31st March: GS Update

Games have been plentiful abound this week, though I have been keeping back the GS so that a couple of friends of mine can win the Viral badge over at 360voice.

borandi showed up yesterday and we were like a superhero team together. I make a great sidekick! Gamerscore stands at 83,621. Up up and away right? That is an improvement of 60 points over last time! He opened up Winning Eleven 2007 picking up 1 achievement, N+, Brain Challenge™, Burnout Paradise picking up 1 achievement, Forza Motorsport 2, and it's a good thing he stopped there, otherwise the concentrated awesomeness could have blown out my circuits.

This is really good stuff... the more we play, the more chances we have to leave TheWings977 in the dust. Call me crazy, but a 73,076 point cushion is not nearly enough for me...

Oh, guess what? Our gamerscore challenge is going strong... If you are curious, follow along over here. 2 other people are throwing down in this challenge. If I do the math correctly, it means that 2 players X 3 days means a whole lot of trash talk! Currently borandi is hanging on to the number 3 spot. However there are still 2 days left to score achievement glory. Let's get to the top of that challenge board! Go!

Let's see what's happened this week... 360voice has now increased their watcher limit to 100. I trawled through the appropriate threads on the forum, so now I'm watching 50 or so people. If you want to be watched (and if at all possible, please reciprocate =D), send me a message or comment on my 360v blog.
Xbox.com has had a new facelift. The new style is A LOT quicker than the old one, but now is more minimalist. I love it with lots of info on one screen, but they've had to change it to reduce load on their already bursting servers. Fair enough - although now my friends list is split into sets of 15, and often I have more than 15 friends online at the same time, so I have to click more links to find some of them. Bleh.

MS has also started going after gamesavers. Good on them. There are plenty to look for and cut down, so hopefully I'll be able to shoot up the rankings somewhat. All my score is legit, with some boosting and cheat codes thrown in (GUN, GH3), but I've never used someone elses saved game and claimed it as my own.

In other news, there has been lots and lots of Forza. See later for more info! Also, I was delighted to be presented with 6 new games this week by Nellas, after her trip back home to the US for 3 weeks. These were: Army of Two (US), Winning Eleven 2007, Fifa 07, Medal of Honor: Airborne, The BIGS and History Channel: Civil War. Four of these are US only releases, so I'm glad to have them.

Now onto the gamerage!

Army of Two™	0 -> 65 of 1000 3 of 37 Achievements
Forza Motorsport 2	930 - > 970 of 1000 43 of 44 Achievements
N+	55 -> 70 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Burnout Paradise	340 -> 360 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements
Winning Eleven 2007	0 -> 240 of 1000 6 of 23 Achievements
Chromehounds	140 -> 160 of 1000 7 of 49 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	325 - > 365 of 1000 35 of 59 Achievements
Thrillville: OTR	0 -> 130 of 1000 9 of 50 Achievements
A-Train HX	0 -> 640 of 1000 16 of 24 Achievements
College Hoops 2K7	0 -> 165 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements
Splinter Cell D.A.	100 -> 125 of 1000 6 of 38 Achievements
Big Bumpin	30 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	780 -> 800 of 1000 30 of 49 Achievements

I haven't really started in Army of Two yet. I've done the training, then was called into a 4 player online game with rican ninja89, mingo21, and Chewy027. We went after the quick online achievements (play an online match, win an online match without buying any weapons, collect 20 mini-objectives) but the big one is the 'Earn one billion dollars online', which in reality will probably take 250-300 twenty minute matches. That's a lot of $$$.

Ah yes, Forza 2. Almost complete =D I finished all the time trials - the last one on the Nurburgring had me almost tearing my hair out. After 25 laps of 7.5 minutes each lap, I finally beat the 7:09 time requirement. Now, my last achievement is the 1 million credits online, which is incredibly slow. You get next to nothing online, expecially if you're not first. At the start of the week, I had 250k. After a 4-player 75 lap Nissan Speedway win (120k for winning), ZACHSP8 10k managed to rustle up 8 gamers for some boosting - we all got a 75 lap Nissan Speedway win
(150k win). I also did some public matches and won 2x5-player 25 laps and 1x4-player 75 lap race. Now I need only 126k for the achievement. Why am I doing Nissan Speedway? It's an oval, requires minimal thought, and with the Ford GT40 I can do it at 248mph = 35.3 seconds a lap. Now though, most public servers dont like the GT40, so I use a TVR Speed 12, which does a lap in 36.0 seconds. Failing that, I've just purchased and done up a Mercedes CLK-SLR, which does 39.0 second laps and has near perfect cornering.

