All of it.

Seriously. I’m seven hours in, and it’s just magical. Not just the vellum-drawn graphics – which are sumptuous – but the whole thing. Charming, challenging, well-paced, epic-but-never-overfacing, it’s the best Zelda Nintendo never wrote.

It barely dented the charts, but it’s one of the finest games the PS2 will see. Hell, it’s better than most next-gen titles right now. Criminally, Clover Studios, who only release Okami, God Hand, and Killer7, have now been closed. In their memory, and in the sake of all that is good and true, shun Little Britain: the Game (number two in the charts last week, for goodness’ sake!), and buy this. It’s stunning.

There’s nothing else to say, really.

So I’ve been playing a lot of Guitar Hero recently. It’s good. It’s very, very good. I wrote a review for Pixelsurgeon, which you can read here. Do read it – it’s one of my favourite bits of writing about games I’ve done, and one of my favourite games I’ve ever played. It’s remarkable; it’s all about music, all about tactile control, and it leaves you with the biggest buzz. If you own a PS2 and even vaguely like music, it’s absoutely worth your time and money.

And if you’re still not sure about that… you could always, as I said, read the review. It’s a review that is mainly about music and love, and has relatively little to do with the mechanics of gaming. I enjoyed writing it hugely.

In which I review Black. Another games review, up over at Pixelsurgeon. I didn’t like it much. Technically wonderful, entirely soulless. And I really tried hard to like it, too. Ah well. I traded it for Advance Wars DS before the California trip. Now that was a good idea.

“Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since Tony Hawk Pro Skater first rolled onto the PlayStation. Like it or not, Hawk is now a part of the gaming canon, committed to rolling out yearly updates. Indeed, Activision has exclusive rights to the Hawk brand until 2015 – we’re not even halfway through the series’ life.”

A new game review up over at Pixelsurgeon, this time of Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land on the Nintendo DS. Very impressed with this – an amazingly good online implementation, which, in terms of how it links up with the internet almost puts Mario Kart to shame; lovely cel-shaded visuals; none of the nonsense that the Underground games brought in. As the review says, it’s essentially Pro Skater 5.

Read the full review.

“It’s a hard life, being a games reviewer. You’d think it would all be peaches and cream – playing games for ages and then being allowed to write about them (and if you’re really lucky, being paid for the privilege).

But it’s a lot harder than that.”

Another game review up on Pixelsurgeon. This time, a review of the Xbox port of Half-Life 2. It’s possibly a bit too “heavy” (you’ll see what I mean when you read it), but it was fun to break away from convention for a while. There’s a horrific typo/crap sentence based around a pun that doesn’t quite work and I’m a bit embarassed about that. Other than that, though, one of the better things I’ve written in a while.

Read the full review.