Anyway, somehow I feel like I haven’t gamed hugely but having had a look, I appear to have gamed quite a bit, with plenty to come too! I’m going to be lazy tonight (after all, it’s hot and I’m lethargic) and just stick some headings down instead of ‘skillfully’ leaping from subject to subject in an intelligent fashion.

New games mostly untouched
A couple of weeks ago I did a trade for a couple of games, so I now have Halo Wars (the shiny Limited Edition one at that) and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in my posession. The terrible thing is I’ve still not got round to playing either of these! I don’t want to simply play them for 30 minutes then forget about them so I’m waiting until I can devote some proper time to them. A similar thing has happened with Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Well, partially. I pre-ordered it ages ago for £17.99 so despite some reservations, I kept the pre-order and it arrived on time. The problem is after 6hrs or so, I just can’t get into it. I think that maybe I would eventually but I don’t feel I’ve got the time or inclination to put into it right now. So I traded it in this morning for £22 so a bit of a profit there. Not much, but it makes sense rather than having it sitting there depreciating away. I will play it in the future, just not sure when.

Bargain!
I managed to pick up Guitar Hero: World Tour for the princely sum of £15. My local supermarket had them labelled up as £38 but thanks to a tip off online, once scanned through they show up as £15 so I went for it. I know it’s not as good as Rock Band 2 (and it’s not in fact!) but it’s worth it at that price for the sake of new songs. Actually, I didn’t even pay for it as my Mum treated me as she enjoys Rock Band/Guitar Hero as well, so excellent going. I’ve done well with my bargain hunting when it comes to Rock Band related stuff. I paid £50 for the Rock Band Instrument Set, borrowed Rock Band 1 off a friend, paid £27.50 for Rock Band 2 and £15 for Guitar Hero: World Tour so I did well I think. Rock Band is brilliant but I wouldn’t have been happy paying the full price for everything!

Reviews
I’ve just finished one iPhone game review with another one on the way soon. As well as that, I have Sacred 2 to review as well as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, both for the 360. I’ve not had a chance to have a proper play of either yet, but expect some thoughts here or on twitter soon.

Movie tie ins galore
I seem to have played a lot of movie tie in games lately. It wasn’t really a conscious effort, it just seemed to happen and it was mostly thanks to the rental service I have with Lovefilm. So in the past week or so, I’ve played both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Monsters Versus Aliens. I completed Wolverine over the course of a few days. It was the ideal rental. It is mindless and has no replay value but is still good fun and ideal for a few days entertainment. For the achievement whores, amongst you, it’s very generous with points. I managed to acquire well over half of the achievements without even trying. The only real irritants were in the latter stages of the game. Moments where the camera was irritating, or frustrating button mashing sequences. But other than that, it was leisurely but enjoyable. So far, Monsters Versus Aliens seems quite similar. Again, not very difficult, again lots of achievements, and again quite fun. I haven’t completed it yet but currently I would recommend it for those with children. I’ve also just had Wanted arrive which will hopefully be ok although I’ve heard some very dodgy reviews for it.

First up, work wise, a few new pieces available: a BattleForge preview, an article on the Rise of the iPhone and a review of Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe. Plenty to keep you busy!

Future work that should be available next week will consist of my Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon review and the much anticipated (admittedly by me rather than anyone else) write up on my experiences at Capcom Headquarters! Yup, come Friday, I’ll be heading to London for the day to see Resident Evil 5 for myself and to interview Capcom’s Ben LeRougetel about the game. If you’ve got any questions that you’d like to see asked, post over at the XboxGameZone forums for a chance

I treated myself after a month of no game purchases with the Guitar Hero:Aerosmith bundle. I’ve wanted a wireless guitar for a while but never been able to justify it, but for £32.99, I finally couldn’t resist. I’m very glad I bought it, for one thing because the offer’s now vanished, but also because it’s excellent fun. I can see why the hardened Guitar Hero fans aren’t so keen, it is much easier than GH2 or 3 but for me (a very bad Guitar Hero player), it’s great as I can actually survive more than five seconds on Medium! I’m hoping to practice lots on this then move back to GH3 and give that a whirl on Medium. Oh and the guitar feels a noticeable improvement upon my wired one.

Twitter seems to have brought out the uber geek in me. I can now admit to having twittered in my sleep…..yes my sleep. I am admittedly a bit strange when asleep. I’ve often sleepwalked around the house, I regularly talk and laugh in my sleep. I’ve replied to texts in my sleep (coherently at that), and perhaps most embarrassingly of all, I once stripped a double bed that my ex and I were sleeping in at the time, and only stopped when he asked me what I was doing. However, I can now add twittering to that impressive list. What was the twitter you may ask:

Just woke myself up dreaming of Twitter, how random 4:19 AM Feb 4th from twitterrific

Stunningly intelligent wasn’t it? Still, what do you expect at 4.19am!

