2 weeks since last update, so lots of gaming to cover :) Take, for example, my last 360voice entry:
borandi hit the switch and fired me up yesterday... his total gamer score is 109,879.That is an improvement of 385 points over last time! He opened up Jumper winning 1 achievement to defeat the game, Live Score Tracker winning 1 achievement, Unreal Tournament® 3 picking up 2 achievements, Infinite Undiscovery gaining 3 achievements, Yaris, Rez HD, Poker Smash, N+, NHL 2K8 adding 4 achievements, Bully Scholarship Ed. finishing an amazing 6 achievements, and laughed with joy and glee the whole time. I like making people happy.
Started on NHL 2k8 this week. Its... frustrating. The menu system is weird, and like THE LAST NHL 2k7 there is a GLITCHED ACHIEVEMENT!! DAMN YOU 2K SPORTS!! HOW CAN YOU GET THIS SH!T WRONG TWICE IN A ROW!!!... Damn you, and your crappy programmers.
Live score Tracker is EA's attempt to garnish money from us by making a game related to Fantasy NFL and offering easy gamerscore with it. Damn them. Damn us for buying it! I'm beginning to question EA's ethical practices.
Spent a while on UT3 this week - mostly working towards the 200 kills every day for 50 days. On the way, worked on the weapons achievements. Fairly straightforward.
I completely blitzed Bully today. Did some of the story, but mainly worked on the easy achievements, like Kiss 20 Gents, Kick a football 100 times etc. Fairly easy so far, apart from the Shop classes (failed 3x :p).
I preordered IU with my Elite, so got some additional DLC with it. It's a JRPG with a Star Ocean type battle system. Only played a couple hours, seems fun, though the actual speech in game is words, not vocals which is common nowadays in RPGs. Will play more, will aim for 1k GS :)
Jumper is an odd game. It offers a new battle system which is fun, but the camera angles are shoddy and the game is glitchy enough that 3 times I fell through the floor. On a speed run, I completed the story mode in 1hr 1minute, though it took 3 playthroughs to get the achievements. One boss was really hard half-way through the first playthrough, but after that it was easy (even the final boss). Game Complete!
I bought Ticket to Ride for the Social 2* badge over at 360voice. It's a fairly easy 200, though I need to boost some online games. Overall, it's a simple (but long) card game.
Finally finished NBA 2k7. The main problem here were the blocks. I was able to fire up a second controller to get all block related achievements, and find a boosting partner for the online wins. Overall, a nice 1000 :)
I played NBA 2k8 in the same ilk as 2k7 - once the blocks were out of the way, the rest was easy. The only achievements left are the online ones. I like the NBA 2k series - nice and somewhat easy :)
I went into Gamestation and bought Call of Juarez and Kane&Lynch this week in their 2 for 20 (GBP) range. I've wanted CoJ for a while as part of my collection, though I'm not too fond of Westerns. I played this for a little, though it seemed a little frustrating. Must play later.
I got the opportunity to play Buku Numeros - the Mexican version of Buku Soduku. So I quickly wrapped up the 200GS, fairly easy when I found a boosting partner - which was a bit hard, seeing as only 100 people have ever played the game (according to MGC)!
I've had Marvel: UA a while, and tbh I should have completed this already! I spent part of this past update time doing the simulation discs. Some of them were hard to get gold, but by using a combination of the best moves and being quick, it worked. After that, a case of getting all the outfits for every character. It was just a case of using one of the Asgard simulation levels. All that's left is to complete the game on hard, 100 arcade wins, and 2 DLC 'Meet X with X' achievements.
Did some boosting with Roquey on Rock Band - some Score Duels. We traded about 10 each, along with me getting the 5 in a row achievement (he already had it).
============ No position updates this time - MGC are having problems. We all hope they get it sorted soon :) Good luck guys.
