My Month in Video Games: December 2011 Wrap Up

So, you may ask, what video games did i play in December (because i haven't really finished any in a while)? 

i didn't do a Game Room monthly post for Decmeber because i used stats from 12/28 (i usually would have used 1/3) on my Game Room: A Year Without Rain Post (or a year without new content)
Luckily, the engage.xbox email will answer some of those questions...  i did have some connectivity issues with Xbox Live that month (kept dropping/logging off)
* Gamerscore: 34,892
* Time on Xbox Live (connected to): 84 hours, 52 minutes
* Most Frequent Activity:  Oblivion: 38 hours, 48 minutes
* Other Activities (rest of top 3):
- Skyrim: 27 hours, 29 minutes
- Risen: 4 hour, 55 minutes
Post Xmas backlog of games i haven't completed (games added to my collection in Dec):
- Divinity 2 Dragon Knight Saga (i've been playing this game a lot)
- Kinect Sports Season 2
- Kinect Disneyland Adventures
- Halo 3 ODST
- Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom
- Leedmees (XBLA) - not played other than demo
- Jetpac Refueled
- Frogger - not played other than demo
- Forza 4 - not opened yet
- Halo Reach - not opened yet
- Gears of War 3 - not opened yet
- Alpha Protocol - not opened yet

Game Room: A Year Without Rain

So, i found the data i as looking for (good thing i had it on SkyDrive).  Now i can do a post about Game Room one year later without any new content.  A year without rain is supposed to be somehow metaphorical - but i forget how. 

Dview: Arkadian Warriors (XBLA)

The Bottom Line:
Arkadian Warriors is a hack-n-slash game available on XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade).  For a downloadable title, this offers a decent amount of gameplay.  There are numerous dungeon crawling "quests" (which you can replay).  The game has recently been reduced in price to 400 points ($5 US)

Dview: Oblivion GOTY Edition (Xbox 360)

The Bottom Line:
Oblivion is an open world action-RPG that can last hundreds of hours if you want to do everything (at least that is what i have heard).  Oblivion was the follow up game to Morrowind and pre-dates Skyrim.  Overall this game is decent, but playing it right after Skyrim sure made the game look worse (at least from a graphical standpoint).   

My Month in Video Games: November 2011 Recap

Did i play any video games last month?  Yes (a lot of Skyrim, which i 1,000ed in early December).  Well, the engage Xbox monthly recap email came again.  Here is a testament to my lack of a life...

* Gamerscore: 32,737
* Time on Xbox Live (connected to): 110 hours, 46 minutes
* Most Frequent Activity: Skyrim - 69 hours, 51 minutes
* Other Activities (rest of top 3)
- Two Worlds 2 (i still have to beat it): 26 hours, 35 minutes
- A World of Kefflings (It Came from Outer Space DLC): 3 hours, 18 minutes

Other Games Briefly Played:
- Game Room (for stats)
- Gears of War (part of triple pack): i got stuck early on Berzerker stage
- Halo CE Anniversary

Odd factoid in email:
Non-US Countries with Highest Average Gamerscore:
- UK: 6,467
- New Zealand: 6,403
- Japan: 6,308

Xbox 360 Metro UI Impressions - Better With Kinect

So, after a small delay, the new update for the Xbox 360 was released.  There are differing opinions on the update.  Some people seem to like it and others not so much. 

Admittedly, i am a XBL Silver member, so i won't know how things like "cloud saves" work (or how Netflix works post update).  i may have missed some smaller details too.  

Anyway here i go in no order with random bullet (or is that asterisk) points.
* It seems to take more time to shut down (at least completely power down)
* i wish it wouldn't default on the sign in every time (couldn't we set it up to auto sign in)
* The "Metro UI" itself looks a little better to me (and yes there are adds)
* The NXE seemed to be more vertically oriented, the Metro seems to be more horizontally oriented (at least it seems that way to me). 
* Your profile no longer shows your XBL points balance.
* You have to have a gold account to use cloud saves.  i wonder if in the future they will charge for additional cloud storage space (i would bet on it). 
* It is less "cartoony" than the NXE 
* It now gives you a little more information on you achievement progress (or it seems to)
* i like the darker (grey) background better than the NXE background

Voice commands seem to work fairly well (but i don't have an accent).  Bing would probably be the least effective as it would have to recognize more words.  For controller free naviagtion, it seems to work well enough (i can't comment on how it works within Apps).  Some basic commands to know
* "Xbox, x" where X = a word on screen, like play game
* "Xbox, Go Home" - to get back to the first "blade"
* "Next" and "Previous" scroll horizontally through selections
* "Xbox, Bing, X" - use Bing to search.  This seems to work ok, but can be a little slow

Game Room: Report for November 2011

Game Room leaderboards saw a few increases in the month of November.  The last game pack was released on December 22, 2010 (i am not sure if i have enough data for that future post, we'll see)

i checked on November 21st and December 3rd. 

Observed Leaderboard Increases (for November 4 - December 3)
* Beamrider (+100)
* Cosmic Commuter (+100)
* Crystal Castles (+10,000)
* Dodge 'Em (+100)
* Iron Horse (+1,000)
* Millipede (+1,000)
* Plaque Attack (+100)
* Vectron (+10)

Summary:
A long time coming... Crystal Castles finally reached the 20,000 plateau (after being at 10,000 since leaderboards were added).  There were no new games which reached the 1,000 plateau.  Will Vectron hit the magical 100 mark?  Time will tell.  Overall, i observed 8 leaderboard increases for a total of 12,410.