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: