5 Well Worth The Effort

What a platinum trophy should look like

After hours of stumbling around for Riddler trophies and manipulating my PS3 clock to get the stupid "Calendar Man" trophy, I earned the platinum for Arkam City, which turns out to be my 40th earned to date. Now while that's not very impressive when compared duck360 or Hakoom or other hardcore trophy hunters out there, I'm proud of the total considering none of them are freebee ones from the Hanna Montana game or similar crap you can finish in a day or two. But do I hold all of those blue glittery mounds of manliness I earned in the same light? Definitely not. Looking back, if I had an actual trophy case to display this trophies (sob), here's the 5, in no particular order, I would make sure to put in the front.

Dude, I just keep dying!

Demon's Souls
Platinum Name: Toughest Soul Trophy (aptly named)

I tackled Demon's Souls (also know as Demon Souls, Demon's Soul, and fuckshitcockballs) many months after its release, hesitant over the famed difficulty it boasted and waiting until the wiki was robust enough that any question I had could be answered. Some might see this as being cheap, but whatever, it's freaking Demon's Souls, chill your balls. While definitely hard, I actually found most of the levels fairly tolerable with some patience. Most of the challenges were more unforgiving than hard, in my opinion, which really prompted me to take my time with each area to insure I limited the amount of times I had to chuck my controller against the wall.

To gain enough boss souls to net the platinum, you need to play through the story about 3.5 times and, unlike 99.9% of games with a new game+ mode, things actually get harder when starting over with your character. I found several strategies I used against bosses suddenly ineffective and trying to get through level 5-1, the Defilement of my ass, became one of the darkest periods of my life. I cannot count the amount of times I got knocked off the cliff towards the end, forcing you start the board again. Never before had I ever gotten so close to rage quitting before in my life.

But after a shit-ton of hours and lots of frustration, I rose above like a nerd rising from the ashes of something nerdy! Now to just muster enough courage to start Dark Souls...

Merry Christmas, bitches! From the 1%!

Killzone 2
Platinum Name: War Hero (ballin!)

I like shooters, but would never consider myself a shooter guy per say because my tolerance for multiplayer is somewhat limited, which is basically the backbone of the FPS genre. Sure, it's fun mowing down kids and hearing everyone call each other gay and fag, but I feel like I would rather play something new rather than the same thing over and over and over again. Nonetheless, Killzone 2 was the first multiplayer mode since the N64 era that I ate up with a spoon. Combined with a very solid campaign, Killzone 2 hinted at the potential the franchise had before Killzone 3 dropped its turd on our face (ok, that was harsh, but it just wasn't as good).

The two biggest hurdles to this platinum are beating the game on the hardest difficulty and getting within the top 1% in the weekly leaderboards. The first was probably one of the most grueling hard runs I ever had to do. You needed to have you shit together because, if you to a second to scratch you face or respond to something happening in reality, prepare to suck some lead. The Helghast attack with poise and relentlessness and each board felt like you were just scrapping by (in a good way). The final knife battle was probably the only real frustrating part,needing more luck than skill to survive, but thanks to the checkpoint system, beating the campaign on the hardest difficulty was hard, but by no means unfair.

When I first saw the 1% trophy, I originally just decided on passing on this platinum. But after getting the hang of the multiplayer and seeing that I wasn't a slouch, I waited until I had a break from work and dedicated a week to playing Killzone and Killzone alone. All day. Like a BOSS! The hardest part wasn't netting alot of points, since I usually placed in the top 3 in kills every round, but playing...so...much...Killzone. Whenever I left the dark cave that was my basement to rejoin society, I would see that people would pass me by the boat load on the leaderboards so on I had to keep playing, even when it became more of a chore than fun. I decided to take a break on the weekend which ofcourse was a 1.5 XP weekend, so that plan went out the window fairly quickly for fear of falling out of the 1% and wasting all the hours committed. It was by far the most I ever played of a single game in such a small time period but, looking back, it was definitely worth it when I heard that chime on Sunday night.

Ohhh, it makes colorful holes.

 Portal 2
Platinum Name: Portal 2 Platinum Trophy (probably least clever thing in the game)

Portal 2's platinum wasn't that hard to get, but makes this list simply because it was one of the funnest plats to earn. I'm starting to just really get into the bulk of Skyrim and still have Uncharted 3 to play, but Portal 2 stands as my game to beat as of now still for game of the year. It was one of the few times I wasn't sick of a game by the time I finished up all the trophies, which definitely speaks to its quality and Valve's understanding that there's no need to be cheap by sucking time out of your life for no reason (ahem Arkam City).

