Andrew x360a's Blog - Apr to Jun 12 (10 followers)

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I dislocated my shoulder in the last week of the rugby season, near the end of April. I knew it was in rough shape, but I wanted to hold off on the surgery until we finished the season (one last tournament) and I got my gator wrestling birthday present. I managed to finish both, but last week it came time to pay the piper and I went under the knife to clean everything up. Without going into all the details, I tore about half the ligaments, part of my labrum, and a bunch of cartilage in my right (I'm right-handed). It's all fixed now, they think, but I'm stuck in a sling for another two weeks and facing at least five or six months of rehab to get back to my old strength and range of motion. I'm learning how to operate with my off (left) hand and not aggravate my right. It's sore and makes sleeping a bit touch and go, but it feels like it's getting better every day.

Fortunately, I can still hold a controller. Gaming progress has slowed down because it takes longer to do everything else, so I have a lot less time to play, but I still make some progress. I started Dragon Age: Origins. It's a far cry from Skyrim, but I'm enjoying the game nonetheless. The story seems to be pretty good and I like the interface and party system. I'm just playing through the first time however I want and then I'll use the second playthrough to mop up the other choices and romance options before doing all the mini Origins playthroughs. I'll likely take a break at some point to play some other stuff as it looks like it's going to take quite some time to finish everything, especially with all the DLC that's out there.

On the arcade front, I made a couple choices. I tried out Outpost Kaloki X and really didn't enjoy it at all. I only played the first three levels and didn't unlock any achievements, so I deleted it off my card and my hard drive. It was a free game, so I don't feel bad about that. I also had a revelation with Bejeweled 2. The game glitched on me years ago and didn't give me the achievement for Endless Mode even after getting to level 280 on two separate occasions. I'd heard that it was possible that it'd unlock if you continued on after 280, so I started over and was playing here and there, but not really focusing on it. I still managed to make it over 30% of the way back to 280 again. Then, this week I got this message from my friend MathGuy42:

"Hey Andrew. I was just looking over this article again, about a guy who made a robot to play XBLA Bejeweled 2:
http://www.brains-n-brawn.com/default.aspx?vDir=bj2bot

He mentions that the robot had a similar bug to yours, where it got MultiMode, but not Action. He had it replay Action, but still no achievement. So unfortunately I'm very skeptical that you can get the Endless achievement. Sorry. Just wanted to warn you."

A couple years ago I think I would've been pretty upset, being a completionist. Now? I was more relieved than anything else. I'm just going to delete it off the hard drive, stop thinking about it, file it away with other glitched games (EndWar), and let the new (good) games that I'm playing bury it on my card. I really wasn't looking forward to the grind of Endless Mode and I originally got the game because a (now ex) girlfriend wanted something to play while we were watching TV, so I'm more than happy to be done with it.

On the phone, I finished Flowerz and picked up Assassin's Creed. The touchscreen thumbstick is a little awkward to platform with sometimes, but I'm enjoying it anyway. I'm less than a quarter of the way into the game, so I havn't learned any secrets that open up the story, but I'm having a lot of fun with it.


Games

Retail Games - 8 games, 6,725 points total

Assassin's Creed: Revelations - 69, 1490

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 59, 1250

Dragon Age: Origins - 61, 1485

Mass Effect 3 - 52, 1050

Ninja Gaiden II - 1, 30
All Gold - 6/8 Weapons

Perfect Dark Zero - 2, 75
Completed Single Dark Agent - 11/14 Missions

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent - 3, 95
Gold Trophy - 6/16 Maps

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - 54, 1250


Arcade Games - 7 games, 1,240 points total

Assassin's Creed (WP) - 140

Crimson Alliance - 250

Duke Nukem 3D - 200

Gatling Gears - 200

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - 50

Limbo - 200

Prince of Persia - 200


Happy Gaming Friends!

I turned 29 last week. For my birthday one of my favorite adventure partners bought me alligator wrangling lessons. I kid you not, that's a real thing and it is AWESOME! I can't really do it justice, but if you want to see what it was like, check out her blog post on it.

http://theblondecoyote.com/2012/05/20/my-intro-to-alligator-...

Easily the best birthday present I've ever gotten.

As far as gaming goes, I finished off Skyrim after getting back from Colorado. I ran into a glitch with the Companions that required me to make a new character to finish that quest line, but I didn't care. I'm still playing it even after getting the full 1000 and I suspect I'll continue to do so for quite some time. It's just such a fun and immersive game. I can't wait for the first batch of DLC to drop.

There's not a ton of gaming time for me this week, so rather than start up a new game, I think I'm going to make some attempts at mopping up three of my projects - Perfect Dark Zero, Ninja Gaiden II, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Maybe I'll get lucky and actually make some progress towards those last achievements. I'd especially like to wrap up SC:DA. I've even gone so far as to make a gaming session for it. We shall see how that goes. If anyone wants to jump in Friday evening, let me know.

Continuing my policy of only playing good games these days, I fell victim to an Amazon sale and bought Assassin's Creed Revelations and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I've been looking forward to playing both of them for a while (what's up with the weird point total for ACR?), so they're going to be very high on my list when they get here.

