145 Untouched Games Collection!

Time to have a check on how many games I own which I have yet to even start. I'm worried it's going to be far over 100 titles, here's a list of them all. I also wanted to show a picture to friends of my new shelf display. I knew I was going to run out of space soon and decided to stack 2 bookcases on top of eachother. As a result there is now more free space in my bedroom and my games collection can continue to grow woo!

Retail: -

007 Quantum of Solace
50 Cent Blood on the Sand
Army of Two 40th Day (missing from pic, lent it out)
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Bionic Commando
Blur
Brave a Warriors Tale
Brutal Legend
Crackdown
Crackdown 2
Dancing Stage Universe
Dancing Stage Universe 2
Darksiders
Deblob 2
Def Jam Rapstar
Deathsmiles
DiRT 3
Duke Nukem Forever
Enslaved Odyssey
Fairytale Fights
Family Game Night 3
FIFA 09
Football Manager 2007
Fracture
GTA IV (missing from pic, lent it out)
Harry Potter Deathly Hallows
Homefront
How to Train a Dragon
Iron Man 2
Legends of the Guardians
Lego Indianna Jones (not shown in picture, have in sleeve)
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Lost Planet
Madden 09
Planet 51 (not shown in picture, have in sleeve)
Mass Effect 2
Mindjack
Morph X
My Sims SkyHeroes
Mini Ninjas
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Faction Guerrilla
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
The Saboteur
Scene It Box Office Smash (not in picture, is downstairs)
Secret Service
Stoked Big Air
Terminator Salvation
Tomb Raider Underworld
Tony Hawk's Shred
UFC Undisputed 2010
Velvet Assassin
Wolfenstein
X Factor




That's 56 games I have 10 feet away from me on my shelf that have not been put on my card. There's another 10 or so that are on my tag with barely any achievements too but I won't include them in the total. My brother has games too I have access too but I'll leave them out.

Kinect: -

Disneyland
Get Fit With Mel B
Kinectimals
Sonic Free Riders
Yoostar Movies

5 isn't too bad, I tend to play a Kinect game as soon as I get it which is why this is low.

XBLA: -

3D Ultra MiniGolf 2
A World of Keflings
Assault Heroes
Assault Heroes 2
Bastion
Beyond Good and Evil HD
Bloody Good Time
Braid
Castlevania HD
Comic Jumper
Costume Quest
Days of Thunder
Deadliest Warrior
Death By Cube
DeathSpank
DeathSpank T.O.V.
DeathSpank The Baconing
Dead Rising Case Zero
Ecco The Dolphin
Family Game Night (Connect 4x4)
Fancy Pants Adventures
Final Fight Double Impact
Fruit Ninja Kinect
Galaga (Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade)
Galaga Legions (Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade)
Gatling Gears
Golden Axe
Golf Tee It Up!
Greed Corp
Gunstar Heroes
Happy Tree Friends
Hydro Thunder
Hydrophobia
Islands of Wakfu
Kinect Fun Labs: Avatar Kinect
Kinect Fun Labs: Battle Stuff
Kinect Fun Labs: Mutation Station
Lara Croft Guardians of Light
Magic 2012
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Microbot
Monkey Island 2
Moon Diver
Mortal Kombat Arcade
Mr. Driller Online (Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade)
Ms. Splosion Man
New Rally X (Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade)
Nin2- Jump
OutRun Online Arcade
Panzer General
Peggle
Rock of Ages
Scrap Metal
Serious Sam TFE
Serious Sam TSE
Snoopy Flying Ace
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic 4 Episode 1
Sonic Adventure
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Sonic The Hedgehog 3
Sega Rally Online Arcade
Stacking
Super Meat Boy
The Dishwasher VS
The Maw
The Path of Go
The Undergarden
TNT Racers
Torchlight
Turtles in Time RS
Unbound Saga
Undertow
Voodoo Dice
Warhammer 40,000
Xevious (Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade)
X-MEN
Yar's Revenge
Yaris
Zeit 2

Ahhhhh 80 here, again another 10 roughly on my tag and barely played.

