Beaten: Matchbox Caterpillar Construction Zone (review here).

Played: Splinter Cell (XB), Tropico 3 (360), Donkey Kong Country 3 (SNES), Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (GC), Boom Blox (Wii), Little Kings Story (Wii), Cave Story (Wii), Sword of Hope 2 (OGB).

Now Playing: Sword of Hope 2, Little Kings Story, Donkey Kong Country 3.

Highlights: Sword of Hope 2's review is already written in my head, now I just need to finish it. DKC3 is on the hard side.  I don't know why people diminish the SNES series at all. Lame characters? Yes, but everything else is way above average.  I am going to try and beat LKS before teh end of the year so I can consider it for GOTY.  I'm only 5 hours in now and absolutely loving it.  Have to finish it before I can cast final judgement though.

Agnates said:

I keep coming across neat little things on this phone, I'm quite pleasantly surprised since it was so cheap. I just discovered it can open word, excel and pdf files. When writing messages or other text inputs (alarms, memos, stuff) you can keep it vertical for a normal keypad or twist it horizontally to enable a full keyboard, there's handwriting recognition and a doodling application but the touchscreen so far hasn't proven good enough to reliably use either, there are all sorts of nice drag and drop functions to navigate menus or use various functions, I discovered the stylus that I thought didn't come with it but was simply too well hidden inside the phone, being so tiny (it expands, it's a little too thin but works okay), and generally the only issues I have are silly limitations that shouldn't be there, like the inability to customise it beyond the wallpaper and what widgets and speed dials you set on the two "desktops" you can switch between, and that I can't delete a lot of the preinstalled crap, like the crappy Java games it comes with and one of the speed dial entries. The media player is great too, although too loud. I haven't tried video files yet, if it plays them, but music works fine with mp3s, shuffle and repeat options. It only has like 50MB memory but accepts Micro SD cards which should be super cheap if you really need space.

Edit: the series seems to have a decent hacking scene that can fix some of the issues, like the ability to use custom themes. I saw people have basically recreated the default iphone theme. I'll try to look into that stuff whenever I feel the need for a refresh, which won't be for some time I guess.

Anyway, if anyone here is on the look out for a fairly cheap phone that doesn't look like it came from the last century when it's placed next to the fancy stuff people tend to use these days, check out the LG Cookie range. Mine's a KP500, some newer Cookie models degraded the specs, like the camera (which is pretty bad anyway, you need loads of light to get something remotely presentable outside the phone's screen) and the battery (some take AA batteries, meh) so I chose that one, but if you look around you can probably find one that suits you. Oh, and the LG software sucks and barely runs on Windows 7 but you can still access file transfers and such by having the PC recognise it as a simple USB flash drive. I heard similarly good things about the Samsung Tocco phones as well, which are supposed to be cheap also, but none were available in stores here so I got this one instead.

The Microsoft Wireless Bluetrack 5000 mouse is fine as well, it glides smoothly and looks good.

The hacking scene for these things is great (but it seems to be mostly eastern/eastern european so the English in the various guides isn't so great, and it can be a bit fiddly so you should be careful). The main issue I had after a few days of use was how sluggish the main menu was, but I just replaced it with a custom theme that is more functional, looks better, and is smoother. Thanks to the scene you can change everything in this phone despite the fact that by default it only has a few options, and no custom themes. People have made iphone and android themes for example, not just icons but the actual function of the menus and how intutive they are to use, and have added various extra applications (although a lot of it is for online stuff and mobile internet is expensive here so they're not for me) but I like its default simple style and kept it as is except for the main menu.

As for games, yeah, I was right, it just runs Java type crap so don't expect to play games on it. The best you'll find is things like Doom RPG and some early Final Fantasy-like RPGs or dodgy rip offs of things like Heroes of Might & Magic V, Gameloft style (although many other companies do the same). Newer stuff like Doom RPG 2 will also run but very sluggishly, the CPU is very slow. Being a touch phone the type of games actually playable is limited, although it can also play games made for normal keypads with virtual on screen buttons but that obviously won't work well for every type of game. The scene dudes have also made a flash player for it so you can play some flash games but again it's a weak phone so anything complex is very sluggish, and the interface means it's mostly suitable for point & click and turn based stuff, nothing that uses buttons.

All in all I'm very happy with this phone for the price point.

I can't wait 'til I can clear my schedule to play DCKR. I am a One-Game-at-a-Time Gamer now!

Did I mention what I got in the mail last week?

I had the same opinion of Chains of Olympus.  Ready at Dawn are the most under-rated studio of all time. In Chains of Olympus I not ONCE bemoaned the lack of a second stick, they just made it work -- plus it was a better game than the original GoW even, in terms of story and pacing.

^^ Cool, Leo!

Guess what I got a few weeks ago:

And it came in this!

It's actually really high quality. The statue isn't made out of cheap plastic.

Still, I'd prefer a Super Mario Galaxy sountrack or a Famicom classic controller, but it's still a nice little collectible on top of my work desk!

aspro said:

          Oh boy...  How much did you piss away on that? (simpson's reference).

It's got to be part of the Limited Collector's edition, right?

gamingeek said:

Tales of Xillia

Please don't show anymore Tales screens since we'll never be able to play English versions of Graces and this one!

I was looking forward to playing Graces on the Wii, but now we'll never have the chance.

phantom_leo said:

          It was FREE with the pre-order of the game!

*Sorry, don't get the Simpson's reference!*  

How big is that thing? From that picture it looks like it's big enough so that you can wear it as a mask or just a small little figurine.

ASK_Story said:

          How big is that thing?

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one...