GTA6 Platinum (April Fools)

  Hello Everyone. I recently platinummed GTA6 and I want to talk about it.

 

Unlike my past platinum trophies reviews (which y'all never read for some reason), this one was quite the challenge. At least half the trophies in the game are missable, a couple are buggy, and many are extremely difficult to do without careful planning and foresight.  You either have to do multiple playthroughs with entirely different just to get a single trophy, or you decide you haven't suffered enough trauma in life and decide to do it all in a single run with a single build and pray. 

Lets start with some of the straightforward notable trophies and work our way up to the more challenging ones.

 

“Vice City Bootcamp – Complete the Tutorials Flawlessly”. In something of a change for Rockstar, when you first boot the game, it gives you the choice of hopping straight into the story mode, or hopping into GTA Online, or doing a tutorial. If you select the tutorial, it drops you in a Splinter Cell Double Agent PS3 inspired dreamscape tutorial map. You have access to maxed out versions of both Jason and Lucia with all their stats and skills in a sorta small sandbox map which gives you opportunities to practise some of the game's mechanics and controls before you hop into the singleplayer for real. This tutorial includes challenges for driving, pursuits, stealth, gunplay, hand-to-hand, climbing, hacking and pickpocketing with a "bonus challenge" for each. To get the trophy, you need to do the bonus challenges for each of these tutorials.

When playing the game casually, you can skip the tutorial although the game will have some dialogue where Lucia roasts Jason for being so rusty and out of practise whereas she will compliment him if you do the tutorial. You also get some bonus stats and money the more of these challenges you do in the tutorial before you start the singleplayer.

 

Most of these challenges are pretty easy. The shooting one is a reskin of GTAV's shooting gallery and you just need to get 600 points. Stealth is basic and requires you to complete the course without failing once and under 4 minutes. The only one I'd say I found challenging was pickpocketing. It requires you to position yourself perfectly and bump into NPCs and press L1 right as you do it to pickpocket them. What makes it more challenging is the RNG. You can't pickpocket anyone. I mean, you can try but NPCs without pockets or those who are alert will get alerted if you try pickpocketing them. You have to actually look for suitable marks in people with lots of exposed pockets and distracted such as being on their phone or looking around. This challenge took me a few restarts because not enough of them spawned in.

 

The Hacking tutorial is actually kinda funny and cool. Poor Lucia has to type out Unix terminal commands on her phone while I have to either type them out IRL with a PS5 controller or use the quick menu to select commands with L1 and objects with R1. L2 brings up "tricks", these are perks, insight or actions Lucia can do automate or skip certain actions. For example, if you already know the IP Address to ping, you can just hold L2 and select "Ping IP address x" and just ping rather than needing to type out "Ping X" or use L1 to select the Ping command and R1 to select the IP address to ping. Oh And the game doesn't pause as you're doing this.

 

The hacking tutorial asks you to complete the hack without getting detected and without using any tricks. The intended way is to explore the room and find info you can use, then punch in a series of commands to get the computer to open the correct door..... but you can just type "sudo systemctl reboot +1" to make all doors reboot in a minute so they are unlocked, leave the computer and walk in front of the door and enter after a 1 minute to skip having to do all the work.

 

I actually really like this trophy. Yeah, it can be a bit boring at times but I like that it encourages you to actually try out all the mechanics in a safe and isolated manner before you play the real game. In addition, the game is pretty forgiving with this trophy as you can keep retrying the challenges if you mess up and it will let you know if you ace them.  Bonus points for GTA6 finally adopting a modern control scheme so no more mashing X to run. It reminds me of Watch Dogs 2/Legion's control scheme. Better late than never

"Vices' Embrace - Spend the night with another character". This trophy requires your character to get laid. By getting this trophy, you cannot roleplay the average GTA player. 

“Vice City Initiate – Complete the Prologue Without Committing a Crime”. This one is confusing because the game isn't clear on what exactly counts as a crime. You're literally robbing a liquor store! How is that not a crime already!? The thing is that this trophy and the in-game stats page have a very different view on what counts as a crime. You need to execute a very specific series of steps at specific times to appease the game even if the in-game stats counter disagrees. For example, when asked to threaten the clerk, don't aim your gun at her even if the game's pop up says to. Instead, switch to Jason, switch to Lucia and then immediately switch back to Jason and he will be pointing his gun at the clerk. Hold L2 as you do this and even though it counts in your stats as a crime and you get a wanted star for it just like if you did it initially, the trophy doesn't count it as a crime for some reason.

There's a few more humerous examples of what counts as a crime. For example, if you litter during the mission, it voids the trophy and counts as a crime. During the subsequent on-foot escape, the intended strat is to let your partner shoot the cops while you hang back. If you want to speed up the process, you can switch characters as you shoot which counts as a crime in your in-game stats but doesn't void the trophy since technically you "weren't in control" at that exact second.

 

"Vice Sightseer: Explore all of Leionida": This trophy requires you to visit every sub region on the map including all underwater and cave locations. This game loves its underwater caves and by God it's going to make you use it to explore every crevice.

The way the game tracks is that when you open the world map, locations you haven't visited either have a rocky texture if they are on land or have a paper-like texture if they are on water. Once you do visit them, their texture updates to reflect what they actually look like. On paper, this sounds like a fair system. If you explore the map and do all the POIs, you should naturally hit most if not all of the locations.

 But the problem is that it includes small random islands scattered all over the map. Some of which have the same texture unexplored as they do explored. So if you haven't been keeping track of which of these random islands you visited, it can be really tedious to find them. On top of that, this also includes all of the underwater locations as they also count as sub regions even though they don't explicitly show up on the map as different locations nor are there clear boundaries or borders so you wouldn't even notice if you entered or left an underwater region.

 I only noticed something was fishy when I was looking through my PS5 Screenshots. Unlike other PS4/PS5 games but similar to Witcher 3, TES6 names screenshots based on your in-game location rather some date string. So if you take screenshots in Kelly County, it will name them as either "KellyC-1-A7-01-01-26" or "Sentinel-04-H9-03-02-27" (even the game has a hard time keeping its geography straight lol). When underwater, most locations, even those that are POIs, will show up as either located in Leonida or Vice City. But a couple had unique names like "Thraas-Secrets-4-QZ-09-10-24". These are those unique sub regions that you need to visit at least once. But like I said, it's not always clear which you've already visited. Even PSNProfiles doesn't have a good list of which regions count and which are there. My solution was to dump all of my PS5 screenshots to a USB, dump them to my Mac, and cross reference them with a random YouTube Comment and the Wiki that listed out possible regions, double checking if that region has multiple possible names. On top of that, the trophy is said to be buggy where even if you have met the requirements, it can pop hours later.  Fortunately, I got it as soon as I touched the Bird Keys.  

"Vice Fighter - Defeat all flight club members without losing". This was one of the hardest trophies to get. Normally when you're doing the flight club missions you get set to this warehouse/boxing ring where you have to fight these maxed out crack addicts in unarmed combat. These crack addicts are designed to be extremely difficult to beat and even have instant KO moves they can perform on you if you get stunned too much by their attacks since they have crazy high stats and you aren't wearing much  hidden armour. When playing casually, this quest isn't an issue because you're supposed to get beaten up so the story can continue. You can even come back later and fight the enemies in a more fair setup. However, the trophy requires you to actually win on this first visit.


I was stuck on this for quite a while. I'd eventually make a mistake, get struck by a stray punch, or get a rock thrown at my poor character's head from an offscreen opponent, get stunned, and then instantly Knocked Out by an opponent doing a German Suplex or Burning Hammer at Mach 8 on poor Jason, breaking nearly every bone in his fragile twink body, killing him instantly.

My only hope was to fight fire with fire (or at the very least embers). I doped poor Jason with as much Sprunk as his blood sugar could handle so he could deal some damage, dodge, parry and counter without using too much stamina, and recovered somewhat quickly after getting stunned. But even then it took me a long time. And there are people on YouTube who somehow did this without investing in Strength! Those people are absolute machines!

I ended up repeatedly making attempt after attempt. Slowly learning the intricacies of the combat a little bit more every time I got teeth kicked in. My poor character may have gotten multiple ass beatings of a lifetime, but at least he was making more and more progress every time. Until finally, I slowly became the John Wick of GTA6 unarmed combat. I danced through the battlefield, dodging and countering attacks and getting hits in (until I inevitably messed up and had to reset). Until I memorized every possible situation and thanks to my overly specialized build made specifically for this purpose, I prevailed. I beat the shit out of all those Crack Addicts with my bare hands. I performed the same German Suplexes and Burning Hammers they used to break my neck on them, giving them a taste of their own medicine. They had to catch these Hands as they were Rated E For Everyone. Not even Johnny Sins evil Twin Brother, Sohnny Jins, could unfuck the mess the I left behind. And in the end, I earned that bronze trophy for all my hard work. I no longer have to frequent Super Weenie Hut Jr's. I can now eat nails without milk at the Salty Spitoon.

 

Those were some of the more notable singleplayer trophies. I could explain all the collectibles, aligator wrestling and story related ones but those are easy enough with a guide. But GTA6 has an online component with trophies necessary for the platinum 😢. I wish the singleplayer and online had different trophy lists but alas.

 

“Friendly Fire Department – Accidentally kill all your teammates with ‘non-lethal’ options.” Why Rockstar made a trophy that encourages griefing, I will never know. This one requires you to fail an online mission by having all of your teammates die at the same time to either tear gas or the stun gun.

