Thunderbozz

So, 2008 is nearly over, and it's that time of year between Christmas and the new year – wittily known as "Old Year's Week" by one contributor to The Daily Telegraph 's letters page this week – when people look back at the events of the last twelve months. For me, this year will probably be remembered as The One Where Quite A Lot Of Stuff Changed. I finished university back in the spring, putting an end to nearly fifteen years of full-time education (and, to be frank, fifteen years of keeping the Real World at arm's length). Now, I have a full-time job, and with it, the right to moan/worry about grown-up things like the Credit Crunch, the threat of recession, politics and interest rates. The culture of British life has undergone a huge shift in the last decade; caution was thrown to the wind as people began to live beyond their means. Getting hold of cash – cold, hard money – became so easy, that today's generation have come to accept the ability to...

The story It's classic Sonic as far as the story goes: a really fantastic looking video at the start of the game explains how Dr Robotnik manages to trap Sonic with a special new ray, harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds he was carrying and use them to crack open the planet. This not only unleashes "Dark Gaia", a mysterious beast within the planet's core, but also turns Sonic into a Werehog when the sun goes down. Sonic must travel around the world, repairing the planet by collecting rings, defeating enemies and returning the Chaos Emeralds to a series of temples. The game The game is split into two: during the day, you race around at blindingly fast speeds, collecting rings, running round loop-the-loop tracks and smashing through blocks. The game mode switches between classic side-scrolling mode and "3D" gameplay. By night, Sonic transforms into a much slower, but far more violent beast: enemies encountered along the way have to be defeated before...

One thing you'll have noticed being advertised heavily on television recently is games consoles. This is interesting for several reasons. For one, it demonstrates the fierce rivalry between the manufacturers to be number one. For another, it's that each console is being sold on different merits. The XBox 360 is selling itself as the cheapest option. Every single advert ends on the price ("consoles start from £129.99") because Microsoft are desperate to make their mark. They should do very well out of this because - although it lacks the very useful hard drive - even the cheapest XBox is a phenomenally good piece of hardware, with a great selection of games and features. Faced with this threat, Sony are pushing the PlayStation 3 as the home of a range of exclusive games (like Little Big Planet ). Oddly, the most unique of the PS3's Unique Selling Points is never mentioned in the ads: its Blu–Ray drive means that the PS3 is the cheapest high definition DVD pl...