Trackmania Nations

It's a racing game.

It's a very good racing game.

It's a very good racing game that's great fun online because people can't shove you off the track or otherwise annoy you.

It's a very good FREE racing game that's great fun online because people can't shove you off the track or otherwise annoy you.

It's a very good FREE racing game that's great fun online because people can't shove you off the track or otherwise annoy you... but it comes with Starforce copy protection.

Whether the Starforce thing is enough to put you off is up to you, but this is a very, very good game online and - as I said - it's FREE. And I bumped into Ste from ugvm when I went online, which was nice.

HINT: Downloading it from Eurogamer was much, much faster than downloading from the official site, which is getting hit hard today.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Mortgage: PAID!

(Until a huge one arrives again tomorrow.)

ARWING: GOT!

(But I've not seen it yet. It's awaiting new room tomorrow.)

Geometry Wars 2

107,000
102,000
72,000
89,000
109,000

RUBBISH.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Been away for the weekend. Played a small amount of Animal Crossing, but that was it.

I'm now within 20,000 bells of paying off my current mortgage, but I can't be bothered to fish for ages, so I'll pay it off next time some fruit grows.

Oddly, there were no dig spots today.

Full Auto Demo

It's a new downloadable demo for the 360. It's ace... for an unfinished product... and for four minutes of fun.

If they can get the slowdown sorted out prior to release - and they damn well should - then it could be really good fun. It's a racing game with games and explosions and lots of stuff on and off the track to blow the crap out of. So I played through it three times and had a blast. But will it be fun doing that over and over again in the full game? Burnout managed it for a couple of games, so maybe Full Auto will be able to sustain itself for at least one. I guess this is where reviews come in handy.

There's a good chance it'll go on my 'under twenty quid' list, along with Condemned and Amped 3.

Marble Blast Ultra

It's a new download on Xbox Live Arcade. You roll a marble around and pick up gems and then head to the exit. It's a bit Monkey Ballish, yes.

I went through the levels in the demo, then unlocked the full game without a second thought, did all twenty beginner levels under par and then leapt into a quick online game, where I rolled around badly until I lost my connection.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

So, today was a big day in Venture.

I'd left all the trees alone for a few days so I could tell which were fruit trees and which weren't. Today I went round and every non-foreign-fruit or cedar tree got chopped down. Well, every one on the east side of the river. I'm keeping the small amount of land on the west side for natural trees. Then every stump got dug up and replaced with a foreign fruit. Saplings everywhere! Then I went round and picked all the foreign fruit I had still sat on trees and made about 100,000 bells.

Took about two and a half hours in the end, but if I'm willing to pick everything I should be able to make a fair bit of money without playing the stalk market.

Dragon Quest VIII

Another couple of hours.

It's a really great game and tonight the time between saves was pretty much perfect. I wouldn't turn it on if I had less than two hours to play, though.

Anyway, I got past the sticky bit and went through a 'dungeon' and - because of my wrongness last night - I think I know exactly what to do when I restart tomorrow. So everything's worked out okay.

Dragon Quest VIII

Well, Boling Point and Ridge Racer 6 arrived today. I was trying to decide which to play first when I remembered how many unfinished games I have. And not games that are unfinished because they're too rubbish or too hard, but games I love but have stopped playing.

So I leapt back into Dragon Quest VIII, which was dangerously close to being left forever for no reason. Played it for another hour and a half, but now I'm stuck. I've got to go somewhere, but I've no idea how to get there. I don't think I got any clues when I last played a few weeks ago that I've forgotten, but it's a possibility.

I think I may have missed an entrance to a passage somewhere I was a while back. I'll go back and check, but the game's stupid save system means I haven't got time to investigate properly tonight. I wish there was just a quicksave option you could use at any time.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

And finally this evening p'anther from Teacozy came round to play and we had some tea and then went downstairs and listened to music.

Best.

Midway Arcade Treasures 3

And then I remembered that this arrived from Play this morning, so I decided to play it.

The main game I bought it for is Rush 2049. I was a bit worried because everyone's been saying it's rubbish, but it turns out everyone's wrong. The graphics haven't aged very well and, yes, the handling is incredibly twitchy (especially on the default settings) but that's not really important. The important thing is that the track design is as great as it ever was. I spent half an hour on one track, just searching for shortcuts, alternate routes and coins. (There are coins dotted around the track which disappear permanently when you collect them. I'm not sure if there's any reason to collect beyond wanting to, but I want to.) I came last in every race and couldn't find a way into a lot of the shortcuts I could see, but I had fun. Fun! Then I spent ten minutes in stunt mode and managed to miss every coin I tried to collect. Never mind. I'll be back.

