Dauersack's path back to 100%

[Dauersack]

Once upon a time I had 100% completion, and I was proud of it despite my profile not having many games at the time, it felt hard earned anyway given that I did not exactly avoid some of the more challenging or grindy games to unnaturally preserve the 100%. For the last 2 years I barely gave a crap, I felt like I was in over my head with some games, I abandoned the goal to 100% everything, got sloppy over time, complacant, content to accept mediocrity thinking it would mean having more fun. When once before the thought of having 90% completion was a bad thing, recently it was just a fact of life for months, and as a result my overall motivation to trophy hunt at all went far down, leading to long breaks with no progress. Turns out the hunt for 100% that I sometimes cursed for all the frustration attached to it was the thing that really kept me trophy hunting to begin with, and the ups and downs were responsible for a lot of the appeal gaming had for me in the first place.

 

Despite the compulsive goal to get 100% leading to some truly frustrating experiences over the years, the good outweighed the bad, as it turns out few things in gaming can compare to the feeling of finally completing a frustrating game to get that S rank. I knew I wanted to go back to it, but motivating me to properly start something is tricky, so I knew that I had to take some more drastic measures. I got used to staring at the 90% I was dancing around, but I knew that getting lower would annoy me a lot. I had put in too much effort completing games overall for it to sit at a lower total completion rate. I needed an even more specific goal and enough annoyance to kickstart my ass into starting the long process and use the momentum to finish it.
 

At this starting point I sit at 63 platinums, the goal is to get back to 100% at the same time I hit the 100 platinum milestone, now having started most games  required for that, unlocking one trophy in each game to tank my completion and therefore motivate me to truly get back into the whole thing. The games I chose are a wild mix from my backlog, so there is a bit of everything. I started enough games for 93 plats at this point, leaving a few slots open for possible impulse purchases. Once I have filled up the extra slots I will not start a new game with a platinum until I reach the 100 plat milestone. Finishing Jotun Valhalla Edition will be the 75th platinum milestone and whats left of Super Meat Boy in order to get this elusive beast of a plat will be the 100th platinum milestone, for which I will likely prepare by completing other tough platformers I have yet to choose.
 

With my available gaming time being both limited at times and somewhat unreliable these days due to work and real life tending to get in the way pretty often, this will have to be a slow and steady process, but one that I want to keep working on, even if it takes years. This thread here is for me to have a good overview over how far into the process I actually am, see how many games I have already completed, summarize my thoughts on the completion process of certain games and maybe to talk about certain games as I complete them, if there is anyone to talk to. People may feel free to comment here it if they so choose. I will post the to do list with all the games that I have to complete, I will make a post whenever I start a new game (except the first dlc clean up as I have already started that), maybe make a post talking about the ongoing process of trying to complete a game, definitely one once the game is done to summarize the experience and what to go for next, then cross out the game I completed on the list, update the total numbers, even if they are not totally accurate yet with a few games still getting added later. The frequency and length of my posts may vary depending on how much time I have or if anyone is even interested. The list will stay in this rather simplistic form for the time being, fancy extras may get added later, perhaps I even go out of my way to add stuff for all the other games I completed on my profile so far, but no promises yet.

 

 

To do list of games

 

88 heroes ?

Battlezone ?

Bioshock 1 Remastered

Bioshock 2 Remastered

Bioshock: Infinite

Cities: Skylines

Dark Souls II: Scholar Of The First Sin

Days Gone

Deep Rock Galactic

Detroit: Become Human

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Foul Play

Goetia

Heavy Rain

Horizon Chase Turbo (DLC clean up) ?

Jotun

Kingdoms Of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

Middle Earth: Shadow Of War

Mortal Shell

Mousecraft (no platinum trophy)

Planetbase ?

Reus

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Shadow Of The Colossus

Sonic Forces

Sonic Mania (no platinum trophy)

Super Meat Boy

Surviving Mars

The Long Dark

The Sims 4 ?

The Swapper (no platinum trophy)

Thumper

Towaga Among Shadows

Tribes Of Midgard ☺️

Vampyr

 

Current total known trophies left: 1306

Current completion: 73.76%

 

Games left to choose: 6

 

Working on: Deep Rock Galactic

 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Dauersack

[Cassylvania]

It's a good goal to have. I find trying to fully complete a game causes me to stick with it a lot longer than I might otherwise have, for better or worse. It also makes you get your money's worth.

 

Just a couple things about your chosen games...

 

The Long Dark currently has one bugged/possibly unobtainable trophy (unless they fixed it), but there are probably workarounds for that. Cities: Skylines...uh, well, if you're going for the 100%, What the...? is one of the worst trophies ever conceived.

 

You have some long ones and some hard ones there. Good luck.

[deaf_swap004]

7 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

It's a good goal to have. I find trying to fully complete a game causes me to stick with it a lot longer than I might otherwise have, for better or worse. It also makes you get your money's worth.

 

Just a couple things about your chosen games...

 

The Long Dark currently has one bugged/possibly unobtainable trophy (unless they fixed it), but there are probably workarounds for that. Cities: Skylines...uh, well, if you're going for the 100%, What the...? is one of the worst trophies ever conceived.

 

You have some long ones and some hard ones there. Good luck.

There is no longer a glitched trophy in The Long Dark. It was fixed a couple years back. The forum talking about the glitch is from 2017.

[Dauersack]

51 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

It's a good goal to have. I find trying to fully complete a game causes me to stick with it a lot longer than I might otherwise have, for better or worse. It also makes you get your money's worth.

True, that is a blessing or a curse depending on the quality of the game and it's trophy list. I have played a select few games long after already completing them, The Witcher 3, They Are Billions, Mount&Blade: Warband, just to name a few, but generally when all the trophies are earned I consider it a finished task because I get this nagging feeling that I should start the next game, so the trophy list demanding more time can be a really good thing that also keeps the game entertaining for longer by creating additional interesting challenges. Other games can turn into miserable experiences though, my profile has some games that I played far longer than I would have naturally because of unreasonable trophies demanding an extra 100 hours, or more, turning it from what would have been a fun 50 hour experience into a grueling 150-200 hour experience.

 

51 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

The Long Dark currently has one bugged/possibly unobtainable trophy (unless they fixed it), but there are probably workarounds for that. Cities: Skylines...uh, well, if you're going for the 100%, What the...? is one of the worst trophies ever conceived.

Sad statement for me to make, but I do not expect that one to even get into my top 5 worst trophies I have ever earned, perhaps not even my top 10 if I get lucky. Certainly this design is potentially atrocious for some, while others may get it naturally during their normal completion, shitty rng trophies can go both ways. I am not too concerned with it yet, as it is not nearly crappy enough of a trophy to make me not start a game and in the worst case I make it a daily habbit to play some of that game occasionally if it is the last trophy missing, but yeah talk about bad design. As for The Long Dark, I have not found anything thats completely bugged, but that game does struggle with some issues for the trophies, not my first time with that kind of list though so I hope it will work out.

