Friday 15 March 2024

DLC #178 - The Last of Us - Left Behind

It took a while, but we finally got round to some Single Player expansion content for the Last of Us. After my experiences with this game, here are some things I hoped I wouldn't see;

Collectibles, Optional Conversations, Missable trophies. We get all 3 here.

For this reason, I didn't play through Left Behind blind. I just didn't really want to play an expansion multiple times, for a game that took me almost 4 playthroughs to Platinum. That isn't a testament against the quality of the game, I just feel like I've exhausted it by this point.

Left Behind serves the purpose of adding some backstory and character development to Ellie, after your brief cameo with her during the main game. It isn't a very long experience, and you can tie everything up, including all 10 trophies, within a couple of hours.

You run the majority of the episode alongside Riley, Ellie's friend, who is also actually a Firefly, playing off a very clear conflict of interest dynamic between the two. There are arguments between them, but also obvious indications they are still great friends. If you were playing through this episode without any context, you'd be forgiven for believing that you were actually playing through some sort of demonstration of the game. 

The episode looks like it merges 2 different parts of the wider story together, and you play them out in parallel to one another. For the most part, you stroll through an abandoned mall at a leisurely pace, exploring the various corners of it, portraying the innocence of a couple of kids just having a bit of fun and games. The other part is direct from the main story, taken from the moment in the game where Joel is desperate for medial support after piercing his body through a stake, and Ellie is attempting to find some first aid to assist. This is where the odd combat encounter is thrown in, just to briefly remind you of the reality of what the Last of Us has always been - A survival horror game. Combat only makes up around 20% of the episode, where the rest is focused on just exploration, which is where it gives me the vibe of feeling like a demonstration. It was short, sharp and to the point, which is exactly what I wanted, and I felt the way it told 2 different stories from within the same environment to be very well executed.

There are 10 trophies added, and these can all be achieved within the roughly 2 hours you'll spend playing through the episode. You can earn 4 difficulty-related stackable trophies if you beat the episode on Survivor difficulty, which is already available from the outset, so there is no need to play through to unlock it like you had to do with the main game. The low emphasis on combat also helps here.

There are a series of missable trophies for the variety of interactions you have with Riley, whereby you have to win a series of different games, else you'll need to replay the episode should you lose. The same goes for the collectibles and optional conversations, which again, have trophies attached to them. I was at a point with this game whereby I didn't want to take any risks of missing something silly, so referenced a guide throughout as I went along. I never spoil anything here, but despite it's briefness, the episode does reveal a fairly significant link back to a major plot point within the main game.

Left Behind didn't exactly bring the game to new levels, but it was a nice punctuation to what was one of my favourite games within the Playstation 4 era. I'll look forward to Part II.

Monday 4 March 2024

Platinum #129 - Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

It took a while, but Crash Bandicoot finally made it's presence known on latter generation consoles.

It began with the N.Sane Trilogy back in 2017. Not just a remake collection for the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games released on the Playstation 1, but also the catalyst for 2 brand new additions to the franchise in Crash Bandicoot 4 : It's About Time and Crash Team Rumble. Before both of these hit the timeline though, there was another remake.

Originally released in 1999, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is the remake of Crash Team Racing, a spin-off to the series that sees characters from the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games race around an assortment of exotic locations and tracks.

It's an excellent remake, full of nostalgia for those who recall playing the original title. It stays true to the original in every sense of the word, whilst taking the necessary leaps in refreshing, modernising and enhancing the game to be fit for the present day. The balance is absolutely spot on.

It contains most of the main game modes you could experience in the original. The Adventure mode is back, and plays a significant part within the quest towards the Platinum trophy, and you can still use Arcade, Battle and Versus mode to create your own races/events to stretch your imagination a bit further afield. The new additions also include Ring Rally mode and a fully fledged Online Multiplayer offering, though there wasn't any incentive within the trophy list to explore much of the newly added modes.

The gameplay sticks to the same formula that made it so fun in the 90's. Races typically contain a field of 8 racers, and the chaos is present in abundance as you pick up power-ups to use against your opponents to get the upper hand. It will demand a fairly high level of mastery if you want the Platinum trophy, but if you're just simply looking to relive the fun, it's also still true to it's pick up and play roots.

The environments are vast, colourful and bursting with personality, and the tracks range from simple to complex, with loads of hidden secrets and shortcuts scattered throughout. These elements of the game are the biggest beneficiary of the enhanced console power, finally allowing the landscapes to pop with vibrancy and really bring them to life - From Piranha plants ready to chew you up if you get too close on Papu's Pyramid, to Seals skating across the ice to stifle you on Blizzard's Bluff. It's a real treat to see such an iconic game get the remake treatment and it was a pleasure to get the chance to go through such a timeless classic all over again.

In regards to the trophy list, there are 48 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy. Despite having a fully fledged Multiplayer offering this time around, this list is purely a Single Player experience, with all trophies spread across the game's various Single Player game modes.

The trophies are distributed well, encouraging the player to focus on the total package the entire game offers. The Adventure mode, Time Trial mode and Arcade Mode are all shown some love, but the trophy list does show an obvious bias towards the Adventure mode, so that's where we'll start here.

The "Galaxy's Fastest" trophy, awarded for Defeating Nitros Oxide in the Adventure Mode once and for all, requires you to effectively reach 100% in the Adventure Mode.

This includes meeting the following requirements; Winning all 16 main races, Beating each of the 4 Boss races to earn all 4 Gold keys, Obtaining all 18 time trial relics and Earning all 20 CTR Tokens. Once you've done all this, you'll unlock the ability to race Nitros Oxide one final time, and in turn, unlock this trophy. It doesn't seem like alot to get through, and in all fairness, it's not, but this was a bit of a funky journey, which I'll explain from start to finish, by firstly touching upon another specific trophy.

The "Yeee HAW!" trophy, awarded for Completing the Adventure Mode on the Hard difficulty, is where I originally attempted to start my progress towards the previously aforementioned "Galaxy's Fastest" trophy, but I eventually stumbled into an unforeseen issue which meant I had to find an alternate route towards the Platinum. I'll expand on that later, but whilst we're here, there are vital things to mention about hard difficulty in this game.

Firstly, this IS the true definition of hard. I've played through many games that promote their hardest difficulty level, and it ends up providing an experience that does not meet the advertised expectations. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is not one of those games, and there are two main factors that drive it's difficulty.

Firstly, you have to master the drift mechanic to perfection. The AI on the hardest difficulty level will smoke you if you don't consistently maximise top speed, and you can only do this through perfecting the art of drift boosting. To drift boost, you need to execute a drift, and when the drift bar reaches the top, you need to tap the shoulder button to boost at the exact peak of the bar. This will maximise the boost time, but if you miss it, you'll fail the motion. You can do this up to 3 times per drift, and you can't afford to drop your inputs at any point if you want to maintain a good enough pace to win most races. You will need to consistently do this throughout the whole race to give yourself a chance at winning. It's easy to perform as second nature once you've nailed the technique, but it has a steep learning curve and is difficult to master.

Secondly, this game has some of the most criminal rubber-banding I've experienced in any game. Racing games can be notorious for this, but I honestly believe CTR has some of the worst. You can perfectly drift boost for the entirety of a race, maintain the lead throughout, and then suddenly get overtaken at the finish line seemingly out of nowhere and end up losing. Or perhaps you'll get hit with the worst timed power-up, struggle to recover and then never gain first place back as the AI just develops a massive lead over you that quickly becomes insurmountable. 

Races are mostly won purely on luck, and rarely seem to actually be determined on skill, which seems incredibly backwards for a game that requires you to master a really tough game mechanic to overcome it's most challenging difficulty level, just to make it almost pointless to success. Sometimes I would play out a perfect race and still lose. Other times I would underperform, yet still win. It never really made any sense, and I just accepted I was completely at the mercy of the game and my progress was always driven by how kind the rubber-banding wanted to be to me.

It's a frustrating experience, especially given how much importance the game puts onto understanding the drift boost mechanic. Why expect me to put hours into perfecting an art when my success is just going to be determined by RNG anyway? It is easily my biggest criticism of the game.

This means there's quite the sense of relief reaching the end, but the problem was, I hadn't quite reached the end yet. I outlined the requirements above for reaching 100% and having the opportunity to defeat Nitros Oxide a second time, and this involves earning all CTR Tokens in order to unlock the Gem Cups and then beat those too, but this is where I became unstuck.

CTR Tokens are awarded for beating all 16 races again, whilst collecting the letters "CTR" hidden around the track, and they'll only count if you also win the race, which is where the catch lies. Races are tough enough to win on the hardest difficulty as it is - Then the game wants you to go out of your way to collect these letters whilst still somehow notching up a win. I quickly found this just way too demanding, and had to make a decision.

The decision was to drop a difficulty level down to medium and go through the whole game again, beating every race, and then cleaning-up on the CTR Tokens, Time Relics and winning all the Gem Cups on medium difficulty, which would help me acquire a number of additional trophies. This then finally allowed me to reach 100% completion and beat Nitros Oxide again for the "Galaxy's Fastest" trophy.