I then tried Hydro Thunder, because it's meant to be the good game in the pack. And it's surprisingly excellent. The first track is short and boring, but after that there are huge open tracks with lots of detail and the game bursts into life. It actually feels like racing on water, with the all the necessary bumpiness. I played it enough to unlock the Medium tracks and then quit out.

I get the feeling that either of those games would be worth the fiver I paid for the disc and there are a fair few more on there, too. (Though they're probably rubbish.)

OutRun 2

So I played OutRun 2 instead, for the first time in ages. I went through the easiest route a couple of times, scraping in to the finish both times. I've lost a lot of skill.

Then i tried the hardest route and should have made it, but I completely mucked up the first corner of the final stage and ended up driving into barriers and skidding around for a good five seconds. So I only made it to the final corner before the time ran out. Gutted.

Still, it's a glorious experience every time. I just wish the new version was coming to the 360, rather than the Xbox. I'm really noticing the softness of the low-res pictures these days, now I'm running my PC and 360 through the TV at higher resolutions. Never mind, though.

Incidentally, OutRun 2 is my favourite game of all time and my profile says I've only played for seventeen and a half hours in total. Add in the time played in the arcade and on my other Xbox and it's still probably under twenty hours. I find that incredible, but it's because every time I tunr it on it's just for on, two or three runs through arcade mode, which takes no time at all.

DOA MIA

So I started up my old Xbox, wanting to play Dead or Alive: Ultimate to see how much I enjoyed it, to help decide if I want DoA 4 or not. But it wasn't on my hard drive, which is odd as I definitely remember copying it there. So I looked for the box on the shelf and couldn't find until, right at the bottom of the pile, hidden by the coffee table, I found it. But the disc wasn't inside. So I got my old CD storage folder out because I went through a phase of storing my games in there. I found the DoA 3 disc, the DoA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball disc, but no DoA: Ultimate disc. Looked back at the box I'd found and it wasn't the Ultimate box it was the Volleyball box. Gah.

So I can only assume I must've traded in DoA: Ultimate at some point and consequently deleted it from my Xbox's hard drive, but I've got no memory of doing so. Most odd. And annoying.

SWAT 4 Demo

Oooh, now this was a surprise.

First off it looks lovely. I'm sure it doesn't do as many clever things as FEAR but, to my mind, it may look even better. Secondly, it seems to mix things up a bit whenever you try a mission. At least, I found a hostage in a different place when I played the second time after get killed very quickly first time.

The only problem was that I didn't really know what I was doing and thought I'd killed/arrested everyone, but the mission was still ongoing. I found a status screen and apparently I have to report on everybody's status and pick up all the bad guys' weapons. And I couldn't be arsed to go back and do all that, so I quit out.

But it's very tense and the interface makes ordering the squad around so simple that even I found it easy enough to find my way around. Now if I can remember to pick up weapons and things as I go next time then it'll be ace.

I'm really very impressed indeed.

There's an expansion out soon, which is what prompted me to download the demo of the game. I wonder if it's on budget yet?

F.E.A.R.

Straight after installing I had to download a 122MB patch. Aren't PCs great? Only took a few minutes download, though. I remember spending all day trying to download a 13MB patch for Carmegeddon. It took ages and it wasn't until my third or fourth try that my net connection managed to stay up long enough for me to get it. Gah.

Oh, yes, anyway. FEAR. (Just put the full stops in mentally. I can't be arsed to type them every time I write the name.) It's great. It's depressing to see so many settings on "medium" in the menus, but it runs nicely for the most part. Every now and again it'll just die for no reason for a second or two, which is odd. But that only happened a couple of times in the hour I just played.

Anyway, so far there have been loads of fights against nasty men with guns and only one crate puzzle. So that's okay. Thoroughly enjoyable. And, yes, it's a bit spooky at times.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I got stung by bees four times.

I didn't catch a tuna.

Bah.

On the plus side, though, I did shoot down a couple more presents. The golden slingshot can't be far away now.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Well, I didn't bother with turnips this week. I'm about more than making money, man.

At the moment I'm mostly about fruit trees. I'm going to wait a few days without picking any fruit so I can see which trees on the east side are fruit trees and which ones... aren't. I'll then cut the non-fruit ones down and replace them with nice pear, orange and peach trees. I'm thinking long term here, you see.

