10th April: GS Update

Ok so I didnt make a gamerscore update last weekend, mainly because I was too busy. Busy with making extra posts, game guides and watching Zero Punctuation. Deal with it =D . Coupled with this, I'm doing a '2 for 3' deal on updates - 2 in 3 weeks, because I'm away this weekend. Away is as far as I wont update, but still near to a 360 enough to keep my streak on 360 voice going.

Having a new gamer picture is like eating out at a new restaurant... you go in and everything is different and... ok that really makes no sense... bad comparison... never mind. In gaming related news... borandi seemed really excited to play yesterday. Our current gamerscore is 85,191 . That is a boost of 60 points over last time! He played Thrillville: OTR, PAC-MAN winning 1 achievement, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero II, Brain Challenge™, DOOM, and then borandi developed a funny twitch and went to try and sleep it off or something. Crazy humans...

Good thing borandi and I got some play time in! Every day we play is another opportunity to pull away from Donny NL and that 40,257 gamerscore!

Hey, I almost forgot! The gamerscore challenge that borandi is competing in is on day 2 and we're doing our best to win this thing. Check out the progress right now! 12 other competitors are racking up achievements and powering up their gamerscores, hoping to secure a victory! Currently borandi is hanging on to the number 6 spot. We've only got one day left. Let's cancel everything on our schedule from school to work to sleep (haven't been following what borandi does these days) and win this challenge!

This week/update brings up several long time completions, and a new game completion. Along with that, I've lots of hand cramp from Guitar Hero and no achievements to show for it. Almost had one, and also trawling through expert on GH2, even 5*ing a few. I also found this site for GH3, giving some of my more spectacular achievements:

Now for the games:

NHL 2K7 650 -> 700 of 1000 13 of 17 Achievements I'm having another crack at this game. Technically I don't have much left - Win 100 games, play 30 online games, quit 10 online games, and the (gliched so no-one can get it) score a penalty on the hardest difficulty setting. I got the 'Win with every team' achievement though. As I'm writing, I'm going after the 100 wins, and later tonight MR WHIPPY 10K and I will be doing the online achievements.
Brain Challenge™ 50 -> 70 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements Not a lot on Brain Challenge - mingo21 and I did the '10 online wins in a row' achievement for 20GS. I'm at 37% brain usage, so almost at 40 for that achievement.
PAC-MAN 130 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements Pac-man can go to hell! Haha well the last achievement is bugging me, and according to people online on forums, it's bugging them as well. It involves eating every ghost 4 times in the same level. Now there are online videos for this, but since then I believe Namco have put in a random element so the ghosts don't always follow the same path. I tried for 2 hrs last night for the final achievement, and didnt get it. So I might just have to leave this one. On the otherhand, I got the level 21 achievement.
Thrillville: OTR 130 -> 945 of 1000 48 of 50 Achievements Well I finally sent this rental back, 55GS short. Most of the achievements were easy, just required some grinding. I was lucky on the sideshow achievement, with the 'splat-a-mole' game giving me 5* after 3 tries (some people on forums had 50 odd tries before getting it). The two achs I have left are the ultra hard one (Beat Event Horizon 2 on hard) and beat every arcade game. I did manage to get the 'top 10 in the world' achievement, by building the shortest track on one of the racing games, and finishing a race in under 17.4 seconds. That's a sneaky achievement!
Army of Two™ 65 -> 80 of 1000 4 of 37 Achievements Not much to report on Army of Two. I started the main game a little, healed my partner. This does look somewhat like a fun game, but I reckon it's better in co-op and might wait to play it then.
Mr. DRILLER Online 0 -> 90 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements I bought Mr. Driller. It's very fun, in an N+/Geometry Wars style of 'breaking the controller'. The concept is simple - dig down, don't let stuff fall on you, don't run out of air. Yet it's tricky - you'll have to drill around some blocks, then maneuver so that more blocks dont fall on you. Then you have to drill sideways to reach the air pickups. It's fun, and frustrating. Online is poor - the host having the advantage. I managed to get one online achievement, but most people quit as they can't do anything, and that doesn't count as a win.
A-Train HX 640 -> 1000 of 1000 24 of 24 Achievements YaY I completed A-Train! I did my guide for 640GS (which I will post here soon), and then between several of us at x360a.org, we managed to figure out the rest. I then did some videos for my guide. A fairly easy 1000 in the end - there's only one or two real tricky achievements, but once you understand the way the game works, it's relatively simple. Game Complete!
Forza Motorsport 2 970 -> 1000 of 1000 44 of 44 Achievements The last achievement I needed was the 'One Million Online Credits', which was fairly easy - just kept playing the Nissan Speedway with my Ford GT40 (or TVR Speed 12 or Mercedes SLK-GTR, depending on what was allowed). I managed the final 126k in a night, totalled about 10hrs online (which did include some boosting). A very heartwarming 1000GS. Game Complete!
Undertow 165 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements Likewise with Undertow - just needed to grind out those 10k kills. 80 kills in 2 mins with the first map, I just did 1500/2000 a night to get it. Game Complete!
Catan 110 -> 120 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements I haven't had an achievement on Catan for ages, however I was lucky to invite in mingo21 into a game for 10GS. Mingo has all but one ach on Catan, the one he is missing is the '1000pts in online play', despite having won almost 200 games now. Some people have that ach, so we is thinking that it's just being a bit glitchy.
Winning Eleven 2007 240 -> 280 of 1000 7 of 23 Achievements Like I said before, this game is essentially Pro Evo 6, but renamed for the US. I won one of the longer cups since the last update, a nice 40GS. I'll soon start on the leagues. ===================

