Monday, June 28, 2010

Time is not on my side

That song lied.

Yes, once again I find myself swept up by a load of work and far too little time to spend on it all. As a side project I have been doing some work with Creech x360a on cleaning up some cheaters, which generally involves a lot of investigative work followed by a fair bit of typing - then the lengthy wait to see if they get reset of not. That whole system is about to change (for the better) as there is a new investigation forum on x360a where anyone can submit the tag of someone they suspect of hacking, gamesaving or modding. We'll then check them out and pass the juiciest morsels onto MS to deal with. Hurrah!

It will probably mean a lot more work in the long run but, for me, it's worth it. A lot of people seem to think that it is a waste of time trying to get rid of cheats, but if there is no hope of a clean leaderboard at any point then why should anyone bother with achievements in the first place? (Though I appreciate that attitude is what some people go by anyway, ha ha).

Though at the moment I am swamped with work from my original calling: reviews. With Webb out in E3 a number of things were at risk of slipping through the cracks, mainly because he wasn't here to bag us a review copy. So last week I picked up International Cricket 2010 to review, but no sooner was that done than the gates of hell opened upon me (metaphorically).

This week I had to snag Lego Harry Potter and Naughty Bear, plus Webb sent me a promo copy of Tiger Woods 2011 to get through too. I've also got Singularity on order next up, and I'll also cover the new Transformers game if no one else does. Busy busy.

Cricket was actually a bit of a let down, as once again the batting is far too easy and the graphics are shocking. I'll post up the review ASAP so you can check it out though at least it has the reward of being an easy if slightly time consuming 1k. Harry Potter on the other hand was a delight, especially in co-op, and seems to have taken the Lego games back to their fun roots (speaking as someone that didn't really enjoy Indy 2). The review should be up in the next day or so too - but a great kids game, and even us narky old adults can get into it too.

So next on my list will be Naughty Bear, which could be genius or could be a load of tosh. I've certainly heard about a few glitches in my advanced reading but we'll see if that pans out. Then it will be time for a spot of golf and I can put my feet up for a day or so before delving into Singularity.

In the meantime I've also found time to start (and finish) Ben 10, as well as snag a few more points on Gears 2 and Republic Heroes. I'll probably devote my time to finishing up Cricket (just one achievement left) and Harry Potter, then see what I'm feeling after that. Fingers crossed that July and August are lean months in terms of reviews, as I really want to polish off some more of my epic backlog. I had hit the giddy heights of 91% prior to adding two games to my card, so hopefully I can get back over that marker and push on towards my year end goal of 93%.

I can dream.........

No comments: