DLC #217 - Grid Legends - Rise of Ravenwest

There isn't anything much more iconic about Grid than Ravenwest. The original protagonists. Always the team to beat - And with the cinematic production levels of Grid Legends, this DLC gives the people associated with Ravenwest the limelight to portray their obnoxious personas.

The previous 2 pieces of DLC content have focused on gimmicks, touching on Demolition and Endurance racing. Rise of Ravenwest is just a nostalgic nod to the past and focuses on the roots of Grid through a longstanding icon of it's series.

It doesn't do anything spectacular, but it's still my favourite individual piece of DLC so far, mainly for the subtle features that build on the nostalgic vibes. The user interface changes to the bold, vibrant yellow text originally featured in Race Driver : Grid. The lighting and slightly grainy filter give it an old school ambience. The classic Ravenwest liveries return, though it is a shame you can't use them outside the new story branch. The Miami race location returns. All of this with a story told that stretches way back to the beginning of the Grid series. It won't mean anything to some, but I'm a bit of a nostalgia freak so I loved seeing these surprises pop up as I progressed deeper into the content.

Expanding on this, the Miami location adds 2 new track variants and there are 4 new classic vehicles added. These include the BMW 320 Turbo Group 5, 1967 Chevrolet Corvette, 1971 Plymouth GTX and 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback.

Again, there are 10 trophies added to this collection, and these are a bit more straight-forward compared to previous sets.

The new Rise of Ravenwest story branch is the most fleshed out offering yet, containing 11 new events to progress through. This is the most amount of events for any story branch thus far, and as a result of the prolonged length, 6 of the 10 trophies on offer are purely progression-based in relation to completing the story.

With no real dedicated racing theme connected to this expansion, circuit racing is heavily featured within these events, and the requirements are fairly simple for the most part, requiring you to finish anywhere between 4th place and just simply complete the event. You'll need to go on to win a couple of them, but this isn't too demanding, even against tougher AI. All 11 events should take no longer than 2-3 hours, given the fact you shouldn't really have to replay many of them, if any at all.

Trophies tied to sponsorship objectives are chopped for this package. Instead, you'll be required to beat 3 hot laps using specific vehicles on specific tracks. These are with the new vehicles added to the game as mentioned above - A nice touch to give you an excuse to use them, and whilst it's true these are nowhere as grindy as the sponsorship objectives, there is a crucial detail to know.

I was stuck on the first hot lap for hours and thought it was just a matter of practice and developing my strategy. I had the vehicle maxed out with performance upgrades and I felt like I was pulling off the optimal lap each time, yet I was consistently falling a good few seconds short of the required lap time for the trophy.

I did some research and discovered that the default setting for custom events switches off performance upgrades, which negated the upgrades I had installed on the vehicle. Once I'd turned this on, I managed to achieve the hot lap time straight away. Applying the same settings to the other hot lap trophies yielded similar results. It's a good job I checked. I knew something wasn't quite right and it was a crucial piece of information to find out about. I'd lost a few hours unnecessarily but sometimes you find things out the hard way and that's just how it is.

Taking this into account, it's an easy completion. The trophies are heavily weighted to the story and the hot lap trophies are also easy once you know about the trick above. You might need to drive the required mileage to unlock the tier 3 upgrades, which is a little bit grindy, but it's still a better direction than fulfilling sponsorship objectives. 

DLC #216 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Legacy of the First Blade : Episode 2

I've quickly realised that the middle portion of episodic DLC is the most difficult to review. At least the beginning and end give you obvious discussion points through both the establishment of a plot and a conclusion respectively.

Episode 2 of the Legacy of the First Blade does throw up a couple of intriguing plot points, but it's still yet to be seen where these go.

The beginning of this DLC sees Makedonia left behind for Achaia for the second leg of this story, and as before, the entirety of the content is focused specifically within this region. That's probably the most notable difference given the fact the game doesn't really expand upon it's gameplay features within this second episode. 

There is more of an active emphasis on naval combat off the shores of Achaia for portions of the questing, and you'll be able to try out the Chimera's Breath for the first time - A newly added flamethrower attachment for the Adrestia. However, the package is very much more focused on the ongoing development of the story and progressing closer towards it's conclusion than bolstering the gameplay additions.

It's still too early to give any sincere thoughts on the story, but the conclusion of the episode does dangle a carrot of intrigue about how this ultimately ends, albeit with a hint of predictability in the air. I'll be able to confirm if this hunch I have turns out to be true or not. It does also reveal a pretty bizarre plot point which didn't make an awful lot of sense to me. Have a look at the artwork for the hidden trophy in this set if you want a clue about what this relates to.

In terms of trophies, there are a further 5 on offer which add more of the same as previously seen.

The hidden trophy is awarded at the conclusion of the episode, which definitely feels a bit more fleshed out compared to the first installment. The main story continues with 9 new quests, compared to the lighter offering of just 5 previously. Getting through these and unlocking this trophy is where most of your time is spent within this package, and the questing is still way too overly familiar, sticking to a rigid formula of fetch-questing and fort infiltration. At what point does it become acceptable to question the lack of variety and creativity in these quests?

There is another trophy added for hunting down a new group of Ancients of the Order too, though only 5 have been added for this episode, which is 2 lighter than the previous one. Same principles apply - Find the clue that reveals the identity and whereabouts of the target, and execute them all until you have the trophy.

