17th March: GS Update

Sorry, late update this week. Lots of gaming, and some GS to boot - now passed the 80k mark!

borandi decided to ride the gamer-train yesterday. I will admit it... I was happy. What is the gamer score? 80,646 is what it is! That is a gain of 145 points over last time! He rallied G.R.A.W., Catan, Brain Challenge, Undertow, Forza Motorsport 2, Madden NFL 08, DEAD OR ALIVE 4, Quake 4, Need for Speed Carbon, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed. Also, don't tell borandi I told you this, but we have now gamed 30 days in a row... he doesn't like to share that with others. Yay! We get a badge! Look at it and weep!

Oh I almost forgot to mention that borandi has joined a gamerscore challenge titled 'Helping the Viral Spread'. Go check it out and follow along.

Well I bought an XBLA game, and I've been working on a few other games. Also some more LoveFilm goodness. Also, Roquey and I are working towards the viral badge on 360voice - we're in a 3 way challenge with someone who has the achievement. We plan to get it, and spread it amongst friends and the community.

I also got mentioned on the biggest 360 achievement website this week. Thanks to my360stats, I saw Kane&Lynch had some DLC achievements, and yet the DLC has not been announced. You can see the mention here.

Now for the games:

Need for Speed™ Carbon	0 -> 130 of 1000 8 of 50 Achievements
DEF JAM: ICON™	0 -> 390 of 1000 22 of 37 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	295 -> 305 of 1000 21 of 45 Achievements
Brain Challenge™	0 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	310 -> 325 of 1000 33 of 59 Achievements
KUF: Circle of Doom	0 -> 100 of 1000 6 of 32 Achievements
Poker Smash	80 -> 95 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
Looney Tunes: AA EUR	0 -> 370 of 1000 18 of 44 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	115 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
PAC-MAN	0 -> 130 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Joust	40 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Small Arms	110 -> 175 of 235 11 of 14 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	290 -> 350 of 1000 12 of 29 Achievements
Speedball 2	100 -> 105 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
BLADESTORM	300 -> 350 of 1000 7 of 18 Achievements
Bee Movie™ Game	560 -> 1000 of 1000 50 of 50 Achievements

I'm not a fan of the NFS series. The only one I've liked is Need For Speed Underground 2. NFS: Most Wanted and NFS: Prostreet both suck big donkey dong. Carbon is no exception. The cars handle poorly, the menu system is shoddy, online is laggy and crap and the music sounds more like banshees. Nevertheless, ZACHSP8 10K and I boosted a little. I got my 6 consecutive wins, and some other miscellaneous online achievements. We'll be after some of the XP achievements soon as well.

DEF JAM: ICON is also a bad game. Its basically a rap fighting game, where you can control the surroundings with the beat. This is almost an 'easy' 1000GS. By almost, I mean you have to beat career mode in hard for the hardest achievement, and imo, hard fights are quite hard. I plan to get all the online achievements with ZACHSP8 10K before I send this game back to LoveFilm, however I doubt I'll get the full 1000. I'll be happy with 650GS.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful glitch for Dead or Alive 4 where you could gain an awesome rank online. However, that was patched some time ago. My boosting partners and I didnt know that until 10 minutes into attempts to get the glitch to work. However, I was able to get one achievement based on completing story mode with a certain character.

Brain Challenge was one of the XBLA games released last Wednesday. It's based on the Nintendo DS Brain Training games, just designed for the 360. Its a fun game to do for 15 minutes daily. So far I have most of the days. The achievements here are based around online matches, and getting your 'brain usage' up to 100%. I've got 20%, won 1/1 online games, and one game got an A*. Not sure if 200GS is possible, given that you have to perfect every mini-game. But it might happen.

Well this weekend I bought some DLC for GH3. I bought the track 'Erten Wir Was Saen', which is billed as quite a good track for co-op achievements. I did co-op lead guitar on hard ok, but not in single player. However, I can do Bass on Expert, with 1682/1688 notes hit. I'm boosting these achievements with rican ninja89, however he doesn't have this song yet. This week, some free DLC was also released due to it being near St. Patrick's Day. This DLC was three songs by the Dropkick Murphy's. They're quite good, but one of them, (F)lannigan's Ball, is a wrist breaker. The achievement I got was the 1000 note co-op streak - rican and I were going for the 2000 note achievement on Through the Fire and the Flames on easy, and on the way I got the 1000. Still not the 2000 yet though.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is another LoveFilm rental. I got it on recommendation from rican, and to play test for Roquey. Its a straight forward Hack and Slash RPG, with the addition of 4 player online co-op. I did some with rican and mingo21, and I was boosted from level 10 to level 42. When this game gets cheap enough, I'll probably buy my own copy. As it is, the cheapest copy is 28GBP ($56USD).

