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1

Mirror’s Edge was not the first game I played on PS3, but it was the first game that instilled in me the determination to start collecting Trophies. I was so excited for this game. When my best friend and old flatmate Jess introduced me to the trailer of this First Person Parkour game “where you could see your feet and everything!” I was immediately sold.

Once the pre-release demo was available I played through it countless times. I was so happy to confirm that the game was everything I had wanted it to be, Mirror’s Edge was as close to a perfect representation of Parkour in a video game as you could get, while still remaining user-friendly. The game also looked gorgeous, with such a minimalist yet detailed environment (on PC it still looks amazing today).

On the evening of November 15th, 2008 I called in sick to work and made my way down to the local video rental store. I didn’t think they’d even have it in stock but I had no other option. There must have been a fan working there because I walked out with my fresh One Day Rental copy of Mirror’s Edge and I was literally trembling with anticipation. I honestly think this is the first game I had ever experienced true hype for.

I jumped straight to Level 1 – The Prologue and got my first Trophy in Mirror’s Edge at 5:52 p.m. I played that game through the night. During my playthrough, my flatmates came home and had the audacity to question why I was not at work. Not wanting to spoil my experience I told them I’d already taken some time off for the game – that was a lie that backfired in a pretty hilarious way. The flatmates went shopping that night without me because there was no way I was standing up until I finished this frustrating and clunky yet still absolutely fantastic masterpiece of a game.

When the flatmates got back they let me know that they happened to strike a conversation with my boss, they just wanted to reassure her that I was using my time off well, playing video games. Well, you can probably imagine that didn’t quite go according to my original plan. Future dire consequences aside, it didn’t matter – nothing was going to spoil my night. The universe really tried though!

It was around 12:30 a.m and I was half-way through chapter 8 of 9. A domestic fight had broken out right outside of our lounge, on the roadside. A woman was screaming at the top of her lungs at a man who was trying to take her baby, she chased him up and down the road and attacked him, he attacked her back, she tried to get into her car but he pulled her out – and all this was happening while I was just trying to get past the damn eighth chapter of this phenomenal game! Thankfully the woman succeeded in driving away, with the baby.

At 2:24 a.m I put the controller down, having finished Mirror’s Edge. Ding!  That’s a wrap – Complete the story mode on any difficulty. But I knew, with a heavy sadness, that the next day I was going to have to take back this truly wonderful game, so I endeavoured to keep pushing through the night. I moved on to the Speed Runs and Time Trials.

Mirror’s Edge had birthed something new in me, the drive to complete optional challenges set in the game. Before Mirror’s Edge, things like Speed runs and optional trials never really interested me that much, but this game was just too good not to squeeze every bit of content out of.

Immediately after finishing the base game I loaded up the Prologue, the level I knew like the back of my goddamned hand because it was the only main level available in the demo, and obtained the Prologue Speedrun trophy 14 minutes later. 10 minutes after that I completed my first Time Trial – Ding! On the clock and that was that. night well spent, energy also spent, I went to sleep with a large smile on my face, adrenaline subsiding.

A week later I had the necessary funds to rent it out again for another day. It was at this point that I’d had enough time to come to terms with the fact that I was now going to get the Platinum Trophy for this game. I’d read the polarizing reviews and sympathised with the people who had criticized its difficulty, but it didn’t matter to me, Mirror’s Edge was the best game I’d ever played and I wanted to get every last bit of content from it.

I did another playthrough but this time I’d actually looked up the trophy list and devised my plan for the night. At 10:36 p.m Back on the job for finally completing the Tutorial, and by 5:21 a.m Test of faith for finishing the game without shooting a gun, along with the collectible trophies and other collectibles based and miscellaneous trophies. I slept for maybe three hours, then the next day I went back to the rental store and hired it out again with my last shreds of cash.

November 24th, 2008 was the last time I’d have Mirror’s Edge in my possession for almost a year. It was a productive day, I reached my first Time Trial milestone, completed another chapter Speedrun and by the end of the night, Pro Runner trophy for finishing Mirror’s Edge on Hard difficulty. That was one of the most draining gaming moments I had experienced thus far and I decided it was time for a break.

Around January 2009 I was fired from my job at Pak’n Save, to my wildest disbelief. At that point, even if I had been ready to return to Mirror’s Edge, I was no longer able to afford the rental costs so I put that tenuous goal of completing my all-time favourite game aside and moved to other Games/Platforms for a while.

June 20th, 2009 on my 20th Birthday my flatmate Anne had purchased a physical, permanent copy of Mirror’s Edge for me. I didn’t even own a PS3, it was my flatmate Brett’s, but it was one of the best gifts I have ever been given. That game meant so much to me, and I was so grateful for the gift. It was time to return to that goal, which had since looked so much less obtainable – Mirror’s Edge was on every “Top 10 Hardest Platinums EVER!” list back then and I hadn’t even got one Platinum yet.

July 9th, 2009, I decided I was ready to return to Mirror’s Edge. I worked on the time trials and one day later I had achieved A For Effort, the second Time Trial milestone trophy. What followed was a struggle to reach that third and final milestone, and my attempts ended in failure.

That was until the DLC came out with more maps and more possible stars – complete with two new Milestone trophies. Well, I didn’t care about those trophies, what I cared about was that the third Milestone trophy just got a whole lot easier, now that I could obtain the easiest stars from 10 brand new levels.

November 26th, 2009, one year and two days after I had achieved my first Time Trial trophy, I obtained Still Counting which to this day has a rarity of 0.9% completion. Granted I’d done it by using those DLCs to buffer my score, but all that mattered to me was that I was one crucial step closer to that Platinum trophy.

December 1st, 2009 at 5:08 p.m I had beaten the final Hurdle in the trophy list,

Chapter 9 Speedrun and the trophies before it. Those speedruns were the hardest and most rewarding things I had accomplished in a game. Almost daily I’d be in the lounge, PS3 muted and plugged into the secondary 4:3 CRT TV with attempt after attempt after attempt while the flatmates would watch Comedy Central. The main hurdles had been cleared.

6:18 p.m, I had eventually given up on finding all of the collectibles myself and found a guide for the last few. Ding! Packrat. All that was left was a quick string of moves. Ding! Up, over, under, onwards.

Over the Edge (fitting name I think) unlocked 6:18 p.m on the 1st of December 2009.

Oh and 15th August 2017 I got those last two DLC trophies. So there ya go past self, don’t feel so bad.

2

God of War was my introduction to PlayStation 2. I’d seen other games on PS2 before, but nothing captured my attention like God of War. First time I ever saw the game, I had no idea what it was, but watching this JACKED burly bald man with a goatee swinging blades on chains like a fucking ballerina, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Eventually I got my own PS2 and God of War was the first game I played.

Imagine my happiness when I learned that God of War 1 and 2 were receiving full HD remasters in what I believe was the first big example of the remaster trend, a trend I personally love. I came home to find my flatmate Brett had purchased the games already and on December 10th 2009, I finally had something to take my mind off Mirror’s Edge.

Having already played the games I took a good look at the trophy list and when I saw that there was no trophy to finish the game on Very Hard, only Hard, had my first twinge of disappointment, though admittedly mixed with relief. There were a few amusing trophies, but nothing I hadn’t really done before – with the exception of a Speed run trophy! That piqued my interest since I was still coming off the reward high from my Mirror’s Edge accomplishments.

6:48 p.m I sat down and reacquainted myself with my old friend Kratos. We danced and slashed and sexed and explored our way to the end of the game by 1:30 a.m, many optional trophies obtained along the way. The day after I returned with renewed vigor, ready to tackle the speed run and…

Trophy of Zeus unlocked 4:02 a.m on the 12th of December 2009

3

Next up, God of War 2. It was a similar experience to the first one, though I was so impressed with how much difference the HD textures made. It easily passed as a PS3 game. Santa Monica and David Jaffe have my respect for how much passion and work they put into that franchise.

One standout moment of playing God of War 2 again was that I was able to complete challenges I hadn’t been able to do back when I played it on PS2. The optional Trial Arena – Challenge of the Titans had proved too difficult for me back in 2008, but at 6:02 p.m I had achieved the Bleeding Thumbs trophy for beating the trials. A few hours later,

Trophy of Gaia unlocked 10:13 p.m on the 12th of December 2009.

4

Honestly, I don’t even remember why I bought this game. I guess it was just cheap on the PSN at some point, maybe my flatmate Brett had it – maybe this was around the time that I started paying close attention to what the world was playing. Either way, I’m glad I did find it, because during a moment of weakness, a low point in my Mirror’s Edge progress, on November 29th 2009 I sat down to start playing the best 2D Puzzle Platformer I’ve ever seen.

The three character instant switching mechanic was so clever, it allowed for you to tailor your own play-style by putting seemingly insurmountable obstacles ahead, but filling the environment with the tools each character could use to beat the obstacles. Sometimes it was something all three characters could do with varying levels of difficulty, other times it was impossible for one or even two characters. Either way, you had to figure that out yourself. The game was beautiful too, filled with vibrant colours and varied environments set in a lighthearted fantasy world.

What also impressed me was it’s trophy list. It was the first game to plant the seed of an idea of a Trophy list being a dialogue between the Developer and the player. When it’s done well, you can read the list and understand how the Developer wants you to experience different facets of the game outside of simply 100%’ing the content.

There were trophies like What a View! to build a 12 object Tower, which involved the Wizard, and then stand on the tower without collapsing it. Or The Cool Way, which was to finish a level having used each of the character’s unique combat mechanics at least once, or Master Ninja which required, as the name suggests, true mastery of the archer, from a movement perspective. Then there was my favourite trophy, so tantalisingly named Better than the Developers! To finish the Final level of the game on the hardest difficulty with no Character dying once.

The challenges felt personal, like Frozenbyte were sitting in my lounge daring me to do these strange and different things that, had it not had trophies, I would have collected all the collectibles, finished the game and been on my way. The trophies pushed me to find the hidden value in the game, and I wish more games would do that.

It was a very well put together game and was also my introduction to how far I will go to find every single collectible in a game. As it turns out, that is currently limited to “Watch someone do it on Youtube, pausing every 10 seconds to follow exactly what they did.” Some levels had almost a hundred items and there were some pretty devious hiding spots.

My quest to be “better than the developers” took a similar journey to those Speedruns back with Mirror’s Edge more than a week prior, sitting in the lounge on CRT jamming away at it. The night I got it, I got a little drunk with my flatmate and that didn’t help attempts much, but once I sobered up, at 12:08 a.m – Ding! Better than the Developers! Shortly after,

Way Out of the Trine unlocked 12:44 a.m on the 13th of December 2009.

5

This was a game.

Platinum Trophy unlocked 9:44 p.m on the 13th of February 2010.

…

No seriously, there’s not much to say about it. It sure was a Need for Speed game. It took very shallow inspiration from Burnout Paradise with an open world and open race paths. It was pretty. The story was shit. It had cool cars. Why did I even play it? Maybe because of some vicarious nostalgia watching various friends play the older Need for Speeds when I was a kid. Who knows. I saw it on the shelf of the video rental store and said “why not”.

Oh, one noteworthy thing, it was my first introduction to Multiplayer trophies and “Boosting”. I don’t tend to play games for their multiplayer, I play games for interactive narrative and structured challenge, not as a sport. Any multiplayer competitive game that currently exists follows the same base rules as sport does. Two or more teams, prime objective, first to reach prime objective wins. Not my thing.

Boosting is a multiplayer “tactic” used by like-minded people to help each other obtain multiplayer based trophies. Some people question the validity of this as a method, going so far as to call it cheating. My personal stance about trophies, which is shared by many other people, is that they should always be Single Player or cooperative rewards.

There’s already inherent tangible value in winning Multiplayer competitive activities, trophies are kinda redundant in acknowledging that. Not to mention that when the game’s servers eventually shut down, whelp – no more obtainable multiplayer trophies for that game. Ever. The Platinum trophy is impossible to obtain from that point onward.

Need for Speed: Undercover did not have many interesting trophies, but it did have Multiplayer trophies. The worst of which was called Notorious, awarded for finishing 119 MULTIPLAYER RACES. Hey… hey EA? Fuck you. There was also Among the Best awarded for winning 25 races. That was the one that needed the actual boosting assistance. Guess I had more to say than I thought, a shame most of it was bad.

I mean, it’s a Need for Speed game. Like, the twelfth one. Moving on.

6

Looking back on it now, I gave this game harsher criticism than it deserved. It was actually a fun game, I was just a big Sands of Time-era Prince of Persia fan and this reboot was not that. It was a bit self-aware and liked to satirise itself and I wasn’t on board with that at the time. I was still determined to get the Platinum and my resolve was strengthened by some genuinely great gaming moments.

Right from the start it actively insults the lore. He’s riding on a donkey named Farrah, the name of the Prince’s main love interest who goes through some pretty intense arcs over the SoT Trilogy. And no, the original Farrah was not a donkey. I hated it from the start. Then we’re introduced to some new budding love interest who CAN’T DIE. She can also fly. So every time you fail a platforming or combat mechanic, instead of you dying, she flies down to save you and drops you off a little before the thing you died on. Mechanically, same thing as dying. Thematically? I really hated it.

It wasn’t that bad of a game, it was pretty cool. Mechanically I had no complaints, the platforming felt skillful and intuitive, the combat was simple yet effective. The art style was a nice variant on classic cell-shaded but with a somewhat muted tone that fit the environment. The story starts off alright and it’s ending is one of the most memorable endings I’ve ever seen.

The Trophy list, though, was bugged! There were two optional trophies for completing the game under certain conditions – Be gentle with her for “dying” less than 100 times which I guarantee I died more than, and Speed Demon for finishing the game in under 12 hours, which considering I did a full 100% run of, I also seriously doubt that I got. Regardless, both of the trophies popped when I finished the game.

Other than that hiccup, it was a decent list. Pretty standard, with a couple of neat exploration-based awards and it had some speedrun trophies that scratched my lingering Mirror’s Edge itch. But then there was Combo Specialist which as of right now is still the rarest trophy in the list, sitting at 2.1% completion. I could not do it. I tried and tried and tried but I just couldn’t.

I chalked it down to being the kind of thing you could do if you were really experienced with Fighting games, which I was not. I kept on trying the 16 BUTTON COMBO the game was asking from me, but I failed every time. My flatmate Brett watched me attempt this many times and he claimed he could do it. I didn’t believe him, but I wanted someone else to fail for a change. What happened next was the first and only trophy awarded in the hands of someone other than myself. Brett Peters awarded my account with a Ding! Combo Specialist followed by…

Master unlocked 11:40 p.m on the 18th of February 2010. That ding still haunts me.

But I’m not done with Prince of Persia yet. There’s DLC with trophies I’ve been meaning to go back to, so I’ll likely get that done one day, along with, at the very least, achieving the criteria for that damn trophy on my own terms.

7

One of my compulsions is the drive to finish a franchise that I’ve started. Shift was the next game in the PS3 Need for Speed franchise and…. Yup… it’s… a game…

It was a less good Forza/Gran Turismo clone. The trophy list was boring. It has DLC I’m  never going to play. platinumtrophy7:31pm21febwhothefuckcares

Oh and I haven’t played an NFS since, so thanks NFS for being so mediocre that you’re the one franchise I’ll probably never bother finishing. Bye.

8

I never was really a racing fan, which might explain my stance on the Need for Speed games a bit. I don’t really know why I even decided to buy Wipeout HD. I’d heard good things, Jess recommended the previous Wipeout’s she was playing and I was looking for something different. I must have bought it on the same day as Trine – Mirror’s Edge had hit my morale pretty hard and I needed something new to take my mind off it.

I obtained my first gold medal in a race in Wipeout HD November 29th, 2009 at 5:38 a.m. The rush was exhilarating. This was easily was the best racing game I had ever played. Everything about it was perfect. It was one of the few games to run at native 1080p, the visuals were crisp, the colours so vibrant and the tracks varied. The vehicle models were extremely detailed and teased intricate backstory for the teams that they represented.

Driving/Flying my little Green Beetle, Mirage at 200, then 300, then eventually upwards of 1000 kph was exciting every single time. There were quite a few different vehicles to pick from, but it was my favourite for reasons I still don’t know. There are just so many good things I can say about Wipeout. Mechanically it was airtight.

Knowing when to use my power-ups or when to absorb them to recover health under threat of being permanently wiped from the race kept constant pressure on me while I took those tight turns and tactically yet recklessly overtook my opponents with a mixture of health reducing, but speed boosting barrel rolls and brief three second reprieves with the auto-drive power up.

Firing a well-placed shot from the most lethal weapon power-up in the game into an opponent ahead of me and flying through their burning wreckage as I watch my race position change from 2/8 to 1/7 ranks as one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in a game. Every turn in the track is a new surprise waiting to happen. AI is aggressive and competitive, the tracks are devious and jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The music is -perfect-. It’s a racing Masterpiece.

The trophy list was even pretty damn good. Once again, it has a common appearance on Hardest Platinum lists even today, currently sitting at 0.4% completion. The trophies demanded playing some of the game modes under different conditions or to certain, insane, levels of accomplishment. There was also another “beat the developer” trophy called Beat Zico which immediately enticed me. It was also almost impossible. Oh and there were multiplayer trophies but I didn’t even boost them.

It was definitely my hardest earned Platinum so far. Once again, countless nights on the CRT while the flatmates watched TV, but five months after starting,

Ding! Arcade Perfect, for winning a race on every single track and reverse track on the Highest Speed and Highest Difficulty. I passed the final Hurdle, sitting at 0.5% completion, followed by Thanks for the Memory and WipEout® Disciple, both quite appropriately named I thought, culminating in

Transcendence unlocked 11:40 p.m on the 18th of February 2010.

Extra DLC content was finished years later. Thank you WipEout HD, for the memory.

Intermission

Brett moved out shortly after my Wipeout victory and so ended my PS3 days. I returned to PC and played some WoW pretty heavily on a laptop that is bested by most phones made in the last decade. I missed PlayStation, but I just didn’t have the money from my minimum wage paying job at Warehouse Stationery to do anything about that. And then I didn’t have any money at all when I was fired from that job.

My best friend Jess and her now partner Dave moved in, Anne and Alex moved out. I stayed with my parents for Christmas 2011 and didn’t come back to Wellington for over a month. Boy was I in for a nice surprise when I returned.

9

Dave and Jess bought motherfucking PS3s!!! Dave put his in the lounge and it took me a good five minutes before I shamelessly asked if I could play it. Just as shamelessly I borrowed Jess’ copy of the latest Ratchet & Clank game. I’d never actually finished an R&C, I only casually played them when I was younger. This one was awesome.

It felt like Ratchet & Clank but took some really good inspiration especially from games like Super Mario Galaxy. It had tight platforming, fun and varied combat and lots of customization. It was also very pretty. The Ratchet bits were epic, the Clank bits had puzzles that rivaled Portal in their ingenuity (and also enemies that made the most hilarious noises when they died in slow motion).

It was so good to be back on PS3 after literally two years off and this was the perfect game to start with. Just the right amount of challenge and humour and a decent trophy list. Nothing too taxing, aside from one trophy, My Blaster Runs Really, Really Hot which involved completing an intentionally horrible, NES-shovelware-bad, minigame. But it had a co-op mode that made it slightly more manageable and that trophy ended up as an impromptu bonding experience with my old flatmate Dylan, who to each other otherwise we would not normally give the time of day.

Three days later, I wrapped up my first reunion with my PS3 account by finishing Crack in Time once again on Hard and continued my Platinum journey with…

The Lombax Triumphant unlocked 9:02 a.m on the 14th of February 2012

10

One of the things that the God of War 1 & 2 Remaster was heavily advertising, complete with a demo, was God of War III. I played the shit out of that demo. At the time it was easily the best looking game on PS3, it’s scope seemed so ambitious and while the core gameplay was still there, it just was better than the previous games in practically every way.

It was definitely the game I pined after the most, during that two year dry spell. Having played the two previous games to death, I was so very excited to see what they had in store next. So on January 28th, 2013 I trekked down to my local, barely surviving, video store and picked up a copy.

What followed was five days of playing a God of War game. It was pretty, it had some nice innovations with the combat, mainly with a new rechargeable third attack option and it had some stand-out moments. But overall I don’t think it lived up to the sequel it was supposed to be. The story was sadly quite dull, with the worst case of “Child mcguffin” syndrome I’ve seen in a while, but it was still a very entertaining game.

The Trophy list was alright, nothing too exciting. The last boss on Hard Difficulty was admittedly quite hard, until you read up how you can easily stun-lock him to death. Though had that not been a thing, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to kill him. The ending was also pretty good.

Overall the great moments were great, it didn’t have any bad moments, but it had a lot of going through the God of War motions. Though if I’m being honest with myself, I think by this point the six God of War games I’ve played so far have started to bleed into each other. Glad I Platinum’ed it, no desire to play it again.

