DLC #225 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - The Fate of Atlantis : Episode 3

"Go do this. Bring me that. Kill him. I don't know if I can do this anymore." - Quips Alexios towards the end of this final piece of episodic DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey in an expression of burnout and tiredness.

I'm not sure to what extent this is tongue in cheek, but it's almost as if Assassin's Creed Odyssey knows exactly what it is by this point. I felt it was a perfect summarisation of how I'm feeling too.

The final foray into the Fate of Atlantis finally sees Alexios reach the promised land itself. Ruled by Poseidon, Atlantis is situated under the Aegean Sea, and acts as the final destination for the conclusion of this journey. It's another visually pleasing setting littered with grand palaces and surrounded by water. A stark contrast to the glum Underworld in Episode 2.

This is the right time to praise the effort that has gone into creating 3 different realms for each episode of the Fate of Atlantis. The cynics among us will argue that was the least they could do after making you retread the same regions of Greece you'd already seen for the entirety of the Legacy of the First Blade. The effort here is still admirable though, and Atlantis is probably my favourite of the 3 realms within this story.

There isn't much else different of note in terms of gameplay features though. Atlantis is framed as a hub for harbouring Isu knowledge, and you'll need to fill the knowledge bar in order to access certain areas of the map. This is split into 3 levels and follows the exact same concept as Tartaros Veils in Episode 2, which would only grant you access to certain areas once you'd obtained a full armour set. Discovering Isu caches, Keeper Insights and finding Codices are all methods to fill the knowledge bar through it's 3 full levels. It's new, but not really new.

Everything else is the same. Quest structure, abilities and a new batch of characters asking for the same old things. It's hardly reasonable to expect much drastic change this deep in, is it? And with the amount of post-game content Assassin's Creed Odyssey has introduced us to, there's only so many times you can repeat yourself. Reference the opening line of this post for a clinical summary.

This final pack of episodic DLC adds 5 trophies, with yet another emphasis on questline progression.

The hidden trophy in this set is awarded at the conclusion of the final part of the story, which contains 9 main quests. Some of the other trophies intertwine as you progress towards the end goal of beating this plotline once and for all.

Completely filling the Isu knowledge sequence is one of these trophies and you won't be able to reach certain missions until you've earned this trophy, as some quests only become available to start once you've maxed out the knowledge bar. These particular quests are accounted for in the 9 mentioned above, which effectively makes this progression-based too.

Collecting all Keeper's Insights, of which there are 3, will also award another trophy. These generate Isu knowledge, so directly link into progression for the above trophy too, so it makes sense to link them all together to improve trophy acquisition efficiency.

The other trophies are awarded for simple side activities, including forging 3 Legendary weapons, which just requires you to collect Adamant from chests in secured areas. The weapons look cool, but mean absolutely nothing at this stage of the game. My character has felt way too powerful for so long, new weaponry/armour is just something nice to look at by this point.

The last trophy is awarded for Killing 10 Isu Soldiers with the Blessing of Kronos enhancement - Another ability you just need to apply an ability point to in order to unlock it's final form, and kill 10 enemies whilst it's active.

Whilst none of these DLC packs for The Fate of Atlantis are truly difficult, this particular episode did feel like the easiest run of trophies out of all of them. A straight-forward questline, with trophies which complimented this through side activities, combined with low-bar requirements. No addition of those grindy Cultist/Mercenary branches that have existed in other forms of DLC to artificially lengthen the content on offer.

My final cumulative time on my save file sits at 145 hours and 22 minutes, meaning this package added another 7 hours onto the total - About the same length as Episode 2. It's a big level of time commitment for a game that never strayed too far from it's principle formula, and it has been a bit of a slog at times. This is what Assassin's Creed has become though with it's new direction of being a more akin to an RPG-style driven series, and the future holds more of where that came from.

Platinum #150 - Battlefield 5

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

I always referred to Warzone as the "Battlefield Killer".

Warzone was a complete game changer. Call of Duty and Battlefield fought on an even playing ground for me once upon a time, but the release of Warzone made me abandon Battlefield for a short while as a clear favourite emerged and stole most of my time.

It never truly displaced Battlefield, but I spent so much time playing Warzone that I just didn't have enough scope to be playing something within the same genre of game simultaneously, and it's important to specify that this is Warzone we're talking about - Not Call of Duty. I haven't been interested in the Call of Duty series for quite some time, but Warzone came with something different, refreshing and an experience that was also great to play with close mates.

