Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10
In terms of actual difficulty, this list doesn't really do much to overly challenge you (Strangely enough, you could easily argue the game gets more relaxed the further you play it). However, that is more than compensated by what ultimately turns out to be a huge grind-fest, packed with cumulative and collection based trophies for varying elements of the game.
The "Head Trauma" trophy, awarded for using every type of melee weapon on a zombie, is definitely the pick of these cumulative trophies, and the biggest stumbling block regarding these is the fact the game gives you no assistance in relation to which weapons you still need to use to fulfil the trophy requirement.
Granted, it isn't exactly hard to tick them off yourself, and they do thankfully carry over from one playthrough to the next, but there are almost 200 melee weapons in the game, and when you have to go through the list trying to find out which ones you still need to use, it just becomes a massive game of trial and error as you ultimately hope to hit that missing one. You can remedy this by keeping track from the very beginning, but I went for this trophy almost 4 years after I originally started the game, so I never had a chance other than doing it the hard way.
Thankfully, the volume required for most of the other cumulative weapon based trophies isn't anywhere near as bad, and the other stuff, such as spraying all Zombrex posters, retrieving all gifts and changing into every item of clothing is much easier, despite the fact they all have missable elements to keep track of, but if you make sure you don't miss those, you won't struggle too much with them, due to their much more manageable numbers.
The "Duct Tape FTW" trophy, awarded for creating all combo weapons, again, isn't tough by any means, and in reality, it only gets a mention here because it's one of the few trophies that has to be done in 1 playthrough of the game, and progress does not carry over. Some of the parts required for certain combo weapons can only be found from certain points in the game, but most of the parts are generously scattered around or can conveniently be found near workbenches, which makes things alot easier, providing you realise soon enough that it all has to be done in a single game.
This falls in tandem with the "Full Deck" trophy, awarded for collecting all combo cards. You can earn combo cards in a number of ways, through defeating psychopaths, saving survivors, discovering them from hidden posters around Fortune City and simply just crafting the combo weapon yourself, but many of them are exclusively awarded, so you'll need to make sure you know where to get them, especially true for the Tape it or Die combo cards.
The "Hero of Fortune" city trophy, awarded for saving 50 survivors, is where the game shines through with a rare element of skill. There are a total of 65 survivors to be rescued in 1 playthrough, which means you don't really have a great margin of error to hit the target figure. You'll need to plan which missions you should prioritise, especially due to the time limits applied to the game, and some missions can carry up to 4 survivors, so it's best to target those. Some missions won't even appear in some circumstances (More than 8 survivors already on the map, and some missions which are unmarked and don't even appear in the mission feed, for example), so it's important to keep on top of every mission, which can be a tough juggling act to keep up with.
On the subject of survivors, the "Data Miner" trophy, awarded for filling all entries in the notebook, requires you to encounter every character in the game. These cover main characters, survivors and psychopaths, and you'll run into most of them naturally going for the other trophies, but some are slightly harder to find than others.
Alot of these trophies do border on tedious, but the most tedious of all goes to the "Zombie Genocide Master" trophy, awarded for killing 72,000 zombies. Firstly, this has to be done in one playthrough, so you don't even have the flexibility of carrying the kills over, which is hard to take given the fact you could easily play this game through 15-20 times. Secondly, there is only one method for this trophy, to save up $2,000,000 and buy the SUV, and prepare for 7-8 hours of the most mind numbing gameplay you'll ever encounter. It simply involves driving around the Silver Strip, killing zombies and saving every so often in order to repair your SUV and do it all over again. As mentioned, it's dull and takes around 7-8 hours, which is basically a whole playthrough. Not fun.
Despite this game being very heavily emphasised on Single Player, there are a small selection of Multi-player trophies too.
Most of these are easy enough, but the "TK's Favourite" trophy, awarded for playing and winning in all 9 TIR events, is a difficult one to nab. This is mainly because the games are chosen at random, and theres no way for the payers to influence what comes next, meaning when you get down to the last couple, it can be frustrating waiting for them to appear, especially if you miss the chance by losing the round, and have to wait for the next opportunity.
Given the fact that the entire list is full of checklist heavy trophies, and the need to consistently keep track of everything effectively becomes a big game of trial and error, especially when you consider the amount of items that can be missed throughout the game, simply because they only appear during certain missions, or can be obtained from areas that need to be unlocked or visited once, it creates a challenging trophy list, albeit a mentally challenging one, more than anything.
