Two More Games at 100%

I've completed two more games, which I will list below together with a small recommendation. Remember that you can read all my recommendation on Steam by visiting http://steamcommunity.com/id/Skaery/recommended/.

Fun small puzzle game. I really like the idea behind the game, and I just wish it was a bit longer (I only took me 6 hours to get par on all the 24+10 levels). Anyway, fun game and great value for the small price.

Getting all the achievements in this game is pretty simple. Most you'll probably get by jump going through the levels, and the rest are all easy to do afterwards.

I was pleasently surprised when I tried out this game. The game is very cheat and just a casual fun solitaire game, and I was looking for a really casual game that didn't demand much from the player, so I bought it. Later I found out that Valve recommended charging more, but the dev didn't want to.

There's a pretty long story mode where the levels get more and more complex (I didn't really follow the story). You earn money which you can use to buy upgrades such as undo and see next card. You also collect eggs that you need to grow into adults by playing. However, there's 32 eggs to collect and they drops completely random (I'm not a fan of random drops!).

I'll easily recommend this game to anyone just for an easy casual game.

Another game that is straight-forward to get 100% on. The only anoying achievements are collecting all the eggs and getting all your pets to grow up. I want to blame that on the random drops, but getting all the XP to grow them up took me longer than finding the eggs, so I'll blame both.

Three More Games at 100%

I've completed three more games which nets me a total of 75 Steam games (74 if you don't include Black Ops multiplayer) and one GFWL game (Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition). The three new additions are as follow:

Worms Reloaded: I've always loved Worms, and even though this isn't the best version of it I've still had a lot of fun with it. I did, however, not enjoy grinding 17 wins in every gametype in ranked matches. That achievement has been on stand by for a long time, but, somewhat thankfully, noone plays ranked so it's not difficult to boost with a friend. It just takes a lot of time...

Star Trek D-A-C: Another multiplayer game, but another multiplayer game that thankfully has bots. Getting all achievements here wasn't really much of a problem, and it didn't take a very long time, which is a good thing since the game isn't all that fun.

Bloody Good Time: I don't know what's up with all these multiplayer games. All the achievements in this game can quickly be earned against bots. If you want to do it even faster (I used 4.4 hours) you can check out some of the console commands for round time and bonus points. After I had 11/12 achievements I was at 600/2000 stars for the last achievements.

Two More Games at 100%

I've had a busy few days the last week.

I bought Tidalis at the Holiday Sales not because it had a big sale (well, it did get a 50% off), but because I like the developer (Arcen Games) attitude towards charity I wanted to support them. Before trying the game I thought it would be a standard match-4-like game, but with some crazy achievements (64!) that would be impossible to get. I was wrong about both. It is a casual game, but it does require you to be pretty active in the story mode or you'll lose very fast. Especially in the last ~10 levels I had a lot of problem (it doesn't help that they are randomly generated), and I did end up skipping a few to fnish it. Also, the achievements aren't that bad. Most you'll get by just completing story mode, and the rest you'll get by grinding. The worst achievement by far is "To The Moon!" which require your commutative stream lenght to be the distance from the Earth to the Moon. That is a lot of pixels! I had to leave the game running almost 24/7 for three days before that achievement was completed.

I didn't really expect much from Diamond Dan before I started playing, because I didn't really know what it was all about. However, I quickly came to like, and it reminds me of some old-school game that I can't remember the name of. You run around the outside of a temple. Your mission is to get to the bottom while collecting as many treasures as possible and avoiding traps while you progress. It sounds easy, and on easy/medium/hard it's not really that tough. Extreme, however, can be a real challenge in the later levels where there's almost more traps then safe rocks. This is one of those games where you fail a lot, but you keep saying, "One more try. I'll give it just ONE more try, and then I stop!". One day I spent around 4-5 hours on two somewhat simple achievement, which came as a real surprise for me. How easy the various levels are depends a lot on how lucky you are with the generation of the levels. One of the achievements require a speed run on one of the levels, and that really require you to reload that levels a dozen of times before you get the right combination of traps and such to quicky move downwards. Overall the achievements are all doable without too much trouble, and I didn't really find any of them annoying to achievement - not even the 1.000.000 point one (you'll probably have 500k after completing all the others).

