28th October: GS Update

Another week, more gaming! I might have to tone down some more in the following weeks - work is beginning to creep up and deadlines looming! On the plus side, however, I now own 106 retail games.

borandi likes to game, I like to game, this is a match made in heaven! It takes a gamer score like 54,317 to be as cool as him. That is an improvement of 135 points over last time! He rocked out to Overlord gaining 1 achievement, Madden NFL 08, Speedball 2, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR06 picking up 1 achievement, Carcassonne gaining 2 achievements to complete the game, Catan, E4 acquiring 1 achievement, and then he had to stop because we both couldn't take it anymore... we were spent.

And the games this week:

At World’s End	425 -> 550 of 1000 22 of 30 Achievements
Madden NFL 08	0 -> 1000 of 1000 48 of 48 Achievements
E4	0 -> 15 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Carcassonne	150 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR06	0 -> 50 of 960 1 of 16 Achievements
Overlord	280 -> 530 of 1000 30 of 44 Achievements
Quake 4	80 -> 85 of 1000 7 of 50 Achievements
Beautiful Katamari	0 -> 420 of 1250 26 of 40 Achievements
Crash Of The Titans	0 -> 133 of 1000 9 of 47 Achievements

This is now the forth or fifth time I've rented Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's the only game I've rented, so maybe I'll complete it this time! I only picked it up a few hours ago, and ran through the next couple of levels. I only have 8 achievements left - the last 3 levels, all Calypso pieces, and 100 souls. So that's what, another 3 rentals? :p Apparently the 100 souls can be tricky, but I'll have a bash at it.

I actually found a cheap(er) copy of Madden 08 this week to buy. I cant find it to rent, so I bought it, and had a wonderful sight after my first game on it: 27 achievements for 545GS. This game was very easy :) You can also sim ALL the achievements, as shown by my friend who got 17 achievements for 405GS just by simming a 15min qtr game. Fantastic. Well I had a little trouble on one achievement - the 4 blocks achievement. I kept intercepting the ball instead :p But an hour of simming got that final one. Another game complete Jeeves!

I played the demo of E4 just as a random bored thing to do. It was rather interesting, though I didnt really see the point of it. Then I read the 'How to play' section, and under advice, bought it for 800MSPs. It's a fun game :) Just blowing up stuff to either the music provided, or your own. I added a track with 596BPM :) Makes the game a bit easier too. Though I played for 30 mins with the same music track repeating in the background, and got 17 trillion points. I look on the scoreboard, and lo and behold, 17,000 trillion. WTF?? How long do these guys play the game??? The achievements look tricky though, so I'm not expecting 200 from this one. It's like Geometry Wars on crack.

I was able to boost with 3 other friends my final 2 achievements on Carcassonne: Win vs 3 other players, and win by 50 points. It should have been an easy 200GS, but the lack of people online made the online ones a bit tricky.

Tiger Woods 06 is one bitch of a game. To start with, some achievements require you to play online modes. Modes that EA have shut down for cutting into their 'profit margins', thus you cant get these achievements anymore. W*nkers. Though I boosted a little with rican ninja89, and I got one achievement by accident. Woo! 50pts!

I was also able to boost most of the online achievements for Overlord. 50 wins on slaughter and pillage for each player took around 2 to 2.5hrs. The wins are easy - go kill something, then the other person quits and you get the win. I also played a little of the story mode, getting the Arcanium smelter.

I also boosted somewhat on Quake 4 with mingo21 and rican ninja89. We're going after various achievements, like the 500 excellents and 250 impressives. It's a slow process, probably going to take months. I should also play some of the story mode tbh.

I imported Beautiful Katamari the week of its US release. And I'm glad I did, its a wicked game!! After 7 hrs, I had completed the main quest, now I'm finishing up some of the secondary tasks. For several days, according to mygamercard.net, I was no.1 in the UK for GS!
I'm number one!
Yup, thats no.1! Out of about 15 people who'd played it in the UK =D I want to get hold of the downloadable content for it, but that's Asia only. Probably wont make it to the UK marketplace until it gets released here - sometime in January then.

I rented out Crash of the Titans earlier this week. It's your typical Crash Bandicoot platformer, though lacking somewhat in the graphics department. I didnt get to play it a lot, but if you like your platformers, you'll like Crash Bandicoot.

