I could use a break. Anyone have a KitKat bar?

I did not have a good weekend last week.  And saying it was "not good" is an understatement.  And things have only gotten worse since then.

I did a check of my outstanding achievements in Gears of War 3 and I found that there were 160 points that I could realistically get in that game before I would consider myself done.  Getting the achievement for onyxing every medal is not what I call realistic for me.  I'm just trying to keep it real.  But executing Minh 10 times is doable.  Getting 10 reflective kills is doable.  Re-upping for a 2nd time is doable.  And maxing out the command center levels is doable.  Among others.

Or should I say WAS doable.

I've been working on leveling up my "Ready for the Heavies" medal to onyx and I only had 10 more ribbons to get to do so.  I was working on getting those last 10 ribbons all week last week.  Sometimes it was easy.  Sometimes I was playing with a bunch of idiots.  And sometimes my teammates were just too good.

On Saturday night I finally got the last ribbon needed to make the medal onyx.  When the match was over I jumped in to my stats and checked out my newest Onyx medal.  It looked so pretty.  I sat and admired it for awhile before searching around for the next medal I'd focus on to try and get it onyx.

The next closest one was earning money in Horde and if I also spent money repairing the command center I could get that achievement as well.  It seemed like a win-win situation.  Unfortunately it was late and I really wasn't in the mood to play some Horde so I jumped into some Guardian matches (another medal close to leveling up - sadly not to onyx).

I played a few rounds.  I was the leader a couple of times and even killed someone as the leader (working towards another medal).  After a couple of matches I called it a night and jumped out of the game and logged off for the night.

On Sunday I didn't get to play until later in the evening.  I put in Gears 3 ready to grind away at some Hordes and hopefully getting an onyx medal or an achievement before the night was over.  But things didn't turn out that way as soon as I hit the start button.

My system froze a little bit as it was "downloading player profile".  No big deal, right?  It's done that to me many times before.  Unfortunately this time it was different.  As soon as it unfroze I started to get pop ups for unlocking this character, or unlocking this weapon skin, or unlocking something else.  I thought that was very strange and maybe there was a medal or achievement that was glitched and was hoping it was finally unglitched and I actually earned something I should have a long time ago.

Wrong.

On the party screen it said my level was 1.  That didn't worry me too much.  A lot of times it has taken my screen a while to update with my current level.  When I got into my stats menu I realized things were worse than that.  Much worse.

My level on the stats screen said 11.  That's right.  A one followed by another one.  I was level 67 and about a third of the way to level 68 on my second go around on levels.  I had "prestiged" once and my level was a different color.  But now the system was saying I was 157 levels less than what I was when I played the night before.

Oh, but it gets worse.

When I looked at my stats I showed that I haven't even played the game at all.  No Horde.  No Beast.  No multiplayer.  And no campaign.  Everything was gone.  Almost everything.  I still had the characters and weapon skins unlocked . . . but only up to level 11.  It was showing that I collected every collectible item in the campaign, even if it showed that I had never played the campaign.

All my ribbons were gone as well.  I only had 2 ribbons I hadn't earned yet.  One was for reviving 3 downed teammates as a kantas in beast mode.  The other was for killing 3 headsnakes in Horde.  The headsnakes were much more doable in my opinion.  All those 130+ ribbons were gone.  Grayed out.  locked up as if never earned.  Ever.

And then there was the medals.  I immediately got the onyx medal for earning achievements in Gears 2 so at least that wasn't taken from me.  All the other medals (except one) looked like dusty unused trinkets found in the back of your grandmother's closet.  Unloved.  And not looked at for years.  The only other medal that had something (besides the Gears 2 medal) was the medal for playing in Gears of War 3 events.  That medal was sitting at 29 out of 30.  I remember sitting at that level for so long wondering if I would ever get that last event to play in before they finally had something going and I was finally able to get that medal to onyx.  Finally.

Except this time I was stuck back and 29 out of 30.  And I don't think there's anymore events to play in to make it onyx.  I was dumbfounded.  I didn't consider getting the achievement for getting all onyx medals as being realistic for me.  Killing your nemesis X about of time, and getting "number 1" in arcade mode are probably out of my wheelhouse when it comes to game play.  But not having another "event" to play when I only needed one to make that medal onyx was a blow I just couldn't take.

