Achievements of the Week – The Beyond the Wall of Violent Sword Melody Edition

And that’s been…yet another week. If one isn’t paying close attention, these things really blur by. Seven days, one after the other, rapid fire. For instance, I didn’t even remember that I played a ton of Bulletstorm last Sunday, completing the game fully, until I began to put this list together. My mind has been most things Fez-related, with a pinch of Trials Evolution to boot last night, with little room to spare as the wife and I creep closer to MoCCA Festival next week.

All right, here are Achievements I unlocked that I liked the most from the week that was.

From Fez…

Mightier than the sword (10G): A cube for writing.

I couldn’t tell you how I got this. Not because it’s really spoilery, but because after going through so many levels within levels within levels and finding numerous secrets and cube bits and getting lost in the music and cryptic hieroglyphics…I just don’t remember. But there’s a strange artifact in my inventory, and so I must have gotten it at some point. Yeah.

From Bulletstorm…

Armed and dangerous (15G): Grow as a person, experience betrayal. Again.

Amusing Achievement art.

Space Pirate (10G): Drink at least 20 bottles of Nom Juice in the Single Player Campaign

I used to get drunk a lot. It was a coping thing, a way to pass the time, a way to fall asleep. I don’t really drink anymore, and if I do, I nurse the heck out of the drink until it is lukewarm and feeling uncomfortable. But getting drunk in videogames can be fun, and in Bulletstorm, it also earns you extra points to your skillshots. Gulp another bottle down and unleash that leash.

Violent Melody (30G): Complete the Campaign on Normal Difficulty

From Trails Evolution…

No Problemo (10G): Pass the D License Test and get your first bike.

Beyond the Wall of Pain (10G): Smash your bike and break every bone in one spectacular crash.

I missed a ramp and fell on a…landmine. Ka-blooie!

Community Spirit (20G): Post a time on another player’s custom created track.

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I’m almost positive I’ll be playing more Fez and Trials Evolution this weekend–and almost no more Bulletstorm–so that’s where you can expect Achievements to pop for next week. Only, uh, there won’t be an Achievements of the Week next Friday because I’ll be heading into New York City for the MoCCA weekend. So we’ll play major catch-up in fourteen days.

Until then, tell me about your favorite Achievement from the last week of gaming. Do it.

Fez, a shift in perspective

Back in January 2012, I put to e-paper the videogames I was most looking forward to in the year of our collective unmaking.

It’s an interesting list to reflect on a few months later, and here’s why. Two games have not come out yet, and I’m still super excited for them: Animal Crossing 3DS and Borderlands 2. One game has–Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning—but after playing the demo and discovering I couldn’t read any of the text, I’ve decided to pass on the title for the time being. Um, Suikoden: The Woven Web of a Century…yeah, still unlikely I’ll ever buy a PSP, but maybe someone will do a Let’s Play of it and I can experience it second-hand. And y’all are probably aware of my worry and disappointment about Game of Thrones: The Game.

Lastly, I named Fez. Here’s what I said about it:

A puzzle platformer with a unique style and perspective-shifting mechanic to it. The protagonist, a creature named Gomez, rocks a fez of its own and is obsessed with collecting hats, which sounds about right to me. Fez will be out on XBLA in early 2012, so maybe this month, maybe next month, or maybe the one after that. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it nonetheless.

Okay. Not sure where I got the “obsessed with collecting hats” bit from as, far as I can tell, he’s more interested in finding cubes and cube bits to open up more doorways. But otherwise, yeah. Fez came out last Friday–April 13, 2012 to be exact–and I downloaded it as soon as I could, slipping in a cool, screen-rotating forty-five minutes during my lunchbreak. Proof is in the Achievements I unlocked. In all honesty, I could’ve played for hours on end, as it is one charming, inviting, and novel experience, cushioned nicely by a retro style, simple control scheme, and surprisingly calming soundtrack.

You are Gomez, and you earn the power to rotate your universe by acquiring a magical fez. With your new power comes great responsibility; you must find a number of cubes, which will unlock sealed doors and stop the world from being torn apart. Many of these cubes (or cube bits) are openly hidden in the levels themselves and can only be discovered by rotating the screen a certain way. This rotating can also be used to create shortcuts from one place to another, and along the way you’ll pick up keys, treasure maps, and ancient artifacts. I know how the first of those three collection items work, but not the other two…yet.

However, not all is perfect in Fez. The map function might as well be non-existent, as it’s convoluted and barely navigable. Things can sometimes get tricky spinning the screen you are playing on; one shouldn’t then also have to rotate the map this way and that. I’ve looked at it a few times, trying to find my way “back” to the hub level with the multiple locked doors, but couldn’t figure out exactly what was where and then how to get there. Navigating the world can also get a smidge confusing when you are traveling deeper into levels within levels within secret doors within other levels. There’s also some stuttering and long loads, which I can’t determine if it is part of the game’s design or just how it actually is. Either way, it hampers more than it enhances.

Ultimately, Fez is a real treat, and I’m gonna keep playing. My goal is to play as long as I can without looking anything up online. No puzzle hints, no telling me what the deal is with those owl statues, no quick deciphering of all those strange symbols that are popping up more commonly, no nudges in the right direction. Discovery is part of the gameplay; now watch me turn.

Achievements of the Week – The Taking Sides with the Dragon Cube Hunter Edition

For those paying attention, I did not put together an Achievements of the Week post last Friday. And I totally could have. I unlocked a dino dropping size of them for Jurassic Park: The Game, which I completed rather quickly, as well a couple in that dragon-laden roleplaying game that never ends thanks to radiant quests and a landmass barely explored. But no one voiced any disappointment, so I guess this segment isn’t an actual weekly heroin fix for Grinding Down readers. Fine by me, really, as I was extremely stressed around then and disinterested in even hinting at why, and so I just played the games I had and kept blathering about their Achievements to a real minimum.

But I’m back. Got some good ones to share, too. So this edition will basically cover the last two weeks. Haven’t played much else on the Xbox 360 besides Jurassic Park: The Game and Skyrim, but I will be downloading Fez today during my lunch break so I might be able to sneak a few in from there, too.

Fez update: within forty-five minutes, I was able to unlock three–as well as had a blast spinning rooms and collecting bits of cube. Seriously, y’all need to check out Fez; it can be your weekend impulse buy! Looking forward to playing more.

Right. Let’s go then.

From The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…

Taking Sides (10G): Join the Stormcloaks or the Imperial Army

Pssst. Pssst. Yeah, you. Don’t tell anyone…but I signed up with the Stormcloaks! Screw off, ya dirty Imperial.

Dragon Hunter (20G): Absorb 20 dragon souls

Oh yeah! Dragons have nothing on me now thanks to my enchanted Ebony Bow of Lethargy, a full quiver of glass arrows, and plenty of stamina-weakening potions to boot. More will fall from the sky; this, I promise.

From Fez…

Get a cube (10G): Cube GET!

Just starting out. Gotta collect 31 more…

For these next two Achievements, I won’t spoil anything specific, but to get ’em, one just needs to do some light reading of all the Achievement descriptions in Fez and follow through…

Achievement unlocked (15G): Unlocking achieved.

Equal and opposite (15G): Negative space.

From Jurassic Park: The Game…

Hmm. While reviewing the list of Achievements I’ve ultimately unlocked, I realized that several of them share the same artwork. Actually, a lot of them. Never noticed this before. How lame is that? It’s no longer 2006, game developers. Put some care and effort into the look of your unlockables, like BioWare and Bethesda do. That said, here’s the variety you’ll get, with the only differences being in the name of the Achievement and how many Gamerscore points it is worth:

Other than those, the only ones that are special and different are those based on individual dinosaur encounters and not making any mistakes while fighting Yoder. That’s it. The rest are rinsed, shampooed, and used again. That’s pretty disappointing, especially since some good work was done on the Achievement names, like Barbasolved, I Know How to Read a Schematic, and I Herd That.

But whatever. It was not the greatest game.

