Big 'Ol Pile of Wins

Yay, danpsfx and I made it to the 500 wins each! :D

And we talked about cake. 

Dan - I just got given some cake! 

Me - Cool!

Dan - It's quite good cake actually... Though you can't really get bad cake... 

Me - You can, dry cake is bad cake.
Dan - Yeah, this one isn't though...
Me - Oh, is it delicious and moist then? ^^

Whoring ToV

drachemeister's guide on GameFAQs is, like, the most amazing thing ever. It has helped me SO MUCH. I've beaten the final boss, completed all the side-quests (except the 100- and 200- man melees, those are gonna take me no time though) and done virtually everything else.

I am now whoring towards those achievements: 

,which, unsurprisingly, are the highest-ratio achievements in the game. 

They Call Me... I've only got the 200-man-melee titles left, Karol's one for completing the Monster Book, Estelle's one for completing the Item Book, and Repede's one for pissing all over the map. 

Pissing all over the map WTH? I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. My map is complete! It is ALL blue! :@ Well, clearly it isn't, but I can't figure out which bit I'm missing... :(

Monster Nerd These are the ones I'm missing. Gonna get them all done except Zagi, and I can manage that in my next playthrough, can't I? :p

Item Nerd These are the ones I'm missing. And I've got another side of A4 with the weapons. Gonna take aaages synthing them all! 

Once I've done everything I can possibly do in this playthrough, I'm gonna start a new playthrough to complete those, get those 

and hopefully that one

And that'd be the most time-consuming, non-skill-related 1000G on the Xbox done :D

Completed GH WoR

That's it, I've finally completed a game that actually requires skill! (For the record, I'd only 1000Ged Avatar, GH5 and Band Hero, which are all really easy and not really skill-dependant) Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock! :D
It's been good, one of my favorite GHs for sure! (Well, apart from the crappy interface, I don't like it, feels laggy, or doesn't feel as nice as the GH3-GHA one (nicest IMO) or the GHM-GHWT-GHVH-GHSH one (not bad either))

Many thanks go to the people I boosted some of the achievements with, but especially -
MCoreBE for his Chosen One tutorial that helped me a lot, and
danpsfx for boosting a little bit just for me! :)

Update

I don't know how many of you actually read what I write on here, or how many of you actually care... But I'll write something anyway. You might have noticed I haven't written anything for a while... It's cos nothing much's been happening at all! 

I'm carrying on with my achievement whoring on Guitar Heros:

GH2 - Haven't played it in ages. I don't like it - feels too archaic to my taste! 

GH3 - I OWNED that one. Almost literally. Completed expert Career (at last), then completed all the other careers, 5-starred easy, medium and hard, did all of the online achievements (still working on Big Ol' Pile of Wins with danpsfx) and got all of the online co-op achievements (streak, score). Happy! 

GHWT - Nothing much. Been grinding a little towards Bling,Bling

GHWoR - Beaten Black Widow of La Porte, at last. It really isn't that hard... Got Ultimate Answerer and Chosen One left to do. Hopefully sometime soon... I haven't tried them. 

GHVH - Finally completed drums career, netting me the 100G achievement for completing all careers. 

Band Hero - 4 days from 0G to 1000G. Pathetically easy and, frankly, quite boring. The setlist is pants too. 

GH5 and GHM - Haven't played them as have already 1000Ged GH5 and have given up on GHM as only have impossible achievements left. :p

And carrying on with Tales of Vesperia too - awesome game, interminable 1000G! Urgh -_- 710G now, about two thirds of the way through my second game, but the real grinding comes at the very end when you have to grind grind grind kills, items, levels, enemy scans, cooking, etc... 

I also bought DJ Hero 2, and it came with DJH1 as well... :) I'm not adding them to my account quite yet because I wanna get to 75% completion first. Almost there on that one:

Gotta love the Gamescom

That's it, Nintendo have finally given us a release date for Zelda Skyward Sword! 17th November 2011 in Europe. About time! So excited :D
Not gonna pre-order quite yet, I wanna wait to see id they don't make a special edition/ limited edition of some kind - but I'm not getting my hopes up, Nintendo don't really do limited editions :p

Oh and Sony have released screenshots of WipEout 2048 :)

More high-ratio achievements on GHs - Completed GH5 - 10,000G Reached

Lucky me, I was finally able to find people who could FC No Sleep Till Brooklyn on GHWT - Hence the Platinum Rockstars achievement. I also finally got round to doing the A Pair Beats A Pair achievement from GHWT too. 

