Week of 01 Oct 2023
“Your comrades are gone to Yomi.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Vampire Survivors
- State of Decay
- Trek to Yomi
As I near the end of Vampire Survivors, I’ve been trying to play it more sparingly. I could have faced off against the final boss for the base game, but instead focused on Tides of the Foscari expansion. It’s got the same achievements for the most part as the rest of the game (evolve weapons, survive as characters, etc.) but the new maps also have a seal you have to break with certain characters. It’s not difficult at all, though at first I had trouble navigating the “Abyss of the Foscari” map. I even used the Eskizzibur’s combo attack to phase through the invisible walls so I could just skip straight to where I needed to go on the map the first time. I’m actually down to the final evolution and to kill some Sammies and this’ll be all knocked out!
Achievements unlocked: 182 (+11) | Completion: 96%
The game I really wanted to work on this week was State of Decay, even though I still am just not outright enjoying it. But, hey, it’s easy at least! I managed to get Marcus (the first character you start with) leveled up a good bit and figured out how to unlock skills, making things even easier and scoring a few achievements. It also made me feel better as I unlocked a few of the missable achievements related to storylines that you can bypass if you miss the call or accidentally decline the request. I’ve only got one more storyline to wrap up at the courthouse (besides the main one, of course) and I’ll have the really important achievements out of the way. I even managed to kill one of every special infe- er, freak zombie type with my car without really trying, so that worked out great. I wanted to keep playing and get this knocked out… but then an issue on Xbox Live made it so I couldn’t log into the service on my Xbox 360 console. So, guess this is on the backburner until the problem is resolved.
Achievements unlocked: 4 (+3) | Completion: 9%
“…For achievements, probably.”
I’d been strongly debating whether to do Trek to Yomi before it left the Game Pass library on Oct 15. It seemed like a pretty tough game, so I just didn’t know if it’d be wise to attempt in my currently emotional state. But… well, with not being able to play State of Decay, I figured I might as well. And after getting through four of the seven chapters, as usually is the case, I’m finding it pretty easy. The combat relies heavily on parrying and countering enemy attacks, and even on Ronin (Hard) difficulty the window for parrying is pretty forgiving. Even better once you get the Stunning Combination on Chapter 2 you can easily X, X, Y to RB finisher to take down just about any standard enemy. It even works on armored ones! I’m not sure if there’ll be enemies later on that resist this attack, but I’m abusing it like crazy in the meantime and am flying through every opponent. Then there are the bosses, and this is a little tougher. Since I’m playing on the higher difficulty level, they take me out after 1-2 attacks and are pretty hard to counter. Luckily they throw standard enemies into the mix between phases, and the Stunning Combination also heals damage, so it’s just a bloodbath. The bosses, so far, are the only tough part of the completion, because you have to defeat them without being hit for the final achievement(s). This final mode is Kensei, where everything kills you in one hit, you kill all standard enemies in one hit, and the bosses are scaled down to normal difficulty. Thank goodness, meaning if I can manage them on Ronin then Kensei should be pretty doable! There are also collectibles to keep an eye out for and I’m using two text guides to find them (I can’t stand video guides). Overall, not bad! And the visuals are very Kurosawa.
Achievements unlocked: 8 (+8) | Completion: 29%
You didn’t even take off your shoes!
