I finished Uncharted: Drake's Fortune this weekend. I started playing it Friday night/Saturday morning and finished it early monday. I haven't beaten a game from the start that quick in many years. I guess its just a testament to how much I like it. It really is an incredible game. I also went back and finished it again on Hard and got every trophy except the one for finishing it on "Crushing" difficulty (and the Platinum obviously). I can't even remember the last time I played through a game twice! Now yes, I'm playing it on Crushing to get the last trophy (and thus my first Platinum!). The game was very noticably more difficult on Hard compared to Normal. The enemies are a lot more aggressive as far as moving to flank you and throw hand grenades, and I think there are more of them too. I wonder how hard it will be to play through the game on Crushing. Thankfully, I can turn on some of the cheats, including the unlimited ammo for any weapon.

Also, I have found (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) that I played the game very differently than I would have if I wasn't trying to earn trophies. I actually cared about playing skillfully to get certain achievements. I also used a guide to get some of the treasures and medals. If not for trophies, I would have just played the game once, on normal difficulty, and not cared about playing with any kind of skill. I can definately see this becoming a trend as more games that support trophies are released. While this will wreak havoc on my ability to knock out games on my to-play list in a reasonable time frame, I think that I may get more out of my games this way. And it will assuredly make me actually FINISH more games, and may even make me a better player just from earning some of the more skill-based ones. I'm looking forward to it!

Due to tomorrow being my last day at work I will have 2 weeks to catch up on some games, and I plan to play as many games in my back catelog as possible. I don't start my job at Bank of America until Sept 2, and if I get something better then I will probably start even later than that. So I am stoked to start playing Bionic Commando: Rearmed this weekend. I may even get Street Fighter Alpha too. I will have to look through my backlog and make some choices. Good choices!!!

UPDATE:  Yeah, I went ahead and bought Street Fighter Alpha.  Had to do it.