Popular Post pelagia14 Posted April 23, 2023 Popular Post Share Posted April 23, 2023 (edited) TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction Game Rankings Platinumed Games Musings Uncompleted Games Community Events INTRODUCTION: 🏆 Why make a trophy cabinet thread now? I’ve been tracking my gaming backlog and trophy progress with a spreadsheet for over a year but recently realized that the one thing it does not provide is a good way to recall how I felt about a game while it was still fresh in my memory. The other main reason I am making this is to help me become more involved with this community that I have been lurking in. Trophy cabinet threads by the likes of Cassylvania, DrBloodMoney, and RealM722 have helped me decide to play games I was curious about (like Inscryption) or put games onto my radar that I hadn’t heard of before (like Invisible Inc. and The Forgotten City). ⭐ Goals of this cabinet: Create a visually aesthetic display of the games I’ve completed Document my memories and experiences of the games I enjoy Potentially help anyone with very similar tastes to find new games Interact with the community more (Hopefully improve my writing skills over time!) 🎮 Brief “About Me as a Gamer”: I will play games from pretty much any genre. However, in this cabinet you won’t find very many FPS, Racing, or Fighting games. I won’t say never, though, as my many hundreds of hours of Destiny 2 proves that there can always be exceptions! I’ve accepted that I’m never going to have a 100% completion rate on my account. While I might not be skilled enough to beat some games on their hardest modes for a platinum, I’m not going to let that prevent me from experiencing a great or unique game. Also, if a game is fun I’ll consider getting the DLC, but if I have a platinum I don’t also *need* 100% if the DLC doesn’t interest me. There are a few series that I adore (such as Final Fantasy and Resident Evil), and one that I feel obligated to see through at this point (Assassin’s Creed). I have that odd mix of wanting 50h+ deep, immersive games but also wanting games that appreciate my time and that I can beat in a single sitting or weekend. At least anecdotally, it seems like there are a lot of other Millennials out there who feel the same way. I am not deterred by games with lots of collectibles. Yes, I want Ubisoft and many other devs to make more compelling open-world games (for example: Ghosts of Tsushima!). But until that happens, there is the ADHD part of me that makes color-coded spreadsheets to track my progress gathering all of a game’s items since checking things off a list fires up the dopamine in my brain. I love playing games that are challenging (but not painfully so), games that are chill, and games (often indie) that truly demonstrate how videogames are a unique medium of art. I started getting more serious about trophy hunting somewhere around 2019? I wish there was an option to turn off autopopping trophies. The few autopops that I have are PS4 games that I truly wanted to experience a second time via their PS5 upgraded versions, and I wish I could have genuinely re-earned their trophy lists. However I also understand some people not wanting to go through that process a second time, so it’s a bummer that Sony is unlikely to implement some sort of toggle feature. Edited April 15 by pelagia14 fixed grammar; added emojis for pizzazz 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post pelagia14 Posted April 23, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 23, 2023 (edited) NOTE: Games are listed alphabetically within each tier by PS5 then PS4/PS3. 10 - FAVORITES 9 - AMAZING 8 - FANTASTIC 7 - Great! 6 - Tons of Fun! 5 - Decent! 4 - Alright 3 - Neutral 2 - Disliked 1 - Regrets NEED TO RANK: Edited December 30, 2023 by pelagia14 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted April 23, 2023 Author Share Posted April 23, 2023 (edited) Platinum trophies below are listed alphabetically (though entries within a series are chronological). 11-11: Memories Retold [Plat #79, Review] AER: Memories of Old [Plat #71, Review] Apotheon [Plat #6] Aspire: Ina's Journey [Plat #86, Review] Assassin's Creed II [Plat #2] Assassin's Creed: Revelations [Plat #11] Assassin's Creed III [Plat #10] Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag [Plat #9] Assassin's Creed: Rogue [Plat #8] Assassin's Creed: Unity [Plat #4] Assassin's Creed: Syndicate [Plat #13] Assassin's Creed: Origins [Plat #19] Assassin's Creed: Odyssey [Plat #25] Assassin's Creed: Valhalla [Plat #51] Assassin's Creed: Mirage [Plat #106, Review] Astro's Playroom [Plat #31] A Short Hike [Plat #94, Review] Batman: The Telltale Series [Plat #20] Call of the Sea [Plat #113, Review] Chants of Sennaar [Plat #102, Review] Chicory [Plat #82, Review] Concrete Genie [Plat #78, Review] Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion [Plat #63] Dead Island [Plat #5] Death Stranding [Plat #39] Destiny 2 [Plat #26, PS5 Autopop #42] Divination [Plat #64] Donut County [Plat #73, Review] Dragon Age: Inquisition [Plat #23] Dragon Age: Origins [Plat #46] Energy Cycle [Plat #65] Ether One [Plat #43] Everybody's Gone To The Rapture [Plat #18] Final Fantasy I [Plat #87, Review] Final Fantasy II [Plat #89, Review] Final Fantasy III [Plat #91, Review] Final Fantasy IV [Plat #93, Review] Final Fantasy V [Plat #95, Review] Final Fantasy VI [Plat #97, Review] Final Fantasy VII [Plat #27] Final Fantasy VII Remake [Plat #29, PS5 Autopop #40] Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age [Plat #15] Final Fantasy XIII [Plat #45] Final Fantasy XIII-2 [Plat #21] Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns: [Plat #22] Final Fantasy XV [Plat #28] Ghost of Tsushima [Plat #30, PS5 Autopop #38] God of War [Plat #50] God of War Ragnarök [Plat #55] Gorogoa [Plat #81, Review] Gris [Plat #33] Hades [Plat #100, Review] Heavy Rain [Plat #37] Hogwarts Legacy [Plat #68] Horizon Zero Dawn [Plat #17] Horizon Forbidden West [Plat #44] Humanity [Plat #120] Hypnospace Outlaw [Plat #122] Inscryption [Plat #85, Review] It Takes Two [Plat #121] Killer Frequency [Plat #112, Review] L.A. Noire [Plat #34] Life is Strange [Plat #12] Life is Strange: True Colors [Plat #88, Review] Lost Ember [Plat #83, Review] Mass Effect [Plat #32, Review | Legendary Edition Plat #98, Review] Mass Effect 2 [Plat #35, Review | Legendary Edition Plat #101, Review] Mass Effect 3 [Plat #36, Review | Legendary Edition Plat #104, Review] Marvel's Spider-Man [Plat #70, Review] Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales [Plat #75, Review] Marvel's Spider-Man 2 [Plat #110, Review] NieR: Automata [Plat #53] Night in the Woods [Plat #77, Review] No Man's Sky [Plat #57] Ōkami [Plat #1] Outer Wilds [Plat #114, Review: Part 1, Part 2 (Spoilers)] OVIVO [Plat #76, Review] Paradise Killer [Plat #108, Review] PowerWash Simulator [PS5 Plat #67, PS4 Plat #123] Rime [Plat #41] Ratchet & Clank (2016) [Plat #92, Review] Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart [Plat #115, Review] Resident Evil 6 [Plat #3] Rise of the Tomb Raider [Plat #14] Rocket League [Plat #56] Sable [Plat #116] Saltsea Chronicles [Plat #111, Review] Seasons After Fall [Plat #62] Serial Cleaner [Plat #105, Review] Shadow of the Tomb Raider [Plat #24] Shape of the World [Plat #90, Review] Spyro the Dragon [Plat #59] Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! [Plat #60] Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon [Plat #61] Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order [Plat #66] Stray [Plat #49] Superliminal [Plat #118] Tacoma [Plat #52] Tempus [Plat #72, Review] The Banner Saga 1 [Plat #119] The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan [Plat #107, Review] The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope [Plat #109, Review] The Walking Dead [Plat #47] The Mooseman [Plat #80, Review] The Quarry [Plat #103, Review] Theatrhythm [Plat #69] Toem [Plat #74, Review] Transistor [Plat #7] Uncharted: The Lost Legacy [Plat #16] Unpacking [PS5 Plat #58, PS4 Plat #117] Until Dawn [Plat #54] Untitled Goose Game [Plat #96, Review] Virginia [Plat #48] Wytchwood [Plat #84, Review] Yoku's Island Express [Plat #99, Review] Abzû [100% #12] Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry [PS3: 100% #4, PS4: 100% #5] Dear Esther: Landmark Edition [100% #13] Fez [100% #3] Firewatch [100% #9] Gone Home [100% #7] Hue [100% #16] Inside [100% #8] Journey [100% #1] Mass Effect: Legendary Edition [100% #16; Reviews: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3] Never Alone [100% #6] PlayStation Home [100% #2] Rain [100% #10] SOMA [100% #14] The Unfinished Swan [100% #11] The Vanishing of Ethan Carter [100% #15] Edited April 15 by pelagia14 Updated to Platinum #123 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted April 23, 2023 Author Share Posted April 23, 2023 (edited) Assassin's Creed Retrospective: Part I Preservation of Gaming Memories: My Outer Wilds Experience [massive spoilers!] Edited April 15 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted April 23, 2023 Author Share Posted April 23, 2023 (edited) NEED TO FINISH: NEED TO FINISH, TENTATIVELY SCORED: 10 - FAVORITES 9 - AMAZING 8 - FANTASTIC 7 - Great! 6 - Tons of Fun! 5 - Interesting! 4 - Decent 3 - Neutral 2 - Disliked 1 - Regrets UNABLE TO CURRENTLY RANK: These are primarily PS3 games because: (A) most of their online servers are dead now, and/or (B) I wasn't able to get certain achievements in 2022 when I did my final PS3 trophy cleanup before selling the console. 10 - FAVORITES 9 - AMAZING 8 - FANTASTIC 7 - Great! 6 - Tons of Fun! 5 - Interesting! 4 - Decent 3 - Neutral 2 - Disliked 1 - Regrets NEED TO RANK: IMPOSSIBLE TO EARN PLATINUM TROPHIES: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (No online servers) Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (OG Trophy List is now unavailable) LittleBigPlanet 2 (No online servers) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (No online servers) Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (No online servers) Edited April 15 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted April 24, 2023 Author Share Posted April 24, 2023 (edited) I also want to highlight the incredibly inventive and fantastically fun Community Events and Project Platinums I have/am participating in. They’ve helped me find fun ways to tackle my backlog, and even allowed me to discover some good game recommendations! 2023 CHALLENGES: Trophies for Mental Health III Spoiler Event Badge (created by me): Chosen Game: Chicory Event Post Bonus Game - Outdoors: Lost Ember Event Post Gaming for the Animals 2: The Squeakquel Spoiler Personal Contenders for Animal Votes: Post + Facts Event Badge (created by MissShake): Game #1: Ratchet & Clank | Post + Photos Vote: Snow Leopard Game #2: A Short Hike | Post + Photos Vote: Snow Leopard Game #3: Final Fantasy V | Post + Photos Vote: Red Panda Game #4: Untitled Goose Game | Post + Trivia Vote: Red Panda Game #5: Final Fantasy VI | Post Vote: Red Panda Trophies And Relief Doctors Involving Struggle {TARDIS} Spoiler Event Badge (created by DrBloodmoney): 6th Doctor | Detective/Mystery Games: Chants of Sennaar 11th Doctor | Games with Optional Romance: Mass Effect Hades Mass Effect 2 I Know What You Did Last 13 Plats of Halloween Spoiler Committed to: Mass Effect 2 Mass Effect 3 💯 Mass Effect: Legendary Edition The Quarry Serial Cleaner Man of Medan (DPA) Little Hope (DPA) Paradise Killer Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Alan Wake - 28% Progress Killer Frequency - 37% Progress House of Ashes (DPA) - 0% Outer Wilds - 0% Final Post International Hunting Day 2023 Spoiler Event Badge (created by me): Trophy contribution Trophies to Fight Cancer 2023 Spoiler Event Badge (created by DrBloodmoney): ORANGE GAMES: Saltsea Chronicles Call of the Sea Outer Wilds PINK GAMES: Paradise Killer Killer Frequency Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge! 2023 [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler Card #1 - Completed on 23 June 2023 Night in the Woods Chicory The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Spyro: Year of the Dragon Marvel's Spider-Man Final Fantasy II Inscryption Life is Strange: True Colors Spyro the Dragon PowerWash Simulator AER: Memories of Old Gorogoa Donut County Concrete Genie Toem Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Card #2: - Completed on 02 October 2023 Final Fantasy Aspire: Ina's Journey Wytchwood A Short Hike Mass Effect: Legendary Edition Shape of the World Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy V Final Fantasy IV Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion Final Fantasy III Yoku's Island Express Seasons After Fall Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 11-11: Memories Retold Card #3 - Completed on 29 December 2023 OVIVO Chants of Sennaar Serial Cleaner Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Superliminal Killer Frequency Paradise Killer HUMANITY Mass Effect 1: Legendary Edition Untitled Goose Game Man of Medan (Dark Pictures Anthology) Sable Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition The Mooseman Hades Card #4 - Incomplete Tempus Saltsea Chronicles Little Hope Outer Wilds The Banner Saga Unpacking Divination Spyro 3: Ripto's Rage [TBD] Assassin's Creed: Mirage Ratchet & Clank (2016) Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart [TBD] Call of the Sea [TBD] The Quarry Bingo Bonanza 2023 Spoiler [B1] With Online Features: Serial Cleaner [B2] That You Can Beat in One Sitting: Tempus [B3] Featuring a Romance Story/Romance Options: Life is Strange [B4] Strategy, Simulation, or Management: PowerWash Simulator [B5] Frightening/Horror: The Quarry [I1] With Gorgeous Vistas: Lost Ember [I2] Based on a Non-Gaming IP: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order [I3] For Another PSNP Event: AER: Memories of Old [I4] In-Game Weather Effects: Hogwarts Legacy [I5] Last Game You Acquired: Aspire: Ina's Tale [N1] No Jump Button: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion [N2] Has No Humans: Seasons After Fall [N3] Player's Choice: Mass Effect 2 - Legendary Edition [N4] Cult Favorite: Inscryption [N5] That Takes 'Forever' to