freakinalex's Blog - Apr to Jun 12 (4 followers)

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It's been a while since I last blogged. And by a while, I mean about 4 days. Still, who's counting? I've been busy in the last few days, and I have 3 new completions to show for it.

First off, I finished getting 10,000 Gleeks in http://www.trueachievements.com/KR-Glee-Vol-3-xbox-360.htm to finish that last achievement. Then I popped in http://www.trueachievements.com/Disney-Sing-It-HSM3-xbo....htm for a while. Oh my God, why does this exist? Why does High School Musical exist? Every song sounds the same, but with different lyrics. HSM is like the Nickelback of musicals. I only played it so I could keep my position on the Music & Rhythm leaderboards. Thankfully, it was a quick and relatively painless 1000G, though I could have done without having to actually sing the songs. I feel so dirty now...

My third completion came in the form of http://www.trueachievements.com/Harry-Potter-OOTP-xbox-....htm with it's glitchy achievement for completing the game on hard. It's the third time I've attempted it and thankfully it popped this time, allowing me to finally finish off the game.

Right now I'm sitting at 69 completions. (Heh...69...) I'm wanting my next completion to be a retail game so that when I hit 70, I'll have an equal number of retail and arcade completions. So what's on the table for completion #70? Fallout 3 it seems. It's one of those games that I'd play for a bit, then put down and come back to much later. I'm going to make myself actually finish it now. I (apparently) finished the main storyline, so now I'm just going back through all the side quests. Once those are done, I'll seek out the bobbleheads and kill the Super Mutant Behemoths. Then I'll install the DLC (I have the GOTY edition) and go through those quests. Hopefully by the time I finish the on-disc quests I'll be at or close to level 20 and then be able to get to 30 while doing the DLC. If not, then it looks like I'll have to do some grinding later. I'll probably have to grind out the various achievements for picking locks, hacking terminals, etc. I'm gonna try to get it done soon, but it may still drag on a bit, so I'll probably play a few other games in-between.

I've also been grinding corn in Chickens Can't Fly (WP) since this week's weekly challenge makes getting to 1 million extremely easy. I've got a couple days left to finish, but I'm over halfway there.

Finally, I'm in a session tomorrow night to boost Warzone wins toward this achievement...



Once I get those wins done, I'll just have to do most of Co-op Deathmatch and I'll be done with TFD's online achievements.

In non-gaming news, this past weekend I went to a theatre in Houston with my sister to see "Next to Normal," which is one of the best musicals ever. I'd never seen it before, but I've listened to the original Broadway cast recording about a billion times. I know a few people involved in this particular production. I used to go to school with the guy who played Henry and the stage manager, and I currently go to school with the assistant stage manager. So that's pretty cool. And the production was pretty amazing too. If you're into musicals at all, I'd suggest checking out the "Next to Normal" recording or going to see it if a theatre near you is putting on a production.

Anyway, enough blogging for now. I'm going to play Rock Band 3 for a while. That new Carrie Underwood DLC is calling my name. Then maybe some more Fallout.

I need a catchphrase!

So, I attempted to go for my random achievement in Just Cause 2 today.



The verdict? While I did pop one achievement in my session, it wasn't this one. I'm going to forfeit this one, as it's been over a week. Plus, with the way the game is set up, you have to complete a lot of faction missions to unlock the story missions. I don't even have mission 4 unlocked yet, so it's going to take a lot longer than I anticipated, plus I'm still getting used to playing the game again.

So, without further ado, here's what fate has brought me for my third random achievement.



This shouldn't be too bad. I already have the DC story complete, so I just have to do the MK story. If I recall how the DC story was when I played it over two years ago, it's fairly long and will take several hours. I may space it out over a few days or I might just do it in one long session. We'll see how it goes.

I need a catchphrase!

Two blogs in one day? Madness!

I'm trying to survive day one of living without TA scanners. How is it going? Actually pretty productive, so far.

I decided my apartment was pretty dirty, so I took some time to clean it. After a few hours of that, I booted up the SNES to work on my Animaniacs speedrun.

Oh. I guess I never mentioned that I've been trying to speedrun Animaniacs on SNES.

Hey guys. I'm working on speedrunning Animaniacs on SNES.

It's been a few weeks since I last played the game, so I figured I'd be pretty out of practice. However, I actually had a pretty decent run. Here's a breakdown of how it went.

Intro Stage - Not much to say about this stage. I wasted a bit of time in the second screen trying to get away from Ralph, as I was trying to play it safe.

Sci-Fi Stage - Probably my best run of this stage ever. Everything went really well leading up to the end. I had one death on the giant gear screen, and it was a death I'd never experienced before. I actually got crushed by one of the flying monoliths. I also got really lucky, as my second attempt on the screen I got three Hello Nurses on the slot machine, which saved me from a death, cause I forgot one of the gear patterns.

