Exit: earthquake in a hospital

Not a good combination.

Before I start talking about scenario 5, though, a quick word on scenario 4. That was set in the dark, and I found it really quite uncomfortable to play. I felt pretty claustrophobic at times. Luckily, on quite a few of the levels there were switches which turned the lights on (including one level where one of the rescuees was stood right next to it) so that made it a bit easier.

The puzzles are getting pretty hard now. I got stuck on level 04-08 for a while.

Anyway, I'm now on scenario 5, which sees many of the hospital's patients in need of rescuing. Mr Esc has to carry them. This would be fine if it wasn't for the absurdly slow speed he walks at. The rest of the game is hardly a speedfest, but this is just annoying. And why can't I get a fat man to carry them any quicker? They're stronger than me, going by the fact that they can move safes by themselves.

I'm up to level 05-04 now. Not stuck; just got off the train.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: cheating at the fishing competition

Not me, but other residents of my town.

Snake appears to have caught a coelacanth. But it's not been raining.

Fraud.

Black: Graznei Bridge

A first person shooter with configurable controls.

This is level seven, I think. I may have been wrong with some of my previous level numbering. At some point I'll have a bit of a study of a game guide and work out which level was which.

Anyway, this has been the best level of the game so far. It's all played out over the length of a half-ruined bridge, with you haveing to go down onto the struts at times, and onto the gantries at others. For something so linear they've made it really exciting and difficult to progress. But possibly the best bit about the level was the fact that it was really hard but achievable on the first run through (on normal difficulty). As long as you thought strategically, tried to be on a different level to the enemy, and kept an eye out ahead, you could often take out half the enemies before they'd seen you.

Having two (indestructable) team mates helped as well!

Far Cry Instincts: retarded controls

There is one thing that makes me angry in gaming. I think, indeed, there is only one thing. And that is this: non-configurable controls.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the first first-person shooter I seriously played on a console was Quake 3 on the Dreamcast. There's only one analogue stick on a Dreamcast controller, so it's necessary to put 'look' on that stick and 'move' on the other. It's more important to be able to aim with the analogue stick.

This control setup was best on Goldeneye too. Look with the analogue stick, move with the C buttons, meaning that you were also able to use A and B plus two shoulder buttons. Perfect Dark also required it.

So, look on the left, move on the right.

I don't mind if people prefer it the other way around. In some ways it might make more sense - your right hand might be more accurate (if you're right handed), so aiming could work well there. But I'm well entrenched into the left-look-right-move camp, and I really can't get used to the other control method. But it's not really a problem; it's hardly difficult for developers to just let people choose which stick should be used for which action.

So why the fuck don't they do it? I struggled with XIII for a week before giving up. They've removed the control scheme I liked in Confict: Desert Storm and Conflict: Desert Storm 2 and Conflict: Vietnam for the latest in the series (Conflict: Global Strike). And now Far Cry Instincts continues the retardedness. I've spent a frustrating two hours geting through the first area and thinking I was doing quite well, until I found three enemies together and they killed me while I was running around backwards looking at the ground. It's so frustrating - it looks gorgeous, and the story seems intriguing, but I just know I'll never put it on again. Nor buy the followup, nor buy the 360 version, nor buy anything on consoles from Crytek again.

Idiots.

Outrun 2006: Outrun class cars

I've not spent many of my Outrun Miles before, which meant that when I went into the showroom I could afford not only the plain vanilla 360 Spider (my preferred car in Outrun 2 on the Xbox) but also the Outrun class version.

The latter is almost too powerful for its own good. I even have to brake for the chicane at the end of the opening stage on both Outrun 2 and SP. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but at the moment it's like careering down the track being driven by David Blunkett.

It makes the Coast 2 Coast mode a bit easier, though.

Midweek Challenges - 17/05/2006

No, I didn't set up my Xbox, and no, I didn't play Exit. Huh.

One
Complete five more stages in Exit.

Two
Play the first level (if it has levels) of Far Cry Instincts.

Three
Clear the intermediate levels of Flagman on Outrun 2006.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney: the final chapter

It took most of my 'challenge' week, but I've finally finished the game. The last case wasn't as good as the others, but it did have some DS-specific elements in which were quite cleverly done.

One warning: don't finish the game on the train; people will look at you oddly when you're forced to shout "objection!" into the mic ...

Midweek Challenges - 10/05/2006

One
Complete case five of Phoenix Wright. I'm about two days in now, so over half-way.

Two
Set my Xbox up and connect to Live.

Three
Complete five more stages in Exit.

Pre Evolution Soccer 5: Chelsea FTW

(FTW = for the win, in the land of the shortcut typists)

I'm flying along now. I've won some games 8-0. Nobody's close to me at the top of the table, at all. Hoorah.

Outrun 2006: Flagman flagging

Well, I've beaten all the novice challenges now, without much difficulty at all - in fact, the only thing that was at all tricky was the final race, on which I continuously got overtaken by five or six cars on the last corner. Hardly fair. I've started on the second lot, which are quite a bit harder, and have also started some of Clarissa's challenges, which you need to unlock by getting to that stage in a continuous race in the first place. I've not unlocked many yet ...

Prince of Persia Revelations: stupidly weak hits

I'm stuck on this boss. She loses a miniscule amount of energy each time I hit her, and every time she hits me I lose a quarter of mine. Yesterday I had her down to her last 10%, and then she hit me three times in a row.

Midweek Challenges - 03/05/2006

One
Complete the second set of flagman races on Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast.

Two
Win five more matches in PES5.

Three
Finish the first day of case five of Phoenix Wright.

'Fixing' an N64

My brother bought an N64 off of eBay. The seller told him that it worked properly, and it was delivered in a shoe box wrapped in bubblewrap.

It didn't work.

The seller then told my brother that if it got broken in the post, then that's not his fault. Well, no. The responsibility lies with the seller up to and including the point at which the parcel is delivered to the buyer. Including the postal system. If it's been broken by the Royal Mail, it's up to the seller to put in a claim for compensation.

My brother asked me to have a look at it, anyway, to see if I could fix it. After a whole minute of investigation, I found the problem: the plug has had the fuse removed. Furthermore, the console-to-TV lead was missing (although this takes a standard TV lead, so that's not too much of an issue). I put a new plug on the lead, and used my console-to-TV lead, and it seems to work fine now.

Well, sort of fine. The analogue stick on the controller is absolutely dire, registering only when tilted completely to the left or the right. As an indication of how bad it is, I played Mario Kart 64 and struggled to win the Mushroom Cup races on 50cc.

So, basically:

• the N64 could not have been working properly when it was sent off,
• the Royal Mail did not break it, and
  
• the seller, cdatoys, is a bit of a fibber.