 

“The Influencer – Film and export a Snapmatic Reel that goes viral" - This one goes beyond the game. You actually need to make an in-game video, post it to the Rockstar Social Club and pray 100 players actually upvote it. Suffice it to say, people just made a thread online where everyone that wants the trophy just posts a random a video and the community goes through and gives everyone 100 upvotes once every 3 weeks. I had to wait 4 weeks for mine! 😤😤

 

“Method Actor – Remain fully in-character during a 30-minute RP session.” I was never fond of RP in any of Rockstar's games so this was challenging. I decided to join a quick DMV roleplay server where I spent 10 minutes arguing with another player at who was at fault for a DUI crash before both our in-game licenses were suspended and the cops ordered us to fight to the death for it back. I lost and was subsequently thrown into prison where I refused to speak until I got my lawyer. I'm glad this happened because I could AFK the remaining 15 or so minutes without breaking character since you actually have to use your microphone and talk in this mode otherwise you get penalized for breaking character.

 

It took 80 hours or so but I got the platinum eventually. Was it worth it? Mostly yeah. But ignoring that and talking about the game itself, how was it? GTA6 is alright. I enjoyed my time with it. It's fun but I feel the gameplay and mission design is lacking while the mechanics are great.

 

The first 25% or so of the main story is great. The missions are surprisingly open ended and reward creativity and experimenting with all the mechanics. For example, the mission "Debt to Society" has the player tasked with stealing a car from the San 4 San gang but you have complete freedom in how you do it. You can just ride in guns blazing, get into a shootout with every gang member, steal the car and escape a police pursuit. Or you could use Lucia to stealth around the place, sneak into the garage, use her phone to disable the car alarm, frame a local gang member as a high value target to trigger a gunfight between the gang and the cops and drive away in the confusion. Or you could play as Jason and goad some gangsters into a fistfight which doesn't draw much attention from other gang members or the cops, get a few wins and use the chance to buddy up so they don't mind you stealing the car. And that's just a few examples. The next 4 or so missions are just as, if not more open ended.

 

Unfortunately, right after the "Double Tap, Single Life" mission, the game immediately pivots back into Rockstar's typical overly rigid mission design. You have another car robbery mission that instafails if you try stealth, hacking, combat etc. You have to start shooting. In the subsequent car chase, if you get even a bit too far from the target, you get a mission fail. No dynamic "find the escaped target" mission change like in the first quarter of the game. You can't shoot out his tires, change cars or damage him in any way. It's such whiplash from an otherwise really solid sandbox game.

 

It's disappointing because the game has no shortage of cool mechanics. Between combat, hacking, throwing bricks, gunplay, stealth, using vehicles and disguises etc. All of those get so much use and freedom in the first quarter to an almost Hitman 4-like level before becoming so rigid and restricted afterwards. And once you have a taste of how good the mission design can be, it's hard to forget it when the game does. The game never becomes downright frustrating but never feels as fun as it once was. Like, it's cool that the game has a sequence where I can trick an NPC into pulling over when I steal a cop car and turn on the sirens for a mission. But I used to be able to do that to complete missions previously and it never becomes useful later.

 

I also feel some of the actual mechanics are also a bit under baked at least at first. Stealth is pretty basic, on par with RDR2's simple system. It does pick up later when you finally get more control and options. I do like that if you don't shower, enemies can smell your body odour and detect you. Hand to hand is pretty good. The game had a ton of fighting moves but enemies stop engaging in hand to hand after a while so those moves go to waste. The stats system seems promising. Both Jason and Lucia share the same core stats in Strength, Stamina and Driving but Jason can get an extra 20 points in shooting allowing him to dual wield certain guns like in GTASA and even do "tricks" like curve bullets or have them ricochet. Lucia has hacking and the higher this is, the more "tricks" she can do in a hack. But in practise it ends up being a bit of a gimmick and shares the same issues with GTA SA and V's stat systems. Namely that stuff like driving is rather annoying in the early game because your driving stats are low and at max they bring you back to what you already had in GTAV. So you have to deal with understeer or the odd drifts until you earn the privilege of getting back the standard GTAV driving.

 

Gunplay is the most disappointing because it feels like the same system from GTAV and RDR2. There, the game's default aiming setup on controller relies on a very strong auto-aim that locks onto enemies' chests and you can do a quick flip up on the right stick to get headshots every time. To the point you can complete entire shootouts with just L2 + R2 if you have an armour piercing combat rifle. It's a shame because the game's weapon customization system is genuinely amazing. Like, this game takes the best aspects of weapon modding from games like Fallout 4, Metal Gear Solid V and Call of Duty and and packages it quite well. You can take the starting pistol and mod it such that it becomes a rapid fire silent sniper rifle that fires sleep grenades. Weapons have so many stats and things to play around with but the game never takes full advantage of it. 

 

That is, until the 1.06 update. I wish I waited longer to play the game because this fixes all my problems with the gunplay. It renames the current aiming model to "Easy aiming" in the settings menu and adds in "advanced aiming" as an option. This now allows weapons to have stuff like more recoil, sway and even degradation. Gunfights are a lot more intense now because that frankestein's monster pistol you modded may fall apart in your hands as you fire it, requiring you to scavenge the battlefield for a different gun. Even the base guns you make light modifications to feel more interesting to tinker with as you can experiment with seeing how they fare against armoured enemies, or will hip firing, or from behind cover. I ended up with a knife with a taser glued to it and a pistol that fires shotgun rounds as the only weapons I brought on missions beforehand. With the other 70% of the time using the weapons I found on missions, occasionally modifying them in the field. Why this wasn't in the game from the start, I will never know.

 

 Unlike past GTAs, GTA6's inventory system works a bit more like MGS3 and 4 where what you carry is dependent on weight. Both Lucia and and Jason's inventory weight scales with their strength to a max of 100 kgs. Your gadgets, weapons and ammo are factored into this. Missions actually seem designed around this concept and are a lot more grounded compared to GTAV. For example, if a helicopter comes after you, you probably won't just instantly shoot it down with an RPG or Sniper since you either won't have one on you or have such limited ammo that you'd want to reposition for a better shot first. Missions tend to account for this and give you spots to move around to, hide or perch for a better shot. In a return to older GTAs, weapon spawns on the map are more common and useful and can be marked or memorized nearby. So if you do need a sniper, remembering where one is stashed or spawned on the map can come in handy. This helps in learning the map and having it be an extension of your toolset.

 

Driving is much improved now and I enjoyed it a lot more. Fans of GTA4 might be disappointed that it's not a 100% return to its driving, instead feeling like more of a modified version of GTAV's.  But I feel that suits the game and series better. The GTA games are primarily set in city environments where the player must weave through traffic and sharp city blocks, engage in drive-bys, engage in police pursuits, frequently crash out and start accelerating from a stop, as well as frequently swap cars and not have any "on the fly tuning system similar to games like Need for Speed Payback". GTA4's driving was rather frustrating to get to grips with since it felt like I have made some of those low speed turns when I was driving IRL. GTAV's driving, while better suited to the map, did "overdo" it and made driving too easy and all cars handle the same. GTA6 modifies GTAV's driving such that beater and s!$tbox cars and large vecihles feel worse but also more distinct to drive than mid tier cars which feel worse and more distinct than sports cars which seem to have their GTAV handling intact.

 

-Minigames and side activities: 

GTA6 seems to take the Yakuza 0 approach to side activities. In addition to being stuff you can do anywhere at anytime, as well as having a ton of minigames (including bowling, basketball, air hockey, claw machines, arcade games etc), the game also ties some side quests around them. In GTAV, you had no reason to go do golfing or darts or arm wrestling or watch movies since nothing in the game ever even encouraged you to try them. There are still people that don't even know you can play darts in GTAV.

 

Now, each activity also has a short side quest chain associated with it that gives a small story with some choices/RPG stuff. For example, there's this r/c hot wheels-like racing activity in the game. You can do it whenever but at one point, you unlock a series of side missions where either Lucia or Jason can enter into an r/c tournament and it becomes this full on comedy skit where you switch between one character doing the racing and the other trying to sabotage the other children from winning. You even now have Mass Effect style choices and dialogue wheels that change how the missions progress. It's great. What the main missions suffered in their rigidity the side missions more than excel. Another one I loved was the chess side quest where Lucia makes Jason pull a Hans Niemann in order to win a $100 tournament just to flex. The mission even has different outcomes depending on which opening you play and if you play moves a human would play and not the computer. It's good stuff. I recommend the game for the side missions alone.

 

- The Online Mode.

 

Since I had to play GTA6 Online for the trophy, I might as well talk about it. My time with GTA6's Online was limited. I mostly spent like 3 hours getting what I needed for the trophies and leaving. I was never a fan of GTAV online. It felt grindy, repetitive and overly rigid and it was hard to afford anything. What few times it did play well like Cayo Perico were rare. It felt like for the most part, Rockstar tried to shoehorn the overly rigid design of GTAV singleplayer into a multiplayer environment.

 

To my surprise, that's not the case. Online feels like an extension of the first 25% of Singleplayer. The way it works is that you are dropped into this sort of alternate timeline where the events of GTA5 and 6's main story hasn't seem to have happened and Jay Norris is alive and  welcomes you to Leonida. You're then given a series of missions to do that either run in the main world or in their solo instance/sessions/lobbies. You're free to progress those storylines as you play the game and these individual missions are really free and open ended. The game is also a lot more grounded and to the point. No flying motorbikes just yet.

 

The first thing I noticed compared to GTA V Online and RDR Online is just how much more intuitive and welcoming this mode is. The game gives you a proper missions/checklist menu so you know what you can do, where and what the rewards are.  Once you complete a storyline, you can choose to "reset/NG+" that storyline on a harder difficulty with more rewards but more challenging enemies and scenarios. The missions even remember what you did on previous playthroughs and will block off the routes you took last time. For example, in the "Pink Collar Crime" mission, you can enter the hotel lobby from the front to bug the reception. But on a replay, that entrance will have more guards so you may have to find an alternate route.

 

 The big new feature are dedicated Roleplay Community servers run by  players. You actually have to give an interview and fill out a form before you even join one and then follow the rules laid out. I've seen roleplays for both wild heists from the singleplayer and online replicated in the server, to more mundane people roleplaying Breaking Bad. 

  

-The Story,  Environment, map and performance.

