[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.

The afterlife better not be like this

I’m stuck in Limbo.

That’s both a funny, commonplace phrase for us Catholics, as well as my current state of progress within the XBLA downloadable platformer of the same name. I won a free copy of it yesterday and was very excited to sit down and play before going to bed. However, maybe playing this kind of game before bed isn’t the best idea; it’s depressing and dark, hollow and haunting, a sick trip into the unsafe bowels of somewhere, and the only way to get that creepy spider out of my brain was to wash this experience down with some light-hearted UNO afterwards.

I won two games, and lost the third to some twittery brat…if you were curious.

Right. So, Limbo. It’s beyond creepy, and it sucks you right in, and before you know it, you’re walking through a soundless world, unsure of what’s next, falling into bear traps and pitfalls and the clutches of one particularly evil spider. It looks fantastic and mesmerizing; however, all previous complaints about the lack of storytelling ring true. I ended up staring at the opening screen for a good five minutes before I realized, oh, hey, I’m in control of the character now. But why am I in control of the silhouette boy with white eyes? ::shrugs:: A glimpse at the description box from the download menu clues me in that I’m searching for my lost sister, but the game itself tells us nothing.

I have to believe though that the game’s developers are fans of I Wanna be the Guy, a game that is as masochistic as it gets. In IWBTG, players meet untimely–and timely–deaths just by doing as they’ve been trained to do for years. They will jump from platform to platform only to get destroyed by a falling block of spikes that falls the moment you land on the platform. The game is designed to mess with our heads, as well as undo everything we’ve ever learned about the platformer genre. Limbo is cut from the same cloth, and you’ll have to die to figure out how to survive the harsh underworld and all its peril. Which breaks my heart because there’s an Achievement tied to beating the game in one sitting with five or less deaths; I stopped counting around death #20, and so I must just give up all hope on ever getting that one. I hate death-themed Achievements, remember? Other Achievements seem to rely on the main character finding eggs and then breaking them. Here’s the two I got so far:

Wrong Way (5G): That’s not right

Altitude is attitude (5G): Exploration off the ground

No real explanation for this egg thingy, but if I was to speculate, it’d have something to do with a giant chicken kidnapping his sister and this is his bit-by-bit revenge plan. Again, you kind of have no story here so it’s free game to make it all up yourself.

I probably played for a little over an hour last night, and ended up getting stuck at one part. There’s a worm that drops onto your head and messes up how you steer the boy, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it; the mind-controlling parasite keeps walking me straight into a death-pit. Will have to give it some time, as I’m sure the answer is right there before me. Trial and error is your best guide.

Either way, it’s hard not to love Limbo for its art style alone. The stark blacks and whites–and soft, misty grays in the background–really bring about an atmosphere unlike any other game. Sure, it’s depressing as all gets, and the lack of music might drive some gamers nuts, but I found myself really immersed. Especially when some items in the foreground block your vision of the boy; I will actually lean forward in my chair, trying to get a better view, as if that’s even possible.

Alas, I won’t be able to play again until the end of the weekend.

Not So Hopelessly Devoted to You, UNO

I needed a little distraction last night. Nothing too involving, nothing too counteractive. Just something. And so, bring on the UNO. It’s one of my favorite games to play before bed. Between the light jazzy background music and simple–if addicting–game mechanics, my eyes begin to droop after a few rounds. This is a good thing; this is what I want. What I’m saying is that I don’t play the game to become King of the Mountain.

So, when I unlocked the following Achievement last night, I couldn’t help but feel like an impostor:

Devotee (25G): Win 40 games of UNO®.

I bought UNO in June 2009. It is now June 2010. A true devotee would’ve won 40 games in maybe that first month alone. Me? Took a year. My player stats currently say this:

Wins: 40
Losses: 79

Ouchie. Well, not really. A lot of UNO is luck, with a pinch of planning and strategy. So, you win some, you lose some. Achievement-wise, all I have left is to win 10 games of UNO over Xbox Live. I believe, at this point, I’ve won three. In short, I have some grinding to do in that fashion, but it’s okay. A game or two here before bed can surely help (me fall asleep). Just hope it doesn’t take me another year to accomplish this; I only have a month of Gold access at the moment.

UNO, fun for all

I already talked about my lackluster experience of online gaming with Grand Theft Auto IV, and now I’m here to balance the act. I loaded up UNO, donned my headset and quickly joined a game of four. That’s three other players, all of them real. None of this ORANGE PLAYER killjoy. Anyways, for the first round, I was the only one talking. Yup, to myself. Just making happy/sad noises as the game went on, and eventually two others turned on their headsets, leading to topics about frustration, how they should add new colors like purple, and why Kanye West was not chatting with us (his avatar certainly looked the part). It made for a calm, relaxing game…even as we were throwing draw 4s on each other!

It’s also more fun to shout “UNO!” to faraway people than the dustballs under my kitchen table. I’m just sayin’.