On that note, I need some sleep. I’ll try not to twitter in my sleep again

So what’s happened in this time? Not a huge deal sort of. I’ve written reviews for play.tm, namely Darkness Within, Moto GP 07, Tabula Rasa and F.E.A.R Perseus Mandate, with a review of Unreal Tournament 3 up soon; and a copy of Bladestorm for the 360 on the way to review.
Besides this, all I’ve really done is play Mass Effect which is awesome. Flawed but awesome.
There are many things that Mass Effect could have done better, some of the planets look near identical and I hate that bloody Mako vehicle, but the story was captivating which is all that matters in an RPG if you ask me.

And well that’s about it. I’ve played a touch of Guitar Hero 3 which was great, and I’m hoping Santa brings me it for Christmas.

Also of note, hopefully I’ll be soon contributing to The X-Box Domain so wish me luck for when that takes off!

There will be more content soon, just not right now because I have about an hour and 15mins left to play Mass Effect!

Been a productive few weeks though and the number of games I own have certainly increased!

In that time I’ve played 12 new games and I’m currently waiting for Eternal Sonata to arrive too.

In case you hadn’t guessed, it was my birthday over this period (last Tuesday to be exact) and many relatives sent me money which meant by the end of it all, I had £115 to spend! So I went games shopping on Sunday and returned with 3 new games to include alongside the 2 games my parents had bought me and a few arcade games I’ve picked up along the way. Also picked up Ghostbusters 1 and 2 on DVD which is awesome.

So games, games, games.
In no particular order:

Stranglehold – I played the demo of this Saturday night and instantly loved the simplicity behind it. So Sunday i picked up the collector’s edition (mainly because I like the tinned versions as I already own the Bioshock tin and Dead Rising tin). Funnily enough, now I’ve not quite settled into it. It’s fun, just maybe not as amazing as I thought it would be. Probably something I’ll play through once then trade in.
Either way, I’m up 25 points thanks to it, so far.

The Darkness – I didn’t know too much about this game but NokkonWud recommended this to me (when I say recommended, I mean he said ‘you must buy this or else’ ) and he’s usually right so I picked it up for £20. So far, it’s good. It’s keeping me interested but I can’t quite put my finger on why. I definitely like how it’s giving me achievement points gradually, it’s keeping my achievement whoreness keen. The story’s interesting and the graphics are sublime.
Currently I’m up to 150 points on it, just got to Chapter 2.

Flatout: Ultimate Carnage – I fancied another somewhat mindless game so got this alongside The Darkness in a 2 for £40 deal. I haven’t touched it much but figure it’ll be nice when I just want a quick 10 minute bash at something. I mainly went for it after playing it with DaveyPitch a couple of months ago. It was good fun, and I need some 2 player games in my collection I think.
Only got 10 points on this so far, like I said, I’m keeping it really for later on.

Condemned – Birthday present for me I played this while visiting friends in Liverpool. We all sat round the TV as I played through it, scaring the crap out of me as well as them. I wouldn’t have the nerve to play it on my own But it looked great, had tremendous atmosphere to it and was really impressive for a launch title.
Again I’ve not played it hugely but in this case I’m saving it for when I can devote a few days to it (probably a weekend) and simply play my way through it with no break. I’ve played the start of it and it’s instantly hooked me.
10 points here.

Blue Dragon – My other birthday present, Blue Dragon. I love RPGs, I’m a total nut for them so this was an obvious one for me. It’s a bit slow starting so far but I’m hoping it picks up soon. Again, one that requires a fair amount of time devoting to it, hence the paltry 10 points so far.

Besides these, I’ve also finally played Gun and it’s excellent! Really been enjoying it and surprised it hasn’t had better reviews. That was a nice 650 points so far, with more to do yet.

I also rented CSI – Hard Evidence which was exactly what I expected, a fairly average point and click game with incredibly simple achievements, so that was an easy 1k! It was good fun though, even if it did only last me a day.

Finally, I’ve acquired 5 new arcade games. 3 were free and the other two were just tempting me too much.
For free, I gained Robotron, Joust and Yaris. As soon as I played them all, I knew why they were free. Oh dear.

I then purchased Tetris Splash which was fun but probably not worth 800pts in hindsight but oh well. And finally the best arcade game I’ve ever played (with Puzzle Fighter and Zuma coming up strong behind it): Puzzle Quest. Such an amazingly addictive game and so much fun! It might have cost 1200 pts but it was worth every penny. Go download the trial NOW!

So 2020 points, not bad going.
I feel like right now is a great time to own a 360, I’ve got so many games to play and I’ve still got November to follow with Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4 and Guitar Hero 3 amongst others. Plus there’s still plenty from the October line up I wouldn’t mind owning.
If I feel that happy about the 360 line up, imagine how happy the Halo fans must feel!