So far, 14 games beaten in the year 2010

Technically, this is the sort of post I should have done around the end of June, but I’m a bit slow with these things, and so here it is nonetheless. We’re now definitely halfway through the year 2010, and I thought it’d be neat to stroll back through time and count up the number of games I’ve beaten at this point.

Beaten.

Sometimes, in the world of videogames, that concept is hard to pinpoint. I mean, at what point does someone beat an MMORPG like World of Warcraft? Is it when they reach a level cap or actually run out of in-game missions? How would one define beating UNO, a multiplayer-heavy arcade game that has no main quests to complete? So, for a lot of these games, I think I have to just use my better judgment and decide if completing enough of a game equals beating it. One easy clue is that, most often, a game on the Xbox 360 will have an Achievement tied to beating it, and so if that’s unlocked I will definitely check it off (there’s one exception to this, which you can read about below).

Not surprisingly, all games beaten in the year 2010 for me were either on the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo DS…

Xbox 360

• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues
• Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (something wonky happened and the “you beat the game!” Achievement never popped, grrr)
• BioShock
• SEGA Superstars Tennis (I basically played every single thing on this so it’s considered beaten)
• Dragon Age: Origins
• The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
• The Saboteur
• Peggle (um, I completed the main campaign, just not all the side challenges yet)
• Street Fighter II’ HF
• Borderlands
• Limbo

Nintendo DS

• Hidden Mysteries Titanic: Secrets of the Fateful Voyage
• Pokemon HeartGold (I beat the first region and the Fab Four or whatever they were called, and have now unlocked the second region, as well as a lot of post-game material)
• TouchMaster 3

14 if my math is correct. That’s okay, but for some reason, I expected more in the Nintendo DS category. Maybe I’m just going crazy. Or forgetting a bunch. Oh wells.

There’s a couple of games I’m really close to beating, but still need more time with. Namely, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Picross 3D (I’d like to get over the 200 puzzles mark for this one), LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (this is going slower than many might have expected from me, but that’s because I’m playing the whole thing co-op with Tara), and ‘Splosion Man.

Gamers often fall into the trap of buying more games before completing the ones they’re already working on, and yes, I’ve hit that hump too. However, with money and time becoming a bigger issue right now, I’d really love to work on clearing out more of the backlog. There’s pretty much only two games on my must-buy list (Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Videogame and Fallout: New Vegas), and so I will climb this backlog mountain, hand over foot, until sweet victory washes over me like a morning breeze, and then–and only then–will I strike my victory pose.

An empty room, ready for doom and gloom

Sorry, dear readers of Grinding Down, but today’s gonna be extra light on content. I had a pretty horrific evening last night, and I’m still recovering from that…plus I think I got about three hours of sleep total. Coffee is keeping me going, as are phone calls and the thought of something cool to drink after work, but ultimately, I’m a headmess.

Also, throw in the fact that I beat Limbo last night, and, well, the depression deepens. I wasn’t ready for it to end; it ended nonetheless. There’s a staggering connection between the boy’s trip through the unknown and my life as it is, and one day I’d like to talk about what I see here, but I just can’t yet. It’s too…tangible. The game’s ending left me feeling cold and unloved, as well as strangely satisfied. It’s definitely a doozy, one worthy of exploration.

But yeah. This is it for today. I gotta give my brainwires a rest.

Stuff your sorries into a sack

It’s been a rough couple of days in addition to a rough couple of weeks–which will ultimately just be lumped into a rough couple of months in due time–and I just couldn’t find the time or energy to post something at Grinding Down yesterday. Sadly, all I think I’ll be able to post today is this little apology thing, which, I can only assume, is not very exciting to read.

That said, immediately after work today I’m swinging by the local GameStop to pick up LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4. It’s my official purchase of the month for June 2010, and I’m excited, even if some reviews I’ve read recently complain about it being buggy; others said it’s more or less Potter perfection. Either way, it’s a game I need, and despite the guilt festering in my heart, I’m going to get it and play it and enjoy it as much as possible. The plan is even to cover the first hour of gameplay for, well, The First Hour.

Fifty-eight minutes to go, and then I’m off to another world, escaping yet again, flick and swish…

The great escape plan

I’ve been having an extremely terrible week. There’s a lot of bad stuff happening right now in my life, none of which I want to speak about publicly though I do keeping asking this question of the great being above. Thankfully, there are ways I can escape these horrible thoughts in my mind, if only for a couple of hours, but it’s needed regardless. I’m talking about videogames, and you’re not surprised one bit.

So this is gonna be a, more or less, summary of my week with gaming. Not sure how exciting it’ll be for you to read, but it’s important for me because these are some of the things that have helped keep me sane while everything else falls apart.

