DLC #134 - Bioshock Infinite - Clash in the Clouds

From the moment I died for the first time within this DLC, and chose an option that read "Restart from the last checkpoint", believing this to mean from the start of the current wave I was on, only to actually be taken back to the very beginning lobby and lose all my progress within that arena, I knew this was going to be a bumpy ride. It felt like a decision that set the tone.

Clash in the Clouds is the first of three DLC packs for Bioshock Infinite, a wave-based combat mode that sees you battle through increasingly more difficult arenas, whilst earning money by completing waves, and being able to upgrade weapons, vigors and abilities in order to cope with the increasingly more demanding tasks ahead.

There are 4 arenas in total, with 15 specifically designed waves for each one, for a total of 60 different waves throughout the content. You start as if you're a new character playing a brand new game, and beating waves will earn you money which you can use to gradually upgrade weapons and vigors, which will strengthen your character and better equip you for the latter arenas, which scale in difficulty. You also get gifted infusions between waves in order to increase your shield, health and salt capacity.

There are 10 new trophies added as part of this package, with 4 of these corresponding to just merely finishing each individual arena. You have unlimited lives to reach the end, so this is just an exercise that comes down to how long it takes you to progress, and the bare minimum of just passing through each arena shouldn't take longer than 3-4 hours. This is the easy bit.

Overall though, as a wider piece, this is a challenging package, with a difficulty set to a default of "Hard" which cannot be changed, and every type of enemy you've already seen throughout the main Bioshock story is accounted for and thrown at you. There is a noticeable spike in difficulty after the first arena where your upgrades just suddenly don't seem to be relative to the challenge, and you will find yourself farming the earlier stages of this DLC for money in order to improve your weapons and vigors to be able to stand up for yourself in the tougher arenas. However, once you've maxed out all the upgrades for weapons and vigors, it does become more manageable, but still not exactly a trouble-free experience.

It also doesn't help that you'll need to spend a considerable amount of money on unlocking all of the additional gallery content contained for another trophy within the list, and in hindsight, I should have saved this until the end when it turned out I had loads of surplus cash, rather than spending it early when I needed it more, so perhaps some ill-judgement on my part too which made the earlier progress somewhat slower.

The other trophies are awarded for smaller tasks that you should get naturally as you move through these arenas, and there will be plenty of chances to go back through as you drive towards the main goal in this list;

Blue Ribbon Champ - In CitC, completed all Blue Ribbons Challenges.

The "Blue Ribbon Champ" trophy, awarded for completing all Blue Ribbon Challenges, is what makes this package come to the fore, and is both a genuinely challenging, but also frustrating experience at the same time.

To start with the challenging part, there are 60 Blue Ribbons in total to earn, and a Blue Ribbon is achieved through fulfillment of a specific task provided to the player at the start of each of the 60 waves. This corresponds to 1 Blue Ribbon for every wave across all 4 arenas, and the range of tasks is very varied.

My approach was to just casually play-through the arenas and unlock the prior trophies awarded for simply beating them, and seeing how many Blue Ribbons I could unlock along the way without trying to be conscious to their requirements. Most of these seemed to tick over relatively nicely at first, and this was a trend that continued right up until around the 45 Blue Ribbon mark, and whilst there was always that expectation I would reach a point where some of these tasks would begin to stand out and halt my progress, some of the tougher ones were either hard to execute, or either seemed to be driven by circumstantial luck, or by discovering ways to fulfill these requirements differently to what was actually stated.

For example, I discovered the objective to "defeat every enemy with the weapon they're using" still registered when you used the Undertow vigor just to knock them off the map instead, but not until I had spent hours attempting to frantically run around and find a specific weapon to kill an enemy with as per the objective only to die and have to go through the whole arena again. It didn't make sense, but it thankfully still worked, even though I had to spend a lot of time to discover an alternate method.

