Overview:
- Estimated trophy difficulty: 6/10 Difficulty Rating Thread
- Offline: 12 (7, 4, 1)
- Online: 0
- Approximate amount of time to 100%: 10-20 hours
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: N/A
- Number of missable trophies: 0
- Glitched trophies: none
- Does difficulty affect trophies?: N/A
- Do cheat codes disable trophies?: N/A
- Special peripherals needed?: no
Introduction: Crazy Machines Elements is a puzzle game that revolves around completing Rube Goldberg style machines, much like the old "The Incredible Machine" franchise. It has 110 puzzles where you must use a specific set of parts to finish a machine, 20 challenge puzzles where almost nothing is on the board and you must assemble most of the machine yourself from a greater selection of parts, and an editor that allows you to build (but sadly, not share) your own puzzles. All of the puzzles and challenges must be completed for 100%, and you will have to fulfill some specific scenarios in the editor as well.
How difficult you actually find this game will depend on whether or not you use the guide for every puzzle or try to figure it out on your own first. If you just use the puzzle solutions right away, you'll probably find that this game rates more in the 2 or 3 out of 10 range. If you decide to try things on your own first, you'll find that the rating will be a bit higher depending on how good you are at problem solving.
There are no "playthroughs" and no missable trophies. This game has no campaign mode or anything that would need to be replayed from the start. When you first play, you'll have access to a few easy puzzles, and as you complete them, you unlock more puzzles and other gameplay modes, such as the challenges and the editor. Once you've unlocked something, you can go back to it and play it as many times as you want.
The overview makes note that no special peripherals. The game supports, but does not require, Playstation Move. If you have Move, you can use the Motion controller (that's the one with the giant glowing ball on the end) to control the game instead of a standard Dualshock 3 controller if you wish. I only noticed four major difference between the two controllers:
- While using the Dualshock, the selection cursor sometimes randomly jumps around when you're in the inventory trying to select a part, which can be a minor annoyance. The Move controller does not have this problem; the cursor goes to wherever you're pointing at on the screen and doesn't jump around.
- The Dualshock uses the and buttons for rotating parts around, and you can tap them slowly to get precise angles easily. The Move controller requires you to rotate the controller as if you were twisting a doorknob to rotate parts. The only way to get precise angles is to rotate slowly, and even then, I personally found it to be less precise than the Dualshock. This usually only comes into play when you're dealing with lasers and have to set up mirrors to direct the laser beam around the level, and in these instances, the Dualshock's ease of picking a precise angle is a huge plus over the Move.
- The Dualshock allows use of for slower, more accurate placement of parts in addition to being able to use to quickly move across the screen. The Move controller once again can only get slower movements if you move the controller as slowly as possible. The dpad will be preferable in many puzzles where pieces have to be in exactly the right spots in order for the machine to work.
- With the Dualshock, you zoom in by using and . With the Move controller, you have to hold down and then move the controller closer to or farther away from the screen. Zooming with the Move controller can be awkward.
Overall, I recommend the Dualshock. One minor annoyance that barely hinders gameplay and three fairly large advantages that come into play when needed. No matter what controller you use, however, the controls are always displayed along the bottom of the screen for your convenience, so feel free to switch between the two as you like until you find your preference as you won't need to do the tutorials twice to learn each set of controls.
Step 1: Play and complete Puzzle mode. There are 110 puzzles. Along the way, you'll unlock access to the Editor and later the Challenges, but stick with the puzzles until you complete them as it will help you get better at the game. Keep at it until you also get all the Bonus Nuts and unlock the Perfect Puzzler trophy.
Step 2: Go for all the Editor related trophies (Builder, Creator, Pyrotechnician, Fastest Counter, Candlelight, Twin Shot, and Weatherman). At this point, you should have both unlocked the Editor itself and the Collector trophy, meaning you'll have access to all the parts and should have no problem either using the solutions in the guide or coming up with your own.
Step 3: Complete Challenge mode. There are 20 challenges, and by this point, you should have a pretty good handle on how the game works, making this a bit easier. See Challenger in the guide if you need assistance.
[PS3T Would Like to Thank mjc0961 for this Roadmap]