Later on, I synced my laptop speakers with my mic and got the Mike Checka' achievement in GHWT and the Golden Voice achievement in GHSH. That's a nice and easy 300odd TA points, and those have ridiculously high TA ratios, considering how easy they are to sync (and Stone Cold Crazy from GHM is one of those too).

And then I found a really nice player, Jad7, who wanted to get the Sampler Plate achievement in GH5 - which was the last one I needed to 1000G it. We got it! :D

So that's it, that's the most pain-in-the-ass Guitar Hero completed. You have no idea how good it felt when I deleted it from my 360 HDD :p

Oh and that also took me to 10,000G :)

I then took part in a Guitar Hero Van Halen session, got all the online achievements and had a good laugh with real funny guys :)

Oh and I started playing Forza Motorsport 3 again. God that's a boring game. Driving simulation is not fun. Not even remotely. Argh. 

Productive Weekend

Sunday night, 0:26am my time. Blogging this late at night probably isn't the best idea, really should go to sleep, but I feel I should write a little on what has been a rather productive and enjoyable weekend gaming-wise. Can't say so much about the weather - it's been pissing it down with rain for the past week. FML.

Okaaay, I'm carrying on with my Tales of Vesperia. I'm now on my second playthrough, am scrupulously following this guide from GameFAQs to make damn sure I get the achievements for completing the Item Book, completing the Monster Book, getting all titles and saving at every save point. xbox360achievements says it should take between 110 and 130 hours to 1000G this game, and, as enjoyable as it is, there's no way I'm gonna do more playthroughs than are needed. I've just cleared the Ghasfarost Tower [in a first playthrough, this is where you'd get the 100G achievement, the first of the three main quest achievements], and have got all the Secret Mission achievements I didn't get in my first playthrough: 1 (Zagi: piss), 2 (Goliath: pretty easy), 4 (Zagi: really hard one), 5 (Dreaded Giant: not too bad), 6 (Gigalarva: not too bad either). Hoping to get 8 (Zagi again) tomorrow.

I also played some Guitar Hero. Finally bought the Metallica: Death Magnetic track pack, and then got the achievement for getting a 1000 note streak in Guitar Hero 3 by playing The Unforgiven III (brilliant song) and FCing it on medium. Finally. I then got really annoyed with GH3 and how ridiculously hard the achievements are. Indeed, I have played through the whole of the expert career minus one song (Raining Blood, still can't pass it) and am only on 125/1000. Outrageous. This is when this nice little cheat comes in handy: Unlock everything. Brilliant, netted me 4 achievements for 50G (5+5+10+30). 

More Guitar Hero, World Tour this time. I took part in a session to try and get the Platinum Rockstars achievement for 100%ing a song as a 4-player band on hard or expert. I was doing vocals, so got really bored really quickly... Went over to the kitchen, grabbed the 19" TV from there and hooked the PS3 up to the big one and the 360 to the small one. Still had headset on, so could change song++ with the other guys, but wasn't wasting my time. On the PS3, I played NieR RepliCant, of which I haven't seen Ending B yet. Got a little bit done :) [Sorry about the photo quality, NieR on the big one, GHWT on the small one...] And I got a little bit of money grinding done for the Bling, Bling achievement for getting $1,000,000. I'm now on $125,000. -_-

Also played some GH Smash Hits: I was going for War Apparatus (complete a song on Expert+ drums) and Bloody Feet (complete Raining Blood on Expert+ with 5 stars), using this method - have a look, is really clever and it works! Kept on failing though, and gave up after almost an hour cos was sweating like a pig; went for a shower, and forgot about it... until next time. Played a bit of bass career too. 

So yeah, to sum up, this weekend might not have been the best in terms of GS earned, but it certainly was enjoyable and I made really good progress with Tales of Vesperia and gave the Guitar Heros a really good go. Happy :) [And time to go to bed ^^]

Games I'm expecting

Brilliant french gaming website jeuxvideo.com has polls every day. Today's one is as follows;

Where the title means, "Which 2011 game are you expecting most?"

