Gaming Resolution 2011 - Failure!

I definitely made some impressive strides, but ultimately I failed at 2 out of 3 of my 2011 video game-related resolutions.

My biggest, most ambitious goal was to bring my overall gamerscore to a total of 35-percent of the available total. When I began my little quest at the end of last year, my percentage was 23.1%. It now stands at 32.8%. Just shy of a ten-percent overall increase, but sadly, not quite enough.

I wonder how much that total was offset by post-launch dlc increases? Would I have made my goal if games weren't so gung-ho about cashing in with expansion packs? Probably not... although I would be closer, and thus perhaps I would have tried harder because I was so darn close. I'll never know.

My overall point total was quite impressive, however. I started at 70, 560 and ended 2011 with 118,401. That's an increase of nearly 48k! In one year I gained 2/3 as many gamerpoints as I did for the first nearly-five years I had an Xbox 360 (I got my first console Feb 2006). I would have easily made my percentage goal had all those points come from games I had already started, but the majority came from new games. But my enthusiasm for new games did help me easily achieve my next goal.

I set out to "beat" a total of 150 Xbox 360 games, including the 91 I had beaten up to that point. I added 87 to that list (88 if you could Bejeweled Blitz, which doesn't have a real "beaten" point... though when I make it to level 50, I'll call it done). That's right, in one year I nearly made as much progress in finishing games as I have in all those years prior. 56 of those games were new (to me... 8 of them were last year's games I finally got around to starting), which explains most of my failure to reach goal #1.

Perhaps more impressive to me is that I only failed to finish 11 games that I started this year. Those games are: Alice: Madness Returns (got distracted), Catherine (s'hard), Dark Souls (made bad choices early on, probably need to restart), Dungeon Siege 3 (long game, rented it twice and still haven't finished it!), Forza 4 (so dull), From Dust (annoyed with villagers), Halo CE Anniversary (my co-op partner got sucked into Skyrim... as did I), Lord of the Rings War in the North (kinda dull, but still slogging through it), Marvel vs Capcom 3 (got distracted), Two Worlds 2 (disappointed in changes from first game), and You Don't Know Jack (I like it so much, I'm trying to stretch it out as long as possible). I'm sure I'll finish these games some time. But I actually finished more games than I began this year. That's quite an accomplishment for me.

So right now I have beaten 178 out of 412 played Xbox 360 games. That's definitely a better completion percentage than any other console I've owned. Except maybe the N64.

Before I forget, here's the breakdown of games I completed in December:

Skylanders Spyro's Adventure: 730 out of 1000 gamerpoints. I probably would have gone for the full 1000 points, but one of them glitched out so I didn't bother. Also, I think Activision dropped the ball with the release of the toy figures. I played slowly and collected the first & second wave of toys, but there's no reason to obsess over the rest since I finished the game and there's no added achievement points.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare: 400 out of 1000 gamerscore.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: 365 of 1000 achivement points.

These were short single player campaigns, I don't know why I didn't finish them when I initially played them. But now I have. And I don't think that fact's changed my life at all.

Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End: 850 of 1000. This game is pretty much middle-of-the-road as far as movie tie-ins go. Not bad, just quite repetitive. I thought some of the voice work were pretty good imitations of the movie actors.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: 940 out of 1000 gamerscore. Over 150 hours played, and I'll have to start a new game because I screwed up one of the achievements. But not any time soon. Maybe when the inevitable $30 expansion pack gets released.

Lost Planet Extreme Condition: 275 out of 1000 gamerpoints. Just as many annoyingly user-unfriendly mechanics in this game as were in the sequel, but I liked that game better because it had co-op and customization options. This one just had a bunch of cutscenes that were jaw-droppingly pointless.

Conan: 460 of 1000. This was a mostly fun button masher. It had some awesomely brutal combos, but the experience was marred by frustrating auto-aim and annoying boss battles. But since it featured the line "Take me and crush me with your love", all is forgiven.

Battlefield 3: 340 out of 1120 achievement points, for 30%. This is the most disappointing game of the year for me. They made the single player a stale (though incredibly good-looking) Call of Duty clone, with some pointless quicktime events thrown in. I really liked Battlefield 2 because it wasn't about a character, it was about a squad. At any time, you could switch to another squadmate on the field. It was a lot more unique than what this new game is. But nobody cares about the single player for this game, do they? So why'd they even bother?

