20,000G

In just ten months my Xbox GamerScore has double in size, from 10,000G last May to 20,000G today, just a few moments ago. It was reached while playing the astonishingly fun Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, more specifically, the Spec Ops missions that encourage co-operative play. I admit, I worked to get the nice even number, ending in 000, picking three easy Achievements that brought me up from 19,970 in increments of 10. I'd have been annoyed if I had accidentally overshot it and failed to get the image that accompanies this post.

As well as CoD:MW2, new games such as Lego Rock Band and Left 4 Dead 2 have helped push my GamerScore toward this new milestone. Apart from new releases, I recently went back to Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the sequel to the game that got me Xboxing in the first place! I had loads of fun getting back into the co-operative terrorist killing with my good friend Rubber Cookie, who himself recently hit the 10,000G milestone. We found ourselves running the Terrorist Hunt missions on Realistic difficulty and having great fun dieing and dieing again. All that planning, all that running variations, learning where the enemies spawn, where to hide, when to run. All leading to eventually taking that number in the top corner of the screen down to the last five, then three, then one. At which point, the tension reaches fever pitch, the movements become erratic, someone rounds a corner, there is a burst of fire, "Mission Failed" comes up on screen and we start all over again. Every time we finally cracked a level, we roared and shouted in joy, sharing in the mutual success!

While the sequel to Rainbow Six: Vegas has taken up the bulk of my multiplayer experiences recently, my single player time has been almost exclusively spent on the sequel to the other game that made me need an Xbox 360, Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 has fixed most of the problems associated with the first game, while introducing a few new ones. Thankfully, the fixes outweigh the new issues. The story feels much more epic and galactic in scale, the support characters are fantastic, the Achievements don't restrict your gameplay experience, and they thankfully removed the Mako. On that final subject, ME2 has a wonderful ongoing support through DLC, primarily through the Cerberus Network which has given us a new support character, armour, weapons, and most recently, a hover tank to replace the Mako, the Firewalker. All in all, a highly recommended game.

And thus concludes my post about my GamerScore milestones that rambled off onto a short game review. More to come!