A Year in Review

Kelly Brook

It seems amazing that the first anniversary of this esteemed publication is approaching with great haste.

It feels like it has been a somewhat muted year as far as game releases are concerned. Late 2007 saw some big-name titles like CoD4, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War, some of which fell flat and others of which have caused endless, tedious, ill-informed arguments about "optimisation". Of course 2008 still has some way to go, and with likes of Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 still to come there's certainly potential for improvement. Still, this year has passed, or at least is passing with much fewer titles of any real value.

On the MMO front, both AoC and WAR have finally appeared. AoC falling foul of the tiresome, self-righteous, purist, "veteran" community and falling short of content for those of us not interested in mindless grind. WAR will probably become the PvP WoW, for people who are into that sort of thing. There's no evidence that it will have a serious impact on proper WoW, and it's PvE content is decidedly poor, but the fact that it's core mechanic is PvP means it stands a better chance at retaining players than AoC. Because competitive PvP MMO gamers are, of course, idiots.

Meanwhile I've touched upon various issues that have come to my attention over the last year. Wide screen formatting, PvP, beta testing, forums etc. And more importantly I've taken to posting pictures of attractive women in various states of undress, which is after all much more entertaining. At least for me.