Briste's Diary of a Madman

[YaManSmevz]

5 hours ago, Briste said:

Platinum #193

The Godfather II

 

Nice!

 

5 hours ago, Briste said:

I ended up having Covid when I started this game.

 

Okay, maybe not so nice.

 

Great write-up, dude! I thought this game had a very unfinished feel, so many great functions like having a crew, or features like multiple maps, yet they just didn't feel quite as explored as they could have been. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, possibly because I loved the first Godfather game when it came out (warts and all, much like this one).

 

But yeah, agreed with pretty much everything you said - reminded me that my lazy ass needs to get to writing about this one of these days😄

[Briste]

Sorry this reply is coming so late...I've decided I need to stop saying I'm going to post more lol It never seems to happen despite my best intentions. My boss was recently let go and I've been doing the job of two people and my kids are starting to go to bed later now and I'm just beat almost every night. I'm kind of just going through the motions with my games right now to just blow off some steam...but I don't have the energy for it as much right now....and even less to properly maintain this thread. I'd really like to, but I just have so many other things going on so I'll just say that I'll post when I can.

On 9/8/2023 at 3:15 AM, YaManSmevz said:

Great write-up, dude! I thought this game had a very unfinished feel, so many great functions like having a crew, or features like multiple maps, yet they just didn't feel quite as explored as they could have been. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, possibly because I loved the first Godfather game when it came out (warts and all, much like this one).

 

I never new there was a Godfather game lol I didn't know this one existed either until I was looking up the first games with trophies. Was that game also a GTA clone? Unfinished is a good word for this one. A lot of potential and some good ideas, just didn't quite do everything it could have. I am definitely glad I played it though.

 

Platinum #194

Call of Duty: World at War

So this series has been a true surprise for me. As I mentioned in previous posts, I first playe CoD on my friends Xbox way back during the MW2 days I think. We played online for like 20 minutes, I got slaughtered and had absolutely no fun with it and thought never again. I had bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 when I bought my PS3, just so I'd have an MP game to play in case someone came over. It remained unopened until last year and I only played it since I paid full price for it way back when. I was shocked at how much I actually enjoyed it. I solo'd most of the online stuff and DLC's and thought the campaign was a really good challenge. After that experience, I bought most of the other ones that I plan on playing over time. I was pleased to see that this game was so low on the game page count and that I'd get to play a game I really wanted for my project. 

 

I had done a little research going into this one. I know these games can be full of hackers and I really don't want to have to hide any games on my profile for some online shenanigans. I saw that this game was not really safe to play in public lobbies online and I had also read that the main campaign on Veteran difficulty was one of the hardest in the series. I wasn't so worried about the campaign, but the online portion made me nervous. What made the campaign so hard was the absolutely ridiculous grenade spam. There were certain sections of the game (looking at you 'Heart of the Reich' mission). That particular mission requires you to take out four stationary guns. I found the first two guns to be fairly easy to do, and thank goodness there's a checkpoint right after that second gun is taken out because the next section taking out the last two was brutal for me. You need to use cover when you move virtually all the time if you want to survive in Veteran, but you also have to keep moving because if you stay still for more than a few seconds, odds are there's three grenades being lobbed at you. Even when you're not close, they are tossing them at you. It's bananas the amount of grenades get thrown at you. It's not unique to that level, but that particular checkpoint was really hard for me due to that.

 

The next hardest level for me was the 'Burn'em Out' mission. You get a flamethrower and spend most of the level in trenches, where you get shot at from people in trees and people running on the top of the trenches and people in the trenches. You get some smoke grenades, that I found extremely useful in a few tricky spots, but it just took a lot of trial an error to get through it. I tend to play these games through on Veteran my first go through to save time. I figure I have to beat them on that difficulty anyway, so I might as well just do it to start and then use the regular playthrough for clean up if needed.

