[Achievement Unlocked] Bleep Bloop

tastydonuts

Was thinking about getting Dragon's Dogma 2, but still not a fan of the pawn sharing bit. wish you could just create a full crew of your own. :V

Been mostly playing long runs at this point too. Competed Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo, which is says it is inspired by the Hitchcock's movie Vertigo, and I guess his other works? I probably need to watch the movie to see the connection but idk. Wouldn't say it was bad, but kind of meandered along. One of the story beats requires a comical level of incompetence or just... negligence to work too. lol

Poking my way through Eiyuden Chronicles, and a few other games as well.

edit: I did start Dragon's Dogma 2. I am a master of kicks. I guess bows too.

Bursar

I played through and earned 1000/1000 in Jedi Survivor over the past week and a half or so. It isn't as willfully player-hostile as its predecessor, and only a few of the fights felt overly difficult on the medium difficulty (mainly bonus bosses in the combat challenges). This time around, there's only one scavenger hunt required to 100% for achievement completion, which has two particularly egregious item placements. There's an upgrade to show you on the map where these things all are, but even then there's some ridiculousness involved. A pair of the move-specific achievements required a minor bit of grinding to go from 0% to completion within ten minutes of finishing the story, once I figured out what it was actually asking me to do. Everything else unlocked naturally during the course of my playthrough, either by story progression or me just playing as felt natural.

The game doesn't require any replaying, though a New Game+ option is available, and I don't really feel the need to revisit it again.

Arteen

I was amused to see I just achieved 303030 gamerscore.

Spoiler for image size bug.

Currently I'm playing a couple different games, including Assassin's Creed Valhalla which I had an itch to go back to. Right now I'm just working on getting all of the map collectables, which is fun in its own way.

furlion

Arteen wrote: »

I was amused to see I just achieved 303030 gamerscore.

Spoiler for image size bug.

Currently I'm playing a couple different games, including Assassin's Creed Valhalla which I had an itch to go back to. Right now I'm just working on getting all of the map collectables, which is fun in its own way.

303303 would be a palindrome! I would definitely take a pic of that lol. I am getting near the end of DD2 and trying to think of what to play next. Heard good things about Dave the diver and it was just added to ps+ so i might do that.

Brainiac 8

Animal Well is done. Fun game although I get really irritated when games like this and Tunic decide to be a bit on the obtuse side just because they can. But that is a minor complaint as the game was really fun as a whole.
The worst part was finding all of the secret eggs, but I was able to find a nice majority of them myself and used a guide to find the stragglers.

2024 Platinum Trophies so far:

Kingdom Hearts
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Tunic
Dave the Diver
Animal Well

Please Sony, please continue to release some of these really neat new indie games day 1 on PS+. I've been enjoying that with Dave the Diver and Animal Well.

Brainiac 8

And I got the Plat for Bastion. I love this game. It was on the first games I got all of the achievements for when it was originally released for the 360 back in the day. I've been wanting to replay it for a long time now and get the platinum since there were a few trophies and challenges not present in the original release. The four challenge gauntlets were the worst part since you have to beat them all with all ten idols active. That took some planning on what weapons to bring with you. All in all, still love this game.

2024 Platinum Trophies so far:

Kingdom Hearts
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Tunic
Bastion
Dave the Diver
Animal Well

I'm slowly working through finishing the brutal challenges for FF7 Rebirth. Also working on Born of Bread, Legend of Dragoon, and just started Dragon Quest XI. Not sure why I'm working on so many RPGs. I'm a crazy person this year apparently.

furlion

Brainiac 8 wrote: »

And I got the Plat for Bastion. I love this game. It was on the first games I got all of the achievements for when it was originally released for the 360 back in the day. I've been wanting to replay it for a long time now and get the platinum since there were a few trophies and challenges not present in the original release. The four challenge gauntlets were the worst part since you have to beat them all with all ten idols active. That took some planning on what weapons to bring with you. All in all, still love this game.

2024 Platinum Trophies so far:

Kingdom Hearts
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Tunic
Bastion
Dave the Diver
Animal Well

I'm slowly working through finishing the brutal challenges for FF7 Rebirth. Also working on Born of Bread, Legend of Dragoon, and just started Dragon Quest XI. Not sure why I'm working on so many RPGs. I'm a crazy person this year apparently.

