The crack cocaine of the gaming world takes hold of me once more . . .

After a long hiatus of 10 years, I have to say I am well on my way to developing a Magic: The Gathering habit again.  If you look at the innovations in the mechanics they have managed since I first started playing in the Dark expansion era, they you have to say it is pretty amazing the mileage they have managed to eke out of the original Richard Garfield design.

The Ravnica block pretty much had everything in that pushed my buttons about MTG and threw in a couple of nice twists and curve balls: split mana cards, dual spell cards, gold cards and the whole Guild concept is very well conceived.

Looks like the latest Shadowmoor expansion is a return to a lot of these ideas - fresh boosters - mmmm!

Wii - one week on

Ok - so no impulse buy of  Wii for Christmas 2007 - couldn't find one for love or money, so Nintendo must be making money!   

No one seems to be selling a stand alone unit on the high street, so I ended up with a 2 game bundle instead -  sod's law dictated that HMV didn't have any of the games I really wanted so, so I ended up with some second choices -  Resident Evil Wii Edition and Red Steel (a launch title).

The big irony of buying the bundle is that in the UK this puts the Wii into the same price-point as the higher-end Xbox 360 and PS 3 bundles (£250-£300).  Yep you get Wii Sport and a nunchuck widget too.

I already own a 360 - so why buy a Wii and how do they compare?  Forget the raw specs for a moment and just consider the user experience . . .

Side by side the Wii looks tiny compared to the 360, but the main thing you immediately notice is the difference in NOISE.  The Wii is virtually silent compared to a 360 which sounds like a small jet taking off (only to be beaten by the Media Centre PC I own). 

Plus I have never managed to persuade Monica to play Halo 3, but Wii Tennis was positively received and she is actually sufficiently good at Wii play cow racing to consistently beat me these days.