Random happenings in the graveyard of life

I'm not dead

2011-11-02T16:10:00.004Z

It's funny that pretty much every post I've made for the last few months has started in the same way: with me apologising for not posting more and generally promising to buck up my ideas. I'm not going to bother making that same promise this time around as I will inevitably break it and then come back to renew the vicious circle once again.

I will try harder though - honest.

Since I last put up a post I've been pretty busy......so busy in fact that I started writing this particular update on the 2nd November and I've only just got back to it, ha ha!

As ever I'm full of good intentions, and I had planned to do a regular blog to detail my progress through the murky world of Dark Souls. Considering I've had the full 1k for nearly two months now that would seem a bit redundant but I may do a retrospective on it at the end of the year (so not too long to wait). Suffice it to say that the game blew me away - so much so that it is probably my own personal Game of the Year.

However, that is a bit of an unfair label at the moment as there are so many top drawer games that, in typical fashion, I simply haven't had the time to get around to. The problem is that I tend to complete (as in, get all the achievements) every game I play on my tag. So all the terrible games I've been reviewing this year have somehow taken priority over a bunch of amazing releases that have sat gathering dust.

Batman Arkham City, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Dodonpachi Resurrection, Shadows of the Damned, El Shaddai - the list could go on and on. Hopefully I'll find some time over the festive period to sit down and sink my teeth into at least one or two of these bad boys, though as ever I'm still playing catch up to finish off a few outstanding bits and pieces. Namely the latest COD (spec ops stuff) plus a few bits and pieces on Gears 3 (not Seriously though, screw that) and Eternal Sonata.

Whether or not I really get anything done will depend on the other halfs tolerance for my gaming shenanigans, plus the fact it's Christmas and the fact we may be moving in the New Year so the dread prospect of boxing stuff up may rear its ugly head. Yay?

In a week or so I will do a bumper breakdown of how this year has panned out, especially as it's been a very hectic one both professionally and personally. Certainly I've done more gaming related writing this year than ever before, but hopefully I'll be able to transfer a bit of that time and effort back to some personal musings all well. You never know.

Been a while........

2011-09-22T12:00:00.002+01:00

Suffice it to say that my recent blogging activity has barely registered as a blip on the heart monitor of life, but hopefully I'll be able to turn things around and become a tad more proactive in future.

Obviously August was a bit of a write off, as I was whisked away to Gamescom by x360a. It was probably the best year yet in terms of the social side of things, as I met up with Mr Webb and Alex once again, plus had the pleasure of meeting Mr Richard Walker as well (the man tasked with doing all of the news and writing on the site on a daily basis - pity and fear him).

Pretty much every night saw us going out to meet up with a variety of other games writers and PR staff, and it was nice to put some faces to names and meet so many awesome people. Enough brown nosing though, as I also had plenty of games to see and previews to write which is why I was a little snowed under upon my return.

Even after shifting the backlog I then had a bunch of reviews to get to grips with, such as the latest incarnation of Madden and NHL, not to mention Dead Island. In fact the scenic zombie slaying title led to a veritable barrage of messages, friend requests and hate mail on live. I've never played a game like it, with so many people wondering how I'd gotten a copy early and saying that I was a hacker and/or retarded. I kid you not. Obviously I invited such naysayers to read my pending review the following Monday when the embargo was up, but this being the internet it was obvious that some people were being dicks just for the sake of it.

I actually enjoyed the game to be honest, and the vast range of review scores does puzzle me somewhat. I can certainly appreciate that the game does have its faults, but when someone scores it a three out of ten then I have to question their sincerity. Reviews are opinions at the end of the day, but surely each writer will have to endure the same strengths and weaknesses of a particular title and draw fairly similar conclusions? Obviously personal preference and some bias may well creep in along the way but, personally I try and play each game on its own merits and discount whether or not I like zombies, or racing games, or banana peeling simulators. My job is to review the game based on its own merits, rather than perceiving slights based on other titles or my own personal feelings at the time. It seems that some reviewers do tend to forget that fact and people are left confused when a game can divide opinion so widely.

Anyway, in between smacking zombies around I've also had time to go back and polish off a few other titles that have been cluttering up the old gamertag. First onto the chopping block was Need for Speed Shift, well the DLC to be more apt. To be honest it took me a few hours to get everything done so it certainly offered value for money, though I would have to say that whoever decided on the lap time targets you need for some of the challenge stars could do with a swift kick to the nether regions. The amount of time and frustration that it took me to beat some of the times, even after recording flawless laps, is exactly why I tend to avoid racing games in the first place.

I also went back and knocked off the zero point achievements I needed for NBA Ballers and Battle for the Pacific, meaning they are now 'officially' complete in the eyes of both my peers and Jesus himself. I also found out there was a Ticker only style Horde event running on Gears 2 to celebrate the impending launch of the trilogy concluding finale. So naturally I suited up and went to town battling wave after wave of exploding manaces (though mildly irritating nuisances may be a better description). I roped in a few chums to help me get through the longer waves, and I also found a way to do some of the maps in autopilot (assuming they had a boomshield), though there were a few that required me to beat up my foes solo for 10, 20 or 30 waves which soon got old. Still I've now done all of the Horde achievements and managed to knock out 1999 rounds to boot - leaving me with just Seriously 2.0 to grind through before I can move onto playing Gears 3.

I'm a a bit of a lull at the moment, just finishing up some older games and playing whatever I choose, but the review season is well and truly upon us and that will mean a bevy of new titles to sift through and write about. Bring on the pain.

Zero points and completion

2011-08-09T12:01:00.003+01:00

I have a bunch of games sat around on my tag that, while I have all of the gamerpoints available, still have a few annoying zero point achievements left hanging around.

Now back in the day nobody really cared about those little critters, but the most recent dashboard update has basically meant that a game does not show up as complete unless you have all of the achievements unlocked. This is a pain in the balls if you ask me, and I've never really bothered to go back and tidy things up. This week I decided to sort out the ones that would require minimal effort and leave the ones that would be more of a chore.

On my immediate hit list are the following, along with my expectations for difficulty:

Halo 3 - I have the full 1750 but still need two zero pointers for having 7XP on the 7th of the month (not too taxing) and completing the last level on 4 player co-op in Ghosts. The latter will be a touch trickier mainly due to the issue of finding required players as pretty much everyone I know did this ages ago. I have three peeps at the moment though so I'm hopeful that it can be knocked off in short order.

NBA Ballers - One zero pointer left, simply for losing five online games in a row. I can boost this in no time at all. Easy.

Battle for the Pacific - One achievement for being killed 250 times in online play. I can boost this myself but it will take a bit of time. Plus I'm actually a bit gutted as I was number one on the online leaderboards for ages due to the fact I'd never died, ha ha! Oh well.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - One achievement for grabbing a mystery box. You cna only unlock these by completing the Banjo XBLA game, which I bought in a sale not long ago. So I'll gain 200 points for the arcade title AND finish up this game once and for all.

So that will be four games completed without earning a single point. Must be some kind of record. I also have zero pointers hanging over COD: WAW (for prestige - no chance) and Brothers in Arms (about seven, all for online, and requires at least six people. Bah!). So they will stay that way forever.

To be honest zero pointers do not bother me too much anymore (which seems hypocritical considering my plan to go out and get them) mainly because I have no chance of 100% completion anyway. With a few glitched/hard/closed server games on my tag I will never get much further than 98/99% completion at the very most, so no point stressing the small stuff. That said, I would like to complete as many games as humanly possible and this will go some way towards completing that goal.

In all honesty my main aim was to max out all Halo titles, and the others just kind of fell into line due to the ease of what was required. I'm sure most people aren't as anal about this kind of stuff but for me it is always nice looking on my profile and seeing 200+ completed games.

Finishing things off and heading to Germany

2011-08-08T09:22:00.005+01:00

This week I'm making a last ditch effort to get through Call of Juarez: The Cartel for the third time in order to polish it off. To be honest the games seems to get worse each time I play it and some of the errors are bordering on the ridiculous. When the subtitles don't even match what is being said and are often riddled with spelling errors then you have to wonder who the hell put this through QA. As I completed it for the second time yesterday one of my partners glitched into the floor so that only his head was sticking out - I just had to laugh really.

I reviewed the game recently and it is easily the worst FPS game I've played in a long time. It trumps even Duke Nukem and at least that game had the excuse of being stuck in development hell for an age. On the plus side, Juarez is a pretty easy 1k barring the fact you need to complete it with each character. So I should get it done, and out of my house, some time this week.

I also blitzed through Cars 2 over the weekend, which was a fairly fun racing game although some of the A.I was a tad brutal in places for what is ostensibly a kids game. I'm not a massive racing gamer myself, but this was easy to pick up. However, that made the difficulty spike in later races even more perplexing as if you dropped down the field early on then you would struggle to get back to the front. It seems like there was a very specific style of rubberbanding in place - whereby the cars immediately in front of you and behind you would always be on your shoulder. While those a few places behind or in front would continue to fall away/surge ahead. It was rather weird and meant that if you were in fifth, for example, then you could potentially catch fourth and the sixth place car would be right behind you - however, your odds of then catching second or first were pretty much minuscule and they would often finish about 15-20 seconds ahead no matter what you did.

Still it was easy enough to max out and fairly entertaining in parts, so I'd recommend it for kids looking to have a bit of fun with their favourite characters - or anyone looking for an easy 1k of course, ha ha!

I probably will not do much gaming this week other than Juarez, as I'm off to Gamescom soon. I may well putter around on Eternal Sonata or Fairytale Fights seeing as I've started both of them, but other than that I'll probably not bother with anything new.

Gamescom is lining up to be as interesting as ever. There are more of us going this year which means the workload will be spread out a bit more, instead of having 15 previews to write up (As I did last year) I'll have about ten or so instead. It's good in a way as it means less pressure and more time to experience the show floor instead. However, it also means less time with developers and less games to see behind the scenes, which is a bit sad.

Still I'm sure it will be a kickass time once again, and I'm looking forward to seeing some quality titles first hand. As well as having a break from work of course AND getting to do plenty of writing and, hopefully, meet up with some of the journos that were out there last year.

If you are heading out and bump into me then be sure to say hi. I'll probably be wearing some kind of geeky t-shirt and making a tit of myself. Good times.

Job done and moving on

2011-08-04T10:13:00.002+01:00

After taking eleven days to master Extreme mode on Lost Planet it only took me a few more to blitz through both Normal and Hard difficulties and find all the respective target marks on each. That snagged me the final, and rarest, achievement Master Pioneer for finding all marks. I'm surprised that a bunch of people have taken the time and effort to finish off Extreme mode but then not bothered with finding the rest of the marks.

Sure it can be a pain in the ass, but the other difficulties are soooo much easier that a player that suffered through extreme mode should find them a breeze. Plus there are a few handy guides to the exact locations of all the marks, which makes your life that much easier. I didn't miss a single one in either of my final run throughs.

Strangely enough this game is nowhere near the top of my completion pile when it comes to time spent, though the skill level was certainly higher than for things like Oblivion or Borderlands. It was certainly an entertaining test of my abilities and I never really got bored of the game, which is a pleasant surprise considering it requires four playthroughs as a minimum.

As my reward (kind of) I have gone back to Call of Jaurez: The Cartel in a bid to finish it off before I head out to Gamescom. I'm also hoping to polish off Cars 2 as well, mainly for review purposes, and even get a little bit further in Eternal Sonata and Fairytale Fights if I have the time. My to do list never seems to shrink but I'm hopeful that I can crack 95% completion by the end of the year.

I'm currently at about 91.50%, which includes all my available DLC. So my main aim is to finish up a few games that I have DLC sat around for (Tomb Raider Legend, COD WaW and Need for Speed Shift are the main culprits) as well as a bunch of easier titles that I started but never finished. After that my next big game will be finishing off either Risen or Supreme Commander as I started both and really should go back to them at some point. I'm also keen to get World Snooker 2007 polished off if I can.

It is certainly a lengthy to do list but one that I'm kind of chipping away at as I go along. Hopefully I'll get it all done and dusted as soon as is humanly possible, but frankly things have a way of cropping up and review titles will need priority and so on.

Oh, and I need to finish off Halo ODST and Gears 2 before the respective new releases land. Though trying to round people up for Firefight and Horde (which is all I have left to do) is a trial in itself.

So many games, so little time.

EXTREME!!!!

2011-08-01T10:01:00.007+01:00

There it is. The little image that means I finally mastered Lost Planet's rather brutal Extreme difficulty and made it my bitch. To be honest it was a smoother ride than I ever could have expected and I am a bit surprised that more people haven't given it a go.

I'm not saying it was easy by any means, but assuming you have time and patience then it shouldn't be a problem. It also helps to learn the maps and where checkpoints are placed - then to exploit them to your own wicked ends. Did you realise that if you get to a checkpoint and then die, all of the T-ENG containers, VS suits and weapons up to that point will reappear? You do now. Using that little trick is the key to amassing tons of energy and making your life that much easier. If you just blitz through certain areas, hit a checkpoint and then kill yourself you can then back track to the previous area and scour it for useful items and target marks. What is better is the fact that pretty much every enemy vanishes too. Bliss.

Obviously some areas do not let you go back, so you can only use this is key spots but it can often be the difference between life and death. Plus, it makes getting certain taget marks that much easier.

What I would say as well is that you may as well tackle Extreme mode as soon as you unlock it. Some people might look at the fact you need all target marks on each difficulty and say that you should build up to it, but I disagree. It might seem logical to work your way up the difficulties and leave Extreme until last - but by doing so you may well waste some of your own time.

I say this because the difference between Hard and Extreme is massive. Hard mode was a joke in comparison and I breezed through it even faster than I did on Easy, though obviously that will partly be down to my familiarity with the maps. You lose T-ENG at a much slower rate, there are less enemies and they take far fewer bullets to kill off. The three big differences though are the fact that bosses are far easier (less damage given out and more taken), the target marks aren't as well hidden (so less time/energy wasted getting them) and you have access to data posts on each map. These posts give you upwards of 1k in T-ENG when you activate them and are completely absent on Extreme mode. The massive amount of T-ENG you have available on Hard means you can abuse VS suits more often and take way more damge. It took me eleven days, on and off, to clear Extreme mode whereas Hard mode took me two days. That was how big the difference was.

However, I appreciate that Extreme mode is not for everyone. A lot of people struggle on the first boss and give up there, which would be especially galling if you had gone all the way through Easy, Normal and Hard without breaking a sweat (which you won't). So I would recommend Easy first to get the lay of the land and then Extreme with a decent guide to hand if you can - especially for the marks. Then clearing up the other two difficulties will be a walk in the park.

I'm cruising through Normal now, in fact I've done the first four missions in about an hour. Due to how easy it is I can literally just run through and snag the target marks while pretty much ignoring anything else. As long as I snag the odd data post or energy tank then T-ENG is never an issue. It is amazingly satisfying to go back to the menu and start to see levels with every single mark full up, once that pioneer badge pops up I'll be extremely (ha!) happy.

In other news I've been playing Call of Juarez: The Cartel. It is shit. Please don't buy it. Don't even rent it. Hell, don't even look at it.

Big mechs and annoying bugs

2011-07-28T11:58:00.002+01:00

Still on the Lost Planet trail and things are going pretty well. Mission 8 was my latest challenge and it took me nearly two hours to complete once I'd finally dropped the boss - which is probably the longest of any level so far from start to finish.

The main issue was the fact that it was made up of a bunch of large areas all chock full of nasties trying to do me harm. Luckily there was a constant flow of T-ENG and a helpful checkpoint in one of the bigger rooms that allowed you to clear out the room, hit the checkpoint, and then delibrately die. This would let you respawn with all of the enemies still dead but all the T-ENG tanks and VS machines would respawn. Allowing you to stock up on energy and equipment before moving on.

In fact the trick of hitting checkpoints and then going back to empty areas for energ, weapons and target marks is vital throughout and one that people really should take advantage of in order to make things as painless as possible. It has certainly come in handy on more than a few occasions and is practically a neccesity in order to have the right set up to beat most of the boss fights.

In fact the mission 8 boss was made amazingly simple thanks to using a mech with two sets of homing lasers and leaping around on the higher ledges like some kind of madman. He only hit me once and that was due to me jumping into a wall (I think I got distracted by the pretty colours or something).

Mission 9 is next up and I'm hoping to get it done tonight, then move onto the last two level style challenges over the weekend. Shazam!

The quest goes on....

2011-07-27T14:03:00.003+01:00

My drive to finish off Lost Planet is still as fresh as ever, though my progress took a bit of a hit last night. After slogging through the first two sections of Mission 7 and snagging all the target marks along the way I just had to negiotiate the last area and beat up the boss.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite realise that the only VS suit on the last map had an occupant that I really needed to dispose of first. Instead I just went ahead and blew everything up then found myself facing off against the boss on foot, the last checkpoint being just before he showed up. I had a few attempts to beat him this way, but it really was impossible, as most of my weaponry would do minimal damage while he could kill me in one or two hits, with pretty much no way for me to regain lost energy.

I finally threw in the towel and restarted the whole level, meaning I had to find all the marks I'd already gotten and redo the first two areas in their entirety. If anything this just highlights that preparing for the boss on each level is more important than anything else. Second time around I carefully shot the pilot from the last VS suit and made it my own, before I proceeded to pummel the boss in about fifty seconds flat. Job done.

While I will admit that certain sections feel cheap and frustrating on Extreme difficulty (like a giant worm eating you in one move and negating the last twenty minutes you spent building up T-ENG), on the whole I'm enjoying the mix of strategy, planning and skill that each area requires. When this game hits 1k it will be the best completion on my list by a long way. Hopefully I can get it done prior to heading off for Gamescom but time, and two more playthroughs, will tell.

Extreme difficulty and proving a point

2011-07-26T12:45:00.005+01:00

I think anyone over a certain level of gamerscore has been on the receiving end of hate, usually revolving around having no life but also occasionally about the very games they play in order to get to said score.

The number of times that someone has said I play nothing but kids games is kind of annoying to be honest. Esepecially as a bunch of kids games can actually take more skill and time than any number of AAA titles that the self same gamers fall over themselves to play.

It is with that issue in mind that I've tried to go back to a few of the hardcore games sat around on my gamertag in a bid to finish them off and add a bit of a layer of respectibility to proceedings. Frankly this is more for my own satisfaction than anything else, as I know for a fact that very few people will have completed games like COD 3, Gears, Rainbow Six Vegas et al which I most certainly have. However, in my seemingly never ending quest to finish off everything I play I am determined to get some big guns finished off.

My first target is Lost Planet, a game that has one of the most notoriously difficult solo campaigns on the 360. Extreme mode may not be quite on a par with DMC4 or Ninja Gaiden 2, or even the crazy ass sequel Lost Planet 2 (which is just redonkulous), but it is most certainly right up there.

Many moons ago I sat down and did all of the online achievements and never even touched the single player side of the game. That was February 2007, which just goes to show that I never really give up on anything. Fast forward over four years and my first job was to run through the game on Easy in a bid to unlock Extreme and get my first tier of target marks out of the way. For those that do not know, there are four difficulty settings (Extreme is locked until you finish the game on any other setting) and each of them has a set of marks hidden on every level. The twist is that they are hidden in different places on each difficulty and can be notoriously hard to spot or reach. Fun times then.

Easy was just that, as you had plenty of weapons and T-ENG to keep you going, plus enemies were pretty easy to deal with and robot suits could be found around every corner to give you an advantage. The use of T-ENG is two fold, as it powers certain weapons and all the VS suits but also tops up your energy bar when you are wounded as well. Run out of T-ENG and you can expect a quick and messy death - hurrah?

Extreme mode is a different kettle of fish, as your T-ENG drops rapidly and there is much less of it to be found. Enemies do a lot of damage and there are more of them, plus you don't have the luxury and safety of VS suits to blast your foes with for the most part. Rapid shooting, careful energy management and finding target marks that are often in ludicrously out of the way places all make for a bit of a nightmare. Plus, some of the boss battles are staggeringly tough if you do not get to the preceeding checkpoint with the correct level of energy and weaponry.

So far I'm six missions in (out of eleven) and in some ways it is living up to its billing. I am still a bit impressed with how smooth my progress has been thus far though, as I've managed to get all of the marks on each level and do away with everything that has been thrown at me. Some of the boss battles came down to a mix of luck and skill, getting the right hit at the right moment and dodging at just the right time. With some fights taking me nearly an hour by themselves this is not for the faint of heart, but assuming you approach it in the right way then it shouldn't be a problem.

Of course, I still need to find all the target marks on Normal and Hard mode after I'm done with Extreme so my quest will not be quite over and done with if I'm to max out the game. Though after surviving Extreme I should be ready for anything and the marks are nowhere near as weirdly placed on the other difficulties. In fact if you really wanted to make Extreme mode easy you could just get a couple of marks on each level as you go, then replay chapters and snag the others - saving you having to make the perfect run to get them all at once. It may take a bit longer but would probably save on frustration, so I'd recommend that if you have the time and patience for multiple Extreme plays.

Suffice it to say that I'll be pretty proud of this bad boy once it gets done and it is certainly a refreshing change from all of the easy movie tie-ins that I've been reviewing recently. Green Lantern, Captain America and the latest Potter have all come and gone, with a bit of fun but relatively short playing times. At thirty hours into my Lost Planet commitment it is hard to say how much longer I'll be at it, but it will be time well spent and I'm thoroughly enjoying the challenge.

For all of you looking for something to stand out on your tag then I heartily recommend it.

My upcoming to do list includes Supreme Commander, World Snooker 2007, Fairytale Fights, Eternal Sonata and Risen. Quick and easy then. Though I may pop back to Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga and Republic Heroes just for a break and some easy points depending on my tolerance levels.

Big robots, funky t-shirts and busy times

2011-07-12T13:47:00.003+01:00

This year has kind of snuck up on me a bit - I mean can you really believe that we are all the way into July already? Me either.

It turns out that I've actually been pretty damn busy so far this year and things are only likely to get worse in the near future, as Gamescom is right around the corner and that should lead to a plethora of content for me to wrap my head around. Still I cannot say that I don't enjoy sitting down and writing about games, and if I could find a job doing just that then I'd be all over that like a fat kid on cake. As it is though I'm happy chipping away at reviews and the odd event for X360A.org and anything else is just a bonus.

In fact it is a bit of a surprise looking at just how many reviews I've knocked out so far this year. When I factor in the pre-Xmas rush then it will probably be my busiest one on record to be honest. Though at least I've managed to go ahead and fully complete most of the games I've stuck on my own tag from a review perspective - only FEAR 3 is still outstanding from recent times, but that is due to the fact I'm waiting for a co-op buddy to go through Insane difficulty with and do the few co-op only challenges I have left. Nothing too taxing, so hurry up and rent it already Rich!

Games like Green Lantern, Transformers and Dungeon Siege have come and gone - the last one looked like a fairly easy 1k but I just couldn't find a posse to do the 4 player stuff with, so I went ahead and just played it on my backup account and traded it in. I really don't want to get any more semi-complete games stuck on my tag if I can at all help it.

I also polished off Alice which I really enjoyed and LA Noire which I was a touch disappointed with. The story was entertaining enough (though the ending was extremely poor) but the actual gameplay was alarmingly repetitive. Plus, you had a wonderfully recreated 40's LA with very little actually going on - as the few side missions and collectibles really added nothing. A shame, but I'm glad I gave it a go considering the hype it received.

Moving forward I'm trying to go back and finish off a few more of my outstanding games with Fairytale Fights the first on my list. The game requires no less than six completions (one for each difficulty in both solo and co-op) so it will be a bit of a drag but at least I can coerce the wife into playing and she seems to be enjoying it so far. After that I may go back to Lego Star Wars and Republic Heroes - mainly due to the fact they are two easy games that shouldn't take too much effort for me to polish off. Hopefully.

I also have Captain America and the latest Potter game incoming this week, hence my reluctance to start anything outright new, so that's two more things to keep me occupied.

With the constant stream of games incoming it is a wonder that I have time for anything else, though I did splurge on some nice t-shirts from insert coin clothing. They do fuinky takes on a variety of games and I would highly recommend that you check them out if you can. They were so good that I ended up ordering four. Maybe I'm just weak......

Poor showing recently

2011-06-15T16:11:00.003+01:00

My blog has been kind of neglected for the last month or so, but that is mainly due to the fact that I've been bogged down with grinding few the same few games over and over again. I figure no one wants to read about that shit, and I certainly do not want to write about it and so here we are.

I have played a bunch of games for review recently which were ok but not great.

Green Lantern is a fairly decent movie tie-in for once, I mean it is hardly ground breaking stuff but I really did kind of enjoy playing through it - unlike Thor recently. I'd recommend it for anyone after a quick 1k as it will only take you about seven or eight hours if you stick with it. Plus, the gameplay is actually not too bad and Ryan Reynolds helps to keep things ticking over.

I also played Hunted: The Demons Forge which is a co-op dungeon crawler/RPG Lite in the diablo mould. It is decent enough, especially with a buddy, but does get kind of repetitive after a while. It is a shame as the characters are actually pretty well realised and really deserved something a bit more engrossing than a fair to middling hack and slash affair.

Both games slot into the 60%+ category as while they have their moments there are also a few flaws to stop them knocking on the door of being a true gaming neccessity. It is something I've spoken about with Webb before, as a lot of sites seem to think that 70% is a 'bad' or average game, whereas surely 50% is an average game and anything above that is above the norm while anything below that is clearly saddled with issues.

