jonesey46's Trophy Travels

[jonesey46]

 Platinum #144 - Control 

 

Story

You are Jesse Faden and after 17 years of searching, you have finally found the Federal Bureau of Control, A mysterious organisation tasked with keeping all matters of the supernatural under 'control'. When you arrive at the FBC's headquarters, the Oldest House, you realise something has gone terribly wrong and it's your job to find out just what the flip is going on and fix it.

 

Gameplay

Control is a third person action adventure game with similar game play to the inFamous series. You acquire a gun early on and this is the only gun in the game, it can change forms which replicates other guns like a shotgun mode or a machine gun mode, among others. Aside from the gun you acquire various powers through out the game such as telekinesis and a shield ability. The combat can leave a little to be desired if I'm honest, near the end of the game when you have all the powers and have leveled up your character a good bit, it seems like you should be an unstoppable force of nature, but you're not. This game can be fairly challenging and enemies can one shot you even when you are as powerful as you can be. I like a bit of challenge don't get me wrong but with this I wanted to just go mental with the combat and destroy everything but I'd quickly get put in my place like a little bitch. There's also little in the way of diversity in the combat too, I would have liked a few more creative powers or weapon forms but they're all a little conventional.

Combat is my only complaint towards this game though. Everything else is top notch. Especially the location. The whole game takes place in one building, the FBC's HQ or 'The Oldest House' as it's called. That sounds like it could get boring but the way they diversify the different departments is amazing, it can get very mind-bending. This makes exploring the world so interesting and this is the first game in a while where I've actually wanted to read every collectible I find, and actively go looking for them just to find out more about the lore.

Control is a very intriguing game and I found myself not being able to put it down once it got going as I just had to know what happened next, if I wasn't playing Death Stranding around the same time I would have totally finished this in a couple of days.

One more thing I'd like to mention is the sense of humour this game has, it's got this quite dark and twisted humour to it which I loved, similar to Fallout, although not as jovial. There's one character, the janitor, who was my absolute favourite.

 

Platinum Thoughts

The platinum in this game is very simple, although I disagree with the 15 hour estimate on the guide here as it took me longer and although I did explore and take my time a little bit I don't know how I could have done it in that time. Nothing is missable, which I love. So I just played the story through and cleaned everything else up after that. The side quests are where this game shines I believe. There are a few boss battle side quests which can be majorly frustrating but super fun and there's also a few puzzles in the game which are really cool, namely the Luck puzzle (you'll have to play it to appreciate it). After all the quests there's a collectible trophy for collecting only half of the collectibles, which is nice. I managed to get the collectible trophy playing naturally as I was so invested in finding all the readables I could to learn more about the lore. The last trophy I needed for platinum was to earn all character upgrades. You get skill points for finishing main and side quests but once you've done all of them there's still a few skills you'll need. You can unlock the last ones by finding hidden areas which award 1 skill point each.

 

Summary

This game would be a 10/10 for me if it weren't for the somewhat lacking and sometimes infuriating combat/enemies. Love the story, love the lore, love the world, love the characters and I love the humour but the combat just let me down a bit. I would however recommend this game to anyone as the world is enough to justify paying full price. I am very much interested in what Remedy does next and I know there are 2 DLC packs coming out for this game soon so I am deeply excited about that. Something about this game hit me with nostalgia for older games, it has a retro feel to it. It's not a game that holds your hand, you do have to figure a lot out by yourself and because I'm so used to modern game mechanics I did struggle at certain parts. The map in particular can be difficult to read as it's 2D with no specific object markers or path finders. There were a few times where I'd just be running around for ages trying to find out how to get into a certain area. A game hasn't made me do that in a while and I kind of missed it. Hopefully other developers take note of what Remedy has done here and applies it to future games as I think we do need to dial the hand holding back a little bit.

 

Best Bit

The world and lore is enamoring and just leaves you wanting all the answers to your thousands of questions.

 

Worst Bit

The combat can be a little infuriating at times with enemies one shotting you and you not being able to do anything about it.

 

Arbitrary Rating

8/10 (genuinely would have been 9.99/10 if not for the rage-quit combat)

 

Next up; A Plague Tale: Innocence, then I'll be going back to Death Stranding to start the post story grind  

 

[jonesey46]

Update! and a bit of a story.

 

I still have not achieved 100% in my favourite game ever made; The Last of Us

 

Rewind back to June 2013 and 20 year old me has just been blown away by arguably the best narrative driven game ever made. I loved it so much in fact that I played the game through 5 times before I got the platinum, and have played it countless times since then. The platinum to me, was very easy and straight forward and although a lot of people don't like the multiplayer, I ended up having a blast with it. I bought the season pass with the game, which is something I never do, purely for the story expansion which ended up being 'Left Behind'. I also checked out the multiplayer map packs when they dropped too, although I didn't spend too much time with them. Once I had the platinum though, I was no longer interested in the trophies for this game, I had moved on to other stuff, and so they sat untouched until 2018.

 

In 2018 after I had started to take this trophy hunting stuff really serious, I decided to try and get these pesky DLC trophies done. I managed to finish off 'Left Behind' whilst doing my annual play through of the game and expansion and got all the multiplayer ones done with a very nice boosting group found here. After just replaying the game through I thought I'd leave Grounded until next year cause I didn't want to do another play through so soon after the last one and it being a single-player trophy I knew it wasn't going anywhere, or so I thought.

 

Fast forward a bit and the server closures have been announced for Uncharted 2, 3 and The Last of Us. "Fine" I thought, I'd already gotten all the MP trophies in The Last of Us so I've got nothing to worry about! So a little more time passes and after finishing another game from my backlog I begin to think I should probably get around to finally finishing off The Last of Us and much to my dismay I find that I can't. I found out that Grounded Mode was a DLC and not a patch, and when the server shutdowns were announced all the DLC was put into a bundle for free, including Grounded Mode, and that bundle was no longer anywhere to be found on the UK/EU Store. I had the fucking season pass! I was entitled to the mode, but I never downloaded it when it was available because I never knew it was a DLC! 

 

So I go over to the US Store using my US PSN account and find the bundle still available, I download it but of course it doesn't work with my UK copy of the game, as I've learnt before with Little Big Planet (and it's pesky Pirates of the Caribbean DLC) that DLC for PS3 is region locked. I try to purchase a copy of the game itself on the US store but it doesn't accept my PayPal or Bank Details. At this point I gave up and just left it.

 

Today I managed to source a US copy of the game on Amazon and it's expected to arrive in the next week or so.

 

With The Last of Us Part II coming out in May which is no time at all considering the wait we've had (already got my days booked off work) I really hope that I can get this US copy of the game to speak to the US Grounded DLC on my PS3 and allow me to play it on my UK account so I can finally have 100% in my favourite game and in time for the sequel. I have no reason to believe it won't as it worked for Little Big Planet but I guess I won't know for sure until I'm playing it.

 

I'm ridiculously excited for Part II but I'm trying to contain myself so as not to set my expectations too high. I don't think anything could ever beat the original as it's a masterpiece but I'm trying to stay open about it as much as possible. Bring on May 29th

 

 

 

[Litha]

@jonesey46 That sounds... pretty bloody tedious. Meanwhile I have the remaster so the only thing that stands in my way is a lack of will (for the moment at least). 

 

I agree on expectations with Part II. Naughty Dog set the bar high with the first game and I don't know if it can live up to that. Regardless, I'm still looking forward to it.

