Ian
Bean Dive pt.1 can be found HERE.
My plans to put some time into the more challenging first achievements prior to July 7th sadly didn’t come to fruition for whatever reason. See, I’m good at this procrastinating lark. However, having a better half who does shift work played into my hands as she worked Friday 8th until 2200 and all day on both Saturday & Sunday following, so some proper headway can be made on these badboys.
Due to my gambit of watching NFL Total Access on Sky Sports, I was successful in my plan of making a sly start to the Dive prior to turning in for the night. First up just after midnight on Thursday was DJ Hero. The purist in me wanted to just get the one achievement before moving on to the next. However the game had other ideas. I skipped the tutorial as is my wont, before diving into the first mix. Got the first achievement by getting an 8x multiplier but since I was on a roll saw out the mix. Then the game hit me with the bête noire of many score whores, a bloody 1 point achievement for finishing my first mix as well as the achievement I’d expected to get first for 5G. I could’ve carried on but for work in the morning so switched off. My own personal hell is an uneven gamerscore set to a Mick Hucknall soundtrack.
30 unstarted retail titles, some good, some bad, all mocking me
Along with breakfast, I made a start on two easy XBLA achievements, Sonic & Knuckles & Age of Booty both gave up a combined 15G with ease. I thought Feeding Frenzy would be another that’d yield quickly, but oh no. With that I went to work.
Eight or so torturous hours passed where all I could think about was which game I’d be tapping up next…
Continuing where I left off, Guitar Hero Metallica was slain with a simple ‘download a free song from GHTunes’ for 5G. I could’ve sung or played a song, but time was of the essence and I still had most of a pile of games to tackle.
Next up was Bayonetta and I can see why it polarises opinion, though I’m not sure how it garnered an Erse 10. Maybe the reviewer likes pain or has a thing for Sarah Palin. Two achievements popped this time (15G), though I could’ve quit to dashboard after just one. I figured my copybook was already blotted by DJ Hero so it didn’t matter anymore.
Revisting Feeding Frenzy garnered a quick 10G after about 10 minutes, easy. Another XBLA title, indie poster-child Limbo was up next. I went the wrong way and got some avatar tat as well as 5G for my trouble.
Following on we had a Peoww source of mirth, Shaun White’s Snowboarding (bLOL – Ed) was inserted in the disc tray. Horrible. One of our erstwhile forumites paid full price for this. He may have even been lead reviewer. Wow, what an incredible error. It takes everything that was great about Amped and ignores it. Horrible. One flung snowball later (15G) and I popped the disc tray with the disc still spinning. Horrible. It’ll take some going to surpass this game with another I’ll want to play even less. Did I say it was horrible? Our 2/10 review back in the mists of time may well have been a trifle generous.
Aqua: Naval Warfare was up next, nothing to do with those annoying Nordic pop types thankfully. More a water based twin-stick shooter. Finished the tutorial, 10G was mine.
Time to move on to MindJack. Overwhelmed by the sudden stench of citrus, I did everything I could to try to skip the interminable opening sequence and the crude control orientation, I was out to dashboard quicker than the game blotted my gamercard with 5G. Cheers for that Squiddy.
A much more promising game was up next, underpublicised racing game Superstars V8 Next Challenge from Italian developer Milestone, fondly remembered by me for their early PC game Screamer. Distributed over here by Codemasters, I’m not hugely surprised SSV8 didn’t get any hype given as it clashes with their own Grid series. Regretfully rather than sampling the gameplay, I went for an easy achievement in watching the credits. They went on for about 5 minutes, thankfully not as long as those for the interminable Guitar Hero II. 9G later (Ha! Take that DJ Hero!), it was time to move on.
Bargain-basement darts title PDC World Championship Darts gave Shaun White a run for its money in the enthusiasm stakes, thankfully my fears were proved wrong as I found myself quite enjoying the game. At least once I’d realised you could stop a throw if you’d Johnny B. Downsed it. Sure, a max looks like a grindy hell, but it’s not hateful like SWSB is. Won my first match against the 16th ranked player for a paltry 5G. The postman only won once though.
I don’t know about you but I’m getting bored of this blow-by-blow account of every damn achievement I got during the dive, so if it’s boring for me god knows how you must feel dear reader.
In conclusion, I decided not to go for Ninety Nine Nights, Blaverage Angels or Naruto: Rise of a Ninja ’cause I had taken on enough games as it it was. That combined with the fact I’d have had to grind to even get the first achievement in each. And in the case of NNN, there was probably a reason why I’d bought it cheap in 2008 and never played it.
Total games played rose from 215 pre-dive to 249 afterwards and my completion ratio dropped from 51.2% to 44%. Going to need a bit of work to tackle this, but at least it’ll stave off my compulsion to buy yet another game for a while.
Will I do it again next year? Possibly. At least now I have the ghosts I’ll address them. Bullet Witch can still fuck off though.