Week of 19 May 2024
“Do you see how the pitiless world stamps you down?”
Achievements Earned In:
- Rainbow High: Runway Rush
- A Little to the Left
- Zegapain
- Watch Dogs
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
- Minecraft
The “hey, fellow kids” cringe-fest that is Rainbow High: Runway Rush didn’t last very long incomplete once I started gaming on Sunday. I just blew through the rest of the story (should really be called “Runway Bore” because… that show was a travesty) and then quickly cleaned up everything else post-game. It’s very easy and short! Thank goodness, because I couldn’t handle this horrid, vapid writing any longer.
Achievements unlocked: 29 (+16) | Completed
Needed to use A Little to the Left to extend my streak on Monday and Friday, then managed to get the 75-Daily Tidy badge on Wednesday. Only 25 more days and I can stop doing the dailies!
Achievements unlocked: 34 (+3) | Completion: 62%
Sigh, freaking Zegapain. With XOR completed last week, it was time to move to NOT, where you play other events that occurred alongside XOR’s campaign (which itself ran alongside the events of the anime). The TA walkthrough I was following warned that this game was harder than the previous, so already I was prepared for a rage-fest, but it was way worse than I expected. It began easy enough, and I quickly blew through the first three missions, scoring an SS-rank on each towards the main achievement. The fourth mission was the first where I just couldn’t get the needed score, due to the enemies being too fast for my current weaponry, so I decided I’d limit my frustration and just come back to it; unlike XOR, you can earn these scores at any time in the Simulator and it’ll count. Proceeding on, it wasn’t long until I reached the eleventh mission, where I just couldn’t manage the damage and speed needed to hit the rank! This game requires so much more accuracy and speed compared to the last, so it took a lot of tries in many of these missions to properly balance how much damage I took, how many kills I got, and how quickly I did it all. Y’know, a fairly typical struggle for anyone trying to get high ranks in games like this. It only got worse over the next few missions, and there were times I was convinced it wasn’t possible to get a good score. The biggest shock is the first boss you’re faced with at the beginning of mission 15 whom will obliterate you pretty quickly. To even defeat him I had to equip a particular weapon, get a particular distance from him, and shoot him twice quickly within the first few seconds of the fight. After that the rest of the mission is pretty standard and I didn’t have much issue, though I got angrier than I probably should have since I keep forgetting there is a massive threshold for the damage you can take in these final missions while still being able to get an SS-rank.
Then came the freaking EX missions you also have to get SS-ranks on… 1-3 were pretty annoying, but EX Mission 4 was on a whole ‘nother level. You’re faced with three waves of increasingly difficult enemies, each followed by a boss. You’re assisted in this endeavor by two NPC pilots, and their survival is indirectly necessary for the rank you need because if you reach the final boss with no assistance, or they die during the fight, the boss will make short work of your health bar and you’ll lose the points you need for the ranking! Even worse, if I managed to get to the end with little damage, no matter how much I threw myself into damage and wiped out the waves, I still kept coming up short for the score! With the best gear in the game, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do here to go faster. I ended up playing this mission over and over and over again for hours trying to eke out that final few seconds to up my score over the threshold (usually about 30k) and at 110 kills, 1572 points of damage, and 11.48 minutes I finally achieved a score of 35300. UGH. This left just getting the two endings I needed, which I could do by quickly doing mission 15 again in the simulator and just choosing the partner I needed, but as I started before the first boss can be a massive pain. I also struggled through the final boss, for some reason, but I was so worked up at this point that I was just raging anyway. But I finished. And eff this game.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+7) | Completed
What are you talking about, you’re the one with your eyes closed?!
While Ubisoft still hasn’t gotten around to fixing the matchmaking for Watch Dogs, I still had at least one achievement I could still obtain: completing 10 online co-op missions. After inviting my alternate account (piloted by my kiddo) I went to the East side of the Loop and found a Militia “Knock out the target” contract I could easily repeat. Once I learned the layout the first time, I could complete a run of the mission in less than two minutes most times, making this all a pretty easy and painless achievement. I really hope they fix everything soon so I can get around to clearing the 100% on this one.
Achievements unlocked: 44 (+1) | Completion: 90%
After raging at Zegapain and generally playing semi-okay games lately, I figured I’d treat myself with a new release that I knew would be good: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. It was released this week and looked amazing, and once I heard the completion is pretty similar to the first game, I knew I should just pull the trigger and jump in. And this is definitely a game where I can’t talk too much about the story since that is a major factor in the enjoyment of it, but the other things I loved about the first title are also here: the “Furies” whispering uncomfortably in your ear, the hallucinations, the cinematic-yet-easy combat, and Melina Juergens’ incredible acting. The completion for this is just beat the game, replay a level with a new narrator (unlocked post-game), find the two sets of collectibles (yay, chapter select), and use Photomode once. I’m currently working my way through the game without worrying about any of the collectibles, and have reached the second-to-last chapter. I have to play it in chunks because all those mind-games can really wear on me, and the constant whispering and talking in my ears is so unnerving. But, yeah, hard recommend all around. Did I mention the game is also freaking gorgeous? Unreal 5, man… even on my 20” TV and Xbox Series S, just wow.
Achievements unlocked: 6 (+6) | Completion: 55%
Wait, wasn’t this a popcorn bucket recently?
Jumped into Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch to extend my streak on Thursday so I could go out and see a movie and have dinner with friends. I simply joined a server and popped a few. Still stringing this along.
Achievements unlocked: 94 (+13) | Completion: 75%
Highest ratio: 4.24
Three-quarter Sorter (A Little to the Left)
Lowest ratio: 1.05
The Next Sign (Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II)
