27th April: GS Update

A mix this week. Some news, some games.

borandi came to represent the gaming world. 89,362 points and counting! That is a profit of 40 points over last time! He rocked out to Lost Cities, BLADESTORM, Call of Duty 4 gaining 1 achievement, Lost Odyssey, and almost cried with joy. I have that effect on people.

All this week has been a buzz around GTA4. It comes out Tuesday, despite a large number of people playing it already (thanks to people working in game stores, or people selling it early). My preorder was in, and the money has gone out, so I expect it to be dispatched, ready for Tuesday. I'll probably play it a good lot, apparently it's a lot of fun.

PES2008 130 -> 210 of 1000 8 of 28 Achievements Just a little bit of PES08 - just 5 or so games. Yet as a result, 3 achievements unlock - 2+ goals average in 5 games after 20, possession > 60% in last 10 games, beat all England teams. Like PES6, this game will take a while. Each game is 5 mins, and one of the final achievements is 'play 500 games' - thats 2500 mins (even without loading), which is 42hrs.

Lost Odyssey 110 -> 235 of 1100 5 of 42 Achievements After some recent FPS gaming, I decided to delve back into the RPG arena, now that I have the Lost Odyssey guide - I've played it almost all weekend. As a result, I got to the second disk in around 10hrs from a new game. The guide is a brilliant help, especially with the bosses which are hard for a JRPG.

Call of Duty 4 190 -> 770 of 1000 31 of 37 Achievements Well it looks like last time I played CoD4 I didn't update. Well I was at 600GS, stuck on the level where you got 20 minutes to get out. I was literally pulling my hair out. That was in November, so now I took off the shrink wrap (I bought it around Christmas, last play was a rental) and put it in again. A quick youtube guide got me through that level, and the next, until the point where you've got 9 minutes to save the missile launch. Now that level is an ARSE. You have to get into a couple of pathways that face each other, and enemies are on either side. You cant peer round to shoot one then the other, and grenades dont work. So I'm basically buggered - and as a result, I almost broke a controller. So I set the difficulty to easy and breezed past the last two levels. I dont think I'll comp this game on veteran, I just dont have the patience, and Activision frustrates gamers like me with these achievements. Why not make a couple online, like reach level 54? (Which is v. easy on the PC version).

BLADESTORM 550 -> 600 of 1000 12 of 18 Achievements I still like Bladestorm - its the Hack and Slash with out the frustration and a little bit of strategy. I got the 3*, and the Book of Camels. I'm taking a liking to the Halberds, the Poleswords. With their 3 specials, they can take out a whole squad which they are weak against. As a result, my Halberds book is at 73%, which is enough for the final achievement. Now I'm working on a couple of other groups - archers and spears. I cant stand the cavalry, though.

Lost Cities 0 -> 80 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements Lost Cities is the XBLA game this week, which I bought so Nellas and I can play. It's a simple card game, with some easy achievements - except the 'Win 300 games' achievement. A game lasts 3 rounds, and a round can last 4-5 minutes. Thats 3600 minutes, or 60 hours.

Guitar Hero III 365 -> 390 of 1000 36 of 59 Achievements Not much on GH3 this week - Nellas and I finally finished co-op easy. We're doing a couple of tracks at a time - I hope to get 5* easy, 5* medium co-op, as well as complete co-op as lead and bass eventually.

Viking 0 -> 90 of 1000 6 of 50 Achievements I got a small chance to play Viking this week. One of my friends had bought it, and came over one evening. I played for an hour, but it looks an alright game. I cant really tell if it's going to be a good one, as there was no real tutorial. But the slicing and dicing was fun, anyway.

G.R.A.W. 670 -> 736 of 1000 30 of 43 Achievements A couple of online achievements on GRAW - a group of 6 of us went for the Crackshot achievement (10x headshots without reloading with at least 5 different gametags in the room) as well as Team Player (Win 30 co-op matches with at least 6 GTs in the room). On the way, I managed to get the Sniper ach (500 head shots in multiplayer).

