Matter of Honor

Well, I've been challenged to a platinum race of honor by Kochiya Shana from PSNProfiles.com. It all started when I got the idea to have a 'friendly competition' with her from watching Commander Carlos talking about his 'friendly competition' with his pals and said "If I lose, I have to plat this and this game."

I ended up with foot-in-mouth syndrome and offended her a lot. She eventually said I couldn't back my words and she said she'd challenge me to a platinum race. What a platinum race is is basically who gets the most platinum trophies by the end of the year.

Luckily, she put some rules down so nobody gets an unfair advantage:

• The event ends on New Year's Ever, 2016, just one minute before midnight. This makes it so we have plenty of time to catch up.
• The only games which are banned from this event are games from Telltale(like The Walking Dead and the Wolf Among Us) and Visual Novels and any games which have completion times of under twelve hours. This is to discourage trophy whoring, so no Hannah Montana or Megamind or anything like that.
• All platinums earned from New Year's Day of this year onward count. Kochiya has four and I have nine as of this post.
• Finally we will be scored based on number of platinums with an extra point to a platinum if it is an ultra-rare(aka less than 10% of people have earned it) at the end of the event, and we'll have the forum members vote on who earned the best platinums at the end.

She also refuses to punish me for losing - she said she preferred to take my pride over anything else. Well, I don't have a lot pride in myself, but this is a 'friendly competition', so no bad feelings to the loser, which I am sure is going to be me, foot-in-mouth. I have a bad habit of getting myself banned from forums because I say things I shouldn't, and I really want to avoid losing my account on PSNProfiles.com, as that's the only way I can keep track of my trophies. :(

You can see her trophy list here. Wish me luck! ;)

OH MY GAWD!

(Cue: "Time is Changing.")

Yep, probably one of my favorite PS2 games has been ascended to trophy whore on the PS4.

Recently, Sony has come up with a new system - they KNEW that the PS2 had some of the most awesome games in video gaming history... doomed to dust when the PS3 and PS4 arrived with their shiny trophy hunting system...





NO MORE.

LEVEL 5, the creators of these games, has given rights to Sony to import their classic RPGs - the Dark Cloud series and Rogue Galaxy, all of which I grew up with - to a special PS4 edition series - digital purchase on PSN only - which has kicked off Project Reboot, which reboots many old PS2 classics onto the PS4 and gives them trophy lists. Yes, you actually earn platinum trophies for 100% of these games! This means more fun games to plat and less chance you have to sit through Hannah Montana. XD

I will be putting these games on my list, I promise. I went through high school with these games and to not get the platinum in them, even though they are hard as heck, is a sin! Also, Psychonauts (another game I loved) has plans to come out in Project Reboot too so expect that showing up on the list when I get the money to buy it on PSN.

Journal #18: Greetings from The Solana Galaxy!

 PLATINUM #18: Ratchet and Clank (PS3)

I do not know what happened to my last two journal entries... I must have burned them in a drunk rage - had I known that my host from that wild 2016 party had spiked the punch, I would have refused to take a cup. :(

Anyways,I got a message from Ratchet saying that he saved the galaxy. Good for him! I was too smashed to care. He also gave me a copy of his Zoomerator trophy so it is now on the mantle with everything else. Sometimes, it doesn't pay to get out of bed.

PLATINUM TIME: January 16, 2016; 6:37 PM

AFTER THOUGHTS: So yeah, this platinum and this update were a long time in coming but I finally called in a sickie(like I work, hah!) and buckled down to finish the last trophies, most of them being the damn hoverboard trophies. If the reboot is using hoverboard races again, I'll kill myself. (No, j/k. Please don't put me in a group home!)

Still, you can't blame Insomniac for this - this was the first game, and now they've moved on to a stupid FPS(Resistance) but hey, this is a great classic. My advice, play it on PS2 and don't bother getting the skill points, all they unlock are fake mag covers.

Sorry for the short update, I wanted to show you my 18th platinum.

Interlude: NEVER. AGAIN.

Nothing like fleeing from an albino T-Rex mutant with red eyes - sure beats Shamu! ;)

 The author here. I am not even going to dignify this entry with a journal entry. Needless to say, my avatar has three Jurassic World trophies in his cabinet.

PLATINUM TIME: January 14, 2015; 2:43 AM

PLATINUM #17: LEGO Jurassic World (PS3)

Yep, I finally got the platinum for the Playstation-3 version of LEGO Jurassic World... and let me say it was the worst trip of the bunch. Take my first platinum, LEGO Jurassic World for PS4, and corrupt it with bugs, lags, freezes that forced me to turn off my system, and TWO MISSING GOLD BRICKS THAT I FOUND IN A PATH BETWEEN TWO AREAS WHICH THE KIOSKS DID NOT RECORD...

