Platinum #45 - Motorstorm : Apocalypse

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

A large potion of this trophy list is dedicated to the game's story mode, with a generous offering of progression based trophies for simply finishing the 3 different campaigns in the single player festival.

Collectively, each story path takes no longer than a couple of hours, and you aren't even required to win every race to be able to unlock all of the relevant trophies (You simply have to place in the top 3).

This makes for a quick and incredibly easy batch of trophies, a stark contrast to the festival mode of Pacific Rift, which was hugely punishing, and required you to win every race too.

The single player portion of the list does throw up some frustrating collectible based trophies though, with the "Found 'Em All!" trophy awarded for collecting all 150 of the Motorstorm Cards. Whilst, for the most part, these are easy to grab, there are a handful of them that can be difficult to collect, and require an element of trial and error to get. It's also important to mention that the sheer volume of them will stick at least a few hours onto the Platinum time too.

The hugely unforgiving regressive online levelling system present in Pacific Rift has also been ditched, and substituted for a more traditional system where you can still level up irrespective of your finishing position in each race, and never have to worry about being demoted ranks.

You can earn experience points for practically everything, which maximises your potential experience for every race. Earning medals and accolades are the way to level quickly, as they grant huge experience rewards, especially the later tier accolades which can frequently award 10000 experience points and much more.

Even with this taken into account, the "Jackpot" trophy, for reaching rank 40 in Multiplayer, is still a hefty time sink, where you can easily be looking around the 20-25 hour mark to reach the highest rank (trophy-wise). There are even trophies granted at levels 5, 15 and 30 as spur on incentives on your way to hitting rank 40.

The rest of the list is just based around menial tasks within races, and exploration of other game modes and gameplay options. These require nothing more than a bit of dabbling (though a few of them can be a bit tricky), and some can even be easily obtained naturally whilst going through the story mode and online related trophies.

Overall, it is a very watered down list, especially in comparison to Pacific Rift, which was harder and more time consuming to the ten-fold, and even though you'll still be looking at a decent time investment to Platinum Apocalypse, it's still way too easy, and as long as you have the patience for the online levelling grind, the rest is a complete breeze.

Notable Trophies -

Found 'em All! - Collect 150 of the hidden Motorstorm Cards
Jackpot - Reach Rank 40 in Multiplayer

Hardest Trophy -

Jackpot
Reach Rank 40 in Multiplayer

DLC #59 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Puzzle Pack

Stress your brain with a logical twist.

The final piece of Worms 2 DLC (and definitely the most challenging), adds yet another 12 trophies, with 20 further levels based around a series puzzles where you're tasked to defeat an enemy worm with limited items at your disposal.

The trophy list format follows the same sort of structure as the rest of the DLC, with 3 trophies awarded for beating all 20 of the new levels. However, some of them are seriously tough, and if you resist the temptation to use a walk-through guide, you'll easily be racking your brain over some of these puzzles for a good few hours alone. It can get frustrating at times when nothing seems to work, but it is much more rewarding when you finally nail a solution to a puzzle you've been stuck on for ages.

The remainder of the trophies all revolve around beating specific levels within certain criteria. The 3 trophies that require you to have at least 1 item left in your inventory definitely furthers the puzzle aspect, since you have to go back and determine how to beat a certain level, minus 1 piece of equipment that you'll need to have left over to unlock the trophy. Cue more brain racking.

With all of that taken into account, the length of the DLC will depend on how quickly you can solve all of the puzzles. Naturally, it will take some longer than others, but I cleared everything up within about 6-7 hours, though it is important to note, there was an extensive amount of time spent on a select few puzzles that were much harder than the rest.

DLC #58 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Time Attack Pack

Fly through some time attack, Worms style.

Still in Worms 2, with the Time Attack DLC, which takes a slightly different angle on the Worms experience, and adds a further 12 trophies to the package.

As previously, you can pick up a small clutch of the trophies (3, in this instance), for beating the fastest times for the 20 new levels included in the DLC.

First of all, there's a little bit of confusion when the trophy description mentions completing all of the levels with a "fastest time". From what I gathered, there wasn't a set time to beat the level, and just simply getting to the end of all 20 levels granted the respective trophies. Even racking up a bunch of fall and mine penalties didn't seem to effect the qualifications for "fastest time", so it remains a mystery as to what the requirements for the trophies really are. 

Regardless, you can absolutely fly through all of the levels in less than half an hour, they really are that easy. The rest of the trophies are where the DLC puts up a slight challenge, including some tricky time attack related trophies that require you to beat certain levels within a specified time limit that will take a numerous amount of restarts to beat, but apart from that, there are an easy 12 trophies on offer here, and the whole package takes no longer than a couple of hours to earn every trophy on offer.

DLC #57 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Retro Pack

Go Retro!

Revisiting the Worms 2 DLC with the Retro Pack adds a further 12 trophies, with the package comprised of 20 new single player missions, with all the trophies on offer attached to them in a variety of ways.

You can grab 4 of the trophies just through beating the 20 levels, and although the majority of them are relatively easy, and should take no more than a few attempts, there is a slight difficulty spike towards the end, where the last few levels end up presenting a stiff challenge (although that is mainly due to the frustratingly accurate computer opponent).

The rest of the trophies are mission specific, and require you to fulfil various requirements within certain levels. Again, none of these trophies are really too demanding, and using the correct tactics for each should ensure that you complete them without many further attempts at all.

Grabbing all of the trophies should take no longer than 5-6 hours. You can expect to beat every level once within 3-4 hours, and the clean up is just a matter of how long it takes, but even then it's still no longer than a few extra hours on top to conclude a fairly straight-forward trophy set.

DLC #56 - Skate 3 San Van Party Play

Re-visit the classic San Van skate park!