70 Steam Achievement Games at 100%

 A few days ago I completed my Steam achievement game number 70. Game number 70 turned out to be Supreme Commander 2, a game I didn't think I would ever 100%, since I didn't think I would like it. I was not a fan of the first game so for a long time I didn't even want to give it a chance. This, however, changed when a friend forced me to play it since we didn't have a lot of other games to play over LAN. Supreme Commander 2 was not nearly as complex as I thought it would be, and it wasn't really that hard so I gave the campaign a shot. After reading some achievement guides it didn't sound like it would be that hard to complete, so I began going through the campaign on hard. And, as it said in the guides, it wasn't really that hard. The only hard achievement to get was the 25 online ranked matches, but my friend help me boost these, so thanks to him.

New Prince and Princess

A big congratulation to the crown prince couple (of Denmark) after the crown prince has become the happy father of four. The crown princess and the new prince and princess are all doing fine after a great birth.

OCD, Addict, and Global Warming

You know all that talk about global warming and all that talk about turning off everything so it doesn't use power? Hopefully Garry hadn't heard about it when he decided to update his sandbox of a game (Garry's Mod) with achievements. Among all the bad bad grind achievements he decided to have a 'Have the game running for a whole year' achievement. Well, you know some of those OCD people just have to go for it, and the first has just completed this. Congrats to Rhy for being the first.

Steam Treasurehunt

The Steam Holiday Treasure is over, and I didn't even win a single game. I will review my progress in this post.

December 6th-7th

• Self Portrait - Setup an avatar
  Already done.
• Got Tanked? - Become a Desert Fox in R.U.S.E.
  See note below.
• Up the Ante - Unlock The Iron Curtain in Poker Night at the Inventory
  I already owned this game, but not this achievement. It didn't take long to get, though.
• More Cowbell - Set a leaderboard score of at least 1,124,400 in easy (9 minute) mode for the "Paul Hartnoll" level in Chime
  I already owned this game, but I hadn't played the specific song in easy. This took, naturally, nine minuts.

 December 8th-9th

• Friends with Benefits - Have 10 friends on your friends list
  I had 83.
• What Happens in Vegas - Complete Ol' Buddy Ol' Pal achievement in Fallout: New Vegas
  See note below
• Terminal Velocity - Set a leaderbord score of at least 22,600 on the level 'Mash Face Against Mountain' in AaAaAA!!!
  This game has an achievement named after me for some reason, so, naturally, I already had this one.
• Go To Your Happy Place - Play the demo or game The UnderGarden
  Tried the demo, but didn't buy the game.

December 10th-11th

• Join the Club - Join an Official Group
  I'm already a member of 86 official groups.
• Family-Style - Get Back in Business in Mafia II
  I have 100% in this - well, except that one buggy achievement in Joe's Adventure DLC.
• Stack the Deck - Be a Devastator in Magic: The Gathering
  I am not good at Magic, but I already had this one.
• Just Drop It - Set a leaderboard score of at least 85,370 for 'Classic - Small Wonder' in Droplitz
  I already had 100% in this game, so that score was cleared.

December 12th-13th

•  It's Better to Give - Send a gift to a friend
  I'm very generous!
• Take One for the Team - Make a Sacrifice in Call of Duty: Black Ops
  I only got this game because I could get it 40% at release, which made the price reasonable. I'm just missing the Zombie mode achievements, so this one was done.
• Breaker, Breaker - Set a leaderboard score of at least 11,200,000 for 'Bonus Mode' in Shatter
  I already had a score of 15,500,000.
• Zombie Zoo - Create a Crass Menagerie in Left 4 Dead 2
  I love L4D and L4D2 and I play them casually with friends. I have both games at 100%.