 

51 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

You have some long ones and some hard ones there. Good luck.

Thank you, I tried getting a good variety in and I will give it my all to complete them all one day. If you have any particular recommendations for interesting games that may be a good fit for one of the leftover slots, be it tough platformers for the 100th milestone practice or just a lesser known gem, feel free to share it with me at some point?

Edited August 22, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Progress update, entry finish

 

Finished: Horizon Chase Turbo DLC cleanup

Senna Forever DLC

 

Disclaimer, I have absolutely no clue about Formula 1, I know 2 names out of that sport and thats it, so this DLC being a tribute to Senna, a former F1 racer, does nothing for me, nor would I get any Easter Eggs or reverences.

Senna Forever is more of the same. A decent experience playing more of a weird hybrid game that poses as a racing game but does not feel like a racing game.

 

The Gameplay

The DLC takes away all of the whacky cars the base game had and instead gives boring Formula 1 cars, which is a bit of a letdown. The rest is pretty much up to par with the base game, driving a vehicle on a rail track "racing" against a massive rubberband that requires you to kinda drive normally in the first few laps as the other drivers would just get an impossible lead if you drove too fast, only to then use all your nitro and overtake them in the last lap. For extra busy work there are coins on the tracks, gathering them all gives you the equivalent of another nitro boost, there is also 1 extra boost per track and some fuel to pick up in order to make it to the end of the race. So far so good, a career mode that has the historical races of Senna, spiced up with extra goals/milestones you have to meet during the race, and the already known tournament mode, though thankfully not as unreasonably long and tedious as the one in the base game that demanded you to play over 100 races in a row. This game wanted to be like the old arcade racers, and to some extend it succeeds, I still can't quite view it as a racing game. Not a bad game, not a great game, just a medium game that I did not mind completing back then, but could have lived without having to return to it.

 

The Trophies

The trophies do not all quite make sense. A few ask you to win a specific career race under special conditions that are... not really special as the game itself asks for similar stuff and more all the time for the milestones. There is a trophy for each of the five career mode chapters, and one for completing all the milestones in all the chapters, which was not difficult to achieve, most could rather easily be done on the first try, as the game is not difficult once one figured out the rubberband mechanics. The games speed is often named as a bit of an obstacle, but it was not for me, perhaps because I figured out how to use the map to anticipate the turns, or because I used to play games with a similar speed like Extreme G back in the day, games that were not on rails so you had to actually memorize and react to the track, and the trophy list was not an obstacle either. After the two special race trophies, the Senna milestones trophy, and the 5 chapter trophies were done, there were only 3 tournament trophies, one for each difficulty. They were all reasonably short and not really tough, no special conditions, plenty of room for mistakes, so getting those meant just playing the races.

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 5/10

Time requirement: Short

Verdict: Overall an ok experience if you want to have the illusion of playing a super fast racing game, likely a blast for fans of the old arcade racers, for anyone else probably just something in the middle.

 

 

The next game

I decided to start out with an easy one and go for 88 Heroes as the first real game from the list, which is not all that long and does not look like it will give me any trouble. I will likely go for a strategy game next, though I am not entirely sure yet. With 88 Heroes looking somewhat short, there will either be no progress report while playing it (so just the update after I completed it), or one at most.

Edited August 23, 2022 by Dauersack

[TC_217]

You are right about the satisfaction that comes from completing a tough game. I've found that there is just as much satisfaction, if not more, from completing a game you gave up on long ago.

I think it's great that you decided to try not being a completionist, and decided you wanted to go back to being one. I sometimes wonder which is better, I tend to think I too would feel badly seeing my completion rate drop.

Enjoy getting that % back up!

[Dauersack]

Progress update, entry finish

 

Finished: 88 Heroes

 

A pixel platformer about 88 unique heroes who were chosen to stop an evil villain from destroying the world. I say unique, but there are more fitting words to describe many of these heroes, trashy, useless, suicidal. That is intended by design, the joke is that the worlds real heroes were too busy to take on such a non threatening villain so the player has to content with these misfits. There are 88 levels, some of which are very short, others are a bit longer, 88 seconds to finish each one, 88 minutes as a total timer before the world gets blown up, you get the running joke of the game at this point I guess.

 

The Gameplay

You start at the level entrance and need to reach the goal before 88 seconds are up, that is pretty much it. On the way there are all kinds of obstacles, from spike pits over lasers all the way to a rather big and unusual group of enemies, from the standard robots that walk or shoot at you to exploding babies, toilet monsters and suicide bombing ceiling cats. The levels start out short and easy, but definitely amp up the difficulty as you progress further, sometimes into cheap territory when a laser just hits you from out of screen. Sure, there is a look around function, but the clock keeps ticking and there is a trophy to finish it with a certain amount of time left, so who wants to waste time looking around in the middle of a level with the clock still ticking.

The heroes are all more or less unique, some look similar or have somilar abilities, some can destroy enemies while others are super mobile, some can revive themselves, others are just super handicapped by carrying a bomb around that will explode the moment you stop holding down an extra button. In the standard 88 hero mode you will get a hero, play through a level and if you die you get another hero randomly, until you either beat the game or all heroes are dead. By collecting coins you get to revive one hero every once in a while, though who you get to revive is mostly random as the 3 candidates you can choose from get picked arbitarily. There are a few boss fights, all kinda similar with different obstacles, a little more variety would not have hurt here.

After the 88 heroes mode there is a mode that lets you choose your 8 favorite heroes so that you can finish the game with only these 8, reducing your lifes to 8 but giving you the best of the worst to have an easier time, and solo mode which allows you to play through the entire game with your single favorite hero and 88 lifes, which is by far the easiest mode given that a select few heroes make most levels rather mundane. Another unique gimmick is the games villain being visible at the bottom of the screen the entire time, commenting on your heroes actions and fate, think of a very, VERY low budget and whacky version of the narrator from Bastion. It was good for a few giggles, though sometimes it was also annoying when other figures were walking through the bottom of the screen.

 

The Trophies

We get the standard trophy list for the most part. Play through each chapter, play through it quicker, die with every hero once, die with one hero a few times, complete every mode once, complete the standard mode with at least 16 heroes left, gather a certain number of coins etc. A few grindy trophies like die 888 times in total, play the game 88 times or kill 888 enemies in total, but after the others are finished the grind is rather short and could be done in less than an hour, which may still be grind by definition but to anyone who has done advanced grinds it will barely feel like doing a grind at all. Some of the games trophies would have been considerably more difficult had it not been for the very forgiving mechanic of the game to allow restarting more or less infinitely, taking all potential for difficulty right out of it. It was never a game that would compete with tough platformers in terms of difficulty, but it could have been somewhat challenging given some of the later level designs if it wasn't for its rather abusable mechanics.

