The Platinum Road and Welcome back PSN

The Playstation Network has actually been up for a good week or so now since its shutdown back in April. The Store had been closed, so the only content we had available was our Friend List and Online play. During the time Online play was down, I played coop games with Chelsea like Portal 2 and Single Player campains like Fallout: New Vegas. Once the friend list and trophies returned, I was back in business.

YESSSS

As soon as the trophy server returned, it was time to finish off Mirror's Edge. Many trophy guides out there give Mirror's Edge high marks for difficulty. Unlike other "difficult" platinums that involve several hundred hours of gameplay or quests that are difficult to find or qualify for, Mirror's Edge requires a bit of skill and prowess with the Dual-shock controller. In fact, it is probably like trying to get all the trophies in a First-Person Shooting game, except instead of just "Kill XX in YY style" it is "Complete the game on hard mode in X time with no deaths." The roadmap (for me) for Mirror's Edge was:

1) Complete the game on normal without firing any shots. (5/31/2009)
2) Complete the game on hard mode. (6/16/2009)
3) Find all Bags. (3/30/2010)
4) Obtain a Time Trial rating of 50. (5/19/2011)
5) Complete a qualifying speed run in all levels. (6/1/2011)
6) Finish silly trick trophies. (6/1/2011)

The humongous gaps in game time come from how I first started playing it. If I remember correctly, I rented the game for a while and never beat it. Then I bought it and played through a good chunk of it. Once I realized how hard the platinum was, I put it on the bookshelf for a year. After that, I finished it off. And to be honest, I'm wanting more. Sad to say, but, as soon as I got the platinum trophy, I started looking for more I can do in the game. Surprisingly, I like it a lot, and I would dare put it in a top 20 list of favorite games. If EA ever decided to retry a sequel for this game, it would be a day 1 purchase for me.

I wish there were more games like Mirror's Edge. If you think about it, games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider are upgrades from the idea of "action stages." In this day and age, running through levels for high scores probably isn't worthy of being a fully fledged, 60 dollar retail game. Sonic Generations is being released in just a few months and is probably the closest I can get to that style of game(actually, Sonic Generations is EXACTLY what I want). Not that I have anything against games where you do MORE than platform. I'm a huge fan of Uncharted, Little Big Planet, and all of that stuff. But I need something slightly faster and slightly more skillful.
Something like this:

Video credit: 4e and link

That is still a little ways away, so I need to play something in the mean time. Lucky for me, the Playstation Store was put back up yesterday! That means I can spend my unused credits for more downloadable games. Best of all is SCEA's Welcome Back campaign.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/03/welcome-back/

The Welcome Back Promotion gives you access to 2 out of 5 free PS3 games and 2 out of 4 PSP games.
1) Deadnation PS3
2) Little Big Planet PS3
3) Infamous PS3
4) Super Stardust HD PS3
5) Wipeout HD PS3
1) Little Big Plant PSP
2) Killzone Liberation PSP
3) Modnation Racers PSP
4) Pursuit Force PSP

Out of those PS3 games, I already own 3 of them, so that means I am getting Super Stardust and Wipeout HD.

Ignore Threads of Fate(great game btw)

So hopefully I'll have enough stuff to hold me over. Infamous 2 is in a lot of ads for next week, so eventually I will have to get that. Also, MAG is calling out to me and I will probably get back to playing that. I'm just FIVE trophies away from finishing that game off. Five fairly large trophies, but hey, I can count that in 1 hand.