Platinum #50 - Dead Rising 2

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

In terms of actual difficulty, this list doesn't really do much to overly challenge you (Strangely enough, you could easily argue the game gets more relaxed the further you play it). However, that is more than compensated by what ultimately turns out to be a huge grind-fest, packed with cumulative and collection based trophies for varying elements of the game.

The "Head Trauma" trophy, awarded for using every type of melee weapon on a zombie, is definitely the pick of these cumulative trophies, and the biggest stumbling block regarding these is the fact the game gives you no assistance in relation to which weapons you still need to use to fulfil the trophy requirement.

Granted, it isn't exactly hard to tick them off yourself, and they do thankfully carry over from one playthrough to the next, but there are almost 200 melee weapons in the game, and when you have to go through the list trying to find out which ones you still need to use, it just becomes a massive game of trial and error as you ultimately hope to hit that missing one. You can remedy this by keeping track from the very beginning, but I went for this trophy almost 4 years after I originally started the game, so I never had a chance other than doing it the hard way.

Thankfully, the volume required for most of the other cumulative weapon based trophies isn't anywhere near as bad, and the other stuff, such as spraying all Zombrex posters, retrieving all gifts and changing into every item of clothing is much easier, despite the fact they all have missable elements to keep track of, but if you make sure you don't miss those, you won't struggle too much with them, due to their much more manageable numbers.

The "Duct Tape FTW" trophy, awarded for creating all combo weapons, again, isn't tough by any means, and in reality, it only gets a mention here because it's one of the few trophies that has to be done in 1 playthrough of the game, and progress does not carry over. Some of the parts required for certain combo weapons can only be found from certain points in the game, but most of the parts are generously scattered around or can conveniently be found near workbenches, which makes things alot easier, providing you realise soon enough that it all has to be done in a single game.

This falls in tandem with the "Full Deck" trophy, awarded for collecting all combo cards. You can earn combo cards in a number of ways, through defeating psychopaths, saving survivors, discovering them from hidden posters around Fortune City and simply just crafting the combo weapon yourself, but many of them are exclusively awarded, so you'll need to make sure you know where to get them, especially true for the Tape it or Die combo cards.

The "Hero of Fortune" city trophy, awarded for saving 50 survivors, is where the game shines through with a rare element of skill. There are a total of 65 survivors to be rescued in 1 playthrough, which means you don't really have a great margin of error to hit the target figure. You'll need to plan which missions you should prioritise, especially due to the time limits applied to the game, and some missions can carry up to 4 survivors, so it's best to target those. Some missions won't even appear in some circumstances (More than 8 survivors already on the map, and some missions which are unmarked and don't even appear in the mission feed, for example), so it's important to keep on top of every mission, which can be a tough juggling act to keep up with.

On the subject of survivors, the "Data Miner" trophy, awarded for filling all entries in the notebook, requires you to encounter every character in the game. These cover main characters, survivors and psychopaths, and you'll run into most of them naturally going for the other trophies, but some are slightly harder to find than others.

Alot of these trophies do border on tedious, but the most tedious of all goes to the "Zombie Genocide Master" trophy, awarded for killing 72,000 zombies. Firstly, this has to be done in one playthrough, so you don't even have the flexibility of carrying the kills over, which is hard to take given the fact you could easily play this game through 15-20 times. Secondly, there is only one method for this trophy, to save up $2,000,000 and buy the SUV, and prepare for 7-8 hours of the most mind numbing gameplay you'll ever encounter. It simply involves driving around the Silver Strip, killing zombies and saving every so often in order to repair your SUV and do it all over again. As mentioned, it's dull and takes around 7-8 hours, which is basically a whole playthrough. Not fun.

Despite this game being very heavily emphasised on Single Player, there are a small selection of Multi-player trophies too.

Most of these are easy enough, but the "TK's Favourite" trophy, awarded for playing and winning in all 9 TIR events, is a difficult one to nab. This is mainly because the games are chosen at random, and theres no way for the payers to influence what comes next, meaning when you get down to the last couple, it can be frustrating waiting for them to appear, especially if you miss the chance by losing the round, and have to wait for the next opportunity.

Given the fact that the entire list is full of checklist heavy trophies, and the need to consistently keep track of everything effectively becomes a big game of trial and error, especially when you consider the amount of items that can be missed throughout the game, simply because they only appear during certain missions, or can be obtained from areas that need to be unlocked or visited once, it creates a challenging trophy list, albeit a mentally challenging one, more than anything.