N+ is also doing my head in. Sometimes it is just so unresponsive. Thus I got the 1000 deaths secret achievement. I'm also upto Chapter 23 or so. Did some online races and co-op campaign, so maybe those achievements might pop soon.

I haven't been playing much Burnout Paradise this week - just the odd race here or there. I'm several races away from my A license, and I also got the achievement for a 10x multiplier in showtime.

Winning Eleven 2007 is the US version of Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which if you remember I have the full 1000GS in it. So I started on the easy achievements on WE07. I've played about 40 games so far, but still have all the leagues and all the online to do yet. Fun =D

I did a little Chromehounds too this week - just 4 or 5 deploys with rican ninja89. I got my 'Capture 100 COMBAS' achievement, so nothing major. This is another game on my 'to do' list.

Ah yes, some GH3. rican finally got the German song 'Erten Was Wir Saen', and we did some rocking - with me on bass, both on expert. Without any effort, we hit 900k, getting the '700k co-op' achievement. In actual fact, only the host got it, so we had to do it again with the other person hosting. We also got a terrific achievement - 2000 note streak! We had planned to do this on Through the Fire and the Flames, but we tried it on this German song, with me on Easy lead guitar, rican on expert bass (no guesses who the better guitarist is, lol), and on our 4th attempt, we got a 2150 note streak. =D

Thrillville is one of my LoveFilm rentals for the time being. As far as I can tell, it's an 'easy' 985GS according to rican, with one 15GS achievement that is stupidly hard. It's like the new version of Theme Park, so I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it.

I've been looking forward to A-Train HX for some weird reasons. One, it was released in Japan ages ago, and now makes it to UK shores. Two, it's not out in the US. Three, most people have played it (in Japan) have the full 1000GS. So I got my LoveFilm rental (minus a manual), and had a go. Without the manual or a guide, it's startling of what you have to do, as there is no tutorial. Online websites have no help, as almost no-one who speaks English has the game. So I fiddled with it, then posted an easy 'Quick Start Guide' over at x360a.org for everyone to enjoy. Within minutes of posting, it was made a sticky, so result! I'll post it here after this post. (Which reminds me, I didn't look at Zero Punctuations post this week, or last week... I'll post those too).

I had my US 360 out for a while this week. So I put in some College Hoops 2k7, a semi-easy game if the guides online have anything to go by. The good thing about this game is the sliders - it makes the game somewhat easier :) However, with any basketball game on the 360, the blocks are the problem achievements. I put the slider up for free throws, and managed the hard free throw achievement =D I need a proper thrash of this game.

I boosted a little on Splinter Cell with rican - just a couple of levels as one of the sides. Nothing too serious with this game yet.

Some Big Bumpin as well - given that there was some promise in boosting it this week. That didnt materialise, but I managed to get that achievement for the middle competition in single player mode which didn't unlock last time.

Yes, I did play some Halo 3 again this week. More specifically, I played through a level to get the skull and the points achievement for it. I need 2 more gold skulls, several online achievements and all but 1 points achievement.

GamerScore:	82246 -> 83701
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	18 / 51
Completed Retail:	38 / 192
GS Completion %:	41.62% -> 41.13%

Country Rank:	106 -> 104
World Rank:	735 -> 707
Completion Rank:	1,767 -> 1,773

24th March: GS Update

Woah my sleeping pattern is so screwed up this week. 14 hour nights, various hour days. Nevertheless, during the uptime, lots of gamerage:

borandi really threw down yesterday. It was good to see! I wish you could have been there! Last time I checked, his gamer score is 82,246. That is an increase of 105 points over last time! He opened up N+ picking up 1 achievement, Guitar Hero III, BLADESTORM, Burnout Paradise finishing 4 achievements, as well as stared off into space... thinking about the one that got away.

