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It’s done!

This morning, well before noon, I managed to start and complete the score attack mode. Once I got to the point of no return, I’ve completed the first Reflection as well as a bunch of earlier level with all the Idols activated. This was enough to get me above one million points and the last achievement was mine.

Bastion Steam Achievements, 100%

Mission Complete!

As amazing as this game is, it’s time for it to give up the place it’s holding on my hard drive for some other game. Other than a very likely future onset of nostalgia, there really is no reason for me to play it again any time soon. Amazing game, but I got all I could from it.

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I started playing as soon as I was done with my last article yesterday and got all the six cores that evening, in less than two hours. Throughout today, I’ve completed the rest in a couple of relatively short sessions. The story is a breeze when you start out with most of your weapons almost fully upgraded.

In addition to completing the story, I managed to complete all the extra “meditation” levels with all ten idols active. Some needed several attempts, but none of them were too hard, mostly in thanks to my Pike/Mortar combo.

Bastion Art - Rucks and the Kid

Rucks might be getting tired of all the talking, but I’m not.

I only have one achievement left now, and that is to get enough points in the Score Attack mode. I started up this mode a few minutes ago, just to see what it was about, and it looks like you get to repeat levels, and earn points by killing enemies. You also don’t get to keep your gear or your levels, just the idols and spirits.I also got the hidden Turret Opera achievement which requires me to have my Portal turret kill 20 enemies before dying. In case anyone is wondering while reading this article a few years from now, you get the portal turret in New Game+ once you find the girl. I got it on the Kid dream level.

I’ll try to tackle that tomorrow, unless I finally start playing Minecraft Tekkit with a friend. We’ve been talking about trying this out for a while now.

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As you might know, I used to almost exclusively pirate games. A while ago, I decided to stop, in order to get more enjoyment from my gaming, which seems to be working for now.

Bastion was one of the games I pirated. To this day, I consider it one of the top games I’ve ever played, right up there with Final Fantasy VII and some other games. This, and the fact that I pirated it in the past, made me decide to obtain this game legitimately and play through it again.

Bastion Art - The Characters

Playing Bastion is a magical experience.

So now that I’ve finished the game officially, with a legit copy and on Steam, I’ll probably also tackle the achievements and try to reach 100% completion. It doesn’t look too hard, but it might take a while, since you have to basically complete the game a total of three times in order to get all the achievements. I’m not sure if I’m going to do it right away, but I definitely intend to do it with this one.The first half of this decision was done weeks ago, when Bastion was part of the Humble Bundle. The second half began and ended today. I started a fresh game this morning and completed it this evening. It’s still the perfect experience I remember from over a year ago, and it’s still one of my favourite games. The soundtrack, the graphics, and the story combine with the gameplay perfectly, making it a one of a kind experience. Seriously, any gamer should at least invest a couple of hours on this game.

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Over the last few days, I forgot to mention I also started playing Osmos.

There’s no need to mention it, really. I didn’t like it, and this is one of the first games I’m abandoning outright. If I could remove it from my Steam library, I would.

I gave it a shot, I really did, clearing well over half of it. Eventually, though, I realized what I’m doing isn’t fun. I was just playing the game out of some obligation, some idea that, since I own it, I have to at least clear it once. What would be the point, though? First of all, I got it as part of a bundle, meaning I didn’t really pay for it, I paid for other games in the bundle. Secondly, even if I did make a mistake of buying it, throwing money away and suffering through it is worse than just throwing money away.

Osmos Screenshot

Osmos is pretty, but that’s all it is.

It’s a pretty.. experiment, but there’s nothing compelling about it, really. You float around, avoiding getting eaten by larger bodies, eating the smaller ones and growing. It’s a basic “food chain” concept, and nothing more than that. The levels get harder, making you restart them over and over again, until you manage to stumble into a good enough path to eventually end up on top of the chain.

It’s pretty, and frustrating, and annoying. I’m putting it under the “crap I won’t play” category. It just isn’t worth the hassle. I gave it a shot, and I’m not giving it any more
.

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No new game today, and nothing of importance with the games I’m currently playing.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth

I gave a shot with one of the extra game modes I unlocked during the campaign. Bagdad Mayhem is the actual reverse tower defense I was talking about when I started this game a few days ago. You get some starting cash and need to destroy wave after wave of spawning towers, surrounding a generator. Once the generator is destroyed, new towers spawn, tougher than before. I managed to get to wave 13, out of 18 in total, before I was destroyed.

Toki Tori

The story repeats itself. I tired the level I was stuck on again, and I solved it again. I can’t believe it wasn’t obvious the last time. I managed to solve a few more, but I haven’t completed the world this time, like I did yesterday. Still, I’m getting there.

Titan Attacks

Bah, I hate it. Five or six fresh attempts, but I got nowhere. There’s nothing to write about, really. The last zone is hard.

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I’ve completed the last few levels of this game’s campaign yesterday. As it turns out, after the second six missions in Tokyo, I had to return to Baghdad for two more missions before it was all done. I also unlocked several more units, but in the end, all I used for the last few missions was the shield generator, a tank, a dragon and two missile launchers. I simply seemed more effective to get as much damage as possible and use my commander unit as an extra decoy for when it’s needed.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Random Screenshot

It’s hard to capture a truly memorable moment in a game like this, so here’s just a regular pretty moment.

For now, though, I mark the game as “completed”.The last mission was hard, but I found the mission before that slightly harder, with more enemies and more need for my suit abilities to keep my army alive. Still, both were pretty tough to get through, even at the casual difficulty I played at. From what I can tell, there are achievements for beating all the missions on a higher difficulty, so I might have to revisit all of them eventually. There’s also extra game modes I can try out, as well as achievements linked to those modes.

