Oh my god - I think my Resident Evil kick has finally ended. I tried playing Resident Evil: Revelations and ended up a bit bored. That was the end, I think. It was nice to replay almost all of the mainline games in some way over the past month or so, a nice reminder that some of those games do sit in my absolute all-timers list, even though there’s several that I really dislike. Quality never fades, it seems. Although, I am still playing one of them… so maybe there’s one last Resident Evil newsletter to come.

BUGGED ACHIEVEMENTS

I’ve had an absolute ‘mare this last week. I fired up Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and ported my save game over to the PS5 free upgrade version so I could get reacquainted with it a bit before the release of the new one and, largely because my beloved Newcastle United absolutely pumped Tottenham 6-1 this past weekend, I’ve had loads of football podcast content to listen to so I’ve enjoyed just having a checklist endgame to work through fairly mindlessly. I was going back through all of the planets, beating optional bosses and finding all the chests and having a decent time while I listened to the Gallowgate Shots lads analyse Joelinton’s first touch and having a genuinely good time slowly approaching the platinum trophy and completing 100% of the game.

One of the things you have to do is find all these things to scan. They give you a bit of lore and a bit of flavour to the different planets and on my initial run through the game I didn’t bother with most of them but they were a cool way to have a little explore of the worlds whilst listening to podcasts over the past week.

And then THIS happened…

See that wall, right? You’re supposed to be able to scan it. It’s the LAST THING I need to scan to get 100% completion and the final trophy. I’ve tried EVERYTHING. It’s bugged, I can’t get it and I’d have to play through the entire game again in order to get it. Needless to say, I cannot be arsed.

I’m not that precious about achievements/trophies, broadly speaking. I should be, as I love this kind of extra challenge checklist that tasks you with attempting some really specific things that - at their best - force you to try stuff a little off the beaten track you’d be on when just playing through the game normally. However, I had to let them go really early into their existence. I bought an Xbox 360, fired up Gears of War for the first time, unlocked my first achievement and my brain immediately went “I simply have to unlock every single one of these in every single game I play for the rest of my life”.

This thought was quickly stamped out when I fired up my second game, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. One of the achievements is to literally become the number one player in the world online. I was never going to do that, so I knew I’d never finish that achievement list. I had to abandon my goal at the first hurdle. Saying that, when I DO put in the work, it’s a pain in both my balls when it doesn’t work.

It’s only happened to me a handful of times but my word it is annoying. The first time was with Xbox 360 also-ran open world game Prototype, which I was enjoying for similar reasons I was enjoying Jedi: Fallen Order. It was a fairly throwaway open world checklist with some cool movement and combat mechanics. However, my save file corrupted AT THE FINAL BOSS. One save file, completely busted, no way of recovering it and I was faced with having to start again in order to finish it off. No chance. It remains unfinished to this day.

The second one was a bit weirder. I love Hotline Miami. It’s one of my all-time favourite videogames. I’m also really fucking good at it. I swiftly unlocked every Steam achievement on the game upon its initial release but, hilariously, the ‘unlock all the achievements’ achievement wouldn’t pop for me. Uninstalled it, reinstalled it, played through the entire game again. Nothing. A year or so later, when they updated the game to remove it from the Game Maker engine, it randomly unlocked! Tremendous! I had no say in this, but luckily for me the game was still in some kind of active development so I was able to get it. The same cannot be said for Jedi: Fallen Order - there’s no way on Dathomir that game is getting a patch to address this weird issue all these years after release. I’m basically stuck at near completion until I develop a strange urge to replay the whole game, which frankly isn’t happening any time soon. Even then, there’s no guarantee it will work, either!

Anyway, just thought I would vent a bit about that here this week. I don’t really have much else to say but what I will do is ask you if you’ve ever had any game break on you at a really inappropriate and irritating time? Head over to my beehiiv page and leave a comment - this doubles up as a smart way of testing the new comment section over there!

I’m amazingly busy with REAL WRITING WORK this week and next week, so apologies for the slightly shorter length. It’s likely next week will be similar but I’ve got plenty of games on rotation at the minute that I plan on writing about, so there will be more weird retro shit in these newsletters soon, I have no doubt.

THANKS FOR READING.

Please consider chucking a couple of dollars at my Patreon page if you like this or any of the other things I do.

patreon.com/andihero