Fall 2016 Long Play Marathon: Andrea vs. Zajac

[Andrea]

Welcome to yet another platinum race extravaganza. In this installment, watch as two accomplished trophy hunters bite off more than they can chew with nightmarish long and difficult games. Who will be the first to break a controller trying to finish Sonic Unleashed's Hot Dog Stands? Who will break down in tears over Evil Within's Akumu mode? Will either player complete the event with sanity intact? Follow the thread to find out!

 

We each nominated two games with the criteria being 1.) they must take 50 hours+ to complete and 2.) they must be difficult.  The event runs until 1 January 2017, or until either player has platinumed all four games.
 
Andrea's Nominations:
 
Dragon Age: Inquisition (125 hours, 8/10 difficulty, 7.02% achieved)
 
The Evil Within (50 hours, 9/10 difficulty, 3.62% achieved)
 
Zajac's Nominations:

Sonic Unleashed (60 hours, 9/10 difficulty, 2.47% achieved)
 
Nuclear Throne (? hours, ? difficulty, .01% achieved)
 
Scoring
 
In the event that neither player platinums every game by 1 January 2017, the following scoring system will be used to determine the winner:
 
Platinum = 12 points
 
Gold = 6 points
 
Silver = 2 points
 
Bronze = 1 point
 
DLC trophies in any of these games will not count toward points here.
 
The thread will be updated with tentative totals as we progress through the games.
 
Current scores
 
Andrea's Games -  112 points
 

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition 29/51 (28 1  )
 
Evil Within 42/42 (28   9   4   1 ) - Completed 10/23/2016
 
Nuclear Throne 0/45
 
Sonic Unleashed 0/51

 
Zajac's Games - 260 points
 

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition 51/51 (42 6  2 1 ) - Completed 12/16/2016
 
Evil Within 42/42 (28 9   4 1 ) - Completed 11/5/2016
 
Nuclear Throne 25/45 (19 5 1 )
 
Sonic Unleashed 47/51 (33 13 1  )

Edited December 31, 2016 by Andrea

[Saionji]

Andrea's Nominations:

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition (125 hours, 8/10 difficulty, 7.02% achieved)

 

The Evil Within (50 hours, 9/10 difficulty, 3.62% achieved)

 

Zajac's Nominations:

Sonic Unleashed 60 hours, 9/10 difficulty, 2.47% achieved)

 

Nuclear Throne (? hours, ? difficulty, .01% achieved)

 

Those are easy plats, you guys should aim for something harder

 

Good luck to both off you thou, if there was an option to Vote I would cast mine on Zajac as he know how to get those URs

[AffectatiousDonk]

Looks like fun best of luck to you both ....... Of course there is no marathon without a Star Ocean

Edit : I'm definitely following though

Edited August 30, 2016 by cjshaitan

[zajac9999]

Thanks for setting this up Andrea.

 

I guess you could add a poll in? I always think it's interesting to see how people vote.

 

Anyways, I did a quick run on Nuclear throne, only 10 mins play but earned a few trophies so I'm now sat on 4/45. Sadly I can't play anymore today as I'm away for the rest of the day and tomorrow I'll probably finish off Dead Nation before continuing on with NT.

 

Good luck with the games Andrea.

[J2V89]

Good luck to you both and I'm looking forward to seeing how well you both do. 

[Andrea]

I knew I forgot something. (the hazards of setting this up at 2:30 in the morning.)
 

Poll added.

 

I'll do an intro post for myself tonight, won't start any games until tomorrow most likely I am enjoying this dumb football game (everything I know about American football I know through games) and also want to try out Retro/Grade.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Andrea

[XX_FTW]

Geeze Zajac how many of these things are you in? You can't take on all of PSNP. 

 

I do like that you are going after the same plats. Good luck with this marathon.

[Hemiak]

I feel like I've seen roughly this idea somewhere before.

Looks like a pretty good list of games, good luck to both of you. Def rooting for my bro Z, but Andrea takes these things pretty seriously so it could go either way.

