When RS:V2 released there were a couple issues with achievements not unlocking properly. It is not the first game to have that issue. Most of the time issues like this are corrected in an update after 3 or maybe even 4 months. Ubisoft surprised me yesterday with an update to RS:V2 update that addresses these issues and a few others. I’m not surprised that they fixed the issues, but I’m really impressed with how quickly they got these items fixed. Here is the full breakdown of what all was updated.

>>> IMPROVEMENTS <<<

Weapon Switch
Swapping to & from Pistols are now faster in Multiplayer.

Sound Loops
Optimized sound bank to improve weapon firing and helicopter sound clips that loop over and over.

Pings
Servers now update their pings more often so that players have a more accurate value of server performance.

Team Leader Respawn Modification
Spawn Shield is shorter when respawning with the Leader.

XP Modifiers
When there are more people on a team than the other, there is an overall XP modifier applied to all XP gained during the game.

Outfitting
By pressing the start button, players now have access to the outfitting menu in observer mode.

Team Deathmatch Respawn Modification
Respawning in Team Deathmatch now work like regular Deathmatch (random points throughout the map) which intensifies gameplay and minimizes spawn camping/trapping.

Faster Respawns
Faster respawns for Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. You no longer have to wait a full 10 seconds!

Custom Search
Players who enter a room using custom search then exit will be brought back to an automatic search with the same criteria.

>>> FIXES <<<

Rank Reset Glitch
Fixed. Players will be able to use their Xbox guide during the game loading without risk of losing their rank.

Private First Class – Achievement
If you are ranked Private First Class or above, you will automatically get the achievement after the title update is complete and you load your gamer profile.

Freedom Shall Prevail – Achievement
If you’ve passed all checkpoints on Story Mode on Realistic and finished the game, you will automatically get the achievement after the title update is complete and you load your gamer profile.

That Wasn’t So Hard – Ribbon
Your ribbon now unlocks when you get the achievement.

Light Machinegun Sound Glitch
When firing continuously with any light machinegun, the sound of the weapon will no longer get cut off.

Civilians & Hostages on Tactical Map
No longer are displayed as terrorists.

Shield Teleport Glitch
Players can no longer teleport when trying to take cover with a shield

Out of Map Glitch
Players can no longer cover-peek into each other to raise a team mate above their heads that allows them to walk into areas outside the designated map.

Friend Invite in Ranked Matches
Inviting friends in Ranked Matches now work correctly.

Custom Face
Previously, Custom faces were sometimes copied over to another player’s face. This is no longer the case. Custom faces will display the proper faces.

Radar Jammer
Radar Jammer now work for clients, not just hosts.

XP Farming
That one famous area in ACT 1 “Ambush” will no longer allow XP Farming.

Observer Mode
Players will no longer be stuck in the respawn screen at 0 seconds while in observer mode.

Weapon Restriction
The weapon restriction configuration is no longer kept in Terrorist Hunt, Story and Co-op Story.

Custom Camo 3 Save
The colour and pattern of Custom Camo 3 now saves correctly.

I also checked out Lost Cities today on Xbox Live Arcade. I generally don’t play a lot of board and card games on XBLA. It is not that I don’t like them, but there are just other types of games I prefer more. Lost Cities is pretty fun – not great, but still fun if you like this type of game.

The game is a strategy card game basically that is played with two people. You have to play your cards in a strategy that gets you more points than your opponents. There is an element of chance that effects the outcome because you draw cards from a random deck. So, if you partner just gets much better cards and has an ok strategy he could probably beat you even if you have a great strategy but get lousy cards. Fortunately the cards are randomly drawn so you’ll most likely get pretty even cards. Then it is up to you to have a better strategy.

I played the trial a few times and was beating the AI pretty badly. It was actually kind of boring after about the second time. I think this game would be more fun in the multiplayer mode when you’re playing against a friend and shooting the breeze.

I decided to check out Rock and Bullwinkle on Xbox Live Arcade today. What a waste of time. This game is garbage. It is designed to be a party game with a Rock and Bullwinkle theme. Basically you have a lot of little games all in a row, but the games are so ridiculously short and easy that it was annoying. Most of the mini-games you play using just a single button or thumb stick. I’d guess that somewhere around half of the mini-games that I tried I literally pushed one button and either won or lost. Most without even knowing what I just did. Going into it I did not know that it was a bunch of mini-games I thought it would be like playing through some episodes of the story in and adventure game mode. If you’re looking for a party game try Rock Band or Scene It. Leave this piece of garbage alone.

