DLC #106 - Battlefield 4 - Second Assault

As with the previous Naval Strike pack, Second Assault also adds an assortment of new maps, weapons, gadgets and vehicles, along with 5 trophies, complimenting the new additions to the game within this package.

There are a few very menial tasks that yield trophies, including igniting a brush fire using the repair tool in Operation Metro or Caspian Border and finding the hidden tunnel on Caspian Border, both of which take a matter of seconds to unlock. This is even quicker if you can achieve both on the same map.

The third out of three bronze trophies is awarded for killing an enemy with a ceiling collapse on Operation Metro, which could actually prove tricky, due to it's very situational/luck orientated nature, but I managed to grab this one without such issues.

There are also 2 silver trophies, one of which is awarded for killing an enemy flag carrier while carrying their flag, in the newly added Capture the Flag game mode. Just as above, this can potentially prove tricky, but the vacant nature of the game at this stage makes it much easier when you're playing within smaller groups of people. You can imagine the challenge of trying to achieve this trophy among the height of the game's life cycle in huge lobbies where everybody would be focusing on the objective of the game mode, and the difficulties this would create in terms of killing a flag carrier whilst holding the enemies flag simultaneously, so the fact the game is deeply into a declining phase of population actually makes this trophy more achievable.

That leaves the final trophy, which does present a reasonable challenge, irrespective of the circumstances;

Blind Bomber - In a round get 5 kills with air vehicles in Gulf of Oman

The "Blind Bomber" trophy, awarded for getting 5 kills with air vehicles in Gulf of Oman in a single round, is challenging for multiple reasons.

Firstly, you have to overcome the difficulty curve of mastering any air vehicle in Battlefield, which remains one of the most challenging aspects of the game. If you've been playing through, or have already played, the China Rising expansion pack, this includes trophies that contain a heavy emphasis on air combat, so you may already be in a better position to tackle this trophy where you've maybe had a decent level of practice. If not, be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of time learning how to master the flight mechanics and obtain kills simultaneously.

Secondly, the Gulf of Oman map has live climate changing mechanics which involve a sandstorm sweeping across the environment. This makes visibility extremely poor, and as a result, can significantly hinder your progression towards the total amount of kills necessary to fulfill the requirements of the trophy. You can attempt to get closer to the ground, but this makes you much more vulnerable to ground units equipped with rocket launchers, so you'll need to maximise the amount of kills you earn outside the storm timeframe.

The final barrier is the fact the trophy is actually glitched. I had to obtain 5 kills in a round on 2 separate occasions before the trophy was triggered. This led me to believe that kills as a passenger may not have counted, but they actually do, and if you get 5 kills in a round, regardless of whether you're the pilot or the passenger, then it's likely the trophy has just glitched on you instead, so I ended up fulfilling the requirements of the trophy twice.

A good tactic to adopt is to park the helicopter on the floor near a conquest capture point and man one of the side gunners and just lie in wait for enemy troops to approach. It's effectively like using a stationery ground turret, but will still count towards the total of 5 kills because you're still inside the helicopter, and you'll also avoid the dogfights that can often leave you respawning often and losing time.

Is this package easier than Naval Strike? I personally think so, but then again, that's purely based off the fact I got lucky with a few of these trophies which could potentially be a nightmare for certain people who aren't as lucky with them. Second Assault is the second of two packs that don't contain an assignment related trophy (the second of which is the aforementioned Naval Strike pack), and the only 3 trophies I now have left for this game are the 3 assignment based trophies, for each of the 3 outstanding DLC packs.

If you can negotiate the "Blind Bomber" trophy without too many issues, this shouldn't be too bad, but should be approached with an open mentality, due to the possibility of struggling with the other circumstantial trophies outlined above.

Platinum #78 - Dead Island

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Just for the sake of addressing the disclaimer immediately, this is a reduced Platinum Difficulty Rating purely based on the strategic use of the Bloodbath Arena DLC package when progressing towards trophies in this main list, which makes the Platinum trophy significantly easier for reasons which will be addressed in detail below.

This is a list that once upon a time was breaching into the realms of 7/10 in terms of difficulty, mostly for a very time consuming venture with some very scrappy trophies thrown in for good measure.

For the most part, that's actually still true to word, but this list can be made a much easier task to conquer courtesy of the Bloodbath arena DLC, which helps with the progress towards a handful of the longer and/or more challenging trophies in this list.

Despite being an open-world, sandbox game, there is still a story mode, though this doesn't have as many progression related trophies tied to it as you may expect from any game with a story driven narrative. You'll get trophies for completing each of the 4 acts, but there's nothing difficulty related here and the game doesn't require you to complete the story any more than once, though that is dependent on your how you approach your quest to level 50.

The trophy list also does it's best to promote the co-operative element of the game, throwing in an array of trophies for completing quests within a co-op party and progressing the game with different numbers of people. There's also a heavy emphasis on kill accumulation trophies with differing types of weapons and vehicles, and the array of customisation options from weapons and equipment. There's a really big assortment of naturally progressive and miscellaneous trophies in this list, which will come through simply working towards the more notable trophies in the game.

In terms of where the challenge of this list comes from, the "Rootin' Tootin' Lootin'" trophy, awarded for Looting 5 Exceptional Weapons, is the solitary Gold trophy in this list, and entirely based on luck under normal circumstances. Exceptional weapons are graded in orange, and pop up in crates throughout the game, and there's no rhyme or reason as to when or where you'll find them. After an entire first play-through, I only had 2 exceptional weapons, and it seemed like the only way to get the rest was to carry on playing the game. This didn't feel like an unnecessary slog at the time because I still had some way to progressing towards level 50 and the "School of hard knocks" trophy, which you'll have to go deep into a second play-through to achieve, but the entire luck based nature of this trophy gives no guarantee you'll loot 5 exceptional weapons before you hit level 50, which could place you into the territory of fruitless grinding. Trading exceptional weapons with other players doesn't count, and there doesn't seem to be any solid methods of increasing your chances of looting exceptional weapons, so you're at the mercy of the luck-based trophy Gods.

