I went through with it, and the second game in the Blackwell series is now cleared of all achievements. It was pretty tough to.
First, I went for the Trying to Cut Down achievement. I thought it would be simple and all I had to do was be careful, but I was wrong. On my second playthrough, I counted all the cigarettes and got 13 on my side, but I didn’t get the achievement. At this point, I thought the game is bugged or something, because I was sure I wasn’t even close to 20. I tried to force the game to detect it in several different ways and nothing worked, so I decided to do a second attempt, with a third playthrough. This time, I decided to work on both cases simultaneously, which helped me save some time and I finally got it.
This is the map screen in Blackwell Unbound
With that out of the way, I went for the Chain Smoker achievement. This one, unlike the previous one, does have bug issues. The most straightforward way to get the achievement would be to just light a cigarette manually, and then handle the TV, phone or radio to put it off and repeat this. The problem is, it often happens that the lighter and the cigarettes become unusable. On the cases that this doesn’t happen, a second bug occurs, where Lauren is constantly claiming she already has a lit cigarette, even though that obviously wasn’t the case.
What I did in the end was that I loaded a save game from the moment after the second case is done and the balcony scene is over. Then I parked Lauren on the balcony and switched to Joey. I left her idle like this for about 45 minutes and then completed the game for the fourth time. I ended up with 111 cigarettes and finally unlocked the last achievement.
In any case, I’m done with the Blackwell series on Steam now. There are a few other adventure games I haven’t completed yet, though, so I might try those, since most are pretty short if they don’t drag you along with bad puzzles.
Blackwell Convergence – Completed!
I did it. The final game of the first Blackwell Trilogy is completed. Even better, it’s completed with all the achievements done to, meaning I can add it to my 100% completed list.
Blackwell Convergence brings us back to the present, and you follow Rosangela Blackwell, the character from the first game. Her ghost saving business is advancing and you finally get acquainted with the Countess from Blackwell Unbound. Her story is explained, her spirit set free and everything is fixed, but the game makes it obvious that we’ve only scratched the surface and there’s a lot more to come.
I love cinematic starts!
You get to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist again, just as it was possible in the second game, but I find the game an improvement overall. The puzzles are a lot more straightforward and clearer, the control switching doesn’t complicate things and makes more sense, and the “you should search for this term on your computer” parts are more heavily hinted, so you don’t have to guess. All in all, it was a more polished adventure experience.
Now that the third game is completed, I have the fourth one left, but I don’t have it on Steam, so it’s probably time to play something else. The thing is, since I got all the achievements in both Blackwell Legacy and Blackwell Convergence, I’m kind of feeling like getting the final two achievements in Blackwell Unbound also, just so I could them all on the 100% done list.
Blackwell Unbound [1] – Completed!
Well, since I was already on a roll, I decided to do another one.
Blackwell Unbound is the second game of the Blackwell series and it didn’t suffer from the issue of the first game – the bad ending. It’s a prequel of sorts, following Lauren Blackwell, who is, I believe, the aunt of the character from the first game, during two of her cases in the seventies.
The area “between the worlds” received an upgrade.
The overall story is expanded in Blackwell Unbound, and I’m actually starting to be interested in what will happen next. In this game, you often have to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist, in order to get by some puzzles, which is an interesting change, but not one I really like. I mean, I don’t mind it, but I prefer to keep adventure games simple.
I didn’t get all the achievements this time. The two I have left are one that asks me to finish the game with less than 20 cigarettes smoked, and one where I have to smoke more than 100. I guess the second one can be done by reloading a save and idling for a while, but the first one will take replaying the game. With the knowledge I have now, I should be able to complete it fast enough not to smoke to much. However, I won’t do that next.The second of four games is done now and, since I also have the third on Steam, I’ll definitely tackle that one next.
The Blackwell Legacy – Completed!
