17th March: GS Update

Sorry, late update this week. Lots of gaming, and some GS to boot - now passed the 80k mark!

borandi decided to ride the gamer-train yesterday. I will admit it... I was happy. What is the gamer score? 80,646 is what it is! That is a gain of 145 points over last time! He rallied G.R.A.W., Catan, Brain Challenge, Undertow, Forza Motorsport 2, Madden NFL 08, DEAD OR ALIVE 4, Quake 4, Need for Speed Carbon, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed. Also, don't tell borandi I told you this, but we have now gamed 30 days in a row... he doesn't like to share that with others. Yay! We get a badge! Look at it and weep!

Oh I almost forgot to mention that borandi has joined a gamerscore challenge titled 'Helping the Viral Spread'. Go check it out and follow along.

Well I bought an XBLA game, and I've been working on a few other games. Also some more LoveFilm goodness. Also, Roquey and I are working towards the viral badge on 360voice - we're in a 3 way challenge with someone who has the achievement. We plan to get it, and spread it amongst friends and the community.

I also got mentioned on the biggest 360 achievement website this week. Thanks to my360stats, I saw Kane&Lynch had some DLC achievements, and yet the DLC has not been announced. You can see the mention here.

Now for the games:

Need for Speed™ Carbon	0 -> 130 of 1000 8 of 50 Achievements
DEF JAM: ICON™	0 -> 390 of 1000 22 of 37 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	295 -> 305 of 1000 21 of 45 Achievements
Brain Challenge™	0 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	310 -> 325 of 1000 33 of 59 Achievements
KUF: Circle of Doom	0 -> 100 of 1000 6 of 32 Achievements
Poker Smash	80 -> 95 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
Looney Tunes: AA EUR	0 -> 370 of 1000 18 of 44 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	115 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
PAC-MAN	0 -> 130 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Joust	40 -> 50 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Small Arms	110 -> 175 of 235 11 of 14 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	290 -> 350 of 1000 12 of 29 Achievements
Speedball 2	100 -> 105 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
BLADESTORM	300 -> 350 of 1000 7 of 18 Achievements
Bee Movie™ Game	560 -> 1000 of 1000 50 of 50 Achievements

I'm not a fan of the NFS series. The only one I've liked is Need For Speed Underground 2. NFS: Most Wanted and NFS: Prostreet both suck big donkey dong. Carbon is no exception. The cars handle poorly, the menu system is shoddy, online is laggy and crap and the music sounds more like banshees. Nevertheless, ZACHSP8 10K and I boosted a little. I got my 6 consecutive wins, and some other miscellaneous online achievements. We'll be after some of the XP achievements soon as well.

DEF JAM: ICON is also a bad game. Its basically a rap fighting game, where you can control the surroundings with the beat. This is almost an 'easy' 1000GS. By almost, I mean you have to beat career mode in hard for the hardest achievement, and imo, hard fights are quite hard. I plan to get all the online achievements with ZACHSP8 10K before I send this game back to LoveFilm, however I doubt I'll get the full 1000. I'll be happy with 650GS.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful glitch for Dead or Alive 4 where you could gain an awesome rank online. However, that was patched some time ago. My boosting partners and I didnt know that until 10 minutes into attempts to get the glitch to work. However, I was able to get one achievement based on completing story mode with a certain character.

Brain Challenge was one of the XBLA games released last Wednesday. It's based on the Nintendo DS Brain Training games, just designed for the 360. Its a fun game to do for 15 minutes daily. So far I have most of the days. The achievements here are based around online matches, and getting your 'brain usage' up to 100%. I've got 20%, won 1/1 online games, and one game got an A*. Not sure if 200GS is possible, given that you have to perfect every mini-game. But it might happen.

Well this weekend I bought some DLC for GH3. I bought the track 'Erten Wir Was Saen', which is billed as quite a good track for co-op achievements. I did co-op lead guitar on hard ok, but not in single player. However, I can do Bass on Expert, with 1682/1688 notes hit. I'm boosting these achievements with rican ninja89, however he doesn't have this song yet. This week, some free DLC was also released due to it being near St. Patrick's Day. This DLC was three songs by the Dropkick Murphy's. They're quite good, but one of them, (F)lannigan's Ball, is a wrist breaker. The achievement I got was the 1000 note co-op streak - rican and I were going for the 2000 note achievement on Through the Fire and the Flames on easy, and on the way I got the 1000. Still not the 2000 yet though.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is another LoveFilm rental. I got it on recommendation from rican, and to play test for Roquey. Its a straight forward Hack and Slash RPG, with the addition of 4 player online co-op. I did some with rican and mingo21, and I was boosted from level 10 to level 42. When this game gets cheap enough, I'll probably buy my own copy. As it is, the cheapest copy is 28GBP ($56USD).

I'm still grinding out some Poker Smash. I picked up the online win with mingo21 this week.

LoveFilm also issued me Looney Tunes AA: EUR this week. Its an easy enough game - your straight forward 3D platformer. Story mode is ok - I'm about 50% in. Achievements in this game are doing the story, some specific level achievements, and a few online ones. Some of the specific level ones are to do with completing the level in a certain time. One level requires to beat 2mins 20secs. I've had 2:22, 2:21 and 2:20 on that level.

Spyglass Board games is an easy 200 - as long as you have a partner for the online ones. I boosted with mingo21, and helped ZACHSP8 10K get his. Game Complete!

I bought PACMAN with some MSPs this week. Tbh, I cant really stand the game. It's the same thing over and over again. It's meant to be easy GS, and I have two achievements left - complete level 21, and eat all 4 ghosts 4 times.

Joust is a hard 200GS game. However I got the 'beat level 5 in co-op' achievement with mingo21 and ZACHSP8 10K.

I grinded the Small Arms 'X wins' and 'X games' achievements by setting up a 2 player local game, 1 life, and a small map where the spawns are close. 30 mins got all those achievements. All that's left is the 50 survival wins, and the DLC achievements (which are apparently quite easy).

I played Lego Star Wars II in order to get the 2* family badge on 360voice. I needed 55GS, so I did 3 * 20GS 'Complete the level without dying' achievements. However, that night, 360voice added a game to the family badge, so now I need 600+ GS.

I did some League Manager on Speedball 2 - I'm in the top division now, needing to win it for another achievement. On the way, I got the 'Raise all the statistics of one player to the maximum in a single player match' achievement.

With BLADESTORM, I reached 2* reputation, and was able to find another book for another 50GS.

Well, Bee Movie Game was a grind. The jobs were long and arduous, and getting the human encounters perfect was a chore. However, I sent the game back to LoveFilm. Game Complete!

GamerScore:	79081 -> 81006
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	17 -> 18 / 49
Completed Retail:	37 -> 38 / 185
GS Completion %:	41.02% -> 41.28%

Country Rank:	111 -> 109
World Rank:	779 -> 758
Completion Rank:	1,894 -> 1,866

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