 

I like these campaigns and I appreciate that they bounce you around a few different characters to play. It allows them to expand the story a bit and gives you some different perspectives to play from. The graphics were good for the time and the controls are good. The trophies for the game are pretty consistent as well. You pretty much get some trophies for beating missions in Veteran difficulty, there's always a collectible to find and then there's some unique things to do in a mission for a trophy. I found the hardest random trophy to be the 'Sum of all Zeros' trophy for shooting down 45 Japanese planes. There's not too many more planes than 45 it seems so you need to shoot down most of them. It takes a little while to learn the level well enough to know where they are coming from. Thankfully it can be done in Regular difficulty...but that one took me a good 45 minutes to an hour to get.

 

I found the hardest trophies in the game to be for the DLC's. Both involve the Zombies mode of the game, which has historically been my least favorite part of the games. The trophies are not easy for either of them and require quite a bit of luck to do solo. In the Map Pack 2 DLC, there's no place safe where you do not have to worry about zombies coming from a blind spot. There's a very specific strat for doing it solo, but it requires a lot of luck with regards to the random gun you get from the mystery box and the random perk you get from the vending machine. You need the Wunderwaffe, which is like an electric shock gun, and a high capacity, fast shooting gun like the PPSh-41. You need specific perks. You really need to end each round with a crawler, which is a zombie whose legs have been blown off, so it moves really slowly. This allows you to catch your breath, replace boards on windows for some cheap points and get ready for the next round. As the rounds get higher, the zombies move much, much faster and if you get stuck, you're pretty much dead. The strategy involves getting those key guns/perks, unlocking specific areas, and then running a loop to get a huge zombie train behind you before running back into the hut, creating a long line of sight where you can just mow the zombies down. It took me several days of trying to get the right setup and used to the strategy, until I was able to beat it. You feel like a major badass when you get it working, but it was very hard to do.

 

I didn't think DLC Map Pack 3 could possibly be as hard as Map Pack 2, but I was wrong. In theory, it is easier. The level has warps, you can boost up your weapon, and there is an area where you can camp where you won't be attacked from the back or sides...but the trophies make this one harder. The trophy 'Perkaholics Anonymous!' requires you to get to the 20th round without buying a perk. That is super hard to do. I tried for several days to do this solo and just wasn't even getting close. I did what I could and then decided to do something risky...I joined a public lobby to see if I could do it with others. I got reeeeeaaaaaaally lucky. I got into a room with two dudes who were vastly better than me at the game. I pretty much just had to not screw them up, and we were going to make it. It's hard not to screw things up in the later rounds. There's just so many zombies, they move so fast, and they don't go down as easy...plus there's Hell Dogs to contend with. The first 18 rounds or so, you can hang out in the camping spot up the stairs and survive...but after that round, it gets impossible. You have to use the teleporter and start to kite a bit to survive. I was not prepared for this the first time through and we died in round 19. Thankfully, the same two dudes played again and we got to like round 22 and I got the trophy. I was able to do all of the other trophies alone, but I rolled the dice with that one that I wouldn't get screwed by hackers and really lucked out.

 

While Zombies is my least favorite part of the game, I found the DLC's to be very satisfying to beat since they were so hard and it's typically not something I'm good at. The game has been out for 15 years, so odds are if you wanted to play this game, you would have by now. If you haven't, it is a fun game to play and I would recommend it. I'm not terribly good at FPS games and I was able to solo everything but one trophy, so I think it's achievable by most with a little patience. I'm currently playing the Vita CoD game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. That game is mostly hard because the Vita screen is so damn small, but I will definitely play more games from this series going forward. I think I have less interest in the newest ones, but these classic ones have been a lot of fun.

 

The rest of the games in my project will be beaten eventually, but I'm going to turn those into series runs now. I really enjoyed Bioshock and am looking forward to the other games in that series. I also need to finish Mirror's Edge...and the Soulsborne series...my ambitions are high and my time is low 😭

[YaManSmevz]

On 9/21/2023 at 7:30 PM, Briste said:

I never new there was a Godfather game lol I didn't know this one existed either until I was looking up the first games with trophies. Was that game also a GTA clone? Unfinished is a good word for this one. A lot of potential and some good ideas, just didn't quite do everything it could have. I am definitely glad I played it though.

