Three games down and many more to go

Two posts in one day? Shocking I know!

Hello again readers I thought it was about time I actually did a general update instead of just news or unboxing posts. So I kind a caved this year and my back log of games has been growing quite quickly. Way too many new releases and sales been happening, plus you know what I’m like for buying new games. Also did not help I still have a few games from last year still play as well.

So the last two weeks I have been trying to put more time into getting some of these games clocked and its going well. I finished Lego Batman 3 on the Xbox 360 first along with all its expansions, picked this up last in the Black Friday sales and never got around to working on it. It’s one of my top five Lego games and would recommend playing it, it’s even the game that got me into the Lantern Corp and the reason why I picked up a Green Lantern graphics novel.

Same week I also completed Agatha Christie ABC Murders on the PS4, new release that has just come out. Got say I was bit disappointed with this game since it was really short, would say maybe two evenings or a day to complete it. The puzzles are not too hard and to be honest the story wasn’t that great. I like my puzzle investigating games and I probably will play it again to earn some achievements but I will not be running out to get it any time soon.

Not a bad for a week’s work to be honest, after that I did a take few days off and play some new releases but nothing with a 100% focus. I want to give full focus to games in my collection that once I’ve played I probably will trade-in. With so many new releases over the next few months, credit is always a help right now to pay for them.

This week I started Adventure Time Jake and Finns Investigations on the Xbox One. Few work colleagues had recommended me the show so when I saw this on sale for a good price earlier on the year I picked it up. It’s been sitting there for a while so I thought it was about time I give it a try and if I did not like it then it can be traded in.  Well I was quite shocked how much I did enjoy it to be honest, the game is a like Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes where you investigate the area to find clues and solve puzzles to progress through the story. Story is weird but funny and I enjoyed every minute of it and could not put it down, it’s got me interesting into watching the cartoon as well now. I would have no problem playing this again on a different console to earn some more trophies/achievements. 

Well that’s it folks for what I’ve been playing and completing, what’s next to play? well I’ve got a few games on the go at the moment. Nothing serious just yet but once I’ve got something solid I will do another blog post.

Think that’s it for this blog post and I really should go enjoy my day off with some good games. Need to keep completing some games since there’s quite a few new ones out this month. Expect a post about that soon, until then don’t forget to comment with what you been working on.

Until then have a good one folks,

~Iznic

P.S. Yes I did clock Minecraft Xbox 360 in between but I was only missing one glitched achievement so it wasn't like I did a full massive session to finish it off. Still another 100% though so that was a win. 

Happy New Year!

Good morning folks,

First Happy New Year folks! Hope you had a good holiday and had some great fun. My new year did not start off great since I woke up on the first with a cold which I’m still trying to get rid of. But I’m not letting it get me down and decided that it would be a good time to do a new blog post. So I thought it would be good to talk about this year’s challenges and last years. 

If you read my blog in the past you will already know this but for those who I don’t, every year I set myself a challenge to complete so many games or earn x amount of Gamerscore.

So in 2015 I had a couple of goals and they were:

1. 15 Platinum Trophies
2. Do not let the pile of shame get any bigger
3. Finish all games I buy this year

How did I do? Well the first goal I clocked at the end of the summer which I was really surprised with since I did not think I would get it. In fact, I think I finished on 16 so no bad but in a way it was a little disappointing since I could have earned a lot more in the last few months of the year.

Second goal was very good throughout the year but I did slip up in the Christmas period. That cannot be helped due to the fact I work in retail and it’s the busiest time of year. Plus, I work in gaming retail so add all those new releases into the mix and you be surprised how tired you get when you get home. If I was to grade this goal It would be a B-, good but could had been better.

Finally, as you just read thanks to retail I did not complete goal 3 since I still have new releases from the end of the year waiting to be finished/played. Part way through Tomb Raider at the moment.

2015 was not a bad year overall and I’m happy with how it went so that now leaves to set this year’s goals. This year for 2016 I’m going to go overboard with it and set some stupidly hard challenges. Should be a laugh I’m hoping so what are they you ask?  Goal one is to hit 200,000 gamerscore on the Xbox. Very hard goal since in the past when I did focus on achievement hunting I was earning roughly 17,000 a year. I need 29,000 to hit that goal but I do have in my favour that since the PlayStation 4 came out I’ve not really played much on the Xbox. This means there is quite a back log of games to earn achievements in.

Second goal is to again earn another 15 Platinum Trophies which I do think I should reduce since of my Xbox challenge. But then where is the fun in that! Set the goal high and give it a shot, least I can say I failed a hard challenge and tried.

Of course I want to keep my pile of shame down so I must again try to complete all the games I buy this year. I know it’s hard at the end of year since I work in retail but I know deep down I can do better.

Final goal is stop buying games on impulse, this is how my pile of shame happens and in fact I did pick up a few purchases the other day already even though I got a few games to work through (will blog about them later). Need to reign this in and be good, this will be my true challenge this year.

Quick look at the summary for this year’s challenges.

1. 200,000 Gamerscore
2. 15 Platinum Trophies
3.  No pile of shame this year and complete all the games I buy this year
4. Stop buying on impulse when I have games to play already (Ties in the with third goal)
5. HAVE FUN

Should be a good year for gaming and in fact I have got a post planned to write about what I’m looking forward to this year so keep an eye out for that soon. On this note I’m going to end this blog post and again hope you all had a good new year. Don’t forget to comment with any challenges/goals you setting yourself this year.

