Ok, it's a very rare day when I post a blog specifically devoted to a single game, but with all the new community games which came to the Xbox 360 yesterday, there is some pretty amazing stuff out there. If you're unaware, the community games are games that private people or very small companies without distributors make and put on Xbox Live to be bought by us, the consumers, for cheap on both ends. Quite a few of the games come out as utter crap, like something you would immediately delete of your new cellphone. However, some of the games are outstanding, and even revolutionary. The people make the games, and the people know what we want!
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So, the game that has stood out the most to me so far is In The Pit. It's shocking that nobody has created a game of its kind before. There's no video or pictures of any type in the game, so I actually play it with the tv turned off. Sounds crazy, right? Well, you play as a monster in a pitch black pit. People wind up in the pit, and you have to eat them, but you can only tell their location by listening to their breathing, and you can't move too fast, or else they'll hear you. The game is completely revolutionary, and so damn entertaining. It's only really worth playing if you have a good pair of headphones, or a great surround sound setup, but if you have that, it is really great.
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The game is $5, and I don't know how long it is, as I've only had about half an hour to play so far, but I think it was entirely worth it, even if only as a conversation piece. If you've tried it, let me know what you think.Â
Today marks the 10th birthday of Penny Arcade, which was birthed on November 18th, 1998. Here's the first comic produced, which was done with MSPaint, while Gabe now uses Photoshop.Â
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Happy Birthday, Penny Arcade, here's to another great decade!
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Current gamerscore stands at: 42,502Another fairly brief 1,000. My gaming time definitely spiked during this last stretch, thanks in no small part to Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3. So, today's Friday, I got both games last Friday. By Saturday night, I had put in 20 hours on Gears 2, and by today, I have put in almost 50 hours on Fallout 3. This is not to mention the hours of DS I've been playing lately. I think it's fair to say that this has been The week with the most gaming in all my life! And I recently got quite a few games from Gamefly, including Silent Hill: Homecoming, which I'm really looking forward to! So, about that 42,000, here's the rundown:
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Days since 41,000: 10 daysÂ
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (50 points) - Really starts off amazing, but kinda drops off after you no longer get to be Vader, imo. I don't like the combat too much, and I really hate games with an uncontrollable and unending supply of enemies. I like to explore, and I hate that hindrance. That being said, I borrowed this from my neighbors and I will hopefully get a chance to finish it off.Â
Portal: Still Alive (25 new points (200 total)) - Portal became my second ever 100% gamerscore XBLA game! Huzzah! Portal has great replay value, mostly for trying to get fewest portals or footsteps, or lowest time on the challenge maps, and to get lowest time on the main game. Time is measure in some odd point system, so all I know is my best time in the game is just under 300,000 points, which is about 45 minutes. Beat that!Â
Gears of War 2 (470 points) - Gears 2 is much better than the first, everybody's been saying it, and it's true. Unfortunately, Gears 2 also has a lot more bugs (and I'm not talking about the locust variety). The game can glitch out pretty bad, often causing certain parts to be not passable. I haven't played the multiplayer, since that's not really my thing, but I did get through the sp on hardcore on co-op, and it lasts a lot longer than the Gears 1 sp, so I'm working on it on Insane now.Â
Rock Band 2 (0 new points (470 total)) - Haven't been playing too much Rock Band lately, mostly because of the horrible list of releases last week. This week, however, they released the Colours and Shapes album from the Foo Fighters, and it's really good, but they charged $20 for it. Bastards.Â
Fallout 3 (600 points) - Fallout 3 is all about big pros and big cons. Pros: great graphics, no load screens in any individual map, including the massive outdoor one, tons of good voice acting, long life, tons of stuff to explore, really cool weapons and visual design. Cons: The usual Bethesda glitchiness (got used to it from Oblivion), the story really falls apart at a certain point, no exploration after the main quest has been completed (seriously, Bethesda, wtf?), and the new level up system sucks. At least Fallout 3 has only frozen on me a couple times, major improvement from Oblivion. Bethesda did, however, keep as much stuff as physically possible exactly the same as it was in Oblivion, I assume to cut costs. Even the sound when you pick up a key is exactly the same byte as from Oblivion, and even Morrowind! If only they'd kept the level up system the same. In their past games, you would practice a skill to level that skill up, giving you the ability to max out your skills, and incentive for using them. Level up your main skills 10 times, and you get a level up of your character, where you can improve your stats. However, Fallout 3 uses a more traditional rpg level system, where you gain some weird thing called "experience points" and can only improve your skills through a distribution system trans level. Besides all the negatives, though, it really is a great game. It definitely takes some time to get into, as it can be very difficult early on after you get outside, but once you're established, you'll love it.Â
Current gamerscore stands at: 42,152
Following a tip from Tycho, I went to 7-11 a couple days ago to pick of Gears of War 2, a full 2 days before release date. Unfortunately, they had sold out. However, I did get back there early this morning and snatched a copy. I also got a copy of Fallout 3 from them. Who'da thought 7-11 had turned into a game retailer?! Anyway, I've been on Gears for about 4 hours now, and it's amazing so far. Even better than the original. I can't wait to play it on my 65" hdtv when I get home from school for the holidays, but my little 29" here will have to do for now. Atleast I have a great sound system here. Well, back to the game!
