see what had happen was...

due to the recent poor weather conditions. i do not have power at my house. i am currently staying with my sister until that gets up and running. while she does have power, she does not internet access. so i do not have the ability to access my online score. hopefully, i am back soon. until then, i will be updating from my phone.

a new challenger arrives

i know, it is almost as if you can hear the Street Fighter II music in the background. ok, so the weekly chart update is up and running. it may not look like much now, but based on what i have seen happening over at the 360voice challenge. the more weeks we ad to the list, the better our graph will look. dadirtykid15 has also joined the ranks as a new contender. hopefully he finishes registering for the site so we can begin to track his points.

for some reason i thought i had more to say, but i guess if i think of it i can always add it on later.

Br-brains....brains....

Not really important for the challenge, but note worthy none-the-less.

The Resident Evil 5 demo is currently live on XBox Live. It will set you back nearly half a gig of memory and it took me about an hour and a half to down load (I'm running one of the fastest internet connections available to residents in Southern Indiana, mind you!), but it should definitely be checked out.

After everyone gets a chance to play it, post your thoughts, guys. This is shaping up to be "Game of the Year" material.

Happy gaming.

so the good news is...

it seems that the points are updating correctly, and they being tracked on the charts. the blogs have also received a new update. the countdown timer, however, remains inexplicably fixed in its position. i took a pick at some other random challenges from 360voice, and i noted that they all were having a similar situation. as long as the points and blogs keep updating, then i am ok with that. those are the two things i need to keep track of our scores here.

a funny thing happenned on the way to the forums

ok i just recently got home from my night/weekend job, and i thought i would check out the challenges board to see if there had been any new updates, overthrows etc... much to my surprise, the site has yet to update. so i hit the refresh key just in case. still nothing. so i hopped the link back to my main blog on 360voice and i noticed that had not updated either, but to be honest i do not know what time the blogs officially update there. i just know that data is recorded around 3 or so in the morning. so i go back to the challenge page, and i notice the time bar has stopped. completely! it does not say the challenge has ended, and the date has not been altered in any way. however, the countdown timers is not counting down, for lack of better words. i heard they were having some difficulty with data capture via the developer blog. i was not aware that it may affect some of the challenges. i checked some other blogs as well, but there did not seem to be any updates done. i will definitely log in later to check on the progress to see if there has been any changes made, and to do another unrelated post.

Our biggest one day gain thus far!

Morning, everyone. Just popping in for a bit of an update.

Yesterday, which was Friday January 23rd, was our second biggest point gain over at our challenge at www.360voice.com. It fell -65 points from being our biggest gain, but the celebration comes from the fact that it has been the only day in the challenge that all 5 gamers earned any points! Between the current 5 competitors in this month's challenge, we gained a collective +695 points. Breaking that down by the gamers and their point gain:

MOtaku: +325
XCinX: +135
RaverZombie69: +90
MackD512: +80
Zapster X: +65

For a bit of congrats, my hat goes off to both RaverZombie69 and Zapster X as they are finally starting to come into their own on this current challenge. Raver is about to cross the +1,000 point threshold, while Zap is finally getting some footing.

The current challenge doesn't end for another 2 weeks so it is still anyone's game.

Happy gaming.

ok a quick update, my Queue over at Gamefly is full. i did not even know that was even possible?! apparently, you can put so many it at some point, it tells you that no more can be added. i sort of have a problem with this, considering a good chunk of the list is consistently unavailable, then i do not think it should matter how many i add to it, if there are only three there that i can choose from. on top of that, it is not even as if i am renting the newest games that are coming out. in fact, a lot of the games on the list are games i would normally not rent, and definitely would not buy. so why are they in such high demand?

i may delay the update of the chart to be done every Monday instead of my original plan. there is a reason behind this move, primarily the reason is that i am lazy. the smaller, but somehow more important to me, portion of my reasoning relies on the fact that 360voice does a weekly recap every Monday for points earned that week. this would save me a lot of time in the long run of keeping track of what was earned from week to week for those are not part of the daily charts. also preventing me from making any colossal errors on another person's score. i will of course, backlog the current chart to reflect this trend. in fact, i already have. also, because of this modification slight, i am able to backlog all of the previous points for those of us who actually began on the 1st of the year. so all that work is now included.