I have to say it's a tough one for me. I'm really looking forward to a couple... Mario Kart 7 being one of them, because Mario Karts are always awesome, and Zelda Skyward Sword being the other one, because Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass were so disappointing, but Ocarina of Time 3D is going back in the right direction... 

Skyrim and Forza Motorsport 4 are also appealing, but I haven't played Oblivion or Forza 3, so can't really say much about those... :p

GH5: Star Cluster

Got it! :D

47 down, 2 to go: Outgoing (Complete 25 Pro Face-Off matches online) and Sampler Plate, the glitchy one for playing in every game mode. Hopefully will be done before the end of the month :)

So what now?

I'm quite unsure as to what I should do now... I guess I have several options:

1. Complete Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (X360). I started playing that one back in February, (cf. what I wrote back then) and liked it. Only thing is, haven't touched it for almost six months and can't really be bothered to get back into it. 

2. Complete Ending B of NieR RepliCant (PS3). I looove this game so much, gotta do that at some point. 

3. Actually get round to completing Portal 2 on PC. I started this one at the beginning of the month and kinda stopped playing when I started playing more GH - guess I should get back to it. I haven't played it for so long, in fact, that Steam now says I am 'Teh Suck'. Charming. 

4. Play FFXII International... I really want to! Only thing is, I'm not gonna get achievements from it, so I'm not so keen... 

5. Focus on my TrueAchievement Targets: 

It is worth noting that the percentages on the right do not show your percentage relative to the target, but rather your progress since you set yourself the target. For instance, I had 8 achievements to go in GH5, I've done 5 since, so logically I'm five eighths of the way there, and 5/8=62.5%. That's that. So yeah, the gamerscore one and the total of 500 achievements won will come quite quickly, the Completion percentage one will be quite easy as long as I am diligent and stop adding games to my account! :p

5 and a half. Yeah this is about Guitar Heros. I've now done all the easy achievements, now all I've got left are the really hard ones (Creeping Death, The Inhuman Achievement, Hand Mutilator, Chosen One....) and the really tedious and long-winded ones (Hit 250,000 notes, Earn $10,000,000, Complete the careers on every instrument and as a band, Complete the guitar career on Easy AND Medium AND Hard AND Expert...) and I can't be bothered... But I'm gonna have to do them eventually.... 

6. Back to the targets; I loved Tales of Vesperia. It's got achievements, it's awesome, and it's fun. But it would take me about 100 hours to complete it (One playthrough where you get EVERYTHING there is (titles, cooking recipes, enemy info, skits, literally, everything), one speedrun (do it within 15 hours) and one low-level run (get to about 1/3 through the game on Lv14 or under))

7. Start something new. Resonance of Fate (PS3), Oblivion (X360), Okami (Wii) to name but a few of all the games I want to play...

I am so torn! :p

9000G / Grinding Guitar Hero

I've been using trueachievements.com a hell of a lot lately, and especially their 'gaming sessions'. You create one, tell people what achievements you're going for, and they can join. I took part in almost a dozen over the past week and a bit, and won 40 achievements, all in Guitar Heros. Some being quite easy (band v band, win x matches, complete a song as a band...) and some being slightly harder (Heavy Metall... in GHWT, for getting 444,444 in Trapped Under Ice as a band, Free as a Band in GHSH for getting 2,000,000 in Free Bird as a band, and most notably Battery in GHM for getting 1,000,000 in Battery as a band. That one is ridiculously hard, it took us 6 tries to get it, and even then we only just scraped it: we got 1,007,000... Ouch.) Annoyingly, Sampler Plate in GH5 is glitched - I've met the conditions (playing at least song in every single game mode there is), but it hasn't unlocked... Guess I'd better persevere until it unlocks. 

So yeah, I've made about 1000G on those (I'm now on 9610G), and that's obviously made my TA score rocket up: those are hard achievements, therefore they have a high TA ratio (2.00+) 

Many thanks must go to MCoreBE, who has helped me a lot with various achievements in all GHs, but also to everyone else who I've gamed with. Thank youuuu :)

Got FFXII International

It's no secret, FFXII is one of my favourite games (with ToS and Zelda TWW). I've been looking for FFXII International: Zodiac Job System for quite a while now, but oh how surprised I was when I found it on eBay... Back then the bid was €1.50, and it was described as 'very good condition'. I bookmarked it, and came back one hour before the auction ended, the bid was still €1.50. I put a bid in, then got outbid, and so on and so forth. I ended up winning the auction, got the game for just under €20. Brilliant! And that's not the end of the good news. The game turned up a few days later, but it was brand new! Absolutely delighted, excellent value for money! 