So in this month I finished more old games than newly started ones. The first time I've done that since January. And even the new games were started in previous months, which means I didn't start a single new game in December! I made a real effort to try to reach my 35% goal. I didn't make it mostly because of Skyrim. I managed to get 3,995 points last month, a bit shy of the 12,000 or so that I needed.

As for part three of my gaming resolutions... writing reviews for every game I finished. I made strides towards this mid-year... writing very brief 3-line reviews of each game I had completed so far. These were to be used when I restarted my video game webcomic. But many complications have delayed that venture. I could have jotted out a bunch more quick reviews to make that resolution complete, but I felt it would be disingenuous. Once I get the comic on its feet, I will then figure out precisely what I need my reviews to be.

So that's it. I fell just short of my gaming goals for 2011. Looking back, I made some impressive strides. But perhaps I put too much pressure on my ability to change.

So what's next? In 2012, I plan to continue striving to increase my gamerscore percentage. Maybe I can get it up to 40% this year? I am also going to try to finish at least as many old games as new games. And I also want to get my video game webcomic going again. But as far as making these plans into official resolutions? Nah. A casual goal should suit me just fine. Aaaand, it probably won't need to be regularly documented. I'll probably check my progress a time or two during the year, and just keep myself focused. How much I'll blog about depends upon if I can work it into my webcomic site. It's all up in the air at the moment. But it's a New Year. Anything can happen.

Gaming Resolution Update - November

November was not a big month for my gamerscore, which is rather contrary to the number of awesome games that came out. It's all because of Skyrim.

But not a case of burnout, as was the case with L.A. Noire earlier this year. I just want to keep playing and playing and playing Skyrim, despite how slowly the gamerpoints are doled out. Despite investing over 90 hours into the game (the most of any game this year), I have yet to finish the main storyline, or any of the major sidequests. This is not surprising to me, as I never finished the main storyline of Oblivion either, despite putting in over 140 hours before losing my save. But I'm determined to finish the game, and perhaps even gather the full 1000 achievement points, by year's end. A complete Xbox crash may be the only thing to stop me... although Bethesda has been trying their hardest, by releasing a rather broken patch.

I only completed five games this month... only one of those after the release of Skyrim on the 11th. All were brand new games released this month. Did I even play anything older? Not that I recall.

Completed game summary:

Sonic Generations: 525 out of 1000 gamerpoints. I really enjoyed this game, for the most part. Sure, I stuck with 2D Sonic for as much as I was allowed, but even the 3D stages weren't much of a burden. Although, some seemed to go on and on for far too long. A very solid game, and an enjoyable few hours.

NCIS The Game: Full 1000 achievement points. Ugh, why do they make games like this? I'm a big fan of the show, and yet I could hardly stand this dull slog of a game. They couldn't even be bothered to make analog walking controls. All point & click. Very poor showing. And most of the character models didn't resemble the actual actors. And only 2 of the actors from the TV show voiced their characters... and one was only a guest star! A dreadfully dull experience, not even worth the gamerscore.

Goldeneye 007 Reloaded: 285 out of 1000 gamerscore. An enjoyable, yet unnecessary remake of the N64 classic. My major gripe with it is that none of the new actors/character models are very distinct. Remember that big green hat the Russian general wore in the original? Not here. They even cut out the annoying Boris "I am invincible" guy. And they weren't very generous with the achievement points. Most of the ones I did get were for doing ALL the objectives on each level... if not for those, I would only have gotten 55 points! Most achievements are tied into multiplayer, and it's a poor time of year for a list like that.

Modern Warfare 3: 335 of 1000. Due to my normal lack of completing Call of Duty games, and the fact that there was no achievement for completing the game on Normal, I played through the storyline on Casual difficulty. And I enjoyed it quite a bit. Was it because I didn't die so much and have to repeat some many sections? Or was it a more just paced much better than previous games? Probably a bit of both. Didn't play much of the multiplayer at all, because Skyrim arrived mere hours after I finished the single player campaign.

