Platinum #98 - Ratchet and Clank

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Whilst researching the archives, I found it hard to believe that I only had one other Ratchet and Clank Platinum in my entire collection prior to this. 

That was Ratchet and Clank : A Crack in Time, achieved back in 2012 as my 25th Platinum Trophy, and this lack of subtitled installment (apparently down to the fact that this is the first, and as of this write up, only release on a new generation of console), is therefore considered a reboot of the series that has seen multiple installments through it's PS3 era. This has included both brand new titles and remasters of the original first 3 games in the entire series.

Ratchet and Clank includes a large trophy list, consisting of 47 trophies in total, and is purely a story-driven, Single Player experience.

Taking control of Ratchet and Clank, the plot revolves around stopping Chairman Alonzo Drek from destroying a series of planets in order to harvest their remains to build his own network and develop a super-army in order to take over the rest of the Universe, so this is pretty run of the mill stuff for a Ratchet and Clank title. This plan turns out to be secretly driven behind the scenes by Dr. Nefarious, an old foe to the Ratchet and Clank series, and the game will take you from planet to planet completing a series of objectives specific to each area, and the varied, vibrant environments and characters within that accompany each of them along the way.

It's tough to draw on comparisons to previous lists in the series, and how they all line up against one another, purely down to the fact I've only ever had first hand experience of one other Ratchet and Clank title. However, there are a lot of obvious similarities here that seem to have been carried through, including a large focus on story-related progression-based trophies, rewards for miscellaneous activities and a return for Challenge Mode.

"The End Of The Beginning" trophy, awarded for Defeating Dr. Nefarious on the Deplanetiser, caps off the story as the final boss fight, and the list will throw a sizable amount of progression-based trophies at you as you go through the relatively short campaign, which clocks in at around 8-10 hours in length.

Along the way, you'll unlock an additional 14 unmissable trophies relating to hitting various points within the story, and given the short length, these pop at pretty regular intervals. On top of this, there are a host of other trophies you'll no doubt unlock subconsciously along the way, including trophies awarded for completing Planet-specific tasks and performing certain actions with some of the games host of weapons.

Speaking of which, the weapons are given a big focus within this trophy list, and the game does put alot of care and attention into the weapons system, and the trophies reflect and ensure that the player gets the fullest usage out of them all in the quest for the Platinum trophy. Ratchet and Clank games have historically always placed a large emphasis on their weapons system, and the trophy list is certainly used to provide exposure to this with maximum effect.

The "Master of War" trophy, awarded for Upgrading every weapon to maximum level, is one of the last trophies you'll unlock, and this is down to the amount of work required in order to max out every weapon in your arsenal. The list dedicates a large portion of itself towards the games vast array of weaponry, so be prepared to become very comfortable with every single weapon you'll handle, even if you don't like them.

There are 15 weapons that apply to this trophy (we shall exclude the wrench in this instance), and each one needs to be purchased, which is step one. The first important thing to note about this trophy is that you'll need around 3.5 Million bolts in order to purchase every single weapon in the game, so this contains an element of grinding to be expected. You will need to beat the game twice as a minimum though, reasons for which will be detailed later, so it's not just mindless end-game grinding, though that has the potential to massively become a factor into things if you're not conscious to switching up and using different weapons regularly enough. This point is fundamental, and the games willingness for the player to experiment with every weapon will work in your favour here, so don't be stubborn about it, or it will work against you.

When you initially purchase a weapon, you'll only be able to level it up to level 5, then you'll need to purchase the advanced version of the weapon, which will allow you to reach level 10, so this is effectively a two step process, and hence why you'll need so many bolts. It also effectively means the game actually has 30 weapons, rather than 15, since you're purchasing 2 different versions of each weapon. The advanced version of the RYNO alone will cost 1 Million bolts, and the multiplier within Challenge mode is THE key factor to accumulation of bolts which will minimise the amount of grinding you'll have to do when it comes down to progressing with this trophy. 

The very short length of the story, and the vast amount of bolts you'll need to accumulate in comparison, is why it's important to maximise the bolt multiplier within Challenge mode, as this will allow you to earn greater volumes of bolts at a much quicker rate, meaning you can effectively chase this trophy, and ensure you're not leaving yourself too much to do once you've wrapped up 2 full play-throughs.

It's also relevant to point out that, on top of all this, you will also need to fully upgrade each weapon via Raritanium, a mineral found scattered around the various planets you'll visit on your journey. Each weapon has a corresponding skill tree where you can use Raritanium to unlock more and more perks until full completion. I'm not sure of how much you'll need in total, but some Raritanium is very well hidden and you'll need to go out of way within levels to find it, so I would personally encourage this to make sure you adequately keep up with this aspect of the task. Raritanium, no matter how well hidden, always shows up on the menu map, so there's no excuse not to explore in most instances.

