Fridaily Update

Celebrations were had,
Super Hard mode was beaten

A while ago I thought this day would never come but today I can finally say I'm finished with Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Thursday night saw the realization of weeks of effort, all for 5 measly Gamerscore. If I were doing this for the points alone I probably would have moved on long ago but I like to think of myself as a completionist and while I'm not sure Bionic Commando: Rearmed was the hardest game I've ever slogged through it would definitely have to be one of the hardest ones in a long, long time.

Yesterday was a weird day, filled with ups and downs, which is why I didn't end up posting anything - I just didn't seem to have it in me. The completion of Bionic Commando: Rearmed Thursday night did cap off a mixed day on a high note and help to put yesterday behind me. This won't be then end of Nathan Spencer as today, after a brief stint revisiting Joe Danger 2: The Movie and completing the Undead Movie Pack DLC, I've started working on Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2. Yes you read that right, more Bionic Commando action than you can shake a stick at. I'm sorry if you've had enough of Bionic Commando but I figured while it was still fresh I might as well put the skills to use and finish the sequel off as well. Before we go deeper into that, lets talk about Joe Danger 2: The Movie.

Fast paced and loads of fun. You should give Joe Danger a try

Joe Danger was a cool little game that can also be very hard, however I found it insanely fun. You play as a cartoon stuntman doing all kinds of daring tricks and stunts while trying to complete the different objectives each level tasks you with. I absolutely loved Joe Danger so when Joe Danger 2: The Movie came out I jumped on it quick. After completing Joe Danger 2, I had deleted it off my hard drive sad that there would be no more Joe Danger for the foreseeable future. I was happily proven wrong when word of DLC for Joe Danger 2 reached me. I bought and played the Undead Move Pack last night and this morning and while happy to revisit Joe Danger I found the DLC to be lacking and very short. After maybe 2 hours I was finished with Joe Danger again. Until next time buddy.

Back sporting a Mo this time

This quick pallet refresher proved to be all I needed to start thinking about tackling Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2. I thought what the hell, let's strike while the iron is hot. I had a quick look at the achievements and after playing the game for a little while I think I was right in my assumption that this incarnation of Bionic Commando will be easier than the last. It's been pretty fun so far, and I think I'm somewhere around halfway through my first play through. There seems to be a lot more levels this time, and the achievements require a lot of playthroughs, but with the quick progress I've been making so far I think this game won't put up half the fight the previous one did. The swinging mechanic is different this time, it behaves the way I thought it should have in the first game. After playing the original for so long however it's weird getting used to the change.

That's it for this week. No PC games, no phone games, just straight Xbox this time. I'll be back sometime next week, Monday is a public holiday so I'm unsure if I'll be writing anything but something will go live Tuesday for sure. See you all then.

Wednesdaily Update

Foil me once, Gottfried, shame on you.
Foil me twice, shame on me.

OK, let's get it out of the way again - Bionic Commando: Rearmed, I played it. I played it and played it and still haven't managed to beat the last level. I am getting very confident that it will happen soon though, as I'm now in a position where I can semi-reliably tell what heights the rockets are coming at now and usually make it into the third or forth sequence of the boss battle. It's agonizingly close and I did manage to beat the boss once, but I ended up dying on my way out of the level and it just happened that it was my last life. You can imagine some choice words were thrown around after that. I've done it before and I can do it again, it's just a matter of time and knowing that has taken some of the frustration out of each failure.

I'm still working my way around the map collecting extra lives before tackling the level. I still reliably make it to the boss with one or less deaths but the whole preparation process takes a while and can take a toll on my frustration levels when having to repeat it over and over. This has led me to continue playing Cook, Serve, Delicious in between attempts and I'm closing in on that second star restaurant rating. I'm interested to see if anything changes in the later game of Cook, Serve, Delicious as at this stage I've pretty much bought all the equipment available to me. Just buying and upgrading different foods might not be enough to keep my attention for too much longer. I have managed to obtain a couple of golden tickets, and so far the game has been obfuscating their use in mystery. I'm interested to see what they end up unlocking.

