BioShock 2 Remastered
53 Achievements
15-20h
GOG
Against All Odds
Finished the game on the hardest difficulty level.
7.1%
How to unlock the Against All Odds achievement in BioShock 2 Remastered - Definitive Guide
If you follow my method, you can get this achievement within 6-8 hours .
We will be exploiting a glitch, which will give you infinite health / no damage. However, you won't be able to do so until mid game - so for half the game, we have no choice but to play it normally, and Hard mode is (you guessed it) pretty difficult. However, an average FPS gamer should get to the midway point with their sanity in tact, and by the mission Siren Alley we will be repeating a glitch that will mean you will not die at all, andcomplete the remainder of the game in about 3 hours.
Disclaimer: this walkthrough assumes you've completed the game once, and understand how gatherers gardens, health, adam and eve, weapons, the missions etc. work. If this is your first play through, you're in the wrong place.
Before we start, I strongly recommend the following:
1) Do every other achievement (DLC doesn't matter) before this one. This step is not compulsory but STRONGLY recommended. Collectibles, little sisters, weapon stations etc. are NOT your focus on this play through. Just get hard mode done.
2) Enable vita-chambers. You will die a lot until the mid way point in the game. To try this with vita-chambers disabled is utter suicide unless you are a complete veteran of this game.
3) We will be ignoring most little sisters, and harvesting any we do need. In my opinion, the game is much more enjoyable when you save the little sisters; however, it will make this achievement SIGNIFICANTLY harder, so we have little choice. Sorry
4) Make a fresh save for each mission. This allows you to revert to a previous save only 1 mission prior if a game breaking glitch happens. BioShock are some of the best games of all time, but glitches do occur. I was more unlucky on 1 than 2, but better to be safe than sorry.
Playthrough
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Step 1: Start Game on Hard, with Vita Chambers enabled. Play through normally until the start of Siren Alley. Make sure you have at least 200 ADAM left, and don't buy any plasmid slots.
I've put some detailed tips to help you out as this isn't easy
Optional Tips:
- There are 3 little sisters before Siren Alley, but we will only be resolving two. The first one, in Ryan's Amusements, complete the gathers and harvest (the gathers are compulsory with this one). Harvest for maximum adam. In Pauper's Drop, there are two little sisters. Only grab one and harvest straight away. You should have plenty of ADAM from these 2 a lone (160 x 2 for harvests plus a little more for the first 2 gathers.) Leave the third alone, as it will spawn a big sister which are very difficult on ahrd and will just drain your resources. With the 1st little sister, the big sister is unavoidable.
- Don't worry about dying. Sounds silly, but I recommend dying often. Money is very, very scarce on hard mode, and is the single most challenging part of the difficulty. The enemies aren't overly hard, its your scarce resources. Limit your use of health kits and accept death instead unless using a health kit is obvious (i.e. you have the discipline to use only one and have 5 at your disposal etc.). With Vita's enabled, you'll simply respawn with half of your health bar, all your kits, hypos, ammo and money intact. Secondly, all the enemies will be damaged to the extent they were before you died (so if a big daddy only had 25% when you died, they still will). Thus, its better to use and abuse the vita chambers rather than use up all your kits, ammo and hypos
- Plasmids are hella useful. Like really useful, especially before the glitch mission (Siren Alley). Use shock and melee combo, fire, and hypnotise. Just remember that EVE hypos are scarce, and always have a couple on you if you can.
-Linked to the above, spend your money on ammo. This is really important as you will have a minimum of two encounters.
- Don't buy plasmid slots the Gatherer's Garden!!!!. Step 2 relies on this.
- Hack all health stations, vending machines and ammo machines you use. If you aim for the blue, it will chuck out kits, ammo etc. at you. Also, hacked health stations damage enemies who try to health up there.
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Step 2: As soon as you get to Siren Alley, use the glitch exploit for the rest of the game to get infinite health.
Glitch time. We will need a plasmid called Scout and will be glitching it. This plasmid is unobtainable before Siren Alley, hence the wait, but it is worth it trust me.