Speaking of the aforementioned, the "Challenging" trophy, awarded for Completing the game in Challenge Mode, requires you to beat the game a second time, within a mode that is only unlocked after completing the game once on any difficulty, so the relevant point here is, of course, the fact that this game is a minimum 2 play-through adventure, regardless of anything else.

Challenge mode provides the previously mentioned bolt multiplier modifier, which can reach up to x20, and can be used to accumulate alot of bolts very quickly. This will increase the longer you kill enemies without getting hit, and once you move towards the x20 multiplier, you'll be earning generous volumes of bolts, which will allow you purchase weapons quicker, and therefore, minimise the amount of grinding you'll have to do beyond the minimum required 2 play-throughs of the game. Simple stuff really, though you do lose your multiplier whenever you get hit, and the hectic nature of battles within this game at times makes that a very real thing.

Challenge mode also allows you to carry over weapons and bolts to the next Playthrough, so this allows you to take advantage of the accelerated bolt accumulation to use towards purchasing and upgrading weapons, so it compliments the above well too.

This list also has a small handful of trophies which are technically deemed missable for varying reasons, and whilst none of the requirements for these are overly difficult, they will require a certain degree of diligence when playing through the game, mainly down to the fact these trophies will require you to perform certain actions on enemies that are either limited in their appearances throughout the game, or only appear once, which is mostly applicable to the handful of boss fights during the story. You'll get 2 chances to ensure you grab what you may have missed first time round when you tackle Challenge mode, but if you're still missing any of these (I count 5 trophies that could be deemed missable), then you'll need to play-through on a fresh run, which will add extra completion time on, so it's sound advice to be aware, especially given the fact they're mostly small tasks.

The "Death By Disco" trophy, awarded for Using the Groovitron on every enemy type, is a standout trophy though, requiring you to use the Groovitron weapon, which is a disco ball that forces the enemy into a dance-trance, on every available enemy at least once, of which there are 48 in total. These do accumulate between play-throughs, so again, it's no bother if you've missed anything on the first run, but there is alot to keep track of, and it's easier just to go through the game in Challenge mode and make sure you tick them all off in one fell swoop. It's also a great way to level up the Groovitron weapon at the same time. 

Included within these 48 enemies will be bosses and "passive" characters that don't technically count as enemies, such as the Glowing Slug and the Non-swimming Pool Shark, and therefore could be easily missed, so just make sure you have a checklist available to mark your progress, and so you can understand which enemies count towards this trophy. Ultimately, you don't want to be adding on any extra play-throughs unnecessarily because you missed a few on your mandatory play-throughs.

Via the application of my own logic of using 4/10 as the starting benchmark for every game, and only considering anything lower in exceptional circumstances, Ratchet and Clank is about as 4/10 as any game can be. The game does have 3 difficulty levels, but the trophy list does not require you to play on anything higher then easy difficulty, should you chose to do so, and even the most challenging difficulty level (hard), really isn't anything to write home about. The gameplay is very casual, pick up and play, like every Ratchet and Clank game that has ever existed, which is a consistent parallel to the general low difficulty.

However, you will need to beat the game twice at the very least, and there is a moderate grind element present in order to max out all weapons, which saw me farm the end-game of my Challenge mode play-through, and also begin a third play-through of the story to be able to level up the remaining weapons I had with refreshed enemies available to kill. The missable trophies also have the potential to present further challenges if you're not paying adequate levels of attention too.

These are the key factors which stop the game dropping below 4/10, and time-wise, this is still around a 30-40 hour experience, but there isn't enough on the whole to increase this rating much higher, and you can bag yourself a nice easy Platinum, providing you haven't already seen enough of Ratchet and Clank trophy lists up to this point.

Notable Trophies -

The End Of The Beginning - Defeat Dr. Nefarious on the Deplanetiser.
Challenging - Complete the game in Challenge Mode.
Master of War - Upgrade every weapon to maximum level.
Death By Disco - Use the Groovitron on every type of enemy.

Hardest Trophy -

Master of War 

Upgrade every weapon to maximum level

DLC #128 - Destiny - The Taken King

The Taken King is the first of two DLC packs released for Destiny, and also, without question, the most challenging element of the entire game, inclusive of the main list.

The package comes with 10 additional trophies, focused around Oryx (The Taken King), and his plot for revenge for the death of his son Crota, who is slain in a previous portion of the Destiny story.

This content also unlocks a new area of the game, a huge ship called the Dreadnaught, where most of the requirements of this trophy list are fulfilled through a variety of quests, Strikes and a new Raid, as well as a tough set of collectibles which turn out to provide one of the more difficult challenges within this selection of trophies.

