DLC #92 - Sleeping Dogs - Nightmare in North Point

Not so Smiley Cat.

This DLC package adds Sleeping Dogs to the forever growing list of games that gets the popular treatment of zombie-themed game design, where North Point is over-run by a re-incarnated zombie horde led by Big Scar Wu AKA Smiley Cat.

The 5 trophies on offer are very similar to those you'll find in the main game's list, treading familiar ground with their requirements.

The "Can I Haz Banishment" trophy, awarded for banishing Smiley Cat, tops off the 7 mission episode, which should take no longer than a couple of hours to beat, with the same ease of challenge reflected in the gameplay as anything that went before it.

There is a small slice of additional content available from this list, including trophies awarded for completing a clutch of side missions and discovering all 10 hell shrines scattered around North Point, which are extremely routine tasks.

The "Cursed Gold" trophy, awarded for Achieving 5 Gold Awards, was the sort of trophy that was responsible for the challenge provided in the game's main list. None of the 5 new challenges are exactly tough, though they will require slight elements of grind in them to be fulfilled to gold standard. This mostly applies to the Vampire Hunter and Demonic Exorcism challenges, which require you to kill 200 Jiang Shi (the regular enemies in the game) and to kill 15 Yaoguai with the Peachwood sword (the less common mini bosses in the game that appear at random).

Not enough of each of these required figures will pop up throughout the main story arc alone, and you'll be required to parade around the city finding the remaining number of enemies during the end-game, which does ultimately become a slightly tedious exercise. It doesn't add too much time onto the package, but it ends up feeling like 2-3 hours too much, especially with the extremely limited combat system in full swing.

Overall, this is still a relatively straight forward package. The 7 new missions will only take a couple of hours to beat in their entirety, and the side content is enough to tag another 2-4 hours on top of that. There is a very slight grind element in a few of the gold award requirements, but nothing any more difficult to get through than what is present in the main game.

Platinum #72 - Resistance 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

The follow up to a game that still holds one of the most prestigious Platinum trophies available in the entire Playstation catalogue couldn't be further away on the spectrum.

Where Resistance 2 was a 10/10 in the truest form, Resistance 3 is anything but, and although it can throw up the odd difficulty spike, these are in short supply, and the overall challenge is quite meagre.

The first thing to note is the fact there are an extremely unusual amount of trophies in this list, totalling 59 including the Platinum, with 53 of these being bronze trophies.

The main bulk of the difficulty comes from the "Brutal" trophy, awarded for Completing Campaign Mode on Superhuman, and there are some tough portions of this game, particularly as you creep towards the end of story.

This is mainly due to the unforgiving health system, where enemies will deal some serious damage which will deplete your health bar significantly quickly. Certain parts of the game where you're bombarded with enemies will test your patience as you retry them multiple times, and with practically no cover system and the absence of any form of health regeneration, the game mechanics don't really do the player any favours when trying to counter the punishing health system.

The story isn't terribly lengthy either, clocking in at around 8-10 hours or so, and you can quite easily beat it twice within 25 hours, including the massive bronze trophy clean up that will most likely follow.

It is also important to note that you will need to beat the game once in order to unlock Superhuman difficulty, as you did in Resistance 2, but with the sheer amount of trophies on offer, and given the fact the vast majority of them are attached to the campaign mode, it's actually more ideal to break it down over 2 play-throughs because there are alot of trophies to keep track of to manage over one trip. There is the benefit of a chapter select feature too, which is useful, because there is alot of clean up potential in this list.

The "Juggler" trophy, awarded for Simultaneously burning, freezing and poisoning 4 separate enemies, is possibly the pick of the rest of the list. The majority of it is so easy, it's difficult to pick out anything genuinely challenging, but there are problems with this trophy registering correctly. There are a few prime locations with groups of enemies where this can be found, but the ticker is very sketchy when counting the 4 times you need to execute the requirements of this trophy, but were clutching at straws a bit here in all honesty. You will unlock it eventually, it's just very bugged and will take longer to unlock than it should do.

Much was made about the "Killing Machine" trophy from Resistance 2, but you won't need 10,000 Multiplayer kills this time round though. You technically won't even need an online connection, though there are a couple of co-op trophies. However, these can easily be farmed in local co-operative mode if you possess two controller pads. If not, they are still achievable through the Multiplayer mode, though connectivity to another person at this stage in the game's life cycle may be extremely difficult.

The rest of the list is just full of small menial tasks that you will either manage to complete naturally during the story, or through chapter select for anything you may have missed across the two play-throughs. This includes collectibles, which are registered automatically and tracked through specific in-game menus. They also do not have to be collected in one go, which is another good example of why this list is so easy.

Overall, the challenge this game presents in it's trophy list is extremely minimal. Superhuman difficulty can provide some stern moments, and there are an excessive amount of trophies on offer for a normal retail list, which can be a bit overwhelming. Even though you have to play the campaign mode twice in it's entireity, and with the potential for high clean up afterwards, you can still quite comfortably beat this game in a sub-30 hour timescale.

It isn't terribly far off being towards the very most opposite end of the spectrum to it's predecessor, and if it wasn't for a moderately challenging top difficulty mode, it probably would be. Superhuman difficulty saves it a little bit of grace, but this is still one of the easiest lists available in the Playstation catalogue.

Notable Trophies -

Brutal - Complete Campaign Mode on Superhuman
Juggler - Simultaneously burn, freeze and poison 4 separate enemies

Hardest Trophy - 

Brutal
Complete Campaign Mode on Superhuman