realm722 Posted July 22, 2021 Author Share Posted July 22, 2021 On 7/18/2021 at 5:29 PM, rjkclarke said: I feel like I'm also another "weirdo under a bridge" - dwelling goblin that often doesn't venture too far out from my rock, unless I feel like I can give some helpful tips on a game in a thread or something.. I just occupy the UK version of that bridge haha!! I love your posts too by the way... No - before you wonder I'm not just saying this because you mentioned me, I've been reading your stuff for ages and it's great. I just haven't dropped a comment yet.. Here's the first one of many I expect. Funny you say that about Okage.. I literally have that review already written, but I hadn't posted it yet. I'm still spending most of my gaming time failing the jump rope mini-game in Final Fantasy IX , I'm still having lots of fun with it though, so not like I'm getting overly frustrated with it. I'll post the Okage review later and tag you in it... Okage is great by the way, just have to apply the context of when it was made to it. Don't judge it by modern standards. That game has so much charm, it probably needs to have an extra set of eyelids just to contain it all. ??? Thank you so much! I'm glad my elaborate post ended up helping me out by sniffing a review out of you haha, I def hope to tackle it before the end of 2021. It's one of those games that I never got to experience during the PS2 era but will look at it with forgiving eyes given it released over 20 years ago. On 7/19/2021 at 3:13 PM, Grotz99 said: I've been posting for almost a year?! Seriously though, I feel honored to be included in your post, even though you docked me points for POWGI games . I take no shame in those as I played them with my wife while we had music on in the background, knew they would haunt me one day... lmao you have no idea when I read this I thought "damn I'm a jerk" given I had never even considered someone playing a game along with somebody else. GAME UPDATE: I don't normally do these since I really like the idea of each post of mine being it's own flush review of a game I've tackled but I can't help myself. OH MY GOD IS NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT KICKING MY ASS. I've joked in the past about being a god gamer and honestly, I'm not that good but I don't think of myself as poor either. I got the frigging Stardew Valley plat pre-iCloud loophole!!! That being said, good lord maybe it's because I haven't played a racing game in awhile and the older Need for Speed games are harder but just LOOK AT THIS. You have to get all gold medals. Here are @Celestial_Lily and @GioVB just casually achieving them on the 1st and 2nd attempt while I'm out here spending 2 and a half hours on A SINGLE track. It's so humiliating seeing how long it took your friends because whenever you see it took them 10+ attempts I just think "am I gonna be here 'til Sunday?". I feel like I've gotten a bit better and learned the importance of boosting out of turns and the absolutely horrific traffic that can ruin good runs but man... I hope I can finish it before the end of July to not have my 4-games-a-month streak snapped 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted July 22, 2021 Share Posted July 22, 2021 (edited) 13 minutes ago, realm722 said: lmao you have no idea when I read this I thought "damn I'm a jerk" given I had never even considered someone playing a game along with somebody else. Haha no worries, they are the type of games that I should have another account for, but my account is already a mess so oh well. In hindsight, we could have just used another account on the PS4 at the time. I also kind of just play whatever I feel like (there are some other games I'm not so proud of on there, but I do enjoy good puzzle type games). Surprisingly, we platinumed those, but I can't seem to get her to help me finish up A Way Out's misc trophies that should be so easy. Trying to get her to play It Takes Two with me now... Edited July 22, 2021 by Grotz99 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted July 23, 2021 Share Posted July 23, 2021 1 hour ago, realm722 said: Thank you so much! I'm glad my elaborate post ended up helping me out by sniffing a review out of you haha, I def hope to tackle it before the end of 2021. It's one of those games that I never got to experience during the PS2 era but will look at it with forgiving eyes given it released over 20 years ago. That was pretty much my thing with Okage too, I missed the boat on PS2 because I literally couldn't play it.. Well I mean.... Erm.... Not legally anyway ?... I just forgot I hadn't posted that review, so I'm glad I got the reminder haha!! I didn't really put any tips for trophies or gameplay in it, but you don't really need any outside of patience. But then you could get the Q of Hearts the first attempt, you just never know with that game. You'll get Hot Pursuit eventually!! I can identify a little too much with that right now - about being stuck on one thing that you think on paper isn't or shouldn't be that difficult, yet ends up completely kicking your arse, as far as difficulty or time taken is. I'll look forward to reading your eventual review of Hot Pursuit, that's one of those "never got around to" games for me - I think I'll definitely pick it up in the future, just got to slice my backlog down a little bit further. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted July 31, 2021 Author Share Posted July 31, 2021 Game: Shape of the World Analysis: I bought Shape of the World for $3.74 in early June 2021. Let me just be brutally honest, this was played when it was since it was a quick platinum and I had only completed 3 games this month and needed a 4th since Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is taking much longer than I anticipated it would have. I'm going to start off overly brutal and then work my way around to being mildly positive by the end of this paragraph. If anyone says "Shape of the World is a great game", run away from that person and never trust their opinion on video games again. For games such as SotW and others like it, I am automatically sketchy of anybody who suggests this could be "one of their favorite games" or a "hidden indie". What is there to love? Seriously. I'll sum up my entire joyment of the game in a single sentence. I like the colors. THAT'S IT. THERE'S NOTHING MORE TO BE SAID. In Shape of the World, you wander around environments, you can collect seeds that change the colors and serve as a sort of collectibles, you can launch yourself using trees to move faster, you have a feeble jump button, you can throw seeds to spawn more trees with L2, and occasionally you click giant white monuments with R2 to build stairs to travel between triangle to triangle progressing through each level. I JUST SUMMED UP EVERY MECHANIC IN THE GAME IN 71 WORDS. This post would exceed 10,000 words if I needed to describe every mechanic in Enter the Gungeon. There is no story. There is no distinct music. There's no gameplay or puzzles. You travel from point A to point B, and sometimes, you change the pretty colors into different pretty colors. It's intended to be a simple, relaxing experience. That's fine. But anyone who "loves" this sort of game is bizarre in my eyes. I utterly despise the term "walking simulator" since it can often be lambasted as an insult against games that try to do something other than good guy slaughters bad guy for the billonith time but sometimes it applies. I hated Dear Esther. I will never play Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Yet despite it all I've said here, SotW manages to finish above all those games. Why? It knows what it is. It doesn't try to tell some vague nonsense story with nothing to grasp onto to. You see the pretty colors, keep your move on, complete the game 3 times, do some odd one-off trophies, and you get your 28.60% rarity platinum in 21 hours and 13 minutes (26th fastest All-Time btw) and you get on with another game. I respect it. I got to look at some pretty colors while I listened to Bill Simmons laugh about the movie Draft Day. My fastest speedrun for the game came in at 37 minutes and 14 seconds on my 2nd time through, and my "slowrun" was nice and easy since I just did it on my 1st play-through when I left the game running to do household chores. It's such a strange little game since it has these mildly annoying collectible seeds that can be difficult to track if you lose sense of where you are, but in every other regard it doesn't annoy you, the player. No annoying cutscenes. No obnoxious dialogue. Just colors and vibes man. Would I recommend it? No. Not unless you can get it for under $4 and just want a cheap easy platinum that has decent rarity all things considered. I needed a quick win towards the end of July and SotW was there to give it to me when I was in need. For that alone it avoids a negative rating, and as I said, I liked the colors. Panda Score: 6.0 / 10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 1, 2021 Author Share Posted August 1, 2021 (edited) Game: Armikrog Analysis: I bought Armikrog for $1.99 back in early June 2021. I disliked it. After enjoying a surprisingly good 100% last month in Wandersong, we collapse right back down in the dumps with Armikrog. Let me not be unnecessarily mean. A huge disclaimer I will add to all my comments is that I very much do not enjoy claymation. I think it's gross. The one exception in my life to this rule is the classic Wallace and Gromit. Armikrog is not that. While I don't believe graphics are everything in games, aesthetics are very much important to me. I bought Psychonauts for $1 back in 2019, have heard time and time again by long-time fans how great it is, and yet still have not played it due to hating the art style. I haven't played My Time at Portia since the game visually feels very plastic to me. Why did I purchase this game despite disliking how it looks? Because you should still try things you dislike now and then to see if your tastes have changed. Maybe you may find enjoyment in an activity DESPITE something about it that you dislike. Maybe you won't. You won't know until you try. So the $2 I dropped on it was worth the gamble. But even over-looking its' visuals, Armikrog is a box standard point-and-click adventure game. You have your companion Beak-Beak who you can switch with to complete certain puzzles. Here's a fun tip if you want to play the game - IF YOU FOLLOW A WALKTHROUGH, KNOW SOME PUZZLES ARE RANDOMIZED. Don't use this one. USE this one. OR the written version of the guide. I just tried to get assistance from the first one on YouTube and that ended up being a waste of time due to not knowing that caveat. None of the puzzles are atrocious, just a bit dull given there are multiple "shift the pieces around to make space for the proper pieces" puzzles a few too many times. It's an adventure game so some of the solutions and locations to get there can be obtuse. The story is fine, you find a baby, care for it, have it stolen by your evil brother, and escape in the end saving the baby and your vaporized dog while killing your brother in the process. You also speak to octopuses. The humor is fine, not bad, but it never managed even a chuckle out of me. I completed Armikrog in 2 hours and 8 minutes to achieve the 30.01% rarity 100% completion. Would I recommend it? No. Unless you enjoy claymation, adventure games, or puzzle games. It was not offensively bad, but I was extremely glad the game was so short. In other news, I finally conquered NFS: Hot Pursuit so that will be the next review. What game am I playing after that? Absolutely zero idea. Maybe something difficult. There's also the NBA offseason going on. Supposedly the Heat are going all-in on Kyle Lowry. That feels like a mistake. If we also end up getting DeRozan(I DON'T think that'll happen but still) we'll have the worst spacing of any team in the league. Still would kinda want to see it happen if possible. I can't believe football preseason starts again on the 14th. That's fun. Anyways, until next time! Panda Score: 5.2 / 10 Edited August 2, 2021 by realm722 