Well, about two months ago, my TV was taken away because my grandparents wanted cable (what?!). They never told me, they just took it and left. Now this TV was pretty crappy, and I guess in the beginning I looked at it as a way to get a new HDTV and finally play my xbox the way it should be. So I kept asking my parents, but all they told me was to wait until may. So, without xbox live, I had nothing to do, so i decided to give a try to World of Warcraft. It seemed like it was a great game, and some of my friends played it. I had loads of fun, until one day when I was around lvl 19ish. I tried logging in, and then a message popped it. It warned me that I was banned. Banned? What did I do? I'm only lvl 19! (Gnome warlock lol). So I checked my e-mail, and there it was. Some dude hacked my account and advertised his gold site! It says I was banned temporarliy, but I had already lost hope. By this time, I was already in love with this game. In fear of being hacked again, I created a new account. I made a new character, with the same class and same race. Yep. After about three days, I checked my account again. I changed my password, and I saw what they did. They had created a whole list of characters (mainly orcs), but luckily, they left my character alone. By this time I faced a decision: to come back to my old account, or stay on this one. The new character I made was on my friends server, who was lvl 65 at the time, so I was sorta being treated as a twink ( someone who gets unusually high lvled gear and money for their lvl), so I decided to stay on that one. As I was in some instance or so, I got disconnected randomly. Then i signed back in. And then i got disconnected. This repeated about 4 times. When your playing, and someone else signs in to your account, you are kicked out. This is what was happening to me. I couldnt believe it. Again? I got hacked again? On a completely new account. Frantic, I changed my password again, but realized when I tired to sign in; i was banned. AGAIN.

Tired and sick, I decided to go back to my old account and resume playing from there. I had fun for a while, until my newer character was playable again. I resumed play as usual, and after a week or so, I decided to check on my old account. Apparantly, that was hacked too, and they deleted my old character as well. It was pretty obvious that these attacks were from diferent people. I brought this to the forums, and they told me I had a keylogger. A keylogger is a spyware virus that can trace every single letter you type on your computer. This means that entering any credit card information was highly dangerous. In an attempt to stop this, I downloaded a spyware detector, deleted everything, and put keylogging defense to high.

Now, I felt safe, and I resumed playing on my new account. I played for about a month unbothered, and got to lvl 38. Then something happened. I tried signing in one day, and it just wouldnt work. It was like my nightmare all over again. I e-mailed blizzard, and they helped me get my password back. I signed on. And yes, they deleted my character. Now this account that I was talking about this whole time (the new one) was not mine, but my sister's friends. He had quit playing, and decided to let me use his account to save me from the $20 activation fee, and another $30 for burning crusade. He had two lvl 64s, and a bunch of random chracter strewn across different realms. They were ALL gone, except for his one hunter, his main, but it was stripped of gold and armor. This terrified me. I quickly canceled my credit card subscription, and here I am now.

I still love this game, and I still feel like playing. I completely rebooted my computer, and now I plan on starting some other time in the summer or so. But now, I feel like playing on a private server. I found this webiste called wowtoxic or something, and I guess it looks pretty good. Can anyone tell me if they've ever tried a private server, and what is different? Are there less people? Glitches? Hackers?

*By the way, I recently got my new HDTV i finally wanted! Two months without live!

Yes, we all know it, and you're probably thinking that i'm going to blame GS for firing Jeff, just like every other person in this community. Well, that partially is the reason, and it seems to have started around there. After they fired Jeff, for a reason still unknown, HORDES of users from GS said they were either leaving or converting to IGN (supposedly). I guess the staff decided there was no reason to be here anymore, so they all just left. After Jeff, there was Alex, Ryan, and so on. Now more and more of the people who actually made GS interesting are leaving, leaving the community to make this site worthwile themselves. I'm not saying the community is dying, but the Gamespot website.

To make interesting videos and features, you need interesting people, who are fun to watch, entertaining, and sometimes humorous. Jeff Gertsmann was just that person. He was in almost every feature and reviewed almost every game, well, because everyone liked him. After he left, features and On-the-Spots Gamespot would make never were the same. And then other star hosts like Ryan Davis left. Who's left at GS? This is my opinion, but when a big game like Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out, GS usually hands the review to someone whos a great at it, like Jeff. Who the heck is Lark Anderson? I've never even seen him.

