Unlocking the L85A2

To unlock the L85A2 in Battlefield 3, two assignments need to be completed in this order:

1. Best Friend Forever

This requires:

• 10 revives
• 10 heals

2. Professional Russian

• 100 Kills with assault rifles
• 20 kills with underslung grenade launcher
• Win 5 rounds of squad deathmatch (SQDM). 

All of those can be easy enough, except winning 5 rounds of squad deathmatch.

I have tried to join in to a SQDM by myself, but I never had any luck winning. The chances of winning a SQDM game are one in four, and going solo has never really helped. The best way to do this is to be in a squad. I had my wife join me, and we won five out of the 8 games we played. 

Here are a couple of good SQDM servers I found: 

1. Close Quarters
2. Battlefield 3

Here is a break down of our wins

1. Operation 925

My wife and I started off the round as assault, and for whatever reason I was terrible with the AEK. I just couldn't control it, and the best I got were kill assists. Then I switched to support class with M27, and I got considerably better. It also helped that my wife was there to revive me more often than. The match ended with 125 - 75. 

The reason my score looks that good is because I got revived several times. This is essential to winning SQDM. We had the perfect balance going. My wife healing me, while I gave her ammo. 

RomkaTerminator from C squad was my nemesis. He/she was extremely good with the shotgun, and in close quarters, and my M27 was not fast enough.  

2. Ziba Tower

So we just had our first win in SQDM, and we figured its worth seeing if we can repeat our success. So off we went to Donya Fortress. 

And we lost by 5 points. That was a close game, and we figured we should try again. 

Now its Ziba Tower. My wife played assault and I played support. This time however, I knew the M27 was not going to be fast enough. Ziba Tower has a lot of close range encounters. Considering I am really no good with shotguns, I had to find a way to beat RomkaTerminator. I went with P90 and suppressor. This proved to be very effective. I got better of the two several times, and we ended up winning. 

3. Scrapmetal

Following this victory, we wanted to play another round. This time it was Scrapmetal. My least favorite map. I don't know why, I just hate this map. I don't understand it very well. I decided to go assault, and that didn't go very well. I went back to being support with M27. That worked very well. RomkaTerminator did get me a few times, but the team didn't do very well, and we won the game. I was surprised I did as well as I did considering I was never any good at this map. 

By this time, our luck has run out is seems, and we lost the next two rounds. We decided it was time to quit. 

4. Noshar Canals

Next morning, I was casually looking through the servers for something interesting, and I found a server in Brazil that had SQDM with BF3 maps. I never played SQDM on these maps, so I wanted to give it a shot. My wife wanted to go back to playing Close Quarters, but I convinced her to at least give it a shot. 

This match went amazingly well for us. My wife was assault as usual, and I was an engineer with G36C. I also played as support with M27. I did not realize that SQDM had vehicles in it, so after taking some beating with the LAV, I spawned as an engineer, and that worked out very well for the team. 

The match ended with my wife being the MVP, even though I had 18 more kills than she did, she revived me a number of times, and that turned the match in our favor. 

5. Seine Crossing

In the preview round, I didn't have any one in the opposite teams dominate me, so winning the round wasn't much of a fight. In this round, I had this one fellow twobles, constantly harass me. He was playing as recon with SPAZ, and would annoy the hell out of me. He would jump out of nowhere and shoot me in the face and disappear. Thankfully my wife was always close by to review me or to give me health. 

Towards the end however, I got the better of him. I switched to my go to gun - M249B, and ran to the opposite building, and just waited for him to come running around the corner, and gun him down. After a few attempts, it seemed like he decided to give up irritating me. 

The round turned out to be very close. It was basically a battle between Squad C and Squad D. At one point of time, they got control of the vehicle, and were tailing us by 5 points. For whatever reason no one in my squad was going after the vehicle. I told my wife to provide me cover, and spawned as an engineer, and went after it with my SMAW. I ended up destroying the vehicle (the only time I did that in the round), and that turned the tide in our favor. 

We slowly gained momentum, and we won the round, and I unlocked the L85A2. 

Now, I am not saying I single handedly won the round for us, I did play a crucial part in our victory. 

L85A2

Having gotten the L85A2, I am not sure I am a fan of the weapon. I haven't played with it a lot, but I feel the AEK and M416 are a lot better than this. I don't have all the attachments unlocked yet, and at some point, I will give this weapon another try, but for now, when I play as an assault, I will go with the AEK. 

Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2

Mass Effect 3

I played a little more of Mass Effect 3, and I am still impressed with it. I just finished playing a quest where one of my favorite characters in the previous game is killed off. That was a little disappointing. The mission had me make some tough decisions.

I enjoy the gameplay in Mass Effect 3 so much, that it makes me put up with some very awkward controls. I am not a fan of the way the cover system works. There are several times when I wanted to run, and I took cover instead, and times when I vaulted over cover when I wanted to just stay behind cover. Any other game would have probably annoyed my to a point where I would just give up playing. I hate putting up with console controls on PC. Mass Effect is an exception.

I realized that the dream sequences in the game remind me of Max Payne quite a bit.

Guild Wars 2

Having played single player games for the longest time, I seriously got into multiplayer games with TF2, followed by Battlefield 3.

A couple of days ago, my wife convinced me to buy Guild Wars 2. I have never played a MMO before, and I was not very enthusiastic about it. I didn't see myself playing an RPG for months, so I didn't want to waste money on it. 

The wife however, insisted, and I bought it. 