I got this image from Goggle, please do not sue me.

My thoughts exactly, Clair Darling. Way to sully my first platinum, LEGO and Traveler's Tales! I WAAAAS going to spend my store credit on your pricey $100 piece of street crap you call LEGO Dimensions, but now you've made me salty and will need some major buttering up in order for me to avoid reconsidering and paying for Wizard101 stuff. I mean, seriously guys, I *know* the PS3 is probably dead, but could you have not beta-tested it some more before kicking it out the door? X(

Anyways, now that my saltiest tongue is sated, I plan to stay away from all PS3 LEGO games in the future and leave the PS3 for games that have good distributors, like the Sly Collection... if I decide to go for it. ;)

Next update will be DetectiveCJ again. I just had to get this off my chest. (To be kind to this bastard 'sword' game, I actually beat the platinum record for the PS4 version by eight hours.)

I WILL PLATINUM DISGAEA SOMEHOW!!!

So... I am desperate to get one of the Disgaea games on my list and, as I said, all games on my list will fill up their trophies even if it is all that I play, so I decided to start an event on PSNProfiles.com to help build up a support group. The thread should be accessible by this link.

If you love Disgaea like I do, follow the link, make an account on the site if you have none, and put down a post! ^_^

Journal Entry #15: To Catch a Thief

PLATINUM #15: Sly Cooper and The Thievius Raccoonus (Vita)

I paid a brief visit to Solana where I visited Ratchet and Clank. They told me that they had defeated Chairman Drek and were going to gather money for the Golden Weapons as well as kick back with some hoverboard races. I wished them luck and went back home to R&R...

 

Only to find a case file about some master thief called Sly Cooper. I shrugged and read over the file. It told about how he had infiltrated the lairs of a group called the Fiendish Five and shortly thereafter, a police detective called Carmalita Fox arrested them when they were found unconscious.

 

Sly was notorious for leaving a calling card and only stealing from other criminals. I smirked. "A virtual Robin Hood."

PLATINUM TIME: January 9, 2015; 10:05 PM

Nevertheless, as I was thinking about this, someone delivered a package to me, it was a book called "The True Thievius Raccoonus (abridged)" and I recognized the symbol on the signature, it was the one on the case file. I smirked again. This was ironic, a thief giving me, an investigator, a trophy.

AFTER THOUGHTS: Unfortunately, my plans to platinum the PS3 versions of LEGO Batman 3 and LEGO Jurassic Park went down the toilet when the disk I received refused to update due to a bug. The Batman disc tried to update but my PS3 beeped in rage and refused to work until the offending material was removed. I knew that the PS3 versions of these games would have issues (being on an inferior machine) but not like this! :(

So, hopes dashed that I'd ever platinum the PS3 versions of this game(at least for now), I had to have a back-up plan. It took me a while to come up with one since I was busy with a pet project that would last a minimum of three months, but eventually I did. I didn't create a Detective persona for nothing, mind you. And what better game for Plat #16 than a game about a thief! (I have to apologize for the doctored screenshot - just when I caught the screenshot showing the platinum pop-up, I got the stupid pop-up cascade bug that made the trophy alert unreadable. I take no credit for whose picture I ripped the PS3 alert from.)

I bought the Sly Cooper collection at Gamestop only to find that Sucker Punch lived up to its namesake - Sly Cooper: Honor Among Thieves, the third entry, was a digital download only and anyone who bought a legit copy on release date got a code to download it from the PS store. :I

But platinuming this game was sort of fun - the only things that made me rage were the races, the escort missions, and the final chapter. (Surprisingly I managed to not screw up the third stage at the critical point, go me!) I even managed to get it as my fastest plat yet, beating my Ninjago one by eight hours at 11 hours, 26 minutes. All of the trophies will be guaranteed except for the collectibles - the clues and the vaults they open. You have to collect the bottles in a stage(except for ones like races, escort missions and the final chapter) to open a vault in that stage. There are 26 vaults but they are easy to get to. Trophies are either story-related(beating bosses) or collection related(opening all of the vaults in the game), so half of the trophies will be yours even if you don't open any vaults.

Also, since I opened my final vault in the Flaming Temple of Flame stage, Bentley's words were "You're lucky I'm versed in chaos theory, or this code would have been impossible." XD

Journal Entry #14: It's pronounced "key", that's what Xehanort says!

