I enjoyed our second installment of Dorito's sponsored arcade games. I have to say, I was amazed with how little in-game marketing they threw in there since it was their project. Either way, the games this year were pretty good.

Last year we got Dash of Destruction which was great for achievement hunters. 15 minutes or so and all 200 points are yours. However, the game had a replay value of about 20 minutes IMO. Just not enough to do, but the fact that it was free, easy achievements, and a fun concept, it was a winner to me.

This year we got Harm's Way and Dorito's Crash Course. Harm's way was another easy achievement game. I had a friend online when I originally DLed the game and we had all 200 pts in 5 minutes. The game is fun though, and replay value is there, I just don't have time for it with other games now. Great concept and definately will use strategy when you are playing with a full room of people.

Dorito's Crash Course is awesome though! The achievements were all fairly easy except for beating Japan #4 in 1:40 and getting all golds. Over the past few days, I have worked on getting all golds. I had gotten golds in all US levels, 3 of the Europe levels, and 0 in Japan. It took me a while, but I got gold on Europe and 2 of the Japan levels on my first sit down. I was left with levels 3,4, and 5 on Japan. I went after level 5 because my friend had a better time than me, and I wanted to beat it. I got gold on that and moved on to level 4. I was going for gold and planning to make the speed run later on. I was sucking at it and then something hit me and I just hit every bump and jump perfectly and finished it under 1:40 to get the gold and the achievement. The final level was Japan 3, and I still don't know how that isn't #5. It's the most difficult level in my opinion. To get to the end isn't that bad, but to get a good time is. I figured out each section, but I couldn't string it all out together. I have played it a few hours now and just couldn't get it. That was... until lunch today. I ran home, let the dog out, make a PB&J sandwich and turned on the tv. I played for about 30 minutes not getting anything right. Finally, one of those awesome moments where everything clicked in place. I ROCKED it and got the gold. I went from not beating 1:54 (target time for gold is 1:45) to doing it in 1:33. I ended up being #1500ish on the time charts. I know I could knock off another 5 seconds easily. There's one part with small cubes. I went cube to cube because I was doing great on time and didn't want to mess it up, but you can run and jump to #1 over to #3 and run down the next few blocks and jump at the final one in the stepdown to the last one over the huge gap. That would save me a good amount of time. Also, the hammer wave at the end, you can slide under, but since I was so good on time, I walked the whole way, but I could pick up a good amount of time doing the slide there and jumping over the last few on the final downhill of that section. I might try to go back sometime and work on a better time, but I'm very content with my score and getting 200/200 for all Dorito's Games!