Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

Yes, Oblivion fever sent me back to this. Xbox version, as I didn't want to bother reinstalling the PC one.

Loaded up my last save, dated 9th February 2004. Yes, over two years ago. Disturbingly, within about two minutes I'd remembered exactly what I was doing. I'd got stuck doing Imperial Guard missions when I got to a locked door in a tower that I couldn't get past. I also remembered that in the PC version I'd found a key to the door and a bit of nosing around unearthed it. Inside the room was a nasty man who refused to pay his taxes and had imprisoned an orc who'd come to collect them. So I killed him. Harsh, but fair. He had some expensive stuff, so I took that. Freed the orc, went back to my commander. Got promoted to a trooper and got asked to see if I could find proof that some of the soldiers were in a cult planning to kill the Emperor. I had to use a fair bit of cash to bribe people, but I got my answers and found the proof. I was then tasked with killing the two main conspirators. Sorry, not killing, executing. I believe there's a difference. Anyway, they died and I got promoted to the rank of agent and got given enough new armor to leave me unable to actually move.

I saved it there. I'll have to drop some stuff when I reload. I probably shouldn't play this too much before Oblivion appears, lest I get Elder-Scrolled-out. But I may have the bug again.

(And then I played Animal Crossing with p'anther for two hours.)

Zuma

Thought I'd have a quick go before playing Ridge. Quick go lasted 53 minutes. And I'm still bottom of my friends leaderboard. Gah.

Xbox 360

Played more Ridge Racer - I didn't bugger it up as much as earlier - and then went to download some stuff on Live.

Downloaded all the eighteen unlock keys for extra cars in Ridger Racer 6. Very odd. The cars are on the disc already, but you have to go online and unlock them one by one by one by one. It's quite a long process and the only point seems to be to annoy people who aren't online. Mind you, anyone who's bought a 360 and doesn't have it online needs their head looking at.

Then I downloaded the Xtreme difficulty level for Crystal Quest. I shouldn't have done. It cost 100 points. It'll only encourage more developers to cut bits out of their games to charge for later. Anyway, it transforms the game. It... well, it makes it really hard. Obviously. Hence the name. Basicaly it cuts out all the boring stuff and turbo charges it. I've ony got off level one once so far, but that gave me my best score ever by about a million points.

Ridge Racer 6

Finally tried it out. Jumped into World Xplorer mode.

Did eight races.

Four took me one try, three two tries and one five tries.

And everyone else on the Internet seems to be saying they won every race first time without any hint of trouble.

Oh dear.

It's great, though. In fact, because I'm actually having to try to win, I'm probably enjoying it more than most other people do.

Chikyuu Boueigun 2

Oh. It seems to have got difficut.

Loads of striders plus huge numbers of mirrored saucers = death.

My death.

A lot.

Whichever character I use.

Armored Core: Formula Front International

I just tried a league match.

I choose Manual mode instead of AI.

And I still won!

Hoorah.

Marble Blast Ultra

I thought Marble Blast would be a good game to play for a few minutes before going out.

I was wrong.

I had to leave a level uncompleted, which is going to annoy me all day.

Black

I just did it again!

I blew up while the "minefield cleared" text was still on the screen!

The trouble is, everything's brown. Completely brown. So although the mines are on the surface, most of the time they're not actualy visible.

I know, I know, I should be more careful, but these new mines come at the end of a big, safe bit and as it's telling me the minefield is cleared.

Mind you, second time was definitely more my fault than the game's, it has to be said. I'll try again some other day and this time I'll remember.

Black

You have to laugh.

On a level where you navigate through an area packed with enemies and reach a minefield. Avoid the mines while killing enemies, that sort of thing.

Anyway, first time I tried the level the mines killed me. Next two times I didn't even reach it, thanks to things exploding next me. Time after that I made it to the minefield again and slowly, carefully made my way through it, using grenades to blow up the mines in my path, picking off enemies along the way. Lovely game.

Then I got to a point where it said the minefield objective was complete. Hooray! So I - I'm not making this up - took one step forward and the ground beneath me erupted. Oh. A mine. I thought I was meant to be through the minefield. Didn't you just tell me that?

