Delith's Blog - Jul to Sep 15 (5 followers)

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So last night Aaron came over again and we kept chugging along on Halo: Reach Achievements. We finished Mission 9 before calling it a night (which was more like a morning since it was 1am). I got to tell ya, I'm not as young as I want to be anymore. I'm pushing 40 and here I am, drinking beers and playing video games until 1am on a weeknight. I got a toddler and a full time job. I'm a respectable adult and an upstanding citizen for the love of Pete. I am writing this the morning after and I feel a slight hangover swimming in the cobwebs of my skull. I'll probably feel this hangover all day long. I'm just not cut out for this stuff anymore. That's not going to stop me from doing it again of course, but I need to pace myself.

I'm coming up on my second vacation of the summer, which entails going 'up north' with Aaron and his wife, another friend of mine and his family and spending a week at a cabin, free of Internet and video games. I'll instead be surrounded by backwoods nature, a pristine lake, and good friends and family. Instead of a controller in my hand, I'll have a beer and a kayak paddle. Instead of shooting aliens I'll be shooting the breeze. All in all, I'm looking forward to it very much.

I also have to get ready for a house concert I'm hosting this Friday at my home. Emily Forst is going to be playing a set again (I think I mentioned her in a previous blog post but if not, check her out) and I need to get the backyard ready for it. We're hoping this time around to get 50+ people but we shall see. The point of this paragraph is to let you know that I probably won't be on the Xbox from here until the end of the month. Just too much to do in the real world.

A week or so after I get back, the Mile of Music will be kicking off. It's in it's 3rd year now and is a 4 day music festival here in town. This year, we got VIP tickets so I'll be spending quite a bit of time away from the TV and in front of a stage, which is OK in my book.

So because of all this 'stuff' happening in the coming weeks, a gaming dry spell is about to occur. Summer in Wisconsin man. It's just jam packed. I think I'm going to try to sneak in one more game session before the weekend starts. I want to pound out some more storyline in GTA5, but I don't know if I'll get any achievements in time.

So in case I don't, I made this achievement, which I will strive to get in the coming weeks.

Well, I'm still working on 'G' and over the last few days, popped a few more Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360) Achievements achievements. I got almost all the collectibles (just need knife flights and nuclear pickups) and even progressed farther in the story than I did when the game first came out. I know I'll finish the story and also nab every single player achievement I can in the game. I'm not so sure I'll do multiplayer yet though. Maybe I'll snag a few of the easy ones that I can do solo but we'll see.

Anyway, this blog isn't about GTA this time. I've officially moved on to 'H' last night when Aaron came over and we played some couch co-op Halo: Reach Achievements.

As previously mentioned, this game went on my card when pretty much a stranger came over and played the game using their disc and just played some multiplayer. Luckily, this game was a GWG a few months back so I didn't have to buy it. Also luckily, Aaron was willing to help me run through the story co-op and make the game slightly more bearable. It's interesting to note that any game with couch co-op easily becomes more fun when played with a friend sitting next to you. The game could be a total dog turd wrapped in Monopoly money but with a friend, it becomes a fun dog turd wrapped in Monopoly money.

So it is with Reach. We got to mission 5 last night and I'm still not sure what the story behind the shooter is. I mean, it's just a bunch of shooting while going to an objective and then more shooting and more running followed by more shooting and running. We're playing it on Heroic because in the in game settings, it stated that Heroic mode is the way Halo is meant to played and we thought why argue with the game creators? If they say this is the way to play it, then that's the way we will play it! So since it's Heroic, and we both kind of suck at FPS's, it's more like shooting, dying, respawning, shooting, running to checkpoint and dying, respawning, shooting, dying and spawning, dying right away before we can shoot, then respawning and shooting, and well, you get the picture. It's a battle of attrition.

So we decided we'll just play the campaign and not worry about the achievements and once it's over, if we feel like it, go back and snag the ones we missed but since it's summer in Wisconsin, the amount of times we'll be able to get together to play will be few and far between and we may decide to move on once the campaign is complete.