However, there is a savior, and it comes in the form of the Bloodbath Arena DLC. During arenas, you'll get a notification at some point that a zombie within the current wave is carrying an exceptional weapon, and once killed, you can pick it up and it'll count towards your total of 5, making this trophy much easier. The point at which the notification appears seems to be random, but this method was how I cleaned up the remaining 3 exceptional weapons I needed after the desperation of endlessly opening loot crates with no progression whatsoever. It's strange that the game counts weapon drops from zombies as "looting", but it works and that's all that matters. A huge time-saver, and a foolproof method.

On similar grounds, the "School of hard knocks" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 50, is the highest level based trophy, with just over 3,000,000 experience points required to hit this milestone, and under normal circumstances, can be typically reached within just under 2 full play-throughs of the game. You shouldn't need to clean up much after your first run-through, so the second just comes to whatever you missed and accumulating experience, but this is a long journey and should you choose to follow this method, it's a long grind right to the end.

However, as before, there is a savior, and it's the exact same savior as previously mentioned. The Bloodbath Arena DLC is a haven for farming experience points. If you choose either of the two hardest arenas, you'll be able to rack up the experience much quicker than if you were to just continue playing through the game again. Every wave in the arena yields a challenge, which in turn yields experience, and the countless zombies for you to mow down generates experience points aplenty. Even though you'll still feel the struggle towards the higher end of the 40's, it's the most effective and quickest way to reach level 50, and it beats grinding through the entire game again completing the exact same quests as before in an attempt you level up your character.

Not only will you get the experience points from killing a ton of zombies in a manic, horde-esque environment, you'll also rack up the challenge experience on top from the various challenges on offer during each wave, and perhaps a few other miscellaneous trophies along the way. It all contributes towards hitting level 50, and this method significantly reduces the difficulty further to the above.

For some trophies though, there is no such workaround, including the "Right 4 Life" trophy, awarded for completing act 1 with 4 different characters. At 2-3 hours to complete act 1 for each character, that adds around 10-12 extra hours for something that is just no more than just a rinse and repeat job. A little bit tedious, and something to definitely note as it adds a significant amount onto the overall completion time.

The "There and back again" trophy, awarded for Exploring the entire island, is missable, because some of the 72 locations within the game cannot be revisited after certain points in the game, meaning if you never explored them before you move onto the next area, you'll have to carry over your game into a new play-through and reach the point where you first encounter the location. Any location you've previously seen carries over though, so you won't need to re-do everything, but a fair few of them can be easily missed, especially if you don't stray from the main story path, so it's important to make sure you keep track of them all to ensure you don't move onto a new area too quickly without ensuring you've unlocked every location beforehand.

It can be also difficult to know which locations you haven't seen yet, given the fact the only indication the game will give you is by telling you how many of the 72 locations you've unlocked, so if you're not keeping score, it'll be up to you to work out which ones you've missed, which can be a nightmare to dissect if you have to go through the game again because you won't know how far forward you have to play before you hit the areas you've missed, and there's still always a chance you may miss them again, which is a bit messy, so this is definitely one to watch out for. 

The "Nearly there" trophy, awarded for Finding 120 collectibles, is mentioned for similar reasons to the above. This is another missable trophy, and the game will have to be played from scratch on a new play-through to collect anything you may have missed previously. Thankfully, this number is not the full compliment of collectibles in the game, and you have a small margin of error, which makes it easier than hunting down every location because you won't to scour the whole map in search for all of the postcards, recordings and manuals. It's still alot to do though.

All in all, this a list that can made significantly easier if you choose to take advantage of the Bloodbath Arena DLC, which is a genuine difference maker. Under normal circumstances, this is a long game with a hefty leveling grind, along with the uncertainty of looting exceptional weapons which can potentially have you playing way beyond necessity. Without the option of the Bloodbath Arena DLC, I would be marking this game somewhere in the region of 7/10, but after being able to use this to drastically support progression to the two most difficult trophies in the list, it brings it down a few notches to a more average rating.

Most of the list is simply a matter of accumulating kills in various ways and ensuring you're playing the game in co-operative mode as often as possible in order to unlock the handful of co-op trophies on offer. Natural progression towards completing the game once and playing on towards level 50 will see you unlock most of the miscellaneous trophies, but the missable trophies keep you suitably on your toes, and despite the DLC related shortcuts that make the tougher trophies much more achievable, you're still looking at around a 60-70 hour Platinum with everything taken into account, which is a hefty time commitment.

That's all it really boils down to though. The game doesn't present an actual challenge in terms of difficulty, and you're never really penalised upon death, so there's never any pressure when going through the game because you'll always respawn where you last died with nothing but a financial penalty which never adversely affects your characters progression or abilities. It's still a good slog which will test your staying power, but if you can overcome that, then you've won most of the battle. The rest of it can be won by downloading the Bloodbath Arena DLC.

Notable Trophies -

Rootin' Tootin' Lootin' - Loot 5 Exceptional Weapons.
School of hard knocks - Reach level 50.
Right 4 Life - Complete act 1 with 4 different characters.
There and back again - Explore the entire island.
Nearly there - Find 120 collectibles.

Hardest Trophy - 

School of hard knocks
Reach level 50

DLC #105 - Dead Island - Bloodbath Arena

The Bloodbath Arena DLC adds a survival arena mode to Dead Island, with 4 arenas of varying difficulty, requiring the player to survive wave after wave of zombies in increasing volumes. A very simple concept at it's core, and one which has been used many times in various games before.

The package adds 10 new trophies, all catered towards progression within the arenas under differing circumstances, and most of the list will require you to reach a certain amount of waves under specific conditions, most of which aren't generally that challenging.

Surviving a certain number of waves using custom weapons, only fists, analog fighting controls and on each of the 4 arenas all yield trophies upon completion, with a couple of throwaways on the side. Where left unstated, these can be achieved on any of the 4 arenas, so you can choose Arena A (Easy), if your only intention is to unlock the trophies in the most efficient way possible, though tougher arenas yield better rewards in terms of experience points and item drops, which can be useful if you're also still chasing trophies from the main game's list.

As a small side note, you actually may find this game mode challenging if your character hasn't been substantially leveled and/or holds some strong equipment. It feels like the game mode was designed to be tackled later into the game, and doesn't favour low leveled characters. It also doesn't favour solo or smaller parties, which may make it slightly tougher if you're trying to go for these trophies alone, which you can do for most of them, though you will need to play in co-op as a minimum requirement for some of the trophies of this list. As for the more direct challenges;

Gladiator School - Survive 15 consecutive waves with each of the 4 characters.
Morituri te salutant - Survive 30 consecutive waves with at least one co-op player.

The "Gladiator School" trophy, requires the player to survive at least 15 waves in any arena with each each of the 4 main characters. The difficulty around this trophy has already been touched upon above, and this is a tough one to achieve unless your character is a high enough level to get through 15 waves of enemies. In reality, you won't have leveled all 4 characters substantially enough to tackle this without taking a few shortcuts. The main game's list only requires you to achieve level 50 with 1 character, and the only other way you'll use the other 3 is for the "Right 4 Life" trophy, which only requires you to reach Act 2 with every character, so chances are, purely from a trophy hunters perspective, you'll have to complete this trophy using 3 weaker characters.

So what are the tactics out there which can help you achieve this trophy in the easiest possible way? Firstly, you can have a team of stronger players carry you through to wave 15 if you don't want to invest the time playing through the game and strengthening your characters beyond Act 2. It's obviously in the best interest of the game to attempt to contribute where you can, but your effectiveness will be limited, especially as the size and strength of the hordes grow through the rounds. Secondly, you could get your hands on a modded gun, of which there are plenty in the game at this stage of it's life cycle. It may be that some of the people you group up with already have modded guns, which makes light work of the zombies, but they may also drop them for you to use, so it wouldn't be a bad idea at all to take advantage, primarily because it allows you to take an arena on in solo mode.

You could, of course, just level each of the 4 characters up to around 30+ and make this manageable, but this takes a long time, and both of the above methods work just as well when it comes to the end goal of achieving the trophy, so just save the time and effort, unless you actually enjoy the game enough to significantly level 4 different characters.

The "Mortituri te salutant" trophy, is here for similar reasons, though is somewhat easier because you can use your primary character you reached level 50 with in the main game for this one. The above 2 methods will also work in the same way, but you most likely won't need to resort to these in order to achieve this trophy because your main character should be strong enough, with a decent selection of weapons to get you through 30 waves. It takes a while to get through 30 waves (about 45 minutes), so you'll need maximum concentration. Your partner will also need to be similarly high leveled, which you should make sure is the case straight away. You don't want to be in a position where you're carrying your partner, so make sure they're a high enough level and their equipment is strong enough for a good contribution.

Every trophy other than the 2 mentioned above can be comfortably achieved in solo, providing you just use your strongest character and go to work. The others will require assistance, but all outlined methods work well when trying to achieve these trophies, and actually require minimal work. It can be tough to find players at the stage of the game's life cycle, and you will need a willing runner to reach wave 30, so there a few obstacles to overcome along the way.

NOTE : This DLC is an excellent outlet for many of the trophies contained with the main list of the game. It is especially useful for leveling up your character, obtaining epic loot and also unlocking a series of miscellaneous trophies within the main game's list. It is certainly worth taking advantage of when you consider what you may need to still achieve from the main game. This will be mentioned in more detail during the write up of the main list.

DLC #104 - Battlefield 4 - Naval Strike

The Naval Strike expansion pack is 1 of 5 add-ons to Battlefield 4, adding 4 new maps and a host of weapons, gadgets, vehicles and equipment to the Multiplayer aspect of Battlefield.

As is a common theme with all of these DLC packs, the trophies are spread across a variety of the new features added for each expansion, encouraging the player to indulge within as many new aspects as possible.

In relation to all 5 pieces of DLC, Naval Strike is actually one of the easier packs to complete, and contains 5 new trophies awarded for executing in-game tasks.

Completing a game of the newly added Carrier Assault game mode yields a trophy, as does obtaining a kill in the new ACV, but the slightly tougher elements of this package come from a couple of other trophies included within;

Fly Swatter - Kill an enemy with the AA Mine
No Parley - Get a kill with the old cannon

The "Fly Swatter" trophy, awarded for killing an enemy with the AA Mine, is the hardest trophy in the set, and actually one of the most difficult trophies across all 5 Battlefield 4 expansions packs. For starters, the AA Mine isn't readily available, and the "Death from Below" assignment is a pre-requisite to unlocking this piece of equipment. The assignment requires you to reach level 10, and then to obtain 3 PDW ribbons and destroy 5 air attack vehicles with rocket launchers.

This isn't terribly difficult, but creates extra work, and once this is done, the real fun starts. The AA Mine has a few limitations to take note of when going for this trophy. The most notable limitation is the fact that, unlike most anti-air weapons, it won't take a vehicle down unless it's already been significantly damaged, due to the fact the AA Mine only deals around 30 hit points worth of damage. Another limitation is the fact that it only has enough power to use 1 projectile, meaning your approach to this has to be extremely tactical.

The best thing to do is equip a primary rocket launcher, such as the Stinger or the Igla, and once an aircraft has been hit, you can quickly deploy the AA Mine in hope enough damage has already been done to achieve the killing blow. This will more than likely contain much trial and error, and was the primary approach I took when attempting to achieve this trophy. The irony of the situation is, I actually ended up just getting lucky when I spotted a helicopter on it's way down, and just deployed the AA Mine, which hit the falling chopper and killed the pilot, triggering the trophy, so it might just end up being a case of situational fortune.

The "No Parley" trophy, awarded for getting a kill with the old cannon, can also see you succumb to a touch of trial and error. The old cannon is an emplacement weapon (meaning it's fixed to a certain location as part of the map) and only exists on the Operation Mortar map. The cannon is in 4 locations around a raised fort at the highest point of the map, but 3 of these locations face outwards towards water, making them incredibly unlikely situations to be able to kill an enemy. The other location looks downhill, giving the greater chance of killing enemies on foot.