No checkpoint, so it asked me if I wanted to restart from the beginning of the level again. I didn't. I turned the Xbox off.

It's just... how can something with such great gameplay - and I really must make clear that it really is superb given how much I'm complaining - be surrounded by such oddness?

Black

Oh for pity's sake!

So much of this is great. I love the gameplay, but some of the interface decisions are incredibly stupid. Like the not being able to save checkpoint progress. That's just absolutely insane. I'm baffled.

I was playing a level just now and for some reason all the guns except my own stopped making sounds. My ally's gun wasn't making any noise. My enemies' guns weren't making any noise. Which made things a bit tricky and a bit, well, shit. But I was two checkpoints through a mission and I couldn't turn the console off without losing that progress. So I just had to do the final section several times in weird half-silence.

And why warn that you'll lose all your progress when you restart a mission after not having made any progress? How difficult would it be to see if any checkpoints have been reached and miss out that screen if they haven't?

So, we have what appears to be a brilliant game, based on the first three or four levels. (I forget.) I mean, truly exceptional. But there are bugs and an interface that might as well have been designed by Satan himself. No mid-level saving. No skipping cut-scenes until you've completed a mission. Odd uneccesary warnings. Stupid unskippable credits sequence when you first boot up and want to get playing.

It's the exact same problem as Burnout 3. A great game wrapped in a hideous interface.

I am most perplexed. I just don't see why things are as they are. It doesn't make any sense.

Black

Mission two done.

Criterion have done exactly what they set out to do, but probably not in the way they meant to. They said they were going to do for the FPS genre what Burnout did for racing games. And they've done it, in that they've managed to combine a fantastic game with one of the worst interfaces I've ever had the misfortune to use.

How on earth do they do it?

OutRun 2

One run through Arcade mode.

Top of the score board and four seconds off my previous best time.

Ah, that's better.

Now I can probably jump back into Black for a bit.

Black

Picked this up in Game. Paid fifteen quid after using my reward points.

The core game is excellent, I reckon. Really nice feel to it, great fun. Bit tricky to pinpoint headshots, but then I've never been the most accurate of marksmen. Lots of flying bullets, weighty guns. Very nice.

However, however, however...

We've never needed the Blue Sky In Games campaign more. Apart from the green health bar I might as well be running this on a black and white TV. I had no idea they were going to take the game's name quite so literally.

No checkpoints. Well, there probably are, given there's an option for them on the menu you get when you die, but I've not seen one yet. The first mission didn't have any. (I know because the last bloody enemy killed me the first time I tried it.) The second one might do, but they must be a long way in. Too far in. You have to trek through a forest to a border crossing and then fight your way through it. So I get to the border crossing and die. Trek through the forest again. Die in exactly the same place. Trek through the forest again...

You get the idea. Surely a checkpoint when you reach the border crossing wouldn't be too much to ask? I'm only playing on Normal, too.

Also: Unskippable cut scenes. And not just unskippable the first time you watch them. Every time. That's really idiotic and annoying. That and the checkpoint thing led me to switch the game off just now and play OutRun 2 instead.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Oh my!

Crystal Quest

A quick game on the hardest difficulty setting. Nice and relaxing after Marble Blast.

And - hooray! - my gamer score just passed the 2,000 point mark. Just got 25 points for getting the Immortal Achievement, which is awarded for getting 1,000,000 points without losing a life.

Marble Blast Ultra

Playing through Advanced Levels has led me to invent two laws.

Allaway's First Law Of Gaming: At sufficiently advanced levels of challenge, skill becomes indistinguishable from luck.

Allaway's Sceond Law Of Gaming: If it isn't clear whether something's luck or skill, then it's either luck or cheating.

Day Of Defeat: Source

I want this recorded.

I've had this game since it came out, what with buying Half-Life 2 over Steam, but I'd not got around to playing it.

Chose a server at random (more or less, filtered it down to Euro servers that had anti-cheat stuff enabled) and leapt in. Wasn't sure what was going on at first, but I soon got into it after working out that Assault class characters fit my style of play best. I even recaptured one of our flag point things that the enemy had taken. I learned the best ways round the map for an Assault payer. (Assault players have short range attacks that do a lot of damage. Up-close fighters, suited to interiors. Nasty, brutish and short, basically.) When the map finished, I was about half-way down my team's rankings. Fair enough.