Anyway, today was Yay Day. In which the animals all said nice things to me - even Curt! - and I had to say nice things back. "Nice ears", "cool trunk", "shiny beak", "nice arse", that sort of thing. (Deena's now proudly striding round Venture proclaiming that "nice arse" is her middle name.) The only animal not taking part was Frobert, who had the sickness and needed his medicine again. There's something very wrong with that frog.

I've persuaded Curt to stay, which pleases me. Every town needs at least one grumpy resident. Nobody seems to be packed today, which is nice. I like getting new villagers, but I'm pretty happy with my neighbours right now.

Also completely rearranged my ground floor room... but I'm still not happy with it at all. Hmpf. Maybe I need to go for a whole new vibe, ditch the gaming/entertainment thing.

Star Wars: Empire At War Demo

Oh.

I wasn't paying attention and just got wiped out by an AT-AT.

I wasn't expecting that.

Xbox 360

Robotron 2084 first, to check to see if the background can be removed. (I don't think it can.)

Then a few levels of Wik, which is seriously draining for some reason. I've got on to levels with poisonous bugs now, which is really annoying because I have to, you know, be careful and stuff. Boo.

Then Geometry Wars 2. Hours of it. Well, about an hour of it. I got best score ever, which should be a cause for celebration, but it was only 6,000 short of the achievement-netting 250,000 mark, which put a damper on things. Just 6,000 more and I could have got some more sweet, sweet gamer points.

Star Wars: Empire At War Demo

Yep, I'm going through the demos and free downloads this weekend.

Anyway, I did the incredibly long tutorial for this new RTS and it seems like it might actually be quite good.

It doesn't seem to be doing anything too new and it doesn't look all that great but it seems to play smoothly and, well, you can be the Empire and go round blowing up rebel bases and slaughtering Jawas. The galactic strategy Interface looks a bit fiddly for those of us not sitting with our noses against the monitor, though.

Anyway, I suppose I should actually try playing the game part of the demo at some point, but that tutorial wore me out.

Difficult to judge RTS games quickly, anyway, I suppose. Should probably wait for some reviews.

X2: The Threat Demo

It's one of those Elite type things where you fly around in space and wish you had a quick keyboard reference and get hopelessly lost because there's no up or down and then get annoyed and turn it off.

Not helped by the fact that my mouse cursor wouldn't appear, mind.

Space Rangers II

Installed No-CD crack. (The disc's actually sitting right next to my PC at the moment, but I'm lazy.)

Loaded last save game.

Died three turns later after finding my last game was saved in a Dominator-controlled system. A frantic dumping of cargo to get my ship to move and a run towards the nearest warp point were to no avail. The comforting rings of safety were almost within my grasp when my ship finally succumbed to the Dominator onslaught. So near, yet so far...

Yeah, well, I've quit and I'll start a new game later. Should probably do the tutorial again, too...

Counter Strike: Source

I just played this for the first time in well over a year. I wanted to see the new de_militia map, so I jumped on to a random public server.

About an hour and a half I played. Over three different maps. An hour and a half of frenetic, fast-paced combat.

I got four kills.

Four.

People started commenting on it. Not unkindly, but the way they might talk about a younger relative who's a little bit slow. I've got no idea why I was enjoying, given that my average life span was round about twenty seconds.

Rag Doll Kung Fu Demo

Now, I didn't play it for long, I admit, but I really didn't like the controls.

I know that they're meant to take some time to get used to, but I'm really not sure I can be bothered. It was just annoying and confusing and I didn't like it.

Which is odd, because I thought I was going to. I guess I'm just not in the mood today. I'll try again some other time.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I play this every day. A lot.

I just don't write about it because, well, it's Animal Crossing. I pick my fruit, say hello to everyone, go to Teacozy to see p'anther and her friends, invite p'anther back to Venture for tea.

It's not very exciting. But it's very,,,, comfy.

Guild Wars: Factions - Free Weekend

Well, Guild Wars is having a free preview weekend of the Factions expansion. Or something. I'm not exactly sure. I just saw the word 'free' really, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I went through the training, thinking the game was a bit too fast for my liking, but got through all the fights easily enough. After training, found myself in a big open area with loads of other actual human being people. Ran around randomly until someone invited me into a team. I accepted. When we had a full team, we leapt into a mission and died within about ten seconds.

After which the leader left and - gulp! - the game promoted me to be leader of the party. Someone else asked to join, so I let them jump in and sent us to a random fight. One person never turned up for some reason, so it was only three of us. We died within ten seconds.

After that, our party was down to two people, but two more soon joined. Someone recommended an easy fight we could do. So I chose that one and all four of us turned up and... we died within ten seconds.

I decided it was time to quit.

