Alien Hominid HD (360)

The first half decent Live Arcade game in ages, so I bought it. But it is only half decent, unfortunately. It could be really good. It looks lovely, it's fast and frantic, it lets you start from any level you've reached and you unlock hats for performing certain actions. Hats! However, it falls down because it seems to hate the player in a number of ways.

1 - It doesn't show you your score at the end of a game. As you can't keep an eye on your score during the game it's really, really, really annoying.

2 - The PDA games are a very good idea and fun in themselves, but they don't seem to record how far you got. Nor are there any leaderboards for the single player PDA levels. And the background to game rotates and makes me feel like I'm spinning in space, which is a very unpleasant feeling indeed.

3 - It's far, far too difficult. It's stupidly, punishingly difficult. At times it's fun - normally the fifth time you've tried something when you know enough about what's coming up and there's a bit of a click and a bit of a flow to everything - but sometimes it's just horribly frustrating and feels very unfair. There is an easy mode, but it's not that much easier, really... and enemies release flowers and not blood when they die, which is so shaming that I'm unable to play the game on that setting.

If it didn't kill you so much and if the interface was just tweaked a little this would be fantastic. As it is, it's just about worth the cash and not a bad way to spend a few minutes. The thing is, everything that's felt impossibly difficult and unfair the first time I've encountered it has, after I got past it, seemed fairly brutal, yes, but not actually unfair. With foreknowledge, positioning and timing everything so far has been perfectly possible to do without dying...

...but I'm only on level 1-3 and I'm not even sure I'll much beyond that, at least not any time soon.

Crackdown (360)

499 agility orbs found!

The one I found this evening was on a walkwayy between two buildings on the south Los Muertos island, across the road from the first supply point you're told to recover. Although an easy orb, it wasn't in an especially visible place, so I'm not surprised I managed to miss it.

Where the final orb is, Lord knows. I've gone through the far north island this evening over and over again, so I can be pretty sure it's not there. I really think I've been through all the Los Muertos areas enough, too. Mind you, I think that about everywhere and there's still an orb out there somewhere...

Crackdown (360)

More searching for agility orbs. More failure. I did find a fair few secret orbs, but the others are proving most elusive.

Kororinpa (Wii)

It's like Monkey Ball, only without the monkeys.

And, so far, a fair bit easier, though not quite the cakewalk I was epxecting based on online discussion.

Excite Truck (Wii)

Well, that was weird.

My truck started refusing to turn right. I thought the controller might be broken, until I started paying attention to what I was doing. Instead of tilting the controller to turn, I was rotating it horizontally. I have no idea why I suddenly started doing that, but I found myself having to retrain my brain to tilt instead of turn and so ended up getting the worst scores I've ever got while playing the game.

By the end of the session I was still lacking confidence, but I was starting to play reasonably well again. Hopefully when I next play my brain won't try anything stupid like that again.

Very bizarre.

Crackdown (360)

Had the day off work, so put in another good few hours. Got everything up to 4-star ranking and got 498 out of 500 agility orbs. I just can't find the final two. They must exist, but I have no idea where. I've gone all round the map several times. I don't know how I could have missed them.

Excite Truck (Wii)

I love being rubbish at games.

I've been trying to get S ranks on the SIlver Cup and I've been finding it immensely fun but really very tricky. I'm getting great value.

Kid Icarus (Wii)

Nope, still not to the end of the second stage. I can't even get as far as I could this morning.

I hate being rubbish at games.

New Adventure Island (Wii)

I've decided not to capitalise "Wii" in my headers any more. I'm sure you care.

Anyway, I beat the boss at the end of stage 1-4 after a few goes and moved on to stage 2-1, after a bizarre fan dance cut scene. If my wife hadn't seen it too I wouldn't have believed it.

Crackdown (360)

I am getting terrible vertigo from this game. When trying to climb high buildings I'm holding my breath, swallowing hard, not looking down and really trying to ignore the physical fear in my stomach.

