Achievement Report - June 1, 2013

I had a number of specific gaming goals for this week; here's how they turned out:

GTASC
My first order of business this week was to earn another simple achievement in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PC) - Down Boy for killing 13 zombie dogs.  It's not much, but it's progress.

I then spent some time working my way through Pid, which is a really cute (and pretty tough) platformer.  Completing a single run through the game isn't too bad, but hard mode is a beast and some of the hidden items can be pretty tricky.  This one's another long-term investment for a full completion.

Rhythm Party was another source of frustration this week, as I struggled to unlock the last few achievements.   I still haven't been able to get a AAA rating on the last song, and I can't manage to maintain constant rhythm tricks throughout a song, so I have some more awkward flailing in my future.

Next I discovered that the title update for Happy Wars introduced several new achievements, so I downloaded that game again and starting grinding towards level 50.  I nabbed one achievement in the process, but it seems like it's going to take a while to complete this game again.

Despite last week's goal of earning 1,500 TA Score for my team in the GTASC, I held off this week because my teammates did an excellent job of keeping us in the top 30 for the week.  We were pretty safe from elimination, so I figured I'd save some achievements for future weeks.

Kingdom of Loathing

I didn't even come close to completing this week's KoL goal, only hitting level 25 this whole week.  Maybe I'll be able to bridge that gap this week...

It wasn't a total failure, though, as I managed to grab the trophy for using 40 4-d cameras.  One more down!

Professional Photographer is now on the shelf!

StarCraft II
I didn't play much StarCraft II this week, only winning enough vs. AI matches to get up to the 100 wins vs. Elite AI achievement.  I really can't wait to be done with the Terran race wins vs. AI, because all these Terran games are really wearing me down...

Playing Terran in every game is getting to me.

Guild Wars
This week saw a big jump in my Hall of Monuments rewards points, as I finally completed the Guardian of Cantha title and I acquired the last piece of Elite Luxon armor for my assassin character (which brings me up to three elite armor sets).  That gives me 24 of the 30 rewards points necessary to get all in-game rewards in Guild Wars 2, so I hope to be able to make that happen sometime reasonably soon.  For now, though, I'll just keep grinding away.

Remaining Guardian and Zaishen title progress.

I also completed the Ruins of Surmia and Nolani Academy missions on my new roleplaying character, thus completing both of my Guild Wars goals for the week.  Check out the VODs here.

New Goals
I found last week's specific goals to be a good correction to my usual aimlessness, so I think I'll continue throwing out an idea or two for each of the major games I'm playing:

GTASC: I've been playing a lot of Arcade games lately, so I think I'd like to mix it up this week and go back to one (or more) of the retail games in my collection.  Here's hoping I can get a completion or two this week.
Kingdom of Loathing: I think this week will sadly be more of the same, as powerleveling is going to be a lot more expensive for an Avatar of Jarlsberg.  Hopefully I can actually get those last five levels this week.
StarCraft II: I really don't want to come back to playing Terran exclusively for a long while, so I'd like to chip away at the 250 wins against AI as Terran - fifteen more wins this week ought to be reasonable.
Guild Wars: My next major goal is to complete the Guardian titles on my main character, so I think completing eight more missions on Hard Mode this week is doable.

So I have some specific directions I'd like to pursue in the next seven days; we'll see where I stand next Saturday.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 25, 2013

Oh boy, this has been an exciting week for gaming.

GTASC
This week started a bit slowly for me, only nabbing a few achievements in Kinect Sports last weekend.  Slow and steady on that one...

As the week progressed, Team Lazy Eye was near the back of the pack, so I went into an unorganized rush to earn achievements.

For some quick Gamerscore, I grabbed a couple of downloadable games that were discounted this week: Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond and Rhythm Party.  Neither really blew me away, but they both allowed me to get several achievements pretty quickly, so I was happy to get a few extra points for the team.  I'll comment on these games in a bit more detail after I've spent more time on them.

I also revisited Microsoft's microtransation behemoth - Game Room.  I mostly worked on earning some additional Time Spender medals while trying to improve my Point Buster and Survivalist medals on a couple tricky games.  In the process, I reached level 11 and a total of 48 medals, adding a few hundred TA Score to my total.

I screwed around in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, too, starting to work towards the S+ ranks on each stage.  I have been running through the campaign on Professional getting that high rank, earning the achievement for getting an S rank in the process.

My collection contains a few games I've never played, so I took our team's perilous position as an excuse to delve into a few new titles for a few minutes.  The XBLA games All Zombies Must Die! and Home Run Stars and the retail Tomb Raider: Legend all seem like they'll be a lot of fun, while Zombie Wranglers seems like it'll just be tedious.  The real highlight was Pid, which seems like it'll be a charming, beautiful game.  I'll definitely be coming back to that one soon.

