8th July: GS Update

At World’s End	125 -> 250 of 1000 10 of 30 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	160 -> 330 of 1000 25 of 50 Achievements
Tenchu Z	0 -> 220 of 1000 10 of 31 Achievements

I've now rented out At World's End three times. The first time, I also had two other rentals out and they took precedence, and as such I played At Worlds End for about an hour. The second time, I didnt play it at all (thank god for free rentals). This week, there are no new releases for rent at my local Blockbuster, thus I can focus on some of those games I haven't played as much, like At Worlds End. Well, I played for around 90 minutes, and got all the achievements now for the first five stages that is possible, and thus have seven stages left. Should not take too long =D Though I've been reading on the forums that the '100 souls' achievement can be quite tricky.

More GH2, its a bit addictive. I managed to finish Medium, all on 5 stars. I've bought all the extra tracks from the store, so I'll finish playing though those to get that achievement. Actually, here's a bug - one of those songs uses the fifth fret once on Medium difficulty. Bastards!! I also tried a couple of tracks on hard - it was hard at first, but the easier stuff gradually puts you into the swing of things. The credits were boring (I trolled the net til that finished), but at somepoint I'll go through the easy tracks.

The first Tenchu I played was the first one on the PSX, and it was a phenominal stealth-ninja game. The stages were hard, with people everywhere and it was difficult to get any of the 11 rounds clear. Tenchu Z, while it takes a step up in terms of graphics, gameplay and stage count (there are 50), takes a step back in both difficulty and individuality. It's a great feeling in the game when you can silently stealth kill everyone on the map (even the innocents if you so which), but after doing it for the first 5 levels, it gets boring. The maps are somewhat repeated too, with the same sort of situations. But there are many ways of doing things - go straight to the objective, or kill everyone first. Unlike the first Tenchu, there so far has been no-one on roofs (upto stage 11), and items have not been necessary. But I am playing it on easy, and I do get a great feeling when I get a perfect score on a level. That is shown in the time taken to get each stage just right - when getting into the swing of things (stages 1-5), it was taking me around an hour (of deaths and getting everything just right) per stage, now however, it's taking me 30 minutes. I'll definately be getting this out again - I suggest you go play the demo if you love any sort of stealth.

Oh, and Ninjas > Pirates... always!

GS: 37,169 -> 37,634

Completed XBLA:	7 / 21
Completed Retail:	17 / 81
GS Completion %:	40.49%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.81%

Country Rank:	445/203789
World Rank:	2557/1509791