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted August 2, 2021 Share Posted August 2, 2021 (edited) I actually like claymation, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about it in video game form. I remember when Clay Fighter came out when I was a kid, it was one of those things that sounded great in theory, but once you see it, it turns out it was a crime against nature and you hope nobody ever finds out that you're aware of its existence. ....oh crap. Gotta go! Edited August 2, 2021 by YaManSmevz 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted August 2, 2021 Share Posted August 2, 2021 14 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: Armikrog Sad to see you didn't like Armikrog. Although, and this is quite ironic actually, I ended up posting in @YaManSmevz own thread about how, one of my favourite things on this sub-forum is being able to read someone's long justification for why they don't like something or do, but can still absolutely respect that opinion and enjoy reading it. Which has happened here. I can see why you wouldn't like it, especially after not being a fan of claymation. That was the thing that sold the game for me, I just wanted to know if it worked. I mean, it sort of does. I really wasn't a fan of those really long-winded shift the pieces puzzles myself. If it was just one, I'd be less sour towards them probably. They really outstay their welcome. Still I guess I'll talk about my own experiences whenever I do in my own thread, so this isn't really the best spot. 14 hours ago, realm722 said: Would I recommend it? No. Unless you enjoy claymation, adventure games, or puzzle games As short as that quote is, that's almost perfect for summarising what to actually expect from this game. It really is, I like all three of those things, so I thought I'd really enjoy the game. Whilst I can say I liked it, it's got a fair few problems too, which I'm glad you highlighted in your write up. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted August 3, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 3, 2021 (edited) Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered Analysis: I did not buy NFS: HP Remastered. Instead, I paid a $5 subscription fee for EA Play in order to play and platinum, much more preferable to forking over $20-40 IMO. I enjoy car/racing games. They're far from my favorite genre, and to date, no racing game has even managed to land in the 8.0 range or above(Absolute Drift: Zen Edition does NOT count), but there are 5 games in the 7.0 tier zone in NFS: Heat, NFS: Payback, The Crew 2, NFS: Rivals, and Burnout Paradise. This is all to say that while I don't love these games, I enjoy playing them and they provide a nice challenge and are familiar enough with me that they're lovely to play while watching movies / listening to podcasts while trying to complete all the events and races. Imagine my surprise when I saw that a Need for Speed game was being remastered for the first time. The chosen recipient? Hot Pursuit, originally released in 2010. I had never played the game so I was excited about it, and when I saw the platinum rate was at a decent 14-15% and that you'd just need to get gold in all events I figured hey, how hard could it be? Welp. Help me. What you just saw there was the number of attempts it took me to earn gold on some relatively early on racing events. Did I just suck OR was this game way harder than the %'s suggested? I think it was mostly the former. I wasn't drifting properly around the corners. I wasn't accelerating nitro-boosting out of turns quickly enough and that meant I lost precious seconds as it took me forever to get back up to high speeds. Traffic can be a nightmare sometimes and screw you over since it's fairly random. But imagine my frustration for a second. Here I am looking at my friends, other users on PSNProfiles, who've played this game and gotten these golds on a handful of attempts. Then I compare it to myself, who is taking 2 hours just to earn a gold medal on a race another person got on their very first attempt. It's emotionally demoralizing. But that complete wall I hit with those races early completely changed me moving forward. I learned that you should not take every shortcut, since some of them actually take longer and slow you down than others. You MUST know the track. Know when to go full throttle, know when to start pressing on the brakes. Become a master drifter. Use the proper car. With time and practice, I got to a good skill level whereby the end of the racing events, while many of the Time Trials were complete nonsense and a handful of the Gauntlets were pure BS (oh so this cop can assault me and I can do NOTHING back to him?), I earned all 78 gold medals as a racer in 29 hours and 40 minutes. It's not an impressive completion time by any means, but it's what I needed in order to rise to the game's expectations. Surprisingly, the head-bashing that I went through as a racer made playing as the police unbelievably easy. I was the one now clowning on Celestial_Lily and GioVB and completing events in 1-2 attempts whereas they needed far more re-do's. By the 42 hour mark, I had completed all 63 gold medals as an enforcer. Taking me under 12 hours compared to the 30 I needed as a racer. Using blockades for hot pursuits/interceptor's made them super easy, and while a handful of Previews and Rapid Responses were tricky due to the penalty addition of +2 seconds for hitting walls and +3 seconds for hitting traffic, if you just drive carefully and accelerate in open space - none of them should pose much of a threat to stop you. It was at this time when I shifted my attention to the online and DLC trophies. You don't have to pay for any of these as they're tied in with the base game now. I earned a number of the online DLC ones thanks to assistance from @zid2016, and then got the base game online trophies thanks to @josesmcarrion. It was fairly dull since you just tend to turn your car over so the police can arrest you and end the event as quickly as possible, and you're looking at doing this 60+ times but soon enough you'll have it wrapped up. All I had left to earn was the final level-ups in the police rank and when I was done, I had earned the 14.50% rarity platinum (8.35% 100% completion) in just 2 weeks and 1 day. Here are my final stats after having popped the platinum, 50 hours is a bit much given the recommended 35 hours in the trophy guide but I'll give myself a pass given there were two DLC's and the learning curve was greater than usual. Do I recommend NFS: Hot Pursuit? Not unless you already enjoy racing games. It's a bit too tricky for a complete newbie. I do recommend it to veterans of the franchise. It's a good time and probably the most challenging Need for Speed to date on modern consoles. I also have a couple of extra things I liked/disliked about the game I'd like to mention. 1) Crashes automatically send you into a cutscene where you lose complete control. I don't think I like it. I like how it automatically gets you back up to speed once it's over but 4-5 seconds lost each time... eh. 2) I don't like how for every Spike/EMP/Wreck the game takes away control from you and sends you into a cutscene as well. Lemme play the game bro. This does help for cheesing since the game will set you automatically perfectly on course oftentimes avoiding dying/hitting a spike if you can time a hit very well. But meh, I think you should take away control from the player as few times as possible if you can help it as a video game, ESPECIALLY in the midsts of gameplay. 3) There is no story or cutscenes. I love it. Racing games don't need stories. They don't care, I don't care, why should you? 4) I discovered 40+ hours into my play-time that there's actually a free-roam. I thought there was no free-roam in the game and it was all purely events. WHOOPS lol. 5) There are no collectibles. I love it. Collectibles are largely worthless and normally used to pad a game. My best single summary sentence is that NFS: Hot Pursuit was a fun, throwback challenging game that made me earn its' platinum and scratched the itch I had for playing a racing game. I now have all 5 platinums for NFS games on PS4, and will happily play their next release assuming I can get it for $5 on a lovely EA Play subscription. Toodles! Panda Score: 7.5 / 10 Edited August 3, 2021 by realm722 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted August 7, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 7, 2021 RealM722's Monstrosity of a Google Sheets Document for Trophy Hunting CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT! (it has heat maps!) So.... I'm a psychopath. I can admit it. I feel like there are a lot of strange people who traffic in this odd niche genre we call achievement hunting on Playstation consoles, but I may have just tipped the scales to an irreversible degree. I made an elaborate Google Sheets document involving every single game I have ever platinumed or 100%'d. I meticulously combed over every detail and managed to transfer all of this data over from my PSNProfiles page into a Google Sheets document on a quiet evening while enjoying the Tokyo Olympics. These are the fruits of my labor. But let's break it down in further detail all of the features on each sheet and some new functions that'll be coming in future reviews. Sheet #1 - "My Monstrosity This is the meat and potatoes of the document. Here you'll find every game title and the game studio that created it. Fairly standard information. There were some split decisions I had to make with regard to what developer I put down for each entry. Some games had multiple studios working on them (for example - Journey was co-developed between Thatgamecompany and Santa Monica Studio. Still, most were fairly straightforward. A far more subjective category to properly organize was "Genre". Oh my goodness. At the end of the day, I ignored a lot of PSNProfiles recommended "genres" since it would list like four or five for many games, and just picked the one I most associated the game with. For example, "Action-Adventure" is such a general term it could apply to a huge amount of games, but I typically left it reserved for "giant open-world game typically with a super-hero/powerful protagonist". "Exploration" games could also count in a number of categories, but Shape of the World, Abzü, and Innerspace best fall into that definition for me since their game is mostly looking at pretty colors. "First-Person Adventure" is admittedly a very stupid category, but I don't know what else to put Mirror's Edge Catalyst and Infinity Runner into, and if I ever play another high-energy first-person game at least I'll have a place to toss it into. "Indie Adventure" is a key distinguishing category for me since it avoids putting games like Forgotton Anne alongside Horizon Zero Dawn. "Narrative" is a very far-reaching term but it best describes games made by Quantic Dream, Night School Studios, and games like Life is Strange since while it's not a visual novel, the gameplay is sparse and not much more noteworthy than some button presses. "Platformer" is bloated. "RPG" can describe an asinine amount of games, hell, Pyre is in there when you could make a better argument it's a "Sports" game but I just put what felt right in my heart, even if Haven being alongside FF7 Remake and Ni No Kuni feels ridiculous. "Simulator" category is a joke. But where else would I put those games? "Wacky Controls" is another dumb one that will shockingly have 3 games completed in it by the end of this month. If anybody has some better definitions or suggestions to better organize this, I'm all ears and welcome all the advice. But enough genre nit-picking. Let's get on with the rest of the sheet. "Year" is just the year the game was released in. In most cases, if it's a simple remaster, I'll put the original game's release date (Okami HD, Arkham City, NFS: Hot Pursuit). "Rarity" covers the platinum percentage found on this website. This will be outdated even by the time most of you guys click on it since the percentages change ever so slightly each day, but I imagine they'll never vary more than 2-3% at most even after a number of years. "Plat / 100%?" is an easy way to tell the difference between games that have a platinum and those that don't. "Score" is my final rating on games I put at the end of each post. These are color-coordinated. I tried to make it as simple as possible and basically, Green = Extremely good, challenging, difficult. Red = Very bad, common, and too easy. Here is also where we have a brand new category. I am finally going to include my estimated difficulty for games in reviews now! I know, I know. Took me long enough. But better late than never eh? "Diff." means my estimated difficulty for each game. Let me quickly explain the tiers. 