Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
Looks like I missed posting the last show: EPISODE 98
The Halo 4 episode!
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
I've had all of the Halo achievements from the Xbox 360 for over a year now, when the Halo Wars DLC finally went on sale and I decided to buy them up and start boosting for all of the outstanding achievements. But for being such a Halo fanboy, I felt like there was something missing. I never bothered to pick up Halo 2 for the PC. Well, for a while, I didn't have a PC capable of running it. It required Windows Vista (hacks to get it running on Windows XP aside), and then it just didn't seem like a priority. Who would be around to play it with, anyway, since three other Halo games had been out since then?
I finally decided to pick them up. Finding copies of Halo 2 on the cheap wasn't terribly hard (in fact, I also picked up the original Halo while I was at it, just to officially complete my collection).
The single player achievements weren't too terribly hard (all I'll say is: when you play on a PC, you have much more control over the system as a whole than you ever have on a console), and I was even able to pick up a few of the multiplayer achievements — Hired Gun, you could get by killing yourself (as long as you had the Legend achievement first); and Bonecracker, Assassin, and Flaming Ninja I managed to pick up by happening to find someone else online who just happened to have the Ninja achievement and who I happened to kill with a melee and an assassination before he gave up. The rest, however, were going to be more difficult.
So, with Halo 4 only 20 days away, I decided I would set up a couple boosting sessions on TrueAchievements.com to boost the rest. I made sure I had a handle on hosting games in Halo 2, and I created two sessions for the next two days.
I got one taker for the first session (not too surprising given the short notice). We were actually able to get a lion's share of the multiplayer achievements done in short order — any that didn't require having more than two people on the field at a time. The second night was a full session, having the minimum 5 gamers to get the remaining achievements. (You only really need 5 for the "Killtacular" achievement; the "play all game types" one only needs 4 total.)
To make a long story very short, we were able to get these done pretty easily. It was almost nostalgic playing on the PC, which I hadn't really done in years. We used TeamSpeak to coordinate (because the built-in chat system is somewhat lacking in the quality department, and because TeamSpeak has a brilliant option to overlay who's talking in a very clear manner), but we also had text chat available for those whose computers just weren't cooperating. (I only knew it was there when I was sending a standard Xbox Live text message to one player, and I saw his response typed up in the game window.)
The longest part of the achievement hunting was playing on every single map and game type. There are 39 different game types (and a little more than half that number of maps). It counted if the host (me) ended the game immediately, so we spent the majority of our time watching the game loading screens. But, it definitely wasn't difficult, and now I have every possible Halo achievement scored.
For the next 18 days, anyway.…
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
While the rest of the Geezers are either playing Borderlands 2 or watching the Vice Presidential debate, CyberKnight flies solo to bring you the latest gaming news for this week. Also, GrimJack calls in with a sobering word of caution for those gamers in Borderlands 2 (which, by last count, is everyone).
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
I picked up Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition earlier this summer. For a mere $30, I got the full game plus all four DLC packs. (The DLC is on Marketplace for $10 apiece, and the game is also available for digital download for $19.99. Once again, physical discs at retail prices win out over digital downloads.)
Borderlands is one of those games that's much better played in multiplayer. Although I got it nearly three years late, the announcement of Borderlands 2's pending fall release got people excited enough to revisit this old game over the summer. In the very few sessions I managed to play co-op, I managed to get all of the multiplayer achievements just by playing the game, really only "boosting" the duel-related ones. (I discovered later, though, it wouldn't have mattered so much, since these achievements are obtainable in split-screen co-op with an offline account.) For a game that is so much better in multiplayer, it does seem strange there aren't more co-op achievements; but, so be it.
There are a lot of annoying achievements in the game, mostly due to the repetitive task quests. The "Braaaaaaaaaaaaains!" achievement is a good example. To get it, you have to complete all of the quests from TK Baha in the "Zombie Island of Dr. Ned" DLC area, which amounts to collecting zombie brains by killing zombies with headshots. You first have to collect 10, then 25, then 50, then 100, then 250 brains (by headshotting zombies). If you activate this quest first, it can be easier (since you can just collect brains along your way to complete other quests), except you have to keep coming back to TK Baha to turn in the brains every so often (since you can only collect brains when you've started the quest — any extra brains you may collect will not count towards the next quest). I did the achievement last, so I had absolutely nothing to do but find and shoot zombies.
