Platinum #148 - Tales from the Borderlands

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 1/10

I have sometimes wondered what the easiest Platinum trophy in the Playstation catalogue might look like.

A couple of games in the collection have flirted with such an accolade, but have usually be spared by at least something of note that prevented it from hitting the very bottom of the difficulty scale.

In what should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, the answer lies within an episodic, interactive choice-based story spin-off from the Borderlands series.

Set somewhere among the aftermath of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, Tales from the Borderlands follows the story of tandem duo Rhys and Fiona. Rhys - a Hyperion employee and Fiona - a professional con artist, unexpectedly team up after a deal involving a monetary exchange for a faked Vault Key goes wrong and leads them to go in search of a real vault containing real riches.

It maintains alot of the key story-based values you expect from a typical Borderlands title. It's still got it's comedic edge, a dirge of wacky and wonderful characters - Many of whom are returning from the first 3 Borderlands games - and it's all tied together with some excellent dialogue and interactions between them all.

It should go without saying, but it's perhaps worth mentioning that, despite the above similarities, the core experience is completely different to what you're used to. The high octane combat and thoroughly detailed RPG system takes a back seat to make way for a story-driven experience requiring tentative button inputs to keep you engrossed in the lore, with regular intervention for dialogue options and button mashing sequences.

The game is also accompanied by a banging soundtrack that compliments the intros/outros to each chapter, which is definitely something I didn't expect.

I did have a major gripe with the game though. It does a good job of trying to build up the drama around the choices the player makes throughout the game and make them seem like they'll matter to a much grander scale later, only for this to not really be the case in the end.

In the interest of maintaining as much of a spoiler-free stance as possible - though I will slightly give it away to just summarise my point - the part of the game in Chapter 5 where it becomes apparent your decisions impact on the story relate to something completely immaterial to any sort of story outcome, and instead ends up being much more meaningless than that. It's hard to not be too vague, but you'll understand what I mean when you see it. I'd built this up in my own head to be a grand finale where your decisions may impact critical moments of life and death, or significant actions that dramatically change the plot or the ending - But it's nowhere near any of this sort of stuff, and that detracts from the experience for me when it comes to games like this where the player is given the choice to influence the course of the game. The climax needs to be hard-hitting and significant to the ending.

The dialogue prompts pop up very regularly too, so the game gives you the impression every choice matters and a big path is being woven in the background to come to a specific outcome tailored to your choices. If the idea behind the very regular interaction is to just ensure players stay engaged, then that's fine, but I do also feel like there has to be more to it than what this game gives you in the end. Ultimately, did the game make me care enough about who I could and couldn't take into my vault hunter group for the grand finale? Not at all.

Regarding trophies, this is medium-sized list, with a total of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, and it's an incredibly easy list to break down and go through.

The structure of the game is broken up into 5 individual episodes, with each individual episode consisting of 6 chapters. It's not clear when a chapter begins and ends other than the fact it'll just trigger a trophy notification, and the menus only allow you to begin a specific episode from the very start, so there's no further breakdown of chapters that allow you to replay certain portions of the game from the main menu.

The "Tales Twice Told" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 5, is awarded upon conclusion of the story. Naturally, you'll start with Episode 1 and work your way through, playing the game exactly like you would in it's natural storytelling flow. You don't necessarily have to do it this way - All episodes are available to play fresh out of the gate and there's no pre-requisite to unlock each episode in conjunction with passing through the episode prior, but it wouldn't exactly make much sense to do it out of kilter anyway would it?

Admittedly, I don't have much experience with games of this variety, but it did remind me of Heavy Rain. This differs in the sense that all the decisions you make are relatively consequence-free. In Heavy Rain, every choice, decision or action you made carried significance to the shape of the plot. Characters could die based on your choices and the path of the plot could dramatically change, throwing up a variety of different gameplay paths and endings. That's what gave it the edge of difficulty it had, and Tales from the Borderlands lacks the same sort of depth in comparison. The interaction here feels completely token and does not have the same weight on your shoulders that Heavy Rain gave you when it came to making decisions.

Heavy Rain also contained intense quick time events and fumbling inputs or missing prompts could have dire consequential outcomes which impacted the rest of the game, especially if you were going for trophies that meant you had to achieve specific endings. Tales of the Borderlands is way more forgiving to almost an infinite degree. You can technically fail. I saw a "game over" screen a couple of times due to dropped or no inputs that caused the death of a key character, but all you'd be prompted to do was reload the last checkpoint and you were free to resume from where you left off. This lack of jeopardy makes it incredibly easy and feels like you're always just going through motions. In effect, you can't really lose or fail.

