That came about far quicker than I expected it to. I’ve not done that many side quests though, which might be why. I don’t know how far from complete this means I now am, but I’m guessing I’m half way there, perhaps?

First things to do as King: decide whether to execute my brother or not (I didn’t), then decide if I’m going to be an evil-for-their-own-good ruler or a loved-but-may-end-up-getting-everyone-killed ruler. This was mainly determined by my decisions on spending the castle funds, and since I went the “good” route, I’m now horribly overdrawn and somehow need to raise not only 6.5 million gold just to “win” against The Darkness (no, not the band), but also the 1.5 million or so I’m overspent by.

Or millions will perish. Sigh.

Now begins a tedious and dull run of making money before I can do the next bit of the story. Who thought that would be a good idea? Oh yeah, Peter Molyneux. Tch.

In other Fable news, I got married before becoming King, had a child (called Dave) and then moved my family into the castle once I was crowned.

It’s actually quite good so far. I’ve not played Fable II, so some of the initial story of this is lost on me. In addition, I have played the original Fable, and this doesn’t really play much like it. At least, it doesn’t seem to. It has been a while though.

So far, I’ve recovered my father’s music box (uh, right), and beaten the mercenaries (sparing their boss, who now seems to be an ally). Mostly though, I’ve been shaking hands with people, holding hands with people and trying to take them to bed, and playing Lute Hero. As you do.

I’m enjoying it, I think.

Bad points first, then. The default controls (with the remote and nunchuck) are rubbish. Thankfully, I have a swanky black Classic Controller Pro, and that works much better. Secondly, Pierce Brosnan has been replaced with cardboard actor and presence-less tool Daniel Craig. He’s so useless I found myself siding with Trevelyan, and was actually a bit disappointed that I had to kill him. Oh well. Finally, the use of the smart phone to hack and photograph was woefully underutilised and could have added so much more to the game.

Thankfully, none of that was really very important, and I enjoyed pretty much the whole game despite them. Even the took-me-by-surprise QTE bits, which I really had no idea were in the game. The action was fast, I didn’t get any slowdown, and some of the levels looked utterly fantastic. Juggling soldiers with the rocket launcher on one of the final levels was amusing too. I completely forgot it was “only” a Wii game. Definitely worth the fiver I paid for it, and probably worth several times that, in fact.

I haven’t played multiplayer (partly as I know it’ll be full of cheats – all Wii games are online), but I expect it would be ACE, simply so you can shoot Daniel Craig.

It is still excellent, and still the best Wario Ware title. Not that the others were bad – just that this one is the most pure. Or something.

Completed it today, and found it far easier than I remember it being on the GBA. I suspect that’s because part of me remembered what I was supposed to do in each game. Or I’m just a better gamer now (not true).

The last section of the game takes place in Central Park. Which has mostly been raised into the sky. As you walk (or run) through it, bits crumble away so paths are cut off and stuff. Except that barely affected anything. There are baddies to kill, or stealth past and ignore. Then you get to a section where there are stealthed baddies, except I had a suit upgrade that negated that, and they’re stupidly easy to kill – any that got close were punched in the face, and most got stuck trying to jump up to the platform I was on so were easy pickings for my gun. I don’t think I took any damage at all.

Finally, a tunnel opens. “The final boss?” I thought, “Or a huge fight at least?”. No. Nothing. Game completed.

Like they forgot to include a whole level or something. Damp squib. Oh well.

But I digress.

As a reward to myself for a full week of biking, I bought this with my hard earned miles. And it is lovely. I expected it would be nothing less, of course. I’ve played it a bit so far, and have just opened up World 4. It’s been very easy up to this point, although I’ve not managed to collect all the big coins in each level yet, and I missed one or two flags too, so I’m going to have to go back.

Really loving it so far. It’s a 2D-style Mario game, on a 3D game world. That is, it’s more like New Super Mario Bros than Mario 64, but it works really well. Nice blue skies too, which is always a plus point, as you don’t get them much these days…

Despite not really changing the formula all that much (aside from there being fewer soldiers to shoot and more aliens), somehow Crysis 2 has gone from mediocre to pretty actually fantastic. I’m not sure why.

