The Gamerscore Run - Week 2 - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Week 2, I'm not tired yet, my wrists are literally killing me thanks to Guitar Hero but I'm almost finished with that game thank God. It said I had to go back through and play all songs again to perfection, I looked and there's 100G attatched to it but that means playing a lot of songs all over again, probably multiple times. The only other benefit to doing that would be bragging rights. Bragging rights on a Guitar hero game can only be achieved through Karaoke on Bohemian Rhapsody, as my friends unfortunately know. Only achievements that I could really get on Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock now are hitting X amount of notes. Still, overall I can get another 340G out of it, just a matter of finding the time to sit down and play Megadeath over and over until I get 2000 Stars.

As for the other games I've got to play through, I haven't started on them yet. I played a bit of Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (which I'm planning to 100% complete, along with all the LEGO games) I got part way through Chapter 3 of General Grevious' campaign. Mind, I did find one interesting thing about that game, Telltale Games developed it.

Ewan's Gamerscore - 41,755
Joseph's Gamerscore - 49,558

Games I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 645G/1000G (1 Achievement for 10G) 18% Complete
Titanfall - 180G/1000G
Wolfenstein: The New Order - 390G/1000G

Games I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

007: Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (No DLC)
Bulletstorm - 30G/1000G
Bully: Scholarship Edition - 110G/1000G
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 340G/1000G (6 Achievements for 150G) 32% Complete
Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars - 100G/1000G
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 - 15G/1000G

Gamerscore needed to go even:

7833G

It's went up by a few hundred gamerscore...that's not good...

Game Reviews #23 - Call of Duty 2 - Call of Duty Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

Call of Duty 2! The second game in the Call of Duty franchise I think, because they did that thing with Big Red One, but I'm playing the re-release on the 360. The story of this game followed three campaigns, the Russians, English and American campaigns all offer a wide variety of levels, weapons, characters and objectives to complete. Each mission has a different objective, connect the wire to a radio, destroy flak turrets or storm D-Day. I must say that the D-Day campaign for the Americans was fantastic, you storm the beaches and then get pushed back to a trench and then American troops just spawn in everywhere with tanks and jeeps.

Graphical wise, it was a previous gen game but made a little prettier for the Xbox 360, so nothing really that special. The Germans all look like bits of play-doh modelled into vaguely looking Wehrmacht troops. Guns and stuff have a large variety, you've got the English weapons, German weapons, American weapons, Russian weapons and probably some form of alien weapon.

In all Call of Duty game fashions, there is multiplayer. It's good. People still play it which is fantastic, but we've come a long way from Call of Duty 2 multiplayer, some better aspects in future instalments, some worse and they could learn a thing or two from Call of Duty 2.

One example of the future getting it right is customisable classes, with a variety of guns and weaponry to aid you in combat, fully customizable in any way you could possibly think of, attachments, camo's and that's about it.

I will give it credit for making a good Call of Duty storyline with memorable characters such as Captain Price and the guy who'll shoot you in the face during the tutorial if you aren't careful. The tutorial was actually pretty well made now that I think about it, shows you how to shoot and throw potatoes and then whisks you away into a mission where it actually gives some pretty good advice such as "Always keep your gun fully reloaded" and "Don't actually throw potatoes instead of grenades."

With all of that in mind Call of Duty 2 gets a 8/10

The Gamerscore Run - Week 1 - Day 1 Update

Okay, like I previously stated in the updated version of yesterdays post, the Xbox 360 games were a bit naff when I said I'd just go through alphabetically. So what I've done is I've copy/pasted my list of 360 games into a random picker thingy, which will assign me five physical games to play through, I'll do the same for digital copies of games, but only three of those. So, instead of the games I said I'd play, I'll be playing:

Bulletstorm
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Lego Star Wars III
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014

That seems better, much more random, I'll keep Quantom of Solace, Kingdom and World for Keflings though, I wouldn't mind plaything through them. So, here's the new list:

Game's I'm Playing Through on Xbox 360

Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G (38% Completion)
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G (58% Completion)
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (75% Completion - Without DLC)
Bulletstorm - 30G/1000G (4% Completion)
Bully: Scholarship Edition - 110G/1000G (13% Completion)
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 190G/1000G (20% Completion)
Lego Star Wars III - 100G/1000G (20% Completion)
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 - 15G/1000G (6% Completion)