December 14th-15th

• Sneak Peak - Download and watch a trailer from each of the following games: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Homefront, BRINK, Red Faction: Armageddon, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and Portal 2
  I had a lot of trouble downloading these because Steam would freeze for a min. everytime I pressed download. After I was done, Valve decided to rename this objective to "Steam Gimme", and you just had to have an account. I got it the hard way!
• Tunnel Vision - Become a Nosalis Hunter in Metro 2033
  I haven't completed a playthrough in this game yet, since I didn't find it that much fun. However, I already had this achievement.  
• Cause and Effect - Create a Destruction Frenzy in Just Cause 2
  I already owned Just Cause 2, but I couldn't play it because it requires Win7, and I'm still running XP on my PC. To took a chance, downloaded it on my laptop, and managed to get the achievement even though the game was lagging like crazy on very low settings.
• Beat It - Set a leaderboard score of at least 3,770,488 for 'Survival Best Score' in Beat Hazard
  Already done.

December 16th-17th

• Smack Talker - Post a comment on a friend's Steam Community profile page 
  I actually had to do this. I'm surpriced I haven't done it before now.
• One-Hit Wonder - Build a Wonder in Civilization V
  Already done.
• Road Rage - Set a leaderboard score of at least 10,515 for 'Slaughter, City Center' in Zombie Driver
  Great game! I already had a score of 127,922.
• Butter Me Up - Build Me Up Buttercup in Bob came in Pieces
  Another great game! I have all the achievements already, so this was free too.

 December 18th-19th

• Suggestive Behavior - Write a recommendation
  As I've already written about on my blog, I have made a few.
• Made in the USA - Become a Founding Father in Empire: Total War
  I already had this one, but I haven't played this game that much, since my game started crashing everytime I got to a specific mission.
• Buzz the Tower - Set a leaderboard score of at least 37 for 'Beach' in flight Control HD
  I think my score for every level is over 100, but for some reason this objective kept going from completed to not completed and then back again.
• Overachiever - Played at least 15 games or demos since March 2009 (When Steam began recording playtime)
  No comments...
  

I really didn't want to purchase a lot of games for this treasure hunt, since you only had to complete 10 out of the 28 tasks to do in the drawing for the 100 games, and I was expecting those 10 to be complete free. In fact, I ended up with 20 free tasks, and 6 very easy ones. The first day R.U.S.E. was 33% off, but I decided not to buy it for two reasons: 1. I wasn't really interrested in this game, and 2. I price was still too high, and I could buy it retail cheaper and just activate it on Steam if I really wanted.

The second day Fallout: New Vegas showed up with no discount, and at first I was happy to see this, since I still didn't want to buy a lot for a perfect treasure hunt, and with two expensive games the first two days it looked like that would be the trend.

Then the next few days came, and I got a lot of free tasks - well, the Just Cause 2 one was a bit of a pain as already described. I was now hoping for a game like Modern Warfare 2 to show up, so I could just say 'Fuck it!', but no. All free tasks too.

It was now Saturday the 18th, and I was only missing those two tasks from the first two days, and my damn OCD kept nagging me about it. It was too late to buy the game retail and just activate them on Steam, and I didn't want to spent 100€ on them on Steam. Thus, I decided to look at some of the other digital stores where I came across Direct2Drive where they were also 100€ in their EU store, and cheaper in their UK store. And on top of that you could add a coupon to get an extra 25% off, which in the end meant that the games was about half-price. I thought I would get an error when I tried to use the UK, and I got one:

Your transaction will require review by a Customer Service Agent. Please contact Customer Service for further information. We apologize for this inconvenience.

