Most Recent Platinum

[insaneeeRob]

 Hong Kong Legend

Sleeping dogs: Definitive Edition

 

I think this is the first time I'm writing like a full text of my thoughts about this game. Holy fuck it was a little bit hard. I know it's not much of a challenge but I'm not really good at these type of games were you have to do a lot of things like races, missions with timer, keeping the objective alive. By far the most annoying thing was the races, omg I hated those so much but somehow I did it! The game is really fun, the story is good and I didn't touched the DLCs but I'm sure those are fun too. Until next time Wei Shen!✌️

[snakebit10]

 

#367

 

The first game in the Anthology. I enjoyed it for the most part. First play through was the co-op with @DamagingRob. Did it blindly and got a few trophies. The trophy guide says it can be done in 3 play throughs. I guess if you strictly use a guide you can. It took me 7 play throughs. I messed up the first attempt at the all heart choices and when doing collectible clean up in curator mode I messed up an had to finish the play through and then go back to chapter select to grab what I missed. I still kept around the 30 hours the guide says. Not to bad. I didn't mind the extra play throughs, because it seemed each time I seen things I may not of previously seen. To me that is good replay value.

 

On to the actual game. Starts out in the prologue with two soldiers post WWII. You control one of them and they can't figure out what is going on on the ship they are on. It gives subtle hints. Once you get to present day with your 5 main characters who are on a diving trip, when things go horribly wrong and they end up on this same ship. What seems as a ghost ship at first. Well without spoiling for anyone who hasn't played, I'll just say this. Everything may not be as it seems.

 

I have Little Hope, but don't think I can get to it right now. 

[demonoutcast]

 #99 - Alan Wake Remastered

 

Remastered Rating: 8/10

Difficulty Rating: 5/10

Time: 30+ Hours (for 100%)

 

D3T did a good job on this. Well worth the buy ?

[Marvy_G23]

#276: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Hinokami Chronicles

[sealightbreeze]

 

 

 

[percy547389126yv]

#950 & 951 PS4 & PS5 versions of Gleylancer

[Procyon1981]

Assassin's Creed Syndicate platinum! The DLC is a bit expensive and will await a sale.  One of the more enjoyable AC games I've played so far but Black Flag is next!

Edited October 15, 2021 by Procyon1981

[RedRodriguez87]

 

#340: Platinum

 

Super late post, but whatever. This game was a pleasant surprise.

 

It seems to be rare to find these shovelware looking games and not have them be ball-bustingly cheap and hard to finish, or glitched and a pain to finish, or just too easy to finish. This game however, was a nice experience throughout, being straightforward, but just difficult enough to never feel like a slog.

 

I think the one drawback I would have is a late-game enemy. No, it's not a gamebreaking enemy, but it IS my most hated; the cheaply designed one. They have a damaging homing attack that has a long charge-up, and looks to put them in a vulnerable situation, but the game decides to make them invincible while it's happening, forcing you to defend or dodge, which seems to only work when the game wants it to. To those wondering what the big deal is, imagine Sephiroth and his Sin Heartless Angel attack. now imagine not being able to knock him out of it, and the only options you have are to eat the attack or hope your reflect magic works. Again, these minions' attacks are nowhere near as threatening as SHA, but that's how annoying it is.

 

Other than that, it was still a rather fun game. 

 

 

PS3

 

#341: Consummate Storm Master

 

Alrighty, another PS3 PS4 platinum pair!

 

Without the DLC to distract me, the most annoying parts are the final boss battles, and the fact that the Ai seems to summon substition juice at a rate you the player can only dream of, meaning basic combos border on useless in this entry, but still, not a super harrowing experience.The boss battles are still a blast, the graphics are still amazing, and overall I still feel that Naruto to this day got the Royal Treatment when it comes to video game adaptations.

[sona_11]

 #115 JUDGMENT

The Greatest Detective

 

Enjoyment : 7/10

Platinum : 8/10

 

phew! I finally got this plat!

I've been dropping and coming back to this game since 2020. At first, I didn't exactly enjoy it so I stopped playing before finishing ch1.

However, after few months, I came back to it and finished 4 chapters and become more interested in the story!