The remaining trophies relate to smaller miscellaneous tasks. The new Chimera's Breath weapon needs to be used to set 10 ships on fire, and you'll also need to kill 10 enemies with the Rapid Fire ability. Depending on your skill tree distribution, you may or may not already have this ability. On this occasion, I'd already previously acquired it, but you can reset your ability points should you need to unlock it for the purpose of this trophy.

The final trophy is awarded for parrying 10 attacks with the Judgment of the Lion, which is a bonus weapon you'll earn during the main questline.

The overall content is slightly longer, adding 8 hours onto my save file to breach the 100 hour mark with this game. This is mainly down to a chunkier main story offering, with the number of quests almost doubled compared to Episode 1. The side activities are a bit leaner, and the miscellenous trophies can be earned in no time at all. Let's see how this one wraps up.

DLC #215 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Legacy of the First Blade : Episode 1

Episodic DLC is always difficult to review within it's own merits. You're effectively halting progress part-way through to give a full assessment of a piece of content that only makes up part of the full experience.

This isn't the first time an Assassin's Creed game has adopted episodic content. Assassin's Creed 3 was followed up with the 3-part Tyranny of King Washington story, and there is still a second batch of episodic content to review for Odyssey in the form of The Fate of Atlantis.

The Legacy of the First Blade calls Alexios to Makedonia to save a burning village. During this encounter, he is attacked by Darius - wielder of the "First Blade" - an iconic nod to the Hidden Blade which became a staple weapon of the early Assassin's Creed titles.

Darius reveals that a Persian group called the Order of the Ancients has invaded Makedonia to hunt him down, under the belief that he is a "Tainted One" - Figures who carry a powerful bloodline and are seen as a threat to their cult. Incidentally, Alexios also falls into this same category and turns out to be a prime target for the Order too, meaning they must work together to eliminate the threat and protect themselves.

The content is exclusively limited to the confines of the Makedonia region of the world map, and doesn't add many notable gameplay features or alterations. There is a brand new main story questline added to kick off the episodic story, and the side content is supplemented by a small handful of quests and a new assassination kill list to work your way through.

The Death Veil ability is added to the skill tree, which makes bodies disintegrate when you silently assassinate them, and you can earn some new weapons/loot - including the Pride of the Lion sword acquired early on. However, this is disappointingly light, especially when you quickly discover that the content is limited to a pre-existing portion of the map and alot of the activities the trophies require of you have just been replicated from the main game.

Speaking of which, there are 5 trophies added for this first episode of content, and they make for a fairly straight-forward completion.

There are only 5 main story quests to reach the conclusion of the first part of this story, which unlocks the hidden trophy amongst this collection. There's not much variance within the individual quests - They mostly follow the same sort of pattern from the main game. Fetch this, infiltrate that, kill these soldiers. They should only take a couple of hours to beat, too.

There is also another trophy linked to killing the first group of enemies within The Order of the Ancients. The DLC opens up a new kill list off the back of the Cultists menu, which provides you with 7 new targets to assassinate. You will encounter some of these enemies naturally through the main questline, and in exactly the same fashion as the Cultists side-quest from the main game, you'll need to uncover the identities and locations via clues to find the rest.

This is where most of the remaining time with this package is spent, with the other trophies in the list being easily attainable for smaller side feats. You'll need to purchase the aforementioned newly added Death Veil ability - and kill 10 enemies with it equipped. You'll also need all 3 upgrades to the Rush Assassination ability too, which will allow you to chain together 4 attacks for another trophy, so there may be a necessity to grind a couple of levels if you don't have it. You can also spend a few thousand Drachmae to reset your ability points, which may be a much more viable alternative.

There are an assortment of other side quests available to tackle as part of this DLC, but these are not necessary to trophy attainment, so can be skipped over.

It's a fairly short completion, clocking in at around 4-5 hours total. My save file has reached 98 hours and 23 minutes, so it sits perfectly within this expected timeframe for completion. It is important to note that it does make up a 3-part story, so you may naturally expect it to be a bit more bite-sized overall, but after a 94 hour Platinum experience, that's not necessarily a criticism as far I'm concerned.

DLC #214 - Dirt Rally 2.0 - Season Three

We're on the final stretch of seasonal content for Dirt Rally 2.0 and the grand finale is on the horizon.

Until then, Season Three comes with a couple of newly added Rally locations in Greece and Finland, as well as the brand new Yas Marinas Rallycross location in Dubai.

As with previous seasons, there are also a collection of new vehicles to drive. The Subaru Impreza, Ford Focus RS Rally 2001, Peugeot 306 Maxi, Peugeot 206 Rally and the Seat Ibiza and Volkswagen Golf Kit Cars are all added to the ever-growing collection of vehicles.

Season Three also adds another 4 trophies to the overall list, and contains a strong focus that leans towards the new locations over usage of any of the new vehicles. 

Purchasing any of the 2 new Kitcars will award a trophy, and then you'll need to perform 100 jumps in Finland to unlock the first Gold trophy offered out within this slew of Dirt Rally 2.0 DLC content. It's easily achieved by just loading up a Custom Event with multiple stages and just driving through each of them. Any time your car remotely leaves the floor, it will count as a jump, so it effectively becomes a naturally acquired trophy through accumulation.

There's also another trophy awarded for rolling your car in Finland and continuing the race. I earned this without even trying and Finland's snowy routes with it's raised snow barriers are extra hazardous, so certainly help with this.