Beat: Hades [G1] Spawned an Extended Universe: Ratchet & Clank [G2] Starts With the First Letter of Your PSNID (P): Paradise Killer [G3] Has Snacks: Donut County [G4] Developed in a Foreign Country: Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line [G5] Retro Re-release (Originally Without Trophies): Spyro the Dragon [O1] With an Isometric View: Toem [O1] Ultra Rare Plat: The Banner Saga 1 [O3] That You Meant to Play Last Year: Mass Effect 1 - Legendary Edition [O4] That "Everyone" But You Has Played: Marvel's Spider-Man [O5] With Mystery or Detective Themes: Man of Medan EVERGREEN CHALLENGES: Platinum Every Genre Challenge [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler GENRES & THEMES: 4X: (Sid Meier's Civilization 6?) Action: Horizon Zero Dawn Adventure: God of War Ragnarok Arcade: (Rogue Legacy?) Business: PowerWash Simulator Card & Board Game: Inscryption Comedy: Okami HD Drama: Life is Strange Educational: The Mooseman Fantasy: Nier Automata Fighting: Destiny 2 Hack and slash/Beat 'em up: Dead Island Historical: Apotheon Horror: Resident Evil 6 Indie: Gris Kids: Toem Music: Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line Mystery: Tacoma Non-fiction: Unpacking Open world: Marvel's Spider-Man Party: Gorogoa Pinball: Yoku's Island Express Platform: Astro's Playroom Point-and-click: Batman: The Telltale Series Puzzle: Rime Quiz/Trivia: TBD Racing: Sable Real-Time Strategy (RTS): (Grand Ages Medieval?) Role-playing (RPG): Mass Effect 2 Romance: Life is Strange: True Colors Sandbox: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag Science fiction: Death Stranding: Director's Cut Shooter: Uncharted: The Lost Legacy Simulator: No Man's Sky Sport: Rocket League Stealth: Ghost of Tsushima Strategy: Transistor Survival: Rise of the Tomb Raider Tactical: Dragon Age Inquisition Thriller: Heavy Rain Turn-based strategy (TBS): Final Fantasy VII Visual Novel: Paradise Killer *Warfare: L.A. Noire *The PS3 Version (that I have platinumed) does not list this theme, but the PS4 Version does. Project Platinum: Final Fantasy [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler BADGES: COMPLETED: Final Fantasy I Final Fantasy II Final Fantasy III Final Fantasy IV Final Fantasy V Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VII (OG) Final Fantasy VII Remake Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age Final Fantasy XIII Final Fantasy XIII-2 Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Final Fantasy XV Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line IN PROGRESS: (hopefully) Final Fantasy X Final Fantasy X-2 Final Fantasy XV: Comrades TO-DO LIST: Final Fantasy VI Remake: Intermission Final Fantasy VIII Final Fantasy IX Final Fantasy XV: A King's Tale Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins Final Fantasy XVI A-Z Platinum Club [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler A-Z GAME # 11-11: Memories Retold A Assassin's Creed: Black Flag B Batman: The Telltale Series C Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion D Death Stranding: Director's Cut E Everybody's Gone to the Rapture F Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age G God of War Ragnarök H Horizon Zero Dawn I Inscryption J - K Killer Frequency L LA Noire M Mass Effect 3 - Legendary Edition N Nier: Automata O Okami HD P Powerwash Simulator Q - R Resident Evil 6 S Shadow of the Tomb Raider T Transistor U Uncharted: The Lost Legacy V Virginia W Wytchwood X - Y Yoku's Island Express Z - % - . A-Z Platinum Title Trophy Club [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler PLATINUM NAME GAME # 100% 11-11: Memories Retold A A Symphony of Horror Until Dawn B Be Greater Marvel's Spider-Man C Champion of Ivalice FF12 The Zodiac Age D Don't Ruin the Moment Uncharted: The Lost Legacy E Earn Them All! Assassin's Creed: Origins F Final Words NieR: Automata G God of Blood Hades H Hey There Card Gamers Inscryption I Investigation Freak Paradise Killer J - - K - - L Living Legend Ghost of Tsushima M My Living Legacy Crisis Core - FFVII Reunion N N7 Elite Mass Effect 2 O Omnipotence Apotheon P Plat() Transistor Q - - R Ride The Chariot Night in the Woods S Spotless Serial Cleaner T The Bear and the Wolf God of War Ragnarök U Ultimate Hero Final Fantasy XIII V Viking Legend Assassin's Creed Valhalla W What Doesn't Kill You... The Quarry X - - Y You've Only Done Everything Astro's Playroom Z - - % - - A-Z Non Platinum Club [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler A-Z GAME # - A Abzû B - C - D Dear Esther: Landmark Edition E - F Firewatch G Gone Home H - I Inside J Journey K - L - M Mass Effect: Legendary Edition N Never Alone O - P PlayStation Home Q - R Rain S SOMA T The Vanishing of Ethan Carter U - V - W - X - Y - Z - A-Z Protagonist Platinum Club [IN PROGRESS] Spoiler # - 2B | NieR Automata A - Amaterasu | Ōkami B - Mae Borowksi | Night in the Woods C - Claire | A Short Hike D - Lady Love Dies | Paradise Killer E - Evie Frye | Assassin's Creed: Syndicate F - Chloe Frazer | Uncharted: The Lost Legacy G - Gris | Gris H I - Ina | Aspire: Ina's Journey J - Joel Miller | The Last of Us K - Kassandra | Assassin's Creed: Odyssey L - Lara Croft | Shadow of the Tomb Raider M - Max Caulfield | Life is Strange N - Norah | Call of the Sea O P - Pizza | Chicory Q R - Red | Transistor S - Cmdr. Shepard | Mass Effect 2 T - Anne Tarver | Virginia U V - Eivor Varinsdottir | Assassin's Creed: Valhalla W - Ada Wong | Resident Evil 6 X - Xian Mei | Dead Island Y - Yoku | Yoku's Island Z - Zagreus | Hades No Name - Hearthian | Outer Wilds . Edited December 30, 2023 by pelagia14 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted April 24, 2023 Author Share Posted April 24, 2023 (edited) Full Backlog: Spreadsheet PS+ Catalog Games: Spoiler Celeste Dandara: Trials of Fear Deliver Us the Moon Detroit: Become Human Erica Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Classic Edition Far Cry 4 Far Cry 5 Far Cry New Dawn Final Fantasy VIII Remastered Final Fantasy IX Remastered Haven (?) Humanity I Am Dead Immortals Fenyx Rising (?) inFamous First Light inFamous Second Son It Takes Two Jett: The Far Shore Kena: Bridge of Spirits (?) Lake Life is Strange 2 Life is Strange: Before the Storm LittleBigPlanet 3 Maneater Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy MINIT (?) Omno Prey Rain World (?) Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Returnal Sackboy: A Big Adventure (?) Slay the Spire Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition Stellaris (?) Surviving Mars (?) Tchia (?) Tetris Effect: Connected (?) The Artful Escape The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan The Forgotten City (?) The Gardens Between The Pedestrian The Quarry Yakuza 6: The Song of Life Yakuza: Like a Dragon Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission Ghost of Tsushima: Legends God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye Spoiler Bold = Definite Wishlist 2064: Read Only Memories Age of Wonders 4 Alan Wake 2 ANNO: Mutationem Armored Core 6 (8/26/2023) Ash of Gods [Review] Citizen Sleeper Control Coccoon Curious Expedition 2 [Review] Dead Space Remake Dead Island 2 [only when on sale] Deliver Us Mars Déraciné Death's Door Dredge Final Fantasy XVI (6/22/2023) Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth Ghost Song Hardspace: Shipbreaker Hauntii Heaven's Vault Hyper Light Drifter Invisible Inc. [Review] Like a Dragon: Isshin Marvel's Midnight Suns Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Moonscars Neva Nobody Saves the World [Review] Norco Octopath Traveler 2 OneShot Potion Permit Psychonauts 2 Resident Evil 4 Remake Rollerdrome Season: A Letter to the Future [Review] Signalis Stray Gods (8/3/2023) Sword of the Sea Tales of Arise The Last of Us: Part II The Plucky Squire The Swapper Towers of Aghasba (2024) Tunic Unsighted Ultros Venba [Review] Viewfinder Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair . Edited December 13, 2023 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post pelagia14 Posted May 9, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 9, 2023 (edited) Alright, time to stop worrying about having a perfect trophy cabinet thread done in chronological order and with deep, well-written insights everywhere. I need to just start posting stuff, and eventually I'll find my groove on things. So let's hop straight to a longer write-up at Platinum #70, when I started writing down notes on some of the games I was playing in anticipation of making this thread! Platinum #70 | Marvel's Spider-Man Developer: Insomniac Games, 2018 Country: USA Time Played: 70h (includes all DLCs) Platinum Earned: 22 March 2023 Rating: 9/10 GAME THOUGHTS: I feel like Insomnia Games truly understood the character of Peter Parker, and they did a phenomenal job making almost every mechanic in the game relevant to who he is. Sure, some elements were a bit weaker than others, but the game never throws something in without finding a way to tie it into Peter's character or the narrative. I'm a huge sucker for games with a photo mode. At least a solid hour of my gameplay was probably just messing around with photo mode throughout my playthroughs, and I easily have at least 50 screenshots that I took in the mode. In addition, my 'true' game time played is probably closer to 60h, since I'm the type of person who will leave the game on a pause menu while I cook dinner or get a phone call. NARRATIVE Here is the part where I clarify that while I'm a big fan of the character Spider-Man, I'm not a comic purist who has read hundreds of print issues. I've certainly seen the Sam Raimi movies and the MCU, but most of my knowledge of Peter Parker actually comes from various animated series over the years and general fandom. With that disclaimer out of the way, I think they did an excellent job writing the main characters here. I was also very impressed by how fluid and realistic the dialogue was. In a lot of games, dialogue basically either conveys world-building information or plot-advancing information, and there isn't a lot that just focuses on conveying who the characters are. Insomniac Games seemed to make a point of including either at the beginning or end of cutscenes a lot of the small banter between characters that we often see in things like TV shows, which I really enjoyed. One moment of dialogue that really stood out to me in the game was when Peter was texting with MJ after the big Grand Central Terminal mission. MJ sends a text (I forgot exactly what), and then Peter says "What do you mean you need more time?!". After a moment of frustrated indecisiveness, Peter decides to try to save face and responds "Yeah, me too". It was so realistic to how people dating (or 'not'-dating) will struggle to understand a text message about their relationship but are too afraid to ask for clarification. I can see why a lot of people would get annoyed at the length and amount of cutscenes in this game, but I absolutely love good characterization and character growth, so there were only one or two moments where I was a bit impatient to get back into action. While part of me wanted to just mainline the story so that I could unlock all the power-ups and side missions to efficiently mop up collectibles at the end, thematically it worked really well that at the end of major missions, Peter would want to "catch up" on local crime. Insomniac understood that while we gamers love the epic, bombastic missions, Spider-Man as a superhero was always about the little guy - 'Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man', after all! The Thug Crimes were very repetitive (and gosh you need to do so many of them for the platinum), but the small side quests had unique storylines. One that comes to mind is the woman who birdwatches in Central Park and reported suspicious activity that turned out to be criminals attempting to hack into the Central Park wifi. In my opinion, there are two important factors to any good Spider-Man story. The first is an emphasis on his being a local superhero, as previously mentioned. Spider-Man will help save the world in big team-ups, sure, but the next day he is back to fighting crime in the streets and alleyways of Queens. The other element vital to any good Spider-Man story is that Peter's heroism in saving other people comes at a great personal cost. (Which is something the MCU failed to truly understand until No Way Home, but I digress.) SPOILERS--- (only for people not super familiar with Spider-Man's biggest villains): The narrative arc in this game between Peter Parker and Dr. Otto Octavius was so well done. Most gamers know from the start of the game that Dr. Octavius is going to turn into a villain. Insomniac did a fantastic job showing how Dr. Octavius truly was a role model, an inspiration to Peter. By the end of the main story, even though we all knew it was going to end up with Spider-Man facing off against Doc Ock, you can feel how truly devastated Peter is with having to take down someone he looked up to and viewed as a father figure. This is already a huge personal cost to Peter, but Insomniac upped it even further with his chance to save [person] or the entire city at the very end. And while we are talking about spoilers, damn Insomniac spoiled us by bringing out so many players from Spider-Man's rogues' gallery. Most developers would go "Let's have a main plot Villain and maybe 2 side-plot villains at most". Instead, Insomniac was like... "What if we have 5 supervillains escape from The Raft. Oh, and that'll only happen in the *third* Act." Look at this list: Kingpin, Mister Negative, Doc Ock, Vulture, Electro, Rhino, Scorpion, Tombstone, Silver Sable, Black Cat (though mostly in DLC), Hammerhead (via DLC), Screwball, Taskmasker, Shocker, plus Norman Osbourne pre-Goblin. Granted, Peter doesn't directly fight all of them, but Insomniac wasn't pulling the "oh we have to save a bunch of villains for cash cow sequels". And it's not like the supervillains would coordinate to make sure their schemes don't overlap. This is something that can't be expressed as well in comics, TV, or movies due to the limitations of those forms of media, and it really helps bring the world of Spider-Man