WP7: -

Assassin's Creed
Hydro Thunder Go
Rocket Riot
The Sims 3

Only 4 here, safe to say that Windows Phone I am best at keeping the list down.

So 145 games I make that! Wow that's pretty damn high, not sure why I do it to myself sometimes I just can't help buying Arcade games on deal or Retail games cheap when I see them in the shops. I'm close to adding another few Arcade titles to the list as a few like Plants Vs Zombies and Renegade Ops are on offer for a few more days I wonder how many of those games I will actually ever get round to playing, it's scary to think at least half of them will probably never get touched. Anyway I think I'll end this little blob entry here, I spent way too long doing it, time I could have spent on actually playing one of the games!

Eurogamer Expo 2011 in London Thoughts

Last year I went to the Eurogamer Expo and was so excited as it was the first time I had the chance to play the big upcoming games before they had been released, it was a great day and you can see my thoughts on it on the blog entry I did at a year ago which can be seen here.

Journey There

London is only an hour and a bit away by car journey, something I always tend to forget. I spent my time in the car playing on Fable Coin Golf trying to get all the Gold medals and finish off the game. I managed to get all but 3 which I was quite happy with. We managed to park on some red lines (which you're able to do on a Sunday for free) and a few minutes walk and we was there. 15 minute queue and we were in.

Wandering Around

First thing you do when you get to a place like this is walk around finding out where everything is, checking out the queue sizes for the games. First booth we got to which had an available seat was for the new Ace Combat game. The flight genre is probably one of my least favourites but I looked forward to sitting down so gave the game a go. I wasted 5 minutes of my life trying to shoot down an enemey, I must have fired 50 missiles and thousands of bullets yet the bugger didn't go down. My brother or Dad didn't have much luck either but at least my Dad enjoyed it.



Just Dance 3

After getting off of the Ace Combat game we managed to stumble accross Just Dance 3 which I was quite interested in. The kid playing at the time seemed half decent which gave me a good chance to see what the game is actually like. Now I didn't seem to impressed. Now if you know me you know how I rant and rave about how good Dance Central is, Harmonix are great at making games so they set the bar high. This Just Dance just didn't seem to match. I failed to see any way of the game letting the performer see where they was going wrong. On Dance Central the characters body glows red to let you know what part of your body is slacking in the dance move, I didn't see anything like that in Just Dance. Instead the game was playing around with lights, making it like a rave scene. You can kind of see what I mean from the top picture I took although it was taken from a distance(as to not disturb the gamers). I did like that it shows you the lyrics in the bottom left corner, gives you a chance to learn the words to a song which is neat.



I decided to take 2 photos for this game as when I was coming around later on in the day I saw how 2 ladies had now started performing in these little booths. Needless to say a photo needed to be taken haha. Ultimately I'm sure this game will be decent and fun but Dance Central 2 does seem to be far superior. I'm not creating a section for DC2 so I'll say briefly here what I saw. It looked like the same formula we have already seen with a few changes. I noticed that you now get like gold moves, I assume that getting perfects on them will gives you more points, probably because it's an important move to nail. Either way I have already researched Dance Central 2 from online videos and know it's going to be great, didn't need to see it much at expo.

XBLA Time

Joe Danger The Movie
Towards the back of the show floor you could find the indie and XBLA games. First one I had a go on was Joe Danger The Movie. I think I may have briefly heard about this game but didn't know what it was about. Basically it's a 2D sidescroller where you're in a type of contraption which you need to perform tricks on in order to shoot a movie. You can jump, do flips, combo moves with the bumper buttons all in order to string together really high scores. They had 5 different levels available to play and I had a go on most of them. One time I was skiing jumping over slopes whilst another level had me acting as a policeman on a motorbike doing wheelies. They had a developer there who spoke to me a bit who told me it would be at the £9.99 price point (the original was a PSN exclusive I believe) which works out at 1200 points. It seems like good fun but I reckon the novelty will wear off quite quick, make it 800 points please and it's a worthy purchase.




