Clear the Way!

Clear access to rebel HQ

It’s the rooftop level on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter where you take out the bad guys on the rooftops, while your tanks progress along the road. There’s some kind of glitch in the game where by once you’ve cleared the current sector of all enemies the game doesn’t register the fact and so the next sector on the map won’t open up. The yellow square objective marker is down at road level so you can’t get to it from the rooftop, but even once your tanks get there the level still won’t open up.

Here’s some tips, courtesy of xbox.com forums, which apparently work. I still haven’t managed to get any of them to work yet and I know the level like the back of my hand now.

AlphaZero X:
“I cleared the rooftops of enemies, snipers, etc, before I shot the two guys at the barricade. When I did kill them, I was looking down from the building right next to them and the objective completed immediately.”

Visceral22:
“After doing it the second time I just sent the tanks as far as possible.  They should spot some more enemies up the road where you can’t see.  Order them to attack the enemies and once all are gone the level should open up.”

FunkadeliQ:
“1. Send your tank as far as possible until it says “unable to advance”
2. Walk to a part of the rooftop where you can see your tank.
3. Then somewhere on the right side of your tank you will see some red icons that indicate that are some enemies A soldier, an Anti Tank Gunner and a Troop Support Truck). You can’t see the actual enemies, because there is a building blocking your view, but you can see those red things..Now aim at the red icons and order your tank to shoot at them..You’ll probably have to order him a couple of times, cause he doesn’t hit them at once.”

Update: OK, I cracked it. The last suggestion by FunkadeliQ is probably the best advice. Keep pushing your tanks well ahead of you. When they can’t go any further you advance on the rooftop and take out the next set of bad guys. Next get the tanks to push on again. Keep repeating this until your tanks have sight of the antitank gunner behind the concrete barricade. Order your tank to take this guy out. As soon as he and the guy beside are toast the next sector opens up!

And I know I’ve still got a handful more of rooftop bad guys to go yet

I May Be Gone For a While!

My copy of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter arrived today. I don’t understand what happened with the release date in the UK. My brother pre-ordered from Ubisoft directly and received his game on the 7th. He would have got it on the 6th, but he was out when the parcel arrived.
Play.com done well and got the game to me on the date they had as the release date, the 10th. I guess next time I should pay the extra £10 and get the game days before most people.

Anyway the game’s here now and I have to master the controls, my head and hands still think they are controlling Call of Duty 2. Why can’t we have a universal button for duck and crawl, zoom, hold breath, etc!

Sniper vs Shotgun

My copy of Call of Duty 2 very rarely sees the light of day. It spends all it’s time inside my Xbox 360. Normally once I finish a game I don’t play it again much, but I’ve completed cod2 several times now and am in the process of getting my true money’s worth from the multiplayer experience on Xbox Live.
Yeah OK, there are some issues with the multiplayer portion of this game. The lag can be frustrating, lack of options when setting up games, etc, etc. But if you play at the right times you can get some cracking matches with no lag. Not to mention that IW are working on a patch which will (hopefully) fix all these problems.

Except for the lag I don’t have too much to complain about with regards to the multiplayer experience on Xbox Live. I like the random maps and after a match has finished I don’t mind joining a new lobby. After all I don’t want to keep getting my ass owned by ##gamertag## match after match after match.
However there is one issue causing a lot of commotion over on the cod2 forums and it’s the age-old “please don’t kill me with that particular weapon, it’s too powerful and it’s not fair”
The weapons in question on this occasion are the sniper rifle and the shotgun. Here’s me take on the matter.

Those weapons are there for a reason; to be used. Certain situations call for certain weapons. The truly skilled player will pick the best weapon for the environment they find themselves in.
If he’s creeping around a wide open field with next to no cover to hide behind he’s going to want something which will take the enemy out as soon as he sees them. If he can see them from miles away, then he’ll want a gun which will take them out from miles away. There’s no point having a close-range gun because by the time he gets anywhere near close enough to using it they’ll have taken him out.
If he’s in a built up environment with lots of buildings to hide in and lots of corners for anyone to run around and bump into him then he’s going to want something which is going to take them out at close range quickly and effectively without too much aiming required (he won’t have time to aim!)

The good player is only interested in one thing and that’s killing you. He won’t care how he does it. If he has to chase and hunt you down then that’s what he’ll do. If he needs to stop briefly to make sure his aim is bang on deadly he’ll do that too. He won’t care what weapon he uses as long as you die and he lives. Does he care that the shotgun is so devastating at close range that others think it’s an unfair weapon? No! (I don’t think I’ve ever been killed by a fair weapon…. they’re all unfair!) He’ll use the best killing machine he can get his hands on, because that’s what he’s there to do.

But does this make the good player a skilled player? Well what kind of skill are we measuring here? If he’s owning your ass every time you go up against him I’d say he’s skilled, skilled at killing. If you want to see who can get closest to the bulls-eye then you’re playing the wrong game fella.

Calling all veterans

Seeing as how I’ve never had a blog before and I just created this one today I want to add an entry for something which happened to me during February. You see since I got my Xbox 360 I’ve been going hell for leather trying to complete Call of Duty 2 on it. The game is fantastic. Even before the 360 came out it was the game which made me go ahead and pre-order the console (but that’s another story!)

To be honest I kinda breezed through the normal difficulty and so hardened, “Your skills will be strained”, was great because I appreciated the game more and worked my way through it conscientiously. It wasn’t long before I had hardened nailed as well.
Now at this point I normally put whatever game it is down and generally only ever play it again when buddies are round and we can get a multiplayer going.
Not this game.
I was gripped! I can’t explain what was so good about the gameplay which kept me coming back for and more. Maybe it was the lure of all the achievement points I’d get for completing each campaign on Veteran difficulty, maybe it was the semi-realistic vibrations of the controller evertime I blatted a mag off, or perhaps it was the continual stream of bad guys to mow down, but I had to complete that game 100% And so after much cussing and a few close calls of throwing my controller against a wall I eventually got the veteran, “You will not survive”, difficulty in the bag!

Point to note:
The silo level is hell, but once you clear building F it becomes a little easier