Chromehounds Clan Night

My clan in Chromehounds is trying to get everyone together tomorrow night to play some free battle or maybe a mission or two. I think we might have a full clan; twelve people. I'm not sure.

You see it's been awhile since I played that game. I did put it in a week ago but after dain and I finished our first mission when we were going back to the lobby area my screen went black. Nothing happened and I was completely locked up so I had to power down. Once I turned the console back on and put the game in it said it couldn't read the disk. I thought it might be scratched a little bit (this is my second copy of the game since dain scratched my first copy) but unfortunately for me it wasn't scratched but cracked. Twice. There were two cracks radiating out from the center hole of the disk.

I'm sure I could pick up this game used and cheap, but part of me wants to see if I could get a new copy so I wouldn't have to deal with someone's used game. Who knows what condition the disk will be in. Another part of me says "why bother getting the game again at all?"

In Chromehounds a gamerscore of 720 is probably considered complete. There are just too many achievements that are way too hard to get in that game. You either have to play the game every waking moment of every day to get top honors in a war or you have to boost to get them. And there's a lot of clans that boost making it almost impossible for honest clans to have a chance at the Gold achievements. And the Valor achievements for maxing out hound types are some others that will consume your whole life if you try for them.

But the hardest achievement to get in Chromehounds (in my opinion) is the one for defeating a country's super weapon. Why is it so hard? Because the weapon won't come out unless certain criteria are met within a given war. The problem with that is everyone is playing in the war so while one squad might be trying to control one map as a criteria for bringing the super weapon out another squad might be doing the exact opposite. And since there are several battles going on at the same time it's hard to tell exactly when the weapon will come out. And when it does you have to be affiliated with the right country and pick the right map to fight on in order to battle it. If you're lucky. And if you're lucky and get into the battle with the super weapon you've got to make sure you've got the right hound equipped to bring that weapon down. In other words there's just too many conditional "if" that have to be met exactly before you even have the chance to get the achievement. And don't get me started on the fact that you get a lot less points battling bots than you do humans which makes meeting those criteria for the super weapon that much harder . . . and longer to get.

Once my disk was cracked I just figured I would borrow dain's game to pick up those few single player achievements that I'm missing. A couple of days later I got a message of clan night this Thursday. I miss playing with some of those guys so I really want to play, but I'll have to get another copy of the game in order to do so. I once considered taking a couple of days off at the beginning of a war and do nothing but play that game. I kind of want to see how high on the leader boards I can get. The problem is I'm not that good of a player. I haven't built the perfect hound yet. If I play with a hound that has fire power I get beat by someone with speed and vice versa.

Maybe I'll go out today after work and see if I can pick up a copy of the game. Or maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Or maybe not at all. Chromehounds is a game that I didn't think I'd like when I first got it. But after playing it for awhile I really did start to like it. Unfortunately the gaming community that plays Chromehounds makes the game more frustrating than trying to find a house to buy. And you don't want to get me started on that. At least not until the ulcer I'm developing as I look at houses has healed. My HMO will thank you.