I had a great weekend - doing not much else but gaming. I've played: - Burnout 3 and Fight Night Round 3 against my brother, and I was winning most of the time. - New Super Mario on the DS (while visiting family, by now they've accepted that I'm weird like that, and they don't mind) - Zuma (and I've managed to rank #1 in my friends list, I can't believe how motivating the whole Xbox Live online service is) - I've managed to finish Prey (it was kind of easy but I liked it. I may be the only person, but I prefer these sci-fi settings to GoW's drab grey) - Now that Prey is finished, I am on to Gears Of War, which I find quite difficult at times. But still, great fun so far. The only disappointment I had was with Prey, I tried online play, to get some of the remaining achievements, but I could hardly find anyone playing it onlne. The only match I managed to get on was laggy.

I think I will give in and buy a Nintendo DS after all. I am really keen on both Mario & Luigi 2 and Resident Evil DS, and it's not like any major PSP releases are expected real soon. All the ones I am looking forward to (see list in previous blog post) will take a couple of more months to come out. If I manage to finish the PSP games I have right now, I think I will just go out and buy the DS. Maybe I should buy the Lite version, but I don't expect that it will come out within 3-4 months here, so I might as well buy the heavy brick version.

I gave up on finishing From Russia With Love on PS2. In fact I almos broke the disk I was so frustrated. I am about 1/3rd into the game, on the motorboat level, where someone else is driving/controlling the boat, while I am supposed to shoot the bad guys, boats and locks. The control is so non-precise, it is absolutely painful to shoot the targets, so I never managed to survive the level, after 10 or so retries. I decided that it is just not worthwhile to struggle through the game like this. On the other hand, I am having a blast with Resident Evil 4. The atmosphere and the story is great, the movement of the zombies is really fluid, and it's incredibly satisfying to shoot them, the way they take the hits is really fun. I am slightly worried about boss battles, as I am crap usually in those situations, but we'll see how it goes.

These are the PSP games I am most looking forward to:

• Syphon Filter
• Gran Turismo 4
  
• Splinter Cell Essentials
• Tomb Raider Legends
• Brothers in Arms
• Daxter
  

These are all scheduled for Q1 according to Gamespot, I guess we'll see. I will have to get a Nintendo DS as well, just for Mario and Luigi 2 and the upcoming portable Resident Evil :-)

After spending a lot of time with my PSP, I am back to the GBA SP to complete the Riviera RPG. I already clocked in 22 hours in the game, so hopefully the end is near. I do find the battles quite challenging, and I am keep on losing HP when failing to disable traps, so overall it's a bit of a struggle, but the storyline keeps me interested and going.

I've just completed playing through the SOCOM game on my PSP. Overall I had a great time with the game - and they did a smart thing with the PSP-PS2 "crosstalk" feature, I am tempted to purchase the PS2 game to see how it works. I do find the controls a bit awkward. It's not the fault of the game, I think Sony should have went with a dual analog controller. The difficulty was just perfect for me. I am not a brilliant player, but I did manage to play through every level at 2nd or 3rd try. The story was a typical Tom Clancy-inspired terrorist plot.

Aaah - Episode 2 was just as brutal as the first one. I had to watch like 3 episodes after it of Oliver's Twist to regain some enthusiasm about cooking.