General Update 28: So Long And Thanks For All The 'Chievos!

It’s a sad day today, because I go back to work tomorrow after being off for nearly a week and a half. The reason for the time off was because I needed to burn off some holiday before my new allowance came into affect on the 1st. I didn’t go anywhere as I didn’t want to, instead it was to try and tackle my way through that list I posted in my last General Update.

I started the first weekend by finishing off Space-marine, as I said before, I enjoyed the story and I’m working on the review for it. I did have some trouble near the end and found a video to try and get some tips for playing. In the end I persevered and beat the final boss. Following that I then went onto to finish Timeshift. I had gotten stuck but again I looked up a video which gave me some Ideas which I was able to use for the rest of the game. After completing time shift I picked up Bayonetta as I was not even half way through it and I finished that as well. It will require another 2 playthrough’s at least, but not yet.

With 3 games complete I thought I should try and knock another title from the list. Seeing as i had completed and action game I started American McGee’s Alice. My first impression is that it hasn’t aged well. The control scheme does feel like a dated platformer, not that this is necessarily a bad thing. I also went back to try and put some more hours into a more lengthy game, but completing a few cases on L.A. Noire. I’ve completed 2 of the DLC cases and I’ve got one more Vice case before I move onto the last case desk so progress, despite being slow, is being made.

Oh yeah, before I started back in on Timeshift I went back and started something that I needed to do before March, play Mass Effect 2 as my fem-Shep. According to Raptr, an achievement tracking service, I’ve sunk 33 hours into that play through, and in my defence I did do ‘ALL OF THE THINGS!’. Everyone was loyal and survived, I explored every planet and did every side mission, including some that i hadn’t found before. I also completed the last DLC, Arrival, which I thought add some good narrative to the story but I did think it may have been a little on the short side.

Bioshock: Rapture is finished as well and seeing as, I’ve not made it to Assassin’s Creed Revelations yet, I thought I should pick up some new books. I made my way to Waterstone’s and picked up the 4th Mass Effect novel, Mass Effect: Deception, and Deus Ex: Icarus Effect. Obviously I’ve started Deception, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s interesting to see someone else’s take on the Mass Effect universe as the other 3 were written by Drew Karpyshyn who was a lead writer on the games.

One last thing to mention is that Inversion, the interesting third person shoorter, has been delayed. It was supposed to be released on Feb 10th, but it has been delayed until the vague date or early 2012. This means I’m not going to be buying a new game until march 9th when Mass Effect 3 is launched. Incidentally the demo for Mass Effect 3 is to be released on Feb 14th.

It is now time for bed as I’ve got to try and get used to having early nights and early starts. The rest of this week is going to be long!

General Update 24: Reach for the Stars.

So it’s been a little while since I last wrote and not a whole lot has happened since I broke the 60k Gamerscore mark, but that’s mostly because of the fact that 3 of the games mentioned in my last post still haven’t come down in price, however Lego Star Wars 3 was on offer in Tesco so it was rude not. I’m going to rant about Game being Rubbish and then write up for this blog but it sort of leads into a big can of worms, and the other reason I've not done mush is because I had been playing Mass Effect again! This must be my 7^th play through? And it’s a massive game and I did all the side quests. After completing Mass Effect I completed Lego Star Wars 3, and then after hearing very good things, I picked up Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which I'm loving at the moment.

It’s that time of year again for the Summer of Arcade, I maybe a little late as this is the last week that it runs for. This year the games were Bastion, From Dust, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Fruit Ninja Kinect and Toy Soldiers: Cold War. I downloaded the trial version of Bastion and really enjoyed it so I bought the full game which I am still trying to work my way through. The other trial I tried was for Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. I think there are some interesting mechanics in this game, and once I’ve managed to clear some of the back log from my arcade list then I’ll definitely look at getting the full game. I’ve still not invested in Kinect yet so Fruit Ninja Kinect isn’t feasible at the moment.  From Dust looks intriguing and I should look at getting the trial to see what all the fuss is about.

