Remember a few weeks back I said I will get round to playing Star Wars, I just hadn't done because Top Spin 2 was my priority? Well the weekend just passed I stuck to my word and have now gone and got all achievements apart from 3 for 700 gamerscore on the game (excluding DLC). Those last 3 achievements can all be gotten if I can be bothered to complete the game again, this time on the hardest difficulty.
I don't want to rant on much about the game because I'll save that for one of my mini game completed reviews but what I do want to say is that my brother (gamertag is kizwiz) is inferior to me when it comes to achievements and gamerscore (well I just like to think that) and as he got 1000 on Force Unleashed I feel obliged to do so too.
I think I'm going to try soon as it's going to be hot today so I won't go skateboarding and with me sending off Battle for the Pacific and Transporter 3 I won't be renting anything if I was to also send Force Unleashed back. There's cheats I will probably use this time round, hopefully will make the game not quite so hard.....
Also I'm trying to get up to date with my mini Game Completed reviews but it seems like I just complete more games than I have time to talk about! I've got Fantastic Four, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Top Spin 2 and maybe Star Wars Force Unleashed to still write. I will hopefully start cracking on Fantastic Four later, I been lazy and not wrote one since Afro Samurai for like a week.
Monday, 29 June 2009
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Game Completed: Afro Samurai
So firstly this is a slight lie, I haven't properly completed Afro Samurai. It's unfortunately sitting on my gamercard at 965/1000 with 2 more achievements needed to be gotten. I wanted to trade in the game the next day though so I didn't have time to get the other 2 and as I was fed up with the game after completing it twice I didn't fancy going through it yet again for the last 2. But yeah, thought I would review it now otherwise I may never get to (and be fair I've pretty much completed it as the last 2 achievements are meaningless ones).
When my friend offered to sell this to me for £15 and I checked on CEX and saw I could get £15 back in cash for it I thought it was a win situation for me. I could play a game I was interested in (it did look cool with the blood and slicing body parts off), get some easy gamerscore and not have to pay a penny. First I do need to compliment the slicing precision on the game, it's not perfect (can be bloody hard to chop a hand off) but ultimately it works really well and was a new fresh idea I hadn't seen before which makes this game unique. There's a fair few achievements which involve you needing to chop off 100 heads or slice off toes and fingers at the same time, these can be slightly challenging at first but after a few hours of playing you learn to understand the best ways of slicing off the body part you want by adjusting to your enemies position and their fighting style.
The 5 achievements that are not fun which relate to body slicing are the ones where you need to do it in a game of poker. The character that's voiced by Samuel L Jackson will tempt you to play a game of poker, here you need to slice off a head, leg and hand on a certain type of enemy in order to get a flush and for the achievement to unlock. Doing this on the robots and peasant type enemies is quite easy as they are weak however the male and female ninjas and samurai are harder due to the lack of opportunities to play poker with them. I was unable to get 2 of these achievements on my first playthrough as I was not strong enough and not used enough to the game, on my second playthrough I was on the hard difficulty which therefore meant the enemies were much harder to fight against making the task very hard. This meant a 3rd playthrough was needed for me (on Easy difficulty again) and I could not be bothered to do that.
Final Verdict: - Afro Samurai also has the standard "Completed blabla level" and "Collect all 5 collectibles on blabla level" achievements but there's a few more fun random ones to obtain too. There's 2 involving slicing a bullet and a couple on accumulative totals (like 2000 gallons of blood shed and 2000 kills) which help to make this game an enjoyable achievement whoring experience. Hard mode can be tricky but patience will get you through it.
The 5 achievements that are not fun which relate to body slicing are the ones where you need to do it in a game of poker. The character that's voiced by Samuel L Jackson will tempt you to play a game of poker, here you need to slice off a head, leg and hand on a certain type of enemy in order to get a flush and for the achievement to unlock. Doing this on the robots and peasant type enemies is quite easy as they are weak however the male and female ninjas and samurai are harder due to the lack of opportunities to play poker with them. I was unable to get 2 of these achievements on my first playthrough as I was not strong enough and not used enough to the game, on my second playthrough I was on the hard difficulty which therefore meant the enemies were much harder to fight against making the task very hard. This meant a 3rd playthrough was needed for me (on Easy difficulty again) and I could not be bothered to do that.
