The Alpha and The Omega

Black is bigger!

2009-06-28T22:48:00.004+01:00

Been a quite week for me on the gaming front this week. I'm still slowly working on Prince of Persia but work has been a right pain in the ass and taken away from my gaming considerably. Hopefully this week will be different, I've managed to acquire a few little trinkles that will make me want to game much more.

The first being my brand new Elite(drool...) that has graced my bedroom. I've put my first few paycheques from my new job towards alot of things I've been wanting for a while. The Elite was first on that list, and so far its pretty fuckin awesome! I was running out of space big time with the old 20GB harddrive, taking up an impressive 19.6 GB and thats without any music or other things on it. Just the amount of DLC that has been coming out recently for great games has invaded my Xbox and I realised I'd soon have to upgrade. So up comes the Elite and I have to say I am impressed. It seems to run much more quieter and smoother than the old Xbox did, thank God. If the old one was any louder I'd have to soundproof my room and wear ear plugs constantly.

Now my Elite was looking a tad sad and alone beside my little telly so I went out and bought a nice little 32 inch flatscreen to keep it company. Got it on a sale for very cheap and it is making gaming look magnificent. Though it has made me realise the voice work in Prince really doesn't go well with the charachters lips, that however is another story for another time.

The third present I got myself is a nice new Samsung touchscreen phone, which is also working out great. But I have learnt it makes drunk texting considerably harder! This might just be a blessing in disguise though =P.

Anywho, back to get my gaming back together!

Off to a Gltichy Start

2009-06-19T21:31:00.007+01:00

Well this last few days have been annoying and confusing gaming wise. It started when I was looking to make some progress in the Mega Challenge by playing WWE Smackdown VS Raw 2008. Having just completed Legends I thought I might as well make a go at the WWE games while I was somewhat enjoying them. Even though they are made by the same company and have the same publisher they are as different as steak and grass. Where Legends is more of an arcade game the SvR series are more technical and offer much more options and customization. I was still enjoying it though....and then the incident happened.

Now we all know one(of many really) design flaws with the 360 is that if it moves while a game is in it, it will proceed to tear the game inside to ribbons with perfect circular precision and vindictiveness......I think you see where I'm going with this! I'm currently in the middle of painting my house and while this was going on I moved my Xbox up to my room and into my old tube standard definition TV. I gotta say it is awesome having a Xbox in your room where you can just press the button on your controller from your bed to enjoy its goodness. I still wasn't used to it being there though and in a state of exhaustion and stupidity I knocked it over on my way out of the room. I can only compare it to when you let a glass fall and your watching it, as if in slow motion, as you see it tumble gently to the floor. At this stage you're already cringing and waiting for that little tinkle and then loud shattering of glass. In this case there was no shattering but a noise resembling nails on chalkboard. Ahem......SHHHIIIITTTTT!!!!!

I grabbed the Xbox and immediately picked the game out of it, I saw 3 beautiful circular scratch marks paved into the disc. It's as if the Xbox has a compass inside waiting to shred your games and wreck your head. Needless to say the game was fucked. So it's going to be stuck on 370 on my card for a while until I can find a copy for less than a tenner. This sent my motivation for the Megachallenge out the window altogether. I was fed up of playing shit games and decided screw it I'm not going to win anyway might as well enjoy a game for abit.

Then Prince of Persia arrived in the post. Sweet as a nut. Just what i was looking for, a medium length game that's pretty good and that I will definitely enjoy. So I pop in the game and play the first 10 minutes. Game looks wonderful and I'm really enjoying the cartoony graphics and smooth gameplay. Then I get to a part of the Tutorial level where you're standing beside a cliff and you press RT to slide down the cliff. I go over to the cliff and press RT.......and nothing. No movement, no reaction, nothing. The Prince is just standing there glancing longingly and clearly aroused by the Princess who is with you but is in no way inclined to slide down the fucking cliff. I try this for about 10 minutes, annoyed at myself now thinking I am clearly missing something ridiculously easy that I have to do. I go on Youtube and look up the video for doing the Tutorial, you better believe that was slightly embarrassing! Still don't understand what I'm doing wrong so I check out the x360a.org forums. On the 9th page I find some guy who has the same problem and I get my answer. I have to save the game, remove the battery pack in my controller and then go back to the dashboard, reload the game, put back in the batteries and load my save. Then it will work. My God that was retarded. I really hope the rest of the game isn't that glitchy because it looked very promising before this. Fingers crossed eh?