Then we moved to a different map. I was a Nazi and started in a railway station. This map (dod_surrender?) has three of the flag points and each team starts with one each. The idea - as it is on all maps - is for one team to capture all three. My team kicked arse. We won and won and won and won and kept on winning. Not only were we winning, but I was the top player on my team. Yes, me. The one who's rubbish at all games ever. I had more deaths than anyone else on my team, I think. I had a fairly low kill count, though it wasn't embarassingly low. But the list is sorted by the number of flag captures and I was at the top.

Of course, being an Assault trooper I'd be expected to get more fag captures than a defensive player. It's pretty much my job. But the point is, I was doing it. And not doing it badly. And I wasn't the only player on my team who was on the offensive side of things.

I was competent.

I think my Counter Strike days are over. For one thing, you respawn when you die in Day of Defeat, so no watching your team run around after you've died at the beginning of a round. No worrying about money, either - you just choose your class, which you can change whenever you like.

Excellent.

F.E.A.R.

Haven't played for a while.

I'm rubbish, the game's great. Better than I remember, actually.

I'm only playing it on Moderate, but I'm dying an awful lot. I don't mind, though, because it's fun, fun, fun. It's very much the same thirty seconds of fun over and over again, to reapply the famous Halo phrase, but like Halo that's not a bad thing.

Weird Worlds Demo

Hmm. I downloaded and tried this ages ago, but didn't seem to mention it.

It's basically a quick and simple version of Space Rangers, which isn't such a bad thing.

Only trouble is, I can't work out how combat works. I can't seem to attack ships at all. Might be demo limitation or might be me being incredibly thick. Possibly both.

Seems okay. Really, really, really needs to be on Live Arcade.

Joust

A couple of days ago I said - "the in-game scoreboard says I got 35,800, but the Live leaderboard says 37,750" - when I meant the Live leaderboard says "35,750". Otherwise my claim of a 50 point difference doesn't make much sense.

I just switched it on to make sure. I had a couple of games and got a brand new personal best. Hoo-rah! Same odd problem, though. According to the in-game score board I got 39,050. According to the Xbox Live leaderboard I got a nice round 39,000.

Odd. Very odd.

Marble Blast Ultra

Did a few more of the Advanced levels. They're hard.

Then I leapt into a multiplayer match and came second out of three. Not too shabby. It was great fun, too.

I didn't have my headset on, but realised after leacing that it had actually been plugged in. Hope I didn't confuse anyone.

Xbox 360

Oh dear. I've done something I said I'd never do.

For the second time.

I've downloaded a theme. That costs actual, real money. For some image files. Four of them. I couldn't help it. It's an Oblivion theme and I'm more excited about that game than any other game this year. It's not even a very good thing. Especially as it makes some of the interface text unreadable. D'oh. It's certainly not a patch on the last theme I downloaded, which was from Rare and is a collection of Speccy screenshots. That's so cool it was actually worth the quid or so it cost. I'll probably switch back soon.

And talking of spending money, I wanted a new game today, so I downloaded Zuma. Cost 800 points, but it's probaby worth it. (Even if I don't like spending money on games that are stolen from someone else.) I went into Adventure mode and got up to level 3-2. Only two of my friends have got Zuma, so I've not got much to compare against... but they're both much better than me.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

This Animal Crossing game must be one of my most played games ever already. I've played it every day since I got it over two months ago, for anywhere between five minutes and four hours.

This evening I played for two hours while on the phone to p'anther. Went over to Teacozy to see and her villagers, then she came back and we pottered about in my kitchen for a while and she visited everyone and then it was back to Teacozy for a quick visit to post a letter. Doesn't sound like much, does it? But it filled a couple of hours in the blink of an eye.

Witchcraft, I guess.

Xbox 360

Started off with Hexic HD. I beat Survival mode, but got a rubbish score by the standards of my friends list. Then did a Timed game and didn't think I did too well, but was further up my Friends leaderboard.

Then leapt into Marble Blast Ultra and did a couple of the Advanced levels. I'm not sure that I'm enjoying it any more. It's very tough.