There are a few important details to mention straight off the bat. You'll need to be level 25 in order to access this content with any given character, which is just simply a standard requirement of the game. Further to this, out of the 10 trophies within this list, 3 of them are awarded for unlocking the Taken King exclusive sub-class for each of the 3 character types, and you'll need to be level 25 for each of these characters in order to beat the first Taken King quest, unlock the sub-class, and therefore trigger the trophy. It's also important to make sure the first thing you do above anything else, is defeat the Taken King and beat the main story. This will net you "The Taken King" trophy, and most importantly, fulfills a pre-requisite that a handful of steps to various side missions have which require you to have defeated the Taken King before being able to proceed further.

The biggest thing to note about this DLC pack, is how confusing the trophy list is to get your head around, and that the majority of the trophies require a series of different steps to be completed prior to the final step towards unlocking the trophy. It also isn't always clear what you need to do in order to reach the final step, for example, the "Second Wind" trophy, requires you to complete the "Echoes of Oryx" quest, however when you work backwards from step 1, you eventually discover that you'll need to complete the entire Taken King questline, complete 1 additional side quest, which in turn unlocks 3 extra side quests which you must also complete, which then in turn allows you to accept another main quest.

At this point, you think you may be at the end, but then you realise this quest has further pre-requisites, which require you to complete another mission on the Dreadnaught, in order to access the King's Fall Raid, and then to finally complete the questline, you'll have to defeat 3 DLC bosses, all of which can only be defeated from within the Raid itself, which already has separate trophies accounted for it within the trophy list. This is probably the most obvious example, but more subtle ones exist within other areas of this list.

On top of all this, there is still some room to discuss a few stand-out trophies;

Hunger Pangs - Complete the "Old Hunger" quest.
Long Live the King - Complete the King's Fall Raid (Heroic).

The "Hunger Pangs" trophy, awarded for completing the "Old Hunger" quest, also falls into the above example of how trophy requirements can be more convoluted than initially led to be. In order to do this full justice, I'll pick out the most relevant parts of the questline;

• Firstly, you'll need to have beaten the main Taken King story arc.
• In order to officially trigger the quest to begin, you'll need to find just 1 Calcified Fragment either on the Dreadnaught via free roam patrol, or on any Dreadnaught related activity. This will unlock 3 different questlines you'll need to be complete as part of the bigger picture to this quest.
• Within one of these questlines, called "The Old Hunger", there is a step which requires you to collect 3 items, which correspond to beating the 3 bosses within the Taken King Raid, so you'll only progress further with this trophy once you beat the most difficult Raid in the entire game, so this is already a stumbling block. You can argue the point that you'll need to beat the Raid anyway if you want 100% completion, but you could in theory get so far down the line with this trophy before actually realising this, so it's still important to point out. The items also do not have a 100% drop-rate, so you could also be required to complete the Raid more than once, which is a pain, because if you beat the Raid on Heroic in your first attempt, that would mean you only need to visit it once if it wasn't for this questline.
• Within another questline called "Hunger Pangs", you'll need to collect 45/50 Calcified Fragments, which are obtained in a variety of different ways. These include being randomly scattered across the Dreadnaught to be found within free roam patrol mode, rewards as part of the Court of Oryx, beating King's Fall Raid bosses under specific challenge perimeters and other things. It's relatively plain sailing for around 35-40 of these, but then it becomes a struggle to get the remainder, and becomes an exercise of likeliness. King's Fall Challenge mode is best avoided for the purpose of this exercise, but you can only afford a margin of error of 5 Calcified Fragments, and challenge mode has 3 up for grabs, so you're already pushing the limits. It makes it tough to work out which ones you're best off leaving out, and the whole exercise is very time consuming.
• Still within the "Hunger Pangs" questline, once you've collected 45 fragments, there is a final quest to defeat a Wizard within a mission which will require a strong team to beat. It would be nice to be able to do it solo, but it's simply not possible, and getting to this point and still not being able to finish things off yourself is frustrating, and bearing in mind other players only ever really want to Raid, it can be hard to find partners both strong enough and willing enough. 

To summarise, you'll need to collect 45 out of the 50 Calcified Fragments, the requirements of which gradually become more and more challenging, beat every boss within the King's Fall Raid, and hope they drop the item you're after for the quest checklist (Which is effectively just beating the Raid anyway) and complete a final mission which will require support from fellow strong players, leaning on the game's constant insistence to have to play with others in order to beat it. This is by far the most challenging quest in the entire game, and that includes the main list and other DLC pack.

