DLC #159 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Jack The Ripper

The scope for content during the London Victorian Era is full of intriguing ideas, so it's a little bit disappointing that Assassin's Creed Syndicate only bought out a single piece of DLC content. 

The good news is, they probably picked the strongest and most befitting idea of them all, focusing on the iconic serial killer, Jack the Ripper.

The succession of murders, that took place in Whitechapel, England in 1888 ultimately ended up unresolved, and this level of mystery made these crimes notorious in English folklore. The ambiguity also lends perfectly for the developers to run with their own narratives, characters and conclusion to the tale.

The story begins with Jack the Ripper having already committed the murders of 5 prostitutes, true to the real life crimes the Ripper was allegedly guilty of. However, in an added twist to lay the foundations of the plot, it also seems that Jack the Ripper is responsible for the death of Jacob Frye. This leaves you to play through the DLC as Evie Frye, with the main motivation being to stop the Ripper and understand what exactly happened to Jacob - His case is treated as a mysterious disappearance, but it's made quite clear to the player that Jacob is possibly killed during a very early confrontation with the Ripper. As part of the story, you will also control the Ripper during certain segments, which is a nice touch, as the game retains the angle of playing from the perspective of 2 different characters in the absence of Jacob Frye.

The DLC retains much of the main games approach, though it does implement a few fresh ideas. There is now a Fear mechanic in place, whereby you can disperse groups of enemies by pulling off specific attacks which will cause them to flee in terror, rather than relying on killing everyone in sight. This comes with the addition of some toys, including fear spikes and fear bombs. It's a neat little tweak, and makes combat much easier than killing seemingly endless waves of enemies.

There are also new associates you'll meet throughout the 10 memory sequence, who will provide a range of new side activities to complete. These are all required to achieve every trophy in the list, so to see some fresh injection of ideas into this, rather than just rinse and repeats from the main game, is also a good touch.

The 7 trophies are easy to achieve, and do lean into the fear mechanic quite heavily. You should unlock all of these progressing towards 100% completion, including a final trophy for concluding the story and unveiling the mystery behind Jack the Ripper, but there is a bit of additional legwork required here;

Ripperologist - Achieve 100% synchronisation in Jack the Ripper.

 

The "Ripperologist" trophy, requires the player to complete all content within the Jack the Ripper DLC. This wasn't a requirement for the Platinum trophy, so this is a sudden change in expectations, and full completion will require the following;

Beating 10 main story memories, including all optional mission constraints, completing 21 Associate Activities, including all optional mission constraints and collecting a total of 98 collectible items, spread across Chests, Posters and Helix Glitches.

Everything you do within this DLC works towards this trophy. The Story is great and full of intrigue, and as long as you follow the logic of completing the optional missions constraints as you play through, this will minimise the necessity to replay any memories. With that considered, it's around a 6-7 hour experience.

You'll meet 3 new Associates throughout the plot too, which will unlock a host of new side activities to complete. Most of these are fresh experiences, and a couple of them are carried over from within the main game. These also come with optional mission constraints which need to be completed in order to reach 100% synchronisation, so it's important to make sure these are fulfilled in the same method as per the main story missions. These 21 additional activities, assuming no replay required, should be another 2-3 hours on top.

Finally, and it wouldn't be Assassin's Creed without some arbitrary collectibles, you'll need to jump around the city and find 98 collectibles. This is a fairly standard map-hopping exercise, but it is important to note that you will venture into 3 unique locations as part of the main plotline, where some of these collectibles are housed, so if you're missing any, they're probably there. You'll need to replay the relevant memory where you visit these areas if you missed any collectibles the first time round. As before, you'll be able to purchase treasure maps at £5,000 each, which will reveal the locations of all collectibles. Add another 1-2 hours for this.

All in all, it amounts to the thick end of around 10-12 hours, with all focus on this trophy to cap the DLC off. It's a very casual experience, but a decent amount of time to put into a single trophy, where you effectively unlock the rest along the way. Exactly what was needed after being punished by The Division Survival DLC.

Platinum #120 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

Continuing a tradition of games in a series that seems to be great at consistently producing fairly easy trophy lists, Assassin's Creed Syndicate makes a strong case for being one of the easiest Assassin's Creed Platinum trophies to date.

Set in good 'ole England, in the midst of the second industrial revolution at some time in the 1800's, and for the first time in any Assassin's Creed game I've played, you take control of two protagonists - Twins Jacob and Evie Frye - with the goal to prevent London being overtaken by Templar rule.

You flick between each of the two main characters, both with their own play-styles and motives. Jacob is an action-based brawler who wants to build a gang empire and takeover London, and Evie is a stealth-based spy who wants to unravel the mystery of Eden. It's a good change of pace to effectively play out the story from two different perspectives, and the way these stories feel different, but still closely linked to an overall main story arc is executed well.

As always in Assassin's Creed games, the supporting cast is full of well known characters befitting of the era in time. I especially enjoyed this particular one, as an Englishman watching the introductions of some very influential British figures come and go throughout the plot, with an excellent homage to the First World War added in for good measure.

Despite the split motives between both characters, the ultimate conclusion is to stop Crawford Starrick, a powerful figure who controls London via a massive criminal network. The plot takes a typical shape as you go through memories and sequences murdering your way through a host of other different people with criminal ties to Starrick. It's another great entry into the Asssassin's Creed series, with a proven formula that doesn't stray too far from it's predecessors.

The aforementioned change in perspective, where you now control two main protagonists is the biggest gameplay change, but there are some new mechanics that are also solid additions. Missions where you ultimately end up assassinating a key figure play out as big set pieces with multiple ways to kill your target, down to the discretion of the player, with the variety providing a very Hitman-esque feeling.

The large scale gang fights are a cool addition too, and London is excellently recreated in all of it's Victorian glory, with a host of key landmarks across London bought to life, and instantly recognisable to their real counterparts.

On the trophy list front, it's much more of the same, with the now extremely familiar formula for Assassin's Creeds games being closely replicated here yet again.

The 50 trophies apply a focus on progression throughout the main story, delving into a wide array of the open world side activities, conquering the map and gathering collectibles. It also happens to be the easiest Assassin's Creed game yet.

The "Shall We Dance?" trophy, awarded for completing Memory Sequence 9, concludes the main story of the game, with normal rules in full application. You'll be awarded a trophy upon completion of every memory leading up to the end of the game, as well as another trophy for achieving 100% synchronisation, which involves beating every mission and their relevant additional mission constraints.

By this point, I'm always consciously aware of this because it seems to be a standard requirement of every Assassin's Creed list to contain a trophy for 100% synchronisation of the Main Story. Completing the additional requirements as I go along is a great method of reducing needless replayability, and when I went back over the small handful of mission constraints I'd missed, they were incredibly easy to tick off and gave me absolutely no issues. In previous titles, there have always been a couple of additional tasks that have been somewhat challenging, but no such issue existed here, and I cruised through the story unfazed.

There's no inclination to play through the game on any specific difficulty level - In fact, I don't even think the option is ever presented - and the combat system is still incredibly easy to grasp. There are a few tweaks to the combat - Enemies will now adopt a defensive stance to attacks, and will require you to break their block by pressing X before you can unleash a flurry of attacks yourself, but the game's combat still ultimately comes down to button-mashing using whatever weapon of your choice, and chaining these attacks together to deal with multiple enemies at once.

Outside of the main story, the game offers up a ton of side content, but the trophy list is very selective in it's requirements on how much of this you actually need to fulfil towards completing the entire list.

