Board 8 > Solio ranks his PS3/VITA/PS4 library in various categories

(+) Yeah! (+)

Top 5 Almost Amazing Games
Honorable Mention - Gravity Rush 2

I absolutely adored the first Gravity Rush, but acknowledged that it needed a sequel to complete the story because certain things got set up and then didn't get resolved immediately.

I adored the second Gravity Rush far less than I adored the first because it tried to resolve those things, but did so in an unsatisfying way.

Gravity Rush gameplay was something really special on the VITA, but maybe it needed a little more than just some stance change mechanics to be something special on PS4.

Kat is still a fantastic lead character and the game isn't bad by any means. But it had the potential to be one of the best PS4 exclusives out there. As it is, it's a bit of a letdown after the first game. It just needed a bit better execution.
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#5 - Firewatch

This is a game about normal people. And as it turns out, that made for a pretty fucking awesome video game right up until the closing moments.

Exploring the nature park the game takes place in is really cool, and experiencing the dialogue between the two main characters is nice. It's interesting how Campo Santo made you feel like you knew a character so well when you hadn't ever even laid eyes on her, all you knew was her voice.

Sadly, while the ending stays true to the nature of the game - again, it's just about normal people - one piece of the ending will strongly disappoint almost every player. Subsequent playthroughs may also reveal that the dialogue changes with different choices, but there's not a ton of consequences that change. So while the story that the game tells is good, it really gives a bit of an illusion of choice that isn't there.

Don't let that stop you from playing Firewatch if you haven't played it already, because it's still a joy despite its lost potential.
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#4 - Mass Effect

This is a very easy entry to explain. If you want to see the difference between what this game is and what this game should've been, just compare this game to its sequels.

The original Mass Effect is good, but it's very limited in its scope and scale compared to the stories of the next two games, and the dialogue hasn't yet reached the level that it would in the rest of the trilogy. The gameplay is also maybe a little shoddy, especially those Mako side-planet missions.

It's widely agreed upon that Mass Effect is still a good game, but 2 and 3 were a masterpiece and a somewhat divisive fantastic game, respectively. It took Bioware a game to get Mass Effect perfect, that's all.
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#3 - Nioh

I just got the platinum on Nioh about a week ago. This is definitely one of the harder games I've played, and every now and then it feels a little cheap, but right from the very start of the game you have to be ready to face some seriously challenging shit.

That's beside the point I suppose, I'm really supposed to be talking about why this game isn't quite amazing.

What I really like about Nioh is the combat, but what I don't really like about Nioh is the usage of recycled assets. I had to fight the first major boss of the game, Onryoki, about 10 times in various forms on my track to the platinum. 3 or 4 of those fights were mandatory, meaning they weren't in side missions, they were in a main mission and they weren't something you had to go out of your way to find. Many of the side level maps are re-used numerous times. Enemy variety starts to stagnate after a while and you only see one or two new foes after a certain point.

This is kind of a cardinal sin of gaming. You can't rely on the player to be entertained by the same shit over and over and over again. You should instead make each level unique, and you should let the bosses stay unique to their original level. Committing the sin of re-used assets is only somewhat acceptable and it's never acceptable when you re-use the assets too much. Nioh does it an absurd amount of times.

The story is not told very well either, but I'd still love the game despite that flaw if each level was unique and I only fought Onryoki and Nue once each. The repetition really does the most damage.
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#2 - Watch Dogs

I talked about Watch Dogs's quality a little bit earlier, but I'll repeat the strengths of this game really quick: the gunplay is nice, level design is good, hacking while fighting is really fun, and the motorcycles go vroom vroom quite nicely. I think the characters are pretty memorable too.

Keep in mind this is #2 on the almost amazing list. It's REALLY CLOSE to being amazing. There's not a whole lot to complain about in my opinion, but there are a couple of things. For one, the story gets kind of predictable. I don't remember being surprised by anything in the story, and I remember one point that they even hard-telegraphed a major point of conflict that comes up. It was so obvious that I was kinda like, "Well yeah, that probably should've been dealt with earlier. Y'all are stupid for not realizing that was gonna be a problem." Like, the story is still fine, it gets the job done, but it's not fantastic.

Also, I'd like to point out that Aiden's voice is really dumb. He sounds like Batman most of the time, but sometimes he raises his voice and suddenly loses 95% of the grit in it. Sounding like Batman isn't good unless your character's name is fucking Batman, but if you're gonna make your character sound like Batman at least stay consistent with it.

