28th October: GS Update

Another week, more gaming! I might have to tone down some more in the following weeks - work is beginning to creep up and deadlines looming! On the plus side, however, I now own 106 retail games.

borandi likes to game, I like to game, this is a match made in heaven! It takes a gamer score like 54,317 to be as cool as him. That is an improvement of 135 points over last time! He rocked out to Overlord gaining 1 achievement, Madden NFL 08, Speedball 2, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR06 picking up 1 achievement, Carcassonne gaining 2 achievements to complete the game, Catan, E4 acquiring 1 achievement, and then he had to stop because we both couldn't take it anymore... we were spent.

And the games this week:

At World’s End	425 -> 550 of 1000 22 of 30 Achievements
Madden NFL 08	0 -> 1000 of 1000 48 of 48 Achievements
E4	0 -> 15 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Carcassonne	150 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR06	0 -> 50 of 960 1 of 16 Achievements
Overlord	280 -> 530 of 1000 30 of 44 Achievements
Quake 4	80 -> 85 of 1000 7 of 50 Achievements
Beautiful Katamari	0 -> 420 of 1250 26 of 40 Achievements
Crash Of The Titans	0 -> 133 of 1000 9 of 47 Achievements

This is now the forth or fifth time I've rented Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's the only game I've rented, so maybe I'll complete it this time! I only picked it up a few hours ago, and ran through the next couple of levels. I only have 8 achievements left - the last 3 levels, all Calypso pieces, and 100 souls. So that's what, another 3 rentals? :p Apparently the 100 souls can be tricky, but I'll have a bash at it.

I actually found a cheap(er) copy of Madden 08 this week to buy. I cant find it to rent, so I bought it, and had a wonderful sight after my first game on it: 27 achievements for 545GS. This game was very easy :) You can also sim ALL the achievements, as shown by my friend who got 17 achievements for 405GS just by simming a 15min qtr game. Fantastic. Well I had a little trouble on one achievement - the 4 blocks achievement. I kept intercepting the ball instead :p But an hour of simming got that final one. Another game complete Jeeves!

I played the demo of E4 just as a random bored thing to do. It was rather interesting, though I didnt really see the point of it. Then I read the 'How to play' section, and under advice, bought it for 800MSPs. It's a fun game :) Just blowing up stuff to either the music provided, or your own. I added a track with 596BPM :) Makes the game a bit easier too. Though I played for 30 mins with the same music track repeating in the background, and got 17 trillion points. I look on the scoreboard, and lo and behold, 17,000 trillion. WTF?? How long do these guys play the game??? The achievements look tricky though, so I'm not expecting 200 from this one. It's like Geometry Wars on crack.

I was able to boost with 3 other friends my final 2 achievements on Carcassonne: Win vs 3 other players, and win by 50 points. It should have been an easy 200GS, but the lack of people online made the online ones a bit tricky.

Tiger Woods 06 is one bitch of a game. To start with, some achievements require you to play online modes. Modes that EA have shut down for cutting into their 'profit margins', thus you cant get these achievements anymore. W*nkers. Though I boosted a little with rican ninja89, and I got one achievement by accident. Woo! 50pts!

I was also able to boost most of the online achievements for Overlord. 50 wins on slaughter and pillage for each player took around 2 to 2.5hrs. The wins are easy - go kill something, then the other person quits and you get the win. I also played a little of the story mode, getting the Arcanium smelter.

I also boosted somewhat on Quake 4 with mingo21 and rican ninja89. We're going after various achievements, like the 500 excellents and 250 impressives. It's a slow process, probably going to take months. I should also play some of the story mode tbh.

I imported Beautiful Katamari the week of its US release. And I'm glad I did, its a wicked game!! After 7 hrs, I had completed the main quest, now I'm finishing up some of the secondary tasks. For several days, according to mygamercard.net, I was no.1 in the UK for GS!
I'm number one!
Yup, thats no.1! Out of about 15 people who'd played it in the UK =D I want to get hold of the downloadable content for it, but that's Asia only. Probably wont make it to the UK marketplace until it gets released here - sometime in January then.

I rented out Crash of the Titans earlier this week. It's your typical Crash Bandicoot platformer, though lacking somewhat in the graphics department. I didnt get to play it a lot, but if you like your platformers, you'll like Crash Bandicoot.

GS: 52,354 -> 54,442

Completed XBLA:	13 / 35
Completed Retail:	25 / 128
GS Completion %:	38.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	40.68%

Country Rank:	216
World Rank:	1,377

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

8th August: GS Update

Long time since an update. Well there is news! I have acquired a US 360 in my travels into the United States, and with this gives the benefits of playing the US only, region locked games, as well as importing those releases that take a while to get to Europe. Go me!

I bought 5 games while in the US - Cabela's African Safari, Cabela's Alaskan Safari, College Hoops 2006, NCAA Football 2007, Major League Baseball 2k6. There are around 15 on the US only region locked list, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.

So on with the sporadic gamage these past few weeks!

NCAA® Football 07	345 of 1000 23 of 50 Achievements
Call Of Duty 3	150 of 1000 7 of 26 Achievements
Sonic The Hedgehog	200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Big Bumpin	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Boom Boom Rocket	100 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Pocketbike Racer	125 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
Sneak King	25 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Golden Axe	190 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Carcassonne	125 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements

One of my new games, as mentioned, is NCAA Football 07. Finally I'll be able to get that last achievement for Madden 07 :) The NCAA version itself is not bad - it's a cut down version of Madden (i.e. without names) but includes all the college stadia, and the different college version of Franchise mode. A360P rates the achievements for this game a 7/10, but I think that's because one of the achievements is 'Sim 60 years of Dynasty Mode', which according to the FAQ, takes 8 hours. OUCH.

Call of Duty 3 is still a bad game with the joypad. Did some online multiplayer, nothing too stressful.

Sonic the Hedgehog is an all-time, classic, retro game. Get it now!!!! :D This is the original Master System game, which I remember taking me around 4 hours to complete when I was 5. So I was happy to get the 'complete in 40 minutes' achievement! The time trial achieves took some practice, and the 'complete without dying' achievement requires extensive use of the new save function <3. style="font-style: italic;">that bad. It's what you'd expect from BK. Sneak King is the only one that seems like it will take a while, though one of the Big Bumpin achievements didn't unlock when I should have got it. I'll play these at some later date with severe intention in getting these achieves.

Boom Boom Rocket is like crack - so fun to pick up and play :p

Golden Axe is another awesome retro game, although it's very short. Still need the complete online achieve, but the rest were fairly easy except the 'complete in one continue' achievement - it required constant saving, then reloading if I lost health. The final boss took 20 units of health, so be careful.

I played Carcassonne so long ago, I can't remember what happened the last time I played it!

GS: 37,634 -> 39,029

You may notice below that my country rank has dropped, and the amount of people in the UK has risen by 600,000. This is not true, just a side effect from playing a 360 in the US. It'll all be sorted out soon :)

Completed XBLA:	8 / 23
Completed Retail:	17 / 86
GS Completion %:	40.43%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.90%

Country Rank:	1534/828821
World Rank:	2750/1502797