Just to show you what I have been playing . . .

And here's a list of my most completed games from my spreadsheet I talked about in my previous post.  All my games down to 20% completion.  You can probably see a trend, it's not hard to see.  My overall numbers are 17,615 gamer score earned out of 134,745 possible points for a 13% completion percentage.  Obviously my arcade titles are not included in this number.

I’m really not this organized.

I’ve had several people ask me how I keep track of my games and how I’m doing in them.  It’s not hard and it’s not a secret.  I use an Excel Workbook.

When my brother, dain bramage, and I started playing together we didn’t have very many games.  We would give each other games as gifts if we hadn’t bought that game for ourselves previously.  After a while it got hard to remember who had what game.   We both sat down and created an inventory of every game we owned.  It was just a simple Excel spreadsheet.  One for each system.  We also added a column for “dain owns” on mine and “Pengwenn owns” on his.

Once we did this it was very easy for him to pick the games for our little challenge that started this blog oh so many years ago.  It was also easy to figure out what games to get the other person.  And when I got robbed it was a godsend for filling out those claim forms.  Plus it is an easy way to check off the games I had replaced as I was recovering from the theft.

Here's a snapshot of the first couple games on my Xbox 360 tab.  You can see I haven't play these games very much.  (I did changed my brother's name because I don't call him "dain bramage" in real life but that's what you know him here in my blog world.)

If you have a lot of games (I also have a similar list for my movies) I would highly recommend creating an inventory for said games (or movies).  There’s so many useful things you can do with this information.  You can search for games that are almost complete in their achievements so you can focus on those and finish them off.  If you marked which ones you’ve finished you know what ones you can blog about . . . of help your friends with or recommend something.  It’s also helpful to seeing trends in your game buying.

I went through a “buying only RPG” phase.  Don’t remember what set that off but I have a bunch of games I know I got at around the same time and they’re all RPGs.  Most of them I haven’t even played other than to put it in the machine to make sure the disk will load.  I also went through a “FPS” phase after I got my Xbox 360.  That phase I can point to Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 specifically.

Another way I’ve organized my list is by games with strategy guides.  If I have a guide I’m likely to play the game knowing that if I get stuck I’ve got something handy to help me get unstuck.  But even though I buy the guide for most games I really don’t like to use them unless I’m desperate.  I much prefer to figure things out on my own even if it will give me headache while I’m trying to do so.

I’ve also been able to organize my list by games with no gamer score.   I don’t like seeing games without a gamer score.  There’s just something about that “0” that screams “YOU NEVER PLAY ME” and while that might be true I feel terrible about neglecting one of my games.  There are just so many hours in the day so it’s unavoidable to not getting around to certain games.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not at least thinking about them.  Now that I can isolate which ones they are I can work on playing them and getting some achievements.  It worked for Too Human.  I now have 150 points in that game. 

Until recently I had the games listed alphabetically, but by release dates for collective franchises.  That means that while Assassin’s Creed would list 1-4 first before Brotherhood and Revolution my list was showing them in order of the release date.  That way I could play them in order as they were meant to be played without messing up the timelines.  Unfortunately the last sort I did messed that up and I haven’t gone back and corrected that mash-up.

And speaking of release dates, I have a separate list with the release dates of all the games.  Why?  Because I feel bad for not getting around to playing Batman: Arkahm City, but I feel even worse for not playing Kamino.  Why?  B:AC was released in October 2011 but Kamino was released November 2005.  It was a launch title and I haven’t gotten very far in the game.  That game (among others) have been sitting around longer so I’ve had more time to play them, but haven’t.  But whatever you do don’t get me started on my original Playstation games that I haven’t played.  The number of those un-played games will just spiral me down into depression if I think about that too long.  Again, not enough time in the day.

Despite this fancy, organized spreadsheet I’m not running a well oiled machine here.  I still can’t decide which games to play.  I still play games I’ve finished but can’t get enough of.  I still can’t get to all my older games.  And I still give up to easily when things go south.  

 I’ve been really trying to evaluate any new purchases on a scale of what I’m really dying to play (there’s a spot on my list for those games as well).  Unfortunately I occasionally give in to the hype and buy a game that I had originally planned on passing on.  I won’t mention any name Call of Duty: Ghosts.  I might look organized but I just say “meh” and play whatever I’m in the mood for at that time.

Finally . . . and finally again!

I"m a completionist at heart.  I know I've mentioned that before but it needs to be repeated.  If I can pick up every item in a game; I'll look for it.  If it mean exploring every nook and cranny; I'll be there.  If it means getting every achievement in a game; by golly I'll do it.

There have been 2 games that have an achievement in them that has alluded me for many months.  The first game was Battlefield 1942.  When the arcade game came out my friends and I played it a bunch.  I wasn't very good and wasn't enjoying the game, but I still played because I enjoyed the time spent with friends.  There's an achievement for playing 100 matches and my friends seemed to get this one pretty easily.  Remember when I said I was a completionist?  That's where the nagging feeling of not having earned everything I could in the game comes in.  I needed to play a bunch of matches but I didn't know how many.

The problem with playing that game is it's not that fun without my friends.  But they had moved on.  I was left to get this achievement on my own.  So, whenever I couldn't concentrate on other games and I had no one else to play with I would start this game and try to play a couple of matches before calling it a night.  I did this for months.  And then FINALLY I finished a match and I hear that wonderful little beep that told me I had a message . . . or a friend just came online . . . or heaven help me AN ACHIEVEMENT!