I decided to contact support, and let their responce time decide whether I should go for the two tasks or not. At 00:18 I made my ticket, and at 00:30 they responded:

I sincerely apologize that you’ve been inconvenienced!
In order to protect your card from unauthorized internet purchases our system required a manual review by a human being in a random security sweep.  This is a precaution we take as an online, no card present merchant.
I have cleared your account and sincerely thank you for your patience! Please return to making purchases with us as you normally would. No purchase has completed from your previous attempt.
Feel free to contact me with any more questions you might have.
Regards,

That's just crazy! 12 minuts responce time in the weekend at night? Valve could really learn something here! Anywho, I bought the two games without any problems and activated them on Steam. I was not at home so via remote control I told my PC to start downloading them so they would be ready when I got home the next day. To make a long story short, the Fallout: New Vegas task took a few hours, and R.U.S.E. took around 30 seconds.

Click the image below to see the whole contest page:

And, naturally, the epic Hat of Undeniable Wealth and Respect:

RUSH review and 100%

RUSH is a good puzzle game that never gets too frustrating, and if you do feel a bit frustrated there's a simple hint system that either tells you if your signs are placed the wrong place or tells you where to place signs. However, the game is missing a cute creature like Toki Tori.

The 21 achievements were easily done, but I still had fun doing them. I should have added to the review that the frame rate tends to drop when you start the boxes in the larger levels. This, however, isn't that important since you aren't actively doing anything while this happens. You should still note that some of the loop achievements can be a bit buggy if the game lags.

Rhythm Zone Review

Good and fun music game built up the same way as Guitar Hero just with a keyboard. You can change the difficulty from decent to impossible. It's always a great feature in music games that you can add your own music - in this game you even get an achievement for adding 10,000 songs(!).

One little note: This is possibly the only game ever that gives me nausea. After one song my vision is all weird, and after 4-6 songs I just have to stop.

It's just a bit sad I will never get all achievements in this game. I don't think I have 10,000 songs to add, and the hardest difficulty is just impossible for me.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days Review

I've heard a lot of bad press about this game, and seeing that the game had already dropped to 29,99€ after just a few month didn't look good. But since the game had a 75% sale (already!) I could resist, since, afterall, the game has achievements. I won't be getting all the achievements for this game, since a lot of them are for multiplayer, and I don't want to play the multiplayer in this game. Here's the review I've written on Steam (for all my Steam review, look HERE).

Being an IO game I really wanted to like it, but I just don't. In fact, I have a hard time even comming up with something positive to say. Sure, the weird hand-held camera view is somewhat stylish, but it quickly just gets annoying. Also, who's filming and why? And why is gore and nudity censured?

The guns are weak, and doesn't really feel like they do any damage. The story, well, I never really got it - you hunt someone in the beginning, and your girlfriend gets *snip*, and you hunt the people behind? From all previews I thought it would be about a robbery, but that's only the multiplayer part (or arcade mode).

I've played 4.4 hours so far, and that's 3.5 hours of completing the whole campaign(!), and 0.9 hours playing arcade mode. I'll try to complete the co-op campaign, and then I'll just try to forget this game...

New Design

I've changed the design so it looks more like Steam's design, since I really like that. Also, the new design has allowed me to make the text arena more width.

Steam Pre-Holiday Sale

 

The pre-holiday sale on Steam has started, and this year the theme is gift packs - for instance you can get 10-pack of Freedom forces for only 7,49€ (84% off on each game). I'll list each day's sale here:

November 24th

• Shank 33% off
• Alpha Protocal 75% off
• Borderlands 50% off
• Prototype 50% off
• Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse 70% off
• Counter Strike: Source 75% off
• The Deus Ex Collection 75% off
• R.U.S.E. 33% off
• Indie Energy Pack (includes BRAINPIPE: A Plunge to Unhumanity, Galcon Fusion, Gridrunner Revolution, ProtoGalaxy, and Quantz) 90% off

• R.U.S.E. 6 Pack 50% off
• Half-Life 2 10 pack 77% off
• Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition 8 pack 83% off
• Borderlands 6 pack 66% off