The "Street Sweeping" trophy, awarded for Conquering all the boroughs in London, is as extensive as the requirement goes, and conquering a borough does require a fair amount of work. There are 7 London boroughs to conquer in total, and in order to conquer a borough, you'll need to complete a variety of different tasks which gradually remove Blighter control of that particular area. These include clearing all gang strongholds, completing all gang member bounties, hunting all templars and completing every child liberation mission. Once you've beaten all these activities, you'll unlock the gang war activity for that particular borough, and winning the gang war will finally move it into conquered status.

The gang wars are the best part of this trophy - Most of the other preliminary activities become tedious and boring once you realise they're copied and pasted across all 7 London boroughs, and this sort of content padding is something Assassin's Creed games are notorious for. Even though the boroughs scale in difficulty of enemy presented to the player, there never seemed to be any serious challenge in clearing any of them as you progress through the game. It just becomes a fairly standard tick-box exercise.

Collectibles are still fairly rife, but nowhere near as tedious as they have been in some previous Assassin's Creed titles. You can still purchase maps that will reveal the location of all collectibles necessary to achieve a corresponding trophy in the list, which naturally makes them easier to gather. Further to this, each of the London boroughs will give a breakdown of all collectibles that lie within that area, all sorted by type, so the game does everything it can to support you with maximum clarity on the collectibles you might need, and exactly where you can get them. 

I count a total of 6 collectible-related trophies here, with the overall collective amount of items to obtain sitting at 164. It's not exactly light work, but to add some context, Assassin's Creed Unity had you collecting 422 treasure chests and Cockades towards the Platinum trophy, so it's a very welcome change in direction to see a fairly drastic drop in these requirements. Collectibles in Assassin's Creed games have never really been an interesting exercise, and they're really no different here in Syndicate. Some of them offer up some cool backstory, such as consuming the 20 different brands of beer, all of which provide interesting commentary to them, but their primary reason to exist is to act as a time filler with little intrinsic reward apart from the trophies related to them.

The rest of the list is made up of lots of miscellaneous tasks, some of which will come naturally as you play through the game, and others less so. The list also harbours a handful of really annoying trophies. Who deemed it was necessary to include a trophy that involved destroying 5000 destructible objects with your carriage, where the strategy is to just literally blast around the city for hours carelessly running into anything and everything until you reached a total of 5000?? 

Kicking 50 enemies off trains, shooting 50 enemies before they shoot you and performing 50 multi-finishers will more than likely all require post-game work, as these situations just don't simply pop up that frequently in an organic nature as you go through the game. They are all but a minor inconvenience, but still add tedious legwork onto the end of the journey.

However, this is the easiest Assassin's Creed game I've ever played by virtue of the following;

The additional mission constraints to achieve 100% synchronisation are easy, it's nowhere near as heavy on collectibles as some previous Assassin's Creed games have been - plus you still get the visual guidance from the game through the option of purchasing maps that reveal their whereabouts - and even with the some of the more grindy miscellaneous trophies, you can still come in on under 35 hours for this Platinum if you're efficient and complete additional mission requirements for 100% sync as you go along to minimise replay time.

Once I was finished, I only had a 74% completion rate for everything the game had to offer, which is a good indication of the fact that there's alot of side content you don't need to go through if you're playing the game purely for the purpose of achieving the Platinum trophy. The average benchmark seems to be around 4/10 for an Assassin's Creed, but I do believe this comes in slightly lower for those reasons.

Notable Trophies -

Shall We Dance? - Complete Memory sequence 9
Street Sweeping - Conquer all the boroughs in London

Hardest Trophy -

Street Sweeping

Conquer all the boroughs in London

DLC#158 - Tom Clancy's The Division - Expansion II - Survival

The Division DLC experience has been some journey. It's been time-consuming, grindy, challenging and, in this case especially, brutal in it's conclusion.

The concept of Survival is good, something different, but ultimately very frustrating because it's intent on showing absolutely no mercy and kicking you all over the place.

You're sent into Manhattan in order to extract some Anti-Viral agents, when your helicopter crashes into the middle of map. It's extremely cold, you only have a hazmat suit on, and you've contracted Sepsis, which will kill you within a matter of 1 hour. No bargaining on that.

The goal is to survive, and ultimately escape, but the disease flowing through you takes hold and will eventually kill you if you don't manage to escape within the 1 hour time limit, so something's got to give - And that's if the various other perils within the game mode don't get to you first. These include large groups of NPC's that patrol Manhattan's streets, booby traps and even the plummeting weather conditions.

You start out in a Safehouse with just a pistol and the aim centres around crafting warmer clothes, better weapons and the other necessary tools required in order to extract and escape. The game has a steep learning curve as you go through the process of understanding the map, and the best methods for success. This leads to some brutal difficulty, especially early on when you're running around with flimsy clothing and weak weapons - All it takes is to run into a group of enemies or find yourself caught short in the cold and it could be all over. If you have medkits, you'll be able to revive yourself, unless you die to the cold, which is always an instant death. If you don't possess any medkits, and die through either NPC's or a booby trap, you'll bleed out within 5 minutes unless there's another player willing to revive you. It's a fairly unforgiving experience for the solo player, which is how I mostly played through this DLC, and I failed time and time again.

You can play with other players, and the map is shared, so you'll see them running around alongside you, but, at least from my own experience, you'll be going alone if you're just looking to jump in and play. If you're feeling extra sadistic, you can play against other players too, something I was almost certainly looking to avoid.

The list contains 5 trophies, with a couple of these awarded to whet the appetite, including one for your first successful extraction, as well as crafting the Virus Filter and Flare Gun, both critical extraction components. Achieving a Master Rank will potentially cause a few issues for some, as this requires 10,000 points from a successful extraction, but I got this without even trying for it, so cannot really testify to any challenges.

The completion of this set runs through one trophy;

For The Hoarder... - Successfully extract 100 items from the Survival Dark Zone.

The " For The Hoarder..." trophy, requires the player to successfully extract with 100 caches from the Dark Zone. Once you reach the Dark Zone area, you'll be able to find sealed caches containing weapons and equipment, which you can then open to reveal your prizes. They're effectively the loot element of this game mode, and are either dropped by enemy NPC's, or found in gear containers. You can only hold up to 6 of these caches per extraction, which means, in order to extract 100 of these, you'll need a minimum of 17 successful extractions. You'll spend alot of time working towards this trophy and I ended up extracting 18 times to reach 100, dying many times throughout the process along the way.

I found the best way to tackle this trophy was to identify a solid approach, and stick to it, which I broke down into 2 parts;

Stage 1 - Crafting the Virus Filter to enter the Dark Zone - This is the first mandatory step, but I also made sure I did the following before entering the Dark Zone;

• Gathered Fabric materials in order to craft more sustainable clothing to cope with the cold weather
• Gathered 2 Green Weapons Parts in order to build the Green M44 Marksman Rifle, which takes down enemies at this stage in a couple of shots.
• Gathered Fabric and Tools in order to craft the Virus Filter and reach the Dark Zone

Once I'd fulfilled these steps, I'd move into the next stage...

Stage 2 - Extracting from the Dark Zone, along with the following;

• Gathered Gold Weapons Parts and Division Tech in order to build the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle, which is much better suited to take down the now stronger enemies within the Dark Zone.
• Gathered Tools and Division Tech in order to craft the Flare Gun and Extract - if there are other players around, you may not need to do this, as you can always have the option of backing onto another players Extraction, but this isn't always guaranteed to happen before you die of infection.
• Collected at least 5 Loot Caches in order to fulfil the total towards the trophy requirement - The Hunter you fight at the Extraction Zone will always drop a Loot Cache, which is your 6th drop.