The most annoying achievements, though, are the collectible achievements in the "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution" DLC pack. These achievements require you to collect a certain number of items, which appear from Claptraps when you kill them. There is no shortage of Claptraps, so that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that these items do not always drop. They are relatively rare, and what item you may get is entirely random. Collecting 20 oil cans isn't very hard, except when you take into account that you have maybe a 1 in 5 chance (an optimistic estimate) of getting a special item dropped from a Claptrap, and a 1 in 6 chance of that item actually being an oil can, as opposed to a pair of pink panties, a fish in a bag, a slice of pizza, a Claptrap bobble-head, or a pair of 3D glasses. (In my experience, the 3D glasses were the most common — annoying because they're also what you need the least amount of — but I can't tell for sure if that was fact or just dumb luck with the virtual dice.)
The common boosting method is to get to the end game (spoiler alert), where the Mega Interplanetary Ninja Assault Claptrap rolls around the screen, shooting you the whole time, dropping "Divine Wind" Claptraps when it stops. The deal with the Divine Wind Claptraps is they will eventually self-destruct (right next to you, if they get their way), so you don't have to shoot them to kill them. You can hide in certain spots where none of the Claptraps can get you, but since there is really no penalty for dying on this mission, that's really optional. Just leave the game for several hours, come back, finish off the MINAC, and pick up all the items dropped by the suicidal Claptraps that are filling up the screen. Even then, there are reports that you may have to do this more than once just to get all the special items.
There is a trick that helps it go a little faster. If you shoot the Claptraps as the Mega Claptrap drops them, it will keep dropping them to maintain two Claptraps on the screen at a time for the several seconds it is stopped. I happened upon a machine gun that had corrosive and electric damage that I could fire a few bursts and kill several Claptraps at a time. When I ran out of ammo, I opened chests to find more, and failing that, I switched over to my shotgun to kill the Claptraps as they emerged (keeping a careful eye on my ammo count so I had enough shots to finish off the MINAC). I could get up to around 16 Claptraps for every time the MINAC paused.
It also seemed to me that, if I left the items on the ground, there was a greater chance of getting special items compared to if I picked up the common items before moving on. Also, by leaving the special items I didn't need (like the 3D glasses, which I collected before I even got to the endgame), the special items I didn't have would be more likely to drop. As if the game, when it decided to drop a special item, took note of what items were on the field at the time and favored items that weren't already there. Again, I don't know if this is actually the case; it may have just been my need to find some kind of order to the chaos. The fact that I was getting rather tired of picking up every item (which you have to do by making sure your crosshairs are centered on an item before you even think about pressing the button) probably contributed to me wanting to find an excuse to leave the items on the ground.
Even with the insane number of Claptraps destroyed (I managed to level up from level 61 to 67 in the process), it still took me two separate 2-hour sessions of mindless Claptrap-killing and item-collecting before I finally picked up the last item I needed.
After that, the last few achievements were easy. Game complete.
CyberKnight, Devastator, and McJeepers come together for the latest episode of the Geezer Gamers Community Cast. Lots to talk about this week, with lots of Borderlands 2 news and reviews, and more!
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
No, not my Halo 4 pre-order — although this experience makes me rather nervous about that.
In a nutshell, I placed a pre-order game to take advantage of some very nice incentives, only to find out that my pre-order was canceled without any notification or indication of a problem; and, because of this, the incentives are long gone.
CyberKnight, Devastator, Dukie1993, and Solstice01 gather 'round the studio mics for this week's episode of the Geezer Gamers Community Cast. Now that we know about the Wii U, is it worth a purchase? What is Sony thinking with the new PS3 "super-slim"? Plus some info about the upcoming XCOM reboot, some first impressions about Borderlands 2, and more!
Time for a new feature that will give me some reason to write, outside of game reviews that I never seem to get around to and reposts of the podcasts I've hosted or been involved in. Achievement Unlocked tells the more interesting stories of achievements I've earned.
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron includes three achievements of the kind I absolutely hate: multiplayer achievements that require you to dominate the entire scoreboard, and the worst of those achievements mean your domination includes those players on your own team. Not only are these achievements insanely difficult for anyone to get legitimately (unless they're the kind of player that can truly dominate — which I am quite definitely not), but they can take a team game and make it into a free-for-all, where every player is your enemy, coercing you to engage in unsportsmanlike conduct like team-killing or interfering with them accomplishing the objective.