I'm still grinding out some Poker Smash. I picked up the online win with mingo21 this week.

LoveFilm also issued me Looney Tunes AA: EUR this week. Its an easy enough game - your straight forward 3D platformer. Story mode is ok - I'm about 50% in. Achievements in this game are doing the story, some specific level achievements, and a few online ones. Some of the specific level ones are to do with completing the level in a certain time. One level requires to beat 2mins 20secs. I've had 2:22, 2:21 and 2:20 on that level.

Spyglass Board games is an easy 200 - as long as you have a partner for the online ones. I boosted with mingo21, and helped ZACHSP8 10K get his. Game Complete!

I bought PACMAN with some MSPs this week. Tbh, I cant really stand the game. It's the same thing over and over again. It's meant to be easy GS, and I have two achievements left - complete level 21, and eat all 4 ghosts 4 times.

Joust is a hard 200GS game. However I got the 'beat level 5 in co-op' achievement with mingo21 and ZACHSP8 10K.

I grinded the Small Arms 'X wins' and 'X games' achievements by setting up a 2 player local game, 1 life, and a small map where the spawns are close. 30 mins got all those achievements. All that's left is the 50 survival wins, and the DLC achievements (which are apparently quite easy).

I played Lego Star Wars II in order to get the 2* family badge on 360voice. I needed 55GS, so I did 3 * 20GS 'Complete the level without dying' achievements. However, that night, 360voice added a game to the family badge, so now I need 600+ GS.

I did some League Manager on Speedball 2 - I'm in the top division now, needing to win it for another achievement. On the way, I got the 'Raise all the statistics of one player to the maximum in a single player match' achievement.

With BLADESTORM, I reached 2* reputation, and was able to find another book for another 50GS.

Well, Bee Movie Game was a grind. The jobs were long and arduous, and getting the human encounters perfect was a chore. However, I sent the game back to LoveFilm. Game Complete!

GamerScore:	79081 -> 81006
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	17 -> 18 / 49
Completed Retail:	37 -> 38 / 185
GS Completion %:	41.02% -> 41.28%

Country Rank:	111 -> 109
World Rank:	779 -> 758
Completion Rank:	1,894 -> 1,866

9th March: GS Update

From the shackles of work, to an easter break full of gaming. I've done quite a bit this week - a couple of new games, a near completion too on a favourite.

There are people out there who think video games are violent. But after borandi played yesterday with his gamerscore of 79,081 points, there wasn't any violence at all. A little drooling maybe but definitely no violence. That is an increase of 530 points over last time! That puts us above 79,000 points! He rallied NEW RALLY-X winning an amazing 12 achievements to finish the game, Guitar Hero III gaining 1 achievement, Guitar Hero II, Bee Movie Game, Catan, G.R.A.W., Small Arms acquiring an amazing 8 achievements, Forza Motorsport 2 acquiring an amazing 6 achievements, FC Instincts Predator, as well as stared off into space... thinking about the one that got away.

This week, I picked up two games - Bladestorm and Virtua Fighter 5. Bladestorm I believe holds the record as the biggest demo on the XBLM at 1.9GB - it was an alright demo, lots of hack and slash. I last played VF5 as a rental, and thought it was a lot better than DoA4. I found it cheap, so I picked it up. I also received in the mail a lot of MS points - 12600 to be exact. I managed to find them at a 20% discount, but haven't figured what to spend them on yet. So far, Small Arms and New Rally-X. But I'm also thinking some Pac-Man too.