It has been a while since there was a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace that I really cared to try. Normally games based on movies are not ones I’d bother checking out, but I’m a fan of the Iron Man comics and the new movie looks pretty good so I gave the demo a shot. Maybe it was intended to be that way sine it is a demo, but it seemed pretty easy to me. Since you pretty much auto lock-on to targets you only miss if you are to far away to get a lock. Still, I had fun flying around shooting stuff and punching things to blow them up.

The one aspect of the game that has me really intrigued is the options to upgrade your suit. The demo only gives you two upgrade options, but it looks like there will be a lot of available upgrades in the full game so you can really customer Iron Man’s abilities to the situation. Additionally, you can reroute power to different parts of the suit so that if you want to fly faster or have more fire power for a while you can.

The entire demo pretty much comes down to killing everyone in the area and blowing up some weapons. I’m curious if the whole game is like that or if other levels will have different objectives. Guess I’ll have to try and find some game play videos after it release and see.

This one falls into my “I’m renting this to play something that doesn’t require thinking much” category, but still it was fun enough to rent at some point.

I started playing through the campaign of Universe at War: Earth Assault and am enjoying it so far. I’m only a few levels in but they definitely spent a lot of time thinking how a RTS could work with a controller because it handles nicely. Once I’ve played through more of the game I’ll get you all a full review. I thought I would be much further into the game right now, but every time I get ready to play someone invites me to RS:V2 and I play that instead. I can’t help it. As much as I want to play Universe at War: Earth Assault I just can’t pull myself away from RS:V2. Maybe this weekend all my friends will not be online and I’ll get some solid time in with Universe at War: Earth Assault.

Yep, I’m playing tons of RS:V2. I made Officer last night. I noticed while playing some Terrorist Hunt last night that now that I’ve maxed out all 20 levels in the ACES categories the leveling up goes much slower because there are no more experience bonuses. I’ll make Elite eventually but for now I’m just happy I made Officer.

For the Rock Band – Battle of the Bands I’m currently participating in over at AGERocks.com one of the songs this week was Wanted Dead or Alive. Our band actually got a higher score than the one in the photo above, but the 574 note streak I had was the longest one I can remember getting. I regularly get 250 to 300 note streaks on Medium and Hard, but I don’t recall breaking 500 before. For everyone else playing drums on Rock Band what is your best streak

*** Spoiler Alert ***

I decided to play Lost: Via Domus because I’m a fan of the Lost and I thought it might give some cool back story stuff. I’m glad I only rented it because I beat the whole thing in around 4 hours without much effort. It is suppose to be a mystery style game where to try to remember your past and learn about the island but really your just walking through a story with very little mystery solving to do.

I’m pretty disappointed with the game. Besides being ridiculously short there was very little you do in the game besides walk from one area to another and talk to people. There are a few puzzles you have to solve to unlock areas, but mostly they are pretty simple. Additionally, there were only a few things you actually learn about the show. The first is that the shark that was seen during the episode where a few people try to escape the island on the raft turns out to be a mechanical shark. The other thing you find out is that the Swan Station, where Desmond was pushing the button all that time, did have a way to get behind the concrete sealed walls into the area where the electromagnetic fields come from. They show what is back there but I have no idea what it was suppose to be. It was some big metallic thing. They also show to get off the island by boat you have to temporarily disable the device so you can follow a compass setting like they told Michael and Walt to do without it interfering with the compass. Not really that big a deal.

The game leads you up to helping the others capture Jack and letting you off the island so you can prove that you did not kill your girlfriend (you have photos of the event as you;re a photographer). However, when you go to betray Jack Kate does the usual follow along and gets caught so you blow up some dynamite and help them both escape. You then run to the beach and get on the boat before the Others can stop you since you’ve already deactivate the electromagnetic field. As you get n the boat Locke helps cover your back and escape. He admits he doesn’t want to leave the island but your path seems to be to head home. The game then cuts to the final cut scene and you’re back on the beach again just like how the game starts, but this time your girlfriend comes running over to help you. What?! First off she was dead. Second, how did you go back in time and gt back to the plane crash again after escaping the island? The ending doesn’t answer any of these things. It just ends with her coming over to help you up with the plane crashed in the background. This might be the worst game ending ever. I did not expect to get a lot an answers since Lost never gives any, but why not just end the game with getting on the boat?

