This has to be one of the most frustrating achievements I have attempted. Trials HD ramps up in difficulty very quickly, and the last four tracks induce controller throwing rage, especially after you watch the replays from the top of the leader-boards to witness the ease they dispose of the challenging sections. Inferno II almost defeated me at the very end, I finally finished this challenging map with only 33 seconds left. I do not anticipate going back to attempt a speed run on any of these maps, nor do I foresee myself attempting 200/200 completion on this game because of my hatred for replaying this track ever again.

So I have been playing a lot of Forza 2 lately in an attempt to finish up all of the races, as well collect all of the achievements I had not. Finishing out all of the races was not bad, but now I will be grinding out races to get the 1,000,000 Online Credits achievement, as well as enough credits to purchase the remaining cars I am missing from various regions. I wish back when I had originally played this game I had not purchased cars as I got credits, because I spent more money than I should have buying some cars. I bought a lot of cars before I got the 50% discount on non-race cars which would have went a lot way to helping me avoid the grind I am going to face to finish out these collector achievements. Oh well, this gives me something to work on in between easy Gamefly rentals.

Another Madden game played, another 1000 gamerscore earned. While the 2008 version required a few more games played than 2009 did, it was still pretty easy to rack up the required tasks. Quite a few of them were attainable by letting the computer play the game itself. Some of the final ones I had to play the game myself, with the assist of some slider adjustment, to get the conditions of popping the achievement. One more easy football game down.

Forget about just breaking 50,000 this weekend. I rocketed past that number and even managed to break 51,000 as well. Thanks to finishing off Madden 09 and then Disney-Pixar’s Up, I was able to add 2,000 gamerscore last week.

I would like to point out that Up is a fun little co-op experience in the style of the Lego games that my wife and I have enjoyed playing together in the past. There is one quirk with Up, if you are playing co-op when you reach the final level the camera can go a little wonky. It is best to have the second player drop out before loading that final stage.

Madden 09 will put me over the 50,000 gamerscore mark as I work on 100% completion of this game. Last nights total for one game played Franchise game netted me 635 points and seventeen of the twenty-five achievements up for grabs. I’m currently sitting under three-hundred points shy of the 50k mark, so I will break that milestone sometime during the completion of Madden 09. The only difficult achievement looks to be the 6 INTs in one game, which may take an additional game to focus only on that achievement.

So over the end of last week I finished up a couple of left-over achievements from NCAA March Madness 08 and got all of the off-line achievements from NBA Live 07. Since both of these games have virtually no on-line communities, I don’t think I can 1000/1000 either of them. However, after less than an hour with NBA Live 07 gaining 650 points was not a bad trade. I am now on my road to breaking the 50,000 mark, which should happen sometime this week.

So I finished grinding out my 100 matches to pop the Tour of Duty II achievement in Battlefield 1943.

In addition to finishing out a solid 200/200 on this XBOX Live Arcade title, I have been using FPS Freek stick extenders. I do feel these have helped me step up my game while playing either the Scout or Rifleman classes. I haven’t played much with other FPS games, I played a few short rounds of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with these, but I think overall these will help raise my shooting scores to the top of the rounds I play. They are definitely worth the small price-tag if you are looking to improve your online shooter play.

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.