Maybe the voice thing is a little silly to complain about, but at least the story complaint is reasonable.
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#1 - Tomb Raider (2013)

Tomb Raider has only one big fault keeping it from being an amazing game: who the fuck are the side characters?

Really. Who are they? I don't think I knew them when I was playing the game and I certainly don't remember who they are now. Lara is the big star of the game, and her sister Sam is memorable just because she gets a lot of screen time. None of the other characters have anything interesting about them and you probably won't know their names by the time you finish the game. That is a big problem, but thankfully, the game is still great because of how well done everything else is. The re-imagined Lara Croft is a badass and not so ridiculous with her proportions that it's laughable. The gunplay is good. The explosions and firefights are awesome and fun. And there's a real sense of suspense the entire game. It's really, really, really good.

Except for those characters. Those are really bad. Bad enough to keep an otherwise fantastic game from being truly amazing.
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Here's a recap of the last category:

Top 5 Almost Amazing Games
1. Tomb Raider (2013)
2. Watch Dogs
3. Nioh
4. Mass Effect
5. Firewatch
HM. Gravity Rush 2

Next up will be the Top 5 Hardest Platinums I've Gotten, followed by the Top 5 Hardest Platinums I Won't Get!
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hi solio, nice read
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and now to celebrate his achievements, Solio will embark on his greatest journey yet. One that could completely rewrite these lists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUcdxes1tBQ" data-time="
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Tag! Great rankings so far.
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ninkendo posted...

and now to celebrate his achievements, Solio will embark on his greatest journey yet. One that could completely rewrite these lists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUcdxes1tBQ" data-time="

I am all for this

because it also means SHINE will do it too
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MegamanX posted...

hi solio, nice read

hi, thank you!

davidponte posted...

Tag! Great rankings so far.

hi, thank you!

ninkendo posted...

and now to celebrate his achievements, Solio will embark on his greatest journey yet. One that could completely rewrite these lists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUcdxes1tBQ" data-time="

hi, than... oh lmfao yeah okay
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Top 5 Hardest Platinums I've Gotten
Honorable Mention - Nioh

Nioh is just a hard game period. The trophies aren't really that hard, but the game is, which makes all the trophies kinda difficult. After you've been playing the game for a while, you start to figure out what weapon's attacks work best for each different situation, and you can deal with any fight that's thrown your way, but it's always gonna be a challenge.

The only truly difficult trophy in this game... erm, unusually difficult, is Samurai of Legend, which asks that you complete every mission in the game. This includes Twilight Missions (which held me back from getting the platinum for a bit because they only give you two a day and there's no way to cheat the game's clock that resets the missions) all side missions, and a few of the missions that unlock post-game. Some of those post-game missions were added in patches so they aren't required, and thank god because they're pretty fucking hard. Those missions would have easily bumped this game up a few spots if they were mandatory.

The hardest mission in the game is one where you fight two of the bosses from the main game at the same time, namely Yuki-Onna and Oda Nabunaga. Both bosses are no slouch, but thankfully they're not both long range enemies, so you can take one down while the other chases after you and you don't have to worry about the other too much. I'd also give a mention to The Ocean Roars Again, which feels hard no matter what level you are because there's pitfalls literally everywhere if you want to actually explore the full map and not rush straight to the boss.

Other than that, Twilight Missions can be made much easier by boosting your level higher and all the other trophies don't require a whole lot of extra work.
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#5 - Starwhal

So, remember when I talked about that Too Easy trophy? That's precisely the reason this platinum is hard. Again, navigating the Starwhal is designed to be flimsy and unreliable - that's what makes the game fun when you play it with other people and you're swinging at each others' hearts with your big horns. This makes going through tight spaces without touching the walls frustrating.

It doesn't stop there though. You'll need both skill and patience to platinum this game, because a lot of the trophies ask you to either legit play a shit ton of Starwhal or grind like crazy. You have to play 1,000 rounds of versus, stab 3,000 hearts in classic mode, and shatter 1,000 blocks of ice. Even if you play the game with friends here and there, you're not gonna get anywhere close to those numbers, especially the ice blocks trophy. So, grind like crazy is probably gonna be what anyone chasing this platinum does!

