Platinum #45 - Motorstorm : Apocalypse

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

A large potion of this trophy list is dedicated to the game's story mode, with a generous offering of progression based trophies for simply finishing the 3 different campaigns in the single player festival.

Collectively, each story path takes no longer than a couple of hours, and you aren't even required to win every race to be able to unlock all of the relevant trophies (You simply have to place in the top 3).

This makes for a quick and incredibly easy batch of trophies, a stark contrast to the festival mode of Pacific Rift, which was hugely punishing, and required you to win every race too.

The single player portion of the list does throw up some frustrating collectible based trophies though, with the "Found 'Em All!" trophy awarded for collecting all 150 of the Motorstorm Cards. Whilst, for the most part, these are easy to grab, there are a handful of them that can be difficult to collect, and require an element of trial and error to get. It's also important to mention that the sheer volume of them will stick at least a few hours onto the Platinum time too.

The hugely unforgiving regressive online levelling system present in Pacific Rift has also been ditched, and substituted for a more traditional system where you can still level up irrespective of your finishing position in each race, and never have to worry about being demoted ranks.

You can earn experience points for practically everything, which maximises your potential experience for every race. Earning medals and accolades are the way to level quickly, as they grant huge experience rewards, especially the later tier accolades which can frequently award 10000 experience points and much more.

Even with this taken into account, the "Jackpot" trophy, for reaching rank 40 in Multiplayer, is still a hefty time sink, where you can easily be looking around the 20-25 hour mark to reach the highest rank (trophy-wise). There are even trophies granted at levels 5, 15 and 30 as spur on incentives on your way to hitting rank 40.

The rest of the list is just based around menial tasks within races, and exploration of other game modes and gameplay options. These require nothing more than a bit of dabbling (though a few of them can be a bit tricky), and some can even be easily obtained naturally whilst going through the story mode and online related trophies.

Overall, it is a very watered down list, especially in comparison to Pacific Rift, which was harder and more time consuming to the ten-fold, and even though you'll still be looking at a decent time investment to Platinum Apocalypse, it's still way too easy, and as long as you have the patience for the online levelling grind, the rest is a complete breeze.

Notable Trophies -

Found 'em All! - Collect 150 of the hidden Motorstorm Cards
Jackpot - Reach Rank 40 in Multiplayer

Hardest Trophy -

Jackpot
Reach Rank 40 in Multiplayer

DLC #59 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Puzzle Pack

Stress your brain with a logical twist.

The final piece of Worms 2 DLC (and definitely the most challenging), adds yet another 12 trophies, with 20 further levels based around a series puzzles where you're tasked to defeat an enemy worm with limited items at your disposal.

The trophy list format follows the same sort of structure as the rest of the DLC, with 3 trophies awarded for beating all 20 of the new levels. However, some of them are seriously tough, and if you resist the temptation to use a walk-through guide, you'll easily be racking your brain over some of these puzzles for a good few hours alone. It can get frustrating at times when nothing seems to work, but it is much more rewarding when you finally nail a solution to a puzzle you've been stuck on for ages.

The remainder of the trophies all revolve around beating specific levels within certain criteria. The 3 trophies that require you to have at least 1 item left in your inventory definitely furthers the puzzle aspect, since you have to go back and determine how to beat a certain level, minus 1 piece of equipment that you'll need to have left over to unlock the trophy. Cue more brain racking.

With all of that taken into account, the length of the DLC will depend on how quickly you can solve all of the puzzles. Naturally, it will take some longer than others, but I cleared everything up within about 6-7 hours, though it is important to note, there was an extensive amount of time spent on a select few puzzles that were much harder than the rest.

DLC #58 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Time Attack Pack

Fly through some time attack, Worms style.

Still in Worms 2, with the Time Attack DLC, which takes a slightly different angle on the Worms experience, and adds a further 12 trophies to the package.

As previously, you can pick up a small clutch of the trophies (3, in this instance), for beating the fastest times for the 20 new levels included in the DLC.

First of all, there's a little bit of confusion when the trophy description mentions completing all of the levels with a "fastest time". From what I gathered, there wasn't a set time to beat the level, and just simply getting to the end of all 20 levels granted the respective trophies. Even racking up a bunch of fall and mine penalties didn't seem to effect the qualifications for "fastest time", so it remains a mystery as to what the requirements for the trophies really are. 