[jonesey46]

 Platinum #145 - A Plague Tale: Innocence 

 

Story

You play as Amicia, a young woman born into royalty and out for a nice country stroll with her father. This game seems pretty nice you might think. WRONG. Within 10 minutes both your dog and your dad are DEAD. The inquisition have invaded your home looking for your little brother, Hugo, who has a mysterious illness. In order to protect Hugo from capture, you must leave everything behind and run. What follows is an 8 hour, heart wrenching story across plague infested France in the 13th century. You must do whatever it takes to survive, evade capture by the inquisition and deal with hordes of plague infested rats.

 

Gameplay

A Plague Tale is quite basic, it is a story focused game so the gameplay definitely comes second, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun. Most gameplay revolves around stealth and environmental puzzles, but it's all just a means to further the story. Each section has you evading detection by guards and solving basic puzzles using rats or various alchemical potions. The main problem you'll face is the hordes of rats, and when I say hordes, I mean HORDES. It's impressive how many rats can be on screen at any given time and frankly, quite unsettling. The rats hate light so you need to navigate through the hordes using anything that'll catch fire and this makes for some really interesting puzzles. There is a basic crafting system which sees you making various potions to either deal with the rats or the humans. The game sort of tells you to use these things in different ways to get through your enemies but to be honest, each chapter or so you learn a new crafting recipe and you pretty much only use that recipe in that chapter, and save for a few encounters you barely ever use them after that. There is also an upgrade system which allows you to upgrade your carrying capacity of various items like ingredients or ammo and your main weapon. Your main weapon in this game is the sling, which is like a little rope that Amicia swings around and uses to pelt rocks at enemies faces, much to their dismay. I'll be honest and say that the sling is a very satisfying weapon to use and it's all down to the sound effects, there's something about hearing a rock audibly flying through the air and landing with a mighty thud on some lowlifes skull. Near the end of the game you gain an absolutely amazing ability to take down enemies but I won't go into that here as it's very spoiler-y.

 

Platinum Thoughts

A very easy platinum indeed. Half the trophies are awarded for completing all chapters and the game and the other half are collectible and mission specific based with a couple left over for upgrades. All collectibles can be picked up via chapter select and once you pick up whatever you need from a chapter you can quit to the menu as it's saved on the spot. And likewise for the chapter specific ones, such as save a trapped soldier or play hide and seek with Hugo. This means you can just enjoy the story with no stress and clean everything up after you're finished. The only thing that might cause a bit of a headache is the upgrade system. There are two sections to your upgrades, your sling and your equipment, and you get a trophy for fully upgrading both (there are actually 3 but the third doesn't count for a trophy). It's been said on many guides that you cannot upgrade both in a single play through unless you find pretty much all the materials in the game, so the guide says to focus on one at a time. Also, it's worth noting that the game remembers exactly what you had at the start of each chapter so when you use chapter select at the end, you'll have what you had back when you started that chapter. This means you cannot checkpoint farm materials and have to be somewhat smart with them. The way I did it was I upgraded both the equipment and the sling evenly until about chapter 9 and then focused on one from then on, once I finished the game I reloaded chapter 9 and played through until I had enough materials to upgrade the other, which only took about 2 and a bit chapters, so about an hour. I feel this method is better than focusing on one at a time for the whole game as the trophy guide suggests.

 

Summary

A beautiful game with a really great story and some pretty cool game mechanics, most notably the rats. This is also the first game I've bought because of a demo in a very long time as the first chapter really grabbed me (I miss the days of regular demos for big releases). So if you fancy it yourself, I'd recommend the demo which is available to download on the PlayStation Store.

 

Best Bit

The ridiculous amount of rats on screen and the interesting puzzles that they create

 

Worst Bit

The AVS is a little off (the lip syncing) which can ruin your immersion a bit but it's a very minor complaint and I understand it's a AA game so doesn't have the mega budget other games do.

 

Arbitrary Rating

7/10

 

Now that's done I'm going back to Death Stranding.

[jonesey46]

...This is gonna take a while**

 

 Platinum #146 – Death Stranding 

 

Story

The world has been destroyed by a mysterious event known as the Death Stranding. Most of humanity were wiped out during the event and those who survived now live underground in shelters and settlements. In the aftermath of the Death Stranding, Porters have now become the heroes of the world. Braving the inhospitable world to deliver much needed supplies to those in need.

You are Sam Bridges, son of the president of the United States and a damn good porter. The world is divided, and the president wants Sam to travel across America and bring people together to make America whole again.

 

Hideo Kojima is known for his crazy and grandiose stories that make little sense. Stories that hit you over the head multiple times with its themes and major reveals. I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, but I can’t even count the times that I’ve had to stop playing the games to look something up for clarification. Or the number of hours I’ve spent on Wiki’s after completing one of the games just to get some understanding on what was going on. But I’m happy to say that this game is different. Yes, it’s silly in places and has some parts that’ll make you go ‘huh?’ but for the most part Death Stranding is a comprehensive story that says what it needs to say and doesn’t leave anything hanging. It’s a self-contained story and although I do love the world, I’d hate to see a sequel as I feel it would tarnish the story told here.

 

The acting is incredible and the whole cast does a great job. Particularly Norman Reedus, who plays the protagonist Sam Bridges. I really connected with Sam through out the game as he sort of acts out of the loop most of the time, which is exactly how I felt until the end. Characters are constantly explaining things to him and it always seems to not phase him at all, he always looks as if he’s saying, “I’m here to do a job and that’s it”. Also, hats off to Lea Seydoux and Mads Mikkelsen who play Fragile and Cliff respectively. Absolutely amazing performances.

Okay, there’s some cheesy as hell and really on the nose dialogue sometimes but that’s down to the writing and not the actors, and I’m willing to let that pass for the most part as English isn’t Hideo’s first language.

 

The end of this game had me in pieces and I was left thinking it over for a solid week after finishing it, something only The Last of Us had managed to do before it. I get that this game isn’t for everyone and honestly if you’re not invested by the first hour, you’re probably not going to enjoy the rest of the ride, but this game had me gripped from the start. It is such a unique experience and I don’t think there will be anything quite like it again.

 

Gameplay

So, as you may have gathered, this game is about delivering packages, and if you wanted to get basic with it, that is exactly how you could describe it. But it is so much more than that.

Yes, the core gameplay is taking something from point A to B, but it’s what’s between A and B that makes the game. The landscape is beautiful and harsh and traversing it is an absolute joy. Going in a straight line to your destination isn’t going to end well for you. You must plan your route and find the best way to get to where you need to go, traversing all the obstacles along the way and there’s always another obstacle in sight of your last one. Whether it be the landscape that’s getting in your way, the living/dead inter-dimensional ghost enemies known as BT’s or bandits just looking for a good time. There’s always something around the corner waiting to make your life a misery.

 

There are 3 maps in the game. A small starting area, an even smaller ending area and the massive central region, which is where you will spend most of your time. The central region ranges from a volcanic desert to a frozen mountainous area, so yeah, it’s big.

 

To help you get around there is a large amount of equipment at your disposal such as vehicles like trucks and bikes to robotic enhancers like exo-skeletons and a floating carrier which doubles as a hover board.

 

There’s a lot more to it and I feel describing it on paper really does not do it justice, it’s really something that must be experienced to understand. It’s the little moment to moment gameplay elements that make this game what it is, and the core gameplay loop can get quite addictive. The game has a 'like' system and Hideo has obviously tried to emulate the little endorphin rush you get from getting likes on social media and translated that into the game. At first I thought it was dumb but by the end I came around and I must say, he kind of nailed it.

