DLC #116 - Angry Birds Trilogy - Anger Management

Upon full completion of the previously reviewed main Angry Birds list, there weren't many more things beyond that I ever wanted to see less of than more Angry Birds content.

I say that with a bit of tongue in cheek. There is a strangely addictive charm to this game, which I should, in theory, dislike, but can't quite bring myself to.

This first of two DLC packs offers up more of the same. A collection of new episodes containing a series of levels to conquer in the same old Angry Birds style we've come to know and (not always) love.

There are 6 episodes in total, themed across popular calendar events, such as Halloween, Christmas and Chinese New Year, spanning a collective total of 130 new individual levels contained within. There aren't really any additional game features or new birds to unleash into the atmosphere, so this is literally just more of what you already know. The Piglantis episode does add a cool water mechanic, which makes you approach those particular levels slightly differently to the rest, but that's as about as fresh as this package gets in terms of providing any new content.

There are 10 new trophies in total, 6 of which are offered for completing each of the new 6 episodes. This merely requires you to rid the stage of all pigs present, and does not extend to obtaining a 3 star rating, however, that isn't the case for full completion of this package;

Star-Expander - Get 3 stars in every single level of Anger Management.

The "Star Expander" trophy, awarded for getting 3 stars in every single level of Anger Management, will require you to do exactly that. These are the kind of trophies that bore my love/hate relationship with Angry Birds, purely because they have a bad habit of challenging unpredictability, and this is no different here.

Just like the main game, you'll run into a series of levels at varying points that just leave you stuck for hours, resorting to some desperate trial and error in an attempt to create as much destruction as possible and hit that 3 star score requirement. There isn't any logic to why the points don't quite tally up and it's just a matter of retrying the level until something sticks. It will eventually work, but you just have to persist with it, and that's the hardest thing about these trophies, and the fact you never quite know how much longer any given level will take to complete. There is a very minimal influence that skill can have here, so it's purely a waiting game.

If achieving 3 stars for each of the 130 new individual levels wasn't enough, you'll also have to go back through and cleanse them with the Mighty Eagle too, another popular extra-curricular activity introduced into the main games list, so this doubles the original figure to a plump 260 levels to complete in total. The Mighty Eagle will get you through levels much faster than conventional means of achieving 3 stars, but you're still effectively putting into motion a second play-through of the package. No small feat.

It's difficult to nail down a time estimation, purely for the previously aforementioned degree of trial and error present, but covering a broad spectrum and suggesting 20-30 hours would be fair enough. This may seem high for a package which is much shorter on content than the main game, but I think it nicely emphasises the amount of patience you'll need to see it through to the end.

NOTE : At the time of writing, this content pack has been removed seemingly on a permanent basis from the Playstation store. If you had not downloaded the pack prior to purchase, the trophies within this package are rendered unachievable by conventional means.

DLC #115 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag - Blackbeard's Wrath

The Multiplayer half of Black Flag's DLC comes in the form of a very small DLC package.

The content of the package contains just 3 new character skins, so is a very scarce offering, but does also load up a small collection of trophies to go after too.

Each of the new trophies requires the player to pull off some sort of in-game feat, whilst skinned up as 1 of the additional character skins. There is a surplus trophy which can be achieved with any character skin, but the other trophies will require you to use each of the 3 new characters.

Despite being a Multiplayer package, you can take the easy way out for at least 3 of these trophies, by loading up a game of solo Wolfpack, which is still contained within the Multiplayer portion of the game, but can be played alone as a training exercise. The fact you can still also earn these trophies within that game mode is an added bonus which makes this easy enough, for the most part anyway;

Sacred Land - Playing as The Jaguar, be the highest scoring player of a Domination game session.

Unlike the other trophies in this set, this one has to be completed in a game of Domination, which cannot be done solo. There are two obstacles with this trophy.

Firstly, during any team-based game mode on Assassin's Creed, the responsibility to choose which character the team uses will fall to one person on the team chosen at random. The issue is, the others on your team won't be choosing the Jaguar skin, meaning you'll more than likely have to wait until it's your turn to make the choice, so there's a either large element of reliance on others or a lot of patience to achieve stage one of this trophy.

Once you've managed to create the above scenario, you then you need to make sure you're the best performer in the lobby, which, when full, will consist of another 7 players. There is a really important detail that the trophy description actually neglects to mention, which is the fact you not only have to be the highest scoring player in the lobby, but you also need to be on the winning team. This is something I discovered the hard way, when I thought I had fulfilled the requirements of the trophy, but ended up on the losing team, so the trophy did not trigger.

This meant I was back at square one, and had to go through the whole stage one process of getting into a game where the Jaguar skin was selected either by myself or somebody else, and this will be the case every time you fail at stage two, so this has the potential to be a somewhat drawn out process. It does help to obtain this pack early and tandem it with the main trophy list, which requires you to reach level 55, just so it seems like you're not wasting time if you need a handful of attempts at this trophy. At least you're still leveling up if you're experiencing set-backs.

The fact you can earn most of the trophies in a non-competitive environment makes this package a lot easier than it initially seems. In a competitive Multiplayer environment, some of these trophies are tough, and could take a while depending on situational luck. This is somewhat upheld by the only trophy in the set which can only be earned within a competitive playlist, but the rest is much easier thanks to solo Wolfpack mode.

DLC #114 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag - Freedom Cry

Freedom Cry, the Single Player expansion pack offering from Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag, adds 6 additional trophies to the full list, and focuses around the side-story of Edward Kenway's sidekick, Adewale, a black pirate who's goal is to liberate black slaves from the isles of Port-au-Prince, a end the reign of tyrant Pierre de Fayet, all within a new world for the player to explore, albeit of a much smaller scale.

The list itself is very vanilla. There is a string of 9 new story missions specific to the expansion, complete with their own optional objectives, and full completion of these to 100% will award the singular gold trophy, "His Full Attention", which tops off the package. You will also be awarded a trophy for just merely reaching the end of the story.

As with the main game, the story missions are very standard, and none of the optional objectives will create any difficulty barriers, leading to a completion time of around 3-4 hours for the story alone. This timescale goes by the assumption there's no requirement to replay any missions in order to achieve any of the optional objectives, so it's advised to complete the optional objectives as you go along.

Trophies are also awarded for the liberation of slaves, which is the other big part of this expansion, aside from the new story arc. The "Seeds of independence" trophy, awarded for liberating 500 slaves will ensure you explore enough of this new feature, and slaves can be liberated through a series of randomly generated activities throughout the map. These will range from smaller activities, which liberate less slaves, such as freeing them from a cage, or disrupting a slavers auction, to larger activities, which liberate greater numbers of slaves, such as ridding plantations of slaver influence, or hijacking a slavers ship.

It is important to note that, there is a requirement to liberate at least 350 slaves as part of the progression throughout the main story, and you won't be able to accept specific missions as a consequence of not meeting this minimum requirement, so this is actually mandatory to full completion, at least up to a certain point anyway. There is a clean-up operation required to reach 500, but all you need to do is stick to the larger activities, where you can liberate larger numbers of slaves at once, and you'll reach the target number in no time.

Overall, this package should only take a handful of hours to complete. Somewhere within the region of 5-7 is a fair estimate, and the ever easy gameplay of Assassin's Creed Single Player adventures will help you on the way to an easy 100%.

