12th September: GS Update (1)

Lots of games these past few days! Here's what my 360voice said for my weeks gaming:

Do you know what time of the week it is? Time to talk about what happened these last seven days: It is a good one! borandi had seven days of gaming! In a row! I know! Crazy! The gamerscore increase was just insane. I didn't think it would be possible to get 1220 points in such a short span of time but we did. Who knew 91 achievements could be worth that much? Ok I knew that...

NEW GAMES! NEW GAMES! NEW GAMES! 8 of them to be exact! BioShock, Stuntman: Ignition, Cyberball 2072, Fatal Fury Special, Overlord, DEAD OR ALIVE 4, Robotron: 2084, and At World’s End. I want more! I want more! Also, according to the records, borandi must have been craving some FPS action because Gears of War was the weekly favorite. He played it on 4 of the days.

So there you have it... Check back next week for another report from yours truly.

And onto the games:

Two Worlds	0 -> 40 of 1000 5 of 41 Achievements
MOH Airborne	0 -> 230 of 1000 18 of 46 Achievements
Sonic The Hedgehog 2	0 -> 35 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
TigerWoodsPGATOUR® 08	0 -> 335 of 1000 17 of 31 Achievements
Rockstar Table Tennis	355 of 1000 14 of 29 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 of 1000 32 of 50 Achievements
Quake 4	35 -> 80 of 1000 6 of 50 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	60 -> 135 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Saints Row	110 -> 130 of 1000 11 of 43 Achievements
Blue Dragon	45 of 1000 5 of 43 Achievements

Well I was able to play Two Worlds now (see following blog entry), and I'm a bit disappointed. Graphically, it's fantastic. The NPCs and lipsynch are a bit odd, and the frame rate is very poor (inefficient programming). There isn't much of a tutorial, but it's a vast, vast game. I've played it for a couple of hours and I'm still unsure as to what to do :) I made the mistake of taking a bludgeoning weapon against a bear instead of sharp sword, and died a couple of times!

I rented Medal of Honour: Airborne (MOH:A) this week. I've been put off WW2 style FPS as of late (CoD2/3), but this one is actually quite fun and interesting. You run free over the map when you start, with all your primary objectives labelled out. You parachute into whatever area you want, and tackle the objectives in any order you like. The more you use weapons, the more they are upgraded. I got most of the easy achievements (the first three stages and various others), and a couple of multiplayer ones. A good rental :)

Sonic 2 was the XBLA game release this week, so I had to get it (400MSPs). Its just as I remember, and looks kinda wierd on a 19" screen (as opposed to the 13" CRT I huddled near in my youth). Some of the achievements might be hard - all Chaos Emeralds, Supersonic etc. which I never did when I was younger.

I played the Tiger Woods 08 Demo twice when it came out, and I thought it was the best Golf game I've ever played. When I got hold of my rental copy, I wasnt disappointed! It's very easy to control and to pick up and play. There's isnt much to single player apart from the standard Match Play, but there is Tiger Challenges, which would keep anyone occupied for days on end! Created characters are a bit crap until you go through the challenges, however. I got quite a few achievements - I spend a good period of time on the 'Hole in one' achievement, and set up my own courses of holes to get other achievements. I put some challenges up online, and did some easy ones for those achievements. For the rest, I'm going to have to spend quite a few hours to build up my created character, then win a few tournaments.

I'm starting to get up with Table Tennis. I'm working through All-Star difficulty, and playing each match. I win a couple 11-2, 11-5, then spend a good 2 hours trying to beat the next AI, then on what is supposedly the final of a tournament, win very easily 11-2, 11-2. The perfect ace either works 99% of the time on most characters, or 20% on certain others. Pooh. As a result of this utterly stupid AI, I've almost broken two controllers. Oops.

I might have to give up on GH2. I'm at one song now and it's just too difficult - I can barely get 10% into the song because the beginning sequence is stupid. I might be able to hit the 400k/600k pair achieves in the new semester if I get a friend round.

I also continued a bit with the Quake 4 achieves - perfect round, shotgun only. Its quite simple if you save often enough. Though reloading does take a while.

I boosted some with ZACHSP8 10k, from the 10k club, on Bomberman:Live. He helped with several of the multiplayer achievements (tournament, frag a cowboy, 25 frags in a zombie match) - I also learned that you can sign in guests into Live Gold for online action - i.e. a second controller for other achievements that require 4+ players in player matches. I'll be working on that later.

I'm at the last Los Carnales mission now on Saint's Row - and it's so f*ing difficult. I cant get out of the car to shoot the aeroplane, and there are rocket launchers everywhere. Every time I restart the mission, I have to drive for 2 mins to get to the right area. Bleh... Though I got the 20hrs playing achievement.

I'm still on the second disk on Blue Dragon - it's still fairly linear, buy my characters are all level 35ish now. The Prima guide is available at amazon.co.uk, so I think I'll grab that for help with the achievements and such.