Which brings me to the three qualifying achievements in Fall of Cybertron.
First up is Heavy Metal War. This one does not require you to interfere with your teammates' progress. In fact, it's easily possible for multiple players on the same (and even opposing) teams to get the achievement simultaneously. The achievement requires you to kill six different players on the opposing team in one deathmatch. The things that make this a little more difficult is: (1) you have to get in a match with six people on the other team (which can be a challenge unto itself some nights), (2) you have to be able to find and kill each of those six people (there is almost always one or two players on the opposite team that, no matter what I do, I just can't seem to kill), and (3) you have to score these six kills before either team gets to the winning score of 40 (which is often just a little too fast).
I ended up getting this achievement when I happened into a game that was 5-on-5. The players on my team were pretty good at engaging the enemy, which meant I could fly around as a jet mostly ignored and pick off enemies retreating or hiding. I wasn't really keeping track, but I thought I managed to get each one of the enemy five once. As the game was coming to a close, I saw a notification that someone joined the game on the enemy team. As the voice of Optimus Prime announced there were five kills remaining, I boosted over to the enemy spawn area as the sixth opposing player spawned in. Unfortunately, my first attempt at taking him out didn't go so well, but I was able to respawn, jet over to him, and finish him off just before the game ended.
Second, Ultimate Menasor, requires you to personally capture three flags in a public multiplayer capture the flag game. Since the game goes to a score of three, that means you have to capture all three flags, without any of your teammates scoring even one. This is easily the most annoying and unsportsmanlike achievement in the bunch, since, in order to get the achievement, no one else on your team can score.
Some fellow Geezers got this achievement on a night I happened to not be online. By letting Hyperdive, "the Geezer from Australia," host the match (setting matchmaking preferences to "regional", and it being the middle of the Australian day instead of gaming prime time), they managed to create rooms with very low instances of other people joining. We were trying that method again, but with a party of only three, we weren't able to secure a room all to ourselves.
Duck grabbed the first flag and brought it back to me, and I waited at our base with Duck covering me until the rest of our team secured our flag and I could score. Then the enemy flag was again snagged by our team, but this time by one of our random teammates. I figured this would kill my achievement attempt. The enemy likewise grabbed our flag, and we were in another standoff. Again, I waited by our base, hoping against hope that maybe the enemy would come in for a flag rescue, kill my teammate, and be weak enough that I could kill him and grab the flag for myself.
Then the strangest thing happened. Our flag-carrying teammate came up to me, transformed into his vehicle form (automatically dropping the flag), and drove away. Was this a mistake? Did he not realize that you had to stay in robot mode to carry the flag? I wasn't too sure at that point, but after I scored the flag and the battle for the third score started, he came back and did it again. Completely unbidden, this random player going by the gamertag EMFULZ gave me the achievement.
As soon as the game was over, I left him some positive feedback. I only looked up his profile later and noticed he also needed the achievement, so my intent this week is to hopefully get the Geezers together again, find him online, and return the favor.
Later the same night, I decided to lone wolf it into some headhunter games and see if I could pick up the third achievement: Ballistic Energon Goodie. To get this achievement, you have to play a game of headhunter and score five "sparks" (heads) in one shot. It's another one I didn't think I would get without a lot of orchestrated help, as it requires staying alive long enough to nab five sparks and then score them — although more than one Geezer said they managed to get lucky by playing as a jet, flying into the aftermath of large battles, and scooping up enough sparks to score. After dying over and over again without ever touching a spark, I figured it was a lost cause. Then, I happened to get a glimpse of an enemy jet carrying four sparks. I figured it was worth a shot. I held my boosters down and chased him down a long corridor. At one point, he flew into a room where the rest of his team was congregated, and I started taking fire. I think my missile lock must have had the other jet spooked, as he just kept flying, and I just kept following him. Once he started down another hallway, I started firing, and I killed him out of site of the rest of his team. I scooped up the four sparks he was carrying plus his.