Platinum #87 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

If there's one series that almost, always, produces an easy Platinum, Assassin's Creed is the banker.

Black Flag sees you take control of Edward Kenway, directly connected as the Father of Haytham Kenway in Assassin's Creed 3, in search of an observatory that the Templars are also seeking to be able to control the visions of World Leaders, and use these visions to gain vital insight into how to achieve world power.

The time era is the pirate-influenced Caribbean, so there's a big focus on ship-based combat and exploration, as well as the introduction of underwater sections for the first time in an Assassin's Creed game.

The trophy list is, for the most part, very par for the course for an Assassin's Creed title.

The "Saw That One Coming..." trophy, awarded for completing Sequence 13, and thus, the end of the game, is a permanent fixture for the Assassin's Creed series, and follows a ton of trophies for natural progression through the game's story arc. This also includes a small handful of trophies for the commonly occurring present day sequences too, combining to account for around a third of the entire list.

The story, in length, is roughly around 10-15 hours for a single run, but may also involve covering some previous ground in order to complete the optional objectives for every mission. In some previous Assassin Creed titles, I have given a mention to the full synchoronisation trophy that usually accompanies these lists, which is to achieve 100% of the main story constraints for every single main story sequence, and whilst this also does exist here in the form of the "By The Book" trophy, there are only 2/3 additional objectives in the entire game that are anywhere close to some sort of challenge, so this serves mostly as a tick-box exercise, rather than an additional challenge.

Despite there also being a ton of side activities to participate in and complete, and to which there are individual trophies awarded for the completion of a few of these, which is also normal when comparing to previous Assassin's Creed titles, you don't have to complete 100% of what the game has to offer, and this is a huge game, often filled with very repetitive side content, so it's good to see the trophy list doesn't require you to do absolutely everything, which also helps bring the overall Platinum difficulty rating down a touch.

That's not to say there aren't a few of these trophies that will require some degree of work though.

The "Destroyer" trophy, awarded for Fully upgrading the Jackdaw, is one of these trophies, and probably the most time consuming extra-curricular activity outside the main story which awards a trophy. 

To fully upgrade the Jackdaw, which is the inherited ship that Edward Kenway picks up during the main story, you'll need a combination of both materials and money in order to craft and purchase the upgrades. These resources can be obtained in a few ways, either through looting warehouses or boarding enemy ships and pillaging their stock, but the level of resources required for every single upgrade will take some degree of grinding, especially for metal, which seems to be in much greater need than the other materials. You can also purchase the raw materials from general stores, but given the fact you'll also need the money to buy upgrades, this is a very counter-productive exercise, and the most effective method of accruing resources is to target strong enemy ships, which you'll be able to do once you start to upgrade the Jackdaw. It might take a while to get to this point, but stronger vessels contain greater quantities of resources, and will help you achieve this trophy faster.

Another thing to point out is the fact that, for some specific upgrades, you'll need to obtain the blueprint before you can craft it, which is gained through finding the relevant treasure map that reveals it's location, then locating and digging it up based on what the treasure map tells you, which only extends the grind. You'll more than likely end up boarding alot of enemy ships in order to gather the required resources, and the reales (money) equates to a hefty sum, which will also take time to accumulate.

The same also goes for the "FTFY" trophy, awarded for Fully upgrading your hideout, which becomes available towards the end of the game. Along with the reales required for fully upgrading the Jackdaw, as explained above, you'll need a further 90,000 reales in order to purchase every upgrade for the secret hideout, so the total number of reales required for these trophies quickly accumulates towards a very large sum.

The biggest issue with reales is the fact there doesn't seem to be a sure fire way of quickly accumulating them. The game gives you options, whether it be looting treasure chests within the various cities/islands/underwater caverns, gambling or completing fleet missions, but these can be slow burners and the pay-off never seems worth the time. You can earn big money from sinking the 4 legendary ships, which also awards a trophy, at 20,000 reales each, but these are limited to just the 4, and the random events where you can raid high value escorted ships at 10,000 reales a time just don't seem to occur often enough. This means you're stuck with your chosen method of grinding out the reales, and mine was scouring the entire map for buried treasure via treasure maps mostly (4,000 reales per map), and this makes the game go from a bit grindy to really grindy.

As far as the Single Player portion of this game goes, a steep grind for resources/reales is about challenging as it gets. The core gameplay mechanics have never changed, and the combat and parkour is so easy to understand, it never provides a genuine challenge. For as long as Assassin's Creed games are built this way, they'll usually have low scoring Platinum difficulty ratings for this very reason.

The list does also focus it's attention onto the online Multiplayer, with a small handful of trophies awarded through competing within the online portion of the game.

The "Committed To The Cause" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 55 in Multiplayer, is only the second time (since Brotherhood), an Assassin's Creed title has required a significant leveling venture to trigger the Platinum trophy (Revelations did also include a leveling trophy, but this was only up to level 20). This is a very standard progressive trophy, with 526,000 exp required to reach level 55, and experience points are earned through achieving kills and staying hidden, where applicable to victory. You can also earn good experience through completing a range of different in-game challenges which can be viewed within the online menus, so you can plan ahead of matches which challenges you want to strive towards. These are often tiered by bronze, silver and gold, with greater amounts of experience awarded for each tier, so it's sensible to target easier challenges and unlock each tier in order to maximise experience point gain effectively.

There are also some game modes that are way more lucrative for experience compared to others. These include Manhunt and Wanted as personal choices, but quicker leveling progression will still rely on an element of skill due to the fact "better" kills are rewarded with more experience than wreckless kills, in true Assassin's Creed fashion.

Reaching level 55 took me just over 22 hours, which is reasonable compared to most online leveling trophies I've achieved throughout the past, and if you get into a decent rhythm of tracking and completing challenges and performing high-scoring kills during matches, you can often walk away from a game with a good accumulation of experience, which will allow you to reach the end goal quicker. To suggest it's the hardest trophy in the list is somewhat overstating the meaning of the word  "hardest", but it is the most time consuming, and the online environment against other players will at least test your skills more than the turgid Single Player AI will.

The rest of the Multiplayer trophies, of which there are 4, are very easy, and can be earned as you progress through the leveling venture.

Assassin's Creed games don't generally tend to be very challenging, and Black Flag does not provide an exception to the rule. The re-introduction of a heavy-ish online leveling venture, along with some post-game grinding within the Single Player portion of the game, does just about enough to bring it below the mid-range of difficulty though, but this game is pretty much purely all about the time-commitment required. With everything taken into account, it'll take somewhere in the region of 40-50 hours to complete the list.

There are very few genuine challenges involved, and the gameplay is the same old Assassin's Creed formula of hand-holding and user-friendly controls, which makes it even easier. If you're willing to put the time in, this is an easy win.

Notable Trophies - 

Saw That One Coming... - Complete memory sequence 13
Destroyer - Fully upgrade the Jackdaw
FTFY - Fully upgrade your hideout
Committed To The Cause - Reach level 55 in Multiplayer

Hardest Trophy -

Committed To The Cause
Reach level 55 in Multiplayer

Platinum #86 - Crash Bandicoot - (Part of the Crash Bandicoot N'Sane Trilogy for the Playstation 4)

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Originally released on the Playstation 1 back in 1996, one of the original platformers of yesteryear, Crash Bandicoot, finally gets the modern day remix with the N-Sane Trilogy remaster for the Playstation 4.