The final trophy is awarded for Winning an Event in Greece by over a minute with Hardcore damage enabled. I found the key to making this easy was to choose one of the Rally cars for which I had full engine upgrades available for, as per the main trophy list. Even on harder difficulty levels, the extra performance power of these cars can make light work of competitors - You just need to make sure you pack the event with enough stages to build up a deficit to second place of longer than a minute. It may be worth adding 4/5 stages to make extra sure and prevent any sort of rework.

These content packs have been very straight-forward thus far, but I've already begun working on the final two, both of which are immediately more challenging for different reasons, so it's safe to say the preliminary heats are now over.

DLC #213 - Dirt Rally 2.0 - Season Two

The Post-Platinum clean up has taken longer than expected for Dirt Rally 2.0, and based on what's to come, we've still barely scratched the surface.

Season Two continues with one of the less challenging content packs, adding a single new Rally location in Wales, as well as two new Rallycross locations in Latvia and Germany.

It also brings a slew of new vehicle options, including the Peugeot 205 T16, Ford RS200 Evolution, Lancia Delta S4, MG Metro 6R4, Porsche 911 SC RS and the Lancia 037 Evo 2.

It certainly leans more towards a Rallycross focus, and this is also evident within the 4 new trophies also added to the package.

Completing any event at Wales will net you a trophy, as well as winning 3 Rallycross events in the Ford RS200 Evolution. Both of these can be as simple as creating these events in the Custom Race mode with the shortest parameters possible if efficiency is of the essence.

The final 2 trophies are very similar, requiring you to win at Latvia in the Reinis Nitiss Ford Fiesta Rallycross (MK7) as well as win at Germany in the Kevin Eriksson Ford Fiesta Rallycross (MK8).

I attempted to further create a custom race to fulfil these, but it didn't quite work for some reason. I even made sure the livery was correct for each vehicle and attempted them both again to no avail.

I ultimately just started a new FIA World Rallycross Championship, selecting the appropriate driver and skipping all races until I got to the relevant location before ensuring victory. It's a slightly longer-winded method, and both Latvia and Germany are right at the back end of the Championship schedule, but it still shouldn't take too long to skip the events until you reach the end. You will need to do this twice to cover both drivers and their location though.

In a similar vein to Season One, nothing at all terribly demanding, but we are definitely on the build up to bigger things to come.

Platinum #149 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

Assassin's Creed Origins did something drastic and completely changed the formula for Assassin's Creed games.

I came out the other side of that experience with the belief that the shift into a larger open-world focused, RPG-driven offering was a step in the right direction for the series.

That sort of stuff is easy to say when something feels newly refreshed, and the real acid test is how well the formula stands the test of time. So the big question is, does Assassin's Creed Odyssey - which looks to build upon the newly introduced formula - capitalise on the change of direction?

This franchise has shifted so hard, I don't actually feel like I'm playing an Assassin's Creed game any more. The vast dialogue options, the expansive RPG elements, the absolute bucket-load of side content/questing. If you gave me this game out the box and didn't label it, and you wanted me to guess what I was playing, it would feel a lot closer to the Witcher than it does Assassin's Creed. Your character doesn't even carry around a hidden sleeve blade anymore. That's a subtle but significant difference. 

The hidden blade is a hallmark for Assassin's Creed and it just feels like such notable omissions are the games away of sheading it's roots to settle into this new direction it's taken. It's not a bad thing. I said in my Origins review that it's a series that needed something a little different after all these years, and it's taken that to the very opposite end of the spectrum.

The time period on this occasion is Ancient Greece, and you'll have the option to either play as Alexios or Kassandra, depending on whether you want a male or female protagonist. They're siblings to each other, and there are no drastic changes to the plot depending on who you pick, so it's mainly down to personal preference.

The story is set during the Peloponnesian War and you're a mercenary who fights for both sides of the war between Sparta and Athens. This is heavily overlayed by a personal plotline - To transverse all corners of Ancient Greek land to reunite your broken family and eliminate a secret organisation controlling the war called the Cult of Kosmos.

Ancient Greece is one of my favourite time eras, and the shift in direction for the series does great justice to such a vast world filled with Ancient Greek references. The era is captured perfectly in it's scale and vastness. The multitude of Greek islands, the mythological beasts and creatures, the historical characters. Assassin's Creed games have always nailed historical accuracy - but seeing it on such a grand scale is the strongest suit of the game.

The all-action combat returns, heavily interwoven into the RPG elements once again. Levelling your character will allow you to use ability points on a skill tree to develop your range of attacks and equip better weaponry you'll either find out in the wild or receive as rewards for beating quests. The quest design leans way more into the action elements than it does the stealth-based gameplay the series grew up on - Possibly deliberately in another nod to truly shedding it's roots, but it works well and lends to some solid combat mechanics.

The combat also extends to the sea. The naval-based combat has featured in previous Assassin's Creed titles, but it takes on a huge role in the open world here. This wasn't the case in Origins, and there is a big emphasis on naval combat in the questing for Odyssey. I'm not as big on this side of the combat compared to that of land, but it does a good job of adding to the scale of the game and some of the graphical scenery whilst out of sea is excellent.

It builds well on Origins, and purely for the time era being one of my personal favourites, it's an overall positive step in the development on this new trajectory the series is on. It does have it's flaws. It ends up being way too repetitive and grindy on much of it's content, and that ties deeply into the trophy list, but it's a good installment to the series and still kept me engaged to the very end. Admittedly though, it did start to wear thin eventually, and my engagement threshold was being pushed to it's highest limits.

Speaking of which, the game has 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy, and strap in, because this is a long old haul to the finish line.

