Xbox 360 – Page 4 – Iain Douglas Stewart

2013 videogame targets update and 2014 videogame targets

By Iain 1 January 2014Reflections, VideogamesNo Comments

I made three posts in January of 2013 outlining some targets I had for the coming year, and all of them started well, but fizzled out towards the end. I reckon that if I acknowledge my mistakes, I can learn from them. I’m tackling the videogame targets in this post – You can find the original one here, if you’re interested.

http://www.trueachievements.com/gamergoals.aspx?gamerid=2710

As you can see if you follow that link – I failed my attempt at reaching 100,000 Gamerscore in 2013. I’m not really bothered by this, as I (finally) learned that my time is worth more than some arbitrary number, and I had fun playing some great games in 2013, and that’s what counts. Still, I have made a new target, which roughly works out at 50% of the Achievement score of all the games in my pile of shame, I think. I reckon 50% is about right for any story or Campaign related Achievements in all the games on the list.

Friday Update 29/11/13

By Iain 29 November 2013Creativity, Internet, Reflections, Site Related, VideogamesNo Comments

Let's start with work. I suffer from dry skin on my fingertips (of all places), and if I handle a lot of stock then the skin does tend to crack. I cracked my fingers at work on Sunday - not a good way to start a working week for sure. They usually end up cracked by Wednesday or Thursday, but…

Costume Quest

By Iain 22 November 2013Reviews, VideogamesNo Comments

This was originally posted on the now-defunct Random Fury! videogame blog. The premise behind Costume Quest is bewitchingly simple: Kids dress up in Halloween costumes which then become hyper-realistic in combat scenarios. For example, one of the costumes is a blue robot. When roaming around the overworld, it appears to be made from a cardboard box, tinfoil and roller-skates -…

600th post spectacular – Questions galore

By Iain 9 October 2013Books, Creativity, Internet, Reflections, Site Related, VideogamesNo Comments

Ok, so the numbers say that this will be post number 600. I feel like I want to do something special for it, and after having a little think, I remembered that I’m currently reading a book on my Nexus called “Be creative” by Infinite Ideas – it was free and has so far given me a few decent tips. In one chapter it had a list of questions you should ask of yourself in order to understand yourself, because how often do you actually stop and question things?

So, here we are with the questions and answers. I endeavoured to be as brutally honest as I could be and I gave each question a lot of thought. I ended up spraying my thought process on to the page as I was typing, and I did repeat myself a little, so be warned!

WARNING!!! VERY LONG POST!!!

This post is going to have the most tags ever.

Lewis’s artistic progression

By Iain 7 October 2013Creativity, ReflectionsNo Comments

So when we first moved in together back in 2009, he was this good at drawing: Yeah, I used to let him watch me play Halo 3: ODST, so what. He started in year 7 this September. We've been drawing this Zinogre from Monster Hunter for a couple of hours a night for the past few weekends and we finally…

Top of the leaderboard, baby!

By Iain 6 October 2013Reflections, VideogamesNo Comments

The Xbox 360 brought all kinds of neat touches to consoles, one of them being robust online leaderboards. They were by no means the first stab at global high-score tables, but most games offered different leaderboards per level/mission or track, per difficulty, some ranked by score, some by time, some by how few times you died. My question is: Have…

Fez – An imagination without equal

By Iain 5 October 2013Reviews, VideogamesNo Comments

I was going to write a review of Fez. You know, traditional review structure, explain the story, go over the gameplay mechanics, describe the graphics… But in the end, I decided that would be a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, I am going to gush about the place the game is set, and how it is the most complete imaginary world I have ever encountered. even though I know next to nothing about it for sure. The evolution of it’s inhabitants should be first port of call.

This actually blew my mind when I realised it: Gomez’s ancestors, the ones with the tall heads and only one eye – their village was in two dimensions and their rooms couldn’t be rotated. Did they live in two dimensions simply because they only had one eye? If perception is the key to understanding the world, then maybe. It’s like trying to explain the colour red to someone who cannot see! I digress. They eventually evolved into more Gomez-looking creatures but with large, square heads, and most importantly: two eyes. When you go to their village and it is inhabited, it is clearly in three dimensions, with no rooms being neglected like in the tall-head village, or in Gomez’s home village. Now, this is the bit that felt like a penny dropping into place: The space-squids have three eyes, and can travel through folds in space, quite possibly known as the fourth dimension.

A correlation between number of eyes and number of dimensions perceived.

I’m an asshole: Part two

By Iain 2 October 2013Reflections, VideogamesNo Comments

When people ask if we have any Grand Theft Auto V in stock I ask which format they would like it on. If they want the Xbox 360 version and we happen to not have any in stock, I let them down gently. Before taking great delight in mentioning we've got loads for PS3. This guy and his wife came…

Spec Ops: The Line

By Iain 21 September 2013Films/TV, VideogamesNo Comments

Dave suggested people play this on the 16th of February. Despite already owning the game, I never got around to playing it until July. Appropriately enough, July was blazing hot (this game is set in a wrecked Dubai, after a cataclysmic sand-storm), and it really added to the atmosphere of the game.

And I am only just writing about it now.

Standard.