1,000 Going Once! 1,000 Going Twice!

As you may know, I have become rather addicted to Burnout Paradise since getting my Gold Xbox Membership and discovering a whole new world of fun with thousands of potential players.

What you may not know is that I have clocked up an incredible 137 hours of play on the game! 137! That is easily the most time I've ever spent on any one game. In the process, I inched my way forward through the Achievements that Paradise has to offer to increase my Gamertag status. And last night, while racing seven others drivers, I reached the magical 1,000 Gamerscore. Paradise is the first game I've ever gotten to the 1,000G mark in. The next highest is Mass Effect with 510. I'm certain that the Gamerscore for Gears of War 2 will beat that once I get through the campaign, but for now, that's how the ranking stands.

Basking in the glory of my 1,000G, I wandered into town today and found Avatar: The Legend of Aang: The Burning Earth. A:TLA:TBE is infamous among Xbox 360 fans as having the easiest 1,000G in any game ever! A video on YouTube shows someone starting up the game, flashing past the menu screens and cutscenes and getting 1,000G in under two and a half minutes! I managed it in less than five minutes, first time out! I can't say I'm not ashamed for bumping up my Gamerscore in such a low fashion. I am ashamed. It was cheap, and completely unsatisfying. But then, so was the game! Ha!

Before going Gold, I never had any interest in Gamerscore. I played games to play games, not to earn Achievements. Sure, if I realised a particular Achievement was easy to get, or close to completion, I might take actions towards the requirements, but I never went back to play a game just for the Achievements. I never considered the possibility of the 1,000G mark, as many of the games I enjoyed had online only Achievements. Earning the 1,000G in Burnout was incredibly satisfying, though. I managed it all by just playing and enjoying the game. I never went out of my way to earn any, and I never sacrificed my enjoyment of the game in order to gain Achievements. I glad that this was the game I earned my first 1,000G in. It was always fun, never a chore, and I'll remembered it fondly, even when they eventually replace it with a sequel.

Not that I'm anywhere near finished playing Paradise. I still love to just jump online and run races, or get in some challenges. I've only done around 285 of the 490 available challenges, so I have a while to go yet. I've made a bunch of friends through the game, and recently despaired that there is a 100 Friend limit on the 360. I'm quickly approaching that, and I've been online for less than 6 months. Soon I'll have to start weeding out the people I don't game with just to free up space.

Based on the fact that I am using it as a social experience and making a lot of new friends, I don't feel I quite deserve this t-shirt just yet. That said, I could post it to one of the people on my Friends List. He has a Gamerscore of over 68,000G! Crazy!

Happy Irish Day!

It's March 17th, and I've posted a grand total of twice now in 2009, including this one! We are as good as a quarter of the way through the year already, so I have some serious catching up to do.

Because today is the feast of Ireland's patron saint, I have the day off of work. Because it falls on a Tuesday, I also got Monday off work! So far today, I have put on a wash, dried the dishes that Claire cleaned, did some light tidying, and surfed the net, all climaxing with this post right now. The sun is beaming in the windows of our new place, so I hope to head out and spend some time outside later today as well.

Yesterday was far less productive, but much more enjoyable. Claire had work, and was up early. I got up soon after, turned on the Xbox and spent the vast majority of the day playing Burnout Paradise. Since last I blogged about Burnout, I not only got that elusive Burnout License, but managed 100% completion. Life without internet for six weeks can drive a man to extraordinary heights of accomplishment! I also tried my hand at my first online combat in Tom Clancy's Endwar, and learned that I am not a very good general, despite what my single player campaign suggests.

Finally, last night I put in a few hours on Gears of War 2, a game I really need to post about. I love the game, and have made some great friends through it, all of whom I really enjoyed playing with again now that I'm back online! Horde mode is the best fun ever!

Since Last We Met

It's been a busy few weeks. With Christmas just around the corner, I should be decorating the house, buying Christmas presents, writing a tonnes of "Thank You" cards for all those that wished us well after our wedding (at this rate you'll get your one bundled with the "Thank You For The Baby Gift"!), organising a "Thank You" party for the friends who are waiting for their "Thank You" cards(oh yeah.... I still haven't posted the story of us getting married... hopefully I'll do that some time before 2009!), planning where to spend Christmas, deciding what to do for New Years, deciding what to do with myself in the next 12 months, and so much more.

