Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s Week 13 may be best used as a distraction from work, cleaning the kitchen, or finishing up some errands. It’s a laundry list of tasks to be crossed off.
Instead of breaking away from the past weeks’ “kill things” challenges by making increasing the chance for clever tactics, Valve has opted for the “grind it out” route.
The highlight of this week is “Noise Complaints,” week 13’s guardian mission on Inferno. Tasked with defending the B bombsite, players face down eight Ts and two Heavy Phoenixes all wielding Danger Zone’s Riot Shield. Armed with an M249, the highlight was closer to practicing holding down the mouse button while pointing at the floor, but catching the attackers in a crossfire is satisfying.
Operation Hydra’s missions weren’t all that challenging, but they were fun. Shattered Web lacks that with its new cookie cutter mission model, and the rest of the week’s challenges aren’t that much better.
WTB Earplugs
“WTB Earplugs” is a rehash of an earlier challenge that instead of using Dust 2’s deathmatch, players have to accomplish it in Casual. The template form that Valve has used for Shattered Web hasn’t done it any favors. “Earplugs” asks for an easy five kills. We pulled off six in the first round, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Pack a Playlist
“Pack a Playlist” asks for 40 kills in Arms Race, and the name of the challenge is a little on the nose. You’ll want a playlist because it’s artificial. See, shoot, repeat. Competitive Counter-Strike is about outthinking another human being. Arms Race has its place, and it deserves Valve’s highlights. But 40 kills can turn into a slog.
Stop Asking About the Train
“Stop Asking About the Train” brings players to Overpass and tasks them with tallying ten round wins. Thankfully they don’t have to be in the same game, so players who aren’t huge fans of the map won’t have to put on their serious faces for this one. On T side, a solid B execute with a Molotov on barrels and a heaven smoke is a surefire plant 90% of the time.Â
CT side can be much more difficult. Most players that don’t matchmake on Overpass don’t understand how to hold bathrooms, leading to Rotate Simulator 2020 for the B defenders. The trick is to make contact and fall back, slowly using utility until the final push onto A site. B site defenses make ample use of flashes and incendiary grenades to slow the push enough for reinforcements to arrive.
CSGO Starter Pack
“CSGO Starter Pack” is aimed at all those players that helped break Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s record player count last weekend. Unfortunately for the rest of us, a 200-kill marathon isn’t what we had in mind to welcome them to the community.
It’s rare to see someone drop even 40 kills in a Valve Deathmatch server, so this is a challenge to tick off during pregame warmups over the course of the week.
Pump up the Volume
Finally, “Pump up the Volume” takes players into Danger Zone and tasks them with killing something other than themselves with their own Breach Charges. The locked cargo containers littered about the map can be blown open with Breach Charges, and “A Loud Alternative” asks survival specialists to break open a grand total of five of them.
Breach Charges can be found in the yellow explosive boxes, and the locked doors are shown in the picture below. Blow up five of them and call it a day!
It’s not a guaranteed chance the charge will work, however, so this might take a few rounds of CSGO’s battle royale to nail down. Just like the rest of this week’s challenges, it takes a fair amount of time, not so much effort, to accomplish.
We’ll see if we get another patch in the coming weeks, otherwise the missions in Shattered Web might not be what Counter-Strike fans had hoped they would be.
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