Global Offensive has come a long way since it was first released.
But in this time, some of the achievements have broken.
But are they still possible?
Time to investigate.
To make things even harder- and because I don’t like spending money- I restricted
myself to my free account, which only lets me play with bots.
You know what?
I forget how fun it is to play on a new account.
Unlocking all of those achievements every game, having a reason to actually play casual
gamemodes with bots and so on.
The first achievement I tried to get was EXPERT MARKSMAN, which is an achievement requiring
you to get a kill with every weapon.
Doesn’t have to be all in the same game or anything- but there are a few complications.
Since I was using a free account, I was unable to view my inventory and thus unable to switch
between different weapons in the same slot, like the M4A1 and M4A4, the deagle and the
revolver, and the MP7 and MP5.
Despite this I still got the achievement.
It’s the slot the weapon’s in that matters, so as long as you use either one of those
weapons it will count.
Interestingly, despite being unable to access my inventory, I did get to use both the deagle
and the revolver- thanks to armsrace equipping me with the latter for whatever reason.
Next are the hostage achievements.
For those of you who don’t know, in the early days of CS:GO, hostages would follow
you around, similarly to how they do in the older games.
This made me wonder if the achievements had been updated for this new ‘pick up and carry’
style of hostage mode.
DEAD SHEPHERD requires you to ‘kill an enemy who is carrying a hostage’, so it sounds
like this one has been updated for it, and sure enough, I got it rather quickly.
The other hostage achievements may not necessarily have been updated.
GOOD SHEPHERD requires that all hostages are saved- something that’s a lot easier with
the old method where you could have them all following you at once.
But now, you need another person to pick up the other one, then you both need to rescue
them at about the same sort of time.
This makes it harder.
Especially for me.
Using the free version, the person helping me had to be a BOT.
And these bots didn’t want to save those hostages!
It’s essential that you use the console command ‘bot_defer_to_human_goals 0’,
or they’ll never do it.
But even with this, they just DIDN’T want to help me!
They’d stare at the hostage, run off again, run out of time…
…It seemed as though they only wanted to pick them up if there were still enemies alive
somewhere in the map and if I wasn’t anywhere near them at the time.
After many infuriating failed attempts, I have to admit that this bit here was one of
the most intense moments I’ve had in Counter-Strike.
Thank you, bot_marvin.
I should have just made a custom map instead.
Oh and that other achievement I just unlocked was FREED WITH SPEED, which is the same as
Good Shepherd, but you have to do it within 90 seconds of the round starting.
And with that done, I’m happy to say that all hostage achievements do still work!
You have my word.
Though there’s no way I’m doing the 500 hostages rescued challenge to make sure.
BLACK BAG requires you win the round without making a sound, but while still killing an
enemy.
That meant walking / crouching everywhere.
I had no reason to think this one was broken, but it was interesting to note that jumping
doesn’t count as making a sound, even when it does.
I got the achievement any way.
And the rest of the questionable achievements were all map-related ones.
Aztec Map Veteran, for example, requires you to win 100 rounds on the map.
Which has been made more difficult since it was removed from the game.
You can’t just download it from the workshop, either!
That won’t count.
Turns out, you need to be playing on a map that’s called de_aztec that’s in csgo’s
maps folder.
It doesn’t check what the map is, only its name.
So simply make a copy of any map you fancy playing on (offline against bots, of course)
and name it de_aztec and you can get the achievement.
Yeah you could use Aztec downloaded from the workshop for this, just so long as it’s
placed in CS:GO’s main maps folder.
The same applies to all of the other achievements which require you to play a specific map.
The hardest of which will be MARKSMAN.
Just cos it takes some time.
This achievement requires you to win a match on all of the original arms race and demolition
maps, the list of which you can see here.
Shorttrain is the only one that isn’t available without downloading- check the video’s description
for a link to it, and instructions on how to get it to work by putting it in your main
maps folder.
Ethan over on Twitter reminded me of the WORLD OF PANE achievement, where you need to break
14 windows on a single round of Office.
Playing the map isn’t the problem here- Office is still in the game.
For now.
But in early October the map received an update that broke this by breaking the windows in
a different way.
What you need here is an older version of the map.
You can download this from the workshop, then find it in the maps/workshops folder and drag
it into the main maps folder, overwriting the version of office that’s in there already.
You’ll only be able to play on this version offline, but as you can see from my testing
here, it does make the achievement attainable.
Alternatively you find or make another map with at least 14 windows and rename it cs_office.
But my de_fenestration map isn’t ready just yet.
In conclusion, you can still unlock every achievement that Counter-Strike has.
It’s just a bit fiddly to do some of them.
I really hope that Valve addresses this at some point.
I know that most people don’t care.
But I do.
Right now, having to rename maps in order to get it to work is stupid.
But then, aren’t achievements stupid in the first place?
In fact, when you think about it… isn’t everything?
Nothing matters.
You might as well go crazy!
Host wild parties!
Spend all your money.
Follow me on twitter.