I've been playing Pokemon Pearl for 56 hours and 37 minutes in total. If you lump it all together that's over two days straight! Apart from World of Warcraft there aren't many games that will hold my attention for such a long time.

To date I have caught 65 Pokemon and seen 112. I think this might entitle me to a Pokedex upgrade, I'll have to check with Rowan the Pokemon professor.

Not long ago I picked up a black DS Lite for my girlfriend. She picked up Pokemon Diamond at the same time so that we could trade some of the Pokemon that are version unique. In a matter of days, she had caught up with me in terms of story progression, she even polishes her gym badges more often than I do!

I ordered Odin Sphere from the US this week as it looks like it won't be seeing a release here in Australia any time soon. I'm looking forward to adding it to the stack of games that I really need to play before the Christmas rush. It'll be joining God of War II, and Okami but with Bioshock and Halo 3 coming so soon I don't expect I'll have time.

I picked up Resident Evil: Deadly Silence in a bargain bin at Myer last weekend. It was a treat to hear all the poorly translated wooden dialogue again. Nice to see the zombie chewing the guy's head off at the beginning, too. That part was censored in the UK version I played back in the day.

If I can successfuly sweet talk 'the sponsor' I'll be looking for Picross DS and New Super Mario Bros. at Chermside shopping city this afternoon. Picross really grabbed me after a colleague suggested I check out www.wiipicross.com. If you value your job, don't open this at work! New Super Mario Brothers I've been meaning to get since it was released, I was a Sega fanboy in my youth and didn't play any of the early Mario Games, I thought this would probably be the best way to experience the old school vibe without all the disadvantages the old platforms had.

M. Rossi is taking care of business in Forza 2 as I type this. D'you think they knew that players' enthusiasm might be waning in the late stages of the game? The inclusion of the option to hire a driver to race in your stead makes me think so. Being a slave to the points means I have to finish the game somehow. Mr. Rossi enables me to do something else at the same time.

Now it's gripe time. The menu system in Forza just plain sucks. Many of the achievements involve buying lots of cars, but every time you buy a car it kicks you to the career main menu and it doesn't remember your prior selections as you dig back into the menu tree. There's other stuff that irritates me about the Forza 2 menu system but I won't go on about it, just get it right for Forza 3 please guys!