Of course, to be cool, these days you don’t call them zombies… they’re “infected”. They’re not the dead, come back to life, they’re victims of some disease or experiment. Is it just me… or is that just not quite as scary?

Despite my complete ambivalence towards the brain-munching hoards, I’ve somehow found myself playing three zombie games this past month…

The first game was Resident Evil 5. I’ve never actually played a Resi game before so this was my first experience of the franchise. With hindsight, it might not have been the best game to start with.

One thing that I quickly realised was that I had completely the wrong idea about the series. From everything I’d heard in the past, and from all the comments regarding the racism issue, I’d got the impression that Resident Evil was a pretty serious, gritty and realistic franchise. How wrong I was.

After fighting what I could only describe as a giant troll I soon found myself up against a man who turned himself into a huge sea monster. I have to be honest and say that I just found this a little bit silly. I usually don’t have any problems with battling over-the-top, fantastical creatures, but those enemies just weren’t what I was expecting to see in this particular game.

Then there’s the fact that the infected hoards are running around, pretty much acting like your standard first person shooter baddies, using weapons and throwing grenades… They just didn’t look, act or feel that much like zombies to me.

Of course, silly enemies aside, what usually drives me forward through these types of games is the story. However, when it comes to Resident Evil I think I’m just a little too late to the party to understand or care about much about what’s going on. Plus what is, I’m guessing, a major plot twist seems a little bit obvious… Let’s see, Mr Hero-man tells us about a missing (presumed dead) franchise heroine and… oh look… here’s a mysterious (masked) female assassin… I wonder what’s going to be revealed later on.

So far I’ve played through the first few chapters of Resident Evil 5. I will say that the further I’ve got into it, the more I’ve understood and actually “got” the game… but I can’t say that I’ve ever found myself particularly enjoying it… Will I go back to it and progress further? I’m not sure and, to be perfectly honest, I’m not really that bothered. It’s undoubtedly a good game and plenty of people like it. It’s just not a game that really appeals to me.

Speaking of lack of appeal, I’m unable to describe in words how little interest I initially had in playing Left 4 Dead (my second zombie game of the month). I’m not a huge Valve fan and a first-person shooter that doesn’t really have a story held little attraction for me, especially as everyone kept saying that you really needed to play it online to fully enjoy it.

A curious thing happened though. A few weeks ago, it appeared on Steam at an extremely cheap price. It was an offer that was just too good to refuse and, as everyone was still going on about how great a game it was, I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about…

Left 4 Dead might not have many of the features I usually look for in a game… but, gosh, it is still a blast to play! Even an anti-social, solo gamer like myself can extract a fair amount of fun from working through the four campaign levels. Some people may complain about the AI team members being a bit pants, but the sad fact is… my computer-controlled companions are much better players than I am.

Each of the movie-inspired scenarios sees you and your fellow survivors fighting through hoards of zombies, desperately trying to reach the next place of safety. It’s a fast-paced, quick reaction shooter and even though your undead foes possess quite a turn of speed their basic animal, swarm-like behaviour ensures they exhibit the necessary brain-dead qualities we’ve come to expect from our zombie friends.

I enjoyed playing the PC version of Left 4 Dead so much that I actually went out and grabbed a copy for the 360 as well. I’ve even spent a little time playing the game online (something that’s quite unusual for me) although I have yet to master any of the skills necessary to effectively control specialist zombies in the versus mode. I’m glad I gave this particular game a go. Sometimes it pays to explore titles you wouldn’t normally try.

The third game in my personal zombie trilogy is Plants vs. Zombies, the latest release from Peggle developers Popcap.

It’s a humorous take on the currently extremely popular tower defence formula. In this game you have to stop advancing hoards of cartoon zombies from reaching your house and eating your brains by placing horticultural obstacles in their way. Your arsenal of plants include basic pea-shooters, venus “zombie” traps, spike shooting cacti, exploding cherry bombs and spore puffing fungi.

I must admit that I initially wasn’t that impressed by the demo. It seemed very slow and not particularly challenging. Then Popcap added Steam achievements to the game and that, together with a temporary reduction in the price tag, caused me to take a second look and hit the purchase button.

I’m glad that I did as I’ve been thoroughly enjoying playing through the game. There is just so much to do. For starters there are absolutely loads of different plants to choose from and a multitude of zombie types to fight. There are also three different “areas” to battle on, each requiring slightly different strategies and different seeds to be placed in your arsenal.

