Platinum #110 - Tom Clancy's The Division

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

Every so often, I explore a new series of games which, although provide a bearable experience, don't really do enough to entice me into further exploration.

It's not that The Division is bad. It's actually fairly palatable, but does it make me want to invest in The Division 2? Not at all. I had the exact same feelings towards Destiny 1. They're decent enough games, just not good enough to the point where I feel like they're worth continuing on with.

The central plot is based around uncovering the mystery behind a virus sweeping across New York City, labelled the "Dollar Flu", due to the fact contamination occurs through the transfer of money.

The premise is fairly cliche - A number of factions that control the city have a vested interest in the virus for various reasons, some of which involve obtaining access to the virus in order to detriment the human race, meaning your primary objective, as a Division agent, is to be drafted in to prevent this from happening.

The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies in total, and these do mostly span across the story mode of the game along with the RPG elements that come with it, including levelling up your base of operations, crafting items/weaponry and venturing into the PvP arena known as the Dark Zone.

This isn't an especially tough list in terms of the actual challenge presented here, but it is long-winded, and it does feature alot of repetition that makes you re-tread old ground very often, which becomes a hard slog as you push towards the end of the list. 

The "Know No Fear" trophy, awarded for Finishing all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty, will require you to play through each mission within the story twice through before you unlock this trophy.

There are 16 main story missions in total, and the "Hard" difficulty mode is not available from the outset, meaning you'll have to beat every mission once before going back through and tackling them again on the hardest difficulty level.

The irony is, it was actually harder first time round, because difficulty scaling is present as you progress your characters level and use the experience and resources earned through beating the story missions in order to acquire new skills, craft better equipment and become much stronger as a result and these are necessary to provide a balanced challenge. Given the fact the game is designed to be tackled in groups, it can be tough to play through this on your own, and that is the biggest challenge I faced as I attempted to reach level 30 and beat the story for the first time. Even playing with other agents, it was still a battle to get through certain levels, but not quite to the point where it ever felt insurmountable. On top of this, you will earn a separate trophy for reaching level 30 too.

Once I did beat the story in full, I gained access to the Final Stand arena, where I completed the previously featured Final Stand DLC. This lifts the levelling cap and allowed me to level my character up way beyond level 30 and pick up much stronger gear. So much so to the extent that, when I went back over the story on Hard difficulty in order to unlock this trophy, I literally ended up walking past enemies because I was so over-levelled and my equipment was so powerful. The same story missions that were taking me, in some instances, over an hour to beat in my previous run, were now being beaten within 10 minutes, and whilst I understand this may have been different had I not over-levelled my character by going through the Last Stand DLC, this was the route I took and the review should reflect this.

Along the way, there are 13 progression-based trophies, which unlock upon the completion of certain story missions, and by the time you unlock the "Know No Fear" trophy, you should have almost half the list completed as you also start to get into some of the RPG elements mentioned above, which are critical to developing your character, and ultimately progressing through the story.

Away from the main story offering, there are way too many collectibles to note any one of these trophies specifically, but the list offers out an additional 6 trophies that span an overall total of 290 collectible objects, so it is still worth mentioning.

Collectible items will only appear on the map when you get to within a very close fixed proximity of them and there's no other way to reveal them all at once so you'll never know exactly where you need to go for which items, and given the fact they can appear at a variety of different elevations, whether it be underground, within a building or on a rooftop, it becomes imperative to follow a guide for this exercise, and is certainly one of the least enjoyable collectible-based experiences I've had with any game.

Further to this, character movement feels clunky and it's a complete pain in the arse to get attacked by factions every time you turn onto a new street within the open world environment - 2 key factors which ultimately become a real inconvenience when you've got to trawl every corner of the map hunting down almost 300 collectibles. It prolongs what is already a fairly time-consuming exercise, and it would be best to pick up whatever you can as you naturally move through the game, mopping the rest up at the end. It isn't an advisable plan to fulfil this requirement in bulk, purely because of the monotony attached to it, so my best advice would be to pick up anything that comes naturally and use a guide to finish the rest at the end.

The "I am the LAW!" trophy, awarded for Killing 20 Rogue Agents, will require you to visit the briefly aforementioned Dark Zone, which does have it's own focus within this trophy list with a small handful of other fairly simple trophies, aside from this one.

The Dark Zone allows you to enter a previously forbidden area of New York City, which contains stronger groups of enemies, better loot and most significantly, other players.

For the most part, human players will be passive, and are in the Dark Zone to take advantage of the potential for NPC enemies to drop valuable loot, however, human enemies also have the capacity to turn themselves rogue, which will allow them to attack and be attacked by other human players, and these are the circumstances required to fulfil this trophy.

The reason this was tough for me was because, as someone who is modest enough to admit that I only ever strive to do the minimal required amount to beat a game in accordance to whatever the trophy list asks of me, it meant that, when it comes to the big, bad Dark Zone, I end up being one of the weakest characters present, making it incredibly tough to kill enemies who are more than likely way above my level of strength.

Once you reach level 30, and the level cap blows up, it is seriously hard to compete with other players unless you invest your time into further levelling and obtaining the better gear that comes with this reward, and as someone who only has the requirements of the trophy list at the heart of my best interests, I have no motivation to continue to play the game purely for the sake of character progression, which is something a lot of people do still play the Division for.

This, of course, is absolutely fine. I accept we all play games for different motives, but this did seriously disadvantage me in the Dark Zone as I constantly came up against stronger players. I did notice that groups of people love to get together and just fight, which is where my opening came in, hanging around hoping to get the killing blow at the right time and effectively just scavenge kills towards the trophy. It took me the course of a few weeks of dropping in and out whilst going through the rest of this list when I knew other players were around fighting each other, but I did manage to get there eventually. It certainly wasn't as easy as I felt it could have been, but knowing this was because I didn't want to put the time and effort into levelling my character, I accept that I was forced to find a harder way through.

When I reflect on the main menu upon completing this game, and read the total playtime of 6 days and 12 hours, that's a level of time investment that equates to over 150 hours, and there won't be many games out there I've put that much time into. It is important to deduct a reasonable amount off that for the Last Stand DLC, which I assume would be counted within this, but that would still make this a 100+ hour Platinum trophy at the very least, and I've always been of the opinion that time has always meant something when it comes to rating difficulty of a list.

The overall challenge of this game doesn't peak too high, though it can be rough playing through the game first time round when the enemies are much more relative to your characters level prior to reaching level 30. However, the Dark Zone challenges were a legitimate difficulty barrier, and I can never ignore a list that demands well over 100 hours from me to fully complete, so I'm happy to fit this somewhere around just above the mid-range of difficulty. 

It's time-consuming, the Dark Zone experience was a frustrating one from a personal point of view and collectibles are horrendous, both in terms of volume and practicality. There are still 2 DLC packs to get through, so there's still some way to go, but I'm glad to make another significant step towards full completion by finally grabbing this Platinum trophy.

Notable Trophies -

Know No Fear - Finish all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty.
I am the LAW! - Kill 20 Rogue Agents.

Hardest Trophy -

I am the LAW!                                                                                                      Kill 20 Rogue Agents

DLC #152 - Assassin's Creed Unity - Dead Kings

It's been quite a common reoccurrence for Assassin's Creed DLC to contain additional story-driven content as part of it's extra offerings through the years, and this is reinforced with the Dead Kings pack.

Adding an extra 7 trophies, Dead Kings focuses on events post-Unity, where Arno Dorian meets up with Marquis De Sade. He offers Arno proper closure on his story - a boat heading to Egypt, which will allow him to leave Paris for good and the memories of Elise de la Serre behind.

