Thursday, July 06, 2017

Game Diary: Quite the Achievement!

Hello everyone! I realise there has been a dearth of content for quite a while though.  Hopefully this post will be just the start of a flurry of activity on the site, as I have a lot of things to write about. To begin with I want to let you know what I've been up to over the last month or so, and why both the blog and YouTube channel will benefit. So, somewhere around the end of May I noticed that my Xbox Live Gamerscore was about 12,000 points shy of 100,000, which is currently the highest VIP tier called Overlord. Those who are in the Xbox Rewards program who manage to reach this level get and increase in the amount of reward points they get back on purchases, which gets converted to cash every so often.  I decided that I would make it my goal to try and reach the 100,000 points, and also go back to quite a few games that I had only partially completed in the past.

So far I've managed to finish Far Cry 3 on the 360 as well as Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition and Assassin's Creed: Blag Flag.  These aren't the easiest achievements to get but they aren't too bad.  I'm not trying earn every achievement in every game either, as that's not my idea of fun. I did finish most of the side content in these three games though.  As well as these games there were also a number of Telltale games that I hadn't played yet - Tales from the Borderlands, The Walking Dead Seasons 2 and 3, as well as the Michonne mini series.  These are all an easy 1000 points just for getting to the end, and I had been meaning to get around to them eventually anyway.  In addition to all this I have also signed up for Xbox Game Pass and have been playing quite a few shorter games such as the Sega and Capcom retro collections for games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Dungeons & Dragons.  I personally think the Game Pass is excellent because I never would have spent money on games like these when there are so many AAA titles just waiting to be picked up instead, yet I would still like to play them.

Just lately I have moved on to playing Watch Dogs and have gone back to Forza Horizon 3 where I still have a lot left to do.  The same is true for quite a few of the older Forza titles as well - there’s so much content in those games that I’m never finished by the time the next one comes out.  Although I have already played Watch Dogs on the PS4, that was several years ago now and I did enjoy it. Watch Dogs was one of the Games with Gold in June so I haven't had to pay anything for it - in fact I took a bunch of older PS4 games that have since been in either Games with Gold or PS Plus to CeX and got £27 in trade in value, which I used to get Ghost Recon: Wildlands.  I haven't really played much of it yet though.

Looking to the future, I’ll be moving onto trying to polish off Mad Max and Mafia III.  I have tons of other open world games to get to – Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, Unity and Syndicate, Saints Row IV Reelected, Sunset Overdrive, Re:Core – tons!!! Right now I still need to earn just under 5000 Gamerscore to reach 100,000, so I've still got quite a bit of gaming to go.  Of course, as a result of this very Xbox centric time my PS4 and Switch are getting a little bit neglected.  I'll make up for that after I'm done though, especially as I really want to spend more time with Wipeout Omega Collection and dive in to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age which is out very soon.  Even the 3DS is getting some love right now with the awesome looking Ever Oasis, a full on remake of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid: Return of Samus!

Anyway, as I've been playing through these games I've also been capturing quite a bit of footage from them, and I do intend to write reviews and create videos for them as well.  I've been putting it off for a while because I wanted to write this very article that you're reading now, so now I've got this out of the way I shall start knocking out those reviews.  I'm also in the middle of PS2 Tuesdays Season 4 as well, so I do have to spend some of my time playing and reviewing some PS2 classics.  Speaking of which, the next one of those will be The Red Star, a great and overlooked arcade style shooting and fighting hybrid. Once I've got that made and uploaded I shall then try and find a spare hour or so to write the Sleeping Dogs review, and so on with the other games.  You should see quite a bit of productivity if I manage to stick to the plan!  If you have any recommendations of Xbox One or Xbox 360 games that I could play through then be sure to leave a comment. I have recently picked up copies of Bionic Commando (the 3D one), Wet and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for £1 each - are any of them worth trying? What about the Lost Planet trilogy? I've been thinking of getting those too as they are so cheap.  Any advice would be appreciated!