Andrew Wilkinson

After being completely unable to get online with Mario Strikers last night (as was the case for most people it seems) I decide to play a few games this morning. It was working well, but in my third series I won the first game 1-0, then thanks to a lucky 4 goal mega-strike managed to take a 6-0 lead with 30 seconds to go. Easy victory I thought - except the screen goes black, apart from a "connection lost" message.

Friends code and no voice or text chat might make the online play safe for all the kiddies out there, but it's not going to get people to play fair. Grr. It seems that Nintendo still credited me with the points I would have got for a victory, but it's just not the same as actually winning.

After playing ten or so online matches, and winning the fire cup I have changed my mind somewhat about the game. I still think it's great, and loads of fun - but I no longer think it's as heavily geared towards mega-strikes as I did. Once you get the hang of it defending against mega-strikes is fairly straight-forward, and the fact that sidekicks now have special moves means it is fairly easy to get goals if you just pass it around a bit. The ball charges up as you pass it, and it's only really possible to score once you've passed the ball five or more times in a row. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making it worthwhile to ping the ball between players back near your penalty area, then lob the ball forwards to try and get a volley. That's only a minor gripe though.

If you've not got a Wii, get one!
If you've not got Mario Strikes, buy it!
Buy it now!

My copy of the new Mario Football game arrived today. I was a big fan of its Gamecube predecessor, so I was really looking forward to this one. I've only managed to play it for just over half an hour, but it's loads of fun - if a little complicated. I also found it difficult to distinguish my players from the opposition, which is quite a big problem.

After a couple of warm up games I decided to go online. Seeing as this was my first go I was way down the league in 1195th place. My first match placed me against the 4th(!) placed player, who promptly kicked my arse 9-0, 2-0. The second game was against the 38th placed player, which I also lost 5-0, 9-0. Scoring goals is very hard, and if you let the opposition get a mega-strike then you can quite easily go 3, 4 or even 5 goals down in the space of ten seconds. It's hard to come back from that! It's a shame that the game seems (at least my first play) to be so focused to scoring mega-strikes and not on goals from open play.

Anyway, if you want to add me as a friend on Mario Strikers Charged Football my friend code is 339402992656. If you haven't added Ellen and mine's Wii then that friend code is 2223191855460218. Don't forget to comment with your friend code(s) so I can add you back.

So many stupid numbers. Why not just have the one? Gah.

Someone has ported OpenTTD to the GP2x. As soon I get home tonight I'm going to load it up and then I'll be able to play Transport Tycoon wherever I am. How cool is that?

(Very cool is the correct answer, by the way!)

After that rant I've just had some good news, my copy of Civilization IV has just been posted - I hope I'm not hit by too many of the bugs other people are talking about.