Some skill elements do creep into the game at times, and it can be a very challenging game when you first start out levelling your character, but the sheer amount of time and the constant tedium and repetition are what makes this game truly hard to get through right to the very end.
The amount of trophies that rely on hefty accumulation and collection related tasks is ultimately very overwhelming, and it means you'll end up playing around 10-20 complete playthroughs of the game, which equates to around 100-150 hours, to grab the Platinum. The slightly skill based trophies present a fun edge to the game, but the spotlight is stolen by way too many trophies that just rely on tedium and sheer grinding that test your determination to the very maximum.
Notable Trophies -
Hero of Fortune City
Save 50 Survivors
Labels
DLC Reviews
(217)
Platinum Difficulty Ratings
(149)
Bits and Pieces
(4)
DLC Progress
(1)
SimplySupremes Trophy Cabinet
(1)
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Friday, 19 April 2013
DLC #64 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem Single Player Pack
![]() |
| Attempt to beat the clock, in a series of spin off challenges |
The only Gold trophy in the package, "Clock Watching", awarded for beating the times on all new challenges and the new Deathmatch challenge, is the primary focus of the trophy set, and if you're striving towards this trophy, you'll unlock the other 5 in the list automatically along the way.
There are 10 new challenges in total, all focused around using the games weapons to accomplish certain goals, and the majority of them are incredibly easy to beat, even under the target times you'll need to unlock all trophies.
There are a couple of challenges that might require a handful of attempts, but there's nothing that a little bit of practice won't solve, and where the Multiplayer Pack actually presented a stiff challenge, this package is very much the opposite, and you can unlock every trophy available in the set within 1-2 hours.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
DLC #63 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem Multiplayer Map Pack
![]() |
| More maps, More Mayhem! |
The sole gold trophy, "Feel the Power of the Darkside", awarded for winning a ranked match with 2 or more Worms remaining on each new map, is the pick of the list, and is quite a solid feat to achieve. It requires alot of tactical nouse to be able to keep 2 worms alive by the time you've beaten your opponent, and power weapons can easily have the capability to wipe out a Worm or two in one go, so you need to be fast in your approach at dispatching the enemy worms. Thankfully, forfeiting opponents will count towards the trophy too, meaning it is possible to beat somebody into an early quit and still get the reward from it, which sometimes turns out to be more effective than straight out winning the game.
There are 5 new maps to win on, but the trophy (and a few others in the package) suffers from poor game design, as you can never have any influence on which map to play on, and therefore, things turn very tedious, very fast when you get to that final map you still need to win on and it just doesn't want to turn up in the map rotation. Even more frustrating when you lose, or don't have 2 worms left when you win, meaning you have to replay the map and go through the motions of waiting for it to appear again. Frustrating.
The "Dedicated Ranker" trophy, awarded for winning a ranked match on every new map, is pretty self explanatory, but will be achieved in tandem with the "Feel the Power of the Darkside" trophy.
Apart from this, the "I Love New" trophy, awarded for playing each of the new maps 5 times, is thankfully made alot of easier by the fact all modes count, and can therefore be achieved in an offline local game. Imagine trying to play 25 matches across 5 maps with an online component that doesn't even allow you to have any influence on map selection.
The rest of the trophies in the pack will come along the way, but in all honesty, the toughest thing about this package was trying to find the right games to get into. You don't get the option to create lobbies, and there's no sort of voting process for maps, so you just need to hope you get dealt the maps you need in order to fulfil the trophy requirements. It can add a fair whack of time to overall completion, especially when you consider how baron the online portion of the game can be at times, but when the map rotation is feeling kind, it isn't really too difficult in terms of required skill.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Platinum #49 - Worms : Ultimate Mayhem
Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10
Despite being a very small list, this still passes by as a reasonably challenging game to Platinum, though most of this is entirely down to the Gold trophies alone.
None of the bronze trophies are really worth shouting about, however, the "I Am The Worminator" trophy, awarded for killing more than 3 worms in one turn in a ranked match, is practically down to luck, and just hoping you fall into a scenario where you can take out a close bunch of enemy worms.
Using a high impact weapon, such as the Weapon Factory, and making sure it has a good blast radius, is most likely your best opportunity to knock off at least 4 enemy worms in 1 go, and you'll definitely need to be playing against more than 1 team too, given the fact it's extremely unlikely you'll be in a situation where you can kill off an entire team in 1 go.