More Mass Effect 3 Videos

This week is Gamescom, in Cologne, Germany and there have been a couple of good trailers coming from it. So far I’ve see a Mass Effect 3 trailer that shows off some of the combat, but it looks a little too scripted to be game play, see above, and the other one I saw as for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. This game is looking awesome especially from this trailer, see below. It’ll be good to see Altair again as I’m bored of Ezio, and after the ending of Brotherhood it’ll be very interesting to see how the Desmond story line progresses.

More Assassins Creed Revelations Videos

In other news there is a rumour that does appear to be building some steam, Diablo 3 may be coming to consoles, there has been two reports making mention to bringing the game to consoles and it’s this second post that really builds credibility for the rumour, however we’ll have to wait a little longer to see if it does become a reality. If you’ve been following me on twitter then you’ll know that I’m not the only one that is looking forward to this game. The other news is that Borderlands 2 has been announced to be released sometime between April 2012 and March 2013. I did enjoy Borderlands, you can read my review here, and although info on the sequel is slim on the ground at the moment there is some concept are that can be seen in this article, and the teaser trailer that is below.

General Update 19: “I’m mad as hell,and I'm not going to take this anymore!”

The quote above is part of a speech from a film I’ve not seen called the Network. Where the actor Peter Finch has a rant about how bad things are getting. Anyway this week, yes I know it’s only Monday, but I’ve been getting annoyed. Not because I'm not getting enough time on the Xbox, not because I've got loads of games to try and play through and I'm running out of time to play them in. But I’m hearing more and more things that annoy me. The first, but not the main, shouldn’t really be on here but it’s to do with movies.

My Housemate read out a list of 95 films that have been green lighted sequels. Some of these are films that aren’t even out yet and there are even more films on that list that are from long running series, and there are some from films that don’t need sequels. In a similar vein, I've recently got into the Syfy series Stargate:Universe and although this second series is a little slow to pick up I really enjoy it, but because SyFy are re-branding it’s been scrapped.

Are we that complacent in this day in age that we can’t think of something new? I know that part of the reason is because the costs of making a film are pretty astronomical and in the current climates much more of a risk, but if the film companies won’t take the risks then we won’t see Cult films, like Rocky Horror and Empire Records, “Oh Rexy your so sexy!”, in the same way we do now, and this is disheartening.

The second is this PSN catastrophe. “My name is Chris, and I am a . . . Microsoft Fanboy.” I’ll admit it and i have to qualms about it, and while it has been know for me to dislike some of the things on the PlayStation I don’t go around and hate on it. We’re all gamers here we’re all looking for the same enjoyment out of games aren’t we? so why do the other team in? If karma does exist then all these people saying Xbox Live isn’t hackable are asking for trouble. I’ve always said that one thing I really like about Sony is the trophy system and in particular the gold, silver and bronze medals, but I wasn’t happy that you got Mass Effect 2! But good luck to Sony in keeping the PSN up and welcome back to gaming to those who haven't’ been able to scratch that itch we all get.

Third a double edged sword. Mass Effect 3 has been delayed until next year. First of all this a good thing as it means I won’t have to rush through Skyrim in order to get it. However I've also heard that part of the reason that it’s being delayed is so that it can be ‘laser focused’ on bringing a game that will exceed expectations. However according to this article they are tweaking the game to appeal to a wider market. Mass Effect 2 has sold over well over 6.6 million copies. Do they really need to do this? If they do then people who want to go back to experience the story will be disappointed. ME2 was by no means perfect. I’m sure every time I heard “Probe away!” I died a little in side, but it was a good game and I'm hoping that they are only going to be polishing up the game as it will be the end of an era.

There is a silver lining on the funk in which I seem to have fallen. LA: Noire. The game is released on Friday and I have my pre-order ordered. I can’t wait to see that opening cut scene and to start taking on my first case. I do feel sorry for a friend of mine who had his birthday recently as he’s a PC gamer and at the time of writing this there is no release date for it on PC. It’s a shame that he will be missing out.

Anyway time for bed now, if you folks are lucky i might even write another post before the end of the week, but I will leave you with the video of the speech that the title was taken from.

General Update 14: Merry New Year!

So there we go another year gone and another one stretching out in front of us, but before I rush headlong into the new year and decade I’m going to take a little more time to look back at the year 2010.

