Ian

My name is Ian and I have a problem. Besides being an achievement whore, I’m prone to pick up the odd gaming bargain from time to time. Trouble is, I’ll often forget I’ve even bought it so it can languish in my stack of un-played games for a long time. Brütal Legend (£4), DJ Hero (£15 inc turntable) & several others languish there alongside cheap old sports games like PDC Darts (£1.99) & Trouser Snake’s PGA Tour 07 (98p).

For example, I’ve not started Mass Effect 2 (£5) ‘cause I wanted to mop up the first game before I went to the by-all-accounts superior sequel. Or Super Street Fighter IV (£25 so hardly a bargain) that I’ve not played due to the lame excuse of the 360 direction pad being atrocious. There may be some justification in that point, but not really a valid reason for not playing the damn game.

Then there are the games sent to me by a fellow PEOWW achievement whore, Rich, as he’s done with them and the gamerscore garnered might help me along a little. There’s Dark Void and Jericho to name but two. Microsoft don’t exactly help matters with their deals of the week either, so I have Limbo (600 space bucks) & DR: Case Rosie West (400MSP) on the list with some other XBLA games. To top things off I recently tapped up my friend who works for a certain large software company and I now have promos of Soul Calibur IV & H.A.W.X. 2 amongst others.

“All those games that we have kicking around unstarted are not counting against our completion percentage stats, so we are not particularly motivated to start them.
The idea of the [dive] is to start each and every one of those games, gaining at least one achievement. The shame of having our completion percentage collapse will no doubt shame many of us into rebuilding it as quickly as possible.”

All of which is a great excuse for me to finally address those games I keep putting off starting. This year’s Dive commences on July 7th  so apologies in advance for those of you on my TA friends list as there’s going to be a lot of activity from my direction on the day in question. 28 games so far in fact.

The plan of attack so far is to hop in and hop out right quick just getting an easy achievement and then moving to the next victimgame as efficiently as possible. Bearing in mind that for every Scene-It showering you with achievements like Poundland confetti at a chav wedding, there’s a Monster Madness (played for 5 hours, not one achievement, traded in for profit). Therefore I’ll start on the easier games first then tackling those that require a little more commitment.

The bastard of the bunch looks to be Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII purely ’cause it requires you to beat all 18 campaign missions just to get the first achievement. To fit this into the schedule, some groundwork is required or I’ll be playing this game all day on the 7th. Clearly the only solution is to play the first 17 missions beforehand leaving the final mission and first achievement for Bungie Day.

My grandpa was always on about the WWII, yes.

It’s TA ratio of one belies the chore involved as anyone who plays the game will get it with perseverance. I’m guessing it’s been deleted from a great many game histories since that option became available.

In complete contrast, DJ Hero is a polar opposite when it comes to getting that first achievement, almost rewarding you for starting the game.

10 PRINT "PEOWW IS THE GREATEST"

Saving all game acquisitions I’d got since deciding to do the Dive would be pure folly though so Portal 2 & Child Of Eden were given the proper respect they deserved, the former getting maxed with relative ease thanks to a great co-op partner. The latter is a different matter, no way was I waiting to play it.

My plan is to get home from work (early?) on the 7th and hit up as many games as possible that evening but if  I don’t manage to start them all, I won’t be too crushed. After all, some of the guys on TA who’re also doing it have 100+ games they’re diving with.

Finally, if you want to participate, sign up here!

See you on the flipside if I’ve not lost my mind or caused my 360 to meltdown due to the sheer lemon overload I’ve subjected it to.