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???

Gaming Resolution 2011 - April Recap

Full Steam Ahead! April netted me 4005 gamerscore, with 10 completed games! Six of those games were ones I began in previous years, so it was a very productive month on my backlog!

I earned enough achievement point during the month to put my average a full third above my goal of 100 points a day. And I now only need to finish 29 more games by year's end to hit my goal of 150 total finished Xbox 360 games.

The review-writing portion of my resolution is still floundering, however. I didn't really like how I was presenting them. I plan on returning to my Those Games We Play webcomic and including all these new game reviews there, but that is a ways off.

Recapping my finished games progress:

de Blob 2: Finished with 845 of 1000 achievement points. An excellent help to the overall standing of my score's percentage. I want to go back and pick up the remaining points, but that requires replaying each chapter's storymode so that is several hours of time consumption that might be better spent finishing other games. Really enjoyed this game, though.

007 Blood Stone: Gathered 425 of 1000 gamerscore. Kinda dull shooter, only tried one game online.

Call of Duty Black Ops: 325 of 1300 achievement points, 25%. This is the only Call Of Duty single player game I've yet to complete, and I pretty much had to force myself to do it. I found it rather uninteresting and it long overstayed its welcome.

Blue Dragon: 795 out of 1000 gamerpoints. It only took me about 3 years and over 100 hours, but I beat the game with the majority of the achievements. Other than 20 hours or so of level grinding at the end, I enjoyed this JRPG.

A Kingdom For Keflings: 180 of 200 gamerscore, for 90%. I forgot about this game. All I had left to do was the castle for a quick completion.

Beyond Good and Evil: 200 of 200 achievement points. This was a game I never got around to completing on the original Xbox (hence the eventual need to make a resolution to finish more games). Glad I finally got around to it.

Mortal Kombat (2011): 220 of 1000 gamerscore. Rented this one and enjoyed the story mode, as it explained the history and relationships of the characters in a very comprehensive way. I'll definitely buy this when it hits $20.

Wallace & Gromit Episode 1: 155 out of 200 achievement points, for about 77%. I was initially put off by the non-authentic voice for Wallace. But it still was enjoyable, and I'll get the other episodes whenever they go on sale.

Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2: 470 of 1200, for 39%. An entertaining game for the most part, aside from the overlong boss fight stages. Might playthrough again to pick up some more points.

Guitar Hero World Tour: 275 out of 1000 gamerscore. I had difficulty with 3 songs, but I managed to beat the guitar career on hard. Yay me.

Overall, I managed to get 48% of the total achievements for those completed games. That help boost my total percentage to just over 26%. I'll have to keep up the pace to hit 35% by the end of the year. I'm game!

Gaming Resolution 2011: March Recap

March was a productive gaming month!

My gamerscore reached 81,160, an increase of 3,690 from February's total. That's keeping with the 100-points a day average, with a few hundred extra points on top.

I also completed 7 games, bringing me to 39 left towards my year-end goal. Unfortunately, only 2 of those games were ones I had started before this year. So while they're really helping out in my totals, they're dragging down my overall percentage goal. Well, not so much dragging it down, since I'm earning enough points to cover their entrance into the project, but they are slowing down progress as they keep me from increasing existing percentages much. My gamerscore percentage stands at 25% at this time.

Here's the individual games break down:

Dragon Age: Origins - finished with 930 of 1750, for a good 53% completion. I have yet to play the Dragon Age Awakenings add-on, though I am eager to. I'm also eager to replay the whole game, with a different class to see how much it changes.

Dragon Age 2 - 765 out of 1130, a solid two-thirds of available points. I want to replay this game after a second play through of Origins, but I will wait until more dlc comes out and for the first dlc to go on sale.

Homefront - finishing this game game me a pathetic 150 out of 1000, for a lousy 15%. Should I have expected more points for my 3 hour investment? Would have been nice.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime - 130 of 200, 65%. Another short game, though slightly longer than Homefront. Too bad the percentages don't average out between them.

