Dead Nation

Even though the Playstation welcome back program is over, I still want to write about this game. For those of us who already had Infamous and Littlebigplanet it was kind of a though choice to choose between the 3 remaining games. I chose this one and WipeoutHD. I chose Dead Nation because well... I love zombie related stuff and it looked like fun, and well I think this little game did not disappoint.

The game is not very long, but that doesn't mean it can't get you glued to your couch and kill zombies like a madman. The game offers zombie killing goodness all over the place. Zombies come in hordes, they're crazy for fresh human flesh and it's up to you to unleash the bullet fury. As you would expect in a shooting game, you have a bunch of weapons in your arsenal that get unlocked as you progress through the game.

Among the weapons you have available are machineguns, shotguns, flamethrowers, blade throwers, rocket launchers and even an electric weapon. You also have available a bunch of secondary items you'll definitely need in your undead adventure. Items like flares, grenades, mines, molotov bombs, and even dynamite... dynamite!!

My personal favorites are the electric weapon, the blade thrower and the mine. The electric weapon, when upgraded to the max (yes, you can upgrade weapons) will kill hordes of regular and military zombies like flies. The blade will cut through enemies too, but just like the electric weapon, don't try to use it on the though zombies. And the mine, when maximized, will explode 6 times, making it the best investment for a secondary item after the flare (which is needed for distraction).

There are different types of enemies too. Regular zombies, fast weak ones, fat zombies that explode (bombies), annoying ones that will call hordes of weak zombies (mouths), jumping strong ones, and the strongest who will slice you to death in one or two hits (depending on difficulty).

The game also features multiplayer (split screen and online), and has a set of trophies for those who like to brag about their skills. I recommend getting it if you have around 10 bucks to spare and you're not planning on playing anything else during the summer. It is fun, but it can get repetitive if you try to attempt getting all the trophies.

My (late) reactions/impressions on the WiiU

Nintendo's announcement of a new console on E3 was not really much of a shocker. Blogs were speculating and informing about a new console for a while already, but features were not confirmed yet by Nintendo. The only thing confirmed by them back then was that there was indeed a new console on the way.

When it was unveiled on E3 the presentation kinda left more questions than answers to be sincere, but they took care of that pretty quickly.

Now onto what I think about the new console itself... This is pretty much what the Wii should have been in the first place. A lot of people are trashing the new console because of the tablet-like controller but they forget that you can still use the old wii controllers (and peripherals like the classic controller) in the new console. The new console is capable of 1080p quality graphics, and it seems that there will be heavy support from third party developers this time. With this I can see a lot of games being ported to the WiiU like the Bioshock series, Portal 2, and other games that could benefit from motion controllers. Of course, developers actually porting old games into the new consoles is something very unlikely but the opportunity is there.

Another thing Nintendo is saying is that they will improve in the online gaming department, which I hope it's true because Nintendo are the kings of multiplayer games, but they fell short on the online department with their previous console, which is a shame. I'm hoping for usernames instead of the annoying friend codes, and I'm also hoping for an achievement system! While some people may think of them as an annoyance of today's gaming worl, I think of them as a fun incentive to explore games fully. And of course, something to brag about :P.

I hope the price is not too high also. $300 would be a nice competitive price since the new console will be set to compete with the PS3. Of course, if they make the price $250 I would not complain at all haha.

Tips for getting Platinum on Bioshock 2

Finally got this platinum trophy, which wasn’t really hard but kind of annoying since it involved leveling up on multiplayer.

Tips for getting platinum on this one:

Single player

-Play first on easy or normal, easy is recommended since some trophies (especially the endurance ones) can be a pain in the ass on higher difficulties.

-Disable vita-chambers on this playthrough since they’ll be useful on the hard playthrough.

-Research the fuck out of everyone after you get the camera. Don’t just attack them, also use plasmids to mix it up. When it comes to security research use winter blast and hack it for high scores, so you don’t have to destroy the cameras or turrets.

-Save the little sisters, in the end you’ll get a huge amount of adam to spend.

-Spend the adam on buying plasmid slots, and tonic slots, also buy each plasmid on it’s first level to get trophies. Don’t use the adam to buy eve or health upgrades until you have the adam spending trophies.

