10th February: GS Update

A very interesting week for gaming. Grinded a couple, and tried a couple new games. Completed a 360voice challenge, started another.

borandi is the best... he treats me right, I treat him right. It is a good thing we have going here. Gamer score stands at 72,657. Not too shabby! That is an improvement of 495 points over last time! He played Blue Dragon gaining 1 achievement to master the game, The Club winning an amazing 27 achievements, Poker Smash, Spyglass Board Games, Catan, and wished it would never end, but it did and that was sad.

A big shift in score is coming soon as well. borandi is competing in a gamerscore challenge titled 'Auto Challenge - #128' and looking to win big. Expect a lot of games, a lot of points, and no sleep!

The only other prevalent news this week is my order of Lost Odyssey. Lost Odyssey is an RPG from Mistwalker Studios (of Blue Dragon fame, featuring the creators of Final Fantasy and this time, Shadow Hearts) that was the major project for the 360 - sort of like Blue Dragon was just a lite spinoff. It's projected to be a Final Fantasy-esque game, due out in the US on the 12th, Aus on the 8th, and the UK on the 29th. However, the Asian/English version is PAL compatible, so I ordered that from Hong Kong for cheaper than the cost of a UK pre-order. Result ;)

Now this weeks games:

LMA Manager 2007	660 -> 670 of 1000 13 of 22 Achievements
Meet the Robinsons	720 -> 1000 of 1000 38 of 38 Achievements
GRAW 2	0 -> 105 of 1125 7 of 52 Achievements
The Club	0 -> 465 of 1000 28 of 50 Achievements
Poker Smash	0 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Blue Dragon	345 -> 1000 of 1000 43 of 43 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	490 -> 520 of 1000 34 of 50 Achievements

Just a small amount of LMA this week. Each season is still a grind, but I've 4 seasons left, currently 10 games into the German league. If this game was nicer on the save/reload feature, then I might be having some fun.

Meet the Robinsons - a fun family game. Difficulty curve may be too high for their target audience, and a couple of frustrating achievements. When I loaded up, I was two fights from the end of the game. Did those, an easy 160GS. With the game complete, I was still missing 110GS - I'd missed one collectable, and not done all the 'special' Havok mini-games. In order to do those, I'd have to play through the whole game to get them. So I did. The first play through took around 7hrs (I reckon). The second playthrough took 4 hours, given that I knew what I was doing and didnt have to worry about the other achievements. Nevertheless, it was frustrating. None of the regular websites I go to have these achievements in the order they would normally be achieved. That would be a nice feature. Nevertheless, Game Complete!

I'd received GRAW2 for Christmas. I'm not a fan of the GRAW series - only sitting through 2 playthroughs of GRAW due to the infinite health cheats. Nevertheless, I'd thought I'd give it a try. It's a nicer game than GRAW - easier controls, and the tutorial is better. However, the achievements are bollocks. Most of them for doing co-op online or on online matches. A small amount for offline. This is stupid from Codemasters. Here this - most people play offline/single player. Don't try and make us play co-op. Otherwise you get angry blogs like mine. Take a leaf out of CoD4s book - a good game gets lots of Online Play, even though ALL the achievements are offline only. Get with the game Codemasters, and make something decent (for once).

I picked up The Club this friday. It was released here on Friday, in the US on the 18th/19th. As a result, there is almost no-one online. However, this game is fun. Imagine Hack-and-Slash gameplay with guns, with points, and combos. Its that good. The single player mode, on the easiest setting, is quite short. 8 locations, each with 6/7 events using the whole location. The harder difficulties require lots of skill, so there's lots of replay value - as well as trying to get high on the leaderboards. Online modes consist of your normal DM, Team DM, CTF, as well as Siege (try and take over a base), Hunter Hunted (like a virus mode) and others. The only downside to this game is that searching for matches takes a while - so when they do appear on your list, most of them have started/been cancelled. Achievements are quite varied - some offline, some online. The online ones involve doing each location on any difficuly, then insane difficulty, and then some other skill based ones. Offline involves killing X amount of people with Y weapon, and the stereotypical 'win on every map' type achievements. Also, there is the -now quite boring- 10,001 kill achievement, called 'No, Seriously...' (a dig at the 10k kill achievement on Gears of War called 'Seriously...'). Overall, a fun game, that allows pick up and play. After the first day, I was 12th in the world with 415GS. Good stuff ;) A hard 1000GS though.

