Sim City started the revolution. I have fond memories as a youngster wiling away hours upon hours, on my father’s Atari 512 STE, playing this 2D classic. Since then, simulation type games have become addictive to the masses, absorbing many hours that could have been dedicated to family, friends, or significant hobbies.
As encapsulating as these games are, A-Train HX is the first to grace the Xbox 360, eighteen months after the 360s release*. This game is the next incantation of the A-Train series (none of which I have played), involving the manipulation of railway services to build a prosperous city.
I say ‘a prosperous city’, which in A-Train correlates to ‘allow the AI to build it’ around your creation. By and large, the A-Train HX dynamics can and will confuse – even the most hardcore simulation game fan will become unstuck at some point. As the Fat Controller, you decide where the train stations and tracks go. You have ultimate control of which trains to put on the tracks – ranging from short freight to large 2000-seater fast trains, or tube trains permeating underneath the ground. In order for the AI to kick in, ‘materials’ need to be transported to stations via freight trains from either outside the cities of factories on your map. When the population starts to build, commuter trains help populate the area and more materials result in a larger set of flats or high rise buildings.
At least this is the gist of the game I get. Even after completing the game and writing a quick start guide for a popular achievement website, I couldn’t tell you much else. There is no tutorial regarding the gameplay, let alone the controls. Oh, the controls! As unintuitive as they are frustrating. Many, many times I hit the right button, but I wasn’t selecting the appropriate item to perform the function I intended – it’s not obvious just which item is selected.
Gameplay wise, there is no story mode often associated with modern simulation games. However, provided are eight default maps on an increasing scale of difficulty, ranging from flat plains to mountains and archipelago. Also provided are the tools to create your own maps, to distribute and challenge your friends. If they have the game, which they probably wont.
A-Train HX is easy on the eye, and on the ear. The only visual hiccup worth noting is the camera manipulation near the end of the map, but all the sounds aid the simulation experience.
Ages 3-15 are not recommended ages for this game. I’m not even sure 16+ is appropriate. In fact, I’d recommend it solely to those who either enjoy their trains, or their simulation games. Also for achievement hunters – a simple achievement set for those that can get to grips with the gameplay and controls. A-Train rewards completing certain tasks, but fifteen hours or less is all that is needed for the gamerscore.
I enjoyed A-Train HX, but I like simulation games. And achievements.
borandi
* In English in Europe – in Japan A-Train HX was released a year earlier, and at time of writing, has not been encouraged to approach US shores.
Showing posts with label A-Train HX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A-Train HX. Show all posts
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
borandi's Quick Start Guide to A-Train HX
I said I'd put up my guide at some point! So here it is. Click the following link to go to the thread where I originally posted it.
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64270
The rail laying achievements are quite easy. Press RB until you get to the cutaway option in the top right, and press down twice, then A. The screen should turn almost completely orange - don't worry, this just means you are underground. Now bring up the rail menu from the Game Menu. We need to put down 2000 bits of rail, so keep building in an up and down. 2000 takes a long time (5-10 minutes), and at this point it's probably best to keep the timer running for this one. You'll get a message when you hit 1000. These achievements will unlock as you go through:
Tube Expansion - 30GS
Total length of rails in tunnels exceeds 100.
Public Transport King - 30GS
Total rail length exceeds 2,000.
Ah here's something I almost forgot - go back to the bank screen (under Market). Now keep taking out max loans and paying them back (press A again after taking them out). After less than a minute, this achievement will unlock:
Sign of Success - 40GS
Bank interest paid exceeds 500 million.
If you need all your money back, now is a good time to reload, as these other achievements require some money and time.
These achievements require some basic knowledge of how the train system works in this game, as well as some info about materials.
About factories and materials: most of the buildings in this game require materials. Materials come from factories, or trains that deposit them in material yards as they come from off the map. Trains can only deposit materials in yards within a certain radius of the station, and buildings have to be built near materials in material yards.
Now go back to sea level, and find the patch of water in the bottom right of the map - this is so we can build a port. A port needs a stretch of land next to water of 4/5 squares, so keep this in mind when building.
