DLC #112 - Resident Evil 6 - Survivors

The Survivors pack, the second within Resident Evil 6 DLC offering, adds a further 5 trophies to the game, all focused around the new Survivors game mode.

As with the first DLC pack, Onslaught, this is purely a game-mode add-on pack, and the Survivors mode is a traditional elimination match where the sole objective is to be the last individual or team member standing in order to win the game.

This involves executing other players, and the game finishes when either the 5 minute time limit runs out, or when there is only one person left standing. The game can be played as a "Death match", which is every player for themselves, or a "Team match", which is where you're split into teams of 2, and both variations allow for a maximum of 6 players per game, so things can get very fast paced and hectic.

It seems very run of the mill, and the truth is, it is, but there is a twist. Zombies patrol the map and will attempt to distract you whilst you're trying to kill other players, and when somebody is killed, they're not permanently out of the game. Instead, they respawn as a zombie, and if they can kill a human controlled player, they will re-join the fight in their human form and get a second chance. Out of the 5 trophies within this set, 1 of these is awarded for doing just that and returning to the game as a human character, and most of this list isn't terribly challenging. 

The Gold trophy requires you to win 5 games in a row, which you should achieve naturally in tandem with going for what is the most challenging trophy in this list by some distance;

Take 'Em All Down - Defeat 100 agents.

The "Take 'Em All Down" trophy, awarded for defeating 100 agents, is very self explanatory, and also a large number for the limited amount of opportunities presented to the player within each game. This is an elimination style game mode after all, you don't exactly respawn and chain together killstreaks within 10 seconds as if you're playing Call of Duty, so 100 kills in these circumstances is a tall order.

With that being said, I have to confess, I never really managed to reach a good standard of skill level with this game, and where the Onslaught DLC pit you against zombies, rather than directly against another human character, Survivors is purely a versus game mode, and this is where I started to struggle. 

This was due to a few reasons. Firstly, the controls are somewhat unconventional in some instances (Hold X to run, Hold L2 to display an arch for throwing a grenade, and the R2 button to throw the grenade, for example), which I found difficult to adjust to and made controlling my character a challenging experience with a learning curve attached to it, which I gradually overcame, but spent a while doing so. Secondly, there were much better players than me who had unlocked better characters with better weapon load-outs, so I found myself on the back foot a lot and playing to a disadvantage. This led to dying a lot, and also frequently ending games with either zero kills, or maybe the odd single kill. 

During my just over 16 hour quest for these trophies, which spanned 287 games, compared to the 3 hour journey of the Onslaught pack, the best I managed to do in a game was 3 eliminations, and I only managed to achieve this twice. I did eventually get the hang of the horrible controls, and started to gain experience which unlocked better versions of the basic characters, with better weapon loadouts, and in turn, my performance did improve. I started to finish games with 2 kills quite frequently, but still also went through spells of drought where I just couldn't get anything, which was incredibly frustrating.

Persistence was the main necessity here, and whilst I appreciate it may not take alot of the better players very long to reach 100 kills, I accept I somewhat struggled through this, and stumbled towards the end goal, taking much longer than I should have done due to just not being very good. For as long as you're making progress towards an end goal, I don't mind grindy ventures. When you're levelling up, even when you perform badly, you still earn experience points, so you never quite feel like you're wasting your time and effort, and you also understand you will improve and eventually earn more experience through being a better player. Here, I was jumping from game to game earning zero kills frequently, and also being killed a lot in the process, so there was often no progression towards my end goal, which is one of the most frustrating things, and also the most difficult thing about this trophy.

The only consolation was that I unlocked most of the other trophies along the way, so I didn't really have to give any of them much thought. I notched up 5 wins in a row for the only Gold trophy, won without anybody on my team being killed and returned to the game as a zombie, all of which are feats yielding trophies, but this could have been much shorter than 16 hours, and for some people it will be, just not me.

All the more rewarding to finally see this trophy pop nonetheless, and this makes the Onslaught pack feel like a warm up exercise in comparison. As previously mentioned, I spent just over 16 hours on this DLC according to the in-game statistics screen, and struggled through most of it in my quest for 100 kills. At least I now have a stronger selection of characters at my disposal in preparation for the remaining 2 DLC packs that await, but whether it makes a difference is another story.