Hammer's Blog on Gaming

Time Doesn't Stop

2010-12-30T22:10:00.000-08:00

After taking my foot off the gas pedal for two identifiable periods in the past two years it would only make sense that I've fallen significantly behind in playing recently released games, specifically ones of AAA caliber. This has put me in a mental pickle as I am trying to sort through all the major releases I want to play along with the numerous titles I want to play for gamerscore and completion purposes.

I've always said that there is an important balance that must be met in order to succeed in consistently elevating ones gamerscore at a rapid clip. Of course there is an overarching time factor, but also the ability to maintain motivation and enjoyment in gaming is crucial. Also, breaks are often necessary every now and then (I would recommend not going completely cold turkey for multiple months lol). Personally, I am one that likes to play games with a guide by my side (for achievements and collectibles) and knowledge of potential glitches or problems I may have to avoid in a game. As a result, I often shy away from playing the newest releases.

Thankfully, there are not too many releases during the early portion of 2011 that I am overly hyped for. The two exceptions that come to mind are Dead Space 2 and Test Drive Unlimited 2. Oddly enough, both are sequels. Over my years gaming I've found I am the type of person who much prefers delving into an experience I am somewhat familiar with rather than exposing myself to something new. Irregardless, I feel that in the first few months of this calender year will serve as a nice period of time to do as much catch up as I possibly can.

My next post will feature not only my 2011 gamerscore goals, but also will be the first post I will be featuring music. Until then, have a safe and happy New Years Eve.

A New Era

2010-12-28T23:20:00.001-08:00

I once again went on hiatus throughout the summer months thanks largely in part to my obsession with baseball. About a month and a half ago I got back into more gaming and subsequently more long nights chasing achievements. I've now slowly eased into both putting some points up along with knocking out a few completions as well. Finding a balance will be key for me in progressing at a solid clip in the new year.

Speaking of which, now that the new year is quickly approaching I am considering a number of new years resolutions that I plan on following through on for a change. Aside from the gamerscore goals I will be making in the next few days I am going to make a very serious commitment to following a posting schedule here on my blog. Also, I plan on unveiling a podcast in the new year that will focus largely on achievements and "gamerscore culture." I don't want to get too far into details on this post as they have not yet been fully resolved, but I promise that if you have an interest in gamerscore and the ongoing grind that it can sometimes be, it will be a must listen.

Another component of this blog that will be focused on more in the new year is the implementation of music. I plan on having a song in every post I make in the new year that will somehow tie into that post. It may be linked to the mood of the post or it might be directly linked to the content of the post itself. Hopefully through the music I use on the blog I will be able to make a greater connection with readers and potentially introduce them to bands and genres of music they may not have explored. I play a lot of piano and music is something that is an important part of my life so I want to not only communicate that with readers, but also share some music I love with them.

For now that will be all. Expect a few more post to come before the end of 2010, however I will not be doing any gaming as I am on holidays in Palm Desert and have no Xbox. I know in the past I have eventually drifted away from this blog and I promise that this time will be different. Despite having a fairly small readership I value every single reader I have and would like to provide content that is compelling and something I can be proud of. Stay tuned as the new year is the beginning of a new decade and a new era on this blog.

The Show

2010-03-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

My future dedication to the xbox could be in danger. Tomorrow I'll be picking up my copy of MLB The Show 10. Words cannot describe how excited I am to start playing it. Many of you probably think I'm completely off the wall but this is probably the most excited I am for a game since the release of Gears 2. I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours playing MLB The Show 09 and I am afraid the same may occur this year. With Spring Training just kicking off the baseball season is just amping up and I am hyped for it.

The way I play MLB The Show is that when I get the game I start a franchise with every team in the league. I then playthrough a few exhibition games to get use to the game again. After that I am all ready to fire up some franchise play. Usually I'll play a few games with my favorite team, the New York Yankees. After that I am constantly cycling playing with all the teams to get use to their roster and to learn about them for the upcoming season. I am a subscriber to MLB TV and it is not uncommon for me to be watching up to four games at the same time.

Seeing as I am only 1k away from 200k I will try to get there before I really crank it up with The Show. I want to make sure I hit 200k before any lapses in playing xbox occur. My FEAR 2 boosting will keep me on live daily but while boosting I'll more than likely be playing The Show. If you can't tell I'm fired up to pick up my copy and throw a few pitches at Yankee Stadium, so I am just going to stop before a really start rambling. Go Yankees and thank God that there is a good baseball game I can count on like The Show every year.

Failure in Consistency

2010-03-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

Once again I have faded from writing here on my blog. I have been busy with hockey playoffs and lots of gaming so I'll go with those two excuses. Seriously though, I will try to make a better effort in the future to get my consistency back to where it was in January.

Since my last update I have completed a number of retail games. These completions include Skate, Rogue Warrior, Dante's Inferno, and Vancouver 2010. I am also only one firefight map away from completing Halo ODST. Of the above games I enjoyed Skate the most. Despite not being able to get of your skateboard, Skate was an incredibly fun and easy to learn game. With a little practice I was able to get through all the challenges and milestones relatively easily. I also liked Dante' Inferno. I liked the combat and platforming anyways, but I despised and did not enjoy the environment or story of the game at all.

Once ODST is finally completed I will have three incomplete games sitting at the front of my card. All three of which I have started up within the last week. The long term project of the three will be Fear 2. I am nearing the end of the campaign but to complete the game I am looking at around 100 hours of boosting the multiplayer. Yesterday I spent about 5-6 hours boosting and gained close to 5 % of what is needed. Also, months after its release I have finally started playing Borderlands. Everything I read on the game said it was best served in co-op. So that is exactly how I played. With the help of Sajaa we fired through the main storyline of the game in one sitting of around 5 or 6 hours. I enjoyed it a lot but since Sajaa's character was so much more powerful than mine he ended up doing a lot of the work. Lastly, I started Tiger Woods 09 which was the only game I had originally planned to have added to my card. It should be a relatively painless 1k but if I had known I was going to be getting into Fear 2 and Borderlands I may have postponed it a bit.

Along with boosting Fear 2 this afternoon and evening I hope to finish up the Fear 2 campaign. I want to get that single player out of the way so that beside the tedious boosting, I will be done with the game. This will free up the rest of my non-boosting time to be spent with Borderlands and Tiger Woods. I enjoy playing both so I cannot say for certain which game I will stick with more. Nevertheless I would love to have them both completed by the end of the week.

Like I said, I will try to get back to a more consistant delivery of blog posts but if my track record is any indication of how that turns out I would not put money on it. Everyone enjoy your Monday's, I know most people hate Monday's but I don't mind them at all.

Teleporting Crash

2010-02-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

I must say that I have never experienced collectibles as annoying as the ones in Crash Mind over Mutant. The game as a whole is just a piece of crap for the most part. An open world that is uncomfortable to navigate and collectibles that are quite troublesome. If the guide on x360a was not so poorly written then they would not have been so bad but because the guide was so difficult to understand I found them very annoying. Overall the games is easy, even the collectibles you will find them eventually if you just plug away at them. However when I think about my time spent with the game I will simply think of being annoyed.

This weekend I have a fairly busy reffing schedule. It will be good to rack up some cash though so I'm not really complaining. Monday is a holiday as well so I will have a full day to kick back and relax. Hopefully by the time school resumes on Tuesday I can get through a few more retail completions. I am going to start off by targeting the single player in Rogue Warrior while boosting it when my partners are available to do so. When I'm through with Rogue Warrior I think I will hit Spongebob and try and get through that as quick as possible. I might even through in a quick arcade completion like Gunstar Heroes.

As I'm approaching 200k I keep thinking to myself what I am going to do next. I would love to plough forward to 300k by the end of the year but at the same time I don't want to go and wear myself down again. As of late I have been more into completing games, both arcade and retail. When all is said and done I think I need to come up with some sort of strategy that will allow me to advance my gamerscore while enjoying games that are actually fun and enjoyable. Also, as I progress to 300k I want to go back and try to tidy up my card as much as possible. I have never been one in the past to care about completion but lately I have really tried to improve mine. I may even reach 70% by the time I'm at 200k.

I figure that if I am at 250k by the end of July I am going to have a damn good shot at 300k. The whole trick for me will be balancing fun games and whore games. It has becoming more and more clear to me that the key to a successful gamerscore whore is to obviously put in lots of time but more importantly it is necessary to be consistant. It's quite obvious and unrealistic to go hard and score 12-15k a month. It is best to shoot for at least 8-11k with at least 3 or 4 games to be ones you love and enjoy. Also, I feel that taking a night or two off from gaming to just relax and forget about things is a nice break.

Hopefully you all enjoy your long weekends. I know that I will find it quite relaxing and productive if all goes well. Now time to go listen to Mickey Rourke swear up a shit storm in Rogue Warrior!

Flying to New Heights

2010-02-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

Late last night I finished one of my favorite games to date on the 360. Assassins Creed 2 simply was a masterpiece and one of the most intriguing experiences I've had with gaming. The story itself was incredibly well done and one could ponder all day about the possibilites of where the third game will be. The game was far less repetative than the original as it was far more diverse in its storytelling and mission structure. To be honest the only major problem I had with the game was the assassinations at the end of each DNA block. They seemed far less important and it was very difficult to actually assassinate your target. In most cases you had to fend off a bunch of guards before fighting the target. Unlike in the original where you could sneak in and assassinate the target and then sneak out with no detection.

Nevertheless, despite my few complaints I overall loved and savoured my time spent with Assassins Creed 2. Now that it's complete I'm going to be starting up Crash Mind Over Mutant. I'm not expecting to much from it nor am I expecting much from Rogue Warrior which I plan to play right after. Hopefully I'll be doing some ODST firefight as well every night for the next week until that is done. I am slowly getting amped up for finally hitting 200k. If all goes to plan I should be there within the next few weeks.

Short Absence

2010-02-04T23:12:00.000-08:00

I am sorry for the delay between my last post and now. I've been finally getting back to gaming and haven't really felt like doing any writing at all. However, I have made some decent progress on my goals for the year the past week or so. More specifically I have knocked out a couple of completions on both the arcade and retail sides of things. Regardless of my success completing games lately (easy as they may have been) I am still behind pace on my goal of 300k by the end of the year.

Out of my recent completions Saw has to be the one I have enjoyed the most. For a game that I did not expect much from I found it quite enjoyable. In some cases I enjoyed it even more than I did Silent Hill Homecoming. I especially enjoyed how the game greatly limited the use of combat and focused on solving satisfying puzzles. My other retail completions, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and NCAA Football 07 were both boring and not really worth talking about. Also, I got in like so many others on the NBA Live 07 festivities and finished that bitch even though I almost overslept the event. My lone completions on the arcade since my last post was NBA 2k10 Draft Combine. To be blunt, it was as shitty as a basketball game could be on the arcade.

As for the coming few days I am focused on Assassins Creed 2 which I have been loving so far. I am also slowly working towards completing Halo ODST when my group can get together to do so. Following Assassins Creed 2 I plan to play Crash Mind Over Mutant and Rogue Warrior. Both of which should be easy and fairly quick completions. I'm not sure of arcade games I will be playing soon but there will be some no doubt. Anyways just a quick update on my going ons as of late. My latest absence was due to my trip to the Rockies for the most part, so I should be back to a post ever day or two now. Enjoy your weekends everyone, I know Assassins Creed 2 will treat me well!

Here we go Again

2010-01-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

I have finally made some actual gaming progress. Over the past few days I've managed to wrap up a few games including Guitar Hero 5, CSI Deadly Intent, and Golf Tee it Up. All three are not exactly the biggest completions but after making very little progress over the past few weeks its nice to tuck a few completions away. To anyone looking for a smaller and not as good version of Hot Shots Golf I definetally recommend Golf Tee it Up. While it's not the greatest arcade golf game I've played I still enjoyed it quite a lot. I loved Guitar Hero and CSI was nothing special at all.

As I am finally getting closer to the 200k mark I have decided to wrap up a few other retail completions I've left sitting around for a while. My current focus is going to be NCAA Football 07. I should have wrapped up all the miscellaneous achievements earlier, but they happened to all glitch on me. It looks like I'll have to plug away and play a few more games hoping they will unlock. Some other games on my card that I want to wrap up before 200k include Stoked, Alone in the Dark, Dynasty Warriors Empires 6, Clive Barkers Jericho, and if the 1000 person achievement works out, NBA Live 07.

Hopefully I can get a couple of things done before I go on my little two night trip to the mountains. When I return it will be 100% balls to the wall gaming as I inch towards 200k and my hopeful goal of 300k by years end. Should be an interesting few months upcoming as far as game releases are concerned as well. There's no doubt its an awesome time to be a gamer and I am going to enjoy being one throughout the next few months. Now that I am playing games again, expect to see this blog return to more gaming posts rather than the randomness it has provided the past few weeks. For those of you looking forward to Mass Effect 2 tomorrow enjoy it, as I'm sure it will be an amazing game. How can it not be? I mean it is made in my hometown here in Edmonton :).

Music in Me!

2010-01-19T23:47:00.001-08:00

I am fairly certain that absolutely no body that reads this blog knows that I actually play the piano. I started when I was young, about five years old. Ever since I have been playing. Growing up I actually won various of awards and various other badges of honour. However, because of my obsession with hockey in my junior high and early high school years I quit playing the piano. Just this summer, after about a four year break I decided to pick piano up again. I soon realized that my days of playing Mozart and Bach had long ago passed. I knew that if I had any serious desire to return to my previous ability playing the piano, a lot of practice and re-learning would have to take place.

Over the past six months or so I have been slowly practicing and learning a few more modern pieces. I wish I had the voice to sing along, but unlike one may be lead to believe, Disney's Sing It games are not a substitute for vocal training. Nevertheless, I have been able to thoroughly learn some songs by Coldplay, and Augustana. I might record a few videos of me actually playing, but I don't have suitable sound or video recording units at the moment.