This is the one area where I have zero complaints.  The game looks and runs flawlessly. This is truly the most detailed and alive world in any video game. Everywhere you look, you have NPCs moving and behaving realistically. If you walk into a store and go into the backrooms, you can see employees on a smoke break in accordance with their schedules printed out on a wall. This truly feels the closest to a simulation of a real place in any video game. Graphically, it looks fantastic. Character models and environments look better than in real life. This game has more customization options for your character than in Sims and more options for your car than Need for Speed Underground 2. I've seen players make some whack stuff Online. Especially those weebs and their UwUmobiles.

 

I do like the game's use of social media and how it can both affect you and you can affect it and the environment. For example, you can blow up Adder Cars with secret sticky bombs, film it on the game's version of Tiktok called "ViceLoop", post it to lower Adder's stock and profit. The game is really dynamic. If you commit crimes while wearing a striking look and NPCs take videos of you, then it becomes a trend and other NPCs will start dressing like you. And you can even use this to hide in crowds and lose the police. I don't know how the game does it but the in-game radio and news broadcasts remember what you do and even broadcast it. I was walking around and saw a News broadcast of that time I casually stole an FlyUSA airplane and crashed into the ocean and died.

 

There's a toggle in the game to sync this Online. So now the game downloads trends, in game posts, news reports etc from other players into your game. I turned it on and it was wild. NPCs were dressing up like Hatsune Miku and Guts from Beserk. The in-game ViceCoin cryptocurrency that's supposed to be 0 for plot reasons is now at $431 billion. Strip Club stonks and Viceloops dominated my in-game feed. My favourite feature is actually the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Map Photo mode where photos other players took in Photo Mode show up in your game as you drive or on the map. It looks great.

 

 

The story was also excellent. I bought Lucia and Jason's romance instantly. The 2 are so wholesome (when they aren't doing crime) to the point that they will refuse to let the player go to the strip club or use prostitutes since they love each other. Their character development is on point and I loved how the story is a deconstruction of the criminal lifestyle that GTAV showed as cool. It's like the "other side of the coin" to GTAV.

 

Despite the otherwise grounded gameplay, the story and setting feels like it's out of an Onion Article and never failed to make me laugh. Shout out to Jason's  Brother, Caleb, who is a conspiracy theorist living in a swamp commune and believes the city is run by AI-generated NPCs posing as politicians. The game presents him as a nutcase until the twist that he was right all along. Then uses him to explore themes of police brutality and the erosion of civil liberties without democracy as you deal with ViceMetro+ PD.

 

I won't spoil much more but I do recommend it. I do love that the game actually remembers your choices across all missions to determine the ending. I got the bad ending where Jason learns he was a clone of Caleb all along. I really should have done the Fire missions earlier.

 

In closing, GTA6 is a pretty good game. I enjoyed my time with it despite the challenging platinum. I do wish the excellent mission design  held up and the game had more time in development so the 1.06 patch could have been implemented at launch. I don't think I'll come back to the game or check out the Online stuff. I have had my fill of GTA. See you all in 2028 when I finally get my Platinum review of Concord 3 out.

 

I platinummed Assassin's Creed Rogue on the PS3

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Assassin's Creed Rogue on the PS3 and wish to talk about it. Fun fact, this is actually my first PS3 Platinum. I 100%-ed the game back in 2015 but never got around to platinumming it. I recently found my old PS3, saw the game was still inside that I was like 6 trophies off getting the Platinum so I went for it. According to PSNProfiles, it took me 9 years, 11 months, 1 weeks to platinum this game.

 

Most of the trophies in the game can be acquired naturally as you 100% the game. 100%ing the game in this case means going to every location and doing every objective or finding every collectible in those locations. There are trophies tied to that like "Cartographer - Visit every location in the game " and "I'll take that - Capture all settlements". Most of the trophies I missed in 2015 were ones that weren't necessary for getting 100% completion like "Camper - Loot 20 supply camps" and "What's yours is mine - Loot 20 ship convoys".  I looted around 10 or so in 2015 because I already had all the resources I needed by the 10 count. These were rather tedious to grind since they involved fast travelling to locations, hoping the thing had respawned and completing them. 

 

Ship Convoys were particularly annoying. At least for Supply Camps, they were static respawns so it was easy enough to wait for the ones at their locations to respawn so I could farm them out. But Ship Convoys are pseudo-random events. I looked up posts online and some said co-ordinates of where they tended to respawn but I had mixed success with these. The main issue appears to be that when these spawn, only that 1 exists and travels across the North Atlantic. So even if they spawned at the specified locations, they could have moved away by the time I came to investigate. My main approach ended up being Taverns as you can pay £200 at Taverns to get a chance to mark a Ship Convoy on your map. However, at the 17/20 mark, the game seemed to stop spawning them. Every Tavern I visited said "there is no intel available come back later". I did almost every other trophy while waiting for more to spawn.

 

I imagine this trophy would have been less annoying to get had I been consistently farming them throughout my playthrough rather than at the end. A similar case exists for the "Freedom fighter - Free 300 British Prisoners of War" trophy. The way this works is that a random event spawns where there is a prisoner ship guarded by 2 escort ships. The prisoner ship has 100 prisoners on it and any damage it takes (either from you or from its escorts) damages it and kills prisoners. To save the most amount of prisoners, you have to incapacitate the escorts as quickly as possible while minimizing the damage the prisoner ship receives. It's actually a pretty fun change of pace and challenge.

 

I was kicking myself because one of these Prisoner ships spawned while I was looking for a Convoy Ship and I sailed past it thinking I didn't need it. I could have saved myself the time. The most reliable way to get more Prisoner Ships to spawn, according to all the guides, is to Fast Travel to the Carin Morne location and do nothing for 20 minutes. Just put the controller down and wait 20 minutes and this forces a new Prisoner Ship to spawn. I did so and it worked and got that trophy. Like I said, I missed out on this one because 2015 me  didn't  feel the need to rescue more than 200 prisoners since he already had plenty of recruits.

 

I will praise the game for having a stats page that tracks everything you've done. Including stuff for the trophies so I didn't have to keep count myself. I wish more games had this even if there aren't trophies to benefit from. I love looking at my in-game stats. Even modern Ubisoft games have made this inconvenient as your stats are now on a separate Ubisoft Connect app that is so slow to load in-game. 

I also missed the "Nap time - Put 5 enemies to sleep with a sleep grenade at the same time" and "Instant Vikings - Hit 5 enemies with a berserk grenade at the same time" trophies because in my 2015 playthrough, I never found a scenario where 5 or more enemies were bunched up so closely together that the grenades would have gotten them. Fortunately, this was an easy one to get as one of the Supply Camps have a 5 man patrol I could easily hit with both grenades back to back and get these trophies. "Smashing - Destroy 100 Ice bergs" was another one I missed because in my 100% playthrough, I only destroyed around 56 Icebergs. But it took around 15 minutes or so to get the remaining. 

 

"Denied - Counter 15 air surprise attacks", on the other hand, is a trophy that's annoying to get naturally but trivial if you know how to farm it. Since the protagonist Shay is a Templar being hunted by Assassins, it makes sense there would be Assassins hiding on rooftops waiting to get the drop on him and he'd have to be careful walking around. But in practise, most Air Assassins are static spawns on specific rooftops in New York overlooking certain narrow streets. I tend to play AC games trying to parkour around on rooftops so I seldom end up in a position where the Assassins could Air Assassinate me. On top of that, their AI is ..... questionable. When I was first trying to get this trophy, I used the game's indicators to position myself in the alleys where the game said an Assassin was..... only to be standing there with a full meter with no Assassin trying to kill me. I climbed up and saw the Assassin was in a weird loop where they'd patrol the building above me but get stuck in a walking animation or never notice me. It was easier for me to Air Assassinate the Assassin that was supposed to be Air Assassinating me. Fortunately, there is a place where  Air Assassins spawn in the correct spot facing the correct position where they'd consistently attempt to Air Assassinate me every time. It was easy to fast travel to keep getting them to respawn to get the 7 I needed.

 

The most fun trophies were the "Supplier - Take over 10 large supply camps while only the VETERANS cheat is active", "Hunt the hunted - Sink 10 ships in North Atlantic without dying while only the HUNTED cheat is active", " ENDURE - Sink 10 ships in North Atlantic without dying while only the ENDURANCE cheat is active" and "Killing Machine - Kill 30 guards without dying while only the ENDURANCE cheat is active". Completing certain in-game challenges unlocks "cheat codes" you can use in-game although the game no longer saves your progress while any are active. Though the game's stats page still has entries for doing these activities with the cheats which is great.

 

The VETERANS cheat buffs all enemies to their strongest so they do a lot more damage and have more health. HUNTED gives you max notoriety and sends the strongest enemies after you. ENDURANCE prevents you from regaining health. It was fun trying to survive with these cheats on and trying to get the requisite number of kills. Ship combat was especially intense as I was quickly looking around for smaller ships to quickly sink all while dealing with bounty hunters after me. It was a mad dash as I was using my maxed out equipment, moving as much as I could and intentionally positioning myself to get rammed by enemy ships so I could boarded since I could then quickly engage in melee combat to keep my ship health high. Hands down these trophies are the best examples of how trophies should be used in games like this: opportunities to try out cool challenges that are optional in a casual run.

 

So yeah, overall, I imagine this game, while mostly easy to platinum, does get rather long and tedious. Especially if you aren't farming stuff across your playthrough. While Rogue's main story is arguably the shortest for any post-2010  Assassin's Creed game, it has more side content than AC4. I think I would have preferred if the game was shorter and didn't have so many "get 20 of x" type trophies. Instead, I would have liked a few "Do X challenge during specific missions" since you can replay missions in this game. Or more "do stuff while a cheat code is active" as the few that were here were quite fun.

