Achievements of the Week – The Fighting Magpie Trooper Edition

This was a pretty good week for Achievements, with me earning some in L.A. Noire after keeping away from that game for a few months and then also completing Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’m sure you’ve heard about that game. If not, why not read one of my bajillion blog posts over how frustrating and disappointing my experience in future Detroit was…go ahead, I’ll wait.

::hours pass::

Anyways, here are the Achievements that I liked the most from this week of gaming…

From L.A. Noire…

Magpie (80G): Find and inspect 95% of all clues.

This one popped immediately after unlocking another Achievement, which is secret so I won’t spoil that for y’all. It did, however, put an extra clue into my notebook, pushing me just over the magpie edge I guess. I was kind of hoping that there was a crucial carrot or two that Cole had missed during an investigation. Oh well.

Public Menace (30G): Rack up $47,000 in penalties during a single story case.

Previously discussed.

A Good-Looking Corpse (20G): Find and inspect all of the narcotics in Julia Randall’s apartment.

Last night, I decided that I really like L.A. Noire‘s gameplay enough to spend money to have more of it and checked out how much the DLC cases were. Each was around 320 Space Bucks, so I downloaded two of them–The Naked City and Nicholson Electroplating. I’ve only started playing the former, earning this one Achievement by thoroughly searching the crime scene, but it feels great to be back, with new cases, new clues, and new questions to ask.

From Deus Ex: Human Revolution…

Trooper (50G): Complete Deus Ex: Human Revolution

THANK THE MIGHTY AUGMENTS IN THE SKY! THE GAME IS DONE, AND SO AM I FOR A BIT UNTIL I AM READY TO COME BACK AND PUT ZERO PRAXIS POINTS INTO STEALTH BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER. NOTHING MATTERS, ALL IS INCONSEQUENTIAL.

The D Project (15G): You watched the entire credit list and saw the surprise at the end.

The credits are nothing special. They are about 15 minutes long, a never-ending list of names, and then there’s some goofy photos of those that worked on the game that are probably only amusing to those that know those people. Yay, fifteen minutes on inside-jokey photos. How wonderful. After all that, there’s a small cutscene which ties nicely into the Deus Ex franchise. Just call me…done with this game.

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This weekend, I’m actually looking to play more of my PlayStation 2 than the Xbox 360 (come to me, Suikoden III, my sweet darling) and give Layton some more headspace, but I will probably devote a few hours to those downloaded cases in L.A. Noire. Have you got any Achievement goals currently? Please do share. And also, please come over to my house and finish Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a second time on the hardest difficulty without setting off any alarms and without killing anyone (except bosses). Kthnxbai.

Videogame genres I just can’t play

Obviously, readers of Grinding Down should know that I have a deep, unquenchable love for RPGs. They are my favorite type of videogame, enough so that adding basic RPG elements to other types of games is enough to get me drooling. But, for all my years of gripping a controller, there are still some types of games that don’t interest me and probably never will. Let’s take a look at them to see maybe why…

Tower/Defense

Set up a bunch of stuff and then sit back, staring at the screen as all the action happens without any more involvement from you, the player. Do this for a lengthy period of time, until waves of enemies stop washing over you. I don’t know. It just always seemed boring, and the majority of tower/defense titles feature top-down perspectives or ones with the camera pulled so far out that nothing can be seen. So there I am, waiting for stuff to happen, and then when it does, I can barely make out my units from the enemy’s. A resounding meh.

That said, I’ve still not yet played Plants VS. Zombies, which is purported to convert any and all haters of this genre.

Sports

Ha! If I don’t play them in real life, there’s certainly no enjoyment to gain from experiencing them digitally. Though I do enjoy a round of golf on my 3DS now and then. Very relaxing. Except when I double-bogey a par three. Then I get the rage sweats.

Realistic First-person Shooters

I believe my distaste for war shooters stems from childhood and my father. He’s a hunter, and raised me to respect guns. In fact, I was the only kid on my street not allowed to get a laser tag toy gun the year everyone was jumping off that bridge, and thus missed out on all the late night bonding with neighbors that is vital to a hermit-in-hiding’s upbringing. We used to go target shooting though, and I remember always holding the gun downwards at the ground, in constant fear of it ever discharging by accident. I only ever wanted to point at empty soda cans or paper plates with targets drawn on them, and even then I didn’t like the sensation. Realistic FPS games demand you aim at people and pull the trigger, and with ragdoll animation it’s all a little too life-like when they go down. The infamous “No Russian” level from Modern Warfare 2 is hard to even watch with no controller in hand. I’d rather take down aliens or monsters or robots with brains than shoot a fellow human being, armed or not, which is why some of my favorite shooters are Borderlands and Fallout 3. Surprisingly, not Halo; I don’t really get that series.

Racing

Most of my week is spent in my car, driving to, driving from. Granted, it’s not a race car doing 150 mph and taking turns like a pro–it’s a 2007 Chevy Cobalt for heaven’s sake–but it’s still driving, a foot on a pedal, pushing forward unemotionally. With realistic racers, you just drive. You go around a track X number of times and try to break a record. I prefer a little more chaos, which is why the only racing games I’ve ever enjoyed are Jak X: Combat Racing or Mario Kart. I can, however, appreciate how detailed these cars actually are in games like Forza Motorsport 4 or Gran Turismo 5; some of those replay might as well be broadcast on TV, as they are extremely hard to differentiate between real and computerized.

Tactical Role-playing Games

What? Wait, didn’t I just confirm my love for RPGs and anything with RPG elements to it at the beginning of this post? Yes, yes I did. Way to read, reader. But there’s an exception to every rule, and when strategy and grids and isometric camera angles are added to a RPG, the game changes dramatically. It’s more about where your party is placed on the playing field than the magic spell they cast or the armor they choose to don. I remember feeling so duped by Vandal Hearts for the PlayStation back in 1997, and have never really given many of games in this genre a chance. Recently, there’s been Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Overclocked, which I’ve struggled with.

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So, what game types can’t you play? Speak up below in the comments section and/or tell me what I’m missing out on by not giving Battlefield 3 a chance.