Fall 2016 Long Play Marathon: Andrea vs. Zajac

[Andrea]

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.

 

 

I'm planning on 1 playthrough yes. So far nothing has happened that leads me to believe I won't be able to tackle nightmare in one go, and I've been extra careful (and making lots of saves) to ensure I don't accidentally screw up anything missable. It's one of the best games I've yet to play on PS4 so far so I'm definitely pleased to have started it.

 

As for Nuclear Throne, I am definitely intending for that to be my last game, if for no other reason than because there will hopefully be a trophy guide up for it by the time I finally start it. Evil Within is probably next for me, and I intend to work on it concurrently with Dragon Age, but it probably won't be started until early next week so I have time to finish AC:Unity.

[Andrea]

It has been almost two weeks since last update, so I guess I will break the ice.

 

After spending a lot of time with other games (including jumping off to a hot start in torching cj in our race,) I finally got back into Dragon Age yesterday and had quite a productive session. I'm up to 20/51 trophies now and the game is coming relatively easily. Yesterday I spent a ton of time exploring and knocking out rifts, my team can take on enemies roughly two levels higher (we're level 10) with relative ease, but I still want to get a few more levels under my belt before I continue with the main quest. I'm definitely taking my usual tactic with games with a ton of repetitive stuff to do and trying to knock out as much of it as I can while I still have lots of other variety to deal with. I wouldn't want to go for all 114 shards at once for sure.

 

In terms of grindy stuff I'm at 12/15 astrariums, 44/114 shards, and roughly 30/75 rifts.

 

I'm still really enjoying the game and I suppose that's what really counts. The grind for ingredients is really dumb and tedious but otherwise I haven't been massively bothered by anything. There's a low chance that I'll start Evil Within before the month is out, but my main objective is just to get Dragon Age nearly done by the beginning of October.

 

How are you coming along Zajac?

[zajac9999]

I've not played much of the games in this race recently. I've done a small amount of The Evil Within and earned a trophy or two on Nuclear Throne. I've been playing a lot more of N++ and also Hand of Fate and want to get those finished off soon then I'll go back to focusing on these games a bit more.

 

Evil Within is fun but a bit slow so far, hopefully it'll pick up some more as I get a bit further into it. 

 

Trophy wise I'm this far into the games:

 

Nuclear Throne: 25/45, 50% trophies

The Evil Within: 6/42, 9% trophies

Dragon Age Inquisition: 0 trophies so far

Sonic Unleashed: 0 trophies so far

[zajac9999]

So I've started Sonic Unleashed in the past couple of days and also earned a couple more trophies in The Evil Within. 

 

I'm quite enjoying Sonic Unleashed at the moment, though the camera is very questionable to say the least a lot of the time. I wondering how much of the difficulty in this game comes from sections that require skill etc and how much comes from poor controls and shoddy camera angles. However, as I said, even with those flaws the game is still fun and I'm looking forward to progressing in it further.

 

Progress: Nuclear Throne - 25/45

                The Evil Within - 8/42 (8 points)

                Sonic Unleashed - 15/51 (19 points)

                Dragon Age Inquisition - None

[Andrea]

Everything is up to date. You have a nice lead mostly on the back of the Sonic Unleashed trophies. Here's to hoping those are relatively quick to earn

 

I have finally started making real progress in Evil Within and I'm loving it. Everything I could ask for in a game and I'm a little surprised at the fact that even some of the earlier misc. trophies are relatively difficult. It's definitely setting up to be a tough platinum. My school is on holiday today so I'm hoping to push through and finish the remaining chapters today, and then I can plan out my cleanup, speedrun, and akumu mode

 

Still need to get back into Dragon Age, but I'm encouraged by the fact that it takes like 20 hours just to get as far as I have and you haven't even started it yet. That will be a nice way for me to gain ground.

[Denvirus]

Keep up the good work both of you! I am looking forward to getting into Dragon Age myself a bit.

[Andrea]

And just like that I have managed to nearly completely eliminate the gap between us. I blew through Evil Within this week and have only Akumu mode left to conquer, but when I do I will finally have the lead in this race (assuming Zajac doesn't keep racking up Sonic trophies.) The speedrun was laughably easy and the miscellaneous stuff all went my way and didn't glitch, which I appreciated. Of course, akumu is notoriously the most difficult part, but I feel confident I can take it down without too much fuss. I'll be starting Dragon Age back up this weekend, and may get into Sonic if I feel the margin getting away from me again.

[Andrea]

I've officially drawn first blood!
 

Evil Within finished. Akumu mode was easily the hardest thing I've done on PS4, and one of the harder things I've done across any system. Since Friday afternoon I've played around 12 hours of Evil Within getting my ass kicked constantly, it has so much cheesy nonsense. The platinum is prepared for Rach's event and the beginning of THTL S3 so it doesn't show up yet, but I'm 1 5 minute cutscene away from the end. Feels good to finally get a legit platinum in the bag I'll be continuing with DA: I in the coming days and will try to work it in next month during THTL with the aim of finishing it before 1 December.

