Brief Update!

So, on a complete whim, I decided to retackle GTA. I found out that, despite the fact the Trueskills are in different hemispheres, my spare box and account can match up with my regular one 95% of the time. In the space of 5 hours, I've done 12 races, which isn't bad considering:

1) I accidentally did one race twice, so I really did 13.
2) 11 of them where Cannonball Runs, so that's like 2.5 hours ingame.
3) I started at 10pm EST, which is still peak hours.

I've been incredibly careful for the glitch that felled me the first time, and so far nothing of note has happened. Hopefully, I should be at AWP by the time Fallout 3 GOTY comes out.

Conspiracy week III

The only conspiracy theory I really subscribe to is the JFK assassination. If you've seen the movie JFK, you'd probably agree that, despite its minor factual errors, it does open up a line of questioning as to the legitimacy of the lone gunman theory. I have read (and by read, I mean skimmed through the first few chapters of) the Warren Report, and it is rife with what seems to be straight up bullshit.

First off, the Report states that Oswald's military-tested marksmanship was nowhere near sufficient to make the shot that allegedly killed Kennedy. Then they say that the faulty sight on the rifle compensated for this. That's like expecting a hurricane to sweep by a city that was already hit by one, and move all the debris back to how it was before the first hurricane.

They also give a picture of Oswald holding a rifle that's obviously doctored, none of the shadows match up. Jack Ruby killing Oswald works about as conveniently as a meteorite killing your would-be mugger, and is just about as likely.

But the real nail in the bullshit coffin is the Magic Bullet. I mean, COME ON. How the hell are we supposed to believe that a bullet, fired from a gun, travels hundreds of feet, hits a target, makes something like 7 90-degree turns, including one in midair, and exits completely pristine?

So what do I think really happened? This video sums it up pretty well:

Conspiracy week II

Wrong. Halo 3 gets updated with 750 points, some of which remain unattainable for a year. Then Mirror's Edge gets updated with 250 points that are harder than the original 1000 AND require you to go back to the original game. Fifa 09 gets DLC. Wait, that's a yearly franchise. That can't be good. Then comes the mother of all bullshit, Gears of War 2 forces you to buy maps that were ready before the game's release, and then gets tacked with a multiplayer achievement that takes about 1000 hours. Then, they do absolutely nothing to stop the huge uprising of cheaters. Today, I'm one of probably a dozen legit Rank 100's, and I can't play a multiplayer game without getting bad feedback because I look like one of the thousands of cheaters.

Then Transformers 2, a movie cash-in, gets DLC. Now, it's pretty damn obvious that developers are just making the DLC along with the game and releasing it later for more sales. Think about this thing from the point of view of someone who completes all of their games, like me or thousands of other people. I buy a game with the intent of completing it, understanding that it takes a set amount of time and effort to complete, and assuming that that single purchase will be all I need to do so. Months later, DLC comes out, forcing me to spend more time and money to get what I originally bought, that is, a completion.

From my point of view, this is like if I bought a phone, then 6 months later, the manufacturer takes away my 8 button and forces me to spend another $20 to get it back. I have a friend who's a lawyer, and I assume a very good one because he's pretty boring, that tells me that this does constitute unfair business practice, but it would be impossible to hold Microsoft or a developer liable because no jury would see things from our narrow point of view. Then again, it took only a failed lawsuit for McDonald's to pull its SuperSize option.

What I'm getting at is that this does technically constitute a conspiracy. Microsoft had a set of rules that clearly outlined what developers can and can't do in terms of gamerscore. All achievements must be attainable without extra purchase, only 250 DLC points per game, etc. But developers openly flaunt these rules, releasing glitched achievements with no effort to patch them, forcing people to buy or play another game to tie-in an achievement, shutting down private servers when they could just patch in a line that makes the servers run off of Microsoft's. But Microsoft looks the other way because this all equates to more money for them. Assholes.

Conspiracy week

So, for this week in my English class, we have to direct our blogs in a conspiracy-themed way. Anyone who's ever been in party chat knows that my incessant jabber is one step away from wearing a tinfoil hat and calling into radio talk shows at 2AM with my Project MKULTRA stories. So, it's not really that much of a stretch for me.

Before I dedicate the week to full appeasement of my English professor, I thought I'd rant about Microsoft's near-conspiracy in their shaky DLC practices.

