Trophying

The Trophy-whoring continues. I had a session on Crystal Defenders that saw me gain tremendous success. Managed to clear a stage (Orchise Snowfields) without using a Thief, and then took on the challenge of the W3 maps, and eventually cleared all those. Admittedly I could not quite manage it without losing a Crystal, but I cleared them all the same and that was all that was needed to get me the Trophy.



Crystal Defenders has now become the second game I own to have 100% Trophy completion.

The trickiest part of the game is working out the start for each level. Once you get the positioning right, and the correct choice of starting characters to lead you through the first 15 waves comfortably it’s pretty easy to start racking up cash to then blow out on ridiculous enforcements that can power you through the tougher bad guys. Apart from some Oversoul flying demon thing, that I could not stop, no other enemies got through.

Having done that, I then went back to the original Uncharted game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. After the slick and dazzling wonder of the sequel, this first instalment did feel a little rough around the edges.



Astonishingly I’d only ever completed this game on Easy level! I got it relatively recently (as a result of hearing good preview buzz about the sequel and finding the first one was dirt cheap to pick up on Platinum) which accounts for that, and also accounts for why so much of the treasures and accomplishments for Trophies remain undone. Which also means the game is fertile ground for me to reap some more Trophies from.

I had a long session that took me to one in the morning where I managed to procure thirty treasures, playing the game through on Normal level. Picked up a few Trophies for Magnum kills and Headshots along the way, so I was really flying. I daren’t even entertain the thought of getting 100% for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune though. . .



Compared to Uncharted: Among Thieves, the first game is a lot tougher. The baddies have an unerringly good aim and the bullets seem to hurt a lot more. And that’s on Normal level. Throw in less well-designed battle areas (particularly Level 4, but also some others) that often leave you scrabbling for cover and running out of bullets as more waves continue to approach and it’s even more evident how much of an improvement was made with the sequel.

I’ll press on, though. Like the Trophy-whore that I am fast becoming.

No Thieves

It's all about Crystal Defenders for me at the moment. I bought the game from the Playstation network a few months ago after enjoying the demo, and whilst for a while I absolutely tanned the thing, other games came along (Fallout 3, Uncharted 2) and took my attention away. Well, I got re-acquainted with it for a quick blast and that compulsive obsession it fills me with returned.



It's such a simple game, and it's not got anything to boast about with the graphics. My wife sees me playing it and wonders why I am so driven with it, and her brother sometimes comes round and makes fun of me for playing it. But, I think, it's only the type of game you can obsess about when you play it and get into it. Once it gets its hooks into you it drags you away with a 'one more try' fever that is hard to shake.

I am dying to try and get through a stage without using a Thief. It's not that the levels are always easy with a Thief, but you get a Trophy for managing one without. The best chance, I think, is on W2, where I can use crystals to improve my characters and, whilst I am getting close, it's not close enough!

Good news for me is that my wife is going away for a work trip tomorrow evening, staying away, so it means I get a good run, uninterrupted, where I am absolutely intend to manage that level and others and hopefully, perhaps, with a bit of luck and stiff wind behind me, manage to maybe get another game with 100% Trophy success!

I think I may be becoming a Trophy whore.

1st Platinum

Just a quick note to mention that I did get my first ever Platinum Trophy for Uncharted 2. I got all the Treasures, and I did all those tricky little tasks and shot enough people with all the right guns and my reward was a glorious 100% trophies completed, and a Platinum to go with it.

Now I have one. . . yeah. . . it kind of makes me greedy to get another one. . .

Crushed

My attempt at completed Uncharted 2 on Crushing level, the hardest level, has been met with success. Barring that nightmare time on that bastard bridge, as relayed in the previous post, there was little stopping me beyond that point to the finish.



Even Lazarevic, the end boss, didn't pose too much trouble. I killed him on my first proper run at it. It's all a matter of technique. Of just sticking to one circuit route and the same firing points to hit the piece of shit with blue sap. I was a happy man when I made it across the crumbling bridge to finish the game well and truly.



And so now all there is left to do is finish up whatever Trophies remain to be got to see if I can actually get a 100% complete game on the PS3 for the first time in my whole life. At time of writing I have been scything through the Treasure hunt and now have about three more to find on the last few levels (that was a whole Saturday, right there). And getting the Steel Fist Expert is proving taxing, but those are the only proper barriers, I feel. And I will do them. I absolutely will!

