Gamerscore, or Someone Help Me

My name is Jonathan Singer and I have a problem.

I'm totally addicted to collecting Gamerscore. I know this is bad. Everything about it feels wrong. My recent readings on Buddhism have been telling me that collecting things is a bad thing, representing the attachment which leads inevitably to suffering. (More on Buddhism at some later time.) But it's a little sick, the time and effort I will put into eking out just a few more points in a game.

Case in point: Eternal Sonata.

I have had this game out from Gamefly since 2/21/08. I realize that it is a JRPG, and those tend to take a long-ass time to finish. But I should have long since sent this game back to the hell from whence it came, freeing up that spot on my Queue for other, better games (like the recently shipped Orange Box, though I question whether I will play any of Half-Life 2. I tend not to like getting involved in things part-way through, hence my not watching season 4 of BSG when it starts this Friday, because I'm still not done with Season 2, let alone started and finished Season 3). I mean, I already wrote about having finished Eternal Sonata and gotten the 300 and change achievement points that are possible on a first playthrough.

Of course, the game was made by a bunch of sick Japanese sadists, who require you to play through the Encore mode (basically New Game +, except you start back at level 1, with none of your equipment and the enemies all have twice the HP and 1.5 times the strength and defense) in order to get the other 600some points. This is awful. Who thought of this?

[Ed. note - At the same time, I have to grudgingly give the developers respect for making the second playthrough punishingly difficult. Once you got the timing of counterattacks and blocks down in the first playthrough, it was childishly easy. I could wipe out even the bosses that my walkthrough told me were really challenging. Really challenging for people who suck at video games, but not really challenging for me. I am a master. Well, this was before I played Encore and had Captain Dolce (oh the names are so awesome, so awesome. {cf. Polka}) sweep the floor with my bloomer-covered ass. I find myself again looking at how the course of the game has been changed forever, which is how I felt every time I got a new party level and found that the battle system was upgraded with some new quirk or other, that totally made things fresh and clean again. It's quite nice to find a game that I've spent so many damn hours on continue to surprise me, even if part of that surprise is discovering the inner depths of anger as I shout obscenities at the TV screen.]

Anyway, basically I've spent another 10 hours or so on this game, after having completed it once, just to get to the first of the second round of achievements, which was worth 79 points. So that's cool, but brings the time vs points ratio to like...7.9 points an hour. Hard math that. I actually busted out a calculator. No, really. I feel I can admit this to you, friendly reader types.

Now, the next few achievements will be easier to get, as I near the end of the game. And one of them is worth a cool 321 points, which is hott as Paris says, but really, it's a bit sick. I've pretty much lost enjoyment in the game and am now playing solely to get the achievements and send the bitch back to Gamefly, never to grace my sexy black Xbox ever agains! My replay(s) of Mass Effect will be far, far more enjoyable, because at least in that game, there are no children at all (yes!) and the adults are, on the whole (Preparation H feels good...), pretty sexalicious. And there is interactive sodomy, as they say.

Irregardless, I feel myself coming close to the end of Eternal Sonata and already, my spirit feels lighter and free. I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself when I don't have a bunch of Japanese schoolchildren babbling at me about Piu Grave and Shade Cometu. I'll miss you kids!