I wasn't really planning on buying any video games this Black Friday/Cyber Monday... But a bunch of deals popped up I couldn't resist.
Everything is Xbox 360.
$13 1. Splinter Cell: Conviction $13 from Gamefly. This one popped up a bit before Black Friday and it arrived in the mail Saturday. I feel like I'm already 2/3rds or more of the way through the single player game, but it's fun. Might do a bunch of the side goals/achievements afterward. Really enjoying the style and presentation of this game.
$29 2. Red Dead Redemption $29 from Amazon. Had my eye on this for a while and couldn't resist at this price. Probably inevitable that there will be a GOTY edition bundling the DLC, but I couldn't wait.
$14 3. Mass Effect 2 $14 from Target B&M clearance. Was planning to use this as a gift idea for a kind relative, but I think finding it on clearance was fate. :-D I loved the first game and read a few reviews that say this sequel has everything that is great about the original and fixes the flaws. Sold!
GOTY edition - $30 4. Borderlands GOTY $30 from Amazon. Just bought today, guess they are price matching Gamestop's Cyber Monday deal.
Also picked up Halo: Reach for $30 from Amazon, but that is a gift for a relative - I already own a copy.
I'll probably use Assassin's Creed 2 as a gift suggestion now. I hate having someone buy me a video game for $60 when I can usually find a deal to bring it down to at least $50, it not $40, so using a game that is easily found for $20 as a gift idea works for my thrifty nature. And I have it on good authority that Fallout: New Vegas will be under my Christmas tree.
Also hoping to get a surround sound headset! If the 8 year olds who consistently pwn me in Reach could only see my setup...
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They are simple little extenders that pop over the top of your analog sticks essentially making them longer. I looked at them and the theory seems sound, a longer stick means it is easier to make finer adjustments to your aim in a first person shooter.
Ordered them a while back and I "installed" one of the pair on just my right analog stick as I don't see the point of having one on the left FPS Freek Installed stick. So, unlike the image, my left stick is going commando. I do have fairly long fingers/thumbs so maybe it would be a problem for some, but the extra length to the right stick is fine for me. Didn't really even take a full match to adjust.
My feeling is it improves my aim and lets me have my sensitivity set slightly higher without sacrificing accuracy. Even if it's just my perception, My guess is it helps my game. The placebo effect is a powerful thing. That said, I have used the non-freeked controller now and then to see if there is a difference and I really don't notice anything once the match starts.
I only have experience with the Xbox 360 version, but they snap on very securely. IMO it's equivalent to the factory stick with no add-on. The controller I had this installed on partially broke (left thumbstick button stopped working) so I snapped it off that controller after having been installed for months and was able to pop it on my 2nd controller with no problem. The control stick button that stopped working was the one without a freek installed, so I do not think the freek had anything to do with the malfunction.
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I've been very impressed with Reach's forge mode (much better than Halo 3's) but I've yet to really forge anything. I spent some time making a symmetrical king of the hill map I named "The Spider" but it isn't really anything to write home about.
The root of my problem is that I rarely have a group to play custom games with and when I do, most people seem to want to play gimmicky game modes on specialized maps vs. playing maps designed for standard modes. I do have a few guys that invite me in to check out their maps every once in a while, but we struggle to get a group greater than 4 or 5 so it's really more just running around and looking at what they've wrought in between a sporadic gun battle.
Now, I also struggle with inspiration for a map... But, so far I haven't really put any time into coming up with an idea for something as I don't want to spend 20+ hours crafting something only to have it sit in my fileshare and never be played.
Hmm, that actually brings up yet another thing for me to bitch about. Six measly slots in your fileshare, if you don't spring for Bungie Pro, just sucks. I wish they just gave you X space to use no matter how many files you upload. Stinks that a screenshot and an 18 minute full game film clip both use one of your six slots. I constantly shuffle what I have in my fileshare, but I like to have a few choice film clips that I leave up for a while and a rotating 2-3 screenshots that generally only stay up for a few days. If I design a map I'm proud of and want to share, that is going to take up one of my precious six slots. If I have a tweaked game mode to go along with it, that's a 2nd slot. Yeah, yeah, call me the wahmbulance...
So, it was just a week and a half ago (Nov 3rd) that I ranked up to Commander and at that time I did some calculations and figured it would be late November before I hit Colonel... Turns out I was way off as I ranked up to Colonel today. What I didn't expect is that the 'Game Complete' credit bonus goes way up when you hit Commander. I was getting about 1000 cr just for that(!) making a total of 1200-1400 credits most matches. Throw in the daily challenges and a few 1000+ credit slot machines and I moved up pretty quickly.
250,000 credits are needed to rank up from Commander to Colonel and it took me10 days making an average of 25k credits per day. A big increase from the ~13,600 credits per day I was averaging when I ranked up from Lt. Colonel to Commander. I think it is a combined factor of my playing a bit more Halo over the past 10 days and the significantly increased credit bonus for completing a game.
550,000 credits are needed to rank up from Colonel to Brigadier (ouch!) so if I maintain my current pace of 25k per day it will take me 22 days to make Brigadier and that would be December 5th (I think.)
Right now I'm pretty much just hoarding my credits. The Gungnir helmet is pricey (250k) but it is unique looking enough that I might spring for it. Also would like the gold visor color, but it's also a steep 250k. And, of course, I would love to have inclement weather, but 2,000,000 credits is way off in the horizon for me.
Ranked up after a King of the Hill match that was also my first Wrecking Crew (15 in a row with the hammer) outside of Juggernaut, my first Hail to the King (5 kills from inside the hill before it moves), and my 10th overkill. The overkill was a cheesy one using all four rockets, but I'll take it!
Mile High Assassination Neat shot of me achieving a jetpack to jetpack assassination. I was fooling around in this match with jetpacking above people and attempting to drop in behind them. This works pretty well on the Cliffhanger map - you can jetpack on top of the roof of the two end towers for a 10 second soft kill zone and nobody expects somebody to be up there. Very often within that 10 seconds somebody runs up the ramp and out from under the roof allowing me to drop down behind him to deliver a knife in the back.
Anyway, in this instance I jetpacked up and away from a guy after we exchanged a few shots and he decided to jetpack up after me rather than shooting at me from the ground. I managed to maneuver behind him for a mile high beat down.
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Not just really hard (like a 15 in a row stickie spree) but actually impossible.
Thriller - Kill 15 humans as the zombie without dying. The Living Dead playlist is 8 players, so even if you start as the only zombie you could notch a maximum of 7 human kills before the end of the round. You'd need to have a 16 player infection match, start as the only zombie, and make every single kill without a single death. That's a billion to one shot without boosting. Mmm... Brains (10 in a row) is also impossible on the current Living Dead playlist.
The only way I could see people getting the Thriller medal is if Bungie makes some sort of strange reverse infection playlist where a zombie is cured by being killed by a human and respawns as a human.
If you check the playlist medal categories on your b.net profile you'll notice that some playlists don't list some of the medals that are impossible. For example the infection sprees are removed from the Arena list. However, other currently impossible to achieve medals are included. For example spawn sprees on Competitive and Arena. This leads me to wonder why? Guessing that Bungie must be planning to use fire team spawning in arena and at least one competitive playlist at some time in the future, but they will never use infection for an Arena season (thank goodness...)
I was taking some screenshots and film clips from a Reach match and my left thumb stick button died right in the middle of typing in a description. This was on my wired 360 controller, which I've taken to using most of the time. I also own a wireless controller (that came with the system) so I guess I'll switch to that one now.
RIP wired controller, you were a good input device.
Kill 70 enemies with sniper rifle headshots in Nightfall on Heroic.
You can simply play the very first sequence where you kill a stationary elite over and over to unlock this. If you wanted to just reload this 70 times you could probably unlock this in under 5 minutes.
Yesterday, I got a handful of headshots on this mission, then did a Save & Quit to see if it would save my progress. It did not (reverted me back to 0/70), so I reloaded the mission and just played the first section a bunch of times (reverting to last save) to unlock this challenge in one play. I was disappointed that you couldn't spread this over multiple plays or I probably would have seen how many headshots I could get just playing normally once, planning to go back and clean up the rest with a second play if necessary.
IMO weekly challenges should be fun (for at least a healthy % of the player population) to work towards and take longer than 5 minutes to complete. Ideally it should be something that would take at least two 1-2 hour play sessions to complete. But that's just my opinion.
When danger reared it's ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled. Killtrocity with Sword (bonus Slice 'n Dice)I thought this was a neat screen, given that I'd just taken out 5 other players with the sword before this guy got wise and tried to vamoose. Unfortunately for him, I was using Sprint as my AA. I lunged for the kill just after the screen cap for the Killtrocity. Slice 'N Dice on that kill as well, which was neat. (Screen to the left.)
This same match I managed to notch a Cutting Crew. I wasn't even camping with the sword, just ended up being paired with some players who didn't care about avoiding the guy on a tear with the sword and not too smart about following me around corners. Two instances where I got lucky and an opponent opted to shot at a guy near me instead of me. This allowed me to kill the shootee, followed by the shooter.
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Had an amazing run at Halo today! Scored a bunch of firsts in Reach:
Cutting Crew (15 kills in a row with the sword)
Unstoppable Force (15 kills in a row as Juggernaut)
Wrecking Crew (15 kills in a row with the hammer - pretty sure this is a given if you get Unstoppable Force)
Also tallied a few Slice 'n Dices (10 in a row with the sword), an Open Season (10 in a row with the shotgun), and an Untouchable (25 kills in a row) but I had at least one of each of those before today. Spent a few matches focusing on going for a Buck Wild (15 in a row with the shotgun) but the closest I got was a streak of 13 or 14.
Leaves me wondering just how many of the medals on b.net I can light up. I'm pretty sure Thank the Maker (beat a bungie employee) is never going to happen. The assists sprees and 15 in a row with the Spartan Laser also seem like major longshots. Hmm and 15 grenade sticks without dying... I'd like to get at least the base streak medal for all of the categories. Currently I've yet to unlock even a few of the easy ones, such as Splatter Spree. I tend to eschew splatters in Reach, because so many people use Armor Lock.
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