The simple request is that Arno finds a manuscript which contains information on the whereabouts of an Artefact possessing great value, which is also being hunted by a group of Tomb Raiders led by Napoleon's army.

The location has been refreshed, with this content taking you into Saint-Denis, which is of a much smaller scale, though it does contain an underground area, where you'll be encouraged to spend most of your time via main story missions and the collectibles you'll also need to find to complete this list. It's fairly obvious that there is a deliberate focus on the catacombs within this DLC, and most of Sequence 13 takes place within them. The new lantern mechanic, which allows you to navigate past wild animals within the catacombs, was also built specifically for this DLC.

The trophy list is fairly straight-forward, but also very demanded, requiring you to complete everything this content has to offer to finish the list. With that in mind, the easiest way to break this down would be to discuss one particular trophy;

Hydrogen Bonded - Achieve 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings.

The "Hydrogen Bonded" trophy, awarded for achieving 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings, requires you to complete everything checklisted within the progress tracker as part of this DLC package. The other 6 trophies in addition to this one will be unlocked on your way towards fulfilling the obligations of this task, so it's effectively a Platinum trophy within it's own merits of this list. The main game never required you to complete everything to 100%, so it is a somewhat surprising requirement, and there is a fair amount of content to get stuck into here.

Aside from having to complete the new 13th Sequence as part of the extended story, along with the secondary objectives within each memory, there are also a large handful of Artefacts, Bicorns and Chests to find and collect (because that's exactly what you wanted after collecting 400+ of those in the main list). These requirements also come with 2 new Co-op missions to complete, a handful of riddles and some side questing in the form of murder mysteries.

There is alot of variety here, and it will all take you somewhere in the region of 10-15 hours to complete everything in order to reach 100% synchronisation. As long as you commit to working towards this trophy straight away, everything else will come naturally along the way.

Just like the main list, there aren't any difficulty-sensitive trophies, and with the map of Saint Denis being fairly small in comparison to Paris, it makes it much easier to jump around grabbing collectibles and completing side tasks. This ensures the DLC carries through the fairly relaxed undertones of the main list, and makes for an fairly comfortable completion to complete the experience.

Platinum #109 - Assassin's Creed Unity

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

If there is any series of game that feels like it has a template for trophy list reviews, it is almost certainly Assassin's Creed. I see you FIFA, but this is my 7th Assassin's Creed Platinum trophy, and the only thing that ever really seems to change is the era of time the game is set in.

Speaking of which, Assassin's Creed Unity sees you assume control of Arno Dorian, a member of the French Brotherhood of Assassin's, and is set during the height of the French Revolution.

Arno meets Elise De La Serre, whose father takes in Arno after his own father is murdered. After failing to deliver an important message that pre-empts the death of the Templar Grand Master De La Serre, Arno is not only accidentally complicit to his murder as a consequence of not delivering the letter, but also mistaken for being the killer at the scene of the death, which is witnessed by some powerful and influential Templars.

This will take the player through a story of revenge and redemption as Arno is inducted into the Brotherhood in an attempt to clear his own name and take revenge on the group of Templars responsible for killing De La Serre.

The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies in total including the Platinum, and follows a formula very typical of Assassin's Creed trophy lists.

The "Curtain Call" trophy, awarded for Completing Memory Sequence 12, is the final trophy upon conclusion of the main story. As is always the case with Assassin's Creed Platinums, there isn't a pre-set difficulty level, which naturally means there's also no pressure from anywhere else on the trophy list relating to difficulty based challenges.

The combat still moves in the traditional Assassin's Creed way. They have slightly tweaked it here, because you can no longer take advantage of certain mechanics that made the combat overly-simplistic in previous titles, such as chaining combos and human shields. You still fight with a stance, and instead, react to your opponents actions, with parrying playing a huge role in killing enemies. You can be more aggressive and fight on the front foot with the "attack" action, but you'll find it easier to parry or dodge enemy attacks and fight when you've broken their guard. I have personally always found this one of the easiest combat mechanics in any game, and this is no different this time round. It makes the experience very casual, on the whole, and completing the story was a breeze. You'll also unlock alot of progression-based trophies, for completing each sequence leading up to, and including Sequence 12.

The "I Want It All" trophy, awarded for Completing all Single Player mission challenges in Paris, is directly linked to the main story sequences, most of which include specified challenges within the memory the player must complete in order to obtain this trophy.

Again, this has been replicated numerous times across the Assassin's Creed franchise, and it's best to fulfil as many of these challenges as possible as you go through each memory, in order to minimise the need to replay memories again once you've completed the game. Most of these challenges are fairly easy, and if by any chance you miss them, you can always reload the last checkpoint within a memory to reset your progress and make sure you finish them before you complete that particular memory.

Understanding this from previous Assassin's Creed games allowed me to consciously go through these challenges in conjunction with playing through the game normally, which increased efficiency when handling this list, and I only needed to go back and replay 4 memories across all 12 sequences in order to fulfil this task at the end of the game. The fact I had managed to clear the vast majority of them first time round is a strong testament to how easy they generally are to complete though, and this shouldn't really require much rework.

The "I Got Skills" trophy, awarded for Unlocking all Skills, incorporates the big new feature to Assassin's Creed Unity - Co-op mode.

Co-op mode is effectively a series of missions separate to the main story which, despite containing guidance on a recommended maximum number of allies up to the total of 4, can be completed on a solo basis. In order to unlock all skills, which grant you new manoeuvres, weapons and equipment, you'll need to earn all Sync points to unlock every single skill available, leaving no margin for error.

The vast majority of these Sync points come from completing Co-op missions, as well as finding them within the Co-op levels, which is where the association comes. Whilst the Co-op missions are designed for 2-4 players, you still have the option to run them solo, but this will become overwhelming in certain scenarios, especially for the missions that recommend high numbers, so it is best advised to use the matchmaking tool or grab a partner.

If you complete them with at least one other player, you'll find this relatively straight-forward, and although the fact you can run them solo means this is still technically a Single Player Platinum, it is strongly advised you finish these missions with others in order to minimise any issues you may run into difficulty-wise trying to complete them alone. The list does also contain an additional 5 trophies specifically for Co-op mode, which you should earn as you go through unlocking the skill points, but the new mode is shown some reasonable support within the list.

Assassin's Creed titles are also well known for their tendency to include collectible trophies within their lists, and not only is Unity another fine example of that, it also turns this standard up a couple of notches along the way.

The "Curiosity" trophy, awarded for Opening every chest in Paris, requires you to locate all 294 chests scattered on the map. They're located both above and below ground, and will only appear visible on the map when you run past one. You can purchase a map within the in-game menus via the E-Store, which will reveal the locations of every chest instantly, which I would strongly recommend as a good counter to the sheer volume alone.

Even then, this is still a pretty monotonous exercise, and most of the red chests you'll spot across the map are guarded by soldiers that you'll either need to fight or bypass in order to get to the chest, which ultimately adds more time onto an already time-consuming task. 

There isn't much more to add than that, but a large portion of the overall completion time will go towards this trophy alone so it's certainly worth mentioning, and it is an extremely boring exercise, especially given the fact that there are no other real rewards attached to opening chests other than purely for the fact there is an associated trophy within the list.

It is also important to note that are also 128 Cockades to collect as part of another trophy on this list, and whilst this is less than half the amount of chests required, this does still combine to total 422 collectible items across the entire game. It's not a light activity at all.

As is usually the case, this is another Assassin's Creed game that sits towards the lower end of the difficulty spectrum. The combat, despite some subtle changes that were probably designed to make it slightly more challenging, is still relatively easy to adjust to, and the fact the game has a pre-set difficulty level that offers up a fairly casual challenge, is the main reason why Unity joins on at the lower end of the scale.

