DLC #173 - Rocket League - Revenge of the Battle-Cars

I've decided to pick up the pace a bit with Rocket League now. It's a well overdue full completion and I think I can make some decent headway towards the finish line with a reasonable level of focus at this point.

The Revenge of the Battle-Cars DLC pack celebrates Rocket League's roots, paying tribute to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, originally released in 2008 in the Playstation 3 era. Incidentally, it was also one of the very first Playstation titles that adopted the trophy system, which also debuted in the same year.

Due to this being a tribute pack, the Scarab and Zippy car bodies are added - both of which featured in the original SARPBC title, and with it, comes a heck of alot of cosmetic additions. These include new decals, paintjobs, toppers, wheels and boosts, amongst other things. It is purely a visual content pack that focuses on customisation, and even goes as far to add a couple of filters to existing arenas that alter the time of day you can play them in.

The 5 new trophies have a mixed focus and look like they've just been thrown in randomly for the most part. You'll have to exercise either Scarab or Zippy for a couple of the trophies, which should emphasise the nostalgia a little bit, but you earn the remaining trophies through equipping an assortment of different cosmetic items and beating up on a couple of bots through the Exhibition mode.

If you're lucky, and work this the right way, you can actually achieve all 5 trophies within a single Online match, and a single Exhibition match. The parameters of the 2 online trophies will require you to both win a game and be the MVP with either Backfire, Scarab or Zippy, and this is easy in 1 v 1 match.

For the remaining 3 trophies, equip a certain decal, topper and boost, choose a 2 v 1 with All-Star bots and roll a game on the Urban Central map. Then, use your boost at any point during the game, win, and you'll get all 3 trophies at once. If you miss any, just load up a new match and fulfil the requirements on another attempt.

This can easily be done within 30 minutes and up to an hour if things don't as smoothly for you as outlined above, and certainly makes this the easiest Rocket League DLC yet.

DLC #172 - Rocket League - Neo Tokyo

In the latest venture of "jumping back into Rocket League at completely random intervals with no logical reasoning whatsoever", we're now officially half-way through the DLC content in terms of packs completed.

Neo Tokyo's main event is the addition of the Neo Tokyo game-field, which acts as a replacement to the previously discontinued Neo Underpass game-field. Neo Tokyo has some sort of cultural significance to Japanese Anime, but that's all lost on me so it's just a new arena as far as I'm concerned.

There are a couple of other solid additions though. The Snow Day and Hoops game modes are introduced - Variations on Ice Hockey and Basketball respectively - and a trading function, allowing players to trade items with each from within the game. Incidentally, this is due to be discontinued imminently and may render a few trophies unachievable, or potentially a bit more difficult to earn, which has some relevance here.

Participation on the Neo Tokyo arena isn't actually incorporated into the trophy list. However, all other previously aforementioned additions are, with a clear emphasis on Snow Day, Hoops and item trading.

Earning the 4 trophies for requirements tied to Snow Day and Hoops are easy, and should require no more than a handful of games on a casual-play basis. The 2 trophies related to item trading - Not so much;

Certifiable - Earn Veteran status for your Certified item.

The "Certified" trophy, awarded for Earning Veteran status for your Certified item, is actually broken down into a small handful of stages, as follows;

Step 1 - Obtain a Certified item, which is earned through random award each time you level up. When I checked my inventory, I only had 2 certified items, so I'm not entirely sure how rare these actually are. I don't play Rocket League much at all, so they may seem rare just by default of that exact fact, but you used to be able to obtain them through the Rocket Pass too. However, certified items are no longer available through the Rocket Pass, and with the in-game trading system also about to be removed, this will also close off the potential avenue of being gifted them by other players. This will, in theory, make them more difficult to obtain, as you're left with just purely hoping on random luck each time you level up as your sole method of obtaining a certified item.

