When I first chose the "Online" option in this game, it said "Checking Version", then "Downloading". It took about an hour and a half to download whatever it was trying to download, and it eventually finished, telling me to reset the console and game, which I did. But now when I try to go online again, it does exactly the same thing, going to a very slow downloading screen. Does anyone know what might be causing this?

If you've only just got the game then it's going to download each of the updates in turn when you go online for the first time. EGWT updates are slow, and I thinks there's 5 or 6. Once they're all done, the game should boot normally and you can play online.

Wow, so I'm going to have to download 6 or so updates, each one probably taking up to an hour, before I can play online? Makes me wonder just what all that data is that they need to download to my console! I think it's a pretty safe bet that none of it will be extra content like the courses you can buy on PSN.

While I'm here, does this game get harder as you progress, like it does in the excellent PS2 EG game, or does it start really easy and just stay that way, like on the nearly excellent but annoying EG 2 on PSP?

Actually yes it's all the extra courses and characters, as well as the game patches. If you buy the extras you just unlock the data already on your hdd.

There's a nice steady difficulty curve on EGWT. It's highly rated by PSL users that play it.

Fair enough I'll just keep download then. Thanks for the help.