Aquatic Stage - I usually get a deathless run on this stage. In this run, however, I died once on the first screen because I messed up a jump. Everything else ran pretty smooth. I shot at the second octopus too early, so the first shot didn't hit and it threw the pattern off and I lost some time. I got really lucky on Captain Mel's pattern and got all four shots off before he could go invulnerable.

Fantasy Stage - I actually made it through the white rabbit scene without dying for once! However, I did lose a life on the crumbling castle screen because I jumped too early and hit a buzzard. Everything else went smoothly. It took me too long to get the boss into the right pattern though.

Adventure Stage - A really good run on this. Only real issue is that I died once on the vine jumping section because I made a jump too early.

Editing Room - A fairly smooth boss rush. It took me way too long to get the Fantasy boss into the right pattern and I missed one of the shots on the Adventure boss and had to wait for him to run through his pattern once more, so those cost a lot of time. I had one death on Pinky & the Brain because there were still a couple of pixels left of the hit box for one of the boulders on the side of the screen when I used the wraparound.

Overall, it was a pretty good run. For the first time, I didn't use a single continue! This was mostly due to the slot machine being generous and giving me back my deceased Warners every time I lost one and I went into the Editing Room with two Warners alive. I don't know what my time was, since I didn't start a timer because I figured this would be a bad run to shake the rust off. My best run is around 32 minutes, so I'd wager that this could possibly have been sub-30. I dunno though.

What could account for my luck in the game today? I don't know, but it could be that I've had this going in the background all day during my cleaning and speedrun shenanigans...




When I listen to music, I go hardcore.

Well, day one of living without the TA scanners is winding down, and I'm getting ready to go cook dinner for myself. But iTunes cannot sate me for much longer. I'm switching over to the adult jams.




That's right. Motherfuckin' Blu-ray, y'all. You can't handle this 1080p.

Anyway. Food time starts now.

I need a catchphrase!

I popped in Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe for a while yesterday. I played through the Arcade mode with The Flash, grabbing two achievements. Not that you would know, cause the scanners need to be fixed.




Nothing spectacular, though it did take me quite a few continues to get through the game. The combo system may be a lot easier than Street Fighter, but the AI sure doesn't make it any easier on you.

I also tried out The Flash's combo challenge. Judging by the ratios, it should be one of the easier ones. I managed to get the first two down, then got hopelessly stuck on number three. I really don't know that I have the patience to try and get good enough to clear any of them. I'll probably just continue playing casually and work on some of the simpler achievements. I still have to beat the MK story and finish Arcade with a MK character. I'll probably also go for beating Arcade with every character, but right now I've only done it with Batman and The Flash, so that may be a while. I'll probably work on getting every Fatality/Heroic Brutality as well. I did both of The Flash's, and they weren't too difficult, so we'll see.

Anyway, since the scanners are down until Monday at the earliest, I may take a break from the 360 and spend some time on my PS3 backlog. It's been a while since I've used my PS3 for more than a Blu-ray/Netflix player. I still never finished Arkham City. I'll probably blog about my progress on PS3 games over here, since there's no site like TA for PS3.

In non-gaming news, I've got a few things happening. First, our entry into the Houston 48 Hour Film Project, "Crackerjack," won the Audience Award for our screening group, so that's exciting. This makes two consecutive years winning the award. And we're sure to win more awards when they have the Best Of screening sometime in mid-July.

I've also been cast in two plays here at school for Summer Rep. One is a play called "Pvt. Wars." The other is "And Then There Were None," which is based off an Agatha Christie book. I'm also managing props for the latter. So that's exciting. Being involved with two shows is definitely gonna cut the amount of time I get to spend on games though.

I need a catchphrase!

About a week ago I bought a fight stick for my 360. It's pretty neat. It's a Madcatz Fight Stick Pro with a Street Fighter X Tekken design on it. It was a bit pricey, but I recently came into a rather sizeable chunk of money, as my roommate paid me to write his final paper for him back during finals and just gave me the money last week.

So, to try out my new fight stick, I popped in Street Fighter IV to see what I could do. Spoiler alert: I suck. Sure everything started off great. I managed to pop a couple of achievements...





Ok, I did it the cheap way with Zangief. Still, I was surprised just how easy it was. I did it in one shot.

After this, I turned my attention to the normal trials. Big mistake. After making it through the first two tiers of Ryu's I got stuck. So, I moved on to Cammy. Again, two tiers and I got stuck. Turns out I really can't chain 3 moves together to save my life.

Yeah. I'm really bad at fighting games. Still, I'll stick it out with SFIV a bit and try to at least beat Arcade with every character.



While it's nice to boost my completion percentage slightly, I can guarantee I'll never come close to finishing this game. Oh well.

Tonight I might pop in Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and see what I can do there. I always found the MK combo (kombo?) system to be easier to work with than the SF system. However, seeing as those ratios are so much higher than SFIV, I kind of doubt I'll get any of the character challenges done.

What's that? Just Cause 2? Right...about that...

I need a catchphrase!