Each episode clocks in at roughly anywhere between 1 and a half to 2 hours in length, totalling a 10-12 hour experience for all 5 episodes. I didn't binge it all in a couple of sessions, and committed to an episode roughly every 3 days, to ensure the story remained fresh in my mind.

Each episode comes with 7 trophies, with a trophy individually dedicated to each chapter within an episode, and capped off with an overall completion trophy to sign off the ending. Rinse and repeat this format across all 5 chapters and that's how you end up with 36 trophies when you include the Platinum.

It's that straight-forward, there's really not much else to say. I almost wanted to qualify this game for an "N/A" in terms of overall difficulty rating but just for the benefit of consistency in attributing a mark to every game I've ever completed, it just about makes it onto the scale, but even that's incredibly generous in itself. There is certainly justification for why this game shouldn't even be attributed a score and I wouldn't argue against that at all.

You can still see a "Game Over" screen if you don't react quickly enough to certain button prompts that otherwise result in death, but that's about as far as I can stretch the logic, and I'm doing alot of heavy lifting to come up with something there.

However, after the struggles I was put through by Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, the change of pace was welcome and it was refreshing to just sit back and take something in for what it was for a change. I didn't think it hit the right spot purely for it's superficial outcomes and lack of genuine weight the users choices ultimately have, but it's an easy Platinum trophy, and if you're after something a little bit different, it gives you that.

Notable Trophies -

Tales Twice Told - Completed Episode 5

Hardest Trophy -

Tales Twice Told

Completed Episode 5

DLC #212 - Grid Legends - Enduring Spirit

Endurance Racing. It's the sub-genre marmite of the racing world. I've never been a fan personally. Grid itself did enough to put me off the idea of such highly-focused concentration levels of racing with the "Around the Globe" trophy nonsense.

Despite the label, it's a lot lighter touch than you'd rightfully think though - to the point where you can potentially argue that it's masquerading.

The Enduring Spirit is meant to be all about the Endurance discipline, and whilst the undertones are there, the theme is left mostly wanting, and you end up with a fairly generic piece of DLC as a consequence.

Aside from the newly added Endurance discipline, the package finally adds a brand new location with track variants - The Fuji Speedway - as well as 4 new vehicles in the Bentley Speed 8, BMW V12 LMR, Bentley Continental and the Mazda Autozam AZ-1. It's about time we saw an actual new location with a load of track variants.

It's important to note that Endurance racing has featured in previous Grid titles, but it's approached much differently this time round.

Previously, physical tyre wear would determine the distance you were capable of covering in Endurance races, and the race would end at full degradation of your tyres to the point where they'd disintegrate and make your car incapable of travelling any further. It was a slightly odd mechanic, but it's how the game distinguished Endurance racing from your regular circuit race.

Enduring Spirit strips that back entirely and the field of cars is split into multiple classes where you simply cover as much distance as possible within a set time limit. You're only up against your specific car class so it effectively feels like there are multiple races ongoing simultaneously. The times for Endurance racing can range from as little as 5 minutes up to an hour and the race ends once the car in first place overall crosses the finish line once the allotted time limit has passed.

As before, there are 10 new trophies added to the total list, with a varied spread of tasks required to unlock them all.

Starting with the new Endurance story mode branch, which adds 8 new events to the ongoing story mode, where you can unlock 3 progression-based trophies for passing the requirements of all 8 events. Remember to select one of the 3 new sponsor objectives to instantly begin progressing the 3 trophies on offer for completing the sponsor events for Accuse, Avanzar and Bellezza respectively. If you choose Accuse before you start the story, you'll almost have the requirements completed to unlock this sponsor event by the time you reach the end. Handy tip.

The story events are still fairly straight forward, courtesy of their low-bar requirements to pass each event and progress onto the next, and when I said above the package feels like it's masquerading on the Endurance gimmick, the story mode is a great example of that.

Only 3 of the 8 events are actually Endurance races. The rest are just standard circuit races with vehicles already available within the base game lineup. It's a little bit strange to have a themed piece of DLC where you end up thrashing stadium trucks and electric cars around a circuit instead. Even stranger when you remember that Classic Car-Nage was all-in on it's story mode and dedicated every event to it's theme. I can only think that they didn't want to be too heavy on the Endurance theme knowing how time-consuming this could be, and were effectively too scared to fully commit to it.

Speaking of absent, the corny cinematics are also dropped. You see an opening trailer introducing Endurance to the room, absolutely nothing in between the first to last event, and then a very brief closing outro to wrap it all up. It's almost like they started the idea with intent and just gave up halfway through and duct-taped the rest of the package together.