 

Oh yeah, total GTA clone. I thought it was a lot of fun though! Definitely more fully realized than the sequel, even if it didn't always work as well as it should have. Definitely worth a play, especially if you had fun with the sequel!

[Briste]

Despite my best intentions of trying to keep this thread updated as I finish games, I've just really felt a true lack of motivation to do so. I really thought that I would spend my Thursday nights watching the football game and writing a review (if needed) to keep up with all the work I've put into the thread and my profile so far. But, I've instead chosen to just kind of zone out on those nights and go through the motions of playing a game on my PS while listening to the football game on my PC. I used to be excited to make my updates here and log my thoughts on my games as I finish, but lately, I just haven't. 

 

I really can't tell what it is either to be honest. I can't tell if I'm just getting older so my interest is waning, or if it's because I'm hitting some sort of midlife gaming crisis, or what exactly. I have lacked the enthusiasm for gaming that I used to have. I'm sure part of it has to do with the fact work has been so stressful for the past few months, and the company/job I truly thought I'd be working for the rest of my life has had some major changes recently that have me wondering how long I'll last. I truly love my work, however there's been some changes in management that have changed the overall feel and my company recently announced that they are building a new Operations center that will add 45 minutes to my already 30 minute commute. I don't make enough money to justify spending two and a half hours a day in a car. I've been working remotely for three and a half years, so I'm hesitant to bitch too much...but they've had us start coming into the office one day a week and once the construction is completed, it'll most likely be three or four days a week. 

 

I'm a huge work/life balance person. I'm not that passionate about my career and I view it as more of a means to an end. I firmly believe that there will be no evidence I was ever even alive in a hundred years, so I have no delusions of grandeur and the only thing that matters to me, is that my family is happy and provided for. If I can do that, then I will have viewed my time on this Earth as a success. I work, because I have to...not because I have a passion for my industry. I happen to be good at what I do, so I enjoy it, but I couldn't care less about my title or role or whatever. So long as my job gives me puzzles to solve and pays me enough money to give my family a good life, I could work in any field/industry. For a long time, gaming has been my mental escape from any of the day to day stresses that I may have been feeling, but somehow, I've turned my leisure activity and thing that was supposed to help me relax, into a job.

 

I create self imposed deadlines and feel bad if I don't meet them. I don't think I want to do that anymore. I don't want this thread to die, but I don't want it to feel like a chore to do either. I've been mostly lurking on the forums for a few months now...reading the checklists and event updates from my phone. What I think I'm going to do is kind of take 2024 off from some things. While I've loved the events as they've helped me expand my tastes in games and I've met some wonderful people, I don't think I'm going to do any in 2024. I think I'm going to not do anything that has a deadline and just play some games again for a while, focus on finishing my incomplete games, and play some games I truly want to play with no deadline for when it needs to be finished. I want to try and re-center where I'm at. If I don't feel like playing some nights, I won't.

 

I try to be accommodating in real life and I don't really speak up for what I want to do, because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter all that much to me what I do. So long as it makes someone else happy, I'll go a long with it. It's just been a tiring several months. I really don't want to bitch though, because by and large, things are going pretty well overall for me....but this is my Diary of a Madman and I've felt like venting for a bit now, so here I am, gently whining . I read something from @YaManSmevz's thread about how a lie can become the truth in your mind if you tell it enough, and it got me thinking. There have been times in my life where I've told a lie, whether it was an embellishment of some feat or I went here when I really went there. Since I'm the only one that knows the truth in those scenarios, the truth can be whatever I make of it. There were times when I would do that to avoid confrontation or just make my life easier, however I started to feel some overwhelming guilt about it and came clean to those I had been lying to....mind you none of the lies were big...just convenient. It was shit like my wife (girlfriend at the time) thought I was going to the gym when I was staying home and playing video games. Or I'd create some scenario where I'd give up shifts at my job so I could just not work. It's never been anything bigger than that, but it bothered me a lot that I was creating this image of myself that wasn't true and I ended up being honest with my wife about these things and I try now to just be honest. The truth is, she didn't really care one way or the other...she just wanted me to be honest and I've tried to respect that ever since.....except.....

