OK folks, I know it's been a long while since I wrote to you. I guess I've just been caught up doing other things, like adminning on the English Wikipedia. I also think my previous entry schedule was a little ambitious, especially the "news digest" which got to be a bit of a drain typing up every week... So from now on, I'll try and just shoot out a post whenever the mood strikes me. But more than once every 4 months!

Anyhow, today is the release date for Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, the subject of my last entry, so I figured today would be a good day to jump back into the blogosphere. Since last time, we've learned some new things about VP2, most notably would be the inclusion of four-player online co-op! The co-op participants will have full access to all the tools, except you can restrict them to "look only", "everything but sell/smash" and "no restrictions" - presumably to prevent griefing. We've also learned that wildcards are no longer based on some ridiculously miniscule 1 in 1000 chance, but will be based upon performance in the romancing minigame. There's also three different types of wildcard per pinata, which means each pinata can have 16 different (1 normal, 3 variants, 3 wildcards, 9 wildcard variants) iterations! There's also minigames that you can play alone or with the co-op players called P-Factor and Piñata Papercase. You can also design a garden for playing minigolf! Anyhow, these are just a few of the new features revealed over the past four months. Did I mention this title only costs $39.99?! This is a must-buy for both old fans and newcomers to the Viva Piñata universe.

Now, onto some quick reviews. Both XBLA titles I'll be reviewing this week are 1200 Microsoft points, so they're in that "steep" range, but I think they're both well-worth it.

Braid is a delightful title for anyone who has embraced the "videogames as art" movement. The graphic design is straight out of an impressionist painting and beautifully integrated into the videogame genre. The music fits perfectly with the graphics and overall mood of the game. The game's story is presented as a series of somewhat disconnected thoughts written into novel pages. These can have the effect of invoking an abstract emotional response in the player. You also collect puzzle pieces that you must piece together into a painting that presumably shows some stage in the main characters' life. The gameplay is reminiscent of platform titles like Super Mario Bros., with a twist: you can manipulate the flow of time, similar to Prince of Persia - except you can do so right back to the beginning of a level. Thus the game is at once a platformer and a puzzler as you must use this device not only to save yourself from death, but to complete puzzles within the game. Some elements in the game are affected by the time manipulation; others are not. I'm going to admit here, I found 58 of the 60 puzzle pieces without help, the last two I required a guide. This game is tough! Kudos to anyone who finds all 60 pieces on their own. A game like this is very difficult to sum up in words and at the end of the game, you still have to piece together the story on your own: everyone will likely have their own interpretation. The game is somewhat on the short side, but so was Kurt Vonnegut's "Cats Cradle" - and that was worth the price of entry, as is Braid.

Castle Crashers involves much less philosophical musing, and is a classic "beat-em'up". This game is like Legend of Zelda meets Super Mario 3 meets Ninja Gaiden meets World of Warcraft. I chose the "orange guy" who is basically like a fire-specced mage from WoW who can also deal melee damage. In fact, you spec your character however you like, I put lots of skill points into magic, so I excel at doing damage from afar, but if you prefer to fight close 'n' dirty, you can spec in strength and defense, or if you fancy yourself an archer, you can put points into agility. The soundtrack to this game is great and keeps you pumped, and the artistic style is cartooney but sharp. There's also lots of humour sprinkled into the game, including some "toilet humor", I'll leave that up to the reader to discover. Anyhow, there's really not much to this game, you travel through the levels, coming up against various bosses and minibosses along the way, levelling up, collecting new weapons and "animal orbs", which are pets that provide various upgrades such as the ability to jump higher, finding buried treasure or regenerating health. One caveat would be that the online co-operative play is sorely in need of a patch, the few times that I've tried, I had trouble finding and connecting to games, and when I invited players, the connection would drop fairly regularly. However, if you're looking for a great single-player experience and are willing to wait for a patch to get into some co-op action (or deal with the drops), I'd say pick this gem up right away.