After a lame outing last year as Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Joanne and I decided to up our game and get a little more creative for Halloween this year. Seeing as our lives were dominated by the planning of our wedding this year, it was a natural fit to go with Zombie Newlyweds as our costume of choice. Two ‘Best Costume’ awards later, I’d say the choice was a pretty good one. Kat Von D and The Mad Hatter were also awesome costumes, but they were the hosts and couldn’t nominate themselves. BRAIINNNNNSSSS-!

From what I understand, WP7 games will split into two tiers:

1. Xbox Live Enabled Games: Play ball with Microsoft and you get access to the full scope of XBL features including achievements, friend lists, avatars, messaging and more. Games under this tier will carry a little heftier of a price tag.

2. Everything Else: Games not under XBL can be priced at whatever range the developer chooses and will not have access to the features of Microsoft’s service.

Before Apple launched it’s XBL-like GameCenter service, a number of similar social gaming services filled in the gap, with the most popular of the bunch being Aurora’s OpenFeint. With this void existing on WP7 games lacking Xbox Live, OpenFeint could easily become a free alternative for any developer looking to implement leaderboards, friend lists, etc. The platform has already launched on Google Android, so it would be interesting to know if there’s been any movement on the Windows Phone front.

After bumbling through nightmares in The Creeps and bounding the skies in Doodle Jump, the Pygmies of Pocket God are now battling in the trenches of World War I. The latest Trenches update from Thunder Gameworks takes a page out of the Call of Duty playbook and introduces hordes of zombies for allied soldiers to battle. At $0.99, Trenches is a no-brainer for anyone looking for a fun twist on the tired tower defense genre.

And you can run and tell that, run and tell that, run and tell that.

Season two kicked off last week with a couple of bangs [copious amounts of grenades and landmines litter the landscape in Miami]. If you’re looking to make your night happen and maybe even indescribable, you’re going to need some healthy amounts of RonRon Juice in your system. Ronnie’s fruity concoction always seems to get the party started and has probably contributed to a few of the more filthy Seaside Heights moments. Here’s the ingredients:

• Watermelon Chunks
• Fresh Cherries
• Stolichnaya Vodka
• Cranberry Juice
• Ice

Of course, the amount of vodka you use is directly connected to how filthy, creepy and weird you want to get that night.

If you’re going to get married, you might as well go out with a bang. And what better way to burn the life out of your bachelorhood than a trip to the scummiest place on Earth, Sin City.

I was lucky enough to have a team of guys willing to drop their girlfriends (and wife, thank you Shy!) to help me live out every male’s dream of a Dirty Vegas stag party. Our original itinerary included a stop at the Grand Canyon or Red Rock, free shows around the strip and a few MMA fanboy gym visits. Instead, we split our time in Vegas between partying in the gorgeous pool at The Mirage, wandering the strip intoxicated, gorging on buffets and living up the nightlife in a few clubs. And to be perfectly honest, I feel like I didn’t miss out on a thing. I went to Vegas to have the time of my life and I ended up doing that and more.

Click here to view my Las Vegas Photo Gallery on Google Picasa!

It wasn’t until my Gamerscore hovered around the 20K mark that I realized I was a full blown Gamerscore Whore.  When I first got my Xbox 360 I barely thought about it aside from an initial “Huh, that’s pretty cool.” A few years later and I now live for this meaningless little number next to my GamerTag.

But as much as I love the sound of Achievements popping, there is a small part of me that knows they’ve sucked some of the fun from gaming. If I’m not going to be earning score from a game I think twice about playing it and iPhone titles barely interest me anymore because I know I’ll be earning points on a Windows Phone 7 later this year. Overall I think the good outweighs the bad, and achievements have done a lot to restore the feeling of longevity in many games that would have otherwise been tossed aside after being beaten.

My latest gaming milestone has been reaching 30,000 Gamerscore, and I took a moment to look back at my favourite achievements from my last four years of gaming:

Favourite Sentimental Achievement:
FIFA08’s US League: As the Lead Profile in a single player game win the MLS in Manager Mode 10 Points
In the spring of 2007 club soccer finally returned to Toronto when TFC took to the pitch at BMO Field for the first time. After suffering through a dismal inaugural season that lacked anything close to what be called ‘the beautiful game’, it was still satisfying to suit up a virtual Danny Dichio and lead the Reds through a championship campaign. Acquired November 6^th, 2007.