Now, I had five sparks. I was also low on health, not that far from his team, on a map I wasn't too familiar with, and a healthy distance from the score points. I flew in the general direction of one of the score points and what I hoped was friendly territory (bumping into unexpected walls and turns all along the way). Amazingly, I found my way to a score point and swooped through it, scoring the sparks and the achievement. Before I could turn around and get back into the fray, a teammate scored the final points and ended the game.
With the most outrageous achievements out of the way, the rest are just a matter of time, patience, and walkthroughs (for the "collectibles").
Join CyberKnight and the Geezer Gamers as we talk about all things gaming. This week, we chat with a special guest, Patrick Koepke, a.k.a. Solstice01, whose new fantasy novel, Shadow of the Hunter, is on sale now for all Kindle devices and apps.
From the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii, to upcoming consoles like the Wii U and Ouya, to announcements and rumors of the Durango and the Orbis. Put the kids to bed and be a part of the show!
Another thank-you to Palette-Swap Ninja for allowing us to play their music!
It’s the Geezer Gamer Community Cast with CyberKnight and Devastator. OnLive issues, pros and cons of preorder bonuses, layoffs, betas, and more!
CyberKnight, Devastator, McJeepers, and special guest dukie1993 chat about some gaming news. Halo gets more Call of Duty-like, coin-op arcades are making a comeback, Valve plans to offer non-gaming software through Steam while it decries Windows 8 as a gaming platform, and game development students weigh in on the Wii U.
Another special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
CyberKnight and McJeepers chat about some gaming news. We talked about XBMC on the Ouya, and they heard us! Some rumors about the next Kinect and the next Xbox, the Star Wars MMO goes free to play, used games still rock, your calls and more.
Another special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
CyberKnight, Midnight Ghost, and FireMedic get together again to talk about all things gaming. Will the Ouya get its killer app from the Call of Duty veteran programmers in U4iA? Will the Kinect be your next home movie camera? Was Call of Duty Elite worth it?
Special thanks to Palette-Swap Ninja for the music!
CyberKnight, Midnight Ghost, McJeepers, and Devastator get together to talk about console certifications. Do certification processes ensure the best gaming experience for customers, or are they holding back game developers and keeping them from giving customers the best gaming experience? And will the Ouya, with its "hacker-friendly" ecosystem, change all that?
Special thanks go out to Palette-Swap Ninja for permission to use their music on our podcast!
We've recorded our first LIVE podcast! CyberKnight, FireMedic41, Midnight Ghost, and McJeepers talk about the Ouya, and we discuss Microsoft's lead in this console generation and how they could lose their lead in the next generation.
Be sure to join us for our next live episode in two weeks for your chance to win!
On a slow news week, the Geezer Gamers talk about a three-legged Goose from Top Gun (and why Meg Ryan was so lucky), and what it takes to have a Game of the Year (spoiler: not much). You’ll never look at beach volleyball the same way again after this very special episode.
Tastes Good the Second Time Around
CyberKnight, Bantha Skull, and FireMedic41 talk news and rumors about Microsoft’s upcoming tablet, Surface, a possible leaked document about the future of Xbox, and what will be important in the next generation.
CyberKnight, McJeepers, Bantha Skull, and Devastator get together to talk about the E3 press conferences — impressions, disappointments, and how they made or broke Geezers’ predictions and expectations.
CyberKnight, Bantha Skull, and McJeepers talk about their hopes and fears to come from the E3.
- In this episode, our guest Cyberknight joined us to talk about Game of Thrones, how bad E3 will be this year, and what we can expect from the future of gaming. We also introduce the newest product: Barbie’s Horse Adventure and the free Fleshlight given away with every copy sold. Enjoy the show.
CyberKnight, Bantha Skull, and Devastator take some time away from Memorial Day weekend barbecues and failed attempts to connect to Ubisoft game servers to talk about the new Ghost Recon game, the Steel Battalion demo, SyFy’s unique attempt to combine video games and TV, their differing opinions on the Halo 4 preorder armor sets, and a community question from Bryan_506 about what we think makes a game “good”. Plus Hype or Gripe, upcoming releases, culture, and more!
Grab a cup of hot cocoa and settle in, as CyberKnight, McJeepers, and Bantha Skull take some time to get to know Devastator, take a peek at some limited edition games, and get a little culture.
