For me, it' s perhaps Red Steel. The level design is inconsistent in its quality, but at its best its top class. The controls, do have a learning curve, but once I learned them, I fell in love with them and felt they were offering me a little more precision than your standard pad ever could.

What' s your biggest surprise/s of the year, either good or bad?

Gears of War. I though the cover mechanic was going to get old fast, but actually its implemented very well.

Company of Heroes really surprised me. I hadnt heard a thing about it, then picked it up one day and was introduced to one of my favorite and one of the best RTS games ever made.

For a bad surprise I would say the mentality of some gamers. I never would have thought that so many Xbox owners would become such insane, flaming, unreasonably angry people when the ps3 came out. And same goes for the ps3 fanboys, there arent nearly as many, but they are equally as stupid.

I never thought competition in the consoles would lead to such idiocy on a widespread level. I remember the good old days of gaming, and seeing this competition for exclusive content and the buying out of quality game manufacturers is getting annoying.

I never thought competition in the consoles would lead to such idiocy on a widespread level. I remember the good old days of gaming, and seeing this competition for exclusive content and the buying out of quality game manufacturers is getting annoying.

Competition is good, things are better than ever.

Good shout on Company of Heroes. I picked it up out of curiousity and it turned out to be one of the most solid and enjoyable games I' ve played recently.

My personal dissapointment was Splinter Cell Double Agent actually. I quite liked Chaos Theory, and I thought Double Agent might add a bit of dark depth to Sam' s character....but in the end that was only confined to the intro, and in a game that felt like a step backwards from SC:CT, he remained your usual Captain America/Jack Bauer in his War Against Terror.

Personal surprise of the year was perhaps Half-life Ep 1. I wondered how good a 3-5 hour expansion pack could be. Played it through several times now, and even though it didn' t do one thing to advance the story (I don' t even know what story it is I' m waiting for tho!), it was a showcase for clever developement ideas, with interesting AI interactions in a fast but still powerful game engine.

For me it was probably Viva Pinata. I was looking forward t it anyway, but you just get so lost in it, it' s great. I' m going to put it on again just now actually....

The death of E3.

Well, maybe it is not exactly quite dead just yet, but it will sure as hell never be the same again...

The whole Lik-Sang situation, of course, was quite a shock for me, too.

Think positive... I know. Wii Sports is definetly a lot more fun than I ever thought it would be. Epecially bowling, which seems to have became the family favourite.

Competition is good, things are better than ever.

I don' t mind competition in the marketplace, its the idiot fanboys who are so stubborn in their views that they dont ever think outside the box, or even consider that someone elses opinion might be valid, or that they could be wrong about anything.

I don' t wanna get flamed, but I feel like half the time I' m talking to uneducated 13-17 year old americans. I know there are stupid people all over the world, but this demographic takes the cake. I' ve met them IRL, I' ve played with them online for 10 years, and they only get stupider.

Oh, and not to mention when I went in to buy Fight Night Round 3 for ps3, the sales guy had to get it from the back because it released that morning. While waiting with him to get keys from another employee who was busy, he told me PS3' s sucked. This guy was 21 or older, and he is telling a customer that the game they want for the system they own sucks, and has no reason as to why the system sucks, just that it does. The conversation went like this.

Guy: So you have a ps3 huh?
Me: Yah, got one when it released
Guy: ah, I' m and Xbox guy myself
Me: thats cool, as long as you arent one of those fanboys that runs around on forums and games online saying Ps3' s suck
Guy: Well, it does suck
Me: Why? The hardware is as good or better, and will have all sorts of exclusives
Guy: Because, sony is shit, they never had anything good
Me: Final Fantasy, MGS, and Gran Turismo were some of the best console games of their time
Guy: I dono, MGS was lame, and Final fantasy and Gran Turismo sucked.

At this point I just stopped talking to him because I knew his type, and knew no matter what I said, he would just say it sucked or just not listen.

This blew me away, I knew people talked shit and acted like retards online, but this was IRL, and I was a customer and he is spouting of this BS Xbox Fanboy garbage.

I' m not making a damn bit of this up, I have no reason to hate Xbox' s, and I played on one for over 8 months when my roomate had one, but these people......I dont understand them.

Sorry Avarice but the hardware isn' t " as good as or better" , it is worse. You seem to me a lot like the people you are describing. You come off to me as one of the 13-17 year old American haters that post conspiracy articles on shoutwire. Sorry but you can' t run cars on water. I don' t take America bashing lightly. You' ve come off to me as a nationalist piece of shit hypocrite.

I had a conversation once, it went like this:

Majik: Hi.

Big Guy: F*ck off!

