Thursday, July 21, 2011

Challenges of Boosting

Over the years I have spent many hours Boosting games with friends and strangers to unlock achievements. Some of those achievements have been awesome like the 40 points I got for reaching level 50 in Too Human (very underrated game!), most have been a grind fest, and then there are some that completely SUCKED like all the multi-player points I got out of Wolfenstein.

What I am realizing now though is that the game being boosted is not always the problem. Its the people I am boosting with!

I guess early on in my short career of achievement hunting I got spoiled. I teamed up with an awesome group of guys for a GSL over on x360a.org and we later went on to form our own boosting group, the Hand of Thrawn Boosting Alliance. I still keep in touch with the guys I played with but because I took an extended absence from the achievement scoring scene I have fallen waaaaay behind. I am left to boost with strangers and people I find on the forums at x360a and TrueAchievements.com as most of my buddies have already played the game I am playing.

Since coming back to point scoring I have boosted two games, Bulletstorm and Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. Both quality games but I can not say the same for the boosting partners/groups I have had. It seems that people who team up on the fly dont like to communicate, or even worse dont even have a mic! Then there is always that one guy who bails as soon as he pops his achievement and leaves the party hanging. Not to mention the chance of Microsoft getting in the way and we start having those random party drops every other 5 minutes. I am sure most of you have had these same experiences at one point or another

This past week I finally discovered the nifty feature of "Gaming Sessions" over on TrueAchievements.com. The concept seems pretty cool and tonight I finally set up my very own session to do some XP boosting in AC:Brotherhood. I had decent results tonight with it so using the "Gaming Sessions" will be my tool of choice going forward.

Right now I am focused on boosting AC:Brotherhood to unlock the Download Complete achievement (reach level 50 in MP) and the Employee of the Month (MP bonuses). I just needed to vent a little bit of boosting frustration in this blog. Though TA raised my hopes a little tonight I may have to change my choice of games to titles with all/mostly offline achievements.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

o0 SABRE 0o Taking Fire!

A few weeks ago I posted that I was back to Achievement Hunting. In my last post I stated that finding time to play was a concern for me and boy was I right.

I have been extremely busy with work running Close Combat Attack (CCA) Ranges for the last two weeks and have this final week to go. In a CCA range we try to re-create a scenario where a ground unit has to call for air support from an AH-64D Apache Longbow. The scenario we have been using for the last week: a convoy of five vehicles traveling on the outskirts of town hits an IED, disabling one vehicle, and starts taking small arms fire from the enemy.

The soldiers in the vehicles start engaging the targets with their M249s and M4s. The leader of the convoy calls in a team of Apaches (a team consists of two Apaches) and passes the location of the enemies. The Apaches then come in and start their strafing runs, engaging the targets with their 30MM Cannon and 2.75 Rockets. Needless to say the sight of it all is pretty badass. The training we are doing now will hopefully lead to lives being saved on the battlefield.

With all that going on my Xbox Live time has been non-existent to say the least. Gaming with a 6 year old for a Co-op partner has also proven to be a real challenge. I can honestly say that my son is one stubborn kid and it’s clear he gets it from his Mother! We finished the story mode of Toy Story 3 and we are now working on the Toy Box missions. Some of the harder achievements I will have to go back and unlock when he is asleep though. We also started or should I say continued an old save of Marvel Ultimate Alliance campaign. The save date on Marvel:UA dated all the way back to 2007! I never finished the game obviously but I kept it around because my son is big in to super-heroes. We are running with the four man team of Captain America (me of course), Deadpool (my son), Spider-Man, and Wolverine. If that is not a dream team of super-heroes then I don’t know what is. I have no intent of trying to 1k this game. There are far too many collectible for my 6 year old to patiently sit through while I look at guides to ensure I get them all. Instead we will just demolish all the foes standing in our way and complete the story.

For my solo play I was trying to work on the campaign of COD:Black Ops. I have hit a wall of frustration playing on veteran mode so I decided to put the game back down before breaking my controller. Maybe the long layoff has deteriorated my skills but I don’t remember the last few COD titles being this tough on veteran. Or maybe this old Sergeant just needs to spend some more time on the rifle ranges.