Kane & Lynch is a sponsor for GameSpot. Jeff Gerstmann gave Kane & Lynch a "bad" review, with an ultimate score of 6.0.

Jeff was fired.

You connect the dots. The fact that Jeff was still happily blogging about Rock Band a week ago, this is a sudden thing.

I don't really need to explain why this is a horrible thing, do I?

I'm boycotting GameSpot, I will no longer visit their site and I've immediately stopped my subscription. I will continue to subscribe to their podcast for a week or two to see if they mention it. If they don't, goodbye.

While Jeff Gerstmann wasn't the most liked internet personality, especially given his Twilight Princess review (Which I still think is **** it's sad that people are conditioned to think that 8.8 is in anyway poor), some people are celebrating his expulsion. I thought he was an enjoyable fellow to listen to and watch, while I didn't always agree with him, he made his points very clear. This discharge is a horrible sign for game journalism. And reflects poorly on GameSpot and its parent company CNET.

I have no clout of my own, so I can't exactly call to arms and make this a movement, but if anyone can do the same as me we will send a very minor message to CNet that this is unacceptable.

This is a moment which will live on in infamy.

I've been playing Guitar Hero 2 and being sick for the first week. The Wii came out last week and that also seemed to occupy a rather large amount of my time. Here's a trip report.

Guitar Hero 2 is both a disappointment and a great surprise at the same time. The gameplay is miles above the first one, but the tracklist sucks. Most of the songs I've never even heard of and there's way too much metal wankery, even though it's offset with fun poppy songs like Message In A Bottle and Crazy On You, but Laid To Rest, Carry Me Home and Beast And The Harlot do not deserve to be among the main tracks.

I'd say the best Guitar Hero game would be Guitar Hero 2 gameplay mechanics with the Guitar Hero 1 tracks. Which could become a reality on the Xbox360. More money to spend. :sigh:

This is the ultimate multiplayer game. No question. My parents played this game. While not all the games are equally nuanced Bowling, Tennis and Golf are worth coming back to again and again.

Even just by yourself there's a lot of to do. The training modes and the Wii Fitness mode (Think Brain Age for sports. Play three random minigames and get assigned a "Fitness Age".) make me pop in the disc each day.

If this game didn't effectively cost €10 I'd be sorely disappointed. There are only about four real worthwhile games in this package. Charge! just for its sheer hilarity (you're racing cows), Billiards because it's pretty in-depth, Laser Hockey and Shooting just because they are fun.

Find and Pose Mii are alright the first time you play them, since they help you get acquainted with the Wii Remote, but I've never played them for a second time. Tanks is just no fun. Table Tennis and Fishing aren't deep enough for anything other than a quick round with a couple of friends.

People on the internet have been rather negative about this game. The single player is supposedly far worse than the preceding Monkeyballs and the multiplayer minigames are crap and not worth doing.

I disagree with all those points. To be honest, this was my first Monkeyball game. The controls work absolutely amazing with the game and the game is extremely challenging, but I knew this going in.

While there are a few duds in the multiplayer, I'd say there's more fun ones than crap ones. Try to avoid that games that require depth perception from the Wii remote, it's a real Dylan Morrison in that sense.

8.8

No really, it's not a bad score, you dimwits. It's not as good as Link To The Past or Ocarina of Time, but it's better than Wind Waker. Graphics are great (this is coming from a true graphics whore) and the dungeons are really cool. Not to mention there's a bit more of an interesting story now. But at the end of the day: it's Zelda.

The Mii Channel should count as a second pack-in game because it's incredible fun creating yourself, your friends/family and pop culture icons. And then the ability to share them is nothing short of genius on the part of Nintendo.

Notice how Australia is way farther away from the first point? And how the second point is way closer to the first point?

Yeah well, Guitar Hero II is made in point 1. I live in point 2. Australia is point 3.

Australia gets Guitar Hero II before I do.

It's not fair. :(

For those of you who were worried that my fall to the darkside was permanent:

Playing a female Night Elf was probably the worst thing I could have ever done. Just imagine how icky actual women must feel when playing:

If you're going to hit on women use proper spelling and grammar!

BEST GAME EVER

Crap.

A couple of weeks ago Doom was released on Xbox Live Arcade, forcing me to buy some more MICROSOFT POINTS™ so I could actually play this classic. Yes, I hereby admit that I've never really played Doom. The extent of my Doom experience was playing the Shareware version when it came out. So now was a perfect opportunity to play a game that will probably make me mow down my classmates.

As I was struggling to even complete the first episode on the default difficulty setting (which I still haven't accomplished if you check my achievements) I realized something: This game has some kick-ass level design. I started comparing it to other recent FPSseseses I've played and Doom came out on top in just sheer fun. Sure, the levels aren't even remotely realistic, but they are challenging in other ways other than the fact there are lots of enemies.

There were games that tried to go the old-school Doom route (I'm thinking Serious Sam, Will Rock, Painkiller) but they still failed to capture the level design that's in Doom. I admit that I've only played Serious Sam and Painkiller but their level design was atrociously linear. When Doom wants you to find x-card for y-door, at least it's somewhat entertaining, in the other games it usually consisted of "SHOOT ALL THE ENEMIES, OK DOOR OPENS TO NEXT ONSLAUGHT OF ENEMIES".

I guess what I'm saying is that contemporary leveldesigners could take a page from guys like John Romero and American McGee. Make something else than SEWER LEVEL 3302 or OFFICE BUILDING 6831.

Except for Valve, you guys keep on keeping on.

I love The Sims. I own every single PC Sims release. I love playing The Sims. But I can only play it in extremely short bursts. Why? Because I'm afraid I will let my Sims down.

I am so afraid of failure in my SIMulated life that I will save every two minutes and feel disappointed when they're not in a platinum mood. I am afraid they won't get that promotion they need to pay for food and new stuff next week. I worry about my SimKid's grades. I feel like there aren't enough SimMinutes in the SimDay.

In fact, I feel more tense playing The Sims than Silent Hill. Sure, I can get killed by the scary monster, but what if they take my kid away to boarding school? Oh my God, I only have 30 days left until they turn Old.

I like fighting games. I grew up with Street Fighter II Turbo almost permanently lodged into my Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I even entered a tournament when I was 8 and got to the second round! Those acne-ridden teenagers were impressed with my Hadoken-spamming skills.

However the latest crop of fighting games, especially those made after the transition into the third dimension, seem to exist only to frustrate me. This started with Tekken on the original Playstation, but recently reared its ugly head again when I purchased Dead Or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360.

The multiplayer? Fun. It's always fun to sit next to someone on a couch and kick their virtual behind. The singleplayer story mode? Extremely frustrating. Some characters have their own unique bosses (usually a character you unlock), but most of them have evil incarnate as their boss: Alpha-152.

She has an attack that will simply empty 1/3 of your lifebar. And it's not just some simple beam attack or something, no it's this extremely complicated animation that lasts for half a minute, so you can just sit there and watch your character being beaten into a pulp. According to Team Ninja (the same people who gave you Ninja Gaiden) this is good gameplay. It seems the key to defeating her is either having huge amounts of luck or being such a fast button masher that you give her no opportunity to attack. There's the problem. The default controls for DOA 4 suck. Take a look at this:

Notice how there are only two buttons to kick ass with. That just isn't enough to make for an interesting attack strategy (My strategy usually consists of rhythmically pressing the buttons in random order, and that's hard to do with only two buttons). Sure there's a third button there that will allow you to throw your opponent but that move is way too easily blocked. Now, I just recently discovered that the button I marked as "Nothing" there is supposed to be blocking. How am I supposed to know this when the game's option screen labels it as "Free". Apparently that means that you can "free" yourself from a person who is trying to throw you, or that is at least the only interpretation I can think of as to why you would label your block button as free. That isn't even Engrish, that is just nonsense.

And blocking isn't even supposed to be a separate button. That doesn't make a lick of sense. Whenever I'm in a fight (which is not as often as you might think), I'm protecting myself. I have my hands up and I'm screaming like a girl. Now, most of the fighters in DOA 4 are girls. It doesn't make any sense that I should move my hands from the "kick ass" buttons to the "make sure my face doesn't turn into blood pudding" button.

Now, recently Street Fighter II Turbo was released for the Xbox Live Arcade, only it was called Street Fighter II 'HF. Now for those who don't speak Japanese, apparently ' is pronounced as "dash". Again, "free" is "block", "'" is "dash", I don't know what is up with those Eastern types.

Anyway, I was talking about controls. Let's take a look at SFII's controls. Since they are on the same controller it should be easy to compare them with DOA 4's.

Notice how pretty much every button is dedicated to kicking ass. Now that's what a true fighting game is about. To block, I only need to move backwards. How simple is that? This allows me to fully concentrate on spamming those Hadokens into your face.

Although I keep losing online because of the atrocious LAG. LLLLAAAAGGGG. Fix it Capcom. These guys can dodge my Hadokens and Hurricane Kicks only because of your crappy netcode.

I'm FSFunky and I like fighting games. And Street Fighter II is a better fighting game than Dead Or Alive 4. That's pretty much all we've learned today.

It is only fitting that the start/return of this blog is with the news of Joe "Kane" Kucan's return to the Command & Conquer franchise. I can't imagine bringing any other good news as the inaugaral post of this blog.

There you have it, Kane is back, this blog is back. And all is right with the world.