I can feel it coming in the air tonight ... oh, lord.

It's funny how easy it is to fall back into old habits. Shortly after starting this blog it's fallen into the "neglected" pile on my desk. It's something I need to start making time for, I suppose. It's not entirely my fault though. Let me explain.

I've never been an achievement whore, per se. Don't get me wrong, I love it when that little bubble pops up and my gamerscore goes up. I love the looks I get when the kids at work see my 21,184 gamerscore. I know it's not that impressive compared to others but it is to them. I've never really put an effort into getting the points though. I tend to play through games, get my fill of them, and shelf or trade them. I don't go out of my way to get some crazy achievements or play through two or three times to get the points I missed. Hell, the farthest I've gone in the past is buying the Live Vision camera to get the Rainbow Six: Vegas achievement for putting your face on your character.

All that has changed recently. Over the holidays I got my first taste of blood in the seven years I've been on Live. I got 1000/1000 points in Assassin's Creed 2 and Borderlands (pre-dlc). This seemingly small feat has opened up the floodgates. I've found myself staring at the "completed" tab under my achievements and thinking of what other games could be added to the lonely little picture of Ezio there. I've been pouring numerous hours into the Borderlands DLC in an attempt to recapture my completion of that game (I'm also a huge lootwhore.) I've even been browsing my list of played games all the way back to Perfect Dark Zero, the first game I ever played on my xbox, in order to see what games I got close to completing. There are so many missed points I feel I have to go back and get now. My 21,184 is out of over 79,000 potential points. Those 700, 800, and 900 point games are screaming at me to finish them where, in the past, I smugly smiled at just how much of them I had completed. It couldn't hurt to rebuild my collection anyway.

More to the point all this means I've been playing more. A lot more. Than I should. My mornings which should be spent in quiet contemplation of what to write about have rather been spent squeezing in as many Crawmerax farming runs as I can before I have to go to work. I've also acquired more than a few older games that I've either played previously or have been meaning to. When I'm going to find time to play them all is another story. With Splinter Cell just over the horizon even my Borderlands runs will be cut short for a few weeks. Potentially more if the multiplayer is half as good as Chaos Theory or Pandora Tomorrow (Double Agent wasn't bad either).

I can feel the achievement whore starting to come through. I've always said it was a fantastic implementation to gaming. That was because I never really put a lot of effort into it. Now that I care, now that I want to put forth the effort, it scares me. The sheer time involvement is enough to make me want to trade my xboxes in. I'd like to think I've got the self-control to avoid falling into that trap. I'd like to think that the copy of NBA 2k6 that a friend gave me for "1000 easy points" will never find it's way into my xbox. I wish I could say I haven't considered renting "Avatar" (the crappy cartoon game with the easiest achievements know to man.) To be honest, I'm not so sure I could say those things truthfully. I want those points. I want more, MORE!

Up until now I've been a nice little Dr. Jekyll. I hear Mr. Hyde the achievement whore knocking. He wants to come out.

-N. "Soylent" White