Platinum #67 - Hitman : Absolution

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

After 3 trophy-fuelled re-releases of the previous Hitman games in the series, in the form of a HD collection, which produced a moderate to low-end hard string of lists, Hitman Absolution most definitely comes in as the easiest Platinum trophy of them all, and never quite manages to throw up any sort of real challenge within the whole list.

The lists contained within the 3 previous HD collection games were very similar to one another, and Absolution takes a very different approach to it's trophy list than what was seen before.

The most obvious difference is the size of the list, and Absolution packs a significantly larger amount of trophies than the other Hitman games. The most notable thing about the list is that fact is packs a ton of progression based trophies that revolve around completing the games 20 levels and, in a few instances, making the right choices, or finishing levels using different methods. There are 21 trophies that can be earned through simply playing the game from start to finish, which is just shy of half the entire list.

The "Absolution" trophy, awarded for completing Hitman : Absolution on any professional difficulty, will mean you do have to play through the game in it's entirety in any mode that falls under professional, and anything on a lesser difficulty is not rewarding in the trophy list, which doesn't exactly give you much of a choice if you're trophy hunting.

Difficulty modes have also been drastically changed from the previous Hitman games, which is actually a big part of the reasoning behind why this game is the easiest in the series. Where beating the game on Professional difficulty meant actually beating the game on it's toughest mode previously, Absolution splits 5 difficulty levels under 2 headings. "Enhanced" mode will cover easy and normal difficulty, and "Professional" mode will cover hard, expert and purist difficulties.

This means you can play through the game on the average difficulty (which is hard mode), and since it still falls under the "Professional" category, you'll still earn the "Absolution" trophy. Hard mode isn't terribly difficult at all, and the majority of the difficulty contained within the game itself is all mental and figuring out the best ways to complete a level without blowing your cover and getting killed. You might need to be prepared to be patient, and use a fair amount of trial and error as you constantly make poor errors of judgement during levels, but it will never get to the point where it becomes frustrating, nor too difficult to understand what you actually need to do.

If you're playing the game as intended, and want to take on a stealthy, low risk approach, it can be a long game, clocking in at around 20-25 hours from start to finish, plus anything else you might need after in terms of clean up on the trophy list, so it's a pretty modest time estimation.

The "Grand Master" trophy, awarded for completing 100 challenges, is the only other Gold trophy in the list, and the only other trophy of real significant note too. Challenges are just level specific objectives, and each of the game's 20 levels contains a handful of these challenges to complete along the way, with the whole story containing 278 challenges, so the margin for error is actually quite high.

With that being said, you most likely won't unlock 100 challenges just through just natural progression, and it does pay to read up on the list of challenges prior to beginning each level. Not only will they give you significant clues to eliminating targets and finishing levels, it will also minimise further replays later on when you're polishing up the list, and could drastically cut down on the estimated Platinum completion time.

Most of the challenges are quite straight forward, and some of them overlap into other trophies included in this list,  and although some will offer a harder challenge, it's not really necessary to push for the harder challenges when you don't even need to complete the vast majority of them for the trophies you need, so it's always better just to stick to the simple ones and spare the extra effort.

The "Jack of All Trades" trophy, awarded for Collecting all Play Styles, requires you to fulfil a number of criteria to unlock all 20 different styles of play in the game. Most of these tasks are easy enough, but you'll need to look up the requirements, which are locked until you fulfil them, and you'll also need to find out the best levels to achieve them within, given the fact that certain play style challenges will only be achievable in conditions that exist in a couple of levels throughout the game. It's a little bit fiddly, but nothing more than that.

The "Information is Power" trophy, awarded for Collecting all evidence, requires you to pick up every piece of evidence strewn throughout the game's story levels. Most evidence is easy enough to find if you're thorough in your search, though a small handful of them are actually well hidden and will require some out of the box thinking to find and pick up.

It's also important to note that collecting all evidence for each level will fulfil a challenge towards the "Grand Master" trophy, and you can always go back to level select and collect any missing evidence later. The game will also tell you which sections of a specific level you're missing the evidence from too, which makes it slightly easier to track down afterwards if you've missed a fair chunk of them and there are always various visual guides you can call upon if you're still somehow struggling.

Despite the list being very heavily emphasised on the Single Player main story, the Multiplayer contracts mode also gets some very slight attention too, though you won't be required to play through the mode in any great excess to collect all the trophies attached to it. 

The "Set for Life" trophy, awarded for earning 1 million contract dollars, might require you to play through a handful of competitive contracts and there are a ton of easy contracts that have big pay-offs available, which makes that total more readily achievable, but everything else barely scratches the surface of the mode, and simply liking other players contracts and completing a few tutorials are the sorts of criteria you need to fulfil to unlock everything the Multiplayer mode has to offer.