My brother wrote to Mr Cdatoys, telling him that the console was broken, and the response?

i tried being reasonable with you but you left neg feedback, as far as im concerned youcan go to hell

Nice.

Midweek Challenges - 26/04/2006

One
Complete the boss fight I'm currently up to in Prince of Persia Revelations. It's hard, both in difficulty and in the crap controls.

Two
Get my gaming diary up-to-date.

Three
Fix my brother's N64.

Moving ...

I'm moving house over the next few days, so don't expect (m)any updates. I'll try and catch up (and post-date entries) when I can.

Exit: that's not the correct order

I'm onto stage 04-06 now. I know what needs to be done, but just can't work out what order it needs to be done in. It's very annoying indeed.

Pro Evolution Soccer 5: strange coincidences

I've not played this for a couple of weeks, but appear to be doing better at it than ever before. I don't follow football much (if at all), but over the last few games I seem to have accurately followed Chelsea's progress this season, according to BBC sport:

• 1-1 away at Aston Villa
• 2-0 at home against Liverpool
• 2-1 at home against Spurs
• 2-0 at home against Man City

I've got some quite amazing goals saved on the memory stick now, as well.

Midweek Challenges - 19/04/2006

One
Complete up to and including level 04-05 of Exit.

Two
Win three more matches in PES5.

Why only two? Well, we're moving at the end of next week, so I'm not going to have a lot of free time ...

Prince of Persia Revelations: what's going on?

I tend to play handheld games on the tube to and from work. At the moment, in fact, that's when I do most of my gaming. On the tube it's pretty noisy, and as such I can't really rely on hearing everything. Also, I don't really like the hassle of putting in earphones if I want a quick 5-minute game of something. So I turn the sound off.

For most games, this isn't a problem. Either they don't really need the sound (PES5, Advance Wars Dual Strike, Phoenix Wright, Pokémon ...) or they provide you with subtitles (Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories). Lots of games don't have a story as such to follow in any case. But Prince of Persia Revelations does, and it doesn't have a subtitle option. As such, all I know is that there was this woman on a ship who rammed my ship, and I chased after her and beat her up, and then we somehow transported to a ruined castle. And after making my way through the castle I found the woman again and we were transported into the past - I presume it's the past, because the castle's all whole again.

The other tricky thing is the darkness. The PSP screen's great, but it does reflect a fair amount, and it's hard to see dark areas. I do wonder if the testers for Prince of Persia Revelations actually used PSPs to test the game, since at times you can't see anything at all. It really is quite dire.

Yet I'm still playing it. OK, so it's slightly more focussed on the combat than The Sands of Time, but there's plenty of platforming in there, and it works really well when you can actually see the level. The save points are sometimes a little spread out, but the sleep function of the PSP is excellent. It looks like a finisher, if my eyes can take it.

And when I've finished, I'll go and look at an FAQ to know what the story was about.

Outrun 2006: Flagman challenges

Basically just a race against rivals. The first lot were pretty easy; although occasionally getting past my rivals was a bit of a pain - they like hogging the road.

Clarissa's challenges are rather a lot harder.

Exit: who needs brain training?

Stage 03-10 is very hard indeed. Or, rather, not hard, but taxing. Trying to work out what order everything needs to be done in is a bit of a pain.

In case anyone else is stuck here, and is frustrated by the lack of an FAQ, here's my solution:

Walk left and lower yourself into the gap
Pick up the plank
Jump and climb up to the right
Push the crate one space to the right
Stand on the crate
Jump and climb up to the right
Jump over the gap to the left
Rescue the two people
Jump over the gap to the right
Climb over the crate, make both people follow you
Make one person pick up the key
Make one person take the plank off of you
Push the crate one space to the left
Stand on the crate
Jump and climb to the left
Walk to the left end of the platform
Jump and climb to the right
Running jump to the right
Walk right and pick up the plank
Go down the rope
Go down the ladder
Tell one person to push the crate left off the edge
Tell both people to walk left, down to the platform below
Tell both people to push the crates right off the edge
Tell the person with the plank to lay it across the gap
Lay your plank across the gap
Call both people to where you are standing
Tell the person with the key to use it on the lock
Open the door
Exit!

I think I'll actually start writing down my solutions and put them into an FAQ. That'll give me even more incentive to complete it.

Midweek Challenges - 12/04/2006

One
Complete the first set of flagman races on Outrun 2006.

Two
Complete up to and including level 03-10 of Exit.

Three
Finish the first chapter of Prince of Persia Revelations.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: real-world friends

Kieron, a friend from the real world, visited Bangaio last night. We had a great time, with him selling stuff at Nook's, stealing stuff from the boot fair, sending me some presents and meeting my animals. Then we went over to his town, and I wrote on the notice board about how the flower festival was a fix.

Oh yes, the flower festival. Tortimer said that it wasn't going to be about numbers, it'd be about order and prettiness. I had a display next to my house ordered by colours (in rows) and types of flower (in columns). I has lots of rare colours - three black flowers, two orange, two pink, two purple, and one blue. I should have won it.

Instead, it went to Joey, who doesn't even live next to one of the Flower Cultivation Zones.

I hate the mayor.

I'm still playing this game every day, by the way. Hopefully John will be able to visit Bangaio tonight as well.

Prince of Persia Revelations: stunted progress

If you're wondering what the sudden influx of posts is due to, I was in Amsterdam at the weekend with my wife. I didn't play much as a result - bits and pieces here and there. The gap between save points in Prince of Persia Revelations was a bit of a killer. In real terms, I made no progress. In actual terms, I got a bit further then tuned the PSP off without saving.

Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

I'd better specify that this is on the PSP, since I'll probably end up getting this on another format as well.

This is a superb game - I'm impressed with how well it's been made to run on the PSP. It's not perfect - the controls, if nothing else, see to that - but it's great fun. The package is well put together, too, with various missions and other bits and pieces to make it longer than the arcade game would otherwise last.

The only slight downers are the controls, occasional framerate issues, and the noise of the PSP due to streaming the levels. I can see the battery wearing out pretty quickly.

Exit: fatties are annoying

They can't climb up anywhere, and you have to be very careful about where they're running in case they fall down a gap and can't get up.

Kids are also annoying, if only because they need help getting over the slightest ledge.

I'm up to around level 03-04 now, and some of the puzzles are quite tricky. I've had to restart a few times, where I've become trapped in a room with the door switch on the other side. However, there's always a way around the level that's quite obvious; it's just a case of doing it.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: jumping the bridge

I rescued Salvatore, and he told me that he needed to lay low - so to go to the next island. Hoorah, I think, I'm off to Staunton. At last.

On the way, he tells me that the bridge still isn't quite ready, and the ferries aren't running. The police are chasing us. We're going to have to jump. Excellent.