It's absolutely horrible and absolutely brilliant at the same time. I'm not sure any game has been this real before when it comes to heights. Tomb Raider and - oddly - Klonoa 2 also both made me feel a bit weird when up high, but nothing like this.

Kid Icarus (WII)

I got some more Virtual Console points today, so was intending to buy Super Mario World and Ocarina of Time. However, I couldn't bring myself to part with the asking price for either, as I have them already, so I ended up trying Kid Icarus again instead.

It's really not that bad. The core jumping and shooting machanics aren't anything special, but they work well enough. The screen didn't start wobbling madly this time, which helped, but some horrific slowdown still remained. I got off the first stage fairly easily, then played the second stage for a while. I had to turn it off when I died about two steps from the end. Just couldn't face going all the way back to the beginnning of the stage yet again.

I can't yet see why it's regarded as a classic, though it kept me away from Crackdown and Excite Truck this morning, so there must be something beyond my curiousity.

Crackdown (360)

473 agility orbs now.

Blowing up too many civilians.

Can't get to the top of the oil rig.

Crackdown (360)

Gosh, no, I didn't stop playing just because I'd finished killing all the gang leaders. Not even close.

I spent a few hours searching the map for agility orbs - I've still got fifty or so to find, no idea where they could be - and then turned gangs back on so I could get the Untouchable Agent achievement, which involves killing 200 enemies without dying. It was pretty easy, but great fun.

Crackdown (360)

About ten hours of play now.

I've got four stars in two stats and between one and three in the others.

I've got about fifty hidden orbs and about three hundred and fifty agility orbs.

And I've destroyed all three gangs and seen the final cut scene.

Crackdown (360)

Brought this home this evening.

Five hours later I've forced myself to stop.

It's just like the demo... only more.

It's going to be pretty dangerous in the short term, I think.

The Sims 2 (PC)

Breaking news!

My wife's family hasn't met the Voorhees family yet, but Pamela Voorhees just stole their garden gnome.

I feel strangely guilty.

Kid Icarus (WII)

Kid Dickarus, more like.

I swear, if I buy one more NES game out of curiousity to see what it's like someone should shoot me.

Actually, to be fair, this doesn't appear too bad. But the screen is all wobbly for some reason and I've seen some quite incredible slowdown. And I keep dying.

The Sims 2 (PC)

My wife's playing this, so I created a family to move in near her family. I'm not going to play them, I'm just hoping they might meet up now and again.

There's Pamela Voorhees, with her young son Jason and her teenage daughter Biscuit. They've moved into town with Pamela's new husband Bob and their two dogs, Machete and Goalie.

New Adventure Island (WII)

Got to a boss.

Boss killed me.

Started again from the beginning of the stage.

Repeat a few times.

Strangely, still fun.

Excite Truck (WII)

Look, this game is incredible. It just is.

I've now completed the Bronze and Silver cups (levels, whatever) with S ranks and I've dipped into Challenge mode. I've tried a level where you have to drive through lot of gates without your time running out. It's incredibly hard, but very addictive and it's just a very nice cherry on the Excite Truck cake.

And a word about the graphics. Yes, the trees are just hexagonal structures painted with low-res textures. Yes, there is a distinct lack of anti-aliasing. Yes, some of the objects are semingly two-dimensional. BUT! You can see for miles, everything's very clear and it all runs incredibly quickly and smoothly. Which is good enough for me, thanks.

Excite Truck (WII)

All cups finished, so now it's back to get S ranks so I can unlock Super Excite mode.

This is, quite simply, one of the best games I've played in a very, very long time.

I have no idea why it's met with such a muted reception. Variable reviews and a new entry at 36 in the UK charts this week, why?

Excite Truck (WII)

Marvellous.

On to the Platinum Cup now and I'm having a great time.

It's impossible to play without tilting around like a madman and shouting "whoa!" every few seconds.

I did a 1440 degree air spin this evening. I am a god.

Still not got any jump combos, though.

Excite Truck (WII)

After buying this yesterday and not ending up playing it, I just put this on for a quick go... and an hour and a half later I've had to force myself to stop playing so I can make dinner and deal with family emails and suchlike.

