Week of 10 Sep 2023
“This cannot continue. Your song must end here!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants
- Metal: Hellsinger
- DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace
- SEGA Bass Fishing
- Vampire Survivors
- Rio
Annoyingly, all I had left in Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants this week were boring grinds that either were a pain to get progress in or just weren’t unlocking properly. Namely, discovering the 10 pirate’s nests and playing for 50 hours just wouldn’t pop! For the first, it seems that the way in which you find those hideouts is what makes it count or not. If you get a tip from a tavern, that doesn’t count, and you have to find them on your own. The trick is to find a tipster in a tavern, save, pay for the intel, remember where the marker is, reload the save, then park a ship where the location is. After doing this in a Free Play game with pirate activity on high, I finally managed to find the ten “on my own” and unlock the achievement. Next was getting the 500 battles during patrol, but by save-scumming that was easy to get once I located a bunch of pirates. And then I had EVERY other achievement…but not the one for playing a total of 50 hours? In a 60-hour completion! How does that math?! I guess I really kicked some butt in efficiency, though it’s far more likely some time wasn’t accumulating correctly. Either way, it was time to idle while I was at work…but the game went to sleep even though I had a wired controller going. My kiddo came in clutch, though, and woke my game up when she came home from school on Monday and it popped shortly after! I was really worried this completion would stretch through another day or two, so I’m glad it’s done and dusted. That’s another Bingo game down, and this one was pretty easy overall.
Achievements unlocked: 61 (+3) | Completed
I decided to go ahead and get to some of the games leaving Game Pass on Friday, and started with the rhythm-based FPS Metal: Hellsinger. I actually tested this game a while ago and found it tough, and wrote it off as something I’d never ever ever play for achievements. Well… here we are. The thing that changed my tune was an added suite of accessibility options, including one that makes it so every shot is always “on beat”, making the gameplay and completion far, far easier. In fact, with that aspect of the game taken care of I found the entire game really easy. By the time I beat the game, completed all challenges, and got around to the final achievement for dying 20 times, I had only died a total of three times. That’s it! Sure, you can play on Lamb (Easy) difficulty, but even then you could still die. But I’m too good! I even got the one kinda-tough achievement on my first try! The challenges can be intimidating, but with the way each tier unlocks you only have to truly 3-skull the first two levels of each challenge and just 1-skull the third. I absolutely expected this to last two days, minimum, but I managed the entire completion in one evening after work! And I actually really enjoyed it, so I’m glad I was able to get to it. I was very tempted to do the Windows stack, but I didn’t quite enjoy it that much.
Achievements unlocked: 28 (+28) | Completed
This DLC outfit really changes the whole tone, yeah?
The other leaving-Game Pass game I decided to do was DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace, which was even shorter than Hellsinger! This one was actually a surprise, as I totally figured this would be a licensed cartoon platformer or 3D action game, because… I mean, historically, that’s the most likely outcome. But, no, this is an on-rails shooter, a la Panzer Dragoon! Obviously extremely watered down, but still didn’t expect that kind of gameplay in this. And… that’s really all there is noteworthy to this one. It’s very easy and straightforward, with the only point of difficulty being an achievement for beating a level without killing a single LexBot. Obviously, don’t shoot any, but when you knock into them you ALSO destroy them (because it’s a kids’ game) so you have to really make an effort to avoid their movement paths as they blow past your superdog. Just take it real slowly and you can do it; I did so on the first level. Easy peasy, and another completion.
Achievements unlocked: 28 (+28) | Completed
After hearing of Superman’s horrible experience with flying through rings, Ace had to do it as Krypto was too scared.
With that nonsense out of the way, it was back to the Bingo dive pool and (speaking of water) I decided to work on SEGA Bass Fishing, which was one of the games I had a few trepidations about. I don’t like fishing, games or otherwise, and a fishing competition game definitely gave me the icks. But, I own it, and that meant I would prefer to get around to it, so here we are. And… okay, yeah, that was really easy. First off, the BIG help is that if you fail to get a good score in a leg of the tournament you’re on, you can close the game/dashboard and load back up to try again. But, even with that save available, I ended up only having to do so three times! There’s lots of mechanics to the game, like temperature of the water and time of day and weather… but really I just picked a type of lure I preferred and went to one of the two locations I found most profitable depending on the options available. For me, it was the Suspend Minnow for the lure and the Reed/Lodge for the location. That was it! I’ll say, overall, the game was VERY easy, thank goodness. I never felt challenged and, once I had the routine down, never felt hurried either. That final 500-bass grind was a bore, though. I was only at around 250 by the end of the tournaments, so it was some boring fishing while watching Netflix’s One Piece. Not terrible! Put that on the box.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
Fishes!!*
Jumped into Vampire Survivors real quick on Friday to secure my streak before returning to fishing. Ran one round and managed to unlock a few achievements! Game is still fun, but I’ll keep popping in and out for now.
Achievements unlocked: 74 (+3) | Completion: 39%
I jumped back into Rio on Saturday so that I could finish up the grind to completion. I had left off on getting each of the minigames’ gold trophy… which I was apparently doing incorrectly anyway. You have to have at least a single AI player in the game to even be able to unlock a gold trophy. What you can do (and what I did) is have your four controllers in the minigame, and then right before the time runs out have one of your controllers quit by pressing the Back button. Boom, gold trophy. I also did one of the other modes finally, completing the three “difficulties” in Garland Gala. Also easy. And then I didn’t play much more and opted instead to “touch grass” and go party at a bar. Much more fun, honestly.
Achievements unlocked: 36 (+10) | Completion: 72%
Highest ratio: 7.56
Lean Back (Port Royal 3: Pirates and Merchants)
Lowest ratio: 1.02
Kill Your Demons (Metal: Hellsinger)