Now for the hard playthrough:

-Use the vita-chambers!

-Unless you like to use the drill and you’re good at it, don’t upgrade the drill at all. Upgrade the rivet fully and it’ll kick a lot of ass early on, use 2 basic upgrades on the shotgun (especially the clip size), and upgrade damage on machinegun, but don’t upgrade recoil reduction unless you’re really bad at using it.

-Don’t you ever forget to research big daddies and big sisters, the later gives you EVE upgrades as research bonus. Brute and Spider splicer’s final bonus are very useful too (Armored Shell 2 and Fountain of Youth, respectively), so research them fully!

-Spend your adam wisely, get the eve and health upgrades whenever you can.

-My personal recommendation when it comes to plasmids are: Security command 2 and 3! Charge the plasmid to summon a friendly bot so you won’t have to fight alone ever again. Insect Swarm 2 and 3, it stuns and distracts every kind of enemy for a while so you can beat the hell out of them easily, and the third upgrade makes the effect almost endless. Decoy 2 and 3 are very useful, not only does it saves you from an ass kicking at times but the second upgrade makes the damage rebound to the attackers, and the third one gives you health back when the decoy is attacked.

-Useful tonics are:

Fountain of youth + Natural camouflage: If you need to recharge your eve and/or health without spending money just step on water and wait while you’re getting healed without being seen.

Walking inferno + Rivet gun 3rd upgrade: On its third upgrade the rivet gun will randomly set your enemies on fire, with this plasmid it is sure to give more damage while you take less damage from fire attacks.

Electric flesh: Very useful when you’re stepping on water and want to electrify everything that gets close, you won’t take any damage from your own electrobolt plasmid!

Damage Research: You get it near the end but it’s useful nonetheless, you’ll inflict more damage on your researched enemies if their bonuses rewards you with inflicting more damage.

Multiplayer

-If you’re really good at competitive first person shooting multiplayer then go for survival of the fittest, the free for all mode of Bioshock 2. But if you’re like me and you pretty much suck at headshots, and precision… go for civil war, the team based match.

-Taking down a big daddy, becoming one, rescuing a little sister, and completing a trial are thing that will be done eventually so don’t rush it, and don’t lose patience.

-Rescuing a sister can be a pain the ass so wait until you get the houdini plasmid (rank 16) and aero dash (rank 4). With houdini you’ll get close to the sister and with aero dash you’ll get to the ventilation tube faster.

-Getting to rank 40 requires a lot of patience and luck, sometimes the enemies will be too smart to gather too much adam and sometimes they’ll be easier to deal with and you could end up among the first on the match rankings.

-Houdini is my favorite plasmid, but you’ll see that people have a lot of different strategies like electrocuting the enemy and getting headshots (with pistol, crossbow, shotgun or elephant gun), throwing stuff at the enemy with telekinesis to stun them and then kick their ass, Freeze the enemy and then break them with aero dash, etc.

Have fun :D

Tips for Bioshock 1 Platinum Trophy

In order to get the platinum trophy I would suggest playing the game twice (since trying to achieve it in only one run could be suicidal).

Focus on the non-difficulty related trophies on the first playthrough.Trophies like the tonic collector one and slots are ADAM wasters so do that on normal difficulty where you can beat the game without actually improving your health. Also be careful with the research/pictures of bots, cameras and turrets since those don’t have individual bronze trophies (I almost fucked up actually) and you won’t know if you completed their research if you don’t check yourself.

Now for the survivor difficulty level trophies (remember to turn off vita chambers in options when you begin the game):

-Save very often, you don’t wanna repeat doing some stuff just because you didn’t save.

-You don’t need more than 4 plasmid slots, so don’t waste ADAM on the 5th. Telekinesis, Security Bullseye, Enrage and Hypnotize Big Daddy are the plasmids you should have in hand aside from the electric one.

-Chemical thrower is your friend, electric gel beats the crap out of the big daddies, the napalm works well on splicers and the icy one is way better than the electric plasmid to deal with turrets and cameras.

-Upgrade chemical thrower, grenade launcher and crossbow first! those are the most useful weapons against big daddies.

-While you won’t be needing the whole 5 plasmid slots, you will be needing the tonic slots, so buy them.

