Platinum #142 - Death Stranding

Platinum Difficult Rating - 6/10

In a world of saturation, I have always championed new IP's. The biggest challenge they still have is that they're risky and compete against established franchises that firmly have their foot in the door.

Reputation will always help though, and Death Stranding is the brainchild of Hideo Kojima. He refers to it as a "Strand Game" and whilst I'm still not entirely sure what this actually means, the core concept of the game revolves around delivering supplies to groups of different people - A necessity to keep civilisation alive and kicking within a post-apocalyptic United States of America.

The "Death Stranding" refers to an apocalyptic event caused by supernatural beings that have invaded the land via the afterlife, causing devastation to the world and collapse of the population. You control Sam Porter Bridges, a courier who is now responsible for ensuring the remainder of society can still function by delivering goods, produce and stock all over the landscape, whilst connecting them all together via a chiral network to help gradually rebuild the country.

The overall premise is easy to understand but the deeper elements of the plot are confusing, and I ended up losing the will a bit with the game in general for various reasons (more on that soon). However, the plot was what lost me first. It has too many complicated concepts to it that are both difficult to understand and make any reasonable sense of. Typically Kojima, some might say.

Sam carries around a baby (A "BB" to provide it's technical term) that can help detect threats in the outside world, but also ends up becoming a core component to the story when Sam develops a personal attachment to it. There are a variety of cryptic characters you'll meet along the way whose motives are unclear due to unnecessarily ambiguous use of storytelling. You'll frequently transfer to other characters realms called "Beaches" where you freely teleport to and from at various points in the story with no real reasons as to why this happens. It's a huge digression for a game that's ultimately just a delivery simulator at it's core and it never really had me hooked at any point. If I only played games for their story, I wouldn't have made it past 10 hours with Death Stranding.

The graphics are OK, but definitely better in some departments than others. The environments are very samey and dull, with the exact same shades of grey, brown and black plastered all over the landscape but the character models are very sharp and well detailed, especially when you see them up close in cutscenes and cinematics. In a game that I don't think excels in much at all, this is a stand out positive.

I'll talk more specifically about the gameplay features that I felt let this game down, but the overall concept is just a big swing and miss for me. It heavily leans into the delivery simulator element, and despite being supported by a detailed story, you'll spend the majority of the game traipsing the landscape and delivering cargo between various points of the map. It's an idea that holds very limited novelty value, which is aided in some part by some terribly executed gameplay features that really let the game down.

In terms of trophies, this is a large list, containing a total of 63 trophies, including the Platinum trophy. These are spread across a mostly Single Player experience, though a small handful of these trophies are dependant on the online component of the game too.

Firstly, a primary focus to complete the story, which is split into 15 episodes, with a total of 15 progression-based trophies awarded for the completion of each.

The "Thanks for Everything" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 14 : Lou, is the final trophy to conclude the main story portion of the game, and this group of trophies equates to roughly a quarter of the list. Whilst the game has options for varying difficulty levels, there aren't any trophies on offer for beating the game on any specific level of difficulty.

However, it is important to note that there are other trophies in this list which will require you to achieve them whilst the game is set to a certain difficulty level, so it's better to play the game on Hard difficulty if you want the recommendation that suits the best interest of what the trophy list requires of you.

I'm not too sure what the difficulty level influences. Death Stranding isn't exactly a difficult game. How tough can you make a delivery simulator after all? However, it does lean on elements of combat which are prevalent throughout the story. When I said above the game suffers from some terribly executed gameplay elements, the combat fits straight into this category.

Sam feels very clunky and slow generally, but especially so when dealing with firearms, and the guns you'll have access to lack a fluidity and punch. Combat is treated like a secondary part of Death Stranding, and it shows. The range of weapons you'll add to your arsenal throughout the game is vast, but making use of it all just feels cumbersome and lacks excitement.

Throughout the story, these fights are forced upon you, but my approach to conflict within the open world environment was to avoid them. Combat becomes annoying and hinders the overall experience. It is not fun running into enemy territory and getting dragged out of your vehicle 200 meters by BT's, just to fight a generic boss every single time - and this was sometimes difficult to avoid. It is frustrating to have deliveries constantly disrupted by enemies you're trying to evade but the game decides it wants you to engage in it's rigid combat system instead - like a neglected child desperate for attention.

I set the difficulty to Hard in preparation for some of the trophies in the list, but did not experience anything overly challenging. Even the forced combat segments were easy enough to navigate, and anything else I could actively avoid, I did. It's a lengthy story, and with a little bit of sidetracking to indulge the open world, I'd managed to finish it within 60 hours.

Ironically, even after this level of time commitment, I still wasn't sure on my overall stance with the game. The story clearly had enough for me to stick around for, and 60 hours isn't exactly a small sample size - Then I looked to complete the rest of the list and indulge the post-game grind...

Before I talk more about the other notable trophies in this list, I will preface this by saying that I'm no stranger to a post-game grind. I've done them before and I'll do them again, but Death Stranding has had me the closest to tapping out of any game I've attempted to grind to the end, and it's down to a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the "Best Beloved" trophy, awarded for Reaching the maximum connection level with all facilities, requires you to complete enough deliveries in order to achieve a full 5 star rating with that particular facility. This is cumulative and you will need to do this for 36 different facilities across the map.

When delivering cargo, you're awarded assessment points based on a variety of different factors that may be applicable to that particular order. These can include condition of the cargo, distance travelled, time taken to deliver and volume/weight of the cargo. Each of these factors will be rated with "likes" upon reception of a delivery, which are then converted into points and will fill the 5 star rating bar accordingly. Better assessment ratings will lead to more points, and subsequently fill this bar up for the facility receiving the order.

Certain facilities will require more points than others to max out, but just to give some context of the level of input required here, I completed a total of 356 orders across my time with the game. A small proportion of this wouldn't have been related to this trophy specifically, but out of this total, 238 orders were related to standard deliveries, which would have been completed in order to progress this trophy. 