Final Verdict: - Afro Samurai also has the standard "Completed blabla level" and "Collect all 5 collectibles on blabla level" achievements but there's a few more fun random ones to obtain too. There's 2 involving slicing a bullet and a couple on accumulative totals (like 2000 gallons of blood shed and 2000 kills) which help to make this game an enjoyable achievement whoring experience. Hard mode can be tricky but patience will get you through it.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
I Showed You Ai Sugiyama!
Who's Ai Sugiyama you ask? Well I'm not entirely sure myself as she may or may not be a real person (my sheer laziness will mean I won't ever find out the answer to that). What I do know is she is on Top Spin 2 and as I got to the Grand Slam final she was my opponent. Ranked 8th I wasn't too worried but was weary due to the fact I somehow hadn't come across her before whilst playing. You see I know who the top players are and each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, it's my job to exploit those weaknesses so I can win every game which has been the case so far.
Today I witnessed my first "defeat", I put quotation marks around the word defeat because after I lost I turned off my console in frustration knowing I would have to face her again next time I played. So why did I lose? I'm not entirely sure because I won the first set fine and then unfortunately lost the second set in tie break. I wasn't too bothered because this has happened a few times against the harder players and I always manage to win the third set. What happened here was a reverse of what usually happens, I lost the games I would usually win and won the games I would usually lose (so I'd lose when I served, I usually win).
I thought I understood the rules of tennis but I was unaware of what happened when it was a draw at the end of the third set. I was expecting to have a tie break again yet that wasn't the case as we kept on playing normally. After the 4 games were finished another 4 games began and yet again we both won 2 so it went to another 4 games (scores being 6:6 in this set). She won the first game and then won the second and to my disbelief had won the match. I was confused as to why because I was expecting to be able to win the 2 games afterwards to make it go 8:8, I was annoyed that I didn't get the chance to do this as the 2 games we played in this set of 4 were the ones I did bad at. So can anyone that knows Tennis well explain to me what happens? Hope you understand what I was getting at, might be confusing to understand so my apologies if so.
After 10 minute break I was bored and thought I'd try again. I'm the type of person that gets pretty pissed off when something doesn't go my way (I won't be childish, just put into a foul mood) so I was aware that if I lost again it would proper frustrate me. The game played out the same as the previous with me dominating the first set and the second coming down to a tie break. This time however I made full use of my advanced shots and defeated her! So I'm now ecstatic and once again in a good bright happy mood which is probably a good thing because my girlfriend wouldn't have enjoyed my company this evening otherwise.
That's the end of this blog post, I just wanted to document on my crazy losing match and ultimately I've managed to produce a blog post out of it. If Ai Suigyama for some unbelieveable reason manages to read this then my message to you is "muhahaha I beat you in Top Spin 2 :D".
Today I witnessed my first "defeat", I put quotation marks around the word defeat because after I lost I turned off my console in frustration knowing I would have to face her again next time I played. So why did I lose? I'm not entirely sure because I won the first set fine and then unfortunately lost the second set in tie break. I wasn't too bothered because this has happened a few times against the harder players and I always manage to win the third set. What happened here was a reverse of what usually happens, I lost the games I would usually win and won the games I would usually lose (so I'd lose when I served, I usually win).
I thought I understood the rules of tennis but I was unaware of what happened when it was a draw at the end of the third set. I was expecting to have a tie break again yet that wasn't the case as we kept on playing normally. After the 4 games were finished another 4 games began and yet again we both won 2 so it went to another 4 games (scores being 6:6 in this set). She won the first game and then won the second and to my disbelief had won the match. I was confused as to why because I was expecting to be able to win the 2 games afterwards to make it go 8:8, I was annoyed that I didn't get the chance to do this as the 2 games we played in this set of 4 were the ones I did bad at. So can anyone that knows Tennis well explain to me what happens? Hope you understand what I was getting at, might be confusing to understand so my apologies if so.
