OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Not only did I play it on the bus this morning, but I also played it at home before I left for work, which is pretty much unheard of.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

ARGH!

So I've been playing more of this on the PSP and saving up my miles to buy the 328 GTS, because it was my very favourite car on OutRun 2 on the Xbox.

I finally get enough miles and run off to the showroom, choose the car and... a message pops up saying "Sorry, you must unlock this car on the PS2."

Fuck's sake.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Hooray!

I've become a master sneak.

That's my first skill maxed out.

(I got my agility up to 100 before any buffs earlier, too.)

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Hooray!

On my fourth go and with the office clock clicking closer and closer to one o'clock I finally finished the SP easy route for the first time. Go me!

I now have 10,001 OutRun miles. I need 13,500 to buy the 328 GTS. Would have enough if I'd not bought the F50 earlier.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Played it on the bus to work.

Yes, I played OutRun 2 on the bus to work.

I love how that sounds.

I played OutRun 2 on the bus to work.

I still can't quite finish the easiest route on the SP stages, but it's really starting to feel like it's my fault, not the controls. Getting used to digital braking and accelerating has been the biggest challenge. I can't ease off the gas to get round bends anymore and it's really changed the way I'm having to play the game. Anyone who went all or nothing on the triggers in the Xbox game will probably find it easier to adjust.

But it's so good. It is OutRun 2 in the palm of my hand. It's not perfect, but it's more than a handheld approximation of the real game. It is the real game.

It's Magical Sound Shower played through a decent all-in-one stereo instead of an expensive separates system with gold-plated double-thick speaker wires. Or something.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Oh dear.

I was trying to prove that it's possible to kill people for no reason and get no bounty for doing so. So I snuck into a house in Bravil and slaughtered the woman I found inside eating breakfast.

I then went out and talked to a guard, who didn't arrest me. And my stats screen showed no bounty. So, the perfect crime.

I wasn't going to save after this, not being the murdering type. But the game had autosaved when I left the dead woman's house and my last maunal save was right before the tricky bit of a mission I did a while ago.

So I'm stuck as a murderer. Oh well, I might as well embrace my new calling. There's a man called Rufio...

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Hooray! For probably the only time ever I've got the best score on one of the routes on the OutRun2 online leaderboard. On the PSP version, this is. Representing for the UK. Only Union Jack on the top scores screen.

Tried to play online, but there were no games and nobody joined when I created one.

Anyway, I've taken the steering sensitivity down a couple of notches, which has helped things massively. I've mainly been playing OutRun 2, rather than any challenges or SP, just to try and compare it to the version I already know and love.

Best PSP game ever? Well, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max is stiff competition, but OutRun 2006 might just beat it. We'll see.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

I managed not to play for the entire evening!

I turned on for one quest and ended up staying two hours, doing two quests and a fair bit of buggering about. Couldn't find a decent fence, so had to get rid of a stolen sword on the cheap, which was annoying.

Oh, actually, I finished another quest I'd got the other day. So that's two and a half quests, I suppose.

Still, I managed to stop before bed time, so I did okay.

Sonic The Hedgehog

The music's right, too. Which is very good. No sound effects, mind.

And I've got to the end of Green Hill Zone now, but the pathetically easy boss killed me. D'oh.

It really is a fantastic achievement this game and it looks absolutely wonderful. It's just a pity that there's a better version from fifteen years ago to compare it to.

Sonic The Hedgehog

It's come out on mobile phones now. A surprisingly faithful conversion. Controls aren't as good as on a proper gaming device, obviously, but they're far better than I expected them to be. (Using the K750i thumbstick.) It's nice and fast, too, and seems to have the same level layouts as the Megadrive original, as far as I can remember.

Well, so far. I've not got past Green Hill Zone Act 2 yet. As I said, the controls are much better than expected, but aren't perfect. Having to stop pressing right to press jump is a bit odd.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Tried the PSP version briefly this lunchtime. Very difficult to control and drifts don't seem as natural to pull off as in OutRun 2 on the Xbox.

It seems good, don't get me wrong, but it's going to take some getting used to is all.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

I finished the Thieves Guild missions last night.

The final two were excellent. The penultimate mission I used lateral thinking to get past and the final mission was all about the sneaking.

Fantastic stuff.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

I tried doing the main quest last night.

