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There's nothing there that looks like it'll be a stinker so giggy-up!

What, not even Robbie Morrison's "Queer Eye..." Dredd spoof? I don't have high hopes for that one...

;-)

Alas, even that brief glimmer of enjoyment was snuffed out by Weld's godawful dialogue beforehand...

;-)

Colour me absolutely gobsmacked by the reaction to this story.

IMO, Sin/Dex jumped the shark back in 1999 and the past few years have seen the strip pissing away any promise it once had. There've been a couple of glimmers of interest, but the strip has really become desperately poor recently - clones and alternate reality versions of past villains? Ugh.

I'm kind of glad someone is getting some pleasure out of it, because I'm certainly not.

Must admit, I'm quite baffled as to the positive reception this story has been getting.

Are readers just so happy to see a Sin/Dex story that isn't rubbish that they're rushing to embrace this fairly dull tale?

Well, yes, it is :-)

How much you get out of Nintendogs really depends upon your tolerance of what is, essentially, a done-up-to-the-nines virtual pet. Although it does have traditional game elements - an experience point system, minigames with multiple difficulty levels - it's distant enough from trad game designs to make it unpalatable for some people (mostly people who are actually into games, I've found - non-gamers are the ones who respond to it and seem most fascinated by it. Perhaps it's something to do with a combination of interface, the convincing behaviour and the lack of traditional game "rules"?)

Advance Wars DS is simply fantastic, and if you enjoyed AW and AW2 you'll love AWDS. The stylus interface is a perfect little addition, and the tweaks to the core game are welcome. The "two front" dual screen battles are great fun, if perhaps not quite as well-implemented as I would have liked. It's not groundbreaking stuff, but IMO it's a perfection of an already strong game design.

Both titles are - like most DS games I've played - perfectly suited to mobile gaming, with a nice balance of "burst" gaming (my 10-minute bus ride in the morning is perfect for a couple of levels of the AW arcade mode, or just enough time to walk my three puppies) and more involved modes (the later campaigns in AW can take a good hour or so to complete, and extended training sessions with your Nintendogs just gobble up time).

I'm now eagerly awaiting delivery of Electroplankton and Metroid Prime Pinball (a game that I ignored totally until the rave reviews started appearing) and I've got a list of around a dozen other titles I must buy - and that's before we hit the burst of great DS games appearing in the next 6 months.

Not interested in the slightest, I'm afraid. The Xbox was the only one of the current-gen consoles I didn't pick up - all the games on it that interested me I could play on other platforms, and the exclusives it did have weren't my cup of tea.

The 360 looks to be much the same, but bigger & shinier with added features that I could care less about.

The PS3 is also fairly uninteresting at the moment, but I'll keep an eye on it - there were plenty of games on both the PS1 and PS2 that I enjoyed, and unless Sony really fuck it up the PS3 will likely have a bundle of must-have titles.

The console that I'm really fired up for is Nintendo's Revolution. The "Virtual Console" - downloadable versions of NES, SNES and N64 games - plus backwards compatibility with the GameCube, plus remarkable new interface, plus all of Nintendo's usual class-A titles & franchises = me sold already. It might well be an utter flop, but - as with the DS - Nintendo are trying something new & offbeat, and that's what really turns me on about gaming.

...like The Professionals, but with spooge instead of Martin Shaw?

Mega-City... GROVE!
Mega-mega-mega... Mega-City... GROVE!

Ba-ba-da-daa-da-da-daaa...

(Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until PJ gets shot in the eye by Dredd)

...at least not until we skyclad savages come bundling down across the border to beat the snot out of a few of you English pansies. With a haggis.

;-)

[is]

Problem is, it's addressed to me and it has my customer ref. on it, so it would seem that as far as they're concerned it is for me!

No idea whatsoever. My working assumption is that they've mistakenly sent an invoice that should have gone to their local depot to me. The package weights & destinations don't seem to match my own shipment, and I've already had another invoice for ?37 (which matches up with typical import charges, IIRC).

While I'm pretty sure it's a mistake, the damn thing is payable within 7 days and the longer it goes without any reply from DHL the more I worry about it.

Add that to my dodgy laptop and a shitty week at work & I'm not having the best time at the moment!

JEB --

Hundred quid? Pah! I've just had a bill for ?1,000 from DHL for customs charges on items worth less than ?180!

Cue much stress, especially when I realised their bloody phones get switched off at 5.30. Still waiting for a reply to my (lengthy & irritated) email...

...does that mean you know the pass? C'mon, spill!

There's a new cover & listing up at Amazon. I've still got a copy of the cover from the original listing (crap quality, I'm afraid) and both are posted below for comparison.

I'd be very interested to know what the problem was with "The Spider" as a title, though...


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/buttonman/spider_preview.jpg">

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/buttonman/kingcrooks.jpg">

Hoo-fucking-rah! Still had no explanation from Titan as to the delay, but if it's shipping now I'll be over the moon.

...but what about The Steel Claw?