Current gamerscore stands at: 41,137Current world gamerscore rank: 18,200
Ok, a quicker 1,000, still. This one due in no small party to Samurai Warriors 2 Empires, gaining me 900 points in about 3 days! Oh, and the other topic in the headline, yeah, this week was probably the worst week on record for Rock Band song downloads. So they release new songs every week, and, like a sucker, I buy them every week (I now have over 150 downloaded). Normally, they have some really good stuff. This week should have been no exception, as there was Fallout Boy, which I love drumming to, The Presidents of the USA, which I love and are a local band, and some band called Hinder. Well, listening to the Hinder song, it was completely lame, so I didn't get it, but I downloaded the other songs without even knowing what songs they were. That was a mistake. They chose probably the worst Fallout Boy song possible, with very low fidelity and lame drumming, and 3 President's songs that I don't know at all, and generally don't like. Nice going on the worst week ever, Harmonix.
Anyway, so I got another 1,000. Here's the rundown:
Days since 40,000: 3 days
Marble Blast Ultra (10 new points (130 total)) - Apparently, somewhere along the line, they released new achievements, so I went back and got the easiest one!
Rock Band 2 (100 new points (405 total)) - Apart from this week's releases, I'm still playing almost every day, slowly working towards mastery of my drum craft! The new achievements came mostly from finally starting to play in score duels and tugs of war with people online.
Samurai Warriors 2 Empires (900 points) - For those who aren't in the know, I'm a big Dynasty Warriors fan. So here's the thing about Dynasty Warriors, they made 30 different versions.......all pretty much the exact same game. I played all of them. Extensively. Then, Koei realized that Dynasty Warriors games were coming along a little too rapidly, so they ditched the Chinese set and exchanged Lu Bu for Nobunaga Oda in Japan and called it Samurai Warriors. So, in the normal games, you go through a story board campaign and fight each battle along the way. In the Empire editions, you actually go throughout the empire the way you want to and try to unite the land that way. Just different colored icing with the same sweet, sugary flavor!
Current gamerscore stands at: 41,007Current world gamerscore rank: 18,226
Another landmark gamerscore! It's been a year and 3 weeks since 30,000; it's about time!!! So, involved in this one was the new Penny Arcade game which I've been heavily anticipated, and it turned out to be my very first ever 100% XBLA completion game! You may notice that this 1,000 gamerscore went by relatively quickly compared to others recently. That's mostly because, now that I'm in a college dorm room, I've got tons of gaming time available! Anyway, here's the rundown:
Days since 39,000: 15 days
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (10 new points (205 total)) - After 7 months, I finally got back to Vegas 2. I never actually beat this installment, though I did beat the original on Realistic. The 10 points came from a glitched achievement that had never shown up, but did as soon as I started the game this time because I had cleared the cache on my 360's hdd. I'll hopefully get back and beat the game soon.
The Darkness (170 points) - I bought this game quite a while back from Gamefly, because they were having a deal and it was very cheap. I always avoided playing it because I had bad misconceptions about it. However, I watched my roommate play it for a bit and decided it was a must play. Turns out it's actually pretty damned funny, and not bad gameplay. I'll most likely be finishing the game within the next couple weeks.
