Week of 29 Jan 2023
“Well at least avoid impaling yourself horribly.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Quantum Conundrum 🎮
- Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo 🎮
- Endling: Extinction is Forever 🎮
- Rumbleverse 🎮
I didn’t play a whole lot of Quantum Conundrum in the beginning of the week, but I did pop in quick on Sunday to grab the one collectible I needed from The Desmond Debacle add-on, wrapping that DLC up. I returned to the base game on Saturday, knocking out the entire rest of the campaign! It was a very fun puzzle game that I only needed to look up help a few times, and the writing is pretty funny. Gotta love all the portraits that transform when you shift dimensions, too, and a couple got me to chuckle. I also knocked out all of the Shift and Time Goals using the glitch I was made aware of last week, and boy was that a load off. I even managed to use the glitch on the end of the Yellow and Red Wings, too, though I couldn’t get it to work on the final area of the game so I had to do that one properly. All-in-all, this is going to be a far far easier completion than I’d anticipated. All I have left is to grab the final base game collectible, and then go complete the final add-on. Should be cake! Hopefully…
Achievements unlocked: 18 (+10) | Completion: 72%
Serving up some major steel on a silver platter.
Following with my goal to use my free 1-month Gamefly subscription to play some of the lesser-player games of 2022, the next game that arrived is Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo. This is yet another point-and-click adventure title, though this is far more like Telltale’s The Walking Dead than Saint Kotar was. So, you can’t skip any dialogue and…boy, this game sure likes to pause and stop to establish some kind of emotional tension. Seriously, the characters will just stand there and look at something just a little too long, all the time, and it grinds the entire story to a halt. The story itself is also just not very interesting. I’m not really sure if the game’s storyline follows the film or not as I’d never seen it. Ooo boy, those facial animations, too! The main character is just unlikeable and seems like he’s constantly being snarky and whining. Not even in an endearing way. This really couldn’t have wrapped up fast enough and I’m pretty happy to have it over with.
Achievements unlocked: 31 (+31) | Completed
Here, check out this silly cat video I found. The murder? Oh, we’ll get back to that.
The next game to arrive from Gamefly was far more fun: Endling: Extinction is Forever. You play as a fox trying to care for her kits in a very harsh world being ravenged by deforestation, pollution, and all the other fun things humans bring to every corner of the world. You more or less start each night, go find food for your babies, observe or interact with events, and then head back. It sounds repetitive, but I really enjoyed it and felt for the little fox family as their home fell apart and they did their best to survive. It’s definitely not a happy game, but it’s a beautiful one. Achievement-wise, it’s a pretty easy completion, but it takes a lot of planning to make sure you get everything in one playthrough due to the passage of time. Heck, one of your babies can be eaten and that alone will lock you out of a good few achievements! Though, since there’s an achievement for completing the game with all four babies intact, you kinda need the little brats around anyway. None of the enemies besides the owl will even bother them, so it’s not like this is difficult to keep them safe. Annoyingly, the guide I followed had the achievements not in unlock order but in some random order and I had to use the search function to try and track what I should be looking for. I missed one of the cub skills, though, so I had to do an almost full second playthrough since there’s no level/night select. But, overall I highly recommend this one. With climate change causing more and more issues IRL, it’s a potent story.
Achievements unlocked: 28 (+28) | Completed
Hey, could you guys just…not?
Boy, this was not a good week for “games as a service” titles. Amongst the list of server closures was Rumbleverse, which had gotten pretty good reviews upon release way back in… August 2022, so I thought I’d give it a shot and complete it before the servers are shut down at the end of the month. And I’m glad I did, because the positive word-of-mouth I caught at release was definitely warranted! The game is a fun take on the PUBG/battle royale formula, with a heavy emphasis on hand-to-hand melee combat styled like professional wrestling. Instead of head-shotting that dude with a chicken head, you instead run up and suplex him off a building. In my case, while looking like a knock-off Freakazoid. The achievements are also very easy and short, with my having unlocked most of the list the first night I played, on Thursday. I teamed up with ValakC and we went about mostly trying to get the achievement for landing an elbow drop from a great height. We tried different methods, but what worked for me is hiding atop a very tall billboard overlooking Half Nelson Highway in northeast Grapital Central and waiting while everyone else brawled below us. I was shocked when I nailed that elbow drop right on the head of a passerby and the achievement popped! You also have to land a KO with a stop sign (annoying, as they’re fragile), reach the final ring with a partner (we were often too good and won before then), and win a match with no special moves equipped (one of my first achievements). This all came within about 2-3 hours of playing with little issue! The real pain was the achievement for scoring 100 hits with a Vicious attack while someone is blocking; no matter how much I tried I just made miniscule progress most of Friday evening. I finally gave up and loaded up my second profile, matching up and just spamming attacks on them using a weak Vicious special attack (namely, Vicious Mist) while they blocked. Easy enough! This game was a lot of fun. Shame it’s closing down!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completed
Oh, nut bunnies, this is gonna smart.
Highest ratio: 9.47
In less than 12 Parsecs (Quantum Conundrum)
Lowest ratio: 1.00
Home Sweet Home (Endling: Extinction is Forever)