Majik: ...ok...



Wasn' t very interesting...

Was that you, Sorry Majik get very grumpy when people pinch my arse without asking.

Surprise of the Year How well the DS has done against the PSP.
Disapointment of the Year No Halo 3 for another 10 months

My surprise of the year:
I bought a 360, didn' t buy a Wii. WTF?! How the hell did that happen?

2006
-My first console death :' ( I have never had a console die on me. The 360 was the first...tho i was more to blame as I did a few things to it i shouldnt have but fuck all if I was gonna tell the guy at EB! It was even more saddengin cause I had just bought 3 new games upon its death. My origional Xbox from release date didnt die til I opened up...fuckn curiosity but hell it wen on for damn 4+ years so it lived a good long life.

-Announcement of Half-Life 2+Portal+Team Fortress 2+Ep2+Ep3 being packaged as one game for $59.99!

-SC:DA being such a big fuckn downer on 360...I want to play the montreal developed xbox version now to see how that fairs.

-A PS3 has been sitting at my store for a week and a half now...whereas the Wii seems to vanish before I have a chance to even see it get stocked...If I ever have the money I may need to pick up that poor homeless PS3.

-Saints Row being more fun then it should be allowed too. I recored to very poor quality videos that I may show later. Same goes to Viva Pinata. Way more fun then it should be.

-Find out that Star Trek is a damn good show after veiwing it on the Video Marketplace. Plus the best deal in terms of cost/time/entertainment value. I mean come on all the short 15 minute Adult Swim episodes are the same price at the 40+ minute Star Trek episodes...they couldve at least bundles the short shows or somthing.

-I dunno there was a lot of stuff that I really cant remember at 6 am...Ill probably add mroe later

2007
-10.4 million 360s sold. As big a fan of the 360 that I am I really didnt think itd make it...I am sooo ashamed. Sorry MS I will be a good little whore form now on I wont doubt you no more.

-Plenty more to come soon Im sure.

The whole DS vs. psp thing still has me perplexed. How can a stupid fucking handheld like the ds beat the psp so badly? It' s funny actually because I remember when I first heard about the psp and a friend and I were laughing at Sony and the idea of competing against Nintendo in the handheld market. However once they revealed the psp I immediately wanted one and thought it would crush DS. Of course that was before the ds LITE, Sony needs to make a psp redesign. I want a clamshell design with a built in HDD with a built in Camera and GPS (think of the gaming possibilities with a camera and gps on a hendheld).

I sold my psp to buy a DS LITE, and sold that to buy 360 games and PC. Now I' m a little pissed because I want my psp back for Tactics. Maybe I' ll wait for the game to actually come out and hope for news on a redesign.


My second surprise of 2006 roots back to 2005 when COD2 came out for 360. I bought it to tide me over till the release of Oblivion and other games I was looking foward to. I wasn' t a fan of the franchise, and I figured it would be a game I would end up trading in for a better game once the real ones came out. COD2 blew me away. I fucking love that game. I used to be a well ballanced gamer that enjoyed a bit of everything, now post COD2 I' m pretty much just an FPS whore. The games I look foward to most are almost all FPS. It' s nuts, it' s like I don' t even need an console, I just need an FPS player. My disc actually snapped for no apparent reason and as soon as I go to the video store I' ll buy another copy because COD2 kicks the crap out of COD3.

My third surprise is that there hasn' t been any updates about Huxley in a while. I' m starting to get restless.

My surprise of the year:
I bought a 360, didn' t buy a Wii. WTF?! How the hell did that happen?

And still i would never play with you over XBL,now fuck off.

Fine, I wouldn' t wanna play with you anyway. You seem to be one of those poor suckers that spend too much time playing online that you' re so good it' s hopeless to play with you

Heh.

Well...
I usually wins... tbh.

But i got great allies,Funner and Ribcage Se.

I don' t get surprised, but a big surprise to many people is that PS3 doesn' t " have better graphics" than xbox 360. It got hyped like no other, came out over a year later, and costs a gazillion USD. A lot of people would think it should be.

Sorry Avarice but the hardware isn' t " as good as or better" , it is worse. You seem to me a lot like the people you are describing. You come off to me as one of the 13-17 year old American haters that post conspiracy articles on shoutwire. Sorry but you can' t run cars on water. I don' t take America bashing lightly. You' ve come off to me as a nationalist piece of shit hypocrite.

I' m talking about blue-tooth, bigger HD, blu-ray, and no matter what you say superior processing power.

I' m not gonna get into the graphics debate, its already been proven Ps3, at this time is slightly edged out by the Xbox360.

edit: to add quote