DrunkenEngineer's OCD Funhouse!

[DrunkenEngineer]

22 minutes ago, Copanele said:

I never go for Steam Achievements however, it would take double the work  

 

Look at you, being all wise and shit!

 

Nice, so it looks like you prioritize PlayStation and dabble in PC for games that play best there/only available there.  I can appreciate that.  My impression of those PC-centric strategy games is that to even consider getting all the Steam achievements would be an unholy grind unknown to most trophy hunters.  Sort of similar, I have a smattering of achievements for Team Fortress 2 and I have completely written off even attempting to complete that.

[Copanele]

3 hours ago, DrunkenEngineer said:

 

Look at you, being all wise and shit!

 

Nice, so it looks like you prioritize PlayStation and dabble in PC for games that play best there/only available there.  I can appreciate that.  My impression of those PC-centric strategy games is that to even consider getting all the Steam achievements would be an unholy grind unknown to most trophy hunters.  Sort of similar, I have a smattering of achievements for Team Fortress 2 and I have completely written off even attempting to complete that.

Hah wise = avoiding responsibility on my Steam library.

I think the best comparison will be these 2 lists :

Titan Quest - PS4 trophies

Titan Quest - Steam achievements

 

Just look at those tasks - were those on PS4, Titan Quest would be a sub-1% UR platinum  

However you can also cheat like crazy on Steam (PC perks and modding) so I really don't feel like putting in the effort there. I return to PC gaming whenever I want to go wild with a keyboard, no trophies attached  

[DrunkenEngineer]

33 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Hah wise = avoiding responsibility on my Steam library.

I think the best comparison will be these 2 lists :

Titan Quest - PS4 trophies

Titan Quest - Steam achievements

 

Just look at those tasks - were those on PS4, Titan Quest would be a sub-1% UR platinum  

However you can also cheat like crazy on Steam (PC perks and modding) so I really don't feel like putting in the effort there. I return to PC gaming whenever I want to go wild with a keyboard, no trophies attached  

 

Oh most definitely, that’s an insane disparity in lists.

 

Dead Cells is sort of similar.  Steam is obviously the lead platform and gets all the DLC and patches first.  For the longest time PS4 didn’t get any new trophies until recently.

 

Since I’ve been floundering around a bit losing focus on tackling games I’m thinking hard about diving in to some of the community challenges.  After completing Super Star Wars on May 4 (review coming soon, and I wanted to pop the whole thing on Star Wars day), and busting out the Dunwall Trials on Steam, I’m in the mood for just keeping myself challenged.

 

Your Ultra-Rare Cleanup Challenge and the Platinum Difficulty Challenge look engaging, and there is overlap between the two.

[DrunkenEngineer]

100% Completion - Super Star Wars (May 4, 2022)

 

 

Trophy Statistics

 

The Good

• Classic Nintendo platforming
• Fantastic use of the Star Wars license
• Trophy icons

The Bad

• It's not Super Empire Strikes Back
• The controls are very fiddly, which are improved in the sequels
• We probably won't get the sequels

What a classic.  It really brings home the saying "NES Hard".  Or in this case, SNES.  Super Star Wars was released for the Super Nintendo all the way back in 1992, and is a very cool licensed platformer that was notoriously hard even then. It's reputation still holds up.  I have had this on my wishlist, and on the morning of May 4th I was reminded "Hey, it's STAR WARS DAY!"  Do I dare attempt to 100% this before the stroke of midnight, unlocking all trophies on this most hallowed of days?  Yes, yes I do.

 

What a rewarding experience.  I was immediately hit by a wave of nostalgia as I loaded in, remembering all the quirks, both good (unique monsters only mentioned in the movies) and bad (hold "up direction" and "jump" for a super jump! Can't shoot while moving!).  For the no-death Jedi difficulty run it’s true you can just abuse the save-load feature and make consistent progress. The trophy guides talk about using PS+ cloud or USB to make a hard backup of your file, and revert if you back yourself into a corner during a level. Or in my case, hit “save” after a death rather than “load”.

 

This didn’t work for me. Deleting the game, deleting the saves, pulling down from USB, from Cloud backups, nothing worked. The in game save would never revert.  I read something about how there are possibly two saves, one for online cross play (Vita & PS4) and one for offline. I suspect the save you can backup is for offline play, and you have to log off PSN to use that one.  The online save is likely embedded in your profile. I lost about an hour and a half of progress fiddling around, hope this helps out some other poor soul in the future.

I still completed the game on time, and it was very rewarding popping that last trophy with an hour to spare! I never smashed R1 to blow up the Death Star harder in my life.

 

 

[DrunkenEngineer]

I'm a sick, sick man.

 

 

Including Dishonored in the ultra-rare cleanup challenge gave me an excuse to add it to my PSN profile.  The challenges were much tougher on PS4, with a controller, versus PC with a mouse & keyboard.  Still got it done with a modicum of frustration.

[DrBloodmoney]

10 hours ago, DrunkenEngineer said:

I'm a sick, sick man.

 

Including Dishonored in the ultra-rare cleanup challenge gave me an excuse to add it to my PSN profile.  The challenges were much tougher on PS4, with a controller, versus PC with a mouse & keyboard.  Still got it done with a modicum of frustration.

 

Nice work, m'dude!

 

...now just the PS3 version to go!  ?

[DrunkenEngineer]

11 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Nice work, m'dude!

 

...now just the PS3 version to go!  

Thankfully I don’t have a PS3!!

[DrunkenEngineer]

STEAM Completion - The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (May 5, 2022)

 

 

Achievement Statistics

 

The Good

• Rural mining town setting is well-realized
• Story that has potential to hit you right in the feels

The Bad

• Dodgy voice work

This is baby's first "Walking Sim" right here.  The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first person puzzler held afloat by pleasant graphics and a moody soundtrack.  Dragging it down is the inconsistent voice acting and irritating pixel hunt puzzles. The story is a bizarre Lovecraftian tale with a twist at the end, which was moderately heart wrenching but spoiled by the inconsistent voice work outside of the protagonist, Paul Prospero.

 

The achievements are straight forward, none are missable.  All the "puzzles" need to be completed to see the true ending, but again those can be cleaned up at any time.  This is my second time playing this game, and I tackled it purely as a quick completion from my backlog.  I looked back on a review I wrote when I first played this, and I was significantly higher on the game then than I am now.

 

The genre has moved forward in the years its release.  I'd recommend SOMA or the excellent What Remains of Edith Finch before visiting this game.

[DrunkenEngineer]

Platinum #32 + DLC 100% - Dishonored: Definitive Edition (May 29, 2022)

 

 

Trophy Statistics

 

The Good

• Art direction that has aged gracefully; Dunwall is a Victorian England/low fantasy hybrid with a watercolor palette
• Careful world building through readable lore and clever scene setting
• Player choice is paramount; missions can take as long or as little time depending on approach

The Bad

• FoV is incredibly narrow, even for a console port
• Never patched to 60FPS or a higher resolution on PS4Pro/PS5 even though the Xbox version was improved
• Dunwall City Trials can be frustrating and discouraging to trophy hunters

A supremely sneaky immersive sim for the masses, Dishonored combines the best of old school Deus Ex, Half-Life 2, and Thief into a near perfect blend.  The super powers are cool as hell, the aesthetic top notch, and voice work well acted.  I love immersive sims, and I oddly got my first taste of them with Metal Gear Solid, which isn't one exactly but the stealth and emphasis on non-lethal approaches introduced me to this style of gameplay; Dishonored is the pinnacle of the genre.

 

The trophy guides lay out a pretty straightforward path to completion.  The hang up for the vast majority of folks is the infamous Dunwall City Trials DLC.  This DLC has a reputation for being exceedingly difficult and overly dependent on random luck.  One of the more noteworthy trophies, "By My Hand Alone" requires you to complete the entire challenge where only the player kills the wave's enemies.  The problem is that most waves have a random chance for multiple factions, with enemies spawning in and killing each other before you have a chance to react.  I'd argue there isn't a whole lot of skill involved in this challenge, but a rather large dose of luck.  It took me about 2 hours to clear this trophy alone, but I knew that eventually the numbers would work out in my favor and I'd get through it.

 

The next infamous trophy is "Daredevil" involving platforming using the Blink ability and having to complete 6 unique jumps in one level.  Again, RNG is an issue here.  I found this challenge demonstrably harder than anything in the DLC.  I estimated about 4 hours to clear this challenge, with a total time to clear the rest of this DLC at 10 hours.  Full disclosure: I own the game on Steam and before tackling it on PS4 I tried out the trials DLC there, and cleared it in 15 hours.  So these are decent time commitments, but if I can do it, a completely average gamer, then anyone can if they persevere.  The remaining DLCs are absolutely fantastic and continue the story from an antagonist's perspective.  I'd argue these are even better than the base game.

 

There are some things that the series follow-ups do better, but overall I think this is the superior game and absolutely worth a recommendation for anyone.

Edited June 13, 2022 by DrunkenEngineer

[YaManSmevz]

Engineer Beast Mode strikes again!!

 

Excellent work, my dude! With you and Mr. Clarke handling this, it's seeing a slow push up the long line that is my backlog. I've heard nothing but good things, and while Dunwall is a considerable reason I been like "ehh," you do make me think of an important question: who wants to live in fear of some stupid trophies??

 

Great write-up, and a great job slaying yet another fearsome completion.??

[DrunkenEngineer]

12 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Engineer Beast Mode strikes again!!

 

Excellent work, my dude! With you and Mr. Clarke handling this, it's seeing a slow push up the long line that is my backlog. I've heard nothing but good things, and while Dunwall is a considerable reason I been like "ehh," you do make me think of an important question: who wants to live in fear of some stupid trophies??

 

Great write-up, and a great job slaying yet another fearsome completion.??

 

Thanks boss!  The focus of my write up really was on the Trials DLC as my experience with them was harrowing, to say the least.  @rjkclarke can attest to my neurosis for the better part of a year regarding tackling them or not.  It was a great relief to get through them and realize they ARE just a bunch of stupid trophies, and they were consuming way too much of my brainspace.

 

The rest of the game is sublime and it's really worth checking out!  I can't decide if I want to jump in to the sequels now and work them in to one of the community challenges, or let them breathe a bit (I've beat them on Steam before) and try something else.  I'm leaning towards picking up Darksiders Genesis as it's the oldest game in my digital library I haven't gotten to yet, and did install it right before I jump in to Dishonored.  Might be a good change of pace.

[damcrac5]

On 5/12/2022 at 9:26 PM, DrunkenEngineer said:

This didn’t work for me. Deleting the game, deleting the saves, pulling down from USB, from Cloud backups, nothing worked. The in game save would never revert.  I read something about how there are possibly two saves, one for online cross play (Vita & PS4) and one for offline. I suspect the save you can backup is for offline play, and you have to log off PSN to use that one.  The online save is likely embedded in your profile. I lost about an hour and a half of progress fiddling around, hope this helps out some other poor soul in the future.

I saw this on your profile and had to purchase it!  Look forward to going back in time on my Vita to enjoy a gem like this.  The only question I have pertains to the quote above.  What did you do in order to fix it?  Just go offline?

 

Congrats on getting the Survival Trophies in Uncharted 4 completed btw.  Will be an awesome 100% game to have on your account!

[DrunkenEngineer]

1 hour ago, damcrac5 said:

I saw this on your profile and had to purchase it!  Look forward to going back in time on my Vita to enjoy a gem like this.  The only question I have pertains to the quote above.  What did you do in order to fix it?  Just go offline?

 

I'm glad I inspired you!  I didn't really fix it, I just rerolled everytime I got jammed up.  The game itself is pretty short, I would have had the 100% in 4-5 hours without the roadblocks.  I was on a bit of a time crunch as I was trying to get the whole list completed on May 4, Star Wars day.  Had I a little more time I would have dug in a bit more.  I suspect if you do want to keep the global save scum option on the table you'll want to play on your PS4/5 offline.

 

1 hour ago, damcrac5 said:

Congrats on getting the Survival Trophies in Uncharted 4 completed btw.  Will be an awesome 100% game to have on your account!

 

Oh man, I failed to give you a shoutout when I got those done.  Your suggestion to find that Facebook group was key, a couple of the moderators there carried me through over the course of two 1 hour sessions.  Super nice dudes!  Felt kind of "ick" about getting a carry for it, but it's such an old dead game mode that noone plays naturally it was either this, or invest the 70+ hours to do it solo.  No thanks.

[damcrac5]

2 minutes ago, DrunkenEngineer said:

  Your suggestion to find that Facebook group was key, a couple of the moderators there carried me through over the course of two 1 hour sessions.  Super nice dudes!  Felt kind of "ick" about getting a carry for it, but it's such an old dead game mode

I didn't feel bad about the fact they added trophies to a game mode that is heavily incentivized with micro-transactions.  They made it multiplayer, and we just happen to find good players, lol.  Sure, isn't the purest, but it was not a consumer friendly game mode.

[DrunkenEngineer]

2 hours ago, damcrac5 said:

I didn't feel bad about the fact they added trophies to a game mode that is heavily incentivized with micro-transactions.  They made it multiplayer, and we just happen to find good players, lol.  Sure, isn't the purest, but it was not a consumer friendly game mode.

 

That's very true - as you said much earlier it's not like you can just jump in and compete.  You need hours and hours of farming and grinding to get upgrades to even attempt Crushing mode.  Good riddance.

[DrunkenEngineer]

I've got a new completion to report - Maneater was taken to 100%.  It's a game that I earned the platinum before I started this checklist, so I'm not sure how I want to tackle covering it.  Typically I record my PlayStation completions by the date I earned the platinum and I earn the 100% soon afterwards.  This is the first title I've had where DLC came out afterwards.

[DrunkenEngineer]

Platinum #15 + DLC 100% - Maneater (February 27, 2021/June 15, 2022)

 

 

Trophy Statistics

 

The Good

• Doesn't take itself seriously at all; lots of fun to be had chomping on humans
• Great graphics; UE4 engine is coming on strong

The Bad

• Completely overstays it's welcome, especially the DLC
• Standard open world collect-a-thon
• Finicky camera

There isn't a whole lot to say with this one.  You play as a shark from inception as a lowly pup progressing to a radioactive oceanic murder machine.  Voice-over work (by Chris Parnell) is framed as a nature documentary that slowly devolves into a pit of paranoia by the time we reach Truth Quest DLC.  This is fun but ultimately shallow.  The base game had just enough content to justify the 12 hours it took to complete the trophy list, but the DLC has lots of meaningless filler to pad out an additional 4 hour runtime.  I only went for the DLC to maintain my 100%, to give you some idea of my motivations.  Those of you who have claimed it on PS+ are in for a fun time that just gets drug down by the monotony.  Otherwise, save your money.

[DrunkenEngineer]

Platinum #33 - Darksiders Genesis (June 25, 2022)

 

 

Trophy Statistics

 

The Good

• Isometric view really complements Strife's twin stick shooter gameplay
• Collectibles are easy to track, nothing is missable
• Level variety is fantastic with lots of different biomes.  The sickly, oozy swamp map stands out in particular.

The Bad

• Platforming is atrocious
• Apocalyptic difficulty not unlocked from the start

What a tale of two halves.  A completely fun, straightforward, and exciting campaign playthrough that is almost, almost sullied by level grinding and an honestly unnecessary second required run on the unlocked hardest difficulty.  Darksiders Genesis is billed as a prequel to all the other titles and we finally get to play as the oft mentioned Strife. A lot of the familiar elements from the previous games return - such as light environmental puzzles, Metroidvania back tracking, collectibles - framed against a hub world that makes revisiting previous chapters a breeze.

 

With a $29.99 USD launch price we see the series firmly in the AA space, which is honestly where it should have been the entire time.  The scope and pacing of the game is appropriate for where its positioned.  Character designs are fantastic, I've always loved the cartoon stylizing that is strong in the series.  Levels are varied and unique, powers and unlocks feel good.  This is really just a good, fun time.  Billed as a coop game I played entirely solo.  War is present, and pretty much as you'd expect him with a focus on melee, with Strife as the ranged option.  I stuck with Strife the majority of the time; the isometric view didn't seem to work too well with War's hack and slash.

 

So now that we've got the good out of the way, let's talk about the bad.  The big elephant in the room is the platforming.  It's bad.  Very bad.  I'm stumped why the developers thought intricate platforming puzzles would be a good thing in an isometric game.  Thankfully, the most egregious puzzles aren't required for trophy completion.  Do yourself a favor and don't bother with the Leviathan Gauntlet puzzle, there is a well documented glitch to skip around that and get the collectible.  The story is also completely predictable, but balanced with good voice over performances and some eye-rolling humor.

 

For Darksiders fans this is definitely worth checking out, especially if the third one left a sort of sour taste in your mouth.  Recommended!

Edited June 27, 2022 by DrunkenEngineer

[AJ_Radio]

I still haven’t touched the second Darksiders game. If it’s anything like the first one then I should be good to go. Had the perfect blend of God of War and Legend of Zelda. Can’t think of too many games that incorporated elements from those two franchises.

[DrunkenEngineer]

4 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

I still haven’t touched the second Darksiders game. If it’s anything like the first one then I should be good to go. Had the perfect blend of God of War and Legend of Zelda. Can’t think of too many games that incorporated elements from those two franchises.

 

I would love suggestions on other games like this series.  I can't explain why I enjoy them so much, but I do!

 

Darksiders 2 was personally my favorite.  Which platform do you have your untouched copy on?  Because if it's PS3 fair warning the platinum is unobtainable (stupid server closure).  Besides that, it does have a very obnoxious collectible system but the rest of the game is very good.

[AJ_Radio]

5 minutes ago, DrunkenEngineer said:

 

I would love suggestions on other games like this series.  I can't explain why I enjoy them so much, but I do!

 

Darksiders 2 was personally my favorite.  Which platform do you have your untouched copy on?  Because if it's PS3 fair warning the platinum is unobtainable (stupid server closure).  Besides that, it does have a very obnoxious collectible system but the rest of the game is very good.

It’s the PS4 version.

[DrunkenEngineer]

11 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

It’s the PS4 version.

 

Should be good to go then, I highly recommend giving it a spin.  You'll want a good collectible guide on hand - there are a shitload of them and they don't track in game.

[AJ_Radio]

On 6/27/2022 at 8:19 AM, DrunkenEngineer said:

 

Should be good to go then, I highly recommend giving it a spin.  You'll want a good collectible guide on hand - there are a shitload of them and they don't track in game.

 

I was just reading that Darksiders 2 is liable to have your PS4 crash to the XMB, though if you turn off certain settings you can prevent that from happening.

[DrunkenEngineer]

1 hour ago, AJ_Radio said:

 

I was just reading that Darksiders 2 is liable to have your PS4 crash to the XMB, though if you turn off certain settings you can prevent that from happening.

i think it you turn off the floating damage numbers that should mitigate it. I didn’t have any issues, and if I did turn those off it was once I reached a section of the game known to be crashy. Otherwise I was good to go. 

[The_Kopite]

On 5/13/2022 at 2:26 AM, DrunkenEngineer said:

The Good

• Classic Nintendo platforming
• Fantastic use of the Star Wars license
• Trophy icons

The Bad

• It's not Super Empire Strikes Back
• The controls are very fiddly, which are improved in the sequels
• We probably won't get the sequels

Man, I was really pumped to get these Star Wars classics, especially this one and yet never got around to it! Never played the original versions either so I really need to get them at some point lol heard so many good things about them. Nice review!