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