Beating the game on Hard difficulty should have been the end of the frustrations I'd experienced with Adventure Mode, but despite it being a complete cake-walk on Medium difficulty, to have to sink more additional time into a game that I should have had been able to just clean-up in the same way you would with any post-game content, was disappointing. This also had a knock-on impact with the Time Trials.

The "Gasmoxian Slug" trophy, awarded for Beating all of Nitros Oxide's times in Time Trial Mode, is arguably a more challenging feat than beating the Adventure Mode on Hard difficulty, and that's a big claim.

However, where the Adventure Mode puts you at the mercy of game mechanics that are mostly out of your control, the Time Trial Mode is much more heavily dependent on the players skill, and this is really where the mastery of the drift-boost technique comes to the fore.

Firstly, there are 31 tracks you'll need to beat Nitros Oxide's time on to achieve this trophy, and there is a necessity to complete 3 runs of each track in order to accomplish this. You'll need to post any time onto the leaderboard, which will subsequently unlock N Trophy's Time Trial, and you'll then need to also beat that in order to unlock Nitros Oxide's Time Trial, and then subsequently beat that too. So that's 31 tracks times by 3 runs per track, meaning you'll need to post a minimum of 93 Time Trial runs, and that is purely under the assumption you're going to do it within the minimum required number of attempts. You're not though.

Nitros Oxide is ridiculously quick, and you'll look at some of the times compared to what you may have already posted and wonder how on earth you're going to beat them all. Compared to N Trophy, he takes all the shortcuts, does not make mistakes and avoids all the track hazards - making his runs almost immaculate. That's the biggest difference between both sets of Time Trials.

The largest advantage you'll have is that you should have mastered the drift-boost mechanic, as you'll hopefully have beaten the Adventure Mode on Hard difficulty by this point. It's not a guarantee, but you'd like to think this is where most people would have naturally started. The biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone with this Platinum is to go into the Adventure Mode first, in order to prepare specifically for the Time Trials.

It's a fairly standard expectation with any Time Trial Mode that you may have to rely on persistence and copious amounts of trial and error, and never were those words truer spoken than they are right here. Some actually aren't too bad, but most of them require a perfected level of understanding on how to drift-boost and chaining these together in seamless manner. Any minor mistake or let up in momentum is more than likely a run-ender, and you'll need to be prepared to miss out by fine margins of times on many of these tracks. It is a task that really will make you suffer, and is the peak of testing the skills you've learnt from playing through this game.

Adventure Mode was tough, but tough for very different reasons. Nitros Oxide's Time Trials will genuinely push the limits of your skill, and creates a modest challenge that requires practice and patience. It's not just about how well you've managed to master the drift-boost mechanic, but also how well you've remembered the track layouts, where their shortcuts are and always making sure you can still avoid hazards whilst travelling at speed.

Just a final note on the Time Trials. Another part to having to run through the game again on another playthrough was the fact I also had to revisit and beat all the N Trophy Time Trials. This was due to the "Is everyone here?" trophy, which is awarded for Unlocking all characters from the original roster. You have to beat the Purple Gem Cup to unlock Fake Crash, which requires the collection of CTR Tokens - Something I've already explained couldn't be done on the hardest difficulty. However, you'll also need to unlock N Trophy, which requires you to beat him in all Time Trials. This meant repeating this feat over as part of earning this trophy separately, creating even more re-work than anticipated.

The rest of the list isn't too difficult outside of this. Adventure Mode will throw alot of progression-based trophies at you, as you defeat all the bosses, use the power-ups in certain ways and discover all the secrets of the variety of tracks you'll race on. The other modes outside of Adventure and Time Trial will require some minor dabbling at most, and should make for some light clean up.

However, the overall challenge presented is a steep one, and there are 2 distinctly different experiences at play for you to contend with. The Adventure Mode will often make you feel helpless towards the influence of your own progress, through it's awful AI rubber-banding and the Time Trial Mode is a genuine test of the skills you've acquired and will push these to their highest limits. This naturally sets the difficulty rating well above the average, but you have to also account for the extra effort required by beating the Adventure Mode for a second time, as well as the N Trophy Time Trials, which added a reasonable amount of time on top.

As an overall time estimation, I would say this probably sits within the 35-40 hour range, though this will largely depend on your luck within the Adventure Mode and how well you can get to grips with the demanding nature of the Time Trials. Either way, it's certainly the most challenging Crash Bandicoot title to date, easily surpassing anything presented within the Crash Trilogy.

Notable Trophies -

Yeee HAW! - Complete the Adventure Mode on the Hard difficulty.
Galaxy's Fastest - Defeat Nitros Oxide in Adventure Mode once and for all.
Gasmoxian Slug - Beat all of Nitros Oxide's times in Time Trial Mode.

Hardest Trophy -



Gasmoxian Slug
Beat all of Nitros Oxide's times in Time Trial Mode

Wednesday 21 February 2024

Platinum #128 - Far Cry 4

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Granted, it's been over 10 years since I achieved the Far Cry 3 Platinum trophy, but I honestly don't remember a single thing about it. That could say more about me than it does the game, but after now also adding Far Cry 4 to the collection, and being completely underwhelmed by what is ultimately a very generic and average FPS game, I'm a bit more confident that it wasn't just me.

Far Cry 4 is set in the fictional country of Kyrat, located within the Himalayan mountains, where you control Ajay Khale, who returns to the country after the death of his mother to honour her last wish of having her ashes scattered there. A completely different location, main protagonist and plot to Far Cry 3.

The visit is abruptly interrupted by a group of soldiers who ambush the bus Ajay is travelling in, which turns out to be the soldiers of Pagan Min's army - the King of Kyrat. Spoiler alert, but it turns out that he isn't a very pleasant individual, which is something you come to the realisation of fairly quickly when you're kidnapped and taken away. Thankfully, you're assisted in your escape by Sabal, the leader of a local faction called the Golden Path, who are attempting to fight back against Pagan Min's Royal Army, for the freedom of Kyrat.

You're roped into fighting the Golden Path's cause against Pagan Min, on behalf of Sabal and his people, which leads you through a string of missions to take down the influential leaders of Kyrat, before eventually reaching Pagan Min himself.

I just want to make the key point clear early - I don't necessarily dislike Far Cry 4. I just think there is little that excels about it, and as a consequence of this, it provides a very average experience that does little to make it stand out from any other FPS that sits out there. This is probably the exact same reason I don't remember anything about Far Cry 3.

Many of the games ideas are just things you've more than likely seen replicated if you've played other FPS games before. It uses a Skill Tree system for character development, the combat is very run of the mill, but feels clunky and slow and the open world environment is crammed with a ton of copy and paste side activities that do nothing more other than to artificially pad the game with content.

As a prime example, if you want to reveal more of the map, and discover further locations, you'll need to sabotage the most local communications tower. Each time you want to reveal another portion of the map, you'll need to do the exact same thing again, then again, then again. It's just uninspiring, dull and lazy, and I know this isn't exactly a modern game anymore, but it's a sin that many are still guilty of, and Far Cry 4 is one of them. The rinse and repeat vibe to the various side activities is rife throughout the game, and I hate it when open world games do this. If you're going to be brave enough to be a sandbox game, then make sure the content is strong enough to compliment it in the proper way.

I also don't feel the environment is maximised to it's full potential either. Buildings and structures all just look the same. Internal cave systems, Radio towers, Outposts and Fortresses all suffer the same copy and paste feel that plagues the side activities. There are a couple of unique places here and there, but the game definitely cuts corners on it's attention to detail in a way that doesn't meet acceptable standards of open world games, which are meant to be vast and diverse, with different things everywhere you look. The beauty of open world games is never quite knowing what you might see when you explore, and this just becomes far too predictable and devoid of surprise.

Even the Story is fairly predictable and doesn't pull out too many shocks. In fact, one of the best things the game does is ensure that the trophy list doesn't demand too much from the player. There is alot of content, and this would have been an horrific grind if they insisted you finished the lot, so I'll give a little bit of credit under the assumption this was deliberate and they didn't want you to suffer for the Platinum Trophy.

The trophy list itself contains 51 trophies, mostly weighted towards the Single Player Story, with a very small scattering accommodating the game's Multiplayer.

The "The King Is Dead" trophy, awarded for Deciding Pagan Min's fate, requires the player to reach the end of the Story, which concludes after 34 main missions.

There are no difficulty-sensitive trophies, nor is there a necessity to play through this game multiple times in order to achieve the Platinum trophy. I opted to play on Hard difficulty, which is the highest difficulty setting in the game, and still did not feel like this game presented a reasonable challenge at any point. You can lose health fairly quickly in some situations, particularly those that are more combat-centric, but the penalty for death is limited, and becomes somewhat inconsequential, due to the fact you'll always restart from the last checkpoint, which are generous and plentiful. You can also consistently heal without the requirement for healing items - These will heal you quicker and more extensively if you have them in your inventory, but you can always recover health to a minimum capacity via self-healing methods, which are unlimited in any situation.