Settling on this method took some trial and error to reach, and there were many failed attempts along the way, some of which would come as agonisingly close as almost extracting, but either running out of time and succumbing to infection, or getting killed by NPC's near the end of the session. The Dark Zone is full of Purple and Yellow-graded enemies, and they will cause you problems in groups, which is probably the most noticeably unforgiving thing as a solo-player, and also why it's essential to craft the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle. It's a necessary equaliser to not always having the support of another player in gun fights. I know some people like crafting the turret, but I never did this personally, as my general tactic was to choose the path of least resistance, and this generally involved ignoring fighting.

Also, as soon as you call in an Extraction via shooting the Flare Gun, a Hunter will spawn in, which you'll have to beat before the chopper lands. They're powerful and if they down you, they'll execute you before you can revive, so this is a horrible knife-edge at the final step of any Survival Session. I came unstuck here multiple times, even during my latter parts of this trophy when I'd gained more experience. They're just tough foes that can get the better of you if you're not careful, which adds to the difficulty levels.

I did generally try to avoid conflict when I reached the Dark Zone. It's better to try and go about your business quietly, and only fight in situations of absolute necessity, if all you're attempting to do is achieve this trophy. It is discouraging to see so much time and effort go to waste when you die, and there were some times I'd play multiple Survival games in a row and come away empty handed every time, which is a big test of perseverance.

One thing I do need to shout out is how helpful other players are. If you get downed by enemy NPC's, and you don't have any medkits left, you'll get a 5 minute timer before you bleed out and your session ends. Your only hope at this point is if another player comes and revives you. This will cost them one of their own medkits, and if you die, they could scavenge all your loot off your corpse, so it was extremely refreshing to see alot of people choose the former option and help you up. This saved numerous sessions for me where I ended up getting extractions off after being on the brink of death, so this supportive environment is absolutely worth mentioning. It was my favourite part of a pretty rocky experience.

Once I'd gotten used to the game mode, and put in place a clearly defined plan of attack, I did start to find a much better flow. There were still some horrible endings to sessions where I'd get blown up by a bomb I didn't see around a corner, or not managing my time well enough to extract before death, or being sandwiched by groups of enemies coming at me from 2 different directions, but that's all part of the game. It's an aptly named piece of DLC that will always keep you on your toes, and the sense of relief upon achieving this final trophy was huge. I'm probably going to need to play something more casual next, that's for sure.

In terms of a time estimation, it's hard to gauge. 18 extractions totalling the full time limit of 1 hour in most instances would be around the 18 hour mark, but the number of failed extractions isn't accounted for anywhere. I would say I comfortably failed more than 18 times, but these wouldn't always amount to an hour lost each time, depending on at which stage of the run I died at.

However, one statistic that is tracked - I've ended up spending 9 days, 22 hours and 56 minutes beating the Division. That's 238 hours in total, the vast majority of this being on these 3 punishing DLC packs, which makes it one of the most time-consuming 100% games in my entire collection. It's definitely been a journey to remember.

Platinum #119 - Metro : Last Light Redux

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Generally speaking, I don't mind vast crossover between games born from the same series when it comes to their respective trophy lists.

There has to be a certain level of expectation that ideas will carry over, and the scope for creativity is somewhat limited as a consequence of this - and this is something I am OK with.

However, I really dislike it when certain ideas return where I feel like they don't really compliment the experience for the average trophy hunter, and sadly, I think you see this here with Metro : Last Light. I'll explain more soon.

Despite Metro 2033 offering 2 different story endings to the player, based on the games moral system, the story for Metro : Last Light picks up under the premise that the missiles were ultimately called down upon the Dark Ones in order to wipe them out as a threat to humanity.

It's reported back that a sole surviving Dark One escaped the blast, and there is an order for Artyom from Captain Miller to hunt down and kill the remaining creature in order to be sure the entire threat has been eliminated, as was the original mission in Metro 2033. Khan, who returns as an ally to Artyom from Metro 2033, convinces Artyom that the Dark One can help them as a key to preserving the future of humanity. The Dark One is found almost immediately, but both Artyom and the Dark One are captured by the Nazi Reich and suddenly have to find a way to escape from their clutches.

This suddenly turns the plot on it's head, as the mission quickly becomes about stopping the Nazi Reich, whose plan is to take control of D6, and use it to control the fate of humanity by getting hold of the nuclear explosives being held within.

I wasn't huge on Metro 2033, levelling a few criticisms towards bland gameplay, an uninspiring range of weapons and poor enemy AI, and in all honestly, I don't think Last Light does anything to really address any of that. The game also still takes place in Moscow, so even the environmental settings are exactly the same underground metros and overground warn-torn cities of rubble that still existed in the previous game, so even that feels too similar to the point where you just feel like you're playing the same game again for the most part.

Even the unique gameplay elements from Metro 2033, which I liked, have now just returned here, such as using air filters when navigating through areas above ground. Seeing these just return with no expansion to them merely adds to the lack freshness as a result, and there isn't really anything new to talk about that's been introduced as part of this package to make it feel like an upgrade on the original game.

This theme of repetition continues deep into the trophy list, which isn't exactly a million miles away from being practically identical to Metro 2033, with alot of the same gameplay options and features returning for Metro : Last Light. The Moral points system is back, as are the Survivor and Spartan game modes, all of which are heavily integrated into the trophy list once again.

The "Redemption" trophy, awarded for Saving D6, is the exact equivalent trophy to the "Enlightened" trophy from Metro 2033, and requires you to achieve enough positive moral points throughout the game in order to trigger the good ending.

The moral system works exactly the same way as it did in Metro 2033. You go through the game performing certain actions in order to fulfil the requirements of this trophy by executing enough positive actions, as well as avoiding negative actions that could potentially impact the outcome of the game, and thus, the awarding of the trophy.

The system itself is still extremely mysterious, which was definitely something the game could have improved upon, and whilst I appreciate there is a sense of deliberate design to it being this way, where they're potentially looking to see more organic gameplay develop without players being guided by a very obvious moral system that gives you choices, it's a real pain for trophy hunters. There's still no tangible indication of how many moral points you need to acquire in order to trigger the good ending and there's still no introduction/explanation to the system and the influence it has on the outcome of the game. It just sort of sits there for the player to work out, though every time you perform a positive moral action, the game will give an audio/visual prompt, so there is at least something that indicates to the player they're on the right tracks this time.

I feel like the fact you have to bring up a guide in order to make sure you fulfil as many positive actions as possible, and avoid the negative ones, really breaks up the immersion of the game itself - having to stop and sense check every 5 seconds throughout the entire game, primarily focusing on not missing anything important for practically every step of the way isn't the right way to engage the player.

You should have no problems triggering the good ending, and earning the trophy as a consequence, but you will need to make sure you're following a guide and there is a theory that some critical plot points that award trophies also do potentially offer so many negative moral points, they automatically award the bad ending, regardless of how many positive moral actions you may have earned beforehand. I don't know how true this is, as I played it fairly safe and grabbed these either on the bad ending play or just through chapter select afterwards, so it's always better to go for the safer option, especially when you can still grab any outstanding trophies from the chapter select menus anyway.

