Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

Another story mission completed. I lost Liane again, though, which meant she missed out on a ton of XP again, which means it'll be even harder to keep her alive next time around. Healers are such a pain. I think I need to Free Battle for a while.

Bioshock (360)

Lots of BIG! IMPORTANT! plot tonight. Was a struggle to turn off, actually.

Oh, and I casually decided to use a fruit machine when I was walking past and got the jackpot-getting achievement, which was nice.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

I tried a story mission tonight and Jeanne died. I made a really stupid mistake, a cocky mistake. I thought it would be easy, so I could just run Jeanne in without worrying, but she died. Horribly. I wish there was a quick reload option, instead of having to go all the back to the main menu.

Quake 2 (PC)

Ah, I remember back in the day when Quake 2 came out and the single player mode seemed like a huge step up from the first Quake. Looking back now, I don't see that. They're really very similar indeed. Still, Quake is great fun, so Quake 2 is too. I'm not complaining.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

Haven't been advancing the story today. I just took some time out on one of the old levels to work out everything that was confusing me and test out powers and tactics. It's really very enjoyable and I love the Unified Guard system, which means it's good to keep your party together.

Bioshock (360)

Looking at the Achievements list and the blanks in the list of locations I reckon I'm about a third of the way through this now.

It's great. Every time it seems to threaten to become mundane I turn off the game for a while and when I come back I'm amazed again.

It's also a game that my wife loves to watch me play.

Bioshock (360)

The thing is, this isn't the new Halo, it's the new Ico.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

This SPRG seems to have slipped under the radar somewhat. Possibly because it's on the PSP. If it was on the DS, it wouldn't look as gorgeous, wouldn't have such lovely anime cut scenes, but it might be getting some attention.

I've played it for a little over two hours now and it's rather good. Not worth buying a PSP for, but worth dusting one off for.

Equipping skills is a little confusing still, but the only real trouble is that the lovely anime cut scenes aren't subtitlted, which is very annoying as I tend to play handheld games with the sound off. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

Sega Genesis Collection (PSP)

On the face of it, twenty-odd Sega classics for ten quid sounds like a remarkable deal. However...

Alex Kidd - Bad graphics, horrible one hit deaths. Quite fun for five minutes.

Columns - Seems to get too fast too quickly. Quite fun for ten minutes.

Comix Zone - Incredible graphics, basic but reasonable beat-em-up fun. Quite fun for five minutes.

Flicky - Can't work out how to shoot. I'm sure I used to be able to play this, but right now this not fun for two minutes.

Gain Ground - Too hard for my twenty-first century, molly-coddled gaming brain. Quite fun, though, for about a minute and a half, until level two appears and kicks you in the crotch.

Kid Chameleon - Annoying graphical glitch means backgrounds become a slightly different colour when scrolling. Still, kept my attention for an entire game and was quite fun for ten or fifteen minutes I played.

Ristar - Looks lovely, feels a little clunky. Quite fun for ten minutes.

Shinobi III - Most enemies no challenge, then a boss comes along which is impossble. A small about of fun, followed by frustration.

Sonic The Hedehog 2 - It's Sonic 2, which means I still can't do the Casino Zone boss. I'm rubbish like that. Good fun up until that point, though.

VectorMan - Looks lovely, but is too hard. Quite fun for five minutes.

Okay, there are a lot more games on there, but it's not been too great so far. Nothing's grabbed my attention.

Bioshock (360)

I've put a good few hours into this now. I find that two hours or so is my limit for a single session. I don't get bored, as such, I just seem to start to finding it very difficult to keep track of things and to kill enemies. A break of half an hour sorts that out, then I'm ready to jump back in.

It really is excellent. The setting is wonderfully atmospheric, but the main focus is the combat, which I think is superb. You really have to think fast, to choose which plasmids and weapons to use on a split-second basis. I'm dying a lot and I think some enemies have a touch too much health, but that's about the only criticism I have right now.

Bioshock (360)

This is... a bit good. Yes. A bit good.

skate Demo (360)

Either something's up with my controller or it's incredibly difficult to do some of the first flip tricks it shows you. A right something-or-other was done first time, but the left took about ten minutes to finally get. I'm not sure why.

Rest of the tutorial went okay, but I can't manual to save my life.

Track & Field (360)

I failed on the hammer throw today. I then checked the leaderboards for the events I have completed. I'm not very good, but I'm only bottom of my friends list in one event.

Hexic 2 Demo (360)

I tried Battle Mode. When it ended I wasn't sure if I'd won or lost. 800 points remained unspent.

Street Trace:NYC Demo (360)

So bad it felt like deleting the demo wasn't enough. I wanted to somehow cleanse my 360, to try to rewind to a time before this abomination had been downloaded.

Space Giraffe (360)

Demented farming sim that pretends to be shooter. Utterly baffling if you've not spent two hours reading about the scoring system online, excellent once everything's been figured out.

I like.

Quake (PC)

I played Quake yesterday for the first time in many years and seems to be a better single player now than it was at the time. I remember thinking it was a bit dull at the time, but now I'm seeing a lovely quick arcade blast, with some ingenious level design and great set pieces. I think at the time I wanted something epic and huge, but now I'm just happy being able to zoom around at a hundred miles an hour shooting things in the face.

But most of all, maybe, is that now I'm so used to the keyboard and mouse interface I can play it as id intended all along. There's no interface now, if you know what I mean, and it feels a lot like Doom to me. Surprisingly so.

It's actually really good fun.

But, yes, it really is as brown as I remember. Maybe browner.

Track & Field (360)

Okay, I used to hate this type of game in the eighties. Turns out that with the 360 controller held on its side that it's actually good fun. Probably still wouldn't have bought it if I didn't have the points sitting there waiting, but I did, so I did.

Stranglehold Demo (360)

Played through this again and enjoyed it even more than I had done previously. The Precision Aim power is very much a guilty pleasure. I really want this now.

Fatal Inertia Demo (360)

Unlike virtually everyone else on the Internet I rather enjoyed this. Not enough to consider spending any money on it, but it was nice bit of Wipeout-esque fun for a couple of minutes.

Beautiful Katamari Demo (360)

It's Katamari. Again. But in HD. That'll probably just about do.

It was my wife's first glimpse into the world of Katamari and after one go of the demo she demanded more, so I sat her down in front of We Love Katamari on the PS2, which she's still playing and which she's calling, "The funnest game ever."

I need to find my PSP charger and hope we can work some TV-sharing out when Bioshock comes out.

Marathon: Durandal Demo (360)

It's like Doom, except looks worse (despite an HD update) and doesn't control very well and the ten minutes or so I tried managed to hide any fun a long, long way away from me. I might try again to see if I'm just being unfair, but nothing about it grabbed me at all. Very disappointing.

Ecco The Dolphin Demo (360)

Eh. Pass.

Bioshock Demo (360)

Not content with playing this yesterday, I played it again today. It's very, very, very good. Atmospheric and exciting and, oh, it's just everything people are saying it is.

Singstar '90s (PS3)

It's a PS2 game, but I'm playing it on the PS3. Mostly excellent song selection, but unfortunately one of ours mics has developed a fault and cuts out now and again, which means my scores were even more pitiful than they should have been.

Bioshock Demo (360)

I didn't really mean to play this. I wanted to wait until the full game on Friday. I couldn't help myself, though. Anyway, it's ace, but I found it very hard indeed and didn't actually complete the demo before it was time to go out.

Doom (360)

Just checking that this has stood the test of time, given it only made it to number 57 in rllmuk's top hundred games. It's brilliant, but it's very tough. Not sure what difficulty level my save game is on, but I'm getting my arse kicked.

Stranglehold Demo (360)

Finally! I've got my consoles set up again! No surround sound right now, because two of the speakers have disappeared into boxes that haven't been unpacked yet, but I have consoles. Hooray!

First thing I did was to download this demo. In which, basically, you get to be Chow Yun Fat in a John Woo film. As this has always been one of my dreams, this suits me... quite well. Another game to add to the list of things I need to buy at some point.

Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee (PSP)

I've completed all the Senior events now and am about the step up to Grand. I hope it's not too much harder.

ZAngbandTk (PC)

Suddenly, I've got a character doing quite well. He got some lucky, lucky equipment early on and that meant he could cut straight through the early enemies and earned him enough cash to get properly started, with scrolls of Identify and Recall. He's now down deeper than I've ever been, killing invisible enemies and even, on one memorable occassion, seeing off a whole kobold army by dazzling them, so that in their confusion they ripped into each other and he managed to kill those on the sidelines and even the leader of army himself. Sweet. So, when Creep the Beastman Chaos Warrior finally dies, as he will, he'll be top of the scoreboard, easily.

Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee (PSP)

I've been having a good time with this. The events I'm doing now are just hard enough to be a challenge, without being frustrating. Had some bitter Sudden Death defeats and some wonderful victories on points. It's good stuff.

ZAngbandTk (PC)

I'm not sure how the scoring works. The character I talked about in my last post - Your Mam's Face - managed to get more than a thousand points before dying stupidly. (He was killed by cave spiders. Cave spiders! I didn't even think of them as a threat and so wasn't paying attention.)

My next character - Mexico Shooter - didn't do too badly, either, before dying stupidly. (He read a random scroll he'd found and it turned out to be a scroll of summon monsters, so found himself surrounded by dragons and bees without a way out.) However, he only ended up with 24 points, which is about as many points as I normally ever get.

So where did these hundreds and hundreds of extra points come from for Your Mam's Face? I wish I could find a scoring guide somewhere.