Midweek Challenges - 05/04/2006

One
Get onto the second island in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

Two
Finish the first chapter of Prince of Persia Revelations.

Three
Complete up to level 30 of Exit.

Four
Complete a course of Outrun 2006 on the PSP.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: the drugs bust

Sill making progress through this, but not off the first island yet. The last mission I completed had me picking up some drugs for Salvatore, but as we were about to hand over the money the police arrived. Fairly reminiscent of the start of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I managed to get from one end of the city to the other on three flat tyres, which I was quite impressed with.

Prince of Persia Revelations

A remake of Warrior Within for the PSP. So far, it looks as if they've taken out most of the bugs, and left the rest of the game intact. I've heard they've added in some extra puzzles though.

It's a good game so far, if not as good as Sands of Time - although given that Sands of Time is one of my favourite games that's no really bad thing. There's a lot more emphasis on combat than there is on platforming, but that's just my impression from a very short playing time - around 20 minutes. I'll be playing more of this soon.

Exit: a little exciting

Up to level 25 of this now. Because the main character is very slow, it can get a little frustrating when you know what you want him to do, but have to wait until he gets there. Still, that's not really unlike Lemmings, and some of the levels are pretty ingenious.

I'm still trying to remember all the controls, though.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: Maria

Salvatore's daughter is a bit of a pain - she's now asking me to drive her to shops, which she then robs. And I have to lose the police. I managed to roll the car and kill her five times before I completed the mission.

Black: level 4

Really, really fun. The only problem is that it took me one hour and twenty-eight minutes to work my way through it, and because of the retarded checkpoint system I had to do it all in one go. But there were some really good parts - fighting through the factory complex with cover from a sniper (who took out more than their fair share of terrorists), destroying machinery, and shooting large concrete cylinders which rolled down a hill and crushed enemies as they went.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: multiplayer

On the tube home tonight, a random bloke asked me what I was playing on the PSP. I was, at the time playing GTA:LCS. So I told him.

He was also playing GTA:LCS, and asked if I wanted to try the multiplayer game. I didn't realise there was a mulitplayer game ...

It took a bit ogf hassle to link up, but one we had we were able to run around Portland trying to kill each other. It was pretty fun, although the controls did their best to ruin it. I won 4-1 in the end, when we had to get off of the tube.

Cheers, Pieter, if you ever read this.

Toy Golf: silver course unlocked

Having struggled to get below 18 for the first three holes (par for each hole is 6), I managed to get an albatross, and eagle and a par to get a total of 13. So, I've unlocked the silver course. It's the same three holes but with another three afterwards. It seems a bit harder, but hole six is masterful - it's a par 3, but I've got a birdie at it a few times. You just need to hit the first ramp with the right amount of power and the ball rolls all the way down to the hole.

Midweek Challenges - 29/03/2006

One
Get onto the second island in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

Two
Clear the Bronze Course in Toy Golf.

Three
Start Prince of Persia: Revelations.

Four
Complete up to level 20 of Exit.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: my mum hates me

And she's trying to kill me. As you can imagine, this isn't very nice.

I think I'm nowhere near getting off the first island; I'm stuck on a mission where my mother's hired hitmen to take me out. I dispatch loads of them, but then four arrive all armed with machine guns, and kill me almost instantly. Not fair.

The problem is not with the game, but with the controls. They're just not suited for any sort of precision. It's very frustrating.

Pro Evolution Soccer 5: running away with it

I'm now second in the league with two draws, one loss, and five wins. The top team has ten wins. That's just not on.

Burnout Legends: opening up the coupe class

Not only have I completed the compact class, but I've also completed the muscle class. There were a few tricky events in the muscle class, including a Road Rage event where I just couldn't take out enough opposition without ruining my car. In particular, the track went under an elevated roadway, and there were pillars everywhere, which I kept hitting.

In the end I got a silver - I think I've got mostly gold with three silvers over all events. That'll do for me.

I've also played a few more crash events. I think my favourite has to be "Jackknife Junction", where I managed to hit a car so it bounced back and forth across the road taking out anything that drove near it, including six lorries.

I've completed 18% of the game. It's rather good.

Exit

Excellent game, so far. It's a cross between a platformer and a puzzle game, sort of like Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time was in places. It's also like Krusty's Super Fun House in that you've got to guide computer characters out of the door - or, more to the point, to the exit. These compute characters are of several types, and you can instruct them to do stuff - for example, you need two youngsters (or one youngster plus yourself) to pull an adult up over an obstacle.

It's a little slow, but I think that's more due to the style of the game than anything - it's certainly been built around the speed. It may become more problematic later on, but currently (I've finished the first ten levels) the time limit isn't a barrier in any way.

Pro Evolution Soccer 5: a famous vicory

I've started playing through a league now, as Chelsea (one of the two licensed clubs they've got in the game - I'm currently trying to find an option file to rename all the other clubs and give them the right kits and so on). So far I've drawn twice, lost once, and won twice.

The last victory, against 'Manchester Reds', was great. On the tube home last night, I scored three goals in the first half, against none from them. I then put the PSP into sleep mode. On resuming the game this morning, Manchester Reds had obviously got very fed up waiting, and proceeded to injure three of my players. I still scored another two goals, though - finishing 5-0.

Toy Golf

Another Gizmondo game. You play a game of golf around a Micro-Machines-esque household, by aiming the ball and controlling the strength of the shot - you only putt, though. It's strangely addictive, even though I can't complete the first course under par and so am restricted to three holes.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: loadsamoney

Thanks to Jaxon, I've now got over 10,000,000 bells in the bank. The town hall had better send me something nice.

Sticky Balls

This week I'm set to fail all my challenges. Well, maybe not. But I have just bought my second new handheld in as many weeks - I've got a Gizmondo. HMV were selling the £130 model for £40, and all games for just over a fiver. I've had a bit of a play with it, and it's a pretty nice handheld - much easier to hold than the PSP, but with fewer buttons and a much smaller screen.

Along with the handheld I bought Sticky Balls. It's a game where you have to knock coloured balls around a level getting them to stick to each other. In doing this, you must make sure whichever ball you hit touches a ball of the same colour first, otherwise you commit a foul - and you've only got so many fouls at your disposal. It's much better than it sounds - and is rather addictive. It's almost worth the price of the console plus game itself.

Midweek Challenges - 22/03/2006

Yes, I failed everything last week. But I had an excuse.

One
Get onto the second island in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

Two
Get to 10% complete in Burnout Legends.

Three
Win three matches in Pro Evolution Soccer 5.

Four
Play some of Exit. I would set a more specific challenge, but I've not played it yet so I don't know what sort of challenges can be set. From the box, it appears to have levels, so I'll challenge myself to clear level 1.