The Blackwell Legacy was another quick one. I started playing it this morning and completed it in a couple of hours. It’s a never adventure game, but with a classic look. The looks seem outdated, but they have a certain charm which I greatly enjoyed. It’s a good, fun adventure game, but there were a few flaws.
The game is graphically ancient, but it holds a certain charm.
I also managed to get all of the achievements in this one, meaning I can mark it as 100% completed. It can all be done in a single playthrough to. The important part is to enable all commentaries in the options menu before starting and to talk to Joey constantly, but only in your apartment room, not anywhere else. Everything else is easily doable. Once the game was finished, I still didn’t get the Family History achievement, but reloading at the autosave, examining all of my photos and then exhausting all the conversation options with Joey was enough to get it.First of all, while the voice acting was fine, the voice quality could use some work. I guess that’s how it is with lower budget indie games, so I can’t take that as a significant flaw, but still, it takes away from the game a bit. Secondly, the ending was cheesy and not at all in the tone of the rest of the game. I won’t reveal to much about it, but it basically ended too abruptly and with a completely unimaginative twist. It could’ve been done better.
All in all, The Blackwell Legacy is a quality adventure game, which any fan should play. There’s four more games in the series, but I only have the next two on Steam. I’ll probably tackle those next. The next one is Blackwell Unbound.
Twice Completed!
Since the last post, I’ve been a bit busy, completing two extremely short games. Well, for the most part, they feel like tech demos more than anything, but they’re in my Steam library, and now I’ve been able to put them in my “Completed” category.
Half Life 2: Lost Coast
This really, literally is a tech demo. To be more precise, it’s a tech demo for using HDR in the source engine. I played through it with commentary on and cleared it in under half an hour. There really is nothing to it. They explain a bit on how they design games, what technology is involved and that’s it. You kill a few enemies, fight a helicopter and get invited to dinner by a fisherman.
Lume is a beautiful game, but it’s much too short.
Lume
This one isn’t a tech demo, calling itself a full-fledged game, but it sure feels like a tech demo. It’s a pretty, but extremely short adventure game. You play as a girl who visits her inventor grandfather. Unfortunately, he had to go to the nearby village to fix their power generator, so while you wait for him, you have to fix the generator at his house. That’s it, nothing else to the game. It was fun, but it was short, taking me about 40 minutes to complete. Still, my backlog is getting smaller. It’s still huge, but it’s getting smaller.
Faerie Solitaire [3] – Completed!
It took me ten hours of playing in total, but today, I finally managed to complete the last stage and end the game. I have no idea what compelled me to play this utterly dull and not at all engaging game, but I did it, and now I can play something else.
I had to run the game one last time to get an actual game screenshot.
With the game over, I’ve collected 26 out of 30 achievements in total. Getting the last four doesn’t really sound like a fun activity, though:The last few levels weren’t any different than the previous levels. I think that’s my main issue with the game. Past the first few levels, there is absolutely nothing new that happens. It’s just a single, monotonous activity you do from start to end. The pets could’ve been something to help with this, but they do nothing to the game. They’re basically just stamps you collect. If only each pet had something like a passive bonus to you as a player, it would all be so much more engaging.
- Elite Skills: Complete all challenges.
- Hatch’em All: Collect the baby form of each pet.
- Millionaire: Earn $1,000,000.
- All Grown Up: Collect each pet’s adult form.
Elite Skills is doable. The challenge levels seem only slightly harder than the later adventure levels. The only real difficulty is filling the purple bar in less than 1 minute on each level. It’s not impossible, but it requires luck. Then again, pretty much anything in this game requires luck. Millionaire is close enough already. I’d probably get it by the time I get Elite Skills, since I’m already at around $800,000 right now.
The game ends with a cliffhanger, since a sequel is planned.
Hatch’em All and All Grown Up are the annoying achievements. The way I understand it, you get eggs at random when you clear a single column of cards, just like with gold and materials. Throughout my ten hours of playing, I didn’t even get half of them. As far as I know, there is no faster way to get them, meaning I’d probably have to play for at least as much as I did already. In addition to that, for a pet to evolve, you have to play long enough with that pet set as active. This means even more time is needed, and nothing else other than the time.
