Mr Driller Online: not online

The Xbox 360's d-pad is rubbish, but even that can't take away from the magnificence of Mr Driller.

I only played this quickly last night after it had downloaded, just enough to complete the 100m and 500m levels.  There are items!  And odd flags!  One of the items looks stupidly useful - a full air tank.  I can forsee myself using that very often indeed.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations: cultural references

I'm halfway through the third case now, and it's very clever.  Confusingly, it appears to be a retrial when it should be an appeal, and there's a fake Phoenix around.

A computer programmer's been murdered, and it's difficult to get information out of his boss ...

Maya: "SuPer-Admin Restricted Desktop Access password-protected!?  What!?  This is madness!"
Phoenix: "No, Maya, that is SPARDA."

Mario Kart Wii: the French are pretty good

This was delivered on Thursday, and, what with me running the London Marathon tomorrow, I have the prefect excuse to stay in most of today and do little else but play it. I've completed the 50cc game, getting gold cups on all tournaments, though only one star rank and a few Bs and Cs. Apparently the ranking you get depends on the total time taken to complete the grand prix, which itself is highly dependent on the items that the computer uses against you, so that seems a little unfair. I'm now onto 100cc, for which you have to use bikes. PGR4, now this - the world is ending.

I've also been online for a fair few races, and have ended up with a score of 5100 (up from the starting score of 5000). You win points for coming in the top half of a race, and lose points for coming in the last half. For quite some time I was languishing in the 4000s, but a few victories over Dutchmen and Germans saw me elevated again. For some reason the French seem to be very good at this game. The best bit though is that it's not out in the US until the end of this month, so for a while we'll have blissfully few disconnects, cheaters, and idiots driving the wrong way around the track. Excellent.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations: blackmailing a blackmailer

So, I've finally finished the second case - all very complicated by the end, with plot twists and turns all over the place.  Who'd have thought that pink paint would be so important?  I'm glad to see the back of Luke Atmey though, he's one of the most annoying characters I've come across so far.

Project Gotham Racing 4: speeding across the Brooklyn Bridge

One of the most difficult events I've faced today was a speed camera event, where I had to go through four speed cameras and get a total sped of 440mph. All but one of the cameras was just after a sharpish turn. The one exception was placed at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I managed to get 185mph through it, in a TVR. Rather amazing.

I've managed to work out how to upload photos from PGR4 now as well. Rather idiotically, you can't upload ones that you've already saved; you can only upload them as and when you take them. After my stint in a TVR in career mode, this afternoon I was racing in a Jaguar.

In Tokyo, where an overtaking event was made all the more difficult by an opponent who refused to go slowly (you can see him in the background):


In Tokyo, where it was snowing and the wheels were spinning all over the place:


And in Las Vegas, where my car got infeasibly dirty:


You've got to love the purple and orange colour scheme.

Geometry Wars Galaxies: η clear

There was another of the difficult levels with the light and dark blue shapes; not a star this time but a cross. This one didn't take me quite so long, though, since I followed the same tactic as before, and found a place where I could hide and just watch out for things spawning behind me.

This morning I played through some of the planets in the theta galaxy, and have even managed a couple of golds. One on Rocduo, where I got 10million (the gold required 5million), and one on Flipente, where a score of 53million was not only four times that needed for gold, but is also the fifth best score in the world, according to the leaderboards.

That doesn't say much though. The leaderboards are idiotic, since you need to connect to Nintendo Wi-Fi individually for each planet. It really ought to be a one-off connection, where it takes a few minutes but downloads the current high scores for each and every planet at once. Especially given the nature of the DS, where the opportunities to connect to the Internet are rarer than with home consoles.

Still. Fifth in the world. Huzzah.