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.

No Game, All Pain

As a lot of you already know, the Playstation network has been down for a couple of weeks now. For those who don't know, after the hack attempt that froze up Sony's servers, there was a pretty major "security breach" on Sony's network. There have been warnings all over the internet that account holders should change passwords and keep an eye on their credit card and bank statements. Immediately after the security breach, Sony's servers were shut down for "maintenance" as they attempt to encrypt all of our information again. Also, as always, Sony jumps into legal action, and investigation is taking place in many different federal investigation agencies. Sony went after someone who leaked information to get into the console, and they get DDoS attacks from a community that felt wronged? Makes perfect sense. Whether this helped the real criminals gain access to account information is unknown to me, but it is a bit of a coincidence that all of this is happening in such a short amount of time.

Many of the people who don't have lucrative assets tied to their PSN credit account are worried about the Console itself. Will the breach mess with our trophies? What about cloud saves through Playstation Plus service? Will we get any kind of compensation for the time and money lost because the servers had to be shut down? Of course Sony has only said positive things regarding gameplay careers, but any company in a tight spot like this would only want to tell their customers the best. I wouldn't really be surprised if the sync process for trophies goes haywire, especially with millions of users all doing it at the same time.

I'd hate to lose this.

The games I were playing before the network shutdown were MAG and MvC3. MAG is an online only game. Everthing you do is with other people. MvC isn't strictly online, but I dont really have anyone to play it with at home. Besides, the trophies I need to get for it are online trophies. With the network down, I can't play either of these. Sad, I know. There are some offline games I need to work on though, even if I'm not 100% in the mood to play them.

I don't know about you guys, but I have a huge gaming backlog. I play games whenever I'm in the mood to play it. Believe it or not, there was a time where I WASN'T in the mood to play MAG. At that point, I was playing Fallout New Vegas and Disgaea 3. Once my mood changes, I'll pick up a different game. It isn't always about what is new and hot. Today, I feel like failing more at Mirror's Edge(post on this coming soon), so I'll probably play that and New Vegas in between.

Of course, if I had an Xbox, I could be playing that. But...no lol I'm fine with my PS3 that I can't play online with. Please get everything up and running soon Sony, I'm dyin' over here!

The Platinum Road - MAG and Bayonetta

I know I haven't made a post in a while. But you can trust that I have been playing PLENTY of games in the last week. I was lucky enough to get Marvel VS Capcom 3 from Chelsea for our anniversary. I'm borrowing Killzone 3 from a pal at work. But, of course, the things that are taking up my time are Bayonetta and (as always)MAG.

Bayonetta
Having beaten the game on normal, getting the platinum trophy is supposed to be easy.
1) Beat game on normal.
2) Finish off Alfhiem portals.
3) Farm halos(money) from the chapter 7 boss until you can unlock the cheat codes for the best items.
4) Use the super items to beat the game on Hard and Extra hard difficulties.
Of course, I would want to beat the harder difficulties without putting cheat codes into the game. On Hard mode, not only do enemies attack more often, and at a faster rate, Harder enemies are put into more of the spawn points. By that, I mean the first chapter on Hard mode will have higher tier enemies where you would expect to find low tier ones. It is actually pretty fun, I'm just worried about what I will find in the later chapters. Even worse yet, harder difficulties.
But after completing all the difficulties, there are a few minor trophies that should be easy enough to get. Things like performing a number of counter attacks without getting hit, finding hidden book pages, etc.

Mag
I am still playing MAG, which is one of the best multiplayer shooter games on the market. My trophy status for the game is 70% now, which I'm pretty proud of. However, I am now working on a trophy that is EXTREMELY annoying, the Head Hunter.
1) Finish Head Hunter Trophy. That is 5 Silver Bullet Ribbons - killing 10 enemies with headshots in 1 match, the Longshot Ribbon - killing 3 enemies at 120m in 1 match, and the Sniper Master Medal - killing 1000 enemies with the sniper rifle over the course or your career.

As someone with 6000+ Assault Rifle Kills, this is pretty hard for me. As of me typing this(12PM), I am at 330 kills with the sniper rifle. I started at 270 this morning(9AM), meaning It is possible to get 100 kills a day, making the trophy very obtainable. This is done using a my typical medic/resistance/athletic build with a lot of points poured into the Sniper Skill Tree. Recoil and Reload speed are pretty important, but probably the most important skill is the Fire Rate.

Once those are done, you have 2 options for weapons, you can go for the one-bullet-one-kill approach which uses the most powerful sniper rifle available, coupled with the lowest Fire Rate. This is definitely a long rang weapon, and you will be massacred at mid to short range.

The other option is the "battle rifle" with the fastest fire rate. Combined with the Fire Rate Skill, it can shoot as fast as a pistol. At short ranges, this is amazing, and when you aim high, you can clear rooms of people with headshots. Unfortunately, the weapon won't one-shot anyone when attacking the body, so if you want to be a "true sniper", you may have to go with the other gun. I personally switch between both. Battle rifle on maps where I have to go to objectives (Domination, Escalation), and Sniper Rifle for everything Else (Sabotage, Acquisition, Interdiction.)

2) After that is "the big ones." The gold trophy for collecting 58 medals and the silver trophy for obtaining 40 ribbons. So far, I have 35/58-66 medals and 35/40-48 ribbons. The remain ribbons are easy. There are things like killing 10 players from both sides of Escalation, repairing ONE bridge, destroying/repairing 2 sensor array, repairing 2 vehicles, and getting 10 kills with the vehicle turret. Medals on the other hand are a different story, and I need a lot of them. A lot of the medals are actually obtained through getting Ribbons, which makes things a little more annoying. Since I need THIRTEEN for the trophy, here's a list of the easiest/mandatory ones:
The Streaker - Killing streak of 15.
Sniper Specialist - Kill 1000 enemies with the sniper rifle.
Silver Field Engineer - Repair 10 bridges across your career.
Master Engineer - Repair 10000 units of damage.
Combat Mechanic - Repair 25 vehicles.
Skeet Practice - Kill 100 Paratroopers.
Sidearm Master Specialist - Killing 250 enemies with a sidearm.
Rocket Man - Killing 50 enemies with a bunker turret rocket.
Gold Command Medal - Winning 100 battles as squad leader.
Screaming Eagle - Parachuting into battle 500 times.
Roadside Assistance - Capture 10 Interdiction points.
Mortar Support - Repairing 25 Mortar Batteries.
Mortar Demolition - Destroying 50 Mortar Batteries.
That's 13, and none of them are terribly difficult, just time consuming.

I really want to go back and finish some trophy hunting on older games. Dante's Inferno, Mirror's Edge, and the infamous Sonic Unleashed are the main ones that poke at my brain. Dante's Inferno is actually supposed to be easy. Sonic...well, let's say that Sonic is about 70% skill and 30% luck. Mirror's Edge requires a fair amount of skill. I don't have any videos to show you guys, but the skill I'm talking about is for inputting commands into the Dual Shock 3. Some call that skill, some don't, but for me, it can get pretty hardcore. What sucks is that failing at Mirror's Edge is as bad as Sonic, you start the level from the beginning. Difference is that Mirror's Edge levels take 4-9 minutes, and each failure chips a little piece of your patience away.

Someday though!