Hey everyone, I’m taking a break this week to guest blog on Newlong’s Blog to mix some Nintendo content into his normal PS4 and PC content. This week, Ryan is filling in for me with some Halo gameplay. Ryan typically writes about the latest happenings in tech so if you’re interest in the latest in technology go check out his blog!

Newlong’s Blog: http://blogs.uww.edu/hmonglorrydergaming/
Ryan’s Blog: http://blogs.uww.edu/todaystech/

If you grew up playing Xbox, you most likely know the fear that trying to complete the Halo campaigns on the most difficult level, legendary. Halo revolutionized the way FPS are made and played, it makes sense that the game is still held to a high esteem. With all of the Halo games that have come and gone, the hardest one, by far, in my opinion, is Halo Reach. The game was the fifth installment of the franchise, and the prequel to Halo Combat Evolved. The game itself is pretty hard to beat, but it is not impossible. If you invite friends to campaign, the game scales to the number of players in the squad, meaning if you have three members in the squad, the game is three times harder. But the real difficulty comes when the player plays the campaign on LASO or Legendary All Skulls On. One of the skulls, the Iron Skull, forces the player to beat the mission with zero deaths or saves. This means if the player dies in the last part of the mission, the player has to repeat the entire level from the beginning. I tried to complete the 10-mission campaign on LASO. With all 13 skulls activated, it took me 6 hours to get to the 9^th mission. The mission that caused me the most trouble, was the last one, where I died over and over again. That mission alone, took me over 2 hours. I could not complete the mission, there were many places I died. I gave up after 2 hours of being stuck on the level. I have completed the campaign the before, but I have never tried to complete it solo with all skulls activated. I can easily say that this was one of the hardest game challenges I have tried.

Hello and welcome to this week’s bad gaming idea. After cruising through the early chapters of Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, I decided I needed to step up the difficulty to get back on the pain train. This time I’m going for a very specific achievement in Half-Life 2 Episode Two. The objective is to carry a small garden gnome from one end of the game, to the other end and put it in a rocket. Now as Half-Life 2 Episode is a first person shooter with enemies ranging from aliens to super soldiers, carrying around a garden gnome is not going to be the easiest task in the world. I’ve been playing Half-Life games since high school but I never got into them as much as one of my friends did. Since he has gotten every achievement in all three of the Half-Life Two games, I asked him for some pointers on how to do the run and I got a lot of good advice from him. For example, he told me that during the chapter where Alyx is injured you can just leave the gnome in the room with her and play the chapter normally rather drag it around with you the entire time. While I didn’t play super long into the game due to its length, it was a very interesting way to play since I was constantly making mental notes to myself about where I left the gnome and if it was safe to throw it somewhere. If you’re not an experienced Half-Life 2 player I would personally not recommend going for this achievement.