This wasn't always the case though, and the following objectives are the ones I ended up seriously struggling on;

• Duke and Dimwit Theater (Arena 2) - Wave 13 - Defeat 5 enemies with a single Devil's Kiss blast.
• Raven's Dome (Arena 3) - Wave 13 - Defeat all enemies while they are distracted with a Booker decoy tear.
• Emporia Arcade (Arena 4) - Wave 2 - Defeat 2 enemies who are riding Sky-lines with traps.
• Emporia Arcade (Arena 4) - Wave 5 - Defeat both Handymen while they are electrocuting a Sky-line.
• Emporia Arcade (Arena 4) - Wave 7 - Defeat two enemies with the Fireman's suicide attack.
• Emporia Arcade (Arena 4) - Wave 10 - Defeat all enemies only using the sniper rifle.
• Emporia Arcade (Arena 4) - Waves 11 - Defeat all enemies while they are distracted with a Booker decoy tear.

This doesn't quite paint the full picture though, and as previously mentioned, there are some big frustrations with the game design that also make this more difficult than it should be.

The biggest one is the fact that, every time you pass a wave, but you don't fulfill the requirements for the Blue Ribbon challenge (dying will also instantly fail the challenge too), you will have to go through the entire arena in order to reach the wave you still require the challenge for, just to have another attempt. This is a seriously big oversight and causes alot of unnecessary rework in the instances where the Blue Ribbon required is situated within the latter waves of any given arena.

Some of the challenges listed above I struggled on occur within later waves, and there is always that psychological edge that brings some pressure knowing you don't have any leniency from the game when you work up towards a certain wave. For a game that uses the chapter select feature so well within the main trophy list to mop up any excess trophies, to see them completely abandon the ability to replay a wave, just for the benefit of not having to slug through an entire arena just to get another shot at an outstanding challenge, is disappointing. It eventually makes it feel like you're spending a lot of dead time with the DLC, and even the incentive for money runs out eventually, so you really do feel like you're just going through the motions when you get down to the nitty gritty of those 2 or 3 Blue Ribbons left, which isn't fun after the 6th, 7th or 8th failed attempt at a challenge, which seemed to be a regular occurence.

The other big frustration is the fact that the game will register actions of enemies and count them against you for certain challenges, prematurely voiding them.

For example, in a wave where the challenge states "Defeat the enemies using only Vigor traps", enemies falling off the landscape via their own accord, or enemies wielding heavy weapons, such as RPG's, and causing friendly fire splash damage, will go against you and provide you with the failed challenge prompt. I wouldn't say it makes less sense than having to play through an entire arena again, but it is frustrating to know you're being penalised by the actions of questionable AI.

This is a rocky road for numerous and varied reasons, and will take you somewhere within the region of 12-20 hours in total to beat, hugely dependent on the above factors. It is an experience blended up of challenge and annoyance, and completion is met with relief more so than satisfaction, though it is a good feeling to eventually knock off an increasingly elusive Blue Ribbon challenge, even if the incredibly tedious repeatability does wear you down. I actually had a lot of fun pursuing this list, but the nuances do leave a bittersweet aftertaste.

I haven't had an experience with Burial at Sea yet, which is next up, but I would be suprised if Clash in the Clouds somehow wasn't the peak for Bioshock Infinite's DLC offering.

Platinum #102 - Crash Bandicoot 2 : Cortex Strikes Back - (Part of the Crash Bandicoot N'Sane Trilogy for the Playstation 4)

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Originally released on the Playstation 1 in 1997, came Crash Bandicoot 2, the second title remade within in the 2018 N'Sane Trilogy.

There are alot of parallels to draw from based on previously reviewing Crash Bandicoot here, both in terms of game design and the trophy lists, so there may be some echoes along the way, and the aspects present within this list that are different don't really do much to influence a massively dissimilar experience to the first game on the route towards the Platinum trophy.

As always, I like to pad these out for the benefit of doing the review justice, but don't want the danger of feeling like I'm treading alot of old ground because of the fact the previous list in the series was so similar. I might have to officially coin such circumstances. I'll call it something like "Uncharted-Syndrome", perhaps.