The final piece of Skate 3 DLC re-visits the old stomping ground of San Van, complete with 9 new trophies.

Although the requirements are incredibly linear, and simply involve beating the small clutch of newly presented missions, there is a fairly solid challenge to be had in certain instances.

Every new challenge, including a range of film, photo and own the spot challenges, grant an individual trophy upon completing them, which ensures a nicely even spread on the package, and given the fact most of them only require a couple of tries to beat, it's a generous offering of trophies.

However, if you're still looking for a challenge, you'll get one thanks to a specific trophy in this DLC;




Marraffanator
Complete the "Marraffa's Skatepark" OTL challenge 



                                                                                                            The DLC is about 4-5 hours in total length, but the majority of this time will be spent trying to beat the Own The Lot challenge for the DLC.

As with all OTL challenges, there are a couple of incredibly tricky tasks to pull off, and you never feel like you get enough time to tick off all 12 tasks in order to "Own the Lot" and unlock the trophy. Even though most of the 12 tasks are quite simple, there are a couple that will peg you back and halt your progression, which will definitely require you to retry this challenge a handful of times.

It's a little bit frustrating to get so close, but having to re-do everything because you couldn't tick off a couple of the boxes on the trick list, but as long as you persevere, you'll be OK and eventually nail it.

Apart from that though, there's alot of easy trophies on offer here, and if you're willing to be patient, grabbing all of them isn't too demanding.

DLC #55 - Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection 3

Destroy a Battleship in "Arctic Recon"

The latest Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection ups the ante, with 14 new trophies on offer, spread across the 4 new Spec Ops missions within the DLC.

The trophies are typical of the other collections that have gone before, all of them awarded for beating the missions on Any/Veteran difficulty, and then a small clutch of mission specific tasks to perform on top.

As always seems to be the case with Call of Duty, beating the missions on veteran are mostly just all about persistence, but the trophies attached to the Arctic Recon and Vertigo missions were surprisingly difficult, with both of them requiring multiple tries and a dosage of hard patience to finally beat.

Both of these missions also contained the hardest mission specific trophies too;

dr0n3d - Complete the "Arctic Recon" Special Ops mission in under 3:30
To Jugger or to Jugger-naut - Kill all Juggernauts after they land on Veteran difficulty in the "Vertigo" Special Ops mission

Beating the Arctic Recon mission in under 3:30 is a tight squeeze and requires a very precise speed-run to finish within the limits, even when playing on recruit difficulty. There's a slightly frustrating 10 second window at the end of the mission where the clock just runs down as you watch the escape cutscene, so ideally, you're technically looking at boarding the helicopter at around 3:20, to allow for the 10 second gap between boarding and the actual end of the mission. Definitely something to be aware of, since you'll need a near flawless run.

The only thing that really makes the "To Jugger or to Jugger-naut" trophy difficult is the fact you have to fulfil the requirements of the trophy on veteran difficulty. It makes the 3 juggernauts harder to take down, along with the multiple waves of enemies who show up in between. Thankfully, there are a bunch of handy weapons lying around that can dispatch juggernauts handily, but you'll always need to be wary about the fact you're playing on veteran and how quickly you can die.

In contrast, all of the trophies related to the Special Delivery and Light 'Em Up missions are incredibly easy, and even running through on veteran should take no more than a couple of attempts for each. The real challenge of the collection comes within the earlier part of it, but once you overcome those first few missions, the rest is easy, and you're still only really looking at around 3-5 hours in regards to completion time for all trophies in the package.

Platinum #44 - Call Of Duty : Modern Warfare 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

We're at a stage now where you could call this a pretty typical Call of Duty trophy list.

The majority of the games trophies are catered to the single player campaign, with a large allocation relating to the progression within the campaign mode.

Aside from beating every mission in the game on any difficulty level, you also get the usual designation of trophies related to beating the missions on veteran difficulty, which is consequently one of the easiest veteran runs in any Call of Duty game to date.

The rest of the trophies are awarded for completing some incredibly simple chapter specific tasks, and, as ever, there are also 46 intel items to collect (Though there is no way to actually know from the chapter select menu which intel items you're missing, which is a little bit annoying).

Even though you can quite easily achieve every single player trophy in around 12 hours, this is still a relatively lengthy list courtesy of the new Survival multiplayer mode.

The "Unstoppable" trophy, which requires you to reach wave 15 in each mission of Survival mode, is nothing more than a slog, and it's also worth noting that you'll also need to reach level 50 in order to unlock every piece of equipment for the "Arms Dealer" trophy, which requires you to buy all weapons from the Survival weapons armoury. Another pretty big slog in itself, and definitely fulfils the grindy element of the Platinum.

The Special Ops missions also carry a sleight weighting of trophies, and even though there are only 3 attached to this mode, you do still need to achieve the maximum 48 stars for the "Overachiever" trophy. Some of the missions can be fairly challenging, but you'll most likely breeze through the rest, especially with a good co-op partner at your disposal.

All in all, despite the grindy elements of the Survival mode, this is possibly the easiest Call of Duty Platinum yet. The single player "Veteran" mode is anything but, and despite a few tough missions, the Special Ops mode is just as easy. The only real degree of challenge presented comes exclusively from the grindy nature of the Survival missions.

Notable Trophies -

The Best of the Best - Complete the campaign on Hardened of Veteran difficulty
Unstoppable - Reach Wave 15 in each misson of Special Ops Survival mode
Arms Dealer - Buy all items from the Survival Weapon Armoury

Hardest Trophy -

Arms Dealer 
Buy all items from the Survival Weapon Armoury




Note: The trophy itself isn't challenging in the slightest, but you'll need to hit level 50 in Spec Ops/Survival missions in order to unlock the last weapon required to qualify for the requirements of the trophy.

