Another Big Completionist List…

This should be a quick’n’easy weekly post – I’ve mainly played a ton of Halo: Reach. I’m still really enjoying myself – even more so, now that I’ve discovered the gloriously silly Grifball. Running around the map, smashing gravity hammers with scant regard for anyone’s safety (with, thankfully, no punishment for betrayals), and occasionally actually paying attention to the Grifball, is a soothing palate cleanser after a couple of hours of Team SWAT or Firefight Doubles Arcade.

I’ve hammered my way through most of the Colonel Grades, and have just attained the Rank of Brigadier; the targets I mentioned last week were clearly far too low. And with the variety of games I’m comfortable with now, it feels like it’s relatively easy to snaffle 200,000 cRedits a week… if I avoid playing anything else.

And, y’know, I’ve got a few other games to work on as well.

The most overt of the “other” games is Suda 51’s Shadows of the Damned, which I finally got around to starting this week. And, for me, it’s a pretty conflicted game: I’m not into the control mechanism at all, and – as soft as this may seem – I’m finding it a bit too scary to play late at night… thank christ I decided to ignore the game’s gamma-adjustment suggestion. On the plus side, however, there is a generous amount of Suda nuttery on display, and Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack is fucking amazing. But overall, I’m finding it tough going at the moment – not so much in difficulty, more in desire and application.

But what about the other “other” games – the long-term List-dwellers? My old Gears-boosting buddy Lita asked (on my TA friend-feed) whether I had a breakdown on my outstanding requirements… and I figured that was a pretty good thing to write about (rather than try to recount some sticky-grenade antics from the week’s Halo-play).

Now, a lot of these requirements are driven by my desire to see everything the game’s creator has included – to fully acknowledge their work. It’s not just a matter of Achievements (or Trophies), though they may indeed span the breadth of (or even exceed) what I would have normally deemed “complete”; it’s the satisfaction of the OCD itch that tells me something wonderful may be hidden inside a game’s bits and bytes. To that end, I’ll often do a chunk of research (i.e., hammering GameFAQs) to see what may be embedded before deciding on a reasonable completion target; I’m always open to suggestions, though…

Wii::

• Wii Sports: All Pro-levels, all Gold Medals in the practice events (yes, I know there’s a Platinum Medal, and that there are maximum Sports rankings, but I see no need to attain them).
• Wii Play: All Gold Medals.
• Paper Mario: I’m almost done with this (though I’d love to replay it at some stage) – I just need to ensure I’ve collected all the recipes.
• MadWorld: Complete the Hard difficulty level, get all collectibles.
• Wii Fit Plus: Ummm… no idea, really. Make sure everything’s unlocked? Actually use it again?
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: I’ve got two versions of this – the US and the Japanese. Both should be completed on Bitter difficulty; I’m dreading the return to it, actually.

Xbox 360:

• Perfect Dark Zero: All Achievements. That covers all the difficulty levels, and I’ve played too much of the multiplayer as it is.
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved: All Achievements.
• Mutant Storm Reloaded: All Achievements. The one remaining cheevo for this is Black Belt Grandmaster (complete the whole game on the hardest difficulty setting in one go); never going to happen.
• Robotron 2084: All Achievements. Even less likely to happen than the above. I struggle to make Wave 10, let alone Wave 100.
• Ninety-Nine Nights: Ah – the first game on this List for which I have all the Achievements, yet is deemed Incomplete. There’s a bunch of random drop collectibles to be snaffled here; quite looking forward to revisiting this at some stage, actually.
• Lumines Live!: All Achievements, all Skins unlocked, all Puzzles solved.
• Halo 3: Hey, it’s a Halo… complete Legendary Solo.
• Boom Boom Rocket: All Achievements. No DLC required, since it was a pack-in freebie.
• Luxor 2: All Achievements.
• Rez HD: Oooooh… 100% shoot-down all levels.
• Ikaruga: All Achievements. The Gamecube version of the game deserves to have all A-Ranks, too. S-Ranks are just pie-in-the-sky thinking.
• Geometry Wars Evolved^2: All Achievements. Should be doable.
• Bionic Commando: Rearmed: All Achievements. Probably won’t be.
• Shadow Complex: This has a bunch of internal Master Challenges; I reckon these should be doable (in much the same way that the Braid time-trials got reeled in).
• Bayonetta: Ah, Bayonetta. Your Achievements came so freely, yet you are less than a third complete. There’s two whole characters (and hence playthroughs) left to go here; one requires all Platinum levels, the other the successful completion of a bastard hard challenge. Never going to happen.
• After Burner Climax: Christ, I’d forgotten about this. I feel compelled to get all the Score Attack medals. The problem is that I’m incredibly shit at the game.
• Halo: Reach: Ugh. Witness my torture! 100% Commendations, 100% Armory, Legendary Co-op Campaign, Inheritor Rank. Most of that is insane.
• Child of Eden: All Achievements. Never, ever, going to happen.
• Shadows of the Damned: All Achievements, though I think there’s an additional difficulty level unlocked after Legion Hunter. That’d be in-scope, too.

