Platinum #59 - Far Cry 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

There really isn't much about this list that makes it difficult, despite it's predecessor offering one of the toughest trophy lists in the entire Playstation 3 catalogue.

There's a heavy emphasis on the game's main story, with a large selection of progression based trophies awarded upon completing certain missions right up until the "What a Trip" trophy, awarded for attending the final ceremony, and thus, completing the game.

There are no difficulty influenced trophies, meaning you can play through the entire game at whatever ease you like, though the tougher difficulty levels will provide a steeper challenge for those looking to toughen up the list a little bit.

The "Fully Inked" trophy, awarded for earning every tattoo by learning all the skills, more or less goes hand in hand with the main story, and it's a simple process of levelling up your character in order to earn more skills points and purchase tattoos that will give you additional skills. You will still need to delve into a fair amount of the side activities, mostly due to the fact the amount of experience points you need to unlock every tattoo isn't achievable purely through the main story arc, but also because some of the skills need to be unlocked by beating certain side activities and collectibles.

On the subject of collectibles, the list does also contain it's fair share of those, though most of them only require up to 50% of the overall total for the player to trigger a trophy, so they're actually quite relaxed. 

The "Archaeology 101" trophy, awarded for gathering a total of 60 relics, is exactly half of the 120 scattered across the map, as is the same requirements for the "Jungle Journal" trophy, awarded for unlocking 50 entries in the survival guide and the "Full Bars" trophy, awarded for activating 9 of the 18 radio towers (though you can argue you do still need all 18 anyway, due to the fact they uncover important map markers such as relics, outposts and main story missions).

It's incredibly generous, given the fact that the majority of trophy lists will require you to collect everything before any form of trophy is awarded, and makes the list even easier than what it could have been. Even the other collectible based trophies awarded for obtaining all Letters of the Lost and all Memory Cards are the collectibles of a lesser quantity, and you do always have the option of purchasing sectioned maps within any store that will pinpoint the exact location of everything in the game, negating the need for any sort of physical walkthrough guide.

The "Island Liberator" trophy, awarded for liberating all outposts, is undoubtedly the most difficult trophy pertaining to the games various side activities. There are a total of 34 outposts to liberate, and each one becomes progressively harder to take over as you go through them all, which is due to each outpost progressively hosting tougher and more frequently appearing enemies. It can be difficult to eliminate every enemy without dying a few times and having to restart, and it's definitely the stand out trophy in the list regarding difficulty and aspects of the game that are genuinely challenging.

Everything other trophy in the Single player side of the list just requests that you dabble in various other side activities, or experiment with a range of weapons with an attached kill requirement, amongst other similarly easy tasks. There is still definitely a trade off though, with the quick an easy trophies being levelled off with more time consuming ones, so there is nice mixture here.

The list does also cater to the games co-op mode, with a small, but equally frustrating, handful of trophies, with each of them being awarded for beating the 6 co-op missions in the game.

The most important thing to note about the co-op trophies is that they're horribly glitched, and don't seem to unlock under public co-op matches under any circumstances. This means you're forced into playing through all 6 missions through local split-screen co-op, and tackling missions that are designed for 2-4 players all on your own becomes difficult for all the wrong reasons. It's still doable, but you need extreme patience and will to put yourself through alot of trial and error as you bundle through to the end of each mission and knock off every trophy upon completing them all.

The co-op portion of the list actually turns out to be one of the more difficult parts of this game. If the trophies actually unlocked properly under normal circumstances, then they would be an absolute breeze, given the fact you'd have the support from other players, and just like the single player part of the list, these too are not difficulty influenced, so you can play through them at whatever ease you like. Unfortunately, the trophies suffer from poor game design, which never was even attempted to be fixed, and are made 5 times more difficult as a consequence.

Overall, this isn't at all a difficult list to get through. You can play through the Single player at whatever difficulty you wish, and simply playing through the main story will be enough to earn most of the trophies on offer. Some of the side activities will require a larger time investment, but with seriously lenient thresholds on certain activities and collectibles, the completion time is drastically cut as a result.