A walking boat in space

After working through 30 waves of Survival: Settlement last weekend, I got back in contact with my buddy Dillagence and he helped me through 20 waves of Survival: Swamp. We smashed through it in one go, netting me the "Swamp Survivor" achievement. This means one of the easiest multiplayer achievements is the only one I have left, however Iron Brigade seems to be very temperamental with constant disconnections and dropouts plaguing most of the matches I've been in. Sometimes it's me, other times a person I'm playing with but I don't think I've been in a match where 1 person hasn't dropped midway. This makes the last achievement very problematic as it asks you to "Complete a mission with 4 players". The quickest and least problematic way to do this is to play a boss level which can be beaten with 4 players in less than a minute, however no-one wants to play these levels. Dillagence and I were trying to sucker 2 other players into completing a quick match with us but most left the instant they saw it was a boss level and when trying to play a normal level someone always dropped out mid game. It was quite frustrating and I gave up after a while, but I will eventually get back to it and finish Iron Brigade once and for all.

Lastly the reason this blog is so late today is that I was out all day. I had a couple of appointments, and things ran long. I barely have had any time to even browse the internet today so if this entry seems a little rushed it's because it is. I'm trying to finish and post it before midnight, which as of right now is in 15 minutes. This time spent waiting for appointments was of some use though, as I made some stellar progress through pack 2 in iStunt 2. I've only got a few levels to get all the gold stars in now and it'll be smooth sailing from there. That's it for this blog entry, I've got to quickly find some pictures and post this now. Please leave a comment, anything you'd like to see on my blog, what you like best about it, constructive criticism or just that you flat out hated it. Hope everyone's had a good day and I'll see you all again Friday.

Mondaily Update

I admit there was some yelling, both in celebration and
frustration this weekend. Success is near, I can feel it!

It's another Monday and I finally have hit a decent milestone in Bionic Commando: Rearmed! Finally something I can point to and show some progress. Yesterday saw me finally managing to barely finish off the Challenge Rooms and boy was it a close finish. My heart was thumping when I crossed the finish line with less than a second on the clock. This brings me to a total of 195/200 achievement points obtained in Bionic Commando and I'm still working on the last level on Super Hard difficulty, but I have hope that it will be mine soonish too.

After trying that last level for a solid 5 days or more I've come to the point where I can reliably finish the level with 1 or no deaths. I've also discovered a tactic which sees you go back and revisit all the non combat levels in the game which house an extra life to let you face the boss with 15 or so lives to spare.Those 15 lives are then promptly thrashed by the boss but I've been making progress and I'm at the point where I know I will eventually be able to beat him, it's just a question of how long until it happens. Collecting those lives takes a while, which can be frustrating and then dying over and over adds a lot more frustration so I can only have a good two or three runs before I'm not at my best which this over this past week has seen me turn to Cook, Serve, Delicious on my PC.

Press the right buttons and do it fast, other orders are queuing up!

I've talked a bit about Cook, Serve, Delicious before but if I were to describe its gameplay to someone I'd have to say you get an order, then try and fulfill it as accurately and quickly as possible. You do this in the form of a button pressing mini game and try to fill every customers order and not let them wait to long and eventually leave. It's really quick with a round lasting 10 minutes or so which is perfect for breaking up my Bionic Commando: Rearmed induced frustrations. There's a layer of restaurant management and menu planning on top of this in the downtime between rounds. It's a simple game but it's serving me well and can become a little addicting.

Over the weekend I also returned to Dust: An Elysian Tail, which is another game I had finished a while before starting this blog that I noticed I didn't get all the Avatar Awards available. After looking up the award I had missed I discovered it had actually glitched on me and is one of the first ones you normally get. I started a new game on the easiest difficulty and ran through the game as fast as I could and ended up unlocking it in an hour or so. After deleting it from my hard drive again I took another look through my avatar awards and noticed a couple more games were missing a few so I've redownloaded them and will return to them eventually too.

