Boosted a couple of games partly for my benefit but mostly at the request of friends. First up was Yaris, a truly awful game, even if it is free. But a friend wanted to get 10 points from it so he hit 25k on the dot, after doing that multiplayer game, I played for 5mins and got another 10 points. Evil game though, so embarrassingly bad.
As well as that, I boosted for the online achievements for Football Manager 2007 with Nokkon and gained 36 points. Suppose I’d better do the single player achievements…meh :p

I’m renting Two Worlds and Cabela’s Alaskan Adventures at the moment, both of which are pretty dire. I’m only on 40/1000 for Cabela’s but that’s getting sent back tomorrow I think, it’s crap.
Two Worlds: I’ll try to keep going with, but it’s not really very appealing. It’s still very buggy even after being patched.

So we come to my two current favourites of the week. Civilization Revolution (again) and Viking. 105 points from Civ and I’m still enjoying it loads, the harder achievements are to come but I’m a big fan of the series so hopefully it won’t take long.
Viking I bought today (with the £20 as previously mentioned), only 82pts so far from an hour or two this afternoon, but I really like it. It’s pretty simple so far, a basic RPG mixed with hack n slash but it’s good fun. Shouldn’t be too hard for points either. Nice, mindless distraction.

I also bought The Bourne Supremacy on DVD for £1.99 and ordered The Bourne Identity for £2.50, yeah I thought I’d give it another chance. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed, or else I’m coming after you Nokkon :p

Finally, I’m working on another piece for play.tm: a preview of the new World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King. So far, it’s looking very promising! Really pleased to be doing it too, gives me an excuse to go back to it. Although currently I’m only playing as a Death Knight, not anything else.

In the last few days I’ve put aside Lost Odyssey in favour of Civilization Revolutions which, Nokkon will be so unsurprised by this, I bought in the Gamestation sale for £19.99. Yeah, my name is Jen and I’m a game buyingaholic. I love it though. I’ve chosen it over sleep (playing till 3am despite being knackered) and food (despite it being mid afternoon and having only eaten one small slice of toast all day). It rocks. I love Civ games. Worth every penny for me, just the same as FM2008 was worth £15. Plus I’ve managed to reap 365 points from it in only a couple of days.

Excluding short bursts of CoD4, FM2008 and Superman Returns (which I now hate after my brief break from it, it’s like I’ve realised what good games are meant to be like, and this is far from it!), my only points came from Kung Fu Panda which I finished off for the most part. There were two achievements I didn’t get, due to a mixture of laziness and because I needed to send my rentals back in time for my free trial to end with Lovefilm.

Lucky for me, I have another free trial going! Only 45 days this time round but hopefully I can stick a 90 day one on afterwards. Tomorrow I should have Bee Movie and Cabela’s Alaskan Adventures arriving, both of which I’ve briefly played before but not hugely for various reasons. I also have Two Worlds arriving, not so much for points (although hopefully it won’t be too bad for points) but to see which side of the opinion divide I’m on, and because it’s the only RPG on the 360 I’ve not played.

Fingers crossed I hit 60k soon!
Till the next update…hopefully I’ll be more imaginative by then.

I did receive NBA Ballers but it was so shocking, I sent it back the same day with no points. It’s ruined my completion percentage but it was pretty bad to begin with, and I’ve got a low tolerance of bad games.
Having said that, I will get on with X-Men. Despite realising I deleted my save file from last year

Oh and finally, I succumbed and bought games. It was a bad weekend so I went for 4 for £20 in Gamestation and acquired Tomb Raider Legend, Shadowrun, Superman Returns and Championship Manager 07. I used to own the first two so for £5 each they were worth it. Champ looks like it’s going to be a challenge and a half though!

Hopefully a more interesting update soon with a write up of what I think of the new games.

Out of those, Beowulf was the most abysmal (actually, the only abysmal one). So abysmal in fact that I only gained 30 points from it before sending it back to LoveFilm. I love gaining points but not to the point that I will put myself through such terrible games. The control system felt daft, the song segment was irritating and most importantly of all, it kept going buggy not long into Chapter 1 so that I got stuck walking through a boat while being able to do anything else. Sure, if that didn’t happen to me, maybe I’d have kept playing and it would have drastically improved. But I decided life was too short and basically couldn’t be bothered to see if the bug would magically fix itself and gave up. Who knows why it did it…..but who cares!

Football Manager 2008 is my perennial game in my slow but determined attempt to 1k it. It’s more time consuming than anything. I’ve got a very good team formed that hardly loses a game, if ever, but I’m just starting my 4th Season of 10 and it’s already taken me around 36hrs. It’ll be nice to have the full 1k though, especially as not too many people have it. Maybe I’ll go back to working on Football Manager 2006 then. For only £15, Football Manager 2008 was a terrific bargain for me.

Jericho was a pleasant surprise. I bought it in March sometime, played it briefly then confined it to the pile for some reason without returning to it. After another brief spurt of play in April, I finally went back to it this past week and greatly enjoyed it. On hard (many of the achievements require playing it on hard), it’s still not much of a challenge especially if you use the cheats. The cheats are a little awkward to track down as they all seem to be ‘uniquely’ locked to the code that comes with the game but they’re worth it. It makes the game maybe a little too easy but I fancied a relaxing game. The story isn’t bad at all and the squad element, all with different abilities, while nothing new, is fun. The weapon achievements are a little tedious though.

Lego Indiana Jones, as always, is just plain fun. Much more fun than Lego Star Wars if you ask me but I’ve always preferred Indiana Jones. I need to finish up the achievements sometime, but collecting all the artifacts is a bit dull. What is it with so many games having collection achievements? They’re so dull half the time.

