A pre-emptive Since U Been Gone

Sorry to announce that I'll once again be closing up shop for a while. This time though it's not on a down note, on Wednesday this week, after a long and extremely stressful process, I finally got to close on my house. So it's moving time. Again. For the last time though for quite a while I hope.

Sooo, I probably won't get to bore you with what I thought of the Fangoria Frightfest films. You're sad, I can tell. For those who have been following along, I did manage to break the 50k mark for my gamerscore, which you may already know if you're either a) on my friends list or b) scroll down far enough and look at my gamercard in the sidebar. It was Metro that put me over the top. That is a fun game, you should play it.

Anyway, just wanted to say goodbye to my blog buddies, and hope to see all of you again soon. Don't know for sure how long it will be before I break down and get internet again, but I know I will at some point. Until then!

Week 6

I got fed up with Gamefly, so I went out and bought Metro 2033. Glad I did though, this one's a keeper. Loving it so far, it's kinda like a cross between Fallout 3 and F.E.A.R. and that's high praise from yours truly. Sunday, I only put in about an hour, but did unlock two achievements, "First Blood" for completing the intro chapter, and "Nosalis Hunter" for killing 30 Nosalies.

Back to the subway tunnels of Metro on Monday. So far I've primarily been using the knife to kill enemies because there's an achievement for doing so. My thinking behind that is, might as well use the weakest weapon at the beginning of the game as the enemies here probably aren't as tough as they will be later on in the game. So anyway, I unlocked "Slice and Dice".

Wednesday I finally got Eat Lead: the Return of Matt Hazard in the mail. And after about 30 minutes of play, it's going right the hell back in the mail. This game is without a doubt one of the very worst games I have played in a looong time. Believe me when I tell you, I've played some terrible games too. Even the easy achievements aren't worth the headache of playing this piece of shit. 30 minutes did get me several though, and they were: "It's Hazard time", "Take 5", "Hands-on Approach", "Headache", "Disco is Dead", and the appropriately titled "Migraine".

In an attempt to permanently burn the memory of Mr. Hazard from what's left of my feeble brain, I threw Metro back in for a while. I set an explosive and blew up a tunnel to seal off advancing monsters for the "Demolitionist" achievement, then made my way to a different station and was promptly arrested by Reds. When I made my escape, I made it all the way to freedom without getting recaptured, unlocking "Fugitive" in the process.

I've turned my 6 year old into something of a Street Fighter junkie as of late, which should surprise absolutely no one that knows anything about me. We've been playing nightly pretty much all week. Friday night when we threw down, I finally got my 50th Super Combo Finish, and the "Super Combo Champion" achievement.

I don't know how many of you have ever attempted to explain, or train somebody on how to pull off a Hadouken in Street Fighter, but if a person has never played Street Fighter before, it's moderately difficult to get them to grasp the concept of the down-to-forward motion on the stick coupled with a simultaneous press of the punch button. Now imagine trying to explain it to a 6 year old. My patience was being tested severely at the beginning of the week, as there was much whining and frustrated 6 year old smack being talked. Somewhere around the middle of the week it clicked for him though, and he can actually hold his own a little bit. He tends to favor Blanka, of course because of his extremely cheap electricity attack, and because he looks like a monster. "Daddy, I'm over guns and shooting, I just want to fight now." Who says the fighting genre is dead? SHORYUKEN!!!

Curtain closed on week 6 just shy of my goal. I would've cleared it by a sizable margin if Matt Hazard hadn't been so god awful. It was so bad that I refused to even finish the first level, 50k be damned. Breakdown....

Beginning Gamerscore: 49,752
Finishing Gamerscore: 49,987

A gain of 235 points, which is not bad at all considering how much time I spent this week playing Infamous on my PS3. Also this week I canceled my Gamefly account, as I'm paying $15 dollars a month for them to skip all the good stuff and continue to send my bargain-bin shit from my list. Matt Hazard was the final nail in the coffin. I highly doubt I won't be able to find 13 points in something this week, likely Metro, so week 7 will officially end the countdown.

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....

Week 4

Saw arrived on Monday, so I spent a couple hours after dinner playing. When I say a "couple" I literally mean I may have played for 2 hours total, and my God at the achievements. This game literally throws them at you! Here's the list so far: "It's a Trap!", "Treasure!", "What Was That?", "Would You Like to Know More?", "Just Experimenting", "I'm in Charge", "It Was an Accident", "Pipe Dream", "Who is the Jigsaw Killer?", "Forced Entry", and "Darwin Would be Proud" which I got for dying for the first time, which I did on purpose just to see what would happen if I did a puzzle wrong...it was worth it hehe. I also got "You've Wasted Your Life" which unlocks when you sit idle for five minutes...I didn't even know this was an achievement, I put the controller down to send a text on my phone and looked up to see who was online when I heard the notification, imagine my surprise when I saw that it was an achievement!

