Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The Summer of Platinum # 1

I.
Single Trophy Blues

Welcome to the first entry in a series of Summer-long entries that are going to be devoted to my attempt to earn the Platinum trophy on as many PlayStation 3 games as I possibly can between the months of May and September.  If you're not aware, Trophies were Sony's response to Microsoft's Achievements on the XBox 360, with the added bonus of the bragging rights bing and notification of the Platinum.  I'm glad they added these little things and I'm thankful for Microsoft for bringing them to consoles (I really don't know where these things come from, to be honest) because it's driven me to do a lot of things I wouldn't normally do in video games.  Like constantly replaying the same games over and over, for instance.  On every generation that has come before the one we're in now, I'd finish a game and be done with it.  Including games like Final Fantasy VII, God of War, and so on and so forth.  The only came I continued to play no matter how many times I completed it was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night; not including fighting games of course.  Everything else was pretty much a one-hitter-quitter.

When the Trophy system was first implemented in July, 2008, and I got that first bing and pop-up notification, I began tracking and collecting as many trophies as I could from the games I tend to play (which is a lot).  These new little added bonuses have seen me play through several RPGs multiple times, as well as action adventure titles, first person shooter games, and who knows what else, trying to do things that normally I wouldn't care about.  And then there's the Platinum Trophy.  A special added bonus that isn't available to the XBox 360 that's really just there for bragging rights.  It's an I DID EVERYTHING sort of trophy, because it actually requires you to do EVERYTHING all the other trophies require you to do in order to obtain it.  It's intensely nerdy, absolutely frustrating, but for some reason it's a very satisfying experience.  At least for me.

So, I decided to blog about my adventures in trying to get as many Platinum Trophies over the Summer as I possibly can, which I'm pretty sure I've already stated, and thus, I'm repeating myself, sharing with whomever it is that reads this thing that intensely nerdy side of myself all for the sake of shits and giggles.

The Single Trophy Blues comes about when you need one meager little trophy to bing off in the top right corner before you get that Platinum one.  These trophies somehow manage to elude you for any number of reasons.  It could be that you need a partner to help you get it, as is the case for me in Resident Evil 5 where the trophy War Hero is all that is needed for me to get the Platinum Trophy, We Will Survive.  To get the War Hero trophy, you need to beat all chapters on Professional difficulty, which is nothing but a frustrating pain in the ass to even attempt to do by yourself.  Mostly because Sheva is a piece of shit when she's controlled by the AI and is always dying at every turn.  And in a game like this, where the co-op is forced upon you, you almost always have to do something hokey like running across the map 'cause Sheva got stuck and killed and you need to revive her.

Or the trophies can be ridiculously simple, but for some reason or another you just can't get it.  Like Devil's Brigade, a single bronze trophy in X-Men Origins: Wolverine that requires the player to find all the dog tags decorated throughout the game.  I've attempted this on many occasions, and every single time there's one set of dog tags that I can't ever locate.  I tried it four or five times by myself, and then additional four or five times using various guides on the Internet and even the official strategy guide on one occasion.  The official strategy guide had all but one listed in the book, which I suppose is to be expected from Brady Games (or Prima for that matter, as both publishers put out the shittiest strategy guides in video gaming).

Or they can be the closest thing to a nightmare as possible, at least for me.  Such is the case for the Hard to the Core trophy from Dead Space 2.  This trophy requires the player to beat the game on Hard Core mode, which isn't all that difficult as far as monsters and combat and the like goes; but it's made more difficult in that there are no check points in the games, items are a bit rarer to find, and you only get three saves the entire game.  You have to practically memorize the game inside and out before attempting it and knowing where the best save points are (i.e. the ones right before you die a horrible death) and you have to avoid making any mistakes whatsoever (like backing up into environmental hazards that lead to instant death, whoops!).

These are the games I'm going to begin this summer with.  I'll try to record every little detail; every triumph and failure; and every time I want to poke a game dev in the eye for subjecting me to this nonsense.

II
Double the Dosage

Surprisingly, I don't have many games that need just two trophies to get the Platinum.  Just one game, actually.  God of War III.  Unfortunately, they're both trophies that I'm not very excited to even attempt in any sort of way.  Unhuman is the first one that requires the player to beat the game on Titan Mode, which is the game's hardest difficulty setting, and it's not a setting that's very Dameyon-Friendly.  I've made two attempts at it already, and both times I saw myself turned into a pile of mush over and over again at the hands of sub-boss after sub-boss.  I didn't have any problems with the bosses, the Gods themselves, but the sub-bosses were awful little bastards.

