Achievements for Fallout: New Vegas lack glitz and glam

With a month or so to go until its release, the Achievements list for Fallout: New Vegas was bound to be spoiled early. And now it has. Everyone toss your poker chips into the air and give a shout of joy! Well…mild joy. Alas, the Achievements are rather uninspired. They follow the same format, more or less, as Fallout 3, with a chunk given for completing quests, another for reaching specific levels (though this time without karma), and others for doing X a number of times. The toughest-looking Achievement is probably Hardcore, which demands you play the game from start to finish on hardcore difficulty. Everything else should just come naturally with time and persistence. I’m guessing snowglobes are the new bobbleheads. And sadly, there’s no random Achievements like Fallout 3‘s Pyschotic Prankster (10G; Placed a grenade or mine while pickpocketing). It’s all plain Jane.

I guess that’s okay. I mean, truthfully, I don’t play games just for Achievements…but I kind of expected a little more flair here given the Vegas setting and all. The names are pretty solid, but the actions to earn them are yawn-worthy. I half-expected some for maybe beating the game without killing anyone or another for strippers.

Fallout: New Vegas is set to release on October 19, 2010, for the PS3, PC, and Xbox 360, and I’ll be honeymooning in Florida, spending my time storming Hogwarts and riding all the non-scary rides. Oh well. The game will have to wait for my grand return.

So…ready to see ’em? Click the linky below to see the full list of Achievements for Fallout: New Vegas.

Xbox Live prices set to increase real soon

Well, it was bound to happen. Subscription rates for Gold members of Xbox Live are increasing a wee bit, but even a wee bit in this day and age is enough to either make or break someone. Here’s a good table breakdown of what is what (snipped from Press the Buttons):

Like I said, tis only a wee bit of an increase. An extra $0.83 a month if you really add it up. However, as of late, I’ve been paying for my Gold membership on a month-to-month basis, and I don’t even think I used it at all in August so far. Haven’t found any time for online co-op in Borderlands so the only benefits of a Gold ‘ship at this point has been early demos and not using their Facebook/Twitter applications. Yippee? Nopers.

Considering I’m getting married in October and moving apartments in a few weeks, I’m most likely going to axe my Gold ‘ship for the time being. Hey, I might not even have the Internet for a bit. I meant…it’s not worth the money. I haven’t even turned on my Xbox 360 in five days, and the games I most often end up playing lack any kind of online characteristics.

But there’s always pre-bed rounds of UNO. Hmm…

Scott, if your life had a face, I’d punch it and gain XP

Yesterday, after work, Tara and I went looking for apartments. Cause, more than likely, we’re gonna need a place to live after we get married. The one we saw is decent; it’s old and old-like, and it has these slanted ceilings to it because it’s basically the third floor, and these slanted ceilings are going to do battle with me and my head. Tara will be fine; she’s a short thing. But yeah, the timing of things to come and the constant worry of money and/or lack of money…well, it hit us hard with The Stress. Thankfully, I knew that once I got back to my pad that there’d be a light of happiness and distraction. See, Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game hit Xbox Live just yesterday. Sure, those Playstationheads have already got to enjoy it now for a week, but I’ve had to bide my time accordingly. Not like I have things to do or anything. ::ahem::

So, this game…it’s hard. And it sounds beautiful. And the animations are top-notch. And I died a lot as Kim, and I could only beat Ramona’s first evil ex as a level 4 Scott. And I spent almost all of my money on sushi. And I love the references to all things O’Malley like the Kupek graffiti or seeing Lost at Sea in the bookstore. It’s Scott Pilgrim the Game, through and through.

One thing I don’t like though is how it controls, but the majority of that blame falls upon the Xbox 360’s controller. The left analog stick does not allow for quick side-stepping and yet the d-pad below it is not in the best place for this kind of button-mashing game. My thumb’s natural instinct is to go to the analog stick, and this leads to many faulty moves. And I don’t think I ever hit the block button once, but maybe I should rethink that considering how beat up Kim got.