As you play the game you unlock puzzle modes, survival challenges, a large collection of mini-games and even a Zen garden where the time spent looking after your plants is rewarded with in-game currency. The money you earn can be used to purchase new species of plants and other extra game features.

There are some great additional modes of play. Rapid decision making is required in the games where you’re gradually given a random selection of plants. Other levels see you smashing open jars to reveal the zombies or seeds hidden inside. There’s an interesting plant version of Bejewelled, where you move your flowers around to create groups of three whilst continually being attacked by waves of undead. You can even take on the role of the enemy and attack the flowers yourself in a series of levels where the Michael Jackson-style dancing zombies, in particular, become really useful.

Plants vs Zombies is not a particularly difficult game but, because it contains so much content, I’ve no hesitation in recommending you pick it up for PC or Mac. Due to the control scheme, I can’t see them producing a version for the 360 or PS3 but, should it appear in a suitably priced handheld form, it has the potential to be a big iPhone or DS hit.

Prince of Persia does away with constant deaths and tedious reloading. The prince’s trusty companion, Elika, tirelessly swoops you up to safety every time you drop off a ledge or become endangered by an enemy.

People have argued that it’s this lack of challenge that makes Prince of Persia such a dull, boring and monotonous experience. I disagree. I don’t mind easy games. The reason I’m finding it so dull and boring is simply because I honestly don’t care about the story and these two characters.

For me, that’s not because they aren’t likeable or their relationship isn’t believable. Unlike some people, I’ve no issue with the casting of the prince. I’m not a long-time Prince of Persia fan so I’m not carrying around a lot of baggage of how he should sound or act. My complaint is that I do not want to have to stop the game every two seconds just to listen to the two protagonists witter on to each other. It’s not what they’re saying… it’s the fact that it interrupts the (otherwise flowing) gameplay.
Why do I have to repeatedly have to hit the talk button and stand perfectly still? They’re saving the world, for goodness sake… can’t they talk on the move?

In the end I’ve decided to just stop hitting the conversation button altogether, which is a shame because I’m no longer fully experience the story and the story is the thing that drives me through games like this. I’m now well over a quarter of the way through Prince of Persia but every time I play it looks less and less likely that I’ll ever drum up enough enthusiasm to get to the end.

I’m about ten levels into the campaign in Halo Wars. I’m not a player of this particular genre of games but it’s obvious, even to me, that Halo Wars is an RTS game for people that don’t really like RTS games very much. The problem is, I think, that’s it’s not necessarily an RTS game for people that actually do like RTS games.

Nevertheless, I’m enjoying my time with the title. I’m making steady progress in the story mode. Normal difficulty seems perfect for me, the bonus achievements for each mission are well thought out and I’m already tempted to go back to try and improve my scores.

Little things do keep niggling away at me, though. I imagine they must be driving proper RTS nuts mad. Things like not being able to group together your units into squads. As I’ve said several times, I don’t usually play this type of game, but even I realise that it’s hard to get really strategic when it’s so difficult to position your guys where you want them.

Thinking about it, I’ve been playing a platforming game for people who aren’t good at platforming games and a strategy title for those that aren’t really that good at strategy. How hardcore am I?

It’s certainly a good value collection, especially when you factor in the cost of some of the titles that have already been released separately on the XBLM. Yes, there are some duds on the compilation but with 42 games you’re bound to find more than a few gems to justify the purchase. There are certainly a lot of side scrolling beat ‘em ‘ups on the disc, like the Streets of Rage games and Shinobi III, which take me back to days spent in arcades as a youth.

One title I was particularly impressed by was Comix Zone. Although it’s similar to those aforementioned games I loved the whole idea of controlling a super-hero as he physically moves through the pages of a comic book. The idea of using comic panels to switch between the different areas is very clever, as is the way the “artist” draws in extra enemies. It’d be nice to see a remake of this title or somebody using some of the concepts in a modern super-hero game.

Burnout Paradise went back in my consoles this week due to the release of the Legendary Cars pack.
These new vehicles are lots of fun, especially the “DeLorean” which barrel rolls like mad. I’ve mostly been using them in the PS3 version as there are trophies associated with them. I have also been playing the 360 version of Paradise, though, because I was lucky enough to have bought the other two car packs when they were accidently put on the XBLM early.

The toy cars weren’t what I expected. I thought they’d be really small and I’d be racing along at pavement level for some reason! What you actually get is squashed down, reduced wheel base, caricatured versions of some of the vehicles from the main game. They remind me a lot of the pull-back cars I had as a kid that you used to pop a penny in the back to do wheelies. They handle very differently in game. To me they seem a lot more responsive… you feel like they’re running off electric batteries rather than petrol. I’m not sure people will want to buy all of them but I think it’ll be worth picking and choosing your favourites.

The two boost specials are interesting in different ways. I’m not that good at controlling my car under boost but if you are the you’ll love these. The first one is more of a dragster. When you hit boost it locks on and you’re stuck going very (very) fast until you either crash or make a pretty violent turn.

The second car is an “alien” hybrid that features all three boost types (stunt, aggro and speed) and allows you to instantly switch between them with the click of a thumbstick. It seems a great, flexible ride to choose if you want to go around paradise doing different events without having to go and swap cars in the junkyard.

Coming from the creator of Katamari, it’s no real surprise that Noby Noby Boy is such a strange game. Priced appropriately, for what seems little more than a doodle of a game idea brought to life, it’s a bizarre, fun, colourful little toy. It’s mostly up to you to make your own entertainment, with only the trophies providing any real goals, and so it will depend completely on the player as to whether this is money well spent or money totally wasted. The main thing stopping me from enjoying the game, as much as I might otherwise, is the pretty awful camera system.

I had two PS3 rentals arrive from LOVEFiLM this week to take over from Uncharted which I completed (great game, bit short, want to play the sequel now). Street Fighter IV was the first title (not bad to get it the day after release).

Although I enjoy playing fighting games such as Dead or Alive, Tekken, Soul Calibur and Virtual Fighter, I’ve never really played that much Street Fighter. I thought, perhaps, that this would be the game that would get me hooked on the series. How wrong I was…

I just can’t see any way into it for a “newcomer” like me. I’m not completely rubbish at fighting games but I can’t cope with something like this that requires intricate knowledge of super and ultra moves. I mean, I’m used to totally cheap boss characters on the last level of these games but I can’t even bash my way past Seth on the “easiest” setting. Come on Capcom. I know you have legions of fans that know these combos and controls like the back of their hands but easy should mean easy and be a way for new players to learn the ropes!

If you love Street Fighter, though, there’s no doubt you’ll love Street Fighter IV. I guess I’m just no good at really technical fighting games.

You can tell how frustrated I got with Street Fighter IV. I ended up loading up my other rental of the week, which was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. I never thought I’d be playing a Mortal Kombat game (it’s just not me) and I never thought I’d be enjoying it more than Street Fighter IV. It’s still pretty trashy rubbish but at least it’s fun trashy rubbish.

In an effort to get a regular weekly-ish “what I’ve been playing” gaming post established again I’m going to briefly discuss some of the titles that have been in my consoles this past fortnight. I don’t expect that these posts will be of much interest to general visitors to this blog but they are quite nice for me to look back on.

Without anything really meaty to play on the 360, my regular late night gaming sessions have been spent on the PS3. Unable to drum up any enthusiasm to play Prince of Persia (a title I’ve had on rental from LOVEFiLM for ages) I decided to take a look at Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. It’s been sitting on my shelf, unopened, ever since I bought my PS3 back in the autumn.

I’m a big Tomb Raider fan and, in many ways, Uncharted is just Tomb Raider with more shooting. Okay, a lot more shooting. It’s quite funny really that many people expressed the opinion that they wished the combat had been removed completely from the recent Tomb Raider Underworld game. Uncharted proves that you can go to the other extreme, bunging in absolutely tons of shooting, and still have a satisfying, fun experience. The problem, I think, with the current batch of Tomb Raider titles is that the gunplay is pretty wishy-washy, middle of the road stuff. They should either drop the combat completely or do it properly.

Uncharted features good, strong, fun characters. Yes, they’re your typical, stereo typical adventure film trio but that’s not a bad thing. I definitely found myself warming pretty quickly to Nathan Drake and I’m now looking forward to the sequel.

I did find the game environments and enemies in Uncharted a little samey. I know a lot of that this dictated by the plot of the game, I’m just used to the way Ms Croft jet-sets between very different locations.

I also got a little bit tired of solving tricky puzzles, to gain access to hidden areas, only to find that somehow a whole group of mercenaries had got into the place before me. They must’ve either used some super-secret backdoor or have cheated by watching walkthroughs on You Tube.

