DLC #175 - Rocket League - Clubs Update

There's not actually too much to say about this content pack. It wasn't released as an open piece of DLC, but was instead included as part of a patch update.

In fact, the update doesn't seem to add much at all. No new customisation items, no new arenas or game modes and no new features, although this makes sense given the fact this was a content update, and not a piece of downloadable content. What doesn't make much sense is how dull this update actually is.

The new clubs system allows you to now invite friends into your club, where they'll sport certain chosen club colours and a club tag, but that is literally it.

It's a little bit confusing how bare bones this feature is, and even to this day, it still hasn't been fleshed out with any new additions or ideas over time. It feels like the framework for something bigger that just got ignored and left to fall by the wayside.

You can access your club from the main menu, and from within, you'll be able to see the clubs members, set the teams colours/club tag and create private matches - Presumably to play amongst each other.

I did some additional research, just to make sure it wasn't just me missing something glaringly obvious, but it just seems to be a hub for absolutely nothing. No club leagues or tournaments, no club levelling system, no ability to openly challenge other clubs, no club records. It not only feels like a wasted opportunity for something that could have added something great to the game, but it also feels utterly pointless. Strange.

However, it does add 6 new trophies, and you'll need at least 1 club mate to tackle them with.

Creating your club and completing an online tournament game can be done on a solo basis, but the remaining 4 trophies will rely on playing with a club mate, so you'll need to grab a co-op partner to complete this list with.

None of the requirements are too strenuous, and you should be able to achieve all the trophies within the same amount of time it takes to complete 10 matches with a club mate, which you can do through either Tournament, Competitive or Casual play. It's recommended to start at Tournament play, as you'll need to win the MVP award in a Tournament match for one of these trophies.

The "Squad Goals" trophy, awarded for Scoring a goal while in a Club Match, has the potential to be tricky, because you'll need to matchmake against another club, and not just 2 random people who have been matched together against you, and whilst this happened normally for me, this is down to random chance, and I'm not sure how many people who play together are also part of the same club, so just be aware.

Outside the 2 solo trophies, I managed to grab the 4 co-operative trophies within less than 2 hours according the to trophy timestamps - This was also achieved within just 1 game session, so my experience here was seamless. It's an easy pack if everything falls into place, but just be aware that you may need to play longer than anticipated if you can't find another squad within the matchmaking environment to score a goal against.

DLC #174 - Rocket League - Dropshot

It's become apparent to me that one of the strongest suits of Rocket League is their variation of game modes. Having previously reviewed the Neo Tokyo pack - which introduced Hoops and Snow Day - this pack further introduces the Dropshot game mode.

Where Hoops and Snow Day were easy to explain off as just variations on Basketball and Ice Hockey, Dropshot is a little bit more complicated to explain. The new arena in which Dropshot takes place (Core 707) is a Hexagonal shaped field, split into 2 halves, with each half containing a certain number of hexagonal tiles that make up the floor.

The goal of Dropshot is to break through the floor of the oppositions side of the arena using the ball, exposing gaps, and subsequently scoring via knocking the ball through any space in the ground.

In regards to the goalscoring process, the floor consists of 3 stages. A weak shot (which does not electrocute the ball) will damage a single floor tile. A stronger shot (which will electrocute the ball) causes radial effect damage to a number of surrounding tiles. Any damaged tile which is subsequently hit a second time will cause the tile to break, exposing the floor below it, and giving you a goalscoring opportunity if you can then knock the ball through that space.

The more you do this, the more of the overall floor you'll expose, thus increasing your chances of scoring. Games are the standard length of 5 minutes and whoever has scored the most goals within that time, wins the game. It's a simple, but fun concept, and it's probably my favourite Rocket League mode.

As ever, the pack also adds a bunch of additional cosmetic items, some new arenas to try out and 6 additional trophies. Half of these are focused on random requirements and the other half are focused on Dropshot itself. Most of it is fairly easy, but you will need to spend a reasonable amount of time in Dropshot here for one particular trophy;

Full Course - Score a total of 18 Goals in Dropshot.

The "Full Course" trophy, awarded for scoring a total of 18 Goals in Dropshot, might not seem like anything too tasking on face value. However, for as much as I enjoyed playing Dropshot, it is a game mode that feels like success comes at a premium when it comes to scoring goals.

This isn't like Soccar, or even Hoops and Snow Day, where you can score with a single shot and witness games just erupt into pure goalfests out of nowhere. The nature of Dropshot outlined above means games are generally very low scoring, and in my personal experience, it was rare to see games end with anything more than 3 or 4 goals between each team.

When I say "the nature of Dropshot", what I mean is, there's alot to do to score a goal. Floor tiles need to be broken before the process of scoring is even possible, and when you do eventually score, the opposition's floor completely resets, so you have to begin the process all over again. When you combine this with the fact games are still only 5 minutes long and Dropshot is played on a 3 v 3 basis, meaning tough competition to score against team-mates, it does mean 18 goals is a slow burner.

I'm not sure how many games it took me to do this in the end, but when I was attempting to keep track, I was playing out alot of games without even scoring. This is mainly down to limited opportunity, but I do also believe it's a much harder variation of game mode to play and learn, especially compared to traditional Soccar.

I suppose perseverance is the key. You may get lucky with some flukey touches that go in and will credit you with the goal, but that's Rocket League all round. As long as you're prepared to watch the games go by where you chalk up a big zero, then it's OK, but almost certainly don't be expecting to get this done within a handful of games. There are a couple of other trophies to earn from Dropshot in tandem, one of which is awarded for damaging 320 tiles across all games, but I had this done way before I notched up 18 goals.

A fun mode, at least, which prevents the looming feeling of pointless grinding, especially when you start to rack up the games where you draw a blank. If you're going to get nowhere, you might as well have fun doing it, and it always make the trophy a bit sweeter when you do eventually grab it.

DLC #173 - Rocket League - Revenge of the Battle-Cars

I've decided to pick up the pace a bit with Rocket League now. It's a well overdue full completion and I think I can make some decent headway towards the finish line with a reasonable level of focus at this point.

The Revenge of the Battle-Cars DLC pack celebrates Rocket League's roots, paying tribute to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, originally released in 2008 in the Playstation 3 era. Incidentally, it was also one of the very first Playstation titles that adopted the trophy system, which also debuted in the same year.

Due to this being a tribute pack, the Scarab and Zippy car bodies are added - both of which featured in the original SARPBC title, and with it, comes a heck of alot of cosmetic additions. These include new decals, paintjobs, toppers, wheels and boosts, amongst other things. It is purely a visual content pack that focuses on customisation, and even goes as far to add a couple of filters to existing arenas that alter the time of day you can play them in.

The 5 new trophies have a mixed focus and look like they've just been thrown in randomly for the most part. You'll have to exercise either Scarab or Zippy for a couple of the trophies, which should emphasise the nostalgia a little bit, but you earn the remaining trophies through equipping an assortment of different cosmetic items and beating up on a couple of bots through the Exhibition mode.

If you're lucky, and work this the right way, you can actually achieve all 5 trophies within a single Online match, and a single Exhibition match. The parameters of the 2 online trophies will require you to both win a game and be the MVP with either Backfire, Scarab or Zippy, and this is easy in 1 v 1 match.

For the remaining 3 trophies, equip a certain decal, topper and boost, choose a 2 v 1 with All-Star bots and roll a game on the Urban Central map. Then, use your boost at any point during the game, win, and you'll get all 3 trophies at once. If you miss any, just load up a new match and fulfil the requirements on another attempt.

This can easily be done within 30 minutes and up to an hour if things don't as smoothly for you as outlined above, and certainly makes this the easiest Rocket League DLC yet.

DLC #172 - Rocket League - Neo Tokyo

In the latest venture of "jumping back into Rocket League at completely random intervals with no logical reasoning whatsoever", we're now officially half-way through the DLC content in terms of packs completed.

Neo Tokyo's main event is the addition of the Neo Tokyo game-field, which acts as a replacement to the previously discontinued Neo Underpass game-field. Neo Tokyo has some sort of cultural significance to Japanese Anime, but that's all lost on me so it's just a new arena as far as I'm concerned.

There are a couple of other solid additions though. The Snow Day and Hoops game modes are introduced - Variations on Ice Hockey and Basketball respectively - and a trading function, allowing players to trade items with each from within the game. Incidentally, this is due to be discontinued imminently and may render a few trophies unachievable, or potentially a bit more difficult to earn, which has some relevance here.

Participation on the Neo Tokyo arena isn't actually incorporated into the trophy list. However, all other previously aforementioned additions are, with a clear emphasis on Snow Day, Hoops and item trading.

Earning the 4 trophies for requirements tied to Snow Day and Hoops are easy, and should require no more than a handful of games on a casual-play basis. The 2 trophies related to item trading - Not so much;

Certifiable - Earn Veteran status for your Certified item.

The "Certified" trophy, awarded for Earning Veteran status for your Certified item, is actually broken down into a small handful of stages, as follows;

Step 1 - Obtain a Certified item, which is earned through random award each time you level up. When I checked my inventory, I only had 2 certified items, so I'm not entirely sure how rare these actually are. I don't play Rocket League much at all, so they may seem rare just by default of that exact fact, but you used to be able to obtain them through the Rocket Pass too. However, certified items are no longer available through the Rocket Pass, and with the in-game trading system also about to be removed, this will also close off the potential avenue of being gifted them by other players. This will, in theory, make them more difficult to obtain, as you're left with just purely hoping on random luck each time you level up as your sole method of obtaining a certified item.

Step 2 - Understand which statistic drives the progression of your Certified item and how many of these you'll need to reach Veteran status. Each Certified item is attached with a specific in-game statistic that you'll need to accumulate in order to level it up. The item I settled on required you to clock up Centered balls, of which I needed 200 in online matches, to reach Veteran rank. Some tasks attached to Certified items will require less than this total, but are also generally considered to be tougher to accumulate in comparison, such as goals and MVP awards, and this sort of high volume, whilst simple enough, still requires the grind.

Step 3 - Accumulate the total number of actions required to level your Certified item all the way to Veteran rank and unlock the trophy. Centering the ball requires you to play the ball to within the centre of the pitch, and as mentioned, you'll need 200 of these to reach Veteran rank. This took me around 10 hours or so, and because you have to clock this up within a competitive environment, the game doesn't allow you to just boot up exhibition matches against uncompetitive bots. This can make progress slow, and I was averaging around 3/4 centered balls per game, so 200 felt a little grindy, and 10 hours is a long time to spend on a trophy like this.

The bigger reason for note, is the fact there may be very limited ways in which you can obtain Certified items going forward, with the imminent removal of in-game trading and the fact you can't get them as Rocket Pass awards any more. If you don't already have a Certified item to roll with, then I'm not sure what your prognosis of success looks like, as it seems the only way you'd be able to acquire one is through natural levelling progression.

The rest of the pack is very straight-forward, but this is definitely one to watch.

DLC #171 - Uncharted 4 : A Thief's End - Survival Mode

There's no such thing as straight-forward when it comes to Uncharted DLC. It's proven to be the peak of the series when it comes to delivering a genuine challenge to the player, and the free-to-play Survival Mode in Uncharted 4 is no exception to the rule.

Survival Mode is effectively a horde-based game mode for up to 3 players, taking place across 10 different stages. Each stage consists of 5 waves, and in order to beat a stage, you'll need to successively complete each wave by fulfilling the requirements set for it's completion.

Each stage can be tackled on 4 different difficulty variants. These include Easy, Normal, Hard and Crushing, but if you're familiar with the typical demands of Uncharted trophies, you won't be surprised to know that the primary focus within this DLC pack is towards the higher end of that difficulty scale, and you'll be competing within the Hard and Crushing difficulty levels if you want to grab all the trophies on offer here.

As far as horde-inspired game modes go, this is solid for the most part, and that's mainly down to the excellent combat Uncharted delivers, which has always been a strong point of the series. Great mechanics are essential to these kind of games modes that focus heavily on combat, otherwise it can make the product stale and dull, and despite being a frustrating experience at times when aiming for full completion, it's still a great game mode which I enjoyed through to the end.

There are 12 new trophies on offer, and the roadmap to full completion has very clear direction. You'll be awarded 10 of these trophies just for beating each of the 10 stages on any difficulty level to any star rating, which is measured on a scale of 1-3, and is based on how quickly you can clear the 5 waves on any given stage.

However, despite a plethora of trophies thrown at you for some very simple requirements, there is a standout trophy;

...It - Earn three stars on all Survival stages on the Crushing setting.

The "...It" trophy, awarded for earning three stars on all Survival stages on the Crushing setting, requires you to earn every star possible (30) across all 10 stages - and in typical Uncharted DLC fashion, this is not an easy feat.

Each of the 10 stages contains 5 waves to beat, and these will either be Survival, Siege, Marked Man, Treasure Hunt or Warlord. Warlords are bosses, and these occur every 10 waves, with the exception of Stage 10, where there are Warlord waves at 49 and 50 to end the game. To spice up the challenge, waves will also come with modifiers. Survival, but only headshot kills count or Siege, but enemies are revived by Saviours in the local area, for example.

There are a couple of important pre-requisites to point out before tackling this trophy in earnest. These are as follows;

• It is not compulsory, but is highly recommended, to be at least character level 40 before you attempt anything on Crushing difficulty. Each time you level up, your character will receive a 3% permanent boost to their HP and damage output, which will both significantly help on Crushing. You can level your character up through playing on Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty variants of the Survival stages.

• You will need to just beat each stage at least once on Hard difficulty in order to unlock Crushing, so you will be forced to cut your teeth on the preceding difficulty level before being able to jump into the same stages on Crushing.

• Collecting gun upgrades to reach level 5 is extremely useful when dealing with Crushing mode, and whilst also not compulsory, is highly recommended too. Defeated Warlords will drop an upgraded weapon, and a weapon to level 5 will give you more damage from that weapon, which is a great asset in Crushing difficulty. You can only obtain level 4 drops from Warlords on Hard, and you'll need to play Crushing to earn level 5 drops, but this is extremely useful for overall character development.

These things are all important to know, and should ultimately be where your focus lies in order to adequately prepare for Crushing difficulty, however, it is absolutely fundamental to success to have good teammates.

Some of these 10 stages are brutal on Crushing difficulty, and this is down to certain factors. 3 stars are awarded for beating the stage's 5 waves within a certain time limit, which gradually decreases the amount of stars you earn down to 0 depending on the amount of time you take to clear all waves.

You can somewhat cheese certain stages though, and you'll find that sitting in specific positions can create enemy spawn patterns that will lead them in a specific direction towards you, which also creates a chokepoint where you can pick them all off at will. This is sometimes complicated by wave modifiers, that force you to move, such as Treasure Hunts and Sieges, which will add an extra dimension of challenge, but on the whole, is a relatively assured tactic.

I did mostly play with random players, and you notice how chaotic things can get when you play with people who don't understand this tactic, and the importance of it to clearing certain stages within some fairly slim timescales. If you've got one player (and this mode is for only 3 players) running around doing their own thing, it creates a level of disorganisation you can't afford to have if you want to reach 3 stars on Crushing difficulty.

Stages 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 all include Warlord bosses. Stage 10 has 2 of them. This is where things really pick up because they have high HP, wield powerful weapons, spawn in tons of smaller enemies to assist them and use powerful attacks that can down you instantly. You'll need to be able to deal with these Warlords quickly and efficiently if you want to achieve a fast enough time to earn 3 stars on Crushing, and this is where the importance of good teammates will really come to the fore.

I was lucky enough to find a solid pairing to assist me, especially with stages 8 and 10, which both caused me problems when trying to earn 3 stars, and did require multiple attempts. Part of the issue is, if you all die and have to restart the round, the clock does not reset, so the margin for error is practically none-existent and failed attempts will just eat into the time limit.

The approach for dealing effectively with Warlords is to make sure you have the right offensive weapons and perks equipped. For me, the quick revive perk, in order to help revive downed teammates faster, is essential to success, as is the enhanced radar perk, which allows you to see all enemies on the map as red dots. I also pretty much exclusively used sniper rifles, alternating between the HDR and M14. If you play with good players, they'll probably have their guns ranked up to level 5, and will be familiar with the strategies to success outlined above, so when you combine it all together, and you're all on the same page, things will click and you do have a solid recipe for success.

I did spend some frustrating runs attempting to beat some of these stages with random players who just didn't know what was required for victory, and the stage would pass us by as the time limit ticked beyond the 3 star requirement, so I would definitely go as far to suggest that good quality teammates are imperative to unlocking this trophy. You'll need to do your bit too. There's no wiggle room for a carry here, so you'll have to bring something to the table yourself. It's a genuine collective team effort, and even then, it's still a tough challenge, so you will have to be prepated to fail along the way.

However, the important thing to note is, you will succeed, but only if you stick to the correct strategies. This won't be achieved through fluke, or being carried, or without the right approach, so it's important to understand that you'll have to work hard for this completion. It's a reasonable time-sink too - somewhere within the 20-25 hour mark, and some of these latter stages will take 20-25 minutes each time. It's a worthy completion to add to the collection, and maintains the high standards required by the player from Uncharted DLC content.

Platinum #123 - Infamous : Second Son

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 2/10

It seems a long time since - but I recall the Infamous games well. The karmic choice system, the increasing plethora of unlockable abilities and having to collect a bucket-load of shards which was, pardon the pun, Infamous in trophy-hunting at the time, and possibly still is. Despite a new direction for the series in multiple ways, not much of that has actually changed.

It's been over 8 years since I grabbed the Infamous 2 Platinum, and over 10 for the original Infamous title, which was one of my earliest ever Platinum trophies.

Infamous : Second Son, following up as a non-sequel to Infamous 1 and 2, but still technically the third game in the Infamous timeline, sees you take control of Delsin Rowe, the successor to Cole Mcgrath from the first two Infamous titles.

Delsin resides in Salmon Bay, home of a fictional native tribe called the Akomish. Nearby, a group of conduit prisoners are being transported across the country by the D.U.P, a specialist force whose purpose is to eliminate the conduit presence in the country. The convoy is destroyed and the conduits escape, and whilst rescuing one of them amongst the wreckage, a struggle ensues and the conduit transfers his powers into Delsin's body, thus also transforming him into a conduit being.