Near the edge of the map (3 squares away), build a Marshalling Yard with five platforms (press Y to change the number of platforms), with the barriers of the station facing into the main map. Now build rail such that each of the five platforms is going to the edge of the map. Now build large Material Yards around the station - I believe each station can reach out 20 squares or so, so populate the area around the marshalling yard with lots of material yards - keep them close together. Now we need to buy trains.
Goto the train menu. You will see that you already have 3 trains. Ignore those for the time being. Using the D-Pad, goto train spot number 4. Press A to buy a train. Here you see the list of trains available - scroll down until you see the Model EC6 HS Goods Train. Press Y until it has 7 carts, then press A. Now move to one of your platfroms of the Marshalling yard, and press A twice. The train should now be set. Do this with the other 4 platforms.
If you sim a few days, you should now see materials building up in your yards. Good, we need lots and lots.
First task should be to build a port and an airport. If your Marshalling yard is close to the water, building a port is easy - note what looks like the building section of the port actually goes in the water, the rest is on land. The airport is easy too - just find an open space near the material yards. These achievements should be yours:
Take to the Skies - 30GS
Construct an airport.
Port of Call - 10GS
Construct a port.
Now, we build leisure facilities. This is under the construction menu. Here we go with the one that uses the least materials - the shrine. Build 20 of these and sim a day for this achievement:
Leisure Industry Leader - 30GS
Number of leisure facilities exceeds 20.
Now these next set of buildings may take a while. They need lots of materials and money. I'm talking about the landmarks. Find a space near the material yards, and build them one by one. You only need one of each. When they are all built, you get this achievement:
Tourist Trap - 50GS
Construct all types of landmarks.
All that's left is to reload your save and keep playing with the stock market. When you hit 10 billion, this achievement is yours:
Top Trader - 40GS
Share trading profits exceed 10 billion.
Many thanks to woody1993 for the following info on other achievements:
Or do the property baron achievement and sell everything, then build, then sell. (Go to the market screen, then LB to get to where you can sell properties).
I got this during Property Baron - 15 bil in income tax!
I made a video showing about Subway malls. One thing I didnt add is that these malls work best when using tube trains and underneath current towns.
YouTube - A-Train HX - Underground Malls
Useful Links to A-Train HX:
http://www.artdink.co.jp/japanese/ti...en_playing.php
A website that introduces the core concept of the game
(As mentioned by DJ Psydande in another thread)
Videos for making money, made by borandi:
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using Property Pt 1
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using Property Pt 2
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using the Stock Market
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64270
borandi's Quick Start Guide to A-Train HX
=========================================
This guide is for people to follow in order to get over half of the GS in A-Train HX without playing about too much with the core gameplay. This strategy worked for me (640GS in ~5hrs) and I hope it does for you too.
I'll start as if you've just put in the game without reading the manual (I didnt get a manual as it was a LoveFilm rental).
Edit - The basic principle is 'Get Money Quick'. When this guide was first written here, we used the stock market. However, a quicker way has been discovered using Property. See the Youtube videos to see how. The Stock Market method will remain here so people can learn the controls or cant follow the videos.
When you've selected your storage device, you'll come up against the main menu. Here, use the D-pad to navigate (the D-pad and left analog stick do different things in this game, and you'll be using the D-pad a lot). Select New Game and there are eight different scenarios for you to conquer. Choose the one in the top right, called Clear River and Rice Paddies - this map is easy, it's what I did most of my early achievements on, and you start with 1 billion monies (for ease of use, I'll just put $ from now on).
When the map starts, press start. This is the instant pause button in the game.
Now we look at the HUD provided. Currently selected in the top left is what I'll call the Game Menu which uses a twist style function to navigate. If you press RB, the speed is now selected - this is in the top right corner, and should now be flashing. You can use the D-Pad left and right to adjust the speed, or press up on the D-Pad to set the speed back to normal. For this guide, I suggest putting it all the way to the right, as we need to sim a lot of days to get these achievements.