DLC #54 - FIFA 12 - UEFA Euro 2012

The Euro 2012 DLC adds 10 trophies, with a variety of tasks that will require you to invest a huge amount of time if you want to unlock all of them and maintain the 100% look.

Keeping with the core theme of the DLC, there are  a couple trophies attached to winning the Euro 2012 tournament. However, you will need to do this a series of times, including online, with a friend (or a secondary controller if you wish) and regularly in single player, each with their own respective trophy in the list.

Winning the tournament online for the "Glory Moment" trophy might prove to be tough, given the fact you'll need a decent level of consistency against human opponents in order to reach and win the final. There are 3 group stage matches and then 3 straight knock out matches, so you'll most likely need to win 5 out of 6 games (Definitely 4, maybe 5), in order to unlock that particularly trophy. Tough.

There is also a trophy ("Make it Happen") for succeeding in a challenge, which as of the time of writing, is actually unachievable, due to the fact newly updated challenges were halted shortly after Euro 2012 actually finished, in reality, at the end of July. This also actually affects the "My Euro 2012" trophy, awarded for winning a match in every game mode in the DLC, which also encompasses challenges and therefore, if you haven't finished a challenge, this trophy will also become unachievable. 

There is no guarantee the challenges will ever be rolled out again. It is highly unlikely given the fact the real life tournament has long been concluded, and when you couple that with the imminent release of FIFA 13 at the end of the month, you can bet on these remaining unachievable for good, which is a shame for anybody that hasn't managed to unlock them yet.

Regardless, the bulk of the massive time investment from this DLC comes from the Expedition mode, and more specifically one trophy;

 


Collector - Collect all Mosaic pieces in Expedition.





There are 180 mosaic pieces to collect in total, and 159 of them are awarded for beating each team in the DLC 3 times. You collect the rest of them at certain milestones, which also consequently award trophies related to beating all the teams in any group, and beating all 53 teams at least once.

There are no two ways about it, it will turn into a massive grind, mainly because of the fact you're forced to play all these matches against the incredibly boring computer AI, and have to suffer the 1-dimensional side of the game known as the single player mode. In all fairness, I did actually enjoy the mode, considering I almost died a little bit inside when I found out you'd have to beat the computer in 159 matches (and the many more I lost trying to stubbornly win on Legendary difficulty).

The Ultimate Team-esque way of building an ever stronger squad is what kept me going I think (aside the motivation of the trophy, of course), but there is no doubting you'll be slogging through it right to the end if you want that final mosaic piece that'll grant the "Collector" trophy though. For the benefit of those who can't stomach the challenge, this is what the final piece looks like;

Apart from that, the other trophies tied to Expedition are simply awarded on your way to collecting every mosaic piece, so as long as you're striving for all 180 pieces, you'll unlock those too. 

Like salt in the wound though, you'll actually need to carry on your Expedition a little bit longer due to the "National Pride" trophy, which is awarded for winning a match in Expedition mode with 11 players from the same country. This just means you'll have to pick a team, beat them 11 times, fill out your squad with those 11 players, and then win another match, just incase it wasn't grindy enough for you...

All in all, the experience easily borders on 100 hours, and the Expedition mode is one of the biggest and most challenging slogs in any DLC I've played to date. The element of skill required is  minimal, though winning Euro 2012 online does add a slight difficulty edge to the package, but this is just mostly about how much time you're prepared to invest in it to unlock all the trophies.

Platinum #43 - FIFA 12

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

As far as FIFA Platinum trophies go, this years installment is actually relatively tame in comparison to previous years, however, on a general scale, it still stands up a challenging list.

It is important to note straight away that the degree of difficulty in this list will vary depending on 1 trophy.

The "How Great is that?" trophy, for finding a Team of the Week player in an Ultimate Team pack, is purely based on luck and there is, theoretically, no guarantee you will ever unlock it. It didn't take me too long to find one personally, but there are plenty of people who will probably give up, and that's a tough blow to take given the fact there is nothing you can do to influence the trophy.

The best method to increase your chances is to just open the cheaper bronze packs, but that's only by virtue of the fact that the cheaper prices will allow you to open a greater quantity of them. It may also be important to note that transferred player cards during any transfer period throughout the season will also trigger the requirements for the trophy, even though they aren't actually In Form cards. Whether this is intentional to make it easier, or just a glitch, is undetermined, but it does slightly increase your chances of unlocking the trophy, and a transferred player during the January window is how I actually managed to earn this trophy.

Sticking with the Ultimate Team based trophies in this list, the "Growing Club" trophy, for achieving a club value of £85M in Ultimate Team, is just a matter of amassing enough players to reach the target, but you'll need somewhere in the region of around 200,000 coins to be able to reach the equivalent club value total, which will require a heavy time investment in the Ultimate Team mode. You'll also need to be prepared to buy alot of players to fulfil this requirement, and despite the Ultimate Team database being vast, the 700-800 players needed is still quite a large chunk of the game and it is a very tedious task collecting them all.

The "Club Legend" trophy, awarded for playing 100 matches with any player in Ultimate Team, means you'll be spending yet even more time in the games Ultimate Team mode. It shouldn't take longer than the "Growing Club" trophy to achieve this milestone, but you need to be aware of which player you're using to strive towards this target, and definitely be even more aware of the fact that you cannot sell him at any point, else the counter will reset to zero and you'll have to continue with someone else instead. 

Sticking with the continuous theme of Ultimate Team, the "Pack King" trophy, awarded for opening 100 packs in Ultimate Team, is just as time consuming as the rest of the Ultimate Team trophies, and even though you could just theoretically open 500 coin bronze packs and keep your expenses to a minimum, it isn't your best chance of accumulating a club value of £85M or pulling a Team of the Week player, so it's best just to let this trophy come naturally and focus on the importance of the other trophies in this list.

