February Goals: Half

Only two months in, and I've already stumbled. That is to say, my gaming goals for February were kind of half-assed. It did come with an epiphany, however. Victoriously, I conquered No More Heroes, just as I'd promised. A full-on FINAL JUDGEMENTS is forthcoming for that title, and I'm really looking forward to it. Opinions I've presented about the games I've played, thus far, have been pretty cut and dried. How I feel, postmortem, about NMH is very conflicted, and I'm anticipating exploring those feelings. What I would like to talk about, is how Grits and I never did get around to sampling any of the coop missions in Modern Warfare 2.

Picture it, if you will: February 26. A balmy evening. A dog howled in the distance, and it suddenly occurred to me that it was getting pretty damned late in the month, and I'd not yet completed either of my gaming goals. On one hand, I was making excellent progress in NMH, and was quite certain I'd finish before the week's end. On the other, I hadn't done a damn thing with Grits & MW2. I texted my dawg to inform him as much. I figured that maybe one good night session would push us through on it. He responded to me in his usual, punctual fashion, in the negative. This was unexpected. What was I to do?! I'd devoted myself, completely, to the cause of Gaming Goals, but I needed Grits to complete said goals. Then, Grits informed me as to why we would not be completing set goals. Namely, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. As his earlier post informs, we've been playing a lot of it since it came out.

Admittedly, I was hesitant. Dammit, I wanted to get them goals in! But, further explanation from Grits did ring true, and has led me to believe that we should, if not discontinue monthly coop goals entirely, that we should only set them for ourselves when they are applicable. You see, the impetus behind our Monthly Gaming goals were to, for one, force us into burning through the stacks of older games we weren't getting around to on a reasonable timetable. For two, they would force us out of our comfort zones with games, in an effort to make us more well-rounded. You see, for me, I've been feeling over the past year or so, that I've gotten a bit stodgy with what I will and will not play. That I'm denying myself some great experiences, simply because the act of playing some of them makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. When it comes down to it, playing coop MW2 just doesn't fit into either of those categories. Especially when you consider we would have been putting off the epically fun coop of playing Borderlands with DrSmooth and Chester.

So, in conclusion, I have a very warm, ABC After School Special, feeling of growth coming out of February. I feel like, going forward, gaming goals will be more productive, and hopefully less forced. It's such a foregone conclusion, so I don't feel like it'll make that, now-stringent, coop goal status, but RE5's second batch of campaign DLC is up this week. It'll be interesting to see if Grits and I's perspectives change at all, now that we'll be playing Josh and Jill, rather than Sheva and GUN SHOW.

Up Next: The future is a little cloudy. In the wake of finishing No More Heroes, I'm taking a little bit of a break, and don't quite know what I want next. Hopefully I'll be able to let you know in NMH's FINAL JUDGEMENTS.