Pressing RB again takes us to the cutaway guide, to the right of the speed. This is for when you want to build in mountains or underground. RB again takes you to the bottom right, where the train selector is. Here you can view the path each train takes on its day. RB again brings up the calendar, and here you can set dates where your timer will automatically stop. This is useful on Tax Days (1st Apr and 1st May I believe) so you can cobble funds together. RB a final time brings us back to the Game Menu.
The Game Menu is fairly intuitive. However, if you want to delete a piece of rail, you have to select the rail menu and go to the delete function there - same applies for buildings, you have to use the construction delete funtion for those.
But the main crux is the market menu, which brings up the stock market. Go there now (highlight it, press A).
There are 50 companies from which you can buy stock. Now with any stock market, you have to use the 'buy low and sell high' strategy. This game can be a bit picky with stock market rises and falls, so keep an eye out of those.
To get these easy achievements, we need to make lots of money on the stock market - about 12 billion to begin with. Now as a general rule, I buy below $7 a share, and sell above $13. You can't make any money with small gains, as every time you buy or sell, 10% is charged as a commission fee. Sometimes the game will take shares as low as $1, or as high as $20, so we need tactics to counteract that too.
From the beginning, the shares are usually around $8, so try and buy the cheapest you can find. You can press Y to increase the amount that you buy (up to 10 million). Buy as many as you can, but leave at least 200 million in the bank - this is very important; you're current funds are in the top center right of the screen. You can only buy 10 million shares from each company, but you can buy shares from as many companies as you like.
When this is done, press start. Now you will see the days go by quickly, and the stock prices rising and falling. As a market, they rise as a group and fall as a group, so you wont see $4 on one set and $16 on the other, they'll all be around $4 or around $16, etc. Also, share price is not based on how well you play each scenario - its random.
As the days go by, you'll see the odd message saying 'the stock market is falling!' or 'the stock market is surging!'. As a general rule, ignore these messages. Most of them are hoaxes - some of them are true, but most spout the most purile lies.
Stick to your stock screen until the majority of the 5 prices you are looking at reach above $13 - this could take 2 minutes or 10 minutes as the stock market is random. When this happens, press start to pause the game. Now we need to save the game. This is done by going to the Game Menu, and selecting File, then Save. [Note, you cannot overwrite a save game - it has to be deleted first by pressing X, then you can save it the slot]. Once that is done, go back to the market. Press right on the D-pad, and what said 'Buy shares' now should say 'Sell Shares'. Sell all the shares you own. Your money should now be over 1 billion by a small amount (I was by 160 million the first time). Now save the game again, but this time in a different slot.
Go back to the market, and resume the game. If after 5 days or so the stock market has risen, go back and reload the save where you had the shares. In general, this game does follow the same trends everytime after a save (at least for a short while), so this is generally a good indicator. If you reloaded, sim 5 days, and if it's still higher this time round, save before you sell the shares and after you sell the shares. That way, if the shares go up higher still, you can reload and save.
When the shares have peaked and you've sold them all, the market should decline again. This time, we're waiting for shares to dip below $7. This time, we save the game before you buy, and save the game after you buy. That way, if they dip below $5, we can reload the save with all the money and buy them at the cheaper prices. Again, buy as many as you can, but leave at least 200 million in the bank.
You need to repeat the buying/selling/saving process for a while. As you accumulate more money, you'll be able to buy more shares each time, and thus make more profit. About 4 billion is needed to buy from every company on the stock market.
Once you have around 7.5 billion, now we can go achievement hunting. Keep a save file with all this money, just so you can come back to it and get some other achievements.
In the market screen, press LB until you see the bank. Here, we need to take out lots of loan. Press Y until the loan amount is 1 billion, then press right on the D-Pad so it becomes a 2 year term. Then take out as much as you can (goto each line in the table and press A). You should be able to take out 4 or 5 billion, and your total money should now exceed 10 billion (the more the better).
Now goto the project sub menu of the Game Menu. Here, you can create Bullet Trains and MagLev Trains - which cost 600 million and 10 billion respectively. Create both on the map - they should be easy to place, this is an open map. These trains take 128 days to build, so sim through them until they are done. When they are built, you should get the following achievements:
Bullet Train in Service - 30GS
Complete the bullet train project to open a bullet train line.