That's alot of delivery, and unfortunately, this is another area of the game that suffers from deficiencies in it's design that made this such a tedious grind. There are a small handful of ways to deliver cargo across the map. You can walk and use tools such as ladders and rope to scale mountainous environments. This is long-winded and boring, but sometimes the most practical way to get around. You can also use the game's multitude of vehicles. A much quicker alternative, but will struggle to navigate certain terrains. You can also use structures such as ziplines and cargo catapults. This is the easiest method, but requires alot of resources to build enough of these to make an effective network and won't always be the most viable option.

I mainly relied on vehicles to transport deliveries, but the handling of vehicles in this game is comfortably one of the worst executions of driving mechanics I've experienced in any game.

Vehicles are an absolute nightmare. They handle like a fridge on square wheels. They spin out, move with unpredictable volatility and feel cumbersome and slow. They'll randomly get stuck on rocks or inside little gaps/ridges and you won't be able to free them, meaning you have to abandon the vehicle and find another one nearby or progress on foot. If you're using a vehicle for the purpose of carrying alot of cargo, then you'll have to leave everything behind. Vehicles have a battery which will run out unless you find a generator to charge them, which just becomes an inconvenient annoyance - You can use the turbo feature to gain a speed boost, but this just drains battery faster so it doesn't feel like a benefit with a genuine payoff.

There's nothing more annoying than your vehicle running out of battery and you're nowhere near a generator or having your vehicle randomly get stuck on a piece of the environment you can't free it from. Walking is pointless and dull and I wanted to save my building resources for other structures that were required for other trophies in the list, so I refrained from building zipline networks as they're costly and resource-heavy. I know building a network of ziplines would have prevented this, but it's still worth calling out an aspect of the game that should be 100x better than it actually is.

Vehicles seemed like the happy medium but increased my disdain for this game tenfold. I can forgive the combat being sub-par. That is a secondary element to the game. However, the delivery aspect is your bread and butter, and there's no excuse for the vehicles to be so badly executed as a consequence, with awful handling and too many inconveniences that extract the already limited fun straight out of the game.

This trophy is where the bulk of the post-game grind lies, and you can chip away at much of the list through completing deliveries to the 36 facilities across the map. I simultaneously paired this trophy up with another though.

The "Growth of a Legend" trophy, awarded for Completing at least 20 unique premium deliveries in each order category with an evaluation of "Legend of Legends" or "Legends of Legends of Legends", requires you to fulfil 80 total orders with one of the top 2 highest assessment ratings possible.

Where the "Best Beloved" trophy is effectively a volume exercise, this trophy is more geared towards quality of the delivery, and you can only achieve a Legends rating with a certain score that meets this threshold, meaning you can actually fail here.

You'll need to be aware of a few things here. Firstly, you can only achieve a Legends rating on Hard difficulty. This is why it's importantly mentioned above to make sure you're playing through the game on this difficulty level - it's the best method to avoid any unnecessary additional work and you don't want to go around fulfilling orders on a lower difficulty and not being properly rewarded for it.

Secondly, you'll need to make sure the 80 orders are split evenly across the main 4 order categories referenced in the trophy. These are Condition-focused, Quantity-focused, Time-focused and Miscellaneous-focused, and they're all referenced by a unique logo next to each order. Don't fall into the trap of going above 20 orders for a particular category - The Time-focused orders are much rarer in comparison to the others and this'll be the one you're missing.

One thing I will give Death Stranding it's plaudits for is how detailed it tracks in-game stats, and with such a focused trophy list on numbers and quantity, everything you need from seeing which facilities you have at 5-star level to your order-type split, is all laid out perfectly and clearly. Efficient stat tracking will always get a positive mark for me, and it's very good here.

I did say this isn't just a volume exercise though, and the requirements for a Legend rating are dependant on the order type. For example, Time-focused orders will need to reach their destination within a specific timeframe, and this carries the bulk of the assessment points. Condition-focused orders will have fragile cargo susceptible to easy damage, so will need to get there within a certain degree of damage allowed. If you infringe these limits for that particular order, you'll miss the S rank and have to re-do them.

It's frustrating to navigate terrain and suddenly lose your footing, or traction in a vehicle, and end up rattling the cargo around. This will cost you, and it cost me numerous times, and does lead to rework as you replay the order or move onto another instead. This is what the wonky mechanics will cause though. I'm not saying it wasn't ever my fault, but the game has a habit of putting you in unnecessary and helpless peril.

Thankfully, I had been selecting premium deliveries since the beginning, and playing on hard, I'd already gone a reasonable way towards this trophy via my quest to reach maximum rating with all 36 facilities, but there was still some more grinding to do.

The "Home Faber" trophy, awarded for Fabricating all available weapons and equipment, requires you to fabricate all 108 different types of weapons and equipment in the game.

Most of these items and their fabrication plans become available through progression, but there's also a fair amount of items that you'll need to unlock through different means. Some of them are unlocked through specific orders for Sam that need to be completed, some of them of unlocked through side quests given to you by other characters and some of them have up to 4 different level variants that you'll need to work up towards - And like a dosage of salt to a wound, there are also some fabrication plans that require you to beat time trials around a race track in the variety of different vehicles the game offers. I can only believe that's an inside joke that someone thought the one thing this game could do with more of is driving.

This is also a slog and I was completely numb to the game at this point. Running around, still doing these pointless errands in the name of the final few trophies. Staring at a checklist of 108 items with their requirements listed next to them and dreading what the next task was going to be, just to fabricate a single item. You can't complain that the depth isn't here at least.

On a final note, the game does also have a small selection of 5 Online trophies, despite being a fairly pure Single Player experience. You'll notice the world is populated with other players structures and cargo and these can be used to your benefit as long as you can see them. Some features such as postboxes and delivery terminals allow you to donate and receive cargo from others, and the trophies that relate to these features require an online connection to function properly. There's nothing too tasking, but there could be a day that comes where these trophies become unachievable if the online support is dropped, so it's at least worth noting just to make sure you grab these at the earliest convenience. 

Just to be clear, the difficulty rating of this game is not down to the actual challenge of the game on paper. It's fairly easy for the most part, even with the necessity to play on Hard for the extent of the "Growth of a Legend" trophy. It's challenging in the sense that it tested my patience and resolve, and the post-game grind was such a struggle, I've seldom been closer to giving up on a game than I have here. The delivery sim concept just doesn't work for me, and it was only bearable due to my sheer determination to not have to swallow my pride, so it will feel high, even at a score of 6, but I will stick by it. After a save file clocking in at a whopping 152 hours, I can respectfully say, never again.

Notable Trophies -

Thanks for Everything - Complete Episode 14: Lou.
Best Beloved - Reach the maximum connection level with all facilities.
Growth of a Legend - Complete at least 20 unique premium deliveries in each order category with an evaluation of "Legend of Legends" or "Legend of Legends of Legends".
Home Faber - Fabricate all available weapons and equipment.

Hardest Trophy -

Best Beloved

Reach the maximum connection level with all facilities

DLC #205 - Dirt 5 - Wild Spirits

A final rev up into the world of Dirt 5. The culmination of 4 DLC packs adding a collective total of 102 new Career events has almost produced a breadth of content akin to playing through the entire game again.

The Wild Spirits pack is the final contribution to this, adding the last 25 events to grace the eventually enormous Career Mode. If you include the 125 Career events from the main game, the overall grand total reaches 227. That's a lot of Dirt.

The pack also adds 2 new cars, including the Bronco Wildtrak 2021 and the Prodrive Hunter. There are also 2 new track variations exclusively added for Stampede events - Ait Ojana and Tinghir bolstering the line-up of track variants for Morocco.

However, you won't encounter any new race types outside of those already added from prior DLC packs, and there is also an absence of any new race locations. It's exactly what you may have come expect by this point - A little variation between each content pack, but fundamentally just more Dirt.

The 5 additional trophies also follow the exact same logic as before - A consistency which has been maintained throughout.

The "That's the Spirit!" trophy, awarded for Earning all 75 stamps available in the Wild Spirits Career, is the primary goal yet again, and winning all 25 events is the only way to net every stamp for this trophy.

I've generally found the progression through these new batch of events for each content pack to be trouble free, with the odd difficulty spike here and there, and it could just be fatigue at this point, but I found this to be the most challenging pack to tackle when it came to those expected difficulty spikes. I spent 2 hours alone attempting to beat the only Sprint event in the Career path on Hard difficulty, with another Stampede event later on taking me almost an hour extra.

Considering I've completed these prior packs within 3-4 hours previously, this was a little surprising, but an obvious observation to note nonetheless.

The other trophies in the pack are still progression-based, and will be awarded for beating specific events you'll encounter on your way up towards earning all 75 stamps, and the final trophy is the customary milage accumulation trophy - The Prodrive Hunter the chosen vehicle on this occasion.

Oddly, this trophy didn't unlock once I'd surpassed 30 miles, and I actually had to breach the 40 mile mark before I saw it unlock. In similar fashion, I also didn't unlock the trophy for earning all 75 stamps instantly, and had to replay one of the very first Career events in order to trigger it. Nothing hugely detrimental to progress, but an odd situation to suddenly be experiencing glitched trophies after no such issues prior.

I have openly preached for the "more of the same" approach being a perfectly viable tactic for certain games before. However, Dirt 5 was a game that needed to bring something different to the table with it's DLC content after an underwhelming main game. A few new event types, vehicles and track variations just wasn't going to be enough to make up for an abject entry into the series. 

It was nice to jump back in briefly, but I also partly feel like I'm just saying that to be nice. The clear lack of intent to produce something different predictably wore thin quickly, and it feels like an opportunity missed for a game that desperately needed a chance to right a few wrongs. You don't just accidentally churn out 4 straight DLC packs consisting of the exact same content over and over.

Even the trophy tiles between each pack were exempt of any reasonable level of effort, which says it all.

DLC #204 - Dirt 5 - Uproar

A nod to Dirt Showdown - one of my favourite entries into the entire Dirt series.

However, as much as I love a throwback, it only ultimately served as a reminder to question why we never got a sequel to Dirt Showdown after all these years. Especially for a series that has been very much hit and miss ever since.

A familiar drill, but the injection of freshness from the Super Size pack is short lived here. The new events from that pack, which we discovered there for the first time, are (almost) all present here too, so it's no surprise you'll find some continuity, despite playing outside of sequential order.

However, Gatecrasher and Smash Attack are only represented once within the new batch of events, and Time Trial isn't even represented at all, so even though it seems the new event types were actually introduced as part of this pack, they're nowhere near fully capitalised on and criminally underused, especially compared to Super Size, where they're much better represented.

The pack also still lacks any new event locations or track variations. It suffers the same issue as the Energy pack. Just way too much copy and paste and ends up feeling like a lazy, artificially padded extension of the Career mode.

Uproar does add 4 new vehicles though - All of which are ripped straight from Dirt Showdown's catalogue.

There are also 5 new trophies added too, following on from the exact same theme as before. There are a batch of 25 new events to play through, and the "Dusk til Dawn" trophy, awarded for Earning all 75 Medals available in Uproar, will come through winning each of these 25 events. There's a seemingly random gimmick where all events take place within a night-time setting, for whatever reason, which is possibly where the name for that trophy is inspired from.

The remainder of the trophies are all earned through natural progression of the 25 events, outside of the usual ancillary trophy awarded for farming 30 miles out of a particular vehicle - The Duke Coupe Off Road Mod on this occasion. I'd already clocked 27 miles on this particular vehicle through the main game Career mode anyway, making this one much easier than expected.

Difficulty is still fairly consistent when measured up against prior experience. A handful of the events may take a few tries, and some are much easier than that. It shouldn't take more than 3-4 hours to beat them all though.

DLC #203 - Dirt 5 - Super Size

I've been so heavily wrapped up in Forza Horizon 5 recently, I almost completely forgot about the fact I'd began going through the Dirt 5 DLC.

I was fairly critical of the Energy pack for it's lack of new content, and whilst the Super Size pack doesn't exactly drastically alter the course of this, it at least made Dirt 5 feel a little bit fresher.

Since the Energy pack, and bearing in mind this is actually the third piece of DLC in the timeline, the game has finally included some new track variants and event types to tackle them on.

