Platinum #145 - Resident Evil 2

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

I never had the chance to play the earliest Resident Evil games. They were a little before my time. The first title in the series I ever played was Resident Evil 4, so the eventual remasters of every game prior to this gave me the perfect excuse to go back and plugs those gaps.

Originally released in 1998 on the Playstation 1, this 2019 remaster of Resident Evil 2 maintains the formula for what made Resident Evil such a big hit with it's fanbase. It's fair to say that the series has changed and evolved a lot through the years, but people are fiercely loyal to the roots of Resident Evil.

Taking place just months after the Resident Evil 1 outbreak that started it all, Resident Evil 2 takes place in Raccoon City - Completely overrun by the zombie apocalypse.

The main characters are Leon Kennedy, a rookie police officer on his first day in the job and Claire Redfield, a college student just caught up in the incident, and whilst both have slightly different plots and back story, the overall goal is to trace the origins of the outbreak under the belief that Umbrella Corporation are responsible for releasing the virus. This instalment marks the playable debuts of both Leon and Claire.

The gameplay mixes combat, survival horror and puzzle-based level progression. The entire game is played across 4 different environments, each of them with their own series of puzzles you'll need to connect together to access different rooms, reach vital items to enable further progress and ultimately piece it all together in order to advance to the next major part of the game. When I said above that people are fiercely loyal to the roots of Resident Evil, the heavy puzzle-based focus is exactly what I was referring to.

I really enjoyed the strategic level of thought required from this sort of gameplay experience. Discovering items lying around and working out where they need to be used and how they link together with different parts of the level was an experience I got deeply engrossed in. You'll need to scour the entire environment in detail, always pulling on mental notes of where a key may go or where you find a combination for a safe. Some items combine together to make a different item, some items that you may need immediately can only be accessed by retrieving another item first - For example, a key for a locked room - and some items may not necessarily be needed to progress the plot but do contain a path to some nice secrets, such as a new weapon or a hip pouch to increase inventory space.

There is some heavy some backtracking involved, but it's really well constructed with clever thought processes behind it to piece it all together and make it work. A lot of people are critical of some of the later Resident Evil games that shift their focus to all action shooters, and I can completely understand why after playing this. You still get the perfect blend of zombies to navigate past on your way to your various objectives, and may find yourself in perilous situations where you're either low on ammo, health or both, which is the deft reminder that you're still playing a survival horror game at heart. Your escapades will also be interrupted at regular intervals by Mr. X - An unkillable and relentless Tyrant zombie - He's cool, especially when he gatecrashes the party for the first time, but becomes a bit of annoyance once his novelty wears off.

The graphics are excellently sharp, it nails the perfect blend of gameplay mechanics and the story had me hooked throughout. It's a great instalment to the series and I'm glad the game was still as good back then as it is today, as someone who jumped on the bandwagon later and has had to find reasons to go back and explore it's past.

In terms of the trophy list, there are a total of 42 trophies, including the Platinum Trophy, and you'll know this game inside out by the time you unlock them all.

This is because of the fact the trophy list will require you to beat the game multiple times over on your way towards the Platinum.

You have the option to play through the game in 4 different ways. Leon and Claire both have an "A" and "B" variant of their stories. There are subtle, but noticeable, differences between all 4 variants, but the majority of the game is still the same. Their stories naturally crossover anyway, and the differences mentioned will include things like the placement of key items and the weapons both characters have access to. Leon and Claire also have an entire different segment of the story personalised to their own relationships with additional characters they both meet along the way.

To just break this down in thorough detail, there are 2 silver trophies awarded for beating Leon's story in any capacity and Claire's story in any capacity. This was an ideal starting point to simply enjoy the game for the first time completely blind to the plot. Despite it's challenges lying in wait, there is a lot of free fodder in this list along the way, with trophies awarded for some extremely simple and automatic tasks as you progress through the story. By the time I'd finished focusing on these 2 trophies, I already had 23 trophies in the entire list - Which equates to just over halfway.

You can choose from 3 different difficulty settings. These include Assisted, Standard and Hardcore. Assisted difficulty is great for 2 further playthroughs of the game - Another silver trophy is awarded for beating the game without opening the item box, and another silver trophy is awarded for completing the game without using a recovery item. Assisted difficulty gives you aids such as automatic firing lock-on, health regeneration and weaker enemies that consume less ammunition before death. These 2 trophies could be earned in tandem on the same playthrough, but I ran through them separately.

It was then time to turn up the heat just a touch, with yet another 2 further playthroughs of the game. Completing Leon's story on Standard or Hardcore with an S rank, as well as the same requirements for Claire's awards 2 gold trophies. Obtaining an S rank is classic Resident Evil, though the requirements are much more straight-forward than usual here, with time being the only determining factor of overall ranking at the end of the game.

You also have the flexibility of beating the game on Standard difficulty too, which is what I favoured for these 2 playthroughs. Standard difficulty is a little more lenient on completion time and you'll need to beat each story in under 3 and a half hours to make the S rank requirements. This makes it very akin to a speed run, and this is a fairly tight time requirement. There are a few crucial bits of detail to know for these trophies. Watching cutscenes and examining your mini-map will keep the clock running, so it's really important to skip cutscenes and rely more on muscle memory from previous playthroughs which means you won't be wasting too much time consulting your mini-map.

The most crucial thing to know is that, every time you die, hitting continue will take you back to your last save point, but the progress you've just lost will still count on the timer. If you hit quit to main menu instead, and manually reload your save from the main screen, the timer will reset back to where you last saved. This is an imperative tactic to know to be comfortable with these time requirements. The game isn't that long, but 3 and a half hours is still short enough to keep you on your toes, so you can't afford to lose progress that still clocks up against you when you die.

Truth be told though, all of the above is just a warm up for the true main event of this trophy list - Hardcore Mode. Every run through of the game prior to now effectively exists to allow you enough opportunity to equip yourself well enough to take on this challenge. You need to know the majority of the game like the back of your hand. Any hesitation, forgetfulness or lack of efficiency is truly punished.

The "Hardcore Rookie" and "Hardcore College Student" trophies, awarded for Completing Claire and Leon's stories on "Hardcore" game mode is where the majority of this game's difficulty rating comes from. I'm going to talk about both of these trophies in tandem due to their almost parallel similarity in terms of strategy, approach and tactics.