The whole thing was absolutely baffling and the fights run so fast I found it impossible to keep up. I guess it's designed for people who've played the original and know what they're doing. It is an expansion, after all.

Darwinia Demo

Wow.

That was unexpected.

I downloaded the first demo when it first came out and hated the interface, so couldn't work with the game at all. Saw all the reviews (even Kieron Gillen's infamous Eurogamer review) and ignored them.

But I knew they'd made a new demo and I saw it in the Steam menu today, so i thought I'd download it. Was about to go to bed when I noticed it was ready to play. Stupidly, I booted it up.

The graphics look beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous, much more so than I remember. I really can't stress how good it is. The interface has been sorted. I still have a few issues with how you look around the level, but nothing major. The gesture system for creating units has gone - and I don't mourn its loss. What we have now is a beautiful game with huge amounts of personality that's great fun to play.

And it's only about a tenner to download? Well, I didn't run straight upstairs to get my debit card when I finished the demo, but it's definitely been put on my list.

And now, about ninety minutes late, it's time for bed.

Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast

Well, it now looks about 24% prettier and 72% smoother and the stress test averaged 67.8 frames per second.

Somewhat more importantly, it's still ten minutes of pure gaming goodness.

Rather like the demo of the original Half-Life which was a concentrated shot of pure excellence and better than the full game.

(Oh, and, yes, I played a lot of Animal Crossing this evening, too.)

3D Mark 05

With my 9800 Pro and anti-virus software on (forgot to disable it) I got 2667 3DMarks.

After swapping in my 6800GT I ran the test in the same conditions (i.e. AVG running) and got 4911 3DMarks.

Shrug. Meaningless statistics are my friend. (But only 84.6% of the time.)

The GT's a lot quieter, too, but I'm assuming that's because the fan is currently dust-free. That won't last.

I could try a game, I suppose, as that's what it's for, but I've not played Animal Crossing yet today and Mythbusters, House and - cough - Desperate Housewives are sitting on TiVo. In this Mythbusters they're going to talk to plants!

World of Warcraft

Well, last started off with all everything bad about WoW in one handy ten-minute package. After the queue the game wouldn't load properly. Everyone was an 'unknown entity', I couldn't see my own chat in the chat window, my character never appeared. The usual, basically. So I wiped all the cache files and that sorted it out. I was in an orc settlement in the depths of the woods, so I ran around for five minutes trying to find the person in charge of public transport. Eventually ran into her and flew back to The Crossroads. I'm level twenty right now, so decided to try the Stonetalon Mountains for a bit of fighin' and questin'. Walked to them and had been over the border in contested territory for about twelve seconds when a high level human bastard killed me in a couple of hits. Which was followed by possibly the longest corpse run of my life.

So, there I was, wondering why the hell I ever liked this game. But, you know, the graphics are lovely and everything's full of personality and I have a pet spider called Donkey. There's all that. And because I was in contested territory I really like I was adventuring, it was tense and I crept around near, but not on, the path, trying to remain hidden from view as best as possible. It reminded me why PvP servers are best.

Then my old friend Gerplex ran across the world to find me, so we stood in the forest and chatted and emoted for a few minutes.

I continued on into the depths of the mountains and found the loggers I needed to kill. So I did. Fifteen of them, slaughtered. I ran back to the person who'd given me the quest, got my XP and logged off because it was time for Animal Crossing.

Better than FFXI? Yes.

World of Warcraft

So, time and a router reboot seemed to help sort out my downloading problem and I got the patch down in an hour or so.

Restarted WoW, which then decided to download another (thankfully smaller) patch.

Restarted WoW again, which then decided to download yet another patch.

And now I'm finally up to date... and my server's full so I'm in a queue to play.

Remind me why I voted this my game of 2005 and my seventh favourite game of all time...

Final Fantasy IV

Hmm, this is tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky.

You see, there are these Yellow Jelly monsters that appear in groups of four. They don't do much damage, but they can only be hurt by magical attacks. There's only one person in my party who can do that sort of magic and she's only got a limited number of magic points to spend.

Normally in a Final Fantasy I'd stock up on Ether, which recovers magic points, and we'd be all set. But there's only one town I can get to this early in the game and it doesn't sell Ether.

So I'm getting so far into the dungeon and these slimes appear and I'm all out of magic and there's nothing I can see to do but turn off the Micro and try again. There doesn't even seem to be any way to run away from a battle. That might be possible with a long button press, or something, but I'll have to wait until this evening and check the manual to find that out.

Still, makes the bus journey fly by. Nearly missed my stop because of some pesky goblins this morning.

World of Warcraft

Last night I got homesick and decided to just turn on WoW and have a potter about before my sub ran out.

So I booted up the PC... and found I'd have to download a 316MB patch before doing so. I used to have problems with Torrent type stuff, but I sorted those out. Well, I thought I had. The Blizzard Downloader complained about not being able to connect to the tracker. And then, later, that I was behind a firewall. So I set up the firewall and port forwarding on the router, even though the downloader used to work just fine.

Then I did a trace route and it seems there might have been a routing problem in Telia.net. Maybe. I'm never sure if tracert problems always show real problems or whether it shows problems with tracing the route.

Anyway, I tried again this morning and I'm still getting time outs when running tracert and the Blizzard Downloader is still complaining.

I hate PCs.

(I know I could trying downloading the patch from a mirror, but I've had so many Torrent problems in the past I wanted to check this is working okay.)

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Well, Nook was buying turnips for 122b just now so I took the safe option and sold up. I could have held on for a bigger profit, but I didn't think it was worth the stress.

Lily from Smyrna has moved today now that Robin has finally left. She says "lmnop" at the end of each sentence, which is... different.

Planted a few more fruit trees, this time in old apple spots. I think I'm going to make the east side of the river an apple-free zone, but I'll check there is at least one apple tree on the west side beforehand. I don't want my local fruit to become extinct.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Made loads of money today. Spent twenty minutes picking, carrying and selling foreign fruit. Did a load of fishing, including a stringfish capture. Got some duplicate fossils and sold them.

Productive day.

I'm still much less than half-way to paying off my current mortgage though.

Geometry Wars 2

I don't want to talk about it.

Final Fantasy XI Beta

Ah, the glamorous life of an adventurer.

I started this evening in my home city of Bastok, so ran straight out to kill things. Which wasn't very easy, given the entire geek population of the earth had decided to do the same thing. I found enough things - worms mostly, the odd bat - to get me up to level three... and then I got killed by... oh, this is humilating... by... by a Walking Sapling. Yes, a tiny, baby tree salughtered me. It did it with ease, too. And while I was trying to run away.

So when I reincarnated myself back in Bastok I sold everything I could and bought a sword. A cheap, bronze sword worth half as much as a simple potion - yes, even potions are well out of my financial league right now - but a sword nonetheless. I felt better straight away. A sword is always going to be better than a dagger. I don't care about stats, it's better because it's bigger and longer.

Yes, I have issues. Sue me.

Anyway, I ran out into the world and picked my way through the massive crowd and found a vulture. I readied my new sword and... died within seconds. Again I ran out into the world and after five minutes or so I found a rock lizard and I readied my sword once again and... died with seconds. Again I ran out into the world... and stuck to any worms and bats I could scavenge until my sword skills had reached level one and I'd reached level four.

And then I stopped playing. Level five seems a long way away, I've got no money and so no hope of saving up for any new clothes or anything. I've still not got any new spells. I assume you have to buy them, but I've not seen a magic shop. I bet they're not cheap, either. I still don't know why there's a question mark before my name.

And I still haven't talked to anyone. I did see a familiar name run past - Beertiger. I would have said hello, but I couldn't be bothered to reach for the keyboard. Maybe if there had been some sort of voice chat...

I don't feel like an adventurer. I feel like a slum dweller who has to survive each day by going to the rubbish tips and hoping to find trash worth selling before the million other people there do. It's really not a life of high excitement and great deeds. It's frequently boring, full of annoyances and yet... and yet... I played it for a good hour and a half this evening.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Well, Curly's moved out, but Egbert from Teacozy has moved out. He remembered me. I'd forgotten all about him.

Bought 350 turnips at 97b each. Now I'm going to be chained to my DS for the next week. I really shouldn't have bought any. It turns Animal Crossing into something a lot closer to work than I care for.

My trees didn't do too badly. About a 70% success rate, it seems, so I won't be complaining too loudly. At least not until it starts taking me half an hour every day to collect fruit to sell.

Final Fantasy IV

It was in my Gameboy Micro waiting to be started.

I couldn't resist.

It's excellent, but it's too late to explain why.

Bed time now, most definitely.

Final Fantasy XI Beta

Well, I'm going to give up. At least for this evening.

Things started well enough. I found the person I was meant to deliver the report to and completed my mission... but things started to fall down a bit at that exact moment because as far as I can tell I didn't get any experience, money or items for completing it. Very odd. I then started mission two, which seems to involve me going to a dangerous area and... er... waiting for some paper to change colour. Or something.