Delsin works closely with his brother, Reggie, who is a police officer, to use this to their advantage, and take down Augustine, the leader of the D.U.P, and the mastermind at the forefront of the extermination of the conduit race.

I was never massive on the original Infamous titles. They were solid, but ultimately just OK. It's a series, that, for me, could have benefitted from radical change and a degree of reinvention, but Second Son doesn't do that, and staleness ultimately sets in here. You end up just getting a game that feels exactly the same as the original Infamous titles, only with a much less likable main protagonist. I think Delsin is a weak character whose depth only runs as far as a few quippy one-line exchanges with his brother throughout the game.

You still have 2 clear karmic paths to follow, with the same set of in-game actions dictating which one you're steered toward. The same cluster of side quests are repetitively plastered across each of the whole open world districts and you still have to collect shards to upgrade an extensive list of abilities via a loose skill-tree system. Combat, movement and gameplay all look and feel exactly the same, and even the trophy list has a very familiarly recycled look to it.

There are new powers at your disposal that you'll discover throughout the story, in the form of Smoke, Neon, Video and Concrete (the latter is only briefly presented at the end of the game though). These are fun to use and alternate between, though I did end up heavily favouring Neon purely for how easy it is to get around with the dash ability, but the variety and effects from special powers do keep the game feeling somewhat fresh, and they are a graphical treat. Each special power has it's own set of abilities too, but a projectile attack in Neon moves the same way as a projectile attack in Smoke, and a bomb in Video still moves in the same way as a bomb in Concrete. You ultimately still feel like you're driving the same car - It's just the car has different paintjobs, but it is the still the stand-out mechanic in the game.

However, the overall lack of reinvention also extends out to the trophy list too. The game contains 48 trophies, all earned through the Single Player, story-driven experience, and these follow the exact same template of the previous Infamous games.

Just straight off the bat, there is a minimal challenge to be had from this list, and the roadmap is very clear. Beat the game once, ensuring you choose the good or evil karmic path, then beat it again on Expert difficulty, choosing the opposite karmic path you didn't choose first time round. This should take you through to the very end of the list, with a very linear methodology that doesn't require any deviance away from this route.

The karmic trophies account for 23 trophies within this list, which is just shy of half the overall total. To further break this down, 12 of them are awarded for making the relevant good/evil choice with specific branches along the way in the main story, and the remainder are for fulfilling karmic-specific actions within the open world setting through side activities, but these can be easily achieved within either playthrough, regardless of whether you're going through your good or evil path.

The story is also a fairly short experience, spanning across a total of 25 missions for roughly 8-10 hours of gameplay. The Infamous titles have never been renowned for their length, but this is the shortest story by a considerable distance in comparison to previous games.

Outside of this, there are a host of trophies related to the side quests within the game. The open world element is a still a big focus within Second Son, as it was within the previous Infamous games, and Seattle, which is where the game's open world is based upon, is split into 14 districts, each controlled by the D.U.P. The other half of this game, away from the story, is all defined around taking back control from each district by fulfilling a number of side objectives which will gradually reduce the total control the D.U.P hold to 0%. This will clear that district from D.U.P influence.

These include disabling security cameras, tagging graffiti messages onto billboards and destroying radio towers, amongst other things. This will take a while, and quickly becomes fairly monotonous once you realise the objectives required to clear each district are all the same. The big positive is, you won't need to do all of this twice - Some open world games will only allow progression through clearing a certain amount of side content, but Second Son will allow you to go through the main story path and leave the side content untouched to whatever extent you so wish, which is a massive plus point in a game that struggles with justifying it's replayability, but will still require you beat the game twice in order to achieve the Platinum trophy.

The "Unstoppable" trophy, awarded for Finishing the game on Expert difficulty, is the only trophy of any reasonable note here, and even that is a stretch. The only condition that changes on Expert difficulty is the fact enemies hit a little harder, and thus, your health will deplete at a quicker rate. However, the dash ability is the ultimate equaliser, turning out to be perfect for running away from fights and allowing your health to automatically regenerate when you remain outside of conflict for a short period of time.

To the naked eye, the difference between Normal and Expert difficulty was barely noticeable, and even on the toughest difficulty mode, this game doesn't do alot to stand in your way. 

To further cement the case for Second Son being the easiest Infamous Platinum trophy to date, there is no longer any collectible-based requirements contained within the trophy list either. Blast shards still exist, and you'll still need to collect them in order to upgrade abilities for Delsin, but they are no longer incorporated into the trophy list. Collecting all 350 blast shards from Infamous 1? Gone. Collecting all 305 blast shards from Infamous 2? A thing of the past.

