27th April: GS Update

A mix this week. Some news, some games.

borandi came to represent the gaming world. 89,362 points and counting! That is a profit of 40 points over last time! He rocked out to Lost Cities, BLADESTORM, Call of Duty 4 gaining 1 achievement, Lost Odyssey, and almost cried with joy. I have that effect on people.

All this week has been a buzz around GTA4. It comes out Tuesday, despite a large number of people playing it already (thanks to people working in game stores, or people selling it early). My preorder was in, and the money has gone out, so I expect it to be dispatched, ready for Tuesday. I'll probably play it a good lot, apparently it's a lot of fun.

PES2008 130 -> 210 of 1000 8 of 28 Achievements Just a little bit of PES08 - just 5 or so games. Yet as a result, 3 achievements unlock - 2+ goals average in 5 games after 20, possession > 60% in last 10 games, beat all England teams. Like PES6, this game will take a while. Each game is 5 mins, and one of the final achievements is 'play 500 games' - thats 2500 mins (even without loading), which is 42hrs.

Lost Odyssey 110 -> 235 of 1100 5 of 42 Achievements After some recent FPS gaming, I decided to delve back into the RPG arena, now that I have the Lost Odyssey guide - I've played it almost all weekend. As a result, I got to the second disk in around 10hrs from a new game. The guide is a brilliant help, especially with the bosses which are hard for a JRPG.

Call of Duty 4 190 -> 770 of 1000 31 of 37 Achievements Well it looks like last time I played CoD4 I didn't update. Well I was at 600GS, stuck on the level where you got 20 minutes to get out. I was literally pulling my hair out. That was in November, so now I took off the shrink wrap (I bought it around Christmas, last play was a rental) and put it in again. A quick youtube guide got me through that level, and the next, until the point where you've got 9 minutes to save the missile launch. Now that level is an ARSE. You have to get into a couple of pathways that face each other, and enemies are on either side. You cant peer round to shoot one then the other, and grenades dont work. So I'm basically buggered - and as a result, I almost broke a controller. So I set the difficulty to easy and breezed past the last two levels. I dont think I'll comp this game on veteran, I just dont have the patience, and Activision frustrates gamers like me with these achievements. Why not make a couple online, like reach level 54? (Which is v. easy on the PC version).

BLADESTORM 550 -> 600 of 1000 12 of 18 Achievements I still like Bladestorm - its the Hack and Slash with out the frustration and a little bit of strategy. I got the 3*, and the Book of Camels. I'm taking a liking to the Halberds, the Poleswords. With their 3 specials, they can take out a whole squad which they are weak against. As a result, my Halberds book is at 73%, which is enough for the final achievement. Now I'm working on a couple of other groups - archers and spears. I cant stand the cavalry, though.

Lost Cities 0 -> 80 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements Lost Cities is the XBLA game this week, which I bought so Nellas and I can play. It's a simple card game, with some easy achievements - except the 'Win 300 games' achievement. A game lasts 3 rounds, and a round can last 4-5 minutes. Thats 3600 minutes, or 60 hours.

Guitar Hero III 365 -> 390 of 1000 36 of 59 Achievements Not much on GH3 this week - Nellas and I finally finished co-op easy. We're doing a couple of tracks at a time - I hope to get 5* easy, 5* medium co-op, as well as complete co-op as lead and bass eventually.

Viking 0 -> 90 of 1000 6 of 50 Achievements I got a small chance to play Viking this week. One of my friends had bought it, and came over one evening. I played for an hour, but it looks an alright game. I cant really tell if it's going to be a good one, as there was no real tutorial. But the slicing and dicing was fun, anyway.

G.R.A.W. 670 -> 736 of 1000 30 of 43 Achievements A couple of online achievements on GRAW - a group of 6 of us went for the Crackshot achievement (10x headshots without reloading with at least 5 different gametags in the room) as well as Team Player (Win 30 co-op matches with at least 6 GTs in the room). On the way, I managed to get the Sniper ach (500 head shots in multiplayer).

LEGO Star Wars II 350 -> 390 of 1000 14 of 29 Achievements I started playing this just to get some achievements, and complete it a little more for the 360voice 2* family badge. Yet I can't still stand this game - the levels are still too long, and too boring. It's all a boring grind. I got 2 level completion achievements, then couldn't stand it any more.

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GamerScore:	88841 -> 89487
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	23 / 55
Completed Retail:	43 / 194
GS Completion %:	43.28% -> 43.39%

Country Rank:	89 -> 91
World Rank:	634 -> 637
Completion Rank:	1,425 -> 1,439

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