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 6/10

Time requirement: Short

Verdict: Not quite an indie gem due to some of its flaws and the limiting idea behind it all, yet still a short but fun game for the most part that I do not regret buying. The effort to actually make 88 different playable characters, even if some of them are questionable at best, has to be commended.

 

 

The next game

I originally wanted to go with Tribes Of Midgard next, but I do not have a partner for the multiplayer only stuff yet and I don't want to wait in limbo until I find someone, so I will do Planetbase first, a short to medium (just my impression) length strategy/simulator/building type game of which I have a few left on my list. The game looks appealing and I like the concept behind it as well as the genre, so I expect this to be a good experience, especially with the trophy list looking pretty standard for the most part. The platinum sits at the border to ultra rare, which is not really saying something though, Tropico 5 was ultra rare too, guess players who tend to get games of this genre are not really into completion all that much. As it is not just some short game like 88 Heroes I will most likely make one progression update post before the last post that presents the platinum.

 

On 23.8.2022 at 5:55 AM, TC_217 said:

I think it's great that you decided to try not being a completionist, and decided you wanted to go back to being one. I sometimes wonder which is better, I tend to think I too would feel badly seeing my completion rate drop.

Enjoy getting that % back up!

Yeah seeing it drop was rather disgusting after all the games I forced myself to fully complete over the years. Seeing it go back up is very satisfying, even if it happens at a snails pace. Without the meta goal to have a complete account, something was just missing, and it definitely reduced my time with some games, reduced my gaming time in general and made me abandon games like Rise Of The Tomb Raider before I could really get into it.

Edited August 30, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Progress update: Planetbase

 

Being around 40% done with the game I thought this was a good time for a update talking about the general situation and state of this game. A word of warning to anyone who considers buying this game, just don't, the game is giving me a hard time, it is not a good game, it does not even function sometimes, it freezes pretty often and the trophies are varying levels of bugged.

 

Problem 1: Gameplay is terribly slow

 

The idea to survive in a hostile environment is a classic one, but rarely have I seen it executed so badly. Basically you get some metal and plastic as building material to start and have to use that to secure the short term survival, aka a supply of energy in solar and wind and energy storage, water, oxygen, growing food and a place to sleep, and ensure a production circle for new metal and plastic to make further construction possible. This works somewhat well for basic living supplies, less so for metal and plastic as the early stage production is painfully slow for reasons I will get to, meaning a lot of the time you just have to sit idle and wait for your colonists to produce something. Once you have produced a bit you have to secure long term survival by building supply lines for medikits to keep the workers in good health and spare parts that keep your energy production running, failing to do so in time means game over, and whether it works or not may not be up to you, because:

 

Problem 2: Heavy RNG

 

In this game, rng decides whether you live or die. You have to constantly savescum to avoid unlucky game overs. Solar energy you build only works at day, wind only works when wind is there, so even if you have a good amount of both you can get hit by a long, windless night followed up by a sandstorm right as the daylight was supposed to come back and you just lose the game if you have not wasted a lot of time using the first new metal resources to build several beefy energy storages, and doing that risks a game over too because you delay the production of medikits and spares. Then there are random asteroids hitting the surface, sometimes hitting the biodome you grow all your food in killing all of your biologists so you are doomed to starve to death, or hitting your only oxygen producer, or hitting your one energy storage in the evening dooming your citizens to die during the night. There are also "invaders" in the midgame that can wipe out a considerable number of citizens unless you pre produced weapons for the guards, pretty annoying feature punishing you for no reason and requiring considerable investments and micro to get it under control. Having too many injuries too early can burn through your medikits also leading to a collapse of your colony. You also require a lot of luck for your citizens to even function properly in the first place, leading to the next point:

 

Problem 3: AI is buggy

 

Citizens sometimes run around in circles, or stand idle next to the work they should do, just refusing to do their jobs for no obvious reason. Even if they do not outright bug out they rarely work as they should, next to no control over them means they have to figure it out themselves, and the workers seem to have a dislike towards doing crucial jobs like working in the mines, preferring to do less important stuff first, or overdoing one work while completely ignoring the follow up work so nothing comes together, no way to designate one worker to only work in a specific job, prioritizing only works for entire buildings and often gets ignored so that is not much of a help. I have seen citizens ignoring their basic needs for long enough to incapacitate themselves, once it was my only medic so I had to get in another one to fix the first one. In another game most of my biologists suddenly stopped working for quite a while due to a bug, leading to plants breaking down so no more food was produced, which started a death spiral since one basic need going below half makes the citizens act like broken droids so they refuse to ever work unless that need is filled, even if that need is food and they are the ones in charge of producing food in the first place, not terribly realistic behavior, oh and colonists being unhappy means no new colonists or trade ships will arrive for...reasons, so literally impossible to survive this low food scenario as you can neither get new working biologists nor buy new food to get the old ones back to work. Some buildings also have a tendency to bug out, but mentioning them all would take too long. But while we are speaking of bugs, there is something that definitely deserves getting mentioned:

 

Problem 4: Trophies are bugged

 

This one is more annoying than all the others combined. Only a select few of this games trophies popped normally, most are bugged. Some popped with a several minute delay, some did not pop by themselves at all so it required restarting, fiddling around with the pause button repeatedly and other known tricks to finally make them pop after the requirements have been met, and some have yet to pop. I finished the tutorial days ago, finished it several more times since, yet the bronze for doing so refuses to unlock, same with the one for getting 100 colonists on the desert planet, information online is very limited so no clue what I am supposed to do to unluck them. I will try to reinstall the game next but if that does not work then I will ignore the full on bugged ones until they are the last ones left and I will likely just ask some of the players who own the platinum if they had similar experiences and know a solution for it. I seem to have a talent for running into crappy games with buggy trophy lists...

 

Whats left? Finishing the 4 planets with all milestones while hoarding some colonists, doing an incredibly rng heavy speedrun to reach a high number of colonists that will definitely suck a lot, and speedrunning the toughest challenge in the game (maybe I can knock them both out in one go, fingers crossed), so a LOT of saving and reloading is in order and I am not all too happy about that. Definitely not a game I would recommend to anyone who cares about completion to pick up, or anyone at all for that matter as it is enough to sour the genre for me for a while. There goes any chance of me knocking out all the building type games on my list in one go, as I will need a break from these types of games for a while after I am done with this game. Next update will be after I finished it, not sure when though.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Dauersack

[NZBigC]

I see you have Vampyr on the list! Although it was quite fun, it was a bit of a buggy mess at times, and I almost gave up on it after the umpteenth time it crashed on me at a certain point. Here's hoping you don't encounter any (almost game-breaking) bugs like that.

