Is Sega Rally Really That Hard?

When I got Sega Rally for £10 it wasn't an easy choice. I wasn't too keen on getting it but I really wanted to go home that day with an Xbox 360 game, after all it was one of the main purposes of me going shopping in Milton Keynes (got a £20 gift card from HMV for Christmas).

So for a tenner I thought I'd give it a go. I'd heard the game is meant to be really hard and not easy for gamerscore but I remember I played the demo once and it seemed alright so I decided to take a plunge and get it. I played it for an hour or two when I got it for the GSL and got 135 points, first impressions was that it's fun, not too easy but not stressfully hard.

Since then it had not been played, until around a week ago. I was really bored and decided I'd start work on a game I've neglected because my Lovefilm account has finally run out and I've cancelled. I was aware I needed to spend a few hours boosting the 100 host achievement online so I started work on that and once I was bored decided to go back to Championship mode. I've now gone through the Premier, Modified and Major modes unlocking all the achievements for unlocking the events. Some of these achievements had a TA score of nearly 3.0 which I find quite crazy. I can see why people think the game is hard because a few of the achievements require to to win pretty much every race in every event however to unlock the next stages you just need to average 25 points out of 30 in every rally. This isn't too difficult thanks to the tracks having an invisible barrier at the side of the path meaning you can use it to your advantage to help get round tricky corners.

Now I'm at 530 gamerscore on the game and am looking at a potential of between 600 to 660 if I can be bothered. I haven't really gotten to sick of the game as I've only been playing it for around 8 hours which isn't too bad. With Forza 2 still not even touched and Juiced 2 being given to me tomorrow I'll need to finish it off quick so I can move on. My backlog of racing games to play is getting too high (Flatout Ultimate Carnage, PGR3, PGR4, NFS Pro Street, Burnout Revenge, Burnout Paradise).

End of Week 5 of GSL

Okay well I sat out Week 3 and didn't bother doing this for Week 4 so its now time for my end of Week 5 review. It's been a low scoring week, getting 1200+ or so which is bad but I'm not disappointed as I got more than I was expecting. So what have I been playing.....

So my Dad went and bought a new Xbox 360 alongside the games the guy he bought it off had, one of them being Call of Duty 4. Now I loved Call of Duty 2 and bought Call of Duty 3 when it was released to feed my passion for the genre. But Call of Duty 4 came out and went huge, making me not want to play any more. Weird I know but I don't like following the big crowds, add to the fact this version was modern day I thought I would pass it. Now however I was told by my brother (kizwiz) that it has easy gamerscore so I thought I'd play it to boost me some points. Sure enough I've managed to get 200G so far just by completing a few levels on veteran and getting random achievements like 4 headshots in a row. I really enjoyed playing it and the challenge of Veteran difficulty reminds me of the countless hours I spent getting 1000 on Call of Duty 2. It's all good though, I do like a good challenge.

I didn't know what to play this week so I decided to pick one of the games I own but have never truely played and try to get gamerscore from it. I was aware that Stuntman Ignition gave 30G out for the completion of every Movie, that was 150G I knew I could get right there so I decided this would be my game of choice for this week. A great choice it has been as I've found myself playing this the most out of all of my games. I've always liked the game as it's concept is unique and a pleasure so I'm glad I have finally given it the attention it deserves collecting the random "do this 20 times" achievements as well as completing career. I now need to go and 5 star everything which will be tricky but possible (remember I like a challenge) and then find a boosting partner to play online with. I want to stick to giving this game my attention so that I can get the achievements whilst I remember the levels and am good at it, will most likely play a bit next week.

I actually went and played Sega Rally before I even began working on Stuntman which I admit has taken my attention away from this great game. I bought it for £10 waaay back when I went Milton Keynes a few months ago and yet never found time to give it a play. I needed gamerscore so I thought I'd put Sega Rally in and get some easy points, I was wrong. It doesn't give out easy points, it's time consuming and potentially quite hard. I had a shock when in my first race in a Championship rally the flock sprinted ahead of me, spraying dirt in my face. But thankfully I picked up the slick controls quite quickly and have fallen in love with how the game handles driving. It's a lot different to any other racing game I have played and you do truely feel like a master when you drift around a corner with style. I did a few championships and boosted for the online Ranked achievements this morning but that's all I've done so far. I decided that I would be able to pre-play the game outside of the GSL week so I have left it for now.

Easiest game to 1000? No as the developers of Avatar made getting 1000 gamerscore on a game possible for a baby to accomplish, however Codemasters have structured the achievements on LMA Manager 2007 to make them extremely easy to get. As they are all "win this" it means constant simulating and saving before a game so you can load back up and play again if you lose is needed. Make a few tactical decisions such as buying players (Sylvain Wiltord for Rangers got goalscorer of the season for me, oh yeah) and you'll be able to win no problem. I would have gotten 1000 by now if it wasn't such a loooong drag. You need to do 8 seasons which take a couple hours at least each to do which means this is the game I have been pre-playing before the week starts. I have currently done 3 out of the 8 leagues and have started my fourth, with just 3 weeks left of GSL I need to step it up to make sure I make the gamerscore count for the competition.


I played a few more games this week such as boosting online with my brother to get Prizefighter ranked achievements and playing on drums on GH World Tour for a few achievements but only minimal playtime on these games. Of course I got some gamerscore from Skate 2 (putting me at 750 currently) but I can't be bothered to discuss that in-depth right now. Might aim to get the 1000 before the end of GSL so I'll discuss it then.

That's enough from me for now, biggest blog post I've ever wrote? Hmmm, might be....