A Bunch of Stuff

Yes, just like the title says, a bunch of stuff has happened in the what two months since my last post?  Where to begin?  Ah, well we can start with this.  I finally reached 20,000 Gamerscore with an achievement from Forza 4...after all this time I don't remember what it was even...  I'm not sure if I want to continue my quest towards the amount of 30,000 or give achievement hunting a rest for a little while.  I am trying to get all the achievements from Halo Anniversary; however, some of the achievements are proving a little difficult.

I also completely missed making a post on here, which does sadden me to some extent, but life had taken over at that time.  On March 29th of this year, it marked my 5 year "anniversary" for joining Bungie.net.  I didn't follow the semi-tradition of creating a thread stating my opinion on the moderation in my time being there or anything else, besides I have to wait another two years before it becomes mandatory.  Honestly because I was so busy at that time I almost forgot about it, only remembering it halfway through the day.

My next piece of news is in regards to my last post where I mentioned I was joining a Grifball team with Storm.  Well we changed our minds on joining a team shortly after I posted that.  Instead we decided to start our own team.  Very long story short, neither Storm or I had people on our friends lists that enjoyed playing Grifball so in order to find teammates, I went to this place called GrifballHub and they had a thread for players looking for teams and teams looking for players.  The day after I had posted that I received a message from this person with the name of oObeX asking about our runner position.  I replied back with my Gamertag and the best day to catch us online to get some games in.  A couple days later I was browsing through the same thread and saw that UCCxZAKORE was looking for a team.  I sent him a message asking if he wanted to join the team and he was interested.  Farther into the future we came to an agreement on a name and thus The Light Redcoats were created.
So far we had our first experience with league teams in a Vanilla GRUNT...it didn't go too well for us.  Sadly our only win was by a default as one team dropped out.  Since there was an uneven amount of teams that signed up we got a first round bye, once the second round rolled about we got to play our first game; which was a really close game.  We jumped out to a 2-0 lead and were getting ready to score a third time to technically take the game, but we let that game slip out from underneath us.  Our last two games of the tournament were rather...embarrassing.  We got shut out 5-0 in each of them.  Granted they were against veteran teams and we're only a rookie team.  I still stand by what I have said before, with some time, patience and practice I know our team will be able to hold their own during actual league games.

The last thing I will quickly cover in this very short post has to do with my passion for both gaming and writing.  A couple months ago, I was sitting and browsing through the gaming news blog that a few of my friends and fellow Xbox Ambassadors had started and noticed they were looking for staff members.  So I sent a tweet away to the owner and founder asking if they were still accepting applications, he got back within a few minutes stating yes.  So I sent in an application and they gave me a two month trial period to see if I had what it took to become their lead review.  Nothing is official on that yet, but I have wrote a couple of reviews for them (one on Forza 4 and one on ODST) in that time and they were happy with them.  I'm pretty sure I'll at least be a reviewer for Inside View Gaming for a little while.  They are looking to expand greatly in the near future, it sounds like they are hammering out the details for some big stuff as well.

That does it for this short post, but it was at least something right?  Remember, always keep an eye on the ever so elusive Grif.  He's very sneaky if he takes over the right person.

Time for a Decision & An Announcement

Not to sound dramatic with the title of this post, especially since I hate Internet drama, this is more so about what direction that my Halo "career" could go.  Along with some other things as well.As I'm sure you all can tell (even if you just found this blog today) I am a huge Grifball nut.  The past few days I have been looking at GrifballHub's website and reading over the new stuff relating to the new season of the GGL (Good Games League); in that time I have also been thinking of how cool it would be to play in at least one season of the GGL.  I also discovered that they have a list that people can sign up to be what they call "Guest Players".  I've noticed that they mostly consist of current league players but they mention that since the GGL is a recreational league anyone can throw their name on that list so long as they can abide by league rules.  When I saw that list I thought about signing up for that list, but then I had a dose of reality that made me realize my schedule would not permit it right now.  Then a couple days later I was back to doing the same thing.  After doing some extra reading and finding a topic in their forum that was for people looking for a team and for teams looking for players, I came to the decision that next season I will throw my name in the hat and see if I can land a spot on a team.  I know I had said that my schedule will be busy, but by the time the next season of the GGL kicks off with sign-ups I will be finishing up what is tying me down now.
So there you have it, during the Spring or Summer (I don't remember exactly when the next GGL season is) I will at least try out for a team.  Whether or not I make it onto any team is a completely different story.