Naughty Bear - 500 out of 1250 gamerscore, a decent 40% completion. I'll probably try to find time to squeeze out a few more achievements from this one. It's strangely addictive once you get past the sometimes cheap presentation.

Bulletstorm - 480 of 1000 points, a solid 48%. I want to try this again on a higher difficulty, but I cringe thinking about a couple of chapters that gave me problems on normal.

Crysis 2 - 450 of 1000, a well-enjoyed 45 percent. Even now I'm wondering if I could play through this again on the highest difficulty and still have as much fun with the game.

Another aspect of my goal, the written reviews... I've actually made some progress on that note. I've written up a review of 3 XBLA games (including Bejeweled Blitz and Full House Poker, two games I haven't documented as "completed" because of the lack of a storyline to finish) over at my cheapassgamer.com blog (http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/blog.php?u=51731). I'm preparing to post more reviews, but I'm working to get screen captures... but my capture equipment is old, I'm not sure the picture quality will stand up well.

So, I hope to improve my old game/new game completion ratio for next month. There's not too many new games that look all that compelling coming out this month(besides Portal 2!), but I've got a stack of games I've started this year I want to complete. And new is usually more exciting than old, ya know. We'll see how it turns out. Stay tuned!

Gaming Resoltions 2011 Update - Top O' The March

Wow, February was not very productive for me.

Not only did I fail to get much gaming accomplished, but I majorly failed in updating this blog about my failing.

Putting bygones behind me, let's see where I stand.

My gamerscore stands at 77,470. That is up only 1745 since my last blog update a month ago. For the month, that puts me about 1000 points behind my established goal of "about 100 points a day". Thankfully, the very productive January I had more than balances out the total.

However, I only finished 3 games during the month of February. That leaves me with 46 to finish over the next 10 months.

I completed Doritos Crash Course, with 70 out of 200 gamerscore; hitting the 35% goal.

I completed Plants Vs Zombies, with 125 out of 200 gamerscore; a very solid 62%.

And I completed Marvel Super Hero Squad The Infinity Gauntlet, with 600 out of 1375 gamerscore; a helpful 43%, not bad for such a short game... too bad it wasn't much fun.

I suppose I could claim to have "beaten" Bejeweled Blitz Live, since you just play 1 minute rounds over and over. I did surpass the 35% gamerscore goal for the game, but I'll wait until I get the "level 50" achievement to call it complete.

My big misstep this month was the number of new games I started that I've yet to complete. Bulletstorm, You Don't Know Jack, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Zuma, Two Worlds 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and Deadliest Warrior. I purposely play games in short burst and play a variety of games each day to avoid getting frustrated or burnt out on a single game. But, as I've mentioned before, this is what leads me to having so many unfinished games.

I'll need to crack down this month and get back on track finishing games and improving my gamerscore average. It will be difficult, as there are a lot of new games I'm very interested in... in fact, Beyond Good And Evil HD comes out today! I can't wait to see if I remember how to play it!

Oh, and yes, I've also failed at my promise to write reviews for every game I finish. Haven't completed a written review all year. That's about as much as I can fail at that, right? Stay tuned to find out!

Gaming Goals 2011 - January Wrap-Up

My Xbox Gamerscore stands at 75,725.

That's a total increase of 5,165 since I began working towards a goal just more a month ago.

I've completed the main portion of ten games. I need to only complete 49 more in the next 11 months to hit my goal of 150 by year's end. I'm on a good pace so far.

Three of those completed games were ones I began after the new year started. I've started four others (Deathspank, Plants Vs Zombie, Blood Stone and Crash Course) that I've yet to finish. Can I complete every Xbox game I begin this year? That's not an official goal, but it would be quite an accomplishment for me and might prove that I'm capable of actually finishing projects.

What I'm not doing so well with, is writing reviews. I'm waaaaaay behind on that. "One down, Nine to go" isn't very encouraging. I'll have to work on that.