And talking of tough, decided to play Joust again for the first time in ages. After a couple of false starts I managed to get my best score ever. Still, it's only a pitiful... well, the in-game scoreboard says I got 35,800, but the Live leaderboard says 37,750.

Huh?

A bug, I guess. Annoying. It's only 50 points, but still.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Mobile version.

(I'm installing XP on a new PC today. Hence long period of nothing to do but watch progress bars and fiddle with my phone.)

Finally, after many months, I've got off level six. Level seven is proving to be a bastard. It's an excellent little game, mind.

King Kong

Completed!

Mobile version's even shorter than the console release.

Skipping Stone

26.14km

So that's one mid-week challenge completed already, then.

King Kong

Mobile version. Been a while since I played this, so after being awful at Skipping Stone for a few minutes I switched to this. Did a Jack level and then a Kong one, but that's followed by a timed Kong level I didn't manage to complete before my stop. Bah.

Skipping Stone

Fair bit more play on bus journeys yesterday and this morning.

Current best scores -

DISTANCE
Best 18.58km

SPLASH
Best 62
Combo 10

Hexic HD

Wanted to play something quickly before bed, so Live Arcade was the obvious choice.

Chose Hexic because I've not played it in ages.

Thought that Survival mode might offer a quicker game than Marathon, so went for that.

Realised when I hit level 32 with no signs of being in a danger of dying that I should have been in bed fifteen minutes earlier.

So, not quick then.

Skipping Stone

It won Best Mobile Game award at this year's 3GSM event in Barcelona, so I thought I'd check it out.

It's very simple. You use one button to keep a stone skipping over water. Press the button at the correct time, you're fine, press it at the wrong time and you lose some of your energy. When your energy is gone, your stone sinks.

If you start doing well the game throws a random effect at you, which could be good or bad. More often bad, because anything that changes the stone's behaviour is going to throw your rhythm off.

None of them are as bad as playing on a bus that's throwing you around country roads, though. That really makes the game hard.

Anyway, like those Flash games involving yetis and penguins, it's an addictive little bugger and it'll probably end up getting more play than anything other mobile game over time. Fills the same gap as King of Fighters M2, but has the advantage of actually being good.

My best distance score is 3.23km and my best splash score is 24. Rubbish, but I was playing on the bus, like I said.

Armored Core: Formula Front International

It's a PSP mech game.

I thought I was being clever, ordering the Japanese budget release rather than the expensive UK version. The Japanese version has an English language option, you see. Unfortunately, the manual's in Japanese. As are the introductory training videos. Ah.

Anyway, I've muddled through. My team The Revstars have started with five mechs. I've renamed one of them Big Red and fiddled about with it. I've tuned the parts, played the with AI, that sort of thing. A lot of it is understandable, but there are lots of acronyms like EO and, er, other things that I don't understand. What are hangers? I dunno. It's almost like Gran Turismo, where it's assumed you know what the difference between a manual and automatic gearbox is, or something. The whole game seems to be like that. It's assumed you know what all these things are.

Anyway, I decided to test Big Red out. First I tried him out in AI mode and he killed the opposition. Then I tried him out in manual mode and didn't know what the hell I was doing. Couldn't work out which buttons did what, really, and just when I thought I was getting there, I blew up.

Oh well.

Chikyuu Boueigun 2

Played this for over two hours now.

It's really, really great.

Slightly unpolished, sure, but the core gameplay is superb and the graphical design is excellent. There's an excellent sense of scale and of actually helping to fend off an alien invasion.

Unlike Zombie Zone, which was great despite being fundamentally a little bit rubbish, this game is great because it's fundamentally a great game.

Still not convinced?

Tarantulas the size of four elephants! Great striding war machines! Swarms of small UFOs! Great huge motherships! GODZILLA!

It's got great enemies, yes. And you've got great weapons to kill them all. And the levels seems endless. And endlessly destructable.

There's nowhere you can't go and nothing you can't blow up, as far as I can see.

It's just superb.

Shame about the framerate, the Japanese language and the annoying "you've killed a big bad" camera, but they're hardly worth worrying about in the general scheme of things.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Oh, bloody hell.

It's been telling me over and over again that I need more trees. So I've kept planting and planting and planting...