Speaking of Grifball, I have a few games that I recently played in Reach of it.
We lost a person from the start, but we had control of the game pretty much.

Dibs on Defender!  I totally called it!

Good game blue team....ouch.

Bomb meet face, face meet bomb.

And just for kicks, my very first game of Grifball in Reach.

I'll close out this short post (Hey!  It's late here) with some clips from Grifball that I have taken recently.  They are rendered so if you have Silverlight (I think that's what it is) installed and up-to-date you can watch it right on Bungie's site.  If you don't you can either download it to watch next time you boot up Reach or I am hoping to have them uploaded to YouTube in the near future.
I'll first start off with my most recent favorite.

"Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting Gwif."
Hehe, I love doing that.  I also kind of did it once before in Reach and once in Halo 3.

Nothing too special honestly, but I really don't think that I was supposed to get the bomb...
Yeah so that's what I believe (at least they used to call it that) a Grifumble (might be two "f's" not sure) recovered by the opposing team.  What I believe was supposed to happen was the guy I killed was actually the one supposed to get the bomb while the guy that dropped it was supposed to come after me and kill me.  It seems that something went wrong...somewhere.

"I got a clear path to plate, all I gotta do is kill this dude that spawned."
"No you don't."
Yeah, so that was me coming off the spawn.  Nothing too impressive again but I at least saved us from getting scored against.

Planting Fail!
Yep, I failed at planting the bomb.  I would have been fine if I didn't jump.  I always jump though, it's like a force of habit...or nature whichever.  Either way it didn't work too well.


Haha!  I lied!  A quick update on my quest for 20k Gamerscore.  I am currently sitting at 19,571 which if you do some simple math (20,000 - 19,571 = 429) well would you look at that!  Only 429 away from my personal goal.  I still need to finish the Gears 2 campaign and do some clean up on some easy achievements, plus finish both Dead Island and Bulletstorm (still...) which all should net me some extra points.  I am also still going to try to earn all the achievements for Halo Anniversary with Storm; though it looks like some of them might give us some troubles.
There you have it everyone, I will try to get a full fledged post out sometime soon.  No promises but I have been trying to keep this place updated on a regular basis.

Oh Internet, You Amaze Me

This first paragraph is most certainly a rant so you can probably skip to the second paragraph if you don't want to read my ramblings.  I cannot bring myself to the understanding of how someone can think a game that has a bug or glitch that erases your story progress completely game of the year material.  Recently there was a thread in a group I am in on Bungie.net that was in regards to I believe IGN's GOTY article, which they deemed Portal 2 as theirs.  One person in that thread seems intent on trying to convince me that I am wrong in my ways of agreeing with their decision and not jumping on the "Skyrim is teh best gaem evar!!1!" bandwagon.  Okay, so that may not be their main goal but it sounds like it based on the way their posts read.  I guess I just can't grasp my mind around the fact that someone can think a game is GOTY material when it has a serious bug that erases your story progress.I know in the past I have said the no game is perfect, and I still stand behind that.  I can understand it, if it is something on a little smaller scale such as a character disappearing randomly.  But take and ask this question to yourself:
Do you really want to spend 100+ hours playing a game only to save and quit one night then come back the following day to find everything, all your leveled up skills, weapons etc. gone?  While you ponder that, I shall move onto the next topic.

A couple days ago I finished my first season in the Dynasty I had started.  I finished the season at 14-0 and took the team I always use to the National title game.  I bet you can take one guess as to who it is.  Can't guess?  It's the Fighting Illini.  I found out that I evidently have the game on the lowest difficulty...which explains why I can go undefeated through the season.  That does not explain however why I have troubles with Purdue, Penn State and Michigan each time I play them.  At first it was only Penn State that would give me fits (you know, the magic player that would come out of nowhere and sack you or come up with an interception) but now it seems that Purdue and Michigan can be added to that list.  I played Purdue at home in the (with "e" being stressed) Memorial Stadium and they managed to pick me off three times and score on twice of said three times.
I faced Michigan twice.  Once in the regular season and they gave me probably the worst trouble.  I thought this game was going to be whose kicker would be the best.  In the first three quarters it was each team trading a field goal.  It was only until the fourth quarter where we picked them off and returned it for a touchdown.
Since I did rely heavily on my running game throughout the first season I ended up getting my starting running back in the race for the Heisman Trophy.  Unfortunately he kept getting injured in our last few games so his average yards per game went down plus we had a bye week.  In the end the quarterback of Houston won.  I'm not disappointed really, except for the fact that I lost out on a 15 point achievement.

Speaking of achievements, I'm only 599 points away from breaking into the 20K Gamerscore club.  I'm hoping that with finishing up Bulletstorm and Dead Island I'll be able to snag at least another 100-150 more points.  I need to go back and check to see which ones I can get easily.  Plus this weekend I am going to pick up Gears of War 2 (hey, it's only ten bucks!) and from asking someone I know on Twitter what it's like they said it has easy achievements.  As I told them, I'll take easy achievements any day.  I've also thought about picking up CoD4 (aka the first Modern Warfare) however I'm still on the fence about that one.  The only thing I would be playing would be the campaign for it as I am hearing the multiplayer is chock full of modders and hackers.  I'm just not sure honestly.

I leave you with this short post, but at this time I don't have much more to add to this post.  Hopefully I can finish Bulletstorm up this weekend and grab some more achievements in one of three games.

Island of Paradise

My first post since I finished the "Bowl Bound" series, granted it is a tad later than the few days afterwards.  But hey, why should it be any different from before right?  During the time I was doing the Bowl Bound series I got a couple new games.  One of which I already used for the previously mentioned series, NCAA Football 12.  I haven't played a lot of it to form a solid opinion of it, from what I have played of it though I like it much better than NCAA Football 10.  I like the stadium introductions for home teams, it actually feels like a Saturday morning college football game.  I started the usually dynasty on it as well, so far I like how you have to be more involved in recruiting and the like.  Needless to say though, I still kind of suck at doing that.
The other game I got was Dead Island.  Picture Left 4 Dead meeting Fallout in terms of RPG/Shooter combo.  I've played Fallout so I know how the RPG elements work in that game and it is rather....slow with how quickly you rank up.  I'll admit I was expecting the same thing with Dead Island when I first found out that it was going to have that element. When I started playing it I was proved wrong in my assumption (see, they're not always that great) and was leveling up rather quickly.  I love how huge the game world is, I am about halfway through the game and still have yet to fully explore the island itself.  And (Spoiler Alert!) since that is the case I made into the city, which might be larger than the island itself, but I still have yet to explore it completely either.  Needless to say, if you enjoy exploring large maps and hunting for hidden items this game will certainly cure that itch for a while.  I never really used to explore the maps until I was watching Storm do it in Bioshock and saw that he was finding all these cool things hiding away in dark little corners.  I went and played later on and did the same and found all this cool stuff that Storm had previously ran across.  Not that I would ever commit some of those spots to memory and go back to them when I played...nope, never.

The other game I have been playing recently is Bulletstorm.  It's a fun game I like it from what I have played of it.  If a sequel is ever released there is some work that should be done to the basic gameplay and I'm sure the developers would do that.  They do know how games work after all.  There are times where you are fighting an enemy and all of sudden you glitch through the floor and can't do anything.  Or there's the time where the "sidekick" walks over a bridge and starts to float towards the sky only to get caught in a tree.  Yeah so the game isn't perfectly polished, but it's still fun to play nonetheless.  The leash is really sweet, I like how you can yank enemies towards you and kill them that way.  Or if you want you could leash them your way and then kick them into the nearest cactus...or over the closest ledge.  Or even back in the direction he came from and back into the group of enemies he was around.

On a quick closing note, I am currently sitting at 19,091 Gamerscore.  If you remember a while ago I started a quest for 10,000 Gamerscore, currently my new goal is for 20,000.  It might take a while, but I'm sure I'll eventually make it.  There you have it, a somewhat short post but I am hoping to have posts out on a regular basis.  So until next time!

