The February 2020 Free PS Plus Games are : The Bioshock Collection, Sims 4, and Firewall Zero Hour.
Firewall Zero Hour is a VR title, so that is great that we are moving toward getting VR titles, now we just need to get two PS5 titles (probably Post-January 2021) and my hunch will be correct about what Sony will be doing with the PS+ subscription going forward.
The Bioshock Collection I have heard nothing but amazing things about. The first two take place in Rapture, an underwater domed city, and Infinite takes place in the sky. People absolutely rave about these games.
Sims 4, I have heard of the franchise and my gal pal April adores it, I had not heard it had made its way to PS4 yet. I wonder how it plays on console? Also, Sims turns 20 this year, so this is like a birthday present for all of us.
I really love that we are getting game collections through the subscription.
I will probably start with BioShock 1, then try Sims 4. One day, it would be nice to own a VR set, but I have to wait until Walker Dennis is at least 12, so six more years!
. . .
PSP Prices has the games valued as such :
BioShock Collection is typically a $60 game, but goes on sale for as low as $12 – so already PS+ pays for itself on the high end.
Sims 4 is typically a $40 game, but goes on sale for as low as $8.
Firewall Zero Hour is a $20 game, but goes on sale for as low as $10.
So let us see if we hit $45 in value just yet!
These games are combined at a value of $120 at their height, or at $30 at their lowest. The January games were combined at either $30 at their height, or $11 at their lowest, so we are already covered at the highest so I will no longer be tracking that. At the low end, we are now at $41, which is so close to $45. No matter what the games are for March 2020, the subscription will pay for itself.
A visit to PSN reveals :
The BioShock Collection has a theme we can buy for $2, so if I take to the game, I could be tempted to buy that. The Collection comes with all single player content, all DLC content, the “Columbia’s Finest” pack, Director’s Commentary (which I love!), and Imagining BioShock, featuring Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson.
Sims 4 on the other hand has so much additional content! There are three free avatars and three free themes, but the rest do cost money.
Island Living $40
Toddler Stuff $10
Discover University $40
Spa Day $20
Outdoor Retreat $20
Realm of Magic $20
Fitness Stuff $10
City Living $40
Dine Out $20
Get Together $40
Parenthood $20
Jungle Adventure $20
Cats and Dogs $40
Spooky Stuff $10
Backyard Stuff $10
Get Famous $40
Vampires $20
Seasons $40
Get to Work $40
StrangeVille $20
Deluxe Party Edition $50
Live Lavishly Bundle $60
Vintage Glamour Stuff $10
Cool Kitchen Stuff $10
Moschino Stuff Pack $10
Luxury Party Stuff $10
Bowling Night Stuff $10
Perfect Patio Stuff $10
Kids Room Stuff $10
Movie Hangout Stuff $10
Back to School Bundle $50
Bundle – City Living $50
Romantic Garden Stuff $10
Laundry Day Stuff $10
Plus Cats and Dogs Bundle $50
Deluxe Party Edition Upgrade $10
Bundle – Cats and Dogs, Parenthood $50
Bundle – Seasons, Jungle Adventure $50
Bundle – Get to Work, Dine Out, Kitchen $50
So a lot there if that is your thing.
Firewall Zero Hour also has a slew of DLC! This game also has eight free avatars but so much more at cost.
Deluxe Pack $20, comes with characters, camo skins, face paints, and weapon skins.
Digital Deluxe Edition $40, is the game plus the delux pack.
I have now downloaded all of the free items!
. . .
Most reddit reactions seem to be how most already own the BioShock Collection, which was true of the Uncharted Collection, but I do not own the BioShock Collection, so count me as being in the super excited camp.
In a bit of exciting news, PS4 users got the Earth 2 costume as free DLC!
It looks pretty great in the game.
. . .
In Lego Batman 3, I am slowly making my way through obtaining the red bricks and the Bat-Mite items (which unlock one of three character tokens in each level).
In the first Uncharted game, I got to the first real shoot out and died, and on easy, so that killed some of my buzz, but the game looks stunning on PS4!
We played Portal Knights again, unlocking some additional portals, and just having a great time in the game.
Turns out, something happened to my Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 save file, so instead of 100%, it is now at 0%, so Walker Dennis and I played the first three levels of the game, and unlocked the ability to free play as anyone we have thus unlocked during the open world. So that was annoying but these things happen. I feel no pressure, at all, to reclaim anything. Odd thing though is that Walker Dennis is not earning any of the trophies for completing each chapter, so we really should have made him the first player but I will keep monitoring that. Once we get some actual characters, I will see if we can earn some character trophies on his file to see if there is a problem with the game itself.
I got all of the trophies in Goat Simulator I feel like I am easily going to obtain.
So all in all, I am feeling pretty well.
. . .
I have to look at the trophy guides for Sims 4 and BioShock 1 to see how much I am even going to see but I really want to commit to getting 12 new Platinums this year. My second one will be for the first Life is Strange game. I am going to try to do a level of Lego Batman 3, then finish the night with another episode of Life is Strange. Which should not take too long with four episodes left to do.
On September 24, 2019, we had our third State of Play :
Thanks for PlayStation for hosting their own video.
The second to last item they cover was the free October 2019 PS+ Games. They really did a great job with presenting the information as it transitioned beautifully.
We are getting MLB 2019 The Show as one of the free games. Then they revealed we were getting . . . The Last of Us Remastered as well! Which then took us to a new trailer for The Last of Us 2, now scheduled for February 21, 2020. It all just came together very nicely.
I like baseball enough, so I’m looking forward to playing the game. Like NBA 2k19, my main goal will be to join my favorite team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and probably like NBA 2k19, once that goal has been met, I’ll put the game away.
and there looks to be some easy enough trophies for a guy like me to get.
The ones I will earn for sure will be :
Patience is a Virtue – Finish a game without skipping a presentation
Simon Says – In Road to the Show, reach a score of 40 in the pitch memory mini-game
Hi, Dee – Have your first encounter with Heidi Watney
Pump It – In Road to the Show, reach 10 reps in teh bench press mini-game
Hello, World – In Road to the Show, complete the new player creation
None Shall Pass – In Road to the Show, fail a challenge
Something to Talk About – In Diamond Dynasty, equip any unlocked audio
The More You Know – Complete the onboarding tutorial
Walk This Way – Record a walk in your first at-bat of the game
Yyyaarrrrgghh! – In Road to the Show, create a player who was born “At Sea”
Do It Like This – Equip an unlockable no doubt home run animation
I will attempt at least :
Big Fly Ohtani Son – Hit a home run with Ohtani on All-Star or above difficulty
Father Son Picnic – Win the Home Run Derby(R) with Bryce Harper
Lock Him Up – In Franchise Mode, extend a player contract during the season
Velociraptor, HIt the ball over 115+ mph
So not a bad list at all! I will create a batter that can bat with both hands (though I will probably never try for the A Chip Off the Ol’ Block trophy.
Plenty there to strive for and to get the zero percent to one percent (and more!). Looks like a slew of trophies that I would be earning within the first 20 minutes, unlike NBA 2k19 that it took a while to earn my first trophy (immediately after the Pre-Season) and then I earned the bulk of the trophies I did earn within the next hour or so.
Though some people do have some legit problems with MLB 19 The Show being one of the games.
The main issue being . . . We were supposed to get PES 2019 as a free game, there was a major outcry as most people do not care about soccer, and now we are getting MLB 19 The Show, when most people do not care about baseball.
Which I am not really into either sport, but I was super looking forward to PES 2019 and I am looking forward to MLB 19 The Show. I still maintain that once PES 2019 drops to under five dollars, I will buy that game and see what all of the buzz is about.
But all of this goes away as people are very very happy to get The Last of Us Remastered.
Which I started playing a week ago and really enjoyed it. I was not as blown away as everyone else was but I really enjoyed myself. I think I am just more of an Uncharted type of guy but The Last of Us really started clicking with me once The Suburbs chapter started. The environmental storytelling in the sewers was amazing and I eagerly looked forward to the next section of the sewer to get more information. From there, the game is amazing and I will commit to playing a Normal+ playthrough in October after I complete Left Behind.
Here is PlayStationTrophies.org’s trophy guide for The Last of Us.
The multiplayer trophies are not as simple as Uncharted 2’s multiplayer so I will probably pass on those.
I have also stopped being a big collector guy, if I come across collectibles, I will get them, or if there are not too many of them, I will get them, heck, if all I need for the Platinum is the collectibles, I will get them. That’s what made me commit to Until Dawn, as all I needed was the collectibles.
For the second month in a row, I am getting a free digital copy of a game I already own physically. Batman Arkham Knight and now The Last of Us. So Uncharted 4 should be next or Hellblade.
So once GameStop has another trade-in deal with extra money earned, I will be taking those two games for more store credit.
. . .
MLB The Show 2019 is usually a $40 game, it is on sale right now for $30, and has been as low as $23.99.
The Last of Us is a $20 game, as part of the PlayStation Hits line, and has gone as low as $5.99.
So best case, the games are $60 or at their lowest, $30, which is nearly the cost of the service, so once again, the games pay for themselves really. Not a bad first month if October 2019 is going to be the beginning of your subscription service.
. . .
Here are my peeps talking about the free games.
Rob of PlayStation Access
Adam of PlayStation Grenade
I will have to update this if Ben of Platinum Chasers uploads his video.
UPDATE – 10/2/2019 –
Ben of Platinum Chasers uploaded his review!
Always worth the wait! (but usually there is not a wait)
. . .
It was pretty nice being surprised on Tuesday that the announcement came a day early. It made sense the State of Play would reveal the games as they had everyone’s attention. I figured The Last of Us was going to be a free game either in October (for the zombie content), November (for the free game new PS4 owners would get for taking advantage of some Black Friday deals), or December (as a Christmas present to us all).
So once those games were announced though, I immediately bought Murdered : Soul Suspect for two dollars.
The game is pretty fun, I recently completed the first section involving the Apartments. I have a slew of trophies already which feels pretty great. I am already at 29% of the list.
This game as a slew of collectibles (242 of them!) that I am going to attempt to get as all of the other trophies seem super doable. Most of them are simply, play the game, solve some extra side mysteries, collect the artifacts.
Sounds like everything is feasible to do except for the Museum, that gets locked after we exit so I will be spending a lot of time there and with the collectible list in front of me.
The organization took a minute for me to get used to (it makes sense from the in-game checklist) but the more I cross off, the easier it is to read.
I am really enjoying the investigations and the overall game mechanics.
The only real gripe I have thus far, is having to kill demons. The way it is done is pretty irriating, but I am hoping I get better at it. It is not as simple as sneaking behind a demon – which takes timing – but then there is not that much time behind holding R2 to choose to kill the demon, then there are four options for button prompts that could be an option, a direction with the left stick and then one of the four symbol buttons. But the kill prompt will be different each new attempt. It can be frustrating with the fifth attempt and then having to run and hide and then attempt it again. I will get better at it but I am also hoping there are not that many demons in the game. There is no trophy for killing all of the demons (just the first one) but if the demon is in the room, we cannot investigate it fully. At least, that is the impression I am under.
