Say What You See (iOS)
A series of pictures with hidden clues to game titles, films, etc. Like a cross between Where’s Wally? and a cryptic crossword. There are number of “canvases”, and I’ve been playing the Arcade Games one. Completed it, but some of them were a complete pig. Like, which arcade game is denoted by a picture of a goat’s head on a piece of paper? No idea? Exactly.

Super Mario All-Stars (Wii)
I got this for my birthday. Yeah, it’s a bit cheeky being nothing more than the SNES Mario All-Stars cartridge on a Wii disc, but it is a collection of some of the best platformers ever. So there.

Little Big Planet (PS3)
One of the free “Sorry our security was crap, everyone – here, have some old games for free ‘cos everyone has stopped buying them now anyway” games from Sony. It took three thousand years to download, and I’ve played the tutorial level and a couple of other levels. Thoughts: it looks nice, but controls horribly. The into and out-of the screen moving (especially when jumping up) is rubbish. Sackboy’s physics feel wrong. The pop-up menu to access stickers and stuff is annoying, particularly when the camera zooms into your face meaning you can’t see where on the playfield you’re putting your stickers. I might get used to it all, but, y’know, I still have the woeful PS3 controller to contend with.

James Pond 2: Robocod (PS1 on PS3)
Free for the duration of my free month’s worth of PS+. And an utterly horrible, bastardised version of one of my favourite platformers ever – it’s even worse than the DS version. I never want to play it again.

Street Gangs (NES on Wii)
It’s like playing a retro version of Scott Pilgrim! Lovely game. Not far in though.

Muscle March (Wii)
Why didn’t I get this not-gay, manly game for manly men a long time ago? It’s like Hole in the Wall, only less camp! Amazing.

Lasercat (360)
The ugvm people recommended this Indie game as a sort of Jet Set Willy-alike. I can see what they mean, but the sparseness of the rooms (many of which are completely devoid of, well, anything) and the lack of things to collect (only 20 keys), in addition to the silly trivia questions, put me off a bit. I think I’d have enjoyed it more if JSW hadn’t been mentioned. It’s not bad, but not what I wanted.

Contra (360)
This XBLA game was on offer at 200 Microsoft Moon Points a few weeks ago, so I bought it. Never really was a fan of Contra (or “Probotector”, as I always knew it), but it’s fun, if totally impossible. Managed to get to the boss of level 3 before I ran out of credits.

It’s rubbish.

To be more specific, it’s a dull Chase HQ clone with awful stuttering problems (the game would pause for 5 seconds or more, sometimes!), a seemingly pointless handbrake turn (that rarely works anyway) and terrible rubber-banding. I played the first 6 events, didn’t really enjoy any of them, and decided not to play it again.

Yeah, it was only 59p, but that’s still too much.

As it is, The Rev died this week. Also this week, EA had a sale on the App Store, and Mirror’s Edge was reduced to 59p, so in some strange, possibly wrong, way – I bought it in tribute. Is that appropriate? Probably not. Would The Rev mind? I doubt it. Too late now, anyway.

Today, I played it from start to finish in one sitting. And it is glorious. Just like Run!, there are swipes to do different moves, and you can change running direction, wall run, climb, swing and do an alarming number of things you can in the “proper” game – all in 2D. It feels the same too, with the same graphical style and story. At 59p, it’s an utter bargain.

But I’ve completed it now. Sans emeralds, but the Special Stage is too ridiculous to attempt any more, and I don’t care.

Let us not speak of this game again.

Anyway.

It’s just Peggle. Again. And it’s as great as it ever was. And now I’ve completed it. Again. I’m not really sure what else there is to say?

In many ways, it does a lot right. Like, very right. Splash Hill, for instance – it’s ace. First level of Lost Labyrinth? Excellent. Mad Gear 3? Lovely. But some of it, like the nonsense of “get 100,000 points!” in Casino Nig^H^H^HStreet 2, and the AWFUL minecart of Lost Labyrinth 2 just make me want to smash things. They’re not hard, just rubbish.

It’s also disappointing that the whole game is just a remix of the previous games. They’ve literally just done new Green Hill, Casino Night, Labyrinth and Metropolis levels. On one hand, this is fine, but not when this is supposed to be a new sequel in the series – new levels that are similar to old levels (Angel Island/Green Hill, Metropolis/Scrap Brain) are OK, but the same levels with new layouts? Lazy. Same can be said for the bosses – they’ve actually reused the bosses from the previous games, just adding a bit of a twist after a few hits (which, if you’re quick, you don’t see in some cases). Not good enough, Sega.

