Monday 26 October 2009

I Pause To Itch In Racing Games Too Much...

It's a little habit I've noticed that's developed recently when playing racing games, the need to keep pausing the game to itch myself. These itches aren't in a certain area you may expect a male to be itching, they are in fact anywhere on my body. We all get itches and even now as I'm typing and thinking about itching I keep needing to take my hands off the keyboard for a second to get to a new area of my body which is feeling the strain of not being itched.

So why am I blabbing about itching? Well I finally decided whilst playing DiRT 2 for like 8 hours on Saturday that the itching habit only really presents itself strongly when I'm playing a racing game. I'm not exactly sure why but it even gets to the point where I'm pausing the game every 5 seconds just so I can itch myself. I've thought about why this is happening for a while now but I think I finally came to the conclusion and that was yesterday evening whilst I was boosting Burnout Revenge. You see when I was racing as the blue team to win (for the 30 wins as blue team in road rage achievement) I didn't feel the need to pause the game once in the 60-70 seconds it took me to complete the lap. I've now managed to conclude that this is because I know I couldn't because I was racing online and also because my concentration was higher as I was trying to get the boosting done as quickly as possible (took 2+ hours, eurgh).

This leaves me questioning whether I really do enjoy racing games. I've played quite a lot of driving games on the 360 which surprises me (not keen on cars in the real world so I'd have thought it would reflect my gaming) however I've never really thought about if I got bored when playing. I don't think I do but I must do at times, it just doesn't make sense why I always feel the need to itch, isn't that a sign of boredom?

If you have any opinions or ideas as to what's going on then feel free to leave a comment and I'll be sure to reply.

Saturday 17 October 2009

3 Hours of Boosting Failure

I somehow managed to sign up to two boosting sessions that both started tonight at 8:00PM, the same time. I haven't been foolish enough to do this yet because I used to check the times but now I've learnt that because so many people join session's and then leave when they realise they have other plans that I should too. However I didn't decide to leave, I decided to persuade the session leader of Guitar Hero World Tour to push it forward by 30 minutes.

This shouldn't have been a problem, the Platinum Rockstars achievement which we were going for involves needing to complete a song on Hard/Expert 100%. I was hoping to get it done in minutes but unfortunately at 8:20 (40 minutes after we started) we had still not prevailed and the achievement hadn't been unlocked. I was on Bass and didn't mess up where as my friend rover08 messed up quite a bit and huge adrenaline also messed up. I shouldn't moan because Drums and Guitar are a lot harder to do that the Bass that I was on. However, when I leave at 8:20 to join the PGR4 boosting session I had joined I wasn't expecting for them 2 to find a replacement and get the achievement just 3 tries after I'd left. rover08 is a good friend that I know will play the game again for me to get the achievement however I don't know huge adrenaline so asking him to do it again for me is a bit cheeky however it's worth a try.

With this failure behind me I moved on to PGR4, hoping to get the Team Domination achievement which had already defeated me once when I finished a boosting session months ago with no achievement unlocked. Very quickly half of us 8 managed to get the achievement as their opponents quit the game and they continued to gain all top 4 positions, the rest of us waited. The guys with their new found achievements were kind enough to stick around and help me and the rest of us out however with the diabolical matchmaking that Bizarre have created for the game it meant that this was impossible to do. The closest I came was once when me and another guy boosting got put in to a game with 6 other randomers, 2 of them being good and on our team. It started great as after the first race the 4 top spots were taken by my team but then however the great start we had unfortunately couldn't be kept up and we didn't finish in the top 4 spots.

Anyway it's 3 hours later and I've gotten no achievement from my efforts. This blog was a way for me to release all the stress that I'd gathered up from this evening. Today hasn't been a complete waste as I unlocked Battery (1 million points in 4 player band) and other achievements on Guitar Hero Metallica, it's just the fact that the day has ended on a bummer which leaves me feeling bummed out.

Might play a bit more Xbox before I go to bed and try get a few more achievements to make up for the ones I didn't get, for now I'm just going to watch Match of the Day that's on TV and try to calm down.

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Conquest of the Completion of DiRT

Last week I had a friend lend me his copy of DiRT, a game I've been wanting to play for a long time due to it being good fun and easy gamerscore. I started playing it and after the first day I got in to a conversation with another friend of mine (that's you Rob if you ever read this) about the possibility of me being able to complete it, 1000 gamerscore.

I had played enough of the game (a few hours) to be able to understand how lengthy the game was going to be and therefore I was confident I'd be able to get it all done in little time. My friend on the other hand had given up after completing career just the once and he thought I'd do the same, little does he know my determination. When a £5 bet with the loser buying the winner a game was arranged for me to get the 1000G before November I knew I'd ve victorious.

And here I stand, 6 days later with all 49 out of 49 achievements unlocked on DiRT. I hope he enjoys purchasing my brand new copy of Alone in the Dark, I shall continue to mock him for the rest of the year.