Gaming
Ever have one of those days?
We’ve all been there – you’re inches away from reaching your goal, but then something happens to make you fall flat on your face. I’ve had a string of these incidents happen to me lately while gaming – frustration after frustration. It’s like my gaming life has been one big fail blog entry after another.
The worst offender by far is in Left 4 Dead. After Valve released the awesome survival mode content, I rounded up the troops and we proceeded to dominate the maps one at a time, going for the gold medal. For those who have not played the game, or this mode before, the basic premise is that you and your 3 friends try to survive the zombie onslaught for as long as possible. If you make it past 4 minutes, you get a bronze medal; after 7 minutes you earn a silver medal, and 10 minutes is the coveted gold medal.
As you can see below, we came awfully close:
I’m pretty sure if we had killed one additional zombie we would’ve been able to hold out to the 10 minute mark… but instead we fell 0.6 seconds short. Ouch.
Not too long after the massive Left 4 Dead fail, I entered a Guitar Hero contest at a local Scion dealership; by 5PM on that Sunday afternoon, whomever had the highest score in the game would win a MacBook. Not a bad prize, so I entered. I had the highest score for most of that afternoon, but in the last 5 minutes (which was the last guy playing), my score was surpassed by just a little bit. There wasn’t enough time left for me to play again, so I got bumped down to second place. I don’t want to whine too much though, because I did get a nice 16GB iPod Touch for my troubles… but as a fairly competitive person it was not the prize, but the lack of a win that really irked me.
My third incredibly frustrating gaming experience came in the new Popcap game Plants vs Zombies. I’ve been playing this game pretty obsessively – I finished all the minigames, puzzle modes and survival… everything except the endless stuff. So in an effort to earn the Steam achievements, I worked on those endless puzzle modes. For Vasebreaker endless, you need a streak of 15 – for I, Zombie Endless you need a streak of 10.
Here I am falling short of both goals… yet again. If I wasn’t such a chipper person in general, I’d probably have thrown something against a wall by this point. However, this game is awfully fun, so I don’t really mind playing it over and over again. Heck, all the games I mentioned are a lot of fun so it’s not really so bad.
Have any of you come across an “almost, but not quite” situation while playing games lately? I can’t be the only one… right?
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Haha wow, 0.6 seconds is ridiculous. Lost two pickup Quake Live CTF games yesterday in the final five seconds, hurts.
Good writeup :D
I can’t find the last Teen Girl Squad card in the first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. Oh, and I feel like I frequently die in Smash Brothers when my opponent is at 150% of his last life.
(I am not good at Smash Brothers.)
That’s crazy! Sounds kinda like our Epic Fail in Rock Band–on track to bet ES2 and also get Bladder of Steel around 6 hours in–only to be thwarted at the end by a previously locked song we couldn’t get through! Also in high school my friends called it “pulling a Dave” in Mario Kart whenever one of them beat me at the finish line! Argh! Nice article! =)
I have the same experience, just much slower in TF2 – I still have a TON of achievements to earn! They keep adding more mods and more achievements on top of them!
Stay strong – post up your longest time! I really need to dig into L4D a bit more…
Your way more honorable than me, when I start epic failing in any game I decide to kick it in the face with cheats lol.
You talk so you do not fall asleep. There is no value in gaming. Better help some people in need than kill avatars on the screen. And better have sex.
You talk so you do not fall asleep. There is no value in gaming. Better help some people in need than kill avatars on the screen.
I can give you some hints with Vasebreaker Endless…If you’re still having trouble.
I’ve been able to pretty regularly get to 20 with this basic strategy. Break the vases in a column sequence from right to left. Go very slowly, and attempt to eradicate all zombies that you uncover with the tools that you uncover.
For the big guys, 2 double shooters (if they have far enough to walk), or 2 Squash will kill them. If you know the location of the big dudes in advance, position squash on either side. If you can anticipate where they are statistically, a single long unbroken row remaining (or a row without green vases) place a Snow Pea shooter in that row.
Also, if you’re blessed with getting the lantern early, open a hole right in the middle and get a peak at as many dudes as possible. You’ll be able to plan accordingly.
Most important in this strategy, Go Slowly, try and kill everything you uncover as you go… that will make it easier to stop the big troublemaker as they arise.
Good luck.