Week of 03 Mar 2024
“We killed you! And were right doing so.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker
- A Little to the Left
- NeoGeo Battle Coliseum
- Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
- Blood Knights
- Crysis 3
Man, I can’t believe how much fun I had with Hardspace: Shipbreaker on the way to the completion this week. Like, I knew I’d enjoy it as I dug in last week, but I didn’t think it would hit me so hard! I was dying every day to get home and play more, both for the gameplay and what little of a story they had. Apparently, the story elements were added later on? Oh man, and I was zipping around and zero-G flipping all over, tossing scrap into the processor or furnace like a boss. There were some small annoyances (I never really figured out how to properly decompress areas) but it wasn’t long until I was done. Overall, even on Standard difficulty, the game is quite easy. And I loved the commentary on corporate culture; seriously, LYNX Corporation is what Amazon would be if they were galactic. Er, will be. But, hey, for now the soul-crushing nightmare of galactic corporate greed is just in this very fun and entertaining simulation video game!
I’ll be seeing sparking cut points when I close my eyes for a while…
Achievements unlocked: 27 (+17) | Completed
He’s already a corporate stooge, they didn’t also have to give Hal such a punchable face…
Still working on my Daily Tidies in A Little to the Left. I’m now on day 15 of the 30 consecutive days I need for the achievement I’m going for, and I’m nervous as my two-week vacation approaches so I’ll have to make sure I’m on top of that, or else I’ll have to start all over! Otherwise, I’m not actually playing this yet, and am even waiting for the add-on to hopefully go on sale in the interim.
Achievements unlocked: 6 (+3) | Completion: 11%
And with the speedy completion of that leaving-Game Pass title, I finally had time to start getting some major cleanup done. I tend to choose the path of most resistance, so as I worked on the games I’d started back for the TA Genre Bingo event I kept picking ones I didn’t really wanna play, were longer, or I expected to be extra annoying compared to the rest of the games I had on my list. Well… at this point I’m finally through all of those! So, it was time to start knocking off the easier/shorter games, like NeoGeo Battle Coliseum. This is a fighting game (one of my very least favorite genres) but it is luckily a very short one. I started with beating a few different bosses, which you have to reach by performing and connecting with a various amount of D-Assault attacks for each one. For instance, do one during less than three different matches and you face Mizuki, or between four and five for King Lion. It’s not too bad, but to face the toughest boss, Goodman, you have to do a D-Assault on all six matches while also keeping your combined health over 50%. That one was a little more difficult, but I managed it. Then the true challenge of the completion: performing all 20 A/D Assault attacks in the game. These are activated by performing pinpoint-accurate button inputs, a long sequence of them, all during legit matches against the CPU in the campaign. Meaning you not only have to pull off the moves, but you also have to actually land it on an active opponent or else it won’t count. It is a pretty hardcore test of speed and dexterity.
…Or you can just go into the Practice mode and setup a macro to do it for you. Which is what I did. Boom, done.
Achievements unlocked: 81 (+5) | Completed
No one expects the fire tornado during a fighting competition!
Like Battle Coliseum, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is another one I’ve mostly been using to extend my streak now and then, but nothing beyond that. I managed to go and get all the multiplayer achievements done back in February with a dedicated group. Well, this week it was time for the campaign! I’ve always heard good things about this one, so I was hoping it would be a really fun time. But, alas, not so much. I mean, it was definitely easy, but the gameplay never stood out to me. I guess the raving could have been about the story but… well, I mostly played it on mute and never really turned on the subtitles so I didn’t engage with that aspect at all. Sure looked emotional and sad, though! Back to the gameplay, it isn’t exciting like I want in a shooter. I’d maybe place this more in the strategy genre, because while you CAN shoot at enemies, it’s more of a dance between hiding in cover and maneuvering the support squads under your command to take out the enemy. Though, I really did prefer just grabbing a rifle and taking matters into my own hands; the enemies are usually too busy trying to stay behind their flimsy cover or shoot at your squad to pay attention to you, especially if your first shot at them is your only one. It’s pretty short and overall quite easy. Even better, I easily managed to get all of the achievements as I played, so I never really had to go out of my way to check them off. Other than going around and locating all the Kilroys, of course.
Achievements unlocked: 43 (+23) | Completed
You know, you guys didn’t have to all stand in a line, right?
While not difficult or long, I was not looking forward to doing Blood Knights for one simple reason: it’s just bad. The first time I loaded it up I immediately got hard-locked out of continuing the game; not exactly the best first impression. But this Friday was finally the time, and I soon found it wasn’t that bad. It’s essentially like any other basic action-RPG I’ve done, but even shorter and easier. The guides on TA suggested sticking with ranged fighter Alysa, but I actually found myself sticking with the melee-focused Jeremy. I’d jump in with a critical strike, whirlwind, then jump out until my moves had recharged. It really was easy. I only changed this up for the bosses, and near the end of the game, when getting close to the enemies was just too dangerous. There were Blood Coins to collect and a single miscellaneous achievement for keeping a companion safe, but it was a very short and easy completion. Even with the necessary second playthrough to make the alternate choices.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
Can I ask you something? Is it some kind of rule that vampire women have to dress like…that?
Yet another game I got the multiplayer done for previously and put the rest on the backburner: Crysis 3. But this differentiates from Brothers in Arms in that I didn’t start this for Genre Bingo, and I was actually excited to play this. The action-stealth sci-fi shooter is right up my alley and would be much more fun than a strategy-heavy WWII one. At first, I was struggling a little, getting killed so quickly. It made me worry that playing on Supersoldier would be nigh impossible… until I realized that when I’d played through the tutorial mission back in August for a daily achievement I had started this playthrough already on that hardest difficulty! With a CELL intel guide at my side I set off into post-apocalypse NYC and pretty quickly burned through what I could on Saturday before heading out for a movie. I didn’t NEED to stay stealthed as much as I did, but I also kinda did because if an enemy so much as sees me I am almost guaranteed to die. There’s also a miscellaneous achievement to get in every stage, but I’ve already missed a couple. Oops. There are some annoying cumulative achievements near the end of the completion that might be a bit of a chore to mop up, but I guess we’ll find out!
Achievements unlocked: 35 (+11) | Completion: 58%
Highest ratio: 4.53
Disagree and Commit (Hardspace: Shipbreaker)
Lowest ratio: 1.09
Triple Digit Tidier (A Little to the Left)