It's true what they say though. All good things come to an end and my waning interest in Warzone made me revisit what I always thought was the superior offering out of the two series when pit against each other. I've always preferred the less arcade feel of Battlefield in comparison to Call of Duty, which started feeling a bit too gimmicky - with it's wingsuits, jetpacks and wall-jumping. Give me the best era for war games - World War 2 - A tank, old school weaponry and a few air bombers and let's call this argument a day.

Battlefield 5 is a Single Player and Multiplayer experience, set within the Second World War era, finely replicating everything from this time period. Authenticity is what Battlefield has always executed consistently well, where Call of Duty far too often strayed into the realms of abandoned realism.

I do just have to caveat this slightly. I spent much less time with this game compared to the previous titles in the series, which have contained trophy lists that have required prolonged amounts of time with the game. This was very much a fleeting visit by comparison, such were the low demands of the trophy list, so my views were based on a fairly brief experience.

This is still classic Battlefield though. War is captured eerily well. Graphically solid, from the vehicle models to the destructive environment that crumbles and folds around you from explosives and tank shells. Sounds of war are also portrayed excellently, from sniper fire pinging off in the distance to the ominous hum of an incoming bomber seconds away from dropping death from above. Authenticity has always been an ace card Battlefield has held over Call of Duty.

The most noticeable gameplay shift is in the movement and gunplay. It's not a difficult adaptation to make, but the fluid, fast-moving pace of Call of Duty sits on the very opposite end of the spectrum to the slower, slightly clunkier Battlefield. It's ultimately just another arcade to simulation differentiator, and will come down to personal preferences, but I've always felt Battlefield's style lends better to war shooters.

You can still choose from 4 different classes to play as, each with their own roles in battle. Engineer, Recon, Support and Medic all have vital parts to play in their own right, and give you a fundamental purpose to supporting your side in battle, promoting teamwork and synergy. Gaining experience points for tasks related to your role will give you better equipment for that class, so you can really hone in and focus on specific roles that interest you the most. On the other hand, the customisation options for weapon depth are a little bit lacking though.

Battlefield 5 generally isn't a game brimming with content either. The Single Player feels like an appetiser to the Multiplayer component, and the game wasn't supported with any post-game DLC of note. The Multiplayer element of the game has more depth, but people only seemingly play Conquest at this stage of the game's life cycle, whereas everything else is generally ignored. It's important to note that natural player preferences shouldn't be held against the game and it's options available. There are plenty of game modes contained within the overall package - I just barely got a chance to play many of them.

Interestingly enough, the newly added Firestorm game mode is Battlefield's answer to Warzone, however, because it isn't factored into the trophy list, I did not venture into this at any point.

Everything else was a nice way to ease back into Battlefield though. Punchy, albeit slower-paced, gameplay, but incredibly hectic fun when you have a full 64 player match as everyone contests capture zones in crowded areas and set-pieces on the map. 

In regards to trophies, this is a small-sized list, clocking in at a total of 22 trophies, including the Platinum, and it follows the theme of Battlefield trophy lists being relatively trouble-free.

Starting with the Single Player experience, which offers 3 different "War Stories" for you to complete. These were also present in Battlefield 1 - Individual tales told about specific characters representing different sides of the war, including a young Norwegian woman who attempts to save her hostage mother, a young British man who takes a plea deal by fighting on the frontlines to prevent a spell in prison and a young French-Senegalese soldier who takes command of a squad.

Going straight into these on Hardcore difficulty will earn you 6 trophies. You'll earn a trophy for completing each separate War Story, and then a further 3 Gold trophies for beating them all on Hardcore, which are stacked with Medium and Hard difficulties.

Hardcore difficulty has a couple of tough moments, but you can bypass many of the sections across all 3 campaigns with stealth and generally avoid conflict. The parts that force you into fighting prove to be a little bit of a sticking point at times, but you can still comfortably beat each story within 2-4 hours, and the labelling of "Hardcore" turns out to be a little bit disingenuous. It's definitely nowhere near the Veteran levels of Call of Duty titles from years gone by, which earned iconic status, and the checkpoint system is incredibly generous, rewarding you constantly for even the smallest amount of progress. Getting to every checkpoint in Call of Duty felt like a huge win in it's own right. Not so much here.

