My X-Box is on “autodownload games”, it’s a sort of stumble-upon for one-click games. Today I found “Portal 6” inside the downloaded games folder. It’s a 3d puzzle game by Valve, the creators of Half Life and it was released originally more than a year ago in “the Orange box”.

This special X-Box 360 version, Portal:Still Alive was released three weeks ago and contains 14 bonus puzzles.

My first try was not good. I really didn’t understand the game and switched it off. On my next try I had the headphone on and suddenly understood the story… (tip: you need the sound) and somehow I like it. This happens not that often. Most of the games I delete after a few minutes but this one got me hooked.

You start off in a 3d maze and have to solve some simple puzzles by using blocks, portals and other inventive stuff. You could say it’s a sort of 3d sokoban 0. The voice guides you into the more difficult puzzles and slowly after some puzzles you get the hang of it and it slowly becomes addictive.

The game is based on the freeware game Narbacular Drop 0 which you still can download here 1. The same team of people was hired by Valve and worked more than 2 years on Portal (screenshot of the Narbacular Drop on the left). Though it only has few level, a community has created many extra levels.

Much, much, MUCH more on the game can we read on the wikipedia page of Portal  .

The game I am currently playing on the X-Box 360 is Blue Dragon. It’s an RPG game from the maker of Final Fantasy.

I actually played it after I played Lost Odyssey which is a sort of follow-up to the game and I’m completely sucked in the magically world distributed over 3 discs.

I now discovered a neat trick:

Here is a great video on a superb way to quickly level up your characters: go to the Island of the golden poo snakes and make sure you have shoes of hermes (so that you strike first), dog collar (so you stink) and crown of the king ghost. Also make sure you wear the Poo bracelet that kills Poo instantly.

mucho SP - You will find that you level up your characters with 10 SP a time and combine this with the eyepatch and the black belt and you have an incredible fast way of gaining SP (which is much easier than running around with field barrier 3 up and down hallways). In no time all your shadows will up to level 99!

millions of gold - When you also wear the diamond-encrusted ring (this is not in the video) on top of the crown of the king ghost you can get up to 35.000 gold with each kill! (which is way easier than trying to trade medicine one by one in Baroy Town!!)

fast guardian - Also make sure you are equiped with loot because you can get sometimes a guardian heart (but mostly ancient feather). This makes it very easy to quickly level up guardian (just make sure you don’t use it to level from 98 to 99 or else you wont get an achievement).

easy back attacks achievements - If you also combine this with back attacks you can also work on your back attacks achievement (just run around it quickly you do not even need stealth, just let it try to attack you and then run around it while it jumps) (some don’t jump but just run around them quickly). Once you have achieved the back attack achievement you can let it attack you attack you on the back for the other achievement.

just wait - Contrary to what the video states you do not have to run around: just stand still and wait for the next poo to popup. If you have regenerate HP/MP you can see how the killing boosts up your stats dynamically and fast!

Thus gaining a lot of the achievements on this Island alone. If you leveled up all your characters you are ready to face king poo!

Here are some more links:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/game/927950.html   : lots of blue dragon faqs
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/file/blue_dragon_item.txt   : blue dragon items guide
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/bluedragon/forum.html?board_id=m-1-927950&pid=927950   : gamespot forums
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/797/797156p1.html   : another blue dragon walkthrough
http://faqs.ign.com/objects/728/728023.html   : IGN blue dragon walkthrough, faq, cheats, etc…

E3 2008: New Xbox Experience Preview - Features at GameSpot 1
The new Xbox360 GUI and… medals

So far I have bought quite some X-Box 360 games. Most I ditched and didn’t even play longer than 10 minutes (I might bundle them some day for ebay).

Four games I fell in love with and played for a long time (and I need extra accomplishments for all of them so I will play them all again and ongoing):

- Lost Odyessey  : the story, characters, the dreams, the spells, awesome graphics, addictive!
- Assassin’s Creed  , awesome graphics, history, storyline, sweat in my hands
- Prey  , storyline, awesome graphics
- Halo 3  , shoot everything that moves, I *wow*ed when I shot my first scarab tank 0

So… my X-Box automatically downloads demo’s for me from new games, which makes it pretty easy to ongoing play demo’s from new games. 90% of the games are not for me *delete*. About 9% I like but I wouldn’t buy them. And 1% is actually something I would buy. So… what will be my next game? I’ve decided on Fallout 3 6, which will appear soon.

