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

3rd February: GS Update

This week starts a regular regime of me working 9-5 each weekday, then using other time to fit in gaming and everything else. As such, no real hard grinding unless it's at the weekend. This weekend, it was Blue Dragon!

borandi is making me proud and his opponents jealous... even if they are bots or mindless AI sometimes! Check out the 71,307 gamer score! That is a gain of 55 points over last time! He rocked out to Blue Dragon acquiring an amazing 6 achievements, and then I came out of my trance and realized it was all over.

Oh, guess what? Our gamerscore challenge is going strong... If you want to see how good I'm doing, check it out! There are 3 other people rocking out on this thing which keeps it fun. Out of everyone, borandi is holding on to the number 2 spot. But, there are still 5 long days left! We need to keep heading for the top!

Ah yes, 360voice are doing an excellent competition this month. If you're part of a contest, one lucky winner each day wins 1000MS points - and there's some other stuff to win. I've enabled 'auto contests', which means I'm added to one automatically each week. Good stuff.

In other news, I received my UK 360 back from repair this week. Technically, it only took 14 days to turn around. However, I was expecting a brand new system, with a HDMI port. This time however, the motherboard got replaced, thats all. Got the free month of XBL though. At least now I can play my games that dont work on my US console.

Blue Dragon	110 -> 345 of 1000 20 of 43 Achievements
NHL 2K7	535 of 1000 11 of 17 Achievements
skate.	0 -> 170 of 1000 17 of 44 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 -> 490 of 1000 33 of 50 Achievements
WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	120 -> 490 of 1000 16 of 25 Achievements
Rez HD	0 -> 80 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Spyglass Board Games	0 -> 115 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	535 -> 660 of 1000 12 of 22 Achievements

Game of the week is Blue Dragon. I've essentially spent a day and a half on this game this weekend, just going through the story mode. I'm now near the end of the third disc, just finishing up some extra dungeons and leveling up the characters. I was able to do the 'Perfect Moon Lasers' achievement - that took 20 or so tries with help from the guide. The guide for that achieve was good, but far too complicated for the time that it gives to do that achievement. Along with that, I've been mastering classes for my shadows, and finished all the Quick Time Events. Achievements left involve 'Master All Classes' for each character, get level 99 on each character, 2 mechat shooting stages and finish all the collection achievements. If I persist, hopefully this will be done by next week. =D

Even though I didnt get any NHL 2k7 achievements this week, I did assist in helping some people get the 'Win an 8 man online tournament' this week. As a result, they've joined my league. I'm now one person short for the achievement, and its an easy 115GS if another person does join. If you're interested, the tourney is called 'borandi' and the password is 'nhl'. I'll happily join yours to help you get the achievement. Apart from that, this game requires me to 'Play with every team', 'Win 30 games online', 'Quit 10 games online', and to 'Win 100 games'. One achievement is glitched, so 950GS is the max score for this game.

I purchased Skate while my UK 360 was broke, only to find that it didnt work in my US 360. Now, I can play it, and it's quite fun. Difficult, but fun. I've played someway into the story, and done ~50 matches online. I also managed to get the 3 wins in a row achievement, thanks to some deathracing. What I think is great about this game is that you can get 10 achievements, and still only have 50GS. This is for the easy stuff, like 'Upload a video', etc. I'll try hard to do as well as I can on this game - with any luck, persistence will be rewarded.

I also picked up GH2 second hand from a friend who didnt want it any more. With my new skill (and persistance on 'Cult of Personality' on GH3), I tackled Hard mode on GH2 with ease - until 73% of the way through Freebird! However, I got the achievement for all the extra costumes, thanks to some money for going through Hard and someway through Expert. This let me get the 1* badge for music on 360voice ;)

I spent the early part of the week pummeling though WarTech. I came across a hitch - two characters come across the most evil boss in their story modes. I can't defeat it with either one of them, but I was able to get the other 6 story modes done, as well as all 8 characters score attack modes (as boss battles are not a factor in that mode). Along with that, I managed to find one (1) person online to battle with. I won with ease, which I thought was strange, until I saw my opponents win loss record - 0-117. He didnt put up much of a fight, so I'm wondering why he wasnt attacking that much. Nevertheless, that one fight got me an achieve worth 100GS. I'm not complaining!

The game this week on XBLA was Rez HD. I missed out on Rez when it appeared on the Dreamcast, and everyone I knew who had it said it was great. So 800MS points later, I picked it up. Rez is a short game - it can be completed in ~80 minutes. I got to the final boss with maximum lives and died though. I got achievements for doing the first four stages, and hopefully someone will post a guide soon to get the rest.

I also picked up Spyglass Board Games for 400MS points. I needed some points for the 2* Social badge on 360 voice, and looking at the achievement guides, this old game seemed to be quite easy. It was - one hour got me 115GS and all the offline achievements. No-one plays this online, so I'll find a boosting partner for the rest.

I also got back to LMA Manager 07 - the game which ended my UK 360 last time. Easy enough, I finished that season I had started. Now, 4 seasons remain for that full 1000GS. Each season takes ~5hrs to do, so one weekend I'll finish this one.

GamerScore:	70,382 -> 71457
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 44
Completed Retail:	34 / 158
GS Completion %:	42.58% -> 42.87%

Country Rank:	142 -> 137
World Rank:	910 -> 905
Completion Rank:	2,007 -> 1,954

Extra note - Phantasy Star Universe, a game in which I have 1000GS, has now released some extra DLC for some extra achievements. Three downsides to this - extra content costs 1600/2000 MSPs, requires online play (9GBP/mo), and my completed retail score will go down next week. Damn. I liked PSU, but this is annoying.