King of the Hill unlocked 5:00 a.m on the 3rd of February 2013

Reason for almost one year delay between the 2 Platinums? WoW is a hell of a drug.

11

I’d only ever heard of the Sly series when I was younger, never saw it. Developed by Sucker Punch games, makers of Infamous (see below) it was another intended contender to the Mascot Platformer scene, alongside Jak and Ratchet. I don’t know if it managed to reach that level of success, but based on the first game alone, it had the bones of something pretty special.

And yet I don’t really remember much of it. There was a snow area I think? The base gameplay element was immediately enjoyable, due to the focus on stealth – I like stealth games a lot. It’s an easy yet effective way to draw out a game and make it tenser and doesn’t require that much effort to make. It’s hard to fuck up a stealth game, these guys didn’t.

Otherwise it was your pretty standard mascot platformer fare. Cartoony characters, dry and mild humor, clear focus on younger audience appeal and shiny collectibles everywhere.

It’s a very short game, however. The trophy list essentially was to 100% the game, that took me nine hours with a dinner break and still remains my fastest obtained Platinum to date.

True Thievius Raccoonus unlocked 8:06 p.m on the 3rd of February 2013

It’s also my most commonly achieved, sitting at 27%, 54% on PSNProfiles. That bothers me more than it should.

12

This is one I’d heard so much talk about before I started it. Infamous was one of the “must-haves” on PlayStation by the advice of many. I eventually picked it up, from my video store as usual, and I could see why it got so much praise. There was something truly special brewing in this franchise, that much was certain. Almost like they’d make one fantastic sequel, another dogshit reboot/sequel and then a pretty great spin-off to that reboot. Thanks hindsight.

Sadly everything fell slightly short of greatness. The world was detailed and yet kinda boring with some serious draw distance issues. Movement felt too floaty and the unlocked abilities, while varied, still didn’t carry enough weight to make combat feel fun. The open-world that the game was set in also didn’t have enough to do, aside from scour it for collectibles.

Where my opinion of it dropped mainly was an odd mix of it’s relationship between the story and the trophies. Infamous has a morality concept in it’s story. Do good things, unlock the good ending, and vice versa. There’s trophies to finish both.

Let me digress for a minute. Recently Toby Fox re-released Undertale for PS4. He has made his stance on Trophies/Achievements quite clear by the fact that he did not release the original Steam version of the game with Achievements at all. He released Trophies for the PS4 version because he had to. It is understood that the main reason Toby doesn’t like trophies for games is because they can have the problem of dictating to the player how they should play the games. So, understandably, when he released his Trophy list for Undertale, it did not come with any Trophies for reaching any of the multiple endings. I mean ANY. There’s no trophy for finishing the game.

Sucker Punch, on the other hand, did exactly that. They have dictated to the player that they must play through the game twice, seeking both story progressions and endings, in order to meet the Platinum condition for their game. From my perspective, this hurt the quality of the game. My original playthrough was the “Good” ending and I quite enjoyed the story. It had some decent twists and fairly hefty emotional impact. Plus, based on the writing it felt as though the game was pushing the character towards being good as the canon ending.

I was initially curious about how the “Bad” or, as it’s actually named, “Infamous” ending would play out. I quickly realised that almost nothing changed and none of the “Infamous” decisions made logical sense or carried any weight. I played through the game, essentially ruining the previous ending for myself. It wasn’t even the canon ending, despite it’s label.

So that sucked. It could have been easily avoided and I disagree with the idea that Developers should use trophies to incentivise players to play through the story in a way other than they choose, because that does nothing but hurt immersion.

Otherwise the trophy list was pretty standard. The hardest trophy, aside from some really finicky combat-based ones, was for finding all of the collectibles, because in true old school fashion they never offered any way of “tracking” the ones you were missing, you had to scour that world yourself. And boy did I scour. I actually have a little respect for them doing that. Sure I hated them at the time, but it felt good finding them all on my own. Oh, also unlocking every ability required a staggering amount of grinding that I’ve slowly erased from my brain. But once that was done…

inFamous Platinum Trophy unlocked 6:33 p.m on the 16th of February 2013

13

Take Legend of Zelda. Set it in fantasy Japan with a watercolor painted art style and environment. Turn Link into a Magic Dog that is actually Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. Have combat based on turning the world into a canvas and painting your enemies to death with your tail, or if you’re looking for something more personal, swinging a magical disk at enemies in an acrobatic performance not to dissimilar to Kratos and his ballet of death. Now you have one of the greatest adventure RPG’s ever made. I love you Okami.

I heard a LOT of talk about Okami over my time on the internet. It receives near universal praise and it deserves all of it and more. Okami is an astounding game. Compelling, funny, beautiful, heartfelt, tragic, and more. I don’t want to go into any more specifics, because there’s so much to discover and enjoy. Also there’s a button used exclusively for barking. If you have the opportunity to play Okami, take it immediately.

The trophy list was standard, but it did exactly what it needed and directed the player to all the necessary areas required to experience all it had to offer.

Top Dog unlocked 8:43 p.m on the 29th of October 2013

14

Back when I no longer had the PS3 to play, I briefly tried Darksiders on PC. I enjoyed what I played but I never finished it. It’s one of the first games that made me realise that there are some games that should be played with a controller and only a controller.

Darksiders is pretty damn cool. An action game that borrows heavily from many other games, Devil May Cry, God of War, Legend of Zelda, Prince of Persia, even Warhammer 40K and others I’m sure. It’s derivative but does well with what it has taken. I enjoyed the time I had with it, but I can’t really say that anything it did was purely on it’s own merits. The story was alright, the gameplay was, well, highly derivative and so was the world exploration – it was a reskinned Zelda game.

Regardless I stuck with it and I am glad I did. There were some great moments and finding all the game had to offer was a lot of fun. The trophy list was pretty typical, though it did feature the first time I have tied a rubber band to my controller, due to the Dark Rider trophy, requiring me to ride 100 MILES on my horse. Why Vigil Games… Why.

BFA unlocked 11:39 a.m on the 30th of October 2013

15

Take that list I had for the first game about what it’s “taken inspiration from” and add World of Warcraft.

Still, it was excellent. Bigger and better than the first one in almost all aspects. Though the base trophy list for the Platinum required the purchase of an Online Pass. Remember those? Douchebags. I’m glad you went out of business THQ. Not really, but kinda yeah really.

Not much more to say, it’s got some nice surprises, definitely some stand-out and unique moments. Might be a touch too long. Looking forward to Darksiders III!

BFA (yep, same name) unlocked 5:04 p.m on the 4th of November 2013

16

What an amazing sequel. All that unlocked potential from the first game is reached, almost every single flaw is fixed. You have a viable melee attack, movement is far more precise, the story is engaging, you have so much more varied abilities, the world feels -alive-, it’s vibrant and gleaming, the citizens actively and organically react with you and each other. It’s bloody fantastic.

One of the best added features was the loadout system. You could unlock alternate versions of your attacks that you’d use for different situations at the press of a couple of buttons. You’d bring up a sub menu during combat and the game would slow down time enough for you to not be too disadvantaged while you changed your loadout, but enough to keep the intensity and pressure of the genuinely enjoyable combat.

The story contained many likable, relatable or just generally good characters that interacted so well with Cole. They were gloriously mo-capped and voice acted, the game was every bit what an Infamous game should be. I was so very happy with it. However, it still had that same base trophy issue as the first one, but that was somewhat excusable this time because both stories were as good as each other, that is until the end where the “Infamous” story goes places I would never have expected and I won’t soon forget that.

The rest of the trophies were a pretty standard list and I did appreciate the addition of a collectible tracker. It did have an oddly experimental feature that allowed for making your own side missions and putting them into the base world where people could play them. I really didn’t mind that the feature was there, though I had little intention of actually using it, until I had to obtain the UGC Veteran trophy and complete 25 of them. It was certainly more than 25, that trophy was unnecessarily frustrating. But I don’t blame them for adding it, I’m sure other people would have appreciated the feature more than me.

Much respect to Sucker Punch for the masterpiece that was inFamous 2. I’ll likely return to play that game again, it is worth all that and more. And with that…

inFAMOUS 2 Platinum Trophy unlocked 9:27 p.m on the 25th of November 2013

17

Even though I’d previously been spoiled for most of it, playing Spec Ops was still harrowing. Bloody amazing game, emphasis on bloody. The less said about it though, the better. The trophy list was basic, but I think that was kinda the point. I feel like I should feel bad that I have the Platinum for this one. Oh well,

Legion of Merit unlocked 3:39 p.m on the 19th of January 2014

18

On the other hand, I’m so very glad I have this Platinum. Being a coked-up psychopathic mass murderer in the 80s never felt so good. What a blast this game is. It’s so punishing and so well designed. The hectic pace and intentionally jarring visual style and presentation with easily one of the best soundtracks of all time come together to present an experience like no other.

At it’s base it’s a top down shooter, like the original GTA, but set entirely within buildings. You die in one hit, but so do the enemies. Get in, kill everything, get out. The various secrets and weapons you unlock help you develop exactly the play-style you’re personally looking for and the difficulty ramps up appropriately.

The story is exactly what you would expect from the eyes of a coked up psychopath – borderline unintelligible. But it gives you enough pieces and enough big moments to keep you engaged and relating to a character you should not be relating to. It’s weird, psychedelic and very unique.

The trophy list is great. The main hurdle is Scoring the highest rank on each level which requires full mastery of the game. You have to kill fast and you have to kill in as many different ways as possible. Finding the collectibles was entertaining and there were some alternate-play style trophies that made me want to break my controller, but still I can’t deny how much fun I was having. Pretty damn happy to have this one on the list, and check out the name of it…

TROPHY ADDICT (I fucking know, right?) unlocked 2:41 a.m on the 1st of May 2014

Oh and I Platinum’ed that a month after I got my current job. Amazing what that does for the self confidence, huh.

19

I had heard so many things about Demon’s Souls during the time I was without a PS3. I wanted to play it almost as badly as I did with Mirror’s Edge. I’d heard about the difficulty and the bosses and the game design and everything spoke to me. I’d play games like Monster Hunter (more on that one day) and Trials (more on that probably never) in the interim, hoping it would in some way scratch the itch.

Then finally I had my opportunity. When I said I first played Ratchet & Clank on Dave’s PS3, I actually meant I first played Demon’s Souls. The moment I got clearance to use his console I booked it down to the video rental store, praying that they’d have a copy in stock – sound familiar? I took it home and played throughout the evening, getting my ass completely handed to me repeatedly. Yup, this was exactly what I wanted.

I obtained my first trophy for killing the first Boss Phalanx’s Trophy, in Demon’s Souls 1st February 2012 1:26 p.m . My last trophy for the day was

Dragon God’s Trophy, nine bosses down. The game was very difficult, but it was a difficulty that spoke to me. It was this constant dance and I felt it so easy to stay in sync with the game’s movements. Something that I sadly didn’t feel from Dark Souls (more on that one day, maybe).

Demon’s Souls had so many interesting game mechanics that made for such an intricately designed experience. The ideas of “World and Player Tendency”, both changing based on frequency of player deaths, either the world’s combined or just yours, and how that would physically affect the world or your character accordingly was such a clever idea, instilling this odd sense of camaraderie.

The trophy list was… extensive. It required four full and one partial playthrough of the game, culminating in playing a New Game++++ which dramatically increased the health and damage output of everything against you. Some of those playthroughs had to be played within certain parameters of the aforementioned Tendency levels. There was also a trophy gated behind acquiring an item with a 0.5% drop rate from an enemy you can kill, at most, once every five minutes or so. That wasn’t my highest point of enjoying the game.

Overall though, Demon’s Souls comes together with its combat, narrative and exploration so strongly, it’s truly a remarkable eastern action RPG and was well worth the wait. Eventually earning the Platinum is one of my biggest gaming accomplishments.

Toughest Soul Trophy unlocked 6:26 p.m on the 6th of June 2014

20

Few games showed so much squandered promise as Kingdoms of Amalur. It wasn’t initially on my radar but I’d started hearing talk about it soon before release and the reviews came out strong. I believe it was one of the first games I had gotten through Playstation Plus not too long after it was released. First impressions were pretty great. It was a good balance of RPG and action mechanics and qualities that reminded me a lot of Fable. The very first dungeon outside of the tutorial was impressively taxing, featuring a clan of kobolds, both ranged and melee that actively used flanking tactics to put me at a disadvantage. I’m not ashamed to admit I died quite a few times in that first cave.

But then the cracks started to show. I began collecting absurd amounts of pointless loot and leveling up slower while enemies gained higher and higher amounts of arbitrary stat creep. My progression as a player conflicted with my character’s “number” progression.

So I took a step back, blaming myself for not taking my time and doing all the extra content and instead started following the story, until got to the point of wanting to shoot myself rather than talk to the next “Story character”. Lines upon lines of menial, flavourless and expository dialogue were all that awaited me. Uh oh. Kingdoms of Amalur was actually bad.

This sad revelation dawned on me over the course of three days. I started playing May 30th, 2013 and stopped for almost an entire year after June 1st. By May 2014 I was struck with some perverse determination to stick with it and Platinum the game, hoping that there would be something good to come of it. Other than the combat which was consistently enjoyable when my arbitrary numbers were arbitrarily high enough, no, there was no stand-out moment to make it all worthwhile, no real saving grace. But for some reason I kept going and received my fairly appropriately titled Platinum…

Perfectionist unlocked 4:45 p.m on the 7th of June 2014

Oh and it has DLC. So far I have managed to not buy it. Wish me luck.

21

Ok, so, take Super Metroid, one of the best semi-linear 2D action adventure games ever, and instead of robots and aliens, change the theme to Luchadores and Dia de los Muertos. What you get is a game that is arguably better than even Super Metroid, while also being unabashedly referential of it too. Guacamelee is such a cool game.

It’s decent in length, has some great optional challenges and the aesthetic is exactly what you picture when you read the above passage. The writing is great, it’s funny and also genuinely heartfelt in places. It’s creative in it’s clever twists of the mechanics it’s taken from Super Metroid, but makes no illusion of the fact it has done so. Guacamelee is clearly proud of the foundation it’s built from.

The platforming was good until sadly it wasn’t. For the first time I had been introduced to a new platforming mechanic that I simply did not like. Part ways through the game they introduced a mechanic where half of the required platforms to beat an area were incorporeal. You needed to actively press a button dedicated only to switching the available platforms. Platforming was still ostensibly the same as it ever was, but with an added button that needed to be pressed between -every jump-. The mechanic persisted throughout the rest of the game. Nothing interesting was done with it, it was simply an annoyance.

Aside from that one issue, Guacamelee was loads of fun. The trophy list is pretty much what you would expect, nothing more than it really needed to be. Hard difficulty lived up to it’s name, but the inclusion of co-op made it bearable and allowed me to recruit one of my workmates James to help with beating it. I love doing things like that, so thanks for making it so hard and convincing me to do so!

Guacamelee! Platinum Trophy unlocked 6:50 p.m on the 7th of June 2014

There is DLC and I may pick it up one day.

22

I briefly tried Far Cry when I was younger. I didn’t get much further than attacking the very first outpost. But even then I still respected it for being so genuinely tense and feeling like you could die at any second. It was an FPS that promoted cautious play and observance. If you rushed towards any near signs of civilisation, you’d be dead in seconds. The first island felt so big and oppressive and I just wasn’t ready for something like that at the time.

Fast forward to mid 2014, somehow my job has birthed a new sense of confidence in me which pushed me to go and buy Far Cry Classic, the HD remaster of the original game. I sat down and used all my previous learned skills to calculate a path through this hostile jungle island, and I did it on Hard, because I previously checked to see if there were Trophies for difficulty.

I died, a lot. But slowly I learned my way around the game and what it expected from me. I started to really enjoy myself, it was a very well put together game. Until, and yes you know what I’m about to say if you’ve played it – the linear underground bits with the monsters. The thing is, I thought the game was a tad too long in the first place, so I don’t even really understand why they had so many of those bits. It did nothing good for the game.

But those times when you were out in the island, stealthing through the grass and planning your entry and exit routes into enemy encampments were so genuinely enjoyable. Failure happened often, but success was so rewarding because it was purely on your own merits, just you and the island pattern shirt on your back.

The end levels were appropriately epic also, and just as hard. The game never let up on the difficulty, there were no victory laps. It was a satisfying Platinum, flaws aside.

Paradise Memoirs unlocked 5:59 p.m on the 15th of June 2014

23

Read passage from God of War 1 and replace the word PS2 with PSP. It was great to replay CoO on PS3, though for the first time I found myself struggling more on my playthrough of the same game I played earlier. Regardless, it was just as good as I remembered and they upscaled it to PS3 nicely. It’s probably the worst official God of War game, but only because there has to be a worst. It had some excellent moments.

Above and Beyond unlocked 7:15 p.m on the 20th of July 2014

24

Of course, I’d already played this on PC. I can’t say much about Mass Effect that hasn’t been said by anyone else. It’s fucking fantastic. The story is incredible. The main reason I started it again on PS3 was because that’s where I planned to play the sequels and I wanted my story imported. But of course I had to get the Platinum. The Insanity run was one of the more challenging High difficulty playthroughs I’ve done, but it was very rewarding to finish. By that point I knew that game pretty damn well and had an answer to most situations.

The Trophy list was quite extensive, but it also had some annoying pointless grinding. I did three playthroughs because of some oddly designed trophies that I could have really done without, demanding that the “majority of the game” must be played with each squad member.

Overall it was a very good time and I’m pretty familiar with the first game now.

N7 Elite unlocked 6:05 p.m on the 19th of December 2014

25

The Resistance franchise is essentially Sony’s answer to the Halo franchise, but for the PS3. It’s pretty decent. It’s an alternate history alien invasion story that takes place in the 50’s. In the first game you start off as a soldier who gets captured by aliens early on and manages to escape, not before being infected with implants that were supposed to turn him into an alien. He’s rescued before then and the alien growth procedure is halted, but not the benefits like increased strength and regenerating health. What followed was a solid alien shooting game. No trophies.

Resistance 2 was next but that will never be on this list, because I did not manage to complete the multiplayer trophies before the servers were shut down. Remember that stuff I said in NFS Undercover? Yeah, that. Regardless, it was a good game. Long story short, the alien growth wasn’t halted, only slowed. You progress through the game getting more and more powerful until you are killed by your squadmate at the end.

Enter Resistance 3, where you play as that squad mate. No enhancements. No regenerating health, though an uncanny ability to carry a great deal of weaponry, Resistance 3 is for the most part an extremely solid alien killing FPS. The story has emotional impact, the journey is appropriate in scope and length, it’s genuinely challenging and it’s pretty gorgeous looking too.

The story takes some missteps around the end, but otherwise it’s a bloody good game.

Trophies-wise, no multiplayer! It was a decent list, though finishing the game on the hardest difficulty was a struggle. Had it not been for the co-op option, I’m not sure I would have ever achieved it. Once again I recruited another work mate, Dylan and August 18th, 6:28 p.m we accomplished it. If not for such a shitty ending, I’d give this game higher praise. My only Resistance franchise Platinum was achieved a few months later.

Platinum Trophy unlocked 7:45 p.m on the 27th of December 2014

26

Sound Shapes advertised itself as a Rhythm Platformer which immediately intrigued me. It did not disappoint. It was short, yet sweet, with game “episodes” designed primarily by music artists like Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie and Beck. Each episode had a unique feel, a new platforming game mechanic and even a new art style. It was like a visual interactive interpretation of the artist’s’ personal concept albums.

The base game was not too difficult and the trophies specifically revolved around the “Death Mode” challenge alternative of each level when you finished it. It took the base mechanic from each original level and boiled it down to a one screen endurance challenge. I very much enjoyed obtaining those trophies. The other trophies revolved around the game’s secondary feature, a sort of musical element recognition challenge where you’re tasked with re-creating multiple segments of music.

Sound Shapes was the first game that I learned is obtained primarily by Trophy Hunters as a quick way to score a shitload of points. It’s ranked as one of the highest scoring games, with almost every one of the trophies available being Silver, otherwise Gold or Platinum. No Bronzes. If you’re so inclined, many of those Trophies can be obtained using a quick guide, as they mostly pertain to the Music recognition game.

Furthermore, this game was released in at least nine different versions. three regions, and all three consoles. Within one region, the trophy list is immediately triggered by transferring a complete save file from one game to another – resulting in full Platinum completions of subsequent Sound Shapes games automatically “achieved” in a few seconds.

It’s almost invariably seen on any trophy list that features more than 100 Platinums. Currently my list is not one of those, because it would be a bit boring for my next entry to read #27 – Sound Shapes, #28 – Sound Shapes. All power to those who did, but it was never my personal intention to pad my list. I think it makes for a little less interesting story. Though we’ll see if my story stays straight 200+ in.