What did I achieve? Well I suppose the main thing would be breaking the fifty thousand gamerscore mark. I’ve also started playing games on the harder difficulties rather than starting on easy or normal, I’ll jump straight in on hard. What else? Completing Mass Effect 2 on Insanity, it took almost 8 or 9 months, to do and that was with a 6 month hiatus!

However looking back 2010 hasn’t been all good. Probably one of my major sticking points was the news that Mass Effect 2 was to be released on the PS3. I know that the original was published by Microsoft so I know that will never be released on the PS3. I’m just a little confused as to why they would release only a portion of a series. My other big disappointment with the year was E3. I know Microsoft had to show off Kinect and give it a full reveal. But it didn’t seem to show much of anything else. Don’t get me wrong they showed a lot of stuff, but aside from the Kinect stuff there wasn’t a whole lot of Exclusives to be shown.  I’m hoping this will change in this year’s show.

What do I want to achieve for 2011? I guess my main goal is to reach the seventy five thousand gamerscore mark. But I also want to try and make more of an effort to get into the online community. So I’ll try and make some posts on some forums and try and get involved.

What am I looking forward to in this new year? Two major events, the first one being E3. Although I’m not actually going I will be watching the live keynote speech as I have done for the past 2 years. The second event is the Eurogamer Expo. Or E2 as I think I’m going to call it. It will be over 4 days this year and be around the same time. Hopefully they will have Mass Effect 3 there and I will be able to try it out as it’s due to be released this holiday season. The other game that should be good to see will be the next game in the Elder Scrolls series. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as that is released 11/11/11. See what they did there?

Current Gamerscore: 51555g

General Update 11: We Don't Talk Anymore. . .

I suppose I should be grovelling to you for forgiveness due to my being absent so long, no blog entries or twitter tweets and you are right of course, but I blame my friend Mags, who is getting married in a couple of weeks, she got me hooked on the telly series House. I am now all up to date with the series and can hopefully focus on my writing. I did plan a few entries but never got around to write them the plans are still there and while I do still plan on writing my second entry about the EuroGamer Expo, some of the news stories I want to write about are long gone. But I could use them for writing practise.

So things that I’ve been up to in the past few weeks, I got the Fallout New Vegas Collector’s Edition, and I’ve taken photos of it being unboxed so that will get its own special dedicated post. I didn’t get Fable 3, I was financially short that month and I have plenty to be getting on with games wise, I’ve also got the Awakening DLC for Dragon Age:Origins as well as Ironman 2 on top of this I want to add the Borderlands Game of the year edition for all of the DLC.

As far as actually playing goes, I’m only about 20 hours into Fallout New Vegas and I’ve only completed the first mission on Ironman 2. You may also remember that in General Update 10, I mentioned that I had 3 more achievements for Mass Effect 2 DLC. It just so happened that the following Mondays Deal of the week was on Mass Effect 2 DLC, so I was able to pick up the last one for the last few achievements, making Mass Effect 2 the newest entry to my 100% Club. 

General Update 10: In Space No One Can Hear You Shout "Wohoo!"

So this is my first post in a little while, but I’m back now. I’ve been semi busy, what with having a full time job but I was also in London last weekend for the Eurogamer Expo. I managed to get a look at some of the top new titles that will be coming out in the next 10-12 months and being my first Expo I wasn’t disappointed.

Before I went away for the weekend I started a new run through of Mass Effect 2 on Insanity. As I said in a blog post earlier this year I was giving up as I didn’t want to hate the game. This week has seen my plough through the point at which I was stuck and all the way through to the end. Yes i have now got the 1000g avaliable for the main game. I have also done the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. So I only have 3 more achievements to get for me to have the full compliment of achievements for the game, but they can wait.

The one think I thought I should mention about the Expo, before I do my full write up which I will try and put up during the week, was that I found a game that I didn’t originally think I would be interested in but after trying it out at the expo I decided that it’s worth a go. The game was Castlevania Lord of Shadows. I’m not entirely certain what it was about the game that I liked, the graphics are pretty awesome, but it also looked like there would be plenty to do as well. It was released last Friday and I did pick it up on the day of release. I tried it Friday night but then I was called off to save the galaxy!

