DLC #109 - Battlefield 4 - Dragon's Teeth

The Dragon's Teeth expansion adds more of the same to Battlefield 4, with new maps, gadgets and weapons all making an appearance to the core game. (There are no new vehicles in this pack).

The pack also adds the Chainlink game mode, where the primary objective is to capture a series of flags, and by doing so, creating links between capture points in order to reduce the enemies ticks and win the game. The more links between adjacent objective points you hold, the quicker the enemies ticks reduce.

There are also 5 new trophies added to the mix, and for the most part, these are straight forward. Winning 2 rounds of Chainlink will give you a trophy, as will spending 5 minutes using the new Ballistic Shield (which you have to unlock via completing one of the assignments tied to this expansion).

You also get trophies for completing a round on each of the 4 new maps, and earning 5 kills in a round using the RAWR gadget, which is a robotic, remote-controlled gun on tracks. This is also the second of the 3 packs which offers a trophy for completing all assignments, which is the final trophy;

Street Fighter - Complete all Dragon's Teeth Assignments

As before with the China Rising expansion, there are 10 further assignments within this pack, each with a varying number of objectives within them required to complete the assignment. There are 10 in total, the same number as was in China Rising, with a couple of objectives within these assignments that stand out, and are slightly trickier to earn;

Assignment 7 - Destroy a vehicle with the EOD bot

This objective requires you to earn the killing blow on any vehicle using the new Explosive Ordnance Device. This is a remote-controlled robot, which functions in the same way as the repair tool, meaning, if used on an allied vehicle, it will repair it, and if used on an enemy vehicle, it will cause damage. Unlike most weapons effective against vehicles, which is sudden, the damage caused by the EOD bot is slowly progressive, which means the enemy will notice the health counter of their vehicle decreasing over a short period of time, and can react within a plentiful time frame before any killing blow is dealt. This will usually cause an enemy to either vacate the vehicle, and the EOD bot is very weak, so it can be destroyed very quickly, or the enemy vehicle will panic and drive away, and the EOD bot isn't as quick as most regular battle vehicles to be able to keep up with them, which makes for 2 unfavorable situations. It's also difficult to deal the killing blow because you'll usually be competing with other vehicles and soldiers with explosive weapons that deal explosive damage, and will often beat you to the punch as a consequence. You'll have to mostly rely on your allies dealing enough damage to enemy vehicles to the point where their health is below 5, in order for you to be able to deal the final blow. On top of all this, you may also have to deal with enemy engineers repairing vehicles in between high levels of damage at the same time. This is the toughest objective in the package, and requires a high element of luck due to the wide range of variables outlined above.

Assignment 10 - Play 10 hours of Dragon's Teeth maps

This objective is replicated from the China Rising expansion, and is part of the only Gold assignment in this package. You'll more than likely finish every other assignment before you clock up 10 hours anyway, and this was the final assignment I unlocked in this expansion. By completion of every other assignment prior to this one, I had only played 8 hours on Dragon's Teeth maps, so I was purely playing to accumulate game time come the end of this expansion, but it still puts a minimum completion time of 10 hours onto the DLC. It's still a stark contrast to the China Rising DLC, which saw me put way more than 10 hours into finishing it, whereas this one actually left me with time to spare.

Despite being an expansion pack that contains an assignment related trophy, this isn't one of the most challenging expansion packs within Battlefield 4. It's certainly the easiest of the 3 packs which contain a requirement to beat all of the assignments, despite having a couple of challenging objectives along the way. It's somewhere in between being slightly more challenging than the Second Assault expansion, but not quite as difficult as Naval Strike, so it's not quite the easiest out of the DLC packs, but it isn't too far off.

I fulfilled every objective and unlocked all other trophies, within 8 hours, prior to clocking the minimum requirement of 10 hours to complete the gold assignment, so to have time to spare is a good indication of challenge from this DLC.

Platinum #82 - Worms Battlegrounds

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Historically, trophy lists from Worms games have provided a medium to solid test, but this iteration of the series definitely takes a step in the opposite direction, serving up a Worms game with a generally casual list, but not without the odd challenge along the way.

The moderately sized list, comprised of 31 trophies in total, can be further split down into 3 different parts, including a Story mode, Worms Ops mode and an Online mode.

The story mode focuses around controlling a single Worm, and being tasked with retrieving the Stone Carrot from the evil Lord Crowley-Mesmer, and takes you through a series of 25 levels, where the main goal is to eliminate all the enemy worms, and usually fulfill another specific goal to complete the level, such as rescuing an allied worm from another section of the map or reaching a certain point of the map to conclude the level, and subsequent progression to the next.