It just seems like few places use the whole 1-100 (or 1-10) spectrum in a good way, and most games will end up with a score of 7-10 with very few other scores being used except for on rare occasions. It's weird, but so is writing reviews about entertainment products which are highly subjective in the first place.

Away from reviews I managed to coax my lady into plenty of Lego gaming, so that we have finally finished off Lego Star Wars 3 and Lego Pirates. I only have the Complete Star Wars saga on my to do list now, so I really should get around to it. I also completed Green Lantern (shock) in double quick time and I'm FINALLY closing in on finishing C&C Kane's Wrath with 73/90 of the Kane's Challenge missions done. It will be nice to play the last mission for each faction one after the other and see those achievements pop up let me tell you.

I also recently started boxing up some of my old stuff with a view to moving house and it's impressive just how much gaming crap I have. I managed to discover my old PS2, N64, Xbox and a plethora of games for each of them. My PS1 and PS2 RPG collections are pretty huge to be honest and it upsets me that I was never able to get around to finishing them all off. Maybe when I retire........

What's been happening?

2011-06-02T11:02:00.002+01:00

Well after a good start to the year my blogging has kind of taken a hiatus in the last few weeks. I think the main reason is down to the fact I've done nothing but replay WSC Real 11 in order to finish up the last few achievements that I was screwed out of when my save corrupted. As a result I was pretty busy just plugging away at the same few events I'd already slogged through which is hardly the best way to get those creative writing juices flowing.

Luckily I finally finished the game off at the weekend, though there was one final twist in the tale. I unlocked the last trophy (which was, ironically, for winning ALL trophies) and didn't get the achievement. As you can imagine, my patience by this point was already worn pretty thin so I was not best pleased. My last resort was to try and play through one more event as a few people had reported success with that method. Fortunately it worked a treat and the relief was palpable.

I do find it odd that I will play a game for hours in order to get a review done, without even the slightest hiccup, and once I then go back to finish the game up a bunch of niggles and glitches will rear their ugly heads. It boggles my mind, and I recall this exact scenario popping up with VT09 back in the day too.

I also managed to smash through Morph X at the weekend too. In case you've never heard of the game, and why would you have, it is a pretty awful third person shooter that can be pimped for a full 1k in about a day if you were feeling up for it. Honestly the graphics are poor, the achievements and subtitles have spelling mistakes and the story is terrible - but at least it was something a bit different and got me moving in the right direction again.

I've also been playing some Lego Pirates with the missus as well, which is a lot of fun though I think my devotion to Lego games may be waning. Pirates is one of the best out there but it is still just more of the same really and I still have to go back and finish up Lego Star Wars 3 as well - which I'm not looking forward to at all, as I felt that game was a let down.

I'm actually at the point now where I'm toying with starting something new, but I'm not entirely sure what yet. I think an RPG like Eternal Sonata may well be in the frame, as I'm still hankering after something a bit different at the moment. I also have C&C: Kane's Wrath to finish up and I've decided to do a level on each of the Challenge missions at a time - as each of the nine factions take on the otheres in exactly the same order/maps so I may as well just do the same map for each faction and work my way up. As it will mean I can just find a successful strategy and stick with it. I've done 21/90 missions this way so far, so hopefully I can blitz through it in time. I also have Splinter Cell: Double Agent on the way from Lovefilm too - so I can get all the online stuff done on that bad boy and chalk another game off of my list. Boo yah!

So what's the target?

2011-05-12T16:17:00.000+01:00

I've been chipping away at a few old games recently, with the overall goal of improving my completion percentage as well as clearing the decks of a few games and creating some much needed space.

The thought occured today about what my overall goal would be, as I'd never really stopped to think about it. At the moment I have nearly 92% completion without DLC or nearly 91% with DLC, so fairly close really as I do tend to pick up all available DLC when I can. With that in mind it should be reasonable to expect a figure of at least 95% to be well within reach, as I can think of at least five games off the top of my head that are sat on my tag with less than 150 points unlocked.

In order to get there I will probably have to complete at least another five - ten games on my list and I'm aiming to do just that. Currently I'm still working on WSC 11, C&C 3 Kanes Wrath and Battlefield 2. All of which should see me creep up at least another half a percent. Then I may do some of the easier stuff I have lying around like Fairytale Fights, Lost Planet, Lego Star Wars and the like. These games should give up a bunch of simple points, though will also take plenty of time to complete in their own right as well. Choices, choices.

In positive news I did fianlly manage to hit 500 games played on Battlefield 2, so purely have single player stuff to focus on in future. I've also maxed out the multiplayer in WSC 11 as well, which is annoying really as if my game save hadn't been corrupted I would have the full 1k by now pretty much. Instead I will have to slog through the career a second time to get this done. Same goes for C&C with only the rather tedious Kane's Challenge tasks needing my attention. All of which are major time sinks. Perhaps I need to fall back on something nice and easy to tide me over?

A busy month

2011-05-09T15:19:00.002+01:00

It has been another busy month both personally and gaming wise, hence my recent drought of blog posts. Though considering the current dearth of gaming blogs that I regularly follow then it appears that I'm not the only one.

I had actually toyed with the idea of moving my whole blog over to Wordpress as that would give me a more direct web address as well as a more professional layout. The main reasoning behind such a move was my increased interest in the blogs of full time gaming writers and the fact that a well done blog can generate a lot more publicity and interest.

For now though I'm more than happy staying where I am, as the initial phase of moving my work and formatting things just how I want them to be is likely to be a touch time consuming and I really do not have much spare time at the moment.

The main reason is the fact that I'm currently house hunting with my lovely wife, and we have spent the last week tidying our property and boxing up as much stuff as we could do without. You just do not realise how much crap you have around the house until you get around to cleaning and moving it all - honestly the amount of stuff that we have thrown away or donated is ridiculous.

Luckily I managed to keep all of my gaming gear present and correct so I've been able to chip away at a few games in the mean time.

My project of clearing up old games was helped by an event on Phantasy Star Universe that basically meant you can beat the hardest online boss at any level (if you have help). So I managed to get all 250 online points in a few hours, and then spend a few more hours helping a friend do the exact same thing. Nice and easy, and certainly easier than having to grind up to level 90 for the same thing. Yay!

I also went back to Battlefield 2 in a bid to polish off the online aspect of the game. I've managed to snag everything now barring 500 games played. Luckily I can chip away at those in clan matches with two consoles, which take a couple of minutes each as opposed to a full match of 20 minutes a time. At the moment I'm at 345 games played so hopefully I can have it done with by the end of the week. Then I can start with the single player stuff and see how I go.

In other, rage related, news it turns out that WSC 11 has a pretty major glitch. As it turns out that the game will sometimes be unable to find your save - which doesn't seem that bad until you realise that it will render said save unusable in the process. I lost two weeks work in this way and now have to basically start from scratch, backing up my save to a USB stick after every game just in case. To say I was pissed off when this happened is an understatement, as I was only two tournaments away from 100% completion of the single player aspect of the game.

In light of this tragedy the game has gone on the backburner for now, along with Kane's Wrath, as I've had Thor to review. Suffice it to say that the game is pretty poor, and is the perfect example of a bad movie tie in. Still it was a fairly manageable 1k in terms of points so should appeal to people on that basis alone.

I also went ahead and played the first Portal seeing as I'd overlooked it until now. I loved the game though it was far shorter than I'd expected. Still it was worth it for the ending theme alone. Pure genius.

Pot as many balls as you can..........

2011-04-15T16:09:00.003+01:00

Yes, I've been bashing some balls around......let me rephrase that.

Yes, I've been playing with my cue.......hang on.

Yes, I've had a Snooker title to review, better. To be honest it has been quite a lot of fun as well. It is nice and relaxing to play a game that relies on tactics and patience rather than balls to the wall action for once. Obviously it is not a title that is for everyone but for those with even the slightest interest in snooker or pool then I would heartily recommend it. Hopefully I can put in the time required to finish it off, and then I can go back to Snooker 2007 and finish that as well. Doh!

Still my OCD tendencies aside what else have I been up to? Oh yeah, even more OCD issues. I swear that some kind of medication may well cure me but until that day I will continue to chip away at all of those games that I foolishly threw onto my gamercard at one point or another.

Beautiful Katamari was first up and the main concern there is the need for 100 hours played. I seemd to get to 50 hours pretty quickly and Raptr claims that I've clocked 55 hours played recently (which didn't include all of my previous time spent) so I must be there or thereabouts. Hopefully this weekend will finish it off but it has been nice to dip back into the zany world of the King of all Cosmos. The random one liners, and stupid put downs are just the best of all time.

I also finished up Command and Conquer: Kane's Wrath. Well I finished off the story, and all the skirmish achievements to boot, but now I have to plough through Kane's Challenge with each bloody faction. Which is ten levels times by nine (ever so slightly different) groups. Oh joy. Whoever was the brain child behind that little set of tasks will feel my wrath one day, but for now I'll just plug away at it when I have a chance.

In fact the only thing I have managed to finish was The Club which proved to be fairly straightforward if truth be told. It was nice to get rid of one of the games I've had sat around for so long, and I may well have to dig out some other simple stuff and get them out of the door too.

In other news I think that I will try to aim for 250k before Gamescom (assuming I end up going this year) as that would be a nice little milestone to get done. Right about now 300k is looking like it is a long way off, but to be honest I don't have too many designs on rushing to meet it.

Doing fine......

2011-04-06T14:47:00.002+01:00

It has been a fairly busy period on the review front recently, with my latest offering (Tiger Woods) now up on x360a in all of its glory. This has eaten into my own gaming time a bit but at least lets me play a few games now and then where achievements aren't really an issue.

I've also been chipping away at The Club in the mornings, afternoons and evenings. Ha ha, basically any time I had available has been put towards the 10,001 online kills needed. Thankfully I managed to do the majority of the grunt work with a turbo pad and a second console. So my actual personal involvement was fairly minimal. The real surprise was just how short the single player aspect of the game was. I've completed 7/8 of the tournaments on Insane difficulty already and will hopefully polish off the last one tonight. My only task then will be to go back through the game on Casual in a bid to find all of the skull shots. If I'd known the game was going to be this easy to 1k then I would have started it sooner.

On the topic of ridiculous kill achievements I started to wonder just how many games achievement DEMANDED that I off a certain number of people in wierd and wonderful ways. Obviously The Club and Gears wanted me to butcher fellow players online, but there are also all of those games that demand X kills with a certain weapon. On that tangent how about sacrificing five people in Fable 2? Killing 53k worth of zombies in Dead Rising? Pulling the arms from your enemies in Lego?

Heck if I add them all together it would probably be computer game genocide of the highest order, and the temptation is there for me to sit down and do just that. Fun times or perhaps a sign that I have too much time on my hands one day?

I've also dredged up a couple of other older titles to compliment my quest to finish off the latest Lego game. My lovely wife has finally said that I can polish off Beautiful Katamari and a few hours of work saw me unlock the 50 hours played achievement. Unfortunately I will need to double that for one more achievement and polish off 200 requests for the other - nothing too taxing but a bit time intensive.

I also made a start on Command and Conquer 3: Kane;s Wrath. This is another of those games I dabbled with a couple of years ago and never went back to but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to stick with it and finish it off this time around.

All in all, it has been a fairly productive week and finishing up a mix of old and new titles is exactly what the doctor ordered and should see make making some kind of progress towards clearing out a bunch of my titles.

Game, Set and Match

2011-03-30T09:25:00.002+01:00

It has been a good week for polishing off tennis titles, as not only did I finally get to Grade 15 online in Top Spin 4 (and finish up the few offline things I still had knocking about) but I also found the time to polish off Virtua Tennis 09 too.

Considering the fact that I was expecting to be playing VT09 for another five weeks this is a starling turn of events and came thanks to an anonymous tip from a guy who had been looking to boost but then found a faster way. Apparently every player you create on the game can access a new set of online tour matches, meaning that you can just keep creating new players winning 16 matches and so on. So you can snag the full 150 tour wins in a day or so, especially as the second player can just forfeit. WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS SOONER?

Still it meant a rapid conclusion to a game that has been ongoing for months, and I can finally play something else, ha ha!

So after getting tired of whacking balls about, I have moved onto The Club again. I'd briefly dabbled with the online but made an effort this week to get all of the online stuff done (barring the 10k worth of kills naturally). I figured that I can then spend an hour a day chipping away at the massive target of kills that I need in order to get it done ASAP. My only real concern is that the servers may be shut down which is what happened to the PS3 version, so I really need to get cracking. I have close to 600 kills at the moment so there is still a long ass way to go.

In other news I have reviewed both Lego Star Wars III and WWE All Stars. Both games disappointed me for different reasons to be honest. Lego was more of the same but the split screen mode was pretty broken and the story was appalling and severely lacking in direction - plus the game just seems to end, with no real conclusion.

WWE was a lot more fun but it has a very steep learning curve for a game that is meant to be a quick bit of entertainment. Mastering the controls is an art form in itself and for such a shallow game it hardly seemed worth it. I did love the Fantasy match ups and using all of the amazing old school characters but on the whole I cannot help but feel shortchanged.

Still, not every game can be an instant classic and I'm sure both will have their fans. For me though I'm still waiting for a game to truly blow my mind this year, whereas at the same stage last year I'd already had things like Darksiders, Bayonetta and Bioshock 2 to entertain me. Hopefully business will pick up.

Lazy time

2011-03-22T14:14:00.005Z

I've been pretty slack on the blogging front recently, which is unusual as there has been a number of occasions when I have felt like writing about something but have never really gotten around to it. I even fired up my blog more than once with the intention to get some words down but sheer slackness prevented me.

So I suppose there is some catching up to be done.

I did manage to finish off Gray Matter, though I had to revert to an earlier save in order to get the last achievement (for 1,000 conversations) but it only took another hour or so so was no big deal in the grand scheme of things. My assessment of the game remains the same, as it is a cracking old school adventure title though one that is a bit lacking graphically and will probably last less than ten hours with very little replay value. Still well worth a play though.

I also managed to blitz through Pacman CE DX in double quick time. I really love the Pacman games and I've finished off every version available on XBLA to date. There is something about the CE versions of the game that really appeal to me, as the crazy high scores, shifting levels and tight time limits all combine to make a truly entertaining experience. Sadly the games are pretty brief in terms of achievements and points, which is a shame as with the amount of games I play I never really have a chance to go back to things like this.

In the same arcade style vein, I also polished off Plants vs Zombies which I totally loved. My better half actually cajoled me into playing it and I'm glad she did. It is a quality tower defense game, of sorts, and is pretty intense and funny to boot. The story mode pretty much just teaches you the basics of all of the plants and level types, then you can take that knowledge into the Puzzle and Survival modes. I actually found myself completing all of the little trophies in the games (for no achievement - which is a first for me) just for the hell of it. The ultimate accolade is doing well in Endless Survival and I managed to hang on for 70 waves, though I then got a little borde so went and dismatled my defences so I could go to bed. My score still shames everyone on my friends list, but I could have probably gone on further if I had the stamina - ah well.

In non-achievement news, I also went back to Geometry Wars for a dabble. I didn't manage to survive 1 million points - mainly because I suck. But I did manage to best two of my friends scores which was satisfying on its own. To date that is probably still one of my favourite arcade games, which is good going considering how old it is now.

In other gaming news I've been lured back into the sordid world of tennis. After coming so close to finishing off Virtua Tennis 09 (barring a few weeks of tournaments) it seems painful to have another tennis game come along so soon. Thankfully Top Spin 4 is a different animal and is much more tactical and realistically paced. I'm enjoying it thus far though I never knew that Tennis would lead to vast amounts of trash talk - the number of people who gloat when they beat me online, or moan if the opposite happens, is staggering. I fail to see why people take online matches so personally - if you beat me, well done, and I would expect the same response if the reverse was true. Instead people bitch and moan instead of just moving on and having fun. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the game up fairly soon and then be able to avoid the horror of online competitiveness.

Oh yeah, I also started up The Club but got interrupted by my tennis review duties so only managed to unlock a few online achievements before having to put it on the back burner.I'll get back into it soon enough no doubt. Well, there is some doubt, but not much.

Puzzling, culling and completing

2011-03-14T16:16:00.003Z

The review business if finally picking up again. I spent the weekend playing through Gray Matter, a point and click game without that self same interface. In fact the fiddly controls were the major let down for me as the rest of the game was pretty fun - the graphics were not stellar, but the storytelling and plot were superb which is what really matters in old school adventure games like this.

It made me think of my old favourites like Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky and Grim Fandango, and the fact that we just do not see as many games of that particular ilk anymore. Hopefully that will change but I'm not too hopeful. Though at least Gray Matter was something new to experience and hopefully it will do well enough to spawn a sequel, as the writing was genuinely compelling with some superb characters and voicework.

Yay, for somthing new and fresh to occupy my mind. It's nice to get away from the same old shooters now and then, rather than just going through the same motions in a game that looks amazingly like something else. If only more developers took a chance on games like Gray Matter then perhaps people would have a more varied choice of interesting titles.

In other news I have finally started to cull my ludicrously large collection of Xbox 360 games and probably not before time.

Obviously I have played a lot of games over the years, more than a few for gamerscore alone no doubt, and for every game I've actually played there have been two or three others that have been bought and shoved onto a shelf. The other day I actually sat down and browsed through my collection - pulling out a bunch of games still in the plastic wrap (15-20 at least) which is just embarrasing.

While I always believe that I will go back and play games given the time, the reality is that it is pretty unlikely to happen no matter what. Faced with that I decided to trade in a bunch of games that I've never even touched.

Virtua Tennis 3 (after slogging through 09 this is the last thing I want to play), Call of Juarez, Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa and Brothers in Arms (which I have completed, but kept in case I ever went for the 0 point achievements - I won't, so it goes) were the games in question, I also traded in de Blob 2 in as I had finished off the full 1k, but they are really just the tip of the iceberg. I actually brought VT 3 back with me as it was only worth £1, and if I trade it against a new game I will be guaranteed £5 so it was worth keeping back for that purpose alone.

I think my shelves will get another visit soon, as I really need to be brutal with some of the stuff I have sat on there. The only games that are safe are Collector's Editions and Steelbook stuff - which would explain why I still have Endwar and Far Cry 2. Considering I can think of another 5-6 games right now that I'd like to be shut of then it will not take me long to make my collection manageable again.

Though I do admit to feeling slightly bad about getting rid of things like Mirrors Edge, GTA 4 et al without ever even trying them out - but will I? Honestly? I doubt it, so better to get rid of them now than later.

On the plus side I have polished off de Blob 2 and Gray Matter in the same week so at least I'm making some progress on newer games this year. Virtua Tennis 09 is pretty much done with as well with only Tournament wins in my way now, as of this morning I'm at 64/150 which is some kind of progress at least. I've also gotten close to completing Plants vs Zombies and I'm working my way through the shorter Survival modes in order to unlock the Endless version for the last achievement.

This week I'll be firing up Two Worlds 2 at long last, plus in the mornings I will try out the new Pacman CE Dx edition which I've been looking forward to as well as playing some of the online stuff for The Club. Bring on the pain.

I now hate tennis......

2011-03-10T13:33:00.002Z

Well maybe not, but we all love a dramatic headline that can then be examined and prodded like some kind of lab rat in the ensuing blurb. Well, that's my story anyway - and I'm sticking with it.

After a couple of weeks on toil I finally have my 250 Ranked wins in Virtua Tennis 09. To be honest the whole process veered between the simple and the frustrating, often in the space of a few minutes. The online community for the game is pretty much dead and the only people I seemed to find online were from France, Belgium and Spain (maybe tennis is more popular on the continent?) with the occasional newcomer from elsewhere.

In fact my second account has a Recently Played list that is pretty much all of the VT09 regulars at this point in time. Which made it easy for me to check when people were online or already in a match.

The best approach, in my opinion, was to play the game as early as possible. As I could rack up 30 wins in the hour before I went to work if I was lucky (7.30am - 8.30am GMT). The real issue was the fact that just ONE other person could wreck my efforts and some of these people were sneaky bastards with amazing levels of patience to boot. One guy literally sat searching for a game for 30 minutes - he would then go away and play one mini-game before coming back to do the same thing. I got around him by setting my status to Appear Offline though - which goes to show that he must have been looking at my profile to see if I was still online.

Still I got everything done and dusted this morning. So now I can just do Player matches at my leisure, and then play the game once a week for my Tournament wins - which means another seven weeks to go.

I've also been chipping away at de Blob 2, which is still pretty fun for the most part though after doing ten of the twelve levels the novelty has kind of worn off. Still I should complete it in the next few days, all going well, and that will be one more thing off my to do list.

Next up is The Club and another 10k worth of online kills - though at least I can do it solo which should ease the burden somewhat.

Games night and other tall tales

2011-03-07T15:48:00.002Z

Every month or so, I invite a bunch of chums over to my house so that we can indulge in some gaming. Obviously everyone can get their kicks out of beating up/shooting others via Xbox Live, but there is nothing quite as satisfying as getting one over on close friends.

Basically I hook up my two Xbox consoles, set up the TV's and then we play Halo and Gears until the sun goes down. This time around there were seven of us and we pretty much played Halo from about 7pm until 2am. Good times. Most of the games were pretty close and there is always a good level of banter and ridiculousness. Not to mention enough cool moments to fill a highlight reel for life. Not to mention some dark times too - like when my idiot teammate managed to kill off one of our own team and then himself in the last second of a match, turning a victory into a draw. Nice.

We also order copious amounts of pizza, eat dubious nachos and drink far too many fizzy beverages than is good for us. Surprising then that pretty much every attendee is either married or engaged to be, which just goes to show that having a social life and having a gaming life do not have to be seperate entities.

I also managed to play some Horde with some of the early arrivals, finishing off the Blood on the Snad achievement in the process, and pimp the whole of Harm's Way on the Arcade. A fun night on the whole, plus the joy of pizza and a few achievements. What could be better?

After that I just kind of cruised through the rest of the weekend. I managed to finish off all of the single player tasks on Virtua Tennis 2009, though the last few minigames were a nightmare to max out, so now I just need four more Gold medals to get the full 1k. All of them are online tasks and two of them are tied to online tournaments specifically. Hopefully I will have the Ranked and Player matches done with by the end of this week - which will leave me needing 102 more Online tournaments wins to get that elusive completion. With a max of 16 tournaments a week, that means another seven weeks of toil (though the actual playing of the events only takes an hour). So roll on the end of April!

I also went back to de Blob 2 in a bid to continue my quest for collectibles. The game has far too many of them to be honest, and with no real way to save the game it can become a real chore if you die - I ended up having to redo a bunch of challenges three times due to constant deaths at one point which was hardly fun times. Despite that, I have fully completed eight of the twelve levels at this point so hopefully the end is in sight.

After that I will be turning my attention to Gray Matter and Two Worlds 2 - hopefully they can prove to be an interesting diversion, and a nice stream of points too of course.

Painting by numbers and hidden MP

2011-03-02T14:07:00.005Z

My current review project is de Blob 2 - a sequel to a Wii game in case you didn't know. To be honest I was expecting the usual kiddy style shovelware and an easy 1k worth of achievement points. However, the game is actually pretty fun and I've already put 10 hours into the game and still have a bunch of stuff to do, so this is not a game for the quick completion pile.

The idea is that evil Comrade Black wants the world to be as drabbly black and white as he is, so sets about making that dream a reality. It is up to our paint charged hero to then restore the natural hues of the fair city and stamp out this monochrome menace once and for all.

In terms of how it plays then we are firmly in platformer territory here, with a side order of painting and decorating thrown in. Blob uses his powers to clean up the town, defeat foes and solve various puzzles along the way. It is a pretty nice change of pace from my usual fare and I'm really getting into it, though the collectibles and challenges on each level are becoming a major grind. Still I recommend people check it out and hopefully my review will be up shortly.

Next up will be Grey Matter, an old school point and click game which I'm quite looking forward to. It has been a while since I sunk my teeth into something new from that particular genre so I'll be taking my time and exploring every nook and cranny. The key for me will be the dialogue though, as such exposition heavy games need a great plot to drive them along.

In the mean time I'm still working away at Virtua Tennis 09. I'm pretty much done in terms of everything barring gold medals, as the only solo achievements I need are 3 Strikes in a row on the bowling mini game and to beat King (and unlock him). I should have those wrapped up at the end of my current solo season so I have downed tools on that for the moment. Instead I've focused all of my efforts on the online aspects of the game.

It does actually annoy me (considerably) that the devs saw fit to put two easy online achievements in the mix (simply PLAY 10 Player mataches and 10 Ranked matches - not even win) and then hid the real graft behind one achievement worth 25g. You could probably get to 975 points in less than 30 hours if you were so inclined, but then you are looking at 80+ hours for the last achievement. Madness.

Anyway, I've currently done about 50 Player match wins, out of 250, which is the easiest to do as I can invite a friend, and just play 1 game, 1 set.

Then I have 121 Ranked wins (again out of 250) which is more of a pain as there are still a few commited players and the lag in legit matches is horrendous. I tried playing a few people and more often than not I would hit the ball, it would show as going past the player on my screen and then the ball would suddenly reappear halfway across the net on my side of the court - point lost. What the hell?