After 10 minute break I was bored and thought I'd try again. I'm the type of person that gets pretty pissed off when something doesn't go my way (I won't be childish, just put into a foul mood) so I was aware that if I lost again it would proper frustrate me. The game played out the same as the previous with me dominating the first set and the second coming down to a tie break. This time however I made full use of my advanced shots and defeated her! So I'm now ecstatic and once again in a good bright happy mood which is probably a good thing because my girlfriend wouldn't have enjoyed my company this evening otherwise.
That's the end of this blog post, I just wanted to document on my crazy losing match and ultimately I've managed to produce a blog post out of it. If Ai Suigyama for some unbelieveable reason manages to read this then my message to you is "muhahaha I beat you in Top Spin 2 :D".
Labels:
ai sugiyama,
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Friday, 19 June 2009
Renting From Lovefilm Again + Getting Sick of Top Spin 2
I was just about to start discussing how bored and sick I'm getting of Top Spin 2 but then I realised that I have forgotten to even mention the fact that I am now renting games again. Lovefilm is amazing, unfortunately for their business their system isn't which means rebels such as myself figured out that if we changed the last letter of our post code we will be eligible for another 3 month free trial with the postmen still being able to deliver the discs to us. I've done this and currently have Star Wars Force Unleashed and Top Spin 2 as well as having rented Saw 5 and the latest 3 Star Wars films.
I played Star Wars the day I got it and really liked it, thing was you spend like an hour on the prologue level getting easy achievements and this therefore killed me out. I haven't bothered to play it since, not because I don't like the game, mainly because at the time Tony Hawk's Proving Ground was my focus (I got my 1000 now by the way, review coming soon) and now it's Top Spin 2. I will get round to completing it, hopefully start playing once I'm done with Top Spin.
So here's the story with Top Spin. I was one of the unfortunate people not to get the 1000 Career Points achievement, I in fact fell miserably short and only got 760 points or something at the end of the 5th season. This is my fault however the developer can be blamed for not making it clear what career points were and not letting us check our current score at any point. If you haven't already played the game then you need to know that there's also another scoring system in the game, this is the score which I thought was career points and therefore considering I was over the 1000 I did a fair bit of simulating. Now back then when I first played Top Spin 2 (like 3 years ago) there were no Achievement Guides (that I was aware of) or Road Maps so I was just playing on my own initiative. I really wish I did do some research because now, 3 years later I am replaying the whole of career mode again, repeating everything I've done just to get the 1 last achievement worth 250 gamerscore.
I have discovered that I'm actually pretty darn good at the game, this could be due to the fact I've already completed Career mode before but nevertheless I have mastered all of the different types of shots and am storming through the career winning all competitions in site (including grand slams in my second season with low stats!). I'm getting bored of it though as I've played it for what feels like 10-15 hours over the past 3 days, trying to get it done as soon as possible and although the game is fun and I enjoy playing it's a tennis game, tennis games do get very repetitive for a gamer that doesn't really like the sport in general.
Either way I'm hopefully going to finish Season 3 tomorrow morning and then will look at my Career Points and will hopefully already have 1000 or near by thanks to me participating and winning grand slams so soon in my career. Don't think I got 200 points your supposed to get for becoming Rank 1 last year, that was a right bummer for me.
I played Star Wars the day I got it and really liked it, thing was you spend like an hour on the prologue level getting easy achievements and this therefore killed me out. I haven't bothered to play it since, not because I don't like the game, mainly because at the time Tony Hawk's Proving Ground was my focus (I got my 1000 now by the way, review coming soon) and now it's Top Spin 2. I will get round to completing it, hopefully start playing once I'm done with Top Spin.
So here's the story with Top Spin. I was one of the unfortunate people not to get the 1000 Career Points achievement, I in fact fell miserably short and only got 760 points or something at the end of the 5th season. This is my fault however the developer can be blamed for not making it clear what career points were and not letting us check our current score at any point. If you haven't already played the game then you need to know that there's also another scoring system in the game, this is the score which I thought was career points and therefore considering I was over the 1000 I did a fair bit of simulating. Now back then when I first played Top Spin 2 (like 3 years ago) there were no Achievement Guides (that I was aware of) or Road Maps so I was just playing on my own initiative. I really wish I did do some research because now, 3 years later I am replaying the whole of career mode again, repeating everything I've done just to get the 1 last achievement worth 250 gamerscore.