 

Also, The Sims 4 is very easy now that people (myself included... ?) figured out ways to pretty much auto pop most of the trophies, and this is totally doable to get the platinum in well under 3 hours.

 

Good luck with the rest!

[Dauersack]

36 minutes ago, NZBigC said:

I see you have Vampyr on the list! Although it was quite fun, it was a bit of a buggy mess at times, and I almost gave up on it after the umpteenth time it crashed on me at a certain point. Here's hoping you don't encounter any (almost game-breaking) bugs like that.

 

Also, The Sims 4 is very easy now that people (myself included... ) figured out ways to pretty much auto pop most of the trophies, and this is totally doable to get the platinum in well under 3 hours.

 

Good luck with the rest!

Thank you, I appreciate it. Sadly my track record with bugs is not the best, I seem to have a talent when it comes to picking buggy games and then experiencing all they have to offer, bugs included, though of course I also hope that it will be managable.

 

As for Sims 4, I will most likely play it legit for the most part even if that means spending a lot more time on it. I have not played a Sims game since the very first Sims on PC so I want to play it properly for old times sake, though I will likely use all tools available when it comes to shorten the time for rng grind trophies like getting triplets.

[Dauersack]

Progress update, entry finish

Finished: Planetbase

I finished it about a week ago but did not feel motivated to write an update right away, nor did I play anything else during that week, probably let another week pass before doing a new entry.

 

Planetbase is a terrible, buggy and badly made game that does not work as intended half the time and leaves player at the mercy of rng, both for the ai working, which it usually does not, as well as random catastrophes that can end the game 5 minutes in without you having any control over it, forcing you to abuse reload whenever possible if you want to make it on the harder worlds, though even on the easiest world can can happen. As a big fan of colony management games I was shocked to see with how little thought a game can get away with these days and not be deemed a mess, this developer clearly has no clue about what makes such a game fun. What also delayed my completion of this game by at least 2 weeks if not more was the trophies bugging out, forcing me to look for information online, ask people here, ask people per pm, and test around an awful not, making this a much more tedious experience than it needed to be.

 

Gameplay

This games gameplay is slow, really slow. You start with little, you set up the basics, and then you wait, a lot, because the pace of the game is atrocious. After your initial building material ran out to secure direct survival basics of your base like oxygen, energy, water, a place to sleep, food and entertainment you are barely able to build the basic production circles for building material. Production circle is a generous term, you get 2 base materials and 1 addition to a building each to turn them into steel and plastic, thats about it for the most part, thats what you build every single building with except the achievement building that needs both of them combined into a new resource. In theory this should work, in practice the AI is horrible at doing their jobs, and you do not have the tools to micro manage them better, only tool available being prioritizing buildings, doing more than one confuses the AI though. You also can't really manage how your energy buildings are doing, wind power is random, sun does not work at night, on desert planets sandstorms hit randomly, on the last planet both sun and wind are entirely random and sometimes you do not get either for days so you need to either pray to rngesus or waste a LOT of time beefing up energy storages, or you do what I did and reload whenever you see the writing on the wall.

The processes of getting anywhere after the initial few buildings is incredibly slow and tedious, so it takes forever before you can get some real progress in, progress that you need to secure long term survival by producing medikits that heal people who randomly get injured in the mines, which may be 1 injury among the first 20 production cycles or 10 depending on your luck, and spares that allow you to keep your energy producing buildings in good condition. It is slow, tedious and unstable, the AI can suddenly make a base that went well and stable for over an hour go belly up by lowkey redefining their roles. There is no enemy in this game aside from the AI thats doing your jobs and the environment, which never changes aside from random storms, asteroids randomly hitting you (sometimes killing half the population 5 minutes in by hitting the quarters), all in all pretty bad and not too rewarding because you know the that success or fail got decided by luck. Later you also get intruders that you have to fight with guards who usually don't do much and require expensive guns to even do anything, so that is fun too, no real reason for intruders coming, they do not steal for themselves or are the result of anything you did wrong, they just run amok in your base for no reason and are a fact of life, like a sandstorm on a desert planet. The last planet type was the most miserable, both energy types rng and starting out with such a little population and supplies that getting just 2-3 early mining injuries would be game over, making me super grateful for the fact that you can savescum most of the things.

 

AI

Terrible. The AI is what makes a somewhat ok foundation pretty garbage. They can't be managed so you have to rely on them managing themselves. You can lose a game because most of the biologists have decided for a while that being a carry robot is more their calling, leading to a food shortage, which leads to people getting hungry, and they do not work if they are hungry, not even if they are biologists and working would generate the food they need to survive. Can't invite new colonists when your current ones are unhappy, or trade ships either, great system, have fun watching a dozen biologists starve to death right next to a perfectly working set of plants that grow edible shit, because they want their meals before they start working damn it.

Absurd programming at work here, and it is far from the only case, I have seen engineers walk right past a robot that needed to be repaired just so they could go for a walk during a deadly solar flare, seen medics who rather went to bed or decided to work on a new medikit instead of working at the radiation sickness engineer or the gunshot wound guard so both of them died, seen guards go on a lunch break in the middle of a firefight against intruders, and workers categorically refusing to work certain jobs unless I made that one building high priority.

The AI only gets somewhat more functional once you reach the point of spamming carrier bots, as these bots can do nothing except carry stuff, so your humans actually limit themselves more to their intended jobs. Who would have thought that specializing certain tasks instead of making all citizens do it at the cost of their actual jobs would lead to things going more smoothly? Imagine what we would get out of a base if we could, I dunno, tell certain citizens to only work in certain buildings or something, like some kind of stable work place, probably just crazy talk though.

 

Bugs

I already went on long enough about trophy bugs, I have a rant up in this thread and an entire thread describing the problems I had and different solutions. This is for general bugs. Obviously the AI being terribly inefficient and causing a mass dying could be seen as a bug, but there are also citizens who bug out the hard way, standing next to a job they could do and simply not doing it. There is a terrain bug for mines so placing them a little too far into a mountain, on a valid building place mind you, causes it to not produce any ore, but workers still go in, work and get injured, imagine my surprise when I found out that usually one out of 3 mines was not delivering anything. Certain buildings bug out regularly, most commonly the Multi-Dome that has exercise equipment and benches for fun in it, citizens just walking through with their unhappy smileys, refusing to use anything in it, instead camping the TVs in the cantine and bars for fun, which yeah might reflect our society a bit but I know that was not intended. Path finding is a classic problem, leading to people choosing outside paths so long they die due to lack of oxygen once the base is bigger and the energy buildings further away, people getting stuck outside the base and dying, sometimes buildings themselves into a trap during construction and dying, buildings not fitting into slots they should fit in sometimes. The game is also prone to crashing, a few times during gameplay but most commonly during a reload attempt, as you can't just reload from within the save but you have to go to the main menu, and doing that is where the most crashes happen, literally dozens of crashes during my time with the game. All in all a level of bugs and problems I would not describe as tolerable in a finished game.