I've always been one to appreciate the softer, more artistic pieces of music. Unlike many people my age I am not in love with the ACDC's and Metallica's. Nor do I have any interest in any, and I mean any type of metal music. I respect it and understand that people actually enjoy that genre of music, but I simply do not have any sort of interest in it. My most recent obsession as far as music is concerned is from a young pianist and vocalist by the name of Michael Grubbs. His band "Wakey! Wakey!," is incredibly talented and produces some of the best music I have heard in a while. I myself am tackling one of their more popular songs. I suggest everyone take a listen, if only to admire an incredible pianist perform.

Harder than you think..

2010-01-18T21:02:00.001-08:00

When writing a blog about ones experiences with gaming and the never ending pursuit of gamerscore you can often run into a roadblocks. The main one being that when you are not playing games, you don't have many experiences to touch on. Thus, I am finding it a lot more difficult to write for this blog as of late. I literally am playing nothing. I have hardly spent anytime besides the odd visit to xbox.com or TrueAchievemnts or x360a on gaming.

The only solution to my recent lull in writing is to write some opinion pieces or thoughts on some current news events in gaming. I would engage in doing so but I have simply not enough time to sit down and fully write something that is worth reading. I think it is a lot better to avoid writing mediocre posts rather than writing a large sum of poorly written babble.

I am down to 10 days to freedom. To be honest I don't expect for me to get much if any gaming in during that stretch. I will try to get a few posts in over that time period but don't be surprised if I go through a three or four day stretch without a new post. I'll probably post my mapped out road to 200k sometime soon but beyond that I wont make any promises. I do have some predictions in my mind for games that may be announced that I think may still be released this year, so that too may form into a post. Anyways, that is all. I just wanted to give you readers a heads up and inform you of my ongoing absence from xbox love.

The Weekend?

2010-01-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

The weekend is finally here. It has been quite a long week, but I expect next week will be even busier. I am in a countdown to freedom at the moment. 12 days until the date of my last exam. To say that I am excited for those 12 days to be over would be an understatement. I just want it to end sooner!

The other day I took a few minutes and mapped out a road map that would put me at 200k. Based on my road map I should be able to cross 200k within February or at the beginning of March at the latest. It consists of 20 games that I have both on and off my card. I am hopeful that with my plan I will be able to hit 200k with 70% completion. I would also have just under 140 completions. After 200k I am not sure what games I will hit up. Most likely the never ending backlogue of games I have continually put aside.

Anyways I just wanted to make a quick post before I head out to grab some lunch. I started up CSI Deadly Intent last night and hopefully I can scrape some time together to get it done with in a few days. I have been also putting my fan to use with Guitar Hero 5 but not very often. As mentioned studying right now is my major concern, so any game time will be happening when I simply need a break or some downtime. I'm off to go eat, enjoy your weekends!

I Love me my Podcasts

2010-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

As some of you may or may not know I am a big fan of podcasts. I love the idea of being able to essentially put a recorded radio show onto my ipod to listen to at my own convenience. I find myself listening to them quite a lot whenever I'm driving or even when I game. Sometimes I'll even put a podcast on to provide a little background noise when doing schoolwork. Anyways, I thought I would share some of my favorite gaming podcasts and what I enjoy about them. You can't go wrong listening to any of them.

1. Rebel FM: A podcast hosted by three guys that were laid off from 1up last year at this time. They previously hosted the 1up FM podcast, but since they were laid off Rebel FM is their new show. They are currently freelance writers who play a lot of games and have very well developed opinions on them. Rebel FM also has an aspect of humor which can sometimes be a bit odd, but overall quite funny and does not detract from the content at all. Their home site is eat-sleep-game.com. I highly recommend everyone give at least one or two of their episodes a listen to see if you enjoy them as much as I do. They produce one general podcast a week and one podcast they refer to as "Game Club." During their "Game Club" episodes they discuss a pre-selected game in which they have all been playing. Usually the game is at least a year or two old.

2. In Game Chat: A podcast hosted by a group of friends from Alabama that have being doing so for about 3 years now. They previously hosted the Evil Avatar podcast, which was also a live radio show locally. However, because of college sports taking over their time slot on the radio they have returned to simply producing weekly podcasts under the In Game Chat name. They produces very intelligent, well thought out discussion about games and news from all the platforms including the PC. I have been listening to them since they're first episodes so I cannot recommend them enough.

3. 4 Guys 1Up: Formerly known as the 1up Yours podcast, 4 Guys 1up is hosted by writers from 1up.com. Each week they bring in somebody from the industry to guest host the podcast with them. They discuss an array of topics ranging from the games they are currently playing to industry events they have recently attended. All in all, the podcast can be described as quality gaming discussion from industry writers and developers.

Those are three of my favorite podcasts. There are many, many more out there but I feel that these are the cream of the crop. Believe me, I have listened to the majority of them so I think I can tell a quality podcast from a shitty one. Anyways, back to studying. Might try to fire through a few more stars in Guitar Hero 5 later as well but who knows. Enjoy your Wednesday evenings!

Days are to Short!

2010-01-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

I am no joke in need of an extra 5 or 6 hours each day. Exam time is really hitting hard now and with 2 straight weeks of hard studying upcoming I don't see myself getting much if any gaming in. I might try to snake out a few quick 1000's like Night at the Museum or Cloudy with a Chance... but other then that, anything that is time consuming at all I have no choice but to shelf for the moment. Every year exam time is difficult but especially being in grade 12 this year I am very focused and concerned with doing as best as I possibly can. After all, without education what can one do in life?

I would normally try to write a bit more but, to be honest I simply do not have the mental stamina or patience to do so right now. It is quite late and I have been preparing essay topics and dealing with permutations and combinations all night that I am simply worn down. I am going to hit the hay right away. Tomorrow will be more of the same, lots of studying and lots of cups of coffee. I could probably do a whole report about how great the benefits are of coffee and caffine in ones life. Without it I really do not know how I would get by.

No one should really expect to see much of me on xbox live the next few weeks. As much as I'd love to sit down and game all night I certainly have my priorities and succeeding with my courses and preparing for university this upcoming autumn is much more important than keeping my pace to 300k. I will have to play catch up with that goal in February. For now I am signing off for the night. I will still make posts when I can on the blog the next few weeks and stay consistent with it but I wont make promises. Everyone enjoy their game time because I most certainly will not have any.

Pick One

2010-01-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

With the best first quarter in the history of gaming slowly starting up this past week with the releases of Darksiders and Boyonetta I asked myself, what if I had to pick one and only one game to play until the holiday season? What game would I pick and why would I choose it over the others? The game of choice has to be released before April but that is the only restriction. The game can be from any console or any region. The time period in which this being the only game I play ends August 1st. Clearly, this is not something that I will be doing but nevertheless, it is still interesting to think in such a manner.

Right off the bat I quickly got my choices down to three games. BioShock 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and Battlefield Bad Company 2. I thought about both Final Fantasy 13 and Mass Effect 2 but since I have had very little success getting into RPG's in the past I didn't want to select one. I will surely play both games but they are simply not the games I am most hyped for. I also considered God of War 3 for the PS3 but I didn't feel that it would present enough replay for me to play it for 5 months. Thus, the three games which I considered are BioShock 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and Battlefield Bad Company 2.

All three of the above mentioned games have multiplayer include in them. I am certainly not a subscriber to the thought that all games should have multiplayer but, since this is the only game I will be playing for the next 5 months I think having multiplayer is fairly important. The multiplayer in all three of these games will all be quite different. They all have very unique styles and I am sure that they will all be very fun as well.

I think that BioShock 2's multiplayer is the big wild card out of the three. The original BioShock was such an amazing single player experience that many people felt that by adding multiplayer the game as a whole would suffer. There is certainly a lot of potential in the BioShock world for great multiplayer but there is also rick that it could bomb. Splinter Cell will also have very interesting multiplayer. I enjoyed the very little bit of multiplayer I played on Double Agent so if Conviction's is anything similar I could very well love that. However, the fact is Bad Company 2's multiplayer WILL be fucking awesome. No if ands or buts Bad Company 2 is gonna have some good shit multiplayer. Everything I have seen on this game makes me more and more excited so if I was choosing a game solely off multiplayer, Bad Company 2 would be my choice.

As for the single player, I feel that there are no bad choices. You can't go wrong with any of the three games. I feel that Bad Company 2 could have a bit of weaker single player then BioShock 2 and Conviction but that is really yet to be seen. I could go on and on about why I think each games single player will be awesome but the fact of the matter is everyone is going to play them all anyways so whats the point?

In conclusion the game I feel that would hold me in for 5 months would be Battlefield Bad Company 2. The single player will be full of great action and intense sequences that will more than make up for the story which may be lacking. The multiplayer in and of itself is a good reason to purchase the game. Even if you're only plan was to play multiplayer you would get your moneys worth. I completely love the multiplayer Battlefield games provide and I couldn't possibly wait 5 months to play it.

In other news I have completed Jurassic The Hunted and am nearing completion in Guitar Hero 5 with less then 100 stars remaining in the career mode. Hopefully I can find time today to finish or get close to finishing it. Other than that I may go see Sherlock Holmes this afternoon. I think it is really the only movie that I have left on my list from 2009 movies I wanted to see. After I see it I will write a post reviewing my top 5 favorite movies of the past year. Everyone enjoy their Sunday afternoon and have another good week upcoming.

Who's got the Rhythem?

2010-01-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

Over the past week I have been playing a decent amount of Guitar Hero 5. I've always been one to prefer Rock Band but, as of late my opinion on the Guitar Hero franchise has been slowly changing. There are a few contributing factors I can identify that have really allowed Guitar Hero to narrow the gap between the competition, for myself anyways.

First off, I have always been one to prefer the note tracking in Guitar Hero over Rock Band. I just feel that my experience is a lot smoother and consistent with the circular note tracking rather than the rectangles. I know many people that are totally opposed to the circular notes claiming they hurt their eyes and thus prefer the rectangular notes. Either way it really is just a matter of personal preference and enjoyment.

I've never been, nor will I ever be a hard rock or heavy metal fan. I love me my Coldplay and Beatles and I am also a fan of a lot of indie rock as well. I listen to music that calms me down and puts my mind to ease. Never do I want to lay in my bed falling asleep to any sort of hard hitting music. It seems to me that I have found far more songs that I enjoy on Guitar Hero rather than Rock Band. There is simply more variety in the song selection as well as the DLC songs sold for Guitar Hero suit my music tastes better. Again, this is a matter of preference and the music styles one enjoys.

Since the release of Rock Band just over 2 years ago, Guitar Hero has always seemed to be two or three steps ahead of it. However, when you compare the two franchises now there is very little difference between them. They both offer nearly identical features with various minor tweaks. To say that one is much better than the other is really irrelevant. Clearly both franchises will continue to prosper financially but I am glad to see the Guitar Hero has stepped up a bit this past holiday season.

I should have Guitar Hero 5 complete by the end of the weekend along with Jurassic the Hunted. Other than those two games I am not to sure what else I'll be playing. Possibly going back to finish a few games that are fairly close to completing before I hit anything else. Who knows, it's exam season for me so my schedule is completely fucked for the the two weeks. Anyways, enjoy your weekends everyone.

2nd Christmas, Come Sooner!

2010-01-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

January is my least favorite month of the year. Christmas vacation ends and classes resume. Two weeks after said classes resume, final exams begin. Since I am in grade 12 this year I have to write diploma exams. It’s not like diplomas are the be all end all but they are still quite important. This semester I have to write 3 diplomas. That is a lot of cramming and studying, not to mention sleepless nights. The nice thing is that once examinations are over, I’m going snowboarding to the Rocky Mountains. The other positive is that next semester I have the easiest class schedule of all time. It will consist of 2 classes that will span between 11 45 am – 2 30 pm. My math tells me that is just under 3 hours of school a day! So, whatever game time I lose this month because of my long hours studying will be easily made up with my relaxing next semester.

As mentioned above January will consist of a lot less gaming than I am use to. This does suck to a certain extent but it will also be nice to have a little break. While January does have quite a few releases that are very interesting to me, February and March have many more. The one and only problem with many of these releases is that many are sequels to games which I have yet to complete. These include Army of Two, BioShock, Mass Effect, Lost Planet, and Bad Company. Also, since the new Splinter Cell is coming out at the end of February I would like to at least complete the story in Double Agent, even though Conviction will not tie into it very much. Thus, I plan on putting time into many of these original games before their sequels come out. How much? I am not yet sure of but, time will be spent nonetheless.

Since I will be sinking much of my time into the games mentioned above I will not be scoring all too many points in January. However, I’ll hopefully be able to mop up a few completions on both the retail and arcade side of things. All work to my hopes of eventually defeating all 3 of my goals by the end of the year.

Some of the other titles that interest me that are being released in January, February, and March include: Bayonetta, Dark Void, Dante’s Inferno, Alien vs Predator, Final Fantasy 13, and Just Cause 2. Anyways, those are many of the games that I will be checking out here in the first quarter of the year. I must say that 2010 is going to be an absolutely amazing year as far as gaming is concerned. With all these games coming out in the first quarter, one can only be excited to see what will be coming out throughout the rest of the year.

2010 and the Decade Ahead

2010-01-03T01:50:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this post as I'm finishing up Battlefield 1943 but since I'm not really doing much in it I thought I might as well write up a post. It's kinda interesting to look back on ones life a year or two or in this case a decade in the past. It's equally as compelling to look 10 years into the future as well. Looking back, 10 years ago I was at the childish age of 7 years old. Seeing as how I'm turning 18 years old in March it is crazy to think ahead to when I'll be 28 years old. It seems like such a long ways away and I guess 10 years in reality actually is. It is hard to even predict or imagine what life for me will be like in 10 years. Nevertheless it is still sometimes interesting to ponder the thought. Anyways this is my annual post of goal setting and outlook onto the next year for me in gaming.

Last year I set out to reach 200k. I would have easily met my goal had I not quit playing for 4 and a half months and after that I still could have hit 200k if I didn't try completing Gears 2 and Forza 3. Nevertheless it was still a decent year despite the few setbacks I stated. This year and for many years to come I don't plan to quit playing at any point like I did last year. I've always been one to set goals that make me push myself and stretch my dedication and motivation. So, with out further to do my goals for the year of 2010 and my goals for the next decade are:

2010
- GamerScore of 300k
- Completed Retail Games Count of 170
- Completed Arcade Games Count of 80

2020
- GamerScore of 1.1 million
- Completed Retail Games Count of 1000
- Completed Arcade Games Count of 500

As if you couldn't already tell these goals for 2020 are pretty ridiculous with the exception of 1.1 million gamerscore, maybe. 1000 retail and 500 arcade completions is quite crazy as well but I might as well try. My goals for this year are quite ambitious as well but I've always been one to set overly optimistic goals and just see how things work out.

Those are my short and long term goals for now. You can track my progress for my 2010 goals on TrueAchievements quite easily. Before I end this post and get back to actually playing Battlefield 1943 I just want to quickly compliment TrueAchievements and the great new layout they have implemented on their site. It looks incredibly neat and pretty and slick and cool and I love it. So hats of to them.

I'll be back soon with a new post. I feel that I am slowly becoming more and more consistent with posts here on this blog so my last and final "goal" for the year 2010 is to break at least the 200 post marker on this blog. I figure as long as I write 2 or 3 posts a week I should be fine. Everyone enjoy their Sunday and I wish you all a belated happy new year!

Gears and Games Galore!

2009-12-30T23:10:00.000-08:00

My mission to complete Gears 2 before years end is finally complete. After hundreds of hours spent boosting guardian, playing horde, and completing the story I have completed my first game worth 1750 GS. To be honest I never planned to complete it but the multiple triple xp weeks as well as the now permanent double xp really motivated me. All in all I still think Gears 2 is a great game and I am excited for Gears 3 to come out (rumored to be this upcoming August or September).

Anyways now that Gears 2 is finally out of the way I can finally get my shit together and start hitting up some other games that I have been wanting to play. The other day I co oped through the Halo ODST campaign which was fun as hell. As an overall package ODST is a very solid title and not just a simple expansion everyone thought it would be. I thought the story was excellent with the exception of the ending, more specifically the last few minutes of the game. I felt that it was very anti-climactic and there could have been a lot more action. The excitement and intensity of the driving sequence was not matched by the final defence part. Nevertheless, like I said I loved the campaign and am looking forward to playing some firefight and eventually completing the game.

For Christmas I got quite a large sum of games gifted to me (see list below). One of which was DJ Hero. When DJ Hero was first announced I like many other people quickly dismissed any possibilty of it being any good or fun. However, once I read a few reviews and saw all the positive things people had to say about it I decided to put it on my Christmas list. I have not put too much time into the game yet but so far I have been really digging it. The mixes in the game are fun as hell to play and the actual turntable controller is very solid as well. I'm probably going to be continually talking about DJ Hero the next few months as I plan on playing and practicing a lot as I work towards 5 starring all the songs on expert.

I think almost everyone gets loaded with games around Christmas time and the week following. It is both a good and bad thing to have happen. Good to have all these games on hand but bad because it is sometimes to much to have on your plate. I'm not going to start complaining though, here is a list of all the games I ended up with. A few I was gifted but the majority were bought in post Christmas sales:

- DJ Hero
- Lego Rock Band
- Borderlands
- Fifa 10
- Assassins Creed 2
- Dragon Age Origins
- Halo Wars
- Guitar Hero 5
- Guitar Hero Smash Hits
- Shadow Complex
- Secret of Monkey Island
- Worms 2
- Castle Crashers

Like I said that is a lot of time to be spent on just those games alone. That's not even mentioning all the games I already own and haven't played as well as those from gamefly. At least now that Gears 2 is done I'll have some more time to player other things before I have to start studying mid- January for diploma exams. For now though I'm gonna get back to playing some Battlefield 1943. Only 55 matches to go!

Merry Gearsmas!

2009-12-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

Once again triple xp in Gears 2 has taken over my gaming time completely. All I've been doing for the most part during the past week has been boosting Gears 2. I started as a level 10 just over a month ago thinking I would be playing Gears 2 for at least another 4 or 5 months. However I will end up unlocking the veteran gear achievement quite possibly before the year is over. As things stand right now I am a level 90 but very close to a 91. I still need about 1.6 million xp which is not as much as you'd think. After gaining nearly 1 million in the last 24 hours 1.6 is not much at all.

Gears 2 has really taken away any motivation I had of playing any other games. I managed to finish The Godfather 2 last weekend but other than that all I have played besides Gears 2 is Rock Band 2. I don't know why but all of a sudden I have this drive and inner incentive to practice more and more and get really really good at these music games. I have always been able to beat pretty well any song on expert for both guitar and bass but I have never been one to get 98% notes hit on a Aces of Spades on expert. Basically I can beat most songs but scoring well is fairly rare with the most difficult songs in the games. I have been also practicing a lot on the drums as well as of late. Again, I can beat beat around 60% of the songs or so on expert meaning I will have a lot of practice ahead of me to become overly skilled at drumming. I plan on putting at least a minimum of a hour of practice into both instruments everyday. Hopefully if I keep practicing I can even knock out some of the difficult 1k's in which music games often provide. For now I'm just having fun with the music games and continually trying to further improve my skills.

When I finally finish Gears 2 I am still unsure of what I will be in the mood for/want to play. I know over the next 24 hours I will be accumulating a fuck ton of games so I'm not going to say for certain what I am going to play after Gears 2. I know during my last post I stated how I wanted to complete the games gamefly had sent me. Unfortunetaly because of Gears 2 I have only been able to get done with The Godfather 2 as I previously mentioned. Hopefully I can get to a few more of the games I have from gamefly soon but I make no guarantees.

Lastly I want to wish everyone reading my blog a Merry Christmas. The holiday season is always my favorite time of year so I hope you all enjoy your Christmas festivities. Hopefully you all have some time off as well to get some gaming in as there are a plethora of quality titles worth playing. Anyways, that is all for now. I will probably write a post late tomorrow afternoon once I receive all my gifts and do my annual game buying marathon on boxing day. Once again, Merry Christmas to everyone and their families!

The Holidays are Here!

2009-12-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

Although I am not officially on holidays until tomorrow afternoon I am done all of my assignments and exams and have nothing left to complete as far as academics are concerned so I really am holidays already. This holiday season is going to be not to unusual compared to past; same traditions, same routine, same Christmas. I am not complaining however as I love the holidays and adore the Christmas season. During the holidays this year I want to try and get the absolute most accomplished as I can as far as gaming is concerned. January is going to be a slow month for me as I have to write diploma exams so I want to try and get as much gaming as I can for during these holidays.

My plan after Assassins Creed is to while continuing to play Battlefield 1943 to polish off the four games I have out right now from gamefly. These four are The Godfather 2, Stoked, The Bigs 2, and Crash Mind over Mutant. I don’t know how long those will take but hopefully I can get those four done at the very least by the time Christmas day comes around and I have a even bigger stockpile of games in my collection.

Anyways that is just a quick update today. Got to get to my last class of the day here in a little bit so expect a bit of a bigger post focusing on my adventures flag/templar hunting in Assassins Creed as well as the fun I am having with Battlefield 1943.

Disciple of the Creed

2009-12-14T20:19:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I finally sunk my teeth into Assassins Creed. I got the game at release over two years ago and I felt it was just about time for me to get into it. I played through the first 3 memory blocks 2 years ago but since I really could not recall any of the story I decided to restart from the beginning. I finished the story playthrough a few hours ago and to be honest it has earned a spot in my top 10 games played on the 360. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire essence and environment in which the game provides. It has quite an interesting story that had me continually looking forward to what would happen next. There have not been nearly enough games where I feel involved in its story, so being enthralled and amused by the narrative was a breath of fresh air. The art and the graphics in the game were both very well done also.

I also loved the gameplay to no end as well. The combat was very close to flawless in my opinion and the controls complemented it well. The physics and controls pertaining to the parkour aspects of the game were also very well executed. While many felt the game was overly repetitive I did not mind it in the slightest. I found all the missions had a purpose pertaining to your next assassination (with the exception of the save civilian missions). As the game neared its conclusion I was able to vaguely for see what would happen in the end, but overall the ending sequence of the game was very well done and quite rewarding.

Now all the remains for me completion wise with Assassins Creed is the collecting of flags and the killing of templars. That should all be done by Wednesday or Thursday by the latest, reason being I am quite busy with a Christmas party tomorrow along with some schoolwork for Wednesday which will limit my gaming time. I am on holidays for two weeks starting Friday so in that time I plan to get as much gaming done as I possibly can. I am not exactly sure yet what my next few games will be but I will start playing some Battlefield 1943 in the next few days.

Its been a While

2009-12-10T09:55:00.001-08:00

So it appears that I have once again dropped the hammer and have went MIA as far as maintaining this blog is concerned. There have been several moments in which I intended to do some writing and making posts here but I unfortunately never followed through. I believe my last update was on the 1st of November so I guess I have quite a bit to give an update on.
I started off the beginning November much like I spent October. Scoring as many points as I could as fast I possibly could. Then along came triple xp in Gears 2. A week long of whoring out xp on horde and through boosting guardian pretty much killed my intentions of reaching 200k before years end. Nevertheless I was contempt to put all my effort towards getting as much xp as I possible could and felt that it was well worth the sacrifice. When the triple xp was all said and done I had gone from a level 15 to a level 72 in that week. I am currently sitting at a level 74 I believe and I will slowly continue to work my way to level 100 and the veteran gear achievement.

Once Gears 2 triple xp concluded I decided that I was going to change my direction a bit as far as achievements are concerned. Rather than burning through as many points as I possibly could for the remainder of the year I am now putting aside the majority of my easy points to save them for a special occasion in the future which is already being planned. I’ll let you all in on more details concerning that in the New Year. For now I am focusing on completing games which I have not had the opportunity to enjoy. I own well over 120 games in my collection, many of which are still un-played. I decided to really dive in and immerse my self with quite possibly the greatest racing game I have ever played, Forza Motorsport 3. From top to bottom the game is a masterpiece. From the physics, to the graphics, to the controls, to the audio the game has very few flaws and nearly none of any great significance. I finally completed it just the other day after spending 117 hours of in car time. A completion I am fairly proud of despite it being mostly just grinding out races.

Beyond Forza 3 I also completed my other favorite racing game, DiRT 2. This sequel is probably the best off road racing game I have ever played. While the first one was quite good it self it feels as if the second one is just so much more fine tuned and polished. The game is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone that has enjoyed any of the games from the Colin McRae series. Lastly I completed 1 vs. 100. While playing this game during the beta I was never really digging it and never really got into it. I’ve never been a trivia buff and the game seemed to ask questions about topics which I lacked knowledge in. Fortunately the complete version of the game is a lot more accessible and there is a lot more variety in the questions which are asked. All in all I have been having a fun time with the game and despite completing I can see myself hoping into some of the live game shows every now and then.

That is a pretty quick and vague summary of what I have been up to for the past month or so. I know I said I was going to update more frequently before, but now I really plan on doing so. It may not be a daily or even an every second day update, but there will be more than the 0 during November. That is all for now I’m going to go play me some Frontlines and finish that up.

October Month in Review

2009-11-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

October 2nd marked my return to Hammer x360a after a 5 month break. I had planned to make my goal of 200k and quickly set out on doing so. Over the course of the month I have played quite a few really good games, my favorite definetaly being Forza 3. I also got around to playing quite a lot of shit as well. Without question the worst game I have played this month and quite possibly the worst game I have played on the 360 Brave Warriors Tale. I can usually stick out and play most kids games and games that are simply lacking in quality but I could not survive Brave Warriors Tale. I have put that game aside for now but I will one day return to it. Along with gaming I have started back posting here on my blog. I had originally planned to make a post every day or two but that plan quickly went astray. This month I will set the goal of making at least 3 posts a week. Anyways on to the statistics :) :

GS on October 1st: 157 290
GS on November 1st : 175 785
Score Increase: 18 495

I had forgot to mention that Backyard Football 2010 marked my 100th total completion (includes arcade and retail games). With that my goal is to get to 115 total completions by years end. Should not be to difficult with a lot of easy games I still have remaining to be played.

Total Retail Completions: 80
Total Retail Completions: 20
Overall Completions: 100

My goal for November is to get to within attacking distance of 200k. Can't exactly put a number on what that means to me quite yet but I will keep all posted :) For now, goodbye October and hello November, the month on MW2 (which I'm really not that pumped for...)

The Big 5-O

2009-10-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

The past week I have been so busy just playing xbox and scoring points that I just didn't have any desire to come and write a blog post, even for just 5 minutes. I was in the zone it seemed and I know if I want to get to my goal of 200k by the end of the year my focus and energy will have to be high at all times. This past week has been kind of my breakout week as far as scoring goes since my return. Since my return I had two weeks scoring about 3500 points a piece but this week I nearly doubled that scoring around 6500 points. Granted I used Fallout 3 PC but nevertheless points are points and I'll take a 6500 point week anytime.

