7th October: GS Update

I had to set aside my plans for world domination yesterday when borandi decided to game. Our score is 51,359 and always improving! That is a gain of 115 points over last time! He opened up Joust adding 1 achievement, Frogger gaining 1 achievement, SEGA Rally™ picking up 3 achievements, Bankshot Billiards 2 acquiring 2 achievements, Carcassonne finishing 1 achievement, and... hmmm... maybe that was all... it felt like we played more games.

I also want to mention that borandi's gamer reputation decreased somehow. I don't know who he ticked off, but that isn't good. I hope it was just a misunderstanding!

Lol yes I got my first 'negative feedback' today. I've been playing some Sega Rally online, and I'll explain a bit below:

Carcassonne	125 -> 150 of 200 10 of 12 Achievements
Bankshot Billiards 2	80 -> 120 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements
SEGA Rally™	0 -> 75 of 1000 6 of 44 Achievements
Frogger	15 -> 140 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Joust	0 -> 40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Ratatouille	0 -> 145 of 1000 12 of 50 Achievements
Halo 3	115 -> 125 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Juiced 2: HIN	0 -> 55 of 1000 8 of 60 Achievements
Conan	0 -> 115 of 1000 10 of 49 Achievements
Aegis Wing	75 -> 85 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
The Darkness	295 -> 305 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	0 -> 10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements

Carcassonne, in reality, should be an easy game to get 200GS in - all you need is three people online. But not many people have the game! I managed to get the 5000 points achievement worth 25GS - all I have left is the 'win player match by 50points' and 'build a 9+ city in a 3+ player match'.

I've been grinding some on Bankshot Billiards - I was able to do all the golf tables under par. On some of the tables, it was necessary to foul in order to get through the tables with the least number of shots. I also did the 'Speed Freak' achievement - this is one of the hardest to do, requiring 12 tables to be finished in 12 minutes overall. Basically, if there is a lot of balls, put your first three shots at full power, then the rest with 3/4 backspin to stop the ball quickly. Now I have to do the '5 games of 8-ball without losing a turn', '50 games without losing a turn', and all the ones leading upto '200 wins' - I got the 25 wins in the last game, so only 175 to go :p

Sega Rally is a weird game - so I'm glad I only rented it. It's weird - there is no 'out of track' area, you just bounce off. It's like a true arcade version of DiRT - the faster you go, the better you fare. Cornering and breaking is necessary but not critical. I'm pretty sure I got my negative feedback for coming up on the inside of someone, not breaking in time - so he went into the wall, I bounced off of him, but as I had the higher speed I was pushed away faster and gained the position on the track. It's a weird game in that respect, and I'd suggest DiRT over it tbh.

I've also grinded some on Frogger - going after the speed achievements, the saving achievements and the level achievements. All that's left is the level 4, level 5, and the co-op achievement. Now I'm crap at Frogger, so to get the 30k co-op would be hard, given that I can't even get 15k.

I signed up a while back to receive 2 free XBLA games from Microsoft, and I got the codes through - One for Robotron (which I already have) and one for Joust (which I didn't have). Joust is a classic retro game - easy to start, but very hard very quick. Only 58 people have the full 200GS on this, so I dont think I'll be getting it any time soon. But I got to level 5 on my first attempt, and tried very hard to get the level 1 survival achievement. By luck I got the Pterodactyl achievement too.

I rented Ratatouille - it's a fun game, but someone got the coding wrong. If you die, you have to start at the beginning of a level, even if you were right at the end of it. Every level, there are 100 tokens to collect, and if you miss one before the story continues, you forfit that achievement. The camera is appalling too. Apart from that, it's your standard platform fare, regardless that it's a game of a film. Just some grinding at this game would result in 1000GS - the minigames are easy, just mild bits of skill here and there, as well as the collecting.

My journey on Halo 3 has been an eventful one. I'm going to quote what I put on a forum with regards matchmaking this week:

What a load of bollocks. Apologies for the colourful language, but the matchmaking system on Halo 3 is a F*&^$%G joke. Either that, or people intentionally reduce their rank to play the inexperienced.

For example: I'm on one particular map, rank 7, against four rank tens - and I do rather well. I then play the same map against rank 3/4, and get raped - full of bunny hopping fuckheads that always know where you are, one hit kill, then get you soon after you next spawn.

That was on free-for-all ranked - team ranked is even worse. It once put together a group of four rank 8s against four rank 3s. The 8s won by a nearly perfect margin.

What is this joke of matchmaking, seriously? I'm now being pared up in games where everyone else has a red ping - so when I goto punch, it doesnt register. FFS, there are 200k people online, and you're telling me there isnt a decent ping match around my rank in the UK??

Apart from that, Halo 3 is all well and good. Tune in next time for another episode of borandi's rants.

PS Wtf is the 'Steaktacular' Badge???

I started some Free-for-all matches which resulted in this rant - got a multikill and a melee achievement. This thursday I'm taking part in a Halo 3 game night, so hopefully I might get some achievements then!

I also rented out Juiced 2. It's a good driving game, but there are some flaws. The achievements are unoriginal - get to elite offline, get to elite online, get all goals offline, get all goals online. Online mode is a joke, and the creators thought that a lot more people would be playing it - each league has it's own lobby (which takes 20 seconds to log in or out), of which you're lucky if anyone is there. But offline it's straightforward - easy money by getting to league 6, going in the betting race, waiting until one racer has odds of 50:1, and you can get them to win. It's a long game for achievements.