I got that plat earlier this year as well and it was my first time with the game. It was very good, which is not surprising since the developers have basically never missed. I was not prepared for the story to get as deep and somber as it ended up being. What did you use for the 10 idol gauntlets? I used the mortar almost exclusively. Thing was just way too powerful.

Brainiac 8

Mortar as well. I used the carbine as my second weapon.

Even then, I ended up having to redo the stranger's dream half a dozen times.

Arteen

Little Kitty Big City is pretty cute and fun. You play as a cat exploring a small city block, finding collectables, interacting with other animals, stealing stuff from humans, and knocking things over.

It overstays its welcome just a bit with a couple grindy "do [thing] X times" achievements, but nothing too egregious.

Bursar

Arteen wrote: »

Little Kitty Big City is pretty cute and fun. You play as a cat exploring a small city block, finding collectables, interacting with other animals, stealing stuff from humans, and knocking things over.

It overstays its welcome just a bit with a couple grindy "do [thing] X times" achievements, but nothing too egregious.

Ha! I was just considering writing up something about this one. The two I have left to grind are frickin' grindy.

"Get photographed 20 times": It happens seemingly completely at random. If someone has a phone and likes you and stops to pay attention to you, they might take a picture. In my experience they run up and trip over me themselves even if I'm not moving, and then they drop their phone and get angry.

"Recycle 100 objects": I didn't even know this was something you could do until after I'd beaten the game and looked up my achievement list. Nothing mentions it, nor is it required and it's listed as ???? in the challenges menu until you start doing it. On the one hand, it means that discovering this feature feels organic and fun, but recovering a hundred pieces of literal garbage in exchange for currency I no longer have any use for is painful. I've taken to mugging humans for their soda cans because the machines were all out.

Which is a shame, because the everything else about this game was extremely entertaining and I still heartily recommend it.

Arteen

You can headbutt the vending machines near the produce store with that cat that asked you to knock over jars. One of those drops 8 cans at a time and is near a recycle bin, so you can just do that, save, quit, repeat.

For the photos, I had decent luck running ahead of where they're walking, posing, then meowing. Half the time they'd take my picture. If they ignored me or wagged their finger at me I would chase after them and knock them over. That part doesn't help with the achievement but makes me feel better.

Andy Joe

1000/1000 in Hellblade II.

furlion

Finished of Dragon's Dogma 2 earlier with 98 hours in it. Got every side quest and pretty much finished everything there is to do in the game. I put it on par with the original release of the first game, but a bit of a step back from Bitterblack Isle. Still a great game though. I ended up spending most of the latter part of the game as a warfarer but pretty much just used the magic Archer move set. I was trying to get the final augment but finished the game before i got enough discipline. I would have liked the warfarer to let you assign 3 different moves to each weapon you have equipped, instead of just getting to choose 4 (really 3) from all of them. I also wish the maister abilities were better for some of the classes. The mage and mystic spearhand maister abilities were underwhelming. And of course, pretty much everything about the trickster was disappointing.

Overall definitely enjoyed it, flaws and all. Moving on to some shorter games next before I go for the ps5 edition of Elden Ring in preparation for the dlc.

tastydonuts

furlion wrote: »

Finished of Dragon's Dogma 2 earlier with 98 hours in it. Got every side quest and pretty much finished everything there is to do in the game. I put it on par with the original release of the first game, but a bit of a step back from Bitterblack Isle. Still a great game though. I ended up spending most of the latter part of the game as a warfarer but pretty much just used the magic Archer move set. I was trying to get the final augment but finished the game before i got enough discipline. I would have liked the warfarer to let you assign 3 different moves to each weapon you have equipped, instead of just getting to choose 4 (really 3) from all of them. I also wish the maister abilities were better for some of the classes. The mage and mystic spearhand maister abilities were underwhelming. And of course, pretty much everything about the trickster was disappointing.