Is it monumental to note I've played exactly 360 games on my 360?

Venetica: Finished

Wrapped up my first playthrough of Venetica.
I had a great time, and only yelled at the game a couple of times.
I'll play through it a couple more times, I'm sure, but for now I'll move on to something else.

I would like to correct my last post, however.
During the final stages, I saw a tip on a loading screen informing me that there is, in fact, an option to have "dynamic shortcuts". Once I turned that on, I was able to pick four skills/powers to assign to each weapon type (and a fifth, always assigned to the B button stayed constant). So that helped a lot.
Still could have used a separate magic wheel, though. I think there are four sills to learn for each weapon... that would have allowed them to be automatically assigned and still grant full access to each power, plus have a quick-use button for a consumable item.
But I digress...

Gaming Goals 2011 - Stepping out of the DCU

Well, DC Universe Online turned out to not be the total distraction that I thought it might be.
It's kind of sad, actually. I spent more time installing it than playing it.
The gameplay pretty much epitomizes everything I think of when I think of MMORPGs. You get a fancy, well produced, high quality opening cutscene, and then... lame gameplay. Go beat up 10 of these constantly respawning enemies over there, then go hold down the "O" button over here. No creativity to the missions, no alternative ways to do missions, and your powers don't really matter, because they don't have any bearing on your objectives whatsoever.
It's really disappointing because the created characters you make are really well done, and well animated (though the power skill tree abilities are mostly lame). This could have been an incredible single player game, if they put effort into mission structure, and animations and perhaps even lipsyncing the mouth movements to the horrible voice acting (instead of the Beaker Muppet-mouth-flap. That's one way to make Superman look ridiculous, good job guys.).
DC Universe Online is an example of why these type of games are horrible outdated. Had they made it a 4-player online co-op game, such as Crackdown 2, it could have been great.

Oh, and the trophies are terrible, too. Really first-year developer stuff.
There is one trophy for winning a race with a platinum time. The only race I did, to beat it I needed about 1:30. Platinum time was 1:00. I did it in about 37 seconds, and it wasn't even a great run. There's a trophy for me.
All other trophies are grinding out levels, and replaying the game over and over. Seriously.
Trophies for hitting level 30 with each of the six trainers. There's six playthroughs right there. As long as you diversify your characters, you can get the other half dozen trophies as you grind your way up to that.
And that's it. 14 total trophies. Good thing I'm not resolving to increase my Trophy... score? Collection? I'm not even sure how it's referred to on the PS3. Oh well. Maybe next year.
I just have to figure out how to cancel my DCU subscription so I'm not charged $15 bucks for another month of this.

Back on the Xbox, I had a great week of gaming.

My gamerscore now stands at 74,290.
That's up over 1500 from last week. More than doubled the 100-a-day average that I'm trying to achieve.
And, perhaps more importantly, I finished 5 games last week!

I'm counting Harm's Way as finished. There's not much to that game. Just a three race set and you're done. I did the races as a gunner, because I didn't care for the driving all that much. And I just played single player. My friends played through it months ago, so I'm behind and didn't have people to play it with anyway.

I also finished Splatterhouse, Split/Second, Battlefield Bad Company and Saint's Row.

Did you know Saint's Row has no achievement for finishing the whole storyline? Might as well stop doing missions after you wipe out the rival games. But I was only one escort mission away from completing all the Activities, so I finished that and got plenty of points that way.

Splatterhouse was a new game I started after I began tracking my goal. The ironic thing is, being a new game, it threw off my total score goal, but I earned much more achievement points by game's end than I did with Split/Second or Bad Company.
I ended Split/Second with exactly 35% of its gamerscore, and Bad Company only gave me 30%.

