Briste's Diary of a Madman

[Arcesius]

On 14.6.2021 at 5:59 AM, Briste said:

Assist Mode is a mixed bag....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. [...] 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!

 

That's actually the reason why I haven't played Celeste, and probably never will. First of all, I'm all for accessibility... This game is more than a platformer. It puts a big emphasis on the story it's trying to tell, and so I think it's cool that the devs want anyone to experience the game for what it is. 

 

But Assist Mode should disable trophies. I don't want to support the decision to have it NOT disable achievements and so I won't buy the game.

 

As you point out, it is the same with Hollow Knight. The difference is that I didn't know about the glitch for Hollow Knight, and so I pushed through. With Celeste, knowing that the option to take the easy way out is there just would not allow me to build up enough motivation to get everything done legit. 

 

There are enough awesome games out there to play, and plenty challenging ones as well. And so I don't feel bad for skipping this one. I just don't want to give it any of my time. 
And it goes the other way around, too.. how many people (especially on this site) would have skipped the game if it DIDN'T have assist mode? 

[Briste]

18 hours ago, Arcesius said:

But Assist Mode should disable trophies. I don't want to support the decision to have it NOT disable achievements and so I won't buy the game.

 

I agree with this. If the point of assist mode was to make it so more people could view the story, then I think it's a good addition since the game is quite challenging. However, I do agree that we shouldn't be rewarded with the trophy if we decide to use it. I think that would have been the best compromise and I would be forced to bang my head against a wall to attempt to keep my profile at/close to 100%.

 

18 hours ago, Arcesius said:

There are enough awesome games out there to play, and plenty challenging ones as well. And so I don't feel bad for skipping this one. I just don't want to give it any of my time. 
And it goes the other way around, too.. how many people (especially on this site) would have skipped the game if it DIDN'T have assist mode? 

I agree with you here to a point. It is true that there are a lot of good, challenging games out there that if challenging games are your jam, you don't need to settle. For myself, I don't need every game to test my mettle though for it to be a good time. Some times I like a nice relaxing experience or something that is more story driven etc. You are a freak of nature when it comes to hard games....it's a part of your DNA lol I like to really challenge myself occasionally  I don't mind mixing in the odd cupcake for an event or something. My overall goal is to have my trophy rarity on the stats page to be sub 40% (at like 40.35 right now) but it's just a minor goal. So long as I'm hovering around that 40% mark, I feel like I'm keeping enough challenging games in my repertoire, but not denying myself the chance to play a fun game like Miles Morales either.

 

I do have UR envy of your profile though if we're being honest lol

[AJ_Radio]

You're looking at a platformer that is akin to Super Meat Boy if Celeste actually had you doing those levels legit. Splasher and Super Rude Bear Resurrection are two other hard as nails platformers. I've only seen videos on those since I never played them myself, and they look downright brutal.

 

I already botched up my profile with six Sound Shapes stacks and two stacks of Aab's Animals, so having Celeste done on my profile with a bit of Assist Mode doesn't make a lick of difference to me when it comes to judging the trophy standards.

 

40 percent average rarity is actually pretty good. Going too far below that generally means someone is playing games deliberately for the challenge, which are reflected in the trophy percentages. I can't say rarity equals difficulty, as the Dark Souls games have proven to destroy that mindset.

 

I have more easy games on my profile than you and Arcesius combined. But I'm not trophy hunting just for the challenge, some easier games that I find enjoyable is something I generally pursue from time to time. If I was trophy hunting specifically for the challenge I would of already had 500 - 700 ultra rares to my name. But I'm not going to play games I'd otherwise never touch simply because they have a bunch of rare trophies. If the game itself appeals to me and I'm interested in playing it, then I will eventually play it. Surgeon Simulator was one of those rare exceptions, but I bought the bundle that came with I Am Bread, so I will have to play that eventually as well.

[Cassylvania]

2 hours ago, Briste said:

I agree with this. If the point of assist mode was to make it so more people could view the story, then I think it's a good addition since the game is quite challenging. However, I do agree that we shouldn't be rewarded with the trophy if we decide to use it. I think that would have been the best compromise and I would be forced to bang my head against a wall to attempt to keep my profile at/close to 100%.

 

I've always liked the idea of games having one trophy that you try NOT to pop for as long as possible, like Dark Souls 2's trophy for dying the first time. Celeste could've had something like that for activating Assist Mode, allowing hardcore gamers to prove their mettle by getting that trophy last. Doesn't make the platinum any harder, but at least it's a decent compromise.

