Review: Bionicle Heroes

I didn’t know anything about Bionicle Heroes when it first passed my eyes. All I saw was a LEGO symbol – a symbol synonymous with one sort of game: no voice acting, stupidly long linear levels and multiple plays of the same level. After playing BH, it holds up to this branding well.

As far as is ascertainable without investigating the Bionicle world, you play an androgynous ‘freak’. This ‘freak’ can switch persona with a simple change of its LEGO head giving it different powers – but this freak is pissed. Pissed at some random ‘dude’ who can create minions. This ‘dude’ hasn’t stolen the protagonist’s significant other, or an exceptional amount of wealth from some evil caper worth stealing. Thanks to the no voice acting or written story, this tale offers a mind fuck not worth thinking about.

Nevertheless, the game itself acts like a third person shooter. Each level consists of going from point A to point F via points B, C, D and E in typical LEGO sequential fashion. At each point, your goal is gain LEGO pieces by collecting or shooting enough ‘bad guys’ to fill a special meter. This power is unleashed and you proceed to the next point. Each level offers either a level or collectable to finish. Repeat 25 times, ‘story’ complete.

To be honest, the controls are the big let down here. I play the odd FPS/Third-PS, and you should get the normal forward/back/turn/strafe combo with the analog sticks. No such luck in BH, which only strafes if RT is held down. But wait, isn’t that meant to be the fire button? Alas, that is reserved for the myriad of options by ABYX. This combined with the level length and the lack if an apparent story constitutes the main flaws of BH.

On the bright side, the visuals are a credit to the game. When considering the target audience of ages 3-15, the children will like the highly coloured scenery and the responsive sounds BH offers. Unfortunately, not much comfort for hardcore players.

As a game, I can’t recommend BH. It’s dull, boring, and has no ‘yay’ factor after completing a task. In my case, due to the appalling save system the game uses, my save file corrupted at around 80% into the game. Unfortunately, looking at online forums, this problem is common. Nevertheless, with persistence (and another 8 months), I was able to complete the games achievements, totalled around 20hrs play altogether.

On the achievements side, BH is an easy completion in the grand schema of Xbox gaming. Finish the game, kill X amount of each monster and get 5 million coins – these achievements are all straight forward. The main achievement basically requires 100% completion – thus needing every level to be played again (once all the upgrades have been obtained) to get every special item in each level (~9/level), and finish the level with a gold medal (all special items, lots of LEGO pieces). This type of collection achievement is also detriment to the LEGO games.

Bionicle Heroes – one for the kids.

borandi

1st July: GS Update

It's been the final week of my degree course (with one more minor test type activity left next week), so after the exams were done, it's on with the gaming!

borandi really threw down yesterday. It was good to see! I wish you could have been there! Last time I checked, his gamer score is 97,689. That is an improvement of 925 points over last time! Welcome to 97,000!! He played Rock Band adding 3 achievements, Lost Via Domus finishing an amazing 24 achievements to master the game, Bionicle Heroes gaining 1 achievement, and then nothing... nothing at all...

Did I mention the gamerscore challenge that borandi is competing in? Bookmark this link now and check out all the action! 4 other people are also involved... which is madness. Current rank out of all those people is number one though. Everyone else is jealous... I feel their hate. I've made a wager with the 4 other Xboxes in the Challenge -- let's not blow this thing...

This week saw the arrival of Rock Band into my profile. At the equivalent of $90(45GBP), it's the most expensive game (just the game, on it's own) I've ever purchased. It's been part of a want for a long while, plus a personal gift to myself for finishing! I haven't got the instrument pack yet, I'll probably get that in a few months when a) I have the money, and b) it comes down in price. In the mean time, I've got my GH3 controller for lead and bass, and the wired headset for vocals. More about Rock Band below.

Besides Rock Band, there were a few completions this week, including an old-time grind, and another 'position to remember' completion.