alive. --- END SPOILERS I don't have too much to say about the DLCs, except that I felt they decreased in narrative quality in each installment, and a lot of the generic side missions felt extremely repetitive by that point. It didn't help that I basically played the entire game plus DLCs plus NG+ over the course of two weeks. I should have taken a bit of a breather between the platinum and the DLC titles, but sometimes I fall into a tunnel-vision trap of "must completely finish game before moving to the next one", and my enjoyment of the DLCs was definitely impacted by my fatigue at that point. GAME MECHANICS Traversal in this game was an absolute delight. I won't lie, it took me probably a half hour to get the hang of web-slinging, and probably twice as long to really understand Point Launch once I unlocked that. The controls aren't complicated or poorly explained either - just didn't click right away for some reason. But oh boy, once they did click in my head I truly felt like Spider-Man when I traveled the city - factoring in my speed and momentum as I planned how to get from Point A to Point B. This feels terribly shameful to admit, but I'm someone who often takes heavy advantage of fast travel in a game. I love taking in a gorgeous, detailed environment, but I'm also just a highly impatient person. However, I was surprised to discover that I was having so much fun with web-slinging in this game that I only pulled out my map to fast travel if I needed to travel more than say, 40% of the map to reach my destination. I already mentioned that the Thug Crimes were super repetitive. It wouldn't have been so bad if you only had to do 1 crime per district, or maybe 20 crimes total for a trophy. But with... I think 9? districts, each requiring 5 Thug Crimes, that equals 45 Thug Crimes to get the platinum! And even more if you play the DLCs. This almost brought the game down to an 8/10 score from me, but in a weird way, it is almost a metaphor for how crime is never-ending and often not very original. If I were trying to give these games a less biased ranking I would definitely score it an 8/10, but my personal experience with the game was a 9/10. I enjoyed some of the simple scientific 'puzzles' in the game - fixing frequency wavelengths, solving spectrograph fragments, and repairing broken circuits in Otto's lab. It's not the most riveting gameplay, but since they are short and fairly easy to solve, they provide a nice change of pace every once in a while. It also goes to literally showing how Peter is incredibly intelligent in various scientific disciplines. Another side activity tied into Peter Parker is the Landmark Collectibles, since he used to take photos for the Daily Bugle. It was fun getting to find locations from other Marvel series like the Sanctum Sanctorum, Wakandan Embassy, Alias Investigation, and The Bar With No Name. I didn't even realize there were secret photo ops in the game as well, until I took randomly took a photo of a street mural of Vulture. Now to the much-discussed forced stealth missions. Before I played the game, I thought MJ was the only side character to have these forced stealth missions from how often people complained about hers. The stealth mission I had the hardest time with was actually one from the other character since there wasn't always a clear linear path of where to go. I honestly didn't mind them for the most part, especially since the checkpoints for failure were very frequently placed. At the same time, it's possible that was addressed via patch long after the game's release. They weren't the most exciting moments of gameplay, for sure, but I did appreciate that they were trying to showcase MJ's investigative journalism skills and her contributions toward taking the villains down. Granted, the scenarios kept getting more and more implausible, with the most egregious one being in Act 2 when MJ was trying to sneak past armed-and-armored guards! I was totally fine with the Auction House and Grand Central Terminal ones though, since they made plenty of sense for a civilian to be in. Finally, Photo Mode! Any basic photo mode that lets me move the camera around and snap photos already makes me happy. Throw in filters and some fancy options like aperture and brightness and I get really excited. I thought it was really cool that they include some 'frames' that make your screenshots look like the cover of the Daily Bugle or a comic book. I can't remember if comic book sound-effect "stickers" were available in photo mode for this game or just for Miles Morales' entry, but either way they brought a lot of fun comic-book elements to photo mode in this game! (I didn't use a lot of them, but still cool to see it in there.) FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Cat Prints Trophy Moment: Grounded Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted May 15, 2023 Author Share Posted May 15, 2023 (edited) Platinum #71 | AER: Memories of Old Developer: Forgotten Key, 2017 Country: Sweden Time Played: 4h Platinum Earned: 15 March 2023 Rating: 4/10 GAME THOUGHTS: The developer's description for this game is, "Transform into a bird and fly to explore and experience a vibrant world of floating islands in the sky. Venture down into lost ancient ruins where each step leads you closer to the end of the world." Most of the reviews for this game are very positive, and compare it to games that I *did* enjoy like Abzu or Rime. Unfortunately, my experience was the opposite. Exploration should have been a highlight of this game but to me, it was pretty dull for the most part. The story-related temples themselves sometimes had small "lore" pieces you could find - okay, cool. However, to find these little tidbits you have to run down long hallways after long hallways, and there weren't any interesting moments in the environmental design (or even gameplay mechanics like a combat system) to make travelling through the temples very engaging. Sure there are a few very simple "puzzles" in each temple, but I spent so much time being bored walking from point to point that it didn't improve things at all. The "puzzles" were also so simple and linear that it almost feels disingenuous to call them as such. I was frustrated that I wasn't able to fly around the temples in bird form. Yes, it would have made the rudimentary puzzles all the faster to solve, but I also would have spent a lot less time traveling through bland hallways. There wasn't even a vague bullshit explanation provided for why my character Auk was unable to transform inside the temples - not even something like "temple magic interferes with my magic shapeshifting" The open world itself is fairly similar in terms of not really having much of interest to discover or pique my interest. There were a couple of non-story trophies that did let me discover a few unique details (and I love when trophy lists do this!), but I could count those moments on a single hand. Had the world contained stronger environmental storytelling that would have caused me to be curious about its history and culture, I would have been happy to roam around to try and understand the world better. But outside of the areas that contain narrative progression and the aforementioned handful of specific spots with a trophy-related detail, the world of AER was just large stretches of sky to fly through or trees and rocks to run by. The story felt like it didn't have any stakes. At the very start of the game, Auk acquires a lamp and sees some sort of foreboding darkness. For the rest of the game you are constantly warned that The Void is approaching. Supposedly The Void is bad, what with the whole "all-consuming darkness" thing, but I never really felt a sense of looming danger or anything. To me it felt like they had a brainstorming sessions where they created the initial skeleton of a story... and then they never went back to flesh it out. The game also oddly ended immediately with the final conflict. Literally, there was no falling action and conclusion - not even 30 seconds of these fundamental components of story structure, so I was left feeling distinctly unsatisfied with the ending. CONTROLS The flying traversal mechanic is highlighted in all the game's marketing, but I found the controls frustratingly cumbersome and difficult. Occasionally I don't immediately click with a game's controls, but I normally see a progression of my skill level until I finally get the hang of it. I've also played a variety of different flying controls, so I was surprised to have so many issues with it here. I understand that the flying controls in AER are meant to mimic a bird. Turns tend to be wide, banking motions instead of sharp, precision turns. Totally fine. The real problem for me was that there was no way to bank your speed once you are flying fast (even though birds have a way to do this - a way that has been incorporated in many a videogame). My only solution to slow down was to land on the ground in human form, and then start a new flight and avoid increasing my momentum. However, the other issue is that if you start out flying too slowly, you don't have enough air current underneath your wings - so you essentially end up moving at the pace of a snail. I enjoyed transforming into Auk's bird form and flying across long stretches, but once I got to a general area and want to move and explore more precisely I felt hindered by the controls. POSITIVES I always feel a little bad going into detail about the negatives of a non-AAA game (especially one that seems to have a generally positive reception like AER), so time to discuss the things I liked. I really appreciated that you can do the story's three temples in any order that you want. And if you aren't interested in exploring the vast emptiness, then the NPCs tell you where you should go next to progress your quest. I really liked the map's aesthetics and how clouds were represented in a geometric/runic style. The game had a beautiful color palette, and the developers found a good balance between fun, vibrant saturations and more calm, soothing hues. SUMMARY This game felt half-finished to me, unfortunately. I did a small amount of searching online to see if maybe I just completely failed at finding the game's worldbuilding or little secrets, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I think Rime executed this type of game concept in a much better fashion. If you are looking for a super chill platinum that only takes 2-3 hours long, then this might be worth playing. I bought the game on sale for $1.49 USD, and was shocked to find out that it is $15 at full price. Given what the game offers, I think $5 would have been more appropriate. FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Cartographer Trophy Moment: An uninvited guest Screenshots: None Edited June 10, 2023 by pelagia14 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted May 29, 2023 Author Share Posted May 29, 2023 (edited) Platinum #72: Tempus Developer: K148 Game Studio, 2022 Country: SpainTime Played: 2hPlatinum Earned: 25 March 2023Rating: 4/10 GAME THOUGHTS: I first heard of Tempus when I came across it during a Playstation sale. The game's description in the store instantly had me hooked, particularly this excerpt: "TEMPUS is an adventure full of puzzles of varying difficulty, you will see how the scenery changes over thousands and thousands of years. You will witness the impact of time on your island. Throughout 6 levels, you will see how civilization changes over hundreds and hundreds of years." CENTRAL CONCEIT The idea of navigating puzzles in an environment plus how that location changes over the course of different eras is an incredible concept. I thought there would be instances where your knowledge of past "eras" of the location would come up as puzzle solutions in the future. Most of the puzzles you solve are indoors. Okay, I thought that maybe you would see evidence of the building's expansion over time - new floors/wings being added on, the visual aesthetics changing but the floorplan staying consistent, stuff like that. Instead, it felt like in every century/era that you jumped to, people just bulldozed the previous building and built something completely new in its place. The scenery also did not noticeably change with the passage of time - no sapling tree that grew into an ancient, mighty oak. No recognizable landmark that would be build around in various iterations by a supposed civilization. You have the island with trees and water and rocks. And then you have the island with a lot more rocks and some less trees, so maybe you are in a different area? Then apparently all the ice caps on the planet have melted. And then there is a volcano? Granted, the 6 levels span over many, many millenia - and a volcano can form in as little as 10,000 years. But this isn't done in a way that shows how a single spot of geography can change over time, instead more like disconnected pieces of geography. Speaking of people, there isn't ever anyone besides yourself when you are exploring through the levels. Maybe you just happened to stop by at midnight when everyone is asleep, or in the afternoon on a weekend, something like that? Except the very first sentence of the game's description in the PS Store reads "You are the only citizen of TEMPUS, a small island far from civilisation where you live a quiet and carefree life." So, if the island is only inhabited by yourself, how does "civilization chang[e] over hundreds and hundreds of years"? Do aliens come by, wave their space magic technology every once in a while, and then hide away to watch what you do with curiosity? If a developer doesn't want to create a story for their mechanics-driven puzzle game, that's totally fine! Just don't have your game synopsis essentially state that there will be environmental storytelling and evidence of a civilization that is growing/changing over time, if you aren't actually going to deliver that in your game. GAMEPLAY Okay, now that I've ranted enough about how misleading I feel the game's store description is, I actually don't have a ton to say about the game. As I already stated, puzzles in later levels don't ever seem to require knowledge from previous time periods. There were a few puzzles towards the end that I could not figure out, and I needed to look up their solutions after multiple unsuccessful attempts. Not only did I get mentally stuck towards the end, but there were also a few times I became "physically" stuck as well and had to reload to escape it. Annoyingly, you seem to load to the start of the level you are in - there are no checkpoints upon finishing different puzzles within the level. Two specific times I recall having to reload: 1. I decided to take a shortcut and walk down a rocky hillside instead of taking the sloping path that wound around it. I got trapped by a small rock at the bottom of the hillside because there is no jump button, and the hill was too steep to reclimb. 