Everything else just requires dabbling into the various other game modes within the game, or performing certain actions within matches. There are a few tricky tasks to accomplish during the game, such as scoring with a bicycle kick and scoring a 90th minute winner against the computer, but these are mostly just circumstantial, and with the amount of time you'll need to plug into this list, you should get them eventually just through natural play.

The "Virtual Legend" trophy, awarded for playing 50 matches with your Virtual Pro, is a rather time consuming venture, and with Be A Pro games being set to a minimum of 10 minutes, you can expect to be putting around 10 hours into this trophy alone, which is a little bit grindy if you're not a big fan of the Be A Pro game mode. 

There are a small handful of trophies related to the games career mode, but you can easily mop up every single one of them within just a single season, but it is important to note that if you intend to play through for all of a them, a single season is quite a long journey. Thankfully, simulating does work, as per usual, and the career mode trophy selection isn't as demanding as it has been in previous years.

It also wouldn't be a FIFA Platinum without the "FIFA for life" trophy, which yet again returns, and requires you to spend 50 hours on the pitch, but as usual, that is mostly irrelevant because of the fact you'll easily need to rack up many more hours than that to complete this entire list anyway.

The Ultimate Team mode is where the challenge of this Platinum trophy is mainly stored, and even though the game is just mostly time consuming, which really shouldn't be a problem for people who enjoy FIFA, you'll get best results from being good at the game, so there is an element of skill involved too. There is also a big luck element, and pulling an In Form player just simply will not happen for alot of people, which is hard to accept when you're used to trophy lists that are purely in the players control.

If you can get over that barrier, there's no other reason why you wouldn't be able to unlock everything else. The quantity of time consuming trophies in the list will take anywhere between 150-200 hours collectively, and you'll spend of that time in the Ultimate Team mode, but the "How Great is that?" trophy is way too variant in timescale from player to player to nail down a concrete time to represent a general experience. 

A big time commitment and huge elements of luck keep FIFA 12 in line with previous FIFA trophy lists, with a steady challenge to be extracted from the games trophies. There isn't exactly a huge emphasis on skill, but you'll get through this list quicker if you're better at the game, but it's a still a tough nut to crack regardless.

Notable Trophies -

How Great is that? - Find a team of the week player in an Ultimate Team pack
Growing Club - Achieve a club value of 85,000,000 in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Club Legend - Play 100 matches with any player in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Pack King - Open 100 packs in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Virtual Legend - Play 50 matches with your Virtual Pro
FIFA for Life - Spend 50 hours on the pitch

Hardest Trophy -

How Great is that?
Find a Team of the Week player in an Ultimate Team Pack

DLC #53 - Fallout : New Vegas - Gun Runner's Arsenal

To end the stream of New Vegas DLC, Gun Runner's Arsenal is something a little bit different to the usual episodic story related angle.                                                                                                              
As far as the trophies go, this is just essentially a series of challenges to slog through that see you slaughtering practically everything in the wasteland through unusual means, with 3 trophies tied to completing 9 different challenges of increasing difficulty.                                                                      
The other 2 trophies, "Curious and Relics" and "Master of the Arsenal" require 10,000 points worth of damage with Gun Runner's Arsenal weapons, and unique Mojave weapons, both are which are provided by vendors as part of the DLC. These will flow naturally if you make sure you complete all the challenges with these types of weapons, speaking of which;

Up to the Challenge - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) one star (*) Challenges.
Combat Veteran - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) two star (**) Challenges.
Pros Only - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) three star (***) Challenges.

For the most part, the challenges aren't too difficult, though it is mainly down to the fact you get a selective range of choice for each tier.                                                                                                       
Some of the challenges in certain tiers just simply aren't worth the time and effort, and there are definitely easier alternatives (Why would you go through the hassle of killing 20 animals with the FatMan when you can just cripple 5 right arms with a shotgun, which takes no longer than 5 minutes?).                                                                                                                                                        
It's also worth nothing that, if you've already hit the end game (Given the fact this is the 5th DLC package, then chances are, you have) then some of the challenges become somewhat locked out, given the fact they require you to injure/kill certain story-related characters who may already be dead, meaning the only remedy to this issue is to play through the entire game again, which you're hardly likely to want to do.                                                                                                                        
Some of the three star challenges have an air of toughness about them, and despite the freedom of choice, you'll still feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, since most of them involve tackling the Mojave's most dangerous enemies/characters.                                                                   
Despite that, and assuming you accumulate the two, 10,000 damage related trophies along the way, you'll probably beat the package in around 6 hours or so. I tackled the challenges I felt were the easiest for every tier. They're listed below;                                                                                      
One Star Challenges :

• Benefit or Hazard
• The same could be said of all Religious weapons
• Ne, Ne, Ne, Ne...

Two Star Challenges :

• Dyin' ain't much of a Living
• Nyah! See?
• White Line Nightmare

Three Star Challenges :

• Against All Tyrants
• Armed For Bear
• Man-Machine Interface

DLC #52 - Fallout : New Vegas - Dead Money

Escape Father Elijah's clutches, and take
your revenge.

Dead Money finishes off the story driven New Vegas DLC, and although the trophies aren't exactly challenging, the various game mechanics will make you work for them a little harder than you may enjoy.
                
Out of the 5 trophies, 4 of them are progression based (noticed the pattern yet?), and just require you to beat the game, though you will need to bring out the good, old save game trickery again if you don't wish to play this episode through twice to grab everything on offer.
                                                                 
The story doesn't exactly branch, but there are two different ways to end it, with a trophy granted for each way, so as long as you save before accessing the vault, you can reload your save and perform the opposite action for whichever trophy you need. Thankfully, you won't have to replay any long branches or anything like with previous pieces of DLC and the main game, so you won't feel like you're wasting time.    
                                     
The only other trophy, "Sierra Souvenir Aficionado", comes from collecting 500 Sierre Madre chips, which are scattered around practically everywhere, so as long as you're aware to look out for them, you shouldn't be in any danger of missing them, or not collecting enough of them. 
             
