So yeah, I made my first post back in early January of this year, now we are half way through March and I have yet to make another post.

To be honest with you, I'm in my final year of University and am currently buried neck-deep in the life consuming swamp that is my final year dissertation. Thankfully (and at the same time, scarily considering how much I have left to do), the hand in date is just a little over a month away and I will once again be free.

Over the last month, I have banned myself from my favourite past time and am currently finding it hard to stick to it. Why? because on friday the game that I have been waiting for, the game I have wanted for nearly 3 years, arrives on my store shelf for me to purchase (and use my staff discount) and yet, I cannot have it.

I know in my heart of hearts that I am doing the right thing, that waiting until after my dissertation is complete will reap a better experience. A reward for my hard work. I know I'm not alone here either, as two of my friends who are in the same boat as I am are currently holding off from playing Final Fantasy XIII, a game they bought their Playstations for.

Together we are showing a great display of willpower, I myself have caved from the pressure of playing a great new game many a time and lost out on valuable marks.

So I ask you, Destructoid. Whether you are doing a dissertation, studying for a huge exam, have a massive project or for those who are no longer in education, have some sort of huge business meeting or a report to write. What games are you reluctantly holding off from playing? What games should you be holding off from but have caved to the hype and pressure? Past or present, I wanna hear your stories. Not just to entertain me and the other readers, but so we can all know that we are not the only ones. That out there, there are tens, hundreds, thousands or even millions of gamers in the same situation, all of whom are working towards that moment of reward.

Anyway, back to work.

(oh, this may be obvious, but for those who haven't guessed, the game I'm pining for is God of War III)

Hello, I'm new to the whole blogging thing so bear with me.
So it's the start of a new year and I figured that one of my new years resolutions would be to get my opinions out there. However, I have been looking at many different websites in search of "the ultimate gaming community"

Admittedly, I only discovered Destructoid about half way through last year, sticking mainly to sites like kotaku and joystiq. However, as informative as those sites are, their communities are purely comment based. I was after something a little more free.
This essentially led me to want to find a decent community that allows the opinions of gamers to be heard and discussed by other gamers. So my search began.

First of all, I tried an old haunt of mine from waaaaaaaay back, I'm talking about ComputerandVideogames.com. I used to live on their forums on a daily basis, talking about practically anything both game related and off topic, it was an awesome place to be and the users were all cool. Though with every forum, with time comes new members and as everyone on the internet knows, it's;
Person + Anonymity = Arsehole
slowly but surely the place became one big flamewar and I left.
Going back I decided to get involved with some topics but found that the place had basically died a death, with no real decent discussions going on. When trying to get a decent topic of conversation going, it was 12 hours before I got my first reply and the topic lasted 6 posts, 3 of which being mine.

Next, I tried gamefaqs/gamespot.

...yeah... um... no.

So next I tried Neogaf, having read alot of the posts on there, it seemed like a great place to go and just talk games. So after registering using my university Email account. I was all set and ready to post.
Of course, I would have posted, but I didn't know that you had to wait to be accepted. So I waited... and I waited... and I waited some more. It wasn't until 4 months later that I had an Email in my account simply saying "you didnt make it" and that was that. No reasoning to as why, it wasn't like I was allowed to post so it wasn't because of some glaring character flaw. No, they just decided that I wasn't worthy.
Over the 4 months of waiting it became more and more apparent that Neogaf wasn't as amazing as I had thought. It had just come across as completely pretentious.
Though perhaps that's just because I wasn't "accepted"

And then finally, I came here. At this point it wasn't really part of my quest for the ultimate gaming community, I just wanted a new place to check out news that wasn't Kotaku or Joystiq. At first, I wasn't that huge a fan. Sure I found some of the articles alright and I was slowly but surely growing to HAWP. But I just didn't see anything different.
Then, I started paying more attention to the site. I found myself visiting Dtoid more often just to read what was being said. Then things started to really get my attention. The Rev Rants actually had a decent message to them, some I'd agree with, others I wouldnt. Jim Sterling comes across as really irritating, but eventually, you cant help but like the guy, his recent article on Kane and Lynch made me feel better in knowing that I'm not the only person in the world who could appreciate that game. The more I read the site, the more I started to realise that it was something that I wanted to be a part of.

Then I discovered that the community itself can post their own blogs, talking about news stories, reviews, current events or even having a rant. Plus the opportunity for articles from community members getting published on the front page, I had realised that much like love, you only ever seem to find it when you're not looking. I had found my ultimate gaming community.

So with that, I say hello, Destructoid. It's great to be here. I hope this is the start of something special.