Awsomenauts
There were 4 consoles set up for this game with each console squaring off against another one. Me my brother and Dad went on one as we got ready for the 3V3 battle that the game was advertising. There is nothing special to see here, just a standard game which I know I'd enjoy playing for gamerscore if it was at the 400 point mark. You spawn as one of 5 characters and have to take down the oppositions towers whilst you defend yours in the 2D sidescroller. My dad wasn't keen and put down the pad in a couple of minutes (probably because he didn't know what he was doing) so I didn't stay on it long.



Rayman Origins

I was sure to give this one a try as I know when it was announced my brother was hyped about it, having 2 player co-op play meant me and him stayed on and had a play on all 3 levels they had to offer, Cave, Jungle and Desert. There's no need to go in to gameplay details here as it's what you'd expect to see. Challenges and puzzles as Rayman and Globox have to get from screen to screen. It was definitely good fun and caused me to use my brain a few times to figure out how to get through certain obstacles. I can't remember if this is an arcade game or full retail (I know it swapped from one to another) but needless to say it's going to be great.



Free Stuff and Turtle Beach

Now is a good time to mention what we left the expo with. At one point a lady working at the event had a bunch of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 posters to hand out, she didn't have too many but I thankfully managed to get one off her before they went. I then had kids asking me throughout the day where I got it from, I was lucky. Still haven't put it up in my room yet but it will go somewhere, just need to think a bit more. My dad one something much better though. The guys at Alien were giving out scratch cards and my dad happened to win on one of them. Whether or not there are plenty of winners or not I don't know but eitherway after filling out a form and signing up to the competition on the computers he was able to walk away with an Alien keyboard. The guys were claiming it's worth £100 however Google told my dad it's actually about £40. Still, for 10 minutes of your time it's definitely worth it.

The purchases come in the form of pairs of turtle beach. I've always been slightly interested in them but never enough to fork out the cash for a pair. Just so happened that the guys had a stand at the expo and I decided to go take a look. They had about 12 pairs on sale ranging from £20 to £120 but the one that caught my eye was the one on offer, the DPX21 for just £65. I didn't have much knowledge in the value of this product until I started checking the Internet on my phone and seeing it be sold for over £100 on the Internet. Knowing I was getting a bargain I finally decided to go for it and so did my brother. Since being back I have set it up and they are fantastic. I've been watching Prison Break late at night so it was a perfect opportunity to test them out and I'm really impressed. Need to fiddle with the settings still as there's a lot and it's complicated however I have no regrets thankfully, worth £65.




All The Rest

There were a lot of games, most of them I didn't play and those that I did were only for 5 minutes max really. For the rest of the blog I'm just going to write a paragraph on the games.

SSX: - This was the most exciting part for me, checking out an SSX game. It was the only booth where the developer would boot you off after you've rode to the bottom of the slope. I meant to come back to give it another go later on in the day but never managed to. Eitherway I had mixed opinions. I liked it as it was a snowboarding game and I know I'm going to enjoy playing it however it seemed too damn easy. I didn't fall over at all, in fact nobody I saw playing did as it's not possible to. It seems that no matter how many flips or spins you do you're rider manages to stay on his feet somehow and roll away. I don't like that as there doesn't seem to be much challenge! I hope they address this but we shall see, game modes haven't been announced yet but fingers crossed as this is a big one I'm looking forward to.

Lord of the Rings War in the North: - I managed to sneak my brother in to the 18+ section with me to give this a go. We were thrown in to a story mission in co-operative play, I was a dwarf and he was an elf. Obviously I went for hand to hand combat and he stayed back with arrows. At first it seems great, classic hack and slash gameplay with a LOTR feel to it however I started to realise that once a few enemies gang up you become defenseless. I'm used to being able to take on as many enemies as there are when you're surrounded by them, looks like that may not be case here as I'd get 20 hits on me before I can even do anything, 5-10 seconds of this every 30 seconds really does start to bum you out. I wont let this put me off eventually playing the game but it is food for thought.



Ghost Recon Future Soldier: - LAN battles were going on with 6v6 battles. Me and my brother both got on next to eachother on the same team and I'm ashamed to say he ended up getting a better kill death ratio. I started off good with 2 kills in a row and then proceeded to get 5 deaths and no more kills in the 5 minute game. I'm not quite sure what the game mode was as I presumed it was Deathmatch but there did seem to be some objectives to do. Anyway, gameplay wise it's really good and I can tell this game is going to be loved. I found it hard to be accurate when shooting but I presume this is because it's third person perspective, I'm used to Call of Duty at moment so that explains why I didn't do well. I never figured out how to do anything like turning invisible or playing around with futuristic weapons which is a shame but oh well.

Saints Row The Third: - Man I was much more impressed with this than I thought I would have been. I'm not really in to sandbox games, it's because I like to keep things linear as I otherwise feel like I am missing out on doing something which results in missed achievements (which really bugs me). But yeah, starting the game off going in to a club with your team and gunning people down was so much fun. The way the enemies fell is what made all the difference. Think about it, when you kill somebody in a shooting game you're used to the usual body falls to the floor sequence. Well when playing this game I noticed much more animation on the death of an enemy. It's only little things like firing bullets towards the roof as they fall down but it gives a great impression. I am actually going to download the demo for the game when it comes out just to see if I feel the same way again or if I'm just slightly biased towards wanting to enjoy it as I was at the expo.

And that's all I can be bothered to say really as any other game I didn't play properly or only watched being played, this includes the two big guns Call of Duty and Battlefield 3. I wasn't going to bother queuing up to play these games so I just watched from a difference. The Spec Ops Survival mode looked good in Modern Warfare 3, similar to that of Horde from Gears of War which I think is great so I approve of it being implemented in to Call of Duty. There was UFC games, Ridge Racer, the MMORPG that is Star Wars (which had massive attention from people, big queue) Batman, Skyrim and plenty more but it just can't all be seen properly in the 5 hours I was there. Oh and Rage, that looks to be quite brutal for a 15 which surprised me. They had like 20 consoles set up for that game which is quite a lot and I was surprised.





The End

As we left woman were handing out free packets of doritos which was nice, I got 2 packets as I must be special haha. On the way home we saw a fire starting off in a skip which was pretty cool to witness as the fire truck came and started dealing with it. It wasn't too serious but was enough to get me to stop playing Fable Coin Golf to switch to camera mode and take a picture. Afterwards it took me another 45 mins to get Gold medals on those 3 levels and the 200G and game completion was mine. It was a good day and I would go again next year. I would much rather go with friends though as my dad only plays chess over the Internet and even my brother isn't too in to games anymore. So yeah, anybody wants to meet up next year so we can go in a group I would be more than willing. It's a year away though so no planning now, Jason over and out!

Post GTASC

This has been copied and pasted from the blog I have over at True Achievements. If you don't know what the GTASC competition is then this may not be a good read for you.

As you probably know 3+2=6 got eliminated from the GTASC last week, a 2 man team of me and tractakid. What you may have not known is the team name originated from the tattoo I have on my foot, not sure if tracta told many of you that because I know I haven't.

But on to the nitty gritty, my thoughts on the whole competition. Having a competition that goes on for a year is always going to cause problems, a lot can happen in a year which can have direct or indirect influences on how one may contribute scoring points for their team. My main concern was how fast the sign ups went. Just a day or two I believe for 100 people to sign up. The question is, how many of them actually had the heart in them to give the competition a good go?

You may not agree with me here but I believe you should have over 100,000 gamerscore to be considered knowledgeable in the field of score whoring for a competition. Of course this isn't a definitive figure but I tend to use it as a guideline, somebody who has over 100k should hopefully know how to put points on when it's needed as they would have most likely been at a deadline before, be it a previous Gamerscore League or wanting to simply finish a game in order to trade it in as soon as possible.

I've kind of rambled off point a bit there so I'll go back to where I was heading haha. I remember the start of the competition was really lame. So lame. I have a friend that would have loved to be in the competition and I have no doubt would still be in now whoring away as strong as ever. He wasn't able to partake though as he wasn't quite quick enough to get his team signed up. It's hard to be a judge and decide who should or should not take part in a competition but I'd have thought some checking in to the gamers background could be done to see if they are truely capable of taking part in the competition, at a serious level. Sure they may not want to take it serious and I would be okay with that but when others that would take it seriously get left out I feel a bit bummed. Don't quote me but I'm sure a lot of the teams that went out early on are probably on low gamerscores that got that day excitement of taking part in a competition and then lost it the next day, not caring to score points and take advantage of being in the GTASC.