Late Saturday night a good friend on Xbox Live told me that there was a Iron Brigade session scheduled later that night for the hardest achievement in the game. Settlement Savior requires you to "Complete wave 30 on Survival: Settlement". Dillagence and I have taken a couple of shots at this before in other sessions and it's very hard if you're approaching it wrongly. This session started at 1:30 am Sunday morning and was scheduled for 2 hours, needless to say it wasn't that easy and we played long into the early morning. For the first couple of hours everything was going smoothly and we played and failed a good number of games but then disconnections started plaguing our matches. One particularly good game saw me and the session host disconnect deep into the match leaving Dillagence and another session goer to fend for themselves and eventually earn the achievement. By this time the session was already long past finishing and being so early in the morning I wasn't sure if there would be a will to continue but Dillagence stuck in there and we tried once more which when smoothly for me and saw me obtain this achievement too. The session host was having connection issues but started playing with some other people and managed to unlock it himself as well so apart from going to sleep at 6am everything turned out great and I was happy I had another achievement I wasn't sure if I'd get under my belt.

It was cool to return to Iron Brigade again. I really enjoyed my time playing it.

This leaves 2 more multiplayer achievements to go in Iron Brigade but I think those will fall pretty easily if I put a little time in. Speaking of a little time I completed a couple more levels in iStunt 2, getting me past the half way mark in Stadium Stunts pack and closer to my second world with all the starts collected. Upon completing the second world with all stars it will be all downhill as there are no other achievements requiring 100% completion. I feel good about this weekends progress, and while it hasn't resulted in huge Gamerscore gains it has seen some progression in some of the more difficult completions I've been working on lately. 

Fridaily Update

I'm going to stop putting Bionic
Commando pictures in here soon.
I'm sure you're as sick of seeing
them as I am.

Friday always turns up so expectantly. Maybe I'm losing track of time because I've been stuck playing Bionic Commando: Rearmed for so long. Once again there has been some progress but no big milestones in relation to collecting the last two achievements I need to complete the game. I've managed to struggle through and eventually destroy another 2 levels in a row in the mission mode. This brings me to the last level and boy is it a beast! I've tried around 50 times so far and haven't gotten through the first part of the level.

Eventually I got frustrated and turned to the Challenge Rooms and made some good progress there too. I've now finished every Challenge Room except the last two. Hopefully I'll get them soon so I'll finally have something to show for this massive time commitment. I'm feeling especially rushed at the moment because of the announcement and relatively near release of the Xbox One. I still have a huge stack of games I haven't even touched and a bunch of boosting to do just to complete what I've already bought. I don't even want to think about the heap of games I still want to buy and play!

With Bionic Commando: Rearmed being so frustrating I've spent some more time on my PC playing intermittent bouts of Cook, Serve, Delicious. I've been coming up in Cook, Serve, Delicious' world with my restaurant receiving it's first make over and star. Personally I feel like my restaurant deserves much higher than 1 star status with flawless or near flawless service every day.

I'm working towards 2 star status

That's everything to have happened this week. I wish I'd achieved more. Once I finish Bionic Commando: Rearmed I have big plans, involving rapid fire completions and a renewed focus on boosting but I'm also deciding if I should just start Bionic Commando 2 straight afterwards as there must be some skill transfer and in the long run it'll probably be better to see if I can't just smash the sequel too. I've heard it's easier aswell, which is nice. Leave a comment if you'd like and have a good weekend everyone!

Wednesdaily Update

Urgh, just go away Rad

Man Bionic Commando must be the most talked about game on this blog. Yes I'm still playing it. Yes I've made some more progress. Yes, it's still hard. Bionic Commando: Rearmed is almost infuriatingly hard, I can only play it in 30 minute chunks before I'm swearing and punching things. This has stifled my progress a lot as I can't just sit there and play for hours, but the end is slowly getting closer. I managed to pass another level today and I do feel things are getting easier, but not by much. There are 3 more levels to go and once again I'm here hoping to finish it very soon.

Xbox One, the future is coming real soon!

