2010 - A year in the Life

I think on the whole I've enjoyed 2010 - it has been a pretty busy year for me personally, with a lot of upheaval in terms of work and at home (marriage will do that to you). From a gaming standpoint I've had a pretty solid year as well, and my achievement hunting has been a lot more focused and less reliant on just pure crap - though there has been a touch of that too.

I'm sure my personal life does not really need airing much here, so suffice it to say that I'm enjoying the married life and would heartily recommend a similar big day to anyone. I will also mention the fact that I even managed to squeeze achievements into my wedding speech too, ha ha, doubt many people would be able to claim that. As the speech went down a treat then it cannot be all bad I suppose. Plus, a wedding is a great excuse to go on a really kick ass holiday too - though trust us to land in L.A when they were experiencing record temperatures, even the natives were restless.

In a gaming sense I have to say that it has been a very good year for reviews from my own point of view, as I've managed to crank out thirty nine reviews for retail titles and a further five for DLC (though some of them like the Lips add-ons and Dragon Age: Awakenings perhaps are bordering on being a bit more). I also did a lot of write ups from Gamescom which was another highly interesting trip, but more on that later. Another interesting stat is the fact that of those reviews, I actually bought twenty of them myself - so I do not rely totally on handouts or get bribed by publishers with free stuff (which seems to be a common misconception).

Anyway, let's get started. I thought a fun way to do things would be to go month by month and highlight what has happened along the way. Throw in a few stats just because I can, and I think things should be fairly interesting. So let's go.

January

Reviews: 4 Completions: 6

New Year's Resolution was certainly to tidy up a few of the games on my tag. Did not get an ideal start as my run through of Where the Wild Things Are glitched on me, so I had to play the entire thing through again on New Year's Day - not exactly a rocking start to the year but what are you going to do? I was also involved in some co-op dabblings on Lego Indy with my future wife, as well as thoroughly enjoying Darksiders and Bayonetta which are still two of my favourite games of this year even in Decemeber.

In fact Bayonetta is probably my personal GOTY (I'm calling it right now) even if it isn't to everyones tastes. In fact that might have been what appealed to me so much, as I just loved the characters, the style and the action. Just ticked all the right boxes for me. Hell, even my other half loved it which was more of a surprise considering the.....provocative, nature of the leading lady.

Highlight of the month was FINALLY getting the 1k people Online achievement in NBA 07. I had been all set to attend the previous successful attempt a couple of years earlier but, wouldn't you know it, my Internet went down two hours before and came back on about an hour after wards - by which point there were only 900 people online. Gutted.

This time around, I was ready with two hours to spare. It was funny as the achievement popped about half an hour early and then I was frantically sending messages to my friends list telling them to get on NBA like NOW. Ha ha, they came running I can tell you. Though I also suffered my second Red Ring of Death a week before which had me in a major funk - so major that I was finally allowed to buy a second 360 while mine was off for repair. I don't think I can emphasise enough how useful a second box is for anyone that is serious about gamerscore.

I also let myself be talked in going for Seriously on Gears of War. Cue a few months of hell.....

February

Reviews: 3 Completions: 7

The perils of boosting reared their head in February. As while boosting Gears I actually managed to fall asleep. In my defence it was about 2am and, of the four people boosting, I was the last person to do it while we were still playing. Still it just goes to show how mind numbing late night sessions can be, and the fact I managed to nod off with my headset still on is quite impressive. I did try to make sure that we mainly played on weekends but there were a few midweek sessions that went on for a while resulting in me being amazingly tired at work.

For anyone on a similar quest the most important advice I can give would be to find people in similar timezones. Three of us were Brits and one was in the US, so it did make things awkward in terms of meeting up. Also, take regular breaks if you can - or start a bit earlier so you can still get some rest. I would also say that if you are going to pull an all nighter then do so on the weekend, when it doesn't matter when you get up.

Obviously that kind of commitment is not for everyone, but as I'd racked up a few thousand kills by now I was in it for the long haul. We did take a break for a week or so to boost Bioshock 2 so at least that was something a bit different and a lot less time consuming. As a sequel Bioshock 2 was never going to live up to the first game, but it was still pretty damn good and even the MP was decent to play though not exactly overpopulated online.