Hey, I almost forgot! The gamerscore challenge that borandi is competing in is on day 2 and we're doing our best to win this thing. There's so much action in this one, you may pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!!111! Witness the spectacle. 2 other people are also involved... which is madness. That doesn't matter though because borandi is beating them all! Number one baby! Only one day left too! This is good stuff!

This week I managed to get the Viral badge over at 360voice. I'm passing it on to friends and family first, then onto the masses at large. Along with that, I've bought an XBLA game, opened up Burnout Paradise, and done some boosting.

N+	0 -> 55 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Burnout Paradise	0 -> 340 of 1000 23 of 50 Achievements
BLADESTORM	350 -> 550 of 1000 11 of 18 Achievements
Halo 3	745 -> 780 of 1000 28 of 49 Achievements
Need for Speed™ Carbon	130 -> 240 of 1000 19 of 50 Achievements
Assault Heroes	0 -> 50 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
DEF JAM: ICON™	390 -> 540 of 1000 24 of 37 Achievements
Looney Tunes: AA EUR	370 -> 680 of 1000 28 of 44 Achievements

I bought N+ this week. There was a lot of hype around this game when it came out - apparently is was a hit Flash game on the PC before it came to the 360. Well I played the demo, and saw the video on Inside Xbox, so I took the plunge. Now the concept is quite fun - play the demo to see what I mean. But I'm about 15/50 chapters in, and some sections are tearing my hair out, just because the controls are a bit unresponsive at certain times. At least you can view the best times from the leaderboard if you're unsure what to do.

I bought Burnout Paradise this week, after seeing it on offer and having a voucher for it. Now I played the demo, and thought the game was great - imaging the free roaming aspect of Test Drive Unlimited with the classic stylings of Burnout. Now the reviews of this game are mixed - some people love it (i.e. those that love free roaming games) and some people hate it, as it doesnt conform to the regular Burnout style. However, I love the game. The free roaming is great, online is fun (when you're in a room where people know what their doing) and the achievements are varied enough to get everyone involved. There is a couple of downsides - after doing a race, if you fail, you have to drive ALL the way back to do it again. The other downsides are the pricks online. In this game, if you're online and you have the camera, if someone takes you out, it'll take a photo of you to send to the other person. Some people abuse this, and you get a myriad of middle finger style positions (these people get negative feedback of course). Now the only competitive element online is the racing - most of the online is geared towards helping each other. If you loved TDU, you'll love this. I am, and I'm over 15hrs into it.

I played Bladestorm this week for a simple, laid back game. Little did I realise, that after 30 mins more play I had 150 more GS. Now I'm almost at 3* fame, with most of my books at 20%, and a few at 40%. Its the fun sort of hack and slash that Ninety Nine Nights isnt.

Yes, that's right. I got some Halo 3 achievements - *shock*!. Among them was a skull or two, and some online achievements. I looked through the achievement list, and saw what I could do in the campaign. Now there are plenty of videos showing where skulls are too, so I took care of them. Roquey and I also went through a level, to a) get me a skull, and b) get Roquey a level score achievement. I could probably go after those level achievements now, given that I have the three skulls ideal for it (according to the guide at x360a.org). Roquey and I got our score achievement with 8.5x multiplier btw.

NFS: Carbon is still one of the worst games I've played. Nevertheless, Zachsp8 10k and I did some online boosting - I'm XP level 13 now. Level 50 is going to take ~1200 races to do, which involves a lot of time into this game. It'll probably be in the same boat as the Quake 4 achievements, and the Dead or Alive SS rank achievement.

This week, Assault Heroes achieved 'XBLA Hit' status. This means a reduction in price, from 800MSPs to 400MSPs. This was probably the first XBLA game I ever played the demo of, so I took the demo for a spin again, then purchased it. On my first ever run through, I managed to get to the final boss (but died, unfortunately). I'll come back for the achievements to this game at some later date, but it is a fun game =D

Some more Def Jam: ICON boosting this week - mainly just the online wins. It didnt take that long to boost with Zachsp8 10k for the 200 wins - but at 100GS for that achievement, it was worth going for. I could still try the career mode on this game, but I'd rather send it back to LoveFilm.

I finished the story mode on Looney Tunes: AA (EUR) - it was relatively simple. I also got the level 12 combo achievement (which is apparently one of the hardest). The achievements left involve beating the par times on the races, collecting tropies, playing co-op offline, and some online co-op. But like Def Jam, I'd like to send this back to LoveFilm.

GamerScore:	81006 -> 82246
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	18 / 51
Completed Retail:	38 / 186
GS Completion %:	41.28% -> 41.62%

Country Rank:	109 -> 106
World Rank:	758 -> 735
Completion Rank:	1,866 -> 1,767

Disruptive Publishers Content Creation Challenge

Disruptive Publishers have teamed up with Nokia to produce a Content Creation Challenge. Disruptive Publishers are well known in the 360 community for make theme after theme after theme for the 360 dashboard. This time, they want the 360 community to make their own dashboard theme. So I did. And I'd like you to vote for it. Goto http://www.my360theme.com/ and look for the theme called 'A Bene Placito' - it's Latin for 'At One's Desire'. Here are the images I used for it:






Minus the website link of course =D

17th March: GS Update

Sorry, late update this week. Lots of gaming, and some GS to boot - now passed the 80k mark!

borandi decided to ride the gamer-train yesterday. I will admit it... I was happy. What is the gamer score? 80,646 is what it is! That is a gain of 145 points over last time! He rallied G.R.A.W., Catan, Brain Challenge, Undertow, Forza Motorsport 2, Madden NFL 08, DEAD OR ALIVE 4, Quake 4, Need for Speed Carbon, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed. Also, don't tell borandi I told you this, but we have now gamed 30 days in a row... he doesn't like to share that with others. Yay! We get a badge! Look at it and weep!

Oh I almost forgot to mention that borandi has joined a gamerscore challenge titled 'Helping the Viral Spread'. Go check it out and follow along.

Well I bought an XBLA game, and I've been working on a few other games. Also some more LoveFilm goodness. Also, Roquey and I are working towards the viral badge on 360voice - we're in a 3 way challenge with someone who has the achievement. We plan to get it, and spread it amongst friends and the community.

I also got mentioned on the biggest 360 achievement website this week. Thanks to my360stats, I saw Kane&Lynch had some DLC achievements, and yet the DLC has not been announced. You can see the mention here.

Now for the games:

Need for Speed™ Carbon	0 -> 130 of 1000 8 of 50 Achievements
DEF JAM: ICON™	0 -> 390 of 1000 22 of 37 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	295 -> 305 of 1000 21 of 45 Achievements
Brain Challenge™	0 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	310 -> 325 of 1000 33 of 59 Achievements
KUF: Circle of Doom	0 -> 100 of 1000 6 of 32 Achievements
Poker Smash	80 -> 95 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
Looney Tunes: AA EUR	0 -> 370 of 1000 18 of 44 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	115 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
PAC-MAN	0 -> 130 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Joust	40 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Small Arms	110 -> 175 of 235 11 of 14 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	290 -> 350 of 1000 12 of 29 Achievements
Speedball 2	100 -> 105 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
BLADESTORM	300 -> 350 of 1000 7 of 18 Achievements
Bee Movie™ Game	560 -> 1000 of 1000 50 of 50 Achievements

I'm not a fan of the NFS series. The only one I've liked is Need For Speed Underground 2. NFS: Most Wanted and NFS: Prostreet both suck big donkey dong. Carbon is no exception. The cars handle poorly, the menu system is shoddy, online is laggy and crap and the music sounds more like banshees. Nevertheless, ZACHSP8 10K and I boosted a little. I got my 6 consecutive wins, and some other miscellaneous online achievements. We'll be after some of the XP achievements soon as well.

