Platinum #100 - Destiny

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

And then we had 100. 

I did want to try and find a more fitting game to reach such a milestone with, perhaps something closer to 10/10 in difficulty, or something I had to rescue from the brink of unachievable (GTA 5).

Instead, I'm happy enough to settle for a game whose title summarises my journey well. I've always wanted to reach 3 figures, and here we are.

Destiny is an MMORPG, with a typical MMO experience sitting at the forefront of it. Create a character from scratch (more than one if you want the Platinum trophy), level your character up through participating in a varied level of tasks and activities throughout the game world, earn and craft stronger equipment to improve your character, and repeat this process over until you get bored. Then you can do it all over again with a different Character class.

This is a large trophy list, and whilst Destiny is an MMO, with trophies focused on MMO activities and goals, it does have a Story attached to it. However, it doesn't actually contain any trophies that require the player to progress through the Story to any reasonable level of depth, and therefore, this was something I naturally didn't get too heavily involved in. Despite being a game focused on it's Multiplayer elements, it is still unusual to find games with trophy lists that do not dedicate much focus to their Main Story, especially when this was something that was considered for the 2 DLC packs that came afterwards. You only need to play the first few missions of the Story to grab all applicable trophies, so unless you actually want to see the ending, there is no further incentive for trophy hunters beyond the first couple of hours or so.

Instead, there is much greater priority on the PvP element of the game, though feats related to character development and earning the best equipment is also well represented. Raids and Strikes are also generously supported within the list, and everything just mentioned are all more significant elements to a game like Destiny, because they're aspects of the game that suit the MMO style better than a Main Story would. You can tackle Main Story missions in groups as part of a Fireteam (Which is why I have refrained calling this aspect of Destiny a Single Player experience), but they're not as punchy as competing within a PvP environment against others, or teaming up to finish a Raid/Strike together in larger groups, and earning a ton of loot to strengthen your character for your troubles.

The are a handful of specific trophies worth mentioning, including Raids, but the Raids themselves aren't actually the most challenging thing about the trophies to be mentioned, and I am also conscious of the fact I went into lot of detail about Raids within the Taken King DLC piece, and don't feel the need to tread over old ground.

The "Epic Raider" trophy, awarded for Completing a Raid on Hard difficulty, was actually unlocked whilst I was going through the Taken King trophy list, which contains a trophy for beating the Kings Fall Raid on Hard difficulty, which subsequently unlocked this trophy within the main Destiny list at the same time, and having already touched upon the reasons for the difficulty within that piece, I will digress, though it is important to note that, the Taken King and Rise of Iron DLC packs raised the level cap, and therefore, "Hard" difficulty within the original Raids got much easier as a result.

The "Flawless Raider" trophy, awarded for Completing a Raid without anyone in your fireteam dying, is where things get a little bit trickier, and where you can take the exact same approach and tackle one of the original Raids available at launch on the lowest difficulty level, with an overpowered character that has gone through the level cap courtesy of the DLC, the main challenge with this trophy isn't within the Raid itself. 

The recommended Raid to go for in order to obtain this trophy is Crota's End, which will require at least 5 people to beat all necessary steps within the Raid to kill Crota and finish, and this is exactly the challenge. From my experience, and I've spent a lot of time with Destiny, players who Raid will be doing so on the hardest difficulty in order to get the best loot, and that is not a good recipe to achieve trophies that require nobody within the fireteam to die. So, it's not like you can just jump in with a random group of people and hope to unlock it naturally because, even though they are very beatable, the game's hardest Raids on their hardest difficulty levels will kick you around alot, and people will die, so you need to seriously dumb down the experience for the purpose of this trophy.