Earlier this week I got to try out co-op in Borderlands with Greg Noe. This was a lot of fun, and now I see what I’ve been missing out on. He came into my game at level 50 (capped because of no DLC) and helped me climb from a level 34 to level 39 very quickly. Shockingly fast to be honest. Guess that’s what they call power leveling. We rushed through the main storyline missions and took down Sledge before calling it a night. We chatted and casually shot up skags and bandits, and though he handled most of the fighting I really didn’t mind as I still racked up experience points. Got a bunch of co-op Achievements as well, and I’m one away from getting all of them in Borderlands (minus the DLC ones naturally). Just gotta ping level 50, which I might save for (hopefully) another session of co-op with Greg!

I also spent some Microsoft Points, snagging namely Peggle and Street Fight II Hyper Fighting as of the moment. Still have 800 Points to go. I contemplated getting the recently remade Earthworm Jim HD, but after playing the trial version decided otherwise. As Jim, you can’t jump and shoot at the same time, nor can you jump up off of ropes, only down. These design choices have been there from the beginning, but I’ve been spoiled by much better platformers since then and can’t get past these kinds of hiccups.

Peggle is great fun, and I am now working my way through each challenge level; my favorite power-ups are the dragon’s bouncing fireball and the owl’s zen shot. A lot of the game relies on luck, but there’s also a serious amount of planning and preparation to put into each level.

As per Street Fighter II HF, I don’t have any fighters on my Xbox 360 so I figured why not get one of the classics. Even on a difficulty of two stars out of seven, the game seriously mopped the floor with me. Guess I need more practice, but it’s fun nonetheless and really brings me back to those mall arcades. However, Dhalsim’s level is atrocious. The elephants in the background do not stop making noise the entire time. I had to put it on mute. Yoga flame!

After getting stuck on an Act II mission in The Saboteur last night, I said “feck it” and just ran around blowing stuff up. In other words, taking out some more white dots from the map. I also ended up unlocking two Achievements around the same time: the one for blowing up 50 vehicles and the one for stealth killing 50 Nazis. Guess those two were neck and neck for awhile. Hopefully I can get past this mission real soon. An online guide suggests doing it undercover, but the problem is I get caught too soon each and every time. Not sure what I’m doing wrong or if there’s another way around it all. Will keep plugging at it; unlike GTA IV, dying during a mission doesn’t make you start all the way back across the city. So there’s no reason not to keep trying.

Right. I’m visiting home-home for the weekend so I’ll probably just bring my DS to distract me. Picross 3D puzzles and more Pokemon HeartGold to sift through. Other than that, Tara and I will most likely play the LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 demo together tonight, which I really think she’s going to love. We watched a dev diary video recently that showed off Mad-Eye Moody in LEGO form. He looks simply splendid. This world is so perfect for the LEGO build; I can’t stress that enough.

So yeah, that’s my week of escaping. It’s all I can do at the moment.

An update of many things

Apologies for the lack of an update yesterday. See, I had a crazy busy weekend and was really nothing more than a puddle of ooze come Monday. If I had tried to type any words, they most likely would’ve came out like so, “Ghkfer eere yh jkyyu isood kgkgkgx zzdfzzzzZZzZzz.” Yeah, a good time for all.

For starters, I became an uncle. And then I also celebrated with my fiancée Tara as she graduated from college. Woo on both fronts!

To keep this videogame-oriented, I got her a super shiny cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite as a graduation present. I think she likes it (see above). But you can’t really have a DS and not have a game to play so I picked up Boing! Docomodake DS for her, which is a decidely odd little puzzle-platformer starring…fungi. Love the music though. And then my mother hooked her up with some “find hidden objects” game from her collection, meaning she’ll have plenty to do now that she has some freedom.

But yeah, given the weekend’s events, I did not get to do much gaming. But I surprisingly did some. Like more grinding in Pokemon HeartGold so I can beat the Elite Four (my Ho-Oh is at LV. 55, and I plan to stop grinding when it gets to LV. 60). I also played some more of Aquaria–surprisingly well too, considering I was without a mouse while traveling–and though I originally thought I was going to review the first hour for you-know-who, I’m passing that torch along to another writer for the site. Which is fine, really. My time and creative mind space is extremely limited at the moment, but trust me–I will have a lot to say about this game in the near future. And yesterday, shortly before my brain leaked out of my head, I put another hour into Borderlands and just about did every quest in my log save for the one to take out Sledge. So that’s next on the list…

Oh, and one more thing. That Humble Indie Bundle I wrote about a few posts back? Yeah, they added a sixth game to the collection, readily available for those that already purchased the bundle: Samorost 2. I only downloaded and ran it to make sure it worked, but it seems like a very stylized point-and-click adventure. Aliens took my dog? Will definitely check it out soon.