GS: 52,354 -> 54,442

Completed XBLA:	13 / 35
Completed Retail:	25 / 128
GS Completion %:	38.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	40.68%

Country Rank:	216
World Rank:	1,377

1st October: GS Update

From now on you can see my 360voice profile on the right hand side of this page as a little Javascript applet -->
But I'll still quote it here. Recently the guys over at 360voice have been moving their servers, so its all a couple of days backed up on logs and it's a bit skewiff.

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 50,349 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He played Bankshot Billiards 2, and did it while drooling over my awesome graphics and sound.

Harry Potter OOTP	0 -> 40 of 1000 3 of 41 Achievements
Bionicle Heroes	880 -> 900 of 1000 45 of 49 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	245 -> 420 of 1000 17 of 43 Achievements
Gun	920 -> 1000 of 1000 31 of 31 Achievements
Smackdown vs RAW 2007	970 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements
Frogger	0 -> 15 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	0 -> 80 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	0 -> 115 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements
Overlord	240 -> 280 of 1000 19 of 44 Achievements
Fatal Inertia	0 -> 120 of 1000 11 of 50 Achievements
Stranglehold	0 -> 235 of 1000 15 of 45 Achievements
Surf's Up	0 -> 1000 of 1000 29 of 29 Achievements

I rented Harry Potter today, played it for around 45mins or so. I'm one of those people who despises all Harry Potter paraphenalia - the books can burn, the movies can be peed upon. I avoid it at all costs. But my love of achievements outweighs my hate of Harry Potter, so I finally rented it. It's a very easy game (on easy) so far, and on mygamercard.net the average GS is 400+. It seems a bit long (25hrs+) though to complete, so we'll see how far I can get.

Ok so I'm back on the Bionicle Heroes. Now got 51%, with 7 stages to complete. Hopefully the save wont corrupt this time!! I got 1 achievement - the 2.5mill credits one.

Again with the GRAW this week - completed the game on Hard, with the unlimited health cheats on. The levels are quicker than I thought (3.5hrs for a completion), so now I need to redo the game on easy, then it's all the MP achievements to do.

I spent 4.5hrs on GUN yesterday - I basically played through the whole of the story mode, and finished all the side quests to get the 'all gold' and 'all weapons' achievements. The story mode is actually VERY fun, and I suggest anyone that likes the Wild West to play it, even on easy. I did spend about an hour doing one of the hunting quests - the black/great wolf. That is one annoying bastard! He's first in the badlands, and then to the west of the ranch if you're interested. The online guides are quite vague. But now this game is 1000GS complete, and back on the shelf. Totalled around 20hrs.

Ok WWE really got on my tits. After the last debacle, when the 'win with all wrestlers' achievement didn't unlock, it did after my third match going though on Legend. I then tried going through the Legend achievement using PPVs - so I could set up 8 matches at once. After 4 to 5 hours of that, the achievement didnt unlock. So I went to exhibition, hoping I didnt have to got through the entire list again. Thankfully when I went through alphabetically, it unlocked when I hit Cactus Jack. Another game 1000GS complete, though it wasnt an easy task - around 50hrs total.

This week there were three games on offer on XBLA - Bankshot Billiards (1200MSPs to 900MSPS) and Frogger/Hardword Spades (each 400MSPs to 300MSPs). When they first went on sale, some Microsoft employee made a mistake and put a 50% discount! At that time, I got the Billiards, but then had a nap for 8hrs or so. I came back to see the other two were back up to only 25% discount. Bastards.

But I got them all - Bankshot Billiards is your typical pool game. It's rather bland, and not many modes after the standard ones. Not really worth 600MSPs tbh though. Some of the achievements are on modes that take a couple of hours, so I'll grind them at some point.

Frogger is a load of balls - the frogs move a fixed distance, and you die if you barely hit an exhaust. The achievements look quite hard, so it'll be a while before I get these.

I also played Hardwood Spades, for about 5 seconds. It looks weird.

Yes, I got Halo 3. I spent all week saying the beta was shit, then my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday (the 25th). Haha go figure. It's an ok game - better than GoW, but like I've said before, I'm not a console FPS fan. The story mode is quite bland - point, shoot, repeat. The difficulties are exponential - I tried it on legendary, only not to get past the first set of mobs. Bastards! I also played some online, but the Matchmaking is a joke - I often get into a match where it's 25-5 in Team Slayer (my fav mode). I'm often on the losing team. You can see my Halo 3 profile here.

My girlfriend also bought me Overlord - I've gone a bit further in the story, still on 0% corruption. I'd just before the final smelter, so I guess I'm half way.