I also started playing Venetica. I'm really enjoying it. It's a $40 title, so I came into it with lowered expectations, but I've already spent 20 hours in it and I like it quite a bit. It's like a budget Fable. It just doesn't set itself up with such lofty goals, and settles for a normal experience.
The worst thing about this game is everything to do with the dialogue! A lot of lines are bad. Subtitles often don't match the line read. Ambient dialogue will be louder than your conversation. The wrong audio will play during a conversation. Characters emoting will change from line to line as if the performance was cobbled together from greatly varying takes, sometimes seeming like they had different voice actors doing the lines.
The only other really bothersome thing (although the inventory is a bit cumbersome, and your quest list isn't good about updating what you've done... but remember: budget title.) is your shortcuts: how you use your skills and powers. You can have 30 or more powers/abilities, but you only have 5 shortcut slots to assign them for use. If you want to use a variety, you'll be playing in the menu a lot during battles. A power wheel, like in Mass Effect, would have been a great benefit here.
You have 4 types of weapons: Sword, Spear, Hammer (or Axe... apparently they're the same "blunt" class) and your magical Moonblade. You have to learn abilities for each of these separately... including block. And then you have to have the correct block ability assigned to a shortcut for the weapon you're using! There's one dodge button, why couldn't they have made a universal block button?
What they really needed to do was make four separate loadouts, one assigned to each weapon type, so as soon as you switch to a different weapon (switching is made easy, with a button to cycle through them or you can assign the control pad for weapon selection) you'd have usable skills ready to go.
But despite all of its flaws, I really like the game. It has sort of a Beyond Good and Evil vibe.
And I'm over the 35% mark with the achievements already!

I have fallen behind on writing reviews, though. Whoops. I'll catch up after I finish Venetica. I'll just have to write 8 reviews this week while I'm playing LittleBigPlanet2.

DC Universe Online - So Far

My copy of DC Universe showed up this afternoon, and I eagerly put it my PS3 to get what I knew would be a massive download installed.

I sure didn't think it would take four hours to download two gigs.

It's been four hours!

And it's only 70% complete.

Good thing this game came with the first month free, because it needs it just to install the game!

The entire time, there is a single image on the screen. No music or anything entertaining during these hours. Would it have killed them to have made a slideshow of tips and instructions for you to read while you waited and waited and waited for this time to install?

And I had to delete about 10 GB of stuff off my hard drive to fit this thing. Nearly a quarter of my 80GB hard drive is being used up by this game. And that's if it doesn't ask for even more space later (it already made me add more space three separate times).

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I dislike the menu system for the PS3 when it comes to deleting files. I have to go all over to find things. In order to find the file size of each individual item, I have to select options and then information. Then I have to back out of that and then reopen the option menu to select delete.
I don't know what the bulk of my hard drive is filled with, because there is no central memory allotment table to show me how much is being used for what. So I have to pick and choose game saves and data from games I guess I just won't play until I get a bigger hard drive. And unless I writing down these files sizes, I still don't know how much I've freed up, because it doesn't just tell me how much unused space I have. Why is user-friendly so complicated a concept for Sony to grasp?

Also, I don't think my PS3 has been on this long before. And I watched a movie on it right before this mess of an install process began. 9 straight hours. Even when I play long gaming sessions, I'll turn it off my console for an hour or so every five or six hours to get something to eat.
Please don't melt, Playstation. You were expensive.

Gaming Goals 2011 - Week Two

It's been a pretty good week in terms of productivity on my Xbox gaming goals. Since my last update, I've completed Limbo and Mass Effect 2 (the latter was just finished about 15 minutes ago.). I racked up 87% of the achievement points for ME2, and 90% for Limbo, which goes a long way towards bringing up my overall gamerscore to a 35% average.

My gamerscore currently stands at 72,755.