Unfortunately the game sees I'm level seventeen and throws hard enemies at me. Which is bad as it expects me to fight, but while my sneaking skills are high my combat skills are worse than a dead orc's.

I'm not finding it hard. I'm finding it impossible.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

I'm not sure whether I should be feeling like a cheat or congratulating myself on my cunning and skill.

I did a mission a couple of nights ago that was pretty much beyond my capabilities. Enemies that I could just about kill one-on-one, but more than one and I was dead.

No spoilers, but it was just a "get item and get out mission", though, so I found a way.

First up, part of the mission involved swimming through an underground passage. Just after it I ran into some horrible great bastard with a great big sword and eyes like a hawk. I ran. He followed me back to the underwater passage.

He followed me into it.

He didn't follow me out. I used a Detect Life spell and couldn't see him. So I gingerly edged forwards as slowly as I could with a diminishing oxygen bar and found his corpse floating by the ceiling. Seems he needs to breathe, too.

So the next few minutes involved me waving at enemies and then running away and diving into the water laughing to myself as they followed. Killed a couple more that way, but after that the enemies wouldn't follow me back that far.

So I ran past them. I ran and I ran and got to the end, where the item I needed to steal was. Up some stairs, hammering my heal spell, a huge leap over a massive gap, into a room, picked up the item I needed, leapt on to a desk, back over the heads of the enemies that had followed me in and all the way back through the "dungeon" and out into the open air.

All that practice jumping over the rooftops of Brauma and the Waterfront paid off.

After that it was an easy matter to find my way back to my contact. I was torn between feeling cunning and cool (and some of that jumping was just excellent) in a Zorro type way and feeling like I'd somehow done it "wrong" and should have killed all the enemies like in a normal RPG. Even the "boss" was still alive, probably wondering what the hell had just happened.

But my very, very favourite so far was stealing an item from someone's bedroom while they were asleep and then causally picking up an apple from their fruit bowl on the way to the door. I just felt so much like a movie-style cheeky kind of rogue.

I fell asleep on the train on the way home from London and dreamt about Oblivion. And I'm dreaming about it every night.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Wasn't go to play it this evening, because I new that I'd end up going to bed late. But I couldn't seem to resist.

Did a quest - not too long, excellent rewards - and bought a horse and joined the Mages Guild and started another quest but failed it by getting the person who'd given it to me killed.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Why is Frobert sick every Yay Day?

Does he have something to hide?

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

After a total of thirty hours or so it feels almost exactly like Morrowind to me. Do like the way the combat model means it's possible to win fights that there'd have been no way to win in Morrowind.

In fact, it's better than Morrowind in almost every way. I like the way Morrowind's map filled in, Oblivion doesn't do that on the main map. That's an incredibly petty complaint, mind.

The other thing is that I liked Morrowind's alien landscape and wildlife. So far in Morrowind I've just seen deer, horses, dogs and sheep as non-enemy animals. Not quite the same as giant flying jellyfish things.

I bought a horse today, finally. Almost cried when it died after riding it a bit too hard over some mountains. I normally fast-travel to places when doing quests, but this time I decided to ride over the mountains at night while it was snowing. Beautiful, until I got my horse to gallop down a steep slope and it fell out from under me and crashed all the way down, twisting in an utterly sickening fashion. Poor thing. We were only about fifty yards from my destination, too.

Also bought a house from somone. Cheap... but, er... needed some work done... There's no way I'm giving spoilers for that quest. You'll have fun.

The quests are just getting better and better, actually. And they're all side quests.

One day I might even do some of the story stuff, maybe.

Tetris DS

It's an odd one.

It feels wrong somehow when I first start playing, but then feels natural within thirty seconds.

I've tried some of the new play modes. Not sure about them yet. They're not as intuitive as plain old Tetris, but they might end up being worthwhile.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Twelve hours in, character from old quest starts haunting me.

For reasons I won't go into, I've not been able to close the quest off, so after a while the game seemed to decide to send this NPC around to haunt me in a way that's very, very obviously not meant to happen.

In other words, the game broke.

So I started again from the beginning.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

It's... half past midnight...

On a week night.

How did that happen?

Tetris DS

Just tried standard Marathon mode.

It starts slowly and gets faster fairly quickly.