Just a word on the previously mentioned game mechanics, they don't make the story challenging, just a little bit frustrating. The episode is probably the longest out of all the DLC, but only because you'll be scouting out radios to avoid your collar being blown up, or red clouds to avoid being poisoned and killed. It means the pace of the game is broken quite often, and that makes it seem longer than it really is.                                                                    
All in all, you're probably looking at about 6 hours to beat the DLC, providing you make sure you can reload a save before the opening of the vault.

DLC #51 - Fallout : New Vegas - Old World Blues

Outsmart Dr. Klein, and escape Big Mountain

After the step up in difficulty bought about by Lonesome Road, Old World Blues follows up with a more relaxed set of trophies, more similar to the progression based nature of Honest Hearts.
                                                      
Out of the 5 trophies, 4 of them are all related to the main quest-line, which can easily be completed within 2-3 hours, and provides a very minimal challenge, despite 2 boss fights near the end. 
                                                     
Apart from that, the "Making Friends" trophy is the only trophy that branches away from the main quest, and puts you through a bog standard fetch mission, as you locate 10 pieces of data to re-activate 10 different electrical items in the central hub of the map.
                                                                    
The whole package is an incredibly easy 5 trophies, and should take no longer than 4 hours to fully complete. The challenge presented is close to non-existent and you could easily sit down and finish it all in 1 casual sitting.

DLC #50 - Fallout : New Vegas - Lonesome Road

Lonesome Road brings 5 additional trophies to Fallout, and although there is a little bit more variety in the trophy requirements for this package, it is still a fairly relaxed ride that won't trip you up too badly (Until you come to the collectibles part, that is...).

Out of the 5 trophies on offer, only 2 of them are progression based, and simply relate to going through, and beating, the story within the expansion.

It is a little bit tougher to beat than Honest Hearts, for the reasons that you'll run into deathclaws and a tricky final boss fight, but there are various ways round these obstacles, so seasoned players shouldn't find it too much like hard work.

The other 3 trophies in the package relate to collectibles, in one form or another;

ED-Ecated - Found all of ED-E's upgrades in the divide
Rocket's Red Glare - Acquired all upgrades for the divide's signature weapon
Warhead Hunter - Detonated all warheads in the divide

Finding all of these collectibles really isn't really too difficult, but you'll definitely need to be aware of a few things.

The Red Glare (which is an automatic, rapid fire rocket launcher) has 3 upgrades, all of which amount to around 45,000 caps collectively. The best way to approach this is to save your game and sell everything to the electrical commissionary, before re-loading the save after the trophy notification. You'll most likely need to balance out the equivalent of what you need in caps with equipment, given the fact the vendor only has 6000 caps in trading itself. If you need to raise a significant amount of funds still, you might be out luck unless you've done alot of previous collecting, so just be aware of how much you need.

Also, even though ED-E only has 5 upgrades available, 1 of them is stored behind a locked door that requires a terminal hack to the tune of 75 skill. There is no alternative way to unlock the door, so if you haven't got close to a 75 hacking skill, you've either got alot of levelling up to do, or you'll need to find skill books/magazines.

The length of the DLC will depend on if you run into any of the issues above, but providing you have a relatively smooth path from start to end, then you're looking at no more than 6 hours or so to achieve all the trophies.

The main story has flourishes of difficulty, but is mostly trouble-free, and the collectibles are just a matter of backtracking and using any relevant guides to find out the locations of everything. Assuming you don't hit any snags, it's a straight forward enough piece of DLC.  

DLC #49 - Fallout : New Vegas - Honest Hearts

Banish the "White Legs" in Honest Hearts

Sticking with the New Vegas theme, the barrage of DLC content begins with Honest Hearts, and is an incredibly east package to pick up some additional trophies from.
                     
The 5 trophies on offer are entirely progression based, and the only thing worth noting is that story provides a branched ending, similar to that of the main game story, which includes 2 endings, each with a relevant trophy for completing the branch.                                                        
With some good old-fashioned save game trickery, you can play out the 1 ending, and then reload back at the crux point to play out the other ending and unlock whichever trophy you didn't grab first time round.
                   
In terms of difficulty, there practically is none, and the episode takes no longer than 2-4 hours to run through in full, along with both of it's alternative endings (Providing you opt for the more time efficient option of loading from the branch-off point). Even if you do wish to play through the DLC in full twice, instead of re-loading your save, you're still only looking at about 6 hours maximum to grab all 5 trophies. It's a very linear, and incredibly relaxed piece of content.
                                                            
Easy.

Platinum #42 - Fallout : New Vegas

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10                                                                              
The New Vegas trophy list follows a very similar mould to the previous Fallout game, with the vast majority of the list packed with cumulative and quest progression trophies.                                                   
There are significantly less trophies related to side quests this time round, though that's down to the branched off ending paths present at the end of the game.

In a very similar manner to the karma system in Fallout 3, which had trophies revolving around hitting the same levels with each of the 3 karma stances, and therefore promoting multiple playthroughs, this list does exactly the same thing, except with multiple game endings depending on selections and choices throughout the game.

Thankfully, and in the same manner as Fallout 3, there is also a crux point where you can choose which path to take, at which times you can use a bit of save game trickery in order to reload the game from that same section and mop up each of the trophies related to the games 4 different quest endings, without the hassle of actually having to play the game through 4 times in full.
                                 
