Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)

Finally got round to playing this again. Only had enough battery left to play a single day, but I expanded the second floor of my dungeon, completed a side quest and bought some new corridor decorations, which I'm looking forward to putting down.

I really need more magical power and I'm not getting it. Hopefully some new animal-type enemies will appear soon which I'll be able to make new magic-raising dishes from.

Scrabble Interactive 2007 Edition (DS)

Well, with Zelda annoying my pants off, it was time to play something else for a while. So, for a change of pace, Scrabble.

There's not an awful lot to say, as based on four games against rubbish opponents, this seems to be fine. Using the stylus to place words works fine. Opponents don't often play ludicrous words (though it does happen).

One nice feature is that the game gives a definition of the main word played each turn. It's a pity you can't get definitions for the weird little two-letter words that the AI sometimes uses to be able to place its main words, though. And every now and again there's a definition missing.

Also, if you place a word that doesn't exist then you just get to try again, which makes things a bit too easy, I think. I'm trying not to abuse it, but it's hard. Last night I put down QUINS, which I wasn't sure would be allowed, but it let me have it. (No definition, though.) If I'd have been penalised had it not existed I probably wouldn't have risked playing it. (In another game I also tried QUIMS, which was allowed and had a definition. There is a tick box on the player profile screen to say if you're a Junior player or not, I guess ticking it would disable that type of thing.)

One last thing about the AI, now that I think of it- they don't play tactically. They'll happy place words near the triple letter score and won't place a low-scoring word over one to stop you using it. Doesn't feel like playing a human at all, in that respect.

Anyway, so far it seems to do what it should. I'll probably play through the career mode until I get to timed games - I'm a slow, slow player - and then just play quick matches when I feel the need for some Scrabble. (Oh, and there are some other mini games which I've not investigated yet.)

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (DS)

I think I've played it too much in a short space of time. Got up to the Ice Temple last night. Got a couple of rooms in and realised I just didn't want to play any more. Prior to that I'd just guessed my way through a multiple-choice "find the imposter" quest because I couldn't be bothered to work it out.

I used to love the sailing, but last night it started to annoy me. Just watching the screen and idly tapping on any enemies that come near. And that Jolene woman is a real annoyance.

I just can't face another puzzle-filled dungeon with an annoying boss at the end. The last boss I did took me far too many tries. If it hadn't been a handheld game I'd probably not have bothered getting past it.

And I certainly don't want to go back to that timed temple again. If I never see that place again it'll be too soon. I hates it. It puts a downer on the whole game for me, knowing it's there and that I'll have to go back.

But, hopefully, if I leave it for a day or two then I'll start to miss it and enjoy it when I pick it up again. Hopefully everything will seem less of a chore.

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (DS)

I'm a few hours in now and certain aspects of the game are harder to enjoy than others. By "certain aspects", I obviously mean "The Temple of the Ocean King." It's timed, it's repetitive and it can be hideously annoying at times. I've just forced myself through it again and I'm not looking forward to going back.

Now, though, there's a boss fight before I can reach Goron Island. Luckily, bosses so far have been something the game's done right, so it shouldn't be too painful. (Unless my touch screen messes up again - yesterday I seemed to spend more time in the calibration screen than in the game.)

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (DS)

This doesn't make my head hurt, despite my illness.

Typing, however, does, so I can't give this the write-up it deserves. Suffice to say, this is absolutely marvellous and everything about it seems to work perfectly. Glorious.

Eternal Sonata Demo (360)

Very pretty.

Great combat system.

Lovely music.

But who's got the time and money for an RPG round about now? Not me.

PixelJunk Racers (PS3)

Based on first impressions, I'd have more fun eating the £4.99 this cost a penny at a time than playing this.

It's a top-down racing game where you can only move between lanes, rather then freely across the track. It just feels clunky and I have the same problem with it that I've always had with these games - my brain can't handle having the movement controls working relative to car, not the screen.

