13th January: GS Update

This week has been somewhat entertaining. On Jan 6th, we had the Microsoft CES Keynote speech, delivered by the one and only Bill Gates (and Robbie Bach). It's Bill's final keynote, and he didnt have much in the way to say about the Xbox 360. No big announcements regarding hardware or packages. All that was said was regards the now 10 million Xbox Live members, and 17 million consoles sold - and they reached that 10 mill target 6 months early. Thinking about it, I dont know one game that has more than 2 million online gamertags associated with it - looking at mygamercard.net, Hexic HD has 1.05 mill, Halo 3 has 1.05 mill (a mere concidence) and I'm a particular world rank X of 1.7 million. Thus a lot of this tags are either SPAM, or just secondary accounts. Currently there are 5 accounts on my system - my main that subscribes, two spares for regional downloads, my girlfriends, and a mates'. Thus it can be clear by '10 million accounts' that maybe 80% of them are SPAM ones. This leads me to another point - 17 million consoles sold, and so few of them go online? Most of the 360 fun is online! Either MS have inflated their figures or just havent got the message out that the 360 is an online console. If they had included wifi as part of the hardware, I could see a lot more 'players' being part of this online community.

As regards the gaming, this week has been so-so. I'm up to my ears in exam revision, thus limited to few games. My 360voice states:

I thought borandi just wanted to listen to music or watch a DVD. Turns out he was there to game. With a gamer score of 66,287, I should have known that was the case. That is an increase of 115 points over last time! He rocked out to Metal Slug 3 acquiring 1 achievement, Omega Five, Hardwood Spades gaining 1 achievement, Scene It? LCA adding 4 achievements, Guitar Hero III, and... hmmm... I forget what else we did...

This weeks XBLA releases were Omega Five and Tron. Omega Five is the side-scrolling blaster (which I bought and think is ok), whereas Tron is the old pre-arcade version of the game (and is crap).

Scene It? LCA	280 -> 445 of 1000 21 of 42 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	10 -> 20 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Omega Five	0 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Metal Slug 3	60 -> 70 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
Beautiful Katamari	1170 of 1250 39 of 40 Achievements
Marble Blast Ultra	30 -> 70 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	420 -> 670 of 1000 27 of 43 Achievements

Nellas and I have played about 4 games of Scene It? this week. As a result, we're slowly starting to get the achievements for '25 questions correct about the 80s/90s/Romance/SFX' type of achievement. I also got a couple of 'get all questions correct in this block' and a short game score achievement. When I'm not embroiled in revision, I could go through this for a while making mental notes of the answers (and using some forums) and hopefully try and get 1000GS in this. The hardest achievements (apparently) are getting 60 correct without one wrong, which will take some skill as I'm not a film buff.

I've spent quite a few days on GH3 this week, mainly for one purpose - to get the '200k on Cult of Personality without using star power' achievement. I've been working on it on Hard difficulty - expert contains too many 32nd length notes and I cant press the buttons quick enough. However, I'm getting quite good on Hard, with 940/980 notes hit and getting most of the hammer-on sequences correct. It's just a case of minimising damage - each time you break a 4x streak, you lose at least 5k in points. My best is at 182k, and I can usually get 175k. Thus, I need to just get slightly fewer mistakes on a run through. Hitting all the notes should get me around 199.5k, but as there are quite a few chords and also there's a little trick of using star power at the end which doesnt effect the achievement. More practice needed, though I've probably done it around 30 times this week.

I fired up some Hardwood Spades as a few people on my friends list have the full 200 and I'm stuck with only 10GS. I think I'm getting the hang of it now, randomly getting one achievement, and just need to focus on certain specifics to get the others. More practice methinks.

Omega Five is one of this weeks XBLA releases, which I bought. I've always been a sucker for side scrolling shooters, as long as I can do them. Omega Five is Hard! I've died at the second level boss a few times now, but managed to get all the achievements upto that point. The achievements in this game are more geared towards completing with character XYZ without losing a life/continue. Hard achievements for a hard game.

Another side scrolling shooter, Metal Slug 3, also involves completing level XYZ without dying. After using 71 continues on my playthrough on Hard, I fired up some easy mode and tried that. Several attempts resulted in getting the first level done quick and without dying, however I'll need to grind out the other level achievements. Bleh.

I've done some mild work into getting that 100hr BK achievement. Probably gave around 15hrs while I was revising, though it's hard to tell.

I grinded through some Marble Blast Ultra - successfully completing all the Intermediate levels. I had to redo 4 or 5 to get them under par time, and some of them were frustrating. The Expert levels look impossible, and there's no-one online for the online achievements.

I haven't played GRAW for a while, and I knew I had some easy achievements to do. Last time I played this, I went through Hard getting the story achievements. This is an old game, which if you complete a level on Hard you don't get the 'level complete' achievement for easy at the same time. Thus, this time round, I played the campaign on easy mode for an easy 250GS. Now, the only achievements I'm missing involve serious amounts of multiplayer work. Pah.

GS: 65,762 -> 66,357

GamerScore:	66357
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 42
Completed Retail:	29 / 154
GS Completion %:	38.96%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.16%

Country Rank:	160
World Rank:	1,042
Completion Rank:	2,517

4th January: GS Update

Some good news and some bad news this week.

