That's right, I missed my own three-year anniversary. :?

Anyways, I haven't been on very much (read: at all) lately; real life has a way of getting in the way at times. How are things on Gamespot? Has anything interesting happened lately?

...and that's all I have to say about Brett Favre's un-retirement.

EDIT: I don't want him dead or anything, the overall gist of the quote just seemed appropriate.

With the launch of Giant Bomb, I and many other GS users are forced to confront an agonizing moral choice - do we abandon Gamespot, a faltering news site that nonetheless has perseverent editors trying their hardest, in favor of Giant Bomb, a fresh new website with the "Old Guard" of the Gamespot crew at the helm?

At this point I'm still not completely sure what I'm going to do; I do however no that under no circumstances will I completely desert Gamespot. Aside from the fact that I'm almost at 20k, I just have too much of an emotional attachment to this website. The new editors at Gamespot are doing a pretty good job and certainly giving it their all, so I also feel that it would be a mistake to just ignore them. In addition, I'm trying to wean myself off of internet forums to an extent, so I really don't feel like spending the time to establish myself in the Giant Bomb community. However, I'll probably still use the Giant Bomb as a source of news in the future, since anyone can see the quality present there. I still had my fun at GB on day one though... I registered some choice user names, including "The_Dark_Knight," "Barack_Obama," and "Rick_Astley," and I also achieved the dubious accomplishment of being the top poster in the Giant Bomb Off-Topic forum for a while. Thus if I ever switch to Giant Bomb in the future, I can still be like "look at me, I'm a GB vet, woohoo, I like attention" (as is my habit on the internet).

Oh, and the Dark Knight was freaking amazing. Crime saga, Heath Ledger, morality, dark and oppressive, blah blah blah... you've heard it all already, now go see it.

I'm getting kind of worried about Nintendo at this point. I've always been a big fan of the big N; I grew up playing Mario and Zelda, loved OoT and Metroid Prime, yadda yadda yadda. However, with the Wii, I've started to become skeptical - I was all in favor of Nintendo courting the casual market, but not if they stopped making hardcore games after the release of the Big 3. This E3 was Nintendo's chance to revive one of their older franchises or come out with something new that appealed to the hardcore crowd - and they did neither (note: Animal Crossing is cool, but it's still casual). Nintendo really needs to throw a bone to us diehards at some point, or they risk losing the hardcore audience to the 360 and PS3.

That's right, I bought the game 27 hours ago and I finally finished it (with a total play time of 15 hours or so). I won't say anything specific about it, so as to not spoil anything, but... dang... if you're an MGS diehard and you play the game you'll know what I mean. I was incredibly skeptical of the game's ability to live up to its predecessors, but it blew away all my doubts one by one. On the other hand, if you're not an ardent MGS fanboy, I just can't imagine the game appealing to you that much.

Yes, my attempt to avoid Gamespot entirely leading up to MGS4's release finally ended today. :| My resolve broke down, and I could no longer fight the overwhelming urge to go talk about video games. Oh well, I'm definitely going to at least avoid the MGS4 forums - I figure there shouldn't really be too many spoilers in other places.

So what's everyone been up to? Anything interesting happen in the week that I was gone?

Yes, it's true... there have been a few minor spoilers over the past month that have just interested me in the game more, but now we're getting some pretty major stuff. Because MGS4 is the last game in the series with Snake (supposedly), and the last game I'll be looking forward to for a while, I'm handling everything that has to do with it in an excessive manner... i.e. as soon as I get it, I'm going to play it non-stop until I beat it and stuff like that. So as a part of that, I'm contemplating totally abandoning gaming websites until MGS4 comes out in an attempt to be completely spoiler-free... I'm sure my resolve will falter after a day or two, but I might as well try it.

So have fun, and see you guys in a month (or a day, who knows).

Yes, if you haven't noticed, I haven't been around as much lately. At this risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to say yet again that I probably won't be on too much in the near future. Well there is the whole "real life" thing to deal with, I'm also having some major issues with my computer. Due to some cooling issue with the CPU (at least I think), it's basically running slower than a crappy laptop from 2002. Literally. Like, if I wanted to delete this entire paragraph by holding down the backspace key, it would probably take me almost a minute from the sheer slowness of the thing. So yeah... if you had to chart my activity here on GS, it would probably be like a sine wave - I tend to be around over the summer a lot, but this spring and next fall are gonna be pretty darn busy. So please try not to forget who I am. :oops:

Anyways, what have you guys been up to lately gaming-wise? I just discovered the joy of buying AAA PS2 games for really cheap, so I'm having fun with FFXII, GoW, MGS2 and 3, Okami, and DQ8... ahh, I love buying last gen games for cheap. 8)

Yep; I finally got around to getting a next-gen console. Why a PS3? Honestly, because it's in 3rd place... I like having the underdog console, and that way I don't have to deal with all my casual friends bragging about how much better they are than me at Halo or whatever (see, this way I have an excuse... and talking with casuals about video games can be annoying).

Right now I have Call of Duty 4 and Oblivion, but I plan to pick up the Orange Box and the MGS Essential Collection (for MGS3) later this week. Fun stuff indeed. If you have a PS3 and play COD4 or TF2 online, hit me up with a friend request; if you do, just alert me that you're sending me one first place. I don't get too much time to play, which explains my low level in COD4... and I'm a noob anyways, so don't be hatin'.

I figured that since Super Smash Bros. Brawl will be on sale in a matter of hours, an epic video of a headbanging orchestra playing the Final Countdown is appropriate. Enjoy, and bask in the epicness of what is sure to be an epic evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IliwQImJrYE

Oh, and how many of you guys plan on getting SSBB? I unfortunately will not be getting it, seeing as I don't have a Wii, but I'll undoubtedly get plenty of playtime with it bummed off of friends. 8)