World of Warcraft

Well, I managed to complete one quest tonight, at least.

A trip to Ambermill to collect stuff from corpses. Died five or six times, but got it done.

My idea for this evening was to get a new pet. I tried a couple, but they were rubbish, so I'm back with Pooh.

(I did want to tame a lion... but I still don't want to talk about that.)

World of Warcraft

I have just had the single most annoying ninety minutes of my life.

I don't want to talk about it.

But that lion was mine, damn it!

World of Warcraft

Up to level sixteen.

Pooh's now on 'Best Friend' status and has been a very good pet. It helps that he eats almost anything. Been doing quests for the Undead. Trouble with them is that they don't have hunters, so I have jump on an airship back home every time I want to get some new skills. Or, indeed, go to the auction house.

Finally, I'd just like to leave with you a screen shot of the Wicker Man Festival.

Goodnight.

World of Warcraft

You must understand, the only reason I'm not playing right now is that I forgot to charge my mouse last night and it's been flashing red at me for an hour or two. So I'm charging it up and feeling fairly hard done by.

Garak reached 'Best Friend' status so, of course, I shoved him in the stables and tamed a bear instead. Bears are meant to be be good pets, I think. I'm not sure why. Maybe they can take a lot of punishment. Anyway. I named him Pooh. Not very original, granted, but I wanted to see if the game would let me do it.

So, what we have learned have so far:

BAD WORDS: Nipple
GOOD WORDS: Invalid, Garak, Bob, Pooh

That's pretty much America summed up in a nutshell, right there. Maybe I should name my next pet Janet.

World of Warcraft

More.

Just... more.

What is there to say, really?

Garak is now officially my faithful friend.

I've gone to the Undead area to get quests, because all the ones I get given in The Barrens are too hard for me.

I'm still soloing, I've still not grouped with anyone.

Almost up top level fourteen.

I got on a ship to go to the neutral area of Booty Bay, but got scared so jumped off and got killed by something nasty in the water trying to swim back to shore.

There's a centaur north-west of The Crossroads who doesn't quite exist.

There are so few actual stories coming out my play this week that I'm really struggling to understand the hold it's got on me. When I look back, it all seems so routine. All the quests are ones I did earlier this year with my first character. All the areas are familiar to me. I don't have to look for anything, I just have to remember. Playing a hunter is also exactly the same type of play as playing a warlock. Ranged attacks and pet control.

It's very strange. And slightly worrying.

World of Warcraft

Another hour of my life gone, never to return.

Sixty precious minutes, lost forever...

But, hey, I have got a new pet Scorpid called Brian, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

World of Warcraft

I thought it was early afternoon.

Maybe mid-afternoon, at a push.

It's gone six o'clock.

I'm still level twelve. I'm trying to get myself up to level one hundred in engineering so I can make myself some goggles.

I'm trying to avoid asking myself why.

I'm really hoping I get bored of it again soon.

World of Warcraft

The only good gnome is a dead gnome.

World of Warcraft

All about pets.

I've discovered what the problem was. I thought making new pets happy would be a long term problem. But it's not. It's a lot simpler than that. What you have to do is stuff them full of food when you first tame them. Keep feeding them until they're happy. And then when 'happy' dips down and becomes 'content' a little bit of food will perk them right back up.

So, that's good. I understand the pet thing now. I understand loyalty (which increases when they're happy) and levelling up and training and everything. So I like my hunter again now. No desire to jump ship and go druid.

I abandoned Bob the raptor on the road between Ogrimmar and Thunderbluff. I wanted some variety. (On a side note, I wish the 'abandon' option was called 'set free' or 'send to live on a big, happy farm' or something. 'Abandon' just sounds so cruel.) I got a plainstrider called Orville, who was all right, but a bit unexciting. I let him go because I wanted a lion, but it turned out all the lions were too high level for me to tame. So I ran down the road without a pet until, close to Thunderbluff, I happened across a wolf.

Me orc, you wolf.

Perfect.

So now I have a wolf called Garak, who is superb. He's fast and tough and he bites anything I tell him to. Good stuff. And he barks and helps and even sometimes howls for no reason. I love him.

And why was I running between Ogrimmar and Thunderbluff? Because I hadn't been there before, so I couldn't get public transport. And I needed to go to Thunderbluff to get gun training. I made a rough boomstick, you see, using my engineering skills. And I wanted to use it. Which meant running half-way across the continent because it turns out hunters can't use guns by default. I thought they could, but it seems not. And the only way to learn to use them is to be taught bysome cow in Thunderbluff. But I levelled up along the way, learned about pets and found my wolf, so it was all okay in the end.

And my boomstick does, indeed, go boom. Excellent.

Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast

It's a free extra level to Half-Life 2! Which uses incredible new technology to improve the lighting in the game by about a billion percent!

