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Nauticus87's journey for the D


Nauticus87

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Good luck, I wasn't sure what to expect when I first saw the title but I like the concept 

 

I would just try and 100% Titan Attacks if I were you, I came back to it for the first time in years a few months ago and it only took me a couple hours to clean up

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Happy new year everyone. The new year starting on a Saturday, of which it's a long weekend for myself, must mean good things. And what better thing to do on my weekend than play some games! It was 06:00, I was up with my first cup of tea and raring to go. Let's go Hades! Excitement, fun, a repetitious orgy of nectar feeding. You get a nectar, you get a nectar, all of you get a nectar.

 

That was a lot of fun. Worked up a hunger. Time to get washed, dressed, eat some breakfast, second cup of tea. Quick glance at the PS4. What should I do now? Oh, my partner is calling me, I should take that.

 

Quick glance at the PS4. It's 10:00, what should I do? Wonder what's happening on Reddit. I'll have a look. Five, ten minutes, no harm there really. Stop giving me that look PS4, I'm not avoiding you, I've no idea what you're talking about, stop sulking. I need another cup of tea, I can't focus when you're staring at me like that.

 

FINE. OK. Titan Attacks, yes I know I know. Let's get this going then. From the top. Ah, it's space invaders, didn't remember that. This is a bit dull, one agonisingly slow bullet at a time, I keep shooting those green guys without meaning to. Upgrades - nice. Bullets, give me more bullets, more stronger bullets, feed my lust for alien blood. Earth down, moon now, the pace is picking up, the gameplay is actually starting to get a bit fun. Am I... enjoying this? I've a rocket now, a laser, I'm blasting these aliens away. Get hit? Quit out and restart the wave with no losses, I need my money for power not defence. Fuck I clicked no to restart the wave and it wiped my progress since the start of the world, what kind of rubbish is that. Whatever, fight my way back through. On Saturn a second revelation: mashing the attack button is faster than holding it down once you have multiple bullets. Enemies start crashing down in record time. Game cleared, quick replay to snag some aliens and I'm done. 90 minutes for an E to become an S.

 

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"I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me. At the end of Titan Attacks I had a shutting-off feeling, that I had done what I was supposed to do and everything was OK."

One down, nineteen to go.

 

17 hours ago, MD_91 said:

Good luck, I wasn't sure what to expect when I first saw the title but I like the concept 

 

I would just try and 100% Titan Attacks if I were you, I came back to it for the first time in years a few months ago and it only took me a couple hours to clean up

 

Thanks. I do admit the title is silly but it makes me laugh so I had to go with it. You were right about 100%'ing, a really easy game in the end. I think playing on Vita originally coloured my view, my eyes aren't good enough to dodge all the bullets on a small screen while there are multiple things all going on at once. On the PS4 it was still an overwhelming amount of activity going on at times but easier to manage.

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Another day, another E rank scrubbed away.

 

Screenshot-20220102-165403-897.png

 

I'm not done with this but here's an update to show the current change from E to C. It has been surprisingly fun, in an infuriating way.

 

The rubber-banding is obnoxious. If I get a time of 3m10s and barely miss out on first, a second attempt where I get 2m56s shouldn't have me in 6th place because I crashed near the end and all the A.I had magically improved their times to match. I do appreciate that if I start terribly I still have a chance to win though. It can be a little easy to get lost in some races but that's more a learning curve than any complaint.

 

The physics are bouncy, to say the least. I can see why this online would be fun, it's pure maddening chaos. The collision detection can be a bit wonky. Once I crashed into a tree branch that was above my car.

 

I'll keep going until I get bored or beat all the events so expect a final update on this sometime in the coming days.

 

On a nice side note: I just went under 50% average trophy rarity thanks to these. Not sure if I've ever been so low there.

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I think I'm done with Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.

Motorstorm.png

The absolute worst part of MotorStorm is that even though you know your Motor is Storming, you're unable to stop yourself from being Stormed by Motors.  

 

I don't know what happened but at some point it just clicked and I started enjoying it in all its infuriating glory. Twenty hours later and I've pulled that original 2% E up to a 45% A. Puts me in the top 3% of trophies earned for the game (#5,746 out of 193,387).

