"It is that time of the week. I got your weekly recap right here: I told
nestlekwik that 6 days of playing would be ideal... so last week there
was some extra effort to get us there. Good job! Ready for this? Last
week saw an increase of 1865 points! My eye almost bleeds looking at a
number that large! Getting 100 achievements can do that to you. I was
there. I saw it!
If I had a DOLLAR for every new game I played
during the week, I would have 3 bucks! w00t! I can now add Rumble Roses
Double X, Virtua Tennis 3, and WANTED:Weapons of Fate to my
collection... unless they were rentals or demos or betas. I couldn't
tell. Also, I think we can all agree that nestlekwik's favorite game
last week was WANTED:Weapons of Fate. He played it on 4 of the days.
And that's it... short and sweet, just like my power cord."
Again, if you'd like your Xbox 360 to write its own blog, head over to 360Voice.com and while you're there, join our 360Voice group.
It was a slow weekend for the site, for which I apologize. I was tasked with house/dog sitting over the weekend, which I didn't mind because, in earnest, I needed a weekend to just be lazy and sink into the comfort of a sofa, Xbox 360 controller in tow. What was odd, however, was the obscene amount of time I spent playing tennis games over the weekend. Between Virtua Tennis 3 and SEGA Superstars Tennis, I logged in quite a few hours and I don't plan on stopping my momentum as I plow through both games. What struck me as downright bizzare, however, is the handful of people who still play these titles online. I commend their dedication and the reason I think it is weird is because I have no problems finding a tennis match, yet no one will play some of the older fighting games or arcade-based titles. Through the past few days, you can also add in the time I spent playing Sonic's Genesis Collection and we have some sort of wacky SEGA fetish that took up my weekend.
In my wake of achievement destruction, however, I met my goal of reaching the daunted 40,000 mark by the weekend's conclusion. It's times like this where I wish the achievement points had some sort of real-world value, even in a Club Nintendo type of way where netting so many points in a certain time period netted you a cheap little freebie. I'm sure it's extremely feasible to do and I'm not forgetting the Old Spice challenge from a few years back, but there has to be a more permanent means of offering such a feature. With the scores of LIVE Arcade titles Microsoft is tossing left and right in 1 Vs. 100, I'm sure it wouldn't be too much for them to offer limited time only rewards for clearing certain achievement spreads. In a perfect world, we would have cards that deduct Gamerscore Points from your total so you can buy Taco Bell or whatnot, but, alas, it's just not meant to be right now.
I don't really remember playing Wanted on four different days, but, hey, I'm not my Xbox. I'll have to revisit this one to pump up my achievement score on it, but I must say this is absolutely the easiest shooter I've played in quite some time. Time was my only enemy while I had this game in my possession as I have only a handful of achievements to go and I don't anticipate the game putting up too much of a fight in that quest. Overall, it was a very mediocre game - I didn't dig the story or main character, there is no weapon variety, there is no challenge to be had in the game and everything just gets way too repetitive too soon. Maybe I should just start doing full reviews of the games I'm playing for achievements ...
Finally, I'd like to thank Lar for his recent submissions. While it was unclear whether or not we would see him again, he's been pushing through some of his reviews and he has some nice features on the way. Keep checking back this week as we keep at it with new features.