So I will probably main this game until I have it completed. Or by the time October 1 comes and we get the two new free games. Whichever one happens first.
. . .
I have successfully completed The Season of Infamy additional missions in Arkham Knight in my Normal playthrough. I saved Mister Freeze for last so instead of it raining everywhere, it is snowing. It looks amazing but it is surprising how different everything looks with the snow. It is a thick snow too, so I have a hard time navigating around so I do not think I will keep to this plan on my Knightmare playthrough. Which I will eventually do everything in that but not anytime soon. The only advantage of doing all of the missions there is to unlock a new costume but not having it unlocked is not bothering me like it sometimes would.
It does look pretty cool though. We have to have 240% of the game completed to earn it.
. . .
Overall October is looking pretty fun!
Walker Dennis has been really into playing Lego Dimensions again so I have been on my guard to make sure my games are being saved. Especially as I am not home when he first gets there. So he had removed The Last of Us but I had made sure I was at the beginning of the third chapter of Left Behind. I would say that another gripe with Murdered Soul Suspect is that the saving could be more on-demand. It auto-saves but I do not get the symbol / notification as much as I would like. Especially after I have uncovered a collectible or completed a side quest, it would be nice to get that auto saved but now I just make sure I get it then look at the clock to see if I should go to bed.
I am not exactly sure why I haven’t written in so long, just busy I guess. I have completed Man of Medan and I had a great time with my first playthrough.
I did not look at PowerPyx’s Trophy Guide list until my third night of playing but it was mostly just a curious glance at it. Once it seemed like it was going to spoil anything, I looked away.
It was a very fun game, and I’ll post four more videos of my playthrough. It takes around four and a half hours.
I’m disappointed that I’m not going to get the platinum for this game as I can’t commit to playing five hours with someone else online. So that sort of kills my buzz for the overall game and really makes me want to hesitate before preordering New Hope as I could clearly wait it out until the game drops ten dollars.
I had fun, but I’m distracting myself with other games before attempting a second playthrough.
. . .
In much more fun news, the season pass for Arkham Knight finally went on sale!
So I have to sneak and treat myself to a PSN card as I barely have eight dollars in my PSN Wallet. But buy a card, I will! I am so jazzed to get to play the Arkham Episodes and play with the various costumes and variants of the Batmobile.
I read a tip to save Mr. Freeze for last so that it remains snowing in Arkham, and that sounds like a fun thing to do in my Normal playthrough.
There is a pretty massive sale going on the PlayStation store that is good through October 1. I would caution to wait until the free games are announced on September 25, if you are buying any games over two dollars.
Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the launch trailer.
I type that, as I am tempted to get Murdered : Soul Suspect, as that is two dollars and I was tempted to buy it at Shopko one time when it was ten dollars. It might make for a great October free game, so I am going to hold out. Plus, I have Arkham Knight to keep me occupied.
There are two other two dollar games I was tempted by, Toro and Yasai Ninja, but the reviews for those games are bad. Like, not even playable bad.
. . .
I also started and completed The Last of Us! I was looking over Girlfriend Reviews videos and I sort of do a mini-marathon every weekend, as I wait for the new video to drop. I came across The Last of Us video again and figured I’ll finally play the game.
So now I have played all of the games that Shelby has reviewed that I could. Well, technically, I have not played Detroit : Become Human, but that’ll be nice.
I pretty much played The Last of Us straight through. I played on Normal, so I got the Normal trophy as well as the Easy Trophy. The game as a slew of collectibles but the only one I made a point of collecting were the comic book ones.
I did start Left Behind (on Normal) and did the first chapter but now that Arkham Knight is now on the table, I’m going to take a slight break and do those missions before coming back to Left Behind.
I could, looking back, have taken breaks between the seasons but I was told the game wasn’t horribly long, so I figured I would just play it straight. Plus, I was really getting into the game. I don’t think I love it as much as others clearly do but there were moments like in the sewer when Joel and Ellie were with Sam and Henry, and we come across what should have been a safe zone, and getting all of the lore, that I was recognizing what great the game really is.
I also got the trophy for crafting one of everything, that didn’t include all of the melee weapon types, just one of each of the five categories. Melee Weapon, Shiv, Health Pack, Molotov Cocktail, and Smoke Bomb. I barely threw any bottles or bricks. I also got a lot better with stealth, something I usually don’t tend to be in games.
I’ll commit to playing a New Game Plus on Normal but after Left Behind, and probably do a full rotation of my games as well, just like how I am waiting to do another playthrough of Man of Medan. Like, Late Shift, I want a decent break between playthroughs.
. . .
I did take a slight break inbetween The Last of Us and Left Behind to play The Witness.
Thanks to PS4Trophies for hosting the guide for how to get the Symmetry trophy.
It was bugging me so much that I had The Witness at 0% when I legit gave it a proper go when it was a free game back in March 2019. Which I knew I really didn’t give it a proper go, more like 30 minutes but I had not committed to fully giving the free games a fair chance back then. Then I kept thinking about it and I decided to really look into how long and complicated was earning the first trophy in the game really was. And it wasn’t all that hard at all! I think I just got lost in the game’s world, like a maroon, and with the aid of the above video, within 20 minutes, I had earned the trophy. So that is one less thing on my silly mind.
I was also convinced to play while watching Dave and Rosie play the game during one of their live streams. I’m not really sure why I was so dismissive of their live streams in the past, I’m sure it was mostly how long the videos were, but now that I have an hour lunch break again and realizing I can watch 30 minutes a night, I can commit to watching these. They are so fun and I love the team so it makes sense I’ll love them in a long format too. I can be so silly sometimes.
So that has been what I’ve been doing for a week or so.
For back to back months, I am getting a free digital copy of a game I already own! Also, I’m getting a sequel/follow up to a game that I will need to do the homework for before playing the other game.
Last month, we got Detroit : Become Human, but a much better version than I owned, which is a follow up to Quantic Dream’s Beyond : Two Souls. September brings us . . . Batman : Arkham Knight and Darksiders III!
I already own Batman : Arkham Knight and I got Darksiders II : Deathinitive Edition as one of my first free PS+ games way back in December 2017. I only played it past the first boss and a little bit of The Foundry. If I remember correctly, I was up against some monster (not a boss) who just kept killing me so I will have to figure out how to get pass it or straight murder it.
Forge. So I’m going to have to finish at least my first playthrough of that game before jumping into its sequel.
Darksiders III came out in November 2018 and is already a free game ten months later. OnRush came out in June 2018 and was already a free game by December 2018, so Darksiders III isn’t setting a record but it is something to note.
I had to look up Darksiders 1 Warmastered Edition (as I’m going to own the series, pretty soon). It is typically a $20 game but goes as low as two dollars, so once it gets under five dollars, I’ll snatch it up!
Which I’m hoping it goes on sale in September. I’m also hoping Arkham Knight’s Season Pass goes on sale too. I might have to just spend the $20 and buy it in October if it never goes on sale. So Rocksteady has no incentive now to put it on sale.
Darksiders III is still a $60 game, but has gone as low as $36. There is a Season Pass for $20, which includes the two DLC levels : The Crucible ($7) and Keepers of the Void ($13), as well as a Digital Deluxe Edition that is $80 and a Blades & Whip Edition that is $100. The Digital Deluxe Edition is the game plus the two DLC levels. The Blades & Whip Edition is the Deluxe Edition PLUS 1’s Warmastered Edition and II’s Deathinitive Edition, so three games, plus all DLC for $100.
Batman : Arkham Knight Is now a $20 game that has gone as low as six dollars. The PlayStation store has a slew of avatars that I’ve downloaded all of them. The $20 Season Pass makes all of the DLC available. DLC included a Batgirl level (A Matter of Family) that is seven dollars. I really liked it, it wasn’t too short, plus it gave me the option to do AR Challenges as Batgirl, that I didn’t even attempt but probably should. All of the character DLC levels make it so you can play as the character in the challenges. The other DLC are :
Nightwing’s GCPD Lockdown, two dollars
Catwoman’s Revenge, two dollars
Robin’s Flip of a Coin, two dollars
Red Hood Story Pack, two dollars
Harley Quinn Story Pack, two dollars
Seasons of Infamy, ten dollars
When asked if the DLC is worth purchasing, the general answer is that the Seasons of Infamy DLC is the only one truly worth it but for ten extra dollars, I might as well get everything. Especially if I can wait until the Season Pass is as low as eight dollars, then everything becomes a steal at that price! The story DLCs are already priced at $20 so if you buy the Season Pass for $20, all of the other costumes, maps, and Batmobile variants are just free, in a way.
There’s a Premium Edition for $40.
There are various costume packs as well :
New 52, free
Flashpoint, unavailable
Batman Inc, free
Original Arkham, free
First Appearance, one dollar
Bat-Family Pack, two dollars
Batman Beyond, one dollar
Noel, free
2008 Movie Costume, free
Dark Knight Returns, one dollar
A PS4 Exclusive set of the 66 Batman costume and Batman 3000 costumes that were “free” but not available but are now available and I just purchased theme and have the download already queued to my PS4! That was super exciting! I wasn’t even going to do the Arkham Knight store as I owned the game but I wanted you, dear reader, to have all of the information!
When I try to purchase the Flashpoint costume, I get a message that states I can get it if I buy the Season Pass, which used to be the message I got for the PS4 exclusive sets. I can’t wait to get home and play as 66 Batman in the 66 Batmobile! This is going to be a blast!
There is even variations of the Batmobile!
Original Arkham, two dollars
Robin and Robin theme Batmobile, two dollars
2008 Tumbler, two dollars
1989 Movie Costume and Batmobile, two dollars (I had to buy this one too!)
Rocksteady Theme, free
Prototype Batmobile, two dollars
Riddler theme, one dollar
70s Batmobile, one dollar
Batman v Superman costume and Batmobile, free
66 Robin and Catwoman, plus Batmobile, two dollars (that I also had to buy)
There are challenge map packs:
WayneTech Track Prack, two dollars
Five Crime Fighter Challenge Pack, two dollars each ($10)
A Locations from the three games Crime Fight Challenge Map, free
Maybe one day we’ll finally get Arkham Origins on the PS4, then I can finally play that game.
So, by my math, all of the DLC came to about $51, so $20 for the season pass seems worth it but I’m not sure about the Premium Pack for $40 being worth it but I’m sure it goes on sale too. It does, it usually goes for $14, which is also a great deal, if you didn’t already have the game or getting the base game for free come Tuesday. The description essentially just says it is the game plus season pass, it that all works out in the end.
There is an Arkham Collection that is on sale that has the three proper games for $24, down from $60.
. . .
I have also been inspired to finally work on those darn Riddler Trophies that I was finally down to eight of them. I am now down to two and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get them as I just can’t get the Batmobile to work for me. If I could just get ten more seconds, I think I could do both of them.
Thanks to PowerPyx for hosting this video and all of the Riddler Trophies videos that I used to get to this point!
The final two are those dumb races from one platform to the trophy.
7) 2147 x 1492 to roughly 2160 x 1670 at the 3:24 mark.