Controls felt a bit off to me at first, slightly clunky, but I stopped noticing once the speed increased. Still, a bit odd.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

It's brilliant. Of course.

What have I done? Ooooh, loads. Started a new character, a Breton. Custom class, Wanderer. Spells and thieving. Been caught looting a pub's basement. Broken into a farmhouse to steal the few items of any value inside. Picked flowers and vegetables. Killed a highwayman. Found a horse. Killed the same horse after it went mad after I accidentally slashed it while we were fighting a wolf. Failed to kill any deer. Raided a tomb filled with imps and traps. Sneaked past a monster unleashed by a well-intentioned man. Wandered round the Imperial City, mostly lost. Stolen goods from the Imperial Prison. Walked into an Oblivon gate and died.

That sort of thing.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

It is a glorious day.

I got out of bed at 5:15am. By 6:00am Oblivion had been installed on my PC.

(I'd downloaded overnight. I have two copies arriving some time this week, one PC, one 360, so I don't feel guilty about downloading it a day or two early. I had to install some software called Daemon Tools to run it. I hope it's not going to do anything nasty to my PC. I don't know much about downloading games and that. I was so worried I actually deleted all the personal information - e.g. Firefox passwords - off my PC before running anything.)

I played it for just over an hour, through the helpful tutorial section (that will no doubt get annoying when starting new characters) and out the other side. On my PC it looks great. Once out in the world I died, a lot. I only had about ten minutes out there and about five deaths. It's no less harsh than Morrowind in that respect. Do stupid stuff, you die. And I did a lot of stupid stuff, just to test things out. In fact, everything about it is very Morrowind. The combat system's been changed a bit, the interface has been mucked about with, but it feels just like Morrowind to me. I didn't, however, see any enemy health bars. Hopefully I just didn't notice them because I was gawping at the graphics. If they're not there then I may cry.

Anyway, I had to leave for work, but it's a lovely sunny day and I read great interviews with Peter Ackroyd and the Pet Shop Boys on the bus and after all the anticipation and build up to Oblivion I now feel sated. Itching to leave work, go home and plunge back in, but at a manageable level. The wait to play it at all was sending me slightly crazy, I must admit.

Now I'm okay. I'm fine. It reminds me of when I used to be a hardcore smoker and lit up a fag after an enforced period without.

And I'm rubbish at sneaking.

Monkey Ball Mini Golf

1,610 from the first nine holes. I seem to be improving.

Feeding Frenzy

Unlocked full game.

Started a New Game.

One sitting later, had completed the game.

Oh.

Time Attack's where it's at, they say, and I suppose the main game can be replayed for high scores but... oh.

The Outfit

Couple more single player levels down. It's good fun, though the seige at the end of the last level went on a bit too long. Or there was too long between waves, anyway. I wasn't in any danger, given that I'd set up $hlmun gun emplacements around the place I was meant to be defending.

Burnout Revenge Demo

Downloaded it from Live Marketplace. Has saved me some cash. I just can't play it. It's too fast for me. I crash into things I haven't even seen.

Burnout was decent. Burnout 2 was great. Burnout 3 started well, but got silly and had a horrible interface. Burnout Revenge just doesn't seem very good.

Monkey Ball Mini Golf

A well-designed little mobile phone mini golf game with a Monkey Ball skin.

Just gone through the eighteen hole course once. Got a total of 2,410 points, which is probably rubbish. Some holes I ran out of bananas on, so didn't get any points at all.

Ecco The Dolphin: Defender Of The Future

Very pretty, even after six years. Nobody else has really done anything similar that I've seen, so it's not got any competition.

However, after the first training area I got completely lost. I just didn't know what to do. I did a race, which didn't seem to get me very far. I got told that I should catch a big fish, but couldn't see one anyone. I tried fighting some sharks, but kept dying. In the end I just gave up.

Cannon Spike

Yes!

I set my Dreamcast back up after tearing my flat apart looking for its s-video cable. I finally found it in the last place I looked... the Dreamcast box. Oops. Most of VMUs seem to be missing, but I did find a NEW! SEALED! VMU and an equally NEW! SEALED! vibration pack, so that's nice.

