Week of 02 Oct 2022
“When is a croquet mallet like a billy club?”
Achievements Earned In:
- Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition
- Terraria ☁️
- Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
- Alice: Madness Returns
Needed an achievement quick on Sunday, so I scored a simple one in Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition. But I returned to it later in the week to try my hand at actually completing the game. Now, I hate Frogger, and most of these old arcade games in either remastered or original form, but this seemed painless enough. Most of the achievements were just for playing the various modes and the only real concern was the presence of a “challenge mode”. The hardest part of the game was anything involving round 5 because the timing of crossing the river gets kinda crazy. That last combo of turtle and log is annoying! It took more than a few tires, but both completing the Classic mode up to round 5 and the couple challenges involving were completed quick enough and I didn’t even get that angry. I finished it on Wednesday!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+9) | Completed
Y’know, I don’t think I really wanna cross this road…
Another add-on for Terraria this year?! That’s an annoying trend that seems to be ongoing, but for now if they keep it this simple I guess I don’t mind too much. Even better, Shawn1991 had the items I needed, so I jumped into his game and they popped quickly. Well, except for the one for killing the Deerclops. I took a Deer Thing back to my own world and summoned it again, this time unlocking the achievement. Another set done! Hopefully no more…
Achievements unlocked: 39 (+3) | Completed
Here it was: my final sprint to the end of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. I ended last week with only a few HVTs in the wild and one to capture in a mission. They were so annoying to finish up, with their teammates apparently ready and willing to murder them if it meant I didn’t get a chance to whisk them away. The ones in the quarry were definitely the most annoying, but soon I had them tucked away in some dark hole and ever closer to my achievement. Finally, I got to the end of the game and the final HVT, but apparently if you haven’t killed any HVTs throughout the game the end boss is taken prisoner automatically. There’s not even a final battle! You just do a lengthy QTE and the game ends. I mean, I’m glad I didn’t have to struggle through a hail of bullets like I’ve already done the rest of the game to capture some idiot, but it was very anticlimactic. A big sigh of relief when that achievement popped. Moving on, I next needed to unlock the rest of the shop items by completing bounties. The only two groups I had bounties left for were the P.L.A.V. and the PMC, for destroying billboards around the Venezuelan cities and for completing the various challenges, respectively. The billboards are easy enough and simply took driving around blasting the ones I saw. I also needed to collect spare parts (the game’s collectible scattered around the map), but there’s a glitch: collect 32 of them and getting near anywhere they’d spawned previously after loading the game up will score another collect. It’s weird but works like a charm. Even better, I got another glitch: the achievement for getting all the shop items unlocked without my having to complete all the PMC challenges! It still shows I’m missing one, but whatever works! All that was left was the grind to $1 billion, but you just choose a quick challenge and do it repeatedly. Overall, a pretty easy game!
Achievements unlocked: 40 (+7) | Completed
Falling into another week at work like
Next longer dived game I decided to work on was Alice: Madness Returns. Well, to be precise the first game, American McGee’s Alice, which is included as a free add-on. The added achievements are just for beating the game and is easy enough. But, wow, that game has not aged well. It controls so badly, the environments are incredibly bland, and the combat is hit-or-miss. The one boon is that you can save at any time from the pause menu. I wrapped up that storyline on Friday and happily moved to the more recent entry. It’s worlds better, and I’m actually paying attention to the narrative of the game. Well… mostly. It’s pretty wacky and every character you come across is delightfully kooky. I recognize some of them from the first game! The achievements are not difficult and there’s a trick to unlock the Nightmare-difficulty achievement without playing the whole game. I’ll absolutely be taking advantage of that. By the end of Saturday, I’d reached Chapter 3 of the game (out of six) and don’t see this taking much longer.
Achievements unlocked: 26 (+25) | Completion: 52%
No need to be rude. That’s just basic dentistry back then!
Highest ratio: 19.35
Feast of Midas (Terraria)
Lowest ratio: 1.02
No Happy Returns (Alice: Madness Returns)