The biggest flaw of the old cannon is the extreme drop-off when firing a shot, making long-distance engagements difficult to judge when aiming. It's also got a fixed axis of movement within a certain line of fire and also has an extremely slow rate of fire, making it a tough weapon to use. The best tactic is to wait for enemies to vault over the embankment directly in front of the cannon and just firing. It's a guaranteed kill, but you may have to be prepared to wait and be patient. You can continuously try your luck from distance in the meantime, but you run the risk of reloading your shot when there's a possibility somebody could appear in front of you and you miss your chance.

Aside from the trickier trophies in this set, it's still one of the easier pieces of DLC within the game, though that is mainly down to the fact there isn't a trophy awarded for completing all assignments like there is for 3 of the other DLC packs. The majority of your efforts will go into the aforementioned trophies, and they're still a good challenge in their own right, but everything else is fairly easy.

Platinum #77 - Battlefield 4

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

When Battlefield 3 came out, the bar was set higher than ever before, when we got our first real challenging list from a Battlefield game.

Battlefield 4 moves in completely the opposite direction, with a trophy list much more relaxed to it's predecessor.

The list is split by both the Single Player and Multiplayer components, though the large majroity of this list is catered towards the Single Player portion of the game, with the co-operative campaign from Battlefield 3 being completely absent on this occassion.

The "Tombstone" trophy, awarded for Completing the Campaign on Hard, can be challenging in some areas, with some unforgivingly accurate enemies and quick deaths equally contributing towards a steady challenge, but even with this, the campaign is incredibly short, with just 7 missions to complete, and will take you around 6-8 hours to fully finish. It doesn't measure up anywhere near Veteran difficulty on certain Call of Duty titles.

The rest of the Single Player trophies relate to a variety of other things. There are a standard selection of progression based trophies awarded for completing each level for the first time, including trophies awarded for seeing the 3 different endings of the game based on sacrifical choices made by the player. There are also trophies awarded at incremental stages for obtaining all 28 collectibles across every level, as well as a handful of tasks to be completed during certain missions. All of these trophies are made even easier to obtain by the use of chapter select to drop into each level once you've completed the game.

The "Full Arsenal" trophy, awarded for Unlocking all assignments and collectibles in the Campaign, covers off most of the aforementioned activites relating to other trophies within the list. There are a handful of assignments that require you to achieve a certain score within missions, which is driven by your performance within a level, and each level has a bronze, silver and gold threshold score to achieve. Performance is scored on kills and accuracy (headshots, multi-kills etc.), and achieving a gold score will unlock the assignment for that particular level, so you'll need a tactical approach, rather than a run and gun approach, which won't net you enough points to reach the gold threshold, which is certainly worth noting.

Even with any clean up required, the Single Player part of the list is still only around 10-15 hours in length, and apart from a few trickier segments of the campaign, is mostly just a progressional experience. The chapter select feature can be used to complete pretty much every outstanding task you may have, including the trophies awarded for seeing each of games 3 alternative endings, which cuts a potentially large amount of time off, as it negates the requirement for the player to have to replay the campaign in it's entirety multiple times. In this regard, the game does everything to cater it's experience with the average trophy hunter in mind.

It is also worth mentioning that there is a critical bug (which was never fixed) whereby your saved data could corrupt and disappear without explanation, causing you to have to restart the entire campaign. This is obviously frustrating, and did happen to myself when I came back to finish off the list, but given how quickly you can complete the game and clean up everything else, it isn't exactly a dealbreaker, albeit important to note regardless.

The Multiplayer portion of the game is also nowhere near as demanding as what it was in Battlefield 3, but across the 5 trophies distributed amongst the competitive online mode, this is where most of this list's challenge truly lies.

The "Call me "Sir"" trophy, awarded for Reaching rank 25, is a standard levelling venture, and despite not requiring anywhere near the same amount of time as what was required in the previous title, there's still a solid commitment necessary in order to achieve this trophy.

Working towards stars for weapons, ribbons and assignments is the best way to make progress, netting 10,000 experience points per star. However, you'll need exactly 796,000 experience points to hit rank 25, which will take the average player anywhere between 25-30 hours. It's recommended to play conquest, which awards alot of experience for capturing and defending flags, and if you're playing in large scale games, there will naturally be more opportunities to kill people and net additional experience.  

There is also a slew of DLC available (with additional trophies attached) which can be used to assist in the progression of levelling, as they give the player access to new ribbons and weapons/equipment which will also unlock the ability to earn more service stars and additional experience outlets.

Either way, this is a long slog, and actually requires a suprisingly steep climb in experience in correlation to the level you have to reach, so on face value, it doesn't seem like it would be as demanding as it actually turns out to be.

The ".45 old school" trophy, awarded for Performing 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer, doesn't actually seem too difficult on face value, but actually requires alot of additional background work in order to achieve.

The M1911 Handgun isn't a readily available weapon, and much like alot of the weapons and equipment in Battlefield 4, requires you to unlock it by progressing the Handgun experience bar. The M1911 is one of the final handguns along this list, and you'll need 34,000 experience points with Handguns before you unlock it for use, which is alot for a weapon that is only really effective in close quarters combat.

Given the fact the only way you can obtain weapon-based experience is through kills, which usually only award you between 100-150 points per kill, it will take you roughly 300-350 kills with Handguns to reach the necessary amount of experience points you need to unlock the M1911 Handgun, and even then, you'll need a further 45 kills with it in order to fulfil the actual requirements of the trophy, which collectively, will take you a reasonable amount of hours and patience to achieve. It's better to play on small maps where you're likely to get more kills and also have a better chance of obtaining these kills due to the close combat nature of smaller maps, where handguns generally fare better than when used on larger scale maps.

