blue_blur_98's Trophy Museum

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #43 - Puyo Puyo Champions (PlayStation 4)

+ All Challenge DLC trophies

Platinum difficulty: 1/10

Time taken: 3 months, 1 week/39 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 6/10 - Okay

The last - and unfortunately the weakest and grindiest - of the modern-day Puyo Puyo games, and the last one I needed to complete my series trophy collection. This game's basically just a cheap and simple outlet for multiplayer Puyo Puyo matches, and it certainly gets that job done. I suppose I can't fault it for that, since that kind of is its sole purpose, but I do miss having single-player story modes like in Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 & 2... or any kind of content in general, really. This game's pretty light on things to do. If you're not highly interested in Puyo Puyo or have an interest in playing the game competitively, just skip this one since it likely won't prove much value to anyone but the most diehard Puyoheads.

 

The roster's also an absolute anomaly here; a lot of characters from the mobile title Puyo Puyo Quest make their console debut here, and I do quite like these characters, but it comes at the cost of a decent chunk of the series' more recognizable characters being complete no-shows. Just about anyone from the supporting cast in either PPT game, such as Ocean Prince, Lidelle or Yu & Rei are gone, but they weren't always playable to begin with so it makes more sense. Some characters that have been playable in every game since their introduction are completely missing, however, such as Lemres, Klug and Ecolo. Were the Quest characters so important that it was worth getting rid of series mainstays like that? That's like getting rid of Donkey Kong in a new Mario Kart game in favor of one of the characters from WarioWare. It doesn't make sense, especially since the characters wouldn't have to be animated in this game.

 

As for the trophies... it's basically just grinding and not much else. There's basically no challenge here. The hardest this Platinum gets is "mildly inconvenient". I think you could theoretically get this plat without ever winning a single match. You have to win some rounds, sure, but you could, in theory, get every trophy in this game without being the overall winner of any matches. Everything's basically down to repeating specific actions several times over. Complete 200 online matches (none of which you have to win thankfully, because if you did, this would be a gruesomely difficult Platinum), get a specific chain a few hundred times, clear the entire board 150 times, etc. It's all just a grind. The Fever mode-related grinds are the worst, since they're dependent on how the CPU player behaves. If they top out before you can reach the 7-Chains you need while you're in Fever, sorry buddy, just try again next round. It's not hard, it's just annoying and makes what'd otherwise be relatively simple and quick grinds into a randomized chore. The Puyo King trophy for popping 100,000 Puyos is at its absolute worst here, since there's no Endless Fever or Big Bang mode you can keep doing in order to fast track that total. What I did was use custom settings in a Puyo Puyo 2 match to ensure no garbage was being sent, and just held down-right until the trophy would be unlocked... eventually. This took 20 hours to grind out this way, significantly longer than the equivalent trophies in any other Puyo game. That's half my playtime, nearly an entire real-world day dedicated to just letting it go on and pop Puyos for as long as possible as opposed to actually playing the matches. An absolute slog, and one that's made me sure to never complain about the PPT Puyo King grinds ever again. The 200 online matches one was also a bit of a pain to get done, since most of the people playing this game are from the Japanese community, so I had to play at very specific times to even find anyone to pair up with in Puyo Puyo League. Free Play is just a total ghost town, so I had to keep a room open for over half an hour at a time in order to match up with anyone at all. These trophies are ones that I strongly recommend you don't do by yourself. Get a boosting partner and knock them out ASAP. You'll be in for a rough time otherwise.

 

Despite the lack of any substantial content, I still enjoyed my time with Puyo Puyo Champions and will probably keep it in my online multiplayer rotation when I have a PS Plus subscription. Just don't expect to get anything out of the experience if you're flying solo.

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #44 - Arcade Game Series: Galaga (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 6/10

Time taken: 1 month, 1 week/4 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 6/10 - Okay

Why in the world are these Arcade Game Series trophies so damn annoying? I get that there's not a lot of things you can make into trophies in these games, but the two lists I've done have been absolutely strenuous so far and I don't get why they're like this. Are they just having a laugh? Did they think "What if these trophies were absolutely insufferable? Wouldn't that be cool?" Do they just enjoy seeing trophy hunters suffer?

