Mister Jack

I finally got the rest of the Dark Souls III trophies. Powerpyx rates this one as being easier than Dark Souls Remastered but that's bullshit. This was one of the most grueling platinums I've ever gotten. Top 5 for sure. Not only is the game a lot harder than DS1, but even once you get used to it you are not only required to play the game three times to get all the rings but you also have to farm covenant items, some of which have drop rates of 1% or less. And you need thirty of the fucking things! PER COVENANT! I had to resort to joining a DS3 Discord to help me farm some of those items, but even then there are still a few where you have no choice but to grind out those 1% drop rates because the PVP scene is not nearly what it used to be. If I hadn't been so tantalizingly close to the platinum I never would have done it. It occurred to me that I don't have the platinum for the Demon's Souls Remake yet, but I really have to ask myself if I want to deal with the world tendency bullshit to get it. I hated that on the PS3 and I still hate it on the PS5.

ONGBAL is a legendary From games player. Maybe the best on the planet. I'm not surprised he managed to do something so seemingly impossible.

What kind of build are you going for?

Which boss was it? I have a feeling I already know because it was probably the same one for me.

Pick the golden seed as your starting gift. It'll let you upgrade your flask to get one extra heal right off the bat. It's objectively the best choice. Don't start off with a strength build. Strength builds were already hard mode and now they've been nerfed so it's the extra hard mode. If you're not experienced with From games then go with a magic or dexterity build. Being able to move and attack faster makes a huge difference in this game. Don't ignore your weapon skills. Some of them can turn a seemingly impossible fight into a cakewalk. If you don't want to parry with a shield (and unless you're using a buckler you don't), it's actually a good idea to remove the shield skill so that pressing the left trigger will use your weapon's skill without having to put your shield up. Status effects are very helpful, particularly frost, scarlet rot, and ESPECIALLY bleed. Frostbitten enemies take more damage. Scarlet rot is like poison on steroids. Blood loss deals percentage based damage based on the enemy's maximum HP, which in theory means a completely unleveled weapon could still melt a boss just by stacking bleed enough times. If your timing is right, you can dodge attacks that logically you probably shouldn't be able to dodge. Dodging forward into enemies can sometimes work better than dodging sideways or backwards. It takes practice but once you get it down it makes life much easier. Best early game summons to help you get your feet wet are the jellyfish and the wolves. Thankfully these are both handed to you for free. The jellyfish is a major tank that draws aggro for a long time and if you're lucky it can also poison bosses. The wolves do respectable damage on their own, but their biggest benefit is that they attack so fast that they can stagger some enemies and leave them unable to get off their attacks. Don't forget to level up your summons so they'll stay viable later on. Level up your vigor! I cannot stress this enough. Later enemies hit like an entire convoy of trucks. Ideally by the end of the game your vigor should be at 60 or close to it. You'll see a boss almost as soon as you come out into the open world. Ignore the temptation to fight him and come back for him after you get your horse. You'll save yourself a lot of heartache. I spent over an hour trying to do it on foot. When you're exploring a new region you don't have a map for yet, you want to look for the icon below in the greyed out regions: https://attackofthefanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/map-fragment-locations-elden-ring-how-to-find-easy.jpg That icon marks where the map piece is. If you don't see the icon then just explore the region until it shows up on the map.

Well, that's what they say they're going to do at least but you know how roadmaps are.

I know they did an update a while back that changed a lot of systems around so it's possible that you're playing a different game than I did. I'm curious about it but I'm waiting for the NG+ update before I go back to it. I only need a couple more cars for the platinum but there literally isn't enough money in the game to buy them all unless you focus on it specifically.

I decided to go for that Dark Souls III platinum and holy shit, I forgot how ridiculously hard it is right out the gate. Even the tutorial boss took me five tries. I've beaten the game before but it's been a long time and I no longer have my save file so I had to start from scratch. I just hope it lets up a little later on because if not this is going to be a really painful platinum.

Dark Souls Remastered, you have officially been platinumed. Now to put you away and probably never play you again because your younger brother has utterly surpassed you. Grinding for all the rare weapons, not to mention the sunlight covenant that requires 25 faith (who the hell levels faith?!) was a total slog.

I've done pretty much everything in Elden Ring at this point but I was still wanting more so I decided to reinstall Dark Souls Remastered to get the rest of the trophies I never got the first time I played it, and while I still think it's a good game it's hard to go back to the old formula. I miss being able to fast travel without restrictions. I miss having customizable weapon skills. I miss having environments with decent lighting. I miss having unlimited summons. I REALLY miss having a dedicated jump button. I'm still enjoying the game and I intend to see my trophy hunt through, but I have to wonder if I'll be going back to this one again in the future when Elden Ring is sitting right there and is better in pretty much every way. If I'm not burnt out when I finish with DS1 I might replay DS3 to get all the trophies there so I can say I platinumed every From game except for DS2, which I don't want to put myself through playing ever again.

Obra Dinn keeps pretty good notes for you. It also locks in every three crew members you correctly identify so you can focus on them in separate chunks.

Nah I just mean during that playthrough. However if you do miss it you won't be able to get it again until you reach around the halfway point in NG+.

Yeah, like you say. Technically there's six endings but three of them are just variations on the standard ending. One of the endings locks you out of the other ones at about the 2/3 point and I didn't bother to make a backup save that early so I just ran through it all again. Also, when it comes to getting the legendary weapons, one of them is permanently missable if you progress too far so watch out for that.

