50K....Finally

I didnt win my race. I didnt hit my June goal, but as they say....better late then never. Tonight I finally crossed the 50,000 gamerscore mark that had been eluding me the last month.





After a few distractions, setbacks, and save files corrupting I have reached my 2009 goal. In reality I should have hit this some time in the middle of June but with preparations for my family and I's move to Texas I have been a bit preoccupied.

Once I get settled in to Texas I will re-evaluate my gamerscore goals for this year. Maybe Ill challenge someone or work on my gamerscore completion, which stands at 59%. Right now though I can tell you I want to enjoy gaming for the next month so Ill probably tackle some RPGs that I have left neglected.

History of my Gamer Tag

Upon the initial setup of my first 360 in late 2006 I was presented a screen to enter my Gamer Tag name. A name that would represent me across the vast network of Xbox Live. At first this little task of picking a name seemed like a daunting one.

For many years I was known by Vindi in the game World of Warcraft but I did not want to continue that name on my 360. I struggled to come up with a creative name to represent my mad gaming skills. However I did not want my name to be like every other 12 year olds name so I decided to go with something a bit more personal, a name I had been known as before. A name that I had been called by on a battlefield and Im not talking Call of Duty.

The name I chose was SabreOscar. Sabre Oscar was my call-sign during my first combat tour in Iraq. During that tour my responsibility was to move forward with the ground forces and provide operational updates to my Attack Helicopter Unit, a Squadron of AH-64A Apaches. Many nights my team and I found ourselves in the middle of no where in Iraq with our sole purpose of calling in air strikes and making sure that the Infantry had the air support that they needed from the Apaches. The men and women that I served with in that unit, 2-6 Cav, still refer to me by Sabre Oscar to this day.

I felt SabreOscar would be a fitting tag as it had a meaning behind it. I kept the tag for two years before recently changing it earlier this year to Sabre x360a.

My reason for the switch was for gamerscore purposes. It was this year that I began taking gamerscore seriously and actively getting involved on the x360a.org forums. I switched my tag but my forum name on the site still remains SabreOscar. Sabre x360a allows me to represent the Army and x360a community.

For those interested here is a little article that was done on my unit. I was quoted in it and for the record the writer of the article miss-quoted me but Im not surprised lol.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=14468

Defeated

My race with Gamergirl6969 ended earlier this week as she beat me to 50k. In what was a tight race early on finished in a four thousand point blow out.





Congrats are in order and I tip my hat to her. Female gamers should not be taken lightly and she be treated with respect as with all gamers. The topic of females in gaming has been highly debated so Ill save my thoughts on this topic for another time.

Once things settle down for me in Texas Ill be looking for another opponent to race.

50K Push

Its been a while since I have posted here so I felt I would give a brief update. Since the completion of the GSL I have taken things pretty easy in relation to point scoring. I have spent my time playing "Good" games and time consuming games which has led to May being my lowest scoring month of 2009.

I completed Too Human and can honestly say that I enjoyed every hour of it. The grind was a daunting task but with the new spider farming method discovered I was able to finish my last two achievements needed. I was fortunate to get the help of some fellow gamers from x360a.org on some of the tougher ones and I have to send a shout out to FlipSwitch from x360a. This guy has a TON of Too Human knowledge. Thanks also goes out to Method x360a and Prodigy1980 for there help as well. Without them I might still be trying to finish the game.

I also finished the story line of Resident Evil 5 but still need to go back and clean it up for the 1k. Sacred 2 has been taking up most of my time the last week and is a very addiciting game. If you dont believe me then you an read ThrawnOmega's blog. Another big time sink for me this past month was Gears of War 2 multiplayer. I managed to reach level 25 but thats about as far as I am going. To many nights of frustration and wanting to smash my controller into the ground for me to go any higher. Although its always a blast to game with my boys ThrawnOmega, BL4CK SiLv4, and Bishop024.

However its time for me to get serious again. With my upcoming move to Texas in July I have decided that I want to close out the month of June by reaching my goal of 50k. As of today I am currently off the mark by 4,610. I would like to get as many if not all of these points from games in my backlog allowing me to raise my 58% completion percentage at the same time. It shouldnt be too hard but I may have to rent a game or two if it comes down to crunch time and Im still short.

Im Back!

After being crippled by the Red Rings of Death this weekend I decided that I would use this time to take a break and catch my breath. That lasted for about 24 hours.

I shipped out my system on Monday and started considering my options of games I could play to pass the down time of no 360 capabilities. My options looked very promising:

1. Wii - Mario Galaxy
2. PS - Final Fantasy VII
3. PC - StarCraft (never played before)
4. PC - World of Warcraft

I used to play WoW pretty seriously for a couple of years. I was a hardcore raider in one of the top guilds on my server. WoW took alot out of me that I did not realize until I quit playing last year. In a moment of weakness on Tuesday I reactived my WoW account and logged in for the first time in many months. I played around for a few hours on Tuesday and Wednesday and even earned a few achievements in WoW. However, achievements in WoW are no where near as satisfying as they are on the 360. I quickly became bored and realized that WoW was no longer for me.

My Wife was able to sense my boredom and made one of the best suggestions ever in our 5 years of marriage (ok she has probably made better ones). I guess she got tired of me talking to her and told me to just go buy a new one. I know, I know all of you are thinking to yourself how lucky I am. All I can say is I picked a winner!

I walked into my favorite video game store and a few minutes later walked out in style. I went big and bought a new 360 Elite! So now Ill be rocking with my boys and knocking out those chievos with the Black on Black Elite.

RROD

Those three red lights have struck my system again for the second time. The first took place last November. I was playing some MP Gears of War 2 with my friends when my system shut down.

Xbox customer service is always a pleasurable experience.....(hope you picked up on the sarcasm there). I will be sending my system off this week and the nice little lady on the phone, who is somewhere in a distant country, told me my system would be out for three weeks.

I got to find something to fill my 360 time to keep me from going insane.

GSL AAR

What an amazing 8 weeks of gaming! The gaming event known as the Gamer Score League has come to an end. No more latenights, no more boosting games that I would never tell my friends that I played. Best of all, no My Horse and Me 2! If the GSL was one week longer it would have made its way to my door step and I would have been forced to play it...whew that was close.

The Hand of Thrawn was put together by ThrawnOmega with the intent to go out and have fun. In the weeks leading to the GSL we were called out by a few teams, L4A and Rogue Squadron. I happy to say that we crushed both those teams as we cruised to a very respectable 5th place finish (possibly 4th still awaiting word from the moderators).

My Teammates have been nothing but class acts and Id like to thank them all for all the help, games, and latenight conversation they provided.

Week 1 GSL Starting Score: 24,220
Week 8 GSL Ending Score: 42, 655

I put up 18,435 in 5 weeks of play (I rode the bench for 3 weeks). I have to give a special shoutout to Thrawn because if it wasnt for him my score would not have been possible.

Now its time to go back to regular gaming and avoiding all easy games so I have ammo for GSL VIII.