Almost A Brick Wall

Whilst continuing my attempt at beating Uncharted 2 on Crushing level I have, mostly, found it an enjoyably tough proposition. Tough, but not too tough. And then I got to Chapter 23, The Monastery, and my happy-go-lucky enjoyment was put to the test.

Basically this level is one long slog of a series of encounters with gun-toting bad guys in various different situations. The fun part was actually having to re-learn the routes and paths I had taken on the easier levels to survive through this incredibly hard one. Like this bit on the bridge with the cart. . .



Previously I had done this bit by going right up to the gunner on the left, taking him out and then dealing with the rest as they turned up. On Crushing I had to go around the right, taking out people along the way, and sneaking up on the gunner from behind. That was all well and good. And then I got to this bastard bridge. . .



This part just before the snipers in the towers section, previously it had never troubled me. But on Crushing I found it incredibly difficult. I must have died 30 times or more. The sniper guy would take me out. Or the grenade launcher guy. Or the guy with the shield. And even quickly dispatching them meant I still had the constantly approaching soldiers, included two heavily-armouered, shotgun enemies. I'd poke my face around to take some shots and be near-death in seconds - and then I'd rest and wait and try and get my health back and slowly these guys would approach, and get to me, and pick a fight, and then I'd either be beaten to death or shot to ribbons.

Christ!

I honestly thought I might have hit the wall. Hit upon a section I could not get passed. And then, gloriously, a Pistole took out the second armoured guy and I realised I was pretty much through the hardest it had to offer. Holy shit it was some careful picking off of the remaining guys, but it was a joyous moment when I made it across that bastard bridge.

Onward and upward. I hope that's as difficult as this game ever gets for me!

A Crushing Attempt

The love affair with Uncharted 2 continues for me, in two stages now. The first is online, where I have had a serious run at the online games and am finding out what it’s all about.

The initially impressive array of online games has boiled down to, ultimately, being either an enjoyably run at Co-Op (Arena is my favourite, I think, though a lengthy run-through of a Co-Op mission has also proved fun, and is usually the best type of game to chat to other players in a friendly manner, rather than the usual tirade of laughter and abuse!). On the Arena games I think the highest level I have managed, with the aid of others, is about Level 6. I have no idea how many levels there are but it starts to get pretty hard around Level 4, right around the time the guys with shields turn up.

The other online games are the competitive ones, but they are a mixed bag and so far the only one I really like is the Deathmatch. I’m not particularly great at it, mind. At first I put this down to my only just discovering the Store and the use of Boosters, but even with some Boosters added (as much as I can get for my relatively low-level 13 rating) I still don’t fare particularly well.



I am generally around 3rd or 4th highest in kills (out of 5!) for whatever team I am on, but I at least manage to keep myself out of being killed too many times so I am not a massive drain on the score. As such I have more often than not found myself on the winning team probably slightly more times than on the losing – but I suspect this is more down to the other players than it is to me.

I’ve got work to do to get good!

Meantime I have also started a new run at the regular game, this time on ‘Crushing’ level. It’s actually not as tough as I thought it would be. It’s not easy, of course – and there have been some sticking points. The bit in the Borneo camp when waves of enemies turn up took a few goes, but the rooftop battle against the helicopter, which I had been dreading, was actually handled first time. So I can’t complain and I’m feeling confident that I can get through it. . .

(I really hope those claims don’t prove unfounded!)

A Hard End

So I finished Uncharted 2 on Hard level. It actually proved more easy than I anticipated. There were a couple of trouble spots - the rooftop helicopter fight, a couple of run and gun issues against Yeti monsters and Guardians, and the very last fight with the main bad guy took a couple of goes before I got it right.

But I got it right.



There still remains the matter of the 'Crushing' difficulty level which I will, surely, get involved in, mainly to try and make this the first PS3 game where I have managed to attain all the Trophies available. I mean, sure, I do have a lot of treasures yet to find, and a couple of skills to master (the one-punch, ten-in-a-row takedown being the chief pain in the ass in the making) but it doesn't look altogether impossible.

Depends on just how 'crushing' the Crushing level is, I suppose.