The fact you need to witness both the good and bad endings again also still means there is a minimum of 2 Playthroughs required for the Platinum trophy, with the "C'est La Vie" trophy, awarded for Destroying D6. In the bad ending, Artyom will reach D6 and fight off the Nazi Reich in order to complete a suicide mission in blowing up D6 and, in turn, stopping the Reich gaining control of the facility themselves. In the good ending, Artyom will attempt to carry out the exact same steps, but will be stopped by the sole surviving Dark One, who will disrupt the detonation and wipe out the Nazi Reich with the help of a group of Dark Ones who were hibernating within D6 all along. As was the case in Metro 2033, the default ending is more likely to be the bad one, which makes this trophy slightly easier to obtain, as it will probably be the one most people earn more naturally.

A full Playthrough of the game is roughly timed at the same length as the previous game, at around 8-10 hours per Playthrough. The difficulty levels are also exactly the same, with options to play on Normal, Hardcore, Ranger and Ranger Hardcore difficulties. Due to the fact the trophy list does, yet again, not impose any difficulty related trophies on the player, I opted to play this game entirely on Normal difficulty and providing you tandem the Survivor and Spartan modes to correspond to earning both the good and bad ending, you can limit this entire list down to 2 Playthroughs.

As before, Survivor and Spartan modes both give their own unique ways to play through the game, but on the lowest difficulty mode, they don't really prove to be a challenge in any way, and path of least resistance was also chosen for this title as it was in Metro 2033.

The big difference within this trophy list in comparison to it's predecessor, is the fact that there are 9 trophies dedicated to a variety of DLC levels. These were included as DLC add-on trophies in the Playstation 3 version of this title, and as part of the PS4 Redux, are bundled into the main trophy list, therefore counting towards the Platinum trophy.

Most of these are fairly standard packages you can just naturally check off, but the "Test Complete" trophy, awarded for Completing the Tower level is a fairly sudden difficulty spike. In this level, you need to progress through a number of arenas in a horde-like setting, beating waves of enemies until you reach the end of the level. There are 5 in total, and you'll unlock a better range of weapons as you go through each stage. The issue is, the enemies also get stronger, and the clunky combat of Metro : Last Light doesn't really lend itself well to these horde-type game modes. It's hard to escape combat when you're close to death, so you need to keep enemies at arms length, and this is a challenge once you begin fighting waves of Nosalis that can reach you quickly and overwhelm as a consequence.

It took me about 4-5 hours to beat this mode, which is a long time given the fact the total amount for everything else, including 2 full Playthroughs of the story, was around 15-20 hours. Managing your arsenal is the best way to beat it, and once I figured out the best combination of weapons to take into each arena, I did manage to find a way that worked and allowed me to progress, but did this require alot of trial and error.

I would go as far to suggest that this is also the hardest trophy in the list - The "Redemption" trophy isn't exactly hard, it's just an inconvenient way of playing the game that makes it less immersive and requires you to focus on minute details instead. It's just annoying, in all honesty, and it was disappointing to see it return from Metro 2033 as part of the trophy list integration. Beating the Tower level for this trophy was the only real time in this game you felt like you were being genuinely tested by something that wasn't just your own patience.

Other similarities that still exist in the rest of the list include collecting 43 entries of Arytom's diary, beating specific chapters under requirements involving no kills and achieving a certain number of kills in specific ways, though this is nowhere near as heavy as it was in Metro 2033, and has been substituted by the inclusion of the all the DLC content which now forms part of the main list.

Unsurprisingly, the Platinum difficulty rating sits in roughly the same ballpark as it did for Metro 2033. There is around 80% crossover in both lists, with the only real significant difference being down to the fact around a fifth of this list accommodates the DLC that was bought forward from the PS3 version of the game. The moral system is back, Survivor and Spartan modes are back, the same choices on difficulty levels are back and most of the miscellenous trophies that fit around all the aforementioned are back too. Metro : Last Light gets an extra mark purely for the Tower DLC content causing me some unexpected issues during the end-game where I was expecting to just go through some casual mopping up, but on the whole, this is another easy one from the Metro collection to bag, and should clock in at around the 25 hour mark in total.

Notable Trophies -

Redemption - Save D6
Test Complete - Complete the TOWER level

Hardest Trophy -

Test Complete

Complete the TOWER level

DLC #157 - Rocket League - Chaos Run

It's been almost 3 years since a Rocket League update, which is perhaps surprising, given how easy some of these DLC packs are to finish.

No good excuse for not getting round to them, but we now have 3 out of the 9 DLC packs fully complete with the latest completion of the Chaos Run DLC pack.

In a fairly minimalist content update, this package merely adds a large handful of car customisation items, including 2 new car models called Ripper and Grog. The package also makes the addition of the new Wasteland arena, which is a fairly standard Soccar pitch playable in most rotations.

The 5 new trophies do focus on the content within this specific update, requiring you to jump in and take a total of 50 shots on goal in any mode with Merc, Grog or Ripper, as well as score a total of 20 goals across 2 trophies with any one of 6 car models.

You can also grab another trophy for destroying 3 bots in the new Wasteland arena and there's also an easy Gold trophy up for grabs for winning an online 4 v 4 game with the new Flamethrower Booster equipped.

The 20 goals spanning over 2 of these trophies have to be scored against bots, which is easy to farm out within any 1 v 1 setting through Exhibition mode, and the 50 shots on goal will nicely compliment progress towards the "Rocket Repleter" trophy from the AquaDome DLC set. This is probably also best done via Exhibition mode too, and the total package should take no longer than a few hours.

Platinum #118 - Dead Island : Riptide

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

When I reviewed Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record not too long ago, I questioned which part of me felt like it was a good idea to go straight back in and play a game that felt exactly like the previous one I'd just played, and upon completing Dead Island : Riptide, successor to the Playstation 3 title, Dead Island, I'm here asking myself the same question again.

In defence of Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record, it didn't ever claim to be a true sequel, hence the remaining use of the number "2" with an extended tagline in the title, rather than actually calling itself Dead Rising 3. It was the same game with an alternative plot that ran in parallel to Dead Rising 2, so it at least made sense.

Despite being taglined, rather than numbered, Dead Island : Riptide is a direct plot continuation of the ending of Dead Island, which is good enough reason to consider it a sequel in my eyes. However, Dead Island 2 would subsequently be announced for the pipeline at a later date anyway, so who knows what the rules are?

My main point is, Dead Island : Riptide, doesn't feel like a sequel. It doesn't feel like a new game with fresh ideas or differences. If I began to list the changes that I felt were worth mentioning, I wouldn't even fill out this paragraph. Is that a criticism? Probably. I just felt like I was playing through Dead Island all over again though.

The combat is exactly the same melee-heavy, dull, clunky attack system present in Dead Island. Swinging and missing with no rhyme or reason is frustrating and the stamina system sucks the fun out of combat because once you get into the rare occasion of hacking zombies down with consistency and not being stifled by the inaccuracies of the combat system, you'll be forced to take a break for a few moments whilst your stamina bar regenerates itself anyway.

Quests are just a seemingly never-ending loop of fetch tasks, exploiting a painfully obvious lack of creativity, character dialogue is still delivered with a severe lack of quality and the "story" is garbage. The game is better in co-op, which you'll need to do as per the requirements of the trophy list, but the biggest gripes with this game will still exist - you'll just have a few people to discuss how bad they are with, as opposed to just telling yourself in your head.