Regardless, you can absolutely fly through all of the levels in less than half an hour, they really are that easy. The rest of the trophies are where the DLC puts up a slight challenge, including some tricky time attack related trophies that require you to beat certain levels within a specified time limit that will take a numerous amount of restarts to beat, but apart from that, there are an easy 12 trophies on offer here, and the whole package takes no longer than a couple of hours to earn every trophy on offer.

DLC #57 - Worms 2 : Armageddon Retro Pack

Go Retro!

Revisiting the Worms 2 DLC with the Retro Pack adds a further 12 trophies, with the package comprised of 20 new single player missions, with all the trophies on offer attached to them in a variety of ways.

You can grab 4 of the trophies just through beating the 20 levels, and although the majority of them are relatively easy, and should take no more than a few attempts, there is a slight difficulty spike towards the end, where the last few levels end up presenting a stiff challenge (although that is mainly due to the frustratingly accurate computer opponent).

The rest of the trophies are mission specific, and require you to fulfil various requirements within certain levels. Again, none of these trophies are really too demanding, and using the correct tactics for each should ensure that you complete them without many further attempts at all.

Grabbing all of the trophies should take no longer than 5-6 hours. You can expect to beat every level once within 3-4 hours, and the clean up is just a matter of how long it takes, but even then it's still no longer than a few extra hours on top to conclude a fairly straight-forward trophy set.

DLC #56 - Skate 3 San Van Party Play

Re-visit the classic San Van skate park!

The final piece of Skate 3 DLC re-visits the old stomping ground of San Van, complete with 9 new trophies.

Although the requirements are incredibly linear, and simply involve beating the small clutch of newly presented missions, there is a fairly solid challenge to be had in certain instances.

Every new challenge, including a range of film, photo and own the spot challenges, grant an individual trophy upon completing them, which ensures a nicely even spread on the package, and given the fact most of them only require a couple of tries to beat, it's a generous offering of trophies.

However, if you're still looking for a challenge, you'll get one thanks to a specific trophy in this DLC;




Marraffanator
Complete the "Marraffa's Skatepark" OTL challenge 



                                                                                                            The DLC is about 4-5 hours in total length, but the majority of this time will be spent trying to beat the Own The Lot challenge for the DLC.

As with all OTL challenges, there are a couple of incredibly tricky tasks to pull off, and you never feel like you get enough time to tick off all 12 tasks in order to "Own the Lot" and unlock the trophy. Even though most of the 12 tasks are quite simple, there are a couple that will peg you back and halt your progression, which will definitely require you to retry this challenge a handful of times.

It's a little bit frustrating to get so close, but having to re-do everything because you couldn't tick off a couple of the boxes on the trick list, but as long as you persevere, you'll be OK and eventually nail it.

Apart from that though, there's alot of easy trophies on offer here, and if you're willing to be patient, grabbing all of them isn't too demanding.

DLC #55 - Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection 3

Destroy a Battleship in "Arctic Recon"

The latest Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection ups the ante, with 14 new trophies on offer, spread across the 4 new Spec Ops missions within the DLC.

The trophies are typical of the other collections that have gone before, all of them awarded for beating the missions on Any/Veteran difficulty, and then a small clutch of mission specific tasks to perform on top.

As always seems to be the case with Call of Duty, beating the missions on veteran are mostly just all about persistence, but the trophies attached to the Arctic Recon and Vertigo missions were surprisingly difficult, with both of them requiring multiple tries and a dosage of hard patience to finally beat.

Both of these missions also contained the hardest mission specific trophies too;

dr0n3d - Complete the "Arctic Recon" Special Ops mission in under 3:30
To Jugger or to Jugger-naut - Kill all Juggernauts after they land on Veteran difficulty in the "Vertigo" Special Ops mission

Beating the Arctic Recon mission in under 3:30 is a tight squeeze and requires a very precise speed-run to finish within the limits, even when playing on recruit difficulty. There's a slightly frustrating 10 second window at the end of the mission where the clock just runs down as you watch the escape cutscene, so ideally, you're technically looking at boarding the helicopter at around 3:20, to allow for the 10 second gap between boarding and the actual end of the mission. Definitely something to be aware of, since you'll need a near flawless run.

The only thing that really makes the "To Jugger or to Jugger-naut" trophy difficult is the fact you have to fulfil the requirements of the trophy on veteran difficulty. It makes the 3 juggernauts harder to take down, along with the multiple waves of enemies who show up in between. Thankfully, there are a bunch of handy weapons lying around that can dispatch juggernauts handily, but you'll always need to be wary about the fact you're playing on veteran and how quickly you can die.