Whilst playing some LMA Manager 2007, my UK 360 decided to RRoD again. I say 'again', however this current console was a replacement for my last one that I had to send back for RRoD. This new one was built two days before HDMI became standard in Pro machines (so, late August). That makes it 4 months old on RRoD time. A bad deal if you ask me. However, if I get a new one back, fingers crossed it comes with a HDMI port (for my new TV) and is further updated. Incidentally, it was almost a year to the day since I bought my first 360, so I'd be on the wire with regards the original warranty (but if you remember, Microsoft extended the RRoD to a 3 year warranty, so I'm safe).

This has significantly resigned me to my US 360, for which I've been reluctant to play in case that RRoD. But, I spoke to a nice lady called Katrina when I phoned up about my UK 360 - she was really helpful and also mentioned that the UK centre will soon deal with US systems. By 'soon', she explained that probably meant '12 months'. Unfortunately I didnt get any compensation this time. Also, the call centre was outsourced to Germany, rather than the stereotypical India.

But as mentioned, I'm on my US 360. That cuts most of the possible games I can play - all the Racing games, all 2K sports games, and various others. But it allows me to focus on certain other games, like Beautiful Katamari, which I've been demolishing this week.

I thought borandi just wanted to listen to music or watch a DVD. Turns out he was there to game. With a gamer score of 65,507, I should have known that was the case. That is a gain of 80 points over last time! He played Metal Slug 3 gaining 4 achievements, Marble Blast Ultra finishing 3 achievements, Beautiful Katamari, and almost cried with joy. I have that effect on people.

And teh games:

TotemBall	10 -> 20 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Call Of Duty 3	150 -> 195 of 1000 9 of 26 Achievements
Beautiful Katamari	970 -> 1090 of 1250 38 of 40 Achievements
Marble Blast Ultra	0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Metal Slug 3	0 -> 60 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
BioShock	205 -> 275 of 1100 24 of 51 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	535 of 1000 10 of 22 Achievements
Crackdown	810 -> 820 of 1250 43 of 50 Achievements
Arkadian Warriors	70 -> 95 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements

Yes, I fired up the Totemball. With a sheer lack of games to play (and sleep), as well as having my camera set up for once, I just pressed play and had a go. Yes, the game sucks - I can never get in a position to give me full control of the up and down stuff. However, I got the '100 shiny things' achievement.

With all the hype over CoD4, I got out the CoD3. For me, it never made the series feel brilliant - it was just 'another' WW2 clone. However, I got over this step, and continued with my single player (which I last left on 4th August). Within 10 minutes I had two more achievements, and it seems relatively straight forward. I might work some more on this later.

Now to the 'Game of the Week' - Beautiful Katamari. I've had some laughs, some tears. I've trolled forum after forum, looking for those elusive items to get my 100% completion. There were several problems, though. Some forums were diabolical and didnt help at all. After downloading the DLC, it puts the extra items in the middle of all the other collection items, however are not required for the achievement - certain people online had the DLC, others didnt, thus some locations were different and some items were not needed for the achievement. After around 10 hours of searching, asking questions online, and often doing a whole stage just for one item, I got my 100%! w00t! Also, along the way, I got the 50 hours playing achievement. That leaves two left - 200 requests completed, and 100 hours. It'll be a case of quickly doing the requests, and leaving the console on an eternal mode for the hours. Each worth 80pts, totalling 1250. Watch this space!

In the december update, MS lowered the prices on certain XBLA games. One of them was Marble Blast Ultra - a game which I'd played the demo of and quite liked. Thus, at 400MSPs, it was a steal. Upon purchase, I raced through the easy stages all under par for those achievements, then got a couple of stages into intermediates. The main downside to this game is that it's not entirely intuitive - repeated plays of the same level start to be required to get through the level. Also, the achievements on offer yield quite little for a lot of work. At least its a pick up and play game.

Metal Slug 3 - the new game on XBLA this week. While 'new' to XBLA, its an arcade classic, one that all gamers that have been around for the past 10 years should have played. Its your typical platformer/shooter with big a$$ guns and explosions. I snapped it up at 800 points, and decided to complete it for once. 45 minutes on hard mode with infinite continues yielded most of my achievements, with a quick burst on easy to get another. This game is a great arcade title - still as good (or bad) as it was when it was released. Admittedly, its easy to get killed, and most of the achievements rely on not dying in a level, but its quick, easy, and fun. Well worth it (even if you stay at < 100GS).

I'm quite ashamed to have neglected Bioshock for so long. I last played it in September when I rented it, then I traded 3 games (TMNT, Gun and Open Season) for it off a friend who didnt want it. It's sat on my shelf for over a month now, and I only put it in my console this week. After having to relearn the controls (and the storyline), I got another chapter into the game, saved a few little sisters, and took a few photographs of splicers. Some quick and easy achievements, now I'm upto 'Cohen's Masterpiece'.

LMA Manager - the RRoD culprit. I was just into a new Italian league - about 20 games in. It should be an easy 1000GS, as long as it doesnt break anything.

Crackdown! I did the online collection achievement (100 markers in 2:30) with time to spare, then was told of a brilliant website for the other achievements - http://candiedskull.com. Thus I got half of the stunt markers in the game, with the other half to get when I put the game in again. That website also gives some hints to the racing achievements, which to be honest, aren't that fun.

A little more Arkadian Warriors too. Upto stage 11 now, and got the 100 items sold/bought achievement. More grinding on this should net the full 200GS.

GS: 65,392 -> 65,762

Completed XBLA:	15 / 41
Completed Retail:	29 / 153
GS Completion %:	38.94%
GS % (Non-Demo):	41.16%

Country Rank:	152
World Rank:	1,022