I think it was almost 4 years after my previous achievement before I finally got the one for playing 100 matches.  Now I can say I've done everything in that game and I could move one.

And what I decided to move on to was Borderlands.

Maybe the feeling of euphoria at having finally completed a game I decided that tackle an achievement (and a mission) that has dogged me for several months.  The Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnnnsss achievement (or whatever it's called).

When I started playing Jacob's Cove DLC in Borderlands I was forewarned about this mission and the achievement that goes with it.  Get head shots.  Collect their brains.  I was doing that throughout the area only to find out that I had to accept the mission first in order for all those brains to count.  But silly me I left that mission to the very end before accepting it and going for the head shots.  With no other missions to do I was left to wander around all those dark and dreary places looking for zombies to kill.  Not very exciting.  And not very fun when I discovered how many levels there were to the mission and how many head shots I had to get.

When the final 250count level was unlocked I couldn't do it any more.  I was tired of the game and I never wanted to see Pandora again.  But . . . energized by completing Battlefield 1942 I put this game back in and started roaming the paths of Jacob's Cove.  Grand Theft Auto has nothing on one pissed off vault hunter looking form 250 brains.

I was able to get a lot of brains in fits and spurts.  When I got to 170ish all of a sudden I couldn't get a head shot of there was a string tied from my bullet to their brains.  And I wiped out everybody in so many areas that it was taking forever for zombies to respawn.  So close and yet so far.

I stuck with it and FINALLY got that last head shot, picked up that last squishy brain and made a beeline to turn the mission in.  I thought it was the most tedious mission (partly because I didn't get it right away) but I could finally say I have completed the Jacob's Cove DLC for Borderlands.

I love playing games.  They are an escape from the drudgery of life and a fertile ground for my imagination.  But when trying achieve things in a game turns into something similar to the drudgery of life it ceases to be fun any more.  Unfortunately for me my Completionist Devil rears his ugly head and says "YOU MUST FINISH THIS!"  And who am I to argue with the only real man in my life.

Going Insane (almost) all on my own

I went "Insane" and I did it on my own.  Okay, not exactly but I didn't really get a whole lot of help from my friends either.  Until I begged.

I've been working on playing Gears of War 3 on insane.  I tried the standard campaign but couldn't do it by myself.  So I tried it in Arcade.  I figured it was better to play with strangers than to play alone.  Instead of hosting a public match, I jumped into strangers rooms.  At least that way I knew there was one other person there to help me out.  Unfortunately that meant playing the story out of order (not a big deal since I've already finished it on normal) but also having to deal with idiots.

When it got too much I started hosting my own room and just hoping someone would jump in.  Eventually they would but I had to play a lot of mission over again so I would get credit for 4-player co-op (which I was also trying to work towards). 

But once again I was dealing with idiots.  People who spend all their time running around picking up ammo.  If they're gun is full they'd shoot a few rounds then pick up more ammo.  Of course this meant that when it came time for me to pick up ammo there wasn't any left.  Yeah me.

I also had players follow me around trying to swap weapons.  There's nothing more annoying than to be crouched between cover trying to shoot someone when you're own teammate is standing behind you, not firing at the enemy, and their character keeps saying "swap weapons".  So even though someone was in the room "playing" with me I was basically doing Insane on my own a lot of the time.

When it came to the last mission on Act 5 it was even harder to get anyone to join and those that did didn't seem to know what they were doing.  Once a couple of guys picked up the Hammer of Dawn, but never used it on the Queen when she was down.  Another group stole all the ammo but wouldn't shoot the Queen when the bug was on the tower.  If you don't shoot her, she won't come off.  Another group would hide on the other side of the building when the Queen was in the air shooting her laser.  It wasn't bad until the Theron Guards starting climbing up the building.  Because they were on the other side of the building they couldn't do anything about them.  That left me to battle the Queen, and to dodge her laser AND pick off the locust that came up.

And don't get me started on the guy who came in the room and somehow glitched the game so we couldn't knock the Queen down so we could hammer her.  After fighting for 30 minutes and not getting her to drop I shut the room down.  It's never taken more than 5 minutes before even if I had to do it myself.

I eventually got Genghis to join me in a standard co-cop game.  I picked Insane for difficulty and he picked casual.  He did all the heavy shooting . . . I just tried to stay alive.  The Queen was defeated (rather easily) and I got my insane achievement.  Unfortunately I didn't get the Onyx medal for completing the game on Insane in 4-player co-op.

So I begged my friends for help.

When no one responded I thought I would be doomed to never get it.  So close, yet so far.  But Sand Dog came to my rescue.  He booted up Gears 3 and we started the last mission on Arcade Insane.  We also got lucky.  Two other players joined my room and they actually knew what they were doing.  It didn't take long to finish the queen off and for me to get my 4-player co-op Onyx medal.  Thank you Sand Dog!  I also made a new friend.

I still had to go back and find some missing mission I didn't get 4-player credit for but that didn't take long either.  I would much have preferred to play with friends than the hassle I went through playing with strangers but at least I got it done.  It only took several months and over week just for that last mission but I can cross that off my "to do" list.

And speaking of lists I went through and deleted a bunch of people from my friends list on my Xbox.  I took off people I don't play with (or will probably never play with again) and people who are just down right annoying (I'm looking at you Pogue).  I just didn't want to be reminded of all the people I could be playing with but wasn't. 

There are still people on my friend list for sentimental reasons.  Those people will never be deleted.  And Sand Dog has earned his place on that list. He will always be on my list because he helped me go Insane.