Review of the Year 2010: August

So we reach August; or ‘limbo’ as it should be known.  Not quite as bad as July, but still not near enough to the year’s end to really start getting excited. Gamescom was the big deal this month, and it was a bit of a corker.  It was also the first time I had ever covered a major event, and boy was it a trial by fire.  I used to scoff when I heard journos talk about how they barely had time to pee during events like E3, but after one day at Gamescom I can safely say “I get it”.  It’s total sensory overload, and after walking for four hours straight I nearly gave up when I realised there were still two aircraft hangar sized rooms I needed to cover.  I wouldn’t change it for the world though, and would return in a heartbeat (perhaps a little wiser).

In other gaming news, TSA expanded even further with Nintendo and iDevice coverage; we saw Microsoft raise the price of its LIVE service for the first time in years; we found out about GT5’s hard drive abusing install size;  Dragon Age II impressed with its fluid CGI trailers; Marvel vs. Capcom 3 continued to leave our jaws dropped firmly on the floor; we got a hands-on with Dead Rising 2; a very naughty site spread lies about PSP2 (before ironically being shut down due to lying about a GT5 review); ‘This is Vegas’ died; Resistance 3 got its first teaser trailer; GT5 was dated for Europe (HA!); Mass Effect 2 was confirmed for PS3; BioShock Infinite was announced; we got a sniff that Duke Nukem Forever may be back on; we went hands on with Move, and I survived a trip to see the Mafia (II).  Phew!

Downloadable games stole the show this month, with Shank flipping everyone the bird before cutting them; Scott Pilgrim being all ‘I’m so cool’, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light arriving on the Xbox 360 (sans online co-op), and Top Gun causing copious amounts of cheesy one-liners.  Big retail releases included Mafia II – which split opinion to put it politely, and Kane and Lynch 2.

The world news was dominated by the miners in Chile, who were trapped due to a collapse.  I can’t remember how many days they were down there, but it was an insane amount of time and they get all the respect in the world for pulling through.  Rumour has it that, upon being freed, one of the miners was dismayed to find out that GT5 still hadn’t been released and just headed back into the hole.  Should someone tell him now?  Spain and the Netherlands were fined over their World Cup Kung-Fu antics, floods devastated Pakistan, and the iPhone 4 changed everything.  Again.  By not working properly.

The weather was a bit grim this month, with places seeing double the average rainfall.  It was also fairly mild, with high winds.  All I saw was grey.