LEGO Star Wars II 350 -> 390 of 1000 14 of 29 Achievements I started playing this just to get some achievements, and complete it a little more for the 360voice 2* family badge. Yet I can't still stand this game - the levels are still too long, and too boring. It's all a boring grind. I got 2 level completion achievements, then couldn't stand it any more.

=================

GamerScore:	88841 -> 89487
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	23 / 55
Completed Retail:	43 / 194
GS Completion %:	43.28% -> 43.39%

Country Rank:	89 -> 91
World Rank:	634 -> 637
Completion Rank:	1,425 -> 1,439

13th January: GS Update

This week has been somewhat entertaining. On Jan 6th, we had the Microsoft CES Keynote speech, delivered by the one and only Bill Gates (and Robbie Bach). It's Bill's final keynote, and he didnt have much in the way to say about the Xbox 360. No big announcements regarding hardware or packages. All that was said was regards the now 10 million Xbox Live members, and 17 million consoles sold - and they reached that 10 mill target 6 months early. Thinking about it, I dont know one game that has more than 2 million online gamertags associated with it - looking at mygamercard.net, Hexic HD has 1.05 mill, Halo 3 has 1.05 mill (a mere concidence) and I'm a particular world rank X of 1.7 million. Thus a lot of this tags are either SPAM, or just secondary accounts. Currently there are 5 accounts on my system - my main that subscribes, two spares for regional downloads, my girlfriends, and a mates'. Thus it can be clear by '10 million accounts' that maybe 80% of them are SPAM ones. This leads me to another point - 17 million consoles sold, and so few of them go online? Most of the 360 fun is online! Either MS have inflated their figures or just havent got the message out that the 360 is an online console. If they had included wifi as part of the hardware, I could see a lot more 'players' being part of this online community.

As regards the gaming, this week has been so-so. I'm up to my ears in exam revision, thus limited to few games. My 360voice states:

I thought borandi just wanted to listen to music or watch a DVD. Turns out he was there to game. With a gamer score of 66,287, I should have known that was the case. That is an increase of 115 points over last time! He rocked out to Metal Slug 3 acquiring 1 achievement, Omega Five, Hardwood Spades gaining 1 achievement, Scene It? LCA adding 4 achievements, Guitar Hero III, and... hmmm... I forget what else we did...

This weeks XBLA releases were Omega Five and Tron. Omega Five is the side-scrolling blaster (which I bought and think is ok), whereas Tron is the old pre-arcade version of the game (and is crap).

Scene It? LCA	280 -> 445 of 1000 21 of 42 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	10 -> 20 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Omega Five	0 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Metal Slug 3	60 -> 70 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
Beautiful Katamari	1170 of 1250 39 of 40 Achievements
Marble Blast Ultra	30 -> 70 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	420 -> 670 of 1000 27 of 43 Achievements

Nellas and I have played about 4 games of Scene It? this week. As a result, we're slowly starting to get the achievements for '25 questions correct about the 80s/90s/Romance/SFX' type of achievement. I also got a couple of 'get all questions correct in this block' and a short game score achievement. When I'm not embroiled in revision, I could go through this for a while making mental notes of the answers (and using some forums) and hopefully try and get 1000GS in this. The hardest achievements (apparently) are getting 60 correct without one wrong, which will take some skill as I'm not a film buff.

I've spent quite a few days on GH3 this week, mainly for one purpose - to get the '200k on Cult of Personality without using star power' achievement. I've been working on it on Hard difficulty - expert contains too many 32nd length notes and I cant press the buttons quick enough. However, I'm getting quite good on Hard, with 940/980 notes hit and getting most of the hammer-on sequences correct. It's just a case of minimising damage - each time you break a 4x streak, you lose at least 5k in points. My best is at 182k, and I can usually get 175k. Thus, I need to just get slightly fewer mistakes on a run through. Hitting all the notes should get me around 199.5k, but as there are quite a few chords and also there's a little trick of using star power at the end which doesnt effect the achievement. More practice needed, though I've probably done it around 30 times this week.