Sega Rally (360)

Possibly the best racing game ever? Well, I think it's probably up there with OutRun 2, based on the hour or two I've spent with it so far. No great surprise, given that I'd played the demo, but it's nice to have it confirmed. It's fast, gorgeous, it sounds wonderful, has perfect handling and the track deformation makes a far bigger difference than it does in Motorstorm.

It also seems to be rock hard. I got thirty out of thirty points in the first event on my first try, but haven't been able to in any of the other events so far.

I'd have played it more, but I'm sick at the moment and after a few minutes it makes my head want to explode. Annoying, that.

The Orange Box (360)

Half-Life 2 today. Just an hour of it, so I've not got far. The only gun I have is the pistol. It does look very nice on the 360 and plays fine, too, but it's not been very exciting so far. If it doesn't pick up I may just skip it and go on to Episode 2.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Demo (PS3)

What is the world coming to when we get a demo of a demo?

Anyway, I only managed one race which I had to pause every ten seconds because the kitten kept trying to grab the needle on the speedometer. Weirdo.

First impressions, though? Well, it's Gran Turismo again. And that's it.

The Orange Box (360)

Best value game disc ever? Well, that probably depends on how good Team Fortress is. I've not tried it yet. The only thing I've played so far is Portal, which I started and finished last night. It's short, but one of the sweetest gaming treats I've ever had. It's full of great puzzles, it introduces you so gently that you never get overwhelmed and it's got one of the best scripts ever. As my wife said, "I didn't expect a stupid boy game to be so funny."

It may be short, but it's probably worth the price of the disc on its own. We will all remember the first time we played Portal and those of us who have just played through it have had one of the defining gaming experiences of our lives.

It's not too early to call it a classic.

Oh! And the possibilities...

Rendition (Movie)

There's a good movie here. It's probably about seventy-five minutes long. Unfortunately, this cut is two hours long and moves a pace that would have a snail beeping its horn and trying to overtake in frustration.

Shots go on for centuries, scenes seem endless. It's well-shot and it's about an important subject, but it just goes on and on and on and...

There are good things - there's a nice little wrinkle near the end and Alan Arkin's good value - but everything just takes so long.

I'm not sure what the reason is for the languid pace. Maybe the filmamkers involved thought that slow equals atmospheric, which it really doesn't. Maybe it's meant to reflect the fact that this isn't a one-off urgent special event, but a matter of daily routine. Maybe the studio just demanded a two hour film. Whatever the reason, it breaks the movie. It's a real shame, because there's a decent film about an important subject in there somewhere.

I'm glad I went to a free preview screening, though, because at least I can now use my knowledge wisely and warn as many people as possible off the film.

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)

Well, I need to upgrade my magical skills. There are enemies on level two of my dungeon that can't be harmed by my axe. They don't turn up every day, but if I run out of magic before I meet them I've got a problem. Not much of a problem, as I can happily out run them, but leaving anything alive makes me feel like I've failed.

I'm itching to play this at lunchtime. I put a treasure room in the dungeon yesterday and want to see if it's attracted anything. And I just bought an Altar to put in a room, so I'll set that up when I get down there again.

Speedball Demo (360)

I'm coming to this fresh. I think I did play it once or twice on a friend's Amiga, way back in the midsts of time, but I don't remember it at all clearly.

Anyway, it's a very fast future sport and I can't seem to score any points in the demo. It did start to make a bit more sense after a couple of games, I think, but not enough to tempt me to spend 800 points.

Every Extend Extra Extreme (360)

I really enjoyed what little I played of this last night. Unlike everybody else on the Internet I'm not finding impossible to die, as I keep running out of time. I've not played a game lasting more than ten minutes or quarter of an hour yet.

I also enjoy watching the big chains go off, though I can see that it might get boring after an hour or two.

I tried importing by own music, but it didn't work very well. I think Sweet Home Alabama is just abit slow - I wasn't getting enough enemies to form massive chains.

Also, I didn't get any Achievements from it last night. Not even a nice easy five-pointer to make me feel better.

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)

I didn't intend to play this. I thought I'd pulled the Sega Rally UMD out of the case, but Dungeon Maker booted up instead. I had been waiting until Jeanne D'Arc was finished before playing it, but as it was there I thought I'd have a quick go.