I think my next game will be Mass Effect 3. I figure I should wrap it up before the big DLC for it comes out later this summer. I've heard a lot of bitching about the ending, so I'm interested to see it for myself.



Games

Retail Games - 8 games, 6,990 points total

Assassin's Creed: Revelations - 69, 1490

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 59, 1250

Dragon Age: Origins - 76, 1750

Mass Effect 3 - 52, 1050

Ninja Gaiden II - 1, 30
All Gold - 6/8 Weapons

Perfect Dark Zero - 2, 75
Completed Single Dark Agent - 11/14 Missions

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent - 3, 95
Gold Trophy - 6/16 Maps

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - 54, 1250


Arcade Games - 9 games, 1,365 points total

Bejeweled 2 - 1, 10 - 8.49
Endless Mode - Level 165/280 (35%)

Crimson Alliance - 250

Duke Nukem 3D - 200

Gatling Gears - 200

Flowerz (WP) - 55

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - 50

Limbo - 200

Outpost Kaloki X - 200

Prince of Persia - 200


I'm looking forward to a fun week. Happy gaming everyone!

Well, it's been a while since I posted any sort of update. Lots of stuff going on with work and life. I'm working on a publication at work, so spending any extra time in front of the computer has been a less attractive option recently. I have found some time to game during my downtime though. I knocked off a batch of games - Rainbow 6 Vegas, Alan Wake, and Puzzle Quest 2 (WP). That's right, I finally got a smart phone and made it a Windows Phone to boot.

Having a smart phone is certainly a change of pace. Just having that much information and connectivity at your figer tips whenever you want it is pretty amazing. The gaming has been fun too. I loved Puzzle Quest 2 on the arcade and I thought the port to the phone was very well done. It gets a little bit long near the end, but there's a surprising depth of strategy for what looks like a Bejeweled clone. I'm working on Shuffle Party right now. It's a little tough for me because I'm still trying to get a handle on controlling the speed of the puck, but I'm more than halfway done with the challenges, so I anticipate that one getting wrapped up in the next two weeks or so.

As far as console gaming goes, Creech and I tackled the Lara Croft arcade game as our first co-op/boosting game since we finished Far Cry 2. It's a fun little game to play with a friend. The timed challenges to unlock the last relics and artifacts are going to be painful, but it feels like they should be doable. My biggest news is finally starting Skyrim. I played about 250 hours of Oblivion, so I figured Skyrim would be a time sink as well and I havn't been disappointed. I love the new leveling system and the quests have been a blast. The Dark Brotherhood didn't feel nearly as epic as Oblivion did, but that's a small quibble. It's one of the first games in a very long while that made me forget about achievements while I played. The only achievement I actively worked on was saving my money for the 100,000 gold achievement. In fact, there were times that I started playing with every intent to work on a particular achievement (Daedric Shrines, Mages Guild, etc.) and instead found myself going off track to check out a weird looking ruin or picking up a quest from a random townsperson. That's a sign of a really great and engaging game for me.

I need to finish one more game by the end of the month to meet one of my TA goals, but I don't want to rush through this, so I may grab one of the several NCAA Football games that I havn't played and use that to get another retail completion while simultaneously getting me excited for the return of college football in a few months.

On a slightly more personal (non-gaming) note, the new phone has really started to have a big impact on the rest of my life. A little backstory. I've played sports my whole life. Baseball as a kid, soccer in my teenage years, and now, for the past eleven years, rugby. I consider rugby to be the greatest sport in the world and it's not even a close discussion for me. The speed and non-stop movement of soccer, the sudden transition from defense to offense and the requirement of team defense that you see in basketball, and the sheer power, physicality, and toughness that you see in American football (but without pads). Much like soccer, there's limited coaching that can be done during a game, so the players on the field have to have a high game IQ to make adjustments to strategy on the fly. Unfortunately, it's a game that's taken a massive toll on me physically. I injured my shoulder on the next to last weekend of this season and finished out that game and the five games of the closing tournament before seeing a doctor about it this week. It's always a fun conversation when the doctors ask if I've had any other sports-related injuries and I start the list. Two concussions, a torn hamstring, two broken fingers, three broken toes, a broken bone in my left shoulder, bursitis in my right, torn ligaments in the top of my right foot, a hyperextended right elbow, and a partially torn hip flexor. Those are the ones that I remember anyway, there may be more. It sounds like I can add a shoulder dislocation and some sort of labrum damage to the list. I won't know exactly until the MRI this weekend.

In an effort to cope with the physical demands of the sport, I fell into a couple of bad habits. One was trying to add weight and bulk and the other was hard drinking both for the social aspects and to help dull the acute pain after matches and practices and the chronic pain that lingered well into the off seasons. I stand 5'9", but those two factors went hand-in-hand to put me right around 195 pounds. I'm in great shape, but my frame can't carry that weight forever. Unfortunately, the old adage is true. It's far easier to put the weight on than take it off. That's where the new phone came in. One of the first things I downloaded for it was an app to track my caloric intake. Combining that with a heart rate monitor to track how much I burned during my work outs has made it possible for me to stick a diet of 1700 net calories a day and lose roughly a pound to a pound and a half a week. That means I basically can't drink after work unless I workout. My favorite beers are about 200 calories a bottle and my rum or whiskey drinks are roughly the same. That brings a whole new level of motivation to getting into the gym or out for a run and provides a moderating influence to my evening beverage consumption that, frankly, was lacking. I know there were nights that I was getting home around six, hanging out and gaming until midnight, and drinking two drinks an hour for six hours. That's well over two thousand calories on top of whatever I ate that day. No wonder I wasn't dropping weight.