And, in desperation, I went back to a game that is covered in years of dust: Zuma (I don't know why I decided it was worth paying for that game...), although I was only able to pop one very easy achievement before I got too frustrated with it to continue.

Still, we survived another week.  Here's hoping we can keep that momentum going!

Kingdom of Loathing
As mentioned last week, my adventures through the Kingdom are going to be much more casual, at least until I hit level 30 with Avatar of Jarlsberg and descend into the Basement for another telescope piece.

That said, I am pretty disappointed with a big discovery this week.  I didn't realize that an Avatar of Jarlsberg is prohibited from adventuring in the Sea, where I thought I'd be exploring some new content while slowly leveling my character.  So instead of diving to the Sea Floor, I have focused my efforts on collecting filthy lucre and fat loot tokens, as well as little time-consuming trophies.  I've already knocked out two of those trophies (for adventuring in the bathroom with the autoplunger and for killing Dungeons of Doom monsters a bunch of times), so I'm well on my way.

Mmm, trophies...

It's very slow going, but that's the point.  KoL isn't taking up nearly as much of my time these days, but I'm still pushing forward, so it's all good.

StarCraft II
My StarCrafting this week was limited to a few vs. AI matches.  While I didn't earn any achievements in the process (working slowly towards 250 wins vs. Elite AI), I did finally hit level 30 with Terran.

About time!

I guess there's really not much more to say there.

Guild Wars
Unfortunately, I never got around to progressing my new roleplaying mesmer this week, so there aren't any new VODs.

I did, however, do a lot of work towards earning titles on my main character.  I primarily focused on the Guardian titles (completing all missions on Hard Mode), and have very nearly finished the Cantha guardian - all I have left to do are the Kurzik missions, which are easily my least favorite missions in the Factions campaign.

Also pictured: My Party Animal track. Woo-Hoo!

For this next week, I have some specific goals:

In Guild Wars, I want to complete those Factions missions and move my roleplaying character a bit further into the Prophecies campaign.

In StarCraft, I just want to get the achievement for 100 wins vs. Elite AI (less than 10 wins to go), and I might go after some of the remaining Mastery achievements in the Heart of the Swarm campaign.

In the Kingdom of Loathing, I hope to be able to hit level 30, but I probably won't be able to get a telescope piece before the end of the week.

As for my achievement hunting, I hope to be able to contribute at least 1,500 TA Score to the team (I gave a little over 1,200 this week), possibly more depending on our ranking as the week wears on.

There's a lot to do, so here's hoping I can get it all done.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 18, 2013

Another week down!

GTASC
The first game I started playing in this scoring period was starting and completing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.  The full completion took less than six-and-a-half hours, so it's pretty quick and painless.  Check out my full review here.

Later in the week, I managed to find a few people willing to play a 2v2 in Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, which allowed me to mop up the last remaining achievement in that game.  Clash of Heroes brings me up to 181 completed games, which I'd say is a decent feat.

After that, I noticed that the rest of my team had done amazingly well early in the week, putting us solidly in the middle of the pack for the GTASC.  I took that as an opportunity to focus my efforts elsewhere, as it seemed like we would be pretty safe this week.

Kingdom of Loathing
I decided this week to take KoL a bit more casually.  With the end of the Avatar of Jarlsberg challenge path, I've started a softcore AoJ run to work towards the level 30 trophy, which I'll use to transition into another basement run and possibly to explore the new Sea content.  This change in pace will mean that I won't get as many ascension rewards, but it'll also give me an opportunity to do some of the slower stuff, like bounties for the Hound and the Bounty-Hunting Rig, eating Black Puddings and drinking Around the Worlds for the related trophies, or maybe even my first excursions into Hobopolis in the clan dungeon.

I have a long way to go to level 30...

I guess I'll have to see how I feel once I drop the AoJ restrictions after hitting level 30.

StarCraft II
I diversified my StarCrafting this week, playing a number of Team and vs. AI games as usual, but also jumping back into the Heart of the Swarm campaign to grab some more of those achievements.  In the process, I got some achievements all around.  Here are the highlights:

In the HotS campaign, I earned all of the "regular" achievements, as well as a number of Mastery achievements.  I still have some Mastery achievements to go, but they aren't proving to be too difficult, so I might be able to complete the HotS campaign sometime in the next couple weeks.

I also played a fair number of multiplayer matches, making the most significant progress towards the vs. AI achievements.  I've gotten to the point where I just need to get a bunch (~100) Terran wins vs. AI, which gets terribly boring for a Zerg player, so I can't really stand to do too many of those matches at a time.