This hope is expedited because of last nights Xbox One reveal. The next generation now has a name and it's deadline is looming over me. I turn around and take a peak at my stack of unplayed games then think about the many other games I haven't even bought yet that I want to play and I don't know if I'll be anywhere near finished by the time Xbox One comes about. I'm not sure if I'll grab the Xbox One on launch, as I still will have a whole bunch of games to play, but then again I think I'm in this situation because I waited about 2 years before I got my Xbox 360 and I tried to catch up on that 2 year period, which never happened. To this day I think I am about 2 years behind on all the games I want to play. It's this thought that makes me not want to repeat this process again, but what about all the games I haven't played yet. Having two systems on the go just means needing even more time to devote to gaming. It's a tough spot to be in, but most first world problems are lol.

Used games always seemed like a rip off to me anyway.
Shops offer you less than you'd get if you sold them direct
on eBay then turn around and sell them for 5 dollars
cheaper than the new copy.

I've seen a lot of negativity over the Xbox One on the internet but I'm still pretty optimistic. The presentation didn't really offer much to the hardcore gamer in me but then again it wasn't aimed at me. The presentation was televised nationally in America, and catered towards mums and old people to let them know the reason they should buy an Xbox. Of course it still does games, it will do them better than the Xbox 360 but with all the hate I've been seeing online people don't seem to realise this. I've seen people saying consoles are over, mostly in relation to the way Xbox One will handle used and traded games. You can't trade in or buy used games on the PC anyway, they've had single use serial codes for years. The TV stuff is an addition, the internet and Skype functionality is an addition. I think come E3 there will be a whole heap of gaming news and everyone will be flocking back into the fold.

Xbox One drama aside, I've been spending some more time on my PC lately due to Bionic Commando: Rearmed infuriating me so much. I finished Evoland, which was an awesome game and you should really check it out. I'm not sure if I'll review it as it's not an Xbox related game, but if I ever find myself with nothing to talk about I might. Say something in the comments if you'd really like to hear something about it. I moved onto another PC game called Cook, Serve, Delicious which is a great game to play between spurts of Bionic Commando: Rearmed to compose myself. Cook, Serve, Delicious is an restaurant sim/action management game. You manage your restaurant, choose what food to serve and what to use your hard earned money on at the end of each day but you spend the bulk of your time serving orders to your customers in the form of many different fast paced minigames. It's pretty much a restaurant themed Warioware with a higher level macro sim game being played over the top in the down time between serving. It's a lot of fun and you should check it out. Cook, Serve, Delicious is perfectly paced to be played in 10 minute sittings, like breaking up your frustration playing Bionic Commando: Rearmed for example.

These last couple of blog entries have gone up pretty late, I apologise for that and I'm going to try and get back to my normal posting times. Especially now with my new found enthusiasm to push through and complete as many games as I can before the Xbox One comes out. I'll hopefully be online and gaming a lot more. Leave a comment, and I'll see you all Friday.

Mondaily Update

This weekend was a bit all over the place in terms of gaming. I didn't put the solid hours into Bionic Commando: Rearmed that I had planned so, while progress was made, I didn't get as far as I would have liked. I feel like I did make it past the tipping point as I completed another 3 stages in fairly rapid succession but I'm now stuck on one stage. I don't think it will be a problem for that long it's just that I didn't get to dedicate a huge chuck of time to finding strategies and working through it logically. I'm still hopeful that I will get through the rest of this game quickly, with only the last level being the only major hurdle in my way still. We'll see how that goes when I get to it.


I continued BloodForge boosting off and on over the last couple of days, dedicating a chunk of Sunday to finishing it up. Big thanks to Beast Incarnate for sticking with me through all my internet problems. I'm not sure if it was just the game or my internet or something else but searching for challenge updates seemed to take longer and longer and by the end of our boost it was trying to pull data from the servers for over 5 minutes before it would get anything. This must have fucked something up somewhere as the challenges started to become glitchy, with killing the last enemy in a wave not triggering the start of the next one multiple times. I ended up replaying waves multiple times while I'm sure Beast was sitting there wondering if I even knew how to play the game because of how long it was taking.

