Burnout Paradise: online shenannigans

Having been turned off only by the size of the single player game, I was more than happy to join the UGVM gang online. It's a completely different game when you're playing with people you know, driving around the same city and randomly crashing into them. The races from point-to-point were great fun (even if the game did glitch and give me an old banger, when everyone else was in an F1 car), and marked man events - where everyone tries to takedown one nominated player - led to hilarious carnage.

A few days later, I went online by myself, and it was still fun - just not as much. But it helped me to get a few more achievements, and I'm now over 10,000G. I may need to play more Wii games to compensate.

World of Goo HD: factories and virtual worlds

I played World of Goo on my Mac some time last year, but found it a little too tricky to control, with my mouse skills not up to the fast speeds needed. On the iPad, it's a different story. I've been making my way through the story, and have completed the first three chapters now, moving onto a strange virtual world where it's seemingly less about creating structures as it is about flicking goo balls between parts of the level. I'm not sure I approve.

However, the other game within the game, of building a tower of goo, is very addictive indeed. It's made all the more so since you can constantly see a cloud just overhead representing someone else's tower - and you want to build just a little further to beat it. I've got 200 goo balls in my playground now, so am starting to reach a fair height.