Evening, everyone, and welcome to the first installment of Easy Achievements!

As the title would suggest, this is going to be an ongoing feature I've decided to start on the blog to discuss games that have some easy achievements. Now, this isn't to say that all 1000 of the points should be easy to achieve, but at least 60%. Though, it'd be awesome if they are were, but lets be honest, not all games can be Avatar- The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth.

The guidelines for a game to count for this discussion are simply in two parts. First, 500+ of the achievements must be obtainable via a single run through of the game's campaign. Secondly, no multiplayer/online-based achievements.

Though, one thing to declare, these aren't reviews. These are simply pointing out games with easy achievements with a brief description of getting them.

Today's discussion: Lord of the Rings: Conquest.

Total length: 10 hours on casual/15 on heroic, 5/7.5 per campaign. The game is divided into 2 campaigns, the first based on the three films, the second being an alternate take in which evil wins.

Achievements: Campaign One (Heroes)- 275, Campaign Two (Villains)- 230, obtainable in either campaign- 130, training level- 5. Total achievements from single-player campaign: 640 points.

Honestly, for a game based on a movie (since the cut scenes are all seen in the movies), it isn't half bad. I wouldn't suggest buying this game, but its a fun game with an easy 600+ achievements for 10-15 hours depending on your level of difficulty.

A little after holiday giving

In the spirit of continuing to raise awareness for the charity we are gaming for, allow me to point out the following cd that was put out this past year for Child's Play:

http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/cpa08001100.html

The cd is a fantastic compilation of nerdom, with songs about gaming and nerd-culture in general. The highlight of the cd for me, however, as to be the cover track of Still Alive (the popular song from Portal from Valve) done by geek musician Jonathan Coulton and actress Felicia Day. For those that don't know, Jonathan Coulton is the singer and composer of many fantastic songs, including the opening theme to G4's Code Monkeys, while Felicia Day is the co-star of Joss Wedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog and her own hit webseries The Guild, which is currently avaliable for download via the XBox Live Marketplace.

The cd is only $10 and all the procedes do go to the charity.

Also, on the site link, you can also find a Child's Play charity t-shirt. It is the 2008 edition, sizes Small-XXXL avalaible for only $17.99.

I'm definitely picking up the cd, and really am contemplating the t-shirt. See, at work, we do the volunteer and charity t-shirts. I think that this would probably be a good shirt to wear and help get the word out there, especially since I work in a video game department.

the more the merrier

ok, i added some additional people to the chart. as soon as they sign up for one of the gamerscore tracking sites, then i will be able to add their points on as well. the sooner they sign up, the better off they'll be, because i will only be able to track the points they have achieved after they joined. so unfortunately, any that they are currently earning do not qualify.

at any rate, a warm welcome goes out to all the new members. not to worry, when the current challenge ends, we will be starting another almost immediately. because i was already updating the chart, i decided to go ahead and add a little preview of the coming week. this probably is going to be a one time thing, like i said, i was already in the middle of the update. i just plopped a few more numbers in the mix. as you can see, Mack has currently taken control of the board, and VKitten, one of the newcomers is also making a place for herself. the next official update for the chart will be on the 23rd.

Circuit City

Hey, guys.

For those not in the know, Circuit City has gone under and they've started liquidating all their remaining inventory. Truth be told, that isn't a whole lot of merchandise remaining, trust me.

Anyways, the point is, swing by there. You might just a little rare or hidden gem. Case in point, for $20, I was able to pick up the highly underrated Overlord. Its a fantastic game, and for the challenge and price, it is worth being in anyone's collection.