You’ve Gone Platinum unlocked 5:02 p.m on the 28th of December 2014

27

Playing Ghost of Sparta remastered on PS3 was especially compelling to me since it had bested me back when I played it on PSP. Had it not been remastered I’m not sure I ever would have returned to it. I’m so very glad I did, because it is my favourite God of War to date.

It starts off great, implementing a lot of established improvements from God of War III and looking pretty damn good for a PSP game, even better on PS3. It starts off following all the usual God of War rigmarole, but the story quickly takes some turns that engaged me in a way not many other action games have. It’s a story I won’t soon forget, and a really good game to boot.

The Trophy list was what you’d expect if you’d played the other games. Nothing too special, difficulty based and collectibles, which were a little more deviously hidden than the previous games. The team behind Ghost of Sparta had a passion and drive that culminated in a fantastic GoW game that I personally wish had been called God of War III.

The Ghost with the Most unlocked 3:55 p.m on the 29th of December 2014

28

And so continues the HD remaster trend, one of the best things that’s personally happened to my gaming experience. When I was younger I played this on PS2 but I wasn’t the gamer back then that I wanted to be, and I left it unfinished. Being able to return to it years later in HD with trophies was exactly what I needed.

The Sands of Time is already very well established in the gaming culture zeitgeist. It’s almost universally praised and you can see it’s influence in many other games, at least 3 of which are higher on this list. It was a game ahead of it’s time and crafted with a level of detail that is rarely seen in games development nowadays. The platforming is tight and intuitive, the combat is exactly what it needs to be and the story is really well put together, with strong characters all round.

The trophy list was also quite entertaining. There was your usual fare, finish the game, get the collectibles, do things X amount of times, but there was also the Alternative Play trophy appropriately titled  Game Master for finishing the game while using the Rewind mechanic less than 20 times. As the name suggests, it required prior mastery of the game. It was a great experience all round, though sadly it was by far the best game of the Sands of Time Trilogy.

Prince of Persia unlocked 8:21 p.m on the 2nd of January 2015

29

While still on my Sands of Time high I moved on up to Warrior Within. I’d previously played but once again not finished it in the past, so at the very least it was good to tick that off my list. The game is… good. Not great, it doesn’t feel like the natural sequel to the previous game, but it holds up on it’s own merits.

As I understand, it’s the least well rated game of the trilogy, in the eyes of the majority. Thematically the devs took “inspiration” from the current punk/emo culture that was pervasive at the time, showing that the game was geared towards a younger and specific audience. It’s angsty and “gritty” and “edgy” in way that really was trying way too hard.

But from a gameplay perspective it was pretty solid. The story and gameplay married well, with platforming puzzles revolving around bringing the giant castle you’re mainly situated in forward or backwards hundreds of years at a time in order to navigate the area in different ways. The combat was also redesigned to be more varied and satisfying, with some great contextual moves added, culminating in some pretty acrobatic and satisfying kills.

The game story progresses on its own pace, it makes few concessions for people who haven’t played the first game and is honestly still a bit confusing and disjointed for those who did play the first one. But it does have some good memorable scenes and moments.

The trophy list is a similar fare to the first game, with added difficulty trophies (that don’t stack…) and another Alternate Play trophy,  Undefeated, to finish the game without dying. There were trophies to unlock the secret ending, which proved to be a lot of fun.

Warrior Within unlocked 9:30 p.m on the 2nd of January 2015

30

Continuing on my HD remaster nostalgia trip, next up was another PS2 darling that I personally never finished. One of the Kings of the mascot Platformer genre, Ratchet and Clank was remastered on PS3 and that finally gave me the chance to right the wrongs of my childhood.

It’s pretty great. The gameplay never gets boring, every one of the many different areas looks unique has some new game mechanic or challenge to introduce which mechanically and thematically sets it apart. It has a well balanced difficulty curve, with some very challenging moments.

The story is lighthearted and inconsequential, it’s just a good time all round. The Trophy list was comprehensive, and required quite a bit of farming, but your character power creep and the aesthetic value of the whole experience kept that from getting boring. I had a lot of fun getting the Platinum for this game.

 Gadget Master unlocked 4:23 p.m on the 20th of January 2015

31

Arkham Asylum is my second and definitive example of a game I tried on PC before realising that it would be infinitely more enjoyable with a controller. It’s the start of a new Batman series of games that is, without a doubt, the best in the market by far. It’s blend of stealth, exploration and combat has a Metroidvania feel and it’s all lovingly tuned to make you feel as though you were in the shoes of the Batman.

Thinking back, I didn’t enjoy Asylum as much as I should have. It’s a game that has grown fondly in my memory and I’m glad I played it, at the very least because it meant moving on to Arkham City, more on that later. It really was a well put together game, the trophy list was also fairly enjoyable. Very challenging, mainly because of the challenge modes. Go figure.

Platinum Trophy unlocked 6:33 p.m on the 23rd of January 2015

32

Bioshock. What a game.

I first picked up Bioshock from usual video rental store back in December 2008. I’d watched the internet collectively lose it’s shit once they started playing it and I had to see what it was all about. From the very beginning sequence that game draws you into it’s hostile and insane world. The oppressive tone consumes you from the moment you get in the first Bathysphere and listen to Andrew Ryan spout his Objectivist values while you’re submerged over 2000 metres below surface.

What follows is a game that I was not ready for in 2008, nor would be truly ready to absorb and ultimately conquer for another six years. The gameplay expected prior intimate knowledge with precision shooting and resource management, with a keen eye for spotting the hidden ammo and health deposits scattered around the ruins of the underwater city. Enemies would respawn forever, simulating that Rapture once housed tens of thousands of humanities “elite”, driven insane by their own hubris.

One of Bioshock’s most compelling mechanics was the consistent moral choice that was pervasive throughout the entire game, Harvest or Rescue. But it was all a bit much for me. I hadn’t cultivated those necessary skills and couldn’t wrap my head around the benefits of my decisions. By the time I reached Arcadia, the game had found it’s stride and thrown it’s myriad of challenges at me without mercy. I put it down, vowing to return when I was ready.

I earned my next trophy in Bioshock April 2nd, 2013  Hacked a Security Camera. I think that was rather telling of how my experience had already changed. I didn’t even know that was something I could do back when I first played, all the way to Arcadia. The day after that I had fully researched the first two enemy types, followed by  Restored the Forest. Finally, after four years, I escaped Arcadia.

But I still had not learned enough, about myself or about gaming. I reached the next area, Fort Frolic, where the relatively inviting rooms and vibrant greens of Arcadia’s forest were left behind, replaced by an entertainment complex where things had clearly gone horribly wrong. Once again, my self doubt consumed me and I put down the controller, still not ready to truly absorb the experience before me.

January 11th, 2015 I erased my six year old save file. I bumped the difficulty to Hard, and started my definitive playthrough of Bioshock. At 2.22 p.m I had fully researched one of the more elusive enemies – the Spider Splicer. by 3.48 p.m I beat Sander Cohen, the insane performer that held me captive in Fort Frolic for almost two years.

A day later, 4.43 p.m I had escaped Rapture and obtained the Little Sister Savior trophy for achieving the “Good End.” Words cannot express the satisfaction. I joined the ranks of 22.4% other players in fully experiencing this MASTERPIECE of a video game.

Bioshock is probably the best example of my journey as a gamer. The many other games I played and the 31 prior that I Platinum’ed over my time playing PS3 taught me so much more than I would have expected. It opened my mind to new possibilities and pushed me to be more determined to challenge myself and try new things, even if it meant failure. Bioshock changed me.

February 9th, 2015  I Chose the Impossible, the trophy for finishing the game on the Hardest Difficulty, Survivor, without dying once, had been achieved. A few days later…

PLATINUM TROPHY unlocked 6:31 p.m on the 15th of February 2015

Oh and I still have DLC content to do, which I want to get done some day soon.

33

Mirror’s Edge may have been my first Platinum trophy, but the very first game I ever played on PS3 was Uncharted. I imagine I’m far from alone in this fact. Uncharted was the PS3 Console Seller. Made by Naughty Dog, in a wild departure from their past games  Crash Bandicoot and Jak, they successfully developed and released the perfect Modern Interactive Indiana Jones Power Fantasy game.

But I first played this before I knew what a PSN account was or even what trophies were. So my first recorded playthrough of Uncharted according to my list falls in April 23rd, 2009. It was a pretty great game. It was my introduction to 3rd person shooters, the concept of regenerating health and limited weapon loadouts. Though the game’s base difficulty is forgiving and gives you room to learn the ins and outs of it’s combat.

One of my biggest hurdles I faced when first playing Uncharted was that I had no expectation of the Horror game-style sections near the end. I had personally never played a Horror game for more than five minutes before that, not for lack of trying, but for my first playthrough I ended up giving the controller to my flatmate Brett so he could do a certain harrowing bit for me, not unlike the situation with Prince of Persia.

However, once I returned to the game in 2009 to acquire the trophies, I had finally grown the necessary resolve to beat that part myself, on Hard difficulty no less. I then spent the next five days attempting it’s final difficulty, Crushing. I still remember where I got stuck, in that damn church with the waves upon waves of enemies near the end, before the bell puzzle. Sadly, I had reached my current limit as a gamer.

February 16th, 2015, I earned my first trophy in Uncharted in almost six years. A month later, March 20th, 2015,  Charted! Crushing was achieved. While not quite a Bioshock-level evolution in my eyes, it was still very satisfying to return to Uncharted with all my prior gaming knowledge and beat something that bested me so long ago. It was still difficult, to be sure. The final boss took me right out of my comfort zone, but it taught me things that have helped in future games.

Platinum unlocked 1:47 p.m on the 20th of March 2015

34

Sigh. Oh how the mighty have fallen. When I think back on it, I guess there’s little chance that it could have lived up to inFamous 2, almost the perfect game. But it could have, at the very least, kept some of it’s amazing innovations of gameplay.

inFamous Second Son is sterile. It’s dull, and boring and lazy. Sure, it was made with a high budget so the graphical fidelity is obvious. But it has no sense of style, no identity. When inFamous Second Son advertised the main character being able to use four different types of abilities – Smoke, neon, … computer? And eventually – concrete, as opposed to Cole only using lightning, I expected them to use some evolution of the perfect Loadout system that inF 2 introduced.

Apparently I was asking too much. Because in reality, what I got was barely more than a re-skin of the “main” established attacks from the first two games. Light attack, heavy attack, area attack, evasion move, super. Oh and the game felt so proud of itself every time it introduced one of the new elements to you. It would follow dramatic cutscenes and boss fights and would be presented with so much fanfare. “Look! Your shooty death ball is PURPLE NOW!”

It disappointed me at every turn by being so blatantly mediocre. It felt like the devs were just going through the motions, making another inFamous game because money sure is great. Of course they still didn’t change their stance on trophy design, it had the same issue as the first two, demanding a “Good” and “Infamous” playthrough if you wanted all the trophies. Yet again, another wild regression from Sucker Punch’s previous success was that both stories felt less individually involving than they did in the first game. There was -one- standout moment and that was at the end of the “Infamous” playthrough. Otherwise they were two of the most generic and dull storylines I’d seen in a game.

The only reason I Platinum’ed this very pretty trash fire was because I had already done the previous two. I also kept giving it the benefit of the doubt, hoping something interesting would happen. I was disappointed. If there’s one good thing I can say about it, it’s that it gave me the necessary context to enjoy the next game on this list a lot more.

Enjoy Your Powers (No.) unlocked 1:47 p.m on the 20th of March 2015

35

Enter inFamous First Light, the standalone prequel. This game took place from the perspective of a character you meet in Second Son, where she is made out to be unapproachable, whiny and not that interesting. Things didn’t bode well for me to have to play through the game using this character.

Well I’m not sure what happened between the time they made SS and this, but had the people who made First Light made SS I expect I’d be telling a very different story. inFamous First Light is actually pretty bloody excellent. First of all, we’re back to having only one set of abilities, arguably the best one, Neon. Immediately you can feel the differences in the design between Neon’s first implementation and then in First Light. Every ability feels useful and powerful on it’s own. It’s still the standard array, but tweaked to a point where experimentation is rewarded with different, exciting outcomes.

It felt much more like a game, with floating arcade style orbs hidden in various places, taunting you with incremental character progression rewards for exploration. The city had more color, with a slight purple tint and pronounced neon colors tastefully illuminating the streets of the city. The story was raw and emotional, it dealt with heavy psychological themes from all sides and culminated in an ending so much more epic and large in scope than SS.

First Light cost less than half the price of Second Son and yet it provided more than twice the enjoyment for me. It was a brilliantly put together game and it disappoints me even further that Second Son ended where it did.

The trophy list for First Light was also more interesting. A challenge mode was introduced that actually had tangible story connections. It was a lot of fun, one of the best trial challenge modes I’ve played in a game thus far. inFamous First Light gave me two solid days of enjoyment and helped me mitigate the disaster that was Second Son.

Noble Achievement unlocked 4:32 p.m on the 11th of April 2015

36

Like the first Uncharted, I started playing Uncharted 2 a lot earlier as well, October 15th, 2009. By the 17th I’d finished it on Normal and didn’t return until 2015.

As a game? It’s bloody awesome, of course. It fixes almost every flaw the first game had. It’s gorgeous looking, the story is engaging, the gameplay has been tweaked in ways that make it much smoother to play and it’s overall a great experience. I mean, is anyone surprised by what I’m saying? Naughty Dog are one of the Kings of gaming right now.

It was also notably Harder. Back in 2009 I was capable of beating the first game on Hard and getting a decent way through on Crushing, but Uncharted 2 was a struggle for me on Normal. It demanded active thought and adaptation to a constantly changing combat scenario, almost every fight. It was mentally taxing and that is a great thing, but not something I was quite ready for back then.

March 20th, 2015 I started things off right with my first trophy Relic Finder for tracking down the Jak & Daxter easter egg present in game. That same day, Charted! Hard. Three days later, Charted! Crushing, followed soon by yet another Platinum that signified my journey as a gamer.

Platinum unlocked 1:09 a.m on the 22nd of April 2015

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Once I had righted my previous wrongs and Platinum’ed the two Uncharted games that had bested me for so long, I returned to the Ratchet & Clank franchise with renewed vigor and jumped into Ratchet & Clank 2. It was great! It wasn’t too much different to the first game, but there was an appropriate increase in scope. The difficulty seemed to be tuned lower though.

The trophy list was similarly structured to the previous game and I enjoyed myself over the multiple playthroughs it took to unlock every trophy. The incomplete Ratchet & Clank aspect of my old childhood had almost been rectified.

He Went Commando unlocked 6:11 p.m on the 2nd of May 2015

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I immediately jumped into the third game and, having moved from the second one so quickly, I noticed an impressive change in scope yet again. I would say that Ratchet & Clank 3 ranks as my second favourite of the franchise, behind Crack in Time.

The innovations with the mission selection system, the graphical increase and plethora of new and unique things to do in the game kept my attention for the full week I played it. The trophy list was also perfectly manageable, but fully inclusive of what the game had to offer. Kudos to you Insomniac, for a solid end to the base trilogy.

Hero of the Galaxy unlocked 3:04 p.m on the 3rd of May 2015

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And so, spurred on by my completion of one trilogy by a PlayStation Dev sweetheart, I moved on to the next. Unlike 1 & 2, I’d never played Uncharted 3 before. Now that I’d finally Platinum’ed the first two, it was time to break into the end of the Uncharted Trilogy.

It is, by far, my favourite Uncharted game. New gameplay mechanics like the grenade throwback were added to make combat feel more manageable, but still tense. The scope of the journey was blown to insane proportions and some of the action set pieces like the goddamn SHIP still, in my opinion, have not been surpassed by any other game, in quality nor scope. It’s pacing was immaculate, balancing combat and exploration masterfully.

Uncharted 3 was the perfect culmination of my Uncharted journey. It took me just under two weeks to enjoy the fantastic and constantly surprising story and challenge myself to beat it’s Crushing difficulty.

Platinum unlocked 11:46 p.m on the 4th of May 2015

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Once my main franchise goals were wrapped up to my satisfaction, I decided it was time to start a new one. Or rather, return to one that had bested me three years prior. My current list may not suggest this, but I am actually a big fan of stealth games – especially Metal Gear Solid. As it turns out, most of the stealth games I’ve played so far have some pretty tough trophy lists that I haven’t quite cracked.

February 16th, 2012 only a few weeks after I had been reacquainted with a PS3, I decided to try my hand at a beloved old stealth franchise, Splinter Cell. It was rough.

Splinter Cell clearly had a vision. It was the west’s answer to Metal Gear Solid. Less crazy anime cutscenes and action sequences and more gritty, realistic, skin-of-your-teeth stealth gameplay. It was unforgiving and it expected you, the player, to use your wits and meager array of tools to complete punishing missions.

It’s not a pretty game. It barely looked like it should be on the PS2 and the HD remaster didn’t help that much. It did not control well, it felt more dated than the original PS1 Metal Gear Solid. But, there was something that kept me playing. A certain combination of level design and story progression that kept me driven to progress through the game. According to my Trophy list it took me almost 3 days to complete my first playthrough. Well it felt like a lot longer.

Despite it’s flaws, of which there were many, I still really enjoyed myself. Prying the withheld knowledge from the game with every failed attempt or every happy accident made me more and more satisfied with it. Splinter Cell was hiding a compelling gaming experience under all of that extremely dated game engine. Hard difficulty was next, it sure lived up to the name. At the time, despite all I had learned, it proved too much for me and I put it aside.

Over three years later, May 19th, 2015 armed with all my new knowledge, I returned to Splinter Cell with a renewed drive to beat it. The first trophy I earned was Nightlife for destroying 25 light sources. Clearly I’d learned something new.

May 24th, 2015  Echelon Mercenary popped, informing me I beat Hard difficulty, seconds later, Ding! Stealth Operative for beating the game without raising a single alarm, Ding! Urban Legend for dying less than five times in the playthrough and Ding!  Immune for not using a single medkit. After one more playthrough, I was awarded with  Passive Aggression for finishing the game with less than three fatal casualties per level. It was safe to say I had learned everything Splinter Cell could teach me.

Echelon Elite unlocked 5:28 p.m on the 25th of May 2015

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Fresh off my success with the first game, I immediately jumped to the sequel. It was practically exactly the same game as the original, in scope and design. While that was not necessarily a bad thing because thankfully I’d found the hidden value in the old thing, I was still a little disappointed that they didn’t seem to learn much more about their own franchise’s flaws and strengths.

It was still an enjoyable playthrough and there were a few great moments that, despite basically being the same game as the first one, I can clearly differentiate from the two. That’s something I would have a hard time doing between some of the God of War games.

The trophy list was similarly challenging to the first one, with alternate play trophies like  Immune which had the same criteria as the original, or  Samaritan, which required you to not die even once and  Phantom Strike to maintain complete stealth through the entire game. It was a fun and well earned list.

Preserved Hope unlocked 4:25 p.m on the 28th of May 2015

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And then along came Chaos Theory, a shining beacon of masterful stealth game design lying discretely at the end of a package that has so far proved to be maybe a little above average.

Chaos Theory is the game that gets made when a developer takes a good look at their previous works and acknowledges all the right decisions they made, but more importantly all of the wrong decisions. Then they treat their respective code writing jobs the same way a master sculptor would treat a slab of refined stone.

Once in a decade do we get to see a game’s dream fully realized in the way this was. Chaos Theory is perfect. It was built from the ground up in a brand new engine that, despite being released on PS2, could visually pass as a mid generation PS3 game with something as simple as an HD upscale. The way light flickers and reflects off surfaces with differing levels of reliability depending on the source is not only visually pleasing, but also useful from a gameplay perspective, where your main source of cover is light, or rather the absence of it.

Every area is different and provides unique environmental challenges that are implemented with grace and tact. Weather effects have tangible consequences and can be used to your advantage. AI is smart, but not to the point of simply being telepathic. If they catch a fleeting glimpse of you, they’ll actively search, though won’t truly be sure you were actually there.

Every level has multiple points of entry and the game expects you to find those out for yourself. Like the first two games, there is no one there to hold your hand as you stealth through areas of various real-world importance, conducting one-man bank heists or sneaking through the night of war-torn Seoul. Thematically you’re the equivalent of James Bond and Jason Bourne combined. It’s the perfect stealth power fantasy.

And to bring it all together in one immaculate package – the entire game is backed by an OST from Amon Tobin, one of the best Break/IDM artists around. His music dynamically changes based on the situation and passively maintains the slow, yet consistent pace of the gameplay. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is as close to the perfect representation of a high budget modern game that I have ever played.