It's very linear, and there isn't exactly much of what you'd call a "story". You just jump from level to level, completing one to unlock the next, with some dialogue to provide you with the instructions on what you'll need to do in order to beat the level and advance.

The "Mesmerised" trophy, awarded for defeating the evil Lord Mesmer, is the final trophy awarded in a series of progression based trophies as you reach the conclusion of all 25 levels of the story, which will take 5-6 hours maximum. The difficulty does somewhat spike towards the end of the campaign levels, as enemy Worms become way more accurate when using weapons and tougher to defeat, but it peaks at a reasonable enough level to not cause you too many issues. There are 5 prior trophies to this one awarded for progressing beyond certain points through the story.

The second mode is Worms Ops, which are a series of challenges, each with a specific focus around mastering the use of a certain weapon or utility, which will be the primary method of completing the challenge. The overall goal is to beat all 10 of the challenges on offer, but also do so as quickly as possible at the same time.

The "Sergeant Swift" trophy, awarded for Completing all Worms Ops missions in under 8 total minutes, is the most challenging trophy in the list, and will require you to be both time efficient and skillful.

It's important to clear up the description of the trophy, because you don't actually have to beat all 10 of these challenges in a cumulative single run of 8 minutes or less, you just have to beat them for a total combined time of less than 8 minutes. Your best completion time for each challenge is recorded, and then graded between 1 to 3 stars, with 1 being a slower than desired time, and 3 being quick enough to suggest little room for improvement, which provides good guidance when trying to decide on where you need to improve your times in order to bring you below the 8 minute threshold and achieve the trophy.

Some of the challenges are fairly easy, whereas others will require you to play through them over and over to shave valuable seconds off them to get within the 8 minute time limit. The most notable challenges for difficulty are the Holy Hand Grenade and Teleport Gun challenges, and the margin for error is small, so you'll need to put up strong times in most levels to achieve the target time for this trophy. 

One thing I did notice, is the fact that the timer only seems to run when you're actively performing an action with your worm, so standing still or moving on the spot, which includes aiming a weapon, doesn't actually make the timer tick, so this works in your favour and allows you take your time with certain aspects of levels, such as aiming weapons or judging line of sight. Even with this though, you still need to make sure you're accurate and not making too many errors which will cause the clock to total up, so even though this is useful information to know, it is certainly still the toughest part of this list. Having to beat 10 levels within 8 minutes, doesn't give you a huge amount of margin for error, but it's just a matter of going back over the 1 and 2 star levels and seeking continuous improvement.

Finally, the game also has a collection of trophies dedicated towards the online mode, which is fairly standard for most Worms games. Although, previous Worms titles have had a very heavy emphasis on online trophies which have required a hefty time investment, this isn't quite the same outcome here, but there are certainly a few challenges in different ways.

The online portion of the game is split into standard, classic Worms ranked mode, where you fight in a 1 v 1 environment against another human player to simply win the match, and then a new concept called Clan Battles, where you create your clan, invite your mates into it, and you fight other clans in a 2 v 2 environment. This will contribute towards progression into a higher league, and give you the chance to fight tougher clans with better players, so it effectively plays out like a sports league.

The "Steamroller" trophy, awarded for Achieving a win streak of 5 ranked online games, relates to the standard classic ranked mode, and is probably the toughest online trophy to earn. You'll need to be of a reasonable level of skill to win 5 matches in a row at most things, but there isn't any matchmaking to skill level here, so you could play anybody and run into much tougher opponents than you, who will jeopardise your winning streak, which can be frustrating when trying to chain together enough wins to earn this trophy, and knowing that 1 defeat will reset the counter makes this a decent enough challenge, but with the right level of practice, you should get there eventually, and if you win cheaply by adopting a cautious approach defending your worms and letting the rising water level do the rest, then this will help you achieve some safe victories along the way.

The "Ding" trophy, awarded for Levelling up with a clan, relates to the Clan Battles mode, which is, unfortunately, horribly broken. It only takes 5 wins to level up your clan for the first time, and thus, unlock this trophy, but a combination of connection issues with the Battlegrounds servers, which then subsequently leads to faulty stat-tracking, means that wins just don't register properly around 80% of the time.

I had to win 24 matches to get just 5 wins to correctly register to the clan statistics screen and level up, which is terrible. The worst thing about it is, this was never addressed and remained unfixed for the duration of the time since the game's release, so a very frustrating experience all round.

The remainder of the trophies in the list are awarded for miscellaneous activities. Some of them look challenging on face value, but when you realise you can unlock most of them in local Multiplayer (which you don't even need a second controller for), this becomes an incredibly easy clean-up activity, because you can alternate teams between yourself and fulfill the trophies unchallenged. There are cumulative kill trophies too, for killing Worms up to as many as 300, but you should get this naturally as you go through all game modes mentioned above, but even if you do still need a few more, you can always resort to the direct above approach of setting up local games with as many worms on the landscape as possible to help you tally those kills up.

Overall, this isn't anywhere near as challenging as the Worms games that have preceded it. The Story mode is fairly casual, and will only take around 5-6 hours to complete in full, whereas the Worms Ops mode will push your skills a little bit further on. If it wasn't for a completely broken online mode, which works completely against the player and, as a result, is easily worth an extra point on the difficulty rating, then this game would be among the company of some of the easiest game's I've ever finished. The fact you can also unlock most of the other trophies in local play extracts any potential for an additional challenge out of the game too.

The list can also be finished off in anywhere between 15-20 hours, though this depends largely on how many wins you'll need to earn from Clan Battles, compared to the number of wins you should need. My figure of 24 seemed to be both less and more compared to others, so it's hard to say what the average is, but more wins will increase your overall completion time, so I think 15-20 hours is an accurate guess for most players.

Despite this, still one of the easiest Platinum trophies in my collection.

Notable Trophies -

Mesmerised - Defeat the evil Lord Mesmer.
Sergeant Swift - Complete all Worms Ops missions in under 8 minutes total.
Steamroller - Achieve a win streak of 5 online ranked games.
Ding - Level up with a clan

Hardest Trophy -

Sergeant Swift
Complete all Worms Ops missions in under 8 minutes total

Platinum #81 - South Park : The Stick of Truth

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

I'm about to review a trophy list, and will use terms such as "Dire AIDS", "David Hasselhoff" and "KKK" whilst doing so. If that doesn't absolutely stink of a South Park game, then nothing ever will.

This is a turn-based RPG open world game, with combat focused around strategic thinking and character development. As with all RPG's, you'll level your main character, earn/purchase stronger weapons/equipment and recruit a party made up of other classic South Park characters to help you through your adventure, each with their own set of attacks and special abilities.

The game's story covers the Stick of Truth, an object in a fantasy role playing world, which allows the holder of the stick to control the universe, and your role as "Douchebag" AKA the new kid, is to help Cartman's and Kyle's warring factions to obtain possession of the stick from other each other, evil factions and other parties along the way, including nazi zombies and government officials. The story is funny, very outrageous and offensive, a bit mental and contains numerous popular culture references to classic South Park episodes of years gone by.

In terms of difficulty, there really isn't any. You don't choose a difficulty level at any point, the turn based nature of the game means there isn't really any combat-based skill required (aside from a hint of good timing necessary when blocking attacks) and the majority of the enemies you face can be killed with relative ease, including the various boss fights throughout the game.

So where does a 4/10 difficulty rating justify itself for this trophy list? The game contains 51 trophies, and 21 of them are missable. So almost half of the list contains trophies which can be missed for various different reasons, so the level of game management required from the player is as high as any game I've ever played.

Now, it's impractical to go through why every single one of these 21 trophies is missable, but they all contribute towards this difficulty rating, and it is pretty much the only thing that's challenging about this trophy list.

The main quest-line doesn't actually contain that many progression based trophies, but it does award trophies pertinent to how you defeat certain characters through the game. For example, half-way through the story, you can either side with Kyle and the elves, and fight Cartman, or you can side with Cartman and the KKK, and fight Kyle, with each choice awarding a trophy, meaning you'll have to play-through the game twice in order to fulfill the trophies for both decisions, technically making them missable by force of choice.

Similarly, the "Outpatient" trophy, awarded for defeating Princess Kenny while living with dire AIDS, comes towards the end of the story, where you'll have to defeat Princess Kenny after contracting the dire AIDS affliction, obtained by being bitten by a wild animal in Canada, and neglecting to cure yourself. This can be tricky, because dire AIDS incurs additional damage per turn to the player for as long as you leave the condition untreated, and since Princess Kenny is the final battle, you'll have to endure this for the rest of the game.

However, the main point here is that, there are also 2 other trophies for defeating Princess Kenny in certain ways, which include defeating Princess Kenny whilst wearing the girls makeover outfit and whilst looking like David Hasselhoff. As above, this will also require a minimum of 2 play-throughs. (You can combine having dire AIDS with either the girls makeover outfit or the David Hasselhoff face, but you can't have both of the latter at the same time, so you will have to replay the game to beat Princess Kenny again to fulfil all 3 requirements).

