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

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.