10th February: GS Update

A very interesting week for gaming. Grinded a couple, and tried a couple new games. Completed a 360voice challenge, started another.

borandi is the best... he treats me right, I treat him right. It is a good thing we have going here. Gamer score stands at 72,657. Not too shabby! That is an improvement of 495 points over last time! He played Blue Dragon gaining 1 achievement to master the game, The Club winning an amazing 27 achievements, Poker Smash, Spyglass Board Games, Catan, and wished it would never end, but it did and that was sad.

A big shift in score is coming soon as well. borandi is competing in a gamerscore challenge titled 'Auto Challenge - #128' and looking to win big. Expect a lot of games, a lot of points, and no sleep!

The only other prevalent news this week is my order of Lost Odyssey. Lost Odyssey is an RPG from Mistwalker Studios (of Blue Dragon fame, featuring the creators of Final Fantasy and this time, Shadow Hearts) that was the major project for the 360 - sort of like Blue Dragon was just a lite spinoff. It's projected to be a Final Fantasy-esque game, due out in the US on the 12th, Aus on the 8th, and the UK on the 29th. However, the Asian/English version is PAL compatible, so I ordered that from Hong Kong for cheaper than the cost of a UK pre-order. Result ;)

Now this weeks games:

LMA Manager 2007	660 -> 670 of 1000 13 of 22 Achievements
Meet the Robinsons	720 -> 1000 of 1000 38 of 38 Achievements
GRAW 2	0 -> 105 of 1125 7 of 52 Achievements
The Club	0 -> 465 of 1000 28 of 50 Achievements
Poker Smash	0 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Blue Dragon	345 -> 1000 of 1000 43 of 43 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	490 -> 520 of 1000 34 of 50 Achievements

Just a small amount of LMA this week. Each season is still a grind, but I've 4 seasons left, currently 10 games into the German league. If this game was nicer on the save/reload feature, then I might be having some fun.

Meet the Robinsons - a fun family game. Difficulty curve may be too high for their target audience, and a couple of frustrating achievements. When I loaded up, I was two fights from the end of the game. Did those, an easy 160GS. With the game complete, I was still missing 110GS - I'd missed one collectable, and not done all the 'special' Havok mini-games. In order to do those, I'd have to play through the whole game to get them. So I did. The first play through took around 7hrs (I reckon). The second playthrough took 4 hours, given that I knew what I was doing and didnt have to worry about the other achievements. Nevertheless, it was frustrating. None of the regular websites I go to have these achievements in the order they would normally be achieved. That would be a nice feature. Nevertheless, Game Complete!

I'd received GRAW2 for Christmas. I'm not a fan of the GRAW series - only sitting through 2 playthroughs of GRAW due to the infinite health cheats. Nevertheless, I'd thought I'd give it a try. It's a nicer game than GRAW - easier controls, and the tutorial is better. However, the achievements are bollocks. Most of them for doing co-op online or on online matches. A small amount for offline. This is stupid from Codemasters. Here this - most people play offline/single player. Don't try and make us play co-op. Otherwise you get angry blogs like mine. Take a leaf out of CoD4s book - a good game gets lots of Online Play, even though ALL the achievements are offline only. Get with the game Codemasters, and make something decent (for once).

I picked up The Club this friday. It was released here on Friday, in the US on the 18th/19th. As a result, there is almost no-one online. However, this game is fun. Imagine Hack-and-Slash gameplay with guns, with points, and combos. Its that good. The single player mode, on the easiest setting, is quite short. 8 locations, each with 6/7 events using the whole location. The harder difficulties require lots of skill, so there's lots of replay value - as well as trying to get high on the leaderboards. Online modes consist of your normal DM, Team DM, CTF, as well as Siege (try and take over a base), Hunter Hunted (like a virus mode) and others. The only downside to this game is that searching for matches takes a while - so when they do appear on your list, most of them have started/been cancelled. Achievements are quite varied - some offline, some online. The online ones involve doing each location on any difficuly, then insane difficulty, and then some other skill based ones. Offline involves killing X amount of people with Y weapon, and the stereotypical 'win on every map' type achievements. Also, there is the -now quite boring- 10,001 kill achievement, called 'No, Seriously...' (a dig at the 10k kill achievement on Gears of War called 'Seriously...'). Overall, a fun game, that allows pick up and play. After the first day, I was 12th in the world with 415GS. Good stuff ;) A hard 1000GS though.

This weeks XBLA game was Poker Smash - Bejeweled meets Poker meets Puzzle Quest. Its a winner - pick up and play, impossible achievements, and good fun. Go play the demo - if you like, its a definite pickup at 800MSPs. I got some simple chain achievements - 3x and 5x - but the difficult one is 24x that I'd never get :(

The big game of the week (again) was Blue Dragon. Using the guide, lots of achievements came my way. The big worries were whether I'd get the 'collect all items/monsters' achievements. But they came quite easily - all I'd missed was a couple of level 1 spells that I could go back and buy. The long achievement was the 'get all characters to level 99' achievement. That took 4 hours of grinding, just fighting the same monster over and over again. Nevertheless, it works out at 90.5 hours to get that playthrough (I played 30hrs before I restarted, so 120hrs total) and the full 1000GS. Game Complete!