Just like Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2 is a moderately sized list, clocking in with the same total of 25 trophies, along with exactly the same process map towards full completion.

The "Cortex N' Adequate" trophy, awarded for Defeating Neo Cortex, will cap off the end-game as you progress through the very loose story which involves Crash being manipulated into collecting crystals on behalf of Dr Neo Cortex for his plan with ulterior motives, which was stifled in the first game.

The story actually specifies that 25 crystals are required in order to garnish enough power for Dr Neo Cortex and his assistant, Dr N Gin, to reach maximum capacity with the Vortex they're creating for their grand plan, which, incidentally, is also the number of levels within the game, and one short of the amount of levels contained with the original Crash Bandicoot.

As you go through each warp zone within the game, you'll earn a host of progression related trophies for defeating each boss within that particular warp zone in the build up to the final boss fight, located in warp zone 5, where you defeat Dr Neo Cortex and unlock the final story-based Gold trophy. Each of these individual warp zones contains 5 levels, and there are 5 warp zones in total, which is where our nicely rounded figure of 25 crystals comes from. Each zone also culminates with a respective boss fight, which gives us 30 levels when you add them all together. The way you progress through the game is a carbon copy of Crash Bandicoot, both in terms of game design and how the trophies are awarded as you move through the story.

Earning a crystal merely requires completion of the level, which is the easiest part of the game because speed and death are irrelevant (for now, at least), so giving the story the once over achieving what you can is a good starting point, and will naturally progress you along towards the other aspects of this list. If you're conscious of attempting to collect Gems too, you will minimise the required amount of rework when you go back through the game, so this approach is also advised.

It is important to note one big difference from Crash Bandicoot. There are actually an additional 5 hidden alternate levels, and discovering each of these will unlock a further 5 secret trophies. They are very well hidden as secret exits within the main 25 story levels and are placed within a sixth zone. They do also have crystals attached to them, though they do not influence progression within the main story, but you will be required to grab the gems and relics from them if you want the Platinum trophy, so they are still very relevant in the bigger picture.

Once you manage to get through the story for the first time, which is a very leisurely task, the end-game process is also exactly the same, where the attention then shifts focus onto collecting Gems and Relics in a bid to finish off the rest of the trophy list.

The "Laser Powered Vengence" trophy, awarded for Earning 42 gems, holds the exact same concept from Crash Bandicoot, though this is a noticeable step up in quantity from 26 Gems in the first game. This is due to another big difference within Crash Bandicoot 2 where certain levels have seen the introduction of a "Death Route", which is effectively a checkpoint you must reach at some point within the level without dying, to then access the Death Route and reach an alternative conclusion to the level that awards another gem. This duplicates the amount of gems you can earn from certain levels, hence the uplift in quantity, and is therefore not the same as the 1 gem, 1 level approach from the first game.

The requirements for the other Gems are still the same. Break all boxes within a level and complete it in order to obtain the Gem. Coloured gems are also back, and these still require you to beat 5 specific levels without dying whilst obtaining all boxes within a single attempt, just to slightly elevate the challenge in the same way the original game did. Obtaining coloured Gems also still unlocks previously sealed off areas within other levels that can only be accessed after having obtained the corresponding coloured Gem, so you'll be going back and forth to work these puzzles out again too.

Multiple Gems exist within 12 levels (not including levels with coloured Gems), so the Death Routes are used to a greater extent here. A few of them are responsible for some of the more challenging parts within the game too, whereby you have to advance past the Death Route checkpoint in some instances, to clear more of the level ahead, and then eventually backtrack to activate the Death Route and finish the level. This is a new concept that does elevate the challenge a touch compared to the original Crash Bandicoot, but still not the main challenge within this trophy list at the same time.

The "Wumpa-Burner Engaged!" trophy, awarded for Earning 27 Relics (gold or better), is still the toughest aspect of this game, providing further evidence of the continuity shown between both Crash Bandicoot lists thus far.