 

Last thing I want to mention on the gameplay side, is the social function. During your time with the game you can build structures, things like ladders, climbing anchors, bridges, power generators etc. When you play the game online anything you build can also appear in other peoples game and likewise anything that has been built by other players can appear in your game too. This is one of my favourite parts about this game and its because you get this sense of community without ever seeing another player. Structures built by other people can really save your bacon when you’re in the thick of it, or they could just save you a little time. And whenever you place something down, you get the feeling that maybe you’re helping someone out too. You can also leave likes on other peoples structures just to show them how much they helped you out.

 

Platinum thoughts

My total time clocked once I got the platinum was 102 hours, and I loved every minute of it. Could I have done it quicker? Probably. But I was having such a good time with it that I wasn’t interested in min/maxing or cutting corners. Yeah, it’s a grind but the trophies are incredibly straight forward, and nothing is missable. You can choose to do all the extra stuff as you’re going, or you can do it all after the story as you get an endless free roam after finishing it.

 

Most of the trophies you should get naturally as there are a few that are tied to finishing chapters in the story and a few more for doing certain actions for the first time, most of which you’re required to do as part of the story anyway.

 

After all the miscellaneous stuff that’s when the grind sets in. The bulk of your platinum time is spent on just a few trophies. These are; connecting all facilities, leveling all facilities up to 5 stars, reaching level 60 in all delivery areas and getting top delivery rank on Hard mode 20 times in each delivery category. That sounds tedious but it isn’t, they all pretty much come together as you’re working on the 5-star trophy.

 

Finally, you have one collectible trophy and a couple regarding upgrading structures which are super easy. And that’s it!

 

Once I’d finished the story, I spent a few days setting up a zip line network to connect all facilities together and finished building the road network. This took some time to do but my god it made everything after that an absolute breeze. Deliveries became super quick as you can zip around the map at lightning speed and any orders too heavy to carry just get popped into a truck and driven on the road network which makes things laughably easy too.

 

Summary

It’s a big time sink and it’s hard to recommend as you can never really know if a person will take to it or not, but I loved every minute of it and it’s easily become one of my favourite games of all time. I can’t wait to see all the retrospective stuff that comes out in ten years about this game as I genuinely think it’ll be heralded as a master piece.

 

I’ve purposely left a lot of stuff out of this ‘review’ (if you could call it that) because I don’t want to spoil too much for anyone who hasn’t played it as I believe it’s the little stuff in this game that really makes it (the fucking soundtrack for one, am I right?).

 

This truly is a one of a kind experience and I doubt I’ll ever play something like it again.

 

* It’s become clear as I’m reading this back that I’ve been nothing but positive in this whole post so here’s a little negative for you; as much as I love the game and the story, it’s obvious (and I mean blatantly) that this is one big vanity project for Hideo Kojima. This is a game that he wanted to make and he did it how he wanted to do it, which is fantastic and it really works for most of the game but sometimes it gets a little overwhelmingly obvious that he’s just got his mates round, stuck his favourite band all over it and filled it with product placements that work for his interests only. Again, for the most part I think it works but sometimes I couldn’t help but cringe.

 

Best Bit

I like to be more specific at this part but for this game I have to say it’s the engaging gameplay and story. The whole package (excuse the pun) comes together so nicely that it’s impossible to pick one specific thing about it.

 

Worst Bit

It's minor, but my only negative as described above was the blatant vanity throughout this game, which can sometimes be a bit eye-rolly.

 

Arbitrary rating

9.5/10 - I loved it, if you didn't get that.

 

 

**Phew that took a while, if you read this then thanks very much, I better get back to work.

 

Now that’s done, the fiancée and I are about to Journey to the Savage Planet.

Edited January 28, 2020 by jonesey46

[VigilantCrow]

Nice one! The vanity was definitely a red flag for me.

Glad you enjoyed it.

[jonesey46]

? 100% Achieved - Rocket League ?

 

DLC

Utopia Coliseum - Supersonic Fury - Revenge of the Battle Cars

Chaos Run - Neo Tokyo - Aquadome

Dropshot - Champions Field - Clubs Update

 

DLC Thoughts

Rocket League is a fantastically made game. Football with cars, what's not to like? I mean, I don't even like football (or soccer if you can't deal with the fact of what football actually is) and I'm not really that into cars either. But my god this game is good ol' fun. Although, I must clarify; it's fun when you play it casually and with friends. Trophy wise, this game is te-di-ous. I remember the platinum being fairly simple when I got it back in 2018 although I specifically recall going out for the day whilst I left my controller set up with about 4 elastic bands wrapped around it so my car could drive around in circles for a couple of hours. Doing stuff like that, while sometimes necessary for trophies, always seems so silly (like the guys who set up an electric mixer to strum their plastic guitar a million times for that one trophy in Guitar Hero Live)

 

As for the DLC though, a lot of the trophies can be done in seconds, there's trophies for winning a game with a certain hat on or something and these can be done offline on your own and you can set a game to end after one goal, finishing the game in seconds.

 

Then there's some boring ones, like finishing tournaments with a certain vehicle and certain parts. Tournaments are against bots and each match lasts 5 minutes, and it takes about 12 matches to finish the tournament. There's no real challenge to this if you set the bots to Rookie so you just need to occupy yourself while the timer goes down and just be careful not to let the bots get ahead.

 

After that there's some multiplayer only trophies, most notably the clubs update. I managed to get a boosting group together a couple of times to get those trophies done and we all struggled to get one last trophy which was simply just to score a goal in a club match online. Cause this trophy is online only and couldn't be done in a private game, we spent ages in matchmaking to try and get into a game against each other so we could easily all get a goal but as long as we tried we never could match up. So, we just ended up doing it legit, and it took 10 minutes, I felt like a bit of an idiot after.

 

Lastly, the item trophies. Rocket League has an item system where after a couple of online matches you'll get a random item for your car and these items can be of varying rarities. I won't go into it here but there's some pretty ridiculous requirements for some of the item trophies and you can guess why right? MICROTRANSACTIONS BABY. Thankfully, you can trade items with other players and so two very nice people helped me get those trophies with little to no effort, hats off to them, they the real MVP's.

 

The last trophy I needed to get 100% was to make 535 shots on goal, I checked my stats before starting the grind and it was sitting at 406, cool, only 129 to go, shouldn't take long. Much to my surprise, it popped after about 15 goals, so it was glitched in a good way.

 

Overall, I'm pretty happy I played this game, some of the trophies were tedious and it took a while to finally 100% it but there was definitely some fun times had.  A nice easy game to pick up and play but a difficult game to master.

 

-

 

As for what's next, the fiancee and I have started Journey to the Savage Planet which is a blast so far, I'm playing through The Last of Us on PS3 after the whole grounded debacle I had which I posted about the other week, and looking to the PS4 backlog, I think I might start Lords of the Fallen next. If anyone has any tips about that game I'd really appreciate it as I've never played any Souls or Souls-like games (I know, I know). 

 

See you next time!

Edited January 30, 2020 by jonesey46

[jonesey46]

 Platinum #147 - Journey to the Savage Planet 

 

Story

The Earth's fucked, and in an attempt to find a new home for humanity, Kindred Aerospace, the 4th best space exploration company in the galaxy has sent you to another planet. Welcome to ARY-26! Your job is to explore the planet and log everything you find to decipher its suitability for human life. When you arrive though, you see a large looming tower in the distance which wasn't picked up by the preliminary scans and upon closer inspection a huge energy spike seems to be coming from within. Your primary objective immediately changes to getting into the tower and harvesting its power source by any means necessary.

 

Gameplay

Journey to the Savage Planet is like a cross between Subnautica and Ratchet & Clank. It's an exploration game set on an alien planet with a a bunch of stupid creatures to kill in amusing ways with an array of ludicrous gadgets. Its vibrant and its silly, and it has no shame in being so. That was the part that drew me to this game, it's been a while since I played a short silly adventure game that can make you laugh along the way. It's full to the brim with juvenile visual jokes, mostly involving poop, and snarky comments from your AI assistant, which reminded me of Portal with GLaDOS a little bit.

 

It's a very short game with the main story clocking in around 8 hours if you do a lot of exploring, even quicker if you just run to the next objective. And the platinum taking anywhere between 10-15 hours. 

 

Your time in this game is mainly spent exploring the world, gathering resources for your next upgrade, progressing through the different areas of the planet and booting creatures in the face. You get one gun that can be upgraded to have more damage, faster reload times etc. There's a few bosses littered throughout the world which you encounter at different points of the story, these vary from the classic kind of bosses that would fit right into an R&C game and mini-bosses that are usually guarding treasure. Speaking of treasure, this game has plenty of collectibles! Ranging from edible goo's that upgrade your health and stamina, to alien artifacts that reveal various bits of lore from the world. You can get an upgrade which reveals all collectibles on your radar, this makes clean up for the platinum very easy. One thing to note though, there isn't a map in this game, not even a mini one, probably to encourage exploration as opposed to just relying on the map to get you around. This is not an issue however, as the world is very easy to navigate and you learn the layout pretty fast.

 

Endgame wise, once the story is complete you get spit back out into the open world and are free to explore til' your hearts content! Allowing you to clean up all collectibles and side missions. Once you've had enough and you have the necessary fuel to leave the planet, you can trek back to your ship and go home for the true ending. Of course you can leave the planet at any time during your play through, providing you have enough fuel that is, but your employer may not be too happy about that...

One last thing to mention, as well as being a single player game, Journey to the Savage Planet also supports online co-op, meaning you can explore ARY-26 with a friend!

 

Platinum Thoughts

I played the entirety of this game in co-op with my girlfriend and we had a blast. The platinum is super easy as nothing is missable and everything can be done after completing the main story. A lot of the trophies require you to kill creatures in a variety of ways, such as shocking 5 at a time or baiting them to kill each other. Outside of that you'll be getting all the collectibles and then you're pretty much done! The collectibles are a blast to get as the world is really fun to explore and you get upgrades to tell you where all the collectibles are, meaning you can just run around grabbing them without the need of a guide.

 

The two trophies that might worry you are slapping every creature and completing the game in less than 4 hours. I can tell you, there's no need to worry. All creatures can be slapped post story, including bosses as their bodies stay in the world after being killed. As for the speedrun trophy, if you don't end up getting it on your first play through anyway you can start up a new playthrough and get it in less than an hour (see the video here: LINK, credit to @Optinooby)

 

There's a few co-op trophies too and if you're playing solo, these can all be earned very quickly with a boosting partner. We're talking 5-20 minutes here.

 

One thing I will say is that there's a few trophies that cannot be earned as player 2 in co-op, this seems to be a glitch and not a feature. As my experience (or rather my girlfriends) goes, these are "Cannibals", "Flippin' the bird" and "Shocking". The last one requiring you to get quite far in the game to unlock. So, watch out for those if you're planning on playing co-op.

 

Summary

All in all, I loved this game. A super fun adventure game that doesn't take itself too seriously and relishes in toilet humour. Definitely give the game a go if you're a fan of exploration games as the world is a blast to run around in. It's super fun with a friend too.

 

Best Bit

The colourful world and the refreshing humour that's not seen in many games these days.

 

Worst Bit

There's one challenge as part of the Science Experiments side-quest that drove me up the wall (killing two enemies with a dying jellywaft) and of course the glitched trophies in co-op.

 

Arbitrary Rating

8/10

 

Next up, I'm still plodding along in Lords of the Fallen which I'm actually kind of enjoying and on the PS3, I've just completed Grounded on The Last of Us. I don't think I can manage Grounded again so soon so I'm going to play some Crysis 3 in the meantime before going back to do Grounded +. See you next time!  

 

 

 

 

[AJ_Radio]

Lords of the Fallen is usually dirt cheap. So is Alien Isolation, both games I usually find on PS Store at a discount. 

 

Supposing I get Lords of the Fallen, what should I expect out of it? I hear it’s a poor man’s Dark Souls, the mechanics aren’t as fine tuned.

[jonesey46]

6 hours ago, Spaz said:

Lords of the Fallen is usually dirt cheap. So is Alien Isolation, both games I usually find on PS Store at a discount. 

 

Supposing I get Lords of the Fallen, what should I expect out of it? I hear it’s a poor man’s Dark Souls, the mechanics aren’t as fine tuned.

I've never played a soulsborne game so Lord of the Fallen is actually my first experience with the genre. I'm enjoying it quite a bit actually, I enjoy exploring the world but I'll admit it can get frustrating having to re-do areas with respawned enemies because you died or left the area and came back, but I suppose that's to be expected in the Souls games. The voice acting is dreadful and the story is nonsensical but the gameplay is pretty fun. I've heard it's a lot easier than Dark Souls so keep that in mind. I'm not even half way through my first playthrough yet and the platinum requires 3! I suppose the other 2 will be easier as I can just rush them without having to worry about collectibles or leveling up or whatever, but still, 3 seems a bit much.

 

I can definitely recommend Alien Isolation, one of my favourite games of this generation and my personal GOTY of 2014. The first Alien is my favourite film of all time, and this game captures everything that made the film what it is. I honestly couldn't recommend it enough if you're a fan of the film. One thing I will say though is that it's lengthy, some people say it overstays its welcome but personally, I was happy with it from start to finish.

[Copanele]

26 minutes ago, jonesey46 said:

I've never played a soulsborne game so Lord of the Fallen is actually my first experience with the genre. I'm enjoying it quite a bit actually, I enjoy exploring the world but I'll admit it can get frustrating having to re-do areas with respawned enemies because you died or left the area and came back, but I suppose that's to be expected in the Souls games. The voice acting is dreadful and the story is nonsensical but the gameplay is pretty fun. I've heard it's a lot easier than Dark Souls so keep that in mind. I'm not even half way through my first playthrough yet and the platinum requires 3! I suppose the other 2 will be easier as I can just rush them without having to worry about collectibles or leveling up or whatever, but still, 3 seems a bit much.

I believe that's the only prerequisite you need in order to enjoy Lords of the Fallen - not playing any Soulsborne before it. I tried playing the game and my god it was so bland and infuriating. Not sure how am I going to approach this game personally, it's just so disappointing  Also from what most people said, it's best to start 3 separate new game playthroughs since NG+ can be incredibly cheap.

What class did you start as?

[jonesey46]

14 minutes ago, Copanele said:

I believe that's the only prerequisite you need in order to enjoy Lords of the Fallen - not playing any Soulsborne before it. I tried playing the game and my god it was so bland and infuriating. Not sure how am I going to approach this game personally, it's just so disappointing  Also from what most people said, it's best to start 3 separate new game playthroughs since NG+ can be incredibly cheap.

What class did you start as?

