Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360)

I managed to unlock everyone's costumes so that at least brightens up multi-player by about 2%. I cleared everyone's time attack mode to unlock the last hidden character I needed (Tengu, who was the boss of the second game) and that was hell since the CPU is just a cheap cheater who reads everything you are going to do to counter it perfectly. I haven't bothered with online multi-player for quite a while, mainly because it sucks, with a good load of fights running in slow-motion just recently.

Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)

For this game I've been achievement hunting this month, and have got most of the ones I think that are in my skill range. These include beating every level on the expert difficulty level (all done online, of course), killing 1000 zombies with a mini-gun etc. The only ones left to get now are mostly ones that are just stupid (don't take any damage in the last area of a level) or will take a while to get (kill over 50,000 zombies).

Anyway, this game is still fantastic online with mostly good people who aren't complete jerks playing it (the complete opposite of Halo 3) who generally want to help you out through a level. Here is hoping that the downloadable content is available soon as the game could do with a few extra levels.

Dead or Alive (Saturn)

Just to check of the series always had such abysmal A.I. I had a go on the first one. And the answer is no, the CPU didn't use to be a complete cheating bastard. Anyway, I beat the game with every character, unlocked the boss, gained a few new costumes for most characters and beat some of the extra modes, like survival. I've had more fun playing this than I have with the fourth one.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night (Xbox 360)

I beat the game as Alucard. I then started a new file with Richter and beat the game with him in about 20 minutes, mainly because I saw this video and never realised how easier it was if you just spammed the hydro storm attack (the only reason I did this was to get the achievement for it, I may go back and start a new file with him and explore more of the castle next time). I then went back to get the last two achievements: have $100,000 cash and unlock 200.6% of the castle. The first one was easy, but the second one I'd always been put off from trying in the PS1 and Saturn versions I have because I thought it involved having to glitch through walls and stuff using the sword familiar. Turns out I was completely wrong however as I managed to do it without that much trouble, which is the first time I've ever completely beaten the game with Alucard. I think it is also only the second Metroid style Castlevania I've gotten a complete percentage of the map unlocked (Harmony of Dissonance being the other one).

Golden Axe (Xbox 360)

I don't know how myself and Ragey started talking about Golden Axe in an MSN conversation but we did and I mentioned you could get the Mega Drive version from the Live Marketplace. Turns out I was wrong however as this is actually the arcade version, so I downloaded it because it was cheap and I'd never played the arcade version before. Turns out the skeletons aren't quite as cheap super-dicks as in the home versions but the game still kind of sucks, aside from the exclusive-to-this-version "OOOHHH GAWWWD!" sound clip, which is awesome. I've now got all of the achievements this game has to offer (if you like getting achievements, get this game as they are some of the easiest to get I've ever seen).

The one good thing about this game is that it made me do a little research about other titles in the series, and I now have the decent-looking Golden Axe: The Duel on the way to me.

Halo 2 (PC)

Given to me as a present for Christmas, I spent most of the day plowing through the single player campaign, which is short and generally unexciting. I'd forgotten how little there is to the story mode, as I beat it all on the normal setting in just a few hours. Multi-player seemed OK at first but then the lag kicked in and made games unbearable. The amount of people playing this online pales in comparison to the PC port of the original Halo -more evidence that making it Vista only was a terrible move.

And of course, there is no offline multi-player, nor is there a co-op mode. No effort has been made to try and make any of the campaign missions longer either. Instead, we're meant to be impressed that there are a whole TWO new maps available to play in that weren't in the Xbox version!

Beating this means that I've completed all three Halo games this year. Just thought that I'd point that out. And they all sucked lol lol

Sonic 2 (Xbox 360)

I replayed this one to get a few of the achievements. The main one was to get all of the chaos emeralds -I'm quite bad at the special stages so that took quite bit of save-state abusing. There were then a couple to get with Super Sonic but those were easy enough. I've been playing it online a bit and got the achievement for winning 10 multi-player races, although it wasn't much fun simply due to the lag -Sonic or Tails would jump, for example, about a second after I pressed the button, which of course is useless, especially in zones such as Mystic Cave. The only other achievement to get is to beat the game in under an hour, but I'm not in any rush to try that yet.

Doom (Xbox 360)

I beat episodes 2, 3 and 4. I enjoyed the fourth and final episode the most because it had a much greater emphasis on shooting and there were many more bad guys about, making it more challenging. The boss of the episode was still the spider demon -the same as episode 3's, but the arena you fight it in also contained several powerful bad guys making it much more interesting.

I managed to get one online game in and the guy I played against sucked, calling me a fag for killing him for the first time and then a gay dude for killing him about 3 times in a row. At one point he ran back off a platform and shot a wall with the rocket launcher, killing himself. So if you ever happen to see MiyterBinzdirty, don't play him.