This includes Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2 : Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot :Warped, the first 3 titles in the series, but this review focuses purely on the first of the three titles in the box.

The trophy list for Crash Bandicoot is just about moderate in size, and is littered with Gold trophies, which are pretty much the sole focus of the quest towards the Platinum trophy.

The game is very basic in it's design and concept, as you'd expect from a game originally released in the mid 90's. The game is very linear, as you move from level to level, unlocking the next for completing the prior, with a couple of different ways to beat each level along the way, which will be explained later.

The "Cortex N. Capacitated" trophy, awarded for Defeating N Cortex, concludes the initial aspect of the game by running though the 26 stages and 6 additional boss fights for the first time. Trophies are awarded progressively at each point you defeat a boss right up to the N Cortex fight, which signals the completion of the game, and to this point, the game is incredibly easy. This is down to the fact that, all you need to do to complete a level is just reach the end of the stage, regardless of how long this takes you or how many times you die before reaching the end.

However, the end-game takes the game into the moderate levels of Platinum difficulty ratings, down to a couple of key things, hinted above by how you can beat levels in different ways.

The "Ultimate Gem Path" trophy, awarded for Earning 26 Gems, is one of these ways and part of the greater challenge this game presents to the player. Each of the 26 stages in the game contains a gem, which is awarded when the player finds and smashes every box in a level, with the exception of 6 stages, which instead award a coloured gem. The key difference here is that coloured gems are awarded for smashing every box in a level without dying, which is a much trickier feat, and you'll need the coloured gems in order to unlock hidden areas of other levels which award normal colourless gems.

The 6 stages picked to award coloured gems can be tricky not to die on, but once you've managed to collect these, going back over the other 20, which award colourless gems, and subsequently don't require you to smash all the boxes without dying, are much easier to complete. There are a few levels that contain some very well hidden boxes, which you might need to consult a guide for, but the fact you can take a much more relaxed approach and not concern yourself with having to restart after death is a big benefit.

This is what I would refer to as the "lesser" part of the end-game, so much as in the fact that, even though the 6 stages with coloured gems offer a slight degree of challenge, simply for the fact you have to smash every box and not die whilst doing so, the other 20 stages which merely require you to smash every box and finish the level, regardless of how many times you might die, can be completed at a relatively leisurely pace.

A few of the levels contain some very well hidden secret areas, and it can be frustrating completing a level only to find out you were a single box short, to then go back through the level looking for the hidden off screen area, not be able to find it, to then realise the missing box was hidden on top of another box that was above you the whole time instead. It's a very small grievance, but this applies to a handful of the stages within the game, so certainly one at least worth mentioning.

The "Practice Makes Perfect!" trophy, awarded for Earning 26 Relics (gold or better), is what I would call the "greater" part of the end-game, and as a result, is the most challenging trophy in the list by far. In the exact same way each stage in the game rewards a Gem, each stage also contains a Relic, earned through good old-fashioned time trials.

Triggering the start of the time trial for each stage will require the player to beat the stage as quickly as possible, and upon completion, a Relic is awarded depending on how quickly the player reaches the end goal. It is important to note the part of the trophy description in brackets, and that the player only needs to achieve a Gold Relic on each stage in order to fulfill the requirements of this trophy. The Relics are graded from Sapphire, to Gold, to Platinum, so there isn't a need for the player to achieve the best possible time for each stage to unlock the trophy, which is just as well given how tough some of these stages would be if the Platinum Relic was the minimum requirement. This would take the game very close to the territory of 10/10 in difficulty rating.

As it is though, the Gold Relic will suffice, but this doesn't mean to say there isn't a steady challenge to be had here. Some of the stages will require a lot of trial and error, and the level of haste needed will lead to a risky approach and inevitably, a lot of death. The judgement of target times seems to be a little bit imbalanced too, with some stages being easy to finish comfortably under the Gold Relic target time, and some stages requiring a lot of fine tuning and mastery, heightening the level of challenge on offer.

It's also important to mention that, once you trigger a time trial run at the beginning of the level, death with result in an instant failure, and stop the clock, so each successfully posted time will require a deathless run, which increases the difficulty of each time trial. Half of the focus is attempting to finish the level as quickly as possible, whilst the other half is making sure you're frantically dodging death. It can be very hectic at times.

By the time I had finished the game, I had achieved a Platinum Relic on just 5 stages, with 21 Gold Relics elsewhere. I felt like I did well to get Gold Relics on most of the stages, and whilst it's true I only really aimed for the bare minimum in the name of achieving the trophy, it isn't an understatement to suggest that this game's difficulty would skyrocket if the Platinum Relics were mandatory. The Gold Relic times will still present a reasonable challenge, and this is where you'll spend most of your time on the road to the Platinum trophy, going back over stages attempting to shave seconds off previous times.

The remainder of the list can be achieved along the way, and you won't even need to look to earn most of them. There's alot of progression and menial tasks, including the other Gold trophies, which are complete throwaways. 

In terms of an estimated completion time, the game doesn't actually track this statistic, so it's difficult to say. It'll depend on to what extent you struggle with some of the most challenging time trials in the game, but even the most difficult ones can be mastered without having to spend too long on them,  and I reckon 15-20 hours for full completion is a reasonable enough timeframe for most players.

This isn't Super Meat Boy difficulty levels of platforming, and it can be hard to vouch for the difficulty of a game which can still be finished within 20 hours, regardless of the challenges that lie in wait along the way, which this game does have at times, mostly during the quest for obtaining time trial Relics. It also helps that the most challenging trophy in the game has been toned down to only require the player to fulfill Gold standard requirements, rather than Platinum. 

It's almost as if the game wants the player to succeed, rather than push the limits of their skill, which certainly takes the overall difficulty rating down a couple of notches.

Notable Trophies - 

Cortex N. Capacitated - Defeat N. Cortex.
The Ultimate Gem Path - Earn 26 Gems.
Practice Makes Perfect! - Earn 26 Relics (gold or better)

Hardest Trophy - 

Practice Makes Perfect
Earn 26 Relics (gold or better)

DLC #113 - Resident Evil 6 - Predator

The Predator pack adds another 5 trophies to the Resident Evil 6 list, for the new Predator game mode.

This mode, for up to 6 players, sees each player in the lobby take control of Ustanak, the B.O.W from Jake Muller's main story campaign, where there are 2 primary goals, depending on your role.

Whoever is controlling Ustanak, has the goal of killing all players on the map within a 2 minute time interval, whereas the other players goal is to either outlast the clock or kill Ustanak. The number of rounds will be determined by how many players are in the lobby, due to the fact each person will get an opportunity to control Ustanak on a rotational basis, and the winning player is whoever scores the most points at the end.

Points can be scored in every round, regardless of your role. As a player, you can earn points by avoiding capturing, rescuing captured/downed teammates and killing Ustanak, and as Ustanak, you can earn points by capturing and killing players. There are a few variables thrown in to make things more interesting, such as weapon pick-ups for both sides, but the winning player will be the one who scores the most cumulative points once every round has been completed.

The trophies are much easier than those within the Survivor pack, and even though bigger lobbies produce more fun matches, some of these trophies are much easier to earn with as little as 2 people in a game. For example, the "Easy Pickings" trophy, awarded for eliminating all players as Ustanak in less than a minute, would be difficult with a 6 player lobby, but in a 1 on 1 match, becomes incredibly easy.