Regardless, Dead Island : Riptide begins at the end of Dead Island, where your safe evacuation off the island of Banoi is promptly interrupted by an attempted arrest by Australian police forces on the getaway ship. After being sedated, you're awoken to the ship being run amock and all hell breaking loose, an outbreak presumably started by one of the survivors visibly biting a soldier during the arrest cutscene. The ship ends up washed ashore on the island of Palanai after crashing into a rock amidst the chaos, where the infection from Banoi island has already apparently spread into. All of a sudden, we're back at square one where you're taken on a journey to find your way off the island of Palanai.

The trophy list is medium in size, coming in at a reduced volume of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, down 13 trophies from Dead Island's 49. I think it's a slightly less creative list on the whole, with a touch of crossover to the original, but with a bigger emphasis on story progression, and lower emphasis on the Co-op elements of the game.

Across the game's roughly 6-8 hour Story, there are 11 trophies awarded for simply progressing through to the end of the main story arc and completing the main game. This equates to almost a third of the entire list - A big change in direction from Dead Island, whose progression trophies only went as far as beating specific acts within the game.

There isn't any requirement to play through the game on a specific difficulty level, and you're also given the option to import your character across, which will allow you to start from whichever level you reached at the end of your time with Dead Island  - A Level 50 Sam B in my case. This turns out to be an extremely useful headstart for a returning trophy.

The "Obtain Level 70" trophy, awarded for Obtaining level 70, requires the player to amass a gargantuan 23,396,500 experience points. The import character option does make an instant dent in this, which is where the feature comes in most useful. However, this will only get you so far, and you'll need to rely on other methods to achieve this trophy.

You'll earn experience points for fairly standard actions, including completing quests, defeating enemies and completing in-game challenges, but the total amount of experience required for this trophy means you're just not going to get through all this in a single playthrough of the game, even if you choose to import a fairly high level character like I did. Amongst the variation of quests you can complete, there are a series of ongoing side quests where you have to retrieve specific items for certain characters, of which you can infinitely turn these items in, in exchange for experience points.

These quests allow you to take advantage of a duplication glitch, whereby you can drop a series of items on the floor, kill yourself and before you load back into your last checkpoint, you can interrupt the process and reload in manually. This action will restore your inventory to it's previous state, but more importantly, allows you to still pick up the items you previously dropped. Rinse and repeat this process for the relevant item to turn as many in for quest experience as you need to. It's a great tactic that will spare you a full second playthrough of the game, which is something I really didn't want to have to do - This game was barely worth 30 hours of my time, let alone 60. Once I'd beaten everything the trophy list had required of me, I was still only level 62, and even though duplicating these items on repeat was a chore in itself, it was a much better alternative than facing the prospect of a second playthrough.

The "Dream Team" trophy, awarded for Completing all the main quests co-operatively with any number of partners, ensures the co-op element of this game becomes a mandatory part of the trophy list, and you'll need to beat all 28 main story quests with at least one other person.

There is some generous flexibility here. You don't need to use the same partner(s) throughout, it doesn't matter who the game host is, which allows you to freely jump into other players sessions if you find it difficult to get people to join yours, and the quests don't need to be completed in sequential order, which is handy for instances where the only players available are those at different chapters to you.

I had already completed 22/28 quests with a previous mate I originally played this game with, but it was tough to find other players at this point in the games cycle, and I had to accept in a few instances that I would have to jump backwards and beat some quests I'd already beaten to assist somebody else in reaching the same point in the story as me and continuing on through there, which meant a little bit of re-treading old ground on a couple of occasions, but something I had to resort to due to the baron nature of co-operative availability.

I also can't confirm this for sure, but it seems as though joining someone else's session whilst they're part way through a quest doesn't count for trophy progress either. I think you need multiple players present at the beginning of the quest for progress to count, which is a bit frustrating because the only way to make sure this doesn't occur is to have full control of the game as session host - However, it is easier to join onto other players and there's a strong chance they'll already be part way through a mission when you join them. In most of these challenging scenarios, it's just easier to set yourself back and play-through to the point you were at yourself and help somebody else progress.

Finally, the "Hoarder" trophy, awarded for Finding all collectibles, requires you to collect all 61 different items scattered throughout the game.

As far as collectibles go, this isn't actually one of the worst collectible journeys out there, however, it is prone to being glitched, whereby you'll finish on 60/61 collectibles and the game won't recognise that you have picked one of them up. This happened to me and cost me an extra 2-3 hours of gametime to figure out which collectible I was missing - An apt way to finish off an experience that was generally fairly underwhelming.

The most effective way to solve it is to start a New Game+ with a new character and choose to load in at Chapter 12, which will open up the entire map, but respawn everything, including the collectibles. The rest is just a trial and error task of re-collecting them until the solitary collectible you were missing pops the trophy. I already had the individual trophies for collecting all voice recordings and secret files, so I figured those weren't the issue, which narrowed the field slightly, but it was still a postcard that I was missing, and typically, was one of the last few remaining items I had to collect to trigger the trophy.

I managed to earn the Platinum trophy in just under 32 hours. This included a fully complete 29 hour save file, and an extra 2 and a half hours for a new game purely to go through the collectibles for the sole remaining glitched trophy.

The story is very short, clocking in at roughly 6-8 hours, and everything else fits around this as you go through the game. The majority of the rest of your time will be spent completing every single quest in the game for the "Achiever" trophy, which totals to 80, including the 28 main story quests. If you manage to make sure your intent is to play-through this game in Co-op from the very beginning, you'll avoid having to go through the story twice, providing that you also take advantage of the duplication glitch explained above in order to make sure you can reach level 70 in the same playthrough, and further negate the necessity to have to start a new game purely for the purpose of levelling up.

The game itself seldom poses a challenge, and the only consequences of death are losing a bit of money and restarting at a checkpoint that's never really any further than a few steps back from where you died. There are no difficulty sensitive trophies either, leaving you to play the game to whatever leisurely extent you wish. 

Notable Trophies -

Obtain Level 70 - Obtain Level 70
Dream Team - Complete all the main questions cooperatively with any number of partners
The Hoarder - Find all collectibles

Obtain Level 70                                                                                    Obtain Level 70

DLC #156 - Tom Clancy's The Division - Expansion I - Underground

It's been a few years since I played The Division, and the last time I re-visited this game, I spent a stint with it in order to unlock the Platinum trophy.

Having already completed the Last Stand DLC pack prior to this, it was a game I knew I'd only be able to play in limited spells.

Just to re-iterate what I wrote about The Division in my Platinum Difficulty review, I don't think The Division is a bad game, it's just one of those games that's better consumed in smaller doses. It's fairly average, and where the Last Stand DLC did give some much needed variety to the game with some PvP emphasis, the Underground goes back to the PvE formula that drives the main game, and the copy and paste execution of the Underground just feels like the ultimate form of content padding.

Upon purchase, the Underground opens up as a new section of the Base of Operations. Based on the concept of the New York Subway system, you're tasked with going deep within to clear enemies in a horde-mode style of gameplay where you need to make your way through various levels completing objectives and clearing waves of enemies as you go. You set these missions up yourself, with each mission built up of "phases", which are just individual segments with a specific objective designated to each one, and these can be linked together for up to 3 phases in any one mission.

The overall goal is to complete these missions and obtain experience points, upgraded loot and grab collectibles along the way. It's fairly unspectacular and has practically no novelty value - This is effectively just fighting your way through hordes of enemies, pushing through to completing fairly arbitrary objectives, which is exactly what you spend your entire time doing in the main game. Same enemies, same environments and the same loot. Infact, none of the loot I picked up was better than what I already had, which didn't really matter anyway because there isn't much of a challenge for higher levels, so better loot would have made this even more of a mundane exercise than it was already.