Also, you both have to finish Retro/Grade or this whole thing is a sham.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Hemiak

[Andrea]

I have been trophy hunting for just under 7 months and have 73 platinums, but I only feel legitimate satisfaction regarding a half-dozen or so. Many were blatantly easy, I have 4 or so stacked games, and most of the rest were just sort of non-descript in the difficulty department. It has taken some skill to do many of the games as quickly as I have done them, but I feel like I have larger mountains to climb in the form of more challenging games. Even most of my current ultra rares weren't particularly difficult and simply required a bit of coordination or particular instruments in a rhythm game. To remedy that I will be doing this challenge and hopefully completing all of these games. Either that or I smash my consoles to bits and never return.

 

I also love friendly competition and found a strong challenger in Zajac, someone with way more trophies and especially way more ultra-rares than I have. I'm happy to see the poll leaning towards him, being the underdog is where I prefer to be and it worked out well in my summer race concluding next week. This one will have a much different focus though and I know I need to be on my A-game and can't just spam garbage like Duck Dynasty to win.

 

On to my familiarity with the games:

 

I played Dragon Age: Origins whenever it came out on PC and got bored less than 15 hours in. I do love RPGs in general, that one just didn't grab me. I have DA:O complete edition and DAII on Playstation but have yet to play them. Inquisition looks good, I'm a little scared of the time to beat but I will be jumping straight into nightmare mode to try to 1-playthrough it.

 

The Evil Within is even more comfortably in my wheel house. I've beaten the hardest difficulty on all of the Resident Evil series except RE5 and RE0 (neither of which I played for more than a couple of hours.) This game's akumu mode looks next level difficult, but I am not too worried about getting it down with enough practice and preparation.

 

I've only played one roguelike before Nuclear Throne: Binding of Isaac. I was bad at it and it left no impression on me. I played for maybe 3 hours in total.

 

I loved mascot platformers as a kid but somehow have never played a Sonic game in my entire life (ditto for Mario, haha.) The entire extent of my knowledge of Sonic comes from half-decade old Christian Weston Chandler memes.

 

What little I know about these games has clued me in to the fact that my trophies per day average is about to take a nose dive. It is at 16.56 now, it will be interesting to see where I end up at the end of this.

 

Tomorrow I will be starting my journey with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I will probably spend an hour and a half getting my Oberyn Martell character looking right, but it will all be moot because somehow the game doesn't have spears. Morrowind had spears and it is 14 years old! Get it together Bioware.

[TheLastSurvivorD]

Rooting for Andrea on this one. Hope you guys have fun with your games.
 
Also, where's Retro/Grade?

[Andrea]

Rooting for Andrea on this one. Hope you guys have fun with your games.

 

Also, where's Retro/Grade?

 

Zajac is already nearly done with it, that would hardly be sporting.

 

I did start it today, I'll update more in the thread but so far so good. I will probably wish that was picked even with Zajac's advantage after getting crushed in Nuclear Throne enough times

[zajac9999]

Back from visiting my friend now and can start this race properly. I have a tendency to start these things slowly and so this time I was certain I wouldn't do. Here I am playing Dead Nation just wanting to finish off the last few levels for the plat. Then there's retro/grade, and Jojo... I kinda wanna finish off SMB as well. :/ Lol. I'm hoping Nuclear Throne will give me a strong start to this race, I feel it's similar to Enter the Gungeon and I absolutely loved Gungeon. If I like Nuclear Throne as much I'll probably create a guide for it as well (if no one does beforehand)

[Wdjat Prinny Doods]

zajac is my boy but I need to keep up appearances so I'm voting against him and going with Andrea Also kind of hard to vote against her anyway after seeing the dominance she has put on in the summer plat race. Good luck to both of you doods though

[Kent10201]

Good luck to both of you but I have to go with Andrea on this one. She takes these things really seriously based on previous events and I don't see her losing this one. Sorry zajac.

[Dragon-Archon]

Nice challenge , good luck you two.

