Mondaily Update

Welcome back to the start of another week. This weekend saw me throw a whole heap of hours at Bionic Commando: Rearmed. I've made a bunch of progress, finishing the game twice now and collecting 10 out of the 12 available achievements. The two that elude me so far are A Real Challenge and Elite Commando.

A Real Challenge tasks you with completing the challenge rooms with a score of at least 1 star. It seems you are guaranteed a star just by finishing the room, which is fine by me because the handful of rooms I have left are devilishly hard. This achievement will be an exercise in patience, something that I have only at the best of times. Elite Commando wants you to finish the game on Super Hard difficulty, which is exactly as it sounds; super hard. I have already ran through Bionic Commando on Normal and Hard difficulties and I haven't even managed to beat one level on Super Hard. I'm not ready to give up on it yet though, as I found out on Hard mode, once you beat the first couple of levels and get some better equipment the game becomes easier.

X-Men offers a quick completion, with all achievements being obtainable in under 2 hours.

Besides struggling away on Bionic Commando: Rearmed I met up with Beast and we both worked together to complete X-Men the XBLA game. X-Men is a port of the old arcade game famous for the phrase; "Welcome to die". It is a side-scrolling Beat 'em Up featuring six of the X-Men facing off against Magneto and numerous other Marvel villains. X-Men is easily completed within a couple of hours but requires one friend to get a couple of the multiplayer achievements. There's still a couple of reviews on the back burner waiting to be published but look out for one on X-Men in the future.

The only other Xbox related topic of note is the over an hour I spent talking to Xbox support today concerning my inability to buy Serious Sam: TSE. The problem is still not resolved as I had to leave but I will be taking up the issue with them again tomorrow. I might post the chat log for those with a slight voyeur kink. That'll be it for today, again this is a pretty late post, but I managed to get it up before midnight so hey... still Monday. I'll see everyone again Wednesday for another update, and check back tomorrow for another review.

Fridaily Update

Hope all my fellow Australians had a great ANZAC Day, I know I sure made good use of my time. I managed to finish up two games and most of a third I started last night.

Serious Sam: The First Encounter was the first to be wrapped up nicely with the help of a friend who knew exactly what he was doing. We made it through in record time with explosions and flowers flying everywhere. Flowers because I had Hippie blood turned on as the achievement Co-op Hippie asks you to complete the last stage with it, it was a colourful change after the three other solo runs I did with normal blood. Co-op was a blast and super easy as you can die as much as you want and constantly spawn back in exactly where you left off. Completing the campaign in co-op took just under two hours and resulted in the three achievements I needed to complete Serious Sam: TFE. It was a great start to the day.

Red Dead Redemption rides off into the sunset that is my DVD shelf

Next I couldn't really decide what I wanted to play next, and saw Red Dead Redemption was still sitting in my disc drive so instead of wasting time I thought why not just grind out some more levels for a while. I ended up doing that for most of the day but in the end I reached level 50 and passed into legend, sacrificing my rank for the last achievement I needed. It was a bitter sweet moment as I deleted the RDR install and DLC expansions from my hard drive, I was happy I had finally completed it but also sad as now I probably won't play any Red Dead Redemption for a long, long time.


Red Dead Redemption is up there as one of my favourite games I've ever played on the Xbox. Before deleting it I spent some more time in single player, roaming the country side and unlocking the last two outfits I needed by playing a whole bunch of Five-Finger Fillet, roaming around for ages looking for snakes to kill and skin and killing a cougar with a stick of dynamite amongst other things. After getting the Savvy Merchant and Expert Hunter outfits there was nothing more to do in my game and multiplayer, while fun, isn't what I really liked about RDR, so it has now retired from my Xbox almost a whole three years since I first played it.

After looking through my XBLA list one more time I decided on giving Crazy Taxi a whirl. It's been a bunch of stupid fun so far and I've managed to grab all the Arcade and Original mode achievements which leaves me with the Crazy Box. Crazy Box is a set of challenge missions that are a lot harder than any of the fares you drive around in the actual game, so this could end up becoming quite the challenge. I'm gonna see if I can wrap it up today, and get another completion under my belt this week.

That's all for this update, two more completed games to review, along with Deep Black, so look for those reviews in the upcoming weeks. As always leave a comment, and I'll be back Monday.

Wednesdaily Update

Wednesday rolls around just as I managed to finish up Serious Sam: TFE on Serious difficulty last night. I only just managed to squeak through the last boss battle, but a win is a win and my shiny new Serious Sam achievement proves it. I honestly thought this achievement would really put me through the wringer as my first play through on Normal had me in some tough spots but once I was half way done on Serious things just seemed to fall into place and the last half of the game seemed a lot easier than the first.

I was following a secrets guide so I also managed to get the Look, It's a Secret achievement for finding 50 secrets in a play through so I'm left with one single player achievement that I will hopefully grab tonight. It's looking like a hard one, but after some looking around there seems to be a couple of easier ways to go about it so I'm hoping Metropolis King won't take too long. Once I grab that, it's down to the last three multiplayer achievements and I have found a couple of guys that have said they'd be willing to give me a hand so it shouldn't be too long before this is all wrapped up and ready for review for you all!

