Platinum #140 - Prey

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

After the debacle of Fallout on the Playstation, Bethesda are lucky they're not on the shitlist.

Fortunately, I am a big fan of the Dishonoured series, and Arkane Studios were put in charge of the development of Prey, so that's enough justification to claw back a little bit of benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to the standards of Dishonoured (It is at least functional, unlike Fallout). That's not to say Prey is a bad game. The foundations of a good game with some nice ideas do exist here, but it's let down by some poor execution.

You control Morgan Yu, who joins the Research team aboard Talos I at the request of his much more senior brother, Alex - President and CEO of TranStar.

During a series of induction tests, one of the supervising doctors is attacked by a Typhon, and you're knocked out by a non-lethal gas. You reawaken three years later, and the Typhon outbreak has wreaked havoc onboard Talos I. It's claimed that, within this three year period, most of the crew have been killed by the outbreak and there was various research performed in order to find ways to contain the spread of the Typhon influence, to little avail.

It's not really clear as to why you were seemingly unconscious for three whole years, but an aspect of the research was the construction of Neuromods. These assist in the genetic modification that can give humans greater abilities, as well as adopt those of Typhons, as a way of overcoming the Typhon threat. However, a by-product of the use of these is memory loss. Has three years actually elapsed? Or have we just lost our memory about something that actually happened a few days ago?

You meet a couple of characters early that establish the end-goal. An operator called January - Allegedly a past-self of Morgan - guides you to the final ultimatum of how to deal with the outbreak and Alex will also frequently contact you throughout the game to offer further guidance. The plot is a little bit confusing, in all honesty. I ended up going through this game three times in full and still struggled to make sense of certain parts of the story.

Unfortunately, the game has a few other deficiencies too. The Typhon variety is really underwhelming. They're just differently moulded shapes of black matter, and lack a scary persona that makes you feel genuinely intimidated by them. It's bland and boring, and whilst the environments have slightly more character to them, they also ultimately suffer from similar issues, and you start to realise how samey everything looks the deeper you progress into the game and uncover more of Talos I.

In fact, it isn't just the enemies that suffer from this sort of negligence. The character cast is pretty devoid of personality too. Morgan and Alex Yu are both dull and uninteresting main protagonists, and the only other character of any real significance you meet is January - A robot - and he/she still has more personality than any human you ever run into.

The game also suffers from crippling loading screen times. Every time you transcend beyond a door into a new section of the ship, or die and have to reload a save file, you can expect to be waiting. The absence of cutscenes is a typical feature of games like Fallout and Dishonoured, but when you witness how long you end up being stuck on some of these loading screens in Prey, it begins to have a negative impact on the flow of the game.

I did say the foundations of a good game were present though, so there are a few redeeming qualities too. The weapon variety is good, with each weapon serving a different purpose and opening up more ways to tackle combat. 

The Gloo Gun can be used to temporarily freeze enemies in place, but also allow you to create bridges up to previously unreachable areas. Typhon Lures attract Typhon towards them, allowing you to deal with groups of enemies more efficiently, but alternatively, can also allow you to distract them long enough to make an escape. Even old classics, like the Shotgun, are punchy and feel like they're carrying a lot of weight behind them.

Progression is also heavily driven by the player. Talos I becomes fully available to explore very quickly, so you're not restricted on your movements. Can't access a room because you don't have the keycard for the door? You'll have the option to hack it. Don't have enough Neuromods installed to reach the required hacking skill level? There's a vent hidden around the corner you can gain access to the room via if you find it. This level of flexibility is the strongest suit of the game, and gives it a genuine sense that the player has full control.

In terms of trophies, this is a large list, containing 49 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy. The biggest thing that stands out here is the fact that Prey makes no secret that it wants you to play it multiple times, and these hints are all over the trophy list.

You'll need to beat the game in at least 4 different manners, as well as juggle an absolute boat-load of missable trophies. By my counting, there are a whopping 44 trophies in this list that can be considered missable, and unrelated to beating the game in a specific manner. That is by far the most amount of missable trophies I've encountered in a single trophy list.

As a consequence, there are only 2 trophies awarded for reaching specific plot points in the story, so there is going to be a requirement for some meticulous planning within this trophy list. This is purely because there's a lot of synergy within these trophies, and some of them tie directly into one another. This is either because they're directly linked, or could become missable due to certain conflicting actions you take within the story.

Firstly though, a regular playthrough of the game, just to beat it and see where our progress takes us. There are no difficulty related trophies in this list, so you can cruise through on the easiest difficulty without repercussion, which might not be the worst idea if you're possibly overwhelmed by the volume of missable trophies. Anything that reduces the pressure is advisable. I went for a mixture between Normal and Hard difficulty levels across all playthroughs of the game and didn't really run into too many issues until the end, but we'll get to that.

The "I and Thou" trophy, awarded for Completing the game in the most empathetic manner possible, requires you to fulfil a certain number of requirements that mean you effectively earn the "good" ending. This is a hidden Gold trophy, so I wasn't even aware of the fact I was about to earn this on my first playthrough.

Apparently, there is a karma-esque points system operating at all times in the background of the game that'll track the decisions you make and actions you take towards others as you progress the story, culminating in a final score that determines whether you meet the threshold for this trophy.

The "Do No Harm" trophy, awarded for Completing the game without killing any Humans, was a trophy I was conscious to whilst going through my first playthrough, and achieving this at the same time is probably what led me to unlocking the previous trophy. It would make sense that I finished the game in the most empathic manner if I'd also beaten the game without killing anybody along the way, and that's a great example of how some of the trophies in the list work in synergy, as mentioned above.

There are also a generous amount of collectible-related trophies in this list too, which was another thing I was conscious to within my first playthrough. You'll need to read 190 employee emails, find 268 crew members of Talos I (both dead and alive), consume 30 different types of food and drink and listen to 88 TranScribe recordings.

This seems daunting, but there is something that may work in your favour. All of these trophies unlocked prematurely for me, which does seem to be a common occurrence, based on reports from others, so you may not even need to reach 100% collection rate for most of these requirements. I didn't need to use guides to find most of these things, and staff terminals will track the status of the employees for you, as well as tell you where exactly within Talos I you can find them, which essentially acts as an in-game checklist.

Finally, for this playthrough, it was important to pledge a commitment to only using human abilities, as a part one requirement for the "Split Affinity" trophy, awarded for Completing the game once only acquiring Typhon Abilities and again acquiring Human Abilities. Naturally, this would require a second playthrough.

I'd already beaten the game acquiring Human abilities, so being able to switch to Typhon abilities was an easy transition, and in all honesty, aside from the access to different powers, there isn't really much difference in the way you play the game between both playthroughs.

The Typhon abilities are a bit more useful in direct combat. Many of the Human abilities revolve around hacking terminals/keypads, improving the effectiveness of healing items/food and strengthening your character to be able to pick up heavier objects. Typhon abilities allow you to lift and throw enemies, spawn Phantoms to assist you in battle and deal shock damage via mind control.

Aside from this, the "I and It" trophy, awarded for killing every human on or around Talos I, was the primary focus within the second playthrough, and this was a little bit of a nuisance for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it's important to note, the majority of the crew aboard Talos I are already dead. However, this can cause confusion, because you'll need to carefully track everyone and make sure those who should be alive when you encounter them, are actually still alive when you do so. Any human character who dies to anything other than your hands will negate this trophy, and this can very easily happen in a number of scenarios.

Humans can easily succumb to environmental disasters, such as gas canister explosions or fire from a burst pipe. This happened to me a handful of times. I'd sometimes find the human in question already dead and something had occurred off-screen that I didn't even see happen. Sometimes it would happen amidst the chaos of battle and was purely accidental. Either way, the remedy is to reload and hope it didn't happen again. 

You'll also encounter plenty of mind-controlled humans, who roam around as living people, but are possessed by a Typhon mind-trap. If they spot you, they'll chase you down, their heads explode and they'll die, and this won't be credited to you either. They are also identified by turrets and other security measures as a Typhon threat, so if they wander into the firing line, they'll be gunned down on the spot. Reload and start the section over in any of these instances too.

