Sunday, January 20, 2008

20th January: GS Update

The weeks gaming.... Well to start, there was revision. Lots of revision. Then modular exams. Then gaming. Lots of gaming. Not standard pick up and play, but hard grinding that only comes with the satisfaction of laying on a couch, eating a takeaway, and drinking energy drinks. Proper gaming.
borandi held the Xbox button on his controller down for a few seconds and our adventure began! A gamer score of 68,362 is lighting the way. That is a gain of 1,350 points over last time! That was enough to cross the 68,000 mark! Good stuff! He rallied CSI-Hard Evidence gaining 5 achievements to finish the game, Mass Effect gaining 1 achievement, SmackDown vs RAW 2008 winning 3 achievements, Spider-Man™: FoF adding 5 achievements, and then I needed a nap. Don't judge me! It's a lot of work pushing all those pixels.
Even some completions this week. Awesome.

1170 of 1250
39 of 40 Achievements
865 -> 1000 of 1000
26 of 26 Achievements
0 -> 350 of 1000
6 of 12 Achievements
170 -> 210 of 1000
10 of 45 Achievements
0 -> 1000 of 1000
5 of 5 Achievements
20 -> 40 of 200
4 of 12 Achievements
0 -> 560 of 1000
17 of 33 Achievements
350 -> 400 of 1000
11 of 32 Achievements
Once again on the Katamari grind. I'm probably 20hrs or so away from the achievement - I had it on a couple of days but like I've mentioned before, I dont like it on for long periods (incase of RRoD) and save every hour or so. But as I look on mygamercard.net now, I'm no.1 in the UK for BK - one person has the 1000, 2 of us have > 1000. If I can get 1250 first, it'll be a great goal to have! Here's a picture:

I have finally completed WWE SvR 08. This game was easier than 07, but sure as hell annoying. I got 865 from rental before, and the last bit was a series of final achievements. It was on offer a while back, so I bought it, and unwrapped it this week. I got the rest of the offline achievements, no problems, however the final achievement I needed was '5 Title Defences against 5 different gamertags in 24hrs'. Basically, it either means be really good (which is almost impossible - everyone online are vets and the lag is horrible) or post on every achievement website possible to get boosting partners. Well, I started at 1am with a friend, then by morning I had a couple other requests. I was on and off all day, checking messages, and getting some matches. However, I turned off the *box once or twice, and also did matches in Rising Star and Free (two different modes based on experience). By the time I had 5 wins, and the achievement didnt pop up, I was a bit miffed. Then on six wins, angry; seven wins, furious. In the end, I decided to leave my 360 on until the matches came, which put me off of Spiderman until this achievement popped. After all that, on my 10th match against a different GT, 23hrs and 55 minutes after my first match, the achievement came up. Game out, onto completed shelf, restore hair from floor to head. Game Complete!

Ah yes, a new game as well. I bought Spiderman: FoF over christmas - mainly because is was cheap, but also I'd seen it was an easy 1000GS. And 'they' weren't wrong. I actually like this Spiderman game - it reminds me of the old ones. More platform oriented, linear based, power-up type (like Marvel: UA) that is fun to play, unlike that crappy Spiderman 3. As I write now, I'm 8 levels in, with lots of various upgrades, and half the achievements. The rest are for completing the game while collecting everything (not hard, maybe 3 to 7 items per level), fully upgrading my last skill, and upgrading all the extra characters. That final one looks like a bit of a chore - possibly doing the final level over and over which is mentioned in some guides.

Mass Effect is a game I should not be putting off - its fun, great story (despite what Zero Punctuation says), and non-linear enough to deserve around 100 hours exploring it. However, the achievements aren't that easy. Like I've mentioned before, the achievements basically require 3 play throughs - I'm 15hrs into my first, probably around 60-70% complete. I've done a couple of side missions, but not many. The achievements I acquired this week come from 'Meeting all species' and '75% total Paragon' (basically means doing all the good stuff, answering nice, etc.).

I have a couple of points to make about CSI: Hard Evidence. The story line is good - typical CSI faire. However, I hate this sort of game. It requires searching each area thoroughly, enough to get several stadia sized headaches. Luckily, this game has a hints system if you get stuck. Even luckier, is that x360a.org has a thorough indepth guide, resulting in a 6.5hr completion time. Now I've been after this game a while (due to the easy GS), however my local rental place has not had it. I walk in after my last exam to treat myself, and there it is on the wall. Paid the nicely sum of 4.95GBP, walked home, then realised my UK 360 is still in for repair. Luckily, the game worked (however Bladestorm didn't, so I took that back and swapped it for Rush Hour 3), and I completed it that day. I would recommend the game for the story line, but not a lot else. Not a lot of replay value. However, Game Complete!

Some more Spades as well, in various 10 minute pick-up-and-play sessions. These were just regular grindy achievements - 500 tricks, 10 wins. I get how to play this game, but a bit frustrated on how its purely luck, and it isnt like Poker where you can force people out.

I got my MLB 2k7 to work! =D =D I trolled a couple of achievement forums, and the problem arises in how the game is saved. Now from the release of this game, there has been an update and a free stadium to download. When you apply the update, the game saves it differently. However, it only loads correctly when the stadium is downloaded. So I hopped onto my US account and got it. I've picked up just over half the achievements - most of the rest require online play, or specific offline play targeted at just that achievement. The online achievements require '
Win twenty 9 inning games online', which is a hellish feat. I'll add this one to the grind pile?

Last but not least, DDR Universe. Now I'm still having trouble with story mode (that final boss battle is a b!tch), but I churned out 10 tracks on freeplay to get the '40 songs cleared' achievement. There are achieves for 50, 60 and all, as well as the various challenges still to do. But you can only play this game a bit at a time.

GamerScore: 66,357 -> 68512
Zone: Pro

Completed XBLA: 15 / 42
Completed Retail: 29 -> 31 / 156
GS Completion %: 41.16% -> 41.72%

Country Rank: 160 -> 150
World Rank: 1,042 -> 967
Completion Rank: 2,517 -> 2,293

Woohoo, top 1000 in the world!

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