Really, it looks lovely. Gorgeous, even. I always thought Half-Life 2's visuals looked a bit sterile and lifeless, especially in the outdoor scenes, but this adds the missing life.

Didn't like my PC much and eventually just crashed horribly, but I've not seen a better argument for upgrading in quite some time.

I really am off to bed now. Really.

World of Warcraft

Was meant to go to bed.

Played a Tauren druid up to level three instead.

This is bad.

World of Warcraft

That's a picture of me and Bob, my pet raptor.

I didn't want a pet raptor. I reached level ten this evening and I took my taming quests and I was excited because I knew I wanted a tiger and I knew where tigers were. So I got a tiger. I wanted to call him 'Nipple', but that's an invalid name according to the rules, so I called him 'Invalid'. And I was pleased. I trained him to growl and I fed him some meat and then, just as I was about to log off for the night, he ran away.

No idea why, no warning. He's just gone.

I didn't want to be petless, so I ran out of the inn I was in, grabbed the nearest raptor and brought him home. Before I log back in I'll have to read up on pets. The in-game help is normally very, well, helpful, but there doesn't seem to be much explaining of this pet stuff.

I'm definitely doing to have to do some research here.

Doom RPG

It's Doom!

On my mobile phone!

But it's an RPG!

Dungeon master meets Doom, kind of thing.

I've played it for ten minutes. I've put out fires, talked to some poeple, killed a zombie with an axe and killed a dog with the same axe. Good axe, clever axe.

Doesn't seem very interesting so far, but we'll see.

World of Warcraft

Tried two different servers tonight and had problems on both.

Let's play a game of 'Spot The Fuck Up', shall we?

Here's Spinebreaker -

ONE

Pretty obvious there. Now on to Twilight's Hammer -

FOUR

Hmm, see the trouble in that one?

(I know I missed out 2 and 3. They exist but, bizarrely, they look okay on my PC but fucked in a browser. Tried both Firefox and Safari. And I've tried saving and uploading the images again. They only show the same problem as the first image, anyway.)

FIVE

Spot the problem there? Look closely.

SIX

And this the same problem as 5 really, just more obvious.

World of Warcraft - great!

World of Warcraft

It's a good thing I've got the day off tomorrow.

I just started it again for a bit and... got lost in time. Suddenly it's one in the morning.

I completed a couple of easy quests and died a lot trying to do a quest that I just don't think I'm ready for yet. Not alone at any rate. And these newbie areas are amazingly empty on this server. I guess there aren't that many new characters being created these days. I ran round a whole group of islands for ages and only saw one other person, who ame and went very quickly. In a way it's quite nice, but it's also nice to have a load of people around to take some of the heat.

I can't defeat all those trolls alone!

I'd forgotten how beautiful the art design is while I was away. There's a a group of shipwrecks near the orc starting area that's just breathtaking. And running back into Ogrimmar at the end of the session was like coming home.

And even more like coming home when the auction house was empty of NPCs, which was followed by a disconnection message and an inability to get back into the game for five minutes. Ah, random outages, how I've missed you.

Gerplex, lovely undead level sixty man that he is, gave me some cash too get me started, so I've bid on some more bags in the auction house. The most annoying thing about WoW is the lack of inventory space.

Well, most annoying apart from corpse runs, possibly.

Oh, and I went trick or treating a couple of times and got a flimsy elf mask and some lollipops. Cool.

World of Warcraft

I'm back, baby, I'm back.

On March 25th I logged into World of Warcraft for the last time... until today. Obviously. Otherwise this post wouldn't be here.

My old character, Revenant, an undead warlock, was on a server long since abandoned, so I started a new character on Twilight's Hammer. It's a full server, so I really shouldn't have, but that's where the remains of my old guild are. And, as luck would have it, one of my best guild buddies was online when I whispered to him. So I was added to the guild (who are now called Shin Seiki Evangelion, whatever that means) and therefore had people to chat to as I did the newbie quests. Which is a good thing. A very good thing. Not that the game's not fun, but it's more fun when you're chatting. I even had some people come over to say hello, which was nice.

Got my new orc hunter (as in an orc who's a hunter, not someone who hunts orc) up to level six in about two and a half hours of play. Wasn't power-levelling by any means, but that's good enough for me.

Oh, and by the way, it took me an hour and a half from first putting the install CD into my PC to logging in to the actual game. An hour and a half! That included downloading a 243MB patch, too. WoW is not for people on dial-up.

Final Fantasy I

A highly productive half hour bus ride. I found the guy who I was meant to give the Rosetta Stone to (more or less by accident) and I also found a landing spot near the town I thought it was impossible to get to in the airship. So now I'm on course again. No more wandering around randomly for a while!

And everybody levelled up.