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YOU HAVE NOW REACHED THE END OF THIS POST. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW, TELLING US ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE UNLOCKED ACHIEVEMENT OF YOUR WEEK OF GAMING. DO IT. THE CAPS LOCK DEMANDS IT.

Turning over a new leash with Bulletstorm

Let me just get this out there, so y’all understand that when you see me crawling out of an alley, begging for money and smelling worse than the rotten remains of a Stygia mutant previously eviscerated by the “Rear Entry” skillshot, it’s because of this: Steam sales. They will be my undoing, as just about anything heavily discounted suddenly becomes interesting in front of my eyes. And I do mean anything.

Take, for instance, the crude and callous first-person shooter Bulletstorm. I absolutely disliked the demo, ultimately saying this:

Bulletstorm is irrefutably juvenile, and the demo is all I probably needed to experience…ever. And for fun’s sake, here’s some phrases used affectionately during the demo to hit home their target audience: pasty, bean bag, butt hole, and, the new cult favorite, dick tits.

Right. So, why then did I buy a copy of the game over the weekend for the PC? Why have I been unlocking a lot of Achievements in rapid succession? Why am I–and this is almost troubling to admit–having fun kicking mutants into slow motion and then shooting them in half? Well, because Steam was selling it for $5.00. And at that kind of price, Bulletstorm is a blast.

At its boyish heart, Bulletstorm‘s story is about revenge gone wrong. Grayson Hunt is looking to kick his former commanding officer General Sarrano of the Confederation of Planets in his nuts and then shoot him in the head. This is because Sarrano used Hunt and his fellow friends to assassinate innocent people by telling them they were corrupt evildoers. Unfortunately, trying to ram Sarrano’s spaceship with Hunt’s spaceship brought both vessels down on the planet Stygia, which is infested with mutants and monsters. But Hunt’s no quitter, and so he’s crawling across the planet’s dangerous grounds in search of the man that made him mad. He is helped by Ishi, who is now part android, and Trishka, a former member of the elite squad Final Echo.

Gameplay involves moving forward through a level and racking up points by using creative kills against the many, many mutants that want to ruin your very existence. Headshots are boring, and so one must look for other ways to create mayhem: tossing an enemy of a cliff, dropping them on some spikes, shooting them in half, setting them on fire, and so on. Points let you buy ammo and upgrade weapons, so the more creative you are, the stronger your guns will be, which in turn let you get even crazier. It’s a system that works and reminds me of the way weapons upgraded in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. You also use a hi-tech leash that can grab objects and throw them around though I prefer sliding into enemies and then kicking them off ledges the most–really helps conserve precious ammo. Occasionally, gameplay gets mixed up, with Hunt controlling a huge, Godzilla-like monster or trying to just escape a section of the level under a time limit; otherwise, it’s still just a lot of shooting.

Also, what’s kind of nice is that, unknowingly, Bulletstorm on Steam counts as a Game for Windows Live thing, meaning I can play it logged in as PaulyAulyWog and earn Achievements for my actual Gamerscore. Think this is my first GFWL experience, and it’s all good in the skillshotty neighborhood. Here’s a few that I unlocked that are not tied to completing story chapters:

Master of Disaster (40G): Earn 2000 points or more at once

Disco Inferno (10G): Kill all enemies without leaving the dance floor in the city outskirts

No Man Left Behind (20G): Kill all enemies while escaping from the collapsed building

Currently, I’m somewhere in Act 4. Second chapter? Third? Don’t really know what that means in comparison to the overall game, but it feels like midway through. Maybe even more than that. I’m sure it won’t take long to finish up, as we’re definitely getting closer to wherever Sarrano is hiding. Again, for $5.00, this is a good time; however, if I had bought Bulletstorm at full price on Day One…I would definitely feel otherwise. And there you go.

Achievements of the Week – The Jetpacker Leftovers from ytiC daeD Edition

Another week has come and gone, and I am here again, whipped into action and berated by the higher beings, to share some of my favorite Achievements from the last seven days with y’all. Just two games get the special attention this time around, but I am by my lonesome this week–not counting cats–as Tara is dog-sitting. Also, I am just about to finish up my 31 Lovingly Bad Love Comics challenge, which means…uh, more free time? I suspect I’ll play a bit of this and that over the next two days.

