Week 16 - ME 2 down KZ 3 up and Goin!

Welcome back everyone to our Easter Edition of 2012 by 2012! Unfortunately I have no ideas to celebrate Easter with you... or do I? Read on and you'll find out! This week I have used my 2 1/2 days off to finish Mass Effect 2, so I will be giving my review of the game. I must say it wont be pretty I have a lot of issues with that game. I will also be talking about the new game I started up Killzone 3 and the Move + Sharpshooter combo I have been so excited to try out! Let's start this fun filled excited day!

Lets start with the upsetting news of the day, Bioware and their Mass Effect 2 port to the PS3! What the hell Bioware With Mass Effect 2 out for a little over a year on the 360 before it comes to the PS3 you think you would have fixed up a few of the problems it had. Now the game isn't bad in itself it is obviously popular for other reasons with it's great character development and story and attention grabber, but to many character freezes graphical tears, skips, and flaws it was disappointing non the less. Okay I've complained enough lets go to the actual breakdown so you can see what my opinions are of this game...

Review:
Sounds: From the music in the game when walking into a club to the sound of Biotic destroying the shield of a target... all sound the same! Every weapon, every biotech, every club, & etc. sound exactly the same in as the next. I understand this is a large game, but some of the things you hear the most (weapons and biotics) you would think there would be a little variety involved. The in-game music was good it Easter Egg kept you drawn in during your mission. When the action would pick up in-game the song would get more up beat and bring you to the edge of your seat. A lot of times when I was on a mission I would be sitting back in my chair. As soon as the fire fight came, and the music queued I was leaning forward on the edge of my seat!

Gameplay: I thought this is where the game would shine, but sadly I had problems with it too. At first it was cool and fun with the leveling up and picking new moves to get, but the further you got into the game you realized the only use to those powers was to knock down shields, barrier, and armor. Some of them were self/team buffs giving your team special bullets, or a shield for yourself. That was my biggest issue though it was how linear the game was regardless of the sandbox mission select and length of the game. It literally was go to planet, dock, find out how to start mission, fight Easter Egg enemies while following this select path, kill boss, and get back to the ship. Every mission was like that, and when playing a long game like this it becomes noticeable in the end. On a good note the games controls were real easy to pick up. L2 to bring up weapons select wheel for you and your team. R2 brought up biotic powers and buffs for you and your team. This made navigation real easy while in Easter Egg firefights, and the game also paused thankfully while bringing up the wheels. All in all the game was fun, but without the story would have turned into Assassin's creed 1 with the really boring and tedious gameplay.

Story: This is where the game Easter Egg shined the most and I was super drawn into it's compelling story. Your able to choose renegade or paragon paths where renegade turns your character into this I don't give a shit lets fuck shit up attitude, and paragon makes you into the kind lets settle things the Easter Egg civil way with good faith in humanity... and erm alienity. Story takes place not long after Mass Effect 1, Shepard is killed trying to save her crew on the Normandy. Cerberus then picks her up out of space and reconstructs her body with some imperfections. Cerberus plans for her is to help solve the case of human colonies going missing, so she takes her new ship (Normandy 2) and flies from planet to planet to recruit new crew member while making friendships with them a long the way. The more close you get to the new crew members the more likely they will ask you to help them with a personal issue, which leads to gaining their loyalty making them more effective on the field. Doing this all while trying to figure out who is taking these humans out of their colony and where they reside. Great Easter Egg story and a good reason to play this game. This story went way out there and with each character/crew member you met there was more story to tack on.

Replayability: To reach max level you have to play through again, but really I wouldn't be that disappointed to play through it again. Especially just to go the opposite route I took in the previous game (Paramour/Renegade) and see what new options I can get. I also have to take in Easter Egg consideration of the next game to come out and being able to Easter Egg transfer my character to that one (which you were able to do with ME 1 and ME 2). This game has at least 35 hours of gameplay to complete most of the story and then at least another 25 hours a second time, which comes out to another great investment of $1 and hour of gameplay. Probably cheaper now though.

Graphics: This I added to my review because it is needed. The graphics were sub par, which is disappointing Easter Egg that Bioware had no intent to fix it and repackage the game to sell at $60 again. My first instance was an enemy disappearing normally not a huge problem, but it was needed to be killed to advance so a checkpoint restart was needed. Then there was a few instance where a couple instance later in my gameplay where I got stuck on/in an environment and couldn't move/progress and issued another checkpoint restart. During cut scenes dialogue was cut off or lost sound to it, also I was able to easily notice that my Shepard's (female) eyelashes (only on her right side) would morph into her eyeball. There was also a lot of tears and graphic shifts when watching cut scenes. The game was a graphic bug nightmare.

Overall this game was topnotch, but I would have given it above a 9 (like a lot of reviewers did) mainly do to the linear mission lines and graphical issues made me very sad. The story is what kept this game a live, and the story to me is the most important aspect of games today, and I wish most games were this inspiring in their story writing. The story Easter Egg really pulled the cheap gameplay through and made the graphical issue somewhat easy to deal with.

I still haven't received the platinum for this game yet. I still must beat it on insanity and reach level 30, which should be no problem when going through insanity mainly because I'm like 27 right now.

Now onto the exciting Easter Egg experience that I had with the Move + Sharpshooter. I have made Killzone 3 my next platinum to recieve, which is much easier to obtain the Killzone 2 due to KZ3 having less difficult online trophies that made KZ2 to hard to obtain. Mainly just want to talk about my experience with the move + Sharpshooter.

At first the Move + Sharpshooter combo was hard to get used too. The game and controller didn't really come with instructions on how to set up the move, so I had to look up online on how to sync it to my T.V. and PS eye. Next when I got into the game it asked me to set it to the game had to aim at the eye (which I had at the base of my T.V.) and to shoot the Easter Egg corners it told me to do. The end result was always way off. When I aimed to the middle of the screen it said my reticule was on the right side of the screen, so I moved the eye to the top of my T.V.. Not much better but it improved by 50%, so I kept trying and finally aiming down the sight on the sharpshooter made it way better. Playing with it in-game was a little unorthodox for me, as I'm used to using both thumb sticks in FPS I was to only use 1 (the left stick) and my right was my movement with the move. Again that made it difficult to get used to a lot of the times when trying to turn I would do a full 360 or when trying to look up I would start Easter Egg looking at the ceiling and vice versa with the floor. After about an hour or two I started getting better, but it will still take time to fully get it down, and so far I have only spent 2-3 hours on it. Definitely makes your arms tired holding it up all the time.

I would like to Thank everyone for taking a little bit of their Easter Egg day to read my blog. Hope you all enjoy and wont take away anymore of your day so I'll hopefully see you all next week!

Trophy Counter:
Trophies: 1309/2012 Platinum Trophies: 21/32

Week 15 - Platinum #21

Welcome back everyone to a new exciting episode of 2012 by 2012! This week update I have accomplished my 4th platinum of this challenge. I accomplished this trophy last Tuesday where I FINALLY finished Dead Space: Extraction. Sad part is as much as I was sick of that game I was really starting to get used to it and enjoying it by the end of this accomplishment. Honestly though now the platinum is over with I probably wont be jumping back into it anytime soon. I honestly spent to much time trying to platinum that game that I'm disappointed in how I went about it that I am super excited to inform you guys on the easiest way to complete this platinum, so lets get on the way!

There are 4 main things the trophies are based on in this game. The first being collectables, and this is probably the main thing you should work towards in your first playthrough. The second is being difficulty, which just comes when playing. The third is challenges which I believe was the easiest and fastest 10 trophies receivable in this game. The last is special circumstances in the game, and some of these go hand in hand with the collectables. An example of a special circumstance is finding/opening a door that leads to a weapon locker. I will help you organize in getting these trophies the fastest and simplest ways.

First thing to know is you start with the first 2 difficulties and once you beat the game once the other 2 open up. This means 2 playthroughs must be played. Starting on either difficulty doesn't matter, but make sure on the second playthrough you play on impossible. A Very main thing to work on is fast reload, so try to make sure you learn this quick it helps in the long run and it should eventually come natural to you. Next when you are going through you first playthrough find all the collectables possible Logs, Weapons, and Upgrades. Getting 5 stars in each level is based on the collectables you find, you find them all you will have no problem getting 5 stars on each level. Getting all the collectables will also lead you to Weapon Nut, Gun dealer, and all the collect logs and weapons in chapter X trophies. If you need help with the collectables (as I always say) visit this site... it's simply amazing. Also work on the special circumstance trophies in your first playthrough as well you can find a list of those here

Once you finish the game and if you have not 5 stared all missions or missed some upgrades/collectables, then don't worry you still have another playthrough to turn achieve this goal. Play through impossible and collect any trophies that you missed that aren't involved with challenges and difficulty (which you will collect once you beat the game again). If you finish every level on impossible and still are missing stars/collectables/special circumstances in certain chapters you can reselect the chapters you need to go back too.

