Platinum Update

It dawned on me that I haven’t gotten around to posting about a couple platinum trophies I got recently: Red Dead Redemption and Demon’s Souls! Here are some thoughts.

Red Dead Redemption is a great game. The single player mode has a great story, a huge world to explore and an immersive atmosphere that really pulls you into the game. I am not even really a fan of cowboys/Westerns and I really liked this game. I liked it so much that once I had finished the story I decided I wanted to platinum the game. The single player trophies were very manageable if not easy but then I jumped into multiplayer mode. I found the multiplayer modes to be fun but many of the trophies themselves are very time-consuming to get. For example, grinding your character up to experience level 50 takes way too much time, so much so that I got completely sick of the game and stopped playing entirely. Months later, I found myself monitoring Rockstar’s Twitter account looking for triple XP announcements and thanks to that I was finally able to to grind my character up to level 50. All in all, this is a great game and the online component is very fun, especially with all the newly added online modes. Just be prepared for a grind if you are looking for that platinum trophy.

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Demon’s Souls is a game that I was unsure of when I first bought it but quickly became my favorite PS3 game. Seriously, there are so many awesome things about this game. It is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played and because of that there are some very tense moments. At times, this game had me screaming obscenities at my TV in anger, but I loved every minute of it. It’s difficult to describe, but Demon’s Souls is a really satisfying experience. It’s an old-school type of game in that memorization and trial and error are pretty much required to make it through. It wasn’t easy but I am very proud to finally have this platinum after many, many playthroughs. See you on Dark Souls!

Assassin’s Creed II Platinum

Last week I got the platinum trophy for Assassin’s Creed II! I really enjoyed this game, even though I found it to be a tad on the easy side (more on that later). I particularly enjoyed getting the platinum for this game because they don’t require you to waste a bunch of time replaying the game on multiple difficulty settings (looking at you, Bayonetta). I was worried that it would be a pain to get 100 feathers, but it really wasn’t. I had a little more than half by the time I had finished the game and rounding up the remaining ones was easy using this guide from gamesradar.com.

Actually, the most annoying trophy was Fly Swatter: Kick a guard while using the flying machine. This trophy is insanely easy to get if you know about it, but if you don’t it’s a missable trophy. If you miss it your choices are to play through the game again (the ability to replay chapters is not possible and the flying machine segment occurs a little more than halfway through the game) or buy the Battle of Forli DLC for $3.99 which has a flying machine available for you to use whenever you wish. I chose to buy the DLC pack as I didn’t have the patience to replay the game. The DLC pack (which, to add insult to injury, does not have any trophies of its own) is entirely a waste of $3.99 unless you need to use the flying machine to get your platinum like I did. Boy, did it piss me off when I realized how crappy the DLC pack was, but I was happy to finally have my platinum even though I basically had to buy it.

Trophies aside, I really liked this game a lot. The ending was very interesting and well done, the gameplay and graphics are top notch and you really feel like an assassin sneaking around the cities. My one major gripe with the game is that it is just entirely too easy. The game offers little to no challenge, if you can power on your PS3 then most likely you can beat this game. This would not be so detrimental except for the fact the game puts so much emphasis on stealth but in reality your character is so awesome at fighting that you can just annihilate anyone in the game that happens to see you, thereby completely nullifying the need for stealth. The developers attempted to balance this by having certain missions automatically fail if you are seen by anyone, which was just annoying. That being said, this game is a really fun experience. I had the most fun just exploring the cities, running around on the rooftops and looking for treasure.

So now that I’ve completed this game I’m going to give Brotherhood a go, most likely when it comes down in price a little bit more. I hear the online aspect of that game is really awesome and I’m interested to see where the creators go with the story.