Well hello there to one and all, how's things in your part of this wonderful world?

From my point of view, I'm a bit of a happy chappy. I've had a good run with Games in the past couple of days, and achieved a couple of nice lil' goals...

Firstly, I spent a few hours on Friday night grinding in inFamous. Chased around a bunch of buses and trucks, beating down all the evil minions guarding them. After a few hours of beating them 'up, I clocked up enough experience to purchase the last couple of evil powers, and scored myself my first Platinum trophy on the PS3. Yay! So I've now put inFamous back on the shelf for the time being, and I've replaced it with Ghostbusters - as I have another difficulty level to complete in that Game.

Shifting Consoles, I've also put in a bit of time on the Secret of Monkey Island on the 360. I was always a fan of the old school point-n-click adventure Games (got a few of them on the PC already), but I'd never tracked down SoMI. So it was great fun to be able to play the original Monkey Island Game, and score some achievements during the experience...

As it stands, SoMI is a great fun Game. I was playing through it somewhere between two and three times simultaneously (*minor spoiler* One of the achievements is to complete the Game in under three hours, so I would play through a chapter to experience all the dialogue and figure out all the puzzles, and then reload a save from the beginning of the chapter and play through it again to complete it quickly and skip all the cutscenes and dialogue - worked pretty well actually. *grin*), so it took me a few hours to beat it.

The Game itself is GREAT fun, as there's plenty of funny dialogue options ("How appropriate, you fight like a cow" is something Anna is sick of hearing at this point), some tricky puzzles, and some slick modern (and for that matter, old school) graphics to top it off. The fight scene in the Governor's Mansion is hilarious, even though you can't see most of it - the humour is in the commands at the bottom of the screen, so watch out for those.

Overall, I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys a funny adventure, and doesn't mind having a think from time to time. As of about ten minutes ago, I knocked over all twelve achievements for a full 200 points, so if any of you need a hand with it, sing out and I can point you in the right direction.

Dinner's ready now, and then I think I'll settle in for a night of TV watching. Next Game on the 360 front is another older one - Hitman: Blood Money. Again, one I never finished previously, but would like to wade through again. I have four playthroughs going on it simultaneously - one for each difficulty level - so it'll take me a lil' while to beat that one, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

In the meantime, make sure the rest of you...

GAME ON!

Hi again, just me. Thought I should post another quick message to follow up from my last one.

In completing BioShock, I also managed to pass the milestone of 20,000 Gamerscore. Yay me! *grin*

That is all, please now return to your normal programming...

Well hello there! Now that I seem to be confirmed as alive by one Mr. Vashkey, I thought I would write again about my latest achievements in Gaming.

This week just gone saw me replaying BioShock, a Game that I got about halfway through last time I played it, but haven't looked at in over a year. So, I thought after my recent stint of knocking over Games fairly quickly, I would chuck it in the 360 and give it a go again.

It was as good as I remembered. Nice to have the variety of Plasmids available to help me in destroying all the Splicers and whatnot that infested Rapture. My goal (as always) was to not simply complete the Game, but to go for as close to 100% of all the Achievements available as I could manage.

As with many Games nowadays, BioShock has you hunting down a collection of Diary entries from the various inhabitants of Rapture. This was my main challenge, as many of the other Achievements you accumulate simply by playing through the Story of the Game. Sure, there was also the Achievements based on collecting 53 Tonics, but I wasn't as worried about that one as I figured if I was thorough I would spot those in their glowing glass vials.

Unfortunately, I didn't achieve my goal of finding all 122 of those Diaries. I found all the Tonics, upgraded all my Weapons, completed the Game ontheHard difficultyand took about a gazillion photographs of the inhabitants of Rapture along the way. I saved all the Little Sisters (without harvesting them), but I didn't quite reach my goal of 1000 points for the Game. Disappointing, but not the end of the world. I figured I would simply head back through the Game from my last save before the final boss battle and just track them down that way.

So at this point I consulted a FAQ, to see which areas I had missed Diaries in, and this was where I got a bit annoyed with myself. I had missed a couple of Diaries along the way- not too many, but enough to make it a bit of a slog to track them down. The problem (and the annoying bit) was that one of them was in an area I couldn't return to after completing it. The rest of the missing ones I could find, but not that ONE blasted Diary! I didn't have a save from before that point anymore, so that meant I was going to have to play through the Game again...

Add to that the fact that I also need to acquire the Brass Balls Achievement (play through the Game on Hard with the Vita Chambers switched off), and this means two more playthroughs of the Game. One on easy, to track down all of the Diaries (and perhaps see what happens when you harvest all the Little Sisters), and not worry about much else, and the other on Hard, focussing only on the Story, and not doing much else. Dunno when I'll do those two runthroughs, but I'll let you know when (and if) I score those missing 150 points.

So how have the rest of you been doing out there in Gamer Land? What Games have you been playing, and do you have the same obsessive compulsion to complete 100% of the Achievements / Trophies in the Games you play, or are you more interested in just seeing the Story and leaving it at that?

While I pack for our night away from home (given Anna and I have had an awful run at work in the past week or two, she's booked us into a hotel for the night, so we can get away from it all - even if it's only for a lil' while), don't forget that you should always:

GAME ON!