Three Months, but Who's Counting?

Right if you answer yes to the question of who is counting the amount of months since my last post, you can stop counting now.  So why the lack of posting for the past three months?  I do have a life outside of gaming you know.  Anyways, in the past three months I haven't done a whole lot really.  I've been playing the usual Reach, but I also went back to playing Fallout: New Vegas in hopes to finish it sometime....soon-ish.  And by "soon-ish" I mean sometime within the next several months.  In that same time I also went back and finished my third season in my first dynasty I started when I first got NCAA Football '10.  Interesting story about that actually.

So why not start with said interesting story, I agree, lets.  Resuming my third season as Illinois about half through the actual season (makes sense right?) I was still undefeated and ranked about sixth or seventh in the nation.  I'll admit, I did suck when I first started playing again as I haven't played it for ages.  With that being the case, I would just so happen to draw Purdue as my first opponent back in conference play...this should be fun.  Fast forwarding to the actual game, we had home field advantage (I love when we play at home, both in a video game and in real life) and it was a back and forth game to go along.  We won the coin toss at the start of the game and I decided to defer until the second half ( I know, not a smart choice) but I was confident that our defense would be strong right out the gate.  I was right, we held Purdue off from scoring...not before they could move down to within the five yard line though.  Once that happens we hold them at a quick three and out with pushing them back a few yards on a couple plays; then they bring on the field goal unit...only to miss.  I'm still puzzled as to how they missed about a twenty yard field goal.  Anyways, that results in us getting the ball at their end, we march it all the way down the field and score.  After avoiding what should've been an easy three points for them at the start of the game and returning the favor by scoring our own seven points I'm thinking "Great, we can take these guys easily now."  Kickoff to Purdue coming, fielded at about 24 yard line.  Okay return coverage lets them get it to about their 35, moving a little bit ahead, they manage to throw these short passes on our secondary and eventually make it back down to the five yard line again.  Deja vu anyone?  This time we're not so luck as for holding them off though, they make yet another short pass over the middle into the endzone to tie it up seven a piece.
Continuing on to the second quarter both teams basically end up wasting each time they had the ball.  Closing in on half time that is, I manage to take a forced fumble back for a TD and a 14-7 lead.  Thinking a little more conservatively this time around on defense and knowing that with time running out for the first half I predict the short passes to the sidelines.  Purdue does exactly that...and it still works for them.  They manage to tie it up going into the half.  Skipping ahead to the middle of the third quarter I manage to take over on offense and put another couple scores to match Purdue's one score they put up.  Going into the fourth I'm up by a score making it 28-21, proceeding later into the fourth I am able to get two interceptions and take them both back for a final score of 42-21.  It was really an interesting game...I'm glad I escaped with the two interceptions in the fourth.

After escaping that game I moved up to number two in the nation and then had a road game against Indiana and then back to Champaign-Urbana for Penn State.  Oh boy...Penn State, EA always has something for them being a really good team each year.  I don't remember how this game went, but I know I beat them by double their score.  I'm always happy when that happens since they are the only team that actually threatens to beat me each season.  After all this is said and done I end up getting bumped down in the polls to number three.  A few "weeks" later they release the bowl predictions with second ranked Florida taking on the first ranked NC State (seriously...where did they come from in that season?) playing in the BCS Title game.  Fine and dandy and all that extra stuff, I don't care about Florida or NC State, I end up getting sixth ranked USC in the Rose Bowl.  That sounds fine to me, it'll be the perfect revenge for the '07 real-life Rose Bowl destruction they handed us.  I finish the season up and we proceed into the post-season, all the conference playoffs are going on and since the Big Ten doesn't have those (until now anyhow) I just sit there.  I sim the final week of the post-season and find out that both NC State and Florida lost their conference championship games...this in turn places me into the first seed taking on number two Miami in the title game.  -blam!-  At this point I would have much rather played in the Rose Bowl against USC as I wanted revenge badly.  Forwarding into the title game I take it 27-13, and now I am currently in the off season.  The part I hate about playing through a dynasty.