The rest of the Bronze trophies, which make up almost half of the whole list, are very easy, and even just complete throw-aways in some instances, and the Silver trophies, though not exactly as easy, can still be achieved through natural progression through the game, and go towards the Gold trophies in most instances anyway.
It is relevant to make an exception to the "Embrace the Darkness" trophy, though, awarded for winning 10 games with the last hit coming from a Sentry Gun. It's tough to manufacture a situation where you can kill the final enemy with a Sentry Gun, and given the fact you need to replicate it 10 times in total, it is the stand-out Silver in this list.
It is always easier to leave 1 enemy worm remaining, and set up a Sentry Gun in or around their area, and hope that they trigger it off when they take their turn. You may need to be very persistent, but this is sound tactic that should be effective in fulfilling enough wins to unlock the trophy.
However, the Gold trophies are the ones that take this game's difficulty into the upper end of the scale, with all 6 of them being culpable to some degree of extent.
Starting with the hardest, the "Total Ranker" trophy, awarded for winning 40 online ranked matches across 3 games modes, will take anywhere within the region of 20-25 hours for the average player alone, though this timescale will depend on your win to loss ratio. The relevance of 3 game modes is largely insignificant, because you can do the bare minimum of 1 win in 2 modes, and 38 wins in another, and since Deathmatch seems to be the only mode that people indulge in online, it's just aswell theres no limit on your win distribution.
The "Billy No Mates" trophy, awarded for completing the single player story mode (which contains 26 missions), will take around 5-10 hours, and barring a couple of missions, is incredibly straight forward.
Directly tied into this trophy, is the "Doing it Solo" trophy, awarded for completing the story, challenges and tutorials. The tutorials are easy enough, as you'd expect, but some of the challenges can be deceptively tough, which are mostly quick levels based around beating target times. You'll need to be fast and efficient for some of them though.
Aside from the main Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there's also the Worms 3D campaign, which is covered by the "Fan of the Arts" trophy, awarded for collecting all gallery images available. There are an additional 35 missions within the Worms 3D campaign, with artwork available for beating every single one of them, meaning you'll need to complete the entire campaign in order to unlock this trophy. However, just like the Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there isn't alot to trouble you here, aside the odd mission that might spike the difficulty a touch.
The "Genghis Worm" trophy, awarded for killing a total of 600 worms, might seem like a bit of a grind, but there's enough content in the trophy list for you to be able to achieve this number way before you grab the Platinum anyway. It isn't exactly a modest total by any stretch, but it won't keep you slogging away at the game way after you've finished everything else either.
The final Gold trophy, "Shop-A-Holic", is actually the only secret trophy in the list, and is awarded for unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style, which is only available after everything else in the shop has been purchased. There's a fairly wide selection of items and weapons in the shop, and a decent accumulation of coins is needed to unlock them all, which can be earned through the beating missions within the games single player modes. It isn't exactly tough, but it will be one of the last trophies you unlock, due to the sheer wealth of content you need to purchase before unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style.
Ultimately, this game essentially boils down to the various Gold trophies within. The list is quite sparse of trophies that are difficult in terms of actual skill required, but there's still a pretty hefty time investment, clocking in at around 40-50 hours to complete everything on offer.
Notable Trophies -
Total Ranker
Win 40 online Ranked matches across at least 3 game modes.
Despite being a very small list, this still passes by as a reasonably challenging game to Platinum, though most of this is entirely down to the Gold trophies alone.
None of the bronze trophies are really worth shouting about, however, the "I Am The Worminator" trophy, awarded for killing more than 3 worms in one turn in a ranked match, is practically down to luck, and just hoping you fall into a scenario where you can take out a close bunch of enemy worms.
Using a high impact weapon, such as the Weapon Factory, and making sure it has a good blast radius, is most likely your best opportunity to knock off at least 4 enemy worms in 1 go, and you'll definitely need to be playing against more than 1 team too, given the fact it's extremely unlikely you'll be in a situation where you can kill off an entire team in 1 go.
The rest of the Bronze trophies, which make up almost half of the whole list, are very easy, and even just complete throw-aways in some instances, and the Silver trophies, though not exactly as easy, can still be achieved through natural progression through the game, and go towards the Gold trophies in most instances anyway.