Managed to snag three Achievements though:

Dirty Trick (10G): Defeated an enemy by throwing an object at him while he was already down.

Shopaholic (20G): Bought all the items of a shop during the same visit.

New Challenger (10G): Defeated Matthew Patel without losing a life.

That last one had me nervous. Patel wiped the floor with Kim thanks to his hipster demon girls, but Scott has a great kick-uppercut combo that slowly whittled him down into coins. After that, the world map opened to two areas, one that I’ve already gone to (the shopping district). Didn’t have any more time to play as the pillows were calling out my name. Might try more tonight, but every review says that the game gets extremely challenging for solo players. Gotta wait for Tara to join me in cold, snowy, pixelated Toronto. However, I’m not totally convinced on the RPG elements within, as the leveling up system is…decidedly odd. Will have to (pun-intended) experience it more.

LEGO Harry Potter’s final boss fight is like an Unforgivable Curse

Unforgivable.

Well, that’s another game beat for 2010.

Over the weekend, Tara and I finished up the last book section of LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, completing the full game with a lowly completion percentage of about 35%. Yeah, there’s a lot more to collect, as well as Hogwarts to explore and open more Metroid-style. We’ll get there…in time. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. You see, I’m disappointed…greatly. The boss battles here are three steps back from the wonderfully imaginative ones in LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. Instead of creative and challenging, they were lame and over way too quickly. The Mountain Troll required you to lift its club over its head three times and let it drop; Aragog and his spider kiddies required some trial and error, but it was ultimately easy once you knew what to do; the fight against the Dementors was over fast once you realized you only had to target each one with the Expecto Patronum spell. And now we get to the final boss battle, the big one, the face-to-face duel between Harry and You-Know-Who. In the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, this fight was epic; it came out of nowhere; it gave us the readers our very first tug of emotional death; and it become memorable the moment it was done.

The very same boss fight in LEGO Harry Potter? Eh, not so much. First off, Cedric Diggory is alive during the fight for co-op purposes. Fine, fine. Not a dealbreaker as it allowed Tara to battle the incoming Deatheaters as I, Harry, played wand versus wand with Lord Voldemort. This meant that, when Voldie cast his spell at me, I had to tap X rapid fire until it pushed the spell back into him. Then I did this a second time. And finally, a third. BOSS FIGHT OVER. Wipe nonexistent sweat off your brow. Roll scene and credits. Oophm.

Tara even commented that she felt something was off there. That the maze level leading up to the boss fight was more challenging and clever than that. Which it was. Ten times the challenge. A shame really. Still, we have plenty more game to play…though I did go and grab some easy Achievements last night, namely these three:

Chilled Out (10G): Freeze 20 characters using Glacius

Boo! (10G): Scare 20 students using a ghost character

Back in Time (10G): Use the Time-Turner

The majority of the remaining Achievements involve a lot of replaying. I’ll have to check with Tara if she wants me to wait and do it with her together or if I can plow ahead and go for the full Gamerscore. It’s gonna take some time, but it will be FAR from a challenge.

Oh well. Maybe things will get a bit tougher in LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7. I mean, after all, Umbridge will be in charge for a bit then.

Autosave feature, you do not complete me

I beat The Saboteur some weeks back, but it’s a game I keep on playing. There’s a lot of post-ending grinding to do (mostly for Achievements), and I know it’s not something one completes over the course of a single night. For example, one Achievement asks that Sean spend 75,000 contraband. That’s A LOT. By the game’s end, I had only spent around 45,000, and this Achievement now involves a lot of weapon/ammo buying, and dying to head back to the shop to rinse and repeat. So…slow is the name of the game, but that’s okay with me. I enjoy playing this game in short spurts, killing a couple of Nazi dots and continuing to explore this wonderfully open Paris.

