Week of 14 Apr 2024
“COMPUTING HARD. DON’T MOVE.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD
- Pikuniku
- A Little to the Left
As I continued to work my way to the end of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD this week it really didn’t grow on me at all. If anything, I hated it the more I played it! It was already bad enough you pretty much have no new weapon options or upgrades at all, but apparently the three different characters aren’t really all that different, either. The only change between each section is the Secondary Weapons you have access to. If we’re talking about the campaign and traversing the castle, Trevor is the best character due to his Electric Bomb making normal mobs a joke to handle. Not to mention by that point you have all the abilities and upgrades, so he’s definitely the most enjoyable option. But when it comes to bosses (and therefore the main challenge of this completion, the Boss Rush mode) Alucard is the clear winner with his Stopwatch. With all the ammo upgrades, you have so many chances to toss one out to dodge enemy attacks, to get more damage in during openings, etc. And considering what Boss Rush entails, this is obviously immensely helpful to limit the danger posed to you. Oh, right, the main campaign! All I really have to say about that is that, though not very fun, it was pretty easy overall; I even managed to score my speedrun achievement during my Hardcore run with very little issue!
That brings me to the Boss Rush, which was intimidating enough to make me put off playing this game for years! And, yeah, it was kinda tough, but no where near the intense challenge I thought it would be. It wasn’t until Wednesday when I got to really sit down and give this a try. I started with Easy, just so I could quickly knock out a run and have an achievement for the evening. It would also give me a feel for the fights and identify what might be tough on a harder difficulty. This is the kind of game where “harder difficulty” solely means the enemies hit like a tank, so it was important to know who I had trouble keeping away from. And while Alucard has the best Secondary Weapon to help with bosses, I’d say his set are also the hardest overall! Namely, I struggled a lot with the Reaver and his encounter with Dracula. It didn’t take long for me to easily get through Simon’s lot with little issue, and Trevor’s four bosses are a joke overall, but especially the Reaver always became the main hinderance to my progress. It’s the only boss that can really feel unfair, and if you run out of magic energy you can very quickly get stuck in a corner and, at best, take a lot of damage. This is made worst that you can’t really use your mist form on the following boss to heal, so you’re essentially stuck with the HP you leave the Reaver fight with until Dracula two fights later. But he’s also tough so it’s just no good. My method became to just lay into Reaver with everything I had, using the Chain Barrier and Guillotine skills whenever I could. This fight and the following one (the Daemon Lord) is usually where I burned the vast majority of my ammo to make it as painless as possible. I definitely didn’t think it’d happen, but after only three hours of attempts, I finally reached the very end of the run (watch out for the instant death section after Dracula!) and unlocked my achievement. WHEW! Talk about a nice surprise. I guess I’ll finally have to consider doing Lords of Shadow 2 at some point!
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+9) | Completion: 45%
I really love the… decor in this area.
Yet another nice and chill game leaving Game Pass to play! This time it was Pikuniku, and this game was pretty darn cute. You play as Piku a… red ball with legs. It’s hinted you’re VERY old? Either way, you wake up and go about interacting with all the odd inhabitants of the island and solving problems. It’s all in a bright art-style reminiscent of old Flash games. Overall, the game is very easy, but there are a few sequences required for achievements and/or trophies that require some level of skill. The hardest of these is probably the rhythm-based dancing minigame, but that was even pretty easy. There’s also some necessary co-op to do, so my kiddo was nice enough to jump in and help with that. Even… another speedrun achievement?! Man, I’ve been wracking up those left and right lately!
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completed
*looks at other works* Did… you ever have it?
Managed to hit the 50-day mark on my Daily Tidying in A Little to the Left on Saturday. Next up is 75!
Achievements unlocked: 26 (+1) | Completion: 47%
Highest ratio: 5.51
The great pirate king (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD)
Lowest ratio: 1.14
Clumsy boy (Pikuniku)