So for the games:

Rock Band 0 -> 50 of 1000 5 of 50 Achievements I got this game Friday, and now it's Sunday night/Monday morning. What do I think of Rock Band? Well, it's a very good game. There's only so much you can say about this music genre type games, and I thought GH3 had done well, but Rock Band just takes it a step further with a bit of spit and polish to make everything look neat. The layout of the game itself is good and clean, and the repertoire of music tracks available are varied, with many more available on the Marketplace. My first experience of RB was one I was rather expecting - I was told that it was easier on GH3, so I stuck it on Expert difficulty straight away. That was fine, except when I played, the timings were significantly tighter than GH3. That's very good at least, means I have to play to a beat, rather than be slightly off. So far, I'm now at the final track on expert. I haven't had to repeat one yet to pass it, except this final one - it's a bastard. 9 minutes 49 seconds of Freebird style playing and me with a semi-broken wrist. One thing I notice with Rock Band on Guitar is a lot of the tracks have the same note repeated, quickly, for a long time. So my hand hurts. So when I got to this track, I got 80% through TWICE, and a solo kills me. Thats 8 minutes into the track, so you bet it's annoying that to go through it again I have to play though ALL 8 minutes. Pah. On the vocals side, I suck as I'm tone deaf. However, Roquey and Nellas seem to be pretty good - Roquey has been able to 95%-99% a few songs on hard, and Nellas has finished some on expert as well. It looks like I may be calling upon them to do my Vocal achievements, but we'll see and I'll practice. My vocal range is limited to C, C#, and some wierd falsetto, currently.

GTA IV 540 -> 550 of 1000 34 of 50 Achievements Not much GTA at all this week. However, the GTA 'kill a developer' achievement was released into the wild. Common thought was that this achievement was not viral, as in you would have to personally kill a developer to get it. But, it seems like it is viral, and spread like wildfire. I caught wind of this fact, and jumped into an online game of Cops and Crooks. I got the achievement on my first kill, so that was handy =D

Bionicle Heroes 940 -> 1000 of 1000 49 of 49 Achievements A grinders hardship can be summed up with Bionicle Heroes. For those that have followed my story, this is how it has gone: I got the game and starting playing it in the morning of 17th February 2007. I sat playing through every level, for almost 8 straight hours. I was 18 stages in (~83% through the game), when I received the following message: 'Autosave Failed'. I did not know what this meant at the time, but to sum up - this game, which does all the saving automatically, will not let you save in two places. If it fails to save, it will no longer save, and your previous save is corrupt. What this meant for me is, that those 8 hours of playing went down the tube. I had 800 or so GS in the game by this time, and the final achievements would require playing through those 8 hours again. So, over the course of the next 16 months, I played a level here, a level there, making sure not to play it for too long at a time. Until last night that is, when I blitzed 14 levels or so to get the final 19% of the game. It required completing each stage with a gold medal, and collecting every Gold and Silver canister (people have reported in online forums that this isn't necessary, but for me it was) to get the full 100%, and 5 million monies along the way. My Bionicle Heroes story is a weary one, and I'm glad to get this POS out of the way. Game Complete!

Lost Via Domus 125 -> 1000 of 1000 30 of 30 Achievements At first, I was saving Lost for a 8-week GS competition over at x360a.org. But then I dropped out, seeing as I will be moving in that time (stay tuned) and then used it for a 360voice 5-day auto challenge. Lost, in all respects, is a fairly easy 1000. No hard parts, a fairly quick game, but at the same time, dull. Not necessarily boring, but just dull. You don't get a sense of 'Why am I playing this?', but you also do not get the sense of 'This is fun and enjoyable!'. With the online guide at x360a.org (check the forums), it was fairly easy with minimal thinking. Game Complete!

Boogie Bunnies 0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements I bought Boogie Bunnies for Nellas this week, and also as part of my on-going quest for the 1* Puzzle badge over at 360voice. It's one of these 'match 3 in a row and try not to die' type games, apart from this game uses over the top cute bunny type creatures, who sound like they've been eating the defauly soundbites from every Worms game every made. I haven't had a serious go of this game yet, however the achievements look a bit tricky (Nellas has 6 atm, compared to my 3) and might require some proper playing time.