Pro Evolution Soccer 5

It's virtually identical to the home console versions.

This is mainly a good thing. The game plays really well, and there's very little slowdown other than in cutscenes where it doesn't really affect gameplay. It's as hard as ever to score, and it does reward passing and building up play. It even works OK with the analouge nub - maybe I'm just getting used to it now. It's mising a few play modes - only one league is available, and the number of teams is cut down - but the basics are there.

But they really ought to have thought about how the game should be redesigned. They've left in all the videos, the cutscenes, the elaborate menus ... all the things that mean it takes a good couple of minutes to get into a game, past all the loading sections. It loads an introductory cutscene for 20 seconds; I press X as soon as it appears; it then goes to load in the game.

Worth waiting for though. It's great to play.

Lots of new games

As I mentioned, it's my birthday today (and will be for at least another four minutes). We went out for drinks this evening and my friends have been very generous indeed. For I have been given:

• Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (PSP)
• Exit (PSP)
• Prince of Persia: Revelations (PSP)
• FIFA 2005 (Xbox)
  

I suspect the last one of these was because John got it for less than a fiver (effectively), but it does mean at last I can play football against him online. And he also got me Prince of Persia - which is supposedly pretty good, being a remake of Warrior Within with bugs removed and additional storyline development.

I'll have to play them all now. What hardship. Opinions as and when I form them.

Gadgets galore

It's my birthday tomorrow; I met with my parents today in our new house to do some decorating and they gave me a present.

An iPod. I think the multimedia functions of my PSP have just become rather redundant.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories: the car lot

I can't believe there's a side mission which sees you driving a car around the city slowly and carefully to try and tempt an old woman to buy it. I further can't believe that it's so hard.

I've had a bit of a play with the PSP's other capabilities this weekend. The video function's great. I ripped my DVD of the Lion King to my computer, then converted it to a lower resolution - it comes to about 600Mb, and took about 4 hours to convert. Then, after that, it was just a case of transferring it to the PSP via a USB cable (and storing it on the memory stick), and then watching it. The PSP's speakers are pretty good, and the screen's great.

Transferring stuff to the PSP is really easy. Films are the hardest, in fact, since you have to name them in a certain way. Music and photos can just be dragged across as if the PSP were just an external hard drive. You don't have to install anything on the computer, you just plug in the USB lead and away you go. Great.

The music function's just as good as the video, but it's lacking a few features from what I could see. No random songs option, and I don't think you're able to turn the screen off while playing songs which would impact on the battery life. Again, though, it sounded good through the speakers (and even better through headphones).

Photos are clear on the screen and there's a nice slideshow effect. Not a lot more to say.

And the Internet browser's great. Now, it really does miss having a keyboard (or even touch screen), and as such I'll never be able to type on here using it, but sitting on the sofa and browsing the BBC website while watching TV is really useful - especially given the quick startup (from sleep mode).

Big thumbs up here.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

They've done a fine job of squeezing GTA3D onto a handheld. Technically, it's very impressive indeed. It's fun as well, to a point. That point being where you realise that it's really, really hard to control. As ever with 3D GTA games, the on-foot sections are the hardest to control, but this surpasses anything that's gone before in the "no, not that way!" stakes. Partially due to the rubish analogue nub, partially due to the sensitivity of changes in directions, and partially due to the camera that gets stuck behind the nearest building whenever it can ... it's just very frustrating.

It's frustrating because I love the GTA games, and want to be able to play this. And when I'm playing it, it's fun, but I'm continually thinking that it would be so much better on a home console where I could control the character.

Having said that, Ive played it loads and still want to play it some more, so it must be doing something right.

Burnout Legends: extended play

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. My hands.

Six events completed now, including a couple of very annoying one-on-one races. The way in which no matter how well you race, you'll never leave your opponent very far behind is very annoying - I had an almost perfect race with constant boost, and one crash right at the end meant that I came second.

Still, done now. This is a great game.

Burnout Legends

This week I'm set to fail all my challenges. Not because I'm lazy; not because I'm just pessimistic. No, it's because I've just taken delivery of a (white) PSP. As such, I think I'll be stuck in the thrill of the new for the next week or so, and it's unlikely that Pokémon Sapphire, Black or Advance Wars: Dual Strike will get a look in. I'll water the flowers in Animal Crossing, of course.

I've not had much of an opportunity to play with it yet, but I couldn't resist, at lunchtime, turning it on, looking at the menus and setting up my name and other information. And trying out Burnout Legends, which is one of the games I got with it.

It's very good indeed. I liked Burnout and Burnout 2, but Burnout 3 was just a bit too heavy for my tastes. Burnout Legends isn't as 'in your face' as Burnout 3, but uses a lot of the same gameplay mechanics, while also returning to the ideas that made the first two games so good.

There are only a couple of issues. The PSP may look nice, but its controls are utterly retarded. The analogue nub is virtually impossible to use accurately, which means that I was trying to rely on the D-pad to steer. And the D-pad is a Sony one, which means it's the worse D-pad ever made. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's very awkward to hold and use, and after fifteen minutes of playing, holding down the right shoulder button to accelerate almost constantly, my hands did start to hurt.

I can't wait until I get to go home ...

Midweek Challenges - 15/03/2006

One
Complete level four of Black.

Two
Work out where to go next in Pokémon Sapphire, and go there.

Three
Complete the Advance Wars: Dual Strike map that I'm playing, without quitting.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Turnabout Goodbyes

Rather a long and complicated case, but I liked the way it drew in stuff from everything before and filled out the backstory for the whole game. Good twist at the end as well. Again, not giving too much away, some points:

• The young Miles Edgeworth and his bow tie were amusing
  
• Some of the dialogue is very melodramatic - especially from Larry Butz
• Maya gets on my nerves rather a lot
• A stun gun? Hmm
• Whoooooooooop!
  

I'll move onto the fifth case at some point soon but I think I want to play something else first.

Black: level 3

I ran through this again last night and completed six secondary objectives. It's a bit easier when you know where all the RPG launchers are standing.

Black: the first two levels

This would be the first three levels, but it's not, because of the lack of ability to save midway through a level. Not all of us can always guarantee a full hour to play on something, EA. More on that later.

Anyway. Very good game other then the saving annoyance. Oh, and the unskippable cut scenes nonsense. And the fact that it lets you set up all the controls as you want them, then prompts you to create a profile, doing which wipes the controls you spent ten minutes perfecting. Still, at least it lets you customise the controls to be exactly how you like them.

This last point adds on at least 2 points to a score out of ten.