If the Humble Indie Bundle reaches donations of $1,000,000, the developers will release the source code for several of the games. It’s currently at $949,491 as of 1:oo PM today, and there’s only so much time left. If you haven’t checked into this yet, PLEASE DO IT RIGHT NOW. It’s a wonderful collection of games with no restrictions as to where you play ’em and how you share them. I can’t recommend it enough…

Press start to continue

Well, no…not really. But it sure feels like I’ve run out of extra lives after a busy, busy weekend. There was movie-watching, marriage courses, and heavy lifting. Not a lot of videogaming in the end, but hopefully I can make up for that over the week.

You want something to look forward to? How about a review of THE WORST VIDEOGAME EVER MADE BY MAN?

Stay glued for that one.

Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and more arriving on Xbox 360 November 17

That’s right. A slew of social content is coming to Xbox Live on Tuesday, November 17, including Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Zune video, and a new “News and More” section, which will draw from MSNBC, The New Yorker, and Dilbert for content. Wait…Dilbert? Hmm.

Seems that the services are only available to Xbox Live Gold members but us lowly Silver users (must be 18+ for Facebook and Twitter) will be able to get a sample thanks to a Free Gold Weekend happening from Friday to Sunday. I’ll be sure to try it out and let the world know what I think of it. Personally, I still feel like much of the social shtuff such as tweeting and updating statuses will be time-consuming, awkward, and worse for wear, but let’s wait until I can actually update my status with “Just blew a Super Mutant Overlord to pieces with a Lincoln’s Repeater headshot!” before I start with the nay-saying.

Until then…

Fallout 3: Status Report (Level 20)

I’m now ten levels deeper than my previous update on Fallout 3, and I’m still totally loving this game. If this was vanilla Fallout 3, I’d be at the end of my rope, no longer able to gain experience past level 20, but thankfully, with the Broken Steel DLC, there’s still room to grow.

So, what have I been up to these past ten levels?

Well, I researched further into my father’s past, freed him from the madness that was Tranquility Lane, helped him get Project Purity going only to have that fall apart, befriended a vernacularly loyal Super Mutant, stole a G.E.C.K., got underminded, convinced a AI prez to do himself in, and readied myself in preparations to “take it back”…only to not.

And that point, I kind of sensed that the big finale was coming up (and by finale, I mean the original end-all, be-all vanilla Fallout 3 finale; I’m completely aware that the game continues on now after the fact) and I just wanted…to explore. There’s so much to see (and miss) in this game, it really is quite astounding. Imagine me, just venturing around the wasteland when I spot a rinky dink house in the distance. Off I go…only to find myself distracted by something else before I even reach it. Ah, ADD and the Capital Wasteland–causing havoc since 1954!

Anyways, I took on a few more quests (The Superhuman Gambit was especially fun, but I felt too much pressure during Blood Ties to do the right thing and so I let the “cannibals” slide for the time being), and then when I was ready for some more gameplay-driven adventure I searched out the downed spacecraft. That’s right, I tackled my second piece of DLC: Mothership Zeta.

Much like Operation: Anchorage, Mothership Zeta is a very linear experience. Your character is captured in a beam of light and transported onto the big ol’ spaceship to be plucked and prodded. Then, with the help of some other prisoners, you will have to escape the ship (e.g., reach the bridge and kill Captain A. Lien). It’s hard to get lost, and you’ll basically be plowing forward, shooting aliens with their own awesome weaponry while collecting tons of weightless food and energy cells. I didn’t worry about finding all the radio logs, and on whole the DLC took about three to four hours to complete. It was a good time, and it definitely helped me earn XP with little to no trouble. But again, while the plot and worldbuilding in Fallout 3’s quests are deep and well-told, the two DLC so far that I’ve experienced are not. Some of the logs reveal a few bits of story, but otherwise it is just “see alien, shoot alien”…except for the workers. Had to keep my karma in check.

But that’s it for now. I suspect I’ll head back and wrap up the Take It Back quest and then head elsewhere. The Pitt or Point Lookout, dear readers? Both worry me that my stealthy ninja might not be a great match for them.

And I still haven’t found Dogmeat…

Did I mention…?

…that I beat Assassin’s Creed recently and was severely disappointed in its “ending”?

…that I checked out the demo for Batman: Arkham Asylum and thought it was okay at best, but the actual combat felt clunky and foreign?

…that I’m a few steps closer to achieving a full gamerscore for LEGO Batman?

…and that I solved my second mystery in Magician’s Quest Mysterious Times and it involved fishing and then fishing and then fishing more?

All systems engage and–update!

Today’s the day Xbox LIVE gets an update.

Will have to wait until I’m home from the day job to check out how it runs and all that, but so far the Internet is telling me all is good. No Facebook/Twitter integration, rampaging dinosaurs, or XXX porn. That comes in the next updatery. Can’t wait…