30th August: GS Update

From my 360voice today:

When borandi was walking by I pretended to be off. I think it tricked him into turning me on for a few games. Gamer score stands at 44,493. That is a boost of 179 points over last time! He rocked out to Streets of Rage 2 adding an amazing 8 achievements, Blue Dragon, Saints Row, Puzzle Fighter HD finishing 5 achievements, and then the lightweight went to bed. Freakin' wuss.

LoL! And onto the games I played these past few days:

Guitar Hero II	430 -> 470 of 1000 31 of 50 Achievements
Puzzle Fighter HD	0 -> 120 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Spider-Man 3	50 of 1000 4 of 43 Achievements
Saints Row	110 of 1000 10 of 43 Achievements
Blue Dragon	10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Streets of Rage 2	130 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
MotoGP 06	0 of 1000 0 of 24 Achievements

I managed to get through and complete EASY on GH2, as well as get all 5 star. Very boring, but now onto HARD mode. I've got 3/48 tracks done there, so some grinding is needed :)

I picked up Puzzle Fighter HD from the marketplace on wednesday - the demo seemed ok and I had a friend to boost on the online achievements. Most of them are easy (due to unlimited continues) and if you pile up alternate sides of the screen each round. The '25 block' achievement gave me a headache (and a sore toe as I threw my controller to the floor in anger and missed) for a good half-hour, but I've only 3 achievements left - 'complete arcade without a continue' (could be hard) and '5x combo', '7x combo' (which are nearly impossible). It's a nice puzzle game for the 360, but there are better games on XBLA worth their 800 MSPs.

I received my winning copy of Spiderman 3 through the mail on wednesday too - and played it a little. I'm going to need a session and a guide to do these achievements (as well as a tranquiliser... probably), which I may attempt in the near future.

More Saints Row done (though no achievements) - its nice and easy-ish so far, but sometimes the damage factor gets raised 1000x for a couple of seconds, resulting in death by those 4 Los Carnales on my tail. Bastards.

I'm at a point in Blue Dragon where I have to protect a couple of carts from monsters. If I manage it without any damage to the carts, I get an achievement and 30GS. The only problem is, it's f**king hard to not get hit. Monsters appear in the same spots everytime, however, up to 3 appear at once, often far away from each other, and the monster circle attack (right trigger) doesn't always pick the bastards up as they spawn. I spent a good 30 mins on it last night, and got quite distraught.

I also got Streets of Rage 2 on the marketplace. A retro game from yesteryear, vastly improved by the save function! I got most of the achievements, including the 'complete without using a continue' and 'complete without a special attack' (do it on very easy settings :p). I'm just lacking the 10 wins online and the two achievements for HARD difficulty - which sound very, very hard.

Moto GP 06 is an annoying game. While my UK 360 is at the cleaners, I'm limited to driving games it seems, thus I took Moto out of it's shrink wrap and stuck it in. First corner, and I'm flying off the track. It seems that every corner requires a maximum of 4mph to go around it, and the controls vary from corner to corner - sometimes too responsive, other times like steering in treacle. It's a WTF situation, and it pissed me off. I can see why it didnt sell too many copies.

GS: 44,314 -> 44,574

Completed XBLA:	10 / 27
Completed Retail:	21 / 97
GS Completion %:	41.09%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.29%

Country Rank:	1149/840261
World Rank:	1993/1524920

27th August: GS Update

I got my first weekly update from 360voice.com today - it's a bit skewed due to the fact that I've been putting in all my previously completed games in order for it to be recognized by their system. As a result, it's thinking I've put these games in for the first time:

Someone ask for a weekly recap? Even if you didn't, here it is: I told borandi that 4 days of playing would be ideal... so last week there was some extra effort to get us there. Good job!Ready for this? Last week saw an increase of 780 points! My eye almost bleeds looking at a number that large! Getting 249 achievements can do that to you. I was there. I saw it!

For the record, we played 27 new games over the last week. They were Gears of War, Crackdown, Saints Row, FC Instincts Predator, Quake 4, Bejeweled 2, Geometry Wars Evolved, Outpost Kaloki X, Chromehounds, Catan, Mad Tracks, LEGO Star Wars II, Cabela's Safari, X-Men:TheOfficialGame, Bomberman LIVE, Marvel Ult. Alliance, Blue Dragon, TMNT, Prey, Enchanted Arms, Phantasy Star Universe, Madden NFL 06, Fuzion Frenzy 2, Carcassonne, GALAGA, 3D Ultra™ Minigolf, and Boom Boom Rocket. They were all fun... in their own little ways. Oh, and from what I remember, borandi's favorite game last week was Chromehounds. He played it on 4 of the days.

