Achievement Unlocked

It has almost been a month since my last Achievement update so it's time for a progress report.

Progress in Mass Effect has slowed quite a lot due to the fact that I'm actually stuck in the game. That is weird for me to say as it implies that I don't know what to do but in this case, I do know what to do I just can't do it. I'm on my third and final (or so I hoped) playthrough of the game and as a result, the difficulty I'm playing on is Insanity. Now Insanity isn't hard as such but due to some mistakes, I think I have gotten myself stuck in a particular section. This section (being vague to avoid spoilers) can't be escaped and must be completed for me to progress and due to having no Medi-Gels left and still being on the lower levels for my characters, I'm finding it extremely hard to get past this point. If I get hurt, I can't heal so I have to be really careful otherwise I will die and due to my low levels my weapons/characters/abilities aren't as strong as they could be and yeah I'm just finding it really difficult. I have two options: keep trying with the hope that I may actually pass it (and have a frustrating experience while I am at it), or, drop the difficulty level down to get past the point and use the playthrough to pick up all remaining achievements except for the Insanity one.

If I take the latter option (which I'm leaning towards) then that will mean I will have to do another playthrough just to get the Insanity achievement. Originally my intentions were to get everything done in three playthroughs, but the idea of a fourth isn't sounding as bad as it could do because really all I would have to do is the main story. So far on this third playthrough though, I have picked up a few of the tech ability achievements so it hasn't been all bad.

I obtained the last two achievements I wanted from the XBLA game Battlestar Galactica and in the end it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I thought beating Scar without dying was going to be extremely hard but once I learned how he reacted to my moves I worked out a way where I could attack him a fair bit before having to retreat to find health. Once I worked that out it wasn't that hard and I managed to do it within three attempts after that. I also finished playing the 50 matches I needed to for the other achievement so it's nice to finally put this game away and class it as completed. I mean sure I could go for the 5000 kills and really finish it with the 200/200, but honestly I can't be bothered.

On the Guitar Hero side of things I have given up on trying to obtain the achievement you get for completing the career on Hard (or Expert) with the controller which is a shame. Why? Well I came really close to managing it by finishing every song except the very last one, which ironically is called 'One' by Metallica. The majority of the song isn't hard at all and I can hit all of the notes but the end section is another story and is frankly impossible if you ask me. I swear it is physically impossible to press the left trigger button on the controller (the green fret) THAT fast and even with the aid of Star Power, I cannot pass the song. So I have given up and instead begun practising playing on Hard with the guitar which actually ended up being a good thing as I'm definitely a lot better now than what I was. I can't hit all of the notes of a song yet and I'm still confusing my fingers a fair bit, but progress has definitely been made which I am proud of. Continue the progress and hopefully I will reach my goal of being able to finish Expert in both games. I did finish the Guitar Hero II career on Hard actually although that was with the controller...

I have also returned to Rez HD recently and picked up a fair few achievements in that. I have only got two left which are time consuming rather than hard. One is for completing Score Attack 30 times and the other is for finishing a particular version of Direct Assault which doesn't unlock until the other Direct Assaults have been completed (Direct Assault sees you going through the 5 Areas of the game in a row so it's quite a long session each time). The 200/200 is definitely possible for the game though and it is more a case of when rather than if.

Last but not least is of course Grand Theft Auto IV, a game which has given me a fair few achievements. Too many to list here anyway. I think the game's achievements are quite good actually with some easy ones and some more challenging ones. There is the typical collection ones as well for the hidden packages (flying rats) and stunt jumps. I'm sort of annoyed with the idea that there are multiplayer achievements though. I can understand them but the idea of having to rely on other people for achievements seems to misrepresent the idea of the system a little to me but most games have multiplayer achievements so it's something I am used to.

As you can tell I haven't obtained all that many achievements lately (aside from GTA) and that is mostly because I don't really have any new games to play and therefore to obtain achievements in. Still, I am happy with the progress I have made and I should be able to break the 30k barrier in the near future now that I'm playing GTA to death.