Background

Early on into the failure of the PSN network and Sony’s general failure to protect our personal data or provide us any kind of meaningful information on when service is going to be resumed, I purchased a new PS3 to replace one whose blu ray drive had ever so nicely decided to conk out. Due to PSN being down I have as yet been unable to sync my trophies or download my DLC to my console limiting what I can play as I have several games like Dragon Age 1 and 2 for which some of the DLC is an integral part to the story.

About 1 week ago or so I have the random thought that as the console is now handing out trophies that I have already earned as it hasn’t synced with my PSN account, maybe I could re-earn my sole platinum trophy I have achieved so far which is on Final Fantasy XIII. This platinum is one that I earned after two playthroughs of the game totalling about 200 hours of gameplay. The platinum is possible on just one playthrough though assuming you don’t miss anything or stupidly sell or dismantle any treasures that are only available in spheres at certain points in the game so it is my aim to re-achieve it in just the one playthrough and hopefully with significantly less playtime but still a significant amount of playtime that should highlight the amount of time Sony have allowed PSN to stay down for.

Progress

This section will be updated at the end of each day/session with my progress. I only started this post fairly late in the story however there is much that needs to be done even after completion of the main story.

15/05/11 – 20:26

Knowing that PSN was coming back up today has been one long grind really. Firstly killing as many adamantoises as I could with the summon/death trick in hope of them dropping a trapezohedron. I got one trapezohedron which I promptly used to transform Lightning’s weapon to ultimate and then maxed it with the array of ultracompact reactors I had accumulated from selling platinum ingots. Tried to kill a few more in hope of another trap but none were forthcoming. Moved on and completed chapter 12 after another stupidly easy encounter with the proudclad.

Sailed through chapter 13 until I reached the ramp containing enemies worth 32k CP each. Grinded there until characters had maxed core roles, one secondary role and were well on their way to maxing an additional secondary role and that is as far as I got before the news arrived that PSN was back (at least partially). So trophies have been synced and I have my platinum back but failed the challenge of re-earning it before the restoration of PSN. But at least I have my lightning theme on my XMB again!

15/05/11

Sony are starting to restore PSN services in some regions including trophy sync so its likely I’m going to fail this challenge as my platinum trophy should sync back over once I download the new firmware and connect to PSN. It’s a shame as if it was down for another week or if I’d started this challenge a lot earlier than I did, I might have succeeded. I may continue this playthrough anyway and try to max out the crystarium and 5* all missions which would earn pretty much every trophy bar the annoying treasure hunter one

14/05/11

Completed a few more Ci’eth missions, completed Taejin’s tower, reached Oerba and rebuilt Bhakti earning the pulsian pioneer trophy in the process. Obtained and upgraded taming pole to max tier 2. Lightning, Hope, Fang and Vanille now have max tier 2 weapons. Need 4 trapezohedrons to convert to untimate weapons but only way to get them is for 2million gil or by farming Adamantoise. Attempt to kill an adamantoise, fail miserably. Console myself by taking down as many adamanchelids instead. Complete chapter 11. Reach leviathan plaza on chapter 12 after the easiest ever encounter with Proudclad’s first form which due to my excessive levelling I take down in one stagger. Attempt to kill the adamantoise using vanille and summon/death. Fail on 3 occasions before giving up for the day.

13/05/11

Little progress. Reached but did not enter Taejin’s tower instead choosing to double back and do a few more missions and continue building my teleportation network

11/05/11

As expected made little progress in terms of story in chapter 11 due to its size and that I’m power levelling to try and make life a touch easier when I get to endgame. Completed Ci’eth missions 1-15 though without 5* so some will have to be reattempted in endgame. Reached maw of the abyss and grinded until all characters had maxed all 3 core disciplines and are learning a 4th discipline. Achieved a trophy for completing all low level Ci’eth stones. Killed Juggernaut for no reason other than because I could. Discovered the joy that is increased ATB rate synthesised ability, something I’ve never done in either playthrough before but increases lightnings ATB rate by 15% which doesn’t sound much but does made a difference. Lightning also has nearly maxed her tier 2 helter skelter. Hope has a maxed tier 1 Airwing and is waiting until I find the transformational catalyst (I refuse to buy catalyst until absolutely necessary preferring to farm them or pick them up in treasure spheres or mission rewards – Gil is short enough in this game without wasting money on something I can pick up for free). Fang is waiting for taming pole before I upgrade her weapon. All other characters have tier 1 weapons.

10/05/11

Completed chapters 9, 10 and commenced chapter 11 of the story. Have just entered the Archylte Steppe and accepted the 1st Ci’eth Stone mission. Have earned all story trophies so far and the loremaster trophy which unlocked for getting information on 100 enemies. Aims for next day attempt any possible Ci’eth missions and startt to build my teleportation network and unlock Chocobos. Reach Maw of the Abyss and grind to level up. Kill Juggernaut at end of Maw of the Abyss that was impossible on my first playthrough but possible on my 2nd and 3rd and progressively easier with each play. Also want to see if it is possible to kill an Adamantoise in chapter 11 rather than run away from them very fast as is the normal tactic. On my last playthrough I managed to kill one in chapter 12 despite it being supposedly impossible by using Vanille’s summon/spam death trick. This allowed both treasure spheres to be obtained in chapter 12 which is also meant to be impossible

Have to say it is hard enough to walk through the city centre without being harassed by beggars, charity direct debit leeches, people trying to sell you crap you don’t want and the stupid police tardis box which is dangerous and blocks the view of traffic when crossing cheapside without a radio station adding to the potential dangers and harassment when all you want to do is go about your business!

