Week 5

Sunday I decided that if I was going to finish this damn Saw game that it needed to be quick, because it was really beginning to try my patience. So, I began a marathon session on Sunday afternoon, and without boring you with a lot of detail, I unlocked "Surgeon", "Say Hello to my Little Friend", "Absent Parent", "Curb Stomp", "I Can Stop Anytime", "Wait for the Boom", "Aphasia", "Professional", and "Splitting Headache"...most of which were for getting more kills with more various objects and weapons. Yippee.

Sunday night, I switched over to Modern Warfare 2 for some Spec Ops with my homie Diptastic. Love the Spec Ops missions, although I haven't played all of them yet because there's hardly ever anybody on my friends list playing when I'm online. Anyway, finally made it to 30 stars, and got the "Specialist" achievement as a reward for all my hard work!

After work on Monday I was determined to be done with Saw one way or the other, so another marathon was in order. More bullshit timed traps to work my way through, more horrendous melee combat, and more random achievements! Here's the list: "Eager Student", "Hatchet Job", "Penetrated", "Grave Digger", "Choked Up", "Born Victim", and "Violence Begets Violence".

And finally, after all that, all the cheap deaths, shotgun tripwires, poison gas filled rooms, shotgun collars, and everything else this game tossed my way, I got to the ending, and made my final choice between the Truth and Freedom doors. I chose Truth first, and it ended up being the "real" ending, which ended up being pretty cool, it was the ending that we would've seen had this been a movie instead of a game, and that door got me the "Cost of the Truth" achievement. After that I reloaded my game back to the choice, and picked the Freedom door, which was the crappy ending, but I got "Never Truly Free" for going that route.

Saw is FINISHED. Overall for a movie game, it wasn't really all that bad. If you're a fan of the movies, I'd definitely rent it. Not worth a buy though. Just be ready for lots of timed puzzles, very clunky combat, and LOTS of cheap deaths.

Tuesday I purchased the full version of Limbo after falling in love with the demo over the weekend. I can honestly see "Arcade Game of the Year" for this one, as well as adjectives such as genius, brilliant, haunting, creepy, and the ever-popular "awesome". This one is light on the achievements though, and the ones that are available for unlock are hidden pretty well. I did manage to find the easiest of the bunch though, by immediately going in the wrong direction at the very beginning of the game..."Wrong Way" unlocked!

More Limbo after work on Wednesday, and one more achievement, one of the well hidden ones too, "Alone if the Dark" unlocked. I also saw another of the hidden eggs, though not exactly hidden this time, the route to said egg though....WELL hidden. Will backtrack once I've finished the game for the first time.

Bones by nimble, Bones be lame....Bones be addicted to the Limbo game! On Thursday, my first playthrough of Limbo came to an end. This game is absolutely wonderful. The ending was a bit of a wtf, and of course subject to player interpretation, and of course leaves things wide open for (hopefully) a sequel. For completing the game, I unlocked "Where Credit is Due" and also a Limbo creature for my Xbox avatar :)

Started going back through chapters to find eggs, with the help of a video walkthrough on Youtube, and managed to get all of them. "Under Ground", "Altitude is Attitude", "It's Stuck", "Urban Exploration", "Climbing the Cog", "Backtracking", "Guided by Sparks", and "Going Up" all unlocked. That only leaves one more achievement for Limbo, but it requires a playthrough of the entire game in one sitting, losing only 5 or less lives. Yeah, gonna take some more practice on some of these puzzles before I attempt that one.

That's a wrap on week 5! Looking like week 6 will close out the Countdown....breakdown:

Beginning Gamerscore: 48,972

Finishing Gamerscore: 49,752

An unprecedented gain of 780 points! With only 248 points to go, I like my chances of knocking this out next week. I got the bone again on Metro from Gamefly, so Matt Hazard will likely be the game that puts me over the top. Now if I can only stop playing Infamous long enough to play the Xbox....