The road to the trophy is fairly straight forward, asking you to beat the story and co-op campaigns for the bulk of the metal. While the story was a blast, I had suuuuuuch a good time playing through the co-op with my cousin, each of use putting our heads together to try and figure out how to proceed. What made it all so great was, while challenging, none of the puzzles felt beyond comprehending. And when we finally did figure out what to do, satisfaction followed the a ha's! and we walked away feeling smarter, which is a reward in itself.

Crotch targeting FTW

 Fallout 3
Platinum Name: Platinum Trophy (laaaame)

It took me some time (and some trophy motivation) to get into Fallout 3, despite the heaps of praise lopped onto it. After an unsuccessful romp with it on the PC, I finally found my stride with the game of the year edition on PS3 and never looked back. The sense of freedom is palpable and, from the moment you shoot out of your mom's vag in the vault, the world immerses you. New Vegas was a solid follow up (after the bugs were patched) but I still think I enjoyed Fallout 3 more simply for the newness factor and more apocalypse/less western feel.

Besides the "getting to level x with y alignment" trophies(which is easy to get around with multiple saves and a little heads-up) none of the trophies were annoying to get, which was refreshing. It's fun sometimes when trophies require you to change the way you play the game, but it's also somewhat relaxing knowing you can just play the freaking game and not have to worry about missing anything. Although I think Skyrim will eventually it's place as my favorite Bethesda game, Fallout 3 will always hold a soft spot in my heart. And ditto for its platinum.

Note to self: don't get caught smuggling

Bioshock
Platinum Name: PLATINUM TROPHY (I LUV CAPS)

Like Portal 2, Bioshock's plat finds its way into my top 5 simply because it's the shit and had no trophies that felt were an unnecessary time suck to get. Besides beating the game on the hardest difficulty, which is not easy but by no means a struggle, you can just enjoy the experience Rapture offers without having so sweat your balls off trying to do something idiotic that you wouldn't normally do that trophies sometimes like to require, like beat the whole thing with just the wrench while standing on one leg. Again, I appreciate when earning some trophies require you to step out of your comfort zone at times and think of new ways to attack challenges, but far too often I feel like developers simply just make things harder for difficulty sake. It would be one thing if I needed the ego boost, but I don't, let me just enjoy the freaking game. And when it's a game like Bioshock, there's alot to enjoy.

So there are my top 5 platinums. But like the Force, there's a light side...and a dark side. Coming soon: 5 platinums that suck and weren't worth it.

Holy Bunch of Side Quests, Batman!

What, you no like the boobs?

So as this stellar Q4 draws to the close, I'm desperately trying to play through all the AAA games sitting on my shelf. The last 4 weeks or so have been dedicated to Batman: Arkam City, the sequel to the pleasantly awesome Batman: Arkam Asylum. It does what every good sequel does, which is take what the first did and make it better. But does that make it the superior title in my mind? That, I'm not so sure.

With some time passing between the two games, Arkam City opens up with billionaire badass Bruce Wayne speaking against the creation of Arkam City, a city sized prison that somehow Hugo Strange got put in charge of. Dozens of leading baddies have taken up residence and using his cunning (random group of armed goons), Strange gets Bruce tossed in as well and the countdown to the mysterious protocol 10 commences. The opening sequence of freeing yourself and putting on your Batgear is a great intro to the game, and once you slip on the mask, you know it's go time.

Here comes the pain!

While a dying Joker acts as your main villain to topple, Rocksteady threw the kitchen sink at this one, with Penguin, the Riddler, Two Face, Mr. Freeze, and a bunch of others all coming into play. This kitchen sink approach both hurt and helped the game in my opinion. What I thought was cool about the first game was how it felt like a big deal when you came across one of these super villains with the asylum gone wild. They all had a purpose for being there and it felt like a big deal going toe to toe with them. With Arkam City, I just didn't get how they all came into play. The Arkam City felt more, well, like a city and all these dudes just happened to be there rather than being in prison. If all of these bad guys are so awesome, how did they end up there anyways? And with so many big names to share the spot light, it kind of diminished the wow factor facing them the first had.

