Platinum #130 - Crash Bandicoot 4 : It's About Time

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 10/10

A perfect score hasn't ever been something I've given out lightly, but I have rarely been more certain about a game that has deserved to take maximum points for it's level of challenge.

When you look back through the Crash Bandicoot timeline, it looks like a clear scale in difficulty has occurred throughout. The N'Sane Trilogy, which contained reboots of the first 3 Crash Bandicoot titles originally released on the Playstation 1, all scored 5/10 - A leisurely re-introduction to the series where all 3 titles could be beaten within a sub-25 hour timeframe.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled kicked things up a notch scoring an 8/10 - A challenging racer with difficult to master game mechanics and unforgiving time trial requirements.

Then we finally got Crash Bandicoot 4 : It's About Time, which absolutely blows the ceiling off from a difficulty perspective. It's also the first Crash Bandicoot title developed by Toys for Bob, who clearly wanted you to suffer all the way through this experience - At least from a Trophy hunters point of view. If you're not of the disposition that attaining full completion matters, then you'll probably come out the end of this experience with your sanity (and thumbs) fully in tact, otherwise strap yourselves in.

The gameplay experience of Crash Bandicoot 4 : It's About Time is very different to the previous 3 Crash Bandicoot titles in the series. It is important to remember that, despite the N'Sane Trilogy only preceding this title by a handful of years, these were just effectively a series of remasters from titles that were released over 20 years ago, so whilst they have a few gameplay improvements, they're still mostly carrying the same formula as they did 20 years ago when they first came out.

Levels are much lengthier, complex and varied in comparison, and there are a number of big changes to the game when matched up against the original Crash titles. This time round, you'll take control of a variety of different characters, all with their own specific character traits. Tawna has a grappling hook that you'll need to swing through levels, Dingodile possesses a suction gun that can suck up boxes from a distance, as well as fire them back out as projectiles and Dr. Neo Cortex has a raygun, which can be used to change enemies into different states of matter, such as jelly and metal, to allow you to progress through the level in different ways.

Speaking of which, the game also introduces a variety of different Quantum masks. When donned, these allow you to make changes to the environment and come in 4 flavours. Lani-Loli allows you to pause time, 'Akano allows you to consume Dark Matter, which increases the length, distance and height of the spin ability, Kupuna Wa allows you to slow time and Ika Ika allows you to manipulate gravity. This is the strongest addition to the game, and it's implemented really cleverly throughout the vast number of levels, making them incredibly dynamic. Once you reach the latter stages of the game, you'll notice that you play through levels which contain the use of multiple masks and this is where the challenge becomes much more apparent - but it's still a fun game mechanic that adds layers of the depth to the game.

Something that never seems to change is the plot. Dr Neo Cortex is attempting to take over the universe (again), and it's Crash's job to stop him (again). You'll encounter a familiar cast of antagonists who join Dr. Cortex, and you'll still transverse through dimensions in time as you go through the game - Prehistoric, Futuristic and even pirates, to name a couple of the 10 different dimensions.

Outside the familiar, usual platforming levels, you'll also encounter timelines, flashbacks and boss battle arenas, which adds to the already impressive levels of depth this sequel goes to. Timelines are a handful of levels where you'll play as an alternate character, mentioned above, and flashbacks are somewhat like a mini sub-story, which tells the tale of Crash's attempts to escape as a subject within Cortex's experimentation lab.

Despite being one of the most challenging trophy journeys I've ever been on, it's still an excellent game, and it's a worthy sequel which improves upon the original titles in every way, shape and form.

This trophy list contains 52 trophies, including the Platinum trophy, and will require you to beat practically everything the game has to offer for full completion of this list. There is nothing done by halves here - You are all in on this experience, whether you like it or not, and whilst the majority of the trophies all work up towards beating the game to 106% completion, each of them contains individual challenges that are worth mentioning here.

Firstly, " The Fourth Time" trophy, awarded for Defeating Dr. Neo Cortex, requires you to beat the game, which simply involves progressing through all 38 story levels, as well as each boss battle arena, culminating in defeating Dr. Neo Cortex and saving the universe once more.

This is probably the least challenging element of this list, but it's important to use this opportunity to get familiar with the layout of levels and some of the game mechanics you'll need to heavily rely on, such as map knowledge, effective use of movement, Quantum masks and techniques like the slide spin and triple spin.

There is a noticeable difficulty curve as you progress through the game, and levels begin to get more complex, longer and use multiple different masks that shift the environment constantly. I recall when playing through these levels originally how impossible it seemed to be to have to eventually beat all of them without dying, but that's why the aforementioned is so important - A grasp on all of the above is imperative to success, and this should be the focus of your first run.

The "King of Bling" trophy, awarded for Earning ALL of the Clear Gems, is the next natural step towards the Platinum trophy. Each of the 38 levels contained within the story has a total of 6 Gems to collect. 3 of these are awarded for collecting 40%, 60% and 80% of the Wumpa fruit contained with the level. 2 of these Gems are awarded for finding all boxes and beating the level within 3 lives. The final Gem is awarded for finding the hidden Gem somewhere within the level.

This is an extremely time consuming exercise, and will require you to play through levels multiple times to acquire all 6 Gems attached to each level. Ultimately, you have to beat every level in the game without dying whilst collecting every box, which will automatically fulfil the requirements of 2 of these Gems anyway, however, the kicker here is that you'll need to perform this feat twice, for the games N'Verted mode.

N'Verted mode just applies a mirrored filter to the level, usually just for aesthetic purposes, but you'll also need to earn all 6 Gems for each level within this mode too, which will award you the "gnilB fo gniK" trophy. 38 levels times by 6 is 228 Gems, and when you further times this by 2 to account for N'Verted mode, this means you'll need to collect a whopping 456 Gems in total. This was an incredibly grindy task and whilst I don't have many complaints about this game, this was definitely my least favourite part of it - It's incredibly repetitive and N'Verted mode did not feel like a necessary addition to the game outside of some classic content padding.

The "Perfectionist" trophy, awarded for Earning ALL N'Sanely Perfect Relics, is where this challenge really kicks off.

In order to earn an N'Sanely Perfect Relic, you need to beat a level without dying whilst collecting all boxes in one life. The most important thing to mention here is that you can take your time on this. Failure will often come from making silly mistakes through rushing and the lack of acknowledgement to the key fact that you can take your time with this task.

Some of these levels can take 15-20 minutes to beat under normal circumstances, and the pains experienced with this trophy will involve alot of smaller nuances. Realising you've failed to collect every box at the end of the level, dying through a silly lapse in concentration or missing a well hidden box are all included within this, and it's tough to progress through some of these longer levels just to slip up agonisingly close to the end.

Many would argue just getting through these levels without dying is a great enough challenge, let alone having to collect every box at the same time. There are so many easy ways to die in this game - Having to focus on not dying whilst trying to remember the location of every box is sensory overwhelm and once you reach the latter part of the game and this is happening all over your screen, it's easy to see how lapses in concentration can lead to death and/or missing boxes.

This trophy is another reason why it's important to get to know each level in detail. Forecasting hazards and memorising where all the more difficult to spot/hidden boxes are the best way to be prepared for this challenge. It may be something you also have to learn the hard way at times, but it will make a difference to progress.

Also, when I say there are so many easy ways to die/fail, the game adds elements of non-platforming that can be tough to negotiate sometimes. Chase segments where you have to run towards the camera and cannot see what's ahead of you, grind rails (the game loves a grind rail) and traversing the landscape via riding a Polar Bear or Jet-ski are not only very easy to die from, but also very easy to miss boxes from too, because you cannot turn round and correct any errors. It's a feat that's worthy of being responsible for a couple of difficulty points on it's own, and it's mad to think that it still isn't the peak of the list in terms of challenge.

The "Faster than Sound" trophy, awarded for Earning ALL of the platinum Time Trial Relics, is exactly where that peak lies, and requires the player to beat each of the 38 levels to Platinum standard - The highest pass time in the game. The Time Trial Relics are a staple of the Crash Bandicoot series, but the previous Crash titles only required the player to beat the Time Trials to a Gold standard, and this is the first time this standard has been set to Platinum.

