Week of 24 Aug 2025
“So I will silence the sound of your songs.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Guardian Heroes
- A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
- Human Fall Flat
Figured I’d return to Guardian Heroes first thing this week, since I’d started before the trip. This is a side-scrolling action game with a branching structure. Due to this, there’s a lot of replaying to get everything. One of the main achievements is to unlock every playable Arcade character, which requires defeating them in a playthrough on Normal or harder difficulty. Oddly, even though it’s all particular routes you could take to minimize missing any, there weren’t any such layouts on TA! I of course quickly went about figuring out my own and posting it, but I’m not 100% it’s accurate since… well, I already played through many times and I was over it. I’d say the “hardest” achievement is completing a run on Hard, but you can manage this by choosing the correct route for an easier boss fight (I went with Ending 2) and utilizing the Undead Hero as much as possible. A neat little XBLA game!
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
Just you and me, buddy.
For my “Game from 2024 I Feel Didn’t Get a Fair Shake” for August 2025, I decided to go with A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, which is essentially an “Alien: Isolation”-like. Though not quite as well-made and polished as that other game. Of course, they can hide a lot of the game’s developmental shortcomings due to the very nature of the premise: you have to move slowly and be very quiet. No matter what, this almost necessitates a slow and tense gameplay loop because, if you try to rush it or not take it seriously, you’ll die immediately. Even on Easy, you have a tiny amount of leeway. To assist with the completion, there’s a fair amount of Accessibility options to help deal with the looming danger of the… wait, is there any official name for the aliens in these movies? I’m not sure, but it’s a vicious creature and if it detects you it’s instant death. Usually you’re just slowly creeping through empty areas, avoiding noisy surfaces and not opening things too fast, but if you make too much sustained noise the monster will arrive and start looking for you. Once in a while you’re doing all this while the monster slowly prowls an open area trying to bump into you for a insta-kill. Funny enough, a lot of the game has you climbing through aluminum vents which would realistically have you dead the minute you put an ounce of your weight on the thing, but sure a squeaky door leads to being ripped to shreds. Achievement-wise, it’s a mix of “use all the items a bunch”, beat the game on Hard (I’d make this your first/only run), and speedruns that cover only small sections of levels. I never found myself really stuck or struggling with anything, so I’d safely label this an “easy completion”! I rarely used supplies, you can die at a checkpoint to refill your “asthma meter” for free, and I never used the flashlight after the tutorial. I wouldn’t buy it full price, but if you can get your hands on this free or discounted, so for it!
Achievements unlocked: 52 (+52) | Completed
Oh… oh no. Shhhhhhhhh~
I had some free time before a wedding on Saturday, so I figured I’d jump on Human Fall Flat and get one of the two new levels completed. I went with Hike, which is exactly what it sounds like. There’re caves and a zipline and even a raft to ride down a river! It’s the same set of achievements: three miscellaneous tasks to do and one for finishing the level. Nothing super tough or complicated, nor any level-long tasks. Pretty easy! Still hate this game.
Achievements unlocked: 127 (+4) | Completion: 97%
Rarest Achievement:
Speed skating in Human Fall Flat [13.61]
Most Common Achievement:
Prologue in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead [1.00]
