25th August: GS Update

Blue Dragon	0 -> 10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Chromehounds	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 49 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
X-Men:TheOfficialGame	685 -> 1000 of 1000 16 of 16 Achievements
Track and Field	0 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Cabela's Safari	350 of 1000 13 of 30 Achievements
Catan	110 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
FC Instincts Predator	0 -> 280 of 1000 13 of 35 Achievements
Outpost Kaloki X	10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bejeweled 2	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Quake 4	0 -> 35 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Five days worth of gaming, and the best bit has been Blue Dragon! Cheapest online price is 30GBP, but I got mine from Blockbuster (32GBP) as it's just round the corner :) I can safely say that Blue Dragon is the best game out on the 360! Forget your GoW rubbish, or Bioshock nonsense - any hardcore RPG fan will LOVE Blue Dragon. I'm seven hours in, and you can already feel the Dragonball Z/Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy influences. For those that don't know, the main artist on BD did DBZ/DQ, and Nobuo Uoematsu did the music for BD and FF. But all the RPG elements are in BD - experience, battles, storyline, FMV. Okay I admit, maybe it's missing one element - the stereotypical double D cup breasted female... But if you've been waiting for a JRPG for the 360, this is it. The achievements aren't too shabby either - in order to get ALL of them you'll probably need either a guide or a couple of runthroughs. I got the easy 2 achieves (Multi-monster, back attack), missed one achievement, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless!

Chromehounds has been on my shelf a while - I got it based on the fact that Tim, the artist at http://cad-comic.com, said he enjoyed it. The best way to describe Chromehounds is to say that it is quite slow paced, mechanised robot fighting ala Battlefield style. I've not done much of the single player, but rican ninja89 plays this a lot with a couple of his mates, so I joined in. Online is very repetitive (doing the same thing over and over again on the different maps) but with some friends it does pass the time. The idea of each map is to beat/destroy the other HOUNDs, or destroy the enemy headquarters. If you win, that area is 'slightly' captured by your force. Everyone online can help towards capturing/defending (i.e. 1000s of people), and keep capturing until your side wins the war. Then the map is reset, and continue. I got some of the achievements out of order thanks to some boosting help, and some of the achievements are almost impossible. But as long as my friends play this game, I will too.

I got some MS points this week, so I bought Bomberman Live. I thought it would be very fun in single player and online... but I was let down. It's basically just more of the same of the demo. There is no single player story mode (which I was looking forward to), and few variations on a theme to play with. My advice is to only get it if you think you'll play the demo online.

I hadn't played X-Men III in a while, mainly because all I had to do was finish up Iceman's achievements. They didnt take long with the help of a guide, so I can finally label this game 'complete' and stick it on the shelf. An easy game overall, bar a couple of Nightcrawler levels.

At last, a decent button bashing game in Track and Field! A mis-spent youth was played with games like this, so I snapped up this XBLA title. I've got all the 'easy' achievements - <9s>65m in all three throws of the Javelin, etc.. The final achievement to get is the 'Qualify with every attempt' achievement - the Hammer throw is the one pulling me down on this achievement, but I'll keep plugging at it.

I've had to start a new game on Cabela's African (the other time I played it was on a different HDD), but I got through the first country no probs in record speed. Managed to get that Dik-dik in one shot, first time - the sneaky little bastard!

I played my first online game of Catan - two people quit early, and I came last anyway with 4 points. That game lasted a long, long time! There's only one person on my friends list who plays it seriously - he's just got the 500 points online achieve, and played it 300 times online. *zzzz*

FarCry Instincts Predator seems like an interesting game - but I haven't played single player. rican and I just traded some easy achievements with the help of an online guide. Spent about 5 hours on this to get 280GS.

I haven't played Outpost Kaloki X for a long time, mainly because there were two ways to play the game - the right way (which happens 1% of the time); and the wrong way (the other 99%). Basically you either win, or fail. There are some very decent guides online that people can follow, but I spent a lot of time pausing the game to read the guide in the couple of levels I did.

I've been playing my Nintendo DS a lot this month - mainly Puzzle Quest (a game coming to XBLA soon) which is basically a Bejeweled RPG. So I thought I'd be a bit better at Bejeweled. WRONG! I got worse... enough so much that I could have laughed milk out of my nose. The achievements are HARD...

Quake 4 is a game I've played on the PC once or twice... so I opened up my 360 copy and joined rican online. It's an ok game, but not enough people play it online. Those that do are intent on not letting people get the top 10/top 1 achievements - often by using glitches to do so. There is always talk of a scoreboard reset, but no-one ever knows when. Single player is fun, if just a bit too dark.

GS: 43,249 -> 44,254

Completed XBLA:	9 / 25
Completed Retail:	21 / 96
GS Completion %:	41.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.56%

Country Rank:	1136/837441
World Rank:	1977/1519859

26th June: GS Update

Apologies for the lack of updates, I've been distracted by several things this week:

Lord Of The Rings Online (PC): Started a 7 day trial. I'm a level 12 Man Champion, but its going well so far. I'd be further, but the hobbits in the shire are damn annoying! The game could be better if you could zoom out with the minimap, or quests were more pinpointed on the map.

Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Beta(PC): The highly anticipated FPS for PCs now has a limited public beta (60,000 keys only), of which I got a key. Notched up about 8.5hrs, 2000XP. Its a good fast paced Quake game with Enemy Territory style objectives. I love the team and class aspects. What annoys me is the hit detection -_- and how no matter what team I'm on I get 2 hit killed with pistols -_-.

Floods: Not a game, but that I was in a badly hit area this week due to rain. It covered my front garden, and was 2 inches from my front door. Some people down the street had to bail water out of their houses, and for the first time in 48hrs I was able to get down the shops this evening.

Work: Yeah, I have a job this summer now =D I'm making a website for a client, and its going well, but I'm have to spend a lot of time this summer in order to get it finished.

Now, onto the 360 gaming fun =D

X-Men:TheOfficialGame	410 -> 685 of 1000 12 of 16 Achievements
WSC2007	0 -> 100 of 1000 8 of 50 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	250 -> 270 of 1000 8 of 29 Achievements
F4: ROTSS	0 -> 60 of 1000 3 of 19 Achievements

Finished up Nightcrawlers' missions on X-Men III, getting full genes and pickups. Some of those Superhero difficulty missions are very difficult! I'm dreading doing the flying missions though, they seem to be very annoying.

WSC2007 is a really good snooker game! It beats Yahoo pool every time =D Its very good for learning the game too. Downsides are that if you let the CPU even have one shot, chances are they'll clear the table.

I finally got Ben Kenobi's ghost on Lego Star Wars II, so it should make the rest of the achievements easier. Though I'm 20 hours in now, making this a long 1000 GS to get.

Fantastic Four is a wierd game. You run round with the four members, using them at various times to do various deeds. The achievements and gameplay are somewhat similar to X-Men, but I dont find the game entertaining to play it for long periods of time.

This week Blockbuster got Shrek III, Vampire Rain and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage. I'll try and rent them this week if they're still available. I'm looking forward to Flatout, having played previous members of the series.

GS: 33616 -> 34071

Completed XBLA:	7 / 20
Completed Retail:	17 / 70
GS Completion %:	41.58%
GS % (Non-Demo):	45.26%

Country Rank:	580/179813
World Rank:	3335/1350840

Belated Update

I haven't posted in over a week, unfortunately not due to my fault - internet was down a couple of days and I've been tired the rest. So hopefully we'll get back on track with some GS Updates and Achievement whoring!

Well since the last update I've probably played 30-40 games, so I'm not going to update them all. I've been loading up a few to get them registered on http://my360stats.com, you can find me here. I've always kept a spreadsheet of all my acheivements - this website thankfully does it for me and other people, allowing easy game comparison and the oppertunity to see how well I'm doing against the average in each game. If you've a gamertag, go register yourself over there. Every update they take the info from you last 16, non-zero GS, games played. Updates are every 4 days, unless your profile gets viewed, then it's every 24 hours.

Well suffice to say, I've now passed the 30k barrier! =D I've also got 1000+ total achievements, so two large milestones this week. GS: 29985 -> 32865. I havent completed any games in this past week, but I've played a few new ones (both owned and rented), and got some more GS on others:

Shadowrun	0 -> 60 of 1000 6 of 50 Achievements
Battlefield 2: MC	0 -> 210 of 1000 10 of 46 Achievements
NBA 2K7	0 -> 525 of 1000 25 of 50 Achievements
Mad Tracks	0 of 200 0 of 12 Achievements
X-Men:TheOfficialGame	0 -> 410 of 1000 9 of 16 Achievements
LEGO Star Wars II	70 -> 250 of 1000 7 of 29 Achievements
Tetris Evolution	185 -> 280 of 1000 17 of 40 Achievements
NHL 2K7	360 -> 535 of 1000 11 of 17 Achievements
Football Manager 2006	320 -> 325 of 1000 28 of 50 Achievements
Test Drive Unlimited	70 -> 360 of 1000 22 of 46 Achievements
Rayman Raving Rabbids	200 of 1000 4 of 16 Achievements
Aegis Wing	0 -> 45 of 200 4 of 12 Achievements
Gears of War	80 of 1000 7 of 49 Achievements
WSOP: TOC	0 -> 55 of 1000 3 of 35 Achievements
American Wasteland	570 -> 900 of 1000 44 of 45 Achievements
Pro Evolution Soccer 6	120 -> 360 of 1000 9 of 23 Achievements
Tony Hawk's Project 8	0 -> 50 of 1000 6 of 49 Achievements
Rainbow Six® Vegas	0 of 1000 0 of 36 Achievements

I've not going into detail about each game this time, mainly because it's 5:55am and I've not been to bed yet, but it has been fun trying out a few new games and rentals. Rayman was fun, R6 was shite. X:Men was good, I'm still figuring out Shadowrun.

Completed XBLA:	7 / 20
Completed Retail:	17 / 65
GS Completion %:	43.03%
GS % (Non-Demo):	47.12%

Country Rank:	588/149171
World Rank:	3312/1147024