I got back from my Holiday in Dorset yesterday at exactly 7:01 pm and although I don't mind being back I had a good holiday, if any of you are ever in the area visit the Tank Museum, it's awesome. But anyway when I got back yesterday I decided to hold off on blogging so I could put one up today as I'm happy to announce that August 18th marks the anniversary of my birth and I have now reached the grand old age on seventeen. What with fitting everything in around the holiday I'll have to leave festivities and presents for a later date but today is a good day none the less. When presents do roll around however it looks like I could be in for a laptop and driving lessons so fingers crossed on that one.

When I arrived home yesterday though I noticed that the new beta Gamespot changes had been implemented. Overall I have to say I'm pretty impressed, what with there being a bit of competitivity between Gamespot and Giant Bomb the Gamespot team have quickly answered the call and implemented a lot of the kind of features and layouts that have made Giant Bomb the favourite for many video game fanatics. But I'm afraid now I'm going to start nitpicking because I do have a few gripes with the new site. Firstly although I know it'll take some time to get used to the new look of the site for me Gamespot looks just a tiny bit too much like Giant Bomb for me and although the forums have been saved from the overhaul the old look of Gamespot made me feel like Gamespot was a more individual site. Secondly changing the thumbs up/thumbs down options to agree/disagree is a bad idea in my opinion, although it gives more clarity on the meaning it is effectively encouraging fanboyism and applaud of a post no matter how well or badly written it is. Thirdly despite much visual revolution Gamespot seems to have retained a few of the technical shortcomings that acted as a nuisance before the new version was implemented, in general these are nothing major but should the video uploader still be as unreliable as it was I imagine they could have a lot of angry users on their hands. Apart from that my other arguments are mainly based around things being too small, why even this blog entry box feels a little claustrophobic. Don't get me wrong, I understand a lot of effort and good design has gone into making the new updates, I just think they could be that tiny bit better.

Those of you who have listened to the latest Giant Bombcast will be familiar with the subject of my next little rant: Blizzard's new World of Warcraft recruitment campaigns. Because if you can get one of your friends to join the game and sign up for two or more months subscription not only do you get triple EXP when partied with them but you also get a free mount. Now my main problem isn't with the triple EXP but its still a big issue for me, partying with hardcore players was an old slightly faster way to piggy back your way through the levels and I didn't mind one player helping another out like that and double EXP being gained from spending time offline or in towns, I didn't mind that either because I thought it was done in a very fair way. But the idea that if you wanna play World of Warcraft you just get your higher level friend to recruit you and express-level your way through the game with them is no more than Blizzard simply cheapening the game, before now there were people who would've done anything for that kind of EXP boost and now Blizzard is just boiling down the levelling structure for their own gain. The free Zhevra mount? Now that is really annoying, I know I'm not the only one who spent the run up to level 40 desperately scrapping together enough gold and silver for my brilliant steed, now we have reached the point where level 70s with epic mounts are going to be running through towns to see everyone riding half-zebra, half-unicorn creatures from A-B just because they roped a single new player into the game. I know this stuff won't absolutely annihilate the WoW experience or anything but in my eyes it is nothing short of selling out.

Finally it was interesting to hear one Bizarre Creations representative say that Geometry Wars is a franchise and that they have lots more ideas in the works, although I think his statement about a Geometry Wars 10 was just one of those stupid things industry people say I'm seriously interested to see if they can really pull off a Geometry Wars 3 that does for 2, what 2 did for 1. Speaking of which my new