I'll have a review coming for Mass Effect 2, but there were some choices made by the developers that were kind of awkward for players who played the first game. They don't affect the review, because they were story choices and didn't affect the gameplay, as they could have easily replaced entire cast from first game and not had any problem. But the lack of interaction between the returning crew members was unfortunate. That's not to say there wasn't any... Garrus and Tali had a hilarious conversation, reminiscing about the elevators from the first game, as I wandered around the (totally redesigned and much much smaller) citadel level. I went out of my way to bring the two of them on missions together, but there just wasn't much acknowledgement of each other.

And what was with Liara's character? A shy, withdrawn archaeologist has suddenly become a intimidating badass (for the most part) information broker? I just didn't buy that at all. They should have written something into the first one that could have evolved into this, but as it is...

And finally, this is a problem I have with most squad-based RPGs. It does not make sense for most missions to only go in a group of 3. Sure, there are a couple of stealthy, infiltration type of missions and the smaller the group the better. But when an assault team is needed, the bigger the better. And only being able to fit 3 people in the transport isn't an excuse, because at one part of the story, all of your characters are loaded into the shuttlecraft, so they'll conveniently be away when the ship comes under attack.
The final mission does a good job of explaining the need to split up into squads to accomplish different task, always leaving you with a group of three... which they didn't bother explaining why you couldn't have a bigger group since a couple new crew members were added via DLC.
I would love it if Mass Effect 3, and other games for that matter, would come up with a good solution to the group-of-three ridiculousness. Maybe a bigger squad, and during points in a mission you'll get separated from part of your team, leaving you with randomly assigned squad members. I like randomness, makes replays more fun and interesting.

DC Universe Online releases tomorrow, and if the snow doesn't stop the UPS guy, I hope to have the game by the evening hours. Next week, I'll report on how well this new game captures my attention, and how much my Xbox gets ignored because of it.

Gaming Goals 2011 - First Week

Steady progress is the name of the game so far.

For me to achieve my goal of raising my Achievement percentage to 35% by year's end, I'll have to average about 100 gamer points a day. I have increased my score by 990 in 9 days, so I am right on track. This was greatly helped out by gathering the last 400 or so points in Lego Batman. Lego games can be a bit of a grind, but achievements start freeflowing when you near 100% completion.
Of course, my target goal increases considering I started two new games (Splatterhouse and Limbo) so I will have to be careful and consistently finish these new games as I go.

I haven't actually finished any game since Lego Rock Band just over a week ago. So that goal hasn't been kept up to pace necessary so far. I'll need at least one completed game a week, plus a few extra to hit that 150 game mark by 2012. But I know there are a few games that I'm pretty close to finishing, such as Fallout 3. I just want to complete more side-missions before wrapping up the main quest. And I know Limbo is a short game overall, but I'm deliberately taking it slow to allow initial impressions of the game not heavily influence my review.

I finally started Mass Effect 2. I was waiting to get all the achievements from the first game, which I finally did last week. I am enjoying the new game quite a bit, even though it's differences in gameplay are a bit jarring. I sure don't like suddenly having to rely on limited ammunition. But I'm getting used to it.

As for Splatterhouse... it is what it is. I got the game most looking forward to unlocking the classic games, which I don't think I ever played but I sure remember the comic book ads for the Turbo-Graphix 16 versions. So far, the game is fun in short bursts.

Looking forward to the rest of January... there seems to be a lot of distractions on the horizon, all of them involving the Playstation 3. I plan to get Littlebigplanet 2, DC Universe Online, and Dead Space 2 for the PS3. The good news is that since they're on the PS3, I don't have to worry about them messing up my gamerscore average, but they will draw a lot of time away from my Xbox and my march towards a decent score.
I'm not sure how much I'll actually play Littlebigplanet 2. Surprise, surprise: I never finished the first one. I was only playing that with my friends when we gathered for game night, and when our game night stopped existing, so did progress on that game. This one I'll try for a while by myself, and see how it goes. I might try my hand at designing a level based on my comics and see if I can get anything to resemble something familiar.
I never played an actual MMO, so I eagerly look forward to DCU. I own Final Fantasy XI for the 360, but I haven't felt the desire to put so much time in that old of a game... are the servers even still active for it? I plan to get as much use out of the free month of DC Universe, and then probably move on to other stuff. Don't want to pay a monthly subscription if I'm not going to be active. We'll see what type of new content they can entice players with to keep them coming back.
And I know Dead Space 2 is a multiplatform game. And even though I have the first one on the 360 (you guessed it, unfinished), I want to get the PS3 collector's edition for the inclusion of the port of the Wii rail-based shooter Dead Space Extraction. So, technically I supposed that makes 4 new games I'll be playing on the PS3 this month. Five if I pre-order soon enough to get a code for the PSN Dead Space game.