PlayStation 3:

• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune: All Trophies. Ugh.
• WipEout HD Fury: All Trophies. Pretty near impossible, I reckon.

Xbox:

• Time Splitters 2: All unlockables… ummm… unlocked. This pretty much translates to all Gold Medals, play through on Hard.
• Panzer Dragoon Orta: Everything in Pandora’s Box unlocked, a successful playthrough on all sub-levels, and a Hard playthrough.
• Deus Ex: Invisible War: Explore dialog trees and repercussions (tricky!), but I’m not sure whether I’ll force myself to do a Realistic run…
• Outrun 2: Unlock all Cards. I’ve no idea as to the feasibility of this.
• Halo 2: Hey, it’s a Halo… complete Legendary Solo. Also create a series of save-points near the Skulls.

Gamecube:

• F-Zero GX: All machine parts unlocked, Story Mode complete on Hard, all character responses witnessed. Never, ever, ever going to happen.
• Metroid Prime: Complete on Hard, and complete the embedded version of the original Metroid.
• Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2: Have all levels unlocked for practice… including Master and Master EX. Incredibly unlikely.

PlayStation 2:

• Bujingai Swordmaster: All coins collected, all goodies unlocked.
• Frequency and Amplitude: All songs unlocked.
• Katamari Damacy: Roll up all the countries in the end segment, and get 75% or better in the Constellation levels.
• We Love Katamari: Collect all items. Don’t really know about any of the levels yet; I’ve not played this since the weekend after I bought it.
• Super Galdelic Hour: Check to see whether the end-week sketch image changes depending on results.
• Vib Ribbon: All Gold.
• N2O: Complete on Hard.

Nuon:

• Ballistic: Complete on Easy (yes, that’s right, Easy… because it’s a fucking shit game and there are no additional rewards for completing the higher levels).
• Tempest 3000: Collect passwords for every (available) level. Oh, and finish the game.

Dreamcast:

• Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio: I’ve got three versions of this: US, PAL, and Japanese. I know the US and PAL releases differ, but I don’t know whether I’ve got the slightly-buggy-but-hard-as-nails JP version, or the re-badged US version. Regardless, all three must be played until all characters are unlocked.
• Space Channel 5: Dunno about this one, really. All routes explored?

Jaguar:

• BattleMorph: Erm… finish it!
• Cybermorph: Likewise!
• Defender 2000: All 100 levels, plus a look at all the other bits Yak squeezed in there.
• Iron Soldier: Just finish it…
• Tempest 2000: Just the 100 levels, thanks. A playthrough on Beastly will not be required.
• Towers II: Completion with all four characters. This one may be painful.
• Zero 5: Figure out what’s going on, first and foremost. Then… finish the game.
• VidGrid: Complete all the levels.
• Blue Lightning: No idea about this one at the moment.

PC:

• Starship Titanic: Finish the game, exploring the dialog tree along the way. Play with the parser!
• GridRunner Revolution: Finish all levels in Normal, Endurance, and Thrusty modes.
• Space Giraffe: LNLM both visualisations.

DS:

• Electroplankton: Explore all modes!
• Chrono Trigger: A Level 3 Perfect File, as described here (minus the cat requirement).

So there you have it… all the expectations I have for myself. These are complicated, of course, by the fluid nature of the industry: I feel compelled to focus on the Achievement and Trophy hunting in the short term, in case those mechanisms disappear in the future! That’s also reflected in my current Reach efforts, too – I feel like I have to hit those targets before the Reach servers disappear, or the community dries up.

So – for the very few who make it this far, please comment: what’s the most stupid thing you have ever committed to, in terms of game completion?