 

As for the game itself, separate from the trophies, it's good. The best thing about Rogue is that's more AC4. It has the same pirate and ship gameplay from AC4, most of the same controls, tools, types of locations, activities etc. Except there are some improvements. The ship gameplay has some smart additions that improve it such as Puckle Guns you can manually aim to do damage even if there isn't an active weak spot. This can sink smaller ships on its own.  Shooting Icebergs now creates a mini wave that can damage other ships. And you can be boarded by enemy ships. 

Level design is also much more improved compared to AC4. In 4, a lot of locations, especially those on random islands and forests, tended to be much more linear with 1 path to R1 your way through. Rogue generally has much more criss-crossing paths on its smaller island/forest areas and more open ended forts in its proper larger areas. Almost like a predecessor to the forts in the RPG era AC games. Shay also has a grenade launcher with sleep and berserk grenades that are cool to play around with.

 

The game is also beautiful. Even the PS3 version I played generally looked quite good and usually ran at acceptable framerates. Seeing stuff like Penguins or Aurea Borealis was quite striking. And from a technical standpoint, the way the game seamlessly goes from on-land gameplay to ship gameplay while still having such high quality animations is still impressive all these years later. Rogue is arguably the technical zenith of the 7th gen consoles.

 

The biggest weakness I'd say is the same one I had with AC4. Namely. I am not into the sailing gameplay and the game doesn't make many improvements to its on foot gameplay. Here's an excerpt from my review on AC4 that sums up my feelings here quite well. I could copy paste it here and replace AC4 with Rogue and it still applies the same:

 

"

I will complain that the overall combat and stealth mechanics of AC4 are quite lacking, both for the time in 2013 as games like the Arkham games had much more satisfying and fleshed out combat and stealth, and now especially in 2023 as future AC games like Unity and Odyssey have really improved these aspects. AC4's combat and stealth do still look cool. The animations for the various counterattacks and takedowns are neat. But the actual gameplay with them does start feeling stale. For combat, it's extremely easy to press O to initiate a counter, even while attacking enemies making most encounters rarely challenging as you can chain kill/counter kill through entire groups of enemies. The game does try to mix it up with different enemy types that can't be immediately countered or chain attacked, but it's simple enough to then press X to break defence them or shoot with a gun or incapacitate them all with a smoke bomb. So just like in past ACs, it's often faster and easier to fight through areas rather than stealth through them.

 

And like its predecessors, stealth in AC4 isn't amazing. There's no manual crouch or dedicated stealth mode making it awkward to sneak through areas. There aren't many tools for distraction which can slow down stealth encounters. AC4 does make steps forward with more bushes to hide in, the ability to whistle from more places to attract nearby enemies, the aforementioned sleep darts, Eagle Vision being able to tag enemies through walls and the premise of combining parkour/climbing to navigate around large forts or similar areas is cool. But it's not until Unity when all these aspects would finally come together and make stealth in AC both fun and necessary/useful. 

AC4 also has its own take on the "Brotherhood/Trading/Mother Base" system. And I'm not too fond of it. It's simultaneously too involving yet too boring. I like the idea of it. The ships you capture can be sent to Edward's fleet where they can be sent on trading missions. Different ships have different stats which can affect their success, timings and actions. Trading routes can be made less dangerous by engaging in automated turn based battles.

 

There are a few issues with this. Lets bring up AC Brotherhood's system first. In that game, you just select the individual unit(s) you want, the task you want to send them to and just send them. It's quick and easy. And it makes nice passive income. You can access the menus from these pigeon coops scattered all over the map so it's not too out of your way.

In contrast, AC4 has these long elaborate but still basic turn based ship battles you can't fast forward which get boring. On top of that, you can "re-enter" these battles to reroll your opponents so you can never lose. There's no stress or tension here and very little stragedy. On top of that the money and resources gained from these aren't great. The long 10 hours of real time missions reward the same kind of money as capturing a couple brigs and frigates as Edward. The resources are exclusive to this minigame so you can't even give yourself the metal and wood you win from these.  And you can only access this from Edward's cabin on his ship. If you could fast forward battles, get more actual resources from missions and could access it from the pause menu or something like in AC3, then this would be a nice system.

Now for the section that might be the hottest take of this piece. I didn't enjoy the pirate gameplay in AC4. Which is odd given that is like 60% of the game and the reason why many people love this game.

The pirate and ship gameplay isn't bad. It is cool to sail around. And it is improved from AC3's sailing as you have more options and weapons, boarding is more dynamic and the strategies of positioning your ship in front of or behind ships or using waves as cover is neat.

But I found it rather repetitive and boring. After a few hours of taking ships, it stagnates. Capturing a ship requires you kill the crew or do the things the same way every time. There aren't new tactics or options. And the slow paced nature of certain animations like boarding end up feeling like a drag. At least Rogue added stuff like icebergs you could shoot to create waves and that you could be boarded by enemy ships to mix things up.

I wasn't as bored of ship sailing in AC3 because in that game, ship sailing was relegated to a handful of missions rather than being part of the open world. It worked better as an occasional change of pace so its shallowness didn't bother me as much. And in Odyssey, everything was sped up and more streamlined. AC4's approach feels like that side activity in AC3 made better, sure, but not deep or varied enough to sustain 60% of the gameplay.

On top of that, AC4 shifts away from the urban based environments of past AC games. Most of the map is now ocean with the land being islands or small settlements. And I find these sections not as fun in AC games. Like, yes, you can parkour on trees and rocks and cliffs here, but these lack the options or freedom of parkouring in cities. Trees typically direct you in a linear path and you can't climb them entirely or make a custom path while climbing. You can't even side eject when scaling up the branches. Small port towns don't have the same architecture or variation as Havana or Kingston. This was an issue in AC Brotherhood's Rome where a good chunk of the Eastern section was flat countryside, and in most of AC3's Frontier but at least there, a good chunk of those games were set in their mostly urban sections. And this becomes the norm in Origins-Valhalla as the series moved away from large urban cities towards massive rural environments.

I suppose it does complement the pirate fantasy. Being able to sail anywhere, and leave your ship to explore a random uncharted island and finding treasure is cool. And some of the side missions such as the Smuggler Dens, Music Sheets, Warehouses, Treasure Maps, Assassination Contracts were fun and I enjoyed them. The Assassin's Creed formula and gameplay does lend itself well to a pirate game where your pirate has to explore jungles, cities, use stealth and flashy combat and climb stuff.

But it often felt like I was grasping for that fleeting AC formula in between the Pirate gameplay it was enabling.

To use an analogy, imagine if the next Spider-Man game had a place like Manhattan with skyscrapers so you could do all the web swinging Spider-Man was known for and you always enjoyed. But now lets say that 60% of that game was set in like, the countryside where there were no skyscrapers so no web swinging. And instead, it was GTA style gameplay where you used cars and guns to drive and complete missions. Even if this GTA style driving and shooting was cool and fun and made cooler by Spidey's powers, you'd rather this Spider-Man game be set in Manhattan so you could do stuff like Web Swinging instead of driving and shooting. Except most people really liked this aspect so now future Spider-Man games moved farther and farther away from cities and web swinging and more into the driving and shooting in the countryside.

AC4 is a good Assassin's Creed game when it chooses to be. I had a blast playing in Havana and Kingston. It's just that it's obligated to be a pirate game most of the time. One I don't really enjoy and am bored of. Which is odd because I imagine for many people, it's the other way around. Most people probably enjoyed the pirate stuff more than the Assassin stuff."

 "

 

All of this still applies to Rogue. The ship sailing feels the same to me here. The game's main city is 1750s  New York which, while not the best city to parkour on, offered fleeting moments of Assassin gameplay when the game occasionally let me play there. It's a shame because this version of New York is an expanded version of AC3's (before a chunk of it was burned down in a fire). It was fun exploring it and seeing areas I recognized from AC3 . It even showed how Rogue was a step forward from AC3 as Rogue was able to render the same locations at a greater draw distance than AC3 did despite both games being on PS3. I do feel the parkour is mixed. Like AC3 and 4, Rogue uses a modified parkour system where you can climb most buildings and make safe jumps by just holding R1. Holding R1 + X will have Shay do unsafe jumps. R1 + O will make Shay quick drop below what he's standing on which combined with the ledge grab move, makes it more fun to descend. (Except if the thing is behind you. The Kenway games won't let you ledge grab stuff behind you which hurts the move).

 

But the thing I dislike the most is the way Ejects work in the Kenway games. In AC1-Rev, you can do side and back ejects at any point during a wall run animation or while climbing. The Kenway games limit the amount of animations where you can do ejects. For example if I do a vertical wall run and Shay starts reaching out for a handhold, I can't do an eject until that animation completes. So my ejects have to be sooner and are more dependent on the environment. I dislike this. Let me eject whenever as that speeds up and makes parkour so much more fun.

 

The other new aspect to Rogue is, as I mentioned earlier, the fact you play as a Templar rather than an Assassin. The game tries to replicate the paranoia a Templar would feel being hunted by Assassins by having Assassins present in the environment to stealth assassinate you when you come near them. The game warns you about them with a whispering sound effect, a slight pink border and the AC Multiplayer target icon when you get close to them in Eagle Vision but aren't highlighted in Eagle Vision. It's a cool idea that you are being hunted by the same Assassins that can do everything you can but like I said in the trophy section, the implementation doesn't reflect it. For one, Assassins spawn in static locations, are easily identified by their orange clothing so not being able to see them in Eagle Vision isn't a huge deal. And if you stick to the rooftops, you rarely encounter them. For ground ambushes, it's easy enough to counter them. Their AI isn't complex or stable enough to keep up with you.

 

Funnily, I feel AC Revelations did the "surprise enemy attack" concept better. In Revelations, crowds sometimes have a Templar spy in them. If you engage in a combat encounter in the streets, when you finish it and begin looting corpses or prepare to move away, sometimes, a Templar spy will run out from the gathered crowd, grab you and attempt to stab you which did catch me off guard when I played Revelations. Here it works better because these guys attempt to jump you while you are in the middle of something as more dynamic spawns. Their distraction works better. Rogue has pretty wide streets that aren't particularly crowded so it's not like you're using social stealth often so you need to watch out for Assassins doing the same thing against you.