Instead I set up matches with my second account, usually as early in the morning as I can to avoid other people, and then crank out as many wins as I can manage before getting interrupted. Considering I only started on Saturday then my progress is pretty good. I hope to have the required amount by the same time next week.

The real grind, in terms of time not difficulty, are the Online Tournament wins. As I can currently only manage 16 a week maximum assuming I play all of the two player events and no one else hops in, then the events get reset on a Sunday night. I managed to grab all 16 wins last Thursday and a further 16 on Monday. So I'm sat at 32 out of 150 needed. Meaning another eight weeks work at the very least. Damn it all to hell.

To say I will be super happy when I get to 1k is an understatement, plus I know for a fact this is a game that very few others have completed too. Double awesome. Hopefully, I'll have everything bar the Online Tournaments done by next week and then I can pretty much put it to bed except for sporadic play.

A community mourns

2011-02-28T15:20:00.003Z

I think everyone that follows me will be au fait enough with gamerscore to know that MGC shut down for good last week.

I'm not going to lie and say that I used the site very often or that it held some special place in my heart, but I will remember it fondly for a number of reasons. It was one of the few sites that I would visit sporadically and I would often check my position on the global and UK leaderboards, plus the genre leaderboards were amazingly compelling though I never could commit to one type of game to mount any kind of serious challenge on any of them.

The real issue is just how such a huge site could possibly fail? Obviously people will point to the 5 million gamertags and say that should have generated enough money to keep things afloat. However, they would be missing the point. Not many of those people even visited the site - as friends could sign each other up, plus the only money was generated was via the forums as MS said that the site could not profit from the gamercards themselves.

Obviously rival sites would crop up too and that seems to be what rankled the most for Morgon (the sites founder). He had approached MS about being given access to the achievement feed, in the hopes of using the extra data to provide extra stats and information. He was turned down flat. I know a similar request has also been made on numerous occasions by x360a, with similar results. Other sites like Raptr and TA instead just went ahead and took the data directly from xbox.com, via HTML scrapes, without even bothering to ask for permission. As a result they could offer information and stats that other sites did not have access to - and as a result traffic from MGC gradually slipped away.

I even saw more than a few posts on TA along the lines of "Who cares - this site is better anyway." Well of course it is seeing as you had an unfair advantage in terms of data whereas a site that played by the rules had to close it's doors. One person even posted up a message from Major Nelson that said, categorically, that scraping xbox.com was highly disapproved of.

And yet here we are.

Now do not take this as an attack on scraping sites, or TA in general, as they do what they do to get traffic and provide an interesting source of stats and information. Heck - I'm a member of both sites though my use is sporadic. However, the truth of the matter is that their activities are not in any way endorsed by MS and as such things need to be changed.

The real issue here is MS themselves and the fact that they seem to refuse to make a formal decision on what is or isn't allowed. Some sites see the XCDL (community dev. licence) as carte blanche to do what they like, while other sites try to go through the right channels and get turned away. So MS have to sit down and either allow all sites the same access or none of them - as just turning a blind eye to such activities is really not doing anyone any favours, and I include Raptr and TA in that assessment.

Obviously a ton of page views from unmanned scanners, such as those sites use, will inevitably slow xbox.com down. At the moment the numbers are probably not enough to be too much of a concern (TA has 120k members compared to the 5 million of MGC) so leaving the sites well enough alone is in the best interests of MS, as that leaves a couple more community driven sites that are generating interest in Xbox and all of its related products at zero cost to MS. Win, win.

Now what would happen if TA and Raptr suddenly had 1 million members (specifically with an Xbox 360 in the case of Raptr - as they are already over that mark thanks to the fact they cover PC, PS3, Xbox and even Flash games)? Or 3 million? Or more? That would be an awful lot of data requests on an hourly basis, which in turn would probably slow xbox.com to a crawl. In that scenario do you think that MS would then act? Of course they would, the access for scraping sites would be blocked and all of a sudden two more thriving communities would be down the pan.

If MS do not want sites to access certain data then why don't they just come out and say so, rather than letting some sites get away with working outside the rules to the detriment of others? All of this could be avoided with the kind of community support that the XCDL was meant to provide, instead the current members some to be overlooked and ignored when it comes to new ideas and input. The data feed is currently woefully inadequate and unless it is bolstered and independent sites are given a lot more support then this cycle will repeat itself.

In the end MGC was a victim of its own success and other sites could inevitably follow suit which would be a sad state of affairs.

When old games attack

2011-02-24T13:33:00.004Z

Since I've started delving into my back catalogue for games to finish off I seem to have become more and more energised by what to play next. I never thought it would happen but I actually WANT to play Battlefield 2, Fairytale Fights and Project Sylpheed. At this point I cannot see a game on my tag that I'm not considering going back to, heck I even thought about playing Spiderman 3 this morning - SPIDERMAN 3!!!!

I'm planning on popping to the shops at some point in a bid to get a second copy of Virtua Tennis 09, as I managed to win my first 16 online tournaments today but will now have to wait a week before they are available again. It doesn't make sense for me to keep hold of a rental game for that long so I'd rather pick up a cheap pre-owned copy to tide me over.

I'm a bit torn after that, as I really want to go back to Battlefield 2 and finish up the MP stuff that I have missing (which is mainly playing 500 games). If I could do that then I could wrap up the solo stuff anytime I wanted to, plus it might give me the inspiration to do just that.

Other titles that are tickling my fancy right now include Fairytale Fights and Project Sylpheed. One of which will probably be my next main game after I'm done with VT09. To be honest it has been nice to play games at my own pace as well as making some strides towards finishing up some titles that I'd left hanging for far too long.

We have a winner........

2011-02-23T15:00:00.003Z

The random finger of fate has chosen Virtua Tennis 09 as my next online project, which is funny really as I already have the online achievements for the game by playing legit. The issue is the rather ridiculous Gold Medal achievement which requires you to undertake a series of challengees that are all tied together for a paltry 25 points.

Tasks like 1,000 slice points won, Five Davis Cup trophies or making 25 friends on tour will all be fairly straightforward. However, amassing 250 Online Player wins, 250 Ranked wins and 150 Online Tour wins will not. So it will be a major grind that will only go towards an achievement. Yay?

The Player and Ranked wins can be done at any point, but I can only do a max of 16 Online Tour wins a week as once you have won an event you have to wait to take part again. Boo! So it will take me a minimum of ten weeks to get the number of wins I need. To be honest I may need to look at getting a second copy of the game permanently rather then renting it, as I really do not want a rental copy sat around for that long.

After that I can move onto my next partial completion, which at the moment is looking like being Project Sylpheed. Seeing as it is stuck at 60/1000 so far then I have plenty to do.

The fickle finger of fate

2011-02-22T10:20:00.002Z

I was offered the chance to take part in some boosting for The Club over the weekend, but had to turn it down so I could spend some time with the wife. Plus, I'd only just finished grinding through Front Mission online so was not really in the mood to leap stright back into grinding something else as well.

However, I may well end up playing The Club this week anyway as the only two games on my Lovefilm rental list at this moment in time are that and Virtua Tennis 09. Both of them will give me a second copy of the game and enable me to boost the relevant tasks. If I get VT09 then I will grind out all of the online wins that I need and if I get The Club then I will get started with all of the easy stuff and then make my way up to 10k in my own time.

To be honest I would much rather do the game in a dedicated boosting party rather than solo, but that way means I have to be ready to play at set times - whereas if I go it solo then I can just do an hour here and there. We shall see if it pans out, though my choice is entirely in the lap of the Lovefilm gods.

I was also expecting to have a couple of review titles to deal with but it seems that Two Worlds 2 has been delayed yet again in the UK. Plus, the other game that was meant to arrive straight from the publisher hasn't turned up either. Sad face.

Last night did see me finish up all of the Keflings tasks except for having ten banner towers - still two short of that target, and I even resorted to hopping into random MP games and then messaging them to see if they would help out. I got no joy doing that at all, curses!

So let's roll the dice and see if it comes up VT09 or The Club. Exciting.

Helper monkeys

2011-02-21T15:51:00.004Z

I finally managed to track down that last pesky sensor - thank you Jesus (assuming Jesus is a twenty foot tall mech with a sniper rifle and missile launchers).

With that nightmare FINALLY put to bed I have gone back into the soothing world of Virtua Tennis 09. I actually enjoy tennis games quite a lot, and I always seem to have one in my collection no matter which console I've had down the years. VT09 is a pretty decent game and one I had left in limbo for some time, mainly due to a number of achievement glitches that apparently had a chance of rearing their ugly heads at certain points.

At least now there is a patch so it should be smooth sailing, though apparently one achievement will only unlock if you remove the patch and play offline. Try and make sense of that if you can - an achievement that is messed up by a patch to fix other achievements? Nice.

Still I have managed to soar up from 150 in the rankings to being on the verge of the top 50. It is a bit of a grind in places as you can only enter certain tournaments until you are ranked highly enough - so I have already had to play a season and a half on the Pro tour just to get this far, and that is after winning every event I have entered too.

Assuming I get all of the single player stuff done then I have an almighty grind to get the required number of online wins that would net me the relevant Gold medals. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

In other news I made a start on A Kingdom for Keflings, which is a cute strategy game that sees you helping your diminutive subjects to build a nice place to live. It should be a fairly easy 200 points but my efforts hinge on the assistance of other people, as I need random strangers to join my game and build their unique banner tower. I managed to get eight helpers (out of ten needed) over the weekend but only four of those were from my friends list - come on chums, help a Kefling kicker out!!!

FAIL

2011-02-18T14:13:00.002Z

So this morning I sat down to try and finish off Front Mission Evolved before work. I had about forty minutes of free time and two levels to scour for the pesky buggers.

I managed to blitz through the first mission without too much trouble, I did miss one Sensor but it turned out to be the very first one on the list that I hadn't looked for closely enough. Then I hopped into the last level and all was going swimmingly, some of the little buggers were annoyingly out of the way but as I closed in on the end of the mission I was perfectly in tune with the list I was going by.

Until I got to the last one and found myself with 19/20. Arrrrrrgh! The real frustration here is the fact that I picked off a bunch of sensors when I was completing the game and never really paid attention to where they were (plus it was last year) so now I have to trawl through the level, step by step, in a vain hope of finidng the very last sensor in the whole game. I truly hope that it is somewhere obvious as I'm starting to grow tired of stomping around in mechs - which I never thought could happen in a million years. COS MECHS ARE AWESOME!!!!

Hopefully I will find that pesky little critter at some point this evening and then I can move onto something a bit different.

Oh the irony.........

2011-02-17T11:05:00.003Z

I wrote a blog post not too long ago about collectibles in games and how they can soon come to be amazingly tiresome if not implemented properly. Well it seems like the gaming Gods took offense at my harsh words and saw fit to smite me in the form of Front Mission Evolved.

This game has 20 Sensors hidden on each level which you have to shoot, plus a further three Emblems per level that need picking up. The real ball ache is the fact that the sensors are pretty damn small and are hidden in some ridiculous places - a bunch of them are actually off the playing area and can only be seen/shot if you use a gun with a zoom feature. Yay!

Normally in such a situation you would just leap onto the interwebz and find a really good guide, perhaps with videos, to help you along. However, the game is pretty much a non-entitty in terms of sales and the guides available are not great. Someone did do a bunch of videos for some of the sensors, but they stopped after about five levels (dammit) so I'm following a written guide on PS3T, which is pretty helpful but also has a few flaws and ambiguous descriptions. As a result it is taking me about an hour to scour each level for every item and, when you consider that I could probably complete some of those levels in about ten minutes, then it soon becomes a real ballache.

I even went and had a look at the Prima strategy guide and it is absolutely APPALLING for the sensor locations. They are not even numbered in the order you encounter then, so for one map number 20 on their list is actually right at the start of the level - meaning you will miss it if you progress too far. Who the hell thought that would be an acceptable layout is beyond me.

To be honest I've seen a lot of shoddy strategy guides for various games and I often wonder how those things get made, if they aren't going to include even the most basic information then what good are they?

Still after a lot of trial and error I have got through the first three acts with everything found. So now I have six more levels to endure before I finally have the full 1k.

After that I will be at a bit of a loose end. I really want to round up a posse to challenge the Firefight missions on Halo ODST, but other than that I'm not sure what I want to play at the moment. A couple of ideas have come to mind, mainly because I have a month of Live on my backup account now, so that I have all of the online stuff done in a couple of games.

My first choice would be Virtua Tennis 09, as this is a game I've already started and would dearly love to finish off. The main problem is that I need 650 online wins (no really) in order to get the relevant Gold medals - yes, 650 wins would only HELP me towards one achievement. It wouldn't get me any points in and of itself.

My other thought was The Club, as there have been rumours of the servers being shut down so if I want to get it done then I have to start fairly soon. I could probably knock out most of the online tasks in a day or so, leaving me with a gring to 10,001 worth of kills. Considering the fact I'll be doing it on my own then it shouldn't be too rough, but at the same time I really don't want to be stuck with another incomplete game.

Choices, choices.

What next?

2011-02-14T11:46:00.003Z

I finally finished off FFXIII for the full 1k over the weekend. It clocked in at about 96 hours give or take - which may well be a few hours short as I remember reloading a few sections without saving when I was farming for gil and items.

Overall I enjoyed the game for what it was, but it really did not feel like a traditional FF game to me. It also annoyed me that all of the sidequests were little more than a series of battles against enemies that you had long since grown tired of. Even the final mark mission was not as tough as I had hoped, and my party made short work of the opposition to net me most of the points I was missing.

The lure of RPG games to me has always been the story and levelling up elements, but in this case it was only the levelling up that really kept me hooked. As once you hit post game then the story is non-existant and you are pretty much tasked with running around various areas to beat up on the Mark mission targets and grind enough money/components in order to acquire every accessory and weapon. Hardly the stuff of RPG legend.

The most positive legacy from the game is that I really want to delve into another JRPG fairly soon, although I do still have to go back to Fallout: NV at some point too. The most likely candidate at the moment is Eternal Sonata, as that game has been on my shelf for an age now (I bought it day one) so could do with some love. Plus, the fact it is meant to be gorgeous to look at and fun to play is no hardship either.

In other news I spent a fun 10 hours over the course of a few days playing through the online portion of Front Mission Evolved. You do need four players to start a game, but luckily Mechahertz and I had two consoles each and two copies of the game each too. So that cut down on the time required dramatically. With the ultimate goal being to get to rank 70 we settled into grinding out the kills in order to rack up the 179k worth of XP needed.

People often say that boosting is a form of cheating and disrupts geniune players, but I can honestly say that we barely ran into ANYONE as we played Front Mission. The online is truly dead and out of all the games we played, we probably only saw another four or five people online in total. To be honest I played the game online legit when it first launched and it was just as bad back then. I know that EA have come out and said publicly that online gaming is the future for ALL games, but I really do not think this is the case. There are some titles that will never thrive online and developers need to start realising that.

After that was done, well nearly I still have a bunch of collectibles to find throughout single player, I then moved back to Harry Potter. Seeing as it is a rental (and my wife wants to get Zumba for Kinect next, ugh) then I figured I should finish it off. I managed to blitz through my second playthrough in just a few hours and find the last set of items that I had missed first time around. I now only have my Easy difficulty completion to do and that will be another completion onto the heap. Yay me!

I think achievements have certainly made me play games differently in one respect as, back in the day, I would never play a game more than once no matter how good it was. Whereas now I will play it until the points are all mine - is that commitment or just OCD?

You be the judge.........

Stats update - sorry kids!

2011-02-10T13:48:00.004Z

RETAIL - 37 games

Assassins Creed: BH – 270/1000
Battlefield 2: MC - 315/1000
Beatles Rock Band – 130/1000
Beautiful Katamari - 1050/1250
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: B. Ops - 1000/1150
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
C&C Kane’s Wrath - 130/1000
Dante's Inferno - 1220/1290
Fairytale Fights - 165/1000
Fallout New Vegas - 155/1000
Final Fantasy XIII - 625/1000
Front Mission Evolved – 750/1000
Gears of War 2 - 1420/1750
GRAW - 752/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Halo ODST – 870/1000
Harry Potter: DH Part 1 – 920/1000
Hellboy: SoE - 310/1000
Kinect Adventures - 85/1000
Lego Star Wars TCS - 260/1000
Lost Planet - 350/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Project Sylpheed - 60/1000
Risen - 70/1000
Spiderman 3 - 10/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Star Wars: Republic Heroes - 365/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
The Sims 3 – 150/1000
Tomb Raider: Legend - 1000/1250
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
Virtua Tennis 09 - 545/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 18347/39440

ARCADE - 8 games

Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Eets: Chowdown - 40/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Puzzle Quest - 200/250
Scott Pilgrim – 150/250
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 100/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 790/1700

Overall - 19137/41140

Yes, I know that people do not really care how many points I have left to play for and they do not give a rats ass about my strategy for upping my completion percentage - but hey, I'm going to do it anyway.

Part of what draws me to playing achievements in the first place is my love of statistics and seeing an actual benchmark of my progress towards certain goals. So posts like this one help me to keep on top of the things I still have to do and also inspire me to pull out some of those older games in a bid to get them done and dusted. It is a helpful tool - albeit one that is kind of mind numbing for anyone reading it, so I apologise in advance for that.

I have 22,003 points available in games that I am actually likely to play. That is kind of a big number (and is even larger according to xbox.com at 24,203 but that includes glitched stuff and games like Chromehounds that I can't score anymore points on) so obviously I need to whittle it down to size.

My main goal is, and probably always will be, getting that target down to 10k or less. Of the arcade games I'm only likely to finish off about half of those games and seeing as Scott Pilgrim will probably take a while then I don't know when I will get around to it. The real soncern is obviously all of that pesky retail stuff: though seven of those games only have DLC left to polish off to be honest.

At the moment I'm focused on three games in particular: FFXIII, Harry Potter and Front Mission Evolved.

FFXIII is a major time sink and I'm in the process of grinding towards the Item Hunter achievement with all of the others coming along the way. I find it ridiculous that a game should ask you to put in double/triple the time it took to complete the story in order to max out a game but there you go. Instead I am reduced to murdering a bunch of giant turtles in order to get enough cash to upgrade all of my weapons and accessories. What joy - and it is not helped by the fact that the drop rates for Platinum Ingots seems to be stupidly low at times. Still I'm hopeful that I will have the game done and dusted by the end of the month.

Next up is the latest Harry Potter game. A night of random flailing managed to net me all of the Kinect achievements, but now I am faced with the prospect of completing the game in its entirety on Easy and Medium difficulties to finish it off. Why not make thos achievements stackable? You've got me......

Finally I have started working on the online achievements for Front Mission Evolved. Luckily I am doing it with just one other person (we have two machines each) and after just over an hours work we both had 20k experience out of the 177k needed, so I think it should be fairly manageable. Once that is done I will go back through the game for all of the collectables to polish it off.

So maybe three games will be done with by the end of the month, which is a start.

What is wrong with Kinect........

2011-02-09T14:18:00.006Z

I'm sure that no one really cares about my opinion but that is the beauty of a blog - I get to tell you anyway, and you have to sit there and take it. Or at least click away from this page.....

Anyway, while I have to agree that the Kinect is an impressive piece of kit it seems to fall foul of the same issues that plague the Wii. Mainly whether or not you have adequate space to play the damn thing, the quality of the games and the accuracy of the technology.

The space issue is the real killer, especially if you want to play with more than one player. We pretty much cleared out our living room (and it isn't that small) in order to play and still ended up with very little space to work with and were constantly getting in one anothers way, which is hardly ideal. The main issue is the one of depth, as you need to be stood at least six feet away from the Kinect camera in order for it to pick you up. This means that a lot of the space you need is acTually not going to get used as the second you start moving too far forward then the whole thing stops working properly.

The games themselves are also not at a very high level at the moment. Admittedly so far I've only played Dance Central, Kinect Adventures and Harry Potter, so perhaps I'm not giving it a chance. Though having seen some of the reviews for third party games then perhaps it is just as well if I do steer clear.

From what I HAVE played, it is fair to say that Dance Central is arguably the best of the bunch. Though if you have zero co-ordination like I do then perhaps you will not find it as much fun. For my sister (former dancer) it was a walk in the park and much enjoyment was had. Kinect Adventures is pretty much a bunch of mini games that show what the machine is capable of, it gets old pretty quickly and does not really have the long term appeal that Wii Sports did. Finally Harry Potter is just awful. The Kinect aspect of the game is just a bunch of on rails sections where you flail your arms furiously to cast a bunch of spells and defeat enemies. The main problem is the fact that the game does not recognise what you are doing most of the time which led to some hilarious moments - especially when my wife developed a move to cast a spell that looked as though she had dislocated her arm. We laughed hysterically but not really because the game was in any way good.

The problem here is that people without large empty rooms are going to get very little enjoyment out of their new purchase, and the games kicking around at the moment do not offer much in the way of long term entertainment. It reminds me very much of the early days of the Wii, especially when I took the Kinect out to meet my family and the in-laws over Xmas. Everyone loved it, loved playing the various games and then got a bit bored after a while.

Since then it has pretty much gathered dust in my house, with the only use being from my wife playing an exercise game every now and then (Biggest Loser, which is also a bit naff about picking up certain movements - but at least it was cheap). Until we played Potter last night so I could mop up some achievements it had sat unloved for for nearly two months, which leads me to believe that the lure of motion control is perhaps not as great as the Wii had made out.

The Wii phenomenon was a simple one, people would play on a friends console and be hooked by the wonder of it all. They would then rush out and buy their own Wii, play it religiously for a few weeks and then never touch it again. I think it is telling that the Wii has the lowest software attach rate of all the current consoles, as people never bothered to look beyond Wii Sports and the console would soon be gathering dust. Unfortunately, MS and Sony simply looked at the hardware numbers with more than a hint of envy and decided motion control was the way forward.

Whether it will pay off in the long term is another matter. Both companies are touting good sales figures, but will the software keep up or will it fall by the wayside as people get tired of shovelware and titles that are little more than a few dull minigames, as happened on the Wii. I think, as with Nintendo, the onus is on MS to produce some amazing first party titles to drive things forward and until that happens it could well be lean times for those people that enjoy virtual dancing, flailing and spellcasting.

Back in the saddle

2011-01-31T12:29:00.003Z

After a bit of a lull period, I have finally got my next review title underway. Mindjack actually came out last week but I was unable to pick it up at the time as I was suffering from the flu which basically left me at home feeling sorry for myself. It also meant a pretty non-active weekend in fairness, though at least I managed to polish off the single player aspect of Halo: ODST.

Instead I popped out to pick it up on the Friday just gone, and then settled down to play it on my girlfriends account. Before I review a game I always make a judgement call on whether or not to put it on my own tag - which usually depends on the achievements and how much of a pain in the ass they will be to complete.

Now before everyone rambles on about how I should play games for, you know, FUN. I only do this for review titles, as they are often games that I wouldn't normally pick up myself, as is the case with Mindjack. However, even if the game hadn't previously appealed to me, I will give it a shot depending on the time sink required.

Mindjack seemed easy enough to do, though you would have to rely upon other gamers joining your game or then have to boost certain achievements with two or three other people. None of which really appealed to me - plus I'd rather devote my gaming time to FFXIII at the moment and didn't want the added hassle of trying to pimp Mindjack for all it was worth.

The game itself is.......odd. On a basic level it is a fairly simple cover based shooter, the twist comes from the fact you can leave your own body and 'hack' into those of other people and machines. If you play online you can also 'hack' into other peoples games and either help or hinder them depending on your personal preference. It is a neat idea but one that seems fundamentally wasted on such a linear and simplistic game. You go from area to area, killing everything in sight, and that is pretty much all she wrote. With a few more ideas and a bit of variety this game could have been a bit special - instead it is a bit shit.

It doesn't help that when you complete a section of a level, all the weapons you picked up are taken away. Also, you cannot pause the game either as the game just continues on in the background. Say what?

Not exactly the start to the year I was hoping for to be honest, but I'm sure things will pick up in short order. I'll be finishing off the review in short order and, for anyone interested in achievements, the game should be a fairly easy 1k (20 hours?) assuming you can find a buddy to play with.

Open world gaming

2011-01-27T09:56:00.002Z

I'm currently dabbling with Halo ODST, and found the set up of the game to be quite interesting. You play the new squad recruit and as you wander the almost abandoned city you stumble across clues about your teams whereabouts, which in turn lead to standalone missions in a flashback stylee.

You can take on some of the missions in whatever order you like, or you could just wander the city and search for collectibles while pummeling the Covenant you come across. It is obviously exploration-lite, but it got me thinking why there hadn't been a full blown attempt at an open world FPS. The idea makes sense and games like Oblivion and Fallout (though both are primarily RPG led) show that it is easily possible.

On a personal level I cannot say whether or not the idea would appeal to me - as I'm notoriously shy about playing open world games. I really just cannot get into them, I've bought the last three games in the GTA series and, after about an hours play on each, they have been consigned to gathered dust in short order. I actully didn't bother buying Red Dead either, as I knew I wouldn't get around to playing it and strangely I don't regret that decision one bit.

Maybe I just need one special game that will draw me into the whole open world set up, but I can't see that happening any time soon.

Anyway, Halo is done with but the inevitable trawl for collectibles begins. I've managed to find 28/29 of them in the city but have no idea which one I've missed, so the thought of going over the locations one by one is not something I'm looking forward to. Still it needs to be done, if only for my sanity.