 

First and foremost, the high round trophies are back with a vengeance. Stage 31 is the absolute minimum you need to reach, which is a very, very big ask as this game gets insanely difficulty insanely quickly. In late stages, enemies fire tons of bullets, will divebomb you with such accuracy I swear they're coded to just beeline to your exact location, and both firing off at the same time means I was constantly getting cornered between enemy fire and other ships divebombing you, and when you can't afford to get hit at all to keep your Dual Fighter intact, that means you are going to be reloading hundreds of times, something made much worse by the arduous process of manually backing up and restoring the save since you're only supposed to be able to load it once.

 

Then there are the Challenging Stages. Dear god, why are Perfect Bonuses mandatory??? You can't miss a single enemy, and it's exactly as bad as it sounds. Enemy patterns often times either move in an incredibly erratic and unpredictable pattern, blast offscreen in a flash, or both at the same time. I had to repeat some of these cycles over and over and over again until I got it exactly right, which sometimes felt like they required damn-near frame and pixel perfection to execute. One trophy required me to do all that without the Dual Fighter I was heavily relying on, which I'm not even gonna go into futher detail on. You can probably imagine how bad it is to do all of that with one tiny bullet. It's awful, and I never wanna do it again.

 

Between this and Dig Dug, Galaga has the worse trophy list by a country mile. Dig Dug's was unpleasant, but this was outright angering at points. I don't recommend doing this one at all; it was not very fun to plat for the most part and your time is better spent doing other stuff. I'll do AGS PAC-MAN's trophies eventually, but it'll be a good long while from now since I imagine it's similarly strenuous.

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #45 - Pinball Heroes (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 1/10

Time taken: 2 days, 2 hours/2 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 7.5/10 - Good

I've started another month of PlayStation Plus Premium recently. You know what that means; time to pick out a game from the Classics Catalog and bank myself another easy Platinum trophy. My initial choice couldn't be more obvious... Jet Moto! ...But it turns out the Jet Moto is kind of ass, so I took advantage of me not earning a trophy in it to delete the list and book it before I'd have to commit. I decided on this instead since it seemed like it's be less stuffed with jank. I made the right choice here, because call me crazy, but I don't think this is a waterbiking game from 1996. Just a hunch, don't quote me on that.

 

It's... pinball. Exactly as the title says. You can't sue this one for false advertising, that's for sure. But it's PlayStation pinball! All of the tables are based off both some of the more noteworthy (such as Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and MotorStorm) and obscure (such as PAIN and High Velocity Bowling) titles of the PS3 and PSP generation in which it was released. Some of the most iconic titles of this time period are absent from this package, such as inFAMOUS or the particularly baffling exclusion of LittleBigPlanet, but the grab bag of games they chose to represent are certainly not a bad representation of Sony's late-aughts and early-10s slate of titles. Each game is recreated in virtual pinball table format with respectable accuracy, with some tables, such as the Fat Princess and MotorStorm tables, even having features on the board that reference actual in-game mechanics from the source material they're pulling from. It's a really neat thematic twist, and while everything may be rendered in 2D unlike more contemporary video pinball releases like Zen Pinball, the tables still do a good job at looking like the games they're based on. That's the best part about Pinball Heroes for sure; its tributes to this very odd era of PlayStation are very admirable, especially to someone like me who is particularly nostalgic for that time of the industry's history. Some of these boards - particularly the Fat Princess and especially the ModNation Racers boards - brought me back to the 2010s in the best way possible.

 

The trophies are not much to write home about. It's probably the easiest Platinum that PS Plus Premium has to offer. The main meat of this trophy list, the high score trophies, are no sweat due to their relatively low 60,000 or so point requirements and the rewind feature, and everything else can be mopped up in a few minutes. It's an incredibly easy list, and I honestly kind of wish there were some more trophies that had more challenging or unique requirements, but I'm not complaining. It's an easy plat in in actual game, and a good one - who am I to turn that down? Plus, getting to play something ModNation Racers related is always a treat.