-Remember that human inferno tonic makes fire related weapons more ass kicking and electric flesh does the same with electricity related weapons (which makes a great combo with electric gel on big daddies).

-Oh yeah, take pictures of every enemy! It will make this run much more easy, and if you combine that with the research tonic, you’ll be kicking ass.

Well those are the essential tips, gamefaqs has more in-depth guides and tips if you’re looking for any.

Revisiting Megaman 8!

It has been a while since the last time I played Megaman 8. I played this game during the PS1 years when I was a teenager. The game is lots of fun, one of my favorites of the series because of nostalgic reasons. One thing that I noticed is that I’m getting rusty, because some parts of the game were a pain to beat (the snowboard stages to be specific).

Another detail is that when I first played this game I did it in japanese, so the opening music and voice acting was kind of a disappointment when playing the english version. At least now I know what the power ups are for (I used to buy them blindly back then because everything was in japanese), but THIS OPENING is so damn awesome!

A beef I had with this game is that some boss’ weaknesses don’t follow logic. For example Frost man should be weak to fire, instead he’s weak to the bomb power. And also Aqua man should be weak to the electric power, instead he’s weak to the astro crush (which looks like it could kick everyone’s ass to be sincere). And the other part I did not like was Wily’s first stage with the snowboard, it was such a pain in the butt to clear that part… but I did it anyway! :D

Overall the game was fun, and looking for the bolts (the currency for the in-game store) was also part of it. I recommend this game for anyone who hasn’t played it yet and likes Megaman. It is not really hard, so it’s easy to get into.

Playstation Platinum Trophy #10

My 10th platinum was 3D Dot Game Heroes, a game that has been praised and criticized at the same time. The reason? Pretty simple: It looks and plays too much like NES & SNES Zelda games. As a person who loved those games (especially A Link to the Past) this game was a must play! And it didn’t disappoint in my opinion, call it a tribute, a rip-off, a mere copy or whatever, it’s a very fun game with lots of content. It has a bunch of mini-games, collectible swords, key items, side quests, etc to keep you entertained for a while.

Guess who’s the character? 

Some of the mini-games may be a pain in the ass sometimes though, especially the Dash Circuit one. Thankfully, times to achieve were reduced by 5 seconds thanks to an online patch the game received back in September (if I’m not mistaken). But still, even with the patch applied that mini-game can give you Angry Video Game Nerd moments. The other mini-games are less stressful and more fun at least, but you have to achieve perfect scores if you want their bonus prizes.

Just like Zelda you have a life bar (represented with hearts) and a magic bar (represented with green potion-like bottles), and different magics (one obtained after each dungeon). And you also have secondary weapons (which are not really that useful when not required). The one thing that stands on its own and differentiates this game from Zelda is that you can upgrade your swords, and there’s also more than 10 swords to collect. Also, swords have different things to upgrade, like size, width, piercing properties, spin, and strength which makes them more useful, especially when you make your sword huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugeeeeeee.

Yes, all that gray area is the sword. 

And while beating the game is not really that difficult, keeping up with all side quests and not missing them (some are time-sensitive) can be a challenge. One of the swords actually requires you to have all key items (and some of them are acquired through side quests), so you have to be a completionist if you don’t want to miss trophies.

Now, getting all the trophies can be really challenging. And you have to play the game 3 times at minimum to get them all.

I personally recommend getting all the swords on your first playthrough because the swords bought with small blocks are carried over on next gameplays, which can be really helpful at the beginning on more challenging difficulties. Because of that, level up the most useful ones you think you may need on your next playthroughs (Excalibur, Hero Sword, Giga Sword and Magic sword are my personal recommendations), as not only special swords are carried over but the stats of the swords that don’t are as soon as you get them again (so you won’t have to spend money on them again).

I also recommend booking all the monsters on normal difficulty since enemies will do more damage on other difficulties, and some of the monsters (and bosses) can be a pain in the ass to book (some of them require more than 30 hits!). I also recommend equipping the wood sword when booking monsters, so you won’t kill them by mistake before being recorded.

Also, save often and don’t use continues nor save after dying. If you die, reload and play again so you’ll get a trophy for not dying once during a playthrough.