Finally, there are a few set pieces at certain points in the game involving humans where you need to make sure they're protected in battle, specifically so they can remain alive for the sole purpose of you making sure that you're the one that kills them. If anyone succumbs in battle? Yep, reload your last save and try again. It's an interesting concept for a trophy, but it bought on much frustration and added an unnecessary element of trial and error that disrupts the flow of the game.

On the theme of how these trophies work in synergy with one another, it is also worth noting that when going for this trophy, it will lock you out of various other trophies that naturally become unachievable as a by-product of the death of every human character in the game. These include side missions tied to making life and death decisions and the achievement of the empathetic ending, so it's really important to track your list meticulously as often as you can. You don't really want to be playing through this game any more than you have to.

After a brief pitstop to grab the "Abandon Ship" trophy, awarded for Fleeing Talos I aboard Alex's escape pod before completing your mission, which can be earned just a couple of hours into the game if you follow the correct steps, we restarted the game one final time;

The "No Needles" trophy, awarded for Completing the game without ever acquiring any Typhon power or Human ability, is the most challenging trophy in the list, as you may expect from a trophy that essentially asks you to beat the whole game without ever having access to any character upgrades.

Without the ability to upgrade your character, this means your closest ally is your arsenal. Firearms are the key to negotiating this task, and it's purely by default, but even this has complications that become very apparent fairly quickly.

You'll get the ability to upgrade various aspects of firearms, including damage, reload speed, range etc. The first upgrade level for each upgrade aspect is readily available, providing you have a weapon upgrade kit, which are easy enough to find. However, any upgrades beyond this point will require a human ability, such as Gunsmith or Engineer, upgraded to a certain level in order to access further weapon upgrades. Due to the fact these abilities are gained through the use of Neuromods, we don't have that option, which means your weapons will only ever be able to reach a certain level of power throughout the entire run.

This is fine to begin with, but once you start to run into Technopaths, Thermal and Voltaic Phantoms, this does become an issue. The game will introduce these enemies at stages where you will have normally had a chance to match the strength of your guns to them, or even possibly have accessed a couple of Neuromod-based abilities to handle them. As a consequence of not having any of this, I just found myself running for my life a lot more often than actually sticking around to fight. I felt like the requirements of this trophy had put me into a situation where the most viable option was to flee. 

I was pumping all my ammunition into bullet sponge enemies because every weapon in my armoury now felt like a peashooter - So I just deployed a strategy to start running between my objectives. Even then, it was still easy to die from a ranged attack or an enemy that would teleport directly into my path, and whilst running was a sound enough strategy overall, I almost felt like I was speed-running the game. There's a fine line between running for your life because you genuinely feel like you're in a tense survival horror scenario, and running for your life out of frustration at the fact you know you're probably about to get cheaply killed and you don't want to stare at another 45 second loading screen. Prey falls into the latter.

By the end, it actually made me start to really dislike the game. The final run had just developed into a frantic mess. Seriously underpowered due to the fact I could neither install Neuromods nor upgrade my weapons to even a modest level. Running through entire areas of the game as a counter-solution to avoiding combat. The story began to actually feel like it was dragging - A final playtime total of just over 22 hours for a run that I felt like I was speed-running for the majority of confirms that.

It's a sour ending, and it felt like a good time to draw this game to a close. Prey isn't a bad game, but it's also not the sort of game that should be welcoming you to beat it 3/4 times to earn the Platinum trophy in the circumstances it does. Attempting to beat it for a final time without using any abilities, and watching myself running through entire areas of the game just because I didn't feel like I had a chance in combat, sucked the remaining enthusiasm I had for it right out of me.

The amount of missable trophies is a little bit too much, too. It didn't really impact my game personally, but I've never gone into any trophy list like this before having to meticulously plan which trophies I need to make sure I get on a certain run of the game, and then also having to cross-check every one of them to make sure they're not going to cancel each other out along the way. Trophy lists don't need to be this high maintenance. 

Managing to beat the game without using any abilities is worth a couple of points on it's own, and when you account for at least 3 full playthroughs of the game, with a dedication to collectibles, juggling a missable-heavy list and a lot of side questing in-between, this Platinum easily pushes the 60-70 hour mark. It's not a journey I'd really like to go through again - "TranStar Employee of the Year" has a nice ring to it though.

Notable Trophies -

I and It -You killed every Human or or around Talos I.
No Needles - You completed the game without ever acquiring any Typhon power or Human ability.

Hardest Trophy -

No Needles

You completed the game without ever acquiring any Typhon power of Human ability

DLC #199 - LittleBigPlanet 3 - The Journey Home

It's fitting that the premise of The Journey Home revolves around somebody dropping the ball.

I was willing to go into this final foray with an open mind, despite some reservations about the workmanship of LittleBigPlanet 3 that were well documented in my Platinum Difficulty Review. Underneath this brief, post-game exterior remains an unpolished game plagued by technical issues. Blue screen crashes, corrupted save files and loss of progress. It's clear that there was an abandonment of this game that has hurt the reputation of the series.

The Journey Home begins where the main story ends. After saving Bunkem, Sackboy and friends are teleported back into Craftworld, ready to be welcomed home by a surprise party. However, the teleporter beam malfunctions and the force of the beam whips the unsent invitations to the remaining party guests out into the world, and it's now your job to find and retrieve them.

This will require progression through a series of new levels where the reward of an invitation sits at the end of each one, and once all 6 have been gathered, the party will finally be able to go ahead.

The pack contains 6 new trophies, all of which are obtained via the new selection of Story levels on offer. This is broken down into 3 main Adventure levels and 3 Multiplayer side missions. There are trophies awarded for both completing and Acing each of the 3 Adventure levels, which are both fairly easy tasks and should take no longer than an hour or so. There is a level dedicated to each of the new heroes - OddSock, Toggle and Swoop. Their lack of usage within the main game was something I was slightly critical of within the Platinum Difficulty review, so it's good to see at least a little bit more advocacy for these characters.

Toggle gains access to the Springinator within his level, which also comes attached with it's own trophy after using it 100 times. The Springinator is a new device that allows him to bounce up to harder to reach places. It's nice to see a neat little gameplay addition, but the variety in content with a game like LBP has always stemmed from it's unique level designs, which are all refreshingly charming in their own way in The Journey Home. It's just a shame that there are only 3 main Adventure levels.

However, the package does heavily lean towards a Multiplayer emphasis that may cause a few struggles along the way;

Two's Company, Four's a Party - Complete any Adventure level with 4 players.

The original intention of this trophy was to encourage community play, and this would have been easy enough to achieve at the height of the game. However, the only way to unlock this trophy now is to have 4 different controllers and finish a level in local co-operative play instead, so if you want this trophy and don't have the required amount of peripherals, you'll need to find a way to acquire them. 

Under normal circumstances, I would usually cut a bit slack for this. After all, the server closure wasn't the fault of the development team, and the action was necessarily drastic to prevent further harm to the LBP community. However, when you've got previous form for this, I feel like you relinquish the benefit of doubt. Two of the LittleBigPlanet 2 DLC packs have become permanently unobtainable to 100% for me purely because they required me to invest in peripherals and that was something I'd refused to do until it was too late. The only reason I grabbed this trophy was because I have 4 controllers anyway, but it's a tough cost to justify for anyone who doesn't and would only be purchasing them for the sake of this trophy.

Loosely linking into this, the 3 Multiplayer side missions also require at least 2 players to complete, and they're both directly linked to a further 2 trophies requiring all Prize Bubbles and obtaining all 6 Invitations to the party. They're all used as rewards for reaching a certain points threshold (30,000 points) within each mini-game. The first one can easily be beaten solo using 2 controllers, but the other 2 will need an actual second player to support well enough to obtain the threshold score. Not only are there multiple pieces of hardware standing in your way of full completion, but you'll also need the services of another person sitting next to you to help out anyway. If you're solo player, these are big barriers to completion.

On a final note, I began to have issues towards the end of this package when attempting to complete the side levels with a second person using another controller. The game would begin to blue screen error at the post-level loading page and upon rebooting the game, the Prize Bubbles would remain uncollected. There were also a couple of notifications that the save had been corrupted and we had to restore via a prompt. 