Hardcore mode limits the player in various ways. Firstly, you have to collect ink ribbons in order to save your game, meaning you can't just liberally use the typewriter whenever you want to in order to save your progress. It adds an extra layer of strategy to how you approach the game. Do you save knowing you'd lose 45 minutes of progress just before that section where you might have to fight a couple of lickers, or do you gamble it and kick on knowing you may need that ink ribbon later? It's a genuine dilemma and it's always important to have checkpoint targets in your head based on how well you know the game and what's due to come next. The decisions may not be as big as say, Dead Space 2 Hardcore - Where you only get 3 saves, but it will make you think carefully enough about your save game strategy. I did lose progress on a couple of occasions taking gambles and it's a tough one to accept, so make sure you know when to use them.

Secondly, the limited inventory space also gives further strategical consideration to Hardcore mode. On other difficulties, there are 7 pouches to collect that expand your inventory size to a healthy level. Hardcore contains just 3, which makes inventory management way more crucial here. It's great picking up attachments for guns until you realise that the shotgun now takes up 2 inventory slots, rather than 1, giving you less room for equally critical items like healing remedies and ammunition. I was constantly visiting storage cases to stock up on items I'd found to use later and chop and change what I was carrying at all times. It's also worth noting you have to carry around items tied to progressing puzzles, and these are permanently required to take up space in your inventory until you no longer need them. The game does a good job of marking items that are no longer needed once they've been fully used for story progression, but they're still a burden.

Obtaining the big hitting weapons like the Lightning Hawk and Grenade Launcher , as well as Stockpiling ammunition for them specifically to use in boss fights was the main tactic that got me through to the end. I knew that, in between these boss fights, the main areas full of regular zombies were easy to control with my handgun alone, which meant I could save my ammo for when it mattered most - Taking down the bosses. Within this, I cannot overstate the importance of the unlimited ammunition Samurai's Edge - A pistol you earn for beating the game with an S Rank. Some people will believe this goes against the essence of Hardcore mode, but having access to a gun you can use consequence-free that preserves ammo is a gamechanger, and if it's allowing me to use it, it's fair game as far as I'm concerned.

All of the above ultimately works by developing an extensive knowledge of the game through previous playthroughs of the game. Knowing the layout of each area, understanding where to go to acquire certain items and knowing all the game's secrets. It really does make a huge difference when the game is fresh in your mind and you can tackle Hardcore mode with the speed and efficiency required to beat it.

There is genuine peril. It's tense and nerve-wracking. It makes the game feel like a true survival horror experience. Running from Mr X whilst your health is hanging on by a thread. Losing your perceptions as a consequence and trying to re-establish your next route to safety because you're facing the prospect of losing 45 minutes of gameplay. Making it to the safe room where you now decide it's a good time to spend an ink ribbon on a save. Knowing trophies are hanging in the balance. It injects that terrifying rush of adrenaline.

I would say Claire's story is slightly easier than Leon's, mainly just down to virtue of the fact I'd gotten a little extra experience of tackling Hardcore mode through Leon's story, but I do also think Claire has a better arsenal to deal with the G boss fights - especially the Grenade Launcher and it's acid rounds. The Stage 3 G in Leon's story had me stuck for hours and was the biggest pain point across both Hardcore runs.

The rest of the list does include a couple of things to look out for. There are a small handful of hidden trophies for defeating the various stages of G within certain parameters. They will naturally become missable, as they're technically story-related, but you're required to play through this game so many times, you shouldn't really miss them if you look up their requirements. 

There are also a couple of collectible related trophies for reading all files scattered across the game, which are generally difficult to miss, but there are also 15 Mr. Raccoon figurines to identify and shoot, which are much more difficult to spot and will more than likely require a visual guide to find.

Finally, there's a single trophy for completing the 4th Survivor alternate game mode scenario - Where you have to backtrack through parts of the map from the sewer to an extraction point outside the police department as Hunk - An Umbrella Security Service Operator - who has been left behind in the outbreak. It's not really noteworthy, but there is a piece of DLC that focuses on individual survivors and their scenarios within Raccoon City to which this could be a taster of, though I am hoping they're a bit more engaging than this was.

Even though Resident Evil 2 sits just above average on the difficulty scale, this is mainly down to it's Hardcore mode challenge. I played through this game 6 times in total. My longest playthrough took just over 12 hours, and the shortest was just over 4, but trophy lists that demand you play through the story this many times are making brave decisions over the longevity of their games. Some people may believe that this is overkill, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. I didn't feel like this was as grindy as it should have been, and I feel like the experience stayed relatively fresh, though I did spread these playthroughs out over long-ish breaks away from the game.

The key to the Platinum trophy is making everything you remember about the game stick. Hardcore mode will still test you and you should expect no less, but if you give yourself every chance to succeed, then you more than likely will.

Notable Trophies -

Hardcore Rookie - Complete Leon's story on "Hardcore" game mode.
Hardcore College Student - Complete Claire's story on "Hardcore" game mode.

Hardest Trophy -

Hardcore Rookie

Complete Leon's story on "Hardcore" game mode

DLC #208 - Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel - Claptastic Voyage

After the eventual slog of the Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel Platinum trophy, I was actually looking forward to a story-based DLC expansion. Something to cleanse the palate at the very least.

The irony of this is, Claptastic Voyage should have been exactly that, and yet, down to some more classic Borderlands-esque shenanigans, I ended up spending way more time indulging in this package than I should have done.

Claptastic Voyage is still good, I just wish they'd learned their lesson from the main list and did a better job with the execution of it's trophies. There's absolutely no reason for a missable, non-story related trophy to be hidden that could have serious consequences on the amount of rework you have to go through should you miss it, but more on that soon.

Following on from the ending to the main game, Jack learns of a powerful, top secret code hidden away in Claptrap's memory by Tassister in order to keep it safe. It's called the "H-Source", and Jack digitalises the Vault Hunters to send them straight into Claptrap's brain to retrieve it.

You'll explore an entire new dimension, full of new environments, enemies, weapons and a brand new series of quests. The theme is a great concept for a piece of DLC - tapping into the subconscious of one of the weirdest Borderlands characters - Where his thoughts and memories are conveyed everywhere you look within different forms. The new selection of enemies includes bugs, glitches, trojans and viruses, as well as an excellent main protagonist in 5H4D0W-TP.

Glitched weapons are also a new addition to weapon rarity. Their properties will change every time you reload them, adding a hint of unpredictability to combat. This could involve extra damage dealt, a different firing mode or random elemental effects. The random volatility is a quirky idea, but this can backfire in combat, and bread and butter weapons are usually still the most effective way forward. The novelty does at least give gunplay a nice injection of variety though.

