Some gaming: Burnout Paradise and DJ Max Portable 2

(tags game, Xbox 360, Burnout, Playstation Portable, music, Dual Screen)

This is a summary of the last week or two of my gaming hobbies.

I felt like I finished up with Stranglehold, since I mopped up most of the easy and intermediate difficulty Xbox Achievement Points. "Hard" and "Hard-boiled" difficulty remain untouchable, as well as the 50 point killing spree Achievement. So I will toss the game back on the rack for now. Still I wish that other FPS games had the cover and time-slow system that Stranglehold uses.

I went back to Burnout Paradise. I finally completed all the events yesterday, earning my "Elite License". Of course I only seem to be in it now for the easy Achievement points. Now I all I have to do is get 100% completion, which means setting record scores on all the roads in both Showtime and Time Trial modes. Showtime was fun but now its just tedious work. I surpassed 10 million (dollars worth of damage) on one run, just to see how far I could go. Usually you need about 700,000. I wish though I finished Showtime first. And I wished that I drove around the city in Time Trial mode instead of plain mode. That would have made my clear faster ... maybe.

Today I went to the grand re-opening of the Gamers Nanba, now called Ani-Bro Gamers. It was only recent news to me that Animate (or the parent company of Animate) and Broccoli (owner of Gamers) became the same company. I will write more about today, later, if ever. Anyway, my bud asked me if there were any interesting PSP games recently and I named Echochrome. I also dug through my stash and DJ Max Portable 2 came up. I intend to lend it to him if he's interested, but I played it for a day waiting for the opening of Ani-Bro Gamers. I got a max combo (no miss) on my favorite stage Seoleim again. That felt good. Then I remembered that I am playing it on 4p ("easy mode" four buttons) with easy difficulty. Increasing the buttons is just insane, so I tried normal difficulty. I get cut off with "You need more practice!" a heck of a lot more. Stop interrupting the song I am attempting!!?!? How am I supposed to practice! Normal has some interesting new songs (to me). I wish the developers of this game made a casual mode for the music neophyte.

Finally, since I was in Nipponbashi, I checked out some stuff. On the gaming front, I was going to buy the PlayStation Simple 2000 Series The Taxi 2 since it was only 840 yen used, but I thought about Vice City and how I need to Taxi that one. Also I was going to get some DS games, like Super Mario 64 DS, since the price dropped at one store to 2480 yen and I figure I like easy collection-ing type games. However, thoughts of the imminent completion of Burnout Paradise and the Bioshock I haven't opened, stopped me again.

You'd think my willpower is strengthening, but I bought Valve's The Orange Box for Xbox 360 (Asia version) at A-Too. It was only 2480 yen. I suppose I was seeing easy Achievement points again. Portal! I do have Half-Life 2 on my PC (link to me playing with the physics engine back in 2005), but I got it free with my video card, so no problems there. Plus this soft has HL2: Episode 1 and 2, which I doubt my Project Sugar PC can handle. Well it couldn't handle HL2 or Portal deftly, either. I really like how my Xbox 360 is making me ignore PC games and the PC gaming upgrade treadmill. Thank you Xbox.