Category: Platinum Review

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: Angels of Death

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Available on: PS4, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android
Played on: PS5 (PS4 version)

Angels of Death is a horror game originally created on RPG Maker and released back in 2015 as freeware and later in 2016 on Steam.

As far as my own experience with Angels of Death goes, I watched and loved the 2018 anime adaptation and that was my entry point into it as a property. I knew vaguely at the time that it was a game adaptation but as a horror game it didn’t strike me as a very “me” game as I’m notoriously a huge wuss – I had to get my housemate to sit next to me for moral support whilst I played Until Dawn. 

angels of death

Watching Angels of Death really piqued my interest and spurred me into playing the game. I knew I loved the characters, and knowing the plot really helped ease any anxieties going into playing, as no matter how disturbing it got I knew what was coming.

Angels of Death focuses on the protagonist Rachel Gardner, who wakes up one day in a hospital where she is receiving counselling after having witnessed a murder. She soon realises that she’s not in a proper hospital, and tries to escape. Leaving the floor of the building she finds herself in, she ends up on another floor and soon finds herself being chased by a scythe-wielding maniac named Isaac ‘Zack’ Foster. After a series of events, Rachel learns that the building she is in is the site of a murder game, where each floor is inhabited by a murderer who determines the theme of each floor. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Rachel and Zack cut a deal with each other, teaming up to escape, and the game is spent traversing the floors of the building seeking escape and avoiding the perils put on each floor by it’s inhabitant.

Littered through each floor there are puzzles which require solving. These can be a little frustrating as you have to do them exactly as the game wants you to, so does tend to require a bit of trial and error even if you’ve figured out the answer to each puzzle.

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There are a few sequences throughout Angels of Death where you find yourself having to run from peril, which really opens you up to the weakest area of the game – it controls very poorly. It’s hard to do anything with any kind of precision, so trying to turn corners when in a chase feels like a matter of luck at some points. It can be frustrating but there’s a liberal amount of auto-save sprinkled through the game so restarting sequences isn’t too much of a chore if you find yourself having to retry.

Visually Angels of Death is nothing special, but it has a certain charm. Having been originally created in RPG Maker, it’s fairly simplistic and rudimentary – something that can be said not only for the visuals, but the gameplay and (lack of) voice acting. The main dialogue throughout Angels of Death is completely text based, with the odd peppering of sound effects, like maniacal laughter, throughout.

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Angels of Death offers interesting characters and an intense storyline to it’s players, however some of the characters do feel a little underdeveloped, and the game doesn’t really offer much insight into the reasons behind the characters actions past Zack and Rachel. It’s here where the anime comes into a world of its own and offers more lore and depth to all characters. The anime and the game work really well in tandem with each other and provide a more full experience for the consumer. Of course, it’s not vital to have both and they can be enjoyed independently of each other. The whole experience feels really special, and the plot of the game is a really well realised and put together journey.

8 stars

 

 

Moving onto the platinum trophy, it’s a fairly straightforward get. The trophies throughout are linked to certain things you have to do in each chapter – a lot being to fail at certain puzzle aspects or to get caught. The guide I used from PSN Profiles is good as it tells you when to save to avoid having to replay long sections, but you will have to read the trophy description to get this information.

My PS5 tells me I played for 9 hours, so a fairly quick platinum to get. I feel the simplicity of the trophies, coupled with the guide make this a really fun and easy platinum to get. The game itself being enjoyable makes any slog for the platinum feel minimal and definitely opens the player up to enjoying the enhanced lore in the anime.

Platinum difficulty rating:

2_stars

 

 

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review Rework

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I’ve been a bit inactive lately, but I’ve always got the blog on my mind! I’ve been thinking up new features, and how to refresh old features. The first thing I want to implement is a change to how I do my Platinum Reviews.

Up until this point, I have been doing separate Platinum Reviews to normal game reviews, meaning each game I do a Platinum Review for gets two articles. I’m changing this so the review is within the same article. This means each Platinum Review will be a bit more substantial and will include my thoughts on the game as a whole as well as how I found the process for getting the platinum trophy. I’ll include links as usual to any walkthroughs I followed.

Scoring wise, each Platinum Review will have a usual game review rating out of 10, and a score on how difficult I found the platinum, also out of 10. I’ll try to quantify how long it took me, but some games don’t have in-game timers, so this might be a bit hit and miss.

