7th October: GS Update

I had to set aside my plans for world domination yesterday when borandi decided to game. Our score is 51,359 and always improving! That is a gain of 115 points over last time! He opened up Joust adding 1 achievement, Frogger gaining 1 achievement, SEGA Rally™ picking up 3 achievements, Bankshot Billiards 2 acquiring 2 achievements, Carcassonne finishing 1 achievement, and... hmmm... maybe that was all... it felt like we played more games.

I also want to mention that borandi's gamer reputation decreased somehow. I don't know who he ticked off, but that isn't good. I hope it was just a misunderstanding!

Lol yes I got my first 'negative feedback' today. I've been playing some Sega Rally online, and I'll explain a bit below:

Carcassonne	125 -> 150 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	80 -> 120 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
SEGA Rally™	0 -> 75 of 1000 6 of 44 Achievements
Frogger	15 -> 140 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Joust	0 -> 40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Ratatouille	0 -> 145 of 1000 12 of 50 Achievements
Halo 3	115 -> 125 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Juiced 2: HIN	0 -> 55 of 1000 8 of 60 Achievements
Conan	0 -> 115 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Aegis Wing	75 -> 85 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
The Darkness	295 -> 305 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	0 -> 10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements

Carcassonne, in reality, should be an easy game to get 200GS in - all you need is three people online. But not many people have the game! I managed to get the 5000 points achievement worth 25GS - all I have left is the 'win player match by 50points' and 'build a 9+ city in a 3+ player match'.

I've been grinding some on Bankshot Billiards - I was able to do all the golf tables under par. On some of the tables, it was necessary to foul in order to get through the tables with the least number of shots. I also did the 'Speed Freak' achievement - this is one of the hardest to do, requiring 12 tables to be finished in 12 minutes overall. Basically, if there is a lot of balls, put your first three shots at full power, then the rest with 3/4 backspin to stop the ball quickly. Now I have to do the '5 games of 8-ball without losing a turn', '50 games without losing a turn', and all the ones leading upto '200 wins' - I got the 25 wins in the last game, so only 175 to go :p

Sega Rally is a weird game - so I'm glad I only rented it. It's weird - there is no 'out of track' area, you just bounce off. It's like a true arcade version of DiRT - the faster you go, the better you fare. Cornering and breaking is necessary but not critical. I'm pretty sure I got my negative feedback for coming up on the inside of someone, not breaking in time - so he went into the wall, I bounced off of him, but as I had the higher speed I was pushed away faster and gained the position on the track. It's a weird game in that respect, and I'd suggest DiRT over it tbh.

I've also grinded some on Frogger - going after the speed achievements, the saving achievements and the level achievements. All that's left is the level 4, level 5, and the co-op achievement. Now I'm crap at Frogger, so to get the 30k co-op would be hard, given that I can't even get 15k.

I signed up a while back to receive 2 free XBLA games from Microsoft, and I got the codes through - One for Robotron (which I already have) and one for Joust (which I didn't have). Joust is a classic retro game - easy to start, but very hard very quick. Only 58 people have the full 200GS on this, so I dont think I'll be getting it any time soon. But I got to level 5 on my first attempt, and tried very hard to get the level 1 survival achievement. By luck I got the Pterodactyl achievement too.

I rented Ratatouille - it's a fun game, but someone got the coding wrong. If you die, you have to start at the beginning of a level, even if you were right at the end of it. Every level, there are 100 tokens to collect, and if you miss one before the story continues, you forfit that achievement. The camera is appalling too. Apart from that, it's your standard platform fare, regardless that it's a game of a film. Just some grinding at this game would result in 1000GS - the minigames are easy, just mild bits of skill here and there, as well as the collecting.

My journey on Halo 3 has been an eventful one. I'm going to quote what I put on a forum with regards matchmaking this week:

What a load of bollocks. Apologies for the colourful language, but the matchmaking system on Halo 3 is a F*&^$%G joke. Either that, or people intentionally reduce their rank to play the inexperienced.