However, I loaded up the game last night to discover that my last save was from early July 2010. Um, no. I had just played the game a few days before…which means all that hard work of blowing up Nazi towers and collecting postcards was all for naught. This also includes the roughly 5,000 contraband I worked on spending to get me closer to the 75,000 mark. And here’s why this happened: I relied on autosave, a function that worked well throughout the main story missions as it saved often and strongly, most often at different mission checkpoints. However, in the post-game world, where there’s no missions left to do, the autosave function does not compute as often as I’d like. I have to wonder if it even does anymore at all. Now there’s only manual saving, something I forgot to do last time. And after seeing all those white dots back on the world map, I will never forget again.

So yeah, I’m a little grumpy over this, and will now most likely take a break from The Saboteur. Just a few days, that’s all. It’s not been my proudest moment. And now I’m reminded of a beautiful little quote from our leading lad Sean Devlin, “Let’s see how proud you are with my f*cking boot up your arse!”

Naturally, ‘Splosion Man ends with a bang

It took tears and sweat and countless piles of uncooked scientist steaks, as well as some mild swearing, but I finally beat ‘Splosion Man:

You’re the Best Around! (25G): Complete the Single Player game.

You bet your exploding ass I’m the best that’s around! Actually, no. I’m not that great. I had to turn off the game several times, and there were many moments where I experienced pure ultimate cruelty and vowed to give this up for good. Like, in my mind, I kept repeating, “It’s not worth it! It’s not worth it!” Alas, it never happened. I soldiered through. It took several nights, but I did it. Feel free to give me some slow golf claps. And that Achievement above proves I did it without using the “Way of the Coward” cheat to skip levels that were much too hard (here’s looking at you, 3-17). Trust me. I wanted to skip. A zillion times…because ‘Splosion Man is a toughie, requiring precise timing and quick hand-eye coordination. Limbo, a puzzle platformer strikingly different in tone and style, also required the same skills, but it never got me this frustrated. Stuck, sure…but I could work through it…or look up the solution online. The thing is, even if you know the puzzle’s answer, you still have to be really good at controlling ‘Splosion Man’s jumps and timing them just perfect. Otherwise, it’s lights out.

But don’t worry. You’ll be rewarded for all your hard work. ‘Splosion Man has one of the most bizarre and memorable endings to date, as well as really scary end credits. I watched them for the music, but I stayed out of pure fascination and fear. It’s the stuff of nightmares. If you don’t want to put in the hours, check it out below then:

Yup. You’re welcome.

I’m sure I have more to say. Maybe a full review later on? Magical eightball says…EXPLOSION!

ClapTrap’s Robot Revolution set to take over Borderlands

Hey, remember all those broken robots in Borderlands you fixed to get backpacks to increase your inventory space so you could carry more crazy-colored loot? Well, they’d like to say thanks. All of them. Plus some new friends. By shooting you in the face. Repeatedly. Hey-o!

That’s right. There’s even more DLC coming to Borderlands, and it’s playing off of something hinted at once the final boss was taken down. Personally, I thought that was gonna be what the sequel used as inspiration, but I’m okay with DLC as it means less money to spend, but more gameplay to devour. Seems like it’s about an army of ClapTraps that want to wage war against the Hyperion Corporation. The Vault hunters just kind of get caught in the middle of everything. There will be 20 new missions, along with new robot-themed enemies including Crab-traps, Skag-traps, and Raak-traps. What, no Badass Pyscho Midget-traps? Hmmph. Ten more skill points can be earned, as well as three extra backpack slots for extra extra loot. Mmm. I’m guessing there’ll be new Achievements, too.

This is so awesome. I love me some ClapTraps. Heck, I even drew one dancing back in the day when I first got the game. See:

Oh yeaaaaah. I’m dancing, too.

ClapTrap’s Robot Revolution will hit PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 in September, where it’ll cost $9.99. I hope to have the General Knoxx DLC completed by then, with my Soldier dude hopefully around LV 53-55.

