PixlBit

I am indefatigably playing Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. I even played it while the Eagles/Arizona football game was on Mark's TV. I can't stop - just one more achievement. First, though, I secured the ownership of Games with Gold freebies, Sacred 3 on Xbox 360 and Thief on Xbox One. The rest was a big ol' bug hunt. 

I am working on beating the game on Inferno mode. I picked up where I left off on Chapter 2, Level 4. I beat it with two AI bots. I had the game open online, but no one popped by. Then I lost badly on Level 5, so I restarted Chapter 2, hoping someone would pop by to help me get through that last level when I would get there. Along the way, I leveled towards being max Rank 8, picked up new weapon drops, and accrued more kills on certain enemies for achievements. Mark dropped in after a bit, and then he dropped out, and then another random dropped by. When I got to Level 5 again, everyone had gone, and I lost with the AI bots again. 

Then I thought to play the whole game through on Hard to see how long it took. I went in with my Battle Armor, but then realized I was limited by the level cap, and brought in my Tactical Armor instead, so I'd level. Mark joined in, and we played through Chapter 1. Then he had something to do and I was left with the AI bots. I got bored of that pretty quickly, so I quit out to play some Survival Mode during the football game. I got my 10k Tick kills achievement and the 100 Waves on Survival achievement. 

After the football game, I tried one last time to beat Chapter 2, Level 5 on Inferno difficulty, hoping someone would drop by online. I fought through the first half of the level, and was about to get to the next half, when I got knocked out. I watched as my AI teammates tried to get to me to revive me, but it looked like they weren't going to make it. They were surrounded and their health bars were dropping quickly. One got knocked out and then, just as the second one was going down, I heard, "a new player has entered the game". A real player jumped in just in time, and ran over and revived me. I revived the remaining bot, and we fought to the next part of the level where the really big bugs and robots show up. That part was just crazy, and we all perished, ending the game. 

I still think it's possible to beat this game on Inferno difficulty. I have a little more leveling I can do and two more weapons to buy; just those two small things might just make the difference. Additionally, there are a couple more achievements I can get for fully leveling up, buying the last two weapons for my Battle Armor, and getting a couple more kill count achievements. So it's still worth it to keep going at least a little farther. 

However, I think I'm not going for a few of the achievements. The ones for leveling all four characters to max, and buying every weapon in the game, seem to me really excessive. It's taken me over 50 hours to get one Armor to near max and my Tactical Armor to a rank behind that. I would double the time I've already spent to get the rest of them to max level. Despite that I am sort of tempted to go for it. I'll have to see how I feel once I've maxed out the one Armor.

That be all.