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #46 - Humanity (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 4/10

Time taken: 2 weeks, 1 day/19 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 7/10 - Good

Another month of PS Plus means another puzzle game for me, I guess. Maybe that's just one of the laws of this land. This time, though, I can confidently rate the game more than a 6 in terms of personal enjoyment.

 

Humanity is - for the most part - intuitive, thoughtfully-designed and wonderfully weird. It's like a modern-day take on the kind of experimental early 3D-era titles that would pop up on platforms like the original PlayStation or SEGA Dreamcast. Games like Intelligent Qube - that sort of thing. It's mechanically unique, aesthetically even moreso. Something about the combo of detailed, yet blocky environments and chunky, low-poly humans give the game such a distinct charm. The ambient music really helps set the mood as well - while I am somewhat disappointed that Hydelic didn't return for the music in this one like with some of Enhance's other titles, Jemapur's more abstract pieces fit the game well and are good in their own right. "Float" was my favorite by far.

 

Gameplay wise, Humanity is mostly sound. Its mechanics are simple and easy to understand, yet varied enough to carry the game through its relatively lengthy campaign (or rather, they should have been... we'll get back to that). New commands and stage-wide gimmicks are introduced frequently, but not overwhelmingly so. One area might involve pushing a lot of boxes or turning conveyor belts on or off, and the next area might freeze time so you can plan out the humans' route before any of them start walking. (That one's my favorite.) It's simple, yet structurally sound, full of variety, and packed with well-designed puzzles. What could go wrong?

 

Everything after Sequence 5, that's what. So, picture this: you've been served a delicious, juicy burger. It's got everything you want on it, and you're enjoying it a lot. Then, suddenly, when you're down to the last third of your meal, the waiter swipes your food away and replaces it with a bowl of lukewarm canned soup. That's what playing Humanity's end-game feels like. Its puzzle elements are just about completely done away with in favor of several hours of... I don't even know, man. It's, like... part-RTS, part-shooter, part-stealth game, part-war sim, and none of it is very good. Gone are the simple, intuitive, easily understandable commands and mechanics meant for puzzle-solving, replaced with a somewhat finicky following mechanic and the world's most uncooperative floating turret. Seriously, I often pointed that thing point-blank at my target but it just would not shoot. These levels are cumbersome, frustrating, stressful, and downright unpleasant to suffer through. It is a massive dip in quality, and it's such a letdown to see the game just crash and burn at the finish line like this after starting out so strong. It's not a bad game at all - there's more good levels here than bad ones for sure - but it could have been so much better if they just stuck to making a puzzler.

 

The trophies here were nothing too taxing, at least. Some of the side levels and Wonders of Humanity are pretty annoying (particularly the Wonders in Sequence 6 and 7, because of course these are the worst ones), but just beating the game gets you roughly 100 of the 150 Goldies, so there's pretty minimal cleanup here. A generally good game, but if you ask me, it's definitely the weakest title published under the Enhance Games banner.

Edited March 20 by blue_blur_98

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #47 - Crash Team Rumble (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 2/10

Time taken: 2 weeks, 5 days/21 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 8/10 - Very Good

Finally got around to playing the full version of this after very much enjoying the free trials. I'm pretty sad that this game didn't catch on, because in today's pretty drab multiplayer landscape, it's a pretty fresh and innovative little game that deserved a much better deal than it got. It's not the easiest thing to explain to someone who's never heard of it, but the best way I can describe Crash Team Rumble is that it's a 4v4 "competitive collectathon" where your main objective is to gather as much Wumpa Fruit as you can and drop it off into your team's bank. First to 2,000 wins. It's a simple concept, but one that is fleshed out with a varied lineup of maps, each having their own quirks and power ups and a roster of heroes that all have completely different movesets and attributes. No two heroes or maps ever truly feel the same, and that's something I really appreciate about this game. The core gameplay is very fast-paced and fun, and feels very true to the series it originated from. You're still doing the usual platforming, item-collecting and box-breaking you'd expect from your garden-variety Crash Bandicoot game, just in a totally new way and in a multiplayer setting. This is a pretty good way to both innovate on the series and make Crash into a PvP game. It's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but it sure is mine and this is definitely going to be in my multiplayer rotation for as long as it sticks around.