For example: I'm on one particular map, rank 7, against four rank tens - and I do rather well. I then play the same map against rank 3/4, and get raped - full of bunny hopping fuckheads that always know where you are, one hit kill, then get you soon after you next spawn.

That was on free-for-all ranked - team ranked is even worse. It once put together a group of four rank 8s against four rank 3s. The 8s won by a nearly perfect margin.

What is this joke of matchmaking, seriously? I'm now being pared up in games where everyone else has a red ping - so when I goto punch, it doesnt register. FFS, there are 200k people online, and you're telling me there isnt a decent ping match around my rank in the UK??

Apart from that, Halo 3 is all well and good. Tune in next time for another episode of borandi's rants.

PS Wtf is the 'Steaktacular' Badge???

I started some Free-for-all matches which resulted in this rant - got a multikill and a melee achievement. This thursday I'm taking part in a Halo 3 game night, so hopefully I might get some achievements then!

I also rented out Juiced 2. It's a good driving game, but there are some flaws. The achievements are unoriginal - get to elite offline, get to elite online, get all goals offline, get all goals online. Online mode is a joke, and the creators thought that a lot more people would be playing it - each league has it's own lobby (which takes 20 seconds to log in or out), of which you're lucky if anyone is there. But offline it's straightforward - easy money by getting to league 6, going in the betting race, waiting until one racer has odds of 50:1, and you can get them to win. It's a long game for achievements.

Conan was also rented - it's a budget hack and slash, with the odd sight of boobies. Hack, Slash. Every-so-often, you will have to use certain moves to get achievements, but it's hack, hack, slash, slash. Just slightly better graphics than the PS2, but not pushing the 360 any.

I got my four controllers together to play Aegis-Wing, and make the four ship formation achievement. 60 seconds, easy to do. Couldn't control the combined ship though!

I rented the Darkness - not a lot of people online, and subject to very, very bad lag. Best if you host the game personally. I got a couple of basic achievements, didn't play the single game any though.

I played Hardwood Spades - it's still an odd game!

GS: 50,699 -> 51,359

Completed XBLA:	11 / 32
Completed Retail:	24 / 113
GS Completion %:	40.77%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.63%

Country Rank:	235/213967
World Rank:	1527/1553389

1st October: GS Update

From now on you can see my 360voice profile on the right hand side of this page as a little Javascript applet -->
But I'll still quote it here. Recently the guys over at 360voice have been moving their servers, so its all a couple of days backed up on logs and it's a bit skewiff.

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 50,349 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He played Bankshot Billiards 2, and did it while drooling over my awesome graphics and sound.

Harry Potter OOTP	0 -> 40 of 1000 3 of 41 Achievements
Bionicle Heroes	880 -> 900 of 1000 45 of 49 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	245 -> 420 of 1000 17 of 43 Achievements
Gun	920 -> 1000 of 1000 31 of 31 Achievements
Smackdown vs RAW 2007	970 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements
Frogger	0 -> 15 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	0 -> 80 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	0 -> 115 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements
Overlord	240 -> 280 of 1000 19 of 44 Achievements
Fatal Inertia	0 -> 120 of 1000 11 of 50 Achievements
Stranglehold	0 -> 235 of 1000 15 of 45 Achievements
Surf's Up	0 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements

I rented Harry Potter today, played it for around 45mins or so. I'm one of those people who despises all Harry Potter paraphenalia - the books can burn, the movies can be peed upon. I avoid it at all costs. But my love of achievements outweighs my hate of Harry Potter, so I finally rented it. It's a very easy game (on easy) so far, and on mygamercard.net the average GS is 400+. It seems a bit long (25hrs+) though to complete, so we'll see how far I can get.

Ok so I'm back on the Bionicle Heroes. Now got 51%, with 7 stages to complete. Hopefully the save wont corrupt this time!! I got 1 achievement - the 2.5mill credits one.