Of course, the trophy list is just as varied and challenging as the previous games. Aside from  Immune, the other trophies were boiled down to one trophy Greater Good, to obtain a “success rating” of 80% or more. The success rating was judged by a combination of the assorted alternative play trophies from the previous game. It required total mastery of the game, there was practically no leniency in how efficient and stealthy you had to play. It was a joy to complete. What an astounding game. A shame about the sequels.

Splinter Cell unlocked 11:10 p.m on the 4th of June 2015

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After Splinter Cell I was a bit directionless, nothing really felt worth my time. I briefly tried the next game in the franchise, Double Agent, which managed to take almost as many steps back as Chaos Theory did forward. It was disappointing. Plus… no trophies. That didn’t help my resolve. So I moved on to another incomplete franchise, to a game I had been playing on and off since April.

After Asylum I was pretty excited for Arkham City. I heard great things and having played it I can say that yes, Rocksteady did it again. The change in scope was damn impressive. The transition from an Asylum to a much bigger and complex area was very smooth, the character felt better suited to larger outdoors environments where your primary method of travel was soaring through the sky with a combination of bat wings and grapnel launches.

The story was compelling and entertaining, taking all the necessary twists and turns you’d expect from a Batman game and then some. One of the coolest things about the franchise, starting from Asylum is that they also act as giant interactive Batman lore encyclopedias. The level of detail in the historical recounts of each Batman character – hero, villain, or otherwise was impressive.

The trophy list was fairly similar to the first game. Challenge modes were back and they did not get much easier. It was a well earned Platinum that I’m very pleased to have.

Platinum unlocked 6:42 p.m on the 10th of July 2015

Oh and I’m still missing DLC content, some of which I want to do, others not so much.

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Borderlands is a game I have been playing on and off with varying levels of interest for a few years. I started on Steam, made a fair amount of progress then started again on PS3 after a year or so.

It’s good, of course. It’s not, like, amazing or anything. The premise is interesting. The aesthetic is unique and it was one of the first games to really popularize the cell shaded art style on modern consoles. I just think there’s something not quite right about the execution of the whole thing, it’s not really something I can put my finger on either.

First of all, playing solo was one of the most boring things I’ve done in a game. I didn’t last two hours solo. Personally I don’t even think the game has been designed around solo play at all. You constantly get loot used exclusively by other classes, enemies rush you en mass and your only real option in combat is to backpedal while shooting, and then being likely to be ambushed from behind. It’s not solo-friendly, which doesn’t help.

Not that it needs to be. If a game designs itself primarily around co-op play, then all power to it. It does have online and local functionality for finding teammates, thankfully my flatmate Brendan is a fan of the series, so we started our co-op adventure through the Borderlands on June 19th 2014. Brendan had just moved into the flat so it was a great initial bonding experience. Until I chose to play the overpowered Siren class and literally burned away all of that good will.

We both played co-op on what we coined “Borderlands Beerday” for over a year, completing a lot of content along the way, including the full Zombie Island of Dr Ned DLC and partially completing Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. We both had the same mutual goal of obtaining the Platinum trophy.

The trophy list was substantial. It assured us by the end of it that we’d seen every centimeter of the base game. We even had to briefly play as each other class, also we had to kill enemies by jumping on them. That is harder than it sounds. Overall it was a good time, and it’s a good Platinum to have achieved. Though it is also a point of sadness because it was around this time that Jess and Dave had moved out of the flat after almost six years.

Borderland Defender unlocked 1:19 a.m on the 8th of August 2015

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In the past I’ve always been a fan of the twin stick shooter genre and, aside from Hotline Miami, this is the first one I managed to get the Platinum for. Historically, trophy-worthy challenges from twin sticks tend to be on the difficult side, this game was no exception.

I loved it though. Geometry Wars 3 is the first Geometry Wars to come to PlayStation and I’m very glad it did. I’d only ever briefly tried an XBOX rip off the second game years ago and it did not run well on my atrocious laptop. Getting to play an official Geometry Wars game at 1080p 60fps was just what I needed.

It’s the same solid design you’d expect from the guys who made the previous ones, but with great new innovations and twists. Many different types of enemies work together to make your gaming experience increasingly challenging. Most level layouts are unique to each other, featuring play fields like the original square arena but with a slight angle change when you fly to the edges, or something as ridiculous as a peanut shape, where enemies are cleverly placed to ambush you.

There’s multiple different variations of game mode and they’re all very entertaining. Geometry Wars 3 is the definitive game of it’s kind, it’s the prime evolution of the arcade classic. Oh, and as I was saying, the trophy list is pretty bloody difficult.

One of the last trophies I got ties in nicely with my Borderlands Platinum alongside Brendan. There’s a full 10 stage co-op mode that is geared around providing a similar level of challenge you’d expect, but balanced for co-op play. After Brendan and I achieved our original co-op goal, I recruited him to help me with this new one. It didn’t take us long, only a couple of sessions and we nailed it. Soon after that I had achieved one of my most rare Platinum trophies.

Platinum unlocked 10:56 p.m on the 8th of August 2015

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I was a latecomer to this one. I’d briefly played the first Assassin’s Creed a few years prior, but it got a little repetitive for my tastes and didn’t hold my attention. When the Ezio trilogy was fully released, it was near universally praised for it’s gameplay, story and characters. I really wanted to give it a try, but I felt like I was going to miss something if I didn’t finish the first one. I finally returned to it years later and bee-lined it to the end of the story. I was ready for Assassin’s Creed II.

It’s very good. Set mainly in Italy, but also still with sections in the future that continue Desmond’s role, it tells the story of what I consider to be the very best playable character in videos games, Ezio Auditore de Firenze. The game literally starts from his birth and takes it’s time letting you ease into his life as it plays out his peaceful life in Florence, Italy circa 1470. The story slowly increases in scope, drama and tension on both Ezio and Desmond’s side of the 20+ hour campaign. It’s a very well put together game, with a refreshingly upbeat and optimistic tone in the face of adversity.

The trophy list was sadly a bit lacking, but it did what it needed to. The game was very, very enjoyable and I was quick to move on to the sequel.

 Master Assassin unlocked 5:31 p.m on the 5th of September 2015

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I was highly anticipating this sequel, so much so that I didn’t even let a little thing like Classification Refusal in NZ stop me! I made a new US PSN account and purchased a US PSN voucher from Amazon. A couple of hours later I was playing the sequel to one of my favourite games.

And somehow it was even better. Hotline Miami 2 took everything that made the original good – that is to say, the entire game and nothing less – and added just enough tweaks to the formula to make it a whole new and compelling experience. It was now set in the 90’s with a slightly more muted color palate than the previous game and throughout the over eight hour campaign it switched between multiple unique playable characters that interacted with the story with Pulp-Fiction level intricacy.

Every few levels it turned the established formula on it’s head by changing your roster of playable characters. Each new character had to handle situations in a different manner and it succeeded on telling a story through it’s gameplay that I think Dennaton tried to achieve in the first game but just didn’t quite manage. Hotline Miami 2 knocked it out of the park, story-wise.

Oh and the music is phenomenal. They found the perfect songs for every level, a wide variation of hard core electronica beats that established the wide array of tones the game was set in. The trophy list was even more difficult with the addition of a Hard mode which limited ammo, nerfed throwing and physically changed the layout of most levels. It was a superb sequel and I’m sad to see that it’s likely the last game of the series.

TROPHY ADDICT unlocked 12:13 a.m on the 11th of October 2015

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This was a nice little distraction while I was between games. It was free on Playstation Plus in October 2015. It was a 2D puzzle platformer with an enjoyable mechanic, relating to magnetism and polarity. The puzzles weren’t especially hard, nor was the game as a whole. It had some good, memorable moments and an enjoyable story that was paced appropriately.

The trophies were slightly odd, in that there were only trophies for finding all of the collectibles, not finishing the game. I almost didn’t finish the game because the final boss was quite difficult and there was no trophy tied to beating him. However, I’m glad I did because the story was worth seeing to the end. It was a nice break from the big budget action games I’d played prior.

Full Completion unlocked 7:26 p.m on the 13th of October 2015

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Where to even begin. First of all, the Talos Principle is the first PS4 game I have ever gone out of my way to buy a physical copy for. I’d seen all the reviews and praise and watched Dave play it briefly on his PC – I also played the standalone demo, the one that features no actual content or spoilers for the game and I was immediately hooked.

One of the first things that drew me in so heavily was it’s mysterious atmosphere. You wake up in this vibrant meadow and the first thing you hear is God telling you how you should proceed. You blindly follow his orders and wonder why you’re the one who has been chosen to carry out his tasks… to solve weird puzzles… with looming threats like wall-mounted miniguns… and then you accidentally go into 3rd person mode and realise you’re an android.

From there the cracks of this perfect utopia start to show. Trees flicker in and out of existence and a computer starts to speak to you, telling you not to listen to God’s lies. Available within the banks of the computer’s database is the daily logs of a woman talking nonchalantly about the end of the world.

It paints such an intriguing picture within minutes of the game’s start. It just gets better from there. The puzzles are so cleverly built, and the world is expansive. There’s over 100 puzzles but it never gets boring. The constant bread crumb trail of conversations with the nihilistic computer or finding each sequential memory log of Alex Brennan as her world literally dies around her is just too compelling not to keep going. Meanwhile “God” is persistently telling you to listen to him and him alone.

The pacing is perfect. The difficulty curve is fair. The game looks gorgeous and it uses music appropriately. The level design is smart and it hides so many secrets. It’s a must play for anyone who even slightly likes puzzle games. The trophy list was fairly standard, it didn’t need to be any more than it was. Astounding game, easily worth the $80 I paid for it.

Platinum Strain unlocked 2:16 p.m on the 22nd of October 2015

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Dragon Age has been my bugbear for a long time. I really liked the game and I replayed it multiple times on PC, though I never came close to finishing it. It was just outside of my current purview. Back in the day I had played one of the spiritual predecessors, Neverwinter Nights, but learning how to deal with encounters that were balanced around controlling only one or two people was much easier for me than the four that Origins allowed for.

It was a very good game regardless, though I felt it was a little bit dated mechanically. Unfortunately the PS3 did not do wonders for how it looked either. 1:50 a.m August 25th  I started my journey once again and finished the Human Noble prologue. Eventually I managed to push past the barrier of entry and I reached the end of my first playthrough five days later.

Once again, through the previous games I drove myself to Platinum, I had strengthened my resolve and I accomplished something that I could not do a few years back – even though I had not played any other western RPGs of Dragon Age’s nature since I tried last.

The trophy list was certainly comprehensive. It required multiple playthroughs under all sorts of different story outcomes. Despite having let my previous stance be known about this trophy design, Dragon Age is so well written that it wasn’t an issue. I enjoyed seeing how the different outcomes would play out.

Eventually I satisfied those story conditions and completed the optional content available to me. The Dragon fights lived up to the name, that’s for sure. It was a great game and I was pumped to move on to the next one.

The Ultimate Reward unlocked 10:33 a.m on the 1st of November 2015

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I was looking forward to Dragon Age II, regardless of how much negative reception it had gotten. I’d briefly watched my flatmate Dave play it and from what I saw, at the very least, the story was going to be entertaining enough. So hot off the heels of my recent success in Dragon Age, I began my Dragon Age II journey.

It’s a good game. It’s flawed, without a doubt – but it has enough going for it that I was happy to play through. The pros outweighed the cons. One major improvement was the combat. They had finally made an effort to revolutionize a formula that has, for intents and purposes, stayed the same for about 20 years. Combat felt much more exciting and visually pleasing, while allowing for more options to play your character.

The story was also excellent, as is to be expected from Bioware by now. The plot structure was more intimate than the first one, centred more around the characters than the events. I appreciated the change of pace and commend the effectiveness of some of the more memorable moments.

It’s just a real shame the game had to take place within the same 5 graphical tilesets. For me, that was an almost inexcusable oversight. Re-using the same environments for places that were -supposed- to be different areas was, quite frankly, immersion breaking at times. Especially when they didn’t even bother to change the layout of some of the dungeons, making them functionally identical to one another yet supposedly different according to the story. That was a large blemish on an otherwise pretty stellar game.

All that aside, it was a good time. The trophies were not quite as comprehensive as the first game and didn’t ask for much in the way of alternate or multiple playthroughs. I think it got a much worse reception than it should have and I commend it’s ability to to tell a story much smaller in scope than the first game that still felt just as compelling.

The Ultimate Reward unlocked 7:18 p.m on the 4th of November 2015

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Killzone was a game that I watched an old friend Dan play on his PS2 when I was a kid. Back then I was so enthralled by it. I hadn’t really played many other shooters besides Halo, so the idea of a class-based shooter was so new and interesting to me. The graphics were pretty great for the time, I thought, and the story seemed really interesting.

8 years later, the industry continued with its HD remastering and brought Killzone to full HD on PS3. I picked up in February 2015, fueled by nostalgia and keeping an open mind, and started my journey through one of the most average shooters I’ve played since Haze.

Ok, I get it, it’s old. Very old now. Maybe not as old as Splinter Cell, and honestly it doesn’t even look much better than Splinter Cell, but mainly it’s just a bit too clunky. Regardless, I pushed my way through it. I finished it on Hard about a week later and put it down until November.

It has some ok moments. Nothing too memorable, but the difficulty curve was nicely balanced and the 4 playable characters did have their own identity and (extremely corny) story to tell. There wasn’t anything overtly -bad- about Killzone, it just didn’t stand the test of time, in my opinion.

The trophy list was decent, giving players a reason to play through the stories of each different character. There were no major alternate play trophies, but a few combat based ones where you had to accomplish things along the lines of sniping someone from afar, or killing someone important with a Grenade. It was a good list that kept me playing through a very -alright- game.

Platinum (I just noticed a lot of Platinum trophies are just called Platinum, how dull) unlocked 12:47 p.m on the 26th of November 2015

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It must have been around this time that Brendan and I put action to the plan to alternate our owned PS4’s so we could play each other’s games. What a plan it was! I finally had the opportunity available to me to play Dragon Age: Inquisition. I sure was excited about this one, especially after hearing sporadic details from Brendan about how very good it was.

He was right, it’s bloody excellent. It dealt with all the previous games major flaws and delivered a package so refined that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the greatest thing Bioware ever manages to make – and hindsight informs, despite them releasing a new Mass Effect game, that claim holds true.

The story manages to be both epic, yet intimate with a heavy focus on character development but an overarching story that raises in scope at a steady pace. The playable game worlds are -enormous- and feature many varied tilesets that keep the world looking fresh and unique at every turn.

The combat was refined once again, a nice balance of the more fast paced style from Dragon Age II and the original tactical foundation established almost 20 years ago. My only small gripe with the combat is that because we’re provided with a wealth of choice over how we customize and tailor the playstyle of our 4 person party, you can quickly make the game just a bit too easy, even on the Hardest difficulty.

Though I doubt that’s a complaint many other people share, it’s just nice to have a sense of challenge. The difficulty curve did not progress in the way I was hoping, character power simply overwhelmed most enemies by the end. This is something that’s rectified by choosing to play by a level of “Conduct” and in my next playthrough I’ll be doing exactly that. This goal will be helped along by some Conduct-centric DLC trophies that were released later on.

Overall it was a fantastic experience, I had so much fun playing through the end of the Dragon Age trilogy as it currently stands. Almost every event from the first game tied up nicely and there was an immense sense of satisfaction by the end of the 100+ hours I played. The Trophy list was the most streamlined of the lists I’d seen so far, asking mainly to complete the majority of what the game had to offer.

Dragon Age™: Inquisition Platinum Trophy 5:03 p.m on the 1st of December 2015

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I actually started playing Brotherhood September 5th, 2015 which was literally the day I finished AC2. A few days prior I went down to JB Hifi and purchased it pre owned. After I played AC2, only one thing was going to satisfy me and that was more Ezio.

It’s great, of course. For the most part it plays by the established Assassin’s Creed formula, but makes a few improvements here and there. It adds a neat “Sync level” system for almost every mission in the game in which you’re given an optional challenge to complete before the mission ends. It adds a nice variety to each mission if that’s what you’re looking for.

The story takes place mainly in Rome and I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed by the change in scope from the previous game. Rome was well designed and detailed, but the environment got a little bit repetitive, especially compared to AC 2 which took place mainly in Florence, Tuscany and Venice, each of which had beautiful and unique designs and colors against each other.

Aside from that one issue, Brotherhood was fantastic. The story continued directly on from the first game and kept getting more and more interesting. Integrated between the story and gameplay was a new Assassin recruitment feature, where Ezio was tasked with leading a guild of Assassins. It was a great feature and really well implemented.

The trophy list was pretty standard, at least from a single player perspective. And now we get to why it took me a few months to Platinum the game. It had multiplayer trophies, and they were a griiiind. Eventually, after multiple several hour long boosting sessions, I got those trophies, though with great annoyance. Cue rant as featured in entry #5 – NFS Undercover. But once they were eventually obtained…

Julius Caesar 7:30 p.m on the 11th of December 2015

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I’m trying to remember what drew me to this game in the first place, or why I bought a physical copy of it. I must have been in EB or Jb one day and saw it sitting cheap in the pre-owned bargain bin. Well, for pre-owned bargain bin price, I’d say I probably got my money’s worth. ‘Salright. It’s pretty – kinda. Vibrant colours and unique environments but low detail textures and a resolution problem.

It plays well – kinda. Fun combat and exploration mechanics, marred heavily by an atrocious framerate. Overall it was worth playing, it had some good moments, it had the first and only moment I’ve ever heard a game character say the word “penis”, so that’s neat. I don’t regret playing it, though sadly the most memorable thing about the game is how fucking long I spent collecting every single one of the almost 1000 FUCKING COLLECTABLES.

And so we get to the trophy list. Yeah, that collectable trophy can fuck RIGHT off. I cannot say how many times I scoured the levels repeatedly, looking for every one of those pesky orange orbs, the ones with the sole purpose of increasing my experience counter by infuriatingly small amounts. Eventually I reached a point where I started a brand new game and followed a written guide to every one of the literally hundreds of different locations these fucking things were hidden in.

Is that really a fault of the game though? No, not particularly. If anything it certainly kept me busy and I was pretty fucking happy when I had eventually found every one of the pricks. Other than that the list was pretty standard. A few mini-speedrun trophies and you know how I feel about those! Alright game, had a lot of promise but was technically executed poorly. Ah well.

Platinum Trophy 11:44 a.m on the 16th of December 2015

Oh and the DLC was actually really good. I enjoyed it more than base game I would have loved to have seen Pigsy’s adventures fleshed out as a full game.

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At around November 2015, Sony announced their plan to start bringing beloved PS2 games to PS4 with full share and trophy support. They announced the first batch of games that they would release as soon as the next month. Among that list was what is now one of my all time favourite games and easily my favourite JRPG, Dark Cloud.

I very briefly played the demo for Dark Cloud on the PS2 when I was much younger. I don’t remember much, other than being equal parts overwhelmed and amazed by it. Over the years I’d hear talk of this magical JRPG in hushed and revered tones around the playground that sounded strikingly similar to the game I had briefly tried, then one day Jess put a name to that game, citing her own enthralling experience with game alongside her best friend.

Many years later I had the opportunity to experience the game in full. Full of hype and expectation, having heard so much positive talk about this old PS2 release title, I sat down to play it and didn’t stop unless to sleep or eat until I was finished a week later.

Dark Cloud is a masterpiece of the genre. It’s truly mind blowing that a game developed as the -release title- for a console almost 20 years old would be so phenomenally good. Where do I even begin.

The combat is perfect. It’s challenging and unforgiving and makes no concessions for you. Enemies gang up on you with a wide variety of different moves that force you to approach each room of it’s randomly generated dungeon floors with caution.

Each combat action is to be planned out in advance and an escape route mapped in case of an unforeseen predicament. Each floor threatens you with some new extra challenge, like forcing you to use only one of the roster of characters you had the freedom of choice to switch from before, or forbidding you from healing.

It was sometimes infuriatingly challenging, but always, invariably – So. Much. Fun. Each of the characters you unlock have unique ways of dealing with situations. Some will appeal to certain playstyles more than others. But you’d best have a level of mastery over each character, in case the dungeon decides to want to ruin your day. Failure was punished, as was inefficiency. Dark Cloud respects you as the player, and drives you to be the best you can be.

And yet that wasn’t even half of what made Dark Cloud so good. The truly unique mechanic, one that I’ve never seen done so well, aside from in it’s own sequel, is the Town Building simulation.

Every dungeon you finish will reward you with a new piece of a nearby town that was completely decimated at the start of the game by Dark Cloud’s villain. You are tasked with rebuilding that town by collecting the various rivers, trees, houses, accessories and even -people-. Every time you build more and more of the town you receive rewards that will help you with your dungeon exploration.