In contrast, all of the trophies related to the Special Delivery and Light 'Em Up missions are incredibly easy, and even running through on veteran should take no more than a couple of attempts for each. The real challenge of the collection comes within the earlier part of it, but once you overcome those first few missions, the rest is easy, and you're still only really looking at around 3-5 hours in regards to completion time for all trophies in the package.

Platinum #44 - Call Of Duty : Modern Warfare 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

We're at a stage now where you could call this a pretty typical Call of Duty trophy list.

The majority of the games trophies are catered to the single player campaign, with a large allocation relating to the progression within the campaign mode.

Aside from beating every mission in the game on any difficulty level, you also get the usual designation of trophies related to beating the missions on veteran difficulty, which is consequently one of the easiest veteran runs in any Call of Duty game to date.

The rest of the trophies are awarded for completing some incredibly simple chapter specific tasks, and, as ever, there are also 46 intel items to collect (Though there is no way to actually know from the chapter select menu which intel items you're missing, which is a little bit annoying).

Even though you can quite easily achieve every single player trophy in around 12 hours, this is still a relatively lengthy list courtesy of the new Survival multiplayer mode.

The "Unstoppable" trophy, which requires you to reach wave 15 in each mission of Survival mode, is nothing more than a slog, and it's also worth noting that you'll also need to reach level 50 in order to unlock every piece of equipment for the "Arms Dealer" trophy, which requires you to buy all weapons from the Survival weapons armoury. Another pretty big slog in itself, and definitely fulfils the grindy element of the Platinum.

The Special Ops missions also carry a sleight weighting of trophies, and even though there are only 3 attached to this mode, you do still need to achieve the maximum 48 stars for the "Overachiever" trophy. Some of the missions can be fairly challenging, but you'll most likely breeze through the rest, especially with a good co-op partner at your disposal.

All in all, despite the grindy elements of the Survival mode, this is possibly the easiest Call of Duty Platinum yet. The single player "Veteran" mode is anything but, and despite a few tough missions, the Special Ops mode is just as easy. The only real degree of challenge presented comes exclusively from the grindy nature of the Survival missions.

Notable Trophies -

The Best of the Best - Complete the campaign on Hardened of Veteran difficulty
Unstoppable - Reach Wave 15 in each misson of Special Ops Survival mode
Arms Dealer - Buy all items from the Survival Weapon Armoury

Hardest Trophy -

Arms Dealer 
Buy all items from the Survival Weapon Armoury




Note: The trophy itself isn't challenging in the slightest, but you'll need to hit level 50 in Spec Ops/Survival missions in order to unlock the last weapon required to qualify for the requirements of the trophy.

DLC #54 - FIFA 12 - UEFA Euro 2012

The Euro 2012 DLC adds 10 trophies, with a variety of tasks that will require you to invest a huge amount of time if you want to unlock all of them and maintain the 100% look.

Keeping with the core theme of the DLC, there are  a couple trophies attached to winning the Euro 2012 tournament. However, you will need to do this a series of times, including online, with a friend (or a secondary controller if you wish) and regularly in single player, each with their own respective trophy in the list.

Winning the tournament online for the "Glory Moment" trophy might prove to be tough, given the fact you'll need a decent level of consistency against human opponents in order to reach and win the final. There are 3 group stage matches and then 3 straight knock out matches, so you'll most likely need to win 5 out of 6 games (Definitely 4, maybe 5), in order to unlock that particularly trophy. Tough.

There is also a trophy ("Make it Happen") for succeeding in a challenge, which as of the time of writing, is actually unachievable, due to the fact newly updated challenges were halted shortly after Euro 2012 actually finished, in reality, at the end of July. This also actually affects the "My Euro 2012" trophy, awarded for winning a match in every game mode in the DLC, which also encompasses challenges and therefore, if you haven't finished a challenge, this trophy will also become unachievable. 

There is no guarantee the challenges will ever be rolled out again. It is highly unlikely given the fact the real life tournament has long been concluded, and when you couple that with the imminent release of FIFA 13 at the end of the month, you can bet on these remaining unachievable for good, which is a shame for anybody that hasn't managed to unlock them yet.

Regardless, the bulk of the massive time investment from this DLC comes from the Expedition mode, and more specifically one trophy;

 


Collector - Collect all Mosaic pieces in Expedition.





There are 180 mosaic pieces to collect in total, and 159 of them are awarded for beating each team in the DLC 3 times. You collect the rest of them at certain milestones, which also consequently award trophies related to beating all the teams in any group, and beating all 53 teams at least once.

