{"id":513,"date":"2010-12-05T22:18:30","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T12:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2010-12-05T22:18:30","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T12:48:30","slug":"halohalohalo-and-a-little-bit-of-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/?p=513","title":{"rendered":"HaloHaloHalo (and a little bit of Crackdown)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a really quick one this week (or fortnight, as the case may be), because I&#8217;ve been doing bugger all for the last five weeks while I&#8217;ve been off work but I&#8217;m heading into the office again tomorrow and I&#8217;m completely unprepared and I&#8217;m worried that my sleep pattern is all out of whack and stuff.<\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanowrimo.org\/\/\/eng\/user\/649921\">my little writing exercise<\/a> successfully completed, I thought about giving myself a nice little project for my remaining holidays: visit the folks? Did that. Finish populating The Moobaarn? Well, I did a bit of that. Have a nice relaxing read? Did a <em>tiny<\/em> bit of that. Resurrect one of my coding projects? Avoided that like the plague.<\/p>\n<p>Play a shitload of <em>Halo<\/em> games? Oh, alright then.<\/p>\n<p>But first, I wrapped up <em>Crackdown 2<\/em> with a sizeable amount of multiplayer. Now, more will be written (hopefully) about <em>Crackdown 2<\/em> later on, but the multiplayer components are definitely its strong points. There&#8217;s lots of fun to be had, even if it is derived from people who quit a game because their team is losing, then immediately search for another game&#8230; and get matchmade with, surprise surprise, the under-manned team they just left. Again and again and again.<\/p>\n<p>So &#8211; <em>Crackdown 2<\/em> off <a href=\"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/?page_id=62\">The List<\/a>. And I looked at the vast amount of time I had off, and at the remaining multiplayer Achievements I had on the 360&#8230; and I thought I might clear a few of them up.<\/p>\n<p>First stop: a <em>Halo 3<\/em> boosting session, abandoned by its &#8220;host&#8221;. I&#8217;d already committed to the session, and had created a little spreadsheet of all participants&#8217; required Achievements and cross-referenced them with maps and gametypes. Three hours later, everyone who joined in had every Achievement they required; I cajoled the group where necessary, kept everyone focussed, and reveled in their delight. And when the sole Achievement I required popped&#8230; well, I was pretty damn pleased.<\/p>\n<p>But that left one <em>Halo 3<\/em> Achievement outstanding: the Vidmaster Annual. Final level, Iron Skull, four players, all finishing on ghosts. My usual crew seems to have disbanded (or, more accurately, gained aspects of life that I&#8217;m too immature to indulge in myself), and I&#8217;d read <a href=\"http:\/\/halo.bungie.org\/gameplay\/vmc_annual\/\">a guide on Vidmaster Annual<\/a> that had mentioned the Spartan I Project, who were &#8220;available for hire&#8221; (worry not &#8211; no items of value change hands).<\/p>\n<p>So &#8211; one forum post later, and I&#8217;ve got a team, well versed in the art of this Achievement. And, with their guidance, it doesn&#8217;t take long before the Achievement pops &#8211; and it was a lot of fun, too, whetting my appetite for a Solo Legendary run through <em>Halo 3<\/em>. Instead, I started a Solo Heroic run, and got about three chapters in (on the road to Voi) before becoming irritated by the lack of friendly checkpoints.<\/p>\n<p>And then the DLC for <em>Halo: Reach<\/em> was released. Cue a somewhat painful boosting session for that, with one participant continually whining that he wanted another specific Achievement&#8230; even after being politely told &#8220;no; set up another session for that&#8221;. Over and over. Still, Achievements were achieved, and another session wrapped up the last of my <em>Reach<\/em> Achievements&#8230; for now.<\/p>\n<p>Finally came <em>ODST<\/em>. Now, my memories of <em>ODST<\/em> were not fond, but I found myself in a Firefight with another Aussie and a couple of Americans that went really quite well. We cleaned up a couple of Firefight Achievements, and then I thought (as with <em>Halo 3<\/em> previously) that I might start a Solo Heroic run, just to see what it was like. But I slipped, and accidentally selected Legendary&#8230; what the hell, I thought, I&#8217;m going to play that eventually anyway.<\/p>\n<p>So I started playing through the levels on Legendary. And bloody hell <em>ODST<\/em> is <em>good<\/em>. In fact, I couldn&#8217;t stop playing it all weekend &#8211; cricket and work-prep be damned! &#8211; and I&#8217;ve only got the final level to go before it&#8217;s done. Boy, knocking <em>ODST<\/em> off The List would make a pretty nice Christmas present&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a really quick one this week (or fortnight, as the case may be), because I&#8217;ve been doing bugger all for the last five weeks while I&#8217;ve been off work but I&#8217;m heading into the office again tomorrow and I&#8217;m completely unprepared and I&#8217;m worried that my sleep pattern is all out of whack and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/?p=513\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">HaloHaloHalo (and a little bit of Crackdown)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[99,63,72,101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}