 

As for the trophies, it's an incredibly easy one to complete, especially for Crash Bandicoot standards, but it's pretty intrinsically luck-based due to its status as a multiplayer game. A lot of the trophies either require a handful of the enemy team's players to be in the same place at the same time or require a match to stretch on for a really long time. Some of the character-specfic ones require a specfic move to be used to hit two to three people at once, which just requires you to be blessed with the will of God in order to be put in a situation where you can earn them, and the trophy for 10 KOs is something I consistently struggled with until it just kind of... happened. There's also a pretty significant grind for bringing a character to Level 15, but I can't really speak about that since I already got most of the way there with my existing trial progress, which also autopopped two trophies related to character customization, giving me a whopping 30 seconds of my life back. Nothing required for this Platinum is particularly challenging, you just have to get lucky and wait for the right moment to come around.

Edited March 26 by blue_blur_98

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #48 - Arcade Game Series: PAC-MAN (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 3/10 (With save-scumming + Round Select)

Time taken: 6 days, 20 hours/2 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 7/10 - Good

For my birthday this year, I got the best gift of all; an Arcade Game Series Platinum that doesn't suck.

 

Serving as both my first (and, realistically, probably my only) birthday Platinum and kind of a slot filler to help me set up my 50th Platinum milestone, here's the final game in the Arcade Game Series 3-in-1 bundle. And thankfully, this was not just mostly easy, but also actually fun. The previous Arcade Game Series titles were really annoying to plat, but the requirements for this one actually go pretty easy on you, and for once, I can actually say that this Platinum is worth going for. This was always my favorite of the (noteworthy) '80s Namco arcade games, so I was gonna save it for last anyway, but this was doubly the right choice because it let me end on a fun and easy Platinum for once.

 

First and foremost, the highest round you need to reach on one credit is only Round 7 - about half of what you'd need for the others. This really isn't that bad, since you could use the pause-save trick to keep your lives, and because this isn't the point where the game becomes too ludicrously hard. You do need to reach Round 18, but using Round Select doesn't void any trophies, so if you have that on, it's more of a matter of when you get it, rather than if. Om Nom Nom is the only remaining trophy of note, and this one actually is pretty difficult. You have to play a perfect round to earn it - both fruits must be eaten, and you have to eat all four ghosts in a row with each Power Pellet. It's tough, and did frurtrate me a bit, but the pause save feature can really save the day here. Make a save after you eat a fruit or a group of ghosts, and you won't have to restart the round every single time. I tried following a pattern, but what ended up working for me was ditching the pattern after the first cherry, then just kind of winging it until I saw the right moment to eat the ghost groups. This is just about the only really difficult trophy, though.

 

Why PAC-MAN for a birthday Platinum, though? Well, you generally tend to eat the things you like on your birthday, and PAC-MAN eats... This is perfect logic amd I refuse to hear otherwise. All in all, this was a pretty good time. I might even do AGS Ms. PAC-MAN sometime down the line.

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #49 - Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier (PlayStation 4)

Platinum difficulty: 3/10

Time taken: 1 month, 1 week/9 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 6/10 - Okay

This is often cited as the Jak and Daxter series' low point, and after playing it, I now know why. It's because the bastards took his goatee away!

 

The thread that started with Jak now continues with Jak. Probably not the last time, since Daxter getting reissued like this game did seems like more of an inevitability at this point. I've re-completed my series Platinum collection, at least for the time being, and it unfortunately did not end with a bang. It also didn't end with a whimper. It ended with a middling PSP game and me getting screwed over by a crashing bug.

 

Might as well start with that. If you weren't here when this version of the game dropped back in March, the game's US release had a very bad bug that'd cause the game to immediately and unavoidably crash whenever you even remotely approached the Far Drop hub area. Your first visit to this area occurs very early into the game, and before you can return to Brink Island (not like that'd accomplish anything), so if this happened, there would be nothing you could do in the game and your file was softlocked. This was, to put it lightly, a bummer, and prevented me from actually playing more than two hours of this. Luckily, the issue was patched, though my PS Plus Premium membership expired before this patch rolled out, so I had to pay $10 for the full game in order to complete the rest of it.