DISCLAIMER: THESE EVENTS PROBABLY AREN'T IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. I'M TIRED AND THIS IS A RANT, LIVE WITH IT

So, way back when, gamerscore was cut and defined, right? You got a retail game and it offered about 1000 points for you to earn. Some were impossible and some were child's play, but whatever. Arcades gave you 200. Shortly after, Microsoft came out with set rules that stated all retail games must have an available 1000 points, arcade, 200. Ubisoft went back and put G.R.A.W. up to a round but still stupidly impossible 1000, but other companies like EA decided to flaunt noncompliance by never patching their games up, and coming out with shit like Tiger Woods 06, which had something like 250 glitched points out of the box. But whatever, they're EA, they can have and shut down their own servers, and do whatever they want because they make Madden, the best-selling yearly franchise on the 360.

That worked pretty well for a while, as EA and 2k continued to make an ass out of themselves by releasing full-budget games with glitched achievements they never bothered to patch, as well as the odd shovelware like Rayman or Smash TV. Then, Bethesda thought it would be a great idea to add extra achievements onto DLC for its game Oblivion. Great idea, as the DLC pack, Shivering Isles, was good, lengthy, and well worth the $30 it cost to download. But wait, doesn't that kind of mess with people who care about completing every game they play? In theory, yes, but these are fair deals and a fun experience.

So games like Gears joined in with 6 new solid maps and a decent set of achievements mirroring its new online gametype. Cool. The Godfather brought its original 835 up to 1250 with a mission mode. Nice. Crackdown brought its 900 up to 1250 with more vehicles, more sidemissions, and more weapons. Awesome. Stranglehold came out with a bunch of half-asses maps ripped right off of single-player for its tacked-on and horrible multiplayer, and charged 20 bucks for it. Wait, what? Okay, a good system had its first little hiccup, but that's okay because, hey, the 250 extra points for that are REALLY easy.

So, we continue for a while and some weirder stuff starts to happen. Ninja Gaiden II comes out with DLC not only a few weeks after release, but with a mode that's way harder than the original 1000. But anyone who's going to 1000 NGII is a masochistic and extremely talented freak, so they'll enjoy the extra 250. Beautiful Katamari is released with the DLC that's encoded on the disc and the 20-dollar download just unlocks it. Okay, I guess, because the game was only $40 when it was released. Phantasy Star Universe comes out with 250 extra points, but it's almost 2 years and you still can't earn one of the achievements. Naturo comes out with glitched ones that the developers never fix. Hellboy is released with unattainable achievements and the promise of DLC, but it's been over a year now and nothing. Okay, shit's starting to go down, but you could always wait for a game to get its 250 points and then it'd be safe to play, right?

TO BE CONTINUED...

WET so far

So, the first of 4 playthroughs for WET is done, and I'm not as impressed as I thought I'd be. They start to really abuse Quicktime Events near the end, and they commit the other QTE crime by not introducing them until far into the scene. Story was a little hard to follow too, as they kept jumping back and forth in time and introducing too many characters to keep track of. All in all, I'm satisfied and I don't seem myself getting aggravated at the game, which whores itself for playthroughs. One playthrough to unlock the hardest difficulty, another to play it, another for a mode where I lose health as time goes on but everyone dies in one bullet, and another in a score trial mode.

I'll give any game two playthroughs before I get pissed at it, and more free passes if they offer alternative means of playing. I haven't played Golden Bullets or Points Count modes yet, but it looks like it's in the clear.

Sandboxing

So, the 360voice sandbox leaderboard has been updated, and with it my goals for 2010. Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed 2, and Left 4 Dead 2 will be the only new retail games going on my gamercard. I want to be at 99% completion by year's end. Once I get to the point where I can count my incomplete games on one hand, I'll be going nuts with new games and gamerscore in a dash to 100k. I also want to get every sandbox game besides Spiderman 3 and maybe Mercenaries 2 done before then, so here goes:

BULLY
Seems like a solid game, but with slightly buggy achievements. I own it though, and it's a quick 1000.

DEAD RISING
With my new school/work schedule, (which will be defunct by the time the year ends, so I might be doing this early) I can pull a 14-hour shift on Sundays without messing up my schedule too badly.

GTA IV
If Rockstar weren't bitches, this would have been done already. But alas, I need to redo AWP and grind out Wanted. Ugh.

MERCENARIES 2
The glitchy achievements scare me. A lot. I can probably do most or all of it offline completely, so if there's any issues I can delete my account completely, recover it, and pretend I never played the game at all. Mwahahaha.

RED FACTION: GUERILLA
I actually intended on getting this at launch, but it never happened for some reason. Online will take a while, but it doesn't look too bad.

SPIDER-MAN 3
Ugh. I definitely think I can do the races, I just don't know if I'm willing to put in all that time and effort on stupidly buggy controls and camera angles.