A "quick go" which ended up eating my entire evening.

It's all very simple. If you want a soundbite, think Viva Pinata with monsters. (Thanks to my wife for that comparision.) If you want a slightly more detailed description, it's a simple dungeon hack, where instead of the levels being pre-determined or randomly-generated they're user-created.

A day goes like this. You wake up at home in town and then go into your dungeon. You run around killing the monsters your dungeon has attracted overnight while refining and extending it. Run to a dead end? Then bring up the building menu and add some rooms or corridors from your supplies. Running through boring corridors? Why not bring up the building menu and give them some wood panelling, if you've got some in stock. In a boring room? Add a fountain or some beds. Everything you do improves your dungeon and changes which monsters you'll attract. Some need water, hence the fountain. Some are only attracted by certain types of room, such as the self-explanatory Goblin Room. Once you've explored and expanded your dungeon, it's back to town. Sell any loot you don't need, buy supplies, cook yourself an evening meal, go to sleep ready for the next day.

Combat's pretty simple. Two attacks (fast and slow, basically) and a magic menu which lets you teleport or drop rocks on enemies, or, well, I've not got any new magic yet. So far my dungeon is just a single level and money's tight. I'm spending most of my cash on new building parts. Only about half my dungeon is decorated, so I need more wood panelling. There's lots of space and the bigger your dungeon is the more and better monsters you get, so I need to buy more corridors and rooms.

My current main goal is to attract a boss creature. Once the dungeon's good enough he should turn up and defeating him will let me add a second floor to my dungeon. I also get the odd side-quest, which all seem to be "find object X". At the moment I only have one, which is to get a Kobold Ring for the weird chap who runs the museum in town. I've killed plenty of kobolds, but not one has dropped a ring yet.

It's all quite simple after some initial confusion, but that's not a bad thing in a handheld game. At least, it's not in short term. It remains to be seen if this game has legs, but I've had a good couple hours of fun so far.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)

I have to say that, despite its faults, this game is excellent fun in short bursts. I set up some Instant Action using Random settings and played a couple of quick rounds during Dragons' Den last night and had a great time. I earned a couple of medals (Achievements in all but name), manned the gun of an AT-AT, rode a Kybuck and killed Admiral Ackbar. Excellent.

The clunkiness of the controls is an issue and always will be, but I think the solution they've come up with is the best possible on the PSP. It's just a shame the PSP doesn't have a couple of pop-out analogue sticks or something.

Track and Field (360)

Holding the controller on its side, I had some good fun with this, until I got to the Hammer Throw event. I just couldn't get the timing right and didn't get a single throw that counted. Game Over. I did improve my scores in the earlier events, though, and now I'm only bottom of my Friends Leaderboard in the 100m. I'm near the bottom in the rest, but there are some people below me, thank goodness.

I really love the announcer in this game. I get so nostalgic for my childhood every time I hear her synthesized voice. Back in the day I could only hear that sort of thing in the arcade. The ZX Spectrum, lovely though it was, wasn't great for producing speech.

My favourite bit of eighties speech ever? "Here goes nothing!" on the Return of the Jedi arcade machine. I kept dying about two seconds after hearing that, but kept pumping money in, so it just hooked itself into my brain on a loop and has never completely gone away, even twenty years later.

Carcassonne (360)

I started this up for the first time in ages while the wife was having a shower and thought I might buy the expansion packs they've released for it. However, it turns out that they're three hundred points each. That's over two pounds. Each. For, what? A few more tiles and a couple of rule changes? I could almost buy Every Extend Extra Extreme for that kind of cash.

A hundred points each and I'd have been curious enough to use some of my points, but three hundred is just too much for me, I'm afraid. I could see those prices being good enough for addicts who really want some twists to their favourite game, but I just don't play this enough.

Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction Demo (PS3)

Well, it looks nice and it's all very solid. However, it's also quite dull. I'm not sure if I missing something, but there didn't seem to be anything much to this. Run down the linear path provided, jump over gaps, shoot and/or melee enemies. Which, um, could describe a lot of games, good and bad. It's just that underneath the gloss this seemed to lack any life. Maybe it's that it was so incredibly easy. I did die once, due to a mistimed jump, but that was it. The rest of the time the enemies barely seemed to touch me and when they did, there seemed to be an almost unlimited supply of health packs around.

Oh, and the fact that you can't invert the y-axis in the demo is absolutely unforgiveable.

It's possible, I guess, that I'm being overly harsh because I don't want any more games on my Want List, but that didn't stop Bladestorm from taking me by surprise and winning me over.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)

I just tried this online. Oof.

The interface is easy enough to use, but finding anyone online in the EU is hard. (Plenty of US types playing, but the pings are bad.) I fought two matches against bots before finding a server with people playing. That was like playing against bots, except it was horribly laggy (teleporting stormtroopers, no thanks) and unfair. Unfair, because I got stuck on a team consisting of myself and seven bots against a team of four people and four bots. As the bots are utterly useless, that meant my opponents had a massive advantage.

Still, I played for over half an hour, so it can't have been utterly awful, I suppose.

And then I went to the stats page... but I didn't seem to have any. Maybe you need to play matches full of people and no bots, or something. That could prove tricky, unless things pick up a bit. I mean, maybe people are out on the town, as it's Friday night, instead of staying home watching Emmylou Harris Night on BBC4.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)

What are lunchtimes at work for, if not for playing a quick couple of levels of a video game?

In this respect, Renegade Squadron is a perfect handheld game. I started it up, choose "Single Player", then "Instant Action", chose Endor as the map and Conquest as the game type and off I went. (Conquest is the only game type without flags. The idea is to control spawn points on the map. If your team can keep all of them under control for a full minute, you win.)

It's a fun way to rewrite history. I'm not sure what triggered it, but in the first round I suddenly got the option to play as Han Solo. I accepted. A few seconds after I'd taken control, Darth Vader appeared. Proving that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster, I ran around and shot him to bits. Don't know why Luke had such trouble with the guy, really.

In the next round I played as an Imperial and - again, seemingly at random - got the option to play as Darth Vader. In the language of the Internet, I pwned all. I was an unstoppable force and turned the tide of the battle single-handedly. (Or so I like to think.) Pity I only realised I had a Force Choke move after all the rebel scum were dead.

There's no denying that it's clunky, but it is fun. Whether it'll still be fun when the novelty wears off, I don't yet know. Oh, how I wish the PSP was equipped with two good-quality analogue conrollers. Then we'd really be talking.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)

Seems to have divided opinion, this one. I can see why, based on an hour or so of play last night. It's a bit clunky and easy until suddenly death comes out of nowhere. Not that death matters that much, you just respawn and get stuck back in again.

First up, I did the first couple of campaign missions. On the ground you lock on to people, run around them and hammer the fire button. In the air, you lock on to people, hit the autopilot button and hammer the fire button. That's about it.

Then did a couple of skirmishes with brain-dead bots. Won the first one - a straight game of Capture The Flag with a single flag. The second game was something called Hero Capture The Flag, or something, which meant Kit Fisto and Jango Fett were carrying flags around. I didn't quite work out quite what was going on and my side lost the match.

Really, it seems easy and fun to play without excelling at anything - other than being Star Wars, which it's bloody good at. That's probably the important bit. If you're the type of person who, like me, gets a giddy thrill at going to the customisation menu for the first time and seeing you can play as a dreadlocked wookie then you're going to be a lot more receptive than someone who would have trouble picking Admiral Ackbar out of an identity parade.

Sometime this weekend I hope to test the online play. I expect to die. A lot.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

I went back and tried the battle I'd lost by a single arrow again. This time my plan was to run to the target by the most direct route and slash his face in. Wasn't a very good plan, as it turned out. Due to differing movement allowances, my force got split in two, with the stragglers being caught by knights coming from behind. They were slaughtered. Then my fast troops met resistance before the target and were having trouble seeing them off, while the knights who'd killed my other troopers were closing from the rear. When the caught up the end was messy, but was mercifully quick. Turn seven saw my final unit fall.

