Wait, what? I made it to the second week of stats? The world hasn't ended and Dog of Thunder still lies dormant in his glass coffin. All is well...so far.
Bolstered by
last week's success
and beatings, the Statisticles have been working extremely hard to bring you some fascinating numbers to look at. Look, there's a 4. Isn't that 7 nice. Not enough 9s for my liking.
This report is for the period August 27th to September 2nd 2012.
Games Started18,008 TrueAchievements gamers started a total of 26,865 games between them (1,615 different games).
Despite fairly consistent accusations of their derivative nature and lack of innovation, annual-release sports games continue to be a big draw the world over as players eagerly step into the shoes of their favourite team to secure victory against the competition. That may be a sweeping statement, and maybe
Madden NFL 13 bucks the trend; I wouldn't know, I play
Botaoshi. Regardless,
Madden NFL 13 proves the genre's popularity, turning over decent sales in its first week, decimating the previous week's top titles,
Sleeping Dogs,
Darksiders II and
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. All that, and it had only been out for three days when these numbers were collated.
Last week's
Deal of the Week seems to have persuaded the stragglers to pick up
Assassin's Creed: Revelations and finish up Ezio and Altair's story in readiness for moving onto Connor's antics in
Assassin's Creed III. I also purchased the DLC when it was on offer, even though I don't own a copy of the game yet. Is that weird?
Top Retail Games Started
And the man at the back said 'Everyone attack' and it turned into a Rock Band Blitz.
And the girl in the corner said 'Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a Rock Band Blitz'.
Ahem. Excuse me, I was having a
glam rock moment. It won't happen often, I promise.
Rock Band Blitz has got everyone back into rhythm games, rejuvenating the franchise with its arcade style and happy lack of expensive peripherals. It 'blitzes' the chart this week, with a surprisingly significant lead over last week's top starter,
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD and
The Expendables 2 Videogame slip away silently into the night.. The first game I'd recommend: it's a fun remake of a classic beat-em-up and a swift completion. The second game...
not so much.
Top Arcade Games Started
A new week, a new Windows Phone game is released and dominating the numbers. And when I say 'dominating', I mean over 20 times the amount of people started
Roll in the Hole (WP) than the next game down,
Doodle God (WP). That is a massive margin. Apparently, people sure do love the idea of rolling in holes.
I can't quite figure out why
Doodle God jumped up to second. Anyone know? Then again, the numbers down the rest of the table are actually so close, it probably doesn't really matter. It's all fairly interchangeable.
Top Windows Phone Games Started
Games Completed9,217 TrueAchievements gamers completed a total of 13,105 games between them (1,169 different games).
From what I hear, "Leviathan" wasn't quite the single player
Mass Effect 3 experience some people were hoping for. What it is, is a very easy completion, with (as of this moment) 90% of the people who started it having finished it, bringing the game back to the top of the Games Completed chart.
Sleeping Dogs also continues to prove itself an easy completion for a large open-world game, hitting a similar number of completions to the previous week.
Top Retail Games Completed
Guess what? A new
The Walking Dead episode came out. I wonder if the final episode of the game will buck the trend by having achievements for different endings, forcing you to replay the whole thing to nab the final completion. Not that that would be a bad thing: from a story perspective, replay value is one of this game's many strong points.
Top Arcade Games Completed
People seem to love rolling in holes so much, that they're taking their hole rolls to completion with ease. To date, over 60% of players have completed
Roll in the Hole.
Top Windows Phone Games Completed
Achievements Won46,533 TrueAchievements gamers won a total of 613,208 achievements online between them (44,592 different achievements).
The top Games Started and Games Completed titles combine nicely into the Retail Achievements Won table with all of "Leviathan's" achievements making an appearance alongside the easiest ones from
Madden NFL 13.
Top Retail Achievements Won
The Walking Dead comes really close to a clean sweep in Arcade Achievements Won. In fact, the only reason it doesn't get a clean sweep, is because those are the only eight achievements in the episode.
It's also a testament to
The Walking Dead's continued quality and popularity, and the poor release schedule at the moment, that so many more people are picking up achievements in that game than any others, especially new releases from the past few weeks.
Top Arcade Achievements Won
In case you hadn't figured out already, top game started and top game finished means
rolling,
rolling and yet more
rolling.
Top Windows Phone Achievements Won
Rock Band Blitz power chords Music & Rhythm up the Genre chart a little, but I doubt it'll stay there very long.
Total TrueAchievements won by Genre-
Action-Adventure5,605,419
Last week I was more than a little derisive about individual games dominating the tables. That's nothing compared to this week, however. These charts look like the New York stock exchange the day Apple won its case against Samsung. A little topical humour for you there.
Check back next week when, hopefully, we'll see a little more variety and closer competition between the titles.
*Looks ahead to next week*
Oh, nuts.