Cut the Rope was a fun distraction, lets hope Experiments is more of the same

Other than Serious Sam not too much has been going on, I grabbed Cut the Rope: Experiments on my Windows Phone because they dropped it to 1 dollar and I enjoyed the original Cut the Rope. I haven't really been playing my Windows Phone much lately but I may get into some of that in the future. Tomorrow is a public holiday here, ANZAC Day, so I'm not sure if I'll post the review of Deep Black: Episode 1. Come back and have a look but I'm guessing you'll just have to wait until the Fridaily Update. Leave a comment and see you guys later.

Mondaily Update

Sometimes walking away from a huge firefight with
7 health is a win!

Monday is here, hope everyone made a bunch of progress in whatever they were playing. I had a fairly busy weekend, which included a couple of outings, some training, a little bit of boosting for the first time in ages and a lot of dying. Dying can be the most infuriating thing in the world, but also serves as incentive to get it right the next time. Maybe there's something wrong with me but I can't seem to walk away from a game when it's all going bad, I need to push through and show my Xbox who's boss.

Since last update I've been slowly working my way forward in Serious Sam TFE. The save system is a godsend in this game, with every encounter on Serious difficulty running the very real risk of being your last. I've been following a secrets walkthrough this run to make sure I grab that achievement when I finish and to make sure I get every health and armour pickup I can to make it just that bit easier. Except that it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. I've made it to the back half of the game and things are only going to get harder but I'll do it, oh yes! It'll happen Xbox, you'll see.

Part 1 of 1 it seems...

Apart from Serious Sam, I took some time on Sunday to bust through Deep Black Episode 1. One of my regular boosting buddies grabbed the game and seeing as it had four online achievements that can be attained real quick, so we got them while the getting was good. After wrapping the multiplayer achievements up in 30 minutes I decided a break from Serious Sam could be good so I continued playing through Deep Black's campaign. It's surprisingly decent for a game everyone seemed to overlook completely and it's made me a bit sad because I doubt Deep Black Episode 2 will ever be developed. Just like Amy, Deep Black cuts off without wrapping up it's story and let's you know to keep an eye out for Deep Black Episode 2. If/when that happens I'll gladly go back in for another look, Deep Black isn't good, but it's interesting and has some new ideas.

I shouldn't get too reviewy here, look for a Deep Black review Thursday. Tomorrow the review for Joy Ride Turbo should go live so check that out too. Leave a comment below and I'll be back Wednesday, hopefully you will to?

Tuesdaily Update

Hack and/or Slash

So we finally get to a more typical update post. Shorter and to the point, though in the past any blog I've started by saying that has been anything but. I'll try to buck the trend, but first I hope everyone's had a fine day full of gaming and/or achieving. All of my gaming time has been spent with Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale lately. I'm closing in on finishing the game a forth and final time, however I will still need to put in some time afterwards.

One of the achievements requires you to get all characters up to level 10, which will be a bit of a grind seeing as you finish the story at around level 8, even if you complete all the side quests. This is the first action RPG where I have actually enjoyed playing a spell caster. Usually I find playing one tedious, my Dwarven Cleric and Halfling Wizard have both been the most fun to play. Historically I've been more of a warrior type, but I have to say the Human Fighter just didn't grab me at all.

I'm about 3/4s the way through with my Elven Rogue, which is the last of the characters you can play as, and about to jump back in kill off a whole bunch more goblins and hopefully finish the game. Other than getting all characters to level 10 the rest of the achievements are easy.

Daggerdale is very similar to the original Diablo in that it all takes place in the one dungeon. You work your way through the floors completing quests until you reach the bottom/end and face off against your nemesis. I won't go into too much detail on the game as that's not what these updates are for, I expect to finish it soon however and will write up a review.

Today was a Good Day in Metropolis

That's all that has been happening on the Xbox 360 front. On the PC, however, I have been playing some DC Universe Online at the behest of a friend. This is the first MMO I've delved into since World of Warcraft, which I lost 3 months to years ago. I usually peter out on MMO's fairly quickly, though I will say DC Universe is now free and has a cool character creation tool that has allowed me to squash injustice as Ice Cube with both my gats and ice powers. You might find me flying around the PvP US Server. My hero's name is TheDonMega, drop me a line if you play.

Xbox Musings

This should be the last historical post before I start writing what will be a more typical update post. I'm looking forward to writing more of them, as these are quite a bit more taxing to write. These posts usually end up long and filled with reflection, when I'm more of a go with the flow and keep looking forward person. I don't usually like talking about myself too much, and these past couple of posts just come off (to me at least) as a bit self-important. I just wanted to establish a decent base, so people might be able to understand where I'm coming from a little better.

I thought that now you guys have a decent base to work from I should lay out some of my more recent pursuits from which the shorter, more consistent updates will use as a jumping point.

