I bought two new games this past week, yes I know. Bought Lego Batman and Mercenaries 2. Unfortunately I’m not overly keen on Lego Batman so that’s why I have the latter, I’ve blitzed through Batman so I can ebay it and make up the money to pay for Mercenaries 2 so not bad going!

I blitzed through it in 3 days, nearly 600 points in it and now I’ll ebay it. If I want to get more points, I’ll just rent it at some point. I was no fan of Lego Batman as a few people may have noticed from my recent comments. As a bit of background: I loved Lego Indiana Jones but didn’t like Lego Star Wars (at least not the original, I’ve not tried The Complete Saga enough to know), I put it down to not being a big Star Wars fan and it felt like Traveller’s Tale had improved the game AI drastically for Indiana Jones. So I hoped that as the order implied, Lego Batman would be as good as Indiana Jones. After all, I love the Batman films. I knew the game wasn’t based around any of the films but I love the characters too, so worth a try. It was immensely disappointing in reality As well as very infuriating in places. As a disclaimer: I can see how playing it in co-op is great fun, as most of the problems are based around the poor partner AI more than anything else.

The AI is the main problem, it’s just too stupid, your partner spends half its time getting in the way. But the ultimate annoyance was one puzzle halfway through the Hero segment of the game. It required lighting up a dancing stage so that you could unleash a giant robot (don’t ask!). To do this, you and your partner need to move across white squares quickly so that you can change their colour to green, completing it by turning all the squares to green. Two squares light up at a time, one for you, one for your partner. Then move quickly to the next set of white squares that appear. The problem was, in one player mode, the AI just stood there doing sod all. Essentially I had no chance at all of getting past the segment without a human player, so I got my Mum to take over the controls for the brief segment. But what if I was in the house on my own? Lived alone? I assume I’d have been screwed, never to complete the 3rd Hero story. Unless I became extremely talented at controlling a lego character with my feet. Plain unforgiveable if you ask me!

So really, Lego Batman was not a bad game, just bloody irritating! Which was a shame. It did help me reach 64,000 points though

In other achievement, but not gamerscore news, me, Daz, Leowyatt and Nokkon completed the Halo 3 Vidmaster achievement. It involved completing the last level of the game on Legendary riding Ghosts and with the Iron Skull on. The Iron Skull meaning that if one person dies, everyone goes back to the last checkpoint. It wasn’t actually as hard as I thought it’d be, mainly because I thought it’d be impossible! It was incredibly satisfying to achieve though Even if it is a 0 point achievement. We need another 4 player co-op game. It was a great laugh with everyone

I haven’t had a chance to play Mercenaries 2 yet which is where my bad luck day begins. While finishing off Lego Batman achievements, my 360 began to lock up. It did it about 6-7 times including sometimes on the dashboard, as soon as I started it back up. I kept going, crossing my fingers it wasn’t dying. Finished Lego Batman and loaded up Mercenaries 2 for the first time, it froze while choosing characters. Restarted it, got as far as the opening segment and paused it for a second. When I came back 2 minutes later, it had frozen again. Turned it off and back on again. Ta da!

That’s my 2nd RROD on 2 different consoles. The first 360 lasted from October 2006 until December 2007, it was one of the early models so really it was a matter of time till it died anyhow. I bought a new one, an Arcade model with the Falcon chipset and HDMI. Sent the old one off to MS to be fixed and when it returned, I ebayed it only making about £5 loss all in all. So it was my Falcon chipset (supposedly reliable one) that died after just under 10 months. A good friend of mine, Leowyatt, is going to help me hopefully get it exchanged at Gamestation tomorrow so fingers crossed! If not, I might just see about if I can afford to owe myself the money for a replacement then do what I did last time. It might sound sad but in the past 6 months, it’s really, really helped me with stress relief and getting by. It’s just nice as escapism and I’ve had a lot to want to escape from this year. God knows how healthy it is, but I think as long as I get by somehow, it’ll do!

Oh and in final bad news. No Fable 2: Collector’s Edition for me Tesco decided they couldn’t get stock in for it leaving me without it as everywhere’s sold out now. I have got a regular copy arriving however as for some reason shopto didn’t cancel my pre-order so that’s on the way tomorrow. But it’s not the CE due to when I pre-ordered it, I briefly considered just going for the regular till I read up on the DLC that comes with it and decided that was still worth it despite no figurine etc.

So it’s not been the luckiest of times games wise for me! Actually, it’s never the luckiest of times life wise for me either

Gaming wise, it’s been a bit bitty. Not really sunk my teeth into anything other than the two review games (which doesn’t really count as I had to do that!). I’ve played a bit of Halo 3 on Legendary with friends, started with just one friend but it was getting hard and tedious so now there’s four of us which has made it much quicker and more enjoyable. Got the first three levels done last night, and doing more tonight. Not overly impressed with the game but it’s ok, worth it for a laugh with friends but I doubt I’d play it single player. It was the same with the first two. I played the first one with my ex a few years ago, we played it solidly for the day and it was great fun. But when I had a chance to play it in single player, I really wasn’t interested. We started on Halo 2 but broke up before we finished it so I’ll probably never get that done now. I hope Halo 3 doesn’t have an annoying library part like in Halo 1, that was sooooooo dull! Halo 3 online doesn’t appeal to me at all so doubt I’ll get any multiplayer achievements but I might give it a go.

Played through Prince Caspian slowly. It’s a total Lego Star Wars clone but without the charm. Identical game engine and identical bugs (such as not being able to pick up an item because it’s sticking halfway into a wall), it’s just not overly fun. It’s ok, it passed the time and I stuck by it to 1k it. That’s my only real score whoring I think, otherwise I’ve played purely for fun and gained a few achievements on the way.

I’m still liking Forza 2 but it is getting a bit boring now. The tracks are repeating themselves over and over again, so it’s getting a bit predictable. I love the RPG like elements of collecting all the cars (like Pokemon for petrolheads!) though so I’ll keep working on it. I’m over half way anyway now at level 35ish.

I picked up Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise for £25 when Morrisons were doing a week of cheap games. Paid for it by also buying Guitar Hero on the DS and ebaying it! Selling the review games has also helped me nicely. It’s just like the first game, so if you liked that, you’ll like this. It’s encouraged me to go back to the first game, which I suppose slightly ruins the point!

Birthday’s coming up fast and I keep being asked what game I want….and I don’t actually know! Lots of reasonable games about, but they all look like rentals to me, like Mercs 2 and Force Unleashed. Fable 2 comes out a couple of weeks after my birthday and I’ve got it pre-ordered anyway so that’s no good.

Not bad going that I mentioned in my last entry that I wanted both Viva Pinata:TIP and Infinite Undiscovery and now I have them both! At least I didn’t pay for one of them and hardly paid for the other in the end

More entries to come eventually….

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

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.