Week of 26 Jun 2022
“True beauty only manifests itself in death.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Goosebumps: The Game
- Jump Force
- Monster Sanctuary
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Anthem
- Aqua: Naval Warfare
- Asura’s Wrath
- Carrion
- Demetrios - The BIG Cynical Adventure
- Disney’s Bolt
- Foul Play
My first goal for the week was to wrap up Goosebumps: The Game as quickly as possible, but that didn’t quite go as planned. I followed the guide and thought I’d paid attention to where some achievements were supposed to pop, but missed one: to get a perfect score on the skeeball machine in the mall. I even got the score on my first playthrough but didn’t notice when the achievement didn’t pop before moving on. So, when I beat the game and found myself one unlock short, I realized I needed to speed-run back to that point. There sadly are no guides tailored for such a run, so I had to use the TrueAchievements walkthrough and jump to parts I actually needed, just to reach the mall. It actually worked pretty well, and this time I made sure the achievement popped. That’s the end of the double-dip on this one.
Achievements unlocked: 40 (+33) | Completed
For such a dump, this place sure has an expensive-seeming security system! They must have a nasty Kathy on staff.
Instead of going back to the third game I’d started for TA’s Warboats PvP event, I decided to start a game I’d had planned for a while. Jump Force has a server shutdown date of late August, so I decided back when this was announced in November 2021 that I wanted to at least get the online done before that date. Once my spouse entered the endgame of her disease and I had to leave town, obviously this put getting this started/finished firmly on the backburner. Now that I’m home, I have access to my two Xbox Ones and could begin double-boxing the online achievements. They’re all pretty straightforward, just having to play 100 matches, win a ranked match, and win a “friendly” match. Only the ranked match really gave me any pause, but there’s such a small online player base that it only took about 3 or 4 tries to match up with my alt account. Even better, for the 100 matches, you can have the other player not getting wins quit out to count as a match played, making this much quicker than having to actually fight through them. Once I wrapped that up, I played some of the story campaign, but I’m going to mostly be leaving that alone for now. I know this game will tick me right off in the later stages of the completion, so I’m super not looking forward to it.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completion: 24%
I’m…not liking these odds.
Sigh. So, out of the blue, Monster Sanctuary received more content and achievements this past week. To be honest, the additional content was extremely minimal and took little time and effort to complete with my end-game team, but the achievements that caused me issues were actually tied to compounding with previous content. They added one additional costume and about ten more Legendary Keeper battles, and two achievements tasking you with collecting and completing them all. With the whole map uncovered, it took barely a few minutes to collect that new costume and one of the ones from the base game I hadn’t gathered yet. But…oh boy, those freaking Legendary battles. Throughout the whole game, I always hated when you have to fight fellow keepers because the battles never seemed as fun as literally any other kind of battles. With these new fights, the combinations of abilities given to the monsters makes it so often you can’t even damage the enemy monsters beyond how much they heal the following turn. And practically all of the new Keepers have these combos, making every. single. fight be just like bashing my head against a wall. It took hours of frustration to win all the fights and it took constantly using all the items I’d been gathering during my playthrough to level and adjust my team to make it through them all. What a stupid pain, but it’s complete again, and the developers have stated they don’t (currently) have any plans for future achievements.
Achievements unlocked: 41 (+7) | Completed
C’mere, I wanna ensla- er, partner with ya.
Well, even though I had just started the Warboats event over on TA, I decided to partake in another. This is one of the main events on the site that I have always avoided: The Beanpotter annual Bean Dive. Essentially, everyone that takes part will start as many games as they can, putting one achievement at least on their gamertag and purposely tanking their completion percentage. The goal is to both tank it the most, and also recover. Considering how much I safeguard my stats I have always balked at doing such a monstrous thing…until this year. I’ve noticed that when I do these events it makes picking the next game I’m gonna play go much faster since I’m already “stuck” playing all the games I started (i.e. dove). But, hey, I’m not THAT crazy, so I’ve decided to only dive twenty games, getting the first achievement or so in each and moving to the next. Once I’m done, I’ll go back and start picking them off one-by-one as I see fit. Let’s get to the list so far:
Since I installed the games on my Xbox Series S and then went down the list, they are gonna appear alphabetically. First up was Alice: Madness Returns, a sequel to a game which itself was a twisted “sequel” to the original Lewis Carroll story. Funny enough, that first game is actually included as an add-on (with achievements) to this one, so I decided to start there. The game…has not aged well, looking and playing not the best. But, I think it’s short, and I’m sure the sequel/base game will be better.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 2%
Next up was Anthem, developer BioWare’s failed Iron Man simulator. Or, at least it was a failure profit-wise and amongst gamers. I’ve honestly always been wanting to play it! With EA’s tendency to shut down old servers, definitely decided to both dive this and I’ll be making sure this gets done as one of the first games when I go back through.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 2%
I decided to get more Xbox 360 titles started (as you’ll see) and the twin-stick shooter Aqua: Naval Warfare is next on the list. I only had to work through the tutorial for this initial achievement, but it seems like a fairly standard game of this type.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 8%
I’ve always had an interest in CyberConnect2’s Asura’s Wrath, especially after playing their Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 game back in 2010. The cutscenes and scene of action are top-notch, and this always looked like a bonkers good time. The first achievement pops during the opening sequence, so I got only a little to go on so far, but it was lots of madness in that short time.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 2%
My next game, Carrion, served two purposes: both as a “dive” game, and as a “Valaking” for the next list leaving Game Pass. I have also played a nice little bit of this on my alt account previously. This time, I played VERY little as the murderous creature since the first achievement comes within a minute or two from starting. With the time ticking on my access to this one, it’ll likely be the very first game I return to.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 5%
Next up: Demetrios - The BIG Cynical Adventure, a fun little point-and-click adventure game with so much potty humor than it allows you to tone it down if you want. Funny enough, I probably played this the longest of my dived games because the achievement took a few good scenes to finally unlock, but I’m liking what I’ve played. Being a game of this type, it’ll be very quick and easy to complete.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 3%
Next, I decided to do Disney’s Bolt as a part of my dive, if only to get another of these lingering kiddie games from the Xbox 360 generation completed finally. Quickly beat the first level, and it’s a pretty typical action game. At least it’s short/easy!
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 3%
Oops, I actually got two achievements in my final game, Foul Play. I got the first one while I was playing the first level, and didn’t wanna quit in the middle of my playthrough so proceeded to finish, getting a second one. This one seems like it might be the one requiring the most skill of the batch I started so far. Hopefully it’s not too bad.
Achievements unlocked: 2 (+2) | Completion: 7%
Highest ratio: 24.67
Mythical Keeper (Monster Sanctuary)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
Early Warnings (Anthem)
Anger Management (Asura’s Wrath)
Flesh of Prey (Carrion)
Walking is Boring (Disney’s Bolt)
Amateur Dramatic (Foul Play)