Happy gaming, everyone.

you added a cool chart

so the good news is that managed to get the chart posted to the blog. we also decided that we would stick with weekly updates for multiple reasons. for one thing, i have to enter the updates manually, so it would not be much fun to maintain that daily. also, because we are going to be doing the challenges for the better part of a year, 360 updates on such a tiny chart not only seems overwhelming, but it would be a visual apocalypse as well.

i am off for the next two days! so in addition to raiding my local circuit city during their massive liquidation sale, i will be putting in a lot of gaming time. as you can see, from the last weeks progress, it finished with me in the lead. that lead is already gone, and it went by fairly quickly. i think it will be quite the surprise to see the update at the end of week two.

one more thing... i found this awesome for generating faux achievements, like the one you can see at the beginning of the post. how much more appropriate could that be, considering the content of our site. if you want to make some of your own, check out the Achievement Generator.

And coming up from the rear...

Wow.

Color me impressed. Seriously.

Yesterday and early, early this morning saw some major improvement in our challenge as two of our players skyrocketed upwards. Our very own RaverZombie69 played some Call of Duty: World at War and Superman Returns to increase his score +260, reassuring his 4th place position. The big jump came from gamer MackD512 who played some Lord of the Rings: Conquest to increase his score by an astounding +590, rocketing him to 1st place and sending yours truly tumbling to third.

Combined, these two alone kicked out the best single day combination of +850 points. Very, very nice guys.

But rest assure, gents, this is only round one and there are still just over 20 days until the first round is done. It isn't over to the fat lady sings, or all the 360s of America Red-Ring, which ever happens first.

Achievement Unlocked: Advantage XCinX!

Morning, everyone.

To save any and all confusion as to who is posting and when, I've joined the site under my own account. I figured if RaverZombie69 and MOtaku are contributing authors, I might as well be one too. Plus, this will save me from speaking for the whole blog.

That is all.

good news everyone...

so i have actually managed to figure out a way to chart our progress, not unlike the the line graph that we have running over at 360voice. if you have not seen our challenge there yet, here is your chance. it is still set at 30 days, which we have discussed a little bit and as a whole, we seem to be ok with that.

the downside of the site not being able to extend the end date is pretty obvious. essentially, it would mean that we will have to manually track our progress via alternate methods. as luck would have it, i have discovered such a method. more on that in a moment.

the upside to having to start a new challenge every so often is this, we have room to expand to people who could not join us initially. the more people involved over the long run, the better. in fact, i may even make the challenges shorter, perhaps 14 days, so that people can do more of a jump in/jump out thing.

of course we will continue using both gamerDNA and 360voice to track our rising totals, but the solution to an overall total is on the horizon. so no worries there. cast not a blind eye at this

apparently, i can create a line graph that is strikingly similar to the one that is on 360voice. two snags that i have run into so far. for one thing, i have no idea how to obtain or manipulate data from my Xbox so that it will automatically convert and store it into a file that can be used for the graph. so i will have to do all entries manually. which isn't as bad as it seems, since will be just obtaining the information from the 360voice site, as they do have collection capabilities. secondly, i have yet to figure out how to embed it on the blog. this is a bigger problem than the first, but one i plan to fix during my next off day.

some things that may change during the creation/manipulation/update...shun process. i have to figure out how to make the points more visible. the points do, in fact, reflect the current total via rollover. also, i have to figure out how to get rid of the whole decimal point thing that is going on there. i am not sure if that is an unfortunate side effect of the software i am using, or if something can actually be done about it. only time will tell.

see the thing is...

although i do like the idea of expansion packs. i mean they breath new life into a game that i love playing already. they may introduce new characters, locations, and occasionally even an entirely new story line. however, all of this magical, wonderful, upgrading-ness does not come without a price.

one of my latter goals during this challenge is to up my percentage of 100% retail and arcade games. the difficulty arrives when downloadable packs up the ante. i started off trying to achieve a regular goal of 1000, or 200 and i would be done. it just seems weird to look at my gamerscores, and see all of these seemingly unfinished titles littering the landscape. with add-ons that change the total score, it feel like they are teasing me with a finish line, and when i get close enough to it and i am about to collapse from exhaustion, they move it another 100-yards away.