You can tackle these missions solo, or as part of a wider group of up to 4 players. It's at least a bit more interesting in a group, and you're going to be putting the hours in, so my recommendation would be to play with others wherever you can. 

The package contains just 5 trophies, and the recommendation to play in a group does extend as far as completing a 3 phase operation with 3 other players for 1 of these trophies, but the quest to full completion runs through 2 main trophies;

The Beast Below - Reach Underground Rank 40.
Gone Spelunking - Retrieve all 55 Audio Logs and 25 UrBex Diaries the Underground.

"The Beast Below" Trophy, awarded for Reaching Underground Rank 40, is ultimately the end goal of this package, and you'll be completing missions in order to accumulate enough experience to reach the highest level.

A total of 341,200 EXP is required for Rank 40, and this is accumulated in 3 primary ways. Completing phases is where the majority of experience points are handed out here, and the payout of experience points per mission will depend on a variety of factors. These include the difficulty level chosen, the number of phases included within the mission and any modifiers applied during the set-up process. Modifiers are referred to as "directives" and apply certain restrictions/conditions to the player that add certain elements of challenge to the mission, for example, removal of the mini-map or a shock charge that disables the player upon firing too many bullets at once. 

A 3 phase mission on challenging difficulty with the maximum amount of directives applied, will net somewhere within the region of 7,000 to 8,000 experience points per run, but it is important to note you don't have immediate access to the full range of options from the outset, and you'll need to gradually rank up in order to unlock the ability to set-up your own missions on higher difficulties with all directives available to choose from. You will be able to assist other players missions who have these options available, but you won't always be able to rely on this, so levelling progression may be staggered depending on these circumstances.

I ended up playing through 86 phases to reach Rank 40, and when you calculate a rough estimate of around 15-20 minutes per phase, this equates to around 21 hours of game time. There does need to be further consideration for failed phases, but this usually occurred when players left the game, and were seldom down to the difficulty of the mode, which is incredibly easy with a maxed out soldier with powerful gear. The phase needs to be finished for the experience points to count, so these would go down as lost time.

The other 2 primary methods for earning experience points are for killing individual enemies and you'll be granted experience points for every enemy killed within the mission to the tune of around 30-40 EXP per enemy. You'll also earn the experience points for any enemies your teammates kill, which is a massive relief. The final method for obtaining experience points is for picking up collectibles;

The "Gone Spelunking" Trophy, awarded for Retrieving all 55 Audio Logs and 25 UrBex Diaries in the Undergound, will award the player 300 EXP for every collectible gathered, which means 24,000 experience points are up for grabs through completing this task.

It is vitally important to realise that you need to ensure you're conscious to grabbing these collectibles as you go along completing missions. There are 80 in total, and I only needed to complete 86 phases to reach Rank 40, so this would become an unnecessary post-rank 40 task if you failed to tandem these trophies together.

Each phase contains 1 collectible to obtain somewhere. These are randomly generated, and will always be a unique collectible you have yet to obtain, so the you won't need to worry about duplication. Their spawn rate is guaranteed up to a certain point, so if you feel like you've missed one, make sure you expand the map and look back over where you've just come from. They can be well hidden, but it'll definitely be there somewhere, and will become missable once you advance into the next phase.

Once I'd collected all 55 Audio Logs, I had 3 Photographs to go, but this is where the collectibles cease to be guaranteed. For whatever reason, once you have the maximum number of collectibles for either the Audio Logs or Photographs, the remaining collectibles become completely random in their spawn rate, and I started playing through phases without finding any of the collectibles I still needed. This is apparently deliberate through design, and this is why I had to play an additional 6 phases. That isn't that many, and I only needed 3 Photographs once I'd hit 55 Audio Logs, but it's quirky and throws you off. An additional 6 phases isn't terrible, but spawn rate is completely random so I can't promise you wouldn't experience something completely different.

The Division isn't a good enough game to get away with releasing uninspiring DLC packs that are purely built to prolong the games life cycle, and this was eventually a bit of a struggle. Working towards Rank 40 along with grabbing collectibles as you move is a fairly natural route to full completion, and you'll get the other trophies along the way.

It clocks in somewhere between a 25-30 hour experience as per the calculation above, but this includes a fair chunk of waiting in-between mission set-ups and failed attempts. I didn't really enjoy it. It felt pointless and unnecessary, with enemies, environments and mission objectives you'll have seen and done before.

It oddly reminded me of the Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot DLC from Borderlands 1, which you can draw alot of parralels from. Fend off waves of the same pointless enemies, work towards unrewarding objectives and pick up redundant loot because you already have the best loot the game has to offer. That was boring, and so is this, and completion was a welcome relief.

Platinum #117 - Cuphead

 Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

There's definitely a lack of representation of Indie games within my trophy collection, and although it's something I've never exactly vowed to fix, we are getting better at it.

Cuphead is a run-and-gun, side-scrolling game with a fairly basic narrative. You control protagonist of the same name, Cuphead, who makes an agreement to help the Devil in response to racking up too many debts at his casino (You can also choose to play as Mugman, though differences between the two are purely aesthetic).

The Devil offers Cuphead an out - Recover the souls from fellow debtors in order to pay off Cuphead's own debt, and spare himself from the Devil's fate.

This starts a sequence of continuous boss fights, which make up the majority of the game, though these are sometimes interspersed with run-and-gun, platforming levels that break up the pace of the game.

Just to explain the basic premise of how these boss fights work, given the fact they are practically the make-up of the entire game, each boss has multiple phases. When they take enough damage in any given phase, they'll transition into the next one, which usually evolves/changes the boss into a different form with a different set of attacks. This process repeats until you beat the final phase, and ultimately end the boss battle.

The concept is very simple, but executed brilliantly thanks to fast and frenetic gameplay, the ability to purchase new powers and supermoves through progression and an array of varied, interesting characters, all with their own personalities and unique fighting scripts.

Cuphead will punish you, but in addictive fashion. Some of these fights will require mastery of patterns and strategic thought, understanding the best loadouts to beat certain bosses, as well as reliance on cold, hard motor skills. Reaction time, quick-thinking and adaptability are required in abundance in order to make sure you outlast your opponent and progress towards the end of the game. Coupled with beautifully rendered rubber hose style graphics, it's a truly unique offering that will test your abilities to their highest level.

The trophy list is medium in size, coming in at 29 trophies, spanning across the entire Story-based journey as you venture through the Inkwell Isles - A map broken down into 4 different areas. The first 2 isles contain 5 bosses each and the third isle contains 7, as well as 2 run-and-gun levels in each. The fourth and final area is slightly different, but will ultimately lead you to the game's conclusion.

The "Beat The Devil At His Own Game" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Expert, is the ultimate goal of this entire list. The path to full completion runs solely through this trophy - You'll firstly need to beat every single boss in the game on Normal difficulty. This is because you'll need to pass this requirement in order to unlock the Expert version of that particular boss, so there are 2 full Play-throughs required as a minimum. However, this is not applicable to the 6 total run-and-gun levels - There is a different trophy for that which we'll go into soon.

On the initial Normal difficulty run, this acts as a good way to get accustomed to the game. The bosses, generally, don't seem to scale in terms of difficulty as you progress deeper into the game, and I've seen different opinions on the challenge of some bosses compared to others, so I would conclude the standout challenges are all down to individual experiences.