Suffice to say, there is no chance in hell I’m doing this.
A.R.E.S. [2] – Completed!
As I thought, the game is short. The five levels I could see on the level select screen are all the levels A.R.E.S. offers. After my post last night, I’ve spent some time upgrading my weapons on one of the earlier levels and this morning, I cleared all that was left. I think I’ve cleared the game in under 3 hours.
The game boasts excellent 2.5 D graphics. This is the fourth boss.
All in all, it’s a very fun game which any fan of the Megaman franchise will absolutely love. I know I did, but my backlog is still huge, so I’m moving on to another game for now.A.R.E.S. is a short game, then. That’s not all it has to offer, though. Megaman style games are all about mastery, and the achievements you can unlock in A.R.E.S. show this. Other than the basic “Clear the game” and “Watch all the cut scenes” milestones, you have some pretty tough achievements such as “Kill the boss without getting hit”, or “Clear the level without dying/using repair kits”. I’ll keep the game on my hard drive for now, because I wan’t to at least try to give a shot at some of those, but in all honesty, I’m not sure if I have the skill to get all of them.
Toki Tori [5] – Completed!
After beating Eufloria, I decided to continue my winning streak and try my luck with beating Toki Tori. It took me a while, and plenty of those puzzles made my head hurt, but I managed to complete all the normal levels, which the game counts as me completing it. Of course, there’s a whole bunch of extra hard and bonus levels I have yet to even try, but the game is small, so it can remain on my hard drive for when the mood strikes.It turns out, there’s only four normal worlds in the campaign. The fifth world, called Test Lab, consists of only three levels made especially for the Valve Portal 2 ARG. These three levels weren’t too hard, compared to Bubble Barrage and Stinky Swamp, so I managed to beat those right after I beat the game.
The bridge here collapses, so the game isn’t over yet.
It’s a fun game with plenty of challenge left in it, so puzzle lovers will get an honest recommendation from me. It’s time to try something else, but this game will go on my “Beat 100%” imaginary list.
Eufloria [2] – Completed!
It took a lengthy session to complete this game, but I did it, just a few minutes ago.
The third world was called Outer Colonies, and it wasn’t too hard. As far as I can remember at this time, I only had to restart one level. Overall, it was mostly a world with typical conquer-all levels. The fourth world, Deep Space, was a lot more creative, with a level where you couldn’t build anything and one where you had to run from the enemy until you could increase your numbers enough to beat him. Due to these special levels, it was also a fast world, with the longest mission taking me 21 minutes to beat. In comparison, level 14 of the Outer Colonies, called Liberation, took me over an hour.
The final world, also had a few creative levels, but most ended with me conquering everything. Naturally, the very final level, The Centre Cannot Hold, was the hardest. I probably restarted it a dozen times before finally beating it. I’m not even sure how I did it in the end, since I didn’t change my strategy much compared to previous attempts.
The final level had a dark theme.
Now that the game is won, I have access to bonus modes, but I really don’t feel like playing those. I got a total of 9 out of 18 achievements, and from the description, I think I could unlock a few more with relative ease, but I don’t feel the game is good enough to spend more time than necessary. It’s fun and relaxing, definitely beautiful, but nothing to deep. If I had a tablet, it’d probably have a permanent place on it, but there’s to many games in my backlog not to move on.The gist of it was to capture another large asteroid right at the start and then slowly conquer an area closer to the edge, since being at the centre would mean all the opponents would focus on me. Once I got out of their way, they mostly kept busy killing each other, keeping their numbers relatively small and allowing me to pick them off one by one. Once I got one of the two huge asteroids, I could launch assaults more easily and the game was pretty much won.
Bastion [4] – All the Way Completed!
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.
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.