There are also trophies awarded for other smaller tasks, such as defeating Ustanak without anyone on your team being captured and capturing a total of 50 humans as Ustanak, which, in larger lobbies, is a total you can accumulate very quickly. However, the Gold trophy is the only thing that stops this being a easy 5 out of 5;

Not without a Fight - Defeat Ustanak 20 times.

Where I mentioned above that some of these trophies can be easier to obtain depending on the size of the lobby, this is somewhat irrelevant for this trophy in particular, which is awarded for defeating Ustanak 20 times.

If you're playing in smaller lobbies, Ustanak will win every single time. This is, after all, a game mode designed to be 1 against the rest, and the imbalance in numbers is due to the overwhelming power that Ustanak possesses against human players, so to play in smaller lobbies is a thankless task when trying to accumulate kills against Ustanak. This means you'll have to play in bigger lobbies, in order to take advantage of the increased number of humans that will, not only give you a greater chance of survival, but also greater opportunities to inflict a killing blow. However, this also means that more people are helping you to kill Ustanak, so this creates problems when looking to earn kills for yourself because you're suddenly competing against others to do this.

The tally of 20 will only increase when you deal the killing blow, and you will need the help of your teammates to kill Ustanak, but there are a few tactics you can deploy which will help make sure you increase your chances of getting the decisive shot. Firstly, there are visual cues for the health of the player controlling Ustanak, which change from green, to yellow, to red in order to indicate the health level of the creature. You can therefore choose to conserve your ammunition and wait you see the name flashing red, then use your ammunition all at once to try and obtain the finishing hit.

Alternatively, there are weapon pick-ups which spawn at random across the map that deal big damage, which you can also take advantage of. You may be in competition from other players to get hold of these, but the map will indicate their whereabouts and you will have a significant advantage of taking Ustanak out if you're wielding one of these weapons, so this is a highly recommended approach.

There is an element of luck involved to all of this, and you will get captured/killed alot along the way, but you have a chance of accumulating kills at a decent rate if you're participating in full lobbies (If your lobby had 6 players, each game would give you 5 chances to kill Ustanak), so 20 isn't a daunting figure. At least not compared to killing 100 agents in Survivors mode was anyway.

I spent 7 hours on this package by the time I had finished it, and I focused on this trophy from the very start, naturally achieving every other trophy along the way. It can feel like a bit of a slower burner, but much more manageable compared to other DLC packs in this collection.

Platinum #85 - FIFA 17

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Truth be told, if you copy and pasted the FIFA 16 review into here, you wouldn't actually be that far off from being able to give an accurate assessment of the FIFA 17 trophy list too.

FIFA games have always been guilty of duplication of trophies, especially within more recent times, but the FIFA 17 list is mostly a direct lift from the FIFA 16 one. There is one key difference to mention, but not to the point where it matters to the difficulty rating being any different to the previous game.

Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs, Online Seasons, Womens football (which returns for the second straight year) are all accounted for again, as are the same straight-forward tasks and, quite honestly, dull trophies that have made up these lists for a number of years now.

The one big difference, is the latest addition to the series, which is the new Journey Mode, a story based narrative that sees you take control of Alex Hunter, who begins a quest to realise the dream of making it as a professional footballer. The game is played from the Be A Pro perspective and you start from the bottom, trying out at an open day, to being signed by a Premier League side and breaking into the first team, and the list is accommodating to this mode with a small handful of trophies.

The "The best is yet to come" trophy, awarded for finishing the journey, rewards you for reaching the end of the season. The game mode takes you through an entire league season, and it's difficult to say how many games this is, due to a few scripted events that occur throughout the story, which require you to play on loan in another league for a different club, along with appearances in the domestic cup competitions. It is a fairly lengthy mode as a consequence of this though, and it gets boring quickly, thus becoming grindy. Despite being given a facelift, through the fact it has a fully fledged story with cutscene animations, it is really just the old-fashioned Be A Pro mode at it's core, and you just end up doing the same thing over and over, which is just playing games from the Pro perspective, without any real incentive to become more immersed in the experience because the story itself is a bit uneventful and dry.

You can also have the season cut short impromptu, through a handful of quality measures, such as too many consistently poor performances, and a poor social media following/bad manager opinion as a direct consequence of aforementioned poor performances, so there is still an element of skill required to make sure the game doesn't end prematurely, otherwise you'll have to start over.

The "Hard to get" trophy, awarded for Achieving a transfer value of £8,000,000 in The Journey, is also tied into this game mode, and is technically a missable trophy.

Consistently good performances will cause Alex Hunter's transfer value to increase, as will good training reports, so you need to have hit this value at any point during the story. You don't have to end the Journey on this value, and the trophy will trigger as soon as you hit this total, which also means it doesn't matter if you fall below this transfer value thereafter, but you do have to put in alot of good performances to reach £8,000,000, and poor performances will also set you back, so you might have to accept you'll need to graft hard to make sure you're steadily accumulating this figure as the season goes on.

It actually ties into the "The best is yet to come" trophy anyway, because, even though you can't simulate through the Journey if you don't want to have to play through every single game to reach the end, games that end in poor performances won't increase your transfer value, so you'll need to make sure you're playing well regularly enough so you don't miss the "Hard to get" trophy, or hit a dreaded game over screen too soon.

I wouldn't exactly call The Journey difficult, especially so when you can play through the mode on any difficulty setting you like, which can make the game criminally easy if you so choose, it's just a bit laborious. Even though it is technically a new game mode, under the hood, this is just Be A Pro with a face-lift, and I've always believed FIFA shines in an Online environment, so my personal level of boredom hit it's peak across what is ultimately an unskippable 40+ game season.

However for the second year running, the FIFA Ultimate Team Online draft steals the show, and carries this game into the middle regions of the difficulty scale yet again.

The "Trial of Power" trophy, awarded for Winning all 4 matches in an Online FUT draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team, is back again, and the same rules apply as before. There is nothing about this trophy that hasn't already been said in terms of the challenges faced from FIFA 16. There is still an extortionate buy-in value to compete in the draft, it is still an extremely competitive game mode and it's also the most challenging trophy by some distance within this list.

I struggled this time round with the draft almost as much as I did with it in FIFA 16, completing it within 12 attempts, albeit a very slight improvement from the 14 attempts it took me in FIFA 16, but still difficult enough to the point I was plowing real money back into the game to be able to afford the buy-in without having to accumulate the 15,000 coins it takes to enter without having to resort to purchasing FIFA points with real currency.

The "Half a Century" trophy, awarded for having a player score their 50th goal at the club in FIFA Ultimate Team, also returns in the exact same capacity as "FUT 50" did in FIFA 16. I'll spare the detail, for the sake of not wanting to tread over too much old ground, but same rules apply as before here too. 

Thankfully, it's quite rare that games take a copy and paste approach to the trophy lists within their series, but even in the odd example where they do, you could potentially talk and compare other aspects of the challenge, such as length of the game, or difficulty of the gameplay, both of which aren't really relevant to mention more than once for a game like FIFA.

As for the overall justification of the difficulty rating, there isn't really much to suggest it should be any different for FIFA 17 than it was for FIFA 16. The return of the Online FIFA Ultimate Team draft session propels the difficulty from what would have probably been somewhere in the region of 3/10, though it is important to mention that the addition of a fairly grindy Journey mode does give a very slightly different complex to this list than FIFA 16, but nothing drastic to the point where it changes much in terms of an overall difficulty rating. 

