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.
Monday, 26 October 2009
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.
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.
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.
Monday, 28 September 2009
My Goal Progress Update
I been waiting for the time my goal's duration got to the 50% mark, I'd planned to write this blog when it did so I can reflect on my progress and see if I am on task to get the desired 125,000 Gamerscore and 175,000 True Achievement score before 2010.
I'm a couple of days late writing this (I forgot it had gone over 50%, it's now at 51%) but I think my ratio has stayed the same roughly. I had decided back in March or something this year that I wanted to try and go for 75% game completion, with the GSL on at X360a I was expecting to sink well low down however I managed to stay between the 50-52% mark, maybe even going up instead of down. On the 25th of June TA made it possible to create a goal for getting your percentage up to a desired number, I then set myself the challenge of giving myself 1 year from that day to get it up to 75%. Below is the image found on TA of my progress.
http://img21.imageshack.us/i/tapercent.jpg/
As you can see I am right on track here (well maybe 0.05% under) with my goal which I am pleased about. Do I think I can keep to this goal and accomplish it? Not really too sure. I'm doing well but I need to keep it up and with the summer been and gone my days of tons of free time for gaming have gone.
Then the other two goals were set up and decided by me as soon as TA implemented the goal feature. With my gamerscore sat at just over 101,000 I knew I needed a new goal to do (getting to 100K was my previous) and I thought it wouldn't be without of reach to go for 125,000 before New Year. This goal is quite big for me as I was aiming for around 24,000 in just over half a year, which a quite estimation means that if I kept up that rate for a year I'd be getting 46,000. I've had my Xbox 360 for 3 and a quarter years at the time of starting this goal which means I had averaged about 33,000 gamerscore a year, quite a bit lower than the equivalent of 46,000 which would have been my goal. Check below to see the image of my progress.
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5784/gsta.jpg
This is going well and I hope as long as I can get a few easy gamerscore games off of friends won't be too hard to accomplish.
The goal of True Achievement score to 175,000 is similar to my gamerscore one except even more demanding I believe. I didn't do the maths so I'm not sure but my gamerscore goal increase was around 24,000, my TA score increase was 44,500. Now roughly that is an average of 1:1.8 or so, as my current average of points ratio is around 1.55 it means I would need to be playing high TA scoring games if I wanted to try and get to 175,000 TA score before 125,000 gamerscore. View the final image below.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/1381/tatah.jpg
The goal is on track for completion but as expected is slightly behind my gamerscore one. I don't mind though because I've been improving my point ratio average from each achievement over the past few months so I'm doing quite well.
That's it for this long mind boggling statistical post. You can view my goals here if you wish to track my progress. I probably won't post about this goals again until near Christmas time where I make my decision about whether the gamerscore and TA score goals will be achieved.
I'm a couple of days late writing this (I forgot it had gone over 50%, it's now at 51%) but I think my ratio has stayed the same roughly. I had decided back in March or something this year that I wanted to try and go for 75% game completion, with the GSL on at X360a I was expecting to sink well low down however I managed to stay between the 50-52% mark, maybe even going up instead of down. On the 25th of June TA made it possible to create a goal for getting your percentage up to a desired number, I then set myself the challenge of giving myself 1 year from that day to get it up to 75%. Below is the image found on TA of my progress.
http://img21.imageshack.us/i/tapercent.jpg/As you can see I am right on track here (well maybe 0.05% under) with my goal which I am pleased about. Do I think I can keep to this goal and accomplish it? Not really too sure. I'm doing well but I need to keep it up and with the summer been and gone my days of tons of free time for gaming have gone.
Then the other two goals were set up and decided by me as soon as TA implemented the goal feature. With my gamerscore sat at just over 101,000 I knew I needed a new goal to do (getting to 100K was my previous) and I thought it wouldn't be without of reach to go for 125,000 before New Year. This goal is quite big for me as I was aiming for around 24,000 in just over half a year, which a quite estimation means that if I kept up that rate for a year I'd be getting 46,000. I've had my Xbox 360 for 3 and a quarter years at the time of starting this goal which means I had averaged about 33,000 gamerscore a year, quite a bit lower than the equivalent of 46,000 which would have been my goal. Check below to see the image of my progress.
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5784/gsta.jpgThis is going well and I hope as long as I can get a few easy gamerscore games off of friends won't be too hard to accomplish.
The goal of True Achievement score to 175,000 is similar to my gamerscore one except even more demanding I believe. I didn't do the maths so I'm not sure but my gamerscore goal increase was around 24,000, my TA score increase was 44,500. Now roughly that is an average of 1:1.8 or so, as my current average of points ratio is around 1.55 it means I would need to be playing high TA scoring games if I wanted to try and get to 175,000 TA score before 125,000 gamerscore. View the final image below.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/1381/tatah.jpgThe goal is on track for completion but as expected is slightly behind my gamerscore one. I don't mind though because I've been improving my point ratio average from each achievement over the past few months so I'm doing quite well.
That's it for this long mind boggling statistical post. You can view my goals here if you wish to track my progress. I probably won't post about this goals again until near Christmas time where I make my decision about whether the gamerscore and TA score goals will be achieved.
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Loving TrueAchievement's Gaming Calender
There's a reason behind why I've been boosting lots of online achievements recently with some of the games I've been meaning to do for months but never gotten around to. It was because I was never motivated, couldn't be bothered. I mean why do you want to play a game online and then not actually play it properly, it's boring, tedious and usually takes a long time (at least on FPS games).