I had to remedy this by just making sure I collected the Prize Bubbles only and didn't trigger the end of the level via the finishing screen. If you've collected the Prize Bubbles, you can just exit the level without actually officially finishing it. It took a handful of attempts to work this out as a viable workaround, but it's a real shame some awful technical issues reared their head once again.

When it's working, The Journey Home is at least a serviceable offering. It doesn't break any new ground, but it's still good, hearty fun and the levels of creativity maintain a high standard. It's a little bit on the shallow side with just 3 main Adventure levels and 3 mini-game side missions, and the complications of requiring multiple controllers, another person to combat the mini-games with and eventually having to juggle some unexpected technical errors near the end had me questioning whether the balance had actually tipped towards the downside of the scale.

Platinum #139 - LittleBigPlanet 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

When LittleBigPlanet first hit the Playstation 3 in 2008, it genuinely seemed like it was destined for great things, but a series of decisions over the years has put the series in an tough place.

The most significant of these changes was seeing Media Molecule step away from development to make way for Sumo Digital, who would be in charge of development of a LittleBigPlanet game for the first time.

More recently, an unexpected external attack on the servers led to the decision to indefinitely bring them down for the first 3 main LittleBigPlanet games on all platforms.

This was a somewhat forced decision, but there have been some choices made that have raised questions. Other, less forgivable decisions include; LittleBigPlanet Karting servers being closed within just 6 years of the game's launch and LittleBigPlanet 2 DLC packs requiring you to purchase expensive peripherals to earn some of it's trophies, in an undoubtedly advantageous cash-in ploy on Sony's hardware. Even the DLC for this game, The Journey Home, was suddenly delisted and cannot be acquired unless you'd already purchased it.

When you think about it, it's been a tumultuous period that not many franchises would survive.

However, losing the servers was the real killing blow. It's always going to be a big problem when the premise of your game is based around user-generated content, and you suddenly lose half your product because that element becomes instantly inaccessible to everyone with no alternate solution to keep it alive. It wasn't just losing the ability to play through story levels with others co-operatively online. What use is still having offline access to this massive level creation tool full of possibilities without being able to actually share your creations with the masses? It effectively became redundant.

These were ultimately big issues with the game and I personally felt the series regressed with LittleBigPlanet 3.

The main showpiece is the Adventure Mode. The tutorial is interrupted by a character called Newton, who creates a black hole, sending Sackboy into a world called Bunkem. It's explained to Sackboy that Nana Pud is about to open a tin containing 3 Titans, that were locked away to protect Bunkem many years ago, and this needs to be prevented. Stopping Nana Pud allows Newton access to the tin, and upon opening it himself, he garners the power of the 3 Titans and this turns out to have been his ulterior motive all along. It's now Sackboys job to stop him and restore order to Bunkem.

The game retains it's warm charm, simple controls and pick up and play nature that has made it accessible to anyone and everyone over the years. The biggest new addition is the fact you can now play as different types of Sackboy. Throughout the Adventure Mode, you'll play as Swoop, who harnesses the ability of flight, Oddsock, who can sprint and bounce off surfaces, and Toggle, who can shapeshift into becoming a smaller or larger version of himself.

Sadly, it's a criminally underused element of the game. They each get their own introductory levels to showcase their uniqueness in comparison to the regular Sackboy, but are then only used in brief capacity thereafter. Their unique properties add some great variety to the way some levels play out and it would have been nice to see how far this creativity could be stretched. It's a genuine missed opportunity.

Other new gameplay mechanics include the Blink Ball, a gun that fires an orb that can instantly teleport you, and the Boost Boots, which can propel you to higher, previously unreachable, parts of the landscape. The Velociporters, also a new addition, can quickly send you through different layers of the level, and are used creatively in puzzles. Naturally, all of these new toys are available within the creation tool.

I've always taken an apathetic stance towards the creation elements of LBP. That's not the game, that's me. I've just never had the patience to learn how to be good at making levels, and without the ability to share them with anybody due to the lack of any online service, it almost feels like barely worth giving a mention to.

The creativity on display in the Adventure mode levels is still great and the mini-games are inventive and fun. It's a bit buggy at times though. I've been stuck on infinite loading screens, lost Prize Bubbles off the edge of a level and the framerate is still choppy when there's a lot going on at once on screen. These may seem like small niggles, but when you fall through the landscape for no reason half-way through an attempt to ace a level, they become much more viable complaints. I did also manage to play the game in online co-op before the servers were axed, and it was always laggy when another player was in the level with me, even when connected to different people.

In terms of the trophies, this is a medium sized list, containing 32 trophies, including the Platinum, all of which are evenly distributed amongst 3 main areas of the game, starting with the Adventure Mode.

Most of the trophies within the list are earned here. To be precise, 14 of the 32 trophies are achieved through Adventure Mode, which is almost half the list, and these are mainly progression-based.

The Adventure Mode feels shorter than it has in previous titles. There are 20 main levels to complete, and although there are a generous number of additional mini-game levels, the majority of these do not factor into the trophy list, with only a couple required to be beaten for separate trophies. If you want to spend time discovering all the secrets in a level, where you can often find Prize Bubbles and Multiplayer segments, you can easily squeeze around 7-8 hours from the story. 

However, one of the main reasons the Adventure Mode seems shorter, is due to the absence of a trophy relating to the collection of all the Prize Bubbles, which had featured in both previous trophy lists in the series. Without this, there isn't a necessity to explore the entire level, where Prize Bubbles would usually be hidden in harder to reach places. These were also sometimes unavailable first time round, and you'd need a sticker or a tool that you only obtain later, and would therefore have to come back and replay the level. Prize Bubbles also used to be annoying for the fact they were often provided as rewards for beating the Multiplayer aspects of story levels, usually requiring 3 or 4 players locally using the same number of controllers or online with the required amount of people, both of which caused challenges for different reasons.

Not having to worry about collecting all the Prize Bubbles means you can just go through the main path of the level, and can also therefore complete it much faster. There is still a trophy awarded for Acing each level, and this also seemed much easier than before. I remember some tough levels in previous LBP games, yet there's nothing here that gave me a challenge when it came to beating it without dying. 

The "Don't go alone..." trophy, awarded for Completing all the Adventure levels with another Sack Thing is where the path became rocky. I'd originally attempted this trophy when the online element was still accessible, just using the "Dive in" feature to quickly matchmake with another player and beat the level with them. This seemed to be going fairly well, aside the horrendously laggy connection that was a constant throughout, but it seemed like the most viable way to Ace levels and beat them with another player simultaneously.

However, the trophy didn't pop. All 20 levels beaten with different online players, and no trophy. I'd read it was buggy and that the only real solution was to just replay it all over again. So that's exactly what I did, except this time, in local co-op with another controller. I'd beaten all 20 levels with another Sackboy idle throughout and still didn't get my trophy. That's 2 full playthroughs of the Adventure Mode with nothing to show for it.

My next step was to delete the save game data and go for a third run. Ironically, the shortest Adventure Mode in any LBP game was quickly becoming the longest and this summed up my thoughts on the buggy nature of the game. Thankfully though, I didn't need to resort to restarting a new save file. After playing through each level twice I'd noticed that a small handful of them had not recorded a leaderboard score, which was also something I'd read about. Before committing to deletion of my save file, I jumped back into a couple of these levels, and the trophy popped upon completion of one of them and we finally had it.

This was clearly just a little bit buggy, but just to further add to the frustrations, one of the most useful tools for trophy hunters within LBP, has always been the Pins. These would show you tracked progress for certain trophies, and where there were numeric requirements attached to them, you'd also see how much you'd need for a particular trophy. This trophy is tracked here, but for whatever reason, it won't show you how many levels you've beaten with another Sack Thing, so effectively may aswell not be here. Just about summed it all up.

The "A guy called Quest" trophy, awarded for Completing all the Quests in LittleBigPlanet 3 Adventure Mode, requires you to complete a listed set of individual tasks. These are simple requirements, often related to Story levels or Mini-Games, and do not require you to do anything too taxing. In fact, they're fairly easy and some of them are actually just awarded for progression-related milestones tied to reaching certain points in the story.

