Week of 19 Jul 2026
“The only thing that satisfies your cravings… is WAR!”
Achievements Earned In:
- Dark Souls
- Vigour
- My Friendly Neighborhood
- Metal Gear & Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Didn’t expect Dark Souls to be the first game from my Dive to be getting an entry on the ole blog, but I needed a quick achievement Sunday after receiving some somber news about a family member. I actually had one I could unlock within a few minutes of loading this back up. Still can’t form much of an opinion based on the less than five minutes I’ve now played, but I still don’t think this will be as bad as I’m sure many people would assume. This isn’t even the top of what I’m worried about from what I started!
Achievements unlocked: 2 (+1) | Completion: 5%
Speaking of easy achievements, Vigour came back into the picture on Monday for the same reason: I was feeling pretty low and just needed to keep the streak going. I actually kinda forgot about this game, I’ll be honest. Only two more achievements left!
Achievements unlocked: 8 (+1) | Completion: 80%
It was back into the studio for My Friendly Neighborhood on Tuesday. But it was to wait until after getting the worst news about my family member. I knew it was coming, so it was more about coming to grips and making sure my kiddo was okay. Luckily streaming is therapeutic for me, so by the late afternoon I was happy to jump to this completion. It was into the Offices to begin with, which seems to be where the game starts getting a bit tougher. The enemies never really mix things up, though, and you really can start blowing through faster once you know how the puppets work. The most annoying part of this section wasn’t even the enemies; there’s a board game you have to play to obtain a key, and it’s just RNG BS most of the time. Minor, but still annoying! It wasn’t that much longer until I’d finished the first of a handful of playthroughs, but you quickly unlock cheats for faster guns, invincibility, and the ability to reach far from you. That last one is the best, as you soon can just skip huge sections of the game, grabbing keys you shouldn’t be able to reach yet or skipping the end boss fight. And once you know what to do in the game an entire playthrough takes barely 30 minutes! There’s also a “neighborhorde” mode to contend with, but it wasn’t very challenging. Was definitely worth fitting in before it left the Game Pass library.
Achievements unlocked: 43 (+39) | Completed
This seems like a poor idea.
So, along came Thursday and the announcement of this weekend’s Xbox Free Play Days choices, which were some cool ones! But what really caught my eye was the inclusion of METAL GEAR SOLID - Master Collection Version, and namely Metal Gear & Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The two OG games are part of the bundle and, unlike Solid, aren’t nearly as long or tough to get through. I installed it and started on the very first Metal Gear game after work the same day, and I have to say it was quite the trip to go back to those days of gaming. But, it became clear quickly this was indeed a Kojima game. Not quite full-on yet, as this is his first title and he wasn’t originally on the project, but the signs are there. Even some of the aspects that I remember from Metal Gear Solid are here, like the various radio signals to tune into or the sometimes random ways to solve puzzles. There’s also stealth and alerts and concepts I didn’t see until much later in gaming. It’s very cool, but being so retro it can also be very easily cheesed. Yeah, I was playing on Easy anyway, but even then it was a pretty easy jaunt through Outer Heaven.
Then it was on to Metal Gear 2, which definitely stepped it up a bit. You can clearly tell this game is actually heavily developed by Koijima, as now the dialogue is more in line with what you expect from the series, the twists in the story come hard and fast, and Snake looks like… well, Snake. The puzzles also got weirder, like needing to know the ingredients of the various rations to use in puzzles. But the tech also takes a jump and makes it a little tougher to cheat the NPCs as their visual cone is much improved. The alarms are also much harder to escape once someone spots you, but you can also climb into ducts and under installations now to hide! I’m sorta surprised both games didn’t have any miscellaneous achievements considering all the secrets and areas, and everything is related to the storyline. The guide on TrueAchievements is very streamlined, though, and made it nice and easy. Both games also unlock a boss rush that is also needed for the completion, but they weren’t any real challenge. I guess I should start thinking about maybe playing more of this series finally!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completed
Maybe if I don’t move…
Rarest Achievement:
Cheater's Reward in My Friendly Neighborhood [4.43]
Most Common Achievement:
GO AHEAD SOLID SNAKE! in METAL GEAR & METAL GEAR 2: Solid Snake [1.02]