So I tried again. This time I took up a defensive position and slaughtered the first group of knights. Due to my own idiocy is not noticing how badly he was hurt, Jean fell early, which was a blow. But with five units remaining and the knights, the enemy healer and the enemy archer all dead, I moved on. The ensuing battle was tough and I lost three more units before the target finally fell, with two turns to spare.

But with that level completed, chapter two was over. I'm not my way to Riems with the Dauphin in tow... or will be once I've levelled up a bit in the new Free Stage I've just unlocked.

Various 360 Demos (360)

Bladestorm

I had far too many games on my "must buy" list before downloading the (two gigabyte!) demo from Live Markeplace. However, the game seems to be completely ace and now I need it badly. Charging in on horses, leaping back to control some archers to finish off stragglers, running in with swords waving, it's all good. Damn your eyes, Koei!

The Simpsons

A licenced game. A demo consisting of, urgh, a boss fight. A rubbish camera. Should have been very painful indeed, yet ended up being great fun and I couldn't stop until I'd destroyed Lard Lad, which took a whole fourteen minutes. Doubt I'll buy it for more than a tenner, but it was better than I expected. Looks really lovely, too, when the camera's showing something useful.

Conan

"Ha ha ha! I chopped that guy's arms off! And that guy's! And that guy's! Oh, now I'm being blocked by three big bastards and am dead. Oh, I'm dead again. I can't be bothered to play this any more. Goodbye." Maybe for a fiver, but no more than that.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

Fifteen turns, one target, the only condition is that at least one of my party survive.

I get off to a bad start. I misread the layout of the level and end up stuck and surrounded just out of reach of the target... to all but my archer, Marcel, who sends a poison arrow into him. As my target loses health from the poison I fight on and eventually, with a couple of turns to go, the rest of my merry band can attack. But the poison's worn off.

It's the final turn, only Roger, Liane and Marcel are left alive. Liane's magic is depleted and her sword skills aren't up to much. There's only one square I can attack the target from, so she waits on the sidelines. Marcel looses off an arro from afar... but it misses. It's all up to Roger. The target had started with over three hundred hit points, he's down to 37 now. Roger attacks him from behind... hits! But only does 29 points of damage.

I lose. If only I'd used Marcel's Sniper Shot skill. It does very little damage, but it always hits. I should have used that, but I just didn't think. I assumed the normal attack would hit. I shouldn't have.

That arrow's going to haunt me.

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

Well, last time I played I'd just started a level I thought I'd never be able to do. As it turns out, it was really very easy and I did it first time.

This may sound obvious, but the trick was just to go for the objective, which was to kill a specific enemy unit. So instead of clearing out all the units before him, I just got to him as quickly as I could and threw everything I had at him. On the way I just kept healing, rather than attacking the other units, so managed to keep everybody alive and healthy.

Pretty obvious stuff, really, like I said. I missed out on all the lovely EXP and bonus items I'd have got from killing everyone on the field, but that's a small price to pay for victory.

However, now I've got another battle straight after that one, with no way to return to the World Map and level up or buy supplies before the fight. Gulp.

Halloween (Movie)

I don't usually talk about movies here, but I'm really baffled by the reception to Rob Zombie's Halloween and I feel the need to redress the balance somewhat. It's been sneaked out in the UK with no notice (a week and a half before it was eventually released it still didn't have a confirmed release date that I could find), minimal publicity and no reviews. It's got an exceptionally poor rating of 25% on rottentomatoes.com and the IMDB score is a reasonably-okay-but-not-great 6.1.

The reason I'm baffled is that it's clearly a nine out of ten movie. (And it's not that I can see any reason to mark it down from a ten, a nine just feels better.) The only way I can see people not liking the movie is if they were never going to like the movie.

Okay, if you don't like boobies and/or blood, then you won't like the movie. But then your criticisms are of horror movies, not of this movie.