Quantum of Solace should be easy, need to finish the campaign, will then run back through and get the optional mission achievements/mobile phones and cameras. Kingdom for Keflings is just a matter of time, same for World of Keflings. Bulletstorm, haven't played much of it yet, I did enjoy it though. Bully, that's a completely different story. I think I'm gonna have to do multiple playthroughs of the game to get all the achievements on that, it's manageable but time consuming. Guitar Hero games are always difficult, will get as many as I can. Lego games are extremely easy to 100% complete and I'd love to 100% complete them all. As for the football game, might get my brother to do it for me.

No achievements yet though...

The Gamerscore Run - Week 1 - The Rundown

I don't know if this'll turn into anything, but I'll give it a go. I like playing a lot of games, specifically on Xbox 360 and Xbox One, over time, I've been getting more and more achievements, it's a lot of fun and I enjoy myself. However, my good friend Joseph, has overtaken me by an excessive amount, I don't have the motivation to collect achievements anymore while he does. So, this is my way of getting myself motivated and hopefully, pass Joseph's gamerscore in 7 or so weeks.

Each week, I'll post an update to the blog to show the difference in achievements and how much each of us have collected over the week. We might even get a word or two from him every now and then. I gave this a go on TrueAchievements but I never found balancing two blogs was the best idea, so I'm gonna post my progress on here. The layout of how it's all gonna work out is down below.

Ewan's Gamerscore - 41,605G
Joseph's Gamerscore - 49,183G

That'll give you the current standings of the week, I'll also put a + next to the gamerscore and how much gamerscore it has increased by, if any. in that week.

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Wolfenstein The New Order - 390G/1000G
Titanfall - 180G/1400G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 635G/4500G

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

007 Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G
2014 Fifa World Cup Brazil - 40G/1000G
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (No DLC)

So as you can see, I've picked four games for each of my consoles, I'll probably play whatever I get for Xbox One and alphabetically for Xbox 360. As for Joseph, who cares what he's playing? He has more gamerscore than me and he plays whatever he wants whenever.

***NOTE***

The games I've picked up top, I'm gonna add more to the list of 360 games, you can probably tell I was going in alphabetical order, honestly isn't the best idea, especially when I'd get to play only Call of Duty, so I'll probably use a random number thingy and just pick 8 games at random. That might work.

Gamerscore needed to go even:

7578G

So, we're just over 7,500G away from getting even with Joseph, which will make the job a lot harder, considering I used to be ahead way back when.

We'll see where we are next week, I'm not looking to complete the games though, I'm only a God, not a miracle work.

Game Reviews #20 - Little Inferno

Platform: Steam
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (TremorGames)

Burn. All. The. Things. Yes, Little Inferno! I picked this up off of TremorGames because I saw NerdCubed play it and noticed that you could burn photos, along with a variety of items. I like burning things, so why not, seems like a perfect little game for me. Honestly, I would have been happy just burning things but Little Inferno wanted to offer more.

So they put a story into the game, while I don't put stories on my review as to not spoil them, I think I should touch on how this story goes. Everyone has fireplaces, you have to burn things to make a load of warmth inside as the outside is cold and bad and everything awful. But how does one get things to burn in the fireplace and keep oneself warm?

Catalogues, you buy items with coins you get off of burning things and spiders, which allow you to buy something out of the catalogue, when you've bought all items on one page of the catalogue, a new catalogue is opened with more expensive items. Sounds great, until you have to wait for the items to burn them. Some items nearer to the end take a few minutes to appear in your inventory, it's ridiculous! You can speed the process up with tokens, but that's like adding a microtransactional system to your game without actually letting people buy useful items. It's best to just open the web browser up on Steam and read this while you wait.

The waiting time in this game reminds me of the Simpsons Tapped Out. A cool game if it weren't made by EA. The time it takes to build certain things in that game is purely ridiculous, eventually taking a day and a half to finish a building, but don't worry, you can spend an exuberant amount of money on donuts, which is their token "premium currency".