 

I call it a scarlet letter trophy.

 

Dark Souls 2 is the only game I know that has one.

 

Lollipop Chainsaw has something close, though...

 

2 hours ago, Briste said:

My overall goal is to have my trophy rarity on the stats page to be sub 40% (at like 40.35 right now) but it's just a minor goal. So long as I'm hovering around that 40% mark, I feel like I'm keeping enough challenging games in my repertoire, but not denying myself the chance to play a fun game like Miles Morales either.

 

I've been (casually) shooting for sub-40% for about a year now and I'm pretty sure it's been hovering around 40.8% this entire time. I feel like the low 40's are where most people are likely to end up, unless you're activating planning out your games. I just don't want to get into the habit of avoiding games just because they have too many trophies with a high average rarity.

 

I want to get into the habit of avoiding games because they're shit. Like The Surge.

[Arcesius]

6 hours ago, Briste said:

I agree with you here to a point. It is true that there are a lot of good, challenging games out there that if challenging games are your jam, you don't need to settle. For myself, I don't need every game to test my mettle though for it to be a good time. Some times I like a nice relaxing experience or something that is more story driven etc. You are a freak of nature when it comes to hard games....it's a part of your DNA lol I like to really challenge myself occasionally  I don't mind mixing in the odd cupcake for an event or something. My overall goal is to have my trophy rarity on the stats page to be sub 40% (at like 40.35 right now) but it's just a minor goal. So long as I'm hovering around that 40% mark, I feel like I'm keeping enough challenging games in my repertoire, but not denying myself the chance to play a fun game like Miles Morales either.

 

Oh absolutely. I'm not saying that every game needs to be challenging at all! I'm saying that if I'm in the mood to play a challenging game, there are plenty of options out there that cannot be cheesed, and that I'd rather play one of those games instead of supporting one that didn't disable trophies with assist mode  I play some chill games from time to time, too ?

 

The thing with average rarity for us completionists is... that DLC rarities are computed so arbitrarily that this statistic doesn't really mean much. But I enjoy seeing that number go down for sure. I'm not obsessed with it or anything, as I don't want it to dissuade me from playing games that would push it up (as you mentioned as well). 

 

 

Quote

I do have UR envy of your profile though if we're being honest lol

 

Lol that's just the games I enjoy... I don't play UR games for the sake of it... it just so happens that my taste in gaming seems to be niche enough that most games I enjoy tend to be UR... Just play stuff you have fun with! 

 

 

6 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

I have more easy games on my profile than you and Arcesius combined.

 

I mean, you also just have many, many more games on your profile overall than us two combined. The amount of easy games is a consequence. You don't go chasing after those easy as pie games either. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

I want to get into the habit of avoiding games because they're shit. Like The Surge.

 

I still don't understand why you hate that game so much. I wanted to answer to all of the negative points you listed on your review (that I don't agree with), but I think your mind is made up ?

Edited June 16, 2021 by Arcesius

[AJ_Radio]

3 hours ago, Arcesius said:

I mean, you also just have many, many more games on your profile overall than us two combined. The amount of easy games is a consequence. You don't go chasing after those easy as pie games either.

 

I don't play that Breakthrough Gaming Arcade garbage. Purely trophy whore bait.

 

3 hours ago, Arcesius said:

I still don't understand why you hate that game so much. I wanted to answer to all of the negative points you listed on your review (that I don't agree with), but I think your mind is made up 

 

She has a pretty valid opinion and puts effort in getting her point across. Unlike that one guy who kept saying Nioh was the worst game he ever played and said Dark Souls was complete trash.

 

There's a difference between actually not liking something but putting effort in being fair and reasonable... and crying that a game was too hard for you so you won't bother to understand how the game mechanics worked. You might know who I'm referring to, I just burst out laughing whenever he made textbook rants on Nioh.

Edited June 16, 2021 by AJ_Radio

[DrBloodmoney]

3 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

because they're shit. Like The Surge.

 

Dude!

 

 

 

Well, I guess it's like the old saying goes:

 

"Opinions are like assholes... in that yours is incorrect about the The Surge"

 

I guess I always felt that particular saying was odd, and a little too specific, but I guess it makes sense now.

[Eagle]

Hey! ? Have wanted to comment on this for a while, but always kept forgetting to. It's a nice checklist you have, and it's very interesting to see reviews from a person whose life perspective is sorta opposite to mine, in terms of experience. 

 

The idea of having a platinum rain day (as you did recently) is enticing, but I know myself too well... my mind would just keep bugging me about not getting the last trophy I needed. ?

 

Good luck in future endeavors (especially Super Meat Boy ?), and all the best to you and your family. ?

[Briste]

On 6/16/2021 at 2:30 AM, Arcesius said:

Oh absolutely. I'm not saying that every game needs to be challenging at all! I'm saying that if I'm in the mood to play a challenging game, there are plenty of options out there that cannot be cheesed, and that I'd rather play one of those games instead of supporting one that didn't disable trophies with assist mode  I play some chill games from time to time, too ?

 

Fair enough and makes sense. If you are going to put in that kind of effort to beat something challenging....it'd be nice to have something to show for it.

 

On 6/15/2021 at 9:05 PM, AJ_Radio said:

I already botched up my profile with six Sound Shapes stacks and two stacks of Aab's Animals, so having Celeste done on my profile with a bit of Assist Mode doesn't make a lick of difference to me when it comes to judging the trophy standards.

 

I don't think that botches a profile...I think a profile says more about a person than just a few games. Maybe it doesn't show what you want it to say about you as a gamer....but you have enough challenging games on your profile where you can tell it's usually more about the games and less about just a pure trophy count.

 

On 6/15/2021 at 11:35 PM, Cassylvania said:

I've always liked the idea of games having one trophy that you try NOT to pop for as long as possible, like Dark Souls 2's trophy for dying the first time. Celeste could've had something like that for activating Assist Mode, allowing hardcore gamers to prove their mettle by getting that trophy last. Doesn't make the platinum any harder, but at least it's a decent compromise.

 

I like this idea too. It would be a lot more fun for some of those really challenging games to have something like this. I agree that if this did have a trophy for using Assist Mode for the first time, it could be a good achievement to show where in the journey that you turned it on. It doesn't help with rarity % if that's your thing....but you could at least show how far you were able to get without help.

 

On 6/16/2021 at 2:30 AM, Arcesius said:

Lol that's just the games I enjoy... I don't play UR games for the sake of it... it just so happens that my taste in gaming seems to be niche enough that most games I enjoy tend to be UR... Just play stuff you have fun with! 

 

I can't lie....I have chosen a few games just based on the rarity. I actually chose SMB for that reason and I also bought Attacking Zegata for that reason....however AZ seems like a bad joke so I never really tried it. Some of it was morbid curiosity (looking at you Space Hulk).

 

On 6/16/2021 at 3:19 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

"Opinions are like assholes... in that yours is incorrect about the The Surge"

 

This made me lol Seems @Cassylvania has the 'hot take' of my thread so far ?

 

2 hours ago, Eagle said:

Hey! ? Have wanted to comment on this for a while, but always kept forgetting to. It's a nice checklist you have, and it's very interesting to see reviews from a person whose life perspective is sorta opposite to mine, in terms of experience. 

 

The idea of having a platinum rain day (as you did recently) is enticing, but I know myself too well... my mind would just keep bugging me about not getting the last trophy I needed. ?

 

Good luck in future endeavors (especially Super Meat Boy ?), and all the best to you and your family. ?

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. Your profile doesn't have a ton of games yet, but it looks like you're choosing wisely when you choose something! Witcher 3 is on the short list of games I really want to play soon. I may play that one this winter as a nice, long game when it's cold out.

 

The platinum rain was really hard lol I usually try to pop that plat as soon as I can....so it took a lot to ignore that impulse. It started from me just wanting to pop all the Mass Effect games in order, but by the time I beat ME3, I had a good amount of games ready to go and then I just decided to wait. While it's cool to see all those games finished on the same day....I probably won't be rushing to do that again.

 

Thanks again and good luck to you too! 

[Briste]

Platinum #146

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series

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!)

[AJ_Radio]

The Walking Dead was the best thing TellTale Games ever produced. Everything after that was just more of the same that we came to expect. Still it was sad to see them go under a few years back.

[Briste]

19 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

The Walking Dead was the best thing TellTale Games ever produced. Everything after that was just more of the same that we came to expect. Still it was sad to see them go under a few years back.

I think I agree with you as far as the story goes. It was really well done...but I think most of the other games they did felt like you had more control over the direction of the story. I don't ever remember thinking, 'what was the point of that decision' in the other games and I thought that several times in this series. I still think that The Wolf Among Us is my favorite Telltale game with Guardians of the Galaxy probably being the weakest one I played.