For the second playthrough I went straight to Spelunker difficulty, which is a difficulty setting honoring an old school game called Spelunker in which everything pretty much killed you. In this difficulty a single hit of any enemy attack will kill you no matter how many hearts you have, and it doesn’t matter either if you have a protection ring. Due to the nature of this difficulty you’ll naturally get the trophies for beating bosses without receiving damage so leave those for this difficulty if you want. Also playing on this difficulty for 10 hours gives you another trophy, so… take your time.

Third playthrough was on hard difficulty (which is called FROM mode). On this difficulty enemies do more damage and the number of enemies on a single screen can get ridiculous. It helps if you got the Excalibur sword in here since it’ll kill pretty much everything with one swing (at least on the beginning of the game). But well… at least you don’t die with one hit!

Now one complain about this game is that most of the trophies are hidden, and I can’t show them off easily :<. Also a bunch of them are missable so you should take a look at the list of trophies because of that and also because some of them are simply weird or unusual.

Not as weird as this “sword” though.

Get this game if you want a retro revival experience or a challenge. It is a very charming and fun game that’s worth the dollars, but don’t expect it to be a walk in the park if you’re a completionist though.

For a more in-depth trophy guide go to PS3trophies’s forum guide of the game.

Playsation Platinum Trophy #9

My 9th platinum was Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. This game is simply great! If you love platforming and crazy shooting get this game!

For those familiar with the series (or at least with the previous installment like myself) the game doesn’t offer too much innovation during Ratchet’s playthrough (at least when on ground), but it’s still tons of fun to shoot everything in sight and level up your weapons for doing so! You get to use the space ship though, which is lots of fun as you get to kill enemy ships with your lazers, do barrel rolls (you know you want to) and also explore different planets (which feels a bit like Mario Galaxy :P).

On the other hand, Clank’s side of the game is pretty much about puzzles. Clank’s time manipulation puzzles is one of the highlights of the game, and while they are not really that hard they will amuse you at times or give you a little bit of a challenge (especially the post-ending ones).

When it comes to trophies it is also a not very hard one to complete. If you’re familiar with the previous game at least I’d say play this game on hard difficulty right away. It’s not really that hard if you know what you’re doing, and even if you don’t there isn’t really much of a penalty for dying. Checkpoints appear often and there is no Game Over at all in this game, which is very exploitable if you want to level up your guns/weapons (just kill everyone with a certain gun and kill yourself after or let yourself be killed by the last enemies of the wave).

Collecting Zoni, costructo modifications, gold bolts, and RYNO V parts just require a little bit of patience and willing to explore every planet/place, since the game itself will tell you if it’s complete or not and what you may be missing on each. Acquiring the map later on the Raritarium Tournament (which can be a pain in the ass at times) helps a lot since it tells you where exactly is everything you’re missing on each stage.

Beating the tournaments is not that bad either. Raritarium tournament may be a little bit challenging at times, especially the last challenge where you have to beat 20 waves of enemies, including two bosses. Just be patient and you’ll be screaming “Fuck yeah!” when you beat them all.

Beating Lord Vorselon may be a little bit harder than the final boss itself so go prepared and go for it right away after you beat the game, don’t try it on challenge mode unless you’re a masochist.

Challenge mode itself is not that hard, at least not if you have the RYNO V. The great thing about this mode is that you can upgrade your weapons even further than level 5 (like in the previous game). Bad thing is that you have to buy the level 6 upgrade, and some of them may be costly (like RYNO V’s 1 million bolt cost, ugh), but maxed out weapons are as deadly as they can get!

There is one single trophy that I think it’s a damn nightmare and that one is getting a 10,000 score on the “My Blaster Runs Hot” mini-game. This is the one trophy that frustrated me the most, and it was actually my last trophy before platinum. If you’re good at it, God bless you, but if you’re not… well… let’s say prepare to be frustrated and throw F-Bombs everywhere while playing it.

So, get this game if you love platforming mixed with action and lots of shooting, and if you liked the previous game you won’t be disappointed with this one. Platinum is far from impossible, but requires a little bit of patience so I hope you have some in you.

For a more in-depth trophy guide go to PS3trophies’s forum guide of the game.