The burning animations for each item are superb. Setting fire to corn will make it pop, setting fire to the Tiki heads and they'll spew fire out of their mouth. It's great to see that so much work has gone into the animations and how unique each item is. I'm a big fan of the art style of this game, probably why I played all the way through to the end I suppose.

The game wont take long to beat, 2 hours at the most, just keep burning your things, make your way through all the catalogues and so on. Keep the hug token.

A cool idea that was executed fairly well, however the microtransaction-esq method of tickets to speed up items that take minutes to appear may turn some people away from this game.

Little Inferno gets a 7/10

Is It Worth Watching: Futurama

I just started binge watching a load of shows all at once, so why not make some use out of all my watching of three seasons a day and make a blog post about it. I've got a load of TV Shows and movies to watch through, so why not. We'll kick things off with Futurama. Now I must admit, I'm a lot better at game reviews than I am with TV show and movie reviews, however as time goes on it'll get better and we'll enjoy it all the more. This is a TV show with 7 seasons, so instead of analysing the show as a whole, I thought I'd analyse each season individually.

Season 1 - 13 Episodes

Season 1 gave us such classic episodes such as I, Roomate, Space Pilot 3000 and My Three Suns. This season does a great job of introducing us to our main characters which consists of Phillip J. Fry, Turanga Leela, Bender, Professor Farnsworth, Amy Wong, Hermes Conrad and everyone's favourite Dr. Zoidberg. The first season definitely has a strong lineup of episodes with no horrendously awful episodes to be seen.

Best Episode: Fry and the Slurm Factory

Basically mocking "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" this episode is full of laughs, music and introduced the fan favourite "Slurms McKenzie".

Worst Episode: A Fishful of Dollars

The whole episode consists of Fry looking for Anchovies, then sticking them on a pizza because anchovies died out, definitely not the strongest episode in the series, but still has it's fair few laughs even if the plot is a little fishy.

Season 2 - 19 Episodes

Season 2 was 6 episodes longer than the first season, which is always nice. The more Futurama the better, this season did a fantastic job of making us love our main characters even more than we already did. It even introduced some new, recurring characters that have been our favourites ever since, most notably President Nixon and Robot Santa.

Best Episode: How Herme's Requisitioned his Groove Back/The Cryonic Woman

I didn't honestly know which episode to pick for this one, I like "How Herme's Requisitioned his Groove Back" because it showed us some depth to one of the other Planet Express members, who at this point hadn't had a large story arch like this one. I also picked "The Cryonic Woman" because it show's what happens when Fry's ex-girlfriend comes to the future and how their relationship has an affect on the rest of the Planet Express crew.

Worst Episode: The Honking

Honestly, the reason for me not liking this episode is because it's that overdone. We've seen the original piece of work being Werewolf transformations and car related shenanigans in all manner of shows, movies, books and such. Futurama really didn't hit the nail on the head with this one either, which is a shame because it could've been done fairly well.

Season 3 - 21 Episodes

Season 3, it made us laugh, cry and get emotionally attached to a plant that Fry was trying to find. It gave us a lot more information about Fry's past, Bender gets a boost in plot points and it also gave us plot points to revolve around Farnsworth's and Herme's kids...

Best Episode: Roswell That Ends Well

This episode was great because it was one of the episodes to show how the Planet Express crew have had accidental impacts on history, being sent back to Roswell, Zoidberg is captured and is deemed an alien while everyone else has to fix the ship, also some very interesting things happen to Fry...

Worst Episode: Amazon Women in the Mood

Bleh, this episode is strange. In it, Zapp, Kiff, Amy and Leela all end up on some island where there's women who only want "snu-snu", Bender and Fry are there, then there's a giant computer? I don't know, this episode was really messy in turn.

Season 4 - 18 Episodes

The one with the dead dog. This series is probably the most critically acclaimed amongst fans and for good reason, a plethora of good episodes to choose from. The characters are given some great backstory's and episodes as well which is always good.

Best Episode: Jurassic Bark/Three Hundred Big Boys

Well, that was expected really wasn't it? Seymour and all that, it made me cry and was certainly one of the best episodes just for the ending scene alone. Three Hundred Big Boys is an interesting one, everyone get's $300. Fry buys 100 coffee's, it is amazingly funny seeing how Fry slowly turns into a maniacal freak solely devoted to coffee.