So that's it for now. It was a good week. On to the next one.

As for the games I really played:

Guitar Hero II	430 of 1000 29 of 50 Achievements
Texas Hold'em	115 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
Bionicle Heroes	880 of 1000 44 of 49 Achievements
Blue Dragon	10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	30 -> 60 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Track and Field	170 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	290 of 1000 9 of 29 Achievements
Chromehounds	120 of 1000 5 of 49 Achievements

Picked up GH2 again - I'm still plugging through the EASY tour (I done the medium on 5*). It's god awful boring... so much so that I'm making stupid mistakes! But I've done 18/35 tracks so far. When I started, I warmed up on a bit of Less Talk More Rokk on medium. Did a couple of songs on Hard - got one 5*, so I'm well chuffed - though it didnt have any 5th fret action iirc. I also tried that track on expert, and completed it \m/.

I still suck at Texas Hold 'em. I was trying for the 'all scenarios' complete achievement, but the CPU are ultra conservative and always win every hand unless I scare them off. Bleh.

Still on the way to getting Bionicle Heroes done (after the severe data loss at 860GS, thus requiring me to complete the game again to continue to get the other 100-ish). Did another couple of levels, now it's showing 40% complete.

Blue Dragon is still at the top of my list of 360 favourite games - I'm now about 14 hours in, all my characters are level 20, and I'm more than half way through the Mural Valley (there are eight cats ;) ). There is a great Blue Dragon review over at x360a.org - check it out!

I did some more of the stupid achievements on Bomberman LIVE: Blow 3 CPU players up with one bomb (get the bomb with the skull and crossbones on it, and max firepower), and the 130 tiles in a zombie match (same tactic, but make powerups indestructible and scavenger on). I'm slowly working my way to 60 costume balls.

The final Track & Field achievement (qualify with every attempt on a run through) took about an hour of solid plugging to get the hammer throw just right. It takes at least 6 turns and 38 degrees to get the 73m required! For the high jump, as long as you clear the qualifying height without fouling, you can foul the rest, and the final achievement is unlocked as you start the second round. Chalk another XBLA game 'complete'!

Lego Star Wars II is still as boring as hell... I did another story gold block, but that's about it.

More Chromehounds online for me as well - I've realised I suck at soldier hounds and much prefer sniper hounds with fast ammunition :) I do use a soldier hound for 1vs1 conflicts :)

GS: 44,254 -> 44,314

Completed XBLA:	10 / 25
Completed Retail:	21 / 96
GS Completion %:	41.36%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.62%

Country Rank:	1151/838700
World Rank:	1997/1522127

360voice.com

I like to give a shoutout to a great site called http://360voice.com. I just found out about it recently.

What is 360voice.com?

360voice.com is a site where gamers can read or subscribe via RSS to a blog about what their friends are doing every day on Xbox live. It takes the information in the gamercard that only gives you a current snapshot and allows you to see a players gaming over time. This allows for conversations around specific daily achievements and events like gamer score increases and most played games. What we are doing right now scratches the surface of what is possible once you start caching all this gaming data.

I started up my 360voice account, and here is an excerpt:

borandi's Xbox - 8/25/2007

I was about to feel sorry for myself, until borandi showed up and made my day with a little gaming! Our gamerscore stands at 44,244 and counting! That is a boost of 365 points over last time! That was enough to cross the 44,000 mark! Good stuff! He made some progress on Catan acquiring an amazing 7 achievements, Mad Tracks, Chromehounds, LEGO Star Wars II gaining an amazing 9 achievements, Cabela's Safari adding an amazing 13 achievements, Track and Field picking up 1 achievement, X-Men:TheOfficialGame winning an amazing 16 achievements to finish the game, Bomberman LIVE finishing 3 achievements, and after we were done, borandi hugged me with his eyes. It was one of those platonic hugs... you know...

It seems pretty nifty, so I'll start quoting it at the beginning of my GS Updates.

