Start of the Weekend

This was me this morning attempting the beta for World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria, epic fail is my choice of words for it. Seems to be only one server and all the npc quest givers are like this right now, after five minutes I was crashed to the desk top. So right now my beta adventure is on hold for another couple of days until it calms down a little, if it still doesn't then my plan is to just go out and explore the new land.

Anyway back to the matter on hand, morning folks hope you having a good Easter. I know I am since I got the whole weekend off!! Gaming day today for me then tomorrow I'm going out with the girlfriend for a lovely day out (will be street passing on the 3DS lol) then Sunday is another day full of gaming.

Did a couple more levels on Kanes Wrath yesterday so I probably only got like three or four left so that's my goal for today, to clock the game for the full 1,000 gamer score. After that who knows what I will try, maybe my rental game, maybe Pokemon White or Lego harry arrives maybe that.

Well I'm going to go get started and I will catch you all later,
~Iznic

P.S. Two months until E3 2012!!!! Cannot wait

Thursday Thoughts

My week is out of whack thanks to my timetable being different, keep getting my days mixed up so I'm currently all over the place. On the positive side though I am currently around half way through Kanes Wrath on hard mode, getting very close to getting the full 1,000 gamer score. This morning also saw Tales of the Abyss (3DS) arriving in the post from shopto.net and Lovefilm have sent me Marvel Super Hero Squad Infinite Gauntlet so that should be interesting to play. HMV have also posted my time card for Star Wars and Lego Harry Potter for the Vita, really hoping the Lego game arrives tomorrow so I can take it with me on the weekend to play but I have my doubts it will arrive. Actually hope the time card arrives tomorrow or Saturday too since I will be back on Sunday morning and I really want to have a MMO day, spend a few hours on Warcraft doing the new Easter stuff then jump on over to Star Wars to do some questing.

Guess will have to wait for lady luck to decide on my deliveries, anyway back to the present and I'm expecting to have a busy weekend. Currently want to finish off Kanes Wrath since I'm so close to finishing then I probably will jump into my rental Marvel game, but with it being Easter I've got a funny feeling Gears of War 3 will have an event on. Could do with getting back into Mass Effect 3 and finishing it off finally, unlike me to leave such a good game sitting on the shelf but then again it as been a crazy month.

So much to do and so little time, still need to work on Pokemon White and let's not even go into the huge pile of games sitting on my shelves. Someone needs to invent a time stopping device for me! well I better get back on it and yes I've not forgot my reviews, just having a little bit of writers block with them. Hopefully by the end of next week they should be up so until then have a good one,
~Iznic

Gotta Catch 'Em All

Morning folks,
I was planning to jump onto Warcraft this morning to work on today's Dark Moon Faire daily quests, but alas it was not to be thanks to maintenance time so the servers are down. Consoles are temporary switched off since I'm recording and cannot do both since it's a simple free view box. So I thought this would be a good time to work on Pokemon White since I need to unlock the online features so I can download the event Pokemon.

As I spoke in a past post I want to just level up my starting Pokemon so I have a ridiculously high level Pokemon that can destroy everything. So that is my plan for Pokemon White, to stick with the starter and own everything that gets in my way. Of course I will have other Pokemon in my party for abilities like fly, cut etc but they will never go into a fight (well maybe once I own everything in the game then I might work on levelling other Pokemon).

So the first thing to do? pick which starter Pokemon I want to be my champion, now that's an hard choice. I'm thinking grass won't be suitable so it's between water and fire since I think both will be heavy hitters, leaning towards fire more since I've always liked the fire type Pokemon. Feck it let's go with Tepig the fire Pokemon!

Tepig

Always love the basic introduction to the Pokemon games at the start, "Everyone calls me the Pokemon Professor" think you find every professor goes by that title. Hmmm I need to pick my character's gender, thinking girl since I picked boy in Pokemon Black.

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Gone with a girl named "Lily" (yeah I been reading Harry Potter recently) and picked up Tepig, about to do the starting battle with Snivy. Well that went easier then I thought, my first tackle was a critical hit and took out half the health leaving me with nearly level six (level five is the starting level). Second fight with the other friend went the same with a critical hit on my second attack and completely wiping out his Pokemon so now on level 6 and half way to level 7. Don't worry I will not be talking about every battle I do just the important ones like the Gym battles or Boss fights.