You also have to defeat the Meth Tweekers whilst dressed in the Evil Cartman goatee and bald cap and defeat the Boss Hall Monitor whilst wearing freckles. These are all really simple tasks to fulfil during the main story of the game, but you have to be on top of them and make sure you have the equipment to fulfil the conditions of the trophy, and that you remember to equip them (which can be an easy thing to forget to do with the amount of juggling this game requires from you). If you don't at least one earn them, you'll be replaying the game, because you only have the one opportunity with all of these missable trophies. The vast examples are emphasised to just reinforce that point.

The "Chinpokolypse" trophy, awarded for collecting all of the Chinpokomon, may seem like a standard collectible trophy, but 7 of the 30 Chinpokomon toys in the game are only available during specific levels which you can only visit once, therefore making this trophy missable too. In a game full of collectibles, and trophies to accompany them, this isn't actually one of the worst, but you can't afford to miss any of them, and they can actually be quite difficult to spot. Some may also require inherited powers to reach which you only unlock later on in the game, like the gnome dust and alien probe, which can disrupt your tracking of this trophy as you come back later to retrieve certain Chinpokomon which could only be collected after obtaining these special powers. It's important to also note that, there is an in-game menu which shows you the Chinpokomon you have, and the Chinpokomon you still need, which is a very useful tool to utilise.

The "More Popular Than John Lennon" trophy, awarded for being friends with Everyone in South Park, requires you to befriend every character in the game through interacting with them. There are 120 characters in total, and acceptance of a friend request can range from just simply talking to them to completing a quest for them. As before, a handful of these people can only be befriended at certain points in the game, and if you don't befriend them before it's too late to do so, you won't earn the trophy. It's especially important to track this trophy properly because of the high volume of characters, and, although the characters you have befriended are tracked within the in-game menus, it doesn't actually tell you which ones you need, so it's not as helpful as the Chinpokomon menu.

The "Clothes Whore" trophy, awarded for collecting all of the available costumes, is mentioned here for exactly the same reasons as above. There are 85 total costume items to get, which are scattered throughout the game, and found in secret chests, purchased from the various in-game shops and looted off specific enemies. A lot of these are missable, so again, diligence is required when going through levels you cannot return to in order to make sure you grab every costume, and these are also tracked under the collectibles tab on the in-game menus, which tells you which costumes you have and which ones you still need, so this helps a little bit. The majority of the clothes come as a 3 piece set though, usually either purchased together in the same shop, or collected together within a certain area/level, so not so scattered as the other collectibles.

The "Full Arsenal" trophy, awarded for owning all the weapons and costumes available in the game, follows on with the exact same principle as before. There are 68 weapons to collect in the game, and a fair amount of these can only be obtained within certain levels, and are therefore missable (surprise, surprise). 

However, with weapons, you only have to have owned the item, meaning you can you sell it, which is especially useful if you need to raise the extra cash to afford the higher level, and ultimately more expensive, weapons in the game (which you'll most likely need to take advantage of). The weapons you have owned, and need to own, are tracked in the same menus as above, grouped together with the costumes, so again, take advantage of this, and make sure you're grabbing the missable stuff in-between levels.

Aside from that, nothing else will really cause you any issues in this game, but it is a challenge to keep on top of everything from the very start. Most of the other trophies are awarded for random actions which are secondary to the game, or feats you will naturally achieve in combat as the game progresses. The sole focus should be around the collectibles, and knowing exactly where you need to pick up certain items so they don't become missable.

When you combine all of the above together, it's a bit overwhelming, and the level of game management you need to make sure you maximise your play-through to the fullest potential is about as high as it could be. It's never my intention to play any story driven game just once, for the want of enjoying the story first and foremost, but even if trophies were my sole focus, I still wouldn't attempt everything in this list in one go. I would split it in half with as much rational thought as possible and focus on every missable trophy over 2 playthroughs, to make sure I didn't miss a handful of things accidentally first time round through overload.

To complete the main story, and the necessary side content, will take somewhere in the region of 15-20 hours. You could, in theory, with more than a handful of strategic saves, beat the game in just a single play-through for around 25-30 hours, in order to get the previously mentioned story choice branching trophies, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to play the game twice and make sure the sheer amount of missable trophies are easier to manage.

However, on the whole, this list isn't really that challenging, and even in the worst case scenario of poor game management, it's not the worst thing in the world if you ever had to replay the game because you missed a trophy or two that you shouldn't have missed. It's an average length for a single play-through, and the difficulty curve is minimal at best.

Notable Trophies -

Outpatient - You defeated Princess Kenny while living with Dire AIDS.
Chinpokolypse - You collected all of the Chinpokomon.
More Popular Than John Lennon - Everyone in South Park is your friend.
Clothes Whore - You've collected all of the available costumes.
Full Arsenal - You own all of the weapons and costumes available in the game.

Hardest Trophy - 




More Popular Than John Lennon
Everyone in South Park is your friend