The collectibles are a pain though, and deserve an entire point on the rating completely by themselves. It isn't necessary to have so many collectibles when there are no other reasons to hunt them down other than the fact the trophy requirements dictate that you need to unlock them all. Money eventually becomes inconsequential because you earn so much of it, as you progress through the game, and the chests yield nothing else other than currency, so it does feel like a pointless exercise that is there to purely pad completion time.

The game does parlay you on the fact that you do not need to achieve full 100% synchronisation and therefore does neglect alot of the side content from the trophy list, though even with this accounted for, I would still say this is around a 40-50 hour experience.

The majority of the other trophies within the list shouldn't really require any specific focus, and as long as you complete both the main and Co-op story, you should have most of it done by the time you turn your attention to the collectibles, with any clean up necessary at the end of these. If you can stomach the inevitable tedium of all those collectibles, this shouldn't give you too many problems at all, and does still come in as one of the easiest Assassin's Creed Platinum trophies to date.

Notable Trophies -

Curtain Call - Complete Memory Sequence 12.
I Want It All - Complete all Single Player mission challenges in Paris.
I Got Skills - Unlock all Skills.
Curiosity - Open every chest in Paris.

Hardest Trophy -

Curiosity                                                                                                        Open every chest in Paris.

DLC #151 - Fallout 4 - Far Harbor

This whole trophy journey sort of sums up my own feelings towards Fallout quite well. These games are OK experiences on the whole, but ultimately a bit messy and lack stability. I started this DLC aiming for it be my second completion, and prior to the Platinum trophy, and since then I had completed every other DLC as well as earned the Platinum before ending the series with this.

The main reason Far Harbor was outstanding beyond the rest of the DLC and the Platinum trophy itself was because of a in-game character dialogue glitch that ultimately meant I had to restart the entire Far Harbor story and hope self-correction took natural cause (which it thankfully did). Again, it kind of sums up Fallout and it's notoriety for being held back by bugs and glitches.

Anyway, Far Harbor focuses on the case of a missing person, who is believed to have fled from her family towards a place called Far Harbor. The questline is triggered by listening to an audio tape from the family reaching out for support and you have the option to investigate the case.

You find out very quickly that the concerned party is a couple, and the girl in question is their daughter, who is under the belief that she is a synth, and has fled under the knowledge that Far Harbor is a refugee relief centre for synths - a place she believes will give her a greater sense of belonging. As you travel to Far Harbor to look into the case further, the story unravels and your real reasons for ending up at Far Harbor become more apparent.

Despite the issues I ran into regarding the trophies, this is the strongest DLC offering in Fallout 4. It contains the most content, the most expansive story and the best new environments/characters that make the game feel genuinely fresh, where most of the other DLC packs just felt very stagnant and uninspired. The Nuka-Cola expansion was good, but I felt Far Harbor was better.

The pack also adds 10 trophies, 5 of which are driven by the new questline, awarding you trophies as you progress through and uncover the secrets hidden deep within Far Harbor. It's a place inhabited by the townspeople you meet and will carry out these quests for, who are fighting greater battles against the Children of the Atom, refugee synths and dangerous creatures, whose natural habitat is the island itself. It all blends together well and adds to a strong story-driven experience. Carrying on playing through on the "Hard" difficulty still failed to present me with any true challenges, and being able to acquire some seriously tough arsenal, including the new Harpoon Gun, made this even easier.

A couple of these story-related trophies are missable, dependent on which decisions you make as you go through the questline, so it may be important to ensure you're making the correct selections in line with trophy accomplishment along the way. 

The remainder of the list comes from various miscellaneous tasks, some of which come in familiar guises, such as finding 20 different locations, killing 30 creatures native to Far Harbor and collecting all issues of "The Islanders Almanac" magazine - Some fairly standard requirements by this point.

This comes complete with a small shout-out to the "Push Back The Fog" trophy, awarded for Unlocking 3 Far Harbor Workshop Locations - After unlocking 2 of them, the next quest triggered an endless looping dialogue that I just couldn't seem to get out of. I reloaded old saves, completed other related quests in order to alter the quest path and, out of sheer desperation, physically attempted to beat a solution out of the Far Harbor residents. None of which worked.

So I parked it and came back to it on a brand new save once I'd completed every other DLC pack and also the main list for the Platinum trophy. In reality, this was around 10-12 hour experience, but this glitch would have extended this by another 3-4 hours. It was a very apt to way to wrap up another complete (and buggy) Fallout experience.

Platinum #108 - Fallout 4

 Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

"War Never Changes" - And neither do Fallout trophy lists, it seems.

It's been a long time since a Fallout Platinum trophy featured here - The last one was Fallout : New Vegas at Platinum #42 almost 10 years back in July 2012.

That's a long time for things to change, but the Fallout formula has mostly stayed the same in practically every single aspect.

Fallout 4 takes place post-Fallout 3 to the tune of around 10 years, set in a place called the Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic setting considered to be "retro-futuristic".

The game begins during a period of time just before the Commonwealth is reduced to a post-apocalyptic, danger-inhabited wasteland, where your character is living with their family in a completely harmonious setting. A knock at the door eventually sees you being led into Vault 111 amidst the warnings of an incoming Nuclear bomb, and whilst inside Vault 111, you and your family are sheltered within cryogenic pods.

Shortly after this occurs, your son is kidnapped by an unknown party from within the Vault, and your partner is killed in their attempts to prevent this, but confinement to the cryogenic pods make you helpless to prevent this situation and you suddenly awaken 60 years later after your body is preserved in ice.

Upon awakening from this, the end-goal is clear - To find your son and the reasons behind his kidnap. Naturally, I won't go beyond the basic plot, but you'll be unleashed into an open world full of perils, exploration, companions and differing factions you'll have to make critical decisions with or against - Just to emphasise the continuation of the similarities to previous Fallout games.

The trophy list is large in size, clocking in at 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy, and just like many of the elements within the game, doesn't stray too far from the standard when it comes to trophy requirements in comparison to the previous 2 Fallout games.

That's not to say there isn't anything different, and the things that are different are actually some of the things that end up being more relevant when discussing overall difficulty, but you can still expect to mostly see a very questline-driven, naturally progressive list focused around beating various quests for the different factions you'll encounter and fulfilling metric-based objectives around killing a certain amount of creatures, hacking a certain amount of terminals and picking a certain amount of locks, amongst other examples - but things you've seen accounted for before if you already have experience with Fallout titles.

The "Prepared for the Future" trophy, awarded for Deciding the Fate of the Commonwealth, concludes the story, which is generally a fairly casual experience. Unlike the "Hardcore" run in Fallout : New Vegas, there aren't any trophies dedicated to difficulty here, and despite choosing Hard, I never once felt like I couldn't beat any specific segment of the game. The first encounter with a Mirelurk Queen at the Castle was a little bit hairy, but aside from that, it was all mostly downhill.

No matter which path you choose to take as you go through the story, and which factions you decide to fight with and against, the conclusion will always present you with this trophy. However, there is a particular fork in the road where you'll have to make a save to return to later in order to ensure you take the alternative path to the end of the game. Save game trickery is not a new concept for Fallout games, and has existed in every single one, but it has previously been more complicated than it is here. On this occasion, all you need to do is reach a certain point near the end, make a save to go on and complete the game, unlocking this trophy, and then just reload and take the alternate path to finish up the other quests you were locked out of first time round.

Fallout : New Vegas had 4 separate endings, all of which required the player to go back to a certain point and make a different decision, so Fallout 4 is nowhere near as laborious, with the requirement of only having to go through one other path.

