In August of 2016, forgive me for forgetting which exact day, there was a certain game that appeared for sale of the PlayStation Store. The game cost $13.99, and was called Solbrain: Knight of Darkness. There was, however, a special sale for members of PlayStation Plus that made the game only cost $9.79, and during that sale, I bought the game for myself because I knew it wasn't going to stay on the store for long.
You see, Solbrain: Knight of Darkness is a fucking terrible game. I knew it was when I first heard about it, and I had to spend time debating with myself about buying it, because I knew it would suck, but I had to decide if it was worth getting the game as I knew without a doubt it would eventually disappear forever. Not because it was bad though, because if that was the case, it wouldn't have appeared on PlayStation to begin with. It's because the game was full of completely stolen assets.
Allow me to show you the video that first informed me about this pile of shit calling itself a game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ9XpnDlv00
Video belongs to Roosterteeth.
Channel name: Inside Gaming (Formerly The Know)
I think that's enough backstory, I'm going to now tell you the story of this blog's title. You see, because Roosterteeth did not play the game themselves (not that they had any reason to, let's be fair) they didn't know about about just how broken this game was to play.
For starter's, the fucking camera does not stop moving if you don't touch it. It keeps moving to the right if your finger isn't directly over it and guiding it. I've, no joke, never seen a video game with a broken camera like this. Then there's the enemies sometimes not getting hurt by your attacks because I guess you're too close to them or something, even though all enemies only need two hits to die. Unless you use your only magic attack, which somehow fucking kills everything around you. In fact that there are limited uses for it, making that one spell the most "video game" thing about this video game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAbrgSMEfJQ
Video done by: Cornshaq
Channel name: CornshaqGaming
Cornshaq can describe the rest to you, especially the fact that the enemies will sometimes glitch behind something and you can't kill them. And you can't save, or even fucking pause.
So until Monday, February 13th 2017, 2:48 A.M. Eastern Time, nobody had beaten this game on the PlayStation 4. No one had even beaten the tenth level, meaning they could not move to the eleventh/final level.
Until me.
I'm so far the only person who had the patience to beat this game on PlayStation.
And I watched the non-existant ending. Which was the credits, followed by a thank you to someone, and a promise the franchise will be back. I'm sure it will but I doubt it'll be on PlayStation.
This garbage banished from the PlayStation store until the ends of time. This game only sixty or so people bought and played before the plug was pulled. None of them could finish level 10, let alone the final one. I took the challenge and I fucking won.
The funny thing is, anyone who's never played this game will think this is a minor victory. You'll just think "The game was shit, clearly everyone else just gave up because it was so bad."
That's half of it. A game being hated will prevent people from finishing it. Such as Naughty Bear, which I have admitted to liking on this blog the last time I went uncensored, or the new game based on Ghostbusters that also came out in 2016. Both of those games have quite a low percentage of players who bothered to continue, let alone finish.
But anyone who has played Solbrain knows that is not the entire case. A shit game gets people to give up because they are tired of how awful it is, and they need something else.
But when a shit game is also difficult, purely due to the fact it's broken, that is when people stop because they end up being afraid this beyond shitty game will put them in a mental ward.
Hell, hours after I'd beaten it. After I'd gone to bed and woken up. I got this message from someone on PlayStation Online:
I ended up having a nice chat with this guy about it. We apparently had the same strategy of keeping enough enemies alive so that if anyone was stuck, we could still die so it would restart the level. Because thankfully dying doesn't put you at the beginning of the game, only the level, this isn't an "old school" game, just a broken one.
So let me repeat, if you get stuck you cannot pause and you cannot save. If you can't die, you have to exit the game and start from the very beginning. A game that is broken in every single fucking way, and I'm the only PlayStation player to have beaten it thus far. This poor sap is probably going to try it again now, he or she actually had more trophies than I did before I beat it, they were the original number 1 player before I kicked them down and took a crown they can't ever have because I got it first. Sure, whoever this was will probably be the second person to beat it, and I would wish 'em luck, but I also hope they decided against it. Not because it diminishes my win, because it doesn't, but because I wouldn't wish having to suffer through this game on anyone. (UPDATE: They beat it not long after the original posting here. No one else has done so in the almost three years it’s been since this post though, I’ve heard trophy support got pulled for newer players after a while because of the delisting but I still see the game in my trophies list so I don’t know if that’s true or not)
It took me over two hours just for the tenth stage, as stated above, they kept getting stuck on the fucking roofs. I didn't quit because I knew I would be the first forever, and with a game like this, that's an honor nobody wants but I am so proud of myself that I did it.