 

The fact is, I'm the only one that truly knows my mind...and despite the fact that I present happiness to my friends and family, because that's how I want them to feel, I'm not sure that is how I truly feel. I should feel that way....but something just seems off. I feel fatigued and I'm just running the rat race, treading water. I'll keep that lie going with my wife and kids, because I don't want them to worry (and truly there isn't anything to worry about), but I just need to do some soul searching and find what makes me happy. In the pursuit of doing, what I think is the right thing for my family, I've forgotten about myself a bit....I'll make no promises about this thread...I won't abandon it, but I also don't know how often this will be updated either.....stream of consciousness over.

 

 

Battlefield 1943

I have honestly never felt less qualified to review a game I've played than this one. With my personal event of preparing for a potential Gaming By Numbers event for 2023, I started to play Battlefield: Bad Company. Once I realized that the event probably wasn't going to happen, I decided to revert to my usual 'play all the games of a series in order' when possible for this series. I was going to do Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and so on with the whole series consecutively, so I started up this game to get prepared.

 

The reason I feel hardly qualified to review this game is because I barely played this game. One of the trophies is for playing in 100 online matches. I started the game and played a couple of rounds and realized that I really didn't want to invest that much time into this game. I have a turbo controller for my PS3 and just rubber banded it with a LEGO piece holding the X button down and left the PS3 on over night for a couple days. In doing so, I got several of the trophies just for jumping in place. The other trophies I got in maybe five actual matches? There were a lot of people boosting this game, so finding jumpers was pretty easy so I was able to get pretty much all of the other trophies by just wandering around and picking off jumpers.

 

I played this game at a time when a lot of people were trying to get it done before the server closure. Boosting groups were all over and jumpers were all over and the game was just a mess of people trying to get the trophies. I don't know if I really got to experience this game the way it was meant to be played. There's no campaign and no one was really playing it. Since the servers are dead and you can't play this anymore anyway, it's not like I can recommend it or anything anyway lol.

 

I can say that I didn't like the MP nearly as much as I enjoyed Battlefield: Bad Company. The planes in this game were a bitch to fly and I found the graphics to be more grainy and I didn't find the combat to be as satisfying. What I can say this game did, is help me decide NOT to play the entire series in order. I treated this game and the two Bad Company's as one series and at some point (probably when those servers are going to be closed) I'll do the non-Bad Company entries as a separate series. Out of all the FPS games I've played, this one was the one I liked least and fortunately, the one I invested the least into.

 

Until next time folks, I hope you all have a great holiday season.

[Platinum_Vice]

I'll be here to read whatever you put out... whenever that is... if there is something else again. 

 

From one internet stranger to another, I wholeheartedly agree that you should strive to maintain integrity/honesty/authenticity in your life, and to do whatever it takes to get your bearings again.

 

Finding your North in this hobby is much more important that trophies... anyone worth their salt will agree to that. 

 

Best of luck Briste. 👊

[YaManSmevz]

Hey Briste!

 

That's rough that things haven't felt quite right as of late, but for what it's worth your awareness and attitude are very healthy and wise. Taking care of yourself and seeing what can regain the proverbial spark could be the best thing for you - hell, I may take that advice my damn self!

 

Along with Vice, I'll still be here to happily read anything you may post, whenever that may be. All love, homie👊

[Rally-Vincent---]

13 hours ago, Briste said:

The fact is, I'm the only one that truly knows my mind...and despite the fact that I present happiness to my friends and family, because that's how I want them to feel, I'm not sure that is how I truly feel. I should feel that way....but something just seems off. I feel fatigued and I'm just running the rat race, treading water. I'll keep that lie going with my wife and kids, because I don't want them to worry (and truly there isn't anything to worry about), but I just need to do some soul searching and find what makes me happy. In the pursuit of doing, what I think is the right thing for my family, I've forgotten about myself a bit....I'll make no promises about this thread...I won't abandon it, but I also don't know how often this will be updated either.....stream of consciousness over.

 

Not that I would be qualified to give advice, but - have you thought that it might be something bordering burn out if reallife is afflicted? Please take good care of your health, it's usually the only one you got. There is nothing wrong with doing something for yourself now and again.

