Metroid Frustration

Here's the story:
I'm working on completing Insane Difficulty in "Gears of War 2" when "The Ballad of Gay Tony" comes out. I gotta run through that. Then I realize I don't have 100% in "The Lost and Damned." So I finish that first then get 100% in Ballad. I still need 100% in the missions but decide to come back to that later.

Instead of going back to Gears 2 I decide to put in Burnout Paradise. I've been wanting to play it since it came out and I've had it for a month. It's better than I thought it would be. The demo doesn't do it justice. I play it all day long. Next day I fire up the game again but the disc isn't reading. I take it out and it looks fine, not at all like the first Gears 2 I had to send back. Try a few more times, it still doesn't work. I decide to clean it, still nothing. I pop in Gears 2 and it works fine. So I'm like "What the hell? I have to send another game back?"

I start playing Gears for a few hours then I shut it down to do something else. I come back and now Gears isn't reading. Now I'm freaking out. I try Halo 3 ... nothing. Orange Box? No go. So I realize it's not the games. My disc drive is dead. My 360 is past warranty and I can't pay to fix it at the moment. I have these games installed to the hard drive by the way. I just need to read the disc for a second and I can play. But no. And of course it didn't Red Ring so I wouldn't have to pay for it.

So here I am driveless and can't play disc games. Peggle goes on sale. I buy that and have been playing it since. A friend asks me what I'm going to do about Gamefly and I say "I don't know. I can't find any info about freezing the account." His question gets me looking again and I find out you can't freeze Gamefly accounts, only terminate them. So I'm stuck paying $20 a month for games I can't even play.

Which brings me to Metroid Fusion. See, I was getting there. If I'm paying for games I'm playing games. Emulators FTW. Played through Fusion. I found it harder than Super Metroid. There were a few times where I had no idea where to go. I had to watch a speedrun to get through parts. I thought the bosses were easier once you knew how to beat them: Spam Beam or Spam Missles. A good sequel over all. Next up Zero Mission, which should be interesting since I never played original Metroid.

Full Tag List:
360, Gamefly, games, Gears of War 2, GTA IV, The Lost and Damned, xbox, The Ballad of Gay Tony, Burnout Paradise, Halo, The Orange Box, Peggle, Metroid Fusion, Super Metroid, Emulators, Red Ring of Death, Bill G can S my D