It is interesting to see that the less reviews I do then the more my completions shoot up, though February was helped by a week off where I did nothing but play games, ha ha! If you get the chance then I would recommend it. The best way to do those pesky half finished games is just to dedicate a couple of solid days work into them. A week here and there can really clean up your tag let me tell you.

March

Reviews: 4 Completions: 3

Tip from the top here kids: if you are trying to complete games and boost your percentage then do not slap a 100+ hour RPG on your tag. Exactly what I did with FFXIII in March. A game that I have barely touched since then and really need to go back to.

In all honesty I have a bit of a history of doing this with Final Fantasy games, as I'll play them for hours only to get bored at some point and never go back. Usually I do return to the game and finish it up but it just hasn't happened in this case so this is certainly on my to do list. I would also say that it is one of the weakest entries in the series by far, which is part of the problem.

There were also a few games this month that were too shoddy for me to slap on my main gamer tag. I may play games for points but I also have a bit of OCD about completion, and will always strive to finish off every game I play. Just look at things like FIFA 06 and Gears, which have literally years between the first and last achievements. So if I'm reviewing a game and don't want to go for the full 1k it will go straight onto one of my various back up accounts (depending on whether online access is required). This prevents my to do list from spiralling out of control and means I can subjectively play through a game without worrying about guides or collectibles. It makes a refreshing change of pace.

I also recall getting into a big old scrap on TA about the merits of DLC, and whether or not they should be counted towards game completion or not. Frankly I think their insistence that DLC be treated separately is amazingly archaic and does not really mesh with the achievements system. MS make the rules - so by choosing not to follow them can you really claim to be comparing people fairly?

I don't really use the site anymore (not for this reason though, I'm not that fickle, ha ha) as I tend to keep an eye on my own stats rather than trust those of other people as things can sometimes get messed up. I found that the TA feed would often be quite slow in updating and I didn't really use the boosting features or forums a lot, as there was quite a lot of flaming and 'in crowd' style behaviour plus a couple of instances where my guides from x360a had been blatantly plagiarized. Ah well, c'est la vie. I do like the idea behind the site though as I'm always a sucker for stats and they do tend to lure me in.

This month also saw the breakdown of our Gears boosting group, as we struggled to meet up with our US team mate and then he seemingly dropped off the grid entirely. It left us with a few weeks of non-boosting and wondering when we would ever be done.

April

Reviews: 2 Completions: 6

April was all about one solitary achievement: Seriously. What had started as a quest to do the easy Gears online achievements in December had transformed into over four months of late night boosting, frayed tempers and a last minute charge. In the end we probably got as many kills in April as we did in the three months that came before it combined. By this point we had all just about had enough, and even my other half wanted me to finish it or quit. Hence some late night grinds and one mammoth 12 hour session that yielded well over 1k in kills.

When it popped all I actually felt was relief and an urge to go to sleep - so I wouldn't expect elation to kick in when you are going for something this ridiculous. In honesty I probably wouldn't do the same thing again if given the choice, so bear that in mind. Plus having to go nearly two thousand kills past the 'supposed' requirement was not a fun experience.

I also dragged my better half into a run through of Resident Evil on Desperate Escape, ha ha! It was actually a lot of fun and she performed better than I ever would have expected. So if you ever need a hand with an achievement do not be afraid to rope in whoever is willing to help - you will be surprised how quickly games can be picked up.

May

Reviews: 7 Completions: 4

May was a nightmare in terms of reviews, it used to be that you could pretty much guarantee a few of the lull periods throughout the gaming year but now things have just gone a bit strange. Instead of the usual deluge of games at the end of the year there seems to be a whole host of stuff being released around Easter time instead, usually games that were pushed back by COD or something similar.

Still I started the month in relaxed fashion with a week off to do nothing but game. I find that it you do have a stretch of free time then that is ideal for polishing off some niggly games. I personally used it to finish up Castle Crashers, Fifa 09 and the online portion of NHL 09 plus I blasted through Iron Man 2. To be honest a lot of people, once they have stopped playing a game, will never find the time to go back to it for one reason or another. So a holiday gives you just that opportunity. For any completionists out there I would certainly recommend this kind of planning ahead to make sure you keep on top of older games.