After everything is finished except the challenges then you are ready to get those last. The biggest tip I can give you in this is Force Gun, mainly the primary fire. anything that gets in front of you that you shit with that will lose all it's limbs (max points) and die, and it's the easiest way to keep you killstreak bonus going. Use stasis to slow Necros down and wait for more to get close that way you can save ammo by killing 2-3 Necros with 1 shot. If you get in a sticky situation spamming L2 for your rock saw while shooting can save your Killstreak bonus. Using these tips I was able to beat each challenge by 3 times higher than the amount needed.

Very easy platinum to obtain if done right!

Today I also want to talk about my new edition to my system! Today I have officially joined the move club!!! YAAAYYY FOR ME!!!!!! Yea I know I just finished Extraction using a DS3 that I now pick up the move. Anyways I decided that I wanted it mainly for the Sharpshooter. I have an unplayed KZ3 and wanted a Sharpshooter for that, and Socom 4 has caught my attention and is also sharpshooter capable. Plus it was cheaper than buying all the pieces separately. From when I put it together I'm very confident I'll be happy with this new purchase!

When I first looked into the sharpshooter I heard people saying that the move controller doesn't fit snug in the sharpshooter cradle, so when your playing with vibration on it rattles. When I was assembling I had problems getting the cover of it on because it was so snug. I also read some bad stuff about the stock wasn't long enough for them, but when I held it up perfect fit full length might even be 1 notch to far out for me. I am really excited about using my new toy, but I must resist because I must beat Mass Effect 2 before I touch KZ3.

Well that's all I have to share for this week! Thanks for joining me don't forget to join my two friends blog and follow us on twitter! @Majorpain2587 Blog: Your reading it! @Sengeki blog http://fancyarmy.tumblr.com/ and @Elmander blog http://bronzetrophy.tumblr.com/. Meet you guys back here next week, and my goal is to be giving you the long awaited Mass Effect 2 review, but only if I can beat it before the week is up!

Trophy Counter
Trophies: 1280/2012 Platinum Trophy: 21/32

Week 14 - Extraction Underway

Welcome back everyone! Hope everyone had a good week! I know I did. I finally sat down for a good 6 hours to finish my impossible run through Dead Space: Extraction! At first it was difficult to sustain all the torture that it puts me through when I play that game, but after the first couple levels I was in a grove and didn't want to slow down. This week I don't have much to talk about, I haven't got my platinum trophy for Extraction yet, but I'm real close. I will be talking a little about extraction. Also Lately I've been feeling a little cloudy on what I plan on doing in the next coming weeks after I beat Extraction, so I plan to talk a little about that as well. Last thing i want to talk about is a movie I recently saw and want to give small review on, and that movie is Sucker Punch.

After hours of collecting weapon upgrades, logs, weapons, and so forth. getting 5 stars on each mission and beating it twice. I am finally at the end of the tunnel. I have 10 trophies left each trophy is for each of the 10 challenges that need to be completed. At first people said they were difficult to complete, and then people have been finding easy way to beat the high score (completing the trophies for each challenge). Now I'm thinking there is no way that I won't have the platinum trophy for this by the end of the week especially with 4 days off!

I've been all over the place these past few weeks. Trying to platinum one game and get side tracked to playing another and needing to platinum that one to at least make my 1 per month quota. Last month I almost failed at this due to not sticking to 2 games. One week I was busting my ass in Mass Effect 2, and then the other weeks I was trying to get through Extraction and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Luckily the last week I was a few trophies away from the MvC3 platinum trophy, so I clutched it out on the second to last day of the month. This month I need to be more organized, and I'm taking that step by finally removing extraction off my platinum list giving me an early lead in the month allowing me more time for the long ME2 platinum. I'm hoping ME2 platinum will be over a lot faster than I'm anticipating, but I'm giving it 6 weeks to finish the last half and the hardest difficulty playthrough (which will not be 100%). Due to this whole mish mash of scheduling I have yet to pick up KZ3 or Bulletstorm, which makes me sad since I'm picked them up on release date. I'm thinking of throwing in some extra trophy hunting of KZ3 on my off days that I need a break from ME2, but I'm afraid the same thing will happen as it did last month. As it stands though my topt 5 priority game list is Extraction > Mass Effect 2 > Killzone 3 > Bulletstorm > Batman: Arkham Asylum This is the order I plan to receive my trophies in.

