Diary of a Lethargic Video Gamer

I’m hooked on this and ended up playing it for four hours yesterday progressing from day 24 to day 85, and I am now on chapter four.  It’s got a perfect ‘just one more go’ aspect to it when it gives you a daily report just after it auto-saves, so you end up wanting to take a glance at the report and then playing through yet another day as a result.

With this and the equally excellent LostWinds I’m finding WiiWare to be a much better alternative to both PSN and XBLA at the moment.

I’ve been playing the oh so addictive but oh so short demo of this on the PS3 and the full game has gone straight to the top of my want list.  It’s classic Civilization but with the micro-management reduced without dumbing the game down for a console audience to any great extent.  The controls are well worked for the pad and from what I’ve seen so far it’s a joy to play.  I’ve since pre-ordered if for the Xbox 360, although I’m contemplating switching to the PS3 version as the downloadable ‘Game of the Week’ scenarios apparently require a gold subscription to XBL and I only have a silver account  They would of course be available for free with the PS3 version.  Regardless of which version I end up with, I can see this taking up a substantial amount of my gaming time.

I’ve been playing this for a few weeks now, but have still only completed about 8% of the single player mode.  That is because the multiplayer aspect is absolutely fantastic and it’s very rare I get the chance to play it without someone else in the household jumping in and challenging me to a game.  Even my wife loves it and she very rarely plays any video games nowadays.  It’s a little unpolished in places, and there are occasional glitches, but I can forgive all this - I love it.  I’m really quite surprised, but the Wii has become my main console of choice this year.  The PS3 has had some use thanks to the excellent Pixeljunk Monsters, but the 360 literally hasn’t been used in months.  I just hope it still works when I finally get an excuse to fire it up this coming weekend to play Civilization Revolution.

I dug out my hard dance mat last night and fired up my old copy of Dancing Stage Party Edition for the original PlayStation on the PS3, and bloody hell, my dance mat skills have diminished.  It’s just as much fun as ever, but I’d forgotten how poor the track listing is though, with most of it being made up with crappy Japanese pop pap.  It’s making we wish Sony would copy the PS3 SingStar idea and release a new PS3 dance game with a DanceStore full of new tracks to purchase and online score tables.  I haven’t heard of any planned dancing games for the PS3 yet, I’ll keep my fingers crossed anyway.

I hit just over ten hours of exercise in this yesterday and was awarded with a bronze fitpiggy!  Wahay, or something.  Today I barely hit my daily thirty minute target due to tiredness and gave up after three goes at step plus and one at rhythm boxing.

Eurogamer have just awarded the third 10/10 score to a game in as many weeks, the Wii version of Okami being the latest recipient. The PS2 version is great, and the gameplay makes it a perfect fit for the Wii remote and I really want it now, but with the original release sat unloved and incomplete on my shelf I really must try and resist. Gah!