Week of 09 Jun 2024
“You believe it, you achieve it, you just D.R.E.A.M!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Bramble: The Mountain King
- Skull Island: Rise of Kong
- XDefiant
- JoJo Siwa: Worldwide Party
I made it the rest of the way through Bramble: The Mountain King early on this week, and faced all the horrid folklore creatures in my way. It’s a very cool game and story, and quite dark. I was able to complete everything in one run… except of course the “don’t die” achievement. I did try to cheese it as I did my initial playthrough, quitting out whenever I died, but that didn’t seem to take and no achievement unlocked at the end. I had every intention of trying it legit next, and I made it all the way to Näcken’s pond without dying, but it wasn’t long before I went back to trying to save scum when I died again. I just didn’t have time to try and learn this like I did with LIMBO and Braid, so I looked up online how to do it properly this time. You have to be offline in this case, only syncing to the cloud servers when you are ready to backup your save. With this trick, it was no problem making it through the game and sending this one off.
Achievements unlocked: 30 (+25) | Completed
Mountain King, I have come to bargain.
With my final (I thought) rental from Gamefly coming along, I decided I just had to see what all the fuss was about over last year’s Skull Island: Rise of Kong. If you aren’t aware, there were a number of notable licensed stinkers, starting with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, then followed by this game and The Walking Dead: Destinies. They’re all pretty bad, got scathing reviews, and became a joke around the internet. But… how is the completion? I looked on TA and saw that it seemed at the very least pretty short and doable, so why not give it a shot? And… spoiler, yeah, it’s really boring and bad. But not the horrific mess the internet made it out to be. Honestly, the biggest knock against the game is just how dreadfully empty it is. It’s almost like the developer had some grander plans for the game, and instead of downsizing the levels whenever that changed they just ripped it all out and left it as-is. Even worse, you don’t actually gain anything from fighting enemies, as you only level up when you fight Ascension Events (arena fights) or bosses. So you’re just sprinting through these five massive maps and grabbing the odd collectible (bring a map) until you get locked into an arena fight. The combat itself? Just mash the X-button for a combo, use the Left Bumper to ram them, and repeat. Oh, also grab the regeneration ability ASAP, it’ll make any challenge even lesser. Regardless of IguanaBee’s intentions, this is a very sloppy game. It’s a Wii-era licensed title in a modern time! Wild this got released. For $40 freaking dollars. Yeah, that’s why I rented it. And completion-wise… yeah, very easy. Definitely recommend.
Achievements unlocked: 27 (+27) | Completed
Gotta watch out for those Black Riders. And raptor-things.
I’ve wanted to play another online shooter for a while now, but haven’t been able to really decide and commit on one. Well, I’ve had my eye on XDefiant since it was announced as some weird Ubisoft crossover, so when it was released last month I had been deciding whether to take the jump or not. Obviously, this week I jumped right on in or I wouldn’t be here talking about it! It’s… well, it’s a shooter. There’s not a whole lot to talk about there. for the completion, most of it will come with time, but I’m a little concerned about the 3 MVPs needed; or at least I was until I managed to score one! So, I guess that’ll also come while I grind to character level 50. I decided to stick with the Third Echelon faction since I started, and that’s usually more how I play so I’m just gonna keep with it. I’m sure I’ll be checking in with this over a good few blog posts.
Achievements unlocked: 7 (+7) | Completion: 54%
So, when I went to cancel my Gamefly subscription, I was alerted to the fact one more game had squeaked in under the bar to get in the mail to me: JoJo Siwa: Worldwide Party. This is yet another Outright Games joint, just like most of the other games I’ve played this rental period. And their whole business seems to just be games for children, so obviously they’re all pretty easy. For this one, I didn’t know what to expect as my kiddo was never into JoJo Siwa and her whole schtick, but it is apparently an endless runner-type game set to her music. And, I jokingly stated on stream during the first level that I didn’t even know that JoJo had a catalog of music to cover a game with ten worlds and… I was right. The first level of each world is a song’s background instrumentals, then the second adds the chorus, and finally the third level is the full song. Then you get to hear the song again during the final level, a concert, which is completely inconsequential and I just idled most of them so I could take a break. Some of the songs had a nice sound to them, but listening to the lyrics it’s all special snowflake overly saccharine nonsense and gives me the ick. Very easy completion and back in the mail.
Achievements unlocked: 15 (+15) | Completed
I hope you all paid for your tickets or I’ll have your whole family killed! D.R.E.A.M., fam!