I tried to order the Survival Edition 1 on Amazon but that gave me: “We’re sorry. This item can’t be shipped to your selected destination." *grmbl* this is quite a shame because it includes a pretty neat version of the Pip-boy 3000. So let’s wait for the regular version.

Apart from “the” game, I will probably also go for Civilization Revolution   and some other games that were in the news lately. However I think that Fallout 3 will fit in my “top 5 games” list, which now only contains 4 games.

I just climbed the church of Acre as shown in the video below, wowie! I really have sweat in my hands because of the height! superscary! In the video you can see, at the end, the enormous height, *argh* Actually I’m now standing on a tower by the sea which made me even more tremble while climbing it LOL! Amazing cool game.

I know I sound over enthousiastic, but please see the video and you will get a feeling why.

more videos from assassins creed  

So… I started Assassins Creed 0 and I must say… this game is absolutely stunning. I read earlier that it was choosen as the best game ever and after diving into the initial storyline I must agree.

The graphics are mind dazzling. The game takes place around 1100 during the crusades and your character can freely travel through the VAST country, mountains, cities, villages and do basically anything he likes. He can ride with his horse to Damascus or to Jerusalem through the mountains and you have the feeling you are really there. I just stop occasionally in the mountains to enjoy the sights, truly stunning.

At the moment I’m standing on a plateau high in the mountains and I have an overview of Jerusalem in the valley, normally I would take a picture of the panorama! The complete city in which I later on can wander (I ride with my horse down) and do some breathtaking climbing. It’s hyper realistic and I can basically do anything I like.

I have no words to describe the game it’s simply wow. My mind simply can not grasp that I can ride through a vast country, travel through cities and all “as if it is real”. I just stop the game to watch the sight and watch the scenery. When I’m climbing a high building I get sweat in my hands!

I have been playing only 1 game on my X-Box 360: Lost Odyssey 1. I started in april and today I finished it. The end sequences and boss were amazing wow.

It was the best game I ever played. I traveled the complete world, learned all skills, gathered all accessories, leveled everyone up to max, found all dreams, all seeds, all side-quests and enjoyed this comprehensive game to the max.

I can only propose that you play it, it’s amazing, it’s a life experience.

Here are my achievements:

I thought I’d give you a little roundup on how we manage the digital photographs taken in our household, maybe it is interesting for you. It’s also a good opportunity to link all my gadget theme pages!

- pics and movies are retrieved from our camera’s (e.g. Nikon 8800  ) to both my computer(s) and the computer of my wife via usb or pcmcia memory card interface

- they are then stored on the Synology NAS   in the /photo share (2 terabyte), the NAS run in RAID so even if a harddisk fails I just put a new HD in

- my wife can work on her computer and use Google Picasa, order prints via Picasa, make web albums via Picasa and e-mail new pics via Picasa.

- I can use my own tooling on the same /photo’s and e.g. upload some to Flickr or my weblog or add them to my PDA  .

- Via the XBox   or the KISS Player  , the photo collection is displayable on our TV, with all kinds of options (random image from the past years photoshow is fun with some music on the X-Box when visitors are coming by to run in the background)

- On the NAS I run the automated FTP script to synchronize with my hosting account at MediaTemple. This happens automatically overnight so even when we accidentally press DELETE on a gallery or the complete city is nuked, ALL photographs ever taken since 2002 are stored safely there

- And while we have it as storage location on the MediaTemple account we have also added a Zen-Photo web frontend so that externals can view the photo galleries (password protected) e.g. grandmother wants to see the new pics of Maarten and the bbq  .

- Via the Zen Photo WordPress plugin my wife and me can select pictures from the Zen Photo album to add them to e.g. the weblog of Maarten so that we don’t have to duplicate content and can link directly to galleries.

Any comments/suggestions?

Lost Odyssey Walkthrough - Mahalo 2
wow…. A LOT of Lost Odyssey stuff!

Above you see the latest 8 games I bought for the X-Box, currently I’m playing “Lost Odyssey”. I only achieved 280 of the maximum possible of 8350 on gamerscore for these games, so …. these games may keep me busy for some years.