The Review Corner

2009-06-15T23:13:00.009+01:00

Been a few days since I've had a chance to post anything. I started a new job at the end of last week and it's really taking time away from my gaming. It's got a 3 hour round trip commute attached to it every day also which sucks some serious balls! Getting used to it now but what I'll never get used to will be the stupid price of petrol.

The challenge over at 360 voice is going pretty well, coming in 4th out of 78 people so happy with that so far. I'd love to make a push for first place but don't have the time to at the moment. I still managed to complete 3 games last week, I know I'm awesome =P. Here's a little review of each of them.

First off was Terminator Salvation, got this in the post on a Friday and since the Challenge wasn't starting till Sunday I waited till then until I played it. A very easy 1000 once you get to learn the game but it can be annoying at the start. As a game....well to quote Joey it made me want to rip off my arm so I could have something to throw at it. After seeing the movie I really hoped the game would be good, the initial reviews immediately doused all hope of that but I have to admit I still held onto a tiny shred of it. The shred was cut about 3 seconds into the game. Aside from the fact they didn't sign Christan Bale to the game(facepalm) there are so many gameplay issues I could write a report on how not to make a game from it. It reminded me of trying to play a Gears prototype that was 2 months into development, except worse. There are also a total of 5 or 6 enemies in the game, and the game only attempt at getting more difficult is that there are more of them to destroy, but the reality is it seems to get easier because levels get shorter and once you learn how to kill each type its simple to do it again....and again....and again.

Then came Fifa 06:Road to the World Cup. This surprised me immensely, for such an old game I thought it was really good soccer game. Especially for FIFA, which in my opinion lost its touch about 2002 and it was all Pro Evo after that. I've heard Fifa has improved in the last 2 years but I'm too hooked on Pro to go back to it now. I got 06 for the easy gamerscore and got both that and a fun enough 5 hours out of it. the gameplay is great and really smooth. Thankfully there is a controller set up that is pretty much the same as the latest football game so the controls weren't a problem either. If you enjoy soccer and see this game then buy it. I got it for €7.....sweet!

The last game I just completed yesterday was WWE Legends of Wrestlemania. It was awesome! I used to be a huge wrestling fan when I was a kid and there is nothing like seeing the Hulkster body slamming Andre the Giant. It plays more like an old arcade game than any of the recent Smackdown V Raw series. Much more simplified controls and not as many options, match types, wrestlers....or anything else really. Still a wonderful burst of nostalgia though. Get it if you used to love wrestling back when it was actually good and not the spectacle it is today.

After this challenge I'm gona start playing Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect. Really looking forward to playing good games again. I've whored it out for the last 2 months and I'm getting fed up of playing shit games.

In other news I'm down to 533 in the Irish leaderboards at the time of writing this post. That's an improvement of 260 positions in the last 2 weeks...not too shabby is it ;).

The Joys of Trading Games

2009-06-10T23:15:00.003+01:00

Right I'm just going to get this off my conscience right off the bat. I have never traded in a game in my entire life. Before today. Yep that's right I'm a hoarder. I collect literally everything and anything that I have accomplished or enjoyed in my entire life. I have soccer medals I won while playing under 10's right beside a trophy I won for a rugby league last year. I have Playstation games in their cases right beside my 360 games, I just don't like throwing or giving things away. Right now I have a shelf that has in or around 100 Playstation games, 80 odd Playstation 2 games and until this morning about 40 Xbox360 games. I just never felt the need to trade them in, I mean what was 5 euro worth really?

But now in these penny-pinching times (and my newfound achievement whorage) I decided I gotta get rid of the crap and just see what I can get out of it! Boy was I surprised. First off I had to decide what games to trade in. I had a look at what I had completed and wouldn't release any more DLC. I came up with 7 games- Harry Potter, NBA 2k6, Madden 06, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lost:Via Domus and Jumper. Now as much as it pained me to part ways with Jumper I felt it was for the best and it was there that I found my biggest surprise.

First thing on the agenda was to price around the game shops in town to see what they would give me. I went to Gamestop first and was very disappointed that they could only offer me 13 euro in store credit. Balls to that! So I then went to Xtra-Vision(pretty much the Blockbusters of Ireland) to see what I could get there, €40 in store credit! Happy days! What I couldn't believe was that they offered me €12 for Jumper alone, after me paying only €7 for that last week. So not only did I get a 1000 off of it but I also managed to make a fiver off of it too =).

With the store credit I took advantage of a 2 for 1 deal they had going in the store and stocked up on some ammo for the Gamerscore Challenge at 360voice. I managed to pick up Fifa 06 Road to World Cup(which I just 1000'ed), Cars, Crackdown, Smackdown 08, Splinter Cell Double Agent, and History Channel:Battle for the Pacific. It cost me the store credit plus 5 euro for all those games. Sweet sweet deal! So I'm now about to start trucking away at Cars to see if I can get much of that done tonight. So I guess I've had my trading virgin-ness taken away and I'm all the happier for it!