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 2/10

Time requirement: Medium on paper, Long due to buggy trophies, crashes and frequent reloads being mandatory on class S world

 

Explanation: Difficulty is low because basically all the obstacles are rng or artificial due to bugs, frequent reloading drops the difficulty way down as the more frequent you reload the easier it gets, if this had been cursed with an iron man trophy for completing a world then the difficulty would have gone up severely. This constant reloading also drops the already low enjoyment down even further, as my idea of fun is not reloading every 5 minutes, with every few back to menus leading to a crash, because something broke or bad rng came through. Obviously buggy trophies also lowered the rating, it only escaped being a 1 because I have played several games that were worse, not much fun was had completing this game though, that I can promise.

 

Verdict: This game fails as a colony management game by design and as a game in general, trophy list was a buggy pain, stay far away from it, many dozens of better games from this genre out there, play one of those instead.

 

 

The next game:

Tribes of Midgard

Why this game? Well for one because it looked good and was fun during my first play of the game to unlock one trophy in it, is a different genre that Planetbase so I get an extended break from that genre, and because it has a lot of online trophies, which I would like to cratch off my list soon, as having too many online trophies on my to do list makes me a bit nervous. The game also does not have too many trophies, is neither super hard nor super long (looking at you there, Deep Rock Galactic) and it is viking themed, and I love me some viking stuff. Guide says game is about 50 hours, though because the game has a rather slim trophy list of merely 27 trophies that all look rather straightforward, and currently no dlc, I will likely do only one progress update on it before finishing it. I will most likely start the game during the first october week.

[Dauersack]

Progress update, entry finish

finished: Tribes Of Midgard

I originally wanted to make another progress update halfway, but realized that there wasn't really any reason to, as most what was left turned out to be mundane grinding, which is not super interesting to write about.

 

Tribes Of Midgard is an adventure game with rpg and survival elements. You get spawned into a world and have to survive by farming materials for equipment, potions and fortifications, leveling up the village characters that work as crafting stations via souls aquired by doing all kinds of tasks like gathering, killing enemies and opening treasure chests. Basic survival game at day, tower defense at night, as during night the village gets attacked and you have to fend off the invaders in order to protect the tree of life in the center of the village. Simple, yet effective, sometimes boss caliber enemies spawn and have to be stopped while they are on their way towards the village.

I did most of it solo and realized that it was meant for multiplayer, at least the saga mode, as a single player does quickly get overwhelmed between farming, defending, hunting and exploring, with there being a tight timer if you want to achieve everything in one go. Half of the classes had some kind of support ability that simply was wasted in singleplayer, though the game was easy enough without any support. The games survival mode was much more casual since they reworked it, the guide being out of date due to a new season confused me and cost me a few days of my time at least given that I farmed Saga mode instead of the more suited survival mode for a while.

 

The game was fun to play for the most part, even with the trophy list being a bit annoying. Most trophies were standard stuff, killing bosses, crafting stuff etc, with only some being needlessly grindy, like waiting out 100 days in survival, spending a million souls and reaching season level 50, though it was far from insufferable. No bugs to speak of, only problem I ran into sometimes was getting stuck on something, but that was easily fixable by just using the teleportation rune. I'd still recommend anyone who wants to play it to do so with a small group, as that is obviously the intended way to play it, but it is still easy for the most part even if done in singleplayer, even if a bit confusing.

 

Difficulty: 4 solo, 2 team

Enjoyment: 6-7

 

The next game (NEW)

Battlezone

A new entry on my list, one of my free slots that was still left. Quite the task I accepted there, doing it partially together with a friend, and from what I have seen I will need that friend because the platinum is really hard, and seriously grindy. Rated as an 8/10 in difficulty due to a really high difficulty mode, requiring 50 playthroughs and around 250 hours of playtime thanks to a sneaky silver trophy, I'd say I have my work cut out for me for a few months.

The game is based around futuristic tank battles, a former VR game that was made playable via patch, my first hour with it was a lot of fun and I expect this to be a blast, at least for the first 60-80 hours or so, then practicing for extreme difficulty runs and grinding the data will likely proof to be a big challenge. I originally felt that Deep Rock Galactic was enough of a difficult grind monster to tackle, but what can I say, a platinum with this rarity that also allows me to play a tank is just too tempting to not take it. Given the time and practice required I will most likely post several updates on it.

[Dauersack]

First progress update, Battlezone

 

I have completed my first campaign, a medium length easy campaign by now, played around the levels, tried out different tanks and weapons and unlocked a few trophies for random stuff like killing several enemies with one shot. Easy difficulty was pretty managable, but not a freebie, not paying attention to your surroundings could still get you killed pretty quickly, playing on normal is actually quite challenging at the moment so I can only imagine what hard and extreme are like. Currently playing alone but I will play with someone else at some point, for the multiplayer only trophies as well as the extreme difficulty, which I have to assume is unreasonably tough to manage for a single person.

 

Game is actually a lot of fun, plenty of weapons, tanks and abilities, enough enemy variety to force different approaches, reasonable campaign length and missions. The one thing that is a bit concerning is that, after the time I spent with the game by now and the 36% of the trophy list I have finished by now, I have barely made 1% progress towards the grindy silver that seems to be the platinum breaker even for many of the people who managed to win 3 extreme difficulty campaigns for one of the other nasty silvers. Definitely not something I will get close to finishing this year.

 

Next goals are all the "do all of X in one campaign" trophies, the "do campaign without doing X" trophies, then climbing up the difficulty modes hopefully becoming somewhat comfortable playing on hard, multiplayer trophies are to be done in between whenever I get 3 other people together for it. After this is done I will post another update.

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Second progress update, Battlezone

 

I have unlocked a considerable amount of the games trophies by myself. I am starting to reach the limits of what one player can realistically do though. I have finished campaigns on easy, medium and one on hard, with the latter being a massive pain in the ass that took me very long and required a lot of luck. You can tell that hard is expecting you to be part of a group, because any tank you pick will have a very hard time getting through late stages. Heavy tanks are entirely unviable solo because the damage enemies do is impossible to just endure even for them and they are too slow to dodge most things, medium tanks are a good mix due to being fast enough to dodge most things but still surviving the occasional hit, and light are viable early but pretty unviable late due to dying to pretty much every single hit, and there are many things trying to hit you during late levels.

 

Extreme difficulty was tried by me and deemed pretty much impossible for a solo player, neither heavy nor medium tanks would have any chance, so the only way to go would be using light tanks and dodge literally everything for several minutes as you kill enemies from a distance. Not technically impossible, but in practice I don't think anyone will manage, also because you need a lot of luck with the map seed, the nemesis spawn and the random weapons you get in shop, easily a 10/10 in difficulty solo. Once the team is ready we will get the online trophies out of the way in about an hour, and then its down to practice so that we can tackle extreme and the no death campaign on hard, both of which are very unreasonable to attempt solo. I don't expect any real progress on the difficult mp trophies until late november given the amount of practice and luck required for it.

