I saw Cloverfield today. (Note: I'll try to keep out any spoilers, but you have been warned). I went into the movie with slightly low expectations, knowing that it wouldn't meet its hype. Fortunately, because I went in not expecting much, I came out pretty happy. The movie was decent. It wasn't amazing and lacked an original story and character development, but it was entertaining to say the least. Now that I saw the movie, I'm not at all surprised at how Cloverfield's antagonist was kept such a secret: simply because there isn't a secret. It's something that was entirely expected.

I thought the whole use of the hand camera thing might be annoying, but in fact, it wasn't really. It worked out well, and they used the gimmick nicely using flashbacks (because he accidentally recorded over an old tape). This provided some backstory, but nothing significant enough to make the movie good in terms of storyline. The simple fact is is that it's a monster movie--nothing more, nothing less. My suggestion to you (if you haven't seen it yet) is to do what I did and go in with slightly low expectations. A lot of people seemed disappointed with the ending, but honestly, without giving too much away, how else would it end? Giving it a sad ending or a happy ending, people would have been disappointed regardless. I think many people felt there wasn't enough closure, but I figure any more tacked on to the end would be pointless and just detract from the movie. God knows they'll make a prequel and a videogame for this movie.

 In something totally unrelated, I've been playing a ton of Call of Duty 4 on PC, and I must say, it's like 100x better on PC than on Xbox 360. It's better in pretty much every aspect. I've also been playing quite a bit of Team Fortress 2 on PC, which is like 200x better than its 360 counterpart. I've played a bit of Garry's Mod 10 lately too. They just updated it and now it includes a whole bunch of new stuff and it runs on the updated Source engine (from Orange Box).

The only Xbox 360 game that I've been playing on and off recently is Rock Band. With me being a big Oasis and Smashing Pumpkins fan, I'm looking forward to the downloadable content that was recently announced:

Week of Jan. 22: Oasis Pack (440 MS points/ $5.50)

• Don't Look Back in Anger (160 MS points/ $2)


• Live Forever (160 MS points/ $2)


• Wonderwall (160 MS Points / $2)

• Siva - Smashing Pumpkins (160 MS points/ $2)


• Working Man - Rush *Cover* (160 MS points/ $2)


• Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial) - Coheed and Cambria *Cover* (160 MS Points / $2)

According to the vice president of MTV Games, over 2.5 million Rock Band DLC tracks have been downloaded, and there are over 200 tracks in the pipeline for 2008.

I have ordered some of the parts for the new PC I will be building. So far, I have 4GB of RAM, a CD/DVD drive/burner and a 700W power supply. I'll probably be ordering the motherboard, video card , processor and hard drive over the course of the next couple weeks. I also will probably need to get another sound card as well, and I'll have to pick up Windows Vista Home Premium. The video card I'm getting comes with Crysis, so I'm looking forward to running that on high settings. Depending on the price difference, I may use EVGA's "step up" program to upgrade to the 9800 once it releases around March.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. 

So it's December 23rd, meaning tomorrow will be Christmas Eve with Christmas following that the next day, of course. Usually the holidays are a time for relaxation and hanging out with your family, but so far this has not been the case.

Last night, I was up until 3:30 AM getting Game-Spectrum's 2007 awards list up. I'm happy to announce that it is up (if you didn't see already). Check it out here and feel free to voice your opinion by leaving a comment. The Game of the Year category was argued over considerably. The Orange Box, BioShock and Call of Duty 4 were all contenders for the award, but ultimately The Orange Box won out because of its incredible value.

Yesterday also marked the wrap up of the Three for Free Giveaway. The winner was Scott Curfman, and he'll receive three free games of his choice from www.sprocketidea.com.

Other than what's going on around GS, nothing very interesting is going on in my life at the moment. Whether or not that's a good thing, I don't know. So, to not bore you any further, I'll keep this post short. Anyways, I hope you all have a merry Christmas or just simply a happy holidays, whatever you're into.

Wow, it's been a really long week. The GS team has been working tirelessly day and night to get the new website up, and it finally went live today. We're really excited about the new features and plans we have for down the road. My personal favorite of the shiny new features is the blog system.

I'm sure some people will be upset that everything was lost (mainly their post count for the forum), but we felt that it was a necessary sacrafice and that this will be much better in the long run. There are still some bugs left to squash both in the forum and in the website itself, so we need everyone's help to report them in the Report Bugs thread. My main concern right now is that the "mark all topics read" button in the forum function properly.

For something completely off topic, I picked up Mass Effect last Tuesday, and honestly, I haven't had much of a chance to really get into it (getting the new site up was my primary concern). However, from what I've played, it's fantastic. I'm not a huge RPG fan aside from a few games like Oblivion, but this game is definitely my kind of RPG. It's focus on dialog is really cool with how you can choose everything your character says, and each choice has a different impact. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the game. I still have to beat Call of Duty 4 as well (which is also a really good game), but I don't think I have much left to finish.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow (...looks at clock...) today, and I'm looking forward to that. Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite holidays, for reasons only known to fat Americans.

Oh, I almost forgot. I plan on ordering this Samsung monitor I saw on Newegg for my PC soon (as in before the end of November, so I can get the $40 rebate). It's the Samsung 226BW . It's 22'', has a 2 ms response time and a dynamic contrast ratio of 3000:1. I think it looks pretty good, and it's received very good reviews. Can't wait to get it.

Anyways, enjoy the new GS and happy Thanksgiving!