Gamerscore Update: 04/10/10

It has been a long time since I did one of these. That was mainly due to PAX and then moving got in the way. Also, I didn't play anything 360-wise last week so the dry spell just kept piling up. I did get a bunch this week though.

Dead Rising 2
This was the clear winner this week with 400 points achieved in it. Though this may not seem like a ton, especially considering the amount of time I put into it, compared to most people with the game - it's a lot. On my friends list, I don't think anyone else have even broke 200. I really enjoyed it, and though it is an open world game, almost every achievement is for doing something non-story related. Oh and also, every achievement is 20 so that was annoying.

Quantum Theory
This game sucks and I have no idea how the points are because I only got 15 in it and didn't care to spend any more time with it.

Gamerscore Update: 29/08/10

This week was mainly downloadable games and the total stands at 74 585.

Shank
This was an overall good game and, though I'm not done the main campaign, the achievements are coming in quite regularly. The majority of them are from beating each of the single player bosses so I'll get those at some points. I currently have 80 of them and since there's one for 1000 kills and beating it on hard, I'm pretty sure I could S-rank this game.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game
I am loving this game and the fact that the achievements are quite easy. I've beaten it three times already and plan to do it another two times to wrap up one more of the achievements. I currently have 170 points in it.

Monopoly
This is where the points really came rolling in this week. I have 480 points in it so far and that was around five hours of play. I should note that three of these hours I had another TV on so I could watch something else because Monopoly is SLOW. Most of the points seem relatively easy, and considering all of this game seems to be pure chance, I think I can get another hundred or so just by having it on in the background. I don't plan to spend too much more time with it however.

Gamerscore Update 21/08/10

This week was good for points. I picked up several games since last weekend and earned around 1 300 points.

Gamerscore total is at 73 455.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
This was the big release this week and though I ran through it twice (once alone and again in coop) I can't bring myself to like it. I got 545 points out of it and almost all of it is from the main campaign. I don't have much interest in the multiplayer but I may jump into it for a few more achievements.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
This was the final release in the 2010 Summer of Arcade and it is really fun. I only got Limbo and this from the series this year so it wasn't the best. I got 175 points in this game, missing only one of the achievements. The last one is collecting all the relics, artifacts and weapons so it will definitely take some time.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
This was the game that got me the most points this week. I got 595 points in the game and I'm on the fourth level out of the five in total. Most of them come from killing a certain number of people in different ways. I'm quite enjoying it and I really like Raven Software. I plan to finish it which will get me another 100 points or so.

Singularity
I only got another 30 points in this. I finished up some multiplayer stuff and decided against doing a play through on hard. I had to move on to other games.

Bioshock 2
I got 10 points in this. I only played about 15 minutes so I can't really talk about it yet.

Gamerscore Update: 16/08/10

This week was two games mostly, however there was an extensive amount played of both of these.

Total gamerscore stands at: 72 100

Singularity
I finished this game and enjoyed it vastly. I currently have 765 points in it. What really surprised me is how much I enjoyed the multiplayer as well. I was content with just running through it once and being done with it there but I heard the online was good so I gave it a chance. I really like it. So much in fact that I have almost all the class-specific achievements for the multiplayer. I have a couple more online ones to get and I think I'll just back in for a run on hard to get a few more. I might even S-rank this game.

Split/Second
This was a new one to me and I ran through all of it in about three days. Granted these days consisted of about 4-6 hours of gameplay straight. I got 455 points in the game and I feel I'm done with it. Like the reviews have said, it puts it best foot forward early and the AI cheats a TON. With that, there aren't many online achievements to keep me staying with it. The main ones are reaching certain ranks but with the number of games I played and where I ended up in the rankings - that's more time than I want to commit.

Gamerscore Update: 07/08/10

Alright, another week has gone by and another week's worth of points has been gained.

Current total is 70 980. This is about 400 points more than last time, let's see where those came from.

Clash of the Titans
This game isn't that great for points, by finishing the game I got 365 points. This was around eight hours of play - and repetitive and terrible play at that. Most of the points were for just completing each of the chapters and a few were for getting some quick time events perfect a few times. Getting any more points would require some grinding with the combat. Considering that 99% of the game is repetitive combat, I couldn't come to do any more.

