February is the worst month of the year. It’s the month when we’ve all just paid off big sums from our credit cards so January’s wages look pitiful. We’re reaching the end of our resolve with that new year fitness regime and many of us inevitably fall off the sobriety bandwagon that we mounted after our alcohol-soaked Christmas period. Luckily, it’s the shortest month of the year so we can just keep our heads down and power through it.
It was a strong month for mediocre game releases with Mario Sports Mix, Nail’d, Test Drive Unlimited 2 and Two Worlds 2 all hitting shelves. There were some real gems to be found though, Bulletstorm came out this month, as did Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Kirby’s Epic Yarn (EU) and Killzone 3. Stacking and The Undergarden were released as downloadables too so the digital stores didn’t fare too badly either.
TheSixthAxis published 509 stories in February, with plenty of news about the Nintendo 3DS’ Japanese launch. We reported the strong opening weekend sales and the decent launch game reviews for that console – a situation which seemed to lose its momentum fairly rapidly.
[drop2]Other big gaming news saw us report on Gran Turismo 5’s phenominal six week sales figures (over 6 million) and the release of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, which we were one of the first gaming sites to look at. We also saw the first rumours of a Syndicate reboot and heard that sales of Enslaved had been underwhelming.Proper news in February was dominated by what went on to become known as the “Arab Spring”. Protesters organised a March starting from Tahrir Square in Egypt to protest the rule of President Mubarak, world leaders lined up to make increasingly strong suggestions for what their old mate Mubarak might want to do with his political career and other populations in the region looked on and decided that democracy might be nice to try. You know, for a little change from all the dictatorships.
Back in Europe, Silvio Berlusconi was in a spot of bother after it was alleged that he’d had sexual relations with a prostitute. That would be a political disaster for any other serving politician but to make matters worse, the prostitute was under age at the time too. That trial is ongoing but if all previous evidence is to be believed, he’ll either get off on appeal or his party will change the law just before his verdict comes in.
The weather outside was windy. Lots of stuff blew over and we all moaned about how gusty it was. Typically, the North got the worst of it with the North West of England and Northern Ireland suffering from many felled trees and flooded roads. As the month progressed, though, it got quite mild bringing an end to the wintery weather.
We’ll be back with March’s review tomorrow, join us and remember what the world was like all those months ago.
R4U Eldave0
Killzone3, Bulletstorm and MvC3. Feb was a much better month than I thought it was