Some skill elements do creep into the game at times, and it can be a very challenging game when you first start out levelling your character, but the sheer amount of time and the constant tedium and repetition are what makes this game truly hard to get through right to the very end.

The amount of trophies that rely on hefty accumulation and collection related tasks is ultimately very overwhelming, and it means you'll end up playing around 10-20 complete playthroughs of the game, which equates to around 100-150 hours, to grab the Platinum. The slightly skill based trophies present a fun edge to the game, but the spotlight is stolen by way too many trophies that just rely on tedium and sheer grinding that test your determination to the very maximum.

Notable Trophies -

Head Trauma - Use every type of melee weapon on a zombie
Duct Tape FTW - Create all combo weapons
Full Deck - Collect all combo cards
Hero of Fortune City - Save 50 Survivors
Data Miner - Fill all entries in the notebook
Zombie Genocide Master - Kill 72,000 zombies
TK's Favourite - Play and win in all 9 TIR events

Hardest Trophy -

Hero of Fortune City
Save 50 Survivors

DLC #64 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem Single Player Pack

Attempt to beat the clock, in a series
of spin off challenges

The second DLC pack for Ultimate Mayhem shifts focus onto the Single Player aspect of the game, with 6 trophies catered around a series of new challenges.

The only Gold trophy in the package, "Clock Watching", awarded for beating the times on all new challenges and the new Deathmatch challenge, is the primary focus of the trophy set, and if you're striving towards this trophy, you'll unlock the other 5 in the list automatically along the way.

There are 10 new challenges in total, all focused around using the games weapons to accomplish certain goals, and the majority of them are incredibly easy to beat, even under the target times you'll need to unlock all trophies.

There are a couple of challenges that might require a handful of attempts, but there's nothing that a little bit of practice won't solve, and where the Multiplayer Pack actually presented a stiff challenge, this package is very much the opposite, and you can unlock every trophy available in the set within 1-2 hours.

DLC #63 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem Multiplayer Map Pack

More maps, More Mayhem!

The Ultimate Mayhem MP pack throws a handful of new maps into the game, along with 6 trophies specifically for the online portion of the game too.

The sole gold trophy, "Feel the Power of the Darkside", awarded for winning a ranked match with 2 or more Worms remaining on each new map, is the pick of the list, and is quite a solid feat to achieve. It requires alot of tactical nouse to be able to keep 2 worms alive by the time you've beaten your opponent, and power weapons can easily have the capability to wipe out a Worm or two in one go, so you need to be fast in your approach at dispatching the enemy worms. Thankfully, forfeiting opponents will count towards the trophy too, meaning it is possible to beat somebody into an early quit and still get the reward from it, which sometimes turns out to be more effective than straight out winning the game.

There are 5 new maps to win on, but the trophy (and a few others in the package) suffers from poor game design, as you can never have any influence on which map to play on, and therefore, things turn very tedious, very fast when you get to that final map you still need to win on and it just doesn't want to turn up in the map rotation. Even more frustrating when you lose, or don't have 2 worms left when you win, meaning you have to replay the map and go through the motions of waiting for it to appear again. Frustrating.

The "Dedicated Ranker" trophy, awarded for winning a ranked match on every new map, is pretty self explanatory, but will be achieved in tandem with the "Feel the Power of the Darkside" trophy. 

Apart from this, the "I Love New" trophy, awarded for playing each of the new maps 5 times, is thankfully made alot of easier by the fact all modes count, and can therefore be achieved in an offline local game. Imagine trying to play 25 matches across 5 maps with an online component that doesn't even allow you to have any influence on map selection.

The rest of the trophies in the pack will come along the way,  but in all honesty, the toughest thing about this package was trying to find the right games to get into. You don't get the option to create lobbies, and there's no sort of voting process for maps, so you just need to hope you get dealt the maps you need in order to fulfil the trophy requirements. It can add a fair whack of time to overall completion, especially when you consider how baron the online portion of the game can be at times, but when the map rotation is feeling kind, it isn't really too difficult in terms of required skill.

Platinum #49 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

Despite being a very small list, this still passes by as a reasonably challenging game to Platinum, though most of this is entirely down to the Gold trophies alone.

None of the bronze trophies are really worth shouting about, however, the "I Am The Worminator" trophy, awarded for killing more than 3 worms in one turn in a ranked match, is practically down to luck, and just hoping you fall into a scenario where you can take out a close bunch of enemy worms. 

Using a high impact weapon, such as the Weapon Factory, and making sure it has a good blast radius, is most likely your best opportunity to knock off at least 4 enemy worms in 1 go, and you'll definitely need to be playing against more than 1 team too, given the fact it's extremely unlikely you'll be in a situation where you can kill off an entire team in 1 go.

The rest of the Bronze trophies, which make up almost half of the whole list, are very easy, and even just complete throw-aways in some instances, and the Silver trophies, though not exactly as easy, can still be achieved through natural progression through the game, and go towards the Gold trophies in most instances anyway.

It is relevant to make an exception to the "Embrace the Darkness" trophy, though, awarded for winning 10 games with the last hit coming from a Sentry Gun. It's tough to manufacture a situation where you can kill the final enemy with a Sentry Gun, and given the fact you need to replicate it 10 times in total, it is the stand-out Silver in this list. 

It is always easier to leave 1 enemy worm remaining, and set up a Sentry Gun in or around their area, and hope that they trigger it off when they take their turn. You may need to be very persistent, but this is sound tactic that should be effective in fulfilling enough wins to unlock the trophy.

However, the Gold trophies are the ones that take this game's difficulty into the upper end of the scale, with all 6 of them being culpable to some degree of extent.

Starting with the hardest, the "Total Ranker" trophy, awarded for winning 40 online ranked matches across 3 games modes, will take anywhere within the region of 20-25 hours for the average player alone, though this timescale will depend on your win to loss ratio. The relevance of 3 game modes is largely insignificant, because you can do the bare minimum of 1 win in 2 modes, and 38 wins in another, and since Deathmatch seems to be the only mode that people indulge in online, it's just aswell theres no limit on your win distribution.

The "Billy No Mates" trophy, awarded for completing the single player story mode (which contains 26 missions), will take around 5-10 hours, and barring a couple of missions, is incredibly straight forward.

Directly tied into this trophy, is the "Doing it Solo" trophy, awarded for completing the story, challenges and tutorials. The tutorials are easy enough, as you'd expect, but some of the challenges can be deceptively tough, which are mostly quick levels based around beating target times. You'll need to be fast and efficient for some of them though.

Aside from the main Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there's also the Worms 3D campaign, which is covered by the "Fan of the Arts" trophy, awarded for collecting all gallery images available. There are an additional 35 missions within the Worms 3D campaign, with artwork available for beating every single one of them, meaning you'll need to complete the entire campaign in order to unlock this trophy. However, just like the Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there isn't alot to trouble you here, aside the odd mission that might spike the difficulty a touch.

The "Genghis Worm" trophy, awarded for killing a total of 600 worms, might seem like a bit of a grind, but there's enough content in the trophy list for you to be able to achieve this number way before you grab the Platinum anyway. It isn't exactly a modest total by any stretch, but it won't keep you slogging away at the game way after you've finished everything else either.

The final Gold trophy, "Shop-A-Holic", is actually the only secret trophy in the list, and is awarded for unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style, which is only available after everything else in the shop has been purchased. There's a fairly wide selection of items and weapons in the shop, and a decent accumulation of coins is needed to unlock them all, which can be earned through the beating missions within the games single player modes. It isn't exactly tough, but it will be one of the last trophies you unlock, due to the sheer wealth of content you need to purchase before unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style.

Ultimately, this game essentially boils down to the various Gold trophies within. The list is quite sparse of trophies that are difficult in terms of actual skill required, but there's still a pretty hefty time investment, clocking in at around 40-50 hours to complete everything on offer.

Notable Trophies -

I Am The Worminator - Kill more than 3 worms in one turn in a Ranked Match
Embrace The Darkness - Win 10 games with the last hit coming from a sentry gun, all modes count
Total Ranker - Win 40 online Ranked matches across at least 3 game modes
Doing It Solo - Complete the story, challenges and tutorials
Fan Of The Arts - Collect all the gallery images available
Genghis Worm - Kill a total of 600 worms, all modes count
Shop-A-Holic - Purchase the Kichen Sink game style

Hardest Trophy -

Total Ranker
Win 40 online Ranked matches across at least 3 game modes.