Saturday, 18 February 2023

Platinum #119 - Metro : Last Light Redux

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Generally speaking, I don't mind vast crossover between games born from the same series when it comes to their respective trophy lists.

There has to be a certain level of expectation that ideas will carry over, and the scope for creativity is somewhat limited as a consequence of this - and this is something I am OK with.

However, I really dislike it when certain ideas return where I feel like they don't really compliment the experience for the average trophy hunter, and sadly, I think you see this here with Metro : Last Light. I'll explain more soon.

Despite Metro 2033 offering 2 different story endings to the player, based on the games moral system, the story for Metro : Last Light picks up under the premise that the missiles were ultimately called down upon the Dark Ones in order to wipe them out as a threat to humanity.

It's reported back that a sole surviving Dark One escaped the blast, and there is an order for Artyom from Captain Miller to hunt down and kill the remaining creature in order to be sure the entire threat has been eliminated, as was the original mission in Metro 2033. Khan, who returns as an ally to Artyom from Metro 2033, convinces Artyom that the Dark One can help them as a key to preserving the future of humanity. The Dark One is found almost immediately, but both Artyom and the Dark One are captured by the Nazi Reich and suddenly have to find a way to escape from their clutches.

This suddenly turns the plot on it's head, as the mission quickly becomes about stopping the Nazi Reich, whose plan is to take control of D6, and use it to control the fate of humanity by getting hold of the nuclear explosives being held within.

I wasn't huge on Metro 2033, levelling a few criticisms towards bland gameplay, an uninspiring range of weapons and poor enemy AI, and in all honestly, I don't think Last Light does anything to really address any of that. The game also still takes place in Moscow, so even the environmental settings are exactly the same underground metros and overground warn-torn cities of rubble that still existed in the previous game, so even that feels too similar to the point where you just feel like you're playing the same game again for the most part.

Even the unique gameplay elements from Metro 2033, which I liked, have now just returned here, such as using air filters when navigating through areas above ground. Seeing these just return with no expansion to them merely adds to the lack freshness as a result, and there isn't really anything new to talk about that's been introduced as part of this package to make it feel like an upgrade on the original game.

This theme of repetition continues deep into the trophy list, which isn't exactly a million miles away from being practically identical to Metro 2033, with alot of the same gameplay options and features returning for Metro : Last Light. The Moral points system is back, as are the Survivor and Spartan game modes, all of which are heavily integrated into the trophy list once again.

The "Redemption" trophy, awarded for Saving D6, is the exact equivalent trophy to the "Enlightened" trophy from Metro 2033, and requires you to achieve enough positive moral points throughout the game in order to trigger the good ending.

The moral system works exactly the same way as it did in Metro 2033. You go through the game performing certain actions in order to fulfil the requirements of this trophy by executing enough positive actions, as well as avoiding negative actions that could potentially impact the outcome of the game, and thus, the awarding of the trophy.

The system itself is still extremely mysterious, which was definitely something the game could have improved upon, and whilst I appreciate there is a sense of deliberate design to it being this way, where they're potentially looking to see more organic gameplay develop without players being guided by a very obvious moral system that gives you choices, it's a real pain for trophy hunters. There's still no tangible indication of how many moral points you need to acquire in order to trigger the good ending and there's still no introduction/explanation to the system and the influence it has on the outcome of the game. It just sort of sits there for the player to work out, though every time you perform a positive moral action, the game will give an audio/visual prompt, so there is at least something that indicates to the player they're on the right tracks this time.

I feel like the fact you have to bring up a guide in order to make sure you fulfil as many positive actions as possible, and avoid the negative ones, really breaks up the immersion of the game itself - having to stop and sense check every 5 seconds throughout the entire game, primarily focusing on not missing anything important for practically every step of the way isn't the right way to engage the player.

You should have no problems triggering the good ending, and earning the trophy as a consequence, but you will need to make sure you're following a guide and there is a theory that some critical plot points that award trophies also do potentially offer so many negative moral points, they automatically award the bad ending, regardless of how many positive moral actions you may have earned beforehand. I don't know how true this is, as I played it fairly safe and grabbed these either on the bad ending play or just through chapter select afterwards, so it's always better to go for the safer option, especially when you can still grab any outstanding trophies from the chapter select menus anyway.

