Adelion

The definition of Irony

Will be discussed later in this post :P As well as games with broken achievements. But first let’s go over some other games. Here is the list of stuff I played since the last post:

  • Alicemare

    4 hours playtime

    13 of 13 achievements

  • Detention

    4 hours playtime

    8 of 8 achievements

  • Death Road to Canada

    108 hours playtime

    72 of 72 achievements

  • Devil's Dare

    34 hours playtime

    35 of 36 achievements

  • The Long Reach

    6 hours playtime

    13 of 15 achievements

  • RUSH

    17 hours playtime

    25 of 25 achievements

Alicemare: A word mixture of Alice and nightmare. And that already gives a bit what this game is about. It is a simple rpg maker like story-driven game loosely based on different fairy tales and a story about nighmares. You traverse different worlds one after another listening to the story of that worlds inhabitant. In between are some minor puzzles mostly searching items and using them on a specific place. All in all the story telling was to cryptic for me and didnt really resonate with me. It is probably a problem of pacing or how the story was told. There is however a novelle as well which I have downloaded. It has been written after the game came out and tells the story in a more detailed view. Maybe I will find motivation to read it so that I may be able to appreciate the story more.

Detention: Detention is a story-driven 2d (side-view) horror game with some light survival elements. Genre-typical the story is also told in a non-linear more cryptic way. But in comparison to most games of the genre, the story of the game and what happened is pretty clear after completing the game. And if you didnt pay enough attention there is an explanation in the forum. Overall there is an interesting story about the life in a totalitarian system and a very very fitting game name in at least two ways. In between you have some minor puzzles (some interesting, nothing to difficult) and some light enemy encounters (enough that you stay wary). Achievement-wise most of the game is very fair as many are story-related. You just have two typical collecting achievements which could be annoying, one for all texts and one for 80 % of all viewable AND clickable objects (even counting doors). The last one is the easiest to miss and I did miss it first time. But I got lucky and replayed the last chapter and could get it done then. Not sure though how earlier progress is considered this way.

Death Road to Canada: Copied from last time: Another rogue-like (or rogue-lite or whatever?) in my collection. Somehow a few of them always get into my library. The goal is to reach Canada after the zombie outbreak. And the result is a lot of silly fun. You have the car sections where you have some choose your own adventures text. The result depends on a bit randomness and on the stats of your characters which can be up to four. The stats are in the beginning unknown and can be trained. Then you have the map sections where you run around with your characters, fight the zombies and try to stay alive. Here, you have to scavenge for health to heal yourself, food so you live another day and gas so your car keeps driving. There is a lot to pay attention to and between all the randomness it is overall pretty fair. Additionally to the mentioned stuff you can recruit special characters which are references to other games and movied. To make it easier you can spend zombo points to buy perks, traits and general upgrades to ease your odds on the road trip. I dont think I will ever complete the game as there is at least one really hard achievement. And there are still updates coming out so I have to look at them as well. There are a lot of achievements and I finally got them all. Most are complete a run with character xyz which is only difficult due to range to even get them or since they are season based. And then you have some difficulty based achievements which can be gained with a bit of knowledge and less fair means (by exiting the game Alt+F4) if things went completely south which is only a problem on the hardest difficulty. And even then you can be stuck since you might just be to weak overall to tackle a specific hurdle. Technically they recently added a mode where you can recruit every character in the beginning and do the character based achievements. But it is so hard that I think it is a fair trade off if you want to do it that way. As I am not sure if there will come future achievements (game still gets updates) I will mark it as beaten.

Devil’s Dare: A brawler game for up to four players in local co-op and many many horror and action references. Gimmick of the game is the money system and the death scenario. If you die and you don’t have enough in-game money to revive or you havent bought a continue before, all your progress will be deleted. There is not much to say about gameplay, you have 4 (+2 secret) characters with different abilities, every night (level) has an endboss and after beating a night you can buy an upgrade if you have the spare cash. Problem is that the game forces you to a specific gameplay style if you want to have enough money (hoarding enemies and killing them with a special move). This makes the game very slow which is unfortunate for a brawler. Also the game is fun for a few turny but gets dull afterwards. This will be even more apparent if you slug your way through the achievements. Some of them need several several playthroughs, replaying the same levels over and over again even if you are successful. And then the game suffers from technical problems. For example the game sometimes forces you to replay the training level although you have completed it before or that achievements are only activated if you exit the game so that you are never sure if you got them registered. Also there is one broken achievement which does not register on Steam. I have unlocked in the ingame list but not on Steam. Technically, since I have done it I could “unlock” it otherwise. But I will not use a program which shouldnt exist in the first place. Also I don’t want to cut out the developer from his responsibility to make every part of the game working as intended. There is a minor chance that the “Streets of Red” update will come to Steam and maybe something about the achievements will be done (or made worse). For now I have to accept that the game is not completed due to technical issues.