Scene It? Box Office Smash got popped back in the 360 this week mainly due to the release of a new, “awards season”-inspired question pack.

One thing that disappointed me about the second Scene It? game was how quickly my wife and I exhausted the supply of questions. The bonus DLC doesn’t really add much to the title in terms of longevity. I had a couple of run throughs using the “DLC only” mode to try out the new content and already I think I know all of the answers.

The DLC also adds a new round type, Pop Quiz, which presents you with a famous film personality and a list of ten films. It’s a case of quickly selecting either true or false as you decide which of the films they worked on. This is a nice addition to the game and makes the pack a little better value for money.

The appearance of Feeding Frenzy on my gamercard didn’t go unnoticed by several of my followers on Twitter. In my defence I was looking for something to play on the 360 and came across the CD that came free with my arcade SKU. I’d originally put the disc away, as I already owned most of the content, but as I was really bored I thought I’d give Feeding Frenzy a try. It’s a nice, fun little game that doesn’t require much thought to play. I wouldn’t necessarily have paid points for it, although I have bought much worse in the past (Bliss Island!), but it provided enough entertainment to fill a couple of gaming sessions.

I haven’t mentioned how much I’ve been playing Microsoft’s answer to the Singstar series. Lips is a great game, packaged with a particularly impressive and weighty set of wireless microphones. It may not yet have a huge library of songs but it is a lot of fun to play, both on your own or with a partner.

I’ve been taking part in a lot of challenges with the guys on the Cranky Gamers UK forums. Although the system could do with a few adjustments, it’s quite cool the way you can compete offline to achieve the highest score on a particular song.

I’ve just three achievements left to get in Lips. One for winning twenty challenges (I’m one win away from this), another for obtaining 100,000 stars (still a way to go) and the final one which will involve me importing almost 300 tracks into the game (it’ll be the deleting that’ll be more time consuming).

The past week or so also saw yet another attempt to play Half-Life 2 from The Orange Box. I keep coming back to this game, every few months, in an effort to make further progress and find out just why almost everyone seems to rave about it. It’s still not clicked for me.

There’s not much to say about 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, EA’s casual-friendly take on their ice hockey series of games. I downloaded it, played it, enjoyed it and completed all the achievements. All within the space of a few hours. It’s not something I’d go back to but it was a fun little diversion. It would be nice to see EA produce similar introductory titles based on their other sporting franchises. I’d certainly give a golf or gridiron game a go.

Part of the reason I’ve not posted about things is that I’ve actually covered most of the games I’ve been playing in the reviews I’ve been writing for the Cranky Gamers UK blog.

I suppose I could come up with a few words about some of the other games I’ve been playing recently.

Unreal Tournament 3 has been in my disc tray a lot. It instantly brought back memories of all the time I used to spend playing the different versions of Unreal Tournament on the PC. The console version, Unreal Championship, was also one of the few games I used to regularly play on the original Xbox’s Live service.

I’ve just finished the campaign which is merely a collection of bot matches arranged into “chapters” with a few cut-scenes in between. The storyline is a complete load of twaddle, taking a more Gears of War route rather than the tournament theme of the previous games.

I’m going to be doing a full review on the game soon. There’s basically nothing wrong with it. It’s simply Unreal Tournament on the Xbox 360. The only thing is, if you’re a real Unreal Tournament fan then surely you’ll either be playing it on the PC or the PS3… both of which fully support the user created mods that have made the series such a success.

Price Caspian is another title that’s in my current stack of games. I’ve only had an evening’s play of this so far. The developers seem to have wanted to mix the button mashing action of the Lord of the Rings film games with the character swapping of Lego Star Wars. I’m not sure how successful they’ve been. I’ll be going back to this one once I finish reviewing Unreal Tournament.

The last achievement producing game, that I’ve not already reviewed, is Beijing 2008.

I actually think that the control schemes for most of the games are extremely well thought out. I love the diving and the shooting. Many of the gymnastic events are a lot like rhythm games. The field events, although they need a lot of practise, actually work really well. The only event I truly didn’t like was the judo. The ultimate problem with the game is the reliance on button bashing for about half the levels, mostly the swimming and running. It really stopped me enjoying the game.