If I was on LOST, I’d most certainly get blown up

So…Wordpress decided to change the Cutline theme, which Grinding Down has used since its very birth, replacing it with what you see now. Very similar, but there’s also some minute changes. Plus, all my sidebar widgets got thrown out of whack, and now I need to redo them all. Ugh. Annoying as all gets. But it’s not going to happen just yet. I will fiddle around with it later on, so don’t mind the mess, dear readers, as it is.

To add to the explosion heap is, well, craziness at the dayjob–which I can’t discuss–and then so much to do every minute of every day to get this wedding in order, as well as life, and the life of others. Seriously. I have this to-do list written down, and every time I cross something off…I add two more items. That’s not how sanity works, ‘kay?

If I was to relate the above image to something videogame-like, I’d mention that I played some more Red Faction: Guerrila last night. And things exploded. Felt good. I just needed to run around and knock buildings over. Let me be. Maybe tomorrow there will be more interesting content here, but I can’t promise y’all the world.

Paul, out!

[Full Gamerscore] UNO

So…full Gamerscore earned for UNO; all 12 Achievements pinged and proudly captured; blah blah blah yadda ya I’m the man blah blah. It happened last night, and I slept quite soundly thanks to it. I polished off a few more rounds of online multiplayer, thus securing the final Achievement and telling the world that, yes, I am a UNO shark. Feels good to finally have another game fully completed that isn’t LEGO-based.

Anyways, reviewing the list of Achievements, it’s clear this isn’t exactly a tough 200 to get. Most just come naturally with time, and the ones that took the longest for me involved playing online games…because I was a Silver member of Xbox Live for a great while.

Favorite Achievement

Skip to My Lou (15G): Play 40 Skip cards.

Skipping an opponent is a lot of fun. I enjoy it more than Reversing or even making them Draw 4 and lose a turn. Skipping just has this quick satisfaction to it, and I love the Achievement’s artwork. Makes me want to throw some rocks across a lake now.

Easiest Achievement

UNO! (10G): Successfully call UNO! and win the game.

This is basically how you win a game…though I guess you could win without calling UNO! but that might get you in trouble with other opponents, forcing you to draw two more cards. Best to just call it and then seal the deal.

Hardest Achievement

UNO Shark (30G): Win ten 4-player games of UNO®, in any mode, on Xbox Live.

It’s the last one I got. Some nights, I’d play two to three games and not win a single one. This is because some people like to play up to 250 points, which is not easy to win in one fell swoop. Other times, I’d be in a game where the first person to go out wins, and that made things easier. Either way, this one required patience and a lot of diligence.

Yay…full Gamerscore! UNO! It excites me to now see a new entry on my Xbox Live dashboard under the fully completed titles section. Maybe I should try to finish up Shadow Complex next, since that’s the closest. Or Winterbottom. One of those. We’ll see. So much more games to play, so little time and sanity left.

It’s the age of industry in Fable III, and the chickens aren’t pleased

The Fable series sure loves its chickens. Well, I can’t actually speak for the first game as I’ve never played it, but Fable II had a lot of chicken-related things going on. You could kick them for an Achievement, kick them for a bonus in the Coliseum battle place, you could sacrifice baby chicks to represent how true evil operates, and you could dress up like one because…well, everybody has their quirks. But yeah, they were there, hopping around some of the towns, adding life and personality.

Times are a-changing for Fable III. The kingdom of Albion is embracing the age of industry, and cogs and machines and factories are just about everywhere. But chickens always remain constant, and as our narrator tells us, the oppression of the common person is at the heart of the story. Thus, the chicken. It, too, can be oppressed, be a hero, and it just takes one hero to get an uprising started. The intro shows just how far one can fight back, and it certainly is an interesting journey to watch unfold.

Check out the opening cinema sequence from Fable III due out this Fall:

I think for lunch today I’ll get a crispy chicken sandwich in its honor. Wait, what? That’s not how “honoring” it works? Too bad. No arguing with my tummy. Om nom nom…