This week, for all the Gears of War 3 buzz during E3, Epic decided to give us 6x XP in Gears of War 2, helping all of those people still going for level 100 a little bit of a boost. I started playing again on Monday, hoping to get some levels in this week to make my way towards that ultimate goal. I concluded that Gears of War 2 multiplayer sucks. There was a time when I thought I was decent at the game. I was wrong. I suck at it. But that’s due in part to the fact that there are so many things wrong with the multiplayer. Maybe I’ll write more on that later. Anyway, I went back into the multiplayer of Gears hoping to get some achievements. Keep reading to find out all the magical things that happened.

Battle-Hardened Gear – 50G Reached level 50 and played in the snow

Like I said, I suck at Gears multiplayer. I typically player Guardian, but I was getting sick of leaders being stupid and causing us to lose, so I decided to go with an objective game like King of the Hill. I got kicked out of a couple of games (I didn’t know you could do that), but then I found one where people had like 60k points for the game. Turns out they were boosting, and invited me to join the fun. Over the course of a couple of hours, I went from level 23 to level 50, averaging about 140k XP per game. That saved me a lot of time I would have had to play normally. Unfortunately, I still have to get to 100.

Battle-Tested Gear – 30G Reached level 25 in multiplayer

This unlocked right after the first match I played with the boosting guys. I started out at level 23, and got about 45k XP from just a single round, taking me all the way to 28.

A post every couple days isn’t so bad, as long as the achievements are on track, right? Hopefully I’ll be picking something new up soon so I’ll have something that will last me a while in terms of achievements. In the meantime, I’m concentrating on completing games that I’ve been close to completing, all while still trying to maintain my quota. I’ve got a couple of new games for today, and by that I mean ones I haven’t posted about before.

Street Racer – 20G Win every Street Race using any vehicle(s)

When I first started trying these races sometime last year, I tried doing them legit. Well that just made me get pissed off. So, this time around, I cheated. As soon as the races started I would get out of my car and use whatever I could to use a barricade. It didn’t need to completely stop the vehicles, just long enough for me to shoot the gas tanks and blow them up, resulting in them being out of the race. Once I was the only car left, I finished the race at my own pace. Sure, it makes the race take easily twice as long, but it guarantees a win every time.

Psych Out – 100G Complete all Time Trial missions at the Psychotic difficulty level

These weren’t too difficult solo. The hardest part is just trying to find an appropriate method of getting to the boss. Once you’ve got that locked down, you can pretty much run past any guards and then unload on the boss with a rocket launcher.

The city is safe… for now. – 50G 100% game completion.

In order to achieve 100%, you need to beat all missions, collect all memorabilia, unlock all suit upgrades, find all red bricks, purchase all characters, rescue all hostages, and purchase everything from the Data section (which counts for a surprisingly large amount). Tedious, yes. Time consuming, yes. Worth it? Not really.

League of Assassins. – 30G Unlock all the Villain characters.

The Xbox 360 version has a bonus character – Ra’s Al Ghul – who is only available for purchase after completing the game 100%. Luckily, he is not needed for this achievement.

Memorabilia. – 35G Collect all Memorabilia.

The most tedious and boring part of this game. It’s still not as bad as the Super Stories from Lego Star Wars, but time consuming none the less.

Vigilante. – 25G Rescue 25 civilians.

Located through most of the levels is a civilian being held captive by some bad guys, and they’re usually located in an area you can only reach in Free Play. You need to rescue all of them to unlock Hush as a purchasable character.

There haven’t been any new posts the past couple of days because I’ve been working on just these few achievements. If you recall from a few days ago, I mentioned I might have something that would get me back ahead of schedule. Well, I did, and I am ahead of schedule, if only slightly. Turns out the achievements were a little harder to get than I had previously anticipated. Fret not, I still got them and am still on schedule. This is probably the longest this has lasted.

Sith Warrior – 100G Complete Game – Sith Warrior difficulty. Do not change the difficulty after the game has started.

