Day Two Hundred-sixteen: Evening of March 8th 2010

I completed the collection of the M-Com units in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (and the unit that I listed in yesterday’s entry would have been the only one I wouldn’t have found). Now the only thing left to do is completing the weapon collection, which is down to a single weapon - the XM8.

Time to initiate a Google search. The following “digg xm8 location bad company 2” was typed in, and a number of hits resulted (I used the Digg link because it produced a successful link to the find the M-com collectibles). Some of the hits were demo videos of the XM8, others were descriptions of the weapon, there were occasional comparisons of the XM8 to other weapons, even a few hit saying the weapon was over rated, but no digg hits on the first two pages. I did manage to find a link at www.vgevo.com (Video Game Evolution) that contained descriptions that seem to be done by the same author of the M-Com locations I found through Digg. This set didn’t have the maps that the M-Com locations had. The description for this particular weapons was clear enough:

Weapon Collectable #21 — XM8:

“You will find the XM8 in the mission titled High Value Target. This is the only mission I was able to find the XM8. Once you get out of the humvees, there will be dead soldiers right near you. The XM8’s will be laying on the ground by them. If you already have the different XM8 S model out, then it will just pick up the ammo and still count as collected. Now on my second playthrough I was still unable for it to show the weapon icon as collected just like every other one has shown so far. This still happened even after not having the XM8 S with me. It did however make the sound and show up in my collectables as collected.”

I was on a second run through after the M-Com locations, when I tried this. The weapon was spotted, I moved over to it, and it didn’t show that it could be picked up. I was holding the XM8-S, which I liked using, but there was no indication that I had collected the weapon's ammo. So now I’m puzzled, I’m not quit sure what to do. I ran up the hill, found a weapon cache, swapped out my XM8-S with another weapon, and returned to the location of the XM8 only to find everything - bodies, debris, weapons - was gone. Now I’m even more confused. I’ll move through the scenario and see if I can pick up an XM8 that someone drops.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make whatever kind of contribution that you can afford.