Good and bad

Well despite a few niggles and last minute distractions I had a fairly good weekend chipping away at my target (or targets - I seem to have so much to do all of the time, ha ha). I managed to finally sit down and polish off the last of the Bioshock 2 DLC, which I thoroughly enjoyed for the most part.

Before I did that, I actually managed to Re-up for the second time on Gears 3, so I then spent an hour or so grinding out the last five matches I needed for the online Zeta Squad achievement (for using a character in MP). I actually ended up doing pretty well in games too, which was a surprise after not playing for so long. So as well as knocking out two achievements I had a bit of fun.

Back to Bioshock 2 and The Protector Trials were a bit hit and miss, as I felt there could have been a few less missions on the whole. It just felt like you were going through the motions on some of the trials and could get away with using the same tried and tested tactics assuming you had certain plasmids. I have to say that it did give me a new found respect for the Insect Swarm ability - so if that makes the jump to Infinite then I'll be abusing the hell out of it. It pretty much stops enemies from doing much of anything and can even damage them over time at higher levels. Totally beastly. Use it with a decent gun or even some mini turrets and you are golden.

Next up was the Minerva's Den DLC which I'd heard nothing but good things about. In truth it didn't feel like a massive departure from either of the first two games' main campaigns but that is not much of a criticism. I enjoyed the plot and spent plenty of time thoroughly exploring the new area and using all of the little sisters to harvest as much ADAM as possible, I even enjoyed the quirky hidden mini-game that you have to play for an achievement. As DLC goes it is like a mini, self contained Bioshock and works really well because of it.

In between doing all of that I also found time to jump into Halo 4. This time I didn't do as much damage to my overall completion percentage as I had done with Condemned 2 (which I still need to go back to) as I managed to get three quarters of the achievements done and dusted in a fairly lengthy sitting.

I actually played the first level or so on my own, late Friday night, as I'd just finished off the Trials on Bioshock 2 and saw it was nearly midnight. So I figured I had enough time to get through the first Halo 4 campaign mission and then do the Midnight Launch achievement at the start of mission two. Thankfully it was as straightforward as I had hoped, so I then hopped into some solo Spartan Ops just to see how it fared. I did the first mission on Legendary solo and it was fairly easy stuff, plus it managed to get me up to Rank 5 in one fell swoop. I then tinkered around and got a bunch of the easy five point stuff (changed tags, names, taking a screenshot, uploading a video etc).

Next day, I joined up with Rich, Cosmic and Kimi to tackle a co-op run through on Heroic. We absolutely blitzed through the game and managed to get it done in about five hours and ten minutes (I say about - that was the exact time). With four players there was pretty much nothing standing in our way and we sailed through the whole game, even watching all of the cutscenes and finding all of the terminals as well as doing all of the level specific achievements barring two. It was a pretty thorough undertaking.

With time to spare we then jumped into four player Spartan Ops and cruised through all five of the initial missions, on Legendary no less, in under an hour. This racked up all the Spartan Ops achievements that were currently available to boot. Considering this was meant to be the 'hardest Halo to date' that certainly does not seem to hold true when it comes to co-op as there are no extra enemies when you compare it to the solo experience - which seems like an odd decision really.

I then got one of the two mission specific tasks I needed this morning, and I should be able to get the other one later on tonight (fingers crossed) plus we should all be meeting up to do the next batch of Spartan Ops which should have another achievement ready to be attained. After that I'll need to do the campaign on solo Legendary and then pay some attention to the MP in order to rank up to level 20, win 20 matches and complete 25 challenges. Nothing I can't handle I'm sure. Theoretically I could have the original 1k done by Xmas at this rate - so here's hoping.

So my current gaming will be Halo 4, Tomb Raider Legend (to finally finish the awful Anniversary DLC) and maybe Gears 3 when I have some spare time. On Gears I just need to sit down for a few hours and grind out all of the Horde fortifications for the last two achievements, that will leave me with Seriously 3.0 which I have no plans to tackle EVER. So that will be another game put to bed. Yay! Tomb Raider is pretty dull but at least I should be able to get through it given the time and inclination. Then I can focus on Halo 4 and maybe even ODST if I can find the time.

After all of that I should be there or thereabouts when it comes to hitting all of my goals for the year, but time will tell.