Singularity
I only have 100 points in this so far. The majority of them seem like weapon based ones, specifically were you need a certain number of kills with each. I'm definitely enjoying my time with it so far. I also hear the multiplayer is quite fun so I'll definitely check that out at some points.

Tales of Vesperia
I finally got back into this never ending RPG. Just as fun as I remember but I still have a ton of stuff left to do in it. As it is an RPG, the points are terrible, I only got 30 since I got back into it and that was around 12 hours of game play.

Gamerscore Update: 31/07/10

It's been a while since I've done one of these, then again it's been a while since I used this site. All is changing and change is good (not really).

So the current total is 70 535.

Red Dead Redemption
I finally got around to making my way through the main campaign for this. I really didn't get into it back when it first was released but with all the positive talk I kept hearing about it, I figured it needed a second chance. My opinion changed significantly but it's still just not my game. Open world games tend to turn me off a bit. It should say something when I tell you I never once did anything apart from story missions. This shows why I only have 320 points in the game which, compared to the time I put into the game, isn't that much. The ending is great though.

The Darkness
This came from my run of the $2.50 games at Block Buster and sat in between finishing Red Dead and waiting for Clash to come out. It's an interesting game, the darkness powers definitely set it apart from other first person shooters. I'm enjoying it for the most part; my only grievance is the lack of a navigation system. I can't tell you how many times I got utterly lost. As for the points, I have 235 of them which, once again, isn't a lot for the time put it. I do like the achievements though since the majority can be collected just through playing the game normally. I can see a lot of them unlocking closer to the end though since I have to get a certain amount of kills with each power for the most part.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate
I rented this game, since it's around three hours long. I already played this game on the PS3 since I picked it up from Block Buster for $2.50 and felt that I could get some easy points and fast on the 360. I was right. I have 485 of them and that's just from one run through on normal. I'm not sure if I'll go through it one more time on hard, I probably should since that will get me another 300 or so. It doesn't seem like a hard S rank at all.

Alan Wake
I mention this because I gained around 200 from it just from playing through The Signal DLC. That's the only reason I went back to the game, I had already finished it. I enjoy the DLC, found it pretty solid - especially for being a free download. It's much harder than the standard game so getting the two collectables achievements got really frustrating. Overall, good amount of points for the hour or so I put in.

Clash of the Titans
I don't really have much to say about this yet, I haven't played that much. I'm maybe an hour or so in and have around 90 points. A lot of them seem like they'll take a bit, we'll have to see.

Fallout 3 (PC)
I left this one for last since it's the one that got me the most. As I'm sure any achievement hunter knows, the points in this game are mad easy since you can just type in an unlock code for everyone; this includes the DLC. So it might be a little dirty but it got me 1 550 points in about three minutes.

I miss these

Gamerscore Update: 19/08/09

LOTS has happened in the way of achievement points and me in the last two weeks. I finished playing all of the games from my last update and got a whole bunch of new ones for this time. I'll run through these in the order I played them.

Armored Core 4
This game was awful and has one of the worst user interfaces I have ever seen in a game. So bad in fact that I had to turn off my game due to it and, thinking it auto saved after a few of the missions I had done, lots everything I had done. So I got 20 points. That is all.

Shellshock 2
This game is pretty dumb but I did get a decent amount of points for the hour or so I played. I got 11 for 175 points by going through the first three missions. A lot of them are from getting a certain number of kills without reloading specific guns. You also get a massive 40 point achievement for beating a level without dying. And that's pretty easy to obtain by going through the first mission on easy. Overall I am never going back to that game, I didn't enjoy it.

Ninja Gaiden 2
This game is mad hard, MAD hard. I got 20 points (3 achievements) for starting up the second level and playing through that. I never want to play this game again.

Bioshock
This is the big one. I finally sat down with a friend and made my way from the start to the end of this game. It actually gets a lot less creepy as you proceed through the game. Playing on easy also makes it that much easier since you will never die. I got a total of 47 of the 51 achievements, which is 900 of the possible 1100 points. Overall this was a good game that has some easy, easy points.