The Story is very linear, and the missions aren't exactly wildly different to one another. There are a handful of forks in the Story arc where you're asked to make a choice that sides with either Sabal or Amita, who are both vying to become leader of the Golden Path, but the only purpose the decisions from these choices serve is the specific mission you subsequently play out, and you end up at the same ending regardless, which merely gives the illusion of choice, rather than any of the decisions you make at critical points having a genuine influence on the outcome of the Story.

You can beat all 34 Story missions within around 15-20 hours, which is a fairly standard length for a Single Player Story, and there are 5 progression-based trophies to unlock at specific intervals along the way, mostly for defeating certain key figures you'll also be required to eliminate on the path towards Pagan Min. Some people will have had to beat this game on more than one occasion, which I'll explain more on shortly, but thankfully, that wasn't me.

The "Fully Loaded" trophy, awarded for Learning all skills, requires the player to max out the Character Skill tree, which will extend into the post-game content beyond the main Story. 

Each time you level up, you'll be awarded a point to use in order to acquire a range of different skills for Ajay. The Skill tree is split into the Tiger and Elephant path - The Tiger path is more focused on combat, and the Elephant path moreso on healing, strength and motor abilities. Both paths are to be fully upgraded to fulfil the obligation of this trophy, and this will require a total of 74 points, which is alot.

The majority of the 48 different skills only require 1 point to unlock, but for some reason, there are 4 skills on the Elephant path that have 10 cumulative levels to them, and therefore, cost a total of 40 of these points alone. Thankfully, there is a nice, quick grinding method you can use on one of the fortresses that will net you high amounts of experience points at a fast rate, in order to obtain these skill points relatively quickly. This would otherwise be a colossal grind to stomach, bouncing around the different side activities, which would have dragged the game to new levels of monotony and tedium.

This trophy is also widely reported as glitched, with a number of people claiming that you can obtain all the Skills to their highest level, and still not unlock the trophy. The only remedy is to restart the game from scratch and play through it all over again. This was what I was referring to earlier when I said that some people may have had to play through this game more than once, but this luckily never happened to me. It would have easily been worth an extra point (at least) onto the overall difficulty rating had I been to required to go through such a dull experience all over again.

Outside of this, there isn't really much worth noting in terms of individual trophies. The majority of the rest of the list is very numbers-rich. Collectibles make up a small handful of trophies, but you won't be required to grab them all and there are loads of cumulative trophies based around kills in a specific manner, crafting a certain number of items and completing the different array of side quests scattered around the map. 

If the developers had made the decision to go in hard on this trophy list, it would have had some serious grind potential behind it. There are alot of things to do in this game, and they're all tracked extremely thoroughly within the progress menu, which you can access at any time. However, the only activity that requires you to progress all the way through to obtain a trophy is liberating all outposts, of which there are 24 in total. Even that alone was enough for me to decide that I'd sampled enough of the extra-curricular this game has to offer, and everything else will only make you go half-way maximum for a trophy. If this was a conscious decision through deliberate choice, it's a sensible one. The appetite for this sort of grind would be non-existent, from my point of view.

I did also mention that the game dedicates part of the list to the Multiplayer, though this only extends to 2 trophies, and they're both achievable within less than an hour's worth of play. Dabbling in the map editor and sampling each of the Multiplayer game modes are simple activities that can be completed without too much hassle. They're so quick, I can't even give any substantial thoughts on the Multiplayer portion of the game.

If you like low-hanging fruit, Far Cry 4 is a very favourable option. This is a short Platinum trophy, clocking in at just over 26 hours, according to my save file. There is no necessity to play this game up to a specified difficulty level, you can leave large chunks of the game's side activities on the table if you're only looking to earn trophies and there's nothing grindy or strenuous to contend with. It checks a lot of boxes for a game that qualifies on the comfortably below average range of the difficulty scale.

When I looked at the options for picking out the hardest trophy, I genuinely found it hard to call. Not because it's a difficult choice, but because I'm sitting here wondering how I justify either of them. I think that's an apt summarisation.

Notable Trophies -

The King Is Dead - Decide Pagan Min's fate.
Fully Loaded - Learn all skills.

Hardest Trophy -



Fully Loaded
Learn all skills

Friday 9 February 2024

Platinum #127 - The Last of Us

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

Upon beating the Grounded Mode DLC back in May 2022, I said I would refrain from talking about the overall experience of The Last of Us, specifically to save it for this moment. So here we are - 4 playthroughs and almost 2 years later - We can finally discuss The Last of Us in earnest.

The Last of Us is set in post-Apocalyptic United States - Ravaged by an infectious disease converting the population into hordes of infected.

Taking place 20 years on from foretold events at the beginning of the game, which see Joel, who you play as the main protagonist, lose his daughter to a police command to open fire on them under the premise of leaving no doubt when dealing with the original outbreak.

Upon tracking down an arms dealer to discover the whereabouts of a missing weapons cache, they discover the cache has been sold to a local faction called the Fireflies, who will only give it back under the condition that Joel delivers Ellie to a group of Fireflies across the city awaiting her arrival at a local hospital.

Unbeknownst to Joel at the time, he later discovers that Ellie is infected, but resistant to the disease, and the reason she is being trafficked by Joel is to undergo an operation to extract her brain in order to harvest a cure for the infection.

As a consequence of this, you're pulled through a tale of pure survival horror, battling through hordes of infected, local factions and humans who want to take Ellie away from Joel once it becomes common knowledge how important she is to the future of the human race.

The fluctuating tempo of the game makes the pacing completely unpredictable, keeping you on edge at all times, and contributes to a genuine roller coaster experience. You can go from traipsing through a peaceful, sunset-kissed neighbourhood to being ambushed by hordes of clickers within the space of a few minutes.

Set-pieces which involve having to sneak around a dark basement to activate a generator quietly enough to not rouse the infected and escaping a garage from a bunch of savage locals who just want you dead really encapsulate the survival horror element perfectly.

The story is excellent, and the characters are the best part about it, especially the dynamic between Joel and Ellie. You can see the mood noticeably shift between them, going from treating each other with contempt at the belief they have purely just been burdened with one another, to genuine care and emotional attachment as the realisation sets in that they have to rely on each other to survive.

The game also excels in it's graphical output, capturing a variety of different environments beautifully. Anything outside with natural lighting and landscapes is nailed to perfection, but even when you're stuck in a murky basement, the shimmer of infectious spore particles and natural light creeping in through the odd gap is still enough to leave you in awe of the attention to detail the graphics provide.

Combat is also solid, with excellent melee and gun elements blended perfectly. Death animations are brutal and full of violence, really hammering home the desperately dark undertones the game displays throughout, which are a constant reminder than you're in the thick of a survival horror game. It boasts over 200 Game of the Year awards on the box art, and you can absolutely see why.

As far as the trophies go, this is actually a fairly small list, with just 24 trophies in the base game, including the Platinum trophy. However, don't be fooled by the low volume - There's still a reasonable amount of work to put in here in order to unlock that Platinum trophy.

The list is divided between the Single Player story, which is where the vast majority of the trophies are obtained, and the Multiplayer side of the game - A team-based adventure with an interesting twist.

The "The Last of Us - Survivor +" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Survivor+, is the hardest standard to which the main list will require you to beat the story on. However, it's not technically the hardest difficulty in the game after the addition of Grounded Mode as part of the final piece of DLC released for the game.

The Story is split into 12 chapters, and will take anywhere within the region of 20-25 hours to beat.

You will need to beat the game once on any difficulty to unlock both New Game+ and Survivor difficulty level, so there is a minimum requirement to play through the game twice in order to achieve the Platinum trophy. There could be a possibility of a third playthrough, depending on your progress with upgrading weapons and obtaining collectibles, but we'll get into that later.

Survivor difficulty isn't too bad on the whole. The biggest notable difference is the fact that ammunition and resources are much more scarce than they are on lower difficulty levels, so there are portions of the game that will force you to treat it like a true survival horror, such as negotiating past certain areas through stealth alone and being ready to escape enemies that may spot and pursue you.

This doesn't necessarily make it more difficult, it just makes you change the way you play the game. You'll be able to almost run and gun on lower difficulty levels, because you'll never have to be worried about being constrained to the limitations of low resources.

Saving the limited ammunition and crafting items is crucial in Survivor difficulty, because you'll need to be conscious of the parts of the game where you'll have to fend off enemy ambushes or defeat enemies that come at you in larger quantities, so it'll certainly make you play in a smarter way that will catch you out if you don't preserve your ammo properly. It's a subtle, but critical difference.

In theory, if you beat Grounded Mode, you should be able to beat the game on Survivor, though it is important to note that I tackled Grounded Mode in a specific way that meant I avoided the limited resource challenges of the higher difficulties, and appreciate the fact that this makes a direct comparison between Survivor and Grounded somewhat difficult to make.

Upon beating the game on Survivor+, and due to the fact that all difficulty related trophies are stackable, this will mean you'll have unlocked 8 trophies, which is a third of the whole list. There are no progression-based trophies awarded at critical plot points in the story, nor for beating certain chapters, which is unusual for a Story driven game.