This upcoming week I hope to continue my big push to 200k. I have a lot of points prepared and ready to go which include: Madden 10, Godfather 2, The Bigs 2, Raven Squad, Cloudy with a Chance..., Backyard Football 2010, and Darkest of Days all of which are right next to me at the moment. Then the other games that I will be getting in the mail and from Blockbuster as well throughout the week.

I have been competing in Fshuy's series of challenges on 360voice lately and I plan on continuing to do so. I am going to try to get to 5 consecutive challenge victories. Unless someone really steps up to the plate I think I can probably do it. I have all these games just sitting here that have really easy points and if I use them strategically it will take a lot of points to beat me.

Anyways that is pretty much all for now. Ihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIeWjLC_SB0always go to bed early on Sunday nights so I can re-energize myself well for the long nights that will occur in the week ahead. I will make more frequent posts this week so don't you worry I will be in touch.

EDIT: In case you didn't get it from the title this is my 50th blog post so as Drama would say...

Happy Sunday

2009-10-18T13:15:00.001-07:00

For the most part I have had quite a productive weekend. On Friday I picked up Tornado Outbreak, which was surprisingly fun. Essentially it is a rip off of Katamari but instead of playing as a Katamari you are a tornado. It was nothing too new or amazing but it is just brainless fun. I completed the story and finished up a few miscellaneous achievements and then left it at that. I also borrowed Guitar Hero Metallica from my friend and ripped through what I found to be a very easy expert career on bass. I also started up the guitar career and am about halfway through that. It’s Guitar Hero, what else is there to say? Beyond those games I completed both Sorry!, and Sorry Sliders which are a part of Family Game Night. I have only 3 achievements remaining in Family Game Night, which are all linked to Scrabble. Last night I decided to start up a snowboarding game I got in the mail earlier this week called Stoked. It has actually been quite fun so far. The mountains are big and there is a lot to do as far as challenges and events are concerned. The game controls well and the graphics are excellent. I’m only about 4 hours in so I’ll give more feedback on it later.

This Sunday afternoon and evening I plan on finishing up Wallace and Gromit #1, then I’ll probably start working on the Lips DLC achievements. After that I’ll either just play through more of Guitar Hero Metallica and/or Stoked. I have already reached my 3300 points a week quota that is necessary for me to maintain weekly in order to hit 200k by the end of the year. This upcoming week I have a bunch of games ready to go already including Madden 10, Brave Warriors Tale, The Bigs 2, Raven Squad, and Dirt 2. Should be a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon and another good week! Everyone enjoy your Sundays and I’ll be back tomorrow.

Holiday Season 2009

2009-10-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

The following are games in which will be day one purchases:

Forza Motorsport 3 – At the very top of my list. I loved both Forza 2 and the original Forza and from everything I’ve heard Forza 3 is going to be even better and bigger than the previous two iterations.

Modern Warfare 2 – Loved the single player in the first one but never really go into the multiplayer. I’m excited to pick this one up though and give the multiplayer another shot after finishing the campaign that looks simply stunning. I’m also looking forward to the co-op mode they announced as well. Should be interesting.

Assasins Creed 2 – Shamefully I have still not finished the first one. However I assure you I will be finishing it as the sequel gets closer to release. The thing that really excites me about the second one is the environment and the setting. The setting and feeling of the environment is what I enjoyed of the first one and I’m sure with mission improvements that decrease the repetition, Assasins Creed 2 will be brilliant.

Borderlands – I have been really excited about this game since I first saw it. Since then I have tried to distance myself from it so once I finally pick it up I can enjoy thoroughly without having to high of expectations.

Backyard Football 10 – The Backyard Sports series was accountable for hundreds of hours of my childhood. I don’t even know why but, even today I find myself wishing I still had the discs around to play. I am really excited to play this for the nostalgic effect I am sure it will provide for me.

As for the rest of the great games coming out, a bunch of them will probably end up coming on the Christmas tree. Last year I got 10 new games on Christmas day. Candidates for games that I’ll be asking for include:

- Tekken 6

- LEGO: Rock Band

- Dragon Age: Origins

- Band Hero

- Left 4 Dead 2

- Grand Slam Tennis

- Saboteur

- Fifa 10

2009 should definitely be another great holiday season for games. Fortunetally, with so many great games that have got pushed back to early 2010 I might actually be able to keep up with all the releases. In years past where multiple AAA titles were coming out every week I got so behind that even to this day I have not played some of the great games that have come out. I personally am very happy that AAA titles are getting spread out throughout the year which will allow them to all receive the extra attention they deserve. I’ll make a post in the next few days more along the lines of this very topic of when games are released. Stay tuned. Over and Out...

A Lengthy Recap

2009-10-13T16:43:00.001-07:00

Over the course of my six-month break from whoring out gamer score I played two games almost completely exclusively. The first of which was Tiger Woods 10 and the other is MLB The Show 09 on my PS3. I enjoyed Tiger Woods 10 so much that I plan on once again completing it for a second time on my Hammer x360a tag. There were so many little things that really enhanced this year’s version over years past. For instance instead of the Tiger Challenge mode implemented the past few years a new Tournament Challenge mode was in Tiger 10. This mode allows the player to go back to various historic moments in recent PGA tour history and replay them in an attempt to match or better what had really transpired. The other new game mode that was featured in Tiger 10 was the Live Tournaments that took place on Xbox Live. Over the summer I watched all 5 seasons of Entourage whilst competing in these Live Tournaments, which really puts into perspective just how much I competed and played in those tournaments. I loved Tiger 10 and I highly recommend it to any golf fans as there are so many options in which you can experience what it is like to compete like the professionals.

As for MLB The Show 09 I can say with complete confidence that it is truly the BEST baseball game that has ever been made. I have played very close to 200 full 9-inning games of baseball and I still continually play at least a game every day. The pitching is simple but fun as opposed to MLB 2k9’s pitching system, which is complicated, inconsistent, frustrating, and simply not very enjoyable. The fielding in MLB The Show 09 is very fluid as is the batting, which is pretty straightforward, but still challenging in a realistic sense, which keeps it fun. While I’ve heard the Road to the Show mode is excellent I much prefer playing the GM mode and controlling a full team rather than just one individual player. The GM mode is quite deep in that you can make various minor adjustments to try and continually improve your team’s skill. However, you can also turn on assists that will allow you to simply focus on the playing of baseball. Essentially you have endless options in which you can approach and experience baseball the way you want to. If you have a PS3 and even have the slightest interest in baseball this game is a must play.

After returning to my true tag Hammer x360a I have already gotten through quite a few games. I’ll just give a brief summary of a few of the games I’ve played the past week and a bit.

Summer Athletics, which is a game I had played pre-retirement but had given up on completing for the simple fact it was so very hard on my hands. However, I decided to finally complete it when I returned and fortunately it did not take much time as it is truly an incredibly annoying and shitty game. The worst part is that I still have a big blister in the palm of my right hand to show for it. Overall I hated Summer Athletics but the points come pretty easily if you are willing to sacrifice your hand to some blisters.

The second game I played since my return was Fight Night Round 4. I have always loved the Fight Night series and Round 4 was no exception. The graphics are top notch and the controls are tight. Using the right analog stick for ones punches is a lot more satisfying than using the button controls that various other boxing games have. The career mode is fun but does not really do anything new or inventive. Nevertheless, Fight Night Round 4 is great fun and an enjoyable boxing experience.

Thirdly I played Terminator Salvation. While the movie was rather entertaining the game was not. In total there were about 4 different enemies and there were only about 3 or 4 different weapons in total. The game wasn’t completely awful but it was certainly not good. In the end the best thing about this game is that it’s only about 4 hours long to both beat and complete.

Ice Age was decent but there is really nothing worth talking about there. Wanted was fun and curving bullets was quite entertaining for a while but the gimmick slowly wore off. NBA Live 10 seemed to be not a whole lot to different than 09. However, the game play does seem to get continually more realistic and from what I’ve heard it is getting much closer to the quality of the 2k basketball games.

That is all for now. I have just started playing Eat Lead as I’m posting this. Probably not going to get very far with it tonight though since I have a bunch of reading and an exam tomorrow. Thus I guess it will be a night at my desk while my 360 is running the Fireplace Indie game I bought :p.

The Return of the Hammer

2009-10-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Many of you may have figured it out by now but Hammer x360a is indeed back in commission. After a lot of thought and consideration I’ve decided to return to Hammer x360a and pick up where I had left off about half a year ago. I think that credit must be given to JJDude as when I announced I was retiring he wagered I returned and for that you will be awarded with a prize. A friend request ;p (seriously lacking in friends at the moment so feel free to help me fill up my list anyone). Anyways I guess my decision to return was kind of a spur of the moment. I was bored one evening and just for shit I recovered my account back onto my hard drive. After taking a look around the marketplace and the rest of the dashboard I realized how much I had enjoyed the ongoing progression and fun that gaming and achievements had provided to me. I then proceeded to start scoring some points and getting back into things.

Now, a week and a half later I have scored 5k and looking to build on that. My goal from the beginning of the year was to hit 200k by 2010. While I always thought I would hit it sooner I think that completing my original goal while still taking half a year off would be more than satisfactory. So my 1 and only goal for the rest of the year is to get to 200k by 2010 or die trying. It will be a balls to the wall effort but I know I have the library and motivation to get there.

Over my half-year vacation something I really missed, that I loved doing was writing and posting on this blog. Whether it be a blog on baseball, science fiction, religion, or gaming more and more people are starting to use blogging as an outlet to get their voice heard. I plan to be much more active on my blog and will try very hard to make daily posts. Today you can probably expect quite a few posts from me as I will talk about a few of the games I have been playing over the summer as well as those I have been playing more recently.

As for my strategy and gaming style I will use on my spring to 200k, it will be more of a try to get as many points as possible kind of method. I will go for a completion if I don’t have to go to far out of my way to get it but for the most part I will be in a “GSL” mode simply trying to score as much as I possibly can. I have renewed my 4 game plan from GameAccess and have a couple of Blockbusters and Rogers Videos at my disposal so I can get whatever I need to use to complete my very ambitious goal.

For now that is all, I am going to get to finishing up the extra mode achievements in Wanted and then I’ll probably make a post again later in the day. I will also be updating the side bar here on the site with a few stat tracking and information features.

April Month in Review

2009-04-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

Another month in the books. Just one and a half more and I'll be on summer holidays relaxing and enjoying the short summer in Canada. While still enjoying my games of course. Anyways this month as far has gaming goes has only been 20 days. I got back from my holidays on the 10th of April and went straight to work. I have actually scored quite well I would say considering it was a short month of gaming for me. Statistics:

GS April 10th (start of month for me) - 142 920

GS May 1st - 153 410

Total Points Scored - 10 490

Total Completions - 7

Retail Completions - 6

Arcade Completions - 1

Total Games Owned - 130

Retail - 110

Arcade - 20

Overall I have no complaints about April and I think I am just getting into a nice zone for points scoring. May should be another good month of gaming for me. I am hoping to build off of April and make bigger and better strides towards 200k while getting a few more completions than I managed this month, especially on the arcade. I am hoping to hit a few games that I have had riding in the back seat but then again I say that every month haha.

Clearly my new game stlye that I set out to do a month or so ago has been really successful for me (see new game style HERE). I am having a lot more fun playing than I did before and I am also getting more done as well. Also, I have been enjoying the hell out of buying and becoming a real collector of games. I always loved collecting all sorts of things when I was younger and collecting games is hitting the same spot that collecting cards did when I was younger (more expensive though).

Lastly, I did not do an amazing job with maintaining and making consistent posts on this blog in April. I find it hard to put time aside to just sit down and write a post which is why the majority of my posts are just updates on what I have been up to. Hopefully I can find some motivation to write some short reviews or opinion posts this month. Summer is finally here it seems and writing a blog post every night or two after dinner, out on the porch, in the sun, with a cup of coffee could become a nice little routine to get into.

All These Things That I've Done

2009-04-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is inspired by The Killers song. I was at their concert last night and they put on a great show. They hit on all of their well known loved songs along with a lot of their new music off of their most recent album Day and Age. Overall the concert was awesome and probably my second favorite concert of all time after The Foo Fighters.

Anyways on to achievement news and a wrap up of what I bought the past week. Once again I scored close to 3k. I managed to only complete one game which was Disney's Bolt but I worked on a few others that are getting close to completion. High School Musical is one of them. I originally thought that this game would take the better part of 30 hours but thankfully Fugitive wrote an excellent guide for almost all of the secret cues over at x360a. Now all I have left to do is 100% every song on the easiest difficulty. Aside from finishing Bolt I also did quite a bit of work on Race Pro. All I have left in that is online and the career mode which appears it may take quite a long time. This is a game I plan on purchasing sometime soon when the price drops a bit. Yesterday I started up Lips and am really enjoying that as well. It is an excellent karaoke game and a ton of fun. The wireless mics are great and there is quite a good selection of songs on the discs. Also since you can toss songs from your Ipod or other mp3 player into the game it makes for a lot of replayability. Anyways I am out for the day, keeping it short and sweet. My purchases for the past week are below.

- NCAA Basketball 09

- Tony Hawk's Project 8

- Lips

- WWE Smackdown vs Raw 08 (received in a trade)

150k and Beyond

2009-04-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I hit 150k on the dot while playing Race Pro. To be honest I was not all to excited when I hit the mark. I remember when I hit 50k I was really ecstatic but my excitement was no where near that for 150k. Nevertheless another 50k is down in the books and it is still a legitimate accomplishment. I have a bunch of stats and number so I'll just post those =p.

50k achieved - February 8th, 2008

100k achieved - October 4th, 2008

150k achieved - April 24th, 2009

This last 50k has been the quickest for me taking only 6 months and a few weeks. I hope to make my run from 150k - 200k even quicker!

