17th February: GS Update

Various ups and downs gaming this week. I ended up putting in all the games that I own that I've not played yet into my xbox, so they would all show up in my profile. Hopefully some 0 GS games would shame me into playing them ;) Also received my copy of Lost Odyssey =D

It is that time of the week. I got your weekly recap right here: Oh man are my cores just rocking... borandi played seven days last week! SEVEN! That is a NUMBER SEVEN followed by NO ZEROS! HOT! Ready for this? Last week saw an increase of 1784 points! My eye almost bleeds looking at a number that large! Getting 87 achievements can do that to you. I was there. I saw it!

I told borandi to try 15 games last week: Poker Smash, The Club, The Godfather™, DEAD OR ALIVE Xtreme 2, Football Manager 2007, Hitman: Blood Money, LOST PLANET, Need for Speed™ Carbon, Over-G, Pimp My Ride, Rapala Tournament, Rumble Roses Double X, SAMURAI WARRIORS 2, Star Trek Legacy, and NBA LIVE 07. It was a mix of good and bad. Oh, and borandi seems obsessed with role playing games lately... You can tell because Blue Dragon was the favorite last week. He played it on 5 of the days.

There are still a couple of games in my US pile I still need to put in ;)

Arkadian Warriors	95 -> 190 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 -> 285 of 1000 30 of 59 Achievements
LMA Manager 2007	670 -> 870 of 1000 18 of 22 Achievements
WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	490 -> 520 of 1000 17 of 25 Achievements
WARRIORS OROCHI	0 -> 40 of 1000 2 of 29 Achievements
DEAD OR ALIVE 4	80 -> 245 of 1000 16 of 45 Achievements
Two Worlds	260 -> 270 of 1000 24 of 41 Achievements
Lost Odyssey	0 -> 110 of 1000 4 of 36 Achievements
Undertow	50 -> 115 of 200 9 of 12 Achievements
Pimp My Ride	0 -> 30 of 1000 3 of 30 Achievements
Football Manager 2007	0 -> 9 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Arkadian Warriors was added to the RPG genre over at 360voice. Thus it became higher up on my priorities list =D For some reason, playing the game this time round was incredibly easy. I completed the last 7 missions in the main quest, got the 500k gold achievement, and at the end redoing the final level netted the 'level 20' achievement. All that's left now is the 'kill 100 with exploding vases' achievement. It should require a bit of grinding the first mission, but not too difficult.

The first GHIII achievement in a while came my way this week =D Was playing some co-op with Nellas, and we got the 100% a song co-op achievement. Unfortunately, some games are weird with two players getting the same achievement at once, so Nellas didnt get it. It was an easy track, so we can get it again.

Last week, I was 10 games into the German season on LMA Manager 07. This week, I finished the German league achievements and the French league achievements. All that's left is the Dutch and Portuguese leagues. Four, maybe five hours of simming I reckon.

I didn't actually play any WarTech this week. I just left the console on for a few hours while working around the house, and got the '10 hours played' achievement. While doing nothing, might as well try and earn something ;)

I started playing Warriors Orochi on advice that it should be an easy 1000GS - about 30 hours or so. Its like Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires, but more RPG and Story based. It's fun - each map takes around 20 minutes (rather than 5) and is quite easy to win (unlike Ninety Nine Nights). Well, except for the final bosses. I got my characters to level 40ish and the final boss kicked my ass. More grinding, better weapons, more skills. Not too hard, just a little bit of playing and grinding.

As I've stated before, Dead or Alive 4 is an annoying game. It's got an annoying difficulty curve, and I suck at it. So rican ninja89 and I went and did the online achievements - 5, 10 and 20 consecutive wins, beat people on 10-14, 15-19 and 20+ win streaks, achieve rank B and D. I didnt take long =D

I opened up Two Worlds for the first time since September this week. I had no idea what I was doing. Controls, storyline, nothing. So I bought the guide - it has the main storyline and all the side quests explained, so the rest of the achievements should be fairly easy. Didn't play it much though. Will focus on it soon ;)

Lost Odyssey. All the best elements from Final Fantasy in a Japanese-RPG, and I'm only two hours in. Seemless transition from FMV to in-game action sequences. It makes Blue Dragon look like a minor 'Side Project' or 'concept car' to test the engine. Get this game, now.

Also did some online achievements in Undertow with rican ninja89. We also started the story mode on Ultra, and did about 5 stages. 200/200 is perfectly possible on this game, just needs some grinding and a small amount of skill (hopefully).

Pimp My Ride is one of those games that has been labelled as 'easy' by the gaming community. So I gave it a 45 minute whirl when I was putting in all my unplayed games. It looks easy, and a bit of a grind. I'll play some more later.

Also with Football Manager 2007 - I just simmed for about 30 mins, and got a few achievements. This game reminds me of FM06, which was crap. Bleh.

GamerScore:	73072 -> 73836
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 45
Completed Retail:	36 -> 35 / 178
GS Completion %:	43.51% -> 39.28%

Country Rank:	129 -> 130
World Rank:	860 -> 856
Completion Rank:	1,812 -> 2,394

It looks like the new PSU achievements kicked in on mygamercard.net - hence the 36 -> 35 game completion drop.