I hope you like what I plan to do!

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: Distraint

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Cast your mind back to my little platinum run of games, when I played Distraint Deluxe Edition. The reason for my choosing Distraint to play in the first place was because it was listed on Playstation Trophies as an easy platinum.

Distraint isn’t difficult, it’s mostly a point and click sidescroller, so there’s nothing too challenging about the gameplay. There are a few puzzles which might take some more thinking than others, but if you really don’t want to do too much thinking then there are plenty of walkthroughs online that you can follow.

distraint

There’s a lot to be enjoyed with Distraint, and as said in my review, the story is an interesting one and pretty compelling, so playing it blind is probably the best option, in my opinion! It took me around 45 minutes to get the platinum with a guide, and I think I would have gotten a lot more enjoyment out of the game had I not used a guide.

Playstationtrophies.org lists Distraint as a difficulty rating of a 1 or 2, and timewise it lies in 0-5 hours on votes with most commentors stating that it took around an hour.

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: One Night Stand

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Back when I decided to do a little platinum trophy number boost, I bought One Night Stand in the PSN sale for relatively cheap, you may remember I wrote a review on it. I had chosen One Night Stand, among a few others, as it was reported to be a quick platinum, and when I say quick, I mean quick. I managed to get the platinum trophy for One Night Stand in around 45 minutes.

There are guides for One Night Stand out there, but essentially what you’re aiming to do is get all the available endings and fill out all the pictures on the phone that appears at the end of each route. The game gives you clues about how to get each picture, so you’re not flying totally blind.

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From memory, there’s one other trophy which isn’t tied into an ending and relates to a decision that you have to make in the game, but it is kind of a spoiler, so I won’t say!

I would recommend anyone playing One Night Stand to play through a normal route first, and attempting to fill in the blanks themselves, but if you don’t want to do this then there are a lot of guides out there. This is the one I used, or you can find your own with a simple Google search – just make sure you add ‘game’ at the end of ‘One Night Stand’, or you could end up with some interesting search results!

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Over at Playstationtrophies.org One Night Stand is rated with 1/10 difficulty and a 1-2 hour time estimate. I agree with the difficulty rating; nothing in this game is a challenge, and even without guides everything is quite straightforward and easily figured out. The 1-2 hours estimated platinum time is probably fair. Like I said, I got it in 45 minutes, but I used a guide for the most part, so without a guide 1-2 hours is pretty reasonable.

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: The Nonary Games

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I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to clear up platinum trophies on games I’d already started, and The Nonary Games collection was first on my hit list.

The Nonary Games is a collection of the first two games in the Zero Escape series; 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (999 hereafter!), and Virtue’s Last Reward (VLR). 999 was originally released in the West on Nintendo DS back in 2010, with VLR following up on PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS in 2012. The remastered collection was released on Windows and PlayStation 4 and Vita in 2017.

I had played both 999 and VLR prior to The Nonary Games coming out, getting the platinum in VLR at the time. Judging by my 999 playthrough and how little I remembered, I think I only played one route at the time as I felt like I had forgotten almost all of the game, and my memory can’t be that bad, right? I often joke, “I wish I could wipe my memory so I could experience x for the first time again”, and this is probably the closest I’ll ever come to that!

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For reference to anyone who might want to attempt The Nonary Games platinum, it is given as a 2/10 for difficulty with 20+ hours as a guide time on Playstationtrophies.org.

I would tend to agree on the difficulty rating, but the time estimate purely depends on how good you are at puzzles, though solutions are easily found on the internet. It’s worth noting that sometimes though you might think you have solved a puzzle or have figured out the solution, you have to solve it the way the game want you to, but this is often the case with puzzle games.

999 and VLR both have really great (if somewhat confusing) stories. 999 is slightly more tricky to get the different routes on as there’s no visual map of what you’re doing, so you might need to look for a guide for that if you’re set on getting the platinum in the quickest time possible. Over on VLR’s side, the game features a handy flow chart so you can track back to route branches and fill out the whole map. It does get a little confusing as you have to hop around each branch to unlock certain bits of story to progress further on different branches, but that’ll all make sense when you play it!

Whilst The Nonary Games is a fairly straightforward and quick platinum, it’s really rewarding. As I’ve said, the story is incredible, and the series features some really wonderfully written characters. Once you’ve tackled The Nonary Games, you can move onto the sequel, Zero Time Dilemma, which is equally as great.

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: The Sims 4

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It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but rest assured, I’m still getting platinum trophies. This year my challenge is to get 20 platinum trophies, and I’ll be honest, things are not going brilliantly, but I’m trying to turn things around!

Early on, I decided I would mop up some platinums for games I’d started, and I had an urge to play The Sims, so I opted for The Sims 4 for my first platinum of the year.

Playstationtrophies.org lists The Sims 4 as a 3/10 difficulty rating, and 26-30+ hours. I have to say, whilst not difficult it did take me a lot longer than the estimated time.

The Sims 4 platinum

No trophy is especially difficult, but the fact that so many of the trophies are for getting to the top of each career path and maxing out each skill means they are fairly time-consuming. There are a lot of tips in the forums on Playstationtrophies.org, and these will direct you to some custom content you can download to make things easier; a Sim who is pregnant with triplets being the hardest to come across in the game naturally, but with the custom content, you have a pregnant Sim who you just need to move onto a lot and wait. Simple!

Towards the end of the slog for the platinum, I sort of lost any love I had for the game. I’ve always been someone who loved The Sims, but somewhere along the line grinding for this one (and it did feel like a grind), any enjoyment I had for the game just left me.

I’m glad to have done it, but I don’t think I’ll ever play The Sims in any iteration again.

Platinum Review

Platinum Review: Nubla

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and as I faced ending the first half of the year with no platinum trophies I found myself on a forum for “Games with easy platinums” on PSN Profiles. Imagine my delight when I see a game that is hailed as being the easiest platinum trophy ever. I quickly corroborated the fact on PlayStation Trophies, and lo and behold it’s true. The rating on the game’s page was down as 2/10 and estimated time of 0.5-2hrs.

A quick check of the PlayStation Store, and I saw the game was £7.99. Too good an opportunity to pass up.

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So, what is the game? It’s called Nubla, and as a loose plot description it’s about an art gallery that has lost the pictures in its paintings. You control a character and essentially solve puzzles to restore the paintings. For a game that centres around art as you’d expect, the art style is really impressive. It’s unique and charming, and makes the whole game feel like a really special experience.

You get (gold!) trophies for completing each of the games chapters and for collecting each “Dream Memento”, with the platinum popping at the end of the credits.

The collectables are sometimes difficult to spot, and a few are only visible after you trigger a certain art of the environment. There’s no chapter select, so these trophies are missable, but luckily there are some really comprehensive walkthroughs on PlayStation Trophies.

It took me almost an hour to get the platinum trophy for Nubla (around 50 minutes in actual fact), and I used a collectible guide. I’d personally estimate the difficulty at 1/10. The game isn’t diffcult in any way. There are some frustrating moments with the game mechanics, but they don’t affect the playthrough in anyway – you can’t die in the game, there are no platforming moments.

For those interested, there’s also World of Nubla. It’s exactly the same game, but a different trophy list, and comes in at £11.99 on the PlayStation Store.

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: Life Is Strange

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Episodic games are like the Holy Grail of easy platinum trophies, and for that reason, I will almost always play one. This is working out pretty well for me so far, as I’ve loved each and every episodic game I’ve played.

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Life Is Strange is the first episodic game I’ve played that hasn’t been made by Telltale Games, but I didn’t enjoy it any less than any of their offerings. Though I didn’t feel the same emotional attachment to some characters in other episodic games I’ve played (“Lee?”, crying face), Life Is Strange does throw up some very real emotions and poses some very big questions on how individuals treat each other which is bound to resonate with players.

For those that don’t know, Life Is Strange is about Max Caulfield, a girl attending the prestigious Blackwell Academy. She seems to be some sort of photography prodigy, and her USP is that she uses a Polaroid camera. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously here, and makes lots of jokes about what a hipster Max is, but at the same time the majority of the plot centres around very mature and dark themes, so the frivolity and seriousness balance each other out. Early on, Max witnesses someone being shot and discovers she has the ability to rewind time to prevent it from happening. Over the course of the five episodes, Max will have to use her rewind power to help her friends and to solve the mystery of a missing Blackwell student, as well as trying to prevent a huge natural disaster hitting Arcadia Bay.

So, the platinum. You’ll be awarded a trophy for playing each episode, and one for completing the game. The rest of the trophies come from taking in-game photos of specific objects. There’s an in-game photo album with silhouettes of what you’re looking for, but if you’re dumb like me and can’t figure it out, there are some pretty comprehensive guides online. I would suggest using a guide as an accompaniment anyway as a few of the photos are only available to take once you have used Max’s rewind ability in a certain way which aren’t always obvious from the outset. Taking the photos should in no way detract from your enjoyment of the game, as it’s not too much of a detour to obtain each one – we’re talking mere seconds out of the story for each, and mostly en route to the next point of the story.

Playstation Trophies lists Life Is Strange as being a 1/10 on the difficulty rating and estimates that it will take 10-20 hours. I’d agree with these summations – with a guide, playing through in one go. I played each episode in individual sittings, which makes it seem a longer process somehow, but no more difficult.

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

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Point-and-click games are the holy grail of platinum trophies. Posing no real threat, there are no difficult platforming levels, and often no collectibles to concern yourself with. The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is really no different to the Back to The Future game in this respect, with it’s most difficult moments lying in puzzles.

As the name suggests, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is based on a Sherlock Holmes adventure. The whole game is one story with smaller mysteries building up to a much larger case, though all are linked and as you solve the mysteries the pieces of the larger puzzle will begin to fit together.

The positives of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes are far outnumbered by the negatives. To try and remain on a positive note for a while longer, the puzzles are challenging without being infuriating, and there are comprehensive guides available online. Though the backgrounds and scenes seem authentic to the Victorian England setting of the game, a below average level of graphics means you’ll never get to enjoy it. The game also suffers from some truly awful voice acting, with the actors playing the children some of the worst I’ve ever heard.

Throughout the course of the game you will control Sherlock Holmes, John Watson and Toby, Holmes’ dog. Each character feels more difficult to control than the last, and at times it feels impossible to get the characters to even look in the direction you want them to. Luckily, the bulk of the game centres around solving puzzles, but the searching for clues often feels very labourious due to the sub-par controls.

Players must be aware that there are a number of missable trophies for this game – six in total. With no chapter select available (the game makes you save your progress manually, I would advise creating multiple save files as a precaution), if you miss one trophy then you’ll have to play right through from the beginning.

Playstation Trophies list the game as a 2/10 difficulty and estimate the game with take around 10 hours to complete. Though I’d agree on difficulty, I’d add that with a guide you can probably complete the game in around 8 hours. Be warned, if you aim to get the platinum on this game, you’ll spend a lot of your time feeling very frustrated!

Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: The Smurfs 2

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Sometimes, I sit down and think, “Time to get serious with this gaming. Time to play GTA V.” Sometimes I’ll think, “Oh sweet! A new LEGO game! I love LEGO games!” And just sometimes the little voice in the back of my head will say, “This LEGO game sure is taking a long time. I want a platinum trophy NOW.” As I sat down to play The Smurfs 2, it’s pretty clear which thought was running through my head.

To add context into my shame, the LEGO Marvel map is huge, and a real effort to do all of the side-quests and is just taking too long for my platinum craving. I am also playing Sound Shapes on PS3, PS4 and Vita, but I need something to break up the mind-altering frustration caused by Death Mode. The lure of the triple platinum is just too much for me to ignore completely.

I’d like to be able to talk about the plot of The Smurfs 2, but the cutscenes are skipable for the most part and I only really took in the non-skippable ones. As a very brief synopsis, Smurfette is kidnapped by Gargamel and the rest of the Smurfs have to save her. I’m sure there’s more too it than that, but I’ve never been a fan of The Smurfs, and frankly, don’t care about the danger they are in now.

Gameplay is divided up into five levels and a boss in six different worlds, with each level taking less than five minutes to complete. No exaggeration. Levels are linear, with no opportunity to stray from the path. In order to complete your first playthrough as quickly as possible, you should look to do a speed-run and play as Clumsy who can tumble forwards, much more quickly than the other Smurfs. Don’t worry about collectables as you’ll be playing through again once you’ve unlocked Smurfs with different abilities anyway.

As far as games go, The Smurfs 2, is probably about as easy as they come. The Playstation Trophies website lists the game as being 1.5 out of 10 difficulty, with a platinum obtainable within 5 to 8 hours, I would agree with this and perhaps go so far as to suggest the game is even easier. There are no troubling trophies, and the only thing that will take some time is collecting the 100 Smurf coins, which can be done without a guide though there is a comprehensive one online.