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

28th December: Christmas GS Update

Seasons wishes to everyone! If you're celebration includes gift giving, then I hope you got/gave what you wanted!

My Christmas was particularly uneventful (the way I like it =D) but now I'm back on the 360 and doing some serious gaming yet again.

I turned my 360voice off while I was away, but here's what the first blog back had to say about me:

Consoles are for playing! I am glad borandi picked up on that yesterday... Gamerscore is a respectful 65,217 points. That is a boost of 470 points over last time! That was enough to cross the 65,000 mark! Good stuff! He made some progress on Guitar Hero III, Beautiful Katamari gaining 5 achievements, NCAA® Football 07 acquiring 2 achievements, MLB 2K7, DDR/DS Universe, and then he had to stop because we both couldn't take it anymore... we were spent.

I did game over the festive season - mostly on a 360 without an internet connection byt was able to continue the gamerscore goodness throughout.

Beautiful Katamari	640 -> 970 of 1250 36 of 40 Achievements
Scene It? LCA	0 -> 280 of 1000 14 of 42 Achievements
MLB 2K7	0 of 1000 0 of 33 Achievements
NCAA® Football 07	790 -> 825 of 1000 46 of 50 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	270 -> 275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
E4	35 -> 80 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
TigerWoodsPGATOUR®07	0 -> 60 of 1000 6 of 27 Achievements
Arkadian Warriors	60 -> 70 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
PROJECT SYLPHEED	460 of 1000 15 of 24 Achievements
ICC Cricket 2007	480 -> 530 of 1000 15 of 20 Achievements
ACE COMBAT 6	0 -> 10 of 1000 1 of 49 Achievements
Tomb Raider: Anniv.	0 of 1000 0 of 32 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	0 -> 535 of 1000 10 of 22 Achievements

The wonderful developers of Beautiful Katamari released the 'final' batch of Downloadable Content (DLC) required to get the final achievements over the festive period - while I was away. Thus the first game I played when I got back home ended up being BK with the extra DLC. The new levels are great - more BK goodies =D I've been able to complete all the DLC achieves (100% Presents/Cousins, 1.5million km Katamari) and also done a few of the original achieves (100 Requests, 50 online matches). Thus the only ones I have left are 50/100 hrs playtime, 200 requests, and 100% collection completion. The playtime and requests should not be a bother, and I'm 98% on the completion, but its a case of finding the right level for the right stuff I'm missing. At some point I'll go troll a few forums to get the ones missing, and get my first 1250 in a game :)

I received Scene It for christmas. Its a good game, but I'm not a film buff, so it's pure luck I've got some achievements. In a nutshell, the achievements for this game are getting X amount of questions right in each section, with X points needed or X questions correct in a row. Thus I'm hoping I get a lot of repeated questions, such that I can just answer the ones I remember :) Overall, its a fun game with friends, good after a film night. After an hour at a time though, it gets a bit boring.

I now have a hate/hate relationship with MLB2k7. I imported it for my US 360, given that it seems an easy 1000GS. However, I bought a preowned copy, and its a bit scratched. As a result, it sometimes corrupts all MLB2k7 saves, thus I can't get achievements as it wont save properly. I'll need another copy to get my GS. Damn.

On a US 360 spree, I also pulled out NCAA 07 to get the final few achievements for it. The ones I have left are pretty hard - 60 seasons in dynasty mode being the big one, also 8 5* recruits at the end of a season, and winning 3 seasons back to back being the other. All rather time consuming, all requiring a good portion of time (60 seasons is ~8hrs according to guides online). I was able to get a couple of achievements though - '#1 recruit class' and 'win a championship game'.

On my way through GH3, it was going to be required that I complete a difficulty on lefty. And I did - Easy difficulty - but the lefty achievement didnt unlock. Damnit. Got the achievement for doing easy though.

I played a couple of games of E4, but the GS change I have above is the result of missing the game off my list on the relevant update. I still cant find a decent guide online for this game to help me get the rest (they're not too clear).

I had the chance over christmas to play Tiger 07. I prefer Tiger 08, mainly because of the clicky way of hitting the ball, and the quality of graphics. I didnt get to play 07 much though, but its like an improved version of 06. It has quite long loading times as well, which is a downside.

I was able to start a co-op game with my brother Roquey of Arkadian Warriors, and we both got the two dungeon co-op achievements :) The rest of the achievements I need to get will require some grinding however.

I was lucky enough to buy a copy of Project Sylpheed cheap before I left. This game is typical Square-Enix greatness, and has a well deserved place on my shelf. I was able to participate in one mission before I left, and improved my level score by 10x for mission 2 =D Thankfully there are quite a few guides now online to help me get the full 1000GS.

Along with Sylpheed, I also bought Brian Lara ICC 07. The achievements I have left for this game require lots of one day internationals and 5 day test matches with all teams, but I was abe to get King Pair achievement - get one batter out in his first ball in both innings. With some deft saving, and awesome bowling skills in which I got 5 wickets in 5 balls in the first innings, I was able to get this achievement first time without any reloading. Awesome.

One of my final 'free' rentals was Ace Combat 6. I was exceptionally busy those couple of days, and only had time to play it 30 minutes before I had to give it back. I wish I'd played it more - the first mission was an absolute blast. I'm having a rekindled fondness for flying games, and AC6 felt like one of the best I've ever played. Must play more....

My other final 'free' rental was Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Now I haven't technically done any in Legend, neither have I been a fan of the series (unlike my Grandfather who has his PC pre-order in the day of announcing the next one). But Anniversary seemed fairly polished - not the best graphics *cough*Bioshock*cough* but challenging gameplay nonetheless. I cant really comment - didnt play it for that long and not a fan of the series.

Aha - now LMA Manager is a game that has been on my shelf for quite a while. It's loomed over me with the 'easy 1000GS' tag thanks to several of the people on my friends list having the full GS. And it is easy - thanks to the relatively quick save/load system. If I lose, I reload. Simple as. The achievements basically revolve around winning 8 different leagues in 8 different countries, and as long as you pick a strong country then a nice win streak is a good as yours. I have 5 leagues left (3 leagues = 500 GS when you get the European cups) and hopefully they're the small leagues.

GS: 64,082 -> 65,392

Completed XBLA:	15 / 39
Completed Retail:	29 / 153
GS Completion %:	38.77%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.03%

Country Rank:	146
World Rank:	1,010