7th October: GS Update

I had to set aside my plans for world domination yesterday when borandi decided to game. Our score is 51,359 and always improving! That is a gain of 115 points over last time! He opened up Joust adding 1 achievement, Frogger gaining 1 achievement, SEGA Rally™ picking up 3 achievements, Bankshot Billiards 2 acquiring 2 achievements, Carcassonne finishing 1 achievement, and... hmmm... maybe that was all... it felt like we played more games.

I also want to mention that borandi's gamer reputation decreased somehow. I don't know who he ticked off, but that isn't good. I hope it was just a misunderstanding!

Lol yes I got my first 'negative feedback' today. I've been playing some Sega Rally online, and I'll explain a bit below:

Carcassonne	125 -> 150 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	80 -> 120 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
SEGA Rally™	0 -> 75 of 1000 6 of 44 Achievements
Frogger	15 -> 140 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Joust	0 -> 40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Ratatouille	0 -> 145 of 1000 12 of 50 Achievements
Halo 3	115 -> 125 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Juiced 2: HIN	0 -> 55 of 1000 8 of 60 Achievements
Conan	0 -> 115 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Aegis Wing	75 -> 85 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
The Darkness	295 -> 305 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	0 -> 10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements

Carcassonne, in reality, should be an easy game to get 200GS in - all you need is three people online. But not many people have the game! I managed to get the 5000 points achievement worth 25GS - all I have left is the 'win player match by 50points' and 'build a 9+ city in a 3+ player match'.

I've been grinding some on Bankshot Billiards - I was able to do all the golf tables under par. On some of the tables, it was necessary to foul in order to get through the tables with the least number of shots. I also did the 'Speed Freak' achievement - this is one of the hardest to do, requiring 12 tables to be finished in 12 minutes overall. Basically, if there is a lot of balls, put your first three shots at full power, then the rest with 3/4 backspin to stop the ball quickly. Now I have to do the '5 games of 8-ball without losing a turn', '50 games without losing a turn', and all the ones leading upto '200 wins' - I got the 25 wins in the last game, so only 175 to go :p

Sega Rally is a weird game - so I'm glad I only rented it. It's weird - there is no 'out of track' area, you just bounce off. It's like a true arcade version of DiRT - the faster you go, the better you fare. Cornering and breaking is necessary but not critical. I'm pretty sure I got my negative feedback for coming up on the inside of someone, not breaking in time - so he went into the wall, I bounced off of him, but as I had the higher speed I was pushed away faster and gained the position on the track. It's a weird game in that respect, and I'd suggest DiRT over it tbh.

I've also grinded some on Frogger - going after the speed achievements, the saving achievements and the level achievements. All that's left is the level 4, level 5, and the co-op achievement. Now I'm crap at Frogger, so to get the 30k co-op would be hard, given that I can't even get 15k.

I signed up a while back to receive 2 free XBLA games from Microsoft, and I got the codes through - One for Robotron (which I already have) and one for Joust (which I didn't have). Joust is a classic retro game - easy to start, but very hard very quick. Only 58 people have the full 200GS on this, so I dont think I'll be getting it any time soon. But I got to level 5 on my first attempt, and tried very hard to get the level 1 survival achievement. By luck I got the Pterodactyl achievement too.

I rented Ratatouille - it's a fun game, but someone got the coding wrong. If you die, you have to start at the beginning of a level, even if you were right at the end of it. Every level, there are 100 tokens to collect, and if you miss one before the story continues, you forfit that achievement. The camera is appalling too. Apart from that, it's your standard platform fare, regardless that it's a game of a film. Just some grinding at this game would result in 1000GS - the minigames are easy, just mild bits of skill here and there, as well as the collecting.

My journey on Halo 3 has been an eventful one. I'm going to quote what I put on a forum with regards matchmaking this week:

What a load of bollocks. Apologies for the colourful language, but the matchmaking system on Halo 3 is a F*&^$%G joke. Either that, or people intentionally reduce their rank to play the inexperienced.

