Chp 826. 4 Shows 4 Lockdowns

Hello, my friend, welcome back to the world of Total Lockdown. :D

With a sudden spike of over 60 positive cases detected in Mizoram yesterday, there was an emergency meeting held late last night between various Ministers, CS, Department heads, ZMC heads and other NGO heads, and we're now back to four days of Total Lockdown in Aizawl.

None of us are strangers to a Total Lockdown by now, and many of us continued to minimize social interactions and avoided going out even after the lockdown in Mizoram was officially lifted months ago, but still, you can't ignore that eerie feeling of a mandatory lockdown.

Well, to help you cope through these four days of Total Lockdown in Aizawl, here are four Netflix (India) TV shows that I really recommend you watch.

Now before I start, let me tell you that these TV shows are not popular, at least among our Mizo community (or as we say in Mizo - "a common lo"). I'm basing this hypothesis based on what I have seen at various Mizo social groups and forums, and I haven't seen anybody talk about these particular shows yet, so if you have already seen them before, I apologize in advance.

They're not any of the shows that most of us Mizos have watched on Netflix, the popular ones, like Breaking Bad, Suits, Blacklist, Sherlock, Peaky Blinders, Money Heist, Narcos, Mindhunters etc. But they are all abso-freaking-lutely amazing and definitely worth binge-watching. And so, without further wasting your time (because you have to binge-watch them all), here are my four selected Netflix shows for this Lockdown period:

1. Line of Duty

Duration: 5 seasons, 6 episodes each.

IMDB rating: 8.6

Rotten Tomatoes: 98%

Line of Duty is a British show about an Anti-Corruption Unit within the police department, and how they tried to take down corrupt police officers. The beauty of this show is that unlike other police TV shows where the cops put on their hero capes and go guns blazing and shoot down all the bad guys, in this show, most of the action takes place inside the office, during interrogations. :)

Yeah, you're probably thinking that's boring, right? Wrong. It is bloody suspenseful. And the script has been written extremely well. You'll come across a lot of new abbreviations you're not familiar with, like DC, DS, DI, AFO, TFC, UCO, ETC. :P but it is written in such a way that you'll soon be familiar with what the abbreviations stand for. The show also has a lot of realistic police protocols, bureaucratic red-tapes and organization politics, something that most of us can relate to.

The actors and acting are superb, and you'll be sitting at the edge of your seat throughout the entire seasons. The only negative thing about this show is that the latest season (season 5) released last year, is not there on Netflix. Netflix apparently lost the license to stream the latest season, and so you'll find it on BBC One (BBC iPlayer), or from your trusted torrent site :D :P

2. Shetland

Duration: 5 seasons, 6 episodes each.

IMDB rating: 8.1

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Shetland is a Scottish show about a Detective Inspector and his team who investigate crimes in a small group of islands called Shetland. The beauty of this show is that I can relate it so much with our Mizo community because it takes place within a small close-knitted society like ours where everybody knows each other types.

In the first season, each case went on for two episodes each, but from season 2 onwards, a case takes up an entire season. Apart from the well written dialogues and script, the scenery is just breathtakingly beautiful. It makes me so want to visit the place one day, maybe after this CoVid-19 pandemic is over.

You might want to watch it with subtitles on because it is a little bit difficult to catch some of the heavy Scottish accent. It is quite educational for me too to learn a lot of common Scottish words, like "cannae" instead of "cannot", or "da moarn" for "tomorrow", or even a complete sentence like "I dinnae ken were the wee fellow be" which means "I don't know where the little guy is" :D

3. Fauda

Duration: 3 seasons, 12 episodes each.

IMDB rating: 8.2

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Fauda is an Israeli show about an elite branch of the IDF (Israel Defense Force) specializing in operating undercover among the Palestinians and their attempts to infiltrate Hamas and prevent attacks on Israel. Fauda means "Chaos" in Arabic, and the entire show is in Hebrew and Arabic.

To me, the show is as badass as "Narcos", so yeah, I was a bit surprised most of my friends here in Mizoram have never even heard of this show. It is definitely worth binge-watching, though you'll have to watch it with an open mind. The show has been heavily criticized by many Palestinians and Israelis alike, accusing it of being too soft on either sides. But then again, that is not surprising because of the ongoing conflict between the two states.