If you don't think movies should ever be remade then, well, maybe this will change your mind. The remake of The Wicker Man wasn't a bad movie because it was a remake of a classic movie, it was because it was a quite incredibly awful remake of a classic movie.

I'm sure I'll be pulled over by the movie thought police for saying this, but the original Halloween isn't without its problems. The main one being that it drags. Zombie's version never does. He's made the story from the original movie the second half of his version and filled the first half with more back story for lil' Michael and family. It's a decision that works well. Michael Myers was never a character whose mystique came from his history. We knew a lot about him in the original movie and now we know more. As well as being interesting in its own right, this allows the second half of the movie to move along at a cracking pace. It's not all super-fast quick cuts, though. Rob Zombie is a talented director, who's as adept at using stillness and easy listening as fast motion and loud rock.

It's interesting, it's tense, it's scary and it walks the fine line between horror and comedy that Zombie seems to have chosen as his own particular path. A lot of people seem to have missed that in quite spectacular fashion. You may be able to get through without laughing out loud if you're particuarly stone-faced, but I don't see how you'd get through without craking a smile. It does, I'll admit, settle down on the horror side of the divide for the majority of the second half, but until then it's one funny film and isn't without amusing moments even near the end.

In a sense, I feel that Zombie's movies are for healthy people. They may sound odd to some, filled as they are with guts, screaming and death, but my theory is that you need to have a well-balanced mind to be able to appreciate all the dark shades he uses. The comedy in his movies is often very, very black, but it should be easily discernable if you're open to it. Halloween is on another level to his earlier movies, though, I think. He seems to have toned down the scattershot approach of House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. Enjoyable as they both were, they didn't hang together nearly as well as this movie.

And to top everything off Halloween's sprinkled with appearances by Zombie regulars, Brad Dourif and the mighty Malcolm McDowell in a big, crunchy role.

As I said earlier, if you don't like modern horror then, no, you probably won't like this, but Halloween is on another level other recent makes, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, and there's more story and life to it than the likes of Saw and other gorno features.

It's the masterpiece of the current wave of post-post-modern, seventies-influenced horror movies, it's actually better than Carpenter's original and it sure as hell deserves far better than it's got.

Sin & Punishment (Wii)

Bah. I spent ages last night deleting loads of games so I could fit this on to my Wii, only to find that my brain can't handle the controls at all. Seems I can't aim with the left sitck, for one thing - half the time my brain wants the controls inverted, the rest of the time it doesn't, so vertical aiming is lottery for me. And moving using buttons with my right hand feels very odd. And firing with the left trigger is very uncomfortable indeed after a while.

I'll try it again, but I'm not hopeful that I'll be able to get anything out of this, which is very unfortunate. More of a Stretch Panic than a Gunstar Heroes for me right now.

If I used smilies I'd use a big old sad face here to show my disappointment.

Race Driver: Create & Race (DS)

Just had a very quick go on this sat at my desk. Went straight to the track creator, made a track, tested it, saved it. All very easy to do, though I did keep overwriting bits I'd already laid down and having to redo sections. Only place I could easily find to race it was in Simulation mode, so I did that. Handling felt a lot weightier than in the testing mode. I got a couple of cautions for careless driving, but easily pulled away from the pack.

Graphics are DS-nasty, with pixels and pop-up galore, but they're pretty clear and are nice and smooth, which is more important than eye candy.

It definitely seems to be the best car-based racing game on the DS by a mile, based on this quick go, but I'm not sure based on this if it can compete with my favourite PSP racers - the PSP version of TOCA is awesome, then there's OutRun, Sega Rally, Ridge Racers, etc. - but the track designer gives it a different kind of appeal. It's amazing how much the (pretty random) track I made felt like a proper race track. It's really very well done indeed and could give this real long-term appeal for me.

Halo 3 (360)

Started the evening with some Team Slayer action, which was good fun. I did okay, generally, though I was rubbish at Rockets on Narrows.

Then played through level one of the campaign on Heroic difficulty. Well, some of it. I still wasn't done after an hour and so had to save and quit. Good fun and very satisfying, but it's really a bit beyond my skill level.