Push to 200,000 Gamerscore

The other day I got given an extra shift at work when I didn't really fancy doing it. I decided the money gotten from the shift should be spent on treating myself to some easy gamerscore games in a bid to help motivate myself to get to 200,000 gamerscore. I mean my progress in Gamerscore ths year has been pretty poor I have to say so myself, as I'm currently on 189,000 at typing it means I've gained just 9,000 gamerscore in the past 3 and a half months of this year. That roughly equates to about 30,000 gamerscore this year if I manage to get another 1000 in the next few weeks. In 2010 I got 55,000 gamerscore throughout the year so I set myself the challenge of slightly upping myself this year and going for 60,000.

As I just showed my progress has been slow but ultimately I'm not really too bothered. I put a lot of time and effort in to creating my website the first couple months of the year (check www.thedumblife.co.uk) which reduced my Xbox gaming time plus Lidl have been giving me 40 to 50 hour weeks sometimes which is more than the 20 or so hours I used to spend at college this time last year. It's also worth mentioning that lots of my real life friends that I skate with have all been banging out prestiging on Call of Duty Black Ops so I have played that with them for a while. After prestiging for the very first time ever on any Call of Duty game I decided to call quits and go back to getting some gamerscore, I now only play it when all my mates are on instead of on my own at times trying to rank up haha.

So, where to go from here. Well the 8 games I ordered from CEX all have enough gamerscore between them to get me much closer to 200k. I expect I will continue to play other games too to make up the rest of the gamerscore so now it's just time to put the games in and bang them out. Although if the weather continues to be really sunny I'll be spending all my spare time out in the Sun and that will hinder my progress. Without further ado, here's a picture of the games I got.



All the games there I believe will all be easy completions for me, the exception being Army of Two which I only bought because it was £4 and I wanted it for the collection (I own 40th Day but am yet to play). Oh and HSM is already on my tag but I got red rings and never finished it, should get few easy points from that. The other games are not the usual ones you'll find in shops, in fact most of them were the last in stock from CEX. I have never played a Cabela game so African Safari will be interesting and playing through a game featuring owls 4 whole times will be sure to drive me insane.

Nevertheless it shall be done as I would like to hit 200k, will be nice feeling to know I've scored 100k (what few of my online friends have yet to do *cough cough* tractakid *cough cough*) a total of two times. It would be made even sweeter if I got there before Bemusedbox does but after chasing me for a while he's finally overtaken me on gamerscore and is just 8,000 away, I doubt I will beat him now. It was painful when rover08 overtook me, now yet another of my "close" online friends has gone past me. Next up will probably be adiash73, stay away from me I tell you!

200,000 Gamerscore before 2011

Is it possible? For me to get my gamerscore past 200,000 before the start of the new year. Ask me this question a couple of months ago when I made my gamerscore goal of 160,000 for 2010 and I would have said no. I saw gaining 35,000 over the course of 2010 as being a relatively simple goal to follow and one that I wouldn't be extremely proud over but nevertheless happy that I had accomplished.

Things are changing though. Me and my good friend rover08 have been swapping games with each other and this has enabled me to play a lot more easy gamerscore games than I was expecting too. We've not even finished the first 2 months of the year yet and I am currently at 137,375 which means I am 12,375 in to my goal of getting 25,000 by the end of the year. Lets say by the end of February I manage to make my total gamerscore currently earned this year up to 13,000, that will then mean that if I keep up the pace of getting 13k every 2 months then by the end of the year I would have accumulated 78,000 gamerscore (over double my aim!).

This is what's gotten me thinking that I could potentially get to 200k before new year. It would be another goal for me, one that I don't want to force myself to go for but one that would make me extremely proud to do. I need to look at how gaming these past couple of months has changed my life and whether I can keep it up for the rest of the year or not. I don't really have any commitments, I go to college 3 days a week and have assignments I need to do at home at times but really it's not too much hassle. A loving girlfriend likes to see me everyday plus I also love to skateboard as much as I can.

Now college is going to maintain the same until May or June and ultimately I am capable of maintaining my gaming lifestyle and still reach the Distinction Diploma I am aiming for. I feel like I could have done a slight bit more of work but screw it, I'll make up for it near my assignment deadlines (I feel like I work better under pressure when my time is nearly up). My girlfriend is the one part of my life that needs to be kept as she means a lot to me. I've still managed to spend hours with her pretty much every day (or other day) and it hasn't been a problem with my gaming ways. She'll leave me at 10 in the evening and I'll then game for a couple of hours before bed so that's no concern. The one commitment I have which I know will cause me to cease my gamerscore whoring ways is my skateboarding. These past couple of months we've had horrible weather here in England, all rain and snow. This weather makes skateboarding not possible to do and therefore I've not spent much time on my board (which I don't like). This is the free time I've had which has enabled me to spend more time on my Xbox. Unfortunately this will change come summer as I do want to get lots of skateboarding done as this could possibly be my last summer before I have a full-time job.

So really I don't think 200,000 Gamerscore is going to happen this year. It definitely is possible if me and rover08 keep up our current trading however I need to really want to push for that goal, something I can't foresee happening as my focus will be on my annual skateboard video instead. I'm thinking of going half way in the middle, aiming for 180,000. This way I can have my time to skate in the summer and then game on the wet days or when I'm injured. Only time will tell.