This trophy will require a mastery of everything for you to succeed. Map knowledge? Check. Hazard awareness? Check. Perfect understanding of the triple and slide spin? Check. The requirements for the Platinum relic are tight and require practically zero margin for error.

The rules are exactly the same as they have been for any previous Crash game. You'll need to beat the level from start to finish without dying within an allotted amount of time to earn a Relic, and this challenge is only cut out for the very best. The box layout is exactly the same as it is for any normal level, however, some of the boxes will change to a number between 1 and 3, which indicates the amount of time the clock will be frozen for in seconds should you smash that box, which is key to establishing a quicker pass time.

Mastering the triple and slide spin is also incredibly important, and if you can't do this, you won't achieve these Platinum Relics. Executing a consistent pattern of triple and slide spinning will allow you to always achieve maximum speed, but this isn't an easy rhythm to maintain whilst also trying to avoid environmental hazards and enemies, and you may be often required to react or think quickly to avoid death. It's also made tougher by the fact you have to be consciously aware of smashing timed boxes wherever you can too, and this sometimes means deviating from the best path or exposing yourself to risky moves that can cause cheap death. It's a necessary evil though.

There are, of course, the standard things to consider when it comes to Time Trial trophies too. There's alot of trial and error, alot of practice and hard yards to put in and alot of perseverance required. As far as Time Trial related trophies go, this is one of the most gruelling I've ever had to put myself through, to the point where I actually developed a blister within the crease of my thumb once I'd earned all 38 Platinum Relics. The constant triple slide spinning really did take it's toll, and it is quite easily the most difficult task in this list.

The "OVER-Overachiever" trophy, awarded for Watching the 106% bonus ending, effectively ties up everything mentioned above. For maximum clarity, the requirements checklist includes collecting all  228 normal Gems, collecting all 228 N'Verted Gems, earning all 21 Platinum flashback Relics (which isn't mentioned above), earning all 38 N'Sanely Perfect Relics and earning all 38 Platinum Time Trial Relics.

With all of this accounted for, and the remainder of the list mainly just down to a very quick clean up procedure, it took me a whopping 175 hours according to my save file to beat this game, which is an incredible length of time. I managed to finish the hardest elements of this game within an overall time period which spanned around 4 months, and whilst this wasn't through playing the game religiously every single day, it was consistent enough to ensure that I didn't become rusty and have to re-learn the more complicated elements required to reach it's highest demands - and that's a big complimentary show of respect to the level of difficulty of this game.

I'd actually go as far as to suggest that this is within my Top 3 hardest Platinums in my entire collection. When I look at the select group of games that have fit the billing for a 10/10 on the difficulty scale, and the reasons they're in that group, some of them don't tick as many boxes as Crash Bandicoot 4 does.

It's grindy, it has a high standard of mastery and it demands perfection in everything you do, and if you needed the tie-breaker for any reason of doubt, there isn't another game that has given me actual blisters on my thumbs.

Notable Trophies -

The Fourth Time - Defeat Dr. Neo Cortex.
King of Bling - Earn ALL of the Clear Gems.
Perfectionist - Earn ALL N'Sanely Perfect Relics.
Faster Than Sound - Earn ALL of the platinum Time Trial Relics.
OVER-Overachiever - Watch the 106% bonus ending.

 Hardest Trophy -

OVER-Overachiever

Watch the 106% bonus ending

DLC #180 - Far Cry 4 - The Valley of the Yetis

Whilst I admire the intention to at least do something a little bit different - and by different, I just mean "At least it's not zombies again..." - I still can't help but think that if I was to make a list of games out there I didn't really want a reason to revisit, Far Cry 4 would be on it.

But what's one more average gaming experience? Albeit a fairly short one, which makes it palatable at least. Even the intriguing selling point of Yetis still somehow ultimately turns out to fit the Modus Operandum for Far Cry 4 of everything just feeling a little bit underwhelming.