My mistress

I've been playing my Xbox 360 pretty much constantly since I got it. The thing that keeps me glued to the system is achievements. I'm an addict, if the choice exists between a PC version and Xbox, Xbox will win out. I'm not in it for the bragging or e-fame or whatever, I just love the idea that everything I play is in my history. Someone can scroll through my whole list of games, see how far I got in them, what difficulty I beat it on and more from this pool of points I've amassed over the years. It's a cool system, couple that with my slightly OCD obsession with completing or collecting everything I possibly can when I play games and you've found my crack. This has led me to put myself through some grueling challenges, some of the upcoming ones I hope to share with you later when I get video capabilities.

My most proud achievement would have to be completing Lost Planet. I firmly believe Lost Planet to be the hardest game I have ever played and beat so far. Added to that the fact that it is one of the only games I did all the multiplayer achievements legitimately without any boosting or working the system. I usually only have a very limited time for multiplayer, I usually lose interest in a couple of days or a week. Once I've seen the maps a couple times I'm good, I think I play games to experience new things and complete challenges, once I'm replaying maps, struggling against faceless people only to finish a map and do it again with no gain I fall off rather quick. For some reason Lost Planet really stuck with me, I went from enjoying it, to real frustration, to really enjoying it all over again. I firmly believe that there is a lot of depth to Lost Planet multiplayer, in nearly every aspect of the game, from movement to weapons and tactics. I haven't played the sequel yet, but just at a glance I'm not sure it's recaptured the magic. It was this game that taught me to really appreciate and enjoy animation priority, and left me looking forward to the day I finally get time to tackle Dark Souls.

T-Eng for me!

Lately I've been working through XBLA game after XBLA game. I'm a sucker for sales, and Microsoft's had so many that I've completely filled my hard drive with them. I've no longer got any space to download anything or install my disc-based games so I've decided to try and get them under control. I'm trying to complete the ones that take up the most space. I've written my review about Sonic Adventure 2 last week, which you can read here, which was the game I most recently completed. Right now I'm working through Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale. I've been on a bit of an extended RPG kick, which will hopefully provide a tonne of content you guys will appreciate.

I won't get into that too much now, or I won't have anything to say next update. I don't really know if I achieved what I set out to do with this entry, but time is up. I have a previous engagement I need to head off to in 30 minutes. See you all next time!

Past and Future Endevors

Before I can start giving you guys updates I guess you'll need a reference point to start from. I can start dumping updates on you which will eventually form some kind of progress but it'll make a whole bunch more sense if I lay a little back story out first.

The all powerful Master System

I touched on my history in my welcome post which you can read here. That was a real quick over-view of some of my formative years, which won't be too important to the upcoming update posts through out this blog. They will however give you an idea of where my particular tastes and nostalgia is coming from. As a quick recap the lions share of my early gaming memories came from the Sega Master System. I guess most kids either became Nintendo or Sega aligned, not due to any real cognitive decision, but more of the circumstance their parents placed them in. Which ever console your parents decided to get you, was the one you were stuck with. 

Personally I could not imagine growing up without spending the hours upon hours playing Alex Kidd, Wonder Boy, Space Harrier, Columns, Streets of Rage and so many more. Sega will always hold a special place in my heart, even throughout the mostly crap they've been putting out as of late. I guess the reason I'm going over this again in a bit more detail is that if you follow me in my adventures you'll probably see a whole bunch of Sega stuff (old and new) in my gameplay. You might ask yourself why I would waste hours playing something that is by most accounts objectively lower in quality than some of the great games I have stacked up on my desk waiting to be played, nostalgia's one hell of a drug!

Pile of Shame

I guess from there we'll transition into my "problem". I love games, pretty close to nearly all of them. Which can lead me to buy a whole bunch of them, and I really mean a lot! While I have plans to play them all, I can't actually be sure that that will happen. As such I'm trying to cut down buying more while I work my way through the backlog I've amassed. This means that if you're coming here for up to the minute gameplay and information you will be sorely disappointed. I can't even guarantee the stuff you'll be seeing pop up here be timely within a year, in fact I can pretty much guarantee it won't. I'm here to have a good time with games, not rush from new release to new release, so I invite you to join me in just having some fun, playing some games and relaxing.

It's not always going to be relaxing, mind you. I also have a bit of an Achievement addiction. Not in the sense of collecting as many as possible, by playing all kinds of games, grabbing the ones that come easy and moving on like some people. I'm more the completionist, I love the challenge of trying to obtain all the achievements the game can offer and usually I try to stick with one or two games until I do. This adds to the time it takes me to move from one game to the other, compounding my backlog problem. I do think that upcoming features of me raging my way through an achievement or two will make for some very entertaining and embarrassing upcoming features once I get my video recording stuff together. This could also turn into some Guides and How-Tos.

Hopefully as the community of my blog grows we can get together for some gaming sessions, or work on achievements together. If you want to get in contact with me you can do so through the comments below. Please leave a comment letting me know which direction you want me to take this. I have a good idea but I'm hoping to have this be more of a community thing in which you guys help me shape it as well. If you tell me what content you want, hopefully I can provide it for you and we all get what we want!