I'm pretty sure that's beyond me for now.

I talked to a few more computer-controlled people, but didn't get any quests. Not that I seem to be able to do much right now. If I stray more than a hundred yards from the town gates the enemies are too strong for me.

I didn't get any experience from that mission I did. If there are any quests that I can do there's no easy way for me to find them in this huge city. And who's to say if they'd give me experience if the mission didn't.

The only way I can see to level up is to go out and fight the monsters just outside the city gates, who I can kill pretty easily. Or, rather, I could if there were any. This being a new beta, six billion other people have got the same idea and there simply aren't enough monsters to go round. I got lucky and managed to tag three in about twenty minutes of wandering around. All of them in a two minute period where I found myself in the eye of the storm for a moment. An oasis of calm in the sea of adventurers.

Still, I've now got an annoying white blob on my screen that means I'm fighting for my country, or something, and have got some items - Flint Stone, Bat Wing, Zeruhn Soot, Wind Crystal, (another) Bat Wing, Beastman's Seal, (another) Wind Crystal and Insect Wing. No idea if I'd regret selling them, so I'm keeping them for now.

Maybe I need to wait a few weeks until I'm the only newbie left in the village and see if I can level up by killing monsters then. Unless anyone knows any other ways for a solo red mage to get some experience points...

Final Fantasy XI Beta

Well, I've checked the Internet for guides to the two tasks I had. (I normally wouldn't, but, well, it seems okay because this is a beta, somehow.) For the mission, I was being an idiot - I'd completely forgotten to check one part of the city, which - obviously - turns out to be where I need to go. The quest, though, really needs the Internet FAQs. There's no way in-game of knowing that it's actually a level 20 quest - and after the initial conversation, there's no way to know that it's set in a mine that isn't the one that's in the town where you get the quest.

Maybe that's been purposely been designed to get people to work together, but it just seems like rubbish game design to me.

But then in MMOs I've generally been a lone wolf who teams up with people now and again when the circumstances fit, but who generally likes exploring alone. (Mainly because I often have short play sessions and need to leave at a moment's notice.) So I sense that FFXI might not be the game for me, which is a shame. Okay, it does seem to do some things very wrong (from my point of view) but there does seem to be a nice game there.

Final Fantasy XI Beta

I'm a bit annoyed right now.

Partly because there aren't enough monsters to go round, but mainly because of the way quests and missions are recorded.

I decided not to run for miles when I started the game again, so I talked to some more people in Bastok. I got a quest and a mission.

The quest was immediately annoying, because it wasn't recorded decently in my quest log. It gave the location of the quest giver, but not the name or location of the person I was meant to talk to next. Which, as I forgot within seconds of walking away from the person who I got the quest from, was very annoying.

The mission was better, telling me in the information who I should talk to and where they were. So I found them - more or less by accident - and then got told to take the report they gave me to the president's office. The only problem being that, according to the map, there isn't a president's office in Bastok.

Oh, and going back to the woman who gave me my quest gave me the name of the person I had to talk to and a rough location - the mines. Now, hopefully, there's only one mine. If there are more, I'm fucked. The only niggle is that I talked to everyone I came across in the mine... and nobody was the person says I should talk to.

Not wishing to be entirely negative, I did manage to get up to level two, which was nice.

I've had to stop playing for now, annoyingly, because I don't like leaving things like this hanging. I'm really shocked by the lack of information in the quest log, though. Unless I'm missing a way to expand it.

There doesn't seem to be a mini map, either, while I'm complaining.

Final Fantasy XI Beta

Well, I've played it now. I'm some kind of big Hulk-like fucker with white hair. And I'm a Red Mage, which means "jack of all trades", as far as I can tell. Anyway, I started off in some town called Bastok, where the game immediately played a terrible trick on me. There was a cut scene of some woman not being allowed out of the town because it was too dangerous and she didn't have a bodyguard. So I assumed, as one would, that she'd ask me to accompany her for a while and our mini adventure together would be a neat tutorial in the ways of the game. Instead she just ran off, saying she would like to show me round but that that she was too busy. Oh.

So I wandered around town and gave an adventure coupon to a nice lady who gave me some money. Wandered into the residential district and found I had a house, staffed by a friendly Moogle. Kupo. Baffling, but friendly. Kupo.

Anyway, I wandered off and talked some random NPCs until one of them gave me some supplies to deliver to an outpost in another region. Seemed a bit much for a level one quest... or mission... but I decided to do it. (Missions and quests are different in FFXI, somehow, and though the supplies appeared in my inventory, the mission to deliver them didn't appear in my mission list. Or in my quest list. Very confusing.)