The Long Reach: Another story-driven 2d …. hm …. horror game with some puzzles. Story itself is interesting although a bit on the short side. Puzzles are okay but some are very hard to get and I have been running around clicking everything from time to time because I did not know what to do. Overall okay, but nothing special. Sadly, it is yet another game with some broken achievements. There are two collectible achievements (one for the computers and for the water coolers) which both dont work. To be sure I have done two more playthroughs trying some stuff out and they still didnt trigger. Maybe it will be patched or it will be ignored or even outright denied like some other games (looking at you Poncho dev >.<).

Rush: And now finally to the title relevant game. The definition of Irony is that I need nearly 7 years to complete a game called “Rush”. So why is this? Well, first I have a strange relation to puzzle games. If possible I will complete them completely alone without looking at a guide. I’m more willing to break this for story-driven puzzle games like La-Mulana. But for games like Rush where you just have singular levels of different difficulty to chose I tend to just give up instead of looking at guides. And so I played the game first in January 2012 getting most of the game done with some levels not solved. Then 2016 I returned finally giving in and using the ingame hint system solving remaining levels. But I was still missing some of the actual challenge levels and the hidden cubismus levels. I returned at different points to solve those levels (had to look up how to “find” the hidden levels buts solved them myself) and finally got solved the last one this year September. So what was missing? Seasonal achievements for December which I then solved today. And so I have finally completed Rush. The game itself has a lot of very interesting puzzles (and some annoying ones based on timing) and it has something hypnotic to watch your armada of cubes rolling in perfect harmony. For puzzles fans I can recommand this game as most Two Tribes games.

And with this I’m done. A bit salty about The Long Reach as it draws back on my goal to raise my average completion rate. Do you have games with broken achievements annoying you? And not asking about SAM users -_-

rafaelgomesxyz

Yes, the Hitman: Absolution servers had to be shut down because of GDPR and Square Enix being lazy at simply updating their privacy policy. So I can’t obtain those achievements.

ROOT was almost going to annoy me, because it has an achievement that is broken because of a line in its code that the developers are apparently too busy to remove. But I went ahead and edited the code myself and got the achievement.

Adelion

Wait, you changed game code to activate an achievement? Is this even possible? And was it the line for the achievement or just some kind of line which inhibited the trigger?

rafaelgomesxyz

Not to activate it, but to fix the bug that was preventing it from being unlocked. It’s a stealth game, and the achievement is for beating the game without being detected, but the game has bosses at the end of some levels, and it’s impossible to sneak past them. At the end of the game, it checks if the number of detections is 0, and if so, it unlocks the achievement. But the problem is that there was a line in the code that was increasing the number of detections when fighting the bosses, so I removed it, since the developers have been alerted about this and done nothing to fix it, even though it’s an extremely easy fix. More info about it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1569637033

If you have the proper tools to edit game code, everything is possible. I assume SAM does something to that extent, because while I was browsing the code for this game I found the function that locks/unlocks achievements and I could very easily have called it anytime I wanted (I actually did call it to lock the achievement, because I had gotten the achievement at first, but then I decided to do a video showing how I did it, and to show that I got it legitimately, so I locked it in order to get it again). This game in particular is a Unity game, so it’s very easy to edit its code.

Cece09

Yes its very annoying broken achievements, its why I gave up on Harvey’s new eyes the 1st time. I was disappointed that it didnt unlock any achievements so I got it refunded but I gave it another chance and this time it worked but I tried everything possible that I could the 1st time.

Adelion

Has there been an update inbetween? It seems kinda strange that it didnt work first time no matter what and second time everything is fine and well. Or did you change system? Different games have problems with Linux achievements for example.