Shame I need to end it here since I have work soon and should go get ready, expect another entry for the Pokemon journal soon since I really need to start getting all those event Pokemon downloaded. Plus the fact I really want to finish a Pokemon game for once (I did do the Elite Four on Pokemon Red but that was a looonnnnngggg time ago.

Catch you all later folks,
~Iznic

MMO Night

The first MMO night is over and it was a blast, really found myself getting back into these games finally. Started off the night with World of Warcraft and decided that my task for the night was start clearing space in my bags so I can loot then take a look at my gear since I knew full well it needs sorting.

Well that plan went straight out the window, I do have a bit of space in one of my bags but I did not even bother to start looking into make space since I realised it was the first full of April which means the Dark Moon Faire event is on. For those who don't play the game basically the Faire appears on the first full week of the month, outside the major player cities portals appear which take you to the Dark Moon island. The Faire as all sorts of carnival games, weird pet zoo's and a concert (yup you heard me right).

During the week there are daily quests for the carnival games that can only be done once a day to earn tokens, games including everything from whack-a-gnoll, shoot the target and one of my favourites shooting yourself out of a cannon in the hope to hit a bullseye target in the sea.). Reputation is also earned from the quests which unlocks rewards for you to spend your tokens on, some of the cooler rewards are Bear mounts and vanity pets.

Dark Moon Faire

The Faire also as monthly quests which can only be done once per month (so once per Faire) that boost up your professions stats which is great quick cheap way to help level up, plus reputation and tokens too. Anyway back to the point I did today's quests and will be jumping back on every day to do the quests, of course the major levelling and questing will still have to wait until MMO night next week. Also noticed that this Sunday sees the Easter event going live, now normally I would not bother with it since I've already done it before and got all the rewards but since the Cataclysm expansions all the events have been revamped with new stuff so I'm expecting to see some cool changes for Easter (well hopefully anyway).

With the quests done I pretty much spent researching on guides for my class and seeing whats new, planning out what I want to do. Did pick up some new pieces of equipment too to help me get started into getting back on track so very chuffed, next week I'm planning to level up with some factions to unlock some cool enchants which will buff my stats up as well.

God I bet this sounds boring to people who don't play World of Warcraft, sorry folks maybe it's best to stay away from my MMO night posts.

Anyway I stopped myself since at the rate I was going at I would have no time for Star Wars, luckily for me today is the last day of my old time card so using that up first instead of paying for a month subscription. Going to order another time card in a bit and hopefully that will arrive in time for next weeks MMO night.

So my plan for Star Wars was to do my first Flash Point which is basically a group dungeon, was a rough start waiting for a group but after ten minutes grouped up with a nice Intelligence officer. Have to say it was one of my fun group quests ever, all the loot was for my class and the guy let me have it all so now got a nice set of armour and blasters so my Bounty Hunter is pretty pimped out right now.

The Flash Point was Black Talon, basically a simple transporter ship taking us to our destination which then involved us taking it over to use it to intercept a Republic Battleship with a traitor general on board. Plenty of fun but won't spoil anything with what happened during the fights, as I said I walked away with plenty of loot. Calling it a night now and next week my plan is to start clearing up some of my old quests and maybe have ago at PVP for the first time.



That's it for this MMO night, was a blast and it as sparked my passion for MMO's again! really looking forward to next week. Might even do a session on Sunday since it's easter and work is closed, until then anyway have a good one.
~Iznic

P.S. Will try to word my MMO night posts better next time and make it more enjoyable to read, will try and explain things better for those who don't play to.

The Start of Something Beautiful

Evening folks,
Starting this a little later then I hoped but I am pretty tired from work but going to have a blast tonight, why you ask? well I've decided I'm starting a new regular gaming night for myself. MMO night will be happening on a weekly basis, preferably Wednesday night unless something comes up (like this week so it's today instead of tomorrow). Reason I've decided on this is because once again I wasted two time cards, yup Star Wars the Old Republic ran out today and I worked out I probably only got six hours out of the 60 days. Very disappointed with myself and World of Warcraft is nearly the same, I did do a few extra hours thanks to the last holiday event but it was still not enough to make the purchase of the time card seem worth it in the end.

So back to the matter on hand and less ranting, I've decided that every week I would do a MMO night where I would spend several hours on World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic. Do you watch "The Big Bang Theory"? well think of it like their Halo night. Anyway after work I was able to pick up a time card for WOW but found I could not get a Star Wars one, so I'm going to pay for a month then order a time card off the net to replace the subscription after.

Don't expect anything massive from tonight's session since on Warcraft I need to sort out my Druid, all his bags are full and he's level 85 with green/blue items. So need to sort him out and get him ready for some dungeons, in fact I think I only tried out one dungeon in Cataclysm. See what I mean by not giving the games enough time, anyway in the way of Star Wars I'm hoping to do my first Flash point so wish me luck.

So on that note I'm off to go game my night away and I will not doubt catch up with you either later or tomorrow, will do a post about how it went so until then have a good one folks.
~Iznic

The End of March

Morning folks,
Took me a while to drag myself out of bed this morning so I thought I would kick start my day off with the results for my little challenge this year. Was another good week since I clocked the full 1,000 in Marvel Superhero Comic Combat for the uDraw and finished the dlc for Costume Quest.

Week 11 - This week
Starting Total: 133,974
To Earn: 1,694
Achieved: 0
Difference: -1,694

Week 10
Starting Total: 132,719
To Earn: 1,694
Achieved: 1,255
Difference: -469

Week 9
Starting Total: 131,549
To Earn: 1,680
Achieved: 1,170
Difference: -510

Total So Far -
To Earn: 15,065

Achieved:7,695

Difference: -7,370

Again like the week before I was still short from completing this weeks milestone but was a lot closer and the amount needed this week did not go up. Still have my doubts about hitting 200,000 this year but I am hoping to get above 175,000 which would be amazing. Anyway the 2012 progress as been updated now and I'm up to 19 games finished (includes dlc) so not bad so far, although I got a feeling this time last year I had a lot more under my belt.

So this week I'm not sure what I will be doing since I've got beta invites for Diablo 3 and WOW Mists of Pandaria to play around with. Also waiting to see what my new Lovefilm rental will be as well, although I could do with jumping on Mass Effect 3 and finally give it some time. Guess will have to wait and see how it goes, until then have a good one folks and thanks for reading my ramblings.
~Iznic

April Fool's Events

Evening folks,
Just a quick post about several gaming events that are currently ongoing, first up don't forget to visit Calendar Man in Batman Arkham City for another date. If you not done this before then basically the achievement/trophy requires you to visit Calendar Man 12 times in the year (one per month) to listen to a story, he can be found in the court house prison located through the back door entrance. Just talk to him and listen to his Aprils Fool's day story then exit the building which will cause a checkpoint to save your progress, next event is May 13th Mothers Day.

Next event is Gears of War 3 "Glowie Weekend" which is basically double experience on horde and beast mode, horde mode as been overrun with lambent as well. There is a exclusive Gnasher weapon skin and ribbon to be had as well by playing 10 rounds of Raven Down 24/7, a new play list for the next two days (ends tomorrow morning 2nd April).

Finally Infinity Blade is on sale on iTunes for today only at a cracking price of 69p/99cents!!

That's all for now folks so I will catch you all tomorrow, I'm tired and need to finish listening to Calendar Man so have a good one.
~Iznic

Assassin Creed Collector Editions

Morning folks,
In the week Ubisoft finally announced the special editions for the new Assassin's Creed 3 that will arrive in October and my god do they look amazing. First up is the Join or Die edition which can found with most retailers. This beauty comes with the following:

• Copy of the game (of course)
• Collectors Box 
• Connor's Medallion (new assassin)
• George Washington's Notebook containing detailed information about the role of the Assassins in the war
• Singleplayer Mission "Ghosts of War"
• Multiplayer Package "Sharpshooter"