The story has its flaws but it's not really bad if you didn't take it very seriously

The gameplay was fun but the trophies was really tedious and frustrating (YES I'm looking at you drone race )

For the Puyo Puyo game, I didn't had hard time getting it after playing for a while (thank god!!)

 

Honestly, I can't believe I've finally finished it and can't wait for Lost Judgment ... but I'll buy it when it's on discount

and play it when I feel like I really want to torture myself with the trophies ?

 

Moving on to KHMOM !! ~

[rjkclarke]

Platinum #331

Legend of Kay: Anniversary (PS3)

 

 

 

Platinum
Collect all the other trophies to unlock

 

 

I went into Legend of Kay: Anniversary with pretty much no expectations at all. Aside from a slight bit of optimism - that I might discover a new (for me at least) hidden gem from the PS2 era. Did I find that hidden gem? Well as we go further into this review, I’m sure you’ll see what I really think about it – as there tends to be with games of this era, there’s often equal parts roughness alongside the smooth, and in some ways Legend of Kay is a case of having to best navigate those to have the most enjoyable time with it.

 

Legend of Kay was first released in 2005 – and Legend of Kay: Anniversary is exactly what it sounds like, an anniversary – released ten years later in 2015. It’s interesting actually, considering that this is a review of the PS3 version of the game – that Legend of Kay itself a game released fairly far into the PS2’s life cycle; in the same way the anniversary edition was released equally late into the PS3’s life cycle in 2015.  A time in which the PS4 had already released – almost rendering the PS3 version instantly obsolete – which I don’t think is actually that inaccurate of a description, considering the amount of glitches I ran into, more on those later.

 

I guess it’d be fair to label Legend of Kay as a character action game, in which you fight; traverse and puzzle solve your way through linear level after linear level, to stop the evil Gorilla, Minister Shun.  I’ve seen games that really don’t fit into that mould labelled as character action games, so I don’t see why Legend of Kay can’t also fit under that umbrella too. In Legend of Kay you play as the eponymous Kay, well rather obviously I suppose – it’d have been pretty odd if you fired up the game thinking, I can’t wait to see what Kay’s like as a character and then an anthropomorphic cat shows up and says “ Hey I’m Clive, and I’ll be your hero.” Although, if I’m being totally honest I might have preferred Legend of Clive as a concept, because Kay is a monumentally unlikeable character right from the very beginning.   

 

It was either a stroke of genius with characterisation, or it’s a product of the time this game was developed for; I’m going to assume it’s the latter. Now – it’s quite feasible that the developers, and the story writer thought, hey Cats are stereotypically quite indifferent right? So in our game let’s make it abundantly clear that our main character acts as if he’s completely indifferent to every single thing happening around him, and acts as brash and arrogantly as felinely possible.

However, I doubt that was the case, and it was probably just the result of mimicking other games of that period. In the mid 00’s protagonists with attitude were all the rage – and Kay unfortunately joins the pretty rife ranks of tremendously unlikeable ones. You’ll no doubt find him somewhere with his fur swept to the side across his face with a wallet chain talking to The Warrior Within version of the Prince of Persia, about how things were so much better in their day, and that kids these days don’t realise how lucky they have it.

 

So, as a main character Kay might be fundamentally very flawed and ultimately incredibly unlikeable (I’m hoping that’s not just me,) but he’s at least designed very well.  Well enough that a younger person might be enticed into buying the game just because of the cover art, or the background images. In much the same way a lot of the characters and environments are well designed. In fact I’d argue the art design and the visual style, alongside the soundtrack are Legend of Kay’s strongest features. Each of the areas in the game possess their own distinct feeling and look, that means you’ll at least never feel like assets are being re-used to a frustrating degree. I have played games released fairly recently that do that - so I can’t fault that in Legend of Kay’s case, you’ll always have somewhere new and exciting to explore, as you never stay in one location for too long. For a game released in 2005 the scale of some of these locations is surprisingly impressive – for as much as I found chapter eight incredibly frustrating, the fact it had so many interconnected locations was very well constructed to give it its deserved praise.

