One of the first things I noticed on creating an account on GiantBomb and synching my XBox360 and Steam achievements is the interesting way it tracks completion of games. Assigning a rank to your current achievement level adds yet another motivator to get those few final achievements to push from A to S Rank. So I had a look through the games I have currently and tried to see what would be a good starter to "complete" the game. A nice and easy one to start off with, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1 on Steam.

Penny Arcade is the online comic phenomenon created by writer Jerry Holkins (Tycho) and artist Mike Krahulik (Gabe). This is an interesting title if just for the fact that the premise of its development was that two "game critics" would themselves be creating a game. The writing in this game is fantastic and very true to the feel of the Penny Arcade comics. Tycho has never been shy about his love for the English language and the thematic vision that is presented in the game of a kind of steampunk-cthuluesque mixture have popped up before in his thrice-weekly ramblings on the Penny Arcade site. The art style is also very much Penny Arcade at the time it was made. I say at the time because Gabe's artwork is in a constant state of evolution and self improvement that has seen his talents grow and grow.

Sadly the gameplay of this first episode was what let it down for me, proving that talking about something is always easier than doing it yourself. The combat is timer based, so you use items for each of your party’s characters first, then your regular attack and finally a special or a group attack if you wait long enough. Special attacks require the successful completion of a minigame (different for each character) such as timing spacebar hits or pressing the right combination of WASD keys. You can also block incoming attacks if you click the spacebar at the right time......and that's about it. Nothing particularly challenging pops up and you can also use the fact that your timers keep filling up while you perform attacks and that your attacks always take priority over the enemies to keep them locked down for a good portion of the fight.

Taken as a whole though, the game is an entertaining and funny romp through a rich and obviously well thought out universe.

Back to the achievements. I had 2 achievements left to complete to get my S Rank. Pacifist requires me to win a fight using only counterattacks (a block at exactly the right time triggers these), health items, or distraction items. Pack Rat is for finding all the hidden collectibles in the game. I decided to fire up a new game to get these two because enemies do not respawn so you cannot get Pacifist on a completed game. I hadn't played this in a while so the first thing I noticed is that you can now choose the game difficulty, a nice touch which was back ported from the second episode.

I ended up getting Pacifist on the second attempt at it because the first attempt I misread the rules of the achievement and used an item on an enemy to lower its defense. Still, this achievement was annoying because the enemies kept using ranged attacks and only one of your characters can counterattack ranged attacks. After what seemed like forever of pressing spacebar, I killed the last mime (yes mime) and scored the achievement.

Pack Rat was even more of a pain because hidden items in the game require you to click on a certain part of the world (such as a mailbox or a poster), reducing the game to a clickfest as I tried to find all these artworks and albums. I had already found all the artwork in a previous game, but that was so long ago that I had forgotten where they were. So by the time I got to the final boss it was stupid o'clock in the morning and I was still down one artwork and two albums. A quick check on old faithful (the Internet) revealed the location of these final items, with the last album given when you defeat the boss.

Finally I had a completed scoresheet and the bonus of the realisation of why I did not have any 100% achievements before today. It's because some of them are just terribly boring to get. Still...onwards and upwards as they say.

 One of the first things I noticed on creating an account on GiantBomb and synching my XBox360 and Steam achievements is the interesting way it tracks completion of games. Assigning a rank to your current achievement level adds yet another motivator to get those few final achievements to push from A to S Rank. So I had a look through the games I have currently and tried to see what would be a good starter to "complete" the game. A nice and easy one to start off with, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1 on Steam.

Penny Arcade is the online comic phenomenon created by writer Jerry Holkins (Tycho) and artist Mike Krahulik (Gabe). This is an interesting title if just for the fact that the premise of its development was that two "game critics" would themselves be creating a game. The writing in this game is fantastic and very true to the feel of the Penny Arcade comics. Tycho has never been shy about his love for the English language and the thematic vision that is presented in the game of a kind of steampunk-cthuluesque mixture have popped up before in his thrice-weekly ramblings on the Penny Arcade site. The art style is also very much Penny Arcade at the time it was made. I say at the time because Gabe's artwork is in a constant state of evolution and self improvement that has seen his talents grow and grow.

Sadly the gameplay of this first episode was what let it down for me, proving that talking about something is always easier than doing it yourself. The combat is timer based, so you use items for each of your party’s characters first, then your regular attack and finally a special or a group attack if you wait long enough. Special attacks require the successful completion of a minigame (different for each character) such as timing spacebar hits or pressing the right combination of WASD keys. You can also block incoming attacks if you click the spacebar at the right time......and that's about it. Nothing particularly challenging pops up and you can also use the fact that your timers keep filling up while you perform attacks and that your attacks always take priority over the enemies to keep them locked down for a good portion of the fight.

Taken as a whole though, the game is an entertaining and funny romp through a rich and obviously well thought out universe.

Back to the achievements. I had 2 achievements left to complete to get my S Rank. Pacifist requires me to win a fight using only counterattacks (a block at exactly the right time triggers these), health items, or distraction items. Pack Rat is for finding all the hidden collectibles in the game. I decided to fire up a new game to get these two because enemies do not respawn so you cannot get Pacifist on a completed game. I hadn't played this in a while so the first thing I noticed is that you can now choose the game difficulty, a nice touch which was back ported from the second episode.

I ended up getting Pacifist on the second attempt at it because the first attempt I misread the rules of the achievement and used an item on an enemy to lower its defense. Still, this achievement was annoying because the enemies kept using ranged attacks and only one of your characters can counterattack ranged attacks. After what seemed like forever of pressing spacebar, I killed the last mime (yes mime) and scored the achievement.

Pack Rat was even more of a pain because hidden items in the game require you to click on a certain part of the world (such as a mailbox or a poster), reducing the game to a clickfest as I tried to find all these artworks and albums. I had already found all the artwork in a previous game, but that was so long ago that I had forgotten where they were. So by the time I got to the final boss it was stupid o'clock in the morning and I was still down one artwork and two albums. A quick check on old faithful (the Internet) revealed the location of these final items, with the last album given when you defeat the boss.

Finally I had a completed scoresheet and the bonus of the realisation of why I did not have any 100% achievements before today. It's because some of them are just terribly boring to get. Still...onwards and upwards as they say.