Forza Motorsport 2	665 -> 930 of 1000 42 of 44 Achievements
Small Arms	0 -> 110 of 235 8 of 14 Achievements
Bee Movie™ Game	0 -> 560 of 1000 37 of 50 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	295 -> 310 of 1000 32 of 59 Achievements
NEW RALLY-X	0 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Speedball 2	40 -> 100 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
Burnout Revenge	55 -> 165 of 1000 10 of 36 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	245 -> 295 of 1000 20 of 45 Achievements
Poker Smash	70 -> 80 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
BLADESTORM	0 -> 300 of 1000 6 of 18 Achievements
Eternal Sonata	10 -> 20 of 1000 2 of 22 Achievements
Marble Blast Ultra	70 -> 75 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	735 -> 745 of 1000 23 of 49 Achievements
Marvel Ult. Alliance	230 -> 250 of 1250 19 of 58 Achievements
Mass Effect	270 -> 395 of 1000 15 of 45 Achievements

It's been a brilliant week for my Forza gameplay. To start, I finished all the arcade races gold, then I was fortunate enough to get given 10million from ZACHSP8 10K. That was just enough to buy every car in the game. Now, I'm sending them to Roquey (my brother) so he can get that achievement too. All I have left is to get 1,000,000 credits online, and complete the time trials. I've tried a few of the time trials though, especially that one at the 147-corner Nürburgring - was 30 seconds off pace. Might need to practice that one.

I purchased Small Arms, hoping it was an easy set of Gamerscore. Well, 110GS was. The rest consists of getting 50 kills in a survival mode, and winning 100 matches. Some simple grinding should get all but the 50 kills.

I got the Bee Movie Game from LoveFilm this week. I'd heard it was an easy 1000GS. I've so far done the story, now it's a case of doing the specific missions. The jobs were long and arduous, now I'm after concept art, and the human encounters. Sooner or later, 1000GS should be mine.

After many weeks of trying to get 200k on Cult Of Personality in Guitar Hero III, I finally achieved 201k! I just picked up the game, and got the achievement. No warm-up necessary, though the 499 note streak at the beginning helped :)

New-Rally X is defined as one of the easy arcade games. I'd just not been in a position to get it. An easy 200GS, I got it in about an hour. I found getting to level 16 harder than the 100k score target. Game Complete!

I boosted the online achievements for Speedball 2 - also got the 'injure 5 people in one match' achievement. I still need to get the achievements related to the leagues and knockout tournaments.

Burnout: Revenge is a game I haven't played in ages. I tried joining some online games, only to find I was booted for not having a mic, or not being in the right region. Bunch of bastards. In the end, a couple of friends and I got together and we played online for a while. Lots of takedowns involved.

I helped Roquey boost a little on Dead or Alive 4. We got his win streaks, as well as gold/silver/bronze stars. On the way, I got my 50 wins. I also left the 360 on overnight, and got the 5hrs and 10hrs played achievements.

I managed to finish the Poker Smash puzzles, netting 10GS. Tried going online for the achievement - played a couple of games which lasted 10 minutes each, but I didnt get a win.

I fired up some Bladestorm. It's quite fun - hack and slash meets RPG/Dynasty Warriors. 150GS for creating a character (takes 5 mins), then another 150GS in the first 5 hours. The premise of the game is that you're a mercenary during one of the many English/French wars. You can accept jobs from the English or the French, after all a mercenary should have no ties.

It an effort to go after that 3* RPG badge over at 360 voice, I fired up Eternal Sonata. It looks like I've only played the game for 3 hours, so I put another couple into it, and netted one 10GS achievement. I should put some time into this game - its quite fun.

I opened up Marble Blast Ultra for a little while - did one of the advanced levels, and also hunted down the easter egg achievement.

Roquey still needs the legendary Halo 3 achievements, so this week him and I (with another friend) went through a level or two of the story. I also found a skull, thanks to the guide that was put on Inside Xbox.

Also for the 3* RPG Badge, I did a little of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. The game really is a bit boring, and much better when in co-op.

I managed to complete the story for Mass Effect. It looks like the I didnt get the 'play through most of the story with X ally' achievements - I would have to do most of the sidequests to get those. Thus, only 3 more playthroughs to go!

GamerScore:	77231 -> 79081
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	16 -> 17 / 47
Completed Retail:	37 / 182
GS Completion %:	40.63% -> 41.02%

Country Rank:	123 -> 111
World Rank:	801 -> 779
Completion Rank:	2,001 -> 1,894