16th December: GS Update

It's been a mass weekend of gaming. I've finished my deadlines for the year, so its back on the 360 for some serious gaming!

My power supply almost exploded! borandi turned on the juice and we did some serious gaming! 64,052 points of total gamerscore is pretty good. Admit it. That is an increase of 490 points over last time! Another day, another milestone. The 64,000 barrier has fallen! He rocked out to Pro Evolution Soccer 6 winning 1 achievement to finish the game, The Outfit gaining 2 achievements, Arkadian Warriors, Amped 3 adding 3 achievements, ARMORED CORE4 picking up 3 achievements, Guitar Hero III finishing 1 achievement, Blazing Angels 2 adding 4 achievements, Blue Dragon, and borandi won't admit this, but I had to force him to stop.

Hahaha lots of gamage. It also goes hand in hand with my new Christmas present I got this week. So far in my 360 career, I used a 13" CRT (which sucked trying to read text on Dead Rising/PGR3), then moved to a 'HD Ready' 19" LCD. Now, however, I have the pleasure of playing on a beautiful 32" LCD screen, complete with 1080i compatibility. Everything is bigger, and better:


Here it is as I was setting it up, with a good Eddie Izzard on the set. I have noticed some motion blur on it (as quoted in some reviews), but generally it is, in general, better than the 19" LCD I had.

As for the games this week, most of them being on Friday/Saturday:

Blue Dragon	50 -> 80 of 1000 7 of 43 Achievements
Blazing Angels 2	0 -> 50 of 1000 4 of 50 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	270 -> 275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
ARMORED CORE4	0 -> 80 of 1000 3 of 39 Achievements
Amped 3	340 -> 530 of 1000 8 of 15 Achievements
Arkadian Warriors	0 -> 60 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
The Outfit	15 -> 40 of 1000 3 of 41 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	880 -> 1000 of 1000 23 of 23 Achievements
SmackDown vs RAW 2008	510 -> 865 of 1000 22 of 26 Achievements
Party Animals	665 -> 720 of 1000 41 of 50 Achievements

So I've spent the best part of Sunday, and part of the night on Saturday, still pursuing Blue Dragon achievements. Armed with my trusty guide (after spending 30 hours without one, I restarted with it), I'm now happily 18 hours into the first disc, having just arrived in Jibral. On that merry journey, I've picked up one of the hardest achievements in the game - Wagon stage complete. In order to do this achievement, you basically have to train from your first hour to get it, then memorise a pattern, and execute it successfully. Having tried ~30 times previously, I was able to do it in 3 attempts on this new save. 30GS coming my way - beautiful!

I rented some Blazing Angels 2 this week (because next week I no longer get free rentals D=). I enjoyed the first game somewhat, even though it got repetitive. BA2 is roughly the same - just with easier controls and more stuff to do in each mission. I got the first two missions done and picked up a couple achievements just to get the feel of the game. Overall, it's a nice WW2 flight sim - if you like those sorts of games.

I also continually got hold of some GH3 - this time in search for some Lefty Flip achievements. On completing Easy on lefty, no achievement popped up (apart from the complete easy one) - so I was a bit annoyed~! I have plans so go through it again (in search of the 5* easy achievement), so hopefully it'll unlock then.

In an attempt to actually play all the games I have, I busted out my copy of Armored Core 4. This game is quite 'rare' in the UK - I've only seen a few copies, but I managed to pick this up pre-owned for 20 quid at Gamestation. Unfortunately, I went into Game and they had it for 20 quid brand new :( But on the whole, Armored Core 4 is fun. It's like a cross between Chromehounds and Earth Defence Force. You build your mecha/'NEXT' with bits you buy/unlock, then shoot the crap out of everything that moves in a mission style based game. Good fun all round! Overall, achievements seem ok - complete the game on easy then hard nets most of them.

I also returned to some Amped 3. Last time I got an achievement in Amped 3 was in March, well before I started this blog. Well I liked the game then - it required skill and persistence to get the achievements. This time round, I went purely for completion of story mode, which I was able to do in about 90 mins (after being half way through already) to net 290 GS. The rest of the achievements require me to participate in all the challenges, and to show my skillz in each mountain. After completing the game, I'd done around 80 challenges - the game has 240, so technically I'm only 33% into those achievements. Ouchies =P

Arkadian Warriors is an XBLA game released this week (with Gripshift). I'll quote what I said on the 10kclub forums after playing the demo:

To me this game (or what I saw of the demo) looks like a random dungeon generator placed within a storyline. Pick up quests (main storyline or just random), go into a randomly generated dungeon or two, get the quest items/kills, back to town.

Its basically an RPG with the level design effort taken out. like Ehrgeiz for the PSX, or Eternal Quest for the PS2 - neither of which did well, but neither had a story line.

There isnt much graphically you can cram into these XBLA games, especially when trying to create individual 3D environments for RPGs - its easier to create a racing game or puzzle game. I reckon they just tried to create a 30hr RPG within the space constraint, and as a result had to stick in the random dungeon generator and scale down the polygons.

I did buy it, and currently about 33% through Story mode. Hack, Slash, Hack, Slash, New Dungeon, Repeat. That's all it is, and its mindless fun. Most of the achievements can be got going through the game, so I'll be working on that. It has a cool co-op mode, but I haven't tried it yet.

I rented the Outfit again, this time to focus on the story mode. I've only done the first couple of missions (each takes ~20mins) in single player and it's a lot like the last time I played it. Just keep shooting and spawning stuff as you go through the map until you win. Ultimately more fun in co-op though.

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 is FINALLY COMPLETE!!! I spent a good deal of Friday and Saturday playing over 100 games to get the final three leagues complete on this game. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong, but the achievements for completing each league took the biscuit. At 40 games a league, you seriously just have to sit there and grind through the games (whilst watching a show on your laptop). Well I can put this on the shelf, and work on PES2008 now =D Game Complete!

I rented out WWE 08 again this week, for the main purpose of getting most of the online achievements. This was successful (the only online achievement I still need is the 'defend a title 5 times against 5 different gamertags in 24hrs') while boosting with Rican Ninja89, and I got a few more single player achievements too. Another rental (and a successful streak online) should see this game complete.

Same goes with Viva Pinata: Party Animals. All I'm missing are single player achievements, which I could probably grind in 5 hours or less, but that involves playing around 10-16 games offline which will take a while. Fun game, fun achievements, low replayability. Though it's a fun game for 5-10 year olds.

GS: 63,012 -> 64,082

Completed XBLA:	15 / 39
Completed Retail:	29 / 149
GS Completion %:	38.92%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.24%

Country Rank:	143

A note about Christmas blog postings: As usual over Christmas, one goes to see their extended family over this period. I will have access to 360 gaming, but possible not teh interweb for posting. I may wait and do an extended post. You'll just have to wait and see.