Anyway, I put Powerstone 2 to check it worked, then when it booted I turned off and went and had a bath. After that I dug out all my old games. Annoyingly, I couldn't find my boot disc, so I can't play any of my UK or JAP games. No Ikaruga, Cosmic Smash, etc. Hmpf.

Not there's a shortage of DC games for me to play. But the one I was gagging to play was Cannon Spike. Not sure why, but it always comes to mind when I think about the DC. I don't think I even played it that much. Anyway, I've just been back and played a game with each of the characters (including the barely secret Megaman and B. B. Hood)... And then I played another game as Cammy, just for good measure.

It's rather good and still looks good. Not state of the art, but good. No glaringly horrible textures, no jagged lines, no framerate issues. And it's nice and simple to play, despite using all four face buttons for various attacks, the left trigger for a special attack and the right trigger to lock on.

I didn't use any continues. You'd think I'd myself now after all these years, but I'm still playing them the hardcore way.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

My entry for the fishing tournament is a 42.0 inch sea bass.

Also caught a barred knifejaw for the first time, so that went to the museum.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Excellent.

Finally completed the first co-op campaign mission. Two of us finally managed to do it without dying and unlocked the achievement. It didn't seem that hard when we finally did it, which was odd as it took us ages. The trick in the end was to split up, so we could come at the enemy from different angles. Very tense stuff. And very, very good stuff, even if some of the advanced features of the singleplayer game aren't present.

The Outfit

No, I'm really rubbish at this.

I can't seem to win at all. Or even come close.

But my rank is currently 1337, which is excellent. And also means that not many people are playing this online.

The Outfit

Well, I've got the full version now.

Single player seems okay. Nothing inspiring in the first couple of missions, but it's quite good fun.

Really got it for the multiplayer, though. So I've tried it online. First four matches I tried to play all ended in immediate disconnections after loading. They were all against the same player. As soon as I got matched with somebody else everything was fine.

Except I seem to be rubbish. I was good the demo, but I guess I was playing against people who didn't know what they were doing. Everybody online with the full game does know what they're doing. And they're better than me. Mainly, it seems, because they know how to do two things I don't.

1) Do a melee attack.
2) Destroy any gun emplacements I build within seconds of them being built.

Number one can probably be sorted out by me opening the manual. Number two might take some doing. First I need to work out how they're destroying my guns so quickly and then I've got to do it myself.

Xbox 360

There's a new game on Live Arcade called Feeding Frenzy. You steer a fish around eating small fish and avoiding big ones. Seems okay, actually. I played through a couple of times. Would have bought for 400 points, but 800 seems a little much.

Then I flicked between Morrowind (see previous post) and Crystal Quest all evening. I beat my previous best score. And James's best score. I am once again king.

Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

So, it all started because I got stuck in some scenery.

Well, no, it started because I was wondering what type of character to play in Oblivion when it comes out. In Morrowind both my characters where pretty much straight fighters, but I was thinking a sneaky, stealthy character might be fun. So I used an a web page to plot out a custom class in Oblivion. Wasn't sure how it would play... and then realised I could make a very similar character in Morrowind as a test.

So I did. I made a custom class called the "Facilitator'. Basically, it's a sweet-talker who's sneaky enough to be a thief and not bad with a short blade when required. Made myself one of the cat people for the extra agility and the night vision. So, ignoring deaths and restarts, this is what happened in my evening's play...

In the starting town I managed to get stuck on some scenery. That's never happened to me before. Luckily, I'd bought a scroll that magics me back to the nearest temple, which happened to be in Vivec. Now I wouldn't have thought to go to Vivec so soon, but as I was there I popped through a doorway and found myself in some woman's home. She was home. I checked her stuff to see if it was worth killing her for her stuff. She had some nice expensive clothes and she looked weak, so I decided it would be. She took a while to go down, but she wasn't much of a fighter and didn't even leave a scratch on me. As she fell the floor she used her last breath to exhale the word "stupid". I don't know if she meant her or me, but it was unsettling and somehow reminded me that my first act of note in this world was the cold-blooded murder of someone for their clothes.

Wandering outside and up some stairs I found myself in the commercial quarter of this area of the city. I talked to a woman who asked me to steal some valuable cups and bowls from a ship in Ebonheart. I said I'd do it, but I didn't mean it. It's been a while since I'd been to Ebonheart with my other characters, so I couldn't remember where it was.

