Posted on 22 December by James Gallagher – Blog Manager, SCEE

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël, Frohe Weihnachten

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Killzone 2 Merry Christmas

That’s it for 2010! The PlayStation.Blog team (me) is hunkering down in front of the hearth to eat Wine Gums and watch a liberal amount of sport on TV. However, rest assured that I’m leaving you in good hands: together with Jeff, Sid and Rey from the US PlayStation.Blog, we have invited some of world’s greatest game developers to take over both blogs for a day.

We’re kicking off tomorrow, when Guerrilla Games will be telling us about Christmas in Amsterdam, and finishing on New Year’s Eve, when the SingStar Team will be explaining why they are not boring and providing a set-list to help you sing in the new year in style. In-between, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog and more will all be wearing our editorial hats for a day – don’t miss it.

Looking back over 2010, it’s very difficult to pick out a highlight. Obviously, taking charge of this very blog and receiving many kind comments from you guys was a great moment and there have been some fantastic overseas trips, including LA for E3, Cologne for gamescom and Madrid for the Gran Turismo 5 launch event.

Despite all of those incredible events and the news they generate, it’s humbling to know that the most read story on the blog in 2010 was the revelation that even the most intelligent software developers in the world can struggle with the concept that there are actually 365.24 days in a year.

It has been another fantastic year to be a PlayStation 3 owner, with a banquet of exclusive games, third-party blockbusters and varied services such as MUBI and VidZone. To pick a game of the year out of the hundreds I play is a challenge, with God of War III and Gran Turismo 5 obvious candidates to anyone that has grown up with PlayStation (and the person who had to deal with millions of furious people demanding to know when one of those games would be released) and MAG being the surprise personal hit, as I don’t usually play many FPS games.

However, I’ve got to give it to Heavy Rain. I could reference the storytelling, which is leagues above almost every other game out there; the graphics; the huge array of locations; the tense moments where deciding to shoot a person – something we do thousands of times in other titles – suddenly carries the emotional weight that it should; and the fact that it can be enjoyed just as much by a person watching as a person playing, making it a surprisingly social experience.

But the reason I love it so much is that’s it’s different, and when you play as many games as I do then that’s a quality that you really appreciate. Also, it was fun to overhear conversations in the office along the lines of “yeah… I jumped out of the window too” and seeing people called Jason swinging their heads around as their name was randomly called out in different tones of voice.

That’s quite enough rambling from me. All that’s left to say is have a fantastic Christmas and be good to each other. I’ll leave you in the more than capable hands of Guerrilla Games and I look forward to chatting to you all in 2011, when I’ll be a little wiser and a lot fatter.

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Filed: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Community, PS3 Games

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