Oh and I'm looking for somebody to help boost the History Channel achievements online so message me if anybody's up for it!

Mega Challenge Summary

2009-06-06T20:47:00.009+01:00

Well the Fshguy 30 Day Mega Challenge ended yesterday after 30 days of madness! It was an extremely fun experience with lots of laughs and lots of gaining points. 203 gamers competed in it and together we managed to get 776,702 points throughout the 30 days between us. I finished in 25th place with the respectable gain of 7,685 points. I'm gona do a little run down of all the games I managed to get some points in throughout the 30 days, so sit down, get a cup of tea or whatever floats your boat and enjoy!

GTA IV- Lost and Damned

The very first day of the challenge I was in the middle of completing Lost and the Damned. Wow did it blow my mind away. I dunno why but I thought Johnny was a much better character than Niko and easier to relate too. During the main storyline of GTA I thought Niko's story was very drawn out and long winded which made him hard to connect to. Still love the game but I enjoyed Lost and the Damned more. Much more swearing too which is always a plus in a game :P.

Anyway I got 3 achievements for 220 points outta GTA.

Kung Fu Panda

I also started Kung Fu Panda on the first day of the challenge and in between playing other games this took me about a week to 1K. For a family game I found this very funny, and because of that not a bad game. I read a lot of reviews on how this is probably the most loved family game and I would go along with it. Jack Black comes out with some classic one-liners during the gameplay and the cut-scenes and tries to draw you into the pretty poor story. The achievements themselves were decent, getting 100% on every level on both Normal and Master difficulty. A pity they didn't stack and involved a good bit of collecting but otherwise very straightforward and not that difficult to get at all.

So from Kung Fu Panda I managed to get 1000 points from 39 achievements.

Madden NFL 06

Since I knew I would need some ammo for the 30 day marathon if I wanted to finish in a respectable position I went out during my lunch at work to my local GAME to see if I could find anything. I came back 15 minutes later with Madden 06 which I managed to get for a fiver. It was a tenner second hand but I hand 5 Euro on my GAME card which brought it down. I went home managed to get all the achievements bar 2 within one game and then polished the dust of my Godfather DVD put it in my laptop and sat down for a 4 hour simulation fest. I came out of the game after 5 hours with a handy 1000 points and not too many mental scars to show from it.

I can chalk Madden 06 then with 11 for 1000G onto my score.

NHL 2K6

Surprisingly fun game despite the fact I only played it for around an hour or two. I played NHL 2k8 on a friends Xbox and really enjoyed it and this was no different. Now being European I have no concept of Ice Hockey at all to be honest, I have no idea how the offside works in it(is it like football?) so that rule was the first to be turned off. I had a bit of trouble getting the penalty shot achievement, that took about an hour to finally get a penalty shot but once you get the technique down it really isn't that difficult.

NHL 2k6 - 5 achievements - 1000G.

NBA 2k6

As you can see I found a little gold mine of 2006 games in my local GAME and 15 euro later I had 3000 points added to my total. There is something about seeing the glorious message pop up on screen saying "5 for 1000G" that makes me smile. This game took me about 20 minutes to get these and I enjoyed the 20 minutes immensely. If they had made the achievements in this game a little more drawn out I could have seen myself really enjoying it. Ah well back to be traded in you go!

Xmen Origins Wolverine

At the very start of the challenge I found a beautiful little website known as Gamesenders. They are the Irish version of Gamefly/LoveFilm etc. If there are any Irish readers then the link for it is here :

http://www.gamesenders.ie/

Anyway the first game I got from them was Wolverine. I put it top of my list because I had just seen the film, thought it was decent enough and then after checking a few reviews and seeing it seemed decent I went for it. I wasn't disappointed. Very entertaining game, I could not believe the gore levels in the game compared to those in the movie. I mean after you have played the game for 5 minutes, have already slaughtered 30-40 people and you are grabbing a guy from a helicopter then decapitating him by holding him up to the spinning blades....you know you've got a winner. It did manage to get a tad repetitive towards the end but thankfully an interesting enough story keeps you going till the end.

Achievement wise I had a few annoyances. For a start you have to play the game twice as Hard difficulty doesn't unlock until you finish Normal. For me during this challenge this was a bit too much and I ended up just sending the game back before I did it. I'll pick it up cheap in a few months and finish it off. Once you had finished your first playthrough there was a fair bit of grinding to be done also which got boring very quickly but it is very satisfying once you finally complete it.

