Tuesday, July 03, 2007

2nd July: GS Update

303 of 1000
22 of 44 Achievements
0 -> 460 of 1000
15 of 24 Achievements
0 of 200
0 of 12 Achievements
70 -> 125 of 1000
10 of 50 Achievements
0 of 200
0 of 12 Achievements
0 of 200
0 of 12 Achievements
360 of 1000
9 of 23 Achievements
105 -> 125 of 200
9 of 12 Achievements
130 of 1000
11 of 47 Achievements
35 -> 135 of 1000
8 of 45 Achievements

Lots of games these past few days. =D

Finally level 45 on Forza after several more endurance races. Still need to do the few cups to get a couple of achievements (which my auto driver is doing now). Though it's going to be a while until I hit level 50 I feel.

I rented Project Sylpheed today, and it's quite good. Square Enix usually never fail to disappoint, and their foray into a flight sim has turned out rather well. It has quite an arcade style to it, and is full of pre-rendered story scenes that are full of life and colour. The story is worth listening to, as it does help with the missions in the game. There are 16 main missions in the game, each with primary and secondary objectives - but you're never told the secondary objectives. Each level gives you a rank based on time, kills, objectives etc. Each level can last for 5-25 minutes, though it took me 3hrs 30mins of flying for my first run though (about 6/7 hrs total if you include the cut scenes). About half of the achievements are fairly easy and got by going through the game, though 2 of the story achievements didnt unlock for me as I played it which was wierd. The rest are for doing special activities - completely annihilate 'Squad X', destroy 1000/10000 ships, destroy stuff with a total weight of one gigaton etc. Half of those require more than one run though (I got 81 megatons on my first run through, so that 1000 megaton/1 gigaton achievement would require 12 run throughs). As you play through the game, you get unlocks for your ship, and you have to do more difficult tasks and so forth. I enjoyed it, until my second run through, where in order to get higher ranks on some of the levels I died several times from annoying little things. The controls are ok, though it's a bit annoying that if you accidentally go into hyperdrive you cant stop and end up hitting something, and often the screen is so full of colours you cant tell which are the enemy ships, or where your base ship is in order to refuel. Thus, as you try and decipher the map and radar (which sortof help) you end up with either no shield or dead :S Though if you dont really like the current flight sims available (Blazing Angels, Over G Fighters), or love Square Enix or arcady games, then give this game a go.

I tried the Band of Bugs demo. It reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (yeah I didnt get into Advance Wars that much) and looks quite fun-ish. The achievements look ok, with 130 being easily attainable, depending on how long the single player mode is.

I also rented Shadowrun again. I liked it a bit more than last time - mainly because I was able to play a few games with people who weren't retards. By retards I mean the following: people who have to have a running commentary on what they're doing; people who scream and shout down their mic; people who swear non stop; people who are racists and people spouting racial slurs; people who shout 'you got pwned, biatch' after each round; 'people who keep shouting 'revive me!'; people who beat box down their mic; people who play music down their mic... I could think of others, but I'm sure that 66% of XBL games contain at least one of the above. That being said, I got the 5:1 damage to kill ratio achievement, and the fever. I should have got the 10 rounds won in a row achievement (6-0 first round, then 4-0 second, then 4-1, finished 6-1) but it didnt unlock. BOO! I tried going for the 5 gust kills, but I reckon I only got one.

Marble Blast Ultra is a game I like the demo of. Until I gets frustrated by annoying 'air' physics such that movement in the air is almost nil. Bleh.

My *box finally decides to download the Bankshot Billiards demo despite being on auto download for new XBLA demos. It's ok, but in a heartbeat I'd pick WSC2007.

Put in PES6, played a few more games of my D2 League and cup. I'm beginning to wonder why the shortest half length on this game is 5 minutes, and not 2 mins like most other football games. It'll be a while before I reach 1000GS on this game, but I'll get there =D

I've been playing a few more games of Carcassonne, and a couple online. I got the win vs 3 other players online achievement (rather comfortably), and I'm still working my way to that 5000 points achievement. I hope to get 200 GS on this soon. It's a shame no-one on my friends list has it.

I have a love/hate relationship with Blitz: The League. Dont get me wrong, I love the NFL and enjoy the Madden franchise, despite it being made by EA. But the Blitz is riddled with poor camera and poor controls. I hadn't played this in a while, so I went through the tutorials again (quite comfortably). Went back to my campaign game, only to be 21 points down after the first quarter. My defence cant defend, apparently. The menu system for choosing your plays is rather poor, as in the fact that it never remembers your previous play, and as the quarters are rather short there is no messing around in choosing your play. All the default plays (just pressing A) are rather crap. On the field, the defence ends up not defending the Hail Mary, or completely missing with the blitz on a running play. The controller never switches to the person you want, and everytime you select a new person, you have to re-press LT to lock on with a dirty hit. They could have done a lot better with this game. I'll tackle it again when the real NFL starts hiking their balls.

Well, I finally decided to sit down with my rental of Flatout, and go through Carnage mode. All was well for the most part - I started to get silvers and golds, rather than a complete bronze slate. Also ended up with some achievements - Heavy Blast, 100 slams, 1 mill Carnage points, etc. So then I was down to the penultimate Carnage race. Normal race/destruction type, with the goal being 50k points for bronze. 50k?? Thats gold on most other races. So 8 attempts later, my best score is 35k. This is a load of pants. Then I get 45k. Getting better, so then another 8 attempts later, I have 48.5k and 15 seconds left. I can see the car ahead of me, I have full Nitro. I aim full pelt at it, and the car ahead partially crashes into the wall, scraping along the side at 60mph. Easy kill I feel, so I aim for where it should be. In the 50 metres between me and the wall, the other car comes to a complete halt. I mean 60 to 0 in 0.000 seconds. My car never does that unless I hit a tree. So this glitch made me miss, and then if you've ever played this game, you know the reverse gear is shite, so I end up with 48.5k for the race, and almost a busted controller as it gets flung across the room. Destruction Derby got AI and reversing right, why cant these people??

OK, rant over. I also have The Darkness rented out, which I'll hopefully play (and enjoy, by looking at the manual and achievements) tomorrow.

GS: 35,128 -> 35,778

Completed XBLA: 7 / 21
Completed Retail: 17 / 75
GS Completion %: 41.01%
GS % (Non-Demo): 44.61%

Country Rank: 496/203230
World Rank: 2882/1506376

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