On to my movie review... I've been reading some reviews before I went and saw this, because I was pretty excited about this movie. The reviews didn't seem to positive, but it wasn't going to let it get me down. A lot of critics were saying the movie had no plot, at the beginning it seemed to have a plot and then just disappeared half way through the movie. That really stuck out to me when I read that 50% of the critics were saying this. Especially as when you watch the trailer you weren't sure of the plot either it was just women in skimpy schoolgirl outfits jumping around slicing and shooting things... And after seeing this movie it struck me that these critics must of watched the minute trailer and reviewed the movie off of that because there was a plot, and it was easy to follow this said plot.

I'll give you a break down of the movie and the plot without giving to many spoilers... but just for safety sakes *SPOILER ALERT*...

The story starts off with the mother of Baby Girl (main character) dying. Baby Girl has a sister and they inherit all of their moms possessions. I'm assuming her step dad (could be real dad) is displeased with that, so he tries to kill his daughters (i guess to retain the belongings). He comes after his children, and baby girl accidentally shoots and kills her little sister when trying to shoot him. Her father then takes her to a psyche ward to have her lobotomized, and Baby Doll has a week to escape. this is when the main story starts.

It takes place in this psyche ward that is ran by this guy that trains the girls to seduce men, kind of like a strip club but not. The acts are all tasteful, but seducing. The first couple of days Baby Doll is being acquainted with all the other girls (Blondie, Sweet Pea, Rocket and Amber), and after a few days she gains the trust of the youngest one (Rocket) by saving her life. Now after getting comfortable in the ward the dance instructor (Dr. Gorski) has Baby Doll have a try at dancing, but she is so much different then the other girls when she does it it's just so captivating that it puts her and others around her in this dream state (like day dreaming). In her first dance she meets this old guy (which would have been played great by David Carradine) and his name was Wise Man in the movie. Wise Man gives her a sword and a gun, and tells her, "to escape this place she must find 5 things!" These five things were a Map, Knife, Fire, and a Key (yes I know I said 5, but you don't find out what the 5th things is until the end of the movie :P).

Baby Doll then makes a plan on getting those four items, and by doing that she will distract the guards, the owner, and the customers with her enticing dance. Meanwhile her friends will receive the items during the show. Each item is thought out and a plan is processed all before the dance routine.

And that is the plot of the story, how you miss that I don't know. Girl goes to psyche ward, finds out she needs 5 things to escape, and then makes plans to get those items to escape...

In my opinion the movie wasn't all that great... The acting was decent, the visuals were decent, the story was above decent, and most of the choreography was superb and some parts not so much. I wouldn't say skip out on this movie, but it's definitely a better movie on a big screen then it is in a home entertainment system. The movie did keep my interested throughout the whole thing.

That's all I got for my fans this week, and I'm glad I have you guys as fans. If you want some more awesome blogs to follow I would suggest following my friends @Sengeki blog http://fancyarmy.tumblr.com/ and @Elmander blog http://bronzetrophy.tumblr.com/ they have greatstuff that will blow your mind and make you giggle inside! Also feel free to follow me on twitter, and ask me any questions! You can also leave a comment or message and I'll try to get back to ya! Catch you all next week!

Trophy Counter
Trophies: /2012 Platinum Trophy: 20/32

Month 3/Week13 - Platinum #20

Sorry for the late blogs. Last week I really didn't feel I had anything to blog about, cause I've been working on the same games and slowly progressing through them. Due to being the last week of March and yet to accomplish a platinum I had to kick it into gear and get the last three trophies in MvC3 to platinum. This past week that's all I played, and it wasn't easy. Especially the when 5 ranked matches in a row, but I found a few tricks that you can use to help if you were struggling like me. Before I get to that I also needed a few more trophies, which weren't has hard, but also took some time to get. It was the get a group of 8, and become a 1st lord or beat somebody who has.

First lets start of on how to accomplish the easier trophies in MvC3. Most of them you can obtain on the way through the game. If you have a friend you can get 7 trophies in just 2 games. Pick Ryu, Wesker, and whoever... then have your friend pick Akuma, Wolverine, and Chris. This will give you Brave New World, Fate of Two Worlds, Racoon City Incident, and Fate of Satsui no hadau. Next make a team of spider-man, Captain America and whoever... then have your friend make a team of taskmaster, MODOK, and Iron Man. After the match this will give you Whose Side Are You On?, Duty and Dues Ex Machina, and Copy This!. Now you can get Full Roster over time or having your friend pick one of every character he has.