So Wolverine gave me an enjoyable experience and 49 achievements for 950.

Halo 3

During one of the Double Experience weekends I finally managed to get the 'Two for One' achievement with the Laser. This achievement has evaded me for the best part of a year and that 5G I earned from it were the best 5 I have ever earned in my Xbox career ha.

Fight Night 3

This was the second game I had got from Gamesenders and I had heard great things about it. Another very enjoyable experience with a very quick 1000 to go along with it. I had the thousand after about 5 hours of relaxing gaming. After I got the 1000 I went online for a few games after and again found it a very enjoyable experience. I'm thinking of picking this one up second hand just as a game to play with a few friends as I think it has great multiplayer potential. Really looking forward to FN4 now :).

Fable 2 - See The Future

Still way too short compared to what DLC should be. At least this one was 560MS points compared to the 800 I paid for Knothole Island. I really hope they come up with something good for the next DLC, they really need to pull something out of the bag that has a much longer story arc than the 2 hours or so that this gave. The achievements in it were brilliant though as nearly all the Fable achievements have been. The kicking 5 chickens while wearing the Chicken Suit was absolutely fantastic. Overall 13 achievements for 250 points.

Lego Indiana Jones

Only managed to start this as the challenge was finishing up so not gona comment on it quite yet as I haven't played it since the challenge ended. First impressions though were very good, seems like a fun game.

3 achievements for 50 points.

Call of Duty 4

Did a few more levels on Veteran. I enjoy CoD for a game that I go to whenever I want to relax and have been plugging away at Veteran for a few months now. Playing it for an hour or so every week. I got 'The Shot' and 'The Second Horseman' during the challenge. Thats 2 for 80G.

Jumper

Read my last blog post for my thoughts on this masterpiece. 20 for 1000G.

Fallout 3 - DLC's

I completed all of The Pitt during the challenge and alot of Broken Steel. I can't praise Fallout enough it is definitely my favorite game to have ever played on the Xbox. The Pitt was a really cool DLC I thought, the new area was nice to explore and the Trogs and some of the new weapons were a great addition to the game. Only got to play a bit of Broken Steel during the challenge but have completed it today. What an experience. Buy this now if you haven't already!

And that'll be 5 achievements for 130 points thank you.

So overall throughout the 30 days I managed to get 164 achievements for 7,685 points. Smiley face. If you want to see the final table you can find it here:

http://360voice.gamerdna.com/challenge.asp?id=35458

And now for the big news. Zero Desolation is putting on the next Mega Challenge and it is starting tonight at 12 a.m. (PST) I think. The challenge only lasts 14 days and for this one the winner gets a years Gold subscription to Live. Now too shaby at all now is it? So come people join, participate in the fun and score some points.

The link for the new challenge is here :

http://www.360voice.com/join/2M6X2572

You may need a code to join, which is 2M6X2572.

Hope to see a few of you there! =)

E3, Mega Challenge and a Witch Burning

2009-06-04T00:48:00.017+01:00

As you might have guessed from the title of the blog this is gona have 3 sections (unless I start to ramble then God only knows how many it might have).

I'm gona start off with E3 and just say ZOMGBBQ!! Ahem. Microsoft's conference was amazing. This was the first year I've ever really got into the whole E3 thing and I really enjoyed it. Some of it was extremely cheesy and OTT but overall it was a great experience. Bungie really pulled out the stops with the ODST demo and the announcement of Halo:Reach, always good to see more things Halo coming. Metal Gear Solid: Rising was a huge little coup for Microsoft to land. I think a lot of people were expecting MGS4 to be announced but certainly not a brand new game! Only problem I have is we have to play as that batty boy Raiden. I really hope Snake is in it as well or at least that Raiden has grown a pair since MGS2.

Some of the other new games looked great as well Modern Warfare 2, Assassins Creed 2, Alan Wake (drool), and Splinter Cell all looked amazing. Then came Project Natal was bloody hell did that blow me away! It was like something from i-Robot or Minority Report how futuristic it was. The possibilities of it are potentially massive. As an old school gamer I don't think the controller will ever be replaced but that's not to say something like this is a huge step forward. I do have my reservations about Milo however. After going to see Terminator Salvation today I'm beginning to regard him as the Devil's spawn, he could also turn out to be a pedophile’s wet dream which I really don't like =P.