 

If I could wave a magic wand to design this system, I'd set it up in the following way: There is now an "Assassin Notoriety system" that indicates how aggressive the Assassin response will be towards you. The more you expose yourself, for example, killing people, the higher it goes. The Notoriety only affects how the Assassins and French forces (indicated by orange) treat you since in the story, Shay is a Templar who are allied with the British. Originally, I was considering having the noterity system be maxed out all the time but I imagine that could be annoying for players that just want to casually play the game so this would be a compromise.

At Level 0, it works how it is in the game currently. With a few Assassins in Orange spawning in designated spots attempting to jump you. I'd still like to have "hallucinations" to add to the Shay's paranoia. For example, they could see Assassins parkouring on rooftops or ducking behind corners and disappearing if the player tries to investigate them. There could also be infrequent random spawns of Assassins disguised as regular NPCs. Just like in AC's multiplayer mode from the time, the player would have to rely on clues to figure out if there is an Assassin nearby. Maybe looking at their arms to see if they have a Hidden Blade or something that could conceal it. I'd love an event where the player goes on their ship without examining the crew and gets jumped while sailing. Would help in that paranoid feeling Templars feel. I'd also have a chance for an AC Revelations style ambush to also happen.

 At Level 1, French soldiers will be suspicious of Shay at first sight. The game will now also attempt to spawn Assassins to jump Shay based on his predicted movement. For example, if the player highlights a POI on their map and is running towards it, the game will attempt to spawn an Assassin either on the path or close to the destination. For example, if they are going towards a mission start point, there could be an Assassin hiding on a building nearby. Assassins will also be present mingling in crowds albeit in their orange outfits so they'd be easy to spot but aren't highlighted in Eagle Vision. There's also a chance for certain French and British soldiers to be Assassins in disguise and they will turn one of your counter opportunities into an Assassination move you have to counter again.

At Level 2, the French Soldiers be more suspicious at Shay but all Assassins disguise themselves and spawn more frequently and they are drawn towards Shay. I'm imagining a system where at this noterity where the player might be cautious about dropping from a rooftop to street level for fear there could be multiple Assassins down there...... but can't linger on rooftops as the Assassins could climb up and jump him there. 

The player would have to change outfits to manage noterity with less worn suits having less noterity. Feel like it would be a good excuse to get the player trying out new outfits. Of course, being a noterity system, I imagine the player could easily avoid it if they wanted to but I feel the proposed system at least gives a bit more to experience even at level 0. Ultimately, the effectiveness of surprise Assassin attacks are limited given that most of Rogue isn't set in dense city environments that give Assassins more avenues to attack and disguise themselves. Maybe have camouflaged Assassins for island/forest-y areas?

 

The Story:

 

Rogue's story is tough to talk about. In terms of premise, it's arguably the coolest premise for an AC game. An Assassin turned Templar hunting Assassins while also being hunted by Assassins? Sign me up. Unfortunately, Rogue's story is...... mixed. The stuff it does well, it does quite well. The specific plot beats, the performances, the acting etc it all shines. The section where Shay confronts Achilles after the Lisbon Earthquake is gold with how the other Assassins is dismissing Shay's feelings and implying he was at fault.

 

But rarely does the game's story take full advantage of its premise. The game rarely discusses the actual philosophy of the Assassins and never the philosophy of the Templars.  To the point I feel you could rewrite the story with Shay being a Templar that leaves the Templars for the Assassins and little would change about the broader points given how unspecific it is at times. With the way the game is currently setup, if you knew nothing about the Assassins and Templars, the main takeway you'd get from Rogue is that the Assassins "are a secret society that want to use the Pieces of Eden and hate the Templars" and the Templars "are a secret society that want to use the Pieces of Eden and hate the Assassins".

 

The game tries to sow Shay's anti-Assassin sentiments in a few ways. For one, having him Assassinate people like Lawrence Washington, a man who'd be dead in a few weeks anyway. Shay detests having to assassinate a dying man (despite it arguably being a less painful end) as well as it being gruntwork. And being responsible for the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake (fair enough for this one). But when Shay defects to the Templars, the game doesn't offer much of a reason for why Shay would leave his years of anti-Templar feelings aside from "The Templars (and especially Colonel Monroe) were nice to me while the Assassins weren't".  Shay's defect from the Assassins is mostly fine if shakey but his allegiance to the Templars doesn't get much development.

 

In contrast, AC1 and 3 do a much better job in distinguishing between the Assassins and Templars and the pros and cons of their philosophies. Take the doctor in AC1 Sequence 3. Originally, the Assassins paint him as evil because he is kidnapping mentally ill people from the streets and experimenting on them. After Altair assassinates him, he confesses his reasoning. Altair confronts him about ripping these people off the streets, taking away their freedom and experimenting on them. The doctor counters that -1- what freedom? These people were dying on the streets and had no mental faculties? In fact, killing him means that these people would be cast out on the streets again and -2- The doctor's work was advancing medical knowledge that Altair now stopped. Altair doesn't have a rock solid counter to this and is shaken about this afterwards.

The game even shows the consequences of Altair’s actions using gameplay and story. In one of the later assassinations in the Acre docks, the area is full of annoying beggars and disturbed folk that can knock you off your balance into the water for an instant failure as this version of the Animus doesn’t support swimming. Just as Altair’s previous targets predicted. By assassinating them, it means there is both no shelter for mentally ill patients nor anything to prep for upcoming famines.

 

In AC3, much of the conflict is between Connor's naive but optimistic view of how the Assassins view on freedom is a net positive. While Haytham argues against that and provides examples of how Connor's recklessness made the situation worse. In the end, even Connor comes to realize the Templars had a point with how the Americans sold off his peoples' land and the consequences of the Assassin's approach. There's nothing like that in Rogue despite having Haytham present.

 

Basically, prior ACs show that the Assassins aren't just the good guys because you play as them. They are a faction with their own specific philosophy. A philosophy that can be critiqued. Prior AC games have shown how the Assassins with their "free will no matter what" philosophy can often result in a less stable society at times. Meanwhile the Templars believe that humanity isn't responsible enough to handle such free will so much be guided from the shadows and have often helped people and societies find a stability that Assassins couldn't. That is one of the reasons why the Templars typically have had the upper hand throughout the Assassin/Templar conflict. To quote Far Cry 6 "Democracy doesn't put out fires or fix famines".

 

If I could wave a magic wand to tweak Rogue's story, here's how I would do it:

Sequence 1 would mostly be the same. I think it does a fine job is establishing the status quo of Shay's life as a novice Assassin and the main figures in his life and highlighting his slightly rebellious attitude. The changes I'd make is to the targets Shay Assassinates in order to highlight the flaws of the Assassins and better sow seeds the Templars will exploit later. I'd have one of Shay's assassination targets be the leader of a community Shay is allied with or feels close to. This leader would either be neutral and an ally to the Templars or be a possible Templar. The Assassins would order Shay to assassinate him in order to "free the people". Shay would be apprehensive but be compelled to follow through. During the confession/memory corridor, you could have this leader lament how Shay made life worse for this community just because he's blindly following orders and that the people never chose this. Shay as an Assassin is overriding people's freedoms here. Have Shay be shaken and unable to respond. In the aftermath, you have Liam and Hope celebrating a bit with a dejected Shay before Achilles or Le Chevalier interrupt the "festivities" and order everyone back to work. So not only is Shay unhappy with what he had to do but isn't even allowed to acknowledge his happiness.

 I'd also have a copy of the Doctor Assassination from AC1 to show those doubts the Assassin would have in full swing. The point being is that rather than doing what current AC Rogue does and just paint the Assassins as entirely in the wrong, have the framing being that "these are the standard missions you've done in every AC game. Have you ever wondered what the consequences were?"

 

The payoff to these would be when Shay becomes a Templar and is dealing with Haytham, have Haytham use this as a means of further indoctrinating Shay into the Templar order. For example, lets say there's a potential target. Shay sarcastically and unhappily says something like "so you want to be assassinate him without question?" to which Haytham responds with something like "No. I see what you mean. I was an Assassin like you once. I left that life behind. You see, the Assassins believe that in order to make progress, you have have to be drastic. Sometimes they are right. But sometimes, it might be cleaner and safer to put your finger on the scale rather than burn down the building. Manipulate the status quo into more gradual but assured and safer progress rather than reinvent the wheel. In fact, look at slavery. You want to know how the Templars have been addressing it? We got governors to pass laws. In time, Slavery will be banned as a systemic change. The Assassins would say 'just assassinate slavers' but that never addresses the root issue nor will it give the slaves an actual path to freedom. They'll just end up under another slaver. Real change requires a deft hand and foresight, not blind and wanton murder".

 

The point being that have Haytham explain the idea of "the Assassins believe assassinating targets to bring free will is the best course of action. But the Templars believe just manipulating existing power structures from behind the scenes to achieve progress is the better, cleaner, safer and more long term solution".  Shay, who experienced first hand how radically assassinating potential politicians and Templars has ramifications, would be more receptive to what Haytham is putting down (in addition to this being a much cleaner introduction to the anti-Assassination missions). The game now presents a much more meaningful argument why Shay or anyone would now consider the Templars. Essentially the other side of the coin of AC4's approach where it showed why Edward, a pirate with all the freedom in the world, would join the Assassins. It showed the issues with the blind freedom that Nassau and the pirates had which swayed Edward over to the Assassins. This talk from Haytham would show an Assassin the possible holes in that philosophy.

