Pokémon Pearl: j'ai Palkia

My quest up the mountain led me to Team Galactic summoning a legendary pokémon, Palkia. My long trip had left my pokémon weak, and when I was challenged by the two lackies, fighting alongside Jay, I only just defeated them. Luckily, Jay then healed my pokémon (why couldn't he do that in the first place?) before I took on the boss. He was tough, with pokémon around five levels stronger than mine, but I beat him and he ran off with his tail between his legs.

Palkia was sitting there. I healed up, and went to fight. Luxray hit with Thunder first, paralysing Palkia and taking off 25% of its energy. But a heavy hit left him with only 5HP left, and I switched to Infernape (killed in one hit, after throwing a Flame Wheel which caused virtually no damage) and then Gyrados. I threw one ultra ball, which Palkia escaped from, but he didn't kill Gyrados that time. I threw another ultra ball, and he didn't escape. I was amazed.

Maintenant, j'ai une pokémon legendaire.

Pokémon Pearl: erm ...

So much for this gaming diary. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing when I last played Pokémon Pearl, so I looked up the last entry here, which told me I had just beaten a gym leader and had six badges. In the game, I've got seven gym badges and no gym leader in sight.

I've worked out what to do next though, and have just beaten Team Galactic's boss, and freed three pokémon that he was experimenting on. They just disappeared, though - I hope I get to catch them again later ...

Bangai-O Spirits: story and best completed!

There are three main modes in Bangai-O Spirits - the story mode, a group of levels called "Treasure's Best", and a larger bunch of levels which aren't quite as good. The categorisation works quite well.

The story mode acts as a tutorial to the rest of the game, although it gets quite hard towards the end, with quite funny and self-referential story segments interspersed. The reference to taking the game to the second-hand shop when it was finished was most amusing.

The Treasure's Best levels are quite shooty and action-packed. Some of them start with far too many enemies on screen, and an immediate need for a smart bomb. There's a load of slowdown, but it's not clear if that's on purpose or not. I'd guess it is, because on the rare occasion that I've managed a 100x4 (a hundred bullets, at four times the normal size), the screen's paused for a good second before restarting.

I'm still working through the puzzle levels, and I'm probably halfway through. Some take ages to complete; some are over in a couple of seconds. Some are great, others not so.

And I've not even tried to make my own levels yet ...

Mr Driller Drill Spirits: not deep enough

Still nowhere near the bottom of the Egyptian 1500m level, despite loads of tries. I need to not panic so much.

Mario Kart Wii: are you there? Hello?

I can appreciate that, when playing against strangers, a lack of voice chat can be a good thing. The absence of whiney American teenagers screaming in your ear is a blessing. But when you're playing against friends, it becomes a little soulless.

We've found ways around it. When I play Kieron and John at one of the DS's online games, we set up a Halo 3 lobby on Xbox Live, and use that to talk amongst ourselves. In fact, in a couple of days' time that won't be necessary, since Microsoft are finally implementing party chat on their new dashboard.

This evening I played online Mario Kart Wii against George and Marty, and I had to put my mobile on speakerphone just so we could have a conversation during the game. Rubbish. The game wasn't though - a fair smattering of wins from both sides paying testament to Nintendo's balancing policy, with several close finishes. Great fun.

I then went offline and completed two of the 100cc cups. I still can't get better than a silver on the last of the new tracks though - Rainbow Road kills it every time.

Essential Sudoku DS: (picture puzzles) completed!

Wow.

After hours of effort, Essential Sudoku DS is finally over. Well, the picross puzzles - I'm not going to do the sudokus.

So, what do you think the last puzzle was? Well, let's see ...


Last puzzle! How exciting!

Lots of colours. It looks like it'll be quite spectacular. Let's see, where to start? Well, the sixth column sums to 14 plus one blank, so we know how that fits in. We can see the seventh row too. Hmm, this is rather easy ...

Erm, what is this? I was thinking that at least we'd have a picture of a trophy as the last puzzle. I mean, that would have been obvious, yes?

But no. A pie chart. Great.

Essential Sudoku DS: 25 to go

Indeed, I am now on puzzle 975, and the last few have actually been quite easy with one or two exceptions. Some of the pictures are just dire, though. I know I'm not really playing to see the pictures, but rather to just solve the puzzles, but it looks like not everyone at the development studio was a talented artist ...