‘Twas Brillig*

I haven’t mentioned what I’m playing recently, mainly because it’s all been a bit too obsessive. The main obsession is More Brain Training, but Civ fever has also reasserted itself.

I know I’m doing it wrong, but on the brain training front I’ve been switching on and doing a training task just to play Germ Buster (a stylus controlled version of Dr Mario). I’ve basically finished germ buster on hard - a point is reached where the pills are coming down so fast it seems pointless trying to control them. Now that’s over with I may get back to playing it more normally. The new training games in this version are pretty good, but I wish someone had thought about supplying different high score tables/graphs for the different modes with easy and hard modes - my graph for missing symbols looks ridiculous.

Civ is an odd experience, I love playing the game and can lose hours to it, but I am rubbish. I’ve yet to win a game, consistently coming second and being rated as having the leadership ability of Dan Quayle.

In the last few days I’ve started playing Stranger’s Wrath, a game that’s been in the “to play” pile for nearly two years. Gameplay wise it seems quite good, but I’m not convinced it will hold my attention for too long. What I really want is a good RPG.

Pokémon Diamond is going to be the game of choice on holiday; the eldest two are very excited about this, but I’ve never played any pokémon before - I helped one of them through parts of mystery dungeon, but that’s not the same. I’ve read some good reviews and this may provide my RPG fix - what I really would like is a DS equivalent of Baldur’s Gate, but I haven’t seen anything that fits the bill.

I haven’t written that much recently. So just what is the current state of play? The lure of overtime temporarily KO’d a lot of my gaming activities, but I’ve been playing Civ IV, Dancing Stage Mario Mix (what curtains were invented for!), Resident Evil 4 and I’ve just picked up a copy of More Brain Training (apparently my Brain Age is a disappointing 42 ). Plus the perennial Wario ware and Mario Party sessions with the kids.

I started another game on a smaller map, this one is definitely taking longer - less diplomacy and more open warfare. The map basically has two continents, one continent is currently Persian and the other is Indian (me) and Egyptian (if you can call one city a civilization).

I bought Civ IV on release, but haven’t really played it much. The family PC is only just capable of playing it - if I played more PC games and less console games it would be worth upgrading the graphics card but as it is I think I’ll survive. I played a game this evening and just about finished by midnight - I’m glad to see it still has that “just one more turn” feel. I chose all the random settings and ended up with a large map playing as the Egyptians. The game was played without conflict which was kind of boring, but I just wanted to reaquaint myself with the tech tree and wonders.