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As per usual, I wasted some time on these two games today.

With Toki Tori, the same thing happened again. The level I was stuck on was suddenly easy to solve, after a good night’s rest. I solved the two remaining levels of the castle world and unlocked the next one, called Stinky Swamp, if I remember correctly. I got a new item, which I can use to suck in slugs, or just change the direction of their movement, if I only use it for a moment. I solved the first couple of easy levels and then promptly got stuck on one of the next few.

Toki Tori Swamp Zone Transition Screenshot

The way to the Swamp Zone.

As for Titan Attacks, I got pretty much nowhere. The difficulty of the last zone is a nightmare. I’m slowly getting used to it, but I have yet to see the final boss.

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I decided to tackle another game in my steam backlog and Anomaly always sort of interested me. From what I understood, it was basically a tower defense game “in reverse”, meaning you control the line of mobs navigating between the enemy towers. My assumptions were pretty much spot on, but the game still managed to surprise me.

It’s fun, there’s no doubt about that. As someone who always preferred to just play through the campaign of an RTS and then leave the game, this one suits me perfectly. The plot is a classic. It involves an alien invasion and a platoon of badass soldiers saving the day. The story is OK, but nothing special.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth Screenshot

Anomaly is definitely an extremely good-looking game.

I played the game for quite a bit today, and managed to get to level 11. Based on the available achievements, I’m guessing I’m nearing the end of the campaign already, so It’s not a very long game. Still, for the amount of money I paid for it (discounted greatly), I thin it provides plenty of fun. There’s also a couple of extra modes to unlock, but I haven’t tried those yet. They might be fun, though.The gameplay is fun, though. You buy your units, upgrade them, put them in proper formations and then navigate through the streets, trying to find the best rout to kill the enemy towers with minimal losses on your side. Apart from giving orders to your units, you also control your character, their commander. He needs to walk around his troops, using the abilities of his powered suit to help out on the battlefield. You get four abilities, which unlock throughout the game. There’s a repair ability, a smoke screen, a decoy, and an air strike. You can’t spam the same ability multiple times, but you can use different abilities together, creating a strong combination. For instance, a decoy protected by a smoke screen will last much, much longer than on it’s own.

My army usually consists of a highly armored unit in front, followed by a shield generator and several high damage units. Now that I’ve unlocked the tank and the dragon, though, I might abandon the missile launchers completely. I’ll see how it goes.

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Today was somewhat of a slow day, with no lengthy sessions. On the few occasions that I had some spare time to waste, I’ve returned to some of the “older” games.

Saint’s Row: The Third

First I had to validate the game files and download 80 megabytes of data in order to make the game playable again. It seems something get’s lost when you reinstall Windows, so the game starts crashing on startup. I decided to try and get some of the achievements, but this failed. There was still progress, though. I finished a couple of the assassination tasks and completed a few of the challenges, including the Powerslide, Streaking, Helicopter Destruction and Boat Destruction challenges. None of them are directly tied to an achievement, but they eventually add up, so progress was made. Other than that, I bought some upgrades and that’s about it.

Titan Attacks

After about 10 attempts that failed quickly, I managed to get one past the boss of the Saturn zone. As a reward for this, I got access to what seems to be the final, Titan zone. Saturn was a breeze compared to it. All the enemies can take plenty of hits, a rain of bullets is constantly covering the screen, and there’s so many parachuting aliens I either have to kill them, or i die trying to collect them all. Most of my attempts failed at the second level of the zone, but I did manage to squeeze a few through, all the way up to level 91. At 90, there was what looked like a boss, but I guess they just add bosses as regular enemies now, because he was easy to beat and I got nothing for it.

Titan Attacks - Game Over

I’ve been seeing this phrase a lot lately.

Toki Tori

This morning, the game was crashing, for some reason. I wasn’t even able to start a level. Verifying and reinstalling did nothing, so I gave up and tried Titan Attacks. This evening, though, the game ran fine. After some rest, the solution to the level I got stuck on came to me easily. All I needed to do was to stop the brick that was blocking the ladder from falling below by building a bridge over the gap. Once that was done, everything else was easy. The next few levels held me back for a few moments but were eventually dealt with. I got to somewhere around level 10 of this second world, I believe, and that’s where I got stuck again. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be smart again.

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Other than a single, but lengthy Diablo III session, I also managed to squeeze in some time for two more games today.

Titan Attacks

The first one was Titan Attacks. As I said last time, I managed to get to the Saturn world. Today, I tried to get past it, but I couldn’t even get close after several attempts. In fact, I have yet to reach the boss. The enemies that get to me are those big guys that drop down and leave a few of those mines behind. I find it nearly impossible to get in front of them to even be able to shoot them. The window of opportunity is extremely small, and if you get unlucky enough to get a few of them behind each other, it get’s pretty much impossible. After several failed attempts, the rage got to me, so I’ll try again some other time, perhaps in a few days.

Toki Tori Screenshot

Toki Tori is an extremely colorful game.

Toki Tori

The second game was a new one I decided to give a try. Toki Tori is a puzzle in which you use a limited inventory of items to avoid enemies and collect all the eggs on a level. It looks simple, but pretty, the music gives it a happy atmosphere, and overall, it feels fun to play. I’m not sure where or how I got the game, but I’m guessing it was part of a bundle I bought in the past. I have this problem now where I need to get almost every bundle released, so I suffer from a clogged backlog of games. To think I used to almost exclusively pirate…

I managed to complete the first world and got a few levels into the second one. There were some hiccups along the way, but overall, the puzzles were relatively simple up to now. When it gets down to it, it’s about navigating the level in the correct order by using the items you have available. Right now, I’m stuck on a level where there’s only one egg to collect, but I’m not sure how to use the combination of Bridges and Brick Switches to get to it.