The main questline isn't terribly long anyway, but going through each of the 4 endings individually on separate playthroughs would take a solid amount of time and dedication, and would essentially turn the list into a needless chore, so it would be in the best interest of time and enjoyment to duplicate your save file and just reload them before each quest choice.
                                          
Carrying on that progression based theme, there are a bunch of tasks all relating to small grinds over various aspects of skills including lockpicking, hacking, speech challenges and repairing. You can naturally unlock most of these, but for others, you will need to delve deeper into the expansive wasteland and side activities, especially for the trophies that have higher accumulative totals to rack up.
                                                                               
There are also handful of trophies that require you to deal 10,000 points of damage with various wasteland weapons, making caps and healing yourself but most of these are just a matter of playing through the game naturally, and will flow throughout the course of the game. Accumulating damage with weapons is easy to farm through, and there definitely isn't a shortage of dungeons and caves to blast through in order to rack up enough damage points for each weapon category.

It can get more difficult when it comes to 10,000 points worth of things such as unarmed damage and melee weapons, simply due to the reason that enemies are always more dangerous when you're closer to them, but all the points based trophies are simply just a matter of time and shouldn't be too difficult to unlock.
    
Being set in New Vegas, it wouldn't be a complete list without some casino based trophies. The  "Courier Who Broke the Bank" trophy,  awarded for getting barred from each of the strip's casinos, essentially comes down to just cleaning them out of caps, and being banned from competing inside them.

Each casino has a different limit, which is usually higher than the previous one, and even though it can be quite difficult to win so often that you clear out an entire fund pot, if you raise your in-game luck attribute high enough, you can essentially win every single game you play, which definitely takes the sting out of the challenge. Even if you didn't choose a high luck attribute at the start of the game, you can wipe and modify your attribute set specifically for these trophies, which you will most likely need to do if you want this trophy, as it's very difficult to win such a high volume of casino games without it.
                                                                                                      
The only trophy you can argue that provides any sort of challenge is the only Gold trophy in this list. The "Hardcore" trophy, awarded for playing the game from start to finish in hardcore mode, is a mode where you have to take into account various factors that pertain more to real life survival, including starvation, dehydration, prolonged limb damage and sleep.

Even though you have to keep the permutations of Hardcore mode switched on throughout the whole game, you can choose to play it on any difficulty, which does make this considerably easier. It is still tough to keep tabs on the various survival factors in the game, but they degenerate your characters health at a much lower rate on the lower difficulty levels, meaning you're not constantly keeping an eye out on your survival factors so often.

If you want a genuine challenge, Hardcore mode will provide it on the games higher difficulty levels, but that really is the only way that this list will test you. There are a few difficulty spikes in some other areas too, but this Platinum is really just about time. Playing through the main quest is an 8-12 hour experience, and you will need to play through each of the 4 different endings, which, despite being a massive timesaver if you utilise the save game trickery mentioned above, will still take a fair amount of time.

The abundance of side activities and other quests that have trophies attached to them will add to the overall completion time significantly, and you can expect anywhere between 80-100 hours for a general estimation. If you're up for the grind, this is a relatively easy list, but you should expect a slight challenge.

Notable Trophies - 

Veni, Vidi, Vici! - Completed Veni, Vidi, Vici
Eureka! - Completed Eureka!
Render Unto Caesar - Completed Render Unto Caesar
All or Northing - Completed All of Nothing
Hardcore - Played the game from start to finish in Hardcore Mode. 

Hardest Trophy -   
                                                                                                                                

  

Veni, Vidi, Vici!
Completed Veni, Vidi, Vici.





Note : Any of the 4 main ending trophies could be deemed as the hardest trophy, but I felt this one just about edged it in terms of difficulty.

PS3Trophies.org - Call of Duty 4 Game Night

PS3Trophies.org celebrates the websites 4th birthday with a Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare event!

It's been a while since I last played this game, but I still have extremely fond memories of it. 30 days of play-time (Jesus...), every challenge completed, all golden guns collected and the maximum level and prestige (Which I believe was 10 back then).

I actually haven't played this game properly since I finished it all those years ago, but I'm still an avid Call of Duty regular so I'm hoping my skills aren't too rusty. Anyway, my group seems about ready to go, so let's do this...

Well, apparently we started a game of Team Deathmatch on Chinatown, but I got kicked and didn't manage to play through it, so, yeah, take 2...

We clearly don't fuck about in this group. We dive straight into a game of HQ on Shipment, renowned for it's completely mental atmosphere and fast-paced action. Ironically enough, the controls feel somewhat sluggish compared to the more modern versions of Call of Duty, but I quickly manage to adapt and go a steady 48-40. I was finding the business end of Kill-MC-Mildred's RPG way too often for my liking, and we ended up losing 85-60, but we definitely got the blood going with that game.

Next up, some Search and Destory on Wetwork. Very linear map, makes it hard to play a game mode like Search and Destroy, especially when you're attacking. Eddy2k8 racks up a nice lobby high scored of 700 points, including 10 kills as our side wins 4-2. I wasn't too shabby with 475, including 3 kills and 5 assists though.

Bit of a gimmick match next with some Knife-only Free-For-All on Killswitch. I managed to get 6 kill streaks on 2 occasions, which I thought was impressive until both Rawra09 and GForce9x pulled Choppers out of nowhere. GForce9x took the spoils being the first to 25 kills, though I led for practically the whole game until his chopper came in and wiped out everyone!

Into some sabotage next, and we get finished off pretty quickly in a game that only lasts a few minutes, despite my teams best efforts to diffuse the bomb.

Back into some more Search and Destroy, this time on Broadcast. Not one of my favourite maps, but still managed to post the lobby high score of 400, along with a tidy 4-0 win. Managed to get a quality double grenade kill at the start of the game, much to the disbelief of mikmakmok and Kill-MC-Hildred, which is always pleasing to see.