 

Hope you feel better soon.

[Briste]

So it's been a little over two months since I posted last and I haven't opened this thread in that time. I really appreciate the supportive comments and it just reinforces how amazing the checklist community is on this website. I appreciate you all and thank you  I have been spending those couple of months trying to recapture the joy I used to have for this hobby and I'm glad to say, I think it's working. I haven't completely sheltered myself from the forums, but I've been casually lurking on my phone and have kind of avoided the event threads....because let's be honest...if I look, I'm going to want to join since we have so many dedicated people that are creating fun and interesting events. As much as I'd like to join one this year, I think it would kind of put me back in the cycle of playing stuff I have to play instead of playing some things I want to play. I think some deadline free gaming has been a good medicine for the last couple of months. I've finished two games so far this year and they are games I have truly enjoyed. I've casually been playing Diablo II on the side and am currently re-playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake to get ready for the big release on Thursday.

 

I just want to say....the cosmos have been conspiring against me with these last few Final Fantasy releases. Last year, the Pixel Remasters were supposed to be released on/around my birthday and I had taken a few days off from work to be able to enjoy them as a gift to me. Square did something, that would normally be awesome, and moved the release date up several weeks into April. That was great for 99.999% of the world out there, but for me, I couldn't switch my vacation time because someone else already had that week off from work. I do work remotely (for now) and was able to play a little during my downtime...but it wasn't what I had hoped. Final Fantasy XVI didn't have any real hiccups around release, but Rebirth is being released under similar circumstances as the Pixel Remasters for me. I had hoped to take a few days off to binge on release, however the release date is February 29th, and with my job, the last day of the month and the first couple days of the new month are more intensive and I don't want to make my life harder at work by taking those days off to play a video game. Well, if we're being honest...I totally do....but I have to be a responsible adult so I'm going to work instead. Normally, no big deal, I'd work my normal day and play after work....HOWEVER!!!...my job has scheduled a mandatory 'All-Staff' meeting for February 29th, in-person, over an hour away from where I live, from 5:30pm-8:30pm at night....meaning! I won't be able to play during the day since I have to be at the office and I won't be able to play after work until probably 10:00pm since I have to drive over an hour home once the meeting is over. Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage!

 

Anyways, since I'm trying to re-center my gaming habits....I'm going to just take it as it comes and go with the flow. I'll still get to play for an hour or so, and I'm really excited to be doing so. As I mentioned, I've been re-playing FF7R on the PS5 and I can't stress to you enough how much I love Aerith's theme song and how much I love these characters. I cannot wait for next weekend when the story continues.

 

With that in mind, I've been looking at my gaming track and I am about 13 reviews behind. I want to make some sort of outlandish claim that I will do 13 reviews in 13 days or something....but I'm not going to be setting any deadlines. A few of these are shorter titles and I may be able to bang a few out quickly...but Final Fantasy XVI is in there as well as the whole Bioshock series and those will take some time to do. The good news is that I've enjoyed all my games recently so the reviews will be mostly positive and mostly enjoyable to write....so without further ado...

 

Platinum #195

Battlefield: Bad Company

So as I have mentioned, several times at this point, I had decided to prep myself for the annual Gaming By Numbers event for 2023 by getting the platinum for the ten lowest number platinums possible. I wasn't going to play non-platinum games and nothing that was unobtainable (obviously). This game and Farcry 2 were the two games that were making me hesitant. The reason I decided to try this in the first place was because I had just played Bioshock (#3 trophy list ever) and had really enjoyed it. I thought I would enjoy playing a lot of these old PS3 games and it would be a cool thing to do to sync it up with an event. I was hesitant, because these games had some pretty involved multiplayer trophies and I figured trying to play naturally would be impossible 15 years after release and boosting wouldn't be much easier. As luck would have it, a friend of mine let me have his PS3 for $20 since he had just gotten a PS5 and I thought that with self-boosting....I just might be able to do it. This was a situation where the cosmos were actually on my side.