The second one is Up to the Challenge, which revolves around beating the Challenge of Olympus, and the God of War challenge modes aren't something to just wink at and give a quick smirk two.  They're horrible little things that can (and probably have) lead to the death of many controllers across the world.  I've finished these challenges on three different God of War games (God of War, Chains of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta), but God of War II and III aren't a whole lot of fun for myself.  I'll get 'em done, but it's gonna take a lot of effort.

III.
Infectious Trifecta

The games that need only three trophies don't number very high either, including only Assassin's Creed II and God of War II.

God of War II has Bleeding Thumbs, which is another challenge-based trophy; Eye Sore, which requires the player to collected twenty Cyclops' eyes; and You Know the Germans Make Good Stuff... which requires the player to collect all the Uber Chests.  I would have had the last two by now if I kept at it, but I got side-tracked by a plethora of other games.  The challenge one is another butt-clenching situation of frustration.  Whatever that is.  I'm gonna be a bit miffed if these two challenge trophies for God of War II and III turn out to be rather easy to get after failing so many times before.

Assassin's Creed II is a bit more humiliating.  These three trophies are ones that I was going to get after I had finished the game a few years ago because they're all very easy to get with one just being rather time consuming.  But I lost my save file and now I have to start over from the beginning of the game and play it through to the end in order to unlock all the cities and whatnot.  I have In Memory of Petruccio, where I need to collect all the feathers; Show Your Colors, where I need to wear the Auditore cape in each city; and Sweeper, where I have to sweep five guards at once by using a long weapon like a pike or a spear.  All three are bronze trophies.  The one good thing about this one is that I've been wanting to replay all the Assassin's Creed games leading up to Assassin's Creed III for a while -- especially since the last time I gave it a whirl, I had completely forgotten how to play Assassin's Creed III.

IV
The Fantastic Four and Fox Force Five

I got three games in this section.  Dragon Age: Origins and Batman: Arkham Asylum both have four trophies needed, and Mass Effect 2 has five.

Dragon Age: Origins has Easy Lover which requires a romantic relationship with Zevran which is the most annoying character in the game to me.  I hate that guy.  Then there's Hopelessly Romantic, which will automatically trigger once I hook up with Zevran.  Kinslayer's next which requires me to complete the Dward Noble origin story, which I tried to do before, but it gliched out and the other dwarves wouldn't stand where they were supposed to.  I wonder if I still have my Dragon Age game saves.  Prolly not!  Then there's this pain in the ass one called Perfectionist which says, "Across all playthroughs, discovered all possible endings," which I don't even know what all the endings are or what ones I've got!

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a stupid one.  The game is amazing, don't get me wrong, but the trophies are need aren't fun to get at all -- which may make them more satisfying to get.  The first one is Freeflow Silver, where  I gotta get sixteen medals on combat challenges, followed by Freeflow Gold where I gotta get 24 medals.  These aren't easy for me to do because some of the maps you do the combat challenges on are ridiculously hard.  Floors get all electric-shocky-like and whatnot.  Then there's Predator Gold which requires 24 medals on Predator Challenges, which aren't easy either.  Each map has three requirements you need to get to get the medals for.  I'm not sure if you need to get all three in one attempt, or if you can get one, then another on a different playthrough; etc.  Then there's Perfect Knight, which needs 100% completion to get, which, along with the Platinum, will automatically ping when I get those other three trophies.

Mass Effect 2 is just butt.  It's a butt experience filled with butt situations that are all butt.  And not good butt, neither.  Mud butt type butt.  If only because of the Insanity trophy which says I gotta beat the game on Insanity Difficulty -- which I've done on Mass Effect 3, but for some reason ME2 just says, NO, YOU'RE NOT GONNA DO IT, FUCKHEAD.  So I don't do it.  The character I play just doesn't seem to jive with the horrible butt situation that is Insanity Difficulty.

V
To Infinity And Beyond

Or something to that effect.  The rest of the games are too plentiful and the trophies to bountiful to continue listing what I need to get to grab the Platinum and run.  I have pretty close to two-hundred games now and while not all of them have Platinum trophies, or are even on the PlayStation 3; there's still a lot to go through and cover 'em all in this one little entry.

As a bonus, however, since I've just recently acquired an XBox 360 for the first time, I'm also gonna cover the achievements I gather in a little section at the bottom of each entry.

And that's it.  Pretty lame, really, but it's all in an effort to keep me writing more.

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