I'm feeling a bit dashed, I have to say. For the second time my Blackberry has powered down completely - both times because of my idiocy - and I have lost my high score on BrickBreaker. The first high score was nearly 500,000. The second was over 2,000,000. I mean, come on, these aren't small scores. I struggled for nearly a year at 33,600. I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the top scorers' list once: there were people with 11 million or so to their name. E l e v e n million, I say. I had no idea how they could score so much.
Then I realised that it was only the first two cycles of the game that were difficult. Once the second cycle - seriously demented - was accomplished, all subsequent ones were tepid affairs. Boring even. As someone said, the game became geriatric. One scored and scored into the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one was curtailed only by carpal tunnel syndrome or the Blackberry's scroll-mouse failing.
I got the Blackberry about 2 years ago, spanking new and responsive like a Mig-21. It took me months of effort to break through the second cycle. As my score climbed into the lakhs, I had to set myself different goals: score without using any of the magic properties, or accumulate lives, or use only the laser. Then I forgot to recharge the Blackberry one day and it lost the game history and I had to start anew.
It didn't take long for me to recover that high score. This was at a time that the Blackberry's track mouse was still rigid enough that it didn't wobble at the lightest touch. I was also young enough that my reflexes were like a panther. As my score moved up to the million level, however, I noticed that I was making silly errors, the mouse was wobbling far too much, and I was losing lives prodigiously.
Two weeks ago, I went over the 2 million mark. I had 250 lives. I was spending lives as fast as I was gaining them. Frankly, it was getting a bit boring. I thought of switching to the word game 'Word Mole'. I did, in fact, begin to play it more often than BrickBreaker.
Hubris, I tell you. One night, the Blackberry's battery drained completely and I lost the game once again. I don't think I'll ever recover. My reflexes are shot. So is the Blackberry's trackball.
It is over.