It's very stylish - very orange and, er, black. The guns are suitable meaty and weighty, and while your movement is a little too constrained for comfort, it's not too slow for you to think the game's in the process of crashing. It adds tension too - running from gravestone to gravestone to avoid the sniper is rather breathtaking when you can't just dive from one to the next. The AI is a little suspect - characters run out to the same point over and over again, even if they get hit by a bullet every time they move. But when they're running towards you, it's fairly realistic.

I've now played the third level one and five sixths times. The first time I played it, I got to the big open area near the end where hundred of enemies rush out at you. And then I had to go out. "Never mind," thought I, "I've just passed a checkpoint, so I'll quit out and when I come back I'll play from there." Oh no. The game let me play from the beginning of the level, and nothing else. Retracing my steps took quite a bit of time - but at least I knew what to expect. I got to the end of the level and celebrated a bit too soon - I'd only completed 2 secondary objectives, and had forgotton to check before I finished the mission whether I'd actually pass or not. On normal difficulty, see, you have to pass at least three secondary objectives.

So, I'll be playing the third level again soon. At least it's a good game, so I don't mind playing the level again. Although if it fails me next time ...

Pokémon Sapphire: Norman stormed

My dad is defeated. He had some nasty level 30-odd pokémon, which used a move called facade which took my energy down pretty quickly. Only three of my pokémon were actually effective - Kiria, Combusken and Gyrados - since the other three were, and are, too low a level. I'll have to go around levelling them up a bit.

The fight was a bit tense though. It didn't help that Norman used hyper potion on each of his pokémon just as I was about to defeat them each time. I defeated his first two pokémon after a while, and took his last Slaking down to very little health. Then he healed, and hit my Gyrados with facade, taking me down to six health.

Slaking can only attack every other turn. I used dragon rage, and had a critical hit - I knocked around two-thirds of his energy off. Slaking lazed around.

I used dragon rage again. Slaking was left with one pixel of energy. I had no other pokémon left, and Slaking was about to kill Gyrados I was about to lose.

And then Slaking used tackle. And missed.

Gyrados, use strength! Bish bash bosh. Down he goes. That'll be you defeated, Mr Dad.

Midweek Challenges - 08/03/2006

Since Phoenix Wright took so much time, I only managed to complete one challenge last week. I'll be a bit more realistic this time ...

One
Complete case 4 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Two
Complete another Advance Wars: Dual Strike 2CO map

Three
Progress to the next gym in Pokémon Sapphire

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Turnabout Samurai

That was rather long.

I've just finished the third case of Phoenix Wright, which seems to have lasted an absolute age. There were so many twists to the plot it was like an M Night Shyamalan film. Apparently it was only three days in court, but it felt much much longer. Luckily, there wasn't much that you had to remember all the way from the start to the end, and what there was was very heavily hinted about. Especially the spear.

The game really is a bit limited, in that there were a few times when I wanted to point out erors in a testimony and couldn't. And occasionally you know there's a contradiction, but you have to present evidence to object and the 'correct' evidence you have to choose is rather tenuously linked.

Still, it gets pretty exciting at the end of a case, and the main characters are a little more fleshed out now. I must say that I wanted Will Powers and his three frames of animation to hang, though.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Turnabout Sisters

That was a bit of a shock at the start. And it went a bit odd in the middle. Again, no spoilers, so I won't say anything about the case, except that it was a lot longer and more satisfying than the first.

I still feel constrained as to what I can and cannot do, however. I want to be able to object based on what people said before, not just object based on evidence.

And I want to be able to punch Edgeworth.

Public Gaming

John, Kieron and I met up last night in a pub in London for drinks. And after a while, after eating some rather nice burgers, we got out our DSs, and played games.

We started with Mario Kart DS, which was great. I won. Kieron will claim he would have won had the bar staff not come over to us and started to talk about how they were planning on installing an Xbox 2 and a PS3 for customer use on a Saturday afternoon when the pub was quiet. Kieron will claim that, but he would be fibbing, since I was paying as much attention to the barman as he was.

It was interesting, in fact, that three of the (male) bar staff all came over and were talking to us about videogames, whereas I've never been approached by bar staff wanting to talk about anything else in the past. Oh, with one exception. It was all very pleasent.

I think we were all slightly apprehensive about the reaction we'd get playing games in the pub, but it was pretty good, in fact - when we were playing Mario Kart almost everyone who walked past was trying to see what we were playing, probably because of the way we were just as animated as normal, laughing, telling each other we were gits, groaning at being hit with four red shells on the trot, urging more speed out of our karts ... I didn't think we would be, but I suppose the game demands it. Having drinks probably helped.

Second we played some Advance Wars Dual Strike. The first game lasted about 3 minutes before the connection dropped, which was annoying - we've never had the connection problem before with any other game, but AWDS seems to be very flakey. We played that for ages the second time around but it was a bit of a stalemate and got a little dull. Especially because John had four or five battleships; Kieron had lined up infantry all along the shore so John couldn't land, and I had loads of bases and territory but had nowhere to attack. I can't remember the name of the map.

We finished up with some Bomberman DS. I can't remember who won that. I do remember being the red bomber and saying "Red Bomber, one more!" in a slightly high pitched voice, far too loud.

The pub we were in is the Prince of Wales Feathers on Warren Street. A good place to play games. Unfortunately no TheCloud wifi. I might suggest they get it.

Midweek Challenges - 01/03/2006

One
Complete cases 2 and 3 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Two
Complete another Advance Wars: Dual Strike 2CO map

Three
Progress to the next gym in Pokémon Sapphire

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: The First Turnabout

Everyone's been raving about this, and I'm not overly sure why. It seems to be a pretty standard text and point-and-click adventure game, although you do have to think a bit harder than in some I've played. The first case was pretty short, and was really just a lesson in how to argue your case, present evidence, find contradictions, and so on. It seems a little limited in terms of how you interact, but that may have been because it was the tutorial.

Interestingly, it's blindingly obvious what actually happened in the case very near the start, but you need to prove it, which is the tricky side.

I'll move onto case two soon.

Halo 2: Big Team Battle and Team Snipers

Thank God for Big Team Battle. It's about the only way I ever win anything nowadays, since there are enough other people on my team to make up for my ineptitude.

However, I had a good game of Team Snipers tonight on the relatively new Elongation map. It was a good game, with the lead changing a few times, and it ended up a draw. So, so nearly a win to my team though - with two seconds to go I and a teammate came across one of their team and we both hit him one before the time ran out. A more accurate shot, or even one more shot, and he'd have been dead.

I had quite a few games; when you're playing with and against decent people it's a great game. But there are far too many American teenagers online.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Pay Dirt

My word. I'm now onto day 51 of this map and I'm no nearer to making any progress. Every few turns I wipe out most of his force, but then he wipes out most of mine, and we're back to where we started. On day 41 I finally managed to capture the base in the centre of the map.

