With this entry I'm officially closing the "Mark Gibson Bebo Blog". As much fun as it was I've found a much better vessel for writing my musings over at Wordpress.

Then again, there might be the odd entry. Never say Never.

But until then you can find the official Mark Gibson Blog over here:

http://godslayeruk.wordpress.com/

I know I've left this rather late, but it just adds to the overall irony of it I suppose.

2007 has been and gone & by god what a hell of a year its been! There's been some major dissapointments, there always is, but there have been some amazing suprises along the way too:

2007's biggest dissapointments

The simpsons movie - many people out there seemed to love this & I really can't understand why... Everything in here has been done to death in the series itself, probably why the thing is so damn stagnant & if fox actually knew what quality was they'd end it at the end of this season. If it weren't for the massive amounts thats made through the merch I doubt it'd be here today.

Spiderman 3 - just... no! Why? Why, Mr. Raimi did you put a villian that you so lothe into a movie just to fuck him over?

24: Season 6 - A tv show that started out so fresh when it started in its first season that again is suffering from simpsons syndrome in that its just repeating the same thing all over. I think I manged to make it about half way through before giving up.

Guitar Hero 3 - It kills me to write this but Neversoft have killed guitar Hero. I had my first hissy fit at this last night, I failed 'One' at 85% on Hard but its not just that song its the entire last setlist! Then there's the issue of the 'Guitar Battles' in the campaign mode, the worst idea ever concieved. Guitar Hero is about the songs! It's not about being a legend of Rock, product placement or stupid fucking achievements for playing the game through with a standard controller (as oppsed to the guitar), why!?! Infact before the game was even out they Activision announced that they were making a 4th iteration in the series, well if its anything like this abortion then I hope it get trodden into the ground by Rock Band.

& finally... just to get me killed.

The Nintendo Wii - Even though this year will probably go down in history as the year of the Wii due to its mammoth sales, even though people who hadn't managed to pick one up yet couldn't get a hold of one to save themselves because of Nintendo holding units back to keep demand artifically high. But thats not my gripe with it. The fact that over the entire year there were 2 games worth purchasing... 2!! A year where there were so many high quality games came out that I had to, for the first time ever, delve into my overdraft in order to play them all. I've lost count how many games I've bought for my 360 but I can count how many I've bought for my Wii - 3 (2 when I bought the thing in January & Super Mario Galaxy on Hogmany). Thats why the damn thing hasn't been on since April. Especially when apart from Mario Galaxy & Metroid 3 the rest of the games this year could have came from a sewer they are that bad.

2007's Biggest Suprises

The Fountain - a movie that a lot of people probably missed that everyone should see!

Bioshock - Without having played COD4 & Mario Galaxy yet this game will go down as my game of the year. This is the finest example I have seen of atmosphere in gaming, art style, voice acting, plot and the massive twist to go with it make it something very special. If you haven't had the chance to play this game yet then I advise you to head out to tesco now & get yourself a copy! Its that good!

Naruto (for me anyway) - I started this later in the year (220 episodes of Naruto & 41 of Naruto Shippuuden all watched) and its quite excellent.

Guitar Hero 2 - While the third one was raped, this one is the way it should have been. Plus it has War Pigs on it.

Die Hard 4.0 - It was actually good!!

Other stuff to add:
Call of Duty 4 & Mario Galaxy... but I've not played them yet.

But anyway, thats enough of the past as 2008 looks like its going to be an awesome year too! Something I'll go into more after the steadily approaching exams.

Peace

Mark

I doubt there's anyone on here that really cares about this to be honest but I am totally outraged about what is going on over at Gamespot at the moment:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/ru...

For those of you who dont visit gamespot, I'll fill you in. Jeff Gerstmann was the senior editor &, like most people on the site, his job was reviewing games. He was given the task of reviewing Eidos's new game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men and give it a 6.0 meaning that the game is average at best. However, Eidos were currently paying to sponsor the site with Kane & Lynch advertising and because of Jeffs score the company put pressure on CNet (gamspots' owner) to have him removed from the gamespot offices & as a result Jeff was let go last night.

Jeff was one of the few remaining guys over at Gamespot that I thought was entertaining & god knows what the future of the site will be like without him as he was one of the few that was there in the begining along with Ryan McDonald & I have to say he will be missed.

So this opens up a whole can of worms concerning game reviews, can we trust the reviews that are coming from sites when this incident prooves that Eidos essentially handed over money to see a good review for Kane & Lynch. This also shows that Gamespots Assassins creed review may have been subject to backhand payments as it was one of the few sites not only to give it a positive review but a 9.0.

This entire thing is disgusting and the only thing to come out of this will be that Jeff will be given greater credability, which is well deserved, for standing up for what he believes in. Its the fact that his review is completely right in this case, the graphics are terrible, the controls seem clumsy and the general tone of the game is rubbish.

I doubt I will be buying another Eidos game anytime soon, then again since the late 90's they've all been fucking terrible so there's no problem there.

Mark