You'll unlock the majority of the trophies you need within this Normal difficulty run, including a handful of trophies for beating each boss, as well as obtaining an A-Rank for each individual isle. Achieving an A-Rank might seem like a challenge in itself, but it's easy enough to clean this up when you've played each boss on Normal and have a better understanding of their phases and attack patterns. An A-Rank will require you to beat the boss within a certain time limit, finish the fight with a certain number of lives remaining, parry at least 3 objects and use your Supermove - They're fairly standard actions that you'll perform in most fights anyway and I generally found that, as long as you beat any given boss within the time limit, the rest would follow.

Further to this, the ranking system is split down to include + and - rankings for each letter, so obtaining an A-Rank can also include A-, meaning you will have a slight margin for error, and won't need to fulfil every objective on the board to it's maximum requirement. The highest ranking you can earn for a level is S, which you'll only need to achieve for 1 level for an individual trophy elsewhere.

Being able to beat the game on Normal difficulty, as well as achieve an A-Rank for each boss, allows for ideal preparation to finally take the game on in Expert difficulty - And the game does take a noticeable notch up from Normal to Expert. Bosses attack patterns are less predictable and more frequent, they carry more health and additional enemies will fill the screen.

The biggest challenge is adapting. The elements that change from Normal to Expert require a step up in turn from the player. Quicker reaction times, better situational awareness and a necessity to learn different attack patterns. These demands can also be quite steep from boss to boss and you get into situations that just simply boil down to continual practice with a lot of trial and error in order to get past them.

If it isn't an enemy you just simply don't see that gets you, it'll be something else. An attack pattern that looked different to the last time you ran it, a phase in play that requires extremely intricate movement or even simply a lapse in concentration. The game can be extremely unforgiving and whilst it's true everyone will face different challenges, the struggles remain the same and this is a genuinely tough challenge from start to end.

The game includes a death counter, which is always an ominous sign of expectations. Mine clocked it at 1281 deaths by the time I'd achieved the Platinum trophy, and whilst I don't really know how that benchmarks against the norm, the journey was as rough as a 4-figure death count sounds. The game punishes error and lack of focus, and you'll need to have reached an excellent standard of mastery on this game to beat it on Expert difficulty.

Once I'd beaten the game through on Expert, I only had 2 trophies remaining, supporting the point that this game is a very straight-forward journey, from a road-map perspective at least.

The "Pacifist" trophy, awarded for Completing all levels without killing an enemy, specifically refers to the 6 run-and-gun levels which have been briefly mentioned above.

These levels are where you can collect coins in order to purchase abilites and Superpowers from Porkrind's shop, which are essential to progression throughout the game as you figure out the best methods on how to beat certain bosses, but for the purpose of this trophy, you have to beat all 6 levels without killing an enemy.

This is tricky because these levels are designed to be run-and-gun, so having to navigate them without firing a bullet flips the challenge on it's head. You have to navigate levels in a side-scrolling fashion, and reach the end goal without losing all your lives, and clearing enemies by dodging them, as opposed to killing them. It helps to equip the Twin Heart charm, allowing you to start with 2 additional hit points, which you'll definitely need for this exercise.

Most of these stages also contain mini-bosses, which you can only bypass by activating your Superpower. Invincibility will allow you to get past these bosses without having to kill them, so it's also essential that this is equipped and you'll need to also make sure you earn enough parries along the way in order to fill your super-meter and activate your Superpower when required to do so.

The first few levels allow you to ease yourself in, but they do become more chaotic, and my progress slowed down fairly quickly, with the trophy taking around 5 hours in the end, which is a modest amount of time to complete just 6 levels. There's alot of trial and error involved and the majority of this time was spent on the final 2 levels, which definitely escalate in difficulty as you get further down the line and reach the end.

It's nowhere near as tough as beating the main story on Expert mode, but it gives you a different kind of challenge on top.

Cuphead is a unique game. A simple concept that creates challenge through simple ways. It's frustrating, angering and tough in equal measure, but I never really felt turned off by it, no matter how bad things may have seemed. Some of these bosses felt unbeatable on Expert mode as my dedication towards beating them exceeded hours, but I will always be of the belief that perseverance always prevails in games like this - Games that contain a death counter for reasons purely to measure the level of sacrifice you've put in, in order to achieve success. It might require a bit of good fortune along the way, such is the nature of how this game pans out with its highly volatile randomness, but you always need a bit of luck when trial and error is a key ingredient to progression.

The game will prepare you well to tackle it on Expert mode by making sure you clear every boss under Normal difficulty first, and seeing the rest of the list unlock along the way is a good motivator as you consistently see tangible progress towards the overall goal.

I'm not sure on a time estimation, as I played this game over multiple spells, and the amount of time you'll spend per boss will vary extremely. I'd like to think breaching well over the 1000 death mark is a sign of a solid, committed effort, and when you divide the total deaths of 1281 by the number of boss fights - 38 with 19 bosses in total across 2 playthroughs of the game - then you get an average of 37 deaths per boss.

This is an unrelenting fist-fight from start to finish. Prepare to go in head first and never look back. It's a rollercoaster experience with a solid reward awaiting those with enough guts to persevere to the very end.

Notable Trophies -

Beat The Devil At His Own Game - Complete the game on Expert.
Pacifist - Complete all levels without killing an enemy.

Hardest Trophy -

Beat The Devil At His Own Game                                                      Complete the game on Expert

Platinum #116 - Metro 2033 Redux

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

Most of my gaming purchases have a certain basis of judgement to them. I don't tend to stray too far from what I know well, and the Metro collection was a new venture for me.

I never knew it was based off a popular novel going by the same name. I never knew the term "Redux" effectively meant "Remaster" and I never knew my Latin needed some work either.

The Metro Redux package includes the first 2 Metro games bundled into a single box, originally available on the Playstation 3, and Remastered for the Playstation 4.

Metro 2033 is the first of these two games, a First-Person shooter which sees you take control of Artyom, a soldier attempting to save the fate of the Moscow Metro, where survivors of a Nuclear war have taken refuge. The aftermath of the war has made the surface uninhabitable for humans due to high radiation levels and low atmosphere, mutated creatures and warring factions fighting for whatever spoils they can find. Arytom's goal is to rid Moscow of these dangers and restore it to safety for it's civilians.

The gameplay is fairly standard FPS. You go through linear levels, mostly within the Metro system itself, though you will sometimes venture to the surface for a change of pace. This isn't exactly an even split though, and I would say around 80% of the game is spent navigating the Metro system, usually at populated stations or via underground tunnels/sewers that connect them to one another. The game needed a more even split. The Metro environments are way too similar and lack identity, as are the segments exploring tunnels and passages in-between. The lack of variety within the environments you transverse make the game dull and less engaging.

I actually harbour the same feelings towards the other core elements of the game. The spread of weapons on offer lack creativity and aren't really that fun to use and the combat is hampered by bad AI and mundane execution that make it lack excitement. There are some more interesting gameplay mechanics. You'll need to collect air filters for your gas mask when you're exploring anywhere above the surface so you don't run out of oxygen and darker portions of the game require the use of night vision goggles, which require you to charge a battery in order to use them at full functionality. It is cool having to play certain segments out from a different perspective via night vision, and having to always be conscious of your air filter time whilst above the surface adds a strong element of survival, but it's not really enough to make the game stand out, and you get a finished product which leads to a very average FPS game.

Metro 2033 is purely a Single Player experience, with all 50 trophies distributed across various tasks within the main Story. There is a minimum requirement of 2 Play-throughs of the game, courtesy of having to play on both "modes", which is not to be confused with difficulty level.