The "Odyssey's End" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 9 + Epilogue, signifies the end of the main story arc, and Odyssey continues along the same structure Origins followed in terms of how the story is presented. Sequences with sub-objectives to achieve full synchronisation were dropped for Origins in favour of a running questline through a series of episodes, and that's bought back again here, meaning we've probably seen the last of the sequence-based format that was so familiar to the game for such a long time.

You can unlock a total of 10 progression-based trophies on your way to the end of the main story arc, and whilst you will be asked to choose a difficulty level to play through the game, this does not have any material impact on the trophies. I chose to play on "Hard", which is the highest difficulty level, and this is only really noticeable at very specific points of the game. It's not necessarily as noticeable whilst playing through the main questline, but it is for elements of this trophy list which aren't necessarily notable if it wasn't for the nature of the task.

For example, there a handful of trophies awarded for defeating classic Ancient Greek mythical creatures, including the Cyclops, Minotaur and Medusa. These are big fights designed to test your combat abilities, and on the hardest difficulty, these become rough. Perfecting your dodge, timing and endurance to their heights. This also extends to other combat-centric elements of the list including a trophy awarded for beating a side questing arc that requires you to defeat 8 Legendary animals. Again, big fights which will battle-harden you on the toughest difficulty. These alone are worth a mark on the overall difficulty rating - Providing you do indeed choose to play on "Hard" difficulty.

It may also be important to note that enemies scale to your level too, so you always feel like you're fighting battles relative to your own levelling curve. It keeps the difficulty consistent, and fights do mostly feel like they're fair, especially when you finally equip that weapon or piece of armour you've been levelling towards.

Across the 10 episodes of the main story, there are 95 missions in total to beat. This is a testament to the scale of which Assassin's Creed games have grown. I did primarily focus on the story before consciously tackling the side activities, which will constantly have you bouncing around the different regions of Greece. This naturally leads to discovering new territories and things to do often, so it is very easy to get sidetracked, but I did remain committed to beating the story first and foremost, so when I say my save file read 60 hours by the time I'd achieved this trophy, I'd like to think that's a fairly accurate measure. It did feel as long as the time indicated.

So it is a lengthy offering, but the difficulty of selecting "Hard" doesn't actually become that prevalent throughout the story, as many of the quests are simple exercises designed to tie a plot together. The combat can still be challenging, but it never hit it's peak. That sort of challenge is reserved for the big boss fights outlined above. However, for a story arc, that's still a big time investment, but even at this sort of length, it still barely scratches the surface of what the remainder of the trophy list demands. 

There are many miscellaneous trophies you'll unlock naturally by just progressing the main story. I'd unlocked 31 trophies by the time I'd finished the main portion of the game, and whilst a couple of these can be considered side activities that sit well away from the main quest, the vast majority of them are for very simple, naturally-achieved tasks.

However, despite this large accumulation, the post-story grind is big in it's own right, with a number of notable trophies that make up some significant additional hours on top of an already time-consuming main story.

The "Cult Unmasked" trophy, awarded for Defeating all the Cultists of Kosmos, was the first priority in terms of side content progression.

The Cultist tree lays out 43 assassination targets as people linked to the Cult of Kosmos, and unlocking the trophy will require all 43 of them to be killed. For the most part, they're not readily available to hunt down, and their identities will need to be revealed by unearthing clues about the Cultist and their exact whereabouts. To have to scour the landscape and reveal clues, as well as find and kill the Cultist, makes this a fairly time-consuming exercise, and a big chunk of the post-game clean up is dedicated to this trophy. 

Some of the Cultists identities will also only be drawn out through some longer-winded prerequisites too. For example, one Cultist will only be revealed once you weaken a certain region, which requires a couple of hours of taking on mundane side quests to lower the regional influence down to the necessary point that triggers the naval battle you need to kill the Cultist at sea. Another Cultist is drawn out at the higher ranks of the Gladiatorial arena, and you'll have beat a bunch of random warriors in order to reach him. This game is very good at padding longevity through artificial means, and some of the steps required for this trophy are a good example of that.

This trophy also directly links to the "Legacy Restored" trophy, awarded for Upgrading your Spear to Tier 6. Spear upgrades are purchased with Cultist fragments, which are awarded per Cultist you kill. All 43 fragments are required to upgrade the Spear to Tier 6, making these trophies heavily linked.

The "Top of the Food Chain" trophy, awarded for Becoming the first Mercenary, is another key focus within the post-story grind, and this relates to another sub-quest similarly aligned to the Cultist tree. This trophy requires you to kill 38 Mercenaries across the land to climb the ladder from Tier 9, all the way up to Tier 1 and reach the number 1 spot.

Each tier contains 5 Mercenaries to defeat, except Tier 2, which includes just 3, and then Tier 1, which includes the sole number 1 Mercenary. A Mercenary will either come to hunt you when you have a bounty on your head, or you can pro-actively hunt them around the map. Either way, each time you defeat one, you'll gain a spot on the ladder.

On this logic, I believe I had to defeat 38 Mercenaries, though that is a non-committal figure. The Mercenary system is the most annoying mechanic in the game. Having a bounty on your head and being pursued by Mercenaries has a very limited novelty value, and whilst it can be a productive method towards attaining the trophy, it also meant I was having to kill more of them that what was necessary to. Alot of the Mercenaries that came after me were lower in the pecking order, and defeating these does not progress you up the ladder, so this only served as an inconvenience to progression. Pursuing this trophy was where I was starting to get a little bit fed up of how certain elements of the game had started to consume my experience with monotony and dullness.