Sepia toned violence

Eventually it was obvious something had messed up somewhere between the servers and I with my screen becoming flooded with dummy challenges, all from Beast - even though BloodForge only lets you have one active challenge between any two people at a time. I had to click on each one, sit through 5 minutes of it contacting the server only to find myself dumped back at the main menu because that challenge obviously didn't really exist. It was beginning to get frustrating but I knew I only need one or two more to complete BloodForge so after some determination the last achievement was mine.

After finishing BloodForge I found myself in the Avatar Awards section of the dashboard. I'm not really sure what made me go peeping around in there but I discovered I hadn't unlocked all the awards in a couple of XBLA games I had recently finished. I saw that there was an award I missed in Crazy Taxi, which required me to play the game for 10 hours. Not being the biggest Crazy Taxi fan I decided to just grind it out by letting it idle in 10 minute Arcade mode. I knew this would take a while with minimum input from me, seeing as I unlocked the award for playing the game for 5 hours shortly before being finished with the game, so I went looking for something I could do to occupy my time.

Evoland evolves and adds new gameplay and graphics as the RPG progresses

This led to me looking at and enjoying Evoland. My computer is right next to my Xbox so I could reach over every 10 minutes to restart Crazy Taxi while I was playing. Evoland is a PC game that chronicles the progression of the RPG genre. As you get chests you gain abilities and new gameplay options, updated graphics, RPG tropes and more. It's a fun run through of RPG's as they evolved and as someone who has seen them as they did it was cool to experience it all in one game. It's fairly short and I'm just about finished with it but it was a great distraction while grinding Crazy Taxi and a great game to just play and experience yourself.

That's it for this weekend. I managed to squeeze in a couple more levels of iStunt 2. Slowly progressing there as well. I guess the theme for this weekend was slow progress but progress is indeed progress. Thank's for reading, leave a comment if you'd like and I'll be back Wednesday.

Fridaily Update

Welcome to another Fridaily Update, this week has been a bit slower than normal due to me still struggling away on Bionic Commando: Rearmed. I did make some more progress, working my way through 4 different stages so far and getting closer to the point where I felt the game got a bit easier last time. Let's hope that's still the case for Super Hard as these levels can be really trying! I managed to get the Helmet upgrade, which gives me an extra hit to work with but the enemies don't take any prisoners and 1 more hit helps but isn't the game changer I'm looking for. I really hope I manage to complete this run sometime this weekend as I can't help but feel that this is starting to drag, taking time away from me playing other games.

Speaking of other games I've managed to convince my good friend Beast to start playing BloodForge so we can both knock out the achievements tied to the challenge arenas of the game. I think BloodForge is an average game, with some great style and violence to it, but their challenge system is actually really neat. I'm sure some other games are doing the same thing, I just can't think of any right now. BloodForge's challenge arenas are basically wave survival with different and more numerous enemies swarming you as the waves progress. In between each wave you have the ability to choose a modifier which will give you more or less points as you progress. Once you die you can send a challenge to a friend who, if they accept, will have to try and beat your score or survive longer than you did with the modifiers you picked. If they win the challenge can then be bounced back to you and you'll have to try to beat the new high score. When somebody fails, it's game over and you can issue a new challenge if you'd like. It's a cool system that doesn't require you to be online at the same time.

BloodForge's style is great!

We've been sending challenges back and forth to work towards our multiplayer achievements and as soon as I have mine I will have BloodForge completed and will start working on another review. Apart from BloodForge the only other game I've made some more progress in is Angry Birds, finally managing to 3 star all the levels Episode 2 had to offer. If I'm honest it wasn't really me who completed Episode 2. I only had one level that I could not 3 star, even though I must have tried over 100 times. I was at my parents place Wednesday night and my brother was there, who is a much better Angry Birds player than me, and he said he'd give it a go. After ten minutes I heard that familiar 'bloop' that we all love so much and as soon as I finish Bionic Commando: Rearmed I will start work on finishing the rest of Angry Birds. I just need to worry about 3 starring all the levels in Episode 3, which luckily is the last episode to have any star related achievements, as the rest are all grinding related and can be done on any level.