I think what I like the best about the show is how the main "action heroes" are all just normal ordinary people, you know, they're fat or old, they aren't good looking and they seem to be out of shape too. The kinda people you and I can relate to, lolz. So, do give this show a try, you won't regret it, it gives you a good glimpse into the current situation of that region.

4. Rake

Duration: 5 seasons, 8 episodes each.

IMDB rating: 8.6

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Rake is an Australian show about a corrupt criminal lawyer called Cleaver Greene. He is your typical badboy, always getting into trouble and delivering great humour punches. Cleaver is my new favourite antihero (though the show is a bit old and I only discovered it recently).

An antihero is the main character in a show who does things the opposite of what a conventional hero does, you know, being goody goody all the time and stuff. Some of my favourite antihero characters are Dr. Gregory House from "House", Dexter from "Dexter", Vic from "The Shield", Walter from "Breaking Bad", Jax from "Sons of Anarchy", Don Draper from "Mad Men", Michael Scofield from "Prison Break", Raymond Reddington from "Blacklist" and of course Tony freaking Soprano from "The Sopranos". Good to have Cleaver join this list.

What I like the best about this show is how most of the cases are quite controversial. Cleaver has to defend the mob, a cannibal, a bigamist, a far-right racist, a whistleblower, a sociopath and so on, and they are usually guilty of the crime they are accused of. And he also frequently ends up losing his case, making it very different from most of the legal TV shows out there where the main characters always win at the end of the episode.

Just a warning though, there are a few episodes with sex and nudity, so this is not a show to watch with your family, lolz. Other than that, it is all good. There is an American version of this show, which from the reviews, utterly flopped. Everybody talked about how it is of no match to the original Australian version.

And so, I'll end my post with this. I hope this post was helpful to you. I have covered a British show, a Scottish show, an Israeli show and an Australian show. I do have a few other great shows I would like to recommend to you but they are not on Netflix, so maybe I'll talk about those later.

Hope you spend your 4 days of lockdown enjoying these 4 shows. Until my next blog update then, cheers.

Chp 825. Coping with Age & Backaches

So the other day, I climbed a mountain and broke my back. It was my first... Brokeback mountain moment. :P

Yeah, I was using a walker for weeks.

Jokes aside, I was indeed using a walker for a couple of weeks because I sprained my back due to heavy lifting.

After a Total Lockdown of almost 3 months, our family was running on our very last gas cylinder and we were starting to panic a bit! And so when our YMA announced that it was our turn to get gas, we were overjoyed.

For my non-Mizo visitors, let me tell you that in Mizoram, most of the people depend on the local government for gas supply. In my locality Chaltlang, our YMA is in charge of gas distribution, but in other localities, the Local Council can be in charge of it as well. The YMA (or LC) usually has a designated distributor who supplies gas for a particular locality at a subsidized rate. And yes we have other private companies too, but they are more expensive.

Now, to prevent people from crowding up at the gas distribution center and creating long queues, each locality is further divided into different sections, and each section has its own "distribution point" where the supply truck stops to distribute the gas. This ensures that people don't have to walk very far to exchange gas cylinders.

Every resident has their own gas passbook with a unique serial number for each gas cylinder, and then an announcement is made by the YMA (via WhatsApp group and loud speakers) that people of ABC section with serial numbers from XXX to XYZ can now come to collect gas.

For large households with more than one gas connection (hence multiple passbooks) their passbook serial numbers are usually in sequential order so that they fall under the same bracket when such announcements are made. While making the announcement, the YMA also mentions the cost of each gas cylinder (which fluctuates a bit now and then) and people are asked to bring the exact change with them.

And so that was how I ended up exchanging three gas cylinders that day.

I mean, I admit, I am no Superman. I didn't carry those three gas cylinders with my bare hands while sweating and oozing out macho manly testosterones. No. I pushed the cylinders in a makeshift trolley. :D At the distribution point, my niece went to settle the bill with the YMA volunteers, and once they put a stamp on all three passbooks, I placed the three new gas cylinders on the trolley and pushed it back to our house.

