Most Recent Platinum

[ArtisticGeek]

Platinum #213 El Shaddai: Ascension of the Mettatron 

 

[percy547389126yv]

#1,101 PS4 version of The Chick C

[JkarBr]

 #320 - I Am Bread. 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Bread

Collect all Trophies.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by JkarBr

[percy547389126yv]

#1,102 PS5 version of The Chick C

[Juzota]

Been awhile since my last post on this topic. I got my 150th Platinum (TLOU2) in April 2021 and I was pretty much done with trophy hunting, but here we go again...

 

#151 - Life Is Strange: True Colors (16th Feb)

- I have enjoyed every Life Is Strange -game and this was probably my second favorite since the original. I'd love to see some of these characters make an appearance on later games.

 

#152 - Astro's Playroom (21st Feb)

- I was lucky enough to finally get my hands on a PS5 and this was my first Plat on it Nice little game and even nicer memory trip to my childhood.

 

Next Platinum is probably going to be Horizon Forbidden West. I've been really enjoying it.

[Brainswashed]

Call Of Duty MW2 

Difficult:4/10 with veteran 2/10 with glitch

Fun : 10/10 this game bring back memories 2009

Time : 14 hr

 

start with training and other trophy guide and continue on veteran + collect intel + do the rest trophy in each mission I don’t know about the glitch so i beat it on veteran - trophy immortal is easy on rescue if you die just restart the mission no checkpoint , only trophy bird hunted destroy 10 helicopter is a little annoying some time you find 9 helicopter some time 8 but if you die after use the sniper you will find 1 helicopter try dont die and keep waiting even if the countdown begins.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Brainswashed

[BlitzkriegHottie]

February 2022 was indeed soulslike extravaganzza.

Konpeko konpeko konpeko!

 

Revenant Preeminent

Rarity: 13.71%

After 6 months without playing anything, decided to return to my beloved soulsorne games in order to prepare for Elden Ring and had a blast replaying Bloodborne and DSIII. That being said, the jump from those excellent games to Code Vein was rough. Everything about CV is underwhelming, even its most praised aspects like the character creation and, btw, including 2 cat tails, 2 sets of cat ears, a bunny tail but no bunny ears???!!! WTF?! I had to improvise my masterful Pekora cosplay! The performance was awful as well, it stutters like crazy on the Pro and the framerate is all over the place despite not having complex visuals at all. Truly a let down.

 

Platinum wise it's your usual soulslike list, nothing out of the ordinary... until you see the trophy for helping people in co-op 400 times. Luckily, this was "fixed" and now you can quickly farm the medals in the free DLC missions. Took me a single afternoon farming the Tower of Trials. 

 

Game Rating: 5/10 (never goes beyond being 'waifu souls')

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to platinum: 30 - 40 hours

Jojoposing War Criminal

Waifu souls

 

Quite the controversial pick for my return to platinum hunting.

 

 

 

[Deluziion90]

#483 - Horizon Forbidden West

 

All Trophies Obtained Obtained all Horizon Forbidden West trophies.

 

Status update copy:

 

Trophy addication started years ago when I first bought my PS4 with HZD and it was just great to get back into this amazing world.

 

I've played this game at my own speed and just enjoyed almost everything the game has to offer. I just need about 5 more side quests to get the game at 100% and then it's probably waiting for DLC's, if there will be any.

 

The only "bad" thing I could say about the game is that I lost attention more and more towards the end of the game. I've put around 60hrs into the game and I've played just way to much that I just wanted to see the finish line.

Great game nonetheless 9/10!

 

Up next.. Elden Ring ofcourse   

[rjkclarke]

Platinum #346

Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love (PS4)

 

 

Mythical Onion
Collect all Trophies

 

Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love, which from now on I’ll just refer to as Irony Curtain, is a traditional point-and-click adventure game brought to you by Artifiex Mundi. You don’t need to adjust your bi-focal lenses, you didn’t read that wrong, yes, that Artifex Mundi, with the hidden objects and the lite-puzzles, decided to do something very different and make a traditional point-and-click adventure game.

 

I can’t lie here – I was very excited to see that Artifex Mundi had decided to take a chance and try something completely different to the game they’d usually make. I was even happier to see it actually succeed.

 

You know what the greatest thing of all about that is?  Is the fact that their gamble actually worked. Whilst I was very much excited by the idea of a point-and-click game developed by Artifex Mundi what I ended up thinking, rightly, or wrongly is that it’d be a typical Artifex Mundi game where the layout is just changed from a first person perspective to that of a third person one. For a first effort, what I hoped for was competence, and what I expected was maybe a little derivativeness – what I wasn’t prepared for was near excellence.

 

To give you a brief rundown of the setting – you play as Evan Kovolsky, an American journalist and for all intents and purposes is a card carrying communist, the interesting thing being, that the game is set during the cold war. So as you’d expect from something like that, Irony Curtain very much leans hard and heavy on some satirical elements, but they don’t over-egg the pudding with just those, it just provides some context for Evans eventual character arc.