It's huge amounts of fun. It looks absolutely fine to me and it plays brilliantly. Fast, intense and, yes, exciting.

Whether it will last is another matter - I'm guessing I'll want to play it until I've S-ranked everything but it'll end up disappearing into the "must finish sometime" pile once Crackdown arrives - but whether or not it lasts, I've had an amazing time with it so far.

Expectations smashed, and all that.

(I did, however, have to turn the music right down after going through the tutorials or go completely insane.)

Power Stone Collection (PSP)

Yep, that first boss in PS2 Adventure mode goes down without trouble every time now.

I just can't work out how to avoid the second (and final) boss's attacks, though.

Powe Stone Collection (PSP)

Well, I managed to kill the first boss, but the second one kicked me all around without breaking a sweat. Ow.

I tried the original Power Stone for a bit. The arenas are smaller, so the characters stay a bit more visible, but it doesn't have the excellent item collecting that's in the second game, so I think I'll leave it alone.

There are also some mini games, it seems. I've only got one open now, an LCD-style flying game. It's amusing and even almost playable.

Power Stone Collection (PSP)

Picked this up cheap in Tesco after wanting it for a while. I remember losing an entire weekend to Power Stone 2 on the Dreamcast once. So I decided to leap straight in to that, bypassing the original game for now. Went to Adventure mode to get on with the item collection. It's still great fun, even if everything's a touch too small on the PSP. However, the third fight is a boss fight and I just can't kill the bugger, even with the difficulty set on minimum. I can scratch him a little, but that's about all. I'll keep trying until TOCA calls me back.

TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge (PSP)

I am stuck. I've got to the first championship in Australasia. I'm starting on the grid in second place, but I still can't make any progress in the first race. The track is normally packed, so I'm being battered around all over the place and damage has really started to matter. With a even yellow engine I seem to get overtaken by other cars very easily. It's a difficulty spike for sure.

However!

This is not a bad thing. It's still incredibly good fun, just repeating the same race over and over again. It's a well-designed track with a nice mixture of different types of corner and the car I've been given handles like a dream.

New Adventure Island (WII)

Well, I got off level 1-3 and on to level 1-4, but I didn't manage to get very far on that one in the few minutes I played today.

Excitebike (WII)

I was curious. I've been curious for a while. And points aren't real money, right?

I'm not convinced I made a good decision. I'm not convinced a bad one yet, though, either. I have quite worked everything out. I know what the buttons do, but there are some jumps I can't seem to make and sometimes the angle I think I should be at doesn't match what the game thinks.

It would also help if I could work out how to get back to the main menu.

TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge (PSP)

Well, I've now completed the first two difficulty levels of the World Challenge mode. Mostly Silver awards, with the odd Gold and Silver scattered around.

It's an excellent, excellent game. A few framerate problems here and there, which is a shame, and the "Drive The Line" challenges are very little fun, but the other challenges are fun and the handling is generally sublime, which makes up for any little niggles.

TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge (PSP)

As the demo impressed me so much, I got the full version of the game.

Haven't had a chance to play much yet - Singstar '80s and a double bill of eighties movies (The Breakfast Club and Labyrinth) took up my evening - but I've attempted the first two challenges. The first was a cone gate lap in a Renault Clio, which I only managed a silver on. I'll try for a gold later. The second was a braking challenge, where you have to do a lap in under two minutes and thirty seconds while coming to standstill in boxes marked on the road. I've not managed any sort of medal on that yet. But I'll keep trying.

Singstar '80s (PSP)

You know, I can't sing. I really, really can't sing.

But I can rap.

The Reverend Run would be proud of me.

New Adventure Island (WII)

A new addition to the Virtual Console this evening. It's the same as my beloved Gamecube version apart from the graphics, I think. It plays brilliantly well as is finally balanced between learning and reactions. Great platform game that more people should play, but won't.

