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: