Riptide Operation - Week 4: Gendarmerie [Let's Play Games #7]

The new week brought a new set of missions in CS:GO but also some exciting news and a case opening. So, as much as I love sharing my experience doing the weekly missions in this game, I couldn't stay away from opening a case with the stars earned so far but also look into the new update with the Stockholm competition currently going on.

Stockholm 2021 is the first major championship held with gaming teams in the last 2 years because COVID did affect all domains, even if we are talking about virtual games. For those of you who don't know this game too well, we are talking about real teams like every sport has (e.g.: football, basketball, rugby, volleyball, etc.). I know, it's a virtual game/sport but the teams do have real competitions and meet in different countries in the world where they compete against each other and play hard for the prizes which are not little at all.

I used to be a fan of this kind of competitions and never miss the chance to purchase the in-game coins that allowed me to express my bets on which teams I think will qualify further, but as the time passed and priorities became others, I stepped away from doing this and now I can only support the teams by watching the streams with the matches they are playing.

Anyway, on a simple search on Google, I found out that there are around 1,124.55 thousands of gamers who are playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in 2021, which is a big opportunity to take advance of any news brought to the game because we do have the experience from the past where the stickers used for bets on a competition held in 2015, namely ESL One Katowice, are being sold these days for hundreds, and even thousands of euros, the most expensive sticker being for the team Vox Eminor (Holo) that has the current price of 1.478,11€ .

Of course, nobody knows how the prices will evolve during the time, and most likely you will need to wait a few years to get a nice profit, but for people who love the game, it's a great opportunity to earn some extra $$$ which in the end can make a change be felt in real life too, and not only in the game.

The new competition comes with two possibilities of purchasing the viewer pass as it follows:

1. “Stockholm 2021 Viewer Pass” which contains the coin to track your progress throughout the event, full access to the Stockholm 2021 Pick'Em Challenge, Steam.tv chat flairs, coin challenges and unlimited graffiti opportunities in-game for the duration of the event.
2. “Stockholm 2021 Viewer Pass + 3 Souvenir Tokens” brings in addition to the previous pass 3 Souvenir Tokens that can be redeemed for a Souvenir Package from the completed match of your choice which can be either sold for money or opened and try your luck on a more expensive weapon skin.

The price for the first version is of 8.50€ while the 2nd pass is valued at 15.25€ and 50% of the money gathered from sellings go to the teams and organizations taking part in the PGL Major Championship. However, since I already spent a similar amount of money for the Riptide Operation which I'm sure it will help me get back the invested money quite easy, I'll have to think twice before purchasing the pass.

Talking about Riptide Operation, the Week 4: Gendarmerie brought a new set of 4 missions to be completed for the total of 8 stars that can be earned and used to open cases and other skins for the character, weapons and skins:

1. Deathmatch - Nuke - Atomic Punk: where you have to make 10 kills from different positions on the map [★]
2. Competitive - Short Match - Insertion II: being needed to either win 21 rounds in separate matches or win an entire match [★★★]
3. Guardian - Sirocco - Rock The Kasbah: where you are required to kill 20 bots with shotgun weapons [★★]
4. Casual - Group Sigma - The First Five Cuts Are The Deepest: you have to make 5 kills with the first 5 bullets of the round or get 30 kills without being limited on the number of bullets used to attack the enemies [★★]

Since 3 out of the 4 missions available were going to require more attention from us, I decided to begin by playing the first mission where the positions you have to take to make the 10 kills are:

• Outside;
• Bombsite A;
• Lobby;
• Ramp;
• Bombsite B;
• Secret;
• Outside (again);
• T Start;
• Top of Silo;
• CT Start.

The interesting thing about this mission is that you can't make the kills randomly, but only complete the objectives in sequence.
From what I noticed, the most challenging position to get a kill from was the Top of Silo which is basically the place where you are going to be the most exposed and almost any player be able to see you on the map, so you definitely need to have a good reaction against enemies and get those kills faster!

The next mission I completed was the 4th one, on the Casual Mode, where I had to play around 3 matches to get the 5 kills required with the first 5 bullets of the round. Either way, even if I wouldn't manage to do it, I would be completing the mission with the other option of getting 30 kills in total because it was already a while since I was playing CS:GO and the kills were already close to the magic number requested.

For the next 2 missions, I needed my boyfriend to join the game and make a team with.
As much as I love matchmaking, I gotta say that I started being a fan of the Guardian Mode where you basically compete against 5 bots but where you are requested to make the kills with a specific weapon. For this time we had to kill the bots with shotguns which are pretty challenging if the enemies are not close enough to you.

Another challenge was the number of bullets a shotgun has, which is quite low compared with any other weapon and the reload time is visibly longer than usual. The single way to make the kills is to shot the head of the enemy, otherwise, you won't have enough time to kill him due to the bots which are using normal guns and most likely will shoot faster than you.

The last but not least mission we completed, was the Competitive - Short Match on Insertion II, which was our first time playing on that map. Insertion II represents a map where you don't need to defuse the bomb to win the round but save hostages that are well protected by the terrorists... and I've never been good at doing this.

Happily, we met some cool teammates who knew the map better than us and helped us complete the task from the first try, winning the match.

Anyway, as a little treat because is already one month since we started making the missions of the Riptide Operation from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, I decided to open a case with some agents that got my attention.

I know that I said that most likely I'll collect all 100 stars and only decide what to do with them in the last moment before the operation is gone, but I really felt like wanting to change the character I play with on the Terrorists side. The case I wanted to open is with those jungle thematic skins that remind me of Rambo and Lara Croft - yet another series that I loved!

Being a girl gamer, I was rather aiming for the Vypa Sista of the Revolution skin, but I wasn't lucky enough and only got the Medium Rare Crasswater one. After playing some matches with it, I decided to list it on the market and use the money to buy the desired skin, so most likely, you will notice a difference from now on when I'll take in-game screenshots while I'm playing on the T side. 😃