Burnout Legends (PSP)

I thought I'd try this again. I seem to remember I felt it sucking away my soul last time I tried it, but it now seems pretty good. Nasty slowdown and it doesn't quite feel precise enough, but it's pretty good fun. I worked my way all through the Muscle Car series of races happily enough.

However, with TOCA arriving tomorrow (if the Royal Mail do their thing) I doubt it'll get much play after tonight.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP)

Being not very good at things is something of a running theme in my gaming life.

Next exhibit: Street Fighter.

I tried arcade mode a fair few times as A-ism Ryu and never got past round three.

Had fun though, and I forgotten what a good-looking game it is. Lovely.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

Nope, I can't do the OutRun 2 SP 15-stage event. I almost always get to the bit of inbetween track just before the Milky Way stage. The stars appear, the time runs out.

I'm just not very good.

Super Castlevania IV (WII)

Goddamnit!

Decided to play Castlevania for a bit and the Wii locked up when I started up the game. So I turned the Wii on and off and went back, only to find my Castlevania save gone.

Now I have to do the first three blocks all over again to get back to where I was stuck.

Stupid Wii.

Super Mario 64 (WII)

Spent a few mnutes trying to get my hat back from a bad, bad bird. I did. Then died without saving. So I got it back again. And this time saved. Hurrah.

Super Mario Bros (WII)

I can't get off the first world.

(Except by warping.)

Star Soldier (WII)

I can't get off the first stage.

R-Type (WII)

I can't get off the first stage.

Paperboy Demo (360)

Ah, the hou... minutes I spent playing this on my Spectrum! Happy memories!

It doesn't seem to have aged too badly, but it certainly doesn't appear to be worth spending any actual money on.

Def Jam Icon Demo (360)

Seems I'm a big fat idiot. There is a controls guide. on the Pause menu. How I missed that I simply don't know. That's always where I look for controls in games... except this time. It's almost spooky. Anyway, it makes a bit more sense now but rather than feel confusing it just feels clunky. Ah well.

Super Castlevania IV (WII)

While I had the Wii on to check the new channel I played a bit of this. I'm on the fourth "block" and I can get to the part where it goes all Mode 7, but then I die. Always. I don't make the next jump, or the medusa heads kill me.

Every.

Single.

Time.

Everybody Votes Channel (WII)

Interesting new channel appeared on the Wii today. It gives you a list of questions with two answers and you answer them, then predict what the rest of the world will say. It's dogs vs. cats and boiled vs. fried and it's a slightly odd addition to the Wii Channels family.

Odd little free gift or data-gathering cashcow for Nintendo? I guess time will tell.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

Hooray!

I've finally completed the 15-stage OutRun 2 route after many, many tries.

Did it with about five seconds to spare in the OutRun class Testarossa in the end.

It feels good.

Root Beer Tapper Demo (360)

Ugh.

Just ugh.

Various Demos (360)

Went through some 360 demos this evening.

NBA Street Homecourt - Very playable arcade basketball. Don't really understand the tricks system, but I had fun anyway. A possible purchase. I'll keep a lookout for reviews.

NFL Blitz: The League - Bloody awful. Might be okay if you can disable all the little "trash talk" animations, but I couldn't bring myself to play for too long.

GRAW 2 - More like GRAW.1, as far as I can tell. No bad thing. Doubt I'll pay full price, but it should be down to budget by the end of the year and I'll look out for it then.

Cars - Pixar licence. The racing was surprisingly fun, but the tractor-tipping game was pretty rubbish.

Condemned - The longest-serving demo on my 360. Gets wheeled out every few months for a play through. Odd, then, that I've never felt the need to get the full version.

Crackdown - I told myself I wouldn't play this again, so the game itself would be fresh when I got it. I couldn't resist though. It's just so much fun.

LocoRoco (PSP)

Played this for the first time since last July. It really is as good as I remembered. I polished off the fourth world and then wasted all my funds playing the Chuppa Chuppa mini game. I only managed to complete it once and got a very common house part for my trouble. Bother. Then it was off to the Loco House, trying to get the eggs in the huge house. I got one easily enough, but I can't reach the second one. I'll go back once I've got some more parts.

