This is somehow a continuation of my 2009 blog.

I'm now playing Kingdoms of Amalur, totally enjoy playing it, now about 85 hours in, and I just thought a few days ago "why not try to get the platinum?".

I know now I won't have the platinum, as I won't get the one trophy where you have to finish the game on "hard" ( been playing the first hours on easy, then switched to normal - I hoped I could trick by choosing "hard" just before the end game, after all the game lets you choose your difficulty all along, that's one of the major points of the game, the developers used this argument over and over to have gamers be free of how they want to play the game. But now it's a double edged argument as it means I'll have to do another full playthtrough of the game (maybe 15 or 20 hours) to get this one only.

Trophies are now totally useless to me, I won't care getting them, they'll just be an annoyance to me. I've enjoyed this game for 85 hours, there's already one trophy I can't get on this 85 hour playthrough, and some I could have gotten easily, but my playstyle (killing with Chakram and playing an honest - not committing crimes- person) prevents me from getting some trophies (there's two that require stealing, and one where you have to do special attacks that my primary weapon the chakram won't allow), the other ones are just random (50 persuasion attempts, I have no idea how many I got, maybe 25, maybe 40, I really don't care now ; getting 10 of all reagents - I really found fun to get all reagents I could see, now I know it'll just click sometime, or not a at all cause one will be super rare).

So thanks for adding some things you have to do in game that you can totally miss by just playing to see the main story unfold, or just to play in your own style. I've played 200+ hours of Eye of Judgment, I'm at 62%, I've finished Tomb raider underworld twice, really exploring many places, having fun to jump around, i'm at 58%. Played many hours of Prince of Persia 2008, having found 1000 light spheres, could never find the missing one, and it's a bronze trophy, why isn't it gold as it's a major pain to get it???!!!

I'm a 42 year old gamer, played since I was 7 on the Atari 2600, knew times when playing was its own reward, and having fun was just natural. I now officially hate trophies, despise profoundly the guy who had the idea to implement it in the first place (who is a Microsoft guy so no wonder it's a terrible idea).

It's sad that the game that makes me create the topic is Mortal Kombat, as I like the franchise, but them selling DLC that is already done as the game is released, thus proving it should have been accessible for all when they buy the disc is simply insulting the consumer.

Please gamers everywhere (and on every platform), stop giving your money away by getting DLC that you should get for free, and most of all, that doesn't add anything to the game. Remember Tiger Woods 2011 with DLC totalling 70$ ... Or Soulcalibur 4 where you could get the special character from the other consoles by paying the DLC. That's just sad, all these things were developed at the same time as the whole game, there's no sane reason it should be paid for in addition to the cost of the game.

This will also be a step for the paying online fee, meaning you'll have to give a fee to EA, Ubisoft (...) to play their game online and it will be a common practice. This will also be a step for full digital game distribution. And of course it's practical, but it will totally wipe out the used business meaning all the games you'll pay 100% of the price, and don't believe one moment they'll be cheaper, as of course the companies will say they have to maintain the servers, to pay employees to do it, that it's good for you as you can download this game as much as you want from everywhere in the world.

But what will happen if they choose to discontinue a game? or the server has a problem that can't be solved in weeks? or you lose your account information and can't get it back? (and there will be other problems too, like another step will be that you have to pay a monthly fee to access the service). Well, you're 100% screwed and the money you spent goes up in smoke ... Which wouldn't happen if you have a physical game that you keep in your home.

So be cautious when you buy DLC, just get the DLC that really gives you something for your money, first if a DLC is released at the same time as the game, it means it was created when the game was created, so it should be free as it's ready when the game is printed. Then added characters or tracks or special moves ... will you really enjoy the game more because it added 0.04% to the overall content? No.

Achievements or trophies are just the same crap : a way to compare who has the biggest *** or who is ze noob. I want to play the way I like (which is already often limited) and not the way some developers decide and then compare to what others "achieved". The word "achievement" is absolutely ridiculous in gaming worl, as you really achieve nothing in gaming time other than proving you didn't do anything in real life.

Having fun in gaming, it's something too many people forget about, how come we still don't have a car game where you only drive to watch the scenery and listen to cool music after a day's work, instead of getting unnerved because you didn't beat a time for the ** time? If this mode was implemented I'd buy Motorstorm and Pure. Having to beat some AI cars to unlock other cars that are most of the times incredibly hard to drive? wth? And then you see after 40 hours of play you unlocked only 4 trophies and are ridiculous compared to toher guys? Where's the fun of playing?

