More Like Lame Room

It's like a crappier version of Hasbro's Family Game Night except filled with games no one has ever heard of or wants to play let alone pay for.

Although I did realize Invincible Tiger is a massive ripoff of Shao-lin's Road.

75/1000g And that's probably all I'll ever get.

Crackup pt. 2 - The Assassins Creed Incident

Since I did this whole huge rant on Crackdown I might as well share why I hate collectible achievements, The Assassins Creed Incident.

Assassins Creed was one of the first games I'd ever played for the 360 and the second time I'd gotten close to 1000g. The first being Call of Duty 4 which was the first game I did it on. I had only two more achievements.

Assassins Creed has no less than 8 find this hidden thing in the game achievements. With diligence I had obtained seven of them. The 8th "Personal Vendetta" brought me to the brink of sanity. I had found every Templar but one. That last one. I couldn't figure out where he was. So I just decided to start over and go to where each of them were supposed to be. One by on I checked the locations. Nothing. I decided to start over again thinking I must have missed one. Nothing. I checked again, repeatedly checking in groups before I moved on to a new area. Still nothing. After the tenth time I gave up. My dreams of another 100% shattered. I contemplated starting a new game just for that achievement but I decided against it.

It wasn't until almost a year later that I had gotten another 100%. But it was an XBLA game and Dash of Destruction at that. 200 gamerscore in 20 minutes. I felt dirty. It wasn't until a full year almost to the day since AC that I got another 1000/1000g in Dead Space. And I commemorated it with my first gaming blog post.

I was only one achievement away from 1000/1000g in Lost Odyssey but it didn't hurt as bad. Probably because I knew I couldn't get "Treasure Trove" with out starting over but I was so close to getting "Personal Vendetta" in AC.

The other achievement I was missing in Assassins Creed was "Hungerer of Knowledge" and I kept forgetting to push "A" during the cut scenes. That would have required a new game.

Update: It was actually Hexic HD that I got my first 100% since COD4 and it felt awesome. "Grand Pearl Pooh-Bah" was hard as fuck.

Crackup

So here's the story. I've beaten ODST. I just need a couple more achivements and then I'm gonna sit on it 'til the Reach beta. I beat Crackdown and I was trying to get a couple more achievements for that before I returned it. But then Final Fantasy XIII came out and I was like "fuck Crackdown". I played through the story and now I'm ready for the side-quests. But then I think maybe I should finish off Crackdown first.

I'm trying to finish the "Ring Leader" achievement and I go to where the stunt marker is supposed to be but I can't find it because it won't turn on. I would just like to point out that I hate achievements where you have to find huge lists of hidden things, especially identical unnumbered things. You basically have to plan before you even start the game because if you grab a couple and you didn't write down where they were you're pretty much screwed. Even if you have a map and know where all of them are, you don't know which ones are missing. The orb achievements in Crackdown are kind of interesting because the more you collect the easier it is to find the others. It's pretty cool until you have about ten left and you don't know where to look.

"Ring Leader" is by far the worst example of this type of achievement I have ever come across. Sure there's not 500 of the like the agility orbs and they're not as hidden as the 300 hidden orbs, but the smaller number spread out in one huge area makes them pretty hard to find. A problem that can easily be solved with a map. Except for the fact that they are FUCKING INVISIBLE. Which means you can be standing right under one and be unable to see it. And even if you know exactly where it is you can't collect it while invisible. To make them visible you have to be coming from a certain angle a certain distance away. The marker becomes visible for a few moments so you can drive through it. And some of these location are very difficult to get a car to. If after the time has passed you have not driven through it, it will become invisible again. So you might be thinking you can just go to the place and where you turned it on the first time and it will come back on. WRONG. Once a marker becomes invisible again you need to leave the area and then drive back to the "turn-on" spot. Did I mention that sometimes this spot doesn't work even If you have just loaded the game. Did I also mention that you need a specific car two specific cars to reach these markers. You need to drive these two cars to almost every marker. One car that jumps that you can only get in one place and a car carrying truck to use as a ramp hidden in different places around the city. You need to take this truck and place it in the middle of traffic and pray that another car doesn't push it out of it's exact alignment while you go to the other car. If either car gets damaged you need to go find another one.

So after about ten minutes of trying to get a marker to even turn on for me I said "fuck Crackdown" and I have decided to return it. I can't wait until Crackdown 2 comes out. ODST, Final Fantasy XIII, and Splosion Man blogs to come. 790/1250g

Brunch Lunch and Dunch

Finally finished The Maw. Six Meals a Day is probably the hardest easy achievement I've ever seen. With my sleeping disorders 8am took a while to get. And when I was awake for it I forgot about it. Still, Little Planet of Horrors is technically harder. Especially because I had some Yums run over mountains where I couldn't reach.

200/250g if you're counting DLC, which I don't.

Where The Grass Can Kill And The Online Is Shitty

I finally finished Burnout Paradise. Got through all of the offline achievements. Some of the achievements required the Xbox Live Vision Camera which I do not have.

I actually preferred the sandbox style gameplay compared to the "select a track" version. It further differentiates Burnout from the "normal" racing games. Having an event at every intersection and being able to showtime and road rule every street made it feel like I was really racing in a city.

The online how ever was less enjoyable. You have lists of challenges that require a specific number of people but people can join your party at any time making them unavailable. If someone leaves while a challenge is in progress it might be canceled, depending on which challenge it is. And the challenges require participation from every member in your party. So if someone isn't helping out,which in my experience is around 60%, you have to kick them and end the challenge. Which means everyone who was working on the challenge gets punished for their hard work. If the host leaves everyone gets kicked out of the game and you have to search for another match.

Those are mostly complaints about the community so I'll separate my technical problems here. You can't track challenge progress while doing challenges, unless you're the host, which I think is weird. That means you can't request specific challenges because you can't see which challenges you have completed for that specific number of people. When creating a "room" you can't specify that you want to do challenges or races. It only displays the last thing you did, which is nothing if you just started.

To be fair, I often complain about the online aspects of games but I rarely play online games when they first come out. That means the online community is smaller and the online experience will be different than someone who played the game when it first came out.

All in all I did enjoy the game. The amount of vehicles and the customization were definitely pluses. People complain about DLC but this game did offer a lot of options. None of which were required to enjoy the game. *cough* Halo. *cough*.

I ended up with 780/1250g. Pretty good if you don't count DLC.