I got a reply from Xbox Support about my Serious Sam: TSE inquiry which, as I expected, resulted in nothing. I'll post it soon, with some thoughts, on a different entry as this one is getting long. I reviewed Zeit² yesterday, you can read it here. That's everything that's happened in these last few days, leave a comment and I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Wednesdaily Update

My face probably looked something like
the crazy face in the top left as I lost all self
control and start yelling like a two year old
because this game is damn hard!

Welcome back to another Wednesday. This week hasn't been very productive on pretty much every front I've got going right now but it's not for lack of trying! We'll start with Bionic Commando: Rearmed, which I'm starting to believe will become a mainstay of this blog for a long, long time. I made some progress Monday night in the challenge rooms, collecting a couple more completions and now I'm left with a handful that I just can not finish. I've spent hours trying different rooms and frustration was starting to reach boiling point. I decided to take a break from that to return to my Super Hard campaign run through.

After bashing my head against Super Hard for a day I finally managed to beat one level... one! Slow progress is still progress and I'm still determined to complete this run through as I know if I just beat a few more levels the extra items will start making life easier. I'm hoping the experience will be somewhat like my hard difficulty run through with the first 3 or 4 levels being hard as nails, like struggling to reach the top of a hill, but then the last two thirds of the game ended up being all downhill.

Apart from Bionic Commando: Rearmed, there hasn't been much else happening. I ended up contacting Microsoft Support about the Serious Sam: TSE issue I have been having. After some internet sleuthing I actually found out that it wasn't just me and the issue is Australia wide. There has been some apparent movement on this issue and I think one of two things will happen;

1. We finally get access to Serious Sam: TSE here in Australia or, 
2. The completely removal of all mention of Serious Sam: TSE from the marketplace in Australia.

Serious Sam Double D XXL is different
in that it is a 2D Side-Scrolling Shooter.

To be honest I'm expecting the second outcome, but fingers crossed for the first. I mentioned before that I may post the chat log and I remembered to save it for you guys so I will be posting that later today if you guys want to read through the over 2 hours I had to spend chatting politely to the support crew. I really do think they try their best, but sometimes they don't seem all that knowledgeable. In the end I'm happy with the time spent and my experience because, if nothing else, I'll hopefully get some amount of closure on this Serious Sam problem. Oh I also ended up buying Serious Sam Double D XXL, which was part of the Serious Sam themed Deal of the Week last week. This now leaves Serious Sam: TSE as the only Serious Sam available on the Xbox that I don't own.

Apart from that the only other little bits of news come from the Windows Phone. Monster Burner, a game I only mentioned in passing in a previous Update, has now been repriced from free to being a dollar to download. If you missed out then I'm sorry, but you'll now have to pay money to experience Monster Burner. I haven't played it yet so I can't say if it's a big loss. The other Windows Phone news is that during my escapades with Xbox Support they wanted me to take some pictures of the dashboard, which I did with my phone and this required me to connect it to my PC to copy the pictures and upload them.

Upon connecting my phone I discovered there was an update for it, which I promptly denied as I'm not taking any chances with Angry Birds messing up. Especially now I've spent a bit of time trying to complete it. This means I'm going to have to start work on Angry Birds again to complete it before I'm able to download this update. I've mentioned before that Angry Birds has been removed from the marketplace and replaced with a version that no longer supports achievements, it's because of this that I'm not risking the update as it could put an end to the ability for me to complete the game.

In site news I've added a navigation bar at the top which lets you sort the blog roll from everything to just reviews. If there are any other separations you would like easy access too just say so in the comments! That's everything so far this week, leave a comment about whatever and I'll be back Friday to ramble on some more.

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

Friday's here! This means the weekend and more gaming! Since Wednesday there has been some decent gaming as well. I haven't gotten back to Angry Birds yet, I'm still taking some time away from that one. I'll return to it soon, maybe sometime this weekend or next week as I still want to get it finished before any potential problems arise from it's delisting. For now I'm enjoying my time away from the frustration of chasing those stars.

Not as hard as I once thought!

