So I've finally got to 20,000 points, and I'm way behind schedule. However, I am slowly getting there, so I'm still pretty confident of hitting my overall target.

Recent games that have added to my total have been Street Fighter IV and Halo Wars.

Street Fighter IV has given a pretty easy 400 or so points, but I think it's the kind of game that I'll probably keep playing, even though no points are involved. It's not perfect by any means, but it's the kind of game that you could always easily just put on for a few quick online games.

There are some really annoying parts to it that should never be in a game that ranks so highly on Metacritic though. Like not even giving you the ability to turn, what has got to be some of the most horrible music ever made, completely off.

You can turn it down.

But never off.

...Then on top of that, there's the incredibly annoying fight announcer!

There's an achievement to play 500 online games, plus there are all of the fights that you'll have to do to unlock all of the characters, and then you'll want to finish it with every character, and the challenges, etc, etc.

Did they not think that they'd need more than 2 or 3 phrases for the fight announcer to come out with over possibly THOUSANDS of games!?!?

They phrases get so annoyingly repetitive, all you want to do is turn them right off, but guess what?

You can only turn them off if you turn off all the speech in the ENTIRE game!

That's right, no fight announcer, no 'Hadooken!', no 'Tiger Uppercut!', no 'Sonic boom!'.

If I had reviewed this game, I'd have given it a big fat ZERO for audio.

So besides that, I've also been playing Halo Wars, which I've enjoyed a lot more than I originally thought I would. I just don't seem to get bored of building massive armies in different ways and taking out my enemies.

I've never really been into RTS games before.

I tried Command and Conquer, but it still remains one of those 'yeah, I'll play that one later' type games that I have so many of.

It could be the case that Halo Wars is more straight forward than most other RTS's, so it allows me to focus on the building and fighting parts of the game that makes it so appealing to me. I'm not sure, but enjoying this game as much as I have has made me want to see what else the RTS genre has to offer in the near future.

30k, here we come!

I've got a bit of spare time on my hands over the next few days, so along with the many other things that I've been meaning to catch up on, I should be able to work on my gamerscore.

I've managed to get back to adding to it after spending so long on the COD4 multiplayer, and might even be able to get up to the 20,000 points mark over the coming week or so. I'm currently on 17,750, but I have enough games to play through that the 2,250 points to get there should be fairly simple.

I've been playing a wide variety of games recently. I've spent about 70 hours playing Midnight Club LA, for a pretty straightforward 800 points. I went back to Halo 3 and completed the campaign ('finished the fight') on Heroic for a good few hundred too. I've also got a few more points from here and there, including PGR4 and Pure.

At the moment I'm playing through COD:WaW on Veteren. I should be able to get anywhere between 600-800 points just by playing through to the end.

It's been quite an inconsistent experience so far.

It's not what I expected. Some parts have been fun, but other parts have been really, really awful. Having said that, I'd probably put the awful parts more down to the fact that I'm playing it on Veteran, and the AI is just ludicrous at times. If I was playing it on Hardened or a lower difficulty it might be different. I've played the multiplayer a few times and as interesting as I'm sure some of the WWII weapons are, I just don't have the urge to stick with it without my favourite, the P90.

Maybe that's good news for my gamerscore anyway.

One final comment that I wanted to make was on one of the unlockables on Midnight Club.

I like cars, and one of my favourite cars is the Audi R8. For some reaon, Rockstar decided to licence this car and make it practically impossible to get.

I've won pretty much every single race in the entire game, and done almost everything that there is to do and I still haven't done enough to unlock it.

There are 12 different objectives that you have to complete, such as win a certain amount of races and hit a certain number of objects. I've done 10 of the 12. The final 2 are to drive 5000 miles (i've done about 4500) and use something like 2000 'specials'.

The 5000 miles is no problem. I could probably very easily do the 500 more that I need, but the 'specials' is just a stupid idea.

I mean really stupid.

Considering that I had played the game for about 60 hours before discovering that I was only about 60% through completing this particular objective, it doesn't seem likely that I'd be able to do it without having to play the game for 100 hours, unless I spend hours and hours just boosting.

Playing it for 100 hours isn't really the problem here. The problem is that I've already done pretty much everything in the entire single player game, and I still don't have the R8, so what am I going to do when I get it??