I mean I'm signed up for the GSL over at x360a which starts in a couple of weeks and I've taken a look at my competition, a lot of them with low gamerscores. They should be in a favourable position to beat me and anybody else with a high gamerscore as they will have games such as Avatar which have not been put on the there tag. But how many of them will actually outscore me? I'm in it for fun but I'm still going to use it as an opportunity to knock out a few of the easy unplayed games sitting on my shelf. It just makes me laugh a little when I see gamers with low scores talking the talk but then unable to walk the walk.

Getting gamerscore in a competition can be compared a lot to boosting I reckon, they both require determination and commitment to succeed. I'm not on about a few hours of boosting, I'm on about doing something that takes at least 10 hours to do which means planning has to be done. Lots of people just don't know how to commit. It means you can't bail and decide to go out with your mates nor does it mean you want to go to the movies with your girlfriend as you haven't seen her in a while. The GTASC has gotten very tight now and it will separate the men from the boys. Those that want to stay in now will need to make sacrifises and play Xbox more than they probably would like to. The guys with the big gamerscores understand this and they should ultimately get the job done as they have experience. Team The Hoarders I'm going to call you out, with one person on your team at just 50,000 gamerscore there is a lot of potential scoring to be done by you but will you get the job done? Team Disposable Income have done the majority of easy games on the console (in 3 different regions!) yet they continue to put up the points and stay in as they are true professionals to gamerscore whoring.

It was a shame my team went out last week but my thoughts and opinions I had (which I shared over TA feed) do remain the same, despite Van Uden's response to me about it. tracta made a mistake (although was small) which meant our team got knocked out. In the previous week I kept us in, I got the job done. It's not a dig at you Andrew, it's just backing up what I've been saying during this blog post. I said it was going to be my last week and I was sticking to that, to have kept going in the competition I would have had to make the sacrifises of ignoring my girlfriend, not going out skateboarding and potentially missing work just to get the available time to put up the needed points. I knew the workload was getting too much and I wanted out before we got eliminated.

This is where me and tracta both had different opinions. He wanted to get knocked out knowing he had given it his all and had done his best. Now that's all very good and all but how do you know you've really done your best? That's where I find flaws in that thought process. He may have felt like he did his best last week and went out with his head held high but me, I feel like a loser. What if I didn't see my girlfriend that day or what if I didn't go skateboarding, I could have played a new game and scored extra points to survive. Matter of fact is there are 168 hours in a week, there's a lot of gamerscore that could be earned in that timeframe. But no sleep you say! Well giving it your best shot could very well mean that you don't sleep. Only you yourself know what your best is (I'm speaking to everyone, not directly at tracta by the way) and I know my best was never shown in this competition.

I speak from experience as I did a Gamerscore League back in 2009 on x360a and had to put up 5,000 gamerscore in a few days to get my team in 8th position I think, which was our aim. I remember abandoning my girlfriend and skateboarding for those days and staying on the Xbox finishing games like Kung Fu Panda (which was enjoyable I must admit but still, it's tedious). We never did get that 8th position but we can't have been too far off. I did truely feel like I had given it one of my best shots as I was sick of playing Xbox and exhaustion had set in. You can only truely say you've given it your best efforts if you've felt those effects. Now I am speaking directly to you tracta, did you really give it your best try? I know I didn't and therefore I feel like a loser. Had I really given it my best shot and still gone out then I would be fine with it. For these reasons I would have rather just gone out in a week where I didn't try as at least then my conscience is clean for knowing I didn't try and fail. As they say, the first step towards failure is trying.



Think that would be all for now. I did have plans to mention more about what I've been up to since my elimination from the competition but this blog post is surely long enough as it is. I could double or even triple the length of it by including more details and thoughts/theories I have (I've missed out the whole dilemma of how I disagree with how scoring works in this comp) but I think I've summed up most of what I wanted to say. Remember they are just my thoughts and feelings and I'm not saying I'm correct and your wrong. Especially on the needing to have over 100,000 gamerscore part. There's guys with double my score who may think the same of me, if so they have the right as they're more experienced in achievement earning than me. Anywho that's me done, until next time!