Unfortunately, the reason they're notable in this particular instance is because 3 of the 15 quests require multiple players to complete, with one of them requiring the maximum total of 4. Whilst it is a positive that you can still complete the quest solo, you will still need 4 separate controllers, and given the lack of online access restricts the route of grouping up with others, you'll need to have 4 controllers specifically for this part only. It's frustrating that it's literally only a single quest that requires this, and this classic LBP stunt has made me somewhat resentful towards the game. I really don't want to dislike you LBP, but you're putting me in a tough spot.

Just when you think you've gotten through the main parts of the game, and realised that any additional peripherals may have been excluded from thought upon realisation that the Prize Bubbles areas are excluded from trophy list requirements, they still somehow find a way to make sure you're forking out for some extra hardware to keep Sony happy. Keep hold of those controllers too if you intend to dive into the DLC - Spoiler, but you're going to need them.

To shake the sour taste that leaves behind, the Popit Puzzles are a refreshing addition - Effectively tutorials on how to use basic and advanced versions of the toolkit, but rather than just show you how to use them, they task you with beating levels by demonstrating that you have a reasonable understanding of them. Slightly more engaging than the typical tutorial, and you can earn trophies for beating and acing both term 1 and term 2 of the Academy, as well as another trophy for "graduating" - Which is effectively just earning the prior 4 trophies related to the Popit Puzzle mode.

The final mode you'll need to explore is the creation mode. This is where the heart and soul of any LBP game is meant to exist, and whilst I've already said it's just not the sort of thing that's ever really interested me, I have always appreciated the levels that other people have spent their time and effort into putting out for others to enjoy.

There are 8 trophies you can earn within the create tool here, and they're all incredibly effortless, to the point where you can achieve them all in less than 10 minutes. This is a far cry from LBP 1, where possibly the most infamous LBP trophy ever existed - To spend 24 active hours in create mode. The significant dilution of the create feature in the trophy list is very welcome, and it's the easiest step within this whole process. Place a few specific items down on the canvas, play around with a couple of level effects and then max out the thermometer with some mass copy and pasting. Job done.

Finally, there are 3 online trophies within the list too, which require access to community levels. They are also incredibly seamless tasks, but do now unfortunately make this Platinum unobtainable if you didn't grab them prior to the closure of the servers. 

LittleBigPlanet 3 is undoubtedly the easiest Platinum in the series thus far. It actually almost drops below the baseline standard for difficulty of 3/10. If it wasn't for the buggy "Don't go it alone..." trophy causing me the frustration that it did, along with some of the general frustrations that make the game a bit of an unenjoyable slog at times then you could very well argue the case for it being one of the easiest in the collection. It can have an entire additional point on the rating for the forced peripherals.

No necessity to collect the Prize Bubbles, a create mode that only requires around 10 minutes of your time and in worst case scenario, you can navigate your way through the required Multiplayer elements, specifically the Adventure Mode, as a solo player controlling more than one Sackboy at once, unlike previous titles that have required 3 or 4 players due to the way these segments were built. It's annoying that the necessity for extra hardware has become a habit for an LBP title though, and realising you'll need 4 controllers is a real "urgh" feeling. A step backwards for the series in every way, including the difficulty of the trophy list.

Notable Trophies -

Don't go alone... - Complete all the Adventure levels with another Sack Thing.
A guy called Quest - Complete all the Quests in LittleBigPlanet 3 Adventure Mode.

Hardest Trophy -

Don't go alone...

Complete all the Adventure levels with another Sack Thing

DLC #198 - Assassin's Creed Origins - The Curse of the Pharaohs

"Would you like to Boost your character to level 45 before you start this DLC?"

Erm - OK? I was already level 44 anyway, but if you insist. After all, there's a trophy contained within this content to reach level 55, so why not?

I would guess the benefit to this offering is to allow much lower levelled players to enjoy the DLC content without having to put the hours into levelling their character up to reach it. 

I personally wouldn't categorise The Curse of the Pharaohs as "must see" content to the point where you absolutely have to make it instantly accessible to all, but it is an improvement on The Hidden Ones, albeit just very slightly.

Desecrated tombs, Spirits rising from the dead and back and forth ventures into the Afterlife. This time, Bayek is called to the city of Thebes, overrun by evil spirits, angered by the theft of artefacts contained within their burial tombs. The city is being terrorised by Pharaohs of the past whose spirits have been resurrected via a curse in order to seek death upon those who have pillaged their tombs of it's riches.

Naturally, Bayek's role is to prevent the curse from spreading, and ultimately do what needs to be done to bring peace upon Egypt again. Also naturally, this will involve a lot of killing. It seems to be the common progression tree for Assassin's Creed story arcs.

Each of the Pharaohs you encounter terrorising Egypt are significant historical figures of the past, and each of them will need to be banished into the Afterlife in order to lift the curse for good. These new environments are welcome for you to explore in great depth, and each of them reflects on the Pharoah they're attached too. Both the Pharaohs and their relevant Afterlife are the best parts of this DLC package and these new parts of the map finally look like you're exploring completely new areas of the game, and don't feel like they've just been subject to bland copy and paste work, which was my biggest disappointment of The Hidden Ones DLC.

New enemy types await. Aside the Pharoah's themselves, new enemies include Cultists, Giant Scorpions and Mummies. The addition of Star Shards as a crafting material now also allow you to further upgrade your equipment to new strengths once enough of them have been collected and there are some shiny new Legendary weapons to get your hands on too.

It's a better package than The Hidden Ones, but it's still far from perfect, and the main faults I encountered with this content reared their head when I was pursing the trophies.

The package comes with 6 trophies in total. There is a secret trophy awarded upon completion of the Main Quest arc, which contains 5 quests. There's nothing really outside of the ordinary here and the primary focus of the story is stopping the curse sweeping across Thebes by taking down the identified Pharaohs whose spirits walk the land. Each of them put up a tough fight, but if you're well versed with the combat system, they shouldn't take too long to dispatch. Most of my deaths were my own fault, mainly attempting to over-extend attacks in order to finish fights quicker and leaving myself exposed to devastatingly powerful combos which will instantly kill you.

However, the pacing of the game is off here. This content was going absolutely fine. It was nicely paced, fights felt fair and there wasn't a feeling that I was ever behind the curve. Then suddenly, I hit a brick wall with the difficulty scaling. Enemies suddenly became overpowered very quickly as they scale faster than you in terms of levelling, making fights unnecessarily challenging. I understand that the intention in this is to make the player take a break from the main quests and invest some time into levelling Bayek further via side content, but I just felt aggreged about having to do that given how dull the side content in this game is. This is my biggest criticism of the package.

There's a lot of exploration and fetch-questing too. Probably a bit too much for my personal liking. You seem to be scouring a building for clues every other objective, and I think it slows the pace of the game down way too much in it's frequency.

The other trophies outside of this are at least fairly straight-forward. There is a Gold trophy awarded for completing the 5 Serqet locations, which you more than likely won't be able to do until you're close to level 55 anyway. The Scorpions present at these locations that you'll need to kill are all level 58, and will make light work of you anywhere south of level 55, but they're easy enough to take down once you're of a strong enough level.

The importance of levelling has been mentioned a handful of times already, and it's mainly down to one trophy;

Higher Power - Reach level 55 (The Curse of the Pharaohs)

First issue. For what reason do you need to raise the level cap a whole 10 levels from 45 to 55 when this clearly exceeds the amount of experience the main questline gives you? I'd only just reached level 51 once I'd beaten every story mission and had to turn to alternative solutions in order to earn the remaining amount of required experience to hit level 55. Why are you pushing me to complete loads of mundane side missions and locations. Again. 

Second issue. It just takes far too long to reach level 55. As stated, I was at the beginning of level 51 once I'd beaten the main questline, and from this point, you need to accumulate roughly 140k of experience points to reach level 55.

If you visit the Bureau of the Hidden Ones in Memphis in the main game, there is a vendor who sells Tablets of Knowledge. These objects cost 1,000 coins, and in return, will grant you 1,000 experience points. A great way to easily boost your level. Providing you have the money. Which I didn't really have. After selling all the surplus in my inventory, I barely had enough to purchase myself an entire level. What's my option from here?