 

I wanted to vote for zajac, but Andrea suggested Dragon Age Inquisition, so yeah .... sorry zajac, don't hold it against me.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Dragon-Archon

[zajac9999]

Finished playing for the day, got back home around 17:30 pm and had a bit to do before I could start. Ended up getting Dead Nation finished off for plat #235 and also getting a couple of hours on Nuclear Throne. Already I'm really enjoying the game, it seems pretty tough though but we'll see as time goes on. It's really the only plat I'm 'concerned' about as I'm pretty confident I could finish the other 3. I'm not a massive fan of the Dragon Age series (based on the 4% of trophies I bothered to get on DA 1) but I'm hoping DA:I will bring me round and get me to enjoy the series a bit more. Earned a few trophies on NT and am now sitting pretty on 15% Might be quite busy tomorrow so we'll see what progress I can make. ^^

 

 

Tomorrow I will be starting my journey with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I will probably spend an hour and a half getting my Oberyn Martell character looking right, but it will all be moot because somehow the game doesn't have spears. 

 

I just noticed this now, I like how on games with a create a character I tend to spend a minute and a half max on them and that's usually to think of a name for them that I think is hilarious but nobody else does.

[Dragon-Archon]

I played Dragon Age: Origins whenever it came out on PC and got bored less than 15 hours in. I do love RPGs in general, that one just didn't grab me. I have DA:O complete edition and DAII on Playstation but have yet to play them. Inquisition looks good, I'm a little scared of the time to beat but I will be jumping straight into nightmare mode to try to 1-playthrough it.

I'm not a massive fan of the Dragon Age series (based on the 4% of trophies I bothered to get on DA 1) but I'm hoping DA:I will bring me round and get me to enjoy the series a bit more.

Don't worry, the 125 hours is just an estimate. I've heard people say they platted the game in 80 hours by skipping pretty much all the dialogue, speedrunning, and using all the exploits. If you want to cheese the game on Nightmare, play as a mage and pick the Knight-Enchanter specialization. Once you have that OP skill tree unlocked, you'll be a demi-god.

 

I just noticed this now, I like how on games with a create a character I tend to spend a minute and a half max on them and that's usually to think of a name for them that I think is hilarious but nobody else does.

Lol, I usually spend a about 10 minutes customizing the character.

 

 

Tomorrow I will be starting my journey with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I will probably spend an hour and a half getting my Oberyn Martell character looking right, but it will all be moot because somehow the game doesn't have spears. Morrowind had spears and it is 14 years old! Get it together Bioware.

Lol, let's hope your character won't end up like Oberyn . Maybe spears will be added in the next game (along with katanas ).

Edited September 1, 2016 by Dragon-Archon

[zajac9999]

Don't worry, the 125 hours is just an estimate. I've heard people say they platted the game in 80 hours by skipping pretty much all the dialogue and using all the exploits. If you want to cheese the game on Nightmare, play as a mage and pick the Knight-Enchanter specialization. Once you have that OP skill tree unlocked, you'll be a demi-god.

 

Why is this info not sent to me via psn message or something similar? I don't gain an unfair advantage when you tell both of us... shame on you.

[Dragon-Archon]

Why is this info not sent to me via psn message or something similar? I don't gain an unfair advantage when you tell both of us... shame on you.

I tried, but then the Illuminati told me someone kept intercepting my messages . So I had no choice but to come clean.

[Andrea]

Day 1 update:

I started Dragon Age: Inquisition yesterday. Made it through the tutorial with no problems but once I got to the first area started having a bit of difficulty. I had to really break it down and micro manage using the tactical menu, but now that I've gotten a feel for it I'm doing a lot better. Using a ranged rogue, looking forward to unlocking another warrior party member because Cassandra can't seem to hold aggro for anything and that always causes issues.

 

I am not terribly interested in the story and have been skipping most of the dialogue, but I'm enjoying the exploration and laid back collecting. It's nice to do a game where I'm not frantically rushing to the platinum. This game has so many icons and little quests to do that it is very easy to be overwhelmed. For day one I mostly aimed to progress through the story but as soon as I unlock the next three party members I will slow it down and start knocking out some of these miscellaneous quests.

 

I collected 9 shards and all astrariums in the Hinterlands, and managed to net 10 trophies in around 4 hours of play.

 

My goal is to have it done in about 100 hours.