Maglev Train in Service - 60GS
Complete the linear train project to open a maglev train line.
Railway Kingdom - 60GS
Total railway assets exceed the total of non-railway assets by over 15% when the game is cleared.
Harmony With Nature - 60GS
Blocks of trees exceed 300 when the game is cleared.
The Great Leap Forward - 60GS
Clear the game within 5 years.
Now reload up your save with all the money. Goto construction, a choose the small factory. Build 60 or so. After simming a day or two, you should get these achievements:
Factory Head - 30GS
Number of factories exceeds 30.
Company Expansion - 50GS
Number of your properties exceeds 60.
You can also build 30 stations, from the station menu. Any will do, the cheaper the easier though. After another day or two, this achievement will be yours:
Station Expansion - 30GS
Number of stations exceeds 30.
=========================================
This guide is for people to follow in order to get over half of the GS in A-Train HX without playing about too much with the core gameplay. This strategy worked for me (640GS in ~5hrs) and I hope it does for you too.
I'll start as if you've just put in the game without reading the manual (I didnt get a manual as it was a LoveFilm rental).
Edit - The basic principle is 'Get Money Quick'. When this guide was first written here, we used the stock market. However, a quicker way has been discovered using Property. See the Youtube videos to see how. The Stock Market method will remain here so people can learn the controls or cant follow the videos.
When you've selected your storage device, you'll come up against the main menu. Here, use the D-pad to navigate (the D-pad and left analog stick do different things in this game, and you'll be using the D-pad a lot). Select New Game and there are eight different scenarios for you to conquer. Choose the one in the top right, called Clear River and Rice Paddies - this map is easy, it's what I did most of my early achievements on, and you start with 1 billion monies (for ease of use, I'll just put $ from now on).
When the map starts, press start. This is the instant pause button in the game.
Now we look at the HUD provided. Currently selected in the top left is what I'll call the Game Menu which uses a twist style function to navigate. If you press RB, the speed is now selected - this is in the top right corner, and should now be flashing. You can use the D-Pad left and right to adjust the speed, or press up on the D-Pad to set the speed back to normal. For this guide, I suggest putting it all the way to the right, as we need to sim a lot of days to get these achievements.
Pressing RB again takes us to the cutaway guide, to the right of the speed. This is for when you want to build in mountains or underground. RB again takes you to the bottom right, where the train selector is. Here you can view the path each train takes on its day. RB again brings up the calendar, and here you can set dates where your timer will automatically stop. This is useful on Tax Days (1st Apr and 1st May I believe) so you can cobble funds together. RB a final time brings us back to the Game Menu.
The Game Menu is fairly intuitive. However, if you want to delete a piece of rail, you have to select the rail menu and go to the delete function there - same applies for buildings, you have to use the construction delete funtion for those.
But the main crux is the market menu, which brings up the stock market. Go there now (highlight it, press A).
There are 50 companies from which you can buy stock. Now with any stock market, you have to use the 'buy low and sell high' strategy. This game can be a bit picky with stock market rises and falls, so keep an eye out of those.
To get these easy achievements, we need to make lots of money on the stock market - about 12 billion to begin with. Now as a general rule, I buy below $7 a share, and sell above $13. You can't make any money with small gains, as every time you buy or sell, 10% is charged as a commission fee. Sometimes the game will take shares as low as $1, or as high as $20, so we need tactics to counteract that too.
From the beginning, the shares are usually around $8, so try and buy the cheapest you can find. You can press Y to increase the amount that you buy (up to 10 million). Buy as many as you can, but leave at least 200 million in the bank - this is very important; you're current funds are in the top center right of the screen. You can only buy 10 million shares from each company, but you can buy shares from as many companies as you like.
When this is done, press start. Now you will see the days go by quickly, and the stock prices rising and falling. As a market, they rise as a group and fall as a group, so you wont see $4 on one set and $16 on the other, they'll all be around $4 or around $16, etc. Also, share price is not based on how well you play each scenario - its random.