Again with the GRAW this week - completed the game on Hard, with the unlimited health cheats on. The levels are quicker than I thought (3.5hrs for a completion), so now I need to redo the game on easy, then it's all the MP achievements to do.

I spent 4.5hrs on GUN yesterday - I basically played through the whole of the story mode, and finished all the side quests to get the 'all gold' and 'all weapons' achievements. The story mode is actually VERY fun, and I suggest anyone that likes the Wild West to play it, even on easy. I did spend about an hour doing one of the hunting quests - the black/great wolf. That is one annoying bastard! He's first in the badlands, and then to the west of the ranch if you're interested. The online guides are quite vague. But now this game is 1000GS complete, and back on the shelf. Totalled around 20hrs.

Ok WWE really got on my tits. After the last debacle, when the 'win with all wrestlers' achievement didn't unlock, it did after my third match going though on Legend. I then tried going through the Legend achievement using PPVs - so I could set up 8 matches at once. After 4 to 5 hours of that, the achievement didnt unlock. So I went to exhibition, hoping I didnt have to got through the entire list again. Thankfully when I went through alphabetically, it unlocked when I hit Cactus Jack. Another game 1000GS complete, though it wasnt an easy task - around 50hrs total.

This week there were three games on offer on XBLA - Bankshot Billiards (1200MSPs to 900MSPS) and Frogger/Hardword Spades (each 400MSPs to 300MSPs). When they first went on sale, some Microsoft employee made a mistake and put a 50% discount! At that time, I got the Billiards, but then had a nap for 8hrs or so. I came back to see the other two were back up to only 25% discount. Bastards.

But I got them all - Bankshot Billiards is your typical pool game. It's rather bland, and not many modes after the standard ones. Not really worth 600MSPs tbh though. Some of the achievements are on modes that take a couple of hours, so I'll grind them at some point.

Frogger is a load of balls - the frogs move a fixed distance, and you die if you barely hit an exhaust. The achievements look quite hard, so it'll be a while before I get these.

I also played Hardwood Spades, for about 5 seconds. It looks weird.

Yes, I got Halo 3. I spent all week saying the beta was shit, then my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday (the 25th). Haha go figure. It's an ok game - better than GoW, but like I've said before, I'm not a console FPS fan. The story mode is quite bland - point, shoot, repeat. The difficulties are exponential - I tried it on legendary, only not to get past the first set of mobs. Bastards! I also played some online, but the Matchmaking is a joke - I often get into a match where it's 25-5 in Team Slayer (my fav mode). I'm often on the losing team. You can see my Halo 3 profile here.

My girlfriend also bought me Overlord - I've gone a bit further in the story, still on 0% corruption. I'd just before the final smelter, so I guess I'm half way.

Fatal Inertia reminds me of those N64 cheap budget racing games. Easy to pick up and play, but no real depth of options and a bit bland on the graphics. If you get stuck on a point, its fairly linear and cant get past it until you do. Achievements are either very easy, or require time on them.

I've always been told that Stranglehold should be a good game - and it is, for only the first couple of levels. Then it gets very similar. Lots of point and shoot, very linear, and it's just the same style tricks over and over again. MP is crap - everyone has super high HP (thus it needs 20secs of two people shooting one other person, then only one of them gets the kill) - and the weapons are quite unbalanced (the machine gun does next to no damage). Graphically, its exceedingly good. I liked the bit where you destroy half of the famous Terracotta Army.

I dont care what anyone else says - I enjoyed Surf's Up. Its a straightforward kids game, like a linear Tony Hawks' game but surfing. I got around 800GS in two hours, and the other 200GS in the another two. There is a bit of collecting to do, but it's very easy. Each round takes around 3mins, and there's only around 11 rounds in the game. Another 1000GS complete :D Total 4hrs.

I also passed 50k GS doing Surf's Up =D

GS: 48,789 -> 50,699

Completed XBLA:	11 / 30
Completed Retail:	24 / 109
GS Completion %:	41.70%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.75%

Country Rank:	230/213174
World Rank:	1534/1550045