But it doesn’t just end there. Each person that you return to that town has different wants and needs that will make them truly happy. They might want a river at the back of their house, or maybe they can’t stand another town member and don’t want to be placed anywhere near them.

What follows from these requests amounts to an ingeniously designed puzzle metagame of Town Tetris. Handy status bars are available to inform you how close you are to meeting the expectations of the entire town. It is impossible to truly express how genuinely fun this mechanic is.

There’s more to say, so much more, but I want to leave some surprises. Long story short, fucking play Dark Cloud. It’s a goddamn spectacular piece of art. The trophy list is also great and demands full 100% completion of it’s base game. I had so much fun completing this game, I’ll never forget it.

Dungeon Master 1:27 p.m on the 26th of January 2016

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The Legend of Korra is some excellent fan service if you are both a Korra and Platinum Games fan. If you do not fall within those particularly exclusive parameters, it may not be your thing.

I really enjoyed it. Sure it was short and a bit repetitive, but what little it had it did well. The combat was perfect, of course. This is a Platinum game and the one thing you get from a Platinum game if nothing else, is perfectly tuned and maddeningly fun combat. The way they designed the mechanic to switch seamlessly between use of the 4 elements was so clever, and should be used as a prime example of how to manage a game featuring multiple “elements” of attack styles. Yes inFamous Second Son, I am looking at you!

The short campaign was enjoyable and the cutscenes were gorgeous. The game practically played out like a premier length episode of the show. The trophies were a fairly standard array, the hardest difficulty did not mess around and the “Pro Bending” minigame, while frustrating, was manageable once you took the time to learn how it played.

Video Game Bender 5:21 p.m on the 14th of February 2016

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I think it was IGN whose tagline for the review of Remember Me was “Forget about it”. Yahtzee’s was “Remember this Ass”. I had picked it up from PS+ years ago but never got around to trying it out. I’d heard the reviews, which for the most part trended negatively, but the premise and gameplay sounded intriguing enough that I figured it would be worth a try.

Well, if nothing else, it was worth a free try, yeah. Thinking back on it, Remember Me was not a terrible game. I think I liked it less than I do now. It also isn’t a good game. It has the makings of a good game, but poorly executed, kinda like Enslaved.

It looks really pretty. There’s not even a caveat to that, it just does. It portrays the fictional city of Neo Paris in 2084 with genuine artistic flair. The indoor buildings of the higher class areas are clean and buzzing future utopias, dutifully maintained by robot maids. The outside areas are noisy and the streets are cluttered with piles of debris. Shop signs loudly compete for attention with each other and overwhelm the senses, adding appropriate motivation for you to want to direct the main character, Nilin, up into the rooftops and less populated areas of the city.

The base setting is there and the plot starts off interesting but it never really deals with the most compelling aspects of the themes that it touches on. The story never really goes anywhere and falls completely flat by the end. The combat has some interesting ideas, like the ability to make your own combos and empower those combos with secondary effects that allow you to tailor your own playstyle. It’s enjoyable, if still a bit rudimentary by the end. Framerate issues also plague the game, which does not help the combat at all.

The one standout thing about Remember Me, the thing that kept me going and I kept thinking about long after the game ended, was the music. It’s easily in my top 5 best video game soundtracks. It’s this incredible mix of classic cinematic orchestra with time signature altering techno that fractures the established sounds into something jarring yet beautiful to listen to. I was almost solely motivated to progress through the game just so I could hear what the music would be in the next area and I was almost never disappointed.

Aside from its many flaws, I still ultimately enjoyed enough of the game. The trophy list was pretty standard for this kind of game, with a few alternate fight trophies, a speed kill trophy and a bunch of collectables. Overall the list was pretty manageable, with a few frustrations here and there.

Remember you soon 2:38 a.m on the 26th of February 2016

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Initially, upon hearing that there would be a brand new God of War game, I was excited. Though also suspicious, since David Jaffe had already announced that he would not make another one after 3. That was the first warning. I did not have high expectations for God of War Ascension, especially once it was confirmed that a new developer would be in charge. I didn’t bother playing it until I realised that I cannot help myself, and I must Platinum the God of War franchise.

Even with my expectations lowered, Ascension failed to impress. It managed to look less good than God of War 3 and, due to the gameplay “modifications”, it played worse than the first game. For an action game? It’s alright. For a God of War game? It barely compares to the others, Chains of Olympus included. I’d say I lied when I said Chains was worse – but to be honest I don’t even consider Ascension a true God of War game worth ranking. It’s a mediocre bastardisation of the original franchise, clearly made with the sole purpose of making any amount of money they can, regardless of reception or artistic integrity.

The trophy list was a list. Oh, there was one multiplayer trophy, to complete the multiplayer tutorial. It required the purchase of an online pass because fuck the developers with a rake. Ugh, what a disappointing game.

… sigh … champion of the gods 11:28 3rd march.

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The original Deus Ex, released on PC and also PS2, is my second favourite game of all time. If they ever do a PS4 remaster of the original game, I will literally scream. Until then, we have Square Enix’s well meaning representations of a franchise that will never live up to my expectations. But at least they’re trying.

I first played Human Revolution on PC, it was the game I downloaded when I got my new PC a few years back – I had waited to play it for a long time. It was also, however, my first “modern” game I’d played. I wasn’t used to the luxuries of modern gaming, like camera switching for climbing ladders, or pausing to view a cutscene in lieu of executing a melee attack. It was all a bit much for me back then so I put it away, hoping to return when I was little more accepting of the concessions modern games made for the player.

My second attempt was on PS3, but the Director’s Cut edition had not even been conceived by then. I admittedly enjoyed it more on console. I found that the HUD and game mechanics were better suited to a controller. I eventually finished the base game and put it down, not quite ready to get the Platinum trophy.

Fast forward a year or so, and Enix first announces a Director’s Cut edition of Human Revolution, complete with many needed improvements and seamless merging of the later released DLC with the main content. It was first announced, much to mine and many other people’s annoyance and disbelief, to be a Wii U exclusive. Eventually Enix saw reason and announced the Director’s Cut for every console it had already released for.

I put Human Revolution aside and resigned myself to the fact that I’d likely never get the Platinum trophy for it. One thing I have been trying to maintain with my trophy list is no repeats of any of the same game. For a while I even hid the original Human Revolution list from public view, but later decided there was enough difference between the 2 lists and that it was fine to be on my profile. I’m still not sure if I will ever Platinum it.

Director’s Cut brought much needed improvements and fixed most of it’s flaws. It still made the slightly infuriating “concessions” but I understood that was the nature of modern games and looked past that, seeing instead the refined and polished version of Deus Ex Human Revolution that I can genuinely call a great game. I still don’t think I believe that the game was even originally meant as a Deus Ex title, regardless, it was a fun experience that I am glad I played.

The trophy list was also very enjoyable. It had multiple alternate play trophies and overall it actually resembled a very similar list to the Splinter Cell games, which made sense due to the game’s Stealth-focused gameplay. It was a challenging list and I’m glad to have finished it.

Platinum 12:52 a.m on the 11th of March 2016

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Resogun was actually the very first game I played on PS4 back in December 2013, with my friend Chris in Whakatane. He purchased a PS4 practically on it’s release and let me try it out. I had already been keeping an eye on the game because it was a twin stick shooter made by Housemarque, the guys who made Super Stardust, another fantastic twin stick.

Resogun is pretty bloody excellent. It’s a great tweak on the established Twin Stick formula, set purely in a cylindrical arena where you’re tasked with destroying many varied types of enemies and saving “humans” for rewards before they’re captured. Each of the 5 levels is punctuated by a different challenging boss fight.

Though it’s most advertised feature is it’s quite literally dazzling display of the particle effects the PS4 allowed the game to use. Every enemy disintegrates into hundreds of glowing shards that are propelled towards the screen. Finishing a level is celebrated with a giant explosion of the arena, assaulting your eyes with thousands of sparks, flying out in every direction, and all without the PS4 breaking a sweat. It’s a visual spectacle every time.

Resogun is a simple game with a simple goal. “Save the last humans” decrees the authoritative voice speaking from your PS4 controller. Will do, game. Will do. Great game, great trophy list too.

I came, I saw, I blew stuff up 4:26 p.m on the 21st of March 2016

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Back in Highschool there was always that one flash game that people considered the “flash game of the month”. There was that 2D motorcycle game that eventually evolved into Trials. There was that other 2D gore-based vehicle game that eventually … became… Happy Wheels, and there were a few others.

But then, there was that 2D momentum based platformer called n. The n flash game was the first one that I had ever truly gotten on board with. It was my introduction to the “Hardcore 2D platformer” genre. The control system was so unique, in a “love it or hate it” kind of way, though most people love it. I’d use the words “easy to learn, hard to master” but if I’m being honest, it wasn’t even that easy to learn.

The first time I ever felt the drive to push myself past my original skill level was n. Everything about the game’s design was so compelling. Every day I’d learn a brand new nuance to it’s wide set of available movement techniques, or slowly push through it’s roster of over 500 playable levels. I never actually finished n, but I came damn close.

Metanet software clearly knew they had made something big, and took their opportunity in stride by making a fully fledged video game on XBOX 360 call N+. Back then I couldn’t believe that they weren’t going to re-release N+ on PC or any other console at all, I even went so far as to send messages to the company, practically rabid with desperation to play their latest incarnation. Sadly it never happened and my love for the n games fell to the wayside. I stopped paying attention to the releases, knowing that they’d moved on to different things, things that didn’t involve just one of their biggest fans.

And then, early in January 2016 while at Jess’ place in Auckland, I happened to be scrolling through the PSN store when something odd caught my eye. A game called n++ was listed, on special. I really had been on a complete media blackout from Metanet, I had absolutely no idea that this game was even in development. I bought it immediately.

A quick tidbit about N+, by the way. That game was very popular among the Hardcore platforming scene on 360 and I really did want to play it. But Metanet had “updated” the n formula with a few crucial changes like a scrolling screen, the level was no longer displayed on a single screen at all times. That was a big change and I think it changed the flavour of the whole game. They also updated the in-game models and environments to look more “2010”. It still had its minimalist aesthetic, but it was a little less minimalist than it used to be.

To my great pleasure, n++ had reversed all of that. Back were the single screen levels. Back was that beautifully simple aesthetic. This was a true successor to the original game. It was a great moment to return to one of the most enduring games in my memory, on PS4 and complete with a Platinum trophy.

The game starts off perfectly, by giving you the option of a very in depth tutorial that teaches you all those nuances of movement over 16 stages of 5 levels each. Once you’ve learned everything those stages have to teach you, it’s time for game prime.

IT’S FUCKING MASSIVE. I will never manage to finish 100% of what n++ has to offer. Not many people in this world will. It has over 2000 individual levels, ranging over multiple play variations. The one I put the majority of my time into, regardless of the fact that it didn’t have many trophies specifically assigned to it, was the multiplayer.

I wouldn’t say it’s much of a coincidence that Alex, one of my old flatmates, was also a big fan of n. I would say that it’s reaching coincidence territory when he boasted his numerous successes in the flash game, like holding ranked positions on the global leaderboards. In fact, if I were a religious man I might go so far as to say that was providence.

Soon after I bought n++ I told Alex about it. What happened next was a 4 month journey playing the co-op stages of n++ with Alex on an almost daily basis, culminating in the complete achievement of holding the #1 leaderboard position on every one of the 94 co-op stages. To date, that is what I consider my prime gaming achievement, trophies notwithstanding. I’m very happy that we met as flatmates, because that would not have ever been possible without him.

During the time we were working on that goal, I had completed the remainder of the trophy list. It was a solid list that challenged me in ways not too many platformers have succeeded in doing in the past. I’m so very glad I had the opportunity to play Metanet’s definitive version of n. It is, in my opinion, the perfect representation of the vision they had over a decade ago.

Platinum++ 9:59 p.m on the 24th of March 2016

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My Ratchet & Clank franchise completion journey continued along with Deadlocked. I picked it up along with all of the other Ratchet & Clank games directly after I finished the big 2016 remake of the original (more on that one day).

I hadn’t heard too much about it in the past, but it was generally well received from what I gathered. I quite enjoyed it, actually. It was nothing too special, and almost exclusively combat based, foregoing much of the platforming aspect that balanced out the previous games. Overall it was a solidly built game that did what it needed to do.

The regular Ratchet & Clank humor was there, for better or worse. The cool and varied weapon types with a wide array of enemies and places to shoot said enemies were also at an acceptable quality. The textures were a bit low quality though, and the game was just a bit more -brown- than I’d expect a Ratchet & Clank game to be. Aside from that, it was a good change of pace from my previous few games. The trophy list was exactly what it needed to be.

Hero of the Shadow Sector 8:32 p.m on the 26th of April 2016

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My first experience with Bastion came earlier, during my PC stint. I’d finished the game and started work on the optional challenges, but never quite managed to beat them. A few years after that, the PC/360 exclusive was announced to be re-released on PS4. I bought it as soon as it was available.

I love Bastion. I love everything about the game. Combat is exciting and varied, with plenty of customization for tailoring your own playstyle. The movement and light platforming is tightly tuned. Enemies are aggressive and varied. The environment design and aesthetic is one of the most striking and unique designs that I’ve seen in a game, with a vivid color palate and a world that literally springs up to meet you as you walk it’s fractured paths.

It’s also heavily narrated by a guy whose voice is liquid sex. On the subject of sexy voices, Bastion features a game soundtrack that easily ranks in my top 5 OSTs, with more vocalised music than I’ve heard in the majority of games I’ve played. Bastion is visually, aurally and mentally appealing in every way.

One of Bastion’s most interesting and unique concepts was a series of ten “Shrines” that, when enabled, would add some unique difficulty element to the game. Some were as simple as enemies movement speed increasing, or that enemies dropped revenge bombs on death. When activated, they also added a nice percentage bonus to the amount of currency or experience you’d receive from combat. The feature tied in nicely with the game was a great source of challenge incentivised by Trophies.

The trophy list was pretty great too, especially in conjunction with the above mentioned shrines.. It requires finishing the game multiple times, but it’s just as enjoyable each time. The challenges that I referred to earlier live up to their name and I’m still so glad that I managed to accomplish the goal of completing each of the Challenge rooms with all ten shrines activated, ticking off yet another obstacle I’ve overcome that bested me in the past. Great game, everyone should play it.

You Done Good (aw shucks game, no – YOU done good.) 12:36 p.m on the 16th of May 2016

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And then there was the spiritual successor to Bastion. Once again, this is a game I played first on PC. Though, from my initial impressions, I was not so enthralled by this one.

After Bastion, I kept a close eye on their next project, along with most other gamers. When the announcement trailer for Transistor was released, the internet collectively lost their shit in a way only the internet can do. Naturally excited, I sat down to watch the trailer of a game all at once very similar to Bastion yet completely different. I was intrigued.

I bought it day one, picked it up and a couple of hours later put it back down again. I’m not sure what I expected from Transistor, but I didn’t get what I was hoping I would. Perhaps it was that functionally it played in a similar way to Bastion, thought with an almost completely different game mechanic. Maybe it was that a wealth of choice for how to customize my character was given to me too fast, yet still felt restrictive in some way. Whatever it was, I decided that Transistor was not the game for me.

Let’s be clear. Transistor is a good game. A great game even. It’s a worthy successor to Bastion. The combat is this clever mix of isometric slash-and-dodge that they developed in Bastion, but with the added ability to pause the game and queue up an entire sequence of actions, both movement and combat, in order to choreograph and play out more tactically minded moves.

The aesthetic was the biggest departure from it’s predecessor. Set in a fictional alternate future city, everything looked and acted the part of this soon-to-be dystopia. The colours were appropriately more muted than Bastion’s, and the world interacted with you in an artificially inviting way that established a fittingly creepy tone.

The music was, once again, on point and also holds a top 5 position in my OST list. It was the same composer and same singers once again playing to their strengths and presenting a beautiful soundtrack that fit the game’s tone perfectly. What made it even better is that the story literally revolved around the trials of a professional singer. There’s even a button to hum along to the music. That kind of attention to detail is what really makes this game truly great.

And I thought about all of this between the time I played on PC and when I eventually picked it up on PS4. It took me a year or so, but I eventually decided it was really worth trying to understand. I knew I was missing some important component of what made this game so great in the eyes of many other gamers.

For me, that turned out to be New Game+. My first complete playthrough of Transistor was honestly a bit of a drag. I kept feeling like I was being held back, with all these cool abilities waiting for me to unlock them, otherwise purposely being withheld from me. Once I finally finished the game and enjoyed it’s truly remarkable ending sequences, I jumped straight back in – spurred on, of course, by a trophy that demanded an NG+ completion.

New Game+ was where I could take a moment to sift through the literally thousands of different loadouts I could build for myself, comparing the advantages of 20 different abilities, each with unique applications and enhancements when applied in 3 of the unique ways the game offered for you to customize your character. The game’s challenge factor had been scaled appropriately, with enemies that were only introduced at the end of the game now ready to fight you in the opening areas of NG+, and in larger numbers.

New Game+ was a joy to play, and I have trophies to thank for pushing me to play through it. Speaking of, the trophy list was a similar fare to the first game, with multiple game completion trophies and added challenges which played differently to the first game – asking that you complete scenarios equipped with only a specific set of abilities at your disposal. Oh and of course, the difficulty increasing “shrines” were back and required for some trophies. Ultimately I’m very happy that Transistor did eventually pull me in. It was an enjoyable game and I’m glad to have completed it.

Plat() 5:32 p.m on the 16th of May 2016

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Volume is a game made by the developer of Thomas Was Alone. It was a dramatic departure from his previous work, moving from 2D puzzle platformer, to 3D Stealth/Action game. It was good. Was it great though? A lot of people seem to think so. I’m not sure that I do.

I have a great deal of respect for Mike Bithell, I think Thomas Was Alone was an excellent game and his optional developer commentary track was enlightening to listen to. Volume was clearly an impressive technical achievement for the developer and, as a game, it’s airtight. It does exactly what it sets out to do. Though what it sets out to do, apparently, is not be much more than Metal Gear Solid 2’s Virtual Training minigame, realised in 100 levels.

Here’s an unpopular opinion. I don’t think it deserved a Platinum trophy. Not after I’ve seen so many other games clearly deserving of one, but never getting one. I honestly have no earthly idea what the decision process is for assigning a game with a Platinum trophy or not, but sometimes I think it’s completely random.

Incidentally, the trophy list isn’t even all that great. It has the requisite collectable finding trophies, but other than that it’s basically a bunch of pointless grinding. Completing the game and the list were overall a bit of a chore. I did expect more than what I got from Volume. Outside of it’s cool aesthetic (which, again, was reminiscent of the MGS2 VR training mode), it just didn’t quite live up to my expectations and I was unfortunately quite bored, even by the halfway point. Though I stuck with it, hoping it would get a little more interesting. It didn’t.

The Platinum Arrow 3:10 a.m on the 23rd of May 2016

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Imagine my excitement when I saw that Dark Cloud 2 had also been added to the list of games getting PS2 remasters for PS4. After my transcendental experience with Dark Cloud and after everything I’d heard about it’s beloved sequel and watched Jess play literally hours of, I’d finally get to experience it for myself.

And yep, it’s awesome. There’s not much more I can say about it that I haven’t already said about Dark Cloud though. Also, if I am being truly honest with myself, I have to admit that the first Dark Cloud’s unwavering focus and attention on the select few things available to you in the game appealed to me slightly more than the staggering level of content available in the sequel.

Though, things didn’t start off so great. I purchased the game almost immediately after it was available and got to playing. From the first few minutes I realised there was something inexcusably wrong. The game’s framerate was somewhere around 15 or 20 and it wasn’t going any higher as I played. I scoured the internet, looking for some fix or at least vindication, confirming that it wasn’t just my PS4.

So it turns out that for some very odd reason, Dark Chronicle (PAL) and Dark Cloud 2 (NTSC) were separately remastered from each each other and released on their respective consoles. I won’t go into the techno babble, but long story short, the PAL version is objectively worse than the NTSC version, for no reason.

However, I was determined to not let that stop me from playing the sequel to the game I’ll never forget. I brought my US account back to life, jumped on Amazon and purchased another US PSN card and bought Dark Cloud 2 for the second time in a week. The internet was correct. I breathed a sigh of relief and, bereft of twice the money I had intended to be for this bloody game, started what was a 150 hour journey to complete Dark Chronicle. It was worth every cent. Regardless of which is the better game, they’re still both absolutely stellar RPG experiences.

The trophy list was extremely comprehensive and you can be assured that if you’ve Platinum’ed Dark Chronicle, there’s no stone left unturned in this mammoth game. Though a word of warning, if you are attempting the Platinum of the game and would prefer not to do another 100+ hour playthrough, have a (non-spoiler) collectables guide on hand and multiple saves made. It’s not forgiving for purist completionists. Missables are everywhere. It was a well earned Platinum and I wait patiently for any news of the rumoured Dark Cloud 3.