Why not celebrate by pre ordering the Entire Saga, the Original Trilogy or the Prequel Trilogy on blu ray

Middle of last week, they ran an article about police wasting £20k including the deployment of a police chopper in order to arrest two people for the hellish crime of recycling having taken items worth 47p from their local tip. The full article can be found here

This prompted me to send in the following letter expressing my thoughts on the story and the actions of the police who should be far too busy dealing with drug dealers, murderers and armed robbers to be bothered by a couple of people recycling

I was absolutely disgusted to read in today’s paper about police
wasting £20k of funds including deploying a helicopter to nick two
people for taking items worth 47p from a tip.

No wonder this country is rife with drugs, murderers and armed robbers
when the police are far too busy targeting the recyclers!

The letter printed in the paper today is as follows

HOW dare cops spend £20,000 to nab two people for nicking items worth 47p from a tip. If something that has been thrown on a tip is considered useful by someone else it is called recycling. No wonder this country is going to the dogs

Nice to see I was quoted word for word there!

Brown – iPod Shuffle – Old Kent Road

Light Blue – Pogo Pro (substituted for £100 cheque as prize not available) – Euston Road

Purple – Blackberry Curve – Northumberland Avenue

Orange – Laptop – Marlborough Street

Red – £500 experience voucher – Strand

Yellow – Weekend Break – Coventry Street

Green – Mini Cooper – Bond Street

Dark Blue – £500k – Mayfair

Stations – £500 littlewoods credit – Liverpool St Station

As you can see I’ve yet to establish the rare stickers for brown, light blue and orange. If anyone else has established the sticker feel free to comment.

On the subject of comments, after the complete horror that was last year where some of the most stupid people on god’s green earth decided to comment the following serves as an FAQ

1. People wanting to sell their park lane stickers and split the £500k, just take a second to look at how this promotion works. You have a park lane sticker, I have a park lane sticker, EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN TO MCDONALDS HAS A FRICKING PARK LANE STICKER!!! The park lane sticker is WORTHLESS without the mayfair sticker of which there is just one in circulation. Therefore a fair price for anyone wanting to sell a park lane sticker is £0.00 including postage!

2. If you have won, your sticker tells you how to claim, there is no reason to post here claiming to have mayfair, bond street or any of the other valuable rare stickers. You should be too busy claiming and enjoying your prize, if indeed you are telling the truth which is highly unlikely

Nice shiny car coming for me now. Shame I don’t drive!

Aim one is to adopt the Apple way of thinking by making a totally new product that is better than a car by gluing four cars together to come up with a revolutionary new method of transport that is four times bigger, more expensive and uses much more petrol

Aim Two

Aim two is to save Gordon Brown the hassle of needing to pack all his stuff ready to move out of 10 Downing Street by getting the voting public to lend him a hand, something they will only be too willing to do

Aim Three

Aim three is to solve the issue of the PS3 phat losing linux capabilities by adopting the apple way of thinking and coming up with a new and revolutionary product that you can play games on and run linux on. Gluing 4 PC’s together should do the trick

Aim Four

Aim four is to solve the problem of internet perverts preying on young innocent(!) impressionable youth by banning all people under the age of 18 from using the internet

Aim Five

Aim five is to come up with a brand new aim that is so much better than the previous four by adopting the Apple way of thinking and gluing the previous aims together

It’s freezing again, but why should that stop resident mystic Nostradamus from giving himself food poisoning on his very own barbecue. Just two out of three predictions correct from last month will do just that

Prediction One was “Alexander Thorp will receive an invisible card and present from a certain member of his family for his birthday for the third year running”….. cracking start as the generosity and love from a certain blood relative on my side of the family for their own Grandchildren continues to know no limits. Possibly would be funny if they weren’t just proving my point and proving me right

Prediction Two was “Ashley Cole will be executed for his crime of cheating on the “nation’s sweetheart””….. nope, though one can assume it’s only a matter of time. Either that or the daft cow will take him back again, blissfully unaware that pretty much every warm blooded male on the planet would be only to happy to take his place

Prediction Three was “Rian from ITV’s “Take Me Out” will be given her own diet series…… afraid not though the sponsorship deal with Mars Bars is due to be signed any day now

So no food poisoning this month. Here are next month’s predictions

Prediction One

Apple will release a brand new iPhone that isn’t just 4 iPhones glued together

Prediction Two

Gordon Brown will place a booking for a removal van on a date early in May

Prediction Three

The Lord will bring on the full fury of his wrath burning the earth to a cinder and then it will rain fish

Brown – £100 – Old Kent Road
Light Blue – Camera – Euston Road
Purple – Wii – Northumberland Avenue
Orange – Home Entertainment System – Marlborough Street
Red – Holiday – Strand
Yellow – Car – Coventry Street
Green – House – Bond Street
Dark Blue – £500k – Mayfair
Stations – months worth of energy from npower (£1200) – Liverpool Street Station

So if you have any of them feel free to post them to me

1. This has been done before – Yes I’m aware that Tracy and Jon Morter did exactly this at Christmas. However their campaign raised £100k for the homeless which is a very good cause

2. It’s wrong to take on a charity single – If the RATM4XMAS campaign taught us anything it’s that the single the campaign was opposing still sold and it still sold well. Furthermore as a donations page has been set up by me for this campaign, providing it takes off, more money will be raised for charity than if this campaign didn’t exist. I will also hopefully as long as it doesn’t violate the terms of any affiliate programmes I am on be posting a number of affiliate links to download the song and donating the revenue to the cause.

3. You have no hope of succeeding – probably not, whilst RATM4XMAS did succeed, that had weeks to prepare. We have days! But even if the campaign becomes even a fraction as successful as the last one it will still help a good cause

The facebook group can be found HERE and the just giving page for donations HERE

Next time we wont bother!