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.

Push to 200,000 Gamerscore

The other day I got given an extra shift at work when I didn't really fancy doing it. I decided the money gotten from the shift should be spent on treating myself to some easy gamerscore games in a bid to help motivate myself to get to 200,000 gamerscore. I mean my progress in Gamerscore ths year has been pretty poor I have to say so myself, as I'm currently on 189,000 at typing it means I've gained just 9,000 gamerscore in the past 3 and a half months of this year. That roughly equates to about 30,000 gamerscore this year if I manage to get another 1000 in the next few weeks. In 2010 I got 55,000 gamerscore throughout the year so I set myself the challenge of slightly upping myself this year and going for 60,000.

As I just showed my progress has been slow but ultimately I'm not really too bothered. I put a lot of time and effort in to creating my website the first couple months of the year (check www.thedumblife.co.uk) which reduced my Xbox gaming time plus Lidl have been giving me 40 to 50 hour weeks sometimes which is more than the 20 or so hours I used to spend at college this time last year. It's also worth mentioning that lots of my real life friends that I skate with have all been banging out prestiging on Call of Duty Black Ops so I have played that with them for a while. After prestiging for the very first time ever on any Call of Duty game I decided to call quits and go back to getting some gamerscore, I now only play it when all my mates are on instead of on my own at times trying to rank up haha.

So, where to go from here. Well the 8 games I ordered from CEX all have enough gamerscore between them to get me much closer to 200k. I expect I will continue to play other games too to make up the rest of the gamerscore so now it's just time to put the games in and bang them out. Although if the weather continues to be really sunny I'll be spending all my spare time out in the Sun and that will hinder my progress. Without further ado, here's a picture of the games I got.



All the games there I believe will all be easy completions for me, the exception being Army of Two which I only bought because it was £4 and I wanted it for the collection (I own 40th Day but am yet to play). Oh and HSM is already on my tag but I got red rings and never finished it, should get few easy points from that. The other games are not the usual ones you'll find in shops, in fact most of them were the last in stock from CEX. I have never played a Cabela game so African Safari will be interesting and playing through a game featuring owls 4 whole times will be sure to drive me insane.

Nevertheless it shall be done as I would like to hit 200k, will be nice feeling to know I've scored 100k (what few of my online friends have yet to do *cough cough* tractakid *cough cough*) a total of two times. It would be made even sweeter if I got there before Bemusedbox does but after chasing me for a while he's finally overtaken me on gamerscore and is just 8,000 away, I doubt I will beat him now. It was painful when rover08 overtook me, now yet another of my "close" online friends has gone past me. Next up will probably be adiash73, stay away from me I tell you!

Photo Collection Time!

First I have to say I haven't posted an entry in months and I'm aware of that, I personally don't mind that though as my interest in Xbox in that time has been hindered slightly but oh well. I feel like posting something now though so whilst I have my mojo I'm going with it.

Basically today at work I had an 11 hour shift after having just a few hours sleep, this was after I had just done a 10 hour shift yesterday with just a few hours sleep as I worked a close the day before on Thursday. Enough of that though. The point of that is what got me through today was thinking about all the games I have and wondering what it would be I'd play tonight. I recently played Summer Athletics 2009 to the point where I can't really earn any more achievements so I need to figure out what new game to start. This lead me to thinking about posting pictures of my games collection, some of you may be interested so that's what I'm going to do. :)

The obvious picture to show everyone is every game I have and where they're positioned on my shelf, well I took a picture of each shelf so this can be seen.



Then I decided to get out all the games I am yet to put on my tag and check them out. All the titles in this following picture have not ever been put on my tag. There's plenty others I have but they may have the odd achievement in and therefore I left out.



As I am currently in the Great True Achievement Challenge it is important that I score some points tonight in order to stay in. There's a few games there I'm sure I could rip some easy points out of if I needed to. There's a lot of Xbox Live Arcade games I always have available to me. Since there's no physical copy of an arcade game I have decided to write a massive long list of them all. This is for my benefit mainly as I may refer to it in the future when trying to decide what to play.