Worst Episode: Bend Her

Bender becomes a woman. I, I don't think I need to say anything else.

This is the first time the show got cancelled, but don't worry, we still have 3 more seasons to go through.

Season 5 - 4 Movies

When Futurama was initially cancelled, Cartoon Network bought the rights to it and put the episodes on their Adult Swim channel, which boosted sails by, a lot. When the contract ran out, FOX bought back Futurama and they started to make new episodes of the show, to boot up the series again, they made 4 movies, split into 4 episodes each time. I watched all four of these in a day. So, unlike the previous four, I don't want to spilt these into Best Episode/Worst Episode, or even best movie for that matter.

Why? Because they were all equally as boring, I'm not saying they were bad, but I think this is when I realised that Futurama was not gonna be the same as the previous four seasons. Don't get me wrong, the movies were funny, but they just weren't as good as what had previously been delivered. I think the one I liked the most was Bender's Big Score, it was funny, made the whole storyline confusingly awkward, yet believable. 

The worst one, Into The Wild Green Yonder was just boring. That's really all I have to say on the matter, it was boring. However if you like cool music, then watch Bender's Game, the credit sequence has some great music. That leaves the other one, the Beast with a Billion Backs, that was OK, I've seen it before quite a lot so it was boring to watch it again, however funny it was.

Season 6 - 26 Episodes

So this is the series reboot after the four movies, that's all I've really got to say about that. This series is OK, not the best start up to the reboot of a show that got cancelled but it'll do.

Best Episode: Attack of the Killer App

I'm not sure why I liked this episode so much, maybe it's because of the mad craze that we call Twitter, this episode took the mick and turned everyone into mindless zombies that bought new phones, just like Apple have done. It also features the infamous "Shut up and take my money" gif.

Worst Episode: The Duh-Vinci Code

So Leonardo da Vinci's secret invention was found in his old beard. We're off to a great start aren't we? Then all of Leonardo's inventions fit together to make a spaceship and they fly off to his home planet...I'm pretty sure somebody got fired over this episode, I'm hoping so...

Season 7 - 26 Episodes

The last season of Futurama was extremely disappointing, there was a plethora of poor quality episodes that just had a stupid idea to revolve around or they just weren't funny.

Best Episode: Murder on the Planet Express/Stench and Stenchibility/Meanwhile

Murder on the Planet Express was actually really cool, left Bender and Fry cold blooded killers when an evil space alien that can shapeshift comes aboard the ship and starts eating everyone when they're on a team building exercise. I definitely enjoyed Stench and Stenchibility as well, it gave Zoidberg a nice plot point that, actually was pretty well delivered. Meanwhile was the final episode in the series, so it had to be good, which it was, so I'm not going to even thing about spoiling that one.

Worst Episode: The Rest of Season 7

Yeah, I didn't have any strong feelings for the rest of the episodes, they're not worth talking about to be honest, the Zoidberg eating money at the casino episode was pretty good but other than that, nothing worth it.

But it all comes down to one question doesn't it?

Is it worth watching?

Yep.

Game Reviews #22 - Call of Duty Modern Warfare - Call of Duty Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

Game two in Call of Duty month is the game that was before World at War and was the first modern day FPS, delivered to us by Intel Core Pr-Infinity Ward apparently and it was then published by Activision. Cool. So, what's it like? It was the first step away from WW2 shooters, so it was a bit of fresh air back in 2007, so it was received extremely well. Is it still good?

Graphics wise, it's still good, for 2007 it's lovely. The best part about the game is it has this thing called a "story", which is very new to the Call of Duty franchise and is lacking in all the future instalments, I'm looking at you CoD: Ghosts. I want to talk about the story a tiny bit, no spoilers though. You play as both the S.A.S. and the US Military fighting the terrorists and SAVIN' MURICAH!

Gun wise, lots to choose from, most, if not all of them new guns because of the new setting, including the infamous grenade launcher, the not so infamous night vision goggles and many an awesome weapon to choose from. The feature of a new multiplayer was the biggest part of this game in most people's opinion. Call of Duty 3 had multiplayer, but Modern Warfare offered a large variety of modern day weapons to choose from and use against other people online, unlocking new camo's, attatchements, prestiges and guns along the way.