Sonic Rivals (PSP)

It's a tragedy really. The only reason this has got any attention from anyone - including myself - is that it's a Sonic game that isn't completely awful. It's not a bad game, but it's not really very good, either. In a proper world this would be the worst Sonic game in ages, not the best.

Various Demos (PSP)

It was a bit of a pain to get them, but I downloaded some demos from the European Playstation site.

MotoGP - Really didn't get on with this. It looked nice enough and didn't have any obvious problems, but it just didn't grab me. No motorcycle game has since Super Hang On, though, so that might just be me. Or it might really be a slightly sludgy, rather dull experience.

Mercury Meltdown - I must never buy this game. It's good and the demo has a generous selection of levels, but I can see myself being reduced to a boiling puddle of fury by the full game. One level in the demo annoyed me so much I had to skip it, which is never a good sign. It's got something, though, and I could see myself picking it up in a moment of weakness.

Killzone Liberation - A very, very short demonstration level. Looks nice, plays okay, but has slightly clunky controls, annoyingly powerful enemies, some very dangerous checkpointing and hints that the full game might get very, very difficult. If I saw it for a tenner I might have to buy it, but no more than that. Oh, and whoever decided you should press Start to remove tutorial messages needs to go back to interface design school.

Medal of Honor Heroes - Not what I was expecting at all. Okay, it's an FPS and, despite having Jump on the Select button, it controls pretty well with the sensitivity ramped up, but I thought it would be a standard single-player Nazi-killing trip through a French village, or something. But, no, it was just a three minute deathmatch against bots. No story or anything at all. Perfectly playable - I've played three matches so far and will probably keep the demo on my Memory Stick - but nothing special.

World Tour Soccer 2 - A big surprise. I wasn't expecting anything and nearly didn't download the demo. But this is an ace arcade footie game, with a twist. You gain and lose points for everything you do in the game and the idea is to reach points targets, rather than simply win matches. Sometimes that's all, but in other events there are twists. In one of the demo events all eleven of your players have to have had possession before you can score. In another you have to score within ten seconds of gaining possession. It's not a sim, but it's great fun. I really want a full copy of the game now.

Toca Race Driver 3 Challenge - Bloody hell. I wasn't expecting much, I must admit, but this is brilliant. There are three different challenges. The first is a cone challenge. Within seconds of starting I'd fallen in love. The handling felt perfect, even through the PSP's infamously dodgy analogue nub. I played it until I got a gold medal, which didn't take too long, then moved on. The next event, a duel against another car, wasn't so much fun, mainly because the course layout was a pain. An s-bend and two incredibly tight hairpins, that was all. Once I got a silver I went on to the last event, a No Damage race. To get gold you have to win the race without damaging your car. Hence the name. Great fun and plugged away until I got a gold, which took a very long time. (I'm not very good.) And then I went back and got a gold on the Duel, which seemed a little bit more fun but it's definitely the runt of the litter. This has now gone from being completely off my radar to being a must-buy. Also: it has instant restarts from the pause menu. Thank you, whoever made that happen.

Def Jam Icon Demo (360)

Publishers and developers, here's a tip for you.

When making a demo version of a game include some instructions on how to play. A full tutorial, a guide to the controls, something.

Otherwise you may just find people trying to play your game getting very annoyed.

Still, I do like the bouncing buildings in the background. Boing!

The Wicker Man: Director's Cut (2006) (DVD)

The remake of The Wicker Man is as bad as the original is good. The original is one of my favourite films, maybe my very favourite. So, no, I didn't go into the remake with a very open mind. But I simply didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. As a remake it was all wrong, with the themes and style of the original film completely destroyed.

However, more than that, just taken by itself as a modern horror/thriller movie it's awful. It doesn't make sense. Characters come and go with no reason or explanation. Nicolas Cage spends the entire movie looking as if he's trying to work out whether or not he's just soiled himself. Events just... happen, seemingly at random. Scenes just... occur. It's a complete mess. Something went horribly, horribly wrong here.

