Week of 09 Oct 2022
“Oi! Billy! Hand me that bucket.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Aqua: Naval Warfare
- Grey Skies: A War of the Worlds Story
- Asura’s Wrath
I started the week approaching the end of Chapter 3 of Alice: Madness Returns. While a more involved completion than the first game (what with collectibles and longer levels) it’s newer and more polished, so I had an overall better time. The whole game has such a twisted and dark artistic style to it that keeps everything interesting and not boring. It was also interesting after coming from the previous game, which itself was already a twisted version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to an even darker and more corrupted version of Wonderland. But, sadly, the visuals are the only really unique aspect of the game and everything under the skin is a pretty average action platformer, and nothing changed as the game progressed. The game throws a few curveballs at you, like a couple side-scrolling and pinball sections, but on Easy nothing ever gets too tough. I was surprised how easy even beating the final boss without taking damage turned out to be. For the Nightmare-difficulty playthrough, it was actually even easier when using a trick. What you do is start a new game on Nightmare, and for each level play until reaching the first checkpoint, quit out, load up the final checkpoint, and then finish before moving to the next one. You pretty much don’t interact with a single enemy so there’s no having to deal with the actual spike in difficulty. Even the end boss is prior to the very last checkpoint in the game. It’s very quick, barely 20 minutes, and I had this one wrapped up!
Achievements unlocked: 50 (+24) | Completed
Gonna need a hit or seven to make it through all of this.
Time to knock out some of the shorter games I Dived. First up was Aqua: Naval Warfare, a naval-based steampunk twin-stick shooter that, overall, is a VERY simple completion. There are only a handful of chapters, each section was short, and the collectibles aren’t very difficult to find. Heck, I didn’t even use a guide! The real difficulty comes from the Skirmish mode, which is essentially Horde. You have to make it through Wave 25 for an achievement, but that is easier said than done. You can start from Wave 19 and proceed through the next six waves to the achievement, but you start pretty weakened and with no upgrades. I chose this route for expediency's sake, though I wonder if that was the best option. But, man, what a pain! The first couple waves aren’t bad once you know what to expect before you reach wave 23. You have to face ships that kill you so fast! And they have such strong defenses, too. I can struggle-bus my way through that only to face off with ships with a lot of health, move faster, do more damage, and have a reflector shield. I made it through my very first try but entered the final wave with practically no health and no lives so quickly got killed. Took me another day to get back there, but after finally making it with more health and lives, it was time to face… a super easy wave. Nice way to end it! Oh, wait, I also had to get a multiplayer achievement for winning 100 matches, but that was easy enough with two controllers. It’s weird that a multiplayer mode that involves gathering points is called “Chase”; I guess as weird as a horde mode being called “Skirmish”.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
This fire weapon is working surprisingly well in the water.
Next up was one I’ve been really curious about since I Dived it: Grey Skies: A War of the Worlds Story. I ended my last couple times with it barely a few minutes into the game, so I truly didn’t know what to expect. I also made the decision to play the game without a guide, so it was truly a blind playthrough. Imagine my disappointment when I got to the first enemy encounter and…you’re fighting humans. Wielding baseball bats. Granted, they’re spoooooky mind-altered humans, but still! I would have been surprised if it had been the aliens themselves since (spoiler alert) the Martians die fairly quickly once exposed to the pathogens of Earth, but just run-of-the-mill dudes? Even worse, after the very first encounter you can’t really fight them unless you have upgraded your skill tree to allow for crafting grenades. But, for my playthrough, I avoided upgrading at all to store all my points until the sewer section when I could upgrade one path, thereby unlocking the achievement, before reloading my save and doing the same for the alternate. I decided to complete the game with the throwables unlocked for the use of the aforementioned explosives to help clear out the weird, altered humans that don’t exist in any other version of the story. They’re not SUPER dangerous, and by the end of the game I was just sprinting past them all. You do get to face off against one of the tale’s signature monstrous tripods, but it’s just a(n annoyingly wonky) running section. I’d recommend the game only for the… novelty.
Achievements unlocked: 11 (+9) | Completed
Honestly, I came all the way out to Derbyshire for this!
I figured that was enough for the shorter games and it was time for my next effortful completion. I’ve had my eye on Asura’s Wrath for years, and that’s why I included it in my 2022 Dive. It looked like a wild anime, with QTEs added. But, I knew that developer CyberConnect2’s QTEs can be a little annoying from playing games like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 and, since the achievements are tied to getting S-ranks on all the episodes, I figured this would be a massive annoyance. The game so far isn’t too bad, and I’m finding it pretty easy to get the ranks I need by getting at least an A-rank and two S-ranks on each episode’s three categories. The stickler was Battle Points, which took me a little bit to get the hang of; essentially, you gotta kill as many enemies and attack the big one as much as possible, but as quickly as possible. After the first couple episodes I was S-ranking them on the first attempt…on Easy. Apparently, I’ll unlock a gauge that makes Hard a piece of cake, so that’ll be nice. By the end of the week I’d reached Episode 11, so hopefully not much longer!
Achievements unlocked: 20 (+19) | Completion: 38%