However, the only people interested at that point will be like-minded players who want to just coast through a very easy Raid, just to get the trophy, which presents it's own challenges because these type of players are a rare breed. In the very early days of Destiny, it was possible to beat the Crota's End Raid solo and this would unlock this trophy, but a later patch required a minimum of 5 people, and that's a big group for something so niche within Destiny. I waited for a handful of weeks to finally find an opportunity to run for this trophy, and when executed, it was finished within 45 minutes of the first try, but as mentioned, the challenge of this trophy was never within the task itself, and more about the arrangement of actually having to find a willing group in order to carry out the Raid and execute it.

The "Hunter Mastery", "Titan Mastery" and "Warlock Mastery" trophies, awarded for Fully upgrading a Hunter/Titan/Warlock Subclass, add a very grindy element to this list, and collectively will be responsible for an uplift of around 40-60 hours on the way towards the Platinum trophy.

It's not usual for me to group mention trophies, but this is literally doing the same thing 3 times over. Usually, when a game requires you to playthough multiple times, there's often something different that's worth mentioning separately that makes the challenge varied, no matter how blatant or slight, and Destiny allows you to choose 3 different character classes to play as, and you can run these simultaneously as part of different game worlds. They do have different special abilities and Subclasses that can change the way each character feels and plays like, along with differing customisation options, but that's about it, and I ended up just running Crucible matches against other players and treating it like a typical Online levelling journey.

I get that this is common practice within MMO's, and people want to be able to play the game with different characters and upgrading different skillsets, but as someone who is not invested into that side of MMO's too much, this just meant to game became an unnecessary grind.

Fully upgrading a Subclass requires you to reach the maximum level for your character, which is 40, and then also fully upgrade any Subclass, which is just a skill tree that reveals more special upgrades and powers the more you play as that character. It is really important to mention that, each character has interchangeable Subclasses, so if you're going purely for this trophy in the least amount of time possible, you'll want to stick with the starting Subclass and never change it. After that, it's just a matter of what your chosen method is to level up your character to level 40, and then unlock every trait within the skill tree.

After initially choosing the Warlock class, and maxing this out through the rest of the trophy list and the Taken King/Rise of Iron DLC, I ended up just playing through the Crucible PvP mode for the other 2 character classes, and this took around 15-20 hours of solid play for each one. I didn't explore other methods, because, to be completely truthful, I had exhausted much of the trophy list by this point, and Crucible mode was the only thing that I could extensively enjoy without any fresh content to go through. I did want to tandem these journeys with the DLC pack, but this plan quickly dissolved when I found out you had to be a certain, very high light level to undertake most of the activities within the DLC, and therefore, this was only an option for my already maxed out Warlock.

The "Suited for War" trophy, awarded for Having all armor and weapon slots equipped with Legendary or Exotic gear, is the height of character maximisation and requires you to have all 11 different equipment slots populated with at least a Legendary item. You can only have 1 Exotic item equipped at any one time, so most of these will need to be Legandary items, which, barring Exotic, is the highest rarity in the game. You can obtain Legendary equipment quite easily, through either purchase or rewards via Crucible/Raids, and having a Legendary item in every slot is very much an endgame goal. 

However, the main sticking point with this trophy is that it actually requires you to purchase The Taken King DLC in order to achieve it. This is because you need to be at the raised level cap of 40 to equip Artefacts for the Artefact equipment slot, and the level cap is only extended with confirmation of access to The Taken King DLC. This sits amongst the cardinal sin of requiring extras to unlock all the trophies available within a game. I have completed a few trophy lists in the past that have required additional peripherals to access certain trophies, but this is the first time I've seen a game require the user to have post-game DLC to unlock a trophy contained within the main list, which certainly deserves to be called out.

The game scatters it's trophy list out well amongst it's variety of activities, with PvP, Strikes, Raids and character development all incentivised well, but the tasks are fairly easy on face value, and there isn't much else worth mentioning.