This week also yielded a surprise achievement - completing Hard on GH2. I 4*'d Free Bird, and did some more of Expert. If I could get my hand around those 32nd notes, then I'd be fine ;)

GamerScore:	71457 -> 73072
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 45
Completed Retail:	34 -> 36 / 159
GS Completion %:	42.87% -> 43.51%

Country Rank:	137 -> 129
World Rank:	905 -> 860
Completion Rank:	1,952 -> 1,812

27th January: GS Update

Various gaming this week - some more easy games, some new ones too. Also, hit 70k gamerscore!

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 70,262 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He made some progress on Blue Dragon, Hardwood Spades, Guitar Hero III, and before I even realized it, he was finished and I was sad.

And the games:

WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 25 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Blue Dragon	80 -> 110 of 1000 8 of 43 Achievements
Meet the Robinsons	0 -> 720 of 1000 32 of 38 Achievements
Spider-Man™: FoF	350 -> 1000 of 1000 12 of 12 Achievements
Oblivion	1000 -> 1250 of 1250 60 of 60 Achievements
Assassin's Creed	40 -> 60 of 1000 3 of 44 Achievements

I picked up WarTech: Senko no Ronde before Christmas on a whim - a rare enough game, available for 10GBP brand new. I never considered playing it until browsing through the internet, and it came up on a blog of easy games. I peered over the achievements, and a guide, and yes, it looked very easy - play through story mode 8 times, through time attack mode 8 times, play 100 hours, play 1000 online matches, reach rank X online. On this game at least you can do the achievements on 'very easy' mode =D I trudged through two story modes and two time attack modes in 90 mins. The only problem people online have been saying is that to reach the top rank required for an achievement, it requires 230 wins with a boosting partner, at a maximum rate of ~35 an hour. That's some hardcore grinding. Apart from that, looks like some easy GS.

Yes, some more GH3. I recently placed a note on AceyBongos' Xbox blog describing how I feel about GH3:

I've hit a wall on GH3 - a couple of songs from the end on hard mode, where they really hammer the 32nd notes (Iron Maiden and Slayer). Apart from trying to do those, and getting the 200k on Cult of Personality, GH3 has kinda lost my interest. I hope Rock Band brings something new to the 'press coloured buttons in time' genre. All we need is a release date... =D

So yeah, I'll play it for a bit of fun, but not a lot else. I still have the career co-op stuff to do, when I can find someone willing to go through 48 music tracks four or five times.

I've also been trying some Hardwood Spades. It's becoming easier to win, but the streaks and moon shots seem a long way off. The 100 games shouldn't be hard to get though.

YaY for Blue Dragon! I've been neglecting this way too much, so I ploughed ~20 hours into the game in two days. Now I'm at around the part where I was before I reset and starting playing with the guide. I'm at the same level as I was, but I've played 10 more hours but all my characters have almost maxed out all their classes. The achievement I got was the 'Complete Mechat Stage 1: Perfect' which is thought of to be a hard achievement to get. It took me a couple of tries, but with the guide it was easy enough.

I bought Meet The Robinsons, like WarTech, sometime before Christmas. Again, this was meant to be easy GS - and it is. I've been playing through the story mode, and after 6 hours I'm near the end. However I missed a couple of items, and I might have to playthrough the bastard again to get the final achievements. Apart from that, a very easy game. Graphics, sound, gameplay are above the level of a movie of a film, but nothing spectacular. A second rate game - fun for kids, but not much holding it together.

Spiderman: FoF has been a fun game. The levels are simple, fun, and short. There are 20 in the game, and collecting the 3/4 bits per level makes it a good achievement game. The final achievement is to upgrade your whole team - this requires replaying the final stage about 10 times to complete all the upgrades. Apart from that little annoyance, an easy 1000GS. Game Complete!

I completed Oblivion (to 1000GS) in Feb 07. It was an easy game - I wasnt too fussed about the side quests, and ploughed through the game in a little under 35 hours I think. So up comes the expansion, Shivering Isles. This game costs a bomb under the marketplace, but offers 35+ hours more gameplay over the original game. It would do, if you did the side quests. I was able to borrow a mates 'Game of the Year' edition of Oblivion which came with the expansions (Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine) in order to get the final achievements. 6 hours, and some weird storyline, got me the final 250GS. Game Complete!

Aside: I like Oblivion - its a great RPG. It just lacks a few things, like colour (everything seems like a shade of brown), multiplayer, and 360 mods. The PC version has a large mod backing, where people have created their own cities for the game, etc. and made it easier to navigate and so forth. If the 360 had that sort of backing, people would be playing Oblivion more than they normally do! Nellas has got >160hrs gametime, just trawling through the dungeons in the game.

Yes, I rented Assassin's Creed. No, I dont really like it. It's just not enough substance in the game - I have to walk everywhere, be careful that I dont push people over, the controls are a bit sloppy, and it isnt intuitive. I'm sorry guys, this game goes towards the back of my shelf - or back to Blockbusters actually.

Also, I completed Beautiful Katamari, as per the mini update ;)

GamerScore:	68,512 -> 70,382
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 42
Completed Retail:	31 -> 34 / 157
GS Completion %:	41.72% -> 42.58%

Country Rank:	150 -> 142
World Rank:	967 -> 910
Completion Rank:	2,293 -> 2,007