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

23rd September: GS Update

I didn't think I would see him yesterday, but borandi was back and ready for action. Total gamer score is 48,689 points. That is an increase of 215 points over last time! He rocked out to Blazing Angels, Marvel Ult. Alliance finishing an amazing 7 achievements, Guitar Hero II, EarthDefenseForce 2017, Carcassonne, Burnout Revenge winning an amazing 6 achievements, Smackdown vs RAW 2007 gaining 2 achievements, and then borandi went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed.

Hmmm... I just realized... borandi must not have anything major going on in his life right now because we have gamed 30 days in a row! Can you believe it? Give us the badge for streaking! w00t!

Smackdown vs RAW 2007	860 -> 970 of 1000 27 of 29 Achievements
Burnout Revenge	0 -> 55 of 1000 6 of 36 Achievements
EarthDefenseForce 2017	0 of 1000 0 of 6 Achievements
Guitar Hero II	480 of 1000 32 of 50 Achievements
Marvel Ult. Alliance	120 -> 230 of 1250 18 of 58 Achievements
Test Drive Unlimited	360 -> 590 of 1000 32 of 46 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	840 of 1000 19 of 23 Achievements
G.R.A.W.	145 -> 245 of 1000 10 of 43 Achievements
Aegis Wing	45 -> 75 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements
BOMBERMAN Act:Zero	250 -> 350 of 1000 20 of 50 Achievements
2006 FIFA World Cup™	500 of 1000 4 of 5 Achievements
PGR 3	35 -> 175 of 1000 7 of 25 Achievements
Chromehounds	120 -> 140 of 1000 6 of 49 Achievements
DEAD RISING	80 -> 140 of 1000 7 of 50 Achievements
DiRT™	370 -> 420 of 1000 24 of 49 Achievements

It's been retro game week this week. I looked through my played games list, and went through my list backwards a few for the games that I own.

Last time I played WWE 07 I had got to the point where I had to finish the last couple of belts by doing the challenges in the PC. I was having a lot of trouble - but I changed the settings so there was no ring-out or DQs, so I could get weapons out the side of the ring. That made most of the challenges easy, apart from the 2vs2 matches, as my partner would often get pinned in the first couple of minutes. The Kahli vs. woman match at the end was actually quite easy - I was able to keep doing grapples from behind to damage his head so it went red, then put him on the floor and kept damaging his legs till they were red, then it was an easy pin. I also went through the roster pinning everyone on hard mode, to get that achievement. Though I did it by choosing one wrestler to pin the next and so on, I should have got the 'win with every wrestler' achievement, but it didnt unlock (some sort of glitch). That hard mode achievement took around 3 hours to do though, so I might wait until next week to do the equivalent Legend mode achievement.

I took Burnout Revenge off my 'still to play' shelf and started to go through it. NickHarkkonen and I took turns in career mode, and I also did some online mode - which was very fun to play when I wasn't hitting random trees. EA have shut down all their sports '06 games servers, so I'm surprised they haven't shut down their Burnout servers yet. All the achievements in this game require a lot of playing, hence why I've only got a few easy ones atm.

Nick and I are on lvl 33 of EDF - another 20 to go until we finish easy mode. Health around 700 and it's very easy - we've even been doing some levels on the difficulty above easy to get some better weapons.

We also cranked out some GHII, with Nick starting his career mode on Easy. I did a couple of songs on Hard (I still can't get passed that one song, but I'm able to do the rest in that section) and one on expert.

Nick and I also did some Marvel Ultimate Alliance - a game I think is a lot better in co-op mode than single player. We've just been grinding through the main story - we've just started Act 2. It's a fun game, just a bit boring.

I got out some Test Drive Unlimited which I haven't touched in a while. My goal was just to get some easy achievements, but I also did the Island Tour race in my Koenigsegg CC8S - 118miles took only 44 minutes (I was doing 260mph in the straights) - which gave me 30GS. I was able to reach Champion level (needed 450GS) which unlocked a very easy speed race which gave $75k per win (so about $150k/minute). All that money has given me most of the collection achievements.

I'm now 20 games into Serie A on PES6. It's a long hard grind, but now only about 140 games to go until 1000GS.

I also played some GRAW which I haven't touched in a while. I was told of some cheats available for infinite HP, so I did the first 4 levels on hard :) Though there are still quite a few levels to go.

I played some Aegis Wing - using 2 controllers I got the 'combine with a friend' achievement, as well as the 'dont shoot for a level' one. I have 4 controllers, so I guess I can do the 4 ship formation achievement too.

Bomberman Act Zero is an annoying game, but I got a few of the Secret Panels now that there is a guide for them :)

Fifa 06 is an odd game - an easy 500GS and a very tough 500GS. The tough part is to do some challenges, and I was able to do another 5 this week. The hard ones are still to come though.

I've never played PGR3 seriously, so I went someway though career mode this week. I was able to get a platinum medal on manual for 60GS using the fastest car on the first speed track.

Also did some online with Chromehounds online, getting the '50 shots fired' achievement (i.e. 50 HOUNDs destroyed.

I haven't played Dead Rising since January 2nd - 5 days after I got my first 360. That was on a 13" SCART CRT, so now I'm using a 19" HDTV, it looks LOADS better. I'm able to actually do parts of the story - but I prefer mindlessly going around killing zombies :) I got to the gun shop with the psycho, but he killed me :(

I also did the online achieves for DiRT while I was still renting it.

GS: 47,769 -> 48,789

Completed XBLA:	11 / 28
Completed Retail:	21 / 104
GS Completion %:	41.89%
GS % (Non-Demo):	45.18%

Country Rank:	266/212000
World Rank:	1677/1543243