Prepping the Glitch (only time we will have to do this):
- Go to the gene bank at the start of the mission, in the main hub area. Check how many plasmids (top row) and how many slots you have. You need to be sure that you can swap out any plasmid for one not equipped; in layman's terms, have more plasmids than slots. So basically if you have, say, 4 plasmid slots, make sure you have 5+ plasmids, (any plasmids not in use show as a list to the right of the plasmid inventory). If you listened to step 1 and didn't buy plasmid slots, you will almost certainly have more plasmids than slots anyway. If you didn't, you'll be fine as long as you have some ADAM (150ish)
- Go to the gatherer's garden RIGHT next to this gene bank. Buy Scout for 40 ADAM. If buying this plasmid means you have more plasmids than slots, great. If not, buy another cheap plasmid. (it does not matter which, there are lots for about 60 ADAM - something like Insect Swarm of Winter's Blast will do).
-Go back to the gene bank we were just at, and equip scout.
Make a manual save as we will be doing the glitch. Obviously, this requires EVE like any other plasmid would
Doing the Glitch (repeat this step at the start of every mission):
[bStand by the gene bank so the prompt to press X to enter is on screen, but don't press x yet.
-When you're ready, use scout with LT, and INSTANTLY press A to enter the gene bank whilst the animation is in progress. The timing is quite specific but very quick to repeat. If you entered the gene bank with the fist clenched, that's normally a good indicator.
- In the gene bank, swap out scout for any other plasmid not equipped. This is why we needed more plasmids than slots. Scout should now NOT be equipped, and should be in the list on the right.
-If done correctly, you will be out of your body as if you were using scout, but scout will not be in your plasmids inventory. The plasmid you replaced it with will also be blacked out. Press B to return to your body and, if done right, you will now be immune to any damage. Like, anything, you can't die. A video before is attached for reference, as it can take a couple of tries.
YOU CAN NOW RUN AROUND AND NOT TAKE ANY DAMAGE FROM ENEMIES, PLASMIDS OR FALL DAMAGE.!!!!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 3: Complete the rest of the game, doing this glitch at the beginning of every level. . Be mindful that the only thing that will "reset" this glitch, and make you did it again, are load screens at the end of levels (unavoidable) and harvesting / rescuing little sisters (avoidable)
You will have infinite health from now on, so you can literally ignore enemies and follow arrows to your objectives, unless of course your objective requires you to / won't trigger until you kill waves of enemies. Big battles are doddles now. Also, ignore little sister and big daddies for the rest of the game. You'll waste ammo, & by being immune, you won't need to spend ADAM because you won't need to upgrade to not die (if that make sense). Just use what you've got. Research isn't really necessary either.
FINALLY (BUT VERY IMPORTANT)
1) you will have to do the glitch once, and only once, a mission (except for Dionysus Park*), as the load screen resets the glitch. At the start of a new level after Siren's Alley, simply find a gene bank and repeat the "Doing the Glitch" steps above. There is always one very close to the beginning of the level.
Dionysus Park is the main exception to this (the mission after Siren's Alley.) This is because...
2) Resolving the little sisters in any way (harvesting or rescuing) resets the glitch, for some reason. So AVOID little sisters. You won't need them, you can't die, and you don't need the Adam. The reason Dionysus Park is the exception is because you have to resolve 3 little sisters as part of the story, as you know by now. Thus, you will be forced to repeat the glitch several times. The main hub area has a gene bank, so it shouldn't be too stressful.
22/7/20: As stated by Rowdy722: : "The glitch also gets reset after you take control of the Little Sister and collect the Big Sister suit. But it’s only a small fight, then the next level".
Largely, after Dionysus Park however, just do the glitch once at the start of Fontaine Futuristics, once at the start of Persephone, and once at the start of Inner Persephone
Hope this helps everyone, this method should make a hard achievement a moderately simple on.
We will be exploiting a glitch, which will give you infinite health / no damage. However, you won't be able to do so until mid game - so for half the game, we have no choice but to play it normally, and Hard mode is (you guessed it) pretty difficult. However, an average FPS gamer should get to the midway point with their sanity in tact, and by the mission Siren Alley we will be repeating a glitch that will mean you will not die at all, andcomplete the remainder of the game in about 3 hours.
Disclaimer: this walkthrough assumes you've completed the game once, and understand how gatherers gardens, health, adam and eve, weapons, the missions etc. work. If this is your first play through, you're in the wrong place.
Before we start, I strongly recommend the following:
1) Do every other achievement (DLC doesn't matter) before this one. This step is not compulsory but STRONGLY recommended. Collectibles, little sisters, weapon stations etc. are NOT your focus on this play through. Just get hard mode done.
2) Enable vita-chambers. You will die a lot until the mid way point in the game. To try this with vita-chambers disabled is utter suicide unless you are a complete veteran of this game.