After I had completed my third season, it got me to thinking that I wanted going to play Nebraska in my next pre-season games as they are not part of the real life Big Ten conference.  I did some research into NCAA Football '12 and I found out when setting up your dynasty you can customize the conference.  This got me a little excited as I knew once I had that game I could have the Big Ten conference created to perfection complete with the Leaders and Legends divisions with the appropriate teams in each.  So, sometime in the near future I will be talking about NCAA Football '12 instead of '10.

Moving onto the rest of the topics I'm hoping to cram in here.  Unfortunately I can't comment much on New Vegas as I haven't played it enough yet to form a solid opinion of the game.  I can say this though, I -blam!- hate the Radscorpions, I swear they come out of nowhere when I am playing the game.  I'm also not sure if I want to side with the NCR or someone else yet.  I've been told that I can side with Mr. Hand (whoever that is...see I'm early in the game yet) and I might to do that as I'm not hearing much good about the NCR throughout the wasteland.  I know, I know, I can also side with Cesar's Legion (spelling for the in-game character is not correct most likely.)  Last time though I saw someone using fur for a head cover was back in the 1400's when I was Ezio.  Yeah and they tried to stab me...a lot.  I don't take kindly to people who try to stab me.  On the other hand, I've heard from someone on the CRF forums (shameless self promotion I know) that they think the NCR suffers from the usual "fight the powah", as they put it, that governments face.  So who knows really, I sure don't.

Yesterday I downloaded the demo of Forza Motorsport 4.  I really don't play racing games much, but I do enjoy them when I decide to crash, er, I mean race around a track in a half a million dollar exotic sports car.  I have the first Forza for the original Xbox, so I sort of knew what to expect from this demo.  I would get a game that was more realistic and focused on tuning your car in order to make it handle the way you wanted it to.  Sadly since I'm not a gearhead I could never be that good at it, it was fun yes but unless you knew what you were doing you would totally mess something up.  So I pretty much left my cars with their stock parts.  Back to the demo, the virtual cars handle great.  In the demo you were only allowed to play either a race or take on a friends' challenge on beating course within their set time.  This doesn't sound like much of a demo does it?  Well, thankfully for the races you could choose between three different cars to race in, you in turn would race against cars within your class.  If you usually play an arcade styled racing game, the same thought process you would use for one of those won't work too well here.  Say you want to drift into the next turn after speeding down a nice long straightaway, sure I suppose you could do that but you might slide into the wall conveniently located to your immediate left...or right.

So what's the point of all that rambling?  Well in a more technical sense, you really have to slow down if you want to go through the upcoming turn while maximizing your...well whatever special technical term that goes here.  The physics for this game are awesome, easily the most realistic racing game I have played.  If you over steer going through said corner (yes, that corner again) you will start to spin out and crash...not that I know from experience.

The Rival mode is what I was previously talking about where you race a copy of your friend(s) and try to beat their fastest time.  I didn't play much of this, but it looked interesting.  Think of a classic arcade unit where you try to beat the highest score, I can easily see this promoting some friendly competition amongst the people on your friends list.  The graphics look really impressive, the sheen of a what looks like a freshly waxed Ferrari is very nice.  I know that is not much of a "first impression" of Forza 4, but it's only a demo and there isn't a whole lot to do.  In the future though I can see this game easily raising the bar for simulation style racing games and becoming the go-to game for those that throughouly enjoy racing games.

I have a goal set for myself and is to grab 20,000 Gamerscore.  Currently I'm stuck at 17,788...yeah it's going to be a little while yet before I can get it.  Luckily though the other day I went through my game stash and found there are some games I have yet to play on my LIVE account and earn some achievements for.  There are also others that I can go back and grab some extra points from to help my "cause".  Also something else that'll help is I'll be getting three new games within the next couple of months.  In turn will grant me access to more points to help out.

I believe that is all for this post, I am honestly running out of words to throw in here in a semi-logical order.  I will however, leave you with a parting gift.  Do you remember the web based flash game called Warthog Launch?  Well, I swear in a game of Firefight there were a group of Grunts playing that this game.