Conan was also rented - it's a budget hack and slash, with the odd sight of boobies. Hack, Slash. Every-so-often, you will have to use certain moves to get achievements, but it's hack, hack, slash, slash. Just slightly better graphics than the PS2, but not pushing the 360 any.

I got my four controllers together to play Aegis-Wing, and make the four ship formation achievement. 60 seconds, easy to do. Couldn't control the combined ship though!

I rented the Darkness - not a lot of people online, and subject to very, very bad lag. Best if you host the game personally. I got a couple of basic achievements, didn't play the single game any though.

I played Hardwood Spades - it's still an odd game!

GS: 50,699 -> 51,359

Completed XBLA:	11 / 32
Completed Retail:	24 / 113
GS Completion %:	40.77%
GS % (Non-Demo):	43.63%

Country Rank:	235/213967
World Rank:	1527/1553389

5th July: GS Update

Overlord	0 -> 170 of 1000 14 of 44 Achievements
LOTR, BFME II	0 -> 10 of 705 2 of 35 Achievements
Vampire Rain	0 -> 650 of 1000 13 of 20 Achievements
The Darkness	255 -> 295 of 1000 22 of 50 Achievements

Its mainly been an Overlord couple of days =D I played the demo, and thought it was rather good, so I rented it. What's the best way to describe Overlord? Third person Dungeon Keeper mixed with Pikmin. You control a big ass 'Overlord', with the power to control minions who do your tasks for you. Use the Right Stick to move the minions around to pick up stuff, smash barrels etc. I've probably played the game about 6/7hrs, and I doubt I'm even 15% of the way through it. It's a very long game, and in order to get all the achievements, you have to play through at least twice =D If you liked Pikmin or Dungeon Keeper, get this.

Unwrapped LOTR: BFME2. I've played it on the PC a few times, and I wasnt that keen (like with most RTS games). This game differs from other RTS in the fact that most maps are very short - you wont see a 3hr brawl on one map - maybe only 30 mins. The achievements look easy enough, though when I did the second mission today, I needed to do all the secondary objectives such like 'Destroy all tunnels', and the other side bastards started building a tunnel (which counts as a tunnel) about 0.2 seconds before I completed the last primary task. Bah humbug!

Vampire Rain is an interesting game. Imagine Metal Gear Solid meets Blade (the films). The first two single player missions involve running from waypoint to waypoint, avoiding the nightwalkers/zombies. If they see you, they are very powerful and you're dead in less than a second. So keep with the stealth, and it should see you through. I started going after some of the secret achievements, and thus spent 45mins on the 2nd mission, only to die 5 metres from the finishing point. Bleh.... Though I did team up to boost for the online achievements. Took just over an hour to get ALL the online achievements (which is pretty pants tbh), which can be done with two people and private player matches.

Had another little play before taking back The Darkness, and got the 'collect 75 collectables' and 'summon 50 creatures' achievements. I'll get this out again soon to at least complete the story mode, if not participate in some more online brawling.

GS: 36,139 -> 37,009

Completed XBLA:	7 / 21
Completed Retail:	17 / 79
GS Completion %:	40.70%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.11%

Country Rank:	451/203695
World Rank:	2624/1509377

3rd July: GS Update

The Darkness	0 -> 255 of 1000 20 of 50 Achievements
Forza Motorsport 2	303 -> 409 of 1000 27 of 44 Achievements

The Darkness is rather run. I'm not one for horror films, but The Darkness is hardly horror, despite what the packaging might have you believe. Its just a lot of blood, guts, shooting, and ripping hearts out of peoples chests. I've got at least 1/3 of the way through Single Player on normal (rather than easy, heh) and so far I havent been frustrated much. Infinite lives, but it respawns you at the beginning of the stage (annoying on long stages). Very linear, but it works well. Achievements are all spread out too, which is a good thing. Single player achievements look fairly easy (except complete on hard mode), online ones are a bit annoying based on the fact that most servers are fairly laggy, thus host advantage is almost 2:1 if not 5:1 in kills. I quick did a few secret achievements thanks to these phone numbers. This game, overall, is a nice break from the WW2/GoW type FPS scenarios. Controls are half decent too (despite sticks on FPS games), apart from jump being Y and not A. If the controls were a little more stealth oriented, it would fare better I feel. But overall, a good game. I'll be renting this again soon.

I've now only got 2 tournaments to go on Forza 2 career mode, both requiring level 50 to participate. I've also started to purchase cars from regions where I've already unlocked all the cars there. A word of warning, if you've barely touched upon Ferrari, expect to pay around 3 mill for their 19 cars. It drains your bank balance a bit too much! I still have 3.5 mill left, and I reckon I need another 2 mill to get to level 50. The new level 45 endurance race is giving me 142k for 1hr 5mins, so I'll stick with that for a while too.

GS: 35,778 -> 36,139

Completed XBLA:	7 / 21
Completed Retail:	17 / 76
GS Completion %:	40.96%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.51%

Country Rank:	481/203230
World Rank:	2809/1506376