Mercenaries aren't difficult to take down, but to go from Tier 9 and just jump around the map slaying them all one by one to reach Tier 1 is just another lengthy exercise in a game with trophies fully focused around these sort of tasks. After the Cultists tree, did we really need something else that is essentially just the same thing reskinned? The real grind of the list was beginning to test my patience by this point.

Finally, the "Lord of the Seas" trophy, awarded for Upgrading the Adrestia to Legendary Status, requires you to accumulate enough upgrades for your ship to achieve it's highest regard. There are 9 different parts of the ship to upgrade, and 7 levels are required per component to fully upgrade it. Again, this will take some time, but it's mainly down to the amount of resources you need to collect. Drachmae, Wood, Precious Stones, Ancient Tablets and Iron Ore are all necessary for these upgrades.

I found myself constantly out of wood, and the easiest way to acquire this is to purchase from a Blacksmith. This is an easy fix, but cuts into the Drachmae you need in tandem with the other materials to upgrade the ship. As a result, I began to run out of drachmae with a handful of upgrades remaining. I think I was also too liberal with my spending early on and underestimated the amount of money and resources this trophy would eventually require. It also didn't help that I wanted to purchase wood, iron ore and precious gems, rather than naturally farm them from the environment, but I was done with the grind by this point and really just couldn't be bothered. I did end up having to do some additional side content to earn enough money for all of the above though and this was seen as a necessary evil. I wasn't prepared to go around farming materials from the landscape.

This entire list is actually littered with grindy trophies, but the rest of these are much more passive in comparison. There is a trophy awarded for reaching level 50, which I did unlock deep into this journey, and I did actually end up achieving level 56 by the time I had concluded the entire list, which is probably another highlighter of how grindy this experience is - I overlevelled by 6 whole levels to get this Platinum finished. Every action you carry out seems to award experience points, so you'll comfortably reach this anyway. There is also a necessity to complete 20 different side quests and 20 message board quests, but again, these are much more passive as you'll need to find ways to earn Drachmae and resources for ship upgrades, and questing is the best way to accumulate this.

The trophy list ramps up the expectation of the players dedication to previously unseen levels for an Assassin's Creed title. My save file for Odyssey clocked in at 94 hours and 1 minute by the time I'd popped the Platinum - That's almost 25 additional hours in comparison to Origins at circa 70 hours of game time. It did start to weigh me down after jumping between one grindy exercise to the next and the repetitive nature of the game catches up with itself eventually - Particularly post-story. I dislike it when games I enjoy go to unnecessary lengths to extend their longevity, and this has to be taken into account for the difficulty rating. At this stage, we're still pretty early into the sandbox era of Assassin's Creed, but I hope future games move away from this.

The game is most fun when it challenges you with it's combat and the big boss fights but these are somewhat lost in a sea of grindy post-game and side content. The combination of both just about edges into the lower tier of a 7/10, but the majority of this marking is down to it's overall length and the monotony of how you have to reach the end of the game. It's just too much and I'm hoping it doesn't take the edge off the excitement I have for the DLC.

Notable Trophies -

Odyssey's End - Complete Episode 9 + Epilogue.
The Cult Unmasked - Defeat all the Cultists of Kosmos.
Top of the Food Chain - Become the First Mercenary.
Lord of the Seas - Upgrade the Adrestia to Legendary Status.

Hardest Trophy -

The Cult Unmasked

Defeat all the Cultists of Kosmos

Platinum #148 - Tales from the Borderlands

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 1/10

I have sometimes wondered what the easiest Platinum trophy in the Playstation catalogue might look like.

A couple of games in the collection have flirted with such an accolade, but have usually be spared by at least something of note that prevented it from hitting the very bottom of the difficulty scale.

In what should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, the answer lies within an episodic, interactive choice-based story spin-off from the Borderlands series.

Set somewhere among the aftermath of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, Tales from the Borderlands follows the story of tandem duo Rhys and Fiona. Rhys - a Hyperion employee and Fiona - a professional con artist, unexpectedly team up after a deal involving a monetary exchange for a faked Vault Key goes wrong and leads them to go in search of a real vault containing real riches.

It maintains alot of the key story-based values you expect from a typical Borderlands title. It's still got it's comedic edge, a dirge of wacky and wonderful characters - Many of whom are returning from the first 3 Borderlands games - and it's all tied together with some excellent dialogue and interactions between them all.

It should go without saying, but it's perhaps worth mentioning that, despite the above similarities, the core experience is completely different to what you're used to. The high octane combat and thoroughly detailed RPG system takes a back seat to make way for a story-driven experience requiring tentative button inputs to keep you engrossed in the lore, with regular intervention for dialogue options and button mashing sequences.

The game is also accompanied by a banging soundtrack that compliments the intros/outros to each chapter, which is definitely something I didn't expect.

I did have a major gripe with the game though. It does a good job of trying to build up the drama around the choices the player makes throughout the game and make them seem like they'll matter to a much grander scale later, only for this to not really be the case in the end.

In the interest of maintaining as much of a spoiler-free stance as possible - though I will slightly give it away to just summarise my point - the part of the game in Chapter 5 where it becomes apparent your decisions impact on the story relate to something completely immaterial to any sort of story outcome, and instead ends up being much more meaningless than that. It's hard to not be too vague, but you'll understand what I mean when you see it. I'd built this up in my own head to be a grand finale where your decisions may impact critical moments of life and death, or significant actions that dramatically change the plot or the ending - But it's nowhere near any of this sort of stuff, and that detracts from the experience for me when it comes to games like this where the player is given the choice to influence the course of the game. The climax needs to be hard-hitting and significant to the ending.