We’ll Be Back After These Messages
CyberKnight and Bantha Skull sit back with a tall glass of Halo-flavored Kool-aid and talk about some upcoming games (including the surprise reveal of Call of Duty 2012), and how advertisements on the console affect our gaming experience — or don’t.
Bantha Skull, RPMDDS, and CyberKnight get together to talk about the big games coming up this year, whether or not a beta can make or break public opinion on a title before it’s released, and the future of Kinect integration. Will Halo 4 be another blockbuster? Will Steel Battalion prove the Kinect for hardcore gamers? Will CyberKnight ever have anyone to play Reach with again? The Geezers tackle these questions and more.
In my rants about DLC and how it ends up being such a raw deal for customers, I like to make Forza 2 my poster child. I bought the "Platinum Hits" edition of this game, new, from Best Buy, for the retail price of $20. The game came with a disc that included all DLC. I used that disc once, to install the DLC to my Xbox, and have never had to remove it from my DVD binder again. On Xbox Live Marketplace, the total cost of those DLC packs totaled $25. So, I ended up buying all the DLC and the game for less than just the DLC itself.
What I found interesting as I was writing this was, when I looked up Forza 2 on the Marketplace to see if the prices are still consistent, I couldn't find the DLC packs anywhere. Which means someone looking to buy that DLC now, wouldn't be able to. Unless, of course, they found a disc copy. Heck, I could even sell them my disc copy.
Since then, I've made two more purchases that just go to show how completely french toasted DLC pricing is.
A while ago, I purchased the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition. Again, I bought this new, and it included all DLC packs. While I don't recall the exact price I paid, I'm reasonably sure it wasn't over $30 (Amazon is selling it now for $25). On Marketplace, Dragon Age: Origins is available as a digital download for $20. Awakening, the largest of the DLC packs, sells for $30. (That's right; even in Microsoft's own economic world, the DLC costs more than the actual game.) The remainder of the DLC packs totals up to $53 (and that's if you buy both "Feastday" DLCs in a bundle, saving you a whole buck). I only had to install the DLC from the second disc, which was not only (I'm sure) faster than downloading, but also didn't count against any bandwidth cap — and it left me with a physical product I can loan, trade, or resell later when I've finished the game.
Today, a new game is added to the ranks. I walked into GameStop and asked for Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition. They said they didn't have a used copy, just a new one. I said I was ok with that. I wasn't sure if the included DLC would be on disc or as download codes, and I didn't want to risk getting codes that were already used. Turns out, the DLC is on a second disc. Like Forza 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, all I had to do was install the content from the second disc, and then go on about my business. Like Dragon Age: Origins, this game is available as a digital download for $20. Each of the four DLC packs are also available for digital download, at $10 apiece. When you consider the game alone probably originally retailed for $60, and now you can get the game plus all DLC for that price, it doesn't seem like that bad a deal. When you consider I paid half of that for all of the same content, that I can have the exact same experience (minus the oh-so-difficult addition of pulling the disc from my DVD binder and putting it in the tray), and I have a physical product that I can loan, trade, sell, or even put in a replacement Xbox without having to "transfer licenses"; the DLC seems like a very bad deal indeed.
There's a reason I get so worked up about DLC and why it actually makes me angry to hear people talk about going all digital as the inevitable future: because for us lowly consumers who aren't made of money and don't think three games should exceed the cost of the console itself, it sucks.
The crew is back with a new episode of the community cast, this week we revel in someone getting fired and touch on topics submitted by community members in the forum.
After a long layoff the community cast is back with an extended cut this week giving everyone a reason to waste a couple hours this week. In this episode regulars Cyber, Jeeps, and Ghost welcome special guests Bantha and Doc (aka rpmdds) into the house to discuss next gen consoles, exclusive titles, and much more.
A long series of unfortunate events, bad timing, and scheduling conflicts has kept us from getting together for a successful recording of the GGCC — but I just happened to stumble online as the cast from Mad As Hell Gamers Radio started recording, and they invited me to join them on Episode #40.
CyberKnight and McJeepers review the past year, their hopes for the year to come, and their annoyances with everyone's favorite streaming media service.
Beacons, invite etiquette, and endless banter
…and we’re back. This week we wrap things up with our final cast of 2011 covering topics such as XBL’s new beacons, invite etiquette, and the endless banter of a bunch of guys podcasting without a script.
