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

2nd July: GS Update

Forza Motorsport 2	303 of 1000 22 of 44 Achievements
PROJECT SYLPHEED	0 -> 460 of 1000 15 of 24 Achievements
Band of Bugs	0 of 200 0 of 12 Achievements
Shadowrun	70 -> 125 of 1000 10 of 50 Achievements
Marble Blast Ultra	0 of 200 0 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	0 of 200 0 of 12 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	360 of 1000 9 of 23 Achievements
Carcassonne	105 -> 125 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Blitz: The League	130 of 1000 11 of 47 Achievements
FlatOut UC	35 -> 135 of 1000 8 of 45 Achievements

Lots of games these past few days. =D

Finally level 45 on Forza after several more endurance races. Still need to do the few cups to get a couple of achievements (which my auto driver is doing now). Though it's going to be a while until I hit level 50 I feel.

I rented Project Sylpheed today, and it's quite good. Square Enix usually never fail to disappoint, and their foray into a flight sim has turned out rather well. It has quite an arcade style to it, and is full of pre-rendered story scenes that are full of life and colour. The story is worth listening to, as it does help with the missions in the game. There are 16 main missions in the game, each with primary and secondary objectives - but you're never told the secondary objectives. Each level gives you a rank based on time, kills, objectives etc. Each level can last for 5-25 minutes, though it took me 3hrs 30mins of flying for my first run though (about 6/7 hrs total if you include the cut scenes). About half of the achievements are fairly easy and got by going through the game, though 2 of the story achievements didnt unlock for me as I played it which was wierd. The rest are for doing special activities - completely annihilate 'Squad X', destroy 1000/10000 ships, destroy stuff with a total weight of one gigaton etc. Half of those require more than one run though (I got 81 megatons on my first run through, so that 1000 megaton/1 gigaton achievement would require 12 run throughs). As you play through the game, you get unlocks for your ship, and you have to do more difficult tasks and so forth. I enjoyed it, until my second run through, where in order to get higher ranks on some of the levels I died several times from annoying little things. The controls are ok, though it's a bit annoying that if you accidentally go into hyperdrive you cant stop and end up hitting something, and often the screen is so full of colours you cant tell which are the enemy ships, or where your base ship is in order to refuel. Thus, as you try and decipher the map and radar (which sortof help) you end up with either no shield or dead :S Though if you dont really like the current flight sims available (Blazing Angels, Over G Fighters), or love Square Enix or arcady games, then give this game a go.

I tried the Band of Bugs demo. It reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (yeah I didnt get into Advance Wars that much) and looks quite fun-ish. The achievements look ok, with 130 being easily attainable, depending on how long the single player mode is.

I also rented Shadowrun again. I liked it a bit more than last time - mainly because I was able to play a few games with people who weren't retards. By retards I mean the following: people who have to have a running commentary on what they're doing; people who scream and shout down their mic; people who swear non stop; people who are racists and people spouting racial slurs; people who shout 'you got pwned, biatch' after each round; 'people who keep shouting 'revive me!'; people who beat box down their mic; people who play music down their mic... I could think of others, but I'm sure that 66% of XBL games contain at least one of the above. That being said, I got the 5:1 damage to kill ratio achievement, and the fever. I should have got the 10 rounds won in a row achievement (6-0 first round, then 4-0 second, then 4-1, finished 6-1) but it didnt unlock. BOO! I tried going for the 5 gust kills, but I reckon I only got one.

Marble Blast Ultra is a game I like the demo of. Until I gets frustrated by annoying 'air' physics such that movement in the air is almost nil. Bleh.

My *box finally decides to download the Bankshot Billiards demo despite being on auto download for new XBLA demos. It's ok, but in a heartbeat I'd pick WSC2007.

Put in PES6, played a few more games of my D2 League and cup. I'm beginning to wonder why the shortest half length on this game is 5 minutes, and not 2 mins like most other football games. It'll be a while before I reach 1000GS on this game, but I'll get there =D

I've been playing a few more games of Carcassonne, and a couple online. I got the win vs 3 other players online achievement (rather comfortably), and I'm still working my way to that 5000 points achievement. I hope to get 200 GS on this soon. It's a shame no-one on my friends list has it.

I have a love/hate relationship with Blitz: The League. Dont get me wrong, I love the NFL and enjoy the Madden franchise, despite it being made by EA. But the Blitz is riddled with poor camera and poor controls. I hadn't played this in a while, so I went through the tutorials again (quite comfortably). Went back to my campaign game, only to be 21 points down after the first quarter. My defence cant defend, apparently. The menu system for choosing your plays is rather poor, as in the fact that it never remembers your previous play, and as the quarters are rather short there is no messing around in choosing your play. All the default plays (just pressing A) are rather crap. On the field, the defence ends up not defending the Hail Mary, or completely missing with the blitz on a running play. The controller never switches to the person you want, and everytime you select a new person, you have to re-press LT to lock on with a dirty hit. They could have done a lot better with this game. I'll tackle it again when the real NFL starts hiking their balls.

Well, I finally decided to sit down with my rental of Flatout, and go through Carnage mode. All was well for the most part - I started to get silvers and golds, rather than a complete bronze slate. Also ended up with some achievements - Heavy Blast, 100 slams, 1 mill Carnage points, etc. So then I was down to the penultimate Carnage race. Normal race/destruction type, with the goal being 50k points for bronze. 50k?? Thats gold on most other races. So 8 attempts later, my best score is 35k. This is a load of pants. Then I get 45k. Getting better, so then another 8 attempts later, I have 48.5k and 15 seconds left. I can see the car ahead of me, I have full Nitro. I aim full pelt at it, and the car ahead partially crashes into the wall, scraping along the side at 60mph. Easy kill I feel, so I aim for where it should be. In the 50 metres between me and the wall, the other car comes to a complete halt. I mean 60 to 0 in 0.000 seconds. My car never does that unless I hit a tree. So this glitch made me miss, and then if you've ever played this game, you know the reverse gear is shite, so I end up with 48.5k for the race, and almost a busted controller as it gets flung across the room. Destruction Derby got AI and reversing right, why cant these people??

OK, rant over. I also have The Darkness rented out, which I'll hopefully play (and enjoy, by looking at the manual and achievements) tomorrow.

GS: 35,128 -> 35,778

Completed XBLA:	7 / 21
Completed Retail:	17 / 75
GS Completion %:	41.01%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.61%

Country Rank:	496/203230
World Rank:	2882/1506376