Another lot of games I revisited this week on Xbox 360.

Skylanders: Giants - While relistening to all of Kaos's dialog: why do cartoon villains not sound so funny anymore to me? Too real.

I had about six achievements left from last time I played it and knocked off all but two this time. Most were fairly easy and I wondered why I missed them the first time. One took a while. You had to accumulate 65K gold, not cumulatively, but a full 65k in your stash. I auditioned all my Skylanders to find the one with the most gold on them (stored on the figure's chip), found all the Wealth Luck-O-Tron Wheels in the levels, grabed a Hidden Treasure mini figure from Spyro's Adventure and put it on the portal, and then ground away. It was a good achievement to go after because I got the others along the way while doing it. The two left were one for destroying all the gyro-copters on a particular level (grrrrr!) and playing the whole game in Nightmare mode. The aiming for FPS segments of the game isn't great, making that one achievement difficult. And I tried Nightmare and you just take damage like a sponge. You can't even level beyond 15 and get your health up. You can only boost it a little with the Luck-0-Tron Wheels and add defense with hats. I may try that one again next time I break out the game.

It was fun breaking out all the figures again and trying them all out. I ended up using Hothead (a giant) for the 65K achievement and Drobot to win all the arena battles for another achievement. Drobot is a robot dragon that has laser eyes that can really rip when fully upgraded. The final levels for the three arenas are all for winning without taking a hit. You need to dish out pain super fast and move quickly. Drobot is spades!

Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) - I tried to hang in there with the endless puzzles, but I'm just not in a puzzling mood right now. I shelved it for another time.

Cloning Clyde - I've completed all the achievements for this already so I just played the tutorial level to remind myself of it. It's a great 2D puzzle game with a lot of humor. You manage you clones to complete challenges.

Space Invaders: Infinity Gene - This looks great in a minimalistic way on my TV and plays great too. I have no idea how to pull off a Burst Move or Nagoya Attack. I mean, I know, but they never seem to happen. Mysterious. I have no idea what these branching levels are exactly either. The game is a bit cryptic about it's own mechanics. It's fun though.

The Bigs - Well, this is what I wanted, a baseball game that's incredibly easy to play without a tutorial or fancy-dan controls, but the AI just hit everything I threw at them. It was 30-0 in the first when I thought maybe I'd crack this disc in half. I didn't, but I wanted to.

Orcs Must Die - Fun defense game! You set traps in a 3D dungeon or castle and battle the hoards of orcs that try to get to your power nodes (or whatever those things are). You get spring traps, gory spike traps, gooey oil spills to slow them down, and archers and other fun traps and defenses to buy and place. You control a character that fights in 3rd person too, but mostly I just like to watch unless an orc gets through my trap-hoard.

Castlestorm - By Zen Studios and a good 2D medieval siege battle game. You shoot stuff at opposing castles ala Angry Birds and also drop in troops or fire a ballista to stop invading troops. Made me think of Dragon Quest Rocket Slime tank battles. I wasn't in the mood for its complexity after the first few battles though. Too many options for my addled brain right now.

Alien Hominid - Gameplay exactly like Metal Slug and just as hard. Darn it! Because it has such a charming art style, I just want to get through it. Bosses are ridiculous though. I couldn't take it.

Anomaly Warzone Earth - A reverse tower defense game? Neat! You drive a convoy of vehicles through a maze of streets defended by alien turrets. You run along side the convoy (top-down view) and get pickups and activate repairs or drop smoke screens along the way. Cool! Until it wasn't and I died.

Carcassonne - I played a round with five AI players and miraculously won last minute with land acquisitions. Just goes to show, you can own castles, roads and churches all you want but it's good old fashioned land that takes home the prize in the end. Suckers!

Purchases

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)- Used up the rest of my credit on this and the next one at Classic Game Junkies. I finally have both SMG games back in the stables. This one was $25.

Go Vacation (Wii) - $20. A game I'd like to try based on what Cary said about it some weeks ago. I think it might be fun. Explore island resorts with a large amount of sports-based mini-games. Bazinga!

Well, that's a week. The end of my 360 games is in sight but it still may take awhile if I get caught up in something like a tricky achievement or just something I love too much to leave. I'm playing Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure on X360 and Lunar Knights on DS.