3D Ultra MiniGolf 2
A World of Keflings
Arkadian Warriors
Assault Heroes
Assault Heroes 2
Castlevania HD
Comic Jumper
Costume Quest
Deadliest Warrior
Deathspank
Deathspank 2
Golf Tee It Up
Greed Corp
Hydro Thunder
Lara Croft GoL
Microbot
Monkey Island 2
Outrun
Portal Still Alive
Raskulls
Risk Factions
Snoopy Flying Ace
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic 4 Episode 1
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Hedgehog 2
Sonic Hedgehog 3
The Maw
The Undergarden
Turtles in Time RS
Undertow
Xmen Arcade
Yaris
Zeit 2

It's nice to know I have a bunch of arcade games I can just feel like playing whenever I want but I don't want that list to get too big! Before I know it the same will be happening for my Windows Phone as I already have a couple of games queued up on there waiting to be played.


Now slightly changing the flow of direction, I started wanting to show off my collection in specific genres. First up is the Music/Rhythm genre which I have been a big fan of ever since I got Guitar Hero 2 for my 16th birthday nearly 4 years ago. Since then a lot of Guitar Hero games have came out plus Rock Band has been added in to the mix yet I have played pretty much every one in existence. There's a few like the Rock Band Country Packs which are not easily available but the main ones I've played. Here's the pic.



What's missing from there which I consider a game I should have for the Guitar Hero franchise is Aerosmith, Greatest Hits and Warriors of Rock. I've played all of them just don't own any of them, when they're cheap enough I'll get them for the collection. ACDC on the Rock Band is one I would like for the collection but don't have, same applies for Song Pack 2 although I have played both of them before.

The main collection you may have heard me talking about is the extreme sports one, specifically skateboarding and snowboarding games. As I skate in real life I have an immediate link to the games which draws me in to liking them, even the shitty Shaun White Skateboarding which came out last year had me entertained at times.



From that picture there is 12,000 available Gamerscore to be gotten, I have a total of 11,000 from them. I'm 1,000 short because I am yet to play Shred as I only just got it the other day. I don't particularly want to but in order to continue saying I've completed every skateboarding game on the 360 I need to do it. A game which is missing but I've done is Stoked, a fairly decent snowboarding game which I don't own as my brother does so I just borrowed from him. There's 2 copies of Proving Ground as my first copy got some severe scratches on it from a short period of time when I had my Xbox 360 located vertically. This also messed up my Halo 3 so I had to get another copy of that. My xbox is always horizontal now and it shall stay that way. It's a shame Proving Ground got ruined as it was an American copy I paid £45 for as I got it 8 days before the UK release. That's because a local shop used to import games in order to get extra sales from people like me. I also like to state to people that I finished Proving Ground without inputting the perfect balance cheats, sorry if you get sick of me going on about that but I was quite chuffed with myself haha.

Might as well go and talk about the 4 Tony Hawk games I have on the original Xbox. My ex girlfriend did make me happy for one of my birthdays (can't remember which one) when she went and got me them games. Thanks to her I have the full Tony Hawk Xbox collection as the two original Pro Skaters were only ever released on the PS1 I believe. I do also have American Wasteland on the original Xbox but I think I let a friend borrow it years ago and never got it back. I don't care really though as I have it on 360. I bought it on release on Xbox for £40 and then on release for 360 for £45 the day after I got my Xbox 360. I didn't fancy spending £45 on a ported game but I never had Xbox Live on my original Xbox so I was prepared to spend the money in order to play online. Back in the day when I didn't know what achievements were and I just wanted to play a game for fun haha. But yeah I spent a lot of hours playing American Wasteland online for fun, I usually credit THUG 2 for getting me good at balancing and getting high combos but I forget that all the hours of countless fun playing against people online helped a lot too.

The last picture I wanted to take to show off a collection was all the peripherals I have gotten for my Xbox 360. The total cost of all of it brand new is probably around a grand, that's a lot considering the majority of it is plastic instruments haha.



I'll list it all from top left to right.