Time Trial, Gatecrasher and Smash Attack are all newly added event types. Time Trial has you racing ghost variants in an attempt to better their lap times. Gatecrasher has you negotiating a course through a set number of gates to the finish line. Smash Attack has you destroying a certain number of objects within an allotted amount of time. Simple but a much needed injection of freshness.

The package also adds 4 new "Super Sized" vehicles to race, as well as a few new tracks. There are 2 different variants in Brazil added and the Nevada arena is a completely new setting altogether.

There are 5 new trophies to tackle, and these follow the exact same path to progression as before.

The extension to the Career mode sees the addition of 27 new events. This is 2 more than any other pack, and contains a decent mix of the new elements mentioned above. The new event types are well represented across the 27 events, as well as a balanced array of the old favourites, and you'll also get your chance to race at the new track variants a few times too.

Progressing towards the "Main Course" trophy, awarded for Earning all 81 stamps available in Super Size career, is the main goal, and as before, stamps are simply awarded for winning races, with each event being designated 3 stamps for crossing the line in first place. You'll need to win the event to unlock all 3 stamps, and the variance in challenge feels exactly the same as it did in the Energy pack - Most events can be won fairly easily, with the odd one that may give a slightly greater degree of challenge.

You'll unlock the other trophies as you progress towards the main event, with the "Travelling in Style" trophy, awarded for Driving 30 miles in the Bentley Continental GT Ice Race Car, as the only outlier. You can actually use this vehicle in a few of the career Time Trial events, so it's easy to just repeatedly lap one of these until the trophy pops.

Full package completion is around 4-5 hours in length. Could be quicker if you're not precious about an artificially heightened challenge like myself, who opted to stick to the hard difficulty setting.

DLC #202 - Alan Wake : Remastered - The Writer

"It was a moment of clarity", says Alan Wake right at the beginning of this final episode.

The game's sudden decision to finally just start delivering some straight-talking, no-nonsense snippets of information to you about what's actually been going on around here this whole time seems like an odd tact for a game that has shrouded itself in utter mystery for an entire main game and DLC pack prior.

If the intention was to keep things ambiguous and purely down to the players interpretation, then it seems like a strange switch up to suddenly start spilling the secrets so abruptly. Even after all this, the episode still concludes Alan Wake on a cliff-hanger.

Anyway, we did ultimately come into the final piece of DLC for Alan Wake looking for definitive answers, and we do get them - sort of - but only by virtue of the game's strange u-turn to drop the mysterious persona it's been playing on for the last 7 episodes and just begin delivering answers. You are trapped within your own mind. You're struggling to free yourself after making the sacrifice to save your wife. Everything you're facing around you has been conjured up by your own mind through Alan's creative writing which has gotten out of control. 

I know I'm on the cusp of breaching my own rules of generally trying to be spoiler free, but that's the first time I've been able to comment on the plot with any sort of reasonable conviction. In the 8th episode of the game. Even then, the game still doesn't even reach a true conclusion, and it's no surprise at all the game has a sequel.

There are 9 additional trophies added for the episode, and the approach is exactly the same as it was for the Signal DLC. There's no pressure to beat the episode on any specific difficulty level, so an initial run through on normal difficulty in an attempt to unlock the "No Punctuation" trophy, awarded for Making it through The Writer in one dazzling dash. As before, this just translates to beating the episode without dying or restarting from a checkpoint.

Compared to the Signal, there is a much lower emphasis on combat in the Writer, and instead, is substituted by periods where the mysterious voices in your head are confirming plot details back to you as you move through empty space. The game suddenly takes an interest in platforming segments too, and Alan Wake is most certainly not built for platforming. If you thought it was clunky before, wait until you try and navigate moving platforms/objects whilst timing jumps. It's definitely easier to make it through this episode without dying than it was previously, and that is due to the more limited combat, but it's a shame because one of the strongest suits of the game has suddenly taken a back seat.

With that being said, I didn't succeed on my initial run, and abandoned it in favour of the "Go Gentle In That Good Light" trophy, awarded for Making it through the approach to the lighthouse without firing a weapon. The few hectic battles you'll encounter are made much easier by environmental help. You can use your torch to burn words and manifest explosions to eliminate enemies, or summon the support of the booming lighthouse beams to protect you. The sense of jeopardy that the game is capable of delivering in combat scenarios is well removed in this episode, and once I knew what to expect, I beat it without dying incredibly quickly.

There are also 10 Night Springs video games to collect. I missed a couple of them on my initial run and made sure I grabbed these afterwards in subsequent play throughs, and this also gave me a good opportunity to grab the remaining miscellaneous trophies to finish off the list at the same time - None of which are any trouble.

The episode is only around an hour in length, and I didn't need to play it for any more than a total of 3 times in full to grab all 9 trophies on offer. 

Alan Wake is a solid game. It's made me curious enough to want to explore the sequel, but the plot is like a complicated relationship. It's full of second guessing and confusion, and it's always been a personal gripe of mine when games just refuse to give you any sort of clarity, especially when additional content should set the expectation of delivering conclusions, not cliff-hangers.

DLC #201 - Alan Wake : Remastered - The Signal

I will always be of the opinion that, if you insist on leaving games ambiguously open with the view of bringing out post-game DLC, then you have an obligation to give the end user clarity.

I've determined by this point that Alan Wake is very good at explaining alot of things without actually revealing any answers.

The opening to The Signal sets up the premise that Alan is stuck in his own mind after sacrificing himself to save his drowning partner, and the next step is to now work out how he frees himself from his own nightmare. 

Not only do you start in front of the Bright Falls Diner, but you start by re-enacting the exact same opening scene to the main game - Sticking on the jukebox at the request of the Anderson brothers and being lured into the back toilet by a mysterious force leading you astray.

This time, the mysterious force introduces itself as Thomas Zane with the promise of helping Alan free himself if he does as he says and follows the signal via the GPS on a mobile phone. That's about as clear as anything gets as you spend roughly the next hour trawling through rehashed environments and battling through the same enemies you've just spent 8-10 hours fighting off.

I'm very much pro story-driven DLC, but it HAS to add something to the story, and I really don't feel the Signal does that. Even the gameplay doesn't really bring anything new to the table. No new enemies, weapons, equipment or gameplay. I've said before that more of the same is absolutely fine sometimes, but both the lack of progression to the story and gameplay features combined left this a bit flat for me - Not to mention you can comfortably beat the episode within the hour, so it is an incredibly short offering.

In terms of trophies, there are 8 added here, and it's perhaps most important to state that you don't need to beat the Signal on Nightmare difficulty, like you had to in the main game.

With that noted, an initial playthrough on normal difficulty with the intention of grabbing as many trophies as possible, paying specific attention to the "Run-On Sentence" trophy, awarded for making it through The Signal in one glorious go. This just translates to beating the episode without dying or restarting from a checkpoint.

This isn't too difficult, very much helped by the fact that you can play through the episode on whichever difficulty setting you wish. However, after a cheap death where I just got crushed underneath a possessed object that pinned me to the floor, I had to abandon this trophy on my first run, but still came out the other side having collected 5 of the 8 trophies on offer. These are mostly progression-based and the game is still incredibly linear to the point where you can easily pick up many of these trophies as you go along.

Ironically enough, despite claiming a lack of challenge, I would go on to fail a no-death run a further 2 times, but not by being overwhelmed by enemies. Just for silly things that were completely avoidable. There was a necessity to grab 16 collectibles for 2 separate trophies - 10 alarm clocks and 6 cardboard cut-outs - and I needed the extra run to go back through and scoop up a few of these I had missed.

Everything unlocked within 3-4 hours, and the only reason it was even as long as that was because of a couple of cheap deaths setting me back the additional time. If you're slightly more competent than me, this could be done within a sub-2 hour timescale.

Platinum #141 - Alan Wake : Remastered

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

"Psychological Action Thriller" is what Alan Wake bills itself as. I didn't have any other clues at to what this may entail before I began the game, but I'm glad my curiosity got the better of me. It didn't exactly blow me away, but it's an honest, solid game.

Admittedly, the story is hard to understand, but it doesn't outstay it's welcome and with a couple of episodic pieces of DLC waiting in the wings, there's always the faint hope things become a bit clearer.

Alan Wake himself is an apparently famous crime fiction author, and when his wife mysteriously disappears during a cabin getaway in the small town of Bright Falls, his sole motivation is to understand how she went missing and find her.

The clues to her whereabouts are contained within the manuscripts of a book littered across the ground throughout the game that Alan has apparently been working on, and the theory is that the developing situation around his wife is being manifested from his own creative writing. Without giving too much away (not that I can be confident in saying that), this theory is directly hypothesised by Alan Wake himself during the game, though posed more as a question, as if he himself is ambiguous about what's actually going on. So who knows.

The game draws on heavy influences from horror writer Stephen King, and it makes no efforts to disguise these. In fact, they're really blatant at times. The man himself is name-dropped on numerous occasions, and there are plenty of references to his novels baked into the gameplay features, including inanimate objects being possessed by mysterious forces and shadowy figures out to kill you.

I'm not overly keen on the cast of characters. Alan Wake himself is a fairly dull and bland main character, which is ironic given the fact he's a creative writer by trade. The cast around him isn't much better though, and I thought the lack of memorable characters was a big downside to the game. It's a nice touch that the narration of the story comes from the main character himself, and the running commentary does a nice job of providing an authentic feel to the script, even if it is prone to sounding a bit too cheesy at times.

Despite this being a Remastered version of the game, the graphics are a bit hit and miss. I felt like the character models still looked dated, and the voice acting/lip syncing during cutscenes is poor. This is a Remaster of a game that was originally released in 2010, so maybe I should be a bit more forgiving, but I've definitely played sharper remasters recently in the graphical department and Alan Wake doesn't feel up to par in comparison.

The environments are captured well though, and do a good job at providing the tension of a psychological horror. Dense fog, unnerving darkness and an eerie chorus of music every time enemies are nearby. All contribute to nailing the atmosphere. I wish there was a bit more variety though. You seem to spend 80% of the game trekking through a forest and the enemy variation is very limited.

In terms of trophies, this is a standard sized list with 51 trophies available, including the Platinum trophy, spread across an entirely Single Player driven experience.

Firstly, a casual playthrough of the game's story for two primary reasons. As always, to enjoy the story at a leisurely pace, but also conscious to the fact that we'd need to unlock Nightmare difficulty, which is achieved through beating the game just once on either Easy or Normal difficulty first.

The game is broken down into 6 Episodes, and contains 16 trophies related to either natural story progression or beating the game on a specific difficulty level, which is roughly a third of the entire list. Apart from this being about a mysterious missing persons case, I found the story difficult to understand. Maybe it's purposely convoluted. There are constant interactions with Doctor Emil Hartman, who believes Alan is potentially psychologically unstable, and the random Manuscript pages lying around at times seem to foretell the future. A completely different angle to the one presented above which theorises that Alan is responsible for manifesting the dark energy through his own writing. Either way, if there is a story to grasp, I didn't really grasp it.

The gameplay itself is very simplistic. It's quickly determined that the biggest weakness to the darkness is light. You get access to a torch in order to shine beams of light directly at an enemy and weaken them. Once they're vulnerable enough, you'll have the choice from around 5/6 weapons to finish them off. There is a clear running theme of combatting the darkness through the salvation of light, and the variance on this theme is strong. You can use different sources of light against enemies. Headlight beams on vehicles, spotlights and there are even multiple variations of the handheld torch you carry around with you. It's a new concept to me and I liked the depth it adds to the gameplay.

Outside of the direct combat, you can only perform 3 other actions. Dodge, Jump and Run - and don't underestimate any of these, especially when it comes to your Nightmare playthrough. The latter in particular will prove to come in very useful.

Alan Wake doesn't have an expansive skill tree, there isn't a levelling system and you can't upgrade any weapons or equipment. It's about as minimalist of a combat experience money can buy. Is the game worse off for it? Not really. I think the game does a good job of balancing the atmospheric pacing. There are some hairy moments and combat-centric set pieces, but they're few and far between as the game has you trawling through eerie environments and the balls to the wall action moments mostly remains on the shelf. The depth of the combat is ultimately proportionate to what the game throws at you, so you never feel like you're held back by the lack of character development options.

The challenge on Normal difficulty really isn't that great and there are alot of miscellaneous and chapter-specific trophies to collect as you go through the game too. Aside the odd bit of side-tracking, Alan Wake is also a very linear game with clearly defined paths from point A to B. You're even led by distanced light and encouraged by the game to follow the light source if you ever feel like you're lost or not moving in the right direction.

After a casual playthrough of the game, I'd unlocked 37 trophies from the list, and this was without any real specific focus on anything other than just beating the game. This would unlock Nightmare difficulty, where the challenge of the list would peak.

The "Alan, Wake Up" trophy, awarded for Completing the game on Nightmare difficulty, comes with it's challenges, and these are notable in comparison to lower difficulty levels of the game.

The most notable difference is the fact that you die much easier. Most enemies only need to hit you a couple of times to kill you, and I actually found that the best strategy for tackling Nightmare difficulty in most instances was to run away. This is what I meant by earlier when I referenced the importance of not underestimating your options outside of combat. This isn't completely fool proof though and there are 2 small nuances to be aware of when choosing this strategy.

Firstly, there's this mechanic in place which only allows Alan Wake to run for a limited amount of time before running out of breath and slowing down, so it can be difficult to get away sometimes. I'm not necessarily against this feature, but enemies don't seem to suffer from the same sort of fatigue, so they can catch and kill you way too easily at times and it feels like a cheap handicap that purely exists to force you into combat. It should be considered a viable strategy to look to escape in games like Alan Wake that bill themselves as psychological thrillers. Secondly, you can sometimes be hit with projectile weapons whilst attempting to escape from a fight. Enemies have annoyingly pinpoint accuracy, and there are plenty of times you'll be felled whilst fleeing courtesy of a flying knife to the back from 50 yards away.

However, the overly generous checkpoint system will come to your rescue, and whilst you may end up accumulating your fair share of deaths throughout a Nightmare playthrough, you'll never have to make up too much lost ground. Checkpoints are thrown at you with a level of frequency that makes you feel like the game feels sorry for you. It's hard to be angry at the cheap tactics the game deploys to earn a death out of you when the most it'll ever seem to set you back is 30 seconds. It's a big redeeming feature.

Enemies do also take a few more bullets to go down on Nightmare difficulty too, but another thing the game is also overly generous with is supplying you with ammunition to offset this. I never once really found myself in a perilous position at any point in the game, especially when it comes to the segments where you're forced to fight larger groups of enemies because your path to progression is blocked until you clear out what's in front of you. There are 30 hidden chests that you'll need to collect as part of the collectibles element of this list, but these contain generous stashes of ammo that I would absolutely recommend going out of your way to find and open. Once you get hold of flares and flashbangs, the game may aswell roll out a red carpet straight to the end. They're incredibly powerful and can take out groups of enemies in one go if you ever feel overwhelmed or close to death.

You'll still die a reasonable amount. The game loves a cheap death, and some of the tougher fight segments where you need to rely on some really wonky AI to help you deal with crowds of enemies are frustrating. It's worth at least an extra point on the difficulty scale as a whole experience, but to say there are tougher offerings out there would be an understatement.

The other distraction of Nightmare mode was gathering the array of collectibles on offer, and does Alan Wake love a collectible. There are a whopping 298 collectibles in total, including 100 Coffee thermos flasks, 106 Manuscript pages, 11 Radio shows to listen to, 14 TV shows to watch, 30 Hidden chests, 12 Pyramid cans to shoot and 25 Signs to read. Each of these comes with it's own trophy once they've all been collected too.

For a game the length of Alan Wake, it is completely overloaded with collectibles, and you feel like you need to stop to turn your attention to something every 5 steps. It's intrusive to the flow of gameplay and breaks up the immersion way too much. It's almost as if they had so many ideas, they felt the best way to approach it was to just cram them all in and hope nobody really noticed. I did decide to collect everything I could as soon as I saw it on my Normal difficulty playthrough of the game, and actually managed to find the majority of the collectibles without really looking too hard, which is also a good testament to the linear nature of the game. You may have to go off the beaten path sometimes, but most of it is literally looking back at you.

There is an exception to be aware of for the Manuscript pages. Some of these are only collectible on Nightmare difficulty, but these are clearly marked out on the segment within the pause menu that lists all the manuscripts and those you may be missing. All of the other collectibles can be gathered up on any difficulty you wish, but given the fact you'll need to beat the game on Nightmare difficulty anyway, it's a wise tactic to sweep through whatever you see on your initial run, and use a guide to mop up the remainder on a second run.

Outside of this, there are a small bunch of chapter-specific trophies, which can easily be obtained through the chapter select option on the main menu, should you miss them through any of your playthroughs. The chapters are even further divided into sub-sections, so you don't even need to replay entire episodes of the game to get to the specific part you need to get to in order to unlock any of these trophies. The game is very user-friendly and gives the player loads of leeway into the accessibility of trophies. Even collectibles can be scooped up via the chapter select feature for any strays you may have missed. Some games still require you to collect everything in a single playthrough and will punish you for anything you miss by making you play the entire game again. Big thumbs up for the sort of flexibility on display here, and this level of accessibility is a big influencer on the overall difficulty rating.

Ultimately, Alan Wake is an easy game to pinpoint on the difficulty scale. There's no doubt you'll die often on Nightmare difficulty, but the checkpoint system is so generous, death feels almost inconsequential, and you rarely have to re-tread old ground. It almost negates the sense of challenge entirely because you never have to worry about scrambling around for survival to prevent an imminent loss of progress. Die, reload and get straight back into the fight you just lost. The story is also a modest length, at roughly 10-12 hours, and doesn't insist on being prolonged or stretched out. It sometimes feels like there's pressure for Single Player games, that don't offer any additional games modes, to max out their story offerings to extend beyond 20 hours in order to achieve public satisfaction, but Alan Wake doesn't choose to be a victim of this and that's refreshing.

The game is far too collectible heavy though. There just isn't a necessity for any game to contain as many as almost 300 collectibles and attach individual trophies to all of them. They're not my favourite kind of trophy as it is, and they seem to be as common as they ever have. Despite my disdain for them, there's ways to do them right and the sheer volume of unnecessary collectibles is a thumbs down. The Manuscripts might provide some added value to the lore of the game, but the rest of it just feels like clutter with little added value. They're easily worth an additional point on their own merits.

A short-ish story, necessity for just 2 playthroughs and an accommodating chapter select feature. Nightmare difficulty feels like it deploys some cheap tactics sometimes and the collectibles feel like a chore, but Alan Wake is a great example of less is more, and that includes the requirements of the Platinum trophy.

Notable Trophies -

Alan, Wake Up - You completed the game on Nightmare difficulty.

Hardest Trophy -

Alan, Wake Up

You completed the game on Nightmare difficulty

DLC #200 - Prey - Mooncrash

Even as little as a couple of a months ago, I'd never even heard of the term "Roguelike" - Then I began playing Balatro. It also turns out you have a variation of Roguelike, commonly referred to as "Roguelite" which is effectively a variant of Roguelike games with more forgiving elements pertaining to things such as permadeath, progression and upgrades. 

Mooncrash is exactly that. A Roguelite spin-off to Prey's main game. You begin within a habitation pod that overwatches the Moon, which TranStar has a base on called the Pytheas facility. You've been sent by KASMA - a rival to TranStar - to investigate a sudden stoppage in communications coming from the facility.

In order to find out what happened, you plug into a simulation and replay the possible consequences via 5 different playable characters. The goal of the game is to escape the simulation with each of the characters consecutively without any of them dying, using the 5 different variations of escape methods within the moonbase. Death doesn't necessarily signify that the game is over, and if you lose a character, you'll just progress onto the next until each character has either died or escaped - A classic Roguelike feature. It's an experience I can't really liken to anything else I've previously played, which makes sense given my novice levels of experience with Roguelike games.

There are 10 new trophies within this package, and the only way to tackle them was to just dive in blind and get to grips with the game.

Only one character is available from the beginning and the others will need to be unlocked through varying means, which will also subsequently unlock you a trophy. Once you have access to each character, you'll notice they have different traits and abilities that are pulled straight from the main game and are exclusive to that particular character. The hacking skill can only be performed by one specific character, so if you want to hack any computer terminals on the moonbase, you'll need to make sure you do it whilst you're using this character. The clever thing is, once you hack a terminal, this will remain hacked for any future characters that go through the simulation within the same run, and this is essential in progression towards certain goals.

For example, one of the escape methods is via opening a Mimic Portal to teleport out of the moonbase, however the Portal will need to be repaired, and the connecting terminal will then need to be hacked, before it can be used by any other subsequent character. This cannot all be done by the same person and this adds a strategic angle to how you tackle the simulation and the order in which you send your 5 characters into it, and these examples exist in a handful of different scenarios where progression is determined by utilising characters skillsets in a specific order.

But how does overall progression actually work? The moonbase has four distinctly split areas - The Crater, which acts as the centrepiece, and the Crew Annex, Pytheas Labs and Moonworks which all branch off from the central crater. These are always in the same locations and contain the exact same internal layouts each time. Nothing in this regard changes from run to run, so learning the map and your muscle memory will play a key part in making sure you fully understand where you'll need to go for efficiency and speed purposes - both of which become crucial later on.

Things that do change from run to run are as follows; Items that become available to loot - and this is fairly dynamic in multiple ways. Sometimes they'll be there, and sometimes they won't. In other instances, the item you find may be an Elite-standard weapon with all attachments, other times it may just be a recycling material for fabrication purposes. I had a strange sense of intrigue over seeing what random loot I would discover from run to run, and a big part of progression within Mooncrash is discovering better loot that you can take forward with you permanently. I waited for what seemed like forever to finally stumble upon a fabrication plan for an Elite Shotgun which would allow me to use it in future runs going forward, but someone else could find one on their very first run. This is the beauty of Roguelikes - The heavy RNG element ensures that you won't play out the same experience as the next player.

Enemy types you run into will also change constantly, as will environmental hazards that can occur within the moonbase that change the dynamic of how you approach your goals.

For example, power outages will prevent you from using powered systems such as doors, grav shafts and terminals. Radioactive barrels will give you radiation poisoning if you get too close. Your character can also incur status effects. Concussion will reduce Psi abilities and prevent you from installing Neuromods. Bleeding will gradually see your health decrease over time. Fractures to bones will prevent you moving at reasonable pace. 

The game has so many different layers that add constantly changing dynamics to the way you play, which give it a varied and interesting experience. It feels like it should fall foul of being too repetitive in nature, but the Roguelike elements add freshness to the game that also feels like you're always doing something new.

It's initially a little bit frustrating when you start out and your characters are weak due to either not having found enough Neuromods to improve abilities yet, nor having any of the better weapons, equipment and chipsets available, and you can still fall foul of some really cheap deaths due to the sometimes overdone environmental hazards that eventually swarm the base thanks to the ever increasing corruption levels. The corruption levels make this a timed mode, which is a very important detail to mention.

Starting at level 1, the corruption meter will gradually fill right up to level 5. With each new corruption level comes more powerful enemies that also pop up with greater frequency, and more hazards around the moonbase. Once the meter hits the top of level 5, the simulation will just end, and any remaining survivors who have not escaped will die. This is where the importance of knowing the layout of the moonbase really matters, as you'll need to ensure you're moving with efficiency and speed to ensure all 5 survivors can make it out - Not just on time, but also quick enough before you reach the higher stages of corruption, which can be perilous and challenging.

You will unlock a variety of the trophies from just natural exploration of the mode. Killing the new Moon Shark enemy, unlocking all 5 playable characters and chaining together a successful run where you manage to escape the simulation with all 5 characters award trophies. However, despite it's Roguelike elements, there is still an actual endgame to strive for here within Mooncrash, and there are a couple of trophies you'll end up working towards from the start;

Contract Fulfilled - In Mooncrash, Complete all KASMA Orders.
Galaxy Brain - In Mooncrash, install every neuromod power for every character.

The "Contract Fulfilled" trophy, awarded for completing all KASMA Orders, is the effective "End-game" for Mooncrash. Being a Roguelite, it is still a continuous game that you can infinitely loop, but there are a total of 27 KASMA orders that underpin a very loose story element to the game. These are just a varied list of objectives to tick off from within the simulation, but once you complete all 27 KASMA Orders, you'll see the end cinematic, and everything will reset from scratch. 

Most notably, this will include your Neuromod progress for each character, which directly impacts the "Galaxy Brain" trophy. If you earn this trophy without installing every possible Neuromod, you'll reset your entire progress, so it's vital that you make sure you attain these trophies in a specified order that prevents a conflict of interest.

Further to this, the completion of the game will also possibly impact the "Cryptomancer" trophy, awarded for finishing the game with a surplus of 50,000 sim points or more. Sim points are earned for actions within the simulation. Killing enemies, picking up fabrication plans and successfully escaping will total up sim points. They're usually required to purchase weaponry, ammunition, tools and neuromods to assist with your run, but if you don't have 50,000 points banked by the time you tick off the final KASMA order, you won't earn this trophy either and will have to start from scratch.

It's a little bit annoying that you have to earn 50,000 sim points that the trophy list will forbid you from spending. That's 12 additional neuromods, and would easily get you a couple of the higher value abilities for any of the 5 characters.

The trophy creates alot of additional peril that's important to be conscious to. The best course of action to prevent any complications is to leave a couple of orders outstanding until you have each of the other trophies in the list, ensuring that the "Cryptomancer" trophy is the final one you unlock by completing the last KASMA order whilst holding 50,000 points. This is a lengthy piece of DLC, and as fun as I found it, I wouldn't want to be in a position of having to start it all from scratch purely because I overlooked a couple of trophy requirements.

The "Galaxy Brain" trophy, awarded for installing every neuromod power for every character, is where the grind of Mooncrash rears it's head. Across each of the 5 playable characters, you'll need to install around 320 total neuromods to unlock every ability for all characters.

There are 3 primary methods for collecting neuromods; Finding them naturally around the Moonbase through exploration, crafting them through fabrication machines within the Moonbase and purchasing them for 4,000 sim points per piece on the loadout screen.

We mostly focused on the latter method - acquiring neuromods from earning enough sim points to purchase them. The best starting point here is to acquire the 3_ASIC MicroMiner+ Chipset, which increases the amount of sim points you earn per reward. Equipping this at each loadout screen will allow you to accumulate sim points at a higher rate than normal whilst you're navigating the simulation. You will need to find the chipset to unlock it permanently first, and it will also cost you 1,000 points in itself each time you want to run with it, but it will in turn allow you to maximise the number of sim points you earn for every action. This will increase the frequency at which you can purchase neuromods. It's a must for this trophy.

That will support with the purchasing method. On top of this, and once you become familiar with the map, there are a handful of certain places that will always spawn a collective volume of neuromods, and it's important to work out where these are, and ensure you're collecting them within each run as frequently as possible. The Crew Annex and Pytheas Labs can be very neuromod-rich, and Moonworks in comparison is fairly bare. I would personally ignore Moonworks as often as it makes sense to, though if you're desperate to upgrade an ability, and only need one or two, you can find the odd one lying around here. Nailing down a set, optimum path will allow you to efficiently gather enough neuromods to use them on your current character, or if not, store them safely somewhere to prevent losing them in the event of sudden or unexpected death.

It's important to safely store neuromods for subsequent characters to make sure you don't accidently escape without using them, which means you lose them (I foolishly did this a couple of a times) - Or if you have a surplus amount of neuromods for a particular character, and their next available skill is not achievable yet. These precautions will maximise the efficiency for an ultimately grindy trophy. One of the worst things you can do is lose your neuromods because you escaped without stashing them, so leave them behind whenever it makes sense to do so.

One of the earlier mistakes I made was being too liberal with my spending of sim points. Initially, I would load up on weapons and ammunition, for fear of not being powerful enough to cope with enemies. In reality, you can get through the earlier stages of corruption fairly easily, and don't actually need to spend many sim points, which turns out is a vital strategy when going for a trophy that requires a large accumulation of points to purchase neuromods.

Towards the latter stages of grinding this trophy out, the only piece of equipment I'd spend my money on was a Disrupter Stun Gun. This would allow me to bypass Typhon gates without having to worry about conflict. I could easily find the weapons I needed to defend myself in the various areas of the map. It's a waste of money to buy them in the majority of instances and I was guilty of overspending on them, which cut into my ability to spend on neuromods instead. Live and learn. The only drawback I experienced here was that it took me ages to obtain a Disrupter Stun Gun fabrication plan, so it wasn't something I could completely avoid early on. Roguelikes, eh.

 You can also increase the amount of sim points you earn each time you escape the simulation with a character, and this will continue to scale right through to the end, should you make it that far. It meant that this strategy effectively came down to running through the simulation on repeat, aiming to extract each character, accumulate sim points to buy neuromods, and ensure you were following the optimal path each time.

This does naturally become a bit tedious, and as much as I liked Mooncrash, my overall playtime when all was said and done was recorded by the game at 72 hours, and it certainly began to feel like I'd spent a long time with the game. There's only so many times you can loop the exact same strategy until a bit of stiffness kicks in, no matter how much you're enjoying the experience, and it does have it's learning curves along the way that will require adjustments.

Could you beat it quicker than I did? Sure. Infact, if you followed a guide that led you straight through the optimal routes for collecting neuromods, you could probably earn every trophy within a fraction of how long it took me, but I just think I got more from the experience from tackling the learning curve head on - As opposed to just following a set path on a rinse and repeat basis. One of the hooks of Mooncrash is the open exploration it promotes and I always seemed to make new discoveries or find hidden secrets, and following a path of least resistance approach would take away those small pleasures.

It does get easier as you progress, both through the ability to develop the strength of your characters and the familiarity of the understanding of game mechanics. There are some very easy pitfalls to completion, which is the most notable point to make of this list. If you can avoid them, and don't mind putting the hours in, this is a fairly steady road to full completion.

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.