It is relevant to make an exception to the "Embrace the Darkness" trophy, though, awarded for winning 10 games with the last hit coming from a Sentry Gun. It's tough to manufacture a situation where you can kill the final enemy with a Sentry Gun, and given the fact you need to replicate it 10 times in total, it is the stand-out Silver in this list.
It is always easier to leave 1 enemy worm remaining, and set up a Sentry Gun in or around their area, and hope that they trigger it off when they take their turn. You may need to be very persistent, but this is sound tactic that should be effective in fulfilling enough wins to unlock the trophy.
However, the Gold trophies are the ones that take this game's difficulty into the upper end of the scale, with all 6 of them being culpable to some degree of extent.
Starting with the hardest, the "Total Ranker" trophy, awarded for winning 40 online ranked matches across 3 games modes, will take anywhere within the region of 20-25 hours for the average player alone, though this timescale will depend on your win to loss ratio. The relevance of 3 game modes is largely insignificant, because you can do the bare minimum of 1 win in 2 modes, and 38 wins in another, and since Deathmatch seems to be the only mode that people indulge in online, it's just aswell theres no limit on your win distribution.
The "Billy No Mates" trophy, awarded for completing the single player story mode (which contains 26 missions), will take around 5-10 hours, and barring a couple of missions, is incredibly straight forward.
Directly tied into this trophy, is the "Doing it Solo" trophy, awarded for completing the story, challenges and tutorials. The tutorials are easy enough, as you'd expect, but some of the challenges can be deceptively tough, which are mostly quick levels based around beating target times. You'll need to be fast and efficient for some of them though.
Aside from the main Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there's also the Worms 3D campaign, which is covered by the "Fan of the Arts" trophy, awarded for collecting all gallery images available. There are an additional 35 missions within the Worms 3D campaign, with artwork available for beating every single one of them, meaning you'll need to complete the entire campaign in order to unlock this trophy. However, just like the Ultimate Mayhem campaign, there isn't alot to trouble you here, aside the odd mission that might spike the difficulty a touch.
The "Genghis Worm" trophy, awarded for killing a total of 600 worms, might seem like a bit of a grind, but there's enough content in the trophy list for you to be able to achieve this number way before you grab the Platinum anyway. It isn't exactly a modest total by any stretch, but it won't keep you slogging away at the game way after you've finished everything else either.
The final Gold trophy, "Shop-A-Holic", is actually the only secret trophy in the list, and is awarded for unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style, which is only available after everything else in the shop has been purchased. There's a fairly wide selection of items and weapons in the shop, and a decent accumulation of coins is needed to unlock them all, which can be earned through the beating missions within the games single player modes. It isn't exactly tough, but it will be one of the last trophies you unlock, due to the sheer wealth of content you need to purchase before unlocking the Kitchen Sink game style.
Ultimately, this game essentially boils down to the various Gold trophies within. The list is quite sparse of trophies that are difficult in terms of actual skill required, but there's still a pretty hefty time investment, clocking in at around 40-50 hours to complete everything on offer.
Notable Trophies -
Total Ranker
Win 40 online Ranked matches across at least 3 game modes.
Friday, 29 March 2013
DLC #62 - Bulletstorm - Blood Symphony
![]() |
| More Echoes, More Anarchy! |
There are 3 trophies attached to the new Anarchy levels, all awarded for performing certain skillshots with the said levels. As before, none of these are particularly difficult, and you can easily unlock them all within half an hour or so.
The only attempt this DLC package makes of offering a challenge comes from the 2 trophies tied to the new Echo levels.
The "Up-Lifting" trophy, awarded for killing all enemies whilst riding the lift in the Monorail Factory echo, isn't exactly hard, but you do need to be aware of the fact that all enemies in the previous room, prior to the lift section, do also need to be killed for the trophy to unlock, which isn't expressed within the trophy description, and could very easily catch you out.
The " Fast Track" trophy, awarded for killing all snipers on the rooftop before the DNA bomb explodes on the Mean Street echo, also requires a slight element of skill, though this is mainly down to the fact you have to kill 10 enemies with just 10 bullets at your disposal, given the fact the rooftop section has no dropkit available to replenish your ammo, so efficiency is important.