As a direct consequence of this, the only other elements of this trophy list cover off 2 things. Collectibles and Weapon Upgrades.

The "Scavenger" trophy, awarded for finding all collectibles, requires you to collect all 141 collectibles throughout the game. This includes all Artefacts, Comics, Firefly Pendants and Training Manuals, but not Optional Conversations, which are kept separate from this requirement.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind with the collectibles within this game;

Firstly, there is a separate trophy awarded for unlocking all Shiv doors. Shiv's are obtained in 2 ways. You can either just find them naturally lying around, or you can find the materials to craft them. Once you come across a door that requires a Shiv to be opened, if you do not possess a Shiv in your inventory to open a door, you'll be forced to leave it behind, and some of these doors possess the collectibles you need for this trophy, which makes them extremely missable. This was something I found out the hard way, so always ensure you've got at least 1 Shiv in your inventory, or at least the materials to craft one if you need to, at all times.

Secondly, whilst you're not required to collect all the collectibles in one playthrough, they do all still spawn in again during subsequent playthroughs, which makes tracking any missing collectibles a bit of a headache. If they've already been collected within a prior playthrough, they should disappear in New Game+, but they don't, which means you'll have to collect everything again, until you get the trophy, just to be sure that you don't miss anything.

You can view detail on the collectibles within the Chapter Select menu, in order to see where you've missed them. However, it's really important to bear in mind that, once you reload into a specific chapter, you'll lose all your supplement and weapon upgrades that you acquired after the point you loaded up, which are critical to both New Game+ progress, and unlocking other trophies, so this isn't a recommended approach. I just ensured I collected them all again, which obviously requires extra time, but felt like the safest way to tackle this trophy.

Collectible-based trophies of high volume are always worth noting because you have to make sure you're extra diligent when progressing through the game, but a better tracking system, or more effective Chapter Select feature, would have alleviated this task significantly.

The "For emergencies only" trophy, awarded for Fully upgrading all weapons, will require multiple playthroughs, due to the limited amount of parts you'll collect in a single playthrough.

There are 8 weapons in total to fully upgrade, and there are a couple of little nuances that could easily derail you that you should be aware of when working towards this trophy.

Firstly, aside from collecting parts scattered around the open world, you'll also need to find the 5 toolboxes. These equate to 5 levels, which will allow you full access to upgrade every part of a weapon you'll need to upgrade, so it's vital to the trophy that you also make sure you're aware of finding their locations and collecting them ideally in your first playthrough of the game. It's easy to overlook this little collectible side-quest because it doesn't have it's own trophy like the other collectibles do.

Secondly, each time you start over in New Game+, your weapon upgrades will carry over, which is exactly how you achieve this trophy. However, you won't have access to the actual weapons. You'll need to find them to access them, which in turn, will allow you to upgrade them at a workbench. I found it a little bit odd that you don't have them already in your inventory if you're playing in New Game+, but I would guess they wanted to maintain the integrity of the challenge on higher difficulties, and therefore exclude access to upgraded weapons from the start of the game.

Finally, you can only upgrade weapons at a workbench, of which there are limited opportunities to use throughout the game, so make sure you're always checking for upgrades each time you use one. Once you pass a workbench, it's gone, and you cannot freely just upgrade your weapons on the go. In theory, if you pass the final workbench in the game, and you're still missing upgrades on some weapons, you'll have to start a brand new game, so it's important to make sure you're always checking in, especially since a couple of these weapons are found very late on where you're probably only going to be able to upgrade them once at the final bench of the game.

The key thing to remember is that Shiv doors and Safes hold the most amount of parts you can obtain in one go, so as long as you always remember to open these up - and it's important because you'll find collectibles in some of them anyway - then you'll ensure that you have enough parts. It's just a matter of making sure you're conscious to the other points above, especially the understanding of workbenches.

Even after all this, and these could easily take you 3/4 full playthroughs to achieve, there's still the Multiplayer element of the game to tackle.

The Multiplayer within The Last of Us is interesting. It does something a little bit different, but with the same core formula you'd perhaps expect from a game with an emphasis on gunplay and combat. 

You - sort of - play through a story plot, where your first task is to pick a side. This choice is between the 2 main factions you encounter within the main Single Player story - The Hunters or Fireflies.

Once you've made this choice, a 12 week survival period ensues, where 1 day is equal to completing 1 Multiplayer online game, for a cumulative total of 84 matches across these 12 weeks. You are the leader of your chosen faction, and your goal is get through the 12 week period without losing your group of survivors to death and disease. 

At the start of each Multiplayer game, you'll be advised of the survival requirements, and the health of your group of survivors is purely determined by your performance within the subsequent match. If you perform well, your clan will remain healthy. If you perform badly, your clan will suffer. The concept is to get through this 12 week period with enough survivors still alive to save your clan from extinction.

There are 3 different game modes you can choose to play, which include Interrogation, Supply Raid and Survivors. I mostly played Survivors, which is an elimination style 4 v 4 game mode, split into multiple rounds, as I felt it was just the most fun, though I did dabble in Interrogation from time to time, just for a bit of variety. These following trophies are a long slog.

The "Hunter/Firefly" trophies, awarded for Completing the Hunter/Firefly journey, are the trophies that you'll work towards within the Multiplayer portion of the game.

Completing the journey for each one simply equates to surviving for the full 12 week period outlined above, and because you need to fulfil this for both factions, in order to unlock 2 different trophies, this means you'll have to go through these requirements twice. That's a total of at least 168 Multiplayer matches - If everything goes to plan.

This is where the big twist comes in. At 5 different intervals of the 12 week period, the pre-game survival requirements will potentially bring about an outcome that wipes out your entire clan population in one go if you do not meet the performance requirements within the next game. If this happens, you'll have to start over from the very beginning. Out of these 5 instances, 1 of them comes on week 11, day 6 (which would be match 77), and 1 also comes on week 12, day 4 (which would be match 82) - Both agonisingly close to the end of the 12 week period.

In the interest of balance, it's not hard to perform well enough to overcome these hurdles. You do need to seriously drop the ball to fail, but it does require preparation. At these stages when your clan is at 100% threat level, you'll be forced to achieve a certain objective to pass. Some of these objectives are more difficult than others, and there are other special events that will cause a threat to your clans population - Just not to the degree of 100%. The key is to hold out for the easier objectives when your clan threat is at 100%, and use up the harder objectives when it's a lower percentage and you can still survive the hit. Obtaining a specific number of enemy downs, or spotting a specific number of enemies were solid, easy choices for me, but you need to make sure you still have them in your pocket ready for these moments.

Outside of this, and the other thing that's important to mention here; It's long. Really long.

Even if you don't fail and are never forced to restart the campaign, it's still a total of 168 matches to go through each of the Firefly and Hunter journeys. At around 10-15 minutes per match, that equates to 50-60 hours for both combined. That's a fairly substantial grind.

I did personally find the Multiplayer element of the game a solid addition to the package. It doesn't exactly break new ground, but it's a passable experience, and this is important if it demands you to be in it for the long haul. I'm not so sure my thoughts would remain this consistent had I seen my clan wiped out at any point, but luckily, that didn't happen to me.

The multiple playthroughs of the game's story, along with a solid Multiplayer grind probably takes this to around a 80-90 hour Platinum trophy. 

You might see this figure low-balled a little bit generally, but it's important to note that there are shortcuts to make this quicker. One of these is to skip days in Multiplayer and still be able to get through the story unscathed, but I did not choose to use this method. I also had to play through the Single Player on 3 occasions - Once to enjoy the story and unlock Survivor/New Game+, a second time to beat it on Survivor and a final time to polish off any collectibles I'd missed, along with finally upgrading all weapons. I imagine most people will be will also within the 3, possibly 4 playthrough range.

The Multiplayer journey is where the challenge of the list peaks, and even that is just purely for the grind. Survivor+ isn't exactly difficult - You just have to adjust the way you approach the game, and this is a fairly straight-forward concept to understand and execute.

This makes The Last of Us a fairly average difficulty overall. Time-consuming, but ultimately providing a limited challenges that prevents it from reaching the upper ends of the difficulty scale.

Notable Trophies -

The Last of Us - Survivor+ - Complete the game on Survivor.
Scavenger - Found all collectibles.
For emergencies only - Fully upgrade all weapons.
Firefly - Complete the Firefly Journey.
Hunter - Complete the Hunter Journey.

Hardest Trophy -



Hunter
Complete the Hunter Journey

Wednesday 17 January 2024

Platinum #126 - Red Dead Redemption 2

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

There's no doubt that Rockstar are masters at what they do. Excellence is their thing, but they'll always seem to make you work for their Platinum trophies, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is no exception to the rule.

Set as a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, you take control of Arthur Morgan, a member of Dutch Van Der Linde's posse of outlaws intent on making money through whichever way possible, usually criminally, in a bid to escape the cowboy lifestyle once and for all.

Things begin to quickly spiral out of control, and the gang ends up constantly on the run from various groups intent on hunting them down, and this leads you through a thrilling tale of classic outlaw action.