If you’re a fan of lost and have 4 or 5 hours to waste the game has a few little things you can enjoy about the back story of the show and it has really easy achievements. However, the ending sucks and some of the voice acting is not very good. Overall I’d not recommend playing this game unless you’re a die hard Lost fan and a huge achievement whore.

I’ve been playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 almost every day since it came out and I’m having a blast with it. I know a lot of people are calling it Rainbow Six: Vegas 1.5 in the same way that GRAW 2 was called a 1.5. However, I loved Rainbow Six: Vegas so the new additions in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 make it worth the purchase for me. First off, the biggest new addition is the ability to sprint. It took a little for me to get use to, but the sprint option is really nice for running from cover to cover and to get away from grenade throws. Now that I’m getting the hang of using sprint it has really come in handy. There are also about 10 new weapons in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. My favorite has to be the silenced sniper rifle. It is so much fun to snipe guys and not have them be able to figure out where the shot came from.

They also expanded the experience leveling from Rainbow Six: Vegas’s multiplayer to all game modes in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I really like this because now I can rank up just by playing through the story on co-op with my friends. They also have a new ACES rankings that basically unlocks weapons by getting kills in ways other than the normal. Headshots, blind fire kills, and kills with explosions are just a few ways to get ACES points to unlock weapons. The new ACES rankings are fun because they pop up little indicators in the game letting you know when you got more points in one of the ACES categories. So not only can you rub in that you got a kill on your friend but you can add that he gave you some extra ACES points.

I beat the single player story on Normal and have started it on Realistic. I liked the story, it starts off giving you a little background on your character and then you play missions in Vegas that occur at the same time as the missions from Rainbow Six: Vegas. Then, you get one more mission at the end to wrap up the story. Overall, I really enjoyed the single player. There were a few sections that I found really challenging, but they were still fun and I did not mind when I died so much because even when you die you keep the experience points you earned.

The Terrorist Hunt mode is back and better then ever. I’ve beat every map on realistic now and there are a few that are almost impossible to get without having 4 people playing them together. However, Terrorist Hunt mode is the most fun when playing with 3 other people so I don’t mind that some of the maps require a lot of team work. I’m looking forward to playing through more Terrorist Hunt levels and trying new tactics to clear the maps. One thing I noticed is that the enemy AI is a lot smarter now. If you shoot at an enemy and miss, and they take cover around a corner of a building and then you don’t see then for a little but you better watch your flank because they are probably coming around behind you. The enemy AI also seems a but more aggressive. They will get in small groups and charge a doorway you’re covering so that even if one or two go down the other guy will get you. As long as you’re ready for a rush you can get them all but if they catch you in a reload you better have a teammate covering you.

The multiplayer is a blast again. I like the changes to Total Conquest where you now have to hold all 3 satellites to start the counter. The Attack and Defend modes are still a lot of fun, and the new Team Leader mode might be my favorite. It is a little like VIP from Rainbow Six: Vegas, but both teams have a VIP. You win by killing all of the other team or getting your VIP to an extraction point. There are unlimited respawns as long as your teams VIP is alive. If your VIP dies no more respawns. Also, getting killed by the other teams VIP knocks you out for the rest of the round. So, there are a lot of tactics and strategies to try. Do you keep the whole team together and try to get the VIP to the extraction point, or do you leave a few guys back to defend the extraction point and not have as many people protecting the VIP? Each round you can try something a little different and see if you can find the best way to take out enemy VIP without getting yours killed in the process.

I’d recommend anyone who likes shooters get Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. It has my vote for game of the year and it is only April!

I played through the trial of TiQal last night and was not impressed. This Xbox Live Arcade title is a mix of Tetris and Luxor 2. Basically, you drop Tetris like pieces on the board and when you make a square of pieces that are the same color they form a cube and get ready to blow up. You then have a few more seconds to add to the cube to make it even larger. The larger the group of pieces the more points you get. When I started the trial I was liking it. The game play is simple and has a nice pace to it. Plus, it was fun to catch the power ups and take out big chucks at once. However, after a few levels I started to get frustrated. When you blow up a section it obscures your view of that area of the screen for a few seconds so you can’t drop your next piece in that same area, but the blocks continue to come up from the bottom. Also, most of the power ups seem to take out random section of the board, but it may take out a part that you’ve been working on building a large chain in completely defeating what you’ve been working on. The game wants you to make chains and combos but makes it hard to do so and doesn’t really reward you that much when you do. After playing the trial I decided not to buy the game. As much as I like puzzle games this one is just no that fun.