Last-_-Judgment's Everlasting Backlog and Divine Judgments

[Last-_-Judgment]

Platinum #9 - Apotheon

 

Omnipotence

Tier Ranking - D

Difficulty Rating - 3/10

Platform - PS4

 

This was the very first PS Plus game I completed which was around the same time I got the newly made PS4. Ooo... A new world of opportunities... This was actually a bit of a breath of fresh air from playing mostly triple A titles as I don't play many indie games and Apotheon truly gave me the intent to play and explore them more. Apotheon has a strong concept on paper, however it only prevails in certain areas.

 

You play as fictional character Nikandreos who seeks out exactly why the gods have abandoned humanity and despite such a cliche objective (gods are evil and all that), the story is wonderfully told. The story is a little bit comparable to that of God of War and does share similarities however Apotheon sets a softer tone as opposed to a dark barbaric one. Not to mention, Nikandreos isn't an irresponsible arsehole. Overall, the story is a rather interesting one because you might find yourself understanding both sides of the spectrum when you look at the world we live in right now but that's for you to decide. Each chapter is wonderfully told in the form of visuals based on ancient Greek artwork. This beautiful graphic style combined with the incredibly durable mythos creates a lovely mix in narrative and storytelling.

 

Unfortunately the actual gameplay can feel pretty limited. The combat itself is pretty simple and doesn't really offer anything challenging nor is it anything that we haven't seen before. There is no real development in combat over the course of the story either so you'll never have to change how you fight as there isn't any sort of variety in enemy encounters. Not to mention, it feels rather sluggish as you're whacking away with each swing of your weapon. In other words, there is just a serious improvement needed in this area of the game. Regardless of how pretty the game looks, this can create a sense of tediousness and there's no reason for you not to go and rush to the next point in the story as it's truly the most enjoyable and valuable part of the game.

 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this very different experience. My first indie game platinum certainly won't be the last. I could really appreciate what they was trying to do with this game but it definitely could have used some further development. Glimpsing at this and based on genre alone, I probably would have just passed on it. It didn't really seem like something I'd play. But I can safely say that In the future, I certainly won't shy away from games like this anymore. It's not just about what is on the front cover.

 

 

Trophy Thoughts

 

Despite the game having a fairly rare platinum, it's not a difficult platinum to complete. However (and it's a big 'however'), I did use the exploit to finish the game on the hardest difficulty for Olympian which will cause you problems if you happen to do it legit. Personally, I didn't care much to play this game twice for it to frustrate me all the way into the underworld. But hey that's me. I do also remember that there was one trophy that was unobtainable on release but that got fixed pretty quickly in a patch (thank god... pun intended!). There is also plenty of missable trophies in this game but luckily you can return to different area before you go and beat the final boss.

 

Edited March 29 by Last-_-Judgment

[Last-_-Judgment]

Platinum #10 - FIFA 15

 

Football Legend

Tier Ranking - D

Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Platform - PS4

 

Unfortunately for me, I missed out on FIFA 14 in my platinum series and unfortunately for you, I'm talking about it. I never actually owned FIFA 14 as I was going through a serious World of Warcraft addiction phase, so I never bothered with it. Of course now, I really regret not picking it up and getting it done since it's the only one I'm missing in my 10 year run of FIFA platinums. I can't compare this to the previous title, you know how you usually compare games in a series, but I can most likely say that not much has changed...

 

I feel the main talking point of this years FIFA is the realism of the game which they evidently wanted to improve on. EA added more emotional reactions from the players during the course of the match. They might miss a shot and facepalm themselves, score an important goal and go absolutely batshit crazy or maybe make an important tackle and celebrate it like they scored. This is a nice addition to install some immersion into the game. They also added some realistic pitch visuals where you can see parts of the pitch getting damaged from different forms of contact. There is also various other small improvements in atmosphere around the stadium.

 

But the main problem with FIFA 15 (and obviously many other FIFAs) is that EA were not innovative enough, not in the slightest. Since FIFA 13, we have seen very minimal changes to gameplay and modes, but this is the general frustrating consensus which I spoke about before in my FIFA 13 review. They could improve so much more than just a few minor tweaks. And making a very similar game to which we have seen every year for the past 3 years doesn't deserve the acclaim it already gets. You can see already that they were slowly starting to focus their attention on Ultimate Team while Manager Mode needed improvements severely to evolve it's potential and unfortunately only got very few changes. Meanwhile other modes seem to have been abandoned altogether. The only thing they really improved upon off the pitch is the interface which is not a big enough change to truly escape the feeling of mediocre development. 