And now it's complaining that there are too many trees.

Grrrrrrrr.

Chikyuu Boueigun 2

Yes, it's Japanese. Hence the name. A Japanese budget game in which you have to kill hundreds of giant insects attacking cities including London.

It's great fun.

I'd love an English language option so I could kit myself out better and, yes, the PS2 can't really keep up. And it's very grey. And the camera could be better.

But everything else is brilliant. Huge ants climbing over Big Ben! Getting in a tank on a bridge and managing to blow the bridge up, sending me into the Thames below! Giant ants climbing all over an office block? No problem, just blow it up! Flying a jetpack around a giant ants nest that's appeared in the middle of a city!

Excellent!

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

I can't do 360s on the PSP d-pad it seems.

But then I doubt I'd ever choose to play as any charatcers that need to do them, anyway.

Dead Or Alive 4

Went through the Story mode with four or five more characters. Takes about twenty each time. There's always a sticking point. The worst characters for me to play against are Ayane, Hitomi and, curiously, Bass. And Alpha, obviously, but she's not as bad as I've been led to believe.

Then I tried Survival mode a few times. Best was five wins and about 920,000 points. I'm at 80,000 in the world-wide ranking now, out of 105,000 people.

Dead Or Alive 4

Through story mode with Kasumi and Kokoro.

It does seem utterly random whether I win a round or not. I've given up trying to throw the computer characters and I really can't counter, so I mainly just launch flurries of punches and kicks, but try to mix them up a bit. And then get cocky and decide to try some blocking or countering and find half my health bar disappearing.

Trouble is - apart from being a bit too quick for me - is that with a lot of attacks I'm not sure if they're high, mid or low. Is it where the attacks hits or where it starts? I'd assume it was impact point (head, chest, stomach) but I'm not sure if it is. I don't know if I'm countering the wrong way or at the wrong time.

Hmm.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

I hate Eagle.

I think it's bed time.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

Hooray, I've just finished Asia in world tour mode.

Last bit took a while. In one battle I could only damage the enemy with combos - and combos of over two hits. I can't do that, due to rubbishness. But you start off with a bigger health bar, so I just had to bugger about avoiding damage until the timer ran down. Next battle was against Sagat, a two out of three job. A Power battle, which means his attacks did loads more damage than normal. That's what took...

Hang on, this is tedious even for this diary, which is an exercise is ultra-boring geekdom.

Anyway, yes, I kicked some arse and progressed to the USSR.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

God, I love this game.

Why can I kill Blanka in Free Battle but not when he turns up in Arcade mode?

Dead Or Alive 4

Well, okay.

Dead or Alive 3.5, maybe.

Or Dead or Alive 2.2, even more mayber.

Bad thing? Don't think so so far.

Haven't played it all that much, to be fair.

Went through story mode three times with Christie. Or whatever her name is. Something like that. White hair, claims to be poisonous, seems to be allergic to clothing. You know.

Then I decided to - gulp! - jump into online mode. Bought myself a space lobby and a skeleton avatar, found a lobby, joined, first thing I heard was a voice saying, "Argh! It's just started lagging!" So I left. So I joined another one and had I game. Which I lost. Then another game. Which I lost. Then another game. Which I lost. Then another game. Which I won! Then another game. Which I lost.

Lag was terrible, but I don't mind the game slowing down, to be honest. I don't think I managed a counter in any of the matches I played.

Anyway, after that I went into my profile to poke around, went to an "Edit Comment" page, which was a black box with a flashing yellow square in it. Nothing I pressed on the pad did anything. At all. Couldn't enter text, couldn't quit out. Nothing. So I had to bring the Guide up and dump myself back to the dashboard. At which point I decided to turn off the 360 and watch TV Burp.

Marble Blast Ultra

Hooray!

Whirl is defeated!

Not sure how I managed it, but for two beautiful minutes and eight glorious seconds everything went my way and I sneaked home.

How people have managed it fourteen seconds I don't know. There must be some serious glitches somewhere.

OutRun 2

Well, as the Xbox was on I couldn't not, could I?