Lego Harry Potter Years 5 - 7: 500 out of 1000 gamerscore. If not for the screwy water attack magic, this would definitely be my favorite Lego game. I've long since been burned out on the normal Lego games where endless enemies respawn just to annoy you during your stud collecting. The Lego Harry Potter games are different... most levels are nearly devoid of fighting. Because I like the Harry Potter franchise so much, I enjoyed just being in the world and was charmed by the Lego interpretation. This was the only game that could drag me away from Skyrim for a while. I'll definitely 100-percent this game, even though it looks like I have to replay half of it in a new save to get the "Visit Hogwarts in Year 7" achievement (I didn't think I had to make a special trip, knowing how the story end... but apparently the game thinks of Year 7 part 2 as Year 8.).

That's all I got done this month, aside from the aforementioned Skyrim marathoning. I've gathered 330 gamerpoints from that game so far. All in all, I added on 3325 gamerscore, bringing my total to 114,436.

My overall percentage still falls just shy of 32%. Only one month to go. The pressure is on! Luckily, there doesn't appear to be any new games coming out in December to throw me off, although I still have Saints Row The Third & Assassin's Creed Revelations to begin (I also am extremely eager to get a hold of Rayman Origins as well as the new Scene It game on XBLA.)

Can I get another 12,000 or so points in one month to seal the deal? Uh... now that I type that, I realize I shouldn't be wasting time typing!

Gaming Resolution Update - October

I earned 4,596 achievement points during October. I finished the month with an awesome gamerscore of 111,111. I hit 111,105 through natural gameplay, and knew I had to work my way to exactly six ones. This is not the first time I went to Summer Athletics specifically for a single-point achievement. I had considered not playing Xbox at all for eleven more days so I could have had a gamerscore of 111,111 on 11/11/11... but I do not possess the willpower to stay away that long.

I finished 8 games this month. 5 were brand new, 1 was a game I rented earlier in the year and got again to finish, and 2 were from last year... both had sequels that were released this month.

Percentage-wise, I am still at 31% overall completion. That's probably because there were five games I started this month that I hardly have any progress in. I was supposed to get better at not doing that, right? That was the whole point of this resolution. Hmm.

Finished Games Summary:

Spider-Man Edge of Time: 555 of 1000 gamerpoints. I don't really understand why this game was put out after last year's much superior entry in the franchise. It cut all the content by half, including the fun. Big disappointment.

Dead Rising 2: 260 out of 1000 achievement points. I don't know why I didn't finish this last year, personal problems, I suppose. I managed to dig it out and finished it rather quickly in anticipation of the new semi-sequel. Didn't do so well on the achievements, though. Most of them require doing "all" of various things. I'm more of a middle of the road kind of guy. I'll try some of everything, but I get sidetracked and forget to keep looking for more.

Rage: 580 of 1000. Looks great, plays great... it just stops. This game seems to just exist to prep the sequel or a bunch of DLC. How can such a short game need so many discs?

Hunted The Demon Forge: 455 out of 1000 achievement points. This could have been really great with another 6 months of polish, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I hope they're able to make a sequel, or even a prequel, to get into the characters relationship and backstory.

Dead Rising 2 Off The Record: 540 out of 1000 gamerpoints. Having just finished the previous game really help me breeze through this "re-imagining". And the sandbox mode is great for just slaughtering tons of zombies... though the respawning bosses are a bit annoying.

Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions: 550 of 1000 achievement points. Another game that came at a bad time for me last year. It's much longer, and much better than this year's game so I'm gald I had this around to wash the bad taste of the new game away.

Disney Universe: Full 1000 gamerscore! This was a decent kiddie brawler, though it's a disappointing that it's not Kingdom Hearts. Actual Disney characters don't appear, you just dress like them (sometimes only vaguely similar). I had to grind a bit to get the full 1000 points, but it wasn't too bad.

Batman Arkham City: 500 out of 1250 achievement points, 40%. This is a great game, it's just weird that it didn't compel me to keep playing it like the first one did. I didn't stop playing the original until I hit 100% in the story mode. But this time, whenever I died I'd go ahead and take a break or play something else. There is still a lot of Riddler tasks and sidequests to finish, yet I haven't picked it back up since the day I finished it. Odd.