Oh, and can just mention once more how utterly gorgeous the Micro's screen is, please?

Final Fantasy I

Played it on the Micro in bed last night.

Notable for two things -

1) In a darkened room the Micro's screen was just too bright on the highest level, so I had to turn it down a couple of levels.

2) The sound out of the Micro isn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be.

I got to a boss in the Lifespring Grotto I just could not beat. I tried a couple of times, but there wasn't really anything I could do. If I ever replay the game I'm not going to start with a Thief. They're just far to weak when it comes to the big fights.

I suppose I better go and see if I can find that last crystal. (Luckily, the game teleports you outside the dungeon when you die. Which is nice of it.) Oddly, it's the third one I've not got, as shown on the pause screen. You think they'd list them in order. Strange.

King Kong Demo

Got a free Xbox demo of this in post from the nice people at Ubisoft.

Chose the 'Play As Jack' option and dived in. My thought process went something like this -

Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. This is the best game in the world ever. I love this! I'm running away from a T-Rex and trying to distract it and it's the best looking T-Rex in a game ever. I love this. This game is the best thing I've ev...

Oh, I've only been playing for a couple of minutes and now I'm playing as Kong.

This is pretty good, too, not as awesome as the first section, but good. Nice looking beat-up action, with a bit of jumping around. It's good. Oooh, just jumped into a nice fight against a couple of...

Oh, now this bit's over too.

How long was that in total? Seemed liked about five minutes.

I hate short demos. Especially when they're that short and that fucking good.

Final Fantasy I

So, on the bus this morning I opened up the SP and did a couple of levels of the Lifespring Grotto. Got a cool knife that steals health from enemies. Really doesn't work well on the undead though. Ouch.

But then, at work, the postman came...

GAME BOY MICRO GET!

Famicom edition, if you're interested. Looks gorgeous. Non-gaming-geeks in office also thought it looked good.

Couldn't charge it, but it seemed to come with a little bit of charge, so after gazing at the lovely shiny metalness of it for a while I shoved the Final Fantasy cart in and turned it on.

The screen is lovely. Absolutely lovely. I was concerned at first that it would be too small, but some FF play has put paid to those fears. In fact, I think it's easier to see the battle numbers flying by on the Micro than it is on the DS. Something to do with the smaller screen and the brightness and the general crispness of it, I suppose.

Anyway, I didn't play it long. Just long enough to get to an annoying level with disappearing pathways. The Micro's on charge now. Luckily it didn't blow up when I plugged it in. Yes, I used a step down converter, but I was still worried.

Anyway, I need a good session or two on it, but the Micro certainly seems like a lovely piece of kit. I worked out that it's my seventh Game Boy. Nintendo must love me.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Was going to install Football Manager 2006, but somehow ended up switching the DS on instead. Started episode three, but almost as soon as I did the DS's battery light went red. Played for a while, but got too worried about the thing dying and losing all my progress, so I saved the game and plugged it into the charger.

Damn battery-powered consoles.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Hooray!

Case two finished!

Not that there's much real skill involved. It's definitely 'finished' rather than 'won' or 'solved'. Doesn't stop it being highly entertaining.

It took forty-five minutes, by the way, the final section of episode two.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Another section of episode two.

Like I said last night, it's brilliant. It makes me laugh out loud, you know, and not many games do that.

Go buy! Go buy! Go buy!

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

This game is brilliant.

I've just done the first day of episode two's trial.

I'm sure it's just as linear as episode one, but the game makes me feel like I am Phoenix Wright himself. There's enough choice to allow me to make the odd mistake and maintain the illusion (yes, just like the investigation phase, I know I'm repeating myself), but it's probably the presentation that really does it. Flashes and crashes and outstretched-arms, it's got the dramatic stuff turned up to eleven and it works.

Some people are going to hate it. The kind of people who see the Civilization games as, well, games in the traditional sense, with rules and goals and statistics and formulas and who try to maximise their chances of winning. Phoenix Wright is for those of us who aren't playing a strategy game when we play Civ, it's for those of us who are building empires.

If you see a game's 'skin' - and I'm not just talking graphics - as a coating above the important bits, then Phoenix Wright probably isn't for you. But if the skin is important, if you can suspend disbelief and lose yourself in worlds and fill in the gaps in the stories with your own invention, then grab Phoenix Wright.

Earlier this evening I took a look under the hood, as it were, as I mentioned. Just out of curiousity. But much as I sometimes like engines, it's the experience of driving that's really important.

I don't know if I explained that as well as I could have, but I hope you get the point.

Is a Nintendog a cute puppy or polygon wrapped around some simple AI rules? Is Advance Wars an abstract game of strategy or a life and death struggle between opposing armies? Is the princess on another level or in another castle? Is Phoenix Wright a linear adventure game with limited interaction and relatively easy puzzles... or is he a man stuggling to prove the innocence of his clients against terrible odds?