 

Beyond the unobtainable online trophies, the ones I gave up on:

- Getting 96 silver and gold medals. I had 80+ gold but those rank 7 and 8 races are pure bullshit of the highest order. This is not a game that rewards skill in any way. You could have the best race of your life and get second, or crash five times in the first lap and end up winning. The AI is as good or as bad as you and your only hope is getting lucky that they somehow mess up. If you can't see them the AI will cheat. A car with 2* speed will out-speed your boosting 5* car right in front of your eyes. If a car lands on top of you you'll crash, if you land on top of a car you'll crash, if another car crashes near you your car will explode from sympathy (okay maybe that last one was a tad untrue). A racing game that punishes you for getting better is not fun.

- Time trials. I haven't been interested in time trials since Diddy Kong Racing on N64.

- Taking part in 250 races. I have no idea what counts as 'taking part' given that I got the trophy for winning 250 races but my taking part number was a lot lower than my win number.

- Winning all speed and eliminator races. I unlocked them. I got gold on most, silver on the rest. The eliminator ones are luck-based same as the races. The rank 8 speed races are akin to the perfect time trials, I'm not interested.

- Punching 5 competitors and winning. My best was 2.

- Knocking down 10 dismounted riders. I had 7. To be honest I was done with the game after 250 wins, I wasn't going to go do this.

- The adrenaline DLC, because £5 for 2 trophies wasn't worth it. I got the speed weekend DLC because it was more speed races, which I enjoyed (not having to deal with the AI). It was far easier than the main game speed races, fun, and 9 out of 11 trophies wasn't a bad return.

 

I'm not sure what the next game will be out of the remaining 18. I'm open to suggestions.

 

Outside of this challenge I got the platinum on Hades. Just about. In recent times I've decided not to spend hours on a repetitious task for a trophy (most recently Kingdom Hearts MoM. After beating every song on every difficulty I'm not going to keep playing the same song for 4-5 more hours for one final trophy). The last couple of trophies in Hades came dangerously close to senseless repetition but luckily the pact of punishment and mixing up weapons kept it just about interesting enough. Also spoiler: 

Spoiler

Who decided it was a good idea to only continue conversation chains with Sisyphus, Eurydice and Patroclus if you lost. Why punish the player by hindering progress for winning? At one point I had a streak of 8 wins and was wondering why those conversations weren't progressing. I can understand certain ones, like Hades because the whole point is not being able to escape, but those three have no relevance to you winning or losing as far as their conversation goes. Being forced to purposefully lose to continue their conversations baffles me.

 

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I dove into accomplishing this a bit on my profile, but I went too ambitious and wanted to get everything up to at least an A rank. I pull out some older games every now and then to try and raise the ranks on, but I just have so many in my backlog that are more enticing to start so I need to mix it up. Good luck with bringing up some of those game's ranks, looks like you already are enjoying some of them to go past D rank.

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On 11/01/2022 at 0:25 AM, Grotz99 said:

I dove into accomplishing this a bit on my profile, but I went too ambitious and wanted to get everything up to at least an A rank. I pull out some older games every now and then to try and raise the ranks on, but I just have so many in my backlog that are more enticing to start so I need to mix it up. Good luck with bringing up some of those game's ranks, looks like you already are enjoying some of them to go past D rank.

 

Thanks. I do plan on keeping a mix of things as I go along as I also have a huge backlog (that keeps growing because I keep buying more because reasons), don't think I could do these one after another. There are some that I am genuinely dreading going back to, but that's what makes it challenging to me. Not to mention the possibility of being surprised at enjoying something that I barely gave a chance to. I was really happy with MotorStorm in the end.

 

After MotorStorm I did a couple of quicker games away from the challenge: Bastion and Afterparty. I'd played Bastion when it came out on Steam but that was years ago so it was a good excuse to play again. Was interesting seeing some early mechanics that would end up being put into Hades. Wasn't looking forward to two playthroughs, but a handy speedrunning duplication glitch lets you finish the first playthrough in about ten minutes which is great. Afterparty was on my radar as I loved Oxenfree. Unfortunately I wouldn't say it hit the same way, and a second playthrough didn't feel as urgently required as in Oxenfree, but if you're interested in strong conversation-driven narratives you could do worse than give it a try, just don't expect too much gameplay.

 

#3/20 has been achieved... but it's only a D and I can do so much better, expectations have shifted towards getting 100%/S on it. I'll do a proper update once I've finished with it.

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They say that a good game stays with you long after it's finished, an emotional party finished but not forgotten as you take another sip of memory wine and smile at free time awkwardly shuffling their feet in the corner as they stare at the door and urge you to hurry up. But it takes a truly remarkable game to give you those feelings before the game has even started, much like how you'd feel if the party had an entrance fee, required a twelve-page essay on good party etiquette and a perfect rendition of Beethoven's ninth on the doorbell before you're allowed to have any fun.


Such was the case with #3/20: God of War: Ascension. Back in the grand old historical days of PlayStation 3 there was a motto it seems: Why play today what you could put off until Thursday next week. Actually that would be the second motto, the first would be to learn the gift of Zen, to declutter one's hard-driven mind of seventy-five fucking gigabytes are you fucking kidding me you giant piece of fucking shit.


Ahem. What I mean to say is of course. I will delete two years of my mind to fit you in, oh God of Zen. Gone are the memories of Ratcheting my Clank, farewell forays into Uncharted territories thrice times a charming, auf wiedersehen planetary stamps of confusingly different sizes both little and big.


You are content now oh God of Zen, are you not? No, I see now you are not, yes yes I see my folly as I mistakenly thought that you spending two days downloading would entitle me to entry into your mythical realm. No, of course you need to install. For seventy minutes, yes of course that makes perfect sense, let me go watch a movie and leave you undisturbed your Zenliness.


You are downloaded. You are installed. Now, it is time, let me embrace your raging bosom as we carve through ancient updates are you fucking kidding me AND THERE ARE NINE OF THEM ARE YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING HAVING A LAUGH THIS IS AS BIG AS THE INSTALLATION MY GIDDY FUCKING AUNT COULD GO TO THE SHOP FASTER THAN YOU INSTALL AND SHE'S FUCKING DEAD.


Ahem, what I mean is yes, thank you o' lord of Almighty Zen, how wise your words, you are right that I am now sufficiently enraged to slice my way through your pixelated perversion of gore, bare breasts and dialogue that might have been interesting had I been listening through the beating of drums in my ears. Once before I joined this realm and quickly departed in a normal rage. Not today, today my rage is hard, hard and unyielding as I pummel my way through your centaur in pursuit of, well, I don't really know, these are all very pretty and the battles are enjoyably engaging and challenging but I'm not really sure why exactly I'm doing these things? Who is this man, why are these things attacking me, what is the point of all of these notes dotted about that have absolutely no relevance or cohesion?


Who am I to question the higher power. Yes, I shall pummel the stone of chapter nineteen one thousand times, I shall fruitlessly ignore the tutorial in a rage for two minutes, I shall momentarily laugh as I'm transported to Mars and hear the fabled cry of an 80's legend - MY NAME IS NOT QUAID! - as I dream of better times doing better things.


The end comes swiftly and somewhat anticlimactically, going from a roaring set-piece ripped straight from Pirates of the Caribbean to a subdued smack in the face and an amber stone stabbing, and with those final few dings my journey had ended.


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They say that time feels quicker the older you get, to those people I suggest playing God of War: Ascension, a game that somehow took me longer to download, install and update than it took to beat on hard with the platinum.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My cup of tea is cooling so I've decided to update before tea and cake with the rest of the snooker shootout on TV.

 

Nearly one month in, way ahead of schedule, yet I'm feeling it already. After finishing #1/20 I only played one other non-challenge game before getting #2/20 sorted. After that I played two non-challenge games. Now, I've played five games before getting stuck into #4/20. I found the motivation waning, once or twice considered deleting this thread or quietly disappearing but no, I set myself a challenge and I will stick to it. Somehow. Maybe.

 

As far as non-challenge games have gone, I've been pretty happy:

- No time to explain 100% has a rarity of 0.81%. I didn't expect to get this because of the 'Steedrun' trophy, which seemed infuriatingly difficult. Somehow got it third attempt, not complaining.

- Runbow platinum is UR at 2.91%. Once the DLC goes on sale I'll finish the 100%. A really enjoyable platformer with a nice gimmick using colours that makes it into a rhythm-platformer.

- Landflix Odyssey was finished in one sitting and puts me comfortably 1st in fastest achievers (out of 6 but still). Seems to be relatively unknown, I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys old-school platformers, great fun.

Crown Trick is a deceptively difficult roguelike dungeon-crawler. A lot of depth that isn't immediately apparent during your first run through. Platinum took me 32 hours.

Dirt 5 isn't really that great if I'm honest. Especially coming off MotorStorm which I ended up loving, this just felt flat and derivative, lacking any kind of soul. Only trophy left is to drive 1000 miles, which I'm not doing yet, I've done 500 after beating everything. I'll get the DLC when it's on sale and finish off the 1000 miles after I've done all of that.

 

So, onto #4/20: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/2832-persona-4-arena-ultimax/Nauticus87?order=date

 

Changed from an E to a C after an hour and a bit. Won't convert me to fighters, one of my least favourite genres, but I can't deny how well this is made. Whether they're doing mainline games, rhythm games, or fighters, it seems they put in maximum effort. The art is sublime, everything is voice-acted, the whole style is incredible, you can tell how much work and effort has gone into the game. Can't comment on balancing or anything like that, which I appreciate is more important to fighting games, could be the game is poorly balanced and that's why online is empty now, or because it's old. But saying it now, if they make Persona Golf or Persona Racing I would be all over it in a flash (sale).

 

I'll do a bit more, finish the story modes and maybe a bit more, maybe push it up to a B or an A. If anyone wants to help me get one or two of the online trophies let me know, servers still seem to be up.

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"What are you trying to accomplish, putting yourself in old games like that? Trying to see "achievements" done? Is that really achievements, though? Aren't you just doing this because you want a little spice in your boring life? What's the difference between that and a criminal who gets his kicks by murdering people? You see what I'm getting at? There's still a lot of time left. Give it some thought."

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/2832-persona-4-arena-ultimax/Nauticus87?order=date

 

That's #4/20 finished, I've had my fill of this game. Changed from a 3% E rank to a 50% A rank. Even managed to find a fight online and somehow won it, so I'm also retiring undefeated.

 

Beyond that I took a detour for a round of golf, getting platinum #569 on Golf Club: Wasteland. Great game, horrible platinum. Iron Mode, even with being able to back-up your save every hole, is infuriatingly frustrating. I'm certain if it had to be legitimately done - all 34 holes without a mistake - it would be one of the rarest PS4 plats.

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#5/20 has been achieved: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/3092-the-hungry-horde/Nauticus87?order=date

 

Amazingly, I had the A-rank at 11%, bit of a surprise. I've kept going because at this point if you've been keeping up with this you'll see I can't just stop at the D, I'll always try to go as far as I can. That means I'm up to 44% so far and plan to keep going. None of the trophies seem impossible, though perhaps glitched (I may have to delete my game and reinstall with no patch to get Mapmatician, I'm certain I've met the criteria for that to unlock). I'll keep going, see how far I can push it.

 

My memory was right with the loading times, boy are they bad. You're talking a minute plus just to load the opening game menu. Going into anything is a loading screen, returning to the menu is a loading screen. Add to that the horrendous framerate and frequent slowdown and a few trophies become needlessly difficult simply due to stuttering. I can see why this is so low completion-wise, even with the allure of ultra-rare trophies there is a fair bit of grinding and the game itself is mediocre. Even with randomly generated levels you'll have seen it all after half an hour, longer runs become monotonous. I do enjoy filling the sticker-book collectibles but hate that you can get repeat stickers, making things unnecessarily RNG-based. The DLC is only £1.69 so I got that, it adds a little bit of content, nothing major.

 

Outside of the challenge I got Platinum #570: Yoku's Island Express. I was expecting all the collectibles to be frustrating at the end but was pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun they all were to get. Great game and highly recommended. Team17 are becoming one of my favourite publishers these days, they bring out so many good games. I went back to my childhood and got Sonic the Hedgehog (again - it was on the Sega Mega Drive Classics collection too) for a quick and fun 100%, as well as 100% on Arkedo Series - 03 Pixel! which wasn't bad. I didn't even know Pix the Cat had a previous game but it was really cheap so I thought why not try it. I would have been in the top 10 fastest if not for 1) the game crashing near the end of the last level, meaning I had to repeat it and 2) missing one collectible on level 4.

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On 29/01/2022 at 4:44 PM, Nauticus87 said:

Even with randomly generated levels you'll have seen it all after half an hour, longer runs become monotonous.

 

So, speaking of that:

HH.jpg 

 

91 minutes on one run. 91 fucking minutes. And I could have gone longer, I had built up five minutes time to spare, but the last three objectives were quicker through repeated opening runs so I ran face-first into the tank "boss" and called it a morning. In truth, running face-first into a tank sums up getting the platinum this game. It may sound badass (1.77% rarity and all), something to remember you by, but in reality it's a headache waiting to happen, at best, and at worst you're going to injure yourself. But still I did it, I got the 100%. Slowest achiever at seven years and two months, a badge I wear proudly, hidden under many layers of clothing so no-one ever asks me why in the hell I did that.

 

Much like Requiem for a Dream is a compelling story against the dangers of substance abuse, the trophies for Hungry Horde should be passed around schools as a PSA against the dangers of trophy hunting. After thirty hours getting the platinum for Hungry Horde a normal person will never be compelled to seek trophies again. Others may never game again after this experience but that's a fair loss to save the minds of the next generation.

 

I hate you Sony (even though I play Playstation more than I box X-box, tend Nintendo or steam my Steam), I hate you Nosebleed Interactive (even though I want Vostok Inc. and will buy it when it eventually goes on sale), but most of all I hate you Nauticus87 for this infuriating challenge that was going so well until you played this bloody game (you incorrigible, handsome fool you).

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  • 2 weeks later...

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#6/20 finished.

 

10% E improved to a (currently) 75% A. There are five more trophies I can get and that will be as good as a 100% can be since the servers shut-down, only trophies left will be the unobtainable ones and a DLC trophy where I'm not paying money for a 15 second trophy. This game really isn't for me, I have no idea if it's good or not but to me it's boring. The trophies are boring. The arcade mode is repetitive. I'm struggling to even make this paragraph interesting to read because I'm so bored thinking about this game. What were we talking about? I've forgotten. Not important then, moving on.

 

Outside of the challenge I've been busy since Hungry Horde with six platinum:

- Songbird Symphony is a fun and incredibly easy platformer with a rhythm game combat system and a story that will pull on your heart-strings. You don't even need to be good at rhythm games because you can't lose the combat, you can miss every single note and you'll still beat the final boss. No idea why the rarity is only at 43%.

 

Knights of Pen and Paper +1 is a fun turn-based RPG with a tabletop D&D aesthetic. Technically the second time I've played this as I did it on Steam years ago. Can get a bit repetitive but there is plenty of choice and character customisation to make up for the grinding combat.

 

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a faithful Symphony of the Night-esque metroidvania. I love it. Second stack after doing NA in 2020. I did this one using the name code BIGHEAD which, you've guessed it, gives your main character an inflated ego. Also a big head.

 

Jak and Daxter PS3 Trilogy. In 2016/17 I did the first Jak on Vita and PS4 and did Jak 2 on Vita. I enjoyed the original and hated the second one, but since I've had the PS3 trilogy for free for ages I've always wanted to give them another chance, as well as trying Jak 3. I may slightly have regretted my choice. To begin, I did use the debug menu, but not to auto-pop everything. For Jak 1 I used it for health and flying, simply for a bit of fun during my third time going through it. I collected all the precursor orbs as well as the eggs and the scout flies. For Jak 2 and 3 I used the debug trick to get all precursor orbs and metal heads so I could focus on the story/missions rather than the redundant task of finding small, arbitrarily placed items on large, empty maps. For Jak 2 I took health and flying, and after Jak 2 broke my spirit I used health, flying and used level select to only do the trophy missions on Jak 3. I did however do the missions 'legit', even if I may have been t-posing at times hovering my way past hordes of incredulously staring minions.

 

I could go on for a while here about how much I hated Jak 2, how terrible a game it is, but I'll only rant for a bit. Jak 2 is the poser kid from school who thinks he's cutting edge because he just discovered Linkin Park and thinks their lyrics are pure poetry. He's dark and he's intense and he hopes that this hides from the fact he has no real personality. He sees the popular kids, Ratchet and Clank, and he wishes he could be them, but he can't even when he copies them, so he gets all dark and moody and draws on his notebook a whole big squiggle of dark scratched lines that represent the darkness of the soul and that kind of looks like Jak 2's map if you squint hard enough.

Edited by Nauticus87
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#7/20 finished

 

Changed from a 1% E to an 85% A, and I'm done there. I beat the game twice and I'm happy. The platinum would need a third playthrough and require such mastery as to get max rank on every chapter, which I'm not prepared to do, it would sour my experience and leave me resenting the game. I wasn't a big fan of the combat or enemies, found them overall very repetitive, including the bosses, but the whole visual spectacle is worth a playthrough if you can find the game cheap.

 

When you pop the game on you get a warning screen advising that it's a story based on ancient religious texts and was created by a multicultural team. All well and good until you get beyond the first couple of chapters, right around chapter four when you're in a colourful side-scrolling section with strange marshmallow men riding on balloons, spinning around, and generally having a grand old time. Chapter six steals the opening city from FFX and throws you on a motorcycle flying through it. Chapter seven's boss is a very lithe, half-naked dancing man who I can't quite recall reading about in any old scripture, and chapter eight goes into a drug-induced kaleidoscopic fever dream platforming section.

 

spm.gif

Really, what I'm trying to say is I'd really like to see these ancient religious texts they claim to have used.

 

Outside of the challenge:

- Got my second 100% stack of Shu, on vita this time. I had put it off for a long time on the basis that I remembered it was a precision platformer and my vita stick has drift, making precision impossible, but I also remembered how much I enjoyed it. Eventually decided to take the risk and happily realised I could use the d-pad, making it a lot more manageable. Had a blast going through it again. If you like platformers you should check it out.

 

Runbow's DLC went on sale so I picked that up and finished off the 100% one morning before work. Easy enough and fun.

 

- Started A Way Out with my girlfriend, no arguments yet but only just started. Going will be slow there, pick it up when we get our chances.

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10 minutes ago, Nauticus87 said:

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#7/20 finished

 

Changed from a 1% E to an 85% A, and I'm done there. I beat the game twice and I'm happy. The platinum would need a third playthrough and require such mastery as to get max rank on every chapter, which I'm not prepared to do, it would sour my experience and leave me resenting the game. I wasn't a big fan of the combat or enemies, found them overall very repetitive, including the bosses, but the whole visual spectacle is worth a playthrough if you can find the game cheap.

 

When you pop the game on you get a warning screen advising that it's a story based on ancient religious texts and was created by a multicultural team. All well and good until you get beyond the first couple of chapters, right around chapter four when you're in a colourful side-scrolling section with strange marshmallow men riding on balloons, spinning around, and generally having a grand old time. Chapter six steals the opening city from FFX and throws you on a motorcycle flying through it. Chapter seven's boss is a very lithe, half-naked dancing man who I can't quite recall reading about in any old scripture, and chapter eight goes into a drug-induced kaleidoscopic fever dream platforming section.

 

spm.gif

Really, what I'm trying to say is I'd really like to see these ancient religious texts they claim to have used.

 

Outside of the challenge:

- Got my second 100% stack of Shu, on vita this time. I had put it off for a long time on the basis that I remembered it was a precision platformer and my vita stick has drift, making precision impossible, but I also remembered how much I enjoyed it. Eventually decided to take the risk and happily realised I could use the d-pad, making it a lot more manageable. Had a blast going through it again. If you like platformers you should check it out.

 

Runbow's DLC went on sale so I picked that up and finished off the 100% one morning before work. Easy enough and fun.

 

- Started A Way Out with my girlfriend, no arguments yet but only just started. Going will be slow there, pick it up when we get our chances.

How hard did you find it to get G Ranks for El Shaddai's levels on hard? Or did you just not attempt any of them?

Edited by Sendai-Horatio
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2 hours ago, Sendai-Horatio said:

How hard did you find it to get G Ranks for El Shaddai's levels on hard? Or did you just not attempt any of them?

 

I didn't go for it. My second playthrough was on Extra with special armour (which stops you getting G rank), but you don't have that for chapters 6/8/9 so it gave me an idea what to expect in a third playthrough. I don't know how much harder than hard Extra is but two hits puts you into recovery, and you can't have any recoveries to get max special rating towards G rank.

 

The thought of having to reload a save every single time I fell off a platform or went into recovery in a fight was too much to keep my interest in a third playthrough.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Oh man, I had a weekend. We went down to Tijuana, Mexico, you know, and there was this guy there and he was all, "Hey, you gotta come and check out one of these shows." And, you know, it's a woman sucking off a giraffe. And you get there and you're thinking, "Oh, a woman sucking a giraffe" and you get there, and it is not as great as you thought it would be. It's kinda gross. I mean, it was really giving it to her. To be honest, we all just felt bad for her. Kinda felt bad for the giraffe.

 

And the show goes on for 20 hours with different characters coming in and out, but always feeling bad, bad for all the characters involved in this show, all the characters forced to parade their massive bodies in front of the lens for your entertainment - or what they call 'entertainment' - massive enough to shield you from the view, might as well be sold as restrictive viewing seating. Do yourself a favour and skip out on this one during the intermission.

