GTA4 : QUB3D High Scores

When not dealing with Winamp or music, once upon a time, I might have been reading up on some spiritual,
philosophical, theoretical, idealogical or historical literature, or been watching some sci-fi series on tv.

But these days, I must admit, that I spend quite a bit of my spare time playing Grand Theft Auto (GTA3 > Vice City > San Andreas > GTA4),
which I know is a far cry away from seeking the path to enlightenment and higher consciousness....

I haven't played GTA4 for a couple of years. I was playing GTA-SA again most recently...
But, a few weeks ago (in Oct 2013), whilst waiting for 1) the outcome of the Winamp situation and 2) the arrival of GTA5 for PC,
I thought I'd go back to GTA4, for something to do...

There's this little side game in GTA4 called QUB3D, a bit similar to Connect 4.
Falling red, blue, green, yellow, purple & orange cubes which you need to connect 4 of the same color together to clear them off the board.

As part of the 100% completion task, you need to beat the computer high score, which is something around 11,000.

At first, I was getting scores around 15k, then managed to break 20k.
I thought I'd never reach 30k, but when I did a few days later, I noticed that it speeds up quite drastically around the 31k mark, then again at 36k.
That was it, or so I thought. I'll never get any higher than this. It's too fast, not enough time to think, the board fills up too quickly and it's game over.
Then I checked the in-game Tutorial, and found out about Power-Ups,
which you acquire as a result of getting 4 cubes in a square, 4 times.
The max power-ups available are 3.
If you use one, you can get another, but no more than 3 at a time.
So, in the PC version, you just hit the "1" key, and it clears the bottom few rows off the board.
Hit it twice, and virtually the whole board is cleared, which makes it easier to get a few more points, even at that speed,
and hopefully you can acquire another couple of power-ups again...

So then I made it past 41k and, lo and behold, it speeded up again. Arghh! "I hate this game!!!"
The more you play it though, the more you get used to the speed, and the easier it gets.

At 45k it hits top speed, and never gets any faster.
So once you're attuned to this top speed (which took me a good few days, and lots of stressing out, lol),
it's possible to get higher scores.

I thought I'd never reach 50k, but somehow I did, and was very pleased :-)
However, although I knew about the "jump" function, where you can remove a falling cube by moving it to the left or right as it's overtaking a cube already on the board,
I hadn't been using this feature, because it was all just happening too fast, with not enough time to think... or so I thought.
Then suddenly, one day, it just clicked. I got used to the high speed and was using the jump feature to remove unwanted cubes.
I reached the magical 100k. Wow, I thought. Just Wow! I couldn't believe it.
Then a few days later I scored a whopping 270k.

A few days ago, I scored a million. A freakin' million!
And believe me, it took all night (with a few breaks here and there for bathroom, food & drink etc).
Yup, it requires a hell of a lot of patience.

And the even crazier thing is... I can now do it without even using any power-ups.
(okay, maybe the odd one if / when I get distracted or lose concentration)

I've got 3 different 100% completion games saved.
Here's a screenshot from 2 of them with my QUB3D high scores (click to enlarge)

No cheats used, no photoshopping. Saved games are available on request.
Alas, you can see the flash from the camera on my phone reflecting back off the monitor...

So what I initially thought was a very difficult little side game, I now think/know it's really very easy, once you know how to do it.
Though now that I've played it to death, I can longer bear the sight of it and have vowed never to play it again, lol.

Sorry for rambling.
Thanks for reading this geeky garbage :-D

-Egg