GoW2 Solo on Hardcore

Well since it's been a while since I played and I haven't managed to catch up with E, so I decided to try a bit more last night. I found T online but he was giving W a hand with finishing off GoW1, I guess so W can unlock the characters for the multiplayer modes.

So I started up a single player game on Hardcore. (Though it seemed to say that a friend could drop into the game at any time) It was quite a bit tougher than the normal game mode. I don't think I died (do-or-die situations aside) as much in the Normal mode when I was playing with E, since the NPCs tended to rush the foes - I could go slowly and hang back a bit, picking things off from a distance without worrying too much about enemy retaliation. If they did start shooting at me, NPC Dom and Carmine generally got the aggro back and I could shoot some more.

The only real problem was the stage where I was on the transport and trying to do a do-or-die scenario - shoot down spore pods and shoot down reavers before they knock you off the road and down the side of the cliff. I think I heard "shoot that **** before it hits us!" a dozen times. I always got killed by the reaver that sideswipes the transport. The turret gun just couldn't lay down enough fire due to overheating. Ditto for trying to use the shotgun and the chainsaw rifle, not enough to kill it before it rammed me twice and off the road.

Eventually I figured out that the turret chaingun has a cooling system activated by the reload button. I didn't think that the gun would have a reload system cause it didn't have an ammo count, so I'd never tried it during the co-op game with E. That made the gun MUCH more usable and I dropped the reaver on the very same run.

Oh the exploding Tickers can hurt you pretty badly in Hardcore. one of them will take you to the brink of going down, 2 will turn you into chunks.

It was pretty smooth sailing until the stage in sinking Ilima where you come across those creature riders at close range - you can't chainsaw them and they do oneshot kills - I decided to call it a night there after getting shredded about 6 times.

Upsen.