Number of Completions from 100k to 150k - 41 completions

Avg Score Per Day from 100k to 150k - 285.7

Avg Score Per Week from 100k to 150k - 2000

So there are a few numbers from the last 50k I have scored. The past few nights I have been playing a lot of Race Pro and I have also started to work on Bolt which should be done by the weekends over. I have been working on completing High School Musical 3 and NHL 09. I also really need to finish Secret Service and get that game out of my sight but I just can't stomach it at the moment. Thats it for now I'll be back tomorrow with my weekly purchases.

The Race Begins

2009-04-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

I am embarking on a new challenge and race. This one is a 6 man battle to 200k. It should be a lot of fun and I am hoping that it will be a lot more successful than my last race (looks at Fro =p). I think that if I want to win this race I will have to bump my goal of 200k by the end of the year to a bit sooner. How much sooner I am not sure of yet. I am starting out the race at the front of the pack and hopefully that is where I will finish. Unlike my previous race with Fro I know what will take to out go 5 other guys. But we shall see how things play out. Anyways here are the participants:

As you can see everyone is within a pretty good range of each other so it should be a good, fun way to get more motivation to get to 200k as quick as possible.

I picked up a few games yesterday as I was sick of Secret Service and didn't want to force myself to finish that. I got NCAA Basketball 09, Disney's Bolt, Silent Hill Homecoming, and Race Pro. Four games that are all very different from each other. I plan on getting to Bolt and Silent Hill first as they are rentals. Anyways beyond those games I will slowly trudge through the last 2 and a half levels on Secret Service. Till next time, Hammer out.

Moving Along

2009-04-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

Another week marked off on the calendar, which means summer, is one more week closer. Not that I am counting but there are 9 weeks till I will be on my way to a summer of relaxation. But that is still 9 weeks away. As far as this week is concerned I have done quite well on the gaming front. It seems that my new gaming style has been very successful the past few weeks. I have been having more fun, scoring more points, and getting as many completions as I did before. Sure my completion percentage has taken a little hit but in all honesty I don’t care one bit. If you put it this way: you can have one guy that has done all 2k and all 06 sports games and has 100% on all of them thus leaving his completion percentage at 100. Then you can have another guy that has done a bunch of long and challenging games and maxed them all out leaving his completion percentage at 100. Some random person looks at a completion leaderboard and see’s them as equals since they both have 100%. Just my 2 cents though.

Anyways………….This week’s statistics (I love stats and numbers which is why I am always posting them =p)

Start Score: 145 335

End Score: 148 345

Points Scored: 3 010

Completions: 3 (Surfs Up, Ski-Doo Challenge, and TNA impact)

Purchases

- Family Game Night: Yahtzee

- Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

- Dark Sector (2^nd copy)

- TNA impact (2^nd copy)

Retail Games: 105

Arcade Games: 26

Not a big week as far as purchasing games is concerned. There are a few games though that I plan to buy this week (Hannah <3). I did however score quite well and am now very close to the halfway stop to 200k.

My completion project at the moment is NHL 09. Yes a sports game that is both time consuming and quite challenging for the 1k. All I have left is unlocking the Legend cards for both online and offline. To get these Legend cards you must play 150 games in both on and offline and maintain an A- ranking throughout those 150 games. This is not that big of a challenge offline but online this can be quite difficult. If you play 5-minute periods which equals to 15 minutes and game you are looking at just under 40 hours per Legend card mode. I am already 90 games into the single player Legend card and around 50 for the online one. I plan to continue working on this throughout the week and hopefully my single player card can get finished up.

Looking ahead I will finish Secret Service this week no excuses. I just want this game out of my house already! Hopefully I will get to 50 cent as long as my co-op partner gets his copy in the mail and I will also work on The Bigs until I have to return it. The Bigs is something I will definitely be buying shortly. I am really enjoying and want more! Past that I don’t know what else I’ll hit up. Probably some Thrillville but that just seems so unappealing at the moment.

A Day in the Life

2009-04-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

I thought I would share a typical normal day in my life. The day I will share is an example of a general weekday with no evening commitments I have to attend to.

7 30 am à Wake up and proceed to shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast. Breakfast for me generally is a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jam or cream cheese as well as 2 cups of coffee with soymilk.

8 10 am à Leave home for school. Usually hitch a ride with one of my parents but soon will drive myself.

8 20 – 11 00 am à Morning classes run. The first ends at 9 40 and the second ends at 11 am.

11 00 – 11 40 am à Eat lunch and hang out.

11 40 – 1 00 pm à Third and my final class of the day.

1 20 pm à After a stop at Starbucks for a latte I arrive at home.

1 30 – 5 00 pm à Xbox time.

5 00 – 6 30 pm à Eat dinner and get done the majority of my schoolwork.

6 45 – Bed à Made up of more game time along with schoolwork if I still have any that is worthwhile completing. I also usually study and do my reading later at night, which gets me drowsy and ready for sleep. I usually end up hitting the hay sometime between one and on some nights as late as four…depends how tired out I am.

Generally speaking I do not get a lot of sleep by most peoples standards but for me it is more than enough. I don’t fall asleep in class and never feel drowsy during the day. It may have something to do with the amount of caffeine I have or I have just adapted to the sleep schedule I have. During my few weeks in the GSL going to school off a hour or two was not something that I found all to difficult.

I have had a pretty good week as far as scoring in concerned. I have scored 2 065 points so far. I have had a recent soft spot for baseball so I have not only been playing some MLB 2k9 but also The Bigs. I think I am having more fun with The Bigs but to be honest neither one of them are that great of baseball games. I also finished up Dead Space yesterday as well. I had this pre loaded on the last boss for the GSL but I forgot about it so I finished that up. I plan on going through it and finishing it up. Its one of my favorite games of 2008 and I highly recommend it to everyone. Finally I also have Ski-Doo Challenge nearly complete. I have one race left that has been giving me a bit of a tough time but it should be done with by the end of the weekend.

My plan for the weekend is to force myself to finish up Secret Service. I really have no desire to play this game but it’s eating up a spot in my gamefly queue and has been for a while so I think I should get it over and done with. My other plan is to do my first two box boosting with Smash Court Tennis 3. I got a second copy and a second wireless adapter today so I plan on finally putting the luxury of having two xbox’s to use. Other than that I’ll probably play some of Gears 2, skate, Fallout 3, and whatever else that I’m in the mood in. See ya in a few days.

Settled In

2009-04-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Now that I have been back from my adventures across the Atlantic I'm all settled in and getting some serious gaming done. Thankfully I have also caught up as far as my school work is concerned which is a major load off my back as well. I am pretty sure that about 80% of my life has been lived in my bedroom the past 4 or 5 days gaming and getting homework done. I have been playing quite a few games and since my return Thursday have nearly put up 3k which has made me close in on 150k which is a bit of a milestone I guess. I feel that when I was under 100k every 10k I got felt like a good achievement but now being over 100k I don't get the same satisfaction that I did every 10k I score. However 150k is an achievement that will be at least noteworthy for myself.

On the game buying front I am here to give the first of what will become weekly game purchasing updates. Hopefully every Monday if not Tuesday I will just list out everything I bought this week both retail and on the arcade. I'll probably throw in accessories as well when I purchase them.

Week of April 5th - April 12th:

- ACDC Live Rock Band Track Pack (new)

- Major League Baseball 2k9 (new)

- Ski-Doo Snowmobile Challenge (new)

- Uno Rush

- Gears of War 2 Snowblind Map Pack

- Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack

I did buy quite a few things things week but nothing ridiculous. I had also rented Sonics Ultimate Genesis Collection and WWE Legends. I finished WWE Legends and I did a bit of work on Sonics UGC. I am probably just going to return them both today or tomorrow. I have not finished Sonics UGC but thats a game I want to own just because I want to be able to have all those Genesis games I never experienced before.

Thats enough for today. I plan on working on and finishing up Ski-Doo Snowmobile Challenge sometime this week as well as finishing up Secret Service, maybe Sonics UGC if I fine a copy to buy somewhere, Uno Rush, and I plan on starting up and hopefully finishing 50 Cent this week (I need a co op partner so let me know if you're interested). Beyond that what I play will depend on what I buy/rent/get from gamefly this week. Should be a fun week! Also I am excited that on Thursday I'll be finally be getting my full drivers liscence...oh the freedom :p.

Back, Locked and Loaded

2009-04-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I am finally back from my trip to Eastern Europe. I had quite a good time but it feels great to get home. I had a few games in the mail when I got back so I have started on a few of those, one of which is Sonic's UGC. I have not been having the easiest time with it mainly because I really did not play a lot of those Genesis games and I have no experience with them but I think I am starting to get the hang of them. After getting the unlockables for the first 6 games I saved over my initial saved with a blank one so I will have to go through the first few games again. I have also started up WWE Legends which I am not a fan of. I really loved the controls and the feel of WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 but WWE Legends must not have learned cause the controls just feel awful, the wrestling is clunky and it simply does not flow well. The last retail game I started up on when I got home was Fallout 3. I just escaped from Vault 101 and I am craving to get back and play some more. I'm really looking forward to exploring the world and experiencing all the game has to offer. On the arcade side of things I picked up UNO Rush and I really enjoy it. I think its a really fun party game that is simple but forces you to think and make quick decisions. Definitely worth the 10 bucks.

I am really on an achievement high right now and in the mood to throw down points. I have so many games on my plate right now and I am going to ride this high for as long as I can. Hopefully I can get into a strong and consistent scoring groove and ride it all the way 200k. Anyways that is about all I have to say about now. I will be back with consistent updates for now on since the hockey season is done and I am no longer refereeing much so I have even more free time now that I can put into my blog.

Back in the USSR

2009-03-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

In about 6 hours or so my flight to Eastern Europe will be boarding thus taking me away from my 360 for 2 weeks (not complaining). I am looking forward to getting back to easter Europe as I was there 2 summers ago and loved it. This trip I will be spending most of my time in Ukraine where my ancestors originated hundreds of year ago. Hopefully I can have a fun, relaxing, and interesting 2 weeks. I decided against bringing my MacBook so I will probably not be making any posts unless I decide to make a quick stop at an internet cafe or something. Anyways just wanted to let my many many readers what I'm up to. When I get back the bombshell is going to drop for a big sprint to 200k. I know my goal was to hit 200k by the end of the year but I plan on hitting 200k a hell of a lot earlier. Hopefully my new style of gaming will help me make this sprint I plan on a lot more fun and enjoyable. See you all in 2 weeks, try to have fun without me :p.

More Games, More Fun, More Points!

2009-03-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

Over the past week or so I have found myself doing a lot of sitting on the dashboard trying to decide what I should play. I have so many games that I own and have rented but I just can't pull myself to any of them. I feel like if I start a game then thats the one I have to work on till its done even if I am sick of it and want no more of it. I think that by doing this I have not been scoring as many points as I could be. At times I want to really indulge in a great single player campaign where at other times I want to just play a mindless game for fun. I also have been really getting into making a big collection of games and want to further expand on the 95 games I own. Thus I decided that I am going to set some new rules out for my gaming. These are not concrete but are things that will hopefully get me scoring even more points than the fluctuating 2k a week I have been averaging the past few months.

Rule #1: No renting games that take more than 10 hours - This will help me keep from rushing through games that I would not if I owned it.

Rule #1-2: No buying sports games (there are exceptions) - I love me my sport games but waste lots of money buying sports games at full price than playing them for the 5-10 hours it takes to 1k them.

Rule #1-3: No renting games that I know I will enjoy and love just because I can - I have found that I have been renting to many games I would have otherwise bough just because I can with my gamefly plan.

Rule #2: Buy the majority of the games I play. Not necessarily always at release. - I think if I own a lot of the games I am playing I will not feel the obligation to playing something I don't want to just cause it's a rental.

Rule #2-1: Buy at least 1 game at the bare minimum each week.

Now here are some guidelines I am going to put on what I play:

#1. If I am not in the mood for something leave it for another time. Don't force the issue.

#2. Mix up the genres I play - I am going to try my best to play a game from each genre every week. This is something that will not be consistent in most cases but will try to get me to change things up.

#3. Work on completions only after I reach the number of points I want to score in a week - Every Sunday night I will set a point total I must reach, where I can then start working on completions.

So there are a the few things I wanna try to stick to. I am going away to Europe for a 2 week trip on Thursday so I plan on kicking this new play style into full gear when I get back at the beginning of April. As far as the goals I have set myself at the beginning of the year the only one that is going to change is my completion % goal of 85%. While I am still going to be going for completions I just see no point in worrying about a completions % when I am not enjoying doing so. I know a lot of people who are completionists and live and die for their %'age but that is just not me.

Last night I was a bit bored and I just loaded up all the games I had yet to put in my disc drive that I own. It totaled out to 20 games lol. So they are all showing a beautiful goose egg on my profile for now. Hopefully that will light a spark up my ass to get to some of those games. That is it for now. I know I always say I am going to try and do more updates but you probably wont see any while I am in Europe.

Moving Along

2009-03-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well since my last post quite a bit has happened. Basically I am no longer participating in the GSL because of a cheater on my team. I am not going to go all into it but if you listen to the most recent x360a Podcast or read the GSL forums at all you have a pretty good idea about what is happening. Nevertheless, no need to dwell on the past.

Recently I have been up to completing a few things that I did not get to finishing in the GSL. I am trying to get to completing some of these games but I am also in the point whore mood. I am trying to balance completing these games while still point whoring new games, but it seems that the completion side of things is taking up more of my time. Most notably I finished everything in Gears of War 2 with the exception of Seriously 2.0. I am currently at about 48 000 kills towards the 100k so I am hoping that I can work on this further over the coarse of the next few days and possibly finishing it by this time next week. I have also been trying to finish up Asterix at the Olympic Games. This game is quite a change in pace compared to others as it mixes some very good platforming with simple olympic sport mini games. There are however collectible pigeons throughout the game in which 2 I am missing. I am probably going to try to run through the game once more to see if I can scope them out but if not it may be resting on the shelf for a while. Finally the last game I have been working on finishing up is High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance. This game is certainly one of the highlights for me on the 360. The gameplay is next to perfect for a dance game and the fun factor is simply through the roof. The even better part about it is that I forsee it taking nearly 20+ hours to complete the 1k. I am looking to the last 13 or so hours of wonderfully cheerful music that NEVER gets old!