I think I might restart ...

Pokémon Sapphire: aimless wandering

I do appreciate the fact that, in all Pokémon games I've played, they number the roads in the order that you ought to use them. It makes it much easier to work out where you are.

I didn't play this much, but I got reacquainted with my team. They're a bit crap really, but I love them.

Project Gotham Racing 2 online

I like this. Not only because I can beat John and Kieron at it, but also because of the way the game plays. It's really smooth and stylish, and strangely relaxing just talking away as you race.


You'd think they'd make the additional content free by now though. I bought it when it first came out, but John and Kieron got the game a lot later, and by that time the online races weren't as prevalent as they were to start with - so there was little point in them buying the content. But I want to race them around Paris!

Midweek Challenges - 22/02/2006

One
Win a game of Halo 2 online. Considering that last week I didn't even play it at all, I might get a bit closer to achieving this this time.

Two
Get an A on another Advance Wars: Dual Strike 2CO map.

Three
Play some of Pokémon Sapphire, so I can work out what I'm up to.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Twin Isle: I got an A

Yes, I could. It didn't take too long to replay, since I know what to do. I raced down and scraped an A - full marks for speed and power but I lost a little for technique.

Never mind.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Twin Isle: I got a B

B for BOO.

I was playing with skills turned on, but still with only one CO, and this made it rather a lot easier. I found the best tactic was to race down and take the southwest bases, because that allows for a two-pronged attack on the middle.

My challenge was to get an A on this, but I'm not sure if I can be bothered to replay the same map again ...

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Twin Isle: too unfair

I've been trying to play this with one CO and no skills, as I've managed for every other war room map so far. And it's just too hard. The computer player starts with many more cities, which means that it produces a neotank, then a megatank, far too quickly. I've just given up halfway through a game where I'd managed to capture the bases in the SouthWest of the map, but was being thoroughly pounded everywhere.

I managed to get an A on this map in Advance Wars 2, but Kieron believes that the computer starts with more cities in the DS game, which unbalances it too much. So I'm going to try playing with skills turned on.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: a million points in East LA

I finally did it last night - I managed to get two huge combos in one run and so earnt a total of 1.1 million points. So, that's the first five levels cleared.

I then went on to do the 'interesting' tasks on Alcatraz - COMBO, SKATE, hidden tape, and so on - all in three runs. Now I've just got to explore the level to try and find places and routes to get big combos.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: the hidden tape in Vans

Finally, I've managed to collect the hidden tape in Vans. It's been a bit of a sticking point for a week now, and it turns out to be incredibly easy. Rather than trying to jump from railng to railng all the way from the other side of the level, I just grinded (ground?) up the bannister of the staircase which leads to the spectator gallery, and jumped right from there to land on another rail, which took me to the tape.

So, Vans is complete, and I just need to get a million points on East LA to complete my weekly challenge. Oh.

Midweek Challenges - 15/02/2006

One
Clear all goals for the fourth and fifth levels of classic mode in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land. I've found the hidden tape, I just can't get to it. But it doesn't say "get to the hidden tape". Bah.

Two
Get at least an A ranking on Twin Isle in Advance Wars: Dual Strike. I will get around to playing this, really.

Three
Win a game of Halo 2 online. I've not played this for a while ...

Animal Crossing: Wild World: an update

I've not reported on this for a while, so here's the latest:

• I bought 600,000bells worth of turnips and sold them for 2,800,000bells, so I paid off two mortgages and now have a six-room house.
• Nibbles won the Bright Lights competition after I voted for her five times out of six - only because I like her and she bribed me, since all the lights were the same.
• Baabara and Poncho have moved out, presumably to someone else's town.
• I tried to hold a boot fair last night by putting loads of stuff I wanted rid of by the town gate, and opening it. Unfortunately, the connection crashed over and over again, meaning that nothing really came of it apart from a lot of frustration. I'll be trying again later in the week.
• Nintendo left a message on my town notice board, and sent me a letter, apologising for not being in contact sooner. In their letter they made a mistake by confusing "to" with "too". Fools.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: East LA

I still can't get the hidden tape on Vans. Very annoying.

I have, however, cleared most of the goals on East LA. All I've got to do now is to collect the trick signs (which is theoretically easy, it's just that I muck up the timing of the acid drop at the end), and get an overall score of over a million. I'd have got that score yesterday if I hadn't bailed and lost a 600,000 point combo. Very annoying too.

I do like this game though. Really, it's quite an old-style game, with point and skill goals, and no real storyline to it. Yes, they tried to bolt on a story mode, but it doesn't really work too well. Instead, it's really about leaning tricks and combos and being good at the game.

Which I'm not.

Midweek Challenges - 08/02/2006

Oh dearie me. Only one challenge completed from last week. I did make quite a lot of progress on Tony Hawk's, but I can't manage to get to the hidden tape on Vans. Very frustrating.

One
Clear all goals for the fourth and fifth levels of classic mode in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land.

Two
Finish the fourth level of Rainbox Six 3.

Three
Get at least an A ranking on Twin Isle in Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: sick scores

So called because by the time you achieve them, you're sick of the level you're playing.

Official Xbox Magazine Demo Discs

OXM is a dire, dire magazine. Luckily, I managed to get hold of a load of demo discs from the front of the magazines without having to have the magazines themselves. I've had them for a while but never sat down to go through them in earnest.

Well, now I have. I didn't bother with games that I've already got, for obvious reasons. As a result, the majority of games I played were pretty dire - Futurama being a particular lowpoint - with only a few holding my interest at all. Amped seems pretty good, and Crazy Taxi 3 is quite fun - but not as fun as Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast.

Also on the discs were movies - some trailers for games (which I ignored, because they're crap) and some showing either amusing bugs in games or high score runs. There were a disproportionately high number of Halo movies - with people blowing up warthogs, trying to explot glitches, finding hidden rooms - it was quite obvious there was a shortage of good games in the early days of the console!

So, interesting as they were and are, it's not really worth me keeping the discs, so they're off to the boot sale next time we go.

Rainbow Six 3: bye bye RPG

There was a trick to that outside area after all. Rather than dashing out, getting shot at, and the person with the rocket-propelled grenade blowing up the plant, I instead slowly opened the door to the outside and spotted an explosive barrel. I shot it, and four enemies ran around the corner - so I was able to eliminate them with my sniper rifle before they hit any of my team. Went outside, shot the men in the window above, and then realised that one of the four that I killed at the start was the RPG man. Lucky he didn't fire at me, really.

So, that mission's complete. I'm now exploring the house belonging to the president of the oil company, who's been taken hostage there.