PLATINUM #15: LEGO Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey

Next on my list was the world of Chima, a place where animal-human hybrids lived...

But not really in peace due to the Crocodile, Wolf and Raven people rebelling and trying to get some Triple Chi Power to rule over the world.

 
I helped Laval the Lion Prince out and collected all the studs I needed to help him out. Sadly, this was not much of a vacation to me and was rather boring compared to the amazing ninja action I had in Ninjago, but they can't all be pleasant. :(

PLATINUM TIME: January 7, 2015; 2:47 PM

AFTER THOUGHTS: LEGO Legends of Chima was the first game I played on my PS Vita, which made me feel bad. It's not a bad game, it's a beautiful game, but it is the easiest LEGO game ever.

I'm very surprised that LEGO Chima took three hours longer than my fastest platinum and one hour longer than LEGO Harry Potter Vita(which is what I am calling Years 5-7 on the Vita as there is no Years 1-4 on that system), considering that this game doesn't need to be 100% to get the plat.

You heard me right: This game is the only LEGO Game I know of that has no trophy for getting 100% of the game complete.

As such, I am getting rid of that game and not 100% completing it. I got 50% of the collectibles. Most of the trophies are story-based or miscellanous gimmicks like using certain characters. You will need to buy a Raven, a Bear and Furtivo the Fox if you want to get 100% collectibles, but why bother when you get the plat? I'm not trying to be rude to the people who worked on this - I know Legends of Chima has a cult following. But seriously, if you

Also, I don't think this game was created by Traveler's Tales either, so that company really gave a nice sharp injection to the arm of the LEGO Game franchise by coming in and making us rage a bit for our trophies in the franchised licenses. Trust me, if you want to introduce your eight-year old kid to LEGO Video Games, this is the way to go as they'll earn the platinum is less than a day if they forego life like I did, maybe a day and a half if they have to eat and sleep.

The cinematic cutscenes(where the characters actually move their mouths) and the loading screens are all that this game has going for it. I know that Laval, Eris and Cragger do reappear as stuff packs for LEGO Dimensions, though. Anyways, I just got my next GameFly game and will work on that, as well as prep for some major stuff in the future. Cheers!

Journal Entry #13: Come on, come on -- and do the (gets hit with copyright suit)

PLATINUM #14: LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin

After putting away my new trophies, I packed my bags and left the office locked - it was time to start following on my New Year's Resolution to explore the multiverse and see new worlds.

Seriously, ninjas don't use monster trucks to get around! Get with the times, man!

My first destination on my travels was a world called Ninjago, which I thought was silly until I saw how ridiculous the whole place was; it was just a giant Oriental world protected by these elemental ninjas. I laughed - elemental ninjas?

 

This shot required me to press the button with my upper lip. Not fun. :(

Then I heard they had their memories erased by this evil samurai who rode a robot. Okay, I've seen it all now. 9_9 But I did my part to help out, and Master Wu trained me in the art of Spinjitsu, which would probably be very useful in the future. ;)

PLATINUM TIME: January 6, 2015; 12:22 PM

At least I had some fun - I got to learn a new martial art (my Spinjitzu element is darkness but I assured everyone that I wasn't evil, though it took a while to get them to trust me) and I got to ride on Jay's mech while we assaulted Chen's island. Cool! ^_^

AFTER THOUGHTS: Yes, I know there is a prequel called LEGO Ninjajo: Nidroids. However, that game is ruthless; if you get killed in a level, you had to start over from the very beginning.

Anyways, this is probably one of the easiest LEGO games I had platinumed. Like the last two, it involves a bunch of challenges which are easy to do, especially in Free Play when you have the characters you need(and there are only a couple of characters you need to buy - a Skulkin to open up skull doors and a Serpentai to teleport to areas you can't reach) and there are no extra challenges, so once you get all the collectibles and challenges, you only need to do a few minor trophies and you have gotten yourself a platinum. ^_^

The only issue was money - there are only three stud multipliers and they give you a max of 100x, which is the lowest stud multiplier in any LEGO game ever. That means you won't be hitting a billion studs on this game unless you grind on Volcanic Slide, but you don't really NEED a billion studs, the most expensive item is a character that costs half a million studs, and I ground all my studs on Volcanic Slide, which had the most annoying challenge in the game - don't fall in the lava, which is tough because the slide controls SUCK - it takes FOREVER to recover from a wrong turn.

I have never watched the cartoon but this game felt like a story arc in the cartoon, they even animated the talkie cutscenes like the cartoon! I am tempted to watch reruns of this show on Youtube. I don't think Traveler's Tales the Ninjago or Chima games, but whoever did did an excellent job! ;)

Journal Entry #12: Memories of Jurassic Park

PLATINUM #13: LEGO Jurassic World (Vita)

I received an interesting platinum-coated dinosaur egg fossil. I recalled my time there fondly, it was my very first investigation...

Even after death, this guy is still a photogenic. ^_^

I farmed the studs earlier this time, but turned out that I had forgotten to clear one stage completely. Oops!

Of course, I could have done without the ravenous Velociraptors, but there are occupational hazards one must take in my line of work. ^_^

PLATINUM DATE: January 5, 2015; 6:07 PM

Once again I recalled my motto, although I had to refresh my memory a tad. Even though this was only my 12th platinum trophy, it seemed like a long ago when I first visited Jurassic Park. ;)

AFTER THOUGHTS: A bit of a somber occasion when I got this platinum as, ironically, my 13th platinum - funny how the Vita version of this game, which was the least glitched out so far(I did glitch in one place in the Jurassic Park hub, right above the bonus level), got the infamous honor of being labeled 13th considering the bad rap that number has gotten: My mother, as of this post, is deep in neck surgery to fix her spine. She's getting on in years and reaching her golden age, so I hope that she makes it out okay. In the meantime...

This game was pretty easy. The only griped I had were the inability to skip cutscenes in story mode (you could do that in LEGO Batman 3 for Vita!) and that one trophy requiring you to get 2 billion studs. This time, I popped the trophy without being in the last bonus level, which is where I ground out most of the studs with all the multipliers on. If they had a 2x stud multiplier it would have gotten a bit faster, but what can you do?

I have two more LEGO Vita games, both of them original properties, and something ELSE I might try - I am a bit tempted to get rid of that collection but somethiung tells me to plat them so I won't regret my decision to toss them without giving them a chance. After all, I did get the first game plat on my other account for the Platinum Rain Day... *shrug*

I also have two LEGO games coming to my door - both were shipped within two days of each other. Anyways, ciao for now! ;)

Journal Entry #11: Memories of Batman

PLATINUM #11: LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes (Vita)
PLATINUM #12: LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (Vita)

With the New Year now beginning to age(and me feeling my age, sadly), I got another pair of platinum trophies shipped from Gotham City and Metropolis, addressed from Batman and Superman for helping out in times of crisis. I had all but forgotten those misadventures...

I do like the artsy loading screens. :)

I remembered how I spent my entire Thanksgiving weekend helping Batman with the capture of Joker and Lex Luthor when they teamed up to try to influence the 2016 Presidential Elections so Lex could become President...

I had some laughs...

And some triumphs...

PLATINUM TIME: Shown in the screenshot

But in the end, I ended up a Complete Hero. (Unfortunately for me, I didn't have a good photo of the ceremony, so this is all you get. AKA: I took the picture too late and got the cascading pop-up bug so I couldn't get a good shot of the platinum popping. :( This happened with LEGO Harry Potter as well, so please forgive me.)

Then I recalled how I worked behind the scenes at the Batcave during Christmas Eve while Batman and Robin helped the Justice League. I had felt the Earth shrink due to Brainiac's super ray... or actually, I ended up like Alice did in the beginning of Alice in Wonderland when she ate the cake that made her big - my head was bumping into the jagged ceiling of the Batcave for the longest time and I was forced to keep contact with Martian Manhunter via my touchphone. :(

Yuck! I think I prefer the battle with Giga Superman better on the console versions. X(

PLATINUM DATE: January 5, 2016; 1:02 AM

But I was still worthy of the Platinum and put it next to the other trophy denoting me as the World's Finest detective. ^_^

AFTER THOUGHTS: Yes, from now on, the entries will not sync with the trophy list - you see, I had to lump both LEGO Batman trophies for the Vita here because they were in the same setting and... well, funny story, I had finished all the story modes for these two games and LEGO Jurassic World in one shot, and then worked on the Free Play and 100% on the second pass. That means these two games got their platinums within 24 hours of each other. It's efficient. Yes, I still had to take the same amount of time for both games, but this way I wouldn't have worry about scrabbling in... you know, forget everything I said. It's a bit complex to explain. :(

Suffice it to say that I worked on three LEGO games at once to make the grind less troublesome. Once I got the Story modes out of the way, I could focus on Free Play better. The LEGO Batman games did get a major cardboard treatment for the Vita versions, but that's understandable - after all, you cannot expect to put 100% of a console version on a small handheld with less memory! Needless to say, the Vita versions were pretty decent on themselves even if some of the trophies are a pain. (I'm looking at Siamese Bat{because the guide didn't tell you a Stealth Takedown won't happen if you have invincibility enabled!} and Call Shotgun{like before, I couldn't get it to work right away, that was what cost me a dot-on-midnight trophy}.)