DEF JAM: ICON is also a bad game. Its basically a rap fighting game, where you can control the surroundings with the beat. This is almost an 'easy' 1000GS. By almost, I mean you have to beat career mode in hard for the hardest achievement, and imo, hard fights are quite hard. I plan to get all the online achievements with ZACHSP8 10K before I send this game back to LoveFilm, however I doubt I'll get the full 1000. I'll be happy with 650GS.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful glitch for Dead or Alive 4 where you could gain an awesome rank online. However, that was patched some time ago. My boosting partners and I didnt know that until 10 minutes into attempts to get the glitch to work. However, I was able to get one achievement based on completing story mode with a certain character.

Brain Challenge was one of the XBLA games released last Wednesday. It's based on the Nintendo DS Brain Training games, just designed for the 360. Its a fun game to do for 15 minutes daily. So far I have most of the days. The achievements here are based around online matches, and getting your 'brain usage' up to 100%. I've got 20%, won 1/1 online games, and one game got an A*. Not sure if 200GS is possible, given that you have to perfect every mini-game. But it might happen.

Well this weekend I bought some DLC for GH3. I bought the track 'Erten Wir Was Saen', which is billed as quite a good track for co-op achievements. I did co-op lead guitar on hard ok, but not in single player. However, I can do Bass on Expert, with 1682/1688 notes hit. I'm boosting these achievements with rican ninja89, however he doesn't have this song yet. This week, some free DLC was also released due to it being near St. Patrick's Day. This DLC was three songs by the Dropkick Murphy's. They're quite good, but one of them, (F)lannigan's Ball, is a wrist breaker. The achievement I got was the 1000 note co-op streak - rican and I were going for the 2000 note achievement on Through the Fire and the Flames on easy, and on the way I got the 1000. Still not the 2000 yet though.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is another LoveFilm rental. I got it on recommendation from rican, and to play test for Roquey. Its a straight forward Hack and Slash RPG, with the addition of 4 player online co-op. I did some with rican and mingo21, and I was boosted from level 10 to level 42. When this game gets cheap enough, I'll probably buy my own copy. As it is, the cheapest copy is 28GBP ($56USD).

I'm still grinding out some Poker Smash. I picked up the online win with mingo21 this week.

LoveFilm also issued me Looney Tunes AA: EUR this week. Its an easy enough game - your straight forward 3D platformer. Story mode is ok - I'm about 50% in. Achievements in this game are doing the story, some specific level achievements, and a few online ones. Some of the specific level ones are to do with completing the level in a certain time. One level requires to beat 2mins 20secs. I've had 2:22, 2:21 and 2:20 on that level.

Spyglass Board games is an easy 200 - as long as you have a partner for the online ones. I boosted with mingo21, and helped ZACHSP8 10K get his. Game Complete!

I bought PACMAN with some MSPs this week. Tbh, I cant really stand the game. It's the same thing over and over again. It's meant to be easy GS, and I have two achievements left - complete level 21, and eat all 4 ghosts 4 times.

Joust is a hard 200GS game. However I got the 'beat level 5 in co-op' achievement with mingo21 and ZACHSP8 10K.

I grinded the Small Arms 'X wins' and 'X games' achievements by setting up a 2 player local game, 1 life, and a small map where the spawns are close. 30 mins got all those achievements. All that's left is the 50 survival wins, and the DLC achievements (which are apparently quite easy).

I played Lego Star Wars II in order to get the 2* family badge on 360voice. I needed 55GS, so I did 3 * 20GS 'Complete the level without dying' achievements. However, that night, 360voice added a game to the family badge, so now I need 600+ GS.

I did some League Manager on Speedball 2 - I'm in the top division now, needing to win it for another achievement. On the way, I got the 'Raise all the statistics of one player to the maximum in a single player match' achievement.

With BLADESTORM, I reached 2* reputation, and was able to find another book for another 50GS.

Well, Bee Movie Game was a grind. The jobs were long and arduous, and getting the human encounters perfect was a chore. However, I sent the game back to LoveFilm. Game Complete!

GamerScore:	79081 -> 81006
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	17 -> 18 / 49
Completed Retail:	37 -> 38 / 185
GS Completion %:	41.02% -> 41.28%

Country Rank:	111 -> 109
World Rank:	779 -> 758
Completion Rank:	1,894 -> 1,866