Onto the next little topic, Fshguy's 30 day Mega Challenge over at 360 voice(you can find the link here). It's the first time I have ever competed in anything like it and I really enjoyed it immensely. It made me play some games I wasn't that happy about(more on that in a bit) but overall I really enjoyed it. With one day left I'm coming 25th out of 203 gamers so for my first try I'm happy. I've put up over 7,500 points since it started which is a huge amount for me. The leader, t4nd4r, has had the lead for the entire challenge and deserves the win entirely with a score of 22,000+. The trash talk has been hilarious throughout and I have met a lot of people from it. I'd really encourage anybody who hasn't done one of these before to give it a go. Zero is putting up the next one and the first prize gets a years Gold on Live. Should be good!

Now as I mentioned I have played a few easy games during this challenge NBA 2k6, NHL 2k6, Fight Night Round 3, but this one takes the biscuit and is the reason I will be travelling out to the forest after this post to find some firewood.

The makers of this game, Brash Entertainment, should gather all their employees, bring them all outside and proceed to test their jumping skills off the side of a large cliff. I have no doubt this game haunts many many gamer’s minds. It is the easiest game in the entire world for the first 5 levels out of 6. This part of the game will take you an hour at most. But then comes level 6 and out comes Samuel "Sellout" Jackson to drain your soul with 2 hits of his big one. You will not die until you reach this fight and then you will die time and time again. This was so frustrating I turned the game off last night and only opened it a few hours ago to finish it. The real kick in the teeth is having to play the game a second time just to add insult to injury. I know I shouldn't complain, I mean an easy games an easy game right? But the truth of the matter is I won't even be trading this back in (for the €3 I would get) because I wouldn't wish this game to be bought again by anybody. So I’m going to get this fire going and offer a prayer to the Gaming Gods that something like this will never ever be released again. Ever.

Post Numero Uno!

2009-06-02T03:27:00.010+01:00

Good day children, and welcome to my blog! My names Noel and I just recently enough got into Gamerscore. I was inspired to start this after reading Stallion83's, ThrawnOmega's and MajinFro's Blogs for the past couple of months(to name a few). I'm hoping to keep this up with a few posts every week about gaming and the gaming world. But first here's my story so far!

I've been a gamer since the Gameboy back in the early 90's. The Megadrive soon followed. Ah the good old days when all you had to worry about was trying to clear Streets of Rage! From there I had a bit of an episode with the Sega GameGear, the handheld that went out of a production pretty quickly after its release in Ireland but it was the first colour handheld around and I really wanted one for Christmas one year. My parents being the wonderful people that they are got my Aunt in England to send it over with the one game that came with it. Sonic the Hedgehog! Now since they weren't making any games for it anymore(well that's what I thought when I was 9) I had to make due with the Sonic game. Problem was, as with most games at the time, there was no saving, you started from the start and worked your way through as best you could! Now I dunno how many people had a GameGear but the battery life wasn't the greatest to say the least. In fact it was bad that I actually couldn't finish the Sonic game in the time it took for the batteries to go. The amount of times I got onto the 2nd last level only to have that feckin black screen pop up.....agh....I kept coming back though ha!

Anyway from there I was a Playstation man for the next 11 years. Sony was king in my book. That was until myslef, alcohol and Halo 3 joined forces to become the best triple threat tag team in the world! My second year at university consisted of myself and 6 other guys getting drunk and sitting around a 26" tv waiting for our turns to play 4 player FFA in Halo 3. I haven't looked back since! Here is an artists impersonation of me playing the Xbox at that time:

Got my 360 on the 25th December 2007. Up until June of 2008 Halo 3 was the only game to have graced my beautiful Xbox's inside but that was about to change. Lost my boys over the summer so I had to branch out into more single player games and regain my roots in gaming. GTA4, COD, *ahem*Lost:Via Domus, filled this void for a bit. Before long September came back and it was back into the Halo. In December 2008 I realized I've had enough of it. I discovered I truly had lost my way as a gamer and was letting one game keep me away from all the other gems out there. So what do I do? Achievements baby!

Started out in November/December with a GS of around 4/5,000. It was around this time I found x360a *insert angel music here* and a few other achievement sites. I also found mygamercard.net, and found the Irish leaderboard. Boy was I waaaaayyyyy back! When I started looking at it I was around 3,950th. A position I was truly proud of.....Since Dec '08 I have managed to get 20,000 GS all while completing my 3rd year exams, sustaining a fulfilling relationship and watching Lost religiously every Wednesday night! This has since moved me up to 790 in the Irish leadboards, a number which will soon go down in the right direction.

So this is my blog, its just kickin' off and I hope a few people might start to follow and enjoy it! Hopefully I'll make a few more achievement minded friends on Live as well so if you like send me a Friend Request with a message and we'll do lunch!