This weeks XBLA game was Poker Smash - Bejeweled meets Poker meets Puzzle Quest. Its a winner - pick up and play, impossible achievements, and good fun. Go play the demo - if you like, its a definite pickup at 800MSPs. I got some simple chain achievements - 3x and 5x - but the difficult one is 24x that I'd never get :(

The big game of the week (again) was Blue Dragon. Using the guide, lots of achievements came my way. The big worries were whether I'd get the 'collect all items/monsters' achievements. But they came quite easily - all I'd missed was a couple of level 1 spells that I could go back and buy. The long achievement was the 'get all characters to level 99' achievement. That took 4 hours of grinding, just fighting the same monster over and over again. Nevertheless, it works out at 90.5 hours to get that playthrough (I played 30hrs before I restarted, so 120hrs total) and the full 1000GS. Game Complete!

This week also yielded a surprise achievement - completing Hard on GH2. I 4*'d Free Bird, and did some more of Expert. If I could get my hand around those 32nd notes, then I'd be fine ;)

GamerScore:	71457 -> 73072
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 45
Completed Retail:	34 -> 36 / 159
GS Completion %:	42.87% -> 43.51%

Country Rank:	137 -> 129
World Rank:	905 -> 860
Completion Rank:	1,952 -> 1,812

3rd February: GS Update

This week starts a regular regime of me working 9-5 each weekday, then using other time to fit in gaming and everything else. As such, no real hard grinding unless it's at the weekend. This weekend, it was Blue Dragon!

borandi is making me proud and his opponents jealous... even if they are bots or mindless AI sometimes! Check out the 71,307 gamer score! That is a gain of 55 points over last time! He rocked out to Blue Dragon acquiring an amazing 6 achievements, and then I came out of my trance and realized it was all over.

Oh, guess what? Our gamerscore challenge is going strong... If you want to see how good I'm doing, check it out! There are 3 other people rocking out on this thing which keeps it fun. Out of everyone, borandi is holding on to the number 2 spot. But, there are still 5 long days left! We need to keep heading for the top!

Ah yes, 360voice are doing an excellent competition this month. If you're part of a contest, one lucky winner each day wins 1000MS points - and there's some other stuff to win. I've enabled 'auto contests', which means I'm added to one automatically each week. Good stuff.

In other news, I received my UK 360 back from repair this week. Technically, it only took 14 days to turn around. However, I was expecting a brand new system, with a HDMI port. This time however, the motherboard got replaced, thats all. Got the free month of XBL though. At least now I can play my games that dont work on my US console.

Blue Dragon	110 -> 345 of 1000 20 of 43 Achievements
NHL 2K7	535 of 1000 11 of 17 Achievements
skate.	0 -> 170 of 1000 17 of 44 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 -> 490 of 1000 33 of 50 Achievements
WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	120 -> 490 of 1000 16 of 25 Achievements
Rez HD	0 -> 80 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	0 -> 115 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	535 -> 660 of 1000 12 of 22 Achievements

Game of the week is Blue Dragon. I've essentially spent a day and a half on this game this weekend, just going through the story mode. I'm now near the end of the third disc, just finishing up some extra dungeons and leveling up the characters. I was able to do the 'Perfect Moon Lasers' achievement - that took 20 or so tries with help from the guide. The guide for that achieve was good, but far too complicated for the time that it gives to do that achievement. Along with that, I've been mastering classes for my shadows, and finished all the Quick Time Events. Achievements left involve 'Master All Classes' for each character, get level 99 on each character, 2 mechat shooting stages and finish all the collection achievements. If I persist, hopefully this will be done by next week. =D

Even though I didnt get any NHL 2k7 achievements this week, I did assist in helping some people get the 'Win an 8 man online tournament' this week. As a result, they've joined my league. I'm now one person short for the achievement, and its an easy 115GS if another person does join. If you're interested, the tourney is called 'borandi' and the password is 'nhl'. I'll happily join yours to help you get the achievement. Apart from that, this game requires me to 'Play with every team', 'Win 30 games online', 'Quit 10 games online', and to 'Win 100 games'. One achievement is glitched, so 950GS is the max score for this game.

I purchased Skate while my UK 360 was broke, only to find that it didnt work in my US 360. Now, I can play it, and it's quite fun. Difficult, but fun. I've played someway into the story, and done ~50 matches online. I also managed to get the 3 wins in a row achievement, thanks to some deathracing. What I think is great about this game is that you can get 10 achievements, and still only have 50GS. This is for the easy stuff, like 'Upload a video', etc. I'll try hard to do as well as I can on this game - with any luck, persistence will be rewarded.

I also picked up GH2 second hand from a friend who didnt want it any more. With my new skill (and persistance on 'Cult of Personality' on GH3), I tackled Hard mode on GH2 with ease - until 73% of the way through Freebird! However, I got the achievement for all the extra costumes, thanks to some money for going through Hard and someway through Expert. This let me get the 1* badge for music on 360voice ;)

I spent the early part of the week pummeling though WarTech. I came across a hitch - two characters come across the most evil boss in their story modes. I can't defeat it with either one of them, but I was able to get the other 6 story modes done, as well as all 8 characters score attack modes (as boss battles are not a factor in that mode). Along with that, I managed to find one (1) person online to battle with. I won with ease, which I thought was strange, until I saw my opponents win loss record - 0-117. He didnt put up much of a fight, so I'm wondering why he wasnt attacking that much. Nevertheless, that one fight got me an achieve worth 100GS. I'm not complaining!

The game this week on XBLA was Rez HD. I missed out on Rez when it appeared on the Dreamcast, and everyone I knew who had it said it was great. So 800MS points later, I picked it up. Rez is a short game - it can be completed in ~80 minutes. I got to the final boss with maximum lives and died though. I got achievements for doing the first four stages, and hopefully someone will post a guide soon to get the rest.

I also picked up Spyglass Board Games for 400MS points. I needed some points for the 2* Social badge on 360 voice, and looking at the achievement guides, this old game seemed to be quite easy. It was - one hour got me 115GS and all the offline achievements. No-one plays this online, so I'll find a boosting partner for the rest.

I also got back to LMA Manager 07 - the game which ended my UK 360 last time. Easy enough, I finished that season I had started. Now, 4 seasons remain for that full 1000GS. Each season takes ~5hrs to do, so one weekend I'll finish this one.

GamerScore:	70,382 -> 71457
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 44
Completed Retail:	34 / 158
GS Completion %:	42.58% -> 42.87%

Country Rank:	142 -> 137
World Rank:	910 -> 905
Completion Rank:	2,007 -> 1,954

Extra note - Phantasy Star Universe, a game in which I have 1000GS, has now released some extra DLC for some extra achievements. Three downsides to this - extra content costs 1600/2000 MSPs, requires online play (9GBP/mo), and my completed retail score will go down next week. Damn. I liked PSU, but this is annoying.

27th January: GS Update

Various gaming this week - some more easy games, some new ones too. Also, hit 70k gamerscore!

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 70,262 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He made some progress on Blue Dragon, Hardwood Spades, Guitar Hero III, and before I even realized it, he was finished and I was sad.

And the games:

WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 25 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Blue Dragon	80 -> 110 of 1000 8 of 43 Achievements
Meet the Robinsons	0 -> 720 of 1000 32 of 38 Achievements
Spider-Man™: FoF	350 -> 1000 of 1000 12 of 12 Achievements
Oblivion	1000 -> 1250 of 1250 60 of 60 Achievements
Assassin's Creed	40 -> 60 of 1000 3 of 44 Achievements

I picked up WarTech: Senko no Ronde before Christmas on a whim - a rare enough game, available for 10GBP brand new. I never considered playing it until browsing through the internet, and it came up on a blog of easy games. I peered over the achievements, and a guide, and yes, it looked very easy - play through story mode 8 times, through time attack mode 8 times, play 100 hours, play 1000 online matches, reach rank X online. On this game at least you can do the achievements on 'very easy' mode =D I trudged through two story modes and two time attack modes in 90 mins. The only problem people online have been saying is that to reach the top rank required for an achievement, it requires 230 wins with a boosting partner, at a maximum rate of ~35 an hour. That's some hardcore grinding. Apart from that, looks like some easy GS.

Yes, some more GH3. I recently placed a note on AceyBongos' Xbox blog describing how I feel about GH3:

I've hit a wall on GH3 - a couple of songs from the end on hard mode, where they really hammer the 32nd notes (Iron Maiden and Slayer). Apart from trying to do those, and getting the 200k on Cult of Personality, GH3 has kinda lost my interest. I hope Rock Band brings something new to the 'press coloured buttons in time' genre. All we need is a release date... =D

So yeah, I'll play it for a bit of fun, but not a lot else. I still have the career co-op stuff to do, when I can find someone willing to go through 48 music tracks four or five times.

I've also been trying some Hardwood Spades. It's becoming easier to win, but the streaks and moon shots seem a long way off. The 100 games shouldn't be hard to get though.

YaY for Blue Dragon! I've been neglecting this way too much, so I ploughed ~20 hours into the game in two days. Now I'm at around the part where I was before I reset and starting playing with the guide. I'm at the same level as I was, but I've played 10 more hours but all my characters have almost maxed out all their classes. The achievement I got was the 'Complete Mechat Stage 1: Perfect' which is thought of to be a hard achievement to get. It took me a couple of tries, but with the guide it was easy enough.