For example, one of the greatest reviewers on GS was Greg Kasavin, the guy who reviewed Oblivion. He didn't get fired, of course, but instead took up a job at Blizzard. It started around when Greg left, and now, after all these people from the GS staff are gone, it just doesn't seem the same. Of course, I will still stay here and support this website, but if they don't come up with better material or hire better staff members, GS will just be overcome by the competition.

Here is a brief summary of most of the GOTY awards from the critics:

Gamespot- Super Mario Galaxy

Gamespy- Call of Duty 4

Gamepro- Call of Duty 4

Time Magazine- Halo 3

X-Play- Bioshock

Video Game Awards 2007- Bioshock

1up.com- TBA

IGN.com- TBA

Yahoo- Super Mario Galaxy

TeamXbox- Mass Effect

My personal favorite- Call of Duty 4

So to sum it up, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Super Mario Galaxy are the top games of the year. Yea, not a single game is from Sony's PS3 either. This year has been an amazing year for games, especially November, where huge games like Rock Band, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed were released. Next year it might not be as big, but at least we'll see games like Super Smash Brothers Brawl (online play, finally), Too Human, Bad Company, Halo Wars, GTA IV, and maybe Killzone 2. But im happy with my COD and Halo now.

Well, i'm sure most of you have heard of the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, otherwise known as the editorial director of Gamespot. If you have seen any of Gamespot's reviews or On-The Spot shows, then you should know who he is. Apparantly, they have said that all rumors about him being fired becuase of his Kane and Lynch review is untrue. "Neither CNET nor Gamespot has ever allowed its advertising business to affect its editorial content" says the vice president of CNET in a report. Then why not just tell us why? "Any details of Gertsmann's departure cannot be disclosed publicy". If you go and check the Kane and Lynch review, you'll notice the video review is gone. What is up with that? If it wasn't because of "pressure from an advertiser" (Eidos, im sure we've all seen the game being advertised on GS), then why remove the video review? Basicly, he was fired for having an unproffesional review, and Eidos got angry. And that means less money for Gamespot. And looking at other reviews, it looks like Kane and Lynch does suck. 2.6 average user score? If Gamespot (CNET, whatever) really did fire Jeff Gerstmann, probobaly the most known person on GS, for stating his own opinion and doing his job, then theres something wrong here.

*UPDATE

But just recently, the recent Hotspot and updated report proves that no, Jeff was not fired because of pressure from Eidos. The reason that Gamespot took down the Kand and Lynch review was because the audio quality was bad or something. And no, the real reason of Gerstmann's leave was still unannounced (legal restrictions).

Whether this is all true or not is unknown, but im pretty sure GS wouldn't want to keep making mistakes by lying to the public so much. Eidos, like Viper said, all only really cares about money. They even lied about thier game's reviews in Kane and Lynch ads. A lot has been happening this week on Gamespot, and yes, thousands of people have taken part in boycotting Gamespot. Jeff must be enjoying this, seriousley. There has been an official petition webiste with over two-thousand participantes already, and, just this monday, all Jeff Gerstmann supporters were not supposed to go on GS to boycott. I don't even know how many subscribtions were cancelled, but looking at the vulgur comments back in CNET's attempt to calm the public down, it looks like a lot. A "Save Jeff Gerstmann" union, with over 700 members within one week has been created. All for this one guy. Sadly, their work will not pay off, as we all know that Jeff Gerstmann is not getting rehired.

Some other interesting tidbits is the 2.9 average user score for Kane and Lynch for gamespot. There have been a TON of "abysmal" reviews from players, usually with something to do with Jeff in their reviews (this became so bad GS disabled any more player reviews for Kane and Lynch). Also, if you type in "bull****" (without the censor) in the search bar above every page, you find the GS article ("Gerstmann, Gamespot Part Ways") is the first ever article to have been officially tagged with "bull****".:P (For some reason it dissapeared)

9.0

I have finally finished my Assassin's Creed review, and I really hope you guys could check it out. Remember to leave feedback by reccomending it or not! Feel free to leave comments here if you like.