Unlike the Gems though, there haven't been any changes to the way Relics work. You are still awarded a Sapphire, Gold and Platinum relic depending on times posted for each level, and the requirements for earning one are exactly the same. You must beat the level as fast as possible in a single attempt without incurring death, and you can pick up boxes along the way to stop the clock and improve your time. Times are set and performance is rewarded a Relic depending on speed.

I mentioned in the Crash Bandicoot review that there didn't seem to be much consistency in the target times between the levels, and where some of these levels were much more lenient in terms of timescales chosen to qualify for at least a Gold relic, some are much less forgiving and don't allow any sort of margin for error. Crash Bandicoot 2 is exactly the same in this regard.

It's not so much of a problem, but you can find yourself in a good flow and then suddenly hit a brick wall out of nowhere, and the tough speedruns will have you spending a reasonable amount of time perfecting your run in order to find a route that works best and eventually get you that Gold relic. The good news is, there wasn't anything massively over the top that had me stuck for hours on end, but the challenge has translated over from the original game in the exact same way where the majority of this is fairly straight forward, with a small smattering of genuine challenge, which again makes it the hardest trophy within the list.

I also mentioned in the Crash Bandicoot review that, despite the odd difficulty spike, the trophy requirements do still significantly assist the player, due to the fact you aren't required to earn a Platinum relic for every level, and if this was the case here as well, and this trophy was somehow different to the original game, then this would also make this list a significantly more challenging one. I only ended up with 3 Platinum Relics, which was a worse performance than the 5 Platinum Relics I scored on Crash Bandicoot, so the perspective is still an important thing to point out.

The remainder of the list should pose no greater problems, and most of it will come naturally along the way as you focus on the main tasks outlined above. It's another good list to pad out the Gold trophy count too.

In terms of overall difficulty, I feel as though there are so many similarities between both Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 2, it's hard to justify rating them any differently from one another. There isn't anything within this list that blatantly makes it stand out in comparison to the first game.

Despite the fact the "Death Routes" do add an extra dimension of challenge, and also subsequently way more Gems to unlock, this doesn't necessarily equate to a more challenging experience because, regardless of the difference in quantity of Gems, both lists still boil down to a small selection of stand-out levels, so they're effectively equal in that respect anyway.

The same sort of logic applies to the Relics. Though the quantity is of a much similar amount between both lists, it does just come down to the odd few levels that provide that "practice makes perfect" approach compared to the rest of the game, and a small dose of trial and error will eventually see you through anyway. The fact there was also no change in the lenient requirements of Relic collection is also a big deciding factor on the overall difficulty rating again.

Completion time for Crash Bandicoot 2 is slightly higher, clocking in at around 20-25 hours, and this is something that the additional amount of Gems to collect does influence, but regardless of the challenges that lie in wait, it's hard to vouch for a higher rating for a list that can still be completed with such a modest timeframe. If I rated games in increments of .5, there may just be enough of a case to sway a slightly higher rating here, but not quite enough to be adding whole points on.

Notable Trophies -

Cortex N. Adequate - Defeat N. Cortex.
Laser Powered Vengence - Earn 42 Gems.
Wumpa-Burner Engaged! - Earn 27 Relics (gold or better).

Hardest Trophy -

Wumpa-Burner Engaged!
Earn 27 Relics (gold or better).

DLC #133 - LittleBigPlanet 2 - The Muppets Premium Level Pack

It's been a while since I've revisited LittleBigPlanet 2, and whilst there are good reasons for that, they're becoming harder to ignore, and the final 2 packs left beyond this will be finished the moment I can bring myself to acquire the extra peripherals needed to complete the respective lists.

In the meantime, the Muppets Premium Level Pack does not require such acquisition, and follows the same mould as the DC Comics Premium Level Pack (For the most part, at least).