Did the the easiest route in arcade a couple of times and came 5th and 3rd on the high score table. Flushed with success, I decided to try a mission, as I've never fnished mission mode. A few goes later I realised why - it's bloody hard. Too hard for midnight Friday night, anyway.

Halo

As Taito Legends was such a disappointment I decided to fall back to Halo. All the talk in the rllmuk thread about the game had left me itching to play it on Legendary difficulty again. Seems I'd finished a few levels already on that setting, so I started where I'd stopped, at the beginning of the level called Halo. Took me ages to reach the first checkpoint. Then ages more to reach the second. I haven't reached the third yet.

But, oh, despite looking weirdly dark on my LCD TV, it was wonderful stuff. It really is gaming perfection. And it was the Needler that got me through to the second checkpoint. It's got a reputation as a useless weapon, but it really, really isn't.

Taito Arcade Legends

Broken.

It boots in widescreen, which is good... but it plays the games in widescreen, too, which is bad. There's an option in the menu to play the games in OAR, but it doesn't actually seem to do anything. I don't want my games stretched, thank you!

Rubbish.

Also, they've broken Rainbow Islands. The music's rubbish and it just doesn't seem responsive.

Bah.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

So Whitney asks to come over. I leave the DS turned on with the sound turned up by me so I won't forget. For half an hour. She finally comes round, refuses to rate me and only stays one minute.

Grr.

And according to Friga a cactus in a pot isn't a houseplant. It's been in my house for weeks now, thanks.

Grr.

And that bloody kitten's back. But she wants to go to Teacozy, which actually is a town I'm likely to visit. The only town I'm likely to visit, really. So that's okay. Still, that kitten's very annoying.

Grr.

Marble Blast Ultra

Ah.

Hmm.

I set myself a challenge of getting below-par times on all the Intermediate levels before next Wednesday. I thought it'd be easy enough. I only had three levels left to do. And I've now done two of them.

Problem?

The problem is Whirl. It is a bastard. An utter, utter bastard. It demands complete perfection over an incredibly long and difficult course. In what way this is Intermediate rather than advanced I really don't know. The par time is 2:20. My best time is 15:21. And that's after about ninety minutes of playing it.

Oh my.

Dragon Quest VIII

Final completion time 63:18.

And I know there was a whole sub-game I missed out.

Ending left one or two things dangling, but was nevertheless most excellent. A real, proper ending to the adventure.

Moments of frustration, yes. But in the end no boss actually took me more than two tries, as far as I remember. (I think looking for boss tips in the FAQ was a bad thing, given that I finished below the recommended level and without any of the uber-powerful items and weapons it said I should have with me.)

So apart from odd difficulty spikes and having one boss at the end of a long dungeon, it was all very well put together. Great stuff overall... as long as you're willing to push on when it threatens to become overwhelmingly frustrating.

Dragon Quest VIII

I did it!

I only went and bleedin' did it!

Thirty-nine minutes it took. All my skill, all my cunning. Items and abilities and spells and attacks. Omniheal! Kerplunk! Sage's stone! Oomph! Kabuff!

I was magnificent.

Oh man, there's not many feelings like seeing that bastard (who looked a lot like me, disturbingly) go down.

Ignore what I said earlier.

Best game ever!

Now to see the end! Well, I assume it's time for the end after that...

Dragon Quest VIII

Six minutes. That's how long he took to kill me.

I barely scratched the bastard.

I don't think there's anything I can do about it, either. His attacks are too powerful. If I play a purely defensive game without trying to hurt him I'd still die. He just throws more damage around than I can deal with.

So I guess that's it. All this way and I'm not going to finish it. Sixty two hours or so and that's it.

Really, what the fuck it the point of upping the difficulty so much at the end? It's a long enough game as it is. It really, really doesn't need to stretch itself out by getting you to level up for hours on end.

It's Vagrant Story all over again. An object lesson in how to ruin a great game. Just make that last boss easier and I'd have had fond memories of a great game with the odd annoying bit in. Now I'm just going remember it with annoyance.

Okay, okay, because it's been so long, I'll try it one more time. Maybe the game will adjust the difficult or something now I've lost once...

