Achievement Discussion

[Krazie]

Discuss the achievements in this thread!

[Natanji]

Okay, a few comments from me on the achievements to start this discussion

I think the game perfectly demonstrates the principle "easy to learn, hard to master"; and that even goes for the achievements.


The Earth/Mars/Venus/Uranus/eden: It's rather easy to clear stages 1-5. I just finished that all today, wasn't any problem at all. You die from time to time, yes, but then because of knowing the placement of the enemies you do a lot better on your next try and usually make it then.
When having finished all those, you'll already have half of the achievement points you can get - pretty fast if you ask me!

Laser Assasin: 95% shotdowns is also quite okay; I didn't manage that in area 5 yet but almost, and for the rest I immediately had it at the start. It helps to just mash the shooting button because that way you can make sure that absolutely no enemy will escape you.

The Forgotten: Local ranking of 1st in lost area is also rather easy. Here you need to have a somewhat different approach than with the Laser Assassin achievement: It's vitally important that you don't mash your shooting button but always try hitting as many enemies at once; that will drastically increase the score. It's not even important that you manage to get all of the enemies; 150k points is enough after all.

That's as much as I got yet. I'm wondering about the "The Rezident" achievement. First, can you just do the playing time anywhere in the game? The "trance" stage (will unlock after you beat the lost area) just doesn't seem to end at all, so you could just keep it running while you're at work if you feel lazy and whoups, you might have your achievement. Can't try it out myself as I have no cable controller to plug in, and the wireless controller just turns itself off after a while.
Also, I'm wondering if you have to get the 100% shot down and support item for this achievement in one go, or if you theoretically could just only do one of them for example, then achieve the other in a second go and then together they'd mark the level as 100% completed and the game would recognize that for the achievement. Input on this would be nice.

One small side note, one hint: I've found it a lot easier to shoot without my thumb collapsing by setting the fire button to RT.

[Penn]

The trance achievement is not done in the mode you unlock after completing the lost area.

The achievement says you need to complete direct assault on trance. Direct assault is a game mode in the beyond section of the game where you play from level 1 through 5 non-stop and it takes around 60 mins. There are 5 or 6 different direct assault settings starting with normal. I've run through the normal one and i unlocked ambient so my guess is that one of these is trance which you then need to complete for the achievement.

Tips for score attack:

Combo as much as you can! It took me a few tries to complete these as i was rushing to kill things too quickly. The main trick to score high is to let the bosses live as long as possible. For example on the very last boss, instead of shooting the rings in the middle to open up the core, you need to take out all of the things that get shot out around the area chaining them up to max as much as possible. The score attacks should be fairly easy if you have cleared all 5 areas.

[el_rezzo]

I was just wondering if anyone can explain to me what local ranking means (sorry to be such a noob).

[Penn]

Originally Posted by el_rezzo

I was just wondering if anyone can explain to me what local ranking means (sorry to be such a noob).

Hey there,

Local ranking is Rez's term for offline leader boards. When you complete a score attack or die trying one, it will show you the local leader boards.

The scores needed for each score attack are:

Score attack 1 - 150,000
Score attack 2 - 150,000
Score attack 3 - 150,000
Score attack 4 - 150,000
Score attack 5 - 300,000

[Penn]

Boss Rush Mode is unlocked after getting 95% or over on areas 1-5, this is a direct assault on all the bosses.

You start off in the form you have selected in your beyond options so it might be an idea to unlock some of those before you attempt boss rush. You need to set a score of over 300,000 across all bosses to get the Firewall Buster achievment.

[Darunia]

Jeez so to get the trance master achievement, you need to clear direct assault 5 times? egads...

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Darunia

Jeez so to get the trance master achievement, you need to clear direct assault 5 times? egads...

Looks like it.

This is easier than you think though. After getting local rank #1 on boss rush, you unlock infinite overdrives for the direct assault mode. This enables you to fly through the game very very easily.

[Natanji]

Heh, and how do you get boss rush again? :P

[Belgurth]

Originally Posted by Natanji

Heh, and how do you get boss rush again? :P

95+% shot down at all areas.

[RupturedRapture]

These achievments seem more in depth than i would have expected

[Caleb Goessling]

Thought on "The Rezident:" I don't have a wired standard controller either. ...But I do have all kinds of wired music game controllers, and you CAN play the game with those. It's not pretty, but it works. I'll try abandoning Trance Mission for a few hours, and report back tomorrow.

[Caleb Goessling]

Confirmed. Trance Mission can be used to rack up play time, but the unlocks don't come until after you play another normal level. I left Trance Mission running for about four hours, then quit and nothing happened, but then I made another run at Area 5, and afterward I got the unlocks for five hours, six hours, seven hours and eight hours all one right after the other. I should have "Rezident" in no time.

As far as I'm concerned, Laser Assassin looks like it's the only really difficult achievement in the game. Everything else seems to unfold in a natural order once you figure it out.

[Natanji]

Wow cool, I also have a Guitar Hero 2 controller which luckily is wired - so I'll just do that too then. It's somewhat lame maybe, but hey, 100% everywhere seems completely impossible to me unless you play Rez 24/7

In my opinion Rez demonstrates how you can make achievements that are not too easy but definitely achievable without having you play for hours and hours.

[Caleb Goessling]

Just got Rezident without having to hit a different level. The associated in-game unlocks did require that I play another level though.

Strangely, after unlocking it, I noticed that the achievement description for Rezident says you have to rack up all that time in Play mode, but that's obviously not true.