Rainbow Six Vegas
So since I made my way through the second game, it only makes sense to try the first one. I don't like the first Rainbow Six Vegas. There is not enough checkpoints. I got fed up by playing the same part over and over, getting further and further each time but still dying from like two hits and ending up at the same check point. You die far too easily. The second game was MUCH better than this. I got 6 achievements for 125 points.

Splinter Cell Double Agent
I'm not a Splinter Cell fan, never have been. I thought I should give one a try and this confirmed it. When it comes to stealth games, it's Metal Gear Solid or nothing. So I got 3 achievements for doing the two training missions and completing the first level. This got me 80 points and that's all I plan to get.

Tales of Vesperia
Once again I sat down and got a good chunk of this game done. I think I got around 5-10 hours more into that game. It never ends; but I realize that I enjoy its length. It's a great game with so much in it to do. I got 5 achievements this time for 75 points. This was mainly from clearing out all the Giganto Monsters and then a few for normal story bosses. The last 10 point achievement was from earning over 100 000 chips from gambling. I recommend doing this because their "poker" game is mad easy. I bet 500 chips in one hand and finished with over 700 000. A good way to get Gald is to then buy some of the items with your chips and go sell them. Then repeat.

Shadow Complex
This is the latest game I've played. It came out today and I've spent around two hours on it so far. I've gotten 4 achievements for 55 points but I am no where near finishing the game. I plan to get at least 5 more of the achievements to get and I'll try for the others depending on how long they take me. The game is great and is definitely worth the 1200 Microsoft Points.

Gamerscore Update: 19/07/09

This week didn't have much in terms of the 360 for me. Most of my time was spent finishing The Conduit and getting my review up. However, I did receive some DLC codes in my email yesterday and have been doing a bit more.

Tales of Vesperia
As my quest to finish this game never seems to end, I did earn a significant amount of points in it this week. Normally I would obtain around five points for two hours of work, however this week 205. I did this by finally beating the second main boss of the game, that alone got me 150 points. Vesperia awards huge achievements for each significant boss you beat. I also got five points for beating this boss and doing the secret mission involved with that battle. Lastly, I got the 50 point achievement for uncovering every piece of the game. This was annoying since the area I was missing was very small and took a great deal of time just staring at the map looking for blank areas. I currently have 23 out of 50 of the achievements - 445 of 1000.

Gears of War 2
I received a download code yesterday for the All Fronts Collection for review purposes. This gave me the Flashback Map Pack (which I already had), the Combustible Map Pack, the Snow Blind Map Pack and the new Dark Corners Map Pack and deleted scene. So as you can see, many achievement possibilities have opened themselves to me. Currently I have gotten eight achievements - 150 points - since downloading the content and have quite a bit more I can get relatively easily. I did all the "play a multiplayer match on each stage" achievement and now need to find some people to go through Horde mode a bunch of times with me. I have 53 out of the 79 possible achievements which translates to 795 out of 1750.

Overall Gamerscore: 40 570

Tip for 3 Army of Two achievements

For anyone who has Army of Two or plans to play it in the future on the 360, here's a tip for getting the 3 money based achievements.

Whenever you buy something that relates to an achievement, buy them all at once and when the achievement unlocks turn your system off. This way you will have the achievement and your money back.

This works for the two achievements: Say Hello to my Little Friends and Man of Many Masks. By doing this, you can buy everything you need and then turn the machine off so that your money is intact as you work towards If I Were a Rich Man.

Gamerscore Update: 05/07/09

My weekly gamerscore update is now returning from a long hiatus. In these I will talk about the latest games I've been getting some Xbox 360 Achievement Points in. Though I haven't done one of these in a while, I still only plan to talk about the previous week (in other words: I won't be recapping everything since my last update).

The picture I'll have at the top of each of these posts will be from the game I either enjoyed the most of collected the most points from.

This week will be reletively short since I was away for most of it and have only gotten about two days worth of play time in. Expect a much longer post next time.

One thing I would like to note is that I finally broke the 40k mark!