The game needs to be beaten in both Survivor and Spartan mode. Survivor Mode is more focused on stealth gameplay, where resources are less abundant and the player may have to be more savvy with how they progress, whereas Spartan Mode has a much greater emphasis on combat where fighting is encouraged more often, with a higher distribution of resources, but more enemies to kill.

If you want a challenge, then the game will give it to you, and once you've chosen which mode you want to play the game in, you'll then be offered the difficulty level. These rank as Normal, Hardcore, Ranger and Ranger Hardcore, however, the trophies don't make you beat the game within a specific difficulty level, so for the purpose of unlocking the Platinum trophy, you have the freedom of choice, which is the reason the Survivor and Spartan mode trophies won't get a notable mention in this game.

I chose Normal difficulty on both occasions, and the game is rarely a challenge, regardless of whether I was playing through Survivor or Spartan mode. Most enemies are easy enough to put down and the checkpoint system is about as generous as any I've played in any game, never putting you too far back from the position you may have died in, so the consequences of death lend themselves to a much more care-free style of play.

I personally don't think the game is good enough to warrant 2 play-throughs, but it is at least only an 8-10 hour Story, so the overall experience fits into the "could have been worse" category.

The "Enlightened" trophy, awarded for finding the truth, is definitely the trophy to watch out for in this list, because it's doused in mystery and there are things you'll need to know about how you progress through this game in order to unlock it.

It's never made obvious to the player, and perhaps that's intentional game design, but Metro 2033 works off a moral system hidden away in the background, where certain actions you perform throughout the game will either grant or deduct moral points to or from you. This is never introduced, nor explained, relevant actions that lead directly to positive/negative consequences are never indicated when fulfilled and the amount of moral points required to achieve access to the correct ending are not measurable or visibly quantifiable. You just have to go through the game under the assumption that you've earned enough positive moral points, through mostly positive actions, in order to be able to choose the correct ending.

These actions range from the fairly obvious, such as donating currency to homeless people when prompted to do so or saving people from hostage situations, to the less obvious, such as finding hidden areas or interacting with enemies during nightmare sequences. You'll need to use a guide though, purely for how good the game is in keeping the moral system under wraps, and to also avoid the situations where you can potentially earn some negative moral points without realising it.

The theory behind this trophy is, the game ultimately comes down to a solitary decision that you make as the very final action. The "Dark Ones", seemingly an apparition of Artyom's nightmares that appear at frequent points throughout this game, are actually attempting to make contact to Artyom as a signal of peace, and protect him throughout various dangerous plot points in the game in an attempt to communicate this message. This is what the trophy description refers to as "finding the truth" - The realisation that the Dark Ones are a force for good and have helped Artyom reach the conclusion of the story.

The strategy for eliminating the threats now plaguing Moscow is to reach D6, obtain some vital documents on where to find nuclear explosives and plant these on the Tower ready for detonation. If the player has collected enough positive moral points, the final decision the player will make is whether or not to kill the Dark One that attempts to sabotage the detonation. To finalise the requirements of the "Enlightened" trophy, you need to shoot the detonator and NOT the Dark One that attempts to destroy it.

If the game has deemed that you have not collected enough moral points, you won't have this decision to make and will be awarded with the default ending, where Artyom shoots the Dark One and successfully triggers the detonation. Incidentally, if you do manage to accumulate enough moral points, but choose to shoot the Dark One anyway, you will also miss out on the trophy. Finally, if the game deems you to have not accumulated enough positive moral points, you will also miss the trophy and receive the same outcome. All of these scenarios will trigger the "If it's hostile, you kill it" trophy, awarded for becoming a true Ranger, which is effectively just any ending where you allow the detonation to commence.

It makes sense to marry both ending trophies up with the respective Play-throughs of Survival and Spartan Modes, dedicating one to each, but you'll need to follow a guide closely to make sure you get more than enough moral points throughout the game so you don't miss out on the chance to trigger the true ending. The opposite ending is much easier to achieve, as emphasised above through the multiple scenarios in which you can receive it - The fact the game doesn't give you any guidance regarding the moral system makes guidance essential. I made sure I carried out every positive moral action I could, and left nothing to chance, just purely because the game never makes it clear how many of these actions is enough to trigger the correct ending scenario. I'd like to think it's fairly lenient, but you're going to be best off just leaving nothing to chance.

Outside of the trophies determined by how the game ends, there isn't really much else that stands out here. The game opts out of Progression-Based trophies, which is unusual for Story-Driven games, and, as mentioned above, also excludes any difficulty-based trophies.

Instead, there is a very heavy focus on kill accumulation trophies, requiring the player to fulfil a multitude of different tasks tied to obtaining a specific number of kills with the games variety of weapons, as well as killing enemies in certain ways. Trophies that fall into this category, by my reckoning, account for around half of the entire list, which is alot to keep track of.

However, the game comes in clutch with it's checkpoint system, allowing you to farm these trophies extremely easily via the ability to just restart at the previous checkpoint and still count the kills obtained in doing so. You can exploit this really easily by replaying segments with loads of enemies until you've achieved the necessary amount of kills for a specific weapon or situation, and being able to reload each time will not only allow you to quickly move onto the next trophy, but also make your previous actions consequence-free, which is great for making sure killing too many people doesn't impact your moral points at the same time.

At one point during my second Play-through, I farmed 7 of these trophies within a matter of 30 minutes by just playing out a heavily populated segment of the game and reloading back to a prior checkpoint to constantly clear out enemies and continue my kill accumulation progress. It's a lifesaving, trophy-hunter friendly feature and given that some of these trophies require to reach up to 100 kills in some instances, it becomes extremely useful and definitely something everyone should take advantage of on their way towards the Platinum trophy.

It is perhaps important to note that, these trophies cannot be earned across multiple Play-throughs though, and progress will reset to zero if you begin a new game. However, this is where Chapter Select comes in to save the day. Any outstanding trophies post-game can be obtained within Chapter Select, which also includes the small handful of chapter-specific trophies the list offers out. You can also use this feature to go back through and obtain any of the 51 collectible diary entries you may have missed for the "Blogger" trophy, progress for which would also reset upon starting a new game, so it's imperative to highlight the importance of the Chapter Select feature and how it makes the clean-up process very easy for the player. This is typically how most games with the ability to replay individual chapters works anyway, but it's a great alternate option to the checkpoint farming method should you need/prefer it.

Overall, the breakdown of Metro 2033 is very simple. Play through the game twice on both available game modes, and match up both endings accordingly. There's no pressure to play the game to a certain difficulty level and everything you miss can be obtained through a generous checkpoint system that retains your progress no matter how many times you go need to go back. When you add in Chapter Select, it's a trophy list gifted to any trophy-hunter on a plate. Both runs should also only take you a combined total playtime of around 20 hours too.

The lack of explanation around the Moral system is probably the only aspect of the game that makes you figure anything out for yourself, and even that isn't really too difficult to understand when you've got a guide that points out the positive moral points you'll need to fulfil as you go through the game. There are a couple of missable trophies that cannot be achieved via Chapter Select to watch out for, but even these are still slightly forgiving and can be picked up at multiple points throughout the game. You would need to devote an entire Play-through to these in worst case scenario, but this is a minimum 2 runs anyway, so even that shouldn't be an problem.

Notable Trophies -

Enlightened - Find the truth.

Hardest Trophy -

Enlightened                                                                                                    Find the truth