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.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
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!
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!
Saturday, 2 April 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, 5 December 2010
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. :)
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. :)
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Lost the Desire :(
I feel like I owe it to my Xbox friends to write an entry in this blog explaining what I have been up to and why if you've seen me on the xbox this week I was most likely on the dashboard (thought I'd give dashboard saving a go like tractakid does :P).
Truth be told my girlfriend of 3 years left me on Sunday after I discovered a few of her secrets she been hiding the past 4 months. It's the worst kind of betrayal and hurts. As a result I've needed my friends more than ever and I have once again focused my attention on skateboarding, the only love in life that will never hurt me (least not emotionally).
Right now is a prime example of my lack of motivation. It's a sunday morning and it looks pretty wet outside so chances of skateboarding properly are really slim. My usual self would say "screw skateboarding, I'm going to get some achievements" but I just don't feel like that right now. Heck I have new copies of NFS Hot Pursuit and AC Brotherhood sat right under my nose as I type this yet the desire to play them is slim. In 3 days I've gotten hold of Kinect, a HTC 7 Trophy (mobile with Windows Live on) and the 2 games I just mentioned. That should be enough to hype anybody but i's not quite working. I'm starting to regret buying Call of Duty BlackOps too as that has barely been touched at all. No regrets on purchasing Green Day Rock Band though as I know eventually I will love to play that.
This is the best time of the year to be a gamer and the worst time to be a skateboarder (due to weather) however my priorities are stopping me from enjoying my Xbox to it's fullest. Life sure is crappy for me right now. [cry]
Truth be told my girlfriend of 3 years left me on Sunday after I discovered a few of her secrets she been hiding the past 4 months. It's the worst kind of betrayal and hurts. As a result I've needed my friends more than ever and I have once again focused my attention on skateboarding, the only love in life that will never hurt me (least not emotionally).
Right now is a prime example of my lack of motivation. It's a sunday morning and it looks pretty wet outside so chances of skateboarding properly are really slim. My usual self would say "screw skateboarding, I'm going to get some achievements" but I just don't feel like that right now. Heck I have new copies of NFS Hot Pursuit and AC Brotherhood sat right under my nose as I type this yet the desire to play them is slim. In 3 days I've gotten hold of Kinect, a HTC 7 Trophy (mobile with Windows Live on) and the 2 games I just mentioned. That should be enough to hype anybody but i's not quite working. I'm starting to regret buying Call of Duty BlackOps too as that has barely been touched at all. No regrets on purchasing Green Day Rock Band though as I know eventually I will love to play that.
This is the best time of the year to be a gamer and the worst time to be a skateboarder (due to weather) however my priorities are stopping me from enjoying my Xbox to it's fullest. Life sure is crappy for me right now. [cry]
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Spoilt for Choice
Been a couple of weeks since my last post, in that time I've managed to assassinate 7 people in Assassin's Creed, progress which was going well but has since slowed down in the last week as it hasn't been played. The reason for this is because of the sudden burst of new games coming out.
Before I get on to that reason though I should state that my Xbox time this past week was low due to the fact I have had a free house which means I've hosted numerous parties. I also hosted a big FIFA 11 tournament (making sure my profile is never signed in whilst playing as I do not wish to be associated with the achievements on that game yet) which combined a total of me and 6 friends battling it out in a league to see who was the best FIFA gamer. I wont dwell on this topic too long, I'll just say that people get agitated when they lose and the whole fun spirit of the competition is lost (well really it's all Shane's fault) so after just 2 days we called it quits. In that time we did manage to play eachother at least 3 times though so enugh games were played. For anybody interested I came 3rd out of 5th teams as I played with Liverpool, I was gunning for Golden Boot against Wayne Rooney until Shane got pissed off and let Man Utd beat him 8-0, causing the fun to end and Rooney to destroy Torres on goals scored. That's enough blabbing, click the link below to see the scores.
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9746/fifa11tournamen....jpg
(We did play a few more games on Day 3 but I can't be bothered to sort out a picture and upload it).
Having to stop myself from playing FIFA 11 during the week I also had th temptation of Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock which a friend brought round for us all to play. I already have this on my tag so that's not a problem however having to complete Quest Mode twice (which equates to 93 songs x 2 = 186 songs played) would take up too much time so I've left that for now. Last Thursday saw Sims 3 and EA MMA arrive through my letter box (thankyou rover08 :)) and both of them games have been put straight on to my tag. I had my first proper go on Sims 3 last nigh for an hour and I can tell the improvement to the franchise is massive compared to when I played the games on Playstation 2 back in 2003. I think the game will be a big hit with my girlfrind too so I plan on keeping this game, no rush to play it now.
