The Yellow Brick Road

Due to situations a bit beyond my control, I ended up getting Battlefield 2142. I was reluctant to get it on Day 1. But incidentally, my reluctance favored me in some ways as Best Buy would advertise the game for a paltry US$25. One of the two companies is getting the profit shaft. And frankly, I did not care much for who it was. For nearly half of the MSRP for a relatively new game, I figure it's worth snatching up anyway. But even after I had made the purchase, I was reluctant to really open it up immediately and install it. Then 29th of November, 2006, the Sixshot soldier was enlisted.

At first, everything was different. Running around was rather horrible, as there are several abilities that the player needs are locked at first, giving those early adopters and stat-padding retards the early jump on a variety of soldier abilities. Things such as better stamina recovery, longer sprint time, and even grenades are locked. What kind of idiotic system and moron would lock the most basic equipment for a soldier? It's quite horrendous how the developers crippled the way newbies play the game. It's like giving them a naked soldier with nearly nothing to defend himself with but a simple gun, a knife (or spoon), and a class equipment. It would not surprise me one bit if people who started out left the game early due to how they set up the new recruits.

The only reason I have stayed was due to the clan I am associated with. Started out fairly slow. But I eventually got used to how the system works and learned some of the tricks. And then there are the guns. No matter how I looked at it, there seems to be something unbalanced with these guns. Granted, they are alternatives to the stock weapons they provide. Some are better, and some aren't. Being one who defies the Majority Pack, I opted for the Baur H-AR Assault class unlock. And the more I use it, the more I feel that it's one of the better and well-balanced gun out of them all. It's potent and has accuracy. However, it chews through bullets like popcorn. In a sense, it's like BF2's G3 unlock. Yet when I am chewed apart by the Voss L-AR, I cannot help but wonder just why it can do the things it can do. The gun seems to have the same potency and accuracy as the Baur yet it houses 40 rounds per clip. Why???

Anyway, after a while, I started keeping track of various awards I accrue over time. Eventually I started to hunt each awards in order to make the progression to the next promotion and rank less time consuming. This worked for about 10 ranks or so. And at random times, I would be stricken by the Recruit bug, where I can utilize the weapon unlocks but my rank would show up as a Recruit, the lowest rank. In those cases, I would not get the promotion if I was close to getting it. However, it is advantageous to me as it provides an opportunity to acquire various awards that I have already earned earlier. Due to the new Career Point system, certain awards provide a very good and substantial amount of points. And these bugged points get logged, sent, and added into my profile. Thus the road isn't as long or as rough as originally thought.

As it stands now at this time of writing, I have only 3 more promotions to go before the points do not matter any more. When that happens, all that is left to do is clocking in hours and getting the rest of the awards.

In some forums where image signatures are allowed, I link to my profile in order to provide people easy access to who I am in the game. The image I display (see below) changes every so often, as I manually edit it to reflect my progress. That'll all become mostly static when I reach the end of the road.



I hope by the time I finish playing the game that I'll have all the awards that I can get. However, some awards won't be very possible due to the fact that I am on the ground most of the time. In any case, I do hope to earn them regardless.