I always looked up to Gamespot as a reliable place to go for reviews. They always seemed to be unbiased and it's with great pleasure that I joined the community and got to know all of you and all of Gamespot's staff.

All of this is lost now.

I sure hope CNET reflects on this and thinks: Was the money worth losing the hard earned respect and credibility that took years to earn?

I really don't know what happened but something was lost and I'm not a part of this anymore, I don't want to be.

-i78 out.

Hi guys,

I was checking out the review scores of the game ''The Darkness'' on Gamerankings just now and came across a wildly amazing fact: There's a 7 point difference in the scores between the 360 and the PS3 version of The Darkness.

Now, I could understand if for some reason the game had some technical flaws on a system that made it much better on the other console but what do you know-- GAMESPOT has scored both games equally, which can only mean one thing: the review scores out there are biased.

The draught of good, original games for the PS3 is the only logical explanation I have come across, you know? Like some godsent driftwood in the middle of the ocean, every good PS3 game that comes out is hailed like the second coming. On the other hand, does that mean that reviewers are more demanding of XBOX 360 releases?

I don't know. All I know is that more and more I am losing trust in reviewers. I must confess though, more often than not I skip reading the reviews themselves and just look at the scores and conclusions. I am doing myself a disservice, I know. Overlord that just came out: I tried the demo and loved it. Now with review scores averaging 75% I am reluctant in making a purchase. But what does 75% mean? This is my mid-year resolution: Not care about reviews so much, trust my instincts more.

As for PREORDERS and why you should do it: I know a lot of you think that Preorders are a scam, while in fact they're a tool for the merchant so he can offer a better service to his customers. See the Darkness came out and I had ordered only sufficiently for the preorders we had with a couple extras just in case. Personally, I thought the game would do good but my preorders said otherwise-- we had only a few. Well the darned thing came out and for some reason now it was sold out almost instantly and we had people calling about it during the week-end (but we cannot get restocks during the weekend) who wanted the game. We had run out of copies to sell, nothing we could do. See? Unexpected hits are commonplace now, with titles gaining in quality each year you never know what's going to be the next big thing.

My advice? Pre-order Half-Life Orange Box now. This thing will sell like hot cakes.

Hey guys, been a while I know.

I finally got my diploma, thank you very much. That's what kept me away from here at first. Then came summer, a new girlfriend, a new car, a new job and whaddayaknow we're 3 months later and it feels like I haven't been on here in ages.

So anyway I'm making this short but I am reminding all of yous to check out "The Red Star". I blogged about it before the finals started while it was still an upcoming game. Well it's been out for nearly two months now and I've spent some time with it and let me tell you: it's one of the most original old-school games I've ever come across.

It plays out like a beat' em up like say, Final Fight. You've all played Final Fight, right? The twist is that you also have a firearm and the game is in 3D. The stages are a mix of hand to hand fistyfights while the boss are firefights only. Actually, The boss fights play out as if you were in a vertical shooter like Raiden, the camera angles changes to fit the change in gameplay. Your equipment is upgradeable and there's a nice range of combos and tricks you can pull off.

Like I said earlier, for less than 20$ brand new, there's not a lot of games of that quality you can buy so you'd be a fool to pass this one if you're at all interested in old-school type of games. Heck, this game is more fun than a lot of 50$ releases.

So anyways if I haven't convinced you to check it out yet I don't know what else I can do. Oh and for the record, don't bother reading reviews. It's as if half the reviewers totally misunderstood what this game was about. Add the fact it was released at a budget price and you have a bad case of Neglectitis-Ignorantis from a lot of people who reviewed it.

Any of you guys tried it yet? Leave me your impressions in the comments here

-Ben