There isn't really anything I didn't like about this game, apart from the Ghillies in the Mist mission and the one that followed that. I'm terrible at stealth games, so to have two missions that were necessary to the plot be stealth is asking a lot from me, I remember the first time I played this game, I ended up breaking my controller because of it.

It's one of the best story driven Call of Duty games and introduced the multiplayer aspect of the franchise that is o-so important now.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare gets an 8/10

Game Reviews #21 - Call of Duty: World At War - Call of Duty Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (I think)

The first game of Call of Duty month is in fact the last good Call of Duty we had until Advanced Warfare came along. After Advanced Warfare and Kevin Spacey saved the franchise, I thought I'd look back at some of the other games in the franchise. The first on being Call of Duty World at War.

I remember when this game came out, it was the hype of everyone everywhere, but after the sheer prestige that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare brought, the stakes were high for this game. It went back from an original storyline of modern day warfare that is now so washed out that we want the tired, WW2 shooters back that this game delivered. Graphics wise, it's lovely, the game has aged pretty well after six years. The variety of weapons to choose from is great and it's the first game to bring in a flame-thrower.

The flame thrower was in multi-player too, as a perk, so you could have three weapons technically, which was awesome, that is if you could actually get near enough to people to actually use it. But that wasn't what this game is known for, it's known for beginning the Nazi Zombie mode, which is probably the main reason this game is still fairly active. Three DLC's came out for this game, which featured three multiplayer maps and a Zombies map which seems to be the theme for all games in the franchise now.

Nacht Der Untoten, Verrukt, Shi No Numa and Der Rise. I've spent more time on those maps than I can count I still can't beat my highest round on Der Rise, because I played it with four other people for around 6 hours.

Other than the zombies, what else does the game have to offer? The campaign is nice, you play as the American's fighting the war in Japan and the Russians as they storm Stalingrad and the Reichstag. A nice variety of German, American, Japanese and Russian weaponary is available and not to mention the Ray Gun and Wunderwaffe DG-2 inside of the zombies mode.

One interesting point I want to make is that this is probably the goriest Call of Duty, it's the only one to feature blowing someone's leg's off, which, to be fair, added some pretty hefty realism that Call of Duty stays away from now.

This is by far my favourite Call of Duty, featuring a wide array of features that you wont find in other Call of Duty games

Call of Duty World at War gets a 9/10

Ewan Rants: Pre-ordering

I thought I'd tackle a big one today, something that has plagiarised the gaming industry rather recently these past few years. Of course, I'm talking about the horror of pre-order bonuses, the unessential amounts of shoddy DLC packs and the monotonously terrible micro-transactions. As per usual, OPINIONS, OPINIONS ETC ETC you know by now.



That there right above is the most expensive edition of the game Dying Light, I haven't played it yet but I've heard good things about it. £250,000 for the "My Apocalypse Edition". Just let that sink in, that's probably more money than people earn in all of their working years in some cases. I'd love £250,000, not to spend on the Dying Light My Apocalypse edition though. We've seen this happen before and in much worse circumstances, see the Saints Row IV



The "Super Dangerous Wad Wad Edition" is right now the most expensive game that you can get, to my knowledge it's still for sale, not sure who would want to buy it, but if you want to buy it then you get a trip to space, 7 nights in a fancy hotel in both Washington D.C. and Dubai and a bunch of cars.

So pre-ordering usually gets you some sort of meaningless tat like a statue or a comic. But is pre-ordering worth it? In some cases, yes, if you think a game is good enough and wouldn't be able to pick it up on the release day then it's great. Pre-ordering is very useful, however you don't honestly know how the game is going to turn out. So many people have pre-ordered Fallout 4, there is a slim chance that the game may be a broken mess that is unplayable.

Risk over reward really, pre-ordering games could end up being the best decision of your life because you get a great game, of course you could end up with the worst game of your life. Personally, I don't pre-order games, I sometimes wait for the pre-owned prices to drop on games like Assassin's Creed Unity, which is £15 now, so it's still not worth it.