All'nOne

Trophy Madness

2009-06-30T15:08:00.007+03:00

This past month I spent most of my time playing one of my favorite rhythm games “Rock Band 2”. Because I was very good with the guitar after playing all Guitar Hero games before Rock Band, I continued playing the guitar. The drums although were very fun to play, they are very hard and frustrating. I don’t find myself good at singing as well, so I just tossed the mic aside.
One of the reasons I played Rock Band a lot was because I love the game very much but another side of me was playing it for the trophies, some I obtained normally while playing through the tour mode while others required specific conditions met but none of
those conditions were close to what I have experienced yesterday.
Before I continue, let me explain the trophy system briefly. It is a system used on the Playstation 3 consoles in which players get awarded with 3 types of trophies reflecting their skills in videogames but not all games support trophies. Anyway, a bronze trophy which is worth 1 point is obtained normally during your regular gameplay and most of the time considered easy to obtain but there are exceptions. A silver trophy is considered harder, it is worth 2 points, can be sometimes obtained for completing the game but mostly when you achieve some difficult requirements. The last but not the least is the gold trophy, a trophy that is worth 6 points and is mostly very hard to acquire. Here is a picture showing my latest trophy card which you can check on your console, Sony’s official website or other third party website such as playfire, which is the most popular because it is one of the first sites to support gamer cards.

You can clearly see that I’ve got 135 bronze, 42 silver and 10 gold which makes sense because bronze trophies are the most in games then comes fewer silver trophies and even less gold trophies which don’t usually exceed 5 gold trophies per game. What about that glorious and shining platinum trophy LOL. Well, that is the dream of trophy collectors, a single trophy in each game but not all games have it, it is worth 12 points and obtained only if you collect all the game trophies and that is what I’m aiming for recently in Rock Band.
From my experience with trophy collecting, I think it is a way to test gamers skills, make the game more challenging and more fun to play, and most of the times to extend the longevity of the game which is great if the developer sticks to the above reasons, but when the developer crosses a certain line, things surely turn into madness. After playing Rock Band 2 for a long 50 hours I had only 4 trophies before acquiring the platinum trophy, 1 bronze, 1 silver and 2 gold. Here is a list of the trophies and their conditions:
- Vinyl Artist (Bronze Trophy): Finished the Endless Setlist 2 in World Tour on Medium
- Gold Artist (Silver Trophy): Finished the Endless Setlist 2 in World Tour on Hard
- Platinum Artist (Gold Trophy): Finished the Endless Setlist 2 in World Tour on Expert
- The Bladder of Steel Award (Gold Trophy): Completed the Endless Setlist 2 without pausing or failing
Everything seems fine so far, so where is the MADNESS? The madness is the endless setlist 2 that you can see in all four trophies. It is a set of 84 songs that you get to complete during 7 continuous hours. So to lessen the frustration I aimed for the third trophy in which by getting it I will get the first two by default, it is also possible to obtain the forth one BUT it will be a total madness because the forth trophy requires not failing which is almost impossible on the expert difficulty except for the very skilled players and not even pause the game so you have to stick in front of the TV the whole time unless if you have someone else to help you out but my brothers weren’t skilled enough to beat the game on expert difficulty so I was all alone.

You can see clearly how focused I’m because I was playing on the expert difficulty. You can also notice that I’m setting on a very comfortable chair because otherwise I won’t be able to continue and my whole body will start feeling the pain of staying put in a single position for 7 hours. Despite taking all those precautions and setting comfortably I had some shoulder’s pain which feels totally stiff right now. To get the forth trophy I will have to play the endless setlist 2 again, but this time without pausing or failing so I will definitely select the least difficulty which is the medium difficulty. Here is when obtaining the trophy gets boring because the developer isn’t testing your skills but your endurance and that is something shouldn’t be done because it is stealing the fun out of the game. Another example of such trophies is one I heard about in GTA IV where you have to complete the game in less than 30 hours, I know it is considered a challenge and might test your skills but is surely steals the fun too.
The point is that developers shouldn’t support trophies for the sake of increasing game longevity in some poor ways and thus killing the fun, enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. Instead it should be a nice balance between longevity, skills and fun.
It never feels better, I’ve got three trophies, 1 bronze, 1 silver and 1 gold :D The first thing I did after taking this picture was running to the toilet LOL.

- Ali -

New piano video…

2009-05-31T11:24:00.001+03:00

If you read my previous blog you already know that I did post two piano videos. Today I’m posting the third one, it is the start of my second training phase, a level 2 piano piece.
This short piece of music you will here is the second of six Romanian folk dances by the brilliant Hungarian composer “Béla BARTÓK”
I will play the rest of the five remaining folk dances in the next phases because they are harder and I’m still not good enough to play them all together, but then when it is time I will record a single video for all of them together. I leave you now with my third piano video.

Until next time, thanks for watching
- Ali -

Back to piano practice again…

2009-05-27T18:20:00.002+03:00

It has been a long time since I sat on my piano chair and played for more than half an hour and hence I lost a lot of my piano playing skills, it is not as if I was a great piano player but I definitely was much better than today.
Just recently my cousin and her husband visited us from the United States. It is the first time for me to meet her husband who is by the way a piano player, conductor and a composer. He played some piano for us and I was astonished by his playing skills, since that day I’ve been thinking about how I neglected a great hobby. When I played a little for him he said that I’ve got the basics and encouraged me to continue specially that I learned mostly by myself and taking some private lessons will surely improve my playing more. I was greatly inspired by him and decided to get back to my old hobby.
Just few days after they left I spent countless hours searching for piano sheet music from the Internet and sorting them by difficulty from level 1 to 10. I really doubt reaching level 7 but I will try my best and dedicate at least one hour a day for practicing and I’ve already started and finished two level 1 piano pieces and now and I’m already practicing my first level 2 piece.
I decided to post a video of every piece I finish and here are the first two piano videos. The 1st piece is Mozart’s while the 2nd is Bach’s.

I really encourage anyone who is reading this right now to improve any sort of hobby he likes to do because it really feels great to be good in something ;)

- Ali -

Tim Schafer needs help...

2009-03-26T16:09:00.005+03:00

While I was checking the latest gaming news yesterday I saw this funny mini game on the doublefine.com website which is called "Host Master and the Conquest of Humor".

It resembles the gameplay of the fine adventure games by LucasArts such as the famous Monkey Island and Sam & Max. In this mini game you have the control over Tim Schafer in a single room, he is in desperate need for some jokes to use at the GDC because he forgot to write new ones LOL. So your mission is to search the room for some old jokes and then whenever you are ready you exit the door to start the GDC. I managed to find a total of 8 jokes which I presumed are all the ones I could search for and went out, then I've been told that I collected 8 OUT OF 22, LOL I didn't expect there is a total of 22 jokes in this tinny room O.O.

If you enjoy this type of gameplay and you are up to the challenge of finding the 22 jokes then try it out, here is a direct link to the game ;)

Funnily the dude in the game looks exactly the same as Tim Schafer at the GDC, check out the below picture LOOOL

Tell me if anyone of you got the 22 jokes ;)

- Ali -