Like getting a rare item drop in a nice and juicy RPG, it feels good. Sadly, these articles being a rare thing now is a sad thing. If we were like the bigger websites, ChatGPT would be making these articles for us. Thankfully, we're not those websites (although being paid to make AI written articles does sound good). Well... That was a bitter start. Thankfully, the center of this article is full of the sweet cheevo cream that you all desire. Mmmm. Now I'm hungry. Enjoy this eleventh issue of Cheap Cheevos while I go glaze a donut. (Click on "Read More" to read the full article).
Tales From the Borderlands (Steam)
I'm not going to lie to you guys. I'm not a Borderlands fan. Those games don't really appeal to me. I find them to be quite boring compared to other FPS games. Yeah, I can hear you screaming from here. SHUT UP! STOP YOUR SCREAMING! Because there is one Borderlands game that I like and it has easy to get achievements. No, seriously. SHUT UP! All of your screaming is only making yourself look bad.
This is Tales From the Borderlands. Telltale Games five-part adventure-lite (a lite adventure game) epic about a rag tag group of friends who are out to find a vault. Not just any normal vault. This vault contains... No spoilers for those who haven't played it yet. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yes, I know. I just lightly described what this game is about. That's because I'm not all that familiar with the entire world of this game. But this I do understand. You are a corporate goon named, Reese. A guy working so hard to get where he is and feels like that he deserves a promotion. Sadly, Reese is in shock when he discovers that a rival of his takes over as being boss. Yup, no promotion for Reese.
Thankfully, opportunity arises when his new boss gets a call. Reese listens in and gets all of the juicy details. His boss is in close possession of a vault key. What does Reese do? Goes to his friends and hijack the whole deal. That's all I will say. People that have played this game already know what's about to go down. I also don't want to spoil anything more for people that have yet to play this. The story in this one is quite good.
I found (most) of the characters to be funny, charming, and entertaining. There's a lot of humor to be found as well. A good chunk of it is really good, but there are some gags and moments that just try way too hard to be funny. It feels like a post-apocalyptic sci-fi action sitcom. Telltale Games do know how to produce good stories. Sadly, this game suffers from very weak gameplay. This is supposed to be a point and click adventure game but plays more like an interactive movie found on the Sega CD.
All you'll mainly do is in this game walk and talk. There is the occasional action scene, but these play out through quick time events. Most of them aren't even interesting. There is an incredibly fun and clever one that happens during the fourth episode though. I would've loved to have seen some puzzles in this game. It's just too easy to even be called an adventure game. Even kinetic visual novels are more difficult.
Thankfully, this game being easy is the most important thing for this article. All you need to do to get every single achievement is to complete all five episodes of this game. Yup. No special challenges or anything. Just straight up get through the game. There are chances where you can die in this game, but the continues and learning curb is very forgiving.
Overall, probably the only Borderlands game I'll ever care for. I don't know where the hardcore fans would rank this, but for the non-fan of this series, this is worth checking out. I just wished that it had some puzzles.
Rick & Morty: The Game (Arduboy) (RetroAchievements)
RetroAchievements Set: https://retroachievements.org/game/7935
Peace among worlds! It's Rick & Morty: The Game for the Arduboy. What's an Arduboy? A little low-rez handheld that's full of awesome homebrew games (that's the short of it). Anyway, what exciting adventures can you expect from Rick and Morty in this title? Well, nothing much.
Once the game is turned on, you'll be greeted with a character selection screen where you can choose to be either Rick or Morty. Select Rick and you'll automatically win the game. Pick Morty and you'll automatically lose. That's it. It's pure novelty, baby.
Nothing much to do here in this nothing gag game. Just select Rick, one-hundred times in a row. After that, select Morty for one-hundred times in a row as well. Or you can do Morty first, then Rick. Lastly, you'll be aiming for a total score of four-hundred-twenty games played overall. At this point you can choose Rick or Morty in any order, then just keep on selecting them until you've gotten that high score achievement (no pun intended). The rest of the score-based achievements will pop up along the way.
The games go by pretty fast, so you can master this game in around five minutes. Overall, I got a laugh out of it. I wouldn't say that it's a good game though. Hell, wouldn't even say it's a game. It's just a small little novelty. I liked it.
Ardu-EZ Button (Arduboy) (RetroAchievements)
RetroAchievements Set: https://retroachievements.org/game/19548
This isn't the first (or last) tapper game that's going to be covered in this series, but it might be the only one we'll cover for the Arduboy... Unless you count the Rick & Morty game as one. This is Ardu-EZ Button. A game about pressing a button over and over and over again.
There's no point in describing this game even more than this. Let's just jump into the achievement guide. First set of achievements that you'll want to go for are the basic score-based ones. The big score that you'll want to aim for is two-hundred-fifty-six. Once you've hit the button that number of times, the score will roll over back to zero. You'll get all of the other score achievements along the way. If you're fast enough, you can get the speed-run achievement by reaching a score of two-hundred-fifty-five in under forty seconds. It's not hard at all. Just mash.
Only two more achievements left to get. Next up, hold down the B button (A or X depending on what controller you used. I used an 8bitdo one.) to turn on the awful in-game sound. Thankfully, you'll only need to earn fifty points with the sound on. If you're mad, try unlocking this while trying to do all of the prior achievements.