Since I started tracking, I've lost eight pounds and dropped under 190. By the time the season starts up again in late July, I should be comfortably back around 180 pounds, which was my college playing weight. Of course, I didn't carry the muscle in college that I do now, so it should be a slightly different experience. Hopefully an experience with fewer injuries. I'd like to hold on and play another five or six years. I'll be 29 next week and I think playing until I'm 35 is within reach.

Sometimes the simple approaches really are the best.


Games

Retail Games - 7 games, 4,590 points total

Dragon Age: Origins - 76, 1750

Mass Effect 3 - 52, 1050

Ninja Gaiden II - 1, 30
All Gold - 6/8 Weapons

Perfect Dark Zero - 2, 75
Completed Single Dark Agent - 11/14 Missions

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 14, 340

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent - 3, 95
Gold Trophy - 6/16 Maps

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - 54, 1250


Arcade Games - 10 games, 1,560 points total

Bejeweled 2 - 1, 10 - 8.49
Endless Mode - Level 165/280 (35%)

Crimson Alliance - 250 - 1.75

Duke Nukem 3D - 200 - 1.72

Gatling Gears - 200 - 2.04

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - 50 - 1.48

Limbo - 200 - 1.40

Outpost Kaloki X - 200 - 2.85

Prince of Persia - 200 - 2.24

Shuffle Party - 15 - 1.28

What an outrageously long process to finish Far Cry 2. My first achievement was unlocked on April 20, 2010 and I had 47/48 achievements by April 16, 2011. All that was left was getting to level thirty to unlock Warlord. After nearly a year of boosting, we were within range (~300K experience remaining) this weekend, so Creech and I got up at 3:30 AM and started playing games and I was getting maximum experience. Thanks to Ubisoft's ridiculous anti-boosting programming, if we exit to the dashboard or turn off the Xbox while doing this, all experience gained in excess of 1500 per match would be lost, so it turned into a marathon slog to get the last experience we needed. After about ten hours of downing and reviving, I finally had the elusive achievement unlock just after lunch. Creech had to go run some errands for a few hours, so he left his xbox on and we're in the process of getting him the last 100K he needs right now. This is unquestionably the most time I've spent working on a single game and I certainly won't miss it. Still, I'm very proud of the effort and commitment that we put into this one.

Having spent so many hours on Far Cry 2, Creech and I have had ample time to decide what we're going to boost next and we decided to tackle some shorter co-op projects. After looking through our arcade collections and wish lists, we decided that we're going to go on an arcade binge - Lara Croft, Duke Nukem, Gatling Gears, and Crimson Alliance. That'll provide some nice progress towards my goal of finishing 100 arcade titles by the end of 2013.

I also finished up the Nightmare run through of Alan Wake to finish off the original 1000 gamerscore and I almost finished the first DLC (The Signal). I just need to beat the DLC without dying or reloading to complete it entirely. I almost did it on my first try, but I got surrounded by Taken at one point and couldn't dodge my way out of it. Hopefully I can finish that off tonight once Creech gets Warlord. Just one more Alan Wake DLC (The Writer( after that and another retail game will be wrapped up and finished.

I think I'm going to go on an RPG kick once Alan Wake is finished, starting with Skyrim. I know I'm slow to get to the party, but I was looking forward to playing that and only a combination of several factors kept me from picking it up on Day One. Regardless, I have it now and it's already installed on my hard drive, so I can't wait to fire it up and jump back into the world of the Elder Scrolls. I poured over two hundred hours into Oblivion, so I'm excited to see the sequel.

Here's to another week of gaming progress and fun! I'm going to go have a drink in honor of finishing up Far Cry 2. Cheers everyone!


Games

Retail Games - 9 games, 5,590 points total
Alan Wake - 10, 300

Dragon Age: Origins - 76, 1750

Mass Effect 3 - 52, 1050

Ninja Gaiden II - 1, 30
All Gold - 6/8 Weapons

Perfect Dark Zero - 2, 75
Completed Single Dark Agent - 11/14 Missions

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 50,1000

Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 - 1, 40
Best of the Best - Lt Colonel

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent - 3, 95
Gold Trophy - 6/16 Maps

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - 54, 1250


Arcade Games - 10 games, 1,460 points total

Bejeweled 2 - 1, 10 - 8.49
Endless Mode - Level 165/280 (35%)

Crimson Alliance - 250 - 1.75

Duke Nukem 3D - 200 - 1.72

Gatling Gears - 200 - 2.04

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - 200 - 1.48

Limbo - 200 - 1.40

Outpost Kaloki X - 200 - 2.85

Prince of Persia - 200 - 2.24