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Right, I've done the pre-trial part of episode two.

Traditional point and click adventure type stuff, albeit with a streamlined interface. Rather like how Riveria on the GBA streamlined RPGs, actually. Lots of clicking on things in rooms and talking to people and moving between a few different locations through the use of a menu.

I'm not sure if it's possible to miss any evidence, or whether the game doesn't let you proceed until you've found what you're meant to find. I suspect the latter, though if so there is a very nice illusion of free will and investigation.

Good stuff this. Not one to play in short bursts, though. At least not if you have a memory like mine.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Well, I tried episode one again as an experiment.

You can't let things go. If you cycle through all the witness testimony you just get back to the beginning until you hit upon the right the thing to do.

Or you can do the wrong thing. You can introduce a passport into evidence when you should be using an answerphone tape and then you'll piss off the judge a bit. (Or 'lose a life' as we used to say.) If you piss off the judge enough he finds the defendant GUILY and it's game over.

So, yes, expectedly linear in the trial phase, with a definite right way of doing things. That's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I was just curious.

One day someone should get the licence to top ITV3 show The Practice or Living TV's Shatnertastic (not to mention Spaderific) Boston Legal and have a proper court case simulation where you can mess up on one witness but pull it back with an epic closing. Featuring EyeToy compatibility and advanced juror AI... or something.

(No, it wouldn't need a licence, but I like the idea of stealing-company-money-to-pay-off-gambling-debts and sexual-banter-with-(ex)-Lara-Croft mini games.)

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Well, no, as it happens. So far I have no objection to this.

I've just played through the first case. A simple matter of defending an old childhood friend from a murder charge. A very short case. In fact, you might well call it a tutorial. It'd be interesting to see if it's possible to cock up, or if it leads you to make the right choices.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil it for you, so I won't give any plot details.

::looks around::

Do you really want to know about the mechanics of the trial process? Well, in brief, the prosecuter makes a statement and adds evidence to your inventory. And then he calls a witness, who gives evidence. Then you cross-examine the witness by going back and forth through their statement. At any point you can press them further (which I didn't try) or go to your inventory and bring in an item of evidence. So, say they say they saw the victim being killed at three o'clock, you can introduce a shop security video that shows the victim was still alive at four. That sort of thing. And sometimes the judge asks a question and you have to give a multiple choice answer.

I believe there's a pre-trial bit to most episodes to, but I suspect that'll be introduced when I start the next episode.

And it's all touch screen controls, you can save any time and it's got that manga/anime style that's becoming an increasingly common part of DS games. Well, Ouendan, Trauma Center and this game all turned up in close proximity, so it seems like a trend to me.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

I was trying to watch Elektra.

I was trying and failing.

But I paid nearly two quid for the rental, so I didn't want to turn it off.

So what did I do?

Exactly.

Handheld consoles are great.

(Julius mode is odd, though. I'm just whipping my way through the castle with gay abandon and no real purpose.)

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Julius Mode. It's Dawn of Sorrow old school style.

Good stuff. Just jumping and whipping and slashing without any of those modern distractions like souls and potions and stuff.

I got stuck in a room under some of those icy blocks, though, so I turned it off.

I'm really not meant to be playing Castlevania still, need to play other games in the queue. But it's just so good.

Final Fantasy I

Not much today.

Just a quick boss battle. Actually, it wasn't a quick boss battle. It took about fifteen minutes of two people attacking, one healing and one casting ice magic. Got a judgment staff from it, but I've not checked to see if it's any good yet.

Why don't you get experience points for these boss battles, anyway? Tch.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

So, having over nintety percent of the souls I decided to go back to those spikes and try everything again.

And one that hadn't worked first time I'd tried, one that had seemed an obvious way of getting past them, suddenly just worked. Why it didn't before, I don't know. But it worked. And I went through. So I cleared out that area, including secret wall and spinning door.

That done, I decided I might as well go see the final boss. So I did. First time I met him he killed me because I forgot to check my health, but second time I won easily. Even had a High Mind Up left over at the end of it. And hundreds of health items. Locusts rule.

So that's done. Apart from two secret monsters - I've seen one of them once, but died before saving - to add to the list. And there's a couple of rooms 've seen, but I've not managed to save after seeing them. And then there's the last ten percent or so of the souls.

Oh. And all the other modes that I've unlocked and not tried yet.

Whether I'll do all that I don't know, but I'd be very surprised if I didn't at least try Julius Mode at some point in the future.

Oh, and I had sixteen hours and fifty-eight minutes on the clock at the end of the game. Call it eighteen or nineteen if you include times I died. I was level, oh, I dunno, sixty-something-low. Sixty-two, possibly.

