Pokémon Pearl: down t'pit

I'm getting tired of encountering geodudes now. I chose Chimchar as my starter, which means I have a very cool pokémon other then the fact that he's a bit rubbish against rock-types. Luckily, I've levelled him up to the point now that he's learnt Mach Punch, so he's at least partially effective, and Shinx and Machop can help him out. So I've got the coal badge, after hassling the gym leader in the mine, and am now trying to battle my way through a big cave thing to get to the next city. I hate caves; finding your way around a maze is OK but when you're being interrupted every now and then for a random battle, it's a little tiring.

Anyway, Pokémon Pearl is great, really. The game mechanics are pretty similar to the previous games, of course, but it's so much prettier and the touch screen is generally well used for the copious menus, particularly in battles. Outside, though, the traditional controls seem to be the focus, which is a bit odd, particularly given the depth of some of the items menus. I'm sure it'll make sense in time ...

Essential Sudoku DS: a brick wall

And it's not my fault.

There's a puzzle (around #585) which requires guesswork, I'm sure of it. I've tried three possible methods and they've all failed. I can't be bothered any more.

Plus I bought Pokémon Pearl at lunchtime. Yes, I know, I've not completed Sapphire yet. Whatever.

Bomberman LIVE: red bomber, one more!

I tried out the demo last week, and last night I bought the full game. And played it a lot.

It has two main drawbacks. Firstly, the Xbox 360's d-pad is a bit spongy and inaccurate, so it can be tricky to control your character. This isn't helped by the faux 3D perspective which means your character's head overlaps with the row of the playing field above where you're standing - making it a bit tricky to work out when you're in the path of a bomb and when you're not.

The second drawback is common with almost all games on Live. American teenagers who disconnect when they lose. Last night I played in six tournaments, and finished two. And two of them didn't get past the first game, when the host lost.

I wasn't too down though. I won a tournament, 5-3-1-1, which was very pleasing indeed.

Essential Sudoku DS: 500!

It's about all I play on the train now. I'm well beyond puzzle 500 now, and progressing faster and faster.

I bought Me and My Katamari for the PSP when I was in Bahrain, and haven't even opened it yet.

Burnout Revenge: checking traffic

I'm in two minds about this.

In Burnout Revenge (and, I believe, its predecessor, though I've not played that) you're able to hit most traffic going the same way as you without it triggering a crash. In previous games, any contact would lead to the game resetting you on the road and you losing time. You had to choose between driving on the correct side of the road and being able to more easily avoid cars while missing out on building up your boost bar, and driving on the wrong side of the road, getting bonuses to build up boost but at the same time having traffic madly dashing towards you. In this game there's no choice to be made. Hitting other cars up the backside gives you just as much boost bonus, and hardly slows you down at all - certainly not enough to offset one or two crashes.

This makes the game a lot easier. I've already unlocked up to level seven of ten (although I'm trying to complete each level, so I've only raced a little beyond level four). But it's a lot more fun, in a mindless immediate rush way.

And it's fantastic in high-definition. Really, really fantastic.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter: fighting in Mexico

It's a bit tricky.

Having said that, I've made some good progress, and haven't killed off my entire team too many times. The future setting gives you some fun gadgets to play with, including a head-up display which identifies friends and foes. But there are still some limits ... how come I can heal my team, or can instruct them to heal each other, but if I get shot they can't heal me? Why can't I swap guns with others? And why are they happy to run through a hail of bullets just because I told them so?

I've rescued the Mexican president now, though we're not out of the danger area completely. I suspect something else is about to happen given my team's apprehension ...

Forza Motorsport 2: like Gran Turismo, but fun

Although I got this along with my Xbox 360, I've been rather daunted about starting it. It's a huge game, with countles cars and tracks, and the career mode just seemed to require a lot of commitment. Even online is just full of people taking the game too seriously, as evidenced by the posts on Internet message boards.

But, you know, I'm glad I at least started to play the game. It's another racing game on the 360, yes, but it's probably even better looking than Test Drive Unlimited, and it's got a far better driving model. The structure of the game's not as innovative, granted, but this is a serious driving simulator, and it plays like one.

Paper Mario: the whole castle's been kidnapped

What a surprise. Peach has been kidnapped. Again. Mario must rescue her. Again.

The roots of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga are evident here, from the action-based turn-based battles to the item system. It's probably about as funny, possibly more clever, and the paper-thin characters are really quite clever.