I'm also within touching distance of the last boss on FFXIII, so I'll be getting that bad boy done this week too. Though that will only really be the beginning of my time with the game as I still need to get all of the weapons/accessories and level everyone up. What joy.

Why good stats matter

2011-01-25T12:42:00.002Z

I'm not going to go on some kind of crazed rant about why little graphs, achievement points or 100% completion matters. Instead I would rather talk about those little behind the scenes issues that keep games ticking over and make sure that they accurately track your performance along the way. Obviously this kind of thing is more important than ever when it comes to achievements thanks to a plethora of "Get X kills with X" and other amazingly inventive ideas.

When you have a goal in sight then it really helps to know that:

A) Your progression towards that tally is being monitored, and....
B) That once you fulfill whatever mystical condition may be required, then you will be duly rewarded.

Games can help with A by having some lovely trackjing screens that show you exactly what you have done and how close you are towards completing said challenge. Good examples include The Darkness and Gears of War 2, both of which monitor your performance in terms of kills, chapter progression, games played and so on. It makes things remarkably easy to follow, and you do not end up wondering just when you will have played your 1,000th game (or whatever).

This kind of thing is sadly not as widespread as you would hope, but then it doesn't really need to be as long as the software is doing the same job quietly behind the scenes. So in either case, once you get to point B and have played your games, got your kills, or single handedly won the war then you can expect to get your reward.

.............

.....any time now.

Any second.

DAMMIT!!!!

There is nothing worse than KNOWING you have accomplished something and then being royally screwed out of your moment of glory. The issue hit home yet again as I was playing Assassins Creed Brotherhood last night. A few of us had got together in a private match (so we didn't upset the natives) to finish off some of the trickier multiplayer bonuses and snag Abstergo Employee of the Month. However, no matter how many different awards we got (and we got them all fo sho) it would not unlock for one member of my team. I will admit that I was kind of glad it wasn't me, but still felt the same pain.

We had all played the MP together and all gotten the same bonus tags and what not, so the reason for this issue is not entirely obvious. It also does not help that AC:B provides no way of tracking your progress or even seeing which bonuses you already have. Good work Ubi - and I know you can do better as I've seen the stat tracking on HAWX.

It reminded me of the horror of Gears of War, which actually had stat tracking, and yet despite my screen telling me I had 10k worth of online kills I still had to go and get another two thousand to get that damn achievement to unlock.

It just shows that these things are never as thoroughly tested as you would hope, and if you want gamers to put the time and effort into experiencing everything your game has to offer then do not shaft them at the finish line. I suppose it just goes to show that, even now, achievements are not really given the time they deserve in both a development or testing phase. Never mind that this is the exception - should it really happen at all?

Final Fanta...zzzzzzzzz!

2011-01-18T12:34:00.005Z

Let me preface this blog by saying that I love Final Fantasy games in general. Obviously VII has a special place in my heart, but I also think Tactics is one of the greatest games of all time (I had the U.S import) and really enjoyed VIII, IX and X too. I have every single PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy game in my collection and they will probably stay there - some things are too awesome to sell.

However......

Final Fantasy XIII is easily the worst in the series so far. It is not just the amazingly linear nature of the game (which has been discussed to death) but also the fact that most of the sidequests come after you complete the game - why? - and the story and characters as so underdeveloped. The reason people loved VII was because of the great characters and superb stories. When a certain character died you actually CARED, hell I was still praying for some kind of miracle revival come the end of the game.

The newest title has none of that. The characters seem cold and unapproachable, and most of them seem far too self absorbed to really invest yourself into. Some of the dialogue is also pretty damn cheesy and does not really help to suck you into this, admittedly, gorgeous world. Plus the battle system almost insists on taking all the cool decisions away from you. Sure you could select your own attacks but then you would lose valuable time and get beat on - better to just hit Auto Battle time and time again.

With a sequel now in the works you would hope that Square will learn from some of the feedback and make a game that lives up to the series lofty traditions. Hopefully I will have finally finished off XIII by the time it arrives, as I'm in the process of polishing off the full 1k. With the majority of the Ci'eth missions and item grinding still to come it may take me some time, but hopefully I'll get there as it is pretty much the only title I'm playing right now.

Oh - other than Halo ODST, which I did some more of this morning. Annoyingly the tracking for the kill achievements seems to reset when you reload the game, grrr! Still killing Brutes with a plasma pistol never gets old, ha ha! If I could get two more games off my list I would be a happy bunny.

Money well spent?

2011-01-17T09:45:00.002Z

I think everyone knows my opinion on DLC by now. I certainly like the idea behind it, as anything that can expand your favourite games is to be applauded, however, more often than not the DLC is underwhelming and not really value for money.

This weekend I played through the Noble map pack on Halo Reach, in a bid to snag the last 250 points I needed to finish off the game (again). Having put at least 80 hours into Reach already, most of which was online multiplayer or firefight, it was a bit of a shame that the new maps were not all that. Sure you can snag the points easy enough, it took about two hours to get them all, but the maps themselves are not a patch on the original stuff. Playing Invasion on Spire or Boneyard was always a blast, with the large maps offering muliple angles of approach, however the new Breakpoint map seems cramped and ill thought out in comparison. As a result it is easy to create killing bottlenecks that can only be broken by sheer luck it seems.

I think Reach was good fun while it lasted and I have no illusions about the fact that there will be more DLC in the future, but I doubt it will live up to the fun I've had with the core game. So if DLC is not really enhancing the experience then what is the point?

I finally managed to polish off Planet 51 as well, in the end I probably spent close to thirty hours on the game all told - which is far too long for a kids game really - as how many children are going to have that kind of attention span and dedication. Achievements on kids games are reknowned for being easy, but that is because they SHOULD be. These games should cater to their target audience, rather than throwing in a bunch of tasks that are a lengthy chore. The achievement crowd is still in the minority in terms of the 360 population and developers need to make their achievements fun for anyone that wants to go for them, while staying true to the game itself.

After getting that done I was kind of at a loss about what to play next. I have a bunch of games that have yet to be touched, plus even more that are semi-completed. In the end I went back to Final Fantasy XIII as it is a game a can work my way through at my own pace. At the moment I'm close to 40 hours in so there is still a lot to do. It does still bug me that I will complete the game soon (two chapters to go) and yet I will then have to spend all of the post game grinding for CP and items to get the full 1k. A badly thought out design methinks.

I've also gone back to the only incomplete Halo on my list, that being ODST, in a bid to finish it off. I'll focus on getting all of the single player stuff done first and then try and coral some people into doing the Firefight missions with me. It would be nice to put that one tobed seeing as it is not likely to garner anymore DLC in the near future.

Something different

2011-01-14T13:42:00.003Z

I suppose my blog has been the same for quite some time now and, as much as I would love to get it redone in a professional manner, a quick change is for the best. To be honest the main reason if changed the layout is because my Raptr widget would not fit onto the old layour and it would not let me alter the page width either (weird).

So here we are.

Now that I've changed the layout once, I'll probably do it a whole bunch of times just until I find something I like. I also want a nice header for the top of the page but I'd probably have to find someone to help me out with such things as my computer art skills are sadly lacking.

Still I have finally put paid to Borderlands after 101 hours of toil, and now I'm back onto the joys of Planet 51. Some kids games are a joy to behold but this one does not fall into that particular category - instead it is a mind numbing crawl to completion that makes you suffer every step of the way. Thankfully I'm nearly done with it and I may well go back to playing Fallout New Vegas in a bid to get that bad boy done and dusted. It would be a good start to the year if I could chalk up a couple of the RPG's on my tag.

The rest of the stuff I've already started is a mixture of things I'll never complete (because I suck) or things I could easily polish off with a bit of effort. Though my to do list of untouched games is positively frightening. I'll have to take a picture of the horror.

99/100

2011-01-12T13:23:00.005Z

Collectibles in games: good idea or cheap, game extending, gimmick?

Back in the day collectibles were just a bit of harmless fun, something to provide the player with an excuse for scouring the landscape and seeing hidden bits that they might have otherwise missed. However, with the advent of achievements they seem to have become something a little more sinister, at least in the eyes of some gamers.

Now do not get me wrong, collectibles can still be a valuable addition to a game if done correctly. The audio diaries in Bioshock help fill in the back story and give some superb insight into the characters around you, plus they are not so ludicrously hidden so that players would have a headache finding them.

Heck even before achievements and the like, I would track down hidden items within games and find all the secret areas just for kicks. Though only as long as it was within the confines of the game and still enjoyable.

On the flip side you have something like Crackdown with 800 orbs scattered around the city, sure they may help your abilities up to a point, but tracking them all down takes something away from the rest of the game. Sure no one is making you do it but, lets be honest, many gamers have a sense of OCD about these things. You may be getting more game for your buck, but is it time well spent?

The topic really came to mind as this week as I was trying to finish up Borderlands. The last DLC is made up of a bunch of collectible tasks, all of which are made that much worse by the fact the items you are trying to find are only random drops from a certain type of enemy. Not to mention the fact that the drop rate of said items is ludicrously low. Considering the fact you can complete the DLC in a couple of hours it seems odd that you could be spending up to ten times that just trying to scrabble together the last few bits and bobs. It seems like the tasks were purely put in to cover up for the shortness of the general content, and it grates.

It seems that most games nowadays have some kind of collectible tucked away, varying from the ridiculous to the sublime, and I think developers need to make them feel a lot more organic and even necessary to the game. I don't mind tracking down objects that will move the story forward, power up my character or at least help complete an objective - but having a few items scattered here there and everywhere for no pertinent reason is just a ploy to try and artificially lengthen a game. I've certainly yet to meet anybody that enjoys tracking down pointless objects for hours on end.

Obviously no one if forced to do these things, but if you have shelled out money for a game then you want to see everything it has to offer and, let's not kid ourselves, there is something amazingly alluring when you grab something and 1 of 10 etc pops up on screen. What will happen if you find them all? Only one way to find out.....

Collecting things is a powerful motivator (as the over hyped Pokemon series has shown us) but it is also one that needs to be taken more seriously and used a lot more carefully. Integrate collectibles from the get go, don't just add them in as an afterthought.

Those damn bunnies

2011-01-11T10:55:00.003Z

Every now and then I will find myself just completly not bothered about playing games and yet, at the same time, will want to play something, ANYTHING. In those circumstances I usually fall back on games I pretty much deem as impossible completions - any kind of music game (damn you Guitar Hero) or arcade titles like Geometry Wars or Boogie Bunnies.

BOOGIE BUNNIES?! Why sir, surely that is a game for mere children? (I'm assuming that is the thought that would go through the mind of most people).

However, rest assured that it is one of the toughest games (in my opinion) on XBLA. The game has actually been completed by far fewer people than Geometry Wars, though has probably been bought by far fewer people too, and is fairly brutal.

The idea is simple, match up three or more similarly coloured bunnies to score points, earn enough points and you move onto the next level. You fire bunnies at a wall of their counterparts in order to make chains and combos. On Classic mode the line of bunnies moves forward a step after you fire every third bunny, if they move forward too much then they will topple into the water costing you points and, ultimately, the game.

The problem is that the further you get then the more colours of bunny you see, and linking them up becomes a nightmare. The latter achievements see you having to clear ten levels in a row without losing a single bunny - which is a nightmare. I actually got to the last beach level over the weekend without losing one of the critters but then, well, I'm sure you can guess. Assuming I did get through that level then I have to repeat the trick on the Hollywood missions. After that I would then have to clear Arcade mode, where the pesky rabbits move forward at a steady interval so you have less time for planning. The horror.

Despite the nagging feeling that I will never quite manage the full 200 points, I do still enjoy falling back to the game to relax and just pass a bit of time. It is fairly relaxing, and just a bit of fun as most old school puzzle games usually are. It certainly makes a refreshing change to the constant pursuit of points or playing the next dubious review title.

It reminds me that, before my Xbox and all those crazy achievements, I regularly used to have a game that I would play just for fun. Something that I could spend some time on without a specific goal. Usually it would be Pro Evo on the PS2, or even the original Ghost Recon on the XBox (just tackling missions solo with a sniper rifle or similar). I think it's a good habit to have and certainly stops me playing games that could possibly frustrate me just for the sake of it.

In other news, I have my first retail completion of 2011. As I finished up the original 1k in Borderlands, not to mention most of the DLC, so I'm finally up and running. I still have one mission left to complete on the Knoxx DLC and then some time consuming (apparently) collecting on the Claptrap DLC before I have the full 1750, but that should just be a matter of time.

In fact I have a number of games on the 1750 threshold now, which is weird when I'm basically getting two games worth of points from one title. I've already knocked off Lips, Halo 3 and Dragon Age (finished up the last of that DLC over the weekend too) and I have Borderlands and Gears 2 on the cusp. To be honest, more and more games will probably hit this mark and I'm still not sure that the quality of DLC matches the investment required. Time will tell, but I feel that the 1750 mark has been, and will continue to be, a purely money making scheme rather than one promoting quality content.

I hope I'm proven wrong in the long run though.

The only other gaming activity I've taken part in revolves around Planet 51. It is a game I reviewed a while back, but it was such a drag that I didn't put it on my main account. Sadly my wife decided to play the game while I was out at Gamescom last year, unlocking that dreaded ONE achievement that meant I could not delete it. So now I am slogging through the game again, trying to do all of the tasks and snag all of the collectables. If anything I hate it more the second time around as it all feels like such a chore - but I suppose that is an argument that could be levelled at most achievements.

Hopefully I'll have it done this week and then I can move onto something far more enlightening. Though I still have more than a few games still demanding my attention in the back catalogue.

What makes a great game?

2011-01-06T09:25:00.002Z

I've been playing a lot of Borderlands recently - pretty much 70 odd hours worth in the last month alone - and the thought struck me that I wasn't enjoying the game as much as I thought I would.

For a title that had garnered so many game of the year awards, and a bucketload of general praise, I was surprised that the final product did not quite live up to expectations. Perhaps it is just not my kind of game, but I do like shooters and I love RPG's so a mix of the two should be ideal and that isn't even mentioned four player co-op which is how I experience most of Pandora.

I think the main problem is the almost total lack of story and interaction. For an RPG the story is pretty sparse and just consists of mission logs that you can read and the occasional character that pops up on screen to yak at you. I do love some of the humourous touches and dialogue but it all seems just few and far between. It doesn't help matters that most of the missions are just the same old thing over and over again - find something then trek back or kill something then trek back. With such a vast open environment the lack of variety really becomes stifling.

Some of the DLC also does not help matters as the Mad Moxxi arenas are a longwinded waste of time, and one that does not even net you any experience despite the fact you are offing hundreds of foes. A similar experience is in the Knoxx DLC, with the tiresome Circle of Duty mission dragging on for far too long as well. Not to mention the lack of fast travel between areas within the DLC meaning that you have to trek between missions and drive down the same tiresome roads.

Now don't get me wrong - I have had plenty of fun with the game, especially in co-op. But it is not the diamond in the rough I had been expecting. I suppose it just goes to show, ince again, that games are always going to be a personal preference and nothing, no matter how hyped, will ever appeal to everyone.

The end is in sight for my trek through Borderlands as I just have a couple of odd bits to finish up from the DLC and then I can move on - but I think once that happens I'll be glad it is over rather then sad I'm moving on.

Goal accomplished

2010-12-30T10:15:00.003Z

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.

2010 - A year in the Life

2010-12-10T12:48:00.020Z

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/

Coming up

2010-12-09T12:58:00.005Z

I figured at some point that I would do a year in review, basically a post about the best and worst things about a life in gaming and some of the stories along the way. I'm not just going to waffle on about my favourite games, as I'll also have a few stories that have come about from gaming in general - be it multiplayer, games conventions or falling asleep on the sofa while playing, there are always countless things going on that are either caused by or affected by gaming in one form or another.

Personally speaking it has been a bit of a mixed year for me, with plenty of high points personally speaking (and on the gaming front too) but also a few disappointments. Gaming wise nothing surprises me anymore, as certain games are expected to be bad in one sense, but every now and again things just bog down life in general.

If anyone has any suggestions then feel free to fire away. Plus, any questions about anything I do, any games I play or the reviews I've published are more than welcome. Also any opinions about this blog in general, good or bad, will be happily received. I don't expect many (if any) as I doubt this blog is particularly well read, but the offer is there.

I think I will get started either tomorrow or over the weekend. So expect a long winding post that is me rambling on about all things gaming over the last twelve months. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Halo Reach

2010-12-06T13:20:00.002Z

It has been a while since I devoted so much time to playing an online game (without boosting it that is, ha ha) and yet I have been playing Reach pretty much every night for the last week or so.

Ostensibly, it is still with an achievement in mind as I have managed to grind my way up to Captain rank and have my sights set on Lt Colonel too. I've already accomplished all of the other online tasks, barring the DLC stuff that I'm not really prepared to shell out for quite yet. In a short space of time I've managed to rack up well over 200k in credits with very litte effort, mainly by playing matches with friends in Invasion mode and Team Objective/SWAT. We do not always win but at least there is plenty of fun to be had, even when my own performance is fairly variable. Some games I can struggle to do anything but come dead last and then the next match I'll be topping the boards - I cannot really explain it, ha ha!

What I would say is that snagging all of the daily/weekly challenges really can help to rack up the points in a very short space of time. At this rate I could well have that last online achievement in another week or so which is really not that bad going. We shall see.

I've also struggled through the latest Harry Potter game, which is truly a poor piece of work and one that you would do well to avoid. Judging by the fact I was in the Top 50 for most of the challenges (after one attempt) it would seem like the game has hardly sold well regardless. Sadly I will have to complete the game twice more as the difficulties do not stack - great design there, ugh.

I've also dabbled a bit more with Scott Pilgrim which is a barrel of laughs especially in multiplayer. I would highly recommend it to anyone, though I have to say that the spike in difficulty on the last level is a bit harsh to say the least. Oh well, the more I play it then the better I get.

Dull Stat Attack - the Revenge!

2010-11-30T11:33:00.002Z

RETAIL

Assassins Creed: BH – 35/1000
Battlefield 2: MC - 315/1000
Beatles Rock Band – 130/1000
Beautiful Katamari - 1050/1250
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
C&C Kane’s Wrath - 130/1000
Dante's Inferno - 1220/1290
Dragon Age – 1550/1750
Fairytale Fights - 165/1000
Fallout New Vegas - 155/1000
Final Fantasy XIII - 230/1000
Front Mission Evolved – 710/1000
Gears of War 2 - 1410/1750
GRAW - 752/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Halo ODST – 25/1000
Halo: Reach – 315/1000
Harry Potter: DH Part 1 – 120/1000
Hellboy: SoE - 310/1000
Lego Star Wars TCS - 260/1000
Lost Planet - 350/1000
Naruto UNS 2 – 880/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Planet 51 – 90/1000
Project Sylpheed - 60/1000
Risen - 70/1000
Spiderman 3 - 10/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Star Wars: Republic Heroes - 365/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
The Sims 3 – 10/1000
Tomb Raider: Legend - 1000/1250
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
Virtua Tennis 09 - 545/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 17632/42040

ARCADE

Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Eets: Chowdown - 40/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Puzzle Quest - 200/250
Scott Pilgrim – 70/200
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 100/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 710/1650

Been a while since I did this and it is probably just as well as things are looking pretty lean at the moment. Things like the Sims, Assassins Creed BH and Halo ODST have been added with only a few points on each - talk about taking a major hit.

I've also got a bunch of games that have some DLC still needing to be completed, which is going to be a total pain in the ass. There are also a whole bunch of games with just a few points unlocked here and there which I really need to get out of the habit or doing.

I think I need to just pick out a list of ten or so games that can be knocked off in short order and then just focus on getting them done. Whether or not I can stick to my guns and get it all done is another matter, as I do tend to get distracted very easily.

What a difference.......

2010-11-29T13:37:00.005Z

A weekend makes.

After going for nearly two months without a completion (pretty much all of September and October) it looked like my goal of 52 completions over the course of the year was going to be nothing but a pipe dream. However, this last weekend may well have just saved it from total extinction.

I managed to polish off CSI on the Wednesday but it was my few days of rest that sealed the deal. On Friday night I set about grinding out the last few matches I needed to play on HAWX 2, in truth I had no idea how long it would take as I had stupidly forgotten to keep track. Thankfully I only had to go through about eight to ten games (I didn't learn my lesson on the counting thing) before it unlocked - even better news was the fact it was a free Live weekend so I didn't even have to use a 48 card for my backup account. Bonus.

After that, Sam suggested I play something new and fun - but I already had a ton of new and unfinished games clogging up my card so I chose a simple arcade game: Comix Zone. It was fun to play for a while but also kind of annoying in places too, it would certainly have been more trouble without the save feature. As it was, I managed to breeze through for the full 200 in a couple of hours for a nice quick completion.

The next day I set about playing through Ben 10, but halfway through I got a message from Omega Deez to say that he had Monopoly Streets if I wanted to play it. Sounded good to me, so I downed tools and popped that into the drive. A couple of hours of grinding later and I had that game done and dusted, plus Omega had gone from zero points to nearly 600 in the same amount of time with just the simple solo stuff to deal with. A nice little earner all around, ha ha!

I then went back to Ben 10 and managed to finish it off at about 3am. It took a little longer than it should as I managed to miss one of the collectables on the Amazon level. I realised at the time and then went back to get it (unlocking the level specific collectable achievement) but then died and forgot to pick it up again. So when I picked up the final collectable on the last level I missed the achievement for getting them all, which was a bit of a WTF? moment. Meaning I had to play through an entire level again to snag the last item, which just so happened to be right at the bloody end - bah! Still another game down.

Probably my most awesome revelation was the fact that you can apparently complete all of the zombies achievements in COD: Black Ops solo (well split screen with a second controller). It may be a little cheap, but there is a way to hide on the war room table on the map FIVE, meaning you can kill zombies with impunity. I had already snagged the Hands Off the Merchandise achievement legit, so this was a way to get those last three in the bag.

It took some time though as my first game saw me stuck between collecting weapons and trying to get the crossbow/knife needed for the other tasks - resulting in me accomplishing neither and dying hideously. After that I focused on getting the Collector achievement out of the way, which was much easier. I had a bit of cash left so though I may as well gamble on the mystery Box and, wouldn't you know it, I got both of the weapons I needed first time. Unfortunately my route onto the table had been destroyed so I had to risk moving my second pad into the open and then reviving him. This worked a treat, but when I went for the crossbow shot I was mauled to death. Cue another restart and a series of frustrating attempts.

I finally got the crossbow and even made it back to the safe spot - but no matter how many times I stuck my partner and how many zombies I killed, there was nothing doing so I called it a night and played some Firefight on Halo Reach. I gave it one last try this morning and finally got it (pro tip: shoot your partner BEFORE he gets downed, I think that might be the kicker). That gave me my fifth completion in just a few days and has me sitting at 46 for the year now (including all of Family Game Night as one title).

However, I have pretty much exhausted all of my 'nearly' complete games, with only Naruto being close to completion at the moment. Once I rent that bad boy then I should have completion 47 so I just need five more in about a month to hit my target. A couple of arcade games could be easily done in a day but I'd like there to be some retail stuff on there too so we shall see what I can plan out.

Talking of Halo Reach - I managed to get 7,000 points from the Slot Machine after one match. Anyone else been so lucky? The most I've had before is a hundred or so, so it came as a bit of a shock to rake in over 8k for one ten minute match. Not that I'm complaining as I'm closing in on my Captain rank which is nice considering I haven't boosted the game at all or even played the campaign. I had a couple of awesome team games last Thursday too, going 15-1 in one match, and 33-8 in another (with 21 Sniper headshot kills). I normally do alright but not amazing, so both of those came as abit of a shock.

Well I still have plenty of games to get back to, so I had better get cracking.

Chipping away

2010-11-25T12:54:00.002Z

Well I forgot to mention that I finally finished off Madden 11 a week or so ago, which was a blessed relief as I started it ages ago but then got bogged down with the ludicrous Madden Moments and then had other stuff to review.

Once I'd cleared the decks a bit after my honeymoon I figured Madden should be my next logical completion really, so I buckled down and got it done. Now I really do think that the IDEA behind the Moments is a good one - as you replay key moments from games in the previous season and either make sure they are successful or turn them on their head. So far so good.

My issues is the fact that some of them are based purely on luck rather than skill. Returning a kick for a touchdown, recovering an onside kick off to score and stopping the offence when they are at first and goal. Seriously? Can you honestly say that these would be attainable every time? Of course not, so that means you have to just keep on replaying the same moment over and over again. Which is more annoying when there is no Restart button unless the time runs out. Nice. The only other option is to spend ages Editing your opposition until they are utter garbage but I tried to avoid that unless in extreme cases, as it was the most boring task known to man.

Thankfully I persevered and got yet another completion under my belt. Meaning there is only Madden 10 missing from my tag now - mainly thanks to the tacked on DLC that they added. For shame EA, for shame.

I also blitzed through Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 which was major disappointment. How a game can get released with just three unique levels is a travesty and paying full whack for a game you can complete in three hours is absolutely shocking. This was yet another review but I had to part with my hard earned cash to get a copy, so that made it sting all the more I can tell you. The game is just far too linear and easy to boot as, while it is fun to toss foes around like ragdolls, when they are presenting you with no challenge at all then what exactly is the point? I never thought that wielding the force would be so dull and it is kind of sad to play the game and be so disappointed.