And I was lucky too, it happened to be the limited edition in the cardboard sleeve and with the limited FFXII Archives DVD. 

So now that game has joined my ever-growing FFXII collection:

Top Row: Jap FFXII, 2x French FFXII, Platinum French FFXII

Bottom Row: FFXII: RW (DS), FFXII Limited Edition (North America), FFXII International

And just for comparison purposes, the Jap FFXII and Jap FFXII International discs: 

Both are shiny and have a matte Judge on them. They look lush :)

Playing Portal 2

Got Portal 2, for very many reasons, but mostly because a friend of mine recommended it, and because french gaming website jeuxvideo.com gave it 19/20 and had some brilliant videos up, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm now on Chapter 6 (there are 9 in total) and it's absolute genius. This game is brilliant, enjoyable, hard, mind-boggling, impossible, frustrating, but once you do get it, it's brilliant. Soooo satisfying knowing you've solved it! [A bit like puzzles in Zelda, but these are generally harder]

Since this is a Steam game, you can check out my progress with this Steam card:

Guitar Hero Van Halen

Van Halen is a brilliant band (gotta love Jump, Panama, Hot for Teacher, Little Guitars, etc.) and as such I thought I'd get their GH game. It's pretty good, uses the same engine (my favourite) as World Tour, Metallica and Smash Hits. Feels nice, handles well, and thank God for the tapping notes! I just completed career on Expert Guitar, not too hard except for the tapping section at the beginning of Hot for Teacher, the awkward rhythm throughout I'm the One and Eruption and Spanish Fly: in those two, it all either goes well or terribly badly if you're not band on with the tapping notes. If you're slightly off, it's really hard to get back with it and you usually end up failing, but if you're doing well, there's no reason your Rock Meter should ever go into orange, never mind red.
Quite happy with my purchase :)

Avatar:TLA:TBE Completed / 8000G reached

This really was a walk in the park - Avatar: TLA: TBE is almost universally deemed to be the easiest 1000G out there, and not without good cause! Took me less than 5 minutes. Have a look yourselves: (Not my video) 

So yeah, game completed, 8000G reached. :)

Enter Sandman: New Record

After a couple of days' practice, I finally made it, got 330,000 on Enter Sandman Expert Guitar in Guitar Hero Metallica. Never has 30G felt so good before :)

Final Score: 334,170

Lucky shopping!

Got really lucky when I went game shopping today. Found Tales of Hearts (So now Tales of Innocence is the only Tales of I'm missing) and F-Zero GP Legend, an incredible game which I'd completed in 2003 but then traded it in due to a lack of cash back then. Oh well. I wanted to buy it, and I found it going cheap. Sadly it's not in very good condition (you can probably tell from the picture) but the game and the booklet are in pristine condition, and that's all that matters :)

7000G on Xbox Live :)

About time I actually got there. I swear I've slowed down! So this thousand was made up of ~450G on Sega MegaDrive UC, ~250G on various Guitar Heros, ~100G on Hydro Thunder Hurricane and 170G on Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. It's been good. :)

Joined TrueAchievements

I joined TrueAchievements today - you can find my profile here. It's an incredible website with an active community and endless possibilities, such as creating ToDo lists, Gamer Goals, Gaming Sessions, have specific leaderboards (for instance, today, I'm #115 in France in the "Music and Rhythm" category. And I love the idea of TrueAchievement points rather than GamerScore, it's so much fairer! If you're serious about your achievements, I seriously recommend you go check out that website. :)

Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock: Quest completely completed!