The second edition which is the bigger one is exclusive to Gamestop but can be pre-ordered/bought from the Ubisoft website store. This ultimate bad boy edition contains the following:

• Copy of the game
• Collectors box
• Steel book case
• Connor Figurine
• George Washington's Notebook
• 2 Singleplayer Missions "Ghosts of War" & "Lost Mayan Ruins"
• Multiplayer Package "Sharpshooter"
• Exclusive Lithograph

How amazing do these look? the figurine is so much better then the past ones and it's meant to be somewhere around 24cm high. Looks like a lot of thought as been put into them, both boxes look amazing and I'm happy to see I can get the steel book case as well. Hoping the notebook goes into some good detail like how they did the Encyclopedia for Revelations, that was an outstanding book.

At this current time I've ordered both editions, Freedom is a must but I did want the Medallion and I normally do pick up the game later on the PlayStation. So I've ordered the Join or Die edition on the PS3 using the excuse that I was going to get the game again anyway so might as well just order the other edition.

By the way just an heads up for UK customers, Gamestop require you to pay the full amount for their pre-orders in advance so if you don't want to fork out the money straight away go with Ubisoft. I did that with the Animus Edition for Revelations and they don't charge until it's shipped.

So what editions you picking up? Join or Die? Freedom? Normal? Both? or none at all?
~Iznic

Late Results

Afternoon folks,
Sorry for the late results for last week but it's been a crazy week for me so far. Good news though I did complete two games last week which is a feat in its self for me right now. Finally sat down and started Captain America which turned out to be amazing and could not stop for several days until it was finished (yes I did the full 1,000 gamerscore). Then I took advantage of the Xbox Live Arcade weekly sale and picked up Costume quest, again another amazing game that I've missed out on in the past.

Although I did finish two games I was still short of my weekly target but compared to the last few weeks it's a lot less.

Week 10 - This week
Starting Total: 132,719
To Earn: 1,694
Achieved: 95
Difference: -1,599

Week 9
Starting Total: 131,549
To Earn: 1,680
Achieved: 1,170
Difference: -510

Total So Far -
To Earn: 13,371

Achieved:6,440

Difference: -6,931


So my plans for this week? well whats left of it anyway, going to be working on Grubbins on Ice which is the expansion dlc for Costume Quest. Also Lovefilm have sent me Marvel Hero Squad Comic Combat for the Udraw, so I will be working on that since its quest short and easy.

Also expect to see more posts over the weekend where I will be catching up on the gaming news and review the games that I finally finished but for now I'm going to go update the stats page then do some gaming, so until then have a good one.
~Iznic

New Highest Score

Yesterday Stallion83 set the new record for highest legit gamer score with a whopping 700,000!

Check out the awesome video he's put together showing off most if not all the achievements earned from 600,000-700,000. Makes me want to sit down and start clocking some stuff, really want to get my 200,000! anyway check out his web post for plenty of details on his journey to One Million




website link


Big Congratulations to him anyway!
~Iznic

Some Ideas

Been toying around with some ideas for the last few weeks for posts for the blog, more in the way of "Adventures in Azeroth". For those who where not reading my blog at that time I basically get a journal of my adventures in World of Warcraft of my new character that I started levelling. It did not go into massive 100% detail but it did give a good run down on what I was doing.

Anyway I was thinking of booting it up again since I want to really put some time back into since I've got a time card that I'm wasting (Old Republic too), but I'm still in two minds if I want to do it. The main reason my mind was on this idea is because I bought Pokemon White a few weeks back in the sale and I was going to do the exact same thing with it.

Every time I play it keep a blog journal of the adventures, was even thinking of having ago on what I saw posted a few weeks back where a guy had only his starter Pokemon. Spent the entire game battling with just that one and got it to level 100 by the time of the Elite Four and owned everything pretty much thanks to the exp all going to that one.

I was curious to see if that was possible since different types have advantages over you but then when its level 100 I don't think that matters anymore, plus add some potions for back up would help just in case.