Grinding out the remaining 100k experience points on side quests and conquering locations. It was the onion topping on the ice cream sundae. I have somehow found myself in a position where I've ended the Origins DLC experience in the exact same way I had ended the Platinum experience - With an element of post-game grinding necessary to achieve my end goal. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

Granted, it wasn't anywhere near as laborious as the "Old Habits" trophy in the main game, but it just felt like an extension of the same activities and quests, and here I was repeating them all over again. This process took roughly an additional 5/6 hours to finally reach level 55. It made me wish I'd kept more items back in my inventory to take advantage of the Tablets of Knowledge.

The DLC doesn't change my overall opinion on Origins. The refresh is exactly what the series needed, and it's still exciting to see what this looks like moving forward, but the DLC is very average when you balance the pros and cons. This package is slightly better than The Hidden Ones, if only for the fact you actually see some different environments that don't look like direct extracts from the main game's map, but is soured by poor scaling and an unnecessary grind to the finish line.

Platinum #138 - Worms W.M.D

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

As far as strategy games go, Worms will never be the biggest dog in the fight. After all, it's an old, tried and tested formula that Team 17 has stuck to for decades, and why not? 

No matter what form it's ever been presented in, it's consistently good, hearty fun built around a very simple turn-based concept. I was actually surprised to discover that this is the fourth Worms Platinum to grace the collection - A testament to everything I've just said. I've been coming back for more over the years and barely realised it.

Worms W.M.D doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel. I've played Worms Ultimate Mayhem, which was a 3D dosage of Worms. However, W.M.D takes us back to the roots of 2D canvassing.

Each game begins with each player placing their team of Worms strategically across the landscape, and then you have 20 minutes to eliminate the other players worms before they eliminate yours. The winner is the one who fulfils this task first. I told you it was simple, but you knew that anyway because you've surely played Worms before, right?

There are different modes to the game that add interesting twists to the core gameplay, and these are wrapped up within the trophy list, and we'll visit these one by one, but Worms has always been such a charming offering. It benefits from such a simple concept to the point that it doesn't feel the need to do anything drastic in the fear of becoming stale. Team 17 know full well that Worms is loved for what it is.

Combat is intuitive and easy to learn. The plethora of weapons on offer are diverse, fun and at times, just a little bit batshit crazy. Even just cycling through the huge armoury, just to see what they all do, is a hell of a lot of fun in itself, and the game will give you ample opportunities to experiment with it's impressive arsenal.

However, it's not just about brute force. The tactical element of the game is just as important to master. From the positioning of your worms on the landscape, navigating terrain and understanding how to reach advantageous positions to both attack and defend is just as important. Amongst all the dynamite, bullets and exploding sheep, this is still a strategy game at heart, and your success will be determined by outthinking your opponent and your ability to always be two steps ahead.

A shout out to the design team too. Graphics which have maintained their cartoony charm that has been a crown in the jewel of the series over the years and voice lines that are witty and charming. The customisation options on offer for your worms is vast and really draws out some personality to the in-game character models - Right down to selecting the tombstone displayed on-screen when one of your worms faces is shotgunned into the ground.

Worms is exactly how I remember it and it's a prime example of a game that doesn't need wholesale changes to still present an engaging package to it's audience - and that is a rare occurrence. It feels like games are constantly under more and more pressure to adapt and implement change, but Worms pivots on that and sticks to it's guns to serve up more of the same turn-based, 2D death.

Regarding the trophies, this is a medium-sized list, coming in at 30 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy.

These span across a variety of different modes within the game, including the Training Academy, Single Player Campaign, Challenge mode and finally, the online Multiplayer.

As you'd expect, the Training Academy is a breeze, and you'll learn the ropes of most of the basic, and some of the more advanced gameplay strategies, but as a mode intended to help you cut your teeth, it's very straight-forward. The overall list is very Gold-heavy, and you can collect 4 Gold trophies purely through obtaining Gold medals on each of the 20 Training exercises, so this particular mode is heavily incentivised within the trophy list.

As a more seasoned Worms player, I jumped straight into the online Multiplayer component of the game, rather than continue forth with the rest of the Single Player aspects. This contains the most challenging trophy in the list, and there's a lot to say about the online element of W.M.D.

The "Bleating Ranker" trophy, awarded for Reaching Sheep Rank, is a tough battle to the top, driven by a regressive levelling system where you'll be rewarded with points for wins, and punished with deductions for losses. This isn't a standard levelling journey, which usually just allows you to level up via experience points, and losing rarely matters. Every win counts, and so does every defeat, and the amount of points you gain or lose is relative to your oppositions ranking.

Sheep Rank isn't the highest rank in the game though, which is something worth noting, though it isn't that far from the top. You'll begin in Prod, and then advance through Girder, Fire Punch, Uzi, Shotgun and Bazooka - Before eventually reaching Sheep, which is the beginning of Gold tier. The amount of points you earn for a win is determined by your opponents rank relative to your own. If they're at the bottom in Prod, you'll earn significantly less points for beating them than if they were in say, Bazooka, which is higher and will earn you more points. 

The catch is, if you lose to players of a lower rank than you, your points deductions will be heavier, and you can easily lose 20-30 points after being beaten by lower ranking players, and this is where you'll really see the detrimental impact of the regressive levelling system. You ultimately need to achieve consistency, and there are direct parallels to that of Motorstorm : Pacific Rift, which also adopted the same method for it's competitive online mode. This was the last game I played where I experienced a regressive levelling system, and whilst it makes things fiercely competitive, it also comes with a lot more pressure when you know that the stakes are higher.

You can earn bonus points, which massively help you cover losses. Your first win of any given day will net you 5 bonus points, and every time you achieve a winning streak of 3 or more games, you'll earn an additional 10 bonus points per win, which can significantly scale your levelling progression. Sheep Rank will require a net total of 600 points, so you'll need to polish up your skills to a reasonably good standard.

There's also no skill-based matchmaking either. This can either be a blessing or a curse. At this point in the game's cycle, you tend to run into either new players at Prod rank or experienced professionals at Armageddon rank. I'd rate my ability fairly modestly, and what I mean by that is, I'd generally be fairly comfortable against new players, but have my ass handed to me by Armageddon players. The Armageddon players are good. Really good. It was rare to run into people that sat anywhere between this scale, which made for a very feast or famine experience. The positive thing about running into Armageddon players is the fact that you don't lose many points, because you're significantly lower ranked in comparison, and by contrast, you can really reap the rewards for knocking them off with some big points.

These little boosts are not only good for points progression, but confidence too. However, it can be a slippery slope if you're constantly matched up against stronger players. Some sessions would actually leave me down on points, and I had to give up early in order to prevent myself getting into a heavy slump of losses. It's important to know when to fold them sometimes.

Just a few more things to call out; The progress tracking is a bit glitchy. For some strange reason, you have to manually save your levelling progress by hitting a "Save" button after each game, otherwise you'll reset back down to the very start of Prod rank when you next log on. On one occasion, I just randomly lost an entire rank, despite saving my progress. Frustrating.

Finally, there is a restricted weapon set in Ranked play, meaning you cannot access around half of the entire arsenal in the game. It's important to know which weapons and tools are worth crafting, and when to craft them. Using resources effectively is imperative in Ranked, and the best players will know exactly how to manage their resources effectively. Jet Packs, Bunker Busters, Demon Strikes, Poison Grenades and Girth Girders were all personal favourites, depending on the situation.

According to the in-game stats screen, I played 314 ranked games with a 41.72% win ratio. This equates to around 131 wins and 183 defeats. It's painful to realise that I played 183 games online and not a single one of them ever counted for anything. I always felt like I learned from every defeat, but in reality, they just took me further away from my end goal.

The good news is, it's mostly all downhill from this point onwards. The worst that this list has to throw at you is behind you if you've finally reached Sheep Rank. Just two more modes to beat, starting with the Single Player Campaign.