You're still in control of the main protagonist, Ajay Ghale, as the plot starts with a helicopter crash landing right in the middle of a valley. Your pilot is heard being taken captive by a local group and you have no clear way of escape. You eventually find a relay station to hole up in, which you acquire control of - and will ultimately have to defend throughout the story. The goal is to find your pilot and escape, as the plot is told via radio communication with a man who eventually identifies himself as Master Sandesh, leader of the Disciples, the group who have taken the pilot hostage and hold the secrets that occupy the valley.

Except, they're not the only occupants of the valley. The Yeti plays a role in the plot, though their overall presence both within the storyline and open world is somewhat on the scarce side. You mainly fight against disciples throughout the storyline, and Yetis only really make the odd appearance during a story mission or through open world random encounter. It's not exactly a massive dealbreaker, but if you're excited at the prospect of being led to believe that they're at the forefront of this DLC, you're in for a disappointing revelation.

Outside the plot, the new environment just feels like the same as it did in the main game, just with snow, though in a thankfully sensible move, you don't have to liberate outposts to reveal it bit by bit anymore. Other smaller additions of the snowmobile as a mode of transport and a small collection of side quests rebranded from the main story just feel pretty insignificant. Just like the main game, it's a passable at best experience.

The package contains 7 trophies, which can all be earned through natural progression of the storyline, and best explained by splitting this content down into 3 parts.

There are 6 Storyline missions to complete the story, which will earn 3 progression-based trophies, 5 nights to survive in-between, which are used as a way to break up the story missions, and 9 additional side quests to complete in order to unlock 2 trophies relating to earning all relay station upgrades.

The relay station, which serves the purpose of a hideout, is attacked each night, and you're made to survive 5 nights in between each story mission, giving the story an interesting little twist. It's actually nicely done, and the way they're interwoven is a good touch, but it does ultimately just boil down to being a horde-mode-esque feature that pads some additional time to the package as you fend off increasingly more challenging waves of enemy per night. The steadily progressive levels of chaos are fun to watch unfold when you reach the latter nights and Yetis start to turn up and you've suddenly got a 3 way fight between yourself, the disciples and the Yetis, but it's still just a content-padding concept when you strip it all back.

The 9 side quests, which also contain little variety, especially given that most of them are just ripped straight from the main game - Hijack a truck, collect some bags etc - are vital to complete outside of the trophies they award, due to the fact the upgrade rewards will help you greatly when fending off the nightly attacks.

Each side quest will grant you access to an additional feature to help you defend the relay station, whether this be a mounted turret gun, stronger fortifications or traps, so from a strategic perspective, it makes sense to complete these as soon as you can. They're a bit bland, but it's fun seeing the carnage on nightly defence missions when you have every upgrade installed and traps are going off like fireworks.

It all amasses to around a 6-8 hour experience. Missions and side quests are short, sweet and well mixed, and it's nicely paced throughout with the alternating story. It feels very much just more of the same, and I didn't expect anything drastically different that strayed too far from the already trodden path, but it's a fairly quick completion, so it never reaches the point of feeling laboured or forced. You're also encouraged to kill the Yetis, which awards the remaining 2 trophies within this set once 5 of them are felled. They're big, hit hard and they soak up bullets like a sponge, but they're still no match for a couple of power weapons and that's about as tough as it gets.

DLC #179 - Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance - VR Mission Expansion

If you're a trophy hunting Metal Gear Solid fan, and the term "VR Missions" doesn't send a shiver down your spine by now, then you're more than likely a being devoid of any sort of human emotion.

The 20 VR Missions contained within the base game were a genuine blocker for many people, due to their unforgiving nature and steep difficulty curve, and this expansion brings more of the same kind of pain.

The expansion adds 30 fresh VR Missions, and comes with just 2 additional trophies to cover them. It's a straight-forward concept, and there really isn't much further context to provide in terms of depth here - Take what you already had from the base game and just add more. Pretty simple.

The Missions include a variety of different tasks, but they're the same tasks that made up the foundations of the original missions. Reaching a specific waypoint within a certain amount of time, clearing the stage of all enemies, defeating all enemies using a specific method etc. 