Harder Charting

It’s half-past-five in the morning and I can’t sleep. I’m due to be waking up properly in around two hours, to get ready and go to work, but I can’t sleep and it doesn’t feel like the type of state where I can roll over, shut my eyes and eventually drift off.

And, besides, I’ve got a Playstation 3 sitting downstairs with Uncharted 2 to play uninterrupted and in peace. Seems too good to resist, and so I don’t.

I started a new game on Hard level and set off going. I noticed a significant difference compared to the Easy level – this time enemy bullets would have me seriously injured within a couple of shots. Most of the time this just made progress a bit slower, but there were some parts that kept killing me off until I eventually cracked it.



Probably the hardest part I have hit so far was a battle against a gunship helicopter on a rooftop. I had to hit that thing about ten times or something with the grenade launcher, which was fairly tricky – but then other soldiers would turn up and just make the whole thing that much more difficult.

On the whole, though, nowhere near anything I can’t handle. . . so far!

Uncharted Charted!

Managed to complete Uncharted 2. It speaks volumes that I’ve had the game a few days and been spending every available minute going at it. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I was only playing the thing on ‘Easy’ level, though, which was probably an error as it wasn’t particularly challenging. Still, having done it on ‘Easy’ I reckon I’ll jump straight to ‘Hard’ for my next play through.

Aside from a couple of tricky sections towards the end – specifically I am thinking of a tower full of snipers training their lasers on me, and these bastard-hard blue guardians that crop up occasionally wanting to kick the shit out of all and sundry – there didn’t seem to be much that would overly-worry me.



Now I’ve managed to get through the game – see what it’s got and how the story ends – I’ll be a lot calmer about being presented with tougher levels and slower progression.

There’s also the online element of the game to properly engross myself in, as well. But really, now I have done it through, I’ll probably relax a little bit and let this feverish intensity subside. Trouble with me is there’s a bunch of games I’ve got on the go that remain unfinished or incomplete in terms of particular missions, such as GTA IV, Dead Space, Fallout 3 and Crystal Defenders. I am a bit of a completionist, but there’s just so many good games out there I can’t wait and do them all one at a time!

It’s a nightmare scenario, but one I rather love. Better this than the opposite, where there are no good games in my life!

Charting Uncharted

I have a new current favourite game. Uncharted 2 is totally blowing me away, and every spare chance I get I'm hammering the thing. (Unfortunately my social life keeps getting in the way and keeping me from hunkering down and completely absorbing myself in the game.)

The main game is what I have been playing the most, and it's a total blast. It's like a top class action movie that I get to participate in. Standout sequences have been running across a train whilst a gunship helicopter tries to blow me away, or leaping from truck to truck shooting at enemies, to a level I most recently just got passed where a tank was hunting me through a Tibetan village whilst I desperately tried to survive and take the thing out. These were the highlights, but there's a stack of others to go along with it and the sheer level of consistently good stuff is amazing.



I've even enjoyed the cutscenes. Amusing and surprising and sometimes exciting, they're worth setting the joypad down and enjoying. A little part of the game where I was just walking through a Tibetan village following some guy was amazing - the sounds of villagers talking and children playing all happening as I trundled through. It was top notch stuff; astonishing in its subtlety.



I have made a brief foray into the multiplayer online games and I can already tell it's an aspect of the game that is totally going to take over and consume hours. I've enjoyed some Deathmatch games (though my team only managed to win one and I was far from a star performer!) and I've particularly liked the Arena Co-op matches. But mostly I'll be ploughing on with the main game and getting that cleared, finding as many treasures as I can, before I properly dig into the online multiplayer business.

The New Drake

Fallout 3 had to take a backseat for a while because the brand new Uncharted 2 game had been released and delivered to my door. Happy day! I only recently played the first Uncharted, and that was mainly because I had been hearing good things about this second instalment that made me want to get in on the ground floor of the franchise and see what I had been missing. That game initially didn't blow me away, but it did grow on me, and by the end I was suitably impressed.

Uncharted 2 took all those initial feelings of being impressed with the first game and turned them into something properly amazing.

The opening level, with a battered Drake clambering up a train dangling off a cliff edge was a great experience. Not at all tricky, but still with the sense that the whole thing was a genuine ordeal with proper tension. The graphics, and sense of participating in a film, were amazing. It's clearly something the developers have worked hard on.