I bought Meet The Robinsons, like WarTech, sometime before Christmas. Again, this was meant to be easy GS - and it is. I've been playing through the story mode, and after 6 hours I'm near the end. However I missed a couple of items, and I might have to playthrough the bastard again to get the final achievements. Apart from that, a very easy game. Graphics, sound, gameplay are above the level of a movie of a film, but nothing spectacular. A second rate game - fun for kids, but not much holding it together.

Spiderman: FoF has been a fun game. The levels are simple, fun, and short. There are 20 in the game, and collecting the 3/4 bits per level makes it a good achievement game. The final achievement is to upgrade your whole team - this requires replaying the final stage about 10 times to complete all the upgrades. Apart from that little annoyance, an easy 1000GS. Game Complete!

I completed Oblivion (to 1000GS) in Feb 07. It was an easy game - I wasnt too fussed about the side quests, and ploughed through the game in a little under 35 hours I think. So up comes the expansion, Shivering Isles. This game costs a bomb under the marketplace, but offers 35+ hours more gameplay over the original game. It would do, if you did the side quests. I was able to borrow a mates 'Game of the Year' edition of Oblivion which came with the expansions (Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine) in order to get the final achievements. 6 hours, and some weird storyline, got me the final 250GS. Game Complete!

Aside: I like Oblivion - its a great RPG. It just lacks a few things, like colour (everything seems like a shade of brown), multiplayer, and 360 mods. The PC version has a large mod backing, where people have created their own cities for the game, etc. and made it easier to navigate and so forth. If the 360 had that sort of backing, people would be playing Oblivion more than they normally do! Nellas has got >160hrs gametime, just trawling through the dungeons in the game.

Yes, I rented Assassin's Creed. No, I dont really like it. It's just not enough substance in the game - I have to walk everywhere, be careful that I dont push people over, the controls are a bit sloppy, and it isnt intuitive. I'm sorry guys, this game goes towards the back of my shelf - or back to Blockbusters actually.

Also, I completed Beautiful Katamari, as per the mini update ;)

GamerScore:	68,512 -> 70,382
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 42
Completed Retail:	31 -> 34 / 157
GS Completion %:	41.72% -> 42.58%

Country Rank:	150 -> 142
World Rank:	967 -> 910
Completion Rank:	2,293 -> 2,007

16th December: GS Update

It's been a mass weekend of gaming. I've finished my deadlines for the year, so its back on the 360 for some serious gaming!

My power supply almost exploded! borandi turned on the juice and we did some serious gaming! 64,052 points of total gamerscore is pretty good. Admit it. That is an increase of 490 points over last time! Another day, another milestone. The 64,000 barrier has fallen! He rocked out to Pro Evolution Soccer 6 winning 1 achievement to finish the game, The Outfit gaining 2 achievements, Arkadian Warriors, Amped 3 adding 3 achievements, ARMORED CORE4 picking up 3 achievements, Guitar Hero III finishing 1 achievement, Blazing Angels 2 adding 4 achievements, Blue Dragon, and borandi won't admit this, but I had to force him to stop.

Hahaha lots of gamage. It also goes hand in hand with my new Christmas present I got this week. So far in my 360 career, I used a 13" CRT (which sucked trying to read text on Dead Rising/PGR3), then moved to a 'HD Ready' 19" LCD. Now, however, I have the pleasure of playing on a beautiful 32" LCD screen, complete with 1080i compatibility. Everything is bigger, and better:


Here it is as I was setting it up, with a good Eddie Izzard on the set. I have noticed some motion blur on it (as quoted in some reviews), but generally it is, in general, better than the 19" LCD I had.

As for the games this week, most of them being on Friday/Saturday:

Blue Dragon	50 -> 80 of 1000 7 of 43 Achievements
Blazing Angels 2	0 -> 50 of 1000 4 of 50 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	270 -> 275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
ARMORED CORE4	0 -> 80 of 1000 3 of 39 Achievements
Amped 3	340 -> 530 of 1000 8 of 15 Achievements
Arkadian Warriors	0 -> 60 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
The Outfit	15 -> 40 of 1000 3 of 41 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	880 -> 1000 of 1000 23 of 23 Achievements
SmackDown vs RAW 2008	510 -> 865 of 1000 22 of 26 Achievements
Party Animals	665 -> 720 of 1000 41 of 50 Achievements

So I've spent the best part of Sunday, and part of the night on Saturday, still pursuing Blue Dragon achievements. Armed with my trusty guide (after spending 30 hours without one, I restarted with it), I'm now happily 18 hours into the first disc, having just arrived in Jibral. On that merry journey, I've picked up one of the hardest achievements in the game - Wagon stage complete. In order to do this achievement, you basically have to train from your first hour to get it, then memorise a pattern, and execute it successfully. Having tried ~30 times previously, I was able to do it in 3 attempts on this new save. 30GS coming my way - beautiful!