 

As for the game itself, it's one of the most aggressively 6/10 games I've ever played. It isn't bad, definitely not as terrible as some people made it out to be, but it isn't very good, either. "Middling" is the word of the day here. It's a perfectly acceptable action-adventure game for late-aughts PSP standards, but it's just no contest when you compare it to any of the series' prior entries. Control is a lot stiffer, movement is less fluid, some of Jak's most fun abilities from the previous games such as rolling are just gone entirely, and it's half as long as the second and third titles. Plus, I just did not care for the story here. The previous games weren't some kind of gold standard of video game storytelling, but they were enjoyable stories regardless with (mostly) well-written cutscenes and likeable characters. The Lost Frontier, however, just has such a nothing story. Things do happen, but none of it jumps out to me as particularly interesting. The new characters like Captain Phoenix and Duke Skyheed are just so bland and boring, and I just did not care about them at all. Even Daxter didn't have much funny to say in this one. This is a game that gives you a cast of really boring characters, and expects you to care when it tries to put plot twists involving said dull characters into this narrative. It just doesn't compare to its precursors (pun intended) at all. The level design is solid enough for the most part, and the game does introduce new ideas to keep things fresh, so it's not all bad.

 

I quite liked a good amount of the new stuff introduced here. The airplane customization and combat was probably my favorite new aspect - the controls actually felt pretty natural for the most part, the battles can be pretty exciting, and the ability to customize your plane with a host of different upgradeable mods and weapons added some decent depth to this aspect of the game. I don't know how well-recieved this stuff was for others, but I personally really liked it. Then again, I am one of those weirdos who likes Sly 3 the most, so maybe it is just me. I was also pretty on board with the re-introduction of Eco-related gameplay mechanics. The first game was always my favorite, so anything that harkens back to it is always a plus in my book. The Eco Skills were a simple, but appreciated upgrade system. The upgrades I got were often ones where I could really notice the effect it had on Jak, and some were even directly reminiscent of the Eco abilities from Jak 1, such as the one that lets you shoot a burst of Yellow Eco forward whenever you punch. The Eco Powers were something I really like the concept of, but in execution they were a bit of a mixed bag. Some were good, others were either not very fun to use or were barely even required to begin with. I quite liked the rocket jump and detonator abilities, and I'm always down for a good slow down time power, so I was quite on board with the Eco Reflexes, but others, like the Eco Shield and teleportation ability felt very limited and only got used a few times throughout the whole game. Excellent concept, but could have used some fine-tuning when it comes to execution.

 

The trophies were a bit annoying in this one. It's an easier plat than the others, and the side content is less boring than in the previous games, but most trophies are missable, leading me to make a preposterous amount of backup saves and constantly check an old walkthrough just in case. At least you don't need all of the Precursor Orbs, though. Again, this isn't a bad game, but it could have been much better. It's definitely the weakest entry in the series, and a very underwhelming way for the Jak series to end. Even still, there were some things I liked here, and being able to trophy hunt in a Jak game again to re-complete my series Platinum collection was very nice. Hopefully they bring Daxter to PS4 sooner rather than later, since I'd like to play and Platinum that one as well.

[blue_blur_98]

Platinum #50 - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation 3)

Platinum difficulty: 9/10

Time taken: 5 years, 1 month/100 hours of gameplay

Personal game rating: 10/10 - Masterpiece

This still doesn't feel real. The biggest white whale in my entire trophy hunting career, the one Platinum trophy I've yearned to get more than any other, has been conquered. Like... where do I go from here? Difficulty-wise, there's a good chance I've peaked here. I can't imagine I'm gonna do a Platinum much harder than this if I actually value my sanity. I'm gonna have to think pretty hard about what I follow this up with.

