Platinum #135 - Uncharted 4 : A Thief's End

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

By now, what you can expect an Uncharted trophy list to look like, could very well easily be listed as one of life's guarantees.

Through 4 instalments of the title, and a game that has continued to go from strength to strength throughout the years, it's a perfect example of how more things change, the more they stay the same.

Uncharted 4 : A Thief's End is the first venture into the Playstation 4 era after 3 previous appearances on the Playstation 3, as you control Nathan Drake on another quest to risk his life in the name of uncovering the hidden treasure of his ancestors.

The plot begins with Drake seemingly in retirement from his previous escapades. He has now settled down with Elena, but still in admittance of missing the thrills that come with adventure and the excitement that risking his life in the name of treasure provides. He is unexpectedly visited by his brother, Samuel, who allegedly dies in the early stages of the game during a prison break that Drake was successful in escaping from.

Samuel explains that he survived and also eventually escaped too, but his escape was aided by druglord Hector Alcazar. This was not a freebie and would come at a cost. Alcazar knew that Samuel had intel on a pirate called Henry Avery and the whereabouts of his hidden treasure, and demands that Samuel finds this treasure as payment for his escape, or face the consequences.

So naturally, he turns to Drake, his treasure hunting brother, and convinces him to scratch the adventure itch and go on a quest for the hidden treasure of Henry Avery.

The plot is fairly standard by this point, but it's easy to follow and the cast of characters that compliment it are great. Nathan Drake is still a likable main character, and he is supported by a strong cast. Sullivan and Samuel accompany Drake on his quest and their dry humour mixed with sometimes serious conversations about the perils they face is a great adventure dynamic.

On the other side, Rafe and Nadine also make for intriguing protagonists - Rafe was present with Drake and Sam in the prison break, and his active decision to leave Sam for dead adds great revenge vibes to the plot. Rafe has enlisted help from Nadine to track down the same treasure to paint a clear picture that there is competition for this prize and heightens the element of jeopardy for Drake's journey.

The gameplay hasn't ever changed though, and remains the same here. Snappy and responsive melee controls combined with solid gunplay mechanics make for excellent combat scenarios, and the pacing of the game is as erratic as ever. 

Uncharted is mostly known for it's brilliant set pieces and they are standout again here. You go from perilously platforming the face of a cliff, to sneaking through guarded jungles, to solving a clock tower puzzle, to a chase sequence on the back of an armoured car, to fighting through a shipwreck in an abandoned cave. The production value and sheer explosiveness of these scenes is some of the best you'll see in any game, and they're no exception in Uncharted 4.

The graphics also excel in every way possible, and the attention to detail is superb. Environments are colourfully vibrant and full of life, weather effects pop off the screen and the cinematics look like Hollywood blockbusters. The graphical power of Uncharted has always been it's strongest suit, and this remains the case in Uncharted 4. 

The trophy list is the largest it's been for any Uncharted title, with 56 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy.

The "Charted! - Crushing" trophy, awarded for Completing the game in crushing mode, is a staple of this series, and returns for the fourth consecutive instalment. I said in the Uncharted 3 review that Crushing mode isn't what it used to be, and the challenge had been notably lowered since the first 2 games. So, with that said, how does it stack up here? Probably somewhere inbetween in all honesty. The combat-centric parts of this game can be hellacious, as enemies spam grenades at you behind cover and, in a bizarre gameplay decision, the developers took out the mechanic that allows you to throw them back. 

However, there's a much bigger emphasis on stealth than there has been previously, which can help you get through some larger portions of the game unscathed. This is still frequently an all guns blazing action adventure, and some of these spots have the potential to cause you problems if you don't tackle them properly. In the earlier Uncharted titles, you had no choice but to gun your way through these segments, and the development of stealth gives you a viable route away from gunfights. It's still just as easy to die compared to how it was before, but your options are no longer limited to just throwing up a prayer and getting by with trial and error - But it will still kick your ass if you give it a chance to.

As was the same in Uncharted 3, you also have the option to play the game in Crushing mode straight off the bat. Before Uncharted 3, you had to beat the game to unlock it, and the main reason I opted to go straight in for Crushing difficulty was due to the fact there are trophies in this list tied to playing through the game with other goals attached to them. Checkpoints are generously scattered across the 22 chapters, and you can beat this game on Crushing mode in around 20-25 hours, depending on personal experience.

For beating the game on Crushing difficulty, you'll unlock an additional 4 trophies for a difficulty stack of 4 other lesser difficulty levels.

Technically, you could beat this game in just one playthrough, now that it isn't a mandated requirement to unlock Crushing, and there is probably someone out there that has beaten this game in Crushing mode, with a 70% shot accuracy rating and all in under 6 hours, but that someone isn't me.

The "Sharpshooter" trophy, awarded for Completing the game with 70% shot accuracy or higher, makes it's debut in an Uncharted title. This is simply a test of in-game management, and 70% is a high threshold for such a trophy.

You'll need to make sure you're monitoring this religiously, and the statistics screen can be pulled up within the pause menu at any time, allowing you to check your shot accuracy percentage as you progress through the game. This is the key point to acknowledge here - A really crucial tool. This trophy would be significantly harder to earn if this was not present, and you were playing through the game blind to this statistic.

The key here is to avoid automatic weapons. Their high rate of fire can seriously affect your shot accuracy, and in turn, significantly hurt the percentage of shots that hit their target. It is fundamental to stick to single shot handguns, rifles and snipers and remain disciplined to this throughout the entire playthrough.

The reason I wouldn't recommend going for this trophy in tandem with Crushing mode is purely because Crushing mode is way too brutal to limit your arsenal to single shot weapons. This will significantly handicap you in combat-centric situations that may rely on automatic weaponry to get you out of.

There will be a certain margin of error that will allow for correction of your accuracy, should you need it, but you'll also reach a point in the game where you won't be able to claw this back if you're not careful and end up falling too far behind. I would also recommend using stealth wherever possible to bypass portions of the game that can also be handled with gunfights.

Finally, you can play through this trophy on a lower difficulty level. If you choose Explorer, which is the easiest difficulty, lock on aim is enabled as standard. This means the majority of your shots should land but you'll need to be sure that you're not over-firing once you finish an enemy. If you keep a constant eye on the statistics screen, you should be OK.

Outside of this, there isn't anything else notable here. There is a Speedrun trophy, also making it's Uncharted debut, awarded for beating the game in under 6 hours. I've recently earned The Evil Within Platinum trophy, which also contained a Speedrun trophy, and this just reinforced my dislike for them. I personally don't see much satisfaction in attempting to beat a game within specific time constraints, and although it can be realistically achieved within one sitting, it's not something I consider a satisfying experience.

Uncharted is no stranger to collectibles, mainly treasures, and there are 9 trophies awarded for collecting a variety of collectibles scattered throughout the game. In addition to 109 treasures, there are now also a host of new types of collectibles to also obtain throughout the game. These include 25 journal entries, 23 journal notes and 36 optional conversations - A total of 193 collectibles. They're no different to any standard collectible venture. You'll need a guide and they're very missable, but you can use Chapter Select to go back through to grab anything you may have missed and every collectible listed above is tracked for each chapter, so it's very easy to know which ones you're missing if necessary.

There are also 5 online trophies present within this list, denying it from being a purely Single Player experience. I did manage to get all of these within a single sitting, and they give off the impression that they're mainly there to encourage interaction within the Multiplayer element of the game. They're nothing compared to what comes later from the experience the Survival Mode DLC brings, but that's already been covered separately. 

