On April 17, 2020 I began playing The Grand Tour Game which of course is based on the Amazon Prime show of the same name and features Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. My intent was to basically just add to my gamer score, you know get as many achievements as I could with my rather limited gaming skills. Now I have played racing games before, most people know I've streamed Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, and that there was a limit to how quickly I could adjust to all the variables that could throw at me. So in short, my goal was not to unlock everything, but to do the best I could. Now a good portion of the achievements in the game are tied to episodes that gradually were added to the game over the course of season three of the show, and while some are basic of just get a gold medal on every challenge, I did find some to be harder than others.
One that stands out a real pain in the neck is called 'Scotch Mist' which involving Drifting 1050 meters using a car that had Front Wheel Drive (this is done during Well-Aged Scotch, and you're using James May), which basically negated the 'trick' one could use to Drift easily with virtually every other vehicle in the game (which is to basically tap X and do a bunch of small drifts from side to side). Because the track this has to be done is so short in comparison to the others, even with being allotted two laps, it forces the player to get the most out of every inch. Now to get this done, is to basically drift for as long as possible around every corner and hope you close to 100 meters every time. It certainly seems simple but with the car you have to use, this was clearly one achievement I didn't think I'd get because of my approach to playing The Grand Tour, in that it's an arcade racer, so real world physics don't always apply to how the cars handle.
Most people will probably find the four "Win 50 Times With..." Achievements to be a grind if you try and do them all at one time, but the positive is you can set the conditions to where you can just do seven races at a time, turn off gadgets and change other variables to negate the A.I., and of course there are the 'Use the power up items X number of times' that can be done in conjunction with the races. Some of the items only appear if you're trailing behind so you might end up intentionally losing some races in the pursuit of getting the achievements for things like Nuisance Calls and Musical Idiots (good news is that when doing the episodes any power ups you use in those count towards the achievement goal for each item!) .
This being a racer there are time based achievements as well where you have to be as precise as possible to obtain or be observant of the course layout, for example, a gold medal might be say finish an episode segment in under 1 minute 10 seconds.... but an achievement for that segment says to do do it 1 minute 2 seconds. So that's hitting every turn perfect, not a single crash or bump along the way. I certainly got very familiar with some courses that have massive drop offs around corners meaning if you didn't go around the corner perfectly, you were losing valuable time. Some of these van be out right frustrating when you see that you're a second off and wonder where can you tighten things up a bit, doubt will settle in slightly, but all I can say is persistence and having nothing else to do will pay off.
Anyway, on that disappointing note, I'll shut up here.