The week is all about GTA. GTA this and GTA that. You can't escape it!!! *evil grin*
Oh man, borandi was totally in the gaming zone yesterday when he fired me up to play. 91,332 points of total gamerscore doesn't do his skills justice. That is a profit of 150 points over last time! He played GTA IV winning an amazing 7 achievements, Lost Cities, BLADESTORM, PES2008, Marvel Ult. Alliance finishing 3 achievements, and oh... don't tell borandi this, but I have been getting in a little video chat in the off-hours. Booyah!
Oh and it is time for a gamerscore challenge update... listen up... Bookmark this link now and check out all the action! 4 other people are also involved... which is madness. Currently borandi and I are on top of the challenge mountain... it's so beautiful, and high. I can see my house from here. Is that an airplane, or a space shuttle? How's the weather down there? We're in the home stretch with 24 short hours left! Work for that win!
Well I'll explain GTA a little later on. Apart from that, I got Avatar this week from LoveFilm for an easy 1k, I passed 90k, no XBLA game this week (thanks to GTA), though there was a very exciting talk over at 360voice about their merger with GamerDNA. All those that participated got the 'Plays Well with Others' badge, so I joined in (at 3am UK time) and is was good fun.
Lots of MUA this week. The main story line is complete (on easy), wrapping up those achievements, as is all the costumes from the DLC pack achievements. Alongside that, 500 enemies thrown off a ledge, and enough statues to unlock Daredevil and Black Panther. I'm currently working my way through the simulator (managed to get all the discs), going for gold in each. After that, I'll be going for all the costumes on each character, and that should leave two DLC achievements, and complete on Hard left.
Just one achievement this week - 'Keep foul ratio below 0.1 per match for the last 10 matches'. I'm about 27 games through the English league now (out of 38), going after the 100 assists achievement.
Ah yes, the big game itself. It says I've notched up 24hrs in the game already, though some of that is during dinner, etc., where I forgot to pause it. Well, what do I think? It's a very good, all round game. It has bits of everything, and is an absolutely stunning environment to be in. Game of the Year for sure, unless something like Fable 2 shows something spectacular. The developers have worked hard on GTA, balancing every aspect and giving the player freedom to do what they want, with some minigames and a nice multiplayer option to play around with. Some of my best moments in GTA:
- I met a random guy on the street, high on drugs, called me a eastern european tard, then gave me $100 'courtesy of Uncle Sam' - If you cause a ruckus in a strip club, they throw you out, and all the strippers seem to go outside. I just saw one walk outside, in broad daylight, and she started eating a hotdog. - Bumped into a hobo, he shouts 'I ain't got any bananas!' - Did a double flip in a police car and the lights got smashed, the siren now plays like its broken
A few small bugs though. One - at some point in the game, you have to leave the area of your first home with your cousin. Then, when you go bowling or so with him after that, you have to pick him up from the first area where people are after him. Some other responses from NPCs are also out of sync. Also, a distinct lack of things to do in Single Player compared to previous games, like taking cars to the docks for money etc. I'm hoping the August DLC for the 360 shows some more spectacular stuff.
As far as achievements go, it's not really a game you can get achievements easily in - the average GS so far (according to MGC) is about 25. That said, I passed the 90k mark with GTA as some of the achievements are really easy. Escape from a 4* wanted level? Go up and down the runway on a bike. Spend 5 mins at a 6* wanted level? Take a boat or heli and drive round the unopened islands early on at full speed where they cant catch you. Some of the multiplayer ones look a bit tricky - 'Kill 20 people with a pistol match in a ranked match'. Luckily however, if you're the host, you can set it to a small map, pistols only, 20 min match to get that achievement easy.
Go buy the game and enjoy it. It's worth your monies. Over at metacritic, GTA has been getting 100% marks from a lot of magazines. In my eyes, a good game, but not 100%. I'd give it a 98%, as there are some touchup/QA issues they could have worked on, but its GOTY material nevertheless.
The undisputed easiest 1000GS of any game on the 360. All it involves is tapping B on the first level, until your combo hits 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 - and your combo stays unless you get hit. So I did the full 1000GS on each of my 3 accounts and Nellas did it on hers for her first completion. So I timed it the third time round. One minute and 55 seconds from pressing play on the dashboard, to the full 1000GS. Easiest game ever. Game complete!