Jewel Quest 60 -> 110 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements Jewel Quest is also part of my 1* Puzzle gaining quest. This week I finished off the first playthrough, and gained the 500k score margin. Then I got 4/5 through the second playthrough, then I must've pressed a wrong button on a menu option, but I have to start my second playthrough again. Bah humbug.

Burnout Revenge 165 -> 200 of 1000 12 of 36 Achievements With it being the end of my degree and all, one night involving some mates and pizza, we started taking turns doing crash events on Burnout Revenge. The next day I decided to persue some more achievements, and ended up getting the ones for '250 takedowns' and 'perfect the 2nd stage'. This game is fun, albeit having a high difficulty curve to get the achievements. For crash events, it's better than Burnout: Paradise, but Paradise beats it on everything else.

Buku Sudoku 0 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements Buku was one of the XBLA games released this week. I'm not usually a fan of Sudoku, but after having a look at the achievements, I decided to have a bash. Overall, this game is VERY easy. Achievements include 'win 25 online games', 'win one of each board', 'win one of each difficulty', 'win 200 games', 'get 10million points'. Now what makes this easy is that the helpers on this game make it simple to guess the number required. So if you turn all them on, and do simple 6x6 easy boards, the 200 wins is easy at 20secs/win. In the online modes, if you do co-op 6x6 boards on easy, both people get the online win, making that simple. With the points, if you mix some 6x6 easy with a few (12-15) 12x12 boards on easy which take 2 minutes to solve, the points are easy. Also something special worth noting - according to MGC I was: 10th in the World to complete Buku 2nd in the UK to complete Buku Not bad, eh? Game Complete!

Army of Two™ 340 -> 470 of 1250 18 of 47 Achievements Not much to say about Army of Two - I completed story mode, and got all the associated achievements, as well as killing 250 with machine guns and 30 with riot shield melee. The achievements left involve completing it on the hardest difficulty, some more 'kill with X weapon', and a couple online. EA released some FREE DLC (yes, that's right - free) for the game, but as this is my US copy, I need to use my US account to get the DLC. But the DLC is currently only for Gold members, and my US acc is Silver, so I'll have to wait a bit.

Call of Duty 4 770 -> 940 of 1000 35 of 37 Achievements I am now done with CoD4. When I saw in Blockbuster that I could get Rock Band for 15 quid if I traded in CoD4, I leapt at the opportunity - after I'd finished all the achievements first. If you may remember, I was stuck on 'In the War Room' on Veteran difficulty and could not get past it, so I did the final 2 levels on Easy. Well this time, I did the final level on Veteran (for an achievement), then 'In the War Room' on Hardened to get the 'Complete on Hardened or Veteran' 90GS achievement. To be honest, Hardened difficulty was very, very easy compared to Veteran. Well apart from that, I had to collect all the intel on every level (x360a.org guide for that, quite easy). That leaves me with two achievements which I have resigned myself to never getting - 'Complete In the War Room on Veteran', and 'Mile High Club'. I also wont be getting them as I traded my copy into BlockBuster. But they didnt get any Rock Band in on their next delivery, so I got a full refund and bought it from GameStation (hence the $90/45GBP price tag). Game Complete? Not quite, but game finished with.

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GamerScore:	96,139 -> 97,749
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	23 -> 24 / 58
Completed Retail:	46 -> 48 / 200
GS Completion %:	45.28% -> 45.65%

Country Rank:	73 -> 73
World Rank:	534 -> 515
Completion Rank:	1,072 -> 1,026

24th May: GS Update

This past couple of weeks has experienced plenty of gaming, with a lot of work fro my Degree in the middle (priority was probably in that order, it probably shouldn't have been!) but here we are for another GS update.

Go ahead... call me a wussy... but I almost started crying when borandi turned me on yesterday. 96,089 points of raw gamer score are making you jealous! That is a profit of 175 points over last time! That puts us above 96,000 points! He rallied Hexic 2, Civil War finishing 3 achievements, Guitar Hero II, Army of Two™ winning 4 achievements, KUF: Circle of Doom, Jewel Quest acquiring 4 achievements, GTA IV, and afterwards, there were some awkward stares and silence... you know how it is.