So far I'm kinda digging Saw though. It's a movie game, but still it really isn't that bad. So far all I've found to use in combat is the pipe, and boy is it clunky, but I'm hoping that's because it's supposed to be a heavier weapon or something. The puzzles haven't been extremely difficult yet, but I'm sure they'll ramp up. I've described it so far to people as either "Silent Hill Lite" or "Silent Hill for Dummies". I'll let you decide which you like better.

Another day, another excuse to play Hockey. Tuesday night I took my Thrashers and put a beat down on the team I hate the most in all of hockey, the New York Rangers. What made the victory even sweeter was earning the "Dump It" achievement for dumping the puck into the offensive zone 10 times in one game.

After that, I jumped back into the sick and twister world of Jigsaw and his murder puzzles. I've come up with yet another comparison for this game, it's like Silent Hill and Manhunt are second cousins, but they think each other are purty, so they have a kid together, Saw is that kid. Anyway, solving more puzzles that my 6 year old could figure out earned me the "Damaged Goods" achievement. On the combat side of things, I managed to beat a person to death with a baseball bat for the "Homerun" achievement, beat a person to death with a mannequin arm for the "Give me Five!" achievement, and run away from a guy wearing a shotgun collar like mine long enough for his shotgun collar to go off, taking his head with it, for the "Kill or Be Killed" achievement.

More Saw on Wednesday, and more beating people to death with random items scattered about...come to think of it I have no idea where the hell this game is taking place. Some run down old building. Anyway, I beat people to death on Wednesday with the following: a table leg for the "You've Been Served" achievement, a mop handle for the "Cleaning Up" achievement, a crutch for the "You'll Need this Afterwards" achievement, a baseball bat with a bunch of nails sticking out of it for the "Sometimes it Sticks" achievement, and last but certainly not least, a table lamp for the "Light's Off" achievement. If it sounds ridiculous, it's because it is.

All that pummeling also got me the "Self-Defense" achievement for killing 10 minions. I also picked my 5th locked door and for my trouble was awarded with the "Locksmith" achievement.

And Saw once again Friday night. Solved the Pendulum Trap and got "Hit and Run", and 10 more minions fell before my awesome pipe-swinging flurry of violent rage, and "Duress" was my reward.

Decided to take a break from Saw on Saturday night, and revisit the world of Street Fighter. I'm a bit of a SF junkie, and from time to time I'll go back and pick it up and get hooked for a while. I'm absolutely dying to play Marvel vs. Capcom 3! Anyway, back to the subject at hand, while working on the Time Attack challenge I pulled off my 100th Super Combo and unlock the "Super Combo Master" achievement.

So week four is in the books, and it looks like 50k by Halloween is going to be a walk in the park. Here's your breakdown for this week:

Beginning Gamerscore: 48,547

Finishing Gamerscore: 48,972

Another 425 toward my goal! Next week I'll hopefully be finishing up Saw, and preparing to start (hopefully again) Metro 2033 or more likely Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.

Week 3

Sunday night only got in about a half hour of play time, decided to hop back into Mass Effect 2. I added Geth to my squad, and earned the "A House Divided" achievement.

Tuesday, Def Shepard and his team embarked on the suicide mission to take down the Collectors once and for all! We lost some good people, but gained some nice achievements, "Suicide Mission", "Against All Odds", "Long Service Medal", and "Mission Accomplished" to be exact. Also worth noting is that I managed to score with Chuck's bodyguard/on again off again girlfriend! Technically it was just a video game character modeled after her, and technically it was Def Shepard that scored with her, but I'M the one who got the "Paramour" achievement and 50g... And with that, I've completed Mass Effect 2, and honestly I don't think I've ever played a better RPG, including Knights of the Old Republic. Will undoubtedly be revisiting this one before ME3 drops because I wasn't thrilled with the death of my favorite character and I'd like to rectify that mistake, the other two I lost I'm not concerned with in the least. Garrus WILL NOT DIE, best believe that.

Friday night I took advantage of Gamestop's 3 day buy 2 get 1 free sale on used games, and picked up amongst other things, NHL 10 for myself. I normally buy a hockey game every year, and the past couple years I went with the PS3 versions, but I've found that I like the 360 controller better on sports games, particularly hockey. So I laced up my skates and hit the ice for a couple hours, got "Self Sacrifice" for scoring a goal with an injured player, which is a cool little new feature where a player is hurt and the game gives you an injury report and the option to bench him or keep him in play. In my particular case, Mike Richards broke his nose, but I decided that the real Mike Richards would keep playing despite the injury, and as such virtual Mike Richards was left in the game, and went on to score a goal! I also grabbed "Look No Goalie" for scoring a goal after pulling my netminder, "Board Play" for pinning a player from the opposing team against the boards and taking the puck away from him, "Don't Let Up" for scoring 4 unanswered goals against the CPU, and "Eager to Learn" for completing the tutorial at the beginning of the game.