Wandering around some more, an invisible man came up and begged me to help him. Turned out he'd been cursed by a wizard and everybody was thinking he was a ghost. So I went and found the wizard, who told a slightly different story. The guy had begged to be made invisible, so the wizard had obliged. However, the man hadn't then paid the fee so the wizard refused to make him visible again. I didn't have the money to pay the debt and I probably wouldn't have anyway, so I wandered back to the guy to tell him so. Unfortunately he didn't seem to be able to understand that fact. As he was invisisble and complaining everyone thought he was a ghost I wondered if anyone would mind if I killed him. So I took a swipe and a guard ran over and arrested me. Rather than pay a fine, I chose to go to prison.

Turned out that the nearest prison was in Ebonheart. Stroke of luck, eh? I found the ship I needed to steal pulled out my lockpick. Getting into the ship was easy, but on the first level were two imperial guards. I walked past them and they didn't bat an eyelid. Once I was at the other end of the ship I hid myself in the shadowsk, unlocked the next door and climbed down to the bottom level of the ship. Found the goods I needed and exited. If the guards noticed me walking out of a supposedly locked and secure area of the ship they didn't indicate it. Odd behaviour indeed, but I'd successfully used my thieving skills - lock-picking and sneaking - to complete a mission. Hooray!

So I took the goods to their new owner. She paid me 1,500 for the lot. A fraction of the full price, but possibly more than I could get elsewhere. And I'd said I'd get them, so I'm a thief with honor.

So I had a fortune. That amount of money is incredible to have so soon. I decided to pop over to Balmora to spend a bit. Walked there without incident. I would have taken public transport, but I couldn't find it. The fog that blankets Morrowind isn't helpful when it comes to locating things.

In Balmora I bought a full set of Netch leather armour, before remembering that being a big cat I couldn't wear shoes. So I sold them back to the armorer. Went and bought a couple of daggers and a bow. Unfortunately I couldn't find anywhere selling arrows, which is annoying. But I got everything for slightly less than list price using my silver-tongued negotiating skills.

And after that I went over to the guy on the east side of town I was meant to see and handed him a package, finishing off the first proper story mission. And I then fell into bed for a good eighteen hours of sleep.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Single player completed!

Overall, that was a most excellent game. Really, really excellent. A few difficulty spikes and the odd mission objective bug, but nothing too bad. Just one of those games that feels right.

Overall it took me 13 hours and 18 minutes, which seems to be a fair amount of time longer than most people.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Encountered my first proper bug today. After dying my objective didn't appear when I respawned, so I had to restart the mission I was on. Ah well, I was only one checkpoint in. And it was an excellent mission, so no real harm done.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

I played some more of the single player game and I love it. It's just so tense and just feels so right. Everything just seems to come together. So good. Finished off 'Radey For Bear', which was a tough one and then did the next mission which was probably the easiest yet, but no less fun.

Then I played a Team Elimination game with randoms and got killed. A lot. Oh well, it was my first game. And I did get one kill, which saved my pride, three seconds from the end of the match.

The only annoying thing is that I can't seem to change my location anywhere and the game thinks I'm in the USA.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Single player is really hard. I spent about an hour getting a few checkpoints through one mission. It's really not bad hard, though. It's good, challenging hard. It's great.

As is playing co-op over the Internet. I've done a few random elimination rounds with Ade now and this evening we tried the first mission of the co-op campaign. We didn't manage it. Well, we did in the end, but only after I'd given us infinite lives. We really need to do it properly some time, though.

Metal Slug Advance

All these years and I'm still stuck on level two.

Generation of Chaos

Big complicated PSP strategy game with no tutorial and an awful font.

I've been through two turns. Thr first turn I bought a sword, but didn't do anything else. The second turn I managed to move some units and send another off on a search, or something, which is different.

I really don't have a clue what's going on.

There are cut scenes, soon, where lots of people talk to each other about nothing. Using a horrible font.

I need to read the manual. Then maybe some reviews.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Hooray!

After picking 250,00 bells worth of fruit and catching 15,000 bells worth of fish I've now paid off my current mortgage. House upgrade here we come!

Crystal Quest

James beat my score.

I haven't beaten James's score.

Yet.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Traded in some games for it.

It is, as many people have been saying, technically the best looking game on any system ever.