It’s not Sega’s fault particularly. I just don’t find the Xbox 360 controller, with its shiny rounded buttons and the concave dimpled analogue sticks, comfortable to use in the way required to be competitive. It just isn’t designed for the amount of button mashing (or joystick waggling) that’s required. If you’ve got an arcade stick of some kind then I reckon you’ll enjoy the game a lot more. Maybe this is one of those rare titles that I should’ve picked up for the Wii?

Had the achievements been a little more… er… achievable (sometimes breaking the Olympic record isn’t enough to unlock one!) then I might have been encouraged to spend more time on the game. As it it’s been traded in towards my PS3 fund.

Beijing 2008 is extremely good value if you like these sort of games. It’ll be interesting to see what the rival game, Summer Olympics, will be like. The achievements look more obtainable at least.

I finished Lego Indiana Jones completely this week, picking up 1000/1000 achievement points. They’re definitely a lot more obtainable than those in the previous Lego titles.

Picking up the DLC for Dancing Stage Universe gave me enough tracks to unlock another achievement for songs cleared. I don’t think I’ve ever come across such an eclectic choice of music in a game. It will be interesting to see what tracks Konami includes in their Rock Revolution game.

I’m just about done with Spider-man 3. I was hoping to pick up the achievement for all missions complete but the final two seem to be Mary Jane “thrill rides”. If you thought MJ was annoying in the awful third movie, her character is even more infuriating in the game particularly as she constantly bosses you around during these “taxi” missions. I think I’ll give them a miss.

I was really, really disappointed with the latest downloadable content for the RPG epic Lost Odyssey. I’ve posted here before about how much I love the game and I was eagerly awaiting the translation and release of the additional dungeon. It was such a disappointment. For starters the dungeon itself is the exact same floor plan repeated over and over and over. You’re basically given an initial 50 Gamerscore for running down twenty-five flights of stairs. Then you hit the boss. It’s harder than any enemy already in the game, including the Immortal, and when you get defeated (believe me you will) you’ll have to start the dungeon all over again. There are no save points on the way down.

It’s a real shame because there are some brilliant new monsters to fight on the way down and loads of great accessories to collect. However, unless you’ve got an über high-level team that’ll get you past the final challenge, you won’t be able to escape the dungeon to use any of it. I don’t think I’ll be putting the Lost Odyssey disk in again.

A fair proportion of the latest Gamerscore came from Spider-man 3. My impression, from the reviews I read when this game was released, was that it got completely trashed by the critics. A quick visit to Metacritic reveals that that may have been a little unfair. It certainly received a huge range of scores, though, from the lofty heights of 95% to the barrel scraping lows of the 30% it was awarded from Edge magazine. I’m a fan of superhero games so I thought I’d try picking it up as a swap. I went into it not expecting much at all so it ultimately proved to be quite an enjoyable experience. I can really understand the critical panning of the game, though. The developers didn’t exactly move thing on much from the previous outings. In some ways the leap to the new generation of consoles actually coincided with the introduction of many negative features. There are far too many unforgiving “quick time” events for my liking. I really, really despise them.

To supplement my Wii Fit “exercise” I picked up a copy of Dancing Stage (Dance Dance Revolution) Universe. I’m not going to get many achievements from this, due to the widely-acknowledged broken “quest mode”. However, I’ve made a good start on picking up the points for clearing the batches of songs. I wonder if we’ll see the release of the sequel over here? Hopefully it won’t suffer quite as long a delay as this version of the franchise.

The game that pushed me well over the next thousand mark was Lego Indiana Jones. I initially wasn’t convinced that the “Lego Star Wars” mechanics were a good fit for the Indy franchise but Traveller’s Tales have included enough twists and tweaks to make it work well. I’m certainly enjoying it. It arrived on Thursday and by the end of the weekend I was already about 500 points into it. I’ll try to post more detailed thoughts about the game soon.

(This blog update has taken me even longer to finish than I originally thought. The next thousand milestone is rapidly approaching. I’d better start working on some new reviews and game commentary to post before then.)

It’s not really worth bothering with, though. Cars is a strange title that attempts to mix free roaming “open world” gameplay with more traditional racing events. Now I can see how younger gamers might enjoy exploring the setting of the movie but, unless you’re really trying to collect every last item in the game, there doesn’t seem much point in straying far from the main roads. All the “open world” did for me was make the task of trying to navigate to the next event marker even longer and more frustrating.

There’s also some bizarre difficulty spikes, that surely would stop most younger gamers in their tracks, and some overlong circuit racing sections so it’s not a title that I’d recommend. It’s a shame really because the recreation of the characters from the film is well done and there are some mildly humorous cut scenes. I’ve probably been spoiled by Burnout Paradise.

