42 All-Time Classics (DS)

Okay, so Company of Heroes is still running on my PC, just paused, but I've spent hours and hours playing Stamp mode on this. I don't even like most of the games, for goodness sake! What am I doing?

Company of Heroes (PC)

Gosh.

Another intense strategy game on the PC.

I just had to defend a road against a convoy of German troops. I lost nearly all my little soldier guys and there were huge explosions everywhere and panic and fire and... oh!

Somehow, despite some vehicles getting through I was told I did a good job and it was on to the next mission...

Or rather, it was time to save and take a break before the stress killed me.

Doom (360)

Why is there a warehouse in Hell?

Actually...

42 All-Time Classics (DS)

Variable, but a fair amount of fun playing two-player with wife.

I won.

But not at everything.

She beat me badly at bowling, for example.

Defcon (PC)

Just done the tutorial so far.

I'm not sure that I'll be very at good this game.

And it gives me chills.

TOKYO 8.4M DEAD

Doom (360)

First episode complete! Hoorah!

Top of my friends list (for now) and number 946 in the world (for now).

It really is my favourite game of all time. The controls feel perfect now I've adjusted, too. Wonderful, wonderful pure gaming perfection.

Doom (360)

It's up and it's got the best joypad controls the game's ever had. It's Ultimate Doom, too, not the original version.

Not quite up there with a pre-Win95 keyboard, but good enough.

Tried a Deathmatch online. Was laggy as fuck for a while, but got much better once a couple of people dropped out. I lost. Horribly.

Sonic The Hedgehog Demo (360)

The worst thing I've played in months.

Absolutely, utterly awful.

Either the camera and controls get a total overhaul before release, or this is going to be one of the worst games of all time.

No, really. It's horrific.

Half-Life 2 Episode One (PC)

Finally, again, some more play of this.

I'm very near the end now and enjoying it immensely, but it's bed time.

Fuzion Frenzy Demo (360)

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Most obnoxious soundtrack ever, ever, ever.

Shit, shit, shit.

FEAR Demo (360)

Just like the PC demo, but with rubbish controls.

No, not rubbish because they're joypad controls, rubbish because they're rubbish.

Little Savages 2 (PC)

Nice.

Mega Man ZX (DS)

I've got further. Now I just need to find Guardian HQ to complete my mission, or something.

New Super Mario Bros (DS)

Two more coins from a ghost house.

Hoorah, and stuff.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (DS)

Still playing this.

Still not quite sure why.

Got some new team members this evening. That's nice.

Harvest Moon: It's A Wonderful Life (GC)

So, started up the Gamecube version to show my wife. She's now playing it. I wish I could answer more of her questions, but it's ages since I last played.

Harvest Moon DS (DS)

My wife's playing this (and the GBA version), so I decided to have a look. Like all new Harvest Moon games, it's a mixture of the utterly familiar and completely baffling. In this case, with a very odd interface that relies on both the touch screen and the buttons in odd combinations. I've not played it much yet, there's a learning curve I need to battle through.

Test Drive Unlimited (360)

I took the Caterham for a spin, loved it, decided to try and save up for it.

Except I can't seem to do the E class challenges. Going past speed cameras? Too slow. Time trials? Too slow. Delivery mission? Failed by crashing straight into a police car, meaning a huge $10,000 fine and having to pay $4,000 compensation to the guy who asked me to deliver the package.

The end result? I have less money now than I started the day with.

Bother.

Mega Man ZX (DS)

Stuck game on Easy mode, sat through the incredibly long initial cutscene, killed the first boss and now I'm on my first mission... except I can't work out where to go. Am completely stuck. Feel stupid.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (DS)

Well, I can now recruit new members for my rescue team. At least, I can in theory. Apart from the one given to me as part of the story I've not managed to find any more.

It's got a bit tiring to be honest, so far there's not enough meat to the dungeon crawling and the crawls are too short compared to the time spent buggering around in town sorting out items and getting new jobs and such.

Hopefully just a problem in the initial stages.

Oh, and there's a surprising amount of story in the game, too. Not very interesting story, but it's there.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (DS)

My first roguelike.

No, it's not my first roguelike, that's what it should be subtitled. (Except making the name of the game any longer might cause something to collapse.)

Anyway, you're not an adventurer, you're a Pokemon. You don't find scrolls and swords, you find berries and gummies.

The levels are not huge and sprawling, just small and compact.

But it's fun enough and I'm sure it'll get more complicated later on. And it gave me an interview at the beginning and told me I was bulbasaur. Fair enough, I guess. I chose Pikachu to my companion, because, well, he's Pikachu, I guess. (I'm sure I should have thought about which type of Pokemon would be best complement my grass type Pokemon and all that, but, you know, come on.)

Anyway: fun.

Lego Star Wars 2 (DS)

Oh dear.

This just doesn't really work on the DS.

And I'm not sure if it isn't the fault of the DS Lite's d-pad.

Test Drive Unlimited (360)

It's too easy to buy cars you don't want.

Well, it's too easy for me, at any rate. After you test drive a car the car it shows is the first in the garage's list, not the one you just drove. So I now have an Audi A3 3.3 quattro DSG that I didn't want. Seems nice enough and I've sold my Alfa so I don't have two Group F cars.