Be prepared for twists, altercation around every corner, money heists and betrayal. The cast of characters are excellent, full of variety with loads of interesting personality dynamics at play, including Arthur, who is a great protagonist. Gameplay is snappy, with guns feeling punchy and authentic, with revolvers, carbines, knives and dynamite to provide huge variance in combat. 

The open world is stunning, full of different environments from rocky, snow-topped mountains, to sun-basked desert, to gloomy swamps, all bustling with a huge variety of wildlife. Dynamic weather effects and people cut from different societal backgrounds also add to the exceptional attention to detail of this vast open world. It exceeds the original in every way possible.

It's easily one of my favourite games of all time. I loved the original, and I believe this one is better, somehow managing to trump it's predecessor in every way, which had already set a high bar. Story, better. Open world, better. Characters, better. Everything is just better, even if the trophy list did make me somewhat fall out of love with it a little bit towards the end of the journey.

On this note, the game has 52 trophies in total, including the Platinum, and there is a reasonable amount of crossover within the trophy list, when compared to Red Dead Redemption.

In some areas, it follows the classic trophy template for a Rockstar game. Beat the story? Check. Obtain 100% completion? Check. Online grind? Check. It is still creative enough to keep it at least feeling fresh in that charming Rockstar way, but the core foundations are still largely at play here, with a number of familiar Rockstar-esque requirements that will ensure you're plugging hours upon hours into this trophy list.

The list is split between the Single Player and Multiplayer game modes, and we'll begin with the Single Player side of it.

Firstly, the story itself spans across 6 main chapters, and 2 additional epilogue chapters, totalling 109 missions across the game. It is a thorough story and will take a decent amount of time to beat. It's hard to say how long exactly. The combined elements of there being no in-game stats menu that tracks your game time and the constant dipping in and out of side activities makes it hard to tell how long each individual component of this game takes.

There are progression-based trophies awarded as you make it past each chapter within the story, including the "Endless Summer" gold trophy, awarded for Completing the Epilogue and reaching the conclusion. However, due to the fact this is a requirement towards the 100% completion checklist for the game, it's not really considered to be notable, though there is another task within this trophy list which is much more relevant to the story.

Firstly though, the "Best in the West" trophy, awarded for Attaining 100% completion, is classic Rockstar. Aside completing all 109 story missions, you'll also need to indulge in a host of other additional activities to reach 100% completion. Some of those are very small and not worth mentioning, but others certainly stand out. These include completing all 90 in-game challenges - A series of 10 challenges spread across 9 different disciplines, such as gambling, hunting and exploration, as well as finding a bunch of different types of collectibles and strangers to fulfil side quests for.

This will consume alot of your time, and it's mad to think you'll have still barely scratched the surface by this point. I found it made most sense to work on 100% completion straight away following on from beating the story, as you'll probably find that you can simultaneously work on some elements of the 100% checklist whilst progressing through, leaving the remainder for clean-up afterwards.

None of the individual requirements of the checklist itself are particularly challenging. The game doesn't come with set difficulty levels and only some of the higher tier challenges can be a bit of a nuisance, but most of the checklist is merely just that and hugely based on volume alone.

Sticking with the main story, the "Gold Rush" trophy, awarded for Earning 70 Gold Medals in Story missions, requires you to beat all objectives within 70 of the 109 main story missions available. When I said there was another task more relevant to the story, this is exactly what I meant.

This trophy also made an appearance within the Grand Theft Auto 5 trophy list, and it's back in Red Dead Redemption 2. I didn't put any focus into the Gold Medals when I played through the story for the first time, and when I reviewed this properly, I had only obtained 4 Gold Medals naturally, meaning I'd have to play through the vast majority of these missions again at least once - But in many instances, multiple times.

It still works exactly how it did in GTA 5. Each mission has a number of objectives you'll need to fulfil within that mission to achieve a Gold Medal. These range from just 1 to as many as 5 different objectives, and they wildly vary in both expected time of completion and difficulty. The good news is, you get a reasonable amount of leeway, as you can afford to pass up on 39 missions which will not be required for this trophy. There are a couple of catches though;

Firstly, you have to fulfil all objectives to earn Gold. So, for example, if you managed to only fulfil 4 out of 5 objectives in a particular mission, you'll only be awarded Silver and will be forced to replay the mission from scratch. There is no margin for error. This'll also apply if you die during the mission at any point, which automatically rules out the possibility of achieving Gold by default, even if you were to successfully fulfil all objectives - Something I took a handful of missions to find out.

Secondly, the progress towards objectives will only count if you achieve all of them at the same time, so you won't be able to go back into a mission and tick off anything you missed. It's all or nothing. This is particularly frustrating for lengthy missions with a time limit requirement, knowing that if you're too slow, you'll have to go back in and do the mission all over again, but I did also fail on much easier objectives at times too, so it's not even like it's always the more difficult elements of a mission that can cause problems. 

You can be methodical to an extent, and pick your way through them, but you'll be forced into tackling some of the tougher ones eventually. Despite there being a reasonable amount of leeway, 70 is still alot, and it is disappointing to complete longer missions and realise you missed a single objective, or you weren't quick enough. I don't think this is a bad way to promote replay value, but I do feel like the execution is flawed. Why does watching cutscenes still make the clock run on timed missions? Why is there not a "restart mission" option, for quick convenience? You have to either reload a previous save, or play out the mission to the end.

These things all amount to lost time, and can make this seem more frustrating than it needed to be.

The "Zoologist" trophy, awarded for Studying every animal across all states in Story Mode, is where this list truly peaks. Where everything else prior to this felt slightly grindy, but still gave me a reasonable sense of fulfilment and enjoyment, this is where this list halted that dead in it's tracks. When I said at the top of the piece there were elements of this list that made me slightly fall out of love with this game, this is exactly what I was referring to.

For this trophy, you'll need to find 152 different variations of animals, and study them via your binoculars to complete the animal compendium, and it is the ultimate test of trial and error.

Natural progression through the game will probably have seen you through a reasonable portion of these, and intel from others on where you can find the animals you haven't seen yet is generally pretty reliable, and it helps you coast through this challenge for the most part. It's still long-winded, because there's still 152 in total that you'll need to find, and in most cases, skin for an associated trophy, but every now and again you will hit an absolute wall.

The Florida Panther, Regular Panther, Western Bull Moose, Western Moose, Rio Grande Turkey, Timber Wolf all had me wasting hours upon hours of mine aimlessly wandering the open world just trying to get even a sniff of these creatures. You'll seem like you're making good progress, knocking off these discoveries at a nice tempo, and then just suddenly end up cold.

The main issue here is, there's no guarantee as to where you'll find some of these animals. A general region is always a sound bet as a starting point, but specifically, there are differing claims out there when it comes to pinpointing exact locations, and, at least in my experience, absolutely no consistency in any of them. I would resort to bouncing point to point across known hotspots, trying various times of day, using bait/not using bait, saving and loading, and yet I still just seemed to be completely at the mercy of the RNG Gods. The extent to which I felt my own control played a part within achieving this trophy felt about as minimal as you can imagine.

Trial and error is fine - As long as it's mastering a skill-set, developing a strategy, understanding a new play-style. Not just wandering aimlessly throughout a huge open world environment going purely off blind intuition and luck. Trawling through different places for hours just to find a single animal, and then repeating this process 6/7 more times, just for the next animal in the compendium to give you the same issues all over again. It just isn't it. The whole activity felt lethargic and numbed the joyous side of the experience.

Finally, the "Notorious" trophy, awarded for Reaching Rank 50 in Red Dead Online, will ensure you also delve into the Multiplayer side of this game.

This is a very similar experience to the one in Red Dead Redemption. There are a multitude of options to accumulate experience, ranging from competitive team-based game modes, beating challenges to earn buckle awards and completing free-roam activities, so the flexibility allows you to tackle this with preferences, or even as a mixture if you don't settle on something.

I made sure I unlocked the other Multiplayer trophies as I progressed towards rank 50 first, of which there are an additional 16, making up a reasonably sized chuck of the overall list. None of them really stand-out, but some of their requirements are directly linked to ways you can achieve experience points, as pointed out above, so it makes sense to go after these extra trophies on your way towards the highest level.

Rank 50 requires around 220,000 experience, and will take around 40-50 hours. Double experience events, which are common for Rockstar games with an online component, will help you slash this expectation significantly, but none of these ran during the period of time I progressed through the online side of the game. I heavily leant on team-based game modes, as this was simply the most fun I had when playing online, once I'd ensured I had earned the other trophies within the list. Some of the game modes are excellent, specifically Hostile Territory, Up in Smoke and Make it count - and exciting game modes always make levelling grinds more fun. 

I broke away from the Single Player to tackle the Multiplayer, purely because I'd spent months with the game already and needed to break things up a bit knowing I still had significant work to do on this list. Striving towards Rank 50 was a smooth experience, with loads of fun and variety along the way, which is a stark contrast to my bug-ridden, hacker-infested online experience with GTA5. I certainly enjoyed this element of this list more than glorified birdwatching!