I count exactly 23 trophies which are either related to specific quests within the main storyline, or certain progression-related points where you side with a faction, which is almost half of the entire list, and when you also take into account you'll obtain much more of this list as you go through to pursue the end-game, you should have a largely complete list by the time you conclude the main story.

The rest of the list includes the previously aforementioned metric-based trophies, for hacking a certain number of terminals, picking a certain number of locks and killing a certain number of humans, creatures etc. - All of which should come naturally through the various environments you'll grace as part of the questline. Collectibles also make a return through Bobble-heads and magazines, which may require some recreational exploration, and all of the above are very familiar returning trophy requirements.

However, I did have to take advantage of the DLC in order to reach the required milestones for some of these trophies, as well as the "Legend Of The Wastes" trophy, awarded for reaching Level 50 - That's not to say the content isn't there to achieve it, but it made more sense from an efficiency point of view to use the DLC trophies in order to make progress towards level 50, rather than the side-content away from the trophy list that wouldn't earn me any progression towards trophies. This is the main reason the DLC lists have ended up coming through prior to the Platinum.

The "Benevolent Leader" trophy, awarded for Reaching Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement, is where the game starts to become a little less straight-forward.

I did mention above that there are elements to this list that focus on some of the new features within Fallout 4, and that they end up being the more relevant aspects to this list when we discuss overall difficulty. This is especially true of the new settlements feature, which graces a Fallout game for the first (and hopefully last) time. 

Just briefly, for background purposes, settlement mode allows you to build thriving settlements, recruiting people to live within, work for and protect these communities as you watch them grow and prosper. Think The Sims. Just purely from a personal point of view, I think it's boring and pointless, but unfortunately, some effort is required to indulge in the mode for the sake of the Platinum trophy, so here we are.

The first important thing to note is that the trophy description is actually wrong - You don't need to fulfil this objective within a large settlement, the confusion to which ends up costing me a significant amount of time here. I chose Sanctuary Hills, which is the starting settlement, due to it's size, and the fact I already had it populated with 10 people at 83% happiness, so it seemed logical, at the end of the game, to choose this settlement to work on for this trophy.

There are key aspects of a settlement that need to be fulfilled in order to create happiness growth. Things such as ensuring that there is enough food being grown, the water supply is ample and defensive units are in great enough abundance to provide a safe environment, but the issue with this trophy is, there doesn't seem to be much consistency in what actually works, despite it being quite clear what you need to achieve 100% happiness.

I carried on recruiting new people within Sanctuary Hills, to the point where there were 31 people present, with enough food, water and defensive units to keep them appeased. I was also assigning every settler a job to work on (which is also defined in most guides to increase happiness effectively), and yet, this was fine up to the point where I reached around 94% happiness, and then suddenly started to regress, fluctuating between 89% and 94% without any real logical explanation as to why or how - I didn't change my methodology. Every new settler I recruited was given a job, usually at a clinic, and I also made sure there was enough food, water, beds and defence relative to the amount of settlers present. The fact my progress towards this trophy not only halted, but actually started regressing was something I just couldn't figure out.

I came to a stalemate on this method when I discovered that you can only recruit a maximum number of settlers based on your total Charisma +10, so 31 was my highest available, and I didn't know where to go from there other than to look at other options. By this point, I had spent around an additional 8-10 hours to effectively just go backwards.

It was at this point I discovered you didn't actually need to work on this trophy on a large settlement, much to my frustration at the time, because the trophy is very explicit in it's instruction that you need to fulfil this obligation using a large settlement, which was the reason I stuck with Sanctuary Hills to begin with.

I moved across to a smaller settlement, using a method where you can build dog cages, release the tamed animals into the settlement, build a robot and, apparently, you get 100% happiness instantly because a robot does not require food or water, so this is not factored into the happiness rating. 

Sort of, but not quite. I did get to 80% instantly, and this trended upwards at a solid rate of around 3-4% every couple of minutes. It looked like I was onto a winner and then it hit 95% happiness and halted. I had to improvise, and build a clinic to assign the robot to work on that with the understanding from my previous settlement that this could kick the happiness meter back into life, which it did. It took a while to move from 95% up to 100%, as it had stopped increasing by large increments by this point, and every percentage was being earned over a 20 minute period, so it still took a few hours, but it was a relief to finally get there and complete this list.

This seems like alot to mention for a list that practically boils down to 2 trophies, and this was actually a relatively simple adventure right up until the final hurdle. Naturally progressing through the main story questline will net you a large portion of this list, and you'll seldom have to stray from this path to unlock everything else that falls outside the questline. 

However, even though settlements aren't tough to understand on paper, the logic surrounding them throws you into a world of trial and error that ended up consuming my time and effort without any reasonable reward aside the final trophy required for Platinum.

Speaking of time, it's hard for me place an estimate on the Platinum trophy alone, mainly down to the fact that I used the DLC in order to pursue other trophies within the main list, including reaching level 50. My save file clocks it around around 120 hours, but with the consideration of all DLC included within this timeframe, it makes it hard to pinpoint a time range for Platinum completion alone. It's possibly somewhere within the 50-60 hour range, though it is also important to note I did often stray away to also complete side content unrelated to trophies along the way, and does also include replaying the final portion of the game for the potentially missable trophies.

Does it do enough to at least sit on par with the previous Fallout games? It's honestly hard to say. It's been so long since I played a Fallout title, I've actually forgotten, so this makes comparisons harder to draw conclusions from. It doesn't have a requirement to complete the game in any variation of "Hardcore" mode like New Vegas did, and overall, there isn't much here that's actually that challenging from a gameplay perspective, but it is lengthy and the trials and tribulations of the settlement feature was the cherry on top. Except the cherry was actually a raw onion, and not a cherry.

Notable Trophies -

Prepared for the Future - Decide the Fate of the Commonwealth
Benevolent Leader - Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement

Hardest Trophy -

Benevolent Leader                                                                                           Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement

DLC #150 - Fallout 4 - Contraptions Workshop

After the tribulations surrounding the Wasteland Workshop DLC, I was more hopeful of better fortunes for what is sort of, but not quite, the final piece of DLC within Fallout 4.

Contraptions Workshop, just like Wasteland Workshop, focuses again on the creation element of Fallout, and adds a host of new objects to build in order to unleash upon your settlements.

This package also adds 3 new trophies, which are thankfully both much easier to achieve, and less strenuous on the scavenger hunting necessary for the Wasteland Workshop content.

The focus is still based around building some of these new contraptions you'll have at your disposal as part of this package, but the big difference here is that you won't require anywhere near the level of raw resources to build what you'll need in order to achieve all 3 trophies and complete this list. 

They're also way less glitchy. I didn't have a single issue making any of these trophies pop, in comparison to the trial and error nature of Wasteland Workshop, which, in turn, led to a much swifter completion.

You'll need to build a Weapon, Armor and Power Armor rack - as well as displaying one relevant item on each for 1 trophy, as well as building a Pillory and assigning a settler to it for another - both of which required resources I mostly had, but even a short trip to a trader sorted out the small amount of missing resources I needed.

The final trophy just requires you to produce 100 objects from a builder - A device which can be loaded with raw materials to make certain objects, which can then in turn be recycled through the builder, which is perfect for creating the 100 objects necessary for the trophy.

I would estimate this took me around 45 minutes. A very welcome change of pace to finish off this Fallout 4 DLC set. I do still have some unfinished business in the form of Far Harbor, to go back and grab a glitched trophy, but that will formally seal things off.

DLC #149 - Fallout 4 - Wasteland Workshop

*Sigh*

"Up to 15 Minutes" for completion time in the particular guide I read.

I did come with the understanding that this wasn't technically the reality, based on the fact that this was under the assumption you had already acquired every material necessary to craft the items pertaining to the Wasteland Workshop - and merely needed to build them.