Four Years and Still Strong

So, today signifies the four year join date for me on Bungie.net. Since that is the case, I would qualify for the Veteran prefix for my title. However, that's not the case as I already have Exalted which is the highest prefix one can gain. Over my stay there I have been in so many awesome private groups, one of which was the very first group I joined I am still in. I remember the first group I started on my own and tried to get off the ground. Needless to say it didn't go to well... Ah yes, the abomination of a group that was Troops of Onyx. Oh, and can't forget about the real only semi-successful Legion of Elites. Yeah, it had a whole 15 members and only a few were ever active. After that I finally realized that I should give up on trying to start a group myself. I think the only group that ever had a chance at getting off the ground was the Halo Gaming Association. Apparently though, two revived versions of the group wasn't enough to get things going smoothly.

Anyways, a couple weeks ago I played some of Reach's multiplayer with Storm. We had plenty of awesome games and here are a few of them. One of the only times where I'll ever have 20+ kills. The Key made me do it! The Key is basically the sword; it's a reference to a phrase the Tucker makes from I think season four of RvB. Okay, so maybe this is another one of those times. Again, the Key made me do it. Blarg! That was an awesome game, it basically came down to who could control the yellow(more like green to me...) Which a lot of people consider bad for Sword Base, but I like it; I think it adds to the chaos that goes with the name of Halo. <3 Oddball. I didn't do much scoring wise, but I kind of helped by keeping the enemy team away from our teammate who had the ball. Yet another close game. Stupid Armor Lock... I believe that is all of the games I have to post.

However, I do have some rendered videos to show off. This first video shows how not to throw a grenade out a doorway. It might look like it worked, but Storm(yes, he's the one who threw the grenade) was actually intending to throw it out the doorway a little bit farther to the right. In turn I end up getting blown up by a grenade. I'll admit, I laughed pretty hard the moment it happened. Embedded version is below, with the direct link to download the clip to Reach. At some point I hope to have it uploaded to my Youtube channel.
Direct download link is here.
Speaking of my Youtube channel, about a month ago I uploaded some other rendered videos I had laying around in Reach to it. I believe that some of them I haven't posted on here before, on the other hand; some of them already have been. Ah well, pick and choose which one(s) you want to watch.

As of lately, I've been going for another personal goal of reaching 15,000 Gamerscore. Most of you might remember a couple posts I made earlier about my quest for 10,000 points and then later 12,000. I am currently sitting at 14,653 and having a hard time getting those last few points. I originally thought it would be easy to get the last 500 points when I reach it, but that was like 3 months ago... That's all I have for now. I know it's a rather short post compared to what I usually do, but it's at least something.

Fearing 10,000

Okay, so a week or two later than what I had planned on, but it's not out of the normal for me. I'm pretty sure you can guess the point of this post by simply reading the title of it; if not, I'll fill you in a little bit. A while back ago(maybe a month or so) I got 7,000 gamerscore and set out to met goals in increments of 1,000. A few weeks later I hit 8,000 then went for 9,000 and so on. Well on April 12th, 2010, I broke the 10,000 point mark I was originally aiming for. The day before(the 11th) I was playing Fear Files to get the last points I needed, well by the time I was done for the day I ended up with only needing seven points in order to get 10,000 even. I couldn't find any games that I owned with a seven point achievement except for Marathon: Durandal which had one, but I already had it. So the following day I played the Fear 2: Reborn expansion pack that could be downloaded, keep in mind I already had it for a week and earned all the easy achievements in it, and earned the "Foot Soldier" achievement for it. It requires you to get through the first level of the expansion without using the armor you drop in. Which is actually a lot harder than it sounds since there are way too many enemies shooting at you with rockets. Anyways, once I got it, that put me over to 10,023 I believe and I've continued on since then. Granted a little more slowly since I don't have a goal to reach, but still.

My first achievement for my gamertag(which I might consider changing it back, not sure yet) was from Halo 3 and that was "MVP: Earned the MVP in a ranked playlist.", worth five points and earned on November 14th, 2007 in my first game of Halo 3 online.