The main story will still take about 20-25 hours alone though, and all of the additional side activities and other trophies on top will push the game into 40-50 hour territory, which isn't exactly a short time investment. The co-op trophies are good enough for another 5 hours at the very least, thanks to the awful trophy implementation of that part of the list, taking the overall completion time into anywhere between 50-60 hours.

However, with minimal challenge presented by the game, it mostly falls down to the time investment required (though the co-op mode does contribute to the rating aswell), and if you're willing to plug around 50 hours into the game, it's an easy enough Platinum to grab, despite the frustrations of certain modes.

Notable Trophies -

What a Trip - Attend the final ceremony
Fully Inked - Earn every tattoo by learning all the skills
Island Liberator - Liberate All Outposts

Hardest Trophy -

Island Liberator
Liberate All Outposts

Platinum #58 - RAGE

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

A fairly average list with a few genuinely challenging trophies, yet ultimately, along with too many elements of frustration attached.

The game has a healthy dosage of progression based trophies, with 13 awarded for beating each of the game's main story missions, along with an additional 4 stackable trophies awarded for reaching the conclusion of the game.

There are also a large selection of kill-based trophies awarded for using various weapons to rack up specific kill-counts, and even though you should grab the majority of these through pure progression, they do carry on over if you need to go through the game a second time for whatever reasons.

The "RAGE Nightmare" trophy, awarded for finishing the game on Nightmare difficulty, relates to one of the harder trophies in the game, mainly down to a seriously unforgiving health system. The game becomes extremely slow paced, due to the fact you'll often need to get behind cover and replenish your health way too often, which makes getting through the whole campaign both frustrating and difficult.

Thankfully, it is only necessary to play through the game once, given the fact the difficulty related trophies do stack if you beat the game on higher difficulty levels, however, a host of other trophies hold some sneaky missables within that could force you to play through the game multiple times if you're not careful with your checklists.

The "Gotta Have 'Em All" trophy, awarded for collecting all playing cards in one play-through, is the biggest culprit, and requires you to pick up all 54 cards scattered around the game world in a single run. Almost a fifth of them are missable, and can end up getting locked out in areas that you can only visit a limited amount of times throughout the whole game, and missing just 1 of these will mean you have to replay the entire campaign through to the end in order to unlock the trophy.

If you're effectively keeping track, it isn't actually that bad, but there's other things, relating to other trophies, that you can miss out on throughout the game, which can make it a tricky juggling act to keep up with.

The "Master Chef" trophy, awarded for collecting all recipes and schematics in one play-through, is one of these other trophies, and although it isn't as hard to track as the playing cards, there are still a few missable schematics and recipes to be aware of that can be only be found during certain levels you cannot return to later.

These also contribute to the overall completion of the game, and the "Obsessive Compulsive" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% completion in the campaign, is the one trophy you'll always be working towards throughout the entire Single Player offering.

This not only includes collecting all playing cards and schematics, but an array of other requirements, (132 to be ticked off in total), that are also catered to with individual trophies within the list, including winning every race in the campaign, beating every main story mission and side mission and performing all wasteland jumps. There isn't an in-game checklist to look up what you have and what you still need, so it's best to keep track yourself and be aware to what you still need to tick off, especially given the fact that missing playing cards and schematics will also void this trophy unlocking aswell, and require you to replay the whole game to 100% again if you miss just 1 thing.

A couple of the mini-game trophies also deserve a mention, including the "Jackpot" trophy, awarded for rolling 4 targets in the first round of tombstones, which is purely luck based, and could very easily have you sitting there rolling the counter for hours as the jackpot eludes you time and time again, and the "Just a Flesh Wound" trophy, awarded for completing the final round of 5 finger fillet, is a genuine test of skill and reactions, and even though there is a little cheaty pause trick you can utilise, it still takes a considerable element of skill to nail all 5 rounds in a game.