In terms of trophies, there are 10 to earn across the package, and there's not much information to take in at first glance. That's because 9 out of the 10 of these trophies are hidden, which ends up massively going against me here.

Only 5 of them are actually relevant to the new main questline arc, and the rest of these trophies are simply awarded for smaller tasks (or, actually much greater tasks, as it turns out...) which you'll uncover as you dive deeper into the DLC.

The main questline is broken down into 19 new individual quests across 5 chapters as you recover the H Source and stop 5H4D0W-TP in his quest to steal it for himself. It's exactly what you expect of any story-driven Borderlands content as you progress the questline through a series of linear missions, uncovering the new areas of the world along the way. Some of these areas will take you back to previous Borderlands lore, and as a sucker for nostalgia, it's a nice touch to see some of the old Borderlands worlds make an appearance at certain junctures here. As normal, there's also a ton of side content available to explore throughout simultaneously - Some of which is reflected in the other half of these trophies.

This includes 2 trophies dedicated to a post-questline arena mode called the Mutator. This is a repeatable arena that you'll only unlock after beating the final main quest. It's very similar to the Holodome but the twist here is that you can choose a range of modifiers to handicap yourself and reap better rewards as a result of beating 3 waves of enemies with said handicaps applied. There are 9 modifiers in total, and these include gradual loss of health, half gravity and slower reload speed. The premise is interesting, but after having exhausted the Holodome for previous levelling ventures, it felt just like another horde mode that blended into the post-game chaos.

It did help me continue the final push of my main character towards level 50 for the "Space Lord" trophy in the main list, due to the strength of the enemies being presented, and this is where I grinded out the final 4 levels for my character.

This wasn't where the real challenges lay here though, and we were in for one heck of a final stand with Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel;

Shadow of Your Former Self - Defeat 5H4D0W-TP.
Wheely Fast - Outran the Wheel in the Temple of Boom.

Just flipping back to the main questline - The "Shadow of Your Former Self" trophy, awarded for defeating 5H4D0W-TP, signals the ending of the story. It's actually a fairly smooth ride right up until you reach the end, then the difficulty spikes so badly, if you illustrated it on a graph, it would have an overhang. This is a common trap that Borderlands games have systemically been guilty of. 

5H4D0W-TP has multiple forms and his final form is outrageous. He eventually transforms into a massive space station called EoS, dealing huge amounts of damage, spawning tough counterparts that fight alongside him, but most annoyingly, is an absolute health sponge. A successful fight takes upwards of 45 minutes to 1 hour, and I countlessly had my ass handed to me multiple times prior to this.

The general consensus from some research is also that of struggle, and it actually feels like they accidentally added a raid boss into the main questline. I was sufficiently levelled with my main character, had a powerful arsenal and even had the right types of elemental effect applied to weapons that perfectly counter robotic enemies (corrosion). The main problem is, he hits so hard, you can easily be dead in a couple of shots, and when you fight bosses that turn out to be themed on endurance, this is a combination for disaster.

The arena has some good pinch points where you can stay protected from attacks, and the glitched weapons are actually their most useful here. I found that reloading until I managed to see the glitch effect that deals huge damage per shot, and then aiming for critical hit spots, was ultimately the best method to chip away at the shield and health bar of EoS, but popping out of hiding spots and taking shots at the right moment was vital to not end up being melted instantly by a laser beam, so patience is still the most important trait for victory.

The additional enemies eventually start spawning in and create problems of their own, but it's also important to remember that they also exist as second wind opportunities, and these saved me on more than one occasion.

I hate artificial difficulty and boss fights that make you feel like you don't have any real influence on the outcome. That's never fun and Borderlands loves to crowbar in these bullet sponge bosses so it's not exactly shocking, but the fact it's included within a main questline, rather than treated as the side content for the sadistics amongst us who thrive off these things, is another oversight from a game full of them. Overall, it was just another exhausting experience with this game - but it wasn't the only one. There was time for a final "hurrah".

The "Wheely Fast" trophy, awarded for Outrunning the Wheel in the Temple of Boom doesn't fit the usual bill of a trophy of note. It's requirements are very simple and it doesn't involve any skill - However, it was the foundation for a costly error that broke my will with this game.

Towards the end of the DLC content, you'll reach the Subconscious area, and pick up a side mission called "Temple of Boom". You're asked to uncover the temple and find whatever secret hides within. During the mission finale, you're chased out the temple by a giant wheel which you have to outrun to unlock this trophy. I did not manage to do this the first time and the opportunity had slipped away without me even knowing the impact it was going to have.

Once I'd beaten the main questline, I'd noticed I still had a some secret trophies to uncover, and then it dawned on me that the only way I was going to be able to go back and grab this trophy was to play through the entire DLC with another character. This is where I turned back to my Claptrap playthrough I'd recently reached level 25 previously.

I jumped into the DLC for a second time and instantly ran into challenges. My Claptrap character was seriously under-levelled. Enemies start at level 31 upwards in this DLC and I was already struggling to make it through the earliest portions of levels. I had to jump back into the Holodome and farm experience until I was level 28 purely so I could just have a chance at surviving long enough to bypass combat areas within this DLC.

Some parts are just too difficult to bypass and I was dying far too fast. I could at least kill some of these enemies, but my weapons were ineffective and fights took way longer than necessary and I'd continue to die a lot but had no choice but to keep battling through. I couldn't even equip any of the guns I'd found within the DLC world yet, due to their minimum level requirements being beyond 30. It felt like the game was just taunting me at this point.

The biggest blocker comes right before you reach the Subconscious area of the DLC. A level 34 boss called the Denial Subroutine needs to be defeated in order to progress the story and he was essentially just way too powerful for me. I had to spend almost an entire day grinding an additional 5 levels to defeat him. This took me beyond level 30 and also allowed me to equip some stronger weapons I'd found that I couldn't previously equip.

To say I was burnt out from this entire game by this point would be a gross understatement. I reckon I'd easily spent another 20-25 hours slogging fruitlessly through this DLC again - and all I was doing was trying to earn a trophy that I should have already earned and thus could have easily avoided this entire exercise.

There are two costly mistakes the developers made here. Firstly, they made this trophy hidden on the list. It's non-story related and has no reason to be hidden from view. Naturally, I expected this to be a potential spoiler and refrained from any prior research, which is ironic given the fact that this is a mistake I've already made once with this game. Secondly, the fact it's also missable is criminal, and if you don't achieve it first time round, you'll need to go through around 75% of the entire content again just to reach the point at which you can earn this trophy. Why not provide an option to replay the mission? Borderlands has allowed you to farm missions previously. Better yet, why not just exclude it from the list entirely? I don't care to what extent it may be my fault. That's terrible game design.