2. I needed to overlay a tablet onto a pedestal thingy for a second time at one point and the tablet glitched out because I guess I put it inside the "hit box" of the pedestal instead of on top of it? Maybe? I didn't do anything different from the first time, but the tablet was stuck inside the pedestal and it was how I was supposed to proceed further. SUMMARY It's possible that I overlooked some hints and clues that would have linked everything together in a cohesive manner. However, while I sometimes miss things that are incredibly obvious in hindsight, the key is that once I see the solution it makes sense in hindsight. That never happened to me here. Overall, I feel like the developers came up with a really interesting premise, but then had no idea how to effectively execute it. Which is a shame, since the idea itself holds so much potential. The game description did not lead me to expect there to be a strong plot or story, but it did get me excited to see some neat environmental narration. Which I did not. I suppose if you see it on sale and want an easy 1-2 hour plat, that is the only circumstance in which I would recommend playing this game. Oh, also a shout-out to the developers creating unique trophy images, which is sadly more than can be said for some much bigger studios... FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Eureka! Edited June 10, 2023 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted May 29, 2023 Author Share Posted May 29, 2023 (edited) Platinum #73 | Donut County Developer: Ben Esposito, 2018 Country: USA Time Played: 2h Platinum Earned: 27 March 2023 Rating: 6/10 GAME THOUGHTS: Well, I probably should have started my Trophy Cabinet with a post like this one, to set expectations lower. 😅 I picked up this game for one main reason: it looked like a cheap, relatively quick-and-easy platinum to get that would meet the Light Green requirement for the PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge. Instead of being the trash platinum I expected, I found this to be a cute and fun game! The story was completely ridiculous and silly (to a point that I would normally find grating), but it really worked for the game - after all, the premise itself is ridiculous and silly! What is the premise, you might ask? You control a hole in the ground that grows larger the more it 'consumes' - almost like an inverse Katamari Damacy. The raccoon BK's inability to understand for so long why his actions were a problem was a bit amusing - he is an animal, after all. I appreciated how there were a few instances where items could be combined in the hole to amusing effect - like creating popcorn by 'consuming' a cob of corn and then a bonfire, or 'consuming' two rabbits which then make many more rabbits. I wish more levels had incorporated fun little gags or creative combinations like these, and the game would have ranked a lot higher for me had it done so. Nevertheless, this is a lighthearted and relaxing platinum to earn on a chill afternoon. FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Donut County (not, surprisingly, the name of the Platinum!) Trophy Moment: Pyro I would not have known that you could set Pepper's trailer on fire without this trophy! Always appreciate trophies that highlight little game moments that could otherwise be easily missed. Screenshots: I totally forgot to take screenshots for most of the game 😅 Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted May 30, 2023 Author Share Posted May 30, 2023 (edited) Platinum #74 | Toem Developer: Something We Made, 2021 Country: Sweden Time Played: 8h Platinum Earned: 6 April 2023 Rating: 6/10 GAME THOUGHTS: AESTHETICS Color is hugely important for me when it comes to videogames. I'm not as fussy as some people when it comes to the fidelity of game graphics, or what kind of art style a game uses - so long as it is done well, of course. Pixel Art, Flat Art, Photorealistic, Cartoon Art, Cel Shading... while I like some of these art styles more than others, I don't think I've ever passed on playing a game due to its art style alone. A game doesn't necessarily need to have bright, vivid colors either (though woah that Marathon trailer at the recent PlayStation showcase, holy shit that was gorgeous). I've been really surprised at how well some games utilize more somber and muted color palettes to the point where I don't instinctually judge it when I come across it now. Embarrassingly, though, I almost passed on TOEM due to its color palette - or rather, lack thereof. I saw that a lot of people were playing TOEM for the PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge and it really is a fantastic image for the Grey slot. Looking through my backlog, there weren't really any better options for me at the time. Thus, I resigned myself to playing through a probably decent game but one with the agony of monochromatism. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my initial impression of the game was completely wrong! GAME The game's premise is that your character is leaving home, armed with a trusty camera, to learn first-hand what the mysterious TOEM phenomena is! In order to reach the phenomena you have to travel to a few locations along the way by bus, and the way to earn your "bus pass" for each destination is to do sidequests aka help people out. One thing I didn't realize at first was that each stamp you earn for a quest completion can be placed anywhere in the stamp area. I probably had 4-5 stamps in the exact same spot, starting to get annoyed at how they weren't spread out, before I realized I could pick where they go. 🙃 Thankfully there is a 'reset' option that let me replace all my previously-earned stamps so I could spread them all out across the container. The 'puzzle' mechanic itself is kind of cute - figuring out which photo subject each person needs to see in order to 'help' them/complete their quests. There are also various wearable items to collect, and another 'collectible' by way of creating a Creature Compendium aka taking a photo of each new species of creature you come across. The different "Tato" creatures were amusing to come across. I also loved that the developers snuck their pets into the game and created a trophy for it! Overall the game was a fun, relaxing experience - which is often what I look for in an indie title, when I'm taking a break from a big-budget or more demanding game. TOEM really rewards you for fully exploring the areas - I still remember the moment I discovered the Moose DJ and dancing bears. The game's DLC was also super fun! It is essentially one final location to explore, but I would guess that it is about as large as all the previous locations combined. I think the DLC was free, which is super cool if that is indeed the case. As for the TOEM phenomenon itself? I'm so glad that I went into the game completely blind because I loved the reveal moment. FAVORITE... Trophy Image: And that completes the list! Trophy Moment: Experience TOEM Spoiler Silly Trophy: Slow and steady Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 (edited) We've got a similar taste in games. I'm liking your reviews so far, please keep them coming and I'll be sure to read them... eventually. 😅 You've turned me off of Tempus (which is fine), and I also really liked that Spider-Man maintained Peter's character-defining inability to juggle his many great responsibilities. Edited August 28, 2023 by Platinum_Vice 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said: We've got a similar taste in games. I'm liking your reviews so far, please keep them coming and I'll be sure to read them... eventually. You've turned me off of Tempus (which is fine), and I also really liked that Spider-Man maintained Peter's character-defining inability to juggle his many great responsibilities. Wow, thanks so much! After your Disco Elysium write-up in the Mental Health Awareness Event (which moved that game up much higher in my backlog), I started reading through your trophy cabinet as well! I really like your "Series" reviews, and that you include a lot of images in your posts! The fact that you've set up all your trophy milestones to be blue/silver/grey is really cool as well! Insomniac Games really understood the character of Peter Parker and how to convert it into a videogame. One frustrating aspect of the MCU Spider-Man movies is that they focus a lot on the big stakes, and sometimes forget that the best Spider-Man stories don't normally involve world-ending stakes. I was going to write up my Miles Morales review yesterday Sunday but time is apparently a construct that exists, lol. I'm super excited for the new Spider-Man game to come out this fall, though! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 (edited) Platinum #75 | Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Developer: Insomniac Games, 2020 Country: USA Time Played: 23h Platinumed Earned: 7 May 2023 Rating: 7/10 GAME THOUGHTS: I platinumed the first Marvel's Spider-Man (MS) game in 1 week and 6 days. The very next day I started Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (MS:MM), and got that platinum in under 7 days. I really recommend that people not follow my example, and at least give it a few days before jumping into the 'sequel'. 😂 By the time I 100% the map, including dozens more Street Crimes, the burnout felt real. Nevertheless, I still really enjoyed MS:MM! I called it a sequel with air quotes because there was a lot of controversy over MS:MM's story campaign being "only" 20 hours compared to MS's 40 hours. I do think people were right to be frustrated with Sony giving MS:MM the same price tag as MS, but derisively labeling the game as DLC is unfair in a day and age when many DLC campaigns are 4-5 hours long. With the first game selling for $50, I think a fair asking price for the second installment would have been $20 or $25. MILES' POWERS & COMBAT For those unaware, Miles is not a Spider-Man clone in terms of his abilities, even in the comic books. Miles is able to temporarily turn invisible Camouflage (I'm sure there's no societal commentary there...) and he can also use bioelectrogenesis attacks that he calls "venom powers" (because they sting). In MS:MM, Miles can unlock several different Venom attacks over the course of the story. They are pretty powerful, but they can also only be used once segments of his Venom bar charge up in combat. It's a nice balance, especially since you can unlock supporting abilities that help to charge Miles' Venom bar faster. Another fantastic addition to combat was the new system of increasing your combos to certain numbers to be able to use Finishers on enemies. This really helped separate the gameplay feel from my run with Peter. The other big change to combat is that the amount of gadgets that Miles can use in a fight is essentially half of what Peter had available. It makes sense for the story - Miles is just starting out as a superhero and hasn't mastered all of the gadgets yet, plus Peter is out of town so perhaps those are the only ones he had time to give to Miles. As someone who just came off a 40+ hour playthrough where I had access to all of those gadgets, though, it took me hours to adapt to the more limited toolset. I was very frustrated at first, since I had grown to really like using certain gadgets in specific situations with Peter, and all of a sudden they were taken away from me! This problem disappeared as I unlocked more Venom abilities and the Finisher system with Miles. For stealth not only did I have to lean a lot more on Miles' Camouflage, I was forced to use some gadgets that I had largely ignored with Peter and I grew to appreciate how the smaller 'toolset' helped prevent Camouflage from making stealthing through a warehouse too much of a cakewalk. Speaking of combat and narrative being in sync, one other slight annoyance for me was the Combat Challenges. They make sense for Miles' character and considering this game came out 2 years after the first one, having a refresher on the combat system was probably appreciated by a lot of gamers at the time - let alone for the handful of people that might have jumped into MS:MM without playing MS at all. However, as someone who had just completed a Peter Parker NG+ on Ultimate Difficulty, I chafed a bit at having my hand held in the opening hours of the game. This is another reason why taking at least a few days break between MS and MS:MM is highly advised, for anyone who would be playing the games back-to-back like I did. NON-COMBAT GAMEPLAY MECHANICS Thus far it seems like I mostly have criticisms for this game, which is the farthest thing from the truth! However, structurally there is a lot of similarity between the two games (both games emphasize storytelling with cutscenes, having small moments in Peter's/Miles' civilian life that help inform us about who they are, fantastic traversal mechanics, etc.) that I've already covered in my review of MS. Combat is the area of the game that changed the most, and thus is probably what prospective gamers would want the most details on if they've played MS and haven't yet decided on MS:MM. Speaking of traversal mechanics, Insomniac added a few little details that made it even better than it already was. With Peter, you could do a few little tricks when freefalling but the controls were awkward and I don't think it was advertised very well. When Peter jumped from a great height, you could tap and then hold