The online is ok, but it's not something that I really want to keep playing for a long time, so all I'd probably end up doing with my new R8 is cruising for a while, and that's pretty much it.

Is it really worth playing the game for 100 hours just for that?

No.

So I won't be trying to get it for the time being. Which basically means that I'm not getting to play with one of the main reasons that I bought the game in the first place.

Perhaps it would have been a better idea to make the objectives be the kind of thing that the typical player would get through after playing it for around 40 hours, rather than 100.

If most people would spend around 50 hours playing MCLA, then that would give them a good 10 hours to play with what's probably the best car in the game if they chose to.

That seems like a better idea to me.

I finally managed to reach level 55 of the 10th prestige of COD4.

I did it this morning after around just over 17 days playing time.

I only needed 1991 points this morning after having played a bit last night, which I was fairly confident that I could get in half an hour or so. After about 40-45 minutes, I only needed 180 or so points to do it.

My usual weapon of choice is the P90, but I went for the M16 on what looked like being my final game before finally reaching the top rank.

It was Free For All on Overgrown and I won easily enough, finishing the round with a headshot with good few minutes to spare. I think that the person who finished 2nd had about 80 points.

FINALLY! NO MORE RANKING UP REQUIRED! It's taken me the roughly 9 months since COD4 got realeasd to do it.

I know that some people probably managed it in the first few weeks after release, but it doesn't bother me. I've done it now, and to be honest, I don't plan on playing COD4 for a good long while...

I worked out that over the 9 months that it's been out, and the 400+ hours that I've been playing, I've averaged just over 1.5 hours a day. I'm not sure what that means for my stats, but I'm sure that there are many people who put in many more hours a day, but would probably end up on the losing side if they played me or my clan.

So anyway, it's back to gathering the gamerpoints for me again.

I played one round after reaching 10/55 and then put Fight Night round 3 straight into my 360. Just a few hundred points left to go on that which should be easy enough.

So it's no more late nights of using the G3 or the Skorpion just to get the points.

No more trading insults with clan after clan after clan.

No more getting frustrated with the horrible lag when the other team had the host.

At least until Gears 2 comes out anyway...

Wow!

I've missed my gamerscore target by miles!

I'm stuck playing COD4 at the moment.

I don't think that I've ever played a game for this long before. When I checked this morning, I think I remember my stats saying that I'd been playing the onlione for more than 14 days. There is someone on my freinds list who's been playing it for more than 26 days, so even though 14 isn't all that much compared to some paople, it's a whole lot for me on one game.

That's more than 330 hours on the same game.

I'm the kind of person that usually gets bored after 3 or 4 unless I'm playing a real killer app, in which case I get bored after 40 or 50, maybe.

I thinks it's the variation of playing different people all the time that keeps me coming back.

There's also the feeling that I get when I'm not playing and I know that my clan probably is. It's enough to make me want to play even though I probably wouldn't if I was going to play on my own.

The final thing that I think keeps me playing, and probably the biggest reason of the lot is the fact that I just want to get to the top rank before I stop.

I'm currently on the 9th of 10 rankings, or prestige's, and I just want to finish the 10th one before I finally put this game on the 'done it' pile.

I really want to do it soon, because I want to start playing Unreal III soon.

I plan to buy it today.

I'm playing Call of Duty 4 multi-player at the moment.

That's why I haven't gotten many gamer points for a while.

But I think I will be back on the case soon enough, because I'm already much higher up the rankings than I originally intended to be before changing games.

I want to change games soon. I think I've bought at least 4 games since I started playing Call of Duty, and haven't really managed to get going on any of them yet.

Two of the games that I've bought since then are Timeshift and Medal of Honor. Two first person shooters.

I've become very good at COD4, so I think I'm getting to the point where I can handle almost anything that any first person shooter can throw at me. Maybe I'm just kidding myself and have forgotten how frustratingly hard completing COD4 on Veteran was, but my plan is to go straight into my two new FPS's on the hardest difficulty settings to try and get a whole bunch of points without having to play through them more than once.

I played through the COD4 single-player twice.

Once on hardened and once on veteran.

I have to admit that veteran probably took me less time, but it's possible that the reason for this was that I was able to learn the best way to beat the most difficult parts whilst playing on hardened.

Anyway, I also have two driving games ( yes, I'm back on the driving games... Forza 2 didn't manage to totally finish me off! ) to get going with soon too.

