25th August: GS Update

Blue Dragon	0 -> 10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Chromehounds	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 49 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
X-Men:TheOfficialGame	685 -> 1000 of 1000 16 of 16 Achievements
Track and Field	0 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Cabela's Safari	350 of 1000 13 of 30 Achievements
Catan	110 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
FC Instincts Predator	0 -> 280 of 1000 13 of 35 Achievements
Outpost Kaloki X	10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bejeweled 2	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Quake 4	0 -> 35 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Five days worth of gaming, and the best bit has been Blue Dragon! Cheapest online price is 30GBP, but I got mine from Blockbuster (32GBP) as it's just round the corner :) I can safely say that Blue Dragon is the best game out on the 360! Forget your GoW rubbish, or Bioshock nonsense - any hardcore RPG fan will LOVE Blue Dragon. I'm seven hours in, and you can already feel the Dragonball Z/Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy influences. For those that don't know, the main artist on BD did DBZ/DQ, and Nobuo Uoematsu did the music for BD and FF. But all the RPG elements are in BD - experience, battles, storyline, FMV. Okay I admit, maybe it's missing one element - the stereotypical double D cup breasted female... But if you've been waiting for a JRPG for the 360, this is it. The achievements aren't too shabby either - in order to get ALL of them you'll probably need either a guide or a couple of runthroughs. I got the easy 2 achieves (Multi-monster, back attack), missed one achievement, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless!

Chromehounds has been on my shelf a while - I got it based on the fact that Tim, the artist at http://cad-comic.com, said he enjoyed it. The best way to describe Chromehounds is to say that it is quite slow paced, mechanised robot fighting ala Battlefield style. I've not done much of the single player, but rican ninja89 plays this a lot with a couple of his mates, so I joined in. Online is very repetitive (doing the same thing over and over again on the different maps) but with some friends it does pass the time. The idea of each map is to beat/destroy the other HOUNDs, or destroy the enemy headquarters. If you win, that area is 'slightly' captured by your force. Everyone online can help towards capturing/defending (i.e. 1000s of people), and keep capturing until your side wins the war. Then the map is reset, and continue. I got some of the achievements out of order thanks to some boosting help, and some of the achievements are almost impossible. But as long as my friends play this game, I will too.

I got some MS points this week, so I bought Bomberman Live. I thought it would be very fun in single player and online... but I was let down. It's basically just more of the same of the demo. There is no single player story mode (which I was looking forward to), and few variations on a theme to play with. My advice is to only get it if you think you'll play the demo online.

I hadn't played X-Men III in a while, mainly because all I had to do was finish up Iceman's achievements. They didnt take long with the help of a guide, so I can finally label this game 'complete' and stick it on the shelf. An easy game overall, bar a couple of Nightcrawler levels.

At last, a decent button bashing game in Track and Field! A mis-spent youth was played with games like this, so I snapped up this XBLA title. I've got all the 'easy' achievements - <9s>65m in all three throws of the Javelin, etc.. The final achievement to get is the 'Qualify with every attempt' achievement - the Hammer throw is the one pulling me down on this achievement, but I'll keep plugging at it.

I've had to start a new game on Cabela's African (the other time I played it was on a different HDD), but I got through the first country no probs in record speed. Managed to get that Dik-dik in one shot, first time - the sneaky little bastard!

I played my first online game of Catan - two people quit early, and I came last anyway with 4 points. That game lasted a long, long time! There's only one person on my friends list who plays it seriously - he's just got the 500 points online achieve, and played it 300 times online. *zzzz*

FarCry Instincts Predator seems like an interesting game - but I haven't played single player. rican and I just traded some easy achievements with the help of an online guide. Spent about 5 hours on this to get 280GS.

I haven't played Outpost Kaloki X for a long time, mainly because there were two ways to play the game - the right way (which happens 1% of the time); and the wrong way (the other 99%). Basically you either win, or fail. There are some very decent guides online that people can follow, but I spent a lot of time pausing the game to read the guide in the couple of levels I did.

I've been playing my Nintendo DS a lot this month - mainly Puzzle Quest (a game coming to XBLA soon) which is basically a Bejeweled RPG. So I thought I'd be a bit better at Bejeweled. WRONG! I got worse... enough so much that I could have laughed milk out of my nose. The achievements are HARD...

Quake 4 is a game I've played on the PC once or twice... so I opened up my 360 copy and joined rican online. It's an ok game, but not enough people play it online. Those that do are intent on not letting people get the top 10/top 1 achievements - often by using glitches to do so. There is always talk of a scoreboard reset, but no-one ever knows when. Single player is fun, if just a bit too dark.

GS: 43,249 -> 44,254

Completed XBLA:	9 / 25
Completed Retail:	21 / 96
GS Completion %:	41.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.56%

Country Rank:	1136/837441
World Rank:	1977/1519859