Happy New Year everyone. 2008 should be a great year even if my start to it wasn't so great. I ended 2007 in bed ill with this virus taking the UK by storm, I was better again for New Years where I went to a friends party, but then right after that I developed a chest infection and have spent pretty much all that time in bed, not eating, not wanting to play games, only really watching rubbish TV.

Thankfully today (Tuesday 15th Jan) I'm feeling much better, the pain is subsiding, my appetite is back and I'm wanting to play all those games I've been missing out on. Mass Effect, still can't start it as I've not finished the prequel novel. I'm upto chapter 8 and its been slow going, I really should push myself to finish that and get back to the game. BioShock is another game I've got just dangling there ready to finish. I'll be moving to that once Mass Effect is done with.

Driving. Driving is going to be a big part of 2008 for me as I actually NEED to get my licence now. I'm hopefully moving jobs to another town and I'll need a car, so until I pass my test I'll be living with a friend who also works there already. While living with him I'll be pushing to get my lessons done and my test passed so I can get my own car. This has also increased my interest in driving games. I've always liked cars, watching racing, Top Gear etc, but not greatly. But now I've noticed that I'm starting to recognise most cars, so I think my interest must be growing. I often find myself in PGR4 lately just cruising around the London Westminister tour in an Aston Martin DBS, oooh!

I'm really looking forward to GTA4 and Splinter Cell Conviction this spring, hoping neither slips back. Loving having my 360, no need for a PS3 yet, maybe when MGS4 is released I won't be able to stop myself, but for now I'm safe. No Wii yet, I'll get one one day maybe, we'll see, a new Zelda will probably do that job.

I've also updated my banner and profile pictures to reflect where I'm at with my 2008 gaming head, all about the Splinter Cell, bring it on. I know nothing about the new game pretty much and when I know nothing about a game before I play it, it always turns out great (MGS1, Ocarina of Time, Splinter Cell 1, GTA3, etc). What is everyone else looking forward to this year?

Well with exactly one week to go until christmas I feel precisely ZERO christmas spirit and I don't know why. For some reason this year just isn't doing it for me, maybe last year was the last time I'll ever experience the christmasy feeling until maybe I have children and go through it with them. I'm not depressed or anything, just can't seem to get into this year.

Anyway, games. I've been playing Call of Duty 4 online in stints, pushing myself to get to the ultimate unlock that I want, the Baretta .50cal Sniper Rifle and also the Desert Eagle. I want to run around with a gold desert eagle blasting people until they shutdown the COD4 servers. I've also been continuing on Project Gotham Racing 4. That game just has the sense of speed and fun perfected. The controls and handling are just right for me. I recently spent the weekend at a friends where we blasted through Guitar Hero 2 & 3 on the 360. Unfortunatly on HIS profile, so I didn't unlock any new achievements from that.

I did however get 10 new Xbox Live Arcade games free thanks to the 10 free games offer Microsoft where running. I can't remember them all, but I know they included Small Arms, Bomberman, E4, Sonic 1 and a few others. So I've obtained a nice few achievements from that. I also need to revisit Assassins Creed and pick up the achievments I'm missing for pickpocketing knives, throwing poor people around, fighting for more than 10 mins and fighting over 25 peeps in one fight. Then I'll be done with that game as I sure as hell am not collecting all the flags or templars, what a waste of time.

I've been reading Mass Effect: Revelation, the prequel novel to the Mass Effect game. I don't read too much as I don't really have the time, but this book is pretty good. I played the first 5 or 6 hours of Mass Effect so far, but I've decided to hold off continuing until I finish reading the book. Then I am planning on starting again. Its been a while since I started playing and I'm already forgetting what I've acheived, so it should be good to redo things with a better knowledge of the Mass Effect universe and how things work within it.

My plans for the holidays have been thrown into chaos. I was supposed to be paid twice this month, once at the begining and once nearer to christmas, but what has happened is that the company I'm currently freelancing for have decided they'd merge my cheques into one and pay it at the later date, Dec 21st. That is this friday. Now if I get that into the bank that day, its going to take 5 WORKING days to clear, so thats maybe the following friday, so I'm not going to have ANY money until then. My mums birthday is on the 19th and I am supposed to be going out for christmas eve with friends. So now I may not be going out, no-one is getting any presents. What a load of crap eh! Welll at least I'll have my christmas dinner to look forward to and at least I don't have to go christmas shopping with all the packed crowds.

Well I wish everyone a happy holiday and hope that you all have a great New Year, I'll be back on Gamespot next year.

Well after the initial shock has passed on the bombshell that dropped this week gone, I've sorting things out about what my plans are concerning Gamespot.

