Week of 12 Jul 2026
“Television’s heartbeat has returned!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Minami Lane
- Palworld
- My Friendly Neighborhood
Well, back to Minami Lane first thing this week. It’s a very short little cozy management title, with a cute art style. It’s very simple and the achievements are similarly easy, though the entire time I expected it to get suddenly harder or even mildly challenging. In fact, even when you’re getting near the end, you’ll unlock the ability to just have a tanuki tell you what you need to do. Silly and short and easy!
Achievements unlocked: 20 (+18) | Completed
A nice and comfy time on the lane.
And now we come back to Palworld and it’s time to search the world for lots and lots of effigies. The first area was the new Sunreach isles up in the sky, which I’d reached (barely) the week prior. Next was Feybreak, and through them both I had my lovely Xenolord to zoom through and grab the effigies. Next I had to get a “mutation” from breeding some Pals, so while I let them get down (over and over again) I ventured out and leveled up Bushi, my strongest Pal for the boss battles and Arena coming up. That dang swordsman is crazy strong now, and so is my space dragon. A formidable pair! I also had my Azurobe from back when I fought it as a roaming boss. Really, that trio is the core of my team, with the other spots on my team being filled by whatever I need at the time. For all this hunting I’d added a Nox, because with the update it gained the ability to sense nearby effigies; obviously a helpful thing to have! With my Pals all leveled up (and a day off from work) it was time to face the actual strong opponents that have been added, starting with the new/final Tower Boss. I have to say, the changes to the boss fights was on full display, as Shaolong would suddenly flood the arena, meaning I’d have to perilously hide on these small specks of land as I quickly withdrew my Pal before they drowned! Quite the difference between just being dropped in a boring space-arena area to just fight. I also had to take on the legendary Panthalus, a new raid boss that takes place in a special area featuring a vast expanse of water and a quite small piece of land to fight on. This fight was very dynamic, with me dodging various waves and blasts of water as my Pal did their best to reach this massive ancient whale monster. I’d take potshots with my new bow, but most of the damage was done by the Pals. Surprisingly, Bushi was by far the most effective, even though he’s fire and the boss was water. The problem lay in the body of water acting as the battlefield, but Panthalus was kind enough to often hover over the patch of land so Bushi could reach it. The giant tidal wave summoned near the end of the fight did me in a few times, but I was dumb and didn’t just use Xenolord to zoom over it (and take further potshots at the boss). The game also forces you to catch it, even with a standard Palsphere, so that’s cool and it’s added to my collection! It has zero use at a base, though. What a rip off!
And with that done, it was onward to the endgame added to the world: The World Tree! Yeah, the massive tree that has been ominously looming over the landscape that we couldn’t reach was the end area! Who would have ever guessed?! I thought it was just the small island the tree sat on was the zone, but soon you enter the tree and it’s huge. Lots of really powerful and rare Pals wandering around, too. I made a beeline for the final boss, but that area is guarded by three boss fights you have to defeat first. Two are powerful Pals (caught em both) while the third is an extended battle against shadow versions of all the Tower Boss Pals. But Bushi and Xenolord made quick work of them all, so it was time to face the massive Astralym, which proceeded to wreck me. Oops. But that’s about the time that I realized that all the adjustments to the server settings I’d done waaayyy back when I started it with Blue Melodia, so I quickly changed those back and was able to much more easily beat this legendary world ending threat.
Now, I should have been able to stop and celebrate my completion, but as I mentioned last entry I got screwed and the way the achievements for the effigies work is having them all in your inventory at the same time. Since I’d spent some trying out the new upgrade system, I started a fresh world with all the settings set in my favor so I could venture out on foot and barely leveled to collect what I needed. Took most of the evening (why aren’t the coordinates on the TA guide in an efficient order?!) but by Saturday morning I had all my effigies and the final achievements! The plan now is to actually start all over and experience the game how they want it now. I’m excited!
Achievements unlocked: 75 (+14) | Completed
Oh, I’m sure shooting that with an arrow will be fine.
The next batch of games leaving Game Pass was released, and I picked My Friendly Neighborhood this time. If you don’t know this one, think of a BioShock-style game set in an abandoned Muppets studio, and Kermit likes to shake you violently and throw you to the ground. It’s a silly concept that, so far, never feels truly realized or engaging, but I’m starting to see some interesting threads that might lead into something? I guess we’ll see! I have a good few playthroughs to go, and at least it’s pretty off-putting…
Achievements unlocked: 4 (+4) | Completion: 9%
Hey, uh… you good?
So, for once, in the history of… ever, I decided to take part in TrueAchievements’ annual “Bean Dive”, where you get at least a single achievement in a bunch of games to tank your completion percentage and then try to recover before the next one. Many people will dive so so many games, but I was dead set on keeping it to 20 Xbox 360 games, so I set about doing that on Sunday.
I wanted to stick with mostly non-backwards compatible games, while also trying to keep it to a good mix of hard/annoying games and easier ones. The problem is I really don’t have all that many viable options left on the older console and too many of them are hard. So, I slowly went through my entire library and landed on: 1942: Joint Strike, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Bayonetta, Black Knight Sword, Dark Souls, Duck Dynasty, DuckTales Remastered, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, Texas Cheat'Em, The Path of Go, Thor: God of Thunder, WALL•E, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Slender: The Arrival, Raskulls, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, Skylanders Imaginators, and G-Force! I’ll obviously be diving into these games more in-depth as I get back to them over time, but I’m pretty excited to get a good few of these finally on my ‘tag. Anxious too, because look at all these games I have to play now!!!
Rarest Achievement:
Feybreak Guru in Palworld [32.50]
Most Common Achievement:
The Trusty Wrench in My Friendly Neighborhood [1.00]