I believe you're right haha, I've got nothing to compare this game to, so for me, it's the best Soulslike game I've played!

 

I've done a bit of reading on it and I think I'm going to do NG+ for my second playthrough and then just a seperate new game for the third as NG++ is apparently more hassle than its worth. I hadn't read anything about NG+ being an issue, so you've worried me a bit there.

 

I started as a Cleric so I'm just spamming the Prayer decoy spell ?

[AJ_Radio]

You definitely need to play Bloodborne. My favorite exclusive for the PS4 and one of the best of this generation.

 

However, finish up Lords of the Fallen before you do that. Doing it the other way around, can lead to very disappointing results.

[jonesey46]

? 100% Achieved - Metro Exodus ?

 

DLC

Sam's Story

 

DLC Thoughts

Sam wants to go home.

 

Sam is the American character that was apart of Artyom's Crew through out the main story of Metro Exodus. I was quite glad when they announced Sam would be getting his own chapter as DLC as I always found him interesting and wondered what his story was.

 

Anyway, after the events of Metro Exodus, Sam feels like he has served his purpose with the crew of the Aurora and attempts to get back home to the USA. Now he knows life can survive above ground, he believes that his father will be back home, waiting for his return. He travels to Vladivostok to see if he can find a boat to get him across the North Pacific Ocean. When he arrives he meets a man named The Captain who shows Sam that there is an operational submarine in Vladivostok that could take him home, however it is occupied by another American, named Tom. Sam goes to meet Tom and strikes a deal with him to get his ticket home but of course, it's Metro, so there's a moral choice to make that decides Sams fate. Thankfully though, the choice is laid out to you at the end of the game and you can choose one way or the other. Instead of the usual Metro system where there's an ambiguous morality system at play where not giving someone a biscuit is a heinous act but killing their dog is totally fine (those are made up examples but you know what I'm saying). I really liked the story in this chapter and I liked Sam as a character, although the voice acting is a bit naff, but it's Metro so it's to be expected.

 

The chapter plays just like the main game and the map is set out as a semi-open world just like in the main game. Although it's a lot more similar to the Volga level than the Caspian or Taiga level. To be honest I thought this level was better than any of the levels in the main game. It was open but still felt claustrophobic. Once you set off to explore, there are a few story moments that progress you further into the map, from which you cannot return, so if you miss any collectibles (which I did) you're shit out of luck and you're in for another play through. Exploring the map is where the fun is though. You can rush to your next objective if you like and be done with the story in an hour or two but for me, exploring everything around before moving on was what made this DLC so enjoyable for me. Vladivostok is beautiful and it reminded me a lot of the outside bits from Metro Last Light, which is my favourite of the series, so exploring every nook and cranny of the map was a delight, and I still managed to miss some stuff! Aside from the new map, there's some new weapons to play around with too. The Sammy rifle and the Stallion pistol. The rifle takes the position of your special weapon in this chapter so is always on you and can be fully customised to act like an SMG, an AR or a Sniper to suit your needs. The Stallion pistol though, holy shit what a gun. Everything about the Stallion is amazing, the sound design, the animations, everything is just so smooth and it feels like it really packs a punch when you shoot it too. The pistol can be customised as well with silencers and the like but I preferred to keep it au naturel.

 

Trophy wise, it's pretty straight forward. With a guide you could do the whole thing in one run but because I played it the day it came out, I just had to go in blind, so I ended up doing two runs all the way through to the end. Aside from the lengthy, unskippable cut scenes at the start and near the end, you can rush through the chapter super quickly to clean up anything you've missed. 

 

It can be a little janky in places but nothing game-breaking. Although there's a bug involving the stairs where Sam struggles to get up them and it feels like he's swimming up a stream against the current, which really started to piss me off after a while. 

 

Overall I would recommend this DLC to anyone who enjoyed the main game as it is more of the same with a couple of new weapons to play with and an awesome new map to explore. I'm pretty sure this is the last we'll see from this game, trophy wise anyway so bring on Metro 2036!

 

--------------------------------------------

 

Moving on, Lords of the Fallen has been left by the wayside for a bit because I was playing this DLC and then dived straight into the Watch Dogs 2 DLC, which I got on sale recently, as I heard it was fairly quick to clean up but one trophy in particular has pissed me off and highlighted why I don't overly like the game or Ubisoft for that matter. Still, it shouldn't take long and then I'll get back to Lords. Over on the PS3, I managed to make a huge amount of progress on Crysis 3, finishing up the multi-player DLC and cleaning up most of the single-player trophies. Now all that's left to do is beating the game on Super Human difficulty which shouldn't be too much of a bother. After that I'll be starting up Far Cry Classic to add to the collection of Far Cry Plats and after that I'll be going for round 2 on Grounded mode in The Last of Us to finally put that game to bed.

 

 

 

 

[jonesey46]

💯 100% Achieved - Watch Dogs 2 💯

 

DLC

  

Human Conditions - No Compromise - Showd0wn

 

Straight off the bat I want to say that the season pass for this game is horrendously overpriced, I got it deeply discounted for £7.49 but at full price it's meant to be £29.99! From a trophy hunters perspective that is insane as there's only two DLC packs included that have trophies, the second of which can be completed in under an hour! There's other things covered by the season pass I think but most of it is cosmetic stuff which no one gives a fuck about in a game like this. Before writing about the game and the DLC I just want to go on record and say that Ubisoft can get to fuck. I'm still a fan of the Far Cry series despite 5 being a bit of a disappointment so I will still keep up with that series but as for anything else, I'm done with Ubisoft. Their games are all the same, often full of glitches with soulless and fun-sucking grinding and ridiculously overpriced DLC. DONE.

 

DLC Thoughts

Return to the streets of San Francisco with Marcus and the rest of Dedsec to take down some shoddy business practices and get tangled up with the Russian mafia. Also there's a new multiplayer mode that was added for free which no one asked for.

 

Starting with the first DLC 'Human Conditions' which adds 3 new story operations and 1 new co-op operation. The 3 story operations were actually really good and I ended up enjoying them quite a bit. Each of them are separate from one and other and all contain around 3-4 different sub-missions. All 3 revolve around different companies using shady business practices and Dedsec take it upon themselves to expose the truth to the public. There's one invloving a self driving car that uses biometric data to determine whose life should be prioritised in the event of a crash. Another involving a pharmaceutical company testing nano-machine technology on the homeless and the other involving a hospital being held to ransom. I love this kind of Orwellian stuff and I found the concepts really interesting. All the characters from the main game return, including the really cringey ones (oh wait, that's all of them) but I do actually like the characters, they're goofy but they're likable, especially Marcus and Josh. Also, Jordi Chin, a character from the first game, turns up during one of the operations and is as entertaining as ever. Each operation took me around 45 minutes to an hour to complete and none of them were challenging in any way.

 

Now before I move on to the co-op operation of the Human Conditions DLC I want to say that I hadn't played this game for around 3 years since getting the platinum. When returning to this game I quickly boosted the one MP trophy from Showd0wn and then dove straight into the story operations. Because of that, the game had me fooled as I was actually having fun, but once I got to the co-op operation, memories of my love/hate relationship with this game all came flooding back.