Final Fantasy I

Ah, bus journeys are ace.

I got four levels down into a dungeon. It's... a bit easy right now. No difficult enemies. In fact, the enemies are scared of me.

The party trod warily through the depths of the dungeons, torches flickering on the walls. (Which was odd, as they were underwater, but we'll let that one slide.) They trod carefully, quietly, but their efforts to go unnoticed went in vain. Without warning - an ambush! Three giant snakes stood (can snakes stand?) before them. Unready as they were, they fumbled for their weapons, giving the pythons time to launch uninterrupted attacks...

"The python ran away."

"The python ran away."

"The python ran away."

"You gained 1 exp."

The way forward was once again clear and the party breathed slightly more easily...

See? Rubbish. And even if they do attack they either miss or do 1 hit point of damage. (Even my weakest character has about six hundred hit points now.)

And yet it's still fun. There are loads of games around right now that should be boring or annoying but somehow aren't. I need to write an essay about it. Possibly.

Final Fantasy I

Played it for the first time in ages on the bus this morning.

Went into what I think is another optional dungeon, because I don't know where the next real thing actually is.

Anyway, before the sun got too bright and killed my SP screen I managed to find a mermaid village in the dungeon, where there seems to be some sort of mystery...

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

FLAME DEMON!

GIVE ME YOUR SOUL!

Bastard. You're only meant to have a two star soul rarity. So give it up, you fucker. Come on!

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

I've got a few more souls. Skeleton Farmer, couple of others. Nothing very interesting.

I've just been back to those spikes to try and work out how to get past them.

I just can't see a way. There's a very narrow gap. A bat could get through, but they're underwater.

It's killing me. In a good way.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Three new souls got.

First up, Tombstone. I got over 10,000 experience points from killing them before one gave up a soul. As they only give out 48 points per kill, you can work out how many I had to dispose of. Took forever. I was playing by sound alone while watching TV for a good proportion of it.

Run left, wait to hear Tombstone noise, attack, turn around and head right, wait to hear door opening noise, turn left. Repeat. For ever.

After that, I just went for a run across the castle. Took some time out to get a Yorick soul, but that dropped quite quickly.

Then went and got one of the secret creature souls. Pretty easy, actually. The newspapers told me what to do and using a couple of souls I managed to trap and kill him. Soul dropped on about the tenth kill. Somewhere around there.

But none of those souls seem to have given me anything that will get me past spikes.

Space Rangers II

Well, we've got a problem here, haven't we?

And it was all going so well.

Okay, so I got message that Johan had died in combat, but he wasn't much use and I barely mourned.

Wait, wait, back to the beginning. Where did we leave it last time?

Ah, yes, I was trying to get to the planet Banana to snap up some cheap luxuries, but the system I had to go through was plagued with Dominators. So when I started tonight I gave up on the idea. And came up with a new one. I bought a high capacity fuel tank and warped into the dangerous system. I flew round for a bit grabbing some of the debris that was scattered around - systems at war are a great source of spare parts - and jumped back out the way I'd come in. Two trips and there wasn't anything else I could safely get. The big fuel tank was using up a lot of space on my ship, so I sold it and went back to standard one.

Not sure I made a profit in the end, but it felt good to snatch that stuff from the jaws of danger. Went back to my home system to give the ranger boffins some of the Dominator tech I'd grabbed. They were happy with me, which was nice. Went over to the medical station and bought some medical supplies, thinking they'd be cheaper there than anywhere else. But nowhere else in the system would give me a profit on them. About to sell a loss, I was, but then checked the news and saw that a planet in a neighbouring system was desperate for supplies. Result! Quick warp over and some nice profit.

Warped back home, went to the scientific station and bought my first probe. Basically, you can land on an uninhabited planets and send the probe out to search for stuff. I searched one planet and found medical supplies, weapons, a ship's laser and some other bits. (It was while doing this search that Johan died, somewhere off in space.) Went to the nearest planet and sold everything (took a couple of trips) and asked for a mission. They asked me to deliver some special asteroid stuff to another system within a time limit.

Piece of piss!

I thought.

It's a shame that the system I have to fly through to get there on time is under Dominator control. Not even being attacked by the Dominators. They're there. They control the horizontal, the vertical and every other fucking thing in the system.

I warped in without knowing this. I looked for a planet to refuel on, but they were all under Dominator control. "Shit!" I said. Luckily, the remains of some ships were nearby, notably some fuel pods. I can use them to get out, but making my delivery on time is looking to be out of the question.

My first mission and I'm going to let my employer down. This is not good.

(Note: I'm playing the game in a semi-hardcore way. If I die I don't restart the game from the beginning, I load my last save. But I'm only keeping one save, so if I discover I made a bad decision a while back I have to live with it, not just jump back a couple of saves and do things differently. It makes the game more tense and stops it turning into a constant quick save fest. I recommend it.)