What do you readers think? would you read it? food for though I guess
~Iznic

My Top 10 Platinum Trophies/1k Games

Morning one and all,
Was thinking about the top platinum trophy list the other day and started to wonder what the Xbox version would be (betting that Avatar Burning Earth would be near the top if not number one). Anyway after those thoughts I started to think about what would be the top 10 that I wanted to get, well it was instantly filled since I wanted all the Mass Effect games which is 3 plus. So I came up with idea that the series would be classed as one, so Mass Effect 1-3 on Xbox and 2-3 on PlayStation is one (yes its that good I would play it again on the other console for the trophies). So here is my list of 10 games that I want to clock...

1. Mass Effect (1-3 Xbox 360 / 2-3 PlayStation 3)
2. Dark Souls
3. Star Ocean (Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)
4. Uncharted (1-3 PlayStation 3 / Golden Abyss Vita)
5. Assassin's Creed (1/2/BH/R Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)
6. Gears of War (1/2/3 Xbox 360 & 1 on PC)
7. God of War (1/2/3/CO/GS)
8. Batman (Both AA & AC on PS3/Xbox/PC)
9. Elder Scrolls (Oblivion & Skyrim PS3/Xbox 360)
10. Warriors Series (Dynasty/Samurai/Gundam/Warriors Orochi PS3/Xbox 360)

Quite a list right and I'm sure I've not put all the variants on it either, but those are the top 10 I would be super proud of to have. If I did enjoy Dark Souls as well I would do it again on the PlayStation and attempt Demons Souls. So my question to you readers is this, whats your top 10 that you want?

~Iznic

More Lego Games

The Lego game series is one of my all time favourite and in fact when a new one comes out I've always bought them day one. It's even come to the point I would shelve other games just so I can focus on them, brilliant fun loving games.

So coming soon Lego Batman 2 and this time it brings in several new superheroes including Superman! cannot wait and last week saw the release of the first trailer.



Love the concept of Lex Luthor and the Joker joining forces and I can see it being a fun game to play but ...voice overs? ... really?? ... I actually like the games with out the voices so not sure what to think about this. Will hold judgement off until I get to play it since for all I know it could turn out awesome for the characters to have voices finally.

Anyway that was not the only news for Lego Games, last week Shopto.net posted up pre-orders for Lego Lord of the Rings on 3DS. Then tonight the Wii version just went up for pre-ordering as well, so really praying right now for the Xbox/PlayStation versions and a trailer to be up soon. It's going to be so awesome! Lego Ring Wraiths, Lego Hobbits...can see it having some funny cut scenes.

If anyone else knows more information about it give me a shout please, I'm all ears!
~Iznic

A Look Back

Morning folks,
Just posted last weeks results for my challenge and archived the last four weeks onto one post (link can be found on the Challenges page). Barely did 10% of the required gamer score last week but I was just out to have fun this time around, finally finished all of Kane's Challenges which was very tough on the Nods last level. I did think I was almost done with the game because I was sure there was only one achievement left for completing the game on hard mode but it seems I had two more achievements on top of that to work on.

Both where secret achievements but after checking out the on line achievement I've found that I missed two bonus missions, might give them a shot when but I think on hard mode it could be a pain so might redo the levels later on in a lesser difficulty.

So apart from that I also took part in the Mass Effect 3 community event on Sunday, basically needed to complete a Silver Reaper challenge to earn a nice special equipment pack on Tuesday. This pack gives one rare N7 weapon (random picked) which at this time is only in the singleplayer part of the game and through the collectors edition only as well. If the community also  killed 1,000,000 Brutes across the event another different pack will be awarded to everyone (even people who did not take part) granting some extra bonus items.

Found myself playing with a friend off Twitter for the first time, now when I say it was hard...well we started at 1pm (did have some breaks) and finally clocked the challenge at 10pm.

Brute

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer is basically Gears of War horde mode with a few random side quests thrown in like kill important targets before the timer is up. It's ten levels long with the eleventh level being a hold out for five minutes until extraction happens.

Starts off quite easy but at level four you start getting Brutes (See above) and then at level five you get Banshees. Those things give me nightmares, there horrible screams indicate they coming and then they can teleport around chasing after you. If they get to close they do a stab attack which basically picks you up and stab you in the heart which is pretty much 90% chance of instant death.