31) 3258 x 2136 to roughly 3030 x 1155 at the 22:04 mark.
Luckily, but maddening, the two locations are relatively close to each other so I know the route back pretty well, and it doesn’t take that long to attempt again but it just feels so defeating! Especially with the forced Riddler exchange. Like, just let me repeat my attempt with a simple “repeat” option like in a Lego game.
So that’s what I’ll be attempting to do every few days or so!
I was told it is a simple process of ensuring the save files have been uploaded to the cloud, and deleting the game file off of the PS4. Then come Tuesday, I can install the digital copy, download the save file, and it should just work out. So here’s hoping it is that easy! I definitely don’t want to restart that game from scratch!
. . .
The PS4 and PlayStationPlus subreddits seem to be very happy with the game selections.
Looking at the list again, I think I’m still pretty much just going for the Riddler trophy, Riddle Me That, which would then get me Knightfall.
. . .
While checking for any deals through the PlayStation store, I saw a few games that were around three dollars that didn’t have a platinum, plus I’m getting Man of Medan soon, so I shouldn’t have been looking for new games anyway. I did come across another live action game like Late Shift and The Bunker.
Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the video!
That game is, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, which looks like it could be pretty interesting. There was even a bundle for all three games that if I didn’t already have Late Shift, I may have been tempted to get all three of them. The game is typically $13 but can drop down to $6.49, which would be perfect for me. So one of these days all of these games will go on sale and I’ll start grabbing them.
. . .
Another game that I was reminded I have already is Q*Bert Rebooted. I probably played it for an hour and I really enjoyed aspects of the Original (which I rarely played back in the day) and Rebooted was pretty fun too. A very modern take on the classic game.
I got crushed by the Coily, the snake, 25 times (and more). I got smashed by Ugg exactly 25 times (during another 30 minute gaming session when I realized I could get one more trophy). I died well over 100 times and rode 50 discs. There are other and more proper trophies in the game but I’m not really all that good at Classic and it took over an hour and a half to get maybe 200 gems so getting 5,000 gems seems like a huge time commitment. I only came across maybe two green freeze balls. So I feel like I got my time spent with this game that was free back in April 2018.
. . .
So my gaming rotation is :
Batman : Arkham Knight (for those two dumb Riddler trophies)
Darksiders II
Sniper Elite 4
Late Shift (for one final playthrough)
Lego Marvel Superheroes 2
Beyond : Two Souls (for maybe one big chapter and an epilogue?)
Dead by Daylight (still have to begin watching Stranger Things)
Rocket League (for a few more trophies)
Grand Theft Auto V
My plan is to still replace Beyond : Two Souls with Detroit : Become Human and I’m not going to beat Darksiders II anytime soon but once I do, I’ll be prepared for III.
I have two more chapters of Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 of the main story. Then I’ll fully tackle the six DLC chapters, then go back to the main story for the Free Plays and I have characters to unlock to get all ten of the Gwenpool missions, so lots more time with this game. I’m having a blast with it but it is nice to take breaks from it too. Pending on how long it takes to do the DLCs, I might try to knock out two at a time but I’ll figure that out when I get there. I have having a geniune blast with Sniper Elite 4. I usually start and finish the entire mission before going to bed. I completed the third mission and I really should have stopped after one of several checkpoints but I kept going and stayed up way to late. I did have a few moments where I repeatedly thought, this is such a fun game!
Nine games is a bit much but Arkham Knight shouldn’t take too long, just a few more frustrating attempts. Late Shift is practically over, and Beyond : Two Souls is going to get replaced. So that list will come down to seven. Though I do have Man of Medan coming, Amazon told me it got shipped already.
Shelby and Matt already completed (at least) one playthrough and I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers (so far so good). From her screenshot, I see the game is broken down by Acts and not Chapters (maybe?) so maybe the game is a very management two or three hours? I haven’t been able to find anyone who has written the length of one playthrough.
Skimming Dean Takahashi’s Venture Beat article, it does read like it is a shorter game, so that’ll be nice. For $30, I’m not expecting a ten hour game but I could see five hours but with a party mode, a management three is probably the way to go. If it is even three, Hidden Agenda was a solid two hours and I felt those hours in long playthroughs.
Austen Goslin didn’t write regarding the length of the game in his Polygon article (from what I could skim). I also did a search for “long” and “hour” and didn’t see any results about length of time.
To end on a happy note, TellTale Games got purchased! So hopefully LCG Entertainment’s new ownership will mean a third Batman game! Also, that maybe all of the games will go on sale and I can finally get Guardians of the Galaxy too!
Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the trailer for this game.
Yesterday, I earned my 13th platinum!
This was a fun game, it has 12 different endings, spread out over three story branches. You get swallowed by a whale, from there, you can either put on barrels, don’t put on barrels, and wait it out with three ladies who were previously swallowed by the whale. Since the game presents it from left to right, that’s the order I went in.
It wasn’t a bad game, and I enjoyed it for the most part.
There is this one segment where you race against Death that I completely didn’t understand what I was doing so I kept holding down the R2 button and nothing was happening. Then I read that I was either supposed to click on one of the men or Death. By then, I was pretty tired and went to bed.
Then I played a few more times and got two or three playthroughs completed. I think that’s the best way to play this game, maybe do all four storylines of a branch and then come back the next day, or just remember you choose the right cave so next time, you will choose the left cave.
The game can become very repetitive, once you finish an ending, you will come across this sea monster who will tell you that you have finished an ending but she hopes to see you again. I was hoping when you finished the very last one, she would say a different line of dialogue but she just repeated the different ending line. That was disappointing.
You will see the sea monster either underwater or above water, pending how you finished an ending, then you will go to a coffee shop and the guy there will essentially say the same thing. But he will show you a bookcase of all of your endings as you progress through the game.
He will say you have completed the shelf, which was nice. I’m not sure why they wrote one character with a conclusion line but not the other.
I didn’t use a guide until the very end, to get my last two trophies.
I was missing Out of the Deepening Darkness and Nice Day.
There is a segment when you are stuck in a maelstrom that I made too much of a game out of, you are supposed to either widen (R2) it so the men go all the way down, or shorten (L2) it and have the men break free of the storm. I was going back and forth and essentially, kept it open so I ended up doing that playthrough twice as I didn’t realize which I one I did originally. If I had thought about it, I should have known I didn’t close the storm but I was just ready to get the Platinum at that point.
For the other trophy, there are two seals that turn the men into seals and they say as long as you stick together, you’ll make it to the surface but I didn’t keep them together so they just got carried up to the surface. It took some doing but I had them stick together and got them to the surface and got the platinum.
It is supposed to take two hours but I was using it mostly as a break from Arkham Knight.
. . .
Last update regarding Arkham Knight, as I’m done with the game. I attempted some additional AR Challenges but I’m not doing anymore of those, knowing I can’t get even 20 of them, kills my buzz. I’m pretty sure I barely got ten or 15.
I did beat the game on New Game Plus, and the fights were not all that bad, including the underground tank vs tank fight and I didn’t even have a harder time with Arkham Knight, I avoided his crew, got underneath him, grappled up and did those quick moments and then took out his goons then. Then repeat that twice more, so all for all, the only real problem I had was the 60 tanks outside of GCPD during the assault. After like 15 tries, I finally wussed out and stuck to the left side of GCPD (where that breakable wall is), and I would come out, attack, and hide out. A few tanks and drones came to me, which was nice but for the most part, I would take out five or six tanks, fire a slew of missiles, and let Barbara do her business. It was a frustrating matter prior to the final time I completed it. Same for the underground tank fight, that third round took forever! I was able to acknowledge that the long load time was for me to strategize and to calm down but I just wanted it to reload immediately. Same for the tank battle, just get me in there, I heard Batman and Oracle counting down from five so many times, it started becoming a tad maddening.
I only got two additional trophies
The Long Halloween, beat New Game Plus
Savage Metal, smash 10 militia transport vehicles off the road without using the immobilizer
I was hoping to get Savage Metal so it was nice to finally get it when I did, it was during one of the AR challenges. At first, I though Long Halloween was a bronze medal but I see now that it is a silver medal. I was expecting a gold medal so when it wasn’t gold, I didn’t note what type it was until typing this. Silver is better, as it does take a lot of time and skill to get through the story. Besides the tank battle, I wouldn’t even say the game was that much harder.
I could do the side missions but there is no real incentive to do it so I’m pretty much done with it.
. . .
I’ve started Roundabout, I’m not sure how many chapters there are but I’m on the third chapter, with the farm. It is a fun game thus far. You play a revolving limousine driver, Georgio Manos, who is a lady. Whenever you pick up passengers, you get a fun live action sequence. The story is fun and the driving mechanics take a minute to get used to them but there is no way I’m going to be able to get everything done in the game.
Especially as one of the trophies is unattainable right now but even if was an option, I probably wouldn’t be able to get it. It is the trophy you receive from completing everything, so of course, that would be the trophy that would be glitched.
The game only has 18 bronze trophies and one silver, so I don’t feel compelled to get everything.
I do want to just go down the list and just get those trophies as it seems pretty doable that way. I’m definitely going to finish the main story first, and then from there, I’ll start checking the list. I have to start pressing L3 for the horn as having to do it literally a thousand times doesn’t sound great and it isn’t like the horn does anything in-game. I’m in the habit now of dying, blasting my horn ten times, and trying again, as I’m not concern at all about the time limit, so I imagine I’ll get that trophy eventually.
There is a trophy where you have to drive for 8 hours without pausing, and I’m not doing that one either so the pressure is off from this game.
. . .
Once I’ve had my fun with Roundabout, I’ll go back to Uncharted 3 Normal play, I’m on the chapter with all of the boats and I need to figure out the proper route through them all.
I was thinking about playing a different game in-between my Normal and Hard mode playthroughs, and I thought Life is Strange would be a wonderful game to put some distance in-between the two games. But now that I’m typing that, I wonder if I shouldn’t waste the muscle memory and just go back to back playthroughs. My problem is that the way I’m planning on doing it, I have to play Uncharted 3 three times, Normal, Hard, and Crushing. Which I’m all for doing (so Crushing doesn’t, well you know, crush my desires), but that is a lot of time to spend with one game. A great game but still. I’m just thinking back on how Crushing was like in Uncharted 2 and having a Hard playthrough would get me even better at the game (I’m hoping), so Crushing will feel doable. I’m all about the self-motivation.
I’m using psnprofiles to check and that is how I did Uncharted 2, Normal (which gave me Easy), Hard, and Crushing. Apparently it only took me six days to beat the game on Hard.
Whenever I see that giant gap in my gaming timeline, I have to realize that was when Fallout 3 killed my PlayStation 3 with the Yellow Light of Death (YLOD). Which I’ve learned that Fallout 3 and New Vegas both killed many PS3s back in the day.
. . .
Proving that Supermassive Games has an awesome PR team, they released another trailer for Man of Medan!
Thanks again to PlayStation for hosting this video as well!
Also, thanks to WordPress for it keeps capitalizing the S for me.
Odd that PlayStation is hosting the video as the game is supposed to be on all systems but who knows, I’m a PlayStation guy so that works for me.
Such an amazing trailer and it gave me real Peter Stormare/Dr. Hill feels from Until Dawn. Which I’m sure is on purpose.
Of course, I didn’t know about the trailer until recently so I changed my Google account to notify me of all news pertaining to Man of Medan so I’ll be even more updated.
Which, also on my own, I found that we can preorder the game through Amazon!
But since it says December 31, 2019, I’m holding off in case my lovely wife wants to buy it for me for either a late Christmas gift or early Birthday present. I love that it is a thirty dollar game, as it is supposed to be half the length of Until Dawn, so a five hour game, and $60 seems a bit much for that. I was willing to spend $60 but $30 makes it even more doable.
I was tempted just to download the game straightly from PSN, but I’m still old fashion and I like to have my disc. I’ve read numerous times that it doesn’t change the download size, and the free games from the PSN has gotten me in the habit and appreciation of just scrolling over and starting a new game. That’s what happened with Arkham Knight, I beat the game, attempted some AR Challenges and didn’t want to make all the noise of ejecting the disc, opening Uncharted 3’s case and inserting that game into the PS4. I wouldn’t think it makes a lot of noise at noon but it is so much more quiet at 11:30pm, that it could wake someone up. So I just went back to Burly Men at Sea and committed to that game. I also learned how to spell “Burly” as I keep wanting to throw an e in there but that isn’t how you spell it.
Another game I have my eye on is Hellblade : Senua’s Sacrifice, which has been strictly a downloadable game, but might be coming to disc. Which I guess I’ve been waiting for a disc copy so then I can add it to my wife’s Amazon account so she can maybe buy it for me. A little harder to do without the hyperlink. I’m having that issue now with the $40 PSN membership (down from $60). She used the link but since it isn’t a physical card, she’s bummed that she’s going to have to print it and give it as a lame presentation of a gift. I told her not to worry about it but I get it too.
Heck, even Batman : Enemy Within, TellTale’s second Batman game (and most likely last), that disc only comes with the first episode and a code for the season pass, so buying the disc is essentially pointless as you are still downloading the rest of the episodes.
Yet, it is another game that I want and it is hard to put aside $30 for a game but these are nice goals to have.
I imagine Man of Medan is more of a placeholder date and it will come out earlier in the year, which is another reason why I don’t want to preorder it now, as I might not have the funds for it when it first comes out. Not like it will surprise me (I hope) but I rather not get ding for it either.
I had such a good time playing as Batgirl, I might even do the AR segments, I won’t get enough for her trophy but I’ll have a good time with it.
There are a couple segments where Batgirl and Robin team up and we get the option to perform duo takedowns, which is fun but then you automatically switch players and I was making a point of switching back to Batgirl immediately. During the proper game, I would do the same thing, switching from Batman to Robin, Nightwing, or Catwoman, as it is nice to take a break from the Bat.
Another relief with this game was that I was able to get the two missable trophies rather early in the process. I got Ambush as soon as I could take down thugs with a scare effect and I was making a point of taking down all thugs with hacking for the Weird War Tales, prior to even getting to the Ghost Ship, so that felt good.
I needed a guide to locate three of the Jack-in-the-Boxes as those were really well hidden. I liked how the teeth moved so I was able to see them from a distance and the balloons were proudly displayed.
The only mini game that gave me any trouble was the strength test as I wasn’t dive bombing well enough to beat it as I was either missing the giant button or not getting enough speed for it. After a handful of tries, I finally got it done.
. . .
I haven’t made any progress on the 23 Batman AR missions but I made a slaying at the Riddler trophies! I’m down to the final 25!
Which means I’ve gotten 91.9% of the trophies!
It took some doing to get a picture of the two I’m missing in the Arkham Knight’s HQ.
But the number of trophies I’m missing being 25 makes it a nice number for me to stop at. At one point, I was pretty proud of how many I got in Founders, thinking I was done when I realized I hadn’t gone back to Miagani and even attempted those.
I have all of the riddles solved, all breakable items, and saved all of the thugs with bombs in their brains. The ones I’m missing are puzzles that even with the assistance of videos, I’m not fast enough to complete, or there are races that I can’t beat the time for.
I was having a pretty fun time searching for Riddler informants to get more information regarding the Stagg Airships and then I was reminded there were items in the Arkham Knight’s HQ and an underground base as well.
I have three Harley Quinn audio tapes and an Arkham Knight audio tape. I should check again to see if I unlocked any more since calling it good.
. . .
I’m pretty proud of myself for going back, it was bugging me when I wrote the previous article and leaving so much undone. I bought some upgrades and I was able to eliminate the watchtowers, I left the one with the four minigun grunts for last and that felt so satisfying taking the last one down. Once I found I could take out a medic and minigun grunt with a hackable device, that sped that section up. I still have some upgrades to get, but I don’t know which ones I want, so I’ll probably concentrate on Batmobile upgrades as I know the sections I’m not looking forward to the most are all Batmobile and Arkham Knight related.
The landmines was what I concentrated on first and those tank battles took a while but I got them all taken care of and I located the few road blocks I was missing and take care of those as well. I saw that aerial drones could be destroyed with the Batmobile so that saved on time having to grapple to tall buildings and hope I landed on all of them. It took some doing to do it with the Batmobiles as you have to sort of aim below the drone but if you stick with it, you’ll knock them all out. Some drones hover near tall buildings so it wasn’t that hard to reach them.
I’ve earned the following trophies:
Streets of Gotham, destroy all militia checkpoints
Gates of Gotham, destroying all watchtowers Dark Allegiances, taking out the Arkham Knight’s replacement, which is what the other three were leading up too.
I attempted what I thought were eight different jumps but I never went further than 100 meters or I only attempted six, as I thought I tried ten of the 16 but clearly I’m not doing it right.
Since I’m going to attempt to get 23 stars in AR Challenges, I’ll attempt to smash 10 militia transport vehicles during the Seek and Destroy AR Challenge.
I took the time to destroy 20 moving cars without using the Batmobile, The Real Deal, which took way longer than I hoped but not as long as I feared. There are a few street corners that gets lots of traffic. My secret was pressing square as soon as I thought I was within range which worked more times than not. When I first attempted it, I was relying on the icon to appear but then I almost missed a few waiting for the icon so I just attempted it. The hardest part is when the cars are driving faster than I’m gliding and there’s no way to catch up to them by that point. The best location is to be perched on a street light and just prey on any and all cars that drive under you.
Since I can’t get to Riddler, I can’t get the official Knightfall Protocol started, I sat through what felt like a 15 minute sequence but the trophy never popped.
I’m going to attempt New Game Plus but only focusing on the main quest and burning through as much of it as possible. I’m imagining the first real hurdle will be the tank battle in front of Ace Chemicals with the Arkham Knight in his helicopter, as that was the first real obstacle I faced in the game, and the first upgrades I had to purchase. I’m really hoping the Knightmare difficulty isn’t the same as Crushing difficulty in an Uncharted game. The quick saving mechanic could be a little more forgiving in Arkham Knight.
I’ve been sort of missing Uncharted 3 and Burly Men at Sea, but I kept thinking of typing this article and that encouraged me to keep trying. I might give this game another week to try the AR missions with both Batman and Batgirl, and I want to do those in the normal game as I can only imagine how much harder those will be in New Game Plus. Turns out, I do have access to Nightwing, Robin, and Catwoman in certain AR missions so that’s pretty nice. I might try the Catwoman ones too, just because she has a different fighting style as well. I’m mostly looking for new experiences before reliving the same experience but facing tougher obstacles.
I was having such a great time, I’m still thinking of getting the Season Pass to get everything but there is talk of me getting the Spider-Man game and I’ll want a PSN card for the additional DLC in that game as those additional DLC packs come with additional costumes and I’ll want all of those when I play. Shame the DLC costumes are so tied with the DLC achievements so you can’t play with them earlier but that’s what New Game Plus is all about.
. . .
Walker Dennis has been home sick the last couple days so I’ve had a chance to play during naps. I’ve gotten past the part with Harley Quinn at Panessa Studios. I’ve been only focusing on the main mission and not doing any of the side missions. Which I like the idea of Batman just being hyper focus, though he does ask for updates from Alfred on other crimes.
So far it hasn’t been bad. The only real obstacles I’ve faced has been large group fights where I haven’t paid the best attention and allowed a few wild punches to occur.
The Arkham Knight fight outside of Ace Chemicals wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, I credit my ability to do well with the tank battles and having better aim against rockets as I didn’t even lose that fight.
Large boss fights and the Cobra Tank fights seem to be my downfall. Those Cobra Tanks, I wish it took half as long to lock in on their weak spot, and I can’t tell if it takes a little longer than in my Normal playthrough or if I have just forgotten how long it takes. I had to fight five of them before I could make Founders save to use the Batmobile.
So now I’m really not looking forward to the Cloudburst fight with five additional Cobra Tanks and the Arkham Knight’s tank, but that has been one of the three fights I have been dreading. The other problem with that fight is that, where it takes place in the game, you have to complete it as you can’t just escape and do side missions. The other two being the Arkham Knight chase sequence and the following fight with him and his goons.
I was only the menu screen and was noticing the WBPlay icon and figured I’ll do whatever little work it was to unlock the Anime Batman costume and the Zurr En Arrah costumes.
The Anime costume came easily and I had to join the WBPlay forum to get the Zurr En Arrah costume, which I keep wanting to type as Zenn.
I don’t care for how broken the Anime ears look, like there is a clear bend in the ears that isn’t great. I thought Walker Dennis was going to get a bigger kick out of the Zurr En Arrah costume but he didn’t even notice it.
It feels good having two additional costumes though.
I also got one more Riddler trophy in the second Stagg Airship, which I thought I was going to be able too. It was the one that is under the floor where we have to move the crates about. For some reason, I can’t move the crates in that same room in my post game but I was hoping to be able to do it during New Game Plus and it totally worked.
Walker Dennis is now finding question marks everywhere, like road signs or whenever he sees a question written out and wants to point out the Riddler has been up to no good again.
I took him to Hallmark to buy my lovely wife a tenth anniversary card (for November 29) and we looked at all of the Hallmark Christmas Ornaments and he wanted pretty much all of them. I’ll be all for a Frank Gorshin Riddler being on our tree.
We also rewatched Lego Batman and that movie holds up like crazy and I just love how much Bat-mythos are introduced to such a young audience. Shame Riddler doesn’t show up more in it.
Another shame is that Batman The Animated Series isn’t available to watch without having to pay $1.99 an episode. I imagine those will be available through the DC Streaming Channel and that might make that worth the investment.
We’re going through a real Batman phase right now. I should have showed him Mark of the Phantasm as we still own that on DVD, such a great film!
Still no progress on the AR Challenges but I figure I’ll hit a roadblock during New Game Plus and that’s when I’ll pick those up again.
I’ve also looked into buying a replica of a Riddler trophy but Amazon didn’t have anything besides action figures. I thought that’ll be a fun thing to own.
So after playing the game for a couple weeks, I finally ejected it. I didn’t get the Platinum but I never was going to get it.