One other big achievement to be noted is I finally got the coveted 75% overall completion again. I tried to find out when was the last time that happened but either it's too hard to find out that info or TA doesn't track it. Luckily, I started keeping an excel spreadsheet to track such things myself. I started it in February of 2012 when my completion was 70.39% and a TA ratio of 1.49. The highest I ever got was 77.03% and that was in Dec of 2012. By March of 2013, I was down to 74.98%,climbed back to 75% by the end of the year but fell again and never recovered until now. The completion percentage to me is actually one of my favorite stats and one of the reasons I joined TA. When I joined, my percentage was under 40%. I'm very satisfied with a 75% and doubt I can get to 80% but with this alphabet game, it might happen. Actually, I doubt it. That's a hell of a lot of achievements to earn without starting new games. Just to get to 76%, I need 81 more now. Bleh.

Anyway, as always, thanks for the read and letting me get these thoughts out of my head. Till next time.

So over the long holiday weekend, I was able to get in some oh so sweet gaming and even though I mentioned previously I'd stick to the story line I lied. Much like a drug fiend who lies through his rotting teeth to get his fix, I lied through my perfectly fine and non rotting teeth to you and myself and started working on the collectibles in Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360).

Ok, so hear me out before you judge. The reason I put a hacienda on the story of the game is because of the Epilson achievement. I know the ending of it nets some serious cash and I've held off on the Hotel assassination mission because I want some sweet ROI in the stock market when I do it. I figure if I finish the Epsilon stuff, I have even more moolah to invest, right? Well, in order to finish that side mission, I need to wear the robes for 10 days straight. Now I could just be a mook and sleep for 10 days but why? I still will have to do the collectibles regardless! So I'm taking that in-game time to gather the alien ship parts and the letter scraps. I found the really cool interactive map online from Achievement Hunters website that marks all locations of every collectible so while doing those, I also took out Franklin and did all the stunt jumps. Oh ya, I bagged that achievement over the weekend.



So technically, I finished 'G' in the alphabet game by snagging it. But I'm not stopping. Oh no dear reader. This train is going to fast to stop now! However, I do feel much better now that the dry spell is over. I figure it has been almost two weeks since my gamerscore has increased and this juicy one had a nice ratio attached to it.

I'm on day 3 of wearing those ugly ass robes and will probably finish the collecting before the 10th day so I'll probably end up sleeping just to forward time anyway but man, it feels good to get one under the belt, ya know?

OK, so I am doing this Alphabet game, where I play a game and pop at least one achievement, but more often than not, I go for a bunch of them before moving on to the next letter. I don't want to give up on the game because I really like it and it forces me to go back to some older games and try them out again (Like Enslaved). However, I picked GTA5 for my 'G' game and man, that's a long ass game! I mean, it's fun as all get out but since I started over on the campaign, I am replaying all the areas of the game that I already popped achievements on so since I started the game two weeks ago, I have not popped a single achievement! In the last few days, I've thought of maybe just going for the collectibles just so I can hear that sound of an achievement unlocked and feel a little water wash over this dry spell but I just can't do that yet. I started the game two weeks ago and as of last night, I have 14 hours in the game. That's 14 hours of video game time in two weeks, or for those who love math, about an hour a day of video game playing.

At an hour a day, it's going to be another week before I get an achievement! Now obviously this is an achievement site and while it's fun to hunt for them, it isn't the only reason I play video games. But 3 weeks in-between achievements just seems....wrong... somehow. If I was gone on vacation for those three weeks, or even for some of that time, I wouldn't even be writing about it, but that's not the case. I truly am playing to get achievements right now and this game is taking the wind right out of my sails.

So why don't I just shoot for an achievement and satisfy that desire? Well, to do so would be to take away from the story line of the game, and that's what killed my progress the first time around. At an average of an hour a day, by the time I get an achievement and go back to the story, I'll probably forget where I left off and ruin the whole damn thing again. So I trudge on.

The good news is I'm only a mission or two away from being where I left off the first time, albeit without doing a lot of the side missions and strangers and freaks that I did previously, like Flight school, Lester assassinations (which I'm holding off on until later so I can reap more money) and other misc adventures in the game.

So ya, let this be a lesson to you all, if you're looking for achievements to come at a steady pace, don't restart a game that takes 100 hours to complete!