Past, Present and Future 1:29 p.m on the 21st of July 2016

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I first remember watching the trailer of Styx when Brendan pointed it out to me. It was free on PS+ but I had no intention of downloading or playing it. The muddy textures and orange filter on everything was immediately off putting. But I decided it was at least worth it to take a glimpse of the reviews. It was IGN’s review that caught my eye and around the time they said it was the best Stealth game since Metal Gear Solid 3 that I started downloading it.

They’re not wrong, it’s excellent. Styx is unforgiving and brutal, but provides all the necessary tools for overcoming the otherwise practically impossible task of stealthing through rooms heavily populated by enemies, most of whom will kill you in one hit.

It was a harrowing and genuinely frightening experience at times. It was made all the more frightening because I couldn’t hear the telltale signs of guards talking to each other, a classic staple of stealth gameplay. But the reason I could not could not hear any talking was because I muted all of it to avoid Styx’ very worst flaw. The writing and voice acting are godawful. Think Lord of the Rings but with swearing and (cough)… humor. I have no idea what the story of the game was, because I also turned of the subtitles. Something to do with clones I think.

Aside from that glaring issue, a genuinely good and challenging stealth game awaited me, made even more atmospheric by silent enemies, by my own inadvertent design. The trophy list was comprehensive and difficult, but very enjoyable with a good array of collectables and alternate play-based trophies. No grinding. It still remains one of my most rare trophies, sitting it at 0.3% rarity. A genuinely good game, a shame about the presentation of the script and narrative.

All the trophies 4:43 a.m on the 26th of July 2016

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Saints Row was a fun game, and how fitting that it would be Platinum #69. It was pretty much exactly what it had defined itself as from the previous games, a self aware and satirical take on the open world crime game genre. Everything was taken to the logical extreme from a narrative standpoint, and then pushed even further.

It plays well, it looks pretty, the story is ridiculous and in good, yet tasteless humor. Yet it did have some genuinely enjoyable moments that showed a glimpse of the game it had the potential to be if it wasn’t so busy laughing at itself. There’s a sequence that plays out a little ways through the game where you and your friends jump from a helicopter down to a Rooftop Penthouse while the Kanye West Track “Power” plays in the background. The mission is to massacre the attendants of the rooftop party. It’s a brilliantly executed segment that was well paced and thought out.

Also there’s another fantastic moment featuring the Bonnie Tyler song “I Need a Hero”.

The trophy list is pretty large, hitting all the marks for completing everything that the expansive world of Saints Row The Third had to offer. It was mindless fun and a worthy addition to the list.

Kingpin 2:12 p.m on the 8th of August 2016

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Shadow of Mordor was the first game in a long time within the Lord of the Rings universe to be so openly anticipated by many gamers on it’s announcement. They made some pretty big promises, most of which I didn’t think they’d ever live up to. One of the biggest features they boasted was the Nemesis System. “No way.” I scoffed, “There’s no way it will ever be as good as it says it will be.”

I was wrong. Honestly, it ended up better than they promised. It’s one of the best systems to be introduced to a game in a long time and for once I’m disappointed that other games aren’t just blatantly copying it. The Nemesis System could single-handedly carry basically any open world action game, regardless of the quality of the rest of the game. Though thankfully Shadow of Mordor is also very high quality, if also very derivative, in the overarching gameplay mechanics.

Take the movement and platforming of Assassin’s Creed and the quick button-to-button combat of the Batman Arkham games and refine them in such a way that could only be done with the prior knowledge of their implementation in their respective games. Follow through with the usual expected tropes like map revealing “viewing towers” and a plethora of side activities scattered around a decently sized play area and you’ve already got the foundation for a game that’s better than the average open world exploration game nowadays.

To add something as spectacularly unique as the Nemesis System is just icing on an already very full cake. The system merges so well with the rest of the game, elevating every one of it’s already very solid mechanics. There’s basically nothing bad I can say about this game. Sadly, even though the sequel isn’t even out yet, there’s far too much I could say against that. But we’ll save that for another time when I am eventually compelled to play that too.

The trophy list was standard, usual open world action adventure game fare. Nothing too challenging, but it was a good list overall. I still have yet to start any of the DLC content – I’m also not sure if I want to.

Master of Mordor 10:38 a.m on the 15th of August 2016

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Fallout 3 is another game I started a long time ago. But this time the reason for not completing it was not to do with my lack of ability, but instead poor Brett’s overworked PS3’s bluray laser gave up halfway through my playthrough some time around March 2010. And so marked the beginning of the end of my days playing Playstation 3.

I didn’t pick Fallout 3 up again until February 24th, 2013 but that was in the middle of one of my WoW phases so it didn’t keep my attention for long. It wasn’t until June 30th 2014, spurred on by the newfound energy provided by a new job and the acquisition of my very first LED TV, measuring in at 49”.

Once I sat down and let myself get absorbed by the enormous world of Fallout 3, I was hooked. It is a very ambitious game, and clearly the result of Bethesda’s vision of what Fallout should be, come to life. But that is where Bethesda and I differ. I personally don’t consider it worthy as a direct sequel to the revolutionary first 2 games. It’s tonally inconsistent and doesn’t carry the same emotional weight of the other games, though not for lack of trying. They even got Liam Neeson on board, to voice the character’s father. Even that was not enough to fully engage me.

Regardless, it’s a great game. I doubt anyone can really say otherwise. It’s such an impressive example of ambition translated to reality. It also opened the doors for what I consider to be the true Fallout 3 experience with the release of New Vegas – more on that, sadly, much later. The trophy list was as comprehensive as you’d expect from an RPG this size, filled with exploration and quest completion.

It would have been a perfectly acceptable list if one of the most annoying trophies didn’t irreparably glitch on me.  Doesn’t Play Well with Others, normally awarded for killing 300 people, didn’t pop for me even after I killed over 500. So my final playthrough of Fallout 3 was that of my Murder hobo, who went from town to town murdering every civilian he could see until I got the damn trophy. In hindsight, it was actually kinda cathartic.

Platinum Trophy 11:14 p.m on the 16th of August 2016

I did some of the DLC, still missing some. I’m not sure if I am going finish it.

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On the subject of great Bethesda-published games that I finished some time after I started…

I’d been watching Dishonored very closely ever since I saw the announcement trailer back in E3 2011. It looked like the spiritual successor to the old Thief games, but with it’s own unique style and identity. Dishonored came out in October 2012 to almost universal praise and one year later I finally got my hands on it.

It easily lived up to the praise in almost every respect. The gameplay was varied and tightly tuned and the game eases you into your new ability set by starting you off with one of the most fun movement abilities in gaming, the Blink. Blink features as a teleport that provides quick horizontal and vertical travel, with a well designed accompanying interface that informs the player of their Blink destination and whether or not it will prompt Corvo to automatically climb the surface he’s teleporting to. Blink’s design defines the identity of your character and has since been copied by multiple other games, though not executed as well as Arkane did with Dishonored.

The gameplay is well balanced around the abilities you are given and never felt too easy, despite the fact you could teleport basically whenever you wanted. Enemies are observant and pursue you aggressively and in significant numbers later on in the game if you are discovered. Stealth play is highly incentivised, but you are provided with enough defensive abilities to get you out of trouble if caught.

The world and story complement each other nicely. The city of Dunwall is not a happy place and the design and colour reflects that tone well. This is complete with a robust moral choice system which relies less on your dialogue and more on your actions. The more humans you killed in the city of Dunwall, the worse the place would become, being infested with more rats and ‘Weepers’, the plagued citizens that drive the main conflict of the game.

The Trophy list was pretty standard fare for stealth-focused games, with plenty of alternative-play style trophies. Of course, because it had a moral choice system with more than one ending, there were trophies for reaching both endings and, similar to Infamous, I feel as though it hurt my experience by lifting the veil on the illusion that my choices mattered more than they really did. There was one standout trophy though,

Mostly Flesh and Steel to finish the game having only used the Blink ability. That was quite fun to do. Overall it was a great game and definitely worthy to be on the list.

Platinum Blades and Dark Corners 2:52 p.m on the 22nd of October 2016

Dishonored also featured 2 very good DLC stories which and a Challenge/Trials mode that I am still working through.

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What happens when Visceral Games want to take a break from making Dead Space games and they decide to copy God of War verbatim? Exactly what you’d think.

Visceral made christian God of War for some reason. Its inferior to main series in almost every way, featuring the bare bones of the franchise it was aping, but with a lot of questionable decisions regarding the gameplay design. The game’s character progression relied almost solely on stat boosting equipment that added unnecessary RPG elements to what was originally a robust action game. This resulted in action game sins like arbitrarily increased health, damage and quantity of enemies later on in the game, in lieu of different variations of smarter enemies, like you would expect in a God of War calibur-game. It felt lazy.

The environment design was occasionally quite good but often a bit dreary. Dante’s Inferno is set predominantly within the Circles of Hell, though out of the 10+ Circles, I could barely count the memorable levels on one hand. The imagery was suitably disturbing for a game set in hell, though I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the assets in the game had been taken from their Dead Space series and that was a bit immersion breaking.

The trophy list was standard and pretty easy, the many boss fights were uninspired and it was just generally a mediocre game. It had a couple of memorable sections but overall it was a mostly forgettable experience. What disappoints me most is that they had all the tools there to make a really good action game that nicely paralleled God of War, but it just felt like a cash-in.

Master of The Inferno 3:17 p.m on the 26th of November 2016

Extra DLC was also available but I’m not likely to bother with it

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My only experience with the Driver series was watching my Dad play the first game back on PS1. Though when GTA found it’s stride with the 3rd game, it seemed unlikely that the Driver franchise was ever going to be a memorable one. This was sadly true, with the release of Driver 2 and Driv3r not improving enough on their base formula to be considered competitive with other driving or crime games.

Then along came Driver: San Francisco. This game wouldn’t even have been on my radar if it wasn’t for the Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation video. Yahtzee, who has spent many years tearing games to shreds 5 minutes at a time, struggled to find anything bad to say about the new Driver, to his own disbelief. He even featured it as one of his top 5 games of 2011.

I eventually got my hands on the game for less than $10 in EB games bargain bin. I sat down to play it November 24th 2016, encouraged only by Yahtzee’s praise of the game and still not sure whether it was just some elaborate joke by him, but at 9.48pm when I received the trophy  This Can’t Be Real for astrally projecting from my own body into the body of another citizen of San Francisco, I knew this game really was onto something special.

Driver: San Francisco is easily the most unique and compelling driving game I have played to date. It takes the open world driving game formula that was popularised by games like Burnout Paradise and flips it on it’s head in a special way. The story merges with the gameplay seamlessly and is actually worth paying attention to.

The premise is fascinating. The game starts off almost directly from the previous game, though they do a good job of filling those in who hadn’t played it. From the first gameplay sequence the game establishes a 70s-esque buddy cop movie scenario, with you and your police partner chasing down Driver’s main antagonist in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, exchanging witty remarks and generally having a good ol’ time until the antagonist gets the upper hand on you and rams your car into a wall.

Yet somehow, miraculously you and your partner survive unscathed and now you have the ability to Astrally Project into the drivers of any car you want in San Francisco. This is where the base mechanic of the game is introduced to you and how the mission structure is designed. Certain drivers will provide you with useful information to help you find the antagonist when you play out their lives through their respective vehicles.

Outside of the main story, you can also complete side missions through the eyes of other drivers, most of which will have ongoing stories as the game progresses. Or you can just jump into any old car you like and enjoy a wide range of hilarious scenarios and conversations you’ve landed in the middle of.

The astral projection mechanic also makes for some very entertaining gameplay and gives you multiple options to deal with most game missions. Don’t feel like racing in a mission where you’re required to race? That’s fine, astral project out of the car you’re in and jump into another oncoming car and ram headfirst into your opponent while the driver of your original car hopefully stays in the race. Every race was memorable because of the moment-to-moment decisions you made outside of simply driving your original car to the finish line.

It really is as good as it sounds. Driver: San Francisco is such a unique concept that was fully realized. It’s the product of a vision to make a driving game that is interesting and unique, not just more of the same. The trophy list was comprehensive, tasking you with completing all of the optional content, along with a couple of amusing, yet challenging trophies like  Ramped Up! Awarded for completing a police getaway mission in a car transporter. There were also online trophies, which I did boost for the most part, but I also genuinely enjoyed playing the multiplayer, as the astral projection mechanic had been successfully translated from single player. Such a great game overall, I won’t forget it anytime soon.

You ARE the Wheelman 4:37 p.m on the 8th of December 2016

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The remaster/reboot trend of gaming strikes again and this time it’s with a game series I’d never played before. Yet another another reason to love this trend, I’ve been introduced to Strider Hiryu, the the futuristic Ninja who first came to arcade machines in 1989.

From what I understand, the PS3/PS4 remake of Strider was developed from the ground up and is actually a hybrid of the first 2 games in story and content. The gameplay was reminiscent of the 2D metroidvania genre and the general theme and positive reception drew me to try it out.

Strider was great. Challenging, fast paced and packed with secrets, I really enjoyed my time with it. The environment was what it needed to be, if maybe a bit generic. The enemies were nicely varied and the bosses lived up to their name, all of them providing a brutal and unique challenge.

The trophy list was what you would expect from a 2D metroidvania, expecting the collection of basically every secret in the game. There was also  Speed Demon to finish the game within 4 hours, which I did not expect to be particularly challenging, though I only managed it with minutes to spare. Overall it was a good time and I hope there’s a sequel one day.

Strider Master 12:57 a.m on the 12th of December 2016

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I picked this up on a whim a few years ago. The trailer looked promising, appearing to be a first person shooter with horror elements. In reality it was much closer to a point-and-click adventure game, though still with “Horror” elements, in that a creepy girl would appear occasionally.

Master Reboot was a unique game, though why it has a Platinum trophy is beyond me, there are far more deserving games. Regardless, I think I can say I had fun. Each of game’s areas featured some unique mechanic and each stage was visually distinct and applied the use of many different game mechanics.

It also looked like a PS2 game. Not that that’s a particularly bad thing, as long as the gameplay is good (and it was passable, barely) but it might explain why the game is owned by less than 5000 people. Most of those people are likely just looking for a free Platinum trophy, as it’s sitting at 48% completion on PSNProfiles, which is approximately 47% more people than I would expect to genuinely enjoy the game enough to Platinum it on it’s own merits.

Master Reboot is probably my most shameful Platinum, but I did get some enjoyment out of the game. My original purchase was with the intention of playing a unique game and that’s what I got.

Platinum Trophy 1:20 a.m on the 12th of December 2016

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Goddamn DOOM is a good time. I had been paying attention to DOOM during its development but I still assumed it was going to be something more based off the slower paced, Horror-focused Doom 3 than the original. I was completely wrong.

DOOM is an astounding reboot. They took the original ‘94 game and brought into 2016 in a way that could not have been more perfect. Every aspect of DOOM is a love letter to the original. The lightning fast pacing, the weapons, the environments and enemies all feel so similar, but perfectly refined for 2016 sensibilities. Oh and the music is stupidly good and introduced me to Mick Gordon who I will now be closely following the musical career of.

It’s such a brilliantly self-contained experience that I can’t really say much more about it without just explaining the game from start to finish. It really is a fantastic experience. The trophy list was solid, with your standard array of collectables and difficulty based trophies. There was also multiplayer but I didn’t even boost it, I was having that much fun. Really, really great game.

Thy Flesh Consumed 1:00 p.m on the 18th of December 2016

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In stark contrast to my previous Platinum, maybe just looking for a palate cleanser after DOOM, I tried out one of the games that was free on PS+ in December 2016, Color Guardians. It was just my kind of game! An auto-running Twitch Rhythm based game with a Simon Says-esque color switching mechanic. It was a fun use of a day, though a very simple game that I’m sure I would have just as easily found on mobile platforms or as a free flash game.

Like Master Reboot, Color Guardians also questionably got a Platinum trophy assigned to it. Even though this Platinum is about twice as rare, I think it’s even less deserving of one than Master Reboot was. The Trophy list didn’t even ask for 100% completion of the game. The hardest trophy was for beating the last boss without dying. I enjoyed playing Color Guardians, but it’s another Platinum trophy that I’m not super happy to have on my list.

Legendary 7:58 p.m on the 20th of December 2016

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Kingdom Hearts released as part of the “1.5 HD ReMix” collection which has remastered the first 3 Kingdom Hearts games in the series in 1080p on PS3 (later on PS4). I had played the first Kingdom Hearts game on PS2 at the insistence of my flatmates Anne and Alex who wouldn’t accept my excuse that I didn’t want to play a “baby game for babies with Donald and Goofy in it”. I’m glad they convinced me to look past the very disney-esque exterior because Kingdom Hearts is a great RPG through and through.

Who would have thought that Disney and Final Fantasy would go so well together? Some smart exec in Square Enix, that’s who. Even more shocking is that Disney made so many of their properties available to Enix so they could develop such a unique game with a compelling and surprisingly dark story.

I 100%’ed the first Kingdom Hearts on PS2 which took over 100 hours, so initially I wasn’t sure if it was worth me doing another full playthrough of the game. That was until I learned that the HD remaster was actually the translated Japanese edition, which included notable changes such as extra story, new secret bosses and a general difficulty increase. That was more than enough to convince me to play through Kingdom Hearts again.

My first playthrough was with Jess back in 2014 where we took turns to clear Proud Mode, the hardest difficulty. After that I put the game down until 2016, with the intention of moving directly to the second game alongside her. Unfortunately that plan fell apart when Jess and Dave moved out of the flat to start their new careers in Auckland.

A couple of years later I returned to that save file and mopped up the remainder of the trophies, spurred on by the new Kingdom Hearts III footage that emerged from E3. What followed was potentially the most grinding I have ever done in a game in order to complete the -comprehensive- trophy list, but Kingdom Hearts has a way of still making that feel fun, with it’s vibrant colours and particle effects popping excitedly out at you, enticing you to stay in it’s world.

KINGDOM HEARTS Master 10:18 p.m on the 7th of February 2017

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Splinter Cell: Blacklist is the 6th and final game in the Splinter Cell franchise and the 5th game that I have played. I moved on to the 4th game in the series, Double Agent, high off my experiences with Chaos Theory. That will never be on this list though, because Double Agent came out before Sony made trophies a requirement for all games back in 2009.

Double Agent was a rough experience, especially after the masterpiece that was Chaos Theory. It had major technical difficulties and an inexcusably low framerate. That was a shame because there was a decent game hiding under all that technical incompetence. But halfway through the game I encountered a game-breaking bug and I didn’t bother starting it again. The next game, Conviction, was never released on Playstation.

And then there was Blacklist. I’d heard good things, though I was wary after Double Agent. Sadly, even with my lowered expectations, Blacklist failed to impress me much. It was now a “modernized” version of the franchise, even worse than Deus Ex. Sam Fisher, who looked much younger and was voiced by a different, younger actor despite the story carrying on from the previous games, now had the movement capabilities of a cyborg, for no apparent reason.

He’d leap from cover to cover with inhuman efficiency and scale walls like a fucking monkey. He was even more outlandishly skilled than Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series, except unlike MGS, Splinter Cell still took itself seriously with a fairly grounded story that continued from the previous games. It didn’t make sense in any way.

If Blacklist had not been called “Splinter Cell”, it would have been a great new IP that I’d have good things to say about. From a technical perspective it’s solid. It’s a good looking game with a really creative and minimalist user interface and solid game mechanics. Call it “Cyborg Ninja: Origins” and you’ve got yourself a new game series. Don’t call it something it’s not though. It’s not gritty, realistic, slow paced and cerebral. It’s not Splinter Cell.

Trophy list was a list. It had multiplayer because of course it did. I boosted it eventually. There was also a co-op mode and that was actually somewhat enjoyable, I completed that first with Dave and then finished it off with Brendan. It really is a shame that I have to cast this game in such a bad light, but when it’s so obviously a name-based money grab, I can’t let that stand. Good game, terrible intentions. The Splinter Cell franchise is dead.

Decorated Agent 3:19 p.m on the 26th of February 2017

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Revelations was a similar story to my transition from AC2 to Brotherhood. I moved on to it as soon as I was finished with the previous one. There’s nothing much more I can say about the games at this point, other than continue to praise the Ezio trilogy in almost every respect. Revelations was a great end to Ezio’s story with appropriate advancements in gameplay while maintaining the series core design.

Unfortunately Revelations also had Multiplayer trophies which proved to be about as difficult as Brotherhood’s were, despite the fact that the list technically required much less grinding. This was mainly because the trophies were terribly bugged and didn’t pop until the required conditions were meant multiple times. That was frustrating, though it didn’t hurt the single player experience.