Even by the standards of the average Rockstar open world game, there's a hell of a lot to do to complete this list. Even by the time you clock the main story in it's entirety, and move into the post-game clean-up, it feels like there's an entire second game lying in wait for you once you begin to unravel the rest of the trophy list. Even then, you realise that's still technically only half the game because of the Multiplayer component. There are multiple layers to this Platinum, and thick ones at that.

The game is great, absolutely one of the best, but the trophy list is exhaustive and will drain every last bit of energy from you with some gargantuan tasks towards full completion. Just beating the highly dramatic Story mode once over will put you through the ringer - Only for the list to require you do it all over again for the Gold medals. Then you've still got the rest of the 100% completion requirements and studying every animal, along with a Multiplayer levelling grind to act as a cherry on top. 

Overall time estimate is tough to gauge, but I would have enough confidence to suggest it's in excess of 200 hours, and that's where the majority of this difficulty lies. In terms of skill factor, it's not an overly great challenge at all, but anything that will make you commit a couple of hundred hours to it is always going to reach the upper-mid echelons of any Platinum rating scale, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is a perfect example of that.

Notable Trophies -

Best in the West - Attain 100% completion.
Gold Rush - Earn 70 Gold Medals in Story missions.
Zoologist - Study every animal across all states in Story Mode.
Notorious - Red Dead Online : Reach Rank 50.

Hardest Trophy -



Zoologist
Study every animal across all states in Story Mode




Sunday 31 December 2023

Platinum #125 - Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 9/10

Looking back, for benchmarking purposes, I was somewhat surprised to realise that Metal Gear Solid really hasn't featured that much within my trophy collection. This is only the third Platinum trophy I've acquired for this entire series, after Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid V : The Phantom Pain.

I've passed up on alot of Metal Gear Solid through the years, though this is mainly down to the fact that I'd already beaten many of these games way before trophies made them relevant again, and my desire to re-visit them has been practically non-existent.

However, Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance, was completely brand new, no Remaster required, and therefore makes it into the collection.

Set 4 years after Metal Gear Solid 4 : Guns of the Patriots, you control Raiden, the now main protagonist, transformed into a killer cyborg after years of playing second-fiddle to Solid Snake, as the plot revolves around stopping a private military company from making war profits via the destabilisation of world peace.

As the plot thickens, you uncover another dark secret. The same group are also harvesting the organs of children in order to develop their own cyborgs ready to fight within wars. It then becomes a matter of Raiden simply stopping this group from executing their plan.

This is still Metal Gear Solid, but not as you know it. The gameplay focus has shifted from traditional stealth and tactical combat, to a pure, bloody, action-packed hack 'n' slash that plays at 100MPH and never apologises for it. Eerie and slower-paced environments have been ditched for heavy rock music that booms over the top of fast-paced battles and boss fights, to specifically amplify the intensity of the combat. Solid Snake is nowhere to be seen, and instead Raiden is thrust into the limelight, given a cyborg makeover, and equipped with a plethora of weapons that can be used to dissect enemies into hundreds of different pieces, shapes and ways. If it looks like a spin-off...

The changes and major step outside the comfort zone might be too dramatic of a shift for some, but I thought it was brilliant. The combat is fast-paced, fun and engaging, and it's also great to be able to use a ton of different weapons to slice enemies up in such brutally different ways. The characters, especially the main bosses, are full of personality, and this has always been a strong suit of the Metal Gear Solid series, so it's good to see this continue to be a key trademark.

Key fights and boss battles are punctuated with appropriately fitting rock music to match the high-tempo gameplay. Dialogue with other key characters who you don't see as much, through the codec conversations, does well to pad out various elements of the story with solid context and expansion, even if it did end up becoming a bit of a thorn in the side. It's also a very intuitive game in that, "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of way - and that becomes very relevant when we move onto the trophies.

Speaking of which, this game contains 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum, spanning across 2 main game modes. This is purely a Single Player experience, and the vast majority of this list focuses on the Main Story. There are just 2 other trophies to earn outside the story, both related to the VR Missions.

The story is broken down into 8 individual chapters (called "Files"), and whilst there is technically no requirement to play through the game more than once, I would personally strongly recommend an initial run to get used to the game, enjoy the story and pick up whatever you can along the way as you naturally progress through.

There are a range of 6 different difficulty modes, from Very Easy right up to Revengeance, and you'll need to beat each of the games 8 files on Revengeance difficulty, whilst obtaining an S-Rank for every file along the way. 

Throughout the story, there are a wide variance of trophies included for beating each file for the first time, completing specific tasks within each file and killing a number of different enemies a certain number of times cumulatively across the game, all of which will come fairly naturally, but at the very worst, can just be picked up later on, either via Chapter Select, or a secondary playthrough. This is the one of the reasons I would personally recommend a soft run to begin with. You won't want to be juggling all of these additional trophies along with the levels of focus required to beat this game with S-Ranks on it's most challenging difficulty.

There are also a selection of collectible-based trophies too, though these are both fairly easy to come across, as well as relatively low in volume. In some instances, they're directly linked to unlocking other content. For example, you'll need to find 20 laptops that correspond to the 20 VR Missions, and you'll only be able to play the relative VR mission once you find the corresponding laptop in the story. 

The "Stormbringer" trophy, awarded for Completing story mode on Revengeance difficulty with all S Rankings, is the hardest trophy in this list. I know that will split opinion, and many people will feel the VR missions are tougher, but I felt like this was where the greater challenge overall lay.

The game has a steep learning curve. If you're not looking to beat this game for it's trophies, you won't need to master it. However, beating this game on it's most challenging difficulty setting, as well as obtaining an S Rank simultaneously, requires acknowledgement to a number of things.

Firstly, Revengeance difficulty. Enemies will mostly kill you in 1 or 2 hits, but for the purpose of this trophy, it's important to realise that your best approach actually involves ensuring that you don't take any damage during combat whatsoever. This will tie back into the S Rank element of this task. Enemy awareness is also sharper, and attack patterns are way more frequent, meaning you'll have to master the counter/parry mechanic - This part in particular, is integral to success. Similiary, enemies will also be dealt more damage on Revengeance difficulty, so there is at least something working in your favour, but it still presents a solid challenge.

Secondly, S Ranks. Each file contains a certain number of fights, which are graded and award you a ranking based on performance. Your performance is scored at the end, and you must meet a certain criteria of points to be awarded an S Rank. These include measures such as time taken to clear the fight, highest combo and total number of kills. There are also bonus points awarded for every fight you pass without taking any damage, and in most instances, this is the difference between an A Rank and an S Rank. This is why it's important to focus on beating each battle without taking any damage, because these bonus points will end up being the difference.

You'll know the rank awarded on the summary screen at the end of each fight, and if you haven't achieved an S Rank, you'll need to quickly restart the last checkpoint before the game saves your progress, otherwise you'll have to restart the entire file from the beginning. Each file contains a specific number of ranked fights, and the overall file score is not actually based on an overall average like you think it would be. For example, in file R-01, there are 10 ranked fights. If you obtained an S Rank in 9 of them, but an A Rank in 1, you may be forgiven for thinking that your overall score would still be an S Rank, based on the statistical nature of averages. However, you would still get an overall A Rank. In other words, every single battle that scores you needs to be an S Rank and therefore, there is zero margin for error.

It is important to note, many of these battles are fairly easy, and you're allowed to carry through any customisation upgrades you've acquired along the way, which is also another key reason you should playthrough the game on a soft run first - To unlock some new weapons and earn enough Battle Points to upgrade them. Infinite Wig B will allow you to stay in Ripper Mode without having to refuel, and obtaining secondary weapons like the Sai, Pincer Blades and Polearm are all necessary to this task and how you approach certain fights. The Fox Blade is also meant to be the recommended primary weapon of choice, but this was inaccessible to me as a pre-order bonus, and I had to use the High Frequency Blade, which was still fine for the most part.

Despite the right equipment and set-ups, this will still significantly challenge you though. A small handful of the ranked battles are tough, and will require a bit of persistence, but one thing this game showed time and time again, was the fact that it would just throw up a massive barrier to progression, seemingly out of nowhere most of the time. Within this particular challenge, this comes via the boss fights. 

Each file contains a boss at some point, and getting through these fights within the S Rank parameters is the hardest challenge within this trophy. The reality is, you won't achieve the no damage bonuses if you can't block, parry and counter your opponents, and this increases the required skill level, as it forces you to be great at the hardest element of this game. Memorising bosses attack patterns, dodging when you can't block and perfectly timing a parry to open up a counter attack are all high level skills that you'll need to perfect to a flawless standard.  

During boss fights, these come thick and fast, and at speed, so your reflexes and quickness will also be tested. I don't think the game design does you any favours either. You have to hold the left analogue stick in the direction of which the attack is coming from, and press square at the right moment to block/parry an attack, which I personally feel is awkward and counter-intuitive. 