 

I decided to pursue this challenge on January 17th of 2023. How could I possibly remember the exact date you wonder? I know because I had ordered two used copies of both Farcry 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company at the same time and was going to start with whichever game showed up at my house first. I ended up starting with Farcry 2 because one of the copies of Battlefield that I received was actually Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (their mistake, not mine) and I needed to re-order Bad Company to be able to self boost. I ended up keeping Bad Company 2 since I figured I'd want to play that anyways....because of my obsession with doing entire series. Anyways, I had popped Farcry 2 into the old PS3 and was having issues connecting to the server. I closed the game and decided I'd fool around with my alt before doing anything on my main and popped a couple of the random trophies for creating maps and stuff and decided to stop since I was nervous that I couldn't connect to the servers. Turns out, the servers went down on January 16th (unannounced) and I had juuuuuuuust missed having a game with unobtainable trophies on my profile. If I had started this even one day earlier...I would have popped a couple of Farcry 2 trophies and it would have been the first time I had a game on my profile that I couldn't beat due to server issues. I did some interwebs searching and at the time, it was thought that the servers would just be down for a few days...after all, Ubisoft made no announcements and the game was still working on XBox 360. I figured I would just start with Battlefield: Bad Company when it arrived and do Farcry 2 when the servers came back up. For those wondering....the servers are still down over a year later and Ubisoft has still made no official announcement (that I've seen anyways). So....the cosmos have evened out gaming-wise for me in the last year.

 

Back to this game....looking at the trophy list...there were two trophies that were going to make this game very hard. The first being Beans Bullets Bandages for getting 10,002 kills online. The second being I am Bad Company! for achieving all of the awards. However, I had a second PS3 now and an alt so I figured I'd be able to self boost the whole thing. It may take a while, but with some perseverance, I'd get it done. Holy shit guys....no I wouldn't have lol I was not prepared for how many people still played this game. Turns out, they are called 'lifers' in the Battlefield community. There were about a dozen people that were still leaderboard climbing in the game and they were either ridiculously good and/or were using cheats to play. If I had a nickel for the number of times I got headshot sniped by a jumping dude through a fence, I wouldn't have to worry about my All-Staff meeting this week.

 

Anyways, I was playing a bit every day and a match would last around a half an hour. I was getting like 3-5 kills per match and the math of how many hours it would take for me to get to 10,002 was starting to stress me out. The good news was that, besides the lifers being exponentially better than me and making the game significantly harder than needed, the gameplay was actually really awesome. I had only ever played Call of Duty before and there aren't any vehicles in those games to use (at least in the few I've played). In Battlefield, you can drive tanks, helicopters, boats and other assorted vehicles INCLUDING a golf cart. Outside of flying the helicopter (which I actually got decent at doing by the end) all of the controls were pretty intuitive and smooth and was a hell of a lot of fun. The helicopter was a bit unwieldy to fly and was extremely easy to crash. I found it was quite hard in the third-person view however in first-person view...it was far easier to control. Of course, I didn't figure out you could change the camera view until several weeks of playing.

 

I had decided that trying to go for kills outside of a boosting group would be a pretty futile exercise. I ended up using my alt to focus on the trophy for getting all of the awards. This trophy is also quite a grind. There are 120 different awards to get. They are broken down into three categories...Wildcards, Trophies, and Patches. Wildcards are a mix of cumulative achievements and a set of things done in one round. For example, one of the Wildcard awards is called 'Gunslinger' and requires you to get 80 kills with a handgun throughout all of your rounds. That one is easy, you just get kills with a handgun and over time you will get it. Another one, 'Cab Driver' involves driving any vehicle for 5 minutes while you have a passenger in a round. Easy enough, throw my alt in a tank and just drive around away from the fighting for 5 minutes and achieved. Some Wildcards are a bit harder...for example the 'Chopper Chopper' one requires you to kill 25 helicopters over all your rounds and then after you do that (or as your last 5) you have to kill 5 helicopters in one round. This wouldn't have been quite as hard, except the Russian Choppers were glitched and didn't count as kills. This meant you could only kill US choppers or MEC choppers. This made all of the Chopper related awards be harder than needed.