Overall definitely enjoyed it, flaws and all. Moving on to some shorter games next before I go for the ps5 edition of Elden Ring in preparation for the dlc.

lol, 45+ hours in and I only just advanced the main story through Brant's stuff. Snuck into the second region through the western path... was pretty fun. Main for me is archer, but I've spent time as thief and mystic spearhand... when I did the trek along that western path I had just started the mystic spearhand vocation so I didn't have the shield ability or anything so it made the class feel terrible. I need to get the maister ability for it. Just hitting 45 and levelling sorcerer now... I plan on maxing all the vocations out. kind of wish the difficulty could be increased, will miss these times. Dual golem and cyclops fights are pretty amusing, hoping there's more of that. Killed a few drakes too. Always amusing when pawn actually uses augural flare on a weakspot and then we just flick that and it just melts a thing.

I just love exploring caves and whatnot... pretty much playing it the same way I do with Starfield atm. I also haven't run into too many pawn monstrousities or caek. Would still very much love to make a bespoke group of pawns, but so far it's worked out. doesn't seem like there's a lot of items/gear, but I think the the bulk of the power of the characters comes from level.

furlion

tastydonuts wrote: »

furlion wrote: »

Finished of Dragon's Dogma 2 earlier with 98 hours in it. Got every side quest and pretty much finished everything there is to do in the game. I put it on par with the original release of the first game, but a bit of a step back from Bitterblack Isle. Still a great game though. I ended up spending most of the latter part of the game as a warfarer but pretty much just used the magic Archer move set. I was trying to get the final augment but finished the game before i got enough discipline. I would have liked the warfarer to let you assign 3 different moves to each weapon you have equipped, instead of just getting to choose 4 (really 3) from all of them. I also wish the maister abilities were better for some of the classes. The mage and mystic spearhand maister abilities were underwhelming. And of course, pretty much everything about the trickster was disappointing.

Overall definitely enjoyed it, flaws and all. Moving on to some shorter games next before I go for the ps5 edition of Elden Ring in preparation for the dlc.

lol, 45+ hours in and I only just advanced the main story through Brant's stuff. Snuck into the second region through the western path... was pretty fun. Main for me is archer, but I've spent time as thief and mystic spearhand... when I did the trek along that western path I had just started the mystic spearhand vocation so I didn't have the shield ability or anything so it made the class feel I need to get the maister ability for it. Just hitting 45 and levelling sorcerer now... I plan on maxing all the vocations out. kind of wish the difficulty could be increased, will miss these times. Dual golem and cyclops fights are pretty amusing, hoping there's more of that. Killed a few drakes too. Always amusing when pawn actually uses augural flare on a weakspot and then we just flick that and it just melts a thing.

I just love exploring caves and whatnot... pretty much playing it the same way I do with Starfield atm. I also haven't run into too many pawn monstrousities or caek. Would still very much love to make a bespoke group of pawns, but so far it's worked out. doesn't seem like there's a lot of items/gear, but I think the the bulk of the power of the characters comes from level.

Good luck with the vocations. I changed every time i maxed one and i still had 3 of them left when i finished the game. I suppose i could have done some grinding on purpose but i never really felt like it was necessary.

tastydonuts

I've maxed out archer, thief, and spearhandler at this point, I got Fighter to 6 before I switched it out so I need to finish that one, will probably do it after sorcerer. It feels like the trick to level them is just running the road and taking out the packs of enemies as they're better for DCP per fight than fighting mini-boss types. Not really intentionally grinding XP but more just grazing as I explore the land. I pick a spot and then start hoofing it out.

edit: also those random escort/encounter quests are the weirdest things. like running across a poor old lady being beset by a pack of wolves because what did you think would happen to you trying to walking alone in the forest is just... huh? not to mention all the goblins... I mean, at least the guards needing a hand getting to another outpost make sense. even better is they despawn when you finish the quests because they'd all surely die otherwise. lol

Aegeri

I finally sat down and grabbed the last few eggs, then true ending and the damn SNEAK UP ON A SQUIRREL!!! trophy in Animal Well.

Working on finishing System Shock Remake and getting the platinum in Jagged Alliance 3, which is going to be pretty fun imo. System Shock Remake has a lot of really badly explained and buggy trophies, so not sure what luck of the coin flip I'll get there.

