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.

So, E3's here again.

The new streamlined E3... Without all of the rubbish that has nothing to do with games.

I watched the MS conference and got 2 out of the 3 things that I was wanting to see.

I saw Halo 3 single player (meh... still not looking that great)

I saw that the Elite (and HD downloads) was to be be released in Europe

I didn't see any price cut announcement.

I'm still waiting for that, although there is the possibility that MS are waiting until after Sony's conference before trying to steal the limelight with a late press release...

Or maybe they're just biding their time.

Anyway, Sony came out all guns blazing after MS's show with the Killzone demo/video.

"highly detailed and destructible environments" they say...

"Killzone 2 defines a new benchmark of our industry" they boast...

Yeah right!

Lets get right to the point here. Killzone 2 looks like a next-gen game. I haven't seen very many other games that are on the same level, presentation wise.

Pay attention to what I said there though...

'very many'

It looks about on the same level as Call of Duty 4.

Maybe a level higher... Maybe a level lower...

Either way, what I've seen still doesn't put it on par with Gears of War.

And here's the proof...





So as you can see here, 3 similar-ish in-game shots. From top to bottom, Killzone 2, Gears Multiplayer on the 360, and a newly released shot of Gears on the PC.





Now, other than making the Gears PC pic a bit brighter, I've only cropped these. You can see for yourself that Killzone 2 is seriously fuzzy compared to even a multiplayer level of Gears of war on the 360.

Both of them look low res compared to the PC version though.





Here is the most telling part about how much the PS3 can do, graphics wise.

You can clearly see that, for whatever reason, Guerilla have decided that tiny (probably no bigger than 64x64) textures are acceptable for the high up geometry, whereas Gears maintains it's level of detail even on the tops of buildings that might never even be seen by someone playing through as normal.

The PC version appears to have gone into an extra level of detail, with even small details modelled into high up ledges, rather than them just being textured on.





Finally, as for effects like Anti-Aliasing, Gears PC makes both Killzone 2's and 360 Gears' jaggies look dangerously sharp. This is graphics card/ processor dependent, but if you want 8x anti-aliasing at 1920x1200, you can probably get it depending on your set-up.

Even so, the screen shot of multiplayer Gears on the 360 is quite comparible to single player Killzone 2.

Now it could be argued that Killzone 2 is "Pre-ALPHA" and that it's not due for release until 2008.

That's fair enough, but for all of those people saying that this current trailer is the best console game that they've ever seen, then these shots prove you wrong.

It could also be said that these are just still shots, and that all of the weather effects and lighting and the atmosphere of Killzone 2 make it look better than anything else.

Possibly...

But it doesn't appear to be doing much more than Call of Duty 4 from what we've seen so far.

letmejustdothisity.

That seems like a good way to describe it.

It's that thing that very few games have that keeps you playing hours after you wanted to do something else.

Football Manager has it. The letmejustdothisity factor in Football Manager is pretty intense.

Let me just search for a player, then I'll switch off...

let me just keep playing until I see if they accepted my bid...

Let me just offer a contract...

Let me just see if the contract offer is accepted...

Let me just play one game with the new player...

Wow! The new player is playing well. Let me just play a few games, then save, as they might not play so well the next time I load up...

That's just one example of letmejustdothisity in the game.

This isn't simple addiction. Addiction is not being able to stop doing the same thing over and over again.

Like winning an online Gears match. You get the same reward every time.

Same screen, same end and you start the next match with nothing new.

This is continuing to play so that you can get bigger and bigger rewards.

Just doing that little bit more, because you feel like you're only a fraction away from getting something that you didn't have in the game before.

Well, Forza Motorsport 2 is the first game that I've played in a long while that has so much letmejustdothisity.

I keep finding myself 'just doing one more race'

Let me just try me new turbo for one lap of my next race...

Let me just finish this race. Might as well. I've already done one lap...

Let me just buy some new brakes, then turn off...

