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.
