Absolutely loving SFIV so far, unlocked all the characters except Seth (who I absolutely hate) but there is one thing that bugs the crap out of me. Lag. When I search online the connection bar is invisible so I can't really tell what matches will be good and what won't, so I have to take chances with every single match I get into. I win most matches I get into, but when I get into a laggy game I know I'm in for a world of hurt. There was this Ken player who was pretty ok, nothing that should have given me any trouble but I still lost against him because of his connection. Then in the next match I meet a Zangief player, I normally think that if a person picks Zangief they are probably going to be good at the game. Well, he was very good but his connection made me want to bash my head against the wall! He picked up the first round fair and square, I won the second but in the third round was when the connection just decided to take a dump on me. I couldn't get any of my moves or specials off just because there was such a huge delay on every move, watching yourself get an ass-whoopin' and not being able to do anything is crap. 

Well, I was finally de-modded. Dun dun duuuun! This isn't really a big shock to me, I haven't been touching the wiki queue at all for quite a long time. It was quite nice being able to help the site out within the first couple of months but as things began to wind down I've had a lot of my free time taken up by college assignments, friends, family and quite a lot of other boring and uninteresting things. I've also had a big interest in music instead of games, this is mainly due to games obviously being a lot more expensive than music. It's actually quite a relief to have stepped down because now I don't have to tip-toe around everything I say and I can just start being... Me again! Every time I logged in I felt like an ass if I didn't look at the queue, but when I went on there I only did a couple and logged off again. The only thing I was disappointed by was the official tone of the message telling me I was de-modded. It reads out like one of my family members died! Plus it was all in italics, what's up with that? Maybe non-italics was just too unofficial looking, when you're de-modding someone you've gotta use italics.

I got back from Paris a couple of days ago, it was pretty fun! Went on a lot of rides, ate a lot of crappy food and even went to McDonalds to see what it tasted like in France! The chips or... Fries taste a lot healthier than they do here in lovely England, which is pretty odd. There are also these weird guys that hang around at night, they try to sell you random toy dogs and lasers. Of course they get your attention by shouting random stuff at you and pointing the laser in your eyes which was pretty damn irritating. Nonetheless it was a nice getaway.

Managed to bag myself a girlfriend whilst I was there too! I won't share all the boring details, but after a year of being single it's been a really welcome change. Shame games have taken a huge backseat in my life, money has been harder and harder to get recently and I keep spending it on music! There is one game I am definitely getting and that is Street Fighter IV. I am a huge fan of Street Fighter and it comes out pretty damn soon so I'm going to have to have a clear out of my old crap just so I can buy this baby!

College has been going well, just been trucking along the best I can. Been asked to write for the college magazine, my tutor seems pretty adamant on making me write for it so I think I'll have to do it! I have no idea what I'm going to write about so it should be a fun experience. Til next time!

Back in a couple days!

This year has been a fantastic year in games, so much so that we are all writing lovely lists that tell everyone what games we enjoyed in particular! Okay, so most gaming websites do this every year but this is a special one. Why? It's Giant Bombs first! And as a player of video games I feel that I must fit in with my fellow moderators and write a list myself. So here goes!

Ninja Gaiden 2

The most frustrating game of the year. By far. Heck, I never even finished the game because I felt like I wanted to throw my controller out the window before half way through the game, but I still feel like it deserves an entry on this list just for actually giving me a challenge and testing my anger management skills at the same time. It seems like the AI was coded by some sort of crazed demon who wanted revenge on the world for... Something because it is irritating as anything. Damn those damn ninjas with exploding shurikens!

Thars gold in them hills! Golden bars! In Bad Company you take the role of Preston Marlowe who gets stuck in a squad full of crazy comedic characters and an officer who is stuck trying to take control of this bunch of misfits. As well as an engaging single player experience, multiplayer is also just as good with unlockable weapons and crazy statistics galore. Overall, awesome sound, great graphics and destructible buildings is what makes Bad Company a contender for one of the best game of the year.

Soul Calibur IV

Soul Calibur? Soulcalibur? SOULCALIBUR? Who knows? The only thing that matters in this game is beating the crap out of people with huge swords. I've been an avid fan of all of the SoulCalibur games so far (except III, I didn't have a Playstation 2) so it's obvious I would instantly fall in love with Soul Calibur all over again. I swear that Ivy didn't influence me to put this on the list.

Army of Two

I know some of you are thinking “Why the heck is this on the list?” because I thought it was really fun! Even though I only played the single player portion of the campaign I still thought it was really entertaining, although those cheesy and bad looking cut-scenes were laughably bad. But never mind that because you could make your weapons BLINGIN'! If that doesn't make it a contender for the game of the year, I don't know what would.

Saints Row 2

Welcome back to the row dawg. Streaking, car-jacking, killing, drugs, killing and many more things await you in the lovely land of Stilwater! I'm a sucker for open-world games where you can just wander around and accomplish absolutely nothing but still feel that you haven't wasted your time. Also, what other game allows you to customize your character in such wacky ways? Creating an obese, pale skinned, pink haired freak with five chins has never been such fun.