The "That Camp was no Pain" trophy, awarded for Completing the Campaign, requires you to beat all 30 Campaign missions, with a main target requirement needed to pass each mission. This isn't quite the tough part though. The main objective is fairly easy to fulfil, if you purely just want to advance beyond the mission.

The "Billy No Mates" trophy, awarded for Completing all the Sub Goals, is where the Campaign actually gets a little bit tricky. On top of the primary objective for each mission, there are 3 additional sub goals for fulfilling some smaller tasks within the mission. These range from defeating all enemy worms on the map, collecting a certain number of crates, defeating worms using specific weaponry and finishing the mission with a certain level of health - Among other things.

All of these requirements need to be completed in a single mission, including the primary objective, and cannot be spread across multiple attempts. My biggest issue here is the Worms AI. They have a frustrating variance of unpredictability in their behaviour, which can directly scupper your progress towards Sub Goals.

To give a specific example, there's a mission that requires you to complete it with at least one worm having 180 health. You only have 2 worms on the map, and there are 2 health crates in positions that cannot make them collectible in one turn. After working out how to access the crate with the required number of turns to reach it, the enemy worm standing next to it would just decide to fire off a Bazooka 2 yards away from itself and destroy the health crate. Mission over, 15 minutes of work undone and a pending restart.

On the opposite end of the scale, another mission required me to make sure I ended the mission with at least 50 health to the vital worm. Believing it was well protected in a building, and witnessing the enemy team consistently use the "Skip Go" utility, I didn't think there was any imminent danger. Until one worm randomly decided to turn around, fire a bazooka upwards, and use the wind direction to land a rocket with pinpoint precision onto a barrel above the building that triggered a chain reaction of explosions that devasted the worm I was specifically protecting as per the requirements of the Sub Goal. Mission over, 15 minutes of work undone and a pending restart.

You can literally go from seeing pure suicide to the wildest trickshot accuracy from turn to turn, and it just feels like it's only that way purely to add a guaranteed blocker to the achievement of simple side goals. It's some of the wonkiest AI I've ever seen in a game, and these specific examples occurred on at least a dozen occasions and made the Campaign longer and more frustrating to complete than it perhaps should have been.

Finally, there is also the Challenge mode. Within the Campaign levels, there are 10 wanted posters to collect which unlock the challenges available in this mode.

Within these scenarios, you have a find a specific way to defeat a boss worm, and only have a couple of weapons at your disposal. It's designed to be a mode of logic. The route to success isn't always immediately obvious, and may require you to think slightly outside of the box. It's a neat little addition to the game, but they're not overly demanding and don't require too much elaborate thinking, though you will unlock another Gold trophy for your efforts.

Outside of this, there are trophies awarded for a handful of kill related tasks, mostly focused on the range of vehicles available within W.M.D. These include earning a certain number of kills with the Mech, Helicopter and Tank, and can just be farmed within local Multiplayer with a single controller. I had actually made really good progress towards the 80 kills for each during the Multiplayer journey, so it didn't take me long to finish the rest off with some casual custom matches.

If you removed the Multiplayer requirements from this list, it probably barely pushes the mid-way point of the difficulty scale. The Campaign is generally fine to handle, minus some frustrating rubber-banding AI that has a habit of unfairly handicapping you, but the regressive levelling system is the true star of the show. It's brutally unforgiving towards anybody that's unable to show progressive improvement. Armageddon players are merciless, and have been playing this game way longer than the average player just trying to reach Sheep Rank. 

If you've seen anybody with this list on their profile, and they're missing the Platinum trophy, this'll be the reason why. A solid Platinum that'll sort the men from the worms.

Notable Trophies -

Bleating Ranker - Reach Sheep Rank.
That Camp was no Pain - Complete the Campaign.
Billy No Mates - Complete all the Sub Goals.

Hardest Trophy -

Bleating Ranker

Reach Sheep Rank

DLC #197 - Call of Duty : WWII - War Machine

After the welcome reprieve through United Front - the DLC pack that sent us back to the roots of good, old-fashioned Zombie slaying - it's somewhat apt that the final dosage of WWII zombies comes in the form of the most complicated and challenging Easter Egg yet.

War Machine adds the Shadowed Throne Zombies map - A bombed out area of central Berlin, with various points of interest, including a war museum, theatre, church and a hidden Courtyard that acts as a focal point to the Easter Egg journey.

From an aesthetic perspective, it's my favourite map out of the 3 larger maps across all DLC packs, and the fact you get transported up into the Zeppelin for the boss fight is a neat way to extend the variety of the map.

There are also a healthy selection of new weapons added to the game too, mostly focused on melee. You'll need to acquire all of them as per steps towards completion of the Easter Egg, including an Axe, Dagger, Baseball Bat and Blade - all of which you'll need the upgraded versions of. They're all incredibly overpowered in their upgraded form, and you can have alot of fun deep into the run by using the range of new melee weapons available across the map.

For something more conventional, the new Wunderbuss allows you to harvest ammunition with it's alternate fire by firing a bolt into a zombie to drain their body. This charges a prolonged power beam which gradually wears them away with it's primary fire option. Another fun weapon to use against the hordes, and just like the melee weapons, a critical component to completing the Easter Egg.

Speaking of which, the Easter Egg for War Machine is the most difficult yet, mainly down to the fact the final boss - the Stadtjager - is absolutely nails. Some of the steps along the way are a bit funky too, but if you're in the business of being carried through the Easter Egg by seasoned Zombies players, this part doesn't matter as much.

Despite being carried through, the boss battle is still a tough fight, and requires everyone to  contribute. The other maps bosses were nowhere near as health-rich, and you also still have to contend with hordes of Zombies from whichever wave you entered the fight on amidst the boss battle, just to further the complications.

The pack comes with 10 new trophies. The standout trait for most of these trophies has always been the fact you can tandem them up with each other and unlock the majority of them in a single run if you're tactful in the way you strategise your approach. You can technically adopt the same approach here, but it's a lot more challenging, due to the fact there are some very specific tasks that are best focused on one at a time.

There's a big emphasis on the melee weapons within the trophy list, with trophies tied to feats awarded for reaching round 15 using only melee weapons, obtaining the blade without firing a gunshot, killing 250 Zombies with the blade, in the museum, in a single match and killing a Wustling with each of the melee weapons in a single match.

These will require deep progress into the run. Wustlings only appear from wave 11 onwards, and you'll need the upgraded version of each melee weapon to kill them too. Obtaining the blade is one of the final steps to the Easter Egg, which will also require some deep progress. Not to mention the exact specification of reaching wave 15 with melee weapons, which is best done as a run on it's own.

Throw in the ever-present Easter Egg, which again, was tackled in a separate run, and I ended up running this map 5 times to cover each of the trophies within the list. A stark contrast to the other packs, which only required a couple of runs to grab everything I needed. They're not difficult tasks when you play with veteran Zombies players, but they have the potential for underlying challenge if you're attempting them solo or in groups without the aid of competent players.

In all honesty, there are a lot of parallels you can draw up between these DLC packs. It feels like I've been writing the same review each time. They're all heavily focused on Easter Eggs and the elements of such, and my approach to beat them all has been exactly the same - Rely on other players and mostly take a back seat. I'm just relieved I can shelf it all for good at this point.

DLC #196 - Dirt 5 - Energy

If there were awards given out for doing the absolute bare minimum to prolong the shelf life of a game, Dirt 5 would be a clear front-runner.

I don't say that lightly. Dirt has been one of my favourite franchises of all time, but I did express my concerns about the drop off this series has gone through in my Platinum Difficulty review with it's latest instalment.

DLC can often bring about an opportunity for titles to redeem themselves, but the Energy pack raises more questions than it does solve the flaws of the main game.

Here's the summarisation of what you get in one sentence. A total of 4 new cars, 25 new career events and a sense of confusion that the audacity to slap a price on this even existed in the first place.

There are no new tracks or environments, nor any new race types or modes. It's essentially just an extension of the main career you've already been through if you have acquired the Platinum trophy. The only new additions are a couple of new cars added to the existing catalogue. It's so uninspired and shows no desire to put in any level of reasonable effort to offer something genuinely exciting to the player. As a long-standing Dirt fan, it really is disappointing to see such a lack of passion towards producing exciting content for a game that dropped the standards of the series.