I have discovered that I'm actually pretty darn good at the game, this could be due to the fact I've already completed Career mode before but nevertheless I have mastered all of the different types of shots and am storming through the career winning all competitions in site (including grand slams in my second season with low stats!). I'm getting bored of it though as I've played it for what feels like 10-15 hours over the past 3 days, trying to get it done as soon as possible and although the game is fun and I enjoy playing it's a tennis game, tennis games do get very repetitive for a gamer that doesn't really like the sport in general.
Either way I'm hopefully going to finish Season 3 tomorrow morning and then will look at my Career Points and will hopefully already have 1000 or near by thanks to me participating and winning grand slams so soon in my career. Don't think I got 200 points your supposed to get for becoming Rank 1 last year, that was a right bummer for me.
Thursday, 18 June 2009
Game Completed: Pac-Man Championship Edition
Like Feeding Frenzy (the last game I completed) I also got this on disc with 4 other arcade games for £4. That's enough for an intro, on to the game.
I was now around back when Pacman was first created I believe however I have managed to grow up playing it due to it's popularity. I'm yet to play the original on the 360's Arcade but I have gone and completed MS Pacman which I enjoyed. Championship Edition is definitely a brilliant remake of the classic, adding various different game modes to spice up the gameplay a bit. It works brilliantly as does the achievements which involve you needing to play through every mode (ranging from having tinted light so it's hard to see to changing arenas and more) as well as eating the key and crown which crop up during the game and eating 8 ghosts in succession. The other two achievements are for getting a high score of 200,000 and 400,000 in any game mode you wish. I was able to get 200K quite easily but 400 was confusing me. After 30 minutes of trying to work out the best way to get points I finally decided that simply trying to eat lots of ghosts for 3200 points each isn't the best way, it's in fact staying a live so every pellet you eat is worth 50 points. When I put my theory to the test it worked and I was delighted to see the achievement pop up!
Final Verdict: - If you like Pacman then you'll be sure to like this game as it improves on the classics and gives it much more replayability. It's good on the gamerscore as long as you stay motivated long enough to get the hang of it (as in learn how to react when ghosts are nearby so you don't get caught). Try this out, it's 200 gamerscore than can be gotten in an hour and is fun challenge in the process.
Final Verdict: - If you like Pacman then you'll be sure to like this game as it improves on the classics and gives it much more replayability. It's good on the gamerscore as long as you stay motivated long enough to get the hang of it (as in learn how to react when ghosts are nearby so you don't get caught). Try this out, it's 200 gamerscore than can be gotten in an hour and is fun challenge in the process.
Friday, 12 June 2009
After 5 Hours of Boosting I Have My Achievement
The 1000 online games achievement is quite a bitch in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. I have played on my own (friend left his profile on and left me to it) for the past 5 hours and have successfully completed 700 more games, added to the 300 I already had to get me 1000 and achievement unlocked. I'm surprised I calculated when I would reach 1000 so well, the achievement unlocked when my hit counter was at 1001, meaning I had over judged it.
However I'm not quite so sure as I did play games online when the game first came out which should surely count towards the total. Also my friend (VolcomCR) also should have gotten the achievement as he's been with me the whole time I've boosted online. I did an extra 22 matches after I got the achievement but he still didn't, this leads me to conclude that you either have to host or win the matches for them to count (I always hosted and always won).
Either way I'm glad my ordeal is over, just need to arrange to get 5 of us together to get the Online Domination achievement now. And then have to find 100 more cash spots (got 30 so far, I been tracking) and then it's mod spots and gaps and I'm done! Yesterday I got the other achievement I needed which was All Pro, this was frustrating at times thanks to how crap the game is (as in the developers mess up a goal to make it impossible the way it's supposed to be done) but it wasn't too bad in the end.
In other news Star Wars Force Unleashed arrived through my letterbox this morning from Lovefilm and I was every so pleased. I didn't play much as I spent like an hour grinding achievements in the prologue level with Vader but I do look forward to playing it properly soon as the storyline seems to be great!
However I'm not quite so sure as I did play games online when the game first came out which should surely count towards the total. Also my friend (VolcomCR) also should have gotten the achievement as he's been with me the whole time I've boosted online. I did an extra 22 matches after I got the achievement but he still didn't, this leads me to conclude that you either have to host or win the matches for them to count (I always hosted and always won).
