Ah the beginning of a new year—time to reflect on the year gone by and plan out how to make ourselves even better in the upcoming year. It's also a time to mine past columns for material, rather than try to come up with something new and interesting. Hell, I'd be happy with new or interesting, but seeing how I've come up with neither of those things, instead we're going to see how I did with my 2008 resolutions. I should remind you, that I don't need to resolve to do anything as I'm super awesome and super awesome people need no improvement. I just do this to make the lesser beings around me feel better. That and I can milk several columns out of it.

1. Play more co-op

Man, I played the hell out of some co-op this year. Saints Row 2, played that via co-op something like nine hundred times. All gangs, all activities, all diversions. Boom went the dynamite. Even more so because the game glitched on me thereby robbing me of my all missions and Brotherhood co-op achievements. Bastards. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Gears of War 2, played that co-op on normal, casual and insane. Sometimes all in the same night! Mercenaries 2? Check. Rock Band and Rock Band 2? Check and check. Left 4 Dead? Check, but technically this doesn't count because I did it in 2009 and I'm bloody awful at it. Pretty much the only games I didn't play in co-op this year were Too Human and Army of Two. In the case of Too Human, I couldn't get anyone to stop laughing long enough for me to explain why they should play co-op with me. For Army of Two, well, I don't need to play a game that lets you accessorize your firearms. I'm the type of guy who spends way too much time in the morning matching my web-comic t-shirts to my shoes. If I play a game that lets me BeDazzle an assault rifle, well, I'll never actually play the game. I'll spend all of my time choosing the AR-15 that best matches my eyes. I'll be the prettiest psycho at the ball! I'm going to give myself an A+++ on this one.

2. Be a renegade

Was I a renegade? You tell me. Does a renegade send his own father back in time to save his mother from murderous cyborgs? Wait. I didn't do that. Hold on, does a renegade stalk an invisible alien through the jungles of Central America, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse against an unstoppable alien threat? Come to think of it, that doesn't sound like me either. I got it; does a renegade impregnate himself to become the first child bearing man, sidestepping millions of years of evolution in the process? Dang it. That wasn't me either. Well, I may or may not have been a renegade, but I certainly watched way too many Schwarzenegger movies. Let's give me a C and move on.

3. Drink more coffee

Now, this one definitely sounds like me. Come to think of it, I'm drinking coffee right now while eating chocolate covered coffee beans and bathing in coffee. Ok, that's just gross. Honestly, I don't know why I resolved to do this. It was late, I had a deadline. You understand. That being said, I get an A anyway, because I'm awesome and I drink way too much coffee. And I may or may not have bathed in it. It was the seventies! We all did crazy things! Moving on.

4. Make a crappy movie tie-in game or mini-game compilation for the Wii

Funny story. So, I made a prototype of my Petey Poison game and showed it to my neighbor's kid and he loved it. The problem was that he loved it a bit too much, sprayed himself with Drano, roach poison and turpentine and then tried to dry himself off in the microwave. The resulting mutations caused him to go on a rampage and destroy half of Buffalo, NY. Eventually he had to be put down by a low grade nuclear weapon, massively irradiating half of upstate New York in the process. Good times! Ok, so none of that happened, but that would make a kick ass game, now that I think of it. Truth is I have no idea how to make games. Besides, I played a lot of co-op this year. That took up pretty much all of my spare time. A man has to have priorities. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a big old F on this one.

5. Lie more about cake

Here's something I didn't know. When someone is allergic to nuts, and they eat a cake with nuts in it, their throat swells shut. Crazy stuff. So did I lie about cake? My lawyer has instructed me to deny answering any and all cake related questions. I will say that I get an A on this one and you'll have to figure out the rest on your own.

So, how did I do overall? Well, let's see. I have an A+++, a C, another A, an F and an A. Add them up, divide by five, carry the one, round up and we have a super-awesome, A++++! That's right, four pluses, because when you're this super awesome, you get spotted several pluses on principle alone. Honestly, you couldn't ask for someone who hit their resolutions farther out of the park than this guy right here. One can only imagine what 2009 will bring. Had I actually come up with resolutions, I'd probably knock them out of the park too. Unfortunately, you can put "make 2009 resolutions" on the list of things I didn't accomplish due to all of the co-op I was playing. Unfortunately that means that I'll actually have to come up with something to write about this time next year, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the mean time, there's cake in the break room and it absolutely does not have nuts in it. Cross my heart.

Mr. Binky is our resident cranky old man, and when not on Xbox Live (GamerTag: Mister Binky) can be found on his own site, Disparate Elements ( http://disparateelements.blogspot.com ) telling visitors to get the heck off of his lawn.

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