I always try to make these reviews as detailed as possible, but when you're effectively reviewing the same trophy list back-to-back, there's only so much you can say the second time round until you get to the point when you just end up repeating yourself. At least I'm officially up-to-date with my FIFA titles now though, albeit until FIFA 19.

Notable Trophies - 

The best is yet to come - Finish The Journey
Hard to get - Achieve a transfer value of £8,000,000 in The Journey
Trial of Power - Win all 4 matches in an Online FUT Draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team
Half a Century - Have a player score their 50th goal at the club in FIFA Ultimate Team

Hardest Trophy -

Trial of Power
Win all 4 matches in an Online FUT Draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team

Platinum #84 - FIFA 16

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

Now that it's been made clear what the delay was for, FIFA 16 somewhat returns the series to normality of what you would consider for a FIFA trophy list these days.

The list encompasses involvement in most of the game modes present with FIFA with very straight-forward challenges. Ultimate team, Pro Clubs, Online seasons and Career mode are all accounted for again, with some direct duplication of trophies from previous FIFA games present too.

FIFA 16 also introduces Women's football for the first time ever, along with a fully fledged game mode revolving around the Women's International Cup. There is also a small portion of the list dedicated to this addition.

For the most part, this is an incredibly easy list, and most certainly continues the year on year trend of easy FIFA Platinum trophies that have occurred since around FIFA 13. There is rarely any necessity to extensively divulge into any of the game modes to achieve the trophies attached to them, and this allows you to complete them quickly and move onto the next seamlessly.

Where the exceptions lie, and where most of this game's difficulty rating comes from, are within the Ultimate Team game mode, and sit purely with just 2 trophies.

The "The Invincibles" trophy, awarded for winning all 4 matches in an Online FUT Draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team, focuses around the newly added Draft mode, and requires you to go all the way and win the highest prize in the Draft.

Along with Women's football, the FUT draft is the other big addition to FIFA 16. The concept behind this involves selecting a team based on a random assortment of players presented to the player, and then making these choices based on who would best fit into your squad. You get a "Captain" offered as your first choice, who is usually one of the best players in the game, and this acts as the foundation to picking the rest of the team. The overall idea revolves around being able to match up the best possible combination from the players offered to you, both in terms of quality rating and chemistry. This would then be the final team you take into a knock-out tournament format, and attempt to win 4 matches in a row against other users who have also drafted squads.

The first barrier to participation is the fact the FUT draft has a buy-in. This can be through 15,000 in-game coins, or 300 FIFA points, which are purchased and topped up with real money. 300 FIFA points will see you part company with the monetary equivalent of £2.50, but in EA's ever infinite clever wisdom, you can't buy in a single increment of 300, and instead you'll have to either purchase 200 points for £1.99 twice, or purchase 500 points for £3.99 in order to cover the buy-in fee.

On the flipside, you can build up 15,000 coins through competing within the main Ultimate Team game mode through winning matches, cups and leagues. Earning promotion and winning titles within the Online season does grant some generous coin bonuses, which will contribute nicely towards accumulating the entry fee, but if you can bring yourself to spend real money and take the short-cut of buying in, that may be a more feasible, and certainly quicker option, for most people.

Once you've managed to fund your entry into the draft, and chosen your team, you then have to win 4 matches in a row, which is where the real challenge comes in. The FUT draft is a seriously competitive game mode, and you'll play some very good players who have the luxury of drafting some very good teams. The moment you lose a game, you'll be knocked out of the tournament and you'll have to buy your way in for any subsequent drafts your enter moving forward.

Just to add some perspective to this, I entered the draft 14 times before I managed to win it, and after getting bored of the endless cycle of accumulating 15,000 coins per time, I ended up taking the short-cut and buying my way in via FIFA points. The good news is, after every win along the way, you're rewarded with prizes, which is greater the further you manage to progress, redeemable in the form of packs and prizes. If you can manage to get to the Semi-Final stage, the prizes you get back in return will go a decent way towards covering your entry fee, so this is a nice consolation to have behind you, albeit dependent on solid progression. If you lose early though, this is a costly set-back.

This is also a genuine challenge. It is a top skill to be able to win 4 games in a row in online FIFA. Some very good players almost monopolise game modes like Ultimate Team Draft, because the riches on offer can help them fund their clubs towards the most valuable players in the game, and having access to an exceptionally good draft makes these players difficult to beat. Anybody who manages to overcome this challenge legitimately will have most certainly earned it. I consider myself to be good at FIFA, and it took me 14 attempts, which is evidence to this testimony.

The "FUT 50" trophy, awarded for having a player score their 50th goal for the club in FIFA Ultimate Team, is self-explanatory, though could take a while. The best method is to build a squad around a striker you obtain within your starter packs from the very beginning, and make sure you're playing him in every game possible. This will be quicker in offline cups, because some of the lower standard tournaments, where the difficulty setting is capped at a lower standard, are very easy to not only win games in, but also score lots of goals, giving you ample opportunities to tally them up. If you want the more challenging route, which is what I opted for, you can play online cups or seasons, which is harder as you scale up to into better leagues and tournaments, but ultimately just takes a bit of time.

Winning the online draft is certainly one of the toughest individual challenges in any FIFA game to date. Despite some of the earlier FIFA games yielding very high scores, due to containing some incredibly time-consuming trophies, they seldom involved anything that constituted as a genuine test of skill, bar the odd trophy ("Ton Up" from FIFA 10, for example). They were just incredibly time consuming bordering on the realms of insanity, so this rating is based mostly on challenge alone.

Without the "The Invincibles" trophy, this list is a 3/10 in difficulty at the very most. Whilst the online draft was still a challenge worthy of cranking up the difficulty rating a few notches, it was a much more welcome challenge than sitting there for hours trying to trigger the "Extra Effort" trophy from FIFA 15, and considering the habit EA have of mirroring trophies year on year, and the outside possibility this could have re-appear at any point, I would consider this a good thing all in all.

FIFA 17 to follow.

Notable Trophies -

The Invincibles - Win all 4 matches in an Online FUT Draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team
FUT 50 - Have a player score their 50th goal at the club in FIFA Ultimate Team

Hardest Trophy -

The Invincibles
Win all 4 matches in an Online FUT Draft session in FIFA Ultimate Team

Platinum #83 - FIFA 15

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

Although it's not unusual for me to be years behind in most cases when it comes to finally finishing off games, this hasn't normally applied to the annual installment of FIFA, with which I have been very punctual with, but there are valid reasons for why this has taken so long, and subsequently caused a backlog of FIFA installments, which are to be shortly discussed further.

Minus the exception, this list fits in line with the direction of difficulty which most FIFA games have moved towards within recent history, with a large number of very menial tasks awarding trophies, covering a healthy range of different game modes.

FIFA Ultimate team, Pro Clubs, Online Seasons and Career mode are all covered to varying degrees, as well as EA Sports Football Club Activities, which is a newly introduced central hub to interact with people on your friends list, by rating, commenting and sharing articles on a news feed about what they're all doing in the game. Barring what we're about to discuss, it is a very easy trophy list.