Cece09

I havent really changed anything and I dont know about updates as i said I got it refunded but when I was buying games I decided to give it another go just to add it to my collection. But even then certain achievements still bugged out and needed a few tries before it unlocked

Quisty

I don’t mind broken achievements as much as random ones. At least I can check on AStats and avoid them in the first place. My biggest annoyances are with Poker Night at the Inventory which requires to get a straight flush, Oh, Sir! The Insult Simulator which requires forming phrases with specific words, some of which rarely show up (the devs even removed a part of the phrase for XBox, but don’t care about Steam) and Dead in Bermuda. A playthrough is pretty long an slow and requires a series of random events to get one of the endings. I gave up on all of these after trying for a ridiculous amount of time.
I always check for broken achievements before buying or adding a bundled game to my library. I only buy if the devs care to fix them.

Adelion

Problem is that not all broken achievements are marked on AStats. For example Poncho and Devil’s Dare I got both before these topics rose up in the forum. The achievement for Devil’s Dare is still not marked as broken on Astats. The same goes for the broken achievements of The Long Reach and Chronicles of Teddy. For The Long Reach in the forum it was mentioned that it had been patched which is wrong though. For Chronicles of Teddy is also not marked as there are people who got them fair and correctly as they have been broken only at a later point. Normally, I check the forum to see if there are problems but sometimes I overlook stuff, make bad judgement or the information is not given at the time. I wouldnt trust Astats 100 % for most indie games.

Well, kinda agree on the range heavy achievements. I think you can do this, if it concerns reocurring events so that you can get it in a reasonable timeframe. But still, if you are unlucky (especially for stuff below 5 %) you will just never get those achievements. Would have to think if I have luck-based achievements open at the moment. Most stuff I couldnt unlock is skill-based I think.

rafaelgomesxyz

That achievement is so frustrating, it’s almost impossible to get a straight flush. And I’m missing not only that one, but also four of a kind. A while ago I began playing the game every day to see if I got lucky, but still nothing…

EvilBlackSheep

One of the most frustrating achivement related game i’ve played this year was Regions of Ruin, where ALL the cheevos were broken until I completed the game. Then about a month later, the devs (who had been promising to fix them for months and then had disappeared) finally fixed them, but I’d have to replay the whole thing to get them all (apparently some are retroactive if you load an old save, but not all and the order would be fucked).

How is Detention jump scare wise? The game had me interested but I’m always scared when it comes to horror game that it’s jumpscare heavy.

And sad to read about the Long Reach, I had good hope for that one and was waiting for a sale, but bugged cheevos is something really frustrating. I really hope they get around to patch this thing. >___>

Adelion

At least, it doesnt mess with the average completion ratio if all achievements broken :P But yea, replaying may be annoying depending on the game length. Although you have to replay often anyway.

Detention is pretty tame I would say. Out of my head I remember two jump scares, maybe there are one or two more. Can’t be much more. Would say it is similar to The Last Door. Jump scares are there but they are not the focus. Focus is on atmosphere which is unsettling for the first two thirds and the story. Also enemies are very slow and dont rush you. Second enemy type appears out of “nothing” but even that is presented rather slowly. Game works more on making you feel anxious. Would recommand it at least for the story and the title relevation.

As for the Long Reach. Like I said, game is overall okay. The story is an interesting and unusual idea. But puzzle design has issues and the two achievements. If you dont care to much about achievements it is an okay choice. And maybe it is PC dependent. Because one of the achievement has a considerably higher percentage than the other. Or they have been possible at one point. Don’t know. Will just wait, not much other choice anyway.

EvilBlackSheep

Thanks for the info, it seems like I should be able to play Detention after all.

To add to your list of games with infuriating unachievable cheevos… I just finished The banner saga 3 and it busted my completion rate by a lot. There are 40 on 101 cheevos that don’t seem to be unlockable at the moment (one is bugged, the others i don’t even have a clue). I wasn’t gonna 100% it but for now but it still looks like an awful %age .

Adelion

Yea, I don’t think Detention should pose much of a problem. And the story depiction is really interesting.

As for The Banner Sage. It seems to me that there is an update to come. I dont think a franchise like The Banner Saga would make such an error and the achievement icons are significantly different than the rest.
But yea, updates to can pummel the rate. Either temporary like for “Life of Pixel” which increased achievements from 24 to 72 and is sitting now in the library waiting for the update to come or if the update breaks earlier achievements like “Chronicles of Teddy” where the New Game+ achievements are not obtainable anymore.