 

The thing is, I don't hate this game but there was always something about it that annoyed me and it's the combat. Not that the combat is designed badly but that there is any combat at all. Marcus and his mates are a bunch of twenty something dweebs who think themselves as vigilante hackers, so why in the fuck can I 3D print a heavy machine gun and go on a killing spree murdering innocent bystanders and police officers? It just makes no fucking sense what so ever. Watch Dogs 1 made sense as Aiden and his pals were a bunch of morally questionable assholes parading as gangsters, but with Marcus it just doesn't work. And it's just another case of Ubisoft not wanting to take a risk, if they took shooting out of the game, they probably think people wouldn't buy it. That's where this game gets ironic, the whole plot of this game is about taking down the man and giving power back to the people, but it was made and designed by a multi-million dollar company whose only interest, is their bottom line. That's what I mean when I say there's something off about this game.

 

Okay this is getting long so I'm gonna try and wrap this up quick. The co-op operation in Human Conditions is a piece of shit. Essentially you need to play several radiant missions, all the fucking same, with a ridiculous amount of enemies and the only way to complete the missions is murder everyone in sight. For my above stated reasons, I always avoided combat where ever I could in this game but these fucking missions made that impossible, and I hated them for it. So yeah, play 10-15 of these missions and eventually you'll unlock the last mission which gets you this trophy, oh and the last mission is just another one of the radiant missions you just completed 15 of.

 

No Compromise is a pathetic excuse at paid DLC as it's one operation with a few missions resembling the radiant missions I just talked about, except you get cut scenes this time. Power through them in less than an hour, get your trophy and get the fuck out.

 

Lastly, Showd0wn is a free multi-player mode that was added for everyone. two teams of two face off each other to hack something or destroy something, honestly it's pretty boring. It has one trophy and it's for winning four rounds of showdown in a row. Easily boosted, which is what I did with 3 other guys from a session I hosted on here.

 

Right, let's never speak of this game again, and if you're wondering, no, I will not be buying Watch Dogs Legion.

Edited November 8, 2023 by jonesey46

[AJ_Radio]

On 2/19/2020 at 2:48 AM, jonesey46 said:

Before writing about the game and the DLC I just want to go on record and say that Ubisoft can get to fuck. I'm still a fan of the Far Cry series despite 5 being a bit of a disappointment so I will still keep up with that series but as for anything else, I'm done with Ubisoft. Their games are all the same, often full of glitches with soulless and fun-sucking grinding and ridiculously overpriced DLC. DONE.

 

Damn. That’s definitely expressing something. 

 

Sometimes I get excited about potentially playing an Assassins Creed game that’s been remastered, because I do appreciate the history aspect and the correlation between past and present that the series is known for. 

 

But when I hear of stuff like Assassins Creed Liberation Remastered, a game that was previously released TWICE, having horrible glitches and bugs, something is obviously up at Ubisoft. 

 

You basically described their games in a nutshell. While I don’t like Sony’s direction in open world exclusives that they’ve gone these past few years, their games are a LOT MORE FRESH and FUN than most of Ubisoft’s stuff.

 

I badly want to play Assassins Creed Origins through, but Jesus Christ I found it so goddamn boring. The open world is too big. The time period and the Egyptian civilization were some of the most fascinating pieces of history. But Ubisoft makes it boring and just a checklist of things you have to do before that platinum trophy pops up. 

 

I have Watch Dogs 1 & 2 with all DLC, and your review definitely makes it sound like 2 wasn’t all that great to play.

[jonesey46]

5 hours ago, Spaz said:

 

Damn. That’s definitely expressing something. 

 

Sometimes I get excited about potentially playing an Assassins Creed game that’s been remastered, because I do appreciate the history aspect and the correlation between past and present that the series is known for. 

 

But when I hear of stuff like Assassins Creed Liberation Remastered, a game that was previously released TWICE, having horrible glitches and bugs, something is obviously up at Ubisoft. 

 

You basically described their games in a nutshell. While I don’t like Sony’s direction in open world exclusives that they’ve gone these past few years, their games are a LOT MORE FRESH and FUN than most of Ubisoft’s stuff.

 

I badly want to play Assassins Creed Origins through, but Jesus Christ I found it so goddamn boring. The open world is too big. The time period and the Egyptian civilization were some of the most fascinating pieces of history. But Ubisoft makes it boring and just a checklist of things you have to do before that platinum trophy pops up. 

 

I have Watch Dogs 1 & 2 with all DLC, and your review definitely makes it sound like 2 wasn’t all that great to play.

 

My last Assassins Creed game was 3 and I noticed the writing on the wall then. After Black Flag came out everyone was singing it's praises and saying that I should play it, but I'd already made up my mind, I was done with that shit. The historical aspect is cool I'll admit and there's so much material to work with that they could be making the games forever, but they're just straight up boring. 

 

I've seen you post before that 2 is the best one and I agree, 2 was phenomenal, and I even really enjoyed Brotherhood and Revelations but 3 really soured the whole thing for me.

 

The Watch Dogs 2 trophy I'm ranting about in my post wasn't even that time consuming but it was one of those trophies where you stop half way through and think "what the fuck am I actually doing here?" Similar to the way I got with Wolfenstein Youngblood last year. It's all just busy work.

 

The Watch Dogs games aren't terrible and there is fun to be had with them but ultimately they're just not worth your time.

 

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, jonesey46 said:

My last Assassins Creed game was 3 and I noticed the writing on the wall then. After Black Flag came out everyone was singing it's praises and saying that I should play it, but I'd already made up my mind, I was done with that shit. The historical aspect is cool I'll admit and there's so much material to work with that they could be making the games forever, but they're just straight up boring.

 

This was the time when Ubisoft really started getting greedy with the franchise.

 

The present day portion of Assassins Creed is pretty much irrelevant and pointless at this point. I'm probably in the minority here but I really felt the Desmond Miles/Warren Vidic relationship was fascinating. It was a big part of what made the original Assassins Creed interesting. Assassins Creed 2 expanded on that further by revealing more of who Lucy Stillman was and her comrades Shaun and Rebecca.

 

By the time we got to Assassins Creed 3 and later Black Flag Ubisoft pretty much tossed out the present day. Desmond Miles gets killed on a whimper, then you spend both Black Flag and Rogue playing as a mute faceless undercover assassin working at Abstergo. In Unity you get some mysterious female named Bishop who helps you anyway. In Syndicate you basically see a bunch of cutscenes with Shaun and Rebecca, neither of whom serve any point to further the story in Assassins Creed. Finally in Origins you play as some female, who doesn't have a point to her being there either. It's just a fucking mess.

 

Origins and Odyssey probably aren't bad games at all sure. They're probably fairly good. But placing that Assassins Creed label on them is just a slap in the face. They should of been original IPs. The series has strayed so far from what it used to be a decade ago. It's not really Assassins Creed anymore.

 

It's just a series that was eventually made to make as much profit as possible, made by those who probably don't care much for the lore and story.

 

1 hour ago, jonesey46 said:

The Watch Dogs 2 trophy I'm ranting about in my post wasn't even that time consuming but it was one of those trophies where you stop half way through and think "what the fuck am I actually doing here?" Similar to the way I got with Wolfenstein Youngblood last year. It's all just busy work.

 

The Watch Dogs games aren't terrible and there is fun to be had with them but ultimately they're just not worth your time.

 

 

Well at least Watch Dogs isn't the cash cow that other Ubisoft franchises are. I'd probably rate them the same as the Just Cause games and Mad Max, which I recently finished. Fairly alright, but nothing spectacular.

 

I'll just see when I'll get around to playing them.