Super Monkey Ball Deluxe

I bought this just after Christmas for £10, and haven't got around to playing it yet. This is quite amazing given the amount of fun I had with the first two games on the Gamcube. I suspect it's party due to the knowledge that most of the levels are the same. But still.

I couldn't find the option to play a "traditional" game - where you're presented with levels one after the other - so instead went for story mode, where each level consists of around 20 trays and you must pass ten of them to continue. This is rather different to the previous games, where it's necessary to complete every tray of each level. And it makes it rather a lot easier too.

In Super Monkey Ball 2, you could be stuck on a level for ages because you couldn't get past a single tray. Anthropod, for example. But now you can decide not to play Anthropod, but a different level 4 tray instead.

I still played Launchers, however. I like that level, it amuses m. I managed it on my fourth go.

The controls are much less responsive and defined than on the Gamecube games. It really is a struggle to keep the monkeys on the level even when there's a relatively wide path. For example, what was Beginner level 10 in the original game (and is now called something like "Exam Level A") held me up for a couple of falls, whereas I can do it first time, every time on the Gamecube.

But it's still a great game. I'm trying to find the new levels, and some of them are really good - getting rid of the gimmicky switches of the second game, and instead relying on simple design. For example, there's a really cool swirly one where you have to spin into the middle and then out again. I can't describe it very well. Anyway, go too fast at the beginning and you can jump over the ridge into the swirl near the exit. But if you do that, it's easy then to jump back into the beginning groove again.

I look forward to multiplayer.

Rainbow Six 3

Yes, I'm about 5 years late.

I've played through a few missions of this online with my friends. Well, I say "through" - I think we've only ever completed one. But i've never played it single player.

Tonight I got through the first two missions - one set in an alpine village, and once in a blockaded tunnel in Switzerland. It's fun, if a bit nerve-wracking at the same time. In the second mission I took along a sniper rifle, which was excellent - I managed to kill half the enemies without them knowing it.

The only thing that lets the game down is the AI - both on your colleagues and on the enemies. Enemies will hide behind a car and shoot just over the top of it, so you can't get them. And then they stand up to reload. Dur. Your team mates run all over the place, and get in your way as you're lining up a shot. Dur.

I've got most of the way through the third missions, but have got stuck at a point where you enter a clearing and there's someone hidden behind a corner with a rocket launcher. I think I need to find a different way into the area so I can kill him before he kills the hostage I'm meant to be rescuing.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: I'm a bellionaire!

Well, I've got a million bells anyway. Someone on rllmuk had a price of 553bells this afternooon, so I did a couple of runs over there. I left him with 30,000bells and had 1,200,000bells when I returned. So I've paid off my latest mortgage (which was 600,000bells) and have got a nice sum to invest on the stalk market next week.

Hoorah!

Midweek Challenges - 01/02/2006

Well, I did play Advance Wars: Dual Strike, but kept getting very frustrated with it. It's almost like the other games on the DS have spoilt it - Animal Crossing, Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs, Meteos - all are either short-term games or relaxing. Advance Wars isn't - each game in the war room is a big commitment and it almost makes me not want to play it. Which is a shame.

But I will play it. I will.

One
Go through my pile of Xbox demo discs to look at anything interesting before I get rid of them all.

Two
Clear all goals for the fourth and fifth levels of classic mode in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land.

Three
Get at least an A ranking on Twin Isle in Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: classicly sk8ing

Having completed the story mode, I've been playing the classic mode of this. Each of the levels has around ten goals tocomplete, and you get two minutes at a time to complete them. The first few goals are easy - a lowish combo score, a lowish total score, collecting the letters S, K, A, T, and E - and you can clear a few in a single run. But later goals are harder, and I've been stuck on a few.

However, I have now completed every goal for the first three areas, including some very long combos of grinds, manuals, jumps and reverts. The goals are getting harder now though, and progress is a little slower.

Midweek Challenges - 25/01/2006

I did play Advance Wars: Dual Strike abit, and nearly completed one war room map twice, but it was taking too long and I was losing too many units. I'm claiming a half success on that one.

One
Get at least an A ranking on Twin Isle in Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Two
Clear all goals for the first three levels of classic mode in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land.

Three
Finish the fourth level of Spartan: Total Warrior.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: story mode: completed!

I've completed the story mode of this tonight, and I've enjoyed it. It's relatively simple, with you having to travel around areas and find people who'll give you some money to perform a certain trick or sequence. You only have to complete a few of these before the pro turns up and challenges you to something a little harder - but completist I am, I was clearing each stage of challenges before talking to the pro.

The final challenge was set by Tony Hawk himself, and was to do a 900° Japan - erm, a spin in the air holding onto the board. I managed it on my second try - you just had to jump high enough. There were some much more tricky challenges in the game than that ...

Anyway, I've now started playing the classic mode, which is a little more tricky. The challenges are all given to you at the start and you have two minutes to do as many as you can. Some are easy, some less so; I've now got past the first level (10/10 challenges completed) and am exploring the second.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: Yay Day

Joan was selling turnips for 110b each this morning. I bought some through gritted teeth - 810 in total - and have stored them outside my house. I hope nobody steals them.

Today is Yay Day, where you have to compliment everyone. it started off well, with Nibbles appreciating my compliment of "cute cheeks", and Bones being extatic about being told he has a "nice shirt", but the game failed to recognise the non-complimentary nature of what I said to Gabi - I don't think "horrific acne" is what every girl would love to hear, actually. Bill had a "shiny beak", and Gwen had "overkill eyeliner". Well, "overkill eyeline", since I ran out of letters.

I also have some orange pansies. They've grown between a bunch of yellow pansies and a bunch of red pansies. Flower breeding is a new concept.

Nintendogs: Sammi and Baby Gee

Gaby got a pink DS and Nintendogs for Christmas, and she wanted to link up to see what happened. First, however, I had to feed and water Sammi, and give her a bath to stop the fleas jumping off of her. Animal Crossing has a lot to answer for.

We put our DSes into bark mode, and they both barked soon after. "Baby Gee" had brought Megan to play. While Megan was active and bouncy, she didn't like to play with the ball, or the frisbee, or the bone, or the skipping rope. In fact, she was rather boring.

Multiplayer has no interaction, other than seeing how the other person has trained their dog. You both get to play independently with the dogs, and obviously you can't give the visiting dog voice commands since they won't recognise you. It's rather limited, really, but endearing. It's a shame that you can't really expect people on the tube to have their DS set to bark mode, however ...

Still, at least the kennel now has some shi tzu puppies in, if I ever decide to get another one.

Kururin Squash

Despite loving Kuru Kuru Kururin long time, five dorrer, I've never even had this Gamecube game out of the box. After some initial Freeloader difficulties, I got it working, and we guessed our way through the options to a multiplayer race game.