Oh and it is time for a gamerscore challenge update... listen up... Here is the link: check it. 4 other people are throwing down in this challenge. If I do the math correctly, it means that 4 players X 5 days means a whole lot of trash talk! That doesn't matter though because borandi is beating them all! Number one baby! It's good to be in the lead, but there's still 2 days left in the challenge and 4 challengers looking to eclipse our achievements with some of their own.
There have been two major targets this week: the application of my new turbo controller, and going after some more 360 badges.

Well my Hori Turbo pad arrived, and my general impression is that it's quite good. The turbo features are such that you can set each of the ABXY to either 13 or 26 button presses per second when you hold the respective button. Also, the D-Pad is infinitely better than the normal 360 pad. The analog sticks are looser, which make it a bit difficult in aiming in FPS games. The LT+RT buttons are smaller, so easier to press in games which just require pressing, but a bit worse for driving games, as you don't have the range of pressures you do with the normal 360 pad. Also, every so often the controller disconnects from the 360 (even though it's wired), and when chatting online, the 360 wired headset doesn't stay connected to the controller. So overall, it's good for games that either require the turbo buttons or offline gaming, and not on FPS or driving gaming. Saying that, I've applied it to DDR Universe and Track and Field (despite having 200/200, but I broke most of my records).

With respect to 360voice, I've started posting on the forums over there. Good bunch of people for the most part - the odd idiot who doesnt read or engage brain, but you get those everywhere (and they will be removed soon, mwhahahaha!). On the badge front, I got my 50 watchers badge thats to some posting in the 'watch me' forum. Thanks to the Turbo Pad, I got my 1* Music badge (along with completing GH3 on hard) and I also got the 1* FPS badge with some Army of Two. I'm still going after the 1* Sandbox badge with GTA4.

So what about the games?

Bionicle Heroes 900 -> 940 of 1000 47 of 49 Achievements Well I'm almost at the end of this game. I completed the story mode, so now I can go after 100%. On the way, I got enough money to unlock the 3rd special stage, and get a couple of 'Destroy X' achievements. All that's left is the '100%' achievement, and the 'Collect 5million' money achievement.

Jewel Quest 0 -> 60 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements Looking at my badge calculator over at 360voice, I noticed I was only 220 GS away from my 1* Puzzle badge. After looking at all the games for the badge, I compiled the list of best games to buy in order to get the badge depending on it's average GS earned/player according to MGC. Jewel Quest came top, so I bought it. It's essentially like Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest, though you have to clear items from every square of the board at least once. For the full achievement set, you have to go through the story 5 times - each playthrough being more difficult than the last. I'm almost at the end of my first time through, about 7 stages from the end.

Guitar Hero III 400 -> 430 of 1000 39 of 59 Achievements Well, as mentioned above, I managed to complete Hard on GH3 - a monumental achievement in my eyes. After having so much trouble with One and Raining Blood, I managed to do both in the same day, leaving only Lou's final battle left. And that final battle takes the biscuit. Lou gets all the power ups before you do, and the song is difficult enough that anything like Whammy or Double Notes totally screws you over. I tried well over 50 times, then managed to get it by getting two boosts that I don't normally get. General consensus is that the best way to beat Lou is to use a Whammy on his green note streak.

GTA IV 375 -> 540 of 1000 33 of 50 Achievements I'm now 70% into the game from the 100% completion statistic. Achievements wise, I got the 500k money achieve, deliver 30 cars by text, explode 10 vehicles in 10 seconds (use a long vehicle, block a bridge, wait for lots of cars, shoot in the air to get people out of their cars, arrange them if necessary, then launch a grenade in the middle, then wait with the rocket launcher to pick off a couple more), killed 20 criminals via the police computer, and a couple of story achievements.

Army of Two™ 225 -> 340 of 1100 14 of 41 Achievements Thanks to DDR Universe, I had my US 360 out, so I decided to go for my 1* FPS badge on 360voice. Also, I've been neglecting the Army of Two story, so I marched through to Stage 5 (out of 6) and it was rather fun. Nothing much else to say.