Most of the day we kept failing on level 5-9 but at the end we got grouped up with two awesome guys and finally did it, but the whole thing was insane! on the last level everything just spawned around us in large numbers. It was the most intense 5 minutes of my life, the countdown started and in front of us spawned three brutes, two banshee, ravagers, marauders argh!! too much.

I barely lasted the first two minutes, quickly revived a team mate and dodged back since I was being shot at while I was reviving for only to roll right into a brute. Next thing I know every one was down but luckily one of the random players that was part of the party had a medipack, revived himself and ran around the map for the last 20 seconds to finally get extracted. Thank god you only need one person to get extracted to win the mission because there was no way all of us would had made it.

Watching that mission success window appear was amazing though and did make up for all the failures. I cannot wait to see what the results are today for the rewards, hoping for the Shotgun or Pistol since I could not see the Assault Rifle on the list. Have to admit it was very challenging and I cannot imagine how bad Gold challenge will be, actually I can since Bioware released some stats yesterday for the multiplayer. Of all the successfully multiplayer matches less than 1% are done on Gold (check out VGI site for all the stats) which I can believe after doing silver, there is no real thought put in to make it challenging other then less spawn tons of things to overwhelm them.

Would had been awesome if they threw in some kind of giant boss that required team work to take down parts of it, or a cruiser comes over head and bombs the open areas every few minutes so have to dive into buildings before the timer is up. You know something just spice things up instead of that mess.

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 Anyway enough rambling and get back to the point, I did crap on the gamer score increase but then again it as been like that for a few weeks. This week I want to get some time in on some games so hopefully you will see some increase this week so watch this spot.

Week 9 - This week
Starting Total: 131,549
To Earn: 1,680
Achieved: 0
Difference: -1,680

Total So Far -
To Earn: 11,691

Achieved: 5,270

Difference: -6,421

 

 Plans for this week? Mass Effect 3 and Uncharted Golden Abyss!! I really need to put more time into these two great games. Anyway that's it for this post so take care all and hope you had a great week of gaming last week.

~Iznic

Results: Weeks 5-8

Total So Far -
To Earn: 11,691

Achieved: 5,270

Difference: -6,421

Week 8
Starting Total: 131,384
To Earn: 1,645
Achieved: 165
Difference: -1,480

Week 7
Starting Total: 131,134
To Earn: 1,631
Achieved: 250
Difference: -1,381

Week 6
Starting Total: 130,839
To Earn: 1,582
Achieved: 295
Difference: -1,287

Week 5

Starting Total: 130,449

To Earn: 1,512

Achieved: 390

Difference: -1,122

 

Calendar man Event Tomorrow

Afternoon folks,
Just realised tomorrow is St Patrick's day and that means the next Calendar man event in Batman Arkham City. So don't forget to visit him in the cells under the court house to hear another wonderful bed time tale and of course one date out of the way towards the achievement/trophy.

For me it means I will be making a quick trip home to login before heading back for work, the things we do for achievements and trophies....well the things I do anyway. Of course I know I can change the dates/times on my console but I prefer to get it the legit way.

So no doubt I be seeing lots of people playing Batman tomorrow, until then have a good one!
~Iznic

Assassin's Creed 3 Details

Morning folks,
Just catching up on all the stuff I wanted to talk about on the blog and realised this morning that I never came back about the stuff announced for Assassin's Creed 3. Before go into anything if you not watched the announcement trailer then check it out below, if you have seen it well watch it again! its awesome.



This time around the game looks a lot more brutal in the way of fighting, check out that awesome kill move with the rifle under the soldiers chin. There as been talk that they have scrapped the combat engine and rebuilding it from scratch, should be interesting to see how that turns out because I did like the combat in the other games.

Did you also notice through out the trailer that he's always on the move, never stopping to get into a fight. I remember reading before the conference it was mentioned they wanted it to be like that and I can understand it since you could be in the middle of giant battle so you really don't want to stand still with bullets flying about.