I'm a 39 year old gamer and I had lots of fun being pwned in Crystal castles on Atari 2600 or smashed in Shufflepuck cafe on Amiga. And playing Shadow of the beast? the game was so friggin hard even with a cheat it was barely playable. But it was fun playing anyway.

Now we have hundreds of FPS and racers where players say "hey, i've unlocked 45 cars in 8 hours" or "I killed 8 noobs with headshots" ... It was already stupid enough, but now you can compare how much you don't have a socail like by comparing trophies/achievements??? Lucky I have a PS3 to have fun with Ratchet and Clank, Eye of Judgment (I must have about 30% of trophies with 60+ hours of playing). I've had most fun with Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider underworld or The Darkness or Clive Barker's jericho, just because these games have an identity which is not based on being better than the game or another player.

And yes, I love turn based JRPGs, I was at an ounce of beating Ozma with lvl 45 characters, and beat the final boss of Legend of dragoon in less than 25 minutes and never used a resurrection potion, so I can be competitive, but as long as I have fun.

I think and hope gamers will show some critical spirit and show the developers they need to be more creative in the fun aspect of the games and not create some artificial game length by having the gamers do some pre-created gameplay that is only using their will to be better, letting the said developers do less work and have less ideas.

I'm 39, French, and have an expansive variety of tastes.

For music, I like metal (extreme like Cradle of filth, Cannibal Corpse, Mystic circle, or soft like After forever, Metalium, Bon Jovi), 80s music (Duran Duran, Culture club, Eurythmics), Anime music (Escaflowne, Bubblegum crisis, Silent mobius), OST (Silence of the lambs, Star trek, Krull, Danny Elfman), some female pop stars (Madonna, Britney - not all, Rihanna). I hate rap.

For movies I like action (Die hard, Mummy, Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay), horror (Blair witch, In the mouth of madness, Hellraiser), Hong Kong (Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark, Wu Ji, WArriors of heaven and earth - I hate Jet-Li) most and others (Phantom of the opera, Elvira).

For TV shows I like Star trek, Xena, Smallville (I hate Chloe), Melrose Place, Veronica Mars, Andromeda, Sarah Connor, Return of the condor heroes (HK), many that have died too soon : Invasion, Vanished, Surface. I don't like Lost.

My favourite TV actors/actresses : Michael Rosenbaum, Shannen Doherty, Eddie Cibrian, Kristin Kreuk, Kirsten Bell, Thomas Calabro, Jack Wagner, Hudson Leick, Tyler Labine.

I'm sorry, it's a bit long :

Absolutely nothing can prove their numbers are right, even if they were right, it would be a part of the truth (nothing can oblige any shop or internet site to give their numbers) for USA, but how in hell could they get - moderately accurate - numbers for Europe, even worse, Japan?

OK they try to convince you with this :

"As obligated by law, videogame companies report shipment data in their financial reports" : law only obligates to report your sales numbers, meaning how much money you made, and not how many of this product you sold ; even then these numbers go to the finance department, which VGchartz doesn't have access to.

"How VG Chartz comes up with its figures :

Sales figures are determined through two important methods
Data Sampling - VG Chartz gathers random data from a sample of the total number of retailers. ---> RANDOM!!!
Shipment information - VG Chartz has contacts with publishers who give their best estimates on number of products shipped.
Because the number of retailers selling videogames is quite large, it is possible to attain statistically valid results from a small sample.
It then becomes a matter of working backwards by having:
The approximate number of retailers.
Historical sales figures.
Data from sales tracking agencies as reference points in accuracy.
There are obvious limiting factors as well - few games have above a 40% attach rate, a game will never sell more than the console user base, publishers do not ship significantly more or less than they expect to be sold"

* note that this section has disappeared from their FAQs some months ago ...

These arguments show nothing but probability calculations based on "some" shops and "some" publishers, which may not always be even accurate based on lack of internal communication.
They are even full of contradiction, as if "videogame companies report shipment data" and they have access to it, why would they need "some" companies and publishers to give their numbers to VGchartz who then use them to build some probability numbers?

People don't come to their site to have accurate probability, they believe the numbers they see there and there's no way other than legal numbers, which are most confidential, to really know what sales have or not been done.