So it looks like I have my work cut out for me to keep up the pace while cheating with the Playstation. Fun work, though!

Lego Rock Band Review

Lego Rock Band - 2 out of 4 Stars

It's a shame when two big franchises come together, only to produce a product that fails to reach the height of either individual property.

At its core, Lego Rock Band performs as a solid Rock Band product. All the fundamentals are there, and aside from the art direction, the game is essentially a large Rock Band 2 track pack. However, there are a few new additions to the familiar gameplay.

Most notably, as you progress through Career mode, your band is given a series of special Rock Power Challenges along the way. During these events, you do not get the benefit of your "overdrive" meter. Performing well arbitrarily lets you meet some sort of goal, such as defeating a giant octopus, or demolishing a building. But the effort put into programming these spectacles are all but wasted, as you are concentrating too much on the stream of notes watch the action directly. It's like games that hide big flashy CGI sequences behind Quick-Time Events. Seeing things in your peripheral vision doesn't cut it.
The game designers tried to fix this in co-op mode, by having only some band members play at a time during these challenges, while others are given a break… to watch the action I guess? But this feels quite awkward, especially if you're singing. And you'll probably be too busy watching for your cue to rejoin to actually enjoy the scene on display.

Also new to the gameplay, is the chance to save yourself from failing out of a song. If you miss too many notes, instead of stopping the song, you get a "stud recovery" chance which allows you to re-enter the game if you are able to play a small section with a high enough accuracy. It's a nice feature, that might encourage newer players not to give up on the game.

Lego Rock Band also introduces cutscenes to career mode. Guitar Hero games have had brief cartoony scenes, but LRB actually uses your created characters (customizable band members and road crew) in scenes about goofing around or living the Rock Star life. Some of these are really enjoyable, but made me wish they were instead in a proper Rock Band game with more realistic and expressive characters (which finally happened in Rock Band 3, though to a lesser extent).

Which brings me to what I find as the biggest fault of the game: the limitation of the Lego characters. Especially early on, the options for character creation are terribly light. It seems designed for you to want to have weird abominations as your rock avatars. You can't even change color of clothes or skin tone to match properly. You're often stuck with using pre-created characters because it's a bother to find a good torso that matches the skin color of your chosen head.
The allure of the Lego games, for the most part, is seeing famous people and characters in Lego form. Other than a few rock star recreations, that doesn't happen here. You're not even given enough pieces to build yourself with any accuracy. You can simply rearrange a small number of features from unlocked character models.
And the physical limitation of the Lego movements sap the enjoyment out of watching them perform. While it can be charming to see their pivoting dance moves, it grows old quick. And there is never a point in the game where you have direct control over them, unlike in the other Lego games where you can just enjoy playing with their animations.

Another negative aspect of this game is the hinderance of its E10 rating. Any song you've downloaded from the Rock Band Music Store that carries a more mature rating will not show up in Lego Rock Band's song selection. I can appreciate the developers wanting to keep this game as kid-friendly as possible, but I would have preferred that they found a way to use the console's parental controls to restrict the track list of underage players rather than deny everyone access to their songs.

Overall, it is a decent, but limiting game with a big soundtrack. It's best used simply as a track pack for other Rock Band games.

Recommended for: Rock Band enthusiasts wanting to extend their track library.