Anyways, moving on. I recently picked up Bioshock 2 and have played it. It's pretty good, I think I close to completing it though. So in order to combat that, I started a new game and am currently playing through it again being "evil". With the Bioshock series you can either choose to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters you come across, on my first play through of the game I decide to rescue them and get all the stuff they give you. For what reason? No idea. Anyways, once I've completed it at least once like that, I go back and start a new game and then harvest them all. Now with Bioshock 2, there are people you meet and they've done something(I know what they've done, but hey, trying to keep it spoiler free in case you haven't played it) and you have the choice to either leave them alone or kill them. Well on my second play through I am going to kill them and see what's different from my first play through(when I don't kill them) once I finish it. Now if none of that makes any sense to you, I don't blame you. It makes little sense to me either and I'm the one doing it.

Tomorrow I will probably be putting Bioshock 2 down for a little bit as Left 4 Dead 2's "The Passing" DLC is going to be released. I'm really excited for it and it's fairly cheap also. It's supposed to come with a couple new weapons(an M60 and a golf club) and a new uncommon common. Plus it is also bringing back the original four survivors from the first game; I cannot wait to see what part they play in it.

I think that's pretty much it for now. It's not much, but it's something at least right? Oh and my Xbox Live profile is currently undergoing changes. As in my bio, motto and possibly gamer picture might change. Maybe even later on I may change my tag back to StoredGrunt360. I haven't left TUE and don't plan on it for quite some time, but I have a feeling that it might disband after Reach is released. Anyways, that's all for now.

Exalted? Nope.

So what's the point of putting the exalted in the title you ask? Simply put, it's a prefix for the member titles on Bungie.net which means you have gone three years without a ban or warning. What does that have to do with me though? Well this past Sunday I gained that prefix for my title. So now instead of being an Intrepid Legendary Member(Intrepid prefix had to do with a high post count I guess) I am a Exalted Legendary Member. Both of which can make some pretty interesting acronyms if you do it right. The only logical reason I can think of for gaining that title is that the next day was March 29th and marked my three year join date. Personally, I've always liked the sound of the Exalted prefix.

Anyways, moving on. I thought about sitting here and going on some little rant about how people act and if you are wrong about something they make sure you and everyone else knows about it, but you know what; that's what they want. They want you to do that, that way they can get the attention they think they deserve. Just remember though, this is the internet after all and it shouldn't be taken seriously.

Moving on...again. I am very close to breaking the 9,000 gamerscore mark; however, that is not my goal though 10,000 is. I was able to get close to it by playing Fear 2(more on this later) and completing it. I only see a couple problems with getting to 10,000 though. The first is the one game I wanted all achievements for is taking a lot longer than I had expected, so I really don't know if it will happen. The second problem is that once I get done with the original Fear and Fear: Files, I really don't have many games that offer many achievements. There are a few games that I haven't played in ages though that could offer up some points, like Assassin's Creed, which I have yet to finish, and a few others that I can't think of. If I don't have any that offer up some points, I'll have to wait until Reach comes out in the fall or whenever it is; or breakdown and buy a cheap used game that I like and play through it. I've thought about picking up a copy of the original Mass Effect, but I'm not a huge fan for sitting there for hours upon hours collecting things and then investing them in my character. I didn't mind it at first with Bioshock, but I quit doing it after a while because it got boring.

If you remember earlier in this post I mentioned that I played and completed Fear 2. I can't get over the fact of how awesome the shotgun is in that game. I understand why now after reading up on it in the game. It's a 10 gauge and it's larger than the 12 gauge...or something like that I'm not completely sure. The way the game ended we certainly......interesting to say the least. However, I'm lost on the complete story since I didn't play the first Fear nor Fear: Files; which I plan on playing both in order to understand the story and earn some achievements from them.

Anyways, that's all for now. Another short post, but it's at least something as I normally say. Just remember, it's the internet and you shouldn't take it seriously. Which if you aren't taking it seriously that means that what I just said is a mute point to you then. Or something like that... Also, the spell checker on here says I spelled "internet" wrong...I'm pretty sure I know how to spell that.