Army of Two
I have achieved 20 of the 47 achievements in this game so far which has gotten me 500 out of the total 1250 points in the game. In no means will I even attempt getting the 100% on this game. This is partially due to the requirement of buying some DLC but mainly because this game isn't really that fun. With that said, playing through it was a pain and I put far too much time into this game for what I got back. I beat it last night (I guess technically it was this morning) and now I plan to repeat the first two minutes of mission five another twelve times so I can easily obtain $1 000 000. Once I'm done, I will have the last achievement that I am playing for and I will be done.

Fable 2
I have gotten 41 of the 66 possible achievements which translates to 850 out of 1350 points. All of these are from the main quest and side missions found in the main game. However, I recently bought Knothole Island when it went on sale this week and that is why I have returned to this game.

My first impressions of the island is that I will be done it pretty quickly. I spent about an hour to two o with it and I already have two out of three of the main missions done. I'm assuming there is more to do afterwards since this DLC pack usually retains for 800 MS points. We shall see.

I'm not sure if I will be going for all three of the possible Knothole Island achievements; I am going for the main one for sure. So there will be a definite increase of 50 points for me. I might try for the book collecting as well, haven't quite decided.

Scene It? Box Office Smash!
I only put this in yesterday to play when I had some company over and luckily I got 40 points from it. I now have 31 out of 58 of the achievements - 560 out of 1250 of the points.

That was all for this weekend. Coming soon I plan to, as always, continue on the everlasting quest that is Tales of Vesperia. I also will finally claw my way through Bioshock. And if I enjoy Knothole Island, I may pick up the See the Future pack.

Overall Gamerscore: 40 065

Some old stuff returns

Starting next week I plan to once again start up my xbox 360 achievement point updates -- titled Gamerscore Update.

I used to do this a year or so ago. They ran in weekly installsments and consisted of me talking about what 360 games I was playing and how many points I got out of them. For some games I would go in depth on how to obtain certain achievements and some easy ways to get others.

I started these off as a text only write-up. From there I moved into a video version and only ever made a few of these. I may do them again as video if I feel like it. Text is easier but video is more fun. Mabye I will do both.

I may also add in my thoughts and general opinions about non-360 games. This would cause it to be more blog like and give me a way to better put out what I'm thinking about what I am currently playing. We shall see how this turns out.

Points updates?

I've been thinking about doing my points updates like I did a few times a while back. I can either do the written version or the video one. If I were to start these up again, my preference would be the written one. What do you guys think? Should I do them again?

PS. This is pretty cool.

Game Pass

So I will be continuing my list of games from 2008 this week, but I took a break as I got hold of a free Blockbusters Game Pass. It came in the Entertainment pack for this year which runs for $20, so if you want a Game Pass for $10 cheaper than normal, go grab one. Keep in mind that this specific coupon expires on the 31st of January.

So as I have a break off from my usual going-ons, I thought now would be the perfect time. I plan to go in each day to get a new game and see how many achievement points I can earn by the time this is up. I'll update this post each day with the previous day's/game's collection.

If anyone has any questions about how to earn some of the achievements I got from these games, let me know.

Madden NFL 09: 695
Kung Fu Panda: 210
The Bourne Conspiracy: 240
Mirror's Edge: 690
NFS: Undercover: 435
Galaga Legions: 10
Dig Dug: 185
Ms. Pac-Man: 185
Pac-Man: 130
Pac-Man: C.E.: 110
Xevious: 10
New Rally-X: 125
Galaga: 85
Mr. Driller Online: 30
Lego Batman: 285
Sonic Unleashed: 85
Iron Man: 690
Tomb Raider: Underworld: 55
Need for Speed: Pro Street: 50
Skate 2: 40
Naruto The Broken Bond: 230
*Gears of War 2: 20
Ninja Gaiden 2: 55
Mortal Kombat vs. DCU: 350
Saints Row 2: 60
Beijing 2008: 50
Afro Samurai: 445
*Rock Band 2: 50
PotC: At World's End: 275
LotR: Conquest: 190
Banjo Kazooie: N&B: 260
Devil May Cry 4: 30
The Incredible Hulk: 75
Jumper: 750
Dark Sector: 30
Shadowrun: 225
Fallout 3: 40
*Gears of War: 40
Looney tunes: AA: 90

Final Count: 7 610

*Not from the game pass, but I did get more achievements in it.

