Week of 26 Mar 2023
“Survive, and you’ll see with your eyes!”
Achievements Earned In:
- CrossfireX
- Human Fall Flat
- Red Death
- Project Starship
- Null Drifter
- Gal*Gun
Most of this week was spent playing CrossfireX and pwning as many noobs as I could. Man, I forgot how much fun the ole online shooty shooty could be! The completion for this one is very simple, with three kinds of achievements: kill enemies, score headshots, and play matches. After reaching 100 of each…bam, completed. I had read on TA that there’d be a lot of cheaters, but I never really dealt with that. Sure, people were a lot better than I was and most of the people seem to be the same pool of players every day, but I quite enjoyed myself. You get plenty of chances to earn the 100 headshots (and obviously kills) on your way to the matches played, so really you don’t have to put in much extra effort. Even better, a headshot counts as two kills, a piercing headshot counts as two headshots, and a win counts as two matches played. The better you do the quicker this completion is! I definitely recommend this one before it goes offline in May. Even though I only had to essentially idle for the final matches, I still actively played because I was having that much fun!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+9) | Completed
It’s your time to die, Parson Brown.
Beyond Crossfire, this was the week of title updates. A fairly regular entry on my blog, Human Fall Flat, got yet another update with achievements, adding Copper World this time! The theme is, obviously, copper, and you have to go about using the material to conduct electricity and charge batteries to get around the stage. As per usual, the achievements are to do a couple miscellaneous tasks, find a number of somethings around the level, and then to actually complete the level. These were all simple enough and I’m still thoroughly sick of this game and its physics, turns out. I feel like I’ll be playing this for a while to come.
Achievements unlocked: 107 (+4) | Completed
This human is on fiiiiiiire!
The big annoyance this was developer eastasiasoft releasing “updates” to eighteen of their games. I had sadly played three of them previously during an “easy week” in 2021, after grabbing the Eastasiasoft Indie Shmup Bundle for super cheap. So, on Friday I jumped into Red Death first. I remember this one being the “hardest” of the three, but it didn’t take long before I realized how much easier this one seemed now. I struggled to even get to the second boss last time I played, but this time I was easily able to get to the big scary skull boss. The main issue I have with these “title updates” is that they added no new content, only fixing some bugs and adding more achievements that just require a few more kills and pickups and such. Lazy, and I’m annoyed I had to waste time, no matter how little, on such lazy excuses for content. I’ll be doing my best to avoid their games from here on out.
Achievements unlocked: 23 (+5) | Completed
Nyarlathotep really needs to cool it.
The next eastasiasoft game to get patched that I jumped back on to re-complete was Project Starship…which, I’ll be honest, I don’t even remember completing the first time! I jumped in and I just did not recognize the gameplay at all. I even looked at the original set of achievements to unsuccessfully see if that rang a bell. It’s wild, but whatever, it was easy. The speed at which I completed the base list must be why I don’t remember! Killed some enemies and took some damage and I was done. Some of them even popped retroactively after only one kill, so that was nice.
Achievements unlocked: 23 (+5) | Completed
Of the three, I definitely enjoy Null Drifter the most. It just feels more fun, and that’s good because it took the longest to re-complete. Not by much, but still. This one is a twin-stick shooter, and while I enjoy it the most it’s also technically the hardest of the three overall, but the achievements all are cumulative and you’ll get them soon enough with little effort. I actually played this a little extra last time, so most of the achievements retroactively popped, too. It’s not too bad! Just beware the Cthulhu fetus!
Achievements unlocked: 22 (+5) | Completed
I decided I’d finally dive into one of the more involved Japanese imports I’ve had sitting here for a while, and landed on the weirdo Gal*Gun. This…is a very Japanese game, where you play as Tenzou, a high school student that is inadvertently bombarded by “Pheromone Arrows” and given the trait of being irresistible to every girl (and woman?) in his academy. If he is unable to find a girlfriend before the end of the day, he’ll be destined to a life of loneliness. Gameplay is in the form of an on-rails shooter (akin to something like Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear) but, instead of inappropriately peppering your classmates with hot lead, you’re peppering them with “Pheromone Bullets” that cause them to faint in ecstasy. It’s…definitely odd. But surprisingly fun! Honestly, the game looks surprisingly good for coming out over a decade and two generations ago. Achievement-wise, the most time-consuming part will be completing the bios for every student and teacher in the school, which is accomplished by hitting them with Doki Doki Mode three times in a single run. I can’t read Japanese so I have to try and go off hairstyles to discern who is who, but I’m not really there yet. I’ve only managed to get one (of four) love interest’s “good” and “true” endings, so I have a good bit to go.
Achievements unlocked: 39 (+12) | Completion: 31%
Don’t look at me like that, Lulu. I don’t like this anymore than you do.