THE GODFATHER II
Loved the first one, and apparently this one's easier but not as good.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Stupid linked Ironman achievement. I'll have to figure out a way to do that without putting Ironman on my card, because I defnitely don't want to play that.

PROTOTYPE
I don't really have that much to go, but what's left is just stupidly grinding.

WET - first impressions

Holy. Shit.


It's fucking awesome so far, like playing one of those kick-ass low-budget 80's action movies, only on steroids. The game is pretty much Stranglehold and Kill Bill's illegitimate child. On crack. I love the fact that they not only put grain in the cutscenes, but use it to indicate damage in the same way Gears uses a reddening screen.

They also do Quicktime events extremely well. It's usually:

A) Put into a scene 30 seconds in, where nothing indicates it previously. The controller probably isn't even in your hands, and now you have to hit X-A-B-Y-LB-Down-Select to escape a rouge wheat thresher.

B) Completely unnecessary. Why did I have to hit X, twirl the right thumbstick, hit Y-B-RB, and X again to set up an explosive? Just X would have sufficed. I don't care if it's more realistic, I have people to shoot in the face.

Wet does commit crime B with the A-mash X thing to open locked doors, but it's more than made up for by the truly awesome parts. The highway level in the demo, which is the only one I've done so far, is completely badass. You're given a full 2-3 seconds to hit one button, which means you'll never have to end up restarting, and can instead enjoy the flow of the cutscene while feeling like you're involved.

There are a handful of things I don't like so far though. I don't know why I need to watch a 10-second scene every time I get more health, and I would really like a checkpoint right after the cutscenes where I watch a sweeping camera show all the baddies in the area. Instead of how they do it now, by giving you a checkpoint right before it and orchestrating it so you die almost immediately if you don't know exactly what you're doing, condemning you to watching the unskippable scene 5 more times.

Unskippable cutscenes in general annoy me, it's just the developers stuck up their own asses, without any regard to the fact that it may not be my first playthrough (WET requires at least 3, probably more) and I just want to focus on actually playing the game. Sure, WET's cutscenes are badass, but not after the first 15 times.

I also don't get how I pretty much need to be diving or sliding or something to shoot accurately. Sure, that's the point of the game, but there are points where I'd rather stand still and pick people off, just for the sake of not getting killed.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen so far. Looks like a solid 1000, requiring a good dose of time, effort, and skill, but not a stupid amount of any. Also, 360voice updated it's sandbox leaderboards, so it seems as good a time as any to break down my future gaming plans. Later.

Brothers in Arms - done for now.

So, the story's done, leaving just the online 0-pointers (optional), and the stupid load-up-the-game-for-5-seconds ones. I kind of enjoyed it, in all, I just found it almost like a slap in the face that I was forced to watch the cutscenes for an unbearably derivative war story. We get it, war sucks and sometimes people have motives for fighting other than the draft. Not being original.

Anyway, I started up Golden Axe, which should be done in a few hours. I want to finish up Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 up tonight as well, and maybe start up WET. I should be able to get that done in a few days, leaving me plenty of time to mess around with Prototype, Mirror's Edge, and some sports games before Fallout 3.

Peggle

No, it's not on my gamercard. Yet. I've been playing it on the PC, and holy shit is it addictive. To the point where I've barely played anything but and it's taking me days to do Brothers In Arms. It seems like a massive undertaking on the Arcade though, so I doubt I'll be doing it any time soon. Peggle, while awesome, is so luck-based that it makes some of the achievements beyond unfair. Clear every peg in every level? What the hell? I probably will do it one day, but not for a while. For now, I'm still on the BiA grind.

Saint's Row 2 = DONE

Woo-hoo! My refusal to overexert myself for an 11th rank badge is now moot, and I have a 1250 in my favorite 360 game thus far. I also passed 75,000 on the said Kingpin achievement, which is pretty cool. 15 games and 2,775 points stand between me and my goal, and there's an outside chance I could be at perfection by the end of the year.

The only hard things I'd have to do between now and then are GTA IV, The Orange Box, Texas Hold 'Em, and Mirror's Edge. Brothers in Arms will be tedious, but just elongated. It'll take literally 30 seconds a day, just over 100 days though. WET, Assassin's Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Fallout 3 GOTY edition are my only must-plays between now and then, and I kind of want to play Dead Rising and Mass Effect before their sequels come out. 7-Day Survivor won't be a problem really, as I now have almost all of every Sunday off.

It really depends on how much my school workload will weigh me down. Currently, it's not too effective, but you never know.