At home, it was during the time I was putting the new gas cylinders inside our store-room that my back problem occurred. As I was trying to make space arranging the items inside our congested store-room, I happened to lift two cylinders at the same time, no idea why I was in such a hurry, and then my back suddenly went "phraacckk"!

Aaaargh I had never felt such excruciating pain in my life (except maybe the time I dropped my hard-disk and it broke into pieces). I immediately fell down to the floor, sprawling in pain, with a little bit of drama and flair of course.

I mean, I am no stranger to physical injuries. I had played a lot of sports back in school and college, especially basketball. I had fractured by left wrist as well as both ankles, requiring surgeries, not to mention the multiple sprains and ligament tears on my limbs, neck and back. It was something I had to live with for a couple of weeks, adjusting to the situation like limping for a few weeks or using my right hand to wash my bum :D :P, until it healed eventually.

But this one was different.

I couldn't walk at all, couldn't sit down properly, and worst of all, couldn't sleep. No matter what position I was sleeping in, I was in deep pain.

Fortunately for me, when we rushed me to the clinic, turned out, it wasn't very serious, as in, I wasn't crippled for life. The doctor prescribed a lot of painkillers along with thyroid meds etc.

My back was in such bad shape that I was even prescribed "Pregarest" which is apparently a pregnancy related medicine, but since I'm 40 years old now, the chances of be becoming pregnant was quite low. :D :P

I suffered for the next 2-3 weeks. Even while lying down, I wasn't comfortable in any position, and when I was finally able to fall asleep (thanks to the painkillers), I would wake up in pain in the middle of the night if I had changed position involuntarily. A part of me was thinking if this was what the rest of my life was going to be like...

I mean, I was already feeling pretty useless after returning home to Mizoram, you know, now that I am no longer doing the two things I was getting paid to do - advertising and designing games, my two professional skills. But to become an "invalid" on top of that made me feel even worse.

But I just suffered silently, and I exercised daily by walking around the house using a walker.

After around a month, I was finally able to walk properly again. Soon, my walker was starting to get in the way of my regular life, you know, like how it was really difficult to climb a tree to pluck mangoes while using a walker...

To conclude, this is definitely a rude awakening to let me know that I am no longer that fit and young person I once was. Back when I first started writing this blog 16 years ago, lifting two full gas cylinders would have been a cakewalk. A walk in the park. Now it is "a walk in the park, and then across the park, until you reach the clinic".

NKOTB once sang "Age is just a number", and I now realize the number they're talking about is the number of times you'll suffer from backaches and body pain after lifting something heavy. Ahhh, what a revelation it had been.

So until my next post then, cheers everyone.

Stay safe.

Chp 824. Steam Summer Sale 2020

Now that the Steam Summer Sale 2020 is finally over, I see a lot of my gamer friends on Steam contented with the games they have purchased. Some bought the dream games they had kept in their wishlist for almost a year, while others donated their kidneys so they could afford the next big AAA title.

As for me, yeah, I'm utterly butterly shutterly satisfied with my purchases. :)

Steam Sales have always been the best part of a year for me. I'm like that kid stuck in a candy factory whenever a Steam sale is going on, I just go completely crazy with all the game discounts surrounding me! Steam is the largest gaming platform in the world, with over 75% of PC gamers on it, so you can imagine the magnitude of this sale.

For my visitors who aren't into gaming, the best way I can describe this feeling for you is, imagine your excitement when ZARA or Forever 21 or Sephora has a sale. Awesome, right? Now multiply that excitement level by like a gadzillion times, that's the excitement I feel during Steam sales :D :P

Here's a quick glance of my game purchases during these 14 days of sale.

DAY 1:

As it happens during every Steam Sale, the servers were down the moment the sale started. I had to retry for a long time before I was finally able to check-out my games. I started off easy since it was just the first day of sale, buying three games from my wishlist - "Detention", "My Time in Portia" and "My Friend Pedro". I filled up the rest of my cart with small Hentai puzzle games, and I also bought the DLC expansion for "Train Valley 1" which I installed and played immediately.

DAY 2:

"Contra Anniversary Collection" is definitely the highlight of this purchase, which includes all Contra games ever published. I'm definitely going to relive those 90's Nintendo console days! I also bought a couple of nonogram puzzle games like the Arizona Rose series, along with platformer games like S&S series and Tower Defense games like Bloons TD series.