Seems like Search and Destroy is the order of the day, as we jump into another round on Creek. Always did enjoy this map, and this time was no exception. Slightly amusing watching Eddy2k8 forget how to defuse a bomb with 15 seconds left, but that amusement was somewhat short lived when I found out it had cost us the round. Proved to be quite costly as we lost 4-3, with Kill-MC-Hildred putting in a 7 kill haul for the winning team.

Another gimmicky match is thrown up next, with some Sniper-only Team Deathmatch. Needless to say, I'm not great at sniping, but we won nonetheless, scoring 75 kills to 49. Rawra09 dominated the leaderboard with 350 points, a whole 80 points ahead of Kill-MC-Mildred who scored 270 on the other side.

More Search and Destroy, on Crash. Seems like were ticking the maps off 1 by 1 at this point. Wooden Spoon award goes to GForce9x, who ends a round by twatting a grenade off the large building occupying bomb stack A, only to watch it come straight at him and explode off his face. Or maybe that should be Kill-MC-Mildred for going 0 kills and 5 deaths? Regardless, we ended up losing 4-2, but I held my own nicely with 400 points including 6 kills. It didn't match Rawra09 though, who went two better with 8 kills to take the lobby. Again.

Changing the pace with some Domination on Downpour, probably my favourite map in the game. Typically, my best scoring game of the night, equipped with my first Chopper kill-streak, ends in a draw, 200-200. All of that just to effectively be exactly where we were before the game started!

After a quick lobby merge, we jump into some Team Deathmatch on Backlot. Manage to knock up a decent score of 28-12, but couldn't drive us to victory as A_Rabid_Pigeon goes 4 better and notches up 32 kills for his team. We actually end up falling considerably short of the other team, which is disappointing from a personal performance point of view, but anyway, onwards!

Ending the night with Domination, where we easily cruise to victory. Notable mention for Brrnout, who rises above everyone to post a very decent 38-17, and top the lobby leaderboard. Nice to end on a winning note though!

Really successful game night, and I'm glad I had an excellent reason to go back to such a ground-breaking game with this event. Happy Birthday, PS3trophies.org, an excellent site with excellent people, and long may the years roll on!

DLC #48 - Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection 2

Take out some choppers in Kill Switch.

Content Collection 2 is more of the same from Modern Warfare 3, with 6 new trophies spread over 2 new Special Ops missions.                                    
Trophy structure follows the exact same pattern as the first content collection, with 4 trophies awarded for beating the missions on veteran, and then 2 further trophies for pulling off specific in-level tasks in each mission as well.                                                                        
The Kill-Switch mission, which tasks you with detonating an EMP in a Russian factory, is definitely the easier of the 2 missions, and shouldn't take more than a few attempts to beat, even on Veteran difficulty (Though there is a slightly tough part around the middle portion where you have to cover your team-mate with sniper fire which may cause a few re-tries). The sub-task for destroying all 6 helicopters in the level is a breeze.
                
The Iron Clad mission, which sees you guide a tank to an extraction point, is much harder, especially the sub-task of escorting the tank without losing any of it's health. The trick is to make sure the tank is always as far back as possible (aside making sure you go for this trophy on regular difficulty, of course), since there are multiple dangers to the tank, including suicide bombers, RPG experts, choppers and other tanks. Make sure you take advantage of the tanks missiles to destroy air support as quick as possible, everything else should be killed/destroyed by yourself.                                                                                                                             
As far as beating the level on veteran goes, it really isn't too hard if you make sure you take your time and advance forward at a steady pace, but cover areas are quite sparse so just make sure you're extra careful.                                                                                                                                  
When all is said and done, it's no longer than a few hour package, very similar to the first content collection. As seems to be the case with most Call of Duty levels on veteran difficulty, as long as you take your time and are willing to persevere, it's easy enough.

Call of Duty Elite : DLC Impressions #5

Add caption

The fifth dosage of Call of Duty Elite introduces 1 map, 2 new Special Ops missions (which will be covered in their own post as before) and a completely new game mode in the form of Face Off.
        
Starting with the single map, Oasis is a pristine hotel, surrounded by palaces in the baking sun-lit setting of the United Arab Emirates. The map is medium in size, with a nice balance of open areas and confined indoor areas, corridors and staircases.

Oasis is a definite change in scenery from the general gloom and war
torn maps of most of the game.

The striking difference between this map and the rest is purely visual. From a gameplay point of view, it doesn't really have any defining features or major focal points. There are a fair amount of ledges and towers that make for ideal sniping oppurtunties, but the mixture of enclosed and open spaces can be said for many other maps in the game.                                                                                     
Aesthetically, the map diverts away from the gloom and dark trend of most maps, and is by far the most visually appealing map in the whole game by a mile. There's even a beautiful but deadly water feature that hugs the perimeter of the map.                                                                                  
It doesn't exactly bring anything different to the gameplay, but the large amount of visual appeal keeps it fresh and exciting to play on, and the nice mixture of open and enclosed areas will always have you changing your approach depending on where you are.

Recommended Perks

Recon will give you a nice advantage on this map, especially on objective based modes where the bomb stacks and flags are positioned in very open areas, allowing you to easily pick out enemies across the larger areas.                                                                                                                                   
Despite the map being medium in size, it also fairly narrow, so Assassin will allow you the advantage on what is a fairly linear map. Stalker allows you to move faster given the fact you'll be weaving in and out of corridors very frequently, but SitRep might be useful because of the many opportunities of planted explosives lurking around the numerous corners and turns inside. 
               