 

In the meantime I will get to grinding. I still need to grind a few hundred kills on flying objects and watch towers, finish several more campaigns on normal or above for a gold trophy, and of course make progress towards the mega grind for data that I currently only are about 5% done with for that platinum breaker of a silver trophy. Next progress update will happen once there was an actual attempt at extreme difficulty.

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Dauersack

[Messknecht]

oof, a tough list. 

I am not into 100%, I missed that chance a long time ago anyway, but I appreciate your effort with this project and i like the listed games. 

 

einfach kann jeder. 

 

viel Glück! 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Messknecht

[Dauersack]

Third progress update, Battlezone

 

Part one of my to do list with the team went flawlessly, as expected, we finished the measly few online trophies in one session and were done with it. Tackling extreme together did not really even start, mainly due to unfortunate time issues with one of the guys, and our time zones not matching up too well for long sessions. I believe we could have reached a point where we would have been able to do it if the guys were given time to practice, but I did not want to wait for weeks on end until all the guys had time and motivation to practice and go for some serious attempts, so I went about and tried to do extreme on my own, and I was successful.

 

Extreme mode is pretty nasty, quick deaths, more enemies that are faster, more durable and do more damage than ever before, radar use decreased, maps seem to be longer, heavy enemies appear earlier and are more aggressive too, they dodge more and have deadly precision at times, beating the nemesis tank on extreme was a massive pain in the ass. With enough practice I thankfully managed to become experienced enough with extreme to finish campaigns on my own, reusing the same map seed for it every time to avoid unpleasant surprises. To anyone who still wants to go for it I highly recommend doing it with a team, as the lack of healing and enemies being aggressive enough to surround you are the most common causes of death while doing it solo, doing it with a team is more fun and more forgiving thanks to the ability to revive teammates without using up lifes.

 

So what is left? Only one thing, that sneaky little silver, that platinum breaker called "Life Get", farm 10.000.000 data. I feel like I am done with the game, I would normally move on at this point, but still I gotta invest many more hours of grinding, way over a hundred if I follow the guide, which I won't, because I already have a few ideas on how to do better. Given my experience with these kinds of mind numbing and long grinds I am optimistic that I can maximize my efficiency and successfully use a strategy that allows me to get this trophy a bit faster than anticipated, probably still this year if it goes well, though I am making no promises.

 

On 9.11.2022 at 0:28 PM, Messknecht said:

viel Glück! 

Danke. Doing what I can to make progress, and the current game definitely is one of the harder ones so I am glad to have the most difficult aspect of that game out of the way now. Time for the big grind I guess.

[Dauersack]

Fourth progress update, Battlezone

 

Due to being ill for almost a full week I was able to spend a lot of time at home and do some proper marathon grinding for the last trophy, and I have made a lot of progress, getting past the 50% of the required data for the trophy. I am no longer ill now though, which obviously reduces the time available to me, otherwise I probably would have been able to finish it within the week or so, at least in theory. There will be some further delay because I feel like the constant data grind deep fried my brain, as the grind is among the more annoying ones I have faced so far in practice, even if it is not the longest. To keep the rest of my sanity I have decided to give myself a daily goal to grind, and if there is time left I play something else, as the thought of playing nothing else except Battlezone data grind for the next few weeks is just not all that appealing after the marathin I just went through. Given the progress I have made so far I am confident that I can finish the game before the end of the year despite the added variety of another, much more casual game. Speaking of which:

 

New game: The Sims 4

In theory, The Sims 4 trophy list can be completed in less than 2 hours. I am not after a quick platinum though, I am after some diversion, maybe even some fun. I have not played a Sims game since the very first Sims for Pc back in the day and therefore I am curious to see how the series developed. I will play the game casually for the next few weeks with the time I have left after I meet my daily Battlezone goal, and when I feel that I got enough of the Sims experience I will get the leftover trophies, which will most likely be grind and rng trophies, in a more efficient manner so that I hopefully finish both games before the end of the year.

[NZBigC]

13 hours ago, Dauersack said:

 

New game: The Sims 4

In theory, The Sims 4 trophy list can be completed in less than 2 hours. I am not after a quick platinum though, I am after some diversion, maybe even some fun. I have not played a Sims game since the very first Sims for Pc back in the day and therefore I am curious to see how the series developed. I will play the game casually for the next few weeks with the time I have left after I meet my daily Battlezone goal, and when I feel that I got enough of the Sims experience I will get the leftover trophies, which will most likely be grind and rng trophies, in a more efficient manner so that I hopefully finish both games before the end of the year.

Fair play to you for wanting to play this properly. I think the game plays kinda horribly on the console, so hopefully, you can stick to it. Also, unless you want to spend potentially real-life days trying to defeat the RNG Gods with the triplets trophy, you can easily download one of the CAS characters that are destined to have triplets.

 

Good luck to you!

[Dauersack]

Finished game: The Sims 4

 

Well, that was something. Played the game for almost 2 weeks before deciding that I have pretty much seen everything it has to offer, and playing it more would just mean grinding more, so with my PsPlus subscription coming to an end in two days anyway I decided to get the leftover trophies via the guide to shorten job grinding and triplet rng and the likes.

 

What did I think of the game? Well it still feels like the Sims 1, which is both good and bad. Good because it caused some nostalgia and the overall formula used to be fun for me, bad because this series evidently did not develop in any real way in the last 20 years. Sure there is some fancy new stuff, like sims having a smartphone, aging stages, a shop for traits and the ability to have ghosts as playable characters, but the core is still the exact same, as is the experience and the severe limitations of it. You get your sims a job, you grind that job for promotions via leveling skills, you get some money to buy better stuff and a fancier house, and thats pretty much it, only that you reach the peak of the mountain in a few days when it used to take weeks in sims 1.

 

They took out all challenge compared to Sims 1, it used to be hard to reach the highest level in a job due to the need to balance how to spend your free time between the sims needs, the sims skill progress and the sims various friendships that were mandatory to get promotions. In sims 4, you get a crapload of more time away from the job (some advanced jobs only have 2 work days per week), your skills level laughably fast and some can even be done during daily tasks, the needs are easier to take care of than ever with some traits making certain needs a non issue alltogether, and you have no need for friends to get promoted anymore, which was the biggest challenge. Doing the daily tasks is very easy, takes no time really, system is broken at times though, i have witnessed sims getting worse performance despite the tasks being fulfilled, all needs at green and the mood being positive. Not that you need to bother with a normal job at all mind you, the most money is earned being a shut in and either selling paintings for thousands each, adding up book royalties to many thousands a day, or game streams, no need to ever even leave the house, you will have bought all the fancy stuff after a few hours if you abuse this with 2-3 sims. The job rewards also suck, they are worse than the basic expensive stuff, which is not expensive at all anymore with money being so ridiculously easy to come by and bills being super low.