[Grotz99]

On 6/21/2021 at 6:31 PM, Briste said:

I think I agree with you as far as the story goes. It was really well done...but I think most of the other games they did felt like you had more control over the direction of the story. I don't ever remember thinking, 'what was the point of that decision' in the other games and I thought that several times in this series. I still think that The Wolf Among Us is my favorite Telltale game with Guardians of the Galaxy probably being the weakest one I played.

Gotta agree with this one, Wolf Among Us was my favorite as well. It was a unique story with interesting choices. Guardians is close to last, but Game of Thrones takes the cake (mostly because they didn't have a chance to make more and left you hanging).

Edited June 24, 2021 by Grotz99

[Rally-Vincent---]

Any of you guys who liked Slay The Spire - go have a  look at Griftlands and see if that is something for you. @Cassylvania @det_gittes and who else was it?

[Briste]

4 hours ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

Any of you guys who liked Slay The Spire - go have a  look at Griftlands and see if that is something for you. @Cassylvania @det_gittes and who else was it?

Watched a review on Youtube and it looks pretty sweet. Thanks for the tip! I've added it to my wish list for now. I won't be able to play it right away so I'll see if it pops on sale, but it is definitely something that looks like something I would really enjoy!

 

Platinum #147

LEGO Ninjago Movie: The Video Game

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....

[Briste]

Platinum #148

Secret of Mana

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

Edited July 10, 2021 by Briste

[Briste]

WWE 2K Battlegrounds

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 you're being jumped thirty feet in the air for a giant choke slam. 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 buttons pop up and you need to press it 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  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. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Briste

[Rally-Vincent---]

In WWF, The Bushwackers and The British Bulldog were my favorites. Those were the days...

[Briste]

3 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

In WWF, The Bushwackers and The British Bulldog were my favorites. Those were the days...

I also loved the Bushwackers. I liked the British Bulldog too, but if I remember right, he had a long time feud with Brett Hart, who was one of my favorites as well so I backed Brett.

[AJ_Radio]

The way WWE handled COVID-19 last year signaled the end of any support I had left for them. It's obvious Vince McMahon is long past his prime. The last few times I tried to watch WWE on satellite TV I ended up turning it off because it was so boring. The scripts are uninspired and lackluster. The Undertaker was the last guy I gave a shit about, and the sole reason I stuck for the product for as long as I did in my lifetime. But I've come to the realization that WWE will never be like it once was and I have moved on from it, probably for good.

 

I did WWE Legends of Wrestlemania a few years back. Still the easiest WWE game you can platinum, I believe there are only three WWE games with trophy support that don't have online. Basically got it at a bargain bin price because the game was already old. But it was certainly a treat to watch all the old footage they put into the game dating back to the 1980s to late 1990s/early 2000s.

 

This thread just goes to show there are plenty of people out there who are much older than I am who have known WWE from the very beginning. But even from my perspective, the product has changed so much it's almost unrecognizable to me. Eddie Guerrero will always be one of my all time favorites. It's a shame he died so young.

[Briste]

Hello! Last week my family and I went on vacation to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. I tried my best to stay unplugged from the internet while I was up there so didn't really check out PSNP while I was gone. I brought my Vita along since my kids go to sleep by around 8:30pm and I wanted to have something to do other than just watch TV after....I also have a 250+ day trophy streak going that I didn't want to break This site does not track that particular stat, however TrueTrophies does and I have earned at least one trophy every day since last November. It's something I'd like to keep going if I can...not sure why I like the 'trophy streak' stat so much...but I do. Anyway, I started playing Shiren The Wanderer a couple of weeks ago for the RPG event....which I highly doubt I'll finish before the end of the year to qualify...but it's something I'd like to chip away at if I can. Problem is, there aren't a lot of 'quick' trophies you can get so I downloaded a couple of other games I could play that might be a bit easier to pop something. I chose Sparkle 2, a puzzle game that's a cross between snake and candy crush, and NeverEnd, which is a rogue-like game that brings you back to the Atari age of gaming.

 

Since I was on vacation and didn't want to be totally focused on trophy hunting, I also downloaded the PS One port of Final Fantasy VI to play That is my favorite game of all time and something I hadn't played in a while. I randomly watched a 'speed run' of that game on YouTube the week before I went on vacation and it got me wanting to play it again. So while I was on vacation, I played the trophy eligible games long enough to get a trophy or two and then switched to FFVI. I still love that game and I'm looking forward to playing through it again at a leisurely pace.

