Week of 28 Jan 2024
“We need you to settle a debate on taking naps—”
Achievements Earned In:
- Race Pro
- Maize
- Watch Dogs
- Opus: Echo of Starsong
- Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
On Sunday, I finally wrapped up the Career Mode in Race Pro with the max amount of contract points earned, which entailed me getting first place in every race. It was definitely far more about perseverance over skill since the AI racers are easier to beat, but having to stay focused and on course for up to seven laps in the final couple classes was such a bore. And, yeah, it honestly did get a little harder, too, as we all got faster and faster cars to drive and the other racers could keep up better. But, hey, I managed, and next was completing all the championships. Luckily for me, the achievement specifically says to finish the championships, not win them, so I would just start the championship race, end the race, and repeat for a couple hours. All that left was getting the other eight races on Professional that I needed. I started with the highest ratio of the bunch, Circuit de Valencia, and was immediately back to raging at the stupid (but realistic) driving. Funny enough, after getting through that and then the next race, I started just getting the achievements on my first attempt. I think maybe it all just finally clicked? Eh, doesn’t matter, I’m all done!
Achievements unlocked: 50 (+11) | Completed
Between being “stuck” playing all these old Xbox 360 games from the Bingo event and my worsening depression due to the nightmare of last year (and the year before), I just needed something new and shiny to play. Xbox hadn’t announced their list of games leaving Game Pass yet, so that option was out. Instead, I decided to dive into the backlog and chose Maize. Besides the obvious connection to the crop from the name and the “boxart”, I knew literally nothing about this game. I of course peeked at the achievement list to make sure everything was doable, and in my mind I kinda assumed it was a horror FPS game with dark comedy undertones… but no. It’s actually a first-person adventure game that wears its ridiculous silliness plainly on its stalks. It’s actually pretty funny! The completion was simple enough and there are only two missable achievements: collect all the Folio items and beat the game within two hours. Using the text walkthrough on TA, it was easy enough to knock out the entire completion in one go and I really enjoyed the game still. It’s legit funny, and I lol’d more than a couple times. Think corn-based Monty Python, though I found Vladdy’s angry/annoyed schtick old almost immediately. But the corn? Hilarious.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completed
Hey, Comrade Bear, could you get all the way off my back, dude?
With the Xbox issues all sorted, I figured it was time to start really working on getting what I can of Watch Dogs finished. The multiplayer is still scuffed, but I can at least knock out the “Bad Blood” add-on. It’s a similar completion to the main game, with investigations and contracts and a campaign. I started working on the contracts for the various factions at play here and found I could find an easy one and just redo that one the required amount of times. Could I do this in the base game? Probably (oops)! But, anyway, the annoying part of the completion is the new driving contract type, Overdrive, where you have to do your best Keanu Reeves and keep a vehicle above a certain speed limit while hitting checkpoints. It’s a pain, but I had to do 29 of them and so I found a fairly simple one in Pawnee, turned on the newest season of Rick and Morty, and settled in. I managed to get pretty quick at it, but obviously I was a bit distracted so I’d often crash or make dumb errors. Over the week I also did the same for getting tasks done for the Militia and Chicago South Club, picking an easy contract for each and repeating it 20 times. I had started the Fixers, but the available contracts weren’t quick/easy so I put it down for now to work on other stuff. With no collectibles or anything and a short campaign, I don’t see this taking much longer.
Achievements unlocked: 38 (+4) | Completion: 78%
You’d think after 20 times you guys would put a guard over here…
And finally, on Friday, Xbox announced that only two games would be leaving the Game Pass service on February 15th: Galactic Civilizations III on the PC and Opus: Echo of Starsong on console. I began looking up info for the latter almost immediately, but I couldn’t get a good sense of what exactly the completion entailed; there were a fair number of missable achievements alongside a speedrun achievement (I guess I was just in a mood for them this week). But it looked manageable, at least, in the timeframe I had so… about midday I said “screw it” and just jumped in. And… yeah, as always, glad I did. It’s a bit of a mish-mash of game genres, mostly being a visual novel but with some light exploration and puzzle-solving, along with a risk/reward system where you can take a chance at avoiding trouble or getting more treasure, but it relies on a RNG dice-roll to see if you succeed or not. Pretty neat, overall. I started my first playthrough and decided it would be my “don’t fail” achievement run, which is essentially the game’s version of dying. I only died once, during a chase scene, but I quickly closed the game so hopefully that didn’t bork my whole run. I’m following a guide over on Neoseeker, which takes me through the safest route and helps with the game’s many, many collectibles. For the later cleanup, I’ll use a guide over on Steam and bounce around getting what I can. Then, I’ll still need a second playthrough for that final speedrun achievement, where I have to beat the entire game within eight hours. I just got to Chapter 3 on this first playthrough, and I’m at around five hours, so it is definitely very doable. And I’ll also need to visit all locations and collect all Memories (items) during one of them.
Oh, yeah, and the story is so sad. But I’m engaged.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completion: 35%
Weird time to choose to break into song, Eda.
Some major progress in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway on Saturday as I linked back up with the group from last week and polished off the final multiplayer achievement! Honestly, we should have gotten it last week, but apparently it’s glitchy and you have to be host for your final 10 matches or so for the one for completing 20 matches of Capture finally unlocks. Took us hours to finally get this figured out and wrap up the session. Then I had to go and unlock an achievement with actual score to get TA to register it (all the multiplayer achievements in this game have 0gs), so I played the second mission of the campaign and got a quick miscellaneous one. Looks like this will be getting played and completed soon! I’ve heard good things about the campaign, so I look forward to digging into this one.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+2) | Completion: 33%
Highest ratio: 5.63
Veteran Capturer (Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
Country Living (Maize)
Chapter 1 (Opus: Echo of Starsong)