All in all, most of the challenge from this list comes from the amount of time and effort you have to put into the Multiplayer portion of the game. A couple of long-haul trophies is just enough to keep you on your toes, but is also where pretty much the bulk of this rating comes from.

The Single Player experience is mostly a checklist exercise, with a short campaign mode, sprinkled with a touch of replay value for anything you may have missed along the way, whether that be collectibles or a points threshold for a score related trophy. Even if you encounter the mysterious save data wiping bug, the campaign is so short, it doesn't even make it that much of an inconvience if you have to start over. Easy, in comparison to Battlefield 3.

Notable Trophies -

Tombstone - Complete the Campaign on HardFull arsenal - Unlock all assignments and collectibles in the Campaign
Call me "Sir" - Reach rank 25
.45 old school - Perform 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer

Hardest Trophy -




.45 old school
Perform 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer

DLC #103 - GRID 2 - Classic Grid Pack

The GRID 2 DLC ends on the easiest note possible, with the Classic Grid Pack adding 2 final trophies to the overall GRID 2 trophy list, and they couldn't be easiesr to earn.

The pack adds 2 new cars (The Pagani Zonda Revolucion and the Koenigsegg CCGT), and both trophies require you to win an event in each one. An eliminator event for the Pagani, and a drift event for the Koenigsegg.

There are no requirements to win the events online either, as there were with the previous DLC packs, so you can just create a custom event within the Single Player timeline, set the field, difficulty and track and then just make sure you win. It should take no longer than 10 minutes to secure both trophies and complete the package.

If you want to make extra sure, just choose the lowest number of competitors and set the AI difficulty to "Very Easy". Incredibly simple.

DLC #102 - GRID 2 - Spa-Francorchamps Track Pack

In the same way the Bathurst Track Pack added 4 new trophies to the set, the Spa-Francorchamps Track Pack closely follows suit, and (almost) replicates the exact same 4 trophies for it's own offering.

To be more exact, 2 of the 4 trophies in this package are awarded for the exact same requirements as before, including reaching a maximum speed limit on the new Spa map and setting a specific lap time on the new Spa map, both of which are relatively straight-foward.

Despite the other 2 trophies in the pack being slightly different within their requirements, they're still just as easy to unlock, requiring you to pull of a 300,000 point drift, and venture online with the aim of completing an endurance event on the Spa map.

Just on that subject, the "Staying the Distance" trophy, awarded for completing an online Endurance race at Spa-Francorchamps, might require you to stick around for a while in an empty lobby awaiting a match at this point in the game's lifespan, but will merely require you to just complete the race once you've found a suitable opponent. To suggest that's about how tough this package gets, pretty much sums it up.

DLC #101 - RAGE : The Scorchers

Definitely a 2 for 1 offer...

The Scorchers DLC adds a new sub-story to the RAGE package, complete with 10 new trophies, mostly geared towards completion of the new plot, which sees you complete a number of new missions as you bring down the Scorchers and their plan to create a weapon of mass destruction through farming feltrite.

The story is quite short, clocking in at around 3-4 hours, and can be tackled on whichever level you wish, since there are no trophy requirements tied to difficulty. (Not for the DLC, at least...)

Exactly half of the trophies in this list are progression based, spread across the 7 new quests on offer, and unlocked en route towards completion of the questline.

It's a relatively easy list, and even the other non-progression related trophies have very relaxed requirements relating to some luck-based, casino dabbling and a few combat tasks using the new featured weapon, the Nailgun. These make up the 4 non-progression trophies in the package.

But that's 9 out of the 10 trophies accounted for;

Night Terrors - Finish the Campaign on Ultra Nightmare difficulty

The "Night Terrors" trophy, awarded for finishing the campaign on Ultra Nightmare difficulty, in an unusual move, requires you to go back over the entire main game and beat it the newly added and increased difficulty level of Ultra Nightmare.

Ultra Nightmare difficulty isn't as bad as it may sound. There are a few tougher areas later on in the game that may require a few attempts to get through and it can take a seemingly infinite amount of time for the health regeneration process to complete, which are the two noticable differences with this new difficulty mode. Enemies don't seem tougher to kill, money doesn't seem to be harder to come across and you can still expect to beat the game in roughly the same amount of time as you did before when chasing down the Platinum trophy. There is also that small issue that previously existed of having to be constantly aware of manually saving your game, and not potentially losing alot of hard work that may set you back some time, but that's more of a something to note, rather than a direct reflection on the difficulty of the trophy itself. It is important to be regulary saving the game though, because the game won't do it for you.

Given the fact this is an entire playthrough of the main story, this will add another 8-10 hours on top of what was just merely 3-4 hours for the rest of the DLC package, and if your circumstances were like mine, this will be the third time you've played through the game in an attempt to fully complete the list.

I do personally question the neccesity of adding such a trophy for a game that already desirably requires a couple of playthroughs in order to achieve the Platinum trophy, especially amongst a majority of trophies attached directly to the DLC and it's questline. However, it is mostly just an extra time-sink, rather than any sort of genuine challenge, turning this package from a couple of passing hours, into a 12-14 hour offering.

NOTE : If you start a new game to access the DLC having already beaten the game previously, you'll have to play up to, and complete, the "Mutant Bash TV" quest in order to advance the plot for the Scorchers DLC too. This is because the latter stages of the Scorchers story require you to earn a ticket to Oasis, which can only be obtained by completing a second episode of Mutant Bash TV.

DLC #100 - LittleBigPlanet 2 - DC Comics Premium Level Pack

The DC Comics Premium Level Pack adds 7 new levels to the LittleBigPlanet 2 Story mode, featuring a variety of characters from the DC Universe, and challenges you to defeat Lux Luthor and restore order within the DC world.

Along with this selection of levels, comes 7 new trophies, with a typical pattern of progressing through each level and completing them in full.

This includes trophies awarded for defeating Lex Luthor and completing the Story path, whilst you'll also earn another trophy for acing each of the 7 levels too. As standard, there are also trophies on offer for collecting 100% of the prize bubbles hidden amongst all the new levels and smaller tasks tied to usage of the new tools in the DLC package, such as the hero cape and the sliding walls.