I know I certainly had to grind like crazy. There's efficient ways to do those trophies, but it still takes FOREVER. I honestly regret chasing this platinum down because I wasted a lot of time nudging my control stick up and down to flop my horn onto a motionless Starwhal's heart over and over again.
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#4 - Dyad

The concept behind Dyad isn't very easy to grasp. Wikipedia has it labeled as a "tunnel racing puzzle shooting game". I would also maybe add a bit of rhythm to that list. Think about that for a second, and if you haven't played Dyad yet, imagine what that would look like, and then go look it up.

There's always a bunch of stuff happening on screen unless you're going really slow, which is almost never what you want to be doing in Dyad. Speed helps you beat almost all of the trophy levels, so you'll need to get good at piecing together what you're looking at and figuring out what you're aiming for. This is the main challenge of the fundamentals of the game.

It's been a while since I've played Dyad, but I remember some of those trophy levels being really frustrating. And to unlock the trophy levels, you had to beat the base mission first, which could also cause some trouble.

I'd have to play it again to give specifics, but Dyad is not for the faint of heart. It was the first platinum I got that really felt hard.
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#3 - Furi

Playing Furi on the normal difficulty is not easy. Furi's platinum requires you to beat the game on the harder difficulty... and S rank a full playthrough on it.

Some of the bosses are ridiculous on Furier difficulty (aka hard mode). The Song's final sequence is true bullet hell, The Burst's final sequence is pretty hectic, and The Scale's final sequence requires you to be spot on with your dodges. Not to mention, optional final boss The Star is by far the most demanding fight in the game, well past the other three bosses I just referenced.

And you have to S rank a full playthrough of all of the fights, save for The Star. You can skip her and you won't be penalized for it. Now, if you had to fight The Star on your Furier S Rank run, then this platinum would quite possibly be a spot higher. Thankfully, as it is, you just have to be really good at the pretty hard shit, not the incredibly hard shit.

This is a really fun game and getting really good at the hard bosses is rewarding, so I enjoyed the challenge, but that doesn't mean the challenge existed any less. Furi's platinum asks that you have levels of precision and focus that most people don't want to even try to have.

But it's not the hardest skill-based platinum on this list - that would belong to our #2 spot.
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pretty sure I know what #2 is
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#2 - Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved (VITA)

THIS is the hardest fair platinum I've ever gotten. This shit is so hard. Let's go through a list of all the hard trophies:

Retro - Score over 10 million on Evolved Classic Level before losing a life
Only a silver trophy. I had probably two hundred attempts or more on this trophy before I finally got it. By the time you hit about 6 million points, the game is swarming you with enemies. It becomes a hectic mad dash for the 10 million marker, because the more enemies you kill, the higher your score multiplier gets, and there's a ton of enemies to kill to have the score skyrocket. However, with all those enemies on the screen, you're always just one split-second from dying. It's way easier for the enemies to kill you before you hit 10 million than it is for you to survive the onslaught long enough to get the trophy.

Geometry Warrior - Earn 3 Stars on all 50 levels of Adventure Mode
A few of these levels are hard to beat with 1 star. A good number of these levels are infuriating to beat with 3 stars, including the final boss level. It took a long time for me to get this one.

BFF - Achieve 3 Stars on all 10 levels in Co-op Mode
10 levels is a hell of a lot less than 50, but you've gotta do this co-op. So, go find a friend who is as good as you at Geometry Wars and have fun! The issue with this is that you can't do this online on the VITA, or at least you can't do it with two fully functional controllers like you can on PS4 (keep in mind this is a twin stick shooter game - having two analog sticks is important). On the VITA version, you have to do this with one person using a stick and the D-pad while the other person uses a stick and the face buttons. Having the D-pad is a lot better than having the face buttons, because with the D-pad you can still move with some level of precision, but the face buttons limits your shooting to 8 directions. It's still completely fair, but again, you've gotta have a friend who is at least decent at this game to get 3 stars on some of these levels.

Beat Phil - Beat the Developer high score of 21,478,525 on Nufo Flow in Adventure Mode
Totally doable, but it's still pretty hard. Nufo Flow is a level where most enemies only raise your score multiplier by 1, but there's bonus disc enemies that fly super fast across the screen toward you that drop a ton of geoms to raise your multiplier quick. You've gotta avoid the useless enemies while killing as many of the bonus discs as possible to raise that multiplier before the enemies start overwhelming you. Oh, and by the way, you can't shoot, so you have to bait the bonus discs to where they fly right into bombs that some of the other enemies drop.