I'm worried this'll get lost among all my other games and other stuff that's happening. I might have to put it on the front page of my Wii Channels to encourage me to play it.

Test Drive Unlimited: silver shame

A whole bunch of surprises here, indeed.

Yes, I have an Xbox 360. I bought it last Friday, before I went to the Dome for an evening out, and before our games day on Saturday. I'd just been paid for the first time in my new job - indeed, the same new job that's left me rather busy and with a lack of games diary updating time - so I took the leaving present from my old job (HMV gift vouchers), plus the pay I got for the day of holiday I didn't take before I left, and got the premium version of the console, along with Forza 2 and Spiderman 3 plus a remote control thingie, for £280. I traded Spiderman 3 in straight away in the Gamestation in Orpington for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Burnout Revenge.

All of these games are great - although Forza may be just a little too realistic for me to get good at. And Burnout has just too much locked at the start, which was very frustrating when we tried to play it multiplayer on Saturday.

But the star of the show so far for me is Test Drive Unlimited. Playing through an HDTV, it looks stunning, and the whole game's really well structured. I've now got two cars - an Audi TT and an E-Type - and have been driving around the island competing in races and speed tests. Last night for the first time I got a silver instead of a gold in one of the latter - I'll have to retry it later with a car with better acceleration. I've already found where you can buy a Caterham.

The way it's tied in with Xbox Live is marvellous. Driving around to get to events, you see other player just driving their own way. You can challenge them at any time - but given my current slow transport I've not done so. But you can knock them off the road. Of course, I only do so when provoked ...

Loco Roco: oh my god, the racism

I found this for £15, and bought it on the spot. Why is Gamestation still charging £35 for it?

It's got so much charm. It's one of the few games I'll bother using my headphones for, because the music is sublime, with the locorocos singing along in a gibberish voice.

I've just about finished world four now, and have met a number of different locoroco types - different colours, and they sing differently. The black ones are a bit gollywog-like, and sing rappy music. Stereotypical!

Jungle Strike: completed!

The penultimate level was rather hard, but I managed to get through it with only a few restarts. Possibly the most frustrating aspect was the limited fuel supplies, and a few missions which didn't tell you where they were located. For those I had to fly around for ages until I found them, then restart from the end of the previous mission to fly directly there. Not in the spirit of the game, maybe, but I don't care.

So I captured the drug lord, and the madman, and all was well. I went to Washington and met the president, and then it all went wrong ... despite the US's amazingly paranoid immigration policies, somehow someone had managed to sneak 40-odd tanks into the country in their suitcase, and the two enemies had escaped custody.

So I had to protect Air Force One ... well, that's what it was called, but it was a helicopter ... as it fled the city, then go around and clean all the enemies up. And it wasn't actually that hard. The hardest part was not crashing into buildings. Destroyed the armoured transports, then the coach stolen by the drug lord, and the oil tanker stolen by the madman. How daft. Knowing that there's a big helicopter with big guns searching for you, surely the last thing you'll steal is a large, slow moving lorry with a big barrel of oil on the back.

It's a shame that EA Replay doesn't include Urban Strike. I've been led to believe that the third game in the trilogy was set in 2001 and involved terrorists crashing planes into buildings in US cities. I suppose its lack of rerelease is sort of understandable ...

Essential Sudoku: 200%!

I've finished the second batch of puzzles now, all of which were to do with scientific or medical equipment. Generally they were all a bit easier, apart from a few which were generally blank with a diagonally-orientated picture, like a chromosome. I just couldn't work out where to start there ...

Essential Sudoku: 100%!

100%, that is, on the first set of 100. I'm now 12.6% through the entire game. I have so far come across one puzzle which I think was a bit ambiguous in one area - I think there could have been two solutions depending on how you solved a block of six - it could have looked like a S or a Z and would have still been correct. I could be wrong, though.

It's a bit boring to read about, though.

Canis Canem Edit: greasy burgers

40% through, and I've just started chapter four. If anything the game's a little easier now, since most of the groups around the school have 100% respect for me, and so don't try to beat me up all the time. It's only the athletes that cause me hassle.

I've also finished photography classes, and have only one workshop class still to go. I've tried it a few times and filed, and unfortunately it feels like it was the game's fault for not picking up my inputs correctly which makes it more frustrating.