Here's the thing with Destiny though; If you're rating this list purely on the merits of the trophy requirements, it's round about a mid-tier Platinum, but the mitigating factors are what bring the extra challenges out of this list, and they have to be taken into consideration because there aren't any ways around them. After all, the game is an MMO, and as such, was built to be tackled with mates or within groups of people, and this is reflected accordingly within the trophy list, and despite most of the requirements being simple on paper, it is their methods of execution that prove to be the truest challenge behind these trophies. With the trophy requirements also extending to having to max out all 3 character classes, the grind is there for good measure too, clocking this list in at around 80-100 hours in total. 

The potential for a greater challenge was there once upon a time, which was alleviated by DLC content that allowed the player to significantly strengthen their character, which made a bit of a mockery of some of these trophy requirements, but in turn, made it more difficult to execute the methods behind them.

Having actually tackled some of the more challenging elements of this list with the added benefit of being able to play through the DLC, where the level cap was raised to accommodate greater challenges, some of these trophies weren't as tough as they maybe could have been earlier in the games life cycle and potential for a greater challenge which was once there, was alleviated by DLC content that allowed the player to significantly strengthen their character. However, I do still stand by the fact that there are extra challenges to the requirements of the trophy that prove to be bigger hurdles and should be pointed out, involving getting together enough like-minded players who are here for the trophies and not necessarily character development.

The difficulty of the trophies within Destiny peaks with The Taken King DLC, where genuine challenge is introduced into the game, but the reliance of teamwork and necessity to acquire support in large groups, along with a high estimated time for completion, notches this up from a middle of the road Platinum, to somewhere just above that.

Notable Trophies -

Flawless Raider - Complete a Raid without anyone in your fireteam dying.
Hunter Mastery - Fully upgrade a Hunter Subclass.
Titan Mastery - Fully upgrade a Titan Sublcass.
Warlock Mastery - Fully upgrade a Warlock Subclass.
Suited for War - Have all armor and weapon slots equipped with Legendary or Exotic gear.

Hardest Trophy -

Flawless Raider
Complete a Raid without anyone in your fireteam dying

DLC #131 - Rocket League - Champions Field

Since it's still early, and this was something I failed to mention within the previous Utopia Coliseum review some of these Rocket League DLC lists do not actually hold much relevance to the update they're part of, and many of the trophies seem to exist to purely incentivise the wider game.

Champions Field is a good example of this. An update to the game which marked the 2 year anniversary of Rocket League, and purely adds the new Champions Field arena, played on the standard Soccar game mode. There isn't anything particular stellar about the new arena, and there aren't even any new car models or customisation models added. It's just a new location to enjoy some Rocket League games at, though it does come with 2 weather variants which slightly change the atmosphere.

Despite what is a very minimalist update, this pack still contains 6 trophies within, though most of these are attached to random feats, and hold no relevance to this specific pack (as mentioned at the top of this piece). This is quite a common theme throughout these Rocket League DLC trophy lists, so expect similar commentary going forward for a handful of these packs.

It's also important to point out that, because these trophies are not always specific to the pack they've been bundled into, any prior progress towards them will count towards the trophy were applicable to anything accumulative, which could mean retrospectively unlocking them without requiring any further progress, or much shorter journeys towards unlocking them based on existing progress.

For 2 of the 6 trophies, you will be required to venture over to Champions Field. Jumping into an Online game and finishing will net you a trophy, as will completing the game on the stormy variant of the arena whilst you've got a Very Rare item equipped. This could be a notable caveat, as you'll need to either earn a Very Rare item or trade another player for one, but I had already obtained a few from my prior progress, so this wasn't a problem.

Speaking of trading items, you can also unlock a further 2 trophies for performing certain actions within the trade system. This will include swapping an item with another player, but this is easy enough to do with someone on your friends list.

You will need to play out a full compliment of placement matches for the "Rank Up" trophy, which is 10 in total, and can be applied to any competitive playlist of your choosing, and this can be played out in tandem with the "Coming On Strong" trophy, awarded for Scoring or Assisting a combined 30 goals or assists in Casual or Competitive Online matches.

