At the start of the year, Ibwib issued a challenge to the Megabits team to rack up a decent-sized gamerscore by the end of May. We’ve cleverly dubbed this the Megabits Gamerscore Challenge 2011 – and will be running regular updates of our exploits over the coming months.

The three contenders have been quick off the blocks but as Bojeeva knows from last year’s attempt, it can only get tougher and before too long all the low-hanging fruit will have been taken and the trickier achievements will have to be pursued. Already the excuses are emerging, from illness and having too much work to do - to having a life beyond gaming (!) and opting instead to leave the sofa and go out with friends. Pathetic! Here's how the team has been doing so far...



Floored by the flu bug that's been doing the rounds, my gaming exploits have been somewhat curtailed this month. Saying that though, the past few weeks saw me mop up just over 1,400GS since this epic journey started, which stands me in good stead for the months ahead.

I romped my through the previously-overlooked Crackdown 2 and racked up an impressive 655GS, while spreading my time between the fantastic Mafia II and playtesting the recently-reviewed nail’d for another 330GS combined.

Besides freebie Harm’s Way providing an enjoyable – but easy – 200GS and playing the slightly tougher Crash Course, the rest of my time has been spent on Kinect with EA Sports Active 2 (reviewed after the jump), DS Sports Freedom, Kinect Sports and the awesome Dance Central. As a result, my exertions have meant I’ve had achy limbs for the majority of the past fortnight. But it’s all been worthwhile!

With the end of the month drawing near it's time for another update on this year’s Gamerscore Challenge. The cracking early pace continues, although I'm sure we'll all get square eyes or sore thumbs soon enough.

For my part, I've accumulated another 1070GS since the last update. The points break down like this: Split/Second: Velocity: 95, Alan Wake: 600, Medal of Honor: 375.

I'm expecting things to slow down a little now - Alan Wake rains points down on you, but I've finished it. Ditto for Split/Second, from which I've mined all the points that are within my reach, and as for Medal of Honor…well, that game justifies my resolution not to moan about duration any more. It's half as long as Call of Duty: Black Ops, yet ten times more enjoyable, and while 375GS isn't a big figure, its a very tidy return on what was a very short but entertaining expenditure of time.

Due to having a pile of university work higher than my own information overloaded head, gaming has had to to drop down a couple of notches on my list of priorities. Hence, since the last update I've only managed to scrape a rather measly 465G together.

A tear through of The Arena and the Fighter's Guild quest-lines in Oblivion attributed to just over 200 of that, with the newly acquired Dead Space 2 offering up the game's first few achievements. Now I'm less busy however, my attention will be turned back to this epic challenge, starting off with the completion of Dead Space 2, and, god forbid, maybe the odd 'less-than-stellar' second hand title to beef the score up...