Burning the Backlog... again.

A backlog, in regards to the gamer, is a collection of unplayed games. When a gamer gets to a certain lifestyle of game play, backlogs are a natural occurrence that stems from a gamers' attempt to save money by purchasing games on sale that they will play in the future. It's so common an occurrence that there is a site online that helps document your progress on your progress on burning the backlog. However, some cases of backloggery are more extreme than others.

In the month of June, 2010 I accepted a verbal challenge with Botafogo "The Enabler" 007 that I w/couldn’t drop my completion percentage from 75% to 50% and build it back to 75%. In actuality, my percentage was higher than 75% and I was around 115,000 at the time. It took around 117 games, according to True Achivements to achieve 49.9%. My percentage and many people’s feeds were properly raped that month; and it was all done at a time before the terms “Bean Dive” and “Feed Rape” actually HAD names. Today, I have hit 60% and I’m looking at an all too familiar backlog that found its way back on to my shelves and into my hard drive.

Backlog? Again? That’s totally unacceptable. 

I remember when I first heard that what I had done had become a community event. At first I was slightly annoyed that what I had originally done to separate myself from the norm became a mainstream event. Then it was funny to compare their efforts to crush their card compared to my own. I figured that a genuine percentage dump wouldn’t be able to be recovered from the same year; but I have to remind myself that their reason for having a backlog is totally different from my own. Most gamers are not exactly Gamer Scoring League participants, or into Competitive Gamerscoring.  However it did serve its greater purpose of freeing gamers from the personal restrictions that they bind themselves to. 

From a mathematical standpoint, it takes a much greater effort for me to gain and drop percentage than most people. It would take me 185 individual achievements to gain 1%. In comparison to other extreme cases, StophJ requires 275 to achieve the same results. Vandetta x360a, who has a 40k Gamerscore, only requires 39 unlocked achievements for a full percentage gain.  Interestingly enough, both Stallion and Smrnov need 295 achievements to acquire a gain of one percentage point. This is on top of the fact that these numbers only remain true if these gamers do not add any more games to their tag, which is an impossibility considering their playstyle. This is probably why completion percentage races are generally unpopular for higher tiered GS tags; it is the equivalent of running uphill wearing a parachute when playing against those with significantly lower gamerscores.

Believe it or not, it gets HARDER to drop in percentage the higher you get. In fact, it is now a mathematical impossibility for the top scoring gamertags to make any truly significant percentage changes because of the sheer mass of achievements they have already accumulated. There are not enough games available for the top 10 to drop 25%. So the lesson learned is that as a gamer adds more games to their history, completion percentage gets harder to manipulate. Eventually, there is that theoretical threshold where gamers' will find that it is harder to drop their completion percentage, as opposed to raising it. Unless you’re already there, like everyone’s favorite personal stalker Jason3535 or Omfamna, who seems to have played everything that Xbox has to offer. (Information is accurate as of August 29, 2011.)

From 60 to 75%, it would have taken me 2766 total achievements. That would have been cake. However I have decided to play what I have on hand. But why am I dumping at 60%? Why aren't I waiting until I reach my personal goal of 75%, when I made that personal challenge?  Let’s just say I have my reasons.

Rocket Riot

When considering games for GSL, it would be foolish to rule out any game, regardless of how small the point potential can be. GSL rounds have been won and lost by double point margins when the competitive format was designed around three day weekends rather than the current marathon runs that are trending nowadays.

Game speed completion: 9-10 hours of game time. Fifty single player levels will take 6 to 7 hours solo, and expect controller throwing moments during every boss round, which occurs every 10 rounds. Endurance mode can be solo played with a minimum of 2.5 hours. The methods I used to complete the game as fast as possible will be explained below.

GSL Potential:  Fair, for an arcade game. Game is designed for achievement progression through normal play, so in the hour of gameplay, the player can potentially gain 90 points if they can find someone to play a single online game with. The rest of the achievements can't be expected to be unlocked until all 80 single player rounds are completed and endurance mode is done up until level 50, which is 5-6 hours later. Rocket Riot can be hidden from the gamecard until ready to play since all the initial achievements expected to pop all come from the first hour of gameplay.

If the game is in a player's backlog, it might be useful for a quick 90 point punch in the gut when the game stack is running low. If your teammate has a completionist complex, they'll have to get over their hangups and come back to the game later.

What the guides don't tell you: The boss fights can be hard, but it's even harder when they don't give you any particular way to fight them. Strangely enough, the same strategy can be used on all bosses, with a little variance to cater to the particular boss.

When fighting bosses, the ideal powerups are Ghost, Homing, Rapid and Triple Rocket. The ghost powerup actually creates a land barrier that spaces the player away from not only the boss, but the projectiles and any surrounding minions. They can't shoot through terrain, but you can with the power up. Flying and attacking while you're hidden within the game terrain helps preserve your life while keeping you within firing distance to properly attack the boss, who generally cant reach you until he shoots through the pixels. I have used this to safely whittle away at the health of the boss until getting more direct damage powerups.

Still. Expect to die. The game likes to tease you, then remind you of this gameplay mechanic called, "Replay value" in which you die and get to enjoy the level again.

Although it has been mentioned in other guides out there, a fast way to get through elimination and endurance stages is to blow out a corner, (I preferred the upper left.) and shoot out towards all incoming enemies which will all come towards you. It's not a totally foolproof plan, but it's consistent enough to be relied on to speed up the completion process.

And for the sake of completion, the player is probably going to be missing one person for, "The things I've seen" achievement. He'll be on level 8, called "That's no cannonball."

Also, shoutout to Stoph for following along. Also a writer, he maintains his own blog at http://stophj.blogspot.com/. Go check it out. StophJ was ranked 13th in the US for Gamerscore according to the late mygamercard.net and now is a team member of http://www.1milliongamerscore.com/, which tracks the progress of the current world record holder Stallion83.  Although I'm plugging his buddy, the shoutout is for Stoph. "I think StophJ is a pretty cool guy. eh gets gamerscorez and doesnt afraid of anything."

Thanks Stoph.