 

Leaving for vacations is still as empty and useless as it was in sims 1, you take your character to another area but you quickly get bored as all the things that can be done can also be done at home, why go to a gym to train if you have the same equipment at home, why dance in a night club if you have all the stuff at home, why go to a vacation spot just to hang out and take care of your needs just like you would at home. DLCs likely add some new locations, they certainly did in sims 1 with magic worlds and all that shit, but it was basically the same thing with a new skin.

 

Worst thing about this game was the insultingly bad performance. It was alright when it was only one or two sims, but if you have 6+ then it would just have shit performance all the time, with it reaching diashow levels in build mode making it almost unplayable. Commands also often delayed, and taking away free will did not stop sims from randomly insulting others they were supposed to get along during chats. For a game that looks like this there is really no excuse to perform this badly.

 

So what did I enjoy? Well like I said, the experience was nostalgic, there is something appealing to working your way up from a shitty little apartment with the worst stuff to a luxury mansion, from a shit job to an amazing job, getting better at everything etc, even if it is dumbed down and far too easy. The mix between daily tasks and the mini missions for each sim to earn points were a nice touch that kept you busy for a while, plenty of interactions, sometimes even too many so that it could become a chore to find the one you want. Nice extra immersions like the different meals, the different natures for characters, events causing mood changes, aspirations. This is not a bad game, it just is not a great game, not for me anyway, young me definitely would have loved it. I am glad that there was a way to unlock trophies quickly though, because had I been forced to do it naturally I certainly would have been quite annoyed with the game before it was over, especially the long generations trophy and the rng triples.

 

 

 

Fifth progress update: Battlezone

The grind is mind numbing, though playing Sims 4 helped a ton. Pace was steady and I made a lot of progress due to my daily goals being fulfilled, the light at the end of the tunnel is visible by now. I will try to finish this game asap and hopefully will be done before christmas if I really put in effort, then likely take a break until january to recover from the long grinding sessions. There is a lot to talk about with this game so I will write a big wall of text about it when that last sneaky silver and the platinum are finally mine.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Finished game: Battlezone

Battlezone was a fun and challenging experience on one side, and a mind numbing test of patience and endurance on the other side. Finally finishing it after so many hours of grinding, I have earned my second rarest platinum to date at 0.27%, and completed the second longest game on my current to do list, behind only Deep Rock Galactic as far as I can tell at the moment.

 

Battlezone is all about the gameplay, you are a tank, here is a world after a terminator style machine apocalypse, destroy them all, thats about it. No real story progression aside from the fight against the evil super computer, no real characters, no player character, just you the player and your trusty tank that you upgrade and buy nice new weapons for as you cause chaos to a good soundtrack that fits the setting really well. The game does not really need much else to work well, as the gameplay is already fun and rewarding enough on its own and you create plenty of stories yourself via close call rounds, though obviously something is missing even if blind destruction is always nice by itself.

 

You start at a random seed, get a map, then have to progress cell by cell, level by level, fulfilling small missions that clear the cell to progress towards the goal, the boss fight, gathering data, the games currency, along the way, using either a light, medium or heavy type of tank that have different values for speed and shield, also different start loadouts and maximum weapon slots. Data is used for tank upgrades like better shields, magnets for data collection, faster reload, or just shiny new weapons, most of which are ok with 2-3 being considerably and objectively much more powerful than the others. Which ones you get on the shops between your start and end point is luck based, which obviously is fun on lower difficulties as there is a random surprise factor, but punishing on harder difficulties as not getting one of the 3 broken weapons on extreme can make progressing further nearly impossible, meaning you just wasted quite a bit of time with that seed.

Missions are pretty basic, generally boiling down to some species of destroy or defend at the end of the day, enemies start basic and weak but soon beef up and become more creative, with some even using stealth, or the nemesis tank giving you a seriously shit day on the wrong end of an artillery barrage. There are also some random events sprinkled throughout the game, some only delivering flavor text, others reward, and some punish you for engaging, it is not much but at least they thought of something. The game can be played in singleplayer or multiplayer, enemies scale accordingly so a coordinated effort is required to get anything out of a team.

 

Difficulties range from piss easy Beginner all the way to super punishing Extreme that amps up enemies stats, takes quality of life comforts away and generally makes the enemies a hell of a lot smarter and precise. The last boss is an ok fight against a shield generator and a really big gun flanked by support tanks, not terribly creative but it gets the job done. The trophy list is reasonable for the most part, typical gathering, farming kills, difficulties, unlock tanks, noteworthy is the one for extreme difficulty and not dying in a hard campaign, these ones take considerable practice and some luck. The one that is entirely unreasonable is the silver for data grinding, which can definitely be considered a platinum breaker due to how little progress will be there by the time all other trophies are done. Someone who is just into some casual fun may feel free to play this game, preferably with some friends, though going for the platinum is something that is worth carefully considering, as the grind is quite massive and not the afk kind of grind like in some other games. There is also classic mode, which was a lot of fun too even if it did not reward the player with any trophies.

 

Positives

+++really fun to play

+++TANKS

+++challenging and rewarding

++plenty of replay value due to variety of tanks and gear

++multiplayer is not forced upon the player like in Shellshock for example

++ good and fitting soundtrack

+natural progression via gradual weapon and tank unlock

+classic side mode is a blast

 

Negatives

---extremely grindy completion

--bad rng can end high difficulty runs

-- basically nothing in terms of story and characters

- nemesis has potential to block progression

 

 

Next game: Goetia

Goetia is an indie puzzle game that looked like a nice little break in between two tougher games. I choose it next for some easier progress given the difficulty and length of Battlezone. I will not start it this year though as I have decided to take the rest of the year of from trophy hunting, partially to recover from the grind but also because the holidays and the time in between will be pretty busy this year anyway, so I think it is better to wait until January to continue working on my list. Given the short length of Goetia I will likely complete it in one go, then post an update about its completion and pick a bigger game next that I have yet to decide.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Been quite a while since I posted here. My break lasted a bit longer than expected, and when I came back to playing in February I forgot to update here, and I started with Deep Rock Galactic, the biggest grind game on my to do list, instead of Goetia like I originally planned because someone talked me into playing DRG legit with a full 4 man (dwarf) team, so I accepted. Given that this went to shit in record time, it was mainly down to me not really feeling motivated to update, but I have this thread so I might as well do it now that I finally went and finished Goetia.