Most Monotonous Achievement:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s Widowmaker: Threw 500 enemies off a ledge. 30 Points
The entire game may have be an exercise in repetition, but having to spend nearly thirty minutes throwing enemies off the same ledge was nearly enough to make my retinas burn themselves shut. Assassin’s Creed gets a dishonorable mention for its rinse and repeat mission structure that took the recreational task of stabbing people and somehow made it into what felt like a chore. Acquired September 5^th, 2008.

Teenage Dream Fullfillment Achievement:
DJ Hero’s My First Set: Complete a setlist on any difficulty setting. 5 Points
Most people want to be Rockstars [or Guitar Heroes] when they grow up, but if you were a guido, chances are you dreamed of being a superstar DJ and you’ve been pitching you’re terrible stage names to your friends for years. With that said, hello, I’m DJ Stylin’ Marx. Please visit my Geocities website and sign my guestbook. Acquired October 27^th, 2009.

Childhood Dream Fullfillment Achievement:
Batman: Arkham Asylum’s Born Free: Escape from Intensive Treatment to the island surface. 10 Points
23 games. That’s how many terrible to mediocre Dark Knight offerings it took to finally get it right. This game made me forget about all that though.  I even got suckered into buying the $90 special plastic batarang edition by the long-haired sketchy Best Buy employee with the tattoos that scare me. I could have picked any number of cheevos, but this one represents a point in the game when  the awesomeness of the entire game just smacks you in the face. Acquired August 25^th, 2009.

Achievement I Had the Most Fun Earning:
Rock Band’s Hall of Fame Inductee: Finished the Hall of Fame Induction in Band World Tour 100 Points
After years of watching me sprawled out on my couch with a controller clenched in my sweaty kung-fu grip, my girlfriend finally got to join in on the Xbox lazy weekend afternoon ritual with Rock Band. Together we jammed out as My Forbidden Crush, our cover band so awesome they made the Hall of Fame. Acquired February 11^th, 2008.

Achievement I’m Least Proud of:
Avatar: The Last Airbender’s TBE’s One With Combat: Achieve a Hit Counter of 50 300 Points
When it comes to easy cheevos you’ve got your King Kongs and Jumpers, but nothing flat-out says I’m a Gamerscore Whore quite like this little gem. I’m pretty sure the moment I realized I had an addiction was the moment I heard that glorious PKOK! float out of my TV speakers for this embarrassingly easy ‘achievement’. Acquired February 18^th, 2009.

Achievement I’m Least Proud of:
Avatar: The Last Airbender’s TBE’s 300 Point One With Combat: Achieve a Hit Counter of 50
When it comes to easy cheevos you’ve got your King Kongs and Jumpers, but nothing flat-out says I’m a Gamerscore Whore quite like this little gem. I’m pretty sure the moment I realized I had an addiction was the moment I heard that glorious PKOK! float out of my TV speakers for this embarrassingly easy ‘achievement’. Acquired February 18^th, 2009.

MUSE returned to Toronto on Monday for the first Canadian stop of The Resistance tour, bringing with them the L.A. alt-rockers Silversun Pickups. Playing through a set filled mostly with older hits, MUSE occasionally dipped into a few tracks from their latest [but far from greatest] album The Resistance. Frontman Matt Bellamy was a force on stage, playing to all corners of a packed Air Canada Centre before ending with the western/sci-fi opus Knights of Cydonia.

I was excited to see Silversun Pickups live as well, but sadly the energy just wasn’t there and they were clearly the second-fiddle of the night. It was still awesome to hear Panic Switch and Lazy Eye live though. My favourite performance of the night was definitely Plug In Baby, which was complemented by giant eyes falling from the ceiling of the ACC.  Even though I’m not crazy about their latest work, MUSE has a catalog of awesome tracks that I would be up for seeing live anytime.

Check out the videos on YouTube and the photos on Google Picasa.

Here’s the night’s setlist from Setlist.fm: