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.

Platinum #137 - Crash Team Rumble

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 2/10

Just 9 months into the life cycle of the game, it was officially announced by Activision that there would be no further support for Crash Team Rumble.

As a consequence, you're left with a product that is ultimately hurt by this decision and left a little bit exposed for it's lack of depth and variety.

That isn't a fault of the game. The long term vision would have been to continue to support the foundations with regular content updates to flesh it out and broaden the experience for the user. The decision to leave it hung out to dry just gives you a very simple concept that struggles to keep you engaged, and given the overall standard of recent Crash Bandicoot titles, this turns out to be a bit of a flop.

Crash Team Rumble is a 4 on 4 Multiplayer beat-em-up experience where both teams compete against each other to collect Wumpa fruit around the map and deposit it into their teams respective bank. You can collect Wumpa fruit scattered around the map and can also prevent the opposition from collecting it through attacking other players. The first team to bank 2000 Wumpa fruit wins the game.

If it seems like a simple concept, you'd be right. There are no other variations to the game in competitive mode, and this is where the prematurely dropped support hurts it the most. Whether they had plans to include different game modes post-launch will probably remain a mystery, but the fact you only have one way to play this game makes it stale and boring, and will hurt it's longevity.

There are also only 13 different playable characters to choose from, split across 3 different character classes. Scorers primary role is to collect fruit, Blockers primary role is to defend the bank and Boosters primary role is to capture relic points to increase fruit collection bonus. The usual cast you'd expect to see are all present, and each of them are given their own unique weapons and move-sets, but the shallow roster is also another big detriment to the depth of the game. 

I do also find it a bit peculiar that the roster includes the lesser known likes of Catbat, Ripto and even Spyro the Dragon - who isn't even from the same franchise - where there are obvious omissions such as Papu Papu, Pinstripe and Tiny Tiger. Again, I appreciate there may have been plans to add these characters to flesh out the roster at some point down the line, but it still hurts the image of the game to not have some big characters present.

The strongest part of the game is definitely the selection of maps on offer. There are 14 in total, which is a reasonable amount. They're all based on classic Crash Bandicoot environments, and all come with their own mechanics that add interesting dynamics to matches. Aside from Wumpa fruit, which is always the primary objective, you can also collect relics, which can be used to activate power-ups within the map to support you and your team, and these can often tip the balance of a game instantly, adding a tactical edge at all times.

Activate Gulp in Artisans Arena and watch him rain fireballs down onto your enemies or trigger the giant Wumpa bat in Bogged Down and protect it whilst it carries bonus fruit directly to your bank. Multiple different points of interest are present on every map, and they can all influence the outcome of a game to the point where tactics play a big role in the difference between victory and defeat. This is definitely the strongest suit of the game, and you can see the amount of effort and creativity put into the arenas you'll fight on.

The combat is satisfactory. As mentioned, each character is fleshed out with it's own move-set and they all handle differently depending on who you're using and the abilities they come with. It's nothing to wax lyrical about, but it's functional, easy to learn and you won't take long to settle on your favourites. The class system works well, and although it can be frustrating playing with people who largely ignore the roles of their characters, that isn't a fault of the game.

However, the gaps left behind by the decision to drop dedicated support so soon are just way too obvious, and it actually feels like you're playing a beta version of the game that's only about 80% complete. Activision have nailed Crash Bandicoot games since they released the N-Sane Trilogy, but Crash Team Rumble is a big swing and miss as I can remember. I didn't hate it, but if I was aware that this was going to be the final product, I would have potentially skipped it.

To paint a bigger picture for this, the game fills empty player spots with bots if it can't successfully matchmake enough players into a game, and this is something you see fairly regularly. This is a damning inditement for a game that only requires 8 players in a lobby to successfully fill it to maximum capacity, and sadly evidences the effects of a failed project. People just aren't playing this game.

In terms of trophies, this a standard sized list, with 45 trophies to earn, including the Platinum trophy, and it's one of the easiest trophy lists in my entire collection.

To illustrate this straight off the bat, I had managed to earn a whopping 27 trophies within my first session of this game. Not a few days. Not a week. My very first session. The rate at which this game awards it's trophies to you is nothing short of phenomenal, and all I was doing was learning the ropes and getting to grips with the game. I hadn't even really actively assessed the trophy list in that much detail, and yet found myself collecting a trophy every handful of minutes.

Upon reflection, I'd also missed a couple of trophies that I grabbed later on for exploration of customisation options, so this could have very easily been more.

So, what makes this so easy? The list is full to the brim of trophies awarded for completing simple in-game feats, such as knocking out a certain number of enemies, collecting a certain level of gem boost and banking a certain number of Wumpa fruit towards your teams total. All of these trophies are stacked too, with incremental variants which mean you'll unlock all of them in one go if you complete the largest requirement. Collect 1200 Wumpa fruit in one game? You'll earn 3 trophies for it, due to separate trophies for collecting 500 and 800 Wumpa fruit respectively.

There are also 8 trophies awarded for winning a match using a specific character, and each of these characters also comes with an ability-specific trophy attached to them for fulfilling a requirement of one of their specified abilities. Another 16 trophies accounted for there, and where we've seen this sort of trophy from Overwatch, we are nowhere near those levels in terms of difficulty.

You also have 2 types of levelling system present in Crash Team Rumble. There is an overall Battlepass level and a specific character level. The former will gradually allow you to unlock various rewards, mainly customisation options, but will also allow you to unlock power-ups. These can be charged and activated in-game, and there are 7 trophies available for winning a match with these power-ups. You can tandem these with the trophies awarded for winning a game with a specific character, which is a good tactic to accelerate trophy list progression.

The "Playing Favourites" trophy, awarded for Reaching level cap with any hero, is the only noteworthy trophy in the whole list.

Each character's maximum level is capped at level 15, and levelling up a character is simply a matter of just playing the game. I personally didn't like the focus on a single character, as this choice to restrict variety, makes an already stale experience that little bit more stale. It would have been better to apply this trophy to your overall Battlepass level, and encouraged varied usage of the cast.

I settled on Ripper Roo to tackle this quest, mainly because I felt like the Blocker class was the most fun to use out of the 3 class options, and most of my time was spent sitting on the opposition's bank to prevent them from banking Wumpa fruit. It's a fairly mundane way to play the game in reality, but being able to single-handedly win games for your team by preventing the opponent banking fruit gives you a good sense of accomplishment. 

It's also a fairly lengthy task. It takes 278,400 total experience points to reach level 15 with a single character. I'm not entirely sure on total timescales or my average amount of earned experience per game. The game's statistics tracking is incredibly basic, and the closest measure to determining time spent comes in the form of number of matches played, which totalled 241 for me. That's more than a bit of a light dabbling, and whilst a proportion of this will have been going for some of the character-specific trophies on the list, the majority of these games would have been spent working towards the trophy, and maximum level for Ripper Roo.

It certainly slows down the overall progress, especially after unlocking more than half the list within my first session with the game. You can also earn badges for in-game feats that can help you accumulate some decent additional experience points that go towards accelerating the levelling progress for your character, which is vital to take advantage of. These aren't unlimited opportunities though, and will eventually cease to give experience once you've earned a certain amount of badges, but they're worth striving for whilst you play.

Just to raise a few other footnotes - You can't level up (or earn any other trophies, for that matter) in private matches, which eliminates any possibility of boosting. Double experience weekends have ceased in line with the decision to halt support for the game, which takes away an accessible levelling option. Finally, the game does not use a balanced matchmaking system, which can make games incredibly one-sided, especially if you're playing against seasoned players. This would have caused huge challenges if the trophy list contained win-heavy or demanding performance-based trophies. My win rate was only 53%.

However, a lofty levelling grind is about as tasking as this list gets though, and you only need to achieve maximum level for one character. This feels like a generous approach, as I believe there could have definitely been scope to span this across a number of characters, if not all of them, at which point we'd certainly be talking about this Platinum in a different way.

It's rare to see games rated under the minimum baseline standard of 3/10 in difficulty, and I've only ever given this score out with extra consideration to how easy the game actually is. It's only happened on 2 occasions previously, and both those games had similar characteristics displayed to Crash Team Rumble - Minimally challenging trophies with a little bit of resistance in the form of slight time investment.

It's a story of what could have been for a title that has a solid reputation behind it, and the lack of depth runs straight through the trophy list. If you're willing to put a bit of effort into the levelling grind, you can cruise through the majority of this Platinum on auto-pilot.

Notable Trophies -

Playing Favorites - Reach level cap with any hero.

Hardest Trophy -

Playing Favorites

Reach level cap with any hero

DLC #193 - Assassin's Creed Origins - The Hidden Ones

 

"It is recommended that you are level 40 before you begin this story" - A fairly ominous warning to start a piece of DLC with.

I'd already invested circa 70 hours into obtaining the Platinum trophy and yet was still somehow deemed below the requirements of par to dive into the first story expansion for Origins. Apart from perhaps indulging in some of the mundane side quests from the main game, I'm not quite sure what else was expected of me.

We fearlessly jumped in though. A scroll from Tahira explaining that the region of Sinai is under attack from Roman troops kicks off the story. We urgently travel by vessel to the new region of the map to offer immediate assistance, finding out upon arrival that a couple of the Hidden Ones have been caught up and killed in the skirmish.

Tahira introduces Bayek to Gamilat, who leads the rebel group occupying and defending Sinai, with a plan to draw out the Roman leader, Rufio, and suppress the Roman assault with his extermination. It's a very typical Assassin's Creed story arc.

Apart from an extension to the questline, which takes place 4 years after the ending of the main game, there isn't actually alot of new content to mention here.

The fact that this DLC takes place in a completely new region of Egypt is probably the most notable difference, but the landscape just feels the same. I understand that the scope may be somewhat limited. We are still within the same historical period after all, but if you're not going to add any new gameplay features or mechanics, then I believe this stance of feeling underwhelmed is somewhat justifiable. It feels like I'm purely playing an expansion to the main story that merely consists of a couple of additional missions, and nothing more.

I might be in the minority, but it's a bit disappointing. Short, lacking new ideas and that's a shame for a game that decided to gamble in re-inventing the wheel for the Assassin's Creed franchise.

The package adds 8 trophies in total, with a clear focus on the main story.

There are 6 main missions to beat in total, and these should accumulate towards a fairly short experience. However, I mentioned the warning the game gives you about the minimum level recommendation for this content, and this became very relevant for my level 38 character as I tackled the story arc. The scaling of the missions graduates quickly. It starts at level 40 and the final mission has a recommended level of 45.

In reality, there is only about 3 hours of story content across these 6 missions, and you'll unlock 2 of the 8 trophies for progression towards concluding the story. However, the missions are very combat-centric in some parts, and fighting enemies way over my recommended level added hours onto this as I kept losing fights to overpowered enemies over and over. My own perception has led me to believe that the game wants you to indulge it's side missions in order to level up and prepare you for these further challenges. This is fine, but I'd already ploughed 70 hours into the Platinum trophy completing all locations and that somehow still wasn't enough preparation to have a fighting chance here.

The game was already a grind. I was tapping out by the time I'd reached the end, so imagine what it was like heading into a piece of DLC where the game still had higher expectations of me? I still managed to persevere and stumble through, but at the cost of around treble the amount of time it should have taken me. I don't want to ruin it, but to make my point loud and clear, I only defeated a heavily-guarded, level 45 Rufio because of a fortunate glitch that allowed me to kill him whilst underwater.

Outside of the main story, the remaining trophies are awarded for a spread variety of tasks across the new region. Completing a couple of side quests, liberating the biggest citadel in Sinai and freeing 20 captured rebels are just some of these smaller tasks which can all be swept up within a couple of hours collectively. Thankfully, that was the easy part. I'm now just left hoping I don't run into the same problems for the final piece of DLC.