There are some interesting tweaks - Some of the missions now have you playing them from a side-scrolling perspective, rather than third person, some of the stages are littered with insta-kill explosive mines, which is my least favourite tweak, and some are played within the dark. You don't really see enough of these changes to make this feel like a completely fresh experience, and most of the things that do feel familiar centre around the agonising feelings of frustration that came with overcoming the VR Missions from the main game.

Despite there only being 2 trophies, one of which is awarded for just simply beating each of the 30 missions to any requirement, this a gentle reminder that the VR Missions are not exactly light work;

Hero of the Metaverse - Set the highest score on every DL-VR Mission.

The "Hero of the Metaverse" trophy, awarded for Setting the highest score on every DL-VR Mission, requires you to achieve the first place time requirement on each of the 30 new VR Missions. This is exactly the same experience as the "Virtually Flawless" trophy from the base list.

I flew through the first 18 missions with little to no trouble whatsoever, and then suddenly hit the wall. The same wall that I was dreading from the original set of missions. I wasn't lured into any false sense of security here - I fully expected this to happen. It began on mission 19, and continued on and off right through to mission 30.

Everything that was said about the "Virtually Flawless" trophy from the Platinum Difficulty Rating review is applicable here. Strict time limit requirements with almost no margin for error? Check. Tough enemies that come at you in waves? Check. Loads of trial and error? Check. I fully expected more of the same and that's exactly what you get.

I actually think this set of VR Missions is collectively more difficult than those in the base game, and that's saying something given the steepness of that particular challenge. It also contains the toughest VR challenge out of the entire set in VR-DLC Mission 27, which I spent a total of 10-12 hours on alone, which is insane for just a single VR mission. Just for reassurance, this also seems to be the general consensus, so it's just not me and my own personal shortcomings at play here.

Just to add the relevant context, it requires you to defeat all enemies using Zandatsu with a completion time of less than 8 minutes required for first place. Outside of the fact me and the Zandatsu game mechanic just don't really get along - I've always found it to be wildly inconsistent and awkward - there are so many other nuances that contributed to the pain experienced within attempting to beat this mission.

Enemies can suicidally launch themselves off the edge of the map, which will count as a Non-Zandutsu kill and end the mission - an unfortunate circumstance completely outside of your control, and when you get past the tough part, and this happens to you near the end, that's a hard pill to swallow. The volume of enemies attacking you at once within each wave can also interrupt you from completing a Zandutsu kill, which will also prematurely end the mission. The 8 minute time requirement is tight and it's also very easy to get stun locked in situations that you simply can't recover from as you try to withstand combo attacks from facing enemies simultaneously.

I also mentioned above that one of the tweaks to these new set of VR Missions included playing some levels in the dark, which seriously limits visibility and judgement, especially when attempting to block and parry enemy attacks, making any level with this condition much more difficult, and this applies to VR-DLC Mission 27.

I do also want to reiterate how terrible the camera is in this game, and it can't be understated how much it works against you within these VR Missions. It was something I highlighted during the Platinum Difficulty Review, and it's a shame they didn't take the opportunity within this expansion to address something that quite clearly needed fixing - Particularly because you have to block and parry so often within these standout Missions, it makes the design flaw even more critical to success. There is enough working against you here without long-standing, buggy game design playing it's part.

VR-DLC Mission 30 also deserves a mention. I spent a fair few hours trying to beat that too. It requires you to defeat all enemies by any means within a 15 minute time limit for first place, but it pales in comparison to VR-DLC Mission 27.

Despite this matching every expectation I had based on recent prior experience of VR Missions, it didn't make it any less daunting. To spend 15-20 total hours on a DLC package where around 60-70% of that time is spent attempting to beat a single mission is a real test of determination to succeed. Many people would, and probably have, given up the ghost on this under the belief that it just isn't worth the hassle when a Platinum trophy isn't at stake. 

I don't necessarily blame them, but then again, I've always been glutton for punishment, and I'll take the greatest solace in the fact that these VR Missions are finally behind me.

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.

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

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

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

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