3rd February: GS Update

This week starts a regular regime of me working 9-5 each weekday, then using other time to fit in gaming and everything else. As such, no real hard grinding unless it's at the weekend. This weekend, it was Blue Dragon!

borandi is making me proud and his opponents jealous... even if they are bots or mindless AI sometimes! Check out the 71,307 gamer score! That is a gain of 55 points over last time! He rocked out to Blue Dragon acquiring an amazing 6 achievements, and then I came out of my trance and realized it was all over.

Oh, guess what? Our gamerscore challenge is going strong... If you want to see how good I'm doing, check it out! There are 3 other people rocking out on this thing which keeps it fun. Out of everyone, borandi is holding on to the number 2 spot. But, there are still 5 long days left! We need to keep heading for the top!

Ah yes, 360voice are doing an excellent competition this month. If you're part of a contest, one lucky winner each day wins 1000MS points - and there's some other stuff to win. I've enabled 'auto contests', which means I'm added to one automatically each week. Good stuff.

In other news, I received my UK 360 back from repair this week. Technically, it only took 14 days to turn around. However, I was expecting a brand new system, with a HDMI port. This time however, the motherboard got replaced, thats all. Got the free month of XBL though. At least now I can play my games that dont work on my US console.

Blue Dragon	110 -> 345 of 1000 20 of 43 Achievements
NHL 2K7	535 of 1000 11 of 17 Achievements
skate.	0 -> 170 of 1000 17 of 44 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 -> 490 of 1000 33 of 50 Achievements
WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	120 -> 490 of 1000 16 of 25 Achievements
Rez HD	0 -> 80 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	0 -> 115 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	535 -> 660 of 1000 12 of 22 Achievements

Game of the week is Blue Dragon. I've essentially spent a day and a half on this game this weekend, just going through the story mode. I'm now near the end of the third disc, just finishing up some extra dungeons and leveling up the characters. I was able to do the 'Perfect Moon Lasers' achievement - that took 20 or so tries with help from the guide. The guide for that achieve was good, but far too complicated for the time that it gives to do that achievement. Along with that, I've been mastering classes for my shadows, and finished all the Quick Time Events. Achievements left involve 'Master All Classes' for each character, get level 99 on each character, 2 mechat shooting stages and finish all the collection achievements. If I persist, hopefully this will be done by next week. =D

Even though I didnt get any NHL 2k7 achievements this week, I did assist in helping some people get the 'Win an 8 man online tournament' this week. As a result, they've joined my league. I'm now one person short for the achievement, and its an easy 115GS if another person does join. If you're interested, the tourney is called 'borandi' and the password is 'nhl'. I'll happily join yours to help you get the achievement. Apart from that, this game requires me to 'Play with every team', 'Win 30 games online', 'Quit 10 games online', and to 'Win 100 games'. One achievement is glitched, so 950GS is the max score for this game.

I purchased Skate while my UK 360 was broke, only to find that it didnt work in my US 360. Now, I can play it, and it's quite fun. Difficult, but fun. I've played someway into the story, and done ~50 matches online. I also managed to get the 3 wins in a row achievement, thanks to some deathracing. What I think is great about this game is that you can get 10 achievements, and still only have 50GS. This is for the easy stuff, like 'Upload a video', etc. I'll try hard to do as well as I can on this game - with any luck, persistence will be rewarded.

I also picked up GH2 second hand from a friend who didnt want it any more. With my new skill (and persistance on 'Cult of Personality' on GH3), I tackled Hard mode on GH2 with ease - until 73% of the way through Freebird! However, I got the achievement for all the extra costumes, thanks to some money for going through Hard and someway through Expert. This let me get the 1* badge for music on 360voice ;)

I spent the early part of the week pummeling though WarTech. I came across a hitch - two characters come across the most evil boss in their story modes. I can't defeat it with either one of them, but I was able to get the other 6 story modes done, as well as all 8 characters score attack modes (as boss battles are not a factor in that mode). Along with that, I managed to find one (1) person online to battle with. I won with ease, which I thought was strange, until I saw my opponents win loss record - 0-117. He didnt put up much of a fight, so I'm wondering why he wasnt attacking that much. Nevertheless, that one fight got me an achieve worth 100GS. I'm not complaining!

The game this week on XBLA was Rez HD. I missed out on Rez when it appeared on the Dreamcast, and everyone I knew who had it said it was great. So 800MS points later, I picked it up. Rez is a short game - it can be completed in ~80 minutes. I got to the final boss with maximum lives and died though. I got achievements for doing the first four stages, and hopefully someone will post a guide soon to get the rest.

I also picked up Spyglass Board Games for 400MS points. I needed some points for the 2* Social badge on 360 voice, and looking at the achievement guides, this old game seemed to be quite easy. It was - one hour got me 115GS and all the offline achievements. No-one plays this online, so I'll find a boosting partner for the rest.

I also got back to LMA Manager 07 - the game which ended my UK 360 last time. Easy enough, I finished that season I had started. Now, 4 seasons remain for that full 1000GS. Each season takes ~5hrs to do, so one weekend I'll finish this one.

GamerScore:	70,382 -> 71457
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 44
Completed Retail:	34 / 158
GS Completion %:	42.58% -> 42.87%

Country Rank:	142 -> 137
World Rank:	910 -> 905
Completion Rank:	2,007 -> 1,954

Extra note - Phantasy Star Universe, a game in which I have 1000GS, has now released some extra DLC for some extra achievements. Three downsides to this - extra content costs 1600/2000 MSPs, requires online play (9GBP/mo), and my completed retail score will go down next week. Damn. I liked PSU, but this is annoying.