For example: I'm on one particular map, rank 7, against four rank tens - and I do rather well. I then play the same map against rank 3/4, and get raped - full of bunny hopping fuckheads that always know where you are, one hit kill, then get you soon after you next spawn.

That was on free-for-all ranked - team ranked is even worse. It once put together a group of four rank 8s against four rank 3s. The 8s won by a nearly perfect margin.

What is this joke of matchmaking, seriously? I'm now being pared up in games where everyone else has a red ping - so when I goto punch, it doesnt register. FFS, there are 200k people online, and you're telling me there isnt a decent ping match around my rank in the UK??

Apart from that, Halo 3 is all well and good. Tune in next time for another episode of borandi's rants.

PS Wtf is the 'Steaktacular' Badge???

I started some Free-for-all matches which resulted in this rant - got a multikill and a melee achievement. This thursday I'm taking part in a Halo 3 game night, so hopefully I might get some achievements then!

I also rented out Juiced 2. It's a good driving game, but there are some flaws. The achievements are unoriginal - get to elite offline, get to elite online, get all goals offline, get all goals online. Online mode is a joke, and the creators thought that a lot more people would be playing it - each league has it's own lobby (which takes 20 seconds to log in or out), of which you're lucky if anyone is there. But offline it's straightforward - easy money by getting to league 6, going in the betting race, waiting until one racer has odds of 50:1, and you can get them to win. It's a long game for achievements.

Conan was also rented - it's a budget hack and slash, with the odd sight of boobies. Hack, Slash. Every-so-often, you will have to use certain moves to get achievements, but it's hack, hack, slash, slash. Just slightly better graphics than the PS2, but not pushing the 360 any.

I got my four controllers together to play Aegis-Wing, and make the four ship formation achievement. 60 seconds, easy to do. Couldn't control the combined ship though!

I rented the Darkness - not a lot of people online, and subject to very, very bad lag. Best if you host the game personally. I got a couple of basic achievements, didn't play the single game any though.

I played Hardwood Spades - it's still an odd game!

GS: 50,699 -> 51,359

Completed XBLA:	11 / 32
Completed Retail:	24 / 113
GS Completion %:	40.77%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.63%

Country Rank:	235/213967
World Rank:	1527/1553389

23rd September: GS Update

I didn't think I would see him yesterday, but borandi was back and ready for action. Total gamer score is 48,689 points. That is an increase of 215 points over last time! He rocked out to Blazing Angels, Marvel Ult. Alliance finishing an amazing 7 achievements, Guitar Hero II, EarthDefenseForce 2017, Carcassonne, Burnout Revenge winning an amazing 6 achievements, Smackdown vs RAW 2007 gaining 2 achievements, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed.

Hmmm... I just realized... borandi must not have anything major going on in his life right now because we have gamed 30 days in a row! Can you believe it? Give us the badge for streaking! w00t!

Smackdown vs RAW 2007	860 -> 970 of 1000 27 of 29 Achievements
Burnout Revenge	0 -> 55 of 1000 6 of 36 Achievements
EarthDefenseForce 2017	0 of 1000 0 of 6 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 of 1000 32 of 50 Achievements
Marvel Ult. Alliance	120 -> 230 of 1250 18 of 58 Achievements
Test Drive Unlimited	360 -> 590 of 1000 32 of 46 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	840 of 1000 19 of 23 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	145 -> 245 of 1000 10 of 43 Achievements
Aegis Wing	45 -> 75 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
BOMBERMAN Act:Zero	250 -> 350 of 1000 20 of 50 Achievements
2006 FIFA World Cup™	500 of 1000 4 of 5 Achievements
PGR 3	35 -> 175 of 1000 7 of 25 Achievements
Chromehounds	120 -> 140 of 1000 6 of 49 Achievements
DEAD RISING	80 -> 140 of 1000 7 of 50 Achievements
DiRT™	370 -> 420 of 1000 24 of 49 Achievements

It's been retro game week this week. I looked through my played games list, and went through my list backwards a few for the games that I own.