 

This is far and away the hardest kart racer to earn a Platinum trophy in. It's just no contest. Even the other Sonic racing games by Sumo Digital are significantly easier, and the only other one I can think of that might even get close is Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, but even that game doesn't require you to beat goddamn dev times. I'd even argue that it might be one of the harder arcade racers to complete in general, but I could definitely hear someone out if they had a suggestion for a harder arcade racer. There isn't one single thing that makes this one so hard - this game is just stuffed with brutal difficulty in almost every corner. A lot of World Tour events have really strict requirements when you have to play them on Expert - it's been a while since I did most of these, but I distinctly remember having lots of trouble with Sprint and Traffic Attack events in particular. And you have to do every single one on Expert, since you need every star for one trophy, which is not only obviously extremely difficult, but basically requires almost two full playthroughs since you only unlock the Expert difficulty to begin with once you reach Superstar Showdown right at the end of the game. You also have to do all of the Grand Prix cups twice on Expert as well - once on the normal cups, and once more on the Mirror Mode variations. Computer-controlled opponents on Expert can be ruthless, do don't expect to do these on your first try. There's some online stuff too - most of really wasn't that bad when the game still had a player base, and it's trivial now that you need to boost it anyway, but Team Sonic is excruciatingly annoying to get done. You need three people bare minimum, and that's if you're lucky enough to encounter someone with four controllers. Worst case scenario, you're gonna need to find FIVE poor saps willing to help at the same time just to get one Bronze trophy. And because of this trophy and House Party of the Dead, it is impossible to earn this Platinum on PS3 unless you have four working controllers on hand that can be used with the system. Hope you were into playing couch co-op a decade ago, 'cause if not, you're going to be spending a pretty penny just to have the privilege of earning this plat.

 

And then there are the staff ghosts. Oh my god. You know, the other stuff was pretty difficult. Two max-difficulty campaign runs and two max-difficulty Grand Prix runs, on top of the online stuff that can be really annoying at times is no slouch, and if you didn't have to touch Time Attack at all, this'd still be a solid 7/10-8/10 Platinum just accounting for all of that. But then they decided to tie a trophy to beating the best times of the developers, and that alone drives the already high-difficulty through the roof. Keep in mind that this is all for a Silver trophy. These times require impeccable routing, inside-and-out knowledge of the track, and the most optimized racing lines possible. You have to be downright perfect; spend a little time on a sub-optimal racing line, miss one stunt or boost, or scratch even the slightest bit of paint on a wall, and the Expert Ghost will catch up to you and you'll have to do another lap. This is the hardest thing I've ever done, in any game, period. Trophy or not. It's just an absolutely ludicrous requirement, and you will have to perfect every single track if you want to get these done. Again, SILVER TROPHY. Sure, there are a few easy ones. Galactic Parade, Graffiti City, Dream Valley and Shibuya Downtown shouldn't give you too much trouble. Everything else? You're licky if it's just infernally difficult as opposed to soul-denyingly difficult. The likes of Roulette Road, Seasonal Shrines, Sunshine Tour, Sanctuary Falls, Egg Hangar, Graveyard Gig and Chilly Castle will give you endless trouble. I'm actually running out of words to describe the sheer difficulty here; it's that hard. And you're not even done with Time Attack after this! You still need to beat some Mirror ghosts to get 100% completion for your Triple-Star license! Thankfully, though, you can at least get away with just Hard Ghosts if you want to earn enough completion. If you want this Platinum, prepare to be tested. This game does not pull its punches, and you'll be in for one of the most challenging gaming experiences out there. By the time I dragged myself over the finish line here, I had logged 100 hours of play time; though, to be fair, plenty of that was casual online and local multiplayer racing. You could probably get it done in half the time if you just beeline for every trophy.

 

If this game wasn't so good, I wouldn't have pushed myself through this ordeal, but it is. It is an expertly crafted, content-rich slam-dunk of a kart racer, and arguably the pinnacle of the sub-genre, at least in my opinion. Every nook and cranny of this game is positively dripping with polish, passion and talent. From the pitch-perfect vehicle handling and impeccable track design, to the high production values that still hold up surprisingly well 12 years later and the incredible amount of passion on display for tons of different SEGA games, this is just an absolutely top of the line racing game. Even if you're not familliar with the source material Sumo Digital is pulling from here, it's such a damn good game that I can still recommend it since it stands incredibly well on its own merits. Even if this post scared you off from considering the Platinum here, I implore you to at least play Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed if you even have a slight affinity towards arcade racing games. You'll be in for a treat.