Rambling Time

I was thinking whilst playing Green Day Rock Band what I should title this blog post, I originally intended to just write about the Great TA Challenge however more ideas about what I want to say sprung to mind This has lead me in to changing the title of this blog. I'm about to ramble so the title does suit this blog post.

The Great True Achievement Challenge

So first up is The Great TA Challenge, something I haven't mentioned yet in blogs I think so it's about time I did. A year long challenge featuring 52 teams of 2 people, me and tractakid have managed to stay in the competition so far as we approach the halfway mark. I was quite frustrated with how the scoring worked at first (using TA points means negative scores at times which I still don't agree with) but with time I've come to accept it and have just got on with my gaming.

Now when I told tractakid I would partner him in this competition I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to as I had a project going with The Dumb Life which means for the first couple of months of the year i poured hours of hard work on to the website I created (www.thedumblife.co.uk for those interested). Turns out I've been scoring more than plenty of others in the competition and to be honest, I've barely tried. We had a few scares where we left it to late to score but really it's been easy as there's always a team or two that just don't bother the whole week. It defeats the whole purpose of having a year long tournament if all you need to do to stay in is score a little bit of points and you're fine. Sign ups for this challenge went very quick I remember and as such Bemusedbox and others were unable to participate. Now I know somebody such as him would have been a good competitor to this challenge yet he's not in as plenty of other people signed up without any serious content of actually bothering to participate. Slightly hypocritical of me I know but I have gotten down to business and scored points when needed to, it's a big shame plenty of other people do not.

My Dilema

Now since I've been in this challenge for quite some time I've started to take it a bit more seriously. I don't believe for one minute me and tractakid are capable of winning (smrnov and tjayars are too beasty) but that doesn't mean I don't want to give it a good shot and see how far we can go. This had lead to me being conservative in a bid to save points for future weeks when I could need them. Right now as I type this though me and tractakid have a combined total of 2653 score and are in 6th place, that's quite a lot better than the team in last place with 121 points. I'm getting frustrated with myself for letting this competition take over me and stopping me from getting gamerscore like I want to. I recently bought a bunch of games to help me hit the 200,000 gamerscore mark yet I "can't" touch them as I'll be wasting easy points which may come in handy. I decided to buy Assassin's Creed on my Windows Phone as that only has 300 TA score and has a playtime of like 10-15 hours so that would be good to occupy me with. However I've still held off playing it just because I don't like scoring uneeded points. I suppose it's just the principle of it, quite infuriating for me.

So What I've Done

Well yesterday I decided that there would be no more need for me to score points this week as me and tractakid are surely to be safe, therefore I needed something else to do to get me by. I've been playing Green Day Rock Band as completing all of the challenges on that game is a bit of a grind but I don't mind, I love the band which makes playing this music/rhythm game much more fun than some of the others. So I'm going to probably put a bit of focus on to that for this and next week and hopefully get it to the point where there's only a few hard achievements left which I'll be happy to leave. I'm a big fan of GH/RB type games and have played practically everyone on the console to date (apart from non UK releases) yet Band Hero is the only one I've gotten to 1000G. That doesn't bother me though as they all have 1 or 2 tricky achievements in so I don't blame myself for not finishing them.

What I do blame myself with though is the lack of time I've put in to the pro instruments on Rock Band 3. I've got £170 worth of plastic instruments under my bed designed for the game and that game only yet I've barely used them. I like the Keyboard and Pro Guitar/Bass yet I haven't had much desire to play on them. I think the main reason is because I need some friends to get them (go on Andrew ;) as the competitiveness of it is key I reckon. I might have a go on them soon once I'm done with Green Day, there's something else on my mind though.....

What I Plan To Do Next

..... and that's playing Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. I haven't mentioned in a blog but most of my online friends know that I have started reading and watching all of the Harry Potter books and films again. I've had the desire to do this for a while yet it took my girlfriend saying she was going to read them all to give me the motivation to do it. The books don't take as long to read as I remember (I'm currently 220 pages in to the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire) yet it's still time I would have usually spent Skateboarding or playing Xbox. Anyway, the point of mentioning this is that now would be a good as time as ever to finally play Order of the Phoenix which has been sitting on my shelf for probably around a year or so now. I dislike using guides as I'm always paranoid I'm going to miss something and waste my time, this game shall test me with it's collectibles. It's Hogwarts though and I absolutely love J.K Rowley's imaginary world so I'm hoping that will keep me from going insane. If I do manage to complete the game I'll be sure to buy Half Blood Prince and get Deathly Harrows Part 1. The 2nd part of the last book comes to cinemas the second week of July I believe so that's when I would like to get this all done by. Another 2 months, should be enough time.