The Platinum Road R2: Louisiana, Running it Back (Resident Evil 7)
On my quest to get 100 Platinums, I ended up doing save transfers for 4 different games to boost my numbers in order to get it before the end of 2024. I now feel like that was a bit naff so on a new account, I'm going to get them again legitimately. These games are all the PS5 versions of: Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil 3 Remake, Resident Evil 7 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Second and Last (The RE2/RE3 article didn’t work out as I didn’t note 2 enough and didn’t actually beat 3) is Resident Evil 7. It is Spooky season, after all.
Stage 1: Heading South
The trophies come thick and fast in this first playthrough. Starting the game and taking control of Ethan confirms that ‘She’s Alive’. A little further on is a burning pile of Mia’s stuff, inspecting it gets the player ‘A-ha!’ First 5 minutes and we’re two trophies down.
A big part of the game is playing through video tapes and experiencing a different characters story, usually to inform something Ethan has to do. In this case, it’s the Sewer Gators. This tape is unique as it locks access to one of the ‘Antique Coins’, the main collectible in the game. In the tape, you have to unlock a drawer for Ethan to open to find a coin. I progressed too far in the tape and I had to restart tape to find the lockpick (which is behind you as you spawn). Unlocking the drawer earns you series staple title: ‘Master of Unlocking’. Following some gratuitous domestic violence and a gun vs chainsaw, Mia is down and Jack warps space time to deck Ethan one. ‘Welcome to the Family, Son’, indeed.
The start of Resident Evil 7 is one of the series best - thematic and great at introducing the concepts. RIP, Deputy. Before leaving for the Main House proper, we returned to the save room to stab a gaudy looking bobble head, one Mr Everywhere. You better believe ‘He’s Here, He’s There, He’s Everywhere’ as you can find two before the tutorial one. Now that Jack is seemingly dead, we get to explore the Main House. While there’s no chance of a quick billiards game in the Recreation room, there is another tape for us to try. Titled Mia, it shows what happened to Mia after we shot her in the head and Jack kidnapped us. Mia’s tape is a stealth mission around the old house and there’s a trophy for completing it without never being seen. A complete failing in my directional listening skills cost the first attempt but it was smooth sailing on the second. ‘Can’t Catch Me', Mrs B! Seeing a nasty looking bath just means you’ll have to empty it and doing so gives you the wood carving you need to progress. It also means that Jack is back, baby. Heading back downtairs to the shadow plinth, you can certainly try and put something that isn’t the wood carving on - it won’t work but the game ackowldegs it with a well meaning ‘Nice Try’ for your efforts. It’s not long after where you’ll encounter your first of the main enemy variant in the game, the Molded. So scary, you’ll throw your ‘Arms in the Air’ and also discover how effective this block is. Things are wrapping up in the main house with our second fight against Jack Baker. Make sure to crouch beneath Jack’s wild swings to continue living as well as ‘Duck If You Love Life’ as a fun little bonus. Beating Jack and reuniting the three dog heads and let us into the yard but ‘You Ain’t Gettin’ Away’ just yet. The trailer in the yard is the ‘main’ save room in the game and accidentally shutting the door when I tried to leave left people wondering what happens ‘Behind Closed Doors’.
There’s another double bill when we reach the Old House, stomping ground of Marguerite. ‘Things Got Personal’ between me and a giant bug count with things ending in just one knife swing. It’s true what they say, ‘Less is More’ when a shotgun blast at the various insect hives is a valid way of killing two enemies with one shot. A little more exploration and we found a backpack for more inventory space meaning all of our extra weapons like our flamethrower was ‘In the Bag’. With the power of save resetting, I can dump a massive amount of ammo into Marge and say ‘Back Off, Mrs. B!’ to send her scuttling away. Sadly we can’t progress without the Lantern so Marguerite needs to be exterminated. Clearing one of the doors of spiders inhabiting it with my knife had me saying ‘Slash Slash, Slashity Slash’ (No it didn’t). Not much else to say, Marguerite goes down and we retrieve the D-Series Arm from her secret stash before escaping. As they say, ‘The Grave Will Out the Truth’.
Lucas Baker is next on the list here and admittedly my notes are a little sporadic for this section. At some point in the old house I used Psychostimulants for the first time which really helps ‘Open Your Eyes’. Mixing all combinations of chem fluid and other items will surely earn you ‘1st Place at the Science Fair’
The final optional tape in the game is the ‘Happy Birthday’ tape found up in the attic accessed from Lucas’ room. It’s the last hoorah for Clancy who has taken a real beating since finding his way onto the Baker property. I played through once for practice and again, beating it so fast I was ‘Out Before Dessert’. There’s not much to report here other than another Jack fight but we do have to decide whether we choose to save Mia or Zoe with our sole remaining antidote. We chose Zoe this time around since choosing Mia will be faster for our speedrun next playthrough. Regardless of who you choose, ‘You Better Start Running’.
Once upon a time I would have said the games quality drops off a cliff when you reach the derelict ship and while I still think it’s not very fun at all. The whole thing is split into two - the flashback on the tape and the modern day. The tape in the ship is the only mandatory one but since we’ve played the optional ones too, it’s in our best interest to ‘Be Kind, Please Rewind’. The last of the antique coins is on the ship (which I annoyingly missed and had to restart a hefty checkpoint). All those coins? ‘Pelicans in your Pocket’. Coming off the ship, we’re heading ‘Into the Depths’ of the Salt Mines for the games final act.