The requirement has been reduced to an absolute zero for Second Son, and given the fact these games are so similar, this is a big difference maker in the conversation around whether this is the easiest of the three infamous Platinum trophies as a consequence of this exclusion.

The list does also contain a host of miscellaneous trophies to make up the remainder, though these are incredibly easy and much less grindy than some of the trophies within previous lists. It really is one of the most straight forward games I've ever played.

To conclude with a final answer, I do feel as though this is easiest Infamous Platinum trophy to date, though the bar was never set terribly high to begin with. Infamous 2 peaked at a 3/10, so would it feel fair to rate this the same, whilst claiming it to be the easiest Infamous Platinum trophy simultaneously?

I am going to follow up with what makes the most amount of sense though. Despite having to beat the game twice, as well as regain 100% control over every district on one of these playthroughs, you can still comfortably earn this Platinum trophy within 25 hours. The lack of necessity of having to collect every blast shard is a huge differentiating factor, and is ultimately the reason I can't justify scoring this the same as Infamous 2. 

Even beating the game on Expert difficulty level was a low touch challenge, and the game practically rolls out a red carpet for you on your way towards it's Platinum trophy. I barely came away with a scratch here, and neither will you.

Notable Trophies -

Unstoppable - Finish the game on Expert difficulty.

Hardest Trophy -

Unstoppable

Finish the game on Expert difficulty

DLC #170 - Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 - Uprising Map Pack

After having now played through 8 different Zombies maps/experiences across 2 Black Ops games, the level of creativity is something I have to give out some serious credit for, despite not always enjoying Zombies as an overall experience.

These packs have taken us far and wide. Different eras in time, different references to popular culture and different game mechanics to suit the themes these maps are based around.

Zombies in Uprising is set in within the famous walls of Alcatraz prison, and even includes an Easter Egg where you have to attempt a prison break - A nod to the popular culture of belief that genuine prisoners of Alcatraz island have attempted to escape on numerous occasions.

The "Mob of the Dead" also references the cast of gangsters, all taken from a variety of different mob films, emphasising an obvious theme throughout. It's good fun, and if you understand the history behind Alcatraz, or have a penchant for gangster films, you'll be hooked in. 

There are also a number of different game mechanics added in with this round of Zombies.

For the first time, death isn't treated in the conventional way. Instead, upon death, you'll be given a second chance through Afterlife mode, where you'll control a ghostly spirit of your own character, and if you can find your downed body in time, you'll be able to revive yourself from beyond the grave.

In a clever twist, you can also purposely trigger Afterlife mode in order to perform certain actions that you can't when alive. These include restoring power to perk machines, mystery boxes and traps. You can also access certain areas of the map only reachable in Afterlife and clear zombies quickly with the use of electricity as an offensive weapon.

The mode also sees the introduction of prison guard, Brutus, a terrifying presence who spawns in at random and will relentlessly hunt you down as a bigger, stronger and faster version of the traditional zombie. He's slightly reminiscent of the Panzer Soldat from Origins. Other smaller additions include the new perk Electric Cherry, which produces an electric shock with area-of-effect damage each time you reload and the Blundergat, a new weapon combining the mechanics of a Blunderbuss and a Gatling Gun, which can be crafted from parts at a crafting bench. Extremely fun to use too.

Alcatraz is also a very perilous map, full of close quarters action that can get you into trouble at any given moment. Narrow walkways and dead ends around the prison cell area, confined rooms and even limited space in the very few outdoor areas in the dock and rooftop. There were plenty of hairy moments when hunting these trophies down and it creates genuine tension.

Speaking of which, the trophy list adds a further 10 trophies as part of this final zombies experience, though the overall challenge isn't too daunting.

The Easter Egg is a little bit unusual here, in the sense that, the required steps will strive towards finding 5 parts in order to build the plane on the roof, and once done, launching the take-off sequence to escape the prison. This is one variation of the Easter Egg, and will net you the "No One Escapes Alive" trophy. I managed to get it done within just 6 rounds.

However, the plane will crash land and you'll end up back inside Alcatraz, and instead of collecting plane parts, you'll need to collect fuel tanks to refuel the plane and take-off a further 2 times, which earns you the "Making the Rounds" trophy, but again, I was only at round 9 by the time I'd done this.

Finally, there is an alternative way to complete the Easter Egg, whereby you can break the cycle and experience a different ending than just looping the map. If you engage the plane take-off in Afterlife mode, you'll end up having to revive yourselves in Afterlife once you land the plane on the bridge. However, whichever person is controlling Albert "Weasel" Arlington will revive as a target for the other players, and killing him earns everyone the "Pop Goes the Weasel" trophy.