On the plus side this is a pretty straight forward completion with the only exception being some of the annoying challenegs that you need to get Gold medals on. Prepare to be annoyed. A lot. As in pulling out your hair, screaming at the neighbours and destroying your marital home style annoyed. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration but you get the point.

After all that fun I had to bring myself down with something pretty damn terrible. Step forward CSI. A game I managed to polish off this week as well, and that was a lot less hassle. The game is just as god awful as all of the other titles in the series but at least it was amazingly easy. I managed to finish off the game and my review in double quick time, so feel free to read all about the glory (or should that be horror?).

AFter all of that hard work, what better way to muck things up than to chuck a fresh new game onto my tag. I really am a glutton for punishment it seems, as this time it is the new Ben 10 game which is pretty drab if I'm being polite. Hopefully it will not take too long though and then I can move onto Harry Potter.......sigh.

Come december the stream of new games will be down to a trickle and I'll be able to pick and choose what I play. Hopefully. If not I could end up going slowly insane while playing Hyper Child Generic Shooter Investigate 10, or something similar.

Things to do

2010-11-23T16:21:00.002Z

I seem to be struggling to find any free time at the moment, which is probably understandable with Xmas fast approaching. Still the top of my gamertag is littered with games with less than 100 points and a few others that are just shy of full completion. I don't think it has ever been in quite such a mess before, and yet I do not seem to be too overly concerned at the moment.

Part of this may be some kind of new found maturity after getting married - though I doubt that. I suspect, mainly, my reason for not caring is simply because I now have the attitude of "I know I can do it some day" for most of the games.

I would deeply like to finish off COD: Black Ops, as there are only three achievements left all of which are tied to zombie mode. I have tried to round up a posse of folks to help out but all of my online chums have either done the achievements already or are not really interested. Gutted. No doubt there will be DLC in teh future but I just want to get the original 1k done with and then trade in the game if possible.

I also have HAWX 2 on the verge (need 100 online games played), Monopoly Streets just needing online achievements (should take less than an hour when Omega gets his copy) and CSI Fatal Conspiracy nearly over the finish line. I'm also waiting on a rental copy of Naruto so I can finish up the online achievements and then be done with that too. Woo hoo!

After that things get a whole lot more complicated. I need to do ALL of the campaign achievements in Halo Reach and ODST, plus the higher ranked online stuff. I have 10 measly points in the Sims 3 which my wife now refuses to play (I bought it as a gift for her) after I tried to ask her about it and she said I was harassing her. Plus, I started the new Assassin's Creed so I could enter the X360A competition and have less than 50 points all told. Throw in Front Mission (need to do online stuff, lots of it) and Fallout New Vegas (30 hours in for 155 points, ugh), not to mention that I have some DLC to finish up on both Dantes Inferno and Dragon Age, plus all the Horde DLC in Gears 2. All in all it adds up to a shitload of games to play and no time to do it.

Did I mention that I still need to play and review the new Harry Potter, History Channel Medieval Battles and Ben 10? None of which are exactly inspiring me.

Oh yeah, and the little matter of trying to complete 52 games by the end of the year. I'm currently at about forty.....

I think my first priority is going to be all those nearly finished games, just to clear the decks, then I'll focus on big titles like Reach and COD. As getting those out of the way would be a treat. Next up will be DLC stuff just to round my completions off and polish off some bigger titles like Dragon Age and Gears 2.

I try not to plan too far in advance as reviews tend to take priority, plus I tend to only game when I have the time and the wife is occupied with something else - which is not as often as it used to be.

Right about now I really need a week off, with no distractions, just to game. Last time I did that I managed to polish off five games in varying states of completion and that would be just the ticket right about now.

Time flies

2010-11-14T14:32:00.002Z

I would love to say when I'm having fun, but frankly it was more about being busy than anything else.

Since coming back from my holiday it has been all work, work, work with very little time to settle down and just relax. Even when I do have some time it has been pretty much taken up with reviews and generally doing stuff around the house, not to mention going out and about for parties, meals and the cinema.

In fact this coming week will be the first one since we got back that I don't have at least two nights out planned in one form or another. In fact it will be nice to just do whatever I want to each night and put my feet up for once. Well kind of......

I still have reviews for some of the years most anticipated, or should that be questionable, titles. My work load includes the new Dragonball Z, CSI, Medieval Battles, Ben 10 and Monopoly Streets. Surely a line up to cause envy in all of my friends, but frankly there may be the odd surprise along the way. Plus, after getting the chance to review Fallout, Naruto and Call of Duty then I don't mind doing some of the regular stuff.

Though I also had to review Saw 2........hmmmm. I suppose on the plus side I'll be able to boost up my gamerscore a little bit so that will be something. I had hoped to hit 52 completed games by the end of the year (a nice round one completion a week) but things are looking a touch dicey on that front. I'm up to 39 at the moment so I'll need another 13 by the end of the year, Naruto should be one of them and hopefully I can add a bunch of the easier stuff to that list too.

Frankly, with reviews coming thick and fast I've had very little time for snagging points from any games that I'm not actually writing about. Still as things inevitably slow down heading into Xmas I'm sure to be able to find some free time to finish up a few things here and there. Hopefully.

Achievement haters, stats and having a life.

2010-11-04T12:57:00.004Z

Recently a good friend of mine, Cru, managed to hit 200k in gamerscore. Obviously, she is not the first person to have done so nor will she be the last but what is notable is the fact Kotaku based an article around her endeavours in gamerscore.

The first article was, in my opinion, fairly harsh in its assessment of achievement hunting in general even questioning whether of not it was having a negative impact on other aspects of her life. Naturally the anonymous masses of the internet took this one step further and started with the hate, insults and even ridiculous youtube videos. Considering the fact most of the people who would have read that article would be gamers too - can they really justify such a reaction? Sure you may give up some of your social life to game, but saying that you are a bad wife or a bad mum? That crosses the line.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions but when they stray into insults and vulgarity then do they even have a valid point to make? It seems like they are just hiding their own issues and jealousy behind the safe anonymity of the internet. Seriously. If someone wants to spend their spare time earning achievements then what harm is it doing? Real life always comes first for even the most dedicated gamer and a lot of the haters out there seem to forget that.

The original article was a fair while ago now, but after Cru hit 200k there was a follow up piece to see if she was done for good. Cru is a gamer through and through, so she will no doubt keep picking up points here and there, but anyone who follows her on Live or Twitter will know that she plays a lot more casual games of COD with friends than crap for points. Plus, her twitter feed is full of social activities that I can only dream of. So it is safe to say that she is happy with her level of gaming. Sadly though there was still the same level of negativity even when she said she would only play for fun - what is the dillio?

A lot of the negative input is simply down to ignorance. People see a gamerscore of over 100k and generally assume, wrongly, that such a person must game all day every day and has no life. Same happened with Cru, they saw her score and thought that it MUST mean she never had time for anything else which couldn't be more wrong.

Let me break it down in words that even the biggest haters can understand:

The Xbox 360 was launched in November/December 2005 - so has been around for five long years. So 200k over that amount of time is only 40k a year, sounds a lot but let me go further.

There are currently 763 (roughly) retail games available across all regions, some of which also have DLC worth up to an extra 750 points. Add in about 344 Arcade titles worth 200 points each, some with DLC too, and you have a big old pot. So you are looking at 831,800 points to go at - which does not include multiple versions of the same game, PC games, DLC or anything else. With all that on top then the figure is probably approaching 1 million.

Some retail games (eg Bioshock, Fallout 3, Batman AA) can be played more than once on the same gamertag to gain more points. This is due to either GOTY editions or region specific versions, which have exactly the same achievements but class as a different game in terms of xbox.com and your profile.

There are over 100 games that can be completed in less then ten hours (assuming you get the full 1k, if you settled for 500-700 points you could halve this time). In fact there are games on this list that can be finished in as little to three minutes to an hour for a full one thousand points. See here: http://tinyurl.com/ltp2c3

There are also close to 200 games that can be easily done in between 10-25 hours (some dependant on skill and online play) and again that is assuming you are going for ALL one thousand points.

There are also, obviously, dedicated websites, guides, and players should you so wish - which all helps cut down the time it takes to complete titles.

Assuming you played all of the easy games (and I'll use the max time of ten hours for arguments sake) then you could get 100k in 1,000 hours of gaming. Which is 41.66 days of work. So that is 8.3 days a year over the five years since launch. So that is 200 hours of gaming a year and that, in turn, works out to about 35 minutes of gaming a day (or just over 4 hours a week).

THIRTY FIVE MINUTES A DAY!!! Oh my God, this monster has no time for friends/family/Jesus etc. In case you were wondering - that was sarcasm.

So that is just how easy it would be to get 100k. But what about 200k. Again we will assume you did all of the above and then a bunch of 15 hour games (50 of those) and 25 hour games (another 50). So that is roughly 3000 hours of gaming, over five years would be 600 hours a year, which is roughly one hour and forty minutes a day. Or about 11 and a half hours a week if you like.

Still hardly excessive. Especially if you were a stay at home mother whose kid was at school. Same would apply to students, unemployed gamers or even billionaires (would they so wish).

You could argue that players will also play harder games, some games would take longer than I stated etc. But on the flip side you could get 10k in less than a day too, I didn't include arcade games which can be amazingly quick to complete, and DLC can also be chalked off in short order. Not to mention that even the hardest games (which never factored into the lists) can give up an easy 500 points most of the time. So if anything I think the times stated are rather overstating things.

Obviously the regular gamer does not see this, or even care, they play games how they want to and anyone with such a high score is treated like some kind of pariah that spends all of their time glued to the console. How many 'regular' gamers spend over 11 hours a week on COD, the Wii or a PS3? Probably a lot, but because some people choose to use that same amount of time chasing achievements somehow makes them different when, in fact, it doesn't. We all choose to play games how we want to so why not just leave it at that. Some people play a game once and then never return to it whereas others have completed Mass Effect 2 over 23 times - why? Because they enjoy it.

At the end of the day people can do what they like with their own consoles, so why should the world at large see fit to judge them just because they feel a sense of superiority? Let people play how they want to play, as I'm pretty sure no one with a high achievement score has ever gone on a hate campaign against those with lesser scores.

Sure I may be slightly biased, as I'm sure that will be the first accusation for anyone looking at my score, but in my five years of 360 ownership I've also permanently had a full time job, met and married my wife, got a new house, had amazing trips to Cologne, Prague, Rome, Tokyo, L.A and Hawaii and generally enjoyed myself to the max. I also write reviews for x360a which severely hampers my points pimping - but I wouldn't want it any other way.

So for all those who think gamerpoints = no life, I urge you to think again.

Business as usual

2010-10-22T09:43:00.002+01:00

Well I'm finally back, over a month of no blog posts (assuming anyone missed them) so I figured I should check in. I'm now a married man and have enjoyed a blissful two week honeymoon sampling the varied delights of L.A and Hawaii. I would recommend both to anyone (I spent a month in L.A a few years back and it's still good times) though Hawaii is a total tourist trap and some of the prices were ridiculous - I mean $25 for a medium pizza? You're having a laugh.

I did buckle though and visit the Cheesecake Factory a few times, even paid $8 for slice of the good stuff too, which was nice. I suppose when you are on holiday you can justify splurging a little, though I certainly wouldn't do it at home, ha ha!

Before I headed off I went and decimated my tag with a bunch of games, so on my return I had hoped to tidy the mess up somewhat. FAT CHANCE!

Instead I had a bunch of games waiting for review, namely Front Mission Evolved, Fallout New Vegas and Naruto Shippuden 2. I figured I would feasibly want to get the full 1k on all of them in time so went and slapped them in my card. Front Mission gave up the points easy enough, and I just need to finish off the hidden items and online modes. However.........

After close to thirty hours on Fallout (not including the time spent reloading bits when I changed my mind on a decision etc) I've only got 155 points. It's my own fault really as I tend to take on all of the little side missions I come across, and explore random little nooks and crannies that yield nothing but a few semi useful items. Time I probably could have spent advancing the story or doing some of the quests that yield points. Ah well, at least I'm having fun.

I do stand by my dislike of Hardcore mode though, as I know Thrawn has spoken about his difference of opinion with my review which is fair enough. I'm sure that people who enjoy the minutae of the Fallout universe and got a lot of pleasure from playing the first one multiple times etc will really get into it. But, for me, all if really adds are three more 'radiation' equivalents that are constantly increasing. Let them get too far and you will suffer ill effects, or you can click a few buttons and solve the issue. The thing is, every location has a variety of food/drink items and usual a bed as well, meaning there is no real challenge to finding anything you need to survive. Instead it is just a laborious task that takes away from the fun side of the game namely quests, combat and exploration. I do like the gradual healing though and need for a doctors bag, but again they don't really add anything but a nuisance and I personally don't play games to experience realism.

Is surviving in a post apocalyptic wasteland hard? I've no doubt it is, but I'm not going to run off into a desert to try it out so why would I want the boring nitty gritty in my games either - which are meant to be an escape from reality. If you like it, great, but I think I'd rather focus on having fun myself.

The real shock is that I managed to tear myself away from Fallout at all as it was doing a good job of sucking time away from me - especially after I sank nearly eighty hours into Fallout 3 only a few months ago, ha ha! Instead I've been captivated by the newest Naruto title.

My Naruto style love actually started with the last game, Broken Bonds, which impressed me so much that I immediately went out and started watching the manga. It is safe to say that I loved it, hell even my wife got into it and she hates manga normally. So I was totally looking forward to this game, especially after playing it at Gamescom where the graphics just looked amazing. The final game is not perfect, as it can drag in place, the loading times are ludicrous at times and newcomers probably will not have a clue what is happening, but I'm loving it anyway. I've already spent sixteen hours on the adventure mode and will probably put much more than that into it too. Considering it is basically a fighting game too, which I normally steer clear from, I'm shocked by how much fun I'm having.

Despite my love of Naruto, and the time spent, I've only snagged 200 points thus far - as it is one of those games where all the points will come in a deluge right at the end. So it means three new games added, oh make that four as I started Halo Reach before my blessed marriage too, and my card is even more of a mess than ever. Throw in a bunch of other games that I've chucked on there: ODST, Planet 51, Beatles Rock Band, Lego Star Wars, Madden 11 and things look murky. I guess the foreseeable future will involve me cleaning up all of this crap. Ho hum!

Expect me to pop up another post with all of my recent reviews and shenanigans over the weekend at some point too. Yay!

Busy, busy, busy

2010-09-21T13:46:00.005+01:00

With my impending wedding looming ever closer, things have been more than a little hectic. Especially as I've still had stuff to review in amongst doing all of the chasing around after suits, speeches and a reliable DJ. Good times.

The reviews I mentioned in my last post are now up in all of their glory (or hideous shame, if you are that way inclined). So you can go here:

http://tinyurl.com/35x9o2j - for Madden 11.

http://tinyurl.com/35qunrc - for Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.

http://tinyurl.com/34a74dl - for HAWX 2.

The next game on my list of review style goodness was RUSE. I played it on my better halfs tag, but I'm kind of tempted to go for it on my own at some point in the future. The ideas behind the game are truly novel, and the control scheme is simply the best I've encountered on a console. Creech has offered to do some co-op stuff with me in future so it is kind of swaying me towards taking the plunge. Though having said that, I have C&C3 and Supreme Commander both still sat at under 200 points a piece. Choices, choices........

Nest up was a bit of Spiderman action. I'd played a bit of the game at Gamescom so pretty much knew what to expect. In fairness though the full game puts the demo to shame (as it should) as some of the st piece moments and individual levels are superbly structured. The camera though is nothing short of woeful, which is a real shame. There is a lot of repetition too and only one of the four heroes feels vastly different from the others. An interesting game nonetheless, but not one that is going to set the world alight.

I was also hoping to get NHL 11 done and dusted, but I think that is going to be too much of an ask now. Especially as I get married in three days. Luckily Webb had the same thought and will ship it off to Mr Walker for some care and attention. I think it will be the first NHL game I haven't reviewed for the site, so that kind of sucks a bit but what can you do?

In other news I have pretty much wrecked my tag in terms of completion. Firstly, I went and started Halo: ODST with my friends in a marathon stg night gaming session. We only played MP and Firefight so I have a measly 45 points. I then purchased Beatles Rock Band for my lovely lady, and we have snagged a whopping 65 points thus far. When you consider how many achievements rely on being able to play on Expert difficulty (I can barely do Medium) then you can see that I'm not going to be racking them up any time soon. I've also got a mere 90 points on Planet 51. With HAWX 2 still stuck at 600+ points, and me still having to do the rest of the Madden moments of polish off Madden 11 then I really needed to crack on with some stuff.

So why did I go and start Halo Reach? I've pretty much only played Firefight and MP so far (and what a great MP experience it is) so have a paltry 200 points or so. Oh dear, oh dear.

So once I've got this pesky wedding out of the way (kidding.......) I'll be back trying to clear up some of this crap that is cluttering up my world.

Review shenanigans

2010-09-09T13:27:00.006+01:00

It has been a busy few weeks. First of all I had the joy of fifteen previews to write and then there was the small matter of the review backlog to contend with. Seeing as myself and Webb were out at Gamescom a few games had kind of fallen by the wayside, so it was on us to try and catch up.

First onto the chopping block was Madden 11, which is pretty much the same old thing that we have seen year in and year out. I do actually enjoy NFL games even though I've never really followed the sport itself, hell I've been playing Madden games since way back in the Nineties on my trusty SNES. In fact, now that I think about it, my tactics have really changed very little since then. I almost always use shotgun plays and rarely rush the ball - I'd probably be amazingly predictable if I played online often enough.

I actually did enjoy this version, but I wondered (as I always do) just how long EA can continue to release the same game with one or two tweaks? The question has always bobbled around, but in this shiny, new age of digital downloads it becomes more pertinent than ever. After all, EA could easily make new modes and roster updates available as DLC. I doubt they will mind you - but there is nothing really stopping them if they wanted to. Other than the crushing loss of revenue these yearly sports updates bring, of course.

Anyway, my review should be up on X360A in due course so I'll pop up a link when that happens.

Next up was Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.

Hmmm.........

Thinking of something positive to say is tricky for this one. Oh - the game is only about three hours long, less if you play co-op probably. So that's a bonus. To be honest it was one of the worst games I've played in a while - and when you consider the crap I play, that's a pretty big statement. I think it was more disappointing because of the developers involved and the fact it is a fairly big budget title. I expect smaller games to be worse on some level, because they don't have the chops to keep up with the big boys, but when a high profile title is a letdown it is more noticeable. K&L2 was far too short, the story was non-existant and the characters are just annoying at best.

On the flipside you have the wonderfully innovative multiplayer (probably should have filed it under 'good things to say' a bit earlier). As trying to pull off a heist with teammates that could turn on you at any second leads to pure fun times. However, even massive online games like COD have a decent single player campaign attached to them - which this game most clearly does not.

I would say better luck next time, but I really hope there isn't one, more Hitman instead, if you would be so kind.

I seem to have taken this review away from achievements and more towards random chat, and my writing shenanigans of course, so it may well stay that way. I do enjoy talking about all things games, so I'll try and keep things entertaining. I've just started on my review of HAWX 2 so you can expect some banter about that - and I'll probably wax lyrical about achievements too.

All in good fun.

The final batch - don't cry my friends..........

2010-09-07T09:20:00.004+01:00

Apache Assault was one of those games I knew very little about going into Gamescom, but it pleasantly surprised me. The game actually looks like it could be good fun - although the fact it is a simulation first and foremost means that it could well be tough as nails. Still for a first time viewing it looked like a bit of alright.

Check out my in depth thoughts (such as they are): http://tinyurl.com/2ue93gc

Finally we have Def Jam Rapstar, which gets bonus points just for the awesome presentation I sat through with the Def Jam rep, Chris. He was a pretty good rapper too, ha ha! Still the game is looking like a hip hop version of Lips, but with a far more interesting community aspect. If the game takes off then the amount of user generated content could be staggering.

Check it out hither: http://tinyurl.com/3yfjutd

That brings to an end my specific Gamescom coverage. I hope you enjoyed it or even read some of it (doubtful but hey). I'm back on the review trail already as the games have piled up slightly since we were away, and even more so seeing as we were swamped in previews and Webb was off at PAX.

I've already sorted out a review for Madden 11, and the new Kane and Lynch title is next up. After that I'll move onto HAWX 2 and then we should be up to date - as by that point Webb will have sorted out Mafia 2 and Halo Reach. It's nice to be doing so much writing to be honest, as I find it quite relaxing and entertaining. Though with the amount of games en route come the winter rush I may well change my tune.

Any comments, feedback about any of my coverage - leave it here. Cheers.

Sick of previews? Tough........

2010-09-03T09:27:00.005+01:00

We all love Lego games, well unless you have a heart as black as coal maybe, so I was quite excited to see another Star Wars title heading our way. The new features are really just tweaks but they do seem to add a bit of something to the series so that can only be a good thing methinks. Plus there has been a bit of a graphical facelift too which can only be a good thing. Lightsabers at the ready!

Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/34n5pga

Next up is Alien Breed 2: Assault, which is the next in the seires and will be hitting XBLA fairly soon. It was a pretty good blast them up really and should provide a few hours of entertainment for anyone willing to splash out the cash, I certainly had fun with it after a quick run through the first level and an eight minute salvo on one of the survival maps with my Team 17 partner. Good times.

Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/38ftnnh

I've saved the best for last, as From Dust was quite simply one of the best games on show at the whole of Gamescom. The visuals, imagination and scope were just breathtaking. It was kind of hard to convery in a preview just how brilliant the game looked, but after speaking with a lot of other writers and sites that attended people were unanimous in their praise. Hard to belive that it will be an XBLA game too.

Read this, I beg you: http://tinyurl.com/2wszlls

In other news I finally finished up Fallout 3 and will miss wandering the Capitol Wasteland, it was a good run while it lasted and at least I'll have New Vegas to look forward to in the near future. I can't wait.

I've also completed my run through of Dead Rising: Case Zero, which was a blast, though I kind of ruined it for myself by pretty much completing it at Gamescom. When Capcom just let me play as long as I wanted then what was I gonna do? Ha ha.

A plethora of previews

2010-08-31T13:03:00.009+01:00

First up is a bit of Pro Evolution, a series that has been on the decline somewhat in recent times. It is a shame really as I used to love playing the game year in, year out, so having FIFA overtake it kind of narked me off. Though I cannot complain about the quality of the recent FIFA games - just that I wish Pro Evo had done more to keep up.

Read all about it here: http://tinyurl.com/32he9zn

Following that is some Mortal Kombat action, a series that looks set to embrace its traditional roots and bring us the game that people have been clamouring for. Things are certainly shaping up nicely and I really hope that the franchise gets the reboot it deserves.

Read all about it here: http://tinyurl.com/2ulnq88

Next up we have the interesting Lord of the Rings: War in the North. The gameplay reminded me a lof of Borderlands, with a blend of team based combat and looting - so that can only be a good thing really. Can this be the game that finally makes good use of one of the most popular stories in literary and film history?

Read all about it: http://tinyurl.com/32jzr4d

An annual update more reliable than EA's sports games - or at least that's the way the Guitar Hero franchise seems to be going. To be honest the new Quest Mode looked like it could be a bit of fun, and the challenges should add some value to new songs and all of that old stuff you have kicking around from the last fifty zillion games (that figure may not be accurate). Will it be worth investing in though?

Find out here: http://tinyurl.com/3xv5ev2

Finally, and excitingly, we have Force Unleashed 2. The game is looking like a bit of alright barring a few frame rate issues, and the level of force style carnage is once again pretty impressive. I'm actually more excited about this game now that I've had a go with it than I was before.

Once again, a handy link: http://tinyurl.com/3ynmhyj

So plenty of preview style goodness to keep you occupied. Any questions or other information that may float your boat, then just leave a comment and I'll get back to you. SHAZAM!

Warhammer Space Marine - time to kill some Orks!

2010-08-27T10:39:00.005+01:00

Space Marine could well be a lot of fun, but I think there are a few tweaks that could do with being resolved first. Hopefully the game will have co-op too (as it was certainly hinted at) and that the multiplayer will be awesome sauce.

Read my preview here - http://tinyurl.com/2wrnjgf

More preview goodness

2010-08-27T09:56:00.006+01:00

Yes this time I have a look at Fallout: New Vegas thanks to a very pleasurable hour long hands on with the game - it is certainly on my wish wist and I am just finishing off the last bits of DLC for Fallout 3. Hopefully Webb won't mind me swiping an image seeing as I'm linking to my own preview on the site, ha ha!

Here is the link : Fallout: New Vegas - http://tinyurl.com/37gvrrn

Wrestling fan? Prepare for some Gamescom flavoured updates.

2010-08-26T11:01:00.002+01:00

I had the chance at Gamescom to go hands on with the upcoming instalment of Smackdown vs Raw, plus I got a fun taster of WWE All Stars which seems like a more arcadey style alternative - with over the top, buffed up wrestlers and ludicrous moves.

To be honest Smackdown seemed like more of the same, with a few minor tweaks but All Stars could turn out to be a fun little game if they get the mix right.

Read all about it here:

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-6121-Gamescom-2010--WWE-All-Stars---Smackdown-vs--Raw-2011-Hands-On-Preview---In-With-The-Testosterone.html

More Gamescom previews

2010-08-25T10:50:00.002+01:00

So I've already posted up our overall Top 10 games at the show, now I'll give you some links to the specific games I dabbled in. Expect an in depth preview for each so that your appetite for games can be well and truly sated.