However, I didn't anticipate running into a package full of some traditional glitchy Fallout goodness, which stacked the hours on top.

Before I jump the gun any further, this piece of DLC focuses on some of the new contraptions introduced as part of the Wasteland Workshop, along with 3 new trophies, which take a specifically closer look at animal cages and arena fighting.

There are a couple of prerequisites to note.

Firstly, you will require a pretty hefty shopping list of items in order to build all of the contraptions that correlate to the 3 trophies on offer. These will mostly be for the 15 different types of animal cages you will need to build, and will require you to possess some unusual meats, such as Yao Guai, Stingwing and Radstag meat, which is both hard to farm in the natural wasteland and to buy from traders due it's rarity. Mirelurk Eggs and Nuclear Material can also be a pain to find, but this part of the process is the most time consuming element of this package. You may have alot of these materials already from playing through the game, but as someone who doesn't like to horde junk, and not being that aware of how useful it would come to be, I needed alot of resources, which costs both time and money.

Secondly, you'll need to have invested your skill points into 2 specific skills within the Charisma skill ladder - Animal Friend at level 5 and Wasteland Whisperer all the way down at level 9 - in order to build some of the objects you'll need to tame these creatures. If you don't have them, you'll need to reset your characters statistics and re-distribute accordingly.

The process of collecting all the resources I needed took me around 3-4 hours, due to the aforementioned fact that I never saw the benefit of hoarding junk up until now, and therefore had to spend the time acquiring this vast list of items, so I'd spent this amount of time already without technically getting going. Fun start.

But it's only 3 trophies, and I'd read "15 minutes" so at least we were almost done...

Except we weren't, and whilst the 3 trophies on offer don't really "stand out" per their requirements being complicated, time-consuming or any other form of challenge any given trophy could take the form of - They were just terribly glitchy and problematic in the same way that Fallout games always seem to be.

You get the first trophy for having 5 tamed creatures in a settlement. No problem. Just build any animal cage, power it up with a generator, build an emitter which tames the creature (this is the object you need the special perks for, to be able to build), and the cage will spawn a tamed creature every 3-4 times you sleep for 12 hours.

This went to plan, until my settlers started randomly attacking my tamed creatures, which is detrimental to progress given the fact you have to have 5 creatures tamed simultaneously, and not in total, and every time you need to breed a new tamed creature from the animal cage, you have to "repair" it, which means sourcing more meat from a specific animal which I had already done in preparation for a later trophy. So I was suddenly scavenger hunting again.

Anyway, repeat the process, and then find out that different species of tamed animals will also attack each other, whilst continuing to be attacked by settlers whose natural reaction to this is to also get involved, and all of a sudden, we're back at square one again. There's no way to control which type of creature comes out of an animal cage. I used the Insect cage for this trophy, and ended up spawning Radroach, Bloatfly and Stingwing - Not a good combination apparently.

I eventually stocked up on Mole Rat Meat and went through a constant loop of just pumping out tamed creatures and hoping something stuck, which did eventually get me the trophy at the expense of another 1-2 hours of my time. "15 minutes" it said.

Moving on though, there's also a trophy awarded for starting a spectated arena fight in a settlement, another trophy with simple face value requirements, which also turned out to be anything but.

You can create 2 podiums (red and blue), assign 2 settlers to these podiums, and they will then ensue a fight to the death, which should in turn trigger the trophy. No problem.

Except, after carrying this task out on a settlement so often to the point that there wasn't physically anybody left to fight each other anymore, and still not seeing the trophy pop, I find out that some theories suggest you also need to build a Clocking-off Siren, which, when triggered, summons settlers to the arena area in order to spectate the fight, which is apparently a critical trophy trigger.

So, we reloaded, in order to regain our decimated settlement, and tried this out. Build the podiums. Again. Assign the settlers. Again (which is also glitchy as fuck, because they always run into invisible obstacles or just refuse to move). This time though, we then build this Clocking-off Siren, power it up and activate it and then watch the fight. And nothing happens. Just another dead settler and no trophy.

I then read up and find out that it is possible there are more triggers to this trophy, and large parts of the difficulties faced here are around the general cloudiness of what works vs what doesn't matter, and that you need to make sure the combatants don't see each other before they fight (which usually triggers a premature shootout), AND there needs to be an official spectator to the witness the fight. So I have to build an actual arena that has enclosures to ensure both fighters can't see each other when assigned to the podium and prior to the Siren being sounded (which summons the crowd). There also has to be adequate seating made available, which is populated by other settlers when the Siren goes off.

So I end up building, not exactly an elaborate arena, but something more extensive than I expected was necessary, to only then find out other stuff would occur that just didn't make sense. Settlers would stray from their assigned podium, settlers wouldn't seat themselves and react to the Siren properly and they would still somehow start shooting prematurely, even behind metal walls. The inconsistencies were rife and I was yet another 1-2 hours deep tackling what I now believed was a deliberate mindfuck and that this was the underlying challenge.

I did eventually discover that, it was easier to summon the settlers to watch FIRST, and then assign anybody who wasn't sat down to fight. Even though this still triggered a premature fight, I think they fact that some settlers were seated and started cheering when they saw the fighting was the trigger for the trophy, but I never actually read that method anywhere and merely drew my own conclusions - but at least it worked.

The final trophy just requires you to build one of every type of cage, of which there are 15 and this is where all those resources gathered are needed. This one was actually quick and didn't spring any unwanted surprises, so at least we finished up on a positive note, albeit around 8 hours into a package that absolutely shouldn't have taken anywhere near that long.

This led to pure inconvenience in the end, and even though I was never a big fan of the Workshop element of this game before, this package actually gave me reasons to actively dislike it. However, it gets us one step closer to an end that I'm glad is finally in sight.

DLC #148 - Fallout 4 - Vault-Tec Workshop

Contrary to my own beliefs, I thought I was done with the story-driven content within the Fallout 4 DLC, and it actually turns out that this wasn't the case.

I went purely off the fact that every other DLC within this set concluding with the word "Workshop", cannot be story-driven, and rather focuses on the biggest new addition to the Fallout series - the workshop creation tool, which is also heavily used within the main game.

I won't go into the details of this mechanic here. It's better suited to explain for some of the trophies within the main list, but with the bigger picture in mind, this piece of DLC makes lighter use of it compared to the main game, due to it's relatively short nature.

This DLC pack takes you to Vault 88, which is the main setting for this piece of DLC. After responding to an emergency radio frequency requesting assistance, you will be led to Vault 88, where you meet the Vault Overseer after clearing the emergency (which turns out to be as simple as clearing a group of Raiders around the perimeter of the vault, along with some debris that has blocked the vault exit).

It turns out the Overseer locked up within already had her own plans for Vault 88, but they required people, and since nobody could previously enter or exit the Vault, these plans weren't possible. This triggers a quest-line which sees you take on a handful of quests to populate the Vault and use workshops in order to create experimental equipment and study the behaviours of the Vault 88 inhabitants as you recruit them, with their sole purpose as test subjects to measure the effects of this newly built equipment the questline will take you through.

It honestly isn't as interesting as it sounds like it could be - It mostly just seems like a way to showcase some of the new Workshop objects you can create which have been added as part of this pack, with the questline somewhat secondary to all of this.

This pack does only contain 3 trophies too, and they're all progression-based as you work your way through what turns out to be an adventure of around 2-3 hours upon entering Vault 88.

You'll be awarded  a trophy for completing a quest which requires you to unlock all build areas of the vault, which is effectively just clearing them of the enemies that inhabit them and finding the control panel for the Workshop to start functioning again, as well as a trophy for equipping a jumpsuit and a pip-boy on a dweller, which you can do once you progress to the point where you start accepting outsiders to populate the vault.