As I said, it's a little bit unusual, and may need to be done across multiple games, but the steps are incredibly easy, and don't require you to venture too high into the later rounds at all.

However, there was still a little bit of resistance here that lay away from the Easter Egg related trophies;

Full Lockdown - In Mob of the Dead, Brutus completes his patrol.

The "Full Lockdown" trophy, awarded for allowing Brutus to complete his patrol, requires you to tick off a list of objectives where Brutus has to destroy a variety of different objects around the map in a single game.

Brutus will spawn in at random, and is noticeable from most parts of the map. When you can't see him, you'll hear his footsteps and the screen will shake to indicate his close proximity, and if he's close enough to certain objects, he'll destroy them. There are 9 objects for him to destroy in order to fulfil this trophy. These include 5 perk machines, 2 crafting stations, any single mystery box and the Plane frame located on the roof.

He spawns amongst any normal zombie wave every 6/7 rounds, but if you can keep him alive, he'll spawn in with every wave, which does help, as the rounds will climb quickly as you wait for him to respawn and this will naturally make it tougher to survive the longer this continues.

You'll basically need to reduce the wave to the final few zombies and drag them around the map with him. Every time he gets near the objects, he'll destroy them, and all you need to do is effectively lead him around the map to the relevant areas where these objects are located. It does sound simple enough, but you're still having to fight off zombie waves in a very congested map, as well as ensuring you leave a couple alive to allow you to complete the patrol quicker.

I did also find it very buggy. Brutus will regularly run straight past objects he's meant to destroy and zombies waves will just randomly end if you perform certain actions, such as use the Gondola or Plane which are quick ways to get to different parts of the map. Brutus will still spawn in, but a new wave will start, which heightens the risk against the trophy as you're having to compete with a fresh horde every time this happens.

I dragged one attempt out to round 18 once and then died with just 1 object left to destroy, purely because Brutus wouldn't focus on the plane on the roof. As I ran a new wave in circles, I eventually got overwhelmed, died and left feeling cheated by the buggy AI.

I did manage to get it within another couple of attempts, but I have always found it hard to stay motivated with zombies mode when you have to start right from the beginning at wave 1 after losing loads of progress, which goes for any trophy-related challenge I've ever attempted within zombies mode.

It did recently come to my attention that I'm not entirely done with zombies - A misconception I was carrying through this entire clean up process for Black Ops 2 as I made my way closer to the end of the experience. I still have unfinished business with Call of Duty : World War 2, but that's a venture for another time.

DLC #169 - Grid - Season 3

There aren't any valid reasons to make this final review of Grid any longer than it has to be - These DLC packs have been literal copy and paste jobs, with the same set of trophies attached to the same sort of requirements throughout.

Season 3 adds 33 new Career events - Split down as 15 Invitational Events and 15 Track Day events, culminating in 3 Final events for the Hypercar Series Grand Finale.

Again, none of these matter as far as trophy hunting is concerned, and instead, the 3 trophies within this package are related to a further 3 time-trial based objectives.

There isn't anything to specifically mention here, and the challenge contained within is very similar to that of Season 1 - A small handful of very easily achievable objectives, all of which I managed to complete within a sub-1 hour time limit.

The 3 objectives rewarding the corresponding 3 trophies are as follows;

• Beat a 1:47 lap time on Okatuma GP with the Koenigsegg Agera RS
• Beat a 1:25 lap time on Indianapolis Sport Circuit with the Ferrari FXX-K Evo
• Beat a 1:41 lap time on Suzuka Circuit East with the Koenigsegg Jesko

Despite this being an easy selection of tasks, one thing I think may be worth mentioning - And this is something I only noticed right at the point of tackling this DLC - Some of these vehicles are extremely expensive, and you'll need to be able to purchase them to run them around the track in free-play. They can't be loaned, and if you somehow don't have the money, you'll need to play through some of these Career events and earn it. 

The selection of 3 cars required here alone will demand you to have over £4 Million in reserve to purchase them all, so just be aware of that.

DLC #168 - Grid - Season 2

It seems as though the Grid Season 1 DLC lured me into a bit of a false sense of security - After all, what would one more bump in the road be for a game that's just made me oversee a car bouncing off the walls of an oval track for over 200 hours to earn a trophy?

Season 2 adds exactly more of the same to Grid. 33 new events to tackle in the Career Mode, which are split between 15 Classic Touring GT events and 15 Modern GT events, with an additional 3 for the GT Grand Finale.

An additional 3 trophies added also follows the exact same format as prior, meaning the effort gone into including a large handful of new Career events to potentially work through is yet again wasted on trophy hunters.

Fine by me, although contrary to the sub-1 hour completion time of the previous Season, this one stung me a little bit, with a list of objectives linked to trophies that weren't quite as plain sailing as they were before.