The "Long Live the King" trophy, awarded for Completing the King's Fall Raid (Heroic), requires you to beat the newly added Raid exclusive to this content, and where I would normally be discussing the concept of Raids as part of the main trophy list, it wouldn't feel right to leave the detail out during the first instance of discussing them, so here we go;

Raids are co-operative missions, specifically designed to be tackled in large fireteams, and require high levels of co-operation and strength in order to clear and succeed. They contain sub-sections which will either involve co-operative activities or big boss battles which always require everyone to be on the same page in order to emerge victorious.

The King's Fall Raid is the toughest raid in Destiny, and the Heroic modifier only serves to amplify that challenge. There is a trophy available within this list for beating the Raid on any difficulty, and it wouldn't be the worst idea to suggest running this Raid on a lower difficulty first, just to be able to get to grips with how each sub-section plays out and also earn some exceptional loot to increase the strength of your character, and subsequently better equip yourself for the Heroic version of the Raid.

There are 2 things that are of essential importance to understand about Raiding in Destiny;

Firstly, you have to know the Raid inside out. This includes knowing how to beat each sub-section and the various roles each player could be tasked with throughout the Raid. Whether you do this via playing through on a lower difficulty first for the experience or studying walkthrough videos to take it all in doesn't really matter, but if you approach any Raid unprepared, you'll be in serious danger of letting the side down, and the margin of error for lapses in co-operation is small, and it's very easy for one person to become the single point of failure. If one person dies, the entire effort will fail and you'll find yourself restarting from checkpoints way too often if you don't truly know what you're doing, or if you're not strong enough in light level and die too easily. You'll need to be around light level 340 out of a possible 400 to stand a reasonable chance within the King's Fall Heroic Raid, just for added context.

Secondly, Raid's are not quick exercises, and King's Fall on Heroic difficulty took around 3 to 3.5 hours alone to beat, so make sure you've got the free time if you want to tackle this trophy. Even the strongest fireteams (and it is important to note, you will definitely need at least 5 people, maybe even a full 6 to beat this Raid), will be susceptible to deaths and restarts caused by failures in communication and being overpowered by enemies, so be prepared for worst case scenarios and having to stick it out to the end in order to make sure you trigger the trophy.

For what it's worth. I jumped straight in and went for the Heroic Raid on my first go, though I did ensure I researched the Raid before hand, and also leveled up my character to a reasonable enough point where I didn't need to be carried through by my teammates and wasn't deemed a weak link. Most parties will reject you if you're not of a high enough light level anyway, so it's important to make sure you're strong enough to compete within the Raid, if not out of respect for the rest of the team if nothing else.

There is always the very slight off-chance you could get lucky and jump in with a group who will be willing to carry you through, but most people, from my own experiences, only want to raid with players who are confident in their understanding of the level, able to physically communicate via a headset and have a strong character, and this should be considered the absolute minimum anyway, as success relies heavily on all of the above.

Here's the thing about Destiny;

It's not a game built with the intentions of getting by yourself, and large parts of your success with these trophy lists will be down to how well you play with others. Even if you're looking to just get by, and have fireteams carry you through Raids, there seems to be a reluctance for players to accept you into raiding parties if you're not up an adequate level of strength, so you'll more than likely end up spending loads of time grinding quests on your own or playing against others within Crucible mode in order to increase your light level, obtain better weapons and gain acceptance into raiding with other players.

That's more down to player behavior, than any actual faults with the game, but as someone who's here to just simply finish the trophy list and move on, it was very frustrating to have to grind my light level with extra-curricular activities, just to be able to become deemed relevant enough within the community to be welcome to raid with others, when all I wanted to do was finish the trophy list and move on. For the benefit of a balanced argument, I do get the importance of not being a passenger if you're wanting to raid, given the fact that Raids are designed in such intricate ways that, you can ill afford to have cannon-fodder team-mates, especially for Heroic Raids, which are the peak of this games difficulty levels, otherwise it hinders the experience for those who have put the extra effort in and want to raid to their own high standards.

Similiar logic applies to Nightfall Strikes and other high-level missions, and although these are more about total strength of the party, rather than co-operative logic puzzles like Raids are, the same guidelines above are applicable in the sense that you'll need to grind and invest in your character to be able to beat them, and other players won't be able to carry you through.

All of this combined makes for a strong challenge, and the overall completion time is somewhat hard to gauge, as I was completing parts of the main Destiny list in tandem with the Taken King, but it isn't a quick one by any means, and you'll absolutely need to plug the hours in if you want to complete it in full. 

There are some genuine challenges of skill along with some grinding and confusing questlines, with the added burden of some extra-curricular grinding in order to make sure you're up to certain lofty standards to complete some specific tasks. 

This is a good completion to have within the collection, but I'm not sure I'd ever do it again at the loosely estimated completion time of around 60-70 hours.