Let me just try these brakes on another lap...

Let me just finish this tournament. Might as well. I've already done two races...

On and on it goes.

Not many games keep you playing and feeling rewarded like this.

Some games keep you playing for ages because you can't get past that STUPID bit.

You only feel rewarded once you manage to beat the stupid thing. Then you don't feel like going through all the stress again.

Some games keep you playing because they're just so long and spaced out.

You have to get 1,000,000 credits to buy that super-mega-nova-ray-weapon-upgrade, so you put up with the long dull bits for the rewarding feeling when you finally buy the thing.


Anyway, I've been playing Forza 2 since it came out, and will probably continue to do so until I get at least around 900 gamerpoints.

I've had a look at the achievements, and they all seem pretty straightforward.

Dirt is supposed to be coming out tomorrow, but I don't think I'll be buying it for a while, as it probably won't even get put in my 360 until I've done all of the single player achievements on Forza.

I haven't been playing my 360 for a while, but have now managed to get 500 points out of King Kong with almost no effort at all.

The lack of challenge from at least about a couple of hours of gaming doesn't make me feel eager to pick up a joypad any time soon.

I suppose it might be a bit like going on a really long car journey.

You want to go, but the 5 or 6 hours of not really doing anything stops you from going unless you have a really good reason.

King King isn't giving me much of a reason.

These are the sort of games that go into development 7-8 months before the scheduled release date.

No planning, no careful design, no real thought.

Just read the script and put it into polygons as quick as you can. Use an already successful game mechanic and add a twist.

ZZZzzz...

The problem with these games is that they still sell really well.

Spiderman 3 was just knocked off the top of the UK charts by the latest Pirates of the Caribbean game, both of which got pretty bad reviews.

Which means that there is money in mediocrity.

A lot of money.

Anyway, Forza 2 is due for release on friday and I want to get the last hour or so of King Kong finished before then.

I don't think that I'll mind too much if I don't though, since I already have the 500 from it that I planned to get from each of my games.

I don't think I'll be buying a game purely for the ease of its points from now on though.

So if there is at least one thing that King Kong has done, it looks like it's saved me some money.

I still haven't got all 1000 points from King Kong yet, but the reason for that is that I got TMNT on Monday, and have now got the 1000 from that instead.

It's nowhere near as boring as King Kong can get, and I didn't think that it was that bad a game.

Infact, it's probably even the kind of game that I'd play again after completing it and getting all 1000 points.

Not like certain other games that I own.

But I'll try and talk about those later. Not now.

I plan on having a good rant about those games.

TMNT only has single player, and all of the achievements were very easy to get.

I used to really like the Turtles when I was younger. I considered getting this when it was first released, but I can remember seeing pretty poor reviews, so I dismissed it.

Having played it and found it roughly a low 7 out of 10 game, I wanted to have a look at those reviews again to see if what they were saying was true.

I was pretty shocked.

Some of them absolutely slated the game. They tore into it like a hungry dog into a box of burgers.

Now, the game has its big flaws, and even some A class bugs (at one point some of the scenery didn't load so I was unable to proceed, and I didn't know this until I restarted the level because I couldn't get any further) but it's not as awful a game as some reviewers were painting it.

Just makes you wonder exactly how many reviews are paid for these days and whether or not this is an example of a game that didn't pay its dues.

Anyway, TMNT is out of the way, so it's back to King Kong.

I'm now on 6040 points, so just a shade less than 4000 to go.

News comments go here

I finished the single player game on Rainbow Six Vegas today and have now managed to get 420 points out of the game without too much difficulty.

It's taken me a long time, because having pre-ordered the game, I got it a few weeks after Gears of War, which I was much more interested in playing at the time.

In fact, up until I got my wireless wheel, I hardly played anything but Gears of War on my 360.

Gears of War is probably my favourite multiplayer game over LIVE, even with the problems that I have with it.