Completion of all 3 War Stories is all that's required to earn the Single Player trophies in the list. Previous Battlefield titles have extended their Single Player offerings to account for collectibles and specific in-level challenges/feats, but all of this has been dropped on this occasion, which is part of the reason for a significantly reduced trophy list in terms of quantity of trophies.

The Multiplayer element of the game doesn't exactly stretch the limits much further beyond the challenge presented by the Single Player segment of it either.

Just getting to grips with adapting to playing within a competitive environment saw a consistently steady flow of trophies awarded for incredibly easy tasks. In my first session alone experiencing the Multiplayer side of the game, I'd managed to unlock 9 trophies without any sort of specific focus - Almost half of the whole list - but it did also signify the beginning of the sole, real challenge of this game.

The "Death From Above" trophy, awarded for Destroying 5 manned stationary weapons with a Airplane, is the only genuinely difficult trophy in this list, and I had to set aside an entire session in order to earn it.

Firstly, you need to earn the kill AND the notification for destroying the stationary weapon simultaneously. If you're playing anew like I was, you'll only have access to 50kg bombs from the outset, and you'll be able to access up to 200kg bombs the further you progress the levelling of the bomber. The first hurdle I faced was realising that 50kg bombs weren't strong enough to destroy a manned stationary weapon in one drop, which meant enemy players would always get out and either leave the area or repair the weapon back to it's maximum health by the time you'd managed to come back round for a pass, so I quickly found out this wasn't going to work.

So I had to spend some time levelling the bomber up by just flying around and obtaining kills on infantry soldiers. It didn't take too long, but a pre-requisite I hadn't accounted for. The main positive to this was that I at least got the hang of piloting the bomber. I personally don't think the learning curve for flying in Battlefield is anywhere near as bad as some people make it out to be - It's mainly all about getting used to inverted controls but also understanding that flying it in third person is much easier than the default setting of first person too.

Secondly, I do think stationary AA guns are a little bit too overpowered. I'd find it incredibly easy to get shot down to the point where I tried it myself and realised that the hitbox for targeting planes with AA guns is incredibly generous, and most bombers will go down quickly enough if you notice them coming at you early.

To remedy this - Fjell 652 - A close quarters map that's small enough to ensure that your enemies commandeering AA guns don't have enough time to scope and shoot you down. Even the process of dropping bombs is a fairly easy once you realise that a white circle will appear just below the plane when you're close enough to the ground to release a bomb. It's a hit every time as long as your timing is on point. It took me around 6-7 hours, mostly of research and tactical planning outlined above, but I'd managed to obtain 5 kills in a handful of games of Conquest specifically on Fjell 652. You'll need to be patient but it makes a massive difference upgrading your bombs to be strong enough to wipe out a stationary weapon, and subsequently whoever's inside it, in one pass.

Beyond this, the remainder of the list is all downhill. There is another trophy to just make small note of, which requires you to capture 10 flags in Frontlines. This game mode is very similar to Conquest, but instead of capture points spread across a map, both teams compete to capture a linear set of flags where you push back the opposition until you've captured the final flag furthest down the line. Frontlines isn't available in public matches any more, so you'll need to create your own lobby and wait for at least 3 other players to populate it - The minimum amount required to start a game. This was easy to do, but I did have to hang around for a short while for something to happen.

Finally, I moved onto the remaining Multiplayer trophies, which required a little more effort and time. You'll need to accumulate a total of 500,000 experience points whilst playing Multiplayer, with an equally proportionate amount of time to be split across each of the 4 different soldier classes with separate trophies requiring you to earn 100,000 experience points whilst playing as each class.

It's simply just a matter of playing the game, and I found I could accumulate anywhere between 8,000 - 10,000 experience points per match in what I would consider to be a good return on average. Flag captures yield up to 600 experience points per full capture cycle, making them a primary focus of attention. The game also tracks the amount of cumulative experience points you've earned per class too, which is always a useful bonus when it comes to such high accumulation trophies that would otherwise not be easy to track, especially when you consider that you'll still need an additional 100,000 exp once you've unlocked the 4 class-specific experience trophies. 

Overall times spent to reach 100,000 with each class included 6 and a half hours for Assault, just over 5 hours for Medic, just under 6 hours for Support and just over 5 hours for Recon. Achieving an additional 100,000 experience on top of this was another 5 hours and I most went back to the Recon class for this, as I very much enjoy sniping.