 

I'm not sure how much I'll play today, probably not for as long as yesterday. I want to knock out some of the unfinished games on my profile (there are more now than there have ever been, usually it's just 1-3,) so I'll be devoting time for that. Still aim to get 1-2 more trophies though.

 

Lol, let's hope your character won't end up like Oberyn . Maybe spears will be added in the next game (along with katanas ).

 

TOO SOON (also thanks for the guide and vote.)

[Dragon-Archon]

Day 1 update:

I started Dragon Age: Inquisition yesterday. Made it through the tutorial with no problems but once I got to the first area started having a bit of difficulty. I had to really break it down and micro manage using the tactical menu, but now that I've gotten a feel for it I'm doing a lot better. Using a ranged rogue, looking forward to unlocking another warrior party member because Cassandra can't seem to hold aggro for anything and that always causes issues.

 

I am not terribly interested in the story and have been skipping most of the dialogue, but I'm enjoying the exploration and laid back collecting. It's nice to do a game where I'm not frantically rushing to the platinum. This game has so many icons and little quests to do that it is very easy to be overwhelmed. For day one I mostly aimed to progress through the story but as soon as I unlock the next three party members I will slow it down and start knocking out some of these miscellaneous quests.

 

I collected 9 shards and all astrariums in the Hinterlands, and managed to net 10 trophies in around 4 hours of play.

 

My goal is to have it done in about 100 hours.

 

I'm not sure how much I'll play today, probably not for as long as yesterday. I want to knock out some of the unfinished games on my profile (there are more now than there have ever been, usually it's just 1-3,) so I'll be devoting time for that. Still aim to get 1-2 more trophies though.

 

 

TOO SOON (also thanks for the guide and vote.)

Nice progress. Blackwall is a great tank, especially once he gets his specialization, and I used him for my nightmare run (which I also did as an archer rogue with the Tempest specialization) with Cassandra and Solas. You need to do some side quests to get enough power to unlock main missions.

 

What do you mean too soon?

The guy's been dead for 2 seasons now... seems like a good time to make jokes

 

You've earned the vote by choosing DA:I. I hope the guide will be useful .

[zajac9999]

Made a bit more progress today on Nuclear Throne, I'm sure this will be a very tough plat for me. I'll probably move on to other games before finishing this one, not sure what I'll play next though, maybe Evil Within? Won't be for a while anyways.

 

I'll be busy tomorrow so not sure how much time I'll have to play, hopefully I'll at least improve on NT, even if I don't earn any trophies. 

[Andrea]

It has already been a week, so it's time for another update for me.

 

Because of getting into school stuff and finishing up some of the other games I've started, I've only managed about 10 hours in Dragon Age but what a journey it has been. I have recruited all but the final two companions, roughly six agents, mostly finished with Hinterlands and starting in on Storm Coast now. After some early struggles I have slowly improved at the game (adding a second tank REALLY helped) and I'm now completely demolishing most enemies I come across.

 

As far as story I still haven't picked between Mages and Templars, and I haven't even been to Redcliffe village - my goal for the next day or two is to do that and also finish most of Storm Coast (it seems small enough - famous last words?) and cleanup what little I have left of Hinterlands.

 

Loving the game so far.

Edited September 6, 2016 by Andrea

[zajac9999]

Time for an update as well as I've just succeeded looped in Nuclear Throne for the first time. I've been playing it on and off as I wasn't so well last week and so fancied playing something a bit easier. I'm thinking of starting The Evil Within sometime soon as I'm pretty sure that the other 3 games combined will be easier and quicker to plat than Nuclear Throne, at least for me. It makes sense to leave it until last in that case but I'll continue to chip away at it every now and then.

 

I'm not really sure what the gameplay of The Evil Within is like to be honest, guess there's no better time to find out.

 

Nuclear Throne progress: 43% 20/45 trophies earned

[AffectatiousDonk]

Looks like you are both making some good progress.

Are you doing Dragon Age in one playthrough Andrea.

Looking forward to seeing both your thoughts on The Evil Within. It's pretty twisted game but from the little I played seemed very good. Personally I couldn't imagine being able to beat Akuma mode so will be cheering from the sidelines as you both smash through it.