At the moment I think I'm sitting on about 3-4000 pretty easy gamerpoints out of the games that I have, but haven't really tried to seriously play yet.

As well as that, there are a good few games that I fancy playing which are due for release over the next couple of months, so I'm going to try and pencil in a milestone of 20,000 points by the end of April.

Realistically, I should be able to beat that fairly easily, and may even go well beyond it, but setting a milestone should at least encourage me to get off COD4 at some point in the near future.

The way things are going, I could see myself not feeling the need to play a different game for the rest of the year.

I hate...

...no...

I absolutely DESPISE 'Crash Bandicoot: Crash of the Titans' or whatever the stupid game's called.

It's awful.

Horrid.

A disgrace.

I've been sick recently, and was too unwell for the intensity of an FPS, or the speed and sensory battering of a racer, so I thought I'd just give a nice, straightforward platform/action game like Crash of the Titans a go for some easy points.

AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

That was a mistake.

At times the game is tedious, like when you have to sit through an annoyingly un-skipable cut scene that you've seen way too many times before, just to re-play a level.

At times it's frustratingly unfair, like when you try to hit an enemy from behind, only for it to block every single shot and then hit you with ease... ...Oh, by the way, this never works the other way around.

But most of the time it's just boring.

Boring levels.

Boring gameplay.

The worst part about the whole game is that it's now managed to mess up my '5 or 10' point gamerscore!!!

Most achievements only give you a score that either ends in a 5 or a 0, not so Naughty Dog.

They've put an easy one in which gives you 13, then you need to practically get almost every other achievement in the game to get a 26 and a 36 that would put you back onto a gamerscore ending in a 5.

WHY!!??

Alright, I know that this might seem strange, but it's just annoying having to look at a score that only ever ends in a 3 or an 8.

It's just untidy.

More to the point, it reminds me of forcing myself to play all the way through this game just to get to 649 points out of it!

I could probably get up to 800 or so without trying too hard, but I hate the poor level design and boring gameplay so much that I have no intention of ever doing that.

I'm going to have to look for some odd points from another game to try and get my score back the way it's been since I got my 360.

Ending in a 5 or a 0.

I won't be buying another Naughty Dog game any time soon.

Wow!!

Last night I finally broke the 10,000 gamerpoints!

It was late... I was at 9980, and couldn't be bothered to do a whole other level of COD 4 on veteran, so I just downloaded Pacman and tried to see if I could get the last 20 that I needed before going to bed.

I got 30 in the end, putting me on the 10010 that I'm currently on.

I haven't made many posts recently, but since my last, I went on a bit of a spending spree and bought loads of really good games.

COD 4 has given me a really big gamerscore boost, and I'm pretty confident that I can turn it into a 1000 pointer.

I finally managed to convince myself to get through the last 500 points of King Kong over the weekend, which also helped in setting me on the way to my new 5 digit score.

I mean, fair enough, people can say that King Kong is easy points, but you have to force yourself to play the awful thing in the first place.

The game might be easy, but it is bad, so playing it through to the end can be a struggle.

Anyway, since I've finally managed to hit 10,000, I decided to set myself a new target.

One which should see me making a lot more posts here in the future, and one which should be a lot more difficult than my last challenge.

The plan is to get 100,000 gamerpoints before the next version of the XBox is officially released.

That's right, 100,000!

I'm sure that there are probably hundreds, if not, thousands who have done it already, but it's something that I want to do myself.

I have more than enough games to be playing at the moment, and I currently have 10010 points out of a possible 34945, so I should have a lot of room to get a lot more points over the next few months at least.

Anyway, I think that I should get the full 1000 from COD 4 within the next few days, so look out 100,000, here I come!

Something that already seemed pretty obvious to me is newly released research suggesting that gamers prefer to play a game based on the perceived quality of it's achievements.

According to the study, better achievements equate to higher review scores and better sales.

Why this isn't entirely obvious to anyone who plays games is pretty strange to me.

In fact, what I find even more strange is both Nintendo and Sony's apparent total neglect of an achievement based system.

I think that Microsoft have really come across something that has become a big selling point for the 360. They've managed to come up with a system that the PS3 and Wii don't have that, according to this research, sells games.

I for one have often thought about buying non-360 games, but ended up not doing so because, or primarily because of the lack of any achievement points.

