12th May: GS Update

A few odd games this week, nothing too focused.

Like a king on his throne, borandi said 'awaken' and for him I did comply. 92,872 points represents the size of our growing kingdom. Ok, enough of this Monarchy stuff. That is an improvement of 220 points over last time! He rocked out to Football Manager 2007 picking up 1 achievement, NBA Ballers:Chosen One finishing an amazing 7 achievements, BioShock winning 1 achievement, and then I told him to keep playing but he didn't... out of spite I think.

Did I mention the gamerscore challenge that borandi is competing in? There's so much action in this one, you may pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!!111! Witness the spectacle. There are 4 other people playing along as well... they better watch out. Currently borandi is holding the number 2 spot in the group... decent. With only one day left though, we need to make that last big push!

360voice had a big badge update this week. I lost a few badges as a result - 1* Music, 1* FPS, 1* Sandbox. But also gained a couple - 50% completion and 2* Party. The music badge is a bummer, as almost 1/2 the games are US only which I dont have yet. The sandbox badge is a bit annoying - I was hanging on by 5pts, then they added both GTA and Bully to the genre, but only got 300 on GTA.

I also wrote a guide on NBA Ballers, but more about that later.

Guitar Hero III 390 -> 400 of 1000 37 of 59 Achievements After several weeks on and off, with the aid of a mirror, I redid Easy mode on a new band on Lefty Flip in order to get the 'Hendrix Reborn' achievement. Now it's a case of doing as many tracks as possible across all 5 bands to get the 100million points, $350k and 250k notes achievements.

NBA Ballers:Chosen One 0 -> 1000 of 1000 20 of 20 Achievements NBA Ballers was one of the LoveFilm rentals this week. Imagine NBA Street Homecourt, without the fun moves. It's basically a set of 1 vs. 1 matches for story mode, and 3 hours to complete. Another 3 to complete again for that achievement, then 25 wins online and a few other specific skill achievements. I made a guide over at x360a.org, which I've set to be posted here in a couple of days. Not a fun game by any stretch, though. Game Complete!

BioShock 275 -> 285 of 1100 25 of 51 Achievements In a minor attempt to get my 1* FPS badge back, I thought I'd fire up some BioShock. But it was 3am, so I got as far as getting the Jackpot on the one-armed bandits.

Football Manager 2007 9 -> 204 of 1000 18 of 50 Achievements Nothing much to say here. I started a game with max players in top positions at various clubs, then went on holiday and left the 360 on for around 15hrs this week. As a result, a lot of achievements pop up.

GTA IV 325 -> 375 of 1000 25 of 50 Achievements A couple of achievements on GTA. Enough story missions complete to get access to all the islands, and a set of 5 flips in a car. About 50% of the game complete.

SAMURAI WARRIORS 2 XL 0 -> 50 of 1250 1 of 29 Achievements I noticed a few people have the full 1000 on this game, so I put it in. Only a small dabble, I played the minigame from the main menu and won for the achievement, but also started a few of the story missions.

Scene It? LCA 445 -> 770 of 1000 33 of 42 Achievements I did aim one evening to try and finish Scene It. With Wiki and IMDB at hand, and a digi cam, I took photos of each question then paused it, then looked online for the answer. The main achievement on this game is getting 60 correct answers without getting one wrong. I think I got to around 28 before one of the questions was the picture of an actor and he looked more like the wrong guy than the right one. That took 70 minutes to get that far. So I just finished the Long Game and put it away.

Army of Two™ 80 -> 225 of 1100 10 of 41 Achievements Another attempt to rekindle my 1* FPS badge. I went after some weapon achievements, thanks to the guide over at x360a.org. It involves replaying the first mission over and over again, as there is a point where 120 guys spawn 2 at a time, and you have infinite health and ammo.

LEGO Star Wars: TCS 100 -> 210 of 1000 11 of 42 Achievements Another part of my semi-interested runs at the next Family badge. Like the other LEGO Star Wars, this is just as boring and uninteresting. A few achievements from going through the first episode, nothing much else.

PES2008 235 -> 260 of 1000 10 of 28 Achievements One achievement - the 100 assists one. I'm around 10 or so games from finishing the English league.

Geometry Wars Evolved 20 -> 30 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements Aha! Geometry Wars was one of my first ever games I got an achievement in. It's ridiculously hard. But I managed to get the 'get 250k points' achievement.

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I'm not putting up the MGC stats this week. There's been a mixup over there and some of my games that used to be there aren't showing. It should be fixed up by next week.