I fired up some Hardwood Spades as a few people on my friends list have the full 200 and I'm stuck with only 10GS. I think I'm getting the hang of it now, randomly getting one achievement, and just need to focus on certain specifics to get the others. More practice methinks.

Omega Five is one of this weeks XBLA releases, which I bought. I've always been a sucker for side scrolling shooters, as long as I can do them. Omega Five is Hard! I've died at the second level boss a few times now, but managed to get all the achievements upto that point. The achievements in this game are more geared towards completing with character XYZ without losing a life/continue. Hard achievements for a hard game.

Another side scrolling shooter, Metal Slug 3, also involves completing level XYZ without dying. After using 71 continues on my playthrough on Hard, I fired up some easy mode and tried that. Several attempts resulted in getting the first level done quick and without dying, however I'll need to grind out the other level achievements. Bleh.

I've done some mild work into getting that 100hr BK achievement. Probably gave around 15hrs while I was revising, though it's hard to tell.

I grinded through some Marble Blast Ultra - successfully completing all the Intermediate levels. I had to redo 4 or 5 to get them under par time, and some of them were frustrating. The Expert levels look impossible, and there's no-one online for the online achievements.

I haven't played GRAW for a while, and I knew I had some easy achievements to do. Last time I played this, I went through Hard getting the story achievements. This is an old game, which if you complete a level on Hard you don't get the 'level complete' achievement for easy at the same time. Thus, this time round, I played the campaign on easy mode for an easy 250GS. Now, the only achievements I'm missing involve serious amounts of multiplayer work. Pah.

GS: 65,762 -> 66,357

GamerScore:	66357
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 42
Completed Retail:	29 / 154
GS Completion %:	38.96%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.16%

Country Rank:	160
World Rank:	1,042
Completion Rank:	2,517

1st October: GS Update

From now on you can see my 360voice profile on the right hand side of this page as a little Javascript applet -->
But I'll still quote it here. Recently the guys over at 360voice have been moving their servers, so its all a couple of days backed up on logs and it's a bit skewiff.

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 50,349 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He played Bankshot Billiards 2, and did it while drooling over my awesome graphics and sound.

Harry Potter OOTP	0 -> 40 of 1000 3 of 41 Achievements
Bionicle Heroes	880 -> 900 of 1000 45 of 49 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	245 -> 420 of 1000 17 of 43 Achievements
Gun	920 -> 1000 of 1000 31 of 31 Achievements
Smackdown vs RAW 2007	970 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements
Frogger	0 -> 15 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	0 -> 80 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	0 -> 115 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements
Overlord	240 -> 280 of 1000 19 of 44 Achievements
Fatal Inertia	0 -> 120 of 1000 11 of 50 Achievements
Stranglehold	0 -> 235 of 1000 15 of 45 Achievements
Surf's Up	0 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements

I rented Harry Potter today, played it for around 45mins or so. I'm one of those people who despises all Harry Potter paraphenalia - the books can burn, the movies can be peed upon. I avoid it at all costs. But my love of achievements outweighs my hate of Harry Potter, so I finally rented it. It's a very easy game (on easy) so far, and on mygamercard.net the average GS is 400+. It seems a bit long (25hrs+) though to complete, so we'll see how far I can get.

Ok so I'm back on the Bionicle Heroes. Now got 51%, with 7 stages to complete. Hopefully the save wont corrupt this time!! I got 1 achievement - the 2.5mill credits one.

Again with the GRAW this week - completed the game on Hard, with the unlimited health cheats on. The levels are quicker than I thought (3.5hrs for a completion), so now I need to redo the game on easy, then it's all the MP achievements to do.