I must say, I am glad I took her word. I think I am going to enjoy Guild Wars 2 quite a bit. The game looks amazing.

I am playing as a human guardian, and the starting world looks like a fairy tale. This kind of reminds of Trine in 3D.

I was told that most other MMOs do not encourage exploration. I don't know if this is true, and it seems kind of counter intuitive to me. The designers obviously spent a lot of time creating the world, and I would imagine they would want players to explore it.

Apparently, that is not the case. Guild Wars 2, from what little I have seen has a number of perks for those who want to wander off into the world. I am glad it does that. I wouldn't want to play a game that would punish me for wanting to the world.

There is so much about MMOs I need to learn, but I think Guild Wars 2 might be a good idea to begin. I am glad I don't have to deal with subscription fees. I can play this at my own pace. Considering I have so many games in my backlog, I really wouldn't want to deal with a subscription.

I will play some more Guild Wars 2. Considering it is 19F outside, and snowing a little bit, I am not stepping out of home anytime soon. I am blissfully enjoying my Christmas break playing some new games.

Hamachi Logging Off After Disconnecting

I've been using Hamachi for a while, and everything was fine, until recently.

I remote into my home laptop when I am away. One fine evening when I was out of town, I was using my laptop at home remotely, and once I was done working, I put my computer to sleep. When I resumed working, I couldn't remote into my home laptop anymore. At the time I thought something must have happened to my home internet connection, and Hamachi couldn't log back in.

When I went back home, I discovered that the laptop was always online (I could tell because I was still connected Pidgin, and all my chat windows still showed me as online).

After some research I discovered that Hamachi would go offline every time the session is closed.

For example, I am using my home laptop through a remote desktop session, then I decide to close the remote desktop session, I can't remote back into the machine because Hamachi goes offline on all the networks.

Here is an excerpt from their blog post:

So, in the hopes of converting more of you into paying customers, we’re making a small change to Hamachi: unless a computer is part of a paid network, you need to be logged in and running the Hamachi UI on your desktop in order to allow it to function. If no user is logged on to the computer then – even though the Hamachi service or daemon is active in the background – it will not go online in any networks that it may belong to. We believe this a fair change; if you’re using Hamachi casually (such as for gaming), then we’re glad to have you as a free user and this change does not affect you. If, on the other hand, you’re using Hamachi to access unattended computers, then this change does affect you and you will want to upgrade to the premium service in order to continue to benefit from it.

 Read the full post HERE.

I don't know if there are better alternatives to Hamachi. I did not like Team Viewer 7. I will keep looking.

All I need is a free VPN application that I can install on both machines, and be able to remote desktop using the VPN ip address.

Portrait Wallpapers

Video games

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 1200x1920 wallpapers

Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand

Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand 1200x1920 wallpapers

Deus Ex Human Revolution

Deus Ex Human Revolution portrait wallpapers

Credit for the all the above pictures goes to my wife who took the time to make these for my portrait monitors. Mouse over the pictures for more detail.

Dead Space

1080x1920 Dead Space portrait wallpapers

Tomb Raider

1200x1920 Tomb Raider wallpaper

Duke Nukem

1200x1920 Duke Nukem wallpapers

Miscellaneous 1200x1600 wallpapers

Abstract Design

Scenery

Last but not least, we have Batman

Batman 1200x1920 

Now Playing - Mass Effect 3 - Part 1

I decided that this weekend I am going to do a marathon of Mass Effect 3. I am about 3 hours into the game. I am at the part where EDI takes form of the evil scientist to protect the ship. I now have to attend the war summit on the salarian ship.

Its 12/14/2012 8:25PM CST. I am beginning the mission to attend the war summit. I figured I should post screenshots of the game. 

"Its nice to know we're not kids playing with a loaded gun."

In light of yesterday's school shooting in Newport, CT, these words made me shake my head. My sincere condolences to the affected families.

Diana Allers - IGN's Jessica Chobot

Diana Allers - IGN's Jessica Chobot. 

Jessica Chobot from IGN

I was walking in the Citadel, and I spotted this particularly in-shape human woman. I had to stop and see what was going on. Turn's out its the news anchor from IGN. I remember hearing that she was in Mass Effect 3, but I forgot about it when I started playing it. Either way, I was pleased to make she acquaintance. Is is much more pleasant than one other news anchor I had encountered. 

I also think they did they a pretty good job of making the character look like Jessica Chobot. 

And then there was Miranda. 

Yvonne Strahovski  as Miranda Lawson

I believe they should have had a blonde Miranda instead of a brunette, and possibly made her look like they woman they are using to play the character. I don't think the character bears much resemblance to the actress. 

Miranda Lawson & Yvonne Strahovski

One thing I did notice in the Mass Effect universe (I could be mistaken about this), the dancers in the night clubs are all asari. There are no human female (or male for that matter) dancers in the game. I thought that was rather odd. However, the residents of the Citadel don't seem to mind. 

Mass Effect 2 - Table dance by an asari.

I did encounter this woman in Purgatory nightclub on the Citadel.

A human dancer in Mass Effect 3? 

I can imagine there being a huge controversy on Fox news if there were human strippers. After all, the news network went on to claim that the original Mass Effect allowed players to engage in graphic sex, which was completely untrue. I am not sure if they ever apologized for it...

Mass Effect 3 - Blood Dragon Armor

I never played any Dragon Age games, but did think this was a clever addition to the game.

I will post more Mass Effect 3 content in the future.