So my wife helped me play throught the band tour on the Country Track Pack this weekend, and we unlocked 6 achievements along the way. I did attempt to go back and get the solo achievements for Expert Solo tour completion, but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish the tour. I am way out of practice on guitar and got about half-way through the second stage before I got so frustrated I just quit and sealed the game back in the Gamefly envelope.

This has to be the absolute most popular game I have ever played. Why do I say that? I got more messages over XBOX Live about this game, as well as posts on Shacknews about this game. Granted they may have not been the most positive or constructive comments, however, people do notice you playing this game.

With that being said, this game is perfect for fellow achievement junkies. Ten of the achievements are acquired for playing through the story mode. The whole game can be completed in an afternoon play session. And the full 1000 points are not terribly difficult to get. If you don’t 5-star a performance you can go back and redo it. You can redo the fair-games if you don’t get the achievements the first time playing them. And you can go back into the story to purchase more clothing items for the Big Spender achievement.

Now for the shocking part, the game is surprisingly fun. Much like the TV Show is surprisingly funny for non-tweens, the game doesn’t suffer from normal movie-tie-in syndrome. The camera isn’t horrible, only one spot where it matters does it get annoying. The game controls are good, they do what they should when they should. And the game is entertaining, even though it is extremely short.

I’ll admit, I had some laughs and some fun playing this game. Although, some of the laughs were from swaggers voice being stuck in my head.

Jumper has to be the quickest 900 points I have ever gained. In less than 4 hours I had completed two runs through the game and gotten all the achievements except for the annoying Hard Target and Pack Rat achievements. I could have taken another run at Hard Target as once you have completed the game and obtained the Chinese Sword the game pretty much plays itself through the first five levels. The only difficult part was the next-to-last boss, the one that you have to face in several different levels, that caused me to lose my only life during my second play-through.

I doubt I will attempt to gain these last hundred points seeing as I have already put the game back in the mail. Jumper is definitely a game you should rent if you want to gain a quick 900-1000 points in an evening. The game-play does suffer from some broken parts. I got stuck on objects, below stairs, and couldn’t tell where my character was too many times to count during battles in dark brown and black levels. The comic-esque cut scenes do add a bit of nice to the overall game. After all, this is clearly a rent-only title. It’s short, suffers from movie-tie-in syndrome, and has horrible camera controls. It’s only redeeming quality is the speed and ease it throws its twenty achievements at you.

The Maloof Money Cup DLC for Skate 2 adds a quick 250 gamerscore with four achievements. The most annoying achievement to get is the BOOM Goes The Dynamite achievement that requires you to grind the left camera rig. This is not extremely difficult, but lining up the jump from the mini-mega ramp can take a few attempts to get the timing down. The rest of the achievements are rather straight-forward and you should be able to get them quickly if you are good in competetion sessions. One interesting thing, these sessions seemed to have more competitors than the normal Skate 2 jams.

Even with the server troubles that the XBOX 360 launch suffered, I was able to get in several games of Battlefield 1943. I was able to pop off half of the achievements in the first few hours of play, and this looks to be an easy 200/200 arcade game, albeit one that will require you to play 100 matches. Those of you familiar with the original Battlefield 1942 will be able to quickly pick up on the changes, and those who are new to the series should feel at home after a few rounds. Overall this is a great game and it will reward you with an easy 200 gamerscore for the hours of enjoyment it will provide.

Continuing my adventures with Gnar Gnar Binks in Skate 2, I was able to finish up the last Hall of Meat challenges to earn the Spare Parts achievement. Some of these were pretty straight-forward, while others seemed to be almost a little too random to be a little to frustrating at times. Even having a good idea of what to do, some challenges took 20 or 30 attempts to get everything in the universe to align correctly to get the specific body parts to break. Do 2 Body Tweaks and Bail for 10 Seconds seemed to give me the most trouble, as did the 60ft Drop onto a Pedestrian. However a little luck and patience saw me through these without losing a controller to a bout of smashing rage.

Another Skate 2 achievement in the bag. This one had eluded me for some time as I had kept overlooking the entrance to the last fountain. I have been shredding it up in Skate 2 over the past week getting some of the achievements I didn’t pick up during my first play-through, as well as paying for the achievements (250 points) from the first two DLC packs (Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Plaza Pack and the San Van Classic Pack). A third pack with an additional 4 achievements for 250 points is due out July 9, 2009. Featuring the Maloof Money Cup skate competition park, this pack includes two 100 point achievements for winning the street and vert competitions as well as two 25 point achievements for “secret” tasks. I can’t wait to play these and shred some more gnar gnar.

I think I got an XBOX 360 around March of 2006. I found out about 360 Voice sometime later that year, probably around July (according to their Gamerscore hisotry graph). I was just looking, and found these interesting (to me) stats about my gamerscore:

At the end of 2006 I had earned 4,647.

At the end of 2007 I had earned 17,888 for a change of 13,241.

At the end of 2008 I had earned 35,511 for a change of 17,623.

I am currently on the virge of breaking 40,000. Now, while this might not be something I should be bragging about, I do enjoy this “meta-score” of my video gaming. I also enjoy comparing this to various other people on the interwebs.