As mentioned above, prior progress will count towards these trophies, but if you're starting from scratch, the latter will more than likely outlast the former, as this is a ratio of 3 goals/assists per game, which is quite high. It is also important to note this combined total of 30 also needs to be in Online game modes, so it's not like you can just boot up a few matches against offline bots of low difficulty and score past them quickly, so you'll need to either be good, or at the very least, patient.

I had to play through 10 placement matches, but got the 30 combined goals/assists within a couple of these games, purely down to prior progress. Even if you're not that great at the game, a total of 30 combining both goals and assists, which the game does give away very generously sometimes, will only be a matter of time within the worst case scenario. One of the easier packs within this selection of DLC content.

DLC #130 - Rocket League - Utopia Coliseum

So, here it is.

A barrage of downloadable content from Rocket League, spanning a total of 9 packs, which puts it up there as one of the most heavily supported post-game titles in the Playstation catalogue.

These 9 sets of trophies all came as part of game updates, both large and small, and will not be reviewed in any particular order. Some of the larger updates have included additions of completely new game modes and big features, where some of the smaller updates have just been to keep the game fresh.

Utopia Coliseum fits firmly into the latter, adding just 3 new trophies to game, and was released as the very first DLC pack to kick start this onslaught of Rocket League post-launch content. The pack adds the Utopia Coliseum stadium, a standard arena to be played under regular Rocket League rules. There is no additional content added as part of this update.

As a general note regarding all DLC, there is some crossover here, whereby I had already unlocked a handful of these trophies from previous stints with the game where I would play it purely under a recreational basis, and the reason this particular pack is first is because I had already unlocked 2 of the 3 trophies on offer, and accidentally unlocked the final trophy without even consciously attempting for it, and not necessarily because it just so happens to be the first pack in sequential order.

Even though Utopia Coliseum only adds a hat-trick of trophies, this is potentially a bit of a mixed bag.

Play a game in any respect you wish on the Utopia Coliseum stadium, regardless of the outcome. One trophy down. Win a 4 v 4 game in any respect you wish on any map. There's another trophy for you. In fact, tandem them together and you can unlock both at the same time for half the effort.

The other trophy is worth discussing though;

Sky High - Score an Aerial Goal.

The "Sky High" trophy, awarded for Scoring an Aerial Goal, might seem quite innocuous. After all, you only need score 1 of them, right?

I actually unlocked this trophy without any sort of awareness I had fulfilled the requirements of it, and the actual requirements of this are somewhat undefined. There is a belief that you have to be above the goal height when you make contact with the ball prior to it going into the net for it to be attributed as an Aerial Goal, which I can testify to after watching back the goal I scored which triggered this trophy.

I believe the game envisions what the typical Aerial goal would look like, and this would involve the player boosting into the air at a vertical angle, and making contact with the ball from above towards the ground in a goalbound fashion, or, perhaps, running up the wall of the arena, coming off to make contact with the ball and fire it goalwards from a mid-air position.

What I'm trying to get at here is the fact that this is a very advanced technique, and asks alot of your average pick up and play player like myself, and I actually unlocked this trophy through a complete fluke whereby the ball was deflected off the underside of my car via another car attempting to make a clearance whilst I was aimlessly boosting through the air, which fired the ball down into the ground, and into the back of the net. A sheer stroke of luck.

A quick glance at my stats shows I have now scored 1 Aerial Goal in 102 matches, which is a good measure of perspective on the level of mastery required to pull this feat off, and that my normal game is to such a level to expect Aerial Goals are a skill I have not played enough to possess. Purely because of this, I feel like it's important to detail the real challenge behind this trophy that I would have struggled with without a huge slice of luck (Which I will gladly take).

Judging by my own statistics, it seems I was quite fortunate. That's not to say it's difficult to learn how to score from Aerial positions, but I don't run into many players Online who seem to be capable enough of playing to that standard, so I will assume this is a niche skill that not many players possess. At least, not at my skill level anyway...

You can grab the other trophies very quickly, and without any hassle, and you may want to see how you go before you put any specific attention onto trying to score an Aerial Goal, just to see if you find a way to achieve it somehow. If you're left with just this trophy at the end of your journey though, you could struggle unless you're willing to master this technique. I'll set a timeframe down as non-applicable due to the erratic nature of this trophy, as it will vary way too much from player to player.

Platinum #99 - Rocket League

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 2/10

In the spirit of accelerating my progress towards a certain milestone that should be fairly obvious if you read into the numbers closely enough, Rocket League was always due to be an easy catalyst for that, with a very simple trophy list requiring no more than what turns out to be a very basic checkbox exercise.

Incidentally, we're also breaking new ground here, as the first title to ever be awarded lower than a 3/10 in difficulty rating, and the easy ones always tend to be the hardest to write about because there isn't usually much to say about them.

Rocket League, to be brief, which won't exactly help me pad this out, but for the purpose of staying true to the game and it's very simple nature, is football with cars. In all fairness, the game is loaded with content and has been provided with a huge amount of post-launch support, which is well evidenced by a whopping 9 DLC packs containing additional trophies. So, even though, at it's core, the concept is very basic, it is also important to acknowledge how the developers have stuck by the game and consistently added a variety of new game modes, car models, customisation options and trophies.

The trophy list contains a medium-sized offering of 36 trophies, and the vast majority of these are absolute throwaway, for a game that is easy to pick up and play, and very forgiving with it's overall difficulty of challenge.

The "Champion" trophy, awarded for Winning the Season Championship, should be your sole focus straight off the bat, where you can complete (and hopefully win) the Rocket League Championship. This is where you can effectively begin to make proper inroads on this list and leave yourself very little left in the way of clean up.

This format is highly customisable, where you choose between a number of parameters to create the Championship to suit your own preferences. You can make it as short as just 12 games (inclusive of Playoffs) or as long as 39 games. You can also choose the number of cars per side and the difficulty level of the opposition.

Once you've set these parameters out, you then just need to win the lot in order to unlock the trophy. I would strongly recommend setting up the longest season possible, as this will give you greater opportunities to unlock the miscellaneous trophies within the list along the way, and the longest possible season will give you ample opportunity to do this. It's also a good way to fulfill some of the more slightly grindy, albeit still limited in challenge, trophies within the list.

Matches are set at a standard 5 minute length, and there is only additional time to be accounted for in instances where there is a kick off after a goal or if the score is tied after 5 minutes, which triggers sudden-death overtime and will continue for as long as it takes for the next team to score a winning goal. If we keep it simple, and assume 39 matches at 5 minutes each is 3 hours and 15 minutes, we can account for the additional time accrued for the above separately and estimate a full season will take somewhere between 4-5 hours to complete.

Even the difficulty modes you can choose between don't seem to have much of a difference between them all. These are listed as Rookie, Pro and All-Star, and even playing through the Championship in All-Star mode gave me very little problems, and although I did lose a handful of matches, I extended the Playoff bracket to 6 out of 10 teams, so qualification was easy. If you want something to take away as a notable point, this trophy requires you to win the Championship, which does mean you will need to be unbeaten throughout potentially 3 playoff games and if you lose, you'll be restarting the entire season. Thankfully, I did not need to, and won it all on my first attempt.

By my own estimates, I reckon you can easily achieve 19 trophies from this entire list by playing a full season, and you can also make some strong progress towards a few others that you'd effectively just need to "tap in" by loading up a few exhibition games and finishing them off. The list also likes to see you dabble within the customisation and exhibition mode options, which can see you net around another 6/7 trophies, which doesn't exactly leave you much left to do upon completion of these extra-curricular activities on top of the Championship Season.

It would usually be relevant to mention a couple of other trophies, such as the "Stocked" trophy, awarded for Collecting 150 Items and the "Battle-Car Collector" trophy, awarded for Unlocking all Battle-Cars. The former inparticular would require you to play 190 matches. You start with 33 out of 223 in-game items unlocked, with the rest being unlocked every time you complete a game in any game mode. Incidentally, the trophy description was never amended from 150, which was the full collection at initial launch, but you'll need to play 190 matches because they've increased the number of items available throughout the game's lifespan, they just never adjusted the wording of the trophy.