One final thing to mention; The game now incorporates an Encounter Select option, as well as a Chapter Select option. There are alot of trophies in this list for completing Chapter-specific tasks, or require some extent of kill-farming, and Encounter select allows you to pinpoint very specific stages in the game you can replay at will. This is a great addition for grabbing any of these trophies because you don't have to play through entire chapters in order to reach the point you need to reach for the opportunity to earn the trophy. It's an excellent feature.

Ultimately, I feel like somewhere in-between on the variance scale of Uncharted games is where Uncharted 4 should land. Crushing difficulty became notorious in the first couple of games, but it slightly drops off a bit in comparison here. It isn't as easy as Uncharted 3, mainly because of the heavier emphasis on stealth, which will allow you to surpass gunfights if you want to. This approach will give you a reprieve that did not exist in previous titles.

The forced combat segments on Crushing will still give you a hard time though, and the newly introduced Accuracy and Speedrun trophies re-instate a necessity for multiple playthroughs of the game for the majority of players, despite the ability to choose Crushing difficulty from the outset.

The rest is fairly easy, and the game provides significant support to the player when it comes to tracking trophies. A comprehensive statistics menu that provides totals for cumulative-based trophies, clear signposting of collectibles in the chapter select menu and the ability to pick up from very specific parts of the game through Encounter select to aid in minimising unnecessary replay.

It's around a 40-50 hour Platinum, which is possibly one of the lengthiest Uncharted games to date, but it's fair, balanced and supportive. 

Notable Trophies -

Charted! - Crushing - Complete the game in crushing mode.
Sharpshooter - Complete game with 70% or higher shot accuracy.

Hardest Trophy -

Charted! - Crushing

Complete the game in crushing mode.

DLC #189 - The Evil Within - The Executioner

If you told me we'd be treated to a piece of DLC from The Evil Within that allowed us to play as the Keeper - A spiked-hammer wielding juggernaut who uses brute force to dispatch foes - You'd have good reasons to feel intrigued.

It was a premise that was mildly fascinating before I knew anything about the actual content within, and despite having a couple of sturdy hands to play, it sadly falls a little bit flat for a few reasons.

Set within the Victoriano Estate, you control the Keeper, an enemy from the main game who you frequently encounter throughout. The very loose story is based around tracking down your daughter, who is lost in the STEM and is calling for help to be saved. This is unrelated to the first 2 DLC packs, so the story is completely standalone.

The plot is very explicit in it's lore. A number of test subjects occupying the STEM are holding the Keeper's daughter back, and the only way to free her is to go round various rooms within the Victoriano Estate killing these subjects - Which turn out to just be regurgitations of various characters and bosses from the main game.

It effectively just boils down to being a gauntlet mode. You progress through the environment slaughtering enemies until you reach the end, and that's pretty much it. The lack of depth is very obvious and it's about as linear of an experience you'll get.

You can find a little bit of additional novelty through being able to earn memory tokens from defeating enemies. These are used to unlock different weapons, of which there is a healthy selection. However, tactically, all I found myself doing was upgrading the hammer to the highest damage level and wailing on every enemy that stood in my way, so the game does a poor job of promoting the arsenal it provides you. The only reason I had to use anything else was to fulfil some of the Torment requirements, tied to a separate trophy which requires you to fulfil each of the 18 different Torments.

The handling of the Keeper also leaves a bit to be desired. I don't expect him to be fluid. He's a big, clunky character by nature, but the movement feels overly sluggish and combat is very basic. You have a single attack button to use your equipped primary weapon, and you can also use a dash attack, but it feels like every fight you get into is reduced to dumbed down, button mashing thanks to the limited move set. I just didn't find it that compelling or fun.

There are 10 trophies available, which I earned across 3 separate playthroughs of the episode. You will need an initial, casual playthrough, which serves 2 main purposes.

Firstly, the "I Might Close Early" trophy, awarded for Purchasing all items in the Shop, requires a fairly large sum of memory tokens that will need to be accumulated across multiple playthroughs in order to unlock all 10 available weapons. This includes a couple of rewards which can only be purchased in New Game+ mode.

Secondly, you'll need to unlock New Game+ mode for the purpose of a couple of other trophies. The "Cruel and Unusual" trophy, awarded for Completing all Torments is one of these. Torments are specific challenges you can fulfil alongside natural progression and Torment 18 requires you to beat the final hidden execution chamber, which is only available in New Game+ mode.

Further to this, there's also a hidden trophy for opening up a secret portal to a special boss battle, which is also exclusive to New Game+ mode.

The third and final playthrough was reserved for the "I've Got Box of Steel" trophy, awarded for Clearing The Executioner without taking any damage. On paper, this reads like it should be fairly challenging, but there are a couple of things to be aware of that can make this task much less troublesome.

The most important point is the fact that, any time you take damage from an enemy, you can just reload your most recent save point, and this won't negate progress towards the trophy. You can easily clear with trophy within 30 minutes, so your last save point will never be too far back.

The winning tactic is to just load up the rocket launcher and kill everything with a small handful of rockets. It makes light work of most bosses you'll encounter. The rocket launcher also allows you to dispatch enemies whilst maintaining a safe distance at all times and you'll also be able to take full advantage of the unlimited ammunition unlock, since you've beaten the mode a couple of times already. Load it up, spam the rockets without worrying about running out of ammo and it's a fairly fool proof method when you run it this way.

You are also allowed to bypass hidden execution chambers. If the trophy required you to clear these without taking damage too, we would have a significantly harder challenge on our hands, but this is not the case. It only took me 26 minutes and 57 seconds to run through the whole episode without taking any damage using this method.

With 3 playthroughs, this brings together a total completion time of around 4-5 hours. I definitely preferred the story-driven DLC. This just felt a little bit token and, despite being an interesting idea, just got in it's own way a bit with the execution. At least it was an easy completion though.

DLC #188 - The Evil Within - The Consequence

I really dislike that feeling of coming away from story-driven games that make you feel like you've taken one step forward and another step back when it comes to the closure of a plotline.

All the answers I've been dying to find across both story-based DLC packs for The Evil Within are ultimately found in The Consequence but they come at the expense of new questions that pop up in their place.

Do we get a reasonable conclusion to Juli Kidman's role in the plot? Yes. Is there substantial development on the significance of other characters such as Ruvik and Leslie? Yes. Do the introductions of newer protagonists make sense? Yes.

By those metrics, it's a resounding success, but it also couldn't help itself but to leave a few extra carrots dangling out at the conclusion of the DLC that leave the story open-ended and up for further speculation. I know there's a sequel to the game, and that should make me both naturally intrigued and not terribly surprised at the same time, but after a full title and 2 pieces of DLC content, I'd like to believe that's enough to at least see some sort of true ending. It's a touch disappointing, and as usual, I won't delve any deeper for spoiler purposes. It was still a fun ride that was well worth the time investment, despite the frustrations of a cloudy conclusion.

The trophies also follow the exact same format for this episode as they did for The Assignment, so there isn't a whole lot to elaborate on.

You'll be able to unlock 6 of the 10 trophies on offer through completing the additional 2 chapters, along with the 4 chapter-specific trophies that come with this - These are much more cryptic in comparison to those in the Assignment, and I did have to look up the solutions to a couple of them, to make sure I grabbed them on my Kurayami run of the episode. They're not difficult, but I would probably never have worked them out without a bit of guidance.

The gameplay is mostly the same, which makes sense for a piece of DLC that is a part 2 continuation, but there are a couple of noticeable shifts.

The flashlight is a big focus within the Assignment, and it still is here, but there's a segment at the very beginning where you lose it and have to navigate a maze in order to reach a generator switch to restore power. You're given access to glow sticks instead, which you can toss around to help light the way. It's a small change, but I felt it was a nice way to maintain the freshness of the experience.

There's also a return to combat within the Consequence too, with Kidman being provided access to a firearm during a couple of segments throughout the episode. Again, a good change of pace to keep things fresh, and it's nice to be able to call upon some combat gameplay, which I always maintained was a strong suit of the game.

Again, there are 3 trophies awarded for gathering the collectibles throughout the episode. These include 3 Personal Files, 8 Research Documents and 8 Letter Scraps, all of which are scattered out throughout the 2 chapters. Letter Scraps are collected in the same way again, obtained through solving the puzzle on a Keeper box and then using the 8 scraps to piece together a hidden note.

Finally, another run of completing the game in Kurayami mode is required under the same conditions as before. It actually seems like there's a much greater reliance on light sources here than there was in the Assignment. I think it's because you have more combat-heavy segments in the Consequence, and fighting off hordes of enemies in pitch darkness is a tricky case of alternating between reloading your gun and flicking on your flashlight to make sure you're tracking enemies and not missing too many of your shots.

I actually think they missed a trick by making Kurayami mode New Game+ content, rather than being available from the outset. Navigating an environment in pitch darkness with just a flashlight is a great premise for a Survival Horror experience - but not so much when you already know what's coming because you had to play through it once in order to unlock it. It would have been great to be able to play the episode in Kurayami mode straight off the bat, and properly experience that extra level of fear that comes with the unknown of darkness.

It's a slightly shorter experience than before, clocking in at around 4-5 hours. Some of that may be down to the experience of knowing what to do to tackle the exact same set of trophies replicated from the Assignment, which always makes planning and strategy easier.

"Where Do We Go From Here?" - Awarded for Clearing Chapter 4, "A Ghost is Born". Should have seen another cliffhanger ending coming.

DLC #187 - The Evil Within - The Assignment

In my Platinum Difficulty write-up of the Evil Within, I eluded to my feelings on a story that didn't provide much clarity, and more specifically, the roles of certain secondary characters and their relation to the overarching plot.

One of these characters was Detective Juli Kidman, and to take a direct extract from the Platinum Difficulty Review - "Leslie is a patient at the hospital, and possibly of interest to Ruvik as a direct vessel back into a human form, but Kidman, who is a colleague of Sebastian, also takes an interest in Leslie for reasons I couldn't really fathom."

It was my hope that the DLC would provide answers to these questions that remained, so I suppose the burning question is - Does it?

Sort of, and given the fact this is part 1 of a 2 part DLC offering, I have to give the benefit of the doubt for now.

The Assignment focuses on the role and back story of Detective Juli Kidman, who it turns out is also an undercover agent for a sinister organisation called Mobius, tasking her with the capture of Leslie Withers for the benefit of their own research. Some of the lore you discover within the episode suggests that Kidman isn't necessarily a fully willing participant, and is being held to this task against her will. The suggestion is that the assignment to capture Leslie for Mobius is possibly a trade-off to keep her out of trouble for an unknown misdemeanour with the law.

The setting looks to be mainly within an underground research facility. Deformed enemies - with characteristics akin to the by-product of experimentation and laboratory-esque environments point heavily to this, but it's also interwoven with segments from the main story that show Sebastian and Joseph in parallel movements to Kidman, frequently merging their paths throughout the episode. It's a little confusing how it's all linked together at some points but at least there's a bit of clarity on Kidman's role to the overall story and her motivation for Leslie.

The gameplay is also significantly different to the action-centric nature of the main game. Kidman is a stealth-based character, and does not possess the ability of a firearm. Instead, you'll have to rely on pure stealth to bypass enemies, and the best you get in your arsenal is a flashlight that helps guide the way. It also has a special "focus" ability, which allows you to shine the light intensely on certain surfaces to reveal hidden rooms, secret passages and solve environmental puzzles.

I didn't expect such a drastic change of pace, but I was fully engaged and the added vulnerability of Kidman's stealth-only approach definitely feels like more of a true survival horror experience.

There are also 10 new trophies to unlock, which are nowhere near the lofty heights of the main game in terms of difficulty or challenge.

Completing the episode's 2 chapters once on any difficulty, which will take you around 3-4 hours, can score you as many as 9 of the 10 trophies on offer here.

There are 6 progression-based trophies in total - 2 awarded for beating each chapter and a further 4 for completing a series of chapter-specific tasks, exactly the same as seen within the main game's trophy list. Some of these contained within the main game are fairly cryptic, whereas these tasks here are a bit more obvious in their exact requirements. By that I mean I didn't need to reference a guide for any of them, and it was extremely clear at which point within the Chapter you could obtain a particular trophy.

There are 3 trophies awarded for respectively collecting all 3 Personal Documents, 8 Research Notes and 8 Letter Scraps - The Letter Scraps also need to be arranged into the correct positions on a blank template in order to piece together the letter to reveal the secret behind the note. Most of the collectibles are just found scattered around the environment, but the Letter Scraps are locked up behind Seeker boxes which are tied to a puzzle. Beat the puzzle to unlock the box and obtain the Letter Scrap. It's a clever twist on collectibles, that can often be a dull exercise, especially after having just collected 151 of them in the main list.

The final trophy can only be obtained on a second playthrough of the episode once you unlock Kurayami mode.

The initial sinking feeling in my gut was that this was some sort of variation on AKUMU from the main game, but that thankfully doesn't turn out to be true. In Kurayami mode, the environment is plunged into total darkness, with no natural light sources to assist your progress, thus amplifying the importance of the flashlight.

The combat technique is very simple - If you follow the episode up again straight away, you'll have a very fresh recollection of everything you've just played through, and this makes it significantly easier to navigate the environment - Even in pitch black darkness. I actually finished Kurayami mode over an hour quicker than my initial playthrough, and this is attributed to the above. There's not even an increase in difficulty, enemy awareness or damage you receive from hits. It actually feels more like a gimmicky add-on to pad a bit of replayability more than anything else, leading to an easy completion somewhere within the region of 5-6 total hours.

Let's see if the final part answers our questions...

Platinum #134 - The Evil Within

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 9/10

When it comes to Survival Horror, it's a good job the Evil Within is really good.

If a game is going to demand that you play through it 5/6 times to earn it's Platinum trophy, it has to back itself to be good enough to warrant this.

I would actually go as far to suggest that I think it's my favourite game within the whole genre. It's immersive, scary, violent and unnerving, and these are a critical blend of elements that some games just don't always get right.

You control Sebastian Castellanos, a detective who is called to a disturbance at Beacon Mental hospital - A facility for the psychologically ill. Upon arrival, numerous people are dead, seemingly at the hands of suspicious forces, when a few key developments quickly unfold that seem to point to a very unordinary situation.

Whilst attempting to escape from the hospital, a huge, unnatural earthquake occurs and causes the ambulance Sebastian and his colleagues are fleeing in to crash. It's apparent something Evil is engulfing Krimson City, and Sebastian is left to help prevent this evil from spreading throughout the city and beyond.

Even after having played through this game a number of times, the plot is still fairly confusing. Without wanting to give too much away, the main evil stems from a character called Ruvik, who you uncover flashbacks of from his mistreated youth as you progress the story - horribly burnt alive in a barn fire, and then hidden away by his father to conceal his disfigurement from the rest of the world. The motive seems to be very much revenge-driven, but the links to Sebastian aren't really made that clear. He could just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was called to investigate the story, but he seems to actively pursue Ruvik fairly aggressively for someone who just happened to respond to the wrong call.