 

The other change I would make is regarding Lisbon. Now, from Shay's POV, this is an adequate explanation of why he'd defect from the Assassins. The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake was a massive disaster and the game, if anything, undersells it. The whole city was wiped out by the Earthquake and tidal wave and had to be rebuilt from scratch. 45000 people lost their lives. And this isn't the first time the Assassins have even done something like this (see Cappadocia in Assassin's Creed Revelations). But from the player's POV, the whole section is a 10 minute mission. You barely spend any time in Lisbon before it gets destroyed. I feel having at least a few missions in a small Lisbon map where the player got to experience the parkour of an older European city, maybe with characters Shay and the players cared about, before it got destroyed would give players a bigger sense of Shay's loss. Similar to how Montergionni was destroyed in AC Brotherhood. You got a few missions in Montergionni before it was gone.

 

The final change I would add (and is inspired by Mirror and Image fanfics) is having it that whenever Shay climbs a viewpoint and synchronizes, he gets a small silhouette style flashback of his time in the Assassins and more positive memories with Liam, Hope, Achilles and Le Chevalier. Shay is supposed to be heartbroken going after his once family. Having these brief flashbacks showing that all these characters really liked each other would add to the heartbreak for even the player. I'm imagining a flashback where it's Le Chevalier going to bat for a younger Shay instead of Achilles. Showing that even if Le Chevalier is a dick to Shay, he ultimately did believe in Shay's potential as a Master Assassin and was only trying to prepare him for that role and that he is more hurt than he lets on at Shay's betrayal.

 

I feel these changes would elevate the current story of Rogue by adding in more of that Assassin vs Templar debate in a more interesting way.

 

-The Modern Day Story.

 

The Modern Story in Rogue is ...... not particularly notable. I am going to copy and paste what I wrote for AC4's Modern Day as I feel a lot of it still applies here:

 

"

I do agree the pacing and the actual story being told in it isn't particular exciting, but the appeal it has is a bit specific. One of my favourite parts of AC1 and 2's modern day wasn't playing as Desmond but rather hacking into computers or Subject 16's puzzles and peeling back the curtains to learn more about the world of AC.

Because AC is the only franchise that dares to ask the question: "what if every conspiracy theory ever throughout history and no matter how trivial or wacky was not only true but connected?"

 

In AC1, you could hack Warren Vidic's computer to learn that: "that Africa's population has been decimated by a plague; massive number of illegal immigrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexican border... into Mexico, resulting in a shooting war between the U.S. and Mexico; hurricane season no longer exists, since hurricanes happen all throughout the year thanks to climate change; and the last film studio has closed, as piracy has destroyed the movie industry". All this back in 2012.

In AC2 and Brotherhood, doing Subject 16's puzzles tells us that: Alan Turing was Murdered to prevent him from inventing too powerful computers. Cable TV is actually a method for transmitting brainwave altering signals and monitoring citizens. The Moon Landing was done to find an Isu artifact on the moon. The JFK assassination was done by an Assassin who defected to the Templars to recover JFK's POE. He uses his subordinates to kill JFK, stole JFK's POE, used said POE to create the illusion of gunshots and framed Templar Sleeper Agent, Harvey Lee Oswald for it. Which lead to the Templar Lyndon B. Johnson taking the presidency to accelerate the space program for that aforementioned moon landing. Or that Jesus Christ was someone who used Isu Artifacts and his crucifixion was spearheaded by the Templars.

Obviously this is quite unhinged and wacky and I am all here for it. I find this aspect of AC lore fascinating. Seeing how seemingly random historical events have some connection to either the Assassins, Templars or Isu is really interesting to me. And AC2 and Brotherhood in particular, I feel, nail this aspect well because of its presentation here. Subject 16's puzzles are presented in this really creepy and unnerving way. You have recorded phone calls from random civilians talking with Abstergo reps about how their cable TV has their private history storied on it. You have paintings that ask you find meaning in seemingly innocuous details. That photo of Napoleon putting his hand in his pocket? He has an Apple of Eden there. I remember back when AC Brotherhood first came out, I joked that we would eventually learn that BigFoot was actually real and was this Isu experiment gone wrong or something by the Templars to create an Isu. And after playing Odyssey, I think that might actually be true lol.

Part of this is to reinforce one of the themes of those early AC games. Of how skewed history can be and how difficult it can be to ascertain what really happened. And how the Templars are doing a really good job skewing and controlling history.

AC4's Modern Day......sorta keeps this up. I am a bit disappointed because I felt there would be more wacky, creepy and unhinged stuff here. Like, you're in Abstergo itself and can hack their computers. You're at the centre of all the wacky conspiracies, not receiving snippets from an insane computer backup of a dead guy in a USB stick. But while there is some stuff related to the Tunguska event, there's not much as wacky as JFK from Brotherhood.

 

But there is still some juicy stuff here I enjoyed reading. I loved all of Desmond's material. Seeing what happened to his body and DNA, and the contents of his phone and audio recordings. It retroactively makes AC3's modern day even more tragic given how Desmond was getting closer to his squad.

 

I loved reading emails from the higher ups at Abstergo. Stuff like cool potential ancestors from Desmond's DNA and shooting down why projects set in Ancient Egypt, WW2 or the Wild West wouldn't be good fits (and I agree with that lol). Oliver and Melanie joking about some of their work. Or one guy complaining that "we have the means to show history in its most accurate light through the Animus, and we are using it to make terrible and lowest common denominator movies and video games". Only for the truth to be that is intentional. Making terrible movies and Video games allows Abstergo to control pop culture and therefore people without them realizing it. Hell, that's what they plan to do with the footage you get from Edward's memories. And they do it. You can see a trailer for their terrible Pirate Movie with some of the "artistic liberties they wish to take". (and in Unity, you learn that movie bombed. So I guess humanity has some hope. Or perhaps the Assassins sabotaged the premiere?).

Another one of the standouts was Subject One. He was one of the first Animus test subjects and his experiences in the Animus exploring the life of Aveline de Grandpre was used 30 years after his death to create the hit video game Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation on the VITA. And the most unrealistic part of all of this is the fact that the VITA was a success in the AC Universe lol.

 

You can find material and recordings that explore some of his experiences and feelings.  He notes that his centre of gravity is lower, and he can feel the eyes of everyone looking at "his" attractiveness as a female, and finds the roles society expects of a woman restricting. He is also really uncomfortable with attraction she has to men, and asserts that he is not gay but now has a hard time separating his sexual feelings from Aveline's. Someone get Mirror and Image to write a fanfic on this because I would kill to read this story.

You also have the "Market Analysis" videos where an Abstergo executive explains why they passed on making movies/video games on Altair, Ezio and Connor but gave the greenlight to Aveline. And I love how funny and biting this satire is on how executives meddle with and change projects to better appeal to a mass market and ignore the context of the games. He talks about how Ezio is a lecherous old man with anger issues and not a "model leading man" as he corrupts impressionable youth. Or how Altair is a fanatic who breaks the taboos of his time and how Abbas (the guy that literally corrupted the Assassin order, kills many of his own people) is a model leading man. He puts in a request to find any descendants of Abbas. Or how people would take umbrage with Connor's personality and find his early life "foreign" and how it lacks the "balance" to tell the whole story of America. And they approve Aveline because they can edit her footage to show her as a well behaved girl inspired by her mentor Madaline as an empowering piece for female audiences (ignoring that their editing does the opposite from Aveline's already existing story lol).

Like, even though walking around Abstergo Entertainment as a floating iPad and doing basic hacking puzzles isn't the most exciting thing, I found getting the lore from it enjoyable. I honestly wish there was even more juicy lore or more wacky revelations to spice it up.

 

" 

AC Rogue's modern day is more of the same but with the lore a lot less interesting and novel. You go around repairing computers instead of hacking them. The main crux here is your manager, Otso Berg, being obsessed with researching Assassins that defected to the Templars as a way of showing how the Templars are better. The game ends with him sending the Assassins a trailer/montage of Shay's memories showing how the Assassins very nearly doomed the planet with Achilles even saying "Shay was right" and then offering the player character a choice of joining the Templars. We see some of the Assassins panicking in text. This is a cool ending and makes sense. The Templars already have taken over 90% of the planet and the Assassins are really the underdogs here so they by attacking the Assassins' moral certainty, it would hurt them far more. But, similar to other AC games from this time, nothing ever comes of this in future AC Modern Day games. Berg gets a few cameos but we never see the Assassins disorganized or demoralized or now more cautious of causing destruction. For all intents and purposes, you could remove the Modern Days of AC4, Rogue, Unity and Syndicate and little would change for the overall story and that's a shame.

 

 

In closing, Rogue is a pretty fun game. From a gameplay perspective, it does everything Black Flag does and then some. Its environments, level design and missions are generally prettier and more thoughtful. Even though I am not fond of the navel gameplay in these AC games, I imagine those that are would get more of a kick out of Rogue's improved version. The story is rather mixed. The premise and individual beats are fantastic but the a lot of the connective tissue suffers by not properly exploring the Assassin/Templar philosophies the way other AC games do a better job than the one game about that. It was also an easy if albeit tedious platinum.

 

 My next platinum review will be on the PS3 version of God of War 3. See you then.

A brief review of Splinter Cell Conviction on the highest difficulty

 Hello everyone. I recently beat Splinter Cell Conviction on its highest difficulty and wished to talk about it.

Firstly the game was rather challenging to get running. Fun fact, I first played Conviction on MacOS back when the game first came out because it was the only Splinter Cell game released on MacOS and on the Mac App Store. It was harder for us poor Mac bois because the Apple Magic Mouse didn't have a middle mouse button and you couldn't do a left and right click at the same time. I recall the Mac Port even warned you about this and suggest rebinding ADS to "Option/Alt". Those were wild times.