The DC Comics theme is now replaced by The Muppets theme, along with a cast of authentic characters in full costume and a host of new creation options to gather via prize bubbles scattered around within each stage. The levels make use of the new Attract-O-Gel feature too, which allows your Sackboy to walk on ceilings and walls, adding a new element of gameplay that is creatively integrated into the new handful of Story levels.

The pack adds 7 new levels to the sub-stories section of LittleBigPlanet 2, broken up into 5 main levels and 2 additional survival challenges, accompanied by 7 new trophies to unlock along the way.

LittleBigPlanet DLC trophy packs have never been overly challenging, and this one is no different. The primary focus will be the Gold "Standing Ovation!" trophy, awarded for Acing all 5 Muppet Story Levels, which are fairly easy to go through without dying, as long as you take your time to analyse your next steps before your proceed. The final stage, where you fight the Phantom boss, is a little tricky, but once you learn the attack patterns, it shouldn't take too long to nail down. You will also unlock an additional trophy for simply beating all 5 levels, acing not required.

The other trophies will require you to meet a minimum score threshold within the 2 new survival challenges, both of which are very easy to achieve the required score from, and there is also an Online requirement to beat 5 user-created levels that feature Attract-O-Gel.

One key difference between this pack and the DC Comics Premium Level Pack worth noting though, is the fact that there isn't a trophy requirement to unlock all prize bubbles within the DLC this time round, which removes the necessity to have to go through all those secret areas contained within levels which require 2-4 players to unlock the additional Multiplayer dependent prize bubbles. This makes this journey much more straight-forward and means your pure focus can be on just beating each stage without dying. It also means that full completion of this pack can be achieved on a solo basis.

This meant I could unlock all 7 trophies within a single sitting, clocking in at a total of just under 2 and a half hours. A very quick and easy list.

Platinum #101 - Bioshock Infinite

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

It's a been a while since a Bioshock game graced these pages. Bioshock 1 and 2 were some of my earliest Platinum trophies, as the 3rd and 26th respectively. That's a big gap when you consider the fact all 3 Bioshock games to date were originally released on the same platform, and there was only a 3 year gap between Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite.

Bioshock Infinite takes on a different flavour to the previously underwater themed Bioshock games, where you play as Booker DeWitt, who is tasked with rescuing a little girl called Elizabeth from a sky-themed metropolis called Columbia, from the hands of the game's main protagonist, Zachary Hale Comstock.

This is a large list, totalling 51 trophies, and switches the series back to being a purely Single Player experience, as you go through the Infinite story with no other game modes accounted for. The list for Bioshock titles has remained fairly varied as the series has progressed, and Infinite presents a host of differences not previously seen within other Bioshock games.

There are a large portion of progression based trophies as you work through the story, which is a fairly modest 10-12 hours in length, difficulty dependent.

Most of the other, non-progression trophies, can be earned naturally along the way, and there are vast opportunities to earn the majority of them without requiring much thought and given the fact you'll need to play the game through twice in order to unlock the Platinum, it's better to see what you manage to unlock naturally first time round and take in the story, then work on everything else on your second run.

The "Scavenger Hunt" trophy, awarded for Completing the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Dollar Bill machine, is the hardest trophy in this list. The player must first beat the game once on any difficulty in order to unlock it though, which is why it is a necessity to play through the game twice if you want the Platinum trophy.

1999 Mode is a step up from the game's most challenging difficulty, where enemies deal significantly more damage and are tougher to kill. The main distinguishing factor of 1999 Mode is the fact that every death comes at a cost of $100 for the player to be revived, and if you don't have the spare cash, then you'll be returned to the main menu and have to reload from the start of the last chapter. Not being able to use a Dollar Bill machine on top of this means you cannot purchase ammuntion, health packs or salt (which is used to charge up vigors, which are effectively like tonics from the previousy Bioshock games).