If I'm going to play a game without achievements, it has to be something that I really enjoy playing.

A real 'killer app' like (possibly) Mario Galaxy on the Wii.



Source: http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/827/827837p1.html

I'm steadily racking up the points now.

I have to admit that I didn't think that it would take this long, but I've eventually reached over 8000 points.

Or 8190 at the time of writing to be precise.

I've managed to recover from the repetitive drain of lap after lap of the same dull tracks in Forza 2, and have now started playing another circuit racer in PGR4.

It's a lot more varied than Forza 2, and the arcade feel makes it easier to think of it in almost completely different terms.

I've already managed to get most of the easier points, so it'll probably be a good few hours of playing before I get the next big amount.

I managed to get 535 from PGR3, so if I can get around the same this version, I think I'll just be happy to play it without being bothered about getting much more.

I've also been playing a lot of FIFA 08.

It's not brilliant.

It has some huge problems with the AI.

Having said that, it is a pretty good game online.

I've got 280 points from it so far, with a fairly easy 60 that doesn't seem too far away.

The problem with playing this game for the points, though, is that EA seems to have tried to make most of them long term targets.

There are only a few points for finishing seasons in different leagues, which could take ages, depending on how long you set the match length.

Anyway, it's been quite fun online so far. Even when people quit, because I still get a win, which goes towards my 100 online wins achievement.

The Orange Box is due out on Friday.

More first person shooting on the way!

Here are the reasons that Sony won't be tempting me to buy a PS3, even at £299

1. GAMES
I already have most of the PS3 catalogue on 360. The only exclusives are either not out yet, not interesting to me, supposed to be out already/soon but are delayed or will probably come out on the 360 eventually.

Add to that the fact that I wouldn't even be able to pick up PS2 games for a quick blast at a low price if I ever felt like it.

2. ONLINE
"Oh, it's free on PS3, it's free!" Yeah, with no gamer points... I might as well stick to PC gaming if I just want free online play. Plus, Home looks too far off and not good enough.

3. LAST GEN FEATURES
Yeah, looks like I'd have to wait all the way until 2008 just to get rumble... Why??

Sony! These are the things that gamers are waiting for! Not fewer features at a lower price!!

WAKE UP!

Wow!

Now that took Aaaaages.

I don't know how mant hours I put into Forza 2, but I think it must be close to 80+...

80+ hours of driving around in circles!!

I'm pretty sick of the game now to be honest. I've managed to get 780 points from it, and could probably get another 40, possibly 60 within another 3-5 hours, but I just can't be bothered...

That's right. I cannot be bothered to play this game anymore.

It started out alright. I enjoyed the first 20-30 hours.

Then from 20-30 to 50-60 it started to get a bit repetitive. By this point, I was just trying to get to the end.

Then from 50-60 to 70-80 I was beginning to get sick of the game!

Same old tracks...

Same old cars...

Same old scenery over and over again.

For the endurance races I had to put the radio on, like I do on long drives, so I didn't have to give the game my full concentration.

Talk about way to ruin a game!

I don't really have time for long games these days. There are a lot that I want to play, and when I come across one that's just drawn out for the sake of it I get put off playing it.

It's a difficult balance to strike.

Forza 2 might have been able to hold my interest for the whole 80+ hours if it had a whole lot more variety in it's tracks and gameplay.

All you have is career, arcade, free run and time trials around a handful of tracks.

I enjoyed Test Drive Unlimited pretty much right up until the end, because it was over a whole Island, with loads of traffic, different types of road, different types of races/ missions and vehicles.

On top of that, there were other players driving around to have a quick race against, or just go cruising with.

I think I put about 70+ hours into that game, but I don't remember being so bored with it as I am with Forza 2.

Then there are games which are seen by most people as being too short.

Games like Gears of War, even though the online is so popular.

As I said, it's a difficult balance.

It's possible to take a very good game and stretch it out for so long that it just becomes boring by the end.

It's possible to take a really good game and not stretch it out enough, so that people who play it are left wondering why they only got half of the experience that they were expecting.

I think that around 40 hours is more than enough for any game.

Forza 2 was too long for what was in it, and even though I could probably get more points from it with relative ease, I have no drive to do so at all right now.

So I think I'll stick with the 780 points and move on to GRAW 2, which I bought a long time ago, but have barely played.

500 or so points from that is next on the list.