Back in December of 2018, another game that I tried to play through on my 360 before I packed it away was Crackdown 2 (funny thing is that after I completed it it became backward compatible...)  So here is a brief review of Crackdown 2 on the xbox 360:As you can see from my gamerscore, I didn't really go after all of the achievements. Part of the reason is that the achievements were (like in

Back in November of 2018 I tried out a game called "Dark" on my xbox 360. I had been going on a binge of games that are not backwards compatible to the xbox one, so I thought I'd give this a try.The reviews for this game were bad...quite bad! (Metacritic score of 38%).  But the price was right (next to free...) and the concept seemed like an interesting concept: The game follows the story

Well,  summer 'vacation' on Risa is upon us in Star Trek Online, and has been for a while.  This gave me a bit of an opportunity to claim a few more accolades that are Summer Event accolades (as well as go back for a few more Breen ones that seemed 'easy' to get)Unauthorized beach party - Basically come back to one of the beach-front spots after dark to join a fire-side party.  Ever

It's been a while since I played Star Trek Online with the intent to be on the accolade hunt.  I actually I thought I had most of them, but then I came across a list created by one of the game's other players and saw that I was missing a considerable amount.  After clearing out the retired accolades (ones that you can't get any longer), and the ones that you can in theory get, but you need

It's been a while since the actual anniversary date of STO, but it's been busy, so this draft has been sitting in my...drafts...for a while.  This year Cryptic broke up the pieces of the infographic and released them a piece at a time on twitter, before putting the entire thing up on their website at the end.  I am not surprised that Tactical captains are first in the list, and I am also

Man...after close to 6 years of play this accolade is finally complete!  The other day I had the Dabo table going at DS9 on STO while having my iPad read back articles to me (some supplemental readings for the dissertation).  It's pretty mindless to click and bet on Dabo, so while reading I just kept hitting 'play'.  Well - finally I hit the 1,000,000 mark!  I've won 1,000,000

A game I was playing concurrently with Zombi was another freebie from the free with Gold program.  This game was the Incredible Adventures of van Helsing III.  I am not sure if it was integral to the game for me to play parts I and II (I didn't), but even if it were, this game stood pretty good on its own.The game takes place in the fictional eastern european city of Borgovia, and the main

I've been debating which game(s) to move onto next on the xbox now that Assassin's Creed Syndicate is (mostly) done.  I realized the other day that the "free" games that we get on xbox live gold aren't really totally free.  You can claim games for free when they are available, and you can enjoy them, for free, so long as you have an active xbox live gold membership.  Considering that

With the new Kramp'Ikri event on star trek online this season came a new accolade to collect: mine, mine, mine!  I was aiming to earn this before Christmas hit (and I started working more on my dissertation)...and mission (just) accomplished! In the Kramp'Ihri event (usually comes along twice per hour) when you attack the Kramp'ihri, one of the things that he tosses at you (from time to time)

This past weekend in Star Trek Online the Azure Nebula  queue was the featured queue for group missions, which meant this was a good opportunity to earn an accolade that I haven't been able to get since I started going on the accolade hunt (mostly because people weren't queuing up for the Azure Nebula mission)In this mission... (from the STO wiki):After the briefing, the team will have twelve

Well, in a couple of weeks Raptr is pulling the plug on the video-game social network which originally aimed to bring together a more unified view of gamers by allowing people to track the amount of time they put into playing games, showing off their achievements outside of closed and platform-specific views, and bringing people who play similar games together.  I actually liked this quite a

Damn it Fisher!  That's one alarm too many! The mission is over!  Recently I completed the original Splinter Cell - the game that kicked off the series - via backward compatibility on my xbox 360.  I've been wanting to go back and play these games to get the complete story arc of this game series, but on Windows you generally cannot find Pandora Tomorrow (or is it Chaos Theory?) because

I guess this is one of the new facebook things: Good adds up.  I suppose it's a positive way to look at things.  Some people in my timeline have gotten videos, I got a more static infographic page. Yes, it's all Greek to you😜

Holy Chalupa, Batman!After close to 5 years of playing this Star Trek Online (since it went Free to Play basically) my primary character (Tolya Kotrolya) has finally maxed out all of his commendations!  The elusive commendation was the "recruitment" commendation which for the Federation folk it seems pretty hard to get (unless you want to sacrifice a whole bunch of uncommon and rare Duty Offices

A little gamercat humor for you :-).  While playing Star Trek Online I don't often think of achievements (since my achievements/medals aren't visible anywhere).  This past week though I started playing Bully again on my xbox and I started wondering what achievements exist, and what I need to do to get them :-)

I had a good chuckle at this comic the other day.  I used to be like GamerCat - must collect all the trophies and badges...now I feel like I just want to enjoy the story, and any badges are incidental :-)

After 3 years of playing Ingress on my phone (on and off), I've made it to level 9.  Technically speaking I had already earned enough points to be promoted to level 9 several months ago, but since my achievements weren't keeping up with my XP I only now got a silver badge (in distance traversed I think) that allowed me to level up.  I guess I'll need to go out and do some event days.  I

It seems like it took a while to finish this game, but it was a pretty good game (so no complaints here).  Last I left Agent 47 he was being laid to rest as and the FBI director was pretty pleased with himself that he got Dianna to turn and get 47 captured (or killed).  The game ended with a faint heartbeat that kicked in once Dianna placed his two signature weapons (his Ballers) in his hands.I

It's been a while since I've played a game on my PSP! A few months back I noticed that the price of Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines had dropped on Amazon, and I thought it would be a good idea to get it, as well as a few other games for the PSP I wanted to play (such as God of War) before these things start getting rare and more expensive on eBay.  I've been on the fence about getting, and playing,

A few weeks ago I finally completed the last game in the Metal Gear HD Collection, and that game was Metal Gear 2: Sons of Liberty. I suppose that the HD collection also include Metal Gear, and Metal Gear 2: Snake's Revenge, but since you have to boot up MGS3 to play them I am not counting them as part of the "HD" collection. Prior to playing it more recently, I had started playing MGS2 when it originally

Normally with these "adieu" posts the service or software I am writing about the service shuts down or the software maintainer no longer updates the software. In this case Raptr isn't going away, but it's changing focus.  Raptr is (was) a great service to keep all of your gaming information in one place. I could consolidate my xbox gaming, my PC gaming, and the few PS games that I play in one

Well, in addition to having lots of extra time to do homework for my EDDE 802 Advanced Research Methods course I've also had a little more time for gaming, given that Massachusetts has been pounded by snow, snow, and more snow over the past 3 weeks.  Back in the Fall, when I had xbox live for free for a few months I got Battlefield 2: Bad Company for free.  I had been resistant to even getting

With the storms that have hit over the past week came school closings, and with school closings came a little extra time on my hands.  I did spend a considerable amount of this extra time catching forward with my readings for my research methods course, but I guess I also used the time "wisely" to complete another game on the xbox. Over the Christmas break Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was on

Just in time!  Right before my semester starts next week, and my gaming tanks until the summer, I was able to start playing, and finished, Dishonored.  This is one of those games that was a hand-me-down from a friend that moved away.  I tried playing it right after I had completed Bioshock Infinite, however the game styles were too similar and I wanted something else to buffer these

Just before 2014 is done I managed to make my way through Hitman: Blood Money, the last game in the Hitman HD Trilogy that I bought at the end of 2013. I think part of the reason that I really got through this game quickly was because I played it on Normal (7 saves, regular AI), but still I was mostly playing for the storyline and not the achievements which makes this sort of a speedrun for me. 

Right before I went on vacation I downloaded Assassin's Creed Liberation HD for the xbox 360 ( I think it was on sale). I started messing around with it at the time, but I really didn't get very far.  Upon returning I started playing through this portable game upscaled to home console.The story follows Aveline de Grandpre, an assassin in the making.  Aveline is an orphan, living with her

Right before classes started a few weeks ago I decided to start playing Halo 4. Given the amount of games I ended up getting on Black Friday last year it was a bit tough to decide what to play next, but I thought that since the next Halo isn't coming for a while (and probably will only be on xbox one), this seemed like a good game to play for the story.This was the first Halo game I've played on the

OK, after a lot of head scratching I decided to give up on Metal Gear Portable Ops on the PSP.  I think this game is much more frustration than it's worth ;-)  And, certainly I can find out what the story is all about by going onto YouTube and looking at the consolidated cut-scenes from the game. This should fill me in, so I can continue on to the next MGS on the XBOX.What finally did it

Happy new year to all!Just in time for the new year,  I completed Assassin's Creed III which I got as a Black Friday deal on Amazon this past Thanksgiving (warning: spoilers!). I put Red Dead Redemption on the side for this game and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot! I had seen the previews where the main character (ancestor) was an Algonquin Indian, so I was quite surprised when I started

Well, this one crept up on me. OpenFeint, a cross-platform social network for gaming is closing its doors in a few weeks.  It started life on iOS, as far as I know, and later on got onto Android and Windows Phone.  Initially the pitch was global leaderboards for games, something that I really didn't care for much in my iPod touch days...but then came the achievement badges for games and that