I had a blast with it and I completed most of the side quests. The one I absolutely wanted to finish was the rescuing the Fire Station 17 crew. The missions I didn’t complete were:
Riddler’s Revenge
Occupy Gotham – the Militia Watchtowers
Campaign for Disarmament – the Militia explosive devices
Own the Roads – the Militia checkpoints
So the bulk of the Militia storyline and, of course, the Riddler trophies. After just spending a lot of time destroying the breakable items with the Batmobile, I figured I’ll knock out the riddles that were scattered throughout Gotham. But after spending a lot of time with guides, I didn’t want to just be going down a website trying to figure out where all of the riddles were. I also was having a hard time with the trophies requiring me to attempt many of them several times and those are not easy to google either.
The whole time I knew I was never going to get the Platinum, I just wanted to see the main ending and do what I can on my way there. Not like I wasn’t enjoying myself nor wanting to rush it but after losing so many different fights with the Militia, I got the clear hint that my skills with the game were not up to par.
There is also this disconnect once I know I’m not going to get a Platinum in a game. I don’t have the stress of trying to make sure I collect everything or that sense that I have to accomplish something to get the full story.
Thanks to HarryNinetyFour for hosting the video.
I watched the above video on how to go under all three bridges, which I attempted, and then watching the video, I was never going to be able to skim the small section between the water and the bridge. I like the glide, and I do it quite often but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at it.
I’m glad I didn’t buy the Season Pass, as I was never going to do all of the AR challenges, I was tempted to go for the “Complete 8 challenges” but the lowest number was 16 and that’s just too much for me to fail and fail again. I have such a backlog of games that I don’t need to suffer through a miserable time for bragging rights.
Typing all of this, I realize I never did do the Batgirl DLC that I paid seven dollars for, so I should pop the game in and attempt to do that, at the very least. That would have just been a waste of money otherwise.
. . .
At one point, I attempted the Watchtower, Explosive Device, and Road Block missions , several times before making progress in the main storyline. I just kept getting my arse handed to me. I recognize that there are several different ones of these so I should try to get a few of them done but knowing I had a hard time with at least one each of these, I was never going to accomplish the overall goal. One Watchtower has four brutes with giant miniguns, plus two medics, and another fellow. I could get down to maybe two brutes but then eventually die. Which would result in yet another minute long load time before having to slow down and attempt it again. Which I’ll admit I probably don’t have the proper patience for it and I rather it not be easy but it doesn’t have to be devastatingly difficult too.
There were times when I wanted to break my controller during the very long load time, like with the underground race against the Arkham Knight. I’m not sure why it needed that entire minute to reset everything. I rather there were times like when you fall in the water in the Batmobile, it just instant loads right back to where I was prior to missing a ledge, but that long wait was a real buzz kill. Or earlier when I’m trying to take out the hard fought tanks with the one weakness in their back, that sequence took forever and then the Arkham Knight’s own tank battle took a while too. But I would die in my several attempts to get through the sequence and each time it took so long to load. I could have really used an auto saved after destroying three of the tanks. During the underground race, Rocksteady was nice enough to create a save for each time I successfully had the Arkham Knight drive through the mines. That was nice of them. They were also nice enough to put auto saves while trying to save Gordon from the Arkham Knight.
I had a suspicion who the Arkham Knight was but I like how I was able to consult many guides and none of those writers ever spoiled it for me, I really appreciated that.
The explosive devices, I enjoy those battles with the Batmobile, but they last way too long! I can do 32 easily but one of those on Founders Island is 42 tanks and that seems to be 12 or 17 tanks too many for me. The drones don’t help with that and I really need the option to upgrade the Batmobile one more time and to have my weapons strike a bigger punch. I should drive around to see if there are other explosive devices that I can accomplish but knowing that there is two more of these battles but with 50 tanks and one with 60 tanks, those are three of them that I’m not going to be able to do.
One of the Road Blocks, I can get down to maybe four of them, but then I’ll die and that was a rare instance where I got down to the last four. I could use another upgrade to Batman’s health or bigger defenses. Those electric stunners can be a real pain. Even though I’m getting a lot of experience and coming up with different strategies, I’m clearly not where I should be. It’ll be nice if I regained health when I walk away or if I could defeat four of them at a time, run like a coward to GCPD, open a door, save the game, and run back and not have those defeated thugs back on their feet.
I think I do have skill points I could distribute so maybe I’ll fully load up the Batmobile, I believe I only have an 8 point upgrade left, but I have so many gadget and skill upgrades left but typing all of this, I do feel like I have some unfinished business left to do with the game.
. . .
The trophies I don’t have are:
The Platinum, naturally A Leap of Faith, maybe if the locations to jump from in the Batmobile were clearly marked or if I found more than the same four of them, and if I knew I was successful in my attempt, I would be more inclined to get this one. Absolution – achieve 69 stars in AR Challenges, even Fortunate Son with 46 stars is out of my range. Sins of Youth at 23 stars is also not ideal. Blunt Trauma, it appears I’ve done several of the predator takedowns but I have no idea how to do a vent takedown or a smoke pellet takedown or a perched takedown and it is glitched too so I’m not sure I can do all of them one more time either. Brutality 101, I can barely do 21 combos if I’m lucky, so trying to string 15 different moves, in a row, is never going to happen. Gates of Gotham, destroy all militia watchtowers Gotham After Midnight, glide 400 meters while less than 20 meters, I might attempt this again but I’ve attempted it many times. Either I must be too high above the ground or I’m not going the distance. Gotham Underground, I should check my numbers on these and really narrow down which ones are beyond me. Point of Impact – perform five perfect shots in a row with the Vulcan cannons and not take any damage, which just sounds like a trophy I wouldn’t be able to do already as I’m constantly taking damage. Run Through the Jungle – the bridge gliding trophy Savage Metal, smash ten militia transport vehicles, I missed my many opportunities to do this in my proper game but apparently I could try again through one of the AR challenges. Streets of Gotham, is the militia road block challenges The Real Deal, I should try, you have to takedown 20 moving cars not using the Batmobile, I know I’ve done it at least twice so 18 more times sounds like a lot. I may also been mentally combining it with take down ten militia vehicles, thinking it was regular vehicles so that isn’t great.
There is a hidden trophy for beating the game on New Game Plus that I’m also not going to do, and mostly due to the Arkham Knight sequences, I had a hard enough time as it was with them being on normal, so being a higher level of difficulty isn’t ideal. I guess I could start a new game plus and see how that unfolds or how far I can get into it but it just feels so daunting.
Those Riddler trophies, there are just so many of them! 315 of them, 179 trophies, 40 riddles, 6 bomb rioters, and 90 breakable items.
I’ve saved one bomb rioter and broke who knows how many items, probably not 90. I do like fighting fools and then interrogating the last Riddler informant, that’s a fun mechanic.
I’ve made a lot of progress in Uncharted 3 (I think I’m on chapter 12?) but I’ve stopped playing that to try out Burly Men at Sea as it is a free game in November through the PSN, but I really should get more information on where I’m at in Arkham Knight.
I figured this post was going to be a bunch of excuses but having using a guide for so much of RiME, it just feels like cheating but there are not that many riddles so I should be able to knock out portions of the riddles and who knows, maybe this new resolve would get me a tad further in the game and enhance my rudimentary skills.
Plus, I do like making a list and crossing items off of said list.
I went back to bold the trophy names in that giant list above and I’m probably still not going to be able to accomplish those items but I’ll give it a shot.
I had asked for the copy of the game that included the Harley Quinn DLC but didn’t end up with that copy but I should play the Batgirl one. Especially after finding it in the Clock Tower, so I will go back to that one. I read there are some missable trophies so that turned me off from doing it but I’ve also read it is short and if I missed a trophy, I imagine I can do it during my new game plus. I believe that just creates a second file and it doesn’t override my original one but I’ll put off starting that until I’ve gotten as far as I actually think I can get in the normal playthrough.
Those Arkham Knight sequences though, do not sound ideal. Like, at all!
Gosh, the more I think about it, I could at least attempt all of the AR Challenges, at least once, per character, and even getting one star every so often, should net me 23 stars. I really did give up on this way too early. I guess I just needed a break and a moment to think about it.
I’m also two side quests away from getting the next to true ending of the game, and four away from getting the proper ending of the game, and releasing the Knight Protocol.
. . .
The next day after typing the above, I got me two additional trophies!
Gotham After Midnight, the glide for 400 meters while less than 20 meters off the ground Seduction of the Gun, achieve 50 critical shots on light tanks
I also started working towards my 23 AR Challenges, I have maybe nine? I’m not very good at remembering the three objectives.
There is a Riddler trophy that I can’t locate on Miagani Island in the Wayne Tower park garage but I can’t find an entrance way or breakable wall to locate it. I figured I’ll focus on Miagani Island , as I only had one landmine and two Watchtowers, but I had to find those, I’m still missing a Watchtower but I know now to look for those red lights as those are the sentries guarding the Watchtower. So I took out the landmine, 36 tanks showed up, I got one critical hit off but not four additional ones in a row without taking damage but then I forgot about the do 50 critical hits trophy, which I didn’t even list above.
I should use the above link to really locate the rest of the trophies I’m missing. I did figure out two bomb rioters so that was nice to do on my own. One of them required me to use the charge gun as I spent like ten minutes looking for an electrical source for the sonic batarang.
So I spent like an hour and a half just chasing Riddler trophies and breakable items, I was having a hard time just coming across Riddler informants, but then I found two of them but I was too lazy to get out of the Batmobile and I enjoy going into battle mode and electrifying the Informants’ buddies but I got the Informant too. So that wasn’t ideal.
There is also a riddler puzzle that I got started and I was throwing countless Batarangs at but then I had to start throwing multiple Batarangs and I wasn’t ready for that change up. So I have to go back and do that one but I’m not thrilled about it.
I should have concentrated on starting with the Batgirl DLC but I wanted to write down the information of what I was missing but then I didn’t even do that. I thought I had located all of the landmines, Watchtowers, and road blocks but turns out that I hadn’t so now I have to locate all of them so I know which ones I’m missing.
There are two missable trophies with Batgirl that I’m concern I’m going to miss due to my slowness, so I wanted to get back into the flow of things.
I have also taken down two additional cars without the Batmobile, so just 16 more, so that’s going to be a grind as I’ll be gliding down to the road and no cars would be in sight until I was nearly landing.
I need to check which DLC I own and which ones I don’t as I’m looking at the trophy guide:
and I know I own the Batgirl DLC, A Matter of Family, and the 1989 Batmobile and 1966 Batmobile packs but I’m not sure if I own the 2008 Tumbler or the Batman vs Superman Batmobile pack.
The problem with these packs is that I have to achieve 33 stars in AR challenges and there are 23 missions so that’s just one star per mission plus ten more stars and you’re done, which seems like a decent amount of leeway, generous even, but the 23 missions is only if you own all of the other packs which I’m not sure about so I might have to 3 star many of these, which I know won’t be happening. Of course, there is only the one trophy associated with the DLC too, so it isn’t even like a complete 11 or 22 trophies for the types like me that are only going to barely make it.
I will at least attempt them.