I am getting LEGO Batman 3 for the PS3 in a few days, so once I get that platinum, I'll put this game to bed for good. It was a great game in all its formats but to be honest, good things must end. Once I get the rest of the LEGO Vita games wrapped up, I'll begin working on actual time-consuming plats. So cheers and ciao for now! ^_^

(ADDED NOTE: I also made an error in my last post. I didn't have to go to church right away as it was Saturday and not Sunday. Oops!)

Journal Entry #10: Memories of Harry Potter

Platinum #10: LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 (Vita)

Trophies of 2015

The New Year came in with glorious celebration, and I did my first ever yearly summary of my career. I was now an Initiate Trophy Hunter Detective, but even though my career was still young, I had had so many adventures since I set up shop in San Antonio, Texas, back in the middle of November. It seemed like yesterday when I dusted off my new detective's cap and put it on, but now I had come so far and gotten nine Platinum trophy plaques which hung on my wall.

Voldie loves to duel in STYLE. XD

Harry! Don't destroy the pub!!! :(

If Harry Potter knew there was an x-rated puppet show about him, he'd go  all "Avada Kadavra" on them. ;)

I got a trophy in the mail, my tenth Platinum Trophy. I was amazed that it was given to me by the Order of the Phoenix, and as I perused it, I remembered all the adventures I had with Harry just recently, between Christmas and the New Year and the defeat of EX-lord Voldie...

Seriously, Molly? :(

 

I then remembered I did some dueling practice with Dumbledore's Army, although I had a bit of a shock when they used magic to replicate Harry's parents and I defeated them. No wonder Voldemort managed to kick their butts! No offense, Harry, you have wonderful parents. ^_^

Uhm...

But I was All Finished, and that was that. Hogwarts was a nice place but I really wanted to expand my horizons and go to new worlds. ;) (Sadly, for some reason, my camera was messed up when I caught this candid of Draco harassing students.) (My camera was off and just missed the trophy pop-up leaving. This bug happens if you aren't quick enough to snap the photo.)

PLATINUM TIME: January 2, 2015; 9:11 AM

AFTER THOUGHTS: I had to start the new year off with an old story - now that I have formatted my PS Vita to this account(which took half the day because I forgot that I could use the password on my modem to connect to my account and then I forgot I needed to give my PSN password to sign in and not my e-mail password), I decided to have my 10th platinum be a PS Vita version of the last game I platinumed - LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7. Yep, it is a cop out but the trophy list is different. This game could have been contender for fastest plat had I not had to go to bed and then had to go attend a religion in the morning. :(

Other than that, the trophies are so much easier to obtain. Magic casting is faster, and there are fewer cutscenes, and each of the sub-levels is very short and easy to figure out. I actually got all the True Wizard challenges without stud multipliers just by ripping up everything for studs and collecting all loose studs since each part of the book has five sub-levels in it summarizing about a third of the movie/book. There are the dueling club trophies, but each and every member of the club you fight, even the hardest ones like the Dumbledores and Voldemort, can easily be defeated by this method:

• Charge up an attack and release it.
• If it is not blocked, it will stun the opponent in hilarious ways.
• Spam regular attacks until they recover - you'll rip off two hearts of damage.
• Rinse and repeat until you win. :p

Thus, this game, my first PS Vita Platinum, just dethroned XBLAZE LOST: MEMORIES as my fastest platinum. My explanation: I had a terrible nightmare about my house being consumed by a lava flow and woke up at 5:45 AM so, unable to go back to sleep and running off of three hours of sleep(I've had less), I decided to just knock everything out. I almost lost it when I didn't get the 100% trophy but then checked my red bricks and forgot I had to BUY the red bricks to get the trophy and I hadn't bought Regenerate Hearts yet. OOPS. (egg on face) Also, I didn't realize you could hold R1 while targeting to switch spells so to get the final trophy for Draco's Disco, I spent ten minutes casting Immobilus on people. (sheepish laugh) Even so, I knocked this out in less than 20 hours.

I decided to do the PS Vita game entries as "memories" that the Detective Prince had during his career, as the Vita versions of the games are much shorter. I am not sure about doing the Vita version of LEGO the Hobbit due to the fact that you cannot die in the levels(you have to redo it from scratch if you get killed) but the others are a good to go - I own the Vita versions of some of the games.

Ciao for now! I plan on doing both Vita LEGO Batmans in one post as to cover more ground.