The fact you need to witness both the good and bad endings again also still means there is a minimum of 2 Playthroughs required for the Platinum trophy, with the "C'est La Vie" trophy, awarded for Destroying D6. In the bad ending, Artyom will reach D6 and fight off the Nazi Reich in order to complete a suicide mission in blowing up D6 and, in turn, stopping the Reich gaining control of the facility themselves. In the good ending, Artyom will attempt to carry out the exact same steps, but will be stopped by the sole surviving Dark One, who will disrupt the detonation and wipe out the Nazi Reich with the help of a group of Dark Ones who were hibernating within D6 all along. As was the case in Metro 2033, the default ending is more likely to be the bad one, which makes this trophy slightly easier to obtain, as it will probably be the one most people earn more naturally.

A full Playthrough of the game is roughly timed at the same length as the previous game, at around 8-10 hours per Playthrough. The difficulty levels are also exactly the same, with options to play on Normal, Hardcore, Ranger and Ranger Hardcore difficulties. Due to the fact the trophy list does, yet again, not impose any difficulty related trophies on the player, I opted to play this game entirely on Normal difficulty and providing you tandem the Survivor and Spartan modes to correspond to earning both the good and bad ending, you can limit this entire list down to 2 Playthroughs.

As before, Survivor and Spartan modes both give their own unique ways to play through the game, but on the lowest difficulty mode, they don't really prove to be a challenge in any way, and path of least resistance was also chosen for this title as it was in Metro 2033.

The big difference within this trophy list in comparison to it's predecessor, is the fact that there are 9 trophies dedicated to a variety of DLC levels. These were included as DLC add-on trophies in the Playstation 3 version of this title, and as part of the PS4 Redux, are bundled into the main trophy list, therefore counting towards the Platinum trophy.

Most of these are fairly standard packages you can just naturally check off, but the "Test Complete" trophy, awarded for Completing the Tower level is a fairly sudden difficulty spike. In this level, you need to progress through a number of arenas in a horde-like setting, beating waves of enemies until you reach the end of the level. There are 5 in total, and you'll unlock a better range of weapons as you go through each stage. The issue is, the enemies also get stronger, and the clunky combat of Metro : Last Light doesn't really lend itself well to these horde-type game modes. It's hard to escape combat when you're close to death, so you need to keep enemies at arms length, and this is a challenge once you begin fighting waves of Nosalis that can reach you quickly and overwhelm as a consequence.

It took me about 4-5 hours to beat this mode, which is a long time given the fact the total amount for everything else, including 2 full Playthroughs of the story, was around 15-20 hours. Managing your arsenal is the best way to beat it, and once I figured out the best combination of weapons to take into each arena, I did manage to find a way that worked and allowed me to progress, but did this require alot of trial and error.

I would go as far to suggest that this is also the hardest trophy in the list - The "Redemption" trophy isn't exactly hard, it's just an inconvenient way of playing the game that makes it less immersive and requires you to focus on minute details instead. It's just annoying, in all honesty, and it was disappointing to see it return from Metro 2033 as part of the trophy list integration. Beating the Tower level for this trophy was the only real time in this game you felt like you were being genuinely tested by something that wasn't just your own patience.

Other similarities that still exist in the rest of the list include collecting 43 entries of Arytom's diary, beating specific chapters under requirements involving no kills and achieving a certain number of kills in specific ways, though this is nowhere near as heavy as it was in Metro 2033, and has been substituted by the inclusion of the all the DLC content which now forms part of the main list.

Unsurprisingly, the Platinum difficulty rating sits in roughly the same ballpark as it did for Metro 2033. There is around 80% crossover in both lists, with the only real significant difference being down to the fact around a fifth of this list accommodates the DLC that was bought forward from the PS3 version of the game. The moral system is back, Survivor and Spartan modes are back, the same choices on difficulty levels are back and most of the miscellenous trophies that fit around all the aforementioned are back too. Metro : Last Light gets an extra mark purely for the Tower DLC content causing me some unexpected issues during the end-game where I was expecting to just go through some casual mopping up, but on the whole, this is another easy one from the Metro collection to bag, and should clock in at around the 25 hour mark in total.

Notable Trophies -

Redemption - Save D6
Test Complete - Complete the TOWER level

Hardest Trophy -



Test Complete
Complete the TOWER level


Wednesday, 8 February 2023

DLC #157 - Rocket League - Chaos Run

It's been almost 3 years since a Rocket League update, which is perhaps surprising, given how easy some of these DLC packs are to finish.

No good excuse for not getting round to them, but we now have 3 out of the 9 DLC packs fully complete with the latest completion of the Chaos Run DLC pack.

In a fairly minimalist content update, this package merely adds a large handful of car customisation items, including 2 new car models called Ripper and Grog. The package also makes the addition of the new Wasteland arena, which is a fairly standard Soccar pitch playable in most rotations.