I almost wasn’t going to get it as Fallout 3 is released next week and Fable 3 the week after that, and with the fact that I have just ordered Dragon Age: Awakening and Iron Man 2 I’ve got plenty to be getting with for the time being.

Weekly Round Up 01: Week Commencing 13/09/2010

Last week was a quiet one for me gaming wise, purely because I got into a couple of TV series that I’ve started watching the box sets of, but that’s now why you are here. I did have a good weekend before last week in that I managed to gain the last few achievements for The Secret of Monkey Island. Last week I did get an evening on the Xbox on the Wednesday, a mate was over and I showed him a couple of indie games including AppleJack, which got voted OXM’s best Indie game, so it’s not just me that thinks it’s great. The other Indie game I should him was The Impossible Game. A really simple to pick up and play game that is very addictive but as I only had the trial it didn’t take long for us to reach the end.

I did get some more time on Dragon Age: Origins towards the end of last week. I’m still working on my second full play through and I’ll admit I’m starting to get a little bored of it, weather that’s because I’m playing as a Mage or because it’s just the same over and over. I know that you can go either way on some of the major decisions in the game, but I’ve completed all of the origins stories so I know which origin will make the story more interesting when I come to make those decisions. I think I’m going to have to complete this play through and have a rest from it and pick up Mass Effect 2.

What else has been happening? The Tokyo Game Show 2010 was last week and while a few new connect titles have been announced, I can’t think of any major that was announced, but then again I can’t say I was paying much attention. I’m still looking forward to the EuroGamer Expo which is in a couple of weeks. With Fable 3, Fallout New Vegas, Brink, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Crysis 2 and Dead Space 2 all playable on the show floor, I’m very excited. Nothing has been announced for Kinect yet, but I’m hoping they do so I can see for myself how well it reacts to your movements.

Another thing worth mentioning is the fact that Microsoft has announced that it will be raising the price of some Gold Membership options at the start of November. For where it matters the most, here in the UK, we get of very lightly the price change only affects the 1 month option. And raises it from £4:99 to £5:99, so an extra 12 pound a year, which makes a full year’s subscription out right cheaper but about 20 quid. So what are you waiting for?

General Update 08: DLC Dilemma

Hello Gaming Fans. I am back from my un-explained absence. But this will change shortly. I’ve been a little quiet on the update front with having a full time job which is a pain in the ass, so when I get home all I want to do is chill in front of my XBOX? So I hardly get the time to write entries, which is probably why I have a dozen or so entries lined up for me to write. The majority of which are reviews.

So what has been happening with me? well I gave up on GTA IV and returned it to my friend who I had borrowed it from. He in return gave me back Call of Duty: World at War and Red Dead Redemption. I did try COD:WaW when I got it back as I had found that I got stuck around half way through my veteran Difficulty play through. The level I was stuck on was Burn ‘em Out. And after a solid 3 -4 hours I did manage to make it to the end of that level which was when I turned off the Xbox for the evening, and I’ve still yet to go back to CoD:WaW.

After CoD:WaW I pick up one of my Christmas Presents from last year. Ghostbusters I really enjoyed this game I even managed to play through the main campaign on the hardest difficulty although there is a slight glitch than can be exploited to make getting this achievement a hell of a lot easier. Following my ghost busting career, I picked up sword and shield and ventured forth into the kingdom of Ferelden in Dragon Age: Origins. I have finished the game on one of my characters and as of Last night I managed to complete the origin story of 2 more characters.

The final game I’ve completed in my absence was Wet I got it cheap from amazon and it was so cheap it was hard not to buy it. Wet, while a little fiddly to start with does become very entertaining, and while I’ve completed the story once I still have another 3 or four play throughs to get some more achievements.

Speaking of achievements, I have now broken the 47k mark on my gamerscore and from looking at my stats on TrueAchievements.com, which gives me my stats without DLC included, it shows that I am almost on my goal of reaching the 70%/70% mark I had set myself. The 70%/70% stat is worked out by the percentage of total achievements and gamerscore of the games on my gamertag. My current stat is 69.42%/69.07% for Retail games.