The Conqueror 11:27 p.m on the 26th of February 2017

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Gravity Rush is a game I’ve had on my radar ever since it came out for the Vita. After I saw Jess playing it on hers, I almost considered purchasing a Vita purely for that game. Sadly it was not meant to be, once Sony had announced that they were no longer releasing First Party games for the the Vita, there just didn’t seem to be a good enough reason to purchase one.

Some of the best games on the Vita have been re-released on PS4 and one of those games was Gravity Rush. It was worth the wait. The premise is a good blend of familiar and new. Gravity Rush is ostensibly an open world action adventure game with platforming elements and by itself it would be a competent, if unoriginal, game. Thankfully the quick introduction of the Gravity Manipulation mechanic establishes Gravity Rush as a truly unique experience.

When the developers decided that they wanted a game where you could manipulate gravity, they could have very easily designed the movement to act like flight which, while still fun, would not have been all that unique. Instead they actually designed the mechanic to act as what would happen if you had the ability to manipulate the direction of gravity – by causing you to freefall in the direction you’ve changed to. It’s hectic, unwieldy and sometimes terrifying, which only adds to the ample charm of the game. There’s a learning curve as you are quickly expected to “fall with style” towards checkpoints and enemies.

All of the classic Open World staples are there, with side quests, collectables and challenges to distract you from the main quest. The world compliments the unique movement system well, with impressive verticality and even the ability to explore under the floating islands that hold the world in place. If you want to upgrade all of your abilities it’s highly recommended to explore the world literally top to bottom, where hundreds of experience giving crystals are located.

The trophy list is comprehensive and directs you towards finding all of the hidden content and mastering the challenges. I’m glad I got the chance to play Gravity Rush, it was a really unique and enjoyable experience. Looking forward to picking up the sequel one day.

It’s all Relative 12:33 a.m on the 15th of March 2017

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Following the trend of games based around manipulating things you can’t normally manipulate, Aragami is a stealth game where you can manipulate shadows. Honestly I’m surprised the idea hadn’t been thought of before.

The last stealth game I had played was Styx and I was still riding high off that experience, though I’d heard good things about Aragami so I picked it up on special. Right off the bat it was pretty obviously made on a low budget. Graphically it was very simple though the art style complimented that nicely. What was concerning, though, was how badly it ran, barely hitting 30 fps in most sections. Though because of the slow paced nature of stealth games in general, this wasn’t a major hindrance.

Behind the technical issues lies a competent stealth game. The ability to manipulate shadows in a stealth game sounds pretty overpowered, but the stages are balanced in such a way that it is still challenging. The short but frequent moments you’re given the opportunity to make shadows rewards quick thinking and pre planning. Rushing into an area without an exit strategy or a plan will end pretty badly, as pretty much every enemy in the game can finish you off in one strike.

You are provided with a varied set of abilities that allow you to approach each challenge in ways that most compliment your play style. The trophy list is your usual stealth game fare, ultimately requiring that you have finished each level ticking off the individual criteria such as finishing the levels without killing anybody or being spotted. It was a fun little distraction that kept me entertained for a couple of days.

Legend 10:47 p.m on the 15th of March 2017

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Hot off the success of Mad Max: Fury Road, Avalanche Studios of the Just Cause fame released a kinda-but-not-really movie spinoff-prequel thing quite simply called Mad Max.

Take Shadow of Mordor, remove the Nemesis System and put a post-apocalyptic Australia skin on everything and you have Mad Max. Is is the open-worldest open world game that ever opened a world. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it’s just a bit played out, is all. The aesthetic is on point though. You genuinely feel like you’re in that world, lightning tornado storms and all. Moments like those were engaging enough to keep me playing past the many flaws.

The main gameplay loop revolves around driving to enemy encampments and capturing them. Each of the 30+ encampments were uniquely designed and required different methods in order to capture them. They varied in difficulty and allowed for multiple ways in which to clear the objectives.

Each facet of the gameplay was well designed, though heavily derivative of better games. On-foot combat was Arkham City but with a Mad Max flair. Max feels appropriately slow to control and his attacks are violent and brutal. He has a limited arsenal of optional methods to dispatch enemies like his trusty shotgun which was loaded with a small amount of ammunition that was fairly easy to replenish out of combat.

Car combat was the only part of Mad Max that did feel like it had effort put into it to differentiate it from other games and also play well. You could target various parts of enemy cars and take them down by removing crucial parts like tires or the door so you could pull the driver out, otherwise you could simply ram your car into theirs, done enough times will result in a satisfying explosion and rain of resource materials for you to upgrade Max and his car.

The trophy list was every other open world trophy list ever. Collect all the things, do all the missions, explore everything. Overall Mad Max was an enjoyable experience, but it was an experience I’ve had many times before. Getting everything took a lot longer than I would have liked and sadly I was checked out from the game a good 10 hours or so before I finally got the trophies.

Halls of Valhalla 12:48 p.m on the 29th of March 2017

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And so the PS2 remaster trend continues and this time I get to experience a game from that era that I hadn’t even heard of prior to purchasing it. After Mad Max I needed a palate cleanser and what better than a classic PS2 mascot adventure game!

I didn’t expect much from Legend of Kay and it delivered more than I hoped. It is a classic Mascot Platformer with an authentic Chinese theme. The game is not too short, it plays well and it’s decently challenging with a cute story that drives the gameplay along. There are some cool ideas implemented, like enemy health being represented by the amount of armor it is wearing. There are 3 types of weapon – Sword, Claws and Hammer, that each have their own strengths and combos and can be switched quickly in combat.

One other thing worth noting are hidden treasure rooms that you can only find when you’re under the effects of a certain purchasable potion. It’s an interesting mechanic, yet ultimately it was a bit cumbersome to manage legitimately when you only had a limited amount of money to buy the potions and only limited space to carry them, when that space was better used to carry items with more practical applications.

The trophy list was what you would expect, with the hardest trophy naturally being to finish the game on the hardest difficulty. Overall I had a good time with Legend of Kay Anniversary – it held my attention for a few days and I consider it a more than worthy addition to the list.

Platinum 2:03 p.m on the 10th of April 2017

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For a long time I only heard whispers of the name Nier. It was a non-Final Fantasy RPG published by Square Enix and directed by a name I never knew but I’ll now never forget – Yoko Taro.

My first introduction to Nier was through Yahtzee. He did his usual 5 minutes of tearing it apart though he was admittedly a little nicer to Nier than he is to most other games. From what I could gather from the review, it sounded like Enix had tried to do something different but unfortunately not many people cared enough to buy it. By the time I had expressed interest in playing it, there was not a copy to be found for PS3, not even in second hand bins or Trademe.

Somehow Jess managed to get a hold of it. She regaled me with her experience of Nier and filled in the gaps that Yahtzee had left out about the nature of game and what made it so unique. Not long after that, it was announced at E3 that a sequel was being developed and that announcement came with a free demo that was universally praised for it’s content, which Yoko Taro had been working with Platinum Games to develop.

All of this eventually compelled me to ask Jess if I could borrow her copy, to which she obliged.

April 12th 2017 I came home from work to see the game had arrived, promptly dropped all previous plans and settled in for my first night of Nier.

I was sold even before the title screen. The pre-title game preview video showed snippets of what I will later come to realise as content spanning from beginning to the end of the game. Though without that knowledge all I saw were moments of unbridled insanity in the form of gameplay and cutscenes. I knew was in for a heck of a time.

Nier starts off in a dystopian not-so-distant future where you’re introduced to the two main characters of the game, Nier (name changeable) and his daughter Yonah. The game establishes a bleak and and sombre tone, with Nier caring for his daughter in the ruins of an abandoned building, who has has an affliction called the “Black Scrawl”. Minutes later they are attacked and you’re led into the tutorial, where you are given a sneak peek of all the abilities you will unlock in the future. The combat is fast and precise and the enemies come in waves and waves.

Visually the combat was starkly contrasted against the practically grayscale aesthetic of the environment. The dark blacks and reds of Nier’s magical abilities popped vibrantly off the background and this is backed by a fantastic and haunting music track comprised solely of a chanting choir. I had heard Nier had good music, that was very quickly proven true. It was easily the best tutorial of game I’d ever played and I was completely sold on playing more.

It just gets better from there. After the tutorial, the game jumps forward over 1000 years. The grey and bleak environments are replaced with inviting greens and blues and a pleasant village, not unlike what you’d see in other fantasy games. Nier and Yonah haven’t aged a day and Yonah’s still ill. The game invites you to freely explore the small town where you learn that Nier is a well regarded protector of the village, which I think is a nice change to most other eastern RPGs where main characters have a tendency to be written as outcasts.

From there the game improves at a steady pace. The stakes constantly increase, you’re introduced to well written and fleshed out characters that each have their own story that compliments the world well, the music is consistently good and the playable world is appropriately sized, with four major inhabited settlements to explore. There’s constant experimentation with the gameplay formula and sometimes Nier will borrow from completely different genres for large stretches of gameplay. Nier is never boring and moves at an immaculate pace.

The trophy list asks a lot of the player and getting the Platinum is a commitment. It was easily the most grinding I’ve done in a game since Kingdom Hearts. It could have been worse, too, had I not had access to the US-only DLC that made certain crafting components easier to obtain.

Nier is an incredible RPG experience that I’ll never forget. The sequel is even better – more on that one day.

The Final Verse 7:11 p.m on the 24th of April 2017

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After I played Nier and moved directly onto the sequel, there wasn’t really any other game I wanted to play. I was in dire need of a palate cleanser, because I couldn’t help but compare any other game I played to the NieR series, and nothing else could be held to such a standard. That was until early July when Brendan purchased the Crash Bandicoot: N-sane Trilogy which was the perfect game to help me move on.

What can I say about Crash Bandicoot that hasn’t been said before. It is the highest selling game on PlayStation 1, almost anyone who knows what a Playstation is has tried it out and there’s really no other game out there that has successfully managed to make a platformer that is such a perfect blend of 2D and 3D platforming sensibilities.

I played it a few times when I was 8 or 9 years old, but I never managed to finish it, or really even come close. So it was a liberating experience to return to the franchise which has been extremely faithfully recreated and is mechanically practically a 1:1 remake, only now it’s the best looking platformer on the PS4. Everything has been graphically retooled to look like an authentic 2017 representation of the original 1996 game and the music has also been redone.

I played through the game and the sequels over about a week and enjoyed every second of it. The first game still held up mechanically and provided some pretty challenging platforming levels. The Trophies required mastery of the full game, including collecting all of the gems and beating the newly added Time Trials. Crash Bandicoot was a lot of fun and I’m happy to finally tick it off my list.

The N. Trepid Crash Bandicoot! 2:45 p.m on the 5th of July 2017

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After burning through Crash Bandicoot in a few days I decided to take Crash 2 at a more leisurely pace – mainly because I found it to be much harder than the first game. So for some reason I decided to do something equally as, if not more difficult and get the last few GTA3 trophies.

I picked up GTA3 as part of the PS2 GTA trilogy pack on special, with the intention of filling another empty gap in my childhood. When I was younger I had played GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas but I didn’t even come close to completing either of them before I resorted to cheats and gave up.

May 13th 2017 I completed my first mission and enjoyed the nostalgic journey as I quickly reached and then promptly failed the mission that had bested me almost 20 years ago. Surprised and disappointed, I put the game back down again, resigning myself to fact that I was just terrible at GTA. A month later I picked it up and reached the second island in a few hours.

Grand Theft Auto III is an old game but it’s still plain to see how revolutionary it was back in the day. One of the most impressive aesthetic features was that rain effects will leave puddles on the ground that actually have reflections, which was something pretty rare to have implemented in a game in the year 2000. Though this enhancement was juxtaposed against things like an inability to load cars and people more than about 20 metres in front of the player. Also, on console, the right analogue stick did not control the camera.

All of that aside, Grand Theft Auto III still delivers an enjoyable experience with an entertaining story. If you’re going for 100% completion though, you’re in for a time. There’s many little side activities and challenges that all have trophies tied to them, along with an overarching trophy simply for 100%ing everything the game has to offer. Some of the content was very challenging and mastery over the vehicles in the game was required for one of the toughest trophies,  Where we’re going, we don’t need roads awarded for completing each of the off-road driving challenges, which currently sits at 3.5% completion. It was a challenging list for an entertaining game and a great start to my GTA Franchise completion goal.

King of Liberty City 12:03 p.m on the 20th of July 2017

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I jumped into Crash 2 directly after Crash 1 and found it almost immediately harder. The added ability of a slide and high jump/stomp introduced just enough complexity to make each of the levels more involved and challenging, especially in the extra and bonus stages. The quality of the level design had a notable increase over the first game, with less reliance on Crash 1’s classic “bounce on a bunch of boxes in a row” challenges and revolving more around timing the clearance of multiple different obstacles in a row.

The trophy list was practically identical to the first game, with a couple of added trophies to do some specific secret actions like step on the polar bear’s head in the hub world for extra lives. Crash Bandicoot 2 was an excellent sequel and I would say it’s the game I appreciate most out of the trilogy.

The N. Credible Crash Bandicoot 2:19 p.m on the 21st of July 2017

90

Crash Bandicoot 3 is the one I’d had the most prior experience playing, when I purchased the PS1 Classic version on PS3, though I still never finished it. Out of the 3 games I always considered Warped to be my favourite, though after finally playing through Crash 2 I started to question that ranking.

Crash Bandicoot 3 is definitely the easiest game of the trilogy. Obstacles are spaced further apart and tend to be shorter, with the level design’s emphasis more on creating an adventure rather than a challenge. The optional challenges also didn’t demand nearly as much of the player as the previous 2 games did. After each boss fight you are rewarded with a new ability that you didn’t have in the previous games that makes Crash 3 even easier still, like the ability to double jump or float – you even get a bazooka. The difference between the introduced abilities in Crash 2 and 3 are a good example of the balance of complexity vs challenge.

All that said, I still think Crash Bandicoot 3 is my favourite of the series. It’s well paced and has a decent difficulty curve, relative to it’s intended difficulty. The worlds are varied and exciting and it’s just generally a very well designed experience. The trophy list was in the same vein as the previous games and was definitely the easiest to complete. Warped is an excellent game and a climactic to end to an astounding trilogy.

The N. Vincible Crash Bandicoot 2:28 p.m on the 21st of July 2017

91

Next on the list of Nostalgia-fuelled PS2 remasters, Fahrenheit. I picked it up to introduce Alex, the new man in my life, to the polarising Auteur named David Cage. I had briefly tried Fahrenheit on PS2 when I was younger, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for at the time. Since then I had bought the PS4 remaster of his highest acclaimed game Heavy Rain (more on that later) and decided it was time to try it again alongside Alex, after our previous success playing narrative-based games with each other.

That was definitely the best way to play Fahrenheit, because you need to someone to laugh with while the game takes itself so seriously as the story inevitably goes completely off the rails. Things start off relatively simple, establishing a murder mystery, but you get to play the part of the murderer and the investigators which creates a unique sense of cognitive dissonance that really works for the game, as you’re confronted with the decision of whether or not you want to solve the murder or let the murderer get away with the crime.

During the course of this story, the game excels at having the player progress through this mystery and evokes a tense and pessimistic atmosphere through smart design choices like limited time to pick dialogue options and a failure condition represented by a constantly fluctuating “psyche” meter that is affected by dialogue choices and performance against the game’s “combat” checks in the form of ‘Simon Says’ style prompts. Incidentally, those ‘Simon Says’ parts varied wildly in difficulty and in certain sections proved to be equally challenging endurance tests as they were reflex challenges. I’m looking at you, living room poltergeist (credit to Alex).

The characters are well written and have established personal motives and the game succeeds at establishing a bleak atmosphere. Fahrenheit uses the limited resources afforded to the PS2 well, with a focus on believably animated characters at the expense of world textures. It was a smart sacrifice for a story so dependant on the believability of the characters.

But, impressive mocap animation aside, the believability falls apart when the story takes a dramatic turn to the supernatural and what was once a grounded and intimate story suddenly spans across the globe and centres on an illuminati-style World Domination plot, and all the while Fahrenheit doesn’t show a hint of self-awareness, playing the story as seriously as the gritty detective drama it previously was. That was the point when having someone to laugh at the game with was really needed – playing through those sections alone would have been jarring and off putting.

Narrative flaws aside, Fahrenheit is a compelling experience. It’s a creative attempt to merge cinematic storytelling with interactive gameplay the likes of which hadn’t been seen before in a game. Nowadays its influence can be seen in many other games that attempt to achieve that same effect, but never as well as David Cage achieved. The trophy list was actually pretty decent and asked the player to approach a lot of the game in different ways to trigger outcomes I may not have thought of before. Overall I had a lot of fun with Fahrenheit and and I’m glad to have seen David Cage’s origins.

 Indigo Prophecy Master 5:11 a.m on the 31st of July 2017

92

Once I had finally warmed up to the new direction that Deus Ex was taking, I was genuinely excited that a new game in the series was coming out. Almost everything I had saw from the previews and trailers was beginning to convince me that Deus Ex was going in the right direction and thematically establishing a relationship with the very first game.

In reality, I got a disjointed ‘sequel’ to Human Revolution that starts in the middle of a story I was not a part of, and ends about ⅓ the way through the story it was telling. Initially this did not bother me, because Mankind Divided is a competent game from a purely technical perspective. Fundamentally, it plays very similarly to Human Revolution, but introduces fun new abilities, including one called Blink – I mean – ‘Icarus Dash’ which is, well yeah – it’s Blink from Dishonored. The new abilities are introduced with an appropriate story justification early on in the game and then the player is sent on their way to explore the main hub of the game – Prague.

Initially I was disappointed that Prague was the only main city in the game, considering that Human Revolution had two major city hubs to explore – Detroit and Shanghai, which each had their own very unique presentation and a total landmass that dwarfed Mankind Divided’s Prague. But what Prague lacked in landmass it made up for in detail and verticality. Almost every one of the many shops, storage rooms, houses and apartments in Prague were able to accessed and had something unique to offer, whether it be an email or a useful piece of equipment, most of the time cleverly hidden.

It is a shame that the story was so rushed and seemed so unimportant, because the established setting was interesting. The world was clearly affected by the events of the previous game and in Prague augmented people were treated as second class citizens, in a heavy handed metaphor of both African American slaves and Holocaust victims all at once.

Personally I thought it was an appropriate response to the events of the previous game and it does a good job of thematically setting a scenario that could lead to the events of the very first game. Plus it was a nice change playing a Western developed game where my character wasn’t regarded as a hero, but actually shunned from the majority of society. It was a compelling setting and drew me into the game more.

Those positive aspects and sporadic ‘Deus Ex 2000’ name drops initially blinded me from the fact that I bought an incomplete game. Since then Jim Sterling has done a Jimquisition issue that revealed Mankind Divided’s troubled development that resulted in them cutting the game into 3 parts that they would release separately.

To make matters worse, Square Enix have since announced that they have shelved the Deus Ex name. Even after all of my criticism of their treatment of the Deus Ex name, that genuinely saddens me because I think that ultimately they were on the right path to do the Deus Ex franchise right. Here’s to a decade from now when someone else develops a new IP that they slam the Deus Ex name on and we start this shaky process all over again.

But that’s not all! Packaged in with the story came a procedurally generated minigame that was surprisingly good. It took the mechanical base of Mankind Divided and moved it thematically into a “virtual simulation” where you could continue to play a character with abilities very similar to Adam Jensen’s, to complete virtual missions. This feature was not received well by critics, especially Jim Sterling who questioned the addition of a game that used “free to play elements”, the worst of which being Loot Box microtransactions, in a full price AAA game.

Personally, I have no major issue with the addition because it is just that – an addition, to the main game that you do not need to play. I wanted to enjoy more of the technical achievement that was Mankind Divided’s gameplay and this minigame provided that in unlimited capacity. Were the loot boxes pointless and annoying? Of course they were and they definitely marred my experience, but they didn’t completely ruin it for me, because the strong base gameplay foundation was there.

Had they simply released this minigame as a standalone free-to-play feature, the implementation of Loot Boxes would have made a lot more sense and I think the feature would have been far better received from a critical view. Honestly though, that mini game plays like a higher budget first person perspective version of Volume, I feel kinda bad saying I enjoyed it even more than I enjoyed Volume.

The trophy list asked the standard things you would expect from a game like this, though it had quite a few trophies for the minigame but that wasn’t too much of an issue, due to how much much fun I had playing it. There was also a trophy to finish the game in a Permadeath Hard Mode, that was also quite enjoyable. Overall Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a good game. Does it deserve the Deus Ex title? Not quite, but it was getting close. I want the next iteration, whenever that is, to learn from it’s mistakes and make something truly deserving of Warren Spector’s name.