Battlefield has gradually continued to lower the bar for it's trophy lists, particularly in recent iterations. I almost wanted to give this a lower score than what I ended up landing on, for a breezy Single Player campaign, and some Multiplayer trophies that generally just reward you for playing the game.

Accumulating 500,000 experience points will take a reasonable amount of time though, and the "Death From Above" trophy was effectively the reason I didn't budge on my score in the end. Some people will lose patience with the Platinum over this trophy alone, and if you're not willing to stay patient with it, you're probably not even going to want to sink the extra 25-ish hours into reaching the 500,000 exp milestone anyway.

If you can overcome the "Death From Above" challenge, this can be a 30-35 hour total Platinum completion time. The Multiplayer grind for experience is high, but fairly relaxed, and the other trophies that sit around this don't put any additional pressures on that drive a competitive Multiplayer space. It would be considered an ideal trophy list for many people - Unless you hate flying planes or getting killed relentlessly by others who do enjoy flying them.

Notable Trophies -

Death From Above - In Multiplayer, destroy 5 manned stationary weapons with a Airplane.

Hardest Trophy -

Death From Above

In Multiplayer, destroy 5 manned stationary weapons with a Airplane.

DLC #224 - Dirt Rally 2.0 - Colin McRae

Admittedly, I'm not a massive Rally fan. I've always loved the Dirt series, and I've always enjoyed the Rally aspect, but as far as being a regular consumer of the sport goes? Never watched it.

However, regardless of the popularity of any sport, anybody knows the true icons of the game, and Colin McRae is exactly that. The record-breaking winner of 25 rallies had this series bear his name from the late 90's right up to the Dirt rebrand in 2008, a year after he tragically died in a helicopter accident.

It's only fitting that this DLC pays homage to a sporting great, and this will make you feel like you're the man himself - Mainly for the fact it'll push your skills to limits of near perfectionism.

The package is built up of a series of 40 different scenarios spread across a timeline, focusing on significant events that occurred throughout Colin McRae's rally career. They're further divided into 4 time periods - Early Years (1984 - 1989), Rising Star (1991 - 1994), World Champion (1995 - 1998) and A New Challenge (1999 - 2006).

The concept is simple enough. Progress through each time period, completing enough scenarios to unlock the next time period. You'll only need to complete 3 in each era to unlock the next - The trophies and their requirements are a completely different story though. 

The scenarios are varied, and range from beating a teammate, to winning a stage whilst having damage to a specific part of the car, to averaging a certain speed throughout the completion of a stage. You'll also get to drive a range of different vehicles the great man himself has driven. The Subaru Legacy RS and Subaru Impreza S4 debut, as well as Scotland and all it's routes. It's probably a bit disingenuous to suggest it's by far the best Dirt Rally DLC pack, because the others have had nowhere near the same level of depth to them, but that doesn't take away from it's brilliance.

It'll no doubt please true fans of the sport. The scenarios are well recreated and the authenticity is all there - but if you're in it for the trophies, a gruelling challenge awaits.

Speaking of which, there are 5 new trophies added to the game as part of this package, and the centric focus is on the scenarios, despite the fact there is a little bit of extra-curricular inclusion outside of these.

There's a hint of natural progression, as completing the 1995 Wales scenario will net you a trophy, and a little bit of wackiness as rolling your Subaru Legacy RS in Finland 3 times in one stage will also reward you with a trophy. I do have to admit, there was a way more cathartic feeling than would have normally been reasonable upon doing this post-completion of beating every scenario on the toughest difficulty level, which is where the main prize lies;

...Flatout - Complete every scenario on very hard difficulty.

The "...Flatout" trophy, awarded for Completing every scenario on very hard difficulty is a brutal challenge. It's one of the toughest I've experienced in any game, especially within the racing genre, which has seen me beat the Motorstorm : Pacific Rift and Crash Team Racing time trials.

It requires you to beat all 40 scenarios on "very hard" difficulty. Dirt Rally 2.0 operates it's difficulty on a sliding scale basis, where the lowest possible choice to set the game to this difficulty requires the slider to be sat on at least 91 or above, up to 100. There has never been a necessity from the trophy list to unlock any trophies on a specific difficulty setting up to this point, so this was a completely new experience for me. I knew I'd need every slight advantage I could get, so 91 it was and not a notch further.