Last time I played WWE 07 I had got to the point where I had to finish the last couple of belts by doing the challenges in the PC. I was having a lot of trouble - but I changed the settings so there was no ring-out or DQs, so I could get weapons out the side of the ring. That made most of the challenges easy, apart from the 2vs2 matches, as my partner would often get pinned in the first couple of minutes. The Kahli vs. woman match at the end was actually quite easy - I was able to keep doing grapples from behind to damage his head so it went red, then put him on the floor and kept damaging his legs till they were red, then it was an easy pin. I also went through the roster pinning everyone on hard mode, to get that achievement. Though I did it by choosing one wrestler to pin the next and so on, I should have got the 'win with every wrestler' achievement, but it didnt unlock (some sort of glitch). That hard mode achievement took around 3 hours to do though, so I might wait until next week to do the equivalent Legend mode achievement.

I took Burnout Revenge off my 'still to play' shelf and started to go through it. NickHarkkonen and I took turns in career mode, and I also did some online mode - which was very fun to play when I wasn't hitting random trees. EA have shut down all their sports '06 games servers, so I'm surprised they haven't shut down their Burnout servers yet. All the achievements in this game require a lot of playing, hence why I've only got a few easy ones atm.

Nick and I are on lvl 33 of EDF - another 20 to go until we finish easy mode. Health around 700 and it's very easy - we've even been doing some levels on the difficulty above easy to get some better weapons.

We also cranked out some GHII, with Nick starting his career mode on Easy. I did a couple of songs on Hard (I still can't get passed that one song, but I'm able to do the rest in that section) and one on expert.

Nick and I also did some Marvel Ultimate Alliance - a game I think is a lot better in co-op mode than single player. We've just been grinding through the main story - we've just started Act 2. It's a fun game, just a bit boring.

I got out some Test Drive Unlimited which I haven't touched in a while. My goal was just to get some easy achievements, but I also did the Island Tour race in my Koenigsegg CC8S - 118miles took only 44 minutes (I was doing 260mph in the straights) - which gave me 30GS. I was able to reach Champion level (needed 450GS) which unlocked a very easy speed race which gave $75k per win (so about $150k/minute). All that money has given me most of the collection achievements.

I'm now 20 games into Serie A on PES6. It's a long hard grind, but now only about 140 games to go until 1000GS.

I also played some GRAW which I haven't touched in a while. I was told of some cheats available for infinite HP, so I did the first 4 levels on hard :) Though there are still quite a few levels to go.

I played some Aegis Wing - using 2 controllers I got the 'combine with a friend' achievement, as well as the 'dont shoot for a level' one. I have 4 controllers, so I guess I can do the 4 ship formation achievement too.

Bomberman Act Zero is an annoying game, but I got a few of the Secret Panels now that there is a guide for them :)

Fifa 06 is an odd game - an easy 500GS and a very tough 500GS. The tough part is to do some challenges, and I was able to do another 5 this week. The hard ones are still to come though.

I've never played PGR3 seriously, so I went someway though career mode this week. I was able to get a platinum medal on manual for 60GS using the fastest car on the first speed track.

Also did some online with Chromehounds online, getting the '50 shots fired' achievement (i.e. 50 HOUNDs destroyed.

I haven't played Dead Rising since January 2nd - 5 days after I got my first 360. That was on a 13" SCART CRT, so now I'm using a 19" HDTV, it looks LOADS better. I'm able to actually do parts of the story - but I prefer mindlessly going around killing zombies :) I got to the gun shop with the psycho, but he killed me :(

I also did the online achieves for DiRT while I was still renting it.

GS: 47,769 -> 48,789

Completed XBLA:	11 / 28
Completed Retail:	21 / 104
GS Completion %:	41.89%
GS % (Non-Demo):	45.18%

Country Rank:	266/212000
World Rank:	1677/1543243