Essential Sudoku: not essential

Travelling home on Saturday night after Matt's Eurovision party (at which, unlike the rest of the world, Serbia didn't win - because their song was rubbish), I opened up the DS to carry on with my picross games. I completed the one I was on, number 93, and then decided to try a sudoku puzzle instead - so I quit out of the picture puzzle section.

"The data is unreadable or corrupted. All save data will be deleted."




Luckily I enjoy these puzzles, and have now redone the first 40-odd (quite quickly, since I've worked out a few new techniques to use) and done around 20 in the second set of 100. But still.

Essential Sudoku: a bigger challenge

Rather worryingly, I've now read that there are not just 200 picross puzzles, but 1000 of them.

I've done 69.

Essential Sudoku: not sudoku

The game's called Essential Sudoku, but the first item on the menu isn't the number puzzle, but the picture puzzle. This is the first time I've played picross, and I don't know why it's taken me so long, because this is brilliant.

The idea behind picross is that you have to work out which spaces are coloured and which are not, having been told the pattern that occurs in each row and column. For example, you'll be told that in a row there's a line of five blacks, then a red, then two blues. There may, however, be gaps between these blocks - and that's what you've got to work out.

Over the weekend I've played loads of this, which is rather surprising given that I've not really had that much free time. I'm hoping that the game itself wears the battery of the DS down quickly, since I've had the DS die on me twice - both times at around 3am. It's horribly addictive. There appear to be 200 puzzles, and I've done around 45 so far - and they're getting harder - so it should last me a few weeks at least. Luckily, there's another picross game coming out for the DS on Friday ...

Oh, and I've completed two of the sudoku puzzles. Two.

Games by the coast

Over the back holiday, I went down to the coast with Matt, Gaby and Andrew, for a break away from London. We walked along the beach; we visited a vineyard; but most importantly, we played games.

We would have played Wii Sports, but when I opened the box I realised that it was still in my parents' Wii. Horror. We had plenty to get on with, though.

We played Buzz!: the BIG Quiz and Buzz!: the Sports Quiz. I did better on the former, due in no small part to my lack of sports knowledge. Quite a fun game, though the presentation started to grate after a bit. Mr Buzz sounded very little like Jason Donovan.

We played Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. I pointed out the three or four minigames worth playing. We were in hysterics at the hurdles.

We played Wii Play. Andrew beat Matt quite comprehensively at pool.

We played Singstar. Oh, did we play Singstar. Waking up on Monday morning, I could barely manage a whisper. We did get Matt singing. We got Andrew singing to pop songs that he claimed he'd never heard. He claimed to have never heard "I Think We're Alone Now". That was the point that we knew he was fibbing. Gaby and I did some fabulous duets. I think we were both out of key to the same extent. We drank wine and whisky - not together, obviously.

We played Guitar Hero the next morning. I really am quite rubbish.

Pokémon Sapphire: aimless wandering again

My main team's all at around level 40 or just above now, and I very much doubt that's good enough to face the Elite Four. So instead I've been exploring, clearing the sea routes of trainers and so on. Then I went around the map to the daycare centre, to see how the poochyena I'd left there was getting on. It had gone up to level 20, so I took it out and battled with it to level it up once more so it would evolve. Which it did.

I really don't know what to do now. I don't want to go to the Elite Four and fail over and over again like I did in LeafGreen. But it's a bit dull with no aim. I did think of trying out the pokémon contests, but I can never do very well at those. I really don't understand what goes on, and I think that pokémon who are good for the battles may not be the best for the contests.

I get the feeling that there's loads around to do - I've heard about breeding, for a start - but really I'm going to have to go and get stuck again, aren't I?

Pokémon Sapphire: what's a shell bell?

I finally caught a relicanth, and then my adventures took me to a cave just off of Route 125. Inside was a man who told me that if I found four salts and four bells in the cave, he'd make me something. So I went exploring. All through the cave were staircases that started halfway up the cliff face, and I couldn't find any way of getting to them. I looked around and found four salt piles, and a few other goodies, but I was sure I'd missed something since there was no way of getting to the blue ball things (which I assumed were the shells). I explored loads, made more annoying by the frequency of pokémon attacks.

In the end, after a long time of looking, I gave up and went back out of the cave. And then I had a change of heart, and went back in to check the old man wouldn't just accept the salt. For some reason the cave was flooded. I have no idea why.

But this meant I could just walk up the top staircases and collect the shells, and on giving them to the old man he made me a shell bell. Whatever one of those is.