25th August: GS Update (2)

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith 0 -> 570 of 1000 30 of 49 Achievements With my love of guitar games, I just had to get GH:A. Well, that and my old GH3 guitar is a little worse for wear (the buttons stick). I got it with the guitar, and it's great. I completed GH:A on expert with no trouble whatsoever - If I recall correctly, I passed every track first time. Though looking at the achievements, I know there is one I wont get - 325k on Train Kept A Rollin'. I can get 230k, but I'm nowhere near that good.

Lost Odyssey 360 -> 980 of 1100 35 of 42 Achievements With so much time offline, I blitzed Lost Odyssey. Using my Prima Guide, I got all but one achievement of the original 1000 GS. Unfortunately the final achievement is 'collect all pickups' around the world - which the guide doesnt cater for. Bastards. Though even with the guide, I found Lost Odyssey one of THE BEST games available for the 360. Go buy it - buy it now!

ET: QUAKE Wars 0 -> 240 of 1000 17 of 50 Achievements ETQW was on offer on Play-Asia, and after playing the PC version, I thought I had a good feel to what the 360 should play like. In the end, I prefer the 360 version - a lot more pick up and play friendly, even if online there aren't many people. It's your standard team FPS objective style fare - either build this or hack that, or if you're on the other team, defend against the others. Achievement wise, you have the difficulty achievements (complete easy, med and hard), get 3* on all classes on each difficulty, win all maps offline as both sides, play a lot online. I got the play offline ones, done easy on campaign, and one match online. An easy enough 1000 I reckon, just needs some time and effort.

Civilization Revolut'n 855 -> 1000 of 1000 50 of 50 Achievements I'm glad Civ Rev came to the 360 - this is the sort of game the 360 should have. The final achievements I needed were fairly straightforward with a little help from the x360a forums for the best way of going about it. Though the 'get the unique people' achievement took me about 8 or 9 games of culture farming. The final guy came on the last turn of a game. Lucky or what. 10/10!! Game Complete.

EarthDefenseForce 2017 0 -> 150 of 1000 2 of 6 Achievements I just blitzed EDF. Easy and Normal difficulties just required some power shooting and fell quite easy. I've been able to play some levels on the 2nd hardest difficulty, and as a result get some strong weapons that I can use on the easier difficulties. It's great. Still more fun on co-op though.

NFS Most Wanted 265 -> 1000 of 1000 15 of 15 Achievements NFS: MW, in retrospect, was an easy game. Just races from A to B, no real big difficulty when you get the best cars in the game. I found a way to gain bounty other than my previous method which involves driving around the motorway in the bottom left of the map. What was great though, I got the final achievement, but that isnt the end of the game - you have to escape some extreme police. Well I did, got to the final jump... and then my 360 froze up. Haha. Game Complete.

Naruto Rise Of A Ninja 0 -> 360 of 1075 11 of 37 Achievements I love Naruto, but I'm not fond of fighting games. But I like platformers. Naruto is the ultimate mix of the lot - Platform style for story missions, but fighting mode for encounters. I jumped into it with fervor, and completed the story line (some battles I won by the skin of my teeth). Now the problem is that most of the achievements are now online, and I suck at online play, especially when you need 5 wins in a row with each character. Meh.

CM 2007 365 -> 375 of 1000 17 of 42 Achievements Only one achievement of note - managed to sign a player for half his value. Didn't really play this much otherwise.

Stuntman: Ignition 100 -> 225 of 1000 14 of 50 Achievements Last time I played this was from BlockBuster, but HMV are doing this cheap so I picked up a copy. It's a 'meh' game - it could be fun but it's not my sort of thing. Trying to do a succession of stunts, and thus the achievements are dead hard. I got some related to being a tard, and some story mode ones.

FlatOut UC 135 -> 185 of 1000 10 of 45 Achievements I last played this as a rental from BlockBuster, but now HMV are doing it cheap as well. Now last time I played, I almost broke controllers due to one mission on career mode (one mission out of like 120) which was the last one for me to do, and I couldn't even get the bronze medal. Well I picked it up and on my second go, got the silver! So I got the complete career achievement. Excellent :)

Guitar Hero II 700 -> 760 of 1000 42 of 50 Achievements Yep, I completed Expert career. A great achievement in my eyes after all the effort I've put in. Free Bird wasn't too hard - I had more trouble on Hanger 18 and it required some practice. Along with this, I also got the 400k achievement - I used Monkey Wrench on Expert. It's an easy track, but when the max possible is 454k you have to be right on the ball. I got 400232 points, with the last chord on a 4x, so basically only got it on the last note. Awesome.

E4 80 -> 100 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements Now E4 has a decent achievement guide, I decided to go after an achievement or two. I did, the 2000 beats one. The rest could be a bit tricky, and there's an online one left as well.

ACE COMBAT 6 10 -> 40 of 1000 4 of 49 Achievements AC6 has been on my list of games to get for a while. So I rented it from LoveFilm again and played the next few missions. This game is well worth getting IMO, so I sent it back after a couple of missions with a good mind to buy it soon!

DMMM:Elements 0 -> 20 of 1000 2 of 49 Achievements I've played Dark Messiah on PC, and the 360 port is done quite well. Imagine Half-Life 2 with a medieval theme. I didnt play this one long. The best bit of these ports from the Source engine is the interaction with the scenery and kicking enemies off ledges. Fun times =D

Conflict: Denied Ops 0 -> 10 of 1000 1 of 44 Achievements Another short wonder, and to be honest I can't remember much. I have a distinct feeling that the first mission was weird and sent it back to LoveFilm.

F.E.A.R. Files 0 of 1000 0 of 41 Achievements I had FEAR for a night, played one 20 minute mission, wherein I died after 15 minutes and had to restart. The controls were poor on the 360 - I've played the original on the PC and loved it.

SHReK the THiRD 590 -> 1000 of 1000 22 of 22 Achievements Rented Shrek from LoveFilm to get the final GS I didn't get the first time round. Just a couple of playthroughs on hard and easy, then a couple of collection achievements. Easy. Game Complete!

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GamerScore:	99,889 -> 106569
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	25 -> 26 / 62
Completed Retail:	49 -> 53 / 214
GS Completion %:	46.34% -> 46.49%

Country Rank:	71 -> 66
World Rank:	523 -> 504
Completion Rank:	990 -> 1,049

21st October: GS Update

A busy week in terms of work, so not much gaming. But it was luck that a new shop opened this weekend: the second largest GameStation in Europe. They were having some bumper deals on the opening weekend, so I picked up six 360 games for not much money (some of which I havent played yet). I also bought Eternal Sonata, and imported Beautiful Katamari, which should be here next week.

borandi seemed really excited to play yesterday. Our current gamerscore is 51,949 . That is a profit of 10 points over last time! He rocked out to Eternal Sonata finishing 1 achievement, Puzzle Quest, Streets of Rage 2, and then he started getting all these friend requests because of high awesomeness levels.

And the games:

Battlefield 2: MC	210 -> 250 of 1000 12 of 46 Achievements
Open Season	0 -> 40 of 1000 2 of 46 Achievements
CM 2007	0 -> 365 of 1000 16 of 42 Achievements
Streets of Rage 2	175 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Puzzle Quest	0 - > 60 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Eternal Sonata	0 -> 10 of 1000 1 of 22 Achievements
DDR Universe	0 -> 190 of 1000 6 of 32 Achievements
Speedball 2	0 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	170 of 1000 14 of 49 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	175 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Ridge Racer 6	0 -> 5 of 1000 1 of 36 Achievements
NFS Most Wanted	0 -> 10 of 1000 1 of 15 Achievements
Call of Duty 2	230 of 1000 4 of 13 Achievements
Sonic The Hedgehog 2	125 -> 145 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements

I've done a little boosting on BF2:MC, getting some more of those online achievements. In particular, I got the Navy '5 water vehicle kills' and '20 C4 kills' while helping a friend from 10k get some other achievements.

Open Season was one of the cheap games I picked up this week. Looks fairly easy, though I didnt play it much - too many games, not enough time!!!!!

CM (Championship Manager) 2007 isnt a bad game. I'm always reluctant with Football Management sims as they usually are overcomplicated and take too long (or have an elaborate load/save system). So I started a season with Man Utd., and in a few hours I was winning lots (thanks to reloading after a loss) and got quite a few achievements fairly easily. Not many people have this game, and I'm already in the top 300 in the world for GS.

I started a new game on SoR2 on Hardcore, going after that 800k achievement. Basically it'll be like going after the Golden Axe one - beat an enemy without losing health, then save. If hit, reload. I'm halfway through stage two, with ~125k score.

Played a bit more of Puzzle Quest. It's annoying that it's different from the DS version - you cant infinitely raise your stats given enough money, and my favourite weapon has been dulled a little. However, I'm hitting for 11 for every 3 skull combo, and winning easy.

Eternal Sonata's graphics are awesome - they look better than Blue Dragon/Two Worlds/Gears of War. They look Cel Shaded, but its done in such a good way. I played the game for a little over an hour, and I cant help but feel that these new RPGs just aren't as varied as the Final Fantasies of yore. There's little to do with regards to side quests. What might be annoying with Eternal Sonata is that to get 1000GS, you have to play through it twice.

I imported DDR Universe - I had a feeling it might drop off the side of the earth soon. It's an easy game so far - if you start to fail you never lose, and can keep going. It's the only DDR game I've seen with a story mode (which is a bonus), which improves the game immensely over other DDR games/clones. Overall, it looks like an easy 750GS, but some of the challenges look immensely hard.

Speedball 2 came into XBLA this week. It's a game I've been waiting for a while, and one I used to play on the Commodore 64 and Megadrive. The XBLA port is a very good one - improved graphics with retro style as an option, and a much easier to navigate front end. Kudos!

Nellas and I played some social matches online. We came 1st/2nd on a king of the hill game, though a few online players were bunny hopping everywhere. Cheating b*stards!

I finally completed Bankshot Billiards 2. I turned it on, played a large number of games, then thought I had 20 left, so turned it off. Next day, I log in, play 2 games and that final achievement unlocked. =D Game Complete!

I opened Ridge Racer and Need For Speed: MW to get the 'Launch King' badge over at 360voice. I've had the games in my collection for ages, just never opened them. I'll take a better look at them at a later date.

I also went back to CoD2 - I still need to complete this game on Veteran (I've done it on easy on PC already), and it's still quite hard. Grind, grind, grind!

After watching a video online to get the Chemical Plant 1 quick time, I had a bash at it. Took around 15 minutes to get the correct path just right, and another 20GS.

GS: 51,629 -> 52,354

Completed XBLA:	12 / 34
Completed Retail:	24 / 125
GS Completion %:	37.84%
GS % (Non-Demo):	40.25%

Country Rank:	239
World Rank:	1,529