It labels itself as a "hardcore" experience, but in all honesty, the worst thing that can happen is, you may have to redo small portions of the game when restarting a chapter. It's a bit of a stretch to call itself a "hardcore" version of the game I've come to know from experiences with games like Dead Space, which will show no mercy on the player and end your game if you die at any point. Even not being able to use a Dollar Bill machine is more of a challenge of making sure you don't accidentally purchase an item from them, rather than actually being stuck for ammunition, health and salts, all of which are provided in abundance throughout. You are allowed to use other vending machines like Vigor and Weapon upgrade stations, which is something to be careful of, but generally, shouldn't be much of a problem.

However, the game does start to throw you around a little bit towards the end, and this is where 1999 mode's difficulties start to shine through. I was coasting through this game right up until about 3/4 of the way through, and had it set in my head that this was somewhere in the region of a 4 or 5 out of 10 Platinum, and I was suddenly halted in my tracks by a couple of standout segments in the game. There is a series of fights with Lady Comstock, whose ghost haunts you and her special ability is being able to revive the dead, which means you have to fight off hordes and also try to kill her at the same time. It's very overwhelming and you have to fight her on 3 separate occasions. The final fight provides more of the same, where you have to defend the Zeppelin, and is also about fending off hordes long enough to make your escape. The true difficulties of 1999 mode are apparent when you're fighting against large groups of enemies, because your health depletes quickly and it takes much longer to reduce their numbers.

It isn't exactly a "hardcore" experience though. The consequences to death aren't punishing enough for that, but it will test your skills to at least make sure you don't have an easy ride to completion. It also cannot be left unstated the importance of having access to Elizabeth's support either. Once you have access to her, and she is fighting alongside you, her tendency to generously support you is a game changer. She'll find money, health, ammunition and salts at very regular, and often dire times of need and it alleviates alot of bad situations.

Despite Bioshock lists being very varied throughout the course of the series, one of the constants that has remained is their fondness for collectible related trophies, and Infinite is loaded to the brim with collectibles in the form of Voxophones, Infusions and Telescopes/Kinetescopes.

The "Infused with Greatness" trophy, awarded for Collecting every Infusion upgrade in a single game, is the most notable of these collectibles, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, and this is more of a general note, for a game that has so many collectibles (147 in total), it doesn't do a great job of tracking them for the player. Voxophones are recorded in the in-game menu, yet Infusions are not, and these are the most well hidden collectibles in the game. Infusions are used to upgrade your health, shield and salt capacity, so these are not just optional, but very critical to progression as you hit some of the more challenging parts of the story.

Infusions are also easy to miss because they're either contained behind optional side quests that require you to find an item that corresponds to a secret code/message, which will then unlock an area of the game you would not have been able to access previously. In some instances, you'll see the code/secret message before you pick up the item to decipher it, and therefore have to backtrack to a previous area. Infusions are also very commonly found behind locked doors that need to be picked by Elizabeth, and if you don't have enough lockpicks to unlock a certain door, you cannot grab the Infusion you need, and because of the games very linear nature, you won't be able to revisit certain parts once you move onto a new area of the game.

Despite the game having a chapter select feature, which can help you go back and grab alot of the collectibles, the trophy description eludes to a very important difference, which is the fact this has to be done "in a single game". With Voxophones and Telescopes/Kinetiscopes, chapter select will bail you out if you miss any of them, which is something the previous Bioshock games did not offer. All collectibles in both previous Bioshock games had to be collected in one Playthrough, which is exactly what this trophy mirrors, and which is why Infusions are the standout collectible. This also ties into another trophy called "Raising the Bar", which requires you to max out either health, shield or salts when distributing infusion upgrades, and it is realistically possible to collect every infusion in the game, yet not max out any particular attribute. If this happens, you'll be running through the game again as per the same condition of having to fulfill it in a single game, and Infusions not being available through chapter select.

All other collectibles also carry over across playthroughs, though there is no way to tell which ones you have and which you need, and even though Voxophones are tracked in the pause menu under their own heading as you progress through a single playthrough, previously acquired Voxophones do not appear, so you'll start with a blank list regardless. Telescopes/Kinetiscopes, just like Infusions, are not tracked either, which almost makes chapter select pointless because you'll more than likely not know which ones you need. The collectible tracking is not handled very well by the game at all, and you're better off collecting everything within a single playthrough and sparing yourself the inconvenience of trying to work out what you may have missed.