~Iznic

Little Overwhelmed

Morning folks,
Not a lot to report for my gaming time sorry to say, been a little busy at work and then when I do get back I'm a bit overwhelmed on what to work on. Really should be working on lego Hobbit and take it from there but there is so much I want to play right now. It's come to point where there is so much I just don't want to play since I cannot choose.

I know it sounds weird but that is what I'm stuck on right now, although I really hope to sort that tonight. I've decided to give myself a kick up the arse and get on with some gaming. It's pretty quiet with the new releases now until May where there is only two, Child of Light at the start and of course Watch_Dogs on the 27th. So I've got around a month before the next big game comes along so I think it's a good time to start getting some games completed.

My challenge for myself is to finally hit that 160,000 gamer score marker by the time Watch_Dogs comes out, that's a 4,000 gamer score increase in a month which is doable but in my case hard if you look at my past track record. But it doesn't just stop there since I do have a 20 platinum trophies goal for year and still sitting on 6, so I'm also throwing in 2 platinum's to the pot just to make it that little harder.

Insane right? I'm thinking it's going to be fun and I have no clue yet on how to complete this other then Lego Hobbit could be one of the platinum trophies. Of course throw into the mix that I'm currently playing two MMO's and want to work on Pokemon Y well this could be one hell of adventure.

Wish me luck and I will keep you up to date on my progress,
Iznic

Achievement Hunting

Morning folks,
After seeing the world record holder hit one million gamerscore it reminded me how much I loved working on collection achievements. Over the last year I really paid more attention to the PlayStation due to the fact there was more exclusives and of course friends on that console. I love trophy hunting as well but both systems have their good parts and flaws.

For example the Platinum trophy for finishing a game sounds so much better then saying I got the full one thousand gamerscore. But on the xbox every achievement counts towards the end score while on the PlayStation gold/silver/bronze trophies are not really talked about other then when you say I need x trophies to get the Platinum. Really need a system with both of those mashes together but anyway I really do want to start collecting achievements again since I've been stuck on 155k for a long while now. My dream would be to hit 200k by the end of the year but I doubt that in some way and maybe 175k is a good goal.

Reason I love achievements and trophies so much is that it's fun to go out and do the weird challenges, to try different modes or to find some cool easter eggs. Plus the fact you do get your moneys worth from the game when you spend all that time working on them. In the past I would just complete the story, I would never go out of my way to play on hard mode or do multiplayer/arenas. Go for all the collectibles and try to find every last secret in the game. There was some games that I would play over and over but not on the scale I would now. To me achievements and trophies are the best thing gaming could had come up with.

Anyway enough ranting and back on topic, I did go through my games to see what I have and I do have a lot of stuff to complete and finish off for the extra achievements/trophies. In fact I got a lot of PC games that xbox live enabled, with the possibility of the service closing I really could do with starting to work on these while I still have the chance. Think I might load up Fable 3 PC first and take it from there, I think I might juggle a few games over the next few weeks. I have Lego Movie Xbox One on rental and I'm expecting Lego Hobbit PS4 to arrive today, very excited to play that one since I hear its awesome and longer then Marvel.

I do have plans to to do two new post series on the blog as well that will be based around Pokemon and Warcraft (yes again, they seemed to be a hit last time). Plenty to do and not enough time, maybe I will try and focus on one or two games at a time. We will see and on this note I better go get ready for work. Don't forget to drop a comment or two, would love to hear why you love/hate achievements or trophies.

have a good one folks
~Iznic

150,000

Not sure what time I hit it but on Saturday evening I clocked the 150,000 gamerscore milestone finally!

I did realise I had done it until Sunday morning when I loaded up Xbox Live to play some games and noticed my score flash up. According to my blog it was back in July 2010 when I hit 100,000 so it's took me nearly three years to get the 50,000. Talk about a slow progress but to be fair I do play other consoles and plus I don't chase achievements as much as I use too. I'm trying to play games for the story first, achievements last but of course now and again I do play a game just to hunt achievements. For example I finished Rise of the Guardians yesterday for the full 1,000 gamerscore, I did pick up the game for the story hoping for something good like Spiderwick Chronicles or Meet the Robinson's. Turned out to be a flop but the game play was not too bad so I stayed with it to get the achievements, takes about 4-5 hours easily since it's pretty much finish every level and collect a lot of stuff.

So my next goal? well I don't have one really since I would like to say I'm going for 200,000 but I'm not really. My main purpose now is to try and finish some of my games in the Pile of Shame that I've created over the years. Especially now with the new consoles on the horizon, I do wonder though if the next Xbox will continue with achievements and gamerscore. If they do will I still be able to use my profile on both consoles, food for thought and hopefully will get some answers soon.

Anyway so onto with what I'm up to, well with my rental game now finished I've decided to jump back onto the Hitman HD Collection. I'm currently playing through Blood Money on the PS3 and god did I forget how good this game was. I'm over the half way point now since I had a huge four hour session yesterday and once I've done the story then I'm going for the Platinum trophy. As to be done, it's Hitman! it deserves the Platinum. Not really playing anything else on the side yet, there are few games I would like to clean up and finish but I think I'm just focusing on Hitman for now.

That's it really for this week, work on Hitman and after that not sure but I will post up once I know so until then have a good one.
~Iznic

P.S. Woot!!! 150,000!!!