After playing on Apprentice difficulty and acquiring all the items and the miscellaneous achievements, I went ahead and started a new game on Sith Master. For most of the game, I just sped through, using Dashing Blast to move quickly. This works for the most part, and you can avoid a lot of unnecessary battles. There are a few instances where you can’t and that’s when things get tough. Boss battles can be a pain, but most bosses have exploitable patters. Any time you need to open a door with force powers is probably the worst, because that means you need to clear the immediate area in fear of dying in the process. With patience, determination, and in my case, anger management, you can get this done rather quickly. I won’t go into details on specific boss or levels strategies, there are much better places for that.

Sith Lord – 100G Complete Game – Sith Lord difficulty. Do not change the difficulty after the game has started.

Unlocked along with “Sith Warrior.”

Sith Master – 100G Complete Game – Sith Master difficulty. Do not change the difficulty after the game has started.

Unlocked along with “Sith Warrior.”

There’s only one achievement on the list for today. One. I know, it’s not much, but if you’re reading this either really, really interested, or you don’t care at all and reached this page by searching for the latest Glee rumors and casting. Anyway, thanks to the Star Wars achievements I got the day before, I didn’t need a whole lot of points to be on par, and this one achievement just happened to be the exact amount I needed. And I went through all the trouble of making these graphics and writing this post, so you should probably give the rest of it a read.

Blows Up Real Nice – 40G Threw all the proximity mines in “Balance.”

This was the last achievement I needed to finish up not only the DLC for the game, but the entire game itself. I hadn’t done it yet because it was a huge pain in the ass. It is best done with two people due to the sections where there are mines close enough to each other that by picking up one you set the other off, and for when there are two paths to worry about. It took a couple of tries, but after learning the enemy and mine placement, you should get this in no time. The achievement will pop as soon as you throw the last mine, no need to finish the level if you don’t want. A couple things to consider as well: 1) if you pick up a mine and it explodes in your hand, it still counts, and 2) if you haven’t already purchased the DLC for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, you’re out of luck because as of January 1, 2010, it was no longer available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for whatever reason. No word on if it will ever return, but it seems unlikely.

Today’s achievements finish off the Jedi Temple DLC for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I didn’t pick up the Ultimate Sith Edition, or even finish up the original 1000G yet, so there’s still a ways to go for this game, but I’m sure I’ll get to all that at some point. These achievements, on the other hand, were easy as cake.

As The World Turns – 30G Use the large globe to kill 10 enemies in the museum

In the Jedi Temple DLC, one you’ve entered the temple, the doorway to the left takes you to the museum. Inside the museum is a large solar system. If you use Force Grip on the center object (which should be a sun, but looks more like a planet), you can then hurl it at enemies to kill them. As an added bonus, there is a damage increase holocron in the same room to make it a little easier.

Jedi Master – 40G Complete Jedi Temple – Sith Master difficulty

These achievements have a neat little trick for them. If you progress through the DLC on apprentice, once you get to the final boss, the Dark Apprentice, you can change the difficulty, defeat him and get the corresponding achievement, cutting down the time it takes to complete it that much more. Even better, if you exit the game just after the achievement pops before the game has a chance to save, you can continue at the beginning of the battle, change the difficulty again, and get the next achievement.

Jedi Knight – 30G Complete Jedi Temple – Sith Lord difficulty

This was unlocked shortly before “Jedi Master.”

Padawan – 30G Complete Jedi Temple – Sith Warrior difficulty

This was unlocked shortly before “Jedi Knight.”

Get A Grip – 30G Defeat the trials without the sphere turning red

This was a little bit of a pain in the ass. Navigating isn’t so hard, but the line is sort of warped immediately surrounding the orb, so it’s not showing you exactly where you need to go. Slow and steady will get you this achievement. It took me about half a dozen tries.

Glee has become somewhat of a phenomenon since it debuted on FOX last May. In the course of a single season, Glee has seen several awards, including a Golden Globe for “Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy,” the cast has gone on tour, sang the national anthem at the World Series, performed at the White House, been picked up for two more seasons, and released four studio albums, which broke a record previously set the The Beatles in 1966 for shortest time between first week number one releases. Maybe “phenomenon” is an understatement?

I was introduced to Glee in May of last year by some coworkers who were astounded by it’s pilot episode, mainly the cast’s rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” At the time I wasn’t too interested, but when September came and everyone started asking me if I had seen the newest episodes I decided to catch up. Since them I’ve been hooked, making sure I watch every episode the night it airs, purchasing all of the albums (except “The Power of Madonna,” more on that later), and jumping at every bit of Glee news I could find. I had officially become a “gleek,” and for good reason.