 

I was going to mention that it feels good to finally (briefly) take the lead, but I double checked and it seems I haven't even managed that. Oh well, it DOES feel good to be the first to actually finish a game.

[zajac9999]

Made some good progress over the past few days as I had a couple of days off work

 

I basically have 3 sets of hotdog missions left for the Sonic plat. I have no idea how long they'll take me or when I'll do them to be honest. In general the hot dog missions haven't been particularly hard, though I do have the hardest 3 sets left, but they are a bit frustrating due to the fact that most of my failures come down to the clunky controls or bad camera. I can tell eggmanland is going to be incredibly annoying for this because the stage is 4 times as long as any of the others. Also the fact that you have to basically repeat the missions multiple times even though you may have beaten the fastest time etc is a bit annoying too.

 

On The Evil Within I've finished my first playthrough and cleared up a lot of the misc stuff pretty much leaving 2 playthroughs left now. Whilst I've only done 1 of 3 playthroughs I feel like I'm fairly close for some reason and expect the speedrun to be very easy as the time seems pretty generous.

 

Haven't played Nuclear Throne in quite a while, sat on about 50% trophies, there's no way I'll play this game before the New Year deadline so I'll do the others and then make as much progress on NT as I can.

 

DA:I - Yet to start.

 

Progress:

 

Sonic Unleashed - 46/51 92%

The Evil Within - 36/42 76%

Nuclear Throne - 25/45 50%

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 0%

[Andrea]

Made some good progress over the past few days as I had a couple of days off work

 

I basically have 3 sets of hotdog missions left for the Sonic plat. I have no idea how long they'll take me or when I'll do them to be honest. In general the hot dog missions haven't been particularly hard, though I do have the hardest 3 sets left, but they are a bit frustrating due to the fact that most of my failures come down to the clunky controls or bad camera. I can tell eggmanland is going to be incredibly annoying for this because the stage is 4 times as long as any of the others. Also the fact that you have to basically repeat the missions multiple times even though you may have beaten the fastest time etc is a bit annoying too.

 

On The Evil Within I've finished my first playthrough and cleared up a lot of the misc stuff pretty much leaving 2 playthroughs left now. Whilst I've only done 1 of 3 playthroughs I feel like I'm fairly close for some reason and expect the speedrun to be very easy as the time seems pretty generous.

 

Haven't played Nuclear Throne in quite a while, sat on about 50% trophies, there's no way I'll play this game before the New Year deadline so I'll do the others and then make as much progress on NT as I can.

 

DA:I - Yet to start.

 

Progress:

 

Sonic Unleashed - 46/51 92%

The Evil Within - 36/42 76%

Nuclear Throne - 25/45 50%

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 0%

 

The speedrun is incredibly easy if you do it in new game plus; with the rocket launcher and all your upgrades you'll be mopping up enemies no problem. I think I did it in around 3:30:00 with 4 deaths. Akumu you will struggle a bit more with, but I think we are the beneficiaries of having 2+ years of experience and tips to draw from around the internet. No doubt it was bad and will require patience, but minus a few frustrating parts I didn't find it to be nearly as bad as I was expecting.

 

My goal for winning this is to platinum DA: I, then get the easier trophies in Sonic Unleashed and, if needed, NT. I don't know that I'll have time to platinum all four games, especially not with the team league starting back up in a couple days.

 

Back to being down 50 points lol.

Edited October 29, 2016 by Andrea

[zajac9999]

Finshed The Evil Within today, Akumu mode wasn't too bad overall in the end, there's a few annoying spots which took awhile to overcome (notably chapter 6) but I feel these could've been navigated much more easily had I done a bit of prior research on them. I tried my best to avoid looking for tips and tricks online and actually I really enjoyed the playthrough. Looking forward to doing the dlc at some stage now. 

 

I'm undecided whether I'll move on to DA:I or continue with Sonic and try to finish that off as the next game in this race, I have a bunch of games that I've started and want to work on anyways so we'll see.

 

Also yes, you were correct about the speedrun being very easy Andrea haha.

 

Progress:

 

Sonic Unleashed - 46/51 92%

The Evil Within - 42/42 100%

Nuclear Throne - 25/45 50%

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 0%

[zajac9999]

So after majorly slacking for the past approx 3 weeks I've finally started DA:I. I've now played some of all 4 games am somewhat hopeful that I can plat this and Sonic by the end of the year. All depends on the amount of time I get to play though.

 

Anyways, really enjoying the little of Dragon Age that I've played so far.

 

Progress;

 

Progress:

 

Sonic Unleashed - 46/51 92%

The Evil Within - 42/42 100%

Nuclear Throne - 25/45 50%

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 7/51 11%

[zajac9999]

Been a fair while since I updated here. I've platted Dragon Age Inquisition now and I really enjoyed the game. I'm intending to work on most of the dlc trophies too, but the trials ones look like a massive pain so I'm not sure if I'll do all of those (depends on the amount of time they'll take)

 

Anyways, I also noticed my Sonic Unleashed trophy progression is slightly wrong, though this is my own fault, I actually have one more trophy than has been posted here. 