Lastly, I started up and finished my first playthrough of Afro Samurai. I have really enjoyed this game for the most part. The combat is lots of fun, the graphics are quite unique, and the soundtrack is nothing less than awesome. I am hoping that I will get through my second playthrough of this throughout the rest of the week barring any difficulties.

I am planning on starting up Fable 2 this week in co op with one of teammates from the coveted Nocturnal Ninjas team which will be good fun. Also, I plan on not only picking up Resident Evil 5 but also the Limited Edition Resident Evil Xbox 360 Elite. Hopefully I am able to find one but if not I will just settle with a regular elite. I figure it is about time to pick up a bigger hard drive and I figure I might as well just get the whole new elite while I'm at it. I am also sold on Halo Wars after reading a few reviews and playing the demo so I shall be picking that up as well. That is all for today. I'll try to post back soon. :)

February Recap and GSL

2009-03-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

Another month in the books. February is short enough as it is but with all the excitement surrounding the GSL it seemed to really fly by. I think I responded to my mediocre month of January well and put up decent numbers this month. I am looking forward to more score whoring not only for the rest of the GSL but throughout my road to 200k. Anyways on to the statistics.

Gamerscore on February 1st: 123 635

Gamerscore on March 1st: 136 105

Total Increase: 12 470

Retail Completions: 7

Arcade Completions: 2

Current Completion % (based of TA): 64%

Overall Grade: 8

Goal Updates:

200k GS: Currently 136 105

80% Completion: Currently 64%

100 Retail Completions: Currently 61

35 Arcade Completions: Currently 15

4 JRPG's: LOL stupid goal I made. Hopefully I can get 1 complete let alone 2. 4 is highly highly unlikely.

I should have no problem expanding on my progress this month in March. I'll be scoring more and more points each week as the league moves along and I should be well above my pace to 200k by the end of the year. I may even re-evaluate after GSL and adjust that goal. I do want to work on a few JRPG's though so we'll see. I am going to have to figure out how I am going to get a good balance of increasing my completion, getting more completions both arcade and retail, and simply gaining more score.

As for the GSL, my team the Nocturnal Ninja's finally came out of hiding week 2. We erased a 19k deficit down to 2k. Week 3 will hopefully be the week there is a change at the top of the standings but I expect a strong response from Kotor this week. Hopefully we can at the very least keep the gap tight. The rest of the teams in the GSL seem to be in odd positions. There are 3 teams that are 10k back of Kotor and us. Then there is a drop off of 15k to 6th place. I know Hand of Thrawn will be most likely moving up into that second tier of teams and it will be interesting to see if any other teams make real big moves like we made in week 2. Whatever the case may be it should be an interesting couple of weeks on the GSL front.

That is it for today. I know it has been forever (and by forever I mean about 2 weeks) since my last post but I am going to try to make some more time to get back into the blogging swing of things I had for about a month and a half. Anyways thats it for now and I shall be back shortly...I promise.

GSL Diaries - Day 1

2009-02-18T22:27:00.000-08:00

Well the GSL started up today and my team and I unleashed the pre loaded points we had to put us out to a quick lead. KOTOR managed to take over that lead for a few hours but by the end of the day we had a 100 points lead. Yes its day one and yes only a 100 points lead but its still nice to have. While there will be a clearer picture come end of week 1 on Sunday I am happy with how my team has come out of the gates.

Personally I finished up 3 games and scored a total of 2 300 points. Not a bad day. I was hoping to do better but my WWE pre load managed to fuck up so I did not have that 500 points at my disposal. Anyways, my plan is for daily updates on the blog throughout the GSL. You can track all the scoring live at the link below. Thanks to the GSL staff for a smooth start to the GSL!

GSL LIVE SCORING

Lurking in the Shadows

2009-02-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

With the storm of gaming shortly approaching along side the beginning of the GSL in 8 days I have been getting prepared both on and off the Xbox so I can score a fuck ton of points once the league starts. I have gotten back into some GTA 4 and am now nearly 40 missions through so about halfway. I hope to put a bit more time into over the coarse of the next week but I have to many other games that require my attention at the moment. GTA will probably be something I finish up and get back into after the league is over. My game's collection has grown from around 60 games to almost 80 in the past week. I have bought closer to 20 games and with my 4 game out gamefly plan and with me probably getting a Game Pass from Blockbuster for the next month I should hopefully be all set for the GSL. I find that it's quite smart and efficient to have all the games you plan on playing on hand for the most part so you can unload them at a moments notice. After the GSL I'll probably make another updated post of my collection.

Also, I wanted to mention a band that I have really gotten into lately. Their called Carolina Liar. I don't know all to much about them but I bought their most recent album and I am in love with it. The song below is probably my new favorite song.

A Blast of Energy

2009-02-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

I figured with the GSL coming up it might be worth while researching various techniques in which I can use to stay awake when I am dead tired. For the most part everything I read pointed me towards sugar and caffeine. This got me researching energy drinks and other various energy shots. To my surprise there are a ridiculous number of energy drinks out there. I browsed various sites and from what I gathered Monster energy drink was the way to go. So I will be off on a search to track down a case of Monster later today. Hopefully I don't have to go on looking to hard.

Anyways in other news there have been a few games that have been announced recently that I am really excited for. Mass Effect 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Virtua Tennis 2009 have all been announced. Quite honestly I am probably most hyped for Virtua Tennis mostly because I am a huge tennis fan but I also really enjoyed Virtua Tennis 3 a few years ago. Mass Effect 2 did not really generate a lot of hype inside me as I have yet to really get into the first one but I'm sure once I get back to finishing it after GSL I will be more intrigued to see a sequel. Lastly I am quite excited for Battlefield Bad Company 2. The first one was a blast and is something that I will probably go back to periodically over the coarse of the year. The multiplayer is great and the game as a whole is an overall great experience. I hope Dice expands on the first game's successes and makes an even better sequel.

Seeing as how I am almost done with NHL 2k9 I will be getting back into and hopefully finishing Dead Space over the weekend. I also plan on getting back to The Simpsons Game and possibly even Assassins Creed or Prince of Persia depending on what I am in the mood for. 12 days until GSL.

A Month to Forget

2009-02-05T00:54:00.000-08:00

The first month of the year proved to be quite a lackluster month for myself as far as gamerscore and gaming go. With exams and a week away at the end of the month I was really busy and did not get very much game time in. Here are some of my statistics for the month:

- January 1st score: 118 775

- January 31st score: 123 634

- Retail Completions: 3

- Arcade Completions: 2

- Overall month success: 4/10 = Fail

Basically I was not incredibly happy with my gaming in January. Yes, I was very bust and essentially this is a review of only the first 3 weeks of January as I was away the fourth but I am still not satisfied. While I will cut myself some slack I have much greater expectations for February. While I will not be scoring much of anything the first 2 weeks of the month I will be putting up big numbers in the last two weeks. I will not put a goal on how much I want to score but I'll say if the number of points I scored in January is not at least tripled I will be disappointed.

Sorry for the late January summary but I felt like it was still early enough into February that it was still worth doing. Now back to work :).

A Nocturnal Ninja

2009-02-03T22:31:00.001-08:00

Over the past few days I have been away from making posts. For the most part this is because I feel like I don't have anything worth talking about if it's not the GSL. I am not posting anything on GSL until its done so don't expect any updates or info on what is going on with me and my team. I however will try to make a few posts over the coarse of the next few weeks just about various games I'm playing and maybe writing about a few random topics throughout the gaming world. I figure any time I am making posts here I could be using that same time to prepare for the GSL.

Once the GSL ends in early April I predict I will be pretty tired and worn out from gaming hard and playing a lot of sub par games. After I finish up fully completing the majority of the games I end up playing in GSL I plan on finally getting to all the great games I have been putting off for whatever reason. I will be getting back to and I will play all of the games that I have really wanted to play but haven't before going back to playing for points. By the time I get through the majority of my pile of shame it will probably be almost summer time. I will be working hard the next 8 or 9 weeks on this GSL and I will be very busy with it but I will try hard to make semi consistent posts here so don't go forgetting about me if I don't make a posts in a few days :p. Anyways thats it for now. I'll make a post on my thoughts about Dead Space and possibly Top Spin 2 sometime in the next couple days.

The Multiple Scoregasm's - GSL VII

2009-01-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

The past few days I have been sending interviews and private messaging over 20 gamers over at x360a scouting for the GSL team I was putting together. When I first read the news I quickly messaged my buddy liddd to see if he was down to play. He was and we decided we would get a team together. I then messaged a couple of people on my friends list to see if they were interested. A few responded but the only one that ended up on the final roster was Sajaa. For those of you who don't know Sajaa, achievements are in his blood. I know Sajaa is going to be a huge player in this league so I was really excited when he decided he would play.

Then with 3 more spots to fill I headed went to check out who all signed up in the forums. I was looking for people with around 20-40k who would give me their 100% committment to point whore. I shot messages out to around 15-20 guys to see who would fit in with the team well. After going through long messages with quite a few gamers I finally settled with the 3 I thought would be the best addition to the team. xYx VeNoM xYx, JORDAN 7, and ovoon. I had never heard or talked to any of these 3 guys before but after I learned a bit about each of them I knew I could trust them and I knew that with them The Multiple Scoregasms are going to be a team that suprises and is going to compete in the league.

While I don't expect that we are going to be a team everyone is talking about in the weeks leading up to the league like I can guarentee after week 1 of the league we are going to be recognized as a major competitor. However, for now we plan on just lurking in the shadows and being a team that comes out week 1 and turns heads.

Having the GSL VIII only 3 weeks away I decided that I would start out Fallout 3 soon as well as Dead Space. I also plan on finishing Prince of Persia and Warriors Orochi before the GSL starts as I want to free up space with my gamefly for the league. Anyways for now that is it.

A Page Breaker

2009-01-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

It took me a while today to think of something to post. I have done some more statistic oriented posts the past few days so I thought I would do something a little different. I've decided to enrich some of you with some of my favorite bands and songs as well as a couple of youtube videos that make me lol. I figure I will do a post like this every so often as a way to do something here that gets away from gaming. First off my bio for the past few months has been "Day and Age" which is the name of The Killers most recent album. I really love this album and two of my favorite songs from it are Human and A Dustland Fairytale. Listen below its well worth it :).

Now onto another one of my favorite not so well known band The Maine. They have 3 albums if I remember correctly at the moment and are gaining more and more fans. Two of their songs We All Roll Along and Into Your Arms.

I was not able to get these videos on here but you should all check out Neg's Urban Sports. He does random shit and makes events out of them. I'll try to find a link later but for now I'm out. I'll get back on gaming tomorrow with some talk about the type's of achievements I like and don't like as well as some of the games I think have the best achievement lists.

Bread and Butter

2009-01-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

Most of you readers know all about 360 voice and their genre specific badges. For those that don’t I’m sure you will figure it out. Anyways, I was looking through my badges and noticed that I have less than about half of the genre specific badges available. While I am very close on some I am also quite a ways away with others. Keeping in mind that 360voice does not have all my points recorded to 100% accuracy they are fairly close. I think I am going to try and tidy up some of these badges over the coarse of fulfilling my various goals for 2009.

Genre – My points/Total points possible – Points needed for badge.

Sandbox – 3440/13500 – 610 à With GTA 4 I could clean this up but I also have Assassins Creed with only 210 points and a few other titles that will make getting this badge quite easy at some point this year.

Retro – 1055/600 – 745 à Simply put, I will have to pull out some MS points to get this badge. I’m sure I can find a couple of retro arcades to mop up the 745 points needed for this badge.

Social – 465/2850 – 390 à Having Carcassonne unplayed in my arcade list along with Catan should get me close if not totally to this badge.

Fighting – 1745/11200 – 1615 à One of the badges I am furthest away from but one that I am interested in going back to get. Hopefully Street Fighter 4 will be my motivation to getting back into this genre.

Hack and Slash – 1495/12920 – 2381 à Well I have Warriors Orochi waiting for me at home and when I get back to finish The Force Unleashed I will be close. I plan on getting to Castle Crashers on the arcade in time and I’m sure I’ll get to another Dynasty Warriors game sometime this year.

Oddball – 655/6700 – 1355 à To get this I might just have to break out two of the most boring games on the 360. Alaskan Storm and Pimp My Ride. Zzzzzz….

Puzzle – 415/4400 – 905 à Another badge that requires one to play through arcades only. It’s not like I have a MS point tree, then again I just put one on order :p.

Shmup – 185/300 – 715 à This badge can fuck right off.

RPG – 460/15 400 – 4160 à I don’t know how many times I have to make excuses up for not playing RPG’s enough. I own a bunch too. Will get this year.

Strategy – 20/11755 – 3512 à Shows what I think of this genre on the 360.

Anyways, not to make any more goals for myself but I think I just did that. I found this quite interesting though. It shows that I am not a big fan of a broad variety of genres. I have 5 or 6 I really enjoy and that is clearly where I am putting the most time and getting the most points.

What happens in Vegas...

2009-01-24T01:37:00.000-08:00

If any of you readers follow my twitter (Hammerx360a) you may have noticed that I'm in Vegas for a couple days. Gonna be playing 3 or 4 rounds of golf and just kinda hanging out. However, being underage here does limit what I have to do especially in the evening. I walked around for 2 hours or so but eventually worked my way back to my room at the new Encore Wynn to watch some of the Australian Open. I've decided to stay up to watch Nadal's match at about 6am eastern time.