DAY 3:

"Seen" is another Indie game I'm really looking forward to playing, as it has that whole "INSIDE" and "LIMBO" (developed by Playdead Studio) vibes around it. As they say, imitation is the best form of flattery. And I always try to give as much support as I can to Indie developers because I've walked in their shoes for 2+ years and I know what they go through and the struggles they face. I also bought a couple of naughty Hentai games :D :P

DAY 4:

With Trine 1, 2 and 3 already in my collection, I had to buy part 4 to complete my collection. I love the Trine series because it's not just a platformer that requires skill and reflex, there are a lot of puzzles within the game as well. Other games I bought like "Superflight" and "Crazy Machines 3" have an overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam, so those are two other games I'm really looking forward to playing.

DAY 5:

"Sonic" was the first game I played on a SEGA console back during the Nintendo Samurai craze, so yeah, this is another game guaranteed to take me down memory lane. Got a couple of minimalistic puzzle games as well, including a game called "Bears, Vodka, Balalaika" where you  play as a bear in FPS mode and kill German soldiers during WW2 while drinking vodka to recharge, lolz.

DAY 6:

All the "Learn Japanese to Survive" series (Hiragana Battle, Katakana War and Kanji Combat) have an overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and people praise the games for their gameplay, storyline and ability to teach non-Japanese speaking players Japanese in very simple steps. So yeah, once I start playing this series, my vocabulary is bound to extend beyond just Arigatō, Gomennasai and Konnichiwa. :D

DAY 7:

I have "Payday 1" in my library, so yeah, I bought "Payday 2", though I haven't played part 1 even once before. But people talked a lot about this game so maybe one day, I too will give it a shot. :)

DAY 8:

The Witcher series (1, 2, and 3) were available on a great discount so I bought the bundle. "Risk of Rain 2" is another game I'm really looking forward to playing because even though it is still at an Early Access stage as of now (meaning it is not the final, finished product yet), it is currently one of the highest rated games on Steam as of today! You don't see an Early Access game with these many positive reviews so it is definitely a "must buy" game.

DAY 9:

"Lost Orbit" is an intensive space exploration game, and I bought the Deluxe Edition which included the soundtrack. Funnily though, I also got their next game "Terminal Velocity" after buying this bundle, even though it was not included in the bundle description, lolz. I'm not complaining. :D

DAY 10:

I already have "The Room" 1 and 2, so naturally I bought the third part. It is one of the most intense puzzle games I have ever played, and till today, I marvel at the awesome level designing behind the game. I'm looking forward to playing "Akane" too, which is an arena arcade slasher game, as well as the sequel to the highly successful "One Finger Death Punch" game.

DAY 11:

I bought a bundle called the "Tactical RPG Bundle" which included the following games - "Chroma Squad", "Farabel", "Templar Battleforce" and "Dungeon Rushers", all very highly rated strategy RPGs. It's good to keep a lookout for such bundles that are collection of great (but not very popular) games from different Indie developers.

DAY 12:

"To The Moon" is one of my all-time favourite games, I even blogged about it 4 years ago. I cried like a baby while playing that game. And that is why I am so looking forward to playing "Finding Paradise" because it is the sequel to the game and according to reviewers, it is even better than "To The Moon". Let the ninjas chopping onions enter.

DAY 13:

I bought two more expensive games from my wishlist - "Titanfall 2" and "Divinity Original Sin 2" which both require over 60 GB of installation space, lolz, along with many other smaller puzzle games like "Orwell", "Transplan", "Train Valley 2" (which is apparently very different from Train Valley 1), "Unheard", "Nimbus", "Matris" etc.

DAY 14:

I started the last day of Sale by purchasing "Genital Jousting", lolz. Apparently, in the game, you are a penis, and you fight with other online players who are also all penises, race against them, wrestle them, dine with them, kill them, add them as friends etc. It's going to be such a wacky game!

I spent the last day carefully planning my purchase. People tend to over-buy a lot, since it is the last day of sale, and so I wrote down all the games I wanted to buy on an excel sheet, along with their price. For those of you unaware about Steam, you first need to put money into your Steam wallet, kinda like a pre-paid card, and then make your purchases.

I fixed myself a budget, and after a lot of deleting and reshuffling my list, I was finally able to fit the following games within my allocated budget and purchased them all immediately.

After that, I stayed away from Steam. I completely refused to even play any of my games, in case I wandered off into the store section again. I only switched on my Steam application again at 11 PM once the Sale deadline was over. And I believe that is a really wise decision for a compulsive buyer like me.

So my last day purchase was HUGE. In fact, I think it is bigger than all the purchases before that put together. There are so many prominent games in the final list that it would take me an entire post just to write about each and every one of them, so instead I won't mention any of them. That way, it would do justice to all of them. :)

Phew, what an amazing sale it had been. So, how many games did I buy eventually?

Well, in my previous blog update: "Game Achievements", I had 1305 Games and 488 DLCs before the Sale started.

And after the Sale, I now have 1648 Games and 527 DLCs!

If you do the math, I got 343 new Games and 39 new DLCs during this Steam Summer Sale 2020! :D

And this amount will actually be more because some of the games I bought are currently marked as "Profile Features Limited" and "Steam is learning about this game". Such games do not feature in the user's Steam game count, achievement count, card count etc.

This happens to new games with very few purchases made so far, or low concurrent player amount, or low rating reviews (Steam hasn't revealed the exact metrics required to categorize a game as such). The bottom line is, Steam verifies such games manually to see if they are proper games or not. Until then, they are marked as such, and this is to prevent unwanted shovelwares and horrible games from flooding the store, so as to maintain a certain standard of quality.

To end this post, I just want to mention that I did keep my promise of bringing up my Average Game Completion rate to above 50% before the Summer sale started :D

These were my stats one week before the Sale started [read: Game Achievements]

And these were my stats when the Sale ended.

Yup. 27 Perfect Games and 10,000+ achievements later (A "Perfect Game" is one where you managed to get all 100% achievements of that game), I was finally able to bring up my Average Game Completion rate from 48% to 54%. 

This was definitely not an easy task by all means. I had to play a lot of my old games over and over again to achieve this. This was the reason why I had been away from Facebook and even WhatsApp for the past 3 weeks now.

Sometimes I even skipped meals or sleep because there was no time to lose, one time I coughed out blood and was admitted to the ICU, but I continued playing because I was determined to reach my target. Even while the doctor was busy pumping my chest as I was put on a ventilator, I never stopped playing. And as people laid me in a coffin and lowered me 6 feet under the ground, I finally crossed 50% achievement rate, much to the joy and relief of my family, friends, and the people of Earth.

And so, that is my journey so far. Hope you enjoyed reading this post, and I will try to write about other topics in my next update. Enough of gaming for now. :)

Cheers everyone, until my next update.

Chp 823. Blogging frustrations

Today is the last day of June, 2020. Before most of us even realized it, half the year is now over!

Hard to believe, right? Time just... flew past like that. Woooshh.

The worst part for me is, I did nothing productive in these 6 months. At least nothing that I can boast about or be proud of (completing game achievements doesn't count :P ). This is an eye opener for me to turn my life around in the next six months.

The end of June also means that my blogging platform "Blogger" will be moving to a new blogging interface.

Well, today is the last day of June and this has still not been implemented as the default interface, lolz. But I really hope it is not! Because I have tried out the new blogging interface and I hated it. I mean, everything looked cool, from the new "Stats" interface to comments and search operators, but the main feature, that is, the post EDITOR, was super unfriendly to use!

I've been blogging for 16 years now, with over 50 blog posts per year. And in all these 16 years, I always blog by typing whatever I want to write first on an MS Word document, along with all the HTML codes for links and images, and then once I have completed writing and proof-read and am satisfied, I copy-paste the entire text content to the blogger editor (but I make sure I do a "paste as plain text" to remove the MS formatting like div class=“MsoNoSpacing” style=“text-justify:  inter-ideograph” etc).

I mean, you can always type directly on the blogger editor (in fact that's how you're actually supposed to use it), but I'm just more comfortable typing on an MS Word doc first.

For me, I always use MS Word because its kinda like a force of habit, I guess, from the days of using MS Word to type gazillion assignments during my IIM-B days (when I first started blogging) to years of updating my blog from an internet cafe (because home internet connection back then was super expensive and so I had to type everything from an offline home PC first) and finally, my occupations of being a copywriter in an advertising firm and a designer in a gaming agency, where MS Word was still my most frequently used software.

In the new blogger Editor interface (that is supposed to be the default interface from end of June), copy-pasting from an MS Word document didn't work! The HTML commands for links and images that I had typed manually weren't functioning, and when I tried to paste it in the HTML section instead, it converted the HTML commands to plain text! Line breaks were all mixed up too. Arrrrgh, it was super frustrating.

And so I had to revert to the previous interface. To me, this current (old interface) is still one of the best WYSIWYG editors I have come across. And that is why I am praying that the new interface does not become the default interface.

Things like this just make me lose my motivation to blog. Already we know that blogging is a dying past-time, why hammer the last few nails in the coffin?

Another incident that had really frustrated me is that advertisements were starting to appear on my blog posts again! I had deactivated advertisements on my blog a long time ago because I hate the fact that random ads would just appear in the middle of my post. I don't mind having ads at the top or bottom of my post, but not in the freaking middle, spoiling the flow of what I have written.

These ads don't appear on desktop/laptop browser, but you'll see them if you view my recent blog posts from mobile. I even complained about this, showing them proof that my ads setting was turned off, and that there had been no activity on my adsense account, but alas, there seemed to be no solution.

I mean, I wouldn't mind the extra revenue coming in from my blog (especially now that I am unemployed), but I don't want to compromise on money by giving my readers a bad experience. Making money from my blog had never been my intention since I started blogging 16 years ago. And the worst part is, these ads that started appearing on my recent blog posts aren't even from my adsense account! So yeah, I'm still not getting paid for that even if I have no option, lolz.

It is no secret that people don't blog anymore. I mean, look around you, how many friends do you actually have that still blog? I remember the good old days when there were more than 200 active Mizo bloggers, and I found a lot of great friends because of that, many of whom are still one of my closest friends today. But the blogging community is now just a has-been era.

Putting all that into consideration, it is not surprising that Google (owner of blogger platform) no longer prioritizes its blog user-base. Why spend extra resources to sort out someone's advertising issue or editor issue for a platform that has lost its charm, right?

In fact, just recently I found out that many of my old blog links no longer work! When I see my "Facebook memories notification" of a blog link I had shared years ago on my status, clicking that link now leads to a broken link!

So when Google acquired the blogging platform "Blogger" in 2003 and we could use their "blogspot" sub-domain name [example: mizohican [dot] blogspot [dot] com] as our blog link, everything was cool. And then there was a time when blogging reached its pinnacle and a lot of Indians started blogging, and so we were given a new Indian sub-domain ".in" instead of the ".com". And to avoid confusion, using either the ".in" or ".com" link lead back to the same post. However, if you wanted to copy you blog link from the browser address bar, the default sub-domain link generated was the ".in" one.

Now, if I click on any of those old links I had posted before, the ones with ".in" sub-domain name, it leads to a broken link. All blog post links are now back to being just ".com" only. This was probably done to cost-cut on expenses and domain usage, maybe, I don't know.

But the most important question is, did we read about this change anywhere on social media? Did anybody complain about this change of sub-domain name? Nopes. Nothing. That just shows how much of a dying business this is.

Anyway, yeah, I didn't mean to rant so much. I have a lot to say about blog image hosting services too, but I'll stop here for now. Hopefully, the remaining half of 2020 will be better and brighter for us, especially with regards to the ongoing pandemic. And I hope too that these issues with blogging cease to exist too.

Happy Half Yearly greetings to you all, dear friends. Cheers.

Chp 822. 10 Types of Achievements...

...that are really difficult to get.

In my previous post, I wrote about how Steam, the world's largest PC Games distribution platform (around 75% of all PC Gamers) calculates its "Average Game Completion Rate", along with my personal quest to reach at least 50% completion rate before the Steam Summer Sale 2020 starts this coming Thursday (June 25th).

So far, that is going on well.

In this post though, I would like to take you through the 10 types of Game Achievements that I find the toughest to unlock, and the reasons why.