#CantKillProgress (Really? A hashtag on a fucking trophy…) 2:23 a.m on the 14th of August 2017

93

I acquired Stories: TPoD through Playstation Plus with no real intention of playing it. At first glance of the name I assumed it was a narrative driven game along the lines of the Telltale games, but the screenshots and trailer showed something more akin to a Diablo clone. Eventually I decided to give it a try.

Stories: The Path of Destinies may sound like a ridiculous name but it almost perfectly sums up what the game is about – aside from the Stories bit. It’s just one Story. But there are destinies in that story and multiple paths towards those destinies. Now I’m wondering why they didn’t call it Story: The Paths of Destinies. Why am I talking about the title instead of the game? Because there’s not much to say. It’s a unique concept I guess, it’s not particularly ambitious though and it’s heavily marred by technical issues like frame rate drops and glitches.

The Story and each of the Paths of Destinies are incessantly narrated with a script that thinks it is self aware and funny and maybe it is to some people. If you think the idea of a narrator referencing Starcraft or Citizen Kane in a game about an anthropomorphic fox killing evil rats in a fantasy environment, then you might enjoy this game. Narrators can be good in games, Bastion is a prime example of this – Stories is not.

Each playthrough of the Story will take about half an hour and there’s 24 different Paths to their respective Destinies. Almost every one of them ends in tragic death and the aim is to find the correct sequence of events or PATHS of DESTINIES until you find the correct PATH to the “best” DESTINY where you kill the bad guy and run away with the girl.

It was alright. The combat was rudimentary, there were only 7 or 8 unique areas to explore throughout the 24 PATHS OF DESTINIES. The writing was varied in quality but trended good, narrator aside. Getting all the endings was kinda boring by the end, which the trophy list required – among other assorted tasks that weren’t super interesting. Overall it was a nice distraction between bigger and better things ahead.

Grey fox is my pup (yep, that sure was a pointless Metal Gear Solid reference) 1:16 p.m on the 14th of August 2017

94

I’ll start off by saying I would have had this Platinum trophy so much sooner if there wasn’t a mandatory trophy to take a photo of yourself with a Playstation Camera. I don’t blame the Burnout devs for including such a trophy because it is a neat part of the game, but still… ugh.

Anyway – Burnout Paradise is awesome. Every other open world racing game that has since come out owes a lot to it. Criterion games revolutionised the racing game formula with it’s open hub world and pathless races. At the time the game looked fantastic, the textures were crisp, the colours were vibrant and the presentation was tasteful, with rare restraint shown when applying the “Bloom” filter which was all the rage in video game development back then, in lieu of well done textures and environments.

Though one of Paradise’s most impressive features was the “seamless” online play, supported by a UI that is a masterclass in design, with simple on-the-fly d-pad inputs required to access any available online lobby. No pausing, no unnecessary inputs, simply press a couple of buttons and you’re playing exactly the same game but now with other people. Not even a loading screen.

I’ve never seen anything so technically competent as their in-game interface and I wish more games would have taken note in a world of overly complicated and garish interfaces marring otherwise high budget experiences. Good trophy list with the unfortunate exception of the above mentioned one. Great game overall, really enjoyed completing it.

Burnout Paradise Elite 11:10 p.m on the 15th of August 2017

95

I held off purchasing The Witness for some time. Despite the good things I’d heard and the almost universal praise it had received, Jonathan Blow’s long awaited game about drawing lines didn’t really interest me that much. I heard the same initial praise and then subsequent criticism from many other people I respected the gaming opinion of, that the game was fun until 100+ line puzzles down the track when you realise that’s all the game is.

They’re not wrong about that, there sure are a lot of line puzzles. I think I did about 400. But I enjoyed it far more than I expected to and that enjoyment did not wane. The Witness is a clever game. Jason Schreier from Kotaku put it best in his sales pitch for the iOS version that was just released – “a Metroidvania where all the tools are in your head.” Each area strives to teach you a new rule or condition that you will be able to apply to another part in the game, it is purely up to you where you decide you want to start. All of this culminates in a final exam that truly tests what you have learned, in what I consider an almost perfect example of how to end a game.

But there’s no way that it’s worth the original $50+ price it launched at. As the time of writing this, another game came out recently called Hob (more on that one day) and it provides a very solid gaming experience for less than $30. In my eyes, The Witness did not provide $20 more entertainment than Hob did.

Aside from that gripe, I would recommend The Witness to anybody. The world it is set in is gorgeous and full of secrets that seem to provide an insight into Jonathan Blow’s thought processes. These secrets occasionally border on feeling a bit pretentious, but that’s not too unexpected or unwelcome considering the developer!

The trophy list was extremely straight forward, featuring the one of the smallest lists with an accompanying Platinum I’ve seen in a game, but consisting mainly of gold trophies to keep the point value comparable to other games. The list is also a hilarious representation of the people who appeared to play the game using a guide, as the one trophy that had been specifically designed to be practically impossible if you went through with a guide is significantly more rare than the others. I am glad to say I genuinely enjoyed The Witness and I look forward to Blow’s next game.

Platinum 2:58 a.m on the 30th of August 2017

96

Tomb Raider is one of those franchises I always wanted to get into, even back in the PS1 days. When I was younger I would spend literally hours just running around in Lara Croft’s mansion in Tomb Raider 2. I briefly tried the actual game but the difficulty was so beyond my ability at the time that I never finished the first level.

Since then Lara Croft has been rebooted 3 times. I decided to start my Tomb Raiding journey, beginning with the 2nd reboot of PS2 and PS3 games that was released in a Trilogy for PS3. So yes, this game is the next in my line of PS2 remasters. For a PS2 game, Tomb Raider: Legend is well ahead of its time. The physics based puzzles, crisp textures and impressive animations were a pleasant surprise. The 1080p upscale given to the PS3 release was just what the game needed to feel like a competitive PS3 game in it’s own right.

I enjoyed my time with Tomb Raider: Legend. It’s a game that plays itself straight and knows exactly what it’s target audience is – the kind where a scantily clad woman with large breasts explores ancient ruins and shoots things with guns, mainly her trusty dual pistols. It’s a formula that was established back in the 90s and needed little improvement in the 00s if it wanted to maintain its particular audience.

Gameplay-wise Legend is playable but not as competently designed as the other aspects of the game. The animations and models are well realised, but the actual execution of movement and shooting feels more clunky than I would have liked. Though the gameplay was a nice mix of combat, platforming and puzzles that kept me entertained throughout the campaign.

The trophy list was standard adventure game fare, with some speed run trophies included, though they didn’t have very difficult time requirements. Overall Tomb Raider: Legend was an enjoyable game and I have already moved on to the next one in the series, more on that one day.

Master of Tomb Raider: Legend 11:09 p.m on the 1st of September 2017

97

My first exposure to the PSP was LocoRoco. Jess introduced it to me, warning me that I’d never swear so much at a game that looked so adorable. She was certainly right about that. LocoRoco is a deceptive game, it’s got the aesthetic of a children’s cartoon and the challenge of a difficult reflex/twitch 2D platformer.

LocoRoco’s controls were unique but simplistic, being tailored towards ease-of-use on the PSP. Unlike most games, instead of moving your character through the level, you tilted the world and let your character roll in that direction. It was the foundation for some interesting puzzle platforming that escalated in difficulty quickly.

I finished the base game on PSP about 8 years ago, but I didn’t go much further than that. Without the added incentive of trophies I couldn’t convince myself to overcome the unforgiving time trials and find all of the well hidden secrets in the 50+ levels of the game. That all changed when LocoRoco HD was announced for PS4 in 2017.

I bought the remaster on the 9th of May, very soon after it’s release and eventually made up for my shortcomings back on the PSP. LocoRoco stood the test of time, it’s unique and lighthearted aesthetic and familiar yet still challenging gameplay still had it’s charm from before and with a little help from the internet, I finally completed all it had to offer and obtained my Platinum trophy

A Peaceful Planet 1:56 p.m on the 6th of September 2017

98

Where do I even begin.

I guess we’ll start with a bit of an introduction to my experience with Suda51. I’m not sure how I was introduced to one of his breakout games, Killer7 on PS2, but I’m glad I was. It was the first “weird” game I’d ever played. The story was nonsensical, the visuals were disjointed and psychodelic, the gameplay was completely unconventional, playing like a sort of rail shooter/point and click escape-the-room type hybrid.

Every few minutes my senses would be delightfully assaulted by some new crazy off the wall random occurrence. It felt as though the game director Goichi Suda didn’t care what you thought about his game, he just wanted you to experience something truly different. I never finished Killer7, I played it back when I wasn’t so eager to rise to a challenge, but one day I want to go back and rectify that, ideally as the result of a remaster to PS4. I can dream.

But Suda51’s work was not done. More crazy offbeat ideas formed into games like the cult classic No More Heroes series on the Wii. Soon after that, Shadows of the Damned was released on PS3, a game about a Mexican Demon Hunter named, and I quote “Garcia Fucking Hotspur” who has to rescue his girlfriend from the devil, along with his sidekick – a talking skull named “Johnson” who can morph into a motorcycle, a torch and a gun called “The Big Boner”.

Yup.

What follows is a game that takes the tired genre of the 3rd person shooter of which many had been released before and turns it on it’s head. Not so much mechanically, but by laughing at itself and the player for the entire duration of it’s short campaign.

At it’s base technical accomplishment Shadows of the Damned is nothing special, but it oozes that classic Suda style, that eclectic mix of themes and genres that culminate in yet another truly unique experience. It’s funny, juvenile, touching, artistic, crass and intense all at once. Though it definitely feels more grounded than his previous works, which was likely due to the influence of the co-designer Shinji Mikami, an industry legend in horror game design and a little bit more sane than Suda.

Though, the less said about Shadows of the Damned the better, you really need to experience it for yourself. You can guarantee that you’ll never see the ideas and themes in Shadows of the Damned in another game. The trophy list is your usual standard action game fare. Though it was slightly annoying that the difficulty trophies did not stack, in hindsight I’m glad I got to experience the game two more times when I would have otherwise put it down after one playthrough.

There is one notable trophy, not because of it’s requirements but because of the name
 Now That’s A Big Fuckin’ Gun which is the first trophy I’ve seen include an uncensored swear word. I guess Suda gets away with more than most – I mean, who’s going to tell him no?

Great game, glad to have it in my top 100, here’s to many more Suda games in future.

Fleming’s Pride 8:52 p.m on the 8th of September 2017

99

I finished the final game in the Sands of Time trilogy soon after I achieved the Platinum for Warrior Within. Mechanically it was an underwhelming end to the trilogy, failing to replicate the intuitive and well paced platforming gameplay of the first game or the visceral combat and sprawling environmental puzzles of Warrior Within. Narratively it was acceptable, there were some good characters and the story wrapped up nicely. Overall though, I was disappointed.

The Two Thrones almost didn’t make it into my top 100, but because I did enjoy the previous games and I had so much personal history with the franchise, it made sense for it to be the penultimate step to my goal.

The trophy list was nothing special, with a similar list to the other 2 games, though it was lacking in some of the more interesting trophies they had, mainly due to the fact that there was less interesting content to attribute a trophy to in the first place. I eventually obtained the  Sand Snake trophy, to finish the game without dying – not without some exploitation near the end of the playthrough in which I quit to the dashboard before dying on the last boss.

Two Thrones 5:25 p.m on the 19th of September 2017

Honourable Mentions

Alongside the Platinum trophies I have acquired, there have been games that I completed but did not actually have a Platinum trophy to obtain. Some of these games understandably did not have a Platinum trophy due to being quite short or easy – narrative-heavy games that lacked a failure condition or challenge fit this category. (However, the criteria for a game being given the right to a Platinum trophy seems almost arbitrary, especially nowadays.)

Flower is the second game released by ThatGameCompany, the first being a flash game called Fl0w, a top down 2D adventure about being a fish dragon skeleton. Fl0w resonates with me because it’s the first game I’ve played with the initial mindset of “kill the things before they kill me” and slowly learning over the course of playing that not every game is about conflict and not every loss is bad. Fl0w’s concept of challenge and conflict were far more fluid, losses and gains of mass were celebrated and penalised in a more peaceful, zen manner.

That was enough to set me up for Flower, a game about the theoretical dreams (and nightmares) of a series of houseplants. At it’s technical core it was a very competent showcase of the Dualshock 3’s new sixaxis feature, where you would control the game by physically tilting your controller. But beyond that it was a truly unique and meditative journey through a handful of distinctive environments that each have their own compelling gameplay features.

But ThatGameCompany wasn’t done yet. Their latest interactive artistic achievement is Journey, one of the most beautifully designed games ever created and a genuine argument that game development can be truly considered an art form.

It’s flawless from a technical perspective, the movement and controls of Journey are intuitive and responsive. Superb level and environment design subtly guides the player forward and encourages a slow and contemplative approach towards exploration of the masterfully crafted world. Journey is a perfect realisation of it’s own vision.

I briefly touched on Thomas Was Alone in entry 66 – Volume. It was a quaint little 2d platformer that provided an interesting narrative seamlessly interwoven in it’s puzzle oriented platforming gameplay, narrated by a famous name in british cinema, Danny Wallace.

Entwined was free on PS+ one month, I’d never heard of it before and it’s unlikely that I would have heard of it at all had it not been. For that reason I am glad it did make it to PS+, because Entwined was a very enjoyable and challenging game and I think it was deserving of a Platinum trophy. Considering it has a Gold trophy called Entwined which you obtain only when you have gotten every other trophy, the developers seemed to think so too.

The gameplay was simple, yet challenging. You control 2 entities at once, with the left and right analogue sticks respectively. You fly them through patterns that are independent to each other and the aim is to miss as few as possible. During the Campaign there is little penalty for failure, but a trophy is awarded for perfect play and achieving the “best” ending, not that the game has any narrative worth praising.

The visuals, however, make up for the lack of narrative. Vibrant colours, unique shapes and varied environments catch the eye and make the sometimes infuriatingly challenging gameplay a more pleasant experience. The endgame challenges were challenging and I feel as though I did a Platinum trophy’s worth of work to obtain them – this is further vindicated by the 1.48%(0.4%PSN) completion rate of the  Entwined trophy. Though overall I had a great time.

Considering how much media attention this game got and how decently sized it is, I am fairly surprised that there was no Platinum trophy assigned to The Unfinished Swan. The game was praised for it’s very inventive first level, where you start in a completely white environment armed only with dollops of black paint that you use to mark your way through the level. Reviews criticized the rest of the game for not living up to the inventiveness of it’s introduction throughout the rest of the game.

Personally I think it was a really enjoyable game. Each area featured some new mechanic that you needed to learn in order to complete the levels. Each concept was unique and interesting in it’s own way. The narrative supported the journey through the game well, and ultimately ended up as an unexpectedly complex story masquerading as a fairytale, told page by page as you found them through the levels.

Other than the usual completion based trophies, there was one notable trophy called
 Minimalist that required completion of the first level by only throwing three balls of paint, so ostensibly blind. It was a genuinely difficult trophy and only further justified the inclusion of a Platinum trophy.

Proteus is another PS+ gem that I’d heard a little bit about beforehand. It’s a game developed by a musician and a guy who has only ever made Proteus. Needless to say, it’s not conventional. Proteus is a game purely about exploration. There’s no written objective, no means of failure and no visible means of success. The “narrative” progresses with or without you, in the form of the transition of seasons, starting in Spring and ending in Winter.

The trophies are almost purely based on exploration, though it’s some of the most thorough exploration requirements I’ve seen in a game. There’s no checklist to tell you what percentage of things you’ve explored, no visible hints as to how explore certain things, you’re completely on your own to explore the gently transitioning pastel coloured island that is Proteus. I’m not sure if I liked Proteus, but I do respect Proteus.

Mercury HG immediately appealed to the gamer in me that used to play Labyrinth, the wooden contraption with the two knobs and a ball bearing you’d manipulate toward the end. The natural video game progression of that was Marble Madness and all its mutations. Mercury HG is what I consider the peak of that evolution. Archer Maclean has innovated a classic concept and pushed every ounce of nuance he could out of the many unique and challenging levels in the game.

Mercury HG deserved a Platinum trophy without question. It was an elegant looking game that controlled smoothly and featured a very competitive and punishing leaderboard that would show how many attempts it took for you to reach your scores. Score was averaged out by how fast you were, how many collectables you got and how much of your mercury’s mass you had remaining. The interface was minimalist yet informative and made an already remarkable game just that much better.

The rarest trophy sits at 1.36% completion, obtained by a little over 500 people and I am very glad I persevered to be one of those people. My leaderboard, at a glance, will be a mixed bag of low scores with high attempts and high scores with low attempts and vise versa. Mercury HG’s unforgiving memory about my varying level of skill relative to my leaderboard competitors almost broke me and it is potentially the game I have rage quit the most, but in the end I won over myself as much as I won the game, learning to accept failure and celebrate success with every new attempt.

One day at Puppy Games Studio:

“Hey, what game should we make next?”

“I dunno, Space Invaders?”

“Sounds good.”

And so Titan Attacks! was born. Pesschew waccsh!

Before I got my 100th Platinum I made sure to go back to Rain and 100% it, because it is worth talking about. Rain is yet another free monthly PS+ darling that I decided to play on a whim. I didn’t look up reviews or anything, I just liked the cover art of the game and wanted to try something new. That was a good decision because I’m concerned the game’s mediocre reviews would have tainted my initial opinion of it.

Without that lense clouding my judgement, I got to experience a very atmospheric puzzle platformer with a gentle narrative that drives some genuinely disturbing and tense moments, interspersed with an optimistic, fairytale-esque feel. Rain is worth the journey and the pros by far outweigh the few technical and narrative cons that I wouldn’t have even considered if I hadn’t read the reviews after the fact. I would go so far as to say that Rain is criminally underrated.

100

This space was originally reserved for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Portal 2 wasn’t supposed to be my 100th Platinum, but in hindsight I’m glad that it is. Unlike Portal 2, Catalyst was not a thematic and mechanical evolution of it’s predecessor.

Unlike Portal 2, Catalyst did not appear to understand what made the first game so good and evolve on that while organically adding new ideas that only further improved the gameplay. Unlike Portal 2, Catalyst was a misguided attempt to appeal to a niche player base while also trying to draw in a market they had no chance appealing to in the first place, making the game a clumsy, disjointed mess.

I’d played the first Portal but unfortunately it was never released with trophies on PS3, so that will never be reflected in my list. Not to mention the first time I played Portal was XBOX 360. I had picked it up long after the memes had reached their peak, I knew all of the jokes, seen a lot of gameplay and had the story well and truly spoiled for me. Regardless, Portal stood out to me as one of the greats that it’s almost universally considered as. I wasn’t even that interested in puzzle games at the time, but Portal was proof that puzzle games can be incredibly compelling in the right hands, which was proven yet again with the Talos Principle, The Witness, and of course, Portal 2.

I first played Portal 2 not long after release on PC. I refused to let myself be spoiled, I walked into the game almost blind and about eight hours later stepped away from it, the fantastic ending still playing in repeat in my mind. Portal 2 did everything right in terms of what is expected from a sequel. It thematically and narratively changed the formula enough to feel different, yet it maintained the core gameplay that would be expected from a sequel to Portal.

If I were asked, based purely on both Portal 1 and 2’s single player games which was the better game, I’m not sure that I could answer that. They’re too thematically different to be fairly compared. Portal 1 is an experiment lab, Portal 2 is a Theme Park ride. They each excel at their goals in that respect.

However, Portal 2 has multiplayer. And it’s really, really good.

One of the main criticisms of Portal 2 single player was that it was somewhat lacking in the puzzles department, which is understandable due to the clear Theme Park ride-nature of the campaign. Portal 2 was a celebration of itself and it’s players, it was a shining example of a genre that previously made little sense – the Puzzle/Action game. For those who wanted the intricate, mind bending and slower paced nature of the first game’s puzzles, all they had to do was find a friend and jump into the co-op campaign.

And that’s precisely what I did. Portal 2 was the first of many co-op outings with Alex, after a successful faux-co-op experience in Fahrenheit. I’d played through parts of the co-op campaign several years before, but by the point we picked it up again I’d basically forgotten the puzzles, I only remembered the surprisingly good story that followed the two robots through Aperture Laboratory.

17th September, 2017 we obtained out first co-op trophy  Team Building and nine days later  You Saved Science for finishing the co-op campaign. That was not the end of our co-op journey through Portal 2 just yet though, as there were still some very difficult trophies yet to obtain which required completing some of the game’s tests under different restrictions. After a lot of friendly debating, trial and error and little bit of help from the internet, with Alex’s help I had obtained almost every trophy for Portal 2.

And while my good friends including Dave and Jess were away picking up supplies for the party later that night, and 8 years after I had obtained my very first Platinum trophy…

 Portal 2 Platinum Trophy 2:41 p.m on the 1st of December 2017

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