Plus I find that once you polish off a few old games then you get in the mood for more of the same. So I went back to Operation Flashpoint and Damnation too and even did some Annex mode on Gears - which is almost as boring as going for Seriously. All of this in a couple of weeks and all of a sudden my tag is rosy again. Most games are really not as tough as they once seemed especially if you have a bit of time away from them to recharge your batteries.

Oh yeah, and I hit 200k this month too. A fairly minor milestone but nice to hit nonetheless and I think I've rambled about that enough in the past.

June

Reviews: 3 Completions: 6

June saw the formation of a specific X360A forum for dealing with cheaters. I'd been doing some behind the scenes work with Creech for a while on checking out reported tags, highlighted cheated games and reporting them. The procedure got a whole lot more official though as a team was set up to deal specifically with this task.

At first I devoted a lot of time to the work, as reviews were a bit scarcer on the ground at this time of the year, plus I enjoyed the investigative side of things. However, as the reviews came back in force and my wedding drew closer I found that I had less and less time to help out. Plus, things like Gamescom didn't help as that meant I had a lot of previews to sort out as well.

The recent xbox.com change has rendered the process moot though, as the new site does not allow people to browse through gamertags in the way we used to be able to. Plus the individual timestamp on achievements has gone too. Luckily the change has apparently made things easier for the actual Enforcement Team who have other ways to track cheaters regardless. Creech actually took his work to the show regardless, and joined MS as a consultant on all things gamerscore related. So kudos to him.

Games wise I had a mixed bag this month, with a plethora of review titles coming and going. I finished off a whole batch of older games but also started things like Cricket 2010 and Lego Harry Potter. What I would say from a gamerscore front is that a quick easy 1k game can really freshen things up. If you get tired of grinding out a long winded game, then just take a few days to putter through something simple like A Train HX or Ben 10. Both of those games are decent enough fun, but also nice easy completions. Seeing a few games keeping your tally ticking over can really motivate you to stick to your guns and finish off some of the big boys.

I hit the wonderful mark of over 90% completion this month too, which was a major accomplishment considering I had to acquire almost 2k worth of points in games I'd already started to even move up 1%. I'd started the year at about 85%, so a personal triumph indeed.

July

Reviews: 4 Completions: 2

In July I was told by Webb that I would be having a full hour hands on with Fallout New Vegas when I went to Gamescom. He said, "I'm sure you've had plenty of experience with Fallout 3 right?"

My response: "Errr, bought at when it came out.....and never played it."

Cue a whole month of me playing pretty much nothing but. In truth I'm glad this happened as my motivation to really stick with an RPG game is usually quite low, so it was awesome to be able to dedicate some time to a game for once.

Aside from the joys of Fallout I also succumbed to peer pressure and got to level 100 in Gears 2. In truth it only took about five nights at 10x XP so wasn't a major hassle to be honest, though it now meant that I had the desire to actually play the single player. Gears was yet another game that I had bought at launch and pretty much NEVER played.

In fact, let's take a moment for me to just say. DO NOT BUY GAMES WHEN THEY COME OUT UNLESS YOU ARE 100% SURE YOU WILL PLAY THEM!

Honestly, I still have games on my shelf that were bought, for full price, years ago and still have not been touched. If you are going for gamerscore on a budget then just buy games as you play them, then trade them in when you are done. One of my few saving graces is that I trade in practically every game once I've 100% completed it. There are about five games that I have liked enough to make exempt from this rule, but the rest get shuffled off to fund newer stuff. So do yourself a favour and have the following system (if you can):

1) A rental company - this is for games that will take under 10 hours and second copies of games for boosting (assuming you have a second console)
2) Buy used/sale items - if there is a game you want to play, but time coinstraints stop you from doing so then WAIT. Games drop in price with alarming speed and can often be picked up at a fraction of the price a couple of months later.
3) Trade in games - once you are done with a game then trade it in ASAP, as the quicker you get rid of it then the more money you will get. You could obviously sell them on ebay or whatever too.
4) New games - only buy new games that you intend to keep or devote a LOT of time to. No point shelling out for Monopoly Streets when you will finish it in a day.