 

Wolfenstein Youngblood is a slap in the face though. I absolutely love The New Order and The Old Blood, would probably play those again on an alt if I had time. Wolfenstein II is difficult as fuck due to Mein Leben, but I definitely think it's a much better game than Youngblood. The female protagonists I feel are a glaring example of feminist nazis, and I hate my share of feminists.

[Grotz99]

5 hours ago, Spaz said:

It's just a series that was eventually made to make as much profit as possible, made by those who probably don't care much for the lore and story.

 

This right here explains it. I think after the AC 2 trilogy, they fired the team making the story and just hired a bunch of environmental artists. The history is still kind of there and the maps are pretty accurate, but its missing that intrigue of what the hell was Desmond looking for and why were the Templars after it as well. The modern day story is what hooked people because it was a mystery, then they pretty much just ended that, spent less time making the games to pump them out each year and people like me held on for some kind hopeful revival.

 

I played through Origins a couple years ago and it was just too much wandering around collecting stuff. I did like that they added big mythical boss fights and hard challenges, but it was really tedious otherwise. I had Syndicate on my shelf for about 3 years so I just started that to get it out of the way. They really are trying to force some kind of present day story into it, but it really makes no sense. Although, I do like the little side stories involving people from that time like Marx and Darwin. We'll see how long it'll be until i play Odyssey, which has been sitting there for a year, usually pick these up when they are $20 for physical.

 

As for the Watchdog series, I played that way back when PS4 first came out and don't remember too much. The MP was pretty silly from what I remember, guessing it's similar in 2? At least they stopped with the crazy MP trophies in their games recently.

[AJ_Radio]

On 2/21/2020 at 7:25 AM, Grotz99 said:

This right here explains it. I think after the AC 2 trilogy, they fired the team making the story and just hired a bunch of environmental artists. The history is still kind of there and the maps are pretty accurate, but its missing that intrigue of what the hell was Desmond looking for and why were the Templars after it as well. The modern day story is what hooked people because it was a mystery, then they pretty much just ended that, spent less time making the games to pump them out each year and people like me held on for some kind hopeful revival.

 

I played through Origins a couple years ago and it was just too much wandering around collecting stuff. I did like that they added big mythical boss fights and hard challenges, but it was really tedious otherwise. I had Syndicate on my shelf for about 3 years so I just started that to get it out of the way. They really are trying to force some kind of present day story into it, but it really makes no sense. Although, I do like the little side stories involving people from that time like Marx and Darwin. We'll see how long it'll be until i play Odyssey, which has been sitting there for a year, usually pick these up when they are $20 for physical.

 

As for the Watchdog series, I played that way back when PS4 first came out and don't remember too much. The MP was pretty silly from what I remember, guessing it's similar in 2? At least they stopped with the crazy MP trophies in their games recently.

 

I’m sure they have people who work specifically on the historical aspect. How they handled the present day after Desmond Miles is just an insult. 

 

I played a bit after Bayek’s son was killed, and realized there’s just too much content. Bigger isn’t always better. The Witcher 3 somehow managed to keep its stories fresh throughout the whole experience and exploring actually had a point. Beyond the presentation, Origins ends up playing like all the other Ubisoft games. It’s roughly 60 - 70 hours, but I played Just Cause 3 and Mad Max so I know what to expect. 

 

Syndicate was just okay. You’ll understand what I mean once you play through it. 

 

I can’t say I played through the Watch Dog games. Two I definitely hear is easier.

[jonesey46]

 Platinum #148 - Crysis 3 

 

Story

The epic conclusion to the Crysis trilogy sees Prophet taking the fight to Cell, an authoritarian military group who have seized all alien technology after the events of Crysis 2 and are using it to control the world. Michael 'Psycho' Sikes returns from the first game to help Prophet put an end to Cell once and for all.

 

Gameplay

Crysis 3 is a first person sci-fi action adventure and that is my fucking jam. I've mentioned on this thread somewhere that Half-Life is my favourite game of all time, and any games that are even remotely similar to it, I usually love. Wolfenstein, Metro, Resistance, Bioshock, the list goes on. Anyway, Crysis is a little bit more military oriented, unlike Half-Life and my other examples but it's still very sci-fi as it deals with alien invasions, ridiculously futuristic technology and most importantly, super suits.

 

Prophet, the protagonist, is inside a military and alien enhanced nano-suit which allows you to fuck shit up, to be frank. You can turn invisible and stealth through the entire game or you can turn on maximum armor and go guns blazing, killing everything in sight. The nano suit is your best friend in this game and it's your best weapon. There's a huge amount of different guns in this game that you can play with, normal weapons like assault rifles to SMGs, snipers to rocket launchers etc. but there's also alien weapons you can use too, which are extremely powerful and somewhat rare. On top of all the guns, you also get a compound bow to add to your arsenal. This bow is always on you and has various different types of arrows you can use to ruin Cell's day. The bow is a new addition to the series, and it isn't surprising, as every game around the time just had to have a bow in it. The best thing about the bow is that it's completely silent and firing it doesn't break your cloak unlike the other weapons. So it's perfect for playing stealthy.

 

The game is a little on the short side unfortunately, but it's a really enjoyable and explosive experience from start to finish.

 

Multiplayer

The game features a competitive multiplayer mode which is very similar to Call of Duty. Similar game modes, create a class, full of campers etc. But the huge difference is that everyone has a nano-suit with the same capabilities as the single player version. I'm not a big multiplayer guy so I can't really say much about it, but if you like Call of Duty then there's no reason why you wouldn't like this. I think the only thing that lets it down is the fact that everyone has a nano-suit, so everyone can do all the crazy powerful abilities. I think that it should have been a pick up so that only one player has it at a time. To prevent the best player hogging it all round, they could have had it time out and respawn every minute or so. I think that would have been quite fun.

 

Platinum Thoughts

Currently this platinum is an Ultra-Rare at 2.64% and there is only one reason for this, the multiplayer. However, It's nowhere near as bad as Assassins Creed Brotherhood or Batman Arkham Origins and can be done in a few nights with the right boosting team. I got all the MP trophies done over a year ago when the server shutdown notice was posted for Crysis 2. Since the developer didn't really clarify if the notice was for both 2 and 3, I panicked and focussed on 3 as it was less of a time sink than 2. I kinda regret that now as I'll never get those trophies for 2 and 3's multiplayer is still running just fine.

 

I got most of the MP trophies with a boosting group but at the time, the game was still being played by regular people, so a lot of the time I ended up just playing the game normally to rank up etc. The trophies that take the longest are getting up to rank 20 and completing 25 challenges but again, these aren't tricky, they're just time consuming.

 

As for the single player, it's a walk in the park. I did it in 3 playthroughs, but keep in mind one of those was just a normal playthrough back in 2014 when I wasn't worrying about trophies. So it can be done in 2. Or hell, maybe even 1 if super soldier difficulty is unlocked from the start. The trophy list is very run of the mill for this kind of game, there's collectibles, chapter-specific actions, and kill count with various weapons trophies. Nothing too challenging. I personally had a blast going for the platinum as I just really like the game and story. There's a few trophies relating to completing the game on super-soldier difficulty and all of these stack. Super soldier is a piece of cake and with the invisibility function of the nano suit you can rush through most levels without even killing anyone.

 

Summary

I loved this game and yeah, the mulitplayer can be a little bit of a pain to finish off but like I said, if you've boosted other games before, this won't be the worst one you'll see, far from it. The campaign is short and sweet, but full of action packed sequences that make you feel like a bad ass.

 

Best Bit

Feeling like a bad ass running around and wreaking havoc with the compound bow and nano-suit.

