Make a wish.

Been busy as usual, but I still found time to pound out achievements and get work done on SSBB.

Just for the record, here's what I have left to do in Brawl, according to the challenge wall:

Baby Peach - Get 500 different trophies
Birdo - Clear All-Star on Hard
Blue Alloy - Beat 100 Man Brawl with all 35 characters
Cardboard Box - Beat Target Smash Level 4 in less than 32 seconds with any character
Crazy Hand - Beat Classic Mode on Intense with any character
Critical Hit - Beat All-Star Mode with Marth
Dark Cannon - Clear Boss Battles on Hard
Dyna Blade - Beat All-Star Mode on Very Hard with any character
Galleom (Tank Form) - Clear Boss Battles on Intense
Green Alloy - Beat 15-Minute Brawl with any character
Grey Fox - Clear Target Smash L5 with all characters
Jyk - Clear boss battles with 20 characters
Mewtwo - Clear All-Star on Intense
Musketeer Daltania - Clear Target Smash L4 with 10 characters.
Outset Link - Beat Target Smash Level 5 with 10 characters
Phyllis (AC:WW) - Clear All-Star on Normal
Porky Statue - Clear Boss Battles on Very Hard
Ray MK III - Beat Target Smash Level 3 in under 20 seconds with any character
Shadow Bugs - Beat Boss Mode on Normal
Striker Mario - Beat Classic on Very Hard
Subspace Gunship - Beat Boss Battles with 10 characters
Tabuu (Wings) - Clear Boss Battles with all characters.

Aside from that, it's just 1% in the Subspace Emissary, as well as a bunch of trophies from the critters there and a handful of randoms, and I will be 100%. Kind of disgusting, really. I have problems.

As for the Xboxen, here's what's been up. Belated XBLA update first.

Ikaruga
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200 gs)

For those of you who missed it on the Dreamcast and/or Gamecube, Ikaruga is a great example of why shmups are sometimes called "bullet hell" games. This game will take your virginity, your anal virginity, your dog's anal virginity, and will then go back in time and take your mother's, grandmother's, and greatgrandmother's virginity and possibly end up as your great granddaddy in the process. Ikaruga hurts.

The idea of the game is that your ship can switch polarities between light (white) and dark (black). A given polarity can absorb damage of the same time, and does double damage to the opposite type, so it's mostly a matter of deciding to rape or not be raped.

The correct choice, in almost all cases, is not be raped. Trust me. Also it is very pretty, I recommend a download if you're into shooters.

As for what came in the mail after sending back the last batch...

Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War
Achievements: 18 (all offline, 1000 gs)

I'm not entirely sure what's up as I haven't actually played the campaign mode yet, just created a character, but I think it's a sort of RTS or tactics dealie. I'll come back with a more in-depth review once I actually play it, as I was busy grinding the next game I'm talking about. The backstory they lay down is tied well enough into the actual Hundred Years War, with a dash of "Hi I'm a merc," to avoid having to characterize actual people. Kind of an odd twist for Koei what with the Dynasty whatsitsfutzes but whatever.

Achievements look pretty easy to garner, as it sounds like I've mostly just got a lot of conquering to do. Take forts, get treasure, LOOK FOR BOOKS. Finish game do some extra stuff get two more books all right done.

Clive Barker's Jericho
Achievements: 43 (all offline, 1000 gs)

In a rather underfrightening title for something with Barker's name on it, Jericho is a squad-command FPS where everyone has neato magic powers. As for plot, you're running around this
ancient city through several time periods to stop God's first creation before mankind, the Firstborn, from getting out and wreaking havoc on humanity because it's jealous of what we were given.

While I dig the character designs, the rest of the aesthetic is kind of hokey, especially the cartoony, plastic-looking gore that festoons pretty much everything after the introduction. Also, the squad mechanic was a nice idea, save for that you're only going to use one character through most of the game once you can control her.

I'm serious. It's pretty obvious Black, the sniper dyke, is the only one worth playing once you look at the achievements. All of the killcount achievements, for splodey kills, headpops, and using her magic bullet? All her. All the time. The big guy, Delgado, comes in handy for taking down flying enemies with his dragon jont, but that's about it.

Easy 1000 all the way. Just beat the game on Hard, maybe go back on a few levels in case you died, though you can just reload last checkpoint if you do and still get the no incapacitation achievements. Once you're done, go to the Flesh level in the Sumeria block, pop the corpses once and take out the demon hanging up high above the main target, and then just go to town.

There are codes for the game that make life a lot easier, but the main one you might need if you're just doing this for gamerscore (which you will be, once you get tired of it really quickly) is the infinite ammo code, which is free and available fairly easily. Just google it, there's a bit of rigamarole as the different game discs have different codes that you need a number in one of the menus to unlock. Nothing too heinous, but it's how they locked things so you have to shell out $5.49 to get all of the codes if you really want them. Bite me, Codemasters.

Chromehounds
Achievements: 49 (8 offline for 160 gs, 41 online for 840 gs)

This was an awesome idea for an early-run game to get people more involved on Live and sell more Gold memberships. Somewhat believable mech war with a persistent online world featuring countries you're fighting for, allegiance changes, and heavy emphasis on squad tactics. The offline mode was great, too, with a solid story to explain what was going on and chapters giving you a run through all the different unit types and roles...

...but now, no one plays it, and since most of the achievements are online, you're pretty much SOL save for some of the deployment achievements. Maybe you can track down a group of people who still play, but I get the feeling it's unlikely, so I'm kind of hosed. I plan to see if I can do deploy/self-destruct tactics to eke a few more points out things, but yeah. Wow.

Oh, and another lovely element? The final story chapter is A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. I owned the game for a while and remember trying over and over and over, using guides, and getting pretty much nowhere. Not too sure if I'm going to bother going back to it. Ugh.

As a closing note, I've bumped up into the 20k gamerscore tier. Woohoo! I've been bitten by the PSU bug again, too! OH NOES.