So, a decent month... I didn't lose ground, anyway. November pretty much marks the end of this year's new releases. If I can make good progress on all new games I play this month, then December will be the time to polish off tons of old games and get my percentage to where it needs to be. The goal is in sight!

Gaming Resolution Update: September

A new standard has been set in my quest for many achievements. My Xbox gamerscore now sits at 106,515; a 6,360 point increase. That's an average of over 200 points a day.

I finished 13 games during the month of September. That's a lot, but they were all new games so it didn't cut down on my backlog at all. My overall average gamerscore rests around 31%. Will I make it to 35% by year's end? I'll probably need to finish more older games to do so. But that's what December is for, right?

Finished Games Summary:

Deus Ex Human Revolution: 520 out of 1000 achievement points. This game was what Alpha Protocol should have been. The two games were quite similar, except AP was a steaming mess, and Deus Ex was great fun. Hopefully they won't wait a decade to make another one.

Madden 12: 415 of 1000 gamerscore. I miss NFL 2k5. Madden has never gotten the concept that people might enjoy the presentation as much as the actual football game. I like things like decorating my crib, creating bizarre uniforms, and watching cheesy sideline interviews. But Madden is too serious for all that, ain't it?

Bodycount: 670 of a possible 1000 gamerpoints. I don't know why this game was made. There seems to be no hook to it. Just endless genericness continuously flying at you on a cheap pulley system. It did have a cool explosive shotgun. And absolutely no one playing the multiplayer, even on the release weekend.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine: 345 of 1000. Unfortunately, this game doesn't seem made to appeal to people unfamiliar with the franchise. It was okay, and I did like the mix of ranged & melee gameplay. But it needed more choice given to the player, such as upgradeable weapons. And why was there no block or shield? A big badass that just dodge rolls and hides behind stuff?

Dead Island: 780 out of 1000 gamerscore. This is my type of game! I had an amazingly fun time, despite dying constantly in parts. I even played online co-op almost exclusively, with random strangers even... something I don't usually like to do. This is good zombie killing fun, and you're only minimally punished when you die. I would recommend this game to everyone who enjoys bloody violence.

Driver San Francisco: 480 of 1000. Another awesome game. For owning a lot of driving games, I think this is only third one I've ever actually finished. Like Dead Island, I kept wanting to play this game at every opportunity. Why do they release great games on the same day?

Gears of War 3: 410 out of 1000 gamerpoints. I was never big into the franchise, but I can't argue that this is a solid game. I do wish they would have let you choose which characters to bring along on each mission, ala Mass Effect.

Burnout Crash: 55 out of 200 gamerscore, only 27 percent. If the goal of this downloadable release was to make me wish they'd release a new true Burnout game with a Crash Mode, then it worked. Otherwise, is was addictive and enjoyable for a little while. And then I moved on.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two: 420 out of 1000 achievement points. I don't know if they didn't have time to include the random sidequests and crappy stealth missions from Part One, but it's a better game because if it.

X-Men Destiny: 725 of 1000 gamerpoints. Short and lame. The game did itself a disservice by clinging to the X-Men license like a life jacket. If they didn't have a name to sell this game, they might have tried to put some effort into squeezing some quality in someplace.

The Gunstringer: 660 out of 1000. The motion controls are decent, though perhaps they should have used voice commands, since I was yelling "Jump, you idiot!" every time it failed to register the proper motion. There's some funny stuff in there, though. I almost fell over when a member of the studio audience got frightened out of his chair and ran away.

Brink: 560 out of 1250 points, 44%. This is a mess of a game, really. It has a neat parkour movement system, but the level design restricts movements. It is a squad-based objective game, but the AI has out-of-whack priorities. There's something neat in there, but it really needs to be polished.

Vanquish: 410 out of 1000 gamerpoints. This is a fun, stylish shooter with crazy action. Not quite as over-the-top as Platinum Studio's previous game, Bayonetta, but close. They should have had the main characters go "Weeeeeeeeeeeee!" whenever you used the power slide.

I managed to garner just over 51% of the achievement points from these games. A decent standard.