By the same logic used for completing the Championship season of 39 games of 5 minutes being 3 hours and 15 minutes, this would mean 190 games in total would be almost 16 hours of match time, plus any surplus stoppages or restarts in between, so this would make a slight difference to the difficulty rating. The only reason these trophies don't need to be considered further is because they were automatically awarded to me upon booting up the game after a spell away from it. Some research led me to discover that the developers had recently unlocked everything for all players, which subsequently unlocked those trophies at the same time, cutting away huge portions of additional effort required on my part.

I won't list these trophies as notable, even though they would be under normal circumstances, but given the fact I didn't have to actively take any steps to achieve them in the end, I can't speak from my own experiences of having to unlock them, and as such, this actually gives me greater justification to score the game lower than usual. I think it sums things up nicely when justifying the Platinum difficulty rating that some of the more potentially challenging trophies automatically unlocked for me because the game decided to gift out additional items as part of a community favour to it's fanbase.

This actually ends up being a rare occurrence for any game, whereby putting it off for so long actually worked in my favour, and whilst I wouldn't have been adverse to having to fulfil 190 games to grab this Platinum trophy, it wasn't exactly unwelcome. It means I can put pure focus into the host of additional trophies within this title, which are extremely well supported courtesy of a slew of DLC packs released post-launch. Just like FIFA too (a fair comparison), it's the sort of game that is always more entertaining within a Multiplayer setting, and whilst it does look like you could tandem the main list in conjunction with the DLC content quite nicely, achieving the Platinum before applying proper focus to any DLC is much easier to plan and prepare for.

For a game which already, at the very maximum, is hard to see beyond a 3/10, and given the fact I am always conscious about under-rating scores, having the game effectively gift wrap a few of it's challenging trophies made this a much easier conscious decision to make.

Going through a full season within a matter of hours will see you unlock at least half of the entire trophy list, and the clean up process is nothing more than reading down the list, ticking off the requirements and moving onto the next. There's nothing that ever makes you think twice, nor stall your progress, and where there is the potential element for grind that some of the earlier achievers of the Platinum trophy may have experienced, for those of us who were handed the shortcuts, this was a much smoother journey. 

It cuts down the completion time drastically from somewhere within the 20 hour mark, to my estimate of around 7-8 hours, and with no difficulty-sensitive trophies to consider, and with difficulty levels that provide little challenge, this is all about just going through the motions. Just out of pure curiosity born from playing on All-Star difficulty and still finding the game a complete breeze, I played a few exhibition games on the Rookie (lowest) difficulty level, and it was almost offensively easy.

Just make sure you close out the Playoffs within the Championship Season to make sure you don't have to playthrough this again, but even in worst case scenario, you could complete a second season within just 12 games, so it wouldn't exactly be the worst thing in the world to have to re-do. Let the game devs do the rest of some of the harder work for you, and you'll fly through this list in no time, introducing what is now technically, the easiest Platinum trophy within my collection.

Notable Trophies -

Champion - Win the Season Championship.

Hardest Trophy -

Champion
Win the Season Championship

DLC #129 - Grand Theft Auto V - Online Heists

Just to caveat this straight off the bat, the review of this DLC is for the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto V, and although I will go ahead and assume that this is exactly the same as it's PS4 counterpart, it's probably still a safer bet to mention which console I completed this on, just incase there are any discrepancies that exist between both versions.

This Heists update adds a series of additional co-operative missions, specifically to be completed in groups of 2-4 players, along with an extra 9 trophies.

Each Heist will contain a small collection of preliminary, build up missions, which you'll have to complete before carrying out the final set-piece of the Heist itself, all of which require tight communication and proper co-ordination. Each player takes on a specific role within each mission, which they must fulfill with objectives unique to that role, which are critical to the bigger picture, and must be adhered to strictly in order to reach the conclusion, making Heists a very true co-op experience.