A lot of people have compared Glee to the High School Musical series of films because they have pretty much the same premise. I myself have never seen the High School Musical films, but I can’t imagine Disney allowing such adult content into their movies. In season one alone, Glee covered homosexuality, drug use, teenage pregnancy, infidelity, divorce – essentially what most normal highschoolers would encounter in their years. And they do it all while providing a flowing, unique story and memorable music numbers. For the first part of the season, at least.

The first part of the season, comprised of the first 13 episodes (or, “Road to Sectionals,” if you will) was the highlight of the season. During this time, Glee was still picking up steam, getting people hooked and leaving them coming back for more. It also had a pretty fluid narrative, with a lot of different stories all weaved into one. The song choice, though sometimes odd, all seemed to fit into that story. A perfect example of this is the episode “Ballad” where Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) sings “(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka. The story came first and the songs were chosen to compliment it. And when the final moments of “Sectionals” roll past, you feel as if it was the season finale for the show, rather than just a breaking point.

After the winter break, when Glee returned in April, the show had already become an international sensation. Now they didn’t have to try so hard to get anyone’s attention. They had already gotten it and were running free. This is where we saw a wide variety of celebrity guests. Neil Patrick Harris, Molly Shannon, Olivia Newton-John, Idina Menzel, John Michael Higgins, and the return of Kristen Chenoweth all appear, mostly briefly, in the nine-episode span, and mostly for no apparent reason. I mean, was Molly Shannon’s character really necessary to mock Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)? Anyone could have supplied that. Usually when a show casts so many guest stars they’re trying to draw in ratings. Clearly Glee didn’t need that, so what gives?

Also, during this part of the season, the show lacked a main story to drive it along. Sure, we had the mother drama with Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) and Shelby Chocoran (Idina Menzel), and there was a little bit of a love story with Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays), but there wasn’t a common theme between the episodes. Other than Regionals, which didn’t get nearly enough attention or build-up as Sectionals did, and ultimately Quinn Fabray’s (Dianna Agron) baby, there wasn’t anything to look forward to in the actual season finale.

What the show did have during the second half was an overabundance of music. Glee without music is pointless, but there’s only so much I can take. While the show averaged about three to four musical numbers in the first 13 episodes, it averaged roughly six musical numbers in the following nine episodes, most of which were thematically chosen. One episode was devoted entirely to Madonna. For what reason? That episode brought nothing of note to the story of the show. It did, however, give the creators a reason to have Sue Sylvester sing, which they repeated only once and I hope they never do it again. Jane Lynch does an amazing job in the show, but because of her comedic insight, not her singing voice. Then we had a Lady Gaga themed episode, though they only sang two of her songs, one of which, “Poker Face,” had no reason to be sung between the mother-daughter duo of Rachel and Shelby. I personally would have gone with “Brown Eyes.” It would have fit the slower tone they decided to go with, and would have fit the context just a little bit better.

The second half of the season did give us a few good things, however. Matt Rutherford (Dijon Talton) finally had some speaking roles, and Brittany (Heather Morris) and Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) had a lot more appearances, the latter of which actually got to show off her vocals in “The Boy is Mine” during the “Laryngitis” episode. And anytime Brittany opens her mouth is the best moment of the episode. I’ve read online that the shows creators want to give those two girls a larger role next season, and I really hope they do, as well as for Matt and Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.).

Overall, I’ve enjoyed Glee from the beginning, despite some of the many setbacks the show started to have towards the end. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, I suggest you do. A DVD of the first thirteen episodes is already on sale, and a complete season DVD will be available September 14 in the US. Hopefully over the next two, already-announced seasons we’ll see the show grow a little more and try not to forget what makes it great.

With today’s lot of achievements, I was at the exact mark I needed to be at for the day. Hopefully over the next couple of days, however, I might be a good bit ahead of schedule again if everything goes according to plan. It’s good to know as well that most of the achievements I’ve been getting recently are worth a decent amount of points, so it keep my time needed to get them down, and these posts a lot more reader friendly.