I've done my best to enjoy this entry into the Borderlands series, even though it's given me very easy reasons to dislike it time and time again. The good stuff is still great, but the bad stuff leaves a sour taste. It's been about as bittersweet of an experience as anything I've ever played through.

Platinum #144 - Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

Deja vu. French for "Already Seen". The fleeting illusion of having previously experienced a current situation. A befitting way to define the latest instalment of a Borderlands title to the Platinum Trophy cabinet.

We're not just drawing parallels here. We're talking direct copy and paste, and whilst this wouldn't be the first series to be guilty of such when it comes to trophy lists, there are certain ideas that should have always been left behind and considered nothing more than experimental nuggets never to be revisited. Not around here though. 2k Games have other ideas.

Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel sits right between Borderlands 1 and 2 in game lore - Hence the title.

The story focuses on Jack, who is a familiar face in Borderlands 2. He is an employee of Hyperion who wants to find the hidden vault on Pandora's moon - Elpis - but a group identified as the Lost Legion, led by Colonel Zarpedon, attempts to hijack the plan and intends to destroy the planet after taking the contents of the vault.

Jack enlists the help of the Vault Hunters to prevent Colonel Zarpedon's plan, save the planet and secure the loot. It's a very typical Borderlands plot which carries across many of the same gameplay elements seen in both previous Borderlands titles.

Due to the fact you play through the majority of the game on the moon of a planet, there are a couple of new gameplay mechanics at large. You'll experience low gravity environments, which will allow you to jump higher, but move in a more slow and floaty fashion. Oxygen also becomes more relevant, and you'll have an O2 bar which slowly diminishes as you run out of air in low pressure environments. This can be replenished at gas craters and you'll need to wear an oxygen mask, which simultaneously grants powerful combat abilities. It's the sort of game mechanic that can be annoying if not managed well, and Gearbox do a good job of making it add an extra dimension to the game, yet not feel too intrusive at the same time.

The Grinder is also a new feature, and allows the player to feed 3 weapons of a single rarity into the machine with the chance of being able to receive back a weapon of greater rarity. It's an interesting new way to acquire loot, with a slight hint of gambling-esque vibes to it. There are also a couple of new weapon-based variations too, including the introduction of Laser weapons and the cryogenic elemental effect.

Outside of this, it's more of the same in every aspect, both gameplay and trophy-wise. You'll have the ability to choose from 6 different Vault Hunters. They're all new characters with their own abilities and skill trees and you can juggle multiple playthroughs at the same time with each of these characters for maximum flexibility. You'll also see many of the previous cast adopt NPC roles throughout the story including Mad Moxxi, Sir Hammerlock and Mr Torque, as well as the 4 playable Vault Hunters from the first game too. Nostalgia galore, and it was nice to see so many familiar faces.

Graphically, this is still the same cel-shaded shoot 'em up we've become accustomed to by now. The graphics look a little bit dated when you compare them to more modern cel-shaded games, but the character models are well designed and the variety as you transverse the different terrains across Elpis is vast. Boss battles are a key staple within Borderlands games, and this is maintained well here again, with a bunch of varied bosses with some excellent creativity backing them up.

Combat is punchy and hectic, and the addictive draw of hopefully looting better weaponry to improve your arsenal is ever-present. One minute you're rocking a shotgun that fires 4 shells at once and can melt an enemy away with a corrosive elemental effect, and the next you've switched out to a laser gun with a triple beam that can freeze enemies solid and shatter them with one punch. The random concoctions have always added their own unique charm to the series.

Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel also retains the game's core RPG elements. Progressively levelling your character up to spend skill points on unlocking abilities across a fully fledged skill tree allows you the freedom to build your character exactly how you want to. Progressing the story, diving off into side quests or just farming hidden bosses in order to nail that holy grail piece of loot. It's all still exactly how you remember it, and I've always preached the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra. There are some things I definitely wouldn't have kept, but as a core gaming experience, it's overall still great fun.

In terms of the trophy list, there are a total of 51 trophies contained within, including the Platinum Trophy, and this is where the uglier side of the Deja vu kicks in.

Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel is still a primarily co-operative experience, obviously designed to be played with others, but does still cater to the solo player. It does contain some co-operative only elements to the trophy list, but these can all be earned if you have access to multiple controllers where local split-screen can be used to unlock trophies. Otherwise, you'll need to venture online.

The "Multi-Face-eted" trophy, awarded for Defeating the Empyrean Sentinel, marks the end of the main story arc, and this is where the main focus of this trophy list lies.

As is the same with previous Borderlands titles, the game does not have a traditional option to choose a set difficulty level upon beginning the game, and in typical RPG fashion, the strength of enemies will scale alongside your own levelling progression. The challenge through difficulty comes from the option to enter an exclusive version of New Game + mode one you beat the game for the first time. These are called True Vault Hunter Mode and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, and are really important to the levelling process, which has a direct impact on a couple of trophies we'll touch upon later.

Leading up to this particular trophy, there are 12 trophies in total awarded for beating main story missions and I progressed through the main story (and the majority of the entire game) as a solo player. The game does a good job of maintaining balance for difficulty depending on how many players are present, and the drop-in feature is convenient if you ever need to open the lobby up to allow other players to support you. This is useful for a couple of boss fights, especially towards the end of the game, but outside of these, it's fairly plain sailing and even as a solo player, shouldn't give you too much trouble.

Tackling the main story actually ended up being the most relaxing part of this entire list, but that's always been the case with Borderlands games. The main questline has always felt like the calm before the storm, and the extracurricular activities have always been where the true challenges lie, and here is no exception.

The "Challenger" trophy, awarded for Completing level 1 of all challenges with a single character, returns and it presents itself in the exact same form as it did in Borderlands 2. This was my least favourite trophy back then, mainly for it's nonsensical grinding requirements and punishing RNG that you had absolutely no influence over. Both are still present within this trophy.

As before, there are a big list of in-game challenges for you to complete (130 in total), split into different categories and tiered up to 5 levels depending on the quantity of what you're required to fulfil. Obtaining level 1 on the majority of these is fairly straight-forward, but for a small handful of them, they're a little bit more complicated than that.