There are 5 Heists in total. The first one you'll beat is purely introductory, and gives you a feel for the new mode. It's the only one of the 5 Heists that only requires 2 players, rather than 4, and only has 2 set-up missions before the finale. The other 4 Heists that follow contain between 4-5 set-up missions before the finale, and must require 4 players to be completed. Out of the 9 trophies on offer, you'll obtain 4 of these by just beating all Heists in their entirety, but the trophy list will encourage a fair amount of replay value too, so you won't see the back of these missions once you beat them for the first time.

The trophies are also not difficulty sensitive, and you can play them on either normal or hard difficulty modes, the latter of which will grant additional monetary rewards which could prove useful for certain trophies within this package, but the real challenge from this list comes from being able to get through these missions with a solid team, and as a general note before discussing a couple of specific trophies, Heists is best played with like-minded individuals, and whilst you don't quite require Destiny levels of co-operation here, you'll be better off with people you can trust. If anyone dies more than once, or quits halfway through a Heist activity, you'll fail the mission and be forced to start over, so I would recommend getting yourself a strong team of 4 together for maximum efficiency.

That's not to say you can't beat these missions in random groups, and that's exactly how I had to do it, but you do certainly feel like you're fumbling through it at times, and due to the fact every mission has bespoke, individual roles, you'll be heavily reliant on other people to fulfill their obligations to the mission, which puts your progress at the mercy of others. There is also a large reliability factor too, where random players can suddenly quit halfway through a mission, and due to the fact it is a mandatory requirement to have 4 players for this, the mission will prematurely end and you'll have to start over from scratch.

These general things to note are certainly the bigger challenges within this DLC, but there are a few other trophies that deserve specific mentions;

Live a Little - GTA Online: Spend a total of $8,000,000 purchasing vehicles included as part of The Heists Update.
Mastermind - GTA Online: Earn 25 platinum medals across Heist Setups and Finales.

The "Live a Little" trophy, awarded for spending a total of $8,000,000 purchasing vehicles included as part of The Heists Update, is where the largest portion of your time spent with this package will come from. Where I previously mentioned above that this list encourages a fair amount of replay value, this is exactly where it comes from, and if $8,000,000 sounds like alot of money, then it does so because it is.

The Heists Update makes money much more accessible to players compared to what was available prior within GTA Online. There are ways you can obtain large masses of money illegally within the PS3 community these days, but if you're playing through this experience above board, it is tough to amass alot of money quickly, and Heists is very profitable.

However, earning as much as you'll need for this trophy is still a big slog, and once you've given every Heist mission the once over, of which there are 26, you still won't have enough to be able reach the total required. There are also tons of mitigating factors within Heists that offset the potential payout and earnings you'll acquire from them, including;

• Only Heist Finales, of which there are 5, pay-out substantially well and the set-up missions prior, of which there are 21, pay out very minimal monetary rewards.
• Within Heist Finales, the host of the Heist has to accrue an expense called a "set-up" cost, which is deducted from the final payment.
• Heist Finale payments are also cut between all 4 players with pre-agreed splits based on percentages, and all players have to confirm their agreement to these splits before the Heist can commence, creating tough negotiation spots where you may have to settle for a lower cut of earnings upon completion.
• Heist missions come with difficulty levels up to "hard", which will influence higher pay-outs for higher difficulties, but will also present greater challenges. The "hard" difficulty gives the entire team just 1 respawn for any death, making it much more challenging than lower difficulty levels which provide multiple lives.
• Performance within Heist missions will also determine final pay-outs, with Heist teams punished for sloppy performance. This will include damage caused to getaway vehicles, failing additional objectives and deaths, all of which are inevitable along the way.