 

Trophies were all things you had to do in a round and you were able to do multiple times. Most of these involve getting X amount of kills in a round with a specific weapon or getting the best score in a round or doing some specific action in a round. These are repeatable and are often required to get multiple times in order to get the next set of awards, the Patches. The Patches had multiple tiers; bronze, silver, and gold. Generally the bronze is to get a set of trophies three times, silver five times and gold seven times. There's some variation, but that's the general idea.

 

Some patches weren't so bad, like the 'Defend Patch'. This patch set required you to get object defender trophies. You get one of those for getting 18 defender points in a round. You can only get those in the Gold Rush mode where you are defending your bases gold bars....but that'll mostly come naturally if you're playing in that mode since every other round you play on defense. Some patches were a bitch, like the 'Savior Patch' and 'Avenger Patch'. To get a 'Savior Trophy' trophy, you need to get 30 Savior points in a round...which means you have to kill an enemy that was about to kill a member of your team three times in one round. If you kill the enemy too early, you aren't a savior so no dice and if it's too late, well they died...but the good news is you'd get the 'Avenger' points in that scenario. For the Avenger, you kill someone that just killed a member of your team. It has to be within like two seconds or it doesn't count. These are really hard to get naturally. You might get one or two Savior/Avenger kills in a round by accident....but you can't really try for these and they're mostly luck based.

 

So there are 120 of these that I had to get and the good news was I could get something like 100 or so of them by myself with just my alt...but to get them all I was definitely going to need help. Getting them by myself wasn't going to be easy either as a lot of the lifers didn't like boosters and would target them. The good news about boosting was it was pretty easy to do. If you have a turbo controller, just set the  to turbo and your alt will jump in place and when he dies, he will automatically respawn. Fortunately, the spawn locations in most of the areas are fairly close to each other, however, if someone sees a jumper, it's open season on them. For a lot of rounds I wasn't jumping. I would actually mostly play as my alt. I would hide my main in an area that was away from action and I would play as my alt and run to where my main was. I got a lot of the gun and vehicle related awards done this way.

 

While I was doing that above, I was looking for a decent boosting group. Boosting in Battlefield: Bad Company was easy and very not easy at the same time. With the game being as old as it was, the servers were pretty unstable. There are two different modes of multiplayer...a capture the flag mode and a gold rush mode. With capture the flag, it was exactly that. There are two teams and several flags located around the map. Each side has 200 lives and if any team has more flags claimed than the other, the life bar will slowly drain away. The more flags between the two teams, the faster the life bar drains. If the flags are equal, the life bar doesn't drain. In gold rush mode, there is an attacking side and a defending side. The defending side has two crates of gold and the attacking side tries to blow those crates while the defending side tries to stave off the attack. The attackers have about 100 lives and if the defenders get 100 kills before the bars are destroyed they win. If the attackers blow up the two crates, they get some extra lives and the map expands. Generally, there's three or four potential expansions per map. Both modes are actually quite fun to play.

 

With regards to boosting, there is generally only one each mode running at once. It took twenty-four players to fill up a lobby and lock it up just for boosting. This is really, really hard to do unless you have a plan and an event. I had found a discord server for boosting that I joined to be able to finish this game. I cannot begin to tell you how organized these sessions were. The hosts of the event were incredibly knowledgeable and ran a pretty tight ship. They typically allowed up to 16 people to sign up and used 8 alt accounts as dedicated jumpers to lock a lobby. Each person would get roughly three minutes to work on whatever they needed, whether it was a specific award or just kills. Some maps were more conducive to boosting than others and we would skip the really bad ones. But the hosts knew all the spawn points, how to block spawn points to funnel spawns into the best areas and they were incredibly efficient.

 

When I first started boosting, it was before they announced the closure of the servers and we had a real hard time getting enough people to lock a lobby. Most of the sessions were a free-or-all when you would hunt out the jumpers and try to avoid the lifers. While not nearly as efficient as a locked session, it was still lightyears better than a normal session. Once the closure was announced, there were a lot of people that joined the discord server to try and finish the game. Once that happened, they could sometimes get two locked sessions going and there were some sessions that would last a few days because there were enough people on standby to jump in if someone had to go and keep the lobby locked. It was actually a really good experience, which is not always the case with these MP games. I kind of wish that I had played this game 12-15 years ago when the servers were more active, because it really was a great MP experience....but I feel like I did get to play the game enough outside of boosts where I got to enjoy the complete experience, unlike in Battlefield: 1943 where I didn't really play that one at all.