Two easy achievements I'd been neglecting on GH2 this week. I had to start a new band to get the 'buy every guitar' and 'buy every finish' achievements, but all it took was 22 5* songs on medium to get enough money, which is now quite simple for me =D
This has been one exciting week (and a half). On a spur for some completions, I ended up with SEVEN new completions. Yup, thats SEVEN! =D
borandi is awesome! Just plain radical even... I say that because we played some games. Did you know our gamerscore is 88,816? That is a profit of 945 points over last time! That was enough to cross the 88,000 mark! Good stuff! He made some progress on Civil War adding an amazing 27 achievements, MS.PAC-MAN picking up an amazing 12 achievements to finish the game, PAC-MAN adding 1 achievement to master the game, Crash Of The Titans acquiring 1 achievement, Puzzle Fighter HD winning 3 achievements to complete the game, BLADESTORM, Burnout Paradise, Bejeweled 2, Geometry Wars Evolved, Texas Hold'em, and then borandi developed a funny twitch and went to try and sleep it off or something. Crazy humans...
This is really good stuff... the more we play, the more chances we have to leave Stignob 10K in the dust. Call me crazy, but a 2,305 point cushion is not nearly enough for me...
And..... guess what? I will reveal the latest gamerscore challenge status to you as a matter of public record. If you are curious, follow along over here. There are 3 other people involved. I didn't know borandi even knew that many people. Currently, borandi has been using every power-up in his achievement-gaining arsenal, rocking the lead with authority! Only one day left too! This is good stuff!
On the 360voice side of things, I've gone for my 1* FPS badge, 1* Retro badge, I'm just a smidgen off a 1* Music badge (thanks to DDR2 and RockBand not being out here yet) and I also got the 1* 'Hail to the King' badge for getting wins in challenges. I won a 13 player, 3 day challenge, came 2nd in a 8 player 3 day challenge (I was giving out the viral), and I'm on my way to winning a 4 player 3 day challenge. I would go for the 2* family badge, but I dont have any of the other games for that one - I'd complete Shrek if I got it from LoveFilm.
I was let on to a fabulous way of playing Texas Hold'em, at least for the 1000 hand ach and the 'get all hands' ach - and it involves clamping down the A button in a normal single player match. Then the game plays itself. However, I've seen people leave this game on all night for weeks to get the 'get all hands' ach, to no avail. Time will tell! (I got the 1000 hands ach this week.)
According to the in-game timer, I've played B:P for 30 hours already. That's a lot, and I didn't realise it was that many. However, some useful information came my way this week. Using the Carson Fastback, it's easy to do drifting burnout donuts in the baseball stadium. With that, it was easy to do the 20x burnout ach, and the 1 million stunt run achievement (I was able to do that normally yesterday, 2.2m, using the quarry and the bridge). With that came the A class licence. I also did some online achs - won an 8 player race, make 50 online rivals, completed 1 and 20 online races. The other online ach required a bit of tweaking - start an online game, but make it private. Now set all the road rules, except near misses. Make the game open, and as one or two people come in, start a race, and eventually the room will fill. When the room is full, go to the stadium and look for a row of parked cars (or Watt St.) and set the best near miss record (make sure 8 people are in the room at this time). If you get that (or someone beats one of your other records), you'll get the 'In 8 player online Freeburn led 6 of the Today's Best Scores' achievement. Easy stuff.
I last played PF:HD in late August - the week it came out - with ZACHSP8 10k and we went after the achievements. After that week, 3 still eluded me - 5x chain, 7x chain, and complete story without using a continue. Well, thankfully the guides are up on the appropriate websites and I had a gander. Within 10 minutes, I had the 5x and 7x chains, and another 10 minutes saw the complete story mode ach. Nice and easy =D Game Complete!