I spent 4.5hrs on GUN yesterday - I basically played through the whole of the story mode, and finished all the side quests to get the 'all gold' and 'all weapons' achievements. The story mode is actually VERY fun, and I suggest anyone that likes the Wild West to play it, even on easy. I did spend about an hour doing one of the hunting quests - the black/great wolf. That is one annoying bastard! He's first in the badlands, and then to the west of the ranch if you're interested. The online guides are quite vague. But now this game is 1000GS complete, and back on the shelf. Totalled around 20hrs.

Ok WWE really got on my tits. After the last debacle, when the 'win with all wrestlers' achievement didn't unlock, it did after my third match going though on Legend. I then tried going through the Legend achievement using PPVs - so I could set up 8 matches at once. After 4 to 5 hours of that, the achievement didnt unlock. So I went to exhibition, hoping I didnt have to got through the entire list again. Thankfully when I went through alphabetically, it unlocked when I hit Cactus Jack. Another game 1000GS complete, though it wasnt an easy task - around 50hrs total.

This week there were three games on offer on XBLA - Bankshot Billiards (1200MSPs to 900MSPS) and Frogger/Hardword Spades (each 400MSPs to 300MSPs). When they first went on sale, some Microsoft employee made a mistake and put a 50% discount! At that time, I got the Billiards, but then had a nap for 8hrs or so. I came back to see the other two were back up to only 25% discount. Bastards.

But I got them all - Bankshot Billiards is your typical pool game. It's rather bland, and not many modes after the standard ones. Not really worth 600MSPs tbh though. Some of the achievements are on modes that take a couple of hours, so I'll grind them at some point.

Frogger is a load of balls - the frogs move a fixed distance, and you die if you barely hit an exhaust. The achievements look quite hard, so it'll be a while before I get these.

I also played Hardwood Spades, for about 5 seconds. It looks weird.

Yes, I got Halo 3. I spent all week saying the beta was shit, then my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday (the 25th). Haha go figure. It's an ok game - better than GoW, but like I've said before, I'm not a console FPS fan. The story mode is quite bland - point, shoot, repeat. The difficulties are exponential - I tried it on legendary, only not to get past the first set of mobs. Bastards! I also played some online, but the Matchmaking is a joke - I often get into a match where it's 25-5 in Team Slayer (my fav mode). I'm often on the losing team. You can see my Halo 3 profile here.

My girlfriend also bought me Overlord - I've gone a bit further in the story, still on 0% corruption. I'd just before the final smelter, so I guess I'm half way.

Fatal Inertia reminds me of those N64 cheap budget racing games. Easy to pick up and play, but no real depth of options and a bit bland on the graphics. If you get stuck on a point, its fairly linear and cant get past it until you do. Achievements are either very easy, or require time on them.

I've always been told that Stranglehold should be a good game - and it is, for only the first couple of levels. Then it gets very similar. Lots of point and shoot, very linear, and it's just the same style tricks over and over again. MP is crap - everyone has super high HP (thus it needs 20secs of two people shooting one other person, then only one of them gets the kill) - and the weapons are quite unbalanced (the machine gun does next to no damage). Graphically, its exceedingly good. I liked the bit where you destroy half of the famous Terracotta Army.

I dont care what anyone else says - I enjoyed Surf's Up. Its a straightforward kids game, like a linear Tony Hawks' game but surfing. I got around 800GS in two hours, and the other 200GS in the another two. There is a bit of collecting to do, but it's very easy. Each round takes around 3mins, and there's only around 11 rounds in the game. Another 1000GS complete :D Total 4hrs.

I also passed 50k GS doing Surf's Up =D

GS: 48,789 -> 50,699

Completed XBLA:	11 / 30
Completed Retail:	24 / 109
GS Completion %:	41.70%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.75%

Country Rank:	230/213174
World Rank:	1534/1550045