For now, these things.

From Rage…

Just a Flesh Wound (15G): Complete the final round of 5 Finger Filet

This is probably the hardest minigame in Rage. Remember when, bored in middle school, you would place your hand on your desk, spread those digits, and try to stab the spaces between with your pencil as fast as you could? 5 Finger Filet is that, but with a really sharp knife. The first four rounds are scripted and easy to memorize, but the fifth and final round is always random, always fast, and likes to put hit targets right next to each other, which one’s brain might not be able to see before it is too late. The best advice I can offer for those Ark survivors going after this is to…just relax. Don’t overthink it, and you’ll find yourself naturally stabbing at your hand without hitting a single finger in no time.

Jetpacker (20G): Kill an Authority Enforcer during Jetpack descent

ytiC daeD (10G): Complete Dead City Reverse in the Campaign

Hee, I like this one’s name. Maybe too much.

From Jurassic Park: The Game…

I mused a bit already about my early experience with returning to Isla Nublar, which already limelighted a few Achievements. Haven’t gotten to play any more yet, but here’s another one that is full of spoilers for Nedry fans everywhere:

Leftovers (10G): Found Nedry’s ID badge.

Aw.

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I CAN’T THINK OF AN OUTRO FOR THIS POST SO I’LL JUST SHOUT THIS VERY SENTENCE AT YOU AND CALL IT A WEEK.

Welcome to Jurassic Park: The Game

If you know me well enough, or have had the golden opportunity to hang out with my wife Tara, then chances are you know how obsessed we are with Jurassic Park. Not the film series, but the first film–in truth, the only film. Actually, I’m also extremely fond of Michael Crichton’s novel, where it all began, as it was one of the first books I read as a youngling; I think I last reread it a few years ago and it still managed to impress. But you’d really know how dino crazy we are because when a perfect spot opens up for a Jurassic Park quote, we fill it, and we fill it fast. Occasionally, we don’t even need a reason. She likes these zingers:

• “Maybe it’s the power trying to come back on?”
• “Mr. Hammond, the phones are working.”

I usually go with:

• “Hold on to your butts.”

What then follows is us reenacting about every other line of dialogue from the film and then a heavy sadness as we don’t actually own a copy and can’t watch the glorious gem at any given point. These days, you have to buy a box set of all three films, and that’s not up our alley. Anyways, we love Jurassic Park, and so when in GameStop the other day we saw Jurassic Park: The Game for relatively cheap and picked it up. I’ve had some experience with other works from Telltale Games and enjoyed what they did there, but I did head back to Isla Nublar with trepidation.

It’s an adventure game akin to Heavy Rain more than an adventure game akin to Back to the Future: The Game. The action scenes are all about Quick Time Events (QTE), and the rest of the playing involves looking around scenes, talking to whoever is with you, and figuring out the right combination of actions. So far, from what I can tell, the story is split between Gerry Harding and his daughter and the mysterious Nima Cruz who is trying to find Nedry’s Barbasol can of dino DNA, and there are constant nods to the movie, which is always great. Sadly, the game looks pretty terrible, but not enough to scare us away immediately.

Just getting started with these, many of which are awesomely named:

Welcome to Jurassic Park (20G): Escaped the jungle.

I’m a Hacker (20G): Showed your jungle hacking chops.

The First Dinosaurs on our Tour (20G): Survived the two-crested lizard.

Looking forward to playing more, but just like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and LEGO Harry Potter, Years 5-7, this is a game best played with a partner, and so I will wait until Tara has some more free time. Right now, she’s hard at work on a short comic that I wrote, and we will hopefully be able to share it with the universe very soon. Sorry, no, it’s not about dinosaurs. This time.