Elden Ring platinum, baby! I accidentally locked myself out of a couple trophies during my first playthrough so I did a blazing fast NG+ run in about 10 hours to clean up the last few and get the final ending I was missing. I'm sure I'm not done with the game yet but it feels good to clear this one.

Aha! I knew the shields were underpowered! Just now they released a patch to buff them.

Elden Ring This is easily the most impressive open world ever crafted in any game. Frankly, it makes Breath of the Wild's Hyrule look like amateur fare. I cannot stress enough just how enormous the map is, how beautiful and varied the environments are, and how rewarding it is to explore. There were multiple occasions where I entered a door or a cave expecting to find another little dungeon with a boss or an item only for it to open up into a gigantic brand new environment. There are plenty of mini-dungeons to go through too, of course, and while some of the bosses do repeat sometimes there are still enough unique ones that you probably won't be saying "oh not not this guy again" very often. Putting the incredible map aside, the Souls formula has gotten a few tweaks. There's a dedicated jump button now, and yes this is actually a big deal because it changes not only how you can explore but also how you can fight. Weapon arts are also swappable on your equipment and are much more useful than they were in Dark Souls 3. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that finding a weapon skill that complements your playstyle is borderline essential. In addition to summoning other players, if you prefer to go it alone you can still find items that let you summon NPCs to help you out with bosses. Don't be ashamed to use them because the game is balanced like it expects you to. Oh, and we can't forget Torrent, possibly the best video game horse ever because not only is he super easy to control but he can also fucking double jump. As much as I clearly love this game (it's definitely gonna be my GOTY), I do have a few bits of criticism. Firstly, some builds just don't feel as viable as others. I usually go with a strength build, but enemies and bosses in this game attack fast, hard, and often with combos. Not only that but poise really doesn't seem to help you much anymore. I did manage to brute force my way through the game with a greatsword, even beating the optional superboss, but I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would have had a much easier time with a dexterity or magic build. Playing a strength build in Elden Ring is pure suffering. I'm also annoyed that the consumable rune items STILL don't tell you how many runes you'll get when you use them. It sounds like a minor thing but I use those a lot to top myself off and I don't like having to guess which one will give me just enough, let alone look it up. Sometimes it's hard to tell how far you can drop without dying from fall damage, but if you're online people will usually leave helpful messages on reachable platforms to help alleviate this. Finally, while I don't usually like to make this gripe, a few of the bosses just feel downright unfair, even for a From game. I can think of a handful that were more aggravating than fun to fight, and bosses like that really encourage you to use cheap tactics to just get them over with. That's about all I have to complain about, though. Still a 10/10 game, easily my game of the year, and it's practically guaranteed to go down as one of the greatest games ever made. It took me about 72 hours to finish, but a lot of that was because I wanted to explore every inch I could. I think you only need to collect two out of seven runes to access the final boss, but that's like going to a five star restaurant and then filling up on bread if you ask me.

I thought it looked like EDF but with dinosaurs.

I guess maybe a 5? The story mode does go over all the major events up to part 8 but it's mostly just a bunch of text you can skip over, although it will naturally spoil things like villain stands and climactic power-ups. Also, this game looks like an updated version of the original so I can't say if they intend to add new content that would spoil it more.

Is the melee better than in the first game? That was easily the weakest part.

Crysis 3 was five hours long. I beat it in one evening and I couldn't tell you what was in it if you put a gun to my head.

Seems stupid to throw your conscripts at a conflict before the vets, but who knows what they're thinking over at the Kremlin. As much as I'm rooting for Ukraine, I don't doubt that Russia can eventually take it if they're willing to throw enough soldiers at it. Thing is, after they take it they have to keep it. Good luck, assholes.

Here it is! The full design!

Dying Light 2 It's better than the first game but it still has some of the same problems that are just inherent in the series. The biggest one is that you start off weak as hell and the first few hours can be kind of brutal because you have so few defensive options at your disposal. This really is one of those games that gets better after the first act because once you unlock some essential parkour abilities and tools along with a few invaluable combat moves then the game picks up considerably and becomes a lot of fun. Of course, whether or not you're willing to put in the work for that is going to vary from person to person. The open-world gameplay is the real draw here, not the story. The story is better than the first game, but that isn't really saying much. It has multiple endings but you should never expect a whole lot of production value in the endings when there's several different permutations. The characters vary from inoffensive to god-awful. Funny enough, the game clearly tries to push you into siding with the civilian Survivors over the authoritarian Peacekeepers, but many of the Survivors are such rude, ungrateful, dishonest assholes that I sided with the Peacekeepers purely out of spite. What's even funnier is that the Peacekeepers, with one or two exceptions, are all around much nicer and friendlier to you and show you proper gratitude for all the dangerous jobs you do for them. I'm sure it wasn't Techland's intention but I found it deeply gratifying to find some of those former NPCs who always lied to me, cheated me, or threatened me and literally stomp their heads into chunky paste. The story is really just an excuse to run around the city and kick zombie ass, which is fun once you're sufficiently equipped. In fact this is probably the best parkour system I've used when all is said and done, but it takes a while to get everything out of it. Combat is entirely melee focused. The game takes place 15 years after the fall of civilization so all the ammo has been used up and with the exception a disposable pistol you can make out of scrap there are no firearms whatsoever. There are bows and arrows but I found those better for starting fires or poisoning people than sniping them from afar. Fortunately there's more going on with the melee than in something like, say, Skyrim. Still, you do have to work to unlock the combat's full potential but once you do drop-kicking people off of rooftops never gets old. I guess the main takeaway here is that it's a good game that falls shy of being a great game and you need to have some patience to get the most out of it, but your effort will eventually be rewarded.