I’m still flailing away in a vast sea of games; quite literally, in the case of Rayman Raving Rabbids. Its peculiar sense of humour and simple but varied range of mini-games are strangely compelling, plus I get to kid myself that furiously waggling Wii controllers is an efficient cardio-vascular upper-body exercise. I know, like in Wii Sports, small, quick movements give the same (if not greater) accelerometer results as huge, sweeping swings, but that’s not the point is it? If you’re going to play motion sensitive baseball, you might as well launch yourself into a ludicrously exaggerated spin while pretending to hit a virtual ball.

In MMOGland, City of Heroes trick-or-treating continues apace. Well, I say “apace”, it’s quite a slow pace. Standing entirely still, actually. My main badge-gathering hero has most of the previous Halloween event badges for killing assorted witches, werewolves, giant pumpkin-things, ghosts, zombies, people with really cheap plastic tridents and pointy teeth who can’t make up their mind if they’re a demon or vampire and surly teenagers in casual clothes who might stick a plastic mask on if they’re really making an effort before demanding stuff. Something like that, at least… I’ve also got extra costume slots from the event salvage, which I think just leaves the three new badges they added this year, for collecting costumes. In the cold light of efficiency metrics the best way to get these is to stand in front of the same door (you could move around, but there wouldn’t be much point), and click on it once every 60 seconds in the hope of getting appropriate treats. This isn’t the most scintillating activity ever devised, but I just love those badges… On the plus side, the hectic one-click-per-minute (with occasional blasting of spooky villainy) action affords ample time for reading, watching television, chatting, or anything else you can squeeze into roughly-57 second chunks. It’s also proven me entirely wrong in predicting that I’d never use the stopwatch feature of the G15 keyboard.

Mostly, though, I’ve succumbed to the delights of The Orange Box, which I think deserves a post of its own…