Ok, so I got Dead Rising for the Wii yesterday, yeah I know, slow on the uptake as the second game is now out. Its quite funny, because I'm positive that I played the original game of this... except I was sure I played it on a normal X-box, not the 360. I realise its been a few years now (2006!) but I still believe I played it on a standard not a 360!

I've come to realise that its a bit of a fail as well in comparison to the 360 version, not only does it not have as many Zombies on-screen at once (ok, can live with that) but it doesn't have photography, pretty much the icon of the main characters personality. Oh well, other than that it was really fun to play it again with the Wii remote.

On the plus side, I did manage to finally get a _working_ copy of Madworld, which I'm loving. Yes, its mindless violence but hey! That is what some games should be, plus it was only £4 anyway (a lot cheaper than Dead Rising on Wii >.>). I also managed to get Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World which I haven't tried yet, but I did enjoy the original Gamecube one (and actually played it again with my Wife, which she enjoyed).

In my shortlist I still got Fire Emblem to go, which is more of a personal series like and a couple of others, a lot of the maybe-ish games I wouldn't mind having tend to be quite expensive and simply other remakes of games on older consoles. Super Mario Bros Wii is still virtually full price second hand in many places, it doesn't feel like its going to drop yet.

One of the main other reasons for getting Dead Rising however is to motivate myself to finish my SurviveThis! Update for this Halloween. I might be going away for a bit before, so I might have to release it as early as the 26th. It should include a new game play mode, various additions in terms of weapons and clothing, as well as a few new Zombie types. I did post before (check the Survive This tag/keyword) about random generated shading for tiles, this breaks a bit of the plainness of the graphics.

Other things:

Wargames: I had hoped to update this, but I haven't got round to it, its due another update. I had intentioned to ensure this got updated at least every quarter, but I might not quite make it, other things have got in the way.

GiaD: Just didn't happen. Sigh, I feel really bad about this but I just can't help it, I've lost interest in finishing it. For now. I will get round to it, but it will be blatantly late. I highly expect Iain to have posted the results by then.

Dreamland: This is still my favourite project admittedly, I've been redoing the parts that were already existing in the old version and improving where necessary. I've also added a new part in the early game, Recombination which happens before Reionization (which was basically the first part of the game, don't really include the original click to "create" the Universe as gameplay :p), and also changed Galaxy formation at the end of Reionization to a more logical route. Thanks to the new orbiting system, at this point in the game it starts to rotate round, which brings me onto a query:

It takes approx 220-250 million years for the Sun to rotate around the Galaxy, but I'm interested to know how long it might take for our Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy (basically the largest parts of the Local Group) to rotate around each other. I'm asking this because at Group/Cluster level is apparently the largest stage where objects are Gravitationally bound (that is, orbiting alongside or around another object, such as a moon around a planet or a planet around a star). The stage above that, Superclusters are apparently not Gravitationally bound, and just expand outwards as per traditional expansionist theory (so, for the purposes of easy gameplay, they are sticking to a static map :p).

I've also started on a wiki for the project, which is partly to explain the different levels, and also for myself to gauge progress and development. You can find that here:

http://dreamlanduniverse.wikispaces.com/