Week of 12 May 2024
“It’s just that… I have nothing pretty to wear.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Skylanders SuperChargers
- A Little to the Left
- Zegapain
- My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure
- Rainbow High: Runway Rush
It was a really quick time in Skylanders SuperChargers on Sunday since Hugo was nice enough to give me quests I could do easily. Two with him, and one with Tessa and I was all done. Not even ten minutes! And that’s this set of the series all done.
Achievements unlocked: 40 (+2) | Completed
Jumped into A Little to the Left some this week finally, knocking out Chapter 3 and 100%’ing all of those puzzles. It’s funny, because since I’ve been doing all of the Daily Tidies a lot of these puzzles were pretty easy to solve with that knowledge. But, I’m still not gonna really make an effort to finish this game yet.
Achievements unlocked: 31 (+5) | Completion: 56%
It was time to start something new. I first started looking at my non-backwards compatible games, and actually landed on Dishonored to start. But, when I tried to load it up, I still had my NTSC-J console hooked up and it didn’t allow playing that one. Instead of hooking up my other console, I figured I’d just play a Japanese game instead. I’ve been thinking of starting Zegapain for a while now, but while it’s one list and release, there’s actually two “games” to obtain: XOR and NOT. I’ve actually owned the disc for XOR for years, but only recently decided to purchase the disc for NOT off of eBay. It was… not cheap, so I figure it’d be silly not to finally complete this (and then sell it). Like a lot of these little-known titles, there’s very little info on how to actually complete it, but, hey, TA had a walkthrough, so I figured it couldn’t be all that bad. Well… in XOR, you have to unlock three endings by completing certain objectives before the game ends while getting SS-ranks on all 15 of the missions, and I was pretty annoyed when at the end of my first playthrough (going for Mio’s ending) only the SS ranks achievement unlocked. Which, good, because getting this was tough enough, since you have to practically take no damage and engage just about every enemy that spawns to get enough points. For some reason, the shield skill you have obstructs your view with a bright green sphere around you character, and this got me hit or missing shots way too often. Anyway right off the walkthrough had failed me! And, I knew it wasn’t my failing because I’d streamed the whole thing so I could go back and confirm I’d checked all the boxes. I DID. I figured that was a later problem, and moved to Meivelle’s ending, which unlocked as it should. Okay… so then maybe the final/Sarah ending will also unlock? NOPE. Officially annoyed at two wasted playthroughs I decided to go spelunking around the Japanese portion of the internet for any clarification on how to actually unlock these achievements. I luckily found an old wiki post from back in 2009 that helped immensely and helped a lot in figuring out the actual prerequisites for getting the two endings I needed. Funny enough, the guide had them flipped, and added extra steps for Sarah. But, whatever, I managed to quickly get the endings and XOR is all wrapped! Now to NOT, which is supposed to be a good bit tougher…
Achievements unlocked: 7 (+7) | Completion: 50%
There’s a lot going on here, Mio, can it wait?!
Around Monday I received an email from Gamefly offering a month subscription for only a $1, so of course I figured it was time to get some easy games completed again. The first game to arrive on Friday was My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure which, if you can’t tell from the title, is a baby game. There’s really no hard part of it to work for, and it’s luckily an overall inoffensive game to play. It’s just too simple and boring, and I have zero connection to the franchise. Like most my age, I’m only really familiar with the 2010 iteration of the series (wow, remember “bronies” were a thing?) and while this is a sequel to that generation, the animation here is so… generic. Of course it’s also a kids’ game, so the writing is about as dull and boring as you can expect. But, hey, it’s a simple platformer, and super easy and only took about an hour, so I’m not complaining. That’s what these rental periods are for!
Achievements unlocked: 7 (+7) | Completed
Ah yes, peons. Worship me and my drip.
Arriving alongside MLP was Rainbow High: Runway Rush! Unlike that previous game, this one is legit… bad. Where A Maretime Bay Adventure was a “kids’ game”, this is squarely a “girls’ game”, and I mean that in the most derogatory way. You actually don’t see this kind of title developed anymore, as most people know that kids just like to play good games over something that panders to them. This game is the latter, and is so cringe and boring throughout. I made it around halfway, but it’s so much busy work and I’m struggling to stay focused. “Go do this thing in this particular room! For friendship because the blue girl said something kinda mean to the orange girl. No, don’t go to any other room - you can’t, they’re all locked. Fun!” Oh, and the animations are terrible; the girls have only three facial expressions, and they’re used at really weird times. Oh, and there are “suspenseful” and “happy” musical stings to tell you what you should feel. It’s a very lazy game all around, but, again, short and easy. So it’s whatever. Though every time the yellow girl speaks emojis out loud (“Gag emoji…”) it makes me hate the game just a tad bit more.
Achievements unlocked: 13 (+13) | Completion: 45%
Come join us, player. We’ll do art forever and ever and ever…
Highest ratio: 3.88
Hugo’s Hero (Skylanders SuperChargers)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
An adorable thief (My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure)
Unicycling 101 (My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure)
Drama 101 (Rainbow High: Runway Rush)