Before I begin, for my non-gaming friends, let me explain that "achievements" are extra features added to a game. Apart from the main mission of a game, you can also unlock various achievement badges for performing certain tasks or reaching certain milestones within that same game. They need not be a part of the main game's "core loop" and are usually optional. It has been proven that achievement badges and trophies have indeed increased the longevity and retention factor of all games by multifold.

Now if you want to compare this with the real world, "achievements" would pretty be the time... you scored your first kiss, or your first break-up, your promotion to senior management, your 1000th bottle of whisky, and so on. In my case, being single for more than three years now is pretty much an achievement unlocked moment :P

There are all sorts of game "achievements" that can be unlocked, from the usual "level completion achievements" in games like "Limbo" and "Hidden Folks", to performing a special combo move in "Mortal Kombat" or crafting a special weapon in "Grim Dawn", the list is endless. Some games have ridiculous achievements, like in "Garry's Mod" there is an achievement called "Yes, I am the real Garry" that you can only get if you stalk the creator of the game Garry on Steam and wait for him to play the game and once he does that, join the same server he's currently in, then only will you get that achievement, lolz.

Yeah, there are a lot of crazy achievements out there.

So without any further delay (because I tend to blabber a LOT whenever I write about gaming) here are the 10 types of achievements that I find it the most difficult to unlock.

#1. Arena Battle Achievements.

Arena Battle games are your typical online PvP games like DOTA2 and Counter-Strike. Some of these games on Steam like CS:GO, Smite, Warframe and even PubG have so many different achievements to unlock that you'll have to play for a very long time to unlock them all, because such games were designed to be replayed many times over. For example, my favourite game in this genre is "Team Fortress 2".

As you can see from my stats above, I have spent a good 555 hours so far playing this game, and I haven't even unlocked 50% of the total achievements in this particular game! That's how extensive the achievements are.

#2. "Ain't Got Time For That" Achievements.

There are some games where you can get "100% achievements" in a couple of minutes, while some other games will take you a few hours, or even days. And then there are games like the classic Age of Empires II. I purchased the HD edition back in 2016, and after more than 100 hours of gameplay, I have unlocked only 12% of the total achievements so far!

I completed the Burmese campaign (I even wrote an extensive guide in this post), and so far, as of today, only 1% of the total AoE players have completed this campaign!

Considering you have to play with every Civilization and win 100+ times each (along with other requirements), some gamers estimated that you'll have to invest tens of thousands of hours to unlock all the achievements, which is something I don't have the time and patience for.

#3. Mandatory Replay Achievements.

In some games, by the time you complete all the main missions, you would have unlocked most of the achievements. There would be a few achievements here and there that you can unlock by replaying some of the quests again. However, in most of the RPG adventure and action games, you will have to play the entire game again, starting from the very beginning while using a different character, so as to unlock the other achievements.

I have faced this issue many times after I have completed the main game. The Borderlands series is one such example.

As you can see from my stats above, I played as "Soldier" class and after 50+ hours of playing, I killed the final boss and completed the game. However, I didn't even unlock half the achievements. To do that, I now have to play the same game again from the beginning as "Berserker" class, "Siren" class or "Hunter" class, and repeat all over again after each completion. Urrrgh.

#4. Mandatory Online Multi-Player Achievements.

In today's age of easy internet connectivity and good speed, you have to be online while playing most games. And that is something I don't mind. What I hate though, are those games that force you to play multi-player co-opt if you want to unlock certain achievements. I'm not talking about those Battle Arena games like DOTA2, TF2, CS:GO, etc., because the very foundation of those games is online multi-player.

I'm talking about RPGs where you must go on a quest with a complete stranger. Worse is when you have to add complete strangers as friends to make it easier to play co-opt together.

"Torchlight II", one of my favourite games because of its similarity to "Diablo", even has achievements based on the number of friends you add! Arrrghhh.

#5. DLC Achievements.

Oh I hate this so much! DLC means "downloadable content", and it is an additional package of a game that will give you extra missions, additional characters, new weapons etc., within the same game. DLC costs extra and you'll have to shell out a couple of $$$ even if you have already bought the main game.

There are many games out there where you can unlock certain achievements ONLY if you purchase and play the DLC. Developers do this as a strategy to make people buy their DLCs, but gamers feel this is a very cheap tactic because they have already spent a lot of money buying the main game. I have many such games in my library with incomplete achievements because of bloody DLCs, and the one example I will give is the "Sniper Elite" series.

