I’ll be honest. I despise these types of achievements. There are so many types of these kinds of achievements and for some reason they always love to put them in the most difficult games. I mean the game is already hard enough so why do we have to add on extra challenges like that? There are different levels to these types of achievements as well with some of them not even allowing you to get hit at all if you want to get the achievement. Not getting hit is a hard ask for just about any game so exactly how do they expect us to do it. Well, through practice of course. If we practice going through each stage of the game over and over again, we can eventually figure out a way to go through without taking any hits or find the route that offers the least amount of risk in getting hit. That can take hours and frankly speaking that is just for the chance at victory. There is no guarantee that you will be able to pull it off. You just have to trust that all of your effort will eventually pay off. These are challenges that aren’t for the casual player. They are challenges that are only for the few who want an insanely difficult challenge to put their skills to the test. This is not for me, obviously. In case you forgot from the name of the site, I prefer to play games in a more casual manner. The problem is that some of the games I play and enjoy quite a bit have these achievements tied to them. It’s a little annoying knowing I will probably never complete them.
You see, there are two types of no death achievements. The first is relatively simple since you just have to not die. This can either be a limited number of attempts or not once through the entire campaign. Things can be simple if you know exactly what you are doing. After all, you just have to be cautious and take your time advancing through the game. I however, am famous for choking at the final stretch. So, naturally I tend to drop the ball on these ones. They aren’t too bad though overall, since it is only a matter of practice. The problem, for me is the number of resets. One bad moment leads to a total reset of your progress and that can really tank your morale. You are probably thinking “Why is he thinking like this when he loves to play roguelikes?” The difference is that I don’t have to worry about practicing the route beforehand. It is all random so if something happens then that just shows I was unlucky more otfen than not. It doesn’t show necessarily that I was unskilled. It feels more painfull though when things aren’t random and can’t be chalked up to just bad luck. That is when it gets to me. You see, when luck is involved, at the very least I can gamble. I can’t gamble my way out of death wihtout having a certain amount of skill.
Now you might not be thinking that is so bad. However, these achievements aren’t always so nice. Sometimes they want you to beat the game with the best completion possible and even worse are the no hit achievements, which are the no death achievements on steroids. You see you will have to play through the whole segment without making a single mistake or all of your progress gets reset. There is no leeway and no second chances. Not only that but you have to do it in multiple levels in order to actually collcect all of the achievements. I will give you an example. Let’s gp back to the game I talked about last week, Celeste. It’s a pretty difficult little platformer. The thing is once you collect all the crystal hearts and beat every level you unlock the ability to collect Golden Strawberries. In order to get the final achievement you need to collect every single one in the game in addition to the original 175 normal ones in the levels. Thankfully those 175 can be collected outside of the run with the Golden Strawberry. To collect the Golden Strawberry for a level you have to collect it and continue for the rest of the level without dying. Since in this game there is no health bar that basically means not taking a single point of damage. You have to do this not only for every version of each chapter, but also the final bonus chapter Farewell. I can tell you that I have almost 5000 deaths to just beat it once. There is no shot that I get that Golden Strawberry in this lifetime. That’s okay though, it just means I will never get that final achievement which is a little heartbreaking. You see, I hate these achievements not because they are impossible, but because they are possible with time and dedication. These are two things I don’t have at the moment. Maybe one day, but not now. I just hate that I have to invest so much time to only have a chance at success. It’s a bit unsettling. I’ll probably still try though, because I’m stubborn like that. Oh well.
That Casual Gamer Guy 