The dialogue prompts pop up very regularly too, so the game gives you the impression every choice matters and a big path is being woven in the background to come to a specific outcome tailored to your choices. If the idea behind the very regular interaction is to just ensure players stay engaged, then that's fine, but I do also feel like there has to be more to it than what this game gives you in the end. Ultimately, did the game make me care enough about who I could and couldn't take into my vault hunter group for the grand finale? Not at all.

Regarding trophies, this is medium-sized list, with a total of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, and it's an incredibly easy list to break down and go through.

The structure of the game is broken up into 5 individual episodes, with each individual episode consisting of 6 chapters. It's not clear when a chapter begins and ends other than the fact it'll just trigger a trophy notification, and the menus only allow you to begin a specific episode from the very start, so there's no further breakdown of chapters that allow you to replay certain portions of the game from the main menu.

The "Tales Twice Told" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 5, is awarded upon conclusion of the story. Naturally, you'll start with Episode 1 and work your way through, playing the game exactly like you would in it's natural storytelling flow. You don't necessarily have to do it this way - All episodes are available to play fresh out of the gate and there's no pre-requisite to unlock each episode in conjunction with passing through the episode prior, but it wouldn't exactly make much sense to do it out of kilter anyway would it?

Admittedly, I don't have much experience with games of this variety, but it did remind me of Heavy Rain. This differs in the sense that all the decisions you make are relatively consequence-free. In Heavy Rain, every choice, decision or action you made carried significance to the shape of the plot. Characters could die based on your choices and the path of the plot could dramatically change, throwing up a variety of different gameplay paths and endings. That's what gave it the edge of difficulty it had, and Tales from the Borderlands lacks the same sort of depth in comparison. The interaction here feels completely token and does not have the same weight on your shoulders that Heavy Rain gave you when it came to making decisions.

Heavy Rain also contained intense quick time events and fumbling inputs or missing prompts could have dire consequential outcomes which impacted the rest of the game, especially if you were going for trophies that meant you had to achieve specific endings. Tales of the Borderlands is way more forgiving to almost an infinite degree. You can technically fail. I saw a "game over" screen a couple of times due to dropped or no inputs that caused the death of a key character, but all you'd be prompted to do was reload the last checkpoint and you were free to resume from where you left off. This lack of jeopardy makes it incredibly easy and feels like you're always just going through motions. In effect, you can't really lose or fail.

Each episode clocks in at roughly anywhere between 1 and a half to 2 hours in length, totalling a 10-12 hour experience for all 5 episodes. I didn't binge it all in a couple of sessions, and committed to an episode roughly every 3 days, to ensure the story remained fresh in my mind.

Each episode comes with 7 trophies, with a trophy individually dedicated to each chapter within an episode, and capped off with an overall completion trophy to sign off the ending. Rinse and repeat this format across all 5 chapters and that's how you end up with 36 trophies when you include the Platinum.

It's that straight-forward, there's really not much else to say. I almost wanted to qualify this game for an "N/A" in terms of overall difficulty rating but just for the benefit of consistency in attributing a mark to every game I've ever completed, it just about makes it onto the scale, but even that's incredibly generous in itself. There is certainly justification for why this game shouldn't even be attributed a score and I wouldn't argue against that at all.

You can still see a "Game Over" screen if you don't react quickly enough to certain button prompts that otherwise result in death, but that's about as far as I can stretch the logic, and I'm doing alot of heavy lifting to come up with something there.

However, after the struggles I was put through by Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, the change of pace was welcome and it was refreshing to just sit back and take something in for what it was for a change. I didn't think it hit the right spot purely for it's superficial outcomes and lack of genuine weight the users choices ultimately have, but it's an easy Platinum trophy, and if you're after something a little bit different, it gives you that.

Notable Trophies -

Tales Twice Told - Completed Episode 5

Hardest Trophy -

Tales Twice Told

Completed Episode 5

DLC #212 - Grid Legends - Enduring Spirit

Endurance Racing. It's the sub-genre marmite of the racing world. I've never been a fan personally. Grid itself did enough to put me off the idea of such highly-focused concentration levels of racing with the "Around the Globe" trophy nonsense.

Despite the label, it's a lot lighter touch than you'd rightfully think though - to the point where you can potentially argue that it's masquerading.

The Enduring Spirit is meant to be all about the Endurance discipline, and whilst the undertones are there, the theme is left mostly wanting, and you end up with a fairly generic piece of DLC as a consequence.

Aside from the newly added Endurance discipline, the package finally adds a brand new location with track variants - The Fuji Speedway - as well as 4 new vehicles in the Bentley Speed 8, BMW V12 LMR, Bentley Continental and the Mazda Autozam AZ-1. It's about time we saw an actual new location with a load of track variants.

It's important to note that Endurance racing has featured in previous Grid titles, but it's approached much differently this time round.

Previously, physical tyre wear would determine the distance you were capable of covering in Endurance races, and the race would end at full degradation of your tyres to the point where they'd disintegrate and make your car incapable of travelling any further. It was a slightly odd mechanic, but it's how the game distinguished Endurance racing from your regular circuit race.

Enduring Spirit strips that back entirely and the field of cars is split into multiple classes where you simply cover as much distance as possible within a set time limit. You're only up against your specific car class so it effectively feels like there are multiple races ongoing simultaneously. The times for Endurance racing can range from as little as 5 minutes up to an hour and the race ends once the car in first place overall crosses the finish line once the allotted time limit has passed.

As before, there are 10 new trophies added to the total list, with a varied spread of tasks required to unlock them all.

Starting with the new Endurance story mode branch, which adds 8 new events to the ongoing story mode, where you can unlock 3 progression-based trophies for passing the requirements of all 8 events. Remember to select one of the 3 new sponsor objectives to instantly begin progressing the 3 trophies on offer for completing the sponsor events for Accuse, Avanzar and Bellezza respectively. If you choose Accuse before you start the story, you'll almost have the requirements completed to unlock this sponsor event by the time you reach the end. Handy tip.

The story events are still fairly straight forward, courtesy of their low-bar requirements to pass each event and progress onto the next, and when I said above the package feels like it's masquerading on the Endurance gimmick, the story mode is a great example of that.

Only 3 of the 8 events are actually Endurance races. The rest are just standard circuit races with vehicles already available within the base game lineup. It's a little bit strange to have a themed piece of DLC where you end up thrashing stadium trucks and electric cars around a circuit instead. Even stranger when you remember that Classic Car-Nage was all-in on it's story mode and dedicated every event to it's theme. I can only think that they didn't want to be too heavy on the Endurance theme knowing how time-consuming this could be, and were effectively too scared to fully commit to it.

Speaking of absent, the corny cinematics are also dropped. You see an opening trailer introducing Endurance to the room, absolutely nothing in between the first to last event, and then a very brief closing outro to wrap it all up. It's almost like they started the idea with intent and just gave up halfway through and duct-taped the rest of the package together.

Either way, the story events should take no longer than a couple of hours to beat. Despite the lack of Endurance events, the 3 they do offer are all 10 minutes a piece, and the rest will occupy the remaining time to completion. The only event you're required to win to pass is the final one.

The trophy clean up post-story does at least still lean into the Endurance theme. You'll need to complete two 15 minute Endurance races for another trophy, and you'll also need to win an Endurance race on Mount Panorama in the Bentley Continental GT3. The 3 trophies linked to the aforementioned sponsor objectives all contain requirements linked to Endurance, though these are much more reigned in for grindy-ness than they have when previously featured, so they're not too demanding. There are also opportunities to combine the requirements for multiple trophies and progress towards earning them in tandem.

The post-story is where you'll spend most of the time with this package in the end. Clocking in at around 6-8 hours, it's a fairly simple route to completion, though the naturally more long-winded nature of Endurance races does somewhat extend this time estimation.

DLC #211 - Dirt Rally 2.0 - Season One

Cruising straight from the Platinum trophy and into the first dose of seasonal DLC drip-fed throughout the game's life cycle.

Dirt Rally 2.0 was supported by a host of post-game content gradually fed into the game on a bi-weekly basis for a set period of time, with each overall batch of content referred to as a "Season" - So here we are with Season One.

Season One adds Monte Carlo, Germany and Sweden Rally locations into the game, as well as the Citroen C4, Skoda Fabia, BMW M1 Pro Car, Ford Focus RS and Subaru Impreza vehicle options.

Alot of the content released across the seasonal packs has been carried over from the original Dirt Rally lineup, which is a little bit cheeky given the fact this is arguably heavily recycled content just locked behind a paywall. The successor of a game that you already purchased is effectively charging you to have it present as playable content in the sequel.

Either way, it does also add 4 trophies to the overall list, and this is one of the easier packs to complete.

Earning a podium finish in the Citroen C4, completing a stage at Monte Carlo and completing any event in the BMW M1 Pro Car all grant individual trophies and can be comfortably earned within 30 minutes of active play. You won't even need to purchase the vehicles with credits, as they'll be readily available to race upon purchasing the Season One content.

The "Rock 'n' Roll" trophy, awarded for Driving 66 km at Monte Carlo in the DS 21 is a little bit more time consuming. I set up 10 stages of a custom Championship to reach the total mileage accumulation required to unlock this trophy and managed to earn it at the end of the 9th stage. This took around an hour or so of casual driving.

You only need to use 3 different vehicles across just the Monte Carlo stage, and you can comfortably unlock all 4 trophies in well under 2 hours. There is even potential to mix and match some of these trophies to make it an even quicker completion should you so desire.

DLC #210 - Resident Evil 2 - The Ghost Survivors

I had a suspicion that the 4th Survivor sampler was a sign of things to come. More so in hope, rather than expectation, but I was clinging onto the faint possibility that we were going to get a dosage of mini short stories based on the fates of ancillary characters around the Resident Evil 2 plot.

Some people may argue that to be partly true. The Ghost Survivors relate to a series of lore-based scenarios that briefly tell the individual tales of peril of a group of people in desperate situations they need to escape from within Raccoon City.

However, what follows is a quartet of repetitive gauntlet-esque levels which recycle many elements of the main game into a collection of speedrun exercises designed to see how quickly you can reach the end location and navigate the various obstacles in your path along the way. 

The concept is simply to get from point A to point B with a very limited inventory whilst evading hordes of zombies on your way to the escape point. It's exactly the same as the 4th Survivor scenario from the main game, replicated with a cast of new characters and a few gameplay tweaks to the existing formula. 