Anyway check out this post on Xbox360achievements.org that as a huge list of details/information about what will be happening in the game.

Overall I cannot wait to play the new Assassin leaping through the trees, stalking patrols and maybe just maybe get some more answers finally.
~Iznic

Top 10 Platinum Trophies

Found the PlayStation blog last week very interesting when it posted up the top 10 platinum trophies that most people have.

1) Assassin's Creed 2
2) Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
3) Uncharted 2
4) God of War 3
5) Resident Evil 5
6) Infamous
7) Uncharted
8) God of War (HD Collection)
9) Borderlands
10) Sly Cooper (The Sly Collection)

I'm not surprised with Assassin's Creed 2 since its a pretty doable platinum, I am shocked with some of the others though. For me I have none of those games but there are several on there that I would like to finish off and get. Check out the link below for the post on the blog since it as some interesting trend information as well, like none of these have multiplayer trophies, all have 89%+ review scores etc

Personally I'm not a fan of multiplayer trophies/achievements since it puts a time scale on getting them, eventually people stop playing and servers get turned off.

What about you readers? how many on that list have you got?

~Iznic


Source: PlayStation Blog

Arcade Changes & Achievements/Trophies

In the week it was announced that the policy for the Xbox Live Arcade games gamer score cap will be increasing finally. In the past the game had to launch with a 200 gamer score, now it must launch with 400 gamer score and with DLC can go up to 800 with up to 62 achievements in total.

Sounds awesome to me and about time, the arcade achievements are always just a quick throw in at the end and now maybe we will see some thought put it in since they will have more room to play with. This new policy starts in April and all games from then on must abide from it, anything this month can still use the old policy if they wish.



Speaking of achievements what are your thoughts on the matter readers? do you love or hate them, same for trophies too. I know this is a big topic that keeps being used over and over but I never really get involved, personally I both love and hate the concept.

I love collecting, it's in my blood, only got to look around my room at the huge collection of games, books, movies etc to know that. Same for in some games as well, in World of Warcraft I collect mounts and pets. When Star Wars Galaxies was running I had a house full of rare items and turned into a museum of collectibles. So it's naturally I would be into achievements and trophies, it's nice to be able to show off what you have done in game. In fact thanks to achievements I swear I get more out of my games, in the past I would never play the other difficulty settings except normal or easy. I wouldn't bother with collecting the treasures or getting all the unlocks.

Also I'm more open to different games than before, if it wasn't for achievements I would have never tried Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires. The game was brilliant and from then on I've been playing and purchasing every single one since and the spin offs too. I do get quite a bit of lip from people saying I only play the easy games for achievements and that they don't count, they really don't think on how much time and effort that as to go into finishing those games. In fact some of those games I love to bits, Shrek 4ever after, Spiderwick Chronicles and Meet the Robinson's are brilliant games. You know when I found a game I love because I usually will make the time to play it both on the Xbox and PlayStation to get both achievements and trophies.

So at the start I did say I hated the concept as well and I do, I love collecting achievements and in a way I think my back log of games is due to that. In the past any major long games where put to the side for the sake of playing the quicker easier games, my other consoles that don't do a reward scheme are pushed aside. PSP, DS, 3DS, Wii and PC don't get as much time as they use to as well because I'm usually working on clocking a game on the Xbox or PS3. Maybe spending less time collecting trophies and achievements, more time gaming I would get a lot more done.


So my final thoughts on the matter? Overall I think they are good idea, you find yourself doing more in the game then you originally would, I find myself playing more different games and to have something to show what you done and be rewarded for it is great. But like everything in this world there is a downside, just need to make more time for the other platforms that don't do it achievements.

So give a shout with your thoughts I would love to hear from you, until then have a good one!
~Iznic

Battlefield 3 Close Quarters

Hello again folks,
Remember last week when I did all those posts and talked about Battlefield 3 expansions, well a trailer went up this week for the first one "Close Quarters".



How awesome looking is that? looks intense and I really could do with getting online ASAP to try out the online. Love how the walls and building pretty much comes apart around you, wonder if you can blast through the walls to make a short cut.

Think I really do need to get online soon, need more time!
~Iznic