8,703 > 8,000

Okay, so I'm finally getting this post out that I said would be out last week. Anyways, update on the chase for 8,000 gamerscore. I reached it about the middle of last week actually. I was able to grab the last few points I needed in Left 4 Dead 2. However, I've pretty much ran out of achievements I can earn in it without playing online. Right now though I'm playing another game in hopes to earn all the achievements for it. The game: Lego Batman, hey, it's an E rated game, they normally have easy achievements in them. If I do get all of them for that game, it'll be the first one where I have gotten all the achievements for it. I'm close to getting them all with ODST, but the Vidmaster Challenge: Endure stands in my way. I've had a ton of people say they are willing to help me with it, but I'm not too concerned with getting it. Okay, so it'll get me another 25 points, the first or second game with all achievements and the Recon armor for Halo 3.

Anyways, moving onto achievements that are difficult, yet don't offer many points. I understand that the point of the achievement is to do something difficult and you get a little award or something. In the case of what I am talking about though, you do something difficult in a game and get the achievement; yet when you look at it, it isn't worth but only 30 points or maybe less than that even. A good example of these are two achievements along the same lines, just in two different games. The first is, "Little Rocket Man" from Half-Life 2: Episode 2. In which, you are required to find a gnome(which are evil) at the start of the game and carry him to the end. Needless to say it was a pain to keep track of that stupid gnome in the middle of a battle.
Same thing goes with Left 4 Dead 2, there is an achievement that requires you to do the same thing in it. Find a gnome at the start and carry it to the ending rescue you with. Both of which were worth 30 points and were rather annoying to keep track of the gnome in the middle of a battle. You'd be surprised how far those zombies can kick a little gnome. Poor guy....must have hurt, but you're still evil.
Anyways, back on topic here, I'm not saying that they should have been worth 100 or 150 points, but maybe something like 40 or 50 points would be nice for all that trouble I went through. So, my question to you is this, have you ever had one of those achievements where it sounds awesome to do, but not worth it point wise?

Now why was I saying gnomes are evil in the previous paragraph you ask? Well, besides the obvious fact that they are evil. It's mainly due to the fact with the previously stated achievements I was talking about. The gnomes would just not cooperate with whatever you wanted them to do. So if I put him in a little corner while I went to grab ammo after I was done protecting it from a massive horde of zombies, he would not get in the corner, but instead bounce off the wall or something. And, when I would have to drop it in order to fight off a wave of zombies, they would kick him around and away from me. Surprisingly enough, a multicolored gnome doesn't stick out at all on a white floor or light brown floor. Or a turf styled floor for that fact... That being said, gnomes are evil. Maybe a few exceptions, but not many.

That's all for now, I know it's not much but it's at least something. I'll try to get posts out on a more decent basis, even if they are just short little updates on anything really. However, once I have completed Lego Batman and got all the achievements for it(may take a while, but I'll get them, probably even need Storms help for one of them) or hit 10,000 gamerscore(whichever comes first most likely completing the game) I'll then have enough stuff to make a semi-good post. Until then, keep doing whatever it is you've been doing.

Quest for 8,000

Ah boy, I really need to start updating this more often. Anyways, I will have a proper post(can there really be a proper post though?) in a few days. Again, don't ask me how many days few means as I have no idea...as usual.



Anyways(again...) I am nearing 8,000 gamerscore. Gamerscore, I'm sure most of you know what it is, but in case you don't, it's basically the sum off all the achievement points together that you have earned. I have 7,863 currently and plan on getting another 30-50 in the next few days. I know it isn't much, but those are the ones that I know I can get fairly easily and are worth that added up. I should be able to get more much later on(as other games that I am interested in come out, I buy other games that I like and I play older games that I own currently.)

And lastly, as you can see(or didn't see, whichever) off to the right hand side of the page and underneath my gamercard, is a little follow me on Twitter thing. I got an account there a few weeks ago(or something like that) and have been using it mainly just post(or tweet I guess is the correct term for it) cool things that happen in games once I get done playing them. Currently, I keep it more updated than I do this, but 140 characters just isn't enough for me, I need more space! So maybe that'll give me the urge to keep this updated more often.

That's all for now, like I said before I should be able to get a better post out sometime maybe next week...maybe.