Step 2 - Understand which statistic drives the progression of your Certified item and how many of these you'll need to reach Veteran status. Each Certified item is attached with a specific in-game statistic that you'll need to accumulate in order to level it up. The item I settled on required you to clock up Centered balls, of which I needed 200 in online matches, to reach Veteran rank. Some tasks attached to Certified items will require less than this total, but are also generally considered to be tougher to accumulate in comparison, such as goals and MVP awards, and this sort of high volume, whilst simple enough, still requires the grind.

Step 3 - Accumulate the total number of actions required to level your Certified item all the way to Veteran rank and unlock the trophy. Centering the ball requires you to play the ball to within the centre of the pitch, and as mentioned, you'll need 200 of these to reach Veteran rank. This took me around 10 hours or so, and because you have to clock this up within a competitive environment, the game doesn't allow you to just boot up exhibition matches against uncompetitive bots. This can make progress slow, and I was averaging around 3/4 centered balls per game, so 200 felt a little grindy, and 10 hours is a long time to spend on a trophy like this.

The bigger reason for note, is the fact there may be very limited ways in which you can obtain Certified items going forward, with the imminent removal of in-game trading and the fact you can't get them as Rocket Pass awards any more. If you don't already have a Certified item to roll with, then I'm not sure what your prognosis of success looks like, as it seems the only way you'd be able to acquire one is through natural levelling progression.

The rest of the pack is very straight-forward, but this is definitely one to watch.

DLC #171 - Uncharted 4 : A Thief's End - Survival Mode

There's no such thing as straight-forward when it comes to Uncharted DLC. It's proven to be the peak of the series when it comes to delivering a genuine challenge to the player, and the free-to-play Survival Mode in Uncharted 4 is no exception to the rule.

Survival Mode is effectively a horde-based game mode for up to 3 players, taking place across 10 different stages. Each stage consists of 5 waves, and in order to beat a stage, you'll need to successively complete each wave by fulfilling the requirements set for it's completion.

Each stage can be tackled on 4 different difficulty variants. These include Easy, Normal, Hard and Crushing, but if you're familiar with the typical demands of Uncharted trophies, you won't be surprised to know that the primary focus within this DLC pack is towards the higher end of that difficulty scale, and you'll be competing within the Hard and Crushing difficulty levels if you want to grab all the trophies on offer here.

As far as horde-inspired game modes go, this is solid for the most part, and that's mainly down to the excellent combat Uncharted delivers, which has always been a strong point of the series. Great mechanics are essential to these kind of games modes that focus heavily on combat, otherwise it can make the product stale and dull, and despite being a frustrating experience at times when aiming for full completion, it's still a great game mode which I enjoyed through to the end.

There are 12 new trophies on offer, and the roadmap to full completion has very clear direction. You'll be awarded 10 of these trophies just for beating each of the 10 stages on any difficulty level to any star rating, which is measured on a scale of 1-3, and is based on how quickly you can clear the 5 waves on any given stage.

However, despite a plethora of trophies thrown at you for some very simple requirements, there is a standout trophy;

...It - Earn three stars on all Survival stages on the Crushing setting.

The "...It" trophy, awarded for earning three stars on all Survival stages on the Crushing setting, requires you to earn every star possible (30) across all 10 stages - and in typical Uncharted DLC fashion, this is not an easy feat.

Each of the 10 stages contains 5 waves to beat, and these will either be Survival, Siege, Marked Man, Treasure Hunt or Warlord. Warlords are bosses, and these occur every 10 waves, with the exception of Stage 10, where there are Warlord waves at 49 and 50 to end the game. To spice up the challenge, waves will also come with modifiers. Survival, but only headshot kills count or Siege, but enemies are revived by Saviours in the local area, for example.

There are a couple of important pre-requisites to point out before tackling this trophy in earnest. These are as follows;

• It is not compulsory, but is highly recommended, to be at least character level 40 before you attempt anything on Crushing difficulty. Each time you level up, your character will receive a 3% permanent boost to their HP and damage output, which will both significantly help on Crushing. You can level your character up through playing on Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty variants of the Survival stages.