Chapter select is very good for the clean up operation though, and the list contains alot of trophies where there is potential for chapter select farming, with cumulative kill totals for the games various weapons, environmental novelties such as tears and Sky-lines and use of vigors, though 2 full Playthroughs of the game will be more than enough to take care of these. 

There are also stacklable trophies for easy, normal and hard difficulty, and even if you choose not to play through on hard first time round, 1999 Mode will unlock everything else upon completion (including another trophy for just beating the game in 1999 Mode without any additional parameters), so your first Playthrough doesn't really matter difficulty wise, which may be something to bear in mind if you wanted a more relaxed journey to focus on as many of these trophies as possible before running with 1999 Mode and leaving yourself as little to do as possible. I found it bearable enough to run collectibles in my 1999 run and grab most of the outstanding trophies I had left with very minimal need for chapter select.

1999 Mode is the main challenge here, and even though the game is very collectible heavy like it's predecessors, it's only really the Infusions that should give you problems. The addition of chapter select negates the previous necessity in Bioshock titles where you had to collect everything in 1 Playthrough, which was a headache to manage, and is subsequently alleviated here as a consequence.

It doesn't really lay a glove on the difficulty of Bioshock 1, and is more akin to that of Bioshock 2, scoring the same mark out of 10. Bioshock 2 had an easier Single Player offering, but more of the difficulty within that game lent towards the Multiplayer portion of the list, which is absent within Bioshock Infinite due to the exclusion of an online mode. 1999 Mode does lure you into a false sense of security with sudden peaks in difficulty towards the end of the game, and the Infusion collectibles could prove to be problematic for a couple of trophies without the advantage of being able to gather them via Chapter Select post-game. However, everything else in between can be naturally picked up within 2 Playthroughs, and you shouldn't need to rely too heavily on chapter select to finish the list.

The game ranges somewhere within the 25-30 hour mark for completion, and although 1999 Mode will eventually stand up for itself a bit, there are tougher Single player games out there, and as long as you can keep on top of the collectible management, this should find it's way into your collection relatively trouble-free.

Notable Trophies -

Scavenger Hunt - Completed the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Dollar Bill machine.
Infused with Greatness - In the Main Campaign, collected every Infusion upgrade in a single game.

Hardest Trophy -



Scavenger Hunt
Completed the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Doller Bill machine

DLC #132 - Destiny - Rise of Iron

Fresh off the back of the Platinum trophy for Destiny, comes the other half of the DLC content after The Taken King, which is a much smoother journey to finish off the series.

Rise of Iron tells the story of a group of guardians who sacrificed themselves to ensure the secrets of a material called SIVA were contained within the Old Temple (which also acts as the new social hub for this content), only to be discovered by the Fallen some time later, who want to experiment with SIVA as a form of body augmentation.

When tasked with finding a way to stop this, it turns out the Fallen already have access to SIVA and have been using it to create new forms of themselves (called "Splicers"), and need to be stopped.

There are 7 new trophies within Rise of Iron, awarded for completing a broad range of tasks and activities, and just like The Taken King, there is some solid variety accounted for here as the package touches upon most of it's new additions with the small selection of trophies on offer.

Of the 7 new trophies available, 2 of these are awarded for progressing through the new Rise of Iron questline, which will see you defeat Aksis and end the SIVA threat. For a main questline though, this is quite short, and will take you no longer than a couple of hours to complete, containing just a small handful of quests.

The package also spreads the remainder of the trophies well across the variety of other newly introduced content, which includes a couple of new side quests, the newly added Supremacy game mode to the Crucible arena (think Kill Confirmed from the Call of Duty Series), and the new Wrath of the Machine Raid.