Final achievement is a slow one. What you need to do is get a small score of thirty, but there's another stipulation attached. Every time that you gain a point, a box will pop up on the screen. Mash the button and you'll see more of these boxes on the screen at the same time. The stipulation for this final achievement is that you can only have one box on the screen at a time. Don't gain another point until the box is off of the screen. Do this thirty times and you'll have another trophy for your Retro Achievements profile.
Sonic Arena (Pokemon Mini) (RetroAchievements)
RetroAchievements Set: https://retroachievements.org/game/15729
Good news: This title is a fan made Sonic game for a Nintendo console. Bad news: This is for the Pokemon Mini. This is Sonic Arena. A game about gaining points by destroying Badniks while trying to avoid Dr. Robotniks giant wrecking balls. It's a simple title for sure.
Gameplay isn't that great. It's very clunky and difficult to make out what you are doing because a lot is happening on the screen. It stops being fun after a minute. What? You were expecting more? No. There's nothing much to talk about for when it comes to this game. It's as basic as the Sonic LCD games that McDonalds used to give out in the early-to-mid naughts.
Thankfully, you're here to learn about how to boost your gamer score by unlocking all of the achievements. Nothing much to do here but get a score of two-hundred-fifty-five points to clock the games score counter. You'll unlock other score-based achievements along the way, but you'll be aiming for the big one.
If you were to play this game normally, you'll be frustrated by all of the dead hedgehogs that you'll be responsible for. However there's a super delicious trick that you can do to make your experience less of a frustrating one. All you have to do is get Sonic to the right side of the screen, where you'll only have to keep track of the Badniks because Robotniks balls can't harm you in this spot. Granted, you'll probably lose most of your lives trying to get to that spot, but you won't have to worry beyond that point.
All you do next is rack up points and watch the achievements unlock. To keep track of your score, I recommend turning on the leaderboard feature on the emulation frontend that you use and watch that. The in-game score counter is unreliable and stops moving once it hits ninety-nine.
Overall, only play this one for some easy achievements. Even so, not really worth the time due to how bad this homebrew is. Sometimes the fans can't get it right.
Touhou Crisis (Steam)
Have you ever thought to yourself. Hey man, I wonder what it'll be like if you took one of ultra hard Touhou shmup games, mixed it in with the light gun arcade classic, Time Crisis, then release it on Steam. Well, you've got it. This is Touhou Crisis.
What do you do in this? You fight one of the bosses from the Touhou series (I'm not going to pretend that I know the name of the characters) with a gun! The characters that you play will start off behind a barracade. You'll need to use the space bar to make our heroes stand, then you'll be able to shoot the boss by using the mouse. Once you're out of bullets, release the space bar to go back into hiding and your ammo will be back to full. Special weapons can be used when your special bar is filled up. These weapons are really powerful, but they don't last for very long.
This game isn't very long. There's only one level, but the boss itself has several health bars. A boss with several health bars isn't anything out of the ordinary for when it comes to Touhou games. It is very cool seeing a neat Time Crisis twist to the series. Although, I doubt that many Touhou players will be familliar with Time Crisis as it's a dinosaur of a game now. But if you like this and happen to find a Time Crisis arcade cab. PLAY IT! It's worth a shot. Uhh... No pun intended.
I like the way this game looks. It's a mixture of 3D levels and has 2D characters. The two styles complement each other, and the backgrounds help to make the characters pop. Can't say that I enjoyed the animation though. It's very flat and there's nothing much going on.
Now, Touhou games are not known for being the easiest of games. So what makes this different enough to be considered an easy game to get all of the achievements on? Well, if you were to play this with the standard settings on, you wouldn't find this to be an easy experience. Thankfully, you can set this game to have infinite lives. That's the gamechanger, my friends.
Being able to play without the fear of death is good because three of the four achievements require you to beat the game. One for beating the game as one character, one for beating the game as the other playable character, and one for beating a game in online multiplayer. The online multiplayer part can be difficult if you have no friends. I'm not saying that as a joke. It's all to do with how online works for this.
Once you've started an online game, you'll be given a room code/password that you'll have to send to someone. No random player will be able to join your games. Thankfully, Touhou Crisis is a free game with decent online connectivity. So all you need to do is find a way to get your friend to spare five minutes of their life to play a single game with you.
Last achievement is also really simple. There's a good chance that the boss will perform their special attack which will freeze you into place. What you need to do to unlock this achievement is to attempt to fire your gun while all of this is happening. Simple stuff.
Overall, this is a decent little tribute to two great series and genres. It's also free, so it's hard for me to not recommend you to play this game. A good one to play during your smoko break.
Q&A
It's that time once again where I answer your questions and complaints. If you would like to ask (or bitch) about me or my articles, post a comment here. Alternatively, you can post in a real letter to my secret travelling PO Box. This time it is located in the post-credit sequence of the re-make of Dorf Goes Golfing.
Two Bottles of Wine, Five Blocks of Cheddar Cheese, and a Partridge in a Pair Tree asks: I love how you love your Retro Achievement sets. So here's the Q for the man! What system support would you like to see Retro Achievements add in the future?
My answer: Nintendo Gamecube. Would love to punish myself though Super Mario Sunshine again. That game has not aged well, but seeing what someone will do with achievements for that game would be interesting. (Now I'm pissing off the Sunshine fans alongside the Borderlands ones).
Rad Ian the Alien Asks: Are you sure that you're not just ripping off Strongbad's E-Mail?
I Respond: Nope. (Why do people keep on asking that).
That's it for now. See you all next time.
Pics used in this article are sourced from Steam and Retro Achievements.
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