On the subject of bosses, Sonic 4 suffers from The SuckySuck(TM) bit. That’s Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Cliché #1 on my list. For those not aware, it’s a Boss Rush just before the final boss. And is lazy.

Then there’s the homing attacks, which although sort of fit the game, shouldn’t really be there in the first place. They make an already easy game much too easy. However, due to the iPhone’s less than great touch controls, the attack did save me more than once.

Unforgiveable, however, are the bugs. Yeah, I seem to attrack bugs in games, but in fact they just annoy me more than most people who can just ignore them. The few minor ones I had (got stuck in a wall once, stuck in a rock once, glitched through loops multiple times, fell through a floor to my death once) weren’t too bad and are the sort of thing that happened in the original game occasionally too. The one that REALLY pissed me off, was on the end of game boss. His (presumably final) attack form took 5 or 6 lives to figure out a dodge for. Once I did, I dodged a couple of times, and then the game quit. That’s right – the game CRASHED on the end of game boss. Seems I’m not alone either – in searching for a fix, lots of matches on Google came up with the same problem – mainly for iPhone 3G devices, but also a few on 3GSeseses. Annoying. Very annoying.

Overall then, it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been, and for about 50% of the game I was having fun. It’s a shame Sega didn’t reel in the crap bits, and actually put a bit more effort into making it a proper sequel rather than a rehash. Mind you, given past form, perhaps that’s for the best.

I certainly will not be buying the XBLA version on Wednesday.

After a couple of days play (doing levels here and there) I completed it. There’s not a lot to say, really, except that as before, it’s addictive and frustrating in equal measure. And is only 59p! Er, so long as you’ve already bought Peggle (which was also 59p) of course.

And so it came to pass, it was the second iPhone game I completed!

Took about 3 hours in total, I’d say. Yes, I could have done it quicker, but I tried to get every insect on every level, so it took longer. So there.

Perhaps I should explain the game? OK then. You’re a spider, and by using various swipes you can jump around the rooms and environs of the manor house, spinning webs (you draw the edges, and it fills in the middle) in order to catch flies and other insects. Once caught, you eat them, which gives you more silk to make more webs. Eat enough in a single room, and you move on. Simple!

There are many puzzle elements to the game, in both how you create the webs (spanning large gaps, for example) and how you work the insects into them (e.g. trip a light switch to coax the moths out), but with no time limit and, for the most part, more than enough silk, the levels are more relaxing than taxing. Unless you hate spiders or something.

Lovely game. Now to play the other game modes!

And now it’s on the iPhone!

Amazing!  Surprisingly, it works really well. Controls are great (and I generally hate virtual d-pads and buttons), and pulling off tricks isn’t any harder than I remember from the Dreamcast and PC versions. There’s a bit of slowdown (though I got that on the PC a lot too), but nothing game breaking.

So far, I’ve got all bar the 100% goal on the Hangar, and around a third of the goals in the School. And it’s lovely.

I’ve completed all the levels on Earth, and can’t find any more to do, so am I done?

EDIT: It seems, according to GameFAQs, that yes – I’ve completed it. So I’m altering this post to reflect that

Flight Control
It’s only 59p, but it’s addictive like crack. The idea is (as will all the best games) simple – direct aircraft to the matching landing strip. You’ve got fast planes, slow planes, and helicopters, and you draw their flight path in. If they crash, game over. Great fun, hard, but with One More Go Factor 10.

Scramble
Like Boggle. Only free. I’m rubbish at it, but still keep playing.

The Secret of Monkey Island
My most expensive iPhone game so far at £4.99. It’s a remake (or rather, a reskinning) of the original game. I’m not very far in yet, mainly because I’m lost but also because getting used to the fiddly (at first) controls took ages. Looks great though. And it’s a “talkie” version!

Sonic the Hedgehog
I now own this for 8421654 different games platforms and 756467364612 times in total. I’ve only played one level so far though!

Tap Tap Revenge 2
Like Phase on the iPod, which in turn is Guitar Hero for the instrumentless. But it’s very good. The shaking moves are a bit hit and miss though, and although there are loads of free tracks for it, most of them aren’t ones I’ve heard of.

Dance Dance Revolution
59p! It was on sale so I bought it. It’s quite good fun, but a bit disappointing that there are only Konami tunes on there.

Harbour Master
Like Flight Control, only with boats. It’s a bit more different than that, but it still have the same addictive qualities. Made a bit harder as you have to manoeuvre the boats out as well as into the harbour.

Railroad Madness
Reasonably good puzzle game made fiddly because you can’t rotate junctions clockwise and anticlockwise.