War. War never... Bah, if you have any interest in the Fallout series at all you've heard that line hundreds of times so I won't regurgitate it again. When I first played this game I knew I would love it as soon as I stepped out the vault and saw the sheer scale of the wasteland. I still haven't explored all of the places in the game due to how big it is. Of course there is also the Fat Man which automatically makes Fallout 3 an instant classic for me.

Fable II

Hero, there is a new Game of the Year award waiting at the heroes guild for you. I really hated the Guild Master in the first Fable and the references towards him being murdered in some bizarre way in Fable II made me very, very happy. Anyway, the story in Fable II sucked me in instantly. I played this for three days straight until I completed it, just because it was that good. Plus the combat system makes you feel like an absolute bad ass throughout the entire game, so much that you go through the entire game without having one real challenge. I never died once which is pretty sad. Plus the co-op was no where near as good as I thought it was going to be, who decided to make it so that you couldn't be your hero? I don't want to play as some random mercenary! Flaws aside I'll always love this game, it charmed me with it's fart gestures and humour.

Grand Theft Auto 4

Metal Gear Solid 4

I don't even have a Playstation 3, but this game made me want to buy one just so I could play more of it. I was forced to complete it in two days due to me borrowing the Playstation for a very small amount of time but my experience with it was a lasting one. The graphics are mind-blowing, same for the sound, the story and… You get the idea. Everything about this game is perfect for me. Some day when our current generation of consoles are old hat, I'll pick a Playstation 3 up and play this one all over again.

My choice for best game of the year - Left 4 Dead

Shock horror! Left 4 Dead is my best game of the year?! Damn straight. If it was possible to marry this game I would. No other game has brought me so many fun experiences than this one, blasting through levels with my shotgun and 3 buddies is pretty damn fun. So is throwing a Molotov cocktail at your team mates and shutting the safe house door whilst laughing at them through voice chat, but that's a story for another time. Although the game is slightly flawed in some places with the matchmaking often putting me in laggy games, I don't care just because when you do get into a game you stay in it for hours. And when you manage to pull off a perfect coordinated attack when playing as the infected it is very satisfying. Buy this game or I'll feast on your brains.

my head hurts

i'm dizzy

my chest hurts

who wants to come over to my house and give me a massage? I feel terrible.

I finished it a couple days ago and it was pretty fun, but I just don't want to play through it again. At all. I was a good character so there is the whole "You can totally go through and be a total prick to everyone this time around" aspect, but I really can't be bothered for some reason. Don't get me wrong, I did have loads of fun playing through it the first time but there were a couple niggles. The game was far, far too easy. I never had any trouble at any stage in the game and I never got killed/knocked over/what ever they call it once. Half way through the game hardly anything could touch me, trolls were just more of a minor nuisance than an enemy I would be afraid of and the banshees were a huge letdown, I was expecting it to be this ultra huge boss fight but I ended up killing it in 5 shots with my pistol. Which reminds me about the clothing, I was expecting there to be a ton of clothes seeing as they were flaunting the whole customization aspect of the game but in the end there were 2 outfits that didn't look completely ridiculous.

There's also the whole co-op thing going on, I was really disappointed with this. Me and my friends were all like "I'm going to come into your game, kill your wife blah blah blah" but none of us knew that we wouldn't be able to play as our hero. I don't want to play as some crappy merc-for-hire, I want my hero! The loading times were increased by a ton as well, to the point where I just want to play on my own because I'm tired of waiting for these loading screens all the time.

I think I'll be putting it up for sale later today, for some reason it just doesn't have the magic that the first one did. I have no idea why, maybe my standards have gone up a bit now that I'm older? Who knows. Does anyone else feel the same way?

I got Fallout 3 yesterday, so blah blah fast forward to today and I'm playing it. It autosaves and then POW, Xbox freezes. No biggie. Turn it back on and apparently my Xbox profile has disappeared. So I take the hard drive off and put it back on, still the same thing. It's like the entire hard drive has just gone. I'm going to leave it for a while and see if it pops back to life, if not I'm going to have to return it. Damnit, I was so far through Fallout 3! I knew I should have got it for the PC.

Update! The hard drive is working again, not sure how long it'll keep like this. Also, I'm tempted to sell Fable 2, I've completed it but I don't see the point in going through it again. There are all the gargoyles and crud like that, but... I just can't be bothered. Plus even if I get all of these legendary weapons and tons of houses, what's the point? A couple of achievements I suppose, but no one gets to see the stuff I've earned because no one wants to play co-op. Playing as a henchman is crud boring.

Double update! I ordered Pink Floyd - Meddle, King Crimson - The Power to Believe and Explosions in the Sky - All of a sudden I miss everyone. Awesome sauce.

Triple update! I ordered THREE MORE, WOAOOOOAHH. Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure, Steve Hackett - Spectral Mornings and Rick Wright - Broken China.