The final trophy is awarded upon completion of the final quest, whereby the Overseer will promote you to her position. It is possible to talk her down with certain dialogue options, which will actually deny you the trophy, and you'll have to end up killing her instead if you want it.

I'm not a big fan of the Workshop feature, but it's nicely worked into a questline here, which blends together well. The remaining few DLC packs also focus on Workshops, but this here wraps up the quest-based content for good.

DLC #147 - Fallout 4 - Nuka-World

We've had to slightly deviate a bit here.

The original plan was to move through the story-driven content amongst this batch of Fallout 4 DLC, in order to reach level 50, and unlock any other additional trophies missing from the main list along the way.

This was going to plan, with the completion of the Automatron DLC, followed by an attempt at Far Harbor - Where, unfortunately, I ran into a glitch that has prevented me progressing towards the sole trophy I had left from that list, and will need to restart that particular piece of DLC in order to go back through and gather the remaining trophy necessary to finish the pack.

Starting a new game at that stage would have gone against the goal of reaching level 50 on my current game, and thus, I have decided to park Far Harbor and will return to finish it at some point later on.

With that, the natural next step was to come onto Nuka-World, which adds 10 new trophies and is the final piece of story-driven DLC within Fallout 4.

Nuka-World is an old amusement park, located just outside the Commonwealth, and the pack starts with the player being lured into a trap by a raider masquerading as a civilian, claiming that his family is being held hostage within Nuka-World by raiders. After agreeing to assist, the player runs a gauntlet, kills the Overboss of Nuka-World at the gauntlet finale, and then suddenly finds themselves in control of the entire park as the new Overboss.

It quickly becomes apparent that 3 main gangs still inhibit Nuka-World, co-existing, but still fractious towards one another, and the main story arc revolves around the player being tasked with gaining control over sub-areas of the park and delegating these out towards the various gangs in order to appease them and expand their influence on Nuka-World through possession of territory. These sub-areas are all wildly different with specific themes, and each adds a good change of pace to the questline as you progress through.

Out of the 10 trophies on offer, 4 of these are dedicated to the new story-arc, spanning across 11 individual quests, which provides a much more in-depth story-driven experience than the Automatron DLC (and Far Harbor, for that matter). It will take anywhere between 8-10 hours to take back control of each area of Nuka-World, and eventually reach the inevitable conclusion the story culminates with, and whilst this is generally a very straight-forward, relaxed adventure, the other trophies outside of those awarded for completing story quests make it a fairly time consuming package.

The rest of the trophies will have you clambering around Nuka-World and back across the Commonwealth performing a variety of miscellaneous tasks - Completing 12 generic quests given to you by the 3 gang leaders within Nuka-World along with establishing 8 raider camps within the commonwealth will grant you a couple of trophies, and you'll also have collect 20 unique recipes of Nuka-Cola variants hidden around Nuka-World, along with the resources required to craft them for a couple more trophies. This will then, in turn, require you to kill 40 Nuka-World creatures whilst under the influence of these concocted Nuka-Cola drinks.

These extra-curricular activities probably take the same amount of time as it does to complete the main questline, if not a little bit longer. Collecting Nuka-Cola recipes and crafting them is a nice little addition which keeps things fresh enough, but performing very boring and generic quests for gang leaders and setting up raider outposts is less so, and feel more of a chore at this point of playing the game, when you've seen these bland quests far too much already.

There is also another trophy awarded for redeeming 100,000 Nuka-Cade tokens in the Nuka-Cade, which requires continuously playing the same arcade game over and over on a loop in order to raise these tokens -  a grind of around 3/4 hours in itself.

The standard difficulty of the enemies you'll encounter and the tasks at hand aren't anything to write home about, but it is a piece of DLC that probably floats somewhere in the region of 20-25 hours, which is a generous time sink. I did also manage to unlock the "Legends Of The Wastes" trophy, awarded for reaching level 50, half-way through the contents of this pack, so we've at least managed to achieve what we set out to achieve upon strategically working our way around these DLC packs - Even if it has meant we're going to have to go back to Far Harbor at some point...

DLC #146 - Fallout 4 - Automatron

After having fairly recently taken the plunge into Fallout 4, I suddenly find myself not too far away from finishing it entirely, but it's become one of those games with a main list where a little bit of extra efficiency is required to maximise full completion.

I recently took the same approach with The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt, whereby although I had the choice to squeeze some optional, non-trophy related content in order to pursue the final handful of trophies within the main list, it made more sense to go after these trophies via the DLC on offer instead, which allows you to achieve 2 tasks simultaneously.

Just for the benefit of full context, I have practically completed the main Fallout 4 list, but still required around 9 levels to reach level 50 and achieve the maximum trophy-related levelling feat. Rather than just sweep through any extra side content that doesn't award trophies, it makes sense to get straight into the DLC, using the progression through these packs to level my character all the way to 50 and achieve these trophies at the same time. There should be more than enough content across these 6 upcoming DLC packs to be able to do just that.

This first pack adds a new questline into the Fallout 4 world, based around "The Mechanist", a protagonist using mass-produced robotic characters in order to terrorise the Commonwealth. You trigger the beginning of the questline by listening to a radio frequency which draws your attention to a specified location where a caravan has been attacked by these robots, where you will save and meet another robot companion called Ada.

Ada explains that the Mechanist is behind the destructive nature of these robots and wishes to seek revenge on behalf of the caravan, which leads you through 4 new quests from beginning to conclusion to put a stop to the production of these robots and foiling the Mechanists plans. This questline also introduces the new game mechanic of building customisable robots and using them as companions in battle, which didn't really serve any greater purpose to myself other than for the simple fact a couple of the trophies on offer are directly influenced by using this mechanic.

Speaking of which, the pack comes with 5 new trophies, and is a very straight-forward journey.

There are 3 progression-based trophies awarded for completing the new questline, which spans across 4 quests in total, and this should take no longer than 3-4 hours to complete in it's entirety.

The other 2 trophies are awarded for unlocking and then installing 10 robot modifications, which can found on the bodies of felled robot enemies you'll encounter throughout the new questline, and can then be used to modify Ada at any point, which caps off a very simple completion. It is possible to miss the modifications if you're not collecting them off the robots you manage to destroy, so it is important to make sure you understand the meaning of the term "unlocking" in this instance, as it's a little bit misleading.

This gained me almost 3 levels in my quest to reach level 50 too, so I'm confident all this additional content should see me through to my end goal quite comfortably.

DLC #145 - Tom Clancy's The Division - Expansion III : Last Stand

This venture into Tom Clancy's The Division has come very out of the blue, and it's mostly been driven by this DLC pack.

This is a game that has been massively overlooked within my collection since I first bought it, and despite having attempted to re-visit it a couple of times in the past, it's remained both mostly unexplored and very low on my priority list.

This did change recently when I discovered that this content pack, specifically focused around the Last Stand game mode, contains a trophy that requires you to win 50 matches within this mode, and you need 16 players in the lobby to start a match - Which was enough for me to promote this game to the top of my current priorities. It turns out that this is still just about a popular enough game mode, though you do generally have to make sure you're playing at peak times of the day to access full lobbies, and  even then there was still a fair share of waiting around sometimes if there wasn't any availability within another current game, so I felt like this was still a good judgement call on the whole.

It is also important to note that you need to reach level 30 with your character in order to gain access to Last Stand, so there was a fair amount of preliminary work required too. This applies to all DLC packs, and even though my character was already level 11, it still meant I had to finish the main story along with a reasonable amount of side content, just to be able to start working on these trophies.