However, the game is no longer playable on Mac (Intel or Silicon) as the older Ubisoft Launcher no longer runs on Mac and Mac no longer supports 32 bit apps as of MacOS Catalina. In fact, a lot of older Mac Ports from the time like the early Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham Tomb Raider, Bioshock, GTA and Borderlands games are unplayable now (unless you are a wizard with Wine and Rosetta). I tried running Conviction on my Mac running Linux Mint and no dice. The game and its Ubisoft Launcher didn't play nicely so I had to play this game on an Asus Vivobook Laptop running Windows 11 and the game in Windows 7 Compatibility Mode which still had issues. The game's performance and framerate kept chugging and would crash frequently. As someone who is "a complete baby in the world of PC gaming", I had to do something scary and install my first mod. The Conviction Fusion Mod which eased some of the performance issues and made the crashes a bit less frequent. It was confusing as the mod's instructions said "just extract and throw in the folder where the game executable is". I did literally that but it turns out you have to extract the folder and grab the stuff inside and paste that into executable's location.

 

This made some improvements. The controls were now closer to Spinter Cell Blacklist. The game was chugging a bit less and it skipped all the introductions when you first boot the game. But the game still crashed every 30-40 minutes. It would freeze for around a minute and then crash to desktop...... sometimes. Other times, pressing Escape would save the game after a minute and unfreeze it. The game's checkpoint system was generally good enough that I never lost a ton of progress and the game loaded pretty fast but it meant I couldn't really play the Deniable Ops missions for fear of losing everything. I imagine that wiser and more experienced PC gamers than me would probably and easily identify and fix these issues in my place but alas.

 

Back to the game itself, Conviction's highest difficulty, called "Realistic", mostly just tweaks damage, health and detection numbers. Enemies can detect Sam in light in under half a second from pretty far away, and can kill Sam almost as quickly. I also noticed ammo from guns you picked up seemed to be slightly lower though I am unsure of this. Enemy AI also didn't seem to be affected so it doesn't appear that enemies get new moves or tactics on Realistic Difficulty. Now, I have played other shooters from the time on their hardest difficulties like the Uncharted and COD games of the time and noticed I had a lot more fun on Conviction than these games which is what inspired me to write this post.

 

 Lets begin by talking briefly about Uncharted 2 and 3 which released around the same time as Conviction. Uncharted's 3rd person shooting gameplay gives the player quite a few options in combat such as climbing, melee/hand-to-hand, pulling enemies of ledges, swimming, swinging off ropes, taking cover, performing cover takedowns etc. As well as holding one pistol, one 2 handed gun and grenades. Uncharted on its easy and medium difficulties is quite fun as you can run-and-gun throughout the arena using all the cool movement options, alternating between melee and gunplay and brief respites in cover to heal before resuming combat. It's quite fun. I want to shout out that one shipyard gunfight in Uncharted 3. That level and encounter was peak.

 

However, Uncharted's hardest difficulty, Crushing, makes a lot of those options unviable as you get melted quickly for exiting cover. Gunfights often feel more tedious as you're pinned behind cover, occasionally popping out to do a few quick shots before immediately returning to cover and healing off the damage. You can’t really re-enter stealth or move around as efficiently. In my experience, I found I spend around 90% of an Uncharted crushing firefight waiting behind cover healing off damage, 5% shooting enemies and 5% moving around. Rather than testing my skills, I felt these gunfights were more a test of patience and luck as when I completed them, it was more because I finally got done slowly chipping enemies away from cover. If I had to replay the firefight, I don't feel like I would magically and skillfully complete it again faster.

 

I bring all this up as a comparison to Conviction as I feel the average gunfight/encounter on Conviction's Realistic Difficulty was more fun the average gunfight/encounter on Uncharted's Crushing difficulty as more of your options were available and there was more of an element of planning at play. Conviction may be the black sheep of the Splinter Cell franchise due to it abandoning a lot of the cool stealth that is synonymous with Splinter Cell in exchange for being a less novel 3rd person action shooter, but at least it was usually a pretty fun shooter as a consolation.

 

For starters and unlike other SC games, Conviction is generally designed to funnel players into shootouts. Levels are generally quite linear with few alternate paths that let you bypass enemies. Most alternate paths or additions to levels such as pipes you can climb, vents and windows that let you move around etc, function in letting you reposition, break line of sight or flank enemies instead. The earlier levels in Conviction feel a lot more like beta levels for Blacklist as they tend to have a lot more darkness (including light switches and lights you can turn off), pipes to let you get the drop on enemies as well as being a lot wider with more routes. So it's more feasible to use stealth knockouts to clear most if not all enemies in a room. Later levels (especially the White House) are a lot more frugal and spartan with their decorations making firefights a lot more necessary. You also don't have many stealth tools. Sam can't whistle or throw bottles to lure or distract guards. Sticky Cameras are limited and not the best at the role.

 

I feel the game's cover and shooting mechanics are interesting in this context. The game's default PC controls bind taking cover and rolling to holding Right Click and zooming/ADS as a toggle on the Middle Mouse Button. You can move between pieces of cover by looking at them (indicated by arrows) and pressing SPACE. SPACE also jumps over the piece of cover which did cause some issues. Moving when behind cover is cumbersome. In other shooters, including the game's sequel in Blacklist, when you are behind cover and press up or a direction at the edge of cover, your character will try slightly peeking around it. Conviction has Sam partially move out and position to aim. On Realistic Difficulty, you will get spotted if exposed for around half a second which meant that an unlucky position of the camera resulted in scenarios where the game thought me pressing Left meant I wanted to really peek above cover which got me spotted. This became less common as I became more careful with the camera and moving behind cover but it as an aspect of the game I was never comfortable with.

 

The game's cover system is mostly functional but lacks additional moves and features from other games from the time (thankfully added by Blacklist). You can't do proper cover or corner takedowns. The game will sometimes recognize you want to do a melee takedown from cover and trigger an animation of you going out and doing the move. But it was finicky so I often had to manually leave cover and try to do it. Enemies during shootouts would throw grenades which would kill you if you were caught in their blast radius and trying to escape from cover while exposed would often be a death sentence. Enemies also tended to rush me when in cover and even trying blind or hip firing often left me exposed.

 

Sam does have a few moves in combat. He can usually melee kill most enemies or take human shields in close proximity to him but is less reliable in firefights if the enemy is firing at him. Doing a melee move charges up the game's signature "Mark and Execute" feature. You can tag enemies by aiming at them and pressing Q. The amount of tags you can do depend on your currently equipped weapon. weapons like the five-seven pistol can tag up to 4 enemies, While stuff like the SCAR can only tag 2. When you have a "Mark and Execute" charged up, enemies in range will have a red icon above them and pressing E will have Sam instantly headshot all tagged enemies in range.

 

To the game's credit, the stealth elements work well and play nicely with the combat and cover systems. When you break line of sight, the game displays a silhouette of Sam that indicates his last known position. Enemies will target that location letting you reposition. Sam is mostly invisible in shadows (indicated by the game’s monochrome filter).

 

As a result of all this, I often felt the game was at its most fun the less you had to shoot. My favourite combat encounters often worked like puzzles where I analyzed the positions of enemies, tagged a few problematic ones, performed melee takedowns on 1 or 2, did a Mark and Execute, ran behind cover or hid somewhere and then dealt with 2 remaining enemies (either by shooting or melee). I remember the combat encounters in the Scientist facility being quite fun because those levels had a ton of enemies but also lots of stuff in the environment I could use like windows to hide and fight. That sense of “cat and mouse” where both me and the enemies were stalking and hunting each other at the same time was fun.

Remember the Uncharted Crushing difficulty section earlier? There, a lot of Uncharted’s movement and combat options were limited on its hardest difficulty. But in Conviction’s Realistic Difficulty, I was moving around and stalking my enemies more than shooting or waiting behind cover. Sam is quite agile and movement is quite fluid so the combination of movement, stealth and gunplay is quite fun. I best felt that contrast during the mission in Conviction set in Iraq where you play as Vic. Vic lacks most of Sam's moveset and even the Mark and Execute Ability as well as having even more limited level design resulting in his level playing like a far more generic 3rd person shooter which highlights just how much better Conviction's core gameplay is.

 

I will complain that towards the end of the game, the encounters start feeling more repetitive as the game starts lowering your movement and hiding options. For example, in the White House encounters, I remember there is an encounter set in a dining room with a lot of chest high cover but very few windows or pipes to use to climb around. I found myself having to rely more on straight up firefights and chucking grenades to clear out the huge number of enemies. 

Interestingly, some of the most fun I had was in the game's side mode: Deniable Ops' Hunter mode. Here you play as a Splinter Cell Agent that goes through various maps and takes out enemies. The game encourages using stealth as getting detected causes reinforcements to come in. These environments tend to have more of that more open level design and hunter-like gameplay I found fun. Even your progression and challenges from the main singleplayer is carried over allowing you to upgrade some of your gear. Unfortunately, I couldn't dive into this mode as deeply as I wanted as the game had a habit of crashing.

 

I do feel from a purely gameplay perspective, the biggest challenge in recommending Conviction (aside from it being a Splinter Cell game that doesn't focus as much on pure stealth) is that its successor, Blacklist, kinda does everything Conviction does but better and more. Blacklist has a more robust customization and equipment system as well as more open ended levels so even if you wished to play Blacklist like a "Conviction 2", Blacklist gives you more to work with. In addition to the fact that Blacklist better accommodates stealth and ghost playstyles which keeps the gameplay more varied.

 

Returning to Conviction, I'll briefly mention that the graphics, character models and UI were quite cool and impressive. The story was presented well and had some neat ideas. Ironside's performance as Sam was easily his best so far. You really feel Sam's "tranquil fury" as well as his more weary nature in this game. I also liked how the story kept you guessing with Grim's true alligence. But the actual plot and its events were.... questionable and I'll leave it at that.

 

In closing, Conviction on its hardest difficulty was a pretty fun shooter with stealth elements (when the game was running well). I'd still recommend Blacklist over it if you want to experience its particular action gameplay (in addition to stealth gameplay).

I platinummed Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom

 Hello Everyone. I recently platinummed Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated and wish to talk about it.

