Approaching 60k

I honestly have to admit that raw gamerscore barely matters to me. It's been over a year since I last played a game for points alone, not counting my 20-hour-long sub session in GSL VI. But what I did notice is that I'm fast approaching the 60k mark. Once I finish up the Darkness in my boost sessions starting tomorrow, I'll be only 60 points away. And in the time it took me to write this paragraph, I finished the campaign to Jumper, earning me 50 points. That means 10 more seperate me and a milestone I'm determined to hit evenly. "With Friends Like These..." should do the trick. Hopefully I can get all of that done before the weekend, because Halo 3's Double XP weekend is Zombies, giving me a chance at those two achievements that I don't want to miss.

So, The Darkness. Absolutely phenomenal storytelling, characterization, atmosphere, level design, and gameplay. Only problem is that the shooting mechanics are so godawful that it becomes a chore to play it sometimes. This is one of those games that you can tell was pushed out the door too early, and isn't really polished enough to earn a place on every gamer's shelf. The game on Hard is a right bitch sometimes, especially when you die because you can barely aim at or see the enemies. The game also never thinks to tell you that having your Darkness manifested will shield you, and worse yet, seems to take away the Darkness for no reason, right when you need it most, leaving you entirely vulnerable to everything.

The achievement list would be a pinnacle of excellence, if not for a few things. One, give me a damn checkpoint right before you get to the workers in the beginning of the game so I don't have to watch the 5-minute opening sequence every time your horrible shooting mechanics screw me out of an achievement. Two, difficulty resetting when you play multiplayer? How did you possibly manage to do that? Three, the multiplayer blows. The phenomenal storytelling, characterization, atmosphere, level design, and gameplay of the singleplayer doesn't help anything, all you have are awkwardly-played levels and horrible mechanics. I would love to get 250 legitimate wins in a good multiplayer, but I can't. Four, loss of games played tracking? wat.

I also returned to Gears for the first time in a while the other day, and I should really take breaks more often. With the exception of two games of obvious lagswitching, I got 1500+ EXP in 7 straight Guardian matches.