Even still, this is another short DLC package that takes roughly the same amount of time to complete as the Gun Sonata pack, clocking in at around 1-2 hours.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
DLC #61 - Bulletstorm - Gun Sonata
![]() |
| Indulge in some more death-fuelled showboating. |
There are 3 trophies distributed to the new Anarchy levels added by the DLC package, all of which are awarded for pulling off certain skillshots within the anarchy levels. With the correct tactics applied, you can snap all of these up well within half an hour or so, which is very generous when you consider the "Heart Attack" trophy, awarded for killing a boss with the Hot Dog cart in the Hotel Elysium map, is actually a gold trophy.
There are also 2 trophies allocated to the new echoes levels, but again, there's nothing here that will cause you a great amount of trouble.
Just for the sake of stretching things a bit, the "Last Blood" trophy, awarded for killing all enemies on the walkways before the explosions do, at the end of Guns of Stygia, requires some fast reactions and deft shooting skill. However, the only thing that's slightly frustrating about the trophy is the fact you have to get to the end of the level again every time you fail, in order to reach the point at which you can retry for the trophy, but once you realise you can run straight to it, it makes it much less of a burden if you actually do need more than a few attempts.
Regardless, you can still unlock all 5 trophies within 1-2 hours of gameplay, making it a very easy DLC package.
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Platinum #48 - Shift 2 : Unleashed
Platinum Difficulty Rating - 9/10
Most of the single player portion of this list is centred around the career mode, and winning enough events to reach the final branch of races within each discipline.
The "Dominator" trophy, awarded for beating all the rivals, is definitely the core focus of the career mode, and beating all 9 rivals in the game will require heavy mastering of various disciplines and winning a whole host of events in order to earn final races against said rivals. Some events are seriously punishing in difficulty too, with the Drift, Time Attack and Endurance branches deserving of notable mentions when it comes to the latter stages and the eventual rival event.
You'll also need to beat a number of career events to unlock the rival race, so there is a distinct time-based element to this trophy too. You won't need to beat them all, but each branch will need a large amount of progression towards the end before you unlock the eventual rival race and get a shot at beating them all.
The "Bounty Hunter" trophy, awarded for earning a total of $10,000,000 during your career, can be accumulated along the way, but it's a hefty figure to knock off, and there's a highly likely chance you'll be grinding this one out beyond the end-game of the career mode. Given how long the career mode can be, it's a pretty huge total to accumulate, and the best way to go about it is through replaying the final events over and over again, which is where the most prize money is handed out.
The latter events within the game are where the biggest amounts of money are paid out, and you're best off just grinding out these area of the game for any additional funds you need to accumulate. Needless to say, this does eventually become fairly tedious, and does add a good few hours onto the total Platinum time.
Slightly tied into this, the "Leno Would be Proud" trophy, awarded for having at least 1 car from every manufacturer in your garage, will also take a fair chunk to time to achieve, and also be very costly in the process. Some of the more prestigious car dealers only offer cars worth millions of dollars, and with almost 50 manufacturers in the game, the amount of money required to own a vehicle from each of them is towards the larger end of the scale. Some cars can be awarded for free through the career mode, but the vast majority will have to be purchased, and this most often includes the more expensive cars in the game.
The "Day Walker" and "Night Master" trophies, both awarded for mastering every track in the game under day and night conditions respectively, adds a huge element of skill to the list, with a variety of tracks that require pinpoint precision and accuracy to master. Mastering a track requires perfection of the racing line and every corner, and certain variations of tracks are seriously difficult to pull off without some extent of trial and error and/or sheer skill.
These trophies alone definitely ramp up the overall difficulty of the list, especially with almost 100 different tracks and locations to master in total. The vast majority of the tracks just simply become matter of loading the track up in a quick event and blasting out a routine lap or two, but some of them are seriously difficult to nail, and will require genuine racing skill and prowess in order to achieve mastery.
There are a couple of other trophies that will attempt to stumble you, including the "Race License" trophy, awarded for winning 75 career events on hard difficulty, which is a very steep difficulty level that definitely sets a high skill benchmark for the player, though you can actually play the opening events repeatedly to rack up this number, which are easier in comparison to the latter stages, so it might not seem so bad for those who may struggle later on. However, the harder difficulties in the game pay out alot more prize money, which is an extremely useful thing to take note of when you consider how much cash you need to accumulate for some of the aforementioned monetary based trophies.
Regarding the Multiplayer portion, there is no let up on the difficulty presented within this list.
The "King of the Hill" trophy, awarded for winning your first Driver Duel Championship crown, is without doubt one of the toughest bronze trophies available in any game, and requires you to win 7 events in the row without being beaten. Starting from round 1, every win takes you a step closer to the Championship round, and a loss at anytime takes you back down to stage 1.
In all honesty, it's the blatant design flaws of the game that make this trophy difficult to achieve. You'll never get matched up with anyone else who isn't at the same stage as you, which means you could quite conceivably sit within a round for hours and not encounter a single opponent, especially at the latter stages of the tournament. There's also no ghost mode enabled for races, meaning rounds just mostly degenerate into glorified destruction derbies where it will effectively come down to whoever can ruin their opponent first and race ahead. It makes the whole thing an arduous, and also nerve racking slog, and this trophy alone is a massive achievement in it's own right.
Apart from that, the "Notorious" trophy, awarded for playing for 10 hours in total online, is self explanatory, but you will most definitely knock most of this, if not all of it, out during the King of the Hill quest.
The same goes for the "I. Am. Iron. Man." trophy awarded for winning 5 consecutive online events, but you need to win a total of 7 rounds to become King of the Hill and unlock that trophy, so it's better to go for these two trophies in tandem. It just becomes a harder task if you try and race multiple opponents and attempt to beat them all for 5 consecutive races, so despite how hard the King of the Hill mode is, it's still probably the easiest chance you have of accumulating 5 wins in a row anyway.
This Platinum has practically everything, with a large element of skill required and plenty of time to invest too. There are alot of frustrations along the way, and certain trophies will require much persistence and determination to achieve. However, it makes for a very rewarding Platinum, and comes extremely close to the full 10. Is it tougher than Motorstorm : Pacific Rift? No, but it only just misses out.
Notable Trophies -
King of the Hill
Won your first Driver Duel Championship Crown
Most of the single player portion of this list is centred around the career mode, and winning enough events to reach the final branch of races within each discipline.
The "Dominator" trophy, awarded for beating all the rivals, is definitely the core focus of the career mode, and beating all 9 rivals in the game will require heavy mastering of various disciplines and winning a whole host of events in order to earn final races against said rivals. Some events are seriously punishing in difficulty too, with the Drift, Time Attack and Endurance branches deserving of notable mentions when it comes to the latter stages and the eventual rival event.
You'll also need to beat a number of career events to unlock the rival race, so there is a distinct time-based element to this trophy too. You won't need to beat them all, but each branch will need a large amount of progression towards the end before you unlock the eventual rival race and get a shot at beating them all.
The "Bounty Hunter" trophy, awarded for earning a total of $10,000,000 during your career, can be accumulated along the way, but it's a hefty figure to knock off, and there's a highly likely chance you'll be grinding this one out beyond the end-game of the career mode. Given how long the career mode can be, it's a pretty huge total to accumulate, and the best way to go about it is through replaying the final events over and over again, which is where the most prize money is handed out.
The latter events within the game are where the biggest amounts of money are paid out, and you're best off just grinding out these area of the game for any additional funds you need to accumulate. Needless to say, this does eventually become fairly tedious, and does add a good few hours onto the total Platinum time.
Slightly tied into this, the "Leno Would be Proud" trophy, awarded for having at least 1 car from every manufacturer in your garage, will also take a fair chunk to time to achieve, and also be very costly in the process. Some of the more prestigious car dealers only offer cars worth millions of dollars, and with almost 50 manufacturers in the game, the amount of money required to own a vehicle from each of them is towards the larger end of the scale. Some cars can be awarded for free through the career mode, but the vast majority will have to be purchased, and this most often includes the more expensive cars in the game.
The "Day Walker" and "Night Master" trophies, both awarded for mastering every track in the game under day and night conditions respectively, adds a huge element of skill to the list, with a variety of tracks that require pinpoint precision and accuracy to master. Mastering a track requires perfection of the racing line and every corner, and certain variations of tracks are seriously difficult to pull off without some extent of trial and error and/or sheer skill.
These trophies alone definitely ramp up the overall difficulty of the list, especially with almost 100 different tracks and locations to master in total. The vast majority of the tracks just simply become matter of loading the track up in a quick event and blasting out a routine lap or two, but some of them are seriously difficult to nail, and will require genuine racing skill and prowess in order to achieve mastery.
