Week of 07 Dec 2025
“I am everything you’ve ever feared.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Star Wars Episode 1: Racer
- The Casting of Frank Stone
- Pixel Piracy
- Herdling
- Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
TrueAchievements Twelve Days of Christmas:
- DREDGE
- DUCATI - 90th Anniversary
While I lumped all the games I started for the TrueAchievements 12 Days of Christmas event together last week (and did again this entry below), I figured I’d expound on those I both started and finished this week. The first of these was Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, which I started for the Day 7 challenge on Sunday that tasked me with getting seven achievements in games released since 2020 and was started by over 20k players. I wanted to do a quick one (so I could get back to Frank Stone…) and this Game Pass title was of course started by enough people due to its inclusion in the library. Even better, you could use in-game cheats to make the entire completion a joke, so… I did that. This is an old N64 title and would have been a nightmare to complete legitimately.
Achievements unlocked: 29 (+29) | Completed
Is this podracing???
While it took far longer than it should have, I finally wrapped up The Casting of Frank Stone by the end of Thursday. Ugh, what a drag! As always with these games, I had to go through all of those blasted unskippable cutscenes and see every scene and choice play out. The guide I was following broke this all up into three “playthroughs”, though it was mostly two full ones with replaying the final scene many many times using my first set of choices. Even worse, as I replayed these slightly differing scenes over and over, I started to notice more and more any flaws there were, like the dorky and unbelievable way Chris delivers all her lines and the general jankiness of the facial animations. Either way, I got it all done and this might be my least favorite game from my little 2024 recap.
Achievements unlocked: 32 (+8) | Completed
Good job, intern!
Skipping ahead to Day 10 on Wednesday, I needed ten achievements in any games developed or published by Bethesda Game Studios, Ubisoft, 505 Games, Activision, or Outright Games. A lot of these are easy or great completions and many on Game Pass, but I decided to dig into the ole backlog and plucked out Pixel Piracy. I’ve owned this one for quite a long time, and after spending a few hours completing it I can see why I’ve heard scarcely anything about it. This is bad. Overall, it’s a cool concept: you recruit a crew of pirates and go about terrorizing other ships around the sea in side-scrolling point-and-click strategy battles. You get gear and gold, level up, and repeat. One you get level up to around 15 and manage to buy everyone a flintlock pistol it’s pretty much game over for anything the game can throw at you. And this is mostly okay, but it often breaks to the point it’s near unplayability as your characters get stuck and ship tiles randomly glitch into other ones. Far worse, the further you get into the game it all comes apart and soon it becomes ACTUALLY unplayable as the framerate drops to single digits and starts deleting saves. Rebooting helps for a short time, but once it begins you’re in a race to finish. I spent the end of my playtime searching tropical islands for… diapers for my crew. Took an annoyingly long time and I quickly uninstalled this one.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completed
Yar, who took a steamer on the deck?!
I felt like Day 11 on Thursday was designed specifically to make me play something new, as I had to get eleven achievements in games released in 2025 that have been on sale at some point. Most games that release day one on Game Pass are accompanied by a (tiny) sale on their price, so I kinda had my pick of the litter. I leaned easier again, and started up Herdling. I’ve completed and enjoyed developer Okomotive’s other two games released on Xbox platforms, so I was happy to give this one a shot. You’re a homeless city boy that comes across some “calicorn”, a herd animal that yearns to be back where they belong, and decide to get them there. You collect more, face obstacles, and it’s a short and lovely little time. There’s not a whole lot to it, and completion-wise you’re mostly on the lookout for collectibles and avoiding losing any of your beasts. Luckily the game is quite generous with checkpoints and you just need to quickly reload should anything go awry. Took about three hours following a guide!
Achievements unlocked: 31 (+31) | Completed
Couldn’t I ride one of you?! This water is FREEZING!
While I wanted to start another game on Day 12 (defeat a “boss” using score from any achievements unlocked as damage) regardless, I also used this as an opportunity to play my final Game from 2024 I Felt Got Unfairly Ignored/Dogpiled: Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Okay, I’ll admit, this one was kind of a cheat since I ran out of options due to the developers of Dustborn never fixing their achievements. But, this is actually a fairly acknowledged “good game”, so at least I know this one will be enjoyable! I didn’t get too far into it, but it’s an action RPG where you play as “Banishers” in colonial America to help with some pesky ghosts. I’m enjoying the gameplay loop, and the story is very interesting! I’m so glad they happened to also add this to Game Pass so I didn’t have to buy it, or rent it physically. I’ll be focusing on completing the story missions in a particular manner so I can save, get one ending, then reload my save and get the collectibles and side-missions completed and get the second needed ending. Should take about 40 hours?
Achievements unlocked: 4 (+4) | Completion: 9%
Rewinding back, I had some other games I started and played only to get a day’s challenge completed for the TrueAchievements Twelve Days of Christmas:
Day 8: 8 achievements in “Handheld Optimized” games
With Xbox being pretty good about making sure most games in the Game Pass library are “handheld optimized”, it gave me quite the freedom of choice. I decided to indulge a little and started something I *gasp* wanted to actually play: DREDGE. I only played a while, but I’m loving the concept of a creepy fishing game. Pretty excited to get back to this one.
Day 9: 9 achievements in any games with any Sports, Racing, or Music and Rhythm genres
This may as well have been called “Anti-Fire Hawk Day” as I just… do not enjoy the genres involved. Sports games tend to be either annoying or incredibly boring. racing games tick me off, and music/rhythm games are notoriously challenging completions usually. Looking at my backlog, I found a nice compromise: DUCATI - 90th Anniversary. I have zero idea why I own this one, but looking at the achievements shows a fairly painless route to completion. I can crank all the settings in my favor and mostly coast through each circuit. It’s pretty dull (as these simulation racing games tend to be *cough Race Pro cough*) but it only took a handful of races to get my nine achievements.
Rarest Achievement:
All Seeing in The Casting of Frank Stone [6.65]
Most Common Achievements:
It's a new lap record in Star Wars Episode I: Racer [1.00]
Introductions in DREDGE [1.00]
Making Friends in Herdling [1.00]
Reunion in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden [1.00]