 

There is a TON more nuance and information that went into these sessions, but the servers are now closed and writing it down here wouldn't really help anyone. I'll just mention that the servers were finicky and it was often that they would be unstable and crash. The hosts of the boosts knew how to create a stable lobby that would crash and made it possible for probably over 100 people to get the MP done before server closures. The main host (I'd love to give him a real shoutout, but he's very private and would probably not appreciate it so I won't) was truly dedicated. He was very rough around the edges and didn't put up with any BS, but he had finished the game months before I started and stuck around hosting boosting sessions all the way until the server closed on December 8th. He had something like six PS3's he would use to help lock sessions or to keep them locked. He would be up extremely late making sure everyone got their turn and made sure the sessions ran efficiently, and he did it all without any real incentive to do so outside he probably enjoyed being the expert in the game. He knew that I couldn't make all of the sessions due to having a wife and small children and he volunteered to boost with me several times outside of those main sessions to help me get some of the harder awards done. So even though I won't say their name here, I do want to thank him in this small way for his help.

 

Everything I had read about the single player campaign showed that most people seemed to really enjoy it. I thought the gameplay was pretty good, but I didn't really like the story much. The guys in the squad were kind of goofballs and it didn't really make sense to me in the context of what they were doing. I mean, they're in a warzone with enemies everywhere, and in one of the chapters, one of your squad mates just runs into a village because he thinks there's gold in it? And he didn't just run....he Captain Jack Sparrow ran into it. The main character that you play was ok and the platoon leader was great. The other two were a little odd though. I mean, I get it....they were called Bad Company for a reason....they were misfits...but at the same time, it was hard to believe they were an elite squad with how goofy some of it was.

 

That is my only real complaint with this game though. The controls were responsive, the graphics were good, and the variety of weapons and vehicles made the game quite enjoyable. It probably took me about 150-200 hours to get this platinum and none of it felt like a chore. I legit enjoyed it the whole time. While I played this game from January 22nd  through March 27th, I was saving the plat or the event. I was actually kind of relieved when the event didn't ever happen since it then allowed be to platinum the two Bad Company games consecutively, which is how I like to roll.

 

I've written a lot of words here and I think this is a good place to stop. As I mentioned, I will try to get to Bad Company 2 on the sooner side of things, but with FF7R2 coming out in a couple of days...I make no promises....but I am in a better headspace with my gaming and I am starting to enjoy this hobby again....

[Super_Mep]

@Briste

I remember seeing you around in Bad Company. I decided to just get all the multiplayer trophies I could before the closure and I never successfully joined a boosting group. I did fairly well all things considered and actually got pretty good at the game even against the lifers haha. But I definitely didn't attempt the 10000 kills or all the awards. I did get half of them(and the trophy for it) so I felt pretty accomplished over that since I did them legit. I'm sad the game is over it actually replaced R6 Siege for me for awhile. Now I'm back on Siege for my multiplayer shooter fix haha.

[Briste]

15 hours ago, Super_Mep said:

I remember seeing you around in Bad Company. I decided to just get all the multiplayer trophies I could before the closure and I never successfully joined a boosting group. I did fairly well all things considered and actually got pretty good at the game even against the lifers haha. But I definitely didn't attempt the 10000 kills or all the awards. I did get half of them(and the trophy for it) so I felt pretty accomplished over that since I did them legit. I'm sad the game is over it actually replaced R6 Siege for me for awhile. Now I'm back on Siege for my multiplayer shooter fix haha.

I remember seeing your name too! I'm impressed you were able to do that much without a boosting group. It was painfully slow on my own with an alt...can't imagine without it. Not all of the lifers were bad, but some of them were pretty unfun to play with. I'll be cycling through the old COD games if I need a fix any time soon.