DLC #97 - The Last of Us - Abandoned Territories

Abandon ship! (Bus)

After Reclaimed Territories, comes Abandoned Territories, adding a futher 4 maps to The Last of Us Multiplayer experience, and 7 new trophies to accompany them.

The format of this list is an exact carbon copy of it's predessessor.

For a refresher, 3 of the trophies in this package are awarded for playing each of the games 3 game modes on any of the 4 new maps, exactly the same as the previous DLC pack.

Which means, the other 4 trophies are awarded for achieving 5 downs or executions on each of the 4 new maps in one game. It is important to note, which is something I wasn't actually aware of previously, that, you can get a combined total of 5 downs and executions to unlock these trophies, rather than having to get at least 5 of either one, which actually makes these trophies even easier than I previously believed.

As before, they're incredibly easy trophies to unlock, and if you're battling through the main list campaigns, these will all come naturally at some point. Very easy.

DLC #96 - The Last of Us - Reclaimed Territories

No reason to be picky..

The Reclaimed Territories pack is the first Multiplayer based trophy offering for The Last of Us, adding a further 7 trophies related to the 4 new maps bought out as part of this package.

They're such a straight-forward selection of trophies, I didn't even realise how close I actually was to completing this set until I randomly noticed my trophy collection was almost complete for this list, which I suppose tells you everything you need to know about the sort of challenge it presents.

Out of the trophies on offer, 3 of them are awarded for playing each of the games 3 different game modes (Survivors, Supply Raid and Interogation) on any of the 4 new maps, which are added into random rotation during ranked matches, so you should have no problems getting into a game on any of them.

The other 4 trophies require you to achieve 5 downs or executions in a match on any game mode for each of the 4 new maps, which really isn't difficult, even if you wouldn't consider yourself to be very good at the game. You might need to wait around for that last map to come into rotation, but if you're working on the main list of the game, where you need to play at least 168 matches to beat both online campaigns, you should hit all 4 maps multiple times during that period anyway, giving you plenty of chances along the way to full completion.

Given Naughty Dog's track record of Multiplayer trophies, this is very much at the opposite end of the spectrum to the norm. You will more than likely achieve these trophies through just progressing the Firefly and Hunter campaigns for the related gold trophies in the main list, so you won't even need any sort of focus on them, and can completely rely on natural obtainment of all 7 trophies. Very basic stuff.

DLC #95 - Call of Duty : Black Ops - Escalation Map Pack

Ensemble...

The Escalation Map Pack adds 5 trophies to the zombie mode of Blacks Ops, and is the first trophy pack in the game that includes Easter Egg related trophies.

The "Ensemble Cast" trophy, awarded for sending the crew to Paradise in co-op, requires you to fulfil the aforementioned multi-step Easter Egg contained with the newly added Call of the Dead zombies map.

At the time of writing, there have been many Easter Egg themed trophies released in the vast array of games in the Call of Duty series down the years, so even relatively new at the time of it's release, these trophies are now common place in the Call of Duty world.

This is actually one of the easier ones to follow, and even though you will need to finish it in co-op, you can complete every step of the Easter Egg with as little as just 2 people, in comparison to some Easter Egg trophies that will require you to have a full party of 4.

There are no particulary difficult parts of this process, though you will need the V-R11 from the mystery box to turn a zombie into a human during one of the latter steps, but that's about as challenging as any step gets, and you can complete the steps in large chunks providing you have a crawler present at all times. The "Stand In" trophy, will also be awarded upon completion of the Easter Egg, which has exactly the same requirements, but can also be achieved in Solo play.

The more challenging parts of this DLC come from the bronze trophies;

Shooting on Location - In Call of the Dead, kill 10 zombies with one Scavenger shot from over 100 feet away.
Quiet on the Set - In Call of the Dead, cut the lights on the Director.

The "Shooting on Location" trophy proves to be the most difficult trophy on the list.

There are proven and solid methods to obtaining this, and it is best done in Solo play, but you'll need to pull the Scavenger from the mystery box first, and then be able to gauge a position from where you can shoot a group of zombies that are far enough away in order to satisfy the requirements of the trophy. Making a group of crawlers will not only lessen the threat whilst you line up a shot, but also makes them a much easier target to group together and kill all at once.

There's more luck than judgement involved, and it could take you a handful of attempts, whether that be because you didn't manage to pull the Scavenger out of the mystery box early enough, or because you didn't kill enough zombies with 1 shot and have to subsequently start the next round.

It does also help to Pack-A-Punch the Scavenger if you can survive long enough to accumulate 5000 points, which increases the damage dealt and blast radius of the explosion on a shot, and Juggernog is always a good perk to have to hand when playing solo because being downed will end the game when you don't have any team-mates to assist you.

The "Quiet on the Set" trophy requires you to kill George Romero, who wanders around the map, and will become hostile if either shot at, or you get too close to him.

He takes alot of damage before dying, and it's actually best to play for the trophy in tandem with the above, since the upgraded Scavenger can deal alot of damage, which is exactly what you'll need to kill the Director. Standard weapons can work, but the damage is so minimal, it becomes a tedious exercise, and if you already have an upgraded Scavenger from trying to obtain the above trophy, it just makes sense to try and kill him with it too.

The crawler method is sound, though it is important to make sure the crawler is always well away from the fight, else the blast radius will cause death and trigger the next round suddenly. It's also important to make sure you shoot the Director within water, which is the only remedy to his raging rampage around the map, so focus on the centralised starting area when going for this trophy. Almost a full cip of 36 rounds on the upgraded Scavanger will be enough, so make the shots count, and you should have enough.