1-2.9 = red since these are baby games. Goo goo. Gah gah. Your grandma can plat this. 3.0 - 4.9 = purple since these games required proper attention, care, but not anything too challenging outside of many one or two trophies, and generally at most required a modicum amount of stress. 5.0 - 6.9 = light blue as these games were somewhat of a struggle. I likely died A LOT on the initial play-through. There were a lot of collectibles, or I needed to re-try a numerous amount of times to achieve certain times/medals/challenges. It's the video game equivalent of "working up a good sweat" without going to any extremes. 7.0 - 7.9 = dark blue and WOW. That was tough as nails. Likely a very difficult game as is, I had to re-try over and over again on attempts and certain trophies likely took me hours of practice and repetition in order to conquer. But a key factor for this category is I regard it as "tough but fair". If I can feel myself making incremental progress, getting slightly better, even if it's an arduous task, my spirit was never broken. 8.0 - 9.9 = green. GOOD LORD. The equivalent of getting into a street fight with Deontay Wilder. These games made me suffer. I likely said to myself multiple times while playing it "oh my god... I may not ever be good enough to earn the platinum." They bordered on unfair. I was lost at times on the journey. Sometimes I made no progress. All of my effort was in futility. I came out the other side, stronger, but with scars all the same. ANYWAYSSSSSSS, that's the difficulty section covered. Look forward to seeing that in future reviews! Aside from that, we have the fairly standard "Date Completed" to show when I earned the coveted platinum. "1st Trophy - Last Trophy" is a flawed category at the moment since I haven't figured out how to have the data sort by minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years yet but it's a work-in-progress. My final unique category here is "Word Count" and yes, you're not mistaken. I did in fact check the word count on every single review I've made on this thread and paste the total into the document. What you'll discover is I write A LOT MORE now than compared to even a year ago. It's why Goat Simulator has more words than Pyre, Gravity Rush, and Dead Cells combined. Finally, "Review" is a link to each individual post I've written on each game. It's not the quickest, and jumping between posts utilizing my "---" marks on the first post of this thread is even easier but it's there for those who want it. Sheet #2 - "Nerd Stats" Making a monster wasn't enough to satisfy my desire for data so I made this sheet. I was really curious to look at some general averages between genres and years, and thanks to the super-easy "=AVERAGEIF" functions found in Google Sheets, it didn't take long at all to calculate. First, you'll notice "Averages for games, sorted by Genre". This is kind of why I went into such detail on the genres earlier since they do heavily influence the stats here - but I'd argue there is no perfect measurement system. What are my take-aways? 1) I love boss-fight, roguelike, and tactical games. Granted, the sample size here is very small (a whooping 12 games amongst the 3 categories) but this falls in line with many of my beliefs of my own preferences. 2) Indie Adventures and Visual Novels are baby games. That's unsurprising. 3) To see the Sports category have 15 games played, yet be at a 4.71% ultra rarity tells me what we've always know which is sports gamers couldn't give two damns about achievements since the games genuinely aren't that hard. 4) Rhythm, Farming, and City-Builders are lowkey more challenging than I thought they'd be all scoring over a "5.0" on the difficulty scale. 5) I have nothing to say about puzzle games apparently. With regard to the two other tables, they relate to my ratings for games released by year, whereas games rated by what year I completed them in. The numbers here aren't that exciting. My word count for 2020 games is only that absurd because the Final Fantasy 7 Remake spoke directly to my soul. Otherwise, most games released in the last 5 years hover in that 16-23% average rarity, are generally low 7's, and they're all around a similar difficulty. The other chart is generally even across the board minus the gigantic uptick recently in my word count due to... well... posts like these where I write oh-so-much over a lotta nothin'. Oh, and 2017's rarity is extra rare due to me mostly only playing sports games back then. Maybe it'll look more interesting 2-3 years from now! In Conclusion I'm a madman who needs to be put in a straight jacket. This is now going to be something else I look forward to contributing to when I complete a game, as the various tables I made will update automatically each time I input an entry, I'll be able to enjoy the slight changes that occur in the percentages over time. If I motivated anybody to perhaps start their own spreadsheet, feel free to make a copy of mine and edit in your own information. The most strenuous part was putting in all the data initially from my catalog of 170+ games but if you find something to distract yourself with as you put in all the information you'd be surprised by how quickly time flies. If you have any questions about how I made certain things look a specific type of way, feel free to DM me and I'd be happy to help. I hope someone enjoyed this even a fraction as much as I did, take care and the next post will be getting back to a proper review! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 7, 2021 Author Share Posted August 7, 2021 Game: Snake Pass Analysis: I bought Snake Pass for $3.99 back in mid-January 2021. Have you ever played a platformer without a jump button? That may sound like a bad video game, but that premise is at the heart of what makes Snake Pass what it is. I watched Game Maker's Toolkit video on the game over 3 years ago now, where he dubbed it his "Most Inventive Game of the Year". I always had it in the back of my mind and the time felt right to take a flyer on it earlier this year, and I finally got around to playing it. Damn man, it's good! I'm normally very wary of games with "wacky controls". Some that I've played include Octodad and Manuel Samuel, and they were alright decent experiences intended to trigger laughs more than anything else. The same can be said for Bennett Foddy's two popular games QWOP and Getting Over It. If you really boil it down, the entire idea behind these unique control schemes is to make simple tasks very frustrating, thus leading to rage/anger from the player, producing hilarious results in-game, and leading to even more people who want to watch those people get mad. It's a solid formula. But not one that would make for an enjoyable, single-player experience most of the time. This frustration would only be compounded when you factor in my bloodlust for obtaining the platinum. What I'm saying is, this game COULD have been a recipe for a disaster. What was the final result? YO THIS GAME IS GOOD! Super cute, clean, simple fun. There are 15 levels. They're extremely quick to complete once you know their layout. Even 100% completing them should only take you between 8-10 minutes a level. I personally used HD Gaming Switzerland's guides on YT for all the collectibles since some of them can be very well hidden. Initially adjusting to moving the snake will seem challenging, it took me 15 minutes to earn the first token found on the very first level dangling off the edge, but once you learn the controls, the game is very fair. You essentially only control the head of the snake, but always have to factor in the weight and momentum of the rest of your body to avoid having gravity plummet you into the emptiness of the open skies. You can lift your head with X, which is essential to going up platformers and achieving up-ward momentum. You also need to slither your body like a snake or else you'll move at a snail's pace trying to move in a direct line. It's very intuitive once you get a feel for it. There are no enemies or things trying to attack you, and the only thing that can really cause your downfall aside from your own failures are the occasional wonky moving platformers and wind (oh the wind...) on the final sections of the game, but more on that later. In order to obtain to the platinum, you need to 100% the game. That means collecting all 20 whisps and 5 tokens in each level. Most of the whisps aren't that tricky and just involve being thorough. Some of the tokens are just well-hidden, while others are in some of the most challenging sections in the entire game. Involving you risking your life stretching across vast platformers with zero safety net if you goof up. An important detail here is you cannot go all-out, dive for a token, collect it, fall to your death, and boom it's done. You need to make sure you get the token, get BACK to safety, and find a checkpoint to save your progress. If you die after saving at a checkpoint, everything you collected in-between will be lost and need to be re-collected. Aside from 100% completion, you also need to complete every level without dying. The way I did it? Your 1st run, collect 100% of everything(don't forget to touch one idol on each level), dying is fine since you'll luckily stumble a few times going out of your way for the tricky tokens. Your 2nd run is your no-death where you go directly to the end collecting all keystones as quickly as possible. I did this after I finished each level and it was shocking how quickly you can fly through the game when you only care about reaching the end. Some levels will have some tricky elements to them no question, but until you get to World #4, the game isn't that difficult at all maybe requiring 2-3 retries at most. The difference with World #4? There's wind. Wind can be very.... wonky. The worst offender was the final Level #15. I spent 2 hours on this one. So much wind along with the moving platformers, AS WELL as my incredible choking capabilities (no seriously, I died on the very last obstacle after 15+ minutes of perfection FOUR different times) made it a pain-staking experience. I felt the wind was a bit unfair at times since it forced you to speed up your actions (as opposed to being able to go as slow as possible for the first 3 worlds) but it never felt impossible and I knew I just had to try it again and again until I got the right formula down. Would I recommend it? YES. It's a short and sweet game. 15 levels is nothing when they're as short as this game is. Do 4 levels a day and you'll bang the game out in a matter of days. Aside from the 100% and no-death trophies, there are a few miscellaneous for each level but nothing more difficult than those two. Perhaps "No Diving" on Level 6 could pose a challenge but there's a good YouTube video showing you the recommended route. I feel like even if you don't enjoy "wonky control" games, the game is never unfair or overly harsh. On the majority of platforms, you can take your time coiling around it slowly and have a reliable strategy 95% of the time. You'll get boned on the occasional unlucky moving platform or wind at an untimely moment but nothing that should ruin your time with the game. It has such a bright aesthetic it reminded me a bit of my Viva Piñata days and the music is equally chill. In total, it took me 3 days and 20 hours to earn the 8.54% rarity platinum. Credit to Sumo Digital for making such