It's genuinely one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's up there with Romance, Boxing Helena and Batman & Robin.

And it's probably put people off seeing the original, which just completely criminal.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

So, I went and spent a huge amount of money on an OutRun class Enzo.

I don't like it. It doesn't accelerate and it steers like a cow. Its top speed is meant to be a lot more than the Testarossa I've been driving, but I haven't noticed that.

I still haven't finished the 15-stage continuous run through either the OutRun 2 or OutRun 2 SP stages.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

Phew. I spent ages tonight trying to fill in a space on the OutRun 2 scoreboard. I'd not got a high score for the hardest route and the default 'SEGA 500000' was annoying me deeply. Somehow, I managed to finish about eight times with scores under 500,000 before finally cracking it. No idea what was going on there.

Also, I managed to break the game at one point by crashing at an odd angle, which resulted in the game showing me several frames of my car jumping to seemingly random points on the track before it reset me a little further on from where I'd crashed.

I didn't explain that very well, did I?

Viva Pinata (360)

I've just found out about wild cards.

Given that I've never seen one they must be really rare, because my wife and I have played the game an awful lot.

Joytech Control Centre 540C

I got one of these for Christmas and set it up this weekend. It looks nice and it's lovely to have a remote-controlled switchbox, but it degrades the 360 image quality and won't pass a stable 480p signal from the Wii. Not good.

Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)

I'm not sure what possessed me to play this after all these years, but it may have had something to do with the double bill of Cars and Talladega Nights that I watched last night. I decided to clear some Beginner Events, as I'd not played in a long time, so ended up spending all 180,000 credits I'd built up to buy and tune three new cars - a Volvo S60, a Ford F-150 and a Lotus Esprit.

The tuned Volvo - which I bought because it's the nearest thing to my real car, an S40 - ate up the FF championship without a problem.

The F-150 - which I bought because Ford marketing infected my brain when I was living in Houston - didn't much like going round corners, but was still fun to drive and won every race I put it in. All three of them. I can't find any more yet.

The Lotus - which I bought because it was the best MR car in the used car showroom - isn't so good. It's not as fast as some of the cars it's competing against and I can't afford to tune it any more. Oops.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

No, I'm not doing any better in the OutRun class car. It's a lot faster and the game can't keep up with it. At high speeds the framerate really drops and when things get hairy it's possible to cross the entire width of the road between frames.

How the game remains so much fun despite this fairly major problem I don't know.

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

I may not be able to ride a bike in real life, but I can drive a car. (As long as it's an automatic - yes, in many ways I am utterly pathetic.) OutRun 2006 isn't much like driving a real car. That surge of joy, freedom and control you get for about twelve seconds in the average three hour drive through Britain is present a lot more often in OutRun. It's not there all the time - especially in the PSP version, which is slightly hampered by the analogue nub and a dodgy framerate - but it's still great, great fun and when the drifting is going right and you make a few turns in a row there's not a driving game in the world that can touch it.

I've still not been able to finish the OutRun 2 15-stage continuous mode, but I've done some Heart Attack mode and unlocked an OutRun class car now, so I might be able to do it soon. Maybe.

Singstar & Singstar Legends (PS2)

It took a while, but I found my PS2 component cable, my two Singstar mics and - after a good long search - the little box that goes between the mics and the PS2. I took the blue mic and my better half took the red one. Several hours later we'd exhausted both Singstar Legends and the original Singstar disc.

One thing became very, very apparent over the course of the evening. I can't sing. I simply cannot sing. Not one bit. Asking me to sing is like asking a blind man to do a paint by numbers. I just don't understand what I'm meant to do. There's a bit missing in my brain. I get the right sort of pattern - everything goes up and down at the right time, mostly - but I can only hit notes through pure fluke. I don't know how to tell what's correct or what my voice should be doing.

I do have good fun, yes, but it's somewhat demoralising. Sometimes I wish someone could explain it to me and then I'd be able to do it, like long division. But I think it's like riding a bike. Either you can learn or if, like me, you've got no sense of balance, you'll never be able to do it.