Overall, this was a pretty easy and fun game to Platinum. Being a collect-a-thon, the game only requires you find all the collectables so 100%-ing the game is the same as Platinumming it. There aren't additional challenges or missable trophies or bonuses separate from the in-game collectables. I did feel it started to drag towards the end when backtracking previously completed levels to find socks or grind currency but I ultimately had a pretty fun time.

As for the game itself, obviously it's a remake of the 2003 game (different engine and mostly redone assets). I remember playing the original back on my PS2 and generally enjoying it but disliking the graphics and artstyle. I was never fond of the artstyle of many licensed games based on 2D animated shows from the early 2000s as many of them opted for this unsaturated 3D look that resembled Jimmy Neutron (or those episodes from the Fairly Odd Parents that temporarily went 3D). Even the other Spongebob games from the time like Yellow Avenger and Creature from the Krusty Krab, I often felt looked rather ugly rather than capturing the vibrant charm of the source material. 

BFBB Rehydrated fixes that and then some. The colours are vibrant and absolutely pop. Spongebob for example, looks bright yellow and its so appealing. The environments are so saturated rather than looking  washed out. The aesthetics go further with little things like specs slowly floating around underwater, light shining from spots from the ocean surface etc. The best compliment I can give is that this absolutely looks like how I would imagine a stylized 3D Spongebob game should look. It was fun as a fan of the show exploring all the levels I remember feeling nostalgic from both the show and original game recreated like this.

I also wish to the highlight the writing and dialogue. A lot of it from the main cutscenes both reads and sounds like stuff that could have been in the early seasons of the show and often got a chuckle out of me. While other dialogue from minor interactions with characters were alright. I bring this up because I remember from the time of the early 2000s, dialogue and writing for licensed kids video games wasn't particular strong. I remember playing Spongebob The Yellow Avenger at the same time I was playing BFBBR and noting that a lot of the dialogue felt so generic and wordy that I could not imagine it ever working for the kind of humour of the show.

 

As I was playing the game and writing this review, I remember also thumbing through a few episodes of Spongebob Seasons 1-3 and a few from Season 14. What stood out to me (aside from the massive dip in quality in Season 14) was also the amount of references and callbacks to Seasons 1-3. There were entire episodes that felt like sequels to ideas from earlier seasons like SB -129 or an entire episode dedicated to Nosferatu. Almost all of which made me roll my eyes. BFBBR also had a ton of callbacks to earlier seasons but here I was doing that DiCaprio pointing meme with a smile on my face.

I imagine part of that was due to the fact that BFBB is a video game and an adaptation which, by definition, are supposed to be more referential and feel like a trip through the world of the source material. While the TV Show doing it feels awkward at best given how the earlier seasons barely had any continuity. But also how the 2 works do it. BFBB's tone and presentation feels more in line with the earlier seasons so it's easier to buy in to the references and callbacks as a celebration of those seasons. While Season 14 feels so far removed that the callbacks feel more cynical and as a way to use nostalgia as a substitute.

Moving on to the gameplay, I am a bit mixed on the game and a bit apprehensive about criticizing it. While BFBB has a massive fanbase of older players that absolutely adore it (its speedrunning scene is proof of that), the game was originally intended to work for 7 year olds so I often feel some of my criticisms might be unfair in that context. For example, I could say the game was often too easy when playing casually but that ignores that 7+ year olds that first played this game probably found it more suitable. Me being one of those children and it being one of my first 3D platformers. So I feel one's enjoyment of this game is a lot more subjective depending on what you want out of this game.

If I were to judge this game on how well it represents the show and its merit as an introductory 3D Platformer, then it mostly exceeds even for both 2003 and 2025 standards. The controls for movement, jumping and combat are simple and intuitive. The early levels do a great job in easing players and giving them more cheery areas to get accustomed to the game. It's just so charming to explore places like Jellyfish fields or Goo Lagoon and seeing references to the show like the King Jellyfish, the Plane that drops supplies, Bubble Buddy etc. There's even a nice sense of escalation with the boss fights and later areas like Rock Bottom and the Flying Dutchman Levels having a more foreboding (by Spongebob standards) atmosphere. I will complain that levels like Kelp Forest where you have to backtrack and keep swapping characters drags and gets tedious even from a casual "chill out and enjoy the vibe" perspective. I remember even looking up YouTube videos of those levels and seeing comments of people saying these were the low points. Fortunately, there are only a handful of sections like that in the game and being a collect-a-thon means its generally up to the player what content and levels they wish to do to complete it. You only need 75 Golden Spatulas to beat the game and that 75 can be found from more of the fun levels.

I also enjoyed the 3 playable characters in Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy. With Sandy being the most fun on average due to her lasso allowing for swinging around levels. Patrick's levels were generally fine. I did enjoy a few of the more "puzzle-like" ones for certain collectables like in Jellyfish fields where you had to figure out a way to backtrack to Spongebob's section using Patrick's somewhat limited moveset so you can throw an ice block to access a collectable.

But if I shift to my adult POV and look at where I had the most fun, it was in the Spongebob's Dream and Sand Mountain Levels because those feature some challenging timed platforming and racing challenges. I was absolutely locked in jumping across those musical notes or optimizing my route to beat the best times. Even the combat scenarios were challenging and fun because the game sometimes swarmed you with the hardest robot enemies. Despite the characters' limited movesets, I was having a blast here. If the entire game was structured based on those 2 levels, this could be my favourite 3D Platformer.

Unfortunately, the rest of the time outside these levels, my feelings ranged from "neutral/slightly pleasant" to "kinda bored". It was fun sightseeing these environments and all the Spongebob gags and references but they weren't the most exciting to play. I feel that's for a few reasons. For one, most of the game is pretty easy. Most jumps and platforming sections are generous and don't throw a gauntlet of challenges at you like the Spongebob's Dream level. Obviously fine for younger players but it did make the game feel a bit boring at times. I remember also trying out Jak and Daxter 1 on my Vita and messing around on Mario 64 DS while playing BFBBR to get a sense of other 3D platformers for the time and remember enjoying them a lot more. I think that's due to a combination of movement controls and density and speed of platforming challenges.

Like in Mario 64 DS, you have additional moves like long jumping, sideflips and wall rebounds that you can do any time alongside the basic jumping. Younger or less experienced players can use the basic controls while more experienced players can incorporate cooler mechanics even when playing casually. Jak and Daxter 1 also has rather simple movement but stuff like roll jump feels good to use to zoom through levels. But in BFBBR, you don't really get new platforming abilities or ways to mechanically play levels in completely different ways as most additional abilities are contextual. 

For example, one of Spongebob's new unlocked abilities is the "Bubble Bowl" allowing him to aim and launch a bubble like he's bowling. It's a cool ability, it has applications in combat to damage some enemies while lining up its moving shot, and there are environmental challenges/puzzles that require it but it doesn't really change how you play the game. Even in levels like Jellyfish Fields that tell you to come back later with the ability, it tasks you to aim and throw bubbles similar to how you do elsewhere when you use the ability. The ability often feels more like a "Key you use the progress past a lock" and rarely like a tool you can make creative and skillful use of. There are a few rare exceptions like certain combat or timing challenges that ask you make skillful use of the Bubble but these are infrequent and often isolated from other challenges.

It's a similar case for Spongebob's Cruise Missile or Patrick's ability to pick up and throw obstacles. The end result is that these abilities are fine to use but for me, rarely elevated the fun factor. That's why Sponegbob's Dream Level and Sand Mountain felt so refreshing. Despite Spongebob's limited moveset and not even using his bubble abilities, these levels throw a series of fast paced platforming challenges with a small margin of error at you often under a time limit so I am engaged and constantly making inputs and decisions. Even messing up and retrying wasn't frustrating because I could see myself improving by making it further in less time.

I wish BFBBR had something like this in its other levels. I remember when I was getting the platinum, I had to go back to starter levels like Downtown Bikini Bottom and feeling rather bored as I scoured the level for socks or steering wheels because it felt more like I was going through the motions with no real challenge. Made worse by how slow the characters' default movement speed is. I remember even feeling that Spongebob's sneaking speed was barely slower than his running speed. I wish the game had a run or even "Creature from the Krusty Krab" style charge move. Even the ability to become a ball on command rather than it being a temporary powerup would have sufficed as it would have given me a faster way to move through levels as well as challenges for navigating levels in that state. I enjoyed using that powerup whenever it would popup. 

Ultimately, that's my biggest gripe with BFBBR's gameplay. I felt it was at its best and genuinely fun when it was throwing platforming challenges at you based on the simple controls, or when it felt more like a "puzzle" with how you traverse the environment with the abilities you have (like in the Flying Dutchman Level or in the boss fights). These were genuinely fun but outside of these scenarios, the gameplay is a bit too plain for my tastes. But then again, I imagine for kids playing this, the probably felt like the bulk of the experience was fine with those harder sections really feeling hard. Still, given how influential the Speedrunning scene for the game was in bringing it back into the limelight, a part of me wishes the game was expanded with additional challenges and content for more experienced players. Similar to how the Uncharted Remastered trilogy added a bonus speedrun mode with unlocks or how the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Remake Trilogy added speedrunning/time trials to levels. Maybe every level could have a bonus time trial mode to run through it under a certain amount of time.

But with all that said, looking back on my time with the game, I feel I enjoyed it overall. The game is like 15-ish hours to 100%/Platinum and about 9-ish hours to beat casually. It's short and sweet enough with an extremely charming presentation and generally fun gameplay that it carries the experience that it's not too much of a chore to 100%. I wish its gameplay offered a bit more as I don't feel any hurry to replay it, but regardless, I recommend the game as I imagine kids and people looking for that chill nostalgia trip will more than get a kick out of it. Looking into this game's development, both the remake and the original appear to have been rushed to meet a launch date. But despite being a rushed early 2000s licenced game based on a cartoon, BFBB feels like it was made with a lot of heart and passion and I can't help but respect the game. Flaws and all.