The other part of this DLC relates to the new Face Off mode, essentially small team based matches on specifically crafted maps involving 2v2 or 3v3 matches (though you can actually still play 1v1, which gets boring quickly anyway...).                                                                                               
This is a decent game mode, mainly because it actually fixes a big problem with the regular team tactical mode (which I'll go into further down).                                                                                        
The first 2 maps, Aground and Erosion, come free with the package, and even though they're really too small to review properly, they compliment the mode well and the scale of the maps fits nicely with the scale of players actually participating within the game.                                                           
The big problem with team tactical has always been that you were playing on the maps within the main game, which are catered towards 6v6 combat. It always meant that you were running around empty space far too often and matches lost that fast and frenetic nature that Call of Duty is known for.                                                                                                                                                              
Face Off mode addresses this issue with the inclusion of maps specifically built to suit the smaller team game modes. As a result, matches have a huge emphasis on tactical awareness, and are naturally slower paced, but the size of the maps keep action frequent and never stagnates the game to large extents like team tactical does.                                                                                                
It makes Face Off mode a nice addition to the game, and the fact more maps are due to be released will flesh out the mode nicely. It's completely free aswell, which is an excellent bonus, so definitely download it and give it a try.

Platinum #41 - Bulletstorm

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10                                                                                    
The Bulletstorm trophy list is split into 3 distinctive areas, involving the Single Player campaign, Echoes mode and the Anarchy Multiplayer mode.                                                                                  
Truth be told, the majority of the challenge with this Platinum comes exclusively from the latter section of the list, with some gruelling Multiplayer trophies presented to the player.
                                           
The single player consists of a heavy dose of progression based trophies, but does also include 4 stackable, difficulty based trophies, with the "Blood Symphony" trophy, awarded for completing the campaign on Very Hard difficulty being the peak of these trophies.

The game itself presents a minimal challenge, even on the toughest difficulties, due to it's very arcade nature, and also clocks in at a short 6-8 hour venture, and although you can expect alot of repetition of chapters and play-throughs in the quest for collectibles and executing every possible skillshot, it still makes for a short game on the surface.                                                                                                                       
Speaking of which, there are almost 50 collectibles in total, in the form of Newsbots and Electroflies, strewn around the Single Player campaign , but the ability to view any missing collectibles and replay any relevant sections through the chapter select makes these a complete breeze. They're also very easy to find and associated to a variety of skillshots, which makes things even easier for the player.

The "Golden Idol" trophy, awarded for performing every single skillshot in the game, might seem tough, but the majority of them will come through natural progression throughout the campaign, with only a small handful of them being slightly tougher or involving some form of luck.

Most of the skillshots are chapter specific, and just end up becoming a matter of trial and error as you reload chapters or playthrough the game again if necessary. The tougher skillshots are the ones that fall into the "General" category, and can therefore be achieved anywhere throughout the campaign, but it can be tricky finding the best locations for certain skillshots, however, apart from that, the 135 total skillshots really isn't as daunting of a figure as it might initially seem.
                                                                                                                                             
The Echoes mode trophies are definitely the easiest part of this list, and are mostly based around collecting stars within the 14 original echoes. It's very similar to the main campaign, where levels are re-run with score requirements set for performing strings of skillshots and combos, and even though the mode requires a basic knowledge of skillshots to achieve the relevant points targets, the fact you'll most likely already have tackled the levels in the campaign, and also have a solid understanding of skillshots, there's nothing that will trip you up.

The "Hoarder" trophy, awarded for having a total of at least 150,000 points in one Echo round, is just a simple matter of points accumulation, and you will need to replay a few echoes to breach the 150,000 barrier. It's not extensively grindy by any stretch, but you will need to plug away for a bit, even after obtaining the "Supernova" trophy, awarded for getting 3 stars on each of the 14 original echoes.

The Multiplayer Anarchy mode only has a small handful of trophies allocated to it, but is definitely the toughest part of this Platinum.                                                                                                            
The "Anarchy Master" trophy, awarded for achieving a score of at least 50,000 as a team requires a high level of quality in regards to teamwork and communication. The trophy description is actually very misleading, and the 50,000 points needs to achieved in 1 wave within a single game of Anarchy.

The amount of points required to pass each wave escalates as each round passes, however, the earliest time you can earn 50,000 points is wave 20, which takes a good couple of hours just to reach, meaning any sort of failure will set you back 2-3 hours and require you to retry the whole run, which is beyond frustrating. Once you get to wave 20, it's just a matter of teamwork and solid communication, and although there is a very straight forward tactic available to nail this trophy, it will still require the right execution in order to fulfil the 50,000 points requirement, and definitely makes this the hardest trophy in the entire list.

The "Final Echo" trophy, awarded for achieving level 65 in Anarchy mode, is a standard levelling affair, and although  isn't as gruelling as some online levelling grinds that have gone before it,you're still looking at a good 20-25 hours to achieve level 65. You can go a long way to reaching this milestone with the other online trophies in this list, but this will still be the final trophy you unlock in the Multiplayer portion of this game.

It isn't necessary to play with others either, and there is actually a relatively efficient self-play method that can help you rank up and achieve the trophy slighty quicker than if you were to play with others, but it is extremely mundane and does drain the fun element out of the online mode, so it might be something to consider as a final push, but nothing more.
                                 
All in all, this is a pretty moderate difficulty Platinum with everything taken into account. Most of the trophies make this a pretty straight forward list, but there is a genuine challenge present too in places, albeit a fairly subtle one. There is a sizeable time commitment too, clocking in at around 40-50 hours in total.

Notable Trophies - 

Golden Idol - Perform every Single Player skillshot in the game
Hoarder - Have a total of at least 150,000 points in Echoes Mode's total high score
Anarchy Master - Achieve a score of at least 50,000 as a team in Anarchy mode
Final Echo - Achieve level 65 in Anarchy mode

Hardest Trophy -
                                                                   

Anarchy Master 
Achieve a score of at least 50,000 points as a team in Anarchy Mode