DLC is something else I have been thinking about recently. I have at least 2 DLC add-ons that I have yet to play, and yet more are being released. With half a dozen being available for Dragon Age: Origins which include the expansion pack awakening, there are a few for Mass Effect 2 as well that I need to try for, and the Toy box for Crackdown 2 is also now available. Is now the right time for me to take a break from the retail side of things and try and get the most out of the games I’ve already got? Some of which the core games still hold achievements for me to get. Yes, Alan Wake I’m talking about you and your Nightmare play through!

A[long time coming] Look To The Future. . .

So I read or heard somewhere recently that this year Microsoft has got a big name game every month this year, doing a quick search I found the quote on the OXM site. "Starting in January we have like a triple A exclusive title pretty much every month for the first half of the year," Aaron Greenberg. He then went on to say "You've got Mass Effect 2, you've got Splinter Cell, you've got Alan Wake, you've got Crackdown 2...you've [also] got things like Fable 3 and Halo: Reach coming later that year. Those are just the exclusives." So I thought I’d reflect on this and give my opinion on some of the hottest games I'm looking forward to this year. So let’s jump straight in with . . .

Mass Effect 2

The much anticipated sequel is set 2 years after the original and follows the exploits of Commander Shepard and his preparation for the invasion of the reapers. Mass Effect 2 is out now, and as I’ve already mentioned I’ve actually completed it as well. My review will be uploaded shortly.

Alan Wake

I'm really looking forward to this game, I saw a clip of the game play in the E3 2009 Keynote speech, and it looked fantastic. So what is it? It’s a horror survival game where you play Alan Wake a writer who’s having some trouble with his craft, and decides there is no time like the present to take some time off with his wife. While away he realises he is actually in one of his stories. That’s the setup and I’ve got to say I’m hooked already, it’s also an XBOX 360 exclusive.

Crackdown 2

This was another game that was announced at last years E3 event and at the time i hadn't played the original. However I picked up the original on the cheap after a friend also recommended it to me and I was very impressed. It's a good game with an interesting story which I really enjoyed playing. More details have been released now and I'm really excited to see how they have improved on the original.

Fable 3

Lionhead studio's biggest franchise is set to follow up with Fable III later on this year. With details emerging that there will  be no health bar opting instead for a more Call of Duty/Mass Effect display where the screen will convey your health, a lack of experience points meaning your "level" will be derived from your interactions with the NPC's (Non-Player Characters). I've also heard that there is no fighting in the first 1 hour of game play. The story it's self is set 50 years after the events of Fable II. 

Halo:Reach

There is a lot of hype surrounding this game probably due to it being the last proper Halo Game. I say that because Bungie is handing over the Halo name to Microsoft owned 343 studios. While details are scarce the multiplayer Beta will be launched on May 3rd with invitations included in last years Halo 3:ODST.  

Review: Mass Effect 2

To say I am a Mass Effect Fan would probably be an understatement, so I was very much looking forward to this release. Sequels are very tricky to get right, as from a publisher/developer stand point you want to give the fans what they want as well as make it new and not feel like it’s just more of the same. So was I going to be disappointed by Mass Effect 2? The answer in short is not likely!
The story follows on directly from the first game and makes you feel like you've hardly been away, it's a strong story as well. The new characters are introduced well and while you may not feel as close to them as you did to Wrex, Garrus, Kaiden, Tali, Liara and Ashley you do still build up a relationship with them. I think that a lot of the reason you don't feel close to them is because there are more. In the first game there were 6 fellow crew mates that you could choose from, but in this game you have 10, 11 if you have the DLC, characters to choose from.
The level system, has been changed as well you no longer get experience from killing enemies but from completing the missions, and the weapons system now relies on upgrades. However the use of guns has also been changed, you now have ammo, in the form of heat clips, to consider. This is explained in a codex that you pick up, I personally think the idea works, but I don't like it as it's a distraction. You also have to upgrade the weapons using resources that you mine from a planet’s surface. Technically it's a little mini game but I found it tedious and boring after a while. It was the weakest part of the game for me, but I have thought of a way to make it better. A scan of the entire planet  could be done from orbit, much like the first one and a probe launched from the ship the mine would be self maintained with the player swinging by at a later time to pick up the resources collected in their absence. the amount collected would depend on how rich the supply is. Side missions could also call for the player to defend a mine.
I really enjoyed playing Mass Effect 2. The story is really strong and should lead well into Mass Effect 3, especially after the cliff-hanger at the end of the game. However I did have to stop playing I was trying to work on the Insanity achievement but I got stuck so before I ended up hating the game I moved on to something else.