30,000 Gamerscore, and I feel fine

I never really planned to hit 10,000 Gamerscore on the mark, but it happened, and I thought that was kind of a neat milestone. Then came the time for 20,000, and I actually went out of my way to figure out the best combo of Achievements to hit that nice ol’ rounded number on the dot. It became very meta, and that’s okay, as doing some math and using these fickle things called Achievements for an actual purpose was certainly refreshing. Also, as someone in the comments mentioned, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas played a crucial part in both sets of fireworks, and there’s no beating that. Now, here we are again, a year and change later, some 10,0o0 Gamerscore richer, with a total paperweight of…30,000. Take a look:

Yowza.

Alas, I didn’t get there with the help of Fallout: New Vegas, instead using the recently acquired Jurassic Park: The Game to up the ante and then two planned Achievements from Rage to seal the deal. Unfortunately, the last Achievement to tip the scale was based on luck: in Rage, there’s a mini-game called Tombstones, and if you roll four attacks on your very first turn, you get an Achievement. Since rolling is random, it just required sitting on the couch, petting my kitty cat, and hitting A over and over until the dang thing popped. When it did, I shouted in jubilation to Tara that I was successful and immediately shut off the Xbox 360, worried that I might accidentally unlock something else and ruin such a pretty, pretty number.

And I know–I mean, I kn0w–none of this matters. Some of you have probably already pre-judged me as an Achievement whore, but I think there is most definitely a difference between someone playing Rapala Tournament Fishing! just to get more Gamerscore points and somebody who looks at the whole process as a mini-game in itself, going after the ones worth going after, and celebrating little milestones along the way. I have to wonder if I’ll hit 40,000 in about one year or so as well. Maybe not as there just does not seem to be too much coming out this year on my “must buy” list, other than The Witcher 2 and A Game of Thrones: The Game. Keep following Grinding Down to find out how my turtle race to the top continues on…

Achievements of the Week – The Blood Oath for a Paramour Brawler Edition

Achievements, Achievements, Achievements. They came in droves this week from one game, and I just happened to ping another during my lunchbreak. Go me.

All right, let’s just do this.

From Mass Effect 2…

If you’re a daily reader of Grinding Down, then you know this week was my “falling back into Mass Effect 2 hard and now need to beat it like woah” week. And, uh, in the last week, I’ve unlocked 26 Achievements for the game. You can see others by clicking the links in the previous sentence. Here are a few more that I liked, too.

Paramour (50G): Successfully pursue a relationship with a teammate

Shepard totally got some grinding action from Miranda before the suicide mission went forward, and it was awkward and silly, as these sequences often are, but whatever. Good for them. My biggest gripe was that Miranda was in her white outfit instead of her darker one I earned from gaining her loyalty. At least she wasn’t wearing it for too long…

Brawler (10G): Shoot and kill 20 enemies while they’re knocked back by a punch

Weapon Specialist (15G): Fully upgrade a weapon

From The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…

Blood Oath (10G): Become a member of the Circle

Just working my way down the questline for The Companions. Ah-woooo!

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That’s it. I have a friend visiting this weekend and a family dinner to go to so I don’t expect too much gaming time to happen. And then I’ll be drawing comics all week to finish up my 31 Lovingly Bad Love Comics challenge. I do, however, have an itch to go back to Dragon Age: Origins or L.A. Noire, but we’ll see. Still have a ton of games to play on Steam and such.

For now, my Shepard has saved humanity throughout the galaxy from certain annihilation

With not much left to do in terms of side missions for Mass Effect 2, I decided it was high time Commander Shepard and his crew ate their last meal of space turkey and jumped deep into unfriendly territories, to go on what everyone kept calling “a suicide mission.” The Collectors were just past the Omega 4 Relay, and it seemed like we were ready; all members on my crew were labeled loyal, and all upgrades for The Normandy were purchased. We only had to move our feet. And so we did, grim and quiet, kickstarting the end of all things.

And it was…an okay final fight. Kind of underwhelming, really. I went in as virgin-like as possible, not knowing much of the specifics, just that any or all team members could die during these explosive events. My goal, despite how uninterested I was in many of my squadmates, was to keep everybody alive, including my simian Commander Shepard. Just had to watch out for those husk swarms, as melee takedowns was not a strong point.