Some of the bosses weren't too bad, but I really struggled on others, such as Monsoon, Sam and Senator Armstrong. Monsoon alone, the most challenging boss by general consensus, took me 3 days to defeat to an S Rank standard. It's also worth noting that the trophy list awards individual trophies for beating each key boss in the game without taking any damage, and whilst you only need to do this on hard difficulty, I felt it made more sense to tandem this alongside this trophy. It made the requirements of the task more difficult, but given the fact most bosses require the no damage bonus to achieve an S Rank, it just made more sense.

It's a classic case of practice makes perfect, and you'll need to develop some strong levels of resistance to failure, as some of these bosses will strip away hours of your time. It's one of the hardest Story-based difficulty feats I've tackled in some time. Upon reflection, I'm certain I wouldn't have been able to fly into this challenge straight away, and a soft run in order to get to grips with the combat basics, understand the enemy attack patterns, study boss behaviour and master blocks, parries and counters, were all necessary to my own success. I'm not a stranger to going into Story driven games at the highest difficulty where I feel I can do so, but this was not one of those games.

The good news is, once you've finished this, and providing you've done at least one prior run, you'll have almost reached the conclusion - At least in terms of trophy volume anyway. However, the bad news is, the remaining few trophies focus on the VR Missions.

The "Virtually Flawless" trophy, awarded for Setting the highest score on every VR Mission, will bring back some ghosts of the past for those who have played Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of the Patriots, and it's ludicrous requirement to beat all 511 VR Missions. Thankfully, there are only 20 to beat on this occasion, but don't be lured in by this seriously lighter number.

You will need to unlock the capacity to take these missions on. As previously mentioned, there are 20 laptops scattered across the landscape within the main story, and accessing these will unlock a respective VR Mission. The trophy then requires you to achieve the first place target score on all 20 of these VR Missions.

For maximum clarity, the majority of these aren't too bad to get through, and will only take a handful of attempts at best. I did mention above, that this game specialises in throwing barriers up in front of you seemingly out of nowhere, and this is a theme that runs through every aspect of this game. The VR Missions are another prime example of this.

VR Missions 18 and 19 give this trophy a valid case for being the hardest in this list, and whilst I personally don't agree with that, I don't object to any difference in opinion here. VR Mission 18 requires you to beat 4 waves of enemies where the difficulty is set to Revengeance, meaning everything kills you in 1 hit. You'll face Fenirs, Mastiffs, Berserkers and a GRAD too, and asking you to beat all this within 10 minutes in order to earn a first place finish means you'll have to find the perfect balance between speed and efficiency. Rushing will cause you to take risks, and more often than not, becomes a necessary evil. I don't know how many attempts it took me, but it was the hardest VR mission and required alot of trial and error to beat.

VR Mission 19 requires you to beat 3 waves of enemies via Zandatsu, which is the slow motion slicing mechanism that allows you to drain the health of an enemy if you execute a cut across a specified hit box. It's a cool game mechanic, but you control the slice with the analogue stick, and I found it be very fiddly and inconsistent at times. You'll need to pull off a string of Zandatsu's, which can be tough, and if you kill an enemy via a non-execution move, you'll fail the mission. I didn't spend anywhere near as much time on this mission, but it was still long enough, and combined with VR Mission 18, it made for a rocky experience.

Even with the benefit of mastering the block, parry and counter to a relatively strong level, I still struggled. I did start to suffer a bit of mental exhaustion at this point too. Beating the story on Revengeance had taken it out of me, and slogging through these missions over and over just continued to weigh down heavily on my progress. Having the mental resilience to refocus and continue with repeat attempts is an underrated trait when trophy hunting difficult lists.

One final thing; The camera in this game is awful, but it becomes blatantly obvious within these VR Missions. When you get too close to a wall within an arena, it will completely flip your perspective, and this will hurt your timing on blocks, parries and counters. These are always executed based on the input of where you direct your analogue stick, so when the camera flips your perspective suddenly, you'll be blocking in a different direction, and won't be able to counter attacks. It ended many a mission here, and it's a very frustrating aspect of the game they overlooked that works against you in something that doesn't need bad game design to conspire against you on top of everything else.

Finally, the "Amateur Radio Operator" trophy, awarded for Listening to most of the codec conversations, also deserves a subtle mention, just for it's absurdity alone.

Throughout the story, you'll be able to interact with your team, who will be available for codec conversations on a variety of different subject matters. Some of these are triggered by specific events, such as facing a certain enemy or boss, picking up a certain piece of weaponry or equipment or performing certain unique actions, like saving a civilian or hiding in a box. The rest of the conversations outside of these special actions are just available organically as you progress.

There are a couple of challenges with this trophy though. Notice how the description is purposely vague - "most of the codec conversations". I hate trophies that are never quantified properly enough for you to reasonably track your progress on them. There's never any clear indication about how much you need to hear, so you're forced to just keep opening the codec and checking for new lines of dialogue every 5 minutes. It's repetitive, disrupts the flow of the game horribly and just feels like a silly exercise.

It was made even worse that I played through both a soft run, and a Revengeance run - the second of which I was fully conscious to this trophy - and religiously stuck to the task of ensuring I was pulling up the codec as frequently as possible, and STILL didn't have the trophy by the end of it. I don't mind trophies with a basis of trial and error attached to them, but the end goal has to be at least clear to the player, and not make you feel like you're just taking aimless stabs in the dark.

I eventually just began the game again from the very beginning and looked for potential unique dialogue options that I didn't think I had heard yet, in the hope this was enough to trigger the trophy. I managed to unlock it during file R-02, so I didn't need to go that deep, but it was still frustrating that I had get part-way through a third playthrough, purely because of the vague rules around the trophy description.

Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance has the perfect blend for what makes a trophy list difficult. A genuinely high skill threshold, a varying degree of challenges that will test the skills you've acquired to their limits and a necessity for never giving up. It also has some reasonable longevity - My save file clocked in at 57 hours, but you can perhaps add a handful more due to some save game trickery along the way. This is a bit complicated to explain, but it acts as a safety net when jumping between ranked battles in story mode to ensure you can continue from where you left off if you mess up, but you've managed to hold a spare save file, rather than repeat entire chapters over from the beginning. I won't deep it at this point though.

It doesn't quite top the dizzying 10/10 heights of Metal Solid 2 : The Sons of Liberty, and it almost feels like a bit of a disservice to suggest that this still isn't the toughest Metal Gear Solid game in my collection. However, it's certainly on the doorstep at the very least, and one that feels good to add to the collection after such a long time.

Notable Trophies - 

Stormbringer - Complete story mode on Revengeance difficulty with all S Rankings.
Virtually Impossible - Set the highest score on every VR Mission.
Amateur Radio Operator - Listen to most of the codec conversations.

Hardest Trophy -



Stormbringer
Complete story mode on Revengeance difficulty with all S Rankings

Sunday 10 December 2023

Platinum #124 - Call of Duty : WWII

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

The conclusion of Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 earlier this year wrapped up a 6 year streak of completed Call of Duty titles.

Call of Duty : Modern Warfare did not have trophy support when it was released back in 2007, but it was where this journey began.

Full completions for World at War, Modern Warfare 2, Blacks Op 1, Modern Warfare 3 and finally, Black Ops 2 all eventually followed - and I vowed to never play a Call of Duty title again.

I've stayed true to that word since, mostly. However, Call of Duty : WWII, released 5 years after Black Ops 2, is the anomaly in the collection. Reason? I always had a soft spot the World War 2 era, so felt like it was worth revisiting, just for a little bit of personal nostalgia.

The game is broken down into 3 main offerings - A World War 2 campaign, Online Multiplayer and of course, Zombies. The origins of Call of Duty games were all about a strong campaign offering, and this is another decent outing, with a story that focuses on a squadron as you play out their part within the Second World War, told through a series of different missions that throw up plenty of variety. Standard ground-based combat is accompanied by the opportunity to control tanks, dogfights and play out some famous World War 2 set-pieces.

It's short, as it usually is, but it captures authenticity well, and many of the missions are based off real experiences.

The Multiplayer also follows a fairly traditional blueprint. Multiple different game modes, mainly 6 v 6, but other variants added and removed from rotation at certain points. It's also the first time I've experienced the Multiplayer component of a Call of Duty title having been shown some love within the trophy list too.

Zombies is still just Zombies - A quirky alternative game-mode that prides itself on Easter Eggs and a mysterious backstory tying them all together, but is ultimately different compared to previous iterations. The noticeable progress of Zombies would make sense, given the fact there are 5 years between Black Ops 2 and WWII, and it does feel like a much different experience that has gone through the natural course of evolution. Gameplay actually feels way less hectic and much smoother than previously, which ultimately works out for the best, but it is also still where the hardest part of this trophy list resides.

Speaking of which, there are 51 trophies in this list, spread across all 3 aforementioned game modes, and there's something to touch upon within each.

The Campaign mode stretches across 11 missions, and this is where the bulk of the list is focused, where a whopping 35 of the 50 trophies are obtained.

The "Distinguished Service" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Veteran difficulty, is the main standout trophy within this large grouping, and has become a staple for Call of Duty games.