What Have I Been Doing?

I know I said I was going to try and write an entry every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but I let it slip a bit this week but thats probably due to playing Mass Effect 2. However with posting this update, then there will have been 2 updates this week so it's only one that has been missed, which isn't too bad.

As I said in a previous post I recently bought Mass Effect 2. I've now completed the story, however I'm still working towards 2 more achievements. I've only got Warp Specialist - Warp the barriers of 25 enemies, and the biggest one Insane - Complete the game on the Insanity Difficulty. The latter I am finding a lot more difficult than when trying to complete the first game on Insanity, but as was pointed out earlier today, when you were continuing a game you already head decent weapons, but this time round you have to wait for the upgrades to come, although you do start with the main weapons.

I have seen the teaser trailer for Fallout: New Vegas. Although it's only a teaser trailer and not designed to give anything away, I'm sure there will be plenty of speculation as to what it will include. I'm guessing the figure at the end is either someone from the Brotherhood of Steel or it's the character that you will be playing.

So what does the near future hold for me on the gaming scene? Well, I'm hoping to finish off Mass Effect 2 to the full 1015G (go Figure!), and as the neither pick up Dragon Age: Origins again or maybe go back and pick up The Saboteur. However we are only 4 days away from Bioshock 2 being released, and I'm really interested in that as well, but what with my birthday coming up I've already decided that I'm not going to be getting any games as I already  have a large back log of games.

On A Suicide Mission!

You may have noticed that I've done a lot of reviews recently, but this is only because I've actually managed to finish a game and get all the achievements. It's ironic that since starting this blog I've actually completed more games to the full 1000G than I had done previously.

I'm very excited today as I'm about an hour away from going and picking up, in my opinion, the most anticipated game of this year, so far. Mass Effect 2. In preparation for this I booted up my previous save games. I then downloaded the "Pinnacle Station" DLC. It was a good combat refresher and I did enjoy it although when you fail a scenario it took a while to actually get back to be able to retry the mission. At the end of the DLC you get a retirement pad of the Admiral running the station, which will be interesting to see if you carry forward the retirement home.

Speaking of carrying through previous save games brings me to my main dilemma, do I start a brand new game with a brand new character or do I use one of my previous save files. Of course I'm not sure how it will work but I am looking forward to it.

What have I got coming up? well there is the the review of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 that I need to write, I'm hopefully going to have a discussion on Music based rhythm games i.e. Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and who knows I may even have the review of Mass Effect 2, lets see how it goes.

Review: Nintey-Nine Nights

I'll be honest and the only reason I decided to get this game was because it only has 10 achievements but still has the 1000 Gamerscore. However having completed it and getting all the achievements I'm very glad that I did get it.


The story is simple enough although from the first play through the full story isn't revealed in order to find out the whole story you need to complete all of the missions for each of the characters, by doing this you also find out each characters view of the events that unfold.


The combat system is easy enough a weak and a strong attack that you can combine in various ways to pull of combos which get stronger the more you level up. Leveling up is automatic with more combos and more HP/MP gained at each increment. 


As I said above the achievements are fairly easy. 

• There is one for completing the game with each of the characters. More characters become available after completing the story with certain characters. 
• One for a secret mission which becomes available after completing the game with each of the characters. 
• One for maxing out the characters and completing all of their missions again. 
• One for completing the Secret Character's story line and 
• One for finishing all missions with an A-Ranking.

For the sake of balance the movement was a little annoying. For example there was no run command so movement was slow, there was a dash button but there wasn't that much difference in speed. The other thing was that for each character you had a separate save file which I'll admit did end up with me deleting a save file for another character.


To sum up, N3 is the game Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom wanted to be, an enjoy able Hack and slash with characters that were easy to understand, a story that was complex enough and achievements that were relatively easy.


If you're looking for something to tide you over until Mass Effect 2 then i would highly recommend you give this ago. There is a free demo available from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace so you can even try before you go and buy it.