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Well I am writing another recap of my gaming - mostly because I feel like I should keep blogging about something and most of the time I just dont keep up with xbox news enough to actually post about that here. My reviews and guides have died down - I will be writing up something in that regards soon I hope.

Last night was a marathon gaming night. I started the night with some Heavy Weapon, first some multiplayer with Heavy Weapon session i gained a couple achievements:

Then I switched gears and played some Gears of War . First I played some of Act 3 on co-op with Antediluvia. After he left for bed I played a couple rounds of versus, and then it was time to switch games again.

Then was about 30 minutes of Enchanted Arms which ended with me forgetting to save, and finding a battle I couldn’t win, so I am in the same place I was before that. Time to change games.

I haven’t given much time to Progect Gotham Racing 3, I still have it from gamefly but I just seem to put it below many of the other games I am playing right now. I picked up a couple of the achievements, all of which were the ones that dont really take any actual gaming effort.

yeah they could have actually spent some time and came up with different pictures, heh.

I ended the night with about 10 minutes of roboblitz, and I was beat so i went to sleep. It was a 4 hour session of straight gaming, more then I usually play thats for sure.

Well my son is sick so I only got to play for a little bit while he was napping. I decided to dust off Just Cause, it has been a while since I played it last and I have plenty of game left to complete. It might have been my lucky night though, because during the 1 hour and 20 minutes I gained 3 achievements.

After that I figured I would give Roboblitz a spin, but not even 10 minutes into the game nap time was over.

Last night I put a couple more hours into Enchanted Arms, only about 8 hours into the game thus far. Which is tracked by the game itself, but also my Live Eye Profile registers about the same amount of time in game. I also gained my third achievement in the game.

Then once again I joined Ymiris for some Gears of War Co-op. We are almost complete with act 3 on insane. I finished insane a bit ago - but nothing beats a good night of co-op, especially with a friend, and an added side benefit I finally found the checkpoint that I was missing for the final achievement I can recieve for non-versus mode.

Finally just found out I made it into Gamer Speak for participating in the Gears of War All Nighter. Thanks Antediluvia for pointing this out!

Well with the new baby at home, and me being back to work I would say my gaming has gone down a bit. In any event last night I stayed up for baby duty and squeezed in some xbox time. Nothing extraordinary though. Played about 2 hours of Saints Row, but finally finished the story based missions. Racking up another 2 achievements.

They just happen to be the right amount to make my current gamerscore 18,000 - I couldn’t have done that on purpose if I had tried.

Well as I said before since we have absolutely nothing going on for New Years, and with a new baby in the house - I was happy to see the gears of war all nighter event. I didn’t have a big party or anything like that - but that is the great thing about Xbox Live, you can play with a friend without having anyone in your house to steal your drinks and food =) I showed up a bit later then expected - my wife decided to stay up much later then usual, but then I dove right into the action.

Keep in mind I am by far not the best Gears player out there - in fact I am not very good at all, but its all about fun isnt it? So around 10:30 PM EST I started up my xbox, and fired up Gears of War.

As you can see I started out all ready tired - I am sure its because I rarely get much sleep lately while helping take care of our newborn daughter. Who I have downstairs with me, no sense in having my wife have to wake up and care for the baby if I am going to be up playing xbox for the night.

Not a very good quality picture - but here is my television sitting on the match making screen for my first match of the night. I decided that I would play Xbox Live Ranked games for the period of time that I was online tonight - and maybe even get to unlock some of those versus achievements.

Here is the first of many losses.

Although I did end up getting a bit better and got quite a number of kills over the night, if I didnt know better I would say it was because of the tequila.

Just before the final hour of 2006 my daughter woke up for one of her night time feedings - so time for a break…

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Ouch my head

Ok we won one! Now time for some sleep

That was quite a bit of gaming, as you can see by my Live Eye Profile I played about 4 hours of straight Gears of War, and then about 2 hours of Saints Row (just to change it up a bit), and I still have quite a long ways to go before I gain any of the versus achievements, but I made more progress then than any other time I played in versus mode towards one or more of these goals.

This was a quick blog to run down the nightly activities for my Gears of War 2006 celebration. Clearly giving you a play by play would not be very interesting to anyone but those that have read every other article the entire internet has to offer and have made it there life mission to read every article, and posting, available on the internet. But in short, I had a blast and met quite a few new friends, and unfortunately a few people that are best to just be avoided (but very few). If you ran into me during this gaming session, and also somehow find and read my blog, leave me some comments =)

Update 11:08 AM EST
I just read this over again and have come to the conclusion that the Tequila got the best of me - I have never been much of a writer - but this was clearly written under the influence of alcohol.

If you want to see more family photos check out my family blog - which contains tons of family pictures and such - if you are into that kind of thing (www.larrabeefamily.com).

Last night I played College Hoops 2k6. I rented it because it is one of the launch games that I have never played and I play a launch game from time to time working on the 360 voice Launch King Badge. It is amazing the difference in games these days. I mean I know that sports games are notorious for somewhat simple achievements, but this only have 5 achievements worth 1000 points. If that wasnt enough I got 3 of them by simply playing one game! This is definately a far cry from the more current titles with 50 achievements and ALOT more effort to obtain them. I guess to make an honest comparism I should rent College Hoops 2k7.

I played Marvel Ultimate Alliance for only about 30 minutes while my wife was giving our son a bath. Since it was only 30 minutes I made very little progress, but continued to clear more of the current mission I am on.

Then later on last night I put Gears of War in for a spin. It was about a four hour gaming session, first I joined IAmMrTea08 for a quick co-op session, and then we went over to versus mode and invited Just Jr. After a couple rounds of versus, I finished off with some co-op with Just Jr, finishing Act 4 and Act 5 on insane and getting my final 2 COG Tags.

I finished off the night working on my garden in Viva Piñata. I was kind of torn if I was going to like this game but so far I have been having a blast. Picked up a few new achievements on it last night too.

well my brother in law has came up for the holidays, so we got to play a bit last night, and drink a few margaritas.  He showed me Phatasy Star Online, which I will possibly be picking up soon to play with him online, and then we played a few rounds of Rockstar Table Tennis.  Since doesn’t  have an HD TV i showed him the difference of Dead Rising on HDTV vs SDTV.  (there are a number of posts all over the internet on how hard it is to read text on SDTV, etc).  We also played co-op Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and progressed through a couple levels, and achievements =)

Last night the boys over at 360voice.com had a gaming session.  Since I don’t generally get online until about 10PM EST they were all ready in full swing when I joined.  The game of choice?  Gears of War, of course.  I mostly died, and my mic apparently isnt working on my headset - so needless to say it was fun, but it definately could have been better (based on equipment problems only).  After playing for a bit they all decided to call it a night, and I decided to keep going with my hardcore story mode.  Raising my play time for Gears over 1 full day (Live Eye).  It took longer then expected but I finished hardcore mode and now have 3 more achievements

 
I once again ended the night playing dead rising, and ended up dying before I got a save in - so essentially I am still at the beginning of the game =)

Yesterday I picked up Sneak King on my lunch break so I gave it a quick spin at the begining of the night. For the price it isn’t a bad game but I think it is going to become a little boring since the missions are almost all the same thing. After I get a bit further into the game, maybe I will type up a review or guide. Granted, I have not played it for very long, so maybe I am not giving it a fair shake - but for only $3.99 you can’t expect a game to compete with Gears of War.

Speaking of Gears of War, I continued to play my campaign on Hardcore difficulty and am very close to completing Act 4 on Hardcore. Previously I completed the story mode on Casual with a friend on co-op, and I was Dom the entire story mode, but sadly I did not gain the “I Can’t Quit You Dom” achievement. I still am not sure why not yet, most posts seem to mention missing a checkpoint from at least one Act. So I guess I will have to retry some (or all) of the acts in order to get those points. I might start compiling a campaign mode guide for Gears of War, but I just have to actually
dedicate the time, and take notes while i go through the game, instead of just running and gunning. According to the Live Eye, I am up to about 20 hours worth of gaming on Gears of War
To finish the night I played some of Dead Rising. I have the game on rental from Gamefly and with all the new games I bought recently I havent gotten to play it as much as I would have normally. I haven’t even gotten past the first Case.

Finally in non gaming related news, I worked a bit on the “watcher” process for the Live Eye, which will track users activity at an even more detailed level (show not only that they are online and playing a game, but also if they are active, or away on that game). I just have to review the data I pulled last night and validate that it works properly and this will be live on the watcher side of the application soon.