Either way, the story events should take no longer than a couple of hours to beat. Despite the lack of Endurance events, the 3 they do offer are all 10 minutes a piece, and the rest will occupy the remaining time to completion. The only event you're required to win to pass is the final one.

The trophy clean up post-story does at least still lean into the Endurance theme. You'll need to complete two 15 minute Endurance races for another trophy, and you'll also need to win an Endurance race on Mount Panorama in the Bentley Continental GT3. The 3 trophies linked to the aforementioned sponsor objectives all contain requirements linked to Endurance, though these are much more reigned in for grindy-ness than they have when previously featured, so they're not too demanding. There are also opportunities to combine the requirements for multiple trophies and progress towards earning them in tandem.

The post-story is where you'll spend most of the time with this package in the end. Clocking in at around 6-8 hours, it's a fairly simple route to completion, though the naturally more long-winded nature of Endurance races does somewhat extend this time estimation.

DLC #211 - Dirt Rally 2.0 - Season One

Cruising straight from the Platinum trophy and into the first dose of seasonal DLC drip-fed throughout the game's life cycle.

Dirt Rally 2.0 was supported by a host of post-game content gradually fed into the game on a bi-weekly basis for a set period of time, with each overall batch of content referred to as a "Season" - So here we are with Season One.

Season One adds Monte Carlo, Germany and Sweden Rally locations into the game, as well as the Citroen C4, Skoda Fabia, BMW M1 Pro Car, Ford Focus RS and Subaru Impreza vehicle options.

Alot of the content released across the seasonal packs has been carried over from the original Dirt Rally lineup, which is a little bit cheeky given the fact this is arguably heavily recycled content just locked behind a paywall. The successor of a game that you already purchased is effectively charging you to have it present as playable content in the sequel.

Either way, it does also add 4 trophies to the overall list, and this is one of the easier packs to complete.

Earning a podium finish in the Citroen C4, completing a stage at Monte Carlo and completing any event in the BMW M1 Pro Car all grant individual trophies and can be comfortably earned within 30 minutes of active play. You won't even need to purchase the vehicles with credits, as they'll be readily available to race upon purchasing the Season One content.

The "Rock 'n' Roll" trophy, awarded for Driving 66 km at Monte Carlo in the DS 21 is a little bit more time consuming. I set up 10 stages of a custom Championship to reach the total mileage accumulation required to unlock this trophy and managed to earn it at the end of the 9th stage. This took around an hour or so of casual driving.

You only need to use 3 different vehicles across just the Monte Carlo stage, and you can comfortably unlock all 4 trophies in well under 2 hours. There is even potential to mix and match some of these trophies to make it an even quicker completion should you so desire.

DLC #210 - Resident Evil 2 - The Ghost Survivors

I had a suspicion that the 4th Survivor sampler was a sign of things to come. More so in hope, rather than expectation, but I was clinging onto the faint possibility that we were going to get a dosage of mini short stories based on the fates of ancillary characters around the Resident Evil 2 plot.

Some people may argue that to be partly true. The Ghost Survivors relate to a series of lore-based scenarios that briefly tell the individual tales of peril of a group of people in desperate situations they need to escape from within Raccoon City.

However, what follows is a quartet of repetitive gauntlet-esque levels which recycle many elements of the main game into a collection of speedrun exercises designed to see how quickly you can reach the end location and navigate the various obstacles in your path along the way. 

The concept is simply to get from point A to point B with a very limited inventory whilst evading hordes of zombies on your way to the escape point. It's exactly the same as the 4th Survivor scenario from the main game, replicated with a cast of new characters and a few gameplay tweaks to the existing formula. 

You have a couple of options to assist your route along the way. Certain enemies will carry backpacks which drop loot to stock up your inventory and you'll also pass by item dispensers. These give you 3 options for improving your inventory, but the catch is that you can only choose 1 of these items to carry forward with you. Do you take the new weapon or the ammunition for the one you already have? It adds a layer of strategic thinking to the game.

Truthfully, I wasn't big on this piece of DLC. The escape routes see you track back through the exact same areas in the main game, and whilst you could argue this makes sense for the reasons of continuity, it still feels a bit stale. It's important to remember that this is a game that required 5/6 playthroughs for the Platinum trophy. The last thing I wanted to see again was recycled scenery. Weapons and items are exactly the same, as are the majority of the enemies you'll encounter. There are a couple of new enemies with new traits, but this just seems like a token gesture to the necessity of making the content seem fresh. I would have preferred some proper fleshed out story-driven content personally.