There are other questions I felt were left unanswered, mainly around the roles of other key characters, such as Leslie, Dr. Jiminez and Kidman. Leslie is a patient at the hospital, and possibly of interest to Ruvik as a direct vessel back into a human form, but Kidman, who is a colleague of Sebastian, also takes an interest in Leslie for reasons I couldn't really fathom. I think Dr. Jiminez's role is just purely protectorate of Leslie, but he mentions his own research alot, so there could also be ulterior motives at play for which Leslie is a key component of.

It's possible the story-driven DLC answers a few of these questions further, and there's alot of generally crazy things happening throughout the game which make you question whether it's all just pure fiction being played out in Sebastian's constantly deteriorating mental state. This could be deliberate as the game playing up to it's Survival Horror billing.

I wouldn't go as far to say it's a weak point of the game, and there is always an intriguing mystery to drawing your own conclusions - but there were just a few too many blanks for me, and I don't like finishing stories to games where there feels like more questions than answers.

There are 42 trophies on offer here in total, including the Platinum, spanning across the Single Player experience. There are no additional or Multiplayer modes, meaning you're left to purely battle through the story in conjunction with the entire list.

The "Master of Horror" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Nightmare difficulty, is the standard offering amongst a list that requires you to beat the game under multiple conditions. Nightmare difficulty will have to be unlocked by beating the game just once any difficulty level and a standard playthrough of the story will take around 20 hours in total. It's really important to accumulate gel wherever you can, as well as any hidden keys for storage lockers - This will be made clearer for another trophy regarding the upgrade of weapons and abilities.

I really like the way the game plays. Combat is punchy and engaging, the weapons are varied and fun to use and the creative design of the enemies is excellent, particularly the multitude of bosses you'll face across the course of the game. The music composition also deserves a mention, capturing the mood perfectly with a piano score, which always turns up at certain points of the game in an ominious fashion.

Environments are atmospheric, eerie and they always make you feel on edge. The game isn't big on jump scares, but I think that's a testament to the game that it doesn't need a load of cheap jump scares to make you feel like you're always wary of what's around the next corner. It's a really well-rounded game, and a credit to the Survival Horror genre.

I've briefly touched on it already, but the trophy list will require you to beat the game in a variety of different ways, and some roadmaps I've seen state you can earn every trophy within a minimum requirement of 3 playthroughs. I am a little bit sceptical of this, and I personally ended up playing through the game 5 times on my route towards the Platinum trophy.

There's a Speedrun required, a playthrough on the game's hardest difficulty and a run without purchasing any upgrades using gel - All of this on top of a bunch of collectibles, some of which can only be collected in New Game+, as well as gathering a huge of amount of upgrade gel in order to max out all weapons and abilities. I just don't see how you can have all this done in just 3 playthroughs, especially when you also account for the fact that you have to beat the game once just to unlock Nightmare and Akumu difficulty.

With an average completion time of around 20 hours per run, this builds up to being a dizzying cumulative total. Granted, the speedrun requires you to beat the game within just 5 hours, but my Akumu run was 30 hours, so it still averages out.

The "You Asked For It" trophy, awarded for Finishing the game on (AKUMU) mode, is by the far the biggest challenge in this entire list, and the high difficulty rating is largely in part to the existence of this trophy.

As mentioned, AKUMU mode will need to be unlocked first by beating the game once on Survivor difficulty, and it's definitely for the best that you obtain an understanding of the game before tackling AKUMU mode.

Enemies are faster and tougher, everything kills you in a single hit - this proves to problematic in a multitude of instances - and you cannot play AKUMU mode within New Game+, which means you'll have to start afresh with no access to upgraded abilities or weapons. Even though there's no limit to the amount times you can die, it really heightens the sense of Survival Horror when you're attempting to earn this trophy knowing you're in genuine jeopardy with each step you take.

Well concealed bear traps, projectiles, tripwires, gunfire, bombs and even being grappled from close range - When you can die this easily, it's no wonder I finished this mode with a whopping total of 641 deaths and an exact completion time of 29 hours, 41 minutes and 1 second - That's almost 10 hours over the average playtime of a regular playthrough.

Outside of the annoyingly flukey, there's also the downright tough to swallow. Boss fights come at you thick and fast in the Evil Within, and without the ability to carry over your upgrades and weapons, these are difficult fights to get past in some instances. Chapter 6 goes down in Evil Within folklore thanks to it's holdout segments where you're desperately fighting off hordes whilst Joseph unlocks a door in 2 consecutive rooms and Chapter 12 had me stuck for half a day as I tried to get round the machine gunner segment just after you retrieve the medicine from the ambulance.

It's not a permadeath mode though, and checkpoints aren't impacted by the challenge, meaning they stay at exactly the same points as they do under normal circumstances, which is a comforting safety blanket. However, strategy is an extremely important factor because you'll have limited upgrade potential, so it's critical to choose carefully on your upgrades.

For instance, due to the one-hit nature of AKUMU mode, it's pointless spending upgrade gel on your HP or Syringe effectiveness. Instead, you'll want to plug it into your stamina, as you'll no doubt need to be able to outrun your enemies on a handful of occasions throughout the game. I also found the Shotgun and Shock Bolts critical to upgrade, as they're both very effective at dealing with larger groups of enemies that can overwhelm you if you don't have that crowd control option.

It is also worth upgrading the Revolver early too, just to have something else outside of the Shotgun that packs a punch and can help you deal with isolated fights, such as those with larger enemies and bosses. The Sniper Rifle is also a good option, but this is acquired very late on in the game, making it much less viable in comparison.

Despite there being a clear element of strategy, determination is required in equal measure. To be expected to beat a challenge that extends the game by around 10 hours compared to normal average completion time and over 600 deaths is not a normal requirement. It's challenging, frustrating and the specific parts I mentioned above had me give in and come back fresh for another go once I'd slept it off.

It's rare to see individual trophies swing the difficulty rating of a game so drastically on their own, but I am of the belief that AKUMU mode does just this.

The other bespoke run-throughs aren't really notable. Beating the game without using any upgrade gel was something I was able to tandem with beating the game on Nightmare difficulty and Speedrunning the game by beating it in less than 5 hours was also fairly trouble-free. It helps significantly that you can run this on Casual difficulty in New Game+ though, thus making light work of practically every enemy you encounter. I'm not really a fan of speedrun trophies. I feel like they detract from the experience, but it was still beneficial for the purpose of collecting the outstanding upgrade gel required. Speaking of which, there is an overarching task that is worth mentioning that ties all of this together.

The "Unstoppable Arsenal" trophy, awarded for Completely upgrading all weapons, requires you to collect enough upgrade gel to maximise every weapon in the game, and this is a seismic task. Gel is gathered from fallen enemies, found within the natural environment and can also be obtained from hidden keys, which are used to open lockers within the Hospital safe area, though it is not always a guarantee that a locker will grant gel - It can contain other items such as ammunition and bolts.

To put this task into context, upgrading each of the 5 primary weapons, including the Agony Crossbow, requires 738,000 upgrade gel. Further to this, there are separate trophies awarded for upgrading all of Sebastian's abilities and his stock capacity, and when you add this on top, the total amount of gel required is a whopping 952,300.

When I mentioned at the top of this piece that it's important to gather as much gel as possible as early as you can, this is the reason why. The benefit of multiple playthroughs really comes to the fore, as you can accumulate this across your various playthroughs of the game - Even the playthrough for not spending any gel, because you can still accumulate it and spend it on a later run instead. You won't be able to do this for AKUMU though.

This is just a pure grind, though you do have the option to use Chapter Select and farm gel from certain hotspots within the game, which may make it easier, but with the amount of required playthroughs, you shouldn't need to do this. 