The 5 new trophies do focus on the content within this specific update, requiring you to jump in and take a total of 50 shots on goal in any mode with Merc, Grog or Ripper, as well as score a total of 20 goals across 2 trophies with any one of 6 car models.

You can also grab another trophy for destroying 3 bots in the new Wasteland arena and there's also an easy Gold trophy up for grabs for winning an online 4 v 4 game with the new Flamethrower Booster equipped.

The 20 goals spanning over 2 of these trophies have to be scored against bots, which is easy to farm out within any 1 v 1 setting through Exhibition mode, and the 50 shots on goal will nicely compliment progress towards the "Rocket Repleter" trophy from the AquaDome DLC set. This is probably also best done via Exhibition mode too, and the total package should take no longer than a few hours.

Wednesday, 1 February 2023

Platinum #118 - Dead Island : Riptide

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

When I reviewed Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record not too long ago, I questioned which part of me felt like it was a good idea to go straight back in and play a game that felt exactly like the previous one I'd just played, and upon completing Dead Island : Riptide, successor to the Playstation 3 title, Dead Island, I'm here asking myself the same question again.

In defence of Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record, it didn't ever claim to be a true sequel, hence the remaining use of the number "2" with an extended tagline in the title, rather than actually calling itself Dead Rising 3. It was the same game with an alternative plot that ran in parallel to Dead Rising 2, so it at least made sense.

Despite being taglined, rather than numbered, Dead Island : Riptide is a direct plot continuation of the ending of Dead Island, which is good enough reason to consider it a sequel in my eyes. However, Dead Island 2 would subsequently be announced for the pipeline at a later date anyway, so who knows what the rules are?

My main point is, Dead Island : Riptide, doesn't feel like a sequel. It doesn't feel like a new game with fresh ideas or differences. If I began to list the changes that I felt were worth mentioning, I wouldn't even fill out this paragraph. Is that a criticism? Probably. I just felt like I was playing through Dead Island all over again though.

The combat is exactly the same melee-heavy, dull, clunky attack system present in Dead Island. Swinging and missing with no rhyme or reason is frustrating and the stamina system sucks the fun out of combat because once you get into the rare occasion of hacking zombies down with consistency and not being stifled by the inaccuracies of the combat system, you'll be forced to take a break for a few moments whilst your stamina bar regenerates itself anyway.

Quests are just a seemingly never-ending loop of fetch tasks, exploiting a painfully obvious lack of creativity, character dialogue is still delivered with a severe lack of quality and the "story" is garbage. The game is better in co-op, which you'll need to do as per the requirements of the trophy list, but the biggest gripes with this game will still exist - you'll just have a few people to discuss how bad they are with, as opposed to just telling yourself in your head.

Regardless, Dead Island : Riptide begins at the end of Dead Island, where your safe evacuation off the island of Banoi is promptly interrupted by an attempted arrest by Australian police forces on the getaway ship. After being sedated, you're awoken to the ship being run amock and all hell breaking loose, an outbreak presumably started by one of the survivors visibly biting a soldier during the arrest cutscene. The ship ends up washed ashore on the island of Palanai after crashing into a rock amidst the chaos, where the infection from Banoi island has already apparently spread into. All of a sudden, we're back at square one where you're taken on a journey to find your way off the island of Palanai.

The trophy list is medium in size, coming in at a reduced volume of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, down 13 trophies from Dead Island's 49. I think it's a slightly less creative list on the whole, with a touch of crossover to the original, but with a bigger emphasis on story progression, and lower emphasis on the Co-op elements of the game.

Across the game's roughly 6-8 hour Story, there are 11 trophies awarded for simply progressing through to the end of the main story arc and completing the main game. This equates to almost a third of the entire list - A big change in direction from Dead Island, whose progression trophies only went as far as beating specific acts within the game.

There isn't any requirement to play through the game on a specific difficulty level, and you're also given the option to import your character across, which will allow you to start from whichever level you reached at the end of your time with Dead Island  - A Level 50 Sam B in my case. This turns out to be an extremely useful headstart for a returning trophy.

The "Obtain Level 70" trophy, awarded for Obtaining level 70, requires the player to amass a gargantuan 23,396,500 experience points. The import character option does make an instant dent in this, which is where the feature comes in most useful. However, this will only get you so far, and you'll need to rely on other methods to achieve this trophy.