There are no two ways about it, it will turn into a massive grind, mainly because of the fact you're forced to play all these matches against the incredibly boring computer AI, and have to suffer the 1-dimensional side of the game known as the single player mode. In all fairness, I did actually enjoy the mode, considering I almost died a little bit inside when I found out you'd have to beat the computer in 159 matches (and the many more I lost trying to stubbornly win on Legendary difficulty).

The Ultimate Team-esque way of building an ever stronger squad is what kept me going I think (aside the motivation of the trophy, of course), but there is no doubting you'll be slogging through it right to the end if you want that final mosaic piece that'll grant the "Collector" trophy though. For the benefit of those who can't stomach the challenge, this is what the final piece looks like;

Apart from that, the other trophies tied to Expedition are simply awarded on your way to collecting every mosaic piece, so as long as you're striving for all 180 pieces, you'll unlock those too. 

Like salt in the wound though, you'll actually need to carry on your Expedition a little bit longer due to the "National Pride" trophy, which is awarded for winning a match in Expedition mode with 11 players from the same country. This just means you'll have to pick a team, beat them 11 times, fill out your squad with those 11 players, and then win another match, just incase it wasn't grindy enough for you...

All in all, the experience easily borders on 100 hours, and the Expedition mode is one of the biggest and most challenging slogs in any DLC I've played to date. The element of skill required is  minimal, though winning Euro 2012 online does add a slight difficulty edge to the package, but this is just mostly about how much time you're prepared to invest in it to unlock all the trophies.

Platinum #43 - FIFA 12

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

As far as FIFA Platinum trophies go, this years installment is actually relatively tame in comparison to previous years, however, on a general scale, it still stands up a challenging list.

It is important to note straight away that the degree of difficulty in this list will vary depending on 1 trophy.

The "How Great is that?" trophy, for finding a Team of the Week player in an Ultimate Team pack, is purely based on luck and there is, theoretically, no guarantee you will ever unlock it. It didn't take me too long to find one personally, but there are plenty of people who will probably give up, and that's a tough blow to take given the fact there is nothing you can do to influence the trophy.

The best method to increase your chances is to just open the cheaper bronze packs, but that's only by virtue of the fact that the cheaper prices will allow you to open a greater quantity of them. It may also be important to note that transferred player cards during any transfer period throughout the season will also trigger the requirements for the trophy, even though they aren't actually In Form cards. Whether this is intentional to make it easier, or just a glitch, is undetermined, but it does slightly increase your chances of unlocking the trophy, and a transferred player during the January window is how I actually managed to earn this trophy.

Sticking with the Ultimate Team based trophies in this list, the "Growing Club" trophy, for achieving a club value of £85M in Ultimate Team, is just a matter of amassing enough players to reach the target, but you'll need somewhere in the region of around 200,000 coins to be able to reach the equivalent club value total, which will require a heavy time investment in the Ultimate Team mode. You'll also need to be prepared to buy alot of players to fulfil this requirement, and despite the Ultimate Team database being vast, the 700-800 players needed is still quite a large chunk of the game and it is a very tedious task collecting them all.

The "Club Legend" trophy, awarded for playing 100 matches with any player in Ultimate Team, means you'll be spending yet even more time in the games Ultimate Team mode. It shouldn't take longer than the "Growing Club" trophy to achieve this milestone, but you need to be aware of which player you're using to strive towards this target, and definitely be even more aware of the fact that you cannot sell him at any point, else the counter will reset to zero and you'll have to continue with someone else instead. 

Sticking with the continuous theme of Ultimate Team, the "Pack King" trophy, awarded for opening 100 packs in Ultimate Team, is just as time consuming as the rest of the Ultimate Team trophies, and even though you could just theoretically open 500 coin bronze packs and keep your expenses to a minimum, it isn't your best chance of accumulating a club value of £85M or pulling a Team of the Week player, so it's best just to let this trophy come naturally and focus on the importance of the other trophies in this list.

Everything else just requires dabbling into the various other game modes within the game, or performing certain actions within matches. There are a few tricky tasks to accomplish during the game, such as scoring with a bicycle kick and scoring a 90th minute winner against the computer, but these are mostly just circumstantial, and with the amount of time you'll need to plug into this list, you should get them eventually just through natural play.

The "Virtual Legend" trophy, awarded for playing 50 matches with your Virtual Pro, is a rather time consuming venture, and with Be A Pro games being set to a minimum of 10 minutes, you can expect to be putting around 10 hours into this trophy alone, which is a little bit grindy if you're not a big fan of the Be A Pro game mode. 