None of the additional quest-related trophies are anywhere near as convoluted or long-winded as they were in The Taken King, with a much more simple and linear approach taken this time around, though despite this, it is still important to mention a couple of trophies specifically;

Student of History - Activate all Iron Lord Artefacts.
Splicer God - Complete the "Wrath of the Machine" raid on heroic difficulty.

The "Student of History" trophy, awarded for Activating all Iron Lord Artefacts, requires you to collect and attune a total of 8 new Artefacts added specifically for this DLC.

The method is relatively simple. You'll need to accept a quest from Tyra Khan at the Old Temple which requires you to fill up a "good deeds" meter to 100%, by completing public events and killing enemies, which will grant you 1 of these artefacts. You can farm the Archon's Forge, another new addition specific to this DLC, which is effectively an arena mode where you have to clear a series of enemies including a boss, which will grant 5% towards the meter for every arena event you clear successfully, plus whatever volume of enemies you manage to defeat during the event on top of this (Every 10 enemies tops the meter up by 1%). 

This will take between 1-2 hours each time, purely through cycling events at the Archon's Forge, and once you've filled the meter, you can turn the quest in and retrieve the artefact. However, you're only entitled to 1 Artefact per week, and the options for which Artefact you can have are provided to the player on a rotational basis, with 3 different Artefacts up for grabs each week. This means you'll have to come back for 8 different weeks in total in order to collect each Artefact and trigger this trophy, and you'll also need to make sure you pick up a different Artefact each time. The trophy is looking for you to grab each of the 8 Artefacts on a unique basis, and not just 8 of any combination.

Apparently, you can switch between your 3 character classes, and grab 3 different artefacts per week, which can shorten the journey down to just 3 weeks, but I found Archon's Forge to be too grindy and boring to dedicate that much time in one sitting towards it, so if you find that to also be the case, you'll need to be patient and allow an 8 week lead time to unlock this trophy. I was perfectly fine with logging in for just an hour or two to fulfil this trophy over the course of an 8 week period, and didn't see it as an immediate necessity to grind this out as quickly as possible by jumping between 3 different character classes and grinding out anywhere between 3-6 hours in a single sitting.

Either way, it's important to outline this trophy because of it's "ahead of time" nature, and the fact you need to account for a certain level of advanced playing time with the game as a consequence, and will also require somewhere in the region of 10-15 hours alone when you add it all up collectively.

The "Splicer God" trophy, awarded for Completing the "Wrath of the Machine" raid on Heroic difficulty, adds what you may have come to expect at this point based off previous experience, and the same rules apply as already mentioned regarding Raids. Again, I won't get into the details, for not wanting to say too much of the same thing already discussed previously among the other pieces related to Destiny that have already been written about. Where Raids are very varied in terms of their individual challenge, the logic in terms of trophy strategy is exactly the same for each one, and the approach does not need to change, irrespective of which Raid you're tackling, so there is nothing furthermore to add.

Just to quickly note though; In my opinion, Wrath of the Machine is an easier Raid than King's Fall, but it still took me 3-4 hours to beat it on Heroic difficulty, and you'll still need to get together a fireteam of like-minded players, preferably a full squad of 6, but this can be done with 5 if necessary, along with being able to dedicate a reasonable amount of time to running through it in one-go.

Rise of Iron certainly puts Destiny on the downward curve in terms of difficulty. Trophies related to both the main questline and applicable side quests are very easy to just go through the motions with, where The Taken King presented some stiffer challenges. The Raid is an easier one within this package, but will still require solid levels of teamwork and co-operation, as well as a little bit of endurance, and as long as you don't mind having to keep on top of the "Student of History" trophy, and spending a few hours a week plugging away at this to keep it ticking over for a while, then this is by far the easiest trophy list within the Destiny collection.

As a time estimate, and this is also taking into account the cumulative total of all the sessions you'll need to grab 8 Artefacts, this is around a 20-25 hour list, and if you've made it this far after both the Destiny main list and The Taken King DLC, then there's nothing here that will stop you.

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.