First of all we have Dead Rising Case Zero: http://tinyurl.com/33xd36a

Next up is Fear 3 (or F3AR if you prefer that): http://tinyurl.com/344nvpc

Watch this space, as today should see previews for some upcoming wrestling titles (if that floats your boat) and that will be followed tomorrow by Space Marine and Fallout New Vegas.

I'm just too good to you really.

Gamescom Top 10

2010-08-24T09:59:00.004+01:00

As compiled by myself and Webb.

http://tinyurl.com/3y4sgwz

Suffice it to say that Webb saw more of the big game names on show, mainly because he'd had the opportunity to see them first hand at E3 so would have a better idea of what was new content and what was the same old stuff from a couple of months ago.

There are a few games on there that we both got to try out, and I'm particularly happy that I managed to score the From Dust developer session as that game looks truly awesome.

Feel free to disagree with our choices.

But you'd be wrong, ha ha!

What it did get me thinking about was just how many games I'm going to end up buying this year and whether or not I should hold off on one or two of them until they drop in price. I do have a habit of buying games and then leaving them sat on a shelf for days, weeks and months......alright even years, you got me.

Perhaps it is time to cull my preorder list.

Gamescom (in case you were interested)

2010-08-22T18:42:00.004+01:00

Well as the end draws near I suppose I should babble on about the highs and lows of the week and how the event compared to last time out.

To be honest the whole week seems to have flown by, whereas last year seemed to last a lot longer for some reason. Perhaps you can attribute that to the fact it was my first big event last time out whereas this time things seemed a little more familiar and I could be a bit more relaxed about everything.

I only managed to miss one appointment too, which was Mortal Kombat, but the good folks at Warner were kind enough to let me just turn up later on and scope out the presentation anyway. In my defence it was only because their FEAR 3 demo was delayed that I was late at all, ha ha. I think the main thing I learnt this year is that, with a press pass, the developers and publishers will bend over backwards to help you out. Obviously that will only get you so far - as getting time with the gems on offer (like Bioshock etc or some juicy interviews) will require extensive PR work. For those wanting to see the basics though you can expect everyone to be amazingly helpful.

The show floor was packed as ever, though my schedule was that hectic that I really didn't get to spend much time out there until the weekend. A shame really as it meant missing out on some decent shows and hands on experience but I'm more than happy with what we saw and what I hope to write about.

Biggest surprise had to be From Dust (formerly Project Dust) by Ubisoft. The game looks like an absolute stunner in terms of scope and presentation. All this from an arcade title too - it really puts a lot of the other things on show to shame. I strongly suggest you check it out when it does land as I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

Biggest disappointment had to be Kinect (shock) which was roundly lambasted by every single member of the press that I spoke to. The games look pretty woeful at this moment in time, especially the god awful Harry Potter title. MS really needs to tighten up the camera recognition before launch or they are going to have a bunch of disgruntled customers on their hand. I'm not saying it cannot be great - I'm just saying that, right now, it is looking pretty unlikely.

Obviously a lot of other stuff falls somewhere inbetween, but these are the extreme differences in quality on show. I'll also give an honourable metion to Portal 2 as even though the presentation was fairly bog standard it did whet my appetite for the game nonetheless.

In the last couple of days we managed to snag a bunch of photos from the show floor which you can see HERE.

We'll also be posting up our top 10 games from this years show, so I'll slap up the link a bit later on.

Gamescom 2010

2010-08-20T16:37:00.003+01:00

Well here we are again in Cologne and it has been a hectic few days to say the least, but hey as long as there are fun games to play and media people to chat with then I'll power through the pain. Just for you people. It's all for you.

Kind of.

It is mainly for x360a of course, but considering the games on show it is still nice to get out and play some stuff that I'm secretly hankering after. Plus, it is always nice to meet people from other sites and magazines - I suppose they should be the 'competition' but how can you say that when everyone is so amenable.

Game events like this are always full of swag too, though this year seems to have been a lot leaner than last year. Plus every bit of swag I take means a bit less for the actual paying public, so I've tried to just leave stuff alone unless it was being handed out in the Press only sections. So far I've managed a very nice FEAR 3 t-shirt, a fine Space Marine bag, a lovely Portal 2 t-shirt, an awesome CAPCOM pen (you had to be there, ha ha), a Rapstar t-shirt that I thought I was going to have to lay down some tunes for and a fun Worms t-shirt from Team 17. So mainly clothing really but I'm hoping to give a bunch of it away via the site as it is only fair.

What I also noticed is how PR people tend to 'attach' themselves to known writers and certain magazines and sites get better treatment. A clear enough indication that you need to get to know people in the business if you want to get the best interviews and footage. Such is the way with anything though.

Anyway, I'll be doing previews of all the games I've seen on x360a so I don't want to go into too much detail here. But to whet your appetite here is a list of the stuff I've been checking out (though not all will be getting previews).

Fear 3, Mortal Kombat, Smackdown vs RAW 2011, Space Marine, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Rising 2 (and Case Zero), PES 2011, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Castlevania Lord of Shadows, Def Jam Rapstar, Fable 3, Vanquish, Naruto Shippuden Ninja Storm 2, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, FIFA 11, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, From Dust, Apache Assault, Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions and Alien Breed 2.

Some stand out classics in there along with a bunch of sequels that do exactly what they say on the tin really. Though there were a few pleasant surprises in the bunch so I certainly cannot complain.

Obviously that is barely the tip of the iceberg either, as Webb saw a whole bunch of awesome games himself. Though after doing E3 and Gamescom so close together he is a touch knackered (technical term) so it will be light duties at PAX. Though with that only a week or so away and games companies taking the same content - there will not be much new stuff to see. It does seem odd to me that the major conventions are so close together really as it means the same content tends to be rehashed which is hardly ideal - though at the same time it gives US/Euro gamers a chance to sample the new games fairly close together and, unlike the press, it will be their first time playing stuff at least. Swings and roundabouts methinks.

Well I'm off to do some writing but I'll be back soon with information and links aplenty.

Closing in........

2010-08-09T11:58:00.002+01:00

Fallout 3 is approaching completion and I'll be a little sad to see it go. All I have left to do at this moment in time are most of the DLC packs (barring Operation Anchorage) and the last two or three missions of the main storyline.

I think I will probably spend some time on the DLC and then wrap up the story afterwards. Once that is done I'll just have Broken Steel to look forward to and it will be another 100% title to add to my list. I'm hoping the DLC adds something interesting into the mix, but even if it is just more of the same then that should be plenty of fun.

I'll probaly tackle Point Lookout first, then move onto The Pitt and finally Mothership Zeta. No real reason behind it but that is kind of the order I'd like to approach them in. I have to say that I enjoyed the Anchorage DLC as it offered something a bit different even though there was a bit of a lack of looting opportunites.

After that is done I'll focus on grinding kills on L4D to finally get it done with too. and that will be two more pretty decent games to add to my completion list. I'll then need to go back and finish up Bioshock 2 for the third time thanks to yet more DLC. The problem I have with drip fed DLC is that it means I'm constantly going back to games I finished months ago - and the content is often not really worth the hassle. I doubt the Protector Trials will be any different either.

At the end of this week I'll be heading off to Gamescom in Germany so all of my game playing will be curtailing for a week or so regardless. Hoping to see some great titles out there and have the chance to get my hands on some upcoming games that pique my interest. I'll be sure to report back on what I see.

As if by magic.

2010-08-06T16:39:00.002+01:00

Lego Harry Potter is done. I finally convinced my better half to let us finish up the last few levels in co-op and then, once that was done, I had free reign to mop up the last few achievements solo. There was a heart stopping moment after I'd finished the last level in free play - we ended up back at the Leaky Cauldron hub but my 100% completion achievement never popped up.

I jumped back into a level: nothing. I exited back to the Cauldron and then considered turning the 360 off and on again but, luckily, up it popped. Taking me over 210k to boot. The morning after I ran through the few other bits I needed and it was job done.

The only other game I've played recently is Fallout 3 and I'm getting closer and closer to having that bad boy done. I'm only at 600/1550 in terms of points but I'm pretty much done with exploration now and can just focus on the specific quests I need to finish up. Nothing too taxing really. I'll probably leave the DLC until I'm back from Germany in a couple of weeks, though with my wedding fast approaching it may well be longer than that. We shall see.

What has surprised me most is the fact that, after 30 odd hours, I'm still really enjoying the game and just rambling through the world exploring stuff. Even when I try to rush through quests just for the next achievement I still find myself exploring every nook and cranny for weird and wonderful things to see or loot to swipe. Good times. I'm really looking forward to getting some hands on time with New Vegas if it can maintain the winning formula.

Regular dull recap time.......

2010-07-29T15:47:00.003+01:00

RETAIL

Battlefield 2: MC - 315/1000
Beautiful Katamari - 1050/1250
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
C&C Kane’s Wrath - 130/1000
Dante's Inferno - 1000/1290
Fairytale Fights - 165/1000
Fallout 3 - 320/1550
Final Fantasy XIII - 230/1000
Gears of War 2 - 1410/1750
GRAW - 737/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Hellboy: SoE - 310/1000
Left 4 Dead - 1195/1250
Lego Harry Potter - 660/1000
Lego Star Wars TCS - 240/1000
Lost Planet - 350/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Project Sylpheed - 60/1000
Risen - 70/1000
Spiderman 3 - 10/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Star Wars: Republic Heroes - 365/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
Tomb Raider: Legend - 1000/1250
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
Virtua Tennis 09 - 545/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 15532/34090

ARCADE

Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Eets: Chowdown - 40/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Puzzle Quest - 200/250
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 100/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 640/1450

I haven't done this in a while (and I know people love it) so there is the radom stats that make up my gamercard. I think the only things missing from this list are Chromehounds at 700/1000(not attainable anymore due to server closure), Madden 07 at 990/1000 (last 10 points is only available to NTSC players, thanks EA) and Phantasy Star Universe at 1000/1250 (screw doing the online only subscription DLC).

I've managed to knock three games off the list but I've also added Lego Potter and Fallout 3 so that adds a few extra points. My short term goals are Potter and L4D with a dash of Fallout 3 on top. Once I get those done then I may try and focus on one of my quite low scoring games like Risen or Project Sylpheed. Depends how I feel I suppose, though no doubt some shiny new game will turn up to grab my attention.

GSL is coming up in September and I'll probably use it as an excuse to churn out a bunch of easy games in a short amount of time, which should help me to clear the decks a bit. Things like Hellboy and Fairytale FIghts should be ripe for some easy plundering on my list, along with a whole bunch of things I've not even touched yet too.

After the great progress earlier in the year I seem to have slowed to a crawl, but hopefully things will pick up. Yay!

Finally

2010-07-29T13:36:00.002+01:00

Halo 3 is done with and it has only taken me about three years. Ha ha, some games just seem to hang around like a bad smell and I never really get around to them but at least Halo 3 is another one off the list. The really good thing is the fact that I only had the game at about 800 points until a couple of months ago, so doing all of the ranked stuff, metagame levels and DLC has been a fairly swift progression.

I will hold my hands up and say there are a couple of zero point achievements outstanding, which may or may not get done at some point in time. One of them is only for getting 7XP on the 7th of the month, so that's not too bad, but getting four people together for the last level may be a pain. I don't really care for zero pointers anyway so they won't be that high of a priority.

I've invested a bit more time in Fallout 3 as well, mainly scouring the waste for Bobbleheads and the like. At the moment I've tracked down 11 of the little buggers and I'm about to snag number twelve. I figured that I would do all of the exploring first, then focus on the main side quests and then finish off the story. Once that is done I'll concentrate on all of the DLC tasks, though I may just mix them in with my regular exploring if I stumble across anything.

Tonight I'm hoping to get the last Expert level done on L4D, then I can spend next week grinding the remaining kills I need to finish it off. Another game down (fingers crossed). I'm also pretty sure I'll get Lego Harry Potter done at some point in the near future as well. It seems to be taking me longer than expected really but I'm sure it will be sorted sooner or later.

Exploring the waste

2010-07-27T14:31:00.003+01:00

I'm really enjoying Fallout 3 at the moment, I'm not sure what it is about the game that appeals to me but being able to ramble through the wilderness exploring every nook and cranny is just so wonderfully entertaining. I think the main appeal is that every new area has something weird, creepy or disturbing to see.

Entering a weird Vault, filled with mind altering gas, and having to cope with bizarre visions as you try to loot the place is just something else. Same goes when you stumble across a town infected with giant ants. Or even a man merged with a tree. It's a great miz of funny and threatening moments and, even though the variety of the swag seems limited at the moment, it keeps on drawing me in.

Early doors I went on a Scrap Metal search spree, as you can use the metal to gain near infinite amounts of XP via a strange theft/speech loop. Which is all good if you ask me. So I went ahead and levelled up to 20 (with brief stops along the way to snag the neutral/evil achievements). I suppose you could say that I have spoiled the fun somewhat (though I am still grinding up to level 30 now) but for me the enjoyment here comes from just roaming the wide open spaces as opposed to seeing what skill is next up on my roster - especially as none of them are that overwhelmingly powerful anyway.

I've done a whole bunch of the main sidequests but not much of the actual story really. I decided to do a bit of Bobblehead hunting first and maybe scour the land for some juicy weapons and the like, the story can come along when I'm ready for it, ha ha!

Welcome to the waste

2010-07-22T14:21:00.002+01:00

Well I started Fallout 3 and I'm enjoying it so far - though I do wonder if it will outstay its welcome like Oblivion did. When I first started playing Oblivion I loved the open world nature of it and spent hours carefully exploring and levelling up, then after about 40-50 hours of that I got tired of doing the same old quests with minor spins, visiting remarkable familiar tombs and finding loot that was worse than the kick ass equipment I already had.

I'm hopeful that the variety in Fallout will be much greater and that the story will continue to tick along nicely, but I have a nagging doubt that such will be the case. At the moment I've spent a few hours escaping from Vault 101, exploring the local area and doing a few quests in Megaton - so there is still plenty to see and do. Let the good times roll. What I do like is the VATS feature as it gives a fun edge to combat, though I have to say that manual aiming can be a nightmare at times due to the rather bizarre movement exhibited by some A.I.

The reason I'm soldiering on with a new game at all is thanks to the fact I finished GOW 2 on Insane difficulty and Co-op in one fell swoop. The only section where you HAVE to have a second controller is when running through the giant worm stomach - everything else can be done solo with two pads, though obviously having an actual partner would speed things along. I'll probably get started on Horde fairly soon depending on how quick I find some likeminded folks.

I've also made a bit more progress on Lego Harry Potter, as my girlfriend finally agreed to play it again (I'm only allowed to play Lego games in co-op with her, ha ha). So we polished off all of the levels in the first year and a couple of the second. Only 16 more levels to plough through, for collectables and characters, until I'm done. Then a few misc achievements will see me at the full 1k. Nice and easy.

Bored

2010-07-20T15:00:00.002+01:00

Hence the update when I really have nothing much to report.

Churning through Gears of War 2 on Insane difficulty, and co-op to boot, is proving to be a bit of a pain. Especially as some of the sections are impossible to do solo with two pads (as it should be really) so I've had to rope my girlfriend into assisting on a couple of sections. But her play time is about ten or fifteen minutes tops, so it hasn't been too bad.

As it stands I am about halfway through the fourth act so progress is fairly good. Not to mention that there are some exceedingly short sections towards the end of the game, especially the last two chapters, meaning that I'm probably quite a way towards completing it. Doing that will also push me ever closer to 93% completion - should be at about 91.50% I reckon. So I'm really cranking it up on the completion front.

Considering my target for the year was to hit 93% I am well on my way to that and maybe I'll be able to push on even further. My ultimate task is to get to 95% and then I will start on my stack of untouched games, perhaps even a couple at a time, in order to clear the decks a bit. You know you have too many games when you can sell five of them off and the shelves are still groaning.

Changing targets

2010-07-19T13:02:00.002+01:00

Well I managed to polish off Toy Story 3 over the weekend, though sadly I couldn't put any time into either Halo 3 or Lego Harry Potter so those will juct be ongoing projects as and when I can get people together. At least the last few missions on Toy Story were nice and easy though I thought the game had glitched on me at one point, on the very last Gold Star too, until I spotted a task I had missed. Dumb ass. So that minor moment of stress aside it was an easy run to 1k and fairly enjoyable to boot

I also started my Insane/Co-op run on GOW 2 as I've decided to do it solo, using two pads on spilt screen mode, to save on the hassle of finding a reliable partner or forcing someone who has already slogged through the game to revisit it. So far, so good, as I've managed to get through pretty much all of the first two acts by myself. I may need the assistance of my lady on the part where *SPOILER* you have to run through the inside of a giant worm being chased by its last meal. Not sure I could negotiate that bit solo. Same rules may apply to some of the later boss fights but we shall see. Once I finish that run I will only have the eleven additional Horde mode achievements left to get - so it will be time to form some kind of super team and go for it.

I'm also going to break off from any new games and revisit Fallout 3, as I've only spent a small amount of time on the PC version, and hopefully play the game from start to finish. I have an upcoming hands on with the sequel (New Vegas) so want to be as up to speed as possible. Plus, it's a cracking game so it is really win win. Hurrah!

91%

2010-07-15T13:44:00.002+01:00

That would be a good mark on an exam right? Ha ha, well my completion is creeping ever upwards and I'm trying to balance playing newer gamers with older stuff to keep it that way.

I ticked off a few more achievements on Gears 2 and Halo 3, though I still have things to do on both but Halo in particular is pretty much done now just a few more achievements and then a couple of zero pointers and it will be in the bag. Gears 2 will probably stew for a while unless I can find a team of people ready to do all the horde stuff with me. I have to do at least two maps to level 50 and a bunch to level 10, 20, 30 and 40 so it will be a solid weeks worth of work methinks. Then I need to go back and go Insane difficulty and co-op, ugh!

Still it would be awesome to get those two 1750 point games wrapped up sooner rather than later so I'll try and push the boat out, my plan is to get all of the points on Halo 3 this weekend so fingers crossed that I can make it happen.

In other news I've finished up my Singularity review, the game was truly entertaining if a little crappy in places. You will have probably seen it all before as it does like to borrow ideas from far and wide but is fun nonetheless. Though after seeing the multiplayer boosting required I decided to give it a miss in terms of my own tag - as this year alone has seen me conquer Gears 1 and 2 - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! The next online multiplayer game I work on is likely to some time away, ha ha! This is where having four back up tags comes in handy (one of them my girlfriends and the others for boosting).

Next up was Toy Story 3, which landed in the States a month or so ago but is only gracing our fair shores this week. As a kids game it is actually pretty solid, although the story is amazingly short. Thankfully the Toy Box mode gives it the fun and longevity factor, though some of the missions get a bit repetitive and you will get sick of collectables soon enough. I've pretty much completed it all with the exception of the last few Gold Stars and Pictogram missions which should be an hour or twos work at most.

I'm also hopeful of polishing off Lego Harry Potter this week too. I've been playing it with my better half and we have chalked off all of the collectables in Hogwarts and now just have to replay the levels to find all the missing crests, characters and bricks to finish it off. Boo yah!

Then I'll have a month off from reviews (hopefully) as nothing big lands until August. Not to mention the fact I'll be in Cologne at Gamescom too, so that will require a wealth of writing for previews and such. In the interim I will concentrate on mopping up some games and maybe even starting something new. Good times.

Reviews, reviews, reviews

2010-07-08T13:30:00.002+01:00

It has been a busy couple of weeks on the old wordsmith front - I've already had International Cricket 2010, Lego Harry Potter and Naughty Bear posted up. I finished my draft for Tiger Woods 11 yesterday too so that should be joining them and now I'm starting up on Singularity. When will the madness end? Ha ha!

At least summer is looking fairly lean so I should have plenty of time to focus purely on playing games I want to play. Which means finishing things off for a start and the list is now encompassing Halo 3, Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead - not to mention games I've been playing with my better half: Lego Harry Potter, Lego Star Wars and Republic Heroes. Those six titles will be my main concern in the near future and hopefully I can get at least four of them chalked off within the next month or so.

I really want to start polishing off a bunch of these games that I have close to completion as then I can move onto something new (well not new - but something I've never played before). Though, knowing me, I'll just drag up some other game I have hardly any points in and try to finish that off instead. Such is my OCD I guess.

Near future though is Gears related. I'm going to try and get that bad boy done and dusted as soon as is humanly possible now that I've got Veteran Gear out of the way. I'm sure ploughing through Horde mode will not be too taxing, but I have to do it on a bunch of maps so it will be a real slog. Same goes for completing the game in co-op and on Insane difficulty. It is really just a time sink rather than a major challenge.

Broken promises

2010-07-05T16:32:00.002+01:00

But in the best way possible.......

After saying I would stick to my guns, and my rank of 50, in Gears of War 2 I managed to completly buckle under the pressure of 8x experience. With an offer like that how could I possible refuse?

So I managed to accomplish in five nights (a couple during 6x experience and three during 8x experience) what has taken more ardant players months of time and effort. I got to level 100 late last night with probably less than 30 hours of online play all told. Sadly the achievement has only put me at 780 points in the game as I still haven't done the single player, Insane difficulty, co-op, the deleted scene and all of the horde stuff added by the various DLC packs. I'm hoping to get the other 'online' only stuff done this week (namely 10 meatflags and guardian wins) and then focus on horde. I'll leave single player until last methinks.

With that little gem wrapped up - though I fancy that the achievement will become more common than muck considering how often these gargantuan XP events seem to be getting rolled out - I can move back to finishing off some other things I've left by the wayside.

This week I'm hoping to finish off Halo 3 and L4D if at all possible, two games that have been sat around for a good while now. It would be nice if I could cut down my number of uncompleted titles to less than 20 come year end (including arcade titles) so I'll endeavour to do everything I can to make that happen.

Time is not on my side

2010-06-28T16:22:00.002+01:00

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.........

Chipping away

2010-06-17T13:08:00.002+01:00

I managed to get Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise done with this week, I just needed to do an hour of four player online co-op and I managed to round up a goodly number of people to assist me. Basically we just sat around in my garden for an hour and did pretty much sod all - I then donated all of my chocolate coin horde to my three assistants and can now sell the game ASAP.

I'm actually fairly pleased to get it done with as I had nightmares about not being able to find enough helpers to get that last chore done, so it makes a nice change that something went so smoothly.

In other news I have been taking advantage of the 6x XP on Gears of War 2 and am now sat at level 55 - which is neat considering I started the week at level 1, ha ha! The temptation is there to try and rack up as much as I can but I really do not have the time to devote to it. I could easily get to level 80+ with a couple of nights effort but frankly I'll stick by my guns and just do everything barring Veteran Gear. Maybe if there is another event in future I might reconsider but for now my aim is to get to 1675 and then call it a day. I also managed to get a couple of the Public achievements too (Wingman and King of the Hill) so that was an added bonus.

Aside from that effort I've not done much else, I will probably go back to Halo 3 and mop up what can be done there and I also need to get cracking with Gears 2 as I haven't even touched the single player stuff. Pretty lazy of me, but there you go.

Well that was fast.......

2010-06-14T11:23:00.003+01:00

After starting A-Train HX last week I managed to finish it off within 48 hours. It's been a while since I played something so quick and easy so it rather took me by surprise. Especially as the game is a city building simulator which are normally a real time sink. Luckily though there was a fairly quick way to accumulate money and get all of the various tasks done so it was a breeze.

The game itself looked truly awful, I mean real last gen stuff, and it didn't really draw me in as similar games have (like Tropico 3). It was a nice distraction for a day or so but no more than that. If you can find it cheap then give it a go - though be prepared to learn the controls as they can be a real pain at times.

After that I went back to Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. I was playing it with my lovely lady, which is to say that I was playing it and she was planning what pinata and items we would need for the challenges - then scanning the images in accordingly. I would normally feel bad about such a short cut but frankly it still took an inordinate amount of time and I really didn't get into the sequel as much as I did the original. So the thought of attracting and breeding pinatas for hours on end really didn't appeal. After a weekend of labour we had everything done except for the 4 player online co-op - which I can hopefully get a posse together for shortly (or else rent another copy myself).

After that I think I'll go back to Halo 3 and mop up the single player achievements I can manage and then I may well devote some time to Gears 2 this week while it is 6x XP. I only plan to get to level 50 and do everything barring Veteran Gear. So hopefully I can make that happen.

I'm also going to get cracking on L4D (hurray) and Dante's Inferno DLC too. Bring on the pain.

Outstanding things......

2010-06-10T16:19:00.004+01:00

RETAIL

A Train HX - 240/1000
Battlefield 2: MC - 315/1000
Beautiful Katamari - 1050/1250
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
C&C Kane’s Wrath - 130/1000
Dante's Inferno - 1000/1290
Fairytale Fights - 165/1000
Final Fantasy XIII - 230/1000
Gears of War 2 - 210/1750
GRAW - 737/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Halo 3 - 1625/1750
Hellboy: SoE - 310/1000
Left 4 Dead - 1195/1250
Lego Star Wars TCS - 240/1000
Lost Planet - 350/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Project Sylpheed - 60/1000
Risen - 70/1000
Spiderman 3 - 10/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Star Wars: Republic Heroes - 350/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
Tomb Raider: Legend - 1000/1250
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
Virtua Tennis 09 - 545/1000
Viva Pinata 2 - 260/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 15462/35290

ARCADE

Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Eets: Chowdown - 20/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Puzzle Quest - 200/250
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 100/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 620/1450

While I have managed to knock a few long term targets off this list in recent times, things like Gears, Damnation and Flashpoint to name but a few. However, I have decided to add in a couple of games I have the original 1k on in a bid to knock off the DLC too.