Then it's all Age of Wonders 4 for a while. Oh yeah.

furlion

Aegeri wrote: »

I finally sat down and grabbed the last few eggs, then true ending and the damn SNEAK UP ON A SQUIRREL!!! trophy in Animal Well.

Working on finishing System Shock Remake and getting the platinum in Jagged Alliance 3, which is going to be pretty fun imo. System Shock Remake has a lot of really badly explained and buggy trophies, so not sure what luck of the coin flip I'll get there.

Then it's all Age of Wonders 4 for a while. Oh yeah.

As someone who is aware of system Shock mostly through cultural osmosis, how does it hold up as a modern game? I am interested in the remake but i don't know if it is actually good without the weight of nostalgia.

Aegeri

furlion wrote: »

Aegeri wrote: »

I finally sat down and grabbed the last few eggs, then true ending and the damn SNEAK UP ON A SQUIRREL!!! trophy in Animal Well.

Working on finishing System Shock Remake and getting the platinum in Jagged Alliance 3, which is going to be pretty fun imo. System Shock Remake has a lot of really badly explained and buggy trophies, so not sure what luck of the coin flip I'll get there.

Then it's all Age of Wonders 4 for a while. Oh yeah.

As someone who is aware of system Shock mostly through cultural osmosis, how does it hold up as a modern game? I am interested in the remake but i don't know if it is actually good without the weight of nostalgia.

Complicated question TBH. For one, it's an unapologetically old school designed game such as needing to grab a certain guys head because it's needed later, but the game won't tell you. So you can end up searching a deck you've been over, with no map or other guidance markers for this random object. Worse, you could have carried him around for curiosity, dumped it somewhere at random and then realized you needed it to progress with NFI what you did with it. It's unapologetic like this, throwing roadblocks to progress and if you missed an audio log, or couldn't catch onto something, you can find yourself progress blocked without looking it up. It also has large complex levels, that loop around on one another and spawn a good deal of aggressive enemies constantly until you get the security down on a floor and the shooting mechanics are not fluid like your average boomer shooter - System Shock was much more at the start of what I would describe as Immersive Sim games than Boomer Shooters. So it's not a retro fast paced FPS and isn't trying to be either.

At the same time, a lot of the things that make it awkward and frustrating are also what's great about it. The puzzles IMO are really fun, at least once you get what's going on with some of them (like the electric plugs). The large sprawling levels have a real sense of place and atmosphere that a lot of FPS games today lack by being a single linear corridor. There are a bunch of different enemy types that reward different strategies, most of the weapons are really fun with only a couple of shit ones that you move on from forever and the story is pretty good - Shodan is an iconic video game AI villain for a good reason. It's also nice to play a game that isn't smashing you over the head every 5 seconds with what you're supposed to do and respects you to figure things out for yourself via experimentation. The layout of the game is very open, where you quickly gain access to a large number of the games decks and can explore them in any order. Nothing really stops you from exploring the station how you want other than some upgrades that have specific uses, such as protecting you from extremely hazardous radiation and so forth. Likewise the difficulty settings are pretty great as well. On the lowest difficulty not only does it make enemies easier but it removes some of the more obscure elements, like needing to find a random guys head, to progress.

Overall I think highly of the game, but it's not something I would recommend for everyone unless you're the type who happens to record notes and things outside of the game, because you will need to as it will tell you something once, then never mention it again. I bring up the "head" as it's a really good example of the game allowing the player to make their life worse trivially. It's not going to pop up a quest marker or tell you that "Hey you totally didn't find that puzzle". Also the highest difficulty, for achievement hunting, needs at least a first playthrough to be viable. You have 10 hours to finish the game and if you don't, you dead! Note that while this *sounds* bad it actually isn't in practice as you can easily finish the game in 5, it's not linear at all and if you know what to do you don't even need to bother with the majority of the station. Personally I thought System Shock 2 was a far better game than the original and truly deserving of the iconic status System Shock has, so I'm really hoping they get to remake 2 if this is the quality of the first game.