3) We will be ignoring most little sisters, and harvesting any we do need. In my opinion, the game is much more enjoyable when you save the little sisters; however, it will make this achievement SIGNIFICANTLY harder, so we have little choice. Sorry
4) Make a fresh save for each mission. This allows you to revert to a previous save only 1 mission prior if a game breaking glitch happens. BioShock are some of the best games of all time, but glitches do occur. I was more unlucky on 1 than 2, but better to be safe than sorry.
Playthrough
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 1: Start Game on Hard, with Vita Chambers enabled. Play through normally until the start of Siren Alley. Make sure you have at least 200 ADAM left, and don't buy any plasmid slots.
I've put some detailed tips to help you out as this isn't easy
Optional Tips:
- There are 3 little sisters before Siren Alley, but we will only be resolving two. The first one, in Ryan's Amusements, complete the gathers and harvest (the gathers are compulsory with this one). Harvest for maximum adam. In Pauper's Drop, there are two little sisters. Only grab one and harvest straight away. You should have plenty of ADAM from these 2 a lone (160 x 2 for harvests plus a little more for the first 2 gathers.) Leave the third alone, as it will spawn a big sister which are very difficult on ahrd and will just drain your resources. With the 1st little sister, the big sister is unavoidable.
- Don't worry about dying. Sounds silly, but I recommend dying often. Money is very, very scarce on hard mode, and is the single most challenging part of the difficulty. The enemies aren't overly hard, its your scarce resources. Limit your use of health kits and accept death instead unless using a health kit is obvious (i.e. you have the discipline to use only one and have 5 at your disposal etc.). With Vita's enabled, you'll simply respawn with half of your health bar, all your kits, hypos, ammo and money intact. Secondly, all the enemies will be damaged to the extent they were before you died (so if a big daddy only had 25% when you died, they still will). Thus, its better to use and abuse the vita chambers rather than use up all your kits, ammo and hypos
- Plasmids are hella useful. Like really useful, especially before the glitch mission (Siren Alley). Use shock and melee combo, fire, and hypnotise. Just remember that EVE hypos are scarce, and always have a couple on you if you can.
-Linked to the above, spend your money on ammo. This is really important as you will have a minimum of two encounters.
- Don't buy plasmid slots the Gatherer's Garden!!!!. Step 2 relies on this.
- Hack all health stations, vending machines and ammo machines you use. If you aim for the blue, it will chuck out kits, ammo etc. at you. Also, hacked health stations damage enemies who try to health up there.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 2: As soon as you get to Siren Alley, use the glitch exploit for the rest of the game to get infinite health.
Glitch time. We will need a plasmid called Scout and will be glitching it. This plasmid is unobtainable before Siren Alley, hence the wait, but it is worth it trust me.
Prepping the Glitch (only time we will have to do this):
- Go to the gene bank at the start of the mission, in the main hub area. Check how many plasmids (top row) and how many slots you have. You need to be sure that you can swap out any plasmid for one not equipped; in layman's terms, have more plasmids than slots. So basically if you have, say, 4 plasmid slots, make sure you have 5+ plasmids, (any plasmids not in use show as a list to the right of the plasmid inventory). If you listened to step 1 and didn't buy plasmid slots, you will almost certainly have more plasmids than slots anyway. If you didn't, you'll be fine as long as you have some ADAM (150ish)
- Go to the gatherer's garden RIGHT next to this gene bank. Buy Scout for 40 ADAM. If buying this plasmid means you have more plasmids than slots, great. If not, buy another cheap plasmid. (it does not matter which, there are lots for about 60 ADAM - something like Insect Swarm of Winter's Blast will do).
-Go back to the gene bank we were just at, and equip scout.
Make a manual save as we will be doing the glitch. Obviously, this requires EVE like any other plasmid would
Doing the Glitch (repeat this step at the start of every mission):
[bStand by the gene bank so the prompt to press X to enter is on screen, but don't press x yet.
-When you're ready, use scout with LT, and INSTANTLY press A to enter the gene bank whilst the animation is in progress. The timing is quite specific but very quick to repeat. If you entered the gene bank with the fist clenched, that's normally a good indicator.
- In the gene bank, swap out scout for any other plasmid not equipped. This is why we needed more plasmids than slots. Scout should now NOT be equipped, and should be in the list on the right.
-If done correctly, you will be out of your body as if you were using scout, but scout will not be in your plasmids inventory. The plasmid you replaced it with will also be blacked out. Press B to return to your body and, if done right, you will now be immune to any damage. Like, anything, you can't die. A video before is attached for reference, as it can take a couple of tries.