The games in question are Dante's Inferno and Tomb Raider - plus I already have GRAW 2 and Call of Duty: WaW on that list too. If I get these out of the way then the only game (off the top of my head) that I'll have left with DLC outstanding will be Phantasy Star Universe and I'll never play that again so it can stay that way.

The only totally new addition is A Train but that shouldn't take me too long to get the full 1k on, so hopefully it will be gone by the time I do another of these dull lists. Not to mention the fact I'm hopeful that L4D will finally get done along with Halo 3 as well. Hurrah! I'm also actively working on Viva Pinata 2 so that should be done with fairly soon. Business is picking up.

Part of my goal has always been to whittle down my game collection (a fact my lady is always nagging me about) and she has offered to help me by assisting with some co-op play on Lego Star Wars and Republic Heroes.

My oustanding gamerscore total is approaching a mere 20k (not bad considering my overall score) and my ultimate goal is to get that down to under 10k and, eventually, under 5k. A very quick bit of maths leads me to believe I could get that 15k with a bit of effort and without doing time sapping things like Rank 100 on GOW 2 or the time trials on Spiderman 3. Such a mammoth effort would also get my completion up above 95% no doubt, which would be awesome sauce.

Still, one thing at a time, so I'll try and knock another three or four games off this list as fast as is humanly possible.

Random tasks

2010-06-07T15:37:00.002+01:00

I finally put Pure Football to bed last week, I even managed to finish up a review, roadmap and guide as well so it was a good weeks work all around, ha ha! The game is a bit tougher than expected to get the full 1k but it is mainly a time sink rather than difficult in any way. Though you will have to have a high tolerance for repetition as the game really starts to drag........

After that I went back and started doing the meta game achievements on Halo 3. I started from mission 6 because I was still missing some of the terminals for another achievement so figured I would work on that at the same time. I managed to reel off the last four missions in a couple of days of playing it on and off, so hopefully I can go back and finish the four missions I'm missing this week along with a couple of simple five pointers for blowing up vehicles and whatnot.

That will leave me with a couple of Mythic pack achievements, the three 0 point tasks and reaching the rank of Officer online (which is exactly the same task as one of the zero pointers. So it shouldn't be that long until I've chalked it off my list for good.

I'm also still grinding away at Scene It, but I cannot for the life of me get any Best Picture questions to appear during the Pop Quiz round so I'm still stuck at 42 correct answers. I just want that game done with now at is really getting tiresome to see the same questions over and over. Plus I still have to delete my save and restart to get the 50's questions achievement which glitched on me. Bah!

I hate Pure Football

2010-06-04T09:28:00.003+01:00

Maybe that's a little harsh, ha ha!

Still the game is starting to really drag on and wear me down, though part of my problem is the fact I've only just figured out the best way to unlock specific players in the campaign. I've just finished the second of the three required campaign completions (attacker, midfielder, defender) and the last few games were me trying to target specific players to snag. Considering there is an achievement for unlocking EVERY player you can see my frustration.

With (hopefully) one campaign left I have about 33 players to still unlock out of the roughly 200 on offer, so I am still well on target. The real problem with some of these players are the unlock conditions - as trying to get 12 tackles in a three minute match is nigh on impossible and that particular requirement is tacked onto pretty much every decent defender. It is also a pain to get certain players to pop up and to do so you generally need your created player at around the same level OR to flood your team with already unlocked players of that nationality and hope for the best.

At worst I can start another campaign, on Easy difficulty, and just blitz through playing only the teams I need but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. On the plus side I will hopefully be done with the game as a whole by the end of the weekend - depending on how much time I get to spend on it.

For all those looking at the list and thinking it is an easy 1k - don't bother - this game is probably about 5 hours for 700 points and then 30-40 hours for the rest. Bah!

The Holy Grail

2010-06-01T12:13:00.002+01:00

After months of effort, broken promises and review games screwing up my work I have finally hit 90% completion. I've made sure that the mark is accurate across all of the sites I frequent and on my xbox too (as they all take different things into account, such as DLC. So I am now positive that I am over the threshold for probably the first time ever.

Being the obsessed kind of fellow that I am, the fun is not going to stop there as I plan on going for 93% completion by the end of the year. That would allow me to start a new game and easily stay over 90% at all times. Hurrah!

Despite hindering myself by starting Pure Football (while at 89.94&) I managed to fly through the game over the weekend and racked up over 800 points while doing so. I even did all of the online stuff as well which was a bit of a grind but as literally NO ONE was playing the game it wasn't too bad.

When I say no one, here is the scene:

After my first few games I was ranked 34th in the world, then after finishing everything I wanted to do I was 5th in the world. The game is dead and rightfully so as it sucks big time.

That was not quite enough to push me over, so instead I went and snagged a number of achievements on games I had already started. Namely Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Halo 3. Pinata was on the menu because my lovely lady wanted to play something with me and you can garden in co-op, which is nice, and then I managed to boost all of the Lone Wolves achievements on Halo to edge me closer to getting it completed once and for all.

I'm hoping to finish Pure Football and maybe Scene It this week, then I can focus on Pinata and possibly Halo as well. Little bits at a time.

Ruined again

2010-05-28T09:29:00.002+01:00

I don't know why I do this to myself..........

My completion percentage was at 89.94% as of yesterday, just a few achievements shy of finally hitting my target. So what do I go and do? Slap another new game on my tag, that's what. I figured that after ducking all of the review games that looked a bit grind worthy or challenging (by playing them on a second account) I really needed to power through one of them.

My choice for this task is now going to be Pure Football which actually looks fairly tough for a sports title, especially when it comes to the online stuff. Still after snagging the tutorial achievement there is no turning back now - I should be able to get about 700 points easy enough and then it will be pain and suffering to the finish. What fun.

I'm also still slogging away at Scene It: BOS too - I'm at 42 questions right in terms of Best Picture questions on the Pop Quiz round (I messed up the first couple I got which hopefully will not cost me in the long run). So two more of them should see me getting one of the final two achievements, then I can wipe my save game and start from scratch on 50's questions.

I've also decided to go back and do the DLC on Tomb Raider Legend and Dantes Inferno at some point as well. I have a ton of points sat around that cost me next to nothing so I may as well make use of them.

After 200k

2010-05-27T12:04:00.002+01:00

Well now that the excitement is over I suppose it is back to business as usual. To be honest after I hit 100k I told myself I would stop playing as many crappy game and it was true to a point, though I still cannot resist playing something for a quick 1k. At least I only rent those crappy games now though, and stick to buying the high quality stuff, so it means that I am limited to how much dross I can play at any one time.

With 300k so far away I don't really have any immediate goals as such, perhaps 250k by the end of the year but even that isn't really set in stone. So for now I will just push onwards and tidy up my card a bit as I still have a medley of games outstanding that I could do with getting back to.

At the moment I've been spending time finishing off Scene It: BOS but it appears to have glitched on me for the last regular achievement - answering 10 50's movie questions correctly. I have been keeping a tally since I recommenced playing the game and I'm well over ten already, meaning I'll have to wipe my save and start anew which is a major chore. For now though I am trying to grind out 60 Best Picture questions on the Pop Quiz DLC as hopefully that will unlock as it should - no point deleting my save until that is done as it would mean more work in the long run.

After that I am determined to focus on L4D (assuming Smit ever gets sent a copy, ha ha) and get that bad boy done. I only need one Expert mode and about 25k worth of kills and then it will be done with, but I've been saying that for ages now - time to make good on that promise.

I'll also coerce Sam into helping me finish off Lego Star Wars and SW: Republic Heroes too, which will both be easy but lengthy co-op projects. Couple that with my upcoming assault on Halo 3 and there are a fair few things on my list, seems like for every game I complete there are two more waiting to take their place.

I think my main goal, as of now, is to get my outstanding games list (i.e those that I haven't completed the original 1k on) down to only 10-15 titles by the end of the year. So there we go, a new plan and one I should be able to see happen with a bit of patience.

Plenty of reviews recently too, with Splut/Second and UFC 2010 up in the last week (both certainly worth checking out if you haven't already) and now Pure Football on my doorstep today. Keeping me busy but also meaning less time to play the games I really want to - I totally need to get this writing gig on a professional level, ha ha!

Well, I'll try and make things a touch more interesting next time out - though I have noticed a major drop off in the number of people updating their blogs recently. Have gamers given up on reporting their shenanigans? I hope not.

The 200k borefest post

2010-05-19T10:47:00.004+01:00

Seeing as I've hit another major milestone it seems only fair (in my eyes) to punish you all with a dull and lengthy post about how this all came about - possibly with a few thank you nods and winks along the way. As anyone over 100k will tell you, it is impossible to get there without some help from your firends along the way - mainly due to the sheer amount of co-op and multiplayer achievements that are out there.

Once again my planning has failed spectatcularly. As, with a bit of research, I could have hit 200k on the same day (two years later) that I hit 100k, sadly it is only by looking back now that I realised I had hit 100k on May 6th 2008. Still just over two years is not too shabby in my eyes, as even Stallion 'only' gets 100k a year so for me to be hitting half of that is pretty solid especially as I'm a bit more casual about gaming in general.

Here is how my stats looked at 100k:

100,012 / 116,870
84/114 Retail games completed
3/10 Arcade games completed
84.06% completion
61st in the U.K
137th Worldwide completion
441st Worldwide leaderboard

First 1000: Call of Duty 2 (March 2006)
Last 1000: The Darkness (May 2008)

Here they are now:

200,082 / 222,160*
178 / 206 Retail games completed
22 / 28 Arcade games completed (including Family Game Night)
89.67% Completion (achievements earned)*
90.06% Completion (points earned)*
35th in the U.K
75th Worldwide completion
210th Worldwide leaderboard

*All of these stats include DLC

So I have a bigger chunk of score outstanding now, but a few less retail and arcade games outstanding. My completion ratio has shot up nicely too which was my main goal plus I'm higher up the rankings - though that may have more to do with a purge on cheaters by a number of sites then any effort on my part.

I've managed 94 retail completions in this 100k too which is not too shabby, plus 19 arcade completions too. Obviously some of those games may have been started during my initial 100k so I cannot honestly say that I've acquired 97,800 points from solely completing games. Throw some DLC into the mix and I have no idea what the hell has been acquired an when.

What I can say is that this 100k has included a lot more in the way of tougher completions and games I actually wanted to play too. Things like Call of Duty 3, Rainbow Six Vegas and Gears of War all tested my resolve when it came to multiplayer. While titles like Bayonetta, Bioshock 2 and Darksiders all gave me hours of joy. I think I've had a good mix of challenging titles and top notch games, though there has obviously been the odd easy title like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs etc. I've also tried to manage my review titles fairly well - putting games on my card that I either enjoy or can blitz through, while using a backup account to review games I'm never going to want to see again (Planet 51 anyone?).

I now have 32 retail games with points still to attain (including DLC) and a mere 7 arcade titles in a similar vein. I don't count Chromehounds, Madden 07 or Family Game Night on these lists as they have unattainable achievements.

A list of thanks would be in order for sure and includes a lot fo people who have busted their asses to help me out over time:

My fiance - the only reason I can still play games is down to her patience. She puts up with me playing all hours and all manner of crap and even let me get a second console to make things easier on myself. She is also my co-op buddy for all LEGO games and any other games that take her fancy. If you are wondering why I haven't completed Beautiful Katamari or Viva Pinata 2 yet it is because I cannot play them without her present, ha ha!

Rich x360a - first and foremost amongst my friends list. The guy who has helped me play more online games than anyone I know. After soldiering through Army of Two together (before that cheap glitch for easy cash reared its head) we have gone on to boost all manner of games, though most notable being Rainbow Six Vegas and Gears of War - both of which took more time than I can imagine.

elSmitmyster - my other Gears of War cronie, though he will go down in infamy for telling that damn woodpecker joke. Also the guy who finally helped me finish off Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal - a true legend.

The Pr0fessional, x Golden 1 x and Method x360a - the other members of the Gears group that went through the horror of boosting at all hours of the day. Sadly the first two dropped out after a few months and Method joined us when we were nearly done and he was just starting - still he must have enjoyed our twelve hour marathon that garnered us all 1k worth of kills.

Webb x360a - my editor and evil overseer. The man that supplies me with a seemingly endless supply of average games to review, still it keeps me sane. He also witnessed my appalling aiming skills when we did Pro difficulty on Resi 5, I swear that no one killed the brainwashed Jill more than I did. I apologise profusely. We also slogged through the majority of Operation Flashpoint together.

Cru x360a - a party chat is always more fun when Crubie is involved, especially when the discussion takes in Leprechaun movies. We always seem to play terrible games together, with COD 3 and Damnation being obvious examples. Sorry about that Cru but at least you beat me in the GSL. She also has the dubious honour of lending me My Horse and Me 2.

Creech x360a - the reset king. We had the chance to play together on SupCom and HAWX which was a fun time, though don't even bother sending him a message when he is playing a strategy game, I did and got a ONE LETTER response. I kid you not. Also the man responsible for cleaning up all of those cheaters.

The Pants Party - to give him his formal title. He totally beat me to completing The Last Remnant but at least I beat him to 200k, though that may have more to do with his studies than my skills. Always the forum and RPG go to guy.

Stallion, Fro, Apple and Rand - the hardcore legends. People who have helped me and had help from me on any number of games and always provide the laughs in any party gathering. I'm sure they would much rather spend their time calling each other nubs and boosting any old crap than reading this waffle.

The rest - ha ha, don't feel bad to be in this category. I've just realised how long I've been rambling on really. I've been helped and had help from so many people over the years. So many games played and completed that it would be hard for me to not thank everyone. My friends list is quite short (only 50 people) and its because I only keep people on there if I speak to them regularly or play games with them. Kudos to you all and thanks for all of your help.

200k

2010-05-18T15:21:00.002+01:00

Well I finally got there last night.

Expect a long, stat heavy and dull post to follow at some point, ha ha!

Oh - the achievement was Rebirth on Bioshock 2. Ironic really seeing as I'm at the start of my next 100k trek.

DLC shenanigans

2010-05-17T12:21:00.004+01:00

As much as I hate DLC (and I do) I will often download it in order to finsh games off. Mainly due to the fact I managed to get a load of really cheap MS points that have been sat on my profile ever since, when you have 8k worth of the buggers then you get a little less choosy about what you will spend it on, ha ha!

The last few weeks have seen me finishing off a whole bunch of DLC for a variety of games. Kicking things off, literally, was FIFA 09 which was a total grind but strangely satisfying too. After that I focused on Annex mode in Gears and Versus mode in Resident Evil 5. Both of these were a major drag to get through and really didn't add anything to the game at all, but at least they are finally done.

Annex mode proved just how broken the maths are in Gears once again, as it didn't unlock until I'd done well over 100 games of Annex. Considering even the shortest match can take eight minutes then every extra game was a total chore. At least Resident Evil knows how to keep count and the achievement for the final mode unlocked right after 30 matches won - though at five minutes a match it became rapidly boring after a while. Still, two more games to throw on the completed pile for now - one at 1250 and one at a bizarre 1400.

I also finished off Damnation last week by playing it in co-op with my second machine. It was a breeze to be honest though it quickly reminded me of just how BAD that game was in the first place. I'm just glad I will never have to go back to it. THE NIGHTMARES.........

I then proceeded to pretty much wreck my chance of 90% achievement completion (and 180 games completed) before 200k by playing Halo 3. I went from a mere 805 points to a whopping 1505 in a few short hours by just doing all of the easy DLC stuff. I still have 24 achievements left on the game for a mere 245 points reward, which will be a bit of a grind but at least it will be one more thing done.

I dipped back into Star Wars Republic Heroes too and snagged a few more points. The game is fairly easy and repetitive, so I'm hoping to get it done soon but my hands are kind of tied by the fact I'm playing it in co-op with my lovely lady. So I only really play it when she wants to.

My quest to finish L4D seems, ironically, dead in the water. So I may have to arrange a boosting session with some randoms in order to get it done. Being one level away for so long is really starting to get annoying now so I really hope I can find some helpers.

Last up, and bouncing back to DLC, I started to new Bioshock 2 achievements. The DLC is poorly implemented as you can only play on new maps if everyone in a game has bought the content, as there are no specific play lists for the new stuff. It means the only way you can get two of the achievements (As I did) is bt boosting. The other 100 points are for using the Rebirth feature once you hit level 50 - which I am close to attaining. Yet more DLC done and was it really worth it? Nah........

Minor update

2010-05-12T14:07:00.002+01:00

Just realised that I hadn't added any reviews or completions for over a month, ha ha! So there are seven new reviews over there on the right along with a bunch of completions and what not. Nothing too major really but I suppose I should do better at keeping on top of these things.

I made a bit of a list a while back about what games I planned to complete in order to hit 90% completion and also to get to about 178 retail games complete. Progress has actually been better than hoped for:

Castle Crashers (DONE), Operation Flashpoint (DONE), Dragon Age (DLC) (DONE), Brothers in Arms (DONE), Lips (DLC) (DONE) and NHL 09 (DONE).

Damnation, Left 4 Dead, Lego Star Wars, Gears of War and Where's Wally are the remnants of that list. I'm hoping to have at least two of them chalked off by the end of the week - namely Gears and Damnation. I'm also really hoping to get L4D done too but trying to find people to help me with the Blood Harvest campaign is proving trickier than I'd imagined. I'll get there someday.

As for Lego and Wally - I think they may well be left be the wayside in my attempt to hit 200k, as I'll be concentrating on doing Star Wars Republic Heroes instead. Assuming I finish everything else I set out to do (L4D, Damnation, Gears and SW: RH) then I'll have a whopping 60 points left to play with before hitting my target score - so if I snag those badboys in pretty much any game I've already started then it cannot hurt. Though I'm still unsure whether this will be enough to push me over 90% completion or not and I cannot be bothered doing the maths to find out.

An interesting thing I did discover though is that I'm already over 90% in terms of gamerscore attained/attainable. Just not in terms of actual achievements gained/gainable. So I do still aim to have both factors over the threshold fairly soon. Only 0.45% to go, yay!

POST 100!!!!!!!

2010-05-11T11:21:00.003+01:00

I think that many exclamation marks may well be the sign of an unhinged mind, but I'll soldier on regardless.

If I wasn't such a slacker I could have planned ahead abit and maybe tied Seriously in with this post, or done some kind of in depth report/discussion or maybe even some kind of epic competition. Instead I'm just going to do what I always do and ramble on in an incoherent fashion - assuming that someone reads this nonsense and all of that jazz.

I've actually been on holiday (though not in the 'going away' sense) for the last week and a bit so it has meant plenty of time for gaming, plus quite a bit of time for planning my upcoming wedding but let's not get into that. As ever I never quite manage to get everything I wanted to play on the list but at least some good progress was made which is all I can ask for really.

First of all, I commited myself to finishing off the Ultimate Team DLC on FIFA 09 - I wasn't going to bother but then found out it was already on my hard drive so I must have downloaded it at some point and then forgot about it. Considering I can pick a copy of the game up for about £1.99 it was no big outlay. I also rented a copy so I could boost through all of the online tournaments, which still took the better part of two days. Then it came down to slogging through all of the offline tournaments which totalled up to 72 matches at eight minutes a match - fun stuff. I also had to trawl the online card trading system to get 14 cards for one team, a tough process but one I managed to accomplish with some shrewd trading.

I do hate DLC generally and this one was a total grind fest BUT at least it did offer value for money, considering I probably sunk about twenty hours into getting the 250 points then I can hardly complain I was short changed. Still it feels good to get it done with.

Next up was a review title, Iron Man 2, and I can easily say that it is one of the worst games I've played in a long time. Everything about it feels rushed and broken, so much so that it is a wonder the game was released at all. It is no wonder movie tie in games get such a bad reputation when things like this continue to surface, I'll post a link up to my review and you can see what I'm talking about.

On the plus side I managed to get the full 1k in about six hours or so - which included two full playthroughs of the game. It really is that short. Though I would only ever recommend it to die hard achievement junkies and anyone else should steer well clear.

I also saw the film this week, which was thankfully a lot more entertaining if a touch predictable. I always find Robert Downey Jr pretty funny and he delivered once again - it was the perfect popcorn style film really, one you don't have to pay too much attention to but can get a few cheap kicks out of watching. It actually made me go home and rewatch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is an absoluely awesome film if you've never seen it, full of great dialogue and pretty overlooked. Val Kilmer is great in it too which is just an added surprise as he gets a pretty rough time critic wise.

I played through Dead to Rights on a back up account too (as I didn't want to slap it on my tag and mess up my completion, but I did end up breaking that plan anyway *sigh*) and it is a fairly average game. Nothing too terrible about it, but nothing too great either. Though it was fun watching a dog rip someones nuts off, ha ha! Again I'll slap up a link to the review fairly soon. It has to be said that I probably liked the game more just because it WASN'T Iron Man 2 - anything would seem better after that nightmare.

Anywho........

Next up I finished off Castle Crashers by grinding out the two online achievements which only took a couple of hours thanks to the pretty dead community there - I think I only ran into two other people the whole time I was playing it, so it made things mercifully easy.

I also messed around doing some more Annex on Gears, as I really wanted to get that done with but I only ended up getting to around seventy five matches won. Only three quarters of the way there but at least I can polish it off at my leisure.

What distracted me more was starting the Versus DLC on Resident Evil 5. I've done the two player stuff already so now we are grinding through the team games. We got Slayers mode done in a couple of nights and have moved onto the longer Survivors mode (5 minutes minimum a match), but we only managed to crank out 21 or the required 60 games so far. Which means another four hours of play time. A few months ago this would have seemed like a lot for one thirty point achievement but after Seriously everything else seems short and simple, ha ha! Hopefully we'll finish that bad boy off this week.

Next up I slogged through Desperate Escape on Pro difficulty with Rich (more Resi 5). Trust me when I say that it is a total bitch in terms of difficulty. Mainly due to annoying spiders and Reapers which often take you out in one hit while your back is turned. Still we struggled through it all and finally made it through the finale by running around like headless chickens for the last thirty seconds. Anything to make it through. Hell, we even got an S rank which was a miracle considering how much we died.

I then ended up started Star Wars Republic Heroes - as my lady wanted to play a game with me and that was her choice. It may well put paid to my 90% completion ratio being hit before I get to 200k but what the hell, at least we had some fun with it and the game is fairly straight forward so I'll enjoy running through it with her.

After slapping a game on my card that I hadn't intended to I figured that it would make sense to try and finish off some older stuff. Never one to shy away from a challenge I went after Operation Flashpoint. I had to finish up the last three missions on Hardcore mode SOLO, as I'd started it with Webb months ago but he was always too busy to go back and finish it up.

It took me hours to get through those levels, as even one bullet can end a mission and there are no checkpoints so it is back to square one. It doesn't help that your A.I team are so dumb or that the opposition are seemingly crack shots. Still I did myself proud and got through it OK, I then went back and got the few achievements I'd missed - like blowing up a vehicle with a mine or killing someone by dropping a helicopter on them. Nothing too taxing but it's a nice completion to have.

After getting through that game solo I figured I could do the same with Damnation - I'd use my second box to get the co-op achievement as your partner just spawns with you at checkpoints so I wouldn't even have to move them. I'll start that this week and hopefully get it chalked off my list as well. Though my real focus will be getting Expert done (finally) on L4D, assuming I can find enough partners to assist me. Fingers crossed.

Well, I think I've rambled enough for now. I've got to get back to reviewing NIER and generally wasting my life on games.

Seriously, redux

2010-04-26T12:58:00.002+01:00

It is done.

I was going to be all cool and mysterious by just leaving my post at that, but I felt the urge to chat about it a touch more. Me and the posse had been playing from Wednesday - Saturday (nights only, ha ha) in a bid to cross the finishing line. As I was closest the decision was made to have me play EVERY game in a bid to get it done - which would then free the others up to play more games between them while I just had my two accounts sit there.

10k came and went with no achievement in sight, then 11k fell and I started to get a bit apprehensive as we have all heard the horror stories about people having to wait until 15-20k. As I edged closer to 12k we were going to call it a night, as it was 4am Sunday morning and we had been playing for eight hours straight. The game ended and, thank the Lord, the damn thing finally popped up. I had kind of lost any enthusiasm by that point, and the others assumed I was joking or something but it was FINALLY complete. Relief is the word here............

It took 11,740 kills for it to emerge and I have to yet again question Epic's programming skills here. I saw a quote from one of the producers saying that it wasn't broken and that any time a game froze up or a person left (to take it under six players) then the kills would get added to the leaderboards but would not count. I can safely say that he is full of the proverbial - as there is no way I lost 1,740 worth of kills. I kept a half assed tally of when the game froze up or booted one of us. In all of the games I played there were only THREE matches total where I lost kills which could only add up to a maximum of about 270 kills, assuming I played 19 rounds to the other teams 18 and got 90 kills a match. So screw Epic and their dodgy maths.

Still, I now have to polish off Annex mode and dummy another couple of nights so that the rest of the team can get their reward. Everyone is over 10k now so it shouldn't take too long hopefully.