November 25th

• EVE Online: Tyrannis 75% off
• Defense Grid: The Awakening 75% off
• Cities XL 2011 25% off
• DeathSpank 33% off
• AudioSurf 75% off
• Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY 66% off
• Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days 75% off
• Indie Story Pack (includes And Yet It Moves, Gish, Puzzle Agent, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, and Jolly Rover) 92% off

• Defense Grid: The Awakening 10 pack 84% off
• AudioSurf 12 pack 86% off
• Left 4 Dead 2 6 pack 75% off
• Puzzle Quest 2 10 pack 65% off

November 26th

• Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box 50% off
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Gold Edition 66% off
• Machinarium 75% off
• Tropico 3: Gold Edition 75% off
• Torchlight 75% off
• Empire: Total War 50% off
• ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead 50% off
• Blur 50% off
• Indie Clever Pack (includes Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time, Eufloria, Iron Grip: Warlord, VVVVVV, and World of Goo) 91% off

• Freedom Force 10 pack 84% off
• Portal 6 pack 86% off
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising 8 pack 75% off
• Empire: Total War 6 pack 65% off

November 27th

• Left 4 Dead 2 75% off
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 50% off
• Wings of Prey 50% off
• Supreme Commander 2 75% off
• Galcon Fusion 75% off
• King's Bounty: Platinum Edition 75% off
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light 50% off
• Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City 66% off
• Indie Pulse Pack (includes AudioSurf, Best Hazard, BIT.TRIP BEAT, Rhythm Zone, and The Polynomial - Space of the Music) 90% off

• Counter Strike: Source 6 pack 79% off
• NyxQuest: Kindred Spirit 10 pack 85% off
• Red Faction: Guerrilla 8 pack 75% off
• Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City 6 pack 75% off

November 28th

• Mount & Blade: Warband 75% off
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction 33% off
• The Ball 50% off
• Street Fighter IV 66% off
• World of Goo 75% off
• Patrician IV - Steam Special Edition 75% off
• The Orange Box 75% off
• BIT.TRIP BEAT 50% off
• Indie Puzzle Pack (includes Cogs, Droplitz, Puzzle Dimension, Shatter, and Tidalis) 90% off

• Osmos 12 pack 81% off
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction 6 pack 50% off
• Just Cause 2 8 pack 75% off 

November 29th

• Aliens vs. Predator 2010 66% off
• Monkey Island  2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge 75% off
• Metro 2033 75% off
• Peggle Deluxe 50% off
• Beat Hazard 75% off
• Colin McRae DiRT 2 75% off
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 75% off
• Mafia II 25% off
• Indie Air Pack (includes Altitude, DogFighter, Flotilla, Gratuitous Space Battles, and Plain Sight) 92% off

• World of Goo 12 pack 79% off
• Aliens vs. Predator 2010 6 pack 74% off
• Trine 8 pack 87% off
• Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West 10 pack 78% off

Steam Recommendations

As a new feature on Steam it is now possible to recommend a game to your friends. Sadly, you can't see all recommendations for a game. Anyway, it is possible to see all recommendations made by a single user by looking at the Recommended tab under his games (hopefully, they'll add a link on one's profile soon).

Anyway, I've been recommending a few games so far, though mostly games I've already discussed here. You can see them all HERE. The link has also been added to the right hand side.

100% on Flight Control HD

Let me try this again...

This is a new small casual game on Steam, which didn't take long to 100%. This is my review of this game (see all my review HERE):

After ~30 min. you've tried every level, and it already seems a bit too repetitive. If just they've added some simple story mode or some special objectives it would have been much better. If you're just going after the achievements you'll probably have 11 of 12 after those ~30 min and ~30 games, which means your still 170 games away from that last achievement...

All in all, if you have 30 min. where you want to play a small, simple, casual game, then this is a decent pick if you can get it 50% off.

Finally, some free time!