Instead, I've been playing Xbox.

Fallout 3 has sucked up over 50 hours of my life according to the in-game clock, but that doesn't include the times I've reloaded an earlier save to redo a decision I was unhappy with, or all the time I've spent just talking about it with friends. I love how many different versions of the same events people have. "I did this and pick-pocketed him and got this!" "Really? I did this, talked to her, sneaked past him and got this!" "Wow." "That's nothing. I loaded up on shotgun shells, killed them all, and found all this!!" Stunned silence. "But... but... it was a commune of innocent old ladies..." "Bitches had bottlecaps." Awesome stuff.

I picked up Mirrors Edge cheap in a sale in town. I'm glad I did too. It's ok, but frustrating. I wish I'd started it on Easy Mode, as I have no patience for it now. I know that as soon as I get stuck in an area, I'm going to drop it and never go back to it.

In contrast, I borrowed The Force Unleashed off my brother, and started that on Easy Mode after getting sick of Fallout for a while. I thought it would be a nice diversion, running around hacking and slashing with my lightsabre, but I didn't think I'd get much value out of it. Instead, I got totally sucked into the story, pouring over each beautifully rendered cut-scene, enjoying the witty banter the Apprentice throws out, and really enjoying the game far more than I expected. I felt like I cheated myself out of some of the enjoyment by playing it on Easy. But it did mean that I got through the entire game in just a few hours, over two evenings, and got straight back into Fallout!

Thanks to Microsoft's generous offer of making online gaming free to everyone for one weekend, I also spent a lot of time playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 with Bob and Aidan. It was my first experience of the Live multiplayer, and we all really enjoyed it. So much so, that we're all going to start a 12 month Gold Membership within the next two weeks or so. That same weekend got me back into Burnout Paradise, and now I'm slowly pulling down the number of Wins required to get my Elite license. It sat above 100 for months, and it's now in the mid 80's... so... sometime before the Xbox 1080 is released I should have that done! Online Paradise is amazing, and loads and loads of fun either with friends I know in real life, or even just racing strangers! Crashing has never been so enjoyable.

And on top of all of those, I've been playing a little Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Tom Clancy's: EndWar. Both games are a whole lot of fun, and deserve a lot more time than I've given to them so far, but I think they're going to wait until I've wrapped up Fallout and one or two others. Claire and I have also been enjoying playing the Xbox Arcade game Fable II Pub Games. Thankfully we don't have Fable II the game, as the town guards would be long after us at this point due to the massive debt we've accumulated! Fortunes Tower is a lot of fun, but frustrating, Spinner Box is the games own one-armed bandit, and we haven't really taken any time to learn where Keystone falls on the randomness scale. Most of our money has been won in Fortunes Tower tournaments, and lost in Fortunes Tower regular play!

Phew. I haven't played this much computer games in years. Hopefully it's just a phase, and in the New Year I can get back to being productive, doing lots of physical exercise, eating well, and writing the great Irish novel of the 21st Century.

Yeah.

Cork: Home

As most of you know, we've actually been back in Cork now for two weeks, so this is a very late post! In fact, the only reason you're getting it at all was because I'm sitting here waiting for the DownLoadable Content (DLC) for Burnout Paradise to finish downloading so I can crash some motorbikes! The Mercenaries 2 and Fracture demos are up as well, and they're queued right after the Burnout DLC.

Oop! There's the bing. I'm outta here already. More updates, with actual content, soon!

Edit: AAAAAAAHHHHH!! Through no fault of anyones, my copy of Burnout is in a friends house still after the holiday. Am I upset? Heh. No. Not really. I find it kinda funny, actually. I've been to his place since we got back, he's been to mine as well. It just never came up. I guarantee that he hasn't even played it much in the last few weeks. Oh well. Bikes tomorrow. Blogging now.