 

No idea where the trophy guide got 60 hours from, I'm at 20 hours and I can't see this going beyond 25-30. I'll have the platinum in a day or two and finish with a 58% A, an improvement of 50% over my original E-rank. No interest in going for any of the DLC as it's all multiplayer focused. With that I can mark #8/20 complete on the challenge list. Nearly halfway finished!

 

Outside of the challenge I only have a minor update:

Aggelos. Quite difficult 2D action-adventure game. Hard mode isn't too bad except for the final boss, who is absolutely brutal and murdered me around a dozen times. Still got fastest achiever.

Road to Canada. Starting March the same way I started February: with an ultra-rare platinum roguelike zombie game involving a decent grind. At least this one was a lot more fun than Hungry Horde. I'd recommend this game to anyone who likes roguelikes or The Oregon Trail. Even in my later runs I was discovering new events and the number of playable characters is almost overwhelming.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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#9/20 completed

 

We're nearly halfway folks. I plan on giving a stat update at the halfway point, hopefully interests a few of you who may still be reading and watching this.

 

It's funny how we change. In the last four years I've gone through a lot. The me of today is barely even recognisable from the me you'd have known in 2014. That's neither a negative nor a positive, it's just a fact. I am who I am and I was who I was. So going back and replaying what is a highly emotive game with a completely different mindset is quite the experience. The Last of Us, one of the games I was dreading most, I remember disliking it in every regard, was disliked from the mind of 2014. Second time through, I found myself really relating to the hardships and the realistic portrayal of the characters. So much so I may be tempted to get TLoU 2 at some point down the line when it's cheaper than the current sale price. I've too many games and this challenge at the moment to justify another £20 on one game.

 

Now I'm not saying it's all peaches and cream, as much as I really enjoyed the story I still disliked the gameplay, most of which I will continue to say is repetitive. The 'puzzles' are one-dimensional and the stealth/combat never really deviates from the standard set up in the first few hours. At no point do you have to change your playstyle and think differently about how to approach an encounter, beyond the environment the AI is always the same. Speaking of, the AI in this game is atrocious. From standing staring at walls in the middle of battle to randomly running back and forth, or immediately forgetting where I was after I just popped out and shot their buddy beside them, or the complete opposite: Being omnipotent enough to know I'm here when I stealthily murder their friend half a mile away.

 

Changed from an E rank to a 27% A. Not a massive improvement percentage-wise but that's all the collectibles, story beaten twice on normal, and Joel fully upgraded. I've no interest in the DLC beyond Left Behind, which I don't think I want to pay £8 for.

 

Outside of the challenge:

- 40-platinum.png#585 - Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story. I wish I could recommend this game but it's so much wasted potential. Every aspect of it is bare-bones, resembling more of an early-access mobile game at times. It's deceptively addictive, but there is so little variety that it's easy to get bored if you don't enjoy some mindless grind every now and then.

 

Flame Over - I played this back in 2016 and wasn't really too fussed, which was evidently the general consensus going by my 11% A rank. Randomly fancied going back to it. Currently at 45% and I'll probably do a bit more here and there, but I can see me dropping it soon.

 

40-platinum.png#586 - Terra Lander - I wonder how many people went into this thinking it was an easy platinum they could bang out in five minutes. This doesn't mess around, brutally unforgiving and the odds are stacked against you succeeding. You need a lot of patience to beat a level. I managed 5th fastest achiever with a time just under two hours. I would have been 3rd fastest if not for the game deciding to crash multiple times, including at least 4-5 times on the final level.

 

Darkwood - It's 2am and there's someone knocking on my front door, asking to come in. They only stop at 5am, at which point I've been silently praying they don't try to force their way in. Another day survived, but now it's daytime and I have to go out. I have to explore. I have to find out what's going on and how I can escape from it. Not since Subnautica have I felt such fear and unease in going further and further away from my safety zone, mixed with a deep desire to keep going. Highly recommend this game.

Edited by Nauticus87
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  • 9 months later...

So I kind of stopped updating. Oops. It's been slow going but I'm still at this here and there.

 

#10 - Bioshock 2 (PS3) - 1% E improved to 49% A

#11 - Tales of Symphonia - 2% E improved to 38% A

#12 - Onechanbara Z2: Chaos - 9% E improved to 100% S

#13 - Killzone Mercenary - 8% E improved to 44% A

#14 - Lost Planet 2 - 1% E currently improved to 18% B. 

 

6 to go.

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