Anyways on to some Xbox and more importantly achievement talk. I decided to go through my card and see what games I have on there that are really holding back my completion percentage. These are games that I have less than 20% on and played them in 2009. I have more games with less than 20% on but I am not going to list them all.

- The Force Unleashed - Played this a bit during GSL and I really did not like it. I guess considering I'm not a huge Star Wars fan and I wasn't really having fun with the game I put it down and returned the game since I rented it. I will surely go back to this game but I don't think it will be happen really soon.

- Viva Pinata - Someone sent me about 15 of the rarer pinatas in the game and I know have all these pinata's I'm not supposed to have until later in the game running around and killing each other. It is a mess and I will have to deal with it eventually.

- GTA 4 - This is inexcusable I know :(.

- Dark Sector - May actually go back to finishing this up soon. I have finished most of the multiplayer achievements but I just didn't get into the campaign. Put it aside at the time since I had rented stuff that needed playing and I own the game.

- Army of Two - I started this game alongside with Bully. Needless to say I got into Bully and left this game behind. However, I own this game so I will get back to it sometime.

- FEAR Files - Boosted the online and left the game alone. Own the game and will go back to it. I think I will make myself play through the two FEAR games on the 360 already before I think of getting FEAR 2 when it comes out.

- Mass Effect - Another game that is at the top of my pile of shame with GTA.

- Lost Odyssey - As I mentioned in my 2009 goals this is a JRPG I will commit to getting back into. Am actually quite excited to do so.

- Burnout Revenge - It was a mistake to play Paradise and then try out Revenge. Will get back to it when I'm need a racing fix.

- The Simpson's Game - Don't really remember why I did not really get more points on this game yet. Another game I own though.

- The Golden Compass - I'm not going to waste any words on this game.

From this list only The Force Unleashed and Golden Compass are games I don't own. I find that with games always coming in the mail they always take priority and there is rarely an opening for me to dedicate a lot of time to games I own. I think I will try to start to get back to these games especially GTA and Mass Effect soon but it is hard when you wanna make the fullest use of your gamefly service.

Anyways thats about it for today. Will try to continue making posts throughout my time here in Vegas. I will be home and back online Thursday morning if anyone really cares haha. For now I'm going to enjoy my time golfing and roaming around the strip.

PS: $13.99 a day for internet is a bit steep. Oh well.

2009, The Year of DLC?

2009-01-22T17:57:00.000-08:00

The past few day's there has been an absolutely absurd number of games that have announced DLC and more achievements that will be added to their games. Obviously this is a way the developers are trying to get us gamers to buy their games and keep us from re selling them to Gamestop or other trade in retailers. I'm personally quite happy that games are starting to stay committed to releasing DLC and supporting their games past their original release. Some of the games the past few days that have announced or released new achievements include:

- Gears 2: 175 GS at the moment. Probably more to put the game up to 1250 down the line.

- Fallout 3: 100 GS with Operation Anchorage

- Tomb Raider Underworld: Pack 1 has 125 GS as does the second DLC pack.

- Mirrors Edge: No confirmed new achievements but there are trophies so only one can assume achievements will also follow.

- GTA 4: 250 GS with the Lost and Damned

I have personally gotten back to Gears 2. I finished up insane campaign and got the rest of the collectibles today and am working on the DLC achievements. Hopefully the recent DLC splurge will continue throughout the year and years to come. I foresee the year 2009 as being the year of DLC.

Loving the Maw

2009-01-21T22:13:00.001-08:00

Today I came home from school, switched on my 360 and downloaded the trial of The Maw. As I was playing through the trial I got to the point where I ate my first creature and by doing so the game prompted me to buy the game and unlock the achievement for eating my first creature. Of course I could not resist this temptation and dropped the 800 points right there. I was all up hill from there.

The maw is one of the cutest and most enjoyable arcade experiences I have had on the 360. Granted I don't play a ton of arcade games this one is my second favorite behind the awesomeness of Pac-man CE. The charming, colorful, and simply happy world you were put into was just something that put a smile on my face throughout the entire game. I managed to get through the entire game and the 200 points in around 5 hours. For the 10 bucks I paid for it I can say that I easily got my money's worth.

After I finished up The Maw I went on to some TNA Impact for a bit. I worked my way up to 230 000 style points so I'm getting closer to unlocking that final character. I still have the online left anyways so I probably wont be finishing this any time this week. I am gonna try to re-link up with my Gears 2 co op partner to get through the rest of the campaign on insane tonight or tomorrow and then get to work on a few of the DLC achievements and eventually Seriously 2.0. I may put a bit more time into Burnout but I just received NHL 2k9 and since we Canadians love our hockey I'll probably be drifting that direction.

Just a quick post today. Just tying up some loose end to completely finish the semester. If you have not noticed I added the games I currently have out from Gamefly on the side bar. They are listed in order from most recently received to oldest received. Anyways thats it...Go buy The Maw...Now!...Seriously..

Official 2009 Gamerscore Goals

2009-01-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

A while back I posted about having a goal of reaching 200k and how I would have to perform on a weekly and monthly basis to make sure I got there. While that is still my main goal I have decided to set a few more goals to keep me motivated as well.

Goal 1: 200k gamerscore by the end of 2009 as mentioned above.

Goal 2: Raise my coompletion % to above 80. It is currently at 63% but by completing my goal below 80% should come.

Goal 3: Raise the number of retail completions I have to 100. I am currently at 54 so I have ways to go with this goal.

Goal 4: Raise the number of arcade completions I have to 35. I am currently at 13 but I own like 10 arcade games I just have not played so I think this is a very doable goal.

Goal 5: This is like a side goal. It's meant to kind of get me thinking of getting back into some JRPG's. So this final goal is to finish 3 and if I really get into them, 4 JRPG's this year. I already Lost Oddesey so I will probably start on this one first at the beginning of February. The other JRPG's I'm interested in doing are Eternal Sonata, Tales of Vesperia, Last Remenat, and possibly going back to Enchanted Arms. I am going to try and stay on top of this but it is quite possible for me to drift away from this with other, less time consuming games.

Anywho, those are my 5 gaming goals for 2009. While it is going to be a tough road to completing all of the 5 goals it should be alot of fun. Once I get back from my little get away (you will hear about soon) on the 30th of January I'm gonna start to throw the hurt down on 2009.

The Future of Gaming Journalism

2009-01-19T13:52:00.001-08:00

A while back I mentioned that I was going to make a post on where I thought gaming journalism was heading. When I sat down to write it I was simply not convinced on what I thought of it. Over the past week or so I have been able to reach an opinion on this. If I would have been writing about this topic a few months ago my thoughts would have been much different but with UGO’s recent acquirement of Ziff Davis I think this is an indication of a new and different future for gaming journalism.

For those of you who are not aware of Ziff Davis’s situation prior to the purchase I’ll give you a bit of a background. Ziff Davis is an American media company who ran and still runs various magazines, websites, and television stations including various NBC affiliates throughout the country. However, most gamers know Ziff Davis for the 1up network and most notably Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM). Over the past couple years Ziff Davis had publicly expressed their interest in selling the 1up network as they were undergoing difficult economic times. With EGM closely approaching its 20th anniversary in January of 2009 UGO entertainment purchased the entire 1up network. With their acquisition of 1up UGO released around 40 employees and announced that the January issue of EGM would be its last.

With the obscene number of gaming journalist now unemployed one may ask where they are all headed. Some guys like fan favorite and former executive editor at EGM Shane Bettenhausen have decided to go to the game publishing side of the industry. Others have retreated back to their personal blogs and are freelancing for various gaming magazines and websites. The guys involved with the 1up Show and 1up Yours podcasts have continued on together to start their own independent podcasts and their own blog sites. Despite the popularity of 1up it is not the name that attracted the fans, it was the writers that many grew to know and relate to personally. This is why when UGO let go so many of these loved gaming journalists the fans followed these journalists to their new homes or in some cases their old ones. While the 1up network will continue and still has many talented people working there it will never be able to regain the magic and love that they had before.

It is easy for one to react to the cancellation of EGM by saying print as a means of journalism is dead because everyone can get their news and reviews for free on the internet. This is true in the sense that yes, you can get a lot of what you get in a magazine for free on the internet. However, to say that print is dead is a bit inaccurate in my opinion since the reason for the cancellation of EGM was because of financial issues not a lack of readers. I also believe that professional gaming sites like 1up, OXM, and Game Spot are slowly fading away. They are never going to have problems with having an insufficient number of readers to completely go head under water but they are not going to be the dominant gaming sites they use to be. So where exactly does this leave everything?

While there are only a few really massive gaming sites there are hundreds of excellent and fairly large community based sties. These sites like Joystiq, Kotaku, and hell even x360a on a lesser scale are places where gamers are starting to go not only for gaming news that they care about, but also for reviews and previews from people that they can trust and relate to. Also, these community based sites are where gamers can go to not only find new guys and girls to play games with but to feel like they have a voice and are part of a community that cares about its members. Gamers are slowly drifting away from the bigger and more commercial sites and while they will never go away gamers are starting to find new homes with different sites.

Another interesting direction of gaming journalism is the blogging. A lot of people both in and out of the industry are starting to document their adventures as gamers through personal blogs. I know that I love have this blog as a place where I can go to voice my opinion without having to deal with backlash from people that you may get on forums. I think that as more and more people begin blogging it will become a very legitimate source for unbiased opinions on various aspects of the gaming industry.

In conclusion, the shutdown of EGM and the depletion of many of the 1up staff is the first real big movement of gamers moving from a big site and spreading out amongst various niche gaming communities. I think that gaming journalism is continually evolving and it is being proven that the big name sites are not the only ones with a major voice anymore. Games are now becoming more and more main stream and the way they are presented through the media is truly essential to the success of the industry as a whole.

Back on Schedule

2009-01-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

The past few days I have been getting back into my normal gaming schedule. I have been able to get a few things done and have started to work on a few others. Over the past few days I have been thinking about planning out all the games I am going to do for the next month. So I have decided that at the beginning of each month I am going to post a plan of what I am going to do gaming wise. This will help me stay on track as well as give the few readers I have an idea of what I am doing over the next few weeks. By doing this I will not have to write weekly plans either so I can write about other things, that is if I can ever think of anything.

Anyways on to the achievement update. I have finally finished Just Cause Friday night. I clocked in at about 26 hours though it seemed like a lot longer due to just how repetitive the game was. While I enjoyed the main story missions and sky diving from hundreds of feet was fun as hell this game still managed to leave me on a sour note. The liberation missions where you have to capture and take control of the enemy base were certainly a different and were satisfying for a while. However, once you finish about 15 of them and realize you still have about 60 more to do they get really fucking boring. The shooting and combat were very simple and I rarely died while in combat. The flying and driving mechanics in the game were also decent but nothing to groundbreaking. In summary, Just Cause was a decent sandbox game and had a lot of creative ideas that were just not implemented to their fullest potential. Hopefully these issues get adressed for the sequel due out in 2009.

Once I finished Just Cause on Friday night I thought about what to play for a good 15 minutes. I finally decided to go back to Burnout Paradise and try out some of the new features they added like the bikes and day/night time cycle. From what I played with the bikes I really enjoyed and the day/night cycle only added to the life of Paradise City. I intend on working through more of Burnout over the next few weeks so expect to hear more about it later.

Lastly, I started working on TNA Impact and progressed to the very last fight in the story mode. I tried it a few times last night but I was just to tired to concentrate and beat him so I just went to bed. I'll finish beating the story today and I am supposed to be boosting the multiplayer tonight also so hopefully I'll be done with the game by Tuesday at the very latest.

That's it for now. Hope everyone enjoys what's left of their weekends.

Game's Collection

2009-01-15T22:39:00.001-08:00

Ok well I have pictures of every row of my shelf below. It's not the biggest collection out there but it is what it is. A list of games in each picture is below each one.

- Army of Two

- Assassins Creed

- Battlefield Bad Company

- Battlestations Midway

- Beijing 2008

- Bionicle Heroes

- Bully Scholarship Edition

- Burnout Paradise

- Burnout Revenge

- Call of Duty 4

- Call of Juarez

- College Hoops 2k7

- Command and Conquerer 3

- Condemned Criminal Origins

- Condemned 2 Bloodshot

- Dark Messiah

- Dark Sector

- Devil May Cry 4

- Disney's Sing It

- Fable 2 Collectors Edition

- Fallout 3

- Fear Files

- Gears of War

- Gears of War 2 Collectors Edition

- GRAW 2

- GTA 4

- Guitar Hero 2

- Guitar Hero 3

- Guitar Hero World Tour

- Halo 3

- Kane and Lynch: Deadman

- Lost Odyssey

- Lost Planet Colonies

- Madden 09

- Mass Effect

- Mirrors Edge

- NCAA Football 08

- Need for Speed Pro Street

- Need for Speed Undercover

- NHL 09

- NHL 2k7

- NHL 2k8

- Overlord

- Quantum of Solace

- Rock Band

- Rock Band 2

- Saints Row 2

- Scene It LCA?

- Spiderman Web of Shadows

- Splinter Cell Double Agent

- Tenchu Z

- Test Drive Unlimited

- The Club

- The Darkness

- The Godfather

- The Orange Box

- The Simpsons Game

- Tiger Woods 08

- Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

- Too Human

- Top Spin 2

- TNA Impact

So yea there's my collection. Jumper and a few others are in my closet where I keep things that deserve to get dusty. I'm still working on Just Cause. Almost done with all the liberations and will move on to the side missions soon. Also am planned to finish the Gears 2 campaign on insane tomorrow. Should be a long weekend inside out of the cold...