Guild Wars
I finally got around to finishing the Fort Ranik mission on my new roleplaying character, and I've continued grinding towards filling out my Hall of Monuments.  I've discovered a few more scenarios that overwhelm my 7-hero build, but it's generally working quite well.  I think that just means that for certain dungeons or elite missions I'll need to swap some heroes out for something more appropriate.  The VODs for those activities are available on twitch.

Some of my current title progress.

Still, I'm inching towards the Guild Wars 2 Rewards Points necessary for all the in-game unlocks.  My next goal is complete the Guardian titles, as that will both earn some gold (for buying elite armors and weapons) and get me four more titles to display.

And that's it for this week.  I'm going to try to hit the GTASC pretty hard for the remainder of the weekend, then I'd like to put some pressure on my StarCraft and Guild Wars achievement hunting.  I hope next week's report will be equally impressive.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 11, 2013

This week was a lot more exciting for me, following up last week's Magic bender with a bunch of gaming and achievements across the board.

GTASC
We had yet another week of Team Lazy Eye success, surviving elimination along with 61 other teams.

My Xboxing this week was limited to two games:

Initially, Kinect Sports struck me as everything a motion-controlled sports game should be.  After playing for a bit, some of the limitations of the Kinect sensor start to pop up, as precise controls are occasionally very difficult to pull off.  I cannot, for example, figure out how to consistently aim a corner kick shot in the soccer game.  Regardless, I've had a fair amount of fun with it.

The achievements, on the other hand, seem like they'll be a monster to take down.  Many are pretty straightforward (simply winning in each type of game will give you several achievements already), but many are going to be very hard (winning a table tennis match against a hard AI opponent without conceding a point sounds impossible), so it'll likely be a difficult completion.

The second game was another that I started this week: the PC version of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.  I had already played the Xbox version, but I found it to be a little lackluster; I was hoping the mouse/keyboard control scheme would make the game more fun (as I think it usually true for shooters).  Unfortunately, Operation Raccoon City really feels like a crappy port (it was released on PC a bit after the console release), so I'm kind of disappointed with it all around.

As for achievements, the PC version seems like it'll be as tough as the console version - the difficulty related achievements will certainly be a challenge, and the multiplayer is totally dead, so those achievements will require boosting of some sort.  It's overall a disappointing entry into the Resident Evil franchise...

Kingdom of Loathing
KoL has been taking a bit of a backseat for me lately.  Although I still love everything about the game, I'm not finding enough time to give it the proper attention each day (I'm also experiencing huge spikes of lag, which makes everything that much harder).

Even so, I managed to hit an unexpected milestone this week: I completed a 5-day, <1000 turn Hardcore Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension!  It's awesome that I was able pass that threshold before the end of the AoJ season (which will end next week) but a bit of a disappointment as I haven't really been able to capitalize on the extra karma for quicker ascensions.

Still one day behind my shortest ascension ever...

Either way, AoJ is coming to a close soon, so I'm really looking forward to what the next challenge path will bring.

StarCraft II
My biggest StarCraft news is that my regular 2v2 partner is available again, so we rocked some twos this week.  As a team, we're getting pretty good at holding off silly cheeses, successfully navigating bunker rushes, early pool pressure, and proxy gateways, so I think we're emerging from the cheese-dominated lower tier.  To push any higher, I think we're just going to develop better mechanics for longer macro games because the games we lose tend to be ones that seem close for a long while.

As I tend to play random in big team games and vs. AI, I've been getting a good amount of practice with each of the races.  I still can't quite settle on a comfortable Terran strategy, though - I tend to prefer being super aggressive, so lots of ling pressure into mutas or blink stalkers fit my playstyle quite nicely.  I've tried strong reaper openings, but I can't maintain that kind of aggressive pressure through the late game, mainly because reapers can't shoot up (so void rays or mutas will wreck my day).  I just can't get my mind around Terran play, it seems...

So... close...

Still, I'm drawing closer to the maximum level with all three races, needing only a few more levels with Terran to get there.  Huzzah!

Guild Wars
And to round out the week, I spent a number of hours chugging away at Guild Wars.  My new mesmer character made it up to Fort Ranik, but failed miserably in his first attempt to complete the mission (which you can watch in the twitch VODs).

I then tested and (slightly) refined a hero setup for solo + hero runs through late-game Guild Wars content.  Although I've been adapting a build designed for an elementalist, I have worked towards adapting it to my main character (dervish).  These VODs are also available on twitch.  I hope to be able to use this build to max out my Hall of Monuments (or at least build up enough Guild Wars 2 Rewards Points to get all the in-game rewards for Guild Wars 2), which I'll be slowly working out over the next months.

I've also launched a youtube channel.  Granted, I'm probably just going to upload videos from my stream, but it's another way to watch my gaming endeavors.  So that's pretty cool.

Anyhow, I have a lot on my gaming plate for the next week, so I'd better get to it.  Until then, tschüss.