 

Don't get me wrong, FIFA is still enjoyable for football fans like me and although it does satisfy our desire of playing football at a video gaming level, I think the most annoying part about the franchise is that you long for more which could so easily be implemented without a great deal of effort. EA's problem is that they really have no competition to warrant any major changes in their scheme. "Shame!" *shakes bell*

 

 

Trophy Thoughts (Unobtainable)

 

Boasting a surprisingly rare platinum, FIFA 15 was only really truly difficult for one single purpose. Extra Effort was an absolute hair puller. It takes the cake, the candles, the birthday numbers and everything else with it. I would argue the mechanic at hand barely even works 98% of the time. But after at least 2-3 hours of attempting this scenario, I was relieved to see it pop. Everything else in this game was a walk in the park compared to this complete and utter nonsense.

 

Edited March 29 by Last-_-Judgment

[Last-_-Judgment]

Platinum #11 - Assassin's Creed: Unity

 

Master Assassin

Tier Ranking - E

Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Platform - PS4

 

Like Kingdom Hearts, despite the platinums not being completely in order, I had already played all the Assassins Creed games up to this point except Liberation. Assassin's Creed for me was one of my all time favourite franchises. It was always in my top 5. But from this point forward, it just didn't hold up anymore. There's no sugarcoating it, this is Ubisoft's biggest low point in the Assassins Creed franchise. I understand that it was a huge task at hand for them to make something just as good (if not better) than Black Flag, but they did have the capabilities of the PS4 at their disposal. Somehow they managed to make it feel like an abomination compared to the rest of the series.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that Ezio Auditore was the main inspiration behind Unity's protagonist, Arno Dorian. He has charming aspects, he seems rather valiant and can be quite charismatic. He even has a similar backstory. Despite that, there was no improving Ezio as a character in any form, he already brought everything to the table that I feel they are trying to bring out of Arno. I think the story though also doesn't help him as a character as I feel Arno has zero chemistry with his love interest and supporting character, Elise. She isn't very interesting and all of it just feels a bit forced. This lack of character development definitely hinders how much you care about the story since it's featured around the pair of them. In spite of this, 18th century France is beautifully created with the next gen graphics. Exploring the atmospheric streets of Paris makes you feel like you are in an old-school Assassins Creed title again. It was truly stunning seeing the capabilities of the PS4 and how gorgeous it can make a game look.

 

Onto the gameplay... There is plenty wrong in this area of the game. Firstly, the new gear customisation features are seriously poor. Most of the stats and descriptions of armour sets don't really feel like they have much of an effect. Secondly, side content variety in this title is extremely lacking for such an 'impressive' new gen triple A game. The main talking point for me though is the combat. While open combat was very clearly revamped, it was a truly piss poor attempt. It all just feels sluggish, clunky and broken. Every single fight on slightly slanted terrain breaks the combat completely. Arno and his enemies struggle to hit each other due to problems with the animations at different altitudes. Meanwhile you have to constantly roll about as you have enemies spamming pistol shots at you at point blank. Due to this very poorly executed swordplay, it started to feel like the only tactic was to spam smoke bombs and assassinate everyone to cheese the combat system. It was just too frustrating and this of course led the game to feel like a tedious drag. Lastly, even the new coop feature which replaced the former multiplayers modes, despite being a great idea on paper, wasn't executed well at all. The awful laggy servers ruin the experience. And yeah it can be fun doing these assassination and heist missions with others but after doing each mission once, there doesn't really feel like a reason to go back to it. Despite all this, being able to assassinate your targets using different opportunities was a really exciting prospect but doesn't save the gameplay aspect by any means.

 

On a side note, what a strange decision by Ubisoft to give Arno a very out-of-place English accent, but after everything it was the least of my problems.

To be honest, It almost felt like they didn't really know where to go after the success of Black Flag, so they tried to go back to basics and unfortunately it backfired. It's truly a sad thing though as I loved Assassin's Creed since the beginning of the series and honestly this game genuinely hurt my love towards the franchise. Since this title, my experience with the franchise was never the same again and it's the only game of the series that I actually had to talk myself back into playing.

 

DLCs

Dead Kings

 

The single DLC of this game was thankfully given as a free update. Ubisoft usually never hand out any free DLC so this is a rather telling action by them due to the poor state of the game. Dead Kings didn't really offer much other than the newly added Guillotine Gun weapon and a couple of new missions which did have a nice change of pace from the base game and although it doesn't really add anything to Arno's story, it does have a cool tomb raider feel to it due to the exploration of... well... tombs...

 

 

Trophy Thoughts

 

There was nothing difficult to achieve in this game. There is a couple of coop-only trophies which takes maybe 10mins to boost. Unity in general though is just grindy. You'll be spending most of your time cleaning up the map and working towards 100% in the game itself. Not gonna lie, it's not fun but you should get there in the end. Don't be surprised if something glitches on you either. I'm not kidding when I say it's a buggy mess.

 

Edited March 29 by Last-_-Judgment