Robot Parts – 30G Defeat the training room in less than 2 minutes

I actually had no idea this was an achievement till I got it. I thought the only achievements for the Jedi Temple DLC were for the different difficulties. I was just trying to get through it as fast as possible and got this. What you need to do is avoid all the droids (force repulse works well) and just destroy the four spawning statues on the bottom floor and the four on the balcony. At that point the lights will dim, the door will open, and you’ll have the achievement.

Eye of the Sniper – 30G Kill 500 enemies in multiplayer adversarial with at least 6 players present.

Like I said yesterday, when going for the different weapon achievements this will come along naturally and doesn’t take very long at all if you’re any good at the game.

Machine Gunner – 20G Kill 100 enemies using a Light Machine Gun with at least 6 players present.

Using the LMGs I found out something very important about Rainbow Six multiplayer – never look down the sights of a gun while moving. It just takes too much time, and if you have any idea at all of where the center of your screen is you’ll be just as accurate. I was getting very frustrated with the LMG because I couldn’t get kills as easily as I could with other weapons, but that all stop once I started trying to use the gun effectively. The way to play Rainbow Six is to fire from the hip as much as possible and you’ll eventually hit something.

I’m at the point again where I’m no longer ahead of schedule and need to keep up my score every day. So, it is entirely possible that there will be daily posts as well, but I wouldn’t be entirely confident in that. This also means I need to find something else to play. I’ve got over 100 games to choose from, and I really don’t want to play any of them. What ever shall I do? I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Spray and Pray – 15G Kill 100 enemies using a Sub-Machine Gun with at least 6 players present.

These kills weren’t too hard, especially because Rainbow Six is the only game where you can put a sniper scope on an SMG. There was one game in particular where I ound it very easy to snipe enemies with the UMP45 I was using. Same as with the assault rifles, roughly 10 kills per game.

Gun Shark – 25G Kill 300 enemies in multiplayer adversarial with at least 6 players present.

If you’re working on the weapon achievements, this will come along with it, though probably before you finish three of the weapons due to explosive kills and whatnot. Still pretty easy to get though.

Holocron Collector – 75G Collect all Jedi holocrons in the game

There was a glitch with this game when it first released that would cause the game to stop keeping track of which holocrons you collected. You could tell if you were affected by the glitch if on the Mission Objectives screen the secondary objective was replaced with “*Default Text”. No one knew why this happened or how to fix it. Fortunately, it has been patched since then, but that didn’t stop me from encountering the problem while I didn’t have an internet connection. It happened near the end of the game, so it wasn’t that bad. Keep in mind as well that if you go back to a level to collect holocrons, save the game before you select a new mission or any holocrons you acquired since a checkpoint will not be counted.

Stormed – 5G Defeat 100 enemies with Lightning Shield

This should be worth way more than five points. In order to kill an enemy with Lightning Shield, you have to have at least rank 2 of it, so when you charge it up the lightning will arc out to nearby enemies. It will only do this if you get a chance to charge it all the way, and if an enemy hits you while you are charging, it will stop and you will still have used all your force power. Big pain in the ass. I recommend repeating the Tie Factory over and over again till you get this, as well as any other power achievements.

“TOP 5″ is a new, weekly article I’ll be posting here discussing the best of the best in video games, movies, music, television, food, and everything in between. A few weeks ago, Tina Fey, former-SNL cast member, star and creator of 30, and “regulation hotty” turned 40, thus adding to the long list of women who should be much younger than they actually are. Years ago, the age of 40 was something that people, not just women, hated becoming. With this list I want to let all of the men and women know that 40 is something to look forward to.

Salma Hayek, 43, has had a long history of acting roles that make good use of her natural sexiness. Whether she’s playing a vampire stripper queen in From Dusk Till Dawn, a stripper muse in Dogma, or a sexy singing nurse in Across the Universe, Ms. Hayek always looks absolutely stunning; even sporting a full beard in The Vampire’s Assistant she looked oddly attractive. And since the birth of her first child in 2007, she still looks great, playing Jack Donaghy’s (Alec Baldwin) homocidal fiancée on 30 Rock, and Adam Sandler’s wife in Grown Ups

Elizabeth Hurley, 44, is the oldest on the list. She rose to fame mostly based on being Hug Grant’s girlfriend in his heyday, but after his lewd conduct scandal started to make a name for herself as an actress in films like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Bedazzled. She has since left Hugh Grant (thankfully) and married an Indian textile heir and owner of a software company, who no doubt will prove less of a publice spectacle than Grant. Unlike Salma Hayek, however, Elizabeth hasn’t done much since giving birth to a son (to Steve Bing, with whom she shared a brief relationship) and getting married. I’m told she still models and designs swimwear, but we haven’t seen much of her (at least on this side of the pond) on either the big or small screen.