a compelling concept into a proper game. Panda Score: 7.6 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.8 / 10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 On 8/2/2021 at 8:22 PM, realm722 said: Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered Analysis: I did not buy NFS: HP Remastered. Instead, I paid a $5 subscription fee for EA Play in order to play and platinum, much more preferable to forking over $20-40 IMO. I enjoy car/racing games. They're far from my favorite genre, and to date, no racing game has even managed to land in the 8.0 range or above(Absolute Drift: Zen Edition does NOT count), but there are 5 games in the 7.0 tier zone in NFS: Heat, NFS: Payback, The Crew 2, NFS: Rivals, and Burnout Paradise. This is all to say that while I don't love these games, I enjoy playing them and they provide a nice challenge and are familiar enough with me that they're lovely to play while watching movies / listening to podcasts while trying to complete all the events and races. Imagine my surprise when I saw that a Need for Speed game was being remastered for the first time. The chosen recipient? Hot Pursuit, originally released in 2010. I had never played the game so I was excited about it, and when I saw the platinum rate was at a decent 14-15% and that you'd just need to get gold in all events I figured hey, how hard could it be? Welp. Help me. What you just saw there was the number of attempts it took me to earn gold on some relatively early on racing events. Did I just suck OR was this game way harder than the %'s suggested? I think it was mostly the former. I wasn't drifting properly around the corners. I wasn't accelerating nitro-boosting out of turns quickly enough and that meant I lost precious seconds as it took me forever to get back up to high speeds. Traffic can be a nightmare sometimes and screw you over since it's fairly random. But imagine my frustration for a second. Here I am looking at my friends, other users on PSNProfiles, who've played this game and gotten these golds on a handful of attempts. Then I compare it to myself, who is taking 2 hours just to earn a gold medal on a race another person got on their very first attempt. It's emotionally demoralizing. But that complete wall I hit with those races early completely changed me moving forward. I learned that you should not take every shortcut, since some of them actually take longer and slow you down than others. You MUST know the track. Know when to go full throttle, know when to start pressing on the brakes. Become a master drifter. Use the proper car. With time and practice, I got to a good skill level whereby the end of the racing events, while many of the Time Trials were complete nonsense and a handful of the Gauntlets were pure BS (oh so this cop can assault me and I can do NOTHING back to him?), I earned all 78 gold medals as a racer in 29 hours and 40 minutes. It's not an impressive completion time by any means, but it's what I needed in order to rise to the game's expectations. Surprisingly, the head-bashing that I went through as a racer made playing as the police unbelievably easy. I was the one now clowning on Celestial_Lily and GioVB and completing events in 1-2 attempts whereas they needed far more re-do's. By the 42 hour mark, I had completed all 63 gold medals as an enforcer. Taking me under 12 hours compared to the 30 I needed as a racer. Using blockades for hot pursuits/interceptor's made them super easy, and while a handful of Previews and Rapid Responses were tricky due to the penalty addition of +2 seconds for hitting walls and +3 seconds for hitting traffic, if you just drive carefully and accelerate in open space - none of them should pose much of a threat to stop you. It was at this time when I shifted my attention to the online and DLC trophies. You don't have to pay for any of these as they're tied in with the base game now. I earned a number of the online DLC ones thanks to assistance from @zid2016, and then got the base game online trophies thanks to @josesmcarrion. It was fairly dull since you just tend to turn your car over so the police can arrest you and end the event as quickly as possible, and you're looking at doing this 60+ times but soon enough you'll have it wrapped up. All I had left to earn was the final level-ups in the police rank and when I was done, I had earned the 14.50% rarity platinum (8.35% 100% completion) in just 2 weeks and 1 day. Here are my final stats after having popped the platinum, 50 hours is a bit much given the recommended 35 hours in the trophy guide but I'll give myself a pass given there were two DLC's and the learning curve was greater than usual. Do I recommend NFS: Hot Pursuit? Not unless you already enjoy racing games. It's a bit too tricky for a complete newbie. I do recommend it to veterans of the franchise. It's a good time and probably the most challenging Need for Speed to date on modern consoles. I also have a couple of extra things I liked/disliked about the game I'd like to mention. 1) Crashes automatically send you into a cutscene where you lose complete control. I don't think I like it. I like how it automatically gets you back up to speed once it's over but 4-5 seconds lost each time... eh. 2) I don't like how for every Spike/EMP/Wreck the game takes away control from you and sends you into a cutscene as well. Lemme play the game bro. This does help for cheesing since the game will set you automatically perfectly on course oftentimes avoiding dying/hitting a spike if you can time a hit very well. But meh, I think you should take away control from the player as few times as possible if you can help it as a video game, ESPECIALLY in the midsts of gameplay. 3) There is no story or cutscenes. I love it. Racing games don't need stories. They don't care, I don't care, why should you? 4) I discovered 40+ hours into my play-time that there's actually a free-roam. I thought there was no free-roam in the game and it was all purely events. WHOOPS lol. 5) There are no collectibles. I love it. Collectibles are largely worthless and normally used to pad a game. My best single summary sentence is that NFS: Hot Pursuit was a fun, throwback challenging game that made me earn its' platinum and scratched the itch I had for playing a racing game. I now have all 5 platinums for NFS games on PS4, and will happily play their next release assuming I can get it for $5 on a lovely EA Play subscription. Toodles! Panda Score: 7.5 / 10 I hope this isn't as bad as Need for Speed Rivals. Having no actual pause option and the aggressive cops really grinded my gears. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 8, 2021 Author Share Posted August 8, 2021 52 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said: I hope this isn't as bad as Need for Speed Rivals. Having no actual pause option and the aggressive cops really grinded my gears. Yanno for as much criticism as I've seen for the modern Need for Speed games, I've enjoyed almost all of them. I'm not a "car guy" so I don't really care for the nitty-gritty details so that likely helps. Rivals was my first game ever on PS4, I enjoyed it... and 2 years later when I started trophy hunting it became 10th platinum I ever achieved. I remember quite liking it and while thinking reaching racer rank 60 was tricky never disliking it. The most "disappointing" Need for Speed was me was its very name released in 2015. Played in late 2019, I just didn't care for the god-awful IRL cutscenes even if they were funny to laugh at and the always-on night cycle. You'll enjoy NFS: Hot Pursuit if 1) You don't care at all for free-roam since there's 0 reason to do it and 2) Enjoy good challenging events with relatively tight limits for time trials. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted August 10, 2021 Share Posted August 10, 2021 (edited) I wish they would remaster the NFS Underground games, they were by far my favorite and none of the NFS games after them quite felt the same. Of course most of the issue is the licensing for the cars and parts since you got to change body parts. Edited August 10, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted August 10, 2021 Share Posted August 10, 2021 (edited) I'll just lump this all into one post. That write up of Need For Speed Hot pursuit was a great read (what's new, in this thread going forward, you'll hear that a lot from me, most likely). Although it sounds like quite the challenge I'm looking forward to picking that one up in the future. I can't say I'm the biggest Need for Speed guy ever. But I do like to dip my toes in with racing games every now and then. The fact it's pretty much a pure racing experience without any of the fluff that comes from open world racers seems really appealing, so I'm really glad you highlighted that. Sometimes you just want to race right? Or in the case of Gravel, you want to race without some trainspotting nerd telling you all about how next week on the Gravel channel folks, we'll be doing public executions... Oh wait - that only happened in the dialogue I made up in my head, to stop that part of Gravel getting too tiresome. Your spreadsheet is something else!! Part's of that terrified me, in the best way possible of course. Fair play for putting in your word count. Honestly, I've never looked at a single one of the word counts of any of mine. I think I'd be shocked if I did. Especially on my recent Tomb Raider ones. The scariest thing, was seeing your word count for Final Fantasy VII remake. That's almost as long as the written part of my dissertation was! That's a great review though, like truly brilliant and you should be so proud of it. I'm a little tempted to borrow a few elements of that spreadsheet in the future.. If you don't mind of course. Snake Pass seems really interesting, I'd kind of seen one or two clips on it - and assumed it would be Manual Samuel but with a snake, so it's one I'll have to keep an eye out for in future. 4 hours ago, Grotz99 said: wish they would remaster the NFS Underground games, they were by far my favorite and none of the NFS games after them quite felt the same. Of course most of the issue is the licensing for the cars and parts since you got to change body parts. So do I Grotz, so do I. That's where my faithful following of Need for Speed kind of dropped off. Around the time they released Pro Street I think. They could have - and I guess theoretically could still, make such a good HD trilogy pack out of Underground 1 and 2 and Most Wanted. I think I'd pick them up pretty quickly. I don't expect they will have aged all that badly either, good quality games rarely do. You only have to look at how much I've fallen in love with Final Fantasy IX to see that. Edited August 10, 2021 by rjkclarke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 12, 2021 Author Share Posted August 12, 2021 On 8/10/2021 at 1:30 PM, Grotz99 said: I wish they would remaster the NFS Underground games, they were by far my favorite and none of the NFS games after them quite felt the same. Of course most of the issue is the licensing for the cars and parts since you got to change body parts. I am here for any and all NFS remasters. Underground 2 was my personal favorite. Riders on the Storm is UNDEFEATED. On 8/10/2021 at 3:17 PM, rjkclarke said: Your spreadsheet is something else!! Part's of that terrified me, in the best way possible of course. Fair play for putting in your word count. Honestly, I've never looked at a single one of the word counts of any of mine. I think I'd be shocked if I did. Especially on my recent Tomb Raider ones. The scariest thing, was seeing your word count for Final Fantasy VII remake. That's almost as long as the written part of my dissertation was! That's a great review though, like truly brilliant and you should be so proud of it. I'm a little tempted to borrow a few elements of that spreadsheet in the future.. If you don't mind of course. Hah thank you for the kind words as always. I don't think a game will ever have me write that much about it... ever again. (maybe FF7R part #2? lol) I've dumped my complete thoughts on series as in-depth as The Banner Saga and even those 3 reviews combined don't quite get me there. I don't think word count in and of itself is impressive but I'll confess I absolutely love going back to reviews on games sometimes when I wonder: "hey, why did I love that thing again?" and it immediately flood back to me once I read what I typed in the past. But nonetheless yes, please feel free on borrowing the spreadsheet elements! Hell, if you wanted a copy of it you could DM your email and I'd be happy to send the template. I'm still trying to think of ways in the future I could make it look more compelling visually. My hope is when I get a PS5, I will be able to retroactively look at time spent in other games and be able to add that as an extra category. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 13, 2021 Author Share Posted August 13, 2021 (edited) I Don't Think Video Game Stories Are Very Good - Let's Rank Them People love stories. OR at least I think they do. There's gotta be a reason people keep telling them to one another. If they didn't, that'd be good kinda rude don't you think? What makes for a good story? I don't have the faintest idea. Typically for me, stories are mostly dressing for... hanging out and chillin' with some cool characters. The end destination or focal plot tends to take a backseat for me. A good story typically 1) compels the reader to care for the stories' characters, 2) makes you spend time thinking about when you're not reading about it, 3) sticks with you well after you've moved on from it, and 4) it's not written by David Cage. Here's my bold statement. The overwhelming majority of video games not only aren't good, but they're also mostly... bad. That's okay! Games as a medium have the benefit of gameplay so it's not the end all be all. Thus, I am deeply perplexed whenever I hear someone say "I mostly play games for their stories". But in an endeavor to prove my point, let's go through all 175 games in my completion catalog to see how many game stories I actually remember. We'll be using a 5-point scaling system. WARNING: I DO INCLUDE SPOILERS FOR GAMERS IN RED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. List of Games Platinumed / 100%'d That I Believe Have Good - Great Stories: #18) Oxenfree - 1st good story. Kids go to an island and get stuck in a time-loop with spooky elements. Great dialogue. 4/5 #28) Gravity Rush Remastered - You're a gravity girl that explores different towns. Red evil goop causes chaos. You kill the big bad goo in the end. I liked it. 4/5 #36) Gravity Rush 2 - You end up lost as Kat. You sing in a red dress in a bait attack. You discover your past as the Gravity Queen. Very memorable. 4/5 #40) Grim Fandango Remastered - You play as Manny. You scam dead people. You go on a journey to try and find a past lover. Co-worker hates you. Memorable. 4/5 #43) Transistor - You're a singer who lost her voice. You must take down the corruption over-taking different cities. The Camerata are the bad guys. Memorable. 4/5 #48) Pyre - You're a crew banished in the downside, recruit members, take part in the rites vs. other factions to try and liberate teammates and force a revolution. 5/5 #54) What Remains of Edith Finch - One of the rare very good stories. Explore the tragic losses of a "cursed" family. Very artistic. 4/5 #55) Okami HD - Gigantic game. Amaterasu has to gain different powers back. Issun is horny. You fight a ball of badness. Lots of different plots. 4/5 #78) Batman: Arkham Knight - I love this game. You're Batman. Fear is overwhelming you as the Joke tries to take control. Stop Scarecrow and many others. 5/5 #82) Knack 2 - Remember cuz of Dunkey's video on it. ICE KNACK. FIGHT THE KING GOBLIN. TAKEDOWN A FREAKING LASER. 10/5 knacksterpiece no rly 2/5 #103) Batman: Arkham City - I LOVE the presentation in this one. Ra' Ghul. Joker. Dr. Hugo Strange intro sequence is AMAZING. The best kind of flavoring. 4/5 #117) Beholder Complete Edition - You're a landlord. Protect and care for your family while working under an authoritarian government. Genuinely solid stuff here. 4/5 #121) Stardew Valley - You mostly make up your own stories but grow as a farmer in a small village and learn the lives/backgrounds of the townsfolk. 4/5 #126) Beholder 2 - Work your way up the ranks of a government office under an authoritarian regime and figure out who killed your father. Beholder games are memorable. 4/5 #129) Journey - Amazing story. It's mostly flavoring to facilitate the relationship you have between anonymous players online but it is masterfully done. 5/5 #130) The Banner Saga - The dredge are coming. Flee as humans and varl try to seek refuge in a world that is falling apart. Learn your companions backgrounds. 4/5 #131) Life is Strange - Max has the power to reverse time and saves Chloe from being murdered. Teenage drama. Things escalate drastically quickly. I love it. 4/5 #137) The Banner Saga 2 - Continue on your journey from BS1, raise the stakes even further, and play as one of the opposing mercenaries still remaining. 4/5 #151) The Banner Saga 3 - Experience the dramatic climax of the trilogy and how the story ends for all these characters you've grown to love along the way. 4/5 #161) Final Fantasy 7 Remake - There is A LOT of it that I didn't understand, but play as terrorist vigilantes blowing up powerplants to stop a corporation sucking up the lifeblood of the earth in mako. There's also a bad dude named Sephiroth who's trying to stop you. I very much WANT to know more but it only gets 4 stars cuz I don't know enough. 4/5 Spoiler Here is where we send all the naughty games. To the spoiler. #1) Unravel - You're a yarnzy boy. You collect lost pieces for an old lady that's revealed at the end of the game. Story is just there for flavoring. 3/5 #2) Madden NFL 16 - Sports games. No story. 0/5 #3) Scrabble - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #4) Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - You control two sons with two different analog sticks. One of them dies tragically by getting eaten by a spider girl. 3/5 #5) Knack - lmao, you're a giant collection of rocks and you gotta like... stop some goblin lord I think? OR is that Knack 2? Lame characters too. 2/5 #6) Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations - I remember literally nothing. You visit different kingdoms. I remember zero plot details. 1/5 #7) Madden NFL 17 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #8) FIFA 17 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #9) MLB The Show 17 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #10) Need for Speed: Rivals - I imagine it's typical "high-speed racers try to get away from high-speed cops". It's not even flavoring. 1/5 #11) Madden NFL 18 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #12) FIFA 18 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #13) The Witness - It's not a good story, it's vague perspectives and at most, it's about a developer game-testing a prototype. But it is VERY memorable. 3/5 #14) MLB The Show 18 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #15) Ratchet and Clank - Uh... you save the robot side-kick. You do some training. Quark is evil. You fight Dr. Nefarious at the end. It's kid-friendly straightforward. 2/5 #16) Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders - You solve murders as Detective Poirot. I know one of the people involved in the cases is the killer in the end. Very foggy. 2/5 #17) Tiny Brains - It's a puzzle game with an evil creature at the end who put you and your companions through rigorous tests. Just flavoring. 3/5 #19) Fe - Literally don't remember anything. You explore forests with a small black creature that gains powers over time. 1/5 #20) Chess Ultra - Board game. No story. 0/5 #21) Absolute Drift: Zen Edition - If there was a story, I remember NOTHING. 0/5 #22) Catlateral Damage - You're a cat. You knock things over. No story. 0/5 #23) The Unfinished Swan - Hmm... you slowly add color to the world with ink as this kid who becomes a king. Artistic game. Don't remember the ending. 2/5 #24) Valley - Had a plot. It's like some WW2 suit you use to traverse about with. You can either save/kill the valley? Exploring old ruins? 3/5 #25) Madden NFL 19 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #26) The Sims 4 - You make your own stories as you play. But no story on its own. 1/5 #27) Another World - You're a foreign planet. You crash. A big buddy protects you. You explore a dangerous foreign world. Escape in the end. 3/5 #29) Peggle 2 - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #30) The Bridge - It's a puzzle game. There was probably some vague story. I don't remember it. 1/5 #31) FIFA 19 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #32) 2064: Read Only Memories - I never read the dialogue, it's a visual novel. You have a robot companion called Turing. Cyberpunk elements. 1/5 #33) Burly Men at Sea - You can achieve different endings with sailors at sea. 1/5 #34) Horizon Zero Dawn - Set far in the future. Machines that look like animals. You try and uncover your past as Aloy. Not bad, remember it for the gameplay more. 3/5 #35) Cosmic Star Heroine - Wow I ENJOYED this game and don't remember the plot. You have a crew, fight evil. Beat a big robot at the end. 2/5 for not recalling anything. #37) Rocket League - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #38) Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #39) Risk of Rain - One of the things I enjoyed about Risk of Rain is they never wasted your time on meaningless plot drivel. 1/5 #41) The Crew 2 - You're a racer who tries to get popular on social media. Lame. 1/5 #42) Kindom Hearts III - You resolve the plots in different Disney worlds. Organization 13. Xehanort. Good vs. Evil. DARKNESS. Where's Mickey? 2/5 #44) The Sexy Brutale - Puzzle game where you stop murders as a detective and prevent them from happening, turns out, your burnt down the casino for insurance! Good twist, 3/5 #45) Wizard of Legend - You're in a museum. But you're not. It's just flavoring. 1/5 #46) Celeste - Madeline struggles with mental health and must climb her mountaintop and fight against Badeline, has Theo's help. It's solid. 3/5 #47) Marvel's Spider-Man - Established story. Dr. Octupus plot. You resolve side missions. Aunt May dies towards the end. It's aight. 3/5 #49) Defense Grid 2 - It's a tower defense game. Aliens are bad. Kill them. Lots of dialogue but barely flavoring. 1/5 #50) Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below - If there was a story, it was spending 10+ hours hunting metal slimes. 1/5 #51) Mahjong - Board game. No story. 0/5 #52) Unholy heights - Another tower defense game. You're a bad guy and you leave rent for monsters. Takeout the good guys. 2/5 #53) Guacamelee 2! - You're a luchador who has raised a family. You're tryna get back in your prime as evil has comeback again. Good humor/dialogue. 3/5 #56) Dead Cells - It's a rogue-lite, the story and reveal that "The Collector" is a bad guy is good, but it's all flavoring. Solid for a game like this tho. 3/5 #57) Child of Light - Annoying girl who rhymes everything. Don't recall much. 1/5 #58) Dragon Sinker - You're a... king? I think? Badness coming upon the land I'm guessing? 1/5 #59) Tropico 5 - You mostly make your own story. But you're a dictator, and can border from benevolent to downright cruel. Solid campaign. 3/5 #60) Guacamelee Super Turbo Championship Edition - The origin story of the luchador and how he got his various powers and saved his woman. 3/5 #61) Dark Mystery - Platformer. No story. 0/5 #62) Knowledge is Power - Quiz game. No story. 0/5 #63) FEZ - Puzzle game. You're a little... fez? I actually don't remember the plot AT ALL. 1/5 #64) A Hat in Time - You're hat kid and need to collect missing timeshare pieces to power your spaceship. Visit different worlds. Meh plot, amazing gameplay. 2/5 #65) Onrush - Racing game. No story. 0/5 #66) Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life - Go through the course of your early 20's to death with a tight-knit town of villagers and explore their lives. 3/5 #67) Bastion - You're the Kid. You try and bring life to a dying world with the "bastion". You have a choice to... either continue onwards or turn things back? 3/5 #68) Rogue Aces - If there was a story, I remember none of it. 0/5 #69) Silence - You play as two kids. Find some companions. There's these freaky looking monsters. It's a point-and-click game and I don't remember it. There's an explosion. 1/5 #70) InnerSpace - It's an exploration game, there is no story. 0/5 #71) FIFA 20 - Spors game. No story. 0/5 #72) Dragon Quest Builders - You're not a hero. You're a builder. Bring back life to lost islands enveloped by darkness. Fight evil in the end. 3/5 #73) Battleship - It's a board game. No story. 0/5 #74) The Messenger - You're a ninja who can alter between 8bit and 16bit dimensions. Change the past at points? Love the humor, don't remember the story much. 2/5 #75) Need for Speed - Racing game where you fist-bump with your racing bros. 0/5 #76) Gravel - Racing game. No story. 0/5 #77) Heavy Rain - Hahahaha.... I enjoy Heavy Rain, but c'mon. There's a serial murder killing kids by drowning them and leaves behind origami. Play 4 different POVs. So many plot holes. 2/5 #79) PaRappa the Rapper Remastered - Learn how to rap with different senseis? 1/5 #80) Forgotton Anne - Amazing dialogue, can distill and take life from inanimate objects or not. Compelling resolution at the end with your... father perhaps? Lil foggy to be honest. 3/5 #81) Monster Energy Supercross - Racing game. No story. 0/5 #84) Yoku's Island Express - You're a little bug who moves as pinball and delivers mail to folks. No characters are memorable. 2/5 #85) Batman: Arkham Asylum - Joker has taken over the asylum. Time to take control back from him and stop him! 3/5 #86) Arcade Game Series: Galaga - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #87) Persona 5 - You're the phantom thieves, a group of teenagers taking down corrupt adults by changing their hearts. Society's heart is also in the balance! Kill god cuz anime. 3/5 #88) Abzu - Exploration game where I barely even remember if there's a narrative besides look at the pretty water animals. 1/5 #89) Madden NFL 20 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #90) Sea of Solitude - Obnioxus French girl cries over her parents who don't care for her. 1/5 #91) Kona - You're trying to make sense of an abandoned snowy town after a car cras-OH SH!T THATS A WENDIGO! 2/5 #92) LittleBigPlanet 3 - You play as Sackboy and now he has companions. There's an evil dude you need to stop. 2/5 #93) Detroit: Become Human - There is SO much wrong with this story (social justice / worst race allegory in the entire vidya game medium) but somehow I enjoyed it. 3/5 #94) Owlboy - Honestly, don't remember much. Owlboy can't talk. He gets clowned on a lot. But he finds buddies in Alphonse and spider boy and saves the day. 3/5 #95) Hatoful Boyfirend - Visual novel where I skipped all the dialogue. 1/5 #96) Mirror's Edge Catalyst - You play as Faith, a runner on rooftops and fight against evil bad corporations with censorship and all. Big explosion. Not great flavoring. 2/5 #97) Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rond of Blood - WHAT IS MAN? A LITTLE MISERABLE PILE OF SECRETS? Kill dracula. 2/5 #98) Slay the Spire - Love this game but you play as 3 characters and have to kill your way out of a tower by taking down all enemies. Barely flavoring. 2/5 #99) Thomas Was Alone - You're a shape that has other shape friends. Some of them are said? Good narration, don't remember the story. 1/5 #100) Sundered - Uh... you're lost in a desert and some evil darth god tries to convince you to become evil and powerful? Wacky names. 1/5 #101) Spyro the Dragon - It's a platformer. Spyro helps people I guess. Doeesn't have save frozen dragons? 1/5 #102) Subnautica - Survival game where you're stranded after your ship explodes and you try to find your way off the island. Minor plot scattered on island. 2/5 #104) The Swapper - It's a puzzle game that I didn't enjoy very much. You get off an island as an astronaut? 0/5 #105) Burnout Paradise Remastered - Racing game, don't think there was a story. 0/5 #106) Hollow Knight - Genuine story here. Surprisingly in-depth according to mossbag YT videos. You play as a knight. Corruption is taking over fellow bugs. Stop them. 3/5 #107) Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage - Who cares about the plot in Spyro games. 0/5 #108) Arcade Game Series: Dig-Dug - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #109) Children of Morta - A rogue-like with a plot! You play as a family of survivors and must takedown corruption spreading in the caves. Wife gets kidnapped. Good flavoring. 3/5 #110) Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon - Who cares about the plot in Spyro games. 0/5 #111) Slime Rancher - Beatrice is an island on her own with slimes. Collect them. Not much else to it. 2/5 #112) Need for Speed: Payback - Racing game, maybe some lame plot with social media I don't remember. 0/5 #113) Need for Speed: Heat - Racing game, I distinctly remember a good cop killing a bad cop commishoner tryna shutdown street racing illegally lmao, 1/5 #114) Soccer Pinball - Arcade game. No story. 0/5 #115) Strider - You're a guy with a sword and try and stop evil Russians as they send bad guys after you to stop you. Stop the bad guy. 2/5 #116) LEGO Ninjago Movie: The Videogame - Plot in lego games lmao 0/5 #118) Sonic Mania - It's a Sonic game... Dr. Eggman... chaos emeralds... 1/5 #119) VA-11 HALL-A - Work as a bartender who talks with clients and their personal problems. Try to make sense of your own past relationship problems. 3/5 #120) Unravel Two - Now you're teamed up with a buddy yarnzy. Even less plot than the original. 2/5 #122) Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Huge vast plot between building and destroying. Your companion who's name I don't remember, restore light to a realm lost in darkness. 3/5 #123) Valkyria Chronicles - It's anime World War 2. Darcsens are oppressed. Alicia destroys everybody and the opposing valkyria crystals from the past. Maxmilian gets rekt. 3/5 #124) Cel Damage HD - Car fighting game. It's a gamehsow? 0/5 #125) 88 Heroes - Platformer that... is also a gameshow maybe? 0/5 #127) Risk of Rain 2 - Amazing rogue-like that doesn't waste your time with plot as there is none. 0/5 #128) inFamous First Light - Abigail is trying to... escape the police from her powers? Ugh, I didn't like the game at all really besides the arena fights. 2/5 #132) Graveyard Keeper - Mostly flavoring but you end up in a lost world and must work as a graveyard keeper and try to start-up a portal to go back home. 3/5 #133) Sayonara Wild Hearts - Girl gets her heart broken and has to work through it exploring vastly different landscapes. Nice flavoring. 3/5 #134) Afterparty - Narrative/plot heavy. You play as Milo and Lola. You've died. You must collect seals to earn a drink-off with Satan and beat him to get out of hell. 3/5 #135) Dear: Esther: Landmark Edition - Annoying meaningless drivel and pompous directors on top of it. This story says NOTHING. 0/5 #136) Coffee Talk - Chill vibes working at a cafe and learning about the personal lives of different patrons. Not really a plot tbh. 2/5 #138) Typoman: Revised - Platformer where you make words... is there even a plot besides killing a giant monster at the end? 1/5 #139) The Last Blade 2 - Fighting game. No story. 0/5 #140) Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered - Ollie-boy ends up in a magical world after his mom passes. Try and get her back. Save the world from darkness w/ friends. 3/5 #141) MLB The Show 20 - Sports game. No story. 0/5 #142) Touhou Double Focus - I skipped every single dialogue sequence. Anime metroidvania with cat girls. Stop the bad demon at the end. 1/5 #143) Infinity Runner - Run on a foreign spaceship where a werewolf is after you, and you can become a wolf. 1/5 #144) Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland - Achieve different endings, learn about townsfolk backgrounds, and save a town from being turned into an amusement park. 2/5 #145) Act It Out: A Game of Charades - Quiz game. No story. 0/5 #146) Gorogoa - Explore the life story of a man who's been through war and back in the form of a puzzle game. It's alright flavoring. 2/5 #147) Shu - It's a platformer. There is no serious plot other than have companions and keep running. 1/5 #148) Kingdom: New Lands - Build up a kingdom from nothing. No real story asides from that. 1/5 #149) Bully - Play as a new kid, befriend and win-over the different factions only for a jerk kid to try and foil your plans to become king of the school. It's decent. 3/5 #150) Beyond Eyes - Blind girl who makes sense of her surroundings when she gets closer. 2/5 #152) Furi - You're a bad guy. "They're" trying to send good guys to stop you. Kill them all. Destroy earth, or don't. GOOD flavoring, but it's just that. 3/5 #153) Madden NFL 20 - Sports games. No story. 0/5 #154) Patapon Remastered - Play as a tribe and commit genocide against the red tribe guys. Kill big bad monsters with your lil guys. It does its' job. 2/5 #155) CrossCode - Gigantic narrative and plot centered around this fictional game, CrossWorlds, while you play as Leah trying to make sense of past, foggy memory, and beginnings. 3/5 #156) Octodad: Dadliest Catch - You're a dad who's an octopus and your family has no idea. You almost get eaten. 2/5 #157) Manual Samuel - You're an awful human who gets sent to hell and the grim reaper is a cool skater bro who forces you to live a manual life to try and win life back. 2/5 #158) Axiom Verge - There IS a plot and story here. Giant robot mommy's need your help to kill yourself from the future. Didn't care to learn much more of it. 2/5 #159) Haven - You're on a foreign planet completely abandoned with your significant other. Explore the world. Kill the connection to your past or don't. 3/5 #160) Hue - It's a puzzle game and some connection with your mom and colors. 1/5 #162) Minit - Small Zelda-lite where you only live 60 seconds at a time and takedown the baddie in the end. 1/5 #163) Enter the Gungeon - There's a gungeon nobody can escape from. Try to kill your past. I think? 2/5 #164) The First Tree - A story about a fox, and a narrator trying to explain his past? Some relationship with his father? 2/5 #165) Chasm - You're a knight sent out on assignment in a small town where all the townsfolk have disappeared. Kill big bad bosses. 2/5 #166) Desert Child - You can race on bikes. You can race on bikes..... on Mars. Beat your friend and finish in 1st place. 2/5 #167) Jotun - Play as Thora, a viking assigned with killing titans as she had an untimely demise. It's good enough flavoring for a boss rush game. 3/5 #168) Crossing Souls - Play as a rag-tag group of kids in the 80s on summer vacation. Your brother dies. Try and make sense of scary triangle powers before cartoon villain kills you. 3/5 #169) Wandersong - Heartfelt story of refusing violence as a bard and winning people over with your voice. There's a jerk hero lady. 3/5 #170) Goat Simulator - Hah. No story. 0/5 #171) Superhot - You're locked in a computer game where you can't escape. It takes control of you. Tell people it's an innovative shooter. It serves its' purpose. 3/5 #172) Shape of the World - Exploration game. No story. 0/5 #173) Armikrog - Didn't care much for the point-and-click, on a foreign world and have to make your way off of it. 2/5 #174) Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered - Racing game. No story. 0/5 #175) Snake Pass - I literally just played this and like... your bird friend tells you we gotta collect the emeralds since the gate will close otherwise? Barely remember it. 1/5 0/5 games (games with no story or ones I utterly hated) - 49 1/5 games (games with minimum flavoring at most) - 34 2/5 games (games with some flavoring, not very good) - 35 3/5 games (games with passable, if not unique stories) - 39 4/5 games (games with stories I genuinely enjoy) - 16 5/5 games (games with stories I love, would play again for it) - 3 In an effort to prevent this post from being insufferable to scroll past, I have hidden all 0/5, 1/5, 2/5, and 3/5 stories in the spoiler above. Open it if you dare. So I dunno about y'all - but that is JAW-DROPPING to me. Out of 175 games, I think 19 have pretty good to great stories. That is 10.8%. It goes up to 33.1% if you include 3/5 games that I consider to be passable and just fine. Basically, I'm saying that for nearly 70% of stories in games I'm pretty much saying "yea you could have tossed all that out and I really wouldn't have missed much of any of it." Of course, some of this has to do with my game preferences (sports games obviously will never have stories outside of their MyPlayer game modes) and such but still. I may have some controversial takes. I know for some, Horizon Zero Dawn is a great story for a AAA Sony game. For me, it's just fine. I didn't hate it. But I also remember some of the sequences with the triangle futuristic device dragging a bit. Hell, some could argue my "good" story game ratings are generous. Gravity Rush, Banner Saga, Beholder, and the Batman: Arkham Games make up 9 of the 19 games there. Stardew Valley is likely a 3/5 but I love that game so much, and given how huge befriending the townsfolk is, I couldn't relegate it to a 3/5 like I did with say Persona 5 or Ni No Kuni. The fact that Pyre, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Journey are the only ones that truly standout to me is mind-boggling. Pyre is one of the incredibly rare few games I actually replay for a little bit from time-to-time which is a milestone it and of itself. Arkham Knight's presentation is downright majestic, and Journey is so unique I went in skeptical after all the praise I had heard it receive over the years and came out the other side still loving and appreciating it for what it set out to accomplish. I'm going to try and keep this in mind moving forward. I make it a point to always grab each sale a 100%, a relatively easy game in case I'm in a pinch with the month winding down, as well as gameplay games I know I'll probably like - but I have to make it a point to try and play games that people believe have good stories. But my hope in finding good sources for this kind of evaporates when I see games by Quantic Dream highly recommended. I ENJOY playing David Cage games. The stories are VERY memorable. I can tell you Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human's plots by heart. But the stories themselves due to the writing isn't good. I still love them for their ridiculousness and uniqueness, but I want some more What Remains of Edith Finch's that I could feel comfortable recommending to a book-lover. I hope this was a fun task to make you think "hey are the stories good or do I just kinda go along with them since they're good by video game standards." Maybe if we press on the issue we can push the medium forward a bit. My hope for AAA games at this point to move the needle on this is dead, but indies can absolutely carry the torch and my top ranking games are proof of that. Edited August 13, 2021 by realm722 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted August 13, 2021 Share Posted August 13, 2021 Goddamnit you spoiled Chess Ultra story for me. Unsub! Nice writeup for me I think there's one simple condition: if that game makes me want to go to the game's wikipedia page to check more stuff that I might have missed, then that story is GOOD. Happened with games like Dark souls, Yakuza (and God of War). Did not happen with Last of Us. Huh... Maybe I can't recognise a good story afterall ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted August 13, 2021 Share Posted August 13, 2021 18 hours ago, Copanele said: Goddamnit you spoiled Chess Ultra story for me. Unsub! I know - how selfish... I can't believe realm deprived us of the twists and turns and the nuanced interplay between all of the pieces.... What's the point now I know the ending - That final boss Check-Mate......I saw that coming a mile off - such a lazy colour scheme too, all you got was black and white.? 18 hours ago, realm722 said: Here is where we send all the naughty games That got a real laugh out of me - I just pictured, Spyro, Ratchet and Spiderman all sat on a naughty step looking dejected. You possibly might have deprived yourself of a good story, via skipping through most of the dialogue in 2064: Read Only Memories; there is actually quite a decent story buried in there. It does think it's a little more progressive than perhaps it actually is. But it was at least interesting. I guess it's up to the individual though to decide what is or isn't a good story, to be fair. 18 hours ago, realm722 said: I want some more What Remains of Edith Finch's that I could feel comfortable recommending to a book-lover. Get yourself a copy of The Town of Light. I think it's great (It is a Walking SIm though) if you haven't already, that games story reminded me a bit of Edith Finch, but with less production values. I know you aren't the type to turn your nose up at an easier platinum if the experience itself is good - but play it with Italian language and English subtitles - it really enhances the experience. For me it made the story feel more genuine. It's set it in Italy, your character is Italian, it just kind of makes sense to, plus as I think I alluded to quite a while ago when I reviewed it - the English voice acting is not all that strong, but the Italian is. You may have read this before, but I did review it quite early in my thread.. I hate to do the pluggy pluggy thing, that's really not me at all; but it would be easier for me to link you to something you can read than for me to try and elaborate so much on why I think it's awesome - you can choose to read it or not obviously, but if you want to, I'll leave a link here - The review itself is a little bare-bones, but I expand a bit upon it underneath. Which is pretty much spoiler free. It's a game I genuinely think is worth experiencing, it's quite short too, so I think even if you didn't end up liking it, it probably wouldn't outstay it's welcome. It ticked some of your pre-requisites in the start of your post about it needing to stick with you long after you've played it. That was a really interesting post you did on video game stories though, it's a very good point you made. Does make you question the necessity of them, when sometimes they feel so tacked on. Looking at you WWE2K Battlegrounds and WWE2K0 you flaming wheelie bins full of excrement, you. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted August 14, 2021 Share Posted August 14, 2021 "Two out of every three games have kinda garbage stories." What? No, that can't be.... *browses through my own completed games* ...God damn it. Well played sir, well played. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 (edited) On 8/12/2021 at 9:25 PM, realm722 said: So I dunno about y'all - but that is JAW-DROPPING to me. Out of 175 games, I think 19 have pretty good to great stories. That is 10.8%. Scrolled past the hidden list and then saw this and thought naw that can't be true, I bet I can find a good story in there...went through your list and it looks about right from the games I know. Going to be honest though, you don't play many games focusing on the story and tend to play them more for gameplay. Now to peek at my list....POWGI games have amazing stories right? Edit: First glance, I seem to play some games purely for the story...but 1/3 being a decent story might be true. Edited August 16, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destructor-8 Posted August 19, 2021 Share Posted August 19, 2021 (edited) On 08/08/2021 at 11:53 PM, AJ_Radio said: I hope this isn't as bad as Need for Speed Rivals. Having no actual pause option and the aggressive cops really grinded my gears. It's definitely a better game & quite fun as I never played the original but was very impressed with it, so I'd probably recommend it to you. The online isn't too long as well, so if you do get it then I can help out with the online. It's also my favourite of all the recent ones & it's very enjoyable. It's not an easy game so it's one of those where you restart until you get it & even though I've done NFS Prestige I did take quite a few attempts on a few of the races. I haven't been back on it though since I got caught up with other games. On 09/08/2021 at 0:49 AM, realm722 said: Yanno for as much criticism as I've seen for the modern Need for Speed games, I've enjoyed almost all of them. I'm not a "car guy" so I don't really care for the nitty-gritty details so that likely helps. Rivals was my first game ever on PS4, I enjoyed it... and 2 years later when I started trophy hunting it became 10th platinum I ever achieved. I remember quite liking it and while thinking reaching racer rank 60 was tricky never disliking it. The most "disappointing" Need for Speed was me was its very name released in 2015. Played in late 2019, I just didn't care for the god-awful IRL cutscenes even if they were funny to laugh at and the always-on night cycle. You'll enjoy NFS: Hot Pursuit if 1) You don't care at all for free-roam since there's 0 reason to do it and 2) Enjoy good challenging events with relatively tight limits for time trials. This is the first time I've posted here but I wanted to say well done on finishing it! I thought your review was brilliant & you pretty much got the recommendation part exactly right. I've done NFS Prestige & I still wouldn't put this as one of my easier games. It's definitely harder than most. There's a lot of restart until you get the run you need with the game. I've missed out on the time required on my first attempt by a very fine margin & there have been a few times where I've taken far longer than I expected. I really like your review on other games, so I'll have to keep up with it! Edited August 19, 2021 by Destructor-8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted August 21, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 21, 2021 (edited) Game: Moonlighter Analysis: I bought Moonlighter for $5.99 back in early March 2021 and the DLC (Between Dimensions) for $4.19 in early August 2021. Why play Moonlighter? I can give a very easy explanation for this. 1) The pixel art looked gorgeous. 2) I knew there were some shop-like elements ala Recettear. 3) It was an ultra rare platinum that is <30 hours and seemed like it was mostly being held back by glitched trophies that have since been patched. That's all the reasoning I needed to pull the trigger on the initial purchase. Eventually, DLC was added - and since I like to have games 100% completed as opposed to merely being platinumed, I held off until the DLC went on sale earlier this month before finally playing it. I can happily report that all 3 things that attracted me to the game initially are all here. This is wonderful because I knew if all 3 elements were there, I'd likely enjoy the game a fair bit. I did! Moonlighter is Repetition: The Video Game That may sound like a bad thing. What is your initial reaction when reading a game review OR listening to a game review on YouTube when someone says: "the gameplay is repetitive"? Do you automatically check out on it? Cuz I don't. I mean, I LOVE sports. Sports are the definition of a defined set of rules played out exactly to the word over, and over, and over again. There is no "vehicle section for diversity gameplay" in a sporting event. The repetition, some would argue, is PART of the fun. You KNOW the rules. You get to enjoy the small variances such as the fact that some games will be high-scoring. Others will be low-scoring. Some are more high-stakes than others. But at its', the game is the same. Moonlighter fits this definition to a tee. There are 2 core gameplay loops. The first portion is the dungeoneering(not a word) section. You will wander into 1 of the 4 dungeons, kill enemies, collect materials, go as far as you can until your health gets low, and then teleport out. This is followed by the second portion which is the shop-keeping section. You will then fiddle with prices trying to make money off of all your collected materials. This money will go to building up your shop, small