There isn't anything tasking within this package, and you should be able to complete it within 3-4 hours. The majority of this time will be spent on the Story path, and some of the latter story levels might take a handul of attempts to achieve an ace on, but the prize bubbles are made much easier to obtain thanks to the fact each Multiplayer prize bubble area only requires 2 players, rather than 3 or 4 like the main game's list, and all of these areas can be easily completed solo with 2 controllers if you have a second controller at your disposal.

The non-story related trophies are awarded for perfoming very minor tasks, which can be achieved quickly and easily. Now, I need to move on and purchase some peripherals...

Platinum #76 - LittleBigPlanet 2

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

LittleBigPlanet returns with the second installment in the main series of the LittleBigPlanet games, equipped with a slighly kinder trophy list than it's predessesor, though not without a couple of hurdles along the way.

The structure of the trophy list in LittleBigPlanet 2 is the same as LittleBigPlanet, with the "Play, Create, Share" emphasis strongly represented in this list all the way through.

There is a brand new story mode, with progression based trophies for completing all 30 story mode levels, spread across 6 different worlds, which is incredibly easy to sail through at leisure whilst collecting a hatful of trophies for other smaller tasks along the way.

The "Ace Story Mode" trophy, awarded for Acing every level in the story mode, returns again, and will require you to complete all 30 story stages without dying, which, for the most part isn't actually too difficult, but there are a handful of levels which will test your ability, and subsequently patience, if you're restarting them often. 

However, the user friendly nature of the LittleBigPlanet games ensures the challenge doesn't border into the realms of the outrageous, and you shouldn't have too many issues bar the odd the difficulty spike. The best strategy is to just take your time, as most deaths will occur from silly errors caused by rushing into obstacles or not taking care when approaching dangerous areas.

Sticking with the Story mode, the "Uber Prize Collector" trophy, awarded for collecting 100% of Story prize bubbles, is a LittleBigPlanet franchise favourite, and requires you to collect everything in both the main story levels and the mini-game sub-levels within each world. The story levels will require you to explore every possible part of the stage, with some well hidden bubbles along the way, and the mini-games will require you to achieve target scores which releases all prize bubbles as a reward.

The greater challenge here actually comes from the multiplayer portions of each stage, some of which will require as many as 4 players to work together to trigger the completion of a specific area, consequently unlocking the prize bubbles. In some instances, there isn't actually a need for 4 players, but if you're attempting to tackle this alone, you will need 4 controllers, otherwise you'll have to jump online and acquire the help from others. A few of the 3 and 4 player co-opeartive areas are designed in a such a way that you will need the assistance of other people, and this may have not been too bad in the initial stages of the game, but has become increasingly harder as time, and the online community, has moved on.

Away from the Story mode, and into Create mode, where the "1440 Minutes of Create" trophy, awarded for spending 24 active hours in Create mode, requires you spend an entire days worth of time creating levels. This trophy was present in LittleBigKarting, but was not present in LittleBigPlanet, and where you could idle in LittleBigKarting, you could not do this here.

If you're not actively using the controller buttons, the timer won't fill up, so you have to spend an entire 24 hours making stuff, and you will hit a point where you will feel the grind, depending on when you start to get bored of actually creating levels. There are a handful of create-based trophies which will encourage you to make some decent levels, and compliment this trophy nicely, including the "Crowd Pleaser" trophy, awarded for creating a published level which was played by 50 unique players. These can help with the motivation to spend some quality time on learning how to use all the tools, and consequently create some nice levels, but it can't be underestimated just how big of a time sink this trophy will be, and will actually end up being a dealbreaker for alot of people.

This trophy was the sole reason it took me over 6 years to go from first trophy to Platinum. After creating 2 relatively good levels, one of which earned me the "Crowd Pleaser" trophy, there were still just over 8 hours to clock. A combination of being somewhat bored of creating levels, and realising the Platinum still seemed miles away meant the game was laid to rest for a long while, and there haven't been many games that have done that to me, especially to the point where the total completion timespan range has been over 6 years. This very much has to be taken into account.

The "10 Story Versus Wins" trophy, awarded for winning 10 Story mode Versus games against at least one other player offline, is simply here by virtue of the fact you'll need a second controller to achieve it. Yet another Sony game with perhiphal-based trophies, which we see to a much greater extent within the upcoming DLC trophy lists for this game.

In some respects, this has been a difficult list to judge. LittleBigPlanet definitely had a tougher trophy list, with a wider spread of challenging tasks, whereas LittleBigPlanet 2 possesses a much tougher individual trophy than anything prestented in the original title.

In terms of a timescale, obviously including the minimum 24 hours you'll need to accumulate within Create mode, you can expect to add another 30 hours on top for completion of everything else. This includes the story mode, acing every level and collecting all the prize bubbles. There is a strong showing from the "Play" aspect too, requiring the player to notch up certain totals by playing community levels with others over time, culminating towards a 50+ hour Platinum trophy.

LittleBigPlanet was always going to score higher than LittleBigPlanet 2, with everything taken into consideration. However, having to spend 24 hours actively creating levels is not to be overlooked in terms of how much tougher it made this game compared to the rest of the list. If you can stomach the grind, there really isn't much to scratch for under the surface, though that can be dependant on how easy you find obtaining all the prize bubbles with either multiple controllers or being able to find co-operative partners to assist you.

You could talk about other trophies that require you to play a total amount of co-operative levels, or accumulate a certain amount of plays on any one level, but the bottom line will always be, you have to spend 24 active hours creating levels. An entire day of your life for one trophy amongst an easy list. Just incase it hasn't been emphasised enough already.

Notabale Trophies -

Ace Story Mode - Ace every level in the story mode
Uber Prize Collector - Collect 100% of Story prize bubbles
1440 Minutes of Create - Spend 24 active hours in Create mode
10 Story Versus Wins - Win 10 Story mode Versus games against at least one other player offline

Hardest Trophy -

1440 Minutes of Create
Spend 24 active hours in Create mode

DLC #99 - GRID 2 - Bathurst Track Pack

Aussie Rules

The Bathurst Track Pack adds the famous Mount Panorama track to the Grid 2 roster, along with 3 additional cars to add to the collection.