RB drums
GH3 Guitar x2
Kinect
GHWT Guitar
Scene It Controllers
DJ Hero Decks
RB3 Keyboard
RB Wired Microphone
Lips Microphones x2
Xbox 360 Controller x7
Xbox 360 Wired Headset
20GB Hard Drive (original from 2005, hard to see in pic)
GH 2 Guitar (my oldest one yet the one I always use)
RB Guitar
EA Active Heart Beat Monitor
EA Active Green Elastic Band
RB3 Pro Guitar

Quite a lot there, most of it barely ever gets used and just ends up cluttering my room. Especially the RB drums, they are a right nuisance to have up over there in the corner.


Finnnaaaallllly I thought I should take a picture of my TV and monitor so you can see how close I sit when I am gaming. I've done this because often people can hear my television, you may understand why now as I am usually about 2 feet away from the TV when I game sitting up on the chair.




And that's that, all done! Taken me a lot longer than I had hoped it would to do all this so I'm glad it's over now, probably wont blog again for ages lol. I need to play a game or something, got to get some points to stay in the competition!

Shaun White Skateboarding = EPIC FAIL!

I've played Shaun White Snowboarding and I thought it was pretty good. It had its problems but nevertheless it was an enjoyble experience I recommend all to have. Surely they could replicate this for skateboarding and be a success. No, just no.

Firstly you need to be aware that there's 2 skateboarding genres, realistic and arcade. Tony Hawk has always dominated with the arcade style but Black Box have came and destroyed that franchise with realism, creating the most authentic skateboarding game to date. For Shaun White to have stood a chance at being successfull he'd have needed to ensure his game went on the arcadey side of things so that people such as tractakid who are unable to master Skates controls could play the game no problem.

But no, Shaun White Skateboarding has it's own retarded variation of the excellent flick it control scheme which is used in the skate franchise. I haven't played the game too much yet but if you get told to do a Kickflip to Tailslide or something then you're going to have just as much trouble in this game as you would if you are incapable of doing it consistent on a Skate game. To piss me off even more they've decided to lock the majority of the tricks from the get go meaning I've been forced to use just basics such as Kickflips and 50-50's, not fun..... But it gets worse! I finally unlocked the 360 Flip trick and to my horror they have completely ruined the animation of it. The 360 Flip is one of the most awesome looking tricks in skateboarding so it's essential it looks just as sexy in the game. What we're given is a retarded version of it, I can't quite put my finger on the reason why but it kind of looks as if the skater underflips it before hand, eurgh.

The game can't even get it's FS and BS's right. If you approach the rail and it is infront of your feet as you Ollie then the trick you are about to do is Frontside, even if you turn your body to looking backwards (which one may assume meant the trick was Backside). It's that simple yet the game seems to muddle it up or just not even register a FS or BS at times. I was messing around with a few BS Bluntslides and I get "FS Tailslide" register, what the hell! There could have been a win in the game as when you flip trick above coping on vert your skater flips the board in to your hands so you catch it and then place it under your feet. This is how Shaun White and other vert skaters do fliptricks in to grabs in real life yet the Tony Hawk and Skate franchise have failedto incorporate the ability to do that in the game, instead you catch the board with your feet and then grab it. Thing is Shaun White fails as it FORCES you to do it like that. Lets say I want to do a little Kickflip to Fakie on a 4 foot ramp, guess what happens? I can't because my skater automatically tries to grab it even though there's clearly not enough time to do so.

And I'm still not done moaning. There's no way of powersliding to reduce speed or help turn round a corner quick, you can't jump whilst off your board (makes traversing terrain a bitch at times) and I've already encountered a few glitches such as bobbing up and down on the floor. Did I forget to mention there's a marker feature? It's nice but you need to wait 5 seconds for it to re-load you, that would be fine but skate does it instantly.....


You may think I'm being harsh on the game but you need to understand these small things do matter and are important. How would you feel if you placed a racer such as Forza and your small crappy Mini started roaring like a McLaren does. You'd be shocked right? That's how I feel with Shaun White Skateboarding, where's the polish to remove all the stupidness. I can probably find myself getting some fun out of the game once I've unlocked all the tricks, time will tell. It seems like a mediocre game, there's just one big problem.... Skate is so much better. :)