Fatal Inertia reminds me of those N64 cheap budget racing games. Easy to pick up and play, but no real depth of options and a bit bland on the graphics. If you get stuck on a point, its fairly linear and cant get past it until you do. Achievements are either very easy, or require time on them.

I've always been told that Stranglehold should be a good game - and it is, for only the first couple of levels. Then it gets very similar. Lots of point and shoot, very linear, and it's just the same style tricks over and over again. MP is crap - everyone has super high HP (thus it needs 20secs of two people shooting one other person, then only one of them gets the kill) - and the weapons are quite unbalanced (the machine gun does next to no damage). Graphically, its exceedingly good. I liked the bit where you destroy half of the famous Terracotta Army.

I dont care what anyone else says - I enjoyed Surf's Up. Its a straightforward kids game, like a linear Tony Hawks' game but surfing. I got around 800GS in two hours, and the other 200GS in the another two. There is a bit of collecting to do, but it's very easy. Each round takes around 3mins, and there's only around 11 rounds in the game. Another 1000GS complete :D Total 4hrs.

I also passed 50k GS doing Surf's Up =D

GS: 48,789 -> 50,699

Completed XBLA:	11 / 30
Completed Retail:	24 / 109
GS Completion %:	41.70%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.75%

Country Rank:	230/213174
World Rank:	1534/1550045

8th September: GS Update

From 360voice:

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 45,574. Not too shabby! That is an improvement of 75 points over last time! He opened up Overlord acquiring 2 achievements, Gears of War, Rockstar Table Tennis winning 2 achievements, as well as checked out what was new in the live marketplace.

And the games:

Gun	920 of 1000 29 of 31 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	10 -> 80 of 1000 4 of 45 Achievements
Rockstar Table Tennis	20 -> 355 of 1000 14 of 29 Achievements
Gears of War	590 -> 650 of 1250 32 of 57 Achievements
Overlord	170 -> 240 of 1000 18 of 44 Achievements
Track and Field	200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements

I got out GUN out again for the sole purpose of getting the last two achievements - 'All gold' and 'All weapons'. In order to get the first involves finding 44 different points on the map - thankfully there's videos for that. The second requires the game to be completed 100% - all sidemissions included. When I last played GUN, I used the level select to get the first 920GS - only downside is that by changing the level, your weapons and such go missing. :( I might have to play through the game fully at least once to get the other GS.

DOA4 was one of the first games I bought for my 360, after having come second in a local tournament, despite not playing it before. Well, suffice to say, real people are easier than the crappy CPU controlled characters that counter every move you do. Bastards. I used an online guide to set up the time attack (single) achievements - gold, silver and bronze time. Downside is, if you get the gold first, you have to re-do it in the particular timeframe to get the other two achieves. Utterly stupid. This game also only lets you quit out at certain points - so if you're stuck in sequence, you'll have to wait until the end before you're allowed to press start. DOA4, you're going back on the shelf.

With Rockstar Table Tennis, I was able to boost for 280GS with rican ninja89 for the online exhibition achievements. I also started playing it a bit more, and now I'm confident with the game. I've beaten the first three circuits (some games were rather comfortable) and only have the all-pro circuit left. Though the CPU is starting to get quite hard!

With the GoW map pack now being free, I was able to download it and do a couple of offline Annex achievements with two controllers. Took around 60/90 minutes to get the 60GS, but now I'm 50%+ on GoW :)

I rented Overload again, and it's still a fun game :) I went through a little more of the story mode, and did some smelting achievements. I'm also back to 0% corruption, thanks to killing a couple of bosses.

I also played Track and Field online a couple more times - though these games I was against people who couldn't really play, so easy wins for me!

If you've been following my blog, you'll know that I've been awaiting Two Worlds - an Oblivion/Diablo/Guild Wars style RPG. Well I recieved my 'Collectors Edition' this friday (that was when it was released here), only to find that the bloody thing is region locked!! I still haven't got my UK 360 back from MS (they recieved it the 28th August), so I'm a bit peeved!!

Also, a couple of dates for your calendar:

• Eternal Sonata (17th Sep, US; November, UK)
• Beautiful Katamari (19th Oct, US; unknown, UK).

Both are pre-orders on my list!!

GS: 45,109 -> 45,644

Completed XBLA:	10 / 27
Completed Retail:	21 / 100
GS Completion %:	40.78%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.01%

Country Rank:	307/210435
World Rank:	1933/1533094