Whoever it was that designed Su Ling, Kay’s love interest – I really don’t think they should be allowed to have pets, for the pets own safety, because that is one overly sexualised female cat. I don’t think my eyes were quite prepared for the amount of bleach I had the urge to pour into them when I saw a giant pair of what I can only describe as “Cat-boobs.” Seriously – the PSOne version of Lara Croft might have looked at those and in the most prim and politest way possible said “A bit excessive don’t you think?” All of that aside however, pretty much all of the character designs are very distinct and unique, even down to the smallest areas like enemy variety, and in turn the armour variety on those enemies.  Instead of opting for a lazy uninspired palette swap like games often do, they chose to give enemies distinct pieces of armour that have to be removed to be able to damage them, so as you progress further each set of enemies gets surprisingly more ornate and detailed pieces of armour, which adds a lot of depth when you consider you fight rats, crocodiles and Gorillas, along your journey.

 

I alluded to the fact I thought the soundtrack was one of the strongest features of the game – and it absolutely is. Anyone who is familiar with Stewart Copeland’s work on the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy, would probably get a similar level of enjoyment from this titles soundtrack. It’s very reminiscent of some of those Spyro scores. It’s strange that in a game where it’s remarkably easy to tell when the score has been looped, that it really never becomes an issue – it’s a real joy to listen to, relaxing when it wants, to be atmospheric when it has to be, and also fairly memorable too. The specific sound of the music feels very appropriate too, as the game seems to be set in an approximation of China or at the very least somewhere that’d be easy to associate with China, so the music appropriately reflects that, and brings some real character to the proceedings.

 

Equally, for a game released in 2005, it contains quite a decent amount of well made sound effects – now, whether this is a result of being a remaster, I’m not quite sure, as I’ve never played the original to make the comparison, but to hear the clink of swords and the splashes of water as crisply as you can here can be a real joy.

Unfortunately when it comes to voice acting, not so much – part of my disdain for Kay as a character comes from his voice actor. I mean no disrespect to his voice actor, because he sounds like he was a fifteen year old child, but he’s awful. It’s clearly not all the actors fault, they wrote Kay to be such an abrasive character, and when you mesh that with a voice actor that sounds like he’s just in the midst of throwing a tantrum because his Mum wouldn’t let him buy the latest pack of Pokémon cards, you get a character that you really want to turn the volume down on a regular basis, or just scream SHUT UPPPP like Arnold Schwarzenegger does in Kindergarten Cop. I think the actor tries his best, but his character is written so wildly inconsistently that as a result Kay really suffers.

I don’t think it’d be right to ignore some of the other voice acting too, some of it is very good – like Minister Shun for example, he’s a very believable and detestable bad guy. Yet, some of it is unfortunately a little on the nose, I always think it’s a bit hit and miss whether or not you can get away with mimicking a foreign accent in an English voice – like a Chinese-English accent in this case. It’s not really handled with any sort of subtly; if any of you are particularly familiar with Family Guy, just think of every time they make an Asian joke, that’s almost exactly what the Panda’s in this game sound like at times, some don’t sound as bad, but some of them are a little tougher to view without rolling your eyes.

 

The gameplay in Legend of Kay is probably best described as simple yet satisfying. There isn’t a whole lot of depth to it, but it does have some, playing on the hardest difficulty - which you’d need to for the platinum does mean you have to learn some of its finer intricacies to grant you a little more survivability. You essentially have one attack button, a dodge roll and a magic attack button, all with fairly situational uses, alongside a combo meter, which honestly got me killed more often than it helped me. One of the strongest elements of the gameplay is the implementation of different weapons, you have access to Claws, Swords and a Hammer, and each one is situational in its usefulness.

Claws are best used against un-armoured enemies, hammers for breaking armour, and swords can do both, but with a little less specialised effectiveness. Magic ends up being useful in almost all situations – unfortunately that comes with a huge caveat, which is in the form of a problem many games from this era suffers from, which is being able to be hit out of animations, or damaged in the middle of them, without any way to cancel out of it. For example, there’s an enemy later in the game, that regularly throws bombs, yet those bombs can damage you the second you’ve used your magic, so you’ll think the animation has finished, and you should be able to move, but you can’t so unfortunately you get hit with a bomb and lose some of your health, which on nightmare is often quite a lot. So, on that difficulty you have to really know you’re safe to use magic. Bearing all of this in mind, the combat is at least quite enjoyable – and you always have the knowledge that you must be concentrate, because complacency will almost certainly get you killed in a few hits from Gorilla wildly swinging an axe around.

 

Legend of Kay also features races – which actually fit seamlessly into the story, as they are usually the thing that takes you from one area to the next. I quite enjoyed the inclusion of these, and whilst there is a little bit of trial and error involved when it comes to them, being able to ride a Hog (complete with Crash bandicoot reference,) a Dragon and a Wolf around is still pretty enjoyable.

 

One really egregious thing regarding the gameplay, is the use of items and dying – it’s a sign of the era more than anything, but in this game if you die, yet used an item before you died, that item is gone forever, so it essentially becomes easier to just manually quit to the menu and reload a save, otherwise you find you use up all of your best items, only to die, and have an even harder fight ahead of you. This happened to me on the final boss too, which meant I basically had to have a perfect fight against the final boss, which has two really tough phases, as your spawn point for dying after the boss, is right next to a save point, so it’s almost unavoidable to hit the save point, if you’ve used up many good items, it makes the game even harder as a result.

The PS3 version also contains one of the worst glitches I’ve ever encountered across all of the games I’ve played on PS3 – which was that at a very specific spot, you run across a bridge of falling bombs, and essentially - this is going to crash your game if you don’t tackle it a very specific way. From what I’m lead to believe, the game will crash the minute a bomb, or an explosion is caught on screen – so to get around this you either have to run as if you’re facing the camera (think the boulder or polar bear chase sections from Crash 1 and 2,) or you have to zoom in on Kay (which is what I did) and flick the right thumb-stick all over the place to stop the bombs and explosions appearing – which is pretty much all trial and error. I think my PS3 must have crashed at least twenty times in the process, which is such an unforgivable glitch to still be present in a game.

 

What does your journey towards the platinum look like? On paper at least it’s fairly straightforward, you have to complete the game on the hardest difficulty setting, get each weapon, all health and magic upgrades, enter every demon portal and then do one extra race without touching a chilli pepper (the thing that makes the animal move faster). The problem is, nightmare difficulty really is a nightmare, it’s brutal, you die in a few hits, and enemies die in – well, it isn’t a few put it that way. Unfortunately, much like a lot of games from the time period, it has a lot of camera issues – and these will kill you just as frequently as the enemies will, which adds an even greater level of frustration – add to this, the fact that the final boss, has three phases, and the final two have no checkpoints between them, so you’ll have to re-fight the second phase if you die to the third, all this ends up making nightmare quite the frustrating experience. Other than that, so long as follow a collectibles guide – you’ll pretty much have the platinum on completion, so at the very least the difficulty is stackable.

 

I’m having a hard time recommending this one – I guess if you have the interest in it, then give it a whirl. It’s definitely a fairly decent game – but even putting it in the context of when it was released, nothing much really stands out about it. If you did have the desire to play it though – I can’t help but think the PS4 version is probably best the way to go, I’ve heard that version is a little less glitchy, so that removes a huge amount of the games negative factors.

I find it so baffling that this game actually got a remaster – Legend of Kay, a fairly unremarkable title  gets a remaster but Legacy of Kain gets forgotten for the rest of time.... Oh my poor beloved vampires – will you ever get the attention you so rightly deserve? Still, Legend of Kay is decent enough, and I’m at least glad that I played it. Is it a hidden gem? I’d say no, it’s probably not – it’d be more appropriate to say it was a turnip carved into the shape of a diamond and then haphazardly covered in tin foil.

[dieselmanchild]

Great review RJ. You had me hooked at cat-boobs.

 

19 minutes ago, rjkclarke said:

Is it a hidden gem? I’d say no, it’s probably not – it’d be more appropriate to say it was a turnip carved into the shape of a diamond and then haphazardly covered in tin foil.

 

Also this might be the greatest summary of a game I’ve ever read lmao. 

[Viper]

 #249

Marvel's Spider-Man - Remastered

Be Greater

 

So I was about 70% through the story before I found out this was an Auto-Popping trophy list. But alas, I absolutely adore this game, so it was a joy to replay all the way through again. It was my personal GOTY for 2018 and that hasn't changed. Gonna play the DLC legit then probably auto-Pop the NG+ trophies to save me a playthrough. 

 

Not much to review about this one that I hadn't said a few years ago when I originally Platted it. So PS5 specifics...I played on Performance RT mode. Which is Dynamic 1440p/60FPS with Ray Tracing. I was already blown away by the graphics on the PS4...now? Absolutely stunning. I don't think this game gets enough credit in the graphics department when we talk about best looking games on console...it's rarely in the conversation. Yet Insomniac put so much attention to minor details, and I think that's where the discussion needs to be pinpointed. From the way fabric looks interwoven to things you can't see unless you're still and looking for them like feint scratches and finger prints on the armor based suits. To being able to read nutrition facts on a random ass soda can in a garbage bin on the street. I can't get over how Insomniac cut no corners on things like that.

 

Things like the Haptics and Adaptive Triggers are in play here, but they're very subtle. Not much to write home about. And I'm the one who posted about here back when Miles Morales was announced and literally no one but me seemed to care about it as I was the only one upset...but the change to Peter's face. I still hate it. It's terrible...it never got used to it. It doesn't fit, he's less expressive, too young looking, and he's just an odd looking person and not as appealing as the original Peter, and frankly whether it's supposed to look more like Yuri Lowenthal or not...his voice doesn't fit.  I know they'll work on him for Spider-Man 2, but I'll never be a fan of that face. 

 

Ugly ass Peter aside, it's still an amazing game, a must play for any PlayStation owner. 

[percy547389126yv]

#952 Space Break 2

[aarnettbraun]

Astro's Playroom

 

 You've Only Done Everything

Found all trophies in ASTRO's PLAYROOM. See you in our next adventure!

 

Difficulty: 2/10

Time: 6+ Hours

 

Screenshot When Earned:

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by notandrebraun

[Lordguwa]

platinum #557 Cat Quest 2 (ps4)

completed in 1 day and 6 hours

platinum rarity 65.33% common

platinum name: Pawlatinum

 

platinum #558 Barry The Bunny (ps4)

completed in 28 minutes and 34 seconds

platinum rarity 96.81% common

 

platinum #559 Pinkman+ (ps4)

completed in 20 minutes and 54 seconds

platinum rarity 97.37% common

 

Platinum #560 Rift Raccoon (ps4)

completed in 20 minutes and 16 seconds

platinum rarity 94.48% common

platinum name: Portal King

 

mopped up the last of the trophy's in the last hour. did have trouble finding two caves and 2 treasure chests but managed to get the plat before bed. finished plenty of ps4 plats tonight. pinkman+.  wasn't as hard as they say due to my experience with platformers. it had plenty of checkpoints but highly precise missiles. saving the ps5 version for a later time. next game will be Alphadia Gensis (ps4) the long term game will be from the drawer after the 5th.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Lordguwa

[percy547389126yv]

#953 Kick it, Bunny!

[Chris_Alvareno25]

-Need for Speed Heat-

 

 

 

 #1

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

Rarity: 15.67%

 

Well first of all I think that this game entrie is in my top # 3 personal favorite of the Need for Speed saga, cause it has a great car catalog, the game mechanics are nice, the gameplay is clean, the graphics for this game are realistic it really feels like you´re driving the car. The heat level mechanic is cool, after reaching heat level #5 adrenaline starts to kick in, I never thought a chopper could be such a pain, but after playing a few days I get used to it, making a chaos with armored trucks and a thousand police car in my tail was fun after all.

 

I felt that the story for this game is to short, not the best but it is ok, still has the NFS essence, you can choose and customize your own character, car modding was excellent it requires attention on what your doing, events were fun a ton of stuff to do as races, off-roads, drift trials and time trial, my favorite chapter was n°4, my favorite activity was drift zones, and my favorite car was Nissan Skyline GT-R V SPEC.

 

After some time this game felt a bit repetitive but still fun (collectibles, speed traps and long jumps). It feels amazing my first platinum trophy was a NFS game since I played my first Need for Speed game, when I was a kiddo it was NFS II, the moment I played Need for Speed Underground 2 I really get into this masterpiece saga. After all I like NFS Heat, but I really missed Toyota not being in this game cause i really wanted to drive a Supra.

 

Getting the trophies for this game were really easy, I played the game sometimes so it took me quite some time to reach all of the trophies. A friend of mine really pushed me to finally get a plat since he is really into it.        

 

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Edited October 16, 2021 by Chris_Alvareno25

[demonoutcast]

 

#100 - The Last of Us Part II

 

My first platinum was The Last of Us remastered six years ago. The past few years, I've played Watch Dogs religiously non stop while my trophy cabinet remained stagnant at 98 for the longest. Decided a few days ago to go back and knock out a few platinums for old times sake. Feels nice hitting triple digits at last  

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Time: 10 months

Enjoyment: 8/10

Edited October 16, 2021 by demonoutcast

[aarnettbraun]

Marvel's Avengers

 

 Omega Level Accomplishment

Earn all Trophies

 

Difficulty: 1/10

Time: 0 Seconds

 

Screenshot When Earned:

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by notandrebraun

[Deluziion90]

#451 - Alan Wake Remastered

 

Platinum Trophy
Unlocked when all trophies collected

 

Status update:

 

There we go finally after my Far Cry 6 break this game has been platted. Once again I got fooled by all the positive reviews and once again I was confused as hell like Control. The story is a little bit more clear this time but still some stuff was just weird.

 

Gameplay felt like I was playing a very old game. You can tell it's just a remaster and not a fixed new game. 

I would rate the fun of this game a maximum of 6 when it comes to trophy hunting. I was looking at my second screen all the way from start till the end to get all those collectables(and it's a lot of them!) that really killed the fun for me.

 

Before attempting my second run (nightmare mode/hardest difficulty) I choose to get the 2 DLC's out of the way first which was nerve wrecking to say the least. Both DLC's had a trophy where you can't die and have to finish the dlc. The first one I got my first try including all trophies and I was sweating everywhere that was actually a great relief to complete.

The second DLC's only took me a second run to get a no death so all in all those weren't too bad.

 

Nightmare mode! * spooky sounds * .. I was avoiding it for the past days after reading way to much online about it and how some people were raging and complaining about this that I actually got scared to even try it. 

 

But yesterday I made the jump and started chapter 1 and finished 2 without any trouble. Time for a break. 

Today I just went big balls and finished everything in 1 sitting and I can tell you. It's fucking easy .. It's just running, avoiding and that's all you need to do pretty much to get that last trophy out of the way. I even managed to get a misc trophy where you can't use guns in the final chapter.

 

Long story short:

Fun: 6.5/10 

Difficulty: 4/10

Overall time:  ~30hrs

 

Next game: The Dark Pictures - House of Ashes

 

[arcanehornet_]

Platinum #336: BioShock

 

One of the greatest shooters ever made, no doubt. 
The underwater city of Rapture is one of the most intriguing locations I’ve ever had the pleasure of exploring in a game.
The story is top tier, gameplay holds up well for 2008, and the atmosphere is brilliant.

Platinum wise, it is very simple. There are a handful of missables, but if you follow the PS5Trophies guide you should be good for them.
There is a glitch for the Survivor difficulty, you can essentially play on any difficulty till the very end, then change it to Survivor at the last second. You’ll still get the trophies. Just make sure to disable Vita Chambers in the options before your playthrough.

Overall, this was an amazing experience, I really should’ve played this game sooner. Can’t wait for BioShock 2.

 

Fun: 9/10 (at one point I lost 40 minutes of progress due to me not saving, so that was a bit frustrating)
Difficulty: 3/10
Time: 25 hours

[Valzentia]

 #36 - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven

Difficulty: 3/10

Fun: 8/10

 

A fun 3D fighter that I picked up at a discount during the Big In Japan sale a couple weeks back; it also happens to be the first fighting game I have ever platinumed. I really enjoyed the overall story of the game (a Dio from an alternate dimension fucking with the overall JoJo timeline) but feel like they could have executed it a little bit better. Also the Mounted Fighter class is a pile of shit...which is exemplified and amplified while trying to S-rank all side missions. But other than minor flaws like that, it's a pretty good game.

[The Arizona Ranger]

Platinum #18 - Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus (PS3)

 

The Pride of Fastoon (31.00% Rarity)

 

First Trophy: Leap for Your Life (Bronze) - October 12th, 2021 (12:59:45 AM PST)
Last Trophy (which popped the Platinum): Up Your Arsenal (Gold) - October 17th, 2021 (12:04:35 AM PST)
Gap (First to Last Trophy): 4 Days, 23 Hours, 4 Minutes

SOURCE: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/2235-ratchet-clank-into-the-nexus/MossyOakRcn42

Game Review
For reasons that I still don't understand to this day, I never purchased this game back when it originally launched on the Playstation 3 just days before the impending launch of the Playstation 4 console. Considering that I am a big fan of the franchise (have owned/played pretty much all of the games in the franchise, outside of the four spin-off titles), I am somewhat shocked that I never picked up this game. After giving it some thought for several minutes, I guess I failed to remember about the game in November of 2013 due to the impending arrival of my Playstation 4 pre-order from Amazon. Shame that it took me nearly eight full years to finally try this game out, but at least I can finally check it off of my extensive gaming backlog list.

For those who don't know, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus is the last of the games that make up the Ratchet & Clank Future timeline (see below):
 

• Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
• Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty (PS3)
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)
• Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus (PS3)

Set in the years(?) after the events of A Crack in Time and months(?) after the events of the spin-off game Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault (PS3), the game starts with our heroic duo teaming up with friends Cronk & Zephyr to transport the highly dangerous "space witch" known as Vendra Prog to a high-security prison deep in a remote part of the Polaris Galaxy to serve her life sentence in the aftermath of the major crime spree she took part in with her twin brother, Neftin Prog. However, the simple escort mission aboard the massive Nebulox Seven cruiser takes a turn for the worst when Neftin and a small legion of hired mercenaries from the mercenary company Thugs-4-Less make their move to free Vendra from captivity, setting off a chain of events that quickly thrusts Ratchet & Clank into a new adventure deep within the haunted Zarkov Sector in their quest to not only recapture Vendra, but also capture her twin Neftin in order to put an end to their reign of terror in the Polaris Galaxy.

It took me just under eight hours to beat the main story for the game (set on "Hero" [Medium] difficulty). I found roughly half of the Gold Bolts and four of the RYNO VII holo-plans during my first playthrough (I never refer to a gameplay/trophy guide when playing through a game for the first time). On the second playthrough (difficulty set to "Legend' [Hard] for Challenge Mode), I finished the game in around seven hours. It took me a third playthrough (difficulty set to "Cadet" [Easy] for Challenge Mode) in order to track down the few Gold Bolts and RYNO VII holo-plans that I had missed in my first two playthroughs in order have the resources necessary to obtain the overpowered RYNO VII, upgrade all of my weapons to their Omega Variants (bumps weapon level cap from Lv. 3 to Lv. 6) so I could earn the final trophy (Up Your Arsenal) that I was missing in order to pop the platinum for the game.

As a whole, while short, the game was still a fun and enjoyable experience as a fan of the franchise. The story was decent, the in-game arsenal was a fun mix of returning weapons/gadgets from previous Ratchet & Clank games and new weapons/gadgets (Nightmare Box, Netherblades, Netherbeast, etc), the humor was so-so, and the cast of characters was interesting. However, it still sucked that the game itself was so short (went in expecting it to take 11 to 15 hours to beat, so I was moderately disappointed when I managed to beat the game in just under eight hours). Considering that I paid around $50 for a used copy of the game, it wasn't really worth the price I paid for it, but at least I had fun with the game, so that makes it worth it on my end.