I've already completed the above game, I even replayed many missions multiple times to unlock other achievements, but I will never be able to 100% it because I don't own the DLCs. Bummer.

#6. "Too Difficult" Achievements.

These are achievements that are really difficult to unlock. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about this type of achievements, because after all, achievements are supposed to be hard and challenging, or else they lose their sense of achievement. That mental satisfaction and moral accomplishment are no longer there if they are too easy to unlock.

One such example would be the "Metal Slug" series.

It is an old classic arcade shooter game, ported to Steam and other platforms because of its popularity. Completing the game is not very difficult, but there is an achievement that can be unlocked only if you complete the entire game without dying even once. Now that is really tough to unlock, lolz, and I don't think I ever will.

#7. "Too Embarrassed to Play" Achievements.

Hehe, believe me when I tell you this, there are also a lot of weird games out there, games that you don't want your other Steam friends or even your family members to see you playing :D Just out of curiosity, I purchased a few of them (note the curiosity angle), but after a few minutes of playing, I had to make sure I was alone in the room while playing, lolz.

As you can see from above, I have unlocked only one achievement each from "Hunie Pop" and "Panty Party" as I was too embarrassed to play them anymore. "Hunie Pop" is a dating simulator game where you must hone your "wooing" skills to date a couple of virtual chicks. I think I installed this game during the second year of my single bachelorhood :D And "Panty Party" is an action RPG game where you must fly around as a panty and battle other evil panties! :D :D :D

#8. "Specific Time" Achievements.

There are many games out there that require you to play the game at a specific date or month of a year in order to unlock some of its achievements. For example I've just unlocked 24 of the 25 achievements of this puzzle game called "RUSH". The last achievement can be unlocked if I play a series of level that will be available only during December.

"Pictopix" is one of my favourite nonogram puzzle games (I'll write a separate post on that genre), and one of the achievements called "Four Seasons" can be unlocked only if you play one particular level on all four seasons of the year.

The same level even has different solutions for all four seasons!

So yeah, if you're someone like me who don't want to cheat the system by using SAM (Steam Achievement Manager) or manipulating your computer's internal clock, you'll have to wait an entire year to unlock this one achievement :)

And if you think that is insane, then you haven't played this game called "The Stanley's Parable" :D

As you can see above, I have already completed the game, but I'm far from unlocking all the achievements. One of the achievements called "Go Outside" can be unlocked only if you play this game again after five years! During those five years, if you launch the game even by mistake, the clock resets itself and you'll have to wait another five years, lolz.

Totally crazy. :D

#9. "Early Access" Achievements.

An "Early Access" game is one where developers (usually Indie games developers) release a game that is not yet 100% functioning to the public. The money from that purchase is then used to further fund the development of the same game. During "Early Access", gamers report bugs and other issues, while developers listen to feedback and suggestions. Gamers also usually do not give negative reviews caused by bugs if the game is still in "Early Access".

Now some developers reward their "Early Access" customers by giving them an exclusive "Early Access" achievement badges. The problem with this is that, once the game is finalized and in "stable release", then anybody buying that game after that can no longer achieve the "Early Access" achievement, lolz. Some games like AoE have fixed this issue, while this is still there in games like "DiRT Rally".

#10. Buggy Achievements.

Coming to the last point of this post, this is the one type of achievement I HATE THE MOST. I mean, like, literally loathe. And with over 1000+ games in my library, I have quite a lot of these games. These are the games where you do everything that is required to unlock the achievement, but the achievement does not unlock because of bugs. Aaaarrrgghhhhh.

Many developers listen to their customers and fix the so called bug, but there are also many others who simply don't care enough to listen to the complaints. Square Enix is one such developer. One of their games on Steam (ported from mobile) is "Hitman GO", a turn-based puzzle game. In that game, I have completed every criteria required to unlock the achievements, but only 14 of the 26 achievements have unlocked for me, because of bugs. And yes, their discussion forum is filled with people reporting the bugs, but the company just doesn't seem to care.

Fuck them.

And so, these are my 10 types of Game Achievement that are really difficult to unlock. Hope you enjoyed reading the post. Until my next update then, cheers. :)