It is a little bit annoying how much gel is required to fully upgrade everything. Each component of a weapon has 5 levels you can upgrade, whether this be ammo capacity, reload time, fire rate etc. and my main gripe is how sudden the jump is for some of these. For example, the 1st level of Damage for the Magnum costs 8,000 gel, the 4th level of Damage costs 18,000 gel, and the 5th level then costs 35,000 gel, so the increments in scaling are very random and the jumps are unnecessarily large - It stinks of longevity padding and there's no logical reasoning for why it takes so long to upgrade everything to maximum level. It was one of the last trophies I'd obtained, right before I completed my final run of the whole game.

Outside of this, the remainder of the trophies are fairly standard. There are 18 trophies awarded for natural story progression and chapter specific tasks, which is close to half of the entire list. Stackable difficulty, weapon-related and kill accumulation trophies also make up the rest.

Collectibles are also present here too (When are they not?), but they're not too bad. There's a fairly high volume at 151 in total, and some of them are only available in New Game+, which is something to make note of because it can be easy to miss a few if you're unsure as to when you can obtain them.

Without AKUMU mode, The Evil Within probably comes in at around 6/10. I do genuinely believe that the presence of such a challenge makes that much of a difference to the difficulty presented by the list. The amount of additional playthroughs also makes it somewhat grindy, and whilst I did really enjoy this game, having to beat it 5 times in total is the primary reason it's taken so long to earn this Platinum trophy. 

Combining all runs of the game probably amasses to somewhere in the region of 80-100 hours, which is a lot of time for a game that contains just one game mode. The colossal grind for maxing out all abilities and upgrades effectively goes hand in hand with the required number of playthroughs, which also matters, but the rating is mostly a show of respect for one of the toughest modes of any game I've played.

Notable Trophies -

Master of Horror - Complete the game on Nightmare difficulty.
You Asked For It - Finish the game on AKUMU mode.
Unstoppable Arsenal - Completely upgrade all weapons.

Hardest Trophy -

You Asked For It

Finish the game on AKUMU mode

DLC #186 - Hitman 3 - Hitman

I'll do my best to try and make this less confusing than the title suggests.

Hitman has graced the collection numerous times over the years, and it's actually become more difficult to track the chronology of the series than you may expect. It's a series that's seen reboots, HD collections and expansions galore, and contained within the latest Hitman game - Which is Hitman 3 on the PS5, there are a series of DLC packs that allow you to replay the earliest titles in the Hitman series.

I've beaten Hitman 3, but before going back through for the Platinum trophy, it made more sense to return to where it all began with the Hitman DLC, which allows you to relive the entire first game in the whole Hitman series, which, from what I can tell amongst all the clutter, has never been done previously.

That's exactly what this content is. It doesn't really require an elaborate preface. The 6 levels that made up the original Hitman title are available to play through all over again as part of this DLC pack. They've been given the Hitman 3 facelift though, with challenges, mission stories and level mastery all allowing you to play through the game in ways you simply wouldn't have been able to back when Hitman was released on the Playstation 1 at the turn of the Millennium.

I did play the very first Hitman game, but I don't really remember much of it, and even this rush of nostalgia still left me trying to piece together the memories in my head. That's not always a bad thing though, and fresh experiences from old games can still be a blast to play through when you don't recall what's coming, and that's exactly what Hitman was. The story is fairly short and doesn't victimise itself with unnecessarily long-winded and complicated cinematics in the same way that some games do. It's very easy to follow and understand, and it's all tied together by the strongest suit of any Hitman game - It's cleverly crafted and creative levels.

Hitman's 6 levels take you through France, Italy, Morocco, Thailand, the USA and Japan - Assassinating plenty of targets along the way.

There are also 13 trophies on offer, and these can be broken down in very simple fashion. There are 6 trophies awarded for beating each of the 6 levels once, and a further 6 trophies for achieving Mastery of each level.

Level Mastery is a new concept introduced to Hitman within the main game, and is also applied to all subsequent DLC content. Each level comes with a range of different accomplishments, broken down into the following sub-headings; Assassination, Challenges, Discovery and Feats.

Each of these sub-sections will contain a variety of tasks, which, when completed, will contribute experience points that go towards levelling up the Mastery of a level. Once you reach level 20, you'll unlock the Mastery trophy relevant to that level.

Reaching Mastery level 20 isn't exactly difficult. It will require you to play through levels multiple times, ensuring that you're assassinating targets in different ways in accordance to the requirements set out within the menu, as well and ensuring you go round the map unlocking as many additional challenges simultaneously as you can. There is a certain level of tactful thinking required as you plan how you're going to go about each run of a mission in an attempt to complete as many challenges as possible during any given run, and it's a very effective method of adding replay value to the game.

It does get a little bit tedious eventually, but I do really enjoy how the Level Mastery trophies maximise the necessity to explore the environment and it was a joy to seemingly uncover new things every time you reloaded a level. New kill methods, previously hidden locations, little Easter Eggs. It all combines to prolong the fun and it genuinely feels like a beneficial learning experience, rather than just another tedious grind designed to draw out replayability. However, it is also responsible for my biggest gripe with the whole game - The Missions Stories.

Mission Stories are scattered around every level. They're a very specific timeline of events, triggered when you're within close enough proximity of their starting location. They'll tell you exactly where you need to go and what you need to do, with the outcome usually setting you up with a final scenario which opens up the opportunity to kill a target.

Hitman purists will hate this feature because it completely strips away the essence that Hitman is built on - Intuition. The mystery of figuring out every step yourself towards the ultimate satisfaction of killing a target knowing that you worked out exactly what to do all on your own accord, is where the real sense of achievement comes from. Completing Mission Stories awards experience that goes towards Level Mastery, so trophy hunters will have to view them as a necessary evil to progress. 

I don't completely dislike the idea, but I think they're way too generous in the information they provide, to the point where most Mission Stories will literally walk you through every step towards gaining direct access to your target, where the only thing it won't do for you is pull the trigger.

Some of the challenges come with redacted requirements, with just a name and a picture to help you work out the rest for those that want the balance of intuition, and you will need to beat the majority of the tasks to fully Master a level, so the purist experience isn't completely left out in the cold.

For me, it was simply a case of beating the game once to unlock the 6 progression trophies, and going back over each individual level to earn Mastery in order to unlock the 6 Mastery trophies. It's a very straight-forward process.

There is still a final trophy to declare, which is awarded for Completing Suit Only and Silent Assassin Challenges on The Icon, A House Built on Sand or Landslide. These 3 levels come as bonus missions to Hitman, and are objectives set on smaller scale variations of some locations within the main story.

Suit Only and Silent Assassin require you to assassinate the target(s) without being spotted, no bodies being found, removing the target(s) only and doing it all in Agent 47's suit with no disguise change. This can be a challenging feat within the main game, where the levels are bigger and require more steps to completion, but the bitesize levels in relation to this trophy make it a little bit easier.

Plus, you have the flexibility to choose a preference from 3 different levels. I chose the Icon, which is the first one, and didn't see the necessity to switch at any point. It helps that I already knew Sapienza quite well from the second mission within the main game, so used this intel to my advantage. I managed to beat the task within an hour, which turns out to be one of the lighter tasks in this package thanks to the fairly lengthy level Mastery.

It's not a brief experience, with reaching level 20 for all 6 story missions requiring a thorough playthrough of the whole game, but it never really feels terribly grindy, and turns out to be one of the more effective ways of padding a game's replayability. It helps that's it Hitman too, which is, and always has been, great fun.

DLC #185 - Cuphead - The Delicious Last Course 2

Question : When is a Delicious Last Course not actually a "Last Course"?

