Week of 26 May 2024
“The Empire will prevail!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
- My Universe - My Baby
- Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R
- Gatling Gears
I didn’t have a whole lot of motivation to game, and that’s really the only reason it took Sunday and Monday to get through the final half of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II this week. It definitely wasn’t a difficulty thing, or even a lack of interest in the game itself. It’s all very easy, and I enjoyed every combat and puzzle and new revelation. Even though I kinda saw how the story was gonna play out from a mile away it didn’t detract from how cool it was watching Senua’s saga through Iceland. With the news that Ninja Theory has survived the recent developer purge at Xbox/Bethesda and are already working on their next game, I’m hoping we get a third game in this series. I also had to do a quick second-ish playthrough for the collectibles and a helpful Chapter Select has been ended in this entry to facilitate this effort. While you can skip to specific checkpoints, even then you still have lots of narrative and gameplay sections to get through, so it was still a 2 hour adventure. And I was done!
Achievements unlocked: 11 (+5) | Completed
This game is so pretty!
So over on the Hall of Gamers Discord, we have themed months for completions. I wanted to take part at the tail-end for May, so I decided to do My Universe - My Baby since the theme is “jobs/work”. And being a parent is the most annoying job! I kid (mostly) but I also didn’t wanna start anything too demanding and many simulation titles can be very long completions, so this was it. It’s a short and very easy completion, clocking in at around 5.5 hours and all of the achievements are completed by just reaching the end of the game. The entire game is centered around… well, the baby, and you play minigames with it to develop its skills. You also feed it and bathe it and put it to sleep. It’s all pretty mindless and simple, and then once the baby reaches three years old the credits roll and you’re done. It’s not horrible, but it’s not very fun. But, hey, a completion is a completion!
Achievements unlocked: 34 (+3) | Completion: 62%
You little terrorist, did you get into my liquor?!
My next Gamefly rental arrived on Tuesday, and since I was off work all day I decided to get that game, Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R, knocked out in one go. I was a little concerned since it’s a racing title and I hate racing games, but I was hoping since it’s based on a children’s TV show that it would be manageable. And, hey, it was a good bet because, yeah, this was stupid easy. It was rare I wasn’t in first place within the first couple seconds of the race, and I think only once throughout the whole completion did I fall from that spot, though I still ended up winning every race in 1st. And that’s even with the CPUs constantly barraging me with the “blue shell” equivalent in the game! I’ll admit, I had a scare when I initially started planning my playthrough when I saw there were online achievements! But, luckily while you’re playing “online” you can complete the necessary ten races alongside bots. And then the only “tough” achievement is beating the final boss, who actually gives a somewhat good challenge. The best part is… I actually had fun! It’s actually a pretty well-made game, all things considered. The developer has actually done a “real” racing game previously, so I guess they used some of that experience to go hard on this game for children. Much appreciated, 3DClouds. I wonder if their other kids titles are as bearable…
Achievements unlocked: 23 (+23) | Completed
Driiiiiiiiift!
I figured in the interim between my Gamefly rentals I’d work on an Xbox 360 title. Not sure I wanted to get on the actual console, so a backwards compatible title it was! The Mistbound series titles Gatling Gears and Greed Corp have both been on my “to-do list” for a long time, but I never took the dive for one reason or another. Looking at the list, it didn’t seem too daunting so I figured now was the right time to dive into the former. It’s a steampunk twin-stick shooter that asks you to fully level up your mech/walker and beat every level on Hard. Doing one first makes the other easier, so I beat the game on Easy first and got my mech all powered up for the Hard. Luckily, Neomaster offered to jump in with me so we could co-op it, which should hopefully make it easier. I also needed to beat a level in mission 5 without taking damage, but that wasn’t all that hard. In fact, a glitch made that take longer than it should have since, on Xbox Series S, the game kept glitching out at the end of 5-1 and not spawning the final group of enemies (a batch of kamikaze drones) so the level wouldn’t ever end. I did this twice without taking damage before switching over to the Xbox 360 proper. Even then, I didn’t get the achievement after a few more attempts; not only was it maybe glitched, but my controller inputs kept stuttering and such and getting me hit. Even after I finally successfully managed to reach the end of level 5-1 with zero damage, there was an issue with the Xbox Network and the achievement didn’t pop anyway!!! But, since I’d now gotten past the glitched part, I went back to my Xbox Series S and switched to 5-2 for the achievement. Only took a couple attempts of slowly creeping along and I got my achievement to pop finally. Whew, had me on edge for a hot minute! Now for Hard…
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completion: 83%
Highest ratio: 3.22
Glimpses of the Gods (Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
First look (My Universe - My Baby)
Iron Man (Gatling Gears)
