And Autumn came back today. Everything is brown again, and there are more weeds than I have ever seen before in my life. Like, 10 on screen at once. Spent far too long clearing them all. Ran an errand for Octavian, who asked me to take a present to Sally, and then Sally asked me to take a present back to him. Dirty. Mallary is still ill. I don’t really care though.

Bah. I’ve lost another animal – Bluebear. I don’t think I had his/her picture either, which is a pain. Kabuki is now well again, but Mallary is ill. Must be something going round. For some reason, I’ve lost Autumn too. The trees aren’t brown any more – they’ve gone back to being green. Very odd.

Kabuki is still ill. I think someone poisoned him. Or rather, I hope someone poisoned him. Once again, not much else was going on in Cheese. Octavian (who keeps saying “sucker”, Mr. T style) asked me to deliver a letter to Purrl, I bought some clothes I hadn’t seen before, and I pulled a billion weeds (again), but that was about it. None of my animals were particularly chatty.

Totally fed up with this game now. I’ve managed a few more things in Zootopia, including the flying-to-get-monkeys-in-balloons, the test-your-strength, and a couple of others, but two are really, really annoying me. First up is the one where you have to go invisible and creep round a shooting gallery. You have virtually no camera control, so it’s hard. And it’s rubbish. Secondly, is the one where you have to get eight balloons for a monkey. I’d started it accidently many …

I have a new resident! His name is Octavian, and he’s an octopus. Obviously. I don’t know why he doesn’t die though, what with the lack of water and everything. Spent ages doing even more weeding, and then went to see K.K. Slider, who played me K.K. Technopop. It didn’t really sound much like technopop, but anyway. After that, I ran a couple of errands for my animals, and chatted with everyone. Kabuki is ill. He’s actually been ill all …

Oooky monkey oook eek! IRRITATING. So I’ve managed to get the warp spells for Zootopia and Moonhaven. Off I went to Zootopia, and managed to get all of about two “quests” done. I can’t for the life of me do any more though. I also got the spell for turning invisible too. Great. Then I thought I’d give Moonhaven a try. Nope. Could only find ONE errand to start, failed it as it’s plainly impossible, and then couldn’t find anyone …

What a dull day in Cheese. None of the animals had anything of interest to say, I’d started playing so late that Nook’s was shut, and the only thing I could really do was pick up more weeds. Rubbish. Looks like I’m coasting to the full year of play, then. I did get into Pudgy’s house though, and he’s got an Arwing or something in there which I need. Sadly, there’s no breaking and entering in Animal Crossing.

Ooook mook monkey ook eek mook ook EEK! Ook oooook monkey ei! ei! Oooook ei mook! EEK! Oook monkey ei ei monkey monkey oook! Ei! EEK! Mook oook monkey ook! And so on. That’s all the dialogue in the game. It is driving me mental. Also driving me mental is the camera. And the fact that the game just isn’t really all that great. And that I’m stuck – that doesn’t actually help. I’m still on Jungle Island. I can’t …

It’s Super Monkey Ball, Jim, but not as we know it… It’s very odd. Very very odd. Firstly, there’s an issue with the camera – I want to invert the X axis, but I can’t seem to do that. Then there’s the way the entire world tilts when you move. Yeah – that’s how it worked before on the other games, but now you have an entire actual island that moves, and it’s very jarring. Anyway. I rounded up some …

Nooo! Rodeo has moved out! And he didn’t give me his picture even though I was ace to him all the time (well, except for when I told him to eat more beef). Perhaps he’s got a job at McDonalds or something. Not a lot else was going on today. Gave Purrl a shirt, and delivered a letter for Pudgy, and also pulled all all of the weeds in the entire world ever.

Erm, so there’s only three “chapters”? Oh well. The last one started off in some sort of snowy wasteland, then moved underground to the Lost City of Atlantis, then moved through some caves, some strange gravity-warping temples, and finally into an alien spaceship. I can see, actually, that Prey nicked a few ideas from this game too, with the wall-walking and stuff. The last few levels were pretty difficult, as health pickups became fewer and baddies increased in number (and …

There’s a pattern emerging in this game. Collect the item with the big yellow arrow above it, and you get attacked by a million baddies all at once. Anyway. I managed to get through all of Rome, killing a huge thing with loads of arms, and then moved on to China. I wasn’t aware that much of China was actually in the desert, but that’s where most of this level has taken place so far. The baddies are much the …

Realised I hadn’t played over the weekend, so time-travelled to Saturday (to visit K.K. Slider – he played me K.K. Rock), and Sunday (but forgot about turnips), before finally catching up with today. I have a new animal – Podge the Bear. He hasn’t said a lot yet, though. Katrina was in town today too, and I visited her for her usual garbage tarot reading which makes no sense at all. Then I picked $hlmun weeds.

I have about ten million known good games as-yet unstarted sitting on my shelf. Things like Metroid Prime: Echoes and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I even got Fahrenheit cheaply this morning. So what did I decided to pick up and play today? Well, this obviously. Graphically, it’s nothing special. Originality is out the window. The puzzles are few and simple, and there’s nothing much to recommend it. However, there’s lots to shoot and the dialogue is genuinely funny. Best …

Oh no! I thought I’d kicked the habit after my Tony Hawk-a-thon in the beginning half of the year. This was mainly due to the there not actually being any Tony Hawk games left for me to play (well, besides the awful GBC games which are nothing like the “real” versions, so they don’t count). And now look what was on the Xbox Live Marketplace! So, Project 8 then. The demo is a bit restrictive (in time, area, and goals), …