There would be a rush with EA MMA however a lack of achievement guide and road map (plus a low trade in price for the game at CEX alreadt) has meant that I plan to just keep the game now and play it at my own pace. I put it on my tag as I could see there were a lot of easy achievements to be won on it. I haven't ventured online nor have I gave Career mode a go but I've already obtained 9 achievements for 135 gamerscore. This will be on the backburner for potentially ever however it is nice to know I have a fighting game in my collection to work on at any point as I see fit.
The new games trend continued as I decided to spend £94.85 on Rock Band 3 with the Keyboard peripheral. I had been tempted on this bundle for a while but it was the factor of having house parties which led to me giving in and deciding to actually buy it. The game is absolutely fantastic and leads me to believe that there wont be a Rock Band 4 as there really is no need for it. The new pro instruments are sure to keep gamers occupied for hundreds of hours (my progress on Pro Keyboard is yet to start, got other games to play instead) an the interface on the game is excellent. A small but VERY helpful feature is being able to swap instruments via the character select screen without signing out of gamertags and all the usual nonsence we've come accustomed to in Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. All that being said I do think GH Warriors of Rock is a good game too as it has some features which are unique and would have been nice to see on Rock Band 3.
Finally I can't forget Medal of Honor which is still a new game to my collection. I finally started on campaign yesterday and have managed to do 3 levels on Hard already. The game is not Hard at all, in fact I find it a joke that I'm even playing on Hard difficulty. I don't hide behind cover as required in Call of Duty veteran, I just run around guns blazing to get the job done. I've got just one achievement left on the multiplayer aspect (for ranking up to top level) and then I will hopefully be done with the game (depending on how tricky Tier 1 mode is). HMV are offering Call of Duty Black Ops for just £7.99 when Medal of Honor is traded in. I believe Black Ops is reatailing at £45 so that's a really good deal.
I've still got plenty of other games to play too but no time. With a job hopefully in the works within the next few days my gaming timewill be cut down even more. I plan on playing Rock Band 3 endless setlist today as I may not have free time to do it in the future. It seems to be a lot less stressful than the previous games so I do believe I shall get it done.
Before I get on to that reason though I should state that my Xbox time this past week was low due to the fact I have had a free house which means I've hosted numerous parties. I also hosted a big FIFA 11 tournament (making sure my profile is never signed in whilst playing as I do not wish to be associated with the achievements on that game yet) which combined a total of me and 6 friends battling it out in a league to see who was the best FIFA gamer. I wont dwell on this topic too long, I'll just say that people get agitated when they lose and the whole fun spirit of the competition is lost (well really it's all Shane's fault) so after just 2 days we called it quits. In that time we did manage to play eachother at least 3 times though so enugh games were played. For anybody interested I came 3rd out of 5th teams as I played with Liverpool, I was gunning for Golden Boot against Wayne Rooney until Shane got pissed off and let Man Utd beat him 8-0, causing the fun to end and Rooney to destroy Torres on goals scored. That's enough blabbing, click the link below to see the scores.
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9746/fifa11tournamen....jpg
(We did play a few more games on Day 3 but I can't be bothered to sort out a picture and upload it).
Having to stop myself from playing FIFA 11 during the week I also had th temptation of Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock which a friend brought round for us all to play. I already have this on my tag so that's not a problem however having to complete Quest Mode twice (which equates to 93 songs x 2 = 186 songs played) would take up too much time so I've left that for now. Last Thursday saw Sims 3 and EA MMA arrive through my letter box (thankyou rover08 :)) and both of them games have been put straight on to my tag. I had my first proper go on Sims 3 last nigh for an hour and I can tell the improvement to the franchise is massive compared to when I played the games on Playstation 2 back in 2003. I think the game will be a big hit with my girlfrind too so I plan on keeping this game, no rush to play it now.
There would be a rush with EA MMA however a lack of achievement guide and road map (plus a low trade in price for the game at CEX alreadt) has meant that I plan to just keep the game now and play it at my own pace. I put it on my tag as I could see there were a lot of easy achievements to be won on it. I haven't ventured online nor have I gave Career mode a go but I've already obtained 9 achievements for 135 gamerscore. This will be on the backburner for potentially ever however it is nice to know I have a fighting game in my collection to work on at any point as I see fit.
The new games trend continued as I decided to spend £94.85 on Rock Band 3 with the Keyboard peripheral. I had been tempted on this bundle for a while but it was the factor of having house parties which led to me giving in and deciding to actually buy it. The game is absolutely fantastic and leads me to believe that there wont be a Rock Band 4 as there really is no need for it. The new pro instruments are sure to keep gamers occupied for hundreds of hours (my progress on Pro Keyboard is yet to start, got other games to play instead) an the interface on the game is excellent. A small but VERY helpful feature is being able to swap instruments via the character select screen without signing out of gamertags and all the usual nonsence we've come accustomed to in Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. All that being said I do think GH Warriors of Rock is a good game too as it has some features which are unique and would have been nice to see on Rock Band 3.
