Recently I’ve mostly been playing Pokémon Diamond, so far I’ve got 8 gym badges and need to train up my Pokémon to get through the Pokémon league (and beat #1 in battles - so far he has 240+ hours racked up against my 40+). Progress hasn’t been helped by #2’s DS breaking and my letting him borrow mine until it comes back from the Nintendo Service Centre.
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’m finally past Ice Lolly Land - the final stage fluctuation was a problem and then today second attempt I just did it; monkey ball is often like that, a stage appears impassable and suddenly everything clicks.
I’ve now unlocked four more lands Tempest Storm, Meteorite Mayhem, Big Bang Boom and Zero G Station - that makes ten lands in total so this may be near the end, but the last two lands are on a new map screen leaving plenty of room for more. We’ll just have to wait and see, Ice Lolly Land took so much time I’m not convinced I’ll end up finishing four more lands (too many other things).
I’m stuck on Ice Lolly Land, unfortunately I’ve encountered an old friend from the original gamecube version - ‘Acute’ - and so far I’ve only finished the stage once.
I finally completed all the courses on Palarver Lava - as seems to be usual at first one or two seemed to rely on pure luck, but now I know better.
I’ve finally completed Fantascene Falls and suddenly whirl doesn’t seem that difficult.
At lunchtime I had a couple of attempts at Fantascene Falls and failed on Whirl (stage 10 [of 10!]) - in sight of the end no less. Pah!
At lunchtime I completed Junglistic Journey, some of the stages are quite hard - Pincer (stage 4) requires slow measured movement and Starfish (stage 6) is 9 parts luck to 1 part skill.
This evening I’ve completed the Blistering Sands stages - only one tricky stage Betting Course (stage 7), but now I’ve done it even that stage is easy.
I’ve now unlocked three more sets Fantascene Falls, Palarvar Lava and Ice Lolly Land.
I’ve completed the Wet ‘N’ Windy stages. Assimilate (stage 9) took a while, but otherwise all was good. No boss (thankfully!) and a diverting end of set game (toss monkeys in the air to convert letters in the credits into bananas), but no high score table. I can’t believe it would have required much effort to have coded a high score table - lazy.
I have now unlocked two more sets of stages Junglistic Journey and Blistering Sands.