Week of 23 Feb 2025
“Time to dig out the past.”
Achievements Earned In:
- PAW Patrol World
- GRIS
- Happy's Humble Burger Farm
- Power Rangers Super Samurai
- Hitman HD Pack
I’m not sure why, but the remaining zones in PAW Patrol World went far faster than the first are, Adventure Bay, did. I couldn’t tell if I was just more adjusted to what I needed to do for the various activities or the following zones weren’t as well-developed, but they flew by! All you do is go around completing the help requests while checking around for postcards, the various dogs’ tags, and treats. Nothing is TOO hidden, since this is obviously a game for very young children, so just checking obvious dead ends or cliffs or groupings of trees makes it trivial to locate everything. I also completed this game faster than the TrueAchievements completion estimate listed: my full completion video is five hours long, while TA has a 6-8 hour range. Would be even faster if you could skip dialogue… which you can’t. So now I unintentionally know far, far more about the PAW Patrol than I did before. Yay?
Achievements unlocked: 21 (+10) | Completed
Thank you for the affirmation, human taskmaster!
Besides PAW Patrol, the other game leaving the Game Pass library I wanted to get to was GRIS, a narrative platformer about grief and depression. Considering the subject matter, I’m really happy the game includes no text or voicework or much beyond some visual storytelling through symbolism and such; I may have been really affected by it. But, if you’re just speeding through the game following a guide for the collectibles (and some help with the simple puzzles) you can more or less gloss over any deeper meaning. I indulged a little, I’ll admit, but I do like to skirt with danger! This is another one where the TrueAchievements estimates to get all the achievements was way off, with their range being another 6-8 hours and my full completion video coming in at around 2.5 hours. That’s quite the discrepancy! Full transparency, of course I clip my completion videos down from the raw footage, but in this case it was only removing a few additional attempts at escaping the eel monster without getting hit and a partial playthrough of a part of chapter 3 to feed the forest friend some apples. I can definitely say that all added, maybe, 10 minutes to my full playthrough of the game. I know where these estimates come from, but are my fellow achievement hunters that bad at games and/or efficiency?
Very pretty game!
Achievements unlocked: 17 (+17) | Completed
Every screen from this game could be a print on a wall.
Often when I go to TommyToday’s house, they have me try all the recent garbage (and sometimes not-so-garbage-) horror games they’ve bought. It can be fun, as many of them I’ll never get to myself, but sometimes I play one and it sticks in my brain just right and makes me want to play (see last October when I played so many horror games). This past week I tried a little game called Happy's Humble Burger Farm while visiting, which very quickly reveals itself to maybe not be a simple fry cook simulator. And it was so surprisingly interesting that I decided to play it for reals this week! It’s so weird, and definitely tries to be a life simulator game, but leans into the absurd premise and has a cool narrative behind it all. Achievement-wise, the game is VERY easy, and doesn’t truly require a whole lot of skill. Things can get a little fast-paced as you near your final shift at the Burger Farm, with the fryer and hot dog roller and over all going at once, but it’s not terrible. I can’t go into much else without revealing some of the plot, but following a guide you should be able to get the full completion on one playthrough!
Achievements unlocked: 30 (+30) | Completed
Is… this cow trying to seduce me?
It’s been a minute, but I decided to give a little effort to work on Power Rangers Super Samurai this week, playing a fair bit on Thursday. It started with BlueMelodia helping me with an early-game co-op achievement, but I just felt like continuing once that was done. I’m not sure what happened to my progress in the story mode, but I had to start back from stage 3. The game overall is quite short, but… well, it’s OG Kinect. I hurt my arm just trying to swing hard enough to get that accursed machine to track my movements. And then the next day I hurt my knees squatting for the Training Mode. Can’t blame Kinect for that one; I’m just getting old. But man it didn’t work well, so that makes me worried for some of these achievements…
Achievements unlocked: 23 (+6) | Completion: 49%
I had some time between my “lower-than-good popular opinion” 2024 game for March and the announcement of the games leaving Game Pass on March 15th, so I decided to hit the backlog. Hitman HD Pack has been a consideration a few times when picking a new game, but… they’re it’s a bundle of pretty old games. That means the QOL and design is gonna be lacking, which usually means the achievements are also tough. But, screw it, I’ll figure it out, and decided to start it on Saturday. This pack includes both the second and third games in the series, so of course I started with the second game, Silent Assassin, on Professional difficulty. The beginning of my playthrough was hardest as you have to get at least five “Silent Assassin” rankings, and this is for being an efficient and silent hitman. Once I got the fifth ranking on level five, it was time to start getting a little sloppier. Even when I’m not going for it, following guides for the perfect ranking is still the best route as these will usually avoid my getting filled with bullets. I managed to complete the first two areas (Russia and Japan) before the week ended, and I’m not seeing anything so far that would give me concern in finishing this up.
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completion: 20%
Highest ratio: 3.05
You can do anything as a team (Power Rangers Super Samurai)
Lowest ratio: 1.00
Red (GRIS)