This is a very basic piece of DLC, which is a theme very much reflected in the small selection of trophies on offer too.

There are 4 in total, and include completing very miniscule tasks solely on the Mount Panorama track, and you can easily clean everything up in less than hour with ethe right level of efficiency.

The "Aussie Rules" trophy, awarded for beating a lap time of 1:39:00 at Bathurst, may require a degree of track mastery, and will definitely require a tier 4 car, which are much harder to handle than anything else in the game, but these trophies are mostly a complete giveaway.

The "Time Extended" trophy, awarded for winning an online Checkpoint event at Bathurst, will only present a challenge at this stage because nobody is playing Grid 2 online anymore and you may be required to do what I had to do and sit in a lobby for 3 hours waiting for an opponent to show up.

Aside from this, if you're looking for a handful of easy trophies, look no further. A couple of hours maximum and possibly a little bit of patience for the required target lap time is all it takes for full completion of this package.

DLC #98 - Uncharted 3 : Drake's Deception - Co-op Shade Survival Mode

For Sparta...

Despite the main focus of this DLC package being centered around the new shade survival mode, this follows the usual trend of Uncharted 3 DLC, with an assortment of trophies catered towards the general online Multiplayer component of the game.

As per normal, there are 10 additional trophies in total, spread between both competitve and co-operative game modes, with 3 of the trophies in this package awarded for achieving a set number of medals whilst obtaining kills in the new Shade Survival co-op mode.

It's actually just normal co-op survival mode, with re-skinned enemies, so to actually to go as far as to call it a brand new mode is somewhat misleading.

This package contributes both a time consuming and skill filled element, with a handful of trophies within this list responsible for this;

Treasure Collector - Win 50 matches of Plunder
Overseer - Get the Curator Medal while on Crushing Difficulty
Unstoppable -Get the Unyielding Medal while on Crushing Difficulty
Head Crusher - Get 50 Head Hunter Medals

 

The "Treasure Collector" trophy requires you to win 50 games of Plunder, which is effectively a Capture the Flag variant, where both teams have to deposit a statue into a chest at either end of the map. Plunder is also the longest game type, at a maximum time limit of 20 minutes, which is frequently reached before the 5 captures needed for either team to win.

This makes it a very time consuming trophy, and even though there are other trophies scattered around the various DLC packs for 50 wins each game mode, these are often shorter in length, and 50 wins will take a considerable amount of time to achieve, even with a good win ratio. It is a good game mode to achieve medals in though, which will certainly help towards completion of the other DLC packs, though it is also important to note, not all medals can be achieved in Plunder, and are exclusively restricted to Deathmatch modes.

The "Overseer" trophy, is arguably the most difficult trophy in this entire game, and the level of co-operation required in order to achieve it is of a necessarily high standard. The situation occurs at the end of the Monastery level in co-op mode, where you have to protect a statue in the middle of the courtyard from taking any damage whatsoever from a series of incoming RPG equipped enemies.

The fact you have to fulfil the requirements of this trophy on Crushing difficulty turns out to be the biggest problem, because this reduces the margin of error for how many hits you can afford the statue to take, which actually turns out to be just the 1. You'll also need a party of 3 as a bare minimum, in order to effectively co-ordinate the level of cover required to make sure every possible spot an RPG equipped enemy can pop up is always sufficiently covered, then it's just a matter of making sure you kill them before they can get a rocket away. You'll also have to deal with ground troops at the same time, and the fact there is no set routine as to where the enemies will appear from, so you always have to be prepared for a different pattern each time, which can make you and your team open to costly errors.

Due to the fact it also occurs at the very end of the level, if you need to restart, you'll have to go through the entire level from the beginning, which is just plain frustrating, but also something you should fully expect in the quest for this trophy, even with a good team, which is the biggest key here. You can't earn this trophy through naturally playing through the level, because the required strategy is just simply too intricate for 1 person to execute alone, so a like minded party of players all looking to achieve this trophy is a must. I would agree with anybody who believes this is the game's toughest challenge.

The "Unstoppable" trophy is here for similar reasons as above, though nowhere near as difficult as the "Overseer" trophy. During the London Underground level, you're tasked with pushing a cart from one end of a track to other without stopping. You'll need 1 person to push the cart, whilst the other 2 hold off enemies, which can be extremely tough given the fact you'll face a few of the tougher mini bosses along the way. If the person pushing the cart is downed, or stops pushing the cart at any point, you'll have to restart from the most recent checkpoint, if not the entire level, so same rules apply as the above too.

It certainly won't cause you as many problems as the "Overseer" trophy, though you'll need a decent level of co-operation to achieve it.

The "Head Crusher" trophy is the only bronze trophy that really deserves a mention. In order to achieve a head hunter medal, you need to earn 3 headshot kills during a game, and the trophy requires 50 of these medals, which equates to 150 headshots. You won't unlock too many of these per game, due to the nature of how short games can be, and executing headshots is a tough thing to do in a game like Uncharted.

This is predominantly because people move around alot, even when shooting from a stationery position. People seem to have this strange habit whereby they shift side to side extremely quickly on the spot, which makes obtaining headshot kills a tougher tasker than you may initially believe. I found using a sniper rifle loadout to be the best way to earn this trophy, despite the fast paced nature of the game, but you'll need alot of patience and this trophy will take a fair chunk of time to achieve.

This is, yet again, another tough piece of DLC from Uncharted 3. It contains the toughest trophy in the entire game, that is genuine gem to add to any trophy hunters collection, and also tacks on a mass of hours of gameplay into the overall package, with a strong offering of time consuming trophies. In terms of attaching an estimated completion time, it really depends how long it takes you to achieve the "Overseer" trophy. It isn't at all unheard of for people to leave this package incomplete on this trophy alone, but as a rough benchmark, it would fall anywhere between 50-60 hours.