But first, here’s all the end-game Achievements that popped in a nice succession:

Suicide Mission (50G): Use the Omega 4 Relay

Against All Odds (15G): Survive suicide mission

Long Service Medal (75G): Complete Mass Effect 2 twice, or complete it once with a character imported from Mass Effect 1

Mission Accomplished (125G): Save humanity throughout the galaxy from certain annihilation

No One Left Behind (75G): Keep your team alive through the suicide mission

Um…whew. That’s a lot of Gamerscore all at once, more or less. But as you can see, I was very successful on this final mission, kept myself alive, and kept everyone on my team alive. Honestly, after looking up exactly all the number of things that could go wrong on the suicide mission and everything that is taken into consideration, I am surprised I did so well. I mean, I just played the same way I played for the whole game (around 23 hours or so), using my supped-up assault rifle and a ton of Unity and Incinerate and Heavy Overload. When it came time to picking specific squad members to do certain tasks, I went with the obvious choices: Tali for crawling through tubes, Garrus for leading the side-team, Jacob for escorting the miscellaneous crew back to the ship, and Samara for creating a strong biotic barrier. And they all survived. As did my personal two squadmates–Mordin and Miranda–though my brain almost burst during that last boss fight, which is pretty ridiculous.

But yeah, the team and Shepard is alive–and is also done. Other than some story elements and all of the world’s lore, I did not enjoy a ton of Mass Effect 2, and if memory serves me right…I did not have a fantastic time with Mass Effect. There’s a lot to like, but ultimately, it’s not my kind of RPG-in-space. I really dislike the repetitive nature of starting a mission, running down a hallway, encountering enemies, and rinse/repeating until you reach the end, where you have to then make a Big Choice™. Chances are very high that I won’t be moving on to Mass Effect 3, certainly not any time soon, though I am curious to learn how the story plays out. Might just have to spoil myself down the line.

Reading books and stealth-killing mudcrabs like a true Dovahkiin

Recently, Bethesda put word out about yet another patch to one of their patchy videogames–this time, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim–and usually I just glance these over as all they ever contain are a long list of fixes to buggy quests, many of which I can’t actually recall by name alone. However, something was different this time around, and included in this batch of bug-squashing code was the addition of new kill animations for melee weapons and stylized kill cameras for ranged weapons, such as bows and magic. To that, I say: about…freaking…time.

Being the meshuggenah man-boy that I am, I immediately turned on my Xbox 360, downloaded a patch–note that I said a patch, not the patch–and began traipsing across Skyrim, searching for my first kill. Found some bandits in a cave and shot them all down from afar in single hits…with no cool camera action. And with an Archery skill of like 78 or something. Hmm. What gives? This sense of confusion went on for awhile until I went back to the pooter and realized that the patch was only for PC/Steam, and even then, it wasn’t available yet.

Boo.

Nonetheless, I was back in the realm of Skyrim, looting, looking, and living. Checking my stats, I noticed that I was four dragon souls away from 20 and…one skill book away from 50. Surely I could find one more measly skill book, and then I remembered a small hideout right near Whiterun that I had discovered while playing the game on Steam the other night. It was guarded by some bandits and a lonely horse, but otherwise, no trouble–and there was definitely a skill book there. Off I went. Tra la la. All was going to plan until a freakin’ FROST DRAGON SHOWED UP AND TRIED TO ICE ME! After cooling off, I looted the hideout and walked away with one more book in my ever-growing bag of shtuff.

Honestly, I don’t need an Achievement to tell the world I’m a reader, but here it is regardless:

Reader (20G): Read 50 Skill Books

Also, the latest patch just went live on PC/Steam, and so again, I headed back on in, dying to see a ranged weapon kill camera in action. And so it happened. Um…I shot at a mudcrab from quite a distance and watched, in slow motion, as it thunked back into the water, an orcish arrow deep within its shell. It was both lame and exciting, and clearly something that should have been implemented from the very start.

And now I wait for the Xbox 360 version to get updated before I go about finishing up some more quests. Heck, I might even get married soon or pick a Civil War side. There are no limits to my wandering.