The Co-op portion of the game also has a small handful of trophies allocated to it, centered around beating the 9 Legends of the Wasteland missions.

The "Anthology" trophy, awarded for completing all Legends of the Wasteland, is the main focus, and although it isn't as in depth as anything within the Single Player portion of the game, there's still an extra 3-4 hours to be had from all 9 missions on offer, and there are some more challenging trophies as an added extra that require you to beat a mission on Nightmare difficulty, and beat a mission without either player becoming incapacitated, both of which will be struggle unless you can find a good co-op partner to blast through the missions with.

The Multiplayer portion also contributes, albeit very subtlety, to the list, with 2 trophies awarded for competing in and winning an online race. They're very easy, but you wouldn't want the online to phase out before you got them.

In many respects, the things that make this game difficult just relate to managing the trophy list properly, and making sure you're prepared enough to collect everything within a single play-through and not having to play again for the sake of any missed trophies. The game itself doesn't present too much of a challenge, although if you fly straight into Nightmare difficulty, you'll need to prepare to be patient and tolerable of the low health mechanics which make you duck into cover and recoup often before launching attacks, which can make the game seem slow and devoid of any sort of flow and pace. 

Time-wise, a single play-through should take anywhere between 10-12 and hours, and if you need a second just for the sake of blasting through for anything you missed, you can easily do that in a lesser timeframe of around 8-10 hours, and with the co-op mode on top, it's still a sub 25 hour Platinum.

Notable Trophies -

RAGE Nightmare - Finish the Campaign on Nightmare difficulty
Gotta Have 'Em All - Collect all Playing Cards on one play-through
Master Chef - Collect all Recipes and Schematics in one play-through
Obsessive Compulsive - Reach 100% completion in the Campaign

Hardest Trophy -

Obsessive Compulsive
Reach 100% completion in the Campaign

DLC #73 - DiRT 3 Monte Carlo Track Pack

Even more ToUR'ing, in Monte Carlo

The DiRT 3 DLC packs conclude with a trip to Monte Carlo, and another offering of tour events to slog through, along with 4 additional trophies too.

The "La Grande Victoire" trophy, awarded for achieving first place in all DiRT tour Monte Carlo events, requires you to beat every available event, of which there are 8, a slightly higher amount than that of the X-Games Asia track pack.

All of these new events feature Rally races, and some of the latter events include 4/5 stages, which can make them long and challenging.

However, the "Tourist" trophy, awarded for driving in excess of 100 miles in Monte Carlo, will ensure full exploration of the new DLC tracks, and the extended portion of the DiRT Tour is a convenient way to put extra mileage on the clock, and still feel as though you're striving for a goal, rather than aimlessly charging around the longer tracks in the package.

You will still most likely complete the 8 new tour events before you hit the 100 mile mark, and there is still the standard online win trophy, which will also add extra miles to the counter if needed, and given the fact there's no totaliser available to track progression, you'll most likely have to resort to just setting up random rally events and racing the longest track until the trophy is triggered.

This is a longer package than the previous pieces of DLC, but you can still expect to unlock all 4 trophies within 3-4 hours in total.

DLC #72 - DiRT 3 X-Games Asia Track Pack

Visit Japan and do some more ToUR'ing

A slight change of direction for the DiRT 3 DLC, but an equally simple trophy list to go along with it too, adding another 4 new trophies.

The "Tokyo Story" trophy, awarded for achieving first place in all DiRT tour Shibuya events, requires you to beat every additional race available for the track pack (of which there are 4), and they're all just standard Rally Cross events, which aren't at all difficult to win.

The "Metropolis Racer" trophy, awarded for winning an online race in Shibuya, might take a handful of attempts, depending upon skill level, but generally shouldn't cause too many problems.

You can very easily unlock all 4 trophies on offer within an hour or two, which will vary based on how long it takes you to win an online race. Beating all 4 events and unlocking the other 2 trophies in the list can be done in less than hour, and the timescale just depends upon the online win.