I am now drawn into the story, and often with me a decent story is enough of a carrot to get me to progress. It’s not necessarily a great story but I do want to know what happens next, at least. I’m also on top of the controls, which are now not so overwhelming. I’m not struggling with ammo so much either, as I generally kill everything with stealth melee attacks rather than shooting stuff. All in all, much more fun than it was previously.

Currently, I’ve just caused the Otis building (I think?) to collapse. I don’t know how far into the game that is, but judging from the number of remaining locked cutscenes, I’d have to say I’m about 80% of the way through.

Just one main issue I have with it now: Why is it, that when you get shot too much, you die, but when you get launched a billion feet into the air, land on your head, get shot at by aliens, stomped on, then start to get organically deconstructed by a giant cockroach, you simply have to wait for your suit to reboot and all is well again? Hmm.

In this mode, you play through the plot of all the Dead or Alive series, one after another. Well, I say plot – it’s all a bit bizarre and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mind you, I’ve never really played Dead or Alive much previously so perhaps that’s why.

The 3DS game is fantastic. It looks amazing, and the fighting is fluid and as complex as you’d expect from “big console” beat ‘em ups. Lots of moves, combos, special moves, and techniques (blocks, throws, counters, etc.). I really enjoyed it. And not just because of the boobs and knickers. If I’d have known it was this good, I’ve have paid more for it and bought it earlier, but the £7 from Morrisons price? Bargain.

Pullblox (3DS)

Completed this a while back, but have gone back to finish some of the bonus levels that you unlock, and some of the user generated ones I’ve found strewn across the internets. It’s still lovely.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (360)

Returned to mop up a few more achievements and actually play some of the side missions and games I’d totally missed. There are still Cristina and assorted faction side missions to do, but I think I’m done with the game for now. It was excellent though – I just have other things to play!

Crysis 2 (360)

This was £7 in the Morrisons sales. I’m about 3-4 hours in, and haven’t really got used to the controls yet – every button on the pad seems to have seventy-three uses in various situations, or whether you press it or hold it down or double-tap it. The game itself seems like a mix of Half-Life 2, The Conduit, and Aliens vs Predator, with various sections, plot points and cut scenes ripped from each. It’s not bad, but I’m not feeling it yet. Mind you, I’m not a big fan of FPSes generally anyway. We’ll see. It looks gorgeous though.

Zen Pinball (3DS)

I’m useless at this. Shaman is my favourite table, but my high score is only a feeble 14 million or so putting me well down my friends’ leaderboard despite everyone else barely playing it as they all hate it (compared to the other tables, anyway). How do I get score multipliers? How can I stop being rubbish at it? Tch.

Mario vs Donkey Kong (3DS)

The GBA game, which I got free for being a Nintendo Ambassador. It’s a direct sequel to the Donkey Kong (’94) Game Boy game I was playing on the 3DS earlier in the year, and is very good indeed. There have been further sequels, but they’re a different sort of platform puzzler – more like Krusty’s Super Fun House. I liked that game, but I don’t like the others in the Mario vs DK series for some reason. You can see the way the series is going in this iteration, as one level per world is a “mini Mario” level, similar to what would become of the later games. I can cope with that though. Up to World 3 so far.

This fixes pretty much all of that. The levels are now more about creating the right items, rather than how or where you use them, and there is very little in the way of platforming. Since you now have adjectives to work with as well as nouns, there’s a lot more variety too, and I spent a good half an hour or more just on the title screen, creating “giant scary radioactive zombie dinosaur” and “tiny evil dead pink cat” and stuff like that.

It’s easier than the original (although I’ve completed it there are still a third or more levels left to do so it might get harder), but importantly it was more fun, and varied, and clever and funny. The fact you can choose to now control Maxwell directly with the d-pad rather than tap-to-move improves things exponentially too.

Although I’ve played online a bit (which was fun and worked really well), I’ve mainly been playing offline, completing the Grand Prix races. Today, I won the final 150cc cup, having done 50 and 100cc previously. It seemed a bit easier than the last Mario Kart games (the Wii one) I played too, but that could be due to me carefully choosing kart customisations.