There are a small handful of trophies related to the games career mode, but you can easily mop up every single one of them within just a single season, but it is important to note that if you intend to play through for all of a them, a single season is quite a long journey. Thankfully, simulating does work, as per usual, and the career mode trophy selection isn't as demanding as it has been in previous years.

It also wouldn't be a FIFA Platinum without the "FIFA for life" trophy, which yet again returns, and requires you to spend 50 hours on the pitch, but as usual, that is mostly irrelevant because of the fact you'll easily need to rack up many more hours than that to complete this entire list anyway.

The Ultimate Team mode is where the challenge of this Platinum trophy is mainly stored, and even though the game is just mostly time consuming, which really shouldn't be a problem for people who enjoy FIFA, you'll get best results from being good at the game, so there is an element of skill involved too. There is also a big luck element, and pulling an In Form player just simply will not happen for alot of people, which is hard to accept when you're used to trophy lists that are purely in the players control.

If you can get over that barrier, there's no other reason why you wouldn't be able to unlock everything else. The quantity of time consuming trophies in the list will take anywhere between 150-200 hours collectively, and you'll spend of that time in the Ultimate Team mode, but the "How Great is that?" trophy is way too variant in timescale from player to player to nail down a concrete time to represent a general experience. 

A big time commitment and huge elements of luck keep FIFA 12 in line with previous FIFA trophy lists, with a steady challenge to be extracted from the games trophies. There isn't exactly a huge emphasis on skill, but you'll get through this list quicker if you're better at the game, but it's a still a tough nut to crack regardless.

Notable Trophies -

How Great is that? - Find a team of the week player in an Ultimate Team pack
Growing Club - Achieve a club value of 85,000,000 in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Club Legend - Play 100 matches with any player in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Pack King - Open 100 packs in FIFA 12 Ultimate Team
Virtual Legend - Play 50 matches with your Virtual Pro
FIFA for Life - Spend 50 hours on the pitch

Hardest Trophy -

How Great is that?
Find a Team of the Week player in an Ultimate Team Pack

DLC #53 - Fallout : New Vegas - Gun Runner's Arsenal

To end the stream of New Vegas DLC, Gun Runner's Arsenal is something a little bit different to the usual episodic story related angle.                                                                                                              
As far as the trophies go, this is just essentially a series of challenges to slog through that see you slaughtering practically everything in the wasteland through unusual means, with 3 trophies tied to completing 9 different challenges of increasing difficulty.                                                                      
The other 2 trophies, "Curious and Relics" and "Master of the Arsenal" require 10,000 points worth of damage with Gun Runner's Arsenal weapons, and unique Mojave weapons, both are which are provided by vendors as part of the DLC. These will flow naturally if you make sure you complete all the challenges with these types of weapons, speaking of which;

Up to the Challenge - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) one star (*) Challenges.
Combat Veteran - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) two star (**) Challenges.
Pros Only - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) three star (***) Challenges.

For the most part, the challenges aren't too difficult, though it is mainly down to the fact you get a selective range of choice for each tier.                                                                                                       
Some of the challenges in certain tiers just simply aren't worth the time and effort, and there are definitely easier alternatives (Why would you go through the hassle of killing 20 animals with the FatMan when you can just cripple 5 right arms with a shotgun, which takes no longer than 5 minutes?).                                                                                                                                                        
It's also worth nothing that, if you've already hit the end game (Given the fact this is the 5th DLC package, then chances are, you have) then some of the challenges become somewhat locked out, given the fact they require you to injure/kill certain story-related characters who may already be dead, meaning the only remedy to this issue is to play through the entire game again, which you're hardly likely to want to do.                                                                                                                        
Some of the three star challenges have an air of toughness about them, and despite the freedom of choice, you'll still feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, since most of them involve tackling the Mojave's most dangerous enemies/characters.                                                                   
Despite that, and assuming you accumulate the two, 10,000 damage related trophies along the way, you'll probably beat the package in around 6 hours or so. I tackled the challenges I felt were the easiest for every tier. They're listed below;                                                                                      
One Star Challenges :

• Benefit or Hazard
• The same could be said of all Religious weapons
• Ne, Ne, Ne, Ne...

Two Star Challenges :

• Dyin' ain't much of a Living
• Nyah! See?
• White Line Nightmare

Three Star Challenges :

• Against All Tyrants
• Armed For Bear
• Man-Machine Interface