Man vs Tank

I unlocked the Man vs Tank achievement in Left 4 Dead for taking out a tank by myself without any help from teammates, so I’m clearly hardcore. Sure, it was on easy. Sure, the Tank AI glitched and was stuck in one spot. Sure, this meant I was able to shoot it with just a pistol in order to ensure I unlock Akimbo Assassin as well. But I still managed to do it.
Details? Fine. I was playing the Blood Harvest campaign, and we were on top of one of the train carriages under a big stone bridge. The tank spawned in that area, and tried to get on top of the carriage. However, he got wedged under the bridge where he could see us enough that the AI wanted to charge for us instead of find another route, but because of the height of the bridge he couldn’t quite hoist himself up onto the train. This led to me being able to take him out with just a pistol and win at life. I was afraid the bots would jump in to help, but the tank was just out of their aim, so they just stood there and waited for me to do the job. Awesome.

For Your Eyes Only

This is a Team Fortress 2 achievement for the spy class. The player is required to flick a cigarette on the corpse of a recently killed player, so they see it in their freeze cam. The problem that arises is that this particular taunt is done via the cigarette disguise case, which you can’t actually kill with. As a player, you need to make a kill, then quickly swap to the case and taunt in time for the player to see it.
To top this off, the item has an extra taunt that sometimes activates instead. This taunt features the spy pretending to be a crab, as part of the fun spy crab meme. It sometimes activates instead of the cigarette flick, and unfortunately doesn’t count towards the achievement.
Because in a normal game, there’s no real situation as a spy where you’ll make a kill and have enough time to flip to the case and do the taunt, so I needed to farm it. This took a whole 15 minutes trying to get the timing right, and even then it was a total fluke. I am really glad this one is out of the way.

I have so many achieveables!

BLEEP BLOOP.

So this is a new category I’ve thrown into the blog, which is essentially an extension of the Gaming section. I’ve been playing more Xbox 360 and Steam games in the past month, and as it happens these games come with Achievements.

What are achievements, you ask?

Stop seducing me.

Achievements are those little rewards you get in game, for throwing cans are policemen, or pressing start on the main menu. Little trophies of skilful things you do in the game, and they add a bit of replay ability to a game you may of already finished. I enjoy trying to obtain them, and figure what better thing to do, than to talk about the more interesting achievements, or the ones I’m quite proud of (and maybe more boring ones now and again) that I manage to achieve.

Well, that’s the basic introductory post for this section. TUNE IN NEXT POST, when I talk about something no doubt Valve related, since I seem unable to play anything else lately.

Evil gnome is evil.

This bastard of a gnome is making Half Life 2 so hard. All this for a goddamn achievement.

The results (10 Cent Charity)

It’s a little late in writing this, but I’ve been too damned tired to do otherwise.

So October is over, and through spamming Twitter, Facebook, and some forums, the 10 Cent Charity post got over 100 comments. Sure, it would of been way cooler to say OVER 9000, but unfortunately getting that many people to take thirty seconds out of their lives to effortlessly help a cause is beyond me.

First, a thank you to everyone who commented or helped spread the word. It meant a lot to me. An extra thank you to Britt for designing the banner, and a thank you to PeedroPaula for being extra enthusiastic.

So now the tally. Most people stayed under the limit of 10 comments per person, except for one over enthusiastic person who made two extra comments. That makes the end total 126 comments. Which to me is amazing. So that makes a total donation of $12.60 to Blood:Water Mission. That translates to $11.75 US dollars currently, which is enough to supply enough water for over a year for eleven African people. Thank you again, everyone.

Making the donation proved a little difficult; I forgot to check to see if Blood:Water Mission had a PayPal for donations; my bad. A quick email fixed that though, and I got given the link to donate directly to their paypal, which for anyone who wants to make their own (unlikely but) is https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9373832.

So, I’ve made the donation, and because proof is needed I guess, here’s the email I got from PayPal following the donation:

Click to enlarge, dude.

So, that’s that :) It was a fun project. It’s really hot here too. To end this:

Bleep bloop.

Blah

So, not much to say. Unfortunately while I wanted to work on my NaNoWriMo story this month, work commitments (in that I never get to do anything important because I’m too tired after work to focus) have taken over, and I haven’t even cleared the first 1000 words. It’s horrible, but happens.
The story I want to write though has the potential for something else I want to do. It needs a lot of refinement, but I hope if I can work out the problems I can totally do it, which would be awesome.

In other news, I’m still finding it difficult to apply myself to a regular exercise program. I’ve committed myself to using the stairs instead of the elevator at work, but I’m finding it next to impossible to find the drive to do sit-ups every day. I’m headed for nightshift starting next week too, so it’s going to be even harder. All I can say is blah to that.

I get to see Brittany on Saturday, which I’ve been looking forward to since a fortnight ago; we rarely get to see each other, so when we do it’s the highlight of my week. She’s an amazing girl and it’s a real inconvenience I rarely get to see her. Like NaNoWriMo, work conflicts with that. However, that’s life.

I’m addicted

Being the whore I am, I’m going to start posting random achievements on the blog. I’ve really fallen in love with Team Fortress 2 thanks to Brittany, so this is a logical thing for me. It basically serves as something fun for me to throw into it.

In game screenshot from Brittany’s view. We did it for the lulz (Check the kill notification)

Team Fortress 2 has done nothing short of reignite my love for class based gaming. I used to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but over time that game lost it’s appeal, since there was only one mode of play (Axis vs. Allies, completing missions), and only so much you could do. In TF2 though, there’s various game types, lots of servers (many Australian ones too, which is a plus), and plenty of reasons to keep playing. Like on Xbox, you can win achievements for doing certain things, and win new weapons and items to use IN the game.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and in fact many other FPS games take themselves too seriously. Team Fortress 2 is designed to be about fun. Lots of little jokes and giggles fill the game, giving it an awesome bright feel.

And you know, I’d keep talking about it, but doing so has made me really want to just play. So, into the game I go. I promise to give this a better go around next time. Just…the urge is too great.

Also, I’ll be throwing said achievements into a page accessible via the sidebar, strictly because I can.