 

The only major bummer for me was how uneven the performance of the game on my ancient "fat" PS3 was during my 23 hours with the game. Not sure if it was because the game is poorly optimized (pushing the abilities of the PS3 too hard/far) or if it had something to do with my 11 year old PS3, but there were parts of the game where the frame rate dropped down into the low teens with how much was taking place on the screen at various sections of the game. Whenever there were a large number of enemies (usually 5 or more Thugs, robots, or Nethers) on screen in active combat, flying around levels with the Jetpack, or a ton of effects popping up (explosions, flames, effects from weapons, etc), the frame rate began to suffer and would dip down into the 12 to 15 FPS range. I have not seen frame rate issues like this on my PS3 since I last played both Fallout 3 (PS3) and Fallout: New Vegas (PS3), but those games were notorious for having issues once the size of the save file exceeded a certain number (which I don't think was the case here for Into the Nexus).

In the end, outside of the frame rate issues that popped up from time to time, I didn't have any other major issues with the game. The only other issue that popped up twice was Ratchet's movement getting stuck in one direction (he would move in that direction and would not go in any other direction, no matter how much I moved the left stick around). This weird issue took place for the first time during the final planet (Igliak) near the end of my first playthrough This was easily fixed by turning off the controller and turning it back on, which seemed to clear the input issue and it didn't pop up again until near the end of my third playthrough (this time on the planet Thram). Again, this was rapidly fixed by repeating the same process (turn off/turn back on Dualshock 3 controller)

I can only recommend this game for fans of the franchise and for those who are fortunate enough to still have a PS3 in their possession. The game does not take very long to beat (six to ten hours, depending on your skill with these type of games) and the only hard time I had with it was the grind getting all of the EXP in order to level up my fully-upgraged weapons to Lv. 6 in order to pop the final trophy (Up Your Arsenal) and take home the platinum trophy.

Another R&C platinum down for the Project Platinum: Ratchet & Clank group that I am a member of (this is now my third platinum for an trophy-enabled R&C game). Next up is Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (which I beat many years ago, now just have to replay it several times in order to earn the missing trophies for the game so I can take home my fourth R&C platinum).

Final Score (out of 10): 6/10
Difficulty to Platinum: 3/10 (nothing too serious, outside of the time it takes getting all of your weapons fully upgraded and max leveled, which requires two or more playthroughs to make happen)

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by The Arizona Ranger

[Steven-Spiegel]

169 - Unepic

 

 

Fun: 8/10

Difficulty: 5.5/10

Rarity: 4.79% (UR)

Time: 35h

 

Great classic metroidvania like, created by a single developer, his games should have more popularity, his more recent game called Unmetal is a Metal Gear MSX parody and looks awesome.

 

This game is UR (not for long I presume) due the last grind of 10.000 kills in one character but in less that 3 hours repeting the same bat room I manage to get the last 5.000 without much effort.

 

The platinum can be done in 1 walktrough on Hard++ but 2 walktroughs are advisable.

 

I spend 23 hours in the Easy walktrough including the final grind and 12h in Hard++, there is a bunch of missable challenges that need to look a guide, and one phase in the second last area on Hard++ that if are you doing the Crow challenge is quite challenging.

 

Overall a very enjoyable game! I hope more people play this.

 

PS: I started the game on Vita and I had a little problem with the cross-save when I want to make a backup of the save on PS4 and me panicking when my Vita data got corrupted and the save on PS4 was from several vours before... But a database reconstruction on Vita and saving with the two games running and the same time do the trick!

Edited October 17, 2021 by Steven-Spiegel

[DarkSamurai69]

#359 Yakuza 6: The Song of Life

Enjoyment: 9/10

Difficulty: 3/10

 

What a journey from Yakuza Zero to Yakuza 6. This series is one of my favorite game franchises with great stories and characters. It's sad to see Kiryu go but I supposed it's time for him to rest and have other characters shine in the spotlight. Can't wait to see how Judgment and Yakuza: Like a Dragon are. Such a bittersweet ending though. 

 

#360 The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

Enjoyment: 7/10

Difficulty: 2/10

 

I like the art style and it was a pleasant experience. Just some simple platforming with puzzles and trying to keep the Prince alive. It kind of reminded me of ICO with the characters holding hands while being guided through the level. It was cute.