Popular Post Briste Posted May 24, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted May 24, 2019 (edited) Welcome to my Diary of a Madman and my quest to 100% all of the games I play. For a 'much too long bio' about me, take a look at the bottom of this post. I tried to make it my second post...but the website insists on merging the two posts...so I guess the top is just for my games and updates and the bottom my bio. Without further ado, here's my stuff! Currently working on: I will come back to add brief synopsis to each of these over time. Platinums 1-10 Spoiler 1. Batman: Arkham City Spoiler This is where it all began for me. I had no idea that trophies existed and was just looking for a good game after retiring from playing MMO's. Based on a recommendation from my cousin, I bought a PS3 and Batman: Arkham City. Other than Final Fantasy XI, the last new game I had played was probably GTA: Vice City on the PS2. I was BLOWN AWAY by this game. I don't think I noticed the trophies right away since I was so enthralled with how good the graphics were and how smooth the combat in this game was. Gliding around and fighting thugs was just so much fun. When I eventually noticed the trophies, I googled them and found playstationtrophies.org. It had cool trophy road maps and I saw that trophies were an awesome tracking system to let you know when you 100% a game and did everything it had to offer. This really appealed to me and I set off on the task of getting the 100% for Arkham City. I did not find this game to be particularly hard at all. Most of it was just patience and perseverance. These are qualities a lot of gamers lack which is probably why the trophies are on the rarer side. If you are patient enough, and prioritize disabling and disarming thugs with guns...the double X evade pretty much keeps you safe forever. The hardest/most frustrating thing for me in this entire game was the A.R. Training trophies. Fortunately, they only take a couple of seconds to attempt and another couple of seconds to restart when you screw up. The fighting challenges were all easy since all you really need to do is keep your freeflow going and you'll get enough points. I would try to mix up the combinations for the point boost and I found starting with a counter and ending with a ground takedown or two netted the best results. The Predator Challenges usually took a bit longer, but once you figured out the sequence you needed to do the challenges, it wasn't too bad. I found that in most cases, the hardest challenge on the list was the first one that needed to be done before they know you are there and since the AI walk in set rotations, it was just a matter of figuring out the order to tackle them. When it game to the campaigns with the modifiers, I always used the negative modifiers on the combat missions and the positive ones on the Predator missions. I had a lot of fun with these maps. There was only one combat mission I didn't get the three stars on and it wasn't for a lack of trying. The Joker's Carnival challenge I ended up giving up on. I got to 996,000 points once before time ran out...but something would always trip me up and I would either lose the combo, get hit or run out of time. Since I didn't need the one million points for the 100%, I tried for a couple of hours or so before I moved on. Since this game was my first platinum, I chose the Perfect Knight - Day 2 trophy to live in my cabinet. I chose this trophy since it represented doing everything the game had to offer and the Platinum was already on display. Growing up I had always been a team Spider-Man guy...he was my favorite...but between Emo-Spider-Man 3, the Christopher Nolan Batman movies and the Arkham City game, Batman rose to be my #1 Super Hero. I can't recommend this game enough. Because of this game, I have tried to play every Batman game out there. 2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Spoiler There's not much to say about this game that hasn't already been said. I was turned onto to this game by a co-worker. I used to work third shift at a casino (12:30am-9:00am) and there was A LOT of downtime. Another guy and I would talk about games quite a bit and he lived and breathed this game. At his recommendation, I bought this to take a look since, based on his descriptions, I would enjoy it a lot...and I did really enjoy this game a lot I tend to like a stealth approach with a bow and arrow in most of the games I play where that is an option. My friend played using a sword in one hand and magic in the other. I found the Hand-to-Hand combat to be a little too chaotic for me and tended to creep and snipe. This was another game that blew me away with how expansive and interactive it is. I know a lot of people think this game is overrated, but you have to remember, for me this was my second game back into the console gaming experience and it was amazing. I did almost break this game by accident. Very early on in the game, I accidentally discovered an exploit in one of the towns where I could level up my Speech (came to find out later this was a known exploit). There was a shop where you could persuade the merchant and the dialogue box didn't change after the fact. I decided to level up my Speech to 99 while I was there, not aware that your enemies get harder the higher level you are. All of my attack skills were fairly low and my Speech being at 99 inflated my overall level and everything became MUCH harder. I almost considered starting over at first, however I was able to find a few places to level up my archery so that it was doable. Eventually, I was so overpowered that the game was a joke. It was fun to be a God, but when I play it again on VR...I'm going to try to do it the right way. My only real complaint about this game was the glitches. Fortunately, none of them impacted trophies, however I was unable to complete several quests due to these glitches. I was unable to remove a book from a treasure chest that was needed for a quest. There were a couple of quests where the NPC was missing (probably killed) that I couldn't finish. Characters would get stuck in walls and be unable to be interacted with. As someone who tends to do all the side stuff as they appear in the game...this was disappointing. I got over 150 hours of play out of this game and I enjoyed the majority of the time...but there were definitely times where I felt that the caves seemed repetitive and it got a little boring. I'm not sure this game will age very well since this style of game is all the rage these days and there are so many better options. But if I'm being honest...at the time it was probably the best open world game I had ever played. 3. Batman: Arkham Origins Spoiler Based on my love affair with Arkham City, this game was a no doubter. As I mention in my Bio, I don't know a ton about who develops what or why you should boycott/avoid certain companies. I know that there was a lot of hate on this game because it was released by Warner Bros instead of Rocksteady, but I really enjoyed this game. I thought it was every bit as good as Arkham City and I had a lot of fun playing it through. I will acknowledge that it didn't really add anything new to the series other than a very frustrating (but fun when it worked) multiplayer setting. I found this game to be much more challenging than Arkham City, both in game play and in trophies required to 100%. The I Am the Night trophy requires you to play the game without dying at all. There is a nice workaround that made this trophy much easier...you can pause and restart from the last checkpoint if you are about to die and keep going. Having said that...I died twice before I could hit pause and had to start over. Fortunately, neither time was terribly far in...but once was REALLY stupid and almost caused a rage controller throw. I died to some basic thugs outside of Penguins hideout. I had a little bit of health left and felt confident I wouldn't die since they were basic thugs....I died and was super pissed and embarrassed that I let that happen. This mode alone though made the game more of a challenge. The most frustrating trophy for me was the Worst Nightmare trophy for completing certain Predator tasks during the main story. The problem with this trophy is it is missable. You need to do all of the challenges in order and one of them specifically can only be attempted in one portion of the game. If you are not on that challenge during that section of the game...you will miss out and need to replay the story to get it. This happened to me and I didn't get it during my first playthrough and I didn't realize I couldn't go back and do it until it was too late in my I Am the Night run and I needed to do a third run through the story to get it. Other than that, I found this game to be a lot of fun and an excellent addition to the series. I also really enjoyed the multiplayer, when it worked, and thought it was a really cool concept. Basically there are three teams...Bane Thugs vs Joker Thugs vs Batman and Robin. You are randomly placed on one of these teams at the start and the goal is for one thug team to take out the other thug team without letting Batman and Robin get their intimidation meter to max. Batman and Robin do that by taking out thugs. Thugs lower the intimidation factor by taking out Batman and Robin. First team to 20 kills wins unless Batman and Robin get max intimidation first. There are several other little wrinkles, but that is the gist and it was a really cool concept and a lot of fun to play EXCEPT that you or someone else would get disconnected all the flipping time. It made some of the trophies very hard to get since it required all eight players to make it through an entire match. It took time, but I eventually was able to get all of them with Predator Paragon being the hardest. I have placed that trophy in my trophy cabinet since that was one of my most proud achievements in trophy hunting to date. No boosting, just perseverance. It's really too bad the servers were such shit because it really was a lot of fun and it's too bad more people didn't get to experience it. 4. South Park: The Stick of Truth Spoiler South Park is probably my favorite TV show of all time. It came out when I was in high school, but I didn't start watching it until after South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut came out. I went to see it in the theater with some of my friends and I nearly pissed my pants at how funny it was. Since I had never seen the show before I went to the movie...I didn't quite know what to expect and the Uncle Fucker song had me gasping for air I was laughing so hard. I have seen every episode probably 10 times (except the banned 200th and 201st episodes). I don't think it has been as funny since The Book of Mormon came out...I think that doing the show and writing the play burned them out. While their method of writing episodes the week before it is shown allows them to be current with their satire...I think they suffer from a lack of editing and fleshing out stories these days and it isn't quite as good. Anyways...this is my thoughts on the game not the series! This game is awesome. It knows what it is and does a great job of being that. The combat is interesting enough where you're not just mashing buttons...but not so overly convoluted that it detracts from the comedy. The Underpants Gnomes boss battle background is probably the greatest background in the history of gaming. It is so freaking funny and you have to laugh at some of the risks these guys take with their humor. A lot of what they attempt could fall very flat, but they do a great job of making everything feel relevant to the general story. The game isn't particularly hard and the trophy list is very easy with only exceptions being a few missable trophies. Most of them you have a lot of heads up on, however there is one immediately that could negate the More Popular Than John Lennon trophy. If you don't befriend Clyde before you talk to Cartman...you will miss out on that trophy. I didn't befriend Clyde and missed out on that trophy and had to do a second playthrough Fortunately, it is the type of game that I didn't mind a second playthrough as it is relatively short and not overly difficult and it was still funny the second time through. Being from my favorite TV series, I needed one trophy from this game for my cabinet...since Butters is my favorite character, I chose the No Child Left Behind trophy since it has his picture on it. The game is definitely worth a play if you're looking for a relatively laid back game and just looking to laugh. If you like the TV show, you will most definitely like the game. 5. Batman: Arkham Asylum Spoiler The original entry in the Arkham series was awesome and the only reason it doesn't rank higher for me is because I didn't play it first. I feel like if I had played this game first, I would have maybe felt it was the best in the series. However, Arkham City and Arkham Origins cleaned up the fighting so that it worked much, much smoother in my opinion. Because I played the others first, I spent a lot of the time thinking about how much smoother it was in the newer games than appreciating Arkham Asylum for what it was. If I had played this first, I wouldn't have known that the controls weren't as smooth and probably would have had a better experience. I found that I lost combo's much easier in this game. It was far easier to hit to attack and swing at air where in the later versions, I feel like the combat was more intuitive and would aim you towards the enemy. Having said that, I thought that the story in this game was better than the other games. I was able to get the platinum in this game fairly quickly due to the fact I was home on leave due to my first son being born. There was a lot of napping and down time in between visitors and I was able to spend a lot more time playing games than I would have under normal circumstances. I didn't find this trophy list to be very hard either. The toughest battle for me was the Poison Ivy fight on Hard and that got much easier once I figured out that running circular laps around the balcony made her attacks miss you much more than just running back and forth. I felt like the challenge maps in this game were more difficult than the later games as well, mostly due to the less intuitive fighting. I found the map where the floor electrocutes you if you take too long to be much more challenging than anything the later games threw at you. Top to bottom, I am of the opinion that the Arkham series is the best series I've ever played to date. None of the games are bad and are definitely worth your time investment to play. 6. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Spoiler I have a lot to say about this game, but will try to keep it somewhat brief. I had played the original Final Fantasy XIV that was released on the PC. It had a lot of problems and was eventually pulled from the market and re-done (hence A Realm Reborn), but I liked it enough that I was willing to give it a try when they re-released it. After my experience with Final Fantasy XI, I pretty much swore off MMO's. While I did have a blast playing that game, it really took a toll on me. I would give up shifts at work and skip family gatherings so I wouldn't miss events. I would set my alarm for all hours of the day/night in order to camp rare monsters with my linkshell (guild). It was a 24 hour job and it consumed almost all of my time. I wasn't going to let myself do that with Final Fantasy XIV and the only reason I gave it a try was that I read most of it could be done solo or with Pick Up Groups (PUGs). It really is a great game. The worlds are beautiful, the story is engaging and there is all manner of things to do to keep yourself busy. It's not nearly as difficult as Final Fantasy XI was and I was able to do most things on my own. I tried to play this MMO more like a console game than a true MMO. I didn't join any guilds and only used PUGs for anything that required a party. This made some of the missions much more challenging than they needed to be since you never knew if the person you were going in with had any clue what they were doing. This was especially noticeable when doing the Summon(Extreme) fights and even more noticeable doing the Binding Coils. I played this game quite a bit with my brother, who was much more into it than I was. I did most of the Binding Coil with him, which was a big help since he knew what he was doing. Unlike FFXI where I leveled up about six jobs to level 75...I pretty much only played as a Paladin. I enjoyed Tanking in FFXI and that is why I chose this job class when doing XIV. The biggest benefit to choosing this job class was that it was less common and the wait time to get into a PUG was much shorter than if I was a Damage Dealing (DD) class. I enjoyed this game enough that I continued to play it for a little while even after getting all of the trophies. This is not a good game to play if you are just in it for the trophies. The fastest that you can get this platinum is about six months. That is due to An Adventurer's Life trophy that requires you to complete 1,000 Levequests. A Levequest is generally a quick side mission that allows you to earn items and XP. There are NPC's in various camps and cities that will grant you a Levequest and it can range from killing monsters to crafting armor to catching fish to mining and foraging to delivering items somewhere. The problem is that you cannot do these indefinitely. You only get 3 for every 12 hours in real time. The good news is you can bank up to 100 of them. So...at 6 per day divided by the 1,000 that you need...that means it is a minimum of 167 days to get this trophy. This trophy isn't hard at all, but it just takes a lot of time. None of the trophies are particularly hard (anymore) and just require time and patience. When I played this game there was really only one trophy that was hard/skill dependent and that was The Seeker of Truth trophy for clearing the Binding Coil. There are 5 'Turns' or zones that you must clear in order to get this trophy and each turn is unlocked by completing progressively harder quests within the game. So even unlocking parts of the Binding Coil is quite hard. The hardest part of this trophy was the last battle against the dragon Twintania. It has a rage timer (where you pretty much die right away) if you take too long and it has several different phases of the battle as you deplete it's HP. Each phase requires very specific mechanics that need to occur in order to fight Twintania without dying. Every person needed to understand their role and how to do it properly or the battle would be a wipe. Since I wasn't in a guild, I needed to do this with PUGs and it was excruciatingly hard. I probably spent the better part of a month trying this battle over and over before I found a group that could do it and even then it took us several tries. When we finally won the battle, I was about as excited as I've ever been playing a video game because I had all but given up hope that I would ever be able to beat this battle. This is a trophy that made it into my Trophy Cabinet due to what it took to earn. Since I got this trophy, the game raised the level cap and better gear has come out and this battle isn't nearly as tough as it used to be. Twintania still isn't a pushover...but now the rage timer is less of an issue and it's much easier for people to be carried. I ended up quitting this game after the Alexander(Extreme) battles came out. By this point, I had done everything there was to do in the game (other than level additional jobs) and they put a lock on this particular instanced raid so that PUGs could not enter. You could only enter the zone in a pre-made group. Since I wasn't in any guilds and had no interest in being in a guild...it meant I couldn't access this content. The lockout was only going to be temporary, but I got bored waiting. I decided to play God of War while I was waiting for the lockout to come off and ended up never going back to the game. The game gets expensive due to the monthly subscription and it definitely isn't for everyone. Having said that, this game is truly a wonderful game to play and I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get a taste of an MMO but not get lost in the MMO experience. Fair warning though...learn your job and research the zones you are going to enter because the community is not very kind to people who don't know their shit. 7. God of War Spoiler When I decided to take a break from Final Fantasy XIV, I took a month or so off from gaming to binge-watch some TV. When I decided to start gaming again, I had a small problem in that I didn't have any games on standby to play. I had basically played FF XIV for two years with a break in the middle to finish the Arkham series and play South Park. I had nothing really in mind and had heard a lot about the God of War series from my brother-in-law. Mythology was one of my favorite subjects in class so I looked on Amazon, and they were selling an Anthology of five games for $17.99. I figured you can't get a better deal than that and got the whole series. Since it had been a long time since I played a hack and slash style game, it took a little getting used to, but once I did, the game was a ton of fun. This series is kind of why I wanted to start this thread. I don't remember a ton about any of these games specifically because they are all relatively similar in play style and I played them all back to back so they kind of blur together for me. By writing a synopsis at the time I finish them, I will be able to create a fresher image and will be more reflective of a diary. I will say that the thing I remember the most were the challenges...with the last one bringing me as close to breaking a controller as I've ever been. The challenge was to survive a continuous onslaught of monsters while fighting on a circular platform that is rising slowly into the air. When it gets high enough, you can jump off onto a ledge above you and the challenge is over. I think I died a hundred times trying this challenge. The Satyr's had this annoying habit of spearing you and then pivot-swinging you over their head to the other side of the platform. You would bounce once and when Kratos attempted to stand back up, would slip through the edge causing a death and a retry. I honestly do not remember exactly how I beat it. I want to say I did mostly launch and aerial attacks to avoid being speared...but I don't remember for sure. I just remember getting very close several times and dying for some bull shit reason. I'm honestly surprised the completion percentage is as high as it is because that challenge was extremely tough (for me anyways) and I would have assumed more people rage quit at that point. Other than that challenge, the game wasn't too difficult and it was a lot of fun to play. 8. God of War II Spoiler Sadly, I don't remember too much about this game. I remember the trophy for getting to the Loom in less than 15 minutes and I remember the final fight and that I thought it was easier than the first God of War. I also remember having a much easier time with the trials compared to the first game. I know I liked it, but even after skimming over the trophies and the trophy guide...I really have nothing specific to say about this game. All I know is I really enjoyed this entire series (except for Ascension) and even though I don't remember anything specific...it's worth playing 9. God of War: Chains of Olympus Spoiler Another entry I don't remember much about. The biggest change that sticks out in my mind is that since this was a PSP game originally, the controls are slightly different since there were fewer buttons on the PSP. It took a little getting used to, but this game was really easy and I finished it in a day and a half. I remember the Heavy Hitter trophy feeling stupid since it wasn't something you could really get by playing normal. You had to beat on that basilisk in the beginning. I also remember the joke trophy All Beam Walks Completed for walking over all the beams in the game about two minutes in (there is exactly one). I also remember liking these graphics slightly better because even though they weren't as good as the other games in the series, it was really easy to see. Honestly, for just over $3.00 a game, I really can't complain about anything here since they were all fun. 10. God of War III Spoiler I do remember this game more than the others. I remember the boss fights being really challenging. I had more trouble with Poseidon than most and probably less problems with Hades than most. The battle with Zeus was probably the toughest battle for me in any of the games. It took me several attempts to defeat him. The graphics in this game were much more realistic than the previous versions and I actually found the more realistic graphics to be more difficult to see things than the previous releases. While these games are really about the gore and violence...I do appreciate their attempts to make it a decent story...even if the motivations are extremely basic. I love mythology and always thought it was cool how they were able to intertwine the different entities into a story that makes sense. The puzzles aren't ridiculously challenging and the answer often isn't hard to find, but I don't necessarily feel like they mailed in these aspects either. I'm happy that the Remaster was released as a free PS+ title since now I have a reason to revisit this installment. It's not a top priority now, but maybe when I'm feeling a little nostalgic I'll spend some time with Kratos again in all his hack n' slash glory. Platinums 11-20 Spoiler 11. God of War: Ghost of Sparta Spoiler This game I probably remember the least from the series. I vaguely remember the story took place after the events of the original God of War, and that this game further shows Kratos animosity towards the Gods grow. I think I remember the controls to feel slightly less fluid in this game than in the previous versions and that the wraith enemies were pains in the asses. I don't remember disliking anything or having a particularly hard time with anything in this game...it appears it was a pretty forgettable experience. Being a PSP port, I know I had to relearn the slightly different controls again and that the graphics were a step back from God of War III. However, if you have a PS3 and a spare $20...you could do a lot worse than this series anthology and I would recommend them to anyone that hasn't played the series yet. It is gratuitous in every sense of the word...gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence...it's great! 12. God of War: Ascension Spoiler This game is the only one that didn't come with the Anthology and required a separate purchase. Based on how much I enjoyed the rest of the series, this was a no-brainer. Despite being the 7th installment in the series, this game takes place ten years prior to the events of the first God of War, and after the villains from the previous games...this one is a bit of a disappointment. I think the idea of the Furies in the game was good, but it's a bit anti-climactic considering what Kratos has already faced (I understand that chronologically he wouldn't have faced them yet...but game-wise we the players did). The story was only a small reason why this game was disappointing to me...I found the game play to be disappointing as well. If I had played this game first, I may not have wanted to play the rest of the series. While most people think the graphics in this game were the best in the series...I disagree. You could tell that the developers loved what they were doing graphically as they seemed to make that the main focus during several parts of the game. Normally I don't think this is a bad thing...however in this game it ended up adding some unnecessarily hard parts due to the camera. The best example of this is the very first boss of the game. During part of the fight, the camera pans out like a mile away to show you the enormity of what Kratos is up against. Meanwhile, you are trying to control an ant-sized Kratos against monsters and the boss. I died several times because I couldn't see what I was doing and found this to be stupid. They also tried to jump aboard the Multiplayer train and force feed that into this game. I did the training for the trophy and tried it for a few minutes before I found it too stupid to continue. For the sake of completion and a full story, I would say if you played all the other games, play this one...but know it's one of the worst in the series. If this is the only game you played in the series...good news...it gets much, much better. If you aren't worried at all about playing the whole series and just want a good game to play, you can feel comfortable skipping this one and not feel like you missed anything. 13. Final Fantasy VII Spoiler This game was an unannounced gift from the PS gods. I remember coming to the PSN Profiles one day and seeing this under the new trophy listings. I jumped out of my chair and I probably put more hours into this game than any other game I've ever played (MMO's aside). I beat it from beginning to end several times on the PS One, making sure I went on a date with each character you could at the Gold Saucer. On one of those occasions, I got the Master Materia for each materia type for each player. It had been over a decade since I had played it last and I was really happy to see it get trophy support. I picked it up immediately after I saw it here. The timing of the release worked out well too since I had just finished the God of War series in its entirety. I had Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Batman: Arkham Knight on my shelf...but nobody puts Final Fantasy VII in the corner. This release was great for a couple of reasons, the best reason being the ability to speed up time/movement. While I don't mind grinding for xp, the ability to do it faster was a nice touch and definitely removed that grind feeling from the game. I think they added a few too many easy buttons that entirely remove the challenge...but you don't have to play with those and I didn't. The only time I used the speed up option was when grinding xp, otherwise I took my time to enjoy the nostalgia. The trophy list isn't bad, but there are several missable trophies if you aren't paying attention. With the help of the trophy guide, all of that frustration can be avoided. The only downside to the trophy list I think is the Best Bromance trophy for going on a date with Barret. While it wasn't a problem for me since I'd already experienced everything in the game...it's a trophy that needs a lot of planning and can really affect the way you play the game. It's also far enough into the game where it doesn't make sense to create a separate save file for it. Unless you plan on playing through the game a couple of times...this trophy kind of pigeonholes the way you have to interact with the characters. Overall, this game is one of my all-time favorites. The style of game and the graphics don't age particularly well, however that is all outweighed by the nostalgia. They truly don't make games like this anymore. Random encounters and the ATB form of attacking is a thing of the past. I miss this kind of game since it allowed for a little bit more casual experience. I also feel like they spent more time developing the story than the combat mechanics. The length of time it takes to cast some of the summons (I'm looking at you Knights of the Round) can get a bit tedious, but again the speed up timer helps here. The story is pretty convoluted, but I loved all the extra hidden scenes that helped add context and ended up really liking it...even if I still don't exactly understand it all. This game also had the most impactful scene I can ever recall in a video game (to that point in history). I was devastated and probably sat looking at my screen with my mouth open for a good 10 minutes before I could move on. Even though it's been 22 years, I still won't say exactly what the spoiler is. If you've never played it before, there is no excuse not to get this version to try. You need to take your time if you truly want to enjoy it, but if you're in it just for the trophies, the 'cheats' don't disable any trophies so you can blow through it pretty quickly. 14. Batman: Arkham Knight Spoiler I very much enjoyed this addition to the series. I know there were a lot of people that didn't love the villain and a lot of people didn't think the addition of the Bat Mobile was done very well, but I liked both. I thought the story provided some nice twists and the Bat Mobile was actually kind of fun. The hardest parts of the game for me tended to revolve around the Bat Mobile mechanics though. I haven't played a racing game outside of Mario Kart since Destruction Derby 2 for the PS One. I found it much easier to drive using the first-person point of view camera. I didn't drift as much and found the controls much easier to manage. I was able to do all of the Riddler stuff using the third person camera, but most of the DLC races I did from the first person camera. This game is famous for the ridiculous amounts of DLC that was added and they were probably the most challenging part of the game. Specifically the Community Challenge Pack DLC 16. I spent one day and about nine hours to complete the DLC. The Chill in the Air, The Curtain Falls and Requiem for a Killer were definitely the hardest trophies in the entire game for me and I'm pretty sure that The Curtain Falls didn't pop for me the first time it should have. I had to redo Nightwing a second time before the trophy popped. I remember getting though it with Catwoman and being stoked that I finished and then nothing happened...I wasn't sure which one didn't trigger and was pissed that I'd have to start over. Fortunately, I went in reverse order and it popped after the first one I did again. The hardest trophy for me in the main game was the Point of Impact trophy for Performing 5 perfect shots with the Vulcan gun without taking damage. I'm generally not very good at FPS games and I had a hard time maneuvering the Bat Mobile, while aiming with the gun at the one spot you can hit for a perfect shot, without getting hit. Fortunately there is an AR challenge that allows you to retry this over and over without any effort...but my own limitations made this pretty tough. My favorite part of the game was the relationship between Batman and his imaginary friend. There was a lot of comic relief for me there and I really liked that he was always there to taunt or give his two cents on a given situation. To avoid spoilers I'm referring to the character as an imaginary friend...but it is not as stupid as it potentially sounds. My least favorite part was the A Leap of Faith trophies for completing 8 jumps over 100 meters. It was reminiscent of the jumps in the Grant Theft Auto games and I just don't like those trophies. Plus, I found they were a little glitch-y and I had to do the jumps several times for the trophies to pop. This game is a good mix of challenging game play and interesting story arc and is a worthy addition to the Arkham series. I can't recommend the series enough. 15. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Game of the Year Edition Spoiler This was a game I used the Google to find. After finishing up the God of War series, I knew I only had Arkham Knight left to play. I was looking for something to play after and looked up 'Game of the Year PS4' and this game popped up. It was on sale so I figured, why not? This is probably one of my favorite games that I've ever played. In addition to loving the Lord of the Rings (I've read the series and handful of times), I knew from the Arkham series that I'd love the style. I ended up picking up this game very quickly since the combat controls are almost identical to Batman with the addition of the Bow and Arrow. It's pretty much a hybrid of Assassin's Creed (at least the one I played) and Batman. The story was one that I enjoyed, but what I really thought made this game awesome is the Nemesis system. With the Nemesis System, the enemy Orc Captains will remember you (if you don't kill them) and if one kills you it gets promoted and if you happen to die to a regular grunt, they become a Captain and talk a lot of shit the next time they see you. You can turn Orc Leaders to follow you and betray their master and each Orc has a unique name with a Unique set of skills. There are almost infinite possibilities of Orc Captains. I'm a person that gets all the collectibles and side missions as I go. The downside to this is it is sometimes easy to lose track of the main story but the upside is that you generally have all the abilities and are relatively overpowered when going back to the main game. The world is pretty large but there is a Fast Travel option should you need it. There are a few different mounts you can ride as well to make the world a little smaller. There is a reason this game won a Game of the Year award and it is a game I would highly recommend. None of the trophies in the main game were really taxing, but the Repaid in Blood trophy made me have to do a second playthrough. It is an online trophy (which I didn't realize at the time) and I wasn't paying attention to the Vendetta Missions when they were available. By the time I had finished the game, that was the last trophy I needed for the Platinum. I tried fast traveling to get one to spawn and after an hour of doing that, I realized that it wouldn't spawn at that point of the game and had to restart. It was a little frustrating, but it was my own fault for ignoring those and not checking the trophies ahead of time. Fortunately, it was a game I really enjoyed, so the extra partial playthrough wasn't a big deal. The hardest trophy in the game for me was the DLC trophy The Hunt is my Mistress. You need to beat the DLC episode in 40 minutes or less while killing 5 Warchiefs, 20 Captains, 10 Monsters and achieving 13,000 points. You have just over a minute to kill each of the required kills. It took me quite a few attempts, even with backing up my save on a USB stick, to get this done in 40 minutes. I got it in like 42 minutes twice before I was able to finish it in time. This was another trophy that took a lot of work that I was very proud of and it made its way into my trophy cabinet. This is yet another game that I can't recommend enough. 16. Final Fantasy X Spoiler After playing Final Fantasy 7, I got a little bit of the nostalgia bug. I hadn't played any of the Final Fantasy titles after X-2 and had never beaten X-2 when it first came out. I decided to play all the games in the series that had been released to date in order. I had already beaten VII and IX hadn't been released yet so I started with X. This was one of my all time favorite games when I was younger...and I have to say I didn't think it aged that well and I almost wish I hadn't played it again to keep those brilliant memories pristine. The game itself was still fine. I actually enjoy the turn-based battle system and didn't miss the ATB. I like to have a little bit of time to decide what I want to do. I am also one that liked the Sphere Grid...the thing that I found most disappointing was the voice acting and script. Some scenes were exceptionally painful to watch, specifically the scene where Tidus and Yuna are laughing into the wind. It just felt so unnatural and awkward. I didn't remember feeling that way when I was younger, but that is probably because not many games did what Final Fantasy did back then and voice acting, in particular, has gotten so good these days that it is really obvious when it is poor. Due to that, I didn't enjoy the story as much this time around, which is always a big reason why I've loved the series my whole life. The Chocobo Rider trophy almost broke me and almost completely ruined this game for me. I didn't have much of a problem with it the first time around on the PS2, but I just COULD NOT beat this mini-game. What made it worse was that it is a shitty mini-game on top of it. It probably took me about 12 hours over a week or two just for this trophy. It's a short mini-game too so I probably tried 500 times before I got it. I was so annoyed with the whole process, I wasn't even that happy that I got it...it was more 'about fucking time' kind of feeling. The controls for that mini-game are janky, the balloons are random and the piece of shit birds come out of nowhere. I tried the D-Pad...I tried the joystick...both sucked. None of the grind-y trophies bothered me and I didn't have any problems anywhere else, but if you go for this Platinum...get ready for some potentially massive frustration with the mini-games. While my experience with this game bumped it out of the top 5 in the series for me...it's still worth playing for historical and pop culture reasons. Based on the hype/history of the game, be prepared to be a little disappointed because it hasn't aged that well and it can't possibly live up to its reputation compared with what is out there today. 17. Final Fantasy X-2 Spoiler So I want to preface my review of this game by saying...I'm the wrong demographic for this title. I found the characters to be more annoying than empowering and the story was just waaaaay to pop culture-y for me. I felt like they were trying to hop on the excitement of the Boy Band/Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera era by making the story surrounding a Treasure Hunting Band. I also felt like the character turn for Yuna was a little odd. For Rikku it made sense, but I could never get into the story. Now that the bad is out of the way...I will say that I did like the Dress Sphere setup for battle. I have always enjoyed games with job changes and I felt like the animations for switching Dress Spheres was pretty cool and I liked the variety it added to the game. When I first played this game on the PS2, I didn't end up beating it. If I remember right, it was impossible to 100% the game because a decision you make in the game impacts areas you could get to. One choice would get you to like 99.8% complete and the other choice something less than that. I didn't like the game enough to play it through twice back then and I think I struggled with the Via Infinito tower so gave up. I didn't find the game as challenging this time through and was able to pretty much just play through it. While I didn't like the game as much as X, the trophy list is better in my opinion. Has the usual grind-y trophies, but none of the min-games were as bad. I think most people don't finish this game because of the added Lucytyr Tower section. It is completely separate from the main game and is pretty RNG reliant. I kind of liked it better than the main game, probably a little bit due to the fact I was lucky with RNG and got the items I needed without much effort. I don't think anyone needs to go out of their way to play this game since outside the battle system, there is nothing terribly good about it. But if you are a fan of the series and a completionist like me, then you need to take your medicine and get through it. It's not terrible...just not good. 18. Final Fantasy XIII Spoiler I had heard bad things about this game coming into it...mostly that it was the worst game in the series. The biggest complaint stemmed around how 'linear' it was. So I admittedly went into it with pretty low expectations. Having said that, I really liked this game a lot. I thought the Paradigm system was a lot of fun. The story was your usual convoluted Final Fantasy game and some of the characters weren't my favorite (Snow's hero complex was a little annoying) but I thought the voice acting was much better than X. I also felt like the linear complaint was unfair. I didn't find the game any more linear than X was, yet X didn't suffer from the same criticism. I didn't think I would like the Paradigm system at first because I didn't like the idea I wasn't going to get to control each player, however after I learned how to use it properly, I grew to love it. The race to stagger the enemy and switching between paradigms to maximize the DPS was a nice addition. The trophy list was a little annoying due to the Treasure Hunter that requires you to have or have held every weapon/accessory in the game. It is a lot of grinding and the Platinum ingots, Dark Matters and Trapezohedrons are a low % drop against fairly challenging enemies. They are really cool fights...but it's one of the more painful grinds I've had to complete. I generally liked the characters and Fang ended up being my favorite. Lightning was a little stiff for me, but I still liked her overall. I'm still not sure I understand the story, but this game is way better than it is given credit for and I think it is worth playing. Don't let the negative hype dissuade you from playing if you haven't yet...it's a fun ride. 19. Final Fantasy XIII-2 Spoiler This game gets even less love than XIII and if you felt like the first entries story was confusing...it's got nothing on this one. The time travel element only adds to the confusion...having said that...having fewer playable characters made it so they could flesh out the story a little more. It clutched at the heartstrings and this game was my favorite in the trilogy. It had my favorite area soundtrack in the Archylte Steppe. I can't remember exactly which weather it played in...but it was uptempo and very catchy. I made sure to do all of my chocobo steps for the Saddle Sore trophy there. I also found Serah and Noel to be a much more likable protagonists. The trophy list is much better in this game as well, there is nothing nearly as grind-y as Treasure Hunter in XIII. It still utilizes the Paradigm battle system with the focus still being on staggering your opponent for massive damage. They add a few wrinkles to spice it up a bit...but it is generally the same (which I liked). You really shouldn't play this game unless you play XIII since you would be missing most of the motivation behind the characters. However, if you were only going to play one of the games of the trilogy, this should be the one. 20. Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns Spoiler This entry was probably my least favorite in the series. I thought the concept was pretty cool, but the timer ended up being more of a chore than a neat wrinkle in the game. The story was fine as it kind of made sense for the Trilogy, and the Doomsday counter was pretty innovative, so I have to give them credit for trying...it just didn't work out very well. I found several times where you are stopping the clock by using Chronostasis in order to get somewhere and finish a quest. Then on other occasions, you need it to be a certain time so you just stand there with the clock running, waiting for what you need to appear. In order to get the Platinum for this game, you really need to use a guide due to the sheer amount of potential missables caused by the running clock. I normally dock games points for requiring a guide to Platinum as I don't like to rely on a guide to play a game. Usually, I check a guide to make sure there aren't any missables and then playthrough on my own. The odds of someone discovering everything on their own the first time through is zero. In this game, certain missions only appear during certain times of the day, or on certain days or after certain events. Since the clock is always ticking towards the end...it is very easy to miss them and screw up the run requiring another playthrough. One thing I did really like was the monster counter. I thought it was neat that there were a specific number of each type of monster, and that as you defeat them, they no longer become available to fight. I mean, it's a little dark to aim to make something go extinct...but it was another wrinkle in the game I had never experienced before. I also have to give them a little credit with their trophy artwork in this game. I'm generally disappointed by the trophy artwork that accompanies Final Fantasy games, however these are pretty nice. The battle system was also ok. It was close enough to the prior installments where I had fun, but different enough where it took some getting used to. Lightning is the only member of the party in this game, however she has something similar to FFX-2's dress spheres. Each one has its own cooldown during battle, so you switch back and forth between her garbs during battle. Once you get the hang of it, it's actually a pretty fun experience. Overall, it was a disappointing conclusion for me, but the game brings enough new things to the table that it is worth playing...just make sure to bring a guide to eliminate some headaches! Platinums 21-30 Spoiler 21. Final Fantasy Type-0 HD Spoiler I both liked and disliked this game. There were some really neat dynamics as there was a clock involved with this game that prevented you from doing everything...so you needed to make good choices. In theory, that would also improve its replayability. I also thought the variety of battles was interesting. You had open world seizure type attacks and then third person in the zone type of combat. It was fun to have the variety. The sheer amount of main characters also meant there was a lot of variety as far as that third person combat. I ended up using King most of the time as his ranged guns seemed a bit OP in this game. I never really got good at the melee combat characters so didn't play them as much. I had two big complaints. First, while the number of characters made the combat variety more interesting...it also made the story much harder to follow. By the time you figured out each characters personality and how they fit into the story...the game was over. My second gripe is with the trophy list. It's not that it is too hard or anything...it's that it doesn't make you do everything in the game to get it. I remember when I got the Plat, I was like 'wait what? the games not even over yet.' Since I didn't love this game and didn't have the trophies as an incentive anymore, I just stopped. In the back of my head, I said I'd go back and replay the whole thing some day...but that seems highly unlikely. This is also very unique to the Final Fantasy series because they always have you do everything to get the Platinum and they tend to be some of the grindiest games out there. Not this one. While it shares a universe with the FFXIII trilogy...there really isn't a lot of similarity between them. This game never really felt like I was playing a Final Fantasy. It was a decent enough game and I wish the trophy list had been more inclusive of everything there is to do, because I feel like I would have liked it more if I did everything. Before trophies, I may have explored it all, but as it stands these days...I just don't have the motivation. 22. XCOM: Enemy Unknown Spoiler After finishing my run of Final Fantasy titles, I was looking for something other than an RPG. I was in the mood for a Turn Based Strategy (TBS) and did what anyone who's been out of the loop would do...I used the Google. I Googled "Turn Based Strategy PS3" and the top result was Metacritic. I sorted by rating and the top game was XCOM Enemy Unknown. I had never played an XCOM game before, but I had heard of them and figured I'd give it a shot. It was one of the best shots in the dark I've ever made. I loved everything about this game...so much so that I didn't even mind the five playthroughs needed to get the Platinum. The ability to save scum makes this game much easier than it would be without. I don't know if I could beat Ironman without it. The margin for error is so slim and it seems the RNG is stacked against you. Not to mention how easy it is to lose a country in Classic and Impossible difficulty's. This is one of those games that gets easier the longer you survive. As your gear improves and your soldiers rank up and get abilities, the game can be laughably easy at times. I personally am a Snipers guy. My typical group would have two Snipers, two Assault, a Heavy, a Support. Once you get the Plasma Sniper Rifle and Double Tap...you can take down a Sectopod in one turn easy. The two Snipers can kill the final boss in one turn also...you don't even need to enter the final room with everyone...just have the assault guy run in and get the final boss in sight and let the Snipers do the dirty work from the previous room. So long as they have the Line of Sight ability it's easy peasy. For those of you that have never played a TBS game, this series is the pinnacle. It has a pretty steep learning curve because there is a lot going on...but it is masterfully done. It forces you to make a lot of tough decisions. Do you stop the alien attack in South America because you are in danger of losing the country, or do you stop the attack in North America because you really need that engineer. Resources are sparse...especially in the beginning and your decisions could have major impacts on how hard this game is for you. Did you forget to build a Jet to protect your Satellite? oops that was just shot down by the aliens...did you neglect to get any scientists? oops that is why your research project is taking three weeks...the strategy extends beyond just the battlefield which is what separates this game from its peers. I can't recommend this game enough, for both completionists and casual gamers. For you completionists out there, all this game takes is some patience to beat. Nothing is really 'skill' dependent and the fact you can save scum saves you from some bad decisions. There's an Ultra Rare platinum behind this gem of a game. For you non-completionists, one playthrough on easy will give you a taste of the genre and I strongly believe you would be back for more. The only downside now is that it is a PS3 game and not everyone has access to one anymore, but if you have the ability, do yourself a favor and pick this game up! 23. XCOM: Enemy Within Spoiler After loving Enemy Unknown so much, this was naturally going to be my next game. They kept all of the cool stuff from EU and made some enhancements and added a few different features, but by and large it plays just like its predecessor. The cool wrinkle they added was getting to genetically or robotically enhance your soldiers. I prefered the genetic enhancements since your characters still keep they're normal promotion skills as opposed to new skill trees as a cyborg...but the cyborg has its uses as well. There is a lot more variety to party setups in this game than there are in EU. I still tended to use my two snipers, two assaults, one heavy and one support. I'd sub in the cyborg for the heavy for the trophies that required it. This game was a little more buggy for me than EU. Specifically in the base defense map. It was super laggy for me and twice the game froze and I had to restart that level. In my opinion, it's the hardest level in either game so that didn't make it any better that it locked up on me twice. This trophy list is a bit easier than EU, however the An Army of Four trophy was pretty challenging. This trophy requires you to beat the game without any squad size upgrades. Normally you can bring up to six soldiers into a level (after the upgrades) but this trophy requires you to do the whole game with only four soldiers on one of the two hardest settings. Again, save scumming makes this trophy much easier...but it's still quite challening. The good news is it doesn't require you to playthrough it five times like EU did. If you want the feel of EU without the grind, then this game is for you. I recommend both, but this game is far less grind-y. 24. The Last of Us Remastered Spoiler Since I'd had good luck with Google with XCOM and Shadow of Mordor, I went back to the well again. After a couple of months of XCOM, I was ready for another Action/RPG type game so I Googled 'Game of the Year PS4' and this game showed up. I'm not generally into Zombies and horror type games, but I figured I'd had good luck so far so I gave it a shot. This game knocked me out from the beginning. After the conclusion of the prologue scenes, I was gripped an was thinking 'Oh so it's going to be like that is it.' I went it relatively blind and man was this game fantastic. I'd never played a game as real and dark as this before so I was more impressed than most probably. There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. This game did an amazing job of making me care about the characters and did a good job as far as ramping up the difficulty. Grounded mode was very challenging, made more so because I played it from the prologue to the end. I didn't replay each chapter going backwards to maximize supplies and it was a very challenging, yet rewarding experience. The school gymnasium, the underground pipeline and the snowy woods as Ellie were especially challenging for me due to a lack of supplies. Thankfully, the check points are very generous and I was able to get through them. I did have my first trophy glitch with this game. The I Want to Talk About it trophy did not pop when it should have and I basically had to replay the entire game to get it. I did it via chapter select and it popped after a conversation I know I had seen...so it ended up being one of the last chapters I replayed. That sucked, but I was able to eliminate one playthrough by using the Grounded exploit where you replay the prologue and can skip right to the Grounded+ playthrough. I didn't really mind the MP in this game too much. It was a bit much to have to play through it all as both factions since nothing is really different between the two. I also sped this up by skipping as many days as I could without losing my camp. Thankfully, it never bit me in the ass. I am mediocre at best at the FPS style games, but I definitely improved as I learned the maps and ended up having a bit more fun than I anticipated. Funny random story about the online here. I am someone who has a legitimate man cave in my semi-finished basement. My wife doesn't like sports or video games much so I have my TV/PC/PS3/PS4 setup down there for when I want to play games or watch sports. So, I was downstairs in the basement playing this game right before the US election in 2016 and my wife despises Trump. I have the PS4 camera (got it for The Playroom) and I didn't realize that it picks up sound. I could hear other players that I assumed had headsets on and didn't think much of it. Apparently I don't talk to myself much or do any yelling or screaming while playing and it hadn't come up before. I had it plugged in and my wife came downstairs to read me an article about the Clintons and how Hillary was the obvious better candidate than Trump. All of a sudden, we hear on my TV someone say 'Who the Fuck is talking about Bill Clinton?' My wife was like, 'Can they hear us?' and I was like 'Apparently so...' She was mortified but I laughed my ass off and realized I should unplug the camera when I'm not using it. Anyways...that's my funny The Last of Us story and this is a game that everybody needs to experience. I can't wait for The Last of Us 2! 25. XCOM 2 Spoiler Shortly after I started playing XCOM, I realized I loved it and saw that XCOM 2 was coming out soon. I pre-ordered it immediately and was really hyped to see that it was coming out so shortly after I had played XCOM. I had no idea that XCOM 2 was even in the works and I just lucked out. Due to my preference of playing and finishing one game at a time...this sat on my shelf for a little bit until I finished up The Last of Us. This game was every bit as good as the original and actually improved in a lot of areas. I really liked that the base was now mobile; I liked the doomsday counter; I liked the added difficulty of the turn limit in the levels; I liked the changes to the soldier classes and I liked the challenge the trophy list provided. Beating the game buy July 1st in game was really challenging. You need some luck and a lot of planning to get that done. The first two DLC that came with the game were pretty tough as well, especially the Alien Hunters DLC. Those Alien Rulers get to move after each of you moves instead of only on the enemy turn. They can close the gap and do some serious damage in short order. The Viper one wasn't as bad, but the Berserker one was a pain in the ass for me. It took me a long time to beat that one since he is rather beefy. You need good spacing or he'll hurt a lot of your soldiers at once and end a run really quickly. Stun abilities help as well (if they land). The difficulty is really ramped up in this game compared to regular XCOM (in my opinion). The biggest downside to this game for me was the ridiculously long loading times. It wasn't so bad at the start, but the further into the game you get and the larger the save file gets, the longer the loading time is. I've heard they have fixed this dramatically, which is a great thing because I could understand some people not wanting to sit and wait. I was playing this game during the World Series between the Indians and the Cubs and there were times that a baseball half inning moved faster than the loading time to launch a mission. I will say that the loading times drastically affected my willingness to save scum and I tended to only use it in dire situations. I was really happy to see the final DLC that was released. First of all, it was really good and second of all it gave me a rare opportunity to be in the top 10 first achievers. The game was unpopular enough where I wasn't going to be competing against a thousand other people to be in the top 10 and my limited playtime never really gives the opportunity either. I took advantage and I'm happy to say that I am #8 Since I beat the game, I have seen that there is an exploit where you can eliminate the enemies having a turn. I understand that since it exists, there are people that will use it...and that is fine...to each their own...but I sincerely suggest that if you are going to add this game to your profile (which I think everyone should!) that you play through it legit. The game is too good to miss out on the whole experience and the anxiety that comes with a mission. Looking back on it...this game (specifically the final DLC) actually changed how I utilize PSNP and the community. While working to be in the top 10 first achievers, I saw that someone named @Cassylvania was playing at the same time as me (and ended up finishing before me!). I thought it was a really clever name and checked out the profile and saw that she had a lot of games that I had either played or wanted to play. I also saw that she had a trophy checklist thread, which is not something I knew about previously. I read it and lurked for a while until I saw that it was a group of similarly aged, like minded gamers and decided to post. I hadn't ever really posted on the forums here before and it wasn't something that I had planned on taking part in. I've since been a regular on the thread and through the conversations have signed up for several events that I probably never would have and played several games that I definitely never would have. I've also 'met' several other really nice people that have helped keep the website and the games interesting. Before Cassy's thread, I used the guides and only really checked my own profile. Trying to finish this game as a first achiever opened a lot of doors and changed the way I use the site. None of this last paragraph has anything to do with the game...but I thought it was interesting to note as I reflect back on this game. 26. Batman Spoiler I had never played a Telltale game before and really did not know much about them but I had played everything in the Arkham series so far and loved them so decided to pick this game up. I was a huge fan of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books when I was in elementary school. I want to say I was in 3rd grade when I discovered them and read everyone that our library had. Embarrassingly, I didn't realize that you were supposed to skip to different pages depending on your choices and the first time I read one had no idea what was going on. Luckily I had a friend explain to me what was clearly labeled in the stories that you had to skip to a page depending on your choice. After that, I found the books much more enjoyable I won't lie to you...on particularly challenging decisions, I would skip ahead to that page to see if it ended in my death before making my choice lol You don't really have that luxury in Batman since you don't know exactly when your choice may come back to bite you. I will say that I fell in love with Telltale games after this one. The game isn't perfect by any stretch and messed with the Batman canon quite a bit, but I found that just made the story much more unpredictable and unexpected. I will also say that I suck at doing what I want to do in these games lol I was trying to be as good/loyal to Harvey as possible, but ended up making choices that alienated him. I'm sure any choice I made would lead down that path due to who he inevitably becomes...but every time I made a choice, the response would make me go 'No! That's not how I meant it!' I've played several Telltale games since this and it's pretty consistent with me that I do this. While I didn't love all of the canonical liberties they took with the story...I will say that I did find it compelling and that I treat this as a stand alone alternate reality so that it doesn't affect my overall opinion like some others. I did read that a lot of people didn't like what they did, but I didn't end up minding. One thing I learned for sure with Telltale, is that I was going to wait for all episodes to be released before I bought the games. I don't like waiting to finish things. i don't like it with books, or TV series or anything really. With TV shows, I prefer to wait until the series is over and then binge watch as opposed to waiting weeks/months or even years (looking at you Game of Thrones) to see what's next. I learned that from reading Harry Potter. I resisted reading it for years because I thought it was a 'kids' series for nerds. My first job after college, I tended bar and waited tables at a Mexican Restaurant and was working with a bunch of people who were in their early twenties like me. They ALL loved the series and were planning an all-night release reading party for when the final book in the series was released. I called them all nerds and they all told me, that while it may be true they were nerds...I really had to read the series before I could comment. I said fair enough and read the first book. I thought, that was actually pretty good for a 'kids' book. I then read the next in the series and found myself having read the entire series up to the last book in about three weeks. I ended up loving the series and was now frustrated that I had to wait several months to read the conclusion. I decided after that to wait for things to be finished so that I could binge. I did it with Lost, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Alias and tons of other shows as well. I'm not in the know during the shows live run...but I get the full experience so I don't mind waiting. 27. Final Fantasy XV Spoiler I could write a book on how I feel about this game. This is the first Final Fantasy game I had pre-ordered since Final Fantasy X almost fifteen years prior. To say that the hype surrounding this game set it up to fail is an understatement. It was never going to live up to the expectations I had going into it. The saddest part about it was that, not only did it not live up to expectations...I found it quite mediocre. My favorite part of the whole game was driving in the car because I could hear the soundtracks of the previous entries in the series. I found the combat was too basic, using magic was extremely cumbersome and rarely worth it. The amount of fetch quests and hunts made this feel more like an MMO more than a console game. The story was disjointed and lacked context and I honestly didn't even really get into the 'bro' story. I felt some of it was actually pretty cringe-y. I blame SE for my initial reactions because, despite working on it for the better part of a decade...they still released it too soon. They kept releasing content over the course of 2 Years to make the incomplete game they released feel complete. This was the game/trophy list that just would not go away. The attempt at Multiplayer mostly fell flat and wasn't good enough to keep me going past the trophies and the premise was stupid and not fleshed out as well. Just collect a butt load of electricity.. Having said all that negative, I found myself enjoying it more as the DLC was released. It added some context and filled in some gaps. Honestly, SE should have waited and just released it as the Royal Edition and I think a lot of the complaints may have gone away. I ended up playing this game beyond the trophies and doing a lot of optional things when I went back to get the Datalog for DLC pack 6. The landscape is really breathtaking and it is a visually beautiful game to play. But there never really was any challenge to it. Basically all you need to do is Warp Attack until you're out of MP and then charge, mix in the Armiger attack when your meter is full, rinse and repeat. The best comparison I can make is how I felt about watching Kill Bill vol.1. I am a huge Pulp Fiction fan and I really enjoyed Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown as well. So when I hard Tarantino was coming out with another movie...I was stoked. I went into the theater expecting another movie with amazing dialogue and story and go none of that. The movie did not meet my expectations, so in my mind was terrible. If I had gone into the movie with an open mind or even understanding it was a tribute to exploitation films, I may have even liked it, but since it completely missed on what I was expecting, I can't imagine I will ever like it. I hated it so much I never even saw vol.2. FFXV is slightly different since I kept going back for more...but the comparison on expectations is pretty close. I will say that watching the movie Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive gave the story a ton more context and cleared quite a bit up for me...but I don't think people should have to watch a movie to understand the story of the game. I can't help but feel like SE knew there was a ton of hype and released the game/movie etc the way they did to milk as much money out of their customers as possible instead of focusing on making the game as great as its predecessors. Sadly, when I think of this game in ten years, I won't have the same fond memories that I have of literally every other game in the series. Being a Final Fantasy Fanboy, I will still buy whatever they put out that has Final Fantasy in the title, but all I can really say to that is shame on me. Because I was looking for reasons to love this game, i don't hate it...but it was very disappointing compared to what I was expecting. 28. Day of the Tentacle Remastered Spoiler This game is the first PS+ free game that I played. I have been a PS+ subscriber since I started trophy hunting, and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't even realize that there were free games until this one. My best friend from high school and I used to play this game together (among several other point and click games) and he mentioned to me that he heard it was free on PS right now. I looked and it sure was...I didn't even think to look if there were other games. I missed downloading a ton of games because I wasn't paying attention to what came with the service. I think I needed it to play one of my earlier games, so I subscribed and never really looked at it. I now 'buy' everything that is free, just in case. So this was a game I loved back in the day. They really did a great job updating the graphics, which you can tell because there is a mode that lets you play with the original graphics. My friend and I played this game so many times that I pretty much knew how to do everything and was able to blow through this pretty quickly. It was just as funny this time around as it was twenty years ago when I played it the first time. It's a quick game that has some fairly challenging puzzles since it involves sending items through the toilet through time to get the desired result. Enough trial and error will get you through it though. If you got it for free it is definitely worth playing. It's probably worth about a $5 investment at this point even if you didn't get it for free. Point and clicks are a little clunky without a mouse...but it isn't too bad in this game. If you are using a guide, you can get through the game in a few hours, but I recommend trying it once through by yourself. It's quick enough that a second playthrough isn't a killer. This title is a relax and play type game and should offer very little stress. To date (7/18/19) this is my fastest Platinum (however I plan to supplant that with The Wolf Among Us at somepoint! shhh!) 29. Adventures of Mana Spoiler I had bought a Vita in April of 2014 because I was working third shift in a Casino at the time and thought it'd help keep me awake during my break times at work. I played Welcome Park and then pretty much never brought it to work. We were not allowed to have 'Electronic Devices' in my area and I was always too nervous it'd get stolen so I never ended up bringing it to work and kind of forgot I had it. I had never played it at home because it would bother my wife to play games on a handheld while she was in the room. When she was pregnant with our second child, she acknowledged she watches some pretty garbage TV shows and said she didn't mind if I played the Vita while she watched her shows. With the green light to play, I had signed up for the Project Platinum: Final Fantasy and had completed all of the console games released to that point. I decided that I wanted to knock of the bonus game as well and made this game my first official Vita title. I had played the original Final Fantasy Adventure on my Game Boy waaaaay back in the early '90s. I admittedly remember next to nothing from the original, so can't say if it is a fair remake. This game was ok. It plays like the original Zelda on the NES and has very basic graphics and controls. The trophy list isn't terribly bad except for the trophies for getting level 99 in all stats and main level. The game is easily beaten well before that and it ends up being a boring grind of killing elephant enemies and running two screens away to respawn, then rinse and repeat. Fortunately it didn't take a terribly long time to do. The game served its purpose though...as basic and grind-y as it was, it was infinitely better than watching Are you the one? or Married at First Sight....there is no reason to pick up this game unless you love Zelda retro style games and/or are a part of an event and/or it is on sale. 30. Civilization Revolution 2 Plus Spoiler I loved the Civilization games as a kid. My father showed me the first Civilization game and I played it a ton on my PC. I played Civ 2 for a loooooooooooooooooong time. I almost always had a game going with my brother. I had connected our PC's with an IPX cable and I would play Civ 2 with him on the PC while playing my SNES or something on my TV. I never played any of the other games past Civ 2 however. I ended up getting into other, similar style games but were not turn based (WarCraft 2, Red Alert, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires) and then just moved onto console games almost exclusively. When I was looking for another Vita game to pick up after Adventures of Mana, this stood out to me. The game was ok. It was much more simplified from the PC version, but it was an adequate ode to the PC version. The trophy list was pretty annoying since you had to play completely through using each and every leader and win each possible way. In addition to that, you had to lose a game as Lenin. This trophy ended up being harder than it should have. I was trying to lose on purpose and for some reason, the enemy would not occupy my last remaining village/city when there were no troops present. They would just surround it. I don't remember exactly how I got them to attack...but it wasn't as easy as letting them just come and take over an undefended city. Getting all of the Great People to appear was also pretty challenging. The game was quite easy, but got to be monotonous...it was fine for playing while my wife watched TV. This game almost became my first incomplete...My save file was corrupted and I needed to start over. Fortunately, I had only done three or four leaders when it happened. Had it occurred later, after doing more leaders I might have said screw it. I had to redo those leaders for one trophy, but it ended up not being so bad. I'm a little disappointed this game ends up being one of my milestones because it was pretty unremarkable and the image is nothing special also. Hopefully, they will modify these or let us do it ourselves at some point. If it's on sale and you are looking for a fun, throwback TBS game, you could do worse than this. Platinums 31-40 Spoiler 31. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Spoiler As my wife became more and more pregnant, I spent a lot more time with her on the couch in case she needed anything...which meant I was exposed to a lot more bad TV...which meant I played more Vita games than normal during this time. Having been a huge fan of the Arkham series, I saw this game was available on the store and I had signed up for the Batman Project Platinum so figured I'd give it a go. The game isn't bad as a Vita game. It's a 2.5D side scroller where sometimes navigating gets a little confusing since you can't always tell exactly which way you are able to go or how the environment relates to the map. It was a little annoying to do 3 playthroughs since they are all the same with the only real difference being who you defeat last. You need to do this in order to get all of the armor/gear for the platinum. I didn't find the game to be very hard and only had some difficulty finding all of the collectibles. If I recall correctly, I had some challenges getting of the Black Masks. The battle mechanics do a decent job of mirroring the main games from the PS4, but overall the story is pretty meh. I find I need to temper my expectations when it comes to the handheld games. Obviously a game like Batman won't be anywhere near as good as on the main console. I enjoyed this game fine, but don't feel like it's something you need to go out of your way to play. I feel like Puzzle games, TBS games and Platformers are more suited to the Vita than action style games. 32. XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus Spoiler I really don't have much to add to this review. I absolutely loved this series, TBS games are fantastic on the Vita and this game didn't disappoint. The trophy list is much easier since it didn't require 5 playthroughs by starting at each possible zone. It took a little getting used to the slightly modified controls, but this game was perfect for the Vita. If you've never tried the XCOM series on the main consoles and have a Vita, I can't recommend this game enough. 33. World of Final Fantasy Spoiler This game was also part of the reason that I played a lot of Vita games in a row. I am a Final Fantasy fanboy from day 1 and I was drawn to this game based on the nostalgia. It looked cool how they were integrating characters from all the games and I was really looking forward to this. I was pretty disappointed. The characters are pretty childish/immature and I really didn't get attached to them at all. I thought it was a weird battle system and screwy that all the mirages stood on each others heads during battle. It was grindy and was just kind of a chore to finish. It was very easy to get distracted by other games. None of the grind was particularly hard or bad...it was just boring and the story and game play didn't bail out the grind. I also didn't like that you basically needed to have certain mirages in your party at all times due to a peripheral skill needed for roadblocks. Nothing was more annoying or a bigger waste of time than getting to an ice block only to not have a mirage that could melt the ice. You'd need to either use an item to change your mirages on fly, or return to a save spot to change them around. With all of the mirages available, that requirement really limited the actual amount of party variety you could use. Also the trophy for getting all of the treasure chests sucked. There was no counter to let you know how many were in a zone so if you missed one, you literally had to go back and check each one. I missed one and wasted a solid hour looking for it. I thought they did well enough with the Final Fantasy characters, and that was a little fun, but I would say this game is in the bottom third of games I've played. I don't really watch Anime and the Chibi characters weren't really my thing. I could see where people would like this game, it just wasn't for me. This game is only a super sale kind of game in my opinion. 34. Horizon Zero Dawn Spoiler This game is probably one of the best games I've played. I knew nothing about it going in, but saw on the PSNP front page how many people were playing it and that everyone generally loved it. I had no idea what to expect, but decided to buy it based on the PSNP hype. I was not disappointed. I know a lot of people ended up complaining that it was a typical open world game that didn't introduce anything new, but I hadn't played a ton of open world games and I absolutely loved this story. From start to finish, I couldn't stop playing this game. While it's probably true, there was nothing game play-wise that was revolutionary, I found the controls to be very fluid and the game was really fun and easy to play. I tend to play these style games with a bow mostly stealth. I didn't use the spear a ton during my first playthrough. I really enjoy the stealth aspect of these games. Once you learn the weak spots on the enemies, they are pretty easy to take down. There were a few monsters that were pretty challenging and there is a lot of kiting and fleeing involved. What really set this game a part for me was the story. I love the sci-fi genre and I thought this was such an interesting concept. I don't always read all of the lore in these games that are collectible, but I did stop to read all of these. This was also a game where I thought the DLC was completely worth it. My first playthrough on this game really wasn't hard at all. The game is very forgiving as the checkpoints are relatively frequent and once you get the force field armor, you really have to try to die. Having said that, I nearly screwed myself on my NG+ Ultra Hard playthrough. I inadvertently started the end game sequence with no healing potions or anything and died...a lot. Once the sequence starts, you can't leave it...at least as far as I know. It was really challenging, getting to the different check points and if they weren't so generous with the checkpoints, I may have needed to start over. It took me a few hours to get through the whole ending sequence...in hindsight, I probably had a save file on the cloud I could have downloaded that was from before the final boss sequence...but I didn't think of it at the time. Aloy is one of my favorite protagonists in a game of all time and I can't wait to see a sequel. 35. Grand Theft Auto III 36. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 37. Persona 4 Golden 38. SteamWorld Heist 39. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 40. Madden NFL 18 Platinums 41-50 Spoiler 41. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age 42. Final Fantasy IX 43. South Park: The Fractured But Whole 44. Demon's Souls 45. Dark Souls 46. God of War 47. A Hat in Time 48. Batman: The Enemy Within 49. Valkyria Chronicles 50. The Banner Saga Platinums 51-60 Spoiler 51. Pic-a-Pix Color 52. Fe 53. Tales from the Borderlands 54. MLB The Show 18 55. Mulaka 56. Wolfenstein: The New Order 57. The Dwarves 58. Guardians of the Galaxy 59. Ratchet & Clank 60. Until Dawn Platinums 61-70 Spoiler 61. Middle-earth: Shadow of War 62. Eekeemoo: Splinters of Dark Shard 63. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze 64. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 65. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse 66. Batman: Return to Arkham Asylum 67. LEGO The Hobbit 68. Yomawari: Night Alone 69. Catherine 70. The Wolf Among Us Platinums 71-80 Spoiler 71. Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood 72. Burly Men At Sea 73. Chaos on Deponia 74. Marvel's Spider-Man 75. Valkyria Chronicles 4 76. Grim Fandango Remastered 77. Blackwood Crossing 78. Murdered: Soul Suspect 79. The Banner Saga 2 80. The Banner Saga 3 Platinums 81-90 Spoiler 81. Hidden Agenda 82. Rayman Legends 83. Kingdom Hearts 84. Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories Spoiler So fun fact about me...I don't do a ton of research into a game before I play it. I'll look at the trophy list to see if there are any unobtainables or anything and maybe check a Metacritic rating...but I don't watch Youtube videos or anything. With regards to CoM, I had heard that the battles used cards so I was expecting a turn based card game when it came to the battle system. I enjoy that concept and was kind of looking forward to this game since I hadn't played anything like that since I played a Magic the Gathering game on the PC about 20 years ago. I was very disappointed when I saw that the battles were action with a weird card system. I absolutely hated it out of the gate. Because you don't have a ton of cards to start and no good sleights, and I read that you should only really use sleights...there were several battles where I had only one card left. I spent 25 minutes fighting one Fat Bandit in Agrabah before I could kill it. I had one attack card that was a 4 and it took forever for me to be able to get behind it AND attack without the attack being blocked or broken. I didn't run because there's a trophy for not running, and I didn't restart because it had been over an hour since I had saved and I didn't want to lose that progress. I thought I was going to really hate this game after that. Much to my surprise, I ended up enjoying the game. Once I got enough cards and CP where that Fat Bandit situation couldn't happen again and I started unlocking sleights, I found myself really enjoying the battle system. I found the game itself to be relatively easy. Some of the sleights are stupidly overpowered and most of the boss fights, the enemy never even got an attack in. While the story was somewhat of a rehash of the first game, it was interesting enough to keep me involved. I will say that I'm already sick of every cut-scene or dialogue box referring to their 'hearts'. I mean, I get the game is called Kingdom Hearts, but every thing that is said talks about the strength of their hearts or the memories in their hearts...it got a little tired for me. Playing as Riku was a fun addition I thought, however they kind of mailed in his story a bit. The maps are half the size and there is very little dialogue. While I enjoyed playing as Riku more, I found finishing him off to be more of a chore. I beat the game at level 51 and needed to farm 48 levels afterwards for the Level Master Riku trophy. Farming xp was much easier as Sora since the maps were larger and you didn't need to leave the zone to reset the maps nearly as often. I know you can run from a fight with only one monster left and keep fighting the same mob over and over again....but I found that require too much attention. I wanted to farm the xp while watching movies and I needed to pay too much attention for that. Things I didn't like: Xp disappearing if you didn't get it fast enough. I also didn't like that with some of Sora's sleights where you throw the weapon, it wouldn't go any higher if it was a flying enemy. You could target the flying enemy, and throw your sword and it would just sail underneath them. It wasn't game breaking or anything, but just a nuisance. Overall the trophy list isn't terrible. I was relatively lucky farming the Enemy cards with only the Black Mushroom and the Large Body taking me a few hours each. The rest I got within 30 minutes or so. The level 99 ones suck only because they require so much additional farming after you've completed the game to achieve. While it's not a game I feel like I ever need to play again, I did end up having fun with it and am looking forward now to the next playable game in the series. 85. Kingdom Hearts II Spoiler So if I'm being honest with myself, I tried really hard to like KH1 and Re:CoM. They really haven't aged well and I didn't have the nostalgia draw since I had never played them as a kid. Anytime there was a reason to say 'this is good!' I jumped on it because I wanted to like them. But overall, I just didn't like them that much. KH1 was better than Re:Com, but neither was great. Nothing illustrates that point more than how awesome KH2 is. They took a cool concept for a game and just improved exponentially on everything. The story is still pretty convoluted, however I had so much more fun playing. The only area I could have done without was Atlantica...that area felt like a waste of time and added nothing to the overall story. As far as the story...how can all the characters remember him and he remember them...but they forget the circumstances where they met? It's almost like Ground Hog Day the way the story works in this series...moving on! I did just one playthrough on Critical and finished the game in just under 60 hours and that time just flew by. It felt like a good book where you say 'just one more chapter before bed' and I stayed up past my bedtime several times because I just wanted to finish something up. The collectibles weren't terrible and the drop rates seemed much better in this game so I only had to spend minimal time farming materials. The battle system is great fun with the addition of the different Drive Forms. It's more fluid and seamless and Sora is pretty bad-ass when he gets a combo going. The Gummi missions are way more fun and visually stimulating. Building a ship is still pretty confusing when you start out, but much improved from KH1. The donut ship makes most of those trophies a breeze. Playing through the story on Critical wasn't bad at all and I found that the normal enemies killed me more often than bosses did. I was able to finish the main story at level 49, which actually worked out well because I was able to combine farming synth materials with leveling up Drive Forms and going after the collectibles. By the time I hit level 99, all I really had left to do was the Replica Data Battles and a couple of Coliseum runs. I beat Sephiroth at level 74 and the trophy guide was kind of confusing to me for that one. It says that Sephiroth is harder the higher level you are, but it is recommended to beat him at level 99 . It took me about 10-15 tries, but I got it done at 74 just in case he actually is harder at 99. The toughest battle in the whole game for me was the Replica Data Battle (I'll use their numbers to avoid potential spoilers) against number III...in most battles, you can change into a Drive Form in case of emergency and kind of get your bearings again. I tend to revert out of Drive Form pretty quickly so that I can use it again as a safety net, but you can't really do that in the number III fight. You really need to stick to the mechanics of the fight and the margin for error is super slim. It seemed my 'Jumps' would reflect off his Aero Shield and I would hover above him instead of doing damage...I beat every other fight in 5 tries or less, but number III took me a solid 30 tries...he also caused me to make a pretty annoying mistake... So to enter the Replica Battles, you click on the numbered doorway you wish to fight, and press then . After you die you press to continue or then to load a previous game. After one particularly frustrating battle with number III, where I had him to about two health bars left for the win, I got stun locked and died. I was super annoyed and instinctively press and spammed to continue and try again....well that ended up loading my previous save....I had thought I had saved after I had beaten number I, however apparently I just zoned to save my gear changes. When I returned to the Data Replica room, I saw it was even worse than that. I now had to redo numbers I, II, V, VII, and XI Fortunately I had the confidence that I had already done it...but it was a bit demoralizing after my challenges with number III. If I hadn't made that mistake, I would have probably gotten the Platinum last night. I can't recommend this game enough. I would say that Critical isn't so hard that the Platinum should be done in only one playthrough...there are some frustrating moments for sure...but I shaved 30 hours off of the suggested time it takes to win. I've heard that Birth By Sleep is the best in the series...it's got big shoes to fill for me if it is going to beat KH2. 86. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Spoiler I finished up BBS yesterday and I really enjoyed this entry as well. I still think that KH2 was the better game to play, but the story in this one was the best they have put out so far. At first I thought it was going to be annoying to playthrough the same game three times with different characters, however they did it well. I played in the recommended order of Terra ~> Ventus ~> Aqua. When playing as Terra, you could see why he would feel the way he did toward Aqua by the end and I had a hard time understanding Aqua's perspective. Getting to play as Aqua, you got to see how she developed her impression of what was happening to Terra and that it was more from concern than lack of trust. Playing through the story three times from different perspectives made the story much more compelling and I was more attached to these characters than I have been to any of the others so far. It was also nice to see how the wheels of the whole series were set in motion. While playing through the story three times was a treat...having to complete the Reports for all three was quite a bit tedious since there really was nothing new to add after you've done them once. I kind of wish I did Terra's story then completed his Reports before moving onto Ventus, because by the time I finished up the last of Aqua's reports, I was two weeks removed from the story and I'm sure I'm forgetting some details. I already ranted enough about the Mysterious Figure fight as Terra in a previous post, however it was light years easier as Ventus and Aqua. I spent about two hours with Terra, dying around 100 times or so before I won and then beat MF on my first try with Ventus and second try with Aqua. The invulnerability while rolling/cart wheeling makes the fight almost a joke. The other thing I thought that KH2 did better was the battle system. I enjoyed the different Drive Forms much more than the command menu. I can't help but feel that SE wants to prove that the battle system from CoM is a good one, so they keep bringing it back in some form. Don't get me wrong, this is much better than CoM and the card system...but cycling through commands and having cool downs is a little annoying in the heat of battle and I found their shortcut menu from the previous games flowed much better during combat. I'm hoping they do more with Terra, Ventus and Aqua in the later games because they have become my favorite characters in the series. That might be blasphemy because of Sora...but I don't find him as relate-able. He is all good and pure and naive, with no real flaws to speak of whereas I could really empathize with the BBS crew. That's not to say I don't like Sora and Riku, I just haven't been as into the story as much prior to BBS. Overall, the only really difficult trophy was the MF fight as Terra. The Maestro trophy wasn't as bad as I was anticipating and everything else was really manageable. I did it all on Critical so was able do to this in one playthrough. Similar to KH2, I think critical affected the regular monsters more so than the bosses. I probably did the game in about 85-90 hours. Couple of notes for you if you want to play BBS that might speed things up. The rubber band trick does work on PS4 with the EXP walker. Apparently on the PS3 release, your character would stop walking after a couple of minutes, but that isn't the case with the PS4 release. While I went to work, I used the trick a couple of days for each of character and was able to get quite a few levels. It doesn't help a ton as far as surviving, since everything does a ton of damage, but it does help tremendously as far as the damage you do so it can make the fights much quicker. I found Ventus and Aqua to be especially hard early on as their weapon seemed like a wet noodle more than a Key Blade. The other big thing I found out is that Magnega + Thundaga will pretty much kill everything and keep you safe. My farming deck (when going for Commands and Abilities) was 3 Magnena + 4 Thundaga + 1 Curaga (just in case) and I virtually never got touched. The only enemies that do not get sucked into Magnega are the Wild Bruiser in Neverland and the bosses. I also used this deck to help breeze through the Mirage Arena battles (except the big boss fights I used the Thunder Surge/Curaga decks). I feel like that deck helped shave a ton of time off the hours needed to complete the Reports. Despite the grind, I really enjoyed this game overall and I'm really hoping they keep up the momentum with these last few games. I started DDD and I'm a little concerned.... 87. KIngdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Spoiler Seven down...two to go. My first impressions of this entry into the series weren't that great. I liked the idea of dropping, however it created this false sense of urgency and I was rushing in the beginning. I also found the flow-motion battle method to be too crazy. You move so much faster and it was hard to keep the camera angle in a way that was good for combat. It took quite a bit of getting used to. I also was frustrated by the introduction of yet another layer of convolution to the story and the addition of more (unnecessary in my mind) characters. After finishing the game, I'm still not sure what purpose they served. The 'pets' were also a weird addition in my mind. There was nothing like it previously and they ended up getting in the way more than they helped. More than once they pushed me off the edge of something because they displace you when they run into you and for some reason...they love running into you. Having said all that, I ended up really enjoying this game as well. Once I figured out to slow down and basically ignore the Drop Timer, I started to appreciate the story a bit more and the things the game did well more. Combat was still fairly fluid and, even though I didn't love the 'pets', they added a different wrinkle to earning your abilities. It was a little annoying that the only active blue abilities were the one's that were activated on your current 'pets', but it wasn't too bad. The mini games weren't bad, mostly because there wasn't a lot of them. Flick Rush kind of sucked, but it was easy enough. This mini-game alone is proof of my theory that SE wants to prove the battle system from Re: CoM is a good one. This mini game is basically a version of that battle system, except you can't control the movements of the PC's. It takes a little getting used to and patience is actually key, because if you just spam your cards, you'll run out and get smacked around pretty quickly. I waited on Flick Rush until I got Mega Flare and then just breezed through it since it wasn't a great mini-game. This game went all Inception with its concept and was getting really, really confusing...I don't know how any kid is going to follow what the hell is going on, but whatever lol I will give this game credit, because once you hit the last battles...it pretty much spells out in crayon what is going on (which is entirely needed in my opinion.) I didn't love the way they chose to get to the backstory, but it was pretty good once they did. I'm still not sure I understand the motivation of the bad guy...but it's fine...I gave up trying to understand this story a while ago lol. The battle system is very similar to BBS with the addition of Flow Motion and 'pets' and the subtraction of Shot Locks. It still uses the command menu and Thundaga and Balloon are the broken abilities in this game. I really liked the concept of the Dropping...I just think they executed it poorly. On two separate ocassions I dropped in the middle of a boss fight (some enemies have the ability to speed up the timer.) One such instance was in the middle of round 2 of the final boss fight. THAT was really annoying since I had no concept of how long that fight would last. I had the boss to less than half a bar of health and dropped and needed to start all over again. If you could choose when to drop and/or there were artificial blocks in the game that forced you to drop it would have been more fun...but dropping mid-fight sucked. I feel like I've had more negative things to say than positive, but I really did end up having fun with this game. It has more warts than KH2 and BBS, but it is still a fun game. If KH2 was a 9/10 and BBS an 8.5/10...this was probably about a 7/10. I see some light at the end of this tunnel 88. Kingdom Hearts III Spoiler I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with this game. Visually, it was beautiful. The different worlds were bigger than ever and the graphics were majorly upgraded from the prior games. The different worlds were also pretty fun to play individually...the problem with this game is that it is not a stand alone game and is a part of something much bigger. While the individual zones were cool to play...they mostly felt like a waste of time since they truly added nothing to the overarching story for the series. That story really doesn't start to progress until you get to the last world and they start putting the pieces together (until they nuke those pieces to bits...) The best comparison I can make is that Kingdom Hearts III reminded me a lot of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3...when I was watching Spider-Man 3, I remember thinking...'this movie isn't that bad...why did it get such bad reviews' until you got to the exact moment when you were like 'oh...yeah now I see what people were saying' The whole time I was playing this, I was thinking 'this isn't that bad' and then I got to a part where I went 'whyyyyyyyyyyy??' The other big problem I had with the game was the shear amount and length of the cut-scenes. Each world had like a ten minute intro and each world had like a ten minute ending with several other cut-scenes littered throughout. While it was annoying how long they were...they were at least trying to explain everything that had happened so far, which is a big change from the prior entries. But this decision is the crux of why this game was disappointing. They spent the majority of the regular game explaining/rehashing everything that had happened to that point before moving the story along...this game could have been epic if they let you play someone other than Sora. I would have loved to have them mirror what they did in BBS by having you play through the game with multiple characters. I don't think they should have made you play through this game with each character...but it would have been fun to have an episode or two for each of them to bring it all together. So the game itself...combat was much improved from DDD. I like how they brought the customization part back for spells and items as it made the battles more fluid. The worlds are spacious and very detailed with a lot more to explore. I especially enjoyed being a Captain of my own ship. The game felt a lot easier than prior installments...probably since I played the game on normal instead of Critical since I just wanted to relax and enjoy this entry. If they add a trophy that requires critical...I'll probably be disappointed I went the easy way...but I'm glad I didn't stress myself out over the difficulty. I wish they weren't doing a DLC and just released the game completely when it was done...but that isn't the way things are anymore. Releasing a complete game is just crazy...I'll play anything that comes out in the future to see where the story goes...but it'll be more out of curiosity than excitement. So until the DLC comes out...my profile has all the KH games in order...in the words of George W Bush....Mission Accomplished! 89. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry Spoiler I had bought this game out of pure Nostalgia. It was one of the first games I played on a PC back with my father on an orange and black, monochrome screen. I was too little to know what was going on back then, but I used to remember giggling over the dumb stuff you could try and have Larry do. None of it worked, but I had a giggle. Plus I enjoyed playing at the Casino in that game. The phrase 'Ken Sent Me' has been with me for a long time from Larry. The game I spent the most time with was Leisure Suit Larry: Shape up or Slip out. My buddy and I used to play this in Middle School/High School and it was always funny. I never played any of the other games, but I was getting a little worn down with my KH series run and felt I could use something lighthearted and easy to break it up a bit. Plus, I felt like a Larry trophy would make a nice milestone I was originally going to go with Grab her by the Pixel, but I was too close to the milestone to make this one work...so instead I went with this image of a dildo (I'll grow up after Middle School...I swear!) This game was just what the doctor ordered. It was really very funny (especially if you have a juvenile sense of humor) and actually had quite a bit of social commentary. The gist of the game is that Larry was placed in stasis in the 80's and wakes up in the current time period. He is out of touch and naive. But armed with his Leisure Suit, PiPhone and rapist wit...he is ready to tackle the modern day dating scene using the Timber dating app. He needs to get enough Timber points on his profile before the girl of his dreams will go on a date with him. Travel by Taxi has been replaced by using the Unter app and Larry gets in several situations where hilarity ensues. The amount of phallic and Fah Gina images in each screen is insane and sometimes clever. The puzzles aren't terribly hard since your inventory never gets that big and there is a pretty good guide on playstationtrophies.org. I used the guide to see what area I should be in, but tried to solve all the puzzles by myself. I only needed to peak a handful of times. Other than the game ending pretty abruptly and Larry's voice being on the annoying side (which is kind of the point but...), I really have no complaints. It took a little getting used to the controls, but it really wasn't so bad. I had to play the EU version since the NA version didn't end up getting released for some reason. It's definitely worth a playthrough, but there is nothing so earth shatteringly new that it can't wait for a good sale. 90. Life is Strange Spoiler I seem to be on an SE kick considering the next two games on my list. I picked up Life is Strange on a super sale a while back and have been meaning to play it for a while. I really enjoy the 'choose your own adventure' style of game and I had heard this was a good one. I also had picked this game on my Bingo card AND it gives me a '3' for my Gaming by Numbers badge. After the marathons that were KH...I was ready for something laid back and relaxing...DO YOU HEAR THAT SE...RELAXING!!!! So anyways....this game was not relaxing lol It wasn't hard by any stretch of the imagination, but damn...I don't think any of the decisions you get to make were a layup. It felt like you were constantly choosing between getting kicked in the shins or kicked in the balls. Thankfully there was the rewind option because I made the wrong choice (for me) several times. I thought that was an awesome mechanic too that you could learn something from a conversation, rewind, and then use that newfound information to extract even more information. While I really can't relate much to a couple of 18 year old girls, I really enjoyed the chance to play a game from that perspective. Max is super intense and extremely empathetic (at least how I played her) and I really liked her character throughout. It didn't really fit her character that she would ignore Chloe for 5 years...but I let that slide. Chloe got on my nerves quite a bit. I tend to avoid confrontation if I can and am generally a rule follower...not necessarily because I'm a goodie two-shoes or anything, but because I find there's a lot less drama that way and it's much easier to just do what you're supposed to. I'm not very spontaneous and probably not a ton of fun because of that...but it's easier to blend into the background that way So I had even less in common with Chloe and she was mostly a hella pain in the ass (I ef'n HATE when people say hella...except for Cartman....it was funny when he did it) I played through the game without a walkthrough and explored the shit out of every area before moving on and was able to take all of the pictures without having to replay anything. One of my favorite parts was when I searched the TV in Victoria's room and Max imagines herself watching Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on the flat screen and says something like "I don't care that nobody liked that movie...it was awesome!" I had to give credit to SE for poking fun at themselves there. I called the big plot twist, but I wouldn't say the game is predictable or anything. The story got a little convoluted towards the end and I don't think they explained why it needed to end the way it did very well...but overall it was a very emotional game that I enjoyed quite a bit. My favorite part of these games is seeing the stats at the end of all the decisions everyone else made. It's always interesting to see how my choices compare to others and which is more common. Over a quarter of a million people registered on this site have already played this, so I'm not breaking any new ground with this game...but if you haven't played it yet...it is definitely worth a playthrough. Platinums 91-100 Spoiler 91. Life is Strange: Before the Storm Spoiler I played this immediately after LiS and I did not like this one as much. It was a bit shorter and it follows a character I really didn't like much. I ended up playing Chloe as a very aggressive, abrupt and honest person, which (other than the honest part) is not in my nature. It was a little liberating being an asshole to everyone, and based on the percentages at the end of the episodes...most people didn't play her that way so I got to see the game slightly different than most. I ended up softening up with her a bit towards the end because I felt she was impulsive, not evil and I couldn't make all the mean choices. I also didn't like her counterpart Rachel as much as I liked Max and I felt like the character development wasn't as well fleshed out in this one. They go from strangers to soulmates in about 20 minutes and it was a little farfetched. I mean to their credit they kind of acknowledge it...but this could have used a couple more episodes to build that relationship. I will say that by the end, I liked Chloe more than I did when it started. My favorite part of this game was getting to play the tabletop RPG. It was really pretty fun. This story was much more predictable than the first and I don't think it was told as well. It was a much more believable story and still had a lot of tough decisions filled with emotional impact...but it just wasn't as crisp. It isn't a bad game by any stretch, however I much preferred taking pictures with Max as opposed to the graffiti with Chloe. While not as good as LiS, it wasn't a bad prequel and this game is also usually on a super sale and you could definitely do worse. If you like the 'choose your own adventure' style, it's worth a playthrough. 92. Forgotton Anne Spoiler To keep going with my depressing run of story lines, I add Forgotton Anne to the mix. It wasn't as depressing as the last three games, but it was not without difficult decisions and multiple possible endings. I really liked the concept of this game and thought it was a pretty clever story. The game takes place in a forgotten realm, and the inhabitants are called forgotlings. There are those that are trying to bridge the gap from the forgotten world to the real world, and those that are trying to preserve their home. Anne is trying to decide which side she belongs to. There are some great characters and some fun dialogue. My favorite character was Chief Inspector Magnum. I loved his voice and he reminded me of Eric Cartman in the episode where the boys are playing Detective. The game did a great job of making the character match the name and appearance to their role. The platforming was not very crisp and caused a few instances of frustration, but there isn't a ton of platforming required so it wasn't a huge deal. If there wasn't a few 'racing' trophies that required crisp platforming, it wouldn't have been an issue at all. The puzzles are relatively basic (I didn't use a guide for these parts) but do present some challenge. I don't believe you can die, so it's not particularly hard otherwise. The biggest drawback to the game is that the trophy list pretty much requires you to use a guide if you want to get the platinum. Most of the trophies you can go back and collect after winning (I missed one even with using a guide!), however there are two game-spanning trophies that make it a necessity. It's a short game, so it is easily possible to do a blind playthrough and then use a guide for the Pacifist and Empathic trophies. Since we only have a week left for the Gaming By Numbers event, I didn't have the luxury of taking my time if I wanted to finish all my games. Fortunately, the guide I used was relatively spoiler free. A lot of the trophies require specific responses, so it's not totally spoiler free...but I was still surprised during most of the story and enjoyed the game quite a bit It reminded me of The Banner Saga as far as the artwork and the Pacifist trophy as Alette, but that's where those comparisons end. If you can get this game for less than $10, it is worth picking up. It's pretty short otherwise and probably not worth playing unless you can get it on sale. 93. Hitman GO: Definitive Edition Spoiler I had originally bought this game to play on my Vita, however my Vita backlog keeps extending since Space Hulk is taking forever. I needed a '7' for Gaming By Numbers and I figured now was a good time to give it a try. The exceptionally high completion percentage is usually something I steer clear of, however I really do like puzzle games and I wasn't going to go the cheap way and follow a guide so I didn't worry about it. I had no idea what to expect when I started it and I was really pleasantly surprised. The game plays like a chess game where Hitman (not sure if he has a real name) is like the King piece and can move 1 place in any direction (except diagonal) and each of the enemy types follows a specific pattern. There is no randomness to the maps or the movements so there is always a specific solution. You can find other solutions on some maps by drawing things out, however the maps are all pretty small and it doesn't take a ton of time to figure out what you need to do. These puzzles were more challenging than those in Hue, but they weren't terribly complex save a few maps. The biggest drawback was that each map has three objectives and two of them are almost always at odds with one another so you have to repeat the same maps. One objective may be kill all enemies before clearing and the other may be kill none. One objective may be to finish the grid in a max number of turns while the other is to collect a briefcase and you can't do one without voiding the other. While at first the game was quite fun, it ended up getting repetitive pretty quickly. There isn't a ton of variety and once you get a hang of the mechanics, it really isn't bad. I probably would have enjoyed this game more playing on my Vita and spreading it out over a longer period of time. If I ever play Lara Croft GO, I'll probably go that route. This game had no story, which is fine since it didn't pretend to. The game is great for what it is. If you are just interested in the trophies, you could easily get this game done in a couple of hours following a video guide. It took me probably about 4 or 5 hours on my own. If you like puzzle games, you'll probably enjoy this game. If not, you should find something else. 94. Tekken 7 Spoiler I saw Tekken 7 on a decent sale on the Playstation Store and it caught my eye. The last Fighting genre game I really played was Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES. I did have the Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub Zero game on the N64...but I didn't play it a ton and don't really think that would count anyways. I always used to play with my brother or best friend sitting next to me and enjoyed it. I was best with Ryu or Ken, but was able to beat the game on the hardest settings with everyone except Dhalsim. He was just too slow and I could never beat Vega with him. Anyways, I saw this game on sale and figured I'd give the fighting genre a try. The trophy list didn't look impossible for me and this seemed like it could be a good re-entry into the genre. I cannot give this game a fair review because I learned that I do not like fighting games lol I don't think this is a bad game per say, I just found it complicated and boring. If it wasn't for the assist moves, I may have never won a fight. For someone who doesn't play fighting games, this was just overwhelming to learn. There are about 40 characters, with different moves (similarly executed though) and just a lot of nuance. I ended up playing as Marshall Law (get it!?) since he reminded me of Liu Kang and his Rage move seemed to be the easiest to learn. I spent a ton of time in the practice mode trying to get comfortable with the different moves and found myself getting frustrated on not having Law do what I was expecting him to do. The timing on some of the moves is really quick and others not so much. So to simplify, my move set ended up being hold L1, press to double backflip kick to launch the opponent, keep holding L1 and press for a double punch move, keep holding L1 and press for a double kick move to finish the combo. Occasionally mix in a quick jab flurry, sweep the leg or grapple the opponent...then just block until you have an opening. Really repetitive...The main story of the game is really thin, however I've never played a Tekken game before so I have no idea what was going on or if it is a good continuation. I just know Heihachi and Akuma are pretty badass. I played on the easiest setting to limit my frustration and mowed through both the story mode and individual character stories. It only took me an hour or so to be crowned a Warrior through the treasure mode as well...online play was a different story. I tried to get the tournament trophy done first and got smoked several times. Even though I searched for people of a similar rank, I inevitably ended up fighting people with hundreds of wins in tournament play. In one tournament, I got matched up against someone with 9997 wins...I was standing there proudly with my 0 wins and got my ass handed to me. I almost won twice in other matches against closer ranked people and got disconnected both times due to the host of the tournament quitting out. That was pretty frustrating. I ended up getting the trophy for doing 10 online matches before ever winning one. I finally won a tournament match when I decided to host the tournament so I didn't have to worry about the host quitting out. Fortunately, everyone that entered the tournament was with 5 wins or less and I came out victorious in not one but two matches. The player mode and rank match mode I ended up winning back to back fights to finish up the Platinum. Thankfully the trophy list was really easy so I can move on and not feel trapped. I just found the game boring and extremely repetitive. I'm sure if I took the time to develop my skills, I might enjoy it more...but who has time for that? I won't say this game was bad, because it might actually be good...but I don't anticipate myself buying another fighting game anytime soon. 95. Game of Thrones Spoiler I was a person that waited to watch Game of Thrones until the final season. I have no patience to wait week to week or years to see the next episode. I waited until Lost, Dexter, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and a few other shows ran their course before binge watching the whole series in a few weeks. I think it is different with sitcoms since they don't generally carry over week to week nor end on crazy cliffhangers. But these major drama shows I tend to wait. I picked this game up due to a little bit of a perfect storm of things. First, I have enjoyed the Telltale games and had this on my radar. Second, I had just finished binge watching the series and it was fresh in my mind. Third, it had just been announced slightly after the series concluded that Telltale games would be de-listed. I knew I wanted to play it and was afraid I would lose that opportunity if I didn't pick the game up right away. I didn't want to worry about the digital version so went to Amazon to see what the physical game would cost. The PS3 version was like $20 cheaper so I went with that one...I kind of wish I splurged for the PS4 version... The PS3 version was really just a choppy mess. My first hint that the game would not be a smooth adventure was the nearly five minute loading time to even get to the episode selection screen. It was another few minutes before the story started. The game never froze or closed on me and every trophy popped when it should have so hurrah for them....but the choppiness of the scenes, especially in Episode 6 is nearly unforgivable. The story is very high drama and the frame rates just killed any sense of suspense. The QTE sections didn't seem terribly affected by it in that I never missed a command prompt due to the drops in frame rate...but that was a small consolation. The graphics were also quite poor. The characters didn't seem very crisply drawn and the voices never seemed to match up with the mouth movements. As bad as the game play and graphics were...the story was actually quite compelling. It was very fitting of a Game of Thrones entry and the amount of tough decisions and terrible things that seemed to happen didn't disappoint. I can't say I was very satisfied with how the story ended up...but that is true to the series as I don't feel there were very many instances in the show where everything seemed to work out and/or felt satisfying. My only real gripe with the story was that it was most definitely setup to have a sequel that will more likely than not, never happen. You'll need to use your imagination to figure out what happens. If I could do it over again, I would play the PS4 version because the game play has to be crisper and the story was good enough that I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more. If you liked Game of Thrones and like the Telltale style of game play, this is definitely worth a play through on the PS4...if you don't, you could probably skip this one. 96. Space Hulk Spoiler I'm home from New Hampshire and have had time to wrap my head around the fact it's finally over This platinum has tested me more than any game prior and I'm really proud of myself for not giving up. I learned something that will hopefully help others if they choose to tackle this abomination of a game. You must save and back out to the main menu for your undo kills to count. I learned the very hard way, that saving is not enough. For my first 46,000 kills, I would save and then press the PS button on my vita and swipe closed the game to reset the lag. None of those kills count. I have to really tip my cap to @Rally-Vincent--- for bringing it to my attention that swiping to quit out may not count my kills. I was about to give up before that glimmer of hope. I had originally planned on not saving and quitting out at all and just grind through the lag, but when I got to about 24,000 kills it became too much. I was only getting like 200 kills an hour with the lag and I didn't want to waste anymore time than I had to. I google searched and saw a comment on the trophy at playstationtrophies.org that specifically mentions you must quit to the main menu for the kills to count...I figured it was worth a try so I saved...quit to the main menu and reloaded the save. To my extreme pleasure, it removed the lag and to my even more extreme pleasure, I was able to get closer to 700 kills per hour with the eliminated lag. Having no idea how many of my prior kill attempts actually counted (I had quit to the menu a handful of times and finished the level a couple of times to check progress) but was assuming I'd need somewhere around 36,000 but was going to go to 45,000 just to be sure. I'm happy to say that the trophy dinged when the calculator on my phone said 31,449 kills I can, with pretty good confidence, confirm that the undo method works and that you must save and exit to the main menu for the kills to count. Now...onto the game itself. It is really close to actually being a pretty fun TBS game that requires some good strategy and a decent challenge. What kills it is how slow and laggy the game gets really quickly. It borders on unplayable at some points due to this. It is also unclear when you need to use the touch screen and when you can use the controls to do certain activities. It took me quite a while to figure this stuff out. Saving and loading for example is via the touch screen...attacking and undoing is via the controls...rerolling is via the touch screen and so on. This adds another element of clunkiness that is just no fun. Maybe the controls are better on the main console...but it is pure garbage for the Vita. It is also very clear that this game is incomplete and will never be finished. There are game modes in the menu that you just can't access. The only thing it has going for it was that it was a free game. It is not particularly hard and just needs a lot of patience to complete. Honestly, if I'd known about the saving and backing out to the main menu, I would have finished this game over a year ago...as it turns out I probably put 130+ hours into this. I don't feel too bad about it since the majority of that time I was doing something else. I'd play it casually while watching TV and never spent a second playing this game exclusively so don't feel quite as bad about the time commitment. I can't in good conscience recommend this, but if you want an easy UR game...this could be ok....just be warned that it mostly sucks lol 97. LA Noire Spoiler Another day, another Platinum. I had never played the original LA Noire, however I had heard great things and I have liked all the previous Rockstar games I've played so plucked this one from my backlog. LA Confidential is one of my favorite movies and this game seemed like it may feel similar. There was only one nod to the movie that I noticed...the Homicide captain was eerily similar, eh boyo? For the most part, I really enjoyed this game. I did use a guide to avoid having to replay all the missions a second time for the 5 star rating. This is a rare game where I feel like using the guide actually enhances the game...at least with regards to the interview process. I tried the first case doing it on my own and the flow of questioning and how quickly the attitude from question to question seemed a little off. If you use the correct tactic (good cop, bad cop, accuse) then the flow goes much better and is far less awkward. I could easily see someone who doesn't use a guide say that the interrogations detracted from the game, whereas using the guide made the interrogations enhance the game. I treated it as a Telltale scenario for story telling and didn't feel like using an interrogation guide spoiled anything. I tended to look for clues on my own however since the 'clue' music lets you know when you've finished. There were a couple very large crime scenes where I took a peek at the guide. I would definitely recommend using the guide on a first playthrough for anyone looking to play this game. It takes a good 20-25 hours with a guide to complete the story line. Each case is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or so and not using a guide could easily turn this into a 50 hour game. My only real complaint with the rating system is that you are kind of forced to have your partner drive to all of the locations. If you cause too much damage from driving, you will lose a star and it is very easy to crash into stuff. Your partner serves as a fast travel and it just ends up being safer that way. I did almost all of my driving in the open world clean up afterwards. I mean it makes sense that any damage you do would count against you...it just made it a little less fun to play. The story was ok and jumps back and forth between flashbacks to WW II and the 'present' day with the flashbacks just being short movies for context. The voice acting was pretty superb and it was amazing how many of the actors I recognized from other things. They really did a great job with the motion capture aspect and all of the motions felt natural. Hunting down the cars was pretty rough since they all look very similar. I did my best to jump in and out of any car I came across during the cases, which checked most of them off the list. I only needed to search for about twenty of them during the open world portion. The collectibles were a bit of a chore and didn't really add anything to the game. The Newspaper collectibles were fine since it added some context but the others were just a chore. I had hoped that the movie reels would give a little something about the movie or murder that it involved...but there was nothing. The only saving grace about the collectibles, was that it gave you plenty of chances to drive the 194.7 miles for the Miles on the Clock trophy. Since I didn't do much driving during the main story, I was able to catch up on it hunting collectibles. It actually worked out that I got my last collectible with only a mile left to drive, so it could have been much worse. This game is definitely worth a play if you enjoy a little bit of Telltale style story with some Grand Theft Auto style driving and shooting. I wouldn't pay more than $15 bucks for it...but it was definitely entertaining. 98. Alice: Madness Returns Spoiler It's been a little while between Plats for me and it's because I did something I never do...have several games going together at the same time and I was spreading myself too thin. I needed to finish a game for the Monthly Madness event and decided to focus on finishing up Alice. I really enjoyed this game a lot and actually didn't mind the DLC original much either. I wanted to use the Nothing Like the Smell of Bacon trophy for a milestone so started with the main game first. Once I got the milestone, I decided to do the DLC first since I had heard the controls were a nightmare...which they are. Despite the controls being smooth as sand paper and the attacking mechanic being terrible and the platforming terrible...I kinda liked it. There was a little bit of nostalgia about playing a game like that. Since there were no trophies for difficulty, I just played on Easy since there was no reason to pull my hair out. Once I figured out that kiting and throwing the knife at the enemies was far more effective than straight up melee, combat became more tolerable. Thank goodness for the little dot on the screen to target...without that combat would have been impossible. Once I got the Ice Wand, it was much better. There were still a few challenging parts, even on easy, due to the terrible controls. Thankfully you can save at anytime and there were several spots that involved jumping one platform and saving...jumping to the next and saving....just because of how bad the platforming could be. The Jabberwock was very challenging for me as dodging is quite hard in this game...I got lucky and found a spot on the rock where the graphics kind of prevented him from reaching me. It involved waiting for my magic bar to refill and then shooting him with the eye staff thing. While I would never recommend the DLC to play outright...it is a must for us completionists and only took about 6-8 hours so the pain of walking down memory lane was relatively quick. The backstory doesn't hurt either when it comes to the sequel. Madness Returns improved on the game in almost every way. Battles were much more fun. The platforming was great and the story had much more depth. The worlds were very large (probably too large) and interesting. I really only have a couple of minor complaints overall. My biggest gripe is with the 'lock on' feature that was added in battle. It was generally ok, however the camera seems to lock focus more on Alice than on the enemy you are targeting. If you strafe while locked on, you end up losing the enemy in the screen and you can't tell if it is a good time to attack. The only way to reset the camera is to release the lock. If you are fighting more than one enemy, when you go to relock, very often you lock onto a different enemy. This is especially annoying when there are slugs on the field because they are generally harmless and it becomes are to lock on to the target you actually want. Thankfully the dodge is pretty OP so it's easy to get out of most difficult situations. My only other real gripes were the size of the maps...it takes like 4 hours to beat one level. I would have rather had more levels that were a little shorter...but that is a minor gripe. My only other issue was sometimes getting stuck on invisible parts of the scenery. I'd be walking and all of a sudden I seemed to be stuck on something I couldn't figure out and would need to back track or jump to get over it. This didn't happen often but was annoying when it did. Story-wise...it was surprisingly deeper than I would have expected and took an incredibly dark turn at the end. My favorite weapon was the pepper grinder, but the vorpal blade was fun as well. This game has been out for a long time so you've probably already played it if you wanted to, but I thought it was a lot of fun and there are many worse ways you could spend 15-20 hours of you life. There are a lot of great trophies for milestones as well! 99. Darkest Dungeon Spoiler Got this a few days ago....generally like to do my write ups at work but it's been so damn busy at work I haven't had any time. I'm going to see the new Star Wars in 45 minutes, so figure I'd squeak this in beforehand. I like doing the reviews at work for a couple of reasons....the first being that I don't have a ton of time for gaming so when I'm home, I'd rather spend my time playing than writing. Second, I like the idea of getting paid to write these ? So long as I get all my work done, I don't see the harm... I really enjoyed this game and while I've heard the experience may be better on the PS4, I had a great time with it on my Vita. I love turn based games and there aren't a ton of games out there anymore with that setup. This game was extremely challenging and could get very frustrating at times when the RNG was being a dick...oh you have an 89% chance to hit this enemy....miss....miss...miss a third time....There is a ton of stuff you need to manage in this game and it can be overwhelming at first, but once you get the hang of it...it adds a remarkable amount of depth and strategy to the game. That is really my biggest gripe with the game....they kind of just set you down and let you go. They have a little bit of a tutorial, but there is so much nuance to this game that I was still learning things during week 50 of my second playthrough. The thing I like the most about this game is that nothing seems terribly over-powered and all the characters are quite balanced. Character types I thought I wouldn't like so much, ended up being very good if you play them right...you really can't go wrong and I enjoyed mixing and matching the groupings. While I enjoyed this game quite a bit...it isn't for everyone. It can be rage inducing with how bad your luck can be and it can be really tedious at points when you need to farm things. Some of the mechanics can get frustrating too. I'd have guys with +45% to their chance of getting a Virtue and get Afflicted all the time. I took it as a challenge and kept going, but man could those afflicted characters gum up the works with their constant taunting of your other guys and their propensity to pass a turn at a key moment or refuse healing. Once they get to heart attack status....good luck. Despite the levels getting tedious over time...I took that as an opportunity to try out different combinations of characters and that was how I was able to cruise through my Stygian playthrough in 55 weeks. So long as I had a Vestal, I could make most combinations work. Overall, the Hellion was my favorite. Her spear is badass and she can hit every spot in the enemy line. Her versatility made her a must have. Some of the drawbacks I felt was that there wasn't a ton of depth to the story and the ending was quite short. I also didn't like the Crimson Court DLC much. The Crimson Curse was a nuisance and the Epic sized maps it introduced were quite the slog. The fact you needed an invitation to play that zone and that you virtually never get an invitation unless you're at high infestation....it made me do a lot of unnecessary runs through levels just to get the infestation high. The Color of Madness DLC was much better, but that 300 kills trophy took HOURS in that one zone. My only real complaint with the Vita was the controls....well mainly just one of the controls. The back touch 'buttons' on the Vita are how you cycle through your characters. You accidentally cycle through constantly and it was a real pain in the ass. I can't tell you how many times I equipped trinkets on a guy I thought was the guy in my party to find out I accidentally moved to the character below him. The frame rates dropped quite a bit for the Crimson Court DLC and the load times were a bit long....but other than that it was great to play on the Vita. Fortunately, I didn't have the glitch that happened for @det_gittes and got my Strict Mode trophy first try. I was so relieved when it popped lol Looking at the Platinum image....I kind of wish I kept it for my 100 milestone because I really like it...but I'm just happy to add another great platinum to my list. I would highly recommend this game if you enjoy the turn based battle games and something that presents a challenge. Nothing is impossible and all it takes is patience. 100. Final Fantasy VIII Spoiler I first played this game back in 1999...I was a senior in high school and I remember really loving this game. I remember thinking the graphics were a little funky and the draw system was different...but I loved the story and really liked Rinoa and Squall as characters. Due to it being my senior year and me heading off to college...I didn't play this game nearly as much as the others in the series and I was truly surprised how much I didn't remember. I remembered the big twist...but couldn't remember why it made sense...I also had thought that the missile sequence in this game was actually from FF IX and was confused when I didn't see it when I played IX last year. When I didn't see it then, I thought I must have completely confused games and laughed when it happened here. I did play this game at mostly 3 times speed except during the story sequences. It really helped with farming spells and getting through the battle grind. I love a lot of the summoning sequences in these games...but they are freaking long and this also helped there as well. This game was a lot shorter than I remember as well. Not just because of the 3 times speed, but I seemed to be blowing through the discs. There would be like three or four big story events and then it was on to the next disc. There was really only about a dozen or so locations you had to visit and the story moved a lot quicker than I remember. I kind of wish they spent more time developing the Seifer/Squall rivalry, but it was fine. Things I like are the story and the junctioning of GF's (Guardian Forces/Summons). I also kind of like that there aren't really any treasure boxes and I loved the Triple Triad card game. I like the draw system and hated it at the same time. I like the idea of junctioning magic to the GF's to boost your stats...but I hate that you have to spend soooooo much time drawing the magic from the enemies. It's not so bad with the triple speed....but it is still rather tedious. I also don't love that as you use the magic, the inventory depletes and your stats go down. I would have liked to see the magic learning similar to how the GF's learn abilities or how they did it in FFVI where you earn AP and can just cast it after you've learned enough. Because using magic weakens your stats...I almost never used magic in the game which is kind of a bummer. By spending the time to draw new spells, you can really make your characters pretty OP early on. The other thing I love about this game is that it has a real ending. I always feel disappointed by a game when I spend hours and hours to play through the story and beat the game to get a quick two minute ending and a 'Thanks for playing!' type of thing. If it's a platformer that isn't story driven...it's no big deal. But I feel like most other game types should give you a real ending that makes you feel like your time invested had a payoff. This ending was about twenty minutes long and it felt satisfying. I feel like my memories of the game are slightly fonder than how good the game actually is...I also think I related more when I was the age of the protagonists....but due to the nostalgia factor and that I'm a Final Fantasy Fan Boy...I am really happy with my choice for #100. It's not the best game in the series, but it's in the top third for me. Final Fantasy VI will always be at the top for me. Platinums 101-110 Spoiler 101: Batman: Arkham City - Return to Arkham Spoiler I won't spend a ton of time on this game since I already wrote a review of it when it was my first platinum...but I do want to say I think it's cool that the timing worked out where this was my 101st Platinum trophy. I started with Batman: Arkham City on the PS3 and since I became a trophy hunter, there are 100 platinums in between playthroughs. I love this series and all of its entries and I would probably play this again if it got released on the PS5. The challenges do get quite a bit tedious, but the story is excellent...the voice acting is excellent...and the combat is generally extremely crisp. This game is almost always on sale and is definitely worth your money. I would highly recommend playing Arkham Asylum first...but mostly because the controls are not as crisp and it can be quite frustrating to go backwards in quality. I thought Origins and Arkham Knight played similarly enough to this where I don't think the controls would make really impact your experience. 102: The Wolf Among Us (vita) Spoiler I've been saving this game until I had some time where I could beat it in one sitting. I played this game for the first time last year and I loved it. I had no idea that there was a Fable comic and I just thought the whole idea was incredible. It was one of the coolest stories and concepts I had seen in recent memory and as soon as I beat it, I had wished I used it for a milestone. I was happy to see that there were multiple stacks of the title and that I would have an opportunity to do so at some point. I don't generally stack games since there are soooo many out there to play that I don't want to keep playing the same stuff over and over. My double dipping of the Arkham series says I'm a liar, however if I truly love a game, I don't mind the double dip. My previous fastest platinum was Day of the Tentacle and I had beaten it in 23 hours and 38 minutes. I knew this game could be beat in about 8 or 9 hours so I just needed a window where that'd be possible. I was able to squeeze that time in from Saturday night to late Sunday afternoon. It turned out to be a god-send as I needed something to distract me from the embarrassment that was the Patriots losing to the Dolphins.....I was able to do it with over two hours to spare! Now I just can't beat anything faster than that As far as the game itself....it's all story driven and I love the story so there's not much to say there. As far as playing on the Vita...it kind of sucked. There were a ton of times where the frame rates would skip...which wasn't game breaking most of the time, but when it happened during a QTE sequence, it was very frustrating. Fortunately, none of the QTE's are terribly difficult. The story was just as good as I remembered, and I had forgotten enough of it to where it was still entertaining and I had several 'Oh yeah!' moments. If you haven't played this game you most definitely should, however pick the PS4 platform to do it on so you don't suffer from the crazy lag that I did. 103: The Order: 1886 Spoiler Just to illustrate my point about how looking at trophies doesn't necessarily mean spoilers if you don't look too deep...I looked at the trophy list to make sure it was still obtainable and then started playing. Based on the grainy, faded picture and mustaches on the game page...I had always thought that this game was based on the US Old West and thought it had to do with gold mining or something. I'm sure if I looked at the picture more closely and saw London in the background, I would have realized how wrong I was. I was very pleasantly surprised by the story in this game. I've heard a lot of mixed things about The Order: 1886...mostly things like 'it was an amazing story but too short' or 'it was highway robbery how much they charged for a 10 hour game'. I kind of agree with both of those statements. If you paid $30 or $40 bucks, I would have been pissed about how quick the game went...as it stands, I paid $2.99 for the game so don't really have any buyers remorse....having said that though, the game was too short lol I was fully invested in this story. I thought the graphics were great, the voice acting was very good, the weapon variety was decent and the time period/content is some of my favorite. King Arthur, Knights, Vampires, Lycans, old fashioned setting...sold! What little content there is was done very, very well. My best way to explain this game would be comparing a movie to a thirty minute TV show...you can't tell the same kind of story in a TV show that you can in a movie and the developers of this game made a TV show. I feel like they left A LOT of potential on the board with this game. There were several unresolved plot points that felt like they took a lot of time to develop but never bore any fruit (I'm looking at you Isi!) The game gave me enough of a taste where I want more...and they sure as shit left enough room for a sequel. It's a compelling story and I'd like to see what happens next. As far the gameplay...it was a blend of FPS and third person shooter. Most of the time is spent in third person, but when you aim it goes over to FPS and I spent a lot of time aiming. The blacksight ability was ok, but took me a while to get used to using the R3 button to change targets. I really liked that when you killed an enemy, a little red X showed up in the sight so you could stop wasting ammo and move onto the next target. Everything was smooth and I had no drops in frame rate and I'm still on my original PS4. I thought it was a little weird that there was a sway when aiming the sniper rifle but no sway when aiming the crossbow, but that was minor. The game is exceptionally easy considering how many checkpoints there are throughout a chapter but there were a few spots that took a few tries. Most of those areas involved the stealth kills. That was my least favorite aspect of the game. I didn't like that there was a mini QTE when doing a stealth kill. I mean it's stealth, you should have all the time you need provided they don't turn around. Batman definitely did the Stealth Takedown better. Overall, if you spent $3 like me, you should be pretty happy with the result...if you paid full price, I'm very sorry. Looking at it objectively, I'd say the game is a disappointment considering how much missed potential there is....looking at it from a value perspective...I can't really complain. If you can get it for a few bucks...I'd recommend it. 104: Rockerbirds: Hardboiled Chicken Spoiler I know I had said I was going to jump right into SMB and not play another Vita game until I got that platinum, however I'm playing a ton of marathon games on the PS4 console right now and I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something. I also wanted to play something a little more silly than what I've been playing and chose Rocketbirds from my backlog. This game is a pretty basic platforming-shooter type game that has a tiny bit of metroidvania to it with the maps. It is pretty funny and wasn't terribly difficult. The only thing you'd need a guide for is collecting all the signs because I give you about a 3% chance to find them all without a guide. The game was fun with quite a bit of comedy and has a chapter select option to go after any trophies you may have missed during your playthrough. The controls are pretty decent on the vita and the graphics were fine. The music steals the show. I especially liked the theme song from the main menu. The negatives for the game mostly have to do with the platforming. The platforming...is not good. It's kind of realistic in that if you are rolling, it won't let you jump until your feet are down, however it's not easy to tell when that is and the jumping tends to be delayed. The easy answer is to say, then don't roll if you need to jump, however the platforming isn't much better when you are running and you move much faster rolling. I could see some people saying that you can't aim the gun as a draw back, however I didn't mind it and having played Rocketbirds 2 a bit where you can...I kind of prefer not being able to aim. The multiplayer trophy kind of sucks also since both players can't get it at the same time...only the person hosting the game. The good news is it only took me and my partner @thezooniverse a little over an hour and five minutes to finish one playthrough. I was lucky that he has already finished 5 acts so we only had to do one and a half playthroughs. It's the first time I've used the Gaming Sessions on PSNP and I had a really good experience. I feel like I like the Gaming Sessions for co-op play more than I would for just regular boosting. Anyway, overall it was a quick, fun game that was just what the doctor ordered. I liked it enough that I bought Rocketbirds 2 and will finish that as well. Also, Hardboiled Chicken is a cool enough character that it inspired me to change my avatar. He's Rambo mixed with a little bit of the Rocketeer and he's a pretty fun character to play. I would recommend this game. 105: Rocketbirds 2: Evolution Spoiler After having fun with the first Rocketbirds, I decided to jump right into Rocketbirds 2: Evolution. RB2 did some things better than RB1 and did some things not as good. I appreciate that they tried to give you the opportunity to aim your gun instead of it only shooting straight, however it was such a pain in the ass to target and run and shoot. It wouldn't have been so bad since there is an aiming assist option, however there are trophies that require headshots and the target assist mostly just hits the body so you are required to get pretty good with the targeting. Thankfully, Hardboiled Chicken is such a beef cake that he can take some hits while you get your aim correctly lined up for a head shot. The music wasn't quite as good even though it was the same band however they vastly improved the platforming and the levels had a little more to them. It was still relatively easy and there wasn't any kind of 'super boss' like in the first one. The game is set up in two parts. The first part is the main story where you continue on as Hardboiled Chicken and his quest to take down the evil penguins led by Putzky. Part 2 can be done solo or MP/Co-op. This is a rescue mission to save different birds that have been abducted by the Penguins. Part two gets a little repetitive and has the bigger challenge because you need to 3 star an attempt at least once in each of the four zones. I had a little trouble trying to play the levels normal, but easily got three stars when I decided to leave my Duck companion at the hub and solo the missions using a melee weapon. It seems like you need a lot of headshot kills or melee kills as well as finding all of the rooms to get a three star score. I was able to get a three star score even with dying in one of them. It's much harder to do the melee kill method in the fourth zone, however once you rescue Hardboiled Chicken, it was much easier to line up headshots...just make sure you bring enough ammo! Nothing was extremely challenging and didn't take more than a couple of tries to do. I have a feeling the game is as rare as it is more due to the challenge of aiming than anything else. It was a fun vita game and again, if you find it on a decent sale it is worth picking up. Not something you need to go out of your way for. 106: Indigo Prophecy Spoiler I decided to play this series because three of the four games were free and I've enjoyed the Telltale/Until Dawn style games and wanted to play something retro. I'm sure the game was pretty revolutionary for the time...but my god was this one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had in gaming. I took a few week break in the middle because I was so annoyed with a QTE sequence. I decided to start on Hard mode because I had read that this trophy could glitch and I figured if Hard mode was the only save file in the game, it shouldn't glitch. Thankfully it didn't...but this game was borderline ridiculous in Hard mode. First, the QTE's aren't your usual , , , and utilize and with a 'Simon Says' kind of twist. Each direction is a color. Up is red, down is green, left is blue and right is yellow. Sometimes you need to use and at the same time, but most of the time it is one or the other and they alternate (thank god). Generally if it is a double, they go the same direction but there are a few times that they go opposite directions. Thankfully it's never left and down at the same time but up up or left right or something along those lines. That's not to say that every once in a while the game isn't a dick and throws back to back 's at you when you have a rhythm going alternating and eff you up. In hard mode, generally one missed QTE is a lost 'life' and they pile up quick. It is super easy to get a game over. It wouldn't be as bad if you didn't have to be quick and exact with the direction. I can't tell you how many times I pressed down and heard the annoying 'missed' sound when I know I didn't...probably because it was slightly diagonal since you have to move them pretty quickly. My biggest gripe with the QTE's is how flipping long the sequences are. There are about four or five sequences in the game that have you doing crazy QTE's for like three or four straight minutes. The first one of these instances caused me to take a week or two break from playing because of how frustrated I was getting. I ended up resorting to opening up Notepad and righting down the order in groups of four. Thankfully most of the sequences are scripted and you can pause during QTE's. Pausing helps quite a bit. I would do the sequence in game as best I could and pause after four QTE's and type it into note pad. Then I would continue and do the same. It took me a couple of hours to get all the way through and even with me having written down the sequence...it was still really easy to fuck up and have to start over. Unfortunately, the QTE's are a major part of the game and overshadow what was actually a pretty interesting story. The camera also sucked quite a bit. It was tank controls with shitty camera angles. I died more than once because the camera angle would change an so would the direction my character was running...As bad as Hard Mode was...it was much more fun on Easy and waaaaaaaaay more forgiving. I didn't need to pause at all and only failed like two sequences the whole replay through. You definitely do not want to target any real specific trophies during hard mode that require anything QTE related....it's just too frustrating. I blew threw the game on Easy in only a few hours. If you aren't a completionist...it's worth a playthrough on easy since the story is good enough (even with the awkward animation sex scenes...) but if you are a completionist...I can't say the juice is worth the squeeze on this one. I'll finish up the series now that I've started, but I've heard this is the worst of the bunch as far as QTE's go. 107: Path of Exile Spoiler I have to say that I did really enjoy this game. It is a Diablo clone on steroids and it truly has a lot to offer, especially for a free game. You could truly play this game for free, however it would make it much harder because you can't sell any items without buying an enhanced stash tab. It doesn't stop you from buying anything...just selling. There is too much to this game to really be able to sum it up in a few sentences. I will say that it does a ton of stuff well and some basic stuff very poorly. Graphically, this game won't blow you away on the PS4, and it suffers from serious rubber banding and frame rate drops at points. The servers aren't great (however were much better recently than when I started). The difficulty in this game ramps up enormously by the time you reach the end game. I went through the entire main story line only dying maybe five times and then died about a thousand times once I hit endgame. The game really lulls you into a false sense of security as you can be cruising along, disintegrating everything in your path with bolts of lightning and die in an instant. Once you hit level 90, it's not as big a deal since there is no trophy for level 100, but death looms constantly. While I got quite a bit of help at the very end with a few extremely rare and expensive maps, and a couple end game bosses...I'm really proud that I was able to do most of this on my own. I was able to beat all of the Elderslayers and beat the current iteration of a 'final boss' in Sirus. They all were very challenging and caused several moments of rage, but were very satisfying to beat in the end. I won't say much about the game itself since it truly is a Diablo clone, only with so much more depth and nuance. I easily played this game for 200+ hours and still have no idea about most of it. I played as an Arc Lightning witch (Enki's build if you Google it) and had a good time with it. There are probably some better end game options, but this build was fun and pretty easy to learn. I definitely recommend starting off using a known build your first time around if you plan to play this game. It is way too easy to break your character in the passive skill tree and not every build can survive in end game. Having said that, the world is your oyster with regards to variety and between the passive skill tree and the gems you socket to your gear, the possibilities are near limitless. My biggest issues with the game revolved around the stability of it. While the server lag seemed to improve recently...the game would shutdown about once every two hours due to an error which, thankfully, never really negatively impacted me. It very easily could have though and would be extremely rage inducing considering how hard, expensive and rare some of the levels are. If you do plan on playing this game...do know that the current trophy descriptions are inaccurate and if you want to know what you need to do to pop them, you need to check the Achievements on the POE website. Not sure if they'll ever get around to updating the trophies. While I enjoyed the game a lot, I have a real hard time recommending it since they run a new season every 3-4 months which seems to break the trophies every time. I could easily seeing this platinum become unobtainable at some point with how drastically they alter things each league. Having said that, if you don't care about 100%, they are constantly working on this game and clearly care about it. This ranks in my top 5 most proud platinums, but I'm happy to be able to put this game behind me and move on to something else. 108: Heavy Rain Spoiler With all the challenging games on my slate, I took advantage of the fact there is no difficulty related trophy in this game and just played it on easy. With how stressful Indigo Prophecy was on hard...I didn't need more of that in my life lol. This game is markedly improved over Indigo with regards to the controls and QTE's. I didn't love that the QTE's could show up anywhere on the screen, but it was vastly better than the 'Simon Says' way of Indigo. I enjoyed both stories quite a bit with this game taking place in the realm of reality with Indigo being more in the fictional realm. I thought they did a great job with this story and I didn't find it to be predictable at all. I quite enjoyed the twists and turns and enjoyed the character arcs and the directions they took. My biggest problem with the game (and it's not really a problem) is how awkward it is to do QTE's during sex scenes. In both games, I felt the sex scenes were a little forced and felt unnatural (especially in Indigo). Other than the awkwardness of them, they were fine. I got really lucky with what is considered one of the hardest trophies in this game...the Kamikaze trophy for taking the best route during the car chase scene. There is an occassional glitch in the game where the screen flashes...kind of like a strobe light. It happened to me the very first time I turned the game on and I had to restart to even get in the game. It happened again during the car chase scene and the strobing/flickering really slowed down the frame rate. I was able to take my time through that section since the game was moving in almost slow motion and got through it with no problem at all. I did learn something valuable too...the trouble spot where you can't hit the cop car...there are two QTE's there. You have to jerk the wheel to the right and then immediately to the left. The second QTE happens so quickly (even on easy) that it is really easy to miss. I didn't see it the few times I tried it while the game moved at a normal speed. But when I came back to the game after a couple weeks of POE, I got that strobing and could clearly see the second QTE. I did that part in normal speed when I went back for my Perfect Crime playthrough and it worked. I've seen a ton of speculation on how that part needs to be done...but I can say for a fact it is a hard right and then a hard left immediately after. The only other trouble spot was the part where you have to crawl through glass. The controls were very hard and turning was near impossible. I discovered you have to lightly hold down R2 if you want to be able to turn. I was just clicking it slowly so I didn't get all tore up and was unable to turn that way. Other than that, this game ran well and was pretty easy to get through. It was free and a good story and I would recommend it if you haven't played it. I followed the guide on here for the Perfect Crime trophy and it worked perfectly. I have to give Quantic Dream credit...so far they are 2 for 2 with their storytelling. I'm looking forward to the last two games in the 'series'. 109: MLB The Show 19 Spoiler I started this game back around my 4500th milestone. I wanted to Nothing Like the Smell of Bacon from Alice and I needed about 10 trophies or so to get there. This had just come out and was free and I like MLB 18 enough so figured what the hell. I should've looked at the trophy list first, but assumed it wasn't bad since 18 was easy enough. Boy was I wrong...Welcome to the Chip was just a terrible trophy, trapped behind a shitty MP setup. The game is actually quite fun and I had a blast playing the 'Road to the Show' game mode where you create a player and work him up through the minor leagues and into the major leagues. That is actually one of the coolest things about this game is all the different game modes there are. You can play 'Moments' where they put you in a famous situation and you have to come through just like the player did in real life. Your team is compiled of baseball cards you get from packs or buy on the auction house. Some of the cards are insanely expensive and that's why they put in micro transactions to buy stubs...the in-game currency. It is an absolute waste of money though since you can get a pretty stacked team pretty quickly by playing the different game modes. I got a team full of diamond players (85 rating or higher) pretty quickly and didn't spend a dime. The biggest downside to this whole system is you cannot trade your cards or give them away. I'm sure they did it to prevent RMT, etc...but that was the cool thing about baseball cards growing up was the trading. It seems like a hugely missed opportunity to me... The biggest drawback in the whole game is just how hard it is to hit. On the easy settings it's not too bad at all, but once you start playing Diamond Dynasty mode (MP) for Welcome to the Chip (achieved by attaining 800 points in MP), it gets extremely frustrating. You can make square contact on a good timed swing and ground out to short. Sometimes when you clearly pull the ball it goes the other way. Unless you're godly at the game...hitting seems more luck based than anything else. I tried getting this trophy legit and gave up in December...it's really easy to get to 400 points since you don't lose any when you lose a game until that point. Once you hit 400 points though, you start to lose them after a loss....and the point loss is pretty significant. When I made my run in December, I won 9 games in a row and got up to 635 points from 400. I then lost 5 games in a row and was back down to 465...and then the league season reset and it dropped me all the way back to 400 points. The league resets once a month and my plan was to wait until MLB 20 came out and season infinity started (no resets) and try again. As luck would have it, several other people had a similar idea and a boosting thread was made on the trophy page. I was able to hook up with those guys and get it done I will say that they make it really hard to boost. You can only match up with the same player once every three days so it involved several people...several alt accounts just to feed points and many hours of trying to match up with a guy in the group. We got a really good system down and I have to give a shout out to @CupOfJoe4, @Zmanphins54 and @Im2Fast_4U who I did the majority of the grinding it out with. I also need to give a huge thanks to @ryuji_sakujo and @KriiuZ for setting up the thread and staying up very, very late for them to make sure everyone that joined and contributed got their trophy. 110: Spec Ops: The Line Spoiler This was a game I had heard tons of things about and I had picked up on sale a while ago. It was never a high priority, but when @Cassylvania was playing it, I actually took a look at the trophy list and there were a lot of trophies that I really liked as potential milestones and decided I would play it around one of those. I wasn't sure exactly which milestone it would be, but I knew I wanted A Man of Action to be one. When it looked like PoE would take me until May to finish...I was thinking about a FF7R trophy to be a milestone...which was a bit of a risk since I don't even know what the images will be, but I figured it'd be decent at least. When I unexpectedly finished PoE early in March, I realized that I would reach 5k long before FF7R was released and now seemed like a good time to play Spec Ops until FF7R was released. I actually had to do something I'd never done before for this milestone trophy. I got it lined up and saved at the checkpoint before it pops...ready to go and then played Jurassic World to get me to the tipping point. During the firefight for that checkpoint...I ended up popping the trophy for Handgun Kills...which I did not want for 5k. Since I was on PS3, I did the whole delete your profile thing to void the trophy and then downloaded my save from the cloud to try again. I knew not to use my handgun when I tried this time. My only other weapon was the Sniper Rifle...and would you fucking believe that the trophy for those kills popped too on my next attempt? I had to delete the profile again to remove the trophy...only this time when I went to download my save...I had to wait 24 god damned hours to download my save from the cloud. Apparently, this game only allows you to download your cloud save once every 24 hours. I was super pissed, but figured what the hell, I could wait. That section proved to be extremely hard considering the hoops I had to jump through to get my milestone. I had about 5 kills available for each weapon, so had to let my teammates do most of the heavy lifting. In hindsight...I probably could have played through to chapter 7 on easy during that 24 hours to get it...but I didn't think of that until typing this just now lol. In the end, I was able to get my milestone...even if I feel a little dirty about how I got it. I'm hoping I don't have to do that again anytime soon... I'll try to keep this relatively spoiler free, but I'll say I was pleasantly surprised by the story. It was pretty dark and they did a good job of making you feel a connection with your team. This game truly proves that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'll talk mostly about my FUBAR run. I had trouble in many areas that most people did not and got through some areas pretty smoothly where others did not. A lot of it is luck since a couple of hits and you're dead really quickly. I doubt I discovered this method for the beginning of Chapter 6 since the game has been out a long time...but I found a relatively stress free way to get through that level. The chapter starts with you alone, without ammunition, and surrounded by bad guys. Most people seem to consider this the hardest part in the game and it was for me too, until I figured out my method. The zone is a rectangle and your starting cover is behind a car in the bottom left corner. There is a damaged wall to your right that would run along the bottom of the rectangle and has 2 grenades and a shotgun with about 15 rounds of ammunition. My first 15 attempts or so, I grabbed the supplies and hustled back to the car to make my stand. The problem with this spot is that you're still pretty exposed and the enemy will often place you in a pincer. I never got very far attempting the checkpoint from here. The other obvious option is to use the mini wall where you get the supplies for cover...similarly you can get caught in a pincer and I also found that the guys rappelling down could sometimes snipe you as well. What I found, was that if you get the supplies and go to the end of that wall near the bottom right corner, there are about four guys huddled around a car, using it as cover. A well placed grenade kills a couple of them AND makes a huge dust cloud. I used this dust cloud to run to the top right corner of our rectangle to use a big van as cover. While you are technically open to a pincer attack here as well...I think the AI is a little glitched because I never had an enemy attempt to get me from behind. What they would do is run around the front of the van and along the side to try to get me. I would let them get real close to the back and blast them with the shotgun. This allowed me to pick up their weapon to use as well to pick off the guys that didn't run at me. It wasn't fool proof and still took me about 10 tries to get through the checkpoint...but it was really nice to not have to have my head on a swivel checking my back. Patience is the key here. A lot of the FUBAR playthrough is exactly that....patience. You really need to make sure everyone is down before you move, because if you get caught out in the open, odds are you will die. My other big trouble spot was Chapter 11 with the turret. My squad mates just kept putting themselves in bad positions and it took me a lot of tries to get through there. The other main trouble point for a lot of people is Chapter 14, however I got through there only dying about three times. They give you an RPG there for a reason, and it is to buy you time to run from cover to cover. Thankfully there is a checkpoint half way through this chaotic area so once you get there, you're basically home free. The only downside I found was the controls. They used the button for too many important things. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to run, but ducked behind cover or vice versa. I also didn't like that if you backed out of cover, you automatically stood up and had to quickly tap to crouch or you could die. Trying to avoid grenades sucked too. The controls always seemed most clunky when trying to get out of the blast radius. Most of the rest of the controls were fine...but that button thing was a huge source of frustration. Odds are, if you wanted to play this game, you already have...however if you haven't...it really is a lot of fun and extremely challenging at points...but that challenge just adds to the reward Platinums 111-120 Spoiler 111: Jurassic World Evolution Spoiler This game was on sale a few months ago and my son loves dinosaurs. He wasn't really into the Transformers game so wanted to get something he'd be excited about. Turns out he loves this game and he has had a lot of fun helping me build the different parks. Other than Civilization 2 on the Vita, I don't have a Sims style game on my profile and I forgot how addicting and easy it is to lose track of time with these games. I have to say, they did a great job making this game challenging and very immersive. Between storms, company sabotage and anxious dino's....there is no shortage of calamities to keep you scrambling. While there is a bit of a challenge...mostly with the challenge mode where you need to get a 5 star island in under a certain amount of time...the formula is pretty much the same on every island and once you figure out all of the mechanics...isn't hard to achieve. I'll say that it took me a while to get the hang of things. I wasn't using a lot of the tools they provide to help you early on, which made things confusing. I was kind of building things like restaurants in areas I thought they should go, instead of looking at my 'Management View' and seeing where there was an actual demand for something. I'd build a Toy Shop or Bar and have 0 people in it and wonder why...once I learned that there are basic categories of Transportation, Restrooms, Food, Fun, Drink and Shopping and it didn't necessarily mean I needed a variety of stores...just something to satisfy those metrics...it became a lot easier and made more sense. Once you learn this system...getting a 5 star facility rating is easy to get and maintain. It is very easy to mess this up though if you don't leave yourself room to build these things next to your viewing areas. There are a shit ton of different dinosaurs too. Most of them aren't useful for getting a 5 star rating and if you are in it just for the trophies, probably won't build many of them except once. My son on the other hand made sure that I made a variety...and he made sure I didn't mix carnivores with herbivores because he didn't want them fighting lol I did have to show him some fights though due to trophy requirements...plus it's just fun. Getting a 5 star dino rating isn't hard either...you just need to keep making dinosaurs. It gets more challenging during challenge mode when you have a time limit for the trophies...basically you just need to get to Sauropods and then spam them as they give you the most points for your dollar. My biggest recommendation for challenge mode is to only build dinosaurs with a decent comfort rating. Nothing wastes your time more than carnivores who's comfort level drops into a red zone and they break through your fence. Then you have to send your rangers/ACU helicopter after them to tranquilize and then airlift them back into their pen. If you pick dinosaurs that don't get uncomfortable easy...you can basically ignore the storms and just repair the damage they cause. I really enjoyed this game a lot and would recommend it if you are into Sims style games. There is a lot of DLC and it's not necessarily cheap...so that is a draw back...but the game is definitely fun and if you find it on sale...it's worth at least $10-15. I got over 60 hours of playtime from it so can't say I felt cheated 112. Beyond: Two Souls Spoiler I started this game right around the time I started Jurassic World Evolution and having just finished Heavy Rain and really enjoying Jurassic World, I kind of put it on the back burner after playing the first chapter. It then got pushed further back once FF7R arrived in the mail. When I started it back up, I just started from the beginning since I was only about 15 minutes in. True to form, I got another good story with lazy Trophy art and somewhat frustrating controls...the acting in the game was top notch...I mean Willem Dafoe is a legend and Ellen Page is pretty decent herself. The story is more similar to Indigo Prophecy than Heavy Rain since there is an element of the supernatural. The QTE's in this game were the easiest yet. There were no five minute long QTE scenes like in Indigo and nothing like the driving scene in Heavy. It seemed like this game focused much more on the story being the focus and I liked it a lot better because of it. People don't generally play these games because QTE games are awesome...they generally play to get a good story and when the QTE's get to be too much, you spend too much time focusing on dumb control movements and less what is happening story-wise on the screen.I was really able to follow along much more closely. While I did like the story...I did think it was the weakest of the three I've played so far. There seemed to be several different times where they got lazy with the details to infuse drama when there probably shouldn't be. In some scenes, Jodie is godlike and in others she gets taken out with ease. If she's going to have an entity linked to her that can shield her from bullets and be her third eye....it should be able to protect her from a punch in the head. Her powers were just too inconsistent as far as when they seemed to want to work and when they couldn't. I thought the premise was really cool though and there were times where the story did hit on all cylinders. My biggest issues with the game, was having a trophy tied to using a second controller to control Aiden...that just seemed unnecessary and was a little annoying. It also made me do an extra playthrough of the last like six or seven chapters. I knew going into the game, I should try to save all of the characters I could when it appeared. Trying to stay mostly spoiler free, I didn't look much beyond the trophies. Well in one of the longest chapters...I talked to someone too early and it prevented me from saving one of the characters....I knew I had to save him, but go locked past a checkpoint. Because you can't chapter select for the two controller trophy, I couldn't just replay the chapter via chapter select and fix my mistake or I would have had to do a whole other playthrough. Instead, I finished my first run without saving everyone or killing everyone and I had to replay those last chapters an extra time to get all of the endings. That was my other huge issue...you had to watch the goddamn credits on every single ending. They were like six or seven minutes long so with something like eight different endings...I spent 45 minutes to an hour just watching credits roll. I get them wanting you to watch them all once....but after you've seen them...it should let you skip. That felt like a huuuuge waste of time. To play the last chapter, watch an ending and watch the credits takes about an hour exactly. Some of the endings you can just replay the epilogue chapter to watch...but about five of them you have to replay the last chapter....so that's five hours of just replaying the last chapter. Again, it would have been nice to have the option to skip any cut scene you've already witnessed. Considering how easy the game is compared to the other two....I was surprised to see how rare the platinum is. However, after having played it....unless you are a completionist....it is 100% not worth all the replays. Also if you don't have a second controller...that is a bullshit trophy as well. Since I am a completionist, I did the whole song and dance. I would rank this #3 of the series so far with HR as #1 and IP as #2. Having said all that, it was free and is interesting enough to play if you don't care about the Platinum. 113. Energy Balance Spoiler I bought this game about a year and a half ago for the Spelling Bee event. I needed an 'E' for my word and I didn't have any games in my stable to choose from. I ended up getting four 'E' games altogether and ended up going with probably one of the worst games I've played in Eekeemoo: Splinters of Dark Shard for that event. This game seemed to be your usual quick plat game that people will stack to pad their platinum count. I wasn't in a rush to add a game like that to my profile so figured I'd sit on it until I could use it for an event. As it turns out, there is a Puzzle category in the Stay at Home and #PlatinumWithMe event. I wasn't looking forward to this really and figured I'd get it out of the way since I was on the fence about what to play next. Turns out....it's actually a fun puzzle game. I enjoyed it way more than Pic-A-Pix Color. This was actually interesting and somewhat challenging (at least some of the puzzles). The premise of the game is really stupid...you're like a cat spaceship or something that needs to get home and you need to 'Balance' the energy in your ship or something in order to get your ship to fly. I only read a few of the intro text parts because I didn't really care about the story...just wanted some puzzles. The puzzles are pretty interesting...it's kind of like a math Crossword Puzzle/Sudoku. The first set of puzzels are numbered from like -10 through 10 (it may have been -8 to 8 but I don't remember exactly) and you have a crossword puzzle style grid. You have to rearrange the numbers to add up to the total going from right to left or up and down. Some of the numbers are shared between two directions, and once you get a line to = the end number, an energy beam shoots through and you have 'Energy Balance'. Getting all of the lines to balance solves the puzzle. The first several are pretty basic and they get larger and more complex the further you go. It's a really short game as there are only 20 puzzles in the whole thing, however there is some replay value since the puzzles are randomized. The grid is the same, but the numbers change. If you get stuck you can shuffle it up and start again. My strategy was to try and fine a line where it was more obvious what numbers were needed and then work from there. Often times it was starting from one corner and getting all that I could. Once you have most of the grid 'balanced' you can start to move some stuff around to see where you need to focus. There are a lot of solutions for each line and maybe only a few for the whole grid. Hardcore mode was much harder as I want to say the numbers ranged from -40 to 40. I mean some of the lines were easy as you needed like -82 to get it to balance...so obviously it'll take a lot of big negative numbers to reach it. That took a little longer. I was also either pretty good at solving these, or got pretty lucky with my grids because no puzzle took me more than 45 minutes. If you just want an easy plat...I did see on the game page someone created a small algorithm program that will solve the puzzles for you...but honestly they aren't that hard to solve and I found them quite fun. In the end, I don't feel like this game is quite the blemish on my profile as I initially thought it would be considering it was actually pretty fun. If you like puzzle games, it is worth the couple of bucks I spent on it. 114. Steins; Gate Spoiler Let me start by saying I've never played a Visual Novel before and I've only ever seen one Anime (Ninja Scroll) so I really don't know the lingo too well and I only have a very base idea of what Anime's look like. I did not realize that this game was entirely in Japanese without English dubbing and after the first four hours or so, I was regretting my choice. I was very confused by their names as well. I understand the -chan, -kun, etc in Japanese culture...however one guys name was sometimes Okabe, sometimes Okarin but they seemed to be the same...another's name was Mayuri but she kept calling herself Mayushii...I thought it was at first due to gender...but then I thought that was what the -kun etc was...so I was confused. I was heavily debating just skipping the dialogue and just following a trophy guide to get it over with...I am SO happy I did not. What started out as a bizarre (to me) and slightly funny if not completely un-PC (cause he's a guy!) VN...turned into a really deep, dark, intelligent, well thought out story that had me hooked. It felt just like reading a book that you couldn't put down. I am so glad I got through the awkward beginning where I was wondering what in the hell was actually going on. I mean the premise of three high school aged, awkward nerds (name subject to change) who discovered a 'time machine' that was their microwave, where one is role playing a mad scientist, one is a 'Supa Hacka' pervert and one is an extremely naive and ditzy character, just didn't seem like it was going to hold my attention...but the way they developed the characters and brought them together. You could really empathize with how challenging the choices for the Protagonist really was. I like science and enjoy things like time travel and really obscure theories. This was honestly the only thing that kept me going in the beginning. Well that and the evil scientist MUAHAHAHA laugh...while I didn't understand a word of what was being said...if I saw the MUAHAHAHA in the text I listened for the laugh...he had an excellent mad scientist laugh lol. The conversation between some of the characters was extremely interesting. I was truly shocked at the content and felt the authors did an amazing job of dotting all their i's and crossing all their t's. There were rarely any scenario's that didn't seem completely thought out and I didn't notice any continuity issues or anything throughout. It was extremely thoughtful and probably one of the better stories I've read in a long time... As far as gameplay goes...there is none. You are truly just reading a book and selecting very few responses to email and whether or not to answer your phone. It was really easy to get through and if you want to skip the whole game, they make it really easy for you just to get trophies...however that would be a huge mistake. It took me about 28 hours to get through the whole game and I am so happy I did. I'm not sure how soon I'll be looking to play another VN because I did kind of miss playing something...but I'm really glad I took the time to enjoy the story. I would also say, don't worry about looking at the trophy guide here as you play through as there a virtually no spoilers at all. While the guide isn't the easiest to read...it's done that way on purpose so as not to spoil anything. It literally just gives you the title of the thing you have to respond to and the word you have to select to respond...and whether you need to answer your phone or not....on the flip side....you can blow through this game skipping after playing through it to clean up if you want. I got it for free with PS+ and I would definitely pay $5-$10 for it...I would for a good book and that is basically what this was. El Psy Kongroo! 115. Everybody's Golf Spoiler This was a game I had been looking forward to and was really excited to start. The last golf game I played was Tiger Woods 2003 (not the fighting game one featured in South Park). My roommates and I played the shit out of it in college and it was one of my favorite games. I had heard good things about this game and was really hoping to recapture that golf game love from my college days....very sadly it did not....at all. After thinking about my platinum journey, I can't really think of one positive thing to say about this game. The graphics were kind of neat at first because it reminded me of making a Wii character back in the day and there is a million ways to customize your character. Unfortunately, character creation was the best part of the game. There are not a lot of courses (6) and most of those courses suck and are not fun to play. You need to play 120 matches to get one of the VS characters to appear and you need to unlock 720 gallery members for another trophy (I got that one with about 10 matches left). The game just gets to be super tedious due to a lack of variation. I could live with that if the controls didn't absolutely suck as well. There is no guidance in the beginning about what is on screen or even how to read the power guage or the slope of the greens. You'll notice on the power bar whether it is sloping up or down or flat...but they don't tell you that the grid has arrows going each direction to tell you the speed. You pick it up eventually....but it'd be cool if they told you that. They tell you about the trick shots...but that's about it. The power bar is terrible also. It's just lazy with the three clicks..once to start, once to set power and once to set accuracy. It's not terribly innovative, but I could have lived with it if the fucking bar moved at a smooth pace. Most of the time it seemed like it would skip a frame or drag for just a second and totally mess up the timing. I can't tell you how many times that screwed me up. The margin for error is pretty slim and if you slightly miss...it can cause havoc for your shot. The later courses are hard enough with narrow fairways, abundant bunkers and close OB areas, but to fight against the power bar was just a terribly frustrating experience. The biggest reason this game sucked to platinum is the trophy list. Fishing was useless and an absolute waste of time. Press to cast, wait until your bobber moves and press to hook, then mash to real in fish...but you can't blindly mash because sometimes the 1.2 inch fish might break your line (seriously, most of the fish you catch are less than 12 inches long and can break your line....) The 120 matches and 720 gallery members were grindy...but I could live with grindy...the fact that you need to get three Condors (hole in one on a par 5) flat out sucked. The fact that I had to get four Condors sucked even harder. I mentioned in a prior post that my first Condor didn't save because I didn't exit to the main menu before quitting online play. It took me seven fucking hours of just hitting drives at one hole before I got three. There are supposedly three holes where it is possible to get a Condor, however I found two of them impossible based on my Custom club rolls (more on this bullshit system next...) Alpine Forest, hole 12 was the only place I could get one. But, it had to be during an 'official round' and it was only available from regular tees....so it might only be possible to try for these once every week or so...what added insult to injury was the fucking house in the way right before the green. It was fine as an obstacle....but the camera seemed to insist upon shooting the house instead of the green. The only way you could tell how close you were to the hole, whether you had to adjust your shot to the left or the right, was to watch a replay...possible several replays...before you got a shot that would show the hole. It was a huge waste of time and I wish the game would just let you pick a camera angle preference. I would have loved to just have the camera follow the ball the whole time instead of the several other useless angles that seemed to be used most of the time. So I've touched upon why it wasn't fun and why the trophy list sucked, but here is what made me hate this game...the end game is largely based on RNG and micro transactions. After you beat the 'story' in the game, you unlock custom clubs, which can be a significant upgrade to the clubs you start with. What sucks is that how good your custom clubs are is completely random. You can upgrade it 11 times. Each attempt is 10 gems (which you can get from playing) or one S Ticket (which you can buy). Each attempt upgrades either your Power, Control, Backspin or Backdoor ability between 1-3 levels. The upgrades aren't random, but your clubs upgrades are decided when you get the clubs and you don't know what the upgrades will be until you upgrade them. So you can take the time to upload your save to the cloud, do 11 upgrades to one of the categories to see what your roll for that stat will be, then download you cloud save and do the next category....then figure out the combination for the best rolls for that club set. Problem one is that in order to even have a chance for a Condor, your Power level needs to be at least 20 or 21 (max is 25 for power). Each level gives you 4 more yards to your drive. I spent four days collecting gems (you need 110 to max a club) only to find out my set of Custom Clubs maxed out at 16 power....great, so now I had to 'recycle' my clubs using 10 gems, which resets your club rolls. Thankfully, on my recycled clubs, the power level got to 21. To add insult to injury...your custom clubs can deteriorate over time and you need to spend 10 gems to have them repaired. Apparently, the more they are repaired, the faster they deteriorate (I don't know this for sure, but it's what I read). The good news, however, is you can speed this process up if just want to spend some real money to by S Tickets! One S Ticket is the same as 10 gems! You can get 10 S tickets for about $10! Only to find out your Custom Clubs are a piece of shit...but the greatest news is that you can keep buying the tickets until you get the set you want...of course until they deteriorate and you're back to square one. This last bit was the final straw for me....on my entire list of games played, I can't really say that I 'hated' any of them. Some sucked, but I knew that they probably sucked going in. This I had high hopes for and it just sucked all around. Kudos to anyone that enjoyed this game, but I can't say a single good thing about it other than it is an UR platinum and that I get to use it in 3 different events. If I wasn't a completionist, I probably would have walked away from this game...but I'm not a quitter when I'm not having fun with something (hello Space Hulk) and I am very glad to be finished with this title. 116. Ash of Gods Spoiler So this was a game I'd never heard of, randomly saw a thread about on the psnprofiles home page asking the question if it was a Banner Saga ripoff, clicked on the game, saw the graphics and immediately went to the Playstation store and bought it for $17.99. I liked Banner Saga enough that I treated AoG like pizza. Even bad pizza is still pretty good pizza. I figured even a bad Turn Based Strategy game that mirrored Banner Saga was worth my time and if I could make it through Space Hulk, I could make it through anything. After spending the last three weeks with it, I can say it is definitely worth the time and I don't feel ripped off. I don't exactly understand the hate for it emulating TBS because if you think about it...most games mirror something. There aren't a ton of truly unique experiences. Are any CoD games that different from one another or any other FPS for that matter? How many games come out that try to be like Dark Souls? If the format works and is done well, then I don't mind so long as there is some originality to it. This game has an original story and has changed a lot of the battle mechanics from TBS. Since only 125 people have owned/played this game on here...this review will be slightly longer since there isn't a ton of information on this site about it. I'll start with the bad...the game isn't as polished as TBS and it is very evident right off the bat. There is some weird formatting thing where the text has a huge gap in between lines in the text box. The first letter of the first word in the box is larger and in a very fancy font. It usually takes up about 3 lines of text...when you hit the 4th line, there's an extra space. It's like reading a paper that goes from single spaced to double spaced just for one line and then back to single....it's just a weird formatting thing that makes you wonder why they couldn't just fix that. There's also a handful of spelling errors and very often, what the narrator is saying isn't exactly what is being written in the text. Again, it's just stupid formatting stuff, but it makes it seem kind of lazy on the programming side. The bigger sin is how bad the controls are. They are extremely touchy and it is not easy to move the cursor around. You tap it once and it'll move like 6 spaces. Fortunately, you have like six minutes to make a move (you have to be in a coma to run out of time). If you move the cursor far enough, it jumps to the enemy character list. If you move it far enough the other way, it'll go on your character move list. This happens frequently and not on purpose. It isn't made clear in the beginning exactly how to select the character you want or how to move it and it gets real annoying real quick. The way you want to select the character you want to use is with the D-Pad. Press to select your side and then or to highlight the one you want and then finally . It took me far too long to figure this out and I can see why a lot of people might give up before they even really start. It really is frustrating in the beginning to get a grasp on how to make the game do what you want it to do. Couple that with the fact you can't rotate the battle grid, and it can be quite frustrating. Honestly, the biggest problem is when you click on the character you want to use, it doesn't lock the other functions of the cursor until you back out. For example, if you select your character and then try to use the cursor to select where on the board you want him to move...but the cursor jumps 7 spaces and ends up on another character on the board. If you click , it now selects that character, whether he's on your team or not and you have to go back to the D-Pad to re-select your character. Or, once you select who you want to attack, you choose if you want to attack their health or energy. If you press left or right, the cursor will also move in the background and it'll appear like it is selecting something, when it isn't. It'd have been great if once you select your character, it doesn't allow the cursor to move out of the zone they can walk unless you select where to go or back out. It's unfortunate that the controls are so wonky because people are missing out on a great game. Once you understand how the controls function, it is still annoying, but it's much, much better. Those are really the only handful of issues I had. The story and map section of the game follows almost exactly like TBS, i.e. travel to an area, a text box pops up with options, you select one and there are different consequences (sometimes) based on your decision. Battles on the other hand, are quite different. In TBS, you alternate turns with your opponent until only you or them have one character left, and then the order is static. In AoG, you alternate turns all the time...it doesn't matter how many of you or the enemy are on the board. It is actually a huge strategy component as well. You can have up to six characters fight for you at one time (I've seen the enemy have up to ten). Sometimes it might make sense to bring only three or four strong characters so they have more turns...sometimes it makes sense to bring six so your abilities that last one turn (round), will have more staying power. One round in AoG is one cycle through all of a team. If you have four characters on the board and the enemy six, you will hit round 2 after four moves (plus any cards/spells) and them after six moves. Rounds are important for two main reasons. First, you can only play some cards after a certain round. It makes it so you can't use OP spells right off the bat. The second is it signifies when your ability cool downs reset. In a round, you can pick any character that hasn't gone yet in any order, but all need to go before the same one can go a second time. It is possible for one character to go twice in a row if you make them the last character of one round and the first character in the next round. Because of this, it is quite often that you and the opponent on are different rounds. You can only use each character once per round and using a card doesn't count as a character turn. It is one way to extend a good ability a little bit longer. Once everyone has gone once, the next round begins and you can use your characters again in any order, which is also a big strategy component. For example, the character Lo Pheng has an ability that grants him +42 defense. It basically makes him invulnerable to attacks (still can be damaged by cards). He also has an auto counterattack and cannot be pushed back. It makes sense in most levels, to use Lo Pheng first in the first round and walk him as far as you can into enemy territory. Use that ability (which doesn't end his turn) and then attack if you are in range, or just stand there. The bad guys generally target your character with the highest attack rating, which is usually Lo Pheng when you are on his story line, and come and attack him. So long as it isn't a ranged attack, he will counter and damage the enemy while taking no damage himself. That ability lasts one turn (the description in game says one turn, but it means it is active until his next turn). If he goes first, he will then be basically invulnerable for the remaining five turns in this round and then if you use him last in round two, five more turns. That is ten possible attacks from Lo Pheng on one ability. If you go into battle with only him or a few others, then that ability isn't quite as strong. While he sounds very OP, he can also be quite squishy because he doesn't start with any energy, which I explain why that is problematic below. In TBS, your characters Health and Attack share the same bar. When your health goes down, so does your attack and it is often beneficial to keep injured enemies on the board longer to waste enemy turns. That is not the case here. Your attack power does not diminish when your health does. In fact, your attack can fluctuate quite a bit depending on what attack you choose, magic cards you might use or cards or abilities that are used against you. Your characters also seem much more squishy in this game and it is pretty easy to get killed quickly. Instead of an Armor stat like in TBS (there is armor in AoG, but it never lasts more than a turn) there is an energy statistic. Using abilities can cost HP, Energy, both or neither. So long as you have energy in your bar, your character will take normal damage. If your character runs out of energy, they will take double damage. It is the same for the enemy and so you need to decide if it is better to attack energy or HP. The temporary armor stat will mitigate some damage taken. So if your armor for the round is 6 and you get hit by someone with a 10 attack, you'll take 4 damage until you are out of energy and then double damage for every point that was dealt after energy ran out. The addition of the magic cards also adds a slight wrinkle to battle and I found that there needed to be a lot of strategy in these fights to come out on top. I did find the game much harder early on. As your characters gain experience and level up, some of the abilities you can get make your characters very powerful. What happens if your character hits 0 HP is handled differently as well. in AoG, if your character falls in battle, they get an injury designation. A minor injury is one red skull, a moderate injury is two, a major injury is three and if they get a fourth red skull, they die. The good news is you can only get one skull per person per battle and if multiple people get a fourth skull in one fight, only one character will die. This is mostly important to know for the Heartless trophy where you have to play making all the evil choices you can. Battle is not the only way you can get an injury designation. If you run out of strixes, you can also get an injury designation. What is a strix? There is no food or anything in AoG and strixes kind of play that role in this game. Strixes are basically a type of stone in the game that a lot of items/jewelry are made with. Due to a story component in the game (trying to keep this spoiler free as possible), your characters must have strixes on them at all times or they can get hurt. It is an important plot device to the story, however the strixes are perishable as they burn out. Different characters require different amounts of strixes to survive the day. One character may need 5 strixes per day while another only 3. Every day that passes, your strix supply dwindles and if you ever run out of strixes, you have to decide who goes without. Whoever you choose to go without will get an injury designation each day they don't have them. You can get strixes as loot after battle or by purchasing items from merchants. Pretty much if you run out of strixes though, all of your characters will get an injury designation. It's just when you get low where you have to choose. If any character gets a 4th red skull from traveling without a strix, they will die. Again, only one person can die per day. Those are the basic mechanics of the game and other than the game controls, are thought out pretty well and quite challenging to play. I found the game to be slightly harder than TBS. It's hard to gauge how long one playthrough in the game is because based on your choices, the game can probably be a good 2-3 hours shorter. With a well timed USB/Cloud save, you could probably get all the trophies in two playthroughs. For the Iron man trophy, you have to play the Ironman/Hardcore mode as a 'good guy', otherwise the circumstance for the trophy won't present itself. The problem with the Iron Man setting, is there is only one save state and the game updates it after each decision, so it is impossible to replay from an earlier chapter for trophy cleanup in this playthrough. However, if you made a save in the Cloud or on a USB just before Opacum, you could probably replay the ending a few times to get some of the trophies that require players to be alive. For one playthrough, you have to play as evil as possilbe, which means killing off most of the playable characters, which eliminates many of the trophies for the platinum. I ended up needing four playthroughs. I did my first playthrough blind and killed off a couple of characters by accident that were needed for trophies and I didn't think about the cloud/USB idea on my Ironman playthrough. So I then did an good guy playthrough with a few replays of the last few chapters and an evil playthrough for trophy clean up. One of the strengths of this game is the re-play ability. Amazingly enough, the game was pretty different each time I played through it and I'm pretty sure I still didn't see everything the game has to offer. This is about as long a review as I've done, and i did perhaps get a little too technical since most of you will have no frame of reference for what I'm talking about...just know that behind the very visible flaws right off the bat, there is a very good game here. $17.99 might be a bit steep for most people, but if it is ever on sale for $10 or less...it is most definitely worth picking up. Despite its flaws, it is probably my favorite game I've played so far this year after FF7R. 117. Goat Simulator Spoiler This was a game that was never really on my radar and I wasn't in any rush to play. It was free a few months ago on PS+, however the DLC was really expensive and I wasn't going to pay full price. I added the DLC to my wish list, just in case there was ever a good sale. All of them turned out to be on sale for like $7 a month or so ago. I picked it up figuring it might make a good, short game for an event, Turns out I was right and I could use it in the Gaming By Numbers event. Figured it would be an easy game to mix in....however I still had no real timetable on when I'd play it. Then I played The Last of Us 2...All I'll say about TLOU2 at the moment is that I really liked the game a lot. I was able to stay virtually spoiler free (all I knew is a lot of people hated it based on the leaks) and after my first play through, I get why some people might hate it...but I think that was the point and I really give Naughty Dog a lot of credit for having the balls to tell a hard, if not unpopular story....but this review isn't about TLOU2...it's about Goat Simulator. After the heavy themes of TLOU2, I could use something goofy so I slid this in between NG and NG+ playthroughs. There's not really much to say about this game...it's not good lol Sure it's funny for a bit, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly and it just becomes a bit tedious. It was 100% mindless (even the garbage flappy goat trophy was pretty mindless...terribly frustrating, but mindless). Way too many DLC's as well with nothing really great about any of them. I did laugh quite a bit at the MMO DLC having spent a lot of time with MMO's in my past, I thought the chat screen was pretty funny. Thankfully there are pretty decent guides out there that make the trophies relatively painless. The worst of the DLC's was probably GoatZ...mostly due to the Survivalist trophy where you need to craft all of the items in one round. I was using the mods where I wasn't supposed to take damage or get hungry, so it should have been easy. I got most of the items/weapons/clothes crafted and only had three left. I was standing outside the crafting house, looking through the goat mods menu, when all of a sudden it said I died...I was so pissed because it took like 45 minutes to get that far. I went after that trophy first so I didn't really know the lay of the land and it took a bit longer to find everything. My second attempt was just as frustrating...I got to the same point and this time, due to the shitty game, the item I needed (A Home Sweet Home sign) fell into the map and was lost. There is only one of this item on the map and I had to restart again. Another 30 minutes wasted....thankfully the third time went fine...but it was very frustrating. It's been quite a while since I played a game with so many bugs and glitches. It's just a poor quality game and it's clear they didn't put much QC into it. I mean it's a game about being a goat, so I get it...but it was still pretty bad. However, despite all the bad things I have to say about the game...it was just what the doctor ordered. It was mindless, it was a little funny and at points a little fun...and it didn't involve very deep themes that make you look critically at a story and digest just how tragic things can be. If this wasn't free, I wouldn't recommend it for anything other than a mindless escape. It's super easy and due to the way DLC trophies are calculated on this site...ended up dropping my overall rarity by a few tenths of a percentage point lol. 118. Rogue Aces Spoiler This was another unexpected addition to my list. I believe this was a free game from PS+ a year or two ago and was just kind of hanging out in my backlog. Didn't know anything about it and was nothing I was looking to make time to play. However, on my vacation, after I realized my heart wasn't into Super Meat Boy, I looked for something else to play to pass some time during nap time and after my kids went to bed. After some intense scrutiny over my backlog and an arduous game of eenie meenie minie moe...Rogue Aces proved to be my time passer on my trip. It would appear that the backlog gods smiled upon me this time as I really had a lot of fun with this game. It is just a 2-D side scrolling air combat game, however I found the controls to be pretty responsive and it was actually quite a bit of fun. I motored my way through it much faster than I thought I would because I found myself playing this in my normal gaming time over the PS4 console. There is nothing earth shattering about it, it was just fun. A few of the trophies were gimicky, however most of them were something you would get through normal game play. Despite the relatively low rarity of the game, it is not particularly hard. It could be, but you can save after each mission which makes it much, much easier. On the Vita it is exceptionally easy to save to the cloud and reload. The game would be very difficult without that however as completing all 100 levels with just 3 plains would be quite the challenge. I found that security blanket made the game a lot more fun however as it allowed me to be a true daredevil pilot and not worry if I crashed into a cliff. I didn't play it on the PS4 at all, so can't really speak to how it plays there, but this seems like a game that was made for the Vita. The graphics, the controls, everything. The fact it was free was just a cherry on top. The other great thing was it ended up being a number I can use in the Gaming By Numbers event so wins all around! If you didn't get it for free, it's probably worth $5-$7. There's not a ton of depth to the game, but it is addicting...offers decent replay value and is easy enough to play in short bursts on the go. 119. The Last of Us 2 Spoiler he Last of Us Remastered was one of the first games I played after finishing up the God of War and Final Fantasy games way back when I started trophy hunting. It was a game I found by Googling something like "Best PS4" games or something. TLOU was one of the best games I had ever played. Having missed out on a decade of games from MMO's, it was the first really epic 'new' game I had ever played. Once I got punched in the mouth during the prologue, I realized I was in for something I had never experienced before and was pretty excited. That game did not disappoint and is still one of my favorite gaming experiences. Outside of Final Fantasy games, I generally don't know when new games are being released, or what is hyped. I had honestly forgotten this game was even in the works until the major leaks came out. I heard that people were super pissed about what was coming and decided right then and there that I would stick my head in the sand and not look at anything TLOU2 related. Not the forums, not the trailers, not the trophy list....nothing. I pre-bought it and then actively avoided anything to do with it. Due to Covid, my game was like five or six days late after it was released. It was pretty challenging to log into the forums and not see a thread talking about this game. I didn't open any, but the general gist of the title's made me think the game was going to be that good. After finishing it, I can say that I didn't get that same feeling that I got from finishing the first game...but I really enjoyed this game as well and I am really happy I was able to stay in the dark and not let other people cloud my expectations. This is going to be a weird review as I can't say most of the reasons why I thought this game was great without mentioning the story and spoilers...so I'll give my story impressions in the spoiler section below...I'll keep this portion to the game play, etc. My first impressions were a mixed bag. The graphics were amazing and the controls were smooth, however I was kind of bored for a bit. The zones felt a bit too big with nothing in them and it felt like I was just riding a horse around. My biggest gripe was the lack of ammo you could carry. For example, the shotgun holds 6 rounds in the gun...but you could only ever have 8 shells on you...so that means that Ellie only could keep two extra shells in her back pack? She picks up every piece of paper and trading card she can find...but will only keep two backup shot gun shells? It makes no sense at all and seems like just a forced way to ramp up the difficulty, which is kind of lazy. I would rather resources be more scarce, but you can carry more ammo. Another gripe of mine is another stupid oversight in my mind. When playing as Ellie, she's immune so I don't mind her putting the infected in headlocks, since if she gets bit...it hurts but her life isn't over. When you play as someone other than Ellie, it seems like a HUGE risk to put an infected in a sleeper hold to snap their neck...especially wearing something with no sleeves. These are small gripes, but considering how immersed you're supposed to be in the story....it seems really unbelievable that someone would pass up more ammo in favor of a note someone you don't know left behind or that you would risk becoming infected by wrapping your arm around the neck, which I believe is pretty close to your mouth, to kill. I also felt the flow of the gameplay was a little off as well. There seemed to be a lot of downtime, searching areas for nothing but empty cabinets and not running into much resistance followed by sections of intense battle and difficulty spikes. Nothing was crazy hard, but the flow just felt a bit disjointed to me. Part of that disjointed feeling came from the amount of collectibles as well. I spent hours searching every nook and cranny (or so I thought) to find as many collectibles as I could. If you spend too much time exploring...a goddamn message pops up asking if you want a hint and it doesn't seem to go away unless you press to get said hint, or find where to go on your own. I could have probably disabled hints...but it would have been nice to be able to cancel the hint as well. They give you so much shit to look for yet they want you to hurry up and get to the next area as well. Which was also a bit annoying, because there are so many 'point of no returns' in this game. There is really no backtracking at all in this game. If you open the wrong door by accident and advanced the story a bit...well sorry but they just blocked that door behind you and you can't go back and explore. It seems like I'm doing a lot of bitching, but most of these issues are small in the context of the game. I really appreciated what they tried to do with the story. All I'll say outside of the spoiler is it felt a lot like Breaking Bad to me. Character's evolve and react to different situations...some you may like and some you may not...but no one is a hero and by the end...it's possible you won't like anyone. That doesn't mean you don't understand their journey...you just may not like who they've become. I think that is a really hard thing to do as a storyteller and I think this game is as good as any in telling a hard story. If you finish this game and feel happy about the journey, you should probably seek therapy lol I think a lot of the complaints come from people that need/want a happy ending and a story that is black and white with good and evil etc. This game explores grey...deeply. It is a came about causality and consequences of choice. It explores the idea of revenge and illustrates how important the perspective from which a story is told affects how a situation is viewed. I really respect and admire what Naught Dog did here and give them a ton of credit. Having said that...I also feel like the story went one chapter too long... The story isn't for everybody, but I think overall the game is visually beautiful and a great experience, yet lacks that special something that made the first one so revered. If there's a third episode...I'll be picking that up too. Story Spoilers Contained: Spoiler After beating the story, I went back to see what the big gripes were with the story...and I disagree with the complaints on almost every level. I heard the game was too liberal and 'forcing political views' on people which I didn't see. I felt every character was believable and founded in reality. I didn't think the game tried to glorify or force anything in your face and most of what happened felt very organic to me. I was surprised to see that 'Bigot Sandwich' was an issue...I have a hundred people on my Facebook feed that would say something like that. Abby is jacked and a strong female character, which also felt organic to me. I think if you feel they were forcing politics on you, you are either highly sensitive or are looking for things to be mad at. I had no problems with any of the characters in the game. Another huge sticking point was Joel being brutally murdered basically at the start of the game...I wasn't very surprised. I kind of expected something like that would happen in the sequel anyways considering what he did at the end of the first game. I know Joel dying was a huge point of contention for a lot of people...but honestly...if you didn't see that coming, you weren't paying attention. We loved Joel because we got to see his whole arc and could empathize with how he felt towards Ellie...but the fact of the matter is, his selfishness in that moment altered human history. He couldn't let her die due to his love for her, but he sacrificed millions of others in the process. That was bound to piss someone off and he made the choice in that moment, to spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder. It was a lose, lose scenario for him, but that is kind of the mantra of this story. Shit happens and just keeps rolling downhill. I didn't like what happened to him...but I expected it. People thought it was stupid that Tommy and Joel told her their names and where they were from considering how cautious they were in the first game. They said it was out of character and not believable. I didn't remember the circumstances by the end, but I didn't remember having a problem with their introduction. NG+ reinforced that idea too. They were all running from like a hundred infected in the middle of a blizzard and they were locked in a room trying to figure out how to escape. Tommy calls Joel by name and Joel responds to Tommy by name. They ask Abby what she's doing out there and they tell her where they're trying to go. I feel like four or five years living in Jackson maybe relaxed their cautiousness a bit and based on the context of what was going on...felt perfectly fine. Once Abby knew who she was with, it only made sense she would try to get them back to the cabin and considering the storm, it makes sense they would accept her offer. Now considering Joel's history, perhaps that was a stupid thing to do...but again considering the context of their encounter....it didn't seem that outlandish to me at all. I hated Abby at first, but you're supposed to. Considering your introduction to her is the brutal murder of someone you were highly invested in, it makes sense no one would like her. I actually tried to die as her on purpose a few times. I didn't know who she was and didn't like that I had to play as her at all. That scene does a great job of getting the player to rally behind Ellie and say 'yeah, let's go kill that bitch.' When you get to the half way point and all of a sudden you're playing as Abby again...I was like wtf? I don't want to play as her...Thankfully, they show you in the first twenty minutes of the second half of the game what Abby's motivations are. it made it a lot easier to play as her and made me curious what was going on in her head. I actually think it was brilliant how they set it up. I mean the whole time you're playing as Ellie, you think that the WLF is looking for you and that you are in imminent danger always. It was really interesting to see from Abby's side, that they had no idea Ellie was even there and that what happened in Jackson was out of sight, out of mind. This way of telling the story actually made NG+ much more interesting, because now you knew what the WLF is talking about when Ellie overhears and you realize exactly what she is walking into. I read that people didn't like that ND tried to make you like Abby by showing you her motivations. I don't understand that at all. Do people like not knowing the entire picture so that it can line up with their own narrative better? I mean, once I learned what made Abby do what she did...I did have a lot of empathy and understanding for her. Shit, Ellie was doing the exact same thing that Abby did in the first place....get revenge for the death of her father (figure). This story was one huge Greek Tragedy. Abby and Ellie were fighting for the same reasons, just on opposite sides. A conversation between the two would have been fascinating to watch, but since this is a Greek Tragedy...that conversation could never happen...otherwise there would have maybe been an understanding between the two. This story has so much depth and nuance and was truly told very well. The only thing I didn't like was the last chapter. I was fine with it all the way up to when Ellie wanted to fight Abby. At that point I felt Ellie just needed to let it go. Abby was literally being crucified after being made a slave for months. She was famished and malnourished and felt excessive. Ellie wanting to fight Abby in that scenario was the only time something felt out of character to me. Ellie was pissed at Joel too for robbing her of the choice to save humanity. I understand she had extreme guilt due to the way she and Joel parted...but I think Abby had suffered enough for her sins. Considering how terrible the Rattlers were...it would have made more sense to me in that scenario that Ellie either just leave Abby on the cross and walk away or help her escape. Cutting her down just to fight her seemed really stupid...I feel like that ending could have been done much better. There is so much to discuss about this game, but I'm going to stop here before this post gets really out of hand. Just know...Ellie is Walter White and Abby is Jesse Pinkman (without all the crying)....not exactly...but pretty close 120. Enter the Gungeon Spoiler I bought this game for the same reason i bought SMB...just in case I felt like challenging myself to something. This isn't nearly as hard as SMB, however it is challenging enough to stay fun. I knew nothing about it really, but it came highly recommended by @Jens as a great 'rogue-lite' game. It was on sale and while I was pretty intimidated by the 50+ playthroughs it says it takes on the Trophy Guide...I figured I'd stash it. It's been in my back log well over a year and after playing a few open world style games like FF7R and TLOU2, I wanted something a little different. I threw it on my Gaming By Numbers Event card figuring I'd never really get to it, but on a whim I started it up and figured what the hell? This game was awesome. From the fantastic gun puns to the very responsive controls and nice challenge...it feels nearly perfect to me. For those that don't know what a rogue-lite is (I didn't)...it's a dungeon crawler with randomized maps where each run in is somewhat unique. You unlock different weapons and items each trip as you hit different milestones that could show up as rewards for defeating a boss or in a treasure chest...but you start with your basic gear every time. Due to the shear amount of weapons and items and the infinite possible combinations....the replay value is exceptionally high. There are 5 main floors with a bonus 6th floor after you kill all of the main character's past (I won't go into detail on what that means, but it is basically why you Enter the Gungeon). One run takes about 45 minutes to an hour if you get all the way through. Sometimes you get very lucky and get some gear that makes the game have a bit of an 'easy button' but generally it is quite challenging. There are four main characters to start. The Marine, the Pilot, the Convict and the Hunter with two unlockable playable characters (the Robot and the Bullet) as you play through the game. Each has a slightly unique set of skills that make each different enough to add even more variety. I started out playing as the Marine almost exclusively while I learned the game. At first, it seemed like plat'ing this game would be impossible. Just getting to the second floor was challenging, however once I got the hang of it I could get to the 3rd floor in my sleep before it ramps up a little. After playing through all of them, I liked the Hunter and the Robot the best probably. The Hunter is nice because she has a dog with her...he doesn't attack or anything, but after each cleared room there is a chance that it will find an item. This is especially useful for finding keys to unlock treasure chests. She also comes with two guns to start, which is helpful on the first floor. The robot doesn't have health like the others, just armor, and he is much harder to replenish health with (you don't find armor nearly as frequently as hearts). But he is extremely accurate and I found I played well as him. I got exceptionally lucky on a few of my playthroughs with him with gear selection, so that probably helped why I liked playing as him so much. I didn't play much as the Convict or Pilot other than to do a run through to kill their past. My favorite thing in the game is probably how awesomely named everything is. From the bosses Eye of the Beholdster, Gorgun and Dragun to the cleverly named guns like Pea Shooter (shoots peas) and the BSG (Big Shooty Gun), it's just full of plays on words and it is really, really creative how they put it all together. The controls are as sharp as I've seen in a game and if you get hit, you probably earned it. The only problem I found was if you hugged the wall, sometimes the aim would disengage. You can use the auto aim feature or aim yourself...I'm not skilled enough to aim myself and used the auto aimer. While the controls were very responsive...I did not like how they had the default controls set up and changed them all around to suit my style. The trophy list is pretty fair with the only really annoying trophy being Weird Tale for finishing Frifle's Challenges. It's basically a list of different enemies in the Gungeon to hunt down. There is a specific number of them you have to kill before moving on to the next. It is annoying that you can't work on multiple at once and even more annoying how rare a few of them are. One of them, for example, only shows up on the third floor...and may not even show up at all and you have to kill 20 of them. I probably had to rerun the third floor about 45 times before I found/killed enough to satisfy that bounty. It wouldn't have been as bad if it occurred during normal play...but I had finished everything else by this point and it was just a matter of farming. It took me 4-5 days of just farming floors to finish off the entire list. Nothing else on the trophy list felt like a chore. If I wasn't such a fanboy of Final Fantasy, this would probably be my favorite game that I've played this year. It was a lot of fun and I recommend it highly. Platinums 121-130 Spoiler 121. Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered Spoiler We started the bounty Halloween Event and I'm on Team Ghostbusters so it only seemed fitting to start the event off with a Ghostbusters video game. I had bought this a few months ago during one of the big sales. I didn't really know anything about it, but I had read on the forums a lot of people seemed to love it on the PS3 and were excited to see it remastered. I absolutely love the movies and actually saw Ghostbusters II in the theater when I was a kid. Some great quotes in the movies and if the trophy images were better...Spores, Molds and Fungus would have been a milestone trophy 100%. They aren't bad, but they aren't great either...I also have quite a ways to go before my next trophy milestone. Having said all that...this game is the very definition of mediocre lol. I think it was awesome that the original cast were signed on to voice their characters. That was unexpected for me to see and was honestly my favorite part of the game. Even with the presence of the original cast however, the voice acting wasn't great. I thought Aykroyd and Ramis did a pretty good job, but if felt like Murray mailed it in a bit...the script wasn't great, but there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm or any kind of inflection with a lot of the acting. It felt like they were sitting at a table doing a read-through for most of it. Having been written by Aykroyd and Ramis, it would make sense that they might be a little more invested...plus Murray and Ramis hadn't spoken in about 20 years prior to doing this so there may have been some lingering effects from that. On a game play level...it wasn't terrible. Shooting the proton pack was pretty fluid and responded well to controls and moving around wasn't bad either. Getting knocked down though just looked so robotic and awkward. The puzzles were generally very easy and the collectibles were pretty easy too. From a trophy hunting standpoint, this is a really easy game. There are numerous check points in each chapter that make going back for things you missed very easy. It also makes beating it on Professional a lot easier as well. The only really annoying trophy is the Nice Shootin' ,Tex! trophy for beating the game with causing $100k damage or less. It wasn't hard to do actually, you just have to make sure you are aiming towards the ceiling or the floor when you're wrangling a ghost...but some of the things are very expensive if you blow them up. My original plan was to try and go through without doing much damage the first game, and I hit a bus with my proton stream in chapter 2 while firing at a ghost and my bill shot up like $130k lol needless to say, that one errant shot blew the trophy on that playthrough. Restarting the checkpoint doesn't seem to wipe out the damage done. It wasn't that big a deal since a lot of the other trophies involve breaking shit. Fortunately, each chapter is only about 30 minutes long if you skip the cut scenes, so running through it one time quickly wasn't too bad. I had read some people recommended save scumming if you did a checkpoint well, however I found I didn't really need it. I got through the whole game with only $20k in damage on that run. The game was inexpensive and had a few laughs. It wasn't good, but wasn't terrible either. Nothing I would say go out of your way to play, but if it's on sale for $5 you could do worse. 122. Erica Spoiler This game is not something I had ever heard of until it was given as a free game on PS+ a month or two ago. It was also nothing that was on my radar until I needed a shorter '2' game for the Gaming By Numbers Event...turns out I could have done something different, however I generally have liked these 'Choose your own adventure' type games, and this was no different so do not regret the choice. This review won't be terribly long since it is all story driven and there isn't anything as far as game play....not even QTE's. You have to do some actions, but you can't die so there is no penalty for doing nothing. Several times the game/movie will not go on unless you do do something, however a lot of the game will just move on if you do nothing. The biggest wrinkle in the game is the ability to use your phone to play it. I didn't love it at first, but the actions you need to take are either swiping or tapping the screen and the motion pad on the controller is pretty small. The app was quick to download and didn't drain my battery thankfully so it wasn't too bad. I wasn't a huge fan of using my phone at first, however it ended up making it extremely easy to play while I was working. I had the game up on my TV with my phone next to my keyboard. The game went on like a movie and when I needed to make a choice, I could just swipe/tap on the phone and continue on. The story is ok. Seems strongly influenced by the movie Shutter Island and the story really leaves a lot up for your own interpretations. The biggest drawback of the game is no chapter select...meaning you need to play through it fully about six times (seven for me since I f'd up on my last run). The good news is the game is pretty short...maybe an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a half. The bad news is it is like watching the same movie back to back to back to back to back to back with only a few deleted scenes during each playthrough to change it up. I mean, it's not terrible since each path/ending shows you a bit more information to make up your mind about the story...but a lot of it is truly the same bit again and again. As I mentioned, I f'd up my last run...the very last f'n decision in the game too lol You have to make a choice whether to do something or not...I needed to not do something. Normally the screen will tell you your options and give you the direction you have to swipe to make that choice...for some reason my game glitched or something and the dialogue was missing. I thought my game locked up or something and I was swiping on my phone to try and clear it...turns out I swiped in the direction to do the something and the game ended....I was soooo pissed lol It was literally the last decision in the game. But as I said, the game is short and it wasn't a big deal to let it play again until I got to the end. The girl who played Erica was a pretty good actress. She showed quite a bit of emotional range. For a free game, I got my money's worth and it was worth the playthrough. If you don't care about the platinum, it's definitely worth a playing and it really wasn't too bad to do for the platinum either. 123. Tearaway Spoiler I had never heard of this game before last week. I needed a game that ended in 9 for the Gaming By Numbers event and (at the time) only had a few days left to try and finish something. I checked the spreadsheet to see what games others had played and this was on the list. I checked several of the games on the list and many were way too short and some were way too long. I don't mind a short platinum if I feel like I'm not just buying trophies and this seemed to fit the bill. I bought the game and it turned out to be pretty fun. It's a platformer that utilizes all of the functions of the vita, which was pretty cool if not a little frustrating a times. My least favorite thing about the vita is how the back of it is a 'button'. I mean, I assume most people hold the vita similar to how I do and it means I'm almost constantly touching the back. Most of the time it is no big deal, but in this game, touching the back of the vita will bang on a drum (if you're standing on one) that will bounce you. On more than one occasion, I adjusted my grip or moved my fingers slightly and the game registered it as pressing the button, mistiming the jump. It wasn't that big of a deal, but was annoying when it happened. Generally, dying is no big deal in this game except for three trophies where you have to complete the level without dying. Most of the time you just reappear really close to where you were. The game is a story about a letter/envelope who is trying to deliver a message in a world made from construction paper. The world is influenced by the 'Yous' (you playing) and your face appears in a hole in the sun. I'll be honest, I didn't realize the Vita had a camera to take a real picture and it was a little surprising to see my face in the game lol The 'Yous' have the ability to manipulate the world and create things from construction paper to customize the letter and some of the characters he/she meets. You can move structures and extend bridges...it really is quite a creative game. The controls were pretty solid, however the game suffers from some pretty poor camera angles. Sometimes you can move the camera around and sometimes you cannot. I found that if I was struggling to see something, it helped to take out the in game camera, as it gives you a first person perspective to look around. I'm still not entirely sure what the hell happened in the story, but the game was quite a bit of fun Having said that, I feel like I overpaid a bit at $19.99. It would be a good deal around $10. But, it finished my GBN event card and also was good for the Halloween Bounty list as there are Wendigos in it, so I won't complain. 124. Max Max Spoiler I got this game free a couple of years ago on PS+ and it looked like something I might enjoy. When I looked on the gaming page however, I saw that there seemed to be glitches galore and that the Plat might be unobtainable. I was disappointed and put it out of mind since I wasn't interested in starting a glitchfest that I may never be able to plat...flash forward to a few weeks ago when I randomly saw a thread that said the server was closing at the end of October. I thought, well I guess I can cross this game off my list for good...but then I happened to look on the gaming page again and saw that they had fixed the racing glitch and that, so long as I paid attention to my statistics when doing scrap missions, the game should be good to play. I decided to join the mass of people to get this game done before it becomes unobtainable for real. I really didn't know what to expect from this game and didn't go into it with terribly high expectations and I was very pleasantly surprised. The story isn't much and there are definitely some glitchy things that happen, but overall I had a lot of fun with this game. It isn't hard at all...only one story mission had me stuck for about twenty minutes...and that was mostly because when my car touched a wall it would bounce off like a pinball instead of just scrape on by...but overall the game is pretty easy. The most fun part of the game for me was driving around the open world, blasting enemy cars. The fighting was mostly fun, however it was pretty frustrating at times with regards to some of the combat challenges. Fighting is generally the same as it is for the Batman games...only easier. Square punches, X does the special move and Triangle counters...however the timing seemed off for some reason. I couldn't tell if it was because it would pop in and out of slow motion at times...but the buttons didn't seem very responsive. In Batman, you tap Triangle and you counter pretty seamlessly. In Max, I felt like half the time I pressed triangle, it didn't register and I lost soooo many combos due to my counter not doing anything when I'd press Triangle. It felt like I needed to hold down or tap triangle several times before it would work. The same could be said for doing the special moves pressing X. It just felt very delayed and wasn't nearly as smooth as I was hoping. Fortunately, the combat challenges are pretty basic and I finished them all well before the end of the game...it was just a tad frustrating. Gravity was a little weird in this game as well. I actually got the trophy for being airborne in a vehicle for four seconds with out dying on a glitch. I was driving pretty fast and hit a boulder or something and it launched me into the air and I was spinning like a top. I think I was in the air for about fifteen seconds, only about twenty feet off the ground. Needless to say, I got the trophy then. I also think a few of the challenges glitched. I got the combat challenge for killing eight guys in one fury mode during a boss fight where there was only four guys and one boss...it was to my benefit though so I didn't mind. I had zero issues with the infamous 'scrap location' glitch and all of that stuff popped no problem. The cool thing about the game, was the collectibles and cleanup stuff didn't even feel that grindy to me. It was mostly just fun. I got all of the challenges done by the time I went to pop the platinum so had no issues with trying to find enemies to get them to pop. I was pretty cognizant of what I needed to do and tried to focus on a few challenges at a time so i wouldn't be stuck with a ton at the end. My biggest complaint about the game was the lack of variety in the bosses. They are all exactly the same, except for the color of their outfit. An over-sized dude, carrying an over-sized mace-like weapon who charges at you and swings. You dodge roll out of the way, then run over and punch him until he's about to swing again, then dodge roll away. Rinse repeat. Every. Single. Boss. There were maybe only two unique fights in the whole game...other than that they were pretty much all the same. Even still...it had been a while since I had played an open world game and it was pretty fun to slide back into it again. I definitely can't complain too much considering I paid nothing for it and probably got about 50 hours of enjoyment from it. If you're interested in the game, now is the time to play it! 125. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Spoiler I pre-ordered this game back in 2015 or 2016 when they first became available. The Original Final Fantasy 7 was the reason I bought a PS One and probably the game I've put the second most hours into in my life (after FFXI). I loved the original and I don't know if anything will top the first time I played through it and got to the infamous Aerith scene. I had never played a game before with a twist like that and it was so emotionally impactful, that I still remember my horror when I first saw it happen. Never, had I played a game where a main character died like that. To make things worse, I had played to that point with Aerith as Cloud's love interest. I was also at the age where I changed the main Character's name to my own and made the love interest the name of whoever my crush was at the time. Aerith was my strongest character, my love interest and I was devastated when it happened. I remember resetting to my prior save to see if there was a way I could save her. When I saw there wasn't, I kept a separate save file of that scene so I could replay it every so often. I did the same for the Opera scene in FF6 as well lol Anyways....to say this game had a lot to live up to is an understatement. I did not play the demo since I wanted to be able to play the whole thing once I got it. Due to Covid, I got this game several days after it came out. The anticipation was killing me and I tried my best to stay off the forums for a while so I could play the game without spoilers. The only reason it took this long to plat, is I wanted it to be a milestone. I'll keep this pretty spoiler free. It had a lot to live up to and even with my disappointment with FFXV, I still had high hopes for this game. In all honesty, it had a far greater chance of being a letdown than it did of being something I loved....well bravo SE...I loved this game. I loved the updated combat, I loved the expanded story, I loved the music, the voice acting was top notch...it was all great. It hit enough nostalgic notes to hit me in the feels while being fresh enough to keep the story interesting. I'll start with the combat. I think they did an absolutely amazing job of taking live-action style fighting and turn it into something that could be turn based. The pause like state you can put the game into when selecting actions gave it that turn based feel and it happens in a way that doesn't make combat feel disjointed. I also liked how seamlessly you could switch between characters and/or use their abilities while playing as someone else as a main character. The game was challenging (not terribly challenging...but not a cake walk either) and requires you to develop strategies and utilize all of your characters to truly succeed. I wasn't sure how I would like this after I heard some complaints when the demo was released, but I found it to be a truly fun experience. I really liked the expanded story. I like how they made the peripheral characters have more depth and meaning to the plot. It ends up making more sense how Cloud gets invested in the cause since he establishes relationships. In the OG, I didn't even realize Jessie was female and now I cared more about her fate. They took some liberties with the story and made some interesting/questionable additions, however I'm going to reserve judgement until I see how it plays out in the later installments. Overall, I felt like the Remake has stayed true to the original story. They may have taken a huge left hand turn towards the end...but at this point it is all speculation and could just be a talking point/cliff hanger and mean nothing...or it could mean a lot lol Either way, I can't wait for part 2 to come out...speaking of parts...I know a lot of people are not playing this game as a slight protest towards being episodic. I get that having to spend possibly something north of $200 to play a story we've already played seems like a cash grab, but after playing the game, I have no gripes about what I spent to play this game. If they put the same energy and care into the later installments....it'll be well worth it. While I loved this game...it wasn't perfect. I didn't like how many times the game forces you to walk slowly. I understand that it is a mechanic used instead of long loading screens, but it was still pretty frustrating at times when there didn't seem to be any reason to be walking. Hopefully the PS5 makes it so those walking scenes don't need to happen as frequently. The other thing i didn't like was that it felt like a wasted opportunity with the side quests. Most of them felt like your typical MMO fetch quests or something close to that and they really didn't add anything to the story. I would have loved to see them make them seem more relevant. As it stands, they feel more like filler to extend the game than anything of substance. Other than those two things though, this game was a home run for me. I really have to applaud them for how they did Wall Market. I really enjoyed that part of the game. Part of me wanted to wait and have this game be a double milestone for me...I really like the Hardened Veteran trophy image...plus I feel like at my age I'm kind of a hardened veteran of gaming lol...but I couldn't wait 250 more trophies to pop this plat...once Max was done...I popped FF7R in and finished chapter 2 for the milestone. The good news is I have something else I see that I'll also like as #6000. Always have a backup plan boys and girls! 126. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Spoiler While playing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, I learned a very important thing that all fathers look forward to with their children...my son was now old enough to actually play video games instead of just holding an unplugged controller. My son proved much more adept at that game than I could have ever imagined and I decided to let him pick a game to play. He said he wanted to play a Batman game. This made my choice of game to play with him quite easy. He loves LEGO and he loves to 'kick butt bad guys', so this was tailor made for a boys first video game. I had played LEGO The Hobbit a few years ago, and while the game was fine...it was nothing I needed to jump back into right away. I assumed they all follow the same formula and for a kid starting out, it was perfect. Now there was a steeper learning curve for him than I had anticipated. Castlevania was a 2D side scroller and was much easier for him to learn how to move around. I never thought about how challenging the third dimension could be for him. I don't think I tried my first 3D game until Mario 64, so was much older. After some growing pains, he got a pretty good handle of it though. Repositioning the camera is still a bit of a challenge for him, but this is an incredibly forgiving game and he had a blast playing it. It was also a great tool for getting some good behavior out of him as well lol If he was not being a good listener or *gasp* caught lying about something...he would lose playing Batman for that day. It was a pretty good motivational tool lol You can kind of see when he was having some rough stretches behaving based on the gaps in the trophies...not always since we didn't get a trophy every time we played...but you can still kind of tell lol I only played this game with my son except for the bonus level. We did it once together and he found it very boring since there are no enemy butts to kick in that level. He had fun riding the lion and gorilla around for a bit, but we didn't beat it the time we tried it (ran out of time before dinner) so I did it myself the other night to get ready for the platinum. There's really not much to say about the game itself. It does follow the same pattern as the other LEGO game I played. I didn't realize it was based on a movie and I ended up buying it without knowing for my son lol We were scrolling through the Prime movies one day and he saw a LEGO Batman movie and I got it for like $10. I had no idea until we were watching it and I got that 'have I already seen this before' feeling when I realized it was from the game. It took us almost three months to beat, but it is our first Platinum trophy together. I did most of the heavy lifting of getting the collectibles, but he did find a few on his own. He actually got pretty decent at solving some of the puzzles by the end as well. It's kind of funny that my first ever platinum was a Batman game and then my first ever platinum with my son was also a Batman game. He has decided he wants his next game to be LEGO Batman 3 lol I have a feeling my profile will be littered with LEGO's...much like my living room floor... Something tells me these LEGO games won't be nearly as painful as the experience of stepping on a real LEGO on the floor. 127. Vampyr Spoiler This was another game that I had thought about buying on various sales over the past couple of years, but never pulled the trigger. Not that I knew anything about it, but I like Vampire movies and thought this might be something that could be interesting. I had no idea what the game play was like or anything and I was pretty happy to see it being offered for PS+ last month. I wasn't in a rush to play it necessarily, however there was a mini-event for plat'ing this game on Halloween and I was looking for a holiday themed game, so figured why not? While I didn't know what to expect, it was not really what I was expecting at the same time. The game is extremely dialogue/story driven that is split up by some hack and slash-y kind of combat. The story takes place around 1920 in London during the Spanish Flu epidemic and you play as a recently turned vampire who is a renowned doctor and a war veteran. It's a cool time period for the story to take place and you spend the majority of the time talking with the citizens, trying to learn about your newfound immortality while also trying to end the epidemic. I thought the story was decent enough, however I felt that the game didn't really do a great job of explaining the Vampire's ability to 'mesmerize' people. As you learn clues, new dialogue options open and your character is not very subtle when asking about these discoveries. For example, you may learn that a citizen has committed murder....you will just meet the dude and be like 'You murdered so-and-so, why did you do it and shame on you as well' and the dude you are accusing, who you just met, will just spill the beans and then continue to talk to you after. I mean, a weird sound happens when you select the option and the screen kind of goes wavy for a second to imply you're imposing your will on them to get the answer...but it's never explained really (unless I just missed it) and felt kind of weird. Outside of all the time you spend talking...there is some combat. You get some vampire skills, a ranged weapon (if you choose a one handed weapon) and a melee weapon. I tended to use the two-handed clubs and only broke out the guns during some boss fights. I was very unimpressed with the game at the beginning. I found the combat to very clunky and was very frustrated. This is a game that has a stamina bar that depletes as you attack and it seemed to run out too quickly and I died quite a bit at the beginning while figuring things out. The other challenge at the start is there is a trophy for not embracing (feeding) on any citizens, however you get a ton of experience points for doing so. You level quite slowly and there isn't really any other great source of experience points. Killing enemies gets you about 10xp at a time while embracing someone will get you 1000-6000xp (you get more the healthier they are and the more 'clues' you uncover about them). You get a decent amount of xp from completing quests and uncovering citizen clues....but nothing comes close to embracing a citizen. You really need to get some of the side quests done early if you want to stand a chance against the enemies. I tended to try and finish every side quest I could in each district before moving on with the main story line. This helped quite a bit and once I got a few skills upgraded and got used to the combat a bit....I didn't die for a long time. I ended up being level 30 when I beat the game. I had done all of the side quests when I beat the game, and I don't see how you could be any higher really without embracing. As a comparison, when I reloaded my last save from the cloud for trophy cleanup, I 'embraced' every character except for four and was level 50 when the Platinum popped. Overall, I ended up enjoying the game a lot more than I thought I would after the rough start. I got about 30-35 hours out of the game (I read about 1/2 of the notes/lore and listened to every conversation and watched every cutscene), so I can't really complain about a 'free' game that provided that much entertainment. I was able to pop it successfully on Halloween for the event and was able to get into the spirit of the season, so all in all a win in my book. I would say the game is worth about $10 if you didn't get it for free and wanted to try it out. It has flaws, but overall was pretty solid. 128. Mass Effect Spoiler It's happened! I did it! The game I've been saying will be my next game for almost two years has finally been done lol This is a game that my best friend had recommended a few years ago and I bought when it was on a decent sale shortly after. I've heard tons of good things about the series and the only real reason it has taken so long to start is the fact that I have been participating in so many events over the past couple of years. A lot of the events require ten games or so to be finished over about a three month span in general. Since I would like to play these consecutively...it never seemed like a good time to start. I've decided to (most likely) take the winter off from events so I can do some general housekeeping of unfinished games/games that I've wanted to play for a while done. All of the on the longer side. I had generally heard that this was the worst game in the series and that it did not age very well. Well, I disagree lol I found this game to be very good....for a 13 year old game, I didn't think anything felt that dated. There were a lot of things I liked about the game. I thought the the story was really interesting and I liked that you could play as a good guy or bad guy. I liked how vast the game was and how much there was to explore. I thought the graphics were pretty good considering how old the game is and once I got used to it...the combat actually wasn't too bad either. I generally like to play as a more virtuous character that 'does the right thing' but it was kind of funny to play the 'renegade' role in this game. There were a lot of quests where you were like, 'yeah I had to do it cause you suck at your job' or you have an opportunity to save the hostages and you're like 'nah, people die sometimes'. I knew I wanted my final playthrough to be of the 'paragon' variety, so I was a dick during my second playthrough I saw that there was a way to cheese Hardcore and Insanity, but I wanted to play them so didn't bother with it. In all honesty, the harder modes weren't that hard. Your gear is so good by then, that so long as you keep moving and shooting....it's really hard to die. The only hard part about the later modes is how freaking long it takes to kill stuff. Everything seems to have immunity and immunity lasts forever so it takes a long time to kill anything....especially the Krogans...I found that switching back and forth between the ammo for +40% damage to organics and synthetics helped speed stuff up...but that was the only thing that made those modes hard. In general I was able to blow through the game once I knew where to go and what could be skipped. While I don't think the game aged as terribly as some seem to think. There were definitely a ton of areas that could use improvement. Things that bothered me was the Immunity ability....I wouldn't have minded it if it lasted for a few seconds....but it literally lasts like 10-15 seconds which is too long. I mean it makes Insanity and Hardcore easier to survive....but it also prolongs battles waaaaaaay too long. The fact you couldn't select multiple things to convert to omni-gel at once was annoying. It would have been nice to check off a bunch of things to convert at once and it ended up being poorly executed as well. It would have also been nice to have a shared inventory screen instead of having everything sorted separately by what it was. With an inventory max of 150 items, you have to spend a lot of time clearing inventory. I didn't love that the button to skip text was also the same button to select text. I didn't skip any text my first playthrough....but once I knew what was going on, I tried to skip more text the next couple of playthroughs and I ended up accidentally selecting a ton of things I didn't want to. I would have liked to have seen them be two different buttons. The final thing that I found pretty annoying was how closely your teammates followed you...I mean they would be right on your ass and would get in the way all the time. I ended up having them hang back quite frequently when I knew I had to be able to move around. These were all relatively minor nuisances...but it left a lot of areas for improvement on an otherwise stellar game. While the game wasn't terribly hard....getting the Platinum is pretty challenging. There is a lot of annoying things with regards to 100% this game. Having to repeat 45-50+ mission/assignments on each playthrough to get all the different teammate trophies was brutal. The counter for them seems somewhat glitched as well. I didn't notice it on my first playthrough where things seemed to pop when they should, however on the next two playthroughs I was nervous the game glitched out on me. My hardcore playthrough I used Wrex and Tali as teammates. I got them both at about the exact same time and only used the two of them on all missions/assignments together (except the first few before you get them) and for some reason Tali's trophy popped on time and I had to do like 10-15 more quests before Wrex's trophy did. I was certain it wasn't going to pop lol They should have popped at the same time or Wrex should have popped first since I think you technically do one mission with him before getting Tali. So those trophies sucked....the other trophies that sucked were the 'use *blank* ability 75 times' trophies. It wouldn't have been as bad if it counted your teammates, since you'd have access to everything if they counted...however the trophy list forces you to play under multiple different job/class types to get. Fortunately they are relatively easy to farm....but I would have rather been able to do them organically by playing the game. The rest of the trophies weren't too bad...but this trophy list was far grindy-er than it needed to be. Based on my complaints, it probably doesn't sound like I liked the game as much as I did, but as I mentioned....it was mostly little things. Overall, this was a great experience and I'm super psyched that I get to carry my character over to the next playthrough On to ME2! 29. Mass Effect 2 Spoiler Well it took a while to get going, but now I'm on a roll! Two Months and two ME plats. After how much I enjoyed the first one, I didn't want to wait too long before starting the second one up. After a couple weeks of a few palate cleansing games and setting Hollow Knight up to be ready for my milestone....I was back as John Shepard for my second go-round. I really enjoyed this addition to the series. It might be one of my favorite games of all time to be honest. I thought they improved in virtually every facet of the game and there were only a few things that they didn't. Things I liked...I thought the continuation of the story was really good and I was very interested in how this journey would end up. I could see how people might feel the story was a little cheap, since the majority of the game is finding team members and then earning their loyalty, but I really liked it. I thought it gave valuable back story and made you feel more invested in each of them. I used everyone at least a couple of times. My main team was usually made up of Kasumi and Miranda. Miranda was useful against both organics and synthetics and Kasumi's flash bang and stealth attack's were extremely useful too. I did every mission/assignment possible and tried to talk to everyone as much as possible too to get as much of the story as I could. I'm really looking forward to the 'finale' of the trilogy (even though I've heard the story sucked in the end...trying to make my own opinions). I felt like the combat was improved as well with things like aiming much better. I loved that they got rid of that invincibility ability since that just seemed to drag fights on forever in the first game and I liked that they got rid of the inventory as it was more annoying than helpful in the first one. I also liked the idea of upgrading you weapons as well. I didn't notice much of a difference as far as graphics are concerned, but for a 10 year old game, they were pretty good and there was a lot more detail in each of the zones. The zones felt much smaller, but there was a lot more variety and they weren't nearly as sterile as the first one. I liked how they adjusted 'leveling up' and didn't like it as much at the same time. Every one of my characters (except Shepard) had a wasted stat point since anything past the first point into an ability required more than one point to upgrade. Due to this, every character had one stat point that I couldn't assign. At least in the first one that didn't happen, but the improvement in an ability from level one to level two was much more noticeable. I also felt it created a lot more room for customization. I played the first game as a Soldier however wanted to try something different in this one. I was happy that the story made it so that it was possible to change your main 'job' path if you wanted. I ended up playing as an Infiltrator (stealthy type) and found it a ton of fun to play. Since I wanted to do this in one play through, it also ended up being very, very helpful for playing in Insanity. On several occasions, turning invisible and running to cover saved my ass. It was also very helpful getting some of the combat trophies done as well. I thought the Brawler trophy, where you have to punch and then shoot and kill 20 enemies while they are staggered was going to be challenging, especially on Insanity...but I ended up killing all the enemies in an area until one was left and then just went invisible and ran up and smack him then shoot. It only seemed to register about half the time...but It made that trophy much easier and I didn't feel like I would run out of time to do it. Maybe it was because of the job I selected, but I didn't find Insanity to be that hard at all. Only a couple spots took more than two or three tries and most of them I was able to do on my first try. You are basically invulnerable when in cover (unless flanked) so as long as you remain patient....you shouldn't really die much. Things I didn't like....I didn't like that they didn't fix the 'skipping text' button being the same as the choosing an option button. I always play with subtitles since I don't always hear what is being said, and I find reading the lines to be faster and I miss less of the story that way. I hate that several times throughout the story, I'll hit to skip to the next line of text, and the decision pops up just before I hit the button and I don't even see what conversation selection I've made. It almost always seems to end a conversation too....I would rather it default to something that keeps the options up there...or better yet, I could hit another button to skip text that won't make a decision for me. I liked that they added the ability to fly the Normandy around the star maps, but it really sucked looking for materials. It felt like a major waste of time....select a world, press to scan, move the scanner up and down the longitude lines while very slowly moving left or right along the latitude lines until your scanner reads a mineral...shoot the probe...get a small amount of materials....rinse repeat. It took like 5 minutes per planet and you could only carry 30 probes in the beginning. I'd spend about 15 probes per planet and have to waste time going back to the system that had the fuel supply ship to buy more, then trek back out to the system I was probing. It was just really annoying. I'm hoping they improve on that in ME3. The last thing I didn't love was them switching from weapons that required no ammo, but could over heat...to weapons requiring ammo. I never really ran out of ammo....but it really limited my ability to use my favorite guns since they didn't have as much ammo. I enjoy using a sniper rifle...but you only get 10 bullets (at least with the starting gun) and I'd run out far too fast. Other than those minor issues, I thought this game was amazing. At this point, I can't tell if I'd play the remaster's or not. I really enjoy the games so it's not that...but I think it'd be a few years before I'd jump back into it since I'm just playing them now. Who knows...maybe it'll be like a game from SE and be in production for 10-15 years after being announced. Whatever they do....I hope they learn from Cyberpunk and don't rush it. 130. Mass Effect 3 Spoiler It's done folks, the original trilogy is in the books. I can safely say that this is a top 3 favorite series ever. The Banner Saga and Final Fantasy's are in that trio as well. FF probably doesn't belong in there since most of the games have nothing to do with one another, but since that series sparked my love affair with gaming...I feel obligated to put them in there. This series had everything...it made me laugh (way more than I expected), made me happy, made me sad....it was just an excellent story and an amazing experience. After reading somewhere that BioWare screwed the pooch with the third game in the series, I went into the game wondering what would make it go south....and for me it never happened. I thought it was a pretty perfect end to a really good story. The character development was fantastic and so was the voice acting. After checking out IMDB, I was surprised at how many famous actors were in the game. In general, I'm a sucker for games that have a continuation from game to game. i love when decisions made in game one have ramifications in games two and three. With my save that I brought over for each game, I played as a male Shepard and was as Paragon as I could be. I did every quest that I was able to and I talked to everyone that I could whenever I could. The side conversations were my favorite part. There was so much humor sprinkled in there and a ton of character development. In game one, Ashley was my romance option, however in ME2, with Ashley not an option...I went with Tali. I was really curious what she looked like under the mask and thought if she was my romance option I'd get to see it...plus she was the most genuine character of the group and felt like the right choice based on how I chose to play Shepard. Much to my disappointment, I didn't get to see her face in ME2, however I continued our romance in ME3 and finally got my wish. Due to our relationship in the game, I tended to have her in my party whenever I could to see the banter. My biggest disappointment in the game was with the Citaldel DLC. I had Tali as a squad member, but since I hadn't gotten far enough in the main story line when I tackled the DLC, she wasn't at the party at the end. It was really kind of stupid, and even though she was in my squad for the missions...she wasn't at the party, but said thank you after the DLC for having the party. The continuity was really off there, and it was the only real time I was disappointed in the story. I played the whole game on Insanity mode...DLC's included. For the most part, the game was pretty easy. Cover wasn't as broken as it was in ME2, but it was still pretty buff. Enemies try to flank you much much more in this game. The Citadel DLC was the hardest part to play in insanity. The last boss in the DLC was really a pain in the ass...he was just relentless in coming after you and really didn't allow me to stay in cover long. The mirror match in the Arena was also pretty hard on Insanity. I could get through the first two rounds pretty consistently, but that third round with all six Shepards out at once was really tough. The Vanguard Shepard was the bane of my existence for a while. After about twenty five to thirty attempts though, I was able to beat it. The only part of the game that really pissed me off, was a game mechanic at the very end. It's a mini-game of sorts where you only have a pistol and the sway is insane...everything is in slow motion, except when you try to move the crosshairs onto the target....then the crosshairs were on ice skates. You have to be quick and accurate or it's game over...and there's no way to skip the cutscene at the beginning of the segment. Fortunately, the cutscene isn't long....but it got really annoying after try 30. Other than that really annoying section....ME3 was amazing. The story was great, the number of ways things could turn out is great. The replayability of this game is exceptionally high and I'll have no problem at all playing the Remasters when they come out. I'll maybe be a renegade and have a different love interest. Combat was a lot of fun in this game. I liked how they changed up the leveling in this game...I liked that you could combo abilities with your squad mates. You really need to also to beat some of those enemies....Banshees suck ass on Insanity. Playing as an Infiltrator wasn't as beneficial in this game as in ME2. It felt like the enemies could see me much better. It was useful in about three different areas, but for the most part...I didn't go invisible much since it can really mess up the timers. I played as an Infiltrator in ME3 again since it was very useful in ME2 in Insanity mode. If I had to do it again, I'd probably try as a Sentinel or an Engineer. It was a little annoying that I had to do another partial playthrough to get the Overload trophy. Fortunately, it only took a few hours to do cleanup in NG+. Without spoilers (I probably shouldn't worry since the game is like 10 years old now, but I'll be nice), I chose to go straight up the middle in the end. I was tempted to go right and choose red...but since I had been playing as the Paragon type, felt choosing the middle option felt like the right way for this particular story to end. I grew attached to all of my squad members based on their backstories, however generally went with Liara since her crowd control abilities were insanely helpful and either Tali or EDI. If I wasn't sure what kind of enemies I'd be facing, I tended to take EDI since her abilities work well against Synthetics and Organics. I'd take Tali if I wanted to see some unique dialogue. Javik was a great addition and really entertaining to talk to as well. I can't say enough good things about this series, and if you're like me and hadn't played it yet....definitely check out the Remaster when it comes out...or if you still have a PS3, it's worth the investment. Platinums 131-140 Spoiler 131. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark Spoiler Pro Tip for those of you, who for some dumb reason like a platinum rain or milestone, plan on selecting a trophy to save/hold for said rain or milestone....fully read the trophy description lol Learn from my mistake! I was blowing through this game and decided to save the Final Metamorphosis trophy for learning all 19 base Monster Classes with one of the characters. Seemed like a good choice. I could farm the necessary AP to learn the last ability and then just wait to learn it until my rain day. I stupidly assumed that all of the available Monster Classes that you could learn from this character was 19....so if I saved the last job, I would be fine....nope! Turns out there are 20 monster jobs you can learn with this character lol...and the one I saved to pop last was the 'non-base' Monster Class (Mummified ftw). If I had saved any of the other ones for last, my plan would have worked, but since I happened to leave the 'non-base' monster class for last, I was SOL. So, while the plan was to save that last ability in the last monster class to learn on the rain day and pop the platinum....it didn't work out that way. When I learned the last ability in my second to last monster class, the trophy popped....along with the Plat lol. I'd be more annoyed if this wasn't an RPG where I have a top 5 completion time so I get bonus points in the RPG Mania event. The other good news was that since I hadn't finished the DLC yet, I could plat Mass Effect: Andromeda and still have it appear in order with the rest of the series on my profile. The bad news is that this game was supposed to be my 9th out of 10 plats for the rain day and instead I'm back down to 7 lol. So, after I beat Batman: Arkham Asylum (jp) (which is really hard to play not understanding the language fyi), I'll have to find two other games to plat. I do have seven weeks to do it so it should be plenty of time provided no more set backs....but you'll notice I crossed out 131 for ME: A above and it is now 132 So now that I've explained how I messed up saving the last trophy....let me talk about the game a bit. This game was actually great! Well, maybe it's not great but it did hit some nostalgia notes for me which made it seem better than it probably is. It felt a lot like playing Final Fantasy Tactics way back when on the PS One. From the isometric board and combat, to the map and graphics, to the somewhat familiar kind of story....it was just a nice, relaxing experience. Since I wanted to enjoy that experience, and there is no difficulty related trophy, I played it on beginner since I wasn't looking for anything stressful. I bet this game can be really hard though on the harder settings if you do want that challenge. You can set it so that your characters get an injury if they fall during combat and temporarily lost stat points all the way up to permadeath if they fall in battle. If there was a permadeath mode requirement for a trophy, this game would have been a lot harder, but as it stands, it is really quite easy. That's actually one of the coolest things about this game, you can pretty much tailor your experience to whatever you want. There are like 10-15 different settings you can adjust up or down to make the game harder or easier. The best part of this game, was that it can literally play itself 85% of the time if you want. Because of that, it was great for playing during the work day lol. You can set your characters to have the AI be in control. I used that option only when farming AP to level up the jobs...I played the main story missions myself. I died only a couple times on beginner (mostly just because I was being cocky and not respecting the computer lol). None of the trophies are particular challenging and the grind is completely mitigated by the fact you can have the AI farm for you. You have to start the level, place your characters and then assign the AP after the match, but the entire round is controlled by AI. The AI is actually pretty good about not wasting turns either. I might overlook using a random spell or ability for extra XP, but the AI does it right! There are a lot of jobs to choose from and there is quite a bit of variety among them as well. The main characters also get a unique job that you can unlock as you progress through the story. In general, you select a main job and a subjob for your characters. The main job gives you the attack set and passive abilities for that job class. The subjob gives you the attack move set for that job, but then you can pick two extra passive skills and a counter skill from any of the jobs you have learned that particular skill/counter from. Because of this, there is quite a bit of customizability in the game. Some passive's and counters are way better than others, but I found it fun to play around. There is a decent amount of gear you can obtain as well so there really is a lot of different ways to tackle a level. There are some setups that are more OP than others and can help you breeze through stuff, but again I was just looking for something casual to play in between big series. The story is pretty uninspired for the most part. It's not bad, but nothing really new and it's pretty predictable what is going to happen. They try to have some twists, but it pretty much always ends up being the obvious twist. But, if you are looking for a slight nostalgia twang with a laid back turn-based RPG, this is a good choice. I want to say this game is on sale quite a bit and if you see it for $10-$15, it's worth a pick up. If you do intend to play it, do not forget to download the DLC at the same time. I did not do this and had to do a second playthrough to complete the DLC. The DLC adds nothing new to the story and only adds a few extra things to do on the side as your progress. I think the DLC would be much more enjoyable to play during your first play through. I burned through a NG+ in 5-8 hours to clean up the DLC trophies so it wasn't a terrible clean up, but it'd be a better experience to play it while you're playing the main game. Also, unlocking the 'Fell' monster variant in the DLC is extremely not obvious lol so look that one up ahead of time. It's easy to unlock, but nothing you'd necessarily have happen through normal play. 132. Mass Effect: Andromeda Spoiler I'm not going to lie to you...I was dragging my feet with this game due to the negative feedback it had received. Since I had enjoyed the original trilogy so much, I was afraid that this game would leave a sour taste in my mouth. Is this game perfect? No. But is this the worst game ever? Not even close. People who think this is a bad game clearly didn't grow up playing things like Karnov, Bad Dudes and Hydlide and it shows. This game definitely suffers from some Quality Control issues which do cause some eye rolling moments, however the story is a pretty good one and there is a ton of content. My save file says 90 hours, however I spent quite a bit of time in the pause menu since I would play from time to time during my work day. I'd say I probably got a good 65-70 hours. While I technically haven't popped the Platinum yet, this will be the first game I pop on my rain day to keep it with the rest of the ME series. This game fixed my biggest issue with the first three games...that skipping text and making a choice were the same button. It caused a ton of accidental choices in the original series and this game made the switch to skipping text being the button and selecting a choice the . It was a small and extremely easy fix, but was an excellent quality of life improvement. I wasn't sure I liked the combat at first. I had a hard time targeting and just didn't feel as comfortable as the original trilogy, however once I got used to it, I found it was quite enjoyable. I liked the addition of the jetpack thrusters for jumping and they really helped expand where you could explore. The other good thing about the combat was the sheer amount of variety you could have with regards to skills. There are three main skill trees (combat, biotic and tech) with about 10 different options in each tree. You can only ever have three options equipped at once, but it opens up tons of different ways to play your character. In addition to the skills you can equip, there are 'profiles' which mirror the jobs you could select from the original trilogy. When you invest a certain amount of points into the three trees, it'll level up a profile, which in turn gives you additional bonuses. It really does create a ton of flexibility with your character. You can also change your profile and/or your active skills whenever. There is also a way to respec (for a cost), so you have the ability to try different things in the same playthrough, unlike the previous games where you were locked into the job you selected at the start. While the abilities and leveling was improved in my opinion, gearing up was a little overly convoluted. You have a research station where you can research blueprints for new gear, which cost research points (which you gain by scanning things in the field or from Nexus benefits). With the blueprint, you use the materials you find in your travels to develop the gear. Every 5 levels you gain, the next level up of equipment becomes available and needs to be researched. The benefit to crafting your own gear is that you can add augmentations to make the gear stronger than what you find in the field. Whether the gear is found or crafted, they all can receive mods that you find (similar to the original trilogy). It is not very intuitive when you're starting and takes a while to understand. Once I did, it wasn't bad...but it was just really unnecessarily complicated. My biggest issue with the combat is that while there is a lot of variety and possibilities when it comes to your character, there isn't a lot when it comes to enemies. You pretty much see every enemy you're going to fight within the first 20 hours or so and then it's more of the same with just more enemies thrown at you. The main enemies you'll fight are Kett, Roekaar, Outcasts and Remnant. All of them only have about six or seven different enemy types and the strategy to take them out doesn't change all that much as the game progresses. There also aren't many 'boss' style fights and most of them end up being repeated there as well. In this area, I do understand some of the criticism (still not enough to say this game ruined the series). It's also not terribly hard. I played on Insanity and it was really hard in the beginning. No good gear and a lot of unfamiliarity with what you're walking into...however by the time I got to level 15 or 20, the game seemed to get a lot easier. There was only one fight in the whole game that took me a while to get by. There is one section where you fight a 'boss' style Remnant that keeps summoning minions (only time this happens in the game) and the other enemies that are there with it, keep respawning immediately after being killed. My general strategy throughout was to pick off the peons before focusing on the hardest one, but that wasn't possible here. Probably took me a good 45 minutes to an hour to get past that part. I actually had to backtrack from that fight to get an RPG consumable item. Once I got that though, I beat it on my first try. I didn't really use consumables at all other than that one fight. My favorite part of the game was the story. I don't know how most people felt about the story, but I thought the premise was a really intriguing idea. There were several worlds to explore and a lot of the Remnant puzzles were pretty challenging. I thought the bad guys were compelling (maybe not terribly original, but whatever) and I thought that the main character was good enough. Overall, the voice acting was pretty average...some good efforts (I thought Peebee, Drack and Jaal were done well), some decent (male Ryder, Liam, Kallo), some ok (Cora, Gil) and some inexcusable (Tann and Kesh). Pretty much all of the female Krogan voice's they used were pretty bad. I thought they did a good job with normal conversation and some of the humor but did the scenes where you'd expect the characters to be upset or angry pretty poorly. I completed every possible side-quest and task that was available. in doing so, I got a ton of backstory and it really helped flesh out some of the story lines. To that end, you can tell they planned on doing a sequel since several of the more compelling story lines were left unfinished (and it's a bummer the game got such a poor reception and seems unlikely to get a sequel since I want to know what happened lol). The 'main' story seemed relatively short, however there was so much secondary content that the game still ended up providing a ton stuff to do. If you do play this game, I highly recommend doing all the quests. It's not needed for the plat, but definitely makes the game more enjoyable. Some of the quests can be pretty fetch-y, however I had fun driving around on the Nomad. As far as trophies go, there were too many combat related ones for my liking. They aren't terribly hard, and some of them actually made me play with different skills more than I anticipated. I didn't like pull or throw much in the original trilogy, but it was a lot of fun in this game. By holding down the button when using pull, you actually pull the enemy towards you and hold it suspended in air. If you then use the throw ability, you can actually throw an enemy at another enemy. That got to be fun. It also helped when going for the melee trophies. I tended to use Pull and Throw or Incinerate and Concussive Shot and I always had my VI friend in tow. I thought the idea of hovering with the Jet Pack and shooting to be a cool one, however in practice, you make yourself a wide open target and get smoked pretty quickly. I ended up getting that trophy by shooting wildlife. I found a sniper rifle and bugs to be the most effective way to get that trophy. I started targeting them early, so had them all done by about halfway through my run and didn't have to worry about them thereafter. My biggest concern for a trophy was the Romance trophy for having three romances. I read that it could be done in a single playthrough, but there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about how to do it. I basically chose the romance option every chance I could and was fortunate to get it in one playthrough. I had two flings with Reyes and Avela and ended up with Cora as my 'exclusive' romance option. I was genuinely surprised at how steamy the romance scene ended up being. If I could have chosen someone if trophies weren't a thing, I would have gone with Peebee. She was much more fun and interesting....but you had to lock into her too early on I felt and I was nervous I'd miss out on the trophy so only had a mini-fling with her (which turns out doesn't count towards the trophy). I played most of the game with Drack and Jaal or Peebee. Drack was highly entertaining and Jaal was also interesting since it gave a lot of insight into Andromeda. Peebee was fun and I felt that any group made up of these three provided fun banter while exploring. Overall, I feel like this game gets a bad rap unfairly. The original trilogy was an amazing experience and is tough to live up to. Honestly, if this game was just titled Andromeda without the Mass Effect in front of it, I bet it would have been received much better. I personally enjoyed when ME: A made allusions to the original trilogy and they ended up providing a great deal of context for what was going on in this game. Other than the conversation cutscenes being a little sloppy and there not being a ton of enemy/combat variety...this game was actually really good. I had a hard time putting the game down because I was enjoying my time with it. I ended up liking Ryder quite a bit (he's no Shepard, but who is?). If you haven't played this game because of the reviews, I think you should honestly give it a chance. It's not my favorite game of all time or anything, but it's a solid 7.5-8/10 for me and I do not regret playing it. 133. Battle Vs. Chess Spoiler I had always wanted to learn chess as a kid. It was something my father was really good at and I thought it’d be a fun thing to learn…plus he had this awesome (but highly illegal now) ivory chess set that he had bought when stationed over in Okinawa in the late 1970’s. It wasn’t shaped like your typical chess pieces, but were shaped in the model of Japanese culture. The knights looked like Samurai and the king piece an Emperor, with traditional Japanese garb. It was really cool. Occasionally, he’d let us take the pieces out to look at. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much patience for teaching…when I was 11 or 12, I asked him to teach me chess. We took out his board, he beat me in three moves and said he wouldn’t play me again until I could prove that I was better. Needless to say, we never played again…that experience also soured me quite a bit on chess and I didn’t end up playing much. Over this past summer, my best friend from high school started to teach himself to play and asked if I wanted to play a bit. I said sure, why not? We played a little bit and it was pretty fun. I randomly decided to see if there were any decent chess games on the PS to play and found this game. I was a little nervous at first since it was an old game with MP trophies, however some people had appeared to have gotten them recently so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s actually a pretty good game. It took me a little while to get used to what the chess pieces look like, but there are several game modes that make it kind of fun. There is a campaign mode where you play as white or black. The white pieces are like the angelic/good guy pieces and the black are the demonic/bad guy pieces. Each campaign sets up different scenarios that you have to beat and some are pretty challenging. There is kind of a story that goes with it….but it’s nothing memorable. What I liked about the campaign mode is that you can't really cheese it by using a chess move app online. It would work for some of them, but some have weird conditions that an app wouldn't understand so you are forced a bit to figure things out. There is also a puzzle mode where you have to collect a certain amount of points using certain pieces. There are colored circles on different squares and you have to try and 'claim' as many of them as possible using the piece(s) provided. It can be pretty challenging but there is no time limit so you can think out your moves. A chess app doesn't help at all in this mode since you aren't trying to capture chess pieces and there is no other side to make moves. The last mode is just regular chess. If you are just interested in the trophies, you could use a chess app online for most of them and pretty much guarantee you beat the CPU pretty much every time. I tried everything by myself first, but I’m just not that good at chess and needed some help with the move calculator for some of them. It was actually a good teaching tool as well because it helped me see the board in different ways and it ended up improving my game a bit. My friend went from beating me almost every time to now I’m winning two out of three. I never use that move calculator when playing him, but it was useful for some of the trophies. The MP is 100% dead and you will never find anyone by just casually searching. I got very lucky and one of the ‘recent players’ on the PSNP page was interested in boosting. The good news is that it only takes a couple of hours to complete. Since you can win a match in three or four moves depending on which color you are randomly assigned….gaining points happens quickly. If you like chess, the game is definitely worth playing and is a lot of fun…if not, you’re money is probably better spent else where. 134. MLB The Show 20 Spoiler As I’ve mentioned before, I played baseball from age 5 all the way up through college and a few years after. I grew up idolizing Roger Clemens (was painful to see him go to the Yanks, but I still rooted for him when he was on the mound….also he should be in the HoF) and wanted to be a pitcher. I did pitch when I was younger, but I found I got a little bored not being in every play on days I wasn't pitching. I decided that I wanted to be a catcher so I could still be in every play on days I didn't pitch and that ended up being the position I excelled at. I threw hard enough that I could be an effective pitcher through high school….but I never really learned how to pitch and never developed much past my fastball. I truly loved the game and would watch the Sox every night. Unfortunately, my wife is bored to tears by baseball and I’ve stopped watching over the years. I haven’t followed really closely in probably 10 years or so. Actually, I know exactly when I stopped watching every day….it was the ‘chicken and beer’ incident that got Terry Francona fired as the manager of the Red Sox back in 2011. I loved Francona and felt that the Sox did him dirty, so that whole situation soured me a bit. The other reason I was soured was a more personal reason. I got married that same summer and as a gift to my groomsmen, I bought tickets to see the Red Sox play at Fenway. As a special thanks, the tickets I bought were to sit on the Green Monster….they were $600 a piece on StubHub and I spent $2400 in total to go. It was something I had wanted to do since they put seats up there and this seemed like the perfect excuse to splurge without getting crucified by my wife at the cost lol The game was at the end of August against the Athletics and I bought them for a Sunday game. The plan was to get up there early, watch batting practice and then grab some food and adult beverages or something after the game. I had bought the tickets in April so that we could plan ahead….turns out the weekend I picked was the weekend hurricane Irene visited New England. (Pro tip….if you’re going to buy tickets on the secondary market…wait until the day of the game and the price drops dramatically….I stupidly paid a premium.) To try and get the game in before the hurricane, the Red Sox moved the game from Sunday to Saturday and made it part of a double header. I was disappointed since I knew that meant no BP and no after game festivities since the hurricane would be coming. One of my buddies lived near me and we drove up together to meet my other two buddies in Framingham where one of them lived. Framingham is about 20-25 minutes from Fenway so we were close enough to get there in time if the game was on. We were all hoping the game would be postponed so that we could still make a full day of it still later in the year (or it’d be canceled and I’d get my money back) and things looked good early. The game originally scheduled for Saturday was moved to 11:00am and the second game was going to start about 45 minutes after the first game was over. There was quite a bit of rain and the first game had a few delays. In about the 8th inning of the first game, the Red Sox announced that anyone that had tickets for the second game, was welcome to come see the end of the first game (there was no one at the stadium.) We figured, what the hell and drove in. We arrived just in time to see the final out of the first game. We made our way up to our seats and waited for the second game to start. We were still hoping that the game would be postponed, but there was no such luck. To add insult to injury, the Red Sox tweeted out while we were there, that anyone in the area who wanted to come to the game would be allowed in free of charge….so the game I spent $2400 on was the only game I can remember where the team let everyone in for free lol The game had two rain delays while we were there, and we were hoping the game would get called before the 5th inning and the game became 'official'. Once the game is 'official', there is no postponing and the game will be final no matter how many innings have been played. In theory, if the game was tied it could have been 'suspended' until a later date...but that doesn't happen often. With the way Red Sox starter Eric Bedard was pitching…it looked like we could get lucky. When the rain delay hit in the 4th inning, we thought we were golden….we would get two chances to sit on the wall when the game would be made up later in the year….turns out no. During that rain delay, the friend I drove up with’s wife called and asked how close we were to home. We informed her that we were still in our seats lol She was not happy about that…she was like ‘there is a fucking hurricane that is here and you’re up watching a baseball game?!?! COME. HOME. NOW!!!’ We really couldn’t argue and made the trek back home….leaving in the 4th inning….of a game I spent a lot of money on….that anyone could have gone to for free….to drive 2 hours in a hurricane….the only cool thing from it was Ortiz home run over the wall. I was on TV for 2 seconds while they tracked the ball in the air lol I was the dude in the green shirt! The other good news is my two other buddies who lived locally were able to stay and watch the whole game. What I should have done after, was write a letter to the Red Sox to let them know what had happened and see if they would let me buy tickets for the following season at face value to try again. Not free tickets…just an opportunity to buy at face value without the ridiculous secondary-market mark up. It was really unsafe for the Red Sox to let that game go on and I was pretty pissed about it (so were the players as it turned out). However, I never did send that letter and all I have to show for it is a good story. The Red Sox won both games that day and (partly due to karma) it was the last time they won back-to-back games that season. Then the ‘chicken and beer’ “scandal” happened and Francona was fired. I’m still a Red Sox fan, but I lost some of my passion after the way that season ended. Oh yeah….this was an MLB The Show 20 game review….the game was pretty much the same as the prior year with only the trophy list being easier, yet dumber at the same time. There is no outlandish MP trophy this time around, but they have two trophies for throwing runners out on the basepaths for some reason….yet no trophy for doing the game mode Road to the Show. It’s a weird trophy list, but it’s easily doable. I did enjoy this iteration better than the 2019 version. This was mostly due to the addition of the ‘Collection’ portion of the game. You had always collected baseball cards before and from the cards you had obtained, you made up your team….but you could buy and sell pretty freely. Now with the collectible’s album, anything you add to the album is unable to be sold, but by completing different sets, you unlock more (usually better) cards to add to your roster. I had a lot of fun with that part of the game and it actually gave the game a bit of a purpose. You played the different modes to unlock cards for your collection to unlock more cards. While the ‘pay to play’ option is there, there is really no need for it since you can get a pretty good team really quickly. If you going to play an MLB game, I would say this is the one to get. 135. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (PS3) Spoiler This was one of the first games that I played on my Vita and I thought it worked pretty well on the Vita. It was tough to see some of the collectibles on the small screen, but overall it wasn’t too bad. The game is virtually identical on the PS3 and honestly, this game is the text book definition of mediocre. The game is a 2.5D style game which is usually fine, however does come with several annoying things. The biggest is navigation. The map is a 3d map, but the game is a side-scroller, which makes navigation extremely confusing at times. You might be running left to right on the screen and enter a door, then all of a sudden you’re going right to left, but on the map you’re heading the same direction. It can be a little discombobulating. By the 3rd playthrough however, I had pretty much memorized the map so it wasn’t as big an issue…but trying to find the collectibles can be a real pain in the ass. You can see the ‘?’ on the map to let you know there’s a secret there….but sometimes it is really hard to figure out how to get there on the map. Combat is also affected pretty badly by the 2.5D action. The free flow combat isn’t nearly as smooth or polished in this game and with the side-to-side fighting, it is near impossible to pick the guy you want to target. Batman seems to target the guys with knives or armor and it messes up the combo all the time. It took me a lot longer than it should have to get the 100 combo trophy because of this. Other than that one trophy, the game is very easy. It only took me about 3-3.5 hours each to do the two playthroughs that didn’t involve getting collectibles (which was my second and third playthroughs) and it took about 8 hours to do the first playthrough while I was learning the map and getting collectibles. The only real reason I played this game again was to complete the ‘Arkham Series’ tab on PSNP. I’ve loved the whole series (this game is fine) and fully completing the series tab was a tiny goal of mine. I also recently completed the imported JP version of Arkham Asylum so the series is complete (for now). There is no reason to go out of your way to play this game as there’s nothing really memorable or groundbreaking about it and the story is kind of meh. It’s probably not worth the $19.99 price tag that’s on the PS Store. Unless you have some weird goal like I did, you can leave this game on the shelf. 136. Hollow Knight Spoiler This game came highly recommended to me by @Jens and was something I had purchased a couple of years ago. It wasn’t something that I was in a rush to play, but I have enjoyed metroidvania games in the past and figured it was definitely something I’d want to play eventually. As I approached my 6000th trophy milestone, I was looking through my backlog for some trophies that I thought would be worthy of a spot on my page. This game has a ton of well-done trophy images and has one called Pure Completion, which I figured was a good choice considering my overall goal when it comes to trophy hunting. If I wanted that trophy as a milestone, It seemed like a good time to get it started. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t started to play it when I did though. I started the game a little early and ended up putting it on pause while I hurried to squeeze Mad Max in before the server shutdown. Then I started Vampyr for a Halloween event and I ended up having longer breaks in the game than I normally would like. I wasn’t super impressed at the start either, which made taking breaks easier. The graphics were good, the controls were good and the soundtrack fantastic, however you can’t really do much in the beginning before you have any abilities and I found it kind of boring to start. I ended up not being in much of a rush to finish it. However, after finishing Mass Effect, I wanted to have a little palate cleanser before starting up Mass Effect 2…plus my milestone was fast approaching and I wanted to make sure it was ready to pop when the time came. I started playing and once I got a few upgrades and learned my way around the map, the game became a lot more fun. I didn’t find the main game to be terribly challenging. Don’t get me wrong, there were quite a few bosses that took several tries, but as you get more moves into your arsenal, the game is quite manageable. The puzzles are pretty challenging and navigating can be quite difficult at times since you can either use a charm spot to show your position on the map or guess. I tended to guess since I liked using charms that helped in battle. The only thing I didn’t really like about the combat in the game was the stupid knockback. Every time you hit an enemy, you get knocked back slightly. Again, you can get rid of that eventually by using a charm slot….but that seemed wasteful to me so I just dealt with the knockback. Once you eventually get used to it, it can be a bit of a benefit to create space between you and the enemy in between whacks, but it was super annoying until you got the hang of it. I wasn’t great at using the attack skills in the beginning and mostly relied on regular melee and healing, however you really do need to figure out how to utilize your skills if you want to make it through some of the colosseum matches. Those were probably the most challenging part of the game. I was really surprised how long some of those gauntlets ended up being. The first one was pretty easy and I got cocky…the next one was a bit harder, but still manageable….then they just got really hard and I had to work on my skills and better learn the abilities. There ended up being a pretty large variety of enemies and you do need to develop some sort of strategy for a lot of them. It's definitely not a 'mash attack' kind of game. I was really impressed by how many bosses there were and the variety of tactics. I've played a lot of games lately where the bosses are beefed up versions of regular enemies, or slight variations of each other. Most of these bosses mopped the floor with me the first time I tried. Despite the challenge of a lot of the bosses, I was actually surprised how easy beating the Hollow Knight was. I stumbled upon him by accident the first time I fought him. I was completely unprepared for the fight and beat him really easily. I didn’t even have a strategy other than spam attack and heal when I had a moment. The Soul Master was the toughest regular boss for me during the game and took several tries. I also found navigating through the White Palace to be really hard. The platforming was really crisp throughout the game but there was some really challenging spots in there. Other than those few areas, the unholy challenge is final Pantheon. I tried….a lot…and just couldn’t get through it legitimately. At the end of the day, I really enjoyed this game. I was starting to get frustrated and figured I could keep trying the pantheon and end up hating my experience, or take the easy way out and use the glitch to finish it up. This game is really great and I didn’t want to sour the experience. If I didn’t know about the glitch, I would keep practicing until I could get it, but considering how many games I have to play, I really can’t get psyched up to spend 20 hours practicing for something I know has an ‘easy button’ and I can move on to something else. I give a ton of props to those who finished this game legitimately because that pantheon is no joke. This game really should be played by everyone because it is that good and is easily worth the pretty fair price it is usually offered at. If you haven't played this game yet, do yourself a favor and give it a try. 137. Slay the Spire Spoiler This was another @Jens recommendation. I had it on my Wishlist at playstation.com for a while and it never went on sale. Then sometime over the summer I think, @Cassylvania bought it and mentioned how cheap it was to get the disc version on Amazon…I checked and was pretty happy to see it was a good price. I bought it and it sat for a few months on my shelf. Looking for a good reason to stall starting Mass Effect: Andromeda, I saw Jens and Cass talking about the game and decided I wanted in too and installed it on a whim. Turns out it’s one of the best games I’ve played. For those that don't know, StS is a rogue-like game that utilizes cards as your method of attack. Each of the four character has cards that are unique to them and you accumulate them as you travel up the spire. Every 'floor' has a regular fight, elite fight, treasure chest, shop, campfire or '?' which can be any number of things including all things mentioned or a mini-game/event. There are several different paths you can take up the spire, however each trip up the spire includes three acts made up of several floors. You gain new cards after each battle with a relic item being acquired after beating an 'elite' or opening a treasure box. Each Act ends with a boss battle against one of three different bosses for each level. Each act has three different bosses that will only appear in that act. The only progress that carries over between runs is the relics and cards you can unlock by finding them during the trek or by winning with certain conditions. Each successful run can take from twenty minutes to an hour. The game is challenging, addicting and fun! I won my very first trek up the Spire and thought, pshh this isn’t so bad…..lol….yeah so this game is very hard. Save scumming is possible, however it seems that every fight/drop/item is set based on the seed (map) you get. It really doesn’t matter which path you take, your first fight will be the same and the drops will be the same…the first treasure box will have the same relic and the shop will sell the same items. Sometimes, you just get a bad seed and are doomed from the start. Early on, my strategy was to try and build a specific type of deck, and always take the card removal option when it was available. I did this for all four combatants…When I got the cards I wanted….my deck would be beefy…but far too often I wouldn’t get the specific cards I wanted and it ended in a failed run. I chose to use The Defect for my A20 run because frost orbs are so sweet. With a glacier card, a blizzard card, a consume card and the relic that adds an orb every other turn, you can pretty much live forever. So, I tried that strat every time. I’d avoid all of the elite’s, remove any card that didn’t help a frost build and skip taking a card unless it fit that build. I’d get to the second act almost every time, but then I’d find I didn’t have the cards I needed and would get slaughtered. It was starting to get a little frustrating because I was trying to keyhole my runs....which actually does a disservice to the game since one of the great things about the game is the several different ways you can go about playing your deck. After several failed runs, I got some very good advice on an approach (thanks Cass). Small deck builds work ok in the earlier Ascensions, but the higher you go, the harder it gets. Cass’s advice was to just try and survive the first floor. Fight all the elites you can and take the best card you can to just build up your deck. With the relics from the elite fights and some decent cards, it makes surviving a lot easier. Plus, you can still have a frost orb deck with more than eight cards and with cards not made specifically for that build. The best part of that advice, was that I tried out a lot of different card combinations than I normally wouldn't have. I found that there were many cards I didn’t even try to learn since it didn’t seem good for my specific build but ended up being really good for it. I went from being stuck on A14 for about six hours to getting through to A19 in about ten more hours. While I chose to play with The Defect, I really enjoyed each of the characters and what they had to bring. I had the hardest time beating the final boss with The Watcher….took me like fifty runs probably. It was super frustrating since I could get through all three acts pretty consistently, but then that last level would just destroy me. It was a big relief when I finally brought the final boss down. I thought that The Ironclad was a lot of fun and I used him for a lot of my random trophies. I got super lucky on my speed run and got through the level in 13 minutes. I got a few Whirlwinds that I upgraded, a relic that added 8 points to my first attack, the Jaxxed relic that added three strength to my first round attack, the other relic that added 1 str, the coffee mug to add one energy and the Necronomicon which would double my first attack using two or more energy. I literally beat everything in the first round and just blew through it. That was a lot of fun. I also really liked The Silent, but didn’t play her as much (I think it’s a her). It was fun to poison stuff. The best and worst part of this game is how quick a run can be….a successful run is just about an hour or so. Far less if you die early. If you die, you feel like you didn’t waste that much time BUT you can’t end on a bad run so just one more run….just one more run and all of a sudden it is 3:00am and you have to get up for work in three hours. This game will beat you far more often than you beat it, but it is a lot of fun and I highly recommend this game to anyone and everyone. It's also much better to look for the disc with this game since it was far cheaper. 138. Batman: Arkham Asylum (JP) Spoiler There's not much to say about this game that I haven't already said twice before lol It was still really awesome on my third go 'round. It was really challenging at first since all the writing is in Japanese...I had to watch some Youtube videos on the menu screen so I could figure out where to change the difficulty and stuff. All of the voice acting is the original English, but there is no option to change the text to English. I thought it was going to be quite hard at first due to me not being able to read any of the Riddler clues or game clues on where to go next. Fortunately I did remember quite a bit from the last time I played this in 2018. The only real reason I played this version was to fully complete the Arkham series tab. I now for a lot of games, the series tab doesn't make a lot of sense, but for this series it does. This was the series that started me in trophy hunting and I wanted to fully complete it. I'm sure if they re-re-release it for PS5...I'd plat them there too. The only thing of note for me this time around was how easily I was able to get through all of the challenge modes. I had remembered this game's challenge mode to be the hardest since the controls aren't as crisp as in the later games in the series....but I was in a zone the night I did these. I knocked them all out in less than two hours. None of the combat ones took me more than two tries and most of the Predator ones didn't take more than one or two. It was actually a bit of a relief to get through them so fast since those are usually the most tedious things to do in these games. The only trophy I have left to pop this is to do a Predator Challenge and only use Silent Takedowns. I'll just do the first Predator Mission and it shouldn't take me more than a few minutes. If you haven't played this series, I highly recommend it. Outside of Final Fantasy (historically) this is my favorite series of all time. 139. Fill-a-Pix: Phil's Epic Adventure Spoiler This is another game that there's not much to talk about. It's an 'a-Pix' so your basic puzzle game...except here, the puzzles are basically a man with a mustache having you develop the film from his Epic Vacation. For those of you utes...sorry....youths....that don't know what developing film is....that's what old folks like me used to do after taking pictures to see if our eyes were open or not when the button was pushed. You didn't know right away and had to drop off your camera film and have someone else print them out for you. Wild times man....So for the game, you basically solve sudoku-ish/minesweeper-ish style puzzles to discover the landmark that Phil saw on his travel's to that part of the world. The puzzles are broken out into counties/continents that Phil visited. The best part is, other than the picture being different...solving every puzzle is exactly the same. Absolutely no variation in tactics or style. My favorite two places Phil visited were Egypt and Africa....because Egypt definitely couldn't have been included as part of the Africa section lol Before I found out about how you can cheese this game....I was pretty surprised at how high the completion % is because some of the puzzles are MASSIVE. None of them are hard....just very time consuming. Each area has like ten to fifteen puzzles and two or three are pretty short...fifteen minutes or less...but the rest take between one to two hours to finish each. It probably took me about 50 or 60 hours to beat this game. I did cheese one puzzle just to see how it worked...but it was super boring. Since I was playing on the Vita, it was actually fun to do the puzzles (no sarcasm in that sentence). There is no color at all, just black and white, so they are pretty boring. Despite the lack of color, some of the pictures were pretty detailed. I couldn't imagine playing this game on something other than the Vita. The complete lack of color and the monotony of the task would be too much to take on a big screen and console, but it is a perfect little game for the Vita. I generally played while my wife was watching something on TV that I didn't really want to watch. It was mindless and passed the time. This game also boasts one of the best sound tracks I've ever heard in my life. I simply love one song on a 30 second loop for hours and hours. I think I would wake up screaming at night in my bed to that theme music. There is absolutely no reason to play this game at all unless you have a Vita...or are bullied into it like I was by @Jens and @Cassylvania. If Phil didn't have a mustache, I wouldn't have succumbed to the peer pressure, but you can never underestimate a man with a mustache (trademark Deadpool 2). 140. LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Spoiler This game was another that was my son's choice. After we finished LEGO Batman 2, we picked right up with LEGO Batman 3. I enjoyed LEGO Batman 2 much more than I did 3. The free roam was far superior in the second installment. My son and I had a lot more fun roaming around Gotham city 'kicking butt bad guys' then we did wandering the space station and bat cave in LB3. The story was also much weaker. As far as gameplay goes, it follows the usual LEGO game formula of several episodes you get through for the story and then go back in free play to clean up. It's still all about collecting stuff, whether it be gold bricks, red bricks or characters. Collecting the character's was probably the most fun part of the game, mostly because my son got a kick out of getting new good guys or bad guys to play. I always let him be the one to buy/unlock them from the menu so that he felt like he discovered it for us. Most of the game is him chasing me around trying to fight me with whatever bad guy he's chosen while I try to solve the puzzle....however on occasion, he'll get interested in solving the puzzle or find a brick on his own and he took a lot of pride in figuring them out. For as systematic and relatively unoriginal all of these LEGO games are, they are great starter games for kids. There's really not much else to say. It's another Batman game notch on my belt and my second completed game with my son. Our next game together is LEGO Ninjago, however my sister showed him 'Don't Starve' on the iPad and he tends to want to play that more right now. He did see me playing Spider-Man Miles Morales though and wanted to fool around in that for a bit. Much steeper learning curve for that one lol If for some reason you have a LEGO game itch....go with Batman 2....it's much better money spent. Platinums 141-150 Spoiler 141. Ghost Giant VR Spoiler I had never heard of this game before a few weeks ago. I had signed up for the Trophies for Mental Health Event and wasn't really sure what I wanted to play. I looked through the list of recommended games for something that looked interesting, and this caught my eye. Partly because it is a VR game and I hadn't used mine much recently. I picked it up for the event and it ended up being a perfect choice. The story takes a hard look at depression and how it not only effects the person with the mental health issue, but those who care about the ones suffering. In this story, the person suffering from depression is Louis' mother. When you meet Louis, he is alone and talking to himself. You play the part of the Ghost Giant and are Louis' imaginary friend who ends up being a witness and helper for Louis throughout the story. The game is set up like you are watching a play at a theater with each level being a different scene. The graphics imitate you being on a set as well. The clouds are hung by string and some of the buildings can be 'opened' so you can see what is happening inside. The Ghost Giant is in the very middle of every scene and cannot move around. You can turn a full 180 degrees (90 to the right and 90 to the left of the starting position) to see different things or interact with different objects. The crux of the game is Louis is trying to make his mom happy again. However due to her condition, the farm they live on is in a bit of disrepair and they aren't paying their bills and getting her out of her funk will be a big challenge. Your job as the Ghost Giant is to help Louis get the items he thinks he needs to make his mom happy again. Each scene is made up of a handful of puzzles, none are particularly challenging, but what you need to do isn't always obvious either. There are a handful of collectibles made up of hats, bugs, pin-wheels and shooting a basketball into a hoop. There are a handful of trophies that require you to interact with a scene a certain way that isn't needed to solve a puzzle or something you'd necessarily do via natural gameplay...for example, putting a taco hat on a cat or blasting a piñata with some fireworks. The game is pretty sad to play through, however it deals with a very real situation and does so in an impactful way. There are about a dozen scenes and each one takes from five to thirty minutes depending on how much exploring you do. My biggest gripe with the game was how hard it was to interact with some of the items you need to solve a puzzle. You'd go to reach for something and your hand would hit an invisible wall and the game wouldn't let you reach so you'd have to maneuver your head and reset the center of the screen to be able to reach. Some of that may have been my fault based on where the camera was positioned....but even reaching forward towards the camera would hit an invisible wall. Another nuisance was some of the hoops you have to shoot the basketball into are really far away and shooting a ball like normal just wouldn't reach. I found that a backhanded flip ended up being the best way to shoot if you wanted to reach some of the hoops. Overall, the game is just ok. The graphics are cute and the story is about an important topic, but there isn't a lot else going on. I would have liked to see more Easter egg type things by interacting with different parts of the scenery. There are a few, but the game is really quick to get through...I'd say it can comfortably be done in about 6-8 hours. I don't think it was worth the twenty something dollars I paid for it, but the message was good, the game was for a good event and I don't regret playing it. I'd say if you could get it for $10 or so, it'd be worth picking up, otherwise I don't think you'd be missing a ton by skipping this one. 142. Detroit: Become Human Spoiler This is the last game in the Quantic Dream lineup that I had left to play. I enjoyed all of the other games for their story, but found the platinum to be a chore to finish up. I was expecting more of the same here but was pleasantly surprised that the platinum didn’t end up being nearly the same kind of grind. I have read in several places that this game sucked to platinum because of all the playthroughs, but I will kindly disagree…this wasn’t bad at all. Following the trophy guide on here, it is easily done in 2+ playthroughs. The trophy guide doesn't really give away much for spoilers...I mean there are a few since it's a choice based game....but without any context I don't think it spoiled anything and the guide is pretty good. From a story perspective, I think Quantic Dream did another great job telling something that is compelling. It was a little derivative of the underground railroad and the civil rights movement, but I don’t really mind if it gets people thinking about civil rights. While I was playing the game, I felt like you had to choose between the Malcom X style of resistance and the MLK civil disobedience style. My personality is more towards the peaceful approach and that was how I chose to play the game the first time through. I really like how your choices in these games really impact what happens and what you see from the story. It's honestly like twelve stories rolled into one that interconnect like a web. You can see just how complex the story gets when you look at the storyline between chapters. Since the game is very story driven, I will refrain from saying too much more about it other than I thought it was well done and dealt with civil rights. I’ll focus more on what they improved to make the platinum much better to achieve than the other games. For starters, this game can be platinumed in just two playthroughs plus a handful of replays of different chapters…which you can do during your main playthroughs. There are only a handful of trophies that require a full playthrough. So long as you do one peaceful playthrough and one violent playthrough, you can pretty much get it done in just two (I did). What they did in this game that I really liked, was they added checkpoints to the chapters. In previous games, you needed to replay the entire chapter if you wanted to redo something for a trophy. Many of the chapters here have a few checkpoints. You can start at partway through a chapter at a checkpoint instead of starting at the beginning. This shaved a couple hours off the platinum alone. Not every chapter has well placed checkpoints, I think because there are so many options/break points in the timeline that it doesn’t make sense to, but there were enough to make targeting specific trophies pretty easy. This addition to the game was great and I’m wondering if most people don’t know about it which is why they bitch about the amount of playthroughs needed. This was probably my favorite game in the series, simply because I didn’t feel the grind at the end. I really enjoyed Beyond: Two Souls as well, but by the end of that platinum, I was feeling the effects. Playing that last chapter five times or so was just brutal. My favorite characters in the game were Connor and Hank. It was really interesting to see how different the two playthroughs can be, especially through the lens of these two characters. Again, to avoid spoilers, I won’t say anything specific, but their relationship was interesting. I also was shocked that Hank was played by Clancy Brown…well not that he was played by Clancy Brown because I didn’t know his real name until I looked him up….but Clancy Brown played the asshole Captain Hadley in Shawshank Redemption and the drill instructor Sargent Zim in Starship Troopers. With the long hair and goatee, I didn’t recognize him at all. The voice was familiar, so I looked him up and had one of those ‘no way!’ moments. He did a really good job of voice acting, and looking at his IMDB page, I didn’t realize how much voice acting he’s done. I got the game for free with PS+, however I think the game would be worth $10-$15 to buy if you didn’t get it for free then. I mean I love the choose your own adventure style games so for me it’d be worth it, but if that game style isn’t your cup of tea, probably not the game for you. I think it’s worth playing through because the message is a good one and there are a lot of likeable characters with a good amount of depth to look into. 143. Maneater Spoiler This ended up being my first PS5 game that I played. I got it for free with PS+ before I had the PS5, knowing I’d get one eventually. I was kind of looking forward to this game as it sounded pretty interesting. I was a little disappointed though…it was basically the shark version of Goat Simulator. The game is presented like a reality TV show in the mold of Deadliest Catch or something. It’s a weird dynamic because the guy who’s being filmed seems to want to be taken seriously, however everything else about the game is goofy. The commentator is goofy, all the collectibles are pretty goofy….it’s just a weird game. I was bored to tears at first too because you start out as a baby shark and are just chasing down catfish for two hours trying to avoid crocodiles until you have eaten enough catfish to evolve into a slightly bigger shark. Once you evolve a few times and become bigger, the game gets a little more fun…but it’s basically just chasing catfish all game…except the catfish change to slightly bigger fish, then crocodiles and then humans and other sharks and other ocean life. It ends up feeling like you’re playing Sharknado or something with how you bounce across the land eating people left and right. If you eat enough people, bounty hunters come after you and then you just eat them and destroy ships. They'll keep showing up until they lose sight of you for long enough. It is truly one of the weirdest games I can remember playing. I enjoyed Goat Simulator a little bit because I knew it was a joke going into it….I didn’t expect this game to be a joke so it was a little disappointing. If I knew ahead of time what the game was about, I may have enjoyed it more….but at the end of the day it was just a 12 hour shark simulator that just wasn’t very fun to play. If you got it for free and are bored, go ahead and play it…but I wouldn’t pay real money for this…except from what I’ve read, I’m probably going to have to pay real money at some point since it sounds like there are DLC’s in this game’s future. If it is more than $5, I’m going to be annoyed. 144. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Spoiler I bought this game when I bought the PS5. It’s not something I necessarily wanted right away, but I was trying to figure out how to get a PS5 into my cart in Walmart and thought it might be easier to finagle if I had something else in my cart already. I don’t know if that was why I was able to get a PS5 that day…but it might have been! Despite me not really planning on getting this right away, I did plan on playing it eventually since I enjoyed the first iteration. The gameplay is virtually identical to the first. Swinging around the city is exactly the same and the basic combat is the same as well. What made me like this game better than the first was the additions to the combat and the subtractions to the collectibles. Miles extra abilities over Peter adds another dimension to fighting. There are several Venom attacks that are easy to use and work seamlessly in combat. They are pretty OP, but a lot of fun. Miles also has the ability to turn invisible, which is kind of a get out of jail free card. There is only one enemy type that can see Miles when invisible (that I ever noticed anyway) and it doesn’t appear until the end of the game. You can turn invisible every ten seconds or so, so it’s easy to abuse and any time you get in trouble, just turn invisible, web out and then let the bad guys deaggro and try again. The game really isn’t that hard at all partly due to his invisibility. The other great thing about this game was the collectibles weren’t ridiculous like the first one. No more ‘clearing six of the same crimes in each district’ or sixty backpacks or all the other crap that made the first game forty hours instead of twenty hours. This one has about eight unique crimes and the only requirement is to do each of the ‘bonus’ challenges for that crime. So while the same crimes pop up all over, you can mostly ignore them once you have done the extra challenges. There are a handful of side missions and the main story only takes a few hours to beat. It was a nice, quick little game that was fun to play and knew not to drag itself out so long that it became a chore. I know a lot of people have an issue with how short the game is for the price, however I would rather a good, fun fifteen-hour game than a game that only is forty hours because of repetitive collectibles that don’t really add anything. I played on Spectacular difficulty to start because I have a feeling there’ll be some sort of DLC that requires difficulty since that happened in the first and figured I’d get it out of the way. I forgot that there was a higher difficulty that gets unlocked after beating the regular game…so even if there is a DLC, my first playthrough won’t unlock anything lol. I ended up playing NG+ on the easiest difficulty though since I just wanted to get through it. If they do add a difficulty DLC though, I’d happily play through this again. Miles is a very likeable protagonist and is easy to root for and fun to play as. The story is pretty typical of a comic book story…nothing bad but nothing great either. While $60 is pretty steep for a game and I usually only reserve paying full price for a new game that I’ve been waiting for years to play, I don’t regret this purchase. My son saw me playing and wanted to swing around a bit, so it’ll get some more mileage. He got his ass handed to him on Spectacular difficulty lol but he didn’t care…I ended up starting a new game on easy for him so he could actually try and fight some stuff. There are way too many buttons that you need to use quickly for him to be good at this game right now….we’ll probably stick to the LEGO stuff in the short temr, but I’ll let him fool around. He loves Miles thanks to the 'Into the Spider-verse' movie. This game is definitely worth playing, but I’d probably wait for the price to come down. I think you could pay $20-$25 without feeling cheated. 145. Celeste Spoiler This game was a popular one during the recent Mental Health event and one that I'd heard plenty about. I don't love straight out platformers so I wasn't in a rush to get this one....but yet again I succumbed to some peer pressure on Discord and found myself playing it I generally enjoy games with platforming elements, but games that are just about the platforming give me agita. Spikes stress me out and pinpoint precision stress me out. Oddly enough, SMB didn't really stress me out, but I think it's because most of the levels are pretty quick and to the point. I wasn't as intimidated by this game due to the infamous 'Assist Mode', however I did want to give it a fair shot to play without. I promised myself I wouldn't use the assist mode until I at least got through the main game...B-Sides and C-Sides were going to be fair game however....I wasn't looking for a huge challenge. The game itself surprised me quite a bit. The story is actually quite good and not just a throw away. Madeline is facing some inner demons and is trying to get out of a mental funk she is in. She decides to challenge herself by climbing Mount Celeste to see if it will help her clear her head and move on. During her trek up the mountain, she looks inward and tries to slay those inner demons. Through the power of the mountain, some guidance from some friends and some self-talk, she realizes that she doesn't need to slay her inner demons, but accept them as a part of who she is. Once she decides to stop fighting herself and accept herself, good and bad, she is able to focus her attention on getting up the mountain. The story does a good job of looking at depression and uses the mountain very well as a metaphor for how insurmountable her challenges seem. I really have to applaud Celeste for doing more than just being another platforming game. The platforming is really pretty challenging....even in the normal modes. I tackled this game like I tackle most games....a blind playthrough followed by cleanup. I did level 1 blind and then used a map to pick up any missing strawberries, hearts and B-Side tapes I may have missed on my first run through. Once I finished everything in level 1, it was onto level 2 where I followed that same formula. There were several times throughout the game where the platforming tested my patience. While it was mostly very responsive....there were several times when I'd use the dash where I felt like it had me dashing in a direction I wasn't pointing. I also found the stamina to be frustrating at times. With no real timer to it....there were some really in opportune moments that I tumbled to my death. Similar to SMB though, most of the time a death didn't set you back too far and you could quickly learn from a mistake and move on. I tried to make it so if I started a level, I wouldn't play something else until I finished it up...but I wouldn't do more than one level in a day so I wouldn't get too frustrated. Assist Mode is a mixed back....while I probably wouldn't have played this game if that wasn't an option...it really trivializes the game into being not really being a game. Unlimited dashes and stamina and invincibility....you can just bum rush through everything and not even think about the platforming. I did use it for the B-Sides and C-Sides, but felt exceptionally dirty doing it. It reminded me of when I used to run in soccer as a kid. I was one of the kids that would round off the corner (cut it slightly) to make it so I would run slightly less than normal. One of the captains would yell at those of us that did that 'you're only cheating yourself!'. I was always fine with that since I hated running lol....but playing in assist mode made me think of him and those runs around the soccer field. After speeding through the levels, I know I missed out on a really good challenge....but at the end of the day, I just wasn't looking for that challenge at the moment. I won't lose any sleep over it or anything...but part of me wishes it wasn't there so I would've challenge myself. If I've learned anything about myself in these last few months of gaming, it's that I do not have any willpower when it comes to avoiding the easy button with some of these games. I took it with Hollow Knight and I took it here, but I know I'll look back and wish I didn't. In all fairness, if I felt that bad about it, I guess there's nothing stopping me from doing it legit...but considering how I play games these days....that'll never happen. On to the next! 146. The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series Spoiler Well what an emotional rollercoaster ride this series was. I bought this game because I have enjoyed the other Telltale games I've played and generally enjoy the 'choose your own adventure' style of story telling. I have never watched the TV series, but from what I understand, this game has nothing really to do with the show. Spoiler alert, the stories are about the world after the dead rise and start eating people. If you get bit, you become one. Pretty standard zombie stuff with only one or two wrinkles thrown in. There are four and a half(?) seasons overall. Four that follow the story of Clementine, a little girl who is swept up in the madness of the new world, and one that follows the story of Michonne, a widowed mother of two who is trying to get rid of the inner demons that have been chasing her since the world came to an end. With Clementine, each season she's a little older, a little wiser, and a little more hardened. She is also an extremely likeable protagonist. The Michonne season is an off-shoot that has nothing to do with the main series. I ended up enjoying it. I didn't think I would like playing a story that didn't involve Clementine, so I played Michonne a lot less sympathetic than I would normally play someone in these types of games, and I ended up having fun with that story. I usually play as a trusting person (who ends up getting screwed, but I'll keep being me anyways!) With Michonne, I was not trusting and much quicker with the trigger than usual. I picked like two people I would trust and then was just super aggressive the rest of the time...for the most part. It takes a looooong time to get through this series. Each episode is about an hour and a half to two hours long and each season has roughly five episodes. It's about ten hours per story so 40-50 hours to get through it all. I once again applaud Telltale for their ability to tell tales...you see what I did there . These games were heart-wrenching and emotional and filled with gut punches. While I found the stories to be compelling....these games were the most annoying of the Telltale games I've played so far. The reason I like these games, is I feel like the choices I make creates a somewhat unique gaming experience for me as I play through them. Here, I've never felt like my decisions mattered less than in this series. Usually in these games, when you are faced with a tough decision...there are lasting implications to the story. Not here....these games are littered with 'tough choices' that end up being pointless due to how the story progresses. You get given a scenario to save person X or Y and it feels like this is a big decision....more times than not, it makes no difference who you save since the one you do will die shortly after anyways. It felt like they wrote a story and shoehorned every decision you make to fit into that story...whether some of the dialogue choices or decisions make sense or not. In those X-Y scenarios, I wish the game just made the choice for you so that the 'big' choices you do make actually have an impact....or they could just have created more story lines. I have to give credit to Quantic Dream since I never remember feeling like a decision was pointless in their 'choose your own adventure' games. Main characters can die in their games and it can completely change the story. Another scenario that proves the point of a one track story and happens quite a bit, is when you have to decide to help someone or not. More often than not, if you help them....they turn on you....if you turn them away they come back and rob you. In either scenario, the story moves along the same making that choice once again pointless. This mortal sin for a 'choose your own adventure' game was very prevalent in the first three seasons, but less so in Michonne and the Final Season. In those two entries in the series, I did feel like my decisions had more impact. My other big complaint with the series was how many loose ends were never really tied up or were hastily tied up to get to the next story line. For example, at the end of season two you have to make an enormous decision...I ended up choosing to side with the new blood instead of the old blood...and the game kind of ends on a big cliff hanger. My choice at the end of season two was never even referenced in season three. I thought I missed something or something got messed up, but apparently the backstory to what transpired between season two and season three hinges on a choice you make during the first episode in season three. If you go with one person, you get a flashback scene that explains what happens....if you go with the other, you don't. I went with the other and the major cliffhanger at the end of season two never came up once. I ended up Googling it after I finished season three to see what happened since I was like wtf?... From that Google search, I learned that the save being carried over between seasons is a bit glitchy. Turns out the choice I made at the end of season two didn't carry over correctly to season three. The way I could tell is apparently Clementine has a different scar depending on what you choose at the end of season two. The scar my Clem had did not match my choice...but all of my other choices carried over correctly. The same thing happened during season four. At the beginning of season four, there's kind of a brief recap of the first season where it goes through some of the biggest choices you had to make and has you verify them through the flashback while Clem gets you up to speed. It wouldn't let me pick two of the big decisions I made since apparently it didn't fit in with the Canon of the series or something...It made no sense to me. One of the most impactful and emotional scenes of the series happens at the end of season one where you basically have to decide between having mercy on someone or letting them turn into a zombie....I choose the mercy route but that wasn't an option during the season four flashbacks. It was super annoying to me since I felt like that decision helped shape the character of the Clem that I played throughout the series. Despite these annoyances, I thought it was a really interesting story line. Clementine is one of my favorite protagonists of all-time now and I felt really invested in her character throughout. If I had to rank the seasons, I'd put them as Season one, Final season, Season two, Michonne, Season three. None were that bad and the reason season three came in last was because Clem played a supporting role in that story. Since Clem was the character I cared most about, I just agreed with everything she wanted to do anyway...it kind of made most of the decisions moot since my goal was to help Clem. If you played as Clem during season three, the story would have been better but instead you are introduced to a bunch of new characters that you don't really care about until the game is almost over. It just made it the weakest in the series. This collection of games is a lot of work for a Telltale platinum, but if you spread it out enough, I think it's worth playing through. I wouldn't pay more than $20 for this series and the only reason I think $20 is reasonable is because you get four and a half games for it and $5 a season seems fair. If you want an emotionally impactful story and don't care much about whether you choices affect the outcome, than you'll probably enjoy this series. I mean Clem alone makes the series worth it, but you do have to look past a bunch of stupid stuff to enjoy it. I can really only recommend this game if you like the Telltale style of gaming and even that is a stretch since the 'gaming' part of it can be really annoying. You definitely won't lose any sleep by skipping it (and you might lose some sleep if you play it!) 147. LEGO Ninjago Movie: The Video Game Spoiler Another game I added that my son picked out. He really likes the movie and he also likes the show on Netflix so he was quick to pick this one after finishing LEGO Batman 3. This game isn't quite as crisp as the other LEGO games we've played together and it seemed a lot more chaotic on screen. This game also suffers from a lack of variety and only has nine campaign missions. It is much shorter than the other LEGO games I've played. It also is the worst of the bunch I've played too. Unfortunately for me, my son lost interest in this one pretty quick....it's not all his fault though, when he saw me playing as Miles in the new Spider-Man, he lost all interest in this game. He also has been playing Don't Starve on my iPad....not a game I would have gotten him into, but he saw my sister playing it on her iPad and by then it was too late to say no to him lol I also busted out my Raspberry Pi and hooked it up to show him some old NES and SNES games. He is in love with Zelda: A Link to the Past (top 5 game in history in my opinion) and we've been playing that a bit. Anyway, we weren't going to be coming back to this game soon, if at all, and I was tired of seeing it incomplete on my trophy list. I also needed a '5' game for the GBN event so focused on this game for the last week or so to finish it up. I mentioned it wasn't as crisp and it is mostly due to the camera. It was really hard to control in certain areas and seemed to have a mind of its own. It was really hard to turn the camera to see things...by hard I mean it just wouldn't go as far as you may want or would return to center unprompted. The loading times also seemed exceptionally long for a LEGO game...but it is what it is there. Generally, the combat is your typical LEGO combat, however they did jazz it up a bit by having different moves you could do. You can mostly get by just spamming , but in some of the Dojo fights, you need to get a high multiplier to up your stud count for a gold medal. In those situations, it pays to try and do some of the different moves since they can beef your combo up really quickly. Nothing is terribly hard and this game follows the same formula as any other LEGO game....run a campaign that mirrors the movie, collect gold bricks, unlock a buttload of characters and do some side quest-y stuff and races. Where this game really lacked was in characters. There's not nearly as many unique characters as the other game and a lot of the 'characters' you unlock are more different skins for the main ninjas. You've got normal Kai, Kai with no mask on, Kai in high school, original Kai and I think one other iteration of Kai. It's the same for all six main characters...so that's like 30 characters to unlock that is just the same characters....it wasn't nearly as interesting. I had 'bought' this game last year when it was being given away for free, knowing my son would probably want to play it some day. If you didn't pick it up when it was free last year...there is no need for you to pay real money for this game. I think this is LEGO's version of shovel-ware....not that any LEGO game has a lot of polish, but this one didn't feel like they put a ton of time or energy into it. It was just a really uninspired game and unless you also have a seven year old that loves Ninjago or you need a '5' game for GBN....leave this one in the backlog.... 148. Secret of Mana Spoiler I had bought this game right when it came out. It was a pure nostalgia purchase. I had the game on the SNES back in the early 90's and I remember getting stuck somewhere and never finishing it. With no internet to look up what the next move was and no way my mom would let me call a gaming help line, I moved on to something else. Other than getting stuck and not finishing the game, I didn't remember a whole lot about it. I wasn't in a rush to play it when I got it, but I was looking for something shorter (I thought) to play on my Vita to help get me closer to Platinum 150 so I could pop Jotun. I'm just going to come out and say it....this is the worst game I've played that I can remember...and I remember playing Space Hulk. I can think of nothing at all redeeming about it. For starters....only three enemies can appear on the screen at the same time. It was weird more than it was any kind of problem, however later when you are trying to farm the rare gear you need, it was somewhat frustrating to have things appear or not appear due to how many enemies were on the screen. The missing enemy would appear once you killed something to bring the enemy count below three...but you had to move the visible screen out of their spawn area (not into a new zone) and return for them to appear....it was super clunky and annoying. When you do fight the enemies, you swing your weapon and your stamina goes to 0%. If you miss, your companions do nothing since they won't attack until you hit something. You then have to wait two seconds for your stamina to go back to 100% if you want to do more than 0-5 damage. You could always swing at less than 100% so your companions will start doing something, but you won't do any real damage yourself. If you hit the enemy, most of the time it falls over. While the enemy is on the ground, it won't take more damage. You have to wait for it to stand up before it will register any more damage, which makes fights longer than needed and ruins any kind of potential battle flow. It is really bad. This next mechanic wasn't uncommon in games back then, but the stun lock when you are casting magic or magic is cast on you is insane. It made the bosses a joke. You can start casting the next spell while the previous spell is landing on the boss. If you time it right, the boss be almost completely stun locked and will barely move the entire fight. It took any potential strategy or challenge out of the game. So melee sucked and magic was brokenly OP. The music is also mostly garbage...which kind of surprised me for an SE game since most of the games I've played from them have at least had a decent sound track. I get that it is an SNES remaster...but man is it loopy, annoying trash. In addition to the garbage music...the god damn vendor does this stupid dance the whole time you aren't in the buy/sell screen. Has no effect on the game, just made it feel exceptionally cartoon-y. They did a decent job with the graphics and voice work for the remaster....but it wasn't nearly enough to save this turd. Now for the worst part of this game....the trophy list. Getting all of the torso gear, head gear and arm gear was absolutely brutal....I got to the Promised Land zone, which is the first area you have to stop to farm some of the missable gear for that trophy, at about 14 hours of play time. There is only one dungeon after that zone and I didn't get the platinum until 32 hours of playtime. That's right....14 hours of actually game and 18 hours of going in and out of a room to fight a respawn hoping for a rare drop. My worst offender was the Ninja Gloves from the Dark Stalkers....it took me almost six hours of going in and out of the same room, killing two dark stalkers, before I got that drop. Here is how drops work in this game (I looked it up since I thought mine was broken). When you kill a monster, it has a chance to drop a treasure box. According to what I read, it's about an 8/64 chance for a monster to drop a treasure box when it dies (it's 1/8 and it drove me nuts that it referred to it as an 8/64 chance lol) . It is then another 8/64 chance that the treasure box that drops has the rare item in it. So in theory, you should see a treasure box about every 8 kills and then get the rare drop about every 8 treasure boxes....would you believe it took NINETY-SEVEN treasure boxes from the Dark Stalkers before I got the Ninja Gloves? Then just to further piss in my Cheerios, when I was farming the Fiend Heads for the Axe Orb needed for the weapons trophy, I killed a Dark Stalker and got a second pair of Ninja Gloves in a row....I was so mad lol...actually, I was so mad at this game most of the time I was playing it. Not only was I unlucky with these bullshit drops....but can you believe that one of the monsters you need to get a rare drop from is actually spawned from another monster? There is a slime that spawns monsters...and one of those monsters is the 'Eggplant Man'. So to farm this item, you have to go into a room that has the slime...wait for it to spawn a monster and hope that the monster it spawns is an Eggplant Man THEN hope that the Eggplant Man drops a chest and THEN hope that it is the rare chest. The good news is that the slime appears to be able to spawn monsters indefinitely so long as it isn't killed or spawns an enemy that replaces it...cause you know...only three monsters can be on the screen at once. The bad news is that the slime can spawn any one of five different monsters. While getting this rare drop wasn't as bad as the Ninja Gloves for me, it still took around four hours to get. The person who thought to add a rare drop to a monster you wouldn't even see if you killed the slimes too fast, should be dragged out back and shot. I had to restart the game once because something like that happened to me. One of the trophies in the game is for completing the 'Guide' which includes beating all monsters. In my first play through, I beat a zone where a regular 'Goblin' spawns a 'Ma Goblin'. Apparently, I was killing the Goblins too fast for them to spawn a Ma Goblin and I missed it. Clearing a zone removes the monsters and that was the only area a Ma Goblin appears so I had to restart the game. I was only like three hours in so it wasn't that bad....but I definitely paid closer attention to the trophy list after that. At the end of the day, I can give you no good reason to play this game....there is literally nothing redeeming about it. At the time, the story might have felt more original since it was 30 years ago...but now, it is a basic RPG...save the world...you are our only hope...garden variety kind of story line. I guess there is one other redeeming thing about the game....it's an RPG and will count as points in the RPG event....but stay far, far away from this one. Honestly though, I like almost everything and even I think this game is bad so that should say something right there lol 149. NeverEnd Spoiler This game was an unexpected, spur-of-the-moment kind of choice. I wasn't even sure if I was going to start it or not. My first choice for a game to keep my trophy streak going while on vacation was Sparkle 2, which I played the beginning of the week. But once I beat the game on normal mode, I had gotten all of the miscellaneous trophies during that run and all that was left were trophies that would take several hours. Considering I didn't want to play long hours, that didn't bode well for keeping the streak alive. I moved on to plan B next in NeverEnd. I knew absolutely nothing about this game at all. I had assumed it was an RPG based on the tag on PSNP, but all I really knew was I bought it for like $2.99 a couple years ago. This review will probably be a bit on the long side since there isn't a ton of information out there on this game. When I started it, I was not impressed at all. The graphics are truly reminiscent of playing on the Atari or the Intellivision. The game turned out to be a top-down rogue-like game where you play the part of a block shaped being with a shield and a sword (stick). I didn't realize you actually had a shield until I tried using the fishing pole several hours into the game since I never, ever used it. Your starting sword is actually a stick. You meander around from room to room with no idea what you are supposed to be doing. The actual objective of the game is to complete three quests to get three portal keys, which you need to unlock a portal to the final boss. The quests are pretty straight forward, but it is completely random when they appear in a room. The only prerequisite seems to be that you complete the previous quest. There are about 8-10 different ways a room could look. They are always random in the order they appear. It could be an empty room, have 'the void' (which looks like water and you can go fishing in), have normal enemies, a mini-boss enemy, or a shop/quest giver/nest/altar/eagle/mount. The normal enemies can be either a Zomborg (slow moving green block looking things),a wolf (thick black line looking things) or a spider (actually does look like a spider). The Zomborgs are slow movers that are constantly in motion and have 3 HP while the wolves and spiders have stationary pauses in between attacks, but move a bit quicker when they attack and have 2 HP each. The wolves are stationary until either their mouth opens or their eyes turn red...tough to say with how bad the graphics are...and then they dart at you in a straight line very quickly. The spiders are stationary and then move at a medium speed in a kind of arcing path. Only one of an enemy type can be in a room at once and there won't ever be 'the void' in a room with enemies. Enemy rooms will either have no obstructions or 1, 2 or 4 pillars that you can try and hide behind. In addition, sometimes there can be up to 3 Spider's nests in a room that will continually spawn the spiders until destroyed. If you enter a room with an enemy, all the exits are blocked by a door until all enemies are defeated. There is no running away in this game. What makes these enemies hard is that there can be anywhere from 1 to like 15 in a room. If you enter a room with 6 or fewer, it's usually not too bad. If you enter a room with 15 enemies in it, it is really hard to not get hit by something. You only have 3 hearts for health and the 'invincibility' after getting hit isn't very long. It's extremely easy to get smoked really quickly. The mini-bosses are just larger versions of the regular enemies. If you run into one of them before you have the chance to buy a ranged weapon (bow and arrow or hookshot), you're probably going to die. The hit box to hit them is pretty small while the hit box to hit you seems to be bigger and they damage you pretty easily if you get in close for a melee swing. The game really is kind of trash....the hit boxes are weird, you swing and miss quite a bit because the timing on swinging your stick is really tight. If you swing too early you whiff, if you swing too late, you'll probably get hit. It takes some getting used to and even once you are used to it....it is still easy to mess up. I could never beat a mini-boss using melee. I almost beat the spider a couple of times before having a ranged weapon, but it was just really frustrating. If you run into the Zombie mini-boss without a ranged weapon, you will die. That things hit box is completely wacky...it only seemed to register damage if you hit it around the middle of its face to it's right eye. If you shoot at the left eye, it would go right through it and you would have to retrieve your arrow...oh yeah, you only get one arrow that you have to repeatedly go pick up after shooting your bow. Occasionally, the arrow would get stuck in the mini-boss's sprite and you'd be without it until it somehow reappeared several seconds later. The only way to really beat the game is to get lucky with RNG and get several Cupid Arrows at the shop. When you find a shop, it'll usually have 2 items you can buy and 3 potions. You can earn money one of three ways: a) killing enemies; 2) fishing; or d) completing a quest. You have a bar at the top of the screen that fills up white after each enemy kill. Once it has filled completely, you get a CP to spend at the store. Mini-bosses and quests seem to give a static 2 full CP after killing/completing, while if you buy the rod to 'fish' in the void, you get a constant, steady increase to the CP bar. It probably takes about 3 minutes for the bar to fill up completely for 1 CP while fishing, but there is no time limit or shortage of CP in the void. You could fish for hours and just rack up the money...but that's not necessary since you really only need a handful of items. The purchasable items are either a sword, bow and arrow, cupid arrow, potion pack, fishing rod, or hook shot plus the static 3 potions. I want to say there are six different swords ranging from 1-8 CP in cost with the best sword, the 'Black Mamba', being 6 CP. The Bow and Arrow is 4 CP and the Cupid Arrow's are 5 CP. The potion pack is 5 CP (this gives you a potion every 6 rooms discovered), the fishing rod is 3 CP and the hook shot is 7 CP. I believe you need to have bought the bow and arrow before the cupid arrow shows up to be bought (I think it replaces the bow and arrow as an item once the Bow and Arrow are purchased). You get one shot with the cupid arrow and if it was the killing shot on a regular enemy, it'll charm it and fight for you. I don't believe you can have more than one Cupid Arrow in your possession at once, but you can buy another after you have used the one in your inventory. Your charmed pet cannot die and will just walk around and kill stuff. I found that Zomborgs worked best. Without a charmed pet, the last boss is impossible. It must have like 75-100 HP (mini-bosses have 6 by comparison) and it spawns tons and tons of regular enemies to chase you around. With you only having a max of 3 hearts, there is no way you can fight the boss and dodge all the enemies without dying....it's impossible. You only get 3 hearts (there is a glitch that can circumvent this one time per run), but you can carry an unlimited amount of potions. The potions cost 1 CP each and will revive 1 missing heart each time one is used. It might have been possible to kill the boss if the potions restored health instantly when you used them, but your boxlike character takes a second to drink the potion (and slows his walk while doing so) and you'll just die while drinking the potion. The only way to win is to charm several enemies (I had four charmed Zomborgs when I won) and then just dodge the shit out of all the things chasing you. The other challenging thing about this game (on the Vita anyways) was how the game would start to lag the further you got. It seemed like the more rooms you uncovered, the laggier the game got. From the starting room, I always went up first and then spiraled counter-clockwise from room to room to uncover the map. I died several times from getting into a room with 10 or more enemies in it while having 60 or more rooms discovered, due to lag. My sword swing would not register or enemies would appear to jump forward quickly from the frame rate drops. Considering how friendly the RNG needs to be to have a winning run, it got very frustrating to get that far and die for some BS reason like a drop in frame rate. The odd thing is, that while I found the game frustrating to play 95% of the time....I also feel like I kind of liked it? It is so simple and the soundtrack is literally a five second loop, but I got into that Slay the Spire/Enter the Gungeon 'just one more run' trap and found myself liking it a bit more as I got better. Don't get me wrong....the vast majority of people will hate this game with good cause....but I didn't really hate it. I'm happy it's done since I can now pop Jotun tomorrow and get my milestone, but it ended up being more fun than I want to admit. The good news is, it won't set you back much money if you do decide to try it. From what I read online, the PS4 version is superior in that it doesn't suffer from the lag issues, so if you do decide to play it, that may be your best route. 150. Jotun Spoiler I bought this game around the time I played The Banner Saga series. I enjoyed the artwork of TBS and this looked similar and I also enjoy Norse Mythology…well all Mythology to be honest. I didn’t know anything about the game, but it was pretty cheap and I figured I’d get to it at some point. I decided to play it now because I feel it has been a while since I really challenged myself with a game. Most of the ‘harder’ games I’ve played lately seem like they’re mostly hard because they are long and grindy. I guess Insanity difficulty is on the harder side, but it really wasn’t that bad. From what I’d seen, this game was quite hard. I also haven’t played this genre of game in a long time either and felt like it was the right time to download. The game itself isn’t terribly long and if you’re just playing to get through the ‘story’, you’ll finish the game in two or three hours. There’s only five levels and they are more there for you to collect the power ups to fight the bosses. The story centers around a recently deceased Viking named Thora. Her death was not an honorable death (due to not fault of her own) and she has been given a chance to prove herself worthy of entrance into Valhalla by defeating a series of Jotun. Each zone gives you a bit of backstory for Thora and a little bit of insight into the different Jotun within Norse Mythology. There’s not a lot of depth to the story and it serves as a vehicle to get to the boss fights. The challenge in the game isn’t in ‘beating’ it….the challenge is in the trophy list. To platinum the game you need to beat all the bosses several different ways. You need to beat them within a certain time limit, you need to beat them without taking any damage and you need to beat them without using any ‘God Powers’. Each boss also has some sort of unique thing they do and you need to beat them each in that condition. For example, one boss requires you to beat him without using melee attacks. This boss throws a ginormous shield at you which you have to knock back at the boss causing damage…doesn’t sound hard, but there are lots of distractions about that make it pretty hard to lineup that shot. You can also knock down some pillars that cause rocks to fall from the sky, but that won't cause enough damage alone to kill the Jotun. Even those 'unique condition' fights aren’t too bad….what makes this game quite hard is Valhalla mode. It’s a mode where you don’t go through the levels, you just fight the bosses….and they are revved up to 11. They have more health, do more damage and their mechanics are adjusted to make them harder. In this mode, you have to defeat all of them without getting hit and without using your God Powers. Thankfully, you don’t have to do both at the same time or consecutively….Valhalla mode tracks your best effort and keeps it as your high score. Valhalla mode is what makes this game an 8 or 9/10 in difficulty. I found the fights where you couldn’t use God Powers to be harder than the ones where you can’t get hit. There’s just no quick way to take down HP when you can’t use the powers. You only have two regular attacks to use without the powers…a light hit and a heavy hit. The light hit is relatively quick (though there is a slight delay which can cause some frustration in some of the fights) and the heavy hit takes a couple seconds to charge up. My biggest frustration in this game was less about the game mechanics and more about the randomness with which the game mechanics work. Most of the bosses only have two or three moves…but what happens after a move is done is somewhat random and it makes it hard to plan a consistent attack plan. A good run can go very bad in a heartbeat if you get unlucky with the placement of a falling rock or a lava crack placement. The battlefields present an added challenge at times as well. The screen will zoom in and out depending on what is happening and it is pretty easy to lose track of where you are amongst the chaos. It’s generally not that bad….but when you need perfection it does add to the challenge. My other gripe with the challenge was the hit box. The game tries to be 3D in a 2D environment…and sometimes the size of the boss doesn’t make sense. You seem to get hit sometimes when you’re standing in a spot that in a 3D world would be safe. You could be standing behind the boss and it’ll make a slight movement and the area you were standing in is now part of the boss’s body and you get pushed aside, even though in a real 3D environment, the body would be going up and down, not front to back. It takes a while to learn these mechanics and it can get very frustrating, especially when you know you did what you were supposed to, but the game doesn’t respond how it should. The good news is the fights are quick. If you mess up, you can start back up again in a few seconds and retry and retry and retry. A few of the fights took me a good two to three hours before I played them right AND luck was on my side. I only got really frustrated a couple of times when I thought I had the boss beat and some BS happened that would end a fight. The way I tackled the game was to do Valhalla mode first once I unlocked it and before cleaning up the regular game trophies. I wanted to get both of the conditions met in Valhalla and then go back to the main game and finish up that boss’s trophies so that I could effectively be done with that boss and focus on the next boss’s mechanics without getting rusty. I’ll tell you one thing, after beating a boss in Valhalla, the trophy cleanup against the normal bosses was a breeze. It was funny because I though the bosses were pretty challenging the first time I faced them during the story, but after practicing in Valhalla, they were pushovers. I’d recommend this approach for anyone that wants to play it since it really gets rid of the potential frustration for those timed trophies. This game is very inexpensive and was a lot of fun. If you’re looking to challenge yourself, I’d recommend picking it up. Be prepared for some frustrating fights, and take a break if needed, but it was a very rewarding platinum to achieve. This was part of the reason why I chose to make this game a milestone. I like the Viking helmet platinum image and the title of the trophy fits me like a glove ? Now I'm going to try and get some more numbers finished with the GBN event (my last two games were both '0's' ?). Once that event is over, it'll be time for some profile cleanup. I finally bought the KH3 DLC during this current sale and I also have the AHIT DLC as well. Once I get back to just a couple of active games, I'll get back to finishing the Dragon Age series. Platinums 151-160 Spoiler 151. Torchlight 2 Spoiler This game was a suggestion by @Jens. He was also the person that suggested my last Diablo clone with Path of Exile and it turned out I really enjoyed that one so I gave it a shot. I didn't know anything about this game either, but between Jens and @Cassylvania, it seemed like a good chance to play some co-op with someone. Unfortunately, with my play time being later in the evening and Jens 6 hours ahead of me, we only got to play together once....the good news is that Jens was born with a horseshoe up his ass and he keeps a lucky rabbit's foot on his key chain just in case that isn't enough, and the time we hooked up to play he was able to pass on his Legendary Item to me for a trophy. I played all of NG, NG+ and 3/4's of the way through NG++ and didn't see one drop. I also played a full playthrough in hardcore mode in NG and nothing. Jens got one to drop on his first playthrough lol. I was able to transmute a Legendary Item when I got to around level 92, so I would have gotten the trophy on my own, but it's nice to put things in perspective about how the RNG Gods have some select favorite few While Jens and I didn't get to play much, Cass and I did our NG playthrough together. The game is fun enough, but there is absolutely zero challenge so it was a bit of us just running around beating the shit out of stuff. We never really had to come up with any kind of strategy for anything. I played as an Engineer with a badger name Honey as my pet and Cass played as an Outlander (can't remember the pet but remember always thinking it was an enemy and trying to kill it). I went with a quick sword/axe and shield combo for my build as opposed to the two handed great sword/axe or hammer that it seems like that character was designed to play with. Early on I put most of my points in Flame Hammer, Healing Bot and Shield Bash. With the ability to hold unlimited potions and no real penalty for dying (you can forfeit gold if you want to respawn where you died or in the same area, but it's free to respawn back in town) you could basically just straight up tank shit. I made be shield bash and would just hold it down against bosses and use a mana potion if I ran low. At least the game had the decency to not make you have to mash buttons, you could just hold it down. Later in the game, I invested points in Seismic Slam and really got to be lazy. You just run around and bash your foot on the ground and the enemies take some immediate fire damage, followed by some fire DOT. Once that is beefed up a bit....you don't have to do anything but run around and use that skill. Stomp the ground and watch your enemies fall. Flame Hammer is good for doing large damage to bosses and was the ability I broke 10k damage with, but for most of the regular enemies, Seismic Slam mows them down. Once we got through the NG run together, Cass and I parted ways since I wanted to get this one done faster and Cass had some other games to play first. As far as Diablo clones go, this one is extremely similar to Diablo but easier. The plot lines are very similar (demonic being...end of the world...former good guy who got possessed....) and even some of the music felt similar. There is a wooded zone in the first chapter where the music sounded eerily similar to the music that played in town from the first Diablo. The graphics are pretty good and this game runs extremely smooth, especially in comparison to PoE. My biggest gripe with this game was just how easy it was. Because it was so easy, it got pretty boring. As frustrating as it was....in PoE when you died, you lost xp. It made it so you tried hard not to die, especially considering how long it took to level up. Plus I felt like you needed to develop a strategy in that game to combat certain bosses. You could just straight up tank shit with impunity. There was legitimately no penalty here. Technically you could lose gold, but there's an infinite gold glitch and you could just respawn in town for free. Dying truly meant nothing. In hardcore mode, there was permadeath, but you could play the game on Easy and with Spider Mines, you really never need to get too close to harm. I think I used like 10 potions in my entire hardcore run and half of those were from running into traps I think. There's a decent amount of customization you can do with the characters, but it's pretty clear, I think, which are the best abilities. With four job classes, you could play the game several times and have a slightly different experience. One big drawback is the maps don't seem to randomize all that much. Some areas are identical every time you do them, while others change a little. There were a few additional side quests I found in NG+ and NG++, but nothing profound. Without doing all the side quests, you could probably get through the main story in 8-10 hours...but since you have to get to level 100, there's no point in skipping quests. I ended up playing through the game almost 4 full times and the first 3 I just skipped all the text and story since it seemed very shallow. My last playthrough I read it all just to see if the lore was at least decent, but I was right, it is pretty shallow. All in all this was a very average game. It ran smooth and there were no disconnects or crashes so at least that part of the game was good....but overall it felt pretty uninspired and was just pretty boring. If you like Diablo clones, it's not terrible, but there are lot better ones out there to choose from. The good news is this game gets me a '2' in the GBN event which makes it my 5th number which means I'll qualify for a badge. I know I said before that I was going to start doing some clean up on my outstanding games, however I just noticed I'm about 40 trophies away from a milestone and I have one picked out....so it looks like I'm starting a new game this weekend lol Then it will be time to finish up these outstanding games on my list. 152. Mount & Blade: Warband Spoiler I bought this game a while back because it was hovering around 1% completion....? and it also sounded like the kind of game I would enjoy. I had sat on it for a while and when I began to look over my backlog for a good milestone trophy, this game was littered with them. I've already said several times about what I was targeting and how I failed miserably to achieve my first several choices so I'll skip that here. I LOVED this game. It is absolutely full of flaws, but I don't care. This game kicked me right in the nostalgia nuts and I was going to like this no matter what. This review is going to be pretty longwinded, so be warned! Back when I was a kid, there was this place where masses of people used to congregate to go shopping that had tons of different types of stores called a 'mall'. It was always a big deal and it usually coincided with some sort of giant pretzel or a stop at Boardwalk Fries and it was amazing. My 'mall' had this awesome video game store that I always had to stop in when we went. It was called Electronics Boutique and it was every video game nerd's wet dream. By 1995, I was 14 and had been working for a couple years at my family's restaurant, so had some disposable income to throw at video games. I played a lot of PC games at the time in addition to my SNES, and one day when I was in Electronics Boutique, I looked up on the top shelf and saw a game with a Knight on the cover. I couldn't read the name and wasn't sure what it was, but because I was 14 and wanted to be a dick, I asked the clerk to come and get it down for me. He begrudgingly came over to get it muttering about how there was a reason it was on the top shelf since nobody buys this game. Well just to spite him, I decided to buy it (I sure showed him!) The game was called Conqueror A.D. 1086. In Conqueror, the game started with you as a young boy with aspirations of becoming a Knight and perhaps the King of all England one day. You would cross the map of England and do tasks for people and compete in tournaments (jousting was impossible in this game). I want to say you would try to wooo a bonnie lass to be your bride. You could beat the game one of three ways I think...you could defeat the dragon (which involved jousting), you could win over the country by winning all the tournaments (which involved jousting) or you could just be a warlord and take England by force (the only way I could ever play the game). So, I'd take over fiefs and amass an army that was large enough to overthrow the king and try to win that way. The annoying thing about the game was the time limit. I think you had until you were like 30 years old to beat the game or it was game over. Time moved pretty quickly too iirc but the game was fun and challenging. I used to play it on and off for years until PC's got too good and too fast, that it couldn't play games like this anymore. I haven't played a game like this in close to 20 years probably. Why did I just waste your time talking about this relic that nobody in the world played? Because Mount & Blade: Warband was awesomely similar to my lost relic. In M&B you choose a backstory by answering a few questions before you start, then you get to customize what your hero looks like and his/her name. Since you have to beat the game as a female for a trophy, I played as Bristina of the Kingdom of Vaegirs, daughter of a Merchant who spent my early life as a street urchin, fending for myself and learning the ways of the world. As a young adult, I became a troubadour to try and escape the streets due to my excellent singing voice and love of poetry. I decided to become an adventurer for reasons of revenge after the love of my life was killed! How you choose your upbringing and early life dictates your starting stats. You pick a starting faction (kingdom...there are 6 overall and 7 when you make your own) that dictates where in the world you start. You are thrust into it pretty quickly. This game has a very steep learning curve simply because there is just a lot to learn and remember. Each kingdom has a king and each king has several Vassals (knights who fight for them) who have their own personality and land. Each kingdom also has their own type of troops with different strengths and weaknesses that you need to learn if you want to build an effective army. You need to earn money to pay for troops so you need to figure out a source of income; you need to make relationships with the different lords so that they may join you when you decide to make your own faction; you need to generate renown by winning battles and tournaments to people have heard of you and the max size of your army is directly tied to your renown; you need to keep the morale of your troops high so they do not desert you by winning battles, having a variety of foods, not raiding and pillaging towns (troops you have from a faction you are at war with take a morality hit and could more easily desert you); you have to wooo a spouse (for a trophy, you don't have to in the game if you don't want). In addition to all these things, you have to learn how to level up your character properly. There are general stats, personal skills, party skills, leadership skills and weapon skills. General stats are STR, AGI, INT, CHA. Every three points you have in one of those will raise the cap on the personal skills, party skills or leadership skills by one. Those different skills are tied to one of the general stats. For example, if you raise your STR, you'll be able to raise the cap of your personal skill damage (among others)...if you raise your AGI, you can raise your Athletics (among others) which allow you to move faster in battle, if you raise your INT you can raise your Surgery skill, which makes it more likely your troops are knocked unconscious instead of killed. The personal skills tie to the individual unit, party skills affect the entire party and leadership skills only affect you (since you're the leader). I say individual unit because you can recruit 16 different unique characters that level up like the main character and not like the normal grunts. You can only ever have 8 at a time in your party however, since different subsets of them have personality conflicts with others and will leave your party. The trick is to find 8 that are compatible with each other and hold onto them and use them to boost party stats. You can use the others for short periods to your benefit like spread the word of your candidacy for ruler , but you can't keep them long without strife. In general, it makes the most sense to raise the personal skills of your character, since you will only be using yourself to attack and your named companions can't die, and to raise the party skills of your comrades to improve the overall group's abilities. I didn't do much with Leadership personally. Weapon skills level by use and you get 10 points per level to add as well. The overall gist of the game is to have one faction rule over the entire country. You can either join a faction and help them take over everything or create your own to become ruler of the land. For trophies, you need to do both but it's super easy to do them in one playthrough. You can create your own faction, destroy 5 of the other 6 and then become a Vassal for the last king and you'll make that kingdom the ruler of the land. You can then quit without saving and take over that ruler yourself. There are really only three types of battles in this game...tournament, field and siege. All three are pretty similar. In tournaments, nobody dies, only gets knocked out. In the field, you can ride on your horse and charge into battle. You can use a lance or bow or sword...there are tons of options and this game looks really cool riding on horseback into battle and are really a lot of fun. I found sieges to be pretty stupid for the most part. You get funneled into an area where only a couple guys can get through at a time...you can't break down the gate or anything and can just climb a narrow siege tower or one or two ladders. There's not even several ladders....just one or two. And when you have 100+ soldiers climbing at once with 100+ soldiers blocking the entrance....it's just very clusterfucky. Unfortunately, you do a TON of sieging. The good news, is that it's really pretty painless since the AI is dumb as all hell and a siege only takes 5-10 minutes. If you are part of a faction, you are at the whim of the king whether or not you can fight other factions. If you want to keep him happy, you can't start wars without the king first declaring war...and if a fief, castle or town is taken, you have to hope the king awards it to you. You can politic to get it given to you, but you have a lot of competition from the other Vassals. Owning a fief, castle or town is the best way to make money in the long run. Early in the game you have to win tournaments for any decent income and then turn that into 'an enterprising business' such as a brewery or dyeworks in one of the towns to get steady income weekly. You lose that income if you are at war with the faction the town is in, but I found it pretty easy to make money for the most part. At first, I was trying to level up all my troops to the highest form they can be...all soldiers start as recruits and then go up a tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 kind of leveling system. You can choose whether to make them infantry, knights or archers and the higher the tier they are, the more expensive they are per week. I was taking the time to level my guys and then put max level troops in the garrisons of my castles and towns....but it takes a good amount of time to level them up. I found it was much easier in the long run to keep a couple of towns for myself as income, and then give the rest away to my Vassals/lords for them to man with troops. I kept my garrisons full of chumps (lots of chumps though to dissuade other factions from sieging them) and I kept my roving army full of max tier troops more or less and just mowed through the countryside taking castle after castle once I changed to that strategy. I mostly used Swadian Knights, Nord Huscarl infantry and Rhodok Sharpshooters or Vaegir Marksman for archers. I hated Khergit troops and the Sarranid troops were decent at all three if they fell into my lap. There's really so much to talk about in this game that I could go on forever, but I'll switch over to the annoying things about the game that didn't stop me from loving it. The biggest and most consistent nuisance for me was swinging a sword. You can select in the options to either choose the direction you are swinging the sword yourself or have the character do it on its own, relative to the enemy you are fighting. I wanted to be able to select it myself, but the problem is, the button to choose the direction you swing is also the button for controlling the camera, so you switch from slashing to piercing to overhead all the time just trying to situate the camera and it's not always how you want to swing. The problem with having the computer do it, is since there can be tons of enemies around at once, it is a crapshoot half the time how you swing the sword but in the end I found that less annoying. It also takes a lot of practice figuring out how to hit ground troops while you are on a horse. I found the most success when I would swing the sword as I basically ran into the enemy...but while figuring it out, you swing and miss a lot from horseback. Once you level up Archery, I found that to be the most consistent form of attacking, but you can only carry 34 arrows if you decide to have a sword and shield as well. If you went strictly bow, you could carry over 100....but that's not good for close combat. Another fairly large nuisance was leveling troops. After battles or after midnight of the day, your troops would earn experience. Most times, some of them would level up. You would then go into the party screen and arrow down the right side of the screen to the troops you wanted to level. After selecting the troop to level, the cursor would switch over to the middle of the screen where you would select how many of that troop to level (it costs money to level) and/or select a specialization (archer, knight, etc). That worked just fine....the nuisance would be that when you arrowed back over to the right side of the screen to select the next set of troops to level, the cursor would bounce all the way to the top of the list and you'd have to arrow back down to the next troop in line. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you've got 6 different factions of troops types, with several different tiers within that troop along with mercenary's, bandits and farmers who could also be in your army, it gets really old really fast....especially later in the game when you can have well over 100 troops in your army. If it just went back to where you left off instead of all the way to the top, it'd have been sooooooooooo much better. The last complaint is the online portion. It takes the weakest part of the game, the siege's, and makes that the focus for battling. It's got things like capture the flag and deathmatch and stuff...but the servers were mostly dead and it was just really useless. The good part of the servers being mostly dead is it made it really easy to self boost the MP trophies with my PS4 and my sons profile, so it made that part mostly harmless....but it would have been way cooler if they made like a 2 on 2 mini campaign mode or something where each person starts with a town or castle and the object is to overthrow the others. It would have taken a lot longer than the 10 minute sessions it's set up for now....but would have made for a way more interesting MP experience that I would have actually had some interest in playing. There are a couple of other ticky tack kind of things that are annoying about the game, but I loved it too much to really remember them now. This game had it all for me...a great format during a cool era in time along with funny/clever trophy names with pretty good artwork to boot. I can fully acknowledge that this type of game is not for everyone, but I loved it and cannot recommend it enough. I can't really say how long it took to plat since I let it idle while I was working quite a bit...I'd try to play here and there during downtime, but because of that my time played is exceptionally inflated. I'd say it was a good 60-80 hours though. Conquering the whole map is quite time consuming. I could have probably done it faster if I wasn't trying to pop specific trophies at specific times, but make no mistake that there is some grinding to do in this one....but in the end it's all worth it for the 1% platinum, because let's be honest....aren't we all here for UR? ? 153. 2064: Read Only Memories Spoiler I think I got this game for 'free' a couple years ago with my PS+ subscription. It wasn't anything that was really on my radar until this past week when I was going through my backlog to see what I had that might be a shorter game, with a number I need for the GBN event. When I checked the 100% tab on this games page, I saw it could be done in just over 5 hours (if you skip all the text) and figured I could easily get it done in a week. It's the second game I've finished this month with really retro graphics (NeverEnd being the other) and the first point and click game I've played in a bit. I ended up enjoying it. It had a bit of a Steins; Gate crossed with a Detroit: Become Human kind of feel to it. The game takes place in 2064 and you are a struggling investigative journalist, who is surprised one morning in your house, by a ROM who is seeking your help to find his missing creator. This ROM is the first ever sentient ROM and it feels like its existence may have something to do with the disappearance of his creator. Your sidekick being a sentient ROM is what gives it that Detroit: Become Human feeling and all the hacker talk and character personalities give it that Steins; Gate feel. The game is littered with interesting characters. Starfucker and Oliver were my personal favorites follow closely by Majid and Gus. I haven't played a ton of games like this, but it was pretty progressive with its use of language and sexuality. It uses a lot of 'they/their' pronouns when referring to people and also lets you choose your own when you name your character. The sexuality of the characters is very fluid and I think the game does a really good job of making it natural. I know a lot of times when these subjects are broached in games, it can feel either patronizing or preachy depending on what side of the fence you fall on. This game never actually makes a big deal out of it and just treats it as something that is a part of every day life. Since the game treats the language and sexuality of its characters organically, it doesn't come across as being 'in your face', preachy or patronizing. It just is. One of the big reasons that pronouns outside of 'he/she' is used is because in the future there are 'hybrids' who are people that have genetically modified themselves with animal DNA for one reason or another or with cybernetic implants. The reasons could be personal or to combat disease or enhance certain senses. Some characters will share with you why they became a hybrid and some do not. The civil rights struggle of the time is for Hybrids to be treated as human and there is an anti-hybrids organization that opposes them. Needless to say, you get thrust into a few emotionally charged scenarios where tension is high and have to figure out the best way to talk to the characters to get what you need. This is another game that has several endings....fortunately you can get through all of them in just two playthroughs (the guide on here is really good to minimize playthroughs and does a good job as well minimizing any potential spoilers). I used the guide since I was trying to get this done in time for the end of the event. This is not how I usually play these games. Most point and click games I've played aren't terribly long and I like to try and do a blind playthrough the first time if I can unless I get completely stuck. This game has 65 trophies and I'd bet that 50 of them are missable and even with the guide I messed up on two of the trophies (I forgot to talk to my plant in one of the chapters so it died). A couple of the trophies were pretty hard/annoying and they both involved the only places where combat is involved. There are two parts of the game that involve shooting minigames and in both, it seems impossible to meet the requirements due to how sluggish the controls feel in those parts...however, both of them only took me about 20 minutes to get so even the hard trophies weren't that bad. Considering the recent discussion going on in this thread....this game is super easy and has a 7.35% platinum rarity. This is a very rare game that probably has more to do with the missable trophies and being on PS+ than anything else. You are able to skip the text by holding down and can get through a playthrough in about an hour and a half if you do the bare minimum. I did the first playthrough reading/listening to all of the dialogue (the voice acting is surprisingly good in this game) and then 'd through the second playthrough. The dialogue choices didn't change enough to make it worth re-reading everything all over again. BUT this is a game that you can't look at the rarity...at all... and say this is hard....Including the platinum, there are 13 trophies that are 10% rarity or less and 56 that are 20% rarity or less. If there were a rarity board, this would be one of those games that I feel would go up quite a bit for those chasing the leaderboard...which would then bring the rarity up to something more that makes sense. Even though I didn't pay for this game, it was good enough to throw $5 at if you didn't get it for 'free' when it was available. The story is decent and there is enough comedy to make this an entertaining game (there's some great bear puns in one of the areas). Plus it is a game that starts with a number if you happen to be chasing a platinum alphabet. I'm going to try and squeeze one more potentially short game in before Tuesday night though I'm not sure I can beat Downwell in 3 days, but I'll give it the old college try! 154. Minesweeper Genius Spoiler It was a '6' game and that was one of the numbers I needed. When I looked it up on the PS Store, it was going for the massive price of $0.59. I have played hundreds of hours of Minesweeper over the years. I'm not sure if this is something kids still play these days, however it was one of the two games that came with Windows when I was a kid. It was either Minesweeper or Solitaire, and Minesweeper was much less conspicuous in the computer lab at school to hide when the teacher was walking by. I got pretty good at it too. Before cell phone games, there was minesweeper. Considering my extensive experience with the game and the fact I just played a Minesweeper style mini-game in Shiren The Wanderer, I felt like this could be a good choice for me. In addition to those other reasons, I also had my first fantasy football draft of the season coming up later in the day and Minesweeper seemed like the perfect game to be able to play on and off while doing my draft...and if the game sucked, it cost nothing to buy. This game took a little getting used to because it's not set up like your normal Minesweeper game. In this game you play as Aristotle, and you have to navigate him through the Minefield to his destination. He sweeps the floor as he walks and if you walk into a bomb spot, you die and if not, you can continue. You cannot walk over already discovered spots so it's just a matter of finding the safe path through. The board is setup kind of like Sudoku where you can see along the X and Y axis how many bombs are in that row/column. You then have to figure out which direction is the safe way to go. In addition to normal walking, there are also special floor boards with different types of arrows on them that will manipulate the board in some way. One type of arrow will jump you over the next square, one type will shift the entire row you are on the direction the arrow is pointing and one type will shift just that square. It adds a tiny wrinkle to the puzzle, however there is only ever one path through a board. What makes this game a little challenging is that the boards are all randomized. To get the platinum, you need to get 3 stars on every level. Each time you die, you lose a star, so you need to be perfect on the run. If you restart the board or die 3 times, the level resets and it is a new board. I like this because it makes it not an easy peasy game where you can look up all the solutions. I'm actually kind of shocked the completion % is over 60% because there is no cheating or looking up solutions in this game. While the game isn't easy peasy, the only downside I found is that it actually got a lot easier the further I got because you get used to seeing patterns in the way the boards are setup. Even though the boards get a little bigger, there's not a ton of variety that they can do. The boards also don't get that big (I think 8x12 is the biggest board you play one) so it ends up being pretty easy by the end. It turned out to be a really fun game though. As far as cost per hour of enjoyment...this game might be the best I've ever played lol. It took me about 6 or 7 hours to do the whole thing so the game cost me less than a dime per hour. I seriously considered making this game be a milestone for fastest platinum. I enjoyed it quite a bit, Aristotle is a boss and the platinum title of 'True Genius' is just the kind of humble title I like to choose for myself and immortalize in my milestones. In the end I decided against it though since The Wolf Among Us is still one of my favorite games and I also like that trophy image quite a bit. It's not nearly as funny and I kind of wish I did pull the trigger on the change since I like humor more than art...but at least I still like what's there. If you like puzzle games, this is a nice little game to pick up. It was good that I enjoyed it as much as I did and that it was so cheap, because this game didn't end up counting lol The version of the game that was a '6' was the EU version...and I am in NA....so I proudly got to add another '5' to my list of GBN games The good news was I still had 2 days to finish 2 games...but now I needed another 6! 155. Déraciné Spoiler It was 8:50pm EST when I finished Sacra Terra: Kiss of Death and I was really hoping to be to bed by 1:00am at the latest. The first couple of trophies in this game popped after only ten minutes or so of playing the night before, so I had to try and finish this whole game in 3 hours...which turned into 2 hours since my wife wanted to watch a little TV with me from like 9-10:30pm. We have a deal that I won't neglect to spend time with her to play video games if she is awake. This deal allows me to play quite a bit still. I usually play a bit after my kids go to bed around 8:00pm. I often get about an hour to play then since my wife likes to do bedtime songs, take a shower and then call her mother most nights. Once she is off the phone, we'll hang out until she gets tired and goes to bed. If I'm also tired, I'll go to bed too, but most nights I'll come down and play for another hour or two before I call it a night. This arrangement works out pretty well for us and the only challenge I was going to have was to get to bed at a reasonable hour considering I had to get up for my kids first day of school in the am lol Anyways, this game is also a puzzle game in the ilk of Sacra Terra except much more interactive since it is a VR game. You are a good fairy who lives at some sort of small, mystical boarding school in the woods. The game starts with you learning the controls and ending up in the girls dormitory, where you come into possession of two rings. One ring allows you to steal the life essence from something and the other allows you to move time. You can take the life essence of anything living whether it be plant, animal or person and your ring holds onto that essence until you pass it on to someone else. I say anything, but you really only use the ring a handful of times. The time ring is basically a device the game uses to move from one chapter to the next. Once you have solved the puzzle for a particular chapter, the time ring pulses, letting you know it is ok to move on. Other than moving to the next chapter, that ring doesn't do anything. The first couple of chapters involve learning the layout of the school and how to use your new toys. The first 'mission' is to help one of the girls play a prank on her classmates. The puzzles are extremely short, but not necessarily obvious. I mean, one of the chapters involved picking out a chair I'd like to be my own. Once you select your chair (that you never actually use) the chapter is over...A few chapters took 15-20 minutes, but most could be done in just a few. This game was really, pretty weird. I've always thought of fairies as being pixies...however in this game, it seems that a fairy is more of a human phantom than your stereotypical pixie. Movement in this game follows the all-too-common in VR games of 'phasing' from predesignated spot to predesignated spot. I really don't like this about a lot of VR games. I get that graphically it is probably pretty hard to have flowing movement...but I've play quite a few games that allow normal walking. Many of the VR games I've played involve being stationary or only traveling to specific spots in a room and it feels lazy. DOOM VFR has been far and away the best VR experience I've had and that had free flowing movement AND guns AND enemies...so it can definitely be done. DriveClub VR has been decent too, but I'm not a huge racing game fan. The story of this game is never truly apparent. It takes several chapters before a story even begins to take form. Half the game is just doing things that 'a good fairy' might do like helping the kids find lost items, play a prank or bring back to life a dead pet. I assume this is to help you get to know the different kids at the school....but the chapters are so flipping short that you don't even really learn their names. Towards the end of the game, you finally learn what your purpose is. I will say spoiler warning, but the story is so thin in this game that it's not much of a spoiler. Reveal hidden contents There are major gaps in the story, the timeline gets very muddled and there just isn't enough time in the game to actually care about any of the characters. After the initial 'this looks cool' that I get from most VR games, Déraciné just really had nothing else to offer. The biggest bummer was it took me until 1:30am to finish up so I didn't get a ton of sleep, however having worked third shift for ten years, I'm used to functioning on little to no sleep for short bursts. It is definitely not worth the $14.99 I spent on it and I'm going to be a bit more discerning in the future about which VR games I invest time into. While this was a last second choice to finish the event, I had really hoped for something a little better. Every other game I played felt like there was something redeeming about it....but this one just wasn't very good. 156. Dragon Age: Origins Spoiler I had bought this whole series several years ago on sale, simply because it had the name Dragon in the title and it sounded cool. As I've made clear before, I do top notch research on all titles before purchasing. Well, I never really felt the itch to play them, what with all the other amazing games in my backlog, and it kept getting pushed back. After playing the ME series during the winter, I felt like I had waited long enough on this other Bioware series. I'd heard pretty good things about it and I loved the ME series so much I figured I should play this sooner rather than later. It also helped that I joined the PS3 event and the RPG event. Starting this series was killing many birds with one stone. The original plan was to play these back to back to back and have them ready to pop on my birthday platinum rain back in May, however that was scrapped once I started to get sidetracked on several other games. Then I was coming up on my platinum milestone and I had to decide if I wanted to squeeze these games in before 150 or after. I decided on after since there were a few other games that I had gotten into right around the time of my birthday and while this entry was ready to be popped on my birthday, I held off on it. While I did have a good time with this game, it didn't have quite the same impact that Mass Effect did. It's not fair to compare this one game to the whole series yet since I haven't finished this series yet, but I felt like ME broke a whole lot more ground than this game did. Don't get me wrong, it is still quite good, but there were some things that felt pretty dated with this game. Mainly the combat. I decided to play as a Dwarven Noble Rogue (I almost always choose the rogue class when available). I usually play as a human character, but decided to mix it up a bit this time. The Dwarven Noble is betrayed by his brother and exiled from the city, only to be scooped up by the Wardens, who are the worlds best warriors against the upcoming blight. The blight being the invasion of the Dark Spawn and their Dragon leader. Through many betrayals and many quests and journeys, you become part of the last hope to save the Fereldan land from the Dark Spawn. The story is pretty good and if you take the time to read all of the codex's, there is actually quite a bit of lore that goes with it. For a game over a decade old, the graphics were still pretty decent too. My favorite part of the game was the witty banter and voice acting. The voice acting was quite good, even if I heard 'A cunning trap!!' several hundred times. There was quite a bit of comedy and I really like how Bioware lets you choose the way that you want to reply to dialogue. You could be virtuous, funny or a complete dick. I usually choose the virtuous or funny ways, but in order to manipulate some relationships in this game, you are forced to be a dick from time to time. My goal was to limit my number of playthroughs to one if possible. These longer games can get brutal sometimes when you have to do full playthroughs for one or two trophies. That was actually the biggest downside to ME for me, the quest trophies that required 3 playthroughs...In this game, the thing that looked like it would cause a couple playthroughs was the romance trophies and the leveling trophies. Supposedly, it's really hard to romance both Leliana and Morrigan in the same playthrough. I actually did it by accident. I didn't read up on how to do the romances until after I had already romanced two people. What I did was romance Morrigan as soon as I could by focusing on all of her stuff right away. I had barely even spoken to Leliana by the time I had finished the Morrigan romance. I broke off the romance with Morrigan pretty amicably and then had a quick rebound fling with Zevran, who didn't seem to mind the fling part of it. I then did Leliana's romance just fine and she ended up being my one and special someone throughout the remainder of the game. That meant I only had to do a very brief playthrough with a female character to romance Alistair. I still think it's weird to watch a sex scene in these games and for some reason it seems like it's a prerequisite to releasing a Bioware game....but I was happy that the number of playthroughs wasn't going to be the thing that soured my experience with the game. So, I had mentioned that I felt the combat wasn't terribly good. That's not exactly true. The reason I felt it wasn't good is due to the fact it is an auto attack setup. Engage the enemy, and then just sit there. I mean I guess it can be better than mashing buttons, but it was just kind of boring. I was dual wielding for a while and then made the change to a bow about a third of the way into the game. The damage on the bow was pretty sick once you upgraded the abilities and it kept me pretty safe throughout. While the actual combat itself was pretty boring, I did like how they handled abilities in this game. I thought it was cool how they had 3 different types of abilities. Passive abilities, which are always active; active abilities, which are ones that occur right after you use them; and sustained abilities, which are ones that eat up a certain percentage of your stamina, but are always active until you turn them off. For example, the 'Aim' archery ability eats up 5% of your stamina permanently while active, however while active, that ability decreases your rate of fire while raising a bunch of other stats like accuracy and damage. You can flip it on or off whenever you want, which I thought was a cool wrinkle. I can't recall playing another game like that and it was a pretty innovative way to make combat have a lot more dimensions to it. There was a ton of DLC for this game and they were mostly fine....it added a little depth to the characters and lore, but I don't think they really needed to be made. They were definitely worth paying for since they did eliminate two near full playthroughs from the base game. There is a trophy for getting each job class to level 20. I beat the entire game, doing everything and my rogue was only level 24....so to get the other two jobs to level 20 would have basically been full playthroughs. The good news is with two of the DLC's, your character starts at level 20 so you just have to start the DLC with the other job types, press the 'level up' button and the trophies will pop. It saved a good 40-50 hours of replaying the same game. Not that the game isn't good enough to play through 3 times....but I have so many games I want to play that unless additional playthroughs really add something to the experience, I'd rather move onto something else. I'll do it if I have to, but things that cut out several hours of repetitiveness are a win in my book. The grindiest trophy was for killing 1000 darkspawn. For a game about eliminating the dark spawn....you don't really fight a lot of them throughout the game. You fight a ton in the beginning and a ton at the end and not much in between. Fortunately, the counter for the game seems to count all playthroughs and times you reload a prior save. I ended up just replaying one of the last zones over and over until it popped. It was really the only grind-y trophy though. So....now that I popped this trophy I had truly and officially finished my GBN event and could go to sleep. It was 2:00am by the time I went to bed, but looking at this awesome badge by @Spacey Dweeb I think the effort was worth it. It's also fitting that Dragon Age: Origins is the game to get me my dragon badge 157. Dragon Age 2 Spoiler With the Dragon Age: Origins platinum officially popped, it was time to start Dragon Age 2. I had mostly enjoyed DA: O so had high hopes for DA 2 and by and large, I was not disappointed. It had the potential to be a disaster to be honest. One thing that made the Mass Effect series so great, was the fact you got to continue the story with the same characters and was able to get emotionally invested over several games. While I mostly enjoyed Mass Effect: Andromeda, I know a lot of people thought it wasn't a real ME game and were largely disappointed. This game was created in a similar mold to ME: A. The story takes place shortly after the conclusion of DA: O, however you no longer play as the Warden. You play as Hawke (who can be either male or female...I was male), who is fleeing the Ferelden Kingdom after the recently ended Blight, having lost everything. He and his family flee to the city of Kirkwall, attempting to return to the land of his mother and restart their lives. At first, I had the 'ughh' kind of feeling since I wouldn't be following the same characters. It seemed dumb to import a save where none of the characters would be involved. I also didn't love the initial look at combat system right away either. The camera felt a bit choppy and the combat didn't feel as fluid. This game suffered from framerate issues that I didn't recall in the first entry. I played as a rogue again since I always play as a rogue when I can, and after getting through the Prologue I was a little worried. Turns out my worry was unfounded. They did a really good job, as Bioware has done in the their games I've played, of creating a lot of quests around developing the characters. By the end of the game, I really enjoyed the new cast of characters. While none of the characters you played in DA: O are playable in DA 2, apparently a lot of people fled the Ferelden Kingdom after the Blight because you do run into a lot of familiar faces. I ended up really enjoying the cameos and how they weaved what happened in the Ferelden Kingdom into the fabric of what was going on in Kirkland. So, I've started this review kind of scattered....let's step back. I wasn't sure I'd get into a story that didn't seem like it was going to be a progression, however after having played the game, I think they did a really good job making it seem pretty organic. After the blight was defeated at the end of DA: O, one would kind of wonder what is next....and they took the next most interesting story line from the first one and expanded on it here. Throughout the first game, there was an undercurrent of the escalating problem of the mages and the templars. There was a major quest in the first game that introduced you to the age old struggle of the mages and templars, but it wasn't explored much beyond needing them to battle the blight. This game takes that controversy and expands upon it....which actually makes a lot of sense in terms of story telling. After the crescendo of the blight and mankind uniting against a common evil, people are able to settle back into their old habits prior to the catastrophic events. The mages vs templars has been bubbling up for centuries and it comes to a head in this game. As Hawke, you are caught in the middle of it at what will be ground zero for I'm sure happens in Dragon Age: Inquisition. This story is very much an 'Empire Strikes Back' kind of story....it picks up after what could have been a stand-alone story and expands upon it. The cool thing about the story, is you can make up your own mind about which group you wish to support. Are the mages too dangerous and need to be kept in check by the templars? Or are the templars taking it too far and are all the mages being held responsible for the bad decisions of a few? If you choose to use an imported save, it carries your decisions from the first game and there are some consequences (minor) in the story based on what happened. While a trophy makes it so that you have to back each faction at least once, my cannon in this series has been to support the mages, and on my complete playthrough that will carry over to Inquisition, that's who I chose to support. The graphics seemed slightly better, but nothing major. It was pretty much the same aesthetic as the first game. I did like what they chose to do with the map though. Instead of the game taking place over a large area of country, the vast majority of the game takes place within the city of Kirkwall. You are able to travel to a few places just outside the city, but virtually the whole game takes place in the city. You cycle between day time and night time in order to do certain missions and it was kind of a neat idea to keep the story so isolated. While it was a little annoying that the same areas were used over and over as far as battles go, I give them credit for taking a risk and keeping it all in one spot. The game gets split up into 3 acts, with each act lasting about a year and then about 3 years in between acts. I'm not sure why they chose to put so much time in between each acts....it seemed to make the drama last a lot longer than I think it normally would have. They could have just made it a year between acts and it would have made more sense in my mind, but that is a small complaint in the grand scheme of things. While the battle system was different in the sense they got rid of auto-attack, so there was a lot more button mashing, the rest of the battle system was pretty similar. You level up and select abilities from different styles of attacking. It lets you customize your character quite a bit, and with 3 different job types that you can choose from, there really is a lot of replayability should you wish to play the game through more than once. If you were to play this game without a guide, you would most definitely need several playthroughs in order to platinum this game. While the game itself was a lot of fun and I liked it very much....the trophy list is one of the worst I've ever tried to get. There are so many missables and so many of the missables are stupidly missable. The dumbest of the missable trophies is for reading all 4 codex entries about the Chantry. One of the entries is in Act 1, two in Act 2 and one in Act 3. The one that makes this really stupid is one of the ones in Act 2. One of the entries is only available during one quest, and the codex entry is only accessible during a battle. You can't get it before or after the battle since the battle is sandwiched between cutscenes. You can't interact with objects during a fight, however there is a brief pause in between waves, and you need to grab the codex entry in the few seconds break you have in between waves or that trophy is missed. You cannot redo quests, unless you saved before hand and you cannot redo Acts once you've moved on. If you missed something in Act 1....well you better hope you have a save or you are shit out of luck and will need to replay the game. This happened to me with the Supplier trophy for getting all of the craftable items in the game. I missed one in Act 1, which was really frustrating because I counted the ones I got before going to Act 2 and just miscounted. Fortunately, I kept a save from the end of each chapter before doing the quest of no return and was able to shed about 14 hours off of my replay. I had realized my error as I was checking my craftable items before going to Act 3. I had read that you could buy any missed craftables from a previoius chapter at the 'Black Emporium' (a DLC store in game), but that it may not work for the trophy....well for me, the missed craftable didn't even show up in the store so I had to replay from the end of Act 1 on. I skipped all the text and was able to do it in about 10 hours or so....but that was super frustrating. What makes the Supplier trophy so annoying, is it forces you to play the game a certain way to achieve. In DA 2, you can deny people from joining your party or they can get pissed at you and leave depending on some choices you make....but the problem is some of the craftable items are trapped behind quests related to the different characters. If that character isn't in your party, you do not get the quest and therefore cannot get the craftable item. For example, Isabella (who was who I romanced) has to be in your party in Act 3 because the craftable item Ambrosia is only available in her companion quest. If you don't play the game in a way that she wants to join/stay in your party, then you miss this trophy. The same is said for Fenris, Merrill and Anders. There are craftable items that can only be found in companion quests related to them and if any of them leave your party, you miss this trophy. For people who don't go for the platinum, it's no big deal...but if you want the platinum you either have to play this game several times to make sure you do it right, or follow a guide to make sure you make the necessary choices so that they join/stay in your party. I really don't like it when RPG games make it necessary to follow a guide throughout the whole game to get trophies. Having said that...guides are really good these days at removing most spoilers and just give the bare minimum information needed. In my playthrough, I did every quest possible to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I always made sure that I did or said what I thought was needed to get my companions to stay with me. The cool thing is that once you maxed out their 'Friend' or 'Rival' points, they stayed there. So if I maxed out Isabella's friend stat to where she was a 'friend', I could do things to piss her off and it wouldn't change her friend status. That made it a little easier to worry less about the things I did or said once I got to that point...but it was annoying to have to do that in the first place. I thought the DLC entries were ok. They weren't necessary to the overall story, but they weren't terribly long and were interesting enough to make them worth playing. I thought it was interesting that in both of the added DLC's, there were pretty complicated puzzles when nowhere else in the game was there a single puzzle that needed to be solved. They required a bit of thought, but wasn't anything ridiculous and didn't need to be done in order to finish the DLC's, but the one in Mark of the Assassin is required for a trophy. Overall, this was a very worthy addition to the series and I had a lot of fun playing it. The humor from the banter between your companions is classic and there was a lot of humor interjected throughout the story as well. When it made sense, I almost always picked the funny/sarcastic response. Isabella and Varric tended to appreciate those, but they also made the game a lot funnier as well. To that end, the voice acting was quite good in the game. I was convinced that the person that voiced the Male Hawke character was the same person who voiced Jonathan Reid from Vampyr, however it wasn't. They sound exactly the same though lol and oddly enough, the dude that voice Reid did voice a character in DA: I. The game came out 10 years ago, so odds are if you wanted to play it you would have by now, but if this game gets the same remaster treatment that ME did, I would definitely recommend playing it. I'm not sure it's worth the money you would have to pay on the PS3 store right now, but the game was good and worth playing. 158. Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoiler I don't know if I have ever felt more conflicted about a game in my whole life. This game did a lot of things I really enjoyed...and several things that I truly despised. Overall, I'd give this a passing grade and say there was a lot more I liked than didn't here. The place I'm going to start in my review is the graphics....what. the. fuck....When I first turned the game on, I thought the graphics were a glitch or something. I played as a Dwarven Rogue again, because I always play as a Dwarven Rogue when possible, and I was bald with a beard. When I say that the beard looked bad, I mean the beard looked baaaaad. It doesn't even look like hair! It's some weirdly shaped thing with some kind of weird sheen to it, like it was coated with Vaseline or something. While I found my dwarven beard to be the worst offender...the whole game looks like it was dipped in Vaseline. Everything has this weird looking coating on it that is shiny and reflective. It looked cool on like the dragons and stuff, but it just looked so unnatural most everywhere else and was really hard to look past throughout the game. I spent 115 hours with this game so I was able to get used to it....but I felt the graphics in DA 2 were way better. The change in graphics also made Hawke (who at least makes an appearance) look completely different as well. Honestly, it was just so bad lol It was shocking to me how bad it was and I clearly still haven't gotten over it. The other biggest sin in this game for me was doing away with healing magic. They also got rid of the auto-healing after battle. I could have accepted that second change just fine, but how do you completely remove the healing magic component from the game? Speaking from just an RPG/lore perspective for a second....did the mages just forget the spell? Did it get wiped out from Thedas after the Conclave exploded? What logical explanation could possibly exist for why there was healing magic in the world for the first two games and it just disappears for the the third? It makes absolutely no sense at all and it just seems like a mechanic they added to artificially make the game more challenging. The only healing you have in this game is from resting at a camp site or from potions and you only get to carry 8 to start...that are shared among your whole team. 8....At least your healing pots replenish when you rest at a camp, but any of the other potions you use need crafting supplies to replenish. The lack of healing is what made this game more frustrating than anything else...there was a raise spell if you died...but it was on like a one minute timer. I did like that you had to beat the game on Nightmare for the plat. I do like when they add that challenge...having said that....I don't love how they tended to make Nightmare harder here. They just buffed up the defense and added HP to the enemies it seems. No new mechanics or anything....just beefier enemies. When you couple that with how often enemies would replenish their block/armor (it's like adding HP over HP. You have to remove the armor HP before you can take down the actual HP), it just dragged some fights on FOREVER. I spent 20 minutes fighting a Pride Demon because every 5% HP I removed, it replenished its armor and I had to bust that down to zero before hurting it again. The other super annoying thing was how barrier worked in this game. For you and your characters, the barrier starts to deteriorate the moment it is cast. If you stand still it will just run out. Again, that would be fine if that's how barriers worked for everyone, but for the enemies, their barriers last forever unless you dispel it or damage it down. It does not deteriorate over time....which again makes no logical sense. If the barrier mechanic is to degrade over time....it should be that way for everything in the game. The defense of the enemies is really annoying because, at least as a bow rogue, I did negligible damage until I was level 20 and was able to equip a weapon I found in The Jaws of Hakkon DLC. Pride Demon with 48k HP? Sure, I'll whittle it down with 35 damage bow strikes and 300 damage ability bursts in between armor recharges. The game actually got a lot more fun after 20. Not because I could demolish everything, but because the damage output at least seemed to match the HP and guard of the enemies. My bow damage rating was like 120 for most of the game. Once I hit 20 I could equip a bow where my damage rating went to 210. It made a huge difference. Another thing I didn't like very much was the addition of the crafting. It would have been fine if you didn't have to spend half your time running around, collecting shit. You pick some Elfroot and you get one or two Elfroot, but you need like 40 Elfroot for a quest and you need Elfroot to make some potions and so on and so forth. There are like 30 or so different crafting items that you have to harvest/mine and others that you need to kill wildlife for. You spend more time clicking the L3 button searching for crafting materials and stuff than you do fighting enemies. I liked it better in DA 2 where you found a crafting item type and then you could just use it indefinitely. It meant you could spend more time playing the game and less time bending over to dig up roots. And yes, the animation in the game has you bending down and spending a second or two to dig up the plant/root. It is a maddening waste of time. It would have been fine in a smaller dose probably...but you could also craft weapons and armors and all of those weapons and armor could have different grips or leggings or whatever. I honestly was too annoyed with the system to spend much time with it. It could have been cool but it was just way too much and could mostly be ignored. Towards the end game (especially during The Jaws of Hakkon DLC) I spent more time with it, crafting some good gear for my main four, but beyond that I ignored it. The last thing I'll say that I didn't like was how they changed the level up system. You no longer get attribute points each level up to spend on a specific attributes. You just get an ability point and the ability you unlock will give you a boost to a different stat. Not sure why that change was made either...but that one wasn't as egregious as the others in my eyes. So I just used a lot of words to describe all the things that I didn't like....and not just didn't like, but hated. Yet with ALLLLL of that, I still did like this game. While I didn't think I was going to like getting to know new characters again...I've decided I like what they've done with this series. A lot of times, the story revolves around the same handful of characters that always seem to be at the center of the craziness. How these individuals are so lucky/unlucky is usually incredible. They didn't do that with this series. They gave you the world of Thedas, where a lot of exceptional things were going on and they gave you several heroes that popped up to face the different situations. While I had hoped in DA 2 that I would get to expand on the Warden's story, I grew to like Hawke and enjoyed his story of becoming the Champion of Kirkwall. Again, when Hawke disappeared after DA 2, I had hoped I'd get to continue his story, but I ended up enjoying following the story of the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste. While none of the three entries in the series follow one character, they do a great job of creating cameos that make sense or carrying over characters where they make sense as well. I was especially happy that Varric was back for this entry as he made DA 2 pretty entertaining. While I enjoyed the Inquisitor quite a bit as a character, I did not like the supporting cast quite as much in this one as previous entries in the series. I didn't love Cassandra....she was fine I guess, but she was kind of annoying when she appeared in DA 2 and I held that against her in the beginning. She ended up being who I romanced since I could start it earlier with her and since she was always in my party, I ended up liking her by the end. I think Sera was supposed to be a humorous character, but she was kind of annoying as well and I didn't end up using her at all. Dorian and Cole were mostly forgettable and I didn't use either of them much either. Vivienne was extremely powerful to use, but her character was kind of boring. Blackwell and Solas proved to be extremely interesting and compelling characters though. I would have loved to be able to play as Cullen or Leliana, and while they are a part of your team, they are not playable. I would have romanced Leliana if able, however I romanced her as the Warden in the first game so she didn't show much interest. Josephine was interesting as an advisor, but was also not playable. I downright disliked Iron Bull. He was another guy that was supposed to be humorous, but I felt like his personality was really out of character for being Qunari. Actually, that reminds me of another thing I didn't like about this game (actually the one thing I didn't like throughout the whole series) was how the Qunari were portrayed. I felt fine about Sten in the first one. He played the role of the emotionally detached warrior and I was under the impression that he was part Giant and that all the Qunari were. I was really surprised in DA 2 when the Qunari showed up with horns like a demon or bull on their heads and was super confused when I killed several Qunari named Sten. I then realized that Sten was a rank among the Qunari and that was what 'Sten' was in DA: O. He just referred to himself as his rank...but the horns really threw me off. They kind of explained it ok by saying that anyone can be Qunari since it is more a religion than a race, but it was just disjointed in the presentation. They showed this point pretty well in the Assassin's Mark DLC from DA 2 with the Elven Qunari, but it was my least favorite 'race' in the game....In DA: I, Iron Bull looked the part from what they established the more traditional Qunari to look like during DA 2...but his voice acting was just so out of character. I mean I kind of get it, since he had been away from the Qun for a while and surrounded himself with humans, and just like Thor in the MCU, he lightened up and developed a sense of humor. It just seemed like they weren't sure what they wanted the Qunari to be and ended up being all over the map with them. Anyways, my main crew for the beginning of the game was the Inquisitor, Cassandra, Varric and Solas. That party tended to be a bit squishy so I ended up replacing Varric with Blackwall once he joined the Inquisition. This gave me two tanks that could share the hate and ended up keeping Solas and the Inquisitor mostly safe during battle. The downside of this party setup, was there wasn't a ton of DPS so battles tended to drag out pretty long. For the most part, I was OP in most areas. I did every possible side quest I could before doing the next main mission, so I was pretty over leveled for a lot of the main story line things. When I say this game is expansive....this game has tons and tons of quests. Most of them pretty straightforward and none of them added that much to the overall story of the game. They mostly serve as a vehicle for earning 'Power' to unlock main story missions and earning 'Influence' to level up the Inquisition to learn perks for your group. I wanted to do as many of them as I could, and I'm happy to say that I was able to do about 98% of them. Several were locked out because I didn't romance that character, but I did virtually every one I could. One mission I missed because I progressed the story too far and one quest glitched out on me. It was a quest for defeating three high dragons and I killed two of them before I went to the guy who gives the quest. Since I had already killed two, the option to accept the quest never popped up. So I completed the requirements for the quest, but never officially completed it. The main story felt like it was only about 10-12 hours long, but all the side content added like 90 hours to the game. It probably didn't need to be that long, but doing it all in Nightmare ended up dragging it out a bit. As I mentioned above, some of the battles dragged on and on. As far as combat went though, I thought it was a lot of fun. It was mostly smooth and the different abilities were pretty fun to use. It was also pretty easy to cycle between the different characters. They added a tactical menu....which was pretty disjointed and turned the fluid combat into more of a TBS style game. It gave you the opportunity to kind of play as all four characters at the same time. But it really slowed things down. You got to this menu by pressing select during battle and it ended up being useful more as a chance to pause the fight and survey what was going on than an actual battle mechanic. Sometimes the fights got pretty chaotic and it provided an opportunity to think through what you wanted to do. It was probably totally unneeded outside of Nightmare mode, but considering how squishy your characters are, it proved invaluable at times for making sure a needed ability would go off when you wanted it to. I really didn't find the game to be that challenging for the most part. It took some getting used to the changes, but other than the high Dragons and some of the Rifts, most of the game was pretty straightforward with its difficulty. This was not the case at all for the DLC 'Jaws of Hakkon'. My goodness was that a challenging DLC. The enemies scale with your level, so there's no leveling up to the point of just being OP. Despite the added challenge from the battles, the DLC provided some pretty good gear that ended up making the DLC really fun to play...for the most part. One thing about the DLC really pissed me off and made me lose about 4 hours of time. In all fairness, I should have made a separate save before doing one of the final 'main story missions', but I didn't see the need at the time. Basically, one of the final missions of the DLC calls for an assault on a castle. Once you start the mission, you can't leave it until you are done. It was challenging, but doable...until the boss fight. That boss fight got me stuck in there since it was impossible for me to beat with my party setup. Since there was no option to change the party, I was forced to either change the difficulty or go back 4 hours to a 'milestone' save the game made for me right before I started doing the Jaws of Hakkon DLC. I tried the fight for a good three hours and never got the boss down below 55-60% health. I decided to change the difficulty to the easiest setting to just gtfo of there and then go back to my other save on Nightmare to finish up the game. I'm going to describe this fight and how ridiculously hard it was on Nightmare. There are these enemies in the DLC called Bruisers that are giant dudes with huge mauls that have high HP, utilize an armor ability every minute or so that basically heals them for 10kish health and they hit like a fucking truck. The boss fight takes place in this freezing cold area. One of the dynamics of this zone is that you need to be close to a fire to warm up every 20 seconds or so or you start to take cold damage. There are campfires located throughout the zone, and in the boss arena there are four such fires. The battle starts with two bruisers and four mages. When you drop into the area, the two bruisers come running towards you because the mages are busy doing something else. If you do it right, you can take out the two bruisers while the mages are distracted (really the only option because otherwise you add barrier to the fight if the mages join). After taking out the bruisers, which isn't a guarantee because the arena is pretty tight, and the cold makes you go back to the fire pretty regularly, the mages stop what they are doing and start to attack you. They hit pretty hard as well, but are much more squishy and can be managed a bit easier than the bruisers. Once you deal with all of those enemies the boss enters the arena. He has like 230k HP and also uses armor. After you take about 10% damage off of him, he casts a spell that puts out one of the campfires, shrinking the battle arena. When he puts out this fire, two Corpse Archers join the battle. They need to be taken care of first since if you damage the boss too much, he'll put out another campfire and two more corpse archers and two normal Hakkon warriors join the battle and it gets really chaotic. My two tanks were getting shellacked by about this time in the fight. Still, on a couple of occasions, I was able to deal with these enemies and go back to work on the boss. At about 60% health, he puts out one more fire and summons six enemies, including two bruisers. At this point in the battle I would get absolutely lambasted. I would usually run out of healing potions and my characters would drop like flies and even with using the tactical menu....I could never even kill one bruiser during this part of the battle. It became painfully obvious to me, that I would never be able to beat this boss with Solas as my mage. I lowered the difficulty and was able to beat him first try. Even on the easiest setting, it wasn't a cake walk, but they were much more squishy and I got through it. I ended up knocking off a couple of other trophies while on that easy setting before going back the 4 hours to my Nightmare save. I was really disappointed to do that. I felt like I had taken the easy way out, plus I had lost like 4 or 5 levels and was just feeling dirty about the whole thing. I decided that I would swap out Solas for Vivienne (Knight Enchater is very macho). I hadn't used Vivienne at all before this, but I saw that her job class was the most powerful, and while I was sad to replace Solas, it needed to be done if I was going to actually beat the Jaws of Hakkon on Nightmare. I loaded up the save and worked toward learning how to play Vivienne and practiced on some of the Dragons. I did allll of the remaining quests to get myself ready for that boss fight. I was level 26 when I was ready to try again. I didn't make the same mistake this time and made that second save before going into the battle...just in case. I got to the boss without too much trouble. I was ready to show this fucker who was boss....that MFer wiped the floor with me AGAIN. I could get to the same point, and while I was in a better position with plenty of healing pots and a sound strat....those two bruisers just beat the absolute shit out of me in that shrunken arena. One second my party was up, fighting the good fight and the next we were all dead on the floor. At this point I'm going to tell you about the 'Focus' ability 'Thousand Cuts'. This ability is something that only a Rogue in the specialization class 'Tempast' can use and you can only use it when you have enough 'Focus'. You earn focus by combo'ing with your team and is not something that fills up terribly fast. There are up to three levels of Focus you can fill with Inquisition perks, and a level three Thousand Cuts does insanely ridiculous damage. My strategy on the dragon fights was to get the dragon to about 50% health using normal battle strats, and then go in and use Thousand Cuts and it would kill off the remaining 50% health. It is also a bit of an AOE ability and will mess up anything that is standing close to the target. My goal in this battle was to get the boss to about 50% health and then see if Thousand Cuts could finish him off. The problem is, those bruisers always entered the battle around 60% health and the fights got too chaotic and we'd end up wiping before I got the chance to use it. I tried using it from the tactical menu, but it never seemed to work the same way as when I used it during normal battle. Felt like I was out of range or something most of the time. I ended up getting really lucky on the attempt that I beat him. One of my characters, I believe Vivienne, has an ability that causes my guy to do insane damage. Like 1000% damage from what I usually do. She also has a 'snail' ability that creates a small dome and the things trapped inside can't move for a short period of time. On the fight where I ended up winning, I was able to use that snail ability and trap both Bruisers in there with the boss, while I had that insane damage bonus on the boss. I was able to run in quick and use Thousand Cuts and I murdered not only the boss, but both of those fucking bruisers that proved to be the bane of my existence. I was able to do that with all of my characters left standing and we were able to finish off the last couple of stragglers. After winning, I was so happy that I decided to go back to the DLC and commit to beating it on Nightmare. After that, I had pretty much a free run to the end of the game and nothing else proved to be nearly as challenging. So why did I write so much about that DLC fight? To circle back to how this post started, I did a lot of reflecting over the past month or so and I realized that since I started hunting trophies, I stopped challenging myself when I knew there was an easy button in a game if I got frustrated. I did it with Hollow Knight, I did it with Celeste and I felt a little dirty about it afterwards. I wanted to go back to challenging myself at times. This game needed to be beaten on Nightmare for the platinum and that was what I wanted to do. I know that the DLC is separate from the main game....but the thing was that I wanted to prove to myself I could beat it on Nightmare. It had been a while since I had that real feeling of accomplishment from beating a game and I missed it. I don't know if I'll always do things the hard way if I don't have to....but in this game and in this time, I wanted to and I succeeded. For as frustrating a time as I had with this game at points, I got one of my biggest feelings of satisfaction at the end. The only bummer I have now, is that not all of the DLC was released for the PS3 version of the game. This game has major cliffhangers and I would like to see them play out....but I'm not ready to play the whole thing on Nightmare again right away. I do have the PS4 version so there is a chance I do play it some day in the future. I have a feeling that they fixed a lot of the issues I had with the PS3 version, but next up for me is the DLC event and cleaning up these unfinished games on my profile. I would like to get back to 100%. While this series wasn't as good as the Mass Effect series was for me, it was still an awesome ride and if you haven't played the series yet and still have a PS3, definitely give it a playthrough. If anyone made it this far through my review, may Andraste smile upon you 159. Zone of the Enders HD Edition Spoiler This was a game that I got as a part of PS+ two or three years ago and is another game I had never heard of. It wasn't one that was really on my radar, but with the PS3 event I'm participating in, it is one of the few remaining games that I have in my PS3 backlog so I wanted to get to it. I decided to start it while redoing the Jaws of Hakkon DLC from Dragon Age: Inquisition on Nightmare difficulty since I needed a game I could get some quick trophies in to keep my streak alive (I'm up to 344 days in a row with a trophy ). For some reason I thought that this game was an RPG, but it's actually a hack n' slash game that was probably the inspiration for the movie Pacific Rim. I haven't seen that movie yet, but I know it involves people driving giant robots that fight stuff. I wasn't in any rush to beat this game because I had thought the PS3 event went until the end of the year, but when I went to post my DA: I update, I saw that it actually ends on Novermber 1st. Since there is only a week left to the event, I wanted to finish this and the surprise second game that came with the HD Edition. With regards to the HD Edition, I had no idea that 1) Zone of the Enders had a sequel or 2) that it was included with this PS+ game...but Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD Edition is also included. Bonus! I'll be trying to finish that game this week ahead of the end of the event. Anyways, as I mentioned, I had never heard of this game and didn't know what to expect. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the game. It originally came out on the PS2, so I was expecting some pretty retro things to come with it and it didn't disappoint. The graphics had an Atari Arcade game feel to them. I don't know why, but it reminded me of a cross between Missile Command and Star Fox...I can't really defend that, but those were two games I thought of when I was playing. The voice acting was predictably pretty bad (in a good, nostalgic kind of way) and the controls and camera work really did bring me back to the beginnings of 3D gaming. Despite the fact what I just wrote might sound like it's dripping with sarcasm or contempt, it was actually pretty enjoyable. That's not to say there wasn't some extreme moments of frustration due to some of the trophy requirements...but for the most part, the game was really well done. I ran into no glitches and everything was pretty smooth. The story wasn't terrible but wasn't great either. You play as a teenage boy named Leo, who lives in a town that is under attack from giant robots. Some are controlled by humans that are wearing them and some are droids. While trying to hide/get to safety when his town is under attack, he climbs into one of these robots and is all of a sudden controlling one. He is not a hardened soldier and shows a lot of empathy with the decisions he makes. The program, ADA, is very logical and tries to get Leo to complete the mission that the robot suit was created for and Leo is thrust into a battle to save the world. Along the way, Leo decides to save the towns that are under attack, much to the chagrin of ADA. This part of the game is where the biggest frustration comes in. There is a trophy called Damage Control that requires you to get an 'A Rank' on all of the rescue missions. In order to get an 'A Rank', you need to play the game on Hard difficulty, keep the damage done to the city that is under attack under 10%, and save all of the citizens without any casualties. It's not that bad once you figure out the order to attack the enemy, but it can be frustrating during the learning process. Basically there are enemies that roam and some that stand sentry. You can mostly ignore the sentry ones since they don't really do anything until you engage them. But the ones that roam, they cause structural damage and can destroy a building with citizens inside. If any of the citizens die, you need to quit out to the main menu and reload the save. You can't use a continue if you are also looking to get the Valedictorian trophy for getting an overall grade of an A. It's really easy to cause damage by accident and if you select the wrong group of robots to attack first, citizens die pretty easy as well. It took me several tries in each area to figure out a route that worked. If anyone does plan on playing this game, I'll give you a hint to spare you a ton of frustration on the 2nd rescue mission. The first boss fight is in the same zone as the 2nd rescue mission, and the damage done during the boss fight carries over to that rescue mission. It does mention that in the guide, but what the guide does not tell you is that you should exit the zone right after killing the boss. Once you kill the boss, there are like 5 or 6 groups of robots that patrol the zone and your instinct is that you need to clear them out before you can leave the area....this is not true. You can leave the area right after killing the boss and keep your damage percentage in the zone to a minimum so that when you come back to this zone later in the game, you are much more likely to keep the damage percentage under 10%. I ended up beating it with 9.6% damage done so only beat it by the hair of my chinny chin chin. What was super annoying, was that you fight this boss, then do a couple of other areas, including another rescue mission before you attempt this second one. I tried like ten times to get the damage less than 10% and every time it was up around 20%. It is impossible to keep the damage under 10% if you do not leave the zone right after beating the first boss. It was a quick game, probably took me about 6-8 hours to beat. That's including watching all the cut-scenes and replaying the first 30 minutes or so because I missed a trophy for attacking some enemies before you're supposed to. While it definitely doesn't age well compared to the stuff we are playing today, it was a fun, quick little game that was definitely worth the 'free' cost of a PS+ game. Hopefully the second entry is more of the same. 160. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD Edition Spoiler This was a surprise game....in that it was a surprise that I even owned it. When I went to start the first Zone of the Enders game, I saw that there were two games to choose from on the menu. I mean the PS+ game did say Zone of the Enders Collection, but it never dawned on me that it was multiple games. After beating the first one, I liked it enough to just continue on to the second installment right away. They both seemed like fun, quick games and it was something I could use after the marathon that was Dragon Age: Inquisition. ZotE 2 did everything I liked in the first game and just improved upon it. It wasn't perfect, but there were a lot of improvements made from the first one. The graphics were better, the fighting was smoother and the story was much more fleshed out (not that this game had some deep story, but it was just much deeper than the first one). As the title of the game indicates, you play as a new 'runner' named Dingo. I had a real hard time taking a guy named Dingo seriously throughout the game lol I kept imagining Elaine from Seinfeld saying "Maybe the Dingo ate your baby". Anyway, this game involves a lot more story cutscenes than the prior entry. I haven't watched a ton of Anime in my life, but this seemed like a pretty stereotypical Anime storyline. You play a righteous former soldier of BAHRAM who is out for revenge after his unit was left to die. Mix in your standard Waifu named Ken, a little bit of treachery and a psychotic bad guy and you have your story. While it is pretty shallow, they do spend a lot of time fleshing out and providing backstory for a lot of the characters. Not that you get super attached to them, but I appreciated the effort. While there are tons of different weapons to use, I would melee 85% of the time and you can jump that up to 95% in NG+ once you get access to Jehuty V2. The 'warp' ability is pretty fun and broken. It is an entertaining hack n' slash game. I wish I spent more time trying some of the other weapons though, but the melee was pretty mindless and I tended to play this game quite a bit while I was watching TV and/or working so I appreciated the mindless. The only weapon I really used other than melee was Homing Missile and a handful of other weapons when forced to during different missions. Without the cutscenes, the game is quite short...you can get through it in less than 2 hours. It has a handful of missions and several boss fights. The boss fights could get a little frustrating since it wasn't always clear how you needed to beat the boss right away and the targeting in this game was not terribly good. It was the weakest part of the game by far. Generally speaking it is fine. The default is to autotarget the next closest enemy after killing the current one you are attacking. You can switch to a different target by tapping L2. One problem I found is that trying to change the camera angle with R3 would also change your target...sometimes. To get rid of the autotarget, you had to hold the L2 button down for a couple of seconds. There are a few missions where you need to do this and then try and target friendly characters to try and mark them to be healed. It is really clumsy attempting to toggle back and forth between enemy and friendly targets. You are just as likely to attack friendlies as you are to attack an enemy. This is especially frustrating when going for a couple of the trophies. For two trophies, you need to get an SS ranking on a mission, which means you have to do the missions perfectly. In one, you need to make sure there is no damage to the buildings, no civilians die and no LEVs are destroyed. In the other, you have to make sure no LEVs are destroyed, which sounds easier, but there are like a thousand enemies and the map is ginormous....The targeting makes these missions hard...the fact that the LEVs in the first one have no regard for human life also makes that one hard....I tried for like 30 mins on NG to get the SS ranking and just got too frustrated and figured I'd try on NG+. NG+ wasn't that much easier...those dickhead LEVs in the first mission kept damaging buildings and I had to kill all of the enemies almost immediately after they spawned or the LEVs would mess up the run. Other than those two trophies though, the rest of the list isn't too bad. There's really not too much more to say, it's a fun little game that I got for free. If you got it free and still have a PS3 to play, I definitely recommend playing them. Platinums 161-170 Spoiler 161. The Forgotten City Spoiler I need to start this review by giving credit to @realm722 for why I picked this game. I've been playing a lot of Genshin Impact lately and have mostly been enjoying it. The problem is that it is going to take me several more weeks before I can platinum this game due to all the time barriers they have for getting things done. With the DLC event just before it, I hadn't popped a platinum since October 31st. I was starting to get the shakes and needed a quick fix...the problem was that I didn't really have a good game in mind to play that I could finish relatively quickly but also have substance. I've also been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to keep my trophy streak going (I'm actually enjoying the campaign so far) and that is another game that won't be done for a while. After reading realm's review, I found something that looked like the perfect candidate. The Forgotten City is a story-driven, action, point-and-click style, mystery game. It takes a couple of my favorite themes and mashes them together....time travel and mythology. I'll give a brief intro that isn't really any spoiler since it's covered in the first ten minutes of the game. You get to choose the gender of your character and name them (I didn't realize there were different genders since you pick based on faces of a coin and neither looked female to me...but my second playthrough I was female so...). You wake up on the bank of a river, apparently being saved by a woman who saw you adrift. She had apparently fished someone else out of the river slightly before you named Al and she thought that we might know one another. Al had regained consciousness first and decided to go and explore a nearby ruin. He had been gone for some time and the woman asks if I might go look for him. While I am looking for him in the ruin, I stumble upon a time portal and are whisked back 2000 years to when the ruin was an active Roman City. The city is small with only twenty or so inhabitants and the strange thing is that they appear to be trapped in the city with no way out. They have one rule, the 'Golden Rule', which is basically not to commit any sin or 'The many shall suffer for the deeds of the one'. Everyone lives tenuously under this rule as they are afraid to break the rule while at the same time questioning whether it is real or not. It is an eclectic group of people that seem to coexist as much out of fear of consequence as they do because they like one another. There are gold statues all over the city, but no one knows where they came from, only theories and myths...all they know for certain is they are trapped. Anyways, the city is run by a magistrate who senses that someone is about to break the 'Golden Rule' and you are tasked with uncovering the mystery of who it is going to be. If the 'Golden Rule' should be broken, the magistrate knows of a secret incantation that he can perform that will create a time portal that you can go through which will reset the day. So not only is it time travel and mythology...but it's also one of my favorite movies with Groundhog Day! I enjoyed this game quite a bit. It was largely created by three guys over the course of four years and it is extremely well done considering how little manpower they had to push it out. The graphics are pretty good, the combat is pretty smooth and the story is really quite clever. The cool thing about the time loop is that after you learn some new information, you can break the 'Golden Rule' on purpose by killing someone or stealing something and run to the portal to reset the day and tackle a conversation over and try again. In some scenarios, this is actually necessary to solve a mystery. None of the mystery's are terribly hard to figure out, but I was really impressed with the level of dialogue in the story as well the cleverness with how it is told. As you get to know more of the townsfolk and the situation they face, the mystery begins to unfold and you get a pretty nice experience as you go. There are four different endings depending on the choices you make...I got the first ending by accident almost immediately after starting the game lol In addition to selecting your name and gender, you select what your job is. I picked the one where I was an undercover agent or something which made me a 'Warrior' and gave me a gun. You only get 10 bullets for the duration of the game no matter how many times you loop, but when I was figuring out the controls, I shot someone by accident and broke the 'Golden Rule'...a few seconds later, someone was running at me and I thought they were attacking me so shot them....turns out that is the bad ending lol This game rewards conversation and investigation over brute force and it didn't like me going all 'Terminator' in an ancient civilization. The good news, is that is needed for a trophy and you can start from your last save right away so it was no big deal. One thing I liked with the different endings is that there is a 'Canon' ending for how the writers intended the story to be told, so it is good that you have to do that one. While the map isn't huge, it's a little disorienting at first and can take a little bit to figure out where you need to go. The only real knock I have on the game is that when you jump, your arms kind of flail weirdly in front of you. I'm sure it's there to add to the 'realism' but it just looks kind of goofy. My absolute favorite thing this game does right, was one of my biggest issues with the Mass Effect series. The skip text button is different than the select text button. There were sooooooooooo many times in ME where I selected a question/answer that I didn't want to because the option to select came up while I was skipping ahead in text and they were the same button. You can't do that in this game. If you read faster than they are speaking or are on your 9th loop and don't want to hear the same thing said again....you can mash the button feeling confident you won't select the wrong dialogue because to select the dialogue you press ! A huge, HUGE bravo to these guys for making the system work that way lol I had absolutely no frustrating moments in this game due to that. If you know what you're doing, the game could be beaten in probably around four hours or so. I played it blind my first time through and got one of the non-canon endings. After that, I followed the guide to clean up and see the rest. This was the perfect game for me to play at the perfect time. I've been playing a ton of slogs and I didn't want to just play something easy to hear the *ding*. This game was pretty easy, but had great substance and I don't feel bad paying full price for this game at all. It scratched an itch that I hadn't been able to reach for some time and it was really satisfying to finally hit that spot. I have no problems at all recommending this game to any one and while I'd say not to be afraid to pay full price to support this small company, I get that it's not the longest game and paying $25-$30 for it may not be the great deal it was for me. But a big 'Thank You!' to realm for his awesome review and for putting this game on my radar! 162. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Spoiler I have never been a COD fan. I played one of them once at a friends house on the XBOX after it came out and got absolutely murdered online. It wasn't a lot of fun and I just had written the series off for the most part. Flash forward a couple years to when I buy my PS3. When I bought the console I bought two games with it...Batman: Arkham City and Call of Duty: MW3. Why did I buy COD when I knew I didn't really like it? Well because I foolishly thought I might have a friend come over one day that would like to play it so wanted to have an MP game just in case. Needless to say, it stayed in the shrink wrap until a few months ago lol. I wasn't really planning on playing it, but last year's PS3 event got me to finish almost my entire PS3 backlog and I figured I paid full price for it...I should probably just play it. Turns out....I kind of like it. The campaign was fun. It's not terribly long, but there's some challenging sections and it's a game that has very forgiving check points so you don't feel like you've wasted a ton of time if you take an unlucky grenade to the face or a GD dog jumps you from behind. Due to how friendly the check points are, Veteran difficulty didn't prove to be that tough (for the campaign anyways). There's not much to say about the story, just your generic kind of war story but the controls are tight, the graphics are good and it scratches an itch for an FPS game that I don't get too often. While the campaign wasn't too tough...Jeeesus some of the Special Ops missions were brutal. Since I generally try to pop the platinum as my last trophy, I did all the DLC Spec Ops missions before doing the main game ones. They were pretty challenging on Veteran, but none were ridiculous. I was able to beat them all on my own without too much trouble. There were only a couple spots where you had to beat a timer and rush, but pretty much if you take it slow, you'll be able to beat the DLC missions since there didn't seem to be any infinite spawning points. While the DLC missions were doable solo, the main game missions were much more challenging. Now I don't usually play these games since I mostly avoid Online Co-op/MP games like the plague. COD games have a reputation (at least from what I'd heard) for being a community of angry children who yell at you on their headset and I'm just too old for that shit. I avoided this game mostly for that reason and was determined to do it alone. While doing the DLC Spec Ops, I got a message from someone on PS that made me feel I was right in not doing it Co-Op (I'll have more on this later). But, the first Spec Ops Mission made me change my mind. The very first Spec Ops mission is a training obstacle course that you need to complete in less than 28 seconds. When I say you have to hustle, I mean you have to hustle to get the mission done in time. I tried for a solid hour by myself and couldn't get it under 29 seconds. I watched a video and tried to mirror it and it didn't really help too much. It did show me that changing weapons was faster than reloading, but I just couldn't hit the section with 4 targets while I was moving and needed to stop to clear that section. You need to use pistols to do it quickly and I just couldn't get the timing right. I decided that I was going to have to try and make a gaming session to get someone to help me clear the missions. I had taken a couple of days off from work to relax since it has been crazy there and figured it'd be a good opportunity to try and get this done. I made the session and got no hits for several days and thought I was going to be SOL. But, a couple days ahead of time I got a message from someone that was interested and then another wrote a message on the session and yet another signed up. I felt my odds were going to be good to get it done. While I wanted to do it with the person who messaged me first, I felt obligated to do it with the person who actually signed up for the session. One dude dropped out since he signed up as a place holder and wasn't actually available to play when I was able to play. One guy was very nice but just not terribly good. I'm not a great player and I was getting 15 kills to his 1. It took us two hours to beat the second mission (we skipped the first one) and he had to go. Thankfully, the first person that messaged me still wanted to give it a go and we were able to get five or six missions done in the next few hours. I lucked out in that he was better than me lol I carried my weight, but he was the true MVP and I have to give a thank you and a shout out to @VLAAMINGK_N1. Super nice guy and I had so much fun playing with him that I bought COD: MW2 so we could play again together (plus there's a trophy on there I want on my wall as #8000). We had a good time playing and were able to knock out all of the Spec Ops trophies and Survival trophies during the past week. The hardest mission by far was Smack Town. The mission starts with you both totally exposed in a helicopter and if one of you dies, the mission ends. The good news is you will probably die early, within the first 30 seconds, so it isn't a huge waste of time when you fail, but the frustrating thing was just how weird the AI and game mechanics worked for that part. You'd blow up a truck with a grenade to have two guys jump out and start shooting at you. The hit box seemed off in that level and it took longer than both of us would probably want to admit to get through that section consistently. The good news is that is the hardest section and once you get through it, it's just a matter of taking your time and being safe and you can beat the level. Anyways, the game ended up being a ton of fun and it was mostly due to how fun it was to beat the Spec Ops missions with someone. It was a bit grindy to wrap it up, but none of it felt like that much of a chore. I obviously like it enough that I bought MW2 and I won't necessarily shy away from these games going forward. Not sure how much I want to play 'Zombies' mode or if I want to spend the money on the newer ones, but I'll definitely play the Remasters probably at some point. So, back to my weird interaction when I was working on the DLC.... Question: Is the term carry generally viewed as a derogatory term? Like I get it could be if it is said like 'you suck so bad you need a carry'...but like is it a taboo word to use in these games? I'll post my conversation below, but I super offended this person because I used the term carry. I think this dude was a bit sensitive, but since I never play these games, I was genuinely confused at the response and just wanted to get some thoughts on here. Was what I said offensive? 163. Langrisser I & II Spoiler So I think I'd mentioned at some point in this thread that one of my favorite games growing up was a game on the Sega Genesis called Warsong. It was a TBS game that was quite challenging and I loved the artwork on the cover. I played that game so many times through from beginning to end, getting each of the job classes maxed for each character and really enjoyed it. The graphics were basic and the story wasn't anything to write home about, but it was something that I got hours and hours of enjoyment from. I had mentioned that I would love it if they remastered that game for the Playstation at some point not knowing that it had actually been done! I randomly Googled Warsong a couple months ago to check out if there had been any sequels and saw that it was actually called Langrisser in Japan and that there was an entire series that spawned from it. While I was looking at the Wikipedia page, something caught my eye... Hold the phone....it was released on Playstation!??!?! How had I missed this? I could have sworn I'd looked this up once before, but here it was staring me in the face that this game had a PS release and I had not played it yet!! I immediately went over to the PS Store and saw that not only was it available, it was on sale for 50% off! (was still $25 but whatever). When you're dealing with a nostalgia purchase, patience is always easily attained. I immediately downloaded and installed the game and started to play. While the game was downloading, I took a look at the trophy list and was a little confused by what was involved. The majority of trophies are earned by completing different routes...well the game I played only had one route so I was now curious what the different routes entailed. Anyways, once I started playing the game, I was pleasantly surprised. The graphics had a decent facelift and the story seemed to be progressing as I remembered it would. I was thrown off by the names, Ledin will always be Garrett in my mind, Chris is actually Mina, Jessica is Calais, etc. I didn't love the updated music as much, but thankfully they had a setting where you could hear the original soundtrack from the original game. I was 12 years old again for a bit and it was super cool to be able to play something again that had brought so much joy to me as a kid. The basic story is that the Dalsis Empire is trying to bring peace to the world by uniting everyone under their rule. Problem is, not everyone wants to be under their rule and the war the empire is bringing is spreading darkness across the land. While the Kingdom of Baldea is under attack by Dalsis, Ledin, the Prince of Baldea, is sent by his father the King to gather allies to counterattack the Dalsis empire. The key to sealing away the darkness and stopping the empire lies in the legendary sword of light, Langrisser. The story has 21 chapters/levels that you must complete and you pick up some friends and make some rivals along the way. Pretty basic fantasy stuff. The game play itself is your basic grid style TBS game. You control several characters who command several units. If the units are within their commanders range, they get bonuses to attack and defense. If they are outside the command range, they are basically useless, but can sometimes bring down a crippled enemy unit. Each round starts with your turn, then any allies go that are not under your control and then finally the enemies. Each battle brings up a screen where you can see the units clash and they lose HP based on several different factors. For example, spear men are pretty good against cavalry, however cavalry will generally mow down your infantry units. Aquatic units have a distinct advantage in the water, but if you lure them on the land, they are much more vulnerable. You gain XP for each unit killed and it is often best (for leveling purposes) to kill all of an enemy commander's units before killing the commander. If you kill the commander first, all of his units disappear with him and you do not get XP for them. If you kill multiple enemies in one move, like with a spell for example, there is some type of multiplier that really boosts XP gained. Every level gained, earns your character 5 CP. After you've earned enough CP, you can promote that character to a new role which grants new abilities, spells and units. In the original game I played, once you picked a promotion path, your characters were locked into that path and could only play the most recent ranked role achieved. In this version, you can unlock all paths and switch to any role at any time between chapters. That was kind of cool since it allows you to try out several different jobs. In the original, you tended to pick the same path each playthrough since each character had a 'best' role. Overall, this game is a million times easier than the original. The maps are slightly smaller so the battles move more quickly and if one of your characters is defeated during a battle, they withdraw and are able to be used in later chapters. In the original game, if they died during a level, they were gone for the rest of the playthrough. You could easily save scum in the original since you could use the 'save state' before every battle, but you didn't have to. In this game, it was never needed as your guys tend to be so much stronger than the enemy. So back to the trophy list. I like the idea that they added different routes to the story line based on decisions you make throughout the chapters, but they over did it by a ton. The variations between endings were often not enough for it to make sense to add a new route. For example, you might be given the choice of which bad guy to pursue first at the end of a chapter. One route has you follow character X while one route has you following character Y. Both endings end up being the same no matter who you choose, so it just seems like a waste of time to do both. Most of the routes are like that and they could have easily done only have of the routes and been successful at showing you different potential outcomes. When I mentioned I was playing this game on Discord, @Cassylvania warned me how repetitive the game would get. I defiantly said, no way! I loved this game and would never find it repetitive. I am here now to say that I was wrong lol While it is pretty repetitive in the Langrisser I it is exceptionally repetitive in Langisser II. Langrisser II takes place like 600 years or something after the events of Langrisser I and the story is basically the same. In this one, both sides are fighting for the same thing, just doing it differently, so the idea of one side as 'good' and the other as 'bad' is murkier....but they added more routes and some of the ways to hit those routes are not terribly clear. You do a lot of replaying of levels to unlock the alternate routes and many of the maps that were in the first game appear again in the second game. There is no change to anything with regards to battle, XP growth or anything. The only real change made was to the music, which ended up being worse than the first one. Langrisser II would have been fine if you weren't forced to replay 21 routes with most of them being the exact same ending. I mostly enjoyed my time with the game and it was mostly due to the nostalgia it brought. If you are a completist, I can't really recommend this game since it really does get to be a slog by the end. But if you do not care about your completion % and just want to play a fun, throwback TBS game, then this is probably a good choice. I don't think it is worth the $50 at full price or even the $25 at half price (unless you're old like me and clamoring for some nostalgia), but if it was ever 75% off and around $15, it's worth a pick up. 164. Team Sonic Racing Spoiler This was never going to be a game I planned on playing. I don't love racing games (since I'm not very good at them), however I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Kart style games since I grew up on Mario Kart and have a ton of fond memories playing that series. But this one....I saw it was free, figured I'd add it to my backlog and that'd be the end of my time with this game. Fortunately, I did not read a sarcastic comment on Discord as being sarcastic. We were looking for a potential game we could play as a group and someone said (jokingly I know now) 'How about Team Sonic Racing!'. Well, there were crickets at that mention but a couple weeks went by and we were looking to start something new and I said 'How about Team Sonic Racing!' since I figured there was some interest. Well @Cassylvania and I both mistakenly believed the other wanted the play the game and said 'sure, why not'. After about 10 minutes of playing, we started to realize that this wasn't going to be a fun game to play and Cass lovingly started to refer to it as Sarnic Racing (which I find very funny for some reason lol). Anyway, based on the comments, I could tell Cass wasn't looking forward to it and I asked 'then why did you recommend playing it', to which Cass replied 'I didn't recommend it, you did!' to which I discovered, the original recommendation a couple weeks prior was sarcastic. Well trophies had popped and now we were in it for the long haul. The trophy guide said it was a 4/10 in difficulty so I wasn't too worried about it. We played a little co-op for a couple hours and then moved on. Cass decided to tackle it before I did and based on the comments, could tell this game wasn't that great and I wasn't in a rush to get back to it. Plus, I had a ton of games going on at the same time and had planned on pushing this to the back burner. Once I finished MW3 and Langrisser though, I wanted to get this one done sooner rather than later. I had already done the MP stuff so just figured I'd start the 'story' mode. I won't lie to you, I skipped all text in this game so have absolutely no idea what the 'story' is. I did the first few races and the game seemed like a typical Kart racing game and I figured it'd be fine. 4/10 difficulty so I should be fine. The first few races made the game feel like a 4/10 and I assumed I was on my way to the Plat....when I got to the first 'Challenge' track I quickly decided to call bull shit on that 4/10 rating. The margin for error is razor thin and you need to run basically a perfect run to get through a lot of these. There are 5 different challenges. One is like a giant slalom where you have to pass through gates that arc off of a pole. One side is red and the other side is yellow. The red side will give you a +0.1 multiplier bonus (up to +0.5) to points and the yellow side gives you bonus points. You also get bonus points for drifting through the gates, however you get no points and your multiplier vanishes if you touch the pole. The multiplier also has a timer and if you do not go through a red gate in time, the multiplier resets. You have about 75 - 90 seconds to try and get as many points as you can....it's hard. Not the hardest, but hard. Another is a ring challenge where you have to get a certain number of rings within about 25-30 seconds. If you collect rings while drifting, it adds fractions of a second to your timer (but caps at about 30 seconds so you can never have like 45 seconds of clock). There's a 'traffic' challenge where you have to drive between gates while robots try to block your path. There's one where you have to shoot/break targets for points and another where you have to destroy as many 'Eggman' as possible. By far the hardest challenges for me were the ring challenges. You don't get a lot of time and it takes a while to get used to handling/steering while drifting. The early ring challenges easily took me an hour to hour and a half each to beat. Most of the other challenges I got done in five tries or less, but those ring challenges were a bitch and took a while. Some of the tracks also have specific challenges that will reward you with a key if you finish successfully. For example, one was to finish in the top 3 while collecting 75 rings and not spinning out more that 2 times. I didn't find most of them to be too bad, but some took a couple tries. The Grand Prix's could be annoying since your team had to finish in first place to get the star for the level and your teammates AI is just pure trash. I played Team Sonic exclusively and that team was Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and Knuckles was just a Knucklehead...many races end up something like 1. Sonic 2. Tails 12. Knuckles. Then Green team would finish 3, 4, 5 and win the race based on the team points. It was pretty frustrating, but fortunately I didn't have that much trouble with them. There are 3 difficulty settings and you need to be all of the racing levels (not challenges) on both Hard and Expert levels. I decided to play each world to completion before moving on to the next, meaning I beat all the tracks on both Hard and Expert before moving to the next. Expert difficulty isn't unlocked until you beat it on hard. What I'd do is start on hard, then beat expert and then if I didn't unlock all the stars or the key with those two tries, I'd go back and race it on normal. I was able to get most of the stars/keys however without having to do a Normal run through. What I found about this game is that the learning curve is extremely steep, but once you get the hang of it, it really isn't that hard. Once you figure out how to properly drift (which isn't easy) and that doing stunts off jumps will give you a boost if you land it right, I came in 1st or 2nd almost every race. When I first started, I felt like the game was an 8/10 in difficulty, but by the time I finished it, it did feel like more of a 5/10. What I liked about this game was that I could see myself getting better each attempt. Because of this, I didn't get all that frustrated playing it and actually ended up really enjoying it. It was super frustrating at the start, but as I tackled those ring challenges over and over...I kept getting a few more rings or a little further on the track before time expired and I ended up achieving all of the challenges. Due to the nature of it being a Kart game, there were plenty of BS moments where you get Earth Pillared near the end followed by a lightning zap and you go from 1st to 9th in a matter of seconds....but I found that didn't happen so often where it made the game feel like it was 'cheating' (any of you that played RC Pro AM on the NES know what I'm talking about). So while I never planned on playing this game and thought it was a mistake to have started initially after playing, this ended up being a very satisfying platinum to achieve. Not because it's a great game per say (but it really is a pretty good Kart Game), but because of how you can see improvement in a relatively short amount of time. It felt good being able to beat challenges that seemed literally impossible after the first few attempts. While I've played a lot of good games over the years, the platinum often can feel a bit anti-climatic since it just signals the end of this game and to move on. But occasionally, you get one where there's some significance to you because of the challenges you undertook to get it and this was one of those for me. It can be terribly frustrating and if you don't have a ton of patience, this game probably isn't for you....but the price was right and I ended up having a lot of fun, much to my surprise. If you like Kart racing games, this one is pretty decent. 165. Oxenfree Spoiler This game was on sale a couple of months ago for $0.99 and I snapped it up. I didn't know what it was about, didn't know when I'd play it, but I had heard that it was a good game and figure for 99 cents, even if it sucked I wouldn't care. With one of my favorite events started with the Trophies for Mental Health II, I saw that this game was recommended as a game that would qualify there and decided to start it now. The game is completely story driven in the 'choose your own adventure' style where the way you interact with characters changes some of the dialogue throughout as well as the ending. Due to the heavy story nature of this game, I won't say too much about it. The general premise is that a group of high school classmates decide to go to an island off the coast of their home town for an over night party. The island was a former army base that was decommissioned years ago and is basically abandoned at night. There is one resident who lives their all the time and other than that person, everyone is off the island when the business day is over. This makes it a great place for high school kids to cut loose and maybe get themselves into a little bit of trouble. There are tons of superstitions surrounding the island and the kids decide to do some investigating. I won't say much else about the story except that I don't quite understand why people felt like it is a good choice for the Mental Health event. The back stories of the characters involve some general trauma (death, divorce) and your typical high school age issues (school/graduation stress, peer pressure), but most of the problems in this story seem to stem from sci-fi/supernatural influences. Those influences create extra stress and I guess that perhaps how you choose to deal with that stress could make the game qualify, but I didn't really find many lessons to be learned about mental health here. I thought it was just a very interesting story, that borrowed ideas from several different things I've seen before and put them together to make a nice little game, and less a story that shines a light on mental health issues. One playthrough is probably 2-3 hours long if you don't do much investigating and I needed three playthroughs to get the platinum. I did my first playthrough blind, followed by the playthrough where you have to be silent throughout the whole game, followed by the playthrough where you have to have everyone hating you by the end. Only one of those playthroughs needs to involve getting all of the collectibles and doing that only takes about 20-30 minutes to do so there is no kind of grind at all. The cool thing about the game is that I feel like while only three playthroughs is needed for the plat (maybe only two if you don't do one blind), you could probably play it six or seven times and get a little different story each time. The graphics are nothing special, but perfect for this game. The music is pretty eerie, which also plays well here. Overall, there is a lot to like here if you like story driven games. One thing that frustrated me early on is that the dialogue choices you need to select will pop up while someone else is talking. If you take too long to select something, you lose the opportunity to speak but if you select something on time, you'll interrupt the person speaking or you'll be talking over each other. I thought it was annoying at first since I felt like I was missing part of the story and thought it was laziness on the developers. However, after I started my second playthrough, I realized that it was intentionally done that way. Probably to mirror real life more accurately. People talk over each other and interrupt all the time and there's an element of frustration in real life when that happens too. I think they wanted to capture that kind of realness and frustration in the story here and it worked. I also realized on the second playthrough, that if the dialogue is really relevant to the story at that moment, the person who was interrupted will generally start up again. It was mostly the side conversations that didn't pick back up if you chose to speak and interrupt. While I didn't find anything truly groundbreaking in this game, they did what they did well and the story had enough originality to it to keep it interesting. For $0.99, I doubt you'll find too many better games out there. It was polished and you could tell the creators cared about this game. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes a good story. There's really no puzzles or action and there's no need for a guide at all, other than to find the collectibles. While some trophies are 'missable' in a playthrough, the game is short enough where it doesn't really matter. If you ever see it for $5 or less, pick it up, you won't be disappointed! 166. Rayman Legends (Vita) Spoiler I had played Rayman Legends on the PS4 a few years ago and really enjoyed it. This game's platforming style is more my speed as opposed to the crazy platforming games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste (minus assist mode). Those latter two games are super satisfying when you beat them, but make you pull your hair out while trying. Those style platformers are more about accomplishment and pride than fun. Rayman is more fun than anything else. Sure it has some frustrating parts, and the further you get on the Daily/Weekly Challenges the harder it gets, but nothing even remotely close to SMB. I had never really planned on playing this game on the Vita. For starters, there is the trophy for getting a Diamond Trophy on a Daily/Weekly challenge, which requires you to finish in the top 1% for that day/week's challenge and it will give you 50 points towards your 'Awesomeness' rating. For 99.99% of players, that would be a hard block on the way to the platinum. There are some serious professional Rayman players that play this game daily. When you feel great about getting 1500 meters on a 'go as far as you can' challenge and you see the dudes in first at 9 kilometers traveled...you realize you have no shot. There are usually between 150-200 players daily that attempt a given challenge. That means you would have to finish first or second to get that trophy for a Diamond and no way me (or most people) are good enough to get that. Fortunately, there are rare occasions where a 'Murfy Challenge' will glitch and becomes impossible to pass a certain point in the level. Provided you get to that point, everyone will tie for first. So there are a handful of different types of challenges and within those types, a few different objectives. There's an infinite Tower Climb, where you run up a tower as far as you can while it slowly sinks into the ground. You leap back and forth, trying to dodge inconveniently placed thorny vines among other things. If you aren't fast enough, you will sink into the sand too or run into an obstacle. There's a bottomless pit, where you helicopter float or dive bomb drop down until you run into vines with thorns or fire eyes or whirling saws. Wind and moving vines add to the degree of difficulty. There's a Dojo where you run through 'one screen' rooms with varying obstacles and break as many pots or floaty eye monsters as you can collecting Lums. There's your normal horizontal platforming zone where you are being chased by a wall of fire, so you can't slow down and need to think quickly to progress jumping over vines and pits and catapulting through bone walls to get through the area. The final type of challenge involves Murfy's Dungeon, where your selected NPC will run at his own pace while you play as Murfy, the insect-y thing, who moves different obstacles out of the way while the NPC runs as far as he can. Murfy is a bug looking thing that reminds me of Zipper from Chip N' Dales Rescue Rangers. In each of these zones, there can be one of about three different objectives. One will be 'get them as fast as you can' which involves getting a set amount of 'Lums' (usually 150-300) as fast as possible. Once you hit the designated amount, the timer stops and the run ends. It usually takes 45 seconds or less for one of these runs. Another type is 'get there as fast as you can' which similarly has you reaching a set distance as fast as possible, usually around 200-300 meters, which also takes 45 seconds or less. The last type is the 'go as far as you can' which can take several minutes depending on how good you are. These types are my favorite since there's usually a 'break point' where the average gamer won't be able to get by on their first few tries. Since it can take a few minutes to run one of these, most people won't try too much and if you can just get a little ways past the 'break point', you can pretty much guarantee a gold trophy (top 20% finish and 10 points). The other two types, while faster, end up being harder to place in the top 20% (in my experience anyways) since the margin for error is razor thin. The difference between getting a top 20% finish and a top 50% finish (silver trophy and 5 points) could be less than a tenth of a second. There are most definitely some tricks out there to improve your times, but I'll never know how I can run (what appears to be a near flawless run) and lose to the Diamond winner by 3 seconds or more on the 'get there quickly' or 'collect them quickly' days. Anyways, that was a lot of talking about the challenge mode to talk about how getting a top 1% finish is a platinum blocker under normal circumstances. I decided to pick this game up because during the first week of December, I saw a thread on the main page that said there was a 'weekly challenge Murfy glitch'. So what is this glitch? As I mentioned above, the Murfy's Challenges involve an NPC that runs through the dungeon at a consistent pace and you play as the bug Murfy that moves obstacles and pulls levers so that the NPC can progress through the zone. If you mess up, it'll fall to it's death or jump into spikes and the run is over. The cool/hard thing about the Murfy's Challenge zones is that you control the bug by using the touch screen, You have to quickly tap or pull on obstacles to clear the way for the NPC running. When there is a glitched run, there is a spot in the level that no matter what you do, the NPC will die. He'll jump at a spot where he shouldn't and will always fall down a hole or jump into spikes. On those occasions, the god-like Rayman players can get no further than the scrubs like me. Usually, the glitched area is pretty far in the zone and you still have to be pretty good to get there. What made this particular one so special, was not only that it was a weekly challenge so you had a whole week to do it, but it was very near the start where the glitched jump was, so really anyone who wanted to should have been able to get it. I had seen threads in the past about the glitched Murfy zones, but it was always on a daily challenge and was always super far anyway. The ability to try the daily/weekly challenges also don't unlock right away. You need to get to different levels of Awesomeness (points accrued from trophies you get from beating campaign levels and challenges). It never seemed like there would be enough time, and while I liked the game quite a bit on the PS4, I wasn't interested in playing this version until that weekly challenge glitch occurred. Once I saw that Diamond Trophy was available, suddenly the whole game opened up again for me and I took advantage of it. The rest of the game is quite fun. I enjoy the 2D side scrolling action and this game doesn't take itself too seriously. The levels aren't too tough and they are bright and colorful and the soundtrack is pretty fun as well. My favorite levels are the musical levels where you run through a gambit and the music mirrors when you break stuff or collect Lums. The Black Betty level is my favorite, mostly because the first time I played it on the PS4, my children were very small and they thought it was cool. They liked the dragon in the level and would ask me to play 'ooo mommy mommy pa pa pa' which is what they interpreted the words the enemies sing throughout the level. Even now, every once in a while they'll ask to watch 'ooo mommy pa pa pa' on YouTube. These levels aren't hard and are meant to be fun, but that's a tiny glimpse into what the game looks like. The only really hard trophy is the Total Awesomeness trophy and that's only because of how long it takes. You need 6000 points to reach the final level of awesomeness and you only get around 4000 points from beating all of the levels in the main game. Those points are earned in the form of beating the levels and saving the 'Teensies' that have been capture and by collecting Lums. If you save all of the Teensies and collect the required amount of Lums, you'll earn all of the available cups for the level, which ends up being a couple bronze, silver and gold. Once you clear all of the levels of a zone, you earn a Diamond Cup. As mentioned, beating all the levels gets you around 4000 points and the last 2000 have to come from the online daily/weekly challenges. If you were to get a diamond trophy for every attempt, it would take you about 18 days to get the last 2000 points. The fact of the matter is that won't happen so you need to target Golds and Silvers. Bronze trophies only give 1 point and it would take several years to get the points needed if you only ever got bronze. The trophy list isn't too bad outside of the Total Awesomeness trophy. You'll collect most of the grind-y ones just from going for Total Awesomeness. There are a handful or random ones for doing something specific in the game, like kicking ducks back at a shark who's throwing them at you, but they are pretty easy as well. The hardest levels are probably the Invasion levels that require you to beat a level in a short amount of time. It's a flat out sprint to the end and most will probably take a couple of tries to figure out where the traps are...but even those aren't too bad. While I really enjoyed this game (enough to beat it twice and make a trophy a milestone), I would only recommend the PS4 version and not the Vita. There are more players on the PS4 version and it is easier to get golds and silvers. The Vita version is much harder, if only because the margin for error is slimmer. The levels are 90% identical between the games with only the Murfy's Dungeon being different. Despite my enjoyment of the game, I'd be hard pressed to recommend it because you never know how long these servers will be up for. The fact that it'll take a few months (for most) to complete...you could be opening yourself up to an unobtainable platinum if they close while you're still after it. There was a minor scare a couple months ago while I was going for it. The servers were down for about a week and it was unclear whether they would bother trying to fix them. Thankfully for me they did...but if it were to happen again...who knows? The gameplay is a blast so if you're not worried about the platinum and just are looking for a fun platformer, this is a good choice. It was free a few years back on PS+ so you may already have it. If not, it's probably worth the $10-15 range. 168. Horizon Forbidden West Spoiler Horizon Zero Dawn is probably in my top 10 favorite games of all time. I don't have nearly the discerning eye, memory, or scientific method that list guru's like @DrBloodmoney have, which means I probably have about 15-20 games in my top 10....but HZD blew me away when I first played it. Aloy is an amazing personality, the world was beautiful, combat was slick and the story just pulled me in. Based on my experience with that one, I was super excited when this game was announced and pre-ordered it right when I heard it was coming out. In all honesty, this game had extremely high expectations it had to live up to and it was somewhat destined to fail because of that. While Forbidden West isn't a bad game, it just fails to reach the lofty heights its predecessor had set for it. Some things the game does well. The graphics and world is stunning. The desolation of the desert, the vibrance of the under water areas, the beautiful vistas from the mountaintops. It really is breathtaking. My son was watching me play a bit one day, (he loves Aloy too and really likes the machines as well) and as I ran around a bend in the mountainside, he said 'wow, that really is a beautiful place, huh Daddy.' When your 8 year old says 'wow' about the scenery, and comments about the virtual world you're exploring, I think it's safe to say they did a good job. The combat is still pretty smooth and responsive, however I found the reliability of the accuracy to be a little frustrating at times. I mean, I guess it's more realistic to miss your target some times, but when you're in the thick of battle with a Thunderjaw, you don't want to have your arrows skimming off the armor when you had the components in your sights. They added a few new weapons and status effects as well as created combo's with the melee attacks, but my bread and butter was still ranged with my trusty bow and arrow. While the scenery was stunning, the zones felt a bit smaller in this game. It didn't feel like you had to delve as far into the Cauldrons and everything just seemed a bit short. It wasn't a huge deal, but I figured it's worth mentioning. Unfortunately for me, that was about the extent of the things I thought they did really well and I thought they missed a lot of opportunities. The flying mount was really cool and added a whole other dimension to the game...unfortunately you don't get the mount until you're about an hour or two away from beating the game, so you don't get to use it much. I mean, I get it....having the flying mount too early would trivialize the traveling around the beautiful worlds and exploring, but this felt like a missed opportunity to me. I'm sure it would make post-game cleanup a breeze, but I tried to do everything as I went so really don't have much of a need to play anything post-game. This might be nitpicky, but I also had some issues with the voice acting. I felt like Aloy got better as the game progressed, but in the beginning of the game, she did this thing where everything was like a whisper-talk. Where everything she said felt like it was the most important thing anybody had ever said before. I mean, it kind of was, but at the same time I just found it a little annoying. By the end I felt like she was talking more normal, but it was a rough start. I also didn't like most of the voice actors for the Tenakth. Here is this war-like tribe of people, who only survive by their sword and their grit against the harsh realities of their homes and circumstances and they almost all speak perfectly, with crisp, clear, nice sounding voices. It just didn't match up with the image you're seeing on screen. I would have liked the speech for these characters to be more harsh and guttural to match their lives and the challenges they all went through. I wanted voice actors that smoke a pack or two a day. The voice actors for Regalla and Kotallo did an amazing job, but most everyone else just seemed miscast and out of place. Sylens was great again and I didn't have an issue with most of the other peripheral main characters, but the quest givers and NPCs just didn't fit. Speaking of rough start, it took a while for me to get into this one. I probably should have watched a 'let's play' or something beforehand to be refreshed with the story, because I had forgotten a lot of the peripheral characters and had to be re-introduced to them. I completely forgot about Erend and Varl and even the Carja. My lasting memories from the first game were of Sylens, Hades, Zero Dawn and the big reveal. This game really suffered from that lack of a big splash like the first one had. In the first game, you spend the vast majority of the game trying to figure out where the machines came from and what they're for? Why is Aloy able to get into the areas she is able to? What is Zero Dawn and who Elisabet Sobeck? The lore in that game would fill in the pieces of that mystery as it slowly evolved and unfolded for you as you progressed in the game. The story here just felt like one giant fetch quest and the story doesn't hook you the same way. The downside to HZD, is the story will never be as good as the first time you go through it. Once you know the mystery, it's cool, but the journey loses that mystique. It's the same in movies too. The Sixth Sense will neeeever be as good as the first time you see it. When you're mind is blown at the end, you can never get that back. Sure, subsequent viewings will give you the opportunity to pick up on the clues you may have missed leading up to the big reveal...but that impact moment is gone and cannot be recaptured. Forbidden West suffers from that same phenomena that a second viewing of The Sixth Sense has...you've seen the story already and kind of know what happens. You know why the machines are there and what their purpose is. You know who Aloy is and why she's so important. You know (for the most part) what the threat is. That 'wow' moment is lacking in this game and it is a glaring problem with the story. My final big gripe about this game has to do with the side quests and whatnot. I won't spoil the story or anything, but I'll just say that it is clear that time short and they need to move quickly to complete their mission...yet most of the side quests in this game involve 'please go find my friend who was attacked by machines' or 'please go find our missing salvage' or 'please find me this part so I can build some armor'. Why, in the name of the Ancestors, would you stop to find find salvage when the fate of the world could be at stake if you take too long to complete your mission. I get that the game needs to have quests and I get that one of the things that makes Aloy so likeable as a character is her willingness to help anyone in need....but it just felt so stupid in this scenario. Some of the missions felt like Seal Team 6 decided to put their crucial mission on hold to go get a cat out of a tree for a stranger they passed in a warzone. It would have made waaaay more sense if they at least made the person you had to rescue have vital information, or a vital skill you needed in order to complete the task. Then you could justify the distraction from the main quest to help out. The quests just seemed like your basic open world quests and didn't really fit in with what was going on with the rest of the story. I wanted to love this game, I really, really did, but it just missed the mark by a wide margin for me. It took too long to get going and by the time it gets going you have to pause to do some side quests that don't really make sense considering the gravity of the situation only to have an unsatisfying 'ending'. Not unsatisfying in TLOU2 kind of way where there is an ending, just a lot of people didn't like it, but unsatisfying in that it was pretty predictable how it was all going to go down. If you love Aloy and you want to see how the story progresses, then you should play this game just for those reasons alone. Under no circumstance would I recommend paying full price for this. A lot of my negatives above might be very specific to me, however I can't say you should spend anything over $20 for it. I'm going to pre-buy Horizon 3 probably when that comes out, but I won't have the same excitement that I did for this one (which probably means I'll like it more). It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination and there is a lot to like about the game, but it just is vastly inferior to the first game and I wouldn't get your hopes up if you haven't played it yet. Wait for a sale, continue the story, and you'll probably be ok with this one. 168. Figment Spoiler This is another game that I'd never heard of, was not on my radar and would have never played if it wasn't for a Discord chat. I was busy bouncing between Jurassic World Evolution 2, DOOM Eternal, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Genshin Impact to really think about starting something new. However, some people I'm chat with in Discord have a 'new game Saturday' thing going on and this game was the new game of the weekend. One person played it, and was enjoying it enough that another person decided to give it a try. It's currently on sale for just over $2 so it was worth a look. Everything on my current docket is a bit of a slog so I figured I'd join in on the new game weekend and give it a look. Low and behold I played it and enjoyed it This game tackles mental health issues and is not very subtle while doing so. The whole thing takes place within the mind of an adult who has experienced a recent trauma. The game made me think of 'Where the Wild Things Are' mixed with Dr Suess and a dash of MC Escher. You play the part of Dusty, the jaded embodiment of courage, who looks to be wearing a costume plucked from 'Where the Wild Things Are' and dwells within the mind of the subject. He's pretty much checked out and just wants to sit in his rocking chair, sipping his iced tea while flipping through the pages of his scrapbook, remembering the glory days. All's well until some peppy bird named Piper comes to ask for your help to fix the major trauma that we've recently experience and our host needs the help of his mental courage to escape. Dusty can't be bothered since he's too busy looking for ice for his drink, and really doesn't care at this point what happens. He's retired. Fortunately for Piper, while Dusty is off fetching ice, a Nightmare comes and steals his scrapbook. Since the scrapbook is all dusty cares about at this point, he's determined to chase down this shitbag and get his book back. He dusts off his wooden sword and hops in the saddle again. So that is pretty much the story premise...navigate a trauma filled mind to retrieve your stolen scrapbook. The game is mostly puzzles (none terribly hard, but fun enough to figure out) and there is some light combat involved with a couple of missable trophies surrounding the combat. Much like Link in Zelda: A Link to the Past, you have a normal attack and a powered up spinning attack. You have to kill two enemies at the same time with the power attack for one trophy and hit three enemies with one power attack for another. Beyond that, nothing is missable and you can just enjoy the story and the puzzles. The setting reminded me a bit of Tearaway on the Vita and Ghost Giant on VR. There are only a few zones with one taking place on the creative/imaginative side of the brain and the other on the concrete/logic side of the brain. On the creative side, it was more whimsical and some of the background seemed like it was made from construction paper. This was less evident on the logical side of the brain. In any case, the settings were quite interesting and at times, felt like you were in an MC Escher drawing (only in color and less trippy). The puzzles general consist of finding the correct colored 'battery' to unlock or move parts of the setting to progress through the mind. Not all of the puzzles involve a battery, but many do. As you navigate through the mind, you need to keep your eyes open for the only collectible within the game, which are memory spheres in the mold of Inside Out from Pixar. My favorite part of the game was probably the music. Music played a large role in this game and it comes from many directions. Some puzzles involve making specific music, while other times the music may be coming from plants you pass by. The real star of the music comes from the Nightmares themselves. There are three nightmares in all that need to be defeated in order to finish the game and each taunts you by singing songs. One is a Plague Doctor looking dude that throws vials of farts and poop at you (seriously), one is a French Spider that's gumming up the clockworks and the last is the main antagonist that stole your stuff. All of their songs were entertaining and were a highlight for me in the game. While I enjoyed the game quite a bit, it's not a masterpiece and had several issues (mostly surrounding the trophies). I'd say that about half of my trophies popped when they were supposed to. All of the other half popped early, except for one that needed some coaxing to pop at all. All of the boss trophies popped when they should have and so did the combat trophies. The one trophy for getting the memory from Kettle Brothers wouldn't pop at first. That trophy involves getting three brothers to 'put the kettle on!'. The last brother needed a battery for power in order to light his kettle. The first time I hooked up the battery, he just put the kettle on and told me to go get his brothers to as well. I ran all over the place to check the other brothers (which I was certain I'd already done) only to confirm they already had their kettle on. I went back to the first brother and he kept saying the same thing. I thought I'd glitched out the trophy, however a few times of unplugging the battery and plugging in back in and talking to him after each attempt, he finally acknowledged that all three of them had the kettle on and gave me my memory. The rest of the trophies popped early. The one of the trophies for knocking on all the doors popped before I had event visited every zone in the area. All of the trophies for defeating all of the monsters in a zone popped long before I killed them all. The trophy for finding all of the memories also unlocked before I had found the last memory. The good news was that I didn't encounter any other bugs in the game, but it's pretty nerve wracking as a trophy hunter when things aren't popping when you expect them to. Either you fear you've glitched yourself out of something or you fear that the trophies look to be earned in an impossible order. While it doesn't ruin the experience, I think it's important to point out that the trophy pops were fubar. This game is criminally under owned. Currently only 428 people have played the game. You'll be hard pressed to find a better game for $2. It takes about 5-8 hours to beat and is definitely worth picking up! 169. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry Spoiler I don't have a ton to say about this one that I didn't already say here. Ironically, I started this game for a similar reason that I played it last time. Actually there were three factors. The first being that between I've just been playing a lot of longer games recently and could use something light and funny. The second being my realization that the next platinum was 169 and having a sexual game appeals to my infantile sense of humor. Finally, this game and its sequel Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice were/are(?) on sale for a very cheap price ($10.49 for the saga and normally $65). I had trouble originally a few years ago finding this title available in the NA store and bought the EU version to play. With it being on sale now, I was able to complete the stack and get the sequel. The game is extremely loaded with innuendo and most of it is pretty funny. It makes fun of the direction society is taking with a sexual twist. Apple is called Prune in this game and they sell the PiPhone. Instead of an Apple as a logo, it's a Prune...which looks something like this: If you don't find that to be at least a little funny....stay far far far far far away from this game. That is a small taste of the innuendo and humor. As far as the gameplay, there's nothing revolutionary. It's a point-and-click game that is just bananas with its puzzles. For example, at one point in the game, to go on a date with a 'Timber' match, you need to find the drummer for her band, who has gone AWOL and she needs him to come back so she can play this major gig. You find him playing a slot machine down at the pier and he just will not stop playing it. To get him to stop playing, you have to sabotage the machine. How do you suppose you sabotage the machine? Well you have to catch a rat and drop it into the back of the machine to chew on the wires. How do you catch the rat? With a rat trap of course. How do you construct this rat trap? Well obviously with a Magnum Condum, a toilet paper roll and a cheese dildo. Not all of the puzzles are that ridiculous, but most are lol The conversations are pretty funny and you have to admire Larry's confidence despite all of his failings. The trophy list isn't hard but most of them are missable. The game isn't terribly long so a second run for cleanup isn't the worst thing in the world. There are several save spots so you could save the game at various stages through to avoid a complete replay, but you could also just use a guide and enjoy the story. As I mentioned, if you do not like crude humor, there is absolutely no reason to buy this game, but if you're looking for a light game that doesn't take itself seriously and you just want a couple of chuckles, you could do worse. 170. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice Spoiler As I mentioned in the previous review, I had bought the sequel to Wet Dreams Don't Dry as part of the combo pack sale. Because I'm me, I wanted to make sure I got this platinum consecutively with the first one. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this game quite as much as the first one. The gameplay is near identical as this is just a continuation of the story, however the trophy list had one annoying trophy and it stopped doing the thing that makes Leisure Suit Larry games funny...which is Larry failing at every attempt at scoring. The previous entry leaves off with Larry's dream girl, Faith, going missing and Larry is determined to find her. She went missing after a storm hit the Caribbean while she was drifting around on a stalled boat. She was suffering from amnesia due to a knock in the head and her last act before the storm hit was to send the data from her PiPhone to the last name she could remember, which was good old Larry Laffer himself. This game picks up with Larry's PiPhone receiving the data transfer and obtaining the last known whereabouts of Faith. After crafting his own raft, he sets out after the signal. Larry gets caught up in his own storm and washes ashore an island where he finds a clue that leads him to believe that Faith washed up on the same island. The bulk of the game revolves around Larry's investigation on this island, and much to my disappointment, Larry ends up having sex like five or six times during his quest. Some people might be thinking, 'Good for Larry! He deserves some action after all of his failures.' But the problem is, most of the best humor of the prior games surrounds how his search for love ends up blowing up in his face. It was a little weird to not only see him succeed, but succeed so easily and so many times. I also didn't like the main antagonist very much in this game. He supposed to be a caricature of the Gangnam Style dude, but it just really wasn't funny and didn't really make any sense in terms of the story. I get it, it's a Larry game so it doesn't have to make sense, but this really made no sense at all. Basically, he's the evil villain trying to get the algorithm that Faith created to make the PiPhone have AI. He plans to use this algorithm to create sex bots for reasons. But, he also needs to find Faith because he needs her to get the algorithm and he hires a deadly assassin to chase after Larry. The story was extremely weak here and when that is supposed to be the forte of your game, that's a problem. The game is a bit longer this time and the puzzles are a bit more challenging, but there's nothing unique about this game or new. It's just another point and click game with crude humor that too often missed the mark for me. The biggest bummer for me was the fact there is a trophy for completing the game in the Leisure Suit and a trophy for completing the game in the Wedding Suit. You pick your outfit about ten minutes into the game so that second trophy requires basically another complete playthrough. If the game was better, I wouldn't have minded and thankfully the game can be completed in about 3-4 hours if you skip the text, but I would have preferred just the one playthrough with this game. Despite my lukewarm feelings toward this game, I'd probably still play another if one comes out. While it's not as edgy as it used to be, it still has that nostalgia twang for me and the games are short enough to playthrough without it being that terrible. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for this and probably isn't worth playing at all unless you've played the previous one. If you don't like the genre or the crude humor, you can pass on this series without feeling like you've missed out on something, however if you do like the genre and you can get the series for the $11 I did, then I'd say go for it since that's not a bad price for two games. Platinums 171-180 Spoiler 171. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Spoiler This was one of the 'free' games last month with PS+ and was never a game I planned on playing. I always get all the monthly games, because you never know, but I never really got into the Smash Bros series and this seemed like it was going to be a cheesy knock off. If I don't like the signature game from this style, why would I like this one? Well despite my intentions to not play this game, my son ended up seeing the graphic for it and asked what the Sponge Bob game with the Ninja Turtles was. I told him it was a fighting game with Nickelodeon characters and he said he wanted to try it. Well so much for skipping this one lol. The game is extremely clunky to get used to first. Apparently the people who programmed the controls for this game have never played video games before. Honestly, who makes the jump button? It took me a bit to figure out how to jump initially. I was expecting jump to be simply up on the D-Pad like every other fighting game I've played, but that wasn't doing anything. I then tried the next most obvious choices in and , but again nothing. When I finally got to and jumped...I could only shake my head. What an unintuitive system of controls. I ended up switching the controls around to something that made more sense and then I got to playing with my son. While I wasn't impressed at first, my son was cracking up laughing with how much fun he had being The Shredder beating the snot out of Sponge Bob. At first I was letting him win a bit since he was having so much fun seeing my character go flying off the screen, but then he got cocky so I had to play for real for a bit. We played for about 30 minutes and then it was bed time, but in that time a few trophies popped, so now I was committed to finishing. The trophy list didn't look too bad and in the end, it wasn't at all. I was able to bang out the online trophies relatively easily. I did a couple of quick plays and ended up finding a dude that was just running off the edge of the board and dying. I got to afk for 20 minutes while he did that and got the 50 quick play matches done like that. The ranked match play took a bit longer, but was again nothing hard. Even the hardest trophies ended up being relatively easy. From screwing around with my son, I discovered that Catdog was my favorite character to play. His power punch where his roided arm packs a wallop was pretty good for the 'challenging' trophies. I used him to beat Arcade Mode on hard and I was able to do it without losing once. I was expecting it to be a bit harder, but even on Very Hard, the AI wasn't much. You could pretty much stand still and keep punching them. The trophy for beating 1 vs 3 level 9 CPU players ended up not being bad either. I chose the zone where the platforms move from left to right constantly and if you stand on them they start to sink. If you let it sink low enough, The CPU will jump down to get you and they'll just fall down. It only took a few tries and I was successful. With the 'hard' trophies out of the way, it was now just a matter of finishing the 'Sports' games and Arcade mode with each character, which on Very Easy is a breeze. The sports mode was a joke. If you put the CPU to level 0, they don't move. You can just shoot at the goal and score without any interference. Arcade mode on Very Easy wasn't much harder than that. Overall, the trophy list was exceptionally easy. The game itself is mediocre, but is a lot of fun with my son. I won't be deleting this one for a while because he really looks forward to playing it together. While I let him win a bit at the beginning, he's now gotten the hang of it enough that he can win on his own some times. This is one of those games that was absolutely meant to play with other people. If you have a young kid that likes Nickelodeon, this is probably a great game to play. If you do not, this game is very meh. I was a little disappointed in the character selection. There was nobody from shows I used to watch when I was a kid really. There was Ren & Stimpy and Powdered Toast Man...Garfield is there, but I never thought of him as a Nickelodeon character and the same goes for the Ninja Turtles. Not sure why Raph and Donnie weren't included but I would have also like to see Doug or the Rugrats or something. For a 'free' game, I got my money's worth and I am having a lot of fun with my son. Having said that though, this game is easily one you can bypass without missing anything. If you like Smash Bros style games, it's an acceptable substitute. If you want a short and relatively easy plat, this also isn't a bad choice as nothing took me more than a few tries. I'm happy I played it though since it's another game I can add to the list of things to play with my son. 172 DOOM Eternal Spoiler I played DOOM and DOOM II a ton as a kid. My Dad, who used to build computers for a living, used to have three PC's set up in his basement that were connected by an IPX Cable. This allowed my brother, my best friend and me to play some games MP, which in the early to mid 90's was a pretty rare thing. We would spend hours in his basement playing DOOM, DOOM II, Warcraft 2, and Diablo among other things. We absolutely loved our time down there. My friend and I used to frag my younger brother occasionally as 'an accident' just because we were dicks...but it was always funny (for us at least). But I developed a love for DOOM back then and it was IDKFA or bust. Having said that, I stopped playing FPS games as I got more into RPG's and I haven't played a DOOM game since those days. I had bought DOOM and DOOM II for the Playstation when they came out, but I don't have anyone to co op with so they've been collecting dust in my backlog. I'll probably try to do them myself at some point, but when it was suggested in my Discord chat that perhaps we try playing DOOM Eternal together, I said 'why not?'. I recently discovered that I don't mind FPS games and actually enjoy them in the right setting so figured it was worth giving one of my old favorites another look. I tried to buy the disc version of the game on Amazon since I figured I could get it cheaper. The copy that was shipped to me though was the EU version, which would not allow me to upgrade to the PS5 version or install the DLC's. This was a little frustrating, but Amazon has a good return policy so I sent the game back and just went for the digital version so that everyone wasn't waiting on me. Well, that didn't end up working out since this game is an absolute behemoth at over 80 gigs required to play. I got the 15 gig downloaded and hoped we could start, but you needed the full download to do MP. Three of us took on the challenge, which was good since you need three people to effectively boost the MP together. The good news was we had a good group to get it done, the bad news is the MP trophies are kind of a slog and boring to get. The premise sounds cool, one person as the Slayer vs two people as higher Demons, but it wasn't quite as fun in practice. It may have been more fun if the two of us that were just starting had any idea what we were doing, but since we didn't know the controls and stuff yet, it was pretty boring. Getting the kills with each demon and getting each weapon for the Slayer wasn't bad, but getting 200 kills as the Slayer was a bit of a grind at about an hour and a half each, for us all to get it. The good news is that while one person is working on that trophy, the other two can work on the stupid 'Heal yourself or your teammate for 50,000 health' and the 'Do 5,000 damage as a Demon Player' trophies. The Demon trophies come much quicker than the 200 kills one. When you die, there's like a 20 or 25 second timer that you have to wait in order to respawn, so you can get just over two kills per minute. For one of us, these were the last trophies needed and for the other two, these were the first trophies we got. I jumped right into the campaign so I didn't forget the controls while the third amigo needed a break from the game after the MP portion. The campaign was actually a lot of fun. I went the route of playing a normal run first and saving the 'Extra Lives' mode for my second playthrough. The 'Extra Lives' mode requires you to beat the game with 10 extra lives in your inventory. You can collect extra lives as secrets throughout the levels. I played that mode second and beat the game with 45 extra lives I think, so there are lots to spare. After playing through the game, I think it's possible to maybe get the platinum on one playthrough, but it'd be quite hard. The potential block for this lays with the 'Master of Fasting' trophy and possibly 'Gunpletionist' trophy. So long as you do not complete a level until you unlock all of the secrets (there's a fast travel that appears when you get to the very end of a level), the rest of the trophies are doable. The 'Master of Fasting' trophy requires you to complete a mission (level) using the Famine Mode cheat. The Famine Mode Cheat makes it so that enemies do not drop health when they are killed, meaning you can only regain your health through the already existing items in the level. In the regular mode, you can just replay the first mission and use the Famine Mode to get the trophy, however in 'Extra Lives' mode, you cannot replay prior missions. You do not get this cheat until you're very far into the game. Due to that, there's only a handful of missions you could attempt with that code on and it would be far harder. Since you need to finish 'Extra Lives' mode with 10 extra guys, you have to be somewhat careful. The good news is that if you do die, you can exit out using the XMB menu to close the game. When you reload the game, you will revert back to your last checkpoint without losing that life. That safety net makes the possibility of doing the later missions with the cheat code seem like a possibility. The other potential block is the 'Gunpletionist' trophy. There are a limited number of enemies in each mission as they do not respawn once killed (trash mobs do during an encounter, but once the encounter is completed they stop spawning). In order to achieve 'Gunpletionist', you have to fully upgrade all of the weapon mods in the game. Each weapon has two except for the Super Shotgun, which has one, and the BFG/Unmakyr, which have none. You unlock the mods by getting weapon points which you get by completing normal encounters, hidden encounters, slayer gates and boss encounters. Each Mod has two items to unlock, one costing 3 points and the other 6, so it takes a while to get enough points to unlock all of the mods. Once you unlock both mods, to get the final mod you have to do certain actions with that weapon (for example you have to get 75 headshots with the Heavy Cannon Precision Bolt Mod) to get the final upgrade. This is easy enough in a regular game since you can replay missions and it could be easy in 'Extra Lives' mode since there is a practice coliseum at your hub, but I'm not sure if those kills count since you can't die and ammo refills after you leave. The good news is that towards the end of the game there is a collectible that lets you unlock the final mod without doing the required action, but there's only like six or so, so you'll have to do at least half of them. But if that practice area works, then this is easily doable as well. I've written a lot so far without actually talking about the game....so let's change that. While I've played a few FPS games in my history, none were quite like this one. Those (except in rare instances) reward using cover and moving more methodically to stay out of harms way. That goes right out the window with DOOM. The pace gets to be absolutely frenetic in this game. Demons are on all sides of you and if you do not keep moving and strafing, you can die really quickly. I played on the easiest setting and still got overwhelmed with enemies at times (especially when those damned Archvile's were around). I can't imagine how hard this game is on the higher difficulties. The game does a good job of pacing the challenge. You get introduced to more demon types as you go and you have a pretty good feel for the game before they get too tough. The hardest demon to beat is probably the Marauder, which keeps it's shield up until its eyes flash green and it lunges at you. The only time it's vulnerable is during that lunge. If you shoot the shield too much, it'll summon a flaming dog that'll chase you down. The first few times you fight these, they are challenging, but you usually only face one at a time and once you get the hang of the mechanic, they go down easy. They're a pain in the ass in the DLC's where they are mixed in with other Super Heavy demon types, but for the main game they are mostly manageable. My least favorite demons are the Archvilles. These assholes summon other demons and will continue to do so until you kill it. It doesn't just summon one or two demons at a time, but several. While it's summoning, it is surrounded by a fire shield. It takes a few shots to take down the fire shield and then you have to hit him again in order to interrupt the summon. What makes these a bitch is that in some of the battle areas, they aren't easy to spot so they'll summon several demons while you're searching. They also have a nasty habit of teleporting away once you do find them and start doing some damage. My favorite weapon for a lot of these Super Heavy demons was a microwave modded Plasma Gun. With enough ammo, these will hold the demon in place while it does increasing damage, and once the demon runs out of health, it explodes doing damage to anything near it. The downside to the microwave Plasma Gun can take a little while to kill the demon and it uses up a lot of ammo, but if you keep moving, I found it wasn't too hard to avoid damage while locking the harder guys in place. You just need to make sure there are some trash mobs to chainsaw after to replenish the ammo. The biggest challenge in this game, at least until you get used to it, is the low levels of ammo you have. You run out of ammo pretty quickly and you replenish your ammo by using the chainsaw on trash mobs or finding some laying around zones, but those are finite. The chainsaw kill will drop health and ammo. Using the flamethrower drops armor. Once you get in a good rhythm of the different abilities, it becomes fairly easy to stay upright, shielded and loaded, but there is a nuance to it that takes time. The maps were surprisingly big in this game. If you want to fully beat a level, set aside a good hour or so. In addition to the map size, there was a lot more platforming in this game than I was expecting. Many of the secret areas and puzzles in this game require quite a bit of platforming to unlock. You'll have to get good at the double jump and dash ability. The dash ability requires a recharge time and didn't seem to start until you were no longer airborne. I played the PS5 upgraded version and I found the graphics to be pretty good. Nothing amazing, but the Glory kills are pretty graphic and sharp. Overall the game was smooth, looked good and the controls were pretty tight. I did not suffer any crashes and did not run into any bugs, which is unusual for a Bethesda game. I very much enjoyed going through the twelve or so levels and tearing apart hell on my quest to save humanity. While the main campaign was a lot of fun, the DLC was much more challenging. When you get to a combat area in the game, you usually get sealed into that area until you clear out all the monsters. Sometimes there are multiple waves. In the DLC, it felt like every area was four or five waves. They also introduce new demons with new mechanics and many of the waves will have multiple types of Super Heavy demons. I found the first DLC to be harder than the second one, but both were a good challenge. I only did one playthrough for each of the DLC's and went straight to 'Extra Lives' mode. You need to finish the game with five extra lives and I believe you can get 13 or 14 in each DLC so it's a little bit tighter a window there, but very doable. I did the DLC's right after my regular campaign run and it made me a much better player so that doing 'Extra Lives' mode in the main game was a breeze. As I mentioned, I beat the game with 45 extra lives so if you end up doing two playthroughs for the main game, I recommend doing the DLC in between as you'll definitely be better when you finish them. The final DLC horde mode is basically just a gauntlet that you have to run through. Each level has five rounds. Three of the rounds are a combat zone with multiple waves that get progressively harder followed by a 'Blitz' round that you need to platform/use a game mechanic to collect coins. If you get all the coins you get a bonus zone and if you don't you move to the next round of combat waves. The Blitz and bonus rounds gives you extra points and a chance at extra lives. For the first two levels, I didn't really have any problems. The third level was a pain in the ass. I actually failed toward the end of round 5 my first try. I thought I was close to beating the game so got careless with my lives, however that last round was the friggin Energizer Bunny and before I knew it I ran out of lives. I didn't think it was a big deal at first since I thought I'd just have to redo round 5 but nope. If you run out of lives you have to start all over again at the beginning. The second time through I beat it no problem since I knew what to expect. I finished with 10 lives or so to spare, but that last round in level three doesn't mess around. You've got Spirit infused Marauder's chasing after you while an Archville summons other demons while they're buffed by a totem and all the other fun stuff come chasing after you. This game is definitely not for everyone. The pace, FPS nature and gore might scare some people off, but the game was well done. There's a good variety of demons and a good variety of weapons along with decent enough puzzles and a decent enough story to go with it. The only downside I felt were the bosses weren't very imaginative. They looked cool, but they often shared the same mechanic as the existing demons and they really fell in love with that flashing green thing to signify an attack. A lot of the bosses had a mechanic like that where they are shielded, telegraph their move and then come at you. A little more imagination there would have been appreciated for sure. I spend about 50 hours I think with this game and largely enjoyed it. I can't say any game is worth $50 bucks any more considering how many games are available, but I feel like if you spent $20 on this, you wouldn't feel cheated. Outside of the MP portion of the game, it was very fun and I'd feel pretty good giving it a recommendation. 173. Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! Spoiler The vast majority of this review is going to be in the spoiler tag because this is a Visual Novel that would be completely ruined if I said too much. I had never heard of Doki Doki before and a couple people in my Discord chat were talking about it. When I said I'd never heard of it, they said play it now and it's very important that I don't look anything up ahead of time. Having now played the game I 100% agree with that. If you do not know anything about the game, DO NOT LOOK ANYTHING UP! I got it for $10 I think and it was worth every cent. I very much enjoyed this game, but having said that...pay attention to the warnings the game gives you before starting, they aren't joking. The only thing I'll say here outside of the spoiler is that the trophy list for this game kind of sucks, but the game is pretty short, especially after you've played through it once and can skip text. If you're into VN's and are in a good mental headspace, play this game, you will not be disappointed. SPOILERS CONTAINED Spoiler When this game was recommended in my Discord chat group, I had no idea at all what it was. I searched Doki Doki here on PSNP and saw this come up: I had assumed they were talking about the top game, because that bottom game appeared like it was potentially one of those 'Breakthrough' type games or one of those highly suggestive VN's. I showed this image and said, 'top one right?' and they were like 'no no, it's the bottom one'. I looked it up and it wasn't too expensive and I figured it'd be funny to play it so I said sure! When I said I was getting it, they said it was important to not look anything up. I was expecting soft core kind of stuff and was like, 'sure, no problem'. I started to play the game and you are this high school guy who's waiting for his longest friend and neighbor to walk to school together. Her name is Sayori and she seems to oversleep every day, making us wait for her. We give her a hard time and she asks about what club we're going to join at school. We're too cool for clubs, but it seems like we have to join something but we haven't decided. Sayori is the Vice President of the Literature Club and begs us to come and join it. She promises cupcakes if we go. Since cupcakes are involved we go. Once school is over, we head to meet the club and three attractive girls are the only other members. It's our main male character and four beautiful girls....so far I'm figuring my suspicions about this game are correct. There's Sayori, the upbeat, cute girl who's been our friend forever; Monika, the creator of the club who seems to be good at everything; Yuri, who is the shy type who loves Fantasy novels and can't seem to engage in a conversation without it becoming awkward; and Natsuki, the first year fire cracker who pulls no punches when she's talking and is a huge Manga fan. The game is shaping up to be about an adolescent boy having his cup overflow with pretty girls who seem to want to impress him. Obviously, we agree to join the club and the focus in the club right now is poetry. To get to know each other better, the first assignment is to go home and write a poem to share. This part of the game is the only time you really get to impact what happens with the story. The poem mini-game shows a list of ten different words. You have to select a word and each word ties back to one of the three potential love interests (Monika doesn't seem to be interested). When you choose a word, a mini graphic of the girl who likes that word jumps up and down. There's a trophy for doing a perfect poem for each girl. You can actually use the trophy guide here without it spoiling anything (actually, the guide does a good job of not spoiling anything I found). Pick your Waifu and make her a poem for the trophy or just pick words you like and see what happens. You will need to do a perfect poem three times for each girl in one playthrough at one point for a collectible, but it shouldn't be your first run so don't worry about it. Each day after, you hang out with whatever girl you'll impress the most with the latest poem written during the club meeting. I had picked Yuri the first time through. She liked fantasy novels and was super shy and I can relate, so I chose her. You get a little closer with her, and you get to know some of her quirks. Meanwhile, Sayori is super happy that you're getting along so well with Yuri and Natsuki gets pissed (If you pick words that Natsuki likes better, Yuri shies away). There's some weird bickering back and forth among Natsuki and Yuri about who he likes better and they get in a fight. At this point, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell is the point of this game. The story is very light an airy, the music is peppy and catchy. I'm confused as to what is going on. There is a school festival that is coming up and the club decides they want to make an exciting booth to try and attract more members. You end up making three separate poems. During my Yuri run, on day three, Sayori seems to be feeling down. I'm thinking she's realizing she's jealous of Yuri and she's upset that she facilitated our character to pursue Yuri instead of herself. Monika seems to hint there could be something more, but for the most part, the point of the game is to get more members at the festival. On the third day, it's Friday and you have to select between Yuri and Natsuki, who you are going to help get prepared for the festival Monday. Yuri is making decorations and Natsuki is making cupcakes. I chose Yuri and she's coming over to my place on Sunday to prepare. I'm thinking, this is where our hero scores with the shy girl and the game is a success. Yay! Before Yuri comes over, we head over to Sayori's house to see if she's feeling better after she was looking down on Friday. When you get to her room, you learn a startling fact...Sayori admits that she actually suffers from depression and that is why she is late everyday. Not because she's lazy and oversleeping, but because she's trying to think of a reason to get out of bed each day. This was a more serious turn for, what has been so far, a very lighthearted kind of game. She says not to worry about her and we tell her that we will help her in anyway we can. We head back over to help Yuri. We have a great day with Yuri and flirt and get all of our work done. As she's leaving and I walk her outside, we're about to have an intimate moment when Sayori arrives. Embarrassed by our closeness, Yuri takes off. Sayori then confesses a bit to having slightly bigger feelings than she's let on, but she just wishes things could go back to the way they were. At this point you get to choose to tell Sayori you love her or that she'll always be your closest friend. I choose love her because she obviously cares about our character and he cares about her too. We hug and Sayori seems to get even more sad. She is getting everything she wants, yet still feels empty inside. We tell her we'll help her through whatever she needs and we part ways. At school the next morning, we head there without waiting for Sayori. We have a ton of stuff we're carrying and Sayori is late again. We don't have the time to wait so we head to school and over to the classroom to help set up. Monika asks where Sayori is and why she didn't come with me. We suddenly remember about Sayori's depression and feel like we've let her down by not waiting. We run back to her house to get her up and tell her we're ready to support her. We get to her room and open the door and BOOOOOOOOM she's fucking hanging from the ceiling by her neck. What in the fuck just happened? WHAT?! While I'm mentally grasping what is happening, the game says a few lines and then END. Wait....what!?!? The game ends like that....what the hell is this game? Why did my Discord friends recommend this to me? Wait, the game is restarting and the title screen has Sayori pixeled out with Monika in her place....what is going on? The game starts and there is no Sayori. We join the club and it's just us four now, minus Sayori. The text gets glitchy words in it from time to time and screens that should have Sayori are all glitchy. Ok, this game is trolling me now. I get the idea that all the girls have some mental health issue they are dealing with. I suspect that Yuri is a cutter and that Natsuki is being sexually abused or something. Monika seems to be the only one not really suffering from mental health issues. The game repeats itself, but everything is just slightly off and glitchy. There's weird screens every once in a while that shows something gory like an eyeball popping. I start to understand that this is a horror game and I've been duped by the cheery disposition of the game and am left with my jaw on the floor. This game isn't soft core fluff....it's a horror story dealing with real trauma and real issues. Once Yuri stabs herself in the gut and then heart and you're forced to sit there with her all weekend, I knew this game was unique and I was liking what it was making me feel. This game was more than just a horror game, it was also bringing awareness to some very real problems that people go through on a daily basis. I was wrong about Natsuki, she was not abused (at least not the way I thought it was going to be), but she had a bit of a Napoleonic complex where she was always looked at as 'cute' due to her size. Nobody took her seriously and she had to be aggressive to get what she wanted. The game is cryptic at first with their issues, but then all of a sudden it's right in your face. But the game does a good job of juxtaposing their issues with suggestions on how to help those that are struggling. I felt like the game subtly plants the seeds of crisis, without it being completely blatant and still keeping the façade of this being a cutesy game about poetry and adolescent love. By the time you hit Act 3 with just Monika, you realize that she's been breaking the 4th wall the whole time and trying to get you, the player, alone. She's been modifying the code so that you'd finally pick her. During your one on one, she ends up saying one of the more interesting things in the game. There's a conversation about horror movies vs horror literature. She feels that horror movies are about cheap scares like something jumping out at you or excess gore, but in literature, you can build the horror more slowly. It's less about being in your face and more about slowly creating an unsettling feeling within the reader. All it takes is just a little something out of place and it starts to be uncomfortable. Then you just slowly turn up the heat on the items out of place and suddenly the reader is freaked out. She's describing the method this game takes and really is quite brilliant. After you get through the main story, the side stories are unlocked. There is no horror element there and they really just serve as background into each of the girls issues. While it doesn't mean anything for the main game, I liked that they added them so they could go back and address the mental health issues in a less horrific manner. I thought it might have been valuable to have seen these first, but if they had done that, then I think the events in the main game would have been less surprising to get through. There's no poems or anything in the side stories, it's really just story time and each one is only about 5-10 minutes long. They build upon one another until you get to the events just before the story starts. As I mentioned in the non spoiler area, the trophy list for this game kind of sucks. I don't mind playing through the game several times since there's the skip button to bypass everything you've already read and it is short enough...but getting 100% of the collectibles was unnecessarily convoluted. One of the collectibles is a launch screen, that you can only get during act 2, and you have a 1/64 chance to see. Unless you are lucky, you have to open and close the DDLC game from the hub over and over again. It took me over 100 times to finally get it to appear. It's mindless, but unnecessary. A lot of them come from just playing through the game, but some of them need specific things to occur. The most annoying of the trophies for me was finding Dan's special note. To get the special note, you have to do the perfect poem three times for each girl in one playthrough. The problem is that the saves get deleted in between acts so if you go to far, you can't reset to an earlier save. The first time I played through the game, I didn't need to save so I didn't realize the saves disappear. When I got to the second act after Sayori hangs herself, I couldn't go back and had to redo it. Then, the first time I got all the way through the game, I tried to double up the special ending with deleting Monika before she speaks....well you need Monika to speak to get the special ending.... What I found out was that during the credits, all of the unique pictures for each girl show up and are 'deleted'. If the picture is in color, it means you saw it during the game. If it is in black and white, it means you missed it. One of the images is of Monika during the one on one, which I didn't realize when doing the run for that trophy. I missed it and had to try a third time to get that trophy. It didn't take terribly long, but it was still annoying. I really appreciated the recommendation from my friends and really appreciated them telling me to go in completely blind. I totally judged this book by its cover and I was able to experience the full effects of what the game was trying to do. If I had been spoiled, it wouldn't have been as impactful. Hopefully, if you read all of this, you have already played the game. If you haven't played it yet and got this far, I'm afraid you won't have the same experience I did. I'm sorry for all of the fluff in the first part of this review, but I thought it was important to walk you through the story and my impressions to see just how floored I was by the Sayori hanging scene. A+ from me and so far I'm 2/2 on visual novels since I really enjoyed Steins Gate; as well. I may just have to sprinkle these in a bit more frequently.... tldr; it's a good game and you should play it. 174. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Spoiler As I mentioned in my last COD review, this was a series I never had any interest in due to me getting waxed online when I played with a friend on Xbox way back when...MW3 was one of the first two games I'd purchased and finally finished it a couple of months ago. I had such a good time with it and playing with my co-op buddy, that when he suggested MW2 together, I jumped on it. Having someone fun to play with is a huge benefit to these games, but I have a confession to make....when I checked out this trophy list I saw a great contender for my 8,000 trophy milestone. I try to make my milestone trophies be either funny or have cool artwork or both. This one leans heavily in the direction of funny. The platinum image is cool, but there was one trophy that pulls a quote from one of my favorite movies of all time. When I saw a trophy called 'Royale with Cheese', I knew it deserved a spot on my wall alongside other movie greats like The Holy Hand Grenade. The trophy image isn't perfect though....it gives a nod toward Burger King with the picture and not Big Kahuna Burger. I mean, the restaurant in the game is called Burger Town....but with a trophy name like Royale With Cheese plucked from Pulp Fiction, it would have been great to get the Big Kahuna Burger logo too. We'll just chalk it up to a licensing thing or a huge missed opportunity. With regards to Pulp Fiction being one of my favorites, I didn't like it at all the first time I saw it. Granted I was 13 or 14 years old, but I didn't realize that the timeline was mixed up and thought it was dumb that guys that died early, appeared later and so on. I didn't understand what all the hype was about and thought it sucked. However, since everyone was saying what a masterpiece it was, I figured I'd give it another chance. It was on my second watch that I saw how great it was. It's one of those movies that gets better each time you watch it. You'll pick up some small detail that you never saw before...but what I really loved about the movie was the dialogue and interactions between the characters. Everything felt so organic and natural and I just really liked the story being told. It's a movie that I watch probably 2-3 times a year and something I've probably seen over 200 times. My freshmen year in college, I brought a 13" TV/VCR combo for my dorm room. I had paid for cable, but I didn't have the remote for the TV, so I wasn't able to bring up the menu to change the TV from the Antennae setting to the Cable setting so that it could go past channel 13. Only old people will understand that problem lol Anyways, there wasn't a ton of good TV shows on the lower channels and I had brought two movies with me to college. Pulp Fiction and Spaceballs. Let me tell you that I watched the shit out of those two movies. By the end of the semester I could pretty much quote the entire movies from beginning to end...My first semester freshman year consisted of playing baseball, going to class, watching those two movies and playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night while blaring Alice in Chains: Best of the Box CD over and over again. It was a great semester. Anyways..... I didn't realize this at the time, but apparently the Modern Warfare games are one long story and MW3 picks up where MW2 left off. Had I known I would enjoy these games as much as I have, I would have played these in a different order, however I didn't. It was fun to get some background on some of the character's from MW3. As far as the game itself goes, it virtually plays identically to MW3. The only thing I noticed that was different is that there's no points in this game to level up your profile. In MW3, weapons are unlocked in special ops as you gain levels on your profile, and you get points by killing guys and stuff. It was useful in MW3 because you could tell when you got someone since points would appear on the screen, letting you know they died. That does not happen in MW2 so some times you might leave cover thinking someone is dead and get blasted since they didn't die yet. It was a small upgrade from MW2 to MW3, but it was a helpful one that you don't realize is helpful until you go backwards in generations. I did some of the special ops levels solo, but most with my co-op partner. It was very hard to do co-op only because of how bad the servers are. We had no problem connecting, but the lag was atrocious and never got better. The good thing about the lag was that it lagged for everyone at the same time. Me, my partner and the game. It would have been really bad if the bad guys got to move freely while we were skipping, but at least they lagged too. So long as we took our time, we were able to do a lot of the levels. There were a handful, however that proved to be a bit too challenging to do with the lag and we decided to tackle solo. Despite the lag, I did have a lot of fun with my partner again and this game left me with another positive experience in the series. I enjoyed it enough to get Call of Duty: World at War, which I hope to be playing for the Gaming by Numbers event. It was apparently the 5th trophy list ever on PSNP and I think it'd be fun to use as my '5' for the event. While I did have fun with this game, I'm hard pressed to recommend it to anyone at this point (if you haven't played it already). The game is doable solo, but not quite as fun, and the co op lag is just horrendous. However, odds are if you haven't played the game yet, there's a good reason that you haven't lol I'm happy though, it got me a trophy milestone and one game closer to my platinum 175 milestone with Genshin Impact, which I hope to review before the end of the week. I've put over 450 hours in that game so I have a lot to say...but I'll try to keep it a civil length 175. Genshin Impact Spoiler I'm quite delayed on this review and I've played this game for over 475 hours so there is a lot that I could say. This is going to be a weird review because I obviously really have enjoyed this game and there is a ton to like....but this review will probably have a lot of the things that I despise highlighted. I'll start by saying that I don't watch anime and that I never really heard the lingo since it's not a hobby/genre that I've ever paid attention to. Words like 'waifu' were lost on me. This is not a game that I probably would have picked up on my own if left to my own devices...however, I'm in a Discord chat with a few friends from on PSNP and they were talking about Genshin. It had seemed like most people were at least familiar with the game except for me. I was in the midst of living out one of my worst nightmares I had as a young adult...sitting around at a bar/dinner party/camp fire (pick your setting), with a group of people who all knew about some cultural phenomenon, and me on the outside looking in. It's the whole reason I read the Harry Potter series originally... It was about a month before the last book in the series was set to be released. I was working as a server/bartender at a restaurant and a bunch of the staff (all in our early to mid twenties at the time) were sitting around eating before we opened, talking about how excited they were that the book was only a month away. They were talking about getting the book at midnight and doing a sleep over reading or something. I had always thought it was a 'kids' series so never gave it the time of day. I was sitting there listening and proclaimed, 'You guys are all nerds....I can't believe you all are talking about 'reading parties' for Harry Potter....' They all looked at me like I was the crazy one. All of a sudden, I had that feeling that I was in fact the crazy one. How could all of these people love it and it be that bad? How could I confidently say what it was without giving it a chance? Nervous I'd be the only one not knowing what was going on, I stopped by Barnes and Noble on the way home and bought the first book. I surprisingly liked it. I decided to get the next book and before I knew it, I had read the entire series in time to be able to get the last book right when it came out! I got the book and had it read in just a couple days....I learned two things there....firstly, don't assume what something is or isn't without giving it a try because I might just miss out on something I'd like....and two, I had successfully avoided being the only person who didn't know what happened at Hogwarts. Anyways, I started getting that similar feeling here with Genshin. There is a ton of technical jargon that goes into playing this game and reading it on the Discord chat was making my head swim. In all fairness, my head continued to swim for several weeks after I started. I decided to take the plunge with some of the other members of the chat group and I had several first impressions. A) I thought the colors in the game were absolutely splendid and the level of detail in the world was top notch. I was super impressed at how well made this F2P game was looking. 2) I was going to hate Paimon with all of my soul throughout the game and was very concerned that the story was going to annoy me and D) I really wished the default running speed would move faster...period. The thousand foot view of the story is that you and your sibling get separated in this Abyss area (whether it's the brother or sister depends on the gender you choose. I chose the brother). You come to on this beautiful beach with this annoying Pixie named Paimon, who doesn't have an inside voice, and only refers to herself in the third person. She gets to be your travel companion throughout the entire game. If it wasn't for Paimon, I may have actually paid attention to the story in this game, but I have never spammed X so fast in my entire life. The cutscenes are absolutely brilliant and I cannot stress enough how beautiful the world looks, however I find most of the dialogue to be absolutely brutal to sit through. This game has a very steep learning curve. As a 'Free to Play' game, it has a lot of weird dynamics that slow down your ability to progress. Some of the items renew over time and it takes a while to learn how to properly manage it. Having said that, the game does a great job of scaling the learning curve. When you start the game, you feel extremely powerful and that is because your 'World Level' starts at 1 so you are fighting all of the enemies at their weakest. As you progress through the game, your 'World Level' will go up as well as the strength of the enemies. It gives you a lot of time to learn the basics. In the world of Genshin, the majority of people are just normal people, however there are some that gain the ability of a 'Vision' that allows them to use a certain elemental type and makes them unique in their world. What makes The Traveler (main character) unique, is the ability to change the element type they are attuned to. All other characters have an element and that is their element forever. I wish I could tell you more about Visions and how people attain them, but as I said, I've spammed through most of the story so I really don't know. Aside from the amazing graphics and world, what sets this game apart from some other open world games I've played is how fluid and fun the combat can be. Your party can consist of up to four members at a time, however only one is on the field at a time. What is great is how seamlessly you can swap between them. You assign each of the four party members to a direction on the D-Pad and when you want to switch to someone else, just push that direction. Some of the characters work best as a DPS, while others as a support or healer. What is really cool is how your 'off field' party members can contribute to the current active character. Every character has a regular attack, a charged attack, an Elemental Skill and an Elemental Burst. There are bow users, sword users, great sword users, polearm users and catalyst users (these are people that use magic books or hand to hand). The fun is in creating a party that complements one another. Some people have weapons that will increase the attack percentage of the next character you switch to on the field. Some will increase in element type's strength. Most of the synergy comes in creating parties that create reactions for additional damage. For example, having one character that uses the fire element burn the enemy and then switching to a water element type character to use a skill/burst will create the Evaporate reaction and causes extra damage. Sometimes having multiple of the same element types can be beneficial where having multiple of the same type will strengthen the element. Most parties consist of a DPS, sub DPS, Support and Healer. Some characters are just so strong though that it doesn't matter too much how they are in the party, they will just destroy. Ganyu and Zhongli are two such characters that I have that are a bit of an easy button. I'm going to spend several paragraphs now talking about the things that I find super frustrating in this game. I've talked about the amazing graphics, world and combat but how you get your characters is one of the most annoying things about this game. Characters have a star rating and can be either four or five stars. I'm not sure exactly what qualifies some to be five star over four star since there are some four star characters that are better than five star characters, but it basically comes down to the rarity. Most of the characters you get in this game you get from the 'wish' system. This is where it gets a bit complex as well. There are 'standard' characters and 'event' characters. There are always three different 'banners' (sometimes four) that are run at the same time. One will be the event banner that has a unique five star character and three four star characters where the likelihood of getting one is boosted. There is an event weapon banner that usually features the best weapon for the 5 star character on the current event banner. The standard banner is always there and none of the featured event five star characters can be drawn from that banner. There are two different types of wishes you can earn that allow you to make a wish on either of the event banners or the standard banner. You make wishes on a banner by using a 'fate'. An 'Intertwined Fate' can be used on the event banners and the 'Acquaint Faint' can be used on the standard banner. You can achieve wishes in several different ways, however the main way is by converting 160 'Primogems' into a wish. Primogems are a kind of currency the game uses to 'buy' items. It can't be used in the actual game to buy items from a shop, that kind of currency is called Mora, but can be used in the game's menu shop to purchase wishes. The game allows real money to be used to buy 'Genesis Crystals' in the game which can be converted into Primogems (at a 1:1 ratio) and/or other things like character outfits. It is an absolute ripoff of epic proportions. $99.99 will buy you 6,480 Genesis Crystals (with a 'bonus' of 1,600), which if used solely on Primogems can get you 50 wishes. Just to illustrate how bad this ratio is, this game uses a 'pity' system to guarantee that you will get a five star wish eventually and don't have a string of bad luck where you never get one. You are guaranteed to get a five star character (or weapon) every 90 wishes. You are guaranteed to get a four star character (or weapon) every ten wishes. All of the other wishes are 3 star weapons. You can get a four or five star before those Pity check points, but if you pull 89 wishes and get no five star, you are guaranteed one on your next pull. So, for $100 you can get just over halfway to a guaranteed five star pull. That is absolutely bananas. What makes it even more bananas is that you are not even guaranteed to get the event five star character once you finally pull one. You have a 50/50 chance to pull one of the five star characters from the Standard Banner instead of the Event character. However, if you pull a standard five star character the first time, you are guaranteed the event five star the second time. That means to guarantee you get the event banner five star character you may have to make 180 wishes. If you do that with real money, it could cost you almost $400 to do so....to me that is absolutely criminal. I won't lie, I did it one time and regretted it immediately. I had originally started the game in September last year and took a bit of a break from it to finish up some events and some other games, but came back to it in late December. I had gotten a $100 Visa gift card for Christmas and ended up buying the $99.99 Genesis Crystal package. I got more than 50 wishes since I think the bonus was double the amount instead of the 1,600. I think I got 100 wishes, which guaranteed me at least one five star. I'm going to pause here for a moment to say that I have been extremely lucky with my pulls. I have thirteen five star characters and with three of them, I have pulled multiples of the same character five other times. I also have three five star weapons. So all in all, I have pulled 21 five star characters/weapons. I have played this game virtually every day since the end of December, have 21 five star pulls and consider myself lucky. I've had six of those five star pulls with a pity of 25 or less while the most amount of wishes I've had to pull before a five star was 82. Despite my 'good luck', the system is still extremely predatory and broken. You may have seen me mention that I have pulled multiple of the same characters and you may have asked yourself, what happens when you get the same character? Well, one of the stat fields for each character is their 'Constellation'. Everyone has a zodiac sign with six stars that make up the constellation. Each time you get a pull that results in a character you already have, you get a constellation star. Each star you unlock will strengthen your character by adding damage/healing/energy recharge/etc or enhancing a skill or burst. It is usually a really good bump to the usefulness of the character and is a good thing to get. What happens if you get all six constellation stars for a character? Well, it would be really cool if they removed that character from your wish pool since you can no longer upgrade your character via constellations, however that is not what the wish system does. Instead, you get something called 'Starglitter'. Each time you get a four star or greater character or weapon, you get a little 'Stardust' and 'Starglitter'. 'Starglitter' is more valuable than 'Stardust' however both are another form of non-ingame currency that you can use to get more wishes or other farmable items. This is where the wish system is even more criminal. For five 'Starglitter' you can buy one wish. If you end up getting six constellations for your character (C6) and you pull an 8th wish of that character, all you get back is some Starglitter. For a four star character you get five Starglitter. For a five star character you get 25 Starglitter. As I mentioned above, you are guaranteed a four star character/weapon every 10th pull....as a reward for getting an 8th duplicate or more, you get one wish back or 1/10th the value of a unique four star. You get a five star every 90 pulls and you get only five wishes back on an 8th duplicate or more or 1/18th the value of a five star. THAT IS RIDICULOUS!!!! Could you imagine if you spent money on wishes only to get a duplicate and maybe five wishes back if it's a five star? I wouldn't care as much if they didn't charge you but that is absolutely insane. There is no reason why they can't remove characters whose constellations have been maxed out from the pool. I have had this happen to me with Yanfei. I have gotten probably 11 pulls of Yanfei and every time I see her now I get pissed off. The frustrating part about this is it could be easy to fix, more fair and much more likely more people might spend some money to get extra wishes. I'm sure there are plenty of whales that spend thousands of dollars on these wishes to max out their characters....but they should lower the five star pity number to 50 and remove duplicates from your pool once they've reached C6. These two small changes would make this system seem much less predatory. It's too bad that I really like this product because I really want to not play this game since I think this business model sucks. That is the most egregious issue I have with the game, but there are a couple of other items that I find super frustrating. As I mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs, the game has a time block mechanic which stops you from being able to farm some items in the game. Genshin uses a 'Resin' system to limit how much you can do certain activities that usually result in materials needed to either gain Mora (money), experience books, artifacts or weapon/talent leveling items. There is a cap of 160 resin and it regenerates at one resin every eight minutes. The minimum amount of resin needed to do any kind of instanced farming event is 20 and can go as high as 60. Basic Mora/XP farming happens at something called 'Ley Lines' that are strewn about the map. Orange ones yield Mora and blue ones yield XP books. You get very small amounts of XP and Mora from normal fighting, but it's not nearly enough to do anything with so you'll need to farm at these Ley Lines eventually. To level up your character talents (Basic Attack, Elemental Skill and/or Burst), you need to farm a type of book that is relatively unique to your character, along with a couple of other items. The strange thing is that the different books are only available on specific days of the week. Each book can be farmed on three different days. Did you want to farm materials for Ganyu today? Well you better hope it's a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday or you just can't since that domain won't drop that item. Once you have farmed enough items, you can level up any one of those three talents to level 10 before they are capped (unless a constellation adds more skill points up to a hard cap of 15). Most will only ever get to level 9 since in order to get to level 10 you need a 'Crown' item that is only sparingly rewarded from some one time events. I think I've only earned about 14 Crowns since I started playing, so you need to pick and choose who you are going to 'Crown'. Anyway, those talent books are found in instanced domains that also cost 20 resin to do. To level up your character, there are similarly 'unique' items that you must collect from boss type characters. Those boss type battles are free to fight, but if you want to open the treasure box after winning, it'll cost you 40 resin. The 60 resin battles are from true instanced boss fights. They are re-battles of boss fights from quests throughout the game. I think there are five of these instanced domains and one that is just out in the open that acts more like the 40 resin cost battles, but is a 60 resin fight. These last instanced fights drop items you need to level your talents past level seven. None of them are particularly hard, but as you can see, with only 160 resin you can store in a day and with an eight minute delay in the recharge, you can burn through your resin very quickly and be left with nothing to do. There are four types of resin in the game...the normal resin that regens on it's own that I discussed above, and then there is 'condensed resin', 'fragile resin' and 'transient resin'. Condensed resin is made from normal resin. You can take 40 normal resin and make one condensed. It basically doubles your drops from one of the different 20 cost instanced raids I mentioned above. This is good because it halves your farming time and doubles the drops. It also is a quick way to use your resin in a day if you do not have the time to do a full farm. Fragile resin is a reward item that you can get from certain quests or from the 'Battle Pass' (a pass that allows you to get extra items every 45 days or so that costs real money). Using a fragile resin will give you 60 regular resin. You can go over the 160 cap by using fragile resin, but they run out quick and you don't get a ton of them as rewards so it is not a consistently reliable source of resin. Transient resin is something you can buy with 1,200 'Realm Currency' once per week that you acquire from your teapot....your teapot is something you get around Adventure Rank 30 that lets you create your own home. The teapot was broken half the time I played, where you couldn't rearrange your house, but with that currency you can buy the transient resin, which has a shelf life of 9 days. If you do not use that resin within 9 days, it will disappear. If you've never played the game or only played a little, I bet your head is swimming right now. Don't worry because mine was swimming for months after I started playing. It was probably three months before I felt a good rhythm with what needs to happen each day. When you first start the game, you really don't realize that there is a cap on what you can do each day because there is so much to do and explore that it never comes up. But once you finish the storyline and get all caught up, you'll find you can only play for about twenty minutes in a day before you run out of shit to do and then log off. This seems like a stupid concept to me. Why make it so that people have to stop playing your game? I end up playing other things and move on from this game except for that twenty minutes a day. The whole resin system seems unnecessary to me. You can't buy more of it with real money to speed up the game and it just prevents the gamers from farming to strengthen up their characters. I'm sure that people would spend hours and hours replaying the domains to get all the materials needed and then even more hours artifact farming to further enhance. They have enough events that they add and updates to keep people coming back so I truly do not understand what resin is there for other than to drive people to play something different once they run out each day. I mentioned two things in the last couple of paragraphs that I haven't touched on yet. The first was 'Adventure Rank' (AR). Anytime you complete a quest or domain, you'll earn some AR XP. This experience is separate from the XP books you earn to level up your characters. This AR XP is how you level up your world to make the enemies tougher and the rarer drops more abundant. Some of the content is blocked by your AR level. This is there to prevent players from doing end game things before they are ready. You get some rewards from leveling your AR, including wishes and fragile resin. This system is actually pretty good because it allows players to slowly learn what they are doing and wait to level up until you are ready. You have to manually talk to an NPC to level up so it won't do it automatically for you. The benefit of leveling up the AR is not just to level up your world, but to level up your characters. The max level they can currently attain is level 90, however you cannot get that high until you unlock their Ascensions. You start at Ascension 1 and your character level cap is 20. Once you have a high enough AR rank, you can do a quest that will level up your world and then unlock Ascension level 2 for your characters. They can then level up to 40 before they are capped. The next level ascensions only unlock 10 character levels at a time and you cannot cap your character level until Ascension 6. More talents are unlocked (passive talents) the higher your ascension level so there is a lot of incentive to level up as soon as you can. The cool thing though, is that if you are struggling once your world levels up, the game allows you to lower the world level back down a level. This lets you farm and strengthen your characters until you feel comfortable that you can survive. You can change your world level once per day (I have never done this so I don't know exactly how it works). The biggest grind in the game is Artifact farming. Each character can wear up to five artifacts. An artifact will boost your character stats and are vital to making your characters as strong as possible. The five different artifacts represent five different areas where you can only wear one of each. There is a Flower, Plume, Sands, Goblet and Circlet. You can only wear one of each, so if you have two killer goblets for one of your characters, you have to choose which one you want to wear. You can't have two goblets and no flower or something like that. Once you get an artifact, you can level it up to level 20 (if it's 5 star), which will further enhance their abilities. Artifacts also have a ranking similar to characters and weapons, but they go all the way down to one star. To level up your artifacts, you use other artifacts to enhance them. There are also items that you can use to enhance an artifact level, but those aren't too common until you can buy them from your teapot shop. Artifacts can boost, HP, HP%, ATK, ATK%, Crit Rate, Crit Damage, DEF, DEF%, Energy Recharge%, Elemental Mastery, Healing Bonus, Physical Damage Bonus or one of the Elemental Bonuses. An artifact can boost up to five different categories on one piece. If you have a five star artifact, you'll get one stat that gets a major boost and then four additional sub stats that can get varying boosts. The main stat that gets the major boost will get an increase each level you raise the artifact while one random sub stat will get a boost every 4th level. This is one of the biggest reasons artifact farming is a beast. There are a few of challenges with artifact farming. The first being that you have a 1/10 chance in a run to get the piece you are looking for. The majority of artifact farming involves doing an instanced raid that will contain two different kinds of artifacts and with the are five slots for artifacts, nothing is guaranteed. While there are five artifact slots, there are dozens of different types of artifacts. If you have multiple of the same type of artifact in different slots, you get a bonus that is in addition to the stat bonuses from leveling. You'll get that bonus at two and then four similar artifacts equipped. For example, one artifact type is called 'Emblem of Severed Fate'. If you have one of those artifacts in your Flower spot, you get no bonus except for the random stats that are on the piece. If you add an Emblem artifact to the Plume spot, you get an Energy Recharge boost of +20%. If you then add two more emblem pieces to make it four total, it increases your Elemental Burst Damage by 25% of your Energy Recharge stat for a maximum of a 75% boost. Since there is no boost at five of a same type, you can use that fifth slot to just put the strongest artifact you can. As you can see, this can be a significant boost to your character. Once you have chosen the type of artifact you want to equip on your character, you find which instanced raid you must do. This raid will have two different artifact types that can be rewarded for clearing the raid. The good news, is most of the raids can be completed in just a couple of minutes or less...the bad news is the artifact that is dropped is completely random. If you are using regular resin, you can get up to two artifacts per run, however the vast majority of the time you will get one artifact. If you use condensed resin, you can get between two and four artifacts. That one artifact on a regular resin run could be the other artifact that you aren't targeting making that run a waste. It could be for a slot that you do not need, it could have stats that are not beneficial to your character, or it could actually be useful. I find that last scenario to be very rare. I tend to use condensed resin on artifact farming runs to increase the likelihood I get something useful but that is still rare. With how quickly you can burn through resin, it can take a long time to get good pieces. There are not many characters that benefit from a boost to DEF or DEF%. That seems to be a stat that appears often on artifacts and pretty much will render most artifacts that contain that boost useless. Unfortunately, you have to be somewhat selective with the artifacts you choose to level up because leveling materials run out quickly and it can get very expensive to level up artifacts, causing you to farm more Mora. As far as the trophy list goes, it's not too bad. The only really shitty trophy is the DLC trophy for getting all of the 'Toki Alley Tales' book. That involves fishing for 10 pages of a book and fishing is kind of brutal in this game. It took me about 990 fish before I found the 10 pages, which I've read isn't actually that bad. Some people need a couple thousand fish before finding all ten pages. It takes a while because unless you can fish in another person's world in co-op, you have to wait 48 hours after clearing a fishing spot for the fish to respawn. Almost all of the collectibles you find from exploring are like that though. If you pick a flower, it'll be two days before it reappears. The most grindy trophies are the ones for getting reputation in a country. You only get three quests and three bounty hunts per week across all of the countries. You only can get like 420 reputation points per week and you need several thousand points to max reputation...so that one takes a while but isn't hard. The hardest trophy to get is the one for clearing floor 12 of the Spiral Abyss. This is the hardest dungeon in the game and each floor consists of six battles...three on one side and three on the other. In order to defeat the abyss, you need to make two parties of four. What makes this hard is getting eight characters strong enough to be able to survive. Once you start a floor, you cannot change gear, party members or heal (except skills during battle, no items/food) until you either quit out or complete the floor. Each round has a maximum of three stars that can be earned, usually for defeating the floor under a certain time, however floor 11-1 seems to always involve protecting an obelisk from getting destroyed. So long as it stays higher that 60% health, you'll get all 3 stars. Once you get passed floor 8, you need a certain number of stars to be able to unlock the next floor. The Abyss can be unforgiving and challenging, however you can retry as many times as you want so there's nothing lost except time in trying. Once you beat that last enemy on the 12th floor, you'll have achieved the most challenging trophy. My first five star character was Keqing and while she is considered one of the weaker five star characters, I love playing with her and made sure she was in my party. Party A for me consisted of Raiden, Keqing, Xiangling and Barbara and Party B consisted of Ganyu, Zhongli, Mona and Venti. Most of the other trophies you'll do naturally as you play and you will see some gorgeous landscapes on your adventures. My favorite area was probably the Dragonspine. It's a giant mountain in the middle of Mondstadt (one of the countries in Genshin). It has a frost mechanic where if you are away from a heating source for too long, you'll start to take damage...but it was a cool mechanic and it was pretty up on the mountain. You'll have to do tons of exploring to get enough treasure chests for some trophies and there are some fun puzzles along the way. One of the positives of the game are the fun characters. There are only a couple that are intolerable with Xinyan being the most annoying by far. Qiqi is up there as well, but for the most part, I enjoy all of the characters. I wish they would add some more dialogue considering how much time you spend in this game...you'll hear Ganyu grunt a ton or Keqing telling you to stop procrastinating a million times if you pause for more than 10 seconds. They say the same things every time you open a treasure box or when it starts and stops raining. While the dialogue is limiting, the characters are cool. My list of characters are: Five Star: The Traveler, Venti, Zhongli, Ganyu, Keqing, Raiden Shogun, Yelan, Mona, Shenhe, Itto, Yao Miko, Jean, Qiqi and Diluc Four Star: Barbara, Sucrose, Diona, Xingqiu, Benny, Xiangling, Ningguang, Fischl, Yun Jin, Kaeya, Gorou, Noelle, Amber, Heizou, Sayu, Rosaria, Chongyun, Kuki, Kujou Sara, Beidou, Razor, Lisa, Thoma, Yanfei and Xinyan It's funny because Barbara and Keqing are considered two of the weakest characters, yet I love playing with them and both were a part of my Abyss team. Keqing is great to use when exploring because she can teleport with her lightning skill and get to hard to reach areas. With Babs in my party, I feel like it's impossible to die. I have her HP over 35k and her healing has been a nice security blanket when doing stuff. While I've been lucky with pulls and character's like Ganyu and Zhongli make the game have an 'easy button', you can have a ton of fun with any of the characters. I think it depends on who you get first will end up being who you're going to like best. Babs was my first four star pull and Keqing my first five star. They've been with me the longest and are my favorite to play. I've used Keqing less on the open world map since getting Ganyu since she makes everything a breeze, but the fun thing is to mix and match and see what works and what doesn't for you. In addition to the dialogue being repetitive, the daily commission tasks are extremely repetitive. There are like twenty of them in each of the three main countries and you can do four per day. I don't know about other players, but I seem to get the same handful all of the time. I've been playing for months and months and still have not gotten the daily commission 'An Art to be Honed' four times to unlock a mission. I do the Inazuma commissions every day, and I think I've done that one twice so far. It's the last mission I need to complete them all in the game. If you can't tell, I'm pretty passionate about the game and will play this one long past the platinum. If they fixed the issues I have mentioned above, this might be my most favorite game of all time. I've written too much as it is and I've not even touched upon a lot of the different aspects of the game, but I think I've touched on most of them. The biggest takeaways are that the combat is extremely smooth and fun. There are tons and tons of different party comps that you can try and tons of ways to challenge yourself in battles. While the game has a co-op function, it isn't very good for stuff other than for farming domains with someone. You are blocked from doing quests together and are blocked from doing the Abyss (the most challenging dungeon in the game) co-op. However, I've had a lot of fun with @Cassylvania and @Mesopithecus in the game and chatting about it. I'm sure it hasn't been quite as fun for the members in the discord chat that aren't playing the game, but Genshin is a lot of fun when you get into it and is a lot of fun to talk about since it is constantly updating and adding new things. The good news is that while I spent most of this review bitching about certain aspects of the game, the game itself is a near masterpiece and I'll spend many more hours in it to come. There's a huge update coming and I'm curious to see if more trophies are added. It's been a while since they have added anything, but I'll be ready to go! I highly recommend this game to anyone and everyone...just be smart with your pocketbook and you get hundreds of hours of enjoyment from it. 176. Lara Croft GO Spoiler This was a spur of the moment choice that I decided to play a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I had been planning and saving to take our kids to Disney World for almost a year. My kids are 8 and 5 and we felt like this was a good age for the 'magical' trip. They are at an age where things like that are just special. We will probably go one more time when they're like 15 and 12 or something and it's more about the rides...but this trip they were into the characters and the princesses and pretty much everything they have to offer. We were going for ten days and I have a current trophy streak of 644 days. I have no hopes or delusions of ever making headway on the leaderboard, but this is an achievement that I can try to keep myself that is a nice little challenge to keep me interested. Anyways, on the trip, I was going to bring my Vita (since my kids are small and would be in bed by 10:00 most nights) to be able to play for an hour or so at night before bed to try and keep the streak going. I was originally looking for an isometric style, TBS game, however I didn't find anything that wasn't going to require a large time investment. I'm already playing Shiren The Wanderer, however none of those trophies are quick. When I was scanning through the list of Vita games, I paused on this entry since I have already done Hitman GO and enjoyed that game for what it was. If this was anything like it, I knew I'd be able to keep my streak alive while playing a game I might enjoy. Turns out I was right on both fronts. I was wondering why the completion rate is as high as it is, since it didn't seem like the usual 'EZPZ' game that litters the front of PSNP on a daily basis. I found out pretty quickly why. In Hitman GO, there was a 'hint' option...but if I remember right, it only gave you a hint on your next move (maybe it didn't since there's a trophy for not using a hint so I never tried really). This game has no such trophy and the 'hint' option doesn't give you a hint so much as it just gives you the solution. Not only does it give you the solution, it doesn't let you walk off of the path of the solution. Outside of the collectibles, you never really have to pay attention to the game at all to get through it. It was nice to know that was in my back pocket if I wanted it...I mean I was in Florida to go to Disney, not play games, so having the option to speed things along if needed was nice to have. Having said that, I did try to do each puzzle on my own. Some of them were very straightforward and not too bad to do, but some of them were very convoluted and I resorted to hints. The game has a chapter select option to be able to easily go back and do the collectibles. Most of the collectibles were pretty easy to spot, but some of the later ones in particular were very well hidden. I tried to find each of the collectibles as I went so that I wouldn't have to do much back tracking. The boards are isometric in view and you move one block at a time. There are spiders, lizards and snakes that try to eat you as you go as well as trap boulders and darts from walls. Lara has to try to either avoid these traps or move so that the enemies are in-between her and the trap when they go off. There are movable columns and pitfalls to avoid and there's a decently good variety to the puzzle solutions. Nothing groundbreaking here, just a decent puzzle game with an easy button. There are only a handful of mechanics and the game does act very similar to the Hitman version. The only real downside to the game was that the loading times were pretty long. Not XCOM 2 long, but long enough. At the end of the day though, it served its purpose and did provide a little bit of fun in the process so I can't really ask for much more considering what I was looking for. It's not a game anyone needs to run out and buy...but if you find yourself in a similar position to me, it's a good choice to casually play something on vacation. 177. Jurassic World Evolution 2 Spoiler Jurassic World Evolution was not a game that I had on my radar a few years ago. I was scrolling through a sale and my son, who was a dinosaur nut, saw the logo and was like 'Daddy, can you buy that came to play with me?' I thought it would be a good opportunity to bond together a bit over a game he might enjoy so I did. My son loves building things. He's big into LEGO's and we have magnetiles and blocks all over the place, and I thought he'd have fun helping build a park with me. For the most part, we did have a great time. Most of the game was over his head (and over mine for that matter at first) but we enjoyed building paddocks together and he loved to tell me which dinosaurs should go together. We probably played together for six hours or so and the other hundred hours I did it myself. While it wasn't on my radar, I had a ton of fun with the game and really enjoyed my time with it. It was hard and addicting and a cool concept...plus I don't have a lot of those 'Sim' style games on my profile, so it was somewhat unique for me. I had no idea that there was a second game being made and again, it was not on my radar, but when I saw it as a new release, I pounced on it because my son is a bit older now and I thought we could have fun again together. My son was super excited when I told him that I had bought this game for us to play and I loaded it up. I started the campaign and we beat the first level together. I let him tell me where I should put stuff and it was a lot of fun. It wasn't hard, but my son got bored pretty quickly. He has the patience of a gnat and just wanted to be able to build a huge park with all the cool dinosaurs, so I switched over to the 'Sandbox' mode. I took all of the difficulty settings off and just let him go to town making a park...however since we had just started the game, not much was unlocked yet to be used. He wanted an Indominous Rex and an Indo Raptor and all of the big name dinosaurs right away. The problem for us was that, it's not unlocked in the Sandbox mode until you unlock it in one of the game modes. We got about two hours of the game done before he lost interest because he didn't want to help with the campaigns. The game went on the backburner for a bit because I was hoping he'd want to play it again, but he's really into Minecraft and Don't Starve on his iPad and also Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my Raspberry Pi. Because of this, the game sat untouched for several months. I wasn't sure at first if I had liked the changes that they had made to the game either, so I wasn't in a huge rush to get back to it. So now that I've given you the backstory into how it found its way into my active game list....how about I talk about the game? So for those of you that don't know, it's a park simulator game. There are four different gaming modes, the campaign, chaos mode, challenge mode and sandbox mode. The campaign is the games attempt at creating a story. They are all quite easy and are pretty good tutorials on how the game will work going forward. Chaos mode thrusts you into a scenario (loosely based around the events that happen in the different movies) and gives you a series of challenges that you must complete in order to complete the level. Challenge mode is to simply create a five star park. There are five areas (in the base game for the platinum) that have varying wrenches thrown at you to make it a challenge. The higher the difficulty, the bigger the wrenches. The final mode is the sandbox mode which is exactly that, a sandbox for you to play around and fiddle with the game pretty much any way you want. It's fun to mess around in there and was helpful for unlocking a few of the trophies in a controlled environment. The game is very thorough on its demands of what you need to do in order to build a profitable park. You need to build 'Operations' buildings to make sure you have the staff to run a park. That includes a Response Team that has Ranger Jeeps and a Helicopter crew to maintain order with the animals. A Paleo-medical facility to make sure you can cure any diseased dinosaurs or heal their injuries. A staff center, which affects how many scientists you can hire for research, expeditions, hatching, etc. A dig team for finding fossils and extracting the DNA, and a science center for research. In addition to operations, you need to build hatcheries to create the dinosaurs and paddocks for them to roam around in when free. You have different types of Power outputs, whether it is a generator or power plant. There are guest attractions to build that bring in the guests and amenities to build to keep them happy and help make profit while they are there. There's a lot to learn, however a lot of this was carried over from the first installment so playing the first one helped a lot with understanding this one...however they added so much more to pay attention to, yet also made some things so much easier as well. I'll start with the things they added that are annoying. The biggest change to this installment is the addition of scientists. In the first one, you just did stuff and the scientists were implied as being a part of the process. In this game, you have to actually hire them...and they are not cheap. It might cost you $450k to hire one, and then they have an hourly wage that cuts into your profits continuously. If you hire too many scientists, you could go bankrupt if you aren't bringing in enough money...but you can't do anything without them. There are three categories of stats that they could have, Logistics, Genetics and Welfare. The cap for each is as high as 10 points (unless they have a bonus), however usually a scientist's cap is somewhere between 5-7 points in any category. In addition to having points in these different areas, they each have one specialty about them. They might speed up research time or decrease the cost of an expedition or be altruistic and have a cheaper salary. You can level them up (via research) that will give you more points to put into a category, but that costs money and also raises their hourly wage. Generally, you need logistics for all research and digs, genetics for some research, DNA extraction and egg synthesis and Welfare for some research healing dinosaurs and hatching eggs. Everything has a monetary cost and everything has a minimum number of points you need in order to research. For example, researching a small power plant costs $500k and you need at least 5 points in logistics to research. You can have up to three scientists involved in any one research (unless you pay for an upgrade that you also must first research). If you have a scientist with 5 points in logistics, it takes only that one to research the item. If you don't, you might need to use a scientist with 4 in logistics and another with 2. Any amount of points you have higher than the requirement will speed up the time it takes to complete. That's a basic explanation on it, but the higher/better the research item, the bigger the cost and requirements. If your scientists do not have enough points in the required area, you cannot research it until you either level up your scientists enough to where you can (which also requires its own research and money) or you fire your scientists and hire others that do. There's an extra wrinkle with these scientists as well. Every time you have them do a task, they get a bar of fatigue. Most of the scientist have like 7 bars of fatigue, meaning you can use them 7 times before they need to rest. You can't use them if their fatigue bar is maxed and they can't rest unless you have a staff center. If you forget to research a staff center and your scientists are fatigued, you better hope you have enough money to fire one and hire another new scientist or else you need to restart. Letting them rest costs $125k and also takes like 3 minutes of time (researched upgrades can lower both of those figures). While I can appreciate what they were trying to do here, managing the scientists is just a major pain in the ass. Why it costs so much money for them not to do anything is beyond me. There is no logical explanation that can be provided to me why it costs $125k to let them take a break. The scientists is a big change, and to me, mostly negative. Almost all of the other changes though are an improvement. The biggest of these improvements is how they handled herbivore food. In the first game, you had to build feeders that needed to be refilled, which cost money and didn't make a ton of sense. In this game, herbivores eat what is in their environment. You plant fruits, leaf, nuts or fiber and so long as you have enough of their food growing in their paddock, you never have to worry about feeding them. This is a major improvement. It's really easy to do as well. You can click on a dinosaur and it'll tell you it's comfort level and what it needs to be more comfortable. Does it need more water? Put a man-made lake into the paddock. Do they prefer to live in the forest? Put a bunch of trees in there until they are happy. Is it missing fiber, add plants high in fiber for them to eat. I like this change a lot and was a huge quality of life improvement. Another big improvement was the addition of the 'Ranger Station'. You can build one of these in a paddock and if you click on it, it will show you how much area it covers. You can then assign a Jeep, Helicopter and Medical Truck to it and the assigned vehicles will monitor the dinosaurs within its range on their own. If a dinosaur is sick, the Medical Truck will automatically go out to diagnose. When dinosaurs need status checks, the Jeep automatically embarks and if that Jeep is under attack, the helicopter will automatically go out and tranquilize the offending dinosaur. It helped a ton take the focus of the game away from micromanaging the vehicles and into growing your park. This was another awesome quality of life change to the game. The biggest game breaking change was the addition of a pause button. Part of what made the first one so hard, is that the game kept moving...always moving. If a storm came and dinosaurs escaped, you'd spend 10 minutes tracking things down and putting them back and it was so hard to keep up with at times. In this game, if a storm comes, you can hit pause and time will stop. You can then open all the shelters, close all of your amenities (you lose a TON of money if you keep them open during a storm), and once you are ready, hit pause again to get time moving. In addition to pausing, you can also speed up the time by up to 3 times, which was also nice. I would generally pause the moment there was a storm, then get my park prepared, then have the storm move through at 3 times speed and pause again if there was any damage so I could get my ranger teams out to fix, then move time again and once the storm was over, pause the game and reopen all of the things I closed. It takes all of the stress out of these moments. I'd also pause a lot when I had learned new research or when I was checking the different 'birds eye' view of things. There's a menu where you can view your park and see where people are overcrowded or missing restrooms or shelter or amenities and it was extremely helpful in figuring out what needed to be build and where. The addition of this pause button made this game sooooooo much easier than the first and a much more relaxing experience. The only real downside I found to this game was how formulaic it tended to be and how expensive it made things, which in turn meant you didn't use a lot of the things. Basically, to maximize profits, you build a paddock and a hotel next to it with a viewing gallery. Then you build a restroom, a shelter and one of each of the amenities (food, drink, shopping). Add dinosaurs to the paddock to improve the appeal and get people there, then make a new paddock and rinse repeat. As you get further from the entrance of the park, add a monorail to improve transportation, if there's a crowded area, widen the path. There's not a ton of incentive to spice it up more than that. I never needed to research anything passed the basic fence. I never had to research any power options past a small power plant. It just wasn't necessary at all. The other problem is how outrageously expensive things are. It costs like $2M to research T Rex, and then it's like $2M more to send out a dig team, which you need to do several times before you get the genome to 100% (you can synthesize at 50% but the fail rate is high). Then you need to spend $1M to synthesize the egg and then like $2M per egg to fertilize. It costs like $15M to get a T Rex in your park. When doing the challenges on Jurassic difficulty, no way in hell are you going to make enough money to make that worthwhile. You pretty much use the same handful of dinosaurs every map. I didn't make one hybrid, T Rex or Spinosaurus in any of the challenge maps. I only made a Lagoon or Aviary for the novelty of it since the cost of setting one up was so expensive, most of the time your resources were better spent on other things. The only time I got to see them in this game was in the sandbox or during the campaign. It was kind of a bummer that they had over 100 different dinosaur species and you get stuck only able to afford about 20 of them in any one scenario. I didn't even make a Stegosaurus or Triceratops. I got to use the 'lesser' versions of those dinosaurs, but if you want to get a 5 star park, you really can't spend much time trying to get the cool dinosaurs. By the time you have enough money for one, your dinosaurs will die from old age....literally. The trophy list isn't too bad. The 100% database was the hardest trophy to get since it isn't clear how all of the diseases/injuries get unlocked and you have to actively try to get a couple. The hardest one I had to get was for 'ingrown claw'. In order to get this injury, you have to get a dinosaur that has a broken claw and not heal it. They get a broken claw by fighting or attacking a fence. Sometimes it will turn into an ingrown claw. Well I spent three hours trying to get this one before I realized I was sabotaging myself by having my medical truck assigned to the ranger posts because they were healing the broken claw. Then I must've gotten a broken claw ten times before one turned into an ingrown claw. I ended up forcing the issue by making a very small paddock with the strongest fence and loading it with Coelophysis (small carnivore). They were too small to break the wall and they were uncomfortable enough to keep trying. I had like 30 of them in this small zone and after about 15 minutes, I finally had a broken claw turn into an ingrown claw. All the rest of the diseases and injuries happened naturally for me. The trophies for beating the challenges on Jurassic Difficulty were also quite easy due to that pause button. I beat each map in six hours or less and the par time on Jurassic Difficulty was over ten hours for each. Once you get a hang of what is needed to get a five star park, it is super easy to do. I didn't mention some of the nuance involved with amenities and how there are different types of guests that come to your park and how attractions can lure different types. I didn't mention it since while it is a thing, it's not something I really paid much attention to other than making sure my amenities made happy the type of guest that was visiting it (you do that by offering different food/drink/shopping item targeted towards certain guests). If you have attractions that make 'adventure guests' happy, but only 'luxury guests' are visiting that amenity, well you'll probably lose money. Selling the right good or having the right attractions present means big money. I liked this game very much. While I found the scientists to be a pain in the ass, especially in the beginning, once you get the formula down for making a profitable park, even the scientists became pretty easy to manage. If you like park builder games, I would recommend this one since it brings something a little different to the table. It's not a perfect game, but once I got back into it, I had a hard time stopping each night. I kept on wanting to just finish this one last thing before bed, not wanting to lose my train of thought. It was addicting and fun and if you can get it for $20, you will have many hours of enjoyment. 178. Stray Spoiler I'll start off by saying I don't have the same infatuation with cats that a lot of people seem to. I don't dislike them, but I also don't feel the need to run up and pet every animal I see either. I'm allergic to pet dander so never really had any pets growing up, so never developed that 'fur baby' mentality that a lot of people have. I like other people's pets, but don't need one of my own. Having said all that...I'm not a monster lol I like a cute cat video as much as the next person but I'm sure my allergies and not having any pets growing up has made me a bit more apathetic towards the pet-life than if my situation were different. I got this game because it was free at the time, it seemed somewhat unique, and I thought it was a cat sim game to be honest. I thought it'd be fun to do some evil cat shit and push other cats down a flight of attic stairs or chase after a red laser dot or something. Plus, it looked like a short enough game that I could casually play to get some quick trophies to keep my streak alive. Needless to say, I didn't exactly get what I thought I was lol... As I mentioned, I thought this was going to be a Cat Sim game, maybe not as goofy as Goat Simulator, but not far off either. I wasn't expecting there to be much of a story and was somewhat surprised that there is a story and that it's actually not as shallow as you would think. It's fairly original and takes place in a post apocalyptic world. Emotions ran higher than I would have expected from a cat game....but robots are our friends and little gelatin-like parasites are out to get us. The game starts with you falling from the 'outside world' into this dystopian city and you are trying to get out to get back to your family. Along the way you make some friends and help them out. The game is pretty linear, but has an open world feel to it in some of the areas. You can run, jump and meow. Those are your tools against the forces of evil...until you find a flashlight...then you're a badass and microwave explode the little shits. The controls are decent...there is some drag when you're trying to turn at times and it can be slightly frustrating when going for the Can't Cat-ch Me trophy where you have to run through a parasite infested zone without any of them latching onto you. There seems like hundreds during that sequence and they are yeeting themselves at you from every direction. In general, running in a zig-zaggy way seems to throw off most of them, but if that's all you do, you won't get through the area unscathed. It probably took me 45 minutes to an hour to get that trophy. I never really got frustrated since the whole sequence is only a couple minutes long, but there were a couple really tricky spots that took a bit of luck to get through. The graphics were quite good. There was a lot of detail in the city and the lighting in the sewer areas was pretty well done. It was colorful, but you could definitely tell you were in an apocalyptic world. I can't recall any puzzle being that hard to figure out. Finding some of the music sheets were a bit out of the way, but the scratching posts and memories weren't usually too far off the beaten path. Outside of that one trophy, the rest of the list was pretty straightforward. I cut the speed run pretty close clocking in at an hour and 55 minutes. I thought I went pretty quickly through most of the areas, but I think the game can be done in about an hour and 40 or so, so I must've taken the long way around on more than one occasion. For an indie game, it was extremely well done. They took the time to flesh out the story, tighten the graphics and make a pretty enjoyable gaming experience. I beat the game in like 10 hours or so, so it's a game you can do pretty quickly. It's not the best game I've every played, but if you didn't know it was an indie game, you probably wouldn't think it is since there were really no rough edges to be found with this one. I enjoyed my time with it and it was definitely worth the price I paid If you haven't played it yet, it's worth giving a shot. 179. Gotham Knights Spoiler This is a new game so I'll keep this spoiler free beyond the intro/tagline. I had pre-ordered this game because I was really excited about the prospect of another Arkham style Batman game. Arkham City was my first ever platinum and it's the only series I've played all the games for, including all the versions. I absolutely love the series and have loved each and every playthrough I've done. As a kid, I was lukewarm towards Batman and was always more of a Spider-Man fan. I enjoyed both animated series, and the Michael Keaton Batman movie was amazing. The next few that came out kind of turned me off a bit to Batman, but the Christopher Nolan Trilogy brought me right back into the Batman fold, and the Arkham series games helped make Batman my favorite super hero. As I mentioned, I was initially very excited when I heard about this game...and then I heard that it was going to be a Batman game without Batman since he is dead for this one. That made me a bit nervous, but I figured it'd be fun to play an Arkham game with the Bat Family as well, so decided to keep my pre-order. The opening of the game is about a 15 minute cutscene that shows you the sequence of events that lead to Batman's demise and the game starts off with you picking which of the Bat Family you want to play as. The choices are Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin and Red Hood. I decided to play as Babs since one of her abilities is to not be detected by cameras. Since I enjoy playing stealthily, I thought that would match my playstyle the most. I also figured her combat would probably more closely resemble Batman that the others. The opening sequence is cool, but I'll say it was quite jarring to hear someone other than Kevin Conroy voice Batman. Well, let me say it was jarring to have someone who sounds so different to Conroy voice Batman. I felt like Roger Craig Smith, who did Arkham Origins, was close enough that it didn't feel that off. Michael Antonakos does the voice acting in this game and his voice is incredibly deep and very different and was extremely noticeable. He didn't do a bad job, but it didn't sound like Batman. I was incredibly sad when I heard that Kevin Conroy had passed away shortly after this game came out. He was the voice of Batman and extremely good at what he did. I feel like now is a good time to say that this game is the textbook definition of mediocre and it could/should have been great. What this game did well was the graphics and the city of Gotham. It is wide open with a ton of detail and it doesn't look like any expense was spared when creating this game. The handling on the Bat Cycle wasn't too bad but unfortunately, that's the last of the good things I have to say about this game. Nothing is bad, but nothing is good either. The biggest sin that this game has, by far, is the combat. I don't understand how you fuck that one up in this series...the thing that made those Arkham games so iconic (well was several things but...) was the combat. I can only speak from the perspective of Batgirl since I didn't play with any of the other characters, but I hope you didn't like countering in the other games, because it is gone in this game. The combat moved away from the perfected Arkham free flow style to something closer to the Spider-Man game's method of combat that relies on dodging and agility in lieu of countering and brute strength. You have to relearn the combat and it is just not as smooth or well done. Gone are the gadgets, replaced with Momentum Abilities. The abilities are fine, but aren't as fluid in battle. The game is much more button mashing in this than in the previous games and it was my biggest disappointment in this game by a landslide. Once I got the hang of the combat it was a bit better....but it was no longer great. The story is kind of meh also. With Batman dead, there's a power struggle that ensues between some criminal factions and it's the Bat Family's job to step in and subdue the chaos. I found it to be very predictable and several of the 'big reveals' were not as surprising to me as I think they were supposed to be. The voice actors are also fine, but the script is pretty camp-y. Most of the cutscenes end with someone saying something inspiring and then they stand there awkwardly while the camera zooms out and fades away. A lot of head nodding as the camera zooms out too. It was just kind of lazy. There was no darkness or edginess to it like there were in the other games of the series. While the script felt lazy, I thought how they had the story play out was even lazier. As I mentioned, I only used Babs even though there were four to choose from. Nothing stopped me from switching at any point, but I just started with Babs, stuck with Babs and had no reason or motivation to try anyone other than Babs. This was a huge missed opportunity here. They should have interwoven some sort of story for each into the main story where you had to play as each for a while. They could have done something like Final Fantasy VI when Sabin is knocked off the raft and floats down the river and you're introduced to Cyan and Shadow, while Locke has to go to South Figaro to try and sabotage the Empire from advancing to Narshe and meets Celes, while Edgar and Terra go to Narshe to get the help of the Returners against the empire. In that game, you can pick to do any of the three in any order, but you must do all three to advance the story. That is my favorite game of all time and it's because they did stuff like that to really flesh out the story. If that was too much for Gotham Knights, they could have done what Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep did by having all the characters have a different story happening at the same time and you had to play as all three to get the full story. That did not happen here. I think the story is basically the same for any of the four except maybe some dialogue so there is really no reason to have all four at all. What they should have done is have different events within the story where you had to go as Red Hood to do something, while at the same time Robin is off doing X and Nightwing is doing Y, while Babs does Z. You'd have to complete all four events as a team for the story to progress. That would have made the characters you aren't using as your main, at least feel a little relevant. In this game, they're basically on comms the whole time and contribute nothing to what you're doing. It seems like a wasted opportunity and the game wasn't good enough for me to playthrough four times to see what the differences could be. I will say this for them, when someone had an idea...they did the shit out of it. Didn't even have to be a good idea, just an idea, and you'd have to do it hundreds of times. Similar to Spider-Man having crimes that you had to do, Gotham Knights has the same thing. You have to prevent 250 crimes for a trophy. None of them are hard, but there's like six variations and it's the same shit over and over and over and over....It's got your usual collectibles like finding batarangs scattered throughout the city and different street art and some other stuff. There's a couple side missions that involve fighting some peripheral bad guys, not in the main story. But basically the day time in the game is a cutscene advancing the story or allowing you to upgrade/train at the base, and the nights are preventing crimes and doing fetch quests to advance the story. It is a formula that has been done a thousand times and this game truly doesn't bring anything new to the table. The DLC they added didn't bring anything new to the table either. The trophies require you to beat 'hard versions' of the side-bosses from the main game, but they did the annoying thing that these games do to make the bosses 'harder'....they made it have a million hit points. Your 'power level' goes up as you get better gear and better mods to add to the gear, and each boss has a 'recommended power level' you should be before fighting them...but if you have patience, you can ignore that. The first one of those I did, I was like 3000 power under the recommended level and beat it easily....it took me 27 minutes since I wasn't doing more than 500 damage and he had like 1.2 million HP, but I was able to do it. I decided to level up my power after that fight since I didn't want to spend 30-45 minutes each fight. I decided to do the Heroic Assault part of the DLC first and holy shit is that repetitive. You have to beat 30 floors of battles for this trophy. Each floor has three sections before it is beaten and I think there's only like 5 different things it can be. Either defend a console, beat some faction leaders, survive four waves of bad guys, escort a laser gun or fix some consoles to unlock some doors. It is brutally repetitive, but you can play with three other people. It doesn't make things any easier really (except for a couple of the escort levels and the very last level). The best way to get through these is to put the difficulty to very easy and then just watch TV or something while you go through this mind numbing addition. This game's biggest problem is the fact that it was following in the footsteps of some masterfully done games. If you weren't comparing this game to the others in the series, it'd probably be fine...but the problem is you are. They took the best part of the previous entries and changed it and then didn't do anything new or make anything better. The game runs fine, I had no crashes and everything popped when it should have...but there was nothing memorable at all either. If you get this game as a gift, or it ends up 'free' on PS+ some day, and you have a craving for some Batman-like gameplay....you could play this one...but under no circumstances can I recommend you pay full price for this. Everything this game is has been done before and probably a lot better. 180. Shiren the Wanderer Spoiler This is going to be long so be forewarned. I'm only the 25th person to platinum this game on the site, so I don't think there's a ton of information out there on this one. Shockingly, this was another game I had never heard of and had nowhere near any radar I might have had on games to play. The way I found out about this game was from doing the RPG Mania Event for 2021. The game was on the 'Most Wanted' list that counted as extra points. I had wanted to try and do one of them for the event, and that seemed like the most likely one that I could do. I ended up starting the game on my family vacation to New Hampshire that summer. I was in the midst of my huge streak and was looking for a few Vita games that I could pop some quick trophies while there. Since I was on vacation with my family, it needed to be something I could play for a short while after everyone went to sleep. Shiren had a couple that seemed quick to get and I figured if I wanted to get the game done for the event, I needed to start soon (the vacation was in July). I still had no idea what Shiren was at this point except that it had a ton of UR trophies, and that it seemed grindy as hell. It is grindy as hell....BUT....I did enjoy the vast majority of the game. For those of you that do not know, Shiren the Wanderer is a mix between Rogue-like and Rogue-lite dungeon crawler. There is kind of a 'main hub' called Nekomaneki Village, which is where you respawn if you die, and is also where you store your Gitan (money) and gear that you successfully extract from dungeon exploring. There's a dude to lift curses, a shop, a point card exchange, a place where you can make your own items (I didn't do this at all when I played since I didn't understand the mechanic), and a bunch of other NPCs. Some of those NPCs can join you as an ally and a handful initiate quests. There's the beginning town Inori Village, which is connected to Nekomaneki and is the home of a few important dungeons that you need to do several times. Other than that, there's only a couple of other 'Towns' that you find on the trek up the Tower of Fortune. The Hermit's Hermitage and the Sparrow's Inn. There are sixteen dungeons that you must complete for trophies, however there are probably about ten more you could do, but don't have to for the platinum (I didn't). The dungeons will randomly have shops along the way where you can sell stuff you don't need and maybe buy a few items if there's something useful. Most of the different dungeons have some sort of weird gimmick, like hunger goes down at a timed rate instead of each step (turn), or the room caves in once you leave it meaning you cannot go back. One dungeon you use the traps on the ground against the enemies instead of the traps harming you. You always start at level 1 when you enter a dungeon and most of them make you start with nothing...but there are a handful that you can go into and bring gear. Those ones are the main ones you use for farming the vast amount of items/monsters you have to get for the True Shiren Fan and Shiren, Monster Professor trophies for completing all the item and monster entries in the tracking books. There is a ton of stuff to learn in this game and I'm pretty sure that this game would take over a thousand hours to beat legitimately, without the benefit of save scumming. It is soooo easy to run into bad luck and daytime monsters hit like a truck the further down you go. Several can one-shot you and without a revive item, that ends your 100 floor plunge real quick. Oh yeah, I mentioned daytime monsters...there's a daytime and nighttime mechanics (daytime is in every dungeon with night time being in only some). During the daytime, you can use weapons and a shield, can use scrolls and is pretty straightforward (well not really, there's a ton to learn still). At nighttime, it's dark so you cannot see anything unless it's right next to you or unless you use a torch that casts a small amount of light around you...which expires over time. Each of the dungeons that have a daytime/nighttime cycles have a set number of turns before switching. A turn occurs anytime you do anything. Taking a step is a turn....taking an item out of a pot is a turn....equipping an item is a turn...eating food is a turn. Daytime is generally longer than nighttime. I'd say it's usually between 500 and 800 turns for a day cycle and 300-600 turns for a night cycle, depending on the dungeon. If you attack an enemy at night with a weapon, you only do 1 HP. What you have at nighttime for offense instead of a weapon are 'Abilities' that you can use to do damage, but you can only use each slot one once per floor (there are 8 slots). They only refresh if you collapse and are revived or use a peach to restore some hunger and abilities or use a scroll that regenerates the abilities. Due to this, you generally cannot stay on a floor too long at night or you'll run out of ways to kill the enemies and be a sitting duck. The only benefit of night enemies is they can't see either and will often attack each other as well...so if you can avoid them, they'll clear the floor for you. Early on in the game, you pretty much just avoid enemies and rush the stairs at night since you don't start with any really good abilities. Once you get some more abilities (namely Stairlight, Crawling Confusion and Electrocute), I found night time to be the safer way to travel. Daytime monsters can eff you up in a hurry. I've also mentioned hunger...which is another thing you have to monitor. For every dungeon but one, hunger depletes slightly after a set number of turns (let's say 10). If your hunger gets to 0, you start losing HP. Fortunately, you get a warning when you're at like 15% hunger that says 'Shiren feels dizzy' so that you are reminded to eat a peach or Onigiri to replenish. The downside to waiting that long, is if you are in 'Super Shiren' status (a random status you get from killing enemies that boosts abilities and can grant random beneficial effects), you can lose that bonus. Doesn't always happen, but can. It's actually very easy to lose Super Shiren status. Stepping on a trap (these are hidden unless you use a Navigation Scroll or have on a bracelet that reveals them) or taking enough damage where your HP is flashing red will often do it. Traps are pretty plentiful too, so it's really easy to step on one. You can reveal a trap by swinging your sword at the square in front of you....but that would slow you down tremendously and wastes a turn for hunger as well. The floor layouts are generally consistent from dungeon to dungeon. Usually a cave setup, but there's also floors that have water or are floating or that have lava that can erupt. Most of the dungeon trophies aren't too bad either because the first time you do a dungeon is generally an abbreviated run, like get to floor 25 is the finish line for the first run. If you go back in though, it's 100 floors. Many of the dungeons you only need to do once, so you only need to do the abbreviated tour...but some of them you have to get to floor 100 and some of them you have to go that deep to finish up all the entries in the 'Monster Book'. The early floors are generally not too bad (except in dungeons where you can bring gear). The game gives you a chance to try and accumulate some gear to use in dungeons where you start from scratch. You can find Staves, Talismans, Pots, Scrolls, Grasses, Food, Arrows/Rocks, Weapons, Shields, and Bracelets. Some of the stuff you find is really useful, some of it is harmful and some of it is a joke (literally). Staves give you the ability to do certain things when you wave them. They each have a set amount of charges (usually like 5-7) that can range from useful things like swapping your position with an enemy, or boring a hole through a wall, to detrimental things like hasting an enemy or stupid things like nagging you or putting on a play. There's a Drama Staff that when you wave it, the game says some random lines from a made up play. It is useless and there only for comedic affect. The only reason you would use this staff is because in most of the dungeons, the items are unidentified and the only way to find out what it does is to use it. You can also use an Identify Scroll or Identity Pot, or if you're lucky, an Identify Bracelet that will identify any item you pick up without expiring (not common). Learning what these items do and how to use them effectively is the only way to get through some of these dungeons...even with save scumming. It's the same story with the grasses and scrolls. There are some very useful grasses that can raise your level, heal you or revive you if you fall....then there are some really nasty ones like 'Amnesia Grass' that makes you forget all the identified items you've found or the 'Super Unlucky Seed' that resets you to level one. This is where save scumming becomes useful in some of these deep dives. You can save, use the item, and if it was a good item, keep going or if it was a bad item, you can reload the save and know what it is going forward. The game has a nifty 'name' option where you can rename the item...so that is helpful after you've learned what it is and reload the save. Where save scumming is vital though in this game is the last 25 floors or so of a dungeon. The monsters are really nasty here and can pretty much hurt you from anywhere on the map. Dragons can breathe fire that go through walls and can do 30 damage a clip (you only generally get round 300 HP), Porky enemies can lob rocks at you from anywhere on the map, Tanks that get two moves per turn and if they can see you can shoot two missiles at you for 60 damage each, Fearabbits can warp you from anywhere on the floor (as well as several enemies) and place you right next to it. Each enemy is supercharged that far into the dungeon and most of them have some annoying ability. If there are multiple of those specific enemies I mentioned on a floor, you can have several hundred damage done to you each step, effectively wiping your run. This is why I'm not sure how anyone can beat this game without some save scumming. Well, I know how...but there's a lot of luck involved. So each each weapon and armor has 8 upgrade levels as well as a max of +99 the rating can be. It sounds confusing, since there's two different types of levels, but it's not really. A Katana starts as a Katana, but once it's earned enough XP, it'll level up to a 'Good Katana' and so on for 8 levels. There are scrolls/blacksmiths that can raise the power of a weapon/shield as well. If you find a 'Fate Scroll' and use it on a sword, that Katana goes from a Katana to a Katana+1, which raises it's damage by one. In addition to these levels, weapons/shields have the ability to equip 'runes', which are basically buffs. The lower the level, the weaker the item and the fewer runes it possesses. As they level up, they gain power and more runes. Once they hit level 8, you can equip an infinite amount of runes. Many items come with some special rune as an innate ability. For example, the Scythe does bonus damage to plant enemies. If you have a Katana (that has no innate ability), you can get the rune from the Scythe onto your main weapon in one of two ways. The safest way is with a Synthesis Pot. This pot will synthesize items together and join the power/rune with the first item, of the same kind, you put in. That means you cannot fuse a shield with a sword so you can't get the rune from a shield to play on your sword. It has to be the same type of item to synthesize. What's great about this pot is you'll also get the bonus attack/defensive power if the item you're adding to the pot has bonus power. So if you put your Katana+4 in a Synthesis pot and then add the Scythe+2, your Katana will become a Katana+6 with the rune that does bonus damage to plant enemies. A synthesis pot always holds 5 items, so if you save up some random weapons you find on your dive, and then throw them all in a Synthesis Pot, you can add a ton of runes to your sword. As I mentioned though, there's a cap the lower level the sword is, so the base Katana might get 5 runes, while the Good Katana gets 7 and so on until it's infinite at level 8. The other way to add runes to your weapons is from the enemy called 'Mixers'. If you throw something at a Mixer, it will swallow it. If you throw another item at it, it will swallow that too. The higher the level the mixer, the more it can swallow. The weakest Mixer can only swallow two items. Once you kill the Mixer, it'll drop one, synthesized item. The benefit of using Mixers, is that they can also take the abilities from grasses, some staves, some scrolls and some bracelets and put them on your sword/shield. These monsters only show up on specific floors, so it is beneficial to save these items until you get to floors that these enemies are and then boost your weapons. This is not fool proof and I often would save scum this process as well, since you are generally trying to synthesize the equipment you're using...once you throw it at the Mixer, you're now left without a weapon or a shield and the monster becomes that much harder...oh they also get a 'boost' when they eat something...so there's that too. The luck involves finding the correct items you need to mitigate the damage on these later floors and/or finding Pots that can completely neutralize the damage. There's a rune you can get that eliminates blast damage, which makes the tanks unable to hurt you. There's a rune that halves fire damage or a Pot that will completely neutralize fire damage if you put something inside it. There's another pot that makes it so all thrown items miss. If you find those things and can hold them until these levels, you have a decent chance of getting through....but if you get there and don't...it's virtually impossible to get through a floor without dying. What I would basically do, is save every 5 floors and upload to the cloud until I got to about the 50th floor. Then I would save every floor, because so much can go so wrong so quickly, and if you die....you lose all the items in your possession at the time. It's not as big a deal in the dungeons where you start with nothing (unless you've built a really strong weapon/shield during that dive), but it can be catastrophic in dungeons where you can bring stuff and you've brought your strongest gear. BUT....and I cannot stress this enough....YOU MUST ABORT TO THE MAIN MENU BEFORE UPLOADING YOUR SAVE. If you upload a save without doing this and then either close the game or download a save where this has happened...the game will assume you perished in the dungeon and kick you back to the main village sans your gear/gold. This happened to me right after I had just leveled up the strongest sword in the game to level 8 and had a ton of runes on it. I didn't even do it from being stupid with my saves....and this is the second part I cannot stress enough....TURN OFF THE AUTO-UPLOAD SAVE OPTION ON THE VITA FOR THIS GAME...I lost all my stuff because the Vita uploaded a save file overnight, where I had suspended the game outside of the abort menu, and I died in the dungeon and went to reload my prior save to try again. The save on the cloud was the overnight save and I had lost all my shit. I was extremely frustrated and took some time away from the game. At the time this happened, I didn't understand the game as well as I did by the end of it and felt like I had just added 100 hours to my platinum attempt. It was a nuisance for sure, but that weapon didn't even end up being the best weapon for farming so wasn't as bad as I had thought. I did have that happen two other times (from my own stupidity those times) and while it was very frustrating, I knew better how to replace the gear. So while save scumming is the only safe/efficient way to platinum this game....it does come with risks so beware. For as grindy as this game is, I didn't mind most of the grind since the dungeon dives were pretty fun and several of the more grindy things had shortcuts. For example, to max out the weapons book, you had to find every weapon AND get them all to their final form (8th level). Normally, the amount of grinding needed for that would be insane, however there is a scroll in the game called the 'Gambler's Scroll' that has several different things it can do for you. It can make you go bankrupt, increase the speed of every monster on the floor, explode, raise your character 10 levels, warp you 5 floors ahead OR it can raise the level of every weapon/shield in your inventory by one. There's also a pot called a 'Blessed Pot' that will bless any item you put in it. For scrolls, it gives them a second use. The problem with a Blessed Pot is that there is only two ways to get the item you put in there out...one is to throw the pot to break it, but the other is the use of an 'Extraction Scroll' which empties the pot and puts everything on the ground around you. So the trick for this trophy is to get a Blessed Pot with a 5 capacity, fill it with 5 Gambler's Scrolls and then use the Extraction Scroll to get the Gambler's Scrolls out so that you can use them twice. Use the scroll one time, put it back into your pot and then extract them again. So long as you have enough Extraction Scrolls, you can do this cycle forever. It is this method that is used to level up all the weapons/shields to fill out the book. If you're low on scrolls, you can save scum this too, but it gets tedious. The only challenge becomes getting the base level item for every slot. Similar to Weapons/Shields, each monster has 4 levels for each daytime and nighttime cycles, for a total of 8 there as well. These are not as easy as the weapons/shields since you have to find and defeat each enemy, and not every monster is found in every dungeon. I had made a spreadsheet pretty early to track which monsters I needed in a dungeon before entering and on which floor I should hang out to find them. Some of them are pretty rare and took a couple of trips. Honestly...if you plan to play this game, this website will prove invaluable for you and is a must read. It has everything you need to Platinum the game. The roughest part of the Monster List is the Jackwand enemies. Apparently they were the boss enemies of the co-op levels when the servers were up...but since they aren't anymore, the only way you can fight them is by 'wishing' to fight them by turning in 7 different colored catstones on the 43 floor of the Inori Cave. Unlike the other monsters, there are only 7 versions of the Jackwands and there are no day/night versions since it's a boss. Seven Catstones gets you one wish...so you need at least seven sets to fight all versions of the Jackwands. You also need several other sets to unlock unique items in the other books as well.... You can get one full set of Catsones by using 'Tanuki Passwords' and you get one full set for completing the Destiny's Descent Dungeon (the hardest in the game). You can also buy them from a merchant that goes to random dungeons and sometimes find them from Elite Shops in dungeons or by mining walls in dungeons...but the best way to farm Catstones is to find a 'Pick-a-Choice' Shop in the 'Lost Well' dungeon and save scumming your way to getting a full set of them. The 'Pick-a-Choice' shop involves paying 1k Gitan to the merchant, then choosing one of two warp tiles that shoot you to either an item or a trap door. The trick is to save to the cloud, talk to the merchant and then guess a side. If you guess the wrong side, you still see what kind of item was on the correct tile. In either case, reload your save and if it was a catstone, go on the other warp tile and see if it was a stone you needed, if not take a step sideways and talk to the merchant again. The potential item changes each turn you take before talking to the merchant...so you can cycle through the items until you find what you need. If you get an item you need, there's another warp tile next to the item you receive, that will shoot you off to a random place in the dungeon. Walk back to the merchant and rinse/repeat until you have a full set of stones. The reason you can't get all the sets in one trip is because you cannot put a Catstone in a pot, so each stone takes up one inventory space, and you only have 24 of them (not counting pots that can store any other type of item except other pots and Catstones). What makes this grindy, is that Pick-a-Choice shops can show up on any floor. I found them as low as the 6th floor and as high as the 92nd floor. While it can make your trek harder, my recommendation is to leave 14 empty inventory slots and get two full sets each trip to cut down on the number of dives you do. While you are looking for Catstones, I also recommend keeping any VIP Bracelets you find as well. Get as many of those as you can and it will help greatly on the next step I'm about to talk about... The item and monster trophies were grindy, but at least you were diving dungeons and playing the game to do it....the worst trophy by far is the one for maxing your Gitan (money). You can only hold 999,999 Gitan on your character at a time, but there is a bank in town that will hold your money for you. That can hold 99,999,999 Gitan. For this last trophy, you need to max out the bank. Similar to leveling the weapons, there is a workaround that involves using Extraction Scrolls, Blessed Pots and this time Coupon Scrolls. Coupon Scrolls make everything in the store free....so basically you drop all your items on the ground in a shop (hopefully many VIP Bracelets in Preservation Pots), sell it to the merchant, use a coupon scroll to get the items back for free and then sell them to the merchant again and rinse/repeat until you get 999,999 on your character, then pick up all your items and use an Escape Scroll or Undo Grass to exit the dungeon. I played this game for probably 300-350 hours, and I did this trophy last. After doing everything else in the game, I only had a little over 2,000,000 Gitan in the bank....so I had to dungeon dive 98 times to find shops to do this since you can't do this in town. The easiest place was the 'Merchant's Hideout' where you will always (at least I did) find a shop within the first 10 floors. The good news was I had enough good gear where I got 500k each round of Coupon scrolls, so I could get in and out of a dungeon in about 5-10 minutes using only two Coupon Scrolls....but multiply that 5-10 minutes times 98 trips and that's how long it took for me to do this one trophy. It wasn't interesting like filling out the item and monster books either....and I was super paranoid of dying and losing my stuff or messing up a cloud save. It was mind numbingly stupid and took me almost two weeks to do. Honestly, I could write a full dissertation on the intricacies of this game. I only touched the surface and have said a lot of words already. This game is definitely not for everyone, but with all of the tricks and the ability to save scum...it is definitely doable. Despite my use of save scumming, I'm still pretty proud of this Platinum since it was still grindy as hell and took a lot of patience to overcome. The game is extremely deep, thoroughly executed with well thought out and diverse mechanics. I had a lot of fun learning the ropes and if you want a challenge and a good dungeon crawler...then give it a go. It was one of the longer games I've played and I don't regret it. Now that it's over though...I think it's time to get back to Super Meat Boy to see if I can finally finish that one up. I'm not getting any younger so I feel like the window on this one may be closing for me. Platinums 181-190 Spoiler 181. Walden, a game Spoiler It's been a minute since my last completed game. As I've mentioned before, I have a little project I'm working on in anticipation of a potential future event. I've been playing these games and am about two minutes from the Platinum in four of them. I'm one upgraded weapon away from the Bioshock platinum, with a save right in front of the last upgrade station. I'm one collectible in Call of Duty: World at War away from the platinum with that one collectible being at the start of the level. I'm one cracked safe away from the platinum in Godfather II with a save at the nearest safehouse and I'm a 'viewing the trophy art' trophy away from the platinum in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I've also made good progress in Battlefield: Bad Company, but the 10,002 online kills trophy is probably going to take me several months to achieve. So even though I don't have a ton of completed games recently, I have been making some good progress. Since I'm not sure when I'll be completing these games, I've been writing my reviews about them and saving them to a Word doc so that I'm giving them a fair review at the time they are completed. Walden, a game was me taking a break from these more grindy games to play something a bit more laid back and relaxing...and what could be more relaxing than spending a year by Walden Pond fishing and taking in nature? One look at the trophy list should have clued me in that this wouldn't be quite as laid back as I was thinking. There is one pretty mindless, grindy trophy and several of them didn't pop when they were supposed to. In all honesty, I probably would have never played this game if left to me own devices. My friends @Jens and @eigen-space wrote a very nice guide for the game and since they seemed to enjoy it enough to write the guide, I thought I'd give it a go. To their credit, the guide is quite comprehensive for what you need to do to get the platinum and I found their recommendation of doing two playthroughs to be the best approach. For those of you that do not know, Walden Pond is a pond in Concord, MA (slightly northwest of Boston) where Henry David Thoreau decided to live on his own for a year back in 1854, and he wrote a book about the experience titled Walden. Thoreau was a 'Transcendentalist', which is the belief that people are inherently good and that society and its institutions are responsible for their corruption. My biggest memory from learning about him in high school was that he went to jail for refusing to pay his taxes to support a war he did not believe in. That is a very 10,000 foot view on it, but Thoreau decided to test this theory by withdrawing from society and living on his own out in the woods to see if he could, not only survive, but thrive on his own. This game was developed by USC Game Innovations Lab and is, by and large, an educational game. At its core, it's supposed to be a survival game, but I don't think you can actually die in this game, just lose inspiration. In this game, you play the role of Thoreau and the game begins in the summer. You are placed by his unfinished cabin, and are left to your own devices on how you wish to proceed. The goal is to survive an entire year in your cabin. There are several seasons that you must make it through, starting with early summer, then late summer, early fall, late fall, early winter, midwinter, late winter and finally spring. Each season lasts three in-game days and each day lasts about 15 minutes. Based on this, you can see one playthrough is roughly 6.5-7 hours. The basic tenant of the game is to forage enough food, gather enough fuel (wood), keep your clothes from falling off your body and keep your cabin from falling down. If you can do all of those things, you'll make it through. There is generally plenty of ways to stay alive. You can fix your clothes, chop wood and fix your cabin right at the cabin. You can forage for berries almost year round just outside the cabin as well. It really isn't that hard to do. The 'gimmick' in this game involves trying to 'find inspiration' while you are roaming around the pond. You'll find as you're playing, that the more inspiration you have, the more vivid the colors of the game are. While the graphics aren't 'amazing', they are decent enough that you can really notice when you are missing inspiration. You primarily gain inspiration by reading books and examining nature (you can zoom in on things in the game). As you find new items, you'll jot them down in your notebook and gain inspiration. In addition to finding new things in nature, you can also find arrowheads laying around. You primarily lose inspiration by not soaking in nature and by becoming fatigued from doing tasks. If you get too fatigued, you'll collapse and when you awake, are completely out of inspiration. I'm pretty sure the arrowheads are excerpts of Thoreau's writings. You'll find that these arrowheads will give you clues on his beliefs as a Transcendentalist as well as a slight clues on maybe what you need to be doing. You'll also find that the phrases that are said when you find an arrowhead, end up being scrawled in your notebook. The side quests or tasks that you need to do, are learned about from the letters you receive at your cabin, conversations with your good friend Emerson, mail you receive at the post office in the city of Concord or fliers located on the wall of that same post office. There is a trophy called Hermit, which requires you to complete the game once without ever going into town. This playthrough is exceptionally boring. There is not much to do in the game beyond foraging, chopping wood, fixing your house and mending your clothes without going into town. There are a few letters that you receive that let you know of potential side quests to do...but every one of them, except finding Emerson's books, requires at least one trip into town, so you can't really do anything during this playthrough. My recommendation for this playthrough is to just jog all over the place. The trophy Sojourner requires you to walk for 50 miles. You absolutely will not do that in one playthrough and I didn't get that trophy to pop until the end of my third playthrough. I basically just spent that playthrough jogging from your Cabin to Emerson's house and back. You run out of energy just outside of Emerson's house if you run there all the way from the cabin. He has a fireplace, which is important, because Thoreau regains his stamina by staring at a fire...you can then turn around and run back to your cabin and stare at your fire....and just do that over and over only stopping to replenish food/fuel as needed. The Saunterer trophy for walking 20 miles, popped just before the end of my first year at Walden Pond. The bummer about this trophy is that there is no tracker that lets you know how far you've walked. You just have to hope that the trophy isn't bugged and keep walking. I was convinced that the trophy was bugged since I felt like I ran several marathons that first year at Walden and the 20 mile trophy only popped at the very end. I spent the entire winter ice skating back and forth between two fires on the pond (ice skating is faster walking in this game) and it still took a full year for the 20 mile trophy. I was curious, since I was nervous it wasn't counting my miles, how big Walden Pond is...I Googled it and it says it is 1.7 miles to walk around...so you have to walk all the way around the pond just under 30 times to hit 50 miles. If all you do is walk around the pond, you can make it all the way around one time per day. You won't need to do that since you have a lot of walking to do in your second playthrough...but I thought it was worth noting. Another trophy is called Townie and that is for spending an hour of real time in town. I spent my time in town running laps around it trying to kill two birds with one stone. If you can't tell already...the stupid walking trophy is in the back of your head the whole time as a trophy hunter. I'm pretty sure that they have distance being extremely accurate and you legit have to walk 50 miles. As I mentioned, I ended up doing three playthroughs. Not by choice either mind you. On my second playthrough, I ran into a couple of glitched trophies. There is a trophy called Surveyor for doing surveying jobs around Walden Pond. You get the job by visiting the post office and reading a flyer that is pinned to the wall. The flyer is up there from the beginning of the game and I started doing the jobs the moment they became available. Once you finish one surveying job, you can revisit the post office to find the next request. I believe there are eight in all. Once I finished the eighth job, the trophy should have popped but didn't. I believe in late fall, you receive a letter from Emerson letting you know that there are surveying jobs available. I'm pretty sure that you glitch out the trophy if you start the surveying jobs before Emerson tells you about them. I was frustrated it didn't pop, but continued on with my second playthrough to finish up the Abolitionist trophy for helping slaves escape the US. Frustratingly enough, this trophy didn't pop either when I did the final request for that trophy. I'm not sure if they are tied together or not, and it may have been that the Naturalist trophy for gathering all of Dr. Agassiz's specimens would have glitched out too...but I didn't complete those side quest requirements. Once the Abolitionist trophy didn't pop, I stopped my second playthrough and started a third playthrough. On this playthrough, I waited until Emerson told me about the surveying jobs and on that playthrough, everything popped as it should have. So word to the wise if you plan on playing this game...on your non-hermit playthrough...DO NOT start the surveying side quest until after Emerson notifies you about it. It may have been a coincidence, but it's the only thing I can point to that caused the trophies not to pop when they should have during my second playthrough. Turns out I would have needed that third playthrough regardless as the 50 mile trophy was the last one to pop for me and didn't pop until spring started. In hindsight, it may have been a blessing that the trophies glitched in the second playthrough because it meant my third playthrough gave me more to do than just walk back and forth. If I had finished that second playthrough, it would have popped sometime during the winter of the third...but I suppose you could continue your second playthrough and just go through the seasons, walking each day, until it popped. I have mixed feelings about this game overall. I was bored to tears during my first playthrough as there is legitimately not enough to do in the game if you aren't going into town. Your hermit playthrough only consists of walking, taking boat rides to get that trophy out of the way, and maintaining your different supplies. The idea of inspiration enhancing the colors in the game was interesting...but there's no consequence at all for having low inspiration other than lifeless graphics. The second playthrough was way more interesting, but littered with trophies that didn't pop when they should, which soured that experience. That ended up making the third playthrough feel stressful as if I could be wasting my time if the trophies didn't pop this time. It was a relief when they did pop, but the focus was on making sure I didn't do anything to glitch out the trophies rather than enjoy what the game has to offer. At the end of the day, it was a pretty low stress, but boring game. If you read all of the diary entries, you would learn a thing or two about transcendentalism and about Thoreau, but the story doesn't go into any great depth outside of these small phrases you find. I bought Walden, a game back in June of 2022 for $4.49. That is a fair price for this game and I do not walk away feeling ripped off. It would have been a much more enjoyable game to play without the hermit playthrough and without the trophy popping issues. If you can find the game for that price, it's probably worth a playthrough...but any more than that and you may walk away feeling shortchanged. I'm going to try and mix in a few more 'non project' games so that I have more reasons to write. Hope everyone is having an enjoyable gaming year so far! Can't believe it's already March... 182. Strategic Mind: The Pacific Spoiler Here's a secret about me...I love Turn Based Strategy games. I love them. I grew up playing games like Civilization 2 and Lords of the Realm 2 with my brother. I like playing board games like Risk and Mage Wars and some of my all-time favorite games are from this genre. I'm a sucker for them and no matter how bad the reviews are for a game, there's a decent chance I'll still give it a try if it's a TBS. That's why Space Hulk is on my profile and that's why I played this game. I had never heard of it before and the only reason I picked it up was I saw it randomly when scrolling through a PS Sale back in November. It was 50% off and with a name like that...I figured TBS. I looked it up here and saw that there were only a few dozen players of the game and nobody had played it in like a year. Didn't bode well for how good it would be, but I looked up a review, which gave it a pretty poor score, but I saw some of the gameplay and didn't care what the reviews said. This was a game I was going to enjoy. I picked it up with no real timetable of when I wanted to play it...but its scarcity and genre had me interested. There's almost no information out there on this game and what little there is was less than flattering. So what is Strategic Mind? It's an historically based TBS game that utilizes a grid format for maps, reminiscent of Civilization. There are towns/cities (that you don't do anything with directly, but are important to the strategy of a level) and chess-like pieces that can move certain spaces and have specific attacks. There are Naval Ships, Naval Planes and Land Soldiers/Tanks. The green pieces are your core/forever pieces that stay with you throughout the game. If they die, they're gone from the game, but you can level them up and give them bonuses to attacks or extra things they can do. The gold/yellow pieces are also pieces you control, but they are rentals. You can only control those ones for that specific map and whether they live or die won't matter since they don't go to the next zone with you....well that's not true exactly....if too many of your pieces die, you lose 'promotion points' and miss out on the trophy for that level. But if you're going to sacrifice a piece, you want it to be the gold/yellow piece. The blue pieces are allied NPC's that you do not control and the red pieces are the enemy. The story of the game follows the US and Japanese conflict in the Pacific during World War II. It's supposedly fairly historically accurate, however I can't say for sure since I skipped all the cutscenes (I'll explain why later). There are two campaigns. One as the US Navy and one as the Japanese Navy. Each campaign has nine battles to complete to finish. The maps do seem to be pretty accurate, which was neat and I did end up enjoying the game...HOWEVER! This game is so brutally, and almost unforgivably, flawed. I'm going to write about all of the major sins this game has. The first major sin is also the first one you see. The game opens with a CG scene, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Never mind how terrible the scene is, showing a family having breakfast before being bombed from the sky...but the CG and voice acting is HORRENDOUS!! The mouths move completely independent of what the person is saying and there is absolutely no syncing involved at all. The voice acting is extremely flat and they would have been much better served having still frames with a Narrator or something. It is by far the worst CG I have ever seen in my life. I think games in the 90's did a better job of syncing the mouths to the words than this game. It was horribly bad. The next major sin for me was the lack of a tutorial mission or anything. I played the US campaign first and you get dumped into a battle where you are given primary and secondary objectives. You have no foot soldiers yet and only Naval ships and planes. There is no explanation of the stats of each...no explanation of anything. It's the Dark Souls of TBS games. You get dumped into a battle and have to figure things out on your own. I got the platinum and I still have no idea what most of the things on the screen were. I know that the buildings are train stations, runways, ports, supply stations and a couple of other things. I know as your units run out of gas or ammo, you need to go to one of these things to refill...but I'm unclear as to how close you need to be or anything. Some of the hexagon squares on the map are red, which I thought meant you were in range of the supplies or something...but that didn't seem to be the case. I know you don't get the benefit of the building if it's destroyed until it is rebuilt...but I have no idea how to leverage the buildings to your advantage. It doesn't help that the controls in this game are completely fucked. They aren't bad, so long as you do not try to use any of the quick keys to change the size of the map or navigate the HUD. If you should try to press any button outside the D-Pad, twin sticks, , :triangle:, or :circle:...the cursor just randomly will start to move around the screen. Pressing L1/R1 buttons is supposed to jump to different areas of the HUD to help make navigation easy...but if you do, and then move the cursor, it will just keep wanting to return to that spot. The only fix I found was resetting the game. If you play this game, only use those buttons I mentioned above or you're going to pull your hair out trying to maneuver around the screen. It also doesn't help that you can have three units occupy the same square at once. It could be a building, ground unit and air unit or submarine, ship and plane...but trying to select the on you want was more of a pain than needed. I figured out by around the sixth map that the HP of the units could be selected and that you didn't have to click on the image of the unit. That helped, but was still not fool proof. It also was a bit of a pain having a unit try to occupy a town. If you didn't click just right, you'd click on the town and see the supply routes (which I still don't understand how they work.) Despite those headaches, once you do figure out how to move around the screen without the random cursor warping....it's not bad....but it is really bad until then. The HUD in between missions isn't terrible. In between missions you have the opportunity to acquire new units, upgrade existing ones, get equipment, add/upgrade abilities for individual units via the level up tab or add/upgrade abilities that you can use as a commander. You earn a type of currency in each level that you can spend in this phase. The promotion points (called Victory Points in the war room) can be used to upgrade the the commander abilities, which either add things you can do or lessen the cost of abilities during a campaign. The other currency you have is called 'Prestige', which you earn by defeating enemies and finishing objectives. That currency is used to get new units or upgrade existing ones. I found that I liked to upgrade my existing ones more than buy new ones. New units are expensive and I feel like you get more mileage for your prestige on making your existing ones stronger. I tried to get two Capital Ships (Battleships), two Carriers, two to four Destroyers and two subs. I'd then try to get up to five fighter planes and five bombers to go on the Carriers. For ground troops, I got more infantry types than tank types since infantry types tended to be more mobile...but I'd have a couple of each. It takes several campaigns to be able to afford all those units, but that was what I aimed for. The next brutal thing...the phrases your units say when you click on them. I think they were trying to add a bit of humor to the game...but it is so bad and gets really annoying really fast. Plus they randomly throw in swears for no reason. Sometimes when you click on your ground units as the US, they say something that sounded like 'hang on, we've got to take care of some stupid fucks' or something. I ended up not being able to play the game around my kids, which was a shame since they were interested in it. I don't get upset at swear words, since I swear all the time myself...but it just seemed really out of place for this game. I'm also not one that gets offended easy, but one of the Japanese submarine lines seemed borderline racist. All the other pieces speak in perfect English (whether they are Japanese units or US), but this one line goes like 'oooo how you see me' in a Japanese accent that felt like it came from South Park. It wouldn't have stood out as inappropriate if all of the Japanese units spoke with the accent...but it came across as them trying to make a joke on the accent and again didn't seem necessary in the context of the game and the story. In any case, they all get so repetitive and what may have been funny once, got super annoying by the 400th time you hear your pilot say 'low on ammo, not on altitude'. The last sin I'll blast them for are the bugs. I don't know if it got buggy because I had 600 save files in the game, but my game crashed about 30 times on the last US campaign alone and another 10-15 times throughout the entire Japanese campaign. Why did I have so many saves you might be wondering...because the game makes two autosaves each turn. Once at the beginning of your turn, and once right before you hit 'End Turn'. Doing that makes save scumming insanely easy, but it then will auto save your save scumming attempts and the number of saves you have grows quickly. By the time I got to about the fifth level in the Japanese Campaign, any time I tried to make a manual save, it told me I had too many saves and had to delete some. I like the autosave at the beginning of each turn...but it should cycle through ten or something. Anyways, on the last level of the US Campaign, I had upgraded my tanks to the highest level. Apparently that broke the game, because the sprite for the tank didn't appear on the screen. Instead, a giant red question mark appeared where my tank should have been. You could click on the question mark and move it like a tank...but the sprite started to fall through the screen or randomly warp around. Just check out this awesome tank sprite: The shame about it is the game was actually really fun outside of the nonsense. It is very challenging as the fog of war makes virtually all of the enemy units disappear at the end of each turn and you have to re-discover them. Scouting plays a huge role in success and since most units can move a great distance, you need to play it a little safe as it's easy to have the enemy units gang up on your aircraft carrier and send it down to Davy Jones Locker. Now that I know what I'm in for, I'll probably end up playing the other games in the series if they go on sale. I figured out how to avoid the annoying stuff (mostly) and will be able to just have fun with the maps. The trophies are straightforward even if there is no real explanation on what you need to do. Basically you just need to do all the objectives, defeat all the enemies and control all the buildings and you get both trophies each level has. It's a bit easier said than done because some secondary objectives have a time limit on them and some are well hidden. It can also be challenging finding all of the enemies at times due to how strong that fog of war is. Half of the trophies are for 'Gain Enough Promotion Points'. There are 400 promotion points available each map. You gain promotion points for completing objectives and defeating enemies. You lose promotion points for taking too many turns to beat the level and/or losing too many units. There are probably other ways you can lose promotion points as well, but none that I came across. The good news is your promotion points are shown on the top of the map so you can tell when you've done everything. The campaign will want to end after you finish all the primary objectives, but you can return to the map instead of finishing to clean up the rest. This game has a really good concept and the framework of a really good TBS, but the execution of it was such garbage that I have a hard time recommending this game to anyone other than TBS enthusiasts such as myself. The levels were fairly long too, mostly due to how many units you control. You could have anywhere from eight to twenty units. Trying to figure out what to do with each of them and then battling the HUD made each turn take several minutes. It took me roughly 80 hours to beat this game, however a lot of it was going back to replay earlier saves to make sure I completed all of the objectives before moving on. It's definitely not a quick game, but I probably took longer than is needed. If you know what you're doing, you could probably get through it in about 40 hours. Since it takes so long to learn the game and you are battling the HUD half the time, 60 seems more likely. Despite all of the headaches and all of the bad things about the game, I'm glad I played it and I did enjoy it enough that I'll buy the rest of the games eventually...but not a chance in hell for $30. We'll see if/when they go on sale again. As of now, I'm only the third person to platinum the game and I can't give any really good reason why there should be a fourth. 183. Final Fantasy I Spoiler This is it folks....this is where it all started for me. I had played games like Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Contra and Mike Tyson's Punchout and enjoyed them, but this was the first game I became obsessed with. I first saw the original Final Fantasy at my best friends house when I went over to play. He had older brothers with a Nintendo and they were playing this game. I had never seen anything like it. You got to pick your own party and name your characters, very different from anything I'd played before. The music was amazing. I was entranced with the into music and loved the battle theme and the first time they went over the bridge behind Coneria Castle, I used to let the image show and music play for a good ten minutes before continuing on. The black mage sprite was just so awesome. When I went home, I told my mom that I had to have this game. I wouldn't be able to sleep until I had it. I would never ask for another thing as long as I lived if she got it for me. The next time we went to our Mall, we stopped in the Electronics Boutique and I saw the game on the wall. I begged my mother to get it for me and she calmly told me no. I don't remember throwing a lot of tantrums in my life, but I threw one there. I went all out, crying and yelling and all the things I'd be mortified at if my kids did to me in public. There's no way in hell I would get a game for my kid if he pulled the same shit I did, but my mother is not me. Turns out she had already bought me the game and wanted to surprise me when we got home. It was the first time in my life that I remember feeling really embarrassed and ashamed about my behavior. I also felt really guilty about how I ruined my mother's surprise. At the end of the day, it ended up being a good choice for my mother to get me the game because it did make me a bit more self-aware and I never did that again. Now I had my own game and I couldn't wait to get home and play it. My brother was also very excited to play this game that I had talked so much about. A quick aside for those of you that are whipper snappers...these old NES games didn't have many save slots, if they had them at all. You had to ration out saves and make wise choices if you were playing a game that was able to save more than one game of progress at a time. Final Fantasy on the NES was a game that could only have one save on it at a time, meaning only me or my brother could have a game going at once. We didn't learn this until we got home of course and my brother was not pleased that he wouldn't get to play, so my poor mom ended up getting a second copy after our next trip to the mall in order to be fair. Before that though, I loaded my game, heard that famous intro music and put a big smile on my face. It was my turn to choose my party. There is only one real party and one set of names that is canon of course....that party is Fighter, Black Belt, White Mage and Black Mage with the names York, Dee, Thor and Zeus. This was my first party lineup and has been my bread and butter lineup when I replay the game every so often. Of course, with games as expensive as they were and my mother having just bought two copies, we didn't get another game for a long while and that suited us just fine since there was no need for another game after we had this one. My brother, best friend and I played the shit out of our copies. We used to have competitions among ourselves to see who could beat the game the lowest level? Who could beat the game with four White Mages? Four Fighters? Without promotion? If any of us had a thought for a challenge, we all did it and compared notes. I played through this game so many times and it was amazing. For those wondering, I held the record for lowest Chaos win at level 22. My brother had the earliest Marsh Cave clear at level 3 and my friend had the earliest Lich victory at level 7. We all beat the game with virtually every job combination possible, but that first one I mentioned, that is the original and best. The instruction booklet for Final Fantasy came with a large map of the world. On one side was the map and on the other side the bestiary. Here's another nugget for you young'ns that don't know what it's like to grow up without a cell phone....people used to read in the bathroom. If you forgot a magazine or something, it used to be the back of a shampoo bottle or Q-Tip box or whatever you could get your hands on to pass the time. Once I had video games, it turned into instruction booklets and Nintendo Power (or still shampoo bottles if I forgot reading material). No phones to pass the time while doing your business. Why on earth am I talking about this during a Final Fantasy review? Because I had memorized that Bestiary due to the nature of no phones back then. I have forgotten quite a bit, but I know a Pirate had 6 HP, an Imp 8 HP and GrWolf 72 HP, Lich 400 HP and Chaos 2000 HP. I knew where all of everything was located. This game had no secrets from me. It's quite amazing actually, how much this game/series shaped my life. I fell in love with games with Final Fantasy. I bought an SNES to be able to play Final Fantasy 2. I bought a Playstation to be able to play Final Fantasy VII. I spent 8 years of my life playing Final Fantasy XI, where I met some of the members of my linkshell in New York City to hang out. I ended up going the PS3 route over the XBox route to be able to play Final Fantasy XIII. I'm a trophy hunter today because of this game. In between all this, Final Fantasy helped me through some very difficult times in my life. When I was depressed and alone, Final Fantasy was my escape. Where I could pretend I was a hero and could make a difference in the world. When I was very low, it helped me feel like things were ok. I turn 42 next month and Final Fantasy has played a role in my life for about 32 of them. A lot of people probably think I'm nuts, but these games were there for me when I felt that nobody else was. I'm thankful to the series for what it provided me and I will always be a fanboy for those reasons. When I saw that these games were being released on the PS4 with trophy support, I was giddy with excitement. Not because I'd finally get to play them again, but because I really wanted them to be a part of my profile since they were important games in my life and I wanted them on here with the rest of the ones I've played. I tried to pre-order the physical version but it went on sale and was sold out while I was sleeping and I never had a chance. I love this series, but I'm not paying $800 on Ebay for it either. The games were originally supposed to come out the end of May...which happens to be the week of my birthday. Once I saw the release date, I decided to treat myself for my birthday. By and large, I don't care about my birthday. I'm a day older than yesterday and a day younger than tomorrow and age is just a number. I never take the day off and always work because it's a Tuesday and who gives a shit....but this year I was going to bask in some nostalgia and spend the week bingeing on my childhood. I was probably the only person in the world that was a little sad when the release date was moved up to April 19th. I ended up canceling the days off for my birthday and moved them to this week...no harm, no foul right? Nope lol For those wondering, I work in the back office of a bank. I've been very fortunate since Covid started to be able to work remotely and I've been working from home with my games three feet away from me for over three years now. 95% of the time, working at the bank has been amazing...the 5% of the time it's not is generally when we're being audited. Guess what this week is at my bank...that's right...audit week. Normally, we only have one audit at a time going on when we do them and these are audits that are being conducted we pay a firm to do so that if/when we're examined by the real thing, we're confident that we're in compliance with all standards and regulations. That means we schedule them ourselves...wouldn't you know it but our audit scheduler didn't just sign us up for one audit this week but THREE!!! My day off requests were denied (well I canceled them since I'm the supervisor and I can't be out during an audit) and instead of spending my week basking in nostalgia, I've been answering auditor questions about ACH returns, debit card disputes, wire forms (among other thing)....trust me....it's every bit as fun as that sounds. Well, I was determined to play the game the day it came out and cue the 95% of why it is awesome to work at a bank remotely. I was able to play the game while working. I couldn't focus completely on the game and it was slow moving at times...but I was able to do enough to keep me happy. As I mentioned earlier...I've played this game many, many times including competitively for a bit with the Final Fantasy Randomizer group. I play the game fairly often but I've never played the remastered version before. For the most part, the remaster pays good homage to the original. I appreciated that it allowed you to play the game with the original soundtrack and original font. I was thrown for a bit of a loop at first since the enemies have different HP than what I'm used to and most are also called different names. I figured it out, but it was different. Not only were most of the enemies named something different, but virtually every weapon, armor, and item is also named something different. I've played enough Final Fantasy games that I know what they are, but it's something to be mentioned. They also made several quality of life improvements. In the original version, you had to manually select different enemies for your guys to fight. If you selected the same monster as another warrior and the monster was killed, the system didn't auto-select the next monster, but your next warrior would swing at an empty slot and got the 'Ineffective' message. 'Ineffective' was the stuff of nightmares. You couldn't spam 'A' during farming battles, you had to make sure you picked carefully or risked death. That is gone in the remaster...you can hold 'A' and pray just fine now. Also in the original, you could not by things in bulk. If you wanted 99 heals, you had to buy 99 heals individually, usually a 5-10 minute proposition. There was also only one level of heal. In the remaster you can buy 99 at once and there's potions, hi-potions and x-potions. A lot of the quality of life improvements made the game far easier as well. There was no such thing as a Phoenix Down in the original. If you died, you either needed to have a life spell, or trek all the way back to a town with a church that could raise you. God help you if you died near Melmond and had to trek all the way back to Coneria for a raise. Being poisoned was lethal (it's actually more lethal in the remaster since you lose more HP per turn than the original). The cutscenes are a nice touch and the map is altered slightly in this version. This is mostly noticeable up near Onrac and by the Mirage Tower, but there are small differences everywhere. This part explains my routing and has some spoilers, so I'll hide it for those that haven't played this game since it's so freaking old at this point... Spoiler Having played the game so frequently, I have a preferred route of doing things. The game and guide are setup so that you do the Volcano after Earth Cave, but I don't like that route. I always go from Earth Cave directly to Castle Ordeals. It's a shorter walk from the river to the castle than from the Airship landing spots and the monsters in that area suck ass to fight. The Zeus Gauntlet (just Gauntlet in this version) is located there and is an item that casts Lit 2 (Thundara) and helps make the WHM more useful pretty early. It's a relatively short dungeon and you can get it off your list quickly. From Ordeals, I generally go to the Ice Cavern to get the Floater (Levistone?) for the airship next. After Marsh Cave, the Ice Cavern is the worst dungeon in the game. The Sorcerer's (Mindflayers) only do 1-2 damage per hit, but have the chance to insta-kill you with an attack, and they usually travel in packs. The Frost Dragons and Frost Wolves can cause some damage with their AOE abilities and it's kind of a longer dungeon. But, getting the airship really opens up the game. Once you have the Airship, you can pretty much do whatever you want. I usually head straight to the Cardia Islands to loot the treasures and get promoted. I usually then swing by Melmond and Crescent Lake to pick up Warp and Exit before then heading over to the Oasis to buy the Bottle for the Fairy. If I'm short of the 50k gold, I would generally head back over to Earth Cave to farm the 'Hall of Giants'. That is actually removed from the remaster, as are all spawn tiles. The 'Hall of Giants', the double Agama tile in the Volcano and the Mummy tile in Astos' castle are great farming zones since you can force spawn virtually every step. The mummy tile is safer since there are no random encounters and it's a quick step outside to use a Tent and save or hop in the airship over to Coneria for a 30g per night stay at the Inn. In the remaster, it goes from being a spawn tile in front of the chest to a monster-in-a-box or wandering one-time fight. Since the game allows you to quadruple your gold and XP gain, there's really no need to farm in this version...but in the original, it was a necessity. In the remaster, I used the double gold boost, but didn't touch the XP one until I ran into the Warmech.... Once I could afford the Bottle at the Caravan, it's a straight shot to Gaia to get the Oxyale. I like to clear out the Onrac area in one trip, so that means a trek inside the waterfall and then on to the Mermaids and The Kraken. You usually get some good levels in the Kraken's lair and since you have the Cube from the Waterfall and scored the Tablet (Rosetta Stone) in the Shrine, you can swing back to Melmond to visit the infamous Dr. Unne to learn the language of the Lefeinish. Now that you can understand what those toga dudes are saying, you can pick up the Chime and head over to Mirage Tower. Don't forget to pick up Nuke (Flare) and Fade (Holy) while you're there though! Mirage Tower kinda sucks too. It's windy and the enemies are of the pain variety. Fortunately, the boxes on the first floor are easy to grab and then save since the entrance to the next floor is right next to the exit from the dungeon. Once you get past the Blue Dragon, you've made it to the Sky Fortress and the home of Tiamat. This area is annoying only because the boxes are very spread out and you are very exposed to battles. It's another great area to get some levels and gold if needed. That last floor though can be a doozy. The hardest enemy in the game, The Warmech, lives there. I don't remember him being that rare in the original (I used to farm him to try to hit the level cap), but apparently it's a 1/64 or 3/64 chance to spawn in this version. I killed Tiamat first and then walked up and down the corridor looking for the deadly machine. I got very lucky and got it on like my fifth encounter...but got very unlucky in the fight and he used Nuke 4 turns in a row, causing 300 damage to all of my characters each round. The Warmech is hard in the original, but he wasn't ridiculous like this game. I didn't use the XP bonus in the game until this point. When I saw the kind of damage the Warmech dished out, I wasn't going to waste my time on a 1/64 spawn rate if I was going to die and lose my progress like that. While I got that first encounter in 5 fights, it took about an hour before I saw him again..but in that time I was able to get to level 50 and get that trophy out of the way. In the original game, the level cap was 50 so I was surprised when I continued to gain levels after 50. Even with my levels that high, the Warmech was still a challenge as he again spammed Nuke on me. This time I was expecting it and relegated my WHM to heal each round. After about six rounds, the Warmech was down for the count and I was able to move on to Gurgu Volcano at last. I will take this opportunity to mention that I know where every box in the original game is located...there are extra treasure boxes in the remaster version. None of the boxes in the original that were 'Empty' are in the remaster. They all have something. There were also three boxes in Marsh Cave and three boxes in Gurgu that I'm fairly certain aren't in the original. I had missed the Marsh Cave ones the first time I was there and didn't notice until I realized the map shows you how many boxes are left. I was very surprised to see three missed in Marsh Cave and I almost made the same mistake in Gurgu, except I checked how many were left on Kary's floor and saw there were three more. They were all on that last floor, but I swear there's only one there in the original, yet there were four in the remaster. Anyway, I zerged through the Volcano and made Kary my bitch before cleaning up the last couple of monsters in the bestiary around the world (there were four I didn't fight through normal play) and heading to the Temple of Fiends for the final march to Chaos. At this point in the game I was like level 65 or something and the monsters melted in front of me. It took very little strategy to get through TOF. In the original, TOF was extremely challenging. It's a long slow walk to Chaos filled with battles against the hardest enemies in the game along the way and another round against all four (beefed up) fiends before the final battle. In the original game, Chaos has 2000 HP...in this game he has 20,000. It's almost like the game expects you to use the modifiers as that would be an impossible battle in the original. All the OG Final Fantasy players can tell you the horror of getting all the way down to Chaos, do like 1800 HP worth of damage, only to have him Cure IV and wipe you with a Nuke the following turn. No save state or quick save in the original and it meant another full march to Chaos. In the original, spells like Fast (Haste) and Tmpr (Temper) are critical in winning these boss fights. It was less so in the remaster and it felt like the damage on spells was boosted a bit as well. In the original, there was a lot more variation in the amount of damage a spell would do. In the remaster, spell damage was very consistent. I had originally hoped to be one of the first ten people to complete the game. The game meant so much to me as a kid, that I just wanted my name to be up there with the first completed. The irony is not lost on me considering the thread that is going on in that game's forum...it would mean nothing to anyone but me, but it was something I did want. Being unable to take the day off, I did the best I could and beat the game in just over 12 hours and am currently the 30th person to finish the game. I'm happy to be on the list, but I had hoped for higher. This game did usurp The Wolf Among Us as my fastest plat. I had intentionally not beaten any game in less than 23 hours because I loved TWAU and it's trophy image. This game is a good replacement on my milestones considering how important it was in my gaming life. I don't love the platinum image, but I do love the game. The remaster is a fine representation of the game, but is missing that something to make it feel truly authentic. I'm not sure I'll play this version again since access to the original via an emulator is so easy and I'd rather play the original for that nostalgia than this one. If you have never played Final Fantasy though, I think it's worth the $12. If you're not a superfan, you could probably wait until it's on sale and be ok. Shit, if you've never played it before you've waited 30+ years already, what's a few more months right? I don't expect others to have the same reaction to this game as I do, but this is my love letter to Final Fantasy and I thank it for all it's given me over the years. 184. Final Fantasy II Spoiler In the thousands and thousands of hours that I've played Final Fantasy, only about five or so were in Final Fantasy II. As a kid, I never even knew this game existed. For me, Final Fantasy II is Final Fantasy 2 (SNES). I didn't learn until my last couple of years of high school, when emulators were becoming more of a thing, that there were Japanese Final Fantasy games that were never released in the states. I was a little annoyed at first. It never even occurred to me at the time that games weren't released everywhere when a game came out. The internet was still new for most people and your best source of information was still word-of-mouth or Nintendo Power/printed magazines and stuff. My best friend was the one to break the news to me and he set me up with NESticle and an English translation of Final Fantasy II and I loaded it up for the first time. I was a little disappointed off the bat that I wasn't going to get to choose my lineup like in the first one and the music was changed and didn't strike me quite the same way. When I went out for my first few fights and saw that I didn't gain XP but my individual stats seemed to randomly level up made me super confused. Up until then, I had never played a game that did that before. I mean, it makes sense in the real world that the more you do/use something, the more proficient you become at it...but in this game it just made leveling up feel like a nuisance. I also remember getting lost really early in this game. I think more of the game was accessible early than I was expecting and there really wasn't a ton of direction on what to do. It also had some 'hidden' things to find. Between not knowing where to go and the leveling system being somewhat fucked, I gave it up pretty early. I don't even remember getting the snow glider thing. I mostly remember walking up and down the middle land section that wrapped around the world and never figuring out what to do. With games like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics to play, my patience for this game wasn't long and I never ended up going back to it. Flashforward to now. I remember the sour taste I had after playing this one and is the game I was least looking forward to playing. Normally, I'd pass on the XP and Gil boosts for these games since it removes the challenge...but I didn't want to deal with the leveling system in this game so I went X4 on both. My goal for this game was to just get through it and see if it could stand up to the other games in the series. One of the things I like about the Final Fantasy series is that they are willing to take risks and try new things out to see what works. No two Final Fantasy games are the same. They always make changes and adjustments. The only real staples of the games are the great storytelling and the music. Combat always has some sort of wrinkle. Gaining levels or learning skills or unlocking abilities is virtually always tweaked as well. Sometimes it is for the better and sometimes it's a swing and a miss. For me the Paradigm system in XIII was a hit while the Gambit system in XII felt like a miss. I liked leveling in VI where there was natural progression, yet you could supplement your stats with Espers as you leveled. I found the Sphere Grid in X to be cumbersome and grindy,(but not altogether bad)....but there were definite systems that I liked better. I give them a lot of credit for being willing to break something that was working and being willing to see if they could make something different and better. They show that they are constantly trying to improve on things. As I mentioned above, I get what they were thinking with the leveling system here, and I think it works in a game like Skyrim...but it's really annoying in this game. I thought the 'Password' system idea is a cool idea where you learn new things and come back to old NPC's to see if your new knowledge unlocks new information...but again the execution of that in this game was a little clunky. For me, Final Fantasy II was a game where they tried out a bunch of things to see what would work. I think the deeper story (marginally deeper mind you) over the first one was a good step and I think the idea of having characters join and leave your party at different times of the story was a novel idea and was a key component in future games, but most everything else was a misstep. Ironically, my biggest issues with this game involve the story. Spoiler It is never explained and makes no sense why Leon would become bad/evil. They all grow up friends, and his sister is in your party the whole game. He disappears (presumably kidnapped after the first battle) and he just becomes the evil Dark Knight over night? He's not brainwashed or have amnesia or under a spell, but just the bad guy? It's the big twist/reveal of the story, but it makes no sense at all. Having a deeper story isn't a bad thing (I liked the 'lack' of story in FF1 just fine) but if you're going to make a story...at least have it make sense. Most of the deaths in the story aren't very tragic since you've only known the character for like a half hour most of the time. It's like crying over the red shirts that die in Star Trek...who was that guy anyway? I don't have a ton more to say about this one, other than it felt like a beta version of a Final Fantasy game and while this one itself didn't have all the components of a good game, it set the stage for some good stuff to come, so I guess for those reasons, it's worth playing through. Of all the Final Fantasy's I've played though, this is the weakest one by far. I've started Final Fantasy III and it'll be my first time ever with that one. I'm curious to see what is introduced in this one that carries on throughout. Edited Monday at 05:45 PM by Briste 185. Final Fantasy III Spoiler This was my first time experiencing this game. I never played the PS ports way back when and I never played the emulated version either. I didn't do any research into it so it was genuinely a new Final Fantasy game for me. As such, I played this one without any of boosts, however I did use a bestiary guide so that I didn't miss anything. Not that a second playthrough would have been a bad thing, but I would have been annoyed to have to replay an entire game because I missed an enemy or two along the way. After playing through it once though, I can say that this felt like a Final Fantasy game and I really enjoyed it. I'll start by saying that I have been playing through the games with the original font and original music. I've checked out the 'Arrangement' versions of the soundtracks sporadically to see the difference and much prefer the original soundtracks. Final Fantasy III didn't disappoint in that area and had a stellar soundtrack as well. I had a feeling I'd like this game when the opening of the game started off with naming the four characters. I was a little confused that they all had the same sprite which was labeled 'Onion Knight'...but was curious how it would unfold. I was under the impression that the 'job system' of Final Fantasy was introduced in Final Fantasy V based on what I had heard so was not expecting it in this game. After the opening couple of scenes though, you get a handful of jobs that you get to pick from and you can either stay as an Onion Knight or choose from the Final Fantasy I jobs. I, of course, went with Fighter, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage with the appropriately named York, Dee, Thor, and Zeus :) The leveling system was closer to the original, but was different as well. In Final Fantasy III, you have an overall character level and then a job level, so you're leveling two things at the same time each battle. Job levels go up much faster than generic levels and from what I understand, overall character level ups affect your core stats like HP, STR, etc and your job levels improve your proficiency within that specific job. For example, the higher the level your Black Mage job is, the more spells you can cast (no MP in this one) and the more powerful those spells are. You could have two level twenty characters, but if one is a level 50 Black Mage and the other is a level 1 Black Mage, the level 50 one will have more casts per level and more damage capability. It really felt like you got a job level every second or third fight almost, but it did take a while to get to 99. BLM got there the fastest and I was probably 2/3 of the way through the game when I hit 99. WHM got there shortly after and I switched the BLM job to Magus (which was a more powerful BLM) and WHM job to Devout (more powerful WHM). As you progress through the game, more jobs become available to you and they added a lot of jobs that would become staples in future games. The Summoner makes its first appearance in FFIII as well as several others. The upside, is that there is actually a ton of replayability with this game because there are so many jobs to choose from and you could mix and match a ton. You could also try to level as many of them on one save as possible, but this seems like it would take forever. The downside I found, was that it was hard to change from a job that I had spent 50 levels investing in. I got my Fighter and Monk to level 50ish before I unlocked the Knight and Black Belt. In the first game, that was a progression you made after being promoted and your Knight started at the level you were as a Fighter. In this game it was an entirely new job and nothing that you did in the 50 job levels for Fighter or Monk would matter. I ended up switching those two while leaving my White Mage and Black Mage alone, but I ended up not playing around with the different jobs too much since it felt like lost progression when you moved away from the ones I'd been working on. But, this is a game I'd probably play again at some point and I'd probably try out the Viking, Dark Knight or Dragoon jobs and probably the Geomancer or Ranger as well. The graphics felt closer to Final Fantasy IV than the first two games (however these are remastered so that probably had a lot to do with it). When I first started progressing through the story, the map felt very tiny and I thought I was going to be through this game pretty quickly. I was getting the impression that this one may be a poor/rushed story and that the battle system was going to be the best part of the game. You get an airship in the first like fifteen minutes of the game and the dungeons seemed kind of truncated and unimaginative compared to what the FFI dungeons were like. My initial thought was that I wasn't going to like this one. Fortunately, I was wrong. While none of the dungeons were particularly memorable, the map ended up being much bigger than I thought and I think this game is where the series found its stride with storytelling. Where FFII was lacking in creating some depth for the characters, I felt like this one was much better. There were still some odd choices for characters and a few rushed relationships...but overall this game's story was much more fleshed out and creative and felt like the start of the modern day Final Fantasy story. Honestly, I think some of the Kingdom Hearts story may have come from this game as well...not that that's a good thing necessarily lol. Story spoiler enclosed: Spoiler Having said that, there was one spot in the story that felt kind of stupid to me at the end. Your guys are paralyzed with five dragons that are 'going to feast on your bodies' and you're guardian angel comes and says 'hang on a second while I get five pure hearts to counter the five evil dragons.' You then, presumably, stay paralyzed in front of five hungry dragons, who do nothing at all, while the dude transports around the world gathering his pure hearts? It made no sense. He said he knew that the only thing that could counter this paralysis was five pure hearts and it would have made more sense if he had gotten these hearts ready before you were paralyzed so that the dragons weren't just hanging out, waiting for the paralysis to be broken. It was the only real story issue I had throughout this game...that and one of the five hearts was a Three Stooges type knucklehead that was in the story for like five minutes prior. There must've been a better character they could have picked....Fortunately, the dragons just hang out while your buddy grabs the five pure hearts so you can be freed and stop the bad guy. Other than that though, this was a pretty good story. I really liked that there were Dark Warriors as well that were your counterparts in the Dark World that were equally as responsible for keeping the balance. It was a cool twist and it showed a lot more depth than FFII. It was very interesting to me playing this game due to all of the things that worked in this game that ended up sticking around forever in this series. Final Fantasy I introduced the Crystals as a plot device as well as airships and the general battle system and enemy types/lore and such. Final Fantasy II introduced Chocobos and Cid, but this was the first time a character (completely unrelated of course) in the series carried over as both were present in three as well (actually there's also a Princess named Sara like in the first one too). Moogles were introduced in this game, however I don't think they were named that yet, but the sprite made its first appearance. Bahamut and Leviathan (and by proxy summons) were introduced in this game. Multiple worlds/maps, sealed weapons, hidden pathways, hidden items in things other than treasure chests, the spells such as Mini and Toad being needed to progress...so many different things appeared here for the first time that I saw in later games that I loved. It was crazy how heavily influenced Final Fantasy IV was by this game. Well, not crazy since IV came after III obviously, but crazy to me since my initial jump was from I to IV, so all the amazing improvements I saw in IV I didn't realize that many of them actually showed up in III first. The only really annoying thing I can think of was that they got rid of Ethers/Tents/Cabins so you couldn't really heal magic outside of towns without an elixir, which are limited in supply. Losing those items meant you either had to ration out your spells or not travel too far from inns. Fortunately, your mages aren't the same weaklings they are in the other games, but outside of that, I can't think of anything else that really bothered me with this one. As a Final Fantasy fan, I really appreciated this entry into the series. I still think that IV and VI were better since the ideas they had were fleshed out that much better for those games, but this game is very worthy to be in the conversation among the best games in the series. I didn't find it to be terribly hard however. I can't tell how much of that is the remaster making things easier or if it's just the game isn't as hard. As I mentioned, I didn't use any of the boosts (however I did end up doing a lot of farming due to bad luck getting certain bestiary enemies to pop) and I felt appropriately leveled throughout. I didn't slaughter everything, but I didn't die a ton either. My final set of jobs for the last fight was Ninja, Ninja, Devout, and Magus. I was able to cast 18 Curagas and 12 Curajas (I think) and pretty much just had my Devout heal all each turn while my damage dealers whittled down the boss and I was never in any real danger. I was level 52 by the time I got to the end. If you liked IV and VI, then you'll most definitely like this one as well. If you want to see where the modern Final Fantasy started, I think this game marks that point. Now I get to play IV :) I'm really excited about this one! 186. Final Fantasy IV Spoiler Before Final Fantasy VI was my favorite game of all time, it was Final Fantasy IV. As I had mentioned during one of my prior reviews, I got an SNES in order to play Final Fantasy 2 (SNES). I was too young to get one on my own, but I remember getting my SNES for Christmas and with it was Final Fantasy 2 (SNES). To say I was excited was an understatement. I was ten years old and had not played an SNES game yet and I don't remember video game commercials being a thing, so I had never seen the new, upgraded graphics over the NES. Still in my Christmas jammies, I shuffled up to my room, hooked up my new SNES and promptly put the Final Fantasy 2 cartridge in and powered it on. I soaked in that intro music and started my new adventure, quivering with anticipation. The game started very different than the first one. In the first one, you pick your party and are dumped outside of Coneria and you learn what's going on by talking to townspeople and the King. In FF2, there's an introductory cutscene that takes place that's about ten minutes long. It sets the stage for who the main players are and what the motivation is going to be. The opening scene shows the Dark Knight commander, Cecil, leading the Kingdom of Baron's fleet of Airships to attack a town and steal their Crystal. Your troops slaughter some of the townsfolk, who are not resisting, and Cecil takes the Crystal and leaves. On the trip back to Baron, the soldiers are voicing their displeasure with their new role and don't understand why they are doing this. Cecil, the loyal commander, stands by the King, but you can tell that he too is feeling bad about what they've just done. When Cecil gets back with the Crystal, he asks the King why they are collecting the Crystals. Upset at Cecil for his lack of loyalty, the King dismisses him as the Captain of the Red Wings and commands him to deliver a package (Bomb Ring in IV) to the Village of Mist. Cecil's childhood friend and Dragoon, Kain, tries to defend Cecil and is commanded to go along to make the delivery. It is here that you take control of the characters for the first time. This is clearly a pretty involved prologue, and it had me invested before I'd even taken my first step. I had NEVER seen a game do this before, spending so much time to set up a story. Every game I'd played to this point had been a game first and a story as a kind of byproduct of the game. This was a story first and the game was the vehicle to tell the story. With this being my first SNES experience, I spent the entire morning with my jaw dropped wide open, just soaking in the amazingness of what I was experiencing. The graphics and music were incredible, the shift from turns to Active Time Battles (ATB) was new and kept you on your toes. There was just so much cool stuff to see and do. It was truly amazing how much they could do with 16 bit music. The battle music was intense, with it even more intense during boss battles. The 'sad' music could bring you to tears. It could build drama and it was just so well done to set the mood of the game. There were times in the game where if something profound happened and a new song was playing, I might sit for a few minutes and just listen. For me this game was truly revolutionary and set the new standard for how I would compare games going forward. It did so many things well and I really can't tell you anything that I didn't like about it. I played through this game several times and every time I enjoyed it. But this review isn't about my first experience with this game over 30 years ago, but about the pixel remastered version. There is a lot that is similar and quite a lot that is different. I'll talk mostly about the differences. The biggest difference for me was that this was a new translation of the game. Most of the dialogue was different from the version I played (which I'll refer to as the original going forward even if that's not true). It seems like they modernized the lingo and added a bit more attitude to the text. I know a big knock against the original was how bad the translation was, however being ten, I never noticed or cared. I thought it was great. Due to the change in the dialogue, it was almost like playing a new game. The gist of everything was the same, but it had a different feel to it. It wasn't better or worse, just different. Another big change was the names of all the enemies and the majority of weapons were different. My biggest disappointment surrounded them changing the name of my favorite weapon across all the games from 'Spoon Dagger' to 'Knife'...none of the name changes were a big deal, but it was different. The sprites for the monsters were all the same, but nothing was named what I remembered it to be. Again, minor and nothing that impacted the quality of this version. What this version contained that the original didn't was the extra abilities. In the original, Dark Knight Cecil could just fight or use items. He didn't have any other ability to use. Kain had 'Jump' in addition to his normal attack, but Cecil had nothing. The original Japanese version did have these abilities and I'm not sure why they weren't included on the NA SNES version, but they weren't. I feel like I remember reading that Final Fantasy IV had an 'easy version' and a 'hard version' that was released, and NA received the 'easy version' where these weren't included. I'm not sure why these abilities wouldn't have been a part of the 'easy version' and I'm sure there were other things different as well, but if I remember right, that's what happened. Anyway, in this version, Cecil has an ability called 'Darkness' that drains a small amount of his HP to deal AOE damage to the enemies. I didn't find it strong enough to be worth it, especially when there's no healer present in the party, but I used it a couple times to see what it did, but that was it. Rosa had 'Aim' in the original, but in this version she has another ability called 'Pray', which can heal your party if the prayer is answered. I found it had about a 40% success rate. Speaking of Rosa...she uses a Bow and Arrow as her main weapon. In the original, arrows were a consumable item. Each arrow you fired in battle, depleted your stock by one. If you didn't keep your eye on it, you could run out of arrows during a battle. You could change your equipment midbattle in the original, which you can't in this version. But in this game it didn't matter since you only need one arrow and you'll never run out. I did not realize this at first and spent 2k Gil on Iron arrows for her and then shortly after realized my error. It wasn't a huge deal and actually made the game far easier overall, but was a big waste of Gil early for me. In the later game, there are some arrows you can find that you only got ten of when you found them in a chest during the original, but here you could equip them and Rosa ended up being a pretty powerful DD from the back row. As far as other changes, there were some changes to the character sprites...I remember Yang, Rydia and Edge looking a little different in the original as well as Palom and Porom. They also included the ability to buy 'Sirens' as a consumable item, which help tremendously with getting rare items/drops for trophies. What a Siren does, is initiate a battle against the rarest enemy of the dungeon, which was incredibly useful when farming for the Mage Summon (Mindflayer in this version) and mostly, the Pink Puffs (Flan Princess in this version) for the Pink Tail for the Adamant Armor. In addition to adding the 'Siren' as a purchase-able item, I'm fairly certain they significantly increased the drop rates on these items. I got the Imp, Cockatrice and Bomb summons without even trying to farm as they dropped naturally during game play. I decided to farm the Flan Princesses after beating the game to get my characters to level 70 and got five Pink Tails to drop using only 50 or so Sirens. I'm pretty sure this had a 1-3/64 chance to drop in the original and I had a 10% drop rate using Sirens. It did take about 30 battles to get the Mindflayer summon, but it was still extremely painless compared to the original. I think in all the times I played the original, I only ever had one encounter against the Pink Puffs and obviously never got the Pink Tail. I didn't use any of the boosts while playing until after I had beaten the game. I turned on the XP boost to speed up getting to 70 while farming those Flan Princesses. Even without using the boosts, I didn't have too much trouble throughout the game with my hardest fight being against the Dark Elf. It took me a few tries to beat him. I appreciated the 'auto battle' option while farming Gil/XP throughout the game as it made a relatively mindless task even easier to do. I didn't use the Encounter On/Off either until after I had beaten the game since I wanted to mirror my original playthrough as much as possible. This remaster is a very good representation of the original and while there are some differences, I was able to jump back to being ten years old again and I soaked in this nostalgia. I am the exact market that this series was looking to cater too and they have succeeded to this point. I've played and beaten four of the six releases in just over a week since they were released, and I couldn't be happier playing these games. I can acknowledge, that when you compare these games to the stuff that's out now, graphically, they pale in comparison...however take it from me, these games were, and are still, amazing and should be played by everyone. If you like story telling in a game, then you really can't go wrong here. This story is masterfully woven and they do a great job making you invest and care in the characters. I'm looking forward to V as that is another one that I have never played. Considering how awesome IV and VI were, I have high hopes for this one. 187. Final Fantasy V Spoiler Final Fantasy V was the last numbered game in the series that I had never played. I had bought the PS Classic version of the game years and years ago, but never got around to playing it. I had heard that it utilized the 'Job System', where you play the same character but can change up the job (Ninja, Knight, White Mage, etc) on the fly and mix and match as needed. I didn't know much else beside that however, and I was going into this one with an open mind and no spoilers. I assumed it'd be pretty good considering how awesome IV and VI were. Those are lofty expectations and I wasn't expecting that level of enjoyment since this game didn't have the nostalgia box checked, so I did temper my expectations a bit so that I wouldn't be disappointed. Overall, I did end up enjoying this one, although slightly less than the two I already mentioned. Graphically, this game was virtually identical to FFIV. The world map used the same pixels and the characters were also similarly done. The overall tone of the game was more cheerful than IV or VI as well. That's not to say there wasn't some sadness and drama sprinkled in, but there was more silliness in this game compared to the others, which lightened the mood. I also didn't love the names of some of the main characters. They were a bit goofy so it was hard to take them seriously. The main protagonist is a dude named Bartz who has a bit of wanderlust. He just travels around with his best friend Boko, who happens to be a Chocobo. This all changes when a meteorite hits the ground and he meets the Princess Lenna and old, amnesiac Galuf, followed shortly by the pirate Faris and then finally, young Krile. They band together as a team to defeat the evil Exdeath and stop the world from returning to the void. This is where I'll pause to say that I liked the names of Lenna, Faris and Krile...however Bartz, Galuf and Exdeath were very meh for me. Bartz wouldn't be terrible if I didn't automatically think of Bart Simpson every time I read it. Galuf sounded like a mixture of goof and aloof and Exdeath is just a lame name for a character. Having 'death' in the name takes some of the mystery out of who's the bad guy. Also, did he name himself Exdeath or did he have evil parents that thought it'd be badass? Either way, I just thought it was not a real name so was distracting. Golbez was a great bad guy name and so is Kefka. This is a truly nitpicky thing I'm pointing out, but I do think those names made it harder for me to take the game as serious as IV and VI and so did play a small role in my ability to get immersed in the story. The story follows that same familiar formula of crystals and light warriors fighting to prevent the darkness from taking over. There are variations obviously, but it is very familiar to me at this point. I like it, but there's nothing I need to write here that isn't present in the other games. The beginning and the end are the same and the journey is similar with a few twists and turns along the way. The biggest change in this game from the other two is the relative lack of playable characters as well as the job system. There are only five different characters that you can play as, but there are 22 jobs you can assign them. Outside of personality, there's nothing unique about playing as any of them since they all have the ability to be all of the jobs. Since there is a trophy for mastering all 22 of them, I tended to just switch jobs as I mastered them, not sticking to any one job type. I did always have a Blue Mage (or someone that could use their 'learn' ability) in my party since there is a trophy for learning all the Blue Magic, but outside of that, it was just a mix and match. The job system works pretty similarly to how it did in FFIII except in this version you are able to equip an ability that you had previously learned on another job to your current main. For example, if you have leveled White Mage on your character and you decide to change their job class to Ninja, you have the option of selecting White Magic as their 'bonus' ability. If none of my party members were leveling WHM at the time, at least one always had that skill set as a secondary ability. Most of the time I'd have my melee characters have other melee abilities and my mage/support characters would have a mage/support extra ability. The ability could be something innate, such as the Blue Mage ability 'learn'. By having that as the secondary ability, any job class main would be able to learn blue spells (spells/abilities learned from enemies). Or you could have an active ability such as being able to cast white magic. They all shared what was learned as well. For example, you only needed to learn a blue spell one time and they could all use it. You didn't need to learn it on each character for it to be used. Same with the other spells. You only had to buy it once and then they all could use it so long as they had the correct job or ability equipped. The 22 different jobs and dozens of abilities really do make this game have a cool combat dynamic. You could mix and match so many different things that you could play this game however you want and does up the re-playability of it to make each playthrough a bit unique. I didn't find any one job to be that much more overpowered than the rest. I generally just made sure I had at least one tank-y character and one healer ability equipped and you could pretty much run anything else out there. Each job had an element of fun to it. I don't normally use boosts in these games, but I did run with the AP boost for learning jobs faster. I did this to cut down on the unnecessary farming for AP after completing the game. There is so much AP you need to master all 22 jobs, and since each job has its own strengths, I didn't feel like that boost would 'break' the game by making me too overpowered. I still ran with the normal XP and gold accrual to keep the game somewhat challenging. Since each of the jobs are fairly strong though, I didn't find the game to be too difficult. There are some pretty cheese combos you can make with jobs to make things super easy, but since I was farming all the jobs for all my characters, I just went down the list of jobs with each of them until everything was learned by everyone. While I did enjoy this game, it didn't have the same effect on me as the other two. I didn't find the story or characters quite as compelling as in IV and VI. I thought that Faris was the most interesting one of the group and while they did do a decent job of fleshing out each of the backstories, I just didn't get attached to them the same way I did with Cecil and Rosa or Locke and Celes. I am very happy that I ended up playing through it, but it's not one that I'll necessarily rush to play again. Now that I've completed every numbered game in the series, I'll list my ranking of them in order of my favorite to least favorite (all were at least decent). 1. Final Fantasy VI 2. Final Fantasy XI 3. Final Fantasy IV 4. Final Fantasy VII 5. Final Fantasy I 6. Final Fantasy X 7. Final Fantasy XIV 8. Final Fantasy VIII 9. Final Fantasy IX 10. Final Fantasy XIII-2 11. Final Fantasy XIII 12. Final Fantasy V 13. Final Fantasy III 14. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII 15. Final Fantasy X-2 16. Final Fantasy XV 17. Final Fantasy XII 18. Final Fantasy II The top 5 and bottom 5 are pretty firm for me, but the middle are roughly equal to me and I could argue up or down a few spots each of them. I should have probably left off the -2 games and Lightning Returns...but I didn't. I did leave off the FF7 Remake, however I do plan on playing Crisis Core and Stranger's of Paradise pretty soon and then I'll rank every one of the ones I've played that are in the 'series' tab. 188. Final Fantasy VI Spoiler Here it is folks, my favorite game of all time. If I had the power to relive a gaming experience again, I would choose this game without there really being a close second. I cannot understate how amazing this game was for me when I first played it when I was 13 years old. I got it for Christmas, loaded it up and began the best gaming ride of my life. This game came at the perfect time for me. As a 13 year old kid, this was a tough time during my life. Prior to this time of my life, gaming had always been more of a hobby...something I enjoyed to do, but I had lots of things I enjoyed doing. By the time this game came out, gaming had transformed from a hobby into an escape for me. I won't go into it much here since I already spilled my guts in the Trophies for Mental Health Event, but I was having a tough time at home and at school. My self esteem was really low and I just didn't feel like I had a lot to look forward to and not much hope of things getting better. Final Fantasy VI gave me an escape into a world where there was hope to make a difference. It gave me a place where I could live vicariously through the many characters that had surprising depth. This game had many mature themes, as well as some comedy, and most of all, a compelling story with an amazing soundtrack. I needed this game at that time of my life and it delivered what I was looking for. What I love the best in this game is the story. It was the first game that moved away from the Crystals as a plot element and replaced them with magical beings called Espers. Espers were the source of magic and were supposedly wiped out a thousand years earlier during the 'War of the Magi...'. The game starts with one of these Espers being discovered in the mountains and you play as Biggs, Wedge and an unknown girl who mysteriously wields the power of magic. They show up riding on Magitek Armor that resembles the ED-209 from Robocop . Anyways, it was a pretty cool intro. I spent that first morning playing until your party splits up and then you have to choose which storyline you wish to complete first. I fell in love with the character Locke and I choose him first. When I had to do the next two sections, I couldn't wait to get back to Locke and see how his story continued. I'm not going to go through the game step by step, but I could lol. I'll just say I've played through this game probably twenty times. I have one save on my SNES cartridge where I have all of the Rage's you can get with my characters all maxed out, one save that stays at the Opera house and my third save is for replays. If I dust off my old SNES (which I do from time to time), this is the only game I play before packing it up again. So how did I feel about this Pixel Remastered version? I give it B+. They did this with all of the games, but I found it annoying that the names were changed from the NES/SNES versions. It's a small thing, but so many weapons, armor, items, and enemies were called something different. I know the games well enough where I still knew what they were...but it missed that nostalgia piece. I used to stay on the Veldt the first time through until I was able to learn the 'Marshal' Rage since his 'Wind Slash' ability was super strong for that time in the game. In this version, he's the 'Guard Leader'. The 'Telstar' was the 'Satellite'. The graphic was the same, but it was just different. My biggest disappointment, and it was a major disappointment...was that they changed the lyrics of the Opera scene. They did a rehaul of the graphics and made it looks a lot cooler and they also added the lyrics of people actually singing which was cool...but they changed the goddamn lyrics!! Imagine your favorite song comes on the radio and you go to sing along, but the words are completely different....(Guns N' Roses actually did this with their song Don't Cry on the Use Your Illusion CDs...anyone that liked the 'Alternate Lyrics' better is crazy). It was the thing I was looking forward to doing the most, and they changed the lyrics. What made it so disappointing was that nobody sang the song in the original game, it was just the soundtrack and then the words to match so I used to sing it in my head while doing it. I was looking forward to hearing it again and it was different. It wasn't bad...but it was different and not what I wanted during my nostalgia tour. The scene is still amazing and if you didn't play the original, you wouldn't know any better, but for me that was a huge bummer. I don't even know why they felt the need to change the lyrics since I thought they were amazing as is. There wasn't some bad translation or anything....I'll stop here with my complaining about it since I could ramble on for pages. Outside of those couple of things, this version was a very good representation of the game. For those that have never played the game before, those two gripes I had do not exist and the game would be an amazing experience. I really appreciated that they allow you to play with the original score in addition to the newer mix. The newer mix is great, however the original soundtrack is still my favorite. The Celes theme song is what the alarm on my phone plays when I use it. That song is my favorite song from all of the games...in fact several of the theme songs are great. I do like that each of them has their own and it is very distinguishable. Several of my favorite characters in all of gaming come from this game as well. Locke is my favorite and the character I related to the most as a kid, with Celes and Shadow close behind. I did use the XP boost in this game...but I used it in reverse and chose to receive 0 XP for most of the beginning of the game. In this game, you learn spells by equipping Espers. Certain Espers also give bonus's when you level up. For example, if you have Bismark equipped when you level up, you'll get a +2 to your STR stat. There are also Espers that give boosts to Magic Power, Stamina, HP, MP and Speed. The problem is, you do not get Espers till you're several hours into the game and you don't get Espers with +2 boosts on some stats until very late in the game. Since there is a level cap of 99, you can only get the boost as long as you can level your characters. There's also the problem that as you get new members to your group, they join your party with the average level of your party. So if you level a lot early in the game, when you get new characters later in the game, they start at a higher level leaving less room for stat boosts. Having the option to turn off XP was nice because I could keep my party as low as possible while filling out the bestiary until I got the Espers I wanted to boost my stats. In the later part of the game, there is a Coliseum, where you have the opportunity to send one of your characters into battle to win some rare items. The problem is you have to risk an item to get an item and oddly, you lose what you wager whether you win or lose the fight. If you win, you only get the new item and if you lose, you get nothing and lose your item. One would think that if you win, you get to keep your item and win the new one...but that's not how it works here. Anyways, the second issue is that you cannot control the character you pick. The computer will control him and he/she is not always smart. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing your dude cast Esuna on yourself during a turn when you do not have a status ailment. The trick is, to keep one of your characters from learning magic at all (mostly). That way, the only option he/she has is to attack. I always use Shadow in the Coliseum. I would wait until I get the Esper Raiden, which gives +2 to speed, and then level Shadow up to the point his speed stat is around 90-100. He then is basically hasted naturally and attacks really quickly. The only spell he'd know is Quick, which gives him an extra turn so it's not really a bad thing if he uses it during battle. If you have him learn any other spells, you risk having him use stupid things and wasting turns. The object is to kill the opponent as quick as possible since you can't count on your dude to cure him/herself. There's a boost in this game that puts the AP earned (thing you need to learn spells) at 0 so you could level up your Coliseum dude with no spells and still get the leveling bonus if you want. It was fun to play the game this way since it's not something I could ever do in the original. I used to get to the second half of the game around level 25-30, but this time around I was able to get there at level 18, which gave me some extra levels for stat boosting. The game is not terribly hard at all and if you pay attention to your character's XP levels and equip the proper Espers at the proper times when you level, you can become OP pretty quickly. By and large, leveling Magic Power is the most useful one to do, followed probably by Speed and then Strength. There is no need to ever use the HP+ or MP+ boosts since you pretty much cap HP and MP naturally if you get to level 99. Magic power caps around 125 I believe, so for most of my characters, I get the Magic power to right around there and then boost speed so they can attack faster. With Magic Power that high, level one spells can do 9,999 damage to some enemies. The only annoying trophy in the game is for getting 'Joker's Death' on Setzer's Slot ability. That requires you to get 7-7-7 on the slots and it kills all enemies. If you get 7-7-BAR, you get the 'Joker's Death' that kills everyone and gives you a game over screen. If you use 'auto-battle' you can supposedly get it, but I must've gotten the 7-7-BAR one thirty times and never got the 7-7-7. I was saving after every fight in case of the party wipe one happened and it got annoying fast. It's not terribly hard to time manually, however I think the game cheats at times and makes you miss on purpose. That trophy is largely RNG based and was annoying. I was happy when I finally got it and could stop worrying about it. I do recommend to start trying for that one early since it can take a while if RNG is bad. Beyond that, I don't have too much else to offer without major spoilers or writing 45 pages. I know the game is thirty years old, but a lot of people may have never played it due to no trophies and I do not wish to deprive anyone of the joy of a blind playthrough. I cannot recommend this game enough and this version of the game is great for first timers and is adequate for those that are SNES version vets. I hope that everyone takes the time to play this masterpiece and I'd be curious to hear if anyone else loved this game as much as I have. If I could choose one game to be redone/remastered, it'd be this one...but ONLY if they didn't change the story and turn based format. I would just want a fresh coat of paint on it. I really enjoyed FF7R, but I would want this game to be truer to the source material than that one was. Speaking of which....I can't wait for FF7R part 2 next year :) 189. FAR: Changing Tides Spoiler After very much enjoying the happy discovery of FAR: Lone Sails, I decided to pick up the sequel that was on sale (I think). This game has a platinum and looked like it was going to be a slightly longer experience compared to the first game as there is a speed run trophy in this one as well, but it's to be done in under 210 minutes as opposed to the 99 from the first entry. This was the game that I had to pay close attention to with regards to popping trophies since this was the game that was going to get me to 8998 trophies in order to pop my FFVI milestone plat. Thankfully, I had enough of a gap of trophies that I needed that I could do my first playthrough without worrying about popping too many and blowing my milestone. This game was probably going to require a second playthrough anyway for the speed run trophy, so I could take my time and enjoy the first time through. This game starts off the same way as the first one...with no words, text or direction on what to do. Once again, the only real option is to go right and that is the way you go. Very early, you get to see how they changed up this one. The first game takes place almost exclusively on land as you are trying to captain a landship to find civilization. With this game, you come upon water almost immediately and can swim underwater to explore. Instead of starting in an arid wasteland, you are in a flooded city. Your guy is apparently an Atlantean or something since he can hold his breath indefinitely or breath underwater. There is no air timer or anything that leads you to believe you will drown if you are underwater too long. Anyway, this game is pretty much the same as the first game, just instead of a landship, you have an actual ship ship. It has the same basic premise of having sails and an engine that needs fueling. There's still a hose to put out fires and instead of having a permanent structure to use for repairs, you have repair boxes that have about six uses before disappearing. There's a new 'Turbo' speed that is added as you progress as well. The game has that same Overcooked! feel for busywork and timing and is still a lot of fun. There is an added wrinkle in this game, however...not only can your ship sail on the surface, but later in the game you gain the ability to turn it into a submersible and drive underwater. You get a machine you can hook the hose up to either flood with water to go under or expel the water to surface. You can choose to have the hose suck or blow and it is how you control your depth. It adds a really cool dimension to the game and also adds something else to pay attention to. I found that I was never really in danger of running out of resources in this one and I believe the speed run time is very lenient. I did quite a bit of exploring and I think I just missed the time my first attempt. I believe I beat it with like twenty minutes to spare when I actually tried the speed run. There's not a ton to add about the gameplay for this one since it very closely mirrors the first one. The puzzles are slightly more complex (still not terribly hard) and there are some slight changes with making things more realistic, but the spirit of the game is the same. The sailing mechanic was more complex as there were more than two directions the wind could be blowing. You could adjust the position of the sails to catch the wind and move faster. It probably mirrors actual sailing pretty closely with the way you have to shift the sails. It pretty easy to get the hang of as the flag the shows the wind direction goes higher up the sail the more you catch the wind and starts to lower as your sails are losing steam. But requires a lot more attention to be paid in order to maximize speed. The engine is also fleshed out a bit more as you can control the speed and even reverse. There is not steam release button for this one and instead you have to use the hose to cool off the engine to prevent overheating. The annoying thing here is that to cool the engine, you have to spray the hose over the incinerator and it's very easy to accidentally cool the incinerator, slowing down your momentum. You also heat the incinerator a bit different in this game. Instead of just pushing a button, you have to jump on a 'bellows' like a blacksmith would, to add air to the fire and keep the incinerator going. They've added more storage and a loading system for the fuel and the ship is a lot bigger here than in the first one. In addition to the hose/cooling element being a bit stupid for how it is laid out, I found some of the buttons (especially the engine fuel feeder) to be in a little bit of an annoying place. I accidentally hit the loader button into the incinerator several times, wasting fuel. But, as I said, it wasn't a huge deal since I found fuel to be frequent enough that I never ran out. I enjoyed this game every bit as much as the first. It expanded on what the first one built and had the same great music and artwork. It is very well done and is another game that has been criminally underplayed. The only semi spoiler-y thing I'll say is pay attention to the very end sequence. I missed it the first time I ran through the game and beat it, and only noticed it after my second, speed run playthrough...but the game ends in a very cool way. Not that there's a huge story here, but if there was, the spoiler below is a major spoiler so open at your own risk. Spoiler It is unclear throughout the game if you're playing the same character from the first game or not, however once you get to the lighthouse at the end, and the screen flips, and you are all of a sudden going right to left instead of left to right...the game ends with you meeting up with the person from the first game at the pyre that you lit to end the first one. I thought that was a very cool way to tie the two games together and end the story. I really hope that more people check this game/series out. It is a lot of fun, very well done and I would highly recommend. 190. Life is Strange 2 Spoiler I know that these 'choose your own adventure' story-based games are not everyone's cup of tea, but I've always enjoyed them. I don't usually like games that rely on QTE's for gameplay, but I do appreciate a good story quite a bit. I enjoyed Life is Strange and I also liked Life is Strange: Before the Storm so I had no reason to believe I wouldn't enjoy this game as well. It was nothing that I was in a rush to play, but I tend to get antsy when I get close to a milestone. I'll often play some 'shorter' games once I'm within striking distance of a milestone, and with 9000 fast approaching, it seemed like as good a time as any to add this game to my profile. I think I had gotten it for 'free' as part of PS+ or the PS catalog, so the price was right as well. Since the game is virtually all story driven, I'm going to keep my review pretty short and straightforward. Gameplay and controls mirror exactly like the previous versions of the game and you do not need to have played the prior games in the series to understand this one. There are some 'Easter Eggs' and some peripheral characters that are mentioned that make more sense if you played the previous entries....but it has absolutely no bearing on the story of this one. This entry follows the story of two brothers, Sean and Daniel. Sean is a pretty typical 16 year old high school student and is the person that you control throughout the game. He loves to draw (which you'll have the opportunity to do throughout the game and there are trophies tied to this) and he is just trying to fit in. His younger brother Daniel is your typical 11 year old little brother. He really looks up to his older brother and just wants to be included. The story starts in Seattle, and after a disaster strikes, you help guide Sean and Daniel on a trek to Mexico to reconnect with their family. I'm not going to say much more about the story, other than like in the others, one person (Daniel) has a special power and it plays a major role in how the story gets played. You (Sean) have to decide whether to help encourage Daniel using his abilities or to suppress them. You also are the moral compass for Daniel, and your decisions will play a major role on whether Daniel stays grounded or if his power gets to his head. It is a pretty compelling story and tackles issues of racism, death, abandonment, moral ambiguity, family and many other things. I found the story to be good enough that I enjoyed what it had to say. I'll mention that I played the role of supportive and loving brother throughout. This story suffered from the same thing a lot of these stories suffer from...most of your decisions do not seem to have that big of an impact on the outcome of the game. There are certain major events that happen no matter what you decide to do. While the decisions don't alter the story that much, it does alter how your characters respond to what is happening. I mean there are repercussions to the decisions, but you'll almost always end up in the same place, it just may have more or less people and they may act differently depending on what you chose to do...but you'll always end up in the same spot. I find that to be a shortcoming of a lot of these kinds of games as it really takes the urgency/apprehension of making decisions less meaningful and feel less important. That was actually why I enjoyed Detroit: Become Human so much. That story changed completely depending on your choices. You could literally play that game a half-dozen times at least and not see the same thing twice. Your decisions were very impactful and played a major role in the direction the story took. In this game, that is not so...no matter what you decide to do, you'll always end up at the same impasses. For a free game, I can't really complain at all and it was a good enough story. I got attached to the characters and was invested in what happened to them and at the end of the day, that's all you can really ask for from a story driven game. While nothing I did felt truly impactful, it was interesting enough to see what direction to take. While this game was not a directly related to the previous games, I do wish I had played them consecutively so that I could have understand the Easter Eggs more. As it stood, I forgot about certain connections and characters. Overall, it is worth playing if you enjoy this style of game. If you do not, it wasn't so outstanding that I feel it's worth playing even if you do not generally enjoy these kinds of games. For me though, it was a good experience. Platinums 191-200 Spoiler 191. Life is Strange: True Colors Spoiler This will be a double review since the next two games are both relatively short reviews. In the rush to get to 9000, and in the interest of playing series titles either really close or back to back, the last remaining Life is Strange title comes next. This one felt like it was the shortest of the series, and similar to Life is Strange 2, you didn't have to play any of the others for this game to make sense. Steph, from Life is Strange: Before the Storm, is one of the main characters of this story, so while you'd have more background into who she is if you played that game, it's not vital to this story other than it showing that this is all happening in the same universe. This game mirrors the others in that some sort of disaster/tragedy happens that is the crux of the story, and that one of the characters has a special power. In this instance, it is the main protagonist Alex Chen. She is an empath, which means she has the ability to read/feel other peoples emotions. She does this by reading their aura and if she gets close enough to the person, she can actually feel what they are feeling and see the memory or thought that is triggering the emotion. It's a pretty cool concept, but I felt like her mastery of it was very rushed. This is all prologue kind of information, so I don't mind writing about it here, but it could be considered spoiler-ish. She has grown up in foster care and in orphanages for several years where she often got in trouble for not being able to control her power and letting the emotions of others overwhelm her and get her into trouble. The game begins with her aging out of the system, and moving to a mountain town in Colorado (not South Park 😉) to reconnect with her brother. The town is absolutely stunning, however very small. I love mountains and if I were a single dude, this is the type of place I'd want to live. I'm probably not hipster enough to fit in in this particular town, but I'd love it anyway. There's a main street area, and that's about it, but there's some cool stores and the townspeople all know each other. One would wonder how these places stay in business, but it's a game so we'll just move along. Back to my issues with Alex....very quickly after she arrives, she seems to almost figure out her powers all of a sudden and also figures out how to use them effectively to help those around her. It gives off a 'Rey is a Jedi Master before she really even knows what the Force is' kind of vibe and seemed kind of rushed to me. Beyond her sudden mastery of her ability though, I did enjoy this story too. It was probably my least favorite of the series, but it was still pretty good. I think that this game was the most predictable out of all of them, however it also had the most potential variation of them too I think. How you help/ignore the people you meet has a large impact on the outcome of the game. It still suffers from the same issue of funneling choices to the same events, but I think your choices are more impactful in this one. This was another 'free' one I had, so the price was right again, and I can't really complain too much since I did enjoy this one for the most part. The setting is the best of them all and the characters are all pretty likeable/relatable. You could generally understand where each person was coming from, even if you didn't agree with them. There's a lot of context that you can gather by the game's version of Facebook and texting and there's a lot of freedom to make some choices to play Alex however you want. The trophy list was easy and if you played the other games in the series, it's definitely worth a play. If you have to pay for it, or you've never played one of these titles, I'd say there's no rush to get to it, but it's a nice game. 192. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection Spoiler As I mentioned above, this game was not originally on my list. I was honestly a little bummed at the time that this was going to be the replacement for Far Cry 2. I've never played a Far Cry game, but I've heard the series is actually quite fun and I was looking forward to playing that one, even though I was warned that the online grind sucked ass. When that game became unobtainable, I had at least hoped to get a full game as a replacement. Instead, this collection of games was next up. It would have been a better game, if the trophy list wasn't so piss poor. From a gaming perspective, I was a pretty lucky kid. I had an SNES at my mom's house and my dad, not to be outdone by my mom, had bought me and my brother a Genesis for when we were at his house. I had grown up playing both consoles and getting to experience a lot of great games on both. Shining Force and Warsong were two of my favorite games as a kid, and I was happy to see that Shining Force was a part of this collection. If you are a gamer and a lover of retro games, this is an amazing purchase. It has the Golden Axe games, most of the Sonic games, Phantasy Star games and several other arcade hits (and some stinkers too). If you are a trophy hunter...it's severely lacking...if you are a trophy collector, it's not too bad. Basically the trophy list requires you to play a sampling of the games for a bare minimum amount of time. I think the longest I had to play any one game for the trophy was 30 minutes. Several could be done in just a couple and most somewhere in between. I get that you can't really have the trophies be for completely beating each game in the collection. I mean Shining Force probably take 30 hours or so on it's own, and getting a bronze trophy for 30 hours of work is a bitter pill to swallow for some. I personally wouldn't have minded it though...but this platinum would be obscenely scarce if that were the case. Even with how easy it is now, it only sits at an 18% platinum completion rate. Having said that though, I would have rather seen the trophies require you to at least play 10% of the game or something. As it stands, each trophy only requires an amuse-bouche of the game before granting you the ding. Since it's a collection of games, it's hard to give it a real review. Some of the games included are amazing classics, and some of them belong out in the desert with ET...but the game doesn't make you eat your vegetables, you get to give them to Ms. Manners and move on to dessert. I got a little extra use out of the collection since I got to play some of the games a bit with my son. He likes to see the games I played as a kid, plus they are a lot easier for him to control since they are mostly 2D and he has fun with them. He always ends up back playing Minecraft or Don't Starve on the iPad after a while, but I busted out my SNES and we've been playing Link to the Past a bit lately. Oddly enough, my youngest likes playing The 7th Saga, which I loved as a kid, but is waaaaay too hard for him. He's just been putzing around the beginning area fighting birds and demons and seems to enjoy it enough. To put a bow on this post, there's nothing here with this collection that you can't get with an emulator or Raspberry Pi or something. I guess technically there is since there are some interviews and stuff as a bonus....but if you don't have a PS3 and a copy of the game already, there is absolutely no reason to buy and play this game...unless you're doing something weird like I was, then go nuts lol Of the five games I played for this project, this one was the worst. 193. The Godfather II Spoiler This was a game that I did not know existed until I was looking up the first games to have trophies. At it's core, it's a GTA clone. It's a GTA clone in the backdrop of the movie The Godfather II, minus the flashbacks with De Niro. If you've seen the movie, you pretty much know the gist of how it goes in this game. I ended up having Covid when I started this game. I had gone through most of the pandemic with no issues and we took our kids to NYC to go to the Museum of Natural History and to check out some of the other sights and I brought home Covid as a souvenir. I didn't have it as bad as some, but it wasn't a walk in the park either. It started with me being freezing (which I never am) and I was literally shaking from how cold I was. Nothing I did warmed me up. I then had a bad sore throat and was just exhausted for like four or five days. I quarantined myself in my basement with my video games and it was a lot of PS3 and naps during that week. I did continue to work half days, so I guess it wasn't all naps and video games. Anyway, you take on the role Domenic, Michael Corleone's protégé. You get to choose what your dude looks like when you start and my dude didn't look much like the quintessential mob guy. My Domenic probably would have been thought of as a punk with his wavy bangs...I wouldn't have taken me serious anyway. The graphics are kind of meh and the controls are pretty stiff, however I didn't find the game terribly hard either. There were only a couple of spots that took me more than one try, and it was mostly when I was trying to figure out how to play. It's been a while since I played GTA, but from what I remember, the controls are pretty similar. You have a weapon wheel that includes about six different weapons that can be upgraded two times each. My preferred weapon was the Magnum since I found it easy to aim and if you go for head shots, it would put most guys down with one shot. You steal cars and collect money and a lot of the same stuff as it would be in GTA. What's different about this game is that you can travel with a crew of up to three other people, making it a total group of four. Your crew can also have different skills, such as lockpicking or arson, that will help you take over other family business's as you grow your family. You are the boss of your family, and you can start by hiring a few Soldiers for your crew. You can hire up to four as you progress through the game. You'll have the option later to promote two to Capo and finally one more to underboss. Soldiers are only able to have one specialty, Capos two and then the underboss three. As you get further in the game, it doesn't make sense to use your soldiers anymore since the promoted crew members can have enough skills to let you have at least one of everything in your crew at all times. It also is important to be somewhat selective with who you choose to be in your crew since different people are rated differently. Some guys you can hire are only able to have their weapons leveled once while some can have them leveled two times. You want to promote your strongest guys and you always want to make sure you have a healer with you at all times. They can revive you or other members of your crew should you go down. You can also leverage your unused crew to do things while you're out. You can send them to bomb a rival, or protect one of your own assets. I think the concept was kind of cool, but I don't know if the execution was all that great. I found it detrimental to bomb places since if you wanted to take them over, you had to wait for them to be repaired before doing so. I mostly used my guys for defense if one of my assets was being attacked by another family. The game is basically you growing your family, building assets and knocking off other mob bosses to the tune of The Godfather II. So in that sense, it was fine, but with very few surprises since I knew what happened in the movie. The game has three maps, Cuba, Florida and New York and the game gets pretty repetitive. Attack another bosses asset, take it on for your own, buy troops to defend, earn money, move on to the next asset. You don't always have to attack an asset, sometimes you can just intimidate someone into joining you. Once you have enough assets, you can attack the other family Don and knock them off. You pretty much do this five times before getting to the penultimate scene from the movie. As far as trophies go, there isn't anything too crazy outside of doing every 'execution' in the game. There are a lot of them and some require specific setups to be able to do and most of them have multiple setups. Thankfully, there's a section in the menu that tells you what you have done so far. It doesn't tell you exactly what's left, but it will tell you what you've done, so with the use of a guide, you can see what you need to do specifically. It is definitely worth paying attention to as you progress throughout. It would not be fun to try and fit this all in at the end. You can actually miss this trophy if you kill all the other Dons before you achieve it. The game is like 15 years old so if you haven't played it yet, I don't see any reason to go back and do it now. There are similar games that do it better. If you're a Godfather junkie, or are doing something like I was, then you can feel comfortable that it's at least good enough not to be a complete waste of time. It was definitely better than Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, but was the next worse game that I had played from this project. 194. Call of Duty: World at War Spoiler So this series has been a true surprise for me. As I mentioned in previous posts, I first playe CoD on my friends Xbox way back during the MW2 days I think. We played online for like 20 minutes, I got slaughtered and had absolutely no fun with it and thought never again. I had bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 when I bought my PS3, just so I'd have an MP game to play in case someone came over. It remained unopened until last year and I only played it since I paid full price for it way back when. I was shocked at how much I actually enjoyed it. I solo'd most of the online stuff and DLC's and thought the campaign was a really good challenge. After that experience, I bought most of the other ones that I plan on playing over time. I was pleased to see that this game was so low on the game page count and that I'd get to play a game I really wanted for my project. I had done a little research going into this one. I know these games can be full of hackers and I really don't want to have to hide any games on my profile for some online shenanigans. I saw that this game was not really safe to play in public lobbies online and I had also read that the main campaign on Veteran difficulty was one of the hardest in the series. I wasn't so worried about the campaign, but the online portion made me nervous. What made the campaign so hard was the absolutely ridiculous grenade spam. There were certain sections of the game (looking at you 'Heart of the Reich' mission). That particular mission requires you to take out four stationary guns. I found the first two guns to be fairly easy to do, and thank goodness there's a checkpoint right after that second gun is taken out because the next section taking out the last two was brutal for me. You need to use cover when you move virtually all the time if you want to survive in Veteran, but you also have to keep moving because if you stay still for more than a few seconds, odds are there's three grenades being lobbed at you. Even when you're not close, they are tossing them at you. It's bananas the amount of grenades get thrown at you. It's not unique to that level, but that particular checkpoint was really hard for me due to that. The next hardest level for me was the 'Burn'em Out' mission. You get a flamethrower and spend most of the level in trenches, where you get shot at from people in trees and people running on the top of the trenches and people in the trenches. You get some smoke grenades, that I found extremely useful in a few tricky spots, but it just took a lot of trial an error to get through it. I tend to play these games through on Veteran my first go through to save time. I figure I have to beat them on that difficulty anyway, so I might as well just do it to start and then use the regular playthrough for clean up if needed. I like these campaigns and I appreciate that they bounce you around a few different characters to play. It allows them to expand the story a bit and gives you some different perspectives to play from. The graphics were good for the time and the controls are good. The trophies for the game are pretty consistent as well. You pretty much get some trophies for beating missions in Veteran difficulty, there's always a collectible to find and then there's some unique things to do in a mission for a trophy. I found the hardest random trophy to be the 'Sum of all Zeros' trophy for shooting down 45 Japanese planes. There's not too many more planes than 45 it seems so you need to shoot down most of them. It takes a little while to learn the level well enough to know where they are coming from. Thankfully it can be done in Regular difficulty...but that one took me a good 45 minutes to an hour to get. I found the hardest trophies in the game to be for the DLC's. Both involve the Zombies mode of the game, which has historically been my least favorite part of the games. The trophies are not easy for either of them and require quite a bit of luck to do solo. In the Map Pack 2 DLC, there's no place safe where you do not have to worry about zombies coming from a blind spot. There's a very specific strat for doing it solo, but it requires a lot of luck with regards to the random gun you get from the mystery box and the random perk you get from the vending machine. You need the Wunderwaffe, which is like an electric shock gun, and a high capacity, fast shooting gun like the PPSh-41. You need specific perks. You really need to end each round with a crawler, which is a zombie whose legs have been blown off, so it moves really slowly. This allows you to catch your breath, replace boards on windows for some cheap points and get ready for the next round. As the rounds get higher, the zombies move much, much faster and if you get stuck, you're pretty much dead. The strategy involves getting those key guns/perks, unlocking specific areas, and then running a loop to get a huge zombie train behind you before running back into the hut, creating a long line of sight where you can just mow the zombies down. It took me several days of trying to get the right setup and used to the strategy, until I was able to beat it. You feel like a major badass when you get it working, but it was very hard to do. I didn't think DLC Map Pack 3 could possibly be as hard as Map Pack 2, but I was wrong. In theory, it is easier. The level has warps, you can boost up your weapon, and there is an area where you can camp where you won't be attacked from the back or sides...but the trophies make this one harder. The trophy 'Perkaholics Anonymous!' requires you to get to the 20th round without buying a perk. That is super hard to do. I tried for several days to do this solo and just wasn't even getting close. I did what I could and then decided to do something risky...I joined a public lobby to see if I could do it with others. I got reeeeeaaaaaaally lucky. I got into a room with two dudes who were vastly better than me at the game. I pretty much just had to not screw them up, and we were going to make it. It's hard not to screw things up in the later rounds. There's just so many zombies, they move so fast, and they don't go down as easy...plus there's Hell Dogs to contend with. The first 18 rounds or so, you can hang out in the camping spot up the stairs and survive...but after that round, it gets impossible. You have to use the teleporter and start to kite a bit to survive. I was not prepared for this the first time through and we died in round 19. Thankfully, the same two dudes played again and we got to like round 22 and I got the trophy. I was able to do all of the other trophies alone, but I rolled the dice with that one that I wouldn't get screwed by hackers and really lucked out. While Zombies is my least favorite part of the game, I found the DLC's to be very satisfying to beat since they were so hard and it's typically not something I'm good at. The game has been out for 15 years, so odds are if you wanted to play this game, you would have by now. If you haven't, it is a fun game to play and I would recommend it. I'm not terribly good at FPS games and I was able to solo everything but one trophy, so I think it's achievable by most with a little patience. I'm currently playing the Vita CoD game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. That game is mostly hard because the Vita screen is so damn small, but I will definitely play more games from this series going forward. I think I have less interest in the newest ones, but these classic ones have been a lot of fun. Non-Platinum Games Spoiler Welcome Park Spoiler There is really not much to say to this game. It is more a tutorial on how to play your Vita and gives you a little insight into all the different types of functions. The games are simple puzzle games with that idea in mind. Touch the screen, slide on the back, press the buttons, etc. It comes with the Vita, so if you have it you might as well play it. Didn't take long to do and was pretty painless. The Playroom Spoiler This was a game that I probably wouldn't have played if it didn't come on the PS4 and I didn't accidentally unlock some trophies checking it out. You need the camera in order to complete the games and it was fun as a novelty. Similar to Welcome Park, it is as much a tutorial into the functionality of the PS4 controller and camera. Most of it is just goofing off and I had my kid do some of the trophies just playing around with the controller...like shaking the champagne bottle and spraying someone or having the mini-ninjas dance. It took me quite a while to finish this game up due to the Shuriken Master trophy. I wasn't good enough to do this solo, my kid was only two and couldn't help and my wife had no interest. I had to wait until a high school friend of mine that I used to play video games with came over for a visit. He hasn't had a system since the PS2 though so was a little rusty. I showed him how awesome the PS4 is and played through the Ninja course a few times and thankfully he was able to get the few coins that I could never get by myself. It's a mildly fun, interactive series of games and is fun for a short time. It's another free game so there's no harm in playing it, but there is really nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary here. Arcade Archives: Contra Spoiler Contra was one of my favorite games as a kid. I played it so much and got good enough at it where I could beat the game without dying. When I saw this while perusing the PS Store, I got that nostalgic pull and decided to buy it. I was supremely disappointed :( They changed up quite a bit of it and the trophy list was exceptionally easy. You can get all the trophies and only reach the second level since all the trophies are score related. I got the trophies by playing normally and once I hit the 150,000 points, stopped. It wasn't like I remembered and was just disappointed and wanted to move on. I have no idea what happens after level three since I quit right around there. A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV Papers, Please Batman: Arkham VR Final Fantasy XV Multiplayer: Comrades Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Spoiler Not too much to say about this one. It was a three hour movie where a lot of ice cream is eaten...it is extremely convoluted and tough to follow until they kind of explain things in the last 15 minutes. I found that reading the journals ended up helping with the context of the story. It wasn't bad but there is one huge continuity error where in one scene where Roxas, Axel and Xion are eating ice cream, in one image Xion has her hood on, camera angle change and no hood on, another camera angle change and hood on. This happened like eight times in that one entry, but other than that I didn't notice much. I thought the voice acting was much better in this than in CoM, however Xemnas voice doesn't really match his animation. Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded Spoiler I feel like 358/2 Days was much more valuable and informative than this entry. 358/2 filled in some gaps and made more sense of the story...this added a weird side thing that I'm not sure added much to the KH story as a whole. I appreciate that they tried to explain the disappearance of the entries in Jiminy's journal...but this was just weird and convoluted. I may go back and watch it again to see if I can make more sense of it. It was like Inception meets Tron...while it wasn't nearly as valuable to the series, it wasn't a total waste of time either and it's worth watching for completions sake. Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage Spoiler This game was a pretty big surprise to me on many levels. First, the graphics are much more realistic and a little unsettling at first considering not much changed in the model in the entire series until now. It was much more beautiful to play, however I did suffer from frame rate drops pretty regularly. My other surprise was how challenging this game ended up being. It is quite short, you could probably beat it in less than an hour skipping cut scenes, however the objective list was legit challenging. I didn't quite understand how only about 10% of gamers had finished this game going into it...but by the time I was done it made a lot of sense. I'll start by saying that I enjoyed this game a lot. Some of the objectives were extremely frustrating, but I liked that they got rid of the command menu and went back to the shortcut menu. It made battles much more fluid. I enjoyed playing as Aqua again and I thought the story was interesting enough...it is clearly an extended prologue into KH3. Critical was ten times harder in this game than in any of the previous. Not only do you have less HP and MP and the enemies have more, it disables Second Chance. I had thought for a while that it disabled Once More as well, however there were times it seemed to work so I'm not sure. I guess the times I died from a combo were because I tried to dodge or act and it broke the combo or the combo was slower and didn't recognize, but I died several times when I thought it should kick in. I died a lot during my Critical run and ended up spending a lot of time running back to save points to refill my focus bar and MP, because you could die in a hurry, even with more than half of your health. Other things that were hard were the objectives that required you to beat certain bosses without getting touched or using a specific attack that may not even be available when it is time to kill the boss. During one of the boss fights, meteors fall from the sky and turn in to sea urchin things when they land...there were several times I was hit by a stray meteorite that I couldn't see that caused me to take damage and restart the fight. The only really grind-y objective was getting to level 80. You start at 50 so it doesn't seem like much, but the game is so short that I was level 56 on my first run when I beat it and level 60 on my Critical run when I beat it. I did my cleanup run on Beginner and spent a solid hour and a half to two hours cycling through the same area to get to 80. After doing these objectives, the completion ratio made sense. This game could easily have gotten a Platinum trophy based on its challenge, however I get that it is a prologue style entry and didn't. I enjoyed it quite a bit despite a few challenging moments where I needed to use some breathing techniques ;) I don't feel like this is a 'must play' as a stand alone title, but as an entry in the entire series...it was quite enjoyable. What Remains of Edith Finch Spoiler This is a top 3 most depressing, yet well told and interesting games I have ever played. It's a walking sim, so there's not much to it as far as game play goes, but this story was fantastic. It was a free game a few months ago and I needed a '7' for the Gaming by Numbers event so I figured I'd give it a go now. As it turns out...my version of the game is a '5' and it's the EU version that is a '7'....so no dice there, however I'm really happy I made that mistake and played this game. It is super short (2-3 hours tops), but the imagery was awesome and spooky, the subject matter was really dark and how the story unfolds is pretty brilliant. A few of the stories are truly heart wrenching and hit pretty close to home. I don't generally talk to my wife about the games I play since she really doesn't care about gaming...but I told her all about this one. I really can't say too much without ruining it so I'll try to be extremely vague. The gist of it is it's a story about a young girl whose family is supposedly cursed. You play as her as she walks through her old house, uncovering the details of her family history. I'll just say that the details of her family are often tragic and told in unique ways to keep the story fresh. There is just enough interaction to keep it interesting as well. If you got it for free with PS+, what are you waiting for and take a few hours out to play through it. If you don't have it...I can't say you should spend more than $5 considering how short it is...but they pack a lot of awesome into a few short hours. Hue Spoiler I'm conflicted with how I feel about this game. I really like the style of game of the puzzle platformer, so it had that in its favor. Even though the music was relatively repetitive, I enjoy ominous piano music so that was also a plus. I also really liked the concept of using the color spectrum so there are a lot good things the game had going for it. This game mainly suffered from some of the clunkiest platforming controls I've ever played. There are several puzzles that require you to jump and change color in midair. In order to change to a specific color, you have to angle the R3 joystick to a specific angle. Nothing is harder than running with the D-pad or L3 joystick, pressing X to jump while simultaneously tilting the R3 joystick a very specific direction. You have minimal wiggle room to mess up or you select the wrong color and mess up the jump. This clunkiness caused more issues than it should have. Overall, I found most of the puzzles pretty satisfying to solve. A few of them really gave me a challenge, but for the most part they are pretty straightforward. Word to the wise...you don't die walking under the paint spouts. I had assumed for several of the puzzles that if you got hit by the paint, you would die and did a lot of extra work to solve those puzzles. I accidentally ran into one and didn't die and it made the next puzzles much easier. My other big issue was the blandness of the story. Normally I don't care since a lot of platformers aren't about the story and are about the game play. The problem was this game tried to make an emotional story line and I just found the narration to be annoying more than adding any real depth to the game. They should have spent more time on making working mechanics on the controller. Batman and Spider-Man had similar mechanics with changing gadgets and they weren't nearly as clunky. Due to the rather clunky controls and meh story, I'd have to say this is the textbook definition of a mediocre game. I needed a '2' game for Gaming By Numbers, and this looked short and interesting. It did end up being relatively short... Doom VFR Spoiler I picked this game so that I would have a reason to play my PSVR and it also finished up my slate for the Gaming by Numbers Event. I really haven't used my PSVR a lot since I got it and I was looking forward to playing something like this. My initial impressions were a complete disappointment...but I have to say that was entirely my own fault. I played this game without a guide or watching any videos...which I kind of wish I did because I would have enjoyed 100% of my playthrough instead of only 25% of it... Had I watched a video, I would have seen how the movement could/should have been. I am going to blame the game a little bit for my initial perception. The default movement settings for the game are to teleport around or short burst dashes with the D-Pad...If you use the R3 and L3 joysticks, nothing would happen for movement. It was frustrating and stupid for an FPS. I didn't look at the settings for the controls and just assumed this was how the game had to be played. I didn't learn that you could change the movement from segmented and teleport to fluid and running....like a normal FPS until the last couple of levels. It was very hard to control using only teleporting and dashes. The only good thing about my mistake was that I easily got to 1000 teleports for the trophy. If I played the fun way...I would have had to grind that at the end. The other thing I didn't figure out until the end was how to bring up the level maps...which show you the location for the collectibles. Had I noticed this at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have had to replay any of the missions. It was a little fun though to go back and play the missions the fun way. Since I played this game the wrong way...I was supremely disappointed at first. Once I put the controls to the correct setting...this game was amazingly awesome. It truly was like being dropped right into an FPS game. The demons were pretty cool, however the graphics were a little fuzzy on them. The levels were quite clear and very cool to explore. I have the gun controller for the VR and it was really awesome for this game. Once I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun. I'll definitely play another FPS game on the VR down the road. It was pretty short and the levels are relatively small so it is a bit expensive for how short it is...but it really was a lot of fun and if you are a doom fan, there are Classic levels that you can unlock and play. So if you ever plan on playing this game...for the love of Jeebus, fix the controls before you start. You won't be disappointed. SOMA Spoiler I got this game for free on PS+ a while back and with it being the Halloween season and no events, I wanted to throw a horror style game into the mix. This seemed relatively short, it was free and I have it on my Fall/Winter Backlog challenge so snuck it in here between some bigger titles. It's a walking sim that takes place in the somewhat near future and involves apocalyptic events. The game doesn't give you much to go on for clues and it causes some areas to be harder than you would think. The inside zones are relatively straightforward, however I got a little lost in some of the outside zones. Visibility is usually low and the flashlight doesn't help a ton. I'll say that the story was interesting enough, but was not altogether an unfamiliar scenario. The 'wow' moment takes place kind of early in the story and I kept expecting another twist or turn, but it ended up feeling mostly straightforward to me. There isn't a ton of enemies, but the game is very claustrophobic and it can be quite challenging to get around. The music is pretty good as it makes it feel very creepy throughout. They also do a pretty good job with the images, making them fuzzy or harder to see. I played in a dark room to help set the mood. There was supposedly a missable trophy, however I'm not sure how it is missable since it seemed pretty required to advance the story. For a free game it was pretty good. I wouldn't pay more than $5 or $10 if you didn't get it for free. The controls took a little getting used to and I don't think the game really introduced anything terribly new or groundbreaking, but the puzzles presented a decent challenge at places (mostly due to the lack of direction) and it was pretty creepy. The voice acting was decent and if you're looking for a scary walking sim, this isn't a bad choice. It's not a game I feel like I'll remember in two years, but it served its purpose for the holiday! VR Karts Spoiler My kids got me this game for my birthday last year and it was something I wasn't in a rush to play, but since I don't have a ton of games for the PSVR, I knew I'd get around to it eventually. I needed a quick-ish game to finish up my bingo card that had an online component, so it seemed like the time to bust this out. I wasn't expecting much and the reviews are pretty terrible for it. It really is about the most basic racing game ever with decent handling until it is really terrible handling. On straightaways and gradual turns the handling is mostly good, but you can't make a sharp turn and you can't drift into turns unless you have some boost...which isn't a guarantee. The tracks are extremely basic. There is really only 3 different areas with slightly different track layouts. The NPC's are the bullshit type that cheat when you are doing too well. They'll drive faster than you can, get the bullshit power ups to hinder you and make the game more frustrating than it needs to be. The online play is dead basically...I had to search for about an hour before even one other person appeared. It's got a Mario Kart feel without any of the charm or fun. Unless someone gets you this as a gift, there is no reason to buy it...if you do happen to get it as a gift, it is the very definition of mediocre with a few rage inducing moments due to the NPC's. Castlevania: Harmony of Despair Spoiler My first green check mark game since New Year's Day. This wasn't a game that was on my radar in any kind of fashion until @Cassylvania had mentioned needing help on the Boned trophy. Symphony of the Night is one of my favorite games of all time, so I volunteered to help without even looking at it. With 10k milestone fast approaching for Cass, it was time to boot the game up and give it a go. There isn't a ton of depth to the game/story at all. It is really just an arcade version of Castlevania with only seven levels (excluding DLC levels) and a very familiar boss fight with Dracula...which turns out I really enjoyed quite a bit. Up to six people can play at once and it really is a lot of fun. Each attempt gives you thirty minutes to beat the level. If you die, you turn into a skeleton and are pretty useless until someone revives you. If you die as a skeleton, you lose three minutes off your clock. If the clock reaches all zeros, it is game over. Most levels can be beat in less than ten minutes, but some are a little tricky to navigate and can take a bit longer while you figure out where to go. There is a very steep difficulty curve in this game. It is really hard when you start and then really, really hard when switch from normal to medium. I'd still be playing this game if not for the handful of times we logged in to play, an absolute pro randomly joined us and carried our asses. The unknown, green, JP dude, we lovingly referred to as Shrek, carried us through as Soma when @Jens joined us, but we had several other godly characters join as well. I mean it makes sense...the game is nine years old, so anyone still playing it is probably beef caked out and a huge fan of the game. It was just as fun to watch these mad men blitz through a level as it was to play. The name of the game is loot as you don't gain experience points or anything. The harder levels drop better loot, and the better loot you get, the better your character gets. Pretty basic stuff, but it was still pretty fun. It plays a lot like SOTN did, so I really enjoyed it. You can choose from about eight different characters, but I love Alucard and spent most of my time playing as him. I got pretty lucky my first time through Hard Mode as I got one of Alucard's best weapons to drop, which made farming Normal a breeze. I still can't kill about half of the bosses on hard mode solo though. Without help, the hardest trophy by far is beating the game on Hard Mode. The most intimidating trophy would be Boned since you need five other players to get it. Basically, five people need to die and become a skeleton while one person beats the boss. It's really pretty easy actually as nobody but the person killing the boss needs to be in the 'boss zone'. Five people can basically die at the beginning of the level and hang out while someone solo's the boss...which is really easy to do in level one. I found Poetic Justice to be the most entertaining trophy to earn. You get that one for killing a charmed teammate...which is actually more challenging than you'd think. It's not hard to get, but it's easy to get your ass kicked if you're trying against a boss, or smoke the imp if you're using them. The game is definitely more fun to play with other people and can get pretty tedious if you don't like the genre. The biggest reason I enjoyed this game so much, was it is the first game I've ever played with my son. He's six now, and up until this game, I always gave him a controller with no battery life, and let him think that he was playing as me. In this game, there's a benefit to playing with another person instead of solo (double drops for farming gold and items for two other trophies) and I figured I'd give him a shot at playing for real. He also loves Alucard, so I would let him pick my player when we'd play together and most of the time that was Soma. Other than some difficult large gap jumps or jumps that needed specific timing...he did really well. It sounds silly, but I was really proud of him because he stuck with it and really wanted to learn, despite his early difficulty. As of today, he is able to navigate and beat the boss of the first two levels by himself. Granted, he's playing a suped up Alucard...but I was still impressed nevertheless. I let him pick the next game he wants to play, so starting tomorrow, we'll be playing LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. I will only play this game with him and I'm really excited to be able to start gaming with my little guy Gunhouse Spoiler Time for a legitimate, finished game review. No platinum for this game so I wasn't going to save it for the rain day next week. Probably could have, but this game was so bad, I just wanted to finish it when I saw the light at the end of this extremely long and tedious tunnel. This was a PS+ game that I got I have no idea when. I had started playing SMB again a bit last summer and just didn't have the stomach for it at the time and was looking for a new Vita game to play as an excuse to procrastinate. I looked through my backlog and this game was randomly selected....yuck. It's basically just an extremely repetitive puzzle game. The house is set up kind of like a slot machine that has a 3X6 grid. You get to choose three different weapons from the potential eight in the store (you don't start with all eight however). It's really only four guns with four being a kind of upgraded version of its match. When a level starts, the grid randomly fills up with eighteen gun icons from the three you have selected (each gun has a unique icon). You need to get a 2X2 grid of the same icon in order to get a gun that you can 'load' into either the front or back of the house. There is room for three guns up front and three in the rear. If the guns are loaded in the front, they do one thing and if they are loaded in the back they do something different. Some guns are better suited for the front of the house and some better for the back. The more icons you get gridded together, the more powerful the gun in that slot will be. You can also load more of the same gun in the same slot to strengthen what is already loaded...i.e. you load a 2X2 gun and then but another 2X2 on top, it will stack the power. But you have to be careful, because if you slide a different weapon in, it will override what was already there...even if it is weaker. It is very easy to do this by accident as well since the way you get rid of gun icons you don't want is to slide them left or right off the grid. To further strengthen the gun, there are two gun icons located at the very top of the house. This lets you know that if you load the gun with that icon next, it will get a boost. If that gun type is loaded, the bonus gun icon that was there will then disappear and the other icon that was at the top will slide over to be the potential bonus and that one will be replaced by one of the other three random icons. This sounds more confusing to explain than it is in practice. So now that we've gone over what you're doing, we'll go over what a level is. You start on Day 1 at noon. The Day starts and your grid is filled with the gun icons...you then have 20 seconds to rearrange the icons in the grid, Candy Crush style to try and load the guns in the front or back. With about four seconds left, the side of the house gets pulled down slowly (like a garage door), covering the grid and you lose the ability to move the pieces that have been covered. Once the side of the house is completely pulled down, things start coming at you from the left side of the screen, guns blazing, trying to steal your people out of the house. After about 10 seconds or so of attacking (seems shorter if you aren't attacking, but the round won't end if your guns are still shooting), the screen pauses and the side of the house opens and you can start to rearrange the icons in the grid again. After 20 seconds, it's closed and the onslaught continues. You have hearts at the top of the screen that represent your health and every time the bad guys shoot your house, you lose a bit of health and each time they kidnap a person all the way back to the left side of the screen, you lose health (you can block shots and kill the kidnapper to avoid losing health). This repeats until you have fended off the baddies or they deplete your health. If you win, you move onto the next phase which is Day 1 Dusk. If you lose, you can retry. If you beat Day 1 Dusk, you move onto Day 1 Night. Dusk has more things that shoot at you than Noon and Night has more things that shoot at you than Dusk, plus a boss. The things you kill drop money, hearts or nothing. With the money, you can visit the store and buy upgrades to your guns, health or armor. Armor is really important the higher up you go because the gun toting things that attack you start to hit like a truck and you'll die after a couple of hits. While there are eight potential guns you can use, one really needs to be the Fork. It's one of only two defensive 'guns' and is much more effective than the other option. The Fork is a weak gun if you move it to the front of the house but the all important shield if you move it to the back. This one is a must because you'll get stuffed in a locker if you don't block the attacks and you also don't need to invest any money in upgrading since upgrading the shield doesn't really do anything, allowing you to use those funds to upgrade your other items. I also ended up using the Beach Ball and Flame Thrower as my other two options. You can also earn money by completing 'challenges' that the game sets up for you in between each round. You need to do some of these for trophies and they are a good way to get money...however I couldn't be bothered with them after day 40 or so....just wasn't worth the effort. I tried some of the other guns....but nothing seemed to be as effective. Here is why the game sucks though....it is the same thing over and over and over again. Noon, Dusk, Night...same three phases of the day each day and you fight the same enemies on Day 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. Basically the first 10 days are somewhat unique (but not really) and then every 10 days after that is a repeat of the same exact thing again except the enemies are slightly harder each time. When I say the exact same thing....it is the exact same thing....EXACT. No change in background, no change in strategy, no change in enemies, no change in bosses, NO CHANGE IN MUSIC. To get the 100% you need to get through day 100...so 300 of the exact same thing. It was a grueling slog and stopped being fun by around day 15. For a while I tried doing 1 day per day to get through it....but I just needed to walk away for a bit. Watching 'Married at First Sight' was more appealing lol Unless you are a masochistic or have a real hard-on for UR trophies...stay far, far away from this one. The Bridge Spoiler I believe this was a free game with PS+ some years ago and was something that I planned on playing as a part of the PS3 event. I ended up playing the majority of the game on my Vita since it is a cross-play game. It's a puzzle game with an MC Escher flair to it. The game is in black and white and has a lot of optical illusion style boards that you need to solve. The game is relatively short consisting of four acts with six puzzles per act. It starts off pretty easy and gets to be quite challenging. Most of the later puzzles would take forever to figure out without a guide. Even with the guide, a lot of the puzzles are hard to solve because of how precise you need to be with the placement of your guy(s) and the obstacles. In the puzzles, the world can spin around or become inverted and you need to figure out how to use your surroundings to get to the door to leave the room. Many of the doors have a key that is needed before you can exit. I found the further I got in the game, the harder it was to play on the Vita. Some of the puzzles are pretty big and it gets really hard to see you character. I played on the Vita all the way up until the last three puzzles. I think there was some sort of glitch for me with Mirrored World IV - IV....there are two keys in that level, that according to the guide, are attached by a chain to the ground. You are controlling two mirrored professors at the same time and in order to get the key, both professors need to touch their key at the same time. According to the guide, one of the keys that is attached to the chain needs to have the chain extended in one direction as far as it can go or the timing will be off for both professors to touch theirs at the same time. On the Vita, these keys were not attached to a chain and appeared to be bolted to the floor. I was unable to get the keys to move and I spent a good thirty minutes trying to get them without success. I then downloaded the game to the PS3 to try on a bigger screen and I ran into the same problem....the keys were bolted to the floor. I then downloaded the game to my PS4 to try....in this version the keys were attached to a chain. I was able to then beat the level and move on. At that point I just finished the game on the PS4 since I was having trouble seeing on the Vita. For a free game, it was fine. My only issue was that the later puzzles were not very intuitive to solve and I'm surprised that anyone figured out how to beat them. With how finicky gravity can be, the way you need to solve a puzzle seems inherently wrong because the professor doesn't seem to move in the way you are expecting....but then the slightest tweak will make it work. I would have thought most of the solutions wouldn't work if I was doing the game without the help of a guide towards the end so kudos to the people that figured this out....I sure as hell wouldn't have lol It's not worth more than $5 and while most of the game can be played on the Vita, you'd probably have an easier time of it playing on the PS3 or PS4/5. I'd say the game is only about six hours long, but the artwork is cool and I've definitely played worse.....not the most ringing endorsement, but if you already have it in your library it's probably worth playing....if you don't, I don't think you're missing much. WWE 2K Battlegrounds Spoiler To explain why this game is making it's way onto my profile, I'm going to modify a quote by Turkish from the movie Snatch, 'It's hard enough to finish all the games you need to in a timed trophy event, so every now and then you gotta do something that might not agree with your principles. Basically you have to forget you got any.' The Gaming By Numbers event is a really fun event with a cool badge for completing. To finish the event, you need to finish 10 games in about 3 months that each end in a different number on their game page....which isn't a ridiculous number of games to finish, but considering some of the games I play are very long, it can be hard to do in time. In order to finish 10 games with unique ending numbers, sometimes you have to play some games that may not have been on your radar. This game is one such game for me. When I went to add this month's PS+ games to my backlog, I noticed that this game ended in a '9', which I didn't have a game in mind for yet for the event. According to the trophy guide, it only would take about 7 hours to complete so I figured this would be one of those games that might fall outside my principals that would make the list. I've watched wrestling two different times in my life. Once in the late 80's and early 90's when Hulk Hogan was king and guys like Randy 'Macho Man' Savage, The Million Dollar Man, Tatanka, The Rockers, Lex Lugor, Yokozuna and a young Undertaker were roaming the ring. I was a big Undertaker fan and I remember being upset when he 'died' during a casket match or something. At the time, I was still thinking it was all real and was super upset and stopped watching. My second era of following wrestling was around 2000 towards the end of the 'Attitude' era. Some of my college friends had a Pay Per View on and I saw a match with Kane and I thought it was pretty cool. Guys like the Dudley's and the Hardy Boyz were nuts with the stuff they were doing. The Rock and Stone Cold were super entertaining and for about a year or two, we watched every show every week and bought all the Pay Per Views. Once the World Wildlife Fund made the WWF change their name to the WWE and then the WCW folded and was basically absorbed by the WWE, shit started to go downhill for me and I lost interest. Similar to my watching history, I've played two wrestling games in my life. Pro Wrestling for the NES where I played exclusively as Starman and then WWF No Mercy for the N64. No Mercy was actually a lot of fun and that game was in our rotation of heavily played games in college along with Golden Eye and NHL Hitz...but it's been a long time in between wrestling games for me. On the surface, this game seemed like it would be fine, graphics were kind of neat and there was a lot of opportunity for nostalgia. You can waste money with micro transactions if you want to pay to unlock a bunch of wrestlers, but it's not needed at all for the trophy list. The playstyle of this game is to wrestling what NHL Hitz was to hockey. Over the top in the caricature graphics with over the top moves and damage. This game actually had the potential to be pretty fun, however ended up being quite frustrating and pretty annoying to play. Firstly, the trophy list is pretty small compared to what it could have been. There's honestly enough content for this game to have a platinum if they actually wanted you to try and do everything. There's a handful of trophies that revolve around the main campaign, which resembles a comic book story, and the rest are for just doing certain things in the ring or unlocking random items. They could have had a trophy for finishing each area, getting all the stars for the campaign and for unlocking different %'s of the wrestlers, but the trophy list really only has you do the bare minimum to get through. I didn't even look at most of the screens in the game. The beginning of the campaign is pretty easy and is a good way to learn the controls. One thing you learn very early is this is a game that feels like it 'cheats' when you are playing the computer. One of the status bars you have is for your special move, and when it gets full you can press the R2 and L2 buttons at the same time to do the move, same goes for the computer. Well, in this game, the computer player seems like they can do their move whenever they want if the status bar is full. You could be mid combo and all of a sudden your being jumped thirty feet in the air for a giant chokeslam. It also feels like the computer (especially during the Wrestlemania part) counter more than half of your moves. It can be really frustrating at times and make the game feel unfair. In addition to these annoyances during the match, the controls feel a bit clunky. You can get temporarily stuck in objects on the screen. Trying to do moves while then trying to counter the computer's moves put you in a tough spot. If the computer goes to do a move against you, there is a QTE where one of the button pops up you need to press to counter. You have like half a second to respond or if you were hitting buttons for a combo and the QTE pops up, you'll fail if the QTE isn't the button you were pushing for the combo. It's just really annoying. Additionally, the mini game for pinning, submissions or throwing people from the ring during a royal rumble involve alternate mashing of the R2 and L2 buttons. I don't know if you have to fully let go of one before pressing the other, but it didn't seem very responsive to me and there were several times where I lost to submission or got tossed from the ring when I shouldn't have. The good news with the royal rumble is it is relatively easy to cheese. Only four wrestlers can be in the ring at the same time (which is also clunky to switch who you are targeting and/or tell who you switched to) and usually two of them will face off against each other, leaving one against you. If you stand on the turnbuckle, the one you are up against kind of walks just out of distance for a bit and when they finally start in towards you, you can press :square: to jump off the turnbuckle and punch them and they go down. You can go back on the turnbuckle and rinse/repeat while the other guys bash the shit out of each other. Once the energy level is low enough, you can toss guys out of the ring. It's not fool proof, but considering how often you get countered and stuff, I don't think it'd be really possible to beat without doing that. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but my favorite part of the game was going through the roster of wrestlers and listening to the old entrance music. This game could have been a lot of fun, but ended up being more frustrating due to game controls than anything else. It was free so the price was right, it crossed off '9' for me in the event and it was short, so in the end I can't bitch too much. Unless you are a huge WWE fan or are looking for a quick game for some event, this game is easy to pass up. Monopoly Plus Spoiler It seemed quick, was less than $5 and I thought it was a game I'd be able to play again later at any time if we wanted to play as a family one day. It was under that 4 hour threshold I had wanted to stay above, but I also thought it'd be a good opportunity to introduce the game to my son. Being only 7, he didn't really understand the idea of buying property and paying rent, etc, however he did like the game pieces. His favorite was the dog so I let him play as that one while I was the shoe. I'm always the shoe....I don't know why anyone would choose anything other than the shoe...One of the trophies requires playing with 6 people, but you can do it using one controller, so I just started the game with 6 and immediately declared bankruptcy with 4 of them so just the two of us could play. The game is actually pretty good. The graphics aren't bad for a board game, it's got several different types of house rules...growing up we always played where fines went into the middle of the board and anyone who landed on 'Free Parking' would get it...and that mode was available! They had several other 'house rules' setups, but I had never played any of them before. The trophy list was super easy and I got most of them without even trying. There are two that are RNG related. One for getting the highest roll of the dice at the beginning of the game to go first and one for getting a Chance/Community Chest card that gives you over $100. Neither are hard or take long...but you are a bit at the mercy of the RNGods. The card one took a little while since only the main profile gets trophies, and the shoe just wasn't landing on card spots on the board. If I did get a card, I had to pay money or go to jail or something. The game ended up lasting just long enough. My son was starting to get a little board...(see what I did there ;))...so I ended up stopping that game right after getting the last trophy. The game is actually a really good realization of Monopoly and if you like board games and/or are looking for some family stuff to play, this isn't a bad choice at all. You can play classic board or a fancy 3D city board and for under $5, you really can't complain. For trophies, it only took a little over an hour to get the 100% which was very good for my chances to finish up the event. Now I still had 3 days and only needed 2 games to finish. Sacra Terra: Kiss of Death Spoiler I had never heard of this game before. It ended up being on the tableau from two or three years ago and I checked the game page and it looked to be something that would take around 4 hours or so to finish and was a non-plat game. I also saw that it was a puzzle/adventure style game and thought this would be a perfect kind of game that I could start and then put down for a bit if I got busy at work. The other bonus was that I could also use it for the PS3 event, but that wasn't the impetus behind this purchase. The only real bummer about this game being a PS3 title was there was no chance for a sale. The game was $11.99 and was almost above what I was willing to spend on a last second game for an event. But, I figured beggars can't be choosers and just pulled the trigger. I was actually pleasantly surprised by this game. This was another entry that unexpectedly hit a nostalgia note for me. It reminded me of a few older PC games that I had loved playing as a kid in Return to Zork, Death Gate, Myst, and Shannara. All of these were point and click style puzzle, adventure games and this was made in the same mold. I'll come out and say off the bat that this game had perhaps the worst voice acting I've ever heard in anything....ever. The Succubus wasn't so bad....but everything else, especially the boyfriend, was just terrible. The game starts with a couple about to sit down to dinner at the lady's house. The phone rings and the woman gets up to answer the phone. While she is on the phone, the man has a wedding ring box in his hand and is intending to propose to his girlfriend. At this moment....for reasons....the man picks up a book he sees lying on the ground. This book is some sort of magical book with satanic spells inside. He reads one of the passages while his girlfriend is on the phone and inadvertently summons a succubus who comes to steal his soul. In this game, you play the girlfriend who goes to a mysterious island to try and save the soul of your captured boyfriend before it is too late. After the introductory chapter, some weird fisherman dude takes you to the island and warns you that the succubus is very powerful while she has control of all the souls. Your job is to free some of these souls to weaken her enough to free your soon-to-be fiancé from her clutches. There are four different soul stories that you are tasked with freeing. You need to figure out what the souls need to be freed from their hell. It follows the usual point and click, find the relevant item to use on a different screen to progress through the story/puzzle, as most of these games do. This game was actually really easy though. When you pull up the map, there are several hearts like the one in the trophy image above. If the heart is devoid of color, you either haven't been there yet or there is nothing new you can do in there. If it is green, it means there is a clue in that room that you need to find. The room you are in is colored yellow and if it is half yellow and half green, you know there is something to do in the current room you are in. Having the map like this made it really easy to solve the puzzles. You never have a ton of inventory, so there's not too much trial and error and it makes it very easy to see where you need to go next. Littered throughout the game are 'HOS' (Hidden Object Searches?) parts where you are given an area with a mess of stuff in it and you have to find each object that is located on the list below. Kind of like a word search, but with objects. After you find all of the objects, you are given some item that will be needed to progress the story, so there's no option to skip these. They aren't that hard, but some of the stuff was not obvious at all to find. It was alright to do, but really didn't seem to have anything to do with anything in the story and was just something else to give you as a puzzle. You have to do two playthroughs for the 100%, and one of them has to be on hard without using clues. Honestly, since the map is one giant clue, there's never really a need to use the clue button anyways. It probably took me about 3.5 - 4 hours to beat it the first time and then an hour and a half or so the second time when I skipped through all the dialogue and knew what the solutions were to the puzzles. I'd have a hard time recommending this game to someone. It's really not worth $11.99 and while I enjoyed it for the nostalgia ding, the story isn't very good, the voice acting is garbage and the puzzles aren't very inspired either. The best thing about this game, was the fact that it ended with a '4' and meant I only had one game left to finish the event. Q.U.B.E.: Director's Cut Spoiler Slowly starting to whittle away at my active games. Q.U.B.E. was a free game that I got some years ago with my PS+ subscription and was nothing that was really on my radar as a game that I needed to play at some point. I had figured it'd fall under the category of games I never play actually. I had downloaded it to my PS3 as a part of the PS3 event that ended at the beginning of the month and it was all of a sudden on my radar. After finishing up the Dragon Age series, I was looking for something a little more casual to break up some bigger games and this game turned out to be the perfect tonic (well mostly). You might be thinking, what the hell is Q.U.B.E.? (maybe not though since most of you guys are way more knowledgeable about games than I am) Q.U.B.E. is a first person puzzle game that was apparently developed by three college students as a part of their class project. You play a dude that is trapped in a cube. You were apparently unconscious and thought to be dead. After regaining consciousness you hear a voice. According to the voice that is coming through your coms, you are in outer space and are humanity's last hope before the Earth is destroyed. You need to solve the riddle(s) of the Cube and destroy it before it collides(?) with the Earth, destroying life as we know it. The person who is speaking to you claims to be in space with you, in orbit, and is drifting in and out of coms range. Since you wake up and appear to have amnesia as to why you are there, the voice tells you about your history as you progress to try and give you a reason to complete the puzzles. There is another voice that appears that is trying to warn you that you are not in space, but are a lab rat being tested. Solving the Cube will end in your death, not the saving of the Earth, and you should stop trying to get through. The story really has little to do with the puzzles since I don't think you really have a choice in the matter. It'd be cool if there were a couple of endings depending upon which person you choose to believe, however there isn't and the story just unfolds as is. As far as the gameplay goes, the puzzles are pretty fun but were not terribly challenging. The movement is pretty stiff and the reticle you have to target the different cubes seems a bit too small. In the main game it's not an issue, but when you are doing the timed puzzles for the hardest trophy, there's not much room for error with the targeting and it got to be pretty frustrating. The puzzles consist of different color cubes and you have to figure out how they need to interact with each other to get to the next room and ultimately to the next sector. There is a new wrinkle added in each sector which made the puzzles more interesting. Each color cube does a different action. The Blue cubes serve as a launcher/catapult, the Red cubes can be extended up to three lengths, the Green cubes can be moved around via the other cubes, the Yellow cubes always come in a pack of three and can either make stairs if you select either end block or something resembling a middle finger if you select the middle block. There are also blocks that will rotate the room or shift the room up or down. They introduce magnets, fans and balls as well that you have to maneuver into certain areas. It really is a pretty fun game when there is no timer and you can take the time to survey the area. You interact with the different cubes with gloves that you are wearing. It kind of seems like magic is how you interact since you just wave your hand and the blocks move. One hand will move them out and the other will move them back. You have a small reticle to target as I mentioned above to select which block you want to activate and it's all pretty intuitive. The trophy list is pretty straightforward. Nothing is missable since there is a chapter select at the end, but you'll probably need a guide to find the hidden areas. I doubt you'd need one to solve the puzzles though. The main game could probably be beaten in just a few hours as it is a relatively short game, however having been a school project and a free game, I won't complain about the length of it. The only challenging trophy is the first trophy on the list Whatever Floats Your Boat, which is part of a racing/challenge section of the game. The trophy itself isn't that bad, but it is blocked behind 20 medals you need to earn to unlock the level needed. There are 10 levels and the one you need to beat is level 9 and you need to earn 20 medals in the prior 8 levels in order to unlock that level. You can earn up to 3 medals per level depending on whether you get Gold, Silver or Bronze (Gold is 3, etc). The levels are relatively short, only about a minute to a minute and a half each, however there is not much room for error in order to get the gold. Thankfully you do not need the gold in each level to get 20, but you do need quite a few golds. I tried to do the levels blind the first time through them, however you need to get powerups throughout the levels in order to finish fast enough to get a medal so you'll probably need to watch a video to see where some are hidden. The biggest challenge in this area is two fold. First, the movement is kind of choppy since the camera is a bit stiff so it can be hard to aim on the move. Hand in hand with that is the small reticle you have for aiming. As I mentioned above, it's not a big deal with no time limit, but when you only have 52 seconds to beat a level and you have to try and hit a small block or powerup while moving, it can be frustrating. Even with those issues, I would have beaten that mode in just a couple hours, however I hit some weird glitch. It wasn't saving my times or the medals that I was earning. It saved all of my medals properly the first time I played a couple of days ago, but when I went back to finish tonight, I got a few gold medals and had earned 20 so that I could attempt the trophied level, however it wasn't showing as available from the race screen. I backed out to see why and saw that none of the times/medals I had earned tonight registered and I was still sitting at 11 when I had earned 20. I reset the game and tried again and again the medals didn't save (I checked after beating the first new level this time). Thankfully, this was a known issue and there was a thread on the forum here that had the solution of disconnecting from PSN and resetting the game and trying. Doing that ended up working and after about 45 minutes, I was back to where I was when the glitch happened. It was pretty frustrating since I did not enjoy this mode of the game as much as the story mode....but the levels were short enough and it was just a matter of getting lucky with my aim on some of the power up items. If you have the game in your backlog, it was fun enough for me to recommend. If you do not already have the game, I can't say it's worth much more than $5. It was a fun puzzle game and with the pink in the thumbnail it counts towards the Cancer event and since it starts with a Q it also gives me my first Q game for a 100% ABC list. With this PS3 game done, I really only have about 8-10 PS3 games left in my backlog to play. I would like to finish them all in the next year and then I may officially be able to retire that console. I'll keep it of course, as I have with all the consoles I've owned, but it will take its place on my retirement shelf with the other consoles that have been put out to pasture....you never know when you may want another ride! Overcooked Spoiler I believe this was a 'free' game that I got with my PS+ subscription and I had heard it was a couch co-op game so it wasn't something I thought I'd be able to play since I don't have anyone who lives around me that plays games. My sons will when they're older, but outside of LEGO games, they aren't ready for most co-op games. So while it wasn't on my radar, I've heard nothing but good things about it and it was something that I wanted to play. I have been on an epic trophy streak (for me) at over a year with at least one trophy per day, and I was running into a situation where I wasn't going to be able to pop a trophy one day. I checked my backlog for something that would be short, fun and with an early trophy to start and this looked like a good option. I got that first trophy and then put this on the back burner while finishing up my other stuff. When I went back to it to pop my next trophy to keep the streak alive, I found out that this game is a lot of fun. It's extremely basic...you take some tomato's (and other ingredients over time), slice them up, throw them in a pot, heat it up and dump it in a bowl. Wash the dish and repeat. As you progress, you get more recipes such as burgers, pizza, burrito's and fish n' chips. So while the game itself is basic in the sense you are just cooking stuff....the wrinkle comes with the levels being not so straight forward. Maybe the level is on a pirate ship and the prep stations are moving around due to the rocking of the boat, or maybe you are working on a sheet of ice and slip-sliding all over the place. The levels are pretty interesting and are what make the game challenging. Actually, what makes the game challenging is having to three star each of the levels. For each order you complete, you get $20. If you complete the order quickly, you can get a tip up to $6 (I think that is the highest) and if you are too slow, you'll miss an order and lose -$10 (missed time is pretty generous). The stars are given based on the amount of money you earn for putting out orders. Most levels have about 4-6 minutes of time for you to reach the threshold for the three star rating. I found the requirements for three stars in the levels to be extremely reasonable. The biggest reason that I found it reasonable is because I was able to beat all of the levels (up to 6-1 anyways) without using the speed boost. Since I got my first trophy so quickly and then had a large gap until my second trophy, I had forgotten that the speed boost was a thing. I was able to three star every level up until the last four levels without it, so the three star requirements are definitely fair. The only reason I found out about the speed boost is because I was stuck on 6-1 for quite a while. I was about $90 from a three star rating (which is quite a bit) and I couldn't figure out how to get faster. Turns out I also didn't know that you could go around certain obstacles and was cutting myself off from a lot of the board. I watched a video to see what I was missing and saw the person using the speed boost....I found myself thinking how that would have been very useful the whole game....but even without it....none of the levels took me that long to do. With the use of the speed boost though, I was able to finish up pretty easily. I had read that this game was very hard to do solo. I didn't really think it was that hard. Each level is about finding a rhythm with the gimmick that is being thrown at you. Once you get the rhythm down....it's not so bad. I can definitely see how this game would be super fun with a partner and I agree that it is the best way to experience the game if you can....having said that though, the game is still a lot of fun solo. From a 'pure fun' standpoint, this game is probably the most fun game I've played all year. If you haven't played it before, it is definitely worth putting on your radar. I will now be playing Overcooked 2 and All You Can Eat at some point. Sparkle 2 Spoiler There's really not a heck of a lot to say about this game. I got it for 'free' with PS+ a few years ago and figured I'd get to it at some point since I enjoy puzzle games. This was one of the games I started over the summer when I was on vacation to keep my trophy streak alive. No other reason than that to be honest...I'm really happy though that I decided to play the Vita stack of the game instead of one of the other ones that were included. I could see how this game would be exceptionally hard without a touch screen. So what is Sparkle 2? It's a puzzle game that mirrors a lot of the puzzle games out there where you have to match three of a kind (or more) to remove the object, and continue to do so until you have completed the level. In this particular iteration of that style of puzzle game, each level has some sort of snaking path. Most of the levels have one entrance and one hole at the end, where orbs come out of the entrance pushed by a pusher lol and if the orbs reach that hole, you lose and have to retry the level. There are some levels with two entrances and holes and a handful that have three of each. On normal mode towards the beginning of the journey, you have only three colors and the orbs don't move particularly fast. As you progress, a couple more colors get added to up the challenge. You have a shooter/launcher that loads a randomly colored orb that you must try to fire into the snaking line of orbs to make three of a kind at a minimum. You can see the orb up to be shot and the next one in the queue (there is an enchantment that lets you see more, but I didn't use that one) If you do make a three of a kind (or more), those orbs disappear and you continue to fire away until all of the orbs are gone or they fall in the hole. The layout of the snaking path and the position of the launcher are what can make a level challenging. There are times where the orbs along the path will be blocking other orbs on a different section of the path and you are forced to eliminate the the middle of the chain. In the higher difficulties, this can be challenging because it isn't one continuous line coming from the entrance. They come in waves and each wave has it's own 'pusher' that moves that segment. The only time the pusher disappears is when you have removed all the orbs from that wave or the wave behind catches up with the previous wave (the pusher slows as it gets closer to the hole). If the front pusher gets blocked by the next wave's set of orbs, you could lose the level even if you are doing ok on the other wave. I found that it was sometimes beneficial to let the second wave catch up with the first wave before removing orbs from that wave. It made it so they were one long continuous line of orbs and was much easier to manage overall. The shooter has a bunch of 'runes' around the outside of it and the more sets of three you make in a row, the faster you gain runes and/or special shots. The runes are important because once all the runes on the shooter are lit, a special move will happen that usually removes a ton of orbs. The other thing making consecutive groups of three or more in a row do, is create pop up orbs that are special abilities. One such ability is a meteor shower that rains down and destroys orbs it touches; one is to summon a bunch of butterflies from the exit that removes orbs from the end of the line (one for each butterfly). There are several different types of special shots that will help you on your journey and the more consecutive matches you make, the faster you get to use these helpful shots. The only other little wrinkle they have are enchantments you unlock as you progress through the story. The enchantments are there to help you on the journey. An example of an enchantment is tar, which slows down the speed of the orbs. Another is tranquility, which makes the levels easier but longer. You can have up to three enchantments going at once and once you unlock them, they stay with you through each subsequent playthrough. That is pretty much it....the game tries to have a story. You are on a journey to a portal (see image above) and you need to collect five keys in order to unlock it. You will find them all on the way and it's just a vehicle to make the game seem like more than just a puzzle game, but it's extremely thin. One playthrough has 92 levels and each level probably takes 3-5 minutes to beat. The layout of the levels are the only thing that adds any kind of variety, but the objective never changes in the main story....remove all the orbs before they reach the hole. The biggest downside to this game is that the difficulties do not stack and you need to beat each one in order to get the 100%. 92 levels isn't a lot of levels, until you have to do them three times....then it is a lot of levels. While Nightmare difficulty was quite a bit harder than hard, the only level that really gave me any trouble was level 60 on Nightmare mode. In this level, the placement of the shooter is right next to the hole and as the orbs get closer to you, there's not a lot of available orbs to shoot and it gets very hard. This level took me a good 20-30 tries to beat while every other level I was able to beat in three tries or less. There are two additional modes they added in survival and challenge mode. They are both the same thing as the main game, it's just in survival, you have to stay alive in the level long enough to earn five stars. Earning five stars didn't take as long as you would think and wasn't very hard at all. Challenge mode was just as easy. You play the same level a number of times starting on easy until you get to very hard. There are like 25 levels I think? And you have to do each of them between three and five times. There wasn't much to it. As I mentioned in the beginning, playing this with a touch screen made the game much easier (and more fun I think). You could just touch where on the screen you wanted the shooter to launch your orb and it would pretty much go there. With the other stacks of the game, you'd be forced to use the analog sticks to aim, which is significantly harder. When I started playing the game, I didn't realize you could use the touch pad and was using the analog on the Vita and it was pretty hard to aim accurately. I found out you could shoot by touching the screen by accident and it made the game a lot more fun. If you got this game for free as I did and want to play it, I would only recommend playing the Vita stack. I think the other's would be far too frustrating. Overall the game is fine. I wouldn't recommend spending anything on it really since it wasn't that good, but if you like those Candy Crush/Bedazzled kind of games, you just might enjoy this one. Guns Up! Spoiler Apparently this game has been around for a while and is another one you can add to my pile of games I'd never heard of. I learned of this game quite accidentally and it was pretty fortuitous. I saw a thread on the the main page of PSNP that mentioned the servers were closing in April and that anyone who had an account prior to the end of October would get 50k free gold to use in the game. When I see that a game server is closing, I usually take a peek to see if it something I would like to play before it is gone forever. I played Mad Max for that reason and enjoyed that game quite a bit. When I saw this game, it reminded me a bit of Clash of Clans that I played on my phone, except it was a side scroller. The concept is the same though, you build a base to defend your fort and you use troops to assault others. I enjoy games like this quite a bit and decided to pick it up and start playing. I figured the 50k gold would speed up the process, but I had 6 months to beat it in any scenario, so I wasn't very worried. Turns out that the headline was a bit misleading. What the promotion actually was, was that anyone who had an account before they made that announcement, would get 50k gold before the end of October. Me, and several others I'm sure, were duped by the misleading headline and started playing the game expecting the 50k gold to come. It never did. The good news is that it didn't really matter that much. I think the game was much harder for me and those that didn't receive the gold, who were just starting out, because EVERYONE had stacked soldiers from being able to buy card packs with the Gold. I swear to Jeebus, that virtually every base I assault has Commando's (think Jesse Ventura in Predator with a mini gun) or Bombardiers, who just spam grenades at you. There are some bases that you just can't beat without 'Hero' characters. While the game was harder without the gold, it is still very doable. So I haven't really said anything about the game yet other than it feels like COC and that there was a gold giveaway I didn't qualify for. What is the game though...it's a side scrolling real-time strategy game. You utilize troops with different strengths, that you can further enhance with perks and helmets, to assault other bases to earn 'Dog Tags' and other rewards like cards. I don't think the the Dog Tags do anything other than serve as trophies for how well you're doing. You can earn alliance battles by getting some during an alliance war season, but other than that, they seem to be mostly used for daily/weekly/monthly rankings. You start with some basic troops and can unlock more by leveling up. You can use Munitions (in game currency used for upgrading), Gold (you can buy this with real money but not anymore since they announced the closure), card packs or battle rewards to unlock new troops. They are rare from battle rewards. You mostly earn attack cards, perks and munitions from battle rewards, but you can occasionally earn structures for your base, dynamite (to clear your base debris from your base), Valor (to unlock more troop perk slots), Gold (used to purchase card packs and unlock soldiers) or Build Points (used to expand your home base). Attack cards are used during an assault to give your team a short advantage. It could be a missile strike, tear gas, a decoy, health boost and several other things. The basic soldiers are Grunts, Assaults, Grenadiers, Medics and Engineers (you might unlock those last two early in leveling). They are cheap to use in battle, but they are not terribly powerful either. You will mostly be using Grunts as you get five of them to spawn each time you select them for the least amount of munitions. I feel like this is getting confusing....I made a brief video for the thread I mentioned above because people were having trouble beating other bases and I discussed my strategy. I'll put that here too so you can get a quick look at what the game is like: So basically the job of the defense is to use the terrain and setup their structures in a way to prevent you from destroying the base and as the attacker you want to kill it. Very straightforward. The game was not very hard at all to 100%. I finished it in just over a week. Alliance battles happen every couple of weeks, so that one is common enough. The scariest trophy is the one for getting a Legend card as a reward from a battle or card pack. You don't get any Legend card packs unless you have 900 gold to spend or are in an alliance that qualifies for one. I got my Legend card as a reward from a battle, and it wasn't until about my 250th battle that that happened...so it is quite rare. The rest of the trophies though aren't too bad...it takes a little planning for the 'Well Rounded' trophy for spawning five different veterans in one battle...but you can slowly work towards that. You soldiers earn XP during battle, and if they earn enough and survive the fight, they can be upgraded to a one star veteran (boosting stats). They can earn enough to get up to a three star veteran. You can carry over a set amount of Veterans (this amount changes the higher level you are). I only use them for defense for the most part...but for this particular trophy, you need to spawn a veteran from five different classes during a battle. I just used different soldier types until I got five of them saved up and then just spawned them all towards the end of a fight so I didn't lose them and the trophy popped. The grindiest trophy was probably for getting a level 7 wall. It costs like 300k munitions and you don't get them that fast in the game. Plus you want to use your munitions to level up your base and unlock new soldiers, so it's hard to save up that much....but this is another one that just takes a little time. I very much like this game and have continued to play it every day since I started. I'm a bit bummed it'll be shutting down in April, but I'm happy I've gotten to play it this much since it is a genre I do enjoy quite a bit. If you do too, you should definitely give it a try. I'd be happy to friend anyone to help them get the friend trophy and you have more than enough time to get the rest. My next review will come some time in the next few days and will be for the new(er) Gotham Knights game that came out. Happy hunting all! FAR: Lone Sails Spoiler The next game on my list was a happy accident that I have to give tangential credit to @Cassylvania for me discovering. Cass has probably one of the most viewed trophy checklists on the site and I am one to read it regularly. As most of you probably know, Cass is doing a solo event trying to justify a PS+ subscription by playing PS+ games and utilizing a wheel of death to do the picking. As luck would have it (lucky for me but maybe not Cass ), Cass's first game up was Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. I have never watched the show and I know nothing about the games. I've heard of Goku and I think that's about as far as my knowledge goes. It was mentioned in the thread that there is a meme from the show that has something to do with 'It's Over 9000!', which I know nothing about. As luck would have it though...I was about 150 trophies away from getting my 9000th trophy and thought it might be fun to have my 9001 trophy have something to do with that meme. I Googled 'It's Over 9000! trophy' and a game called FAR: Lone Sails popped up as a game with that trophy name. When I saw the trophy image (see above), I thought it was a perfect trophy for 9001. I checked out the game here and saw it did not have a platinum and had a relatively low player count. I looked it up on the PS Store and saw it was like $10 and figured what the hell...why not? I did a bit of research on the trophy to see if it was RNG based or if I could time it for when I wanted it to pop and was happy to see that not only could I time it, it would probably be my last trophy and I wouldn't have to quit playing the game halfway through until I got to 9000 trophies. I had a lot of moving parts with this trophy setup since, for reasons, I wanted to have the entire Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series completed consecutively and in a row on my trophy list, which they will be once I finish the games stuck in the middle there now. I also wanted the Final Fantasy VI plat to be a milestone since it is my favorite game ever. In order to do that, it'd have to be my 9000th trophy since saving it for plat 200 would put them out of order. I needed to get FFVI ready to platinum, get another 150ish trophies without finishing another game to keep the FF series in order and get the 9001 trophy ready to pop right after. A lot of moving parts, but nothing terribly hard to do...just needed patience and to pay attention. You'll notice though, that I popped several games on June 14th since that was the day the magic happened. All that I've written so far was the lead up to how I found the game and why I chose to play it...but what the hell was it? For starters, it's probably my favorite non-Final Fantasy game I've played this year. It was short, fun and surprisingly good! The game seems like it should be a survival game since the setting looks like a post apocalyptic world where you are trying to find another person, however outside of collecting fuel for your landship, there's no 'survival' aspects to the game. You can't die from hunger or anything (you can burn to death but it'll just reload your game from when you died). This game has not a single word of dialogue and there are absolutely no directions on what you need to do. It's a 2D setup and you can only run right or left, or climb up or down in some areas when solving puzzles. The game honestly felt a bit like Overcooked! to me. There is some light puzzle solving and it is mostly a timing game with traps. The game starts with you, at what appears to be, a gravesite. Perhaps of the only other person alive in the world. There's no credits or title screen really...the game just starts. Your only option is to run right. The controls are very basic. You can move, jump, and pick things up or drop them...that's about it. After running a short distance, you come upon a landship (see below) and your job is to get the thing moving and drive to the right. There's not really any directions, there's just some boxes and some buttons and a few labels near stuff. In essence, everything you can pick up can be used as fuel. There are hooks scattered about you can hang stuff from and rooms where you can also drop stuff to store. You need to put the fuel into the engine and keep your ship moving. I'm not sure what happens if you run out of things to use as fuel since that never happened to me. I'm assuming you may need to reload a previous checkpoint and do a better job of salvaging things or maybe you just pull your ship until you find more fuel. I've included a screenshot below to describe the different aspects of the landship. This is a trophy image of mine of a picture of the ship later in the game. You don't start with all of the numbered items and collect a lot of them as you go. This is a vacuum that sucks up items that you drive over that can be used as fuel. It really helps speed things up as you do not have to stop to manually collect the fuel. Unlockable item via the story. This is a winch that you can grab to pull your ship back if needed or you can hook to things behind you. Starting item. This is the fuel loader. You put items on here you wish to put in the incinerator to add fuel. Starting item. This is the button you push to load the incinerator. Starting item. This is a repair kit that lets you fix parts of your ship that get damaged. Unlockable item via the story. This is a fire hose that you use to put out any fires that may appear. Fires often occur if you crash into things. The hose can go very far. Starting item. This is the elevator that you can use to get to the top of the landship to reach the sails or puzzle areas. Starting item. This is the steam gauge that tells you how much steam has built up in the engine. If you press the button connected to it, it will release the steam pressure. If the pressure gets too high, your engine will shut off and could be damaged. Starting item. These are your sails. Push that giant button to raise them. If the sails are raised and you push it, they will go down. They do not go down automatically unless they hit something. Unlockable item via the story. This is the brake. Push that button to stop your landship and keep it from rolling. It is very easy to release the break and your ship could roll away from you if you're parked on a hill. Starting item. This is the gas pedal. Push that button to engage the engine (as the little red dude in the picture is doing right here). It automatically turns off like everything 15 seconds or so if you do not press it again to keep it pressed in. The speed gauge is right next to that button. Starting item. This is your fuel tank. How it looks in this image is a full tank. If you run out of fuel, you'll stop moving (unless your sails are up and there's wind). Your other systems won't work if you're out of fuel. Starting item. This flag will show you if there is wind and which direction it is facing. The way it is pointed in the picture means your sails will work. If it's hanging down or pointing in the other direction, you want your sails down. Starting item. These gauges show you how much damage your systems have sustained. If the meter falls below those lines, your system will not work optimally and should be repaired. The broken system will spark as well if it falls below one of those lines making it obvious what needs repairs. Starting item, but gauges only appear as you get the corresponding upgrade. This is your odometer. It doesn't really serve any purpose, but when this shows 9001, you'll get that trophy :) It takes 3+ playthroughs to reach that distance. Starting item. This is the front winch. It works similarly to the back one where you can pull your boat if needed or hook it to something. Pressing that button will wind the winch. Starting item. So the game is basically finding a rhythm of monitoring all your systems, while maintaining enough fuel to keep moving, while watching the wind direction, while paying attention to obstacles that could be coming in front of you (if you crash, you'll probably damage your systems), while stopping to solve mini-puzzles that either open your way, add an upgrade, or both, until you reach your destination. It takes a little bit to figure out something that works, but once you get going...it's a lot of fun. The game is pretty short as there's a speed run that must be completed in less than 99 minutes. I think I did the speed run in about 90 minutes so there is room to spare. You can also reload a prior checkpoint if you think you took too long doing a puzzle or something and your timer will go back to what it was when you hit the checkpoint so it's very forgiving. As I mentioned, you'll need to do 3+ playthroughs to 100% the game as each run is just under 3000 meters. I thought it was more than that, and maybe the odometer is glitched because I swear I hit 9000 meters and the when the odometer rolled over from 8999, it went to 8000...but I may have just not been looking at it right. I'd be curious if anyone else notices that. This was a happy discovery and I'm very glad to have played it. The artwork was really nice and I very much enjoyed the soundtrack. The games not terribly hard, but was busy to play. I liked it so much that I bought the sequel, FAR: Changing Tides as soon as I finished this one. That will be the next game I review. Lone Sails is kind of short, so I'm not sure it's worth paying much more than $10 for...but it really is a fun and entertaining game that I would highly recommend if you're looking for a nice little palate cleanser in between longer titles. Actual Sunlight Spoiler This is a really short Vita game that I had thought about playing for the Mental Health Awareness event, but wasn't going to be able to finish it in time due to my waiting to pop Final Fantasy VI as trophy 9000. The game literally only takes about an hour to do and is another story based game. It is also 90% text based, so if you do not like to read your games, you should skip this one. The game follows a middle-aged white dude, who is in a dead end job, with no companion and no prospects. He is deeply depressed and the game is basically a day in his life. You wake up and he'll give you his thoughts on waking up. You go to the bathroom and look at the sink and he'll give you his impression of that. Sitting on the bus is more of his impression. The game is either extremely dark humor, based on the text, or extremely sad depending on your outlook on life I suppose. I could relate with quite a bit of what he was saying, however I look at it as more funny than our main character did. It is truly cynical shit and the way that his thoughts are written, juxtaposed with his therapy sessions, you're really not sure if he is in fact joking for much of the game. Actually, it'll just be easier to show you a snippet from the game. I believe this is what pops up when you either talk to a stranger outside his building or on the commuter bus: I believe the game is somewhat autobiographical, and it has some of that Tyler Durden from Fight Club vibe to it. Some of you may see that there is humor to it, except he's being honest, so it's not really funny....but I couldn't help but find myself chuckle throughout the game at the way he made his observations. Virtually everything that you can click on has some sort of story or remark like what is written above. The graphics are very basic and as I said, the game is extremely short....but I thought it was a pretty well done text game. The contents can be very triggering, so if you don't do well with depression or suicide, you should definitely skip this one. I think most of the trophies are potentially missable, but the game is so short, that a second playthrough is nothing. I did actually miss one of the trophies on my first playthrough, but it was quick to finish up. Other than that, there's not much to say about this one. If you've got a Vita and a few bucks, it's worth a playthrough in my mind, but you aren't missing anything major if you pass on this one. So that brings me up to speed with my completed games. I'm going to have several more shortly as a plan on popping the ones that are only a trophy away soon. This post is long enough so I won't go into detail here, but in my next post, I'll explain what I was doing and why I'll be popping them now. Only a couple of days left on my vacation, and I'm hoping to get Genshin Impact back to 100% before it's over. Then I'll be doing some cleanup on my incomplete games in preparation for my 200th platinum. PS+ Backlog of games that I'll probably only ever play a few of: Spoiler Games I spent actual money on and I really will/should play: Spoiler Events/Badges: Spoiler Camp Platapalooza (formerly Camp Wannalottaplat) June 1st - August 31st 2018 Event originally conceived by @Toogie53 Event graciously continued by @ProfBambam55 Games Completed During Event: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ The PSNP Spelling Bee August 12th - September 30th 2018 Event by @Dr_Mayus Badge Artwork by @Kristycism Games Completed During Event: B U T T E R S ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Trophophobia - Face Your Fears September 1st - October 31st 2018 Event by @DoctorDrPepper and @Mesopithecus Badge Artwork by @Masamune Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gaming By Numbers October 13th - December 31st 2018 Event by @eigen-space Badge Artwork by @BigHonkingOne Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Twelve Days of Trophies November 16th 2018 - January 14th 2019 Event by @SpaceCoresDad Badge Artwork by @eigen-space Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 10 Things I Hate About Games January 12th - March 31st 2019 Event by @eigen-space and @gruffiiti Badge Artwork by @BigHonkingOne Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bingo Bonanza 2019 Bingo Card January 1st - December 31st 2019 Event by @XX_FTW Bingo Card: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monthly Madness 2019 Edition January 1st - December 31st 2019 Event by @MarkusT1992 and @Dessane Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gaming By Numbers 2019 July 1st - September 15th 2019 Event and Badge Artwork by @eigen-space Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Backlog Pyramid 2019 July 1st 2019 - Undertermine Event by @kingofbattle8174 Pyramid: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Fall/Winter 2019-2020 Backlog Challenge September 1st 2019 - February 29th 2020 Event by @MidnightDragon Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ultra Rare Cleanup 2020 October 24th 2019 - December 31st 2020 Event by: @Wise_Mans_Fears Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ PSNP Generic Winter Holiday Event November 15th 2019 - January 12th 2020 Event by: @SpaceCoresDad Badge Artwork by: @Kristycism Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ New Years Resolution Event January 1st 2020 - March 31st 2020 Event by: @eigen-space and @Jens Badge Artwork by: @spacey_dweeb Games Completed During Event: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monthly Madness 2020 Edition January 1st 2020 - December 31st 2020 Event by: @MarkusT1992 Games Completed During Event: ___________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Gaming by Numbers 2020 July 1st 2020 - September 30th 2020 Event and Badge Artwork by: @eigen-space Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Halloween Event: Monster Hunt September 1st 2020 - November 1st 2020 Event and Badge by: @Spacey Dweeb Spoiler Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Let's Play Vampyr for Halloween Event October 31st, 2020 Event by: @Dr_Mayus Badge Artwork by: @Dav9834 Game Completed for Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The "Oh God PS5 is coming out soon and I have so many PS3 games left" Event November 1st 2020 - November 1st 2021 Event and Badge Artwork by: @SpaceCoresDad Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ RPG Mania 2021 February 1st 2021 - January 31st 2022 Event by: @Psy-Tychist Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Trophies for Mental Health May 1st 2021 - May 31st 2021 Event by: @Beyondthegrave07 Badge Artwork by: @Ellie-nyan Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gaming By Numbers 2021 June 1st 2021 - August 31st 2021 Event by: @eigen-space with @Jens Badge Artwork by: @Spacey Dweeb Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Trophies to Fight Cancer October 8th 2021 - November 30th 2021 Event by: @Beyondthegrave07 Badge Artwork by: @DrBloodmoney Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Platinum Difficulty Challenge 2022 January 1st 2022 - December 31st 2022 Event by: @Rebourne07 Badge Artwork by: Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Ultra Rare Cleanup 2022 January 1st 2022 - December 31st 2022 Event by: @Copanele and @Arcesius Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bingo Bonanza 2022 January 1st 2022 - December 31st 2022 Event by: @Squirlruler Bingo Card: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge! 2023 January 1st 2023 - December 31st 2023 Event and Badge by: @DrBloodmoney Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Trophies to Fight Cancer 2023 October 1st 2023 - November 30th 2023 Event by: @Beyondthegrave07 Games Completed During Event: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ BIO Spoiler After hijacking @Cassylvania's thread for long enough, I've decided to take the plunge and start my own trophy checklist. I know and expect that I will be the only one that cares about this thread, however gaming is the last hobby I have that I really devote any kind of time to and I've decided that I'd like to create something meaningful to me. I thought about doing this on my own on a word document or something, however this site has been very helpful to me and I visit this site more than any other. I very much appreciate that I have the ability to do something like this here and have decided to take advantage of it. I haven’t done one before now because I haven’t had the time to do it right. I have recently started a new position that has quite a bit of downtime and was able to put this together over a few days. I've never blogged or anything and am not a particularly good writer so, fair warning for anyone that stops by! I was born in 1981 and the first system I played was an Intellivision II that my father bought for my mother for Christmas (she hates video games). Needless to say, that marriage didn't last long, but I had a parent that exposed me early to gaming and I haven't looked back. I wish I spent more time looking at the craft of games with regards to programming etc…but my father wasn’t interested in teaching and I was having too much fun playing to stop and ask. My father used to build computers and due to his profession, I always had a very good system setup. I spent a lot of time in the 90's, in the basement at my father's house, playing Diablo, Warcraft II, Doom, etc on an IPX cable network he had set up between three computers. My brother, best friend, and I spent more time than I care to share taking advantage of, what was at the time, a very rare opportunity to game like that. I also played Zork and a lot of point and click games and dungeon crawlers like Lands of Lore. While I generally prefer playing games on a console...those were some of the best gaming years of my life. My gaming started on that Intellivision II and spread to an Apple IIe where I played games like Load Runner with my dad a lot. I graduated to my first real system, an NES, when I was 7. It was on the NES that I fell in love with the Final Fantasy series and my gaming console choices tended to follow that series. I bought an SNES for Final Fantasy II and a PS One for Final Fantasy VII. I branched out over time and bought more of the systems, but the Final Fantasy series dictated where my money went first. I still own all of my original systems except for the Intellivision (I was never one for trading things in...never knew when I'd feel like playing something.) I have an NES, Gameboy, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, N64, Gamecube, Dreamcast, XBox, PSone, PS2, PS3, Vita, PS4 and PSVR. I don't bust out the old systems as much as I used to...but just like Woody and Buzz were there for Andy...my consoles are there if I ever need them. Despite my age and years of gaming...I am very behind and missed a lot of great games. I spent 2003-2010 playing only one game...Final Fantasy XI and missed a lot of good games during that time. I would occasionally play games on my old systems, but I had my head buried in the sand as far as new games. The only reason I really quit that game was a lack of time. My girlfriend (now wife) and I had just moved in together...I had just started a career oriented job and just was missing out on too much in-game. I didn't want to give up gaming entirely so got back into regular console games where the game didn’t continue on when I wasn’t playing (and I'm much happier!) I wasn't sure if I wanted to go the Playstation or XBox route. Most of my friends were into CoD and were recommending XBox...but I've never really liked those games. My cousin ended up telling me how awesome Batman Arkham City was and I decided to buy a PS3 and Batman for myself with some gift cards I got for Christmas. I had never heard of trophies before and was really confused the first time I saw one pop up. I've always been a person who tried to 100% my games growing up so was immediately interested. It's odd, because I am not OCD or a perfectionist anywhere else in my life...but when it comes to my gaming/media stuff I am. My DVD's were always alphabetized...I had to step over my dirty laundry to get to them...but they were always in order. My mp3 collection all had to have the same bit rate and I organized the file names to be 'Band Name - (album it came from) - track number + title' I was in high school and college during the Napster era and had over 20,000 songs titled that way. It was a sad, sad day when that hard drive failed and none of it was backed up. My games, if possible, need to be 100%. I was the guy that hunted for the Pink Tail in Final Fantasy 2...I was the guy that got a Master Materia for all of my characters in Final Fantasy 7...I was the guy that would farm all the lumber and gold from a map before defeating the enemy in Warcraft 2...I just really like knowing I did everything a game has to offer and having trophies made it easy (for most games) to figure out when I had done that. Wanting to 100% a game is a big reason why my trophy rate was so low for a couple of years. Before I even knew about this site or that Trophy Hunting was a thing...I decided that I would try to play one game at a time and 100% that game before I moved onto the next. Because of my Fanboydom, I tried Final Fantasy XIV even though I swore off MMO’s. Once that first trophy popped, I then had to get the rest before starting my next game. I originally only played it for a couple of months and got bored of it, so played a couple of console games. After beating Arkham Asylum, I decided that if I was going to be a completionist, it meant every game and since I had earned a few trophies in FF XIV, I had to go back to it to finish. It took me a VERY long time to 100% FFXIV. They've since nerfed the game so a lot of the trophies are much easier...but it was another almost 2 year span where I didn't play any other games. When it comes to gaming, I am a guy who plays games and that's about it. I don't follow or know much about the big releases, events or websites. I can't program or talk technical stuff...I just pick a game or a series I like and play it. I tend to find rarer trophies more fun to go after, but am not opposed to a few fluff games every once and a while to ease the tension. I have no delusions of grandeur about my possibilities on a leaderboard, so mostly don’t care about my ranking. I prefer the number to be green than red, but the number itself doesn’t mean much to me. I generally enjoy trophy streaks where I can get at least one a day, but a lot of the games I play are epics and that is not always possible. Thanks to Super Meat Boy, I am now ok playing more than one game at once…however I typically try to keep it to one console game and one handheld game. I’m failing at this at the moment…but only a little. While there were games I enjoyed on all of my systems, I would say that the SNES is my favorite system of all time. A lot of it probably has to do with my age, but there were so many awesome games, the controllers were easy to use and the jump from NES to SNES seemed huge at the time. Plus a lot of my favorite games of all-time reside on that system. I live in south east Connecticut, have a wife and two small boys. I’m a fan of Boston area teams (I know that makes most people puke) and also enjoy movies. If anyone took the time to actually read all of this, thank you :) I’m pretty open about stuff and will try to update this thread as things happen. Edited November 3, 2023 by Briste 22 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cissa90 Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Fun read! And hail the Napster era! Regarding your games, id pick Bloodborne from your backlog to do, and Diablo 3 from your purchased pile. I rate those 2 very highly. The PS4 version of D3 is amazing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Good luck with Space Hulk. There is only war is a shit trophy if I ever saw one. Hope you manage. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 I'm glad you decided to make one of these. It'll be interesting to see some of your thoughts on these games! My favorite thing about your profile will always be your 69th platinum. ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted May 25, 2019 Author Share Posted May 25, 2019 2 hours ago, Cissa90 said: Fun read! And hail the Napster era! Regarding your games, id pick Bloodborne from your backlog to do, and Diablo 3 from your purchased pile. I rate those 2 very highly. The PS4 version of D3 is amazing. Thanks! The Napster era really was a great time to be alive and have internet Bloodborne is definitely one of the ones I will be playing from that list. I like to group series games together, hence all the God of Wars together and all those Final Fantasy games. After I finish up my Kingdom Hearts series binge, I plan on doing the Souls series after. I will play a few stand-a-lone titles in between, but if I'm lucky (or good?) I'll be able to finish that game up by the end of the year. 1 hour ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: Good luck with Space Hulk. There is only war is a shit trophy if I ever saw one. Hope you manage. lol thanks. It was actually you that made me realize that I was probably resetting the god damned counter every time I saved and restarted...it's comforting to know that you were able to get it so I still have hope. If it works using your idea...I feel like I'll owe you something! 36 minutes ago, Cassylvania said: I'm glad you decided to make one of these. It'll be interesting to see some of your thoughts on these games! My favorite thing about your profile will always be your 69th platinum. Thanks! It has been long overdue...I still like your thread for the conversation though, but I'll probably stop talking about what I'm playing at the moment and keep that for over here. I'm glad you appreciate the effort I made to ensure Catherine was #69 ? I had two other games waiting to pop lol Back to the Riku grindstone! Why did they have to make the xp disappear in this game if you don't pick it up right away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jens Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 (edited) [...] Edited September 30, 2019 by Jens 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 Good Luck! Finished KH recently (only 3 missing because i dont own it). You should go for Mass Effect. I had such a blast with this series will try to follow your Thread because i really take a like on reading @Cassylvania Thoughts. If i think i can add some of my experience in your games, you will read about it 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted May 27, 2019 Author Share Posted May 27, 2019 (edited) 13 hours ago, Jens said: You forgot Catherine: Full Body in the list of games for your future. I'm not sure I'm quite masochistic enough to go back for a second helping lol maybe some day, but I'm not sure I liked the story enough to go through it all over again. 13 hours ago, Inuty said: Good Luck! Finished KH recently (only 3 missing because i dont own it). You should go for Mass Effect. I had such a blast with this series Thanks! It's funny you mention that because I'm really on the fence about which series to tackle next...I almost did the Uncharted series instead of the KH series...but the KH series matched up better with some of the events I was doing so I went that route instead. I've been saying that the Souls series is my next series for a solid year now so I feel like I have to tackle that next...but my best friend from high school is the one that told me about Mass Effect and why I bought that series...so I feel like out of respect for him I should play that soon. No matter which route I take...I feel they are all awesome series and I'm in for a good time So with that... Platinum #84 Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories So fun fact about me...I don't do a ton of research into a game before I play it. I'll look at the trophy list to see if there are any unobtainables or anything and maybe check a Metacritic rating...but I don't watch Youtube videos or anything. With regards to CoM, I had heard that the battles used cards so I was expecting a turn based card game when it came to the battle system. I enjoy that concept and was kind of looking forward to this game since I hadn't played anything like that since I played a Magic the Gathering game on the PC about 20 years ago. I was very disappointed when I saw that the battles were action with a weird card system. I absolutely hated it out of the gate. Because you don't have a ton of cards to start and no good sleights, and I read that you should only really use sleights...there were several battles where I had only one card left. I spent 25 minutes fighting one Fat Bandit in Agrabah before I could kill it. I had one attack card that was a 4 and it took forever for me to be able to get behind it AND attack without the attack being blocked or broken. I didn't run because there's a trophy for not running, and I didn't restart because it had been over an hour since I had saved and I didn't want to lose that progress. I thought I was going to really hate this game after that. Much to my surprise, I ended up enjoying the game. Once I got enough cards and CP where that Fat Bandit situation couldn't happen again and I started unlocking sleights, I found myself really enjoying the battle system. I found the game itself to be relatively easy. Some of the sleights are stupidly overpowered and most of the boss fights, the enemy never even got an attack in. While the story was somewhat of a rehash of the first game, it was interesting enough to keep me involved. I will say that I'm already sick of every cut-scene or dialogue box referring to their 'hearts'. I mean, I get the game is called Kingdom Hearts, but every thing that is said talks about the strength of their hearts or the memories in their hearts...it got a little tired for me. Playing as Riku was a fun addition I thought, however they kind of mailed in his story a bit. The maps are half the size and there is very little dialogue. While I enjoyed playing as Riku more, I found finishing him off to be more of a chore. I beat the game at level 51 and needed to farm 48 levels afterwards for the Level Master Riku trophy. Farming xp was much easier as Sora since the maps were larger and you didn't need to leave the zone to reset the maps nearly as often. I know you can run from a fight with only one monster left and keep fighting the same mob over and over again....but I found that require too much attention. I wanted to farm the xp while watching movies and I needed to pay too much attention for that. Things I didn't like: Xp disappearing if you didn't get it fast enough. I also didn't like that with some of Sora's sleights where you throw the weapon, it wouldn't go any higher if it was a flying enemy. You could target the flying enemy, and throw your sword and it would just sail underneath them. It wasn't game breaking or anything, but just a nuisance. Overall the trophy list isn't terrible. I was relatively lucky farming the Enemy cards with only the Black Mushroom and the Large Body taking me a few hours each. The rest I got within 30 minutes or so. The level 99 ones suck only because they require so much additional farming after you've completed the game to achieve. While it's not a game I feel like I ever need to play again, I did end up having fun with it and am looking forward now to the next playable game in the series. Edited May 27, 2019 by Briste 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted May 27, 2019 Share Posted May 27, 2019 2 hours ago, Briste said: Thanks! It's funny you mention that because I'm really on the fence about which series to tackle next...I almost did the Uncharted series instead of the KH series...but the KH series matched up better with some of the events I was doing so I went that route instead. I've been saying that the Souls series is my next series for a solid year now so I feel like I have to tackle that next...but my best friend from high school is the one that told me about Mass Effect and why I bought that series...so I feel like out of respect for him I should play that soon. No matter which route I take...I feel they are all awesome series and I'm in for a good time You should tackle this series sooner then later because ME3 has some MP trophies in it. I was not forced to do it because there were also some Apps you Can use via your Internet Explorer if connected to a EA account.. But I´m not sure how Long this will be up and it was a big Research first how to use it correctly. If I´m informed correctly it should be still up but there is always the possibility that they will shut down this Service for good without the Support on PS3 from Sony anymore. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted May 27, 2019 Share Posted May 27, 2019 The Mass Effect Trilogy is really good, one of my favorite series. I platted all three with femShep, and right after after that I watched a let's play of all three games from my favorite youtuber (he played with male Shepard), that's how much I like the games. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted May 28, 2019 Author Share Posted May 28, 2019 On 5/27/2019 at 2:38 AM, Inuty said: You should tackle this series sooner then later because ME3 has some MP trophies in it. I was not forced to do it because there were also some Apps you Can use via your Internet Explorer if connected to a EA account.. But I´m not sure how Long this will be up and it was a big Research first how to use it correctly. If I´m informed correctly it should be still up but there is always the possibility that they will shut down this Service for good without the Support on PS3 from Sony anymore. 20 hours ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: The Mass Effect Trilogy is really good, one of my favorite series. I platted all three with femShep, and right after after that I watched a let's play of all three games from my favorite youtuber (he played with male Shepard), that's how much I like the games. Well between these recommendations, and the fact I saw my friend who originally turned me onto the series yesterday and he was giving me shit about not playing them yet...I'm just about convinced to do the Mass Effect Trilogy next. I would be really bummed if I put it off so long that some of the trophies become unobtainable. I watched the Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days movie/game over the weekend and it was pretty interesting. I'm impressed that none of them gained any weight considering all the ice cream that they ate. I was initially super confused on what the hell was going on and was getting mad at myself that I wasn't paying close enough attention and missed something...because nothing was making any sense. However...in the last 15 minutes or so, they pretty much spell out for you what happened and I realized it was intentionally confusing and convoluted. I'll be curious to see how this backstory impacts my understanding of KH2. I was a little nervous that the game was glitched since none of the trophies were popping as I was watching. I was expecting the trophies to pop as I passed certain areas of the story, however none of them popped until they all did after the credits rolled. Thankfully the journal entries weren't crazy long to read. I generally try to read all of that stuff as I'm playing, but some games add like an entire books worth of reading into the extra content. Horizon Zero Dawn was a game like that, but I enjoyed it so much, I still read almost everything. I'll kick off my Kingdom Hearts II playthrough tonight. I'm going to attempt to do everything on Critical mode off the start, but if I find myself getting frustrated, I'll just do a trophy cleanup on easy after I beat the game the first time. With no trophies for not using a continue...I feel like I should be able to do this just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted May 28, 2019 Share Posted May 28, 2019 7 hours ago, Briste said: I was a little nervous that the game was glitched since none of the trophies were popping as I was watching. I was expecting the trophies to pop as I passed certain areas of the story, however none of them popped until they all did after the credits rolled. Did you get them to pop with the PS4 version of the game? Mine never did, but I figured that was just because I wasn't playing on PS3. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted May 28, 2019 Author Share Posted May 28, 2019 (edited) 5 minutes ago, Cassylvania said: Did you get them to pop with the PS4 version of the game? Mine never did, but I figured that was just because I wasn't playing on PS3. No. I don't think they have a trophy list on the PS4 version. A coworker of mine had the PS3 remix version of the games and I borrowed his to get the trophies (and to show the whole series on my profile). For the PS4 version, I let the story unfold overnight and spammed through the journal entries so that the cards would be available in CoM. When I did the PS3 version, I watched the whole thing and read all of the chapters. I'm going to be doing the same thing for Re:Coded. Edited May 28, 2019 by Briste 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 19 hours ago, Briste said: Well between these recommendations, and the fact I saw my friend who originally turned me onto the series yesterday and he was giving me shit about not playing them yet...I'm just about convinced to do the Mass Effect Trilogy next. I would be really bummed if I put it off so long that some of the trophies become unobtainable. To make Things worst, only ME3 has only trophies So you Need to finish the first two games before going for ME3 Btw. there was a big shit storm regarding ME Andromeda for the PS4 but I still had a good time with the game. I guess everything crucial was patched and I had no Problems with the game. I Can recommend that as well and you don´t Need any Knowledge about the previous games. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Briste Posted May 31, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 31, 2019 (edited) I haven't had a ton of time yet to invest into KH2. I'm about an hour and a half in and got the Struggle Champion trophy for stealing all of Hayner's Orbs. I got this one without targeting it so the timer is officially started on this game. I'll try to get a couple hours in tonight, but I am going to a retirement party after work for a bit so depending on the refreshments...I may call it an early night I've made a few additions to my backlog ? With Telltale games starting to be de-listed, I know I want to play Game of Thrones eventually, so I bought the disc for PS3 on Amazon. It was like $25 cheaper than the PS4 version. I'm going to install it and make sure I have all the episodes on my hard drive just in case. I probably won't play it for a few months though. I'm locked into my Kingdom Hearts hunt, but I'll make this one of the stand-a-lone titles I play before I tackle either the Souls or Mass Effect series. The next two additions were birthday presents from my kids...VR Karts and Ark Park VR. VR Karts looks fun and I think I will be fine to 100%, however I'm a little worried about Ark Park. My kid is infatuated with dinosaurs and when he saw the cover he made sure my wife got me (him ?) this game. I will definitely play it with him so it will definitely end up on my profile. From everything I've read, the game is pretty much garbage but I'm not going to not play or return the game my son got me because I maybe can't 100% it. I know some of you may be thinking 'just play it on an alt account' but I don't have alt accounts. My trophy list isn't only for putting on games I can do or to impress anyone...it truly is a diary of my gaming journey...warts and all! It just means I'll need to devote a lot more time to it than I want lol. So far, no one has 100% it legitimately. It does say 1 person has all of the trophies, but they don't show up on the leaderboard so it's probably a cheater. That is one of the few annoying things I've found about this site. One of the main focuses/draws seems to be about the leaderboards and rarity percentages, yet there are a ton of illegitimate trophies that are skewing the numbers on the individual game leaderboards and trophy statistics. What's the point of having those things if they aren't going to be accurate? I wouldn't think it's a hard fix to remove banned accounts statistics entirely from the game pages...but I'm not a programmer so what the hell do I know? Edited May 31, 2019 by Briste 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted June 4, 2019 Author Share Posted June 4, 2019 (edited) So I learned a few things over the weekend...I hadn't been trying Super Meat Boy on my PS4 because I couldn't download my cross-save from the cloud. I downloaded the game again and opened it on the PS4, just to try the controls and see how different it was from the Vita...and wouldn't you know it but my progress was there already...I had assumed that I needed to download my save from the cloud in order to play on different systems...I had never even attempted to open the game on the PS4 for fear that a new game would overwrite my Vita progress. What I learned is that I SUCK playing SMB on my PS4 compared to my Vita. I don't know why, but it feels more fluid on the Vita than the PS4. I played for about 20 minutes and stopped since I wasn't in the mood to play SMB, but it was nice to know I could if Space Hulk ends up taking the rest of my life. Speaking of which, I'm up to 14,000-ish kills according to the calculator on my phone without saving/closing the game. The lag is atrocious, but I'm chipping away...1/3 of the way there! I also learned how to install a power source into my PC. Mine died and I ordered a new one. According to the intarwebs...installing a power source is easy so I decided to do it myself. It took me longer than I would have thought since they give you way too much slack with the wires/cords and I had to Tetris them into different areas. When I was done, it wouldn't turn on at first so I figured I failed...I ended up going to Geek Squad at Best Buy for a free consultation to see if they could tell me what I was doing wrong...if your guess was that I didn't turn on the power supply before turning on the PC from the front...you would be correct! I felt like a dumb-shit, but I took a little satisfaction knowing that I did it right Not a ton of progress in Kingdom Hearts 2...I just arrived at the Coliseum. I really like the changes to the battle system so far. It seems much smoother and you are pretty badass with the Drive system. I only have Valor so far, but I'm moving along. I'm trying to get this completed by the end of the month for the Monthly Madness Event, but the trophy guide says 90 hours, so we'll see. Hopefully, by doing everything on Critical, I can eliminate a playthrough and 20-30 hours. I've been surprised how strong some of the regular enemies have been, but I've only died a handful of times so I think it's doable in one playthrough. I started Ark Park as well at my kids request. We didn't get too far because he wanted to stop and look at the dinosaurs in the first room for quite a while. One of the biggest complaints about the game that I read was that you needed to teleport to move around and it killed the flow. They must have patched it because I could teleport or walk. I got pretty comfortable with the controls, so we'll see how it is going forward. I will say that I was more impressed with the graphics in Batman: Arkham VR, but in all fairness...I haven't made it out of the lobby yet. Edited June 5, 2019 by Briste 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 9 hours ago, Briste said: Not a ton of progress in Kingdom Hearts 2...I just arrived at the Coliseum. I really like the changes to the battle system so far. It seems much smoother and you are pretty badass with the Drive system. I only have Valor so far, but I'm moving along. I'm trying to get this completed by the end of the month for the Monthly Madness Event, but the trophy guide says 90 hours, so we'll see. Hopefully, by doing everything on Critical, I can eliminate a playthrough and 20-30 hours. I've been surprised how strong some of the regular enemies have been, but I've only died a handful of times so I think it's doable in one playthrough. I wish you the best of luck .. I had on beginner a lot of Trouble with a lot of the optional bosses of the organization data battles. I don´t want to know how hard they are on critical But maybe I just sucked on KH2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted June 5, 2019 Author Share Posted June 5, 2019 8 hours ago, Inuty said: I wish you the best of luck .. I had on beginner a lot of Trouble with a lot of the optional bosses of the organization data battles. I don´t want to know how hard they are on critical But maybe I just sucked on KH2 Thanks! I'm sure I will have some trouble too. I've read you don't get nearly the same amount of HP on Critical. I played for a few hours last night and got through the Timeless River Episode (that was a really cool area btw) and I got a little concerned about whether or not I can do it without pulling my hair out. I find the bosses on this difficulty level not to be too bad. I've only died once or twice to a boss and most of them I've killed on my first try. I've died a lot though so far to regular enemies. It seems like one or two hits and you're dead. The Coliseum was a bit of a challenge to get through...those Large Bodies and Ghosts were annoying. I'd be fighting one and then just die, and it was because I got hit by a stray fire ball or the Large Body was zooming back and forth. I'm sure the optional bosses will test my patience...but I'm going to give it a try. They really did a good job with this game...everything is improved from the previous installments in the series. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Briste Posted June 21, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 21, 2019 (edited) It's a little premature and I normally wouldn't do this since I am a little stitious and don't want to jinx it, but I have basically gotten the Platinum for KH2 so am posting the Platinum now. I have some downtime right now at work and wanted to do the write up now so I could maybe start Birth By Sleep tonight! I only have to S Rank the Assault on the Dreadnought mission 3. I tried twice last night before I went to sleep. I got enough points but died on the boss. Apparently I wasn't using Drain properly, so I'll try again after work. Platinum #85 Kingdom Hearts II So if I'm being honest with myself, I tried really hard to like KH1 and Re:CoM. They really haven't aged well and I didn't have the nostalgia draw since I had never played them as a kid. Anytime there was a reason to say 'this is good!' I jumped on it because I wanted to like them. But overall, I just didn't like them that much. KH1 was better than Re:Com, but neither was great. Nothing illustrates that point more than how awesome KH2 is. They took a cool concept for a game and just improved exponentially on everything. The story is still pretty convoluted, however I had so much more fun playing. The only area I could have done without was Atlantica...that area felt like a waste of time and added nothing to the overall story. As far as the story...how can all the characters remember him and he remember them...but they forget the circumstances where they met? It's almost like Ground Hog Day the way the story works in this series...moving on! I did just one playthrough on Critical and finished the game in just under 60 hours and that time just flew by. It felt like a good book where you say 'just one more chapter before bed' and I stayed up past my bedtime several times because I just wanted to finish something up. The collectibles weren't terrible and the drop rates seemed much better in this game so I only had to spend minimal time farming materials. The battle system is great fun with the addition of the different Drive Forms. It's more fluid and seamless and Sora is pretty bad-ass when he gets a combo going. The Gummi missions are way more fun and visually stimulating. Building a ship is still pretty confusing when you start out, but much improved from KH1. The donut ship makes most of those trophies a breeze. Playing through the story on Critical wasn't bad at all and I found that the normal enemies killed me more often than bosses did. I was able to finish the main story at level 49, which actually worked out well because I was able to combine farming synth materials with leveling up Drive Forms and going after the collectibles. By the time I hit level 99, all I really had left to do was the Replica Data Battles and a couple of Coliseum runs. I beat Sephiroth at level 74 and the trophy guide was kind of confusing to me for that one. It says that Sephiroth is harder the higher level you are, but it is recommended to beat him at level 99 . It took me about 10-15 tries, but I got it done at 74 just in case he actually is harder at 99. The toughest battle in the whole game for me was the Replica Data Battle (I'll use their numbers to avoid potential spoilers) against number III...in most battles, you can change into a Drive Form in case of emergency and kind of get your bearings again. I tend to revert out of Drive Form pretty quickly so that I can use it again as a safety net, but you can't really do that in the number III fight. You really need to stick to the mechanics of the fight and the margin for error is super slim. It seemed my 'Jumps' would reflect off his Aero Shield and I would hover above him instead of doing damage...I beat every other fight in 5 tries or less, but number III took me a solid 30 tries...he also caused me to make a pretty annoying mistake... So to enter the Replica Battles, you click on the numbered doorway you wish to fight, and press then . After you die you press to continue or then to load a previous game. After one particularly frustrating battle with number III, where I had him to about two health bars left for the win, I got stun locked and died. I was super annoyed and instinctively press and spammed to continue and try again....well that ended up loading my previous save....I had thought I had saved after I had beaten number I, however apparently I just zoned to save my gear changes. When I returned to the Data Replica room, I saw it was even worse than that. I now had to redo numbers I, II, V, VII, and XI Fortunately I had the confidence that I had already done it...but it was a bit demoralizing after my challenges with number III. If I hadn't made that mistake, I would have probably gotten the Platinum last night. I can't recommend this game enough. I wouldn't say that Critical is so hard that the Platinum can't be done in only one playthrough...there are some frustrating moments for sure...but I shaved 30 hours off of the suggested time it takes to Plat. I've heard that Birth By Sleep is the best in the series...it's got big shoes to fill for me if it is going to beat KH2. Edited June 21, 2019 by Briste 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 Congrats! Let the BBS grind begin 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 Briste, you have a milestone coming up, do you plan them? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted June 21, 2019 Author Share Posted June 21, 2019 14 minutes ago, Inuty said: Congrats! Let the BBS grind begin I'm thinking this game must be quite good if it is many peoples favorite despite the grind involved. I don't mind grind-y games that much so I should be alright. I'm debating whether or not to do one critical playthrough like I did for KH2 or to do the recommended two. I didn't have much trouble with KH2 so I'm tempted to just start on Critical and see where it leads me...but if I can shave some time off that 150 estimated hours...it'll free me up to tackle some more games in the new Gaming By Numbers event. 6 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: Briste, you have a milestone coming up, do you plan them? I didn't used to since I had earned several of them before I realized they were there, but I have been since Plat 50. Despite my lack of planning, I'm actually pretty happy with the ones there. If they ever do what @Cassylvania has been begging for with the milestones, I would like them even better. XCom 2 is my 25th Plat and I'd much prefer that one showing than the 20, 30 and 40. The KH trophies are all decent to look at visually, however it's looking like it'll be Dream Drop Distance will be up when I hit 4000. A quick look at them, I don't see anything I love. I would like to make A Man of Action a milestone and I see Spec Ops: The Line is on sale right now...so it's possible I make that 4000. I was hoping for a Sephiroth one originally, but I don't see any other Sephiroth trophies in the series. Birth By Sleep will take me a while so I have some time to decide. Do you plan yours? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 I do since Trophy #2.500, that's shortly after I signed up here. Back then, I knew I'd get two XCOM 2 trophies at the same time - exquisite timing and The Untouchables. I didn't know which one would register first, but both were a good milestone, so it didn't matter that I - uh - thought it would be Exquisite Timing. Like you, I am quite satisfied with my unplanned milestones before that. XCOM :EU as 10th Plat is very neat, Disgaea D2 as #1.500, and I even like #500 for the sound of it: Chop chop. The only milestone I dislike is the l33t trophy, for it being the l33t trophy and for being RE 6, which sucked so much that I didn't even bother to Plat it. I just had #4.500 for Etna from Disgaea 1 complete, and that game was a contender for the 100th Plat (estimated in about a year's time) if Cyberpunk 2077 should not be the game we all expect, but since E3, FF VIII is the back-up plan. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inuty Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 1 hour ago, Briste said: I'm thinking this game must be quite good if it is many peoples favorite despite the grind involved. I don't mind grind-y games that much so I should be alright. I'm debating whether or not to do one critical playthrough like I did for KH2 or to do the recommended two. I didn't have much trouble with KH2 so I'm tempted to just start on Critical and see where it leads me...but if I can shave some time off that 150 estimated hours...it'll free me up to tackle some more games in the new Gaming By Numbers event. I did it on critical from the start so you should be Good to go in my opinion ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 (edited) 2 hours ago, Briste said: If they ever do what @Cassylvania has been begging for with the milestones, I would like them even better. XCom 2 is my 25th Plat and I'd much prefer that one showing than the 20, 30 and 40. I love my 25th plat. When I made this account, that platinum only became a milestone when you reached 50 platinums (until then, it was just multiples of 10), so it really incentivized me to reach that point. I was mortified to see that was changed. If I had known platinum #40 would always be considered a milestone, I would've gotten something better...especially since I platinumed Shantae a day later. I don't even understand milestones now. I just reached 7500, which I thought was a milestone, but I guess multiples of 500 stop counting after a certain point. I think once I reach 10k, I won't see another milestone until 15k, which is...really dumb. That's like three years of my life. What they should have done is created a milestone system that spaces out trophies evenly, such as every 1000 trophies and every 25 platinums, so that (a) it looks better, and (b) players aren't being punished for having an older account. The way it is, though, the majority of your milestones will always be early in your gaming career (likely before you even started caring about trophies). It's a really odd design choice, and an unfortunate thing to have on a site that is otherwise really well-maintained. I don't see them ever changing it, though. I'd rather just have the option to turn off milestones now, because they look jank. Congrats on the KH2 plat! ? Edited June 21, 2019 by Cassylvania 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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