• You will need to just beat each stage at least once on Hard difficulty in order to unlock Crushing, so you will be forced to cut your teeth on the preceding difficulty level before being able to jump into the same stages on Crushing.

• Collecting gun upgrades to reach level 5 is extremely useful when dealing with Crushing mode, and whilst also not compulsory, is highly recommended too. Defeated Warlords will drop an upgraded weapon, and a weapon to level 5 will give you more damage from that weapon, which is a great asset in Crushing difficulty. You can only obtain level 4 drops from Warlords on Hard, and you'll need to play Crushing to earn level 5 drops, but this is extremely useful for overall character development.

These things are all important to know, and should ultimately be where your focus lies in order to adequately prepare for Crushing difficulty, however, it is absolutely fundamental to success to have good teammates.

Some of these 10 stages are brutal on Crushing difficulty, and this is down to certain factors. 3 stars are awarded for beating the stage's 5 waves within a certain time limit, which gradually decreases the amount of stars you earn down to 0 depending on the amount of time you take to clear all waves.

You can somewhat cheese certain stages though, and you'll find that sitting in specific positions can create enemy spawn patterns that will lead them in a specific direction towards you, which also creates a chokepoint where you can pick them all off at will. This is sometimes complicated by wave modifiers, that force you to move, such as Treasure Hunts and Sieges, which will add an extra dimension of challenge, but on the whole, is a relatively assured tactic.

I did mostly play with random players, and you notice how chaotic things can get when you play with people who don't understand this tactic, and the importance of it to clearing certain stages within some fairly slim timescales. If you've got one player (and this mode is for only 3 players) running around doing their own thing, it creates a level of disorganisation you can't afford to have if you want to reach 3 stars on Crushing difficulty.

Stages 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 all include Warlord bosses. Stage 10 has 2 of them. This is where things really pick up because they have high HP, wield powerful weapons, spawn in tons of smaller enemies to assist them and use powerful attacks that can down you instantly. You'll need to be able to deal with these Warlords quickly and efficiently if you want to achieve a fast enough time to earn 3 stars on Crushing, and this is where the importance of good teammates will really come to the fore.

I was lucky enough to find a solid pairing to assist me, especially with stages 8 and 10, which both caused me problems when trying to earn 3 stars, and did require multiple attempts. Part of the issue is, if you all die and have to restart the round, the clock does not reset, so the margin for error is practically none-existent and failed attempts will just eat into the time limit.

The approach for dealing effectively with Warlords is to make sure you have the right offensive weapons and perks equipped. For me, the quick revive perk, in order to help revive downed teammates faster, is essential to success, as is the enhanced radar perk, which allows you to see all enemies on the map as red dots. I also pretty much exclusively used sniper rifles, alternating between the HDR and M14. If you play with good players, they'll probably have their guns ranked up to level 5, and will be familiar with the strategies to success outlined above, so when you combine it all together, and you're all on the same page, things will click and you do have a solid recipe for success.

I did spend some frustrating runs attempting to beat some of these stages with random players who just didn't know what was required for victory, and the stage would pass us by as the time limit ticked beyond the 3 star requirement, so I would definitely go as far to suggest that good quality teammates are imperative to unlocking this trophy. You'll need to do your bit too. There's no wiggle room for a carry here, so you'll have to bring something to the table yourself. It's a genuine collective team effort, and even then, it's still a tough challenge, so you will have to be prepated to fail along the way.

However, the important thing to note is, you will succeed, but only if you stick to the correct strategies. This won't be achieved through fluke, or being carried, or without the right approach, so it's important to understand that you'll have to work hard for this completion. It's a reasonable time-sink too - somewhere within the 20-25 hour mark, and some of these latter stages will take 20-25 minutes each time. It's a worthy completion to add to the collection, and maintains the high standards required by the player from Uncharted DLC content.