Dragon Quest VIII

HEY! WARNING! I'VE NOT GONE INTO SPECIFICS, BUT IF YOU'RE PLAYING THE GAME YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS ENTRY, JUST IN CASE YOU THINK IT CONTAINS SPOILERS! OKAY?

You have been warned.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!

HOW MANY FUCKING BOSS FIGHTS ARE THERE AT THE END OF THIS GAME????????????

WHO THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE IN ANY FUCKING WAY ANY FUCKING FUN AT ALL????????????

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again, I say it!

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bloody hell, really. This is just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Okay, I've just checked a FAQ and I'm now at the final, real boss fight. Unfortunately, it's apparently a much harder version of a battle I only just scraped through earlier. As I used items in that battle that I consequently no longer have, I'm not at all sure I actually sure I can win this battle, at least not without about many more hours levelling up. (I've been playing for about seven hours today and my main character has gone from level 38 to level 39. That's how slowly levels come at this stage in the game.

After I got past the boss I was moaning about earlier the game got good again for a while. Why? Because it wasn't just throwing stupidly powerful enemies at me to slow down my progress, that's why.

Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh.

Right, okay, let's try this boss...

If I can't kill him after over sixty hours of playing this stupid bloody game I'm going to be even more bloody annoyed than I am now. Why? Why ruin a perfectly good game like this? It's just difficulty for the sake of it. I don't want to have to wander around places I've already been for twenty more hours building up experience and money. I don't want to be at a complete disadvantage because I didn't build my characters correctly right from the start, didn't look up alchemy FAQs to get all the receipes for the best weapons, didn't cheat the casino.

And, let's face it, I've been doing fine. But why throw all these bosses at the end of the game? And that bloody test of how well you remember the story that came in the middle of them? Why? Why? Why?

Hmm, should probably go back to the top and add a spoiler warning.

Dragon Quest VIII

Fifty-nine hours.

I'm really not enjoying it any more.

I've got to the last boss - well, so I assume - and I've not been able to kill him. I guess he's got multiple forms, as these bosses generally do, but I hope he hasn't because I've not been able to kill the first yet.

You know, I started today's play with a boss fight. And if that had been the end of things then I'd have really enjoyed the game. But, no, the bastard developers decided to shove in an extra dungeon - a very long dungeon, which the boss is at the end of - and a difficulty spike.

I want to have fun and see what happens to everybody in the end. I don't want some huge challenge, especially not at this point in the game. This should be the glorious finale, not a teeth-grinding annoyance that I'm only prepared to put up with because I've got this far.

Mind you, I left Vagrant Story at the last, impossibly difficult, boss, but I really, really want to finish this. I just don't want to have to play this horrible fucking last bit in order to do so.

Gigawing Generations

I don't care what the big boys on the rllmuk forum say.

I just booted it up to make sure I wasn't insane and, well, maybe I am, but I think it's great fun.

Ugly as sin, yes, but great fun. And I got to the third level on one credit. Twice. Which means it must be easier than the majority of vertical shooters, which can only only be a good thing.

Anyway, I'd posted about it there, but it seems to be down. Again.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I have just got off the phone with p'anther and we Crossed, too. Went to Teazcozy and then came back. When I got back Nintendo had sent me a lovely loveseat (no, that's what it's called) so we sat on it a while and then did fishing. I gave a Frobert a red snapper and he gave me something rubbish in return. Hmm. Now I am very tired and want sleep. So I shall go! Sleep.

Marble Blast Ultra

I'm stuck on a level called Great Divide.

I'm rubbish.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Two and half hours this evening. P'anther came online so I went to Teacozy for a bit and then she came back and we spent a lot of time in Venture. She seemed to bring Friga with her, because she didn't live her when I left for Teacozy, but had moved in by the time I got back. Unfortunately, Anchovy didn't do the reverse. P'anther likes him. I didn't like Friga that much when she lived in Teacozy, but hopefully she'll grow on me now we'll be living in the same town.

Dragon Quest VIII

Fifty-four hours.

Things are coming closer to a close, I believe.

Not there yet, though.

I must say, the story is a lot more compelling and a lot more, well, more like a story than at the beginning of the game.