F.E.A.R. & Call of Duty 2 Demos

Played through them both before, of course. But I recently set up my living room so I can play PC games with the keyboard and mouse on a table instead of on my stomach and a tottering pile of books and newspapers.

Anyway, they're both very good. Like F.E.A.R. more than I did, actually. The controls don't seem quite so over the top now that the keyboard is in a good place. Wasn't nearly as difficult as I remember, either. Moderate difficulty? Pah! I feel sated now, though. I no longer feel the need to spend thirty quid on the full version. Hurrah!

Call of Duty 2, however, I want more. I love running around with teammates I don't have to bother issuing orders to. Rather shocking moment this evening when a guy got shot in the head and his helmet flew off and landed at my feet. Poor bugger. I wouldn't mind the original, actually.

I wouldn't mind a PC with just a bit more grunt, though. Not a lot, just a little more.

Game Boy Micro

Oh Game Boy Micro,
Where are you?
I want to play you,
On the loo.

The postman comes,
The postman goes,
But where you are,
Nobody knows.

Arrive my pet,
And dry these tears,
Arrive to quell,
My thieving fears.

Has postie fallen,
For your charm?
If this is so,
I'll do him harm.

Please come and find me,
By bike or van,
Please come and find me,
If you can.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Up to 75.1% of souls got and level 54. Completion rating 93.4%.

For my reference, souls I haven't yet got -

16 - Slime
19 - Manticore
23 - Yorick
24 - Skeleton Farmer
29 - ???
30 - Tombstone
32 - ???
34 - Quetzalcoatl
62 - Heart Eater
71 - ???
73 - Decarabia
74 - Dead Mate

(Pause. Why doesn't the Dead Mate have a Soul Rarity rating? And why do you not seem to get XP for killing one? Resume.)

75 - Bugbear
79 - Alura Une
80 - Great Axe Armor
81 - ???
82 - Mushussu
88 - Black Panther
89 - Mud Demon
90 - Giant Slug
91 - Werewolf
92 - Flame Demon
94 - Arc Demon
96 - Slogra
97 - Stolas
98 - Final Guard
99 - Malacoda
100 - Alastor
116 - ???

There are, so I've heard, two souls that can be used to get past the spikes. I've got some way to go to be sure that I've got it...

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Just wandering around collecting souls.

I've got 72.1% now, but still haven't got one that lets me get past those bloody spikes, it seems.

Unless I'm being stupid, which is very possible.

Jewel Quest

Travelled for five and half hours today, mostly on trains (both overground and underground, but none Wombling free).

(I assume 'Wombling' is capitalised. But it looks wrong now. Hmm.)

Anyway, I had my SP with me, with Final Fantasy tucked into the cartridge slot. But I didn't play it. The journey up was 'think, watch the scenery and try to ignore screaming toddlers' time. The journey back down was 'I've got a headache coming on and can't be arsed with Final Fantasy' time.

But I did play Jewel Quest on my K750i phone. It's in the same vein as Bejewelled and Zoo Keeper, with a slight twist. Basically, you've got to colour in each tile on a board within a time limit; tiles change colour when jewels disappear on them. And after the first level the boards aren't square. They have bits cut out of them, which obviously makes getting three-in-a-row on those bits more difficult.

I saw my first ever Game Over screen. I've had the same game going since I got the thing, but finally died on level 1-22. It has three 'pits' two squares wide at the bottom of the screen. I managed to get two of them changed, but the last one eluded me. Damn.

We Love Katamari

So, I wanted to play something before bed. Couldn't think what, so I turned on the PS2, went down the list of games on the hard drive, nothing looked interesting... until Katamari! Perfect!

I started up and had a nice easy kind of bonus level rolling up a snowman's head.

I should have left it there, but I had to go and try another level. From 20cm to 12m in 12 minutes. I got up to 9m. Oh. Very angry King. Ran away.

Space Rangers II

Phew. Right. That was a major session. Let's see what I can remember.

Okay, I started again and this time Roger was called Johan. I had a chat with him and we took down the robot ship together (I had to repair myself and a reload or two may have been involved) and after that he became my partner. Being my partner seems to consist of two things -

1) Appearing near me at random intervals.

2) Stealing minerals I wanted, dammit.

After killing the robot (lesson learned: avoid all combat) the tutorial was pretty much over. So I decided to look around for something to do. In the news bulletins I learned of a planet called Banana, which was apparently overflowing with cheap luxuries after an archaeological discovery. Another planet in the same system had recently had an alcohol ban lifted and was begging for booze. Can you see a cunning plan forming? I could.