I logged off.  I would have cried but I was so shocked and dumbfounded that I just couldn't get the tears to fall.  Three years of my life wiped out from one night to the next.  And no hope of getting it all back.

I talked with a friend who knows someone who this happened to.  Fortunately for him it was still early enough in the game that he could recover and earned everything back.  He had sent Epic an email explaining what happened and wanted to know if they could do anything about it.  Unfortunately for him, and later for me, Epic said they know about the problem, don't know why it is happening and have no way to fix it when it does.  Way to go Epic.

I was so traumatized that I couldn't even look at ANY gaming console Sunday night.  I was baffled and befuddled.  Angry and anxious.  It was like being robbed all over again.  But this time it wasn't dumbass people being shitheads that broke in and took things, it was a dumbass company who took things because their shit broke and they don't know how to fix it.  This happened to me before in Gears of War 2.  I lost 15 levels from one log in to the next.  My friend lost about 10 when it happened to him.  It was early enough in the game that I got over it but I remember being at level 89 when everyone else on my friends list was maxing out at 100 (we use to be all close together in ranks).  Once they maxed out they didn't want to play the game any more.  It was really hard to get those last 11 levels mostly on my own.  When I finally got to level 100 and got my wings my friends said "well it's about time".  If I'm having a hard enough time finding friends to play with me right now in Gears 3 what chance did I have to have them play longer with me to unlock the campaign again?

 I went to bed Sunday night not even wanting to play my Xbox 360 every again.  But at lunch on Monday I thought I would try a bunch of things to see if that might help.  One of the things I tried was deleting my profile and redownloading it.  That didn't help.  I even tried having the game download my profile to the cloud instead of my hard drive.  Still nothing worked.

I then decided I would play a level in the campaign and see if that might magically unlock things for me.  I played the first level on normal and when done my screen went ballistic with unlocking stuff.  I jumped out and checked my stats and it seems like I got credit for fully playing the campaign on casual and normal and also playing those difficulties in Arcade mode.  Hmm....

I played the next level on hardcore and the same things happened.  I then played the next level on insane and next thing I know I've got an onyx medal for playing the campaign on insane and playing arcade on insane.  I was starting to think that things might not be all bad.  At least I didn't have to play the entire campaign again.

I next tried Beast mode and while I unlocked beast on casual and normal I didn't unlock anything else for all those other Beast medals.  Previously I had onyx medals for all of beast mode but now they were still grayed out and locked.  You could see the counter going up for what I played but I didn't get credit for everything like I did with the campaign.  The only good news was that I got credit for playing an "event" when I finished the Beast mode game and that medal turned onyx . . . again.

I then gave up on Gears 3.  Partly because I had to go to work, but partly because I had to decide if I was going to put the time in to get everything back that I previous had.  That would mean starting over from scratch in Horde . . . when I was almost done with it.  That meant trying to get those ribbons that I had to have a friends help me plan out and get.  If I played Gears every night faithfully how long would it take me to get back what I had?  How long would I get bored of the game and could no longer stand it?  How many other games would I not be playing because I'm having to recreate everything in Gears again?  I just wanted those 160 points in my gamerscore then I could put Gears 3 aside until nostalgia stuck and I felt compelled to play it again.

On Tuesday I put Gears 3 away and tried playing Lost Odyssey.  It turns out I'm in the last area before I get to put in disk 4.  That means I'm close to being where I was before I was robbed.  And close to finishing the game.  Unfortunately I was having a hard time with my magic users coming up against physical attack enemies.  Two hits and my characters is out.  And since they all come after the same character when it's their turn I always had a character down (sometimes 2) at the end of every round.  And the first character they always take out is my designated healer.

Enough with the Xbox 360 games.  I just couldn't take it anymore.  I disconnected my 360 and stashed it away.  I figure my gaming time would be better served playing on another system.  It turns out it wasn't.  I couldn't get my PS2 to load three of the games I wanted to play.  I finally found a game that it would load (Champions of Norrath) and started that.

It was very obvious from my saved file that the last time I played this game was when I replaced it after having it stolen.  And then, I only played it long enough to see that it worked (character was level 3).  Unfortunately, after trying to play and dying all the time, because I was out of health potions, I gave up on that game and walked away.

I'm not sure what I'll play now.  What game or what system.  I just can't catch a break. If I can't catch a break I think I'll just have a KitKat bar instead.  With my luck I won't be able to open the wrapper.