Only one boss this evening. He didn't seem to difficult, but with a few more points of damage from him on a couple of occassions it could have been different. And it took a while, because he had a lot of hit points. I really didn't make my early game choices too well, so things are more difficult for me than they should be, I think, but not enough to really annoy me. I think that generally the balancing in this game is really very, very good. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had some sort of adaptive difficulty built in. It would explain why the boss fight strategies I checked online didn't work for me and why everything seems to be just hard enough. Either that or my play style - explore everywhere but don't specifically stay anywhere to level up - is the expected method of going through the game.

Dragon Quest VIII

Got past that boss. Took a couple of attempts, but I got there. Totally ignored what the boss tips in the FAQ suggested, as the strategy put forward there just seems impossible. I don't know how often the boss used the status-cancelling ice attack when they played, but it used it every other turn or so when I played, making psyching up impossible. I got there in the end, mind, though I did have to use some items I'd been hoping to save.

Ah, well, got there. And then it was straight off to a tough dungeon, with another boss at the end. So, yes, the boss I was having trouble with was a sort of start-of-dungeon boss. Insanity! Luckily, the end-of-dungeon was pretty simple, not having any annoying attacks.

After that, I was rather at a loss, so I wandered around the map for a while until going to get a hint from, er, the place you can go to get a hint. (I know I say this diary may contain spoilers, but I'll avoid them where possible.) That pointed me in the right direction, so I went off where I'd been pointed, found some new, tougher enemies, realised it was ten o'clock and went back to a town to rest up and save.

Fifty-two and a half hours in now. There's not a lot of the map I've not been to, as far as I can tell, so maybe I'm getting close to the end...

Dragon Quest VIII

Fifty hours now.

No, still not done. Not by a long way, I don't think.

I got to a boss who slaughtered me in about six turns. Ouch. I assumed it was a battle I was meant to lose, you know, they happen in RPGs now and again. But it wasn't. Somehow I was meant to win it. So I went back. And lasted quite a long time, but half of that was me hanging on hoping for a miracle while half my party lay dead.

So I decided to look on GameFAQs for boss tips. Before I got that far, though, the section headings made it obvious that I'd missed out a huge chunk of the game.

A-ha! That'll give me an item I need to deal with this uber-boss!

That's what I thought.

I was wrong. I checked the first sentence or two of the section I missed, which got me started, but I didn't really get anything for doing it. Just a sub-quest, I suppose. I wonder if I've missed many of those?

I've gone up a level now, though, so maybe I'll be able to cope with the boss now. Maybe. I don't know, though. It had incredibly powerful attacks.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

Just to give you an idea of ridiculously packed this is, here's the list of choices on the main menu -

Arcade Mode
Variable Battle
Training Mode
Free Battle
Option Mode
World Tour
Edit Mode
Entry Mode
Vs 100 Kumite
Network
Survival Mode
Dramatic Battle
R. Dramatic Battle
Final Battle
Score Ranking

Arcade has a million different options you can tweak, Survival Mode has eight different types of Survival on its sub-menu, World Tour is pretty huge on its own, etc. etc. etc. etc.

It's just huge a Street Fighter sandbox.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

Hooray, round four!

I'm getting better.

My dragon punches aren't coming as easily as there were last night.

Also noticed a Street Fighter Alpha 3 strategy guide on a bookshelf earlier. It won't cover everything, but it might be worth looking through. I've got an odd collection of strategy guides, actually. Starcraft, Xenogears, Suikoden II, even Crazy Taxi of all things. (I seem to remember that last one was being sold off for 1c in Toys 'R' Us.)

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Well, I've got my new room. Given it a vague outdoors feel with stuff I had lying around. I've decided to set up a complete T-Rex in there, when I get the bits.

Frobert won the Bright Nights contest, even though I voted for Dotty. Bah.

Released my first bottle in ages. I bet it washes up on my own beach.

Anchovy's moving out. I like him, but not enough to presuade him to stay. Frobert, Big Top, Dotty and Deena are the ones who I'll try to keep.

Too late for trunips today, but the next mortgage is only 848,000 or so, so I should have that paid off within a couple of weeks if I keep picking my fruit.

Tried to go out, but nobody had their gates open. Ah well.

Dragon Quest VIII

I've played for forty-seven hours and sixteen minutes.

That's nearly two complete days of my life.