Either way I'm glad my ordeal is over, just need to arrange to get 5 of us together to get the Online Domination achievement now. And then have to find 100 more cash spots (got 30 so far, I been tracking) and then it's mod spots and gaps and I'm done! Yesterday I got the other achievement I needed which was All Pro, this was frustrating at times thanks to how crap the game is (as in the developers mess up a goal to make it impossible the way it's supposed to be done) but it wasn't too bad in the end.
In other news Star Wars Force Unleashed arrived through my letterbox this morning from Lovefilm and I was every so pleased. I didn't play much as I spent like an hour grinding achievements in the prologue level with Vader but I do look forward to playing it properly soon as the storyline seems to be great!
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
I'm Actually Going To 1000 Tony Hawk's Proving Ground!!!!
So when I finally reached Rank 1 on Project 8 after 500 to 1000 times of trying Animal Chin goal (have to combo across the entire world) I was over the moon, thinking I had accomplished the impossible. Proving Ground was Project 8 all over again but had been stepped up a notch once again as there is now 6 specific achievements regarding you doing all of them type of goals in Sick. These are:
Classic: - Old school where you need to do all 10 objectives in 2 minutes
Hawk-Man: - Have to follow a line in one combo doing specific moves
Line: - Must skate on every obstacle that turns green whilst getting a few million points
Skill: - These vary but you need to reach the Sick marker, may be doing a manual for ages in one combo to trying to launch yourself really far to get distance
Film: - Need to do a crazy trick over an obstacle or something in one combo
Photo: - Same as film but now have to push in right stick to take a photo mid-air
Through commitment and dedication I have now managed to get sick in every one of those goals in the above 6 categories. It's taken probably around 50 hours to do but I'm glad, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is 10th on TrueAchievements when it comes to the amount of gamerscore it has (6,254 as I type this) and should be higher as new games such as Fuel and Red Faction are there currently due to the fact people haven't had enough time to play them.
I'm not going to quote a comment I left on Youtube to the following vid. This is the video I was using to help me get Sick grade on Classic in the Air and Space Museum and took me 5 hours to do. This is due to it being ridicolously hard to land in a Natas spin on the tip of that Rocket, 80% of the time I would mis judge my speed and Ollie and not land on it, thus meaning I needed to restart. There are plenty of other niggles in the line the person does in the video (which I mimicked) such as the game not always registering the fact you did a triple backflip and not being able to land in the hole doing a Indy 900 as it's hard to judge. So finally after 5 hours I did it and unlocked the last of the sick achievements, read below to see how I finished off the goal in style
"Wow I've finally done this after 5 hours or so of trying and I did it in style!
The triple backflip also didn't register for me and I was going to give up but then decided to carry on for the heck of it. After getting the last letter for skate I thought I'd try go back to the craters in one combo (ran out of time) and I managed to Natas both computer things again and then do a triple backflip without aggro kick to get me speed. God I'm happy!!!"
So due to the game glitching I had to go back and do the triple backflip again which I amazingly managed to do in one combo.
So what achievements do I have left to do?
With just 6 achievements left and the hard ones out of the way I am almost certain to get the full thousand gamerscore in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. The 6 remaining achievements and how/when I will get them can be seen below.
All Gaps: - This is the third time in a row an achievement has been added for getting all gaps. I did it in American Wasteland and Project 8 so when I can be bothered I'll be sure to do it again but for Proving Ground
Cashtastic: - Am slightly confused about this achievement. You need to find all cash points throughout the game but I believe they respawn everytime you restart the game. I think this will benefit me I will follow a guide to get all 130+ of them in one playthrough.
All Pro: - I may have got 6 on all Street missions but there's still Career type goals I need to go back to and upgrade a few goals from AM to Pro. There's 25 or so needed to be done, I'll enjoy this as it's been ages since I played the core storyline of the game.
1000 online games played.: - This is not fun. After boosting for a few hours I've currently played 300+ online games. Me and my friend shall continue to boost.