Finally I can't forget Medal of Honor which is still a new game to my collection. I finally started on campaign yesterday and have managed to do 3 levels on Hard already. The game is not Hard at all, in fact I find it a joke that I'm even playing on Hard difficulty. I don't hide behind cover as required in Call of Duty veteran, I just run around guns blazing to get the job done. I've got just one achievement left on the multiplayer aspect (for ranking up to top level) and then I will hopefully be done with the game (depending on how tricky Tier 1 mode is). HMV are offering Call of Duty Black Ops for just £7.99 when Medal of Honor is traded in. I believe Black Ops is reatailing at £45 so that's a really good deal.
I've still got plenty of other games to play too but no time. With a job hopefully in the works within the next few days my gaming timewill be cut down even more. I plan on playing Rock Band 3 endless setlist today as I may not have free time to do it in the future. It seems to be a lot less stressful than the previous games so I do believe I shall get it done.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Why Hello Assassin's Creed
With the release of Brotherhood only a month away I have finally decided to properly play Assassin's Creed and then move on to it's sequel all before Brotherhood drops. It's not too much to ask of myself however with a job interview on Tuesday which could lead to 20+ hours a week of work and new games like Medal of Honor arriving (came through the post today, big thank you to rover08 for that :D) I can see it becoming a problem due to a lack of free time. I'm also edgey on the fact that I havn't quite filmed enough tricks for my yearly skate video but that's another topic all together.
On to Assassin's Creed, man I love it! I am not too in to sandbox games like GTA, I tend to get bored running around killing random people but Assassin's Creed hasn't bored me yet. Yesterday before I went to bed I had a quick play with getting some of the combat achievements such as stealth killing 50 guards and 100 enemies defeated without dying. I thoroughly enjoyed getting those achievements as there isn't much else that's as satisfying as sneaking up behind an enemey and BAM, knife to the gut to a calm but cool walk away before anybody notices. I'll tell you this, if I was female I would want altair's babies.
But then again I am only on to my third assassination target and I've seen the weaknesses of the game shine through. It's so god damn repetitive..... It's shameful really that the bureau's in the game all look the same, the dialogue of citizens you save quickly repeats itself and the whole process towards getting ready to assassinate your target is the same. Now I'm sure everybody is going to tell me that the sequel isn't so stupid and fixes these problems, I really hope so as I can imagine I will have so much fun with it.
The achievements on Assassin's Creed have always been extremely off putting to me as friends such as adiash73 will know, I get extremely paranoid about the fact I'm going to miss something or do something wrong which will result in me messing up an achievement. Well now after playing it for a good few hours I can safely say I have a good enough understanding of the game to know what it takes to get all the achievements and I don't foresee any serious problems causing me hassle in the future. I think I should give an apology to tractakid for all the paranoid banter I gave him in chat the other day. I don't feel guilty though as I've had to read countless lines of him moaning and groaning as he plays the music rhythem games.
That's enough for now, I always manage to make my blog entries rather lengthy and I can imagine people can't be bothered to read it all haha. Now I've got to force myself to not get engrossed in Medal of Honor whilst I continue to grind out Assassin's Creed, until next time!
On to Assassin's Creed, man I love it! I am not too in to sandbox games like GTA, I tend to get bored running around killing random people but Assassin's Creed hasn't bored me yet. Yesterday before I went to bed I had a quick play with getting some of the combat achievements such as stealth killing 50 guards and 100 enemies defeated without dying. I thoroughly enjoyed getting those achievements as there isn't much else that's as satisfying as sneaking up behind an enemey and BAM, knife to the gut to a calm but cool walk away before anybody notices. I'll tell you this, if I was female I would want altair's babies.
But then again I am only on to my third assassination target and I've seen the weaknesses of the game shine through. It's so god damn repetitive..... It's shameful really that the bureau's in the game all look the same, the dialogue of citizens you save quickly repeats itself and the whole process towards getting ready to assassinate your target is the same. Now I'm sure everybody is going to tell me that the sequel isn't so stupid and fixes these problems, I really hope so as I can imagine I will have so much fun with it.
The achievements on Assassin's Creed have always been extremely off putting to me as friends such as adiash73 will know, I get extremely paranoid about the fact I'm going to miss something or do something wrong which will result in me messing up an achievement. Well now after playing it for a good few hours I can safely say I have a good enough understanding of the game to know what it takes to get all the achievements and I don't foresee any serious problems causing me hassle in the future. I think I should give an apology to tractakid for all the paranoid banter I gave him in chat the other day. I don't feel guilty though as I've had to read countless lines of him moaning and groaning as he plays the music rhythem games.
That's enough for now, I always manage to make my blog entries rather lengthy and I can imagine people can't be bothered to read it all haha. Now I've got to force myself to not get engrossed in Medal of Honor whilst I continue to grind out Assassin's Creed, until next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