As you see his naive but endearing attitude towards his beliefs slightly change as he begins to see the real Matryoshka first hand as the game unfolds.  That’s all I’m willing to say though, as people should absolutely see the plot unravel on your terms, but for what it’s worth, I thought it was incredibly engaging the whole way through.  

 

As is often the case with a successful point-and-click adventure title, they usually contain a vast amount of memorable and often funny NPC characters. Irony Curtain is no exception. It boasts a huge amount of memorable and oftentimes hilarious characters, the kind you’ll meet once and then spend parts of the game wondering and maybe even hoping they’ll crop up again.

This was a genuine surprise to me – as I worried the thing that would fall the flattest would be the way Artifex Mundi utilised the characters and the overall tone, as that has never been one of their strongest suits – incredible art-style, oftentimes yes, but memorable characters are found in Artifex Mundi games far, far less often. Evan himself is a very effective protagonist – he’s bumbling and naive, but ultimately very endearing.

 

An element that you can almost always guarantee from an Artifex Mundi game is strong artistic direction – and this is absolutely the case here, too. The general aesthetic is that of individual hand-painted scenes, that are just brimming with character and vibrant colours in the scenes that need them, but also a real understated and grimy. With an excellent attention to detail in parts of Matryoshka that look suitably dishevelled and dilapidated.

 

There’s an interesting little Easter egg that you’ll come across in your pursuit of the trophies, which I thought was a gorgeous little touch by Artifex Mundi. For a little context Evan is adopted, so his family created a family tree for him – and to paraphrase his own words “some made up people, my family made to make me feel happier.”

 

That’s fairly innocuous and cute, right? It’s only when you look at the family tree in more detail that you see how awesome it is.

 

 

Each of the family members is an artist’s rendition of popular point-and-click characters, obviously tweaked ever so slightly to avoid copyright infringement, but you can absolutely see who’s who.

 

That being said – the aspect of that picture that I loved the most – was the two people that Evan directly descended from, and when you look at it, and you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Those two characters are Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island and Goal from Deponia.

 

It’s fascinating to me that Artifex Mundi decided to directly address their closest influences like that – because, there is something about that, which rings very true – to me at least, about Irony Curtain being a mixture of Monkey Island and Deponia. Irony Curtain is very similar to Deponia stylistically, whilst also having some of the sensibilities and plot eccentricities of Monkey Island. Even down to small things, like Evan’s naive bumbling likeability that he has in common with Guybrush.

 

It’s a real love letter to the genre, but not in the same way something like Thimbleweed Park is, this game is a statement that the genre can still thrive, and still be  worthy of attention, even in the modern era of gaming.

 

I’d even argue that the puzzles found within Irony Curtain are of a general quality improvement over the usual type you’d find in an Artifex Mundi game (not that they are bad either, they just reappear very often, and if you play a lot, become a bit over familiar). I was absolutely, impressed by the fact that they leaned into being more in line with the genre, as opposed to going to the well with some of the familiar puzzles you’d expect from them. How many times can you say you’ve made a lever rise, by tying a condom inflated with helium onto it? Not many of us I’m sure, unless you work in a particularly odd subsection of engineering.  

 

 

The audio in Irony Curtain is of a pretty high quality across the board. Or at least its individual components are. What I mean by that, is that on start up the game has flatly balanced audio, but I’d personally recommend tweaking that a bit, as I found on a few occasions the soundtrack would completely drown out the dialogue sections, but it’s simple enough to fix that to your own preferences, and that’ll never be an issue.

 

The original soundtrack itself pretty much feels appropriate for each situation, it does loop fairly often, but not in an obnoxious way. An element I thought that was of incredibly high quality was the voice acting, the audio was nice and crisp (especially after tweaking the soundtrack down a notch or two) I can’t think of any bad  voice performances in the game, some of them caught me off guard with how genuinely funny they were.

A good example being – Anna the games femme-fatale, and the way she sarcastically reacts to some of the patently obvious things Evan says whilst he’s none the wiser.

A nice little touch is that the audio subtly, and unsubtly changes when you learn to speak Matryoshkan, as now the character speak in very deliberate ways – like the character you meet who makes Alcohol from mushrooms....sorry,sorry, SHROOMCAHOL, to give it its proper title, who speaks similarly to the most stereotypical hill-billy you can probably think of.  

Christopher Ragland was a real treat as Evan, in some respects he reminded me of Ren from Oxenfree where some of the ridiculous things he says at times you can’t help but crack one of those eye-rolling smiles.

 

The route to the platinum in Irony Curtain is a fairly straightforward one – it has got a fair few missable trophies, as the game is one long linear line, so either have a guide to hand, or replay the game (it’s relatively short, between four and six hours I’d say, so either option is valid). There are a lot of miscellaneous trophies to be picked up, but some of them can give you a real smile from how obscure they are, this isn’t a game where the platinum will set you back a major amount of your time.

 

Would I recommend this one? Absolutely, even if you never play another Artifex Mundi game again, this should appeal to you, even if you just like point-and-click adventure titles. It's chock full of funny references to plenty of things that aren't just from point-and-click sphere, and some of them did get some genuine laughs from me.

 

I can safely say that this is one of the point-and-click games I’ve enjoyed the most in recent times. It has got a few hiccups here and there, sure, where some sections are a bit longer than they should be, but overall it was a great experience for me. For a first attempt at the genre, they did a fantastic job, and I’m really hopeful that this isn’t the last time they make one either.   

 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by rjkclarke

[insaneeeRob]

Hero of the day

Adam's Venture: Origins

 

Okay so I played this since I have psnow for now and I saw this easy game. Pretty boring but at least is short hehehehehe. The best part of Unchar- I mean Adam's Venture is when you uninstall the game.

[Fr_0zt]

 #200 Horizon Forbidden West

 

 

All Trophies Obtained

 

 

Fun = 9.5/10

Difficulty = 3/10

Time = 65 hours

 

Never thought i would make it to this milestone.  SIUUUUUU!! ? 

 

 

[Suminya]

#331 - NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered (EU)

(Racing game platinum #88)

 

NFS Hot Pursuit Elite
Awarded for successfully collecting all Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit Remastered trophies.

[DesmaBR]

Platinum #159

 

 

 Masters of the Multiverse
Collect All Trophies

 

It is a very enjoyable game.

But it just made me wish I was playing Crack in Time instead.

[Biscoito18]

 #116 - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

 

A New Hope

 

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

 

 

[Moridin83]

 

 #197 Middle Earth Shadow of War

 

Ugh. Rant incoming, so if you like this game, I encourage you to skip this. ?

I really didn't like a lot of what this game does. I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor, so more would be good right? Not so much. I don't know if it's faulty memory, or what, but the cutscene graphics in this felt bad. The in game was fine, but the cutscenes disappointed quite a bit. If that was the worst of it though, I wouldn't complain. The combat was unresponsive. I don't know how many times I tried to roll to the side, and I jumped at the vault breaker I was fighting. That wouldn't be such an issue if you weren't constantly having to dodge unblockables and projectiles. Targeting war banners to stop every attack from being unblockable was painful, as I frequently attacked a totally unrelated guy. But the biggest gameplay sin is related to one of the game's signature features, the nemesis system. In concept, I really like the idea, but their intro cutscenes are unskippable, their death animations are unskippable, their arrival in a siege is unskippable, and in a high level siege, you can be dealing with 15-25 captains. This is incredibly frustrating, as it disrupts any flow the game has, and the sieges are required to finish the game. Add to this a glitched trophy for act 4 that made me replay the whole game a second time, and I'll be really glad to see the end of this once I get my 100%.

[Marvy_G23]

All Trophies Obtained
Obtained all Horizon Forbidden West trophies.

[percy547389126yv]

#1,103 PS5 version of One Night Stand

[percy547389126yv]

#1,104 PS5 version of Task Force Kampas

[EverythingOnFire]

Platinum #38

 

Playtime: 9-10 hours

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 8.75/10

 

What a great game! It's basically Rick & Morty without Rick & Morty, and that's fine by me. Obviously if you like the show, you should give this a try. Not as fun overall as I would have hoped, but both the premise & gameplay mechanics are interesting, and I loved the story and stupid humor, so I was constantly engaged. Probably my favorite video game from the last 6-7 months. I'd give one used Plumbus and all thirteen-and-a-half of my Brapples for a sequel.

 

[DrBloodmoney]

  504

 642

 

Death's Door

A 2021 Isometric Combat Metroidvania from Acid Nerve - developers of well regarded (though unplayed by me) Titan Souls - Death's Door puts the player in the role of a crow, employed by the Reaping Commission - a sort of bureaucratic, administrative office, in charge of reaping souls on Death's behalf.

 

After being sent on a routine reaping, the crow encounters another, much older crow, the Grey Crow, who reveals a conspiracy within the Reaping Commission that goes all the way to the top - to the Lord of Doors. The player is dispatched to traverse the game worlds, and reap three 'giant souls' from three distinct bosses, and return them to the Grey Crow, in order to unveil this conspiracy, dismantle the Reaping Commission, and discover the secret that the Lord of Doors has been hiding.

 

Mechanically, Death's Door is pretty simple. The game is isometric, and cribs fairly heavily from 16-bit era Zelda games. Each of the three main 'dungeons' is themed to the individual boss it houses, and while the game feels quite open, and certainly allows for exploring off-the-path to some extent, it's actually much more linear than it first appears. The Metroidvania elements are fairly simple, with traversal blocked by the requirements for the game's only 3 upgrades (a fire spell, a bomb, and a hook-shot,) and these are used fairly liberally to block access to areas until they are found.

 

These metroidvania elements are actually pretty clever, in the sense that the traversal is not quite as 'black-and-white' as in some games in the genre. 

While the fire spell can be used to light brasiers easily, it is awarded after a dungeon where lighting brasiers is actually a requirement already - but they must be lit by firing arrows through a previously lit one, crossing the path of the unlit one. 

The 'bomb' spell can easily destroy a weak wall, however, to get it, the player must first traverse a dungeon full of weak walls, using a particular plant which fires its own 'bomb' equivalent at the player. This helps to keep each dungeon feeling quite puzzle-focussed, as the player has to not only identify a place where they can light a brasier, for example, but on their first run, they must also identify whether it is possible to do without the spell, as part of their initial traversal, or if it is one related to a secret, where they must return later, spell in hand.

It also makes the upgrades feel quite meaningful in terms of 'adding power' as opposed to simply opening up new paths. Gaining the ability to do something that was previously impossible feels like progression, but gaining the ability to easily do something that was tricky before gives a much stronger feeling of 'levelling up'. The distinction is fairly semantic on paper, but the feeling in the game is quite palpable.

 

The puzzle elements of the game are the real highlight of Death's Door. The world is lovely to look at, and very well designed. Each dungeon is relatively small in terms of floor-plan, however, each individual room is crafted with a lot of secrets and clever little hiding spots hidden in plain sight, with just enough clues to let the player know there is something to find, but not so obviously that these ever become tiresome. There are a lot of quite bespoke and specific solutions to these non-critical puzzles and retreading previously trodden ground once a new ability is gained is almost always fruitful - lending a welcome fun to retreading ground, and showing a remarkable depth and cleverness to the level design.

 

There is a bit of a problem in the later game, owing to the lack of inclusion of a map, however. While each area is completely traversable without one in first pass - as the puzzles and metroidvania elements effectively guide the player, as their abilities gate certain areas off. Later though, once all paths have been opened, it can be very tough to remember which one of the convoluted paths actually lead to where. While the earlier puzzle elements are great, the cleared field, post-puzzles is difficult to navigate, and a map would have helped this.

 

The other mechanical aspect of the game, however, is the combat - and that does let the game down quite a bit. For all the work that has gone into designing the world, and the secrets and nooks and crannies, and the smart metroidvania elements, the combat feels remarkably flat and un-nuanced... and there is a LOT of it.

 

The player has relatively few combat options available to them - a melee swing, a 'hard' swing (which borders on useless, due to the lengthly wind-up, given that all enemies attack quickly and without much telegraphing,) plus the few combat-enabled spells. 

Combat is a HUGE part of the game - there are virtually no areas that do not contain significant numbers of mob enemies, and fighting these does tend to become a chore rather quickly. Healing in the game is relatively minimal, and confined to set locations. Rooms often have 3-5 'phases' of enemies that spawn in. Melee swings don't do a huge amount of damage (particularly when attempting the platinum, which requires a full run using only the 'meme' weapon - a low-power umbrella!), and have very limited range, but spells require charge, which is only gained by connecting with melee swings. As such, the general flow of combat is always the same - back off, fire some spells, get close, swing a few times, dodge roll the counter-attack, repeat.

This isn't a terrible flow, however, it does get a little dull - and is made unnecessarily frustrating by both the tendency for ranged attacks to come from off-screen, and the healing mechanics... or lack thereof.

 

That, and one other thing, of course: All enemy hits do identical damage. 

Yes, you read that right. 

A hit from the weakest enemy, or one from the strongest boss, all do one 'blip' of damage. The player is limited to a small number of 'blips' (4 to begin with, increasable to 6 total, though - full disclosure - I did not manage to find enough secrets in my first playthrough to increase beyond 4 blips until well into the post-game.) This means that lengthier enemy encounters tend to be a simple endurance test - trying to avoid the inevitable eventual hits coming form all sides (or dodge-rolling off the edge of a platform, which is a common occurrence, as the dodge roll always goes a set (oddly lengthly) distance.

 

This 'uniformity of damage' concept has a good and bad aspect - it helps to make boss fights more interesting,  but general combat more frustrating. 

Fighting a boss with a limited number of hits you can take is fun, as it involves learning the patterns of the boss in a rather 'Souls-like' way, and mastering the battle, rather than simple attrition.

In general combat though, where traversal is also happening, and multiple enemies move in much less predictable patterns, it tends to just feel arbitrarily frustrating. Getting through several encounters in a row, and having only one 'blip' left, can be fun and exciting, however, when that is immediately followed by another multi-phase encounter, it tends to simply result in feeling hopeless, as the multiple ranged attacks from all sides (and often offscreen) and tight spacing of the encounters are very tough to avoid taking any damage during.

 

Death's Door is actually the first game I have played in a very, very long time, where repeated deaths in the same locations became so frustrating and irritating that I found myself simply turning the game off for a while. Let's be clear: I do not consider myself good at games - there are hundreds of games I have played where I die over and over again (including quite a few you probably found easy, dear reader!...) but few games ever frustrate me in such a withering, deflating way than this one did. 

I do not think Death's Door is a particularly difficult game - certainly I have played much harder ones - but I do think it speaks to something negative that this was one of the only ones I can ever recall where that frustration lead to my preferring to play nothing for a while, than to continuing to play Death's Door!

 

Narratively, the game is in an odd spot. The story is fine, and the world is an interesting and fun one, however, there is a strangely limited amount of actual lore and world-building, given how unusual it is. We get to see the oddness, but learn little of the actual state of the world, beyond what is immediately presented - which is atypical and a little disappointing for a game with such imaginative concepts.

 

It took me a while to figure out why I wasn't connecting with the plot as much as I felt I could be, and I think I figured it out after a while:

The fundamental issue with the narrative, I think, is that Death's Door has all the TRAPPINGS of a story that should be allegorical, or at least metaphorical - but as far as I can tell, it isn't. 

The whimsical reality and eclectic mix of odd concepts and esoteric characters is charming and fun, and feels analogous to something like Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, or L Frank Baum's Oz,  but where those whimsical, crafted realities were in service of direct allegory to real-life concepts, Death's Door isn't. It makes a head fake towards allegory, but never really follows through.

 

There are certainly emotional or philosophical leanings in some of the dialogue - in particular the discussion of the roles of hope, complacency and failure that the Grey Crow gets into, or the role of duty, fate and the will to live brought up by the Lord of Doors, however, without any kind of connection between the make-believe world of the game and our real world, it's hard to connect much with them, or form any real investment with the characters. We only know as much about this world, its rules and its cast of characters as we are told. That isn't much, and without broader context to the world, or a metaphorical connection to some world we do understand better, the emotional moments are reduced to simply beats in a peculiar tale. Perfectly fine and interesting to see, but no more impactful than the comedic ones.

 

While this does not necessarily make the narrative bad - I still fundamentally enjoyed seeing the story play out, was interested in the mystery of the conspiracy within the Reaping Commission, and found the eclectic mix of characters fun to see and interact with - it does lessen the impact of the narrative a little. There was a continual feeling, throughout my time with the game, that the developers and writers wanted me to have an emotional investment in their material that I never did find.

I take no issue whatsoever with narratives that are simply fun and strange and unobtrusive, but here, I do think there is a clear intention for more - it simply doesn't manifest.

 

Visually, there is, however, nothing to complain about here. Death's Door looks really nice. The art is heavily stylised, simple polygonal and somewhat cell-shaded, but the whole thing is rendered in a glossy, smooth pastel-shade, with some of clean, crisp, simple aesthetic of the best looking iOS games. Environments look excellent in this style, and it really lends itself fabulously to the puzzle aspects of the game - there is just little enough detail for clues to stand out, but still hide in plain sight in the isometric format.

 

Audio is an odd case for me personally, as I think it is all very high quality, though not all my personal cup of tea. There is no voice work, but the score is ever-present, and odd in tone. There are some sections where I really like the music - during the "Avarice" chest battles, it becomes a pounding, rousing anthem, reminiscent of the great music in boss battles in Child of Light, and in some areas it was soaring, haunting melody, reminding me of the Shadow of the Colossus score, however, generally, there is an unusually maudlin piano-jazz that accompanies the adventure - and it wasn't really my bag. As was the case with some of the music in Kena: Bridge of Spirits, it is certainly nicely written and produced, and adds a distinct character and flavour to the game, but didn't do much for me personally.

 

Overall, Death's Door is very much a game of two halves for me - a great little puzzle-focussed Metroidvania, but with a fairly poor combat-focussed action element bolted onto it. The game looks great, sounds good, and the plot, while relatively undersized, is interesting, if never truly engaging.

 

Let me be clear - Death's Door is not a bad game. In fact, it's a pretty good game.

The problem is, there are just enough consistent irritations, minor oversights and curiously under-baked or ill-conceived elements to prevent it ever being the great game that it often gets close to feeling like it could be. That 'near-miss' makes the overall game feel worse than it probably is. 

To simply be 'good' is fine, but to be within spitting distance of great, but stumble over the confluence of small annoyances and silly design choices is worse than annoying. 

It's a little bit heartbreaking.

 

 

(For original review and Scientific  Ranking see HERE)

[crowizard]

On 22. 02. 2022. at 9:42 PM, PondNewt said:

Excellent work.  I've read before this is among the toughest platinum's you can go for.  

 

In platforming genre definitely yes.

[DrBloodmoney]

  505

 643

 

Life is Strange: True Colours

 

Summary: 

The fourth instalment in the Life is Strange series has a feeling of a 'return to roots' for the series. That is conceptually interesting, considering it comes from Deck Nine (developers of Life is Strange prequel Before the Storm) and not series originator, DotNod. 

Before the Storm was something of an outlier, in the sense that it eschewed the "magical realism" side of the franchise, leaning instead on the emotional weight, arthouse style and symbiotic relationship the series has with its indie music soundtrack. 
Life is Strange 2 set itself apart further still, by following a more atypical narrative structure, opting to follow two characters as they move across America, and dealing more with discrete, broader societal themes in each standalone episode than weaving a tale around a static set of secondary players.

Life is Strange: True Colours, on the other hand, feels to be something of a maturing for the franchise - having learned from the previous two iterations, but using that knowledge to come back to the broad structure of the original game (a single location, a supernatural power, a grand mystery, a smart but un-self-confident female protagonist, and static cast of well-rounded characters,) with a confidence instilled by the series', at this point established, commercial success. 

 

Set in the small, idyllic Colorado mining town of Haven Springs, Alex Chen arrives having been invited by her estranged brother, Gabe. Both Alex and Gabe grew up together, but after losing their mother to cancer, and their father to despair, they were separated in the foster care system, and both had an extremely rocky road to the point in which we meet them - particularly Alex. Imbued with a sort of superpower/curse, Alex is able to empath with other people, feeling their emotions and, in moments of extremes, be taken over by them. Having spent a lot of time in group homes, (some of the trials of which are hinted at, both in her comments to Gabe, and in text messages on Alex's phone, which can be accessed and scrolled back to read) Alex is emotionally distant and withdrawn around people - fearful of her own power and emotionally delicate, yet strong and driven in a way that befits someone hardened to anguish by years of feeling unwanted or unseen.

Over the course of the 5 chapters, (True Colours is, curiously, the first Life is Strange game not to be released episodically, yet retains the broad structure of the games that birthed it, splitting it's story accordingly,) Alex, and the town, endure a terrible tragedy, and she is forced to make a choice about whether to remain in the town, living with the memories of that tragedy, and try to make sense of them, or to move on, simply adding Haven Springs to a long list of places to which she feels she does not belong. She chooses the former, for a while at least, and throughout the game, she investigates the tragedy, the seedy relationship the beautiful and picturesque town has with the mining corporation that is both the primary employer, and life blood of the local economy, and gets to know a smattering of the locals, slowly becoming a part of the town, and slipping into its rhythm even as she tunes aspects of it to hers.

 

As is the case with most narrative games, I am deliberately talking around the plot, as spoilers are a problem when the game is purely narrative, but I think it's worth touching on the broad elements. While I won't go into detail, I will say, the actual structure of the plot of the game is good here. The story is simpler than the original game - though longer than Before the Storm. The characterisation is extremely strong, not only for Alex, who I find to be incredibly likeable and endearing, but of virtually every secondary character too. The cast is relatively small in this game - closer in scope to that of Before the Storm than Life is Strange or Life is Strange 2, but the longer narrative means each of these characters gets a chance to shine in different spots, and it means than as the story progresses, speaking with and checking in with the secondary players is not a matter of checking boxes, but a pleasure and the meat of the game.
While there is certainly less specific points being made here about aspects of culture, as was the wheelhouse of Life is Strange 2, there are still significant areas in which the game tries (and broadly succeeds) to address real-life concerns, though much more in the spirit of Life is Strange and Before the Storm. These are generally aspects of human interaction than broad societal concerns of LiS2. Grief, Loss, Guilt, Loneliness, Friendship and Love are much more at the forefront here again, and while I enjoyed Life is Strange 2, I feel like that is a good thing. That is the areas best served by the tone of these games, and they are areas which the series can navigate most effectively. 

 

The game certainly retains the unusual player-to-protagonist relationship that has become a staple of Life is Strange as a series. Because Alex, like Max Caulfield, Chloe Price and Sean Diaz before her, comments on items, objects and people in a semi-narrative, conversation way, in part directly to the player, the player resumes the role of guardian and friend, far more than controller or observer. In True Colours, in fact, the developers lean even more into this notion, right at the outset, by having our first introduction to Alex be direct to camera, as she uncomfortably answers questions from an unseen supervisor in the group home she is leaving. Her tone, expressions and discomfort in being observed is clear to see, and because she is looking directly at us as her emotions are laid bare, even as she tries to steel them from us, it forms an instant emotional connection to a character in a way few visual or narrative devices can do. 
Unlike previous Life is Strange games, where I came to empathise and feel for the protagonist characters based on observing their stories and actions, here, I didn't need that. The smart inclusion of these scenes as our first glimpse of Alex, meant that I felt an instant and powerful paternal/human desire to keep her from harm, prior to even knowing what harm there was out there for her to find. That is an emotional and human connection only possible through that kind of 'direct to player' interaction, and as a result of extreme fidelity and verisimilitude of expression and writing, and it is done masterfully here.

Retaining the episodic structure, despite the full release of the game as a single entity is beneficial in most senses. It allows the game to work using discrete 'time-cuts' in the same manner Life is Strange 2 did, and allows the player to retain one of the most specifically 'series staple' aspects of the Life is Strange games - to review the choices the player made, both against the global norm, and those of their PSN friends, however, there is a slight wrinkle as a result of the full game being released at once. Because the game no longer has the roll of credits between episodes, the jump between episodes is much faster, and it can make the time cuts feel a little jarring - occasionally, it feels like there a few lines of dialogue spelling out how much time has passed since the previous chapter, and if missed, it can be up to the player to figure it out.

 

Visually, Life is Strange: True Colours is a massive leap forward from even the Life is Strange 2. The game is a PS5 exclusive, and while I am confident it would work on a PS4 with only minor reductions in fidelity, it is still remarkable what a visual difference there is here from the previous games. The broad art style is retained - the characters here are not 'realistic', but rather, artistically befitting the art-house style, and the staples of the series are present - white, sketchbook outlines on objects of interest, blobby, painterly interpretations of photographs etc. - however, the fidelity in things like character facial animations and movements are a big step up, and the environments are massively more detailed. Haven Springs is - it has to be said in no uncertain terms - fucking beautiful. The town is literally the most idyllic place I can imagine. This is a town that makes Stars Hollow from the Gilmour Girls look like Megaton from Fallout 3. The Main street, the bar, the apartment Alex lives in above it, the Flower Shop, the Weed Dispensary (Colorado, yo) - every location is not only rendered beautifully, it is a beautiful rendering of a beautiful place, and with the art-style Life is Strange affords, and the heightened colour palate of the game (on show in full HDR) it is lent a feeling of 'home' immediately.

 

Voice work and audio are excellent as usual. Alex in particular, I was surprised to learn, is not a prolific voice actor, and this appears to be her first gig according to IMDB, though I'd be extremely surprised if it was her last.
The soundtrack (a Life is Strange staple) is, once again, a well cultivated compilation of indie pop, this time featuring such artists as Novo Amor, The Kings of Leon, Phoebe Bridgers, Radiohead and Far Caspian - and True Colours follows the path laid out in Before the Storm, actively leaning into the soundtrack as a major component of the game. Music is a big part of the lives of Alex, Gabe, and particularly Steph Gingrich (the only retained character from Arcadia Bay, here, a little older and working as a record store DJ,) and the game treats music as an integral player in the overall experience. Throughout, there are moments where the player can take a moment, relax, and simply listen to a song, as the game provides a montage of the environment ands a quiet 'Zen moment', and in a lot of cases, the music is diagetic, with the player listening to it along with Alex.

 

The mechanics of the game work in a very similar way to the previous games - Life is Strange as a series is not concerned, really, with offering gameplay puzzles or mechanical obstacles, but rather, simply adds simplistic versions of these as a means to exploring the town and the environments, and furthering the plot. They work as intended, and a few little PS5-specific flourishes are added, by way of the haptic feedback and rumbles, particularly around Alex's powers, and the internal struggles they invoke.

 

Overall, Life is Strange: True Colours is a wonderful experience. Shedding the aspects of Life is Strange 2 that were more divisive has renewed the series ability to craft, over the course of a relatively short experience, a more complex emotional investment with a wide collection of characters. Alex retains the crown as our closest companion, but the game does not feel like 'us vs. the world' in the way Life is Strange 2 did, but rather, a slice of a bigger story, in which a tapestry of characters are living a life, and we are living with them for a spell.

 

 

 

Life is Strange: True Colours - "Wavelengths" DLC

The bonus episode for Life is Strange: True Colours revolves around main campaign cohort (and, if you're playing as I did, love interest) of protagonist character Alex, Steph Gingrich, prior to the events of the main game. Alex is not yet a factor in the story - having not arrived in Haven Springs at this point - and Steph, having moved to Haven Springs recently (at the outset of Wavelengths,) takes over the job as the DJ for the local radio station, and running the record shop in which the station is based.

 

The content is relatively limited in scope - Steph is pretty much the only character seen on screen throughout, and almost all conversation is internal monologuing, text-conversation (via sms, and the dating app Steph is using, and using which the player is able to control to some pretty amusing effect,) and via conversations with callers over the radio. The entire DLC takes place within the confines of the record store, and does - mechanically - remain fairly basic, which each 'day', (the dlc is broken up into specific vignettes,) consisting of a simple list of tasks to be completed. That is not to say, however,  that it serves no purpose, or that Deck Nine have scrimped on content.

There is a pretty impressive wealth of dialogue and text conversations - all variable, based on player input, and a huge amount - a genuinely surprising amount, in fact - of new licensed music in the game.

Given that Steph is running a radio station, that should be surprising from a narrative point of view, of course, but simply from a technical and economic game-design point of view, its clear that effort was made to give the whole section a great, eclectic soundtrack - with more individual licensed songs than any three episodes of most Life is Strange games combined.

 

There is a fairly significant amount of back-story and insight given via this content - both into the story of Life is Strange: True Colours, and the bridging of True Colours to Life is Strange, and Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Wavelengths, in fact, is functionally similar to the bonus episode for Before the Storm - "Farewell" - in that it both changes the protagonist of the main game to which it belongs, provides background flavour on its parent game, and serves to bridge the history between its parent game, and the games that came before it.

While some aspects simply add flavour and background to Steph's character in True Colours, (it is, for example, easier to understand how quickly her relationship with Alex becomes meaningful, when considered with the knowledge that she has been trying - and failing - to find love via a dating app since arriving in Haven Springs herself,) but the meat of the DLC is in connecting True Colours to the previous games.

 

It's telling that, at the outset, Wavelengths ask the player, before they even begin, what the fate of Arcadia Bay was in their particular playthrough of the original Life is Strange - something the main game never did.
True Colours was an outlier, in the sense that it tended not to be particularly influenced by the games that came before it from Alex's point of view, of course - but Steph, as the only cross-over character, is the bridge to the past. Video and text communications with Mikey (her Before the Storm bestie, and Dungeons and Dragons compadre,) illuminate some of her backstory as to her reasons for leaving Arcadia Bay, and more than that - there are several references to the fate of her hometown having some lasting trauma that still lingers.
(Note - I have only played Wavelengths from my point of view - that of someone who was never able to allow Chloe, after all the tragedy she had survived, to die painfully on a bathroom floor. That Arcadia Bay suffered the fate it did, is canonical to me… and considering that is the ending that the (very good) comic book follow up adheres to, I’m going to say it’s canonical for everyone, dammit!)

Seeing how those memories still affect Steph's outlook, and coloured her personality when we met back up with her in the first episode of True Colours is interesting, and feels significant in the plot of that game, even if only as added texture. 

 

Wavelengths is a fun, if non-critical addition to True Colours, but actually, much more valuable as connective tissue for franchise fans. Almost entirely by accident, I happened to play it directly after finishing Before the Storm, and that was absolutely the best possible time to do so - it allowed me to appreciate all the tie-ins and cross-over nods with that earlier game fresh in my mind, and if anything, made me genuinely consider replaying True Colours...
...I'm still thinking seriously about doing that at the time of writing this!

 

I would argue Wavelengths is a perfectly fine addition for someone who simply played True Colours - but for those who played all the games, there is a lot of fun tie-ins and nods, and those make the whole thing great for those looking to mop up every morsel of narrative - even if it is, mechanically, fairly sparse. 

 

(For original review and Scientific  Ranking see HERE, and DLC update, HERE)

 

[Cmndr_Yoshi]

Platinum #153

 

 

Rarity - 35.07%

I remember when Shenmue was first released, the hype surrounding it's novel use of narrative gameplay and realism was something unseen and unheard of, for the most part. And it was a great idea...for the time. As much as I give the developers credit for doing something so different and groundbreaking, Shenmue has not aged well. Granted, we have come a long way in the narrative department (The Last of Us, Horizon, etc.) and we benefit from modern gaming perks, but there are just some head-scratching moments in Shenmue that just left me either bored out of my mind (waiting for 8:00 PM to hit before I can move to the next day) or putting my head in my hands (forced daily forklift race, ugh).

 

Platinum #154

 

 

Rarity - 40.47%

I read recently that many people feel Shenmue II is a hundred times better than the first game. I humbly disagree. Shenmue II made little to no changes in terms of its clunky Ryo controls or overall general gameplay from the first game. To be honest, I may have enjoyed Shenmue I a hundred times better. Part II went bigger...WAY bigger. Or at least it tried to paint its world as bigger, when really it was just a series of similarly named shops and environments, and at times, a slap-stick style of narrative that I didn't experience at all in Part I. Maybe in Part III...

 

Platinum #155

 

 

Rarity - 15.01% (Plat) / 6.83% (100%)

Ok, so 18 years later, a generous crowdfunding effort led by Shenmue's biggest fans allowed Suzuki to continue his epic Shenmue storyline. And I will say, this was certainly a step in the right direction in a lot of ways. First off, it's a gorgeous game (especially after coming off of the Sega Saturn visuals). The environments of its rural opening act and its urban second act are easy on the eyes and have a variety to them. Secondly, many of the tropes from the first two games have been fine-tuned and combat is slightly better (though, at times, still wonky).

 

Having said that, at its core, Part III still feels like Parts I and II, but with a facelift and some new paint. And perhaps that was the point...why stray too far from the path, especially as this one was developed essentially by the fans, for the fans. But I can't help but wonder if the next installment (should it ever be made) should forge a new path and leave behind a lot of the gaming faux pas that worked back in '99 but just feel stale today. We'll see.

 

Platinum #156

 

Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

 

Rarity - 53.25%

I loved Insomniac's Spider-Man, so it stands to reason I enjoyed this. Essentially more of the same, but with several gameplay twists, SM: MM picks up where the first Spider-Man left off and does it just as well. Controls are crisp, visuals are amazing (especially the snowy Christmas setting)...sure, it's much shorter than the first (time estimates suggest about half as big as the first game, hence the "DLC" connotation this game has been negatively hit with), but what was here was highly enjoyable.

 

Thanks for reading! Good luck on your Platinum goals!

 

[XIIDoomsdayIIX]

#124 - Far Cry 3 Classic Edition.

 

 

 

[percy547389126yv]

#1,105 PS4 version of Moto Roader MC