The 3 trophies on offer this time relate to the following Season 2 objectives;

• Beat a 1:53 lap time on Silverstone Circuit Grand Prix with the Brabham BT62
• Beat a 1:54 lap time on Sepang International Circuit with the Ferrari FXX

These first two objectives fit the standard already set from Season 1 - Easily achievable within a small handful of laps at best. However, the final objective stands out, related to the following trophy;

A Wheely Good Time - Complete the A Wheely Good Time Objective.

The "A Wheely Good Time" trophy, awarded for completing the A Wheely Good Time Objective is linked to the following objective requirement;

• Beat a 1:40 lap time on Crescent Valley GP with the Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro

I've loaded up each of these time trial objectives with 50 laps, which is a standard practice, but never did this in anticipation that I'd actually need to exhaust the full amount of laps without having achieved a par time - This did somewhat come unexpectedly given how easy the DLC content had been up to this point.

I did see the warning signs fairly early though. The first few laps are always used to get used to the car handling and the track, and even though I never expect to achieve the time requirement within the first few laps anyway, they do act as a good measure of expectations - And I was over 10 seconds short in the early going, which made me realise quickly I was potentially in for a fight here.

The 1:40 lap time is harsh. There's practically no margin for error, and the Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro is an extremely fast Supercar that is challenging to control around a track like Crescent Valley, which contains alot of tight cornering and hairpins. I burnt through 50 laps mastering the track and still needed to find an extra 4 seconds or so, so I had to start tuning the car to accommodate acceleration to power through tight corners where loss of speed occurred.

I booted up for another 50 laps, and whilst I was getting close, I was still around half a second, to a full second out from the target time, and after hitting another 20 laps, I decided I had to look into further tuning to squeeze that last second out from somewhere.

After experimenting with adjusting the traction levels, and somewhere between another 10-15 laps, I managed a 1:39.82 lap time, and just about popped the trophy, but I did not expect to put 80-90 laps into any of these trophies when I originally researched their requirements.

Time trials have this fascinating aura of hooking you in sometimes, and the trophy reward on the other side of accomplishment always brings out that addictive form of repetition that simply doesn't exist elsewhere. It may have taken me 3-4 hours for this single trophy, playing this on repeat and only breaking away to delve into some fine-tuning, but persistence will usually win the day.

Thankfully, from here, it's straight, smooth and all downhill the rest of the way.

DLC #167 - Grid - Season 1

If there was ever a game that would benefit most from a quiet exit, it would almost certainly be Grid.

I can't overstate how much that main trophy list grind wore me out - Even more so the impressive feat when you realise it literally required me to do almost nothing and still somehow made me feel that way towards it.

Thankfully, the DLC for Grid is much more forgiving, and we can end this particular relationship on fairly amicable terms at least.

Season 1 adds a hefty chunk of content to the game, including a host of new events, presented as an extension to the main Career Mode under a new tab labelled "Season 1".

There are 33 events in total, split between 15 new Street Racing events, 15 new Pro Racing events and 3 Super Hatch Series Finale events to conclude the season. The package also adds a handful of new cars, but there is an absence of new locations/tracks, which is still a little bit disappointing given the fact this was already a big weakness the game should have addressed. The Season 1 events will still require you to use alot of the existing vehicle roster too, so it'll probably feel like you're mostly just replaying the main Career Mode over again for the most part. Same cars in the same places.

I did toy with the idea of possibly using these additional race events to clock some extra milage towards the "Around the Globe" trophy from the main list, but opted against this because I wanted to just settle on what I ultimately felt was the path of least resistance approach, which eliminated this idea from the decision-making process.

Regardless, the 3 trophies on offer don't require you to go anywhere near the Season 1 Career, and are instead focused on completing 3 new Objectives added to the Player Profile screen.

It was never mentioned in the main list review, but Objectives are just a collection of tasks you can perform to earn some additional experience points away from the core actions of in-game racing, and each of the 3 trophies corresponds to completing a specific objective - All of which are earned for achieving a hot-lap as follows;

• Beat a 4:11 lap time on Okutama Sprint Mizu Mountain with the Audi S1 Quattro Concept
• Beat a 1:38 lap time on Shaghai Waibaidu Way with the Lancia Delta HF Integrale Super Hatch
• Beat a 1:52 lap time on the Havana Paseo de Marti with the MINI Hatch JCW

In all honestly, none of these time trials caused me any issues, and I managed to polish off all 3 trophies within around an hour of play. It's good fun to see and use some new vehicles, but it's all over very quickly. It's also unusual to see so much content left outside of the trophy list, but in this particular instance, that's not a complaint.