You have a couple of options to assist your route along the way. Certain enemies will carry backpacks which drop loot to stock up your inventory and you'll also pass by item dispensers. These give you 3 options for improving your inventory, but the catch is that you can only choose 1 of these items to carry forward with you. Do you take the new weapon or the ammunition for the one you already have? It adds a layer of strategic thinking to the game.

Truthfully, I wasn't big on this piece of DLC. The escape routes see you track back through the exact same areas in the main game, and whilst you could argue this makes sense for the reasons of continuity, it still feels a bit stale. It's important to remember that this is a game that required 5/6 playthroughs for the Platinum trophy. The last thing I wanted to see again was recycled scenery. Weapons and items are exactly the same, as are the majority of the enemies you'll encounter. There are a couple of new enemies with new traits, but this just seems like a token gesture to the necessity of making the content seem fresh. I would have preferred some proper fleshed out story-driven content personally.

The package adds just 2 trophies. Across the 4 scenarios, there are 10 new Mr. Raccoon figurines to find and shoot, which grants one of these trophies. The other focuses on beating all of the content, and whilst a simple concept at heart, it's anything but if your intention is to earn both trophies;

Hell of a Sheriff - Complete the "No Way Out" scenario. (No training mode).

The "Hell of a Sheriff" trophy, awarded for Completing the "No Way Out" scenario, requires you to beat every Ghost Survivor scenario within this package.

Initially, there are 3 scenarios available to play out. "No Time to Mourn" focuses on Robert Kendo. You encounter Robert part-way through the main story. He's the owner of the gun shop whose daughter has been bitten and turned. "Runaway" tells the brief story of Katherine Warren, another captured victim of Police Chief Irons desperate to escape his makeshift lab-den. Finally, "Forgotten Soldier" focuses on a soldier in a race against time after a botched virus retrieval mission with the underground lab due to self-destruct.

Each scenario has difficulty ratings attached to them, but I didn't personally find this to be any sort of clear guidance on actual difficulty. I tackled them all in the order above, and the learning curve for each one requires a fresh reset every time. A different route with different hazards and different inventory options. You can't really apply the same template for success to each run, and this adaptability is important to passing them all.

These scenarios aren't intended to be beaten first time. The experimental trial and error nature is exactly what this game mode is all about. It's memorisation of the route ahead of you and learning, mostly the hard way, about what you'll need to do differently next time in order to successfully tackle certain areas and get by without dying - Chaining this all together for the perfect run. You may get lucky on the odd occasion, but getting from point A to B all the way in one go will require mastery of the level and understanding the optimal route.

This includes knowing which items to pick from the dispenser options, which areas you can viably run past enemies to preserve resources/ammo and the danger areas where you're most likely to die and may need to save certain parts of your inventory for.

Your completion time is recorded for each of these scenarios, though this isn't important for the requirements of the trophy, though speedrunners will love the fact there is a global leaderboard tied to this game mode. For me, I was happy to just beat them and move one. Once I'd played through the scenarios a handful of times, and learnt the optimal routes, I was able to comfortably get through them. I liked the idea of learning through failure, and that sort of thing will always count as progress to me.

The only main frustration is that the consistency of enemy behaviour is a big issue every now and again. Sometimes you'll run through a densely populated area of the map and get grabbed multiple times, which will pretty much end your run. Another time, you'll get past exactly how you should have done. This became increasingly annoying when I had to replay the scenarios for the purpose of cleaning up the missing Mr. Raccoons I didn't find first time round.

However, this doesn't unlock the trophy in question. Upon completing all 3 scenarios with any time posted, you'll unlock the final scenario. "No Way Out" sees you stuck in the gas station as Daniel Cortini - The Sherriff from the very beginning of the game.

This follows a much different format to the first 3 scenarios. You're stuck in a very confined space and have to kill 100 zombies to beat the scenario. They can enter the gas station from 3 different doors and come at you in waves that you'll need to manage with a set inventory of items. Backpack zombies still exist to drop additional weaponry/items and you just have to outlast the 100 zombies to clear the scenario.

Again, strategy plays a big part in this. The zombies come at you from the easiest to toughest forms, so difficulty scales according to your kill total. It's important to preserve the better weaponry for as long as possible because the limited amount of manoeuvrable space is the real enemy here. Learning which zombies are due to spawn in and when to use certain weapons is crucial to success. You don't want to waste the Spark Gun ammo on easier to kill enemies and the Anti-Tank Launcher should only be used when in a last ditch attempt to save your life.

In my initial runs, I could reach the 40-50 mark for kills and gradually improved on this with more practice. I noticed the one door remains shut for a fair amount of time and played a reasonable portion of the level with my back to it, using the sales counter as a barrier between me and the zombies to pick them off knowing I wouldn't have to watch out for what was behind me until much later on.

The poison zombies are a big threat here because the confined surroundings don't give you much space to avoid their poisonous explosions when you kill them. You do get 3 blue herbs though, which will certainly come in use, but aside the tendency to have to deal with overwhelming numbers at times, this is the biggest threat to a run. As mentioned, the Anti-Tank gun you find towards the end is clutch in these circumstances.

That is the last step towards the trophy though, and I reckon I put around 10-12 hours into this across all 4 scenarios. The mode did start to wear thin on me pretty quickly, and I was only really driven forward by the fact I could see progress within the failure that I knew was edging me closer to the goal. Very similar in the same way I experienced in my recent run of Super Meat Boy, just nowhere near as fun. I liked the silly headwear accessories you can unlock and wear though.