to go into a dive which then allowed you to hold the stick to the left or right side and press to do a little trick, depending on which direction you were pointing towards. With Miles they developed an Aerial Tricks system that had more moves and was a lot easier to pull off. When Miles is subjected to the physics of gravity between rope swings (or when he jumps off of something), all you need to do is hold to "enter" Aerial Trick mode and then use one of the four cardinal directions of to pull off a trick. Okay, so what? You can combine different movements to create special tricks - Cannonball is ⬆️⬆️, Turtle Spin is ⬆️↔️ (left or right), Dragon Roll is ⬅️⬅️, Roly Poly is ➡️, and those are just a few! More significantly, you get tiny bits of experience for every simple trick you do, and more experience for pulling off one or more special tricks in a single dive. Now I wasn't just swinging to Harlem to reach my next mission, I was also challenging myself to see what different tricks I could come up with, how many tricks could I pull off in a dive, and I was gaining experience! It is an absolutely clever solution to make traversal a much more engaging activity in the game, versus your Witcher 3's and Ghost of Tsushima's where it is essentially "point mount in direction and press run button", sometimes with a stamina meter mixed in to spice things up. This also made me realize why I tend to take advantage of Fast Travel a lot in games that require it - I am all about admiring pretty scenery pixels, but the probably-ADHD part of my brain gets bored pretty quickly when I am forced to admire the same scenery over and over again. MS:MM has a traversal mechanic that feels fucking awesome (just like MS), and it pairs that to an experience points system that gets the competitive part of my brain really engaged. Photo Mode has several new features added in! You can add in a lot more stickers (which I was personally 'meh' about), but I loved being able to add in light sources when I wanted to take screenshots in darker areas. Plus, you can rotate through all of the costumes you've unlocked inside Photo Mode - even when you pause during a cutscene! - versus having to manually equip different ones outside of Photo Mode if you want a different costume. I also played MS:MM on the PS5 (compared to MS on PS4 via the PS+ Catalog), and I have to say the details on the lighting (and lightning) effects were incredible to see, both during gameplay and when messing around in Photo Mode. COLLECTIBLES & STREET CRIMES I talked a lot in my MS review about how Insomniac created collectibles that made sense for Peter Parker and let us see different sides of him. This philosophy was present, though to a lesser extent, in Miles' game. My first and only exposure to Miles Morales as a character prior to this game was through the phenomenal Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie, so I was a little disappointed that this aspect of gameplay was de-emphasized. I'm probably in the minority of gamers with this viewpoint though, since collectibles are usually just busywork and I seem to recall a lot of people being annoyed at the amount of Collectibles in the first MS game. (Sidenote - I saw the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse last weekend, and even with my high expectations it was fucking incredible.) My favorite collectibles were the Sound Samples, of which I think there were just ten. I knew from the aforementioned movie that music was really important to Miles, as well as his relationship with his uncle. The Sound Samples threads these two aspects of Miles' character together, and they were also interesting 'puzzles'. When you arrive at the designated areas, you find a recording of a short sound effect. You need to then figure out what in the area is making that noise (is it the sound of birds squawking? a rusty gate swinging repetitively? something completely different?) and get close enough to the audio source to record it yourself. You have a helping hand in terms of a visual of the audio waveform in the corner of your screen that you can compare with the recording to figure out if you are 'hot' or 'cold' - which is actually incredibly useful, because even when you quickly identify the sound source sometimes it is a little tricky finding the precise area where you need to stand to record it. Street crimes are greatly reduced in this game, thank goodness. Especially after all the MS DLCs littered with street crime after street crime. Instead, Miles has the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App. While there are still some random crimes that you can stumble across and thwart, if you are trying to 100% the map you just need to complete crimes/requests that are sent to the app. And the criminals are incredibly patient now, since you can activate the quests whenever you want instead of being at the mercy of RNG event spawning. 😂 SUMMARY Overall, MS:MM is a great game. It may not have reached the narrative heights of MS (granted, it only had half the time), and I wish we got more of Miles' civilian life that wasn't directly related to the main plot, but it was still an absolute joy to play. Moreover, Insomniac took the time to evolve combat to suit Miles and even make small improvements to things like traversal, which could have easily just been copy+pasted from the first game instead. Anyone who has played the first Spider-Man game and enjoyed it should definitely check out this adventure at some point. Also, there is a Bodega Spider-Cat costume. 🥰 FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Five Star Review Trophy Moment: Pete's First Villain Spoiler The 'final test' that Peter left for Miles was to fight against a simulation he made of The Vulture. Peter narrates both sides of the fight, with such gems as: "Always meddling, Spider-Man! Why won't you let me commit my senseless, overly-dramatic crimes in peace?!?!" "I'm old! I'm old and I hate youth! Get off my lawn! Early bird specials! Casual racism that it's not worth it to challenge me on!" Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 Platinum #76 | OVIVO Developer: IzHard, 2019 Country: Kazakhstan, Ukraine, & Russia Time Played: 3h Platinum Earned: 17 April 2023 Rating: 4/10 GAME THOUGHTS: I purchased this game because I was intrigued by its art style and it was worth trying on sale for 60% off ($2.79 USD). The concept: You control a dot/blob that can switch between black and white to navigate through the monochromatic levels to reach the end. At the end of each level, the camera pulls out and reveals that all the random shapes you navigated through actually come together in an intricate and beautiful piece of art. When your dot is white you can move through white areas, and when your dot is black you can move through black areas. Your dot can hop, and when you swap colors there is a sort of magnetic positive/negative attraction that comes into play - almost like swapping gravity from bottom to top and vice-versa. After the first few levels, I found myself struggling with the controls a bit. There are sections where you need to quickly swap between the colors and you must keep momentum going in order to continue. Sometimes I would lose track of whether I'd pressed once or twice in a jump, and suddenly I would crash into the next object instead of going into it. You can almost always get back to the beginning of a momentum section (though I think once I needed to restart a level). Most of the time I was successful in figuring out how to use the game's physics to get my momentum within 5 tries or so, but I remember a few areas where it took me several minutes of trying the same 15 second segment over and over and over until I finally made it. One time I even pulled up a video guide to make sure I wasn't unintentionally trying to cheese a section. One of the final levels was a tree and it was really pretty throughout! I also really appreciated the art style of the completed levels in general. There are also some collectible symbols (and dots) scattered throughout the levels, and a lot of the symbols had neat designs. You can go back and replay completed levels. The 'level select' menu design was pretty cool, and it showed your collectible progress within each level which was fantastic for trophy cleanup. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself was pretty meh for me. It was a really creative concept, and I might have rated the game a 5 if I didn't have some really aggravating moments with the controls. If you're looking to play something with a defined aesthetic that is short and unique between longer games, it might be worth checking out when it is on sale. You are so zoomed-in when you are traveling through the levels that it is kind of cool to reach the level reveal at the end, though. FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Nothing is Eternal Screenshots: The first two images above are two of the 9 levels to explore. The final image is the completed 'level select' menu (three rings each containing three of the levels, plus the intro level in the very center). 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post pelagia14 Posted June 24, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 24, 2023 (edited) Spoiler Platinum #77 | Night in the Woods Developer: Infinite Fall, 2017 Country: Canada Time Played: 27h Platinum Earned: 20 April 2023 Rating: 8/10 GAME THOUGHTS: All I really knew going into this game was that it seemed to have a quirky/silly tone, and it dealt with returning home from college and struggling to fit back into a place your character had never really fit in the first place. To my delight, it turned out that this game was so much deeper and richer than I initially expected. PREMISE The story begins with main character Mae arriving back in her hometown of Possum Springs. You quickly learn that she has moved back home after a sudden drop-out from college - though you don't know why - and Mae isn't quite sure what her next step in life should be. It's also clear that Mae hasn't visited or kept in touch with her high school friends that stayed in the stagnate former mining town. I found myself relating to a lot of the game's initial premise. After high-school, I was the only one of my group of friends to go to university more than an hour away from home. I went 8 hours away, to the complete other side of the state. I came home the summer after freshman year, but after that, I mostly just came home for Christmas and sometimes Thanksgiving. A year after graduating from university, some family events caused me to move back home. I didn't have to deal with the 'stigma' of being a dropout like Mae, though I have experience with anxiety and depression. I am also very familiar with the odd feeling of returning somewhere familiar, except it's not quite as familiar anymore. With growing as a person, and growing apart from my childhood friends, and those friends growing closer in different ways while I was gone. With the isolated feeling of not quite fitting in with my hometown anymore, but also not really belonging anywhere else as I try to figure out my life and who I am. WRITING The game's writing is absolutely phenomenal. There is a lot of silly dialogue, in the way that teens and recent-teens often talk in dramatic and hyperbolic ways. (Their frontal lobes haven't finished developing, after all). Most games don't quite nail the delicate balance of drama and hyperbole and epic grandness in how (recent-)teens talk, but NitW absolutely nailed it and avoided steering into super cringe territory. This also comes from someone who tends to prefer more serious writing over humorous writing. Even scenes like early one when a group of teens in the Trolley Tunnel were interested in seeing if Mae was old enough to buy alcohol for them or if she drove a car - and then gave zero fucks about her once they learned Mae wouldn't be useful for them, felt like it was pulled from real life. While there are many silly and lighthearted moments, the game is also good at sneaking in those unexpected moments of seriousness. Many of the characters struggle with mental health issues of one kind or another, and to me, it feels clear that several of the game's writers have intimate experiences with mental health struggles, either first-hand or through a close loved one. There would be times during a conversation when I would just pause for a few moments, letting the cursor flash at the end of a line of dialogue as it waited for me to press the button to continue. In these moments I felt awe at the nuance of mental health being presented to me, and sometimes I even felt partially seen. I also really appreciated how the game did not often linger on the more depressing aspects of mental health struggles. It acknowledged their presence but then moved on, understanding that one can be depressed or anxious but also have fun, happy moments. Plus always treating mental health issues as gloom and doom in media just gets exhausting. SPOILERS-- Spoiler Day 2 - When Mr. Penderson said "No one's forgotten who you are and what you did", I wrote down "Damn, Mr. Penderson woke up and chose violence". Day 6 - The Knife Fight is one of the more odd mini-games that I've played in a videogame. Day 7 - By the end of Weird Autumn, I was becoming resigned to the fact that the murder mystery stuff and Mae's highschool thing were just red herrings never to be fully explored... and then Harfest happened! Story Ending: I feel like this game allowed me to better empathize and understand what it might feel like for someone going through a dissociative episode. Playthrough 1: I chose to focus on the friendship with Gregg, since it seemed like him and Mae were BFFs in highschool. Both Gregg and Mae are the kind of person who needs someone to reality-check them on bad ideas - put the two of them together without supervision and they don't know when to stop. Playthrough 2: It was really interesting getting to know Bea a lot better in this run! I will say, I wasn't a huge fan of the scene where Mae pressured Bea to shoplife. Obviously Bea is not the type of person to easily succumb to peer pressure, and I get that it was a form of bonding for Mae, but it wasn't something I found interesting. However right afterwards was the scene with the fish fountain, which was a cute moment. Garbo & Malloy: I loved that on subsequent playthroughs you could really appreciate the clever foreshadowing done by the duo's late-night segments! --END SPOILERS DEMONTOWER One last thing I want to comment on is the mini arcade-style game that you can play on Mae's laptop starting on Day 4(?), called DemonTower. I despised how finnicky the controls were for the game. The concept itself was cool, but the hitbox registration was plain awful. The first 4-5 levels weren't too bad, but Level 7 nearly broke me - I spent over 3 hours on that level alone - and Level 8 was probably another hour or two. The game did give me a taste of what Souls-like players must experience when they beat a boss, though! 