I held out hope of getting to Elite without rubber bands for many years, but realising that I’m still less than half way there despite putting in what must be close to a hundred hours of terrorist hunts over the past 5 years I figure I need all the “free” XP I can get if I’m going to ever get 1000/1000 in this game.

Since the early hours of Sunday morning my 360 has been running round in circles racking up XP. Which leaves me at a bit of a loose end so I finally logged back into PSN to pick up my two free games (Little Big Planet & WipEout HD/Fury).

LBP took longer to install and update than it could hold my attention when I finally got into the game. I can see it being something that I use to kill a half hour here and there, maybe. I certainly don’t get why people go bat shit crazy about it.

WipEout was a blast, WipEout 2097 was one of my favourite Saturn games and WipEout 3 was the fastest feeling racing game I’d ever played. A couple of hours just disappeared here, this could be the game that gets me back into using the PS3 as a games console.

I also took the chance to play a little further into Black Ops on the PS3; I really don’t “get it”. The story is a mess, there’s all these character names floating around, but I honestly couldn’t even tell you which one is the character sitting in the chair because they are all so generic and replaceable. As for the plot, I’m about 7-8 missions in now and I have not got a fucking clue what’s happening, it’s enjoyable none-the-less, with some fun set pieces, but it just jumps from one seemingly unconnected sequence to another far too often for me. Maybe it’ll all make sense in the end, maybe it’d feel less disjointed if I sat down and played it from beginning to end in a weekend; maybe I would if it wasn’t so bland in the first place.

I also fired up “Zombies” from the title screen for the first time. I can see they thought long and hard about a name for this mode… I’m in a theatre, wondering around seeing “You must turn on the power first” flash up at the bottom of the screen every 20 seconds. How? Where? Why? This really could have done with an introductory cinematic explaining what the fuck is going on and what I’m supposed to be aiming for.

I spend 80% of my time running around trying to find something to shoot, eventually I score enough points to unlock a door — exciting much!?, which just seems to give me even more empty space to run around in. Still no signs of a power generator, nor any idea where one would be, or how I’d turn it on if I did find it. Bored now, switch input to the 360 and stare at my characters feet as he runs in circles … switch back, quit to dash, watch half a dozen episodes of Big Bang Theory. A Sunday afternoon well spent.