You'll earn experience points for fairly standard actions, including completing quests, defeating enemies and completing in-game challenges, but the total amount of experience required for this trophy means you're just not going to get through all this in a single playthrough of the game, even if you choose to import a fairly high level character like I did. Amongst the variation of quests you can complete, there are a series of ongoing side quests where you have to retrieve specific items for certain characters, of which you can infinitely turn these items in, in exchange for experience points.

These quests allow you to take advantage of a duplication glitch, whereby you can drop a series of items on the floor, kill yourself and before you load back into your last checkpoint, you can interrupt the process and reload in manually. This action will restore your inventory to it's previous state, but more importantly, allows you to still pick up the items you previously dropped. Rinse and repeat this process for the relevant item to turn as many in for quest experience as you need to. It's a great tactic that will spare you a full second playthrough of the game, which is something I really didn't want to have to do - This game was barely worth 30 hours of my time, let alone 60. Once I'd beaten everything the trophy list had required of me, I was still only level 62, and even though duplicating these items on repeat was a chore in itself, it was a much better alternative than facing the prospect of a second playthrough.

The "Dream Team" trophy, awarded for Completing all the main quests co-operatively with any number of partners, ensures the co-op element of this game becomes a mandatory part of the trophy list, and you'll need to beat all 28 main story quests with at least one other person.

There is some generous flexibility here. You don't need to use the same partner(s) throughout, it doesn't matter who the game host is, which allows you to freely jump into other players sessions if you find it difficult to get people to join yours, and the quests don't need to be completed in sequential order, which is handy for instances where the only players available are those at different chapters to you.

I had already completed 22/28 quests with a previous mate I originally played this game with, but it was tough to find other players at this point in the games cycle, and I had to accept in a few instances that I would have to jump backwards and beat some quests I'd already beaten to assist somebody else in reaching the same point in the story as me and continuing on through there, which meant a little bit of re-treading old ground on a couple of occasions, but something I had to resort to due to the baron nature of co-operative availability.

I also can't confirm this for sure, but it seems as though joining someone else's session whilst they're part way through a quest doesn't count for trophy progress either. I think you need multiple players present at the beginning of the quest for progress to count, which is a bit frustrating because the only way to make sure this doesn't occur is to have full control of the game as session host - However, it is easier to join onto other players and there's a strong chance they'll already be part way through a mission when you join them. In most of these challenging scenarios, it's just easier to set yourself back and play-through to the point you were at yourself and help somebody else progress.

Finally, the "Hoarder" trophy, awarded for Finding all collectibles, requires you to collect all 61 different items scattered throughout the game.

As far as collectibles go, this isn't actually one of the worst collectible journeys out there, however, it is prone to being glitched, whereby you'll finish on 60/61 collectibles and the game won't recognise that you have picked one of them up. This happened to me and cost me an extra 2-3 hours of gametime to figure out which collectible I was missing - An apt way to finish off an experience that was generally fairly underwhelming.

The most effective way to solve it is to start a New Game+ with a new character and choose to load in at Chapter 12, which will open up the entire map, but respawn everything, including the collectibles. The rest is just a trial and error task of re-collecting them until the solitary collectible you were missing pops the trophy. I already had the individual trophies for collecting all voice recordings and secret files, so I figured those weren't the issue, which narrowed the field slightly, but it was still a postcard that I was missing, and typically, was one of the last few remaining items I had to collect to trigger the trophy.

I managed to earn the Platinum trophy in just under 32 hours. This included a fully complete 29 hour save file, and an extra 2 and a half hours for a new game purely to go through the collectibles for the sole remaining glitched trophy.

The story is very short, clocking in at roughly 6-8 hours, and everything else fits around this as you go through the game. The majority of the rest of your time will be spent completing every single quest in the game for the "Achiever" trophy, which totals to 80, including the 28 main story quests. If you manage to make sure your intent is to play-through this game in Co-op from the very beginning, you'll avoid having to go through the story twice, providing that you also take advantage of the duplication glitch explained above in order to make sure you can reach level 70 in the same playthrough, and further negate the necessity to have to start a new game purely for the purpose of levelling up.

The game itself seldom poses a challenge, and the only consequences of death are losing a bit of money and restarting at a checkpoint that's never really any further than a few steps back from where you died. There are no difficulty sensitive trophies either, leaving you to play the game to whatever leisurely extent you wish. 

Notable Trophies -

Obtain Level 70 - Obtain Level 70
Dream Team - Complete all the main questions cooperatively with any number of partners
The Hoarder - Find all collectibles



Obtain Level 70                                                                                    Obtain Level 70