Well, as most of you know, this November there are so many big games come out. And yes, I want them all!!! :twisted:

1. Call of Duty 4
2. Mass Effect
3. Assasins Creed
4. The Orange Box
5. Rock Band
6. Blacksite: Area 51

Thanks to my lack of money and nicer parents, i'll be lucky if I even get half of these games this holiday season. Well, Halo 3 and Guitar Hero 3 is enough, for now.

9.5

Well i've finally gotten around to finishing my Halo 3 review, and I did my best to offer a good picture of what this long awaited game has had to offer. I've got to hand it to Bungie, they did manage to create a pretty good game that met my expectations. One major flaw is the maps, and after hours and hours of playing online, you tend to get sick of the maps. While some are good, its sad that they took out Blood Gulch(Coagulation) in an attempt to "even" out the gameplay. Overall, they gave us the multiplayer goodness from Halo 2(with major improvements), and the excitement of the campaign of Halo 1. You can find my review here.I've worked my hardest on this one, and notice that in the first paragraph is kinda clumped together. I did my best but Gamespot was being all glitchy again and ignored my linebreaks. After trying over and over again, I finally managed to show the linebreaks except for that one paragraph. Well, have fun reading, and don't forget to comment.

Well I just got back from a three day two night vegas stay, and I have to say, it wasn't so great execpt for one part. Of course, being underage, I wasn't able to gamble, which is sort of the point of Vegas. I stayed at The Orleans, becuase my dad got free rooms or something. It was ok, and I also bought my 360 to play some Halo, but sadly, they don't let you, even though they have the AV plugs. I was reeally looking forward to that, instead of shopping. Which is NOT fun :lol: I ate some good buffets, but best of all, i went a blue man concert. It was awesome, with all that toilet paper everwhere. There performance was cool, they had drums, music with pipes, this twinkie-eating dinner (and they invited someone from the audience, who just sat and laughed the whole time), and, torwards the end, this huggee explosion where lights were flashing so fast it was enough to give someone a seizure and about 400 miles of toilet paper was being passed from the back to the front, and it looked really, really awesome. It doenst sound like much, but with the loud music, seizure-lights, and screams from the cloud, it was really something. If you have seen it, you'll know what Im talking about. Overall, i've been to vegas too many times to call it really exciting to go around the strip, but I still would have rather stay home and play Halo 3 ;)

Well just yesterday, I finnaly beat Halo 3! So I have a basic idea of how good the game it is and i'm going to start writing my review. Just to tell you guys, Halo 3 isn't short, and its a lot better than Halo 2. Halo 2 is like Halo 3 but with half of the game gone. Halo 3 as so many new feautres it could keep you occupied for hours, even after your done with the game. And im not going to spoil the ending for Halo 3 for you guys, but its really amazing how it ended, and it is satisfying, making you a little sad, and maybe a little bit confused. Get ready to see some deaths, and remeber to watch the video after the credits, as it answers the big question after seeing the final cutscene. Now all I have to do is find all the skulls and terminals to unlock Hyabusa armor and try to beat the campaign on Heroic.

Well it looks like gamespots got halo 3 already, and they have it reviewed too. After reading the review and watching the video, i can pretty much sum up the game. It rocks. Well, at least I hope it does, and it looks like an awesome game the way they described it, including some new vehicles, Forge, online coop, and more. And its cool how they didnt change the online multiplayer much, as halo 2 online is still fun. The ability to watch and study your movies that they record is awesome too, its so cool how you can circle around, pause, zoom in, and do all sorts of stuff. We can all be sure that Halo 3 is not a disapointment. It feels weird how this is the last Halo. No more Halos. Thats it. *Spoilers* it sucks how the master cheif has died too. The storyline better be good, unlike halo 2.

Update: Sorry guys, for anyone who thought, master cheif died, for apparantly he didnt, as there was something after the credits.