Getting through the early stages didn't feel too bad. I won't go as far to suggest it was luring me into a false sense of security, but it was going alarmingly too smoothly to at least make me cautious. The Early Years era only has 5 scenarios, and it very much acts as an introduction to the mode. However, so far, so good.

The Rising Star era is where things begin to heat up a little bit. The amount of scenarios just over doubles and you begin to experience the more gruelling multi-stage events that end up being the notch up in difficulty that runs a concurrent theme throughout. Within this era though, they're limited to a maximum of 3 stages and only 3 of the 11 total scenarios are multi-stage events, so it's still not too bad. If you're seasoned with Dirt Rally 2.0, you'll be fine, and this era just acts as a way of getting familiar with the slow rise in challenge.

World Champion era is where this trophy truly comes to fruition though. The number of scenarios yet again expands, with 13 in total within this category, and the multi-stage events are bigger and more frequent. A total of 8 out of the 13 scenarios are multi-stage events, and 7 of these contain either 4 or 5 stages to beat a scenario. These are lengthy and will begin to challenge you in every way.

Mastering each of the routes, perfecting your times - Sometimes by hundreds of seconds - and understanding vehicle handling all become necessary to success. Some of the scenario requirements will expect you to win by a considerable cumulative margin, and this can only be achieved with an almost perfect run for every stage where you stretch a lead. Some of these stages are 7 or 8 minutes long and I lost count of the amount of times I lost concentration on the final leg, causing a reset in progress back to the start. On other occasions, I'd beaten the stage, but wasn't comfortable with the time - and this could sometimes be a matter of half a second or so, such is the demanding nature of this difficulty level.

It doesn't matter how good you get at a game, a mental lapse can happen to anyone, and playing on very hard difficulty does not allow for any margin for error. It also means you have to take way more risks if you fall behind on par times and have to catch up. This is also naturally perilous and resulted in crashes multiple times.

It was also at this point where I discovered something strange that works against you. During certain multi-stage scenarios, if you quit part-way through, which is something I did frequently when I'd given up for the day and needed a break, then resuming from where you left off would give the AI a quicker completion time for the stage you started back at. Due to how difficult some of these scenarios are, this is something that didn't seem unusual, or out of the ordinary and I spent alot of time presuming the AI was beating me up, rather than noticing an obvious glitch had occurred. It's apparently common knowledge, and you can only remedy it by beating multi-stage scenarios without pausing for a break in-between. Frustrating, because it meant I had to set aside entire days at times just to beat a single multi-stage scenario. Thankfully, this doesn't occur on all of them, but an annoying discovery nonetheless. 

Slowly I was chipping away though, and the New Challenge era is where this trophy somewhat plateaus. It still contained more of the same punishing multi-stage events, but bought something new to the table too. This final era introduces a couple of challenges where you have to average a certain speed throughout an entire stage, adding a shedload of calculated risk as you sacrifice prowess for power in the name of ensuring you maintain your speed whilst avoiding catastrophe - another new skill I had to perfect myself on, and took a while to do so.

My average progress would be 1 scenario beaten per session, which could easily be 6-8 hours at times. These 4-5 multi-stage events exist to test your ability and perseverance. Small steps of progress like that began to feel like mammoth victories, and the odd scenario would pop up that I could do within a couple of tries, which absolutely spurred me on. 

It's crushing difficulty had me equally frustrated but hooked for more simultaneously. I've always believed there's a difference between the types of trial and error a game can put you through, and if you're failing but noticing progress, this becomes crucial to pushing through.

Beating that final scenario was a big relief. I'd originally looked up a trophy guide that had suggested this package to be within the region of 100 hours for completion, which I was very skeptical over initially. This probably took me even longer on the basis of how much time I'd spent battling through some of these scenarios.

There is also a stackable trophy, awarded for just completing every scenario, which will suit most people. However, this particular trophy is brutal and is not aimed at the casual player. You will need to be prepared to be very good to earn this, and it makes no compromise on that.

There was a final trophy still to grab, awarded for Setting a time of under 7 minutes on Newbridge House in the Subaru Impreza S4, which only took me a couple of attempts. I honestly felt like this was a breeze purely for the fact I'd practised so hard on the above trophy, everything else after this felt insignificant in comparison - A great benchmark for how well I'd honed my skills.

It wasn't a challenge I saw coming, especially based on what the Platinum trophy and it's subsequent DLC packs had thrown up thus far, but you know what they say - If you want to be the best, you've got to beat the best, and that's what Colin McRae was.