YOU CAN NOW RUN AROUND AND NOT TAKE ANY DAMAGE FROM ENEMIES, PLASMIDS OR FALL DAMAGE.!!!!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 3: Complete the rest of the game, doing this glitch at the beginning of every level. . Be mindful that the only thing that will "reset" this glitch, and make you did it again, are load screens at the end of levels (unavoidable) and harvesting / rescuing little sisters (avoidable)
You will have infinite health from now on, so you can literally ignore enemies and follow arrows to your objectives, unless of course your objective requires you to / won't trigger until you kill waves of enemies. Big battles are doddles now. Also, ignore little sister and big daddies for the rest of the game. You'll waste ammo, & by being immune, you won't need to spend ADAM because you won't need to upgrade to not die (if that make sense). Just use what you've got. Research isn't really necessary either.
FINALLY (BUT VERY IMPORTANT)
1) you will have to do the glitch once, and only once, a mission (except for Dionysus Park*), as the load screen resets the glitch. At the start of a new level after Siren's Alley, simply find a gene bank and repeat the "Doing the Glitch" steps above. There is always one very close to the beginning of the level.
Dionysus Park is the main exception to this (the mission after Siren's Alley.) This is because...
2) Resolving the little sisters in any way (harvesting or rescuing) resets the glitch, for some reason. So AVOID little sisters. You won't need them, you can't die, and you don't need the Adam. The reason Dionysus Park is the exception is because you have to resolve 3 little sisters as part of the story, as you know by now. Thus, you will be forced to repeat the glitch several times. The main hub area has a gene bank, so it shouldn't be too stressful.
22/7/20: As stated by Rowdy722: : "The glitch also gets reset after you take control of the Little Sister and collect the Big Sister suit. But it’s only a small fight, then the next level".
Largely, after Dionysus Park however, just do the glitch once at the start of Fontaine Futuristics, once at the start of Persephone, and once at the start of Inner Persephone
Hope this helps everyone, this method should make a hard achievement a moderately simple on.
50 Comments
Still works as of 17/12/16. Lazy developers being lazy.
If you already finished the game once with vita chambers off, you can turn them on for this playthrough, since there is no real penalty like in BS: Infinite 1999 mode.
You die, return to a Vita Chamber with half a bar of health, some first aid kits and Eve.
And in case you were in the middle of fighting a Big Sister, the timer restarts where you can prepare for her attacks but she still has the same amount of health as when you died (in my case it was half a bar of energy twice on her part).
Don't waste tons of ammo, since Telekenisis does the trick better most of the time with returning fireballs and debris on her.
Also: After the saved ADAM for the Scout plasmid and extra slot, you have loads of ADAM to spent. Use them on the wave 2 plasmids (especially the Insect Swarm 2 does a great job in damage and following Houdini Splicers on the map, making it easier to take those out and some extra tonic slots. Eve Saver and Eve Saver+ are great tonics to save more Eve on the long run and big waves of enemies.
And if possible for the sometimes harder spots (like the beginning of Inner Persophone, where you can get a slap of two or three from Splicers) to have one extra first aid kit is no shame!
If you already finished the game once with vita chambers off, you can turn them on for this playthrough, since there is no real penalty like in BS: Infinite 1999 mode.
You die, return to a Vita Chamber with half a bar of health, some first aid kits and Eve.
And in case you were in the middle of fighting a Big Sister, the timer restarts where you can prepare for her attacks but she still has the same amount of health as when you died (in my case it was half a bar of energy twice on her part).
Don't waste tons of ammo, since Telekenisis does the trick better most of the time with returning fireballs and debris on her.
Also: After the saved ADAM for the Scout plasmid and extra slot, you have loads of ADAM to spent. Use them on the wave 2 plasmids (especially the Insect Swarm 2 does a great job in damage and following Houdini Splicers on the map, making it easier to take those out and some extra tonic slots. Eve Saver and Eve Saver+ are great tonics to save more Eve on the long run and big waves of enemies.
And if possible for the sometimes harder spots (like the beginning of Inner Persophone, where you can get a slap of two or three from Splicers) to have one extra first aid kit is no shame!
By TheBongoFury on 18 Dec 2016 13:59
Awesome solution but I believe that it is actually "A" to enter the Gene Bank on the Xbox One. "X" is used on PS4. Unless of course there is another controller layout that i'm not using. Positive anyway.
By HumdrumAcorn118 on 27 Oct 2016 18:25