All of the above are relevant points to be aware of, but there is also a golden trick that I would strongly recommend which allows you to fulfill the requirements of this trophy after having amassed just $3,045,000. It's firstly important to note that, this is still alot of money to acquire, and the methodology of just replaying Heist Finales over and over again is still the best way to pursue these totals, but the trick is as follows;

The Armoured Kuruma, worth $525,000, is by far the most expensive Heists exclusive vehicle in the catalogue. You can purchase this vehicle, and immediately sell it back to the game for a total of $315,000, making a loss of $210,000 each time. The concept behind this is that, each time you sell the Kuruma back to the game, you're getting a portion of your money back, which can then be used to fund another Kuruma purchase later down the line. Buying and selling back $3,045,000 worth of Kuruma's will ultimately amount to spending $8,000,000, due to the fact you can regain $315,000 for every $525,000 purchase.

I used this method because $8,000,000 is simply just way too excessive, in my opinion. It was challenging enough to accumulate $3,045,000 for the above method, and Heists can be quite the frustrating experience when you're playing with random players, who have a tendency to either perform badly or quit Heists half-way through when they either can't perform the role they've chosen or don't want to restart from checkpoints when things aren't going so smoothly. I just wasn't sure I had the stomach to reach such a lofty total, and was hugely grateful there was a shortcut available.

It is also important to point out that you need to spend the money on vehicles added as part of the Heists update. The last thing you want to do is start spending your money on vehicles that were either already part of the base game or part of a different DLC package, as these won't count towards your progress for this trophy.

The "Mastermind" trophy, awarded for Earning 25 platinum medals across Heist Setups and Finales, will test your ability to outperform the rest of your team within the Heist. 

Each mission you successfully complete will distribute, in order from bottom to top, a Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum medal based on individual performances of all Heist members. The requirements and determination of what you get aren't clearly defined anywhere, so it makes it hard to gauge on whether you've done enough within a particular mission to be the outstanding player and grab yourself a Platinum medal, but combat roles are probably the best option.

Given the fact there are 26 missions, and you need 25 Platinum medals, you'll more than likely not achieve 25 within 26, so it's just aswell you have some extra replay value courtesy of the "Live a Little" trophy and you should make some relatively strong progress towards this trophy during your quest of gathering $8,000,000. 

If you struggle, the Fleeca Job, which is the introductory Heist, only requires 2 people for the 2 set-up missions and Heist Finale, so it's much easier to get Platinum medals within these circumstances where you're only competing against 1 other person, where only a Gold and Platinum medal is awarded at the end. You can just keep grinding this series, and the set-up costs aren't anywhere near as dear as some of the latter Heists, so it's nice easy alternative if you don't manage to grab 25 Platinum medals during your money accumulation journey.

Just like most things that require co-operation in groups of people, the main challenges from this package come from having to rely hugely on others. I do like the concept behind Heists, and there is a lot of effort and attention to detail in how they're created which deserves much praise, and whilst Rockstar can't be blamed for player behavior within these missions, which did cause huge frustration at times, they definitely overcooked the requirements of the "Live a Little" trophy. The Heists are fun and contain great novelty value, and the missions are built in the classic GTA way, but did I want to keep grinding them over and over again with the same unreliable groups of people? Not at all, but I had to.

The biggest irony of it all it is the fact there may not even be a write up for the main GTA V list, due to some difficulties around one of the trophies I have not yet obtained, with chances of me being able to obtain it seemingly very slim, but that one remains to be seen.

Follow my recommended method which means you'll only need less than half of the accumulated monetary total, and this is just about bearable. It'll still take you a while to reach the revised amount, with the whole package clocking in at around 30-40 hours for full completion, and grab yourself a reliable squad of like-minded individuals if you can, otherwise prepare to face up to the reality of playing with others who might not necessarily be in it for the same reasons.

NOTE : This was the only DLC content released with additional trophies for the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto V. The PS4 version included 2 further DLC packs inclusive of trophies, which were not released for the PS3 version of the game, and will therefore not be reviewed at a later date.