See, that's four trophies alone that could probably stop someone from getting platinum on this game. And then there's the gatherer trophy, which requires that you pick up 1 million geoms between the adventure, ultimate, and hardcore modes. This is a massive grind that will almost definitely not be done by the time you finish getting all of the other trophies. It's crazy.

Geometry Wars 3 is a ton of fun and definitely one of the best arcade-style games I've ever played, but damn they make you work for that platinum.
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Arti posted...

pretty sure I know what #2 is

were you right?
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#1 - Freedom Wars

Okay, so Geometry Wars 3 is the hardest platinum I've gotten that I feel is skill based. So why is Freedom Wars above it?

Remember when I said I hate trophies that feel impossible without a guide? Welcome to Freedom Wars's platinum. First off, the game never really explains all the nuances of weapon crafting - there's a mechanic called Late Blooming that is crucial to conquering some of the harder trophies in this game. The game never talks about it. Basically, weapons that have super low damage when you create them or get them at a low level will have ridiculously high damage when you upgrade them fully. But then upgrading weapons requires a DUMB amount of grinding for rare materials which are hard to get without the awesome weapons. So if you don't already have an awesome weapon, you're in for hell trying to get one.

Let me be clear: this game is hard already. There's some pretty severe difficulty spikes at a lot of different points that will force you to grind or upgrade your weapons a lot if you want to successfully proceed. But a couple of the harder missions are ridiculous without Late Bloomer weapons or something comparable.

So how did I get this platinum? I relied on people who already had put in the crazy work of getting those busted weapons and had them help me through online co-op. There was no way I was going through the pain of doing this one all by myself. The friendly AI sucks, the Dionaea Slayer trophy is pretty unfair without the busted weapons, and I wasn't ready to do the grinding because I didn't particularly love this game anyways.

I'm not down with unexplained weapon crafting that is vital to doing the harder stuff, and I'm not down with shitty AI preventing me from being able to do those harder missions offline. So if I went online, I had the well-equipped co-op partners available to me, and I used them. If they weren't there to help me, I wouldn't have gotten this platinum. It took way too long even with the help of others.
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Let's get a recap on that!

Top 5 Hardest Platinums I've Gotten
1. Freedom Wars
2. Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved
3. Furi
4. Dyad
5. Starwhal
HM. Nioh

Killzone Mercenary almost made this list, but honestly, it's easier than it seems. It just takes a while to do.

As promised, we'll go over the Top 5 Hardest Platinums I Won't Get next, and then we'll talk about the Top 5 Indie Games before we close it out with the overall Top 10 Games!
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Top 5 Hardest Platinums I Won't Get
#5 - Payday 2

Maybe this game isn't really a hard platinum. I wouldn't really know. When I played this game, I was pretty confused as to what I was supposed to do, so I ended up just busting into every place loud, stealing EVERYTHING, and killing a bunch of cops before making the getaway. I only played it online maybe twice.

I'd probably have to use a trophy guide to get anywhere on the platinum in this game, and I didn't particularly enjoy the game when I played it, so I'm gonna pass on going back and trying. Plus, the trophy guide I found says these things about the game:

"Approximate time: 40-60 hours
Trophy-wise, Payday 2 isn't overly difficult, however there is some luck involved with several trophies. Most of the trophies are earned by doing specific tasks on specific heists, while others are for doing specific tasks during escapes (which is where a lot of the luck factors in), as well as a few miscellaneous ones."

Eh, that's quite a bit of time and luck sounds annoying.

The REAL difficult platinums start with our next entry.
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#4 - Tricky Towers

Oof. I'm pretty close to getting this one, but those last two or three trophies are just... oh man.

For those who haven't played this game yet, it's a ton of fun. You basically build towers out of Tetris blocks, but the issue is that, unlike Tetris, physics apply here. So if you place a block in the wrong spot and it wouldn't stay stable in real life, it's gonna fall and possibly mess up your whole tower.

These are the trophies I have yet to unlock:
Ultimate wizard - Complete trial #50 without losing a heart.
Master wizard - Complete all trials.
Perfect start - Build a tower with 99 bricks in endless survival challenge without losing any hearts.

Trial #50 is a bitch. I'm not sure how I'm gonna complete that without losing a heart because it's really that brutal. I can't even beat trial 50 with allowing a mistake or two, which is what's keeping me from Master wizard. Perfect start is also tough, but I think it's more doable than Ultimate wizard.

So, for the time being, I'm considering this platinum as one that I'm not gonna ever get. Maybe one day I'll try to go for these 3 trophies again, but that day isn't in the immediate future.
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did you do the real gravity rush 2 ending at solio
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Solioxrz362 posted...

Arti posted...

pretty sure I know what #2 is

were you right?

yes
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NFUN posted...

did you do the real gravity rush 2 ending at solio

You mean after the credits? Yes. It started as if it was gonna live up to the hopes I had for it, but then disappointed me
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#3 - Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational

Trophies left:
SOLD OUT - Purchase every item in the shop.
King of Kings - Collect every crown in Challenge Mode.
Costume Freak - Purchase every costume and color set.

I'm pretty sure you get Costume Freak on the way to getting SOLD OUT, so that trophy is no issue. The biggest issue with SOLD OUT however is that it takes a ton of points to get everything. Remember how I said I've played this game a shit ton? IIRC I'm still a long way away from getting enough points to complete SOLD OUT.

But that's just grinding. What's really keeping me from getting this platinum is King of Kings. There are a few crowns that just feel downright impossible, such as completing the Legacy of Golf Links course without using spin shots and having a high enough score to win. Legacy of Golf Links is ridiculously hard even with spin, but without it the course feels impossible to do good on.

I think there's a B8er who has managed to get all the crowns on the VITA version, and I think it was Dr Football. I'm playing on PS3 and the crowns are different between versions, so I couldn't really ask him for his help, but that's an incredible feat regardless. Some of the VITA crowns are probably a little harder.
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#2 - OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood

Fuck this game, man. Like, it's a fun little 2D skateboarding game, but you have to be so precise to get anywhere in this game. And then once you've done all the challenges on every level (they're hard, really fucking hard) you realize there's a second mode where you can play the whole game over again except this time you have to hit every grind, manual, and combo perfectly. I think it's called Rad mode.

I can't even unlock Rad mode, and there's a trophy for completing every level on Rad mode. So... yeah. Not getting that.

Now, I'm not bad at OlliOlli2. I've gotten most of the trophies, and some of those were pretty insane. There's just a limit to what I can do, and the platinum is past that limit.
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#1 - Binary Domain

I played Binary Domain (and loved it btw) before I started trophy hunting. That's probably a good thing, because now I don't feel bad for not even attempting to go for this platinum.

Apparently this platinum is insanely difficult, and it's probably nearly impossible to get today considering there's an online trophy that asks you to reach level 50. I think this game's online was pretty dead soon after release, and I can't imagine there's ANYONE online now. Reaching level 50 would probably require you and a buddy to sit down and boost the whole way. There's also online versus challenges, which also almost certainly require massive amounts of boosting.

There's also the trophy for beating every stage in Invasion mode online, which... you know what, I've never played Invasion in this game. I don't know for myself how hard this trophy is. But the trophy guide seems to think it's absurdly difficult, and I think this guide written by someone on TrueTrophies should make it clear:
https://www.truetrophies.com/t40273/resistance-hero-trophy?showguides=1

See how long that shit is? See how much that guy felt it was necessary to write to properly explain how to get this trophy? God. Damn. That's a lot of guiding for one trophy.

This is only game I own with a trophy guide that insists the platinum is above a 9/10 difficulty (erm, outside of Super Meat Boy, which I'll address after the recap post). Again, I wouldn't really know because I've never gone for it, but the online trophies alone are probably impossible to do naturally at this point, and I'm not even sure I know anyone else who has this game outside of PS+ owners from back when the PS4 was released.
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Here's a recap of the last category:

Top 5 Hardest Platinums I Won't Get
1. Binary Domain
2. OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood
3. Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
4. Tricky Towers
5. Payday 2
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wow where's crypt of the necrodancer
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NFUN posted...

wow where's crypt of the necrodancer

I have never played it!

On that note, I thought about including Super Meat Boy in this list (because seriously, that's actually the hardest platinum on a game I have that I'll never actually obtain). But let's be honest, what could I say about that game's difficulty that no one else has said? It'd be a pretty short entry. In fact, let's write it right now.

"This platinum requires you to beat every area all the way without dying once, including Cotton Alley Dark World. Fuck that shitty impossible dumb fucking shit, dumb ass game. I can't do most of the light world levels without dying. I'm not going to even attempt beating Dark World, and I'm not doing to ever even think of doing any section of Dark World without dying."
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cotn's is tougher lol
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well good thing i don't have it then, sounds like a game that's too difficult for its own good!

Super Meat Boy certainly is sometimes, although that's literally the whole game's gimmick so
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Solioxrz362 posted...

I think there's a B8er who has managed to get all the crowns on the VITA version, and I think it was Dr Football. I'm playing on PS3 and the crowns are different between versions, so I couldn't really ask him for his help, but that's an incredible feat regardless. Some of the VITA crowns are probably a little harder.

MSG has the platinum in both versions
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Ohh yeah of course he does. Damn I don't know how he's so good at virtual golf
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Unpopular opinion time

Super Meat Boy sucks
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MZero11 posted...

Unpopular opinion time

Super Meat Boy sucks

I thought it was alright but when the whole game's attraction is "This game is harder than almost any other game out there," then the fun of it seems pretty thin. Obviously there's not much of a story that the game relies on and it has indie game graphics, so all you have is DIE DIE DIE HARD GAME DIE
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It just sounds like you're bad at Super Meat Boy
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I mean I beat everything in the Light World, including Cotton Alley. I'm just not gonna waste the time on Dark World
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Top 5 Indie Games
Honorable Mention - Disc Jam

I've had a lot of fun playing this game, and I've actually played it with other B8ers. Had one of my favorite online gaming sessions playing against davidponte in Disc Jam.

However, I hear it's mostly just a Windjammers clone. Bummer. If this game was a little more original, I'd place it way higher. For now, it just gets a mention. Fun in its own right, but if the idea came from somewhere else, then the idea belongs to the game it came from.
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Solioxrz362 posted...

I've had a lot of fun playing this game, and I've actually played it with other B8ers. Had one of my favorite online gaming sessions playing against davidponte in Disc Jam.

I remember that! That game was a good time for the small moment I played it. I won my first like 20 or so games online and felt like I was on top of the world, then hit a wall and didn't feel like putting in the effort to get much better than I was.

Our B8 sessions were great, though.
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#5 - Tricky Towers

As it turns out, Tetris with physics is a bunch of fun! This is also a game that I played with B8ers. In fact, the very first time I played this game, it was with Wigs and someone else (can't remember who, but we all had a great time). We played the puzzle mode, where you have to fit a bunch of blocks under a certain line on the screen, and whoever has the most blocks at the end wins the round. Wigs had a couple of puzzle towers going pretty good, and then he placed one block on a side that shifted the weight too much and the whole thing came crashing down. Many fucks were said.

Since playing it with B8ers, I've gotten really good, gotten almost all of the trophies, and played it a bunch with IRL friends. All of that has been good times too.

It's a really simple concept turned into something I enjoy more than what it derives itself from. I don't really know how much I'd pay for it since I got it for free, but it has been worth the time I've invested, which is quite a bit.
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was expecting at least a mention of rayman legends for awso me and getting a diamond trophy.
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Mr Crispy posted...

was expecting at least a mention of rayman legends for awso me and getting a diamond trophy.

have not played it, so it's not eligible for the lists
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#4 - Papo & Yo

You know, as a game, this is a seriously flawed release. It's kinda glitchy, the gameplay is sub-par, and the graphics are a little shoddy. And none of that matters. This is one of only two games that have ever made me cry, and really this is the only one that had me sobbing. The story comes from the heart of the man who wrote it, Vander Caballero, who wrote it based off of his own father's alcohol issues.

A lot of the game goes off of a kind of silly metaphor between frogs and alcohol, but the ending is powerful, and in a horribly sad way. I've never been the guy to like the statements about what should be done in games, I like the statements about how things are. This game tells the story of children in situations like Vander's when he was a child, and it nails it. Emotionally, it was enough to make a young Solio straight up bawl. I can cry pretty easily nowadays, but back when I played this game, I just didn't do it. So it says something about this game that it hit me as hard as it did.

While it's not a super pretty game, it's still got plenty of creativity in it. And it should. It's in part about a boy's imagination helping him deal with the reality of his father's issue. The way that the main character's imaginary world is depicted gives the game a lot of its beauty when the graphics fall a little short of the standard.

Gotta give credit where its due, this game makes up for a lot of its shortcomings based solely off of the story it tells and how it tells it. The narrative doesn't pull a whole lot of punches, and it progresses honestly & elegantly. It's not a game I can recommend to everyone easily because many just won't find it fun, but that's not exactly the point of this game.
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#3 - Dyad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8noFmnd0I" data-time="

Look at this game. Look at how unique the design is. Listen to how the BGM speeds up and gets more intense as the speed increases.

This is just an awesome game conceptually, and the execution on those gameplay concepts is fantastic. What's even better is that every level finds a way to feel unique and interesting. I don't remember very many levels, if any, feeling like an exact repetition of a previous level.

I really like indie games like this. AAA games often use frequently-explored formulas, but they aim to either execute those formulas perfectly or add a new aspect that differentiates it while remaining familiar. Indie games, on the other hand, seem to thrive when they entirely ditch the most popular game formulas. Open world indie games, indie FPS games, they just don't stand up to the AAAs very often. So I appreciate when an indie developer goes after something that you don't get in many other places, and then pulls it off so wonderfully. Dyad is an entirely fresh gaming experience that you really will not find anywhere else, at least not that I know of, and if you can manage to keep your eyes focused on the important stuff on the screen without getting a headache, you'll really have fun with it.
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#2 - Hotline Miami

I honestly am having trouble finding what to say about Hotline Miami. This was a crazy game, and it was fun. Going for the platinum was challenging but still very, very fun.

Like, honestly, I don't really even know what was happening with the story (if someone wants to explain it to me concisely it would probably help me out), but the game was fun. I went and killed a lot of people and wore nice masks while doing it.

The indie top-down shooters need to take a look at this game if they want to know how to get the formula right. Fast, hard but fair, and easy to retry. Also, you can knock enemies down by opening the door on them. That's awesome.
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#1 - Furi

Take every good thing I've said about the last two entries on this list and apply them to Furi.
- Fast
- Hard but fair
- Easy to retry
- Crazy game and it's fun
- Platinum was challenging but still fun
- Unique formula that isn't used very much elsewhere
- Fantastic BGM
- Stylish

This game is all of those things. I actually wrote a review on Furi pretty soon after it came out (won some Amazon credit from Review of the Month thanks to it!), and to describe the game, I'll use this excerpt:

"Furi is unique in today's game market. In the entire game, there are only 10 enemies. Each one is a boss fight filled with multiple stages, and there are no other battles throughout the 3.5+ hours of the game. Furi is essentially a boss-rush arena-based fighter, but just saying that doesn't really do the game justice. There's more to it than that. The game mixes hack-and-slash melee combat with the difficult bullet hell genre, yet the transition between the two styles of gameplay are seamless and smooth, and the game treats the player with near-complete fairness."

With that said, why is this my favorite indie game, even above something like Hotline Miami? It's because of the format of the game and how well it pulls it off.

One of my lesser-known gaming opinions is that I wish more games had a boss-rush challenge mode upon completion of the main game. Take all of the bosses from the main game, have the player be able to fight each of them in succession (with maybe a break to change equipment or something between bosses, if equipment is part of the game), and then give the player a score based on total time, hits taken/health lost, and whatever other attributes you want to. A game called EOE: Eve of Extinction on PS2 had a boss rush mode, and it was one of the more fun parts of the game (btw, EOE, underrated game). A game like Nioh would've benefit from something like this.

Furi is literally that mode, if that was the focus of the whole game. And it makes it work by having incredibly sleek, fast combat. You don't need normal mobs to fight because every single one of the bosses is fun.

And it has a bit of a story too! The ending is quite striking, and there's a number of small things throughout that give a few hints as to the bigger picture. It's really not a prevalent story, the big focus is entirely on the gameplay, but it's still nice that the game put something forward.

I highly recommend Furi to every gamer who is up for the challenge, as it's the best indie game I've played and the one I've had the most fun with.
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Indie games recap:

Top 5 Indie Games
1. Furi
2. Hotline Miami
3. Dyad
4. Papo & Yo
5. Tricky Towers
HM. Disc Jam

Coming up: Solio's top 10 games (from his TrueTrophies library)
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