It wasn't exactly hard, as it can be done on any difficulty mode, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I've 100%ed Quest mode in Guitar Hero WoR, that is to say, gotten 40 stars in every song. Plus I hit a cumulative total of 150000 gems - I had to grind the last few out playing Dragonforce's Fury of the Storm on Expert Bass, ~2700 notes in 6 minutes - I had to play it six times for that 30G achievement to pop. All that's left for me to do in this game is to get 2000 stars in Quickplay+ and to do some of the online / band challenges. Great game :)

PilotWings Resort for the 3DS

The 3DS has tons of potential, but I felt Ridge Racer 3D didn't quite do it justice. I bought PilotWings Resort, where the 3D is simply incredible. The game looks like the Nintendo games like Wii Sport, Wii Play and Wii Fit, cute and colorful. The 3D is amazing! I'm not scared of heights, so it's fine, but when you land or go down - for instance -  you can really see the plane going down, which is an odd but realistic feeling.

Very much like Wii Sport & co., the game itself isn't brilliant and can be completed in about 2 hours, but is technically very good and shows what the 3DS really is capable of. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who has a 3DS and wants to have a bit of fun! [Let's be honest, the game is way overpriced though.]

iPhone game: Tiny Wings

Tiny Wings was the iTunes Game of the Week 2 weeks ago, so I figured I should give it a go. Not disappointed at all! It's really, really fun. Like most iPhone games, it has a really simple concept behind it - get as far as you can before dusk. Really fun and really addictive! :) At the moment I'm on x20, hoping to get to x22 today, and up and up!

3DS; First impressions

After a long wait, which had become pretty much unbearable since it came out in Japan last month and even more so in the past week, I've finally got my 3DS. 

It feels nice, heavy and sturdy. It's really shiny too! The joystick is brilliant, miles better than the PSP one. The buttons (A B X Y) and the D-Pad feel really nice, very much like the original DS's ones. The L and R triggers are very small but fall under your fingers really nicely so nothing to worry about. 

The dock you get with the console can serve as a charger. It looks quite nice, but feels a bit tacky - it's really light and the plastic does feel a little cheap. I'm generally quite a cautious person, so I'm not too bothered. 

The main menu feels good, easy to handle and has quite a few nice touches. The screens are really good - the bottom one is the same as the DS Lite one (320x240), and the top one is an all-new 800x240, so effectively 400x240 for each eye when the 3D is on. Speaking of 3D, I wasn't at all convinced at first - it kinda looked like those cards you get in cereal packets - move them and the footballer on them moves. After about half an hour and finding the setting that's right for you, you do get used to it and things really do start to seem further away inside the screen. 

So far I've only tried Ridge Racer 3D, the Shooting Faces thingy and the AR Cards game. 

Ridge Racer is the same as ever. The handling hasn't changed at all, and the graphics are pretty good. The music is pretty hardcore, not a huge fan. Overall, an ok game so far - I've only played half an hour. 

The AR cards game is utterly pointless but great. It's really very cool how things start popping out of your desk - and it works! I especially enjoyed seeing Mario and Kirby in my room :)

The Shooting faces game is really good - and kinda gives us an idea of what Zelda OoT will be like as far as shooting is concerned - the cursor never moves, you move the 3DS all over the place to shoot whatever needs to be shot. :p

So far, a great investment. Can't wait to get PilotWings: Resort... and for Zelda OoT and Mario Kart 3DS to come out! 

Three Zeldas in a month...

That's it, we're done! Completed Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker. Brilliant games! [And I really ought to upload reviews for them...]

Retro Gaming, Memories!

There's this really good friend of mine called Alex, and I got him into Zeldas a month back or so. He plays, I watch and play whenever he gets stuck or goes off to fetch some food... ^^
It's really funny seeing people get stuck when you know the solution to the puzzle! [And people get stuck in the same places - he struggles where I remember having struggled...]

It took him just over 2 weeks to get through Ocarina of Time, he really liked it. And the memories the game brings back! Sheik! The Zora! Ganondorf! I really can see why people call it 'the best game ever made'! OoT is the single game I've completed the most times (7 by myself, 8 now, soon to be 9 with the 3DS remake), and one of the only five I've ever 100%ed. I don't know whether we're gonna bother with Master Quest though.

His file

He's now playing Majora's Mask. We've completed the first three dungeons, and have just got the the owl by the entrance to the Stone Tower Temple. Gonna do some side-quests tonight, try and get 11 hearts before starting the dungeon. We should have completed the game by tuesday I reckon.

His file

I'll then get him to move onto The Wind Waker, my favorite / second favorite game ever. I was so moved by that game, when I played it back in 2005... I played it twice back then, once in 2008, and about to do it a fourth time. Looking forward to it big time! 

My perfect file