Firstly, the grindy element to this trophy. Some of the challenges are hidden and need to be unlocked. Level 1 of the "Over Achiever" challenge only requires you to get 10 long range kills with the shotgun. However, you'll need to reach level 5 of the "Take It All" challenge, which requires you get 750 point blank kills with the shotgun. They did this exact nonsense for the same trophy in Borderlands 2. Same challenge requirements on a blatant copy and paste job. I absolutely hate the fact they either overlooked this or knew what they were doing and just did it anyway. There's absolutely no need to grind 750 point blank shotgun kills as a pre-requisite to unlocking a level 1 challenge where 98% of all other level 1 challenges are available from the start.

The same requirements also exist within the rocket launcher challenge category. You need to reach level 5 of the "Collateral Damage" challenge by accumulating 200 splash kills with rocket launchers, just in order to unlock the level 1 challenge "Missile Magnet" - Which merely requires 5 kills with a direct hit via a rocket. It's not quite 750 kills, but 200 kills is still alot once you quickly realise that rocket launcher ammo is expensive and hard to come by, and when you combine hours of griding for almost 1000 kills, just to unlock a couple of level 1 challenges, it just feels like an unnecessary waste of time that didn't need to be repeated from a previous trophy list.

Secondly, the RNG element. I mentioned a new gameplay feature in the form of the Grinder, and this has it's own dedicated challenge category too. 

The "Greater Than the Sum of it's Parts" challenge requires you to obtain 20 Luneshine weapons from the Grinder, which requires you to spend Moonstones every time you grind a set of weapons in order to possibly obtain a Luneshine weapon. Notice the deliberate use of terminology. This is where the RNG comes in.

The Grinder can be expensive, and in actual fact, the lowest amount of Moonstones required to grind is 0, however, this cost is relative to weapon level, so the higher level the weapons you're trying to grind, the higher the Moonstone cost. There may be a fairly reasonable cost-based alternative to complete this challenge, but by the time I'd begun focusing on it, grinds were costing me 12 Moonstones per attempt, which is expensive for only the possibility of obtaining a Luneshine weapon.

I don't know the exact odds, but I've seen it generally theorised as a 30% chance each grind, which isn't exactly terrible, but I did need an effective farming method, and luckily, the Holodome was a key contributor here. I could simultaneously grind for both levels and Moonstones within the Holodome, but that was only half the battle. Since the Grinder also requires 3 weapons to grind each time, I had to find an effective method of obtaining guns too. There's a couple of slot machines in Mad Moxxi's bar in Concordia - Not too far from the Grinder - and these will grant weapons for successful spins. Again, it's expensive, but money earned from the Holodome also went towards further spins.

This wasn't quite as annoying as the seemingly eternal search for Jimmy Jenkins in Borderlands 2, but the similarly uncontrollable variables were just as exhausting, and on top of the level 5 grinds mentioned above, there seemed to be way more effort put into this particular trophy than what was necessary should more reasonable requirements have been implemented. Just so much effort required to simply complete a couple of level 1 challenges as part of this trophy - And this wasn't even the longest part of the post-main questline grind either.

The "Space Lord" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 50, is yet another staple trophy requirement of the Borderlands series, and yet again, this will require much more than a single playthrough of the main story to achieve.

My main character choice was Athena, which ended up being a fatal decision in regards to completion efficiency of this list, and by the time I'd realised this, I was fully committed, so didn't really have much choice but to continue on.

By the time I'd beaten the main questline and completed all side missions, I had still only reached level 31, so the natural transition from this point is to begin a new game in True Vault Hunter Mode. This allows for enemies and quests to scale beyond level 30 and therefore grant more experience, which is eventually capped in Normal mode. This is a necessary requirement to pursue level 50 at a reasonable rate, however, the game instantly feels harder as a consequence, and by this point, I actually pivoted away from the main game and began to explore the 2 DLC content packs as my method of progressing towards level 50.

I did briefly mention it in the Holodome review, but this DLC became an essential part of this trophy. Being able to kill waves of enemies within the Holodome was the most effective way to level, but it also meant we were yet again embroiled in another grind. I used this method to reach level 40 before defecting to the Claptastic Voyage DLC to continue progression - Mainly for a change of scenery more than anything else. Even upon beating that entire DLC package, I had still only reached level 47 - but the Claptastic Voyage DLC also continues a post-story arena mode I took advantage of to knock out the remaining few levels to the end.

An entire initial playthrough, starting a second True Vault Hunter playthrough, completing an entire DLC questline and grinding kills in 2 different arena modes across 2 different DLC packages. Just to reach level 50 - And we still weren't finished with the grind.

The "That Helped, Right?" trophy, awarded for Experiencing all Vault Hunter Modes using VaultHunter.EXE, relates to the specific choice of choosing Claptrap as your starting character. When I said above that picking Athena was a fatal decision, this is exactly what I was referring to.

In order to experience all Vault Hunter Modes with Claptrap's showdown skill, you'll need to earn 25 skill points. At 1 skill point per level, this equates to reaching 25 levels, which is way higher than any of the other playable characters showdown related trophy. So, in an ideal world, it would have made this trophy list much easier to choose Claptrap from the start and continue the pursuit towards the "Space Lord" trophy with Claptrap, which I didn't do.

Claptrap's skill mode will randomly generate an ability each time it's triggered, and these modes are all scattered throughout his skill tree. The furthest unlockable skill, which is the "Pirate Ship" ability, requires 23 skill points to reach, so you'll need to progress Claptrap to level 25, meaning I had to play through around 80% of the main questline all over again just to trigger this random skill mode. This game really did push the limits on what it would make you do just to fulfil simple tasks linked to trophies.

There are 7 default modes to experience, which are available as soon as you access Showdown mode, and there are 6 available to purchase with skill points throughout Claptrap's skill tree. Once you've reached level 25, you will have access to all Vault Hunter Modes, and you can reset and redistribute your points towards other branches of the skill tree to unlock the modes you're missing, so there is that at least.

These modes are all RNG based (shock, horror), so it's just a matter of ticking them off once you experience them when using Claptrap's showdown mode. Just to add to the above, there are also 2 co-operative only modes to also experience - Medbot and Nonsensical sacrifice - and these are both where I spent most of the time attempting to get this trophy. Even though the modes are all RNG based, I'd managed to see most of them fairly easily, but when I booted up the second player in split-screen for the last 2 modes, it took a couple of hours to see them both.

You can still witness the other modes in co-op gameplay, so there is still a lot of trial and error here. Medbot happened fairly quickly but it took me a few hours to see Nonsensical sacrifice - With an approach based on nothing more than waiting for the showdown to cool down and triggering it again hoping for the best. It eventually worked.