Decided to hit the ice again Saturday morning, only online this time as a lot of the achievements require you to do so in NHL 10. As expected, I was beaten, humiliatingly so, as not only was my opponent superior in skill level, but I had to alter my play to work at unlocking a couple of achievements. Anyway, I lost, but was successful in earning "No Offsides" and "No Icing" which are both self explanatory. I also played a match using the NHL '94 control settings, and for that I got the "New Beginnings" achievement.

Week 3 complete! I didn't play as much, but when I did, I made it count heh. I have a feeling that I'm going to be stuck on NHL for a while, and there aren't many more achievements I see in my future on that one, as most of the rest are for online play, or the "Be a Pro" mode which I never bother with. Gotta love the hockey though, and I get very addicted to these games every year. The week 3 breakdown looks like this:

Beginning Gamerscore: 48,007

Finishing Gamerscore: 48,547

Only played on 4 of the 7 days, but added 540 points! As mentioned above, more hockey this week and I should be getting Saw from Gamefly, so maybe it will make up for the lack of NHL achievements.

Week 2

Week two started off right as the brand new XBLA Afterburner game went on sale for half price Monday morning. Love me some Afterburner, so I grabbed it first thing. This is the kind of game that reminds me why I love my Dreamcast so much. My first play got me the "Rank In", "Stealth Bomber", "Emergency Order", "Climax Mode", and "ROLL" achievements.

Back to Mass Effect 2 on Wednesday morning, and it's looking like I'm getting close to finishing my first and likely only playthrough. Def Shepard recruited the final member of his team tasked with taking down the Collectors by adding Tali to the roster and in the process earned me the "The Quarian" achievement. A side mission at the request of the Justicar had me being used as bait in an elaborate scheme to bring her daughter out of hiding so we could kill her, and get me the "Doppleganger" achievement. And finally, investigating a derelict alien vessel we ran into yet another trap, narrowly escaped with our lives (and ship) intact, and got the "Ghost Ship" achievement.

Thursday I took the highway to the danger zone and fired up Afterburner Climax again. I'm sorry but I absolutely love this game, and I can't believe it was only 400 points. Hopped in the cockpit of the F-14D and blasted my way to the end of arcade mode for the "Super Tomcat" achievement, and managed to pick up "Across Enemy Lines" along the way. Thanks to my superior flight skills, and insatiable need for speed, I also got "Triple A" for my final mission time's AAA ranking.

Thursday night, Def Shepard was attacked by Mass Effect's own brand of zombies! I knocked back and then shot 20 Husks and for that, I was labeled a "Brawler".

Friday morning Goose talked to me, and it was time for more Afterburner. I finished campaign mode with the other two fighters, earning the "Super Hornet" and "Strike Eagle" achievements. I've also unlocked most of the EX options which adjust the gameplay settings allowing for things like speed boosts and a larger reticle for missile lock, and thanks to that I also earned the "50 Combo" achievement. On my last playthrough with the F-15, I also finally found my way to the final bonus mission, and after taking down all the nukes got the "A" ending and the achievement for finishing it, "All Clear". And with that, I have all the achievements in Afterburner Climax! There are still a few EX options I've got to unlock, and this game is just too much fun to put down anytime soon, but alas no more achievements to be earned.

After a trip to the mailbox I discovered that the Gamefly gods had seen fit to bestow Ninja Blade upon me. I always jump at a chance to put my elite ninja skills to the test (and my quick time button pressing skills as it turns out) and Friday evening I did just that. I fought a giant flaming mutant creature, learned to wall jump, and killed a gigantic mutant spider amongst other ninja-like shenanigans, and without going into too much more boring detail, I earned the "It slices, it dices!", "Enter the Way of the Ninja", "Yes, I am that Good", "Not too Shabby", "Let off Some Steam", "I'm Rubber and You're Glue", "Nothing Left but the Dying", "Chewy on the Inside", "Gotta Get them All", "How Ya Like me Now?", and "Only a Ninja can Stop a Ninja" achievements, and that was only the first mission! See I told you, my ninja skills are ELITE son.

Saturday morning I jumped back into Ninja Blade before heading out for the day. I swear this game is nothing but quick time button press sequences, platforming, and boss battle after boss battle, and the boss battles also require you to platform and quick time button mash. It's insane, and can be quite frustrating being that the control is a little iffy at times. Not sure if I'll finish it or not, but this morning I did manage to finish mission two, and picked up "Burn, Baby, Burn!", "Sharp Dressed Man", and "Two-Wheel Daredevil". Seriously mission two's finale had to be seen to be believed, hah.