Obviously these rules are only applicable to anyone looking to increase their gamerscore exponentially, plus you will have to have the finances to fund a rental scheme or regular purchases.

Anyway, Gears 2 can be done in co-op with only one person on Insane difficulty to boot. So assuming you have two pads then do not even bother finding an online buddy, just do that thing yourself and feel even more badass at the end of it. This rule holds true for a lot of co-op games too, so keep that in mind.

August

Reviews: 0 Completions: 2

Zero reviews? You are probably thinking that I should have pulled my finger out, but this was of course Gamescom month. Anyone who followed this blog at the time will probably still be reeling from the amount of information I threw at you, ha ha!

After meeting with a bunch of journalists though while I was out in Cologne, it became clear that I wanted (well, needed) to make my blog a bit more professional. Hence the fancy links and images in a bid to step up matters. It is something I plan on going back to as well, as only time constraints are stopping me from doing it at the moment.

My game playing was fairly minimal beforehand as I just kept going with Fallout 3 to pretty much finish it off. I also spent some time doing a bit of research on the games/companies that I would be seeing at the show too, as it always helps to be prepared.

I really love going out to Germany, and meeting up with Mr Webb of course. As he is a fun travelling companion as well as being my evil overseer. It was nice to meet up with Alex (RoutineX) as well, and the three of us had a grand old time despite the fact that Minty managed to not show up, after the good old U.S. government left him high and dry without a passport, ha ha! Maybe next year.

The great thing about Gamescom is not only the show itself, but also getting a chance to see all of the work that goes on behind the scenes at the site plus taking part in some networking (As Webb puts it). Which is basically staying up until 4am with other writers, ha ha! I only managed to do so for four of the seven nights, but Webb managed the whole shebang with aplomb. I didn't manage a late night on the days when I had appointments, as I'd hate to turn up for an event looking knackered - so how Webb managed it the whole week was impressive, I think he has secretly surpressed his yawn reflex.

Shoutouts to the pleasant folk I met on my travels: Thrungus, GZ_Dave, Seedhouse, Startdashselect, ASpasticTiger and the rest who I don't have twitter/tags for. Ah well. You know I love ya.

September

Reviews: 5 Completions: 1

September was more of the same, as I was still cranking out preview material from Gamescom while also getting ready for my upcoming wedding, which was at the end of the month. The only game I completed was Dead Rising: Case Zero, as I really did not have the time to do much else. You haven't known stress until you've planned (and paid for) a wedding, let me tell you.

My stag do was slightly different to most peoples. I don't drink or smoke, so no doubt could be considered fairly boring, ha ha! Still it means that a regular night of debauchery was ruled out. Instead we rented out the local cinema and watched High Fidelity - which was amazing on the big screen in all of its crackly glory. You forget about all the little marks that were on 'film' back in the day as everything is digital now, but it was nice to relive the good old days.

After that we basically played games all night, including marathon sessions of Halo multiplayer and a wee bit of Firefight to boot. Good times.

Even my wedding day was not totally game free, as I brought up Gears of War in my wedding speech - and commended my bride on her ability to put up with me playing it for months on end. Though I did also mention the fact she suffered through Will Ferrell licking poo in Step Brothers too, hmmmm, maybe should have held that one back.

October

Reviews: 4 Completions: 0

I may as well call October the Dead Zone, as I was on honeymoon for the first couple of weeks and then got back to be welcomed with four different reviews to sort out. It pretty much put paid to any gaming that I personally wanted to do, but at least it kept me busy and away from drugs.

I kid, I kid.

The weird thing was the fact that I had barely played games in close to a month but hadn't really missed it at all. A lot of people say that people with high gamerscores are addicted, but frankly I managed to cope just fine, and I certainly was not straight back onto the 360 straight away upon my return. In fact I had a few game free days upon my return and only really played stuff that I had to review - it was a nice relaxing change I can tell you.

November

Reviews: 6 Completions: 9

November was one of my busiest months in terms of reviews and completions, mainly because I was driving towards completing 52 games by the end of the year and also getting reviews out for a bunch of games that had slipped through the cracks. Plus, Black Ops of course.

