Gaming Update #15: 15, A Number, My Favorite Number

By natetodamax July 3, 2010 9 Comments

Hello fellow Giant Bomb citizens. I admit that I have been rather lazy with my contributions to Giant Bomb for a while now. No blogs, no reviews, no large wiki edits..... just me responding to random threads on the forums whenever I get a chance. I shall turn around this streak with the revival of my weekly (although I wouldn't be surprised if this turned into monthly again) blog about the stuff I've been playing. Also, Captain Price.
 

The consequence of not having a Gold subscription to Xbox Live as of right now has been felt. I find myself going back to games I haven't played in a while, and it saddens me to know that many soldiers (read: GoranP) in Bad Company 2 are dying because I'm not there to revive them. Likewise, I haven't been able to shoot anyone in the face with my M4 Carbine in Modern Warfare 2. As a result of this, I ended up playing Oblivion again and got hooked on it. I proceeded to play the game for a few weeks straight. I'm not so sure why this happens to me. I go a while without playing the game, and the next time I pop it in my Xbox I find myself exploring Cyrodiil for the next month or so. But I digress; Oblivion is still a fantastic game and holds up very well today. My Kahjiit character, Farquad, is a sneaky bastard. I've spent a lot of my time breaking into people's homes, ransacking the place, and then heading up to their room and sticking an arrow in the back of their head while they sleep. Normally I wouldn't do this in a game where I actually cared about the characters, but one of the flaws of Oblivion is the fact that nearly every character is basically the same. There are only a handful of voice actors so everyone sounds the same, and any character that isn't involved in a quest is simply there to populate the world. They need to die, and I've made sure of that. As soon as I entered the Thieve's Guild and was allowed to use the fences, I ended up selling over 5000 gold worth of stolen goods pretty quick. 
 

My character is also proficient in using bows. Whenever I enter a cave or dungeon, I sneak through it and stealth kill everyone/everything inside. The satisfaction I get from launching an arrow from several yards away into an unsuspecting bandit's head is immense, and it's a lot more entertaining than just running through with a claymore and going all Stabby McSlash on everyone. (I should also mention that the death screams/grunts from people when they die is hilarious). Because I chose to only use light armor (since it's good for sneaking and it's lightweight), I don't spend a lot of time exploring. I decided to sell the melee weapon I had because I really need to avoid all close encounters when possible. I'm wearing enchanted armor that I can't repair due to my low armorer skill, and getting into a one-on-one fight means it's going to get degraded fast. I also decided to not do any main quest missions at all in order to make exploring easier. If I do the Kvatch mission, Oblivion Gates will start opening everywhere, and I hate to close those things. Holding off on this mission means I can run around and do stuff without having to worry about running into one. 
 

But enough Oblivion talk! I've done enough of that in previous blogs. I went and revisited Bioshock 2 a few days ago to try and get the Savior achievement. This achievement requires you to save every Little Sister in the game, and you also have to spare the characters Grace, Stanley, and Gil. I was pleased to see that I unlocked it right before starting the last mission, so I was able to put the game away without playing through to the end. It's not a bad game, it's just that I really didn't feel like playing it anymore when I came to that point. Instead, I fired up Bioshock 1 from Quick Launch (bought it off Games On Demand) and I was curious to see how far I would get on the Hard difficulty. I had managed to get up to Hephaestus on Hard a while ago but an unfortunate event caused me to spawn at a Vita Chamber when I least expected it, completely ruining my chances of getting the Brass Balls achievement. This frustrated me so much that I said "Eff this game!" and hadn't played it 'till today. Let me tell you, Bioshock is mad hard on that difficulty. That may seem ridiculous to say to some of you, but it's true. The trouble I'm having on this mode might be because I was never any good at hard difficulties at all in my life. I also made the mistake of avoiding all Big Daddies up to this point, leaving me a low health bar, a low EVE bar, only two plasmids and two plasmid slots, and only two gene tonic slots for each category. This made fighting enemies extremely nerve racking, but I've managed to slowly grind my way through the level. Hephaestus is difficult because it actually requires you to kill at least two Big Daddies. I thought I would struggle with this and had accepted the fact that I was probably going to have to throw myself at them over and over again, constantly dying and reviving at a Vita Chamber, until they fell. However, this was not the case. For the first Big Daddy, I got a couple of turrets to fire at him by getting their attention and then standing behind the Big Daddy. This caused the turrets to accidentally shoot the Daddy, and he went into a rage. They killed him for me! The next Big Daddy I eliminated by creating a mine field of traps in front of him, and then launching a heat seaking rocket in his face when they went off. At the end of the day, I found killing Big Daddies with these unique tactics to be more satisfying than just running up to them with a shotgun and unloading rounds into their faces. I'm not sure how difficult the next few missions will be. In all honesty I just want the stupid achievement for beating the game on hard, and then I can call it quits on this game (although I will most likely revisit it later to play through on Easy or something). 
 

The third game I've been playing for the past few weeks is Borderlands. This game, like Oblivion, was successful in drawing me in and didn't let go. I was driven by the desire to reach level 61, a feat I had not yet achieved. First of all, I played a ton of Zombie Island in Playthrough 2. I was disappointed to discover that all of the zombies were pretty much locked at level 42 or 43, and were getting killed by me in one shot. I was only getting about 2 XP for each enemy I killed. Regardless, I played through it all and managed to level up a few times from completing quests. I then remembered that I still hadn't gotten the Braaaaaaains achievement for completing the quest of the same name (albeit a few more a's). I opened up my quest journal and saw that I basically had to start the quest from the very beginning. Collect 10 brains. I knew that the last part of the quest requires me to collect 250 brains. However, it is not all cumulative. At the end of the day, I had collected a total of 435 brains. That's 435 headshots, and 435 zombies. It took me probably over an hour to get. But I sleep easy at night knowing I will never have to do that stupid quest ever, ever again! I did manage to reach level 61, which was awesome. I believe I reached it by shooting a bandit in the face at point blank range with my awesome shotgun that shoots crazy fast and is as accurate as a sniper rifle. Sweet. The next achievement on my list is the one for completing all of the missions in Secret Armory. I noticed it was rare on Giant Bomb and thought that was strange, but then I remembered that killing Crawmerax is required. Thankfully, I do have Crawmerax beaten, but I beat him in Playthrough 2. This means I have to beat the rest of the missions in Playthrough 2, which is pretty difficult. I already have some done, but the quests I have active right now take me all over the place and I'm not sure I have the patience for them. The thing I dislike most about the Secret Armory DLC is the lack of fast travel. There are three main large areas in the game: T-Bone Junction, Sunken Sea, and Deep Fathoms. To get to the last two, you need to drive down a long highway that has military bases throughout them. This is a pain on its own because it takes so long to get to your destination, and you can't fast travel anywhere. It's obvious that Gearbox wanted to increase the amount of time people spent in the DLC, but this was the wrong way to do it. 
 
Oh, and I've also spent some time playing Gears Of War 2 campaign on Normal. Cole is still a hilarious character. 
 
So there you have it folks, the three main games I've been playing in the past month of so. Hopefully  Now, here's a song you should all listen to. 
 
  

  
 
Until next time, children. 
 
 
 
 
 

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