Week of 14 Jul 2024
“I won't let you stop the ride, gramps!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Dead Rising
- Power Rangers Super Samurai
- Front Mission Evolved
- A Short Hike
With my first attempt at 72 Hour Mode going pretty horribly Dead Rising the week prior, I decided to skip straight to the main grind of the game and get the best weapon there is: the Real Mega Buster. With this arm-mounted gun you can kill any zombie in one shot and the psychopaths in 2-3 shots. Obviously this makes managing to keep the survivors (and yourself) alive much much easier. The only snag is you have to get through the aforementioned grind, but considering it’s only 53,594 kills compared to the later games’ far worsening grinds (72000, 100004, and 200008 kills!) and I had knocked it out in a fairly chill 2.5 hours. And now that I was armed to the teeth, it was back into the mall and oh my god I hate the survivors! Even with that Mega Buster (and, later, Adam’s chainsaws) it is such a pain keeping those morons alive. I tried to let them kinda maneuver around the hordes at first, but soon I was just mowing down any zombies in our path. Far more time-consuming, but makes it easier. I was cutting it close a lot getting the map cleared of survivors so more could spawn and Otis could give me a ringa-ding-ding for probably the most difficult achievement in the game, and sometimes I had to reload a save to see if I could make it to my next objective a smidge quicker, but I managed and soon I had Otis off my back and the survivors all saved and cleared out of the mall. At this point after Case 8-4, you can just focus on blasting enemies and the final chapters sail by. The end boss can be a bit of a pain, but that’s mostly because if you die (it’s a hand-to-hand fight atop a tank surrounded by zombies, with no items whatsoever) you have to do the preceding tank battle again. I actually died the first time! Second time went much better after I knocked him down and landed a few Double Lariats on him.
This left some quick cleanup, and I thought it’d be simple and easy… but then the world suffered a major digital infrastructure outage that left everything from airlines to hospitals and, most importantly, the Xbox Network not working right. In the realm of achievement hunting, any achievements unlocked for many just wouldn’t show up anywhere, though they would pop a day or so later with the timestamp of when they were originally earned. When I grabbed the eighth female survivor on Thursday, neither my “pimp” nor my “full group” achievements popped even though the in-game notification still flashed on screen. I was pretty worried at first since I’d heard this game is known to just outright not give achievements, but it wasn’t long before I realized it was due to the CloudStrike and Microsoft issues, and I felt better the next day when both of those achievements suddenly showed up. Same thing happened when I went hunting the PP stickers on Friday and it unlocked the following day. And that leaves the big one: 7 Day Survivor! Hopefully, more on that next blog…
Achievements unlocked: 47 (+42) | Completion: 96%
Ugh, I think I prefer the silence.
Of course, I wasn’t risking my streak due to some global outage, so I had to jump onto Power Rangers Super Samurai to earn a quick achievement on Thursday and Friday to keep it safe. Like most recent Xbox Network issues, only the modern achievement system was affected and earning achievements on Xbox 360 worked just fine. Did a little training and grabbed some unlocks. Not a whole lot.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+2) | Completion: 30%
Not a whole lot to say about Front Mission Evolved, as all I’ve played of it is a 2-hour multiplayer session on Saturday to kick off the quest to complete the game. I was shocked to learn it is a third-person mech shooter, unlike the other entries in the series I’ve played which are typically turn-based strategy titles (similar to Zoids Assault). But, hey, cool, probably easier and more fun that way. I’ll strive to get as many sessions scheduled as I can once I return from vacation in August.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 4%
Since I had plans to dedicate my entire upcoming Sunday to the end of Dead Rising, I had nothing to really play on Saturday. Sure, I could have dug into Front Mission or played more Power Rangers, but I instead decided to start (and almost finish) A Short Hike. This is a part of the next batch of games leaving Game Pass on July 31 (while I’m out of town) and it’s very easy/short, so I wanted to get a chance to complete it. It’s fun! You play as a young penguin stuck at a park with their Park Ranger aunt during the Summer, with no cell reception, and have decided to scale the nearby mountain to try and get a signal. And that’s pretty much it! There are collectibles to grab that increase your stamina (so you can reach the peak), and little minigames and side-quests to do, but it all takes place on this mountain and in this park. It’s all adorable and silly and relaxing. Funny enough, the art style and character models look so much like Lil Gator Game that I 100% expected there to be some connection… but there’s not. At all. Guess they just had the same ideas for cute animals? One huge inspiration the developer had is clearly Animal Crossing; the buried items, the fish shadows, all look like they’re right out of that Nintendo franchise! Anyway, I’m almost finished, but to get enough sleep for my 14-hour ordeal the following day, I had to retire early. This will take maybe another hour or so and I’ll be all done!
Achievements unlocked: 7 (+7) | Completion: 58%
The way the internet should be complaining about video games they don’t like.