Crash is my LoveFilm rental for the time being. I've basically had to restart my game on Hard, as according to everyone online, that's the best way to do it (so you can get the hard achievement). Well, I like Crash games, except this one. The levels are too long (15-30 minutes), and the game is unbalanced (at least on hard). Tbh, I'd only play a level at a time if I could. And the fact that you have to replay a whole level if you miss one little thing needed for an achieve is also ridiculous. This is akin to 'Lego Star Wars' syndrome. Both games have lead charagcters that don't speak, both games have long ass levels that are too long, both games drag on for years and years with no reprieve, and both games require 100% completions for achievements. These developers can f**k off.
Ol' Mr. Pac-dude can now die a happy death. I did that final achievement, without the hint or whiff of a guide - I used all my guile, and 5 lives in the process. To start, eat enough dots so they all come out. Now keep moving so all the ghosts bunch up and follow you. Now go for a pill and eat the bastards. Repeat. Die in between if you have to. Just kill Blinky. Game Complete!
The little yellow bitch is just as annoying as her no-bow wearing moronic cousin. And yes I do imply that they inbreed. Actually, I prefer Ms. Pac-man, purely on the fact that the levels change, and you're not scurrying around the same path for 21 levels trying to get achievements. Also, the final achievement I found easier on Ms. Pac-man. Game Complete!
History Channel: Civil War is a US only game (based on the US Civil War) that tries to be an FPS. By all means, it is an FPS, although you seem to be the only bastard on your side. I started to play through this game, though the missions as both the Union and the Confederacy. Yet every mission I played (on easy), my idiotic 'team-mates' seemed to enjoy charging at will, dying in the first 5 seconds. There's only me left, doing the rest of the campaign. I did the Union and most of the Confederacy on easy before turning the game off. There are various rants on forums regarding the level of difficulty of this game, basically requiring you to save every 5 seconds in case some enemy decides to shoot through 500yds of weeds and trees and hit you square on the head. Yes this game is difficult, the AI is over-powered, and they've completely missed the market they were aiming for when this game was released. You can't teach the Civil War to 8 year olds when they don't want to play because they keep dieing. And the amount of death in this game is unsuitable for that age group (2 hours and 550 enemy kills). I may complete this game sometime, along with climbing Mount Everest and destroying the Moon.
I had 3 achievements left on NCAA 07 when I started it up again this week - Get 8 5* recruits in a season, Win the National Championship three times in a row, and go through 60 seasons in dynasty mode. Well I played for 2 hours, going for an achievement I already had, which was stupid. Then I was reading on some forums on how to get these achs. It involves having a good run of the National Championships (i.e. simming, saving and reloading in case of loss), then finding each of the recruits' perfect pitch by reloading. So I did. And after the hat-trick, it took 4 tries to get the recruits. After that, a day and a half of simming while watching TV for the 60 seasons. It's a LONG time to sim. Game Complete!
Ah it's always welcome when some GS has been earned on GH2! I was able to get four achievements this week - 300k on a song (Monkey Wrench on Hard), quite a few in co-op with Nellas - 400k co-op (also MW, me on Medium lead, Nellas on Easy bass), 100% a song in co-op (Cherry Pie, both on easy), 600k co-op (Free Bird, me on Medium lead, Nellas on Easy bass). All the achs left are almost impossible, apart from the guitar finishes one. I'm working on getting money for that, though I'm running out of tracks I can do, so I might have to start another band for cash.
I bought KUF from Play-Asia, so now I can join people on my friends list who seem to be always playing it. Well after a dabble with the previous rental, it all seems to be going smoothly now, thanks to Roquey. He's pimped 2 of my characters out, so they easily reach level 120, and we've gone and killed a few of the bosses at each stage. The main time consumption on this will be the story mode for each character, but at level 120 and going through normal difficulty should be easy enough.