There are a couple of other trophies that will attempt to stumble you, including the "Race License" trophy, awarded for winning 75 career events on hard difficulty, which is a very steep difficulty level that definitely sets a high skill benchmark for the player, though you can actually play the opening events repeatedly to rack up this number, which are easier in comparison to the latter stages, so it might not seem so bad for those who may struggle later on. However, the harder difficulties in the game pay out alot more prize money, which is an extremely useful thing to take note of when you consider how much cash you need to accumulate for some of the aforementioned monetary based trophies.
Regarding the Multiplayer portion, there is no let up on the difficulty presented within this list.
The "King of the Hill" trophy, awarded for winning your first Driver Duel Championship crown, is without doubt one of the toughest bronze trophies available in any game, and requires you to win 7 events in the row without being beaten. Starting from round 1, every win takes you a step closer to the Championship round, and a loss at anytime takes you back down to stage 1.
In all honesty, it's the blatant design flaws of the game that make this trophy difficult to achieve. You'll never get matched up with anyone else who isn't at the same stage as you, which means you could quite conceivably sit within a round for hours and not encounter a single opponent, especially at the latter stages of the tournament. There's also no ghost mode enabled for races, meaning rounds just mostly degenerate into glorified destruction derbies where it will effectively come down to whoever can ruin their opponent first and race ahead. It makes the whole thing an arduous, and also nerve racking slog, and this trophy alone is a massive achievement in it's own right.
Apart from that, the "Notorious" trophy, awarded for playing for 10 hours in total online, is self explanatory, but you will most definitely knock most of this, if not all of it, out during the King of the Hill quest.
The same goes for the "I. Am. Iron. Man." trophy awarded for winning 5 consecutive online events, but you need to win a total of 7 rounds to become King of the Hill and unlock that trophy, so it's better to go for these two trophies in tandem. It just becomes a harder task if you try and race multiple opponents and attempt to beat them all for 5 consecutive races, so despite how hard the King of the Hill mode is, it's still probably the easiest chance you have of accumulating 5 wins in a row anyway.
This Platinum has practically everything, with a large element of skill required and plenty of time to invest too. There are alot of frustrations along the way, and certain trophies will require much persistence and determination to achieve. However, it makes for a very rewarding Platinum, and comes extremely close to the full 10. Is it tougher than Motorstorm : Pacific Rift? No, but it only just misses out.
Notable Trophies -
King of the Hill
Won your first Driver Duel Championship Crown
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
DLC #60 - Mass Effect 2 - Arrival
![]() |
| A rescue mission, that isn't all that it seems... |
Two of the trophies on offer require you to perform specific tasks within the DLC storyline. The"Last Stand" trophy, which requires you to complete all 5 waves in the battle for object Roh, is probably the harder of the two, but that doesn't exactly say much, it's just the one most people will probably need a few attempts at trying to achieve, if not done in one shot.
Even if you do struggle on either, simply reloading the last checkpoint will take you to the beginning of each relevant point, you just need to be aware at when you're actually at the point in the story-arc where the trophies can be achieved, and not skipped over.
You also get awarded "The Ultimate Sacrifice" trophy, for beating the Arrival DLC, which takes no longer than 1-2 hours, depending on how long it takes you to get the other 2 trophies, which are missable, but easy enough to keep track of and unlock, to not require multiple play-throughs at the same time.
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Platinum #47 - Mass Effect 2
Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10The hardest part of this list comes from the "Insanity" trophy, for completing the game on Insanity difficulty level, with a frequent number of parts throughout the whole game that just end up becoming a tough slog of trial and error as you aim to complete each mission.
It definitely lives it up it's name appropriately, and also turns out to be one of the most frustrating highest difficulty level games you will experience, with punishing enemies and vastly depleting health. Various sections of the game turn into fairly large time-sinks as you struggle to get by them and the trophy ends up being responsible for the vast majority of the difficulty rating for the entire list.
Even though you can wade straight into the game on Insanity mode, you'll most likely need more than 1 play-through regardless (It's tough to imagine that anyone will want to try and unlock every trophy, including loyalty missions and side missions, purely on Insanity mode).
The "Long Service Medal" trophy, awarded for completing Mass Effect 2 twice, or once with an imported character from Mass Effect 1, will probably see that most people do complete the game twice especially when you take into account the fact you should probably tackle Insanity mode with the least amount of obstructions possible. Alternatively, downloading the Cerberus Pack and watching the interactive comic will classify as importing a Mass Effect 1 character, and as such, will also fulfil the trophy requirements.
It's also worth noting the "Power Gamer" trophy, for reaching level 30 with one character, will extend into 2 play-throughs, due to the fact not enough experience can be earned in 1 run to fulfil the requirements of the trophy. The extent to which you have to reach in a second play-through will obviously depend on how far you get in the first, but completing everything in a single game will get you to around level 28, so a second dip into the game is mandatory.
The "Noone Left Behind" trophy, for keeping your team alive through the suicide mission, can only be achieved under certain criteria, based on which choices you make during the game, and which team members are loyal to your character. It's best advised to keep a save backed up prior to the mission, as certain choices during the mission itself will dictate the survival and death of your team members, which can very easily trip you up and undo alot of hard work.
The game does have it's fair share of easier trophies, with a generous amount of them catered towards main story progression, recruiting your team and also finishing their loyalty missions.There are also a small selection of cumulative kill based trophies granted for experimenting with a variety of weapons and special powers.
In reality, the "Insanity" trophy is the only trophy that makes this game genuinely challenging, although there are a couple of other nuances contained within the list, such as a handful of missable trophies that are incredibly easy to overlook, ensuring your whole team survive the suicide mission and the fact it actually required 3 playthroughs of the game, rather than the 2 maximum, for me to unlock the "Long Service Medal" trophy.
Typically, you're still looking at around 60 hours to grab the Platinum. The game's list offers alot for the player to get through, and Insanity mode will test your patience and determination to the very maximum. If you have the will to beat the game on it's toughest challenge, you're practically there, as the rest of the list is just about time and making sure you keep an eye out for the missable trophies.
Notable Trophies -
Insanity
Complete the game on the "Insanity" difficulty level without changing the setting.
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Platinum #46 - DiRT Showdown
Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10The bulk of the Single Player trophies in this list are related to the Tour mode, and most of them can easily be achieved through natural progression.
There are only 60 events in the Showdown Tour this time round, which is a drastic cut from the previous DiRT games. The "GOLD!" trophy, for completing the Showdown Tour and winning Gold in every event still isn't that difficult to achieve, and there are a host of other progression based trophies tied to winning at bronze and silver levels too, as well as beating each of the 4 tiers in the Tour mode, so there is always something to spur you on.
Sticking with the gold theme, the "Max Power" trophy, which requires you to fully upgrade all vehicles, is the other gold trophy in the list, and requires you to kit out every vehicle to maximum specifications. You can earn the majority of the money needed to upgrade everything through just natural tour progression, though you may also need to venture online to scrape together the remaining money needed (or just replay the higher reward Tour events over and over).
Even though there are a considerable amount of throw-away trophies, the "Wrecker" trophy, which requires you to achieve a 5x wrecking streak in Rampage, and "Hitman", which requires you to achieve all hit types in Rampage, will test your skills, and possibly require a bit of luck in the process.
You also need to collect all 100 hidden packages in Joyride mode, as well as beat 100% of the Yokohama and Battersea missions too, which aren't only a touch grindy, but frustrating at times aswell.
Venturing online, and the "Showdown Superstar" trophy, which requires you to reach fanbase level 30 online, makes a return, and has the exact same fanbase target as DiRT 3 (250,000 fans). In the exact same way too, it is also incredibly lengthy and will easily take somewhere in the region 30-40 hours alone.
The "Running the Show" trophy requires you to dominate a friend in challenge mode (10 wins on the bounce), which is no minor task, though as long as you make sure you don't post any challenges to them, you should be able to accumulate this over time, as long as your friend keeps on posting challenges to you.
There are a couple of trickier online trophies, including "Loot Carrier", which requires you to hold the loot for 2 minutes in Smash and Grab, which is a tall order when you take into account the games are only 3 minutes long, and "Showdown Haulage Co.", which requires you to drop the flag off 5 times in a round of Transporter.
Generally speaking though, this is a pretty easy Platinum to achieve. The Showdown Tour shouldn't take any longer than 15-20 hours to complete in full, and given the fact you can achieve the vast majority of the single player trophies on the way to obtaining a gold trophy in every event, the need for a mop up afterwards probably won't be hugely necessary.
Even though the Multi-player trophies do their best to step up the challenge a notch, there still isn't anything overly difficult, and if you can get over the fairly steep completion time (About 70-80 hours in total), you've netted a pretty easy going Platinum.
Notable Trophies -
Showdown Superstar
Reach Fanbase Level 30 Online
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)

















