Week of 05 Jan 2025
“We’re hot to roll up a car now!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Figment: Journey Into the Mind
- We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie
- Escape Academy
- The Exit 8
- Those Who Remain
It was into the final area of Figment: Journey Into the Mind as Sunday wrapped up, and like the rest of the game it was very simple and easy. This was a cute little game, but soon enough one issue arose: an achievement glitched in the second area. It’s a known glitch, and has an easy enough fix. Sadly, it requires my having to play back up to that point. Didn’t take long, and the trick to get the achievement to pop worked perfectly. Another neat game knocked out!
Achievements unlocked: 23 (+7) | Completed
I love the Katamari series, and have been meaning to start We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie for a bit now. I was saving it for a nice chill playthrough when I wanted to relax. I got sick early in the week, so it was time for just such a game. This is also one of the easiest completions, if not the easiest, in the series. You simply have to play through all the silly stages, helping the “fans” of the series. There’s nothing even remotely difficult here, and the whimsical and colorful world can take centerstage. The only annoyance is having to complete the longest stage in the game at minimum six times for collectibles and achievements. Talk about artificial inflation of the completion time! I really hope we either get more remasters of older titles, or stacks of the lists available. I may need to do the Windows stack of the first REROLL title soon, which will give me the full series completion!
Achievements unlocked: 35 (+35) | Completed
What a cozy small town scene. Can’t wait to smash it into a ball and have my father shoot it into space.
Now that it’s leaving Game Pass, it was time for TommyToday and I to sit down with Escape Academy and knock out the added Tournament of Puzzles achievements! These are sadly all competitive, no co-op fun here, so we took turns in two of the modes to speed things up. There’s a third, “Tic-Tac-Toe”, that isn’t too much longer if we don’t let each other win, so we actually competed a little for that one. Then, you need to do 50 matches overall for the final achievement. When it comes to the three levels for this mode, the worst is easily the Hackannery because the level design is confusing and finding the items and puzzles isn’t super easy or intuitive. We settled on the Tomb of the First Escapist as our favorite map. I’m hoping these are the only achievements ever added as I won’t have access to the game anymore, but I guess time will tell. One word of advice: mute the VO when you start; Coach Yoach is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever had to listen to in a videogame.
Achievements unlocked: 40 (+13) | Completed
Cowabunga!
One of the coolest trends to happen in 2024 was the addition of many of the popular indie horror games getting Xbox ports. Home Safety Hotline, Amanda the Adventurer, Poppy’s Playtime, and others all arrived with achievements and everything. Well, looks like it’s continuing in 2025 as this week The Exit 8 had a surprise release. If you haven’t heard, it’s a popular title where you walk through a seemingly nondescript metro tunnel and soon realize something isn’t quite right. The goal is to either continue through if everything is on the up-and-up to proceed, or turn tail and run back where you came from if something’s weird. If you’re correct, you proceed to the next exit; otherwise, you end up back at Exit 0. And boy does it get weird! Sometimes it’s just the texture of the tiles on the floor are different, or a wave of red liquid comes tumbling down the tunnel. Most of the completion is also just that, as you’re needing to “identify” (e.g. running away) all of the anomalies in the game. You also have to complete a run without any errors, and a run in under 5 minutes. The game was super neat! Crazy how good a simple concept and execution can be. I jumped at least once! But, all-in-all this takes about an hour to finish. I hope the sequel is longer!
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completed
Hello, peeps. I have never seen you down here before, so you must be anamolies.
Also leaving Game Pass on Jan 15th is Those Who Remain, a walking simulator style horror game that, so far, has not impressed me. You’re tasked by some weird entity to judge the conspirators in covering up of a crime in a small town you crash outside of. There are shade creatures in the dark, and two monstrous creatures out to get you that pop up now and then. It’s honestly not super engaging and the gameplay isn’t great, but luckily each of the three playthroughs I need to do is quite short. Hopefully I can get this done real soon.
Achievements unlocked: 8 (+8) | Completion: 57%
Highest ratio: 7.78
Senior Varsity Puzzlete (Escape Academy)
Lowest ratio: 1.03
We Love Katamari Damacy! (We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie)