I also tried my hand at the FIFA 09 DLC too, as it had been sat on my harddrive for months. The online stuff can be done with only two people and a bit of setting up when it comes to matches, so it's not too bad. I got through nine of the eighteen online tournaments and I hope to finish the rest off this week. I'm also going to get started on the offline trophies too but they should be quite straightforward. My biggest grind will be getting enough coins to fill a page of the collection which will come down to a mix of luck and time. Still I'm hopeful of getting it done ASAP.

So my immediate goals will be Annex, FIFA 09 and then Castle Crashers. All of which should be done in the next couple of weeks, then it's time for my triple threat of L4D, Damnation and Operation Flashpoint. I'm also starting Dead to Rights Retribution for review purpose. Woo hoo!

Dull stats time - why the hell not?

2010-04-20T16:14:00.001+01:00

RETAIL

Battlefield 2: MC - 315/1000
Beautiful Katamari - 1050/1250
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
C&C Kane’s Wrath - 130/1000
Damnation - 390/1000
Fairytale Fights - 165/1000
Final Fantasy XIII - 150/1000
Gears of War 2 - 210/1750
Gears of War - 1100/1250
GRAW - 737/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Halo 3 - 805/1750
Hellboy: SoE - 310/1000
Left 4 Dead - 1170/1250
Lego Star Wars TCS - 240/1000
Lost Planet - 350/1000
Operation Flashpoint - 610/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Project Sylpheed - 60/1000
Resident Evil 5 - 1270/1400
Risen - 70/1000
Scene It: BOS - 615/1250
Spiderman 3 - 10/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
Virtua Tennis 09 - 545/1000
Viva Pinata 2 - 20/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 15692/36650

ARCADE

Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Castle Crashers - 170/200
Eets: Chowdown - 20/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Puzzle Quest - 200/250
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 100/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 790/1650

So I have 32 retail games uncomplete and 8 arcade games, meaning a whopping 40 overall (I do the maths so you don't have to, ha ha). I can chalk off four of these arcade titles in fairly short order - Castle Crashers, W&G, Where's Wally and Puzzle Quest. However, the rest will probably sit on the back burner for a long time after that.

Retail wise I have L4D, Damnation and Operation Flashpoint lined up. Plus I'll be going back to Lego Star Wars with my lady and boosting Gears and Resi 5 to get them done. Which takes care of a measly six titles. Oh dear.

All of those games will also see me approaching my target of 180 retail games complete, 90% completion and 200k in gamerscore. Assuming I do all of them then I'll be looking at the following on my card:

GS = 198677
Completion = 90.43%
Retail complete = 177
Arcade complete = 24

With only 1323 worth of points until I hit 200k, then the odds of me getting another three retail completions is slim. My best chance would be to finish off Katamari (200 points), Scene It (635 points) and one of Splinter Cell, WSC 07 or Virtua Tennis 09 (all time consuming). So it doesn't look possible frankly - I'll probably aim for at least one more completion but that will be my lot. Not a bad effort though as I had 84 completions at 100k so doubling that would have given me 168 at 200k - to be ten above that is pretty awesome I think.

Oh and, FYI, there is no chance I'll be hitting 200k on the dot either. That is for nerds, ha ha!

Long haul gaming

2010-04-20T12:23:00.000+01:00

Saturday was a busy day for me in the gaming sense. I sat down at about 1pm to make a start on some Annex matches on Gears, as I really wanted to get them done before I got too close to Seriously (otherwise my motivation would just die). However, Rich and Method were online at the same time so we started an impromptu kills boosting session.

Twelve hours, multiple games and the addition of Smit to the group later........

My tally now stands at 8878 kills, so the end is in sight. Frankly I'll never know how close I am to the finish line until the damn thing actually pops thanks to the dodgy stat tracking in the game (cheers for that Epic). How hard is it to put a line of code in there that states: if number of kills = 10,000 then Achievement Unlocked? It boggles my mind. Though not as much as the fact I played games for twelve hours straight without unlocking a single achievement, ha ha!

I was totally under the weather on Sunday (food poisoning methinks) so really didn't do much at all. My only bit of gaming was a co-op game of Resident Evil 5 with my fiance. I needed to unlock Pro difficulty on the Desperate Escape DLC (for the last achievement) and she was game to assist me. I have to say I was a touch nervous as she has NEVER played the game before and hates shooters in general, plus it was on the second hardest difficulty to boot.

She came through like a trooper though and we made it through unscathed. There were a couple of deaths (to be expected) but she was a great partner and I'm almost tempted to lure her back for Pro mode. The toughest part was the final onslaught but we dealt with wave after wave of goons until we ran out of ammo, by that point there was only thirty seconds left so we just ran around like headless chickens until success was assured. Ha ha!

Monday was another rough day too, and after a disturbed night of sickness I slept in until 11.30am. Not a grand time to be sure. I spent the day huddled on the sofa grinding through Annex matches on Gears. Taking myself to 65 games won thus far - though my achievement for 20 wins on Bullet Marsh popped about four games after I thought it would so those figures may be wrong again (how hard is it Epic, I mean really?). Still they were my first points in a few days so it was something at least.

This week I'm hoping to hit 10k on Gears and maybe finish off the Annex stuff too - it would be sweet to have to full 1250 but due to the dodgy tracking I wouldn't say it was a certainty. Next up will be the remaining stuff on Resi 5 and then I'll be focusing on the trio of unfinished games that is Damnation, L4D and Operation Flashpoint.

Progress is good!

2010-04-16T09:06:00.002+01:00

Well I finally got the full 1k in Brothers in Arms last night so the game is done - though if anyone thinks I give a rats ass about the 0 point achievements they are sorely mistaken, ha ha! It would be fine if there were a couple but boosting 20 online matches with four players for no real reward is, to me, a waste of time (though I suppose that argument could be laid at the door of achievements in general). So it is going down as another completion.

I really wish MS would just flat out ban longwinded 0 point achievemnts anyway - as they serve no purpose other than to annoy the hell out of me, plus there are a number of people on their high horse about why they DO count towards completion. Seriously, if those achievements were that important they would have had some points allocated towards them even if it is only 5 or 10. So once I have all the points in a game the game is complete, nuff said.

Though in a complete hypocritic reversal I did snag the last 0 point achievement on Blue Dragon last night, ha ha! Mainly because I'm planning on selling the game and it took me all of five minutes to do. But I doubt I'll ever lavish the same respect onto BIA as it just looks like a big old pain in the ass.

I also managed to polish off the Lost in Nightmares DLC for Resident Evil 5, my run through on Professional difficulty was actually smooth sailing with only that damnable Wesker and my A.I partners stupidity standing in my way. I'll have to go through it again with my pals in order to help them out, but I figured if I knew what to expect then it would make things taht much eaier. I'll be aiming to get through Desperate Escape on Veteran next so I have the Pro mode ready to go in co-op. After that will be the Team boosting in Versus mode and then it'll be done. Boo yah!

Also made some good progress in Gears of War - though it has been kind of enforced. After months and months of late night boosting my other half has finally got sick of it and told me to either finish up by the end of the month or not finish at all. Yikes! So we have been starting super early and squeezing in as many games as possible (apologies to Method who is missing out as a result). The results have been pretty damn awesome though and I should be nearly at 8.5k by the end of the week. A similar run next week will see us on the verge of the magical number and then it becomes a case of 'when will it pop'. I think once I hit 10k my other half will let me keep going until it finally appears but I have to make sure I get there.

I reeeeeeeally need to get cracking on the Annex stuff too, as once Seriously pops up my motivation to play Gears will be almost dead, ha ha! So that will be high on my to do list.

My next goal will be to complete Operation Flashpoint, Damnation and L4D as they are all within my grasp assuming I pull my finger out. Though I will probably need to harass some boosting buddies into helping me out with each of them. My 90% completion target is merely 0.5% away from me now so it now comes down to grinding out a few more completions before I cross the magical threshold of 200k. Getting there, getting there...........

Didn't I pay for that?

2010-04-12T16:11:00.003+01:00

Over the weekend I was due to head over to my dad's house and spend some time with him, though he does pop out and do his shopping and head to the pub with his friends etc so I do have a few hours to myself. Perfect time to boost some Annex on Gears - as he doesn't have internet access so I couldn't really get anything done online.

Not wanting to disturb my hooked up 360 I just took the harddrive off of it and stuck it on my new Elite. Big mistake. As it seems that all of my downloaded content is not just tied to my drive and is instead in some way attached to the rest of my Elite. So I couldn't play any of the new Annex maps or even any of my arcade games, grrrrr!

I had thought (and read somewhere) that once you downloaded content from Live you could then play it as long as you used the original hard drive that it was saved on OR if you were on another harddrive but used the original gamertag that downloaded it (though you would have to be on Live for this method to work). What is the point of me paying money to download content and arcade games if I can never play if offline or at another location? Surely once I have paid for the content I should be able to do what I want with it? I'm not saying I want to be allowed to have all my content available to other users (that would be crazy) but why can't I use it on my tag wherever I am - especially if I'm using the same hard drive that the game is downloaded to?

The whole thing reeks of commercialism and a lack of choice, once a consumer has bought a product they should have unlimited access to it - short of issues that could lead to piracy etc. Anything else is just a way for MS to control the content and spoils the expereince for users.

Anyway, that minor quibble forced me to start on Brothers in Arms, which I happened to have brought along with me just in case I got bored of Gears. I'd only unlocked some of the time based achievements prior to that, the ones that just require you to pop the game in your console for a set number of days, so this was a chance for me to finish up the game and chalk up another completion.

The game has not aged well, which is saying something considering it is not THAT old, and looks extremely rough around the edges. The story is overly convoluted and the gameplay is pretty simple and generic. It reminded me of Full Spectrum Warrior in many ways, but didn't seem as tactical or involved as that particular gem. Still I managed to rustle up a few hundred points in short order and should be able to finish the game off in a few more hours. That will leave the 0 point online achievements but I don't know if I can be bothered to go for them, as I don't know anyone who would be willing to join me and boosting with randoms for no pertinent gain seems even more of a waste of time than usual, ha ha!

I also finished off Lips for the second time, though this time around it was all of the DLC that was the focus of my attention and getting to 200k worth of stars in particular. Though the grind for stars was made easier by a novel method involving a thirty minute single note song and a wired mic - good times. It is kind of embarrasing that the game is now my highest ranked in terms of TA but there you are. I should really finish off Snooker 2007 or SupCom to get something credible up there. Ah well.

I also blitzed through South Park which was thoroughly entertaining. The game was in keeping with the spirit of the show, and also a good tactical change of pace. It was the first tower defence game I'd ever played and I really got into it. Though I'm more proud of the fact I managed to get the full 200 points solo - as a couple of the hardest achievements were meant to be recommended for multiple players. I just manned up and went for it, with great results.

This week I'll probably just focus on getting Brothers in Arms done and then I'm really going to push for L4D as I want it to be finally done with. The game has been nearly complete for months now and with just one Expert campaign standing in my way there is no excuse as to why I haven't done it. It would also sneak me ever closer to my goal of 200k with 90% completion and 180 retail games fully finished. Hmmm.......I could also aim for 20 arcade titles done to make it up to a round 200 games complete. That would be cool.

I'm not dead

2010-04-09T17:52:00.002+01:00

Yes, the rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

It has been some time since my last post but that was mainly due to the fact that the servers where I work took an unholy dump, meaning we've had no PC access for over a week. The fact it was Easter and our technical support are apparently incompetent didn't help either. Oh well - such is life. I tend to post while I'm having lunchables at the old office as I'm never really in the mood once I get home.

Still at least that gives me a bit more to ramble on about.

I'm still plodding on with my goal of attaining 90% completion, and I've just hit the 89% mark too so that is a minor victory at least. Though I will still require about 3k more points on games I've already started in order to get over the finish line. Whoop de doo!

Thankfully I've managed to polish off NHL 09 which was a fairly major scalp as it has been on my card for over a year now, I spent the last week grinding out the 150 Be a Pro wins I would need in order to get my Legend card and snag the last two achievements. Thank the Lord that is over. I like hockey games and it does make me proud to have completed all four of the NHL series on the 360 - but at the moment I'm kind of sick of playing it, ha ha!

I'm also finally back on the path towards Seriously in Gears of War. There were a few weeks of uncertainty where we had to reshuffle the team, but as of this weekend I will be at 7,000 kills. Yay! Though considering no one knows the exact goalpost for the achievement unlocking then who the hell knows how close I actually am to finishing it off. Not to mention the fact I also have the dreaded Annex to occupy my time.

Other random tasks including finishing off pretty much all of the Lips DLC, leaving me with just one achievement for 200k in stars to complete the game fully, and all the regular stuff on Castle Crashers - online boosting will take care of the rest. Boo!

I've also made some major progress on Resident Evil 5 and hope to get it all wrapped up in the next couple of weeks. Though I'm not looking forward to grinding out the team games online as it is a soul sapping experience.

The only new game on my tag was Prison Break and I can safely say it is the worst game I have played this year by a country mile - a stealth game where you can get spotted through walls and by people looking the opposite way (trust me - as the camera zooms in on the person that has allegedly spotted you) is quite simply broken. My review is less than kind. Still I managed to get the full 1k so it wasn't a total loss.

Next up...........well I don't really know. I'm hankering to get Left 4 Dead done with once and for all, but I'm also tempted to push through something easy like Brothers in Arms or just focus on Annex maybe. I've also still got Damnation and Operation Flashpoint to mop up as well. Ugh, why can't I just play one thing at a time?

Ups and downs

2010-03-30T09:43:00.004+01:00

It's strange how one week I can play games pretty much every night and then the next I will hardly play them at all. I've been in a bit of a lull since my last post and not really devoted much time to any game in particular, though my overriding goal has been to chip away at FFXIII as much as I possibly can. I'm about twenty five hours in now and the linear formula is still very much the same - though I'm surprisingly not as bored as I would have expected to be, so the story is clearly making up for the games obvious gameplay failings.

I've also made a concerted effort on the Resident Evil 5 DLC as well, mainly because I've had the evil Versus mode on my hard drive for months so I just wanted it done. Typically this completely breaks with the formula I'd worked out in order to achieve 90% completion but what are you going to do? I play things as the mood takes me really. In any event I've done all of the two player achievements I can, and now I'm just waiting on Rich and Smit so that we can do all of the Team achievements. Frankly the MP is a total snore fest and grinding out 30 wins in each mode is amazingly unfun, it takes about three hours per mode so you are looking at a major investment of time for something that is not that much fun. I also played the Lost in Nightmares DLC which was fun for the most part, but fairly generic. Just need to tackle it in Pro mode and then I'll be done. That would just leave me with Desperate Escape to complete - I'll probably tackle it solo in order to unlock Pro moe and then get a buddy in to finish it off.

Secondly, I finished off the Dragon Age: Awakenings DLC and wrote a review for it. Frankly it was a lot shorter and simpler than I was hoping for, with a lot of clearly borrowed content from the original title and some very poor glitches. Fair enough that you can't bring all of your uber equipment from the original game when you import a character - but having to watch the opening cutscene with your leader in a pair of pants is a little much. Just bad testing methinks but it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth and there are numerous other examples of sloppy worksmanship.

I also did my first bit of Gears boosting in about a month so hopefully it will become a regular thing again as I really want to put that bad boy to bed once and for all. Have to get back to Annex mode as well - sigh.

Last night I broke loose though and started Prison Break, managing to get more points in the first chapter of that game than I had over the entire preceding week. Methinks it will not take long to complete it fully so I will press on and do so, then get a review sorted too. With the next batch of Lips DLC on its way to me the reviews will be coming thick and fast for the next couple of months. Anyone who has seen the line up of games that are due will know what I'm talking about.

Bring on the pain.

Minor update

2010-03-19T09:50:00.002Z

Checked my xbox.com stats and it seems that I am 3725 points away from hitting 90% completion. That's quite an improvement on what I worked out about a month ago, though the continued addition of DLC to games will always make my target an annoyingly fluid one.

I discovered the other day that I actually own the Ultimate Team DLC for FIFA 09 - plus there seems to be a reliable way to easily do the online tasks too - so I'll be attempting to get that stuff done after all at some point. Woo hoo! What I will not be doing is the ridiculous tasks on NFS: Shift which would require 200 online podium finishes, yeah right. I might attempt the newer, and easier, DLC to get a few more points but we shall see.

Sorry I got sidetracked there...............

Anyway, my quest for 90% could well help me to get towards a lovely 180 retail games completed before 200k too. I've worked out that if I finish off the following:

Castle Crashers, Damnation, Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Age (DLC), Left 4 Dead, Lego Star Wars, Brothers in Arms, Lips (DLC), Gears of War, Where's Wally and NHL 09.

Then that will get me to within 35 points of my completion target, add another seven retail completions, two more arcade completions and two more 100% games in terms of DLC. I suppose I could add the 40 point DLC in Dante's Inferno that I'm missing to that list and that would be 90% - yay!

It would also mean I'd be at 196,637 points overall (assuming I don't get any points in any other game, probably not possible). So there would still be the chance for me to complete another 3 or 4 games for sure.

No doubt I'll stick some other game in the machine just to muck things up but at the moment things are looking pretty good.

When is a completion not a completion?

2010-03-17T09:03:00.002Z

An interesting 'debate' is sort of raging over at TA. I say sort of raging because it seems that there are only two people on the same side of the fence as myself while everyone else has the opposing view, ha ha!

Anyway, the problem (as I see it) is that for the purposes of TA they count DLC as basically another game entirely. So the calculations say that DLC only counts if you have earned one DLC achievement rather than if you have played the original game. It means that the vast majority of DLC is practically worthless and that DLC is generally ignored in terms of completion percentage and number of games complete.

I'll come clean and say that I don't count DLC in terms of my completions, though there are a number of games I've done all of the DLC on too, but that is mainly down to my own laziness at not wanting to purchase and play DLC. I still agree that DLC is part of the game no matter what other people say.

At the end of the day MS makes the rules. They have said that DLC counts towards completing a game and also that ANY game could have up to 1750 in points. So just ignoring DLC is akin to saying those 1750 points never existed.

The arguments for leaving the ratios as they are now:

1) It is the fairest system as less people are penalised for not having DLC.
2) People don't want to buy DLC.
3) Changing the system would mean that seemingly easy achievements would have unfairly high ratios.

Now, for me, the first and last arguments are fruitless. The TA system states that the ratio (or difficulty) of an achievement is measured by the number of people who have attained it. The system is not perfect as a tough and time consuming achievement like Seriously has a lower ratio than far easier achievements on something like Supreme Commander - but less people have played SupCom so it shows up as being harder, which is madness. Now DLC is available to everyone who jas played the game it is tied to, so if people wanted to get those achievements and make them fall in line and have lower ratios they can, conversely if they don't want to shell out and play the DLC then the ratios will remain high. The same as with any game - as if more people bought and played SupCom then the ratio would be lower. What is unfair about that?

So the only real argument is the second one - that they don't want to shell out. I agree that DLC is a rip off but can you really base a fair system on whether or not people have the finances to support it. That's like saying people who can afford to buy less games should be able to shoot up the leaderboards just so it is fair. If you can't afford DLC then that sucks - but the achievements are still a part of that game so why should you demand your score be improved just because you can't don't want to buy DLC.

What has also been suggested is a system that lets people display their stats with or without DLC (which they can sort of do already) but that really doesn't solve the issue, as all that will accomplish is splitting the community. As if people have different ways of working out the preferred scores then surely that would lead to seperate leaderboards, comparison tables and the like. A pointless exercise.

Now maybe I'm thinking too much into this and DLC is truly the creation of Satan to be shunned and ignored, but it would be nice to hear some thoughts on the matter.

In other, less rant worthy news, I've completed Batman: Arkham Asylum. The last Predator mission that I had to do fell before me in about ten minutes which was a nice way to end the game really. I then decided to get started on grinding out some wins for my Be a Pro career on NHL 09 - I need 150 in total, plus two trophies, to snag my Legend card. So I'll be working on that for a few weeks no doubt. I'm only at 10 wins so far, though I can zip through games in a couple of minutes so it shouldn't be too much effort.

The next game I have near to completion is L4D so that will be the next target, plus I plan on tackling the Resident Evil 5 DLC in the near future too as a second copy is on its way to me from Lovefilm as we speak. I'll be able to do pretty much all the solo Versus stuff and everything barring the Pro difficulties on the extra chapters. After that I'll be needing some assistance no doubt. Bring on the pain.

What happened to the RPG?

2010-03-16T08:49:00.002Z

Well here is my opinion of Final Fantasy and, frankly, what is wrong with it. There may well be some mild spoilers along the way so I apologise/warn you for that in advance.

First and foremost they have taken everything that an RPG should be and thrown it out of the window. I'm about eleven hours into the game now, not an amazing amount I know, and it is still amazingly linear. In fact it was only an hour or two ago that I finally stopped receiving gameplay tutorials, seriously who needs that amount of hand holding? An RPG, for me, should be about freedom of choice and exploration - so what were the developers thinking by just forcing you down a very straight path with no control over where you will end up?

Webb has told me that you cannot really break free of this formula until you are over twenty hours in - but how many people are going to put up with walking down a path, fighting some monsters, then walking some more for twenty hours? I want to explore, do some side quests, pop into a town and level grind to my hearts content. None of which is really possible.

The side quests are kept to a minimum and can only really be attempted in earnest AFTER you complete the game - SAY WHAT?! In fact you cannot level up properly until you complete the game either as beating the last boss unlocks the final level of upgrades available to you, meaning grinding up to badass proportions is kind of pointless until post game. Great. There are also no towns at all to stop off in with all of the shops stuck in the save points, ugh!

There is a lot wrong with this game in terms of how it plays and it just doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy game at all. The constant flashbacks mean the story is revealed in a slightly confusing piecemeal fashion too, though at least it is vaguely interesting and the characters are a lot of fun. I certainly plan on finishing this bad boy and hope things pick up, but I have to say that I think Square have dropped the ball on this one and created a kind of RPG lite to appeal to the masses rather than a wonderful world of exploration that I would have expected. Oh well.......

I'm probably going to focus most of my attention on Final Fantasy and then play the odd game alongside it to keep things ticking over. I still need to finish Batman, but after that I'll probably give Brothers in Arms a whirl and go back to grinding towards both NHL 09 and GoW Annex wins. If I can finish up both of those games prior to hitting 200k it would make me a very happy bunny!

Other games on my semi-complete hit list remain the same: L4D (need to bug Thrawn, Wreckon and anyone who'll listen), Operation Flashpoint (need to bug Webb) and Damnation (need to bug Cru: BUGGED VIA TWITTER, ha ha!). My goal is to hit between 175-180 retail completions before 200k and I'd also like to have polished off every arcade game I own barring about 3-4 that I either don't play or are impossibly hard (Texas Hold Em and Geometry Wars mainly).

FOX THREE!!!!

2010-03-15T13:05:00.003Z

And other air combat related comments.............

Considering I had left HAWX on the backburner for about 18 months (since I completed it for a review) it has taken me a remarkably short amount of time to finally finish it off. Aided and abetted by my online wingman (not in that way......) Creech, we managed to polish off the trickier online tasks. Namely killing two people that have been hit by an EMP strike, deflecting a ton of missiles and getting to the rank of General.

I also helped him get the annoying repair task out of the way and we went through some of the god awful counter support challenges too - though we couldn't for the life of us get the Cannon/Missile supression combo of perks. We would inevitably get one or the other to show up but just couldn't pull it together. Still it is the only online task he has left to do so we did a pretty good job.

Getting General meant I finally had the full 1k in the game and it was a nice end to the weekend. Plus, it means yet another title I can sell off to try and thin out my ever growing horde of games, ha ha!

In other news I also blitzed through the rest of Arkham Asylum on Hard difficulty too. I'd gone through the game a while ago in order to get the review done, but I never really allowed myself the luxury of finding all of the riddles etc (plus it was on my girlfriends account so why work hard for points?). Because I had left it so long I had totally forgotten how the combat system worked which led to an awful button bashing mess - followed shortly after by my gruesome death at the hands of some goons. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things and master the timings again, thankfully I soon picked it back up and had a great time doing so. I felt it at the time, and I still do, that the last boss was a tad too underwhelming and easy - but aside from that it was top notch entertainment all the way through.

I also dipped in and out of the combat challenges too, and strangely I found the Sewer Bat (Extreme) level took me longer than anything else. Perhaps because I tackled it without the armoured suit and triple batclaw. Wisely I left the last two challenges until I was fully kitted out and they were a hell of a lot easier than I thought they would be. I'd been dreading Shock and Awe (Extreme) but managed to three star it within an hour. Rumble in the Jungle (Extreme) was a bit more of a pain and in one agonising session I managed to complete it with 49,940 points - bloody 60 points shy of the rating I needed. ARRRRRGHHH!!! I did it a couple of tries later though so all was well. I'm currently only one Predator challenge away from the full 1k now - as they were remarkably easy in comparison to the combat ones.

At the moment I'm going to work on the new Moto GP game for an upcoming review, and also dip back into FFXIII too. I'll probably try to work on Gears some more as well as polishing off NHL 09 at some point. All in aid of that lovely 90% completion ratio, yay! I'm closing in on my target of 175 completed retail games too, so maybe I could up that figure to 180 before hitting 200k. Though that would only be possible if I only finished games I had already started I suppose.

Choices, choices...............