Well, the keenest and most eagle eyes of readers may have noticed that the first of my actual reviews have gone up on the site.

Here's to hopefully the first of many! My position as the only (I believe?) UK writer means I also get an interesting aspect in addition to the writing duties I fulfil. I get to attempt to liase via email with PR for various games companies, which I wasn't expecting to do but I'm finding interesting and intriguing all the same. There's an odd sense of... Excitement, I guess, when I go to check my staff email account that I'm really rather enjoying.

There's been a lot of stuff in the press lately about advertiser pressure influencing reviews and reviewers. This sort of thing has ramifications for videogame publications worldwide and internetwide, not just the supposedly offending sites, and I think for a lot of people it's going to be difficult to trust review sites that have ads.

I can't speak for everyone here, but personally, at least, I don't wish to be someone who has their opinions skewed or changed for the sake of a few quid (Great British Pounds) from some faceless company... Here's hoping I never get put into that kind of position, and good luck to the remaining Gamespot staff, who must be feeling pretty down in the dumps right now.

- Adam

Partially as a test of the blogging system, and partially as an introduction, I thought I'd create myself a little blog entry.

I'm Adam and, apparently, I'm a writer now.

I think for the most part I'll be sticking to writing reviews and the like, but I'll be sure to throw some stuff in the blog when I'm feeling particularly opinionated.

In terms of my background, I'm English and living in England, therefore on a slightly different timezone to the majority of the staff, which I actually think works out nicely. There's overlap so I get to discuss and talk to them, but there are long periods where I get to browse the site as the only Admin online. Lord of the manor style, though obviously I'm still not allowed to really touch anything lest I break the wonderful new site the guys have created.

In terms of what my gaming time is being spent doing right now, I'm dipping back and forth between Halo 3 (Custom Zombies games and Rocket Race) and various games on Xbox Live Arcade. The Arcade is where I'm focusing my writing on, at least for the moment, so I imagine the first content you see from me on the site will be XBLA based for all the Microtransaction spendaholics out there.

I think that about wraps it up. Also, I'm getting Mass Effect for Christmas and not before. If any of you spoil the storyline for me I will personally gut you.

Until next time

- Adam