upgrades, and having money for better armor, weapons, and potions. Once you sell everything, you go back to dungeoneering. Repeat cycle until the end of the game. YES, there are little side distractions, like organizing inventory and having brief conversations with the various NPCs in the small town of Rynoka, but none of them are substantial enough to distract from those 2 gameplay loops at the heart of Moonlighter. If it sounds attractive to you, you'll enjoy this game. If it sounds dull, you're in for a mind-numbing 20+ hours. I liked it. I didn't love it. The game is going to end up on the lower end of the 7/10 scale for me but that's still a good game in my eyes. It's aided by the fact you can tell by the gorgeous pixel art that the lovingly hand-crafted animations convey to you the developers loved working on this game. Look at this little animation where your shop helper (a shop level 3 upgrade) puts on her apron when you tell her to care for the shop for you for the day. It is disgustingly adorable. The story is very lightly interspersed during key moments after clearing a dungeon when your speak with the village elder, Zenon. While not winning any awards for best narrative, it serves its purpose for gently nudging the player along to an eventual conclusion. The inter-dimension police force in hazmat suits humor was also appreciated by myself. While little stuff like this won't make or break a game, I love it and it can be the difference-maker between a high 6 and low 7 game for me. Moonlighter is an ultra rare platinum. How difficult was it? Honestly, before saying anything I need to give thanks to @ObsiEez for the elite-tier trophy guide. It is the definition of a 5* guide and I never needed to find references on other websites outside of the prices for the DLC materials in the 5th dungeon. If you're going to plat Moonlighter, you're going to need to do 2 play-throughs. The first one will be the 100% run where you take your time learning all of the mechanics and the second one will be the <10 hour run where you also get the final hit on all the bosses with a broom. This actually works out wonderfully. BY FAR the toughest trophies in this game are perfecting each of the bosses. That means taking zero damage. But there IS an exploit. As opposed to needing to run down each time and reset every time you take a speck of damage on the boss, you can build a teleport right outside of the boss room, go home, save, and make a backup to the Cloud. This means you can quickly try over and over again on the bosses and learn their patterns. In my mind, ranking from hardest to easiest they go 1) Naja, 2) Carnivorous Mutaee, 3) Golem King, and 4) Energy Flux. Naja was so difficult because of those annoying little fire demons that could hit you when they come flying in from off-screen. Carnivorous Mutaee also had annoying small-time plant shooters that could cause similar damage. They took me around 40 minutes each worth of retries before conquering them. Aside from that, the trophies are genuinely not that difficult. You need to play each dungeon a lot since you need to reach the 3rd floor on 10 different runs and kill 1k enemies in each dungeon, but that is just a perfect background activity while listening to a podcast. Just while you're doing all your activities during the game, do these things 1) Hit trees around the town for money, you'll need to collect money from them 100 times, 2) Invest in the banker as soon as possible and don't take your money out till you make money on your investment, takes minimum 5 weeks to complete, 3) Always play on the latest dungeon unlocked unless you're going for a dungeon-specific trophy. Why? Cause the latest dungeon will ALWAYS earn you the most money. Any items missing from other dungeons can just be bought at La Retailer for an up-marked price. Still worth it. 4) 10k kills is obnoxious but there's an AFK method that earns you 1.8k kills per hour. Don't even have to move the controller. 5) The speedrun is nothing to sweat. I personally beat the game in 3 hours, 42 minutes since once you know the perfect prices and what you're aiming for best equipment-wise you can fly through the game as you aren't wasting money trying to 100% everything. Oh hey, there's also a DLC, how was that? The DLC is kinda jarring as it only unlocks once you beat the game. Yet there is an element in terms of allowing you to access elements of the 5th dungeon in the main 4 dungeons beforehand. Kinky. I honestly didn't love it. It's fine, but it really is just more of the same. Shoutout to @dieselmanchild for the amazing time-saving tip and quick method to unlock all the DLC weapons. You're likely looking at a handful of hours added in order to beat the final boss of the DLC nine more times than necessary without it. Do I recommend Moonlighter? Yes, with some caveats. Do you enjoy great pixel art? Then buy it. Do you enjoy decent 7/10 combat and unique shop-keeping elements that are fairly unique in video games? Then yes. Do you enjoy numbers becoming even BIGGER numbers over time? THEN YOU MUST BUY THIS. I left this part out of the review until the very end since it really drives home why I partially enjoyed the game. At the start, you will feel like 5k coins is A LOT of money. Then 20k coins will seem like a ton. The 100k. Then by the end, you will be asked to fork up 562k for the final weapons upgrade, which will seem impossible, except due to the scale of increasing in items to each dungeon you will be raking in the multi-millions each time you open the store by the end-game. This is only further exasperated by the DLC which will have you in the tens of millions easily. If you enjoy Cookie Clicker, you will LOVE Moonlighter. That sense of scale and progression is an intoxicating narcotic. But let me do warn... there's a reason the game isn't an 8/10 for me. The shop-keeping elements while solid, are just that. The game tries to make unique events (stopping thieves, having villagers ask you to hunt specific items, there's a bird who can distract patrons and you need to beat it up) but once you find the right price, it's mostly just a long-form version of waiting to sell stuff at an NPC counter as in any video game. The dungenoning is alright, I like how every 3rd hit you do is a critical and does double your normal damage, but it can be a bit difficult to avoid certain attacks from enemies due to just how fast the animations are. It's solid chunky combat, but chunky all the same. All in all, it took me 1 week and 4 days to earn the 3.59% ultra rare platinum in Moonlighter. That makes me the 39th fastest achiever on PSNProfiles. Cool! Until next time! Panda Score: 7.2 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.7 / 10 Spoiler These are just some bonus notes I took in the moment while playing Moonligher Thoughts / Notes I’m very intimidated by this game since my goodness does it seem like it has a lot of depth to it with all the shop upkeep and prices and just… SUPER rarity ultra rare for the sorta game it is. Hope it doesn’t kick my butt into infinity. WOW I just got destroyed on that room with a ton of enemies… but given the fact the story continued I presume I was supposed to die there Okay Day #1 done playing… your backpack is SO small man, have to go up even when I just get to level 2 or level 3 of the 1st dungeon. Finally upgrading some armor and actually crafting some but my goodness some of these future prices at 150k+ coins is mind-boggling to me while I’m scrapping by with my 20-30k. LESSSGOOOOOO!! PERFECT DEFEATED GOLEM KING! Put the teleport outside which is SUPER helpful to re-do since it took me like 25 min of attempts before getting it. His red slime arm got me the most times. Did it with an upgrade basic silver sword, and yea! Very happy I got the first of 4 perfected bosses down pat. Just dropped 60k on the expensive shop upgrade. I’m quite enjoying the game man. Just comfy to sit down and slowly see your progression as things get bigger and bigger. WOOHOO! FINALLY PERFECTED CARNIVOROUS MUTAE! I honestly thought I had done it 1st try but I had taken 1 hit since I had lost my shield. Then had to spent the next 40 min of attempts trying again and again until I finally got it. Enjoying the game for what it is. Wow Dungeon #3 is kicking my butt… died like 4 times with a full inventory. Particularly the 2nd level boss is destroying me. Gonna switch from sword to gloves now. Kinda forgot these notes… uhh… speed run was super easy and quick on New Game+, did mine in 3 hours and 42 minutes Final Total Time: 24 hours, 3 minutes between 2 saves Edited August 21, 2021 by realm722 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted August 21, 2021 Share Posted August 21, 2021 (edited) If Moonlighter is anything remotely like Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Earthbound, or Chrono Trigger, it is already fucking awesome in my book. On 8/8/2021 at 4:49 PM, realm722 said: Yanno for as much criticism as I've seen for the modern Need for Speed games, I've enjoyed almost all of them. I'm not a "car guy" so I don't really care for the nitty-gritty details so that likely helps. Rivals was my first game ever on PS4, I enjoyed it... and 2 years later when I started trophy hunting it became 10th platinum I ever achieved. I remember quite liking it and while thinking reaching racer rank 60 was tricky never disliking it. The most "disappointing" Need for Speed was me was its very name released in 2015. Played in late 2019, I just didn't care for the god-awful IRL cutscenes even if they were funny to laugh at and the always-on night cycle. You'll enjoy NFS: Hot Pursuit if 1) You don't care at all for free-roam since there's 0 reason to do it and 2) Enjoy good challenging events with relatively tight limits for time trials. I didn't mind the tight limits for the trials, it was the damn car physics and the cops that kept murdering me in NFS Rivals. You must have had a lot more patience for the game than I did. I looked at NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered and it doesn't look half bad. Racers and Cops were always a stable of the NFS franchise, it was always an arcade racer, not the driving simulator like Forza or Gran Turismo. Edited August 21, 2021 by AJ_Radio Added a couple words 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ObsiEez Posted August 22, 2021 Share Posted August 22, 2021 23 hours ago, realm722 said: *snip* Thank you for the very kind words about the guide & I'm so glad you also enjoyed the game as well! I'm super passionate about the game & I think it's one of the more underrated games I've played. In case you're wondering I DO plan on making a guide for the DLC in the future, I just haven't gotten around to it yet since I haven't started the DLC myself even though I own it. Again, thank you for the very kind words about the guide as I put A LOT of time & effort into a guide that I thought was going to get overlooked since it was such an underrated game but I felt like it deserved it, so it feels really great that the guide blew up & brought a lot of recognition to the game itself. I hope that the DLC guide I write for it as well will also do the main guide justice! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieselmanchild Posted August 24, 2021 Share Posted August 24, 2021 Congrats @realm722 on finishing Moonlighter! I’m happy to hear you enjoyed it. It’s one of the more unique little hidden gems I’ve found. ? There’s currently a huge indie game sale on the PS Store and I’m currently in the process of weeding out some other hidden gems and trying to whittle down a short list of games to grab. One game that caught my eye right away is called Hyper Light Drifter. It’s made by a different developer, but has the exact same gorgeous pixel art style as Moonlighter, and the dungeons and gameplay mechanics look nearly identical. After seeing footage of the gameplay I assumed it was created by the same people, and I was very surprised to learn otherwise. Maybe it would interest you too? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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