 

Finished game: Goetia

Indie puzzle game, expectations weren't too high here, but I am still kinda let down. You are a floating soul orb of a young girl who died long ago and is trying to find out what happened to her, and to her family who clearly kept on living for several decades without her. Searching for clues in the ruins of her massive old home, there is occult stuff everywhere, some demons, a massive bird, which were all fine, but then parallel universe bs came into play and I noped out of that story, because the moment any story adds that shit I will usually refuse to keep following it given that it is almost never done well. I was already struggling to stay in the story at that point anyway, as most of it was told via text that was written in atrocious old handwriting and therefore hard to decipher at times, and most of it was about characters you never got to see, so it was hard to care really.

 

Game was not overly long, puzzles were reasonable for the most part, story seemed convoluted and have two unhappy ends from what I understood, ok little indie game, perhaps more if people are into these kind of stories, mainly bought it because it was dirt cheap to begin with.

 

Now for the big elephant in the room.

 

Ongoing game: Deep Rock Galactic

 

As I mentioned, I was baited into starting this game much earlier than I wanted to with the promise of 3 other people playing it with me for the full, intended team playing experience. That did not really work, we had like 1 session, two guys were noping out right after due to being suddenly busy with other shit (online shutdowns), and the third guy really hated the game, so that was dead in the water 2-3 hours in. We only played together again weeks later to get the 4 man trophies out of the way, other than that I was, and still am, playing on my own, and not too happy about it, because had I known this to be the case before then I would not have started this massive grindfest so early after the Battlezone grind, lesson learned though.

 

About the game. I have played this game solo for weeks now, and while I disliked it in the beginning for the various issues it had and how little it explained to the player, it really grew on my by now, more experience certainly makes it all around more enjoyable, even when playing it solo instead of with other players. You play a dwarf working for a corrupt and insatiably greedy mining company that sends you to do dangerous jobs in which you have to fulfill objectives, like collecting resources, finding and fixing lost machines, building a refinery, escorting a big drilling machine etc, while trying to survive against the local alien wildlife. The missions all go the same pretty much, you get dropped off, you scout the caves and get resources on the way while dealing with the occasional alien, you find the objectives during which swarms of aliens will come after your beards, you often have a big standoff to achieve the objective, and then you call the escape pod and try to make it there (random location anywhere in the caves) in time while aliens endlessly come for you.

 

There are 4 classes with different equipment.

Driller. The guy with the massive drills, digs tunnels much faster than the others and likes to play with fire and explosives, good at fighting but has a lot of friendly fire going, also not very mobile. Great for refinery mission and good for all fighting missions.

Engineer. Moderate weapons, but makes up for it with auto cannons and the ability to create platforms to help the team get around. Good at fighting and securing areas, good mobility, a great allrounder who is pretty good at every mission except refining.

Gunner. Heavy weapons. This guy is mainly about killing stuff with big guns while also protecting the team with shields, fighting is all he does, and he is great at it, he kinda sucks at everything else though, his mobility zip line is rather situational and he is perhaps the class that has it the hardest when playing solo given that he only performs well in pure fighting missions.

Scout. Fast as hell, super mobile so he can get anywhere, can lighten up the areas, all good, but he really sucks at fighting with his base weapons, great for any mission that does not include heavy fighting.

 

Each class has base weapons that are upgradeable, bonus weapons that are upgradeable, unique overclocks that give special bonuses, and of course unique armor skins and beards. The game has many funny references in it, you can get drunk before you go on missions or get special bonuses from certain drinks, there are plenty of side activities like machine events and the ongoing lithophage event (badly implemented given that it can randomly ruin missions if unlucky), and various difficulties.

 

I have unlocked 60% of the games overall trophies after 5 weeks of playing it quite a bit, but I am nowhere near the platinum at the moment. Why? Well after getting a few more "kill x bosses" trophies and the like, and after getting the trophies for hazard 5 and elite dives, which is going to get quite difficult, I still have the grinding trophies  to do, which will easily be another 200+ hours given that, after I started the game, the developers fixed a rather well known xp exploit that allowed the games platinum estimation time of merely 300 hours, which is quite outdated now that this exploit has been fixed, so I will have to grind the promotions the hard(er) way, lucky me, platinum was already grindy and difficult enough to have sub 1% even with the exploits.

 

Given how long it will take and that I am not too enthusiastic about powering through another long ass grind so soon after Battlezone, I decided to, for now, focus on all trophies that are not grind related, and the moment I got these out of the way I choose another game to play as the main game, and I will just play Deep Rock Galactic on the side to keep making steady progress and not get burned out from it, as the grind is really long. I will most likely play a few shorter games first, and then go for a medium length one, putting a bit more focus on DRG for a few days after each completion, then see how far I am and decide from there. The smaller game preference is mainly to make some more progress, as I am annoyed at this point to still creep around in the low 70% completion due to choosing the grindiest games before the faster ones.

[Dauersack]

Progress update: Deep Rock Galactic

 

The difficulty related trophies turned out to be more difficult than I thought, with them also requiring luck when it came to overclock progression, which is why I did a lot of grinding already while waiting for lucky overclock upgrades and an easier deep dive rotation. Both the trophies that demanded several hazard 5 difficulty runs in a row to succeed, as well as a flawless one and of course the dreaded Elite Deep Dive gold trophy are now finally out of the way, meaning I only have the promotion grind trophies and the 500 mission one ahead of me. The high difficulties can be pretty unfair in this game at times, and with the caves getting randomized for each individual mission it can sometimes feel like some missions are doomed from the start, so there certainly was a lot of frustration involved, but also a lot of feel good moments when finally nailing one of the tougher challenges.

 

I grew to like the game a lot more overall in recent weeks, both when it came to playing it and interacting with other players, and despite it definitely having some flaws and a rough learning curve it at some point just wins you over massively, despite the grind certainly taking its toll. I will do a considerable amount of the grind solo over the next few weeks, occasionally playing with others for some diversion, and of course play another game as my main game just as I planned in order to not overdose after I already played so much DRG, then when the upcoming game is finished I will get the rest of the DRG grind done in one go, which is why I decided for my main game to be a decently long one as well. I already stated that I am unhappy with the slow progress on my completion due to me choosing one long game after the other, and I know I will get more annoyed by this with my next choice, but the trophy numbers perfectly align to get the clean up platinum of the game after that (Jotun) as a milestone, so I will bear with it for a while longer, but I will definitely get a few of the easier and quicker ones out of the way once I am done with the next 3 games.

 

Upcoming game: Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning

 

Good old fantasy RPG with the typical creatures in it. I liked this game when I played it to unlock a trophy in order to get itt onto the trophy list, it looked good and the gameplay was fun, so I am hyped to finally play it for real. I have absolutely no clue about its background, story, lore, never played the original so I am going in fresh, game is long enough to keep me busy for a good while as I continue to chip away at DRG.