Hammer's Bedroom

2009-01-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

So here is where I hangout. The photos below are all from my bedroom. In the first one you can see my bed, gaming chair, and at the foot of my bed a bench made of hockey sticks. There is a table on the wall side of my gaming chair that I keep my controller's, battery packs, and headsets on. There is also a shorter table about as high as the arm rest of the chair on the other side. This is where my MacBook is and where I do my note taking and such for achievements such as collectibles. Pictured in the corner behind the chair are a few game used hockey sticks from Edmonton Oilers over that past decade. If it were light out side when I was taking these pictures you would see that you can barely see out my window as the majority is covered by snow.

This picture shows my 32' inch Panasonic LCD television. To the right you can see my collections of games (will be posted in full tomorrow). As it stands at the moment i own 55 games. I keep games like Jumper and Eragon hidden in the closet behind though. They do not deserve to be seen by others.

Here is just another picture of my tv except turned on and signed in to Live. Below are my 2 360's. One of which is red ringed but will be fixed by my friend this weekend so I should be back to a 2 Xbox guy again.

Anyways, thats it. My room does extend to the other side of my bed as well but all there is there is a desk and a few book shelves. As for achievements I finished X-men yesterday and am now grinding out Just Cause. Check back for a detailed collection of games tomorrow.

A Rut in Blogging

2009-01-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

As some of you may have noticed...well the few of you that read this have noticed I have not wrote any entries the past few days. Everyday when I sit down to write I just come up blank with what to write about that would be interesting. I have been slaving away to finish an online course I'm taking. I've been working on it the past few days for countless hours at a time. It is as tedious as racing to 8 sprint cups in Nascar, but I guess that's what I get for leaving an entire course to the last week to finish. Luckily I am on the home stretch and should be done today.

Anyways back to gaming. I am almost done with one of the worst games I have played on the 360, X-men. Fortunetaly it is quite short and quick but it does have some annoying parts to it. All I have left is one level with Nightcrawler to finish his mutations and about 5 or 6 with Iceman. Hopefully I will have it wrapped up today and I can get back to finishing Just Cause along with the Gears 2 campaign.

Now I am also planning on getting to another game done before I go away for a week next Friday. I have been between Dead Space, TNA Impact, and Warriors Orochi. While you may say well of course play Dead Space I am hesitant to. I want to really enjoy and experience the game to its fullest and I know I will not have the time to do so by next Friday. I may be able to finish it but it would be done in a bunch of short chunks which is not how I want to experience. I am also leaning away from Warriors Orochi. With this game I just don't think I will have the time to get through all of it by the time I leave. This leaves me TNA Impact. I think this will be the game I go with next but I am not to excited about it since I'm just not really a big fighting game fan.

So that is it for me today. I guess I really just rambled on about nothing but oh well. I thought I should just get something posted as an attempt to spur future posts. Anyways cya all online.

Still in Good Shape?

2009-01-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

So I apologize for no blog entries the past few days. I have honestly been way to busy to even game let alone write blog entries. But this week may have been one of the worst performances I have had as far as gamerscore goes in a very long time. I think I have only scored 700 points or so. This puts me quite behind in my goal to reach 200k by the end of 2009. While I have tons of time to make this up with me not being able to score much the next few weeks either, the month of January is going to be tough to make up.

I am currently sitting at 120 300. Lets say for the purpose of this estimation that I have 51 weeks left in the year. I have to score 79 700 points in this time. Not incredibly difficult but I will be falling further behind this month in all likely hood. So assuming that I do fall a little further behind pace this month I will have to average around 1600 points a week for the rest of the year. Much less than I had thought I would have to. This further averages closer to 7k a month which is also not a ridiculously stretch of a goal.

Now reflecting on the numbers I have just shit out of my calculator I am feeling a lot better about reaching my goal. I know I should not have much of a problem getting there just based off how I score when I actually have time. Unfortunetally January is not being very nice to gaming for me. But what can you do? Just keep pushing and cut back on sleep.

Mid-Week Update

2009-01-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

So since Monday I have not played all to much but I have finished up a few smaller things. First off I finished off the single player story missions in Just Cause and found all the collectibles. Now the game will become ridiculously tedious as I finish off all the liberation and side missions to get the 1k. Secondly, I polished off the last achievement in Spyglass Board Games to finish that up. I have also got back into Condemned 2 and have been boosting it with ThrawnOmega. While to some it is apparently a disappointment I am enjoying it and playing the Bum Rush game mode online is good fun. Other than that I have not been up to much else. I have been racking up NFS races while I'm at school and sometimes at sleep but thats nothing to talk about.

There was a big announcement at CES yesterday dealing with Windows 7. It is now in beta if I remember what I read correctly so if you want something new to check out be sure to take a look at that. Personally I do most of my work on my MacBook but I'll give this a look this weekend on my PC.

Tomorrow I'll post my reactions to the whole 1up/EGM situation but for today I have kept it short. I'm pretty tired and had no real fire to write a big blog entry today. So alas, sorry for the short post but I'll try to make it up sometime.

Goodbye to 1up and EGM

2009-01-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

As many of you may have heard, 1up has been bought by UGO and nearly 50 emlpoyees of theirs have been let go. This spells the end to EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly) magazine and to the 1up podcasts. I am not going to go into all the specifics on why and what happened with this situation since you will be able to find all the information about that in the provided link to the story.

My initial reaction to this was big dissapointment. I personally loved both the 1up Yours and 1up FM podcasts and I have been a subscriber to EGM for 3 years. After 3 years of listening and reading from so many of the great gaming journalists that wrote with them I felt like I had personally lost something yesterday. This just shows the kind of effect the crew at 1up had on so many listeners and fans. The passion and love for gaming that is easily seen through their reviews and articles is something that I will sincerely miss. To all those who were let go I wish you all the best and good luck in all of your futures.

I will post my reactions and my personal outlook on where gaming journalism is going and how the loss of 1up and EGM will affect the industry as a whole on Friday. It should be a fairly long post so I wanted to polish it up tomorrow. This post was more about just paying my respect and wishing all the best to all the hard working folks that provided me with countless hours of entertaining gaming discussion throughout the past few years.

Source: http://www.consolemonster.com/newspost.php?id=0000004709

Top 10 Games to Look Forward to in 09

2009-01-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

10. Skate 2 – Coming up soon here in January Skate 2 now allowing you to get off your board will hopefully advance on all it achieved in the original installment.

9. Fear 2: Project Origin – Another anticipated shooter by many. While I am not the biggest fan of the series I do respect all that if offers with the various game play elements it possesses.

8. Fight Night Round 4 – It has been 3 years since we have had a good boxing game on the 360 and that was Round 3. So hopefully it will just be bigger and better than the third and they will certainly get my money.

7. Halo ODST – Although it may be one of the biggest selling games of 2009 just off its name since there is not going to be any big game play advancement on Halo 3 in it I have put it here. I am looking forward to playing as someone besides Master Chief in a Halo game but with no real game play changes I have slotted it here.

6. Street Fighter 4 – For the fans of the Street Fighter series this game would probably be much higher on their lists. However since I am not the biggest fan of the fighting genre I have placed it here. I will definitely play it but its not one of the most anticipated releases of 2009.

5. Assassins Creed 2 – Even though it has not yet been confirmed for 2009 you will mostly likely see it. While the first one was quite fun it did get tedious and repetitive at times. Hopefully with some changes to the structure of the game this sequel will be a big improvement on the first.

4. Halo Wars – Hopefully Halo Wars is finally the RTS that does things right on the 360. With good controls and game mechanics this game could be one of the bigger highlights of the year.

3. Resident Evil 5 – What is sure to be possibly the biggest highlight of the first half of 2009 Resident Evil 5 is going to be a game for the ages. With all the hype going around about this game it is sure to be one of the most anticipated game for many of the year.

2. Bioshock 2 – The sequel to my personal favorite single player experience thus far on the Xbox 360 Bioshock 2 is sure to be an even greater experience than the initial installment. With rumored multiplayer we can all expect Bioshock 2 to deliver and be yet another big game for the year.

1. Final Fantasy XIII – While it is not yet confirmed to be released in Japan this year let alone North America, if we do see it on store shelves this year we can expect it to bring so much new and bright to jrpg’s and the gaming industry as a whole.

The Week School Returned

2009-01-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

Indeed, holidays have come to their conclusion and it is back to school. Luckily I only have two weeks till I get another break. Unfortunately that break is when I have exams. Luckily I only have three exams. Unfortunately that is three too many exams. So for the month of January I am probably not going to be firing off big points. With exams and then a 5-day vacation at the end of the month I don’t see myself scoring any more than 6k total for January. As for this week however I have a couple of goals:

1. Finish the 1k in Just Cause

2. Finish insane mode in Gears of War 2

3. Progress with Quantum of Solace online

4. Start and finish X-men

I think I will be able to complete the majority of these goals. The only one that I may not be able to completely finish this week is Just Cause buy I certainly see myself finishing the others.

Well I guess that’s really all there is to say today. Gameaccess (Canada’s Gamefly) has sent me Dead Space and Warriors Orochi but I don’t see me playing those this week. Any ways I better get going to finish some homework and get going on those goals so see everyone online.

A Reflection on the Year that Was

2009-01-04T00:51:00.001-08:00

You know that kid that gets everything he wants for Christmas and gets spoiled rotten? Well gamers were that kid in 2008. It is almost impossible to complain about the past year as far as gaming goes. We consistently got AAA titles starting with Burnout Paradise in January and ending with Prince of Persia in December. With all the games that have come out gamers will be feeding off 2008's crop of games for many months to come. I know personally I have many big games that are still in my pile of shame that I still have to play in 2009. These games include (in order of release):

- Lost Odyssey

- Ninja Gaiden 2

- Unreal Tournament 3

- Too Human

- Dead Space

- Saints Row 2

- Far Cry 2

- Fable 2

- Fallout 3

- Call of Duty: World at War

- Left 4 Dead

- Prince of Persia

To go along with these games I have a crap ton of other games that I would not consider must plays but still games that I will play for the achievements. I would make a list of these games but it is almost everything else in between. My plan is to try and finish the majority of the games on the AAA list by my birthday on March 21st while completing a few others in between.

Since every one is into their "Game of the Year" mood I decided I would list my favorite game from each genre that I have played this year. After playing some of the titles on my list above my opinion may change but for now here are my choices.

Action/Adventure - Mirrors Edge

Family - Lego Indiana Jones

Music - Guitar Hero World Tour

Racing - Pure

Shooter - Gears of War 2

Sports - NHL 09

Hammer x360a's Game of the Year - Disney's Sing It!

To go along with all the great games we as gamers were treated with we also had major changes in how we experience online gaming and online social networking. With the NXE's release in November gamers online experiences have been greatly enhanced. Wether it be the party system, avatars, or Netflix there has been useful improvements that almost everyone can enjoy.

As for my gamerscore progress in 2008 I stepped it up a notch. I started the year at 44k and about 75k later I finish the year at 118k. From games that made me question why I liked gaming to games that sucked me in and gave me love games there were always ups and downs. While I am very happy with how well I scored this past year I am excited to push even further this year.

Well thats it for me today. Tomorrow will be the start of my weekly routine I will try to stick to with my blog. Wish me luck and enjoy the rest your weekend everyone!

The Beginning...

2009-01-03T01:11:00.001-08:00

So I've finally decided to join the blogging crusade. My name's Matt and you'll find me on Xbox live as Hammer x360a. I'm 16 years old (17 in March) and am in grade 11. I referee hockey as a job and play game's religiously. I am also a huge Edmonton Oilers fan and am almost at all of their games. As for other sports I am a Atlanta Braves fan, a Florida and Carolina Panthers fan, and a casual Toronto Raptors fan. I am also a confessed achievement hoar and am sitting at 119k at the moment with a completion percentage of 62%. I have 51 retail completions and 12 arcade completions. I play a lot of crappy games, but by playing the majority of what comes out I always find hidden gems and when I come across a really good game it just makes me enjoy it more. To stay motivated and still get those points I always try to be playing 2 games on and off so if I get bored of one I can flip to the other and vice versa. Sometimes I'll pop in a third even. Although I do hoar out for the points my interest in gaming and the industry as a whole is what really makes me love it. I know I will be gaming for my entire life and to experience the changes and how the gaming industry is evolving is really exciting.

Now that you all have some sort of understand of the kind of guy I am going to give a run down on how I plan on running my blog. I first off want to state that doing this blog is my way of practicing my writing skills in a way in which I will enjoy myself. I have intentions of taking English in college/university and I think this is a good way to improve my writing skills. One day I would love to write in the industry but for now I just want to have so fun! I am going to write a blog entry every day and they'll work in a pattern of sorts:

Monday - Plans for the week.

Tuesday - Weekly top 10 (different topic each week).

Wednesday - Song of the Week and Youtube video of the week.

Thursday - Mid - week progress report.

Friday - Current events in the gaming industry.

Saturday - Review's of games that I'm playing and movies I've seen.

Sunday - A look back at the week that was.

So I'll start with this routine on Monday. The next 2 days I'll just compile a few of these together and write a few blogs. Anyways I just wanted to give a little introduction. This weekend I'll be working on the multiplayer in Quantum of Solace, Just Cause, and finishing up the online achievements in NFS Undercover by just letting my xbox sit in an online lobby all night as matches continually start when the previous one finishes. Also I'll be finishing up the last 2 acts of Gears of War 2 on insane difficulty witha friend. Should be a fun weekend! I also have a few papers and assignments I'll have to finish up over the weekend since school resumes on Monday as well as a few hockey games to referee Saturday morning. But anyways thats it for today. I hope you enjoy my work here as I plan on putting a lot of work and dedication into this. Peace of and Happy New Years...Hammer out :)