😂 FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Best Friend Available Trophy Moment: Maestro Trophy Description: Knife Fight ("Slasher, stabber, all around knifer.") Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 26, 2023 Author Share Posted June 26, 2023 (edited) Platinum #78 | Concrete Genie Developer: Pixelopus, 2019 Country: USA Time Played: 8h Platinum Earned: 22 April 2023 Rating: 6/10 GAME THOUGHTS Honestly, the reason I played this game was that I was looking for an entry for Brown in the PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge, and I saw that this was a PS+ Catalog game that many people were using for Brown. All I knew going in was that it was about 8 hours to platinum, so even if I didn’t like the game very much it wouldn’t be a huge investment. The game’s art style for character models seemed to draw heavily from claymation, which is not often seen in videogames. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR COMPLETIONISTS: Apparently, the version I downloaded from the PS+ Catalog included the Virtual Reality DLC trophies. I don’t have a PS VR - so with the platinum trophy, I will forever be at 95% completion. I often don’t care about getting 100% on games with DLC, thanks to PS3 having some terrible DLC lists, but I know some people always go for the 100%. CONTROLS & MECHANICS My first two minutes with the game did not go very well. The game starts with you as teenager Ash painting in some drawings he previously made in his notebook. The motion controls were an absolute nightmare for me. It’s a fantastic concept for a drawing mechanic, but I couldn’t figure out how to properly use it. Coupled with the fact that I am a bit of a perfectionist for fully “coloring” things in, and I was quickly reduced to just waving and shaking my controller everywhere trying to get the last 30% of the image done. I “colored” in 3 images fully before I put down my controller and googled if the whole game was going to be like this… and thankfully you can turn off the motion controls. The game has some collectibles to gather - some which unlock additional design elements you can use, and some which are just “missing pages” from Ash’s notebook that don’t change anything about the gameplay. You can track your progress with collectibles by opening your map, and there is always Chapter Select once you finish the story which lets you mop up any that you might have missed. I used PowerPyx’s guide and had no issue finding everything. PAINTING Thankfully, once I had the paint motion controls turned off, I didn’t encounter any other control issues with the game. I quickly progressed through the opening hour of the story, where you learn that Ash is being bullied by the other kids his age and he turns to art as a way of expressing himself. Ash quickly meets Luna, a magical “genie” somehow brought to life from his art, and he learns how to paint “animated pictures”. You have a LittleBigPlanet-esque menu that pops up and lets you select different images to ‘paint’. For the most part, you are just controlling how large an element like a flame or tree is, or how long something like a vine or aurora might be. Once you exit “paint mode”, it’s almost like you’ve created aesthetic gifs - the flame will flicker, the colors of the aurora will shimmer, etc. (Also, having the aurora unlocked right away is a win in my book 🥰). There are also creatures the game calls “genies”. When you come across one you get to customize it with different body parts and features, and the genie then ‘comes to life’. The genies are elemental, and so you might use an electric genie to power up a lift control, a fire genie to burn away a wood obstacle in your path, etc. I had a lot of fun brightening up the drab environments of Denska with bright and colorful moving creations. You don’t have to do a ton of painting if you don’t want to, but I felt compelled to decorate each wall surface of the environment - even if it was just by splashing a wide brushstroke of shining stars or throwing up a single enormous cherry tree. The use of color in a game is really important to me, and it was really cool getting to add my own personal touch to the environments I wandered through. I had noted that around 5 hours into the game, I had probably spent a good 30-40 minutes just painting large empty areas and making them vibrant. STORY The game’s story is the one aspect that I did not enjoy quite as much. First of all, the story pacing was really bizarre. After the opening cinematic, the main story arc related to bullying takes a backseat until Chapters 4 & 5. And there are only 5 chapters! It is also definitely targeted to more of a preteen and teenager audience, whereas I am in my early 30s. That isn’t to say that I automatically dislike things aimed at kids, or that writing for that audience automatically means that a story will be without nuance or complexity. I think Avatar: The Last Airbender is a phenomenal TV series for people of all ages, and it deals with mature topics like genocide, abuse, sexism, ableism, and toxic masculinity with depth and nuance despite being a “kid’s show”. My issue with Concrete Genie was more the game’s general message and the complete lack of nuance that it offered. SPOILERS--- As previously mentioned, Ash is bullied by the other kids of Denska. They tear apart his notebook, beat him up, and mock him at the beginning of the game. Ash then spends a couple of chapters learning about the magical paint ability, becoming friends with Luna, and getting an increase in his self-esteem. During all of this, we get a “flashback” scene with a few of the bullies showing how they have less-than-ideal childhoods. Whether they lived in a household with two toxic parents always fighting or had to deal with child neglect, the flashbacks are supposed to make you feel sympathetic for the bullies. The frustrating aspect for me is that by Chapter 5, Ash is blatantly becoming friends with all of the bullies. He has saved them from the nightmare-version of the genies that started appearing in Chapter 4, and they have helped him with rescuing each other. Some of the kids mention towards the end that they feel bad about how they bullied Ash before, and I recall him essentially waving it off because now they are all friends. I really didn’t like how the game presented an incredibly shallow “bully redemption” story. The kids don’t really face any accountability for their actions - which included one of them literally kicking Ash in the abdomen a few times. A few hours later they are all just magically best friends through the power of friendship. The game also seems to imply (without probably intending to) that the kids became bullies only because of their terrible childhoods, and those childhoods thus absolve them from their actions. I would have much preferred a story where the bullies now *want* to become friends with Ash (because he saved their lives and now has this cool magic painting power), but he doesn’t instantly forgive them. Instead, Ash would perhaps call out the shallowness of their behavior (as a way of putting into words for the preteen audience why they don't need to feel obligated to befriend a former bully), and make it clear that if their attitude change was real and lasted heck, even a few days, then friendship could be reconsidered. To me that seems a lot more realistic, holds bullies accountable for their actions while allowing for the possibility of character growth, and still stays PG. ---END SPOILERS Anyways, I didn’t play Concrete Genie for the narrative, I played it for the magic paint mechanics. Had the story done more than just instantly absolve the bullies, I would have given this game a 7 instead of a 6. It’s definitely worth experiencing though, especially while it is still on the PS+ Catalog! FAVORITE… Trophy Image: Just Like Old Times Trophy Moment: Pyromaniac (which I earned before realizing it was a trophy 😂) Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 26, 2023 Author Share Posted June 26, 2023 (edited) Platinum #79 | 11-11: Memories Retold Developer: DigixArt & Aardman Animations, 2018 Country: France Time Played: 8h Platinum Earned: 28 April 2023 Rating: 5/10 So I thought this was going to be a really short write-up, and then I went on a tangent about art… 😅. Please also note the GLITCH WARNING that I discuss. GAME THOUGHTS: 11-11: Memories Retold (11-11:MR) follows the intertwining stories of Canadian photographer Harry and German technician Kurt in the final months of World War I. The game has you alternating between playing as Harry and Kurt - and a few moments where you control one of two ‘pets’ that are important to their interconnected story. Harry joins the war hoping that his photography of the front lines will bring him glory and make his crush fall in love with him, whereas Kurt signs on in a desperate attempt to find his son, part of a missing unit. To be clear upfront, while you sometimes control Harry and Kurt during moments of chaotic combat, you never kill or even attack anyone. One of the game’s strengths is showing both the monotony and adrenaline that comes with trench warfare, along with humanizing both sides of the conflict. Another detail I loved was that much of the German dialogue is actually spoken in German and has English subtitles (since Kurt would of course understand what is being said) - the use of German language really helped with immersion. Kurt does have a lot of internal dialogue that is in English, despite not actually being bilingual, though I know that many people don’t have the patience to deal with too many subtitles for whatever reason. IMPRESSIONISM The first thing you’ll notice when you watch any footage of the game is its Impressionist art style. It definitely took some adjusting to, but the use of Impressionism is fantastic from both a historical and artistic perspective. I hope you’ll indulge me in a small exploration of the symbolism the developers used by making this choice in art style. Before Impressionism, we had the Romantic Era of art, which was a Counter-Enlightenment viewpoint that emphasized nature and the artist’s emotions (a reaction to the Enlightenment’s focus on rationality and science). Romanticism did not seek to capture reality as it was, but instead often utilized symbolism and aimed to capture sentiments and evoke feelings. Probably the most famous piece of Romantic art is Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. The Impressionist art movement began in the late 19th century, only a few decades before the start of World War I, and includes famous artists like Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. Impressionism wanted to put to canvas the ephemeral - fleeting moments such as the light of a sunset reflected from a pond or smoke billowing out from a steamboat. In contrast to Romanticism’s emphasis on symbolism and idealism, Impressionism wanted to capture more authentic snippets of real life. Even the subject matter of a piece of art was changed - instead of painting military generals or personified forms of ideals like liberty, Impressionists painted average citizens and workers doing average things in their daily life. Returning to 11-11:MR, we can now discuss how the use of an Impressionist art style heightens certain themes of the game. 11-11:MR is about the subjective experience of two soldiers on opposite sides of a war, just like how Impressionism aims to depict a perception of an experience versus a more “objective”, neutral reality. 