I also found another site to go along with 360voice - it checks your 360voice profile and tells you how close you are to the 360voice site awards (i.e. 10 games complete, RPG fan, etc.): http://voice.blaggspot.com/genrebrowser.aspx

25th August: GS Update

Blue Dragon	0 -> 10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Chromehounds	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 49 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
X-Men:TheOfficialGame	685 -> 1000 of 1000 16 of 16 Achievements
Track and Field	0 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Cabela's Safari	350 of 1000 13 of 30 Achievements
Catan	110 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
FC Instincts Predator	0 -> 280 of 1000 13 of 35 Achievements
Outpost Kaloki X	10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bejeweled 2	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Quake 4	0 -> 35 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Five days worth of gaming, and the best bit has been Blue Dragon! Cheapest online price is 30GBP, but I got mine from Blockbuster (32GBP) as it's just round the corner :) I can safely say that Blue Dragon is the best game out on the 360! Forget your GoW rubbish, or Bioshock nonsense - any hardcore RPG fan will LOVE Blue Dragon. I'm seven hours in, and you can already feel the Dragonball Z/Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy influences. For those that don't know, the main artist on BD did DBZ/DQ, and Nobuo Uoematsu did the music for BD and FF. But all the RPG elements are in BD - experience, battles, storyline, FMV. Okay I admit, maybe it's missing one element - the stereotypical double D cup breasted female... But if you've been waiting for a JRPG for the 360, this is it. The achievements aren't too shabby either - in order to get ALL of them you'll probably need either a guide or a couple of runthroughs. I got the easy 2 achieves (Multi-monster, back attack), missed one achievement, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless!

Chromehounds has been on my shelf a while - I got it based on the fact that Tim, the artist at http://cad-comic.com, said he enjoyed it. The best way to describe Chromehounds is to say that it is quite slow paced, mechanised robot fighting ala Battlefield style. I've not done much of the single player, but rican ninja89 plays this a lot with a couple of his mates, so I joined in. Online is very repetitive (doing the same thing over and over again on the different maps) but with some friends it does pass the time. The idea of each map is to beat/destroy the other HOUNDs, or destroy the enemy headquarters. If you win, that area is 'slightly' captured by your force. Everyone online can help towards capturing/defending (i.e. 1000s of people), and keep capturing until your side wins the war. Then the map is reset, and continue. I got some of the achievements out of order thanks to some boosting help, and some of the achievements are almost impossible. But as long as my friends play this game, I will too.

I got some MS points this week, so I bought Bomberman Live. I thought it would be very fun in single player and online... but I was let down. It's basically just more of the same of the demo. There is no single player story mode (which I was looking forward to), and few variations on a theme to play with. My advice is to only get it if you think you'll play the demo online.

I hadn't played X-Men III in a while, mainly because all I had to do was finish up Iceman's achievements. They didnt take long with the help of a guide, so I can finally label this game 'complete' and stick it on the shelf. An easy game overall, bar a couple of Nightcrawler levels.

At last, a decent button bashing game in Track and Field! A mis-spent youth was played with games like this, so I snapped up this XBLA title. I've got all the 'easy' achievements - <9s>65m in all three throws of the Javelin, etc.. The final achievement to get is the 'Qualify with every attempt' achievement - the Hammer throw is the one pulling me down on this achievement, but I'll keep plugging at it.

I've had to start a new game on Cabela's African (the other time I played it was on a different HDD), but I got through the first country no probs in record speed. Managed to get that Dik-dik in one shot, first time - the sneaky little bastard!

I played my first online game of Catan - two people quit early, and I came last anyway with 4 points. That game lasted a long, long time! There's only one person on my friends list who plays it seriously - he's just got the 500 points online achieve, and played it 300 times online. *zzzz*

FarCry Instincts Predator seems like an interesting game - but I haven't played single player. rican and I just traded some easy achievements with the help of an online guide. Spent about 5 hours on this to get 280GS.

I haven't played Outpost Kaloki X for a long time, mainly because there were two ways to play the game - the right way (which happens 1% of the time); and the wrong way (the other 99%). Basically you either win, or fail. There are some very decent guides online that people can follow, but I spent a lot of time pausing the game to read the guide in the couple of levels I did.

I've been playing my Nintendo DS a lot this month - mainly Puzzle Quest (a game coming to XBLA soon) which is basically a Bejeweled RPG. So I thought I'd be a bit better at Bejeweled. WRONG! I got worse... enough so much that I could have laughed milk out of my nose. The achievements are HARD...

Quake 4 is a game I've played on the PC once or twice... so I opened up my 360 copy and joined rican online. It's an ok game, but not enough people play it online. Those that do are intent on not letting people get the top 10/top 1 achievements - often by using glitches to do so. There is always talk of a scoreboard reset, but no-one ever knows when. Single player is fun, if just a bit too dark.

GS: 43,249 -> 44,254

Completed XBLA:	9 / 25
Completed Retail:	21 / 96
GS Completion %:	41.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.56%

Country Rank:	1136/837441
World Rank:	1977/1519859