Luxor 2, I played solely to make my gamerscore either ending in 0 or 5 most of the time, sad I know It is a good game though. I got it free when I bought an Arcade after my Premium died at Christmas.

The two NBAs were quite fun to compare. I much preferred NBA2k8, it was easier for achievements, but it also felt more fluid and the dunks felt more impressive. I think NBA2k8 was much more arcadey and I always prefer the NBA Jam style game than an attempt at a sim, not that NBA Live was a good attempt at a sim, being far too arcadey in nature (albeit not so much as 2K8….confused yet?). I didn’t 1k either of them. Bit of laziness involved there, plus NBA2k8 would have involved online boosting and I wasn’t in the mood. If I get desperate, I’ll rent them again, but there’s still so many games I’d rather play!

Ninja Gaiden 2 feels very polished and smooth…..yet with that added bite that reminds you it can be brutal. I wasn’t really struggling on Acolyte until I reached the Chapter 2 boss, I got wiped out fast. I haven’t returned yet but I will do soon, I know what I need to do to defeat it. I like taking my time with it anyhow, as I’m sure I’ll get to a point very soon where I’m solidly stuck.

I’ve also been playing Lost Odyssey but the points come slowly with that so it’s definitely for fun. I’m in the middle of Disc 3 at the moment and it’s slightly lost my interest. I’m not sure why, hopefully it’ll grab me again soon. I think it definitely will come Disc 4 as there’s so many sidequests that open up then.

I keep having mild urges to return to World of Warcraft for a bit, which is daft. I’m perfectly happy with the games I’m playing, and I can’t afford WoW really anyhow. And as if by magic, Paramount Comedy, that I’m watching in the background while typing this, keeps advertising it. Mainly with Mr T but suddenly Mini Me has shown up. The advert is just plain weird. So I’ll end this roundup on that strange note!

I’ve hit 52k now. I’m fairly sure I could catch up with Creature on 57k fairly easily: I’ve got NBA Live 08, NBA2k8 and Looney Tunes waiting for easy points, as well as Jericho and a few others. But for now I’m enjoying just gaming.
I’ve actually enjoyed playing Jericho, think I’m just over halfway now but I haven’t played it much in a couple of weeks. I’m playing on hard and stuck all the cheats on, laziness I know. It’s far from scary which is slightly disappointing.
As well as this I’ve been chipping away at Football Manager 2008. I achieved Manager of the Year, Undefeated Season, Win 5 Separate Leagues, Win a Continental Cup and World Player of the Year. And I’m on Season 3 of the 10 seasons I need to do, over that time I’ll collect up the rest of the achievements too. Nice satisfying 1k when I get there even though it is the easiest of the three Football Manager games.

I’ve also made 3 new purchases in the past 2 weeks. I bought Project Sylpheed for £4.99 second hand, so I figured it had to be worth that price. Seems quite fun on the brief play I had, not worth much more, but for a fiver it’s fine. Amazing the amount of games that are £4.99 in Gamestation at the moment, I own or have played most of them but can’t be long till more arrive for that price.

And I bought Ninja Gaiden 2 and Lego Indiana Jones. I saved more this month than I thought plus I sold Mario Kart Wii for £50 so as I couldn’t decide between the two, I went for the greedy option! Lego Indiana Jones is brilliant fun, easy achievements and a nice relaxing game. Ninja Gaiden 2 only arrived today so I’ve not had a chance to play yet, but from my experiences of the original and the demo: It’s going to be a challenge but hopefully very satisfying if I ever master it If not, I’ll retreat to the safety of Indy

Not sure what my next goal is really. 60k seems pretty far off. Half trying for completionistness (inventing new words is fun), mainly with Football Manager 2008 initially and then Football Manager 2006 I think. Just because they’re not hugely common 1ks because they take a while to do. I think I’ll just keep slowly chipping away at Creature’s gamerscore and work my way up the ranks, got rentals on the way which is always useful.

Rest of life is messy so least said the better!

Reviews are forthcoming but I’d rather put them up as they are shown on x360a so you’ll have to wait a little while for that, so far I’ve written reviews for Meet The Robinsons, Pro Evo Soccer 6, Lego Star Wars 2, X-Men: The Official Game and Enchanted Arms. A few reviews have been posted on the site but unfortunately for me, mostly reviews of newer games which is fair enough really.

I’ve spent most of my time back in Swansea job hunting thanks to my old workplace messing me about and changing lots. I’ve finally managed to get one though, it’s working for 3 the mobile phone company. It’s based about 10 miles from where I live but shouldn’t be far on the M4! It’s only 16hrs a week but that’s ideal while I write up my dissertation. It pays well too considering the hours, so should be good.
On Sunday I’m off to Leeds for a training course for it, away Sunday night to Thursday night, all paid for and it’s a 4* hotel too.

Perhaps rather unluckily for me, I’ve got a flood of new games arriving probably while I’m away! I went on a small ebay spree after selling a lot of stuff on there, so coming to me soon is Football Manager 2007 (Nice slow burner of a game) and Just Cause (I played this at a friend’s and was really surprised by how fun it was), as well as a wireless network adaptor for the 360 as soon the whole house is going wireless (hopefully!). I’ve also just traded in lots of stuff for Guitar Hero 2 which is awesome, even if I am pretty terrible at it!
Finally I have Pirates of the Caribbean 3 arriving from swapgame, I’ve still got X-Men to finish up if I can muster the patience, and I’ve only scratched the surface of Shadowrun’s achievements, AND I’m working through Gears of War on Insane with P1NSEEKER off x360a.
That’s just the 360 games, I’ve not mentioned the PS2 games.
So there’s a fair bit to do, but then again I’m not planning on buying any more games for a good month or so, I’d quite like Dirt but I’ve got so many other games to play, I think I’ll leave it a bit.