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Caleb Goessling

Strangely, after unlocking it, I noticed that the achievement description for Rezident says you have to rack up all that time in Play mode, but that's obviously not true.

It's probably referring to the fact that you can't leave it on the menu to rack up play time.

I'm pretty sure that after playing beyond to do the trance segment you'll have racked up 10 hours play easily. Each beyond run takes at least an hour.

[Caleb Goessling]

Originally Posted by Penn

It's probably referring to the fact that you can't leave it on the menu to rack up play time.

No. My point, which I was very specific about, was that the description unnecessarily specified "Play" mode, which is one specific mode of the game.

I'm pretty sure that after playing beyond to do the trance segment you'll have racked up 10 hours play easily. Each beyond run takes at least an hour.

Yeah, but that's nowhere near as easy as using Trance Mission to get 10 hours.

[Natanji]

Still, Penn's got a point: if you want to get 200 here, the Rezident achievement will automatically unlock while you do assault mode in beyond.

[Patmaster]

Little question about the "Power Breaker" achievement. Do you have to start a score attack you like and die with some points to get that one count as a played score attack or dou you have to play a whole level of a scoure attack stage to get it count?

[Natanji]

No one tried that yet I think. Maybe you just try dying 30 times there and let us know?
As it says that you have to complete score attack though, I'm guessing that you actually have to finish it. That'll be some loooong replaying area 1...

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Patmaster

Little question about the "Power Breaker" achievement. Do you have to start a score attack you like and die with some points to get that one count as a played score attack or dou you have to play a whole level of a scoure attack stage to get it count?

The achievement says complete score attack 30 times which implies you have to actually play through a level to add towards the counter. This is the most annoying achievement in the game i think.

Just a quick note about direct assault runs. I'm currently on the oldschool setting and the bosses seem to be tweaked differently on each setting. Normally i can use the unlimited overdrive to kill everything on screen no problem but on the boss of area 3, something managed to hit me and kill me.

I'm gonna retry it actually looking at the screen this time instead of browsing the internet tapping X. :P

[Natanji]

Lol I'm just doing the same as Penn ^^ It's hell annoying though to press that button all the time. To think that we'll have to do this so often, for hours and hours... argh. I need some sort of auto-button-tapping machine here :P Any idea how to build one?

For the third and fourth boss, it is probably required to turn around sometimes. Actually, even for the 2nd boss you need to do that I think. So just doing it automatically won't work out...

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Natanji

Actually, even for the 2nd boss you need to do that I think. So just doing it automatically won't work out...

It was on the bit where the boss opens up and the yellow flower looking things come out. Still have no idea what killed me there, i've never died there before.

[Natanji]

The 3rd boss could have gotten you with the lasers at the start. Because of the default camera perspective, some lasers are not really reachable when shooting - especially the red lasers that shoot up and down at the same time. So that would be my guess.

[Belgurth]

Having just done 99.51% on area 5, if I follow the same method on score attack will I nail it with ease? Cause I only tried it once, got about 90% shot down and 285k points.

[Zio Gigietto]

Hi, I didn't understand how to unlock the Trance Hacker achievement.
I just unlocked the Trance mission and done it, but it seems to be endless, as I can read in your posts. So, how to take it?

[Caleb Goessling]

Re: getting hit in infinite overdrive mode:
I tried going through direct assault using nothing but overdrive, and I found the problem. When you use infinite overdrive, you tend to get over 98% shot down. When you shoot down over 98%, according to the Gamefaqs cheats page for the PS2 version of Rez, you face a subtly harder version of the boss. I noticed that on this version of the second boss, when it splays out into a giant fan shape, and pinches up a frond or two at a time to shoot missiles at you, the harder version will use more fronds at a time. Overdrive seeks closest first, so it gets distracted by the missiles without ever finding time to take down the missile launchers, and that gives the boss time to open more and more launchers, which all suddenly have the opportunity to zero in on you. Moral of the story: no overdrive on that element of that boss. Overdrive is usually bad when you have a single spot you need to focus on amid a flurry. Another terrible place to use it is the big cylinder in Area 5, which won't go down at all if you stick to overdrive, and the flying worms also in Area 5, some of which will escape unless you aim for their heads.

Re: score attack strategy: No, the same strategy from Play mode will not do well for you. It's much better to always use 8x target locks than to shoot down every enemy. An 8x lock equals an 8x multiplier applied to every enemy in the lock. Do the math on that, it's huge.

[Caleb Goessling]

Originally Posted by Zio Gigietto

Hi, I didn't understand how to unlock the Trance Hacker achievement.
I just unlocked the Trance mission and done it, but it seems to be endless, as I can read in your posts. So, how to take it?

Read the exact titles of the levels. "Trance Mission" is not the same thing as "Direct Assault [trance]."

To unlock, play and complete "Direct Assault [trance]," and get the "Trance Hacker" achievement, you have to first unlock and finish the other FIVE versions of Direct Assault.

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Caleb Goessling

I noticed that on this version of the second boss, when it splays out into a giant fan shape, and pinches up a frond or two at a time to shoot missiles at you, the harder version will use more fronds at a time. Overdrive seeks closest first, so it gets distracted by the missiles without ever finding time to take down the missile launchers, and that gives the boss time to open more and more launchers, which all suddenly have the opportunity to zero in on you.

Must of been what happened to me then, next run - single target the boss elements.

[Ry Fryy]

Gawd damnit I love this game..

Just wanted to share that.