Pokémon LeafGreen: elite for nothing

I tried to beat the Elite Four again.

And failed again.

It wouldn't be so bad, but I get loads of experience from getting past each of them. The problem is that I'm a bit short of funds, and so can't really go back to the beginning and retry with newly-levelled-up pokémon, since I'll have run out of the essential potions and other healing stuff to make my pokémon able to fight the next battle.

I think I'll have to do some more levelling up, and fundraising.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Oozium

Horrible stuff. You have to make sure that you'll be able to finish it off in one go before moving next to it, otherwise one of youtr units is going to be killed. And that's not a good thing, especially when it's your megatank.

The first map where you fight Oozium has fog of war turned on. This makes it even worse, since an ambush can be potentially deadly. Having got through that mission with an S-rank (dopping only two points on technique), the next one's massively intimidating. A desert, with about 20 Ooziums (Oosia?) scattered around. I went off and played in the war room instead.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Pivot Isle

More colons are better.

I just played Pivot Isle, a War Room map in AW:DS. I got an S rank, first time through, obliterating my opponent with no mercy shown. It was another map really suited to the Colin/megatank combination, but even before I could afford my first megatank I'd taken the centre island almost completely and had positioned two normal tanks on the southern bridge to stop the blue army getting past. That started the money rolling in, and production of megatanks in the south and on the centre island started soon after.

Bish bash bosh. 290/300 - and I think I was just a day over.

Sonic Heroes

Sonic Adventure was great. Sonic Adventure 2 was also great - I even enjoyed the crystal searching that everyone else seemed to despise. However, there was one level that I got fed up of - it involved Sonic being blasted around by cannons and then missing a grind rail. I got fed up of the grind rails.

How overjoyed I was, therefore, to see the grind rails make a reappearance in Sonic Heroes. But they've made them even better. No longer can you just jump and land near them, and the game gives you the benefit of the doubt. No, now you can jump and even pass through them without the game registering. Sometimes you have to stand next to the start and press B, but that doesn't always work. Very odd.

And boss battles. In the good old Sonic games, you could watch the boss for a while, avoiding his attacks, working out when and where he was vulnerable. Sonic Heroes has to tell you, and more to the point Sonic Heroes has to tell you because half the time the camera hasn't managed to get Robotnik on the screen. Dire.

Yet I'm enjoying the game - it has a certain carefree easiness to it which means you don't mind dying a few times through random issues, since you know you'll get past that bit sooner or later. There a lot of speed and destructiveness and fun. As long as there are no grind rails.

Advance Wars: Dual Striking

Ten hours' play now (nearly), and I've reached mission 15 in campaign. The problem is that it looks like a big mission, and I've not built up enthusiasm to tackle it. Especially since he's got a megatank and loads of rockets, and there's fog of war which I hate.

So instead I've been playing some of the war room maps. Two A ranks and two S ranks so far, which I'm quite pleased with. I do like the megatanks - they give a new strategy for some of the maps where there are limited movement possibilities. Colin's a much better CO in this game too, since the big expensive units become more affordable.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Predictable, I know.

I bought this yesterday lunchtime. At the time of writing, I have played the game for three hours and ten miutes in total, which is impressive given the fact that most of last night was spent unpacking and washing from the honeymoon.

It's a bit confusing. At first, it almost seemed as if they've broken the game, with the addition of tag team tactics, and altered unit abilities and so on. I'm sure that Md Tanks can now move a shorter distance. Some of the new characters are a little suspect too, with odd CO powers. Still, there's plenty of time for it to improve - or time for me to get used to its quirks.

One mission in particular intrigued me. The enemy had a piperunner - a sort of big gun thing - but it was sat on a single piece of pipe a little way from my bases. I was able to build two tanks and send them down to destroy the piperunner in a single turn. As a result, I still know very little as to the piperunner's abilities - what damage can it do; can it actually move? I'd have thought that the idea of introducing new bits a piece at a time was to give an idea of how they worked, but in both this example and the first Black Hole tag-team match, I only learnt the name. Very odd.

Maybe I'm just too good. Doubtful, seeing as Kieron always wins.

I do like the stylus control, though. There was nothing wrong with the GBA games' controls (and considering they've had around 20 years to refine the games, that ought to be no surprise), but the touch screen suits it perfectly.

I'm back

So, what gaming went on during the honeymoon?

Er, what videogaming went on during the honeymoon? Not too much, as expected. I played about 15 hours of Pokémon Sapphire, which is great but pretty similar to Yellow/LeafGreen; I taught Sammi loads of tricks and got her up to the Master level for obedience trials and agility tests; and I bought Meteos and played that loads, because it's great fun.

For once I may have to wear my headphones on the train. Normally I just turn the music down, but Meteos's music is great and really adds to the game.

Not that I'll be playing Meteos any more. For I have just bought Advance Wars: Dual Strike. My life is about to disappear again, I fear.