It's been a long road with this game already, and there are still more 2 packs to complete...

Platinum #75 - LittleBigPlanet Karting

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

At first glance, you wouldn't expect any LittleBigPlanet game to produce a tough trophy list, though through the first few titles in the series, that hasn't exactly been true. Despite this, the racing spin-off doesn't really follow the form book, though there is enough to provide a slight challenge along the way.

The game still follows the convential story format of a typical LittleBigPlanet title, with a series of worlds with a handful of events to complete on each one.

These also provide some standard progression based trophies awarded for the completion of each planet, and the subsequent completion of the story mode at it's conclusion.

It's extremely linear stuff. You win the race, and then move onto the next until you complete the planet, and then it's just a matter of rinsing and repeating for the 7 planets in the story mode. You'll unlock a ton of trophies along the way too.

The "Story Star" trophy, awarded for Starring ever level in the Story mode, requires you to both collect all prize bubbles available and finish 1st place in every event. This is very similar to "Acing" a level in previous LittleBigPlanet games, though there are a few crucial differences that make it much easier in this game compared to the others in the series.

Firstly, every prize bubble in the game can be earned on your own, so there's none of those awkward 2, 3 and 4 player specific sections of levels that were present in previous LittleBigPlanet games that usually required some form of co-ordination and reliance on others to achieve. "Acing" a level also used to require getting to the end of a level without dying, which is replaced in the Karting version by simply winning the race, which is incredibly easy, despite some blatant rubber-banding AI, though this actually also works in favour of the player most of the time too, and allows for easy race wins. It's certainly much easier to win a race than it was to complete a level without losing a life.

The "Building The Imagesphere" trophy, awarded for Spending 24 active hours in Create mode, requires you to clock an entire day's worth of time creating levels. This is an awful long amount of time to spend making levels, and is easily the most arduous part of the entire list. It can be fun at first when you're experimenting with all the tools and different types of tracks you can make, but it fast becomes a grind and, even if you're always looking for creative new ways to make levels, the whole aspect of level-making isn't a particulary exciting process.

It is a returning trophy though, and if you do enjoy the creation side of the game, it probably won't seem too bad, though there's no escaping the fact it's still 24 active hours, which is more than a couple of sessions of playing the game. There are a small selection of other create mode trophies to unlock along the way, but this is the toughest trophy on the list by some distance.

Speaking of which, the "Crowd Pleaser" trophy, awarded for Publishing a level and having 10 different players complete the level, might not seem too problematic on face value, but with the amount of levels shovelled out throughout the game, any published levels can be quickly lost within the depths of the game's publication library, and unless you're a creative genius who manages to pull out some genuinely decent stuff, your sub-par levels will become one of many very quickly.

Levels based around quick plays or finishes for the purpose of unlocking trophies (such as the "The Adventure Continues" trophy, awarded for Completing 100 community levels), seem to be quite popular, as do levels that offer a "play for play" incentive, in the name of helping each other out, but there's still no guarantee you can get enough plays for any one level to satsify the requirements of the trophy.

Unfortunately, the game's list also possesses a couple of horribly broken trophies too, which, under normal circumstances, wouldn't be an issue at all to achieve, but as a consequence of their broken nature, they do become somewhat problematic.

The "Dive In!" trophy, awarded for Diving into 25 community levels and completing those levels, requires you to complete 25 levels using the "Dive In" feature.

Not difficult, on face value, but there are actually a couple of issues here. Firstly, the counter for how many levels you have completed is broken, and you may find yourself having to play through more than 25 levels before the trophy actually unlocks. This could be directly linked to the second problem, which is, because of the fact the "Dive In" feature will automatically throw you into random levels, you'll end up playing the same levels on a regular basis, which could possibly mean playing the same level on more than occasion won't actually count towards the trophy counter.

There is also a possibility it may just be glitched instead, but either way, you'll have to be prepared to play more than 25 levels to unlock the trophy, and the fact you can't control which levels you play makes it a somewhat frustrating experience.

The "Online Champ" trophy, awarded for placing 1st in 25 different online levels with other human players, despite also having similar issues attached as the aforementiond "Dive In!" trophy, also requires a strong element of skill, as you have to win 25 races against human opponents, which is a solid feat in it's own right.

Again, the counter is glitched, and you may have to win more than 25 races in order to unlock this trophy, but where the "Dive In!" trophy simply requires you to complete the level, this trophy requires you to win the race, and there has to be at least 1 human opponent present upon completion of the race for the victory to count. When you take into account the number of losses, along with the broken counter, you could end up playing a fair amount of races until you manage to unlock this trophy, though they will, at least, go towards the achievement of "The Adventure Continues" trophy, so it won't all feel like wasted time.

Despite not being as difficult as other titles in the LittleBigPlanet series, there are a few curveballs contained within this list, though most of the difficulty does sadly boil down to broken game design and glitchy trophies, rather than anything presenting the player with a genuine challenge of skill.

Spending and entire day in Create mode ensures a minimum overall completion time of 24 hours, and along with the Story and Online trophies on top, you can probably expect this total to at least double the timescale for completion, clocking in at around 50-60 hours in total.

If you can get over the frustration of the broken online trophies, and have the stomach to clock 24 hours making stuff work in Create mode, then everything else comes through simple progression by just playing the game, with a bucket-load of easy Story and adhoc trophies to help you along the way. The easiest Platinum from a LittleBigPlanet title to date.

NOTE: At the time of publication of this article, the online servers were actually due for permanent closure for this title, rendering the Platinum unachievable for those who had any outstanding online trophies.

Notable Trophies -

Story Star - Star every level in the Story mode
Building the Imagsphere -Spend 24 active hours in Create mode
Crowd Pleaser - Publish a level and have 10 different players complete the level
Dive In! - Dive into 25 community levels and complete those levels
Online Champ - Place 1st in 25 different online levels with other human players

Hardest Trophy -

Building the Imagsphere
Spend 24 active hours in Create mode.