The DLC pack itself is simply an add-on with the Last Stand game mode - A domination-esque game where 2 teams of 8 players have to fight for control of 3 capture points (A, B and C), gaining points for controlling each capture point until 1 team reaches 15,000 cumulative points, or the 20 minute time limit expires - Whichever one comes first. There are also perk machines which pop-up for activation at pre-determined locations and times in order to give the team that captures these a boost in either one of two forms - Points for kills, or capture multiplier - Which also changes the dynamic of points scoring.

It's a very straight forward concept, and is just any domination game mode in it's purest form at heart. The trophies are equally as straight forward, with 5 in total, including 4 of these which will be no problem as you make your way towards the biggest goal within this list. You'll get trophies along the way for capturing 50 objectives and activating those previously mentioned perk machines 10 times, amongst a couple of other naturally achievable tasks.

However, this pack stands out for 1 reason inparticular;

Stand Taken - Win 50 rounds of Last Stand

The "Stand Taken" trophy, awarded for winning 50 rounds of Last Stand, is very self-explanatory, but the challenges I've faced around this trophy aren't really geared towards the difficulty of the trophy itself, but more the user experience.

The Division throughout it's core identity is a PvE game, and Last Stand is the first time it provides players with a dose of PvP, and it's incredibly biased towards long standing players of the game. This is the primary challenge, though there are a couple of other nuances too, but this was the main one I struggled with on the whole.

Last Stand is not a competitively balanced game mode. Stronger players will always prevail, and are never handicapped for the sake of balance or giving new players a fair chance. The only remedy is to spend time levelling your character up and looting from Incursions or the Dark Zone in order to be able to compete with the stronger players in the game. The catch here is, this late in the games life cycle, I found myself massively behind everyone else, so 95% of the games I played in just ended up involving me running around getting killed by practically everyone, and I could serve no other purpose other than just being cannon fodder. You can impact the game in other ways, whether it be via capturing objective points or activating perk stations, but that's about as far as your contribution will go.

I was purely here to win 50 matches, grab the trophy and then leave this pack behind, so I had no intention of spending any time to endlessly grind my character out and get better equipment, just to purely perhaps have a slightly better gaming experience. 50 wins is alot for any game mode, but it felt longer than usual because I was having such a torrid time of it.

On top of this, the game has practically non-existent matchmaking. Teams will be mixed together in completely random scenarios, with no consideration taken towards balancing the overall strength of the lobby. The majority of the players who still play this game mode are all level 99, but you'll often see small groups of lower levels in any given lobby. They're just as likely to all be on the same team as they are mixed together, so not only does the game insist on bias towards strength of loadout, but it also doesn't seem to have sophisticated matchmaking ability. It's an awful blend for someone who is brand new and simply there for the trophies.

I understand that they were possibly lobbying for a PvP experience that rewarded those players who have committed their time to improving their characters and could test this out an in environment against like-minded individuals, and I don't necessarily have an issue with this because it isn't my goal to get better at the game. As someone whose sole intention was to accumulate enough wins to unlock a trophy, they just simply haven't catered to my audience here, and it just ends up being a lousy experience as a result.

Finally, just to add some context to the grind, matches have a time limit of 20 minutes, whereby at the point of expiration, the team with the most points will win. You're way more likely to see a team reach the 15,000 points threshold, and this typically happens within 15-20 minutes, so if we just take the conservative 15 minutes, and the required 50 wins, combining them together, we already have a 12 and a half hour experience.

You'll also need to account for two other things; The losses and the lobby waiting times. The losses are hard to calculate because the game doesn't track these for you, but I would estimate I probably operated at a Win/Loss ratio of around 1.00, which would double the experience to around 25 hours. Stick another 5 hours on top for the amount of time I spent waiting around in lobbies to jump into a free game because of how unpopulated the game mode is these days, and I think that's a fair, albeit loosely based, reflection.

This wasn't one of my favourite gaming ventures. I actually sort of hated it. It actually reminded me of my experience with the Resident Evil 6 - Survivors DLC, in the sense that, I felt completly helpless to be able to influence my progress within this DLC and had to rely on being carried by chance of being on the better side. I tried to do my bit where I could by being an objective-terrorist, but it all led to a very hollow feeling that just felt like a motions exercise.

I'm glad it's finally done, and I ultimately didn't want to a reach a point in time with this DLC where I was potentially struggling to get into lobbies because of the 16 person minimum requirement, so it made sense to get this one finished sooner, rather than later. There's absolutely no doubt we've stumbled over the line here, but we've got to the end, and that's all that matters.

DLC #144 - Call of Duty : Black Ops - Rezurrection Map Pack

Once I'd finally finished up the Annihilation Map Pack back in January 2021, I felt like I was practically over the hill and Black Ops was, at last, merely a formality - A judgement I don't think I could have gotten more wrong.

There haven't been many more games I have frequently had to re-visit as much as Black Ops 1, and the fact I still have an entire catalogue of DLC packs to go through with Black Ops 2 still fills me with dread. It's been a very mentally exhausting experience trying to finish this game to 100% completion, but we have finally managed to get there.

The Rezurrection Map Pack adds 6 new trophies to the Black Ops list, purely focused around the new Moon map, which adds a completely different dynamic to the zombies experience.

It has to be mentioned that I seriously dislike the Moon setting, and this was my least favourite DLC pack within Black Ops as a direct result.

I hate the way player movement is impacted by gravity because it makes it harder to fight and escape zombies. I hate the randomly spawning astronaut that grabs you and teleports you to another part of the map, detaching you from your squad. I hate the P.E.S system because you can't survive in certain areas of the map without making sure you're wearing one. I hate the launch-pads in the Biodome that will kill you if you don't land safely on the padded parts of the floor.

These mechanics have a direct impact on the difficulty of the trophies too, and they all offer perilous situations that cost me on numerous occasions when all I was trying to focus on was fulfilling the requirements of the trophies at hand. It becomes a real pain, and having to juggle these environmental challenges whilst going for a complete set of trophies at the same time is hard work.

The Easter Egg trophy is, thankfully, fairly forgiving this time round compared to the Annihilation Map Pack, and can actually also be done solo, though a team is always the recommended way to approach any Easter Egg trophy, in my opinion anyway.

The other trophies are fairly straight forward too, though a couple of the required tasks at hand will need you to accumulate a reasonable amount of points. The "Fully Armed and Operational" trophy requires you to Pack-A-Punch 3 weapons simultaneously, which will cost 5,000 points each, as well as obtaining the Mule Kick perk, allowing you to wield 3 weapons at once, which will cost an additional 4,000 points. The expenditure of the 3 weapons on top will mean you'll need in excess of around 20,000 points for this, so may need to progress fairly deep into a game to achieve it.

The same logic can be applied for the "Perks in Spaaaaaace!" trophy, which is awarded for purchasing every perk in one game, which will require a combination of 17,500 points across the 8 perks available throughout the map. It is possible to grab these within the same game, like I did, but you're probably better off separating them.

However, the overall difficulty of this DLC pack peaks specifically with one trophy;

Ground Control - In Moon, prevent each excavator from breaching the base in one game.

The "Ground Control" trophy, awarded for preventing each excavator from breaching the base in one game, requires you to stop the giant saw from penetrating 3 separate areas of the map within the same game, using the hacking tool in order to get back to the starting area and hack the relevant terminal to prevent the excavation process.

The 3 different areas are Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11 (which are both situated either side of the starting area) and Bio-dome, which is the large area found on the other side of the map. You're given advance warning at the start of the round via an announcement that excavation of one of these areas is to commence, from which point you have around 2-3 minutes to get back to the starting area with the hacking tool and hack the relevant terminal to cease the process. You'll receive a further warning at 60 and 30 seconds remaining, and if you don't make it back to the starting area in time to hack the terminal, the excavation process will occur and you'll fail this trophy.

