20th August: GS Update

Long time since an update - I've been very lazy :P Several things have happened since the last update - the major one in this post will be the fact that I passed 40k GS :)

Gears of War	80 -> 590 of 1250 30 of 57 Achievements
Gun	0 -> 920 of 1000 29 of 31 Achievements
Ninety-Nine Nights	100 of 1000 1 of 10 Achievements
Saints Row	110 of 1000 10 of 43 Achievements
Track and Field	0 of 200 0 of 12 Achievements
Golden Axe	190 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Smackdown vs RAW 2007	860 of 1000 23 of 29 Achievements
NCAA® Football 07	345 -> 790 of 1000 44 of 50 Achievements
Rockstar Table Tennis	0 -> 20 of 1000 4 of 29 Achievements
College Hoops 2K6	0 -> 1000 of 1000 5 of 5 Achievements
MLB 2K6	0 -> 1000 of 1000 5 of 5 Achievements
Madden NFL 07	990 -> 1000 of 1000 46 of 46 Achievements
Cabela's Safari	0 -> 350 of 1000 13 of 30 Achievements

Ok a slight change to my achievement listing... I'm not listing games I played just for 5 minutes or to get updates :p Again, this roots to the lazy thing.

Well as you may have read before, Gears of War is not one of my favourite games. Mainly because with First Person Shooters (FPS), I'm a big mouse/keyboard player, and the controller is harder to control. Well I did some achievement trading with a buddy on my friends list - rican ninja89. In return in getting the 50 consecutive title wins on WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, he took me through Gears of War on insane difficulty. I've never been through the game before, and it took about 8 hours to kill the final boss. The upside to this, is that I'm more confident in playing GoW, and I've played some online and I'm enjoying it. I'm still always last (=D) but I'm getting about 10 kills every 30 mins. Only downside is when it's a round full of squealers... :(

I've had GUN on my shelf from easter, and cowboy games aren't really my thing. But while only several of my games work in my US/NTSC 360, I've been willing to play anything. I had noticed that a few people in my buddy list had 1000GS, so it could be an easy game. Luckily, I checked online before playing. There is a nifty level select 'cheat' that can be used to get most of the achievements - even the 'Complete on X difficulty'. The only ones I have left are 'Get all Weapons' and 'Mine all Gold'. The weapons one is a bit annoying, as sometimes after a level select change, you lose all the weapons. The gold may also be hard, but there are guides online. If someone is doing these achieves using the level select, the delivery and hunting achievements are easy if you do the final one in the list first.

I tried doing a few stages for Ninety Nine Nights. It's sooo boring. It was fun for around 5 minutes when I got it....

Saints Row is a bit better - its the GTA before GTA4 gets released. Previously I had been focusing on doing the extra activities (and got bored), but this time I went in the main storyline, which is nifty as it's a three pronged attack with the different factions. At the minute, my character is a fat git with multiple piercings wearing a yellow santa suit. Go figure. I didn't get any new achievements playing it today, but I'm now 25%+ in the story.

I only played the Track and Field demo, but this is the sort of game I grew up on - button bashing olympic competitions. When I can get hold of some cheap MS Points, I'm getting this! So far my best 100m time is 9.07secs, but I remember years ago getting under 8s. For some reason, this game doesnt like me using B and X alternately to run, so I'm having to use the analog stick.

I also boosted with rican ninja89 on Golden Axe - we both needed the online co-op, and he got the 'complete undefeated' achievement too. Another game I can chalk up as complete!

NCAA 07 is just as fun as when I played Madden 07. I'm going to have to get Madden 08 when it's released here. Well on NCAA 07, I now have the game achievements (it took a while to get that blocked punt achieve), and now need the season achievements. That 60 years in franchise is going to be so annoying to do (online it suggests around 8 hours of constant simming...).

Rockstar Table Tennis is a game I saw before I left for the US that I wondered if it was any good. Having played it, it's a good game. But I'm really, really bad at it. The first two games were very easy, then the competition final was very hard. Luckily, some of the achievements are for merely winning X games, and I can boost for most of the offline ones.