Brothers in Arms

So, in addition to having a set of utterly retarded achievements, Brothers in Arms made Metal Gear-sized mistake in thinking that by "play a video game", I really want to watch something and move around every once in a while. Granted, I'm only two chapters in, so maybe it tones down, but like half of my playtime so far has been cutscenes. The game's not bad though, it has its moments, including the extremely awesome slo-mo/zoom in every time you kill a guy with one headshot. It comes across as a lovechild of Call of Duty and Rainbow 6 Vegas, but instead this time it's reminding me that war sucks and all people are human. Except Germans.

Points are easy enough to come by, sort of. It's about 10-15 hours of singleplayer, plus another 5-10 for the 0-pointers that I'm probably going to get. I'm going to do the Committed, Focused, and whatever the hell else legit though, I'm not really big on getting achievements without doing what the description says.

Wet deprivation symptoms

So, I picked up Wet today and it's sitting on my shelf. Looking at me. Taunting me. Why am I not playing it? I can't trust Artificial Mind + Movement. The only other 360 game they've worked on was Mercenaries 2. So, for fear that Wet's achievements are unattainably glitched, I have to just wait it out. So far, it looks like every achievement but the two that no one has (Beating the game on Very Hard and getting Gold on all challenges) unlock just fine for everyone. Hopefully in a week's time I'll be playing it, along with Brothers In Arms. Saint's Row 2 and Halo 3 will both finally be finished at about the same time, so I'll be in good standing with my soon-to-be-broken plans.

What I want to do now is, starting now, complete one game for every new one I put on my card, in addition to staying above 95%. I'm currently at xxxxx/77800 points, so that's a maximum of 14000 I'll be adding before I hit 100% completion. Leaves a comfortable margin for DLC and arcades.

I also figured out why I haven't been getting upgrades as often as logical in Fracture. My commander hates me, which is understandable because my character's an egotistical twat that channels Duke Nukem in the worst way possible.* Every time I get an upgrade, I get to be overpowered for two minutes before the game throws in a new enemy that's about 5 times more powerful than anyone else. It's not even fair.

*By this, I mean nothing against Duke. Duke backs up his trash talking with severe amounts of ass-kicking and Vaporwared awesomeness. Jet's trash talking is followed by him being a little bitch all the time.

Fracture so far

So, with about 800 multiplayer games down, I got cracking on the single to Fracture. I thought it would be some crazy awesome game that let you open up sinkholes beneath people's feet and be totally fucking awesome. But instead, the whole ground-manipulation thing is just coming across as tacked on. It's not really powerful enough to do anything besides slowly change the terrain to get past incredibly obvious puzzles after everyone's dead.

I would think you could at least make hills in front of you for cover, but that barely works. It's so finicky and random that half the time you'll end up on top of the hill and half the time you'll do the same thing to the guy shooting at you. It's so much easier to just duck behind something, well, it would be if there were things to go behind. There are a bunch of crates everywhere that can maybe shield you if you crouch just right and the enemies are slightly lower than you.

Drastically altering the basics of a genre to let the player take full advantage of a new feature is fine, but then you make the entire game hinge on said feature. Imagine if Portal's gun made portals that didn't operate to any consistent physics, and it was never clear at all what surfaces accepted portals until after you tried it. That's about how Fracture works.

It's at least a tolerable game though, and now it looks like I'm getting powered up, which can apparently be done at will with no consequence by my commander. Why the hell is he not giving me all of them at once?

I knew this would come in handy

So, for one of my college courses, we have to make and maintain a daily blog. What that means is that I have to do virtually nothing different in life except maybe update more than biweekly. That won't be a problem though, as I finally got my laptop back or, more accurately, got a new one for free because Best Buy is awesome. Anyway, expect far more updates than I've ever done.

So I finally beat World At War on Veteran, which I didn't really find that hard after Burn 'Em Out. Even Heart of the Reich wasn't so bad. Clear out the first Flak with like 3 frags, blow it up, and there's a Panzerschrek like 10 yards away. Grab that, blow up the second Flak for a checkpoint. Make your way to the one on the far right, there's only a handful of people guarding it. Once you blow up that Flak, your comrades have taken out all but like 3 Nazis on the left side. Not hard at all, really. Whatever, I'm done with stupid grenading Treyarch bullshit until next year. Still have to do the zombies, but that's genuine fun that I won't mind doing.

Currently working on Fracture, which I'm probably not going to get done for a while. Halo 3, Saint's Row 2, Brothers in Arms, and WET are going to take up all my time from Wednesday until Fallout 3 GOTY probably.