‘Twas Brillig*

I spent £45.80 with consoleplus for a Philips DVD drive to replace the Toshiba Samsung drive in my Xbox and 8 TORX screws later (6 long external T25s and 2 short internal T15s[1]) I had the old drive out the new drive in and a working Xbox. Result!

I noticed earlier that I could have bought a brand new Xbox plus 4 games (I own all except Halo 2, but that is what ebay is for) from argos for nearly 90 quid, but I’d have lost all my save games so I think this way is for the best.

I had a quick go at a platinum medal on PGR2 but my l33t skills have gone west and I was completely thrashed by the CPU.

[1] Everything online says it should be T20s and T10s which makes me think the cheap set of screwdriver bits I bought from focus might be mislabelled - the jump from T25 to T30 does look significantly larger than the other jumps.

I’ve obviously been a very good boy and santa brought me a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart (which #1 seems to have commandeered), Zoo Keeper, Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land, Pikmin 2 and Alien Hominid. This week I am mostly playing Zoo Keeper, but that will change quite quickly I suspect once I get a wireless router.

I haven’t blogged for a bit, mainly because I haven’t done much gaming, that should change when I get my DS with MK and Zookeeper for Christmas and #1 gets Nintendogs. I’ve been playing Sonic Advance 2 on R’s GBA SP, Super Mario Sunshine (with and without #1), Mario Party with #1, Mario Kart with #1 and #2 and Sonic on the Xbox. I have really fallen out with the Xbox since it won’t play several games, I suspect #3 is to blame since several discs have large scratches on them.

Apparently I haven’t played this since Oct 6, but I did get sidetracked and since finishing Planescape Torment I’ve been in a bit of a gaming lull.[1] Anyhow I put this on[2], killed some Mandalorians, resolved a “Romeo and Juliet” plot and found the Star Map. I’ve just landed on Tatooine.

[1] I seem to have developed a strong desire to play with JAXB and Swing instead.
[2] The Xbox mucked around reading it. It hates this disc slightly less than PGR2 all the other games play fine.

I went to the grove, solved a particularly boring crime and started Juhani on the journey from the dark side to the light side and I am now a Padawan.

Well I’m now an apprentice jedi, having killed Davik, taken the Ebon Hawk, destroyed some Sith ships and landed on Dantooine. I’m just about to enter the grove where something Dark awaits.

Three more Gold in Ultimate series

Now I seem to be making progress. We ploughed through the Sith Base, defeated the Sith governor and handed the codes over to Candrous. It may just be me, but shouldn’t some of the Sith patrols have been a little upset to see my party strolling through Taris? I then went to Davik’s Estate and engaged in lots more fighting - I’ve met Davik near the ship but failed to defeat him, oh well at least I saved right outside the hangar entrance.

After an hour obtaining zero medals in PGR2 I thought I’d give Knights of the Old Republic a try - I bought this when I first got the Xbox but found myself stuck relatively early on trying to defeat Kandon (AWOOGAH! Spoilers) in the Engine Lab. I feel like I’ve cheated but after reading something in Edge I realised I could ramp down the difficulty, so I defeated him and his gang on Easy, put the difficulty back up and all seems fine with the world. I’ve now won the swoop race and freed Bastila ( although she thinks she saved me).

I got this far and stalled with over an hour of no medals. The remaining Silver in KWS are:

I currently have the following cars to buy/unlock

12 Kudos Tokens left.