College Hoops 2K6 was an easy 1000. Well 4 of the 5 achievements were very easy, the last one (6 blocks with one player) required me to take two controllers to do it. For some reason, blocking in basketball games has never been a strong point of mine. Another complete game :)

MLB 2k6 was also an easy game - with both of these 2k games, you can adjust sliders so the CPU cant really do anything. Awesome :). One achievement gave me some grief - the 'Rob a Home Run' achievement. After looking at some online suggestions, the one on the achieve360points.com forum worked.

Madden 07 is FINALLY complete! I can now join the list of 17 UK people to have completed this game with 1000GS. Though I'm still using my US 360, thus I'm still listed as US :p

Cabela's African Safari is fun - there's nothing like shooting deer with a nice *bang*.. in a simulation only of course! I'm about 2 stages in, and about 6 to go.

Thus: 3 retail games complete, 1 XBLA game complete!

GS: 39,029 -> 43,294

Completed XBLA:	9 / 23
Completed Retail:	20 / 92
GS Completion %:	41.98%
GS % (Non-Demo):	45.62%

Country Rank:	1178/834395
World Rank:	2059/1514704

8th August: GS Update

Long time since an update. Well there is news! I have acquired a US 360 in my travels into the United States, and with this gives the benefits of playing the US only, region locked games, as well as importing those releases that take a while to get to Europe. Go me!

I bought 5 games while in the US - Cabela's African Safari, Cabela's Alaskan Safari, College Hoops 2006, NCAA Football 2007, Major League Baseball 2k6. There are around 15 on the US only region locked list, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.

So on with the sporadic gamage these past few weeks!

NCAA® Football 07	345 of 1000 23 of 50 Achievements
Call Of Duty 3	150 of 1000 7 of 26 Achievements
Sonic The Hedgehog	200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Big Bumpin	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Boom Boom Rocket	100 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Pocketbike Racer	125 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
Sneak King	25 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Golden Axe	190 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Carcassonne	125 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements

One of my new games, as mentioned, is NCAA Football 07. Finally I'll be able to get that last achievement for Madden 07 :) The NCAA version itself is not bad - it's a cut down version of Madden (i.e. without names) but includes all the college stadia, and the different college version of Franchise mode. A360P rates the achievements for this game a 7/10, but I think that's because one of the achievements is 'Sim 60 years of Dynasty Mode', which according to the FAQ, takes 8 hours. OUCH.

Call of Duty 3 is still a bad game with the joypad. Did some online multiplayer, nothing too stressful.

Sonic the Hedgehog is an all-time, classic, retro game. Get it now!!!! :D This is the original Master System game, which I remember taking me around 4 hours to complete when I was 5. So I was happy to get the 'complete in 40 minutes' achievement! The time trial achieves took some practice, and the 'complete without dying' achievement requires extensive use of the new save function <3. style="font-style: italic;">that bad. It's what you'd expect from BK. Sneak King is the only one that seems like it will take a while, though one of the Big Bumpin achievements didn't unlock when I should have got it. I'll play these at some later date with severe intention in getting these achieves.

Boom Boom Rocket is like crack - so fun to pick up and play :p

Golden Axe is another awesome retro game, although it's very short. Still need the complete online achieve, but the rest were fairly easy except the 'complete in one continue' achievement - it required constant saving, then reloading if I lost health. The final boss took 20 units of health, so be careful.

I played Carcassonne so long ago, I can't remember what happened the last time I played it!

GS: 37,634 -> 39,029

You may notice below that my country rank has dropped, and the amount of people in the UK has risen by 600,000. This is not true, just a side effect from playing a 360 in the US. It'll all be sorted out soon :)

Completed XBLA:	8 / 23
Completed Retail:	17 / 86
GS Completion %:	40.43%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.90%

Country Rank:	1534/828821
World Rank:	2750/1502797

23rd July: Where I been

Ok so first post in a while. I have two very good reasons....!

a) Moving house is always a chore, and to top it off the local phone company requires 2 weeks to flick a switch to enable my internet. Though I'm running on 8mb d/l (up from 2mb at my last place) =D
b) Xbox 360 went bye bye! I'm getting the 3RLoD on the box. I still need to phone MS (its been a week now, lol), but by the time I get it back, I'll be on holiday, so UPS will probably balls that up. I might get it redelivered to a friends house, and phone MS tomorrow.

Apart from that, before it went, I bought Sonic and Golden Axe, with around 100 and 150 in them respectively. I'll update soon, though it might not be until mid august. I've a lot of news to catch up on, so see you on the flipside =D