Which was superb. We were in fits of laughter knocking each other out of the way as we squeezed through some really tight passages, then banging against the wall in a masive cavern and being sent back to the checkpoint.

I can only image the carnage which result from a four-player game.

After the seventh race, the girls got back, and that was almost it ...

Beach Spikers

I love Beach Spikers. It's a really well thought out adaptation of the sport, and is pretty intuitive. I explained the three shot/two shot rules to Matt, and what the three buttons did. And he sat through the basic demo of running into the circle and setting up the spike.

And then we played. I won, of course.

But the second game was closer. I'm not sure that Matt was entirely overwhelmed with the excellence of the game, in terms of the controls or the rules of gameplay, but he got better at it very quickly, and it was certainly better than Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

Go go go!

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

Continuing on the Dead or Alive theme, Matt had noticed Xtreme Beach Volleyball on my shelf, and asked if we could play it.

Now, I've never had much luck with this game. I can't get the hang of the actual volleyball at all, which means that I lose almost every game I get to play in the single-player game. And because I don't win, I can never persuade anybody to be my partner, no matter how many presents I give them. So I never get to play any more games.

In two-player, this was OK, but the volleyball is so woolly and your AI partner so unpredictable, that we got fed up pretty quickly. And I decided to show Matt how beach volleyball should be done.

Dead or Alive Ultimate (2)

... and, indeed, Dead or Alive 2 is a rather good game. The immediate differences in graphics and the way the game controlled made us play a number of matches, and we appreciated the way that some levels allowed us to move around and use the arena itself to cause damage to our opponent. Throwing Matt over the edge of the roof was great. Being hurled onto an electric floor wasn't quite as great.

Again, though, the fact that there are quite so many special moves makes the game a little intimidating, and while we were starting to get the hang of counter moves (pressing hold as the other person tried to punch or kick), it still seems that the game would require a lot of time to be invested in it to really appreciate the gameplay.

Dead or Alive Ultimate (1)

Fighting games are made for multiplayer.

I bought Dead or Alive Ultimate for a fiver when I saw it in a sale months ago, and had got so far as reading the manual and getting turned off by the huge lists of special attacks. I had put DoA1 into the Xbox before, but had never really played it.

Dead or Alive 1 looks awful - really bitty, poor textures, poor fighting arenas, and low polygon counts. And the framerate's all over the place too. As for the actual fighting mechanic, it seemed far too slow and restrained, with joypad commands having little effect on what happened onscreen.

Not a huge success. But I did remember reading that the real meat of the compilation was on the Dead or Alive 2 disc ...

Mario Kart Dual Swearing

After lunch, we broke the "not played" rule and played some Mario Kart DS, single-cart multiplayer. Matt was a great fan of the SNES game, apparently, and he seemed to really love the DS update. With the exception of the blue shell, of course.

I was impressed with the way that the single-cart system works. Tracks were downloaded really quickly, and there wasn't too long a wait in the first place. Matt was restricted to playing as Shy Guy, but I could choose any kart and character I wished.

Matt claimed that I chose an unfairly fast character and kart, of course. But I didn't - Luigi and his standard kart hardly set the world on fire.

We had to stop playing in the end because my DS battery started to drain - red flashing lights are a bad sign. Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much of Friday night online in Animal Crossing. Oh well.

Wetrix+

I played a bit of this when I first got it, but only in single player, and it seemed just a little too complicated so I soon got disinterested.

To start with, multiplayer seemed a little tame. We were just building up our own sides, basically playing the single player game simultaneously. Matt had played the game before, and explained some of the nuances - the number of pools, the use of the bombs and rain and so on. Some of these things didn't matter in multiplayer, however.

But then it all changed. I pressed the Y button by accident, and sent across an 'ice attack'. Matt sent back an 'earthquake attack'. We realised that the meter along the bottom of the playing field built up over time, and allowed you to influence your opponent's playing field.

And it really unbalances the game. While you can send over water, ice and earthquake attacks, the best thing to do is just to continue to build it up until you can send over a bomb attack - which drops a few bombs on the playing field, opening massive holes and draining most of the water out. And your opponent probably loses instantly.

I'm sure that if we were more skilled, we'd be able to prevent losing immediately after such an attack, but as it was it pretty much killed the game. Shame.

Matt played single-player while I did some lunch, and got ten pools at one point, and lots of rainbows. He considered himself to 'rock'.

Charge 'n' Blast

Another Dreamcast game which I'd never played in multiplayer - in fact, I'd only ever played this once, and gave up after five minutes after it was just a bit too hard.

However, in multiplayer it shines. This is a out-and-out arcade game, with your movements limited to a single plane, and you having to concentrate more on where you're shooting than where you're standing. You can't just shoot everything though - you must first select which weapon to charge up (using X, Y or B on the joypad), then fire it with A. You can fire immediately, but it's best to wait for the charge meter to build up to the maximum.

The reason it works so well in multiplayer is that you can arrange to use different weapons at the same time, allowing some experimentation rather than having to sit with the boring ordinary single rocket over and over again. And you can work well as a team, with one member concentrating on where the vulnerable points of enemies are, while the other watches out for incoming attacks and shouts for both to move.

Pretty shallow, then, but good fun.

But the absolute best part of the game lies in the options screen: You can choose to turn 'viblation' on or off. Viblation. Hahaha.

Pod 2

During the day, my friend Matt visited my flat while his girlfriend went shopping with my wife. I think we got a better deal. We decided to play some games which either I'd never played before, or which I'd played very little and not in multiplayer.

First up, we played Pod 2 on the Dreamcast. What fun we had, seeing how the options screen allowed you to limit the online communications to 28.8k. And then we started to play.

There were some downers, indeed. The track was horribly foggy so that it was difficult to see where you were supposed to be going. Some of the cars handled like ... well, a ton of concrete. It was difficult to work out how weapons worked and how they could be used. It was difficult to stay on the track, without going really slowly ... and then you never made any of the jumps. And there were no other opponents.

Yet in multiplayer it was pretty fun. Once we'd got the hang of which pickup did what, and how to use mines and not crash, the game became a lot more strategic. And once we'd found cars which did actually turn when you pushed a direction, it got even better.

I got this for £1.99, I suspect long after the online servers had closed down. But it was pretty fun to play, and I think we got my money's worth in the half an hour we played for.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: turnip situation improving

I managed to get out last night and sold half of my turnips in Arkham, courtesy of Dante, for 250b each. This more than covered my investment, and I kept some in case I got access to a 400b+ price.

This morning Nook offered 62b. This afternoon, he's offering 60b.

I need to find somewhere else to visit tonight ...

Animal Crossing: Wild World: turnip situation desperate

68b this morning, 66b this afternoon. I hope someone's online tonight.