But when TrueAchievements released their Gaming Sessions feature I got the motivation back to try and get more online achievements that I've already left. The first version of the calender had many of flaws and although it worked it was unfinished. A week later 1.5 was released and now the feature has became arguably the best for me on the website. I am now able to view the calender by weeks and see what games people are planning on boosting. Seeing a set time that people are arranging to meet up makes creating large 6+ player boosting session's much easier to organize. A great example of this feature at it's best is that in 30 minutes time I will be playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 for the first time in 2 years (would be if I waited 3 times). Why? Because someone has arranged to get the 16 player host achievement at that time, an achievement I never thought about bothering to get but now since the opportunity has arrived I'll simply join the session and let somebody else deal with the hassle of finding enough games.
I love this feature and I really do love the TrueAchievements website. I find myself on there just as much as Gmail and Xbox.com these days which is saying a lot. With the website getting great new features on roughly a monthly basis I am excited to see what else can be created in the future. I'd love to see them implement a badge type system which they have at 360Voice.com, you'd be able to see your total amount of gamerscore in the FPS genre and see what percentage of the games you've played, the percentage of gamerscore you've gotten from the FPS games you've played and many more neat little statistics.
Since I've started writing a blog I will continue the momentum and start writing on my mini achievement review of You're In the Movies. After I've done that my back catelouge of games I need to still review will be at 4, under 5 for the first time since I started doing this lol.
But when TrueAchievements released their Gaming Sessions feature I got the motivation back to try and get more online achievements that I've already left. The first version of the calender had many of flaws and although it worked it was unfinished. A week later 1.5 was released and now the feature has became arguably the best for me on the website. I am now able to view the calender by weeks and see what games people are planning on boosting. Seeing a set time that people are arranging to meet up makes creating large 6+ player boosting session's much easier to organize. A great example of this feature at it's best is that in 30 minutes time I will be playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 for the first time in 2 years (would be if I waited 3 times). Why? Because someone has arranged to get the 16 player host achievement at that time, an achievement I never thought about bothering to get but now since the opportunity has arrived I'll simply join the session and let somebody else deal with the hassle of finding enough games.
I love this feature and I really do love the TrueAchievements website. I find myself on there just as much as Gmail and Xbox.com these days which is saying a lot. With the website getting great new features on roughly a monthly basis I am excited to see what else can be created in the future. I'd love to see them implement a badge type system which they have at 360Voice.com, you'd be able to see your total amount of gamerscore in the FPS genre and see what percentage of the games you've played, the percentage of gamerscore you've gotten from the FPS games you've played and many more neat little statistics.
Since I've started writing a blog I will continue the momentum and start writing on my mini achievement review of You're In the Movies. After I've done that my back catelouge of games I need to still review will be at 4, under 5 for the first time since I started doing this lol.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
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).
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).
Saturday, 29 August 2009
How Long It Takes for 1 Million Gamerscore
I was just thinking to myself "how long would it take to get the 1,000,000 Gamerscore than Stallion83 is going for". I decided I would say it took 10 hours to get 1,000 gamerscore as that's a good estimated average I believe. Then I did the math to see how many hours it would take to get 1 million and then converted the hours in to days, here are my results.
1,000GS = 10 hours
10,000GS = 100 Hours
100,000GS = 1,000 Hours
1,000,000GS = 10,000 Hours
24 Hours = 1 Day
240 Hours = 10 Days
2,400 Hours = 100 Days
9,600 Hours = 400 Days
9,960 Hours = 415 Days
10,008 Hours = 417 Days
Now when you think about that your mouth should fall to the ground. That's over a year playing your beloved Xbox 360 console non stop, a feat impossible for any man. Now in reality it's possible for someone to not have to work due to being rich, they would need 8 hours sleep, couple hours of doing something else and a few hours to eat throughout the day. That means they could potentially game 12 hours a day, which means we need to double the length of time it takes to get 1 Million gamerscore to 834 Days.
I'm not going to bother going in to anymore detail than that as I think you get the idea about how crazy Stallion83's goal really is.. What I will mention is that (from my mathematics) I have played the equivalent of 46 days of non stop gamerscore whoring. Now if I was to turn rich tomorrow and decided to become dedicated to rising my gamerscore I could fit in to the 12 hours a day scenario and managed to double my gamerscore to 220,000 in 92 days, just in time for 2010 New Year (I believe).
Have a think sometime about how much of your life you've poured into getting those achievements, it's quite scary to realise.
1,000GS = 10 hours
10,000GS = 100 Hours
100,000GS = 1,000 Hours
1,000,000GS = 10,000 Hours
24 Hours = 1 Day
240 Hours = 10 Days
2,400 Hours = 100 Days
9,600 Hours = 400 Days
9,960 Hours = 415 Days
10,008 Hours = 417 Days
Now when you think about that your mouth should fall to the ground. That's over a year playing your beloved Xbox 360 console non stop, a feat impossible for any man. Now in reality it's possible for someone to not have to work due to being rich, they would need 8 hours sleep, couple hours of doing something else and a few hours to eat throughout the day. That means they could potentially game 12 hours a day, which means we need to double the length of time it takes to get 1 Million gamerscore to 834 Days.
I'm not going to bother going in to anymore detail than that as I think you get the idea about how crazy Stallion83's goal really is.. What I will mention is that (from my mathematics) I have played the equivalent of 46 days of non stop gamerscore whoring. Now if I was to turn rich tomorrow and decided to become dedicated to rising my gamerscore I could fit in to the 12 hours a day scenario and managed to double my gamerscore to 220,000 in 92 days, just in time for 2010 New Year (I believe).
Have a think sometime about how much of your life you've poured into getting those achievements, it's quite scary to realise.
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