And with these 13 completed games, I have officially surpassed my goal of completed games for this year. I won't stop increasing the count, of course, but it's nice to have actually done finished at least part of what I've started.

I also wrote short reviews of all the games I finished this year. That was unexpected of me, wasn't it? Sure, they're tiny little two-line mini-reviews, but it counts towards the third part of my resolution.

Now all that's left is to keep up the pace for the rest of the year. Yay for games!

Gaming Update - August

My Xbox gamerscore now stands at 100,155. Six digits!

According to my Achievement Progress bar on my Xbox, that's out of a total of a possible 332,290. 30 percent! Making it to my goal of 35% by year's end may be difficult with all the upcoming new releases. I started 6 new games this month, and only managed to finish two of them. Catherine is hard!

I increased my score by 3,570 during the month of August, finishing 4 games.

Finished Game Breakdown:

Lego Star Wars III The Clone Wars: 400 of 1000 gamerscore. Lego games are still mostly the same. They haven't really fixed the problems from previous games... the vehicles are absolutely atrocious. But they add new stuff, but they aren't fleshed out enough to improve the experience.

Transformers The Game: 1000 out of 1000 gamerpoints. This game would have been a lot better if it had just ended one story level shorter than it was. There were annoying parts to the game, such as the whole uber-slow lifting function, that didn't bog down the game too much until the final levels where they all became overused. Oh and having to track down 100 hidden items in each level wouldn't have been as annoying if you didn't have to do it in the same map three times.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 870 of 1000 achievement points. After finishing Deathly Hallows Pt 1, I realized I hadn't finished this game. Now I have. And I am 3 achievements away from 100-percenting it. More hidden-item hunting, yay.

Call of Juarez The Cartel: 630 out of 1000 gamerscore. This is just one of those middle-tier shooters that really fails to make much of an impression. It wasn't really very good, and it wasn't broken. It was just kinda there, cussing at you.

So, just kind of an average month. Not overly impressive, despite the 100k milestone. Four finished games down, only 6 to go. Will I break that mark in September? Could happen!

Gaming Resolution Update - July

Now that was a banner month.

On my last update, I reported that I acquired 5400 gamerpoints and completed 7 games in a two-month period. I beat both those marks during the month of July.

My gamerscore now stands at 96,585... a phenomenal 6,020 increase in one month. And I completed 12 games, including my nemesis, L.A. Noire.

A third of the completed games were ones I had begun before this year. A third of the games were movie-tie-in games. But only a quarter of the games were XBLA games. Shucks. Almost had it all add up.

I achieved 100% gamerscore on two games this month, both of which are listed as finished games, although technically I got the last 2 achievements for A World Of Keflings about 15 minutes after midnight, into August. But I'm going ahead and counting it all as July because I'm still awake.

Oh, and while I'm on full disclosure, I cheated a little bit this month by deleting all the Zero-Point games from my profile. There were around a dozen of them. They range from played for a couple hours and still haven't unlocked anything yet (Onechanbara, Record of Agarest War) to barely played and haven't felt like going back to it (Culdcept Saga, NFL Tour). Even with over 10,000 points being taken out of the average, my overall completion percentage only moved about 1%.

Finished Games Breakdown:

L.A. Noire: 750 out of 1400 gamerpoints, for 53% completion. Getting 3/4 of the achievements while being so frustrated by tedium is quite an accomplishment. I was being more stubborn than determined, though. One of the achievements I did not get was for collecting all the gold film reels... because I never saw a single one. Usually designers throw a few collectibles in plain view so you at least know what to look for, but I guess not. I'm sure I'll return to more achievements when the DLC goes on sale. And I'll probably complain about the game then, too.

Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon: 180 of 1000 gamerscore. Yeah, that's a really low score. Damn near Homefront low. The achievements are all grinding. I beat the game on normal. I'll have to play through again on Hard and Inferno and will probably have at least half the achievements at that point. Oddly there is no Easy difficulty.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One: 620 out of 1000. Ugh, no stacking achievements means if I want to 100% this game I have to play through it three times. I beat it on hard, so it's not very challenging. It's just unnecessarily long. And lame. I don't remember a part in the book or movie where Harry keeps going off on his own to save random wizards, and yet that accounts for about a third of the game.