I haven't posted anything for a long time, since I've been pretty stressed with my master thesis, which I've finally finished and passed (I will post a few lines about this later). That said, I will try to be a bit more active from now on. And that said, I will probably spam this blog with posts about things that has happened the past month, and I will try to make an update of my achievement progress.

100% on Bob Came in Pieces

Edit Jule 19th. - the game got 10 achievements, which I have now unlocked, such that I am truly at 100% again.

This game is a different take on puzzle games. You are Bob, a small alien who has crashed landed on a foreign planet. You start with a basic space ship, and as you progress through the levels, you'll find extra rockets and pipes you can add to your ship. The difficulty lies in chosing the right ship design for the right job. The story levels are quickly completed, and all the parts are quickly found. But for each level there are two speedrun achievements (silver and gold), and it's here the really hard achievements are to be found. In addition, the game has two times gotten new levels in the form of VR mission, which have all been really well designed, and I actually found these more fun than the story levels.

All in all, I think this is a really fun game, and I've had a lot of fun trying to complete the speedruns (which I'm usually not a fan of). For the price of only 6.99€, I would highly recommend this small indie gem.

100% on Altitude

100% on Madballs in... Babo: Invasion

After a long time I finally hit 100%. The multiplayer achiements in this game was really hard to get due to two reasons. 1) The player base is not that big. 2) The players playing have played for a long time, and are, thus, pretty good. I had given up on the multiplayer achievements, but then a free weekend helped a lot. Some newbs joined the game and I was able to get most. The last, host a 4-player co-op game, I managed to get with a friend and some random joiners.

100%

100% on Beat Hazard

Beat Hazard is  Asteroids on LSD. You are a small ship in the middle of space. Astroids are flying about and other space ships are trying to kill you. Every level in the game is different because it is randomly generated by a freely chosen song. The more beat in the music, the stronger your weapon becomes, but at the same time more enemies are spawning. You weapons, the enemies' weapons, and explosions are all very colourful, and at hectic times you can barely see the screen from colours.

When I bought the game I was afraid it would be like Bullet Candy, which I didn't like. But it's not! This game is fun, actually really fun, and especially since you decide your own difficulty by chosing songs - slow songs being the hardest. If you have a few minuts and fell like playing a casual game while listening to some tunes, then I would highly recommend this game.

Most of the achievements are fairly simple, and when you get the Veteran achievement (Accumulate 10 hours of play) you'll probably have most of the others as well. At first you'll think it will be impossible to get 1 million points in one track, but after you level up, you'll find 1 million points in one track is a lousy run. The hardest achievement is probably Survival Champion! (Reach 20 Minutes in Survival Mode), but with the right choice of music it's doable - a megamix is a good choice, make sure there's no quiet moments in the songs, nor at the beginning or the end. You'll most probably get the Boss Slayer achievement (Kill 8 bosses in 1 game) while playing survival.

Anywho, 100%!

100% on Fortix

This newly released game (Fortix) is basicly just an old classic from way back. Let me describe it this way: you are a knight running on the edge of a picture. On this picture there are forts that you need to capture. You capture teritory by moving away from your baseline (which is the frame to begin with) and draw a line from one place of the baseline to another. The smallest side of the line is then captured. But things are not that easy! On the pircture there's also cannons shooting at you and dragons flying around trying to kill you. You kill dragons by capturing the teritory they're on. Cannons you destroy by either capturing them or capturing a tricker that fires a catapult.

If you have a few hours to kill, then this game is great fun, but it's also really short. It took me 1,6 hours to get perfect on all the easy levels. Completing the game on impossible took further 3,3 hours. In my opinion, that is too short. If the game only was 2,99€-3,49€ it would be ok - 4,49€ is a bit overpriced for the game when it is this short and the gameplay so simple.

Enough of that - 100% completed!

I'll finish this this post by showing how I completed the achievement "Dragon Crisis" (Let Xitrof lay 15 eggs on the final level, then win the level.)