11-11:MR does not seek to idealize war or white-wash it into something more palatable, just as Impressionism seeks to capture life as it is without any artistic grandeur. Finally, 11-11:MR tells the story of two low-ranking soldiers - often in more mundane moments, just like how Impressionism typically depicted ordinary moments of ‘common men’. The one downside to the art style is that many of the game’s Collectibles blend in with the environment and many are *extremely* difficult to locate if you are not using a guide. I would have greatly appreciated a feature that allowed collectibles to ‘shine’ or have an outline in a contrasting color - perhaps during Chapter Select, once you have already experienced the gameplay as 'intended'. COLLECTIBLES Speaking of collectibles, it was neat that they were educational in nature! It is very evident that the developers did their research by consulting with academics and historians - there are even three 10-ish minute videos you can unlock by finding all of the collectibles in a section, and the videos show some aspects of how the game was developed. GLITCH WARNING: The collectibles of 11-11:MR are frustratingly glitchy, unfortunately. There were a few spots that I still remember, months later, where I would be repeatedly trying to walk over a collectible to pick it up. Sometimes it required dozens upon dozens of attempts - perhaps minutely changing the angle of my approach to a collectible in a corner, or walking into a wall over and over again until I found the nanoscopically-precise magical spot required by the game’s code for it to register the collection. I also remember [Sniper and watcher - Part 1 of 2] from Kurt’s Path in Above and Below not spawning at all, which worried me. After I completed the game, I read on various forums that I needed to first get the [Trench Sign - Part 1 of 2] collectible during Harry’s Path (when he takes the photo of the cat about to jump down the well) - which I had done!! Anyways, I reloaded Above and Below with Harry’s Path, got to the part where I could take a photo of the cat for [Trench Sign - Part 1 of 2], then played the few minutes to reach Kurt’s section, and this time [Sniper and watcher - Part 1 of 2] spawned for me. LUDONARRATIVE-NESS Don’t worry, I’m not going to be discussing ludonarrative dissonance here. It’s actually the opposite - I wanted to share a moment of ludonarrative harmony, aka when a videogame’s gameplay elements and narrative play off each other’s strengths in fantastic ways. Considering that this is a game about World War I, the very brief scene I am about to discuss is not a spoiler in terms of story. At one point during a combat zone, I was in control of Harry and moving from cover to cover when the enemy was pausing their barrage of artillery to reload their weapons. Most of the NPCs were also moving through cover, but a couple of NPCs were holding their positions at certain spots of cover. I moved next to a soldier and pressed the interact button to speak with him. He was sniped in the head immediately after I pressed ‘interact’ - before he could utter a single sound. I really appreciated how the developer’s chose to *not* have this be a cutscene and *not* have any dramatic music or foreshadowing of the moment, so it really took me as a player a bit by surprise. Death on the battlefield can be so sudden, coming out of seemingly nowhere even when you think you are in a safe spot. This tiny moment from the game was a fantastic example of how there are some things videogames can do that other mediums like books and movies are not able to match. SUMMARY Despite everything I’ve written above, outside of that one moment of ludonarrative harmony this game didn’t seem to be able to get its hooks into me. I know a lot more minutiae about WWII compared to WWI, so I found reading the educational collectibles to be really interesting. I guess my struggle with the game was that I couldn’t find a way to get invested in it. After Harry and Kurt’s journeys first cross paths, while the story seemed to be well-told I was also able to predict almost all of the larger story beats. Even the “multiple endings” felt somewhat empty to me, since they are only the result of a few choices and dialogue selections at the very end of the game. However, I still think this game is worth checking out if you have an appreciation for history, educational games, or games focused on the interpersonal aspects of war without having to aim and shoot weapons. With how many videogames utilize violence and combat in their mechanics, I think it’s important to have a few experiences that examine the real human cost of war and brutality. FAVORITE... Trophy Image: Puurrfect Trophy Moment: Historian Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 27, 2023 Author Share Posted June 27, 2023 (edited) Platinum #80 | The Mooseman Developer: Morteshka, 2018Country: RussiaTime Played: 2hPlatinum Earned: 29 April 2023Rating: 4/10 GAME THOUGHTS: I always like to support games that help preserve a part of a shrinking or disappearing culture, which is what made me pick up The Mooseman. Before you reach the main menu of the game, you get a screen that reads: “This game is an artistic reconstruction of the myths that form the foundation of the artifacts of the Permian animal style. The myths and lore of the Komi Permians, Komi Zyrians, Mansi, and Saami people were the main basis for the reconstruction. The artifacts represented in the game are stored in the regional museums of Perm Krai.” If that seems needlessly convoluted, a more simplified (though less accurate) version is: “This game is an interpretation of cultural myths based on Permian artifacts. The myths are mainly based on the lore of the Komi peoples, with elements of Sámi and Mansi myths from the region incorporated. All the artifacts in the game are from a real museum.” The game has lore text initially appearing in the ancient Permic alphabet called Anbur that then turn into Latin characters (or whichever language you have chosen to play in). The dialogue in the game’s sparse cutscenes is apparently performed in Komi-Permyak (with translated text on screen). CULTURE The Komi people are a Finno-Ugric people who live in the northeastern parts of European Russia. Sadly, documentation of their folklore and myths prior to their 15th-century conversion to Christianity only began being recorded about 150 years ago, and thus much has already been lost. The Komi had a creator god named Yen who had seven demigod sons, including the titular Mooseman. According to Komi tales, Yen tasked his sons with traveling daily from the Middle World (our realm) to the Lower World (underworld) to get a piece of Shondi’s eternal flame and bring it to the Upper World (heavens) which becomes the Sun. GAMEPLAY The game mechanics are very simple - you control the Mooseman and move across the screen. You need to switch between the physical plane of existence and the spiritual plane to get through various obstacles/simple puzzles. You can discover various artifacts - some easy to find, some that can only be discovered by deciphering carved or painted hints in the background. Besides swapping between the physical and spiritual planes, you also unlock an ability to light the Mooseman’s staff to create a shield to defend against evil spirits. There are a few “boss” deities in the game, but for the most part, they are just slightly-longer puzzle encounters. Unfortunately, the 'puzzle' mechanics are incredibly simplistic. Oh, there's a huge chasm you can't walk across? Swap to spiritual mode and there is a spiritual bridge. Is there a cliff too tall to climb? Then you probably have a nearby rock that turns into a moveable rock spirit when you swap to spiritual mode and once it is in position, you can climb over it in physical mode. Etc. When factoring in the somewhat-buggy collectibles, it feels like this project would have been better served as a short animated movie than a videogame. GAME LORE & COLLECTIBLES There is a “Myths” option when you pause the game that lets you see the snippets of folklore that you have unlocked. For anyone who might be getting super excited hearing this, please know that there are just 9 snippets (including the game’s intro) and they are each no longer than a couple of sentences in length. It definitely helps provide context and cultural immersion in the game, but they are not complete, self-contained tales or detailed segments of mythological narrative arcs. The best of which is the "Intro" Myth I liked the idea of hidden collectibles that require deciphering hints to unlock. Unfortunately, even when I knew the solution (and checked a video guide to make sure I wasn’t missing something), it could take me 20-30 tries of rapidly entering the inputs on my controller for my timing and speed to register with whatever the game required. Many of the hidden collectibles require you to just move in a specific pattern - such as the example below, where the solution indicated on the cave wall is to be in spiritual (moose) form and move : [Image from threetimes’ Guide & Walkthrough on GameFAQs] However, sometimes the solution requires you to also swap between spiritual and physical forms among the movement patterns and those tended to be the more finicky ones to unlock. Example Collectibles For anyone considering playing The Mooseman, I have to give a huge shoutout to Maka91Productions’ video walkthrough. It allowed me to see exactly where I needed to start the movement patterns. While I normally dislike guides that have narration, in this case it was very helpful as some ‘solutions’ require you to enter the combinations so fast you are essentially button-mashing. (The one starting at 10:57 and getting unlocked at 11:34 was probably the WORST.) SUMMARY The Mooseman is a game that aims to preserve aspects of the indigenous culture of Russia's Perm region. As a mythological reconstruction, it is clearly evident by the academic citations included in collectible descriptions and the game's credits that the developers really respected the cultures they drew from. As a videogame, it uses a hand-drawn art style and great music to create a fantastic atmosphere and mood for the myths and cultures at hand. However, faithful adherence to what little we know of the mythology leads to a short experience that feels incomplete. For those who are interested in exploring other cultures and/or getting a platinum in 2 hours or less, the game at full price is $6.99 USD and can go on sale for as low as $2.79. FAVORITE…Trophy Image: ArchaeologistTrophy Moment: SunsetScreenshots: Edited June 27, 2023 by pelagia14 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 11 hours ago, pelagia14 said: SUMMARY Despite everything I’ve written above, outside of that one moment of ludonarrative harmony this game didn’t seem to be able to get its hooks into me. I know a lot more minutiae about WWII compared to WWI, so I found reading the educational collectibles to be really interesting. I guess my struggle with the game was that I couldn’t find a way to get invested in it. After Harry and Kurt’s journeys first cross paths, while the story seemed to be well-told I was also able to predict almost all of the larger story beats. Even the “multiple endings” felt somewhat empty to me, since they are only the result of a few choices and dialogue selections at the very end of the game. However, I still think this game is worth checking out if you have an appreciation for history, educational games, or games focused on the interpersonal aspects of war without having to aim and shoot weapons. With how many video games utilize violence and combat in their mechanics, I think it’s important to have a few experiences that examine the real human cost of war and brutality. Very good write-up! I've read a lot of trophy cabinets in my day and I think you're the first one to cover 11-11M as in-depth as you did. As for the game itself, sounds pretty interesting! I'd always seen it on sale but for whatever reason it never captured me enough to make the leap towards making a purchase. The fascinating thing is, the developers, DigixArt, have released more games since with one of them being Road 96, a game I HAVE played! I REALLY enjoyed it. The game's not perfect, and I'm curious if some of the issues with "the not seeming to hook you" would still make manifest with their 2nd but for a story-focused, narrative game (largely about cultivating relationships with individuals) it puts you in a lot of INTERESTING scenarios and asks you to act and be ready for them. It can be incredibly cheesy and goofy too, but hey. Your review helped me realize the studio has a knack putting players in unique settings (at war, not actually fighting) and I think they deserve some credit for that. Consider checking it out! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 27, 2023 Author Share Posted June 27, 2023 (edited) On 6/27/2023 at 7:04 AM, realm722 said: Very good write-up! I've read a lot of trophy cabinets in my day and I think you're the first one to cover 11-11M as in-depth as you did. As for the game itself, sounds pretty interesting! I'd always seen it on sale but for whatever reason it never captured me enough to make the leap towards making a purchase. The fascinating thing is, the developers, DigixArt, have released more games since with one of them being Road 96, a game I HAVE played! I REALLY enjoyed it. The game's not perfect, and I'm curious if some of the issues with "the not seeming to hook you" would still make manifest with their 2nd but for a story-focused, narrative game (largely about cultivating relationships with individuals) it puts you in a lot of INTERESTING scenarios and asks you to act and be ready for them. It can be incredibly cheesy and goofy too, but hey. Your review helped me realize the studio has a knack putting players in unique settings (at war, not actually fighting) and I think they deserve some credit for that. Consider checking it out! Wow, I really appreciate your comment! I realized afterward posting that I got so distracted by my detours into art movements and ludonarrative harmony that I hadn't focused on important things like *story*, hence it really only being brought up in the summary. I'm still finding my rhythm and style, so I'm very interested to see how my writing quality and discipline/focus improve over the next few months. (It will probably help to be reviewing games immediately after finishing them as well. 😅 I only had a few bullet points written down for this game, versus the dozens of thoughts I typically have to reference from.) I honestly had no idea that Road 96 was made by the same people! I've only recently begun paying attention to a wider range of developers outside of the Triple-As or ones that I have a strong attachment to. I put Road 96 on my PS Store Wishlist a few weeks back, so whenever it next goes on sale I'm now super excited to try it out! Thanks so much for the recommendation~! Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 fixed emoji 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 29, 2023 Author Share Posted June 29, 2023 (edited) Platinum #81 | Gorogoa Developer: Jason Roberts, 2018 Country: Canada Time Played: 3h Platinum Earned: 30 April 2023 Rating: 5/10 PREMISE: Gorogoa is a unique puzzle game. You have a grid made of 4 square “viewports”, and to start only one contains an image. You can often zoom in (and sometimes zoom out) from an image, and occasionally move your ‘viewport’ of the scene to the left or right. The core puzzle conceit is being able to take the “top layer” of what you see from a viewport and drag it over to a different viewport, to various effect. This allows you to change things about your environment, allowing a boy to go through a fantastical journey to the game’s end. To attempt to explain the “viewport” dragging mechanic, you get to a point where a watch face fills one of the view ports. If you drag the watch’s outer cover to a different viewport, you can then go back to the first viewport and “zoom out” from the watch hands to see that it is now actually a watch tower as viewed from a distance. GAME THOUGHTS: The primary puzzle mechanic I attempted to describe is actually a lot more engaging than it sounds, primarily from how creative the developer takes thing. Then again, I think that is true for almost any puzzle game. You could be looking at a bookshelf - zoom in to a section of books - zoom in to a desert illustration on the spine of one of the fantasy books - zoom in and suddenly you are in a desert world - zoom in and oh hey there’s a castle! Beyond interacting within a single viewport to arrive to different ‘areas’, the viewports occasionally interact with each other and ‘merge’ together, allowing the boy or certain items to move into different viewports. There was a decent amount of creativity in this regard as well. The game is rather short (you can speedrun it in 30 minutes), but for a puzzle game I definitely prefer something that shows you all its ideas and the iterations of those ideas, stopping just short of filling it with bloat to extend the game time. This doesn’t mean that the game itself has to be short (to my shame I haven’t finished the Witness yet), just that puzzle games should only be so long as the developers are able to do interesting things with their concept. Plus every once in a while it’s nice to know you can platinum a game in just a couple of hours. TROPHIES There were only two trophies that I did not get in my first playthrough. Ironically, the <30 minute speed run (“But Why?”) wasn’t too bad. The game is short enough that I still had most of the puzzle solutions fresh in my mind, and I had a video up for the few spots that I knew I would find a bit tricky. I still had one trophy left after that - “Dexterity”, aka complete the game in less than 500 moves. Should be simple enough to do in a third run, right? ….Apparently not. I had made only one or two mistakes and still no trophy, what the hell?! Some quick internet research told me my problem - the trophy description should really be that you have to complete the game in less than 500 button presses. What’s the difference, you might ask? Sometimes the area on an object where you can click to do the thing you need to do is quick small. If you are still ini a speed-run mindset, you might be like me and ‘throw’ your cursor over to that area and press on the X button… only to realize that you were off by a half inch, so you just “tapped” on a non-interactive part of the viewport instead. Turns out those count as “moves!”. So it took me a *fourth* playthrough to get my final trophy (and paranoid referencing of a guide), but thankfully that took me maybe 45 minutes at the most. FAVORITE… Trophy Image/Moment: Devotion Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 30, 2023 Author Share Posted June 30, 2023 (edited) Platinum #82 | Chicory Developer: Greg Lobanov, 2021 Country: USA Time Played: 26h Platinum Earned: 20 May 2023 Rating: 8/10 PREMISE: The premise of Chicory is simple: Your character Pizza (or a chosen name) was the janitor for Chicory, the land's current Wielder (aka person with the magical Brush that has the ability to bring color to everything). At the beginning of the game, all of the color has been drained out of the world and Chicory has gone missing! Pizza finds her magic brush and travels around the region bringing color back to the area, helping people, and trying to figure out what caused the colors to disappear in the first place. GAME THOUGHTS: I went into this game knowing only the following: It was highly recommended as a great game for the 2023 Trophies for Mental Health Event III It was available on PS+ Catalog Apparently art and/or color was part of the game’s narrative, considering the image on the game’s title card. I am also honestly shocked that this game had slipped past my radar, for the following reasons: It has a fantastic narrative that deals with mental health topics without being dark and dreary. You get to color in it - practically the whole time! I’m one of those people who will occasionally do the ‘adult coloring book’ thing for fun (or as self-care when my anxiety is being a bit much). The publisher for Chicory, Finji Studios, is based out of Grand Rapids, MI. I didn’t know that Michigan had any indie videogame publishers, let alone one that was a [value less than 1 hour] drive from where I currently live! INITIAL THOUGHTS The very first controllable scene of the game has you, janitor Pizza, cleaning up Chicory’s tower. When you are about 75% done with the task, the screen goes black for a moment - something has happened. Moments later you can see again, but now the once-colorful world is now in a grayscale palette! Chicory: “Oh, NO!!! A-All of… Chicory’s colors! I must have cleaned too hard! I’ve got to go tell her right away!” Me: //ignores Chicory’s dialogue, and continues to clean the room to 100% because perfectionism work ethic. 😂 Ladies and Gentlemen, this is me. I am like this whenever I replay Super Mario Sunshine. Same for PowerWash Simulator - which got a new DLC(!) yesterday but I digress. You’d think I would enjoy chores like doing the dishes and cleaning, alas those require actual physical effort and do not have lovely color palettes. And yes, as I continued to play this game I made it my mission to not leave a single pixel uncolored. Anyways, after I received the Wielder’s Brush and was able to start coloring, I literally wrote in my notes “Is this Coloring Book: The Game?!”. Except I came to discover that it is way better than that simplistic concept because it has a fantastic plot, characters, items to collect, and little secrets to discover. THEMES I’ve already written about the mental health themes of Chicory over at Trophies for Mental Health III. (And yes, I reused my "Premise" from it.) COLORS I was pretty annoyed at first that I only had 4 colors in each region, but I grew to appreciate how the restriction in quantity of colors results in more creativity. I also loved how each region had its own color palette, and how all your color choices (and even stamping choices!) are reflected in the game’s map. Whoever made the “paintbucket”/”paint fill” control is my hero. It made it so much easier to fill the entire map with color. After a little while I developed the following process: I’d first “paint fill” in the neutral color that I wanted for the floor, since that often bled into a lot of objects in the environment like trees and shrubs, for whatever reason. Next, I would swap to the two colors that I used for most environmental objects and “paint fill” all those objects. If I was in a region with lots of cliff walls, one of those two colors became cliffs instead of objects. Then, with my remaining color, I usually fill in the few key objects that I wanted to be highlighted. On rare occasions, I would add in one last step where I would do some pattern stamping on a huge blank cliff wall or open area of ground. My final map GAMEPLAY It took me a stupidly long amount of time to realize that I could push the paint bombs to a specific location before detonating them. When I reached the point where I needed to travel to Elevenses (and I loved all the meal-themed location names!), I probably spent close to an hour running around everywhere I had already explored because I couldn’t figure out how to proceed. //facepalm. I’m so thankful there was an ‘invincibility’ mode in this game. The only time you do ‘combat’ is during the boss fights, and brush-fighting was not something I did enough in the game to ever feel really competent at. I probably turned on the ‘invincibility mode’ halfway through the game, since I was here for the story and not for the boss combat. The music during encounters was absolutely fantastic, though! ART I was not able to make very nice painting replicas, to my dismay. I’m a southpaw, so I tried the left-handed controls at one point, but they were even worse for me than the default right-handed controls. I’m used to drawing from the wrist, not from my thumb. 😂 I was curious to see how other gamers made their painting replicas and what they did to their blank canvas paintings, but not very many people online seem to have posted images of their results - at least from what I tried to find. Some of my creations are documented here for posterity (but also spoiled so that this post isn't insanely long): Spoiler Art Museum: Two close-ups: Paintings I am actually happy with, considering the game controls: My painting of Chicory, and playing around with light and shadows on random shapes: "Art": An owl, and then something that was meant to be a scary face in the darkness but turned out more like a kindergartener's attempt at drawing Gastly. Some of Pizza's "commissions": RANDOM THOUGHTS Speaking of music, Chicory’s song with Pizza on top of the Mountain was a beautiful moment. Not only was the song adorable, it was also a pivotal moment in their friendship together. I loved how there were messages with ‘hidden text’ inside the Wielder Temple. You see a phrase written in black text and then either "paint fill" the area or manually paint it to reveal the hidden white text underneath it. This is by no means an inventive puzzle mechanic or anything, but it was still pretty cool. The following dialogues: Spoiler One of my favorite dialogue moments was shortly before the second Brush final boss fight: Pizza: “So you resented that legacy. Did you ‘choose’ me BECAUSE I was a bad choice? Is that all I mean to you?” Chicory: “When I said you could take the brush, you were already holding it. You had already taken it, and colored, and faced a corruption, and made it back. You were a living example that you don’t have to be chosen to be capable." “Chosen One” stories are fun escapism that I absolutely enjoy, but this is also a fantastic message that more stories should center around. Other quotes: Pizza: “I care too much about what everyone thinks.” Clementine [Pizza’s sister]: “It’s okay to say no sometimes, too.” Pizza [to Chicory]: “I want to WANT things, for MYSELF, like you do.” FAVORITE… Trophy Image: The Whole Picture Trophy Moment: TIE: Standing on the Mountain Top & Something New Screenshots: Story-related ones (not huge spoilers in my opinion, but still narrative-focused): Spoiler Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted July 4, 2023 Author Share Posted July 4, 2023 (edited) Platinum #83 | Lost Ember Developer: Mooneye Studios, 2019 Country: Germany Time Played: 9h Platinum Earned: 26 May 2023 Rating: 3/10 PREMISE: In a world where, upon death, spirits of the faithful get access to the heavenly City of Light and unfaithful spirits are “thrown back into [the] world as wild beasts”, you play as the wolf Kalani. At the beginning of the game you meet a pink orb spirit (who I will call Pink!Navi) who has been unable to reach the City of Light due to magical barriers that you both quickly learn can be destroyed by Kalani. The game follows Pink!Navi and Kalani as they try to reach the City of Light and along the way learn a lot about Kalani’s former human life through memories. GAME THOUGHTS: I unfortunately found this game to be pretty lackluster. The graphic artstyle was decent for an indie studio, and the mechanic of “possessing” other animals was an interesting gimmick. I only started to find the story interesting at the very end, and the collectible trophies were frustrating to earn. When starting a new game file, you are asked if you want the “Commentary” settings turned on or off. At first I wasn’t sure if it would be a Director’s Commentary, but I ended up playing the game with “Commentary” turned on. I think it is asking if you want Pink!Navi to have its explanatory dialogues, or if you want to play the game with no narration so that you create your own interpretation of the memory flashbacks and the story. As I already mentioned, Collectibles were very frustrating. You collect memories and mushrooms. There are over 140 mushrooms to collect, but there are only 4 or 5 different graphic assets used for them. Chapter Select will tell you how many mushrooms you’ve collected/still need in a level, but even following a collectible guide can be a bit frustrating since there isn’t a visual change to denote which ones you have already collected. It’s never quite explained why Kalani can possess other animals. Is it because she was a human, and since she supposedly was unfaithful to Yanren culture her ‘punishment’ of being a wild beast lets her possess other wild beasts? Her wolf form vanishes/transforms into the other animals, so it’s not like her default is possessing a random wolf. Anyways, some of the animals were fun to control. The hummingbird was fantastic for getting collectibles in hard-to-reach areas with its speed and precise movement controls. I also actually liked the Buffalo Stampede scene - but probably because I had the stampede song from The Lion King playing in my head. 🎶 You can possess wombats to go through narrow tunnels, moles to dig underneath large obstacles, ducks and later macaws to fly, and at one point even mountain goats to jump up rocky cliff faces. SPOILERS--- The story was fairly average for most of the game. I did find the “twist” to be a bit interesting - how Pink!Navi actually turned out to be Kalani’s empire-loyalist father who ended up killing her but becoming very remorseful over what he had done in the name of the empire. The game seems to imply that he could not enter the City of Light before because of the immense guilt that he felt from killing his daughter. ---END SPOILERS The game was mostly monotonous experience for me. The graphics were decent but most of the environments were fairly simple. You navigate Kalani around the open areas, and the gameplay never gets more complicated than “there is a spot of dirt at this dead end and some moles wandering around here, I should possess a mole to dig underneath the dead end”, “oh look a tunnel, and also some wombats”, etc. FAVORITE... Trophy Meme: You're Breathtaking! Screenshots: Edited August 25, 2023 by pelagia14 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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