So, what took so long? There's nothing naturally grindy in this game, first and foremost, which some of the earlier FIFA titles were culpable of, so it isn't a question of having a sink a minimum amount of time into the game in order to achieve the Platinum trophy. When I use the term "naturally grindy", I mean something of a similar nature to a levelling venture or playing/winning a certain amount of games.

The "Extra Effort" trophy, awarded for scoring from the ground, requires you to score a goal whilst your player is lying on the floor, which sounds very inconspicuous, but is absolutely far from it.

There isn't a mapped controller output to make your player take a shot whilst they're on the floor. It just seems to be a case of hammering the "shoot" command button and hoping for the best, but observing the very normal outcome of absolutely no reaction to the ball whatsoever 99% of the time. It seems to be a random animation triggered by unknown variables, other than the fact you have to be lying on the floor somehow, whether that be through a slide tackle, or being felled by an opposing player.

The best tactic to approach this with is to have a second controller, which you will require for this Platinum anyway, and set up an exhibition match, with both teams controlled by the user. It is advisable to tweak certain pre-game variables, such as shot power and shot accuracy sliders, to make sure your shots have a greater chance of resulting in a goal, and also to ensure games are set to the maximum half limits of 20 minutes. If that final detail doesn't emphasise the point that you could be spending a while on this trophy, nothing else will.

From that point onwards, the fun commences. The idea of controlling both teams is that you can drop the ball as 1 of the goalkeepers, and use a player from the opposing team to tackle him from specific angles, win the ball, and hope that, during the motion of the slide tackle, you can trigger an animation that extends this motion into a goal-bound shot, and it's all pre-determined by luck.

You'll most likely experience situations whereby there is no output whatsoever, which is the most common occurrence, but also other scenarios such as committing a foul on the goalkeeper, or watching the goalkeeper automatically jump straight onto the ball in order to regain possession once you've attempted to dispossess him. The combination of the above makes for a very frustrating experience, and one that explains the drought of FIFA Platinum trophies within the last few years, though this is purely because I wanted to unlock them in sequential order, and not because I got lazy with the other FIFA titles in between.

I would often come back to the game, spend a good few hours attempting to achieve this trophy, only to be an afternoon lighter at the end with nothing extra to show for it. When I mentioned above about how this trophy isn't "naturally grindy", I meant that, because there isn't a specified end goal, you can't put a time-frame upon completion, so you never feel like you're making progress until you actually achieve it, and also have to accept that the amount of time this may take to achieve is open-ended.

As is always the case with trophies based on trial and error, this will be quicker to achieve for  some people than others, but for me, there were many wasted sessions trying to achieve this trophy, which certainly have to be accounted for when assessing this entire list. There were long spells this game went untouched for months, where I just couldn't bring myself to revisit it, but I still came back to it least a dozen times before I finally managed to complete this game, so it was extremely rewarding to finally fulfil the requirements of the trophy.

It seems somewhat irrelevant to discuss anything else in truth, but for the purpose of a balanced review, there are a few more trophies we can talk about;

The "Stylin" trophy, awarded for enabling a custom Free Kick or Penalty Style for your Virtual Pro, requires you to unlock a specific play-style by completing certain in-game accomplishments within Pro Clubs mode.

In order to enable a custom Free Kick style, you have to score 2 free kicks with your pro player in Pro Clubs matches, and in order to enable a custom Penalty style, you have to score 10 penalties with your pro player in Pro Clubs matches, both of which are conditional to a number of factors, such as being awarded a penalty/free kick to begin with, but then also having to score it. There's also the small matter of being elected to take the free kick/penalty by the game, which is usually delegated to the person with the best stats for the related skill.

Naturally, the more people in the game, the less likely you are to be nominated for free kick/penalty duties, so it makes more sense to play in smaller lobbies. It's better to set up a Pro Club with a friend and play together, which will significantly increase the amount of free kicks/penalties you take, simply because there are only 2 of you present, which is the minimum number required for a game of Pro Clubs.

Initially, I angled for the approach of playing cup matches, because they can sometimes go as far as being decided on a penalty shoot-out, which is probably the easiest way to accumulate 10 penalties, along with anything extra you might get in-between, but I actually managed to score 2 free kicks before I scored 10 penalties anyway, but it still took me 42 matches, so there's a decent amount of effort required to obtain this trophy.

The "Tag Team Back Again" trophy, awarded for playing seasons with a guest, requires the aforementioned secondary controller, so if you haven't purchased an extra one, you'll need to do so, or perhaps borrow one if you can, but this is more of a heads up for the purpose of addressing the need for additional peripherals more than anything else.

If you detract the "Extra Effort" trophy, you can lobby a case for this being one of the easiest FIFA titles to date, coming in at around 3/10 in difficulty. If you're luckier with this trophy, it won't be much higher than that, but the degree of difficulty rating will very much depend on your experience with this solitary trophy. I have seen people put in writing that this is a 10/10 for them because they simply gave up on it, which is tough to see happen.

After over a dozen separate sessions solely focused on this trophy way after I had completed the rest of the list, and a handful of occasions that saw me put this game on the backburner time and time again, to the point where I still haven't completed FIFA 16 or FIFA 17, purely because I wanted to be able to review these trophy lists in chronological order, the difficulty absolutely did increase as a consequence of this.

It was an extremely satisfying Platinum trophy to unlock though, and the perseverance thankfully paid off. I would estimate I spent around 20-25 hours on this trophy alone, aiming to spend no longer than 2-3 hours per session on this trophy, purely to make sure it didn't drive me insane. The difficulty rating has scaled upwards from 3/10, finishing at the point where I managed to unlock the "Extra Effort" trophy.

A hard fought Platinum, if not the most difficult on an overall basis. FIFA 16 and 17 to follow shortly.

Notable Trophies -

Extra Effort - Score from the ground
Stylin' - Enable a custom Free Kick or Penalty Style for your Virtual Pro
Tag Team Back Again - Play Seasons with a Guest

Hardest Trophy -

Extra Effort
Score from the ground

DLC #112 - Resident Evil 6 - Survivors

The Survivors pack, the second within Resident Evil 6 DLC offering, adds a further 5 trophies to the game, all focused around the new Survivors game mode.

As with the first DLC pack, Onslaught, this is purely a game-mode add-on pack, and the Survivors mode is a traditional elimination match where the sole objective is to be the last individual or team member standing in order to win the game.

This involves executing other players, and the game finishes when either the 5 minute time limit runs out, or when there is only one person left standing. The game can be played as a "Death match", which is every player for themselves, or a "Team match", which is where you're split into teams of 2, and both variations allow for a maximum of 6 players per game, so things can get very fast paced and hectic.

It seems very run of the mill, and the truth is, it is, but there is a twist. Zombies patrol the map and will attempt to distract you whilst you're trying to kill other players, and when somebody is killed, they're not permanently out of the game. Instead, they respawn as a zombie, and if they can kill a human controlled player, they will re-join the fight in their human form and get a second chance. Out of the 5 trophies within this set, 1 of these is awarded for doing just that and returning to the game as a human character, and most of this list isn't terribly challenging. 

The Gold trophy requires you to win 5 games in a row, which you should achieve naturally in tandem with going for what is the most challenging trophy in this list by some distance;

Take 'Em All Down - Defeat 100 agents.