 

Worst Bit

Campaign is a little short and leaves you wanting more. Multiplayer can be a pain for trophies.

 

Arbitrary Rating

8/10

 

---

 

DLC - Lost Islands

 

DLC Thoughts

I'd would have really liked a single player DLC for this game but no, we get a multiplayer map-pack, cause everybody LOVES those.

 

The Lost Islands DLC adds 4 new maps to the Crysis 3 multiplayer mode. These maps being locations from the first Crysis on the Lingshan Islands. I boosted all the trophies for this DLC in one night with a group of around 6 or 7 people, so it was very straight forward and easy to do. It was nice seeing the Lingshan Islands again but as I said previously, I would have preferred to see them in a single player DLC.

 

One thing to mention is the price, this DLC cost £11.99! There's very few people playing this game now, even fewer with the DLC so that is a ridiculous price to pay. I was waiting a long time for the DLC to go on sale, but it never did so I finally bit the bullet and paid full price. I essentially paid £12 for 10 trophies as even if I did intend to play the game properly and get my moneys worth, there's no one playing the game anyway! Grr.

 

---

 

Right, that's it from me for now. I should be back shortly with platinum #149 which is going to be Far Cry Classic. It's the one game in the series I never played before so I'm enjoying that. Otherwise, I'm still working on Lords of the Fallen, I just finished my first play through of it, so only 2 more to go! Still having fun but we'll see how that changes over my second run through. See ya.

 

[AJ_Radio]

Congratulations on Crysis 3. Definitely a platinum worth having and one to be proud of.

 

A word on Far Cry Classic. The game is very glitchy. I had issues with a trophy that ended up rebooting my console a few times. This game has a tendency to have some weird glitches. There is an exploit regarding difficulty that will let you skip hours of playing for an easy trophy. Fairly easy game, but it has aged terribly. Don't be surprised if the game locks up on you.

 

2 hours ago, jonesey46 said:

Platinum Thoughts

Currently this platinum is an Ultra-Rare at 2.64% and there is only one reason for this, the multiplayer. However, It's nowhere near as bad as Assassins Creed Brotherhood or Batman Arkham Origins and can be done in a few nights with the right boosting team.

 

As someone who has basically avoided Brotherhood's multiplayer, just HOW BAD is it?

[jonesey46]

45 minutes ago, Spaz said:

Congratulations on Crysis 3. Definitely a platinum worth having and one to be proud of.

 

Thanks man, like I said it's not even remotely difficult, but MP trophies mostly make people run for the hills. I'm also pretty sure this was a PS Plus game a few years back which may lend to the UR rating.

 

46 minutes ago, Spaz said:

A word on Far Cry Classic. The game is very glitchy. I had issues with a trophy that ended up rebooting my console a few times. This game has a tendency to have some weird glitches. There is an exploit regarding difficulty that will let you skip hours of playing for an easy trophy. Fairly easy game, but it has aged terribly. Don't be surprised if the game locks up on you.

 

I'm at mission 16 and I haven't had any issues yet, aside from one glitch that made the sound cut out, but rebooting the console fixed it no bother. What trophy was it that gave you trouble? Also, I'm very aware of the difficulty exploit and I plan to utilise that bad boy with no shame. I really like the game so far but I've always enjoyed the jankiness of early 2000's FPS's like AVP, Red Faction and Deus Ex. 

 

50 minutes ago, Spaz said:

As someone who has basically avoided Brotherhood's multiplayer, just HOW BAD is it?

 

I wouldn't know, I've never even booted the MP up. I played the campaign back in 2011 and left it at that. When I was putting together my trophy tracker spreadsheet, I looked up all the games in my backlog to see which ones were going to be a problem and from what I've read AC Brotherhood is a lengthy grind and notoriously glitchy. Maybe one day I'll get round to it, but I doubt that day will come before the servers shut down. Although, Far Cry 2 servers are still up so who knows?

[AJ_Radio]

9 hours ago, jonesey46 said:

I wouldn't know, I've never even booted the MP up. I played the campaign back in 2011 and left it at that. When I was putting together my trophy tracker spreadsheet, I looked up all the games in my backlog to see which ones were going to be a problem and from what I've read AC Brotherhood is a lengthy grind and notoriously glitchy. Maybe one day I'll get round to it, but I doubt that day will come before the servers shut down. Although, Far Cry 2 servers are still up so who knows?

 

I'd place it around the same level as Red Dead Redemption, although I think RDR has a bit more difficult multiplayer.

 

The problem I've heard from people is Brotherhood has a time consuming trophy (getting to level 50), but perhaps the most difficult multiplayer trophy in the entire franchise is AEOTM (Abstergo Employee of the Month). Most feats can be boosted with just two or three people, but some require no less than five players working together with good coordination.

 

With that, coupled with my slow and often poor internet, and the fact this game is now 10 years old with mostly dead multiplayer, I will probably never get the PS3 version done.

 

Brotherhood remains one of my more nostalgic games from a decade ago. Love the music, love the story with Desmond Miles and Lucy Stillman, love some of the characters in the actual game (Ezio, Cesare Borgia), had a lot of fun with it, considering I played the Xbox 360 version initially. The multiplayer.. too much of a hassle.

 

That's why I still haven't 100 percented Red Dead Redemption. Without a doubt my favorite game from last gen, but those multiplayer trophies are just a bitch especially now that the servers are absolute shit. I could go back and earn a good 5 - 10 online trophies, it's quite possible, but I strongly doubt I'll get everything done.

 

You can't have everything. I'm nearly at 96 percent completion, and that's good enough for me.

[Grotz99]

15 hours ago, Spaz said:

The problem I've heard from people is Brotherhood has a time consuming trophy (getting to level 50), but perhaps the most difficult multiplayer trophy in the entire franchise is AEOTM (Abstergo Employee of the Month). Most feats can be boosted with just two or three people, but some require no less than five players working together with good coordination.

 

This right here is why i didn't get the platinum for AC:B. The multiplayer wasn't interesting enough to grind out to level 50. AEOTM is the worst one, actually saw a game session recently to boost that and was tempted, but really don't want to put the time in for the rest.

 

Just finished Syndicate (I think, there was no credits...) and it had some entertaining moments, but overall was just OK. People kept saying that is the most underrated and best one, but I'm not seeing it. Maybe I just grew tired of them or people are anglophiles, especially since beating Yakuza 0 recently was such a great experience. At least they made the characters in the game interesting again and added some personality. Hoping the DLC is interesting as I do like Jack the Ripper stories.

 

15 hours ago, Spaz said:

That's why I still haven't 100 percented Red Dead Redemption. Without a doubt my favorite game from last gen, but those multiplayer trophies are just a bitch especially now that the servers are absolute shit. I could go back and earn a good 5 - 10 online trophies, it's quite possible, but I strongly doubt I'll get everything done.

 

I really enjoy Rockstar's games, but they make half the tophy list multiplayer, then tack on even more through DLC. As I started really trying to collect trophies and complete games this past year, I hit the realization that there are some trophies I won't go back for, such as ps3 multiplayer ones and have to live with that as I don't want to make a new account. I like having my total history of gaming on PS3 and PS4, figured I'll just try to improve that. Just got to 50%, started at about 38% a year and half ago. Also, it's kind of funny seeing how long it took to complete some games as I went back to them.

 

Congratz on Crysis 3, those games were ahead of their time when I played them on PC. Glad to hear that it sounds like it still holds up.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Grotz99