Mondaily Update

For the flock!

This weekend was a busy one in gaming and out. I played a bunch on my Windows Phone to get the weekend started. Mostly Angry Birds, for the reasons I stated in the last Fridaily Update. I've managed to get halfway through the second episode while three starring each level. It's been going smoothly enough, seeing as I've been using Youtube videos to guide me through each level and get those coveted stars. As I've mentioned before Angry Birds was never something that I found incredibly entertaining. While it's fun enough to play a level or two, after that I get bored and increasingly annoyed with trying over and over to get a 3 star score. The fact that you don't even have any idea if the way you're approaching the level can result in three stars or not isn't my idea of a good time.

After having enough of Angry Birds I put some time in with iStunt 2 again. These games are quite different yet I get a very similar experience from them both. I think it's because of the achievements I'm aiming for at the moment in both, getting 3 star ratings in the first 3 Angry Birds episodes and collecting all the stars in the first two iStunt 2 packs. Both require multiple trial and error runs before finding out how you're able to achieve all the stars. iStunt 2 is a very different game however, with you tilting your phone left and right to rotate your snowboarder in order to land jumps and other stunts. I'm enjoying iStunt 2 slightly more than Angry Birds, but I'll be very happy when I finally finish both of them.

After spending most of my Saturday gaming on my Windows Phone and it subsequently whinging about having a low battery, I turned to my trusty Xbox 360 once more. After scrolling through my slowly diminishing XBLA games list Zeit² caught my eye. Zeit² has been sitting there quietly at the end of my games list for a while now. I'm not the biggest fan of these types of shooters but it had been discounted to a very reasonable price a while back and I couldn't help myself. I have seen a bunch of friends complete it relatively easily so I decided I'd tackle it myself.

Zeit² throws a hell of a lot your way, and quick too!

Zeit² has a trick up it's sleeve, you can rewind time, and the game requires you to use this and use it often. It took me a little while before I wrapped my head around the tactics  something like this opens up to you but eventually I felt like I had a decent grasp of them. I was wrong, Zeit² keeps adding and adding features right up until the final boss, barely giving you time to come to grips with any of them. Eventually I muddled my way through it, only barely knowing what I was doing at any given time. The achievements and game are easy to get through, but if you want to spend the time I think there is a lot here you could master.

After Zeit², I was contacted about playing some Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone by a couple of friends. As I have been looking for a group to get the Epic Run 4 player achievement for a long while now so I jumped at the chance. Everything went smoothly and about an hour later everyone grabbed their achievement and thanks to King Plug, The Dark Liege and Chilli Thunder I have one more completion! You can expect reviews covering Zeit² and Zombie Apocalypse: NDA in coming weeks.

That's the weekend in gaming, this update is long enough already but I'll continue for just a little longer. Friday night we went to see Oblivion, the new Tom Cruise science fiction epic, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it. The group I saw it with had a different opinion but I thought this was the first time I had seen a real Sci-Fi movie in what seems like forever. Most Sci-Fi these days seems like it's just there as a setting for an action film but this one seemed different. It had some action to be sure but most of it was just good old fashioned, I hesitate to use the word but, slowburn Sci-Fi. Then came Saturday and the girlfriend had signed me up to run the 5 km Stampede fun run event in Perth. I wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea but it was a fun and messy time. After sloshing through mud and maneuvering through obstacles I was dead tired, but wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

Mondaily Update

Hey all, today just seems to have gotten away from me. It's 10:30 pm as I write this and it seems like I haven't been able to find any time to play and Xbox or write this post since I woke up. This will have to be a quick one as I would like to squeeze in some Xbox and whatever else I find interesting on the web tonight.

Some of the challenges are quite Crazy! Ha!

Friday I talked about having just started Crazy Taxi and how quick and easy most of the achievements were. Well I managed to finish off the remaining 3 achievements after writing that entry with the help of some good Youtube videos. Someone a lot better then I swanned through the challenges like they were nothing, but after watching them I ended up beating them aswell, although with quite a bit more effort and profanities. Crazy Taxi was an enjoyable ride and a quick, although not exactly easy, 200 points. Look for a review sometime in the future.

After Crazy Taxi I found myself looking at True Achievements, an awesome site by the way, give it a look here, and noticed a friend asking if anyone wanted to do any Co-op in Iron Brigade. I had been wanting to start the game but had been putting it off due to the co-operative achievements so this seemed like the perfect chance to give it a whirl. I've played a whole bunch of it and it's really enjoyable and quite the challenge. I did a whole lot of co-opin and a lot by myself. Right now I'm working my way through the DLC, Rise of the Martian Bear, which takes the Mobile Trench Division straight to Mars.

Iron Brigade is fun and funny!

Apart from that I squeezed in a couple more iStunt 2 levels in some down time I had, and watched a couple of movies over the weekend. The first being Iron Man 3, which was quite good. I really enjoyed the first Iron Man but the second was very average I thought, so I didn't know what to expect. They really turned it back around with this movie, but not being much of a comic book fan I dunno what they would think about how the Mandarin was portrayed. I won't say much else, as it is still new and don't want to spoil anything. I know this is not a movie blog, but I also ended up watching Paranormal Activity 4, which was quite disappointing. Even not being the biggest fan of the series, this one seemed lazy and added nothing new or exciting. The Xbox 360 and Kinect do make an appearance. Did you know the Kinect can track ghosts?

That's all for today, time to squeeze in some gaming. Leave a comment and come back tomorrow for the long awaited review of Deep Black. I got a few reviews on the back burner now, so there will definitely be new content for a while. See you then.

Fridaily Update

This week wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped, with the only game I've played being Renegade Ops. Hopefully over the weekend I'll manage to cram in a bunch of game time and have a lot to write about next week. Speaking of Renegade Ops though, I've managed to creep forward and make some more progress. Since last update I finished Hardcore, cleaned up some secondary objectives I missed and banged my head against the achievement for hitting a fifty plus kill streak combo, finally pulling it off yesterday.

Explosions!

This has left me with one last achievement that I'm hoping to complete today. I need to achieve a skill level rank of Alien upon the completion of the level. The game doesn't really tell you what exactly is needed beyond a tool tip saying to do a bunch of damage without taking much. Yeah thanks, that's what I've been trying to do. I will say that I've been severely under-utilising my special power, which is a damage saving shield, so hopefully I can get my tactics in check and finish it with-out too many repeats.

Apart from that there's nothing much more to report on, maybe I'll flesh out these updates a bit with some non Xbox related entertainment. If you're not interested then skip the last paragraph or two of these updates from now on I guess. I decided to watch a horror movie called Sinister last night which was pretty good. If you're into horror movies I suggest you check it out if you haven't. It's about a true crime writer who moves into a house where murders have taken place and a child has gone missing to try and write a book about it. As you can imagine things don't go smoothly. It really succeeds in manufacturing a creepy atmosphere, and has a good bunch of scares in it.

That's it for this week, leave a comment below, have a good weekend and I'll see you Monday!