GamerScore:	83701 -> 85191
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	18 -> 19 / 52
Completed Retail:	38 -> 40 / 192
GS Completion %:	41.13% -> 41.80%

Country Rank:	104 -> 102
World Rank:	707 -> 701
Completion Rank:	1,773 -> 1,691

31st March: GS Update

Games have been plentiful abound this week, though I have been keeping back the GS so that a couple of friends of mine can win the Viral badge over at 360voice.

borandi showed up yesterday and we were like a superhero team together. I make a great sidekick! Gamerscore stands at 83,621. Up up and away right? That is an improvement of 60 points over last time! He opened up Winning Eleven 2007 picking up 1 achievement, N+, Brain Challenge™, Burnout Paradise picking up 1 achievement, Forza Motorsport 2, and it's a good thing he stopped there, otherwise the concentrated awesomeness could have blown out my circuits.

This is really good stuff... the more we play, the more chances we have to leave TheWings977 in the dust. Call me crazy, but a 73,076 point cushion is not nearly enough for me...

Oh, guess what? Our gamerscore challenge is going strong... If you are curious, follow along over here. 2 other people are throwing down in this challenge. If I do the math correctly, it means that 2 players X 3 days means a whole lot of trash talk! Currently borandi is hanging on to the number 3 spot. However there are still 2 days left to score achievement glory. Let's get to the top of that challenge board! Go!

Let's see what's happened this week... 360voice has now increased their watcher limit to 100. I trawled through the appropriate threads on the forum, so now I'm watching 50 or so people. If you want to be watched (and if at all possible, please reciprocate =D), send me a message or comment on my 360v blog.
Xbox.com has had a new facelift. The new style is A LOT quicker than the old one, but now is more minimalist. I love it with lots of info on one screen, but they've had to change it to reduce load on their already bursting servers. Fair enough - although now my friends list is split into sets of 15, and often I have more than 15 friends online at the same time, so I have to click more links to find some of them. Bleh.

MS has also started going after gamesavers. Good on them. There are plenty to look for and cut down, so hopefully I'll be able to shoot up the rankings somewhat. All my score is legit, with some boosting and cheat codes thrown in (GUN, GH3), but I've never used someone elses saved game and claimed it as my own.

In other news, there has been lots and lots of Forza. See later for more info! Also, I was delighted to be presented with 6 new games this week by Nellas, after her trip back home to the US for 3 weeks. These were: Army of Two (US), Winning Eleven 2007, Fifa 07, Medal of Honor: Airborne, The BIGS and History Channel: Civil War. Four of these are US only releases, so I'm glad to have them.

Now onto the gamerage!

Army of Two™	0 -> 65 of 1000 3 of 37 Achievements
Forza Motorsport 2	930 - > 970 of 1000 43 of 44 Achievements
N+	55 -> 70 of 200 5 of 12 Achievements
Burnout Paradise	340 -> 360 of 1000 24 of 50 Achievements
Winning Eleven 2007	0 -> 240 of 1000 6 of 23 Achievements
Chromehounds	140 -> 160 of 1000 7 of 49 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	325 - > 365 of 1000 35 of 59 Achievements
Thrillville: OTR	0 -> 130 of 1000 9 of 50 Achievements
A-Train HX	0 -> 640 of 1000 16 of 24 Achievements
College Hoops 2K7	0 -> 165 of 1000 8 of 49 Achievements
Splinter Cell D.A.	100 -> 125 of 1000 6 of 38 Achievements
Big Bumpin	30 -> 40 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
Halo 3	780 -> 800 of 1000 30 of 49 Achievements

I haven't really started in Army of Two yet. I've done the training, then was called into a 4 player online game with rican ninja89, mingo21, and Chewy027. We went after the quick online achievements (play an online match, win an online match without buying any weapons, collect 20 mini-objectives) but the big one is the 'Earn one billion dollars online', which in reality will probably take 250-300 twenty minute matches. That's a lot of $$$.