Joyously the game mechanics of the first Uncharted have been preserved, so people like me can jump right into this new adventure completely at ease with the controls. Everything works the way it did, except looks better and feels slightly easier. I'm pretty sure it takes a lot longer to die in this game than it did in the first game (I even managed to get a Trophy for killing 75 enemies in a row without dying) but that just makes it a lot less frustrating than the other game could sometimes be.

It's an absolute romp of a game. I'm up to about level 6 and have already traversed various locations and met numerous different characters and I know there's still a long way to go, which makes it all the more sweeter.



I don't have any complaints, to be honest. There's still all the online stuff waiting for me, but mostly I'm just having a great time with playing the game in front of me. In fact, I'm so involved and into the game that I'd rather stop writing this and just spend another hour or two cracking on and seeing where it takes me!

Search And Rescue

Another session on Fallout 3 and, I thought, a successful progression (after some serious wasting time and wandering aimlessly). I got to grips with the VATS attack system for the first time. Previously I had been playing the game like a regular first person shooter/fighting game, but a part at some church with a whole bunch of heavily-armed mutants pretty much saw me getting killed left, right and centre. I used VATS, I rescued some captured guy and let him go.



I do find the combat-system annoying, though. It’s definitely the biggest drawback of the game so far, for me. Picking out a direct headshot and seeing the bullets fly in slow-motion and hit the target only to see barely anything register on the health meter of the enemy is pretty annoying (particularly when it’s followed up by a returning barrage of bullets that pretty much nail me).

I’ve found wading in with my sword has been more effective half the time, but that only works well with one enemy.

I did manage to find Ian West, who had wandered off and got in, of all things, with a bunch of vampires. Still, I managed to get him out of there and broker a truce between the vampires and the people of Arefu which opened up more areas on the map for me to check out.



But what I spent the rest of my time doing was helping some chick out writing her book. I got myself massively dosed with radiation poisoning, and she cured that with the side-effect that I’ll heal with radiation when I am crippled. Result!

My game session ended doing another mission for this book-writing, trying to scavenge food from a derelict supermarket. I walked in and got attacked by some scavengers (as you do), but then my Wife came home and I couldn’t remain in the zone when she was there, so I stopped! Still, I feel like there are stacks of avenues for me to go down with the game now, and it feels wider and more filled with choice than ever. It may be frustrating at time, but it's impressive and I am enjoying it.

Fresh Into A New World

I bought Fallout 3 on a whim at the weekend. It was £20, and I heard some good things about how it was open-ended and impressive. I'd got a lot of games that were quick blasts, or pick up and plays, and fancied getting my teeth into something meaty and time-consuming. So I bought Fallout 3.

At time of writing I've had two proper sessions on it. The first session was about me getting born and taking the G.O.A.T to work out what kind of person I was. It wasn't immediately clear how much of an impact that had on my game but I assume it effected my stats. And then came the crisis - where my father in this nuclear bunker I had been living in my whole life ran off. I made two key decisions on my escape from the bunker.

The first was that I saved the life of some woman who was the mother of this absolute dick of a guy that had been bullying me. I hope that gets repaid back more than just the crappy jacket I got given as a reward.

The second was that I shot and killed the Overseer, right in front of his daughter and my best friend. She didn't take it too well, but she didn't completely flip out and left me feeling like she would get over it some day.

Then I was thrust outside, into the world, where I stumbled across a town called Megaton and where it didn't take me too long to be given the choice of detonating the bomb in the middle of town and wiping it off the face of the Earth. At time of writing I have yet to decide if I'll make that decision, because I left Megaton and headed out to find some other family called the Wests to deliver a message.



Turns out the Wests are dead, but I can't find their son, and I've done a fair bit of exploring trying to hunt him down - killing two Super mutants and finding some scientist ghouls in an old dead town along the way. And that's where I am up to.



So far I am enjoying the sense of freedom I have. At present it doesn't feel too linear and I am given the impression that I can genuinely go where I want, as I please, just so long as I can survive it. I still feel like a total noob out there, green around the gills and vulnerable as hell, but that's what makes surviving in an apocalyptic wasteland that much more interesting, right!?