50 Cent Blood On The Sand: 560 out of 1000. This was a fun game. A just crazy blowin'-stuff-up game is always welcome. I definitely want to play the co-op online sometime soon.

Army of Two: 340 of 1250 gamerscore, for only 27%. Some extremely dumb co-op A-I nearly ruined this game. And with EA shutting down the online servers for this game, I may never find out if it's actually fun to play with real people.

Shadow Complex: 130 out of 200, 65% completion. How have we not gotten a sequel to this game yet? It is a run-and-gun game that feels like what a modern Contra should be, with some craft secrets and awesome melee moves. Other some inconsistencies with the depth-aiming, this is a totally wonderful game.

Captain America Super Soldier: 1000 of 1000! This may be the most fun movie-tie-in game I've ever played. The only other real contenders would be Toy Story 3 (a by-the-numbers story mode is offset by the more-open Toybox mode) and X-Men Origins Wolverine (which did seem a bit too long for amount of variety in gameplay). Captain America is pretty much a straight forward knock off of Batman Arkham Asylum, only he is a faster character so it plays more actiony and you don't have to bother with all that stealthy stuff. Good voice work, too. The story would have been better if they hadn't had to avoid the movie plot (Red Skull shows up, attacks briefly, then walks away to return to the movie).

Full House Poker: 275 out of 300 gamerscore, which is about 91%. I maxed out at level 50 the same day I beat the All-Pro Tournament, so I didn't have to decide which one of those would be considered beating the game. I only have one more achievement to get, I just need to remember to play on a tuesday or saturday to get in on the online Texas Heat game.

Green Lantern Rise of the Manhunters: 900 of 1000 gamerpoints. I can't believe they charge a full $60 for this cheap God-of-War knock off when most Movie-Tie-Ins go for $50. Captain America was $50 and it's so much better. The lamest part of this game is that Green Lantern doesn't fly during most of it. There are three flying levels (which are the most enjoyable parts of the game) but the for rest of it, you can't even double-jump. It's all just bleah. And though there is local co-op, player two gets no achievement points. Double bleah. Add in some glitches that made me reload a checkpoint and this is one generic overpriced bleah-soaked game.

Transformers Dark of the Moon: 750 out of 1000. This is basically the same game as War for Cybertron, with a few improvements such as unlimited ammo. It's unfortunately short (less than 4 hours) and you don't get to pick your character like in the previous game. However, I liked it a lot. Fun times.

Shadows of the Damned: 710 out of 1000 gamerscore. Another game that doesn't stack difficulty achievements, which means it would take three playthroughs to get all the points. It was enjoyable, but without the "What the hell am I playing??" factor on repeat visits, I don't know if it'd be worth it. I enjoyed it while it lasted though. Except for the running from the instant-kill parts.

A World of Keflings: 200 of 200! I really like these Keflings games. They make me wish there was a much bigger, more in-depth version, as long as they retain their goofiness.

Believe it or not, I actually completed every new game I started in July. It was close, however, as I started A World of Keflings with less than 12 hours left in the month. Just barely made it. But that's also why I haven't started Bastian or From Dust. I can safely do so now.

Of the games I completed this month, I gathered about 62% of their available gamerpoints. This brings my overall gamerscore percentage to 29.5%. With only 5 months left in the year, I'll need to raise that by just over one full percentage point each month in order to reach my 35% goal. Doable, but it'll be close.

However, with the 12 games finished this month, I only have 10 more to go by year's end. That'll be difficult not to achieve, provided I actually continue playing games for the entire time.

And the reviewing-games goal... Pphht.

Gaming Resolution Update May - June

I have been off my game. I blame L.A. Noire.

I didn't update my progress on this blog last month because I had such a poor month of gamerscore hording in May. The first half was consumed by a lot of the Gears of War 3 Beta. I was determined to unlock the Gold Lancer for the retail version, though I don't really know why. I didn't play the multiplayer of the first two games for more than an hour, not sure why I would for the third. But I sure put a lot of time into the beta. And then I picked up L.A. Noire.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. It's just incredibly dull, repetitive, pretentious and overly long. And there is a ton of uneventful driving (Which you can skip, but there's an achievement for hitting a certain mileage... and that's the point of this endeavor of mine). After playing nothing but this game for a few straight days, I was burned out on gaming for a couple weeks! And I didn't even finish the game. I'm afraid to go back to it, even though I'm on the last disc.

