Friday 27th March 2015Yes four days off work! Just got home from a ten hour shift feeling great knowing I have time off at last to get back on my Xbox properly. I am going to London tomorrow for skateboard lessons but should be able to game nevertheless. Doubt I will game much for the rest of today, however I did game a lot yesterday on a day off so lets get to it!
Ryse: Son of Rome - 2 achievements for 150 gamerscore (935/2000)So I noticed at one point that my gamerscore was off. If you asked me on the spot "What is the total amount of your gamerscore?" I would probably not give you the correct answer however I should be able to round to nearest thousand and say that. However I was correct in noticing that my gamerscore was off as I remembered looking at it the day before and thinking I had been in the 500 to 600 point range for days due to working and just popping one achievement a day to keep the streak alive. So I scrolled down on TA and sure enough saw two achievements had popped from
Ryse: Son of Rome Achievements without me even playing the game! This must be a no DLC/DLC owned completionists nightmare. Turns out that the game had achievements added in regards to just the standard experience gained from going through the story. I mean I bought
Ryse: Son of Rome Achievements as a launch title as was quite hyped with it but sold it after a few months because I knew I wouldn't go back to it. DLC has come out since but never have achievements popped for me like this. I do wonder if it is a sign of things to come, probably not but you never know. I think the title will go free with Games with Gold eventually so am going to hold off buying it again unless I find it dirt cheap. The Xbox One has been out now for about a year and a half and I think I still find this game to be my favourite on the console. It looks beautiful, gameplay is great and was quite impressed with the multiplayer. Looking forwarding to playing this again one day, maybe I will try finish it on Legendary.
Kinectimals Unleashed - 0 achievements for 0 gamerscore (0/200)Yes that's right, I got no achievements at all. You may be expecting me to say now that I only played it for a few minutes but nope, I must have spent a few hours on the game yet didn't pop a single achievement. A friend of mine
BemusedBox asked me if I would be interested in starting the game
Kinectimals Unleashed (WP) Achievements as you can gift each other gems daily to help out due to its free to play nature. I found the other two games
Kinectimals Achievements and
Kinectimals (WP) Achievements to be decent games so have been interested in starting Unleashed for a while. This gave me the push to do so. It does look like quite a grind though and I am already starting to bore at the mundane task of throwing a frisbee or ball for them to catch over and over again to level up. The challenges are more fun. My girlfriend also started the game alongside me as did her boy (her on her phone and him on our tablet) so in theory I will be able to get another 2 gems extra a day from them which is nice. Wont say anything else on the game for now as it is still early days.
Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious - 25 achievements for 1000 gamerscore (1000/1000I barely got out of bed yesterday, mainly due to playing on my phone and being able to download
JJBDude48's achievements in Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious (Xbox 360) digitally for free. I saw how it was an easy completion and couldn't resist playing despite having a thought in the back of my mind saying I should hold it off for when I need it in the GTASC. I have seen comments where people said they finished it in 90 minutes or two hours, well I took around three I think. There was a couple of times when I had to do a race again and at one point I was stuck trying to get the next mission so ended up wasting time doing extra objectives that are not required for the completion. Nevertheless it is very quick and easy to do, so what do I think of it all?
Firstly I am not hating on this concept. Free game with free achievements that stack, overall a win win in my book. However the game really isn't all that good as it's pretty much just an expanded demo of Forza Horizon. There is basically nothing about Fast and Furious in the game, heck if it wasn't for the title I wouldn't have even realised there was anything about the game that related to the film franchise. It is just a clever ploy for the company to get their name out their a little bit more for hype of the new film being released shortly. I haven't played Forza Horizon 2 but I can imagine this game has just taken the backbone of what's already available in that title and covered it with a new paint job and name for this. The story is rubbish and the graphics looked poor which I must say surprises me as I played
Forza Horizon Achievements and thought it was a beautiful game. Either my standards have raised severely due to the next generation or this game just does have poor graphics. I was getting bored towards the end but knew I should just push through to the end to get it over and done with.
So ultimately do I think this was a good idea? I have mixed feelings. I think it is a great idea to take a good franchise like the Forza one and give it some DLC for something like Fast and Furious, the idea is better than creating a whole new Fast and Furious game that bombs at retail. However this example is just not good enough. They should put a bit more effort in, make it feel more unique instead of just being like
Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox 360) Achievements. Heck if somebody walked in they would think you were playing that game. They could charge £5 for it, even if it only was a few hours long. They would hopefully break even on the investment made to make the product plus help build the reputation of the franchise and then hopefully encourage people to spend money and buy a proper Forza game. So yeah, I think this good be a good concept I encourage other developers to try but hopefully they'll put a bit more time in to make the final product stand out a bit more with a unique flair.
OutroIf you have any tips or advice on how to improve my blog then please let me know. I am also willing to meet new friends that share my passion for achievements as I do so feel free to comment and get to know me. Thank you for reading. :)