Week of 06 Aug 2023
“You’re blind drunk! This is an outrage!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Rio
- Crysis 3
- Pac-Man
- Joy Ride Turbo
- Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga
I scarcely played Rio this week, only managing to get a cumulative achievement for getting stuns with a particular powerup. I’d found a minigame that lasts forever and spawns most of the powerups with achievements attached, so I just sat in there a while, picking up Chili and Bodyguard and Shock and getting progress towards my achievements. I could easily have finished this game, but it fell on the backburner while I worked on other things.
Achievements unlocked: 26 (+1) | Completion: 52%
Boy, I’m just really piling on the games to play! Of course this week EA decided to annouce that they’d be pulling the plug on the servers for Crysis 3. I’d always wanted to finish up this series, but that 6-month achievement in Crysis 2 (and the fact it can be buggy) always spooked me. Now that this game’s servers are biting the dust, I had to jump in and at least knock out those multiplayer achievements. This in of itself was at first kinda bothersome, because you have to complete the achievements in public lobbies and those require a minimum of six people to start. I’m never a fan of relying on others to boost achievements, much less that many people… Luckily, I very quickly became aware of a way to glitch the public lobbies to think I’m in a private one, allowing me to start the match with any number of people I want! It doesn’t actually make the match private, so people can still randomly Quick Match in, but I made it work. Most of the achievements can be quickly knocked out in any mode or map, at least for the base game’s list. The Lost Island DLC complicates things a bit, requiring specific actions on specific maps in specific game modes. But, since most of the time I was in a lobby by myself with my alt account, it wasn’t too hard. The only achievement I couldn’t unlock on my own was for wiping out an enemy team after activating a special radar in the “Crossing” map. The game is smart enough to know I’m not fighting a “full team”, so it wouldn’t unlock with just me and my alt. A quick session on Wednesday fixed that, and that was all the online stuff I had to do! So now it’s time to get to the campaign… Someday. I have other things to do first.
Achievements unlocked: 24 (+24) | Completion: 40%
Since I’d already knocked out the hardest achievement in Pac-Man last week, I figured I’d quickly knock out the rest on Tuesday after grinding in Crysis 3 for a change of pace. You only have to reach level 21 to get the completion, while eating the different “fruits” throughout. Even better, you’re able to start each playthrough on the highest level you’d reached, so technically you have five lives to try each level and can just die to refill your lives when you reach the next. This is plenty enough, though I struggled for a hot minute on level 20, when the ghosts are so aggressive that a Power Pellet doesn’t even do anything. But, done and dusted. I was actually kinda concerned about this one!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+10) | Completed
Time for nomnomnom, you dead jerkoff!
I always like Mario Kart-type games, but tended to avoid them when it came to achievement hunting. One of the most notorious aspects of those games is the wild rubber-banding AI racers you’ll face as the difficulty increases. So, I was understandably a bit worried when I started playing Joy Ride Turbo for this Bingo event. The game has three difficulties, and the first two (100HP and 200HP) were easy enough. It was, of course, the 300HP championship I had my first issues with, as the AI utterly smoked me my first few attempts. I also had the Stunt Park mode to complete, so I moved to that instead to unlock the rest of the cars and earn coins to unlock them. This mode was pretty annoying, with two landscapes littered with trophies and car parts to hunt down. Some of them could be in really hard-to-reach places, and I sometimes felt I was playing Tony Hawk. But it wasn’t super difficult and not long before I’d knocked that out and moved back to the 300HP series with a better vehicle. With that, I could win the three races and then the championship. But it still wasn’t without its frustrations, especially that Badlands Motorplex track in the second set of 300HP races, Wrecking Ball Showdown. The championship was even more annoying, but that was because of how unfairly skilled the AI racers were. But, enough persistence (and rage) finally got me through and earned me the achievement. It’s nice that you only have to medal in the overall championship and not win the whole thing. That would be a nightmare!
All that left me with was the final grind to purchase all car models, which was made easier by another glitch (lot of those this week). Apparently, if you have the EXACT amount of coins when you purchase something, the game does not subtract the price from your total! So, I’d get a high amount of coins, buy some paint jobs to drop my price as closely as possible under the necessary amount, and then hit the Stunt Park to grab the few coins I need to get what I need. Repeat! This cut down the amount of grinding needed for the completion by A LOT, so I recommend taking advantage of this exploit. But that was it! Gotta say, a lot easier overall than I expected.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
Things have gone sideways! Though I can’t tell which direction that is…
Since I managed to knock out two short XBLA titles, figured I should move onto something longer: Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga. As I mentioned last week, I’ve actually technically already completed this before. This is sorta the “definitive” edition, with special armor sets and such. But, it’s still mostly the dull game I didn’t enjoy last time, so this is going to be a drag. I’m not sure which guide I followed last time, but I feel like I remember getting turned around and lost a lot. I didn’t make a whole lot of progress this week, but my goal will be to get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Achievements unlocked: 6 (+6) | Completion: 12%