The year is half over and my gamerscore stands at a sturdy 90,565. That is a 5400 point increase from my last blog update. Too bad that last entry was two months ago. This only averages out to 88.5 gamerpoints per day for the past two months, a bit shy of the 100 I aim for.

I have completed 7 games since the beginning of May. However, only 3 of those were games I had already started. I have six months to complete 22 more Xbox 360 games to achieve that portion of my Gaming Resolution.

Completion Statistics:

Guitar Hero Aerosmith: 410 out of 1000 gamerpoints. I honestly don't remember buying this game. I know when it was initially released, I purchased the guitar bundle of the game for the PS3, planning to get a Guitar Hero instrument set for Playstation to compliment my Rock Band setup for the Xbox. That didn't pan out. I ended up with more than a full set of each for the 360. I sold the PS3 copy of this game not too long after I got it because I didn't care for the song selection. I don't think Joe Perry should be allowed near a microphone. Then again, neither should I. Anyway, I obviously picked up the 360 version at some point and I got around to finishing it in May.

Portal 2: 455 of 1000 gamerscore. I just beat the single player. I had such an incredible amount of enjoyment playing this game, I even forgive all the times I wandered around wondering where I'm supposed to be going. (Valve never has been much for hand-holding in their games. It's a pretty old school mentality. It does make you feel smart when you figure something out without clues, but a manual guide arrow to where you need to go would save some frustration.) I played most of the way through the co-op storyline as well, but I co-op buddy has been too busy to finish the game so far. Hopefully soon though.

Kung Fu Panda: 690 out of 1000. It's annoying that most of these achievements are for completing all bonus objectives on each level on normal & hard and yet they don't stack. I've been going back to this every now and then to pick up a few more 'chieves. Maybe I'll 100% it someday.

Duke Nukem Forever: 765 of 1000 gamerpoints. This game isn't godawful that a lot of reviews have been saying, it's just quite outdated and rather lame. Now, a lot of the minigames are rather godawful. Worst pinball ever. And they've finally made me despise air hockey. Congratulations.

Halo 3 ODST: 465 out of 1000 gamerscore. I was apparently pretty close to the end of the game on this one, though I couldn't tell you what happened for most of the storyline. I didn't like how I had to start over working on accumulation achievements if I didn't get 10 headshots (for example) on a single level. Pretty much every other game let's you acquire such stat-based achievements over the entire game, and I like it that way!

The First Templar: 745 out of 1250 gamerpoints, for a decent 60%. I was really quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this game. The trailer on Xbox Live was atrocious and really highlighted the stiff animation and framerate problems. Yet, despite its obvious budget-title nature, I had fun with the combat. It's not very deep (though it is surprisingly long: 20 levels.) and the stealth stuff is pretty dumb, but it's an interesting game. I rented this at the same time as Dungeon Siege 3, and I didn't finish that game because I was playing this one too much. I'll definitely buy this when I see it circling the $10 mark somewhere.

Red Faction Armageddon: 550 out of 1000 gamerpoints. Another game I enjoyed a ton. Blowing stuff up is always great fun. Cool blue glowy lighting effects makes it classy. Add a magnet gun which lets you send objects and enemies into each other and it tops my must-play list. I was only annoyed by a couple levels (where you're stuck on a ride and have to survive with limited movement capabilities) but the total destructiveness in this game by far outweighed the bad parts. Reviewers complain about this being linear storyline, as opposed to the open-world type of its predecessor, but this compelled me to play and play until I finished it while I have yet to make much progress on the old game. Hmm.

So that's a hardy 56% gamerscore completion rate for those completed games. Not too shabby. I just gotta keep at it and no let myself get discouraged from playing games for long periods if I'm going to make my goals by year's end. Eye on the prize and all that. Of course, if there really was a prize I could earn, that would make a good incentive. What, am I just supposed to play video games for fun???