The "Take 'Em All Down" trophy, awarded for defeating 100 agents, is very self explanatory, and also a large number for the limited amount of opportunities presented to the player within each game. This is an elimination style game mode after all, you don't exactly respawn and chain together killstreaks within 10 seconds as if you're playing Call of Duty, so 100 kills in these circumstances is a tall order.

With that being said, I have to confess, I never really managed to reach a good standard of skill level with this game, and where the Onslaught DLC pit you against zombies, rather than directly against another human character, Survivors is purely a versus game mode, and this is where I started to struggle. 

This was due to a few reasons. Firstly, the controls are somewhat unconventional in some instances (Hold X to run, Hold L2 to display an arch for throwing a grenade, and the R2 button to throw the grenade, for example), which I found difficult to adjust to and made controlling my character a challenging experience with a learning curve attached to it, which I gradually overcame, but spent a while doing so. Secondly, there were much better players than me who had unlocked better characters with better weapon load-outs, so I found myself on the back foot a lot and playing to a disadvantage. This led to dying a lot, and also frequently ending games with either zero kills, or maybe the odd single kill. 

During my just over 16 hour quest for these trophies, which spanned 287 games, compared to the 3 hour journey of the Onslaught pack, the best I managed to do in a game was 3 eliminations, and I only managed to achieve this twice. I did eventually get the hang of the horrible controls, and started to gain experience which unlocked better versions of the basic characters, with better weapon loadouts, and in turn, my performance did improve. I started to finish games with 2 kills quite frequently, but still also went through spells of drought where I just couldn't get anything, which was incredibly frustrating.

Persistence was the main necessity here, and whilst I appreciate it may not take alot of the better players very long to reach 100 kills, I accept I somewhat struggled through this, and stumbled towards the end goal, taking much longer than I should have done due to just not being very good. For as long as you're making progress towards an end goal, I don't mind grindy ventures. When you're levelling up, even when you perform badly, you still earn experience points, so you never quite feel like you're wasting your time and effort, and you also understand you will improve and eventually earn more experience through being a better player. Here, I was jumping from game to game earning zero kills frequently, and also being killed a lot in the process, so there was often no progression towards my end goal, which is one of the most frustrating things, and also the most difficult thing about this trophy.

The only consolation was that I unlocked most of the other trophies along the way, so I didn't really have to give any of them much thought. I notched up 5 wins in a row for the only Gold trophy, won without anybody on my team being killed and returned to the game as a zombie, all of which are feats yielding trophies, but this could have been much shorter than 16 hours, and for some people it will be, just not me.

All the more rewarding to finally see this trophy pop nonetheless, and this makes the Onslaught pack feel like a warm up exercise in comparison. As previously mentioned, I spent just over 16 hours on this DLC according to the in-game statistics screen, and struggled through most of it in my quest for 100 kills. At least I now have a stronger selection of characters at my disposal in preparation for the remaining 2 DLC packs that await, but whether it makes a difference is another story.

DLC #111 - Battlefield 4 - Final Stand

This final expansion for Battlefield 4 adds yet another 4 new maps (which have a consistent winter theme), along with a host of new weapons, gadgets and vehicles.

There isn't a new game mode added this time round, but there are 5 new trophies to go after, which will prove for a challenging venture.

Killing an enemy in specified ways are the order of the day, and 2 of the 5 trophies in this package are awarded for obtaining environmental kills, using the icicle and titan engines on the Hangar 21 map to obtain a solitary kill.

There's also another 2 trophies awarded for obtaining a kill with an assortment of new offensive units, including the HT-95 Levkov, XD-1 Accipiter, Rorsch Mk-1 and the Schipunov 42 and playing on each of the 4 new maps at least once, but these are all worked into the new batch of assignments you'll need to complete in order to unlock the remaining trophy within this DLC;

King in the North - Complete all Final Stand Assignments

This is the third out of three packs which contains a trophy regarding completion of the newly added assignments within the package. Where China Rising and Dragon's Teeth had 10 assignments to complete for the respective trophies, Final Stand is 2 short of this with 8 to complete, but despite this, still contains a very challenging set of objectives, which are broken down below as was the same with the previous DLC packages.

Assignment 5 - Destroy 15 vehicles with the HT-95 Levkov

This objective within assignment 5 requires you to destroy 15 vehicles with the HT-95 Levkov, which is the newly added Hover Tank. Despite possessing a powerful single shot, it's slow to reload, and because of the fact it hovers, it moves quicker across the ground than most other types of tank, but can be also harder to control as a result. The slow rate of fire is the tricky part though, and most enemies will either evacuate the vehicle when it's close to being destroyed, or will end up beating you first with a vehicle or explosive device which can be used much quicker, both of which will deny you when it comes to accumulating kills. The good thing is, there seems to be a small grace period post-evacuation where you can destroy a vehicle and it will still count towards this trophy, so it's important to make sure you destroy a vehicle, even when it's been abandoned, just in case. This one is a slow burner either way though.

Assignment 6 - Destroy 10 vehicles with the Rorsch Mk-1

This objective within assignment 6 requires you to destroy 10 vehicles with the Rorsch Mk-1, which is the newly added Railgun, a long-range scoped weapon, which fires an electro-magnetic pulse of energy, always providing an insta-kill on impact of an enemy soldier. However, vehicles are a different story, but firstly, it's important to note that the Rorsch Mk-1 is not a traditional weapon equipped as part of a loadout. It's a battlefield pick-up, meaning it spawns at certain locations, only on the 4 maps contained within this DLC package, and if somebody else has picked it up before you, you'll have to wait for it to respawn, which can be frustrating if you're purely trying to complete this assignment. Secondly, despite being extremely powerful versus soldiers, it's considerably weaker against most vehicles. 

Against tanks, choppers or any other heavily armored vehicle, it deals anywhere between 10-20 damage per shot, and it also requires a manual reload after every single shot, so the fire rate of the weapon is extremely slow. It's common for the vehicle to either be evacuated or destroyed before you get any sort of killing blow yourself, so your best bet is to interrupt an assault on a vehicle and hope you're dealing a killing blow to it, which will take luck and subsequently alot of time to chip away towards the total of 10. It is effective against smaller, weaker vehicles such as the snowmobile and the XD-1 Accipiter, but the weapon also has roughly a 2-3 second wait from pressing the trigger, to releasing a shot, so you need to gauge the firing distance to meet your target, which is harder to do for the fast-moving vehicles such as these, so there really isn't a sure fire method to obtaining this assignment objective effectively. It's a sound enough tactic to observe firefights and jump in to steal a killing blow, but it will require some trial and error to accumulate 10 kills.

Assignment 8 - Win 10 rounds on Operation Whiteout
- Win 10 Rounds on Hammerhead
- Win 10 Rounds on Hangar 21
- Win 10 Rounds on Giants of Karelia

This assortment of objectives within assignment 8 requires you to win 10 rounds on each of the 4 new maps. At this point, it would normally be relevant to mention the other objective within the final assignment from previous DLC packs, which is to clock 10 hours playing on the new maps, but these objectives will see you eclipse way beyond 10 hours, making that objective irrelevant in this instance. There isn't really much to explain here, but simple maths allows us to come to the conclusion that you'll need to win a total of 40 matches. You can opt to play shorter game modes, such as deathmatches or small conquest, but it makes more sense to play longer game modes because you'll need the extra time to unlock other prior objectives and assignments, and because there are alot of vehicular-based objectives, you have to play certain games like conquest and rush to be able to use the full map and the wider range of different vehicles and weapon pick-ups which become unavailable in certain, smaller modes. This is certainly the most time consuming assignment within the DLC, and you'll also have to make additional time provisions for the inevitable defeats along the way.