I wished the 66 Batman came with the Batmobile but at least I got 1966 Robin and Catwoman, so that’s nice but also super irritating that I’m missing the other key member. If I got the $20 season pack, I believe I’ll get all of the suits, including that one, even if it isn’t available to purchase on its own. Shame the whole world doesn’t get a make over as it’ll be fun to see 66 Riddler and Joker too. But then it’ll be too jarring when you saw modern Scarecrow, or awesome. It will for sure be something.
Do I have the Catwoman pack? I imagine I have not accidently purchased it or that it came with any of the other content that I have purchased. This is considered an Arkham Episode along with Batgirl’s A Matter of Family, and the Harley Quinn and other episodes.
Since I have Batgirl’s DLC, I also have access to that DLC’s trophies but it also gives me access to her Motherlode trophy, which is to achieve 21 stars in the AR Challenges. The base game comes with 21 but with all of the DLCs, there are 87 stars, as each additional character gets DLC but I’m not sure about DLC variants like 66 Catwoman and Robin, so who knows, I might just have 25 stars with the base game and Batgirl. I like the advice of concentrating on combat challenges over predator ones, not only are they easier but are faster too.
I’m also back to wanting to buy the Season of Infamy DLC as I would love to go up against Mad Hatter, the League of Assassins, and Killer Croc.
Okay, I was able to look up the DLC I own through the PlayStation Store:
Crime Fighter Challenge Pack
Batman Inc Skin
2008 Movie Suit
Arkham Knight Batmobile
Batman : Noel suit
Batman v Superman suit and Batmobile
The 52 Skins Pack
There is another Crime Fighter Pack with the DLC characters that I don’t own. There is another Crime Fighter Pack with Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and Catwoman that I don’t own. Four total.
The Season of Infamy is $10
Robin’s Flip of a Coin is two dollars, as is Catwoman’s Revenge and Nighwing’s GCPD Lockdown and Harley’s Story. I forgot Red Hood is considered an additional character, his is two dollars as well.
What I want is called the PlayStation 4 Exclusive Pack, comes with 66 Batman and a red Batman and red Batmobile.
My copy of the game didn’t come with the free Scarecrow Nightmares, which I missed from the Asylum game.
Does seem like a real value for $20, especially if I want to throw down half of that just for Season of Infamy, so maybe I’m back to wanting everything, it’ll be nice just to have that buffer. It would also be nice if the PlayStation Store was an app. The website doesn’t try to sell me on anything so clicking one of the items doesn’t really go further into what comes with the purchase.
. . .
Okay, last night I disposed of all of the landmines, so that felt pretty great!
I went around the map trying to locate all of the other missing items. I can’t find the sole road block I’m missing in Miagani, and I’m missing the third Watchtower there as well. I am also missing my third Watchtower in Bleake and I have two road blocks there that I do know about. I had six Watchtowers in Founder but while finding one, I just took it out as it was just five dudes and I landed to close to them. So I have five left and I only located four of them, and I have one road block left.
While compiling the list, I noticed I have the four drones on each of the three islands and it turns out, we can destroy those so I’ll add that to the list, even though it isn’t a trophy, I’ll like the skies to be as clear as possible.
This weekend, I’ll finally tackle the Batgirl DLC.
I got a few more Riddler trophies, I solved three riddles, and saved two more bomb rioters so I’m glad I went back to the game.
My wife and I have been wanting to buy the NES Classic Edition and the Super NES Classic Edition consoles. Then news came out that PlayStation was going to make a classic version of the PlayStation One, which I was super excited about.
Like most items of this nature, what games are put on it is the huge selling point. My mind wandered with what could be included. I figured Chrono Cross wouldn’t be or Chrono Trigger via a redone Final Fantasy Chronicles. Crash Bandicoot being on there would make it an easier sell for my wife, though we own the trilogy through the PS4. I adored Legend of Mana, still the only Mana game I’ve played, and thought that could have a chance of being part of the set as it is (or was?) a popular franchise for a time. Looking over the list of PlayStation One games over at Wikipedia, I’m starting to think I hardly played the system but I recall spending hours upon months with it so I’m not sure. Maybe I just played six games and moved onto the PS2?
I enjoyed Pac-Man World, that series got better with future games.
PaRappa the Rapper, I thought had a great chance of being included as I still like to kick, punch, chop, and maintain a funky flow.
I attempted Paradise Eve but wasn’t good at it or there was a disconnect.
Was there only one Marvel vs. Street Fighter game? I played that one a bunch too, but I figured the rights to the characters would make that a hard one to get released now. I played that one and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, I thought there were at least two games.
We got one of the Rampage games, not sure which one, most likely, World Tour.
There we go. Activision’s first two Spider-Man games, self-titled and Enter Electro, With the success of Sony’s latest Spider-Man game, I thought there was a slight chance the first Spider-Man game could make it onto the list. I was searching the web for any news about Spider-Man when it was coming out, I remember being in a summer camp program and just using all of the limited computer time searching information on Spider-Man. Of course, no one else wanted to talk about it or even knew the game was coming out. It was that game and the first X-Men movie that was stealing all of my focus.
My other great love of PlayStation One was Star Ocean : Second Story, that’s the game I legit played so much! I was a huge RPG fan back in the day and I devoted so much time playing it and drinking Apple Juice and eating Yogurt covered Raisins. Which was my go to gaming food for a long time.
I tried Tomb Raider but couldn’t get into it for whatever reason, same for Twisted Metal.
I did have the WWE games that came out in a yearly fashion. They got a lot better with time.
There was also a snow racing game but googling that did not get me any results that matched my memory.
. . .
The first five games they announced, of the 20, were:
Final Fantasy VII – which makes sense as people love that game. I picked Chrono Trigger so I have no real connection to Final Fantasy. Even when I got VI with Chrono Trigger, I attempted it but didn’t get too far into it.
Jumping Flash – I never heard of it
Ridge Racer Type 4 – It sounded familiar
Tekken 3 – Which I did attempt but I’m not much of a fighter gamer.
Wild Arms – Which my buddy Greg was way into and it looked interesting being a Western RPG, like a cowboy western and not Western world.
So a Final Fantasy game I wouldn’t mind playing after decades of hype and Wild Arms were the big sellers to me. But the other three seem questionable, so it wasn’t like someone would google “Top 25 PlayStation One games” and just assume those were the 20 games.
Then we got the entire list and it seems like a head scratcher to me.
Battle Arena Toshinden – Never heard of it
Cool Boarders 2 – Never heard of it
Destruction Derby – Never heard of it
Grand Theft Auto – which I’ll be super interested in attempting but I worry it’ll be like playing Fallout 1 after playing 3, it is a completely different game with different mechanics and interface.
Intelligent Qube – Never heard of it
Metal Gear Solid – I tried my best to get into IV but just couldn’t, and I tried for hours. The first one is pretty legendary though.
Mr. Driller – Never heard of it
Oddworld : Abe’s Oddysee – sounds cute, just from the title.
Rayman – I have Raymen Legends for the PS4 but haven’t even attempted it, but it’ll be nice to play the game that launched the franchise.
Resident Evil Director’s Cut – I’m not much of a zombie guy and I haven’t played any Resident Evil game but playing the first one, that is also pretty legendary, would be nice.
Revelations : Persona – Persona sounds familiar
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo – Never heard of, that title could use some work
Syphon Filter – Never heard of it
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six – I’m not much of a fighter, racing, nor first person shooter gamer, but here’s another game I wouldn’t mind playing the beginning of another mega franchise.
So out of 20 games, maybe seven games I want to play? For $100, that might be too much. None of them are games I have played myself so that isn’t great. I like how, for the general public, there is something there for everybody. Five marque names, a fighting game, a racing game, a zombie game, and a platformer, those are not bad. Heck, there even is an RPG so that satisfies an itch I’ve been having lately.
So we’ll probably be passing on this, until it is like a $50 item.
Goliath listed their top 25 games for the PlayStation One:
Chrono Cross came in at 24 (so the list is pretty questionable 😀 )
Spider-Man at 22 might actually confirm the questionability of the list.
It does list games that are on the Classic so that’s good to read a paragraph regarding games like Oddword : Abe’s Oddysee.
PaRappa the Rapper at 15.
Spryo not being on there goes back to my theory about remakes not making the list. Tony Hawk goes towards my other theory that it might be licensing issues.
Nice that two of the top five games, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII made it the PlayStation One Classic.
. . .
Now, the NES Classic is up our alleys. This does not disappoint at all!
Castlevania
Donkey Kong
Double Dragon II : The Revenge (I’m not sure if I’ve played this one)
Dr. Mario
ExciteBike (which I used to put quarters into at the arcade but I’m not sure I actually owned it on the Nintendo)
Kirby’s Adventure
Mario Bros.
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Pac-Man
Super Contra
Super Mario Bros 1, 2, and 3
Legend of Zelda 1 and 2
I mean, just putting all of the Mario games and both Zelda games probably made this a guarantee seller. I’ve seen it at Shopko for $50 and twice have passed up on it but now that a copy can sit on the shelf for a week, I may have to throw down fifty and pick it up. I would definitely be getting my moneys worth from it.
Then the American exclusive ones got:
Castlevania II : Simon’s Quest
Donkey Kong Jr.
Final Fantasy (which we bought at a yard sell and I totally used the previous guy’s game file to first experience the game with)
Kid Icarus
Punch-Out!!
Tecmo Bowl
With a few other games I’ve heard of but would eventually play too.
. . .
With the huge success of the Nintendo Classic, of course they would make a Super Nintendo Classic.
My only thought was, if they put Chrono Trigger on it, I’ll throw down the pre-order money, as soon as they teased it. So me not owning it right now, should be a sign that Chrono Trigger didn’t make the list, which is a super shame! As it would work perfectly on this as opposed to the PlayStation Classic (I would imagine they would improve on the load times, right?).
It still has some pretty great games on it though!
Donkey Kong Country
Final Fantasy VI (they were so close!)
Kirby Super Star
Legend of Zelda : Link to the Past
Mega Man X
Secret of Mana (I would love to play the first game of this franchise, not like I was lost with Legend of Mana)
Star Fox 1 and 2
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario World 1 & 2
Super Metroid
Again, just being able to play the Mario games, plus one Zelda game makes this a must buy. I’m not the biggest Link guy, as I chose Mario back in the day, I still chose Mario, we’re a Mario house – minus us owning a Switch but one of these days.
Then the American exclusive got the following games:
EarthBound
Kirby’s Dream Course
Street Fighter II Turbo : Hyper Fighting
Super Castlevania IV
Super Punch Out!!
Which I adored EarthBound and would gladly play that game again.
I don’t have much connection with the N64, as I had moved to PlayStation after that and have pretty much stuck with them every since. We’ll supplement it with a Wii and WiiPlus, and I’ll accept an XBOX 360 as a gift, and have plans for the Switch, but I’m a Sony guy. Nintendo is great for family games though. I do like how they are still committed to platformers.