There was, however, a problem. My ship can only jump 17 parsecs at a time, which meant there was one system I had to go through to get to the system with Banana in. And this system was under attack by uber-baddies The Dominators. I tried to get through it, many, many times. And I died many, many times. I soon gave up on the idea of flying to a planet in the system to refuel, so bought an upgraded fuel tank that held enough for two full jumps. But you still have to fly across the system to jump out again and The Dominators always found me, even when I tried skirting the edge. Once, I took Johan with me as a human shield - okay, he just happened to follow me - but after killing him The Dominators still killed me.

I'm beginning to think I'm not meant to get to Banana. Especially as, well... The galaxy map is divided up into sectors, each with four or so systems in. You start off in a sector which contains our solar system. Well, you do if you play a human, might not be the same for all races. Anyway, there are two ways out of the sector on my current map and using my current engine. And both of these exit systems are under attack by the Dominators. I don't know if this is just a cruel result of the random map generation, or whether this is a gameplay mechanic designed to keep you in the starting sector for a while.

I might start a new game to find out. Otherwise I can scrape a living for a while and try to buy a bigger engine. (There's one I can get, but it only gets me jumps of 19 parsecs and I need 20 to bypass the dangerous system.)

Like I said, phew!

This evening has been really good. I've learnt how the game works, basically. Things like taking notice of your grapple capacity and checking what a ship can carry before buying a new one. (I thought I'd got a bargain on a new ship until I found out it couldn't hold scanners or shields. Oops.) And some things still seem odd. Sometimes you can seem to choose to go somewhere and the game won't take any notice. And the interface is a bit clumsy and does need learning. But I'm more or less there now, I think.

Overall this is looking really, really good. I love this type of open-ended gameplay. And it's worth noting I've not seen any of the other gameplay elements yet, just the main map section. None of the arcade or RTS or text adventure bits.

Space Rangers II

Okay, this is getting weird.

One part of the tutorial is to destroy a robot ship. Last time I tried I got blown up by that transport I'd attacked on the way into the system and so died.

Now, this time I tried again and was being constantly followed around by Ranger Roger. Apparently I have good relations with him. Now, I'm not one to judge, but I think there must be some backstory missing here that I should have been filled in on.

Anyway, this robot ship was, somehow, kicking my arse. (Maybe I'm meant to ask Roger to help, eh?) But I flew back to a shipyard for repairs, took off again, resumed shooting at the robot ship (well, I think I was, it's hard to tell) and then a nasty pirate ship flew up and killed me.

Oh.

I get the impression this game isn't going to be won any time soon...

Space Rangers II

Two more deaths without completing the tutorial.

How was I to know transport ships (a) have weapons and (b) bear grudges and (c) have friends?

I'm getting into this, though. And I'm quite glad about the last death. I forgot to change my name and everybody called me Timothy, which was very odd.

(The other death was me trying to help a ship in distress. I won't be doing that again.)

Space Rangers II

Okay, this is slightly complicated. Space Rangers and Space Rangers II are both games for Windows PCs. They've both recently been released on one disc under the name Space Rangers and so some people are reviewing Space Rangers II - which is, obviously, the game of choice to play - as Space Rangers. But I'll be calling it Space Rangers II in a desperate effort to try and minimise confusion.

Basically, it's Elite meets, oh, something else. God knows. There's an excellent review up at Eurogamer, which is the reason I bought it in the first place.

Anyway, I just installed it - it's got Starforce copy protection, be warned - and started a game. I was pottering around trying to find my way around the interface and doing the training missions, when someone said we had a duty to kill another ship hanging around. Not being one to shirk my duty, I joined the fight. Long story short, all my shots seemed to leave my ship at a 45 degree angle and miss the baddie ship completely, but all his shots hit me. He offered to let me live if I gave him money, I cut the connection to his ship. Just like Captain Sisko would have done.

So he killed me.

Dead.

Before I'd even got through the tutorial.

And I'd been feeling so clever about buying some machinery on Venus when I dropped off the medicine I was told to take there.


Ah.

I'd not saved, either. So, well, I'll try that again sometime, eh?

Final Fantasy I

Oh Nintendo, I love you again. I kind of stopped when Super Mario Sunshine came out, I admit. And the Gamecube, while host to some excellent games, is definitely my least played of the three main consoles this generation. But, oh, your handheld consoles are things of beauty. Not in the looks sense, of couse. The DS is as ugly as rotting zombie Santa. The SP and the Micro are nice, though. In fact the Famicom SP is absolutely gorgeous.

And the batteries last a good long time. Long enough to get me from Maidstone to Stansted Mountfitchet, stay overnight and then come back again. Not that I was playing the SP for the whole time... just most of it.

Got lots done in Final Fantasy. Most importantly I got my class upgrades. I haven't actually done much with them - I've not bothered buying spells for my two characters who can now use magic - but my party now look much better. And being a ninja is obviously cooler than being a thief.