In regards to the trophies, there are 5 on offer here, which mostly span across the handful of new career events you have available to progress through.

The main goal is the "Extra Energy" trophy, awarded for earning all 75 stamps available in Energy. This spans across the 25 new careers events. In the main game's list, Stamps for events were awarded for in-race objectives, and there was no pressure to actually win the event. Within this DLC pack, Stamps are now awarded for placement in races, so this time round, you will need to win all 25 events in order to collect all 75 stamps. This is a big change in comparison to the main game.

However, even on Hard difficulty, it's still fairly easy to win races. A small handful of events took a couple of tries at worst, but the majority I found could be beaten on the first attempt.

You'll unlock the other trophies as you progress towards earning all 75 stamps, and the only trophy you'll potentially need to go out of your way for is the "Full Charge" trophy, awarded for Driving 30 miles in the Porsche Taycan. For me, this was just a matter of replaying a Sprint event over multiple times until I reached 30 miles. A fitting trophy for a piece of generally uninspired content.

You can unlock all 5 trophies within 4-5 hours. It's just a shame that is feels very shoehorned. Even the trophy tile artwork is duplicated, which is essentially the cherry on top.

DLC #195 - Hitman 3 - Hitman 2

The chronology of Hitman is actually way more confusing than I initially gave it credit for.

Whilst attempting to grasp the understanding of how Hitman 1 and Hitman 2 are linked, I'd led myself down a rabbit hole that had me reading all about how the 3 modern Hitman games are interwoven and the mission timeline has you constantly jumping between all 3 of them. Also, it turns out Hitman : Blood Money is not Hitman 2 either, which seems like an obvious oversight, but that's just a confession to how confused it all got me at one point.

In simpler terms though, Hitman 2 is the successor to Hitman 1. They're both included as separate DLC packs within Hitman 3. I think the original element to this game that confused me was the final DLC pack, titled Hitman 2 Expansion. We don't need to go into detail about that right now, but I originally thought it was a continuation of the Hitman 2 story, when it just turns out to be made up of a few additional missions that exist separate to the main story. DLC within DLC, if you will.

However, despite the fact that they are different games, Hitman 2 is identical to Hitman 1. Naturally, you'll visit different locations, tackle a brand new set of missions and experience a different story, but the template for the foundations that lie around all of this are practically the same.

The story consists of 7 different missions, and the 6 locations you'll visit on this occasion include New Zealand, USA (twice), Colombia, India, the Andaman Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean.

I said in the Hitman 1 review that the strongest suit of the Hitman games has always been it's brilliantly creative level design, and Hitman 2 maintains a high standard of this, with every mission offering an array of choice on dispatching your targets. It should be testified to that a game that barely changes it's template formula can still offer such extensive variation between 2 games, but the depth of the level design is so good, it helps to maintain a fresh-feeling approach each time you jump straight back into a level.

Mission Stories return. They're still a little bit too keen to hold your hand through levels with the amount of information they reveal about your targets and subsequent opportunities to kill them, which was my biggest criticism of Hitman 1, but they're still mostly engaging, and the cathartic feeling they give you leading up to the dispatch of a target is ever-present.

Most people would feel the necessity to be critical of a game that doesn't really make any significant changes - Especially for a sequel - It's just more of the same again, and I don't think that's a bad thing in any regard.

The similarities also extend to the trophy list. Again, there are 13 on offer here, and the trophies follow the same template as they did in Hitman 1. There are 6 trophies awarded for beating 6 of the missions you'll progress through on any difficulty, and a further 6 for achieving level mastery of each too, which totals 12 of the 13 trophies.

Interestingly, the "Shadows in the Water" level is excluded from the trophy list entirely, though you'll still need to beat it to progress to the final level of the game. I imagine this to be down to limitations on trophy points quota - 13 trophies is alot for a single piece of DLC content, and it's possible there were challenges in meeting this, which meant a level had to be sacrificed along the way.

Level mastery works in the exact same way as it did before. You're provided a number of various challenges that you have to complete within the level. Completion of these will award experience points, and these experience points go towards the mastery of the level. You'll need to reach level 20 for all the levels bar 1, for which you only need to reach level 5.

There isn't a need to go into much detail about the level mastery system. My views on an unchanged system remain exactly the same as they did before. I do still like the way that setting the level target to 20 ensures you complete the vast majority of the level challenges - The brilliance of Hitman's level designs and possible outcomes deserve to be explored to their fullest extent, and this is exactly what the level mastery trophies promote. Good implementation of longevity that doesn't just feel like grind-padding.

I stuck to Professional difficulty throughout. This isn't the hardest difficulty level, but it's still enough to make you think about your approach and always maintain consciousness of your surroundings. Without the trophies driving a necessity to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, Professional is a nicely balanced medium.

The remaining trophy requires you to complete The Last Yardbird Sniper mission on Silent Assassin. This is fairly simple, and the Sniper missions will become more prominent later on.

As briefly mentioned, there is a final DLC pack for an expansion to Hitman 2 to go through, but reliving these first 2 episodes in full with the modern facelift of level mastery applied to them has made me excited to go back through Hitman 3 again at some point.

DLC #194 - Call of Duty : WWII - United Front

For every occasion I've reviewed a Call of Duty zombies experience for being something it never used to be, the hope of ever seeing the good old days faded further into the distance.

This might just be an anomaly, but for at least the duration of this journey, the zombies experience I fell in love with was back.

Sure, United Front still has the Easter Egg rigmarole, but this isn't the primary focus, and we finally have the purist's answer to zombies after a lengthy absence of the original formula, stripped down to it's simplest form with the emphasis on pure survival. Just like it used to be.

You're taken on a journey called the Tortured Path. This is made up of 3 separate maps. They're smaller in scale than the maps present within other DLC packs, which typically include just a single, larger map, with loads of hidden secrets and complex routes to flesh it out and amplify it's scale. The maps within United Front are simple and easy to understand. The first map is Bodega Cervantes - A bombed out European village. The second map takes place on a U-Boat called the U.S.S. Mount Olympus and the third map is within a mystical cavern called the Altar of Blood. There's no mystery box, no doors to open that expand the rest of the map and the objective is simple - You've got to outlast 11 waves until you reach the end and excavate, progressing into the next map. If you die, you go back to the beginning.

Most of the waves are just a matter of surviving the hordes of zombies that are thrown at you in classic zombies fashion, with a little bit of added variation. Every third wave will be an objective wave, which will require you to fulfil a certain task around the map. This could be to fix a certain number of repair points, kill a specific number of zombies within an allotted time limit or defuse a series of bombs before they explode. Wave 10 will always be the boss battle for the given map you're tackling and wave 11 will be an extraction wave where you have to fend off a final horde until you escape.

It's the classic zombies survival experience with a slight twist here and there, and it's exactly what I've always wanted zombies to be. Some of the more modern zombies players who are used to Easter Eggs and complicated maps with loads of hidden secrets may find it a bit flat in comparison, and I know horde-esque modes don't always land their mark as a very tried and tested formula. This is what I've missed about zombies though and I found it genuinely enjoyable with the heaps of nostalgia that came flooding back. Give me this sort of content over Easter Eggs every single day of the week.

The pack includes 10 new trophies, and this is an experience that will require a blend of lengthy time commitment as well as skill. You'll be able to earn a couple of easier individual trophies for beating each of the 3 maps for the first time, as well as completing the Easter Egg. This wouldn't normally be categorised as "easy", but the Easter Egg in United Front is slightly different, as it continuously spans across all 3 maps, with a number of steps required to fulfil on each one.

However, you can just load up the third and final map in a custom game and only complete a third of the Easter Egg to earn the trophy for it, so there's a workaround that allows you to significantly reduce the effort required to unlock the trophy.

The challenge here comes from the remaining trophies;

Over Engineered - In The Tortured Path, collect 25 Engineered Parts.
Extra Tortured Path - In The Tortured Path, successfully escape from every map without using Blitz.