Then again, this game is so infamous others want to try it now. This is a section of another PlayStation message I got, from before I went back to complete it:
I had no idea people were actually considering hunting down this game. And I'm the asshole who bought it because I knew it'd get taken down. (By the way, I’ve recently turned off the ability for random people to message me. LOTS of people ask for this game and it’s obnoxious as it is shady as fuck.)
So I am the king of Solbrain, for whatever that is worth. These trophies are so rare, as the above picture shows, they remained at 0.0% even after I became the first person to get them. Speaking of, here's a picture from popular PlayStation trophy help site PSNProfiles.
Before you ask about the ad I got, I have a blog post about my love for toys-to-life games, and Toys R Us was the most convenient place to buy them. Usually my ads are Pizza Hut or Roosterteeth so take this one for what you will.
They couldn't figure out that I'm in the "100% club" even though if you click on it, I'm fucking there. They later fixed it but here is visual proof of the situation:
Yes, that's a PlayStation move controller on the far right of the ad. Never bought one but I consider getting PSVR ever now and again for some reason.
They list 1 person, and they changed my percentage. BUT, when I check the trophies on my personal PlayStation 4, it still says they are 0.0% earned by players. I think PlayStation official doesn't keep track of the game anymore because they removed it, so for the sake of argument, let's see who's closer to the truth.
According to my calculator app, 1/62 is:
0.0161290322580645
Move the period to the right two places, then round up, and you have 1.61%. So PSNProfiles does in fact use proper math. However, I kind of like 0.0% better, because it makes me look even more impressive. I also assume the number pool they are using is the same or close to 62 players, because if you cared about this game I can't imagine you are somebody who doesn't use PSNProfiles. Either way, my real percentage is 1.61%, but I personally think I deserve the much more brag-worthy 0.0% (UPDATE: The above did change but I was stuck at 0.0% for over a week after earning the trophies, the servers failed to recognize anyone had played the game.)
Hey, I want to get semi-serious for a moment, while on the note of what I deserve. Because it's something everyone who played this game deserves.
A refund.
I admittedly could play through this game kind of having an alright time, it was my kind of unforgivable shit. People like me don't just have a list of the worst things they've ever played or seen. They also have a list of the most objectively bad things that they didn't hate. Those lists sometimes contain the stuff that truthfully goes beyond the realms of horrible, media that has no reason to have existed and that no one truly gains anything from. This game tops my latter list, no competition.
And no one got a refund. If you're going to refund anyone, refund the guy who stood up to this game and kicked it's ass. And if you're going to refund me, you better refund all 62, maybe more, who bought this fucking stolen-asset-ridden broken pile of game. If hardly anyone bought it, which is what happened, then how much money would you really lose?
I may be proud of myself for beating a game before anyone else did on your system, but I should have never known about this game, because that would mean it didn't exist in the first place. This was not a slip-up, this was an abomination that you let go buy hoping no one caught it. I mean the developers, but I can't imagine the person from PlayStation who approved it simply "didn't know better".
Fuck, the orcs from Skyrim are an enemy. That's not rhetoric:
Oh, and the Spriggans are as well:
I sort of understand a shady developer stealing one thing from a super popular game, but two? And Skyrim of all games? That's almost asking to get caught.
I'll always find a disgusting charm for this game, but it's this game that let you open the flood gates. This game is why you are now selling Life of Black Tiger and Firefighters: The SImulation, because after Solbrain, anything looks better. I almost love my time with this game, I am proud of beating it, and I also hate everything this game stands for and what followed suite.
By the way, the main character's face looks like a doll's head. Just me? It's creeped me out since the beginning.
Whatever, I'm the winner and this game sucks. Here's a picture of the problem that other guy mentioned:
Squint and you can see it. He's a ninja or something with to orange curved swords. I assume it's from another game.
Also, in case anyone was ready to correct me, there was a PC version of this game but it's also gone from history. I don't know if I'm the first person to beat the game in general because of that, only the PlayStation 4 version, but if you own the PC version I would assume someone could mod the game for you to give you the ability to save and at least pause, and I would not consider that cheating. I would consider that as doing the developers job for them. I did it the hard way, no one else has to.
Also also, the fairy lady you see promoting this game in the header, that's artwork stolen from a deviantART page. Here's the link so you can see who really made it:
http://coocooon.deviantart.com/art/Elf-wallpaper-196617416
Well, I didn't get a Platinum trophy for this game, it didn't have one, so I'll just make one myself the same way the people who made this game would do it. I'm going to use the picture for Cabela's Big Game Hunter: Pro Hunts's Platinum and crappily edit in a description that has poor grammar.