17th February: GS Update

Various ups and downs gaming this week. I ended up putting in all the games that I own that I've not played yet into my xbox, so they would all show up in my profile. Hopefully some 0 GS games would shame me into playing them ;) Also received my copy of Lost Odyssey =D

It is that time of the week. I got your weekly recap right here: Oh man are my cores just rocking... borandi played seven days last week! SEVEN! That is a NUMBER SEVEN followed by NO ZEROS! HOT! Ready for this? Last week saw an increase of 1784 points! My eye almost bleeds looking at a number that large! Getting 87 achievements can do that to you. I was there. I saw it!

I told borandi to try 15 games last week: Poker Smash, The Club, The Godfather™, DEAD OR ALIVE Xtreme 2, Football Manager 2007, Hitman: Blood Money, LOST PLANET, Need for Speed™ Carbon, Over-G, Pimp My Ride, Rapala Tournament, Rumble Roses Double X, SAMURAI WARRIORS 2, Star Trek Legacy, and NBA LIVE 07. It was a mix of good and bad. Oh, and borandi seems obsessed with role playing games lately... You can tell because Blue Dragon was the favorite last week. He played it on 5 of the days.

There are still a couple of games in my US pile I still need to put in ;)

Arkadian Warriors	95 -> 190 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 -> 285 of 1000 30 of 59 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	670 -> 870 of 1000 18 of 22 Achievements
WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	490 -> 520 of 1000 17 of 25 Achievements
WARRIORS OROCHI	0 -> 40 of 1000 2 of 29 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	80 -> 245 of 1000 16 of 45 Achievements
Two Worlds	260 -> 270 of 1000 24 of 41 Achievements
Lost Odyssey	0 -> 110 of 1000 4 of 36 Achievements
Undertow	50 -> 115 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Pimp My Ride	0 -> 30 of 1000 3 of 30 Achievements
Football Manager 2007	0 -> 9 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Arkadian Warriors was added to the RPG genre over at 360voice. Thus it became higher up on my priorities list =D For some reason, playing the game this time round was incredibly easy. I completed the last 7 missions in the main quest, got the 500k gold achievement, and at the end redoing the final level netted the 'level 20' achievement. All that's left now is the 'kill 100 with exploding vases' achievement. It should require a bit of grinding the first mission, but not too difficult.

The first GHIII achievement in a while came my way this week =D Was playing some co-op with Nellas, and we got the 100% a song co-op achievement. Unfortunately, some games are weird with two players getting the same achievement at once, so Nellas didnt get it. It was an easy track, so we can get it again.

Last week, I was 10 games into the German season on LMA Manager 07. This week, I finished the German league achievements and the French league achievements. All that's left is the Dutch and Portuguese leagues. Four, maybe five hours of simming I reckon.

I didn't actually play any WarTech this week. I just left the console on for a few hours while working around the house, and got the '10 hours played' achievement. While doing nothing, might as well try and earn something ;)

I started playing Warriors Orochi on advice that it should be an easy 1000GS - about 30 hours or so. Its like Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires, but more RPG and Story based. It's fun - each map takes around 20 minutes (rather than 5) and is quite easy to win (unlike Ninety Nine Nights). Well, except for the final bosses. I got my characters to level 40ish and the final boss kicked my ass. More grinding, better weapons, more skills. Not too hard, just a little bit of playing and grinding.

As I've stated before, Dead or Alive 4 is an annoying game. It's got an annoying difficulty curve, and I suck at it. So rican ninja89 and I went and did the online achievements - 5, 10 and 20 consecutive wins, beat people on 10-14, 15-19 and 20+ win streaks, achieve rank B and D. I didnt take long =D

I opened up Two Worlds for the first time since September this week. I had no idea what I was doing. Controls, storyline, nothing. So I bought the guide - it has the main storyline and all the side quests explained, so the rest of the achievements should be fairly easy. Didn't play it much though. Will focus on it soon ;)

Lost Odyssey. All the best elements from Final Fantasy in a Japanese-RPG, and I'm only two hours in. Seemless transition from FMV to in-game action sequences. It makes Blue Dragon look like a minor 'Side Project' or 'concept car' to test the engine. Get this game, now.

Also did some online achievements in Undertow with rican ninja89. We also started the story mode on Ultra, and did about 5 stages. 200/200 is perfectly possible on this game, just needs some grinding and a small amount of skill (hopefully).

Pimp My Ride is one of those games that has been labelled as 'easy' by the gaming community. So I gave it a 45 minute whirl when I was putting in all my unplayed games. It looks easy, and a bit of a grind. I'll play some more later.

Also with Football Manager 2007 - I just simmed for about 30 mins, and got a few achievements. This game reminds me of FM06, which was crap. Bleh.

GamerScore:	73072 -> 73836
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 45
Completed Retail:	36 -> 35 / 178
GS Completion %:	43.51% -> 39.28%

Country Rank:	129 -> 130
World Rank:	860 -> 856
Completion Rank:	1,812 -> 2,394

It looks like the new PSU achievements kicked in on mygamercard.net - hence the 36 -> 35 game completion drop.