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

23rd September: GS Update

I didn't think I would see him yesterday, but borandi was back and ready for action. Total gamer score is 48,689 points. That is an increase of 215 points over last time! He rocked out to Blazing Angels, Marvel Ult. Alliance finishing an amazing 7 achievements, Guitar Hero II, EarthDefenseForce 2017, Carcassonne, Burnout Revenge winning an amazing 6 achievements, Smackdown vs RAW 2007 gaining 2 achievements, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed.

Hmmm... I just realized... borandi must not have anything major going on in his life right now because we have gamed 30 days in a row! Can you believe it? Give us the badge for streaking! w00t!

Smackdown vs RAW 2007	860 -> 970 of 1000 27 of 29 Achievements
Burnout Revenge	0 -> 55 of 1000 6 of 36 Achievements
EarthDefenseForce 2017	0 of 1000 0 of 6 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 of 1000 32 of 50 Achievements
Marvel Ult. Alliance	120 -> 230 of 1250 18 of 58 Achievements
Test Drive Unlimited	360 -> 590 of 1000 32 of 46 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	840 of 1000 19 of 23 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	145 -> 245 of 1000 10 of 43 Achievements
Aegis Wing	45 -> 75 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
BOMBERMAN Act:Zero	250 -> 350 of 1000 20 of 50 Achievements
2006 FIFA World Cup™	500 of 1000 4 of 5 Achievements
PGR 3	35 -> 175 of 1000 7 of 25 Achievements
Chromehounds	120 -> 140 of 1000 6 of 49 Achievements
DEAD RISING	80 -> 140 of 1000 7 of 50 Achievements
DiRT™	370 -> 420 of 1000 24 of 49 Achievements

It's been retro game week this week. I looked through my played games list, and went through my list backwards a few for the games that I own.

Last time I played WWE 07 I had got to the point where I had to finish the last couple of belts by doing the challenges in the PC. I was having a lot of trouble - but I changed the settings so there was no ring-out or DQs, so I could get weapons out the side of the ring. That made most of the challenges easy, apart from the 2vs2 matches, as my partner would often get pinned in the first couple of minutes. The Kahli vs. woman match at the end was actually quite easy - I was able to keep doing grapples from behind to damage his head so it went red, then put him on the floor and kept damaging his legs till they were red, then it was an easy pin. I also went through the roster pinning everyone on hard mode, to get that achievement. Though I did it by choosing one wrestler to pin the next and so on, I should have got the 'win with every wrestler' achievement, but it didnt unlock (some sort of glitch). That hard mode achievement took around 3 hours to do though, so I might wait until next week to do the equivalent Legend mode achievement.

I took Burnout Revenge off my 'still to play' shelf and started to go through it. NickHarkkonen and I took turns in career mode, and I also did some online mode - which was very fun to play when I wasn't hitting random trees. EA have shut down all their sports '06 games servers, so I'm surprised they haven't shut down their Burnout servers yet. All the achievements in this game require a lot of playing, hence why I've only got a few easy ones atm.

Nick and I are on lvl 33 of EDF - another 20 to go until we finish easy mode. Health around 700 and it's very easy - we've even been doing some levels on the difficulty above easy to get some better weapons.

We also cranked out some GHII, with Nick starting his career mode on Easy. I did a couple of songs on Hard (I still can't get passed that one song, but I'm able to do the rest in that section) and one on expert.

Nick and I also did some Marvel Ultimate Alliance - a game I think is a lot better in co-op mode than single player. We've just been grinding through the main story - we've just started Act 2. It's a fun game, just a bit boring.

I got out some Test Drive Unlimited which I haven't touched in a while. My goal was just to get some easy achievements, but I also did the Island Tour race in my Koenigsegg CC8S - 118miles took only 44 minutes (I was doing 260mph in the straights) - which gave me 30GS. I was able to reach Champion level (needed 450GS) which unlocked a very easy speed race which gave $75k per win (so about $150k/minute). All that money has given me most of the collection achievements.

I'm now 20 games into Serie A on PES6. It's a long hard grind, but now only about 140 games to go until 1000GS.

I also played some GRAW which I haven't touched in a while. I was told of some cheats available for infinite HP, so I did the first 4 levels on hard :) Though there are still quite a few levels to go.

I played some Aegis Wing - using 2 controllers I got the 'combine with a friend' achievement, as well as the 'dont shoot for a level' one. I have 4 controllers, so I guess I can do the 4 ship formation achievement too.

Bomberman Act Zero is an annoying game, but I got a few of the Secret Panels now that there is a guide for them :)

Fifa 06 is an odd game - an easy 500GS and a very tough 500GS. The tough part is to do some challenges, and I was able to do another 5 this week. The hard ones are still to come though.

I've never played PGR3 seriously, so I went someway though career mode this week. I was able to get a platinum medal on manual for 60GS using the fastest car on the first speed track.

Also did some online with Chromehounds online, getting the '50 shots fired' achievement (i.e. 50 HOUNDs destroyed.

I haven't played Dead Rising since January 2nd - 5 days after I got my first 360. That was on a 13" SCART CRT, so now I'm using a 19" HDTV, it looks LOADS better. I'm able to actually do parts of the story - but I prefer mindlessly going around killing zombies :) I got to the gun shop with the psycho, but he killed me :(

I also did the online achieves for DiRT while I was still renting it.

GS: 47,769 -> 48,789

Completed XBLA:	11 / 28
Completed Retail:	21 / 104
GS Completion %:	41.89%
GS % (Non-Demo):	45.18%

Country Rank:	266/212000
World Rank:	1677/1543243