 

As far as New Hampshire goes, if you've never been to the White Mountains, it is beautiful up there. In addition to the usual hiking and stuff, we took our boys to three different theme parks up there...Story Land, Santa's Village and Clark's Trading Post. Santa's Village was the best of the three. I had been there as a kid and I remembered it being kind of shabby and nothing too impressive. They have really made that place look nice and they've added a sweet water park as well. You could spend the whole day there just at the water park without doing any rides or anything. Story Land was fine, but really crowded....I also lost my keys on the Dino Roller Coaster there....They have a whiteboard on the platform for the roller coaster with the statistics of how many moron's have lost keys, wallets or cell phones while on the roller coaster. So far in 2021, 10 people had lost their keys.  They tell you they have cubbies to put your stuff in so you don't lose it. Well guess who has two thumbs and became #11 on the whiteboard? That's right....this guy! Did I take them up on their offer of a nice, safe cubby for my belongings? Nope! I pushed my keys deep in my pocket and wrapped my pocket under my leg to sit on them so they wouldn't fall out. Didn't work....they do not stop the ride if you lose something and you have to wait until the park closes. They will then check under the roller coaster to see if they can find the lost item. We got to the park at 9:30am and I lost them at about noon. We would have had to stay another five and a half hours to see if they could find the keys or not...with two small kids....that wasn't going to work. If I knew for sure they would be found, we probably would have waited, but I did not want to wait until 5:30pm to discover they couldn't find them and then have to deal with trying to get into my car. We were staying about an hour away so a taxi/uber wouldn't have cut it. We had to call a locksmith to make a new key for our car....turns out they did find the keys and I drove back the next day to get them, which was good since my house keys and other car keys were also on the chain. While that could have really ruined our time there, It ended up not really impacting our day too much. We still had a good time until the lines got really long and then we called it a day.

 

Two other random things happened on my vacation. One of them was my cell phone broke. It got some sort of weird purple screen of death. I woke up Thursday morning and saw a solid purple dot in the bottom left corner of my cell phone, that got lighter in color the further it got from the center of the dot. It was smaller than a thumb print in the morning. I thought it was weird but figured I could manage since it didn't really obstruct anything. I didn't look at my phone again until later in the afternoon and when I did, the dot grew bigger in size. By the time I went to bed the whole bottom left quadrant of my cell phone was purple. You couldn't see anything, but if you touched what would have been there, it registered just fine. Only the bio metric login wasn't working. Fortunately, it didn't get much worse until today, but I had to get a new phone when we got home on Saturday. The 'chip shortage' hadn't really affected me at all yet, but when I went to Verizon to get a new Android phone, they didn't have a single Android phone in the whole store. Tons of iPhones, but nothing for Android. They sent me to Best Buy to get one. I'm good to go now, but that was the second weird thing to happen.

 

The third thing (cause these things always come in threes....) was my wife had fraud on our credit card. While we were up there, I got an email from my credit card company saying we received a rebate from Southwest Airlines. I thought that was funny since we didn't buy anything from Southwest Airlines...turns out fraudsters bought three different flights with our card. The good news was that all three were refunded immediately and I was able to cancel the card without having any impact....but it just put a bow on what was a weird week of occurrences during an otherwise awesome week of vacation.

 

So back to games....

Platinum #149

NeverEnd

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.

 

This was a huge wall of text, but I've been silent for two weeks so

[Rally-Vincent---]

Damn, good thing it turned out mostly well for you.

[Briste]

8 hours ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

Damn, good thing it turned out mostly well for you.

Yeah, towards the end of the week, it was starting to feel like some sort of Final Destination was happening lol It could have been much worse though and we did have a good time.

 

Platinum #150

Jotun

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 no 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.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Briste

[Inuty]

Haha congratulations on the platin! I told you that no god powers are harder then no dmg trophies glad you enjoyed it like i Do! 

 

In the last couple of days Eldest Souls released which is a Boss rush game as well. I will try it out, from the trophy list it has the same vibes like Jotun so maybe something for you to keep in mind.

[Briste]

On 8/4/2021 at 2:27 AM, Inuty said:

Haha congratulations on the platin! I told you that no god powers are harder then no dmg trophies glad you enjoyed it like i Do! 

 

In the last couple of days Eldest Souls released which is a Boss rush game as well. I will try it out, from the trophy list it has the same vibes like Jotun so maybe something for you to keep in mind.

Yeah, no god powers is no joke. A lot can go wrong there. I'll have to check out Eldest Souls....I have a ton of games that are 'up next' so we'll have to see when another boss rush game tickles my fancy.

 

It's been a busy week!

 

Platinum #151

Torchlight 2

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.