it may seem the odd coincidence that i am mentioning this, during the launch of the Knothole Island expansion for Fable II. rest assured, that was actually just a coincidence. i have several other games that bear mentioning on the subject matter, Marvel Ultimate Allaiance for example. also, Ninja Gaiden II, since i am currently playing that as well. at any rate, it became increasingly clear to me, that games with an expansion may pose even more of a challenge to me than first anticipated.

some future plans for the blog include some sort of tracking device for both our points, and the donations, once we get them both up and running. currently, we are being tracked over at 360 Voice. so far, they have not updated our chart to where it will last until the end of the year when the marathon is over. we decided that if that falls through, we can just manually track them, and restart the challenge every 30-days. the advantage to a monthly reset, people can join in who were not initially capable of doing so from the start. the downside of course is keeping track of the scores *sigh*, but again, more on that later.

one more quick thing, at some point i will probably post my game list as well, of course i am going to look for a way for someone who has made listing it less of a chore.

XCinX and RaverZombie69's Game List

Hey there, everyone.

XCinX here to just post a list of the games in my and RaverZombie69's Xbox 360 video game collection.

Retail Games:

Assassin's Creed (Collector's Edition)
Big Bumpin'
Bioshock (Collector's Edition)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: World at War
Condemned
Condemned 2
Dead Rising
Devil May Cry 4 (Collector’s Edition)
Fable 2 (Limited Edition)
Fallout 3 (Collectors Edition)
Gears of War (Collector’s Edition)
Gears of War 2 (Collector’s Edition)
Grand Theft Auto (Limited Edition)
Guitar Hero 2
Gun
Halo 3 (Legendary Edition)
Left 4 Dead
Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions (Limited Edition)
Naruto: Path of a Ninja
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Ninja Gaiden 2
Perfect Dark Zero
Pocketbike Racer
Prey (Collector’s Edition)
Prince of Persia (Limited Edition)
Saint's Row
The Simpsons
Sneak King
Transformers
Two Worlds Limited Edition

Arcade:

Alien Hominid HD
Dash of Destruction
Fable II Pub Games
Hexic HD
Sonic the Hedgehog
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Arcade

what i've been up to lately...

wow, this weekend was crazy for me, and it kind of shows with the lack of gaming that i did. some games that i picked up include Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. best thing about that game, Cree Summer is a voice actor in it. The worst part about that game, pretty much everything else.

i also finally managed to get a copy of Ninja Gaiden II. i say "finally" because it was a long ordeal that had to do with Microsoft not sending me a copy that they owed me, and, as a result, i ended up buying it on the cheap from Best Buy this week. so do not be surprised if i am seen playing that.

i also have two games out from Gamefly, Culdcept (makes me want to eat crunchy chicks) Saga, and Fusion Frenzy 2. if anybody out there has the latter, i could use some people to play against to get the multiplayer achievements and eventually return it.

Day One

Hello, everyone.

The name is XCinX, co-founder of the 100k in 360 Challenge, along with fellow Xbox 360 gamers RaverZombie69 and MOtaku.

What is the "100k" challenge? In a nutshell, it is a year long event to try and raise awareness for the Penny Arcade charity, Child's Play, that raises money and such to donate video games to children hospitals all across the country. The eventual goal of the challenge is that all partiapents will raise their Xbox 360 Gamerscores by 100,000 in the name of Child's Play. We are not officially sponsored in any way with the actual charity. We are just three gamers trying to do our part to give back to the community that has given us so much.

For more information on the charity, please visit http://www.childsplaycharity.org/.

To follow the up-to-date progress of the three of us and a few other players who've officially joined up, visit http://360voice.gamerdna.com/challenge/27616.

This event is up to anyone who'd like to join up to play video games in the name of charity. If you do want to join up, hit one of the three of us up with a message via XBox Live so we can add you to our growing list!

Thanks and good luck,
XCinX