The package adds just 2 trophies. Across the 4 scenarios, there are 10 new Mr. Raccoon figurines to find and shoot, which grants one of these trophies. The other focuses on beating all of the content, and whilst a simple concept at heart, it's anything but if your intention is to earn both trophies;

Hell of a Sheriff - Complete the "No Way Out" scenario. (No training mode).

The "Hell of a Sheriff" trophy, awarded for Completing the "No Way Out" scenario, requires you to beat every Ghost Survivor scenario within this package.

Initially, there are 3 scenarios available to play out. "No Time to Mourn" focuses on Robert Kendo. You encounter Robert part-way through the main story. He's the owner of the gun shop whose daughter has been bitten and turned. "Runaway" tells the brief story of Katherine Warren, another captured victim of Police Chief Irons desperate to escape his makeshift lab-den. Finally, "Forgotten Soldier" focuses on a soldier in a race against time after a botched virus retrieval mission with the underground lab due to self-destruct.

Each scenario has difficulty ratings attached to them, but I didn't personally find this to be any sort of clear guidance on actual difficulty. I tackled them all in the order above, and the learning curve for each one requires a fresh reset every time. A different route with different hazards and different inventory options. You can't really apply the same template for success to each run, and this adaptability is important to passing them all.

These scenarios aren't intended to be beaten first time. The experimental trial and error nature is exactly what this game mode is all about. It's memorisation of the route ahead of you and learning, mostly the hard way, about what you'll need to do differently next time in order to successfully tackle certain areas and get by without dying - Chaining this all together for the perfect run. You may get lucky on the odd occasion, but getting from point A to B all the way in one go will require mastery of the level and understanding the optimal route.

This includes knowing which items to pick from the dispenser options, which areas you can viably run past enemies to preserve resources/ammo and the danger areas where you're most likely to die and may need to save certain parts of your inventory for.

Your completion time is recorded for each of these scenarios, though this isn't important for the requirements of the trophy, though speedrunners will love the fact there is a global leaderboard tied to this game mode. For me, I was happy to just beat them and move one. Once I'd played through the scenarios a handful of times, and learnt the optimal routes, I was able to comfortably get through them. I liked the idea of learning through failure, and that sort of thing will always count as progress to me.

The only main frustration is that the consistency of enemy behaviour is a big issue every now and again. Sometimes you'll run through a densely populated area of the map and get grabbed multiple times, which will pretty much end your run. Another time, you'll get past exactly how you should have done. This became increasingly annoying when I had to replay the scenarios for the purpose of cleaning up the missing Mr. Raccoons I didn't find first time round.

However, this doesn't unlock the trophy in question. Upon completing all 3 scenarios with any time posted, you'll unlock the final scenario. "No Way Out" sees you stuck in the gas station as Daniel Cortini - The Sherriff from the very beginning of the game.

This follows a much different format to the first 3 scenarios. You're stuck in a very confined space and have to kill 100 zombies to beat the scenario. They can enter the gas station from 3 different doors and come at you in waves that you'll need to manage with a set inventory of items. Backpack zombies still exist to drop additional weaponry/items and you just have to outlast the 100 zombies to clear the scenario.

Again, strategy plays a big part in this. The zombies come at you from the easiest to toughest forms, so difficulty scales according to your kill total. It's important to preserve the better weaponry for as long as possible because the limited amount of manoeuvrable space is the real enemy here. Learning which zombies are due to spawn in and when to use certain weapons is crucial to success. You don't want to waste the Spark Gun ammo on easier to kill enemies and the Anti-Tank Launcher should only be used when in a last ditch attempt to save your life.

In my initial runs, I could reach the 40-50 mark for kills and gradually improved on this with more practice. I noticed the one door remains shut for a fair amount of time and played a reasonable portion of the level with my back to it, using the sales counter as a barrier between me and the zombies to pick them off knowing I wouldn't have to watch out for what was behind me until much later on.

The poison zombies are a big threat here because the confined surroundings don't give you much space to avoid their poisonous explosions when you kill them. You do get 3 blue herbs though, which will certainly come in use, but aside the tendency to have to deal with overwhelming numbers at times, this is the biggest threat to a run. As mentioned, the Anti-Tank gun you find towards the end is clutch in these circumstances.

That is the last step towards the trophy though, and I reckon I put around 10-12 hours into this across all 4 scenarios. The mode did start to wear thin on me pretty quickly, and I was only really driven forward by the fact I could see progress within the failure that I knew was edging me closer to the goal. Very similar in the same way I experienced in my recent run of Super Meat Boy, just nowhere near as fun. I liked the silly headwear accessories you can unlock and wear though.