Next you have to go through story mode with every person, this will get you a lot of trophies during the process as well, just make sure you use all female flyers together once (Pheonix, Storm, and Morrigan), then use all the dark stalker characters (Felicia, Morrigan, and Hsien Ko), then weapon X team (Deadpool, Wolverine, and X-23), and last the people who altered there bodies (Spencer, MODOK, and Iron Man). Each one of these gets a trophy. To beat the story mode with every character means that character has too save the world by killing Galactus. Also don't forget you must lose to Galactus as well and not continue to unlock his story as well. This may seem hard and take a long time, but if you go with the settings very easy, 99 seconds, and Highest damage this should take maybe 10 minutes per Story. It also makes it easier to obtain the saving my quarters trophy. Also work on some of the battle trophies in the arcade mode such as the "do x move x times". This would also be the perfect opportunity to go through very hard mode. This can be hard for some people, but I hear picking a team like (magneto, Sentinel, Iron Man) assists with all their beams and spamming assists as well as you in game characters beam can make this easier.

After this you can do missions or online - I did mission before everything to learn combos you can do that as well, but I don't think it helped me I just forgot everyones combos. If you don't have Jill or Shuma then you only need to get 320 mission instead of 360 giving you the ability to skip 40 missions. For me Marvel were the easiest (minus MODOK) to get missions completed from. I did everyone's in capcom except for the last 3 people and only 7 of Amaterasu's because hers were redonkulous! Here is a link talking about mission to avoid for you 40 check it out and hopefully it helps (Link)! Remember you still need to do at least 1 of everyones to unlock the Comic Collector trophy.

For the online trophies which were the hardest for me. The easiest ones to get were the form an 8 party one and become or beat a (former)1st lord. To get the 8 party one just go into search for lobby, and select any, any, any. Look through the lobbies to see if you see a group of 6 or 7 and hop in hang out until someone else comes in (if hopped in a 6 group lobby). If there are no 6 or 7 people group lobbies back out and refresh your search, eventually you will find one. Next to become or beat a (former) 1st lord. Go into ranked online matches and select any, any, any this will up your chance of playing anybody in the world which is were the top players are so play a few games (I think it took me 3 games to come up against a master lord, which is passed first lord I believe). Now for me my biggest problem was win 5 ranked matches on-line, I wasn't any good at least not good enough for the people they set me up against. Once I hit 3rd rank (Fighter) it seemed like I kept facing people 6th rank and down. There's two tricks to this, you can go to your saved data file and delete your online saved data (this will lower your rank to beginner again) and you can face people until you get it. If you rank up to much just rinse and repeat. The next trick takes a little work, Find someone who will boost it with you. There's plenty of forums to find this, and once you have someone to do this with you just take the following steps.

1. Both people go to arcade mode and select your team
2. Make sure both of you select these settings, you turn on accept ranked matches and pick the following Same (if both live in USA), agreed upon language (make sure not to select "any" narrow the search down by picking french, spanish, or anything else), and same (if within same rank) any (if different ranked).
3. start arcade mode and you match should be interrupted to fight the person you are boosting with. If that does not happen choose a new language in step 2.

I found these tips to be the most help when completing this platinum. Now like I have been trying to do for weeks now "I MUST COMPLETE EXTRACTION!!!!" it being on my mind is just wearing me out. Every time I pick up the controller I'm thinking I need to play extraction and don't want to so I put the controller down. I need to face it, and 100% guaranteed that will be my next platinum for the month of April! I will be going through it to beat it on impossible while getting every weapon upgrades. Then just need to do the challenges, should be done in a max of 2 weeks. I'm setting my goal to beat impossible this week. I have yet to start on it, but I have Thursday & Friday off + I go into work later than usual on the other days.

I also starting school again, and this time I have enough money and a car to be comfortable enough to make it through this quarter :P

That's it for this week Thanks for reading my blog hope this helps people make it through their platinum, and I will catch you next week on how my Extraction gameplay is going. Sorry I haven't recorded and shown any videos in a while I was hoping to get some MvC3 games in just never happened. My next recording probably won't be until my hardest difficulty run through in Mass Effect 2. Again thanks for reading :P

Trophy Counter:
Trophies: 1262/2012 Platinum Trophies: 20/32