Ah yes, Forza 2. Almost complete =D I finished all the time trials - the last one on the Nurburgring had me almost tearing my hair out. After 25 laps of 7.5 minutes each lap, I finally beat the 7:09 time requirement. Now, my last achievement is the 1 million credits online, which is incredibly slow. You get next to nothing online, expecially if you're not first. At the start of the week, I had 250k. After a 4-player 75 lap Nissan Speedway win (120k for winning), ZACHSP8 10k managed to rustle up 8 gamers for some boosting - we all got a 75 lap Nissan Speedway win
(150k win). I also did some public matches and won 2x5-player 25 laps and 1x4-player 75 lap race. Now I need only 126k for the achievement. Why am I doing Nissan Speedway? It's an oval, requires minimal thought, and with the Ford GT40 I can do it at 248mph = 35.3 seconds a lap. Now though, most public servers dont like the GT40, so I use a TVR Speed 12, which does a lap in 36.0 seconds. Failing that, I've just purchased and done up a Mercedes CLK-SLR, which does 39.0 second laps and has near perfect cornering.

N+ is also doing my head in. Sometimes it is just so unresponsive. Thus I got the 1000 deaths secret achievement. I'm also upto Chapter 23 or so. Did some online races and co-op campaign, so maybe those achievements might pop soon.

I haven't been playing much Burnout Paradise this week - just the odd race here or there. I'm several races away from my A license, and I also got the achievement for a 10x multiplier in showtime.

Winning Eleven 2007 is the US version of Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which if you remember I have the full 1000GS in it. So I started on the easy achievements on WE07. I've played about 40 games so far, but still have all the leagues and all the online to do yet. Fun =D

I did a little Chromehounds too this week - just 4 or 5 deploys with rican ninja89. I got my 'Capture 100 COMBAS' achievement, so nothing major. This is another game on my 'to do' list.

Ah yes, some GH3. rican finally got the German song 'Erten Was Wir Saen', and we did some rocking - with me on bass, both on expert. Without any effort, we hit 900k, getting the '700k co-op' achievement. In actual fact, only the host got it, so we had to do it again with the other person hosting. We also got a terrific achievement - 2000 note streak! We had planned to do this on Through the Fire and the Flames, but we tried it on this German song, with me on Easy lead guitar, rican on expert bass (no guesses who the better guitarist is, lol), and on our 4th attempt, we got a 2150 note streak. =D

Thrillville is one of my LoveFilm rentals for the time being. As far as I can tell, it's an 'easy' 985GS according to rican, with one 15GS achievement that is stupidly hard. It's like the new version of Theme Park, so I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it.

I've been looking forward to A-Train HX for some weird reasons. One, it was released in Japan ages ago, and now makes it to UK shores. Two, it's not out in the US. Three, most people have played it (in Japan) have the full 1000GS. So I got my LoveFilm rental (minus a manual), and had a go. Without the manual or a guide, it's startling of what you have to do, as there is no tutorial. Online websites have no help, as almost no-one who speaks English has the game. So I fiddled with it, then posted an easy 'Quick Start Guide' over at x360a.org for everyone to enjoy. Within minutes of posting, it was made a sticky, so result! I'll post it here after this post. (Which reminds me, I didn't look at Zero Punctuations post this week, or last week... I'll post those too).

I had my US 360 out for a while this week. So I put in some College Hoops 2k7, a semi-easy game if the guides online have anything to go by. The good thing about this game is the sliders - it makes the game somewhat easier :) However, with any basketball game on the 360, the blocks are the problem achievements. I put the slider up for free throws, and managed the hard free throw achievement =D I need a proper thrash of this game.

I boosted a little on Splinter Cell with rican - just a couple of levels as one of the sides. Nothing too serious with this game yet.

Some Big Bumpin as well - given that there was some promise in boosting it this week. That didnt materialise, but I managed to get that achievement for the middle competition in single player mode which didn't unlock last time.

Yes, I did play some Halo 3 again this week. More specifically, I played through a level to get the skull and the points achievement for it. I need 2 more gold skulls, several online achievements and all but 1 points achievement.

GamerScore:	82246 -> 83701
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	18 / 51
Completed Retail:	38 / 192
GS Completion %:	41.62% -> 41.13%

Country Rank:	106 -> 104
World Rank:	735 -> 707
Completion Rank:	1,767 -> 1,773