Week of 14 Sep 2025
“Total obedience strips all thought.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Marsupilami: Hoobadventure
- The Sojourn
- The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf
Boy, I was not ready for how challenging Marsupilami: Hoobadventure turned out to be. When I started I’d read on TA that there was a glitch that allowed easy Gold Medals on the game’s time trials, but… I couldn’t get it to work. So, I had to do them all legitimately and they really required a fair amount of skill! There was also a challenging Cataclysm Mode on the “The Hidden World” DLC, but while it made those levels much tougher it wasn’t timed so I could take my time. Both of these modes also enable lives, something I had turned off for the rest of the game. Though, if you die in a Time Trial you might as well just restart anyway since the timing is so tight on those for the Gold Medals. It didn’t take long and I had it finished by Monday evening, but wow what an unexpected challenge in such a family-friendly and unassuming game! It’s a good thing the game is functionally sound and that didn’t add much to the frustration.
Achievements unlocked: 72 (+71) | Completed
Hey, nice to meet ya.
The next game to arrive from Gamefly is The Sojourn, a puzzle game where you flip between worlds to interact with portals and teleporting statues to get to the end. But, it’s a puzzle game, so it was right to a guide to get through this as quickly as possible. Annoyingly, that first guide was… no good. Actually it was outright incorrect! I begrudgingly switched to using a video guide since there just wasn’t much in the way of content out there for this game. I saved time by following along with the video simultaneously as I played by using my peripheral vision. It’s a cool concept, and maybe in another world I’d play it “for fun”. The story is something about belief and life. But not here! Not this timeline! Back in your envelope! Thank you for the experience!
Achievements unlocked: 16 (+16) | Completion: 1%
You mess with the sojourn, you get sojowned.
And a third Gamefly game! I figured I knew what to expect with The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf: there’d be hopefully passable platforming, some minor action, and some horrid voice acting and dialogue. Well, to my pleasant surprise, only one of those was true! Yeah, smurf my smurfing smurf the dialogue is grating and annoying. But… this is an actually decent 3D mascot platformer. The controls are tight, the platforming is that perfect balance of fun and requiring some skill, and the combat actually isn’t a walk in the park (forest). Is this Smurfs game fun? I think it might be legitimately fun. It’s bog-standard for this kind of completion, though, with needing upgraded abilities and replaying levels to get all of the collectibles, nearly doubling the time to finish. By the end of the week I’d reached the final zone: Gargamel’s Hovel! I also did this playthrough on hard for an achievement, so I can turn that down soon and skate through the rest of the completion.
Achievements unlocked: 13 (+13) | Completion: 46%
Rarest Achievement:
Olympic Champion in Marsupilami: Hoobadventure [3.34]
Most Common Achievements:
Catch them all! in Marsupilami: Hoobadventure [1.00]
Welcome to Reality in The Sojourn [1.00]
Flower Power in The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf [1.00]