This is retarded

Looking up the Midnight Club: Los Angeles achievements, I came across this.

	T-Mobile myFaves	10
	Join an online game with 5 of your friends. Stay Connected with MyFaves from T-Mobile.

This is just dumb. Have we really gotten to a point where Rockstar needs to sell the "achievements space" they have? Last time I checked, GTA4 was doing okay. Also it should note that the image for this achievement is indeed the T-Mobile icon.

I really hope no one actually decides they need to get a new cell phone plan because Midnight Club: LA told them to.

PS.

I have a french manual for Midnight Club: LA that doesn't actually fit in the box. Does anyone want it?

Gamerscore Update 04/08/08

Points you say? I have points, in fact I have a good chunk of points. How many you say? 17 615! So I think that's another like 1200 or more maybe since last update. This week was good, played (and finished) Bionicle Heroes, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, Tenchu Z and the first bit of Kameo.

So no, I'm not getting into Bionicle again, I've talked about that game and played it more than anyone should have. I finished it, got 880 in it and will go back for another easy 20. Don't buy it.

Next.

Geometry Wars 2 came out this week, as some of you probably know, I stayed up for it. First time I've done that for an XBLA game, ended up grabbing it at about 2am my time. This game is way fun and I totally recommend it for anyone, I'll probably be writing up the review of it in a few minutes, or sometime tomorrow night. It's deffinitly worth the 800 points ($10 US) that you'd need to spend on it and if you bought the first one for half the price, your getting six times the content. Though no one on my friends list has it yet so the huge focus it has on leaders boards is so far wasted on me, which sucks. I have 130 of the 200 points in it, they're not as hard as the first games and I think they're spread nicely between the six modes it has. Achievement wise its ok and game wise it's great (but you'll hear more on this later in my review).

So ya I got Tenchu Z, it was $5 so shut up. This game is crazy broken but I did have some fun moments when going in for the super ninja kills or whatever they're called. You can get around two thirds the achievements just by going through career, that's what I did since getting the best rating on all 50 missions seems stupid to me. Getting a few wouldn't be too hard, I just don't want to play that game anymore. I have 590 points in it and am good with that. Achievement wise it's ok and game wise it's bad.

Kameo I can't talk about to much since I just started. I understand you can get a good chunk of the points by going through the game. The game I hear is less than ten hours long, so those two factors fit together nicely. Like I said, just started, so look for more on this in the next gamerscore update.

In my video blog thing, which needs a better name, or not - whatever, I said I might stop doing this and just talk about it on that instead. I think Ive decided that I will since for the games I just listed off in this one, I wanted to get into more detail on them and talk about them more. When filming myself, I can talk more so that seems to be a good idea. I also thought I would do the video blog maybe every thursday night or friday night, or both. I guess look forward to that?

Gamerscore Update 27/07/08

Let's talk about what matters, let's talk about points. So this was another okay week for achievements and me. I got around 1200 or so since my last update here. I played some Crackdown, Viva Pinata, and a little Gears of War and Bionicle Heroes.

Crackdown really surprised me. It's an extremely sandbox game (like GTA for example) and I usually don't enjoy those to much. I even didn't find Bully all that much fun after the first chapter, but Crackdown surprised me because I really enjoyed it. I put it in and finished it two days later, twice. I went through it on single player and then on co op. I just found that even the annoying little stuff, like collecting orbs, had a fun element to it that I could see myself doing for a long time. The co op mode turned out really easy because me and my friend had our guys almost completely beefed up so we flew through the whole thing in 3-4 hours. Though the co op is incredibly broken and if it weren't so, we probably could have done it in about 2. Achievement wise I'd say its a good, some of them are really hard to get and require alot of time, but I ended 640 points or 34/50 of the achievements in only two days of play. Game wise it's also gonna be a good, the co op being broken just really annoyed me.