I just finished the third crystal dungeon, which opens up another optional dungeon place. Unfortunately, it's out in the middle of the ocean, so I can't land my airship there. Time to find out where I left my ship...

Trauma Center: Under The Knife

Stuck now!

I get so far into the operation I'm doing and then... nothing. I can't work out what to do next. I try using all the tools, but nothing seems to do anything.

Gah. Stupid puzzles. I'll get back to it later.

Trauma Center: Under The Knife

Another operation done.

Less stressful, even though I nearly failed it. The patient's vitals went bad several times and I found it very, very difficult to bandage his wound at the end of things. Ended with eighteen seconds left on the clock.

Wasn't worried about scarring or efficiency this time, I was just glad not to kill the guy.

Final Fantasy I

Found some ice cavern where I was expecting to find this Hellfire Cavern. Ah well, it'll do.

SP's battery close to death, so I've had to put it on charge.

Probably a good thing.

Final Fantasy I

Well, after advice I gave up on the impossible bosses, but didn't know where else to go.

So I toured the world, fighting of pirates and sharks, until I happened upon a small town I'd never been to before. A nice man there gave me a canoe and told me to go west. But life wasn't peaceful there. No. There was a bloody great volcano called Mount Gulg. I can only imagined that the person to discover it celebrated with a few drinks and hiccuped at the moment of naming.

Anyway, I ran around inside for a while - Flame Mail get! - and met a boss who looked very nasty, but turned out to be no threat at all.

And now I think I have to go to a cave in the north, but that can happen later.

I'm about ten hours in now. Good stuff.

Final Fantasy I

Cerberus, bloody Cerberus.

His Thunderbolt attack just does too much damage, even with a Blue Curtain thing active. About 150 points of damage to every character every time he uses it, which is about two-thirds of his turns. Silence and paralyse spells just miss all the time.

I'm level thirty, I should be able to do this.

(And this isn't even mentioning the instant death attacks for the other boss I've found on this floor. They're called Death and Earthquake and they are evil.)

Trauma Center: Under The Knife

Oh no, no, no.

I can't do this.

I've just been through the first two training missions and I can't carry on. It's too stressful. The music, the medical theme, they put me under too much pressure. I just got a 'Bad' rating for some suturing and now I'm feeling horribly guilty about the scar the guy's going to have.

My mouth is dry and I'm only just beginning to calm down.

I never had this problem with Operation, of which this is a distant cousin.

Most stressful game ever. Even though it's just a puzzle game in a medical skin, the stylus starts to feel like a scalpel and I don't know how I'd feel if I failed and the patient died. Probably horrible for the two seconds it would take to reload and start over, at which point all the stress would probably leave and this would become just a normal game with normal levels of pressure.

God, the DS is great.

Final Fantasy I

Gah.

There's another boss on the same floor of the dungeon. He's got lovely "kill outright in one hit" attacks. How charming.

So that's two bosses on one floor that I can't kill.

Talk about a difficulty spike. It'd been incredibly easy until now and - bam!

This may even be a game-killing spike. We'll see.

Final Fantasy I

First death! I got to a boss in the Earth Shrine and he fucked me. Badly. Stupid Thunderbolt attack does more damage than I can keep up with, even with Floss on full time mana-no-object healing duties. It was a long, long battle and I thought I was going to make it, but I lost Arnold. I risked taking a turn away from healing everyone else to revive him, which was a mistake. Two Thunderbolt attacks came quickly and they just destroyed me.

I never normally play games on the bus or at work, but I've done both today. Will this be the first Final Fantasy game I ever actually complete?

Final Fantasy I

I didn't think when I started this diary that one of the benefits would be having a nice place to keep notes about what I've done and what I should be doing next. Useful.

Not that I need to do it now. I killed a piss easy dungeon boss, which led to me being shown a cut scene of a door opening, so I've wandered off there. I think I'm meant to do something with an Earth Rod or and Earth Crystal or something. I'm not entirely sure. But, anyway, I've been warned that there are lots of monsters behind the door, so I guess it's a job for me.

I'm just over seven hours in now, which is quite something. Weekend: eaten.

Final Fantasy I

The vampire's dead, yet the earth's still fucked. Could something else be causing it?

Another tense dungeon crawl finished. It's not as if I'm ever in danger of actually dying, but it feels like I would be if I let my concentration slip for a moment.

When I turn it back on I'm going to have to see if I can work out why killing the vampire didn't help heal the earth. Someone way down south might be able to help, according to someone in the shit town - the FF equivalent of Maidstone - that I've found myself in. There's not even a bloody item shop where I am, so I'm going to have sail back home for a while to stock up, before searching for this wise man.