It also plays well. Six hour session after first turning on well.

It's bloody hard, though. I've just finished a mission called "Mayday! Mayday!" and it took me hours.

Haven't even tried the multiplayer yet.

Jewel Quest

Downloaded 360 version.

Was ace until it got too hard.

Crystal Quest

Horribly addictive.

I've now beaten my own high score and, more importantly, retaken the lead on my Friends Leaderboard, with a cool 23,400,000.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2

So, I was looking for games to trade in at Game tomorrow and came across Battlefront 2, which I'd got for Christmas and not played.

I'd put it on my Amazon wishlist because the online game sounded good, back when I had more faith in the 360's backwards compatibility. Now I can only play it single player, but I thought I'd give it a go.

Just did training. Seemed pretty good, actually. A bit messy, not the best camera in the world and like all Xbox games (except OutRun 2) it looks rubbish on my TV, but it seems like a solid third-person shooter. And it's got Star Wars graphics and noises, which is a good thing.

And I got to pay as Mace Windu and chop up droids with a lightsaber, which isn't something I'm going to complain about.

Crystal Quest

Weird.

I would never have thought that it would be Crystal Quest that would keep me up an hour past my bedtime.

I'm going to pay for this tomorrow.

Zuma

I didn't even get to level 5-5 today.

Died on 5-3.

This game's too hard.

Crystal Quest

A friend of mine, who we'll call "James", got Crystal Quest recently.

He said his Friends Leaderboard wasn't working and the game was recording the incorrect skill level on the Live Leaderboard.

So I thought I'd have a go. My Friends Leaderboard was working and James was in the top spot that I'd previously been occuping, with a score of 11,000,000, compared to my 7,000,000. And, indeed, it was showing the skill level he'd played on as "1". So I played and played and played some more. I hit 14,000,000 and checked the Leaderboard. I was above James, yes, but it was showing my skill level as "1". I played some more and some more and some more. And I hit 17,000,000. This time it recorded my skill correctly as "x10", so I guess it's an intermittent bug, or one they solved while I was playing.

Two new achievements and a new high score more than my previous one. Not bad at all.

The Outfit Demo

Two more games. I lost the first pretty handily after blowing up a bridge I really needed to be left intact. The second was a bit of an epic, but I won it in the end.

It's brilliant.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Completed!

Total time spent playing was probably around an hour. That's all right for £1.50, I reckon.

The Outfit Demo

Shit.

I'm starting to really like this.

The Outfit Demo

Had a few more games, including an absolute epic that's the only one I've lost so far. It was great. For the last half of the match, at least, I was really hanging on by a thread and making small comebacks that didn't build up enough momentum to turn the tde. Final score was about 185-139, or something like that.

The Outfit Demo

New 360 demo.

It's one of those very annoying multiplayer-only demos.

No tutorial, no nothing. There is, at least, a screen showing which buttons do what.

So I leapt into a one-on-one game online. Seemed pretty simple, really. Just kill the enemy and try to capture the capture points. Bit like Day of Defeat, but different. Anyway, I won. Even though I stood around doing nothing for a while half-way through when I had to skip through the "lost kitten" conversation in Animal Crossing.

It was annoyingly enjoyable, too. I really, really, really don't need any more games to buy. Poor buggers coming out the same day as GRAW and Fight Night. If they'd released this time last month when nothing was coming out they could have cleaned up.

The Outfit Demo

New 360 demo.

It's one of those very annoying multiplayer-only demos.

No tutorial, no nothing. There is, at least, a screen showing which buttons do what.

So I leapt into a one-on-one game online. Seemed pretty simple, really. Just kill the enemy and try to capture the capture points. Bit like Day of Defeat, but different. Anyway, I won. Even though I stood around doing nothing for a while half-way through when I had to skip through the "lost kitten" conversation in Animal Crossing.

It was annoyingly enjoyable, too. I really, really, really don't need any more games to buy. Poor buggers coming out the same day as GRAW and Fight Night. If they'd released this time last month when nothing was coming out they could have cleaned up.

Ridge Racer 6

It's ace.

But it is absolutely exhausting.

Got stuck on Basic Route race number 74 for ages. No idea why that's so difficult. The races before and after it are the normal win-first-time types.