Halle Berry, 43, is not someone who I thought could possibly be over 40, because I had always thought anyone of that age was “old” and definitely showed their age (though, if you look at this list, I should have known better). Though only being half African-American, she is probably the most recognized Black woman in recent years, due to her Acadamy Award win in 2001 for Monster’s Ball and a mix of though decent (X-Men films, Die Another Day) and horrifically bad (Catwoman) roles over the past decade. She’s had a bit of a tough love life, having been divorce twice and vowing to never marry again. She recently split up with the father of her daughter, whom she gave birth to in 2008. She spent only 8 months after that away from acting having worked on the film Frankie and Alice, thought it has yet to see a commercial release.

Kate Walsh, 42, first caught my eye as Nicki on The Drew Carey Show way back in 1997., where she even looked great wearing a fat suit in later episodes. Since then, her only big success has been as Dr. Addison Montgomery on Grey’s Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice. I’ve personally never seen either one of those shows, but I make sure to pay attention whenever she’s on television. Being recently single and never having a child helped her reach the top of this list, though, personally, I’ve always had a thing for redheads.

Jennifer Anistion, 41, takes the top spot without contest. I watched her for 10 years as Rachel on Friends (which ranks as #1 on my top five television shows of all time), and have seen nearly everything she’s been in since. Though Friends was her claim to fame, she has had an obscene amount of publicity since due to her marriage and divorce from Brad Pitt, followed by coverage of nearly every relationship she’s had since. Currently, she may be dating Gerard Butler, though there’s no official word from either party (and for good reason).

Over the past few days, I think I may have posted more regularly than I have over the past six months. That’s a good thing, I suppose. I’ve been scrambling for things to do over the past few days. I’ve got no Modern Warfare 2 play, so I have nothing to waste my time with. There’s a lot of posts I want to write, but I have to find the motivation to do them. I decided I should get myself a little further ahead of schedule than I already am, or at the very least stay ahead of schedule, so I’ve got a lot more points to account for today, though still not a lot of achievements.

Gun Shark – 25G Kill 300 enemies in multiplayer adversarial with at least 6 players present.

Since I don’t have access to a playable copy of Modern Warfare 2 at the moment I’ve been trying to play other online shooter games, and since I was starting to get sick of Shadowrun after failing miserably at it for a while, I popped in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the first time in a while. I had played it some when it first came out, but I found the first one so much better so I didn’t play it much, online at least. This is evident in the fact that I got at least 100 kills yesterday alone, so 300 kills doesn’t take a lot of time. I think I averaged about 10 kills a game.

Short Controlled Bursts – 15G Kill 100 enemies using an Assault Rifle with at least 6 players present.

Like I said, I got at least 100 kills yesterday because I was able to get this achievement and most of the way towards the one for the sub-machine guns. If you’re decent at the game this isn’t difficult to get.

Target Lock – 10G Kill one hundred enemies with SmartLink active.

I’ve been working on my Troll games, and with that I’ve been using SmartLink with a minigun. I also have a knack for shooting teammates, so this helps quite a bit. Unlike Rainbow Six, there are a limited number of kills you can get in a game, so this takes quite a bit. I’m lucky if I get 5 kills per game.

Legendary Dark Witch – 100G Complete all Chapters on ∞ Climax difficulty.

This was the last achievement I needed for Bayonetta, and I purposefully waited until I had a connection to Xbox LIVE to get it because I didn’t for any of the other achievements, and I didn’t want people to think I cheated my way through it. Infinite Climax isn’t too much harder than Hard difficulty, except the enemy placement is slightly different, and you can’t activate Witch Time by dodging attacks at the correct moment. However, if you have either Bracelet of Time or Selene’s Light, these DO activate witch time, making the game a little easier. I’ve been used to using the Bracelet of Time, which doesn’t trigger Witch Time when you dodge anyway, so it didn’t take long at all. This run only took maybe four hours.