I ran out of town and killed a couple of hornets with a combination of my Dia spell and my Onion Dagger. Go me!

After that I ignored monsters and just ran to find this outpost. After about fifteen minutes I passed one, but I was still in the starting region, so I didn't think that was it. I needed to go to the next region to the north. Found myself in a nice area with windmills, but no outpost. So I went further north to some dunes and discovered I didn't have a map of that area. But I decided to run around anyway.

By this point my suspicions had been confirmed. This wasn't a mission for level one characters. This is probably something high level players do inbetween riding chocobos and sipping champagne and laughing at the antics of newbies from their heavenly cloud palaces. Or something. All the monsters were, to quote the game, "incredibly tough". Luckily, they didn't seem to care I was there... until a goblin assassin decided he didn't like my lovely white hair and killed me in one hit as I ran past him. So I respawned... back in Bastok, where I'd been forty-five minutes earlier.

I think I might just go and kill hornets for a bit while my pride recovers. Those supplies can sit in my inventory and rot for all I care.

Final Fantasy XI Beta

I've not played it yet.

It's been installing on my 360 for an hour or two and there's still half an hour to go.

I've had to sign up to Sony's Play Online service, too, which seems absolutely horrible.

I bought a keyboard this morning, too, more or less just for this game and the registration process. Taking into account the cost of the magazine with the game disc it's becoming very expensive for a free beta.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

So Curt, Big Top and Dotty sang me tunes. I love all three animals, but I had to go with Dotty's tune. It seemed to mean more to her than to anyone else. At least, I think I've done what I was meant to. I told her she was hired. It's odd, not as organised as I'd expect. Ah well.

Curly's packed to move out today. I've barely talked to him since he moved in, so he's welcome to go. I'll miss his flowers, though.

Frobert needed medicine for the second day running. He must be really sick. I hope this doesn't throw his training regime off too much.

And, finally, I hope there's no limit to the number of new trees that grow each day, because I planted hundreds of them today. None were in old tree places, but I hoping a fair few of them will survive.

Auto Assault Beta

Well, the performance issues haven't gone away overnight, but the repair pads work now.

I went back to the Proving Grounds to mop up quests that I'd missed. Did a few and then tried my first PvP mission. Well, sort of PvP. I wasn't shooting other humans, but racing them. First up to the top of a mountain won the race... or wouldn't have done if the end point hadn't refused to respond when I got there. I should have won, but in the end I had to just abandon the quest. Gah. I filed a bug report about that one, you can be sure of that.

Then I did another mission where you were meant to kill enemies round a house, but they weren't unique, so you could kill the same type of enemy elesewhere on the map and complete the mission in relative safety. Not sure if that's a real bug or just an odd consequence of the design, so I didn't file a report about that one.

Did a few more missions until I just couldn't take another. I'm running out of missions, too. I'm getting tons of equipment I can't use for another four or five levels and after the mission I just took I'm not sure if there are any more I'm ready for. The "main" mission I've got is for level eleven players and I'm only level four.

I suppose I should say something else nice. Well, I like the way that though all your weapons are ranged you can do melee damage by driving into enemies. You are in a big armoured car, after all.

Auto Assault Beta

Well, I've played it some more.

It hasn't changed much, except that I've run into some horrible framerate issues. Really, really bad stuff. Very odd. It first happened when I went into the first town and I could hardly move around because I was getting about one screen update per second. And then back out in the field I had some issues - mainly when driving a long way very quickly. I think the game just can't keep up with the amount of streaming it must be doing. Or something.

Also, the repair pads don't seem to be working, which meant a lot of down time until I discovered I could get fully healed for two, er, whatever the currency they use is called.

All the quests are very standard "kill N of X" or "deliver O to Y" things. And I've done the main line of quests too quickly and am now on one where the enemies I'm meant to kill are impossible for me to hit. (I thought something was up when I got a quest reward that was two levels too high for me.) So I'm going back to find some subquests more suited to my level.

Something odd happened, though. I enjoyed myself. I killed a load of enemies. I had a very quick conversation with another player. I customised my car a bit. I used some skill points to get some healing and defensive abilities. I even got an apartment. And despite the lazy post-apocalyptic generic look of it, despite the frame rate issues, despite the non-working repair pads and despite the standard MMO combat I had a very good time.

I can't explain it and I find it slightly worrying, because I feel like I should be slagging it off as lazy, uninspired rubbish. But I can't help it. I enjoyed it.