You may also remember my lengthy rant about achievement haters, and they fact they label anyone with over 100k as having no life. I would hope that my argument clarified things a little and offered more than a few facts for people to dwell on. I have no doubt that people will keep on hating but at least they cannot claim ignorance. Also a further congrats to Cru, whose milestone of 200k started the whole thing in the first place, ha ha!

I finished off a whole bunch of outstanding games as well as a batch of new ones. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 proved to be the biggest disappointment of the year for me. As after the promising showing at Gamescom the final result was short, rushed and not all that much fun. It was certainly not the worst game I've played but I just felt that it could have offered so much more.

Nine completions in a month might seem a lot but with good planning you can finish off some older games in double quick time. Plus some newer games are still surprisingly easy, and things like Star Wars TFU2, Black Ops, Ben 10 etc can be rinsed for the full 1k in short order.

December

Reviews: 2 Completions: N/A

December is mercifully quiet in terms of reviews, though I did have to struggle through the horror of the new Harry Potter game. Please do not torture yourself in the same way I did - I beg of you.

The rest of the month will see me gearing up the Xmas and hopefully clearing off some more crap from my tag. No doubt I will get a deluge of new games as presents, so my ever swelling shelves are unlikely to diminish any time soon. As for what the New Year holds? Who the hell knows. I hope to keep going with my work on x360a and hopefully keep on playing a good mix of stuff that I enjoy and some easy points titles too.

A couple of people have mentioned that they would like me to go into a bit more depth about the reviews I undertake and this is a good idea on the whole. Obviously my work mainly belongs to x360a but I don't see any harm into throwing out a few of my thoughts.

To be honest there have been a few reviews where I thought of something to add after the event or regretted not mentioning a specific flaw/moment of inspiration. So it would be nice to have a forum to air those little things, and what better place than here?

On the review side of things, and specifically for Thrawn, the way to get more involved at x360a is to be more proactive really. Ever since Razzle stepped down his workload we have had pretty much no promotional stuff stateside, as I'm sure you know. However, as I've already said - at least half of my reviews are games I've gone out and bought/rented myself so it isn't all about the free stuff. I regularly check on upcoming games via sites like Play.com or Amazon (or whatever site you trust) then I go directly to Webb and see what, if anything, he has covered.

Obviously, in recent times, we have started to receive more debug or advanced copies of games that only Webb or Rich can handle, so I keep myself busy by taking on a lot of the smaller games or games from companies that generally do not send us much. The notable issue with this approach is that it is going to cost money, sadly, but I try to sell/trade games where I can to keep the costs down and make sure I keep on top of things.

Onto the stats thing - which people seem to dislike seeing, both in my blog and others. To be honest the stats are mainly for my benefit (selfish I know) so that I have a saved marker of where I'm at and what I'm doing. There is no real need for me to publish them, though I will say that a couple of people have started to keep similar lists for themselves so at least it was helpful on some level. Plus, as the year has gone on I have done far less of the stat heavy posts as I have, I hope, had far more interesting things to yak about.

I'd also tie that in with my regularity of posting. I've done 72 new posts this year, so that is more than one a week plus the figures were messed up by my two months of absence for marriage related reasons.

I would like to blog more, but blogging tends to come a distant last behind life, work, gaming, and reviews. I do try and get on here as much as I can and part of me making this blog better comes in the form of more interesting posts and superior presentation. Sadly that takes up time and, as others have said, when you only have a few regular followers/readers it is hard to keep motivated to continue. Luckily for you (or unluckily as most people would put it) I do enjoy typing away so will continue to publish away. The same goes for expanding my blog really, I do post links up on twitter and have a link on my x360a tag, but beyond that I don't really know how to grow things and I don't want to make too big an effort really.

Well that sums up my long winded year, so if anyone has any comments or just hit the keyboard as they dozed while reading, then it is all good. Have a grand Xmas kids and a lovely New Year (just in case I slack off again, ha ha).

Just been shown this too, ha ha! http://www.xbox360achievements.org/author/lee-abrahams/