Beating the Campaign on Veteran has previously gone down in infamy, but this did gradually become a watered down experience after the dizzying heights of World at War. I was intrigued to see if anything had changed whilst I was gone, but if anything, it's actually become easier than it ever has, and this is down to a couple of notable differences within the game mechanics.

The automatic health regeneration system is gone, and has now been replaced with a request feature. Your squadron will all have specified roles, whether this is to supply you with ammunition, first-aid or air support, and these can be requested on demand as your progress through each mission. If you're low on health, tap the corresponding prompt on the d-pad, and you'll be issued a med-kit by the medic, which makes it much easier to stay healthy compared to having to duck for cover and pray you can recover health quickly enough via regeneration. It's a more realistic system, but on-demand med-kits to heal up instantly, and air support to quickly supress enemy fire, makes the game easier, even on Veteran difficulty, which also just feels way less punishing in general.

The rest of the Campaign trophies are earned for various tasks specific to the 11 missions across the story, as well as beating them for the first time, so it leans heavily into the progression angle. There are also a small handful of collectible-based trophies to acquire, for picking up mementos distributed throughout the landscape across the Campaign, as well as performing specific Heroic actions, which are prompted to the player at chosen points throughout each mission.

Chapter select makes these easy enough, giving you the power to venture back into any mission and gather the mission collectibles, which are also well signposted on the navigation menus, so you always know which missions you may need to dive back in to in order to grab anything you may have missed. It'll also allow you to obtain any outstanding trophies tied to performing specific tasks related to certain missions too. It's exactly how chapter select should be used.

Moving into the Multiplayer, and this is the first time in any Call of Duty game I've played where at least a small portion of the list has been dedicated to the online element of the game. There are only 5 trophies here, but it'll require a reasonable level of dedication in order to pass through this portion of the game on your way towards the Platinum trophy.

The "General of the Army" trophy, awarded for Entering Prestige 1 in Multiplayer while playing online, is a fairly standard levelling grind, which simply asks you to play enough Multiplayer to reach level 55, and eventually choose the option to Prestige.

To Prestige just simply means to start over, and once you acquire enough experience points to hit the end of level 55, you'll be able to do this and begin the cycle again from level 1, but more importantly, grab your trophy.

You'll need a total of 1,457,000 experience points to reach the end of level 55 and unlock the option to enter Prestige mode. This is a fair chunk of experience, and under normal circumstances, will probably take you somewhere in the region of 20-25 hours of gameplay, which is a modest grind. If you wish to, you can potentially hold off and take advantage of double experience points special events, and this will slash the amount of time it takes significantly, but I'm not sure how common these are, or even if they're applied to older Call of Duty games anymore, so whilst I don't think it's fair to set this as the standard benchmark, it is still worth noting.

You should unlock the remainder of the Multiplayer trophies naturally as you progress through this levelling venture. There aren't any real recommendations to levelling up - Just choose your favourite game mode, stick at it and you'll get to where you need to be eventually. War and Search and Destroy was my personal preference.

Finally, we have the Zombies mode, which equates to the remaining 10 trophies within the list. I have garnered a love/hate relationship with Call of Duty Zombies experiences over the years, and my overall experience with any Call of Duty trophy list has been heavily influenced by my satisfaction levels within Zombies. Sometimes it's been good, sometimes it's been about as bad as imaginable.

On that scale, this probably fits somewhere around the mid, with most of the trophies requiring you to fulfil fairly simple tasks, which you can do solo or within an online lobby/private group. However, there are still a couple of trophies attached to the old Zombies Easter Eggs that we've all become well acquainted with over the years, and this is where the challenge of the overall list hits a few extra notches.

The "Dark Reunion" trophy, awarded for, saving Klaus in The Final Reich, plays out exactly how you expect any Zombies Easter Egg to play out - by carrying out a set of specific actions across the map in certain orders, culminating to the final stage, which, in this instance, is defeating the final boss on the map.

A couple of things about Zombies as a general note compared to my previous experience;

Movement is fluid and the map is bigger, which actually helps the game flow better. It felt so easy to get overwhelmed by the undead in previous versions of Zombies, and maps always felt tighter, so you never had anywhere to go when things got a bit hectic. Better movement mechanics, which always used to feel more stagnant and rigid in older games, and a larger, more open map generally avoids these frustrations, and makes for a better quality of life experience within the Zombies game mode. I frequently reached round 25-30 and even sometimes higher where necessary, which would just never happen previously, and that makes it more fun - There was never anything more demoralising than going for a trophy and dying so late into a game knowing you probably had to spend at least another couple of hours grinding back up to that point.

There's also a change in how the health system works here too. Previously, unless you had the Juggernaut perk, you'd take a couple of hits and die, and there was never a visual indication of your health. This has been addressed, and not only are you now shown a visual health bar, to allow you to understand how close you are to dying, but you also have the ability to purchase shields, which give you 3 when fully stocked. If you get hit enough times, it will break a shield, then you'll have the cushion of 2 more before you go down, but most importantly, you can visualise your health, and also have the ability to purchase more shields if necessary, providing you better protection in general. It's definitely the most positive change.

The Easter Egg comes in 2 forms, and you can obtain the trophy for the shorter form of this Easter Egg fairly easily, because it's the main goal most people play towards in public lobbies. The steps are mapped out on the screen and give a clear indication to the player on what they have to do to reach the end - Something that has also never existed previously in Zombies.

However, not all the steps are documented for the "Hardcore" version of the Easter Egg, and this requires a list of hidden steps in order to reach the conclusion, which is where it gets a little bit more complicated.

At the point where you're told by the game to trigger the ending of the shorter Easter Egg, you'll have the option, unbeknownst to everyone in the lobby, to take things further, and complete a handful of additional steps to trigger an alternate ending. Whilst it means you have to advance a bit further to complete this, that isn't really the issue - The issue is making sure that the players in the lobby don't trigger the ending for the lighter Easter Egg conclusion, and almost everyone will do this because the game instructs them to.

I attempted this a couple of times with a group, and this isn't exactly an issue with the game, so it wouldn't be fair to blame the game for this, but there are alot of people who are looking to unlock Easter Egg trophies in Zombies and just simply come unprepared. These challenges are further complicated when they don't use a headset or cannot respond to verbal instructions, and if these steps aren't carried out like a well-oiled machine, then things will go wrong.

It doesn't really matter for the shorter version, as instructions are clearly signposted right through to the end, and I even grabbed this one naturally whilst going through my own process of understanding and learning. However, the "Hardcore" version has too many extra steps for players to just walk in unprepared, and I failed on a few occasions due to botched attempts caused by a couple of people who were either just clearly looking for a carry from others, or just did the wrong things, such as triggering the ending for the shorter version of the Easter Egg accidentally or just simply not knowing what to do next when they needed to play their part.

To have a defined ending within Zombies is a big change. Zombies games were infinite to the point where everyone died, so the fact you can now trigger a boss fight, which will end the game automatically once complete, makes it a pain when this ends up slipping out of your control.

Ironically enough, my success eventually came from playing with a random player who I noticed was level 1000, and I chanced a direct request for support, which he duly obliged with. This identified another positive with the Easter Egg, whereby you can still achieve it with just 2 players. Large parts of my disdain for Zombies in the past has come from those Easter Eggs that contained steps that mandated the need for 4 players, so it's great to see that this isn't the case here.

But, it also just proved the importance of playing with people who know exactly what they're doing. Easter Eggs in Zombies have always been about intricacy and attention to detail. Research and study are important, and there are just too many people out there who want to be the beneficiary of the effort of others, and this isn't viable in Zombies for the vast majority of the time.

The Single Player Campaign is not the gruelling experience it was once infamously known for on it's Veteran difficulty, and being able to freely dip back into chapter select to go back for any mission specific tasks or collectibles, makes it a seamless journey. The Multiplayer element of this list is no more than a minor commitment to grind, but still doesn't stack up against some of the truly grindy levelling tasks that sit out there within the wider trophy community.

In reality, the majority of this Platinum difficulty rating rests on the Zombies experience. It wasn't as straight-forward as I had it planned out, but that was mainly due to the deficiencies experienced from attempting to achieve the end-game with players who just didn't have the same common goals, or weren't good enough to keep an Easter Egg attempt rolling into the latter stages of a game.

Being able to just call on the support of a random player I happened to get into a lobby with, partly based on their Zombies level, but also pure instinct, was just another example of being resourceful. Sometimes, trophy hunting is just about seeing opportunities you don't necessarily look for, and playing by ear, especially when it comes to seeking help from others.

If I rated in halves, I'd give this a 6.5/10. Outside of the Zombies trophies, I don't think the wider experience does enough to propel this into the upper echelons of the difficulty scale. I enjoyed the foray back into the Call of Duty experience. It wasn't enough to bring me permanently out of hiatus, but it was fun to revisit something that's important to remember gave me alot of enjoyment over the years, and that is always worth it.

Notable Trophies - 

Distinguished Service - Complete the game on Veteran difficulty.
General of the Army - Enter Prestige 1 in Multiplayer while playing online.
Dark Reunion - In The Final Reich, save Klaus.

Hardest Trophy -



Dark Reunion
In The Final Reich, save Klaus