As the days go by, you'll see the odd message saying 'the stock market is falling!' or 'the stock market is surging!'. As a general rule, ignore these messages. Most of them are hoaxes - some of them are true, but most spout the most purile lies.
Stick to your stock screen until the majority of the 5 prices you are looking at reach above $13 - this could take 2 minutes or 10 minutes as the stock market is random. When this happens, press start to pause the game. Now we need to save the game. This is done by going to the Game Menu, and selecting File, then Save. [Note, you cannot overwrite a save game - it has to be deleted first by pressing X, then you can save it the slot]. Once that is done, go back to the market. Press right on the D-pad, and what said 'Buy shares' now should say 'Sell Shares'. Sell all the shares you own. Your money should now be over 1 billion by a small amount (I was by 160 million the first time). Now save the game again, but this time in a different slot.
Go back to the market, and resume the game. If after 5 days or so the stock market has risen, go back and reload the save where you had the shares. In general, this game does follow the same trends everytime after a save (at least for a short while), so this is generally a good indicator. If you reloaded, sim 5 days, and if it's still higher this time round, save before you sell the shares and after you sell the shares. That way, if the shares go up higher still, you can reload and save.
When the shares have peaked and you've sold them all, the market should decline again. This time, we're waiting for shares to dip below $7. This time, we save the game before you buy, and save the game after you buy. That way, if they dip below $5, we can reload the save with all the money and buy them at the cheaper prices. Again, buy as many as you can, but leave at least 200 million in the bank.
You need to repeat the buying/selling/saving process for a while. As you accumulate more money, you'll be able to buy more shares each time, and thus make more profit. About 4 billion is needed to buy from every company on the stock market.
Once you have around 7.5 billion, now we can go achievement hunting. Keep a save file with all this money, just so you can come back to it and get some other achievements.
In the market screen, press LB until you see the bank. Here, we need to take out lots of loan. Press Y until the loan amount is 1 billion, then press right on the D-Pad so it becomes a 2 year term. Then take out as much as you can (goto each line in the table and press A). You should be able to take out 4 or 5 billion, and your total money should now exceed 10 billion (the more the better).
Now goto the project sub menu of the Game Menu. Here, you can create Bullet Trains and MagLev Trains - which cost 600 million and 10 billion respectively. Create both on the map - they should be easy to place, this is an open map. These trains take 128 days to build, so sim through them until they are done. When they are built, you should get the following achievements:
Bullet Train in Service - 30GS
Complete the bullet train project to open a bullet train line.
Maglev Train in Service - 60GS
Complete the linear train project to open a maglev train line.
Railway Kingdom - 60GS
Total railway assets exceed the total of non-railway assets by over 15% when the game is cleared.
Harmony With Nature - 60GS
Blocks of trees exceed 300 when the game is cleared.
The Great Leap Forward - 60GS
Clear the game within 5 years.
Now reload up your save with all the money. Goto construction, a choose the small factory. Build 60 or so. After simming a day or two, you should get these achievements:
Factory Head - 30GS
Number of factories exceeds 30.
Company Expansion - 50GS
Number of your properties exceeds 60.
You can also build 30 stations, from the station menu. Any will do, the cheaper the easier though. After another day or two, this achievement will be yours:
Station Expansion - 30GS
Number of stations exceeds 30.
The rail laying achievements are quite easy. Press RB until you get to the cutaway option in the top right, and press down twice, then A. The screen should turn almost completely orange - don't worry, this just means you are underground. Now bring up the rail menu from the Game Menu. We need to put down 2000 bits of rail, so keep building in an up and down. 2000 takes a long time (5-10 minutes), and at this point it's probably best to keep the timer running for this one. You'll get a message when you hit 1000. These achievements will unlock as you go through:
Tube Expansion - 30GS
Total length of rails in tunnels exceeds 100.
Public Transport King - 30GS
Total rail length exceeds 2,000.