The remaining Gamerscore came from Rock Band (where I’ve finished the guitar solo tour on medium,  vocal tour on easy and the drums also on easy), Virtua Tennis 3 and Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1. I’ll probably try and get a review post up on the Penny Arcade game later.

Now I’m not going to go on and on about the price. I will say that I was always intending to buy the pack with all the instruments in, until they released how much it was going to cost. In the end I ordered a copy of the game and a set of drums. I’ve been using my Guitar Hero guitars and a Logitech USB microphone rather than the official peripherals.

I was initially a bit disappointed by the solo guitar tour mode. I think that, as I’ve played all the previous guitar games on PS2 and 360, it all felt very familiar to me. A little too familiar as many of the early songs featured in versions of Guitar Hero.

Once you get into the game you realise that the tracks are done so much better in Rock Band than Guitar Hero. Harmonix just know how to take a song and convert it to their rhythm system so you feel like you’re actually playing it. The Neversoft guys who worked on Guitar Hero III just didn’t seem to nail that at all on the difficulty levels that I played. There are also lots of nice touches in Rock Band like the crowd singing along and I love the fact that you can continue to build up your “star power” when you’re in overdrive mode.

One of the other things that initially put me off was that I started playing through on easy mode. Easy mode in Rock Band is really, really easy. If you’ve ever played a Guitar Hero game then you need to start on the medium level. A nice feature is that the achievement for completing the easy tour unlocks automatically when you complete a harder tour level so there’s no need to force yourself to play in newbie mode.

I’ve just started playing through on hard and, although I don’t think I’ll manage to complete the setlist, I’m already further through it than I would’ve been in any of the Guitar Hero games. Perhaps it’s all a little too easy for Guitar Hero veterans but I’m sure the expert mode must be still challenging enough for master wielders of the plastic axe.

For me, the choice of songs in this game is absolutely great. There aren’t many songs that I don’t know and the ones I don’t know, I liked on first play through.

The vocal mode is so enjoyable. I’ve never played any of the Singstar games but I imagine that this is a very similar experience.

I did have microphone issues at first. On my initial attempts at singing along I kept failing the songs. I was very confused. I’m not the world’s best singer, but I’m not so bad that I would be crashing out in easy mode. Eventually I tracked the problem down to the fact that I had the microphone muted in my Xbox Live profile settings. That’s what I get for being antisocial online, I suppose!

After a few goes with the headset I decided to switch over to a proper USB microphone. It does provide a better experience. It’s a better tool to play the “tambourine” sequences with and is also a lot easier to trigger overdrive mode.

As my drums were meant to be a birthday present I didn’t actually open them and use them until several days after getting the game. I’m glad I waited as it kept the excitement level up and meant that I didn’t try to cram in too much of the experience at once.

The drum kit is very solid and not as noisy as I expected. I think I’ll invest in some sound dampening just to take the edge off, though. Playing the drums is really easy to get into on the first level of difficulty. I’ve yet to try them on the harder modes. They’re certainly an awful lot of fun to play.

I’ve experienced very little of the world tour so I’ll reserve my judgement on that mode until later.

The Rock Band solo experience is easily as good as Guitar Hero’s. In local multiplayer Rock Band really comes into its own. I’ve been playing the game a lot with my wife who, although she appreciates the songs and the enjoyment you get from playing along, isn’t really into spending a lot of time hammering the plastic strum bar. She has enjoyed the drums, though and actually likes the singing mode a lot more than she thought she would. It may be that we attempt the world tour with her on vocals. My sister also came to visit for a couple of days over the bank holiday. She’s a big Guitar Hero fan and loves the new additions in Rock Band. Banging out tunes as a three-piece was great fun.

I think that if you’re really into Guitar Hero then it is well worth picking up a copy of Rock Band game just to use with your existing peripherals. It’s hard to justify the pricing on the official kit but if you are a rhythm game addict then the drums are almost impossible to resist. I’m just a bit worried about the long term value with new games, using different drum controllers, on the horizon.

1. I’ve now been using the Wii Fit for 28 days.
2. It does seem to be doing some good.
3. The Wii Fit age is absolute twaddle as you can see by how much it bounces around.
4. I’m mostly doing aerobic exercises. The Yoga section is hardly used. Balance games, although popular at first, don’t get played that much.