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.

27th January: GS Update

Various gaming this week - some more easy games, some new ones too. Also, hit 70k gamerscore!

borandi brought the pain yesterday... the good kind... the gaming kind. We are up to 70,262 points of gamerscore. Jealous? He made some progress on Blue Dragon, Hardwood Spades, Guitar Hero III, and before I even realized it, he was finished and I was sad.

And the games:

WAR TECH:SenkoNoRonde	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 25 Achievements
Guitar Hero III	275 of 1000 29 of 59 Achievements
Hardwood Spades	40 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Blue Dragon	80 -> 110 of 1000 8 of 43 Achievements
Meet the Robinsons	0 -> 720 of 1000 32 of 38 Achievements
Spider-Man™: FoF	350 -> 1000 of 1000 12 of 12 Achievements
Oblivion	1000 -> 1250 of 1250 60 of 60 Achievements
Assassin's Creed	40 -> 60 of 1000 3 of 44 Achievements

I picked up WarTech: Senko no Ronde before Christmas on a whim - a rare enough game, available for 10GBP brand new. I never considered playing it until browsing through the internet, and it came up on a blog of easy games. I peered over the achievements, and a guide, and yes, it looked very easy - play through story mode 8 times, through time attack mode 8 times, play 100 hours, play 1000 online matches, reach rank X online. On this game at least you can do the achievements on 'very easy' mode =D I trudged through two story modes and two time attack modes in 90 mins. The only problem people online have been saying is that to reach the top rank required for an achievement, it requires 230 wins with a boosting partner, at a maximum rate of ~35 an hour. That's some hardcore grinding. Apart from that, looks like some easy GS.

Yes, some more GH3. I recently placed a note on AceyBongos' Xbox blog describing how I feel about GH3:

I've hit a wall on GH3 - a couple of songs from the end on hard mode, where they really hammer the 32nd notes (Iron Maiden and Slayer). Apart from trying to do those, and getting the 200k on Cult of Personality, GH3 has kinda lost my interest. I hope Rock Band brings something new to the 'press coloured buttons in time' genre. All we need is a release date... =D

So yeah, I'll play it for a bit of fun, but not a lot else. I still have the career co-op stuff to do, when I can find someone willing to go through 48 music tracks four or five times.

I've also been trying some Hardwood Spades. It's becoming easier to win, but the streaks and moon shots seem a long way off. The 100 games shouldn't be hard to get though.

YaY for Blue Dragon! I've been neglecting this way too much, so I ploughed ~20 hours into the game in two days. Now I'm at around the part where I was before I reset and starting playing with the guide. I'm at the same level as I was, but I've played 10 more hours but all my characters have almost maxed out all their classes. The achievement I got was the 'Complete Mechat Stage 1: Perfect' which is thought of to be a hard achievement to get. It took me a couple of tries, but with the guide it was easy enough.

I bought Meet The Robinsons, like WarTech, sometime before Christmas. Again, this was meant to be easy GS - and it is. I've been playing through the story mode, and after 6 hours I'm near the end. However I missed a couple of items, and I might have to playthrough the bastard again to get the final achievements. Apart from that, a very easy game. Graphics, sound, gameplay are above the level of a movie of a film, but nothing spectacular. A second rate game - fun for kids, but not much holding it together.

Spiderman: FoF has been a fun game. The levels are simple, fun, and short. There are 20 in the game, and collecting the 3/4 bits per level makes it a good achievement game. The final achievement is to upgrade your whole team - this requires replaying the final stage about 10 times to complete all the upgrades. Apart from that little annoyance, an easy 1000GS. Game Complete!

I completed Oblivion (to 1000GS) in Feb 07. It was an easy game - I wasnt too fussed about the side quests, and ploughed through the game in a little under 35 hours I think. So up comes the expansion, Shivering Isles. This game costs a bomb under the marketplace, but offers 35+ hours more gameplay over the original game. It would do, if you did the side quests. I was able to borrow a mates 'Game of the Year' edition of Oblivion which came with the expansions (Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine) in order to get the final achievements. 6 hours, and some weird storyline, got me the final 250GS. Game Complete!

Aside: I like Oblivion - its a great RPG. It just lacks a few things, like colour (everything seems like a shade of brown), multiplayer, and 360 mods. The PC version has a large mod backing, where people have created their own cities for the game, etc. and made it easier to navigate and so forth. If the 360 had that sort of backing, people would be playing Oblivion more than they normally do! Nellas has got >160hrs gametime, just trawling through the dungeons in the game.

Yes, I rented Assassin's Creed. No, I dont really like it. It's just not enough substance in the game - I have to walk everywhere, be careful that I dont push people over, the controls are a bit sloppy, and it isnt intuitive. I'm sorry guys, this game goes towards the back of my shelf - or back to Blockbusters actually.

Also, I completed Beautiful Katamari, as per the mini update ;)

GamerScore:	68,512 -> 70,382
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	15 / 42
Completed Retail:	31 -> 34 / 157
GS Completion %:	41.72% -> 42.58%

Country Rank:	150 -> 142
World Rank:	967 -> 910
Completion Rank:	2,293 -> 2,007