I rented some Blazing Angels 2 this week (because next week I no longer get free rentals D=). I enjoyed the first game somewhat, even though it got repetitive. BA2 is roughly the same - just with easier controls and more stuff to do in each mission. I got the first two missions done and picked up a couple achievements just to get the feel of the game. Overall, it's a nice WW2 flight sim - if you like those sorts of games.

I also continually got hold of some GH3 - this time in search for some Lefty Flip achievements. On completing Easy on lefty, no achievement popped up (apart from the complete easy one) - so I was a bit annoyed~! I have plans so go through it again (in search of the 5* easy achievement), so hopefully it'll unlock then.

In an attempt to actually play all the games I have, I busted out my copy of Armored Core 4. This game is quite 'rare' in the UK - I've only seen a few copies, but I managed to pick this up pre-owned for 20 quid at Gamestation. Unfortunately, I went into Game and they had it for 20 quid brand new :( But on the whole, Armored Core 4 is fun. It's like a cross between Chromehounds and Earth Defence Force. You build your mecha/'NEXT' with bits you buy/unlock, then shoot the crap out of everything that moves in a mission style based game. Good fun all round! Overall, achievements seem ok - complete the game on easy then hard nets most of them.

I also returned to some Amped 3. Last time I got an achievement in Amped 3 was in March, well before I started this blog. Well I liked the game then - it required skill and persistence to get the achievements. This time round, I went purely for completion of story mode, which I was able to do in about 90 mins (after being half way through already) to net 290 GS. The rest of the achievements require me to participate in all the challenges, and to show my skillz in each mountain. After completing the game, I'd done around 80 challenges - the game has 240, so technically I'm only 33% into those achievements. Ouchies =P

Arkadian Warriors is an XBLA game released this week (with Gripshift). I'll quote what I said on the 10kclub forums after playing the demo:

To me this game (or what I saw of the demo) looks like a random dungeon generator placed within a storyline. Pick up quests (main storyline or just random), go into a randomly generated dungeon or two, get the quest items/kills, back to town.

Its basically an RPG with the level design effort taken out. like Ehrgeiz for the PSX, or Eternal Quest for the PS2 - neither of which did well, but neither had a story line.

There isnt much graphically you can cram into these XBLA games, especially when trying to create individual 3D environments for RPGs - its easier to create a racing game or puzzle game. I reckon they just tried to create a 30hr RPG within the space constraint, and as a result had to stick in the random dungeon generator and scale down the polygons.

I did buy it, and currently about 33% through Story mode. Hack, Slash, Hack, Slash, New Dungeon, Repeat. That's all it is, and its mindless fun. Most of the achievements can be got going through the game, so I'll be working on that. It has a cool co-op mode, but I haven't tried it yet.

I rented the Outfit again, this time to focus on the story mode. I've only done the first couple of missions (each takes ~20mins) in single player and it's a lot like the last time I played it. Just keep shooting and spawning stuff as you go through the map until you win. Ultimately more fun in co-op though.

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 is FINALLY COMPLETE!!! I spent a good deal of Friday and Saturday playing over 100 games to get the final three leagues complete on this game. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong, but the achievements for completing each league took the biscuit. At 40 games a league, you seriously just have to sit there and grind through the games (whilst watching a show on your laptop). Well I can put this on the shelf, and work on PES2008 now =D Game Complete!

I rented out WWE 08 again this week, for the main purpose of getting most of the online achievements. This was successful (the only online achievement I still need is the 'defend a title 5 times against 5 different gamertags in 24hrs') while boosting with Rican Ninja89, and I got a few more single player achievements too. Another rental (and a successful streak online) should see this game complete.

Same goes with Viva Pinata: Party Animals. All I'm missing are single player achievements, which I could probably grind in 5 hours or less, but that involves playing around 10-16 games offline which will take a while. Fun game, fun achievements, low replayability. Though it's a fun game for 5-10 year olds.

GS: 63,012 -> 64,082

Completed XBLA:	15 / 39
Completed Retail:	29 / 149
GS Completion %:	38.92%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.24%

Country Rank:	143

A note about Christmas blog postings: As usual over Christmas, one goes to see their extended family over this period. I will have access to 360 gaming, but possible not teh interweb for posting. I may wait and do an extended post. You'll just have to wait and see.