On the flip side, the writing is so strong that all these characters really helped make the experience enjoyable. A lot of the interactions with the villains comes around the side quests in the game (which there are a lot of) and they all felt so unique and engaging that I found myself ignoring the main quest to complete them. It's a prime example of how to extend gameplay without compromising the integrity of the experience...which they then fucked up with those Riddler trophies, but I'll get to that later.

Arkam City is far more open than the asylum was and, despite the big no fly zone in the middle, getting around is super easy, especially once you get the grapple boost from doing all the AR missions (which suck balls). You don't have to find all the gadgets you had from the first one, so right away you feel like Batman, ready to mess noobs up the way Batman does. Through non-lethal methods, woohoo!

I got more punch than a 6th grade dance, brodda!

 The combat and predator aspects of the game have basically remained the same, which is a great thing. Chaining together moves while trying to avoid any sort of slowdown is still easy to learn but hard to master, and things start really get tricky when you're dealing with armored or shielded foes who you just can't pound. The predator segments \still require patience and a bit of strategy, and you can tackle both outside of the main game in the challenge rooms outside of the main quest, pushing you to rack up a certain amount of points or take out guys in a certain way to earn medals. In Arkam Asylum, I thought the combat challenges where the tougher of the two, but things seemed to a flipped in Arkam City. Some of the predator challenges are down right frustrating, and sometimes it takes just as much luck as skill since it feels like, while seemingly scripted, the enemy AI doesn't always react in the same ways to some traps you might set up.

And if these challenges aren't enough for ya, there are now campaigns that tie three of the challenges together and allow you attempt to get through them all with only 3 retries and "modifiers" which make them even harder, like "Hey, there are mines everywhere," and "I'm timing your ass, hurry!" Especially in the later ones, the modifiers really throw a wrench in the strategies you utilized earlier, forcing you to rethink things. These truly are a test of skill and I found these definitely way harder than completing the actual game.

And after tackling all these challanges and the main quest and side quests in the normal and new game plus mode, you're left with the Riddler to take down. Fucking Riddler...

Have some free time? Good, 'cause I'm gonna waste it.

The challenge maps and campaigns are now attributed to the Riddler, so when you die, you're rewarded with him telling you how you suck. Which will happen alot. And if you didn't hate him enough by this point, there's also all those pesky trophies he's left on the map to find. Over 400 to be specific. A lot of them require a certain gadget to get so you might have to simply tag it and go for it later when you have the right tool or in new game plus. Instead of finding maps which reveal their locations like in the first game, certain thugs will glow green indicating they're one of the Riddler's informants and if you knock out everyone around them, you can beat the crap out of them and make them squeal. This makes finding them a lot easier and the number of puzzles that forces you to align those stupid green question marks is far less than the first, which is nice. But I still think there are tooooo many trophies! 400+? C'mon! And even when you have the right gadget to get one, the method isn't always obvious, and it takes a lot of trial and error sometimes to get it right. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to hit a bunch of pressure points while not touching the ground for 10 minutes trying to get 1 trophy only to realize there are 300 more to go after that.

When you get enough, the Riddler will try to wave his metaphorical penis at you with a riddle and, when you solve it, you'll get the location of one of doctor's he's holding hostage, having to solve how to get to him/her through a series of traps the green prick has set up. These are challenging but thankfully fairly entertaining, requiring you to think outside the box sometimes.

In the end, I like the ideas behind the Riddler crap. Alot of the puzzles and riddles are clever and, if wasn't for the fact that there's 10000000 of them, I would be more into it. But, after all these hours played and still having 100+ trophies to get, I feel cheated. The Riddler breaks one of the fundamental rules of video games which is DON'T EXTEND A GAME WITH MEANINGLESS TASKS. Moving a steel ball through a maze with the REC gun was fun, but not after 15 times.

FUCASNDF;OWHNDFIOSHD.GKJBHWLGHV!!!!

 Overall, Arkam City is a AAA title to the core that, while having a ton of meaningless BS to get through (which won't be an issue if you're not a completionist) makes a strong case for Game of the Year. Like Dead Space 2, it does what the first did, but better. But, also like Dead Space 2 in my humble opinion, I preferred the original simply for the newness factor. But Arkam City still makes you feel like Batman. Batman, I say! Good enough. Let's go throw some smoke and stare at Catwoman's chest!

Two captions centered around boobs? Must be an off day.