Saturday night I finally got a chance to play in my 6th mutation in Left 4 Dead 2, which was actually my 8th, but the achievement didn't pop until last night. So far my favorite mutation has been the Chainsaw Massacre one, which has come around twice now, and both times I played it, and neither time did it count towards the achievement for me for some reason. Oh well, Saturday night I finally became a "Mutant Overlord" and unlocked the Gnome avatar award!

Week two seems like it was much more productive toward that illustrious 50k benchmark. Afterburner was definitely my favorite game this week, and Ninja Blade is more than likely going back to Gamefly unfinished. Here's the breakdown:

Beginning Gamerscore: 47,532

Finishing Gamerscore: 48,007

475 points gained this week! Up next on the Gamefly queue is either Metro 2033 (which I REALLY hope is shipped), Saw, or Eat Lead the Return of Matt Hazard.

Week 1

Started the week off on Sunday with a couple of old XBLA achievements. I played the trial of the new Duke Nukem game, and it was terrible, but it made me want to finish up Duke 3D, managed to get "Come Get Some" for finishing the Shrapnel City chapter. Moved on from there to Battlefield 1943, and finally 100% on this one now. The only achievement I needed was "Tour of Duty II" for playing 100 matches, and I knew I had to be pretty close as much as I've played this one. Turned out I was only 3 matches shy, so after about 45 mins, the achievement popped.

I spent the evening with Def Shepard and the crew of the Normandy 2.0 in Mass Effect 2. A trip to the Krogan homeworld would gain me the loyalty of the Professor and "The Cure" achievement, as well as the loyalty of the Krogan and "The Battlemaster" achievement. Along they way a Thresher Maw also lost it's life, and the "Big Game Hunter" achievement was mine.

Monday I took a trip to the museum in Liberty City and came away with the "Impossible Trinity" achievement. I also came away with an infuriating reminder as to why I only pick this game up and play it every couple of months for a day or two, and FUCK the "No way on the Subway" mission btw. I also slang a little yayo for my home Little Jacob, and for my troubles I was rewarded with the "Courier Service" achievement.

On Wednesday, I spent the first part of my morning battling the dastardly villains of Lego Gotham City. I've already played through and finished Lego Batman on my PS3, but Jacob has the 360 version, and I need some achievements, soooooo.... The kid and I teamed up and took down Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, and the Riddler, and along the way I picked up the "Hero", "Sidekick", "Master Builder" and "Unbreakable" achievements.

Wednesday evening rolled around, and I headed back out into the stars for some more Mass Effect 2. In a desperate attempt to gain the loyalty of the entire crew of the Normandy, I stopped an assassination, destroyed a facility that did biotic testing on children, and helped Garrus whack the motherfucker that double crossed him. In the process, I earned myself the "Cat's in the Cradle", "Catharsis", and "Fade Away" achievements respectively.

Friday night, time to save the galaxy and such again, Mass Effect 2 was the game of choice. Not much to report, scanning random planets got me the "Agent" achievement.

Saturday night closed out the first week, with Mass Effect 2 once again as the game of choice. I like that game, it's a really, really good one. Ahem, anyway, Def Shepard continued to build his team to go up against the Collectors by recruiting the Justicar and in the process earned me the "The Justicar" achievement.

So week one in the books, and I managed to gain quite a few achievements looking back. I was also playing Darksiders on PS3 this week, which explains my absence a couple days. I like that game too, it's ended up being much better than I thought it would be, and the fact that I'm basically watching moving Joe Madureira drawings is too cool. Here's the breakdown:

Beginning Gamerscore: 47,247

Finishing Gamerscore: 47,532

That's a gain of 285 points this week for those of you keeping score at home (which let's be honest, is all of you). Not a bad start, but I'm gonna have to step it up and spend a little less time on the PS3 if I'm going to hit 50k by the end of October.

Countdown to 50k!

This time last year, I made a commitment to push my Xbox Live gamerscore past 40k by the end of the year. I was somewhere around 37k when I set the goal. If I were still strictly a 360 gamer, this wouldn't have even been a challenge, but being that I split my gaming pretty much 50/50 between the 360 and PS3 I thought it might be a little tougher to achieve.

It ended up being not much trouble. I think I ended the year around 43k or in that ballpark. So here we are at the halfway mark of 2010, and I'm sitting at 47,247...I'm sure you can see where this is headed. That's right folks, I'm gonna shoot for 50k. Only this time I'm not going to be giving myself such a generous time cushion, I want 50k by Halloween. Still probably generous, but it's better than 6 months right?

I'm not entirely sure what games I'll be playing for the remainder of this year. Mass Effect 2 is currently taking up almost all of my 360 gaming time, Metro 2033 will likely be next and Lost Planet 2 at some point after that. Most of the bigger titles I'll be playing on PS3, so we'll see how it goes. In any event I'll be updating here as I go along, so everybody start placing bets on whether or not I fail at yet another goal I've set for myself!