Next was Viva Pinata, I found it used at a local Blockbuster for $8 (later I found another local blockbuster was selling it new for $8, but whatever). I had already gone through quite a bit of this game getting about 500/600 points from it but I realised it's one of my favorite games on the 360 and I really should own it. Currently I have 960 points in it which is 48/50. I recommend it to everyone. Anyways, I ended up getting about 400 or 300 more in the last couple days because I decided I wanted to get them all. At this time I'm only missing 2 of the achievements, which are the having 100 000 coins at once and the 50 hours of play. I plan to finish these two in the next week. Achievement wise it's somewhere between a good and a meh, some of the achievements are real easy, such as name a pinata, while some of them are really hard/time consuming. Game wise it gets a great.

I only touched Bionicle Heroes for a few minutes this week since I loaned it to a friend, but I got probably another 80 in that. Bionicle heroes is way easy for points since each level you'll get at least 40 if you plan it out. And each level takes less than 10 minutes. So I'll be finishing that up this week. Achievement wise I give it a good, the achievements come in big quantities (20 each) while it only takes a couple hours to get around 800 of them. Game wise it's awful, but I got it for $5.

Gears of War I never really got into. I'm not to big into the shooter genre. So I played it for a few minutes this week. Got 2 achievements, finishing the tutorial level and playing an online ranked game. I'll probably go back and give it a second shot by playing through the first act. I doubt I'll be all into even after that though. No take on the achievements and game for this one since I didn't play enough so it wouldnt be fair.

- opening quote by Jeff Gerstmann

Gamerscore Update 20/07/08

I used to do these little articles on what I have been playing on my 360 lately and I would talk specifically about my Achievement Points total, so my Gamerscore. I always enjoyed doing them and thought I would start up again.

So let's look back about one week or so at what I've been playing. Total stands at 15 135, Chris hasn't noticed noticed that I'm only 5 points behind him yet. So I played Lost Via Domus, The Orange Box, Ninety Nine Nights and DBZ Burst Limit. I think these gave me somewhere around 1500 or so since I started playing this week.

Let's get into Lost then. I'm a fan of the show, I guess this is loosely based around the show. Ok, it's like fan fiction for Lost. It basically revolves around a new guy (never in the show) who has to get his memory back. It's shows some key parts to the show but also adds some stuff, I wont ruin anything for anyone who cares about the show...or this game? My overall take on it was meh, I didn't really enjoy playing it and found it incredibly boring. I kept thinking to myself that this would have worked much better as one of those like click adventures that are on the computer alot. Anyways points wise - incredibly easy to get full 1000, so I did. There really isn't any hard ones there so it's worth a pick up if just for points only, other wise, I wouldn't recommend it, it's to boring.

Once again I've gone back to The Orange Box, if you've been following my currently playing games then you'll know I've gone back to this game over and over and over. I finally beat everything in that game. I got 84/99 of the achievements that game offers which has gotten me 705 points. This game is great, every part of it. Though near the end of episode 2, which was the last thing I needed to do, I just got really tired of it and wanted it to end. I've played that game so much now. It's not good at all for points, everything is like 5 or 10 at max, you'll only get anywhere for actually finishing stuff. So I can't recommend it on the points side, but on the actual gameside then yes, very good, go get it.

Ninety Nine Nights is another acheivement armpit. It got be 200 points, I got 2/10 of the achievements on it. The only achievements in this game are for beating the game, which sounds bad but it only takes like 2 hours MAX and that's even a slight exageration. Depends if you care about the story that this game is missing anyways. Then you have to go beat it again with the other 6 characters...ugh. So points wise it's aweful and game wise it's...mehiha so slightly less than a meh. It's a good game to have on mute while listening to like a podcast or something.

I didn't do much this week on Burst Limit. I just found that I hadn't finished the main single player mode so I did that and got another 200 or something. Overall I have 410 from it by use of 31/50 of the achievements. Achievement wise it's a meh, some are easy, some require you to be crazy. Game wise its an ok, read my review on it I guess.

So that's it for this week, I'm thinking of doing these either once a week or once every two weeks, we'll see how it goes. Back to the neverending quest for points.