I bought Dig Dug after my last post, as I needed an arcade completion for my '20 XBLA Complete' badge on 360voice. For the most part, it was frustrating - often needing 3 lives to complete a level or two. The final achievement is reminiscent of the Pac-man achievements. It involves digging every bit of the screen in a level. However, what they dont tell you, is that you have to dig the areas that are already pre-dug by the game before you begin - so all the holes the monsters live in, and the initial dig down before you get control, all of these have to be dug too. I didn't realise this until 90 mins of frustration and twice where it didn't unlock. A hard achievement, but I managed it. The trick was to keep 2 enemies on the screen, and if they start to get too close, then attack them until they almost pop, then carry on - it keeps them stationary for the max amount of time, allowing you to get some distance. Game Complete!
I last rented Jericho at Christmas. Personally, I thought it was a realitively cool game - nice story line, not too hard. However one thing that did annoy me (and Zero Punctuation) was the level design (brown castle, brown castle, brown ruins, etc) and how I kept back-tracking without realising. However, rican ninja89 had the full 1000GS on it, so I got it from LoveFilm. With the helpful suggestions now available on the achievement forums, 1000GS was easy! On a level of King Kong, I'd say. It took me 2 hours to complete the rest of the story line, then another hour to get the various 'kill' achievements and 'complete without dying' achs. I did enjoy Jericho - it was the right length for an FPS, and a good story. Shame about the level design though. Game Complete!
Ok, so I've been putting off this game a while now. Mainly because I didn't really understand the game mechanics, and it seemed better in co-op. But I got off my arse, and did some single player story. By-the-by, it's an alright game. It plays like most others in it's genre, but offers some RPG elements (which may annoy others). I did some of the story, and also bought the DLC pack for those achievements. I'm currently running around with Dr. Doom, Magneto, Cyclops and Sabretooth =D Most of the achs I'll get from the story mode, others I'll need to specifically seek out.
Looking back at my achievement list, I last played this game (when rented) back in July, but made no note of it as I was moving and travelling at the time. This game is heralded as one of the worst of the 360. It's a WW2 FPS (a genre that's beaten like a dead horse until it looks like it's alive), which for the most part, is quite easy, except for two factors - a) Few checkpoints, b) One level where you have to drive a tank through a town without it blowing up, with no checkpoints. When I played this game last, I was stuck on that level. So I got it from LoveFilm, and tried again. After several hours, I did the mission twice - the first time, it didn't count one of my kills for the objectives, so it wouldn't unlock the final door for me (the bastards) so I had to do it again. At that point I got really angry and sent the game back to LoveFilm.
Not much to say about Brain Challenge, apart from I did the 40% brain usage achievement. When I bought this I started to play it every day. Now it holds almost no entertainment value. How hum-drum.
I rented this game back in July 07, thought it was crap. Then saw it was on sale for 5GBP at Christmas, so picked it up then. I took it out of its shrink wrapper this week, as it's a game I know I have to complete. F4 is by no means a graphically poor game - they've included all the visuals you'd expect. However, they've let themselves down on two accounts - a) The level design is abominable - I'm into the 3rd or 4th stage and I've been stuck several times; b) This type of game has been done to death - so do it right - controls are meant to be responsive! So I did a level, not too much. I've had some advice from MR WHIPPY 10K on how to get the achieves, so it's a case of grind, anger, grind.
MR WHIPPY 10K and I did the online achievements, and I knocked out another 30 wins in quick play (seeing as the online ones didnt count). This leaves a dilemma - the last 50G achievement is glitched - i.e. you can do it, but it wont unlock - or so say the bods at the gamerscore websites. And they're right - only 4 people have the achievement, and they are known gamesavers and hackers of the system. So now, is this game marked as complete? If 2k Sports ever decide to fix their games (but they're as stubborn as EA and cant get their backsides in gear), then I'll go for the final achievement. I wont play it otherwise. Game Complete...?
At last I can consign this one to the completions pile. Eragon has plagued me with annoyance since the first level - seemingly over lengthened for the level of enjoyment. The first time you play, you may think 'this looks cool!', but then realise that what you did in the first 10 minutes is repeated for the next few hours. BORING. Game Complete!