 

Progress:

 

Sonic Unleashed - 47/51 94%

The Evil Within - 42/42 100%

Nuclear Throne - 25/45 50%

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 51/51 100%

 

I'm hoping to finish Sonic off before the new year, but I doubt I'll play Nuclear Throne again this year. Sonic should be easy enough to finish assuming I actually get some motivation to play it.

 

I've noticed Andrea hasn't been posting on here recently and also hasn't synced on her account in weeks, hopefully everything is alright though she is fairly frequent on the forums so I think so. Seems she has quite a bit of catching up to do if she is intending to be competitive come the end of this race.

[Andrea]

Not sure how I missed the 47/51 in Sonic as I usually check your profile to see the trophy type. Oh well, I'll add it + the new platinum in a couple hours when I'm on my main computer. Very nice going through Dragon Age as quickly as you did. I like it well enough but I've been chipping away at it since the competition started and still not quite done, though getting closer definitely.

 

Think I'm going to have to say GG on this one. Kind of embarrassing as I platinumed probably 50 games in between the time we started this and now, and just couldn't find the time or focus to do these. Lots of little things chipping away at my time and attention and leading to a bad result. I do still intend to platinum Dragon Age, and maybe even Sonic if I feel really adventurous, but that's not going to be enough even if you don't finish off the latter. If I finish those two and it is super close with a few days left I will go ahead and actually buy Nuclear Throne and see what I can get, but the odds of me winning are probably less than 1% now

 

My account hasn't been synced for awhile only because I've moved over to a new account on a semi-permanent basis. Just using the old one for the Team League and this now, plus any games I want to play that I don't want to 100%. Made a new one to focus on games I want to 100%, and also so I can have a South Africa leaderboard ranking rather than the US one.

[Andrea]

Scores are updated with about 12 hours to go.

 

Congrats to Zajac on a big win, definitely earned it by staying focused on these games for the better part of 4 months. Wish I could say the same for myself as I had zero focus - being distracted time and again by other competitions that required me to do shorter games, games I wanted to play or bought on sale, FIFA 15 with the SO, and even in the last few weeks PC gaming (gasp!) Been on a major strategy bender revisiting old classics like Empire: Total War, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, and both Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology. I know strategy games on consoles tend to suck but damn I wish I could have a sexy platinum for all of these

 

I feel like this was certainly winnable on my end, or if not winnable definitely could've put up more of a challenge, but by the time I cleared my slate of most things I was hopelessly behind and starting my new account. I really enjoyed Evil Within and am proud to have the platinum, so for that alone this event was worthwhile, but I do wish I could've at least finished Dragon Age as well.

 

I'll be coming back with a vengeance in the New Year and look forward to beating you in both Platinum Pyramid and Dragon's New Year Challenge, but if you want a proper rematch I'm game after those events

[zajac9999]

7 hours ago, Andrea said:

Scores are updated with about 12 hours to go.

 

Congrats to Zajac on a big win, definitely earned it by staying focused on these games for the better part of 4 months. Wish I could say the same for myself as I had zero focus - being distracted time and again by other competitions that required me to do shorter games, games I wanted to play or bought on sale, FIFA 15 with the SO, and even in the last few weeks PC gaming (gasp!) Been on a major strategy bender revisiting old classics like Empire: Total War, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, and both Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology. I know strategy games on consoles tend to suck but damn I wish I could have a sexy platinum for all of these

 

I feel like this was certainly winnable on my end, or if not winnable definitely could've put up more of a challenge, but by the time I cleared my slate of most things I was hopelessly behind and starting my new account. I really enjoyed Evil Within and am proud to have the platinum, so for that alone this event was worthwhile, but I do wish I could've at least finished Dragon Age as well.

 

I'll be coming back with a vengeance in the New Year and look forward to beating you in both Platinum Pyramid and Dragon's New Year Challenge, but if you want a proper rematch I'm game after those events

 

Thanks, I had fun in this event too.  Just adds to my reputation of doing well in these plat races (assuming I'm not playing The Guided Fate Paradox :P)

 

I'm really not a fan of strategy games haha, not fast paced enough for me usually. I know some people tend to get very addicted to them though.

 

Haha, honestly I feel we both could've done better in the race, it certainly turned out more of a marathon than a sprint, initially I was thinking there's no way it would take me 4 months to get 4 plats but we both ended up playing a lot of stuff in between. I've got to play some games I definitely wouldn't have though so I'm pleased about that and I enjoyed them as well. I'm happy to have the plat in 2 of them. I intend to finish Sonic up some stage fairly soon, I was just enjoying other things recently and there was no need to rush it in the end. 

 

I'm not participating in Dragon's New Year event (though I may check it out now and see what it is) but I'm planning on having a pretty good go in the Plat Pyramid, I'd like to finish at least top 3 in that. So there's your chance for revenge.  I'm happy to do another 1 vs 1 race sometime in the future, so let me know if you fancy it at any stage.