Goal accomplished

Well after looking down and out in November I've managed to complete a fairly impressive fifteen games in the last two months. It was still looking unlikely as I got nearer the finish line, so I had to resort to playing a few nice and easy arcade games at the death. Still completing a 'game a week' throughout 2010 is something to be proud of, as there were a few tough nuts in that bunch.

I suppose Gears should automatically come top of the heap, but I've also completed things like Bayonetta, Bioshock 2, COD: MW2, COD: BLOPS, Halo: Reach, Left 4 Dead, Naruto and Fallout 3 so I think the quality this year has been a lot higher. Sure, there have been duds and easy games just for the points - but for once I've actually played and completed a bunch of games shortly after they were released which is unusual for me I can tell you.

What is also worth noting is that even some of the easiest arcade games can take longer than a full retail title. It took me about an hour to get 1k from Truth or Lies, yet a simple arcade title like Gunstar Heroes took me two hours and Wolfenstein 3D (which turned into an almighty grind if truth be told) was a whopping seven hours. Not bad for an arcade title indeed.

I've also splashed out on some new arcade fodder through the recent sales - not to mention a good bit of DLC for things like Mass Effect 2, so I suppose I really should get around to playing them at some point. I also bought my other half a Kinect for Xmas, on the proviso that she only use it on her tag.

I'm sure you can guess what happened next......

My tag was left logged in and some achievements were unlocked on Kinect Adventures. Sigh. At least I avoided getting Dance Central on there, but it now means I will have to devote some time and effort into at least two games (the other being Harry Potter, which has a few Kinect chellenges for me to finish off).

The technology itself is pretty impressive, and it has certainly impressed our families as we have been dragging that little bugger to every house we went to over Xmas. The games are a lot of fun, and would certainly do more from a fitness persepective than the Wii ever would, but there is my problem. The Wii was marvelled at and fawned over by everyone when it landed too - and now it probably does little more than catch dust underneath a TV in most homes. In fact out of all the people I know personally with a Wii (six - in case you care), none of them still use their Wii at all, to make matters worse two of them have no other console and the others all use a 360 and/or PS3 regularly instead.

My concern is that, just like the Wii, the Kinect will sell by the bucketload but then be a graveyard for shovelware and half assed titles which never do more than the bundled in software did. I do hope I'm wrong as I feel Kinect has way more potential than the Wii ever did, but time will tell.

Anyway, I digress.

I had hoped to get somewhere near to 250k by the end of the year too but I will be just shy of 230k instead, which is still pretty decent but means I am way off the next major milestone of 300k. At the moment though my main goal is going to be tidying up a bunch of games (again) and getting my completion percentage back above 90% (again). I had hoped to add Borderlands to my list of completions this year to be honest, but the Mad Moxxi DLC is proving to be the tedious grind that everyone said it was and has rather held me up. At least it will give me something to polish off in the new year. I've also still got Gears 2, Fallout: NV and a host of others to polish off so my to do list never seems to shrink.

All the best to everyone - and may the gaming times roll on for you all.