Ridge Racer 6

I just got my 800km driven achievement.

Fair enough.

My head hurts now.

Zuma

Level 5-5 is evil.

Galactic Civilizations 2

So, the human race finally invents the hyperdrive and travels out into the stars. A few planets are colonized. Contact is made with other races, all of whom seem content to let me get on with things at my own pace.

(I turned them down to beginner difficulty.)

All the habitable worlds in the (small) galaxy are now taken. There's nowhere else to go. I've researched weapons and built some smal fighters that I designed myself. I couldn't make them symmetrical, unfortunately, so they don't look sleek or slick, but they've got some sort of charm.

Anyway, I've got to the stage now where I don't really know what to do. I'm trying to build up my influence at the moment, but I'm tiching to try out my fighters, too. So I'm researching Planetary Invasion so I can take over some planets. Trouble is, I've been playing as a good civilisation, so going to war unprovoked isn't really in character.

They key word in that last sentence? Civilisation. Or, rather, Civilization, because that what play GalCiv2 makes me want to play. It's not that GalCiv2 is bad - far from it - but Civilization has a familiarity that GalCiv2 doesn't. (Yes, I played GalCiv, but this sequel is very different and being all in space, doesn't have the intuitiveness of Civ.) But Civ4 would need installing and GalCiv2 is already installed and I'm lazy. And after a few games I'm sure I'll get used to it.

To be honest, putting the difficulty level on braindead might not be the best idea, because it leaves everything up to me. If I had a threat to fight that might focus me.

Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

So I left Ginis and wandered around until I found myself in Khuul, a rubbish little fishing village that seems to have slumped into the sea. Wandered into a shack and killed the owner for no reason. No idea why I did that at all. He wasn't doing my any harm. Sometimes I worry myself, I must say.

Down on a jetty someone offered to give me a lift to the island of Solstheim. I was a bit worried as that's a big new island that was added in the Bloodmoon expansion pack and thus is meant for high level characters. Not sure that level twelve Nord Knight counts. Thought I'd give it a go, though. After the boat arrived I wandered off into the wilderness, getting quite worried when a wolf ran at me. When I killed him in one hit I became less worried, I must say. Found a Barrow, which I picked my way around in the dark, because I wanted my shield out and you can't carry a shield and a torch at the same time. I killed all the nasty things inside and then lit my torch to look around. Found a big new axe that's dead good, but it's a two-handed axe, meaning I can't use a shield at all if I want to use it. Hmm. I'll have to think about that.

After leaving the Barrow I wandered back to the large fort where the boat dropped me off. Huge maze-like place. However, as I'm an agent in the Imperial Guard everyone's either deferential or friendly and I can use the beds, which is nice. The Captain of the place greeted me warmly and asked me to find out why the morale of the men in the fort is dropping so much. Seems to be a lack of alcohol, but I've not quite got to the bottom of it yet.

Marble Blast Ultra

I was doing a level called "Under Construction" or something. It was hard. Too hard. I was trying over and over and over and over again. After abour twenty minutes I realised it was depressing me. I mean, my mood had crashed. I was depressed. Life just seemed to be worthless, everything good seemed to be fading away... So I turned off and I feel better already. I've never had a game do that to me before. I am very, very tired and deliberately staying up late tonight, so I guess I was in a very suggestible state of mind. But, really, that was horrible, just horrible.

Ridge Racer 6

Eight more races one.

Two more cars unlocked.

It's fun, but there's still too much of it.

Xbox 360

Started the 360 up when I got up to see if there were any new demos out. There weren't, so I sent a disgusted message to my friend El Pollo, who was doing the same thing. We exchanged a few messages and then decided to play Joust. Had a few co-op games, which were great fun. We killed each other by mistake quite often. It was my fault, mostly. Oh dear. Still, got a new achievement out of it.

Then we tried Mutant Storm, but that doesn't actually have Live multiplayer, so that was out.

Started up Gauntlet, which really isn't much fun any more, even with two players.

And then El Pollo had to go out, so I had a quick go of Zuma and died too quickly.

And all before 9am!

Zuma

Tried Gauntlet mode for the first time.

Got 53,000 points.

Don't really understand the rank thing. I guess you can play at a higher rank based upon your best score, or something. Not sure. The "Help" section in the game doesn't explain it at all.