Best Games Ever

I just had to make a list of my top ten favourite games of all time. It looks like this -

10. Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)

Online and girlfriend loves it and we can play it together. Which makes it special. And I've played it every day since I got it.

9. Mr Driller: Drill Spirits (DS)

Best (English language) Mr Driller. Drill Land might take the spot if it was out in English.

8. Resident Evil 4 (GC)

Well, just because it's ace. It's as good as all the other RE games are bad. Put together. Which is very good indeed.

7. World of Warcraft (PC)

Because it's given me some of my best gaming moments ever... And I just realised today how much I love the graphics.

6. ICO (PS2)

Haunting, atmospheric, etc. Colossus might challenge it, but I've not finished that yet. Maybe next year.

5. OutRun 2 (XBOX)

I hope this will be chucked out of the top ten soon when Coast to Coast is released. But for now, this is the best racing game in the world... by a fairly long way. (It was a very long way before PGR3 came out.)

4. Mario 64 (N64)

Loved it then. Love it still. But it's losing a place a year (roughly) because it's not aging very well.

3. GTA: San Andreas (PS2)

Best setting, best map, best features, best everything.

2. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind GOTY (PC)

Life eater.Played the Xbox version a lot, too, but the PC version is better. Could be another game to be replaced soon by a sequel. But Oblivion could be broken and shite, so maybe not.

1. Doom (PC)

Genius that hasn't aged in anything but graphics. Gameplay, level design, feel... it's still all there. BEST. GAME. EVER.

Right yes. Something like that... maybe. But I want Giga Wing in there, too. And Halo 2. And a Castlevania... And the GC 1080. And KOTOR... And...

Auto Assault Beta

Well, first impressions after ninety minutes of play. It's very... brown.

And it just feels like GENERO-MMO-293.94... but in a car! It looks like the combat should be proper Twisted Metal style shooting, but it's really just normal MMO style ranged fighting with a cosmetic twist. Lock on to target and hold down fire, watching it say -4, MISS, -2, MISS above your target until one of you dies. And occasionally pressing a number key to use a special ability if you're still awake.

It's not that I didn't enjoy... It's just I didn't... er... really... feel much of anything. It's not bad, but based on that quick play (I'll try more later) it's something I might drop fifteen quid on, but not something I'd pay a monthly fee for. Maybe there's more to it later...

Animal Crossing: Wild World

More online goodness.

It ate yet another evening.

Glory be its name.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

You know, I think I love Dotty a little less after she gave me a shanty wall in exhange for a fossil.

On a happier note, all my coconut trees seem to have taken.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I made a road network out of sandstone tiles I'd designed.

I was very proud of it, until the first person to see it referred to it as the 'Burberry Road'.

Damn it all.

Geometry Wars 2

Half an hour.

No score above 120,000.

Sometimes I don't know why I bother.

Well, apart from the fact that it's great fun.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Every day I have to fend off animals begging for fossils as if they were crack.

Today I had two spare fossils and I couldn't find a single animal who wanted one.

I'm sure they're playing with me.

Xbox 360

I'm really starting to get into the Fight Night demo. I am actually starting to develop technique. My blocking is very suspect and my ducking and weaving is entirely random, but I'm starting to get into the right rhythm, mix up my shots nicely, look for openings, that sort of thing. If March wasn't Oblivion month, I'd pencil this in for a purchase, EA or no EA.

I still haven't won by knockout, though. In the second match I played today I knocked my opponent down twice, but he still managed to get up.

Anyway, after three matches I switched over to Geometry Wars 2 for a five minute go that turned into over half an hour and was only stopped because Life of Mars was about to start on BBC1. I got a new 'official' high score, but it was only 192,000, a good deal less than my actual best score. The quest continues...

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Bought a hat.

Planted some cherry and coconut trees.

Talked some villagers.

Ignored the kitten who wants me to take her to Cockland.

Nintendogs

For the first time in months. Homer was famished, parched and filthy and was lying on his back on the floor wheezing. He was so, so happy to see me again though. I felt so guilty.

Gah! It's only code! It's only code! It's not a really puppy!

Aww, but the ickle guy was soooo cute, wasn't he, wasn't he, oh yes he was...

::dies::

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Joan wanted 104b per turnip.

Joan got told to bugger off.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Phew!

Just remembered to go and see KK in The Roost.

KK Safari was today's selection, but I'm not really sure how it sounds as I had the volume down because I'm watching Sea of Souls on TV.

I'm also upset that the insurance payout for a forged painting is only a hundred bells. Might as well keep them for that price.

Final Night Round 3 Demo

The latest demo on Xbox Live M