We owned like three games for the N64, and one of those was a WWE game, No Mercy, and I pretty much only played that. We didn’t have Mario 64 or GoldenEye but I was able to play GoldenEye at a friend’s house. I played Mario 64 on the DS and that wasn’t ideal. I’m not sure if it was a problem with the port or if that’s how the actual game was, so I missed out on that. I also missed out on Mario Sunshine too.
If they made a PlayStation 2 Classic, I’ll be curious about that but with the let down of what the One is like, I’m not sure.
. . .
Has anyone had any luck with the Sega Genesis Classic Game Console?
Usually it goes for like $20 or something which makes it seem like it’ll be a pretty cheap product but for that price, it would be worth a risk. Plus, just keep the receipt and return it if it isn’t quality.
81 games and two controllers sounds pretty good. You get the Sonic games and Mortal Kombat seems to be the main games of interest.
Atari also has put out a similarly priced product with 105 games that I’ve seen around plenty of times. Pit Fall and Maze Craze would be the two games I want on it but I’m not sure if Maze Craze is on the list. It might not be as if it was, we would own it but maybe it is. My wife is a huge fan of those two games.
My wife got me the Ms. Pac-Man plug n play for Christmas and that was pretty nice. I think she spent too much on it and I wished it had a couple other games included as I turn it on, I play my four (five?) lives and then turn it off, so it can be a fun five minutes or twenty minutes, then I just lose interest or want to google a gif of the cut scenes moments.
I have been tempted to buy the Ms. Pac-Man game for the PS4 but I have a hard enough time pulling the trigger on buying a $20 or $25 PSN card but if I can ever justify it (or be gifted it), I’ll throw four dollars towards Ms. Pac-Man.
. . .
I was going to buy a PSN card to get the season pass for Batman Arkham Knight but now I’m back to wanting to buy a few smaller things like the Ninja Turtle pack and Batman in LittleBigPlanet 3 and keep some money in the wallet for other small purchases. Or just buy the story and costume content and not the additional challenges in Arkham Knight but the costumes come with challenges so I should just buy the season pass. What I need is a $50 one and buy everything I want and not even have an issue with anything. Oh, the goals I have!
This morning, we got my 12th platinum by successfully doing everything in RiME!
My concern about looking up YouTube walkthroughs turned out to be legit as once I looked up one video, I essentially just played around with the video as I watched it.
Huge thanks to YouTubers Sylvain LUCE and PS4Trophies for their most excellent videos.
Thanks to Sylvain LUCE’s above video for Chapter 2.
Without this video, I never would have gotten through to the rest of the game. I got stuck right at the 23 minute mark, as I just couldn’t figure out where the box thing was. Turns out, you had to climb a wall, hide in a shadow, or the eagle would get you. Then I just watched the video all the way through.
I successfully got through Chapter 3 on my own. I figured I’ll go back and get the collectibles later. But the entire time, I was thinking I should just play and watch a video at the same time, as that would save a bunch of time. I had the thought so much that I did that for Chapter 4.
Thanks again to Sylvain LUCE for his video.
The title states (with trophies) but unless I completely missed all of them, he didn’t make a great deal of getting the bonus trophies like Racing and From the Sky to the Abyss, but that’s only two trophies but the video is amazing for all of the collectibles. To the point that I got the From the Sky to the Abyss, was struggling with getting to all of the fox statues, did three of the five of them, I was tempted to get the above video reloaded but realized I had all of the collectibles and quit the chapter. I wasn’t going to do the last 30 minutes when I just needed to wake up, load Chapter 5 and get the Platinum. I waited until Walker Dennis was up and let him actually do all of the walking for Chapter 5 and five minutes later, we got the platinum.
So Sylvain LUCE did a great job with the extended walkthroughs.
PS4Trophies does a great job of just showing you just enough to not spoil the game but to give you the context to catch up to where you should be for the video.
Walker Dennis helped a lot with the first chapter, if you are looking for a game an almost five year old can play, RiME is up there with most LEGO games. He had trouble with the more complicated puzzles but I did too so the game is pretty challenging even for a 36 year old.
This game has a lot of humor in the first chapter that I missed, there are also no real beacons of where to go next, but the map isn’t crazy large (unless you are looking for collectibles).
I would highly recommend just playing the game, you probably won’t stumble across as many collectibles on your first playthrough but I really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment of figuring out puzzles on my own. But I also didn’t miss it during my complete walkthrough of Chapter 4.
That Chapter 2 though, seriously kicked my butt, it definitely has the most complexity of the four chapters. Four’s maze of finding the five fox lights (like the first chapter, in a nice bookend), gives it a run for its money but that’s mostly because it is just columns and dark and rainy, whereas Two has lots of side options you can get lost in.
Honestly, without these two videos, I would be lost, and again, there was a moment when PS4Trophies made a jump cut that I had to pause and figure out how he got there. Apparently, there is a structure with a sun emblem on the side of a wall, that without that clue, I couldn’t progress to the final section of the chapter. It is at the 12:20 time in the above video. I must have ran past it so many times, thinking I knew what to look for but clearly not.
Someone on reddit told me the other two chapters are easy in comparison and they were not lying about that.
Thanks to PS4Trophies for the Chapter 3 video.
Turns out, his name is Brian and has a Patreon page:
Which I thought was the website I go to for most of my walkthroughs of other games but that would be:
playstationtrophies.org
Which wasn’t as similar of an address as I thought it was. PSNProfiles has spectacular walkthroughs as well.
He’s also on Twitter so I figured I’ll follow him there. I’m also trying to remember what other game I would have watched one of his videos for but RiME is pretty much the first game I actually watched a video for the sole purpose of assisting me with trophies. Usually, I’ll watch game footage for games I want to play or am playing but don’t have time to play the game myself but just to watch someone else play.
So I didn’t really need his video for Chapter 4 except for the Racing trophy, which I figured I already knew how to do but it was the Sky to the Abyss trophy that eluded me. That happens at the 4:56 mark.
After seeing so many photo mode photos from the newest Spider-Man game, I’ve started taking screenshots of my games too. I need to upload them but I was worried about uploading photos that could be considered spoilers. But then why take the photos? I’m not sure.
RiME was a free game through the PSN way back in February 2018 and it has taken me essentially eight months to do this but really, a matter of weeks is all it takes and that is if you are taking your time with the game.
That true ending of RiME is super heartbreaking, especially after seeing the third person in the keyhole storylines and I’m going to have to look at those again in one sitting (thanks to the Extra menu). That poor man, I would create an elaborate mindscape too!
. . .
I’m still making my way through Batman Arkham Knight, probably just exclusively focus on that game until I finally beat it. I’m still committed to not doing that much in terms of trophy hunting, I’ll see what I get and what I’m close to getting, but these games like this and Grand Theft Auto, I’m never going to get the platinum for. I’ll say the same thing for Fallout games but I’m three for three on those so there’s something different about that. I imagine the lack of collectibles and lack of side combat challenges helps with that.
I completely messed up on my third Firefly mission and instead of chasing him all over and pressing the eject button and tackling him in the air, I pressed eject super early and flew/glided right past him, like a real dummy. So I’m hopefully I get a second attempt to catch him.
According to PlaystationTrophies.org, there are no missable trophies, so I’ll probably have to load the game and hope that it resets after 24 hours. That was one of the other reasons I pushed RiME back up on the list, I was going to wait until the weekend but I was hoping playing another game, would reset the ingame clock of Arkham Knight and Firefly would be there when I get back. Hopefully by the time I get the game started tonight, it is back.
I believe this is the fire station on Founders’ Island that I missed Firefly at. It looks almost close enough that Ghostbuster loving Walker thought it was the Ghostbuster station.
Which he’s been on the look out ever since I made the mistake of showing him that the fire station is in the PS4 Spider-Man game.
Thanks to Ghostbusters News for hosting the above video!
Super fun that they threw a picture of a ghost on the back of the building. As the building really is Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8’s proper fire station.
But as a guy who will most likely never go to New York City, it will forever be the Ghostbusters house in my mind.
So that’s nice that fire stations all share similarities in both life and in fiction.
Someone did point out since Sony owns both the Ghostbusters franchise and the Spider-Man game is a Sony PlayStation exclusive, they could have easily made it the official Ghostbusters building and it wouldn’t have required too much negotiations. I imagine Sony wanted to honor the brave firefighters who call the building their home and threw in the ghost graffiti as a nod that they know other people know the building as something else.
In my anticipation of Supermassive Games’ Man of Medan, I actually bought Hidden Agenda for the PS4. Walker Dennis really wanted the latest Ghostbusters game, and after seeing it for $15, I bought it as well. I had planned on buying Hidden Agenda but I figured it’ll be one of those things I plan on buying but don’t really follow through. But I did it and I’m super happy I did.
I’ve read people saying it isn’t worth $20 as it is only two hours of content but for $15 and it being three hours of content, I think it is pretty worth it.
Thanks to PlayStation Europe for hosting the reveal trailer.
The game uses the PS4 PlayLink, so you have to download the free app and you use the PS4 controller to select menu settings but once you are ready to start either Story mode or Competitive mode, you start using your handheld device. I used my Android and my Kindle, which was pretty nice. I had put the app and the app for Knowledge is Power on my wife’s phone but I’ll probably delete this app from her phone as she doesn’t have to play with me anymore.
I was able to use my phone and the Kindle at the same time and I didn’t really notice it being all that difficult. I really wanted the trophies that are required with a Competitive play so on my second night with the game, I did all of that.
My very first gameplay, I went with Story mode, to experience the full aspect of the game. I only committed an hour to it and when I came back the second night, I found out I was so close to finishing the first chapter.
I’ll say the second chapter is the shortest as I’ve spent two different nights finishing the final two chapters and the first chapter seems to take up my limited hour of gaming (sometimes I can get an hour and a half a night).
There have only been two real gripes I’ve had with the game. One is when you are looking for clues, it takes a long time for the cursor to register on the screen, so you lose like five seconds of the twenty you are given. Which is great when you have two player mode (in either Competitive or Story (two player Story is required for one specific trust trophy) mode) as either you get more time to find them all or moving two different devices at the same time, gives you more opportunity to go around the room.
The only clue I ever missed was due to whatever delay that is caused between clues. I couldn’t find the magnifying glass (that represents where the clue is), it is on the police uniform. The other two are the pictures of Becky in the middle and the rat trap below the pictures, next to the pink box.
My second gripe is a real bummer for a huge Until Dawn fan. We get the option again to look at Global Statistics, so if you want a run where you pick all of the least proper choices, you can do that. But if you have to turn off the game and come back to it later, the option is still selected as “On” but you no longer get the stats. Every time I came back to the game on the next day, I’ll get an error message. I’ll try to experiment if I quit the game proper, if I can still get the stats to continue but it was a real shame losing those as I continued. So I had to just choose the opposite choice or the choice that would lead to a trophy as I was aware of which ones I’ll need after my first playthrough.
The motion captures and voice talent (I’m not sure if they are one and the same) are amazing. Like a very limited Until Dawn, they hired Katie Cassidy (from Arrow fame) to be Detective Becky Marney.
Christy Choi plays Felicity Graves, the other main character, who is the District Attorney to the Trapper’s case.