Civil War 525 -> 545 of 1000 30 of 50 Achievements I initially started on Civil War to get my FPS badge, hoping that the achievement for '750 kills' would unlock. So I finished the story (I was only 2 stages from the end), then redid the stage where I got most of the kills. Amazingly, I only got 10 more - it seems that I need 750 kills, only counting the highest kills on each stage. Thats a balls achievement. It's a balls game as well - being shot through shrubbery from 2000 ft with a pistol by the AI on easy is pointless.

Lost Via Domus 0 -> 125 of 1000 6 of 30 Achievements I got LOST from LoveFilm this week. Word is that it's an easy 1000. I only did the first couple of stages, and with an online guide, it is fairly easy. A bit of a stupid game though. Imagine CSI, but less fun and more frustrating.

DDR/DS Universe 400 -> 900 of 1000 27 of 32 Achievements Aha - the gold mine for the Turbo pad! Beforehand I got to the final area boss, and he was kicking my arse. So I pull out the turbo pad, and after some initial working out how to use it, I finished the story mode. Using the pad, and some online help, I was also able to unlock all the extra tracks, and do the 3rd, 4th and 5th set of challenges for achievements. With hindsight, I could have made 840GS without it given enough time - all it requires is a lot of the quest mode items. But now, according to MGC, I'm in the top 50 in the world...? Chances are I won't ever get the full 1000GS as it's bloody hard from here on out.

Lost Odyssey 235 -> 360 of 1100 6 of 42 Achievements Using my guide, I'm now onto the 3rd disc (it approached unexpectedly, I must say), having played just over 20hrs. It's still an awesome game, I recommend it to everyone!

Test Drive Unlimited 630 -> 670 of 1000 35 of 46 Achievements After watching lots of Top Gear (A very popular car show) again, and watching my favourite ever car on some tests - the Koenigsegg CCXR - it was time to break out a game which has the car. Well TDU has a couple of Koenigsegg cars, and I bought one in it a while ago. So I decided to lots of A-rank races with it. On the way, I got the '60 gold cups' achievement.

FIFA Street 3 0 -> 1250 of 1250 32 of 32 Achievements I got Fifa Street 3 from LoveFilm this past week. Online, it was rated as 5-12 hours completion, and the DLC is only 300MSPs. Well I got most of the offline ones fairly easily, then finished the game with Undefy, Haly x3h and Sofa King 10k. The game is ok, better than NBA Ballers, but worse than NBA Street Homecourt. The achievements are very easy - the one that takes the time is the 25 online ranked wins, each win takes 5 minutes = 2hrs per person. Other than that, Game Complete!

The Club 465 -> 535 of 1000 31 of 50 Achievements I got out The Club due to mingo21 getting it. I haven't actually played it since the weekend it came out. It's a shame really - I would have played it more if it had some better online modes - they dont really cater for players that aren't that good =D Well we boosted a few online achievements - Win a DM without dying, Capture 25 flags, Kill 25 foxes. There's a few others we can boost as well.

Stranglehold 235 -> 400 of 1250 23 of 55 Achievements I've been seeing Stranglehold near the bottom of my 'games with 1250GS' list for a while now, so I took it out of it's shrink wrap (my last play on it was a rental) and completed the main story. ZachSP8 10k is going to help me boost the online stuff when we get time. I will also need to complete it on the hardest difficulty to get the GS. The DLC is majorly overpriced, at 1200MSPs for a few maps. 300MSPs like Fifa Street 3 would get them a sale from me. 1200MSPs is stupid. You hear me? STUPID!

Ridge Racer 6 5 -> 17 of 1000 3 of 36 Achievements A game I've been neglecting, I did a few races offline and then boosted some online with ZachSp8 10k. It's basically a drifting game (so far), and I'm winning most of my offline races.

======================
(Note the following is 3 weeks difference, as MGC was playing up last GS Update:

GamerScore:	91442 -> 96139
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	23 / 56
Completed Retail:	44 -> 46 / 199
GS Completion %:	43.78% -> 45.28%

Country Rank:	88 -> 73
World Rank:	601 -> 534
Completion Rank:	1,319 -> 1,072

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