Today was meant to be the day that I played Dead or Alive 4 for the first time. Didn’t work out like that.

After I finished fruit picking in Animal Crossing I turned on my 360. Thought I’d just download the demo of Crystal Quest before trying DoA4. Incredibly, it’s yet another shooter using the same old Robotron control scheme. Which makes it, what, the fifth Live Arcade in that vein? Not that I mind, it’s a control scheme I love and I reckon all the games that use it are different enough to be worthwhile. Crystal Quest seemed underwhelming from the eight level demo, but I unlocked it anyway. (When I got my 360 I shove tons of points on there so I wouldn’t have to worry about adding more for a year or so. Except it just made things too easy to buy. They’re going down rapidly.) The game actually turns out to be pretty good… but only after ten or fifteen minutes. However, that’s just on the default skill level. Whack the difficulty level up to 10 and it becomes very hard, very quickly. (Mainly due to one type of enemy that leaves a trail of mines. Not sure what to do about them. I hope they’re not game-breaking.)

Then I played Marble Blast Ultra. Just for a quick go… which turned into over two hours… on one level. I was determined to get an under-par time on Sledding, which meant not using any checkpoints, which meant restarting every time I fell off the level. Which was a lot. Each go lasted about fifteen seconds… so you work out how many times I must have tried it. I did it though, oh yes. It’s a real pity the Friends leaderboards are broken.

Anyway, I realised while playing Marble Blast that I hadn’t downloaded all the Robotron style games from Live Arcade. I’d missed out Smash TV. So I’ve just downloaded it to complete the set. A quick blast and then bed, I think.