Living in the UK means that I'm usually playing people on US servers, so most of the time I get 'bullet lag' and trying to host can mean having to sit and wait for around half an hour just for one match.

Even with these faults though, I've probably played this on LIVE more than any of my other 360 games.

Anyway, now I have these 420 from Vegas, I need 80 more out of the game to keep to my plan of getting at least 500 gamerpoints per game.

Having checked all of the achievements, however, it looks as though the next easiest and quickest points for me to get are with coop play, so I think that I'll wait until I see someone on my friends list with the game and try and get them that way.

I'm not in any rush for these 80 gamerpoints, so all of that means that it's time to change games!

I've decided to go for King Kong, the supposedly easiest 1000 gamerpoints that there are.

This definitely seems to be the case so far though, as after about 25 minutes of charging forward without really caring for what was going on in the game, I managed to get the first 100.

The game just seems a bit boring at the moment. I wasn't all that inpressed with the film, and even though first/third person shooters are my favourite genre, there isn't much for me to enjoy here.

Anyway, I'll go for the full 1000 from this game before moving on.

According to what I've read it shouldn't take that long or be that difficult anyway.

Another achievement and another 30 points yesterday for finishing the penultimate chapter in Rainbow Six Vegas.

I had to go through some pretty tricky scenes, but did it without too much difficulty in the end.

I then proceeded to steam through the last chapter with relative ease until I hit a really annoyingly stupid point.

Bad

Game

Design

!

It's moments like these that make me forget every other part of the game that I might have enjoyed.

It's moments like these that make me want to finish the game as quickly as possible and never pick it up again.

They are infuriating moments where the 'AI' would more befittingly be called 'AS' (artificial stupidity).

If you've completed the game, you'll probably know the exact point that I'm refering to. There is one scene to go after this, and I have to say that this scene is completely out of keeping with the rest of the game so far.

What happens?

I won't go through the details, but I get confronted with about 10-15 grenade lobbing enemies from one side and two from the other side.

I'm quite confident that I'll get it done very soon, but it's not enjoyable at all.

It's frustrating.

Anyway, I don't think that I'm far away from getting the points that I want from this game, then I don't think that I'll bother touching it again.

That reminds me, I must remember to write about difficulty in games.

I have a lot to say about that.

How do things stand at the moment?

As I write this I have 17 disc based games, 4 XBLA games and 4660 gamerpoints.

It's taken me quite a while to get this many points, but I think that I must have managed to get around 2000 in the last couple of weeks or so, so I seem to be getting better at racking them up.

Now I know that 4660 gamerpoints isn't that much of a total, but I'm quite busy most of the time, so whilst I might be trying to build up my score, I'm not someone who can sit down playing games all day and all night.

I do have other things to do you know!

Anyway, I've kind of set myself a total of 10,000 for now.

That seems like a decent enough number.

I've been trying to figure out the average score is for gamers on LIVE, and at the moment, from what I've seen there are a lot of people between 0-2000, about half as much between 2-6000, even less than that with 6-10,000 and a significant minority who have more than 10,000.

I do have someone on my friends list with 19,987 points, but he has more time to play games than I do.

What's all the fuss with these points??

I suppose that's what you're asking...

...if you're not a gamer, that is.

Gamers know why gamers collect points.

Gamers collect points because they're competitive. They like winning and letting other gamers know it. I'll probably visit this subject again, but that's my theory right now.

At the moment I'm playing Rainbow Six Vegas. I have 240 points and am quite close to another 180, which would put me on 420. Then I need to find another 80 or so from somewhere before I move on to another game.

That's my current plan to hit 10,000 quite quickly.

I think that if I can get at least 500 points for each disc based game, then it should'nt take that long, since I don't think that I'll have to worry about getting the online achievements of most games, which is probably what takes the most time.

So anyway, that's a brief outline of the way that things stand, as far as my gamerpoints go, at the moment.

5340 to go.