Fantastic game, and will get a lot more play from me still even though it’s “over”.

Still, it was fun. Ish. Shame it didn’t carry on with another 8 worlds that were harder, as without them it was just too short and easy.

Of course, there are now the 50 or so bonus levels, and untold user-made levels to work through, so it isn’t the end really.

Fantastic game, well worth the £5.40 or whatever it was, and far more fun and much longer and more playable than Sonic sodding Generations.

Things started out surprisingly well. Classic Sonic’s first few levels were pretty good, actually, even if they did still feel like the physics were on the wonk. Even Modern Sonic’s levels were bearable for a while, but as the game progressed things just got worse and worse. I think the breaking point was when the game proudly punched me in the face with the line “Classic Sonic can now use Homing Attack!”. Sigh.

Things were at their worst for the re-rendition of Sonic Colours, particularly for Classic Sonic, with the level being full of bottomless death pits and required homing attack-to-grab sections where the moved failed to work properly half the time.

And the end boss? Not epic like in other Sonic games – just tedious. I did have all the Chaos Emeralds though (the special stages are not only endlessly repeatable whenever you want, but laughably simple) so had Super Sonic(s) for the fight. If that makes a difference.

Sure, there have been far worse Sonic games (pretty much all of them since Sonic Adventure 2, bar the GBA and DS titles), but that isn’t really a positive thing given how bad all the others were. Poor.

Unfortunately, you can’t do it unless you’ve completed the first Quest twice, when I’d only done it once. So, armed with 300 play coins, I set about doing it again. Surprisingly, I managed it with “just” 240 coins used, mainly because I had a White Cat exactly when I needed one, whereas before I wasted 100+ coins waiting for one. I also had a decent strategy too, using a Purple Cat (when I had one) first to poison the enemies the maximum number of times (one for each Hero), then Orange next (if possible) to add an extra attack to each of the remaining 8 Heroes, and finally using magic on any armoured ghost when my Heroes were only Level 1.

I also got lucky with some Green magic attacks – managed to wipe a load of HP off some of the ghosts (including the final one!) while they were napping. Ace.

Now I have all the original hats! Hurrah!

For the first two worlds, at least. I’ve no idea if it gets any better or worse after that as that’s as far as I got before I decided to return to Pullblox.

I’ve spent most of my time plundering the Lairs of Romulus, and also finishing off the remaining Leonardo’s Machines bits (although one still needs to be done), as well as mopping up all the feathers, some Borgia Flags, and lots of treasures. I’ve also tried completing the Shop Quests, but I’m still a few items short.

Alongside all this, I’ve also been sending my assassins off on missions, and they’ve all reached the highest rank now. Oh yeah, and I’ve grabbed a few more achievements – including the one for killing a guard with a broom. Ace.

That is, too many 3DS games. Too many! Who’da thunk that a few months ago? Other than me, I mean.

Pullblox is a simple puzzle game where you “pull” shaped bits of wall out of the back of the screen, then climb up them, pushing them in and pulling them out as necessary to progress. And it’s wonderful. It’s a great idea, it’s lovely and happy blue skies and stuff, and it even has a level editor where you can share levels with other people via QR code. Levels like these!

The former is really easy, and the latter is pretty hard!

At some point in the game, it says “Classic Sonic can now use the Homing Attack!” and I died inside.

I don’t want to talk about it.

I mean, I was expecting to finish it, of course – but I didn’t expect to play though Sequence 5 and get to the end and have “Sequence 9 Complete” come up. Turns out I was much further through the game than I thought. Since I’ve spent about 80% of the game “off-story”, that means the main story was very, very short compared to Assassin’s Creed 2. I don’t really mind as there’s been plenty to do (and I still have lots of Lairs and Machines and some of the DLC left as well), and I’ve spent well over 20 hours on it so far, but if I were just going for the main plot I’d be a bit disappointed, I think.

Still, it was fantastic. Although I hated the end bit with Desmond. It was like that bit in Prey that I didn’t want to play all over again. Tch.

Jumped straight back in and continued sending my recruits on missions and buying up property. Aces.