The "Over Engineered" trophy, awarded for collecting 25 Engineered Parts, is part of a small handful of trophies that will require a fairly lengthy grind. It's important to note the others briefly, which are the "B.A.T. Elite" trophy, awarded for reaching the max Bureau ranking, which is level 50, and the "Ride of the Century" trophy, awarded for completing 100 objective waves.

However, I had unlocked these trophies before I had earned 25 Engineered Parts, so even though you can very easily group these trophies into a collective, there is a still a stand out here. Each map culminates with a boss fight on wave 10, and once the boss is felled, an engineer part will be dropped for a specific gun that boosts it's attributes. This trophy just requires you to do this 25 times.

Firstly, as a minimum, this means you'll need to progress through 261 total waves across the 3 maps. It doesn't matter how you do it, so if you wish to purely grind out the first map, which is regarded to be the easiest of the 3, then this is fine. There's no danger of drop duplication, so it's good to know that every time you beat a boss, you'll be granted a unique part that you don't have yet.

The big challenge is understanding that you won't always reach the end of each map with every run, and the biggest dose of nostalgia I got from this experience was the reminder that things can go wrong in hundreds of different ways when you play zombies like a true horde mode. Whether it's incompetent teammates who you have to carry, challenging objective waves (some are definitely more favourable than others) or being downed and losing all your blitz at critical moments - These are things that will define the success of the run. They'll also be the main reasons you'll fail.

However, a typical strategy can be applied to all 3 maps which will significantly help, and this is as follows;

- Charge up the first battery for the Ubersprechen in Round 1.

- Accumulate 2000 points to purchase an SMG in Round 2.

- Accumulate 4000 points to purchase 2 Blitz power-ups - Laufenblitz (increased speed and stamina) and Kugelblitz (increased weapon damage)

- Charge up the second battery for the Ubersprechen in Round 4.

- Charge up the third battery for the Ubersprechen in Round 7.

- Accumulate 10,000 points and upgrade 2 weapons via the now fully charged Ubersprechen between Round 7 and the boss fight in Round 10 - This can be any 2 weapons, but there are a couple of very good starter weapons (M1 Carbine, 9MM Sap and SVT) that can help with the boss fight.

This approach is fairly fool proof, especially if you're intent on just grinding out the first map to earn all 25 parts. If you're confident in your ability, you can run this tactic solo, but unless you have some spare self-revives, this is risky, as you won't have the option to revive in the event of a fluke death. Objective waves are also much harder to do solo too, such as the repair objective, which is designed to allow one person to fix a repair point whilst at least one other player defends them. I would mostly run public lobbies with randoms, purely to avoid this, but the double-edged sword is being at the mercy of public zombies players, and the majority of them just aren't playing towards the same goals.

Outside of general incompetence, others tend to display behaviour contrary to your strategy. Running around from wave 8 onwards without upgraded weapons, refusing to purchase Blitz, not leaving zombies alive at the end of the wave to re-group if necessary. It can be frustrating and doesn't allow for any continuity to develop. I had 18,961 kills by the time I'd achieved 25 Engineered parts. I'm not sure how that translates in terms of total games played, or accumulated time, as both aren't recorded by the game, but that feels like a hell of alot of death to collect just 25 parts.

The fact I'd already earned the previously mentioned trophies for hitting level 50 and completing 100 objective waves is probably the best way to measure the success of this task. As much as I love getting stuck into an experience that gives me old school zombies vibes, even this began to feel like a slog eventually.

The "Extra Tortured Path" trophy, awarded for successfully escaping every map without Blitz, is where the challenge of skill comes in. Blitz is effectively the equivalent of what perks used to be in previous iterations of zombies. They're purchasable from stations around each map for a varying amount of points and will grant you powers. They're a fundamental part of the strategy for defeating the boss on each map, so removing this in light of a separate trophy requirement is a big issue.

For me personally, the only real necessities are Laufenblitz and Kugelblitz, which increase your speed/stamina and gun damage respectively. Schnellblitz, which quickens reload times, is probably the only other recommendation I'd make if you have the points to purchase it, but not as imperative as the former.

However, for this trophy, you'll need to clear all 3 maps without any Blitz assistance whatsoever. The first 2 maps are generally fine. You'll need at least a competent partner though, and doing this trophy solo just isn't viable, in my opinion. However, providing you can recruit someone, the first 2 maps are fairly straight-forward, but the final map notches this challenge up ten-fold. This is mainly down to the Guardian, the boss for the final map, and his unique ability to regenerate health.

There are some general problems you'll run into without the ability to purchase Blitz;

Your weapons will become noticeably and significantly weaker without Kugelblitz, right up until the point you can upgrade them via the Ubersprechen in wave 7. Even with upgraded weapons, you'll still notice a drop off in power for your weapons without the Kugelblitz ability. This will make the run tougher as enemies become stronger and more likely to resist damage, which will also include the final boss. This is where the correct weapon choice becomes important, and I mentioned above some really strong starter weapons that are worth holding onto and upgrading, providing you can reach wave 7 without dying.

As a direct knock-on impact to this, you'll also be on the run much more, as you frantically attempt to escape enemies. Without Laufenblitz, the small confines of the maps add an extra layer of challenge, as it becomes very easy to hit pinch points and get trapped in tighter spaces, particularly if you're struggling to control the numbers of the horde. The limitations to your stamina and speed will start to conspire against you, and you'll probably go down way more from being engulfed by larger groups.

Even on the first 2 maps, you'll experience teething issues with both of these revelations, and it may require some practice before you beat them. You'll also need a skilled and competent team, so make sure you're driving this forward with like-minded individuals.

Even then, you're still to reach the toughest part of this trophy. The final map. The preliminary stages leading up to the final boss are mostly the same for all 3 maps. Battle through to wave 7, upgrade your weapons and continue to push through the latter stages. The Guardian is a different beast though. His ability to flee from battle and self-heal is incredibly problematic, and the bosses from the previous 2 maps do not hold this challenge.

Even with 4 players, we struggled to take him down. At the same time, you're battling against both waves of regular zombies interrupting the battle, as well as the timer that continues to tick down, even if he manages to heal himself back up. Sometimes we'd run out of time, sometimes we'd just get overwhelmed and die to the horde.

To compound the pain, each run is somewhere in the region of 20-25 minutes, so there's alot of progress washed away for every defeat. Even upgrading some of the better weapons wasn't enough - Every time the Guardian senses himself on the back foot, he'll flee to regenerate his health, and it can literally take just one instance of this to lose a battle. It is a genuine game-changer, and the complications of someone going down means you have one less person dealing damage to the boss, and then perhaps one less person who has to go and revive that person, then the horde can very easily take control. It can spiral out of hand very quickly.

I actually don't think there's a concrete winning strategy. As long as everyone is committed to the cause and has 2 decent weapons upgraded, you just need to hope you can overcome the hordes and get a bit of luck along the way. Some people have reported that you can kill the Guardian before he has a chance to flee and regenerate his health, but I never personally experienced it. In every attempt, he would get away for a healing opportunity at least once, and 90% of the time, that would be enough to end the run.

It should also be mentioned, there is a heavy over-reliance on your teammates doing their bit. If someone goes down, the risk percentage of failure sky rockets, and that's tough to take when it's not you going down. That's not to say it was never me, but it's rough when you're not the one responsible for failure.

One final note; There is another trophy for defeating the Guardian solo, which seems even more daunting. However, you're allowed to use Blitz for this and I managed to do this on my second attempt, which should add some better perspective to the challenge presented by this trophy. I couldn't even put a number of how many attempts it took to beat the final map without Blitz.

I can say with confidence that this is the toughest DLC pack within WWII. The assistance I've had with Easter Egg trophies up to this point has been nothing short of exceptional, but even without it, I still feel they wouldn't have been anywhere near as difficult as the Tortured Path.

The grind is one thing. Reaching maximum rank, completing 100 objective waves, and finally, in my case at least, obtaining 25 Engineered parts, will require a reasonable level of time commitment, all culminating in having to beat all 3 maps without the help of Blitz, which will push your skill and ability to work as a team to the maximum.

Having found the zombies experience fairly flat on the whole since World at War, the shift here was an unexpected pleasantry, packed with challenge to overcome. Which is way better than just striving to be carried through Easter Eggs by more experienced players.