Answer : When a game, for whatever reason, splits some DLC content in half and creates 2 separate trophy lists for it.

The second part of Cuphead's Delicious Last Course includes just 2 additional trophies, both of which are awarded for a couple of very specific tasks.

There's nothing to preface about the content itself. This is simply an extension of a couple of Easter Eggs that can be found within Inkwell Isle IV, and will award you with a couple of trophies for your troubles.

The "A Horrible Night To Have a Curse" trophy, awarded for Surviving the nightmare, is achieved with a very specific set of steps, and will lead you directly into the other trophy within the list.

The Inkwell Isle IV map contains a graveyard with a series of tombstones lined up next to each other. You can interact with each tombstone, and if you do so in a certain order, you'll unlock a secret boss battle - The Angel and Demon. It's not a difficult fight, and once you defeat them, you'll earn a new charm - The Cursed Relic.

This is where things get a little bit trickier;

Paladin - Obtain great power.

The "Paladin" trophy, awarded for obtaining great power, requires you to upgrade the Cursed Relic to the Divine Relic.

The first thing you'll need to do is make sure the Cursed Relic is actively equipped into your charm slot. Once this is done, the Cursed Relic will be in your loadout at all times, and in order to fully upgrade it to the Divine Relic, you'll need to go back through and beat a certain number of boss fights over again with the Cursed Relic equipped, effectively levelling it up.

However, there are a couple of things to be aware of about the Cursed Relic.

Firstly, it will reduce your HP to just 1 from the outset of any fight. Secondly, your weapon choices are determined by a randomly changing, cyclical order. Each time you perform an action that involves dashing, parrying or if you stop firing your current weapon, your loadout will randomly cycle to the next weapon - and this will also be randomly selected. This point of note is the real game-changer here.

My initial plan of attack was to simply start from the beginning of Inkwell Isle IV, and go back through each of the boss fights I'd most recently tackled. They were still fresh in my memory from the first DLC pack so I still knew what to expect in terms of attack patterns and the different phases of the fight. It seemed like a sound strategy on paper, but I really struggled to make the adjustment to the randomly changing weapons the Cursed Relic bestows upon you, and I felt completely lost without the ability to tailor my weaponry to suit the strategy of the fight I was about to have.

I began this venture by going through an entire day without even beating the first boss, so I turned away for guidance and found some helpful background information regarding the Cursed Relic. Upgrading the Relic works off a background points-based system, whereby you need 16 points to achieve Divine status. These points are awarded for defeating any boss within the game, but each boss is assigned a specific number of points depending on their category. I could have switched back to the main game and beaten a handful of those bosses, but they awarded less points and I haven't played through them since I earned the Platinum trophy, so I felt like the learning curve would be too great compared to the more familiar DLC bosses.

I also found out that the Cursed Relic levels up in stages, whereby every time it reaches a certain number of points, it's benefits begin to strengthen. You can gain HP for successful parries, and dashing will also grant you bursts of invincibility, and picking up these snippets of information allowed me to go back and tackle this challenge equipped with some valuable knowledge.

So did I still continue to struggle? Yes. I generally fared better knowing I could accumulate HP by taking the time to parry attacks, and I slowly managed to gain an understanding of how to take a little bit of control of the erratic weapon cycles, but I still struggled to make steady progress. I just couldn't get used to how the flow of fights is constantly interrupted by the way the Cursed Relic makes your weapons cycle through the different options repeatedly. It created a challenging edge to a game that needs no such invitation to begin with.

Each victory felt like a big one, and in classic Cuphead fashion, there was nothing a bit of perseverance couldn't overcome. I did eventually get to a stage where I could master the weapon rotation a little bit, and effectively skip certain weapons that I didn't think were effective options in battle, and began to favour certain loadouts more akin to the normal strategy of planning for a boss fight with a pre-determined loadout.

It was a steeper challenge than anticipated, but perhaps could have been strategised better. I think it may have been more beneficial to re-learn some of the earlier boss fights and chip away from that angle, as this trophy took somewhere in the region of 10 hours in the end. All 5 Inkwell Isle IV main bosses beaten, with the Root Pack from Inkwell Isle I also beaten, as this would give me the single outstanding point needed to finally transform the Cursed Relic into Divine status.

DLC #184 - Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance - Wolf's Side Story

I have to be careful that I don't sound too ungrateful here.

After all, Metal Gear Rising : Revengenace has kicked me around to it's own contempt at times, and I could very easily be here bemoaning this last hurrah for a game that has had it's way with me numerous times throughout this journey.

That isn't the case here though, and Wolf's Side Story is a soft landing at the end of a very bumpy ride.

This final chapter focuses on IF Prototype LQ-84i - Otherwise known as Blade Wolf, where you get to play out the backstory to Raiden's companion within the main game.

Wolf's story tells of how he is initially under the command of Mystral, and his desire to align to the values of freedom she is allegedly also fighting for. They're both also loosely associated to another character called Khamsin, and I say loosely purely because the game does a terrible job of filling out Khamsin's character. We all know about Mystral. She's the first major boss in the main game, but Khamsin seems to just exist for the sake of filling out the end of the chapter boss fight role. No proper introduction or fleshed out character development along the way. He briefly appears at the start, says a few lines of nothingness and the next time you see him is when you're fighting him at the end - Presumably to stop Blade Wolf from escaping and finding his freedom.

The biggest difference to Raiden and Jetstream Sam, of course, is the fact that Blade Wolf does not handle like either of the human characters you will have experienced in Metal Gear Rising. He's actually a bit more clunky, definitely more unorthodox and has a much more limited move-set. This made him slightly less enjoyable to play as for me personally, but I respect the desire to offer something a bit different to the norm.

The 4 trophies are an exact carbon copy of Sam's Side Story - It's just a much easier all round completion for this particular set. Run through the chapter once on any difficulty to unlock the trophy for simply beating the episode, and you'll also be able to unlock the trophy for 30 Hunt Kills along the way - Which are just the Blade Wolf equivalent of stealth kills.

I opted to run through the episode the second time aiming to beat it on Revengeance difficulty in less than hour. Same rules apply as before - the "restart from checkpoint" feature is key, as every time you die, the amount of time you took to reach that point will accumulate towards your total one hour time limit, and restarting from checkpoint prior to death will cancel this out, which helps keep the timer down.

Luckily, this is a much easier and shorter experience than the Jetstream Sam DLC, so you're nowhere near as precious for time. It's also possible to surpass every fight with pure stealth, and avoiding combat is a great way to progress steadily without burning up too much of the clock. If you get detected, just restart from checkpoint and go again - It's much more time-efficient than fighting the waves of enemies off.

To add to this, Khamsin is also a much easier final boss than Senator Armstrong too. He will kill you in one hit, which can be detrimental to time if you've been fighting him for a while, but there is a trick. If you constantly bait him into fighting you from a distance, this will trigger a sliding charge attack which you can parry for around 10% of his HP each time, and will also only minimally damage you. Chaining these attacks together will see a significantly easier boss fight than anything else previously experienced, and you can beat him within a couple of minutes. 

It's a night and day comparison to the days it took me to beat Senator Armstrong with Jetstream Sam.

This technique won't work with the final trophy, to beat Khamsin on Hard difficulty without taking any damage, but he has a very limited move-set which is much quicker to understand and fight against. It'll take a slight learning curve as you study the attack patterns, but it's one of the easiest bosses in the game to no damage.

Is Wolf's Side Story shallow on content, fairly uninspired and ultimately left feeling a little bit light? Yes. Am I also thankful for it? Yes. So we'll just draw a line under this one and call it a day.

DLC #183 - Dead Space 3 - Awakened

If you've beaten Dead Space 3, but there was still any doubt in your mind about what it truly wants to be, the small handful of hours you'll spend blasting your through Awakened should completely re-affirm any stance in your head that this is a game with an obvious bias towards Action elements.

A splash of Survival Horror is still there courtesy of a few jump scares, but the core objective is driven by heavy portions of gameplay that will see you slogging through hordes that come at you in their masses as you attempt to progress, and it's arguably more prominent in this stretch of 3 chapters than it was at any point during the main game.

Awakened picks up from the immediate ending point of Dead Space 3. Isaac Clarke and John Carver are allegedly still alive, and their goal is to simply escape from Tau Volantis for good. They settle on a plan to locate a shuttle in order to find their way off the planet. A simple concept for a story, but complex in the sense that it just completely throws out even more ambiguity over the actual fate of Isaac Clarke. 

The story expansion taps into the mental instability of Isaac Clarke that you see sporadically across the series, and you play out a handful of segments where you're physically fighting demons that only seem to exist in Isaac's mind. It makes you wonder - Is he actually dead and you're just living out a nightmare within a parallel universe, or is he actually still alive and these demons are being manifested through the power of his mind?

Way more questions than answers though, and even the ending of Awakened is shrouded in mystery just as much as the end of Dead Space 3 was. It makes you question what the actual point of Awakened was given the fact we didn't get any closure to anything. If you enjoyed the heavy action portions of the main game, you'll have a solid experience at your hands. However, you'll spend your time traipsing across the same environments, fighting the same enemies with the same weapons you had before. The addition of the Circle and their Cult Leader adds a bit of variety, but everything else is exactly the same. If you're looking for a bit more flesh to the bones from a story perspective, you'll also be left wanting. It's a very passable experience.

The package also adds 8 new trophies, and will require that you run through the episode at least twice. You'll need to beat it once under any circumstances, and again in Pure Survival mode, though there's no reason why you couldn't go straight into a Pure Survival playthrough and grab both trophies at once.

There is a key decision to make towards the end of the story that awards 2 trophies for each possible choice though - Which is the sole reason you'll need to play through the episode twice over, regardless of whether you choose to play Pure Survival from the off or not.

Pure Survival mode isn't really that tough here. The game still throws resources at you pretty generously, and your inventory carries over from the main game too, so if you were already stockpiling ammunition and health at the end of the main game, you'll start Awakened with a stocked inventory. It defeats the purpose of Pure Survival, and you should have no problems here at all. It is a hectic experience, and the segment throws alot at you, but you'll respawn from the last checkpoint in worst case scenario, which is never too far back anyway. Hardcore mode would have been a much tougher challenge.

There are collectibles present within the 3 chapters that span Awakened, but perhaps surprisingly, these are not accounted for in any of the trophies within this list. Nor is any requirement to beat the content on Classic or Hardcore modes.

Annoyingly, there is a single Co-Op trophy tucked into the list, requiring you to slow down the bleed out process of your Co-Op partner with statis - A really minor task, but one you're going to need to find a partner for. I had already forecasted this and grabbed it whilst I was going through the main game to save having to come back for it and tackle it at a much later date.

Even beating this twice should take no longer than 5-6 hours. Pure Survival mode might beat you up a little bit, but the consequences for death are nowhere near as severe as they are in Hardcore mode. It might be a good idea to tackle a playthrough in Co-Op, purely for the single Co-Op trophy - Just make sure you're making the right key decision at the end each time to effectively manage playthrough expectations.

Platinum #133 - Dead Space 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

The end of an era. After 91 Platinum trophies, we finally close the catalogue on the Playstation 3. It's where trophy hunting all began, and it's provided me with tons of moments over the years. For all the good, bad and ugly, it will be sorely missed.

It's perhaps fitting that we close this particular chapter with one of my favourite series of games whose all 3 instalments up to this point featured on the Playstation 3 console.

Dead Space 3 isn't my favourite game in the series. In context of how it stacks up against the first two titles, I actually think it's the weakest instalment of the three, but as a stand alone title, it's still a solid, enjoyable game. It takes a few gambles that don't quite pay off, but it still keeps providing just about enough of what made Dead Space great through the years it graced the Playstation 3 era.

Isaac Clarke is still the main character, which has been the case across all 3 Dead Space titles. You're amidst yet another Necromorph outbreak, triggered by main protagonist, Danik and the Circle, whose goal is to use this outbreak to wipe out mankind. Isaac is recruited by Norton and Carver, in order to discover the secret to stopping Danik and the Necromorph invasion from spreading beyond space. This is based on their intel linking Isaac to both the creation and destruction of markers across both previous Dead Space stories, suggesting Isaac is the best person to assist them in stopping the outbreak.

What follows is a solid survival horror/action offering, that only occasionally gets bogged down by a couple of differences that I felt weakened the overall experience compared to the previously stronger titles in the series.

There is a much greater action-orientated focus within Dead Space 3 than there has been previously. Bigger emphasis on gunfights and larger scale shootouts in wide open environments are seen aplenty. For me, what always made Dead Space great from a survival horror perspective was the fact that every environment you walked through was tight, close and gave off a real sense of claustrophobia. The feeling you could be cornered and die at any second gave off that true sense or terror. That's not to say that doesn't exist in Dead Space 3 too, just to a lesser extent - walks through tight corridors and spaces are sacrificed to have you fighting human enemies from behind cover across a snowy plain, which is where you lose the survival horror elements for those moments you're engaging in those action-packed shootouts.

On the subject of human behaviour, the game also loses it's survival horror immersion during those segments where you're battling through Danik's troops. The reason the Necromorphs are scary are because they can charge at you quickly, leap out of vents unexpectedly or jump up to attack you after pretending to be dead, and you lose all of that whenever you engage human enemies. The love triangle between Isaac, Ellie and Norton is a great immersion killer too. It's made to be the focal point of the story way too often, and therefore feels forced. Nothing kills survival horror immersion more than the dulcet undertones of a bad love story playing out and stinking everything up, and Dead Space 3 most certainly has that. These things combine to dull the edges of the survival horror elements a bit too much and that's my biggest criticism of the game.

The game also becomes very heavily action-orientated towards the end. The final 5/6 chapters just feel like you jump from fight to fight and barely have a chance to catch your breath. It's not bad, but it's almost as if Dead Space 3 spends the first 13 chapters completely unsure of what it wants to be between Survival Horror and Action, then just caves in to it's own intrusive thoughts as you spend the remainder of the game blasting your way through hordes of enemies right up to the end.

However, everything that made Dead Space great is still alive and well. The gun catalogue is still full of punchy favourites, from the classic Plasma Cutter to the Ripper. The sense of satisfaction in lopping off a Necromorph's limbs in calculated fashion will never get old, and whilst I'm not crazy on the new gun customisation system, the game doesn't force this upon you and it isn't critical to maximise weapon upgrades to progress through the game, which is a subtle but vital touch. I don't think giving the player a range of customisation options is a bad idea for those that wish to indulge and experiment, but for those like me, who just found the wealth of combinations overwhelming and complicated, then it's good to just be able to fall back on the vanilla options in comfort that it isn't going to impact your progress. I much preferred the mechanic of previous games where you simply gathered nodes to develop a skill tree for each weapon until you maxed it out.

There are still an interesting and varied range of enemies, both new and old, and their diverse range of traits are always making sure you adapt the way you tackle them to keep the upper hand in combat. Avoid shooting the pregnant Necromorph's in the stomach, keep the explosive Necromorph's at a safe distance. It keeps the combat refreshing, but most importantly, reminds me how terrifying Dead Space can be when it nails the Survival Horror element, and the variance in design in it's enemies are a big part of the reason why.

