Week of 04 Sep 2022
“Well if it isn’t a fluffy little piece of space dust.”
Achievements Earned In:
- The Artful Escape
- Mighty Goose
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
- Race with Ryan
Starting off this week, it was time to finally get around to the next slate of games leaving Game Pass. There were a good few I wanted to complete, but very little time. I settled on starting with the critically acclaimed one: The Artful Escape. I knew this was both short and easy, but really the gameplay isn’t what the game is about. It’s a psychedelic and artistic story about letting go and chasing your dreams, all told through very simple platforming and rhythm minigames. I can’t express how much I enjoyed this game! It was just so fun to dive into the characters and flashy visuals, and each opening chord during a boss battle was very hype. It’s truly a look at how video games can be art and I can’t recommend it enough.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completed
Intergalactic!
With the award-winner out of the way, I went for the (equally short) Mighty Goose, a good game in its own right and a very fun one. This is a very Metal Slug-style shooter, with so many explosions on screen at time I can’t even tell what’s going on. You just go from linear level to linear level mowing down anything that’s not goose-shaped. There’s no upgrading abilities or anything. You DO get new equipment, but it never makes a massive difference. The achievements ask you score an S-rank on every level and its mirror version, but once you beat the mirror worlds you gain the ability to be immortal and have infinite ammo, making those ranks a joke. One of the levels is actually kinda tough to get the necessary number of kills if you go all out, so you have to let the enemies spawn more before blasting everything. But, all-in-all, this is a very fun and easy completion. It actually received added DLC, but no new achievements, so hopefully that’s not something I have to worry about.
Achievements unlocked: 18 (+18) | Completed
Living in his head rent-free.
It was time to get back to trying to clean up that stupid Bean Dive I did earlier this year. Nexomon was out of here, so I setup a Twitter poll and asked my few followers what I should tackle next. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II was the lucky winner of the poll, so I started back into it on Wednesday. I really raged at the first game, specifically the Darth Maul fight on hard. It just ticked me off enough that I avoided the sequel for a long time. After diving it, now I have no choice! So far, I’m not regretting this decision. Of course, the easy playthrough was a piece of cake, and I was able to knock out most of the miscellaneous achievements and grabbed all but a couple collectibles. but the challenge came in the…well, I honestly didn’t even realize the game had challenges to complete. My worry began when I read the solution and comments and saw that one or two can be very annoying. I have such a low tolerance for B.S. and I hate raging, so I let out a big sigh as I headed into the mode. And at first my worries were well-founded, and I just could not get the platinum score no matter how well I nailed the combos. I spent almost an hour watching videos and making attempts at this…until I realized I only need gold on all of the challenges, meaning I’d gotten what I needed early on. Much easier! I also cleared the next four, leaving only five more to go! From what I can tell I’ve now completed the hardest ones, so hopefully it’s easy peasy.
Achievements unlocked: 34 (+33) | Completion: 59%
Had to jump onto Race with Ryan on Thursday via the Cloud as I visited the missus a few hours away. Got an achievement for winning my second race in the game, and off it went.
Achievements unlocked: 2 (+1) | Completion: 9%
Highest ratio: 3.13
Amplified (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
Made it home (The Artful Escape)
The Great Escape (Mighty Goose)
