Week of 22 Jan 2023
“Tyveleba K’asag!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Saint Kotar 🎮
- The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition 🎮
- Hour of Victory 🎮
- Quantum Conundrum 🎮
Now that my spouse is home (maybe permanently!) I wanted to take advantage of the 1-month trial sent to me by Gamefly. I was gonna just grab some easy kids’ games to knock out quickly, but I decided I instead wanted to do something interesting. After reading the 2022 list of most-played games on TrueAchievements, I got curious on what were the least played games. Since most of them were also released physically, I’d rent those games from Gamefly! Well, obviously nothing that took too long or had unobtainables. Saint Kotar fell into my filter, and it appeared to have walkthroughs around the internet, so decided to add that to My Q. The game is a pretty simple point-and-click adventure starring a pastor heading to a Croatian town to solve the mystery of where his sister is, alongside his brother-in-law. It’s all very dark and morbid! Gameplay-wise, it’s your standard game of this type and a guide makes the entire completion no issue. There are a lot of missables, so a guide is best. Sadly, you need a second, shorter playthrough from about halfway through the game to get another ending, but this only adds an hour or so to a 6-hour first playthrough. I definitely recommend this one overall. It appears to only have been in my initial filter because it was released in Nov 2022, so I don’t think it was there due to poor reception.
Achievements unlocked: 42 (+42) | Completed
Sir? You’re not answering the front desk phone. I need more towels in my room. …Why are you in this secret passageway? Why am I here?!
With my rental out of the way (and the other game I rented a Series-only game and I have no disc drive…) I figured I’d keep the point-and-click theme going with my 2022 Dive game The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. Just like any game of this ilk, it’s VERY easy to just blow through with a guide, and I know this is a classic but I had things to get to and these games just aren’t my thing. It’s funny enough, and it was cool being able to switch between the older and modern graphics at the push of a button. AND another one with a partial second playthrough for another ending achievement! Lame. Otherwise, eh, moving on.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
You gotta tell me what your skincare regimen is!
While not a Dived game, it was time to finally get around to Hour of Victory. I had started it almost exactly a year ago now when a multiplayer group cropped up that could help me get all the multiplayer done. It took a while due to the group not being able to meet up regularly, and I even had to finish up in Rochester during my hiatus from reality. This week was all about the apparently-short single-player campaign. You choose from three different characters (an assault dude, a sniper, and a sneaky-sneaky stabby type), but the only real difference is their health; one of them has a good bit of health while the other two die very easily. I started my playthrough with Ross, the assault guy, and took it slow while playing the game as it was meant to be played. Most of the levels must be completed once with each character, and most of the missions are short and easy. The few that don’t have to be played over again are also the few that are quite annoying, like the boss fight at the end of the game, or an especially annoying tank sequence at the end of Campaign 2 (screw you, Fielder). Once I reached my second playthrough, though, I realized that you can sorta just sprint through most of the levels, stopping for a quick healing respite when needed. Made the subsequent playthroughs much quicker and I was done before I knew it. Nice to finally get this one finished up, but reminds me that I really need to get back to doing non-backwards compatible titles…
Achievements unlocked: 50 (+35) | Completed
You’d think they’d have figured out to NOT go to that console…
I figured this week would finally be the time to start work on the hardest of the games I Dived: Quantum Conundrum. The game is essentially Portal, but instead of portals you use a gun that changes universes: there’s a fluffy one (things are lighter), heavy one (…kinda obvious), anti-gravity one, and time slowdown. You use these powers and physics to solve various puzzles. And, like Portal, the harder achievements for the completion involve beating the puzzle chambers in a limited amount of time and shifts. I started playing through the first wing and found the puzzles weren’t too bad, but hitting those limits can be very challenging. I definitely understood why the achievements were so rare! …Then I found out about The Glitch. See, if you bungle your way to the final door in each level, stare straight down, walk until your reticle is pointed at the edge of further bevel of the door frame, quickly press forward to start walking and then pause the game, select “Restart Level” and accept while holding Up on the control stick, you’ll trick the game into restarting the level before then marking the level as “completed” and showing and recording your stats. Since the game thinks you’re back at the start of the level, it takes THOSE stats so your records show you’ve not died, used any shifts, and beaten the level in about 3-9 seconds! The only limit to the glitch is that you can’t really use it on the final level of each wing (or the add-ons) because it’s hard to time it with how those end. There’s no “door” to use. But, even then, this takes a MASSIVE load off the completion, and I’m not sure why people aren’t going and knocking this out? The overall ratio is almost a 4! Weird. But, hey, this obviously makes me far more confident I’ll have this knocked out lickity split!
Achievements unlocked: 8 (+7) | Completion: 32%
Highest ratio: 4.37
Ludicrous Speed (Quantum Conundrum)
Lowest ratio: 1.00
Finish the Tutorial (Saint Kotar)