On top of this, Kinesis and Statis are still fun to combine in battle and add to the range of options you have at your disposal during fights. Movement is a bit clunky and will get you killed more often than it probably should, but on the whole, it's fine.

In terms of trophies, this is a standard sized list, with 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum. For the most part, it follows the routine formula for Dead Space titles, with a mixture of varying tasks.

The "Shoot for the Moon" trophy, awarded for Defeating the Moon, concludes the story across it's 19 chapters, and on a standard playthrough, this probably takes somewhere within the region of 12-15 hours. There are 9 trophies in the list dedicated towards natural progression and triggered at specific points on your way towards the conclusion of the game. Dead Space 3 is not a difficult game in it's default version of itself. Weapons are powerful and can be upgraded easily, ammunition/health is never scarce and once you obtain access to RIG upgrades, you'll be able to increase you health, armour and strengthen statis effects which will significantly support you in battle.

There are no difficulty-based trophies like there have been in former Dead Space titles, which have previously required you to beat the game on Zealot setting. However, the trophy list will require you to explore alot of additional modes that have been added to the game this time round.

If you're familiar with Dead Space, you should be accustomed to beating the game multiple times under different conditions, but Dead Space 3 takes that up a couple of notches. From my experience, there were at least 4 full playthroughs of this game, and that's mainly down to a specific group of trophies awarded for beating the game in it's various modes. We're not going to talk about them all in detail, but when you combine the amount of additional time and effort they require you to sink into the trophy list, then are worth mentioning as a collective.

We'll go into the detail around Hardcore mode, but my first time beating the game was actually in co-op, which we'll also go through later, and there were specific reasons behind that. You'll also need to beat the game in Classic mode, where you play without the ability to upgrade or customise any guns. Pure Survival mode, where all health items and ammo have to be crafted with resources and cannot be purchased, and then there's Hardcore mode...

The "Aren't You Thankful?" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Hardcore Mode, returns from Dead Space 2, but comes with some big adjustments. The previous iteration of Hardcore mode allowed you infinite deaths, but the catch was, you could only make 3 saves in the entire game, so you'd effectively need to beat the game in 3 segments. The challenge was committing hours of play in a single sitting, and if you died, you'd lose all that progress. It was challenging in it's own right, but it wasn't quite a perma-death mode.

This trophy IS a perma-death mode. You can save as many times as you wish, but the moment you die, the save file is wiped and you have to start over from the very beginning. Maximum disclosure; I used a save file trick to help me achieve this feat, and I will comfortably argue that this trophy pushes this Platinum to the upper realms of the difficulty scale if done completely legitimately.

I actually played through up until Chapter 6 without any major problems, but the reality of the task started to go through my head. This is a 10-12 hour game if you ignore all the side content. Was I really prepared to potentially die half-way through, or even further on, and expect myself to have the motivation to start from the beginning? The simple answer was no, so I would periodically back up my save file to the console, and reload it whenever I died.

I died. Alot. Dead Space 3 will generally kill you in a couple of ways. Firstly, there are cheap deaths lying around every corner. Getting turned into mince by an environmental hazard, failing to navigate an obstacle during the free-flying segments or getting crushed by a falling piece of rock on the wall climbing sections. These all occurred at least once during my Hardcore playthrough.

Secondly, the game's action-heavy segments. These are extremely high-risk, because they mostly occur towards the end of the game where there's a much higher level of jeopardy towards the trophy. It's very easy to become overwhelmed by large groups of enemies if you struggle to keep the numbers down, and the clunky movement and roll mechanic make it tough to survive in some of these instances. I lost many battles to the volume game, and combined with the previous point, I just didn't feel like Hardcore mode was a justifiable challenge for a game I was simply looking to just complete after 13 years of first starting it. This is fairly reflected within the official difficulty rating.

The "Ghosts of the Past" trophy, awarded for Facing all of Carver's demons by completing all Co-Op only optional missions, is where the trophy list really allows the game to lean into the Co-Op aspect.

As you progress through the story, you'll come across certain areas which contain Co-Operative only missions, and you won't be able to complete these unless you have a Co-Op partner. I mentioned above that there was a reason I beat the game for the first time with a Co-Op partner, and this is it.

There are only 3 Co-Op missions in the entire game, and you can approach this trophy in one of two different ways. You can choose to just go through the entire game from start to finish with a Co-Op partner like I did. As long as you're aware of when the optional missions occur and don't accidentally bypass them, this is a fairly foolproof method, and this is exactly how I did it.

The second option is to just jump straight into the relevant chapters via the chapter select screen and hope you can find a Co-Op partner to complete the optional missions with on an adhoc basis. However, this requires another player to be at that exact point of the story at that exact time, so it's a very specific requirement that massively restricts your choices. If you don't have someone willing to play through the game with you though, this will be your only option.

Further to this, and this is something Co-Op caused me further challenges with, the game has a handful of trophies for the various collectibles scattered around the game. Dead Space loves collectibles, and they're very much alive and well here again, coming in the form of 40 Artifacts, 71 Circuit Upgrades, 71 Audio and Text logs and 73 Weapon Parts - That's 257 in total.

The reason I'm mentioning these here is because a handful of these collectibles can only be obtained within optional Co-Op missions, and this is something that I completely overlooked during my Co-Op playthrough of the game. This meant I had to indulge in the second method later on via chapter select, when it became much harder to find players to go through the game with and collect these missing items for the remaining collectible trophies. The Co-Op mode is also purely online, and cannot be done locally via split-screen.

The Co-Op mode is implemented well, and the player who controls Carver will play out specific fight segments that the player playing as Isaac won't see as Carver's demons in his head manifest in front of him. The game's action-based vibes peak during Co-Op, and it pretty much zaps the Survival Horror immersion fully away from the game when you know you're being accompanied by another player at all times, but I didn't hate it as much as others perhaps did.

Everything else in the trophy list is familiar. There are some chapter-specific trophies, kill accumulation trophies and some Co-Op exclusive trophies to be conscious of grabbing when you're playing online with a partner. The game adds a chapter select feature for the first time too, which is a game-changer. It makes tracking all the collectibles and the completion requirements of optional missions easy, as they're all outlined on a checklist for each chapter. It also adds extra convenience by allowing you to just freely jump into certain parts of the game for the purpose of easy kill-farming or fulfilling those previously mentioned chapter-specific tasks.

This could easily be a 9/10 Platinum trophy. The Hardcore mode, on paper, is a much tougher prospect than that of the Dead Space 2 Hardcore mode, due to this being a true Perma-death concept. The ability to save your progress locally, and re-write your save file nullifies the challenge. It's frustrating to have to constantly fiddle around with game saves and transporting them back and forth across the system, especially once the deaths start to accumulate, but it's a small price to pay in comparison to the legitimate method of starting from scratch every single time, which I simply wasn't willing to entertain at this point.

You will need to beat the game at least 4 times, accounting for an initial playthrough, Classic mode, Pure Survival mode and then Hardcore mode. I would strongly recommend a Co-Op playthrough as your initial run if you can. This will accumulate the completion time healthily, and with the clean-up process on top, you're looking at around 50-60 hours for the Platinum trophy.

For me, the final one on the Playstation 3. What a ride it's been.

Notable Trophies -

Shoot for the Moon - Defeat the Moon.
Aren't You Thankful? - Complete the game on Hardcore Mode.
Ghosts of the Past - Face all of Carver's demons by completing all Co-Op only optional missions.

Hardest Trophy -

Aren't You Thankful?

Complete the game on Hardcore Mode.