5 out of 5! Online Domination.: - Problem with this achievement is that you need 5 people all to be in the game and for you to win all 5 rounds in a game. Chance of doing this legit is extremely slim so I need to gather some people together in order to boost this. Will be done in minutes though as rounds can be completed in 10 seconds.
Mod All Spots (secret): - A friend tells me this can be done in 20 minutes by searching the whole world for the hammer icon. Have put off doing this as I don't like having to find things.
And that's that. Getting thousand in this game is going to be fantastic. Having 1000 in the other 2 Tony Hawk games and Skate 1 and 2 means I have 1000 gamerscore in all the other skateboarding games on the console, Proving Ground is the last one. It is going to be conquered, eventually.... soon! :D
Classic: - Old school where you need to do all 10 objectives in 2 minutes
Hawk-Man: - Have to follow a line in one combo doing specific moves
Line: - Must skate on every obstacle that turns green whilst getting a few million points
Skill: - These vary but you need to reach the Sick marker, may be doing a manual for ages in one combo to trying to launch yourself really far to get distance
Film: - Need to do a crazy trick over an obstacle or something in one combo
Photo: - Same as film but now have to push in right stick to take a photo mid-air
Through commitment and dedication I have now managed to get sick in every one of those goals in the above 6 categories. It's taken probably around 50 hours to do but I'm glad, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is 10th on TrueAchievements when it comes to the amount of gamerscore it has (6,254 as I type this) and should be higher as new games such as Fuel and Red Faction are there currently due to the fact people haven't had enough time to play them.
I'm not going to quote a comment I left on Youtube to the following vid. This is the video I was using to help me get Sick grade on Classic in the Air and Space Museum and took me 5 hours to do. This is due to it being ridicolously hard to land in a Natas spin on the tip of that Rocket, 80% of the time I would mis judge my speed and Ollie and not land on it, thus meaning I needed to restart. There are plenty of other niggles in the line the person does in the video (which I mimicked) such as the game not always registering the fact you did a triple backflip and not being able to land in the hole doing a Indy 900 as it's hard to judge. So finally after 5 hours I did it and unlocked the last of the sick achievements, read below to see how I finished off the goal in style
"Wow I've finally done this after 5 hours or so of trying and I did it in style!
The triple backflip also didn't register for me and I was going to give up but then decided to carry on for the heck of it. After getting the last letter for skate I thought I'd try go back to the craters in one combo (ran out of time) and I managed to Natas both computer things again and then do a triple backflip without aggro kick to get me speed. God I'm happy!!!"
So due to the game glitching I had to go back and do the triple backflip again which I amazingly managed to do in one combo.
So what achievements do I have left to do?
With just 6 achievements left and the hard ones out of the way I am almost certain to get the full thousand gamerscore in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. The 6 remaining achievements and how/when I will get them can be seen below.
All Gaps: - This is the third time in a row an achievement has been added for getting all gaps. I did it in American Wasteland and Project 8 so when I can be bothered I'll be sure to do it again but for Proving Ground
Cashtastic: - Am slightly confused about this achievement. You need to find all cash points throughout the game but I believe they respawn everytime you restart the game. I think this will benefit me I will follow a guide to get all 130+ of them in one playthrough.
All Pro: - I may have got 6 on all Street missions but there's still Career type goals I need to go back to and upgrade a few goals from AM to Pro. There's 25 or so needed to be done, I'll enjoy this as it's been ages since I played the core storyline of the game.
1000 online games played.: - This is not fun. After boosting for a few hours I've currently played 300+ online games. Me and my friend shall continue to boost.
5 out of 5! Online Domination.: - Problem with this achievement is that you need 5 people all to be in the game and for you to win all 5 rounds in a game. Chance of doing this legit is extremely slim so I need to gather some people together in order to boost this. Will be done in minutes though as rounds can be completed in 10 seconds.
Mod All Spots (secret): - A friend tells me this can be done in 20 minutes by searching the whole world for the hammer icon. Have put off doing this as I don't like having to find things.
And that's that. Getting thousand in this game is going to be fantastic. Having 1000 in the other 2 Tony Hawk games and Skate 1 and 2 means I have 1000 gamerscore in all the other skateboarding games on the console, Proving Ground is the last one. It is going to be conquered, eventually.... soon! :D
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