I've also moved up into Group E and have bought myself a Nissan 350Z Nismo S-Tune. Which seemed great on the test drive, but a bit twitchy in real racing conditions. I've crashed a bit and spun out a couple of times. Hmm.

Test Drive Unlimited (360)

So, the full game is here and it's excellent.

The demos really don't do it justice.

I started off by buying an Alfa GT 3.2 V6 24v, which seems to go nicely enough, though it pales in comparison to the Elise I rented when I first got off the plane.

After earning some money I found a classic cars showroom by accident - was looking for a race - and fell in love with a Chevrolet Camaro Z-28. It's gorgeous and the engine sound is perfect. It's relatively slow and a tad undriveable, but I love it to bits anyway.

And I got invited to Club Cosmic and accepted. Yay.

Saints Row (360)

Ah, back playing this for an evening.

A few missions done, bit of buggering about, the usual.

I've pimped my Raycaster out good, in purple and brass. I'm so cool.

Oooh, look at me, using the word "pimped" without thinking about it.

Test Drive Unlimited Demo (360)

With all the talk on the Internet about how great this game is, I decided to have another go.

This time I turned the driving aids off and turned the steering sensitivity down a bit. It's like a whole different game. Much better handling, though the Ferrari I tried kept spinning out. I felt it was my fault, though, and cursed myself rather than the game. Infinitely better.

Anyway, full game now ordered.

Scramble (360)

Surprisingly entertaining.

And I've got to level four already. I never got off level two when I was a kid.

I AM NOW MAN, FEAR ME.

Lego Star Wars 2 (360)

Bloody great fun for my wife and I WHEN IT'S NOT GLITCHING OUT BY NOT OPENING A FORCE FIELD AND THEREFORE MEANING WE HAVE TO QUIT AND MISS OUT ON OUR FIRST TRUE JEDI STATUS SINCE THE FIRST LEVEL.

Bastard, bastard, bastard game.

Plus, I spent a good 45 minutes hunting around trying to see what I was missing until finally going online a finding deep in the Internet - the GameFAQs board for the PC version of the game - that it's a glitch and I'm not the only one to find it.

Grrrrrr.

Lego Star Wars 2 (360)

Brilliant.

Just spent an evening playing this with my wife. She doesn't like the flying sections much, but loves the rest. Me, I like all of it.

We got through A New Hope and are now half-way through The Empire Strikes Back. We're not doing too well at being True Jedi or finding secrets yet.

Anyway, it's excellent.

Metroid Prime Pinball (DS)

I think I'm starting to get into this. My scores seem to be improving. I'm still quite sure what I'm doing, but I think I'm learning. You need to collect enough artefacts to light up SAMUS to move to a boss level, or something.

Manual? Pah!

Star Fox Command (DS)

Seems okay. Controls aren't too bad, though every now and again I get up and down confused. Depends whether I concentrate on the crosshair or the ship, or something.

Only done the training and the first level, but I had some fun.

Rhythm Tengoku (GBA)

It's a rhythm action game from the Wario Ware team.

I'm sure it's very good, but somewhat predictably, I'm stuck on a very early level where you have to hit baseballs.

Dead Rising (360)

Just finished my first run through of this exceptionally entertaining game. Didn't bother with the story and avoided most difficult fights, though I did kill a cult leader and some convicts and a very nasty female cop. Which was, you know, cool. Anyway, had great fun and I'm now level seventeen and ready to start over with my current stats. Might even do some of the main cases.

Final stats -

PP Earned: 613,976
Game Clear: Ending B
Zombie Kill Count: 3,768
Survivors: 8
Photo Score: 56,436

Metroid Prime Pinball (DS)

Finally got around to trying this. It seems all right. Games are about the right length for me, too, and not endless endurance matches like some GBA pinball games I could mention. Not much idea of how the table I tried works yet, mind.

Mr Driller: Drill Spirits (DS)

So I went back and a game of this. Tried the 1000m level and got to 867m - my best depth ever. Nice to know my skills haven't died completely while I've been away, though I'm still obviously a bit rubbish.

Dig Dug: Digging Strike (DS)

Hmpf.

This has great Mr Driller presentation and everything, but the movement controls are incredibly clunky and are doing their best to destroy what would otherwise be a fun little game. I'm going to try another couple of levels, but I'm not too impressed right now.

Saints Row (360)

Wow.

Just come off a five and a half hour mega session of this while my poor jet-lagged wife slept beside me. Finished off the Vice Kings storyline, started and finished the Demolition Derby missions, bought some new jewellery, populated my garage a bit, that sort of thing.

I've even been customising my cars, incredibly. I wouldn't normally bother, but I don't think you can lose cars in this game. I think if you blow them up you can still get them repaired.

Anyway, it's terrific fun.

Half-Life 2 Episode One (PC)

I got past the big bad that had halted my progress - yay! - but shortly afterwards the game crashed. Again. And I had to rebooted my PC. Bah.

Better check when I last updated my graphics drivers.

PC problems: always drivers.
UNIX problems: always permissions.

FACT.

Saints Row (360)

It seems the police aren't overly bothered if you derail a train.

Odd.

Lots of fun this evening, but the side missions that have to be done between main missions are getting very tricky now.