This is just a shade less challenging than China Rising, which takes the crown for most difficult piece of Battlefield 4 DLC, but this isn't terribly far behind, and runs in at a very close second. It isn't exactly a photo finish, and China Rising is certainly tougher purely for the focus around the most difficult aspect of Battlefield, which is the air combat. However, there are some challenging assignments here, and and it's definitely the most time consuming expansion out of the five for this game, simply due to the fact you'll have to win 40 matches and master the majority of the new vehicles and battlefield pick-ups added to the game as part of this expansion. I would estimate the completion time for this DLC to be anywhere around the 25-30 hour mark.

The Battlefield 4 DLC was a step up from Battlefield 3, which also came up with it's own challenges along the way, but these assignments would test even the best Battlefield player, despite the fact that though 2 of the DLC packs don't even contain a trophy for completing all of the assignments. A proud 100% for anybody to have in their collection nonetheless.

DLC #110 - Worms Battlegrounds - Alien Invasion

The Alien Invasion expansion adds 5 trophies to Worms Battlegrounds, along with a few new weapons to experiment with, a small collection of new missions and the addition of a new game mode called Bodycount. All of the newly added trophies are linked to the new additions which this DLC brings with it.

Out of the 5 new trophies added as part of this package, 3 of them are obtained through the new mini-campaign, where the narrative is based around an alien clan crash landing a UFO onto planet earth, and facing an immediate threat from earth locals, with the ultimate goal of completing all of these missions and escaping back into outer space with the UFO fully intact.

This follows the same structure as the main game's story missions, a series of simple and linear levels, but every mission within the Alien Invasion campaign has 2 primary objectives. One of these objectives is to eliminate every enemy worm on the map, and the other objective is to make sure the UFO is not destroyed by the enemy team, so you'll have to focus on protecting this too.

The "Houston We Have a Problem" trophy, awarded for completing all Alien Invasion missions, is the reward  for beating all 10 of the new levels, and earns you the solitary gold trophy in the package. You can also earn a further 2 trophies from this part of the package through completing a specific level in a specific way, and also using each of the new weapons once, of which there are 6.

As was the same with the levels from the main game's campaign, none of these missions are particularly difficult, and should only take around 2-3 hours to beat all 10, and also pick up the other couple of trophies within the main campaign.

The remaining trophies are achieved through the newly added game mode Bodycount. The concept of the mode is to accumulate points via killing enemy worms placed all over the map, and using certain methods of killing worms, or achieving multi-kills, in order to score more points. The more enemy worms you can kill per turn, or the more worms you can kill in more creative methods, the more points you'll score, and the mode is simply all about how many points you can score before your team of 2 worms is killed, or by the time the clock runs out.

It's very similar to most games that include a variation of a horde type mode, but this is much slower paced due to the turn based nature of Worms games, and enemies are spawned with very low health to help you along a little bit and make them easier to kill.

Neither of the 2 remaining trophies for this mode are difficult at all, both requiring you achieve 50,000 points in 1 game of Bodycount, which is really easy, and also to rack up a cumulative total of 250 kills in Bodycount, which can also be done across all of the 4 maps exclusive to the mode. This will stretch the package by a couple of extra hours, but is simply a matter of replaying the game and getting the kills in.

An easy piece of DLC to finish Worms Battlegrounds, and should take no longer than 4-5 hours.

DLC #109 - Battlefield 4 - Dragon's Teeth

The Dragon's Teeth expansion adds more of the same to Battlefield 4, with new maps, gadgets and weapons all making an appearance to the core game. (There are no new vehicles in this pack).

The pack also adds the Chainlink game mode, where the primary objective is to capture a series of flags, and by doing so, creating links between capture points in order to reduce the enemies ticks and win the game. The more links between adjacent objective points you hold, the quicker the enemies ticks reduce.

There are also 5 new trophies added to the mix, and for the most part, these are straight forward. Winning 2 rounds of Chainlink will give you a trophy, as will spending 5 minutes using the new Ballistic Shield (which you have to unlock via completing one of the assignments tied to this expansion).

You also get trophies for completing a round on each of the 4 new maps, and earning 5 kills in a round using the RAWR gadget, which is a robotic, remote-controlled gun on tracks. This is also the second of the 3 packs which offers a trophy for completing all assignments, which is the final trophy;

Street Fighter - Complete all Dragon's Teeth Assignments

As before with the China Rising expansion, there are 10 further assignments within this pack, each with a varying number of objectives within them required to complete the assignment. There are 10 in total, the same number as was in China Rising, with a couple of objectives within these assignments that stand out, and are slightly trickier to earn;

Assignment 7 - Destroy a vehicle with the EOD bot

This objective requires you to earn the killing blow on any vehicle using the new Explosive Ordnance Device. This is a remote-controlled robot, which functions in the same way as the repair tool, meaning, if used on an allied vehicle, it will repair it, and if used on an enemy vehicle, it will cause damage. Unlike most weapons effective against vehicles, which is sudden, the damage caused by the EOD bot is slowly progressive, which means the enemy will notice the health counter of their vehicle decreasing over a short period of time, and can react within a plentiful time frame before any killing blow is dealt. This will usually cause an enemy to either vacate the vehicle, and the EOD bot is very weak, so it can be destroyed very quickly, or the enemy vehicle will panic and drive away, and the EOD bot isn't as quick as most regular battle vehicles to be able to keep up with them, which makes for 2 unfavorable situations. It's also difficult to deal the killing blow because you'll usually be competing with other vehicles and soldiers with explosive weapons that deal explosive damage, and will often beat you to the punch as a consequence. You'll have to mostly rely on your allies dealing enough damage to enemy vehicles to the point where their health is below 5, in order for you to be able to deal the final blow. On top of all this, you may also have to deal with enemy engineers repairing vehicles in between high levels of damage at the same time. This is the toughest objective in the package, and requires a high element of luck due to the wide range of variables outlined above.

Assignment 10 - Play 10 hours of Dragon's Teeth maps

This objective is replicated from the China Rising expansion, and is part of the only Gold assignment in this package. You'll more than likely finish every other assignment before you clock up 10 hours anyway, and this was the final assignment I unlocked in this expansion. By completion of every other assignment prior to this one, I had only played 8 hours on Dragon's Teeth maps, so I was purely playing to accumulate game time come the end of this expansion, but it still puts a minimum completion time of 10 hours onto the DLC. It's still a stark contrast to the China Rising DLC, which saw me put way more than 10 hours into finishing it, whereas this one actually left me with time to spare.

Despite being an expansion pack that contains an assignment related trophy, this isn't one of the most challenging expansion packs within Battlefield 4. It's certainly the easiest of the 3 packs which contain a requirement to beat all of the assignments, despite having a couple of challenging objectives along the way. It's somewhere in between being slightly more challenging than the Second Assault expansion, but not quite as difficult as Naval Strike, so it's not quite the easiest out of the DLC packs, but it isn't too far off.

I fulfilled every objective and unlocked all other trophies, within 8 hours, prior to clocking the minimum requirement of 10 hours to complete the gold assignment, so to have time to spare is a good indication of challenge from this DLC.