Ah here's something I almost forgot - go back to the bank screen (under Market). Now keep taking out max loans and paying them back (press A again after taking them out). After less than a minute, this achievement will unlock:
Sign of Success - 40GS
Bank interest paid exceeds 500 million.
If you need all your money back, now is a good time to reload, as these other achievements require some money and time.
These achievements require some basic knowledge of how the train system works in this game, as well as some info about materials.
About factories and materials: most of the buildings in this game require materials. Materials come from factories, or trains that deposit them in material yards as they come from off the map. Trains can only deposit materials in yards within a certain radius of the station, and buildings have to be built near materials in material yards.
Now go back to sea level, and find the patch of water in the bottom right of the map - this is so we can build a port. A port needs a stretch of land next to water of 4/5 squares, so keep this in mind when building.
Near the edge of the map (3 squares away), build a Marshalling Yard with five platforms (press Y to change the number of platforms), with the barriers of the station facing into the main map. Now build rail such that each of the five platforms is going to the edge of the map. Now build large Material Yards around the station - I believe each station can reach out 20 squares or so, so populate the area around the marshalling yard with lots of material yards - keep them close together. Now we need to buy trains.
Goto the train menu. You will see that you already have 3 trains. Ignore those for the time being. Using the D-Pad, goto train spot number 4. Press A to buy a train. Here you see the list of trains available - scroll down until you see the Model EC6 HS Goods Train. Press Y until it has 7 carts, then press A. Now move to one of your platfroms of the Marshalling yard, and press A twice. The train should now be set. Do this with the other 4 platforms.
If you sim a few days, you should now see materials building up in your yards. Good, we need lots and lots.
First task should be to build a port and an airport. If your Marshalling yard is close to the water, building a port is easy - note what looks like the building section of the port actually goes in the water, the rest is on land. The airport is easy too - just find an open space near the material yards. These achievements should be yours:
Take to the Skies - 30GS
Construct an airport.
Port of Call - 10GS
Construct a port.
Now, we build leisure facilities. This is under the construction menu. Here we go with the one that uses the least materials - the shrine. Build 20 of these and sim a day for this achievement:
Leisure Industry Leader - 30GS
Number of leisure facilities exceeds 20.
Now these next set of buildings may take a while. They need lots of materials and money. I'm talking about the landmarks. Find a space near the material yards, and build them one by one. You only need one of each. When they are all built, you get this achievement:
Tourist Trap - 50GS
Construct all types of landmarks.
All that's left is to reload your save and keep playing with the stock market. When you hit 10 billion, this achievement is yours:
Top Trader - 40GS
Share trading profits exceed 10 billion.
Many thanks to woody1993 for the following info on other achievements:
Quote:
| I would play the stock market until you have about 35 billion and save this map as it will be extremely useful in a few of the achievements later on (you should get the 30 billion in assets by doing this also) Railway Microstate achievement Like borandi says just find a map with a track length less than 300 at the start of map and play the stock market till you get about 7 billion then take loans out till you get past 10 billion then you should get the achievement i personally done it on north/south of the mountains map National Conquest Complete the eight original maps this is easy but time consuming just play the stock market as before when you get to 10 billion you clear the map I cleared all eight maps but didn't get the achievement at first so i went to my map list and deleted the maps i downloaded and created then cleared an original map again so to be certain i would just have the eight original maps to start with when you do this achievement Industry Leader Just play stock market again till you get 30 billion and selling any property you own counts towards your total assets City Expansion I did this one by building as many supermarkets,convenience stores and restaurants as i could then sold them to the city and built more and sold them and so on until the achievement popped up this could take some time but you will get it eventually |
Quote:
| Top Taxpayer You should get this by doing Property Baron |
Quote:
| Property Baron - also see video underneath called 'Using Property Pt 1' I built five long tube stations on the edge of the map one level down underground (you can do this by pressing rb until you to the enable cutaway part) then put five goods trains on them with seven carriages then surround the stations with large material yards if they exceed 20 spaces away from station nothing will be dropped off on them, return to normal level then build 50 department stores 1 (you can use other shops and property's but i found these to be best) if you build tall buildings or skyscrapers they will not make a profit until they are fully built.Put a few elevated stations close to the stores so the population will build around them, pretty soon you should be making a profit go to to management info on report at the top of page it should say subs,profit/year it's this total which must succeed 20 billion don't worry it doesn't have to be done in a year. I waited a year until my city built up a bit then i took all my trains off sold them then left it on over night to get this achievement but that's just the way i did it you don't have take your trains off Subway Mall Expansion It's best to do this achievement with a highly populated city when my city had about 9000 population i built an underground double tube station, on the first track i put a goods train with a material yard close by, on the second track i put a tube train, i connected this station with another station further on after a while a subway expanded from the back of my tube station this expanded two at a time to a maximum of eight in length 16 in total when it was fully built i built another six tube stations in close proximity to the original tube station when all fully expanded you should get the achievement (a fully extended subway mall attached to a tube station should resemble the letter t) |
YouTube - A-Train HX - Underground Malls
Useful Links to A-Train HX:
http://www.artdink.co.jp/japanese/ti...en_playing.php
A website that introduces the core concept of the game
(As mentioned by DJ Psydande in another thread)
Videos for making money, made by borandi:
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using Property Pt 1
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using Property Pt 2
YouTube - A-Train HX - Using the Stock Market
Thursday, April 10, 2008
10th April: GS Update
Ok so I didnt make a gamerscore update last weekend, mainly because I was too busy. Busy with making extra posts, game guides and watching Zero Punctuation. Deal with it =D . Coupled with this, I'm doing a '2 for 3' deal on updates - 2 in 3 weeks, because I'm away this weekend. Away is as far as I wont update, but still near to a 360 enough to keep my streak on 360 voice going.
Now for the games:
This week/update brings up several long time completions, and a new game completion. Along with that, I've lots of hand cramp from Guitar Hero and no achievements to show for it. Almost had one, and also trawling through expert on GH2, even 5*ing a few. I also found this site for GH3, giving some of my more spectacular achievements:Having a new gamer picture is like eating out at a new restaurant... you go in and everything is different and... ok that really makes no sense... bad comparison... never mind. In gaming related news... borandi seemed really excited to play yesterday. Our current gamerscore is 85,191 . That is a boost of 60 points over last time! He played Thrillville: OTR, PAC-MAN winning 1 achievement, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero II, Brain Challenge™, DOOM, and then borandi developed a funny twitch and went to try and sleep it off or something. Crazy humans...
Good thing borandi and I got some play time in! Every day we play is another opportunity to pull away from Donny NL and that 40,257 gamerscore!
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. Check out the progress right now! 12 other competitors are racking up achievements and powering up their gamerscores, hoping to secure a victory! Currently borandi is hanging on to the number 6 spot. We've only got one day left. Let's cancel everything on our schedule from school to work to sleep (haven't been following what borandi does these days) and win this challenge!
Now for the games:
| GamerScore: | 83701 -> 85191 |
| Zone: | Pro |
| Completed XBLA: | 18 -> 19 / 52 |
| Completed Retail: | 38 -> 40 / 192 |
| GS Completion %: | 41.13% -> 41.80% |
| Country Rank: | 104 -> 102 |
| World Rank: | 707 -> 701 |
| Completion Rank: | 1,773 -> 1,691 |
Monday, March 31, 2008
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.
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!
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.
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.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.
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!
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!
0 -> 65 of 1000  3 of 37 Achievements | |
| 930 - > 970 of 1000 43 of 44 Achievements | |
| 55 -> 70 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements | |
| 340 -> 360 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements | |
| 0 -> 240 of 1000 6 of 23 Achievements | |
| 140 -> 160 of 1000 7 of 49 Achievements | |
| 325 - > 365 of 1000 35 of 59 Achievements | |
| 0 -> 130 of 1000 9 of 50 Achievements | |
| 0 -> 640 of 1000 16 of 24 Achievements | |
| 0 -> 165 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements | |
| 100 -> 125 of 1000 6 of 38 Achievements | |
| 30 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements | |
| 780 -> 800 of 1000 30 of 49 Achievements |
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 |
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