Act 3 Pain! (Plus Other Stuff)

 

            Hello! I’m mostly here to complain! Yayyyyy! Mostly about Metroid Prime 4 and Silksong. I’m want to touch on achievements/”trophies” (I like achievements better) and a cute little game I bought called Shooters Ready.

            I kind of expect more out of achievements and trophies now-a-days. I feel like it’s probably a “me” thing, just like game series’ not growing with us; Pokemon for example. We tend to complain that Pokemon games feel easier then the early days and whether that’s true or not is hard to say but at the end of the day those games are made for children, not for the people who started with it and continue to play. It would be nice if Pokemon grew as we grew but it just hasn’t and probably won’t. Anyway, achievements. I guess what started this was I saw someone on Reddit talking about playing the first Horizon on the hardest difficulty with NG+ to get the trophy and how “fulfilling” it was and others commented on playing it and other games on the hardest difficulty required you to “really know your stuff” and ect and I was thinking “Really? Because I did that and I just ran through the game doing what I absolutely had to and using the best stuff I had to take machines down as fast as possible.” That being said, I hate freebie achievements. I hate when the game gives you achievements for things you HAVE to do. “You jumped over a gap! Congratulations!” Shut up. I don’t mind ones where you completed a level or chapter, that makes sense, unlocking things and whatnot, sure but after that I’d like to see things for actual experimentation or accidents even. You accidentally knock an enemy into a trap and get an achievement, that sort of thing. When it comes to games I like I’ll try to get all the achievements. Halo for instance. I remember in Reach there was an achievement to get a melee kill on an Elite from above. I worked on that for so long but I finally got it. I’d like more things like that.

            I don’t know how I feel about Metroid Prime 4 right now. I’ve seen people gripe about this, that and the other thing and I was determined not to be like them, or at the very least let them influence me but I’m starting to sour on Beyond a bit. Last time I played I just got the ice chip so I don’t know how far into the game I am but for the most part I’ve only fought the same enemies; angry indigenous species that spit stuff at me and a couple types of security robots. In the other Prime games there’s more of a variety, even in the early stages, maybe I’m just remembering wrong but that’s how it feels to me. I guess that’s all I really have to say about that for now. I had decided I’d focus on playing through Prime 4, Silksong and then I’d like to finish Armored Core 6.

            So Silksong is the bane of my existence at the moment. I had finally got into Act 3 after running around doing a bunch of random stuff then I was confronted by the Bell Eater and stopped playing for a while. I went online and saw a video of someone dealing with it and it helped me get past that boss but since then it has still just been hell. I was progressing through Deep Docks, got myself into a ambush, gauntlet, whatever you’d like to call it and the enemies are already bullshit but then they also have this symbiote shit come over them and they do double damage and have three times as much health. Like, I’m SORRY I didn’t go ABSOLUTELY everywhere before Act 3. What pisses me off the most is that under normal circumstances I can do these gauntlets but they symbiote attacks and the extra health are annoying as all hell. Some of these zones and rooms it’s like, how the hell was I supposed to know these were here unless I ran around hitting every single wall or jumping into any and all corners of an area? I remember when I was looking for Bilewater I had to look it up and the wall I was supposed to go through just looked like a regular wall, if I remember right. How was I supposed to know it could break? Looking online for some other stuff I know I missed or wondering what was behind a locked door only to find out the thing is dead because it’s now Act 3 already made me feel like I would do a second run so I could do some of these fights but with having so many issues I thought maybe I should just restart anyway. I don’t have the patience this game wants you to have. I don’t have the patience to hit an enemy or boss once and then run away and dodge around just to try to get one hit in again. I don’t know how you Souls players do it; you’re a bunch of masochists. I just hate feeling like I’m wasting my time. I don’t have time to do what I want to as it is and redoing the same thing over and over just pisses me off. When it comes to boss battles I will use my tools or I will accentually use my tools because I was trying to use my special and I die and die so eventually I have no more scrap metal to make new tools so I just take the tools off and fight with the bare minimum. I was trying the witch crest and I was liking it, I would hit things two or three times when I ran at them or pogo’d but I just switched back to the reaper crest and I’m killing the same things in the same amount of hits so… back to using what I’ve been using the whole game!

            I had scrapped my finger at work a little bit so I couldn’t hit RB very well on my Steam Deck during break so I did end up starting a new game and while playing the beginning I was like “This is niiiice. What a nice game this is.” I got to the big bug that’s on the ceiling and he follows you around and pukes at you, I don’t think I was supposed to get there when I did but I did. I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill it in my first run, I think I just ran from it but I killed it this time. Going back and forth between these two save files is like annoying, grindy gauntlets and bosses and being miserable to exploration and having a nice time. I just finished the Crust King (finally) and it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like Team Cherry really want you to be patient and take your time and I’m just like “KILL, KILL, KILL.”

            So with Silksong filling me with hate and discontent I needed something that wasn’t as hardcore and I found that in Shooters Ready. It’s a cute little game, it’s kind of like one of those comfy, hobby animes like Encouragement of Climb, Laid-back Camp. It’s about a few girls in a shooting club where they set up rooms to go through and targets to shoot. There’s a small story but then an arcade mode where you go room to room and after a few rooms you get to choose a new skill, kind of like Side Order in Splatoon 3, but it’s fun, it’s zero stakes so it’s really nice. I kind of wish there were more games like this. I mean the game does make me nostalgic for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 terrorist hunt. Terrorist hunt, Call of Duty 4’s first training mission, more of that. I would like something like CoD4’s obstacle course and/or terrorist hunt but it doesn’t have to be violent, it could be like airsoft or paintball. You shoot the characters and they yell “Out!” I’d watch a whole anime about this, Shooters Ready makes me want to watch C³, Upotte and Lycoris Recoil again.

            So that’s that. It seems like I need to be more patient in Silksong but I don’t want to, I’ve got other things to do/play. Oh yeah I was talking about other things; yeah, I want achievements to be better. Just random things that you might just try and oh look! An achievement. I think there’s an trophy in one of the Spider-Man games you can run around the bases at a baseball field and you get a trophy for it. I just remember during Ninja Gaiden 2 getting an achievement for doing the ninja run on a wall as they are explaining it to you. Of course I did this, I HAVE to do this, why give an achievement for it? Maybe I can get through Silksong soon and get back to Metroid Prime 4 and see if my argument still holds. What are your thoughts? How did you fare in Silksong or are you still on the struggle bus with me? Opinions on achievements/trophies? Let me know below, I’ll be back soon, working on a Monster Hunter post, shocker. Bye-bye.

            @AztecSauce