There are 2 main things that complicate this trophy. The first one is the fact that the excavation announcement is not at set intervals, and the first one usually occurs anywhere between rounds 3-7 within my experience, and will follow a similar pattern thereafter, making it hard to predict how many rounds you're going to need to playthrough in order to be able to prevent excavation for the 3 different areas.

The second complication is that you're not guaranteed to be given the chance to excavate all 3 areas within the first 3 announcements, and there could be duplication along the way where you've already prevented excavation of one area that pops up again within a latter round where you're left still waiting for the first call of another area, which prolongs the amount of waves you have to attempt to stay alive for. This is definitely the bigger issue of the 2, though it does help ever so slightly that you do not need to prevent excavation for the same area more than once in a game, and therefore can afford to allow the breach to occur in any given area you may have already prevented once prior.

For a bit of context, in my eventually successful run, I managed to finally excavate all 3 different areas at wave 24 after a pattern that went as follows; Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11, Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11 and then Bio-dome, meaning I had a call to excavate both tunnels before even getting a first call for a warning breach of the Bio-dome, and this was a common theme within this trophy. 

By the time you start to reach the latter teens upwards, things begin to start getting hectic, and there were a handful of occasions I was attempting the trophy where we got so deep into the rounds, we eventually got overwhelmed and lost the game by just waiting on the final area we needed excavation for, which was a huge frustration. This was combined with the game mechanics I have mentioned above also contributing to the experience. Imagine trying to scramble back to the starting area with the hacker, which requires you to abandon the P.E.S, so not only am I gradually losing oxygen and dying, I'm trying to dodge hordes or zombies with zero gravity movement as well as an NPC astronaut attempting to grab me. The further you get into the game with duplication of areas, the tougher it'll get, but even if you're lucky, you're probably looking towards the late teen rounds at the very minimum, so skill does play a fairly large part in obtaining these trophies because you'll need to prove you can advance this game mode.

I did thankfully have 2 very good players to help me through, and whilst you can do this trophy solo, I would recommend some competent players to help out if you can find them. It will significantly increase your chances of success if you're running these latter rounds with a good team by your side who can focus on clearing the hordes whilst you look after the excavation process whenever required to. It is possible solo, but I just don't think I'm at that level of being good enough to reach round 24 on my own.

This is the toughest trophy within the entire Blacks Ops DLC set, which subsequently makes this the toughest pack. I have no idea how many attempts this took me, due to the fact I've dipped in and out of Black Ops over the years so often, and it is incredibly demotivating to get close, battle so hard through so many rounds, and yet still fail - Which is mostly the reason I've always been in and out with this game, and that goes for ventures within some of the other DLC packs here too.

This is ultimately a strong 100% completion to have as part of the collection. Not only a challenging set of DLC lists, courtesy of a change in direction to the zombies mode trophies in comparison to their debut in World at War, but it's important to acknowledge the challenge that zombies also bought to this games main list before we got even more of it here for Blacks Op 1. More to follow for Blacks Ops 2...

DLC #143 - Dishonored - The Brigmore Witches

The final venture into Dishonored comes in the form The Brigmore Witches DLC - The second half of the two-part story-driven offering within this set of trophies.

The finale of the Knife of Dunwall DLC ended with the revelation that "Delilah", the figure Daud was to seek on behalf of the Outsider, is a leader of a cult of witches, and her main driver was to use witchcraft in order to possess Emily Kaldwin, and use this possession in order to become the heir to the throne after Daud had executed Jessamine Kaldwin.

It does a nice job of tying things together and making sense of the more expansive background story they have chosen to given Daud within these 2 DLC packs.

Due to the fact this is a direct carry on from the first DLC, there isn't anything to mention that's new or stand-out. The concept works exactly the same, with 3 new missions to complete in various ways, using the same powers and weaponry you already had at your disposal. 

The 10 trophies also follow the same blueprint, so expect a similar experience in practically every sense, though there are a couple of subtle differences within the trophies here that are certainly important to point out.

As with Knife of Dunwall, there is a requirement to complete the DLC twice courtesy of trophies awarded for completing all 3 chapters, and consequently concluding the story, in both low and high chaos, along with a necessity to complete a full playthrough of the DLC without alerting or killing anybody too. As before, this is best played in tandem with the low chaos playthrough, which is recommended as the second run (even though it didn't quite go to plan for myself).

All very straight-forward, however the subtle differences mentioned above to the trophy list here are certainly worth noting;

Enough Coin to Disappear - You survived the Brigmore Witches in low chaos with 10,000 coins

The "Enough Coin to Disappear" trophy, awarded for surviving the Brigmore Witches in low chaos with 10,000 coins is actually a continuation trophy designed to be earned across both playthroughs of the 2 story-driven DLC packs. It requires you to reach the end of Daud's story with both the requirements of finishing it in low chaos, but also having collected 10,000 coins out of all the available loot across all chapters within both halves of the story.

As standard practice goes for most trophy hunters, researching your trophy lists will allow you to scope the requirements of this trophy out early, but there are important things to note here;

Firstly, you still need to make sure you're fulfilling this requirement on your low chaos run, which naturally means you'll also be trying to beat the DLC without being spotted, and also without killing someone, so it quickly becomes a bit of a juggling act to keep on top of everything at once.

The Brigmore Witches DLC has around 7,000 (not exact) coins on offer, which brings us to the second important point to note. You'll need around 3,000 coins carried over from the Knife of Dunwall DLC, using that save to ensure you start the Brigmore Witches with enough coin to reach 10,000 - This is exactly where the benefits of researching your trophy lists ahead of time really come to the fore.

It's also worth noting that you cannot really afford to spend money on weapons, equipment, upgrades or favours, which are tempted at you by the game at the beginning of each of the 3 chapters, as this will eat into your current cumulative total. If you're pursuing a low chaos run, mostly weapons and equipment are surplus to requirements anyway, but it's good practice to avoid the purchase menu altogether.

It didn't really catch me out much, but it did add an extra dimension to how I approached the low chaos run knowing I had to go round gathering coin whilst already trying to be stealthy for the trophies awarded for finishing the DLC without alerting or killing anyone. Save often is the best advice I can give.

Just on a final general note, I somewhat stumbled through this pack in comparison to the Knife of Dunwall, which I managed to complete exactly to plan.

I completed my first run of this DLC in order to obtain the high chaos trophy, however, after completing the first mission in low chaos, and the final 2 missions in high chaos, I still got awarded the low chaos ending. For whatever reason, the game calculated that this equated to low chaos overall, so I had to repeat it a second time for the no alert, no kill and 10,000 coin run, which I managed to do successfully.

I then went in for a third run to order to get the high chaos trophy, attempting to bypass everything but chuck a few kills in to make sure I was finishing the level with high chaos, which worked for the first 2 chapters. I then scored low chaos on the final chapter, to then be awarded a low chaos rating overall. I couldn't make any sense of this at all as I prepared for a fourth run, extremely sick of Dishonored by this stage.

I made a point to kill everything that stood in my way on a last run, and finally managed to complete this DLC pack across 4 playthroughs, when in reality, it should have been done in 2.

But done it is, and that adds another full completion to the trophy collection. I will still maintain the Dunwall City Trials were the peak of this entire journey, and after pre-emptively assuming these final 2 pieces of story-driven DLC would go down without a hitch, in typical fashion, it didn't quite go to that exact plan, though it still wasn't too bad in the end.

In normal circumstances, you can probably expect to spend another 8-10 hours on a list that is practically the same as the previous DLC pack, but factor that in as more like 12-14 for my chaos-based mishaps along the way via slightly butchered methodology on the way to the overall end-goal.