The first order of business is making sure one of the Molded gets a mouthful of a remote bomb since I couldn’t get it to work with Mia. There’s plenty of Molded here at the start and provided I hadn’t blown his head off, I’m sure the Molded would have said ‘That’s a Spicy Meat-a-ball’ (I’d love to know how this joke translates into other languages). Our collectible hunting bears fruit in the Salt Mines, turning Mr Everywhere into ‘Mr Nowhere’ and finding out ‘The Devil is in the Details’ thanks to all the notes we’ve had to read.
The Salt Mines leads back to the Baker House and there’s nothing left to do but to beat Eveline, which is really quite easy. I’m not sure about ‘Playing it Safe’ but beating the game on Easy and Normal means ‘The Nightmare’s Finally Over’. As for Mia? Well, she’s ‘Just a Memory Now’.
One playthrough down, 30 trophies obtained. We still need another two playthroughs for the remaining 8 but it should be pretty easy.
Stage 2: Tripling Up
(This section was written before the first one where I tried to weave the trophy names into the writing so this is a bit more clinical sounding).
For this second run, there's three trophies we can get as well as the other ending. These are 'Just Get Me Outta Here' for beating the game in 4 hours, 'Resource Manager' for not opening the item box more than 3 times and 'Walk it Off' for only using 3 or less healing items. Doing all three of these in the same run is pretty easy, especially if you play on Easy.
With only my first run as practice (and prior knowledge), I managed to get a 2:51:31 IGT run while still making some mistakes and doing things I probably didn't need to. While I was in the area, I reset the Marguerite fight a few times to get 'Fly Swatter' for knocking the boss out of the air when she leaps. I did get it but obviously reset the timer.
‘Resource Manager’ is a bit of a trick since it specifies only 3 box usages but you NEED to use all three of them to progress – emptying your inventory for the Happy Birthday trial, gathering your stuff afterwards to progress to Jack 3 and finally getting your gear back as Ethan after the ship. The challenge then is to balance everything you need to carry – while there are two inventory upgrades that give you 4 spaces apiece, you can't discard the three keys when you're done with them. There's also the Crank and D-Series Arm. As for weapons, anything other than the pistol takes us two spaces. You can back track all the way from pre Jack 3 to the start of the game if you want but honestly, doing this run even on time limited isn't too bad at all. Playing on Easy certainly helps.
Playing on Easy helps with ‘Walk it Off’ but you can't play too recklessly. I used two of my three heals. I don't remember where I used my first but the second was during the Marg fight. The secret to succeeding here is making use of the Steroids – there's (at least? Total of?) 3 that fully heal you and don't count towards the total. Strong First Aid also only counts as 1 heal rather than 2. Finally there's designated spots where you'll get healed – Post Mia and Post Ship. All that in mind, no healing is pretty easy.
Finally, we got the other ending we needed – Ending A which is faster for the speed run. Doing this ending means there's no Mia fight at the end of the ship (Not that it was that long in the normal run). Completing Ending A gets us 'End of the Night'.
Stage 3: Mold Remover
I really do love the Madhouse difficulty of this game, at least the extra options at the start. Using the bonus items earned from doing the previous runs is almost a necessity here because the game can be tough with them, probably madness inducing without them. There’s not much I can talk about here so instead I’m going to highlight the difficulty points
The first fight with Mia in the Attic took 8 or so attempts. You don’t have your bonus items at this point so it’s just your skills. It took until maybe attempt 5? 6? before I realised blocking with the axe is a perfect block which certainly helped. Even then, roughly 13 or 14 of your 20 available pistol ammo have to be headshots to proceed so this is a real skill check for Madhouse.
Next hurdle was very soon afterwards was navigating around Jack just after dinner. On Madhouse, his speed is increased to a comical degree so you can’tjust do what you do in Normal - run up, grab the key, and get out. I’m not sure which attempt the successful one was but I know one of them resulted in Ethan getting his leg chopped off (I’m surprised this isn’t a mandatory scene honestly).
Heading into the Processing Plant beneath the house, I quickly found out that despite having the Circle Saw that deletes enemies, the Molded can still wombo combo you from full health to dead in seconds, even with the bonus items.
The double Fat Molded fight in the barn was a little challenge because for whatever reason I just chose not to pick up the Shotgun and couldn’t be bothered going back. A couple bad attempts led me to relent and just pick up my Grenade Launcher and use the minimal ammo I had to eke out a win.
My final note pertains to the Salt Mines. In the final rush where Eveline tries to kill you, I ran past everything as is standard. My first attempt was halted by a Fat Molded before I was expecting him and the second I think was just poor movement. The third try and the fight against the Fat Molded duo wasn’t actually too bad at all.
Proceeding into the Baker estate for the last time, the final antique coin we needed was collected and it’s true, I did have ‘Mad Pelicans’. I did actually die against Eveline in her second phase by fumbling through some of my weapons that didn’t have ammo. The second time around we really got to ask ‘Who’s Your Daddy Now?’.
With all said and done, the platinum is ours. We are well and truly… ‘Biosplattered’. Total playtime for the Platinum was ‘17:30’ which is two hours better than my original run. Not bad at all.
While not a long journey, my quest to redeem myself of Platinum fraud is complete. While Resident Evil 2 didn’t get an article (and I need to go back for RE3), I’m really glad I went back to get these legitimately as well as documenting it. While there’s no more of these bonus Platinum articles, The Platinum Road will continue on our quest to 250 (or 251) and beyond! As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!