The two of them have great chemistry together, and there were times I thought about shipping them together but thought that was silly. My first playthrough, I had them look at case files at night together.
They seemed to be very friendly, but none of my other playthroughs required them to look at the case together, which was a shame.
Olivia Carass wrote this fun article commenting on it as well:
They can resolve their issues and get a beer together
But be mindful if Becky should have that beer or not.
The only real legit suspenseful part of the game was when this lady joined Becky at the bar:
She just shows up, sits there and watches as Becky passes out. We get a glimpse of her, well I guess two glimpses of her prior and never again (as far as I can tell), so she shows up, gets the job done, and we never see her again. I was like, who is this?! And then with what happens after that, oh boy!
The entire cast is very well done. Leonard Roberts is Tom, Becky’s police partner. I know him as DL from Heroes, who had the phasing power and dated Ali Larter’s character. He is King Idri of Loria on Magicians, a show I really want to start watching. He’s also been on Mom and The Client List.
Tom was my favorite of her partners, if you make a different decision in the very beginning of the game, you get Karl Carter as her partner, but he always feels an alternate choice to me. West Liang does a great job but I always got Tom as my main partner.
If Karl is your partner, that means Tom is your sergeant which is another shame as Sergeant Riggs is such a great police sergeant. Riggs is played by Chris McKenna. Apparently McKenna and Roberts were on Major Crimes together, during the Conspiracy Theory arc, so I should try to watch that to see if they have any scenes together.
In one playthrough, my final one actually, Becky had to do something horrible to Riggs that made me happy that it wasn’t also Tom in the role. But still bad.
I got the platinum for the game within five days of playing it, and four playthroughs. This makes my eleventh platinum, as my tenth is Fallout Shelter (which is why I’m able to finally play other games).
PlayStation Trophies was a great website to help with the proper playthroughs:
I did one on my own, I attempted an unpopular decisions play (but being aware of other trophies), a third one, the Rat in the Trap, and Antitrust.
Another fun hold over from Until Dawn was that the writers of Until Dawn wrote this game and Larry Fessenden came back to portray Vernon Lemay, a brother to one of the Trapper’s victims. Feessenden co-wrote the game and was the Stranger in Until Dawn. Graham Reznick is the other co-writer, I’m not sure why he doesn’t lend his voice to a character.
There are three other actors that make up the main cast.
Yan Feldman plays Jonathan Finn, who Becky arrests as The Trapper. He’s been in various things but nothing I recognized him in.
Chad Michael Collins is Jack Calvary, who was the detective on the Trapper case that Becky closed for him. They do not get along. He’s a jerk with a heart of jerk so it is easy to take Becky’s side in every exchange. But there is also, not a charm, but charisma about him too. He’s confident. He’s been in things too that I may have recognized him if I rewatched them.
Finally, there is a Gabriel Miller as Simon Hillary, the police medical examiner. He’s credited as Gabriel Schwalenstocker but imdb lists him as Miller. I didn’t recognize any of his credits.
Something I did recognize in the game, and once I recognized it, I couldn’t stop seeing it. As that the game will flick or have a delayed pause, like I could tell when the game was choosing either Response A or Response B, which was smoother for Until Dawn. Also, a character would be talking at one angle, and then Response B would be chosen, be shown at a different angle, and then go back to the original angle to go back to the main plot. I wouldn’t say it was distracting but something that I did notice.
Maybe if I did one playthrough a week and didn’t spend so much time with the game, I wouldn’t have noticed it as much but it is hard to unsee once you have seen it.
Overall, such a fun experience, even the gripes I have, are minor and I would clearly recommend the game to anyone interested in it. I love Until Dawn, I really enjoyed this, and I’m eagerly anticipating Man of Medan.
. . .
As I foretold, once I got the platinum in Fallout Shelter, I haven’t gone back. I have thought about it but like Fallout 4, just spending ten minutes in the game, makes me want to spend an hour in the game. So I’m distracting myself with other games. I did start a new character in Fallout 4 to play on Survival mode to get myself prepared for Fallout 76 but I modeled him after our son and he just wanted to play instead so that took up my 30 minutes. I wished I could have made the character shorter and more younger looking but Walker Dennis thought it looked enough like him to get into it. He’s gotten much better at controlling the character. Of course, he immediately went looking for Dogmeat, and that was pretty cute. I’m filling his memory banks with unimportant things like the map of Fallout 4 but he pretty much went from the vault to Sanctuary (spending no time there) and going to Red Rocket to get Dogmeat. Ideally, I’ll play him as a Railroad member but I’ll also not play at all.
It is easy to be a prophet of your own actions.
Someone on the Trophies subreddit got the RiME platinum and I realized I should pick that game up and figure out where I left off. I was in Chapter 2 and I had unleashed the second windmill and realized I didn’t do the first windmill.
Which, again, was a complicated puzzle that I had made harder than it had to be. I saw several YouTube videos that had completed everything within 30 to 45 minutes and I must have made that level a two hour affair. Someone was nice enough to inform me that the next three chapters are super easy compared to two and they were definitely right about that. So we beat the game, Walker Dennis and I hugged for maybe four minutes after beating the game, it was a long and good hug (it may have been more like a minute of silence) but even he recognized that it was a sad but hopeful moment. I had it originally spoiled for me, conceptually, but actually playing the game and seeing the actual content, hit me on a different level I wasn’t quite ready for. We’ve gone back and did all of the trophies for Chapter 1 and gotten all of the collectibles. I also started a YouTube playthrough for Chapter 4 and just did it along with the video, it still took me an additional 10 minutes but that was more on me than the video.
Thanks Sylvain LUCE for hosting such a good video! We couldn’t have done it without you.
So ideally, we just need Chapters 2 and 3 and we’ll have our 12th platinum. I promised to not play without Walker Dennis there, who is really good at the game. So we’ll probably play on the weekend but still follow a guide. We’ll get the platinum during Chapter 3, at some point, as typically, people get it during their second playthrough when they unlock a costume in Chapter 4 and have to go back to Chapter 2 and we’ll be doing that next.
We got all of the collectibles from Chapter 4 but we definitely need two trophies and once we find all of the white shades (I believe we only need three’s now), we need to replay Chapter 5 as well. So all of my assumptions were wrong. But like they say, when you make an assumption, you are right the bulk of the time.
As I got the platinum at around 11pm for Hidden Agenda, I didn’t want to make all of the noise of ejecting the disc, opening Arkham Knight’s case, and inserting that game into the system (it is louder than you think it would be). So I started Heavy Rain again, did the section with the FBI guy (I have to learn their names eventually) and that section ends with the father informing the police. I clearly didn’t remember what his shirt was, after a few months of not playing, but I got the rest of the questions right, there were no ellipses during the other responses like the shirt response got.
Last night, I did get to play Arkham Knight for a while, and I’ll probably be sticking with that game for some time. I got a little further in The Perfect Crime and the firefighter storyline. I ended the session with attempting a Militia Watchtower but a drone was stopping me from making any real progress. I read I have to hack the drone but I haven’t gotten the hacking device just yet. I also made a little progress in the main storyline as Barbara Gordon caused Arkham Knight’s car to crash and that was a very fun sequence to play. I felt like a real detective, an overly financed one, but a detective nonetheless.
I still need to unlock that third island, so I can get the Batmobile over there, as there are so many threats still. I can access it but the bridges are still up.
It felt great coming across the body in Bristol all on my own, I knew the district it was in but I had to figure it out on my own. That’s the case I’m trying to focus on at the moment, as it was the first case presented to me. So my main goal right now is to get the hacker device so I can get that one particular watchtower completed.
Looking at this website, not the one I found last night, apparently I should just go to the Watchtower by Ryker Heights on Founders’ Island as that’ll give me access to Stagg’s Airship, which is the mission that gives me the hacker device.
. . .
Okay, I’ve typed “hacker” so many times that it triggered something I’ve been wanting to look up on YouTube for too long.
Walker Dennis is obsessed with Chad Wild Clay’s Hacker storyline, he’s on the prowl for the Hacker and the Game Master and I’m either overhearing the YouTube videos or just hearing the word “hacker,” like all of the time.
Thanks to Chad Wild Clay for hosting his own video.
It is this massive (and maybe never ending?!) crossover with other YouTubers like Steven Sharer and his siblings (who I haven’t heard about in a while).
I’ve been meaning to look up if there is a conclusion but I’ll have to watch this video to see what is happening. I’ve heard one video at least six times, where they are looking for clues in their basement. I can’t seem to find the basement video but in my searches, there is at least six or seven different YouTubers who are continuing this massive crossover. I was looking for a video with a blonde lady with glasses but not having much luck.
Well, I’m clearly down this rabbit hole. Rebecca Zamolo is her name.
Thanks to Rebecca Zamolo for hosting her video.
It is the Gamemaster who has a secret tunnel in her house. Though I get the feeling it is a second video where she’s telling another peep about the tunnel and she’s going back in the second time.
Like the Sharers, she has an entire industry with her
Thanks to Matt and Rebecca for hosting their video. Whoever Matt is, he doesn’t appear to have his own video series.
Every time Walker Dennis starts one of their videos, I think about Netflix’s Alexa and Katie as they share the same theme song (somehow).
Thanks to Netflix Kids & Family for hosting the video.
Turns out, they don’t but it sounds similar. Or it did until I listen to both of them.
Wow, there’s research I did that only satisfied me. But seriously, I’m always hearing about the hacker and the game master but I get it now as one video sort of leads into a second video and from there, you’ve seen six videos in thirty minutes.
. . .
According to that Arkham Knight website from forever ago above, the Watchtower I’m currently on (to end this on a video game note) is
Watchtower 19 Location: Founders’ Island – Otisburg, east of Port Adams
You will come across 2 Gun Emplacements in the northeast edge of the area in addition to 3 armed soldiers including a Boa Sentry Operator. It is advised to deal with the Boa Sentry Operator before rest of the thugs to make things a tad easier.
I remember it being near Port Adams but I was doing a search for drone but eventually found it on the page. I was throwing explosive gel at the drone and batarangs at it but I clearly need that hacker device. Which is officially called the Remote Hacking Device, which was called the Cryptographic Sequencer, but I imagine most people called it “the hacker device” and why try harder?
Trying Watchtower 19, I was being painfully reminded that Founders’ Island is further along in the story than I should probably be at as there were tanks all over the place and the Batmobile couldn’t get there as the bridge is still up.
I believe this will be my second Watchtower and I stopped the first one that introduced the threat.
Amazingly, I still don’t know who the Arkham Knight is. Unfortunately, for this post, I had to get the Perfect Crime spoiled for me as I couldn’t remember the mission name and when I found it, the helpful website listed who the boss was but that is what happens when you are a patient gamer.
The bridge will come down eventually as I make progress in the story, I don’t want to just do the story, I like to spice it up with side quests, keep it fresh. The only reason I went to that particular Watchtower was due to it being the closest mission after I did The Perfect Crime event and I wasn’t quite ready to call it a night.
I’ll probably get in the habit of doing one main story point and then a side thing, with a focus on The Perfect Crime. The latest victim was from Tucson, Arizona, which was pretty cool as a guy from Arizona.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 