Again, it may take a handful of attempts depending on mystery box luck, and if you can survive multiple waves, but with the right strategy, it isn't terribly difficult, though can be frustrating having to restart the game multiple times.

Despite not being as easy as the First Strike Map Pack, Escalation presents it's own challenges, but in the bigger scheme of the Call of Duty series, it contains one of the easier to complete Easter Eggs, with some potentially frustrating, but not incredibly difficult added extras.

Platinum #74 - Assassin's Creed Rogue

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

The final installation of Assassin's Creed on the Playstation 3 follows a fairly standard tradition, very much in line with the normal expectations of an Assassin's Creed trophy list, and despite being fairly lengthy, contains one of the easiest trophy lists in the series.

Shay Cormac is the main protagonist, with a heavy emphasis on sea-based travelling and combat, and a follow up from the Black Flag installment on the Playstation 4.

The "Templar then; Templar now" trophy, awarded for completing the game, relates to the main story sequence, which is actually much shorter than that of stories in other Assassin's Creed games, with just 6 sequences to get through. There are also 4 sequences relating to the present day, which don't really add much to the game other than walking around an Abstergo facility in first person of an unnamed protagonist, and merely act as fillers between main story sequences.

All of this, including going back for any secondary objectives, (which are paramount to 100% synchronisation), should take no longer than 8 hours. The story offering is very brief, and if you keep an eye on the secondary objectives, you can easily minimise the amount of replay value you'll have to contest with later on.

The bulk of the time spent on this trophy list will be allocated to the vast array of side activities in the game, which has been fleshed out way more than the main story, with a huge amount of collectibles to grab and activities to complete.

Despite some of these being new aspects to the series, they're very repetitive and grindy, and half the struggle will be getting around the amount of times you'll have to repeat these feats. There are 200 Animus Fragments, 24 Templar maps to find, along with 24 dig site locations relating to each map and 150 quest items, amongst other things. These all have their own seperate trophies attached to them aswell, so there are no shortcuts here.

However, you'll only need to complete half of the Naval campaign, and achieve 100% synchronization on just the main story missions (though this is probably mainly down to the fact all of the secondary memories in this game are collectible and activity based, rather than a deliberate plan to make things a bit less labourious for the user).

The gameplay is exactly the same as it always has been, and therefore, contains no real difficulty spikes, but that doesn't mean there aren't at least a few challenges to be had from this list here and there;

The "Master of the North Atlantic" trophy, awarded for completing all legendary battles, requires you to defeat 4 missions containing some of the hardest ships and convoys in the game. There is a big emphasis on sea-based combat in this game, which is probably the biggest change for the series, and these battles will test your skills and ship durability.

Even with a fully upgraded Morrigan vessel, these are still extremely challenging fights, and you'll need to nail down solid tactics and acquire a bit of luck to win each of them. It's probably best to make sure the Morrigan is fully upgraded before tackling any of these in order to avoid frustration, but even then, you could find yourself replaying them a number of times in order to beat each one, and this trophy ends up being the most difficult one in the list.

On the subject of the Morrigan, the "Phantom Queen" trophy, awarded for fully upgrading the Morrigan is one of the more individually grindy trophies. The amount of resources needed to achieve a full upgrade is massive, and this is mostly down to sinking and then looting other ships in the North Atlantic. Alot of them on scarce on the supplies they give out, which is the main reason this takes a while, but it also means you'll most likely have to wait longer to tackle the legendary battles too as you build your armoury and give yourself a fighting chance.

The "Supplier" trophy, awarded for taking over 10 large supply camps while only the VETERANS cheat is active, is also worth a mention. Whilst not difficult within it's actual requirements, all 4 of the trophies relating to cheats require a certain amount of Abstergo challenges to be completed before the cheat is unlocked. In this instance, 65 challenges are required to have been fulfilled before you can begin to work towards this trophy, and given the fact there are only 75 Abstergo challenges to complete, the margin for leeway is quite small.

Most of these challenges are relatively straight forward, but you may have to be forced to tackle a few that could present a few difficulties, and this will add extra mileage onto the completion time of the list. However, as mentioned previously, the actual requirement of the trophy isn't at all difficult, but the preqrequiste has be considered.

Overall, this is business as usual for an Assassin's Creed title. Despite the story mode being short in comparison to previous Assassin's Creed titles, the wealth and depth of secondary content more than makes up for this shortcoming, and you can still expect to plug anywhere between 30-40 hours into the Platinum trophy here, which is a par timescale based on other Assassin Creed games in the series.

The game mechanics are completed unchanged, and as a result, make the game incredibly easy, especially when it comes to combat and free-running, and despite the odd spike in difficulty presented by the legendary battles, and some of the optional objectives in the main story sequence, the only real challenges presented here come from overcoming the repetitiveness and borderline grindy nature of the secondary memories, side activities and collectibles, but if you can get your head around that, you have a fairly routine Platinum trophy waiting at the other end.

Notable Trophies -

Templar then; Templar now - Complete the game
Achieve full synchronisation -Achieve 100% synchronization in all main missions
Phantom Queen - Fully Upgrade the Morrigan
Master of the North Atlantic - All legendary battles completed
Supplier - Take over 10 large supply camps while only the VETERANS cheat is active

Hardest Trophy -



Master of the North Atlantic
All legendary battles completed.