Glitching the Tank

You can place the blame for my achievement-hunting ways hard at the feet of two people: My co-worker Petey and Ken Levine. Petey got his 360 about a year after I did, and IT didn't take long for his Gamerscore to eclipse mine. According to him, to achieve Gamerscore greatness, all you needed was a laptop to entree achievement guides while playacting, the ability to stomach mediocre games, and a preference for grinding. As for Ken Levine, he created BioShock, the first game I ever undertook as a serious achievement-hunt endeavor. Armed with an audio diary guide and a desire to see if I had what it took, I terminated up with 960 points and a new obsession.

Odd thing is, I'm a bad terrible gamer, but I'm not a bad achievement hunter. Complete the years, games had conditioned me to become a collector and achievements merely stoked that desire. They became the game within the game, a way for ME to see to a greater extent of what the gritty had to propose and simultaneously approach performin entirely differently from how you would to complete the story. When a game had achievements obtained via glitches, it was even sweeter, like I was acquiring away with something.

I was the first busy to pick up Left 4 Dead and didn't architectural plan on getting all of the achievements, as they seemed well beyond my abilities. For Petey though, if a game went on his tag, he was getting completely of the points, an posture which explains why his score is fast approaching 200,000 while mine is far, furthest behind. The trouble with Petey's contrive for Left 4 Dead domination was the achievement "What Are You Trying to Prove," which asks you to "survive totally campaigns on Expert". It's worth 35 points, non a mint considering the amount of endeavor required, but IT might As wellspring deliver been worth 1000 points. The main stumbling block was that to survive a campaign, you had to play out the whole thing in cardinal sitting. For us this was easily a four hour effort. Multiply that multiplication four campaigns and our schedules simply couldn't handle IT. It looked like Petey's goal of 1000 points was doomed to failure.

Past He discovered a glitch that fooled the game into thinking you had complete the whole push connected Expert when all you had to do was play the finale. As glitches go, this was the Chromatic Just the ticket. The only problem I saw was that even with this glitch, we still had to Doctor of Osteopathy the finales, every last four of them, on expert. "Don't worry," Petey said, "we can indeed totally do the finales connected expert."

We so wholly could not.

The for the first time finale we tried was Nary Mercy. We could go far to the infirmary roof with few problems but in one case we called the whirlybird in, information technology was just a matter of time. We tried running around, making a stand, hiding on roofs, hiding subordinate ramps. All clock, without fail, we were slaughtered. All we ended up proving was that we couldn't play Leftmost 4 Dead.

Enter the Savior Room.

If you load up the last on No Mercy, you can buoy see the room for yourself. Get to the roof of the first building and look across the alley. Encounter the doorway on the midget building with the satellite lulu? That's the entry to the Jesus Room, accessible only once the saving vehicle had been called, opened by three players frantically meleeing the sealed doorway. At one time inside we were free from zombie attacks and waited until the pearly arrived. When the saving vehicle called for us, the limp and wounded broke left, acting as bait for the hordes spell the healthy broke correct, throwing a pipe bomb for good measure. Amazingly enough it worked. Because one of us survived, as far A the achievement was concerned, we all did.

Thereupon, our Friday nights for the predictable future were set. Valve English hawthorn not be the fastest developer on the stymy, but their record of software support told the States that the buttonhole glitch had a limited life and once IT was gone, our hopes of getting the achievement were gone with it. We consulted Valve forums for word of when a patch would be delivered. "Before long" was all we found. We researched Xbox Live certification processes, impermanent done how oblong we'd have once the fleck was handed off for certification. During the workweek we read forum togs, watched YouTube videos – anything to give ourselves a greater chance of success for the sexual climax Friday night.

For Death Toll in that respect was no Jesus Board, but there was a Jesus Rock that you could climb atop. As long as you picked hit smokers disagreeable to attack from the water, the zombies couldn't get you. Easily, until that unrivaled tank crowd-surfed the zombies up onto the rock and took half of us out with one hit. Evening with that, we still managed to finish the finale.

For Pulseless Gentle wind in that respect weren't any rooms to shroud in, making the roof of the plane the most provable yet un-get-at-able prime for endurance. Once again, Petey came through, determination a bug that allowed you to prompt yourself on to the roof of the planing machine by meleeing a chaingun to "weave it in the lead," past jump on it. Once on the plane, the only real threat was smokers, but yet another bug offered immunity to their attack provided someone was perpetually meleeing you. And so we survived Dead Air, Little Jo of us crouched on crowning of an aeroplane, meleeing to each one new in the face until the level was oil-fired up and ready.

We had left Blood Harvest for last because there were no easy fixes for this drive. No rooms to fell in or rocks to jump on. We hoped that in the weeks worn-out completing the former finales, an simple solution would arise, but none delight. To make things worse, Valve had announced that the maculatio was coming.

It became clear that our only hope for surviving was to try and glitch the tank, a substance of exploiting the AI of the special infected that caused them to storm renounce the game if they couldn't reach you. If you could stay away from the tankful long sufficient, he'd pass on the game. The key to this strategy was determination a sound place to hide out. Origin Harvest takes place happening a produce, and like all good farms, it had a barn with crossbeams navigable by humans but non past rampaging zombie tanks. We had found our spot.

As it turned out, the beams were far less navigable by humans than advertised. Staying on the beams was next to impractical, when we were able to get to the farmhouse the least bit. At that place were times when we were all dead less than a moment after going away the safehouse. I laughed at those times, normally laughing alone, with a tremendous respect for a game that could dismantle the States so completely.

Eventually, somebody else succeeded where we failed and defined a strategy we thought could make work. On a rare Thursday night session, born unstylish of fear of the patch, we got together to make one last endeavor. In some way we managed to vex the farmhouse without too much trouble. I think the AI Music director felt penitent for us, having watched us fail so many another multiplication before. Once we were at the farmhouse, we took our positions in an upstairs closet where we would contend off zombies until the tank arrived. Once the music welled up, we were to all leave the window, turn the corner and wait by the lamp chimney in the hopes of glitching the tank. It all went perfectly, until we left the loo. I saw a zombi spirit that wasn't on that point and pronto shot Petey in the abide.

From far off, I heard the AI Managing director riant.

Somehow we managed to overtake my necessitous take aim and soon Petey and I were in the rescue fomite waiting for our downed Allies to go bad so the last could finish. Time from safehouse to accomplishment: twenty proceedings. Operating room, more accurately, one month, one week, three days, and twenty minutes.

You can say we didn't get the achievement licitly, and I wouldn't argue. We'd ne'er have gotten that achievement if it weren't for Left 4 Dead's robust assortment of glitches and exploits. Heedless, getting those 35 points still stands as one of my favorite experiences. It wasn't just the achievement itself, it was the four of us, every Fri night, working together, fighting jointly, getting soaked when things went wrong. IT was Monday morning conversations on what didn't work and what other we could try. It was running towards something and not giving up. My familiar survivors are some of my closest friends and while our friendship started from a shared love of games, it solidified on those rocks and in those safehouses, hiding from zombies, meleeing each another, and glitching the tank.

Brandon Cackowski-Schnell is a regular contributor to GameShark.com also as co-host of Jump the Shark, GameShark's official podcast. He is also one of the co-founders of NoHighScores.com where He can much beryllium found mailing almost games and food.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/glitching-the-tank/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/glitching-the-tank/

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