In other achievement news just now I finally scratched that itch and got the last three trophies in Remnant from the Ashes. Surprising me, I got immensely lucky RNG on the armour drops and banged out the fashion trophy very fast. Then one simple boss battle against scorch gave me the offline world boss without taking damage and some quick selling was 200,000 scrap over and done with. I stopped playing a year ago because I couldn't be bothered with these trophies, they took me less than 2 hours to do. Funny how things work.

furlion

Aegeri wrote: »

furlion wrote: »

Aegeri wrote: »

I finally sat down and grabbed the last few eggs, then true ending and the damn SNEAK UP ON A SQUIRREL!!! trophy in Animal Well.

Working on finishing System Shock Remake and getting the platinum in Jagged Alliance 3, which is going to be pretty fun imo. System Shock Remake has a lot of really badly explained and buggy trophies, so not sure what luck of the coin flip I'll get there.

Then it's all Age of Wonders 4 for a while. Oh yeah.

As someone who is aware of system Shock mostly through cultural osmosis, how does it hold up as a modern game? I am interested in the remake but i don't know if it is actually good without the weight of nostalgia.

Complicated question TBH. For one, it's an unapologetically old school designed game such as needing to grab a certain guys head because it's needed later, but the game won't tell you. So you can end up searching a deck you've been over, with no map or other guidance markers for this random object. Worse, you could have carried him around for curiosity, dumped it somewhere at random and then realized you needed it to progress with NFI what you did with it. It's unapologetic like this, throwing roadblocks to progress and if you missed an audio log, or couldn't catch onto something, you can find yourself progress blocked without looking it up. It also has large complex levels, that loop around on one another and spawn a good deal of aggressive enemies constantly until you get the security down on a floor and the shooting mechanics are not fluid like your average boomer shooter - System Shock was much more at the start of what I would describe as Immersive Sim games than Boomer Shooters. So it's not a retro fast paced FPS and isn't trying to be either.

At the same time, a lot of the things that make it awkward and frustrating are also what's great about it. The puzzles IMO are really fun, at least once you get what's going on with some of them (like the electric plugs). The large sprawling levels have a real sense of place and atmosphere that a lot of FPS games today lack by being a single linear corridor. There are a bunch of different enemy types that reward different strategies, most of the weapons are really fun with only a couple of shit ones that you move on from forever and the story is pretty good - Shodan is an iconic video game AI villain for a good reason. It's also nice to play a game that isn't smashing you over the head every 5 seconds with what you're supposed to do and respects you to figure things out for yourself via experimentation. The layout of the game is very open, where you quickly gain access to a large number of the games decks and can explore them in any order. Nothing really stops you from exploring the station how you want other than some upgrades that have specific uses, such as protecting you from extremely hazardous radiation and so forth. Likewise the difficulty settings are pretty great as well. On the lowest difficulty not only does it make enemies easier but it removes some of the more obscure elements, like needing to find a random guys head, to progress.

Overall I think highly of the game, but it's not something I would recommend for everyone unless you're the type who happens to record notes and things outside of the game, because you will need to as it will tell you something once, then never mention it again. I bring up the "head" as it's a really good example of the game allowing the player to make their life worse trivially. It's not going to pop up a quest marker or tell you that "Hey you totally didn't find that puzzle". Also the highest difficulty, for achievement hunting, needs at least a first playthrough to be viable. You have 10 hours to finish the game and if you don't, you dead! Note that while this *sounds* bad it actually isn't in practice as you can easily finish the game in 5, it's not linear at all and if you know what to do you don't even need to bother with the majority of the station. Personally I thought System Shock 2 was a far better game than the original and truly deserving of the iconic status System Shock has, so I'm really hoping they get to remake 2 if this is the quality of the first game.

In other achievement news just now I finally scratched that itch and got the last three trophies in Remnant from the Ashes. Surprising me, I got immensely lucky RNG on the armour drops and banged out the fashion trophy very fast. Then one simple boss battle against scorch gave me the offline world boss without taking damage and some quick selling was 200,000 scrap over and done with. I stopped playing a year ago because I couldn't be bothered with these trophies, they took me less than 2 hours to do. Funny how things work.

That all sounds awesome. Definitely going to pick it up now. Thanks for that explanation!

tastydonuts

How's cyberspace in the remake?

Aegeri

Annoying, but doable. There is a difficulty setting to make it just kill you on being ICEd as well. It's a reasonably fun change of pace now and again.