Overall, this isn't just the easiest Hitman game with a Platinum trophy, it's one of the easiest games with a Platinum trophy too. The Single Player portion of the game will test your thinking capabilities, and you will need to be clever to complete levels in the correct manner to unlock challenges and fulfil objectives in the correct ways, but it never really pushes you to any limits. The fact that you technically don't need to complete the game on the hardest difficulty available, unlike previous Hitman games, is also a crucial and decisive factor, and the sheer amount of progression based trophies is hugely overloaded in this list.

The Multiplayer side of the list is even easier still, which tops off what is a very straight forward Platinum trophy that seldom presents a genuine gaming challenge. It might take a generous chunk of your time to beat the game and go through the process of trophy clean up, but you can easily bag this Platinum within 30 hours.

Notable Trophies -

Absolution - Complete Hitman Absolution on any professional difficulty
Grand Master - Complete 100 challenges
Jack of All Trades - Collect all play styles
Information is Power - collect all evidence 

Hardest Trophy -

Grand Master

Complete 100 challenges

DLC #86 - Skyrim - Hearthfire

Skysims...

The Hearthfire DLC adds 5 new trophies to the world of Skyrim, and focuses around the concept of building and furnishing your own houses, using raw materials gained from resourcing the landscape and/or purchasing them from traders.

The trophies are, predictably, as dull as the actual package itself, with a sole focus of building houses upon all 3 plots of land you're given the option to purchase after downloading the add-on.

The concept of building houses is just pure button bashing, but it is worth noting that you will need to plug a fair amount of financial backing into the cost of land, raw materials and home extensions if you're looking to grab every trophy available.

The "Land Baron" trophy, awarded for buying three plots of land, will require 15,000 coins (5,000 for each plot) straight off the bat, and will also require you to complete/already have completed a couple of side quests for each area before you can buy the relevant plot of land too.

The "Master Architect" trophy, awarded for building three houses, will require you to fully max out a house at each plot of land, which includes constructing a small house layout, a main hall and three different extensions. If you've already beaten the main game and have stockpiled your coins, this won't be a problem, but there are high costs involved in maximising your properties, so if you don't have the coinage for it, you could be in for a very long and arduous slog. 

If not, you can collect all 5 trophies in no more than a couple of hours, albeit a very long feeling couple of hours.

DLC #85 - Skyrim - Dragonborn

Free Solstheim from it's dark shackles

The Dragonborn DLC adds 10 new trophies to Skyrim, all focused around the new region of Solstheim, including a host of new weapons and a fresh questline.

The new main story dominates the trophy list, with exactly half of the trophies awarded for natural progression throughout the relatively short quest-line. The DLC packs 7 new main quests, with the 5 trophies being awarded for hitting specific points in the main story, usually upon completion of certain quests.

The other trophies in the package will reward exploration, and also cater towards new game mechanics, including the "Dragonrider" trophy, awarded for taming and riding 5 dragons and the "Hidden Knowledge" trophy, awarded for learning the secrets of 5 Black Books, both of which take advantage of new gameplay additions relating to riding dragons and more in depth skill books. It's relatively straight forward stuff for the most part, and the quests are incredibly easy, however, there is a slightly more tasking trophy in this package;

Stalhrim Crafter - Craft an Item out of Stalhrim

This trophy is a bit more long winded than it will seem at face value. Stalhrim is a new element which you can only craft specifically in Solstheim, and you'll need to a fulfil a couple of things before you can actually meet the requirements of the trophy itself.

Firstly, there is an early main story quest called "The Fate of the Skaal", where you'll first interact with a group of NPC's who will be attacked by a Lurker. If any of these NPC's die, you won't be able to initiate a later quest which eventually leads onto the discovery of Stalhrim in Solstheim. Therefore, if you play on after this quest and at least 1 of the 3 relevant NPC's is killed during the fight, you won't be able to trigger the dialogue between them later on, and won't discover Stalhrim as a result. It isn't a difficult problem to overcome, you just need to save the game manually before the fight and reload if it turns out one of the NPC's is killed in action.

Secondly, you need a minimum Smithing level of 80 in order to craft Stalhrim. Smithing isn't one of those skills you will use often enough to level it significantly, and chances are, you'll have a fairly low Smithing skill coming into this DLC package. If this isn't the case, you won't need to worry about anything, but if your Smithing is low in level, you'll need to be prepared to lump a few extra hours into grinding methods in order to heighten your Smithing skill to 80, as I had to, given the fact my Smithing level was only at 25. There are good methods out there for this, but it's long and boring if your Smithing skill is anything under level 40, which for most people it will be, but it's the only effective way to get your skill level to where it needs to be.

Aside from that, this is a fairly easy piece of DLC. The main questline shouldn't take any longer than 3-4 hours, and almost every other trophy can be obtained through blasting through a few side activities which should only add on a few extra hours or so. If you need to heavily level up your Smithing skill, that will easily add another 3-4 hours on top, which turns things into a bit of a grind, but there's nothing terribly challenging about this package.