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!