Just a final side note on this trophy. I do completely appreciate that, had I followed the game to a roadmap, this would have meant I only had to play through the game once and my stance on this list would have been completely different in lieu of avoiding a heck of a lot of rework. However, I have always maintained a standard of playing games blind, tackling the obstacles of a trophy list organically and then reviewing them in full retrospect of my own experience.

This is one of those situations where I regret living by those standards, and not just having to scale a brand new character all the way up to level 25, but experiencing yet more completely naff RNG directly related to this trophy. The same naff RNG that soured both this game and Borderlands 2. It's worth an extra mark on it's own.

Outside of this, the list has a couple of awkward co-op trophies, even if you have access to additional controllers. You'll need a party of 4 for the "Who You Gonna Call?" trophy, awarded for Completing the "Sub-Level 13" missions with 3 other players. This will be difficult to earn online at this stage in the game's lifecycle, and if you choose the split-screen method, you will require 4 controllers to obtain it. There are some other trophies which will require at least another player, but this one is the main blocker due it's necessity to be completed with 4 people/controllers.

Character specific trophies will also require you to use each of the playable characters and unlock a trophy for using their relevant Showdown skill, but Claptrap aside, these can be picked up fairly early on in the game and don't require too much rework.

Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel copies much of the formula of Borderlands 2, right down to it's trophy list, and I wouldn't go as far to suggest it's put me off, but I'd also be lying if I said the trophy list didn't have me worn down by the end. Some people may argue that a 7/10 is a little on the steep side for difficulty, but I honestly believe this ultimately just turned into a big, grindy blur that felt like it was never going to end, and I'm praying to the heavens this is the last time we see any more Borderlands-esque RNG.

Notable Trophies -

Multi-Face-eted - Defeated the Empyrean Sentinel.
Challenger - Completed level 1 of all challenges with a single character.
Space Lord - Reached level 50.
That Helped, Right? - Experienced all Vault Hunter Modes using VaultHunter.EXE.

Hardest Trophy -

Space Lord

Reached level 50

DLC #207 - Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel - The Holodome Onslaught

Oh, Borderlands. Why do you insist on being such a complicated beast? It's not that I mind doing things back to front, I just don't know why we insist on ending up in this position again - Yet here we are, slogging through DLC as a backdoor tactical approach to obtaining another Borderlands Platinum trophy.

The Holodome Onslaught will instantly feel familiar to anyone who has played Borderlands before. It's very similar to the Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC from Borderlands 1 - A horde mode where you fend off waves of enemies through a set number of rounds until everything is dead.

It's slightly on the lighter side in terms of depth of content compared to last time, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Underdome Riot was guilty of serious content padding with up to 20 waves of enemies in a single round that made it feel like it just went on forever. I don't like the way they've essentially just copy and pasted a previously used concept, but at least they've been sensible with it's scale on this occasion. We don't need generic horde mode offerings that outstay their welcome.

I'm not saying this is good by any stretch. It's actually very unspectacular and ordinary. However, it does serve purposes to other ends, and my biggest positives of this experience are linked to how the Holodome arena can be used to ease the requirements of other trophies within the main list.

Firstly, it's a good source of experience points for both the enemies you'll kill within the arena and turning in missions for beating the Holodome. One of the trophies within the main list requires you to reach level 50 with any character, and this content is my first stop in exhausting all viable options that'll allow me to reach that milestone without having to indulge in too much repetition.

Secondly, the Holodome is also a good source of Moonstones, which enemies drop fairly frequently here, and you'll need a ton of these in relation to the achievement of some other trophies within the main list, so it turns out to be a great farming location too.

The package also comes complete with 3 additional trophies of it's own, and these follow a very simple route to completion;

The initial phase of the Holodome will see you go through 5 successive rounds, and beating all of these will net you the first trophy within the list. Each round contains between 4 to 6 waves of enemies, scaling in volume, but nothing too outrageous in terms of overall difficulty. If you're like me, and you've beaten the game, and you're using the Holodome to squeeze out some extra levelling, you should have powerful enough weapons to deal with the majority of the enemies fairly adequately.

However, once the initial 5 rounds have been beaten, you'll unlock a final Badass round. Of the 2 outstanding trophies, you'll unlock one of these for beating the Badass round, but for the final Gold trophy, you'll need to go a step further;

I Welcome Your Attack, Fool - Completed the Badass Round without going into Fight For Your Life.

Tackling this trophy as a solo player turned out to be a bit of a rough experience. The Badass Round of the Holodome contains 7 waves, and throws some tough enemies into the mix that are capable of taking you down in a couple of hits if you're not careful.

"Fight for your life" mode is activated when you lose all your health and go down. In solo play, you'll be able to revive yourself by killing an enemy to earn a "second wind" and continue fighting, but this will also void the trophy so you need to be able to progress through all 7 waves without being downed. 

The key is to take your time and be patient. Some of the weaker enemies can be held off at distance with sniper rifles or plasma rifles, but some enemies will need to be fought in close quarters in order to realistically kill them, and this is where the problems arise. Ophas and Virtuous Ophas are dangerous in close quarters because of their powerful melee attacks, but they also spawn Putti - Small creatures which provide health regeneration capabilities to protect the Opha when in danger, so the tactic to pick them off at range with a slower firing weapon wasn't a viable approach because they'd regain their health back too quickly. This forced me into fighting them at close range with an effective Shotgun and Melee combo, but it's a treacherous catch 22 scenario that cost me my life numerous times.

Additionally to this, Guardian Ponders and Guardian Reapers are also incredibly dangerous, and will actively instigate close range fights with their ability to teleport. This often means they'll end up directly at your feet without warning and they both have high damage attacks that can kill you almost instantly. The main thing that makes this frustrating is the lack of ability to get away from a fight courtesy of the space atmosphere that makes your movement floaty and slow, so in most instances where a Ponder or Reaper would suddenly spawn within close proximity, it was rare I'd be able to move quickly enough to escape death. Another annoying way to die that occurred far too often.

There are smaller inconveniences at play too. The arena has an open floor that exposes an insta-kill saw blade trap that caught me out a couple of times, and ammunition management will also become crucial, even if you've upgraded your backpack capacity.

The approach of taking my time and ensuring I did everything I could to fight enemies from a reasonable distance eventually paid off, though I'd estimate it took me over 20 attempts to finally unlock this trophy. You get a feel for spawn patterns and understanding the importance of dispatching the more dangerous foes quickly. It does become a tiring exercise, especially those failed attempts that reach the latter waves - That's over 30 minutes of wasted effort each time. The motivation of levelling proves to be a nice ongoing incentive outside of the Gold trophy. I managed to go from level 32 to level 37 whilst chasing down the 3 trophies in this set, though this did slow down significantly towards the end and I'd just about squeezed the maximum value out of this content from a levelling perspective.

A successful round - and achievement of this trophy - will probably take around 45 minutes, but after around 20 runs of varying degrees of progress, that's a substantial accumulation of time for one trophy. Now to work out how I tackle the remaining 13 levels.

Platinum #143 - Grid Legends

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Since we haven't seen a new Motorstorm title in almost 15 years, Grid now qualifies in pole position for being my favourite current racing series - But ironincally, the series was the width of a coat of paint away from going on the shitlist.

If you're unaware, the trophy list for the Grid reboot for the PS4 included a trophy that required you to drive the in-game mileage equivalent to a full rotation of planet earth. That's 24,860 miles if you're counting - and it still sounds utterly ludicrous today.

If it wasn't for the fact there's a fairly passive method for obtaining this trophy, there's a large statistical chance I wouldn't even be writing this review - Which would have been a great shame.

However, here we are, with the first iteration of Grid for the Playstation 5.

Subtitled Legends, this is pretty much more of what you can expect if you're familiar with the Grid series. It's never really changed the formula that drastically over the years. However, it does break some new ground by adding a couple of notably interesting layers to the game.

The game debuts it's Story mode. Driven to Glory allows you to play out the tale of a new start up team looking to conquer the Grid World Series and topple team Ravenwest, as you progress to catch and ultimately surpass them as top dog in the Grid racing world. It's complete with in-depth story-telling accompanied with cinematic cutscenes, real life characters and an actual script with plot development. The production value is high and you can tell alot of effort has gone into making it work as you progress through various chapters which require you to fulfil certain race objectives in order to unlock the next portion of the story. 

My only real criticism is that the plot is so linear, it suffers from some borderline hilarious continuity errors. I've just won my 8th race in a row - Why are you playing a cutscene back to me emphasising the point that we can't seem win a race? Some more dynamic plot developments that reflected your actual race results would have added some excellent depth but it's still a nice idea and refreshing to see something genuinely new to the series that isn't just a lick of paint.

More familiar modes include a Career - Which is more traditional and comes fully fleshed out with a series of events catered to various levels, spanning a variety of different event types and car classes. There's also a custom Race Creation mode (which comes in really handy for large parts of this trophy list) and an Online mode - All of which have been staple inclusions to the Grid series over the years.

Grid Legends is also way more expansive too. More race locations with greater variations of circuits, more manufacturers and car models and the additions of some new vehicle classes and event types keep things feeling fresh. Keeping up with the modern world, Electric cars make their debut, and require you to pick up boosts around the track in order to maintain their performance. Multi-Class events pit vehicles of different power against each other, giving preset time handicaps to the faster variations on the grid. Drifting, Time Attack and Eliminator all return for more. 

The customisation options are still a bit too shallow, especially if you're into fine tuning vehicle performance to squeeze those extra couple of seconds out of lap times, but Grid Legends does still lean more towards the arcade side of racing, so it's not exactly too surprising these options are shallow. The graphics didn't exactly blow me away, especially for a debut into a new generation of console, but the weather and time of day effects look as good as they ever have.

It's a solid addition to the series, and for as long as it just continues to gradually build upon what it already does really well - Which is just offer a good, hearty racing experience, it will continue to be my favourite. Avoiding the decisions to include honking trophies will always help too, of course.

Speaking of which, the trophy list contains 51 trophies, including the Platinum trophy, and you won't need to drive endlessly for hundreds of hours in order to achieve them all this time. Huge step forward. It's actually a fairly linear route to full completion that will only require you to touchpoint a couple of the games modes.

Firstly, a foray into the aforementioned Story Mode in order to collect a handful of progression-based trophies linked to completing all 36 chapters.

The "THIS IS IT" trophy, awarded for Completing Story chapter - THIS IS IT, signifies the conclusion of the Story mode as you unlock a total of 10 trophies linked to progressing through all 36 chapters - Around 20% of the entire list.

I don't mean this to sound like a smarmy criticism, because the Story mode, if taken for what it is at face value - Something a bit different - is absolutely fine. However, the overriding feeling I had coming out the other side was that it just felt like a glorified tutorial/introduction to the game. 

Each of the 36 chapters will put you in a different scenario that you'll need to fulfil, and it isn't always necessarily about winning a race. Sometimes it's simply just about driving around the track in order to link a couple of plot-points together, which is where the more casual, tutorial-esque feeling stems from. You can play it on a chosen difficulty level, but this doesn't influence the trophies in any way, and it rarely feels like this actually matters, due to the more casual nature of the tasks generally required from chapter to chapter.

Maybe it's just because I'd consider myself to be a bit more of an experienced player than what this mode ultimately demands, but it felt like a warm up to the rest of the game, and you can complete this mode within around 5-6 hours. If the underlying idea was indeed to give newer players the opportunity to cut their teeth on the Grid experience, then I'm absolutely fine with that.

Next, into the main event. The Career. Despite the addition of the Story, this is still where the heart of the Grid experience lies, and the Career mode spans across 4 different career classes. These include Rookie, Semi-Pro, Pro and The Final Gauntlet. Each of these different classes contains a variety of different race categories to get stuck into, with a selection of different events to complete underneath each one. The overall goal is to progress enough in order to reach the Gauntlet, and win it.

The "What a Legend!" trophy, awarded for Completing the Gauntlet in Career Mode, is the culmination of surging through the ranks and beating a series of races in a Gauntlet style format to the very top. There are a collection of 9 different events that make up the Gauntlet and you'll need to win them all to unlock the trophy.

The important thing to note about Career progression is that you won't need to win every event before the Gauntlet in order to progress towards it. In fact, the trophy list is actually really baron on Career-specific trophies. It doesn't require you to win a certain amount of events. It doesn't require you to play through the Career to a specific difficulty level. It doesn't force you to favour events you might not want to race because you prefer the other options.

All you need to do is fulfil the race requirements for a specific event, and that doesn't always involve winning the race. It could just be earning a podium finish or sometimes even finishing as low as 5th will be considered enough to progress. Fulfilling these requirements will count towards unlocking the next Career class. Repeat this process from Rookie, to Semi-Pro, to Pro, and you'll then unlock the Gauntlet to which you'll eventually earn this trophy. It's a very simple route to success and the flexibility of being able to pick and choose which events you want to progress is a big decision in influencing the overall difficulty of the game.

I opted to play on Expert difficulty, which is the second highest available, and generally found this a reasonably fair level of challenge. Time Attack events spike the difficulty heavily, for some reason, but every other event was very doable. Any Career event I felt like I was going to potentially waste too much time on, I just bypassed anyway, as per the relaxed requirements to progression. AI drivers will only really become aggressive if they become your nemesis, and don't tend to display dynamic race behaviours. Crashes always look artificial too - Cars will just randomly spin or flip for no apparent reason, rather than a direct cause of misjudging a manoeuvre or genuine accidents, for example.

The overall length of time to complete the Career Mode is somewhere in the region of 30-40 hours. It does suffer from some unnecessary time-padding though. Some events will be locked until you reach a certain tier with a certain car - usually featured within a prior event. In order to upgrade tiers, you'll need to accumulate mileage within that vehicle. Tier 3 requires 35 miles, and in instances where there is only a single prior event to rack this mileage up, you'll complete that event and remain well short of the target mileage to unlock the next one.

This means you have to either play through the event over until you reach the required mileage to unlock the next one, or make use of one of the other extra-curricular modes in order to just rack up the mileage that way instead. It's a clear case of inorganic longevity by design.

Completion of the Career mode will signify the end of the actual game itself, and whilst there aren't that many trophies directly related to the Career, you'll unlock some naturally as you go through the variety of events on your way to and including, The Final Gauntlet. However, the post-game isn't exactly a simple case of clean up protocol, and there's still a reasonable amount of work to do to earn the Platinum trophy.

Firstly, the remainder of the list contains a big chunk of miscellaneous trophies, simply awarded for setting up some very specific race requirements. The creativity with some of these is excellent, especially with some of the one-off events you'll set up, but some of them are just pure grind. I said at the top of the piece the Race Creator mode eventually comes in handy for large parts of this list, and this is exactly where those particular fruits are laboured.

However, it does also play a more crucial role in assisting the completion of sponsorship objectives. There are 6 trophies awarded for unlocking a specific car by completing it's correlating sponsor objective. Sponsors are found in the Team management section of the game, and each sponsor comes with a list of 3 objectives you need to fulfil in order to unlock an event in which you can win a car.

This is where I maybe missed a trick early on. Selecting sponsors allows you to progress these through the Career mode, and I wasn't aware of this when I was going through it. This meant all of my progression had to be achieved post-game instead, and some of these objectives are very grindy.

Driving 62 miles in a certain type of vehicle, which just involved creating a race in the Race Creation tool and driving around a track for an entire hour. Winning a specific Career event multiple times, which I'd already done once, but hadn't set up the sponsorship for as per above, so needed to repeat. Performing a high number of specific on-track actions during races. Just a few examples of the less favourable and grindy objectives to see in the list.

Another thing that's important to note too. You need to complete all 3 objectives before changing a sponsor, otherwise the progress is wiped and overwritten by the next sponsor you choose to work on. This is also counter-productive - It would have been easier to be able to progress all sponsors openly, and accumulate their requirements simultaneously, rather than have the game force you to work on one at a time. If you want me to accumulate 62 miles in Electric Vehicles, but you won't allow me to change the sponsor without losing that progress, then how am I expected to do that within the Career mode without repeating the same event and stagnating my own progress? It's a poor design choice, and it's a large part of the reason why the game has a bit of a grindy post-game vibe to it. Ironically, it's also why the Race Creation mode is such a crucial back up option.

It actually felt like the post-game clean up was the longest part of this Platinum trophy. It accounts for well over half the trophies in the entire list, and even though you can tandem some of them together if you plan appropriately, it still felt like it went on forever. There isn't anything within the menus from what I could see that tracks overall playtime, so this is harder to quantify, but it certainly didn't feel like a quick clean up process.

There are no online trophies present here, despite there being a fully fledged Multiplayer mode. Grid hasn't been shy of including these within lists of the past, and some of them have been hugely demanding, so the choice to omit them from the trophy list entirely this time round will be a welcome decision for some.

Grid has been an unforgiving beast in the past. From patience-testing online grinds to the absurdity of clocking up excessive numbers of mileage - It's recent Platinum trophies haven't been for the faint of heart. Grid Legends does take a noticeable step back from all of this. The chunky Career Mode combined with the post-game grind will ensure this tips into the 60+ hour range for total completion time, but with no pressure to play through the game on a specific difficulty level at any point, along with the flexibility of being able to take shortcuts in the Career progression, this does ultimately come in round about midway of the difficulty scale.

Notable Trophies -

THIS IS IT - Complete Story - THIS IS IT.
What a Legend! - Complete The Gauntlet in Career Mode.

Hardest Trophy -

What a Legend!

Complete The Gauntlet in Career Mode

DLC #206 - The Callisto Protocol - New Game Plus

It doesn't happen very often at all, but it's strange completing DLC for games where I haven't even had the chance to review the Platinum yet. Especially when they're story-driven.

I can't really talk about the game in detail, because there would be no point in reviewing the Platinum, yet in this instance, I've already beaten the Callisto Protocol 3 times and have a very strong sense of familiarity with the game.

So, how did we get here? There's a horribly glitched trophy within the main list, which requires you to upgrade a single gun - Something you should be able to do fairly early within your first playthrough of the game.

However, 3 full playthroughs and 4 fully upgraded guns later and I still don't have that trophy. The issue is well documented and there is a strong possibility at this point that I'll have to upgrade everything in the game in order to unlock it, and that's going to require a few more runs of the game. Access denied, for now.

Naturally, this'll be a little bit out of sync, and there's a possibility a few more DLC packs may be completed before we even get round to talking about the main list.

New Game Plus was added to the game as the first DLC pack, and comes with just a single trophy. All you need to do is beat the game on New Game Plus - Unlocked after beating the game once on any difficulty and the mode works exactly how you expect New Game Plus to work.

You carry over all your weapon upgrades, money and resources, and you can also play on any difficulty level for the purpose of unlocking this trophy. There are greater challenges to be had amongst all the DLC released for the Callisto Protocol, so I kept this simple and played on Minimum Security difficulty, which is the lowest of the 3 difficulty levels.

The game is significantly less challenging between the combination of playing on the lowest difficulty level as well as being able to carry through upgraded weapons, which you can continue to further upgrade as you go through. This'll be useful for some of the other runs later on and I also managed to beat the game in just over 7 hours in New Game Plus, so it's not like the game's demanding too much from you.

I'm not sure exactly when we'll be able to discuss the main game in detail, but it does change the way you have to review DLC which involves playing through different variations of the game, so I'm hoping we can align things as quickly as possible.

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