Portal: Still Alive (175 points) - Thanks to Chaoscougar for clueing me in on this game. I, of course, got the Orange Box, and loved Portal. I was pretty stoked to hear about Still Alive coming out. The additional maps are definitely different from the original ones. Most of them require use of what seems to me to be a glitch, where you're half in, half out of a portal, fire another one, then back out before it lands. Just seems to me they shouldn't require you to know about that, but they were relatively challenging and fun. The only achievement I didn't get was the "Only go through orange portals" achievement, because it's apparently VERY picky.
Penny Arcade Episode 2 (200 points) - Again, I was very happy to see this installment released, and again, it's my first 100% completion XBLA game (although I have nearly 30 total!). Episode 2 is absolutely hilarious, ingeniously written, and a much more well made game than the original. It does have one major glitch, though, which required me to get nearly to the end of the game to find, then I had to go back through the whole thing again. As the uneducated would say: "Irreguardless," Episode 2 is a great game, and I really can't wait for episodes 3 and 4!
Rock Band 2 (70 new points (305 total)) - I'm actually getting considerably better at the drums, since I've been playing pretty much every day for an hour or 3 each time! I love the drums and can now do most songs on expert, whether my roommates or neighbors appreciate it or not. :)
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Original Xbox game) - Like I said last time, my roommate got me back into this game. I've completed the Bloodmoon quests and all the guilds, and probably have only another 100 hours left to satisfactorily completing the game.
NCAA March Madness 07 (400 points) - Achievement ***** game here. Rented it from Gamefly, played 1 game, got 400 points, sent it back. Not much story here.
Current world gamerscore rank: 19,144
I neglected to mention that I started college at a real university, Central Washington University. I'm living in a dorm now, and taking 3 ****s which don't require tons of homework, so I get a lot of gaming in. I was thinking of cancelling my Gamefly subscription to cut costs, but now I realize I'd go insane without new games. Anyway, I hit 39,000 yesterday, and am now getting a chance to post this. Here's the rundown:
Days since 38,000: 32 days
Madden NFL 09 (235 new points (1000 total)) - A far more enjoyable entry into the Madden series than many that came before it. I finished the achievements, then went into superstar mode, which still isn't perfect, but it's the best version yet.
Duke Nukem 3D (20 points) - COME GET SOME! I haven't had enough time to get deep into this XBLA adaptation, but I definitely like what I'm seeing so far. That is, the same game I played a decade ago on Playstation. Very nostalgic for me.
Fear Files (445 points) - Plays exactly like FEAR, looks exactly like FEAR, and scares exactly like FEAR! This may be a separate title on Xbox 360, but it's a very welcome one.
Turok (10 points) - I rented Turok based on a friend's recommendation, and his opinion still has weight. It may not be the N64 version, but it's pretty close, and plays a lot like Halo. I still have it and will be playing it again soon.
Rock Band 2 (305 points) - It's Rock Band, but with some doable achievements! RB2 has actually taken up over half of my play time lately. Living in a dorm, now, there are always people popping in to rock out, and my drumming skills has improved greatly (as demonstrated by the 100% on expert drums achievement!). My Rock Band 2 plus downloaded library now consists of well over 200 songs!
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Original Xbox game) - Have you played it? No? You casual! I'm now working on 500 hours playing Morrowind, and started a new playthrough in my dorm at nights, mostly because my roommate is a huge fan, as well, and I figured the music wouldn't bother him at night.
Current gamerscore stands at: 39,022Current world gamerscore rank: 19,462
So, Gamespotting did it, and so shall I. Here are my 5 most played games, as reported by 360voice.com:
1. Forza Motorsport 2
Days played: 57 Last played: 8/14/2008 Points: 970/1000
2. Rock Band
Days played: 40 Last played: 8/16/2008 Points: 275/1000
3. Blue Dragon
Days played: 31 Last played: 4/20/2008 Points: 485/1000
4. Mass Effect
Days played: 26 Last played: 3/15/2008 Points: 1050/1050
5. Gears of War
Days played: 21 Last played: 3/13/2008 Points: 620/1250
Your turn!
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