I've spent most of my time since Wednesday playing Alien Hominid HD, which I have now finished. The majority of the achievements are actually pretty easy once you know what you're doing. I don't know why I got so discouraged all those years ago looking back on it now. The game doesn't require all that much from you and is rather forgiving with it's lives and continues when you aren't playing on hard. I think it was the fact that I looked through the achievements and saw the one called Perfect Fight which wants you to "Defeat the Final Boss without using a continue" which I assumed meant that you had to play the whole game and beat him without continuing, which was quite demoralizing seeing as I was continuing on the first level. Turns out this is not the case, and loading up the final level and beating him that way is enough to unlock the achievement.

Those Soviets just wouldn't stand still, all I wanted to do
was rip their heads off!

The walkthrough helped me immensely, and I followed it completely. There are still a few hard achievements and some luck/patience based ones, which I'm not that gifted in. WMD tasks you to "Reach 5000 Km in Super Soviet Missile Master" which is a mini-game in Alien Hominid and required hours of attempts only to be denied more than 5 times with over 4900 Km. Eventually I managed to grab that achievement and nearly hit 6000 Km, it's funny how things work like that sometimes. That left me with the last achievement I needed, Head Chomper which wants you to "Head bite 50 enemies without touching the ground or firing." This is another achievement that just requires hours of patience and practice and luck. After trying for hours I was about to give up on it and started doing something else but I decided to come back to it and just relax and take it really slow while I was watching some Youtube videos and ended up unlocking it when I wasn't even really paying attention.

More running and gunning!

I'm really pleased I've put a lid on Alien Hominid and sealed up that 4 year quest. Emboldened by this victory I noticed Bionic Commando: Rearmed sitting around in my games list and I decided to tackle that. This is another game from my past and, according to the time-stamp on my then singular Bionic Commando: Rearmed achievement which reads 4th of January 2009, has been sitting around for longer than Alien Hominid HD on my hard-drive. I'm not so sure if I'll manage to complete this as it seems a lot harder than Alien Hominid HD, but I definitely want to complete some more achievements and at least beat the game once on a lower difficulty or something. So far I've managed to pop another two achievements and am working on a third. There's a long road ahead with this game so expect to see some more of it around here.

Apart from that there has been some more movement in the Windows Phone front, with the release of Monster Burner this week which is available for free. As someone that can never pass up the allure of free Gamerscore I downloaded this right away but haven't fired it up yet. I'm not playing any more Windows Phone games until Angry Birds and iStunt 2 are in the bag I've told myself. This goes for the recent purchase of Sally's Salon: Luxury Edition as well, though I'm not really all that interested in playing it. It's the Windows Phone Deal of the Week this week, with it being discounted to a buck, so get on it while you can if you're interested.

Speaking of Deal of the Week, this weeks Xbox DotW is Serious Sam themed, with all the Serious Sam games being discounted. As you might know I recently completed Serious Sam: TFE (Review) and was happy with this opportunity to grab the other Serious Sam episodes only to find the Marketplace being quite glitch when it comes to Serious Sam: TSE. Serious Sam: TSE doesn't show when browsing the Marketplace normally, but when searched for appears without the option to buy the game, only to download the demo. I did so, thinking once I had the game on my hard drive I could unlock it from within the game, pay my MSP and be on my way. This doesn't work either, instead it displays a notice saying that this content isn't available in my region. I don't understand why Serious Sam: TFE and Serious Sam 3 would be fine for my region but Serious Sam: TSE isn't. I'm planning on getting in contact with Microsoft about this soon as I don't want to miss out on this deal, especially because I'm planning on completing the Serious Sam series.

That's been my last two days, looking at this wall of text makes it seem far more eventful than I thought it was. Wednesday I teased some more about the upcoming features of my blog and I was right in holding back on promising anything. I've hit a snag and I'm not in the process of ordering some more stuff to get the stuff I already ordered to work, sigh. Oh well, I'm not going to harp on about this and tease it anymore until I know it's already working so I'll be going dark on this front for a couple of weeks it seems, forget I said anything. Hope everyone has a good time gaming this weekend, leave a comment if you feel inclined to do so, I'd appreciate it, and I'll be back Monday!