You see I use this here blog to keep track of my gaming activities and I like to look back on it and reflect on what I was playing at a certain time or what I was upto. If I was to get up and leave Gamespot then this would cease to be and it would mean that it was all for nothing. So I've decided to stay, although I will never renew my Total Access account in protest, I will also never read another Gamespot review, it may sound extreme, but i just can't read them anymore knowing that it's passed through the filter that is Larson.

The only exception is Gamespot UK, this is where my investment in time now lies. Those guys are working so hard for the UK community and we appreciate all their hard work and energy. We're finally getting tournaments in our region and we've had our own podcast for a while now. I feel really bad for the remaining Gamespot US team, Ryan, Kevin, Alex, Aaron, Ryan Mc, Brad, Jodie, Bethany and Brian to name but a few. You guys are all in a horrible place right now and I hope things work out because it's been fun watching you guys these past few years, but I guess all things come to an end.

So here's to my blog, my personal reviews and to all the thousands of Gamespot community members, but most of all here's to

Jeff Gerstmann. Legend.

Upon learning that Jeff Gerstman had been fired this morning. I thought to myself it must have been something extremely serious, when I found out it could have been something as pathetic as the Kane & Lynch review, which was 100% spot on might I add, I was gobsmacked. Jeff has been with the company for 10 years. TEN GOD DAMN YEARS!!!!! He's given a huge chunk of his life, his love to Gamespot and they've let him go over what? A bit of embarassment over a sponsorship deal?

If Gamespot's higher powers only care about money and sponsor ship deals from developers so desperate they need to effectively 'bribe' reviewers, then I don't feel my money is being well spent anymore and my Total Access subscription will be cancelled never to be renued.

There is pretty much only one reason I come to this site and thats Jeff Gerstman. I don't come here for the frankly appauling news which is always days behind any other site. I come here because I like Jeff and I like what he's done at Gamespot since he's been in charge. Now thats been taken away, I don't want to use this site anymore.

Gamespot you learned a big lesson today. Loyalty to employee's is more valuable than Loyalty to desperate devs. Not only have you lost Gerstman you've probably just lost thousands of users who only came here to hear the straight to the point reviews Jeff does.

Good luck to the rest of the Gamespot Crew, but until the situation with Jeff is resolved, I really don't want to be supporting a site that is more interested in money than anything else.

Edit: I advise everyone who is cancelling their Total Access to go here to Adam_B's blog and comment, to show CNET how much money they're losing firing Jeff and pissing all over that which was Gamespot and it's integrity.

Well to be fair, I did go out Friday night for my birthday and didn't get back till Sunday night, so I shot myself in the foot there. I did however accumlate 530 points before Xbox Live decided to die, so its not ALL bad. What I learned from the whole attempt? Play games for the GAME not the achievements , oh and Tiger Woods 08 sucks so bad with its swinging control its untrue. I could have torn the tail off a cat I was so angry after spending an hour trying to get the game to recognise a 350yd drive from a tee.

Hello boys & girls, it's me again with another update on my ToDo list progress. I've finally completed Call of Duty 3, literatlly at the last minute as Call of Duty 4 is out tomorrow. I've collected all but 1 of the single player achievements and thats the 'Complete the game on the veteran difficulty', well screeeeww that! The game is bug fest and just not pleasant to play in some parts, so I will not be playing the single player ever again. Call of Duty 2 has the greatest World War II single player story of any WWII shooter out there. I'm going to be writing a review for Call of Duty 3 and probably Call of Duty 4 when I've finished that.

Now that CoD3 is done, I'm going to push forward into finishing Rainbow Six Vegas, which is a very hard game, but thats a good thing. I feel like I've really achieved something by completing mission. Once thats done I can focus on the other gems I've missed out on, Skate, Tomb Raider Anniversary and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Having been lagging behind a few of my friends on the gamerscore front, I decided to push myself to complete more stuff and gain some more achievements. I think the first thing I needed to do, was break 10,000. I currently have 8965 as I write this and likely that will grow by this evening. I'm hoping for 9000 tonight and then I've got the weekend for the other 1000 which will be nit-picked from the games that I have all half finished, like Tomb Raider Legend, GRAW 2 and some others. But thats the challenge, 10,000 Gamerscore by Monday 12th November 2007.

On a final note, it's my birthday tomorrow and Call of Duty 4 is released, hurray! Anyone who knows me personally knows that modern day military movies and games are a very strong passion of mine. Black Hawk Down is my favourite movie and I've put a lot of hours into Battlefield 2 for PC. Now I know CoD4 is awesome in multiplayer as the beta kicked ass and even though the single player is short, I'm hoping it will be my game of the year.