Platinum #59 - Far Cry 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

There really isn't much about this list that makes it difficult, despite it's predecessor offering one of the toughest trophy lists in the entire Playstation 3 catalogue.

There's a heavy emphasis on the game's main story, with a large selection of progression based trophies awarded upon completing certain missions right up until the "What a Trip" trophy, awarded for attending the final ceremony, and thus, completing the game.

There are no difficulty influenced trophies, meaning you can play through the entire game at whatever ease you like, though the tougher difficulty levels will provide a steeper challenge for those looking to toughen up the list a little bit.

The "Fully Inked" trophy, awarded for earning every tattoo by learning all the skills, more or less goes hand in hand with the main story, and it's a simple process of levelling up your character in order to earn more skills points and purchase tattoos that will give you additional skills. You will still need to delve into a fair amount of the side activities, mostly due to the fact the amount of experience points you need to unlock every tattoo isn't achievable purely through the main story arc, but also because some of the skills need to be unlocked by beating certain side activities and collectibles.

On the subject of collectibles, the list does also contain it's fair share of those, though most of them only require up to 50% of the overall total for the player to trigger a trophy, so they're actually quite relaxed. 

The "Archaeology 101" trophy, awarded for gathering a total of 60 relics, is exactly half of the 120 scattered across the map, as is the same requirements for the "Jungle Journal" trophy, awarded for unlocking 50 entries in the survival guide and the "Full Bars" trophy, awarded for activating 9 of the 18 radio towers (though you can argue you do still need all 18 anyway, due to the fact they uncover important map markers such as relics, outposts and main story missions).

It's incredibly generous, given the fact that the majority of trophy lists will require you to collect everything before any form of trophy is awarded, and makes the list even easier than what it could have been. Even the other collectible based trophies awarded for obtaining all Letters of the Lost and all Memory Cards are the collectibles of a lesser quantity, and you do always have the option of purchasing sectioned maps within any store that will pinpoint the exact location of everything in the game, negating the need for any sort of physical walkthrough guide.

The "Island Liberator" trophy, awarded for liberating all outposts, is undoubtedly the most difficult trophy pertaining to the games various side activities. There are a total of 34 outposts to liberate, and each one becomes progressively harder to take over as you go through them all, which is due to each outpost progressively hosting tougher and more frequently appearing enemies. It can be difficult to eliminate every enemy without dying a few times and having to restart, and it's definitely the stand out trophy in the list regarding difficulty and aspects of the game that are genuinely challenging.

Everything other trophy in the Single player side of the list just requests that you dabble in various other side activities, or experiment with a range of weapons with an attached kill requirement, amongst other similarly easy tasks. There is still definitely a trade off though, with the quick an easy trophies being levelled off with more time consuming ones, so there is nice mixture here.

The list does also cater to the games co-op mode, with a small, but equally frustrating, handful of trophies, with each of them being awarded for beating the 6 co-op missions in the game.

The most important thing to note about the co-op trophies is that they're horribly glitched, and don't seem to unlock under public co-op matches under any circumstances. This means you're forced into playing through all 6 missions through local split-screen co-op, and tackling missions that are designed for 2-4 players all on your own becomes difficult for all the wrong reasons. It's still doable, but you need extreme patience and will to put yourself through alot of trial and error as you bundle through to the end of each mission and knock off every trophy upon completing them all.

The co-op portion of the list actually turns out to be one of the more difficult parts of this game. If the trophies actually unlocked properly under normal circumstances, then they would be an absolute breeze, given the fact you'd have the support from other players, and just like the single player part of the list, these too are not difficulty influenced, so you can play through them at whatever ease you like. Unfortunately, the trophies suffer from poor game design, which never was even attempted to be fixed, and are made 5 times more difficult as a consequence.

Overall, this isn't at all a difficult list to get through. You can play through the Single player at whatever difficulty you wish, and simply playing through the main story will be enough to earn most of the trophies on offer. Some of the side activities will require a larger time investment, but with seriously lenient thresholds on certain activities and collectibles, the completion time is drastically cut as a result.

The main story will still take about 20-25 hours alone though, and all of the additional side activities and other trophies on top will push the game into 40-50 hour territory, which isn't exactly a short time investment. The co-op trophies are good enough for another 5 hours at the very least, thanks to the awful trophy implementation of that part of the list, taking the overall completion time into anywhere between 50-60 hours.

However, with minimal challenge presented by the game, it mostly falls down to the time investment required (though the co-op mode does contribute to the rating aswell), and if you're willing to plug around 50 hours into the game, it's an easy enough Platinum to grab, despite the frustrations of certain modes.

Notable Trophies -

What a Trip - Attend the final ceremony
Fully Inked - Earn every tattoo by learning all the skills
Island Liberator - Liberate All Outposts

Hardest Trophy -

Island Liberator
Liberate All Outposts

Platinum #58 - RAGE

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

A fairly average list with a few genuinely challenging trophies, yet ultimately, along with too many elements of frustration attached.

The game has a healthy dosage of progression based trophies, with 13 awarded for beating each of the game's main story missions, along with an additional 4 stackable trophies awarded for reaching the conclusion of the game.

There are also a large selection of kill-based trophies awarded for using various weapons to rack up specific kill-counts, and even though you should grab the majority of these through pure progression, they do carry on over if you need to go through the game a second time for whatever reasons.

The "RAGE Nightmare" trophy, awarded for finishing the game on Nightmare difficulty, relates to one of the harder trophies in the game, mainly down to a seriously unforgiving health system. The game becomes extremely slow paced, due to the fact you'll often need to get behind cover and replenish your health way too often, which makes getting through the whole campaign both frustrating and difficult.

Thankfully, it is only necessary to play through the game once, given the fact the difficulty related trophies do stack if you beat the game on higher difficulty levels, however, a host of other trophies hold some sneaky missables within that could force you to play through the game multiple times if you're not careful with your checklists.

The "Gotta Have 'Em All" trophy, awarded for collecting all playing cards in one play-through, is the biggest culprit, and requires you to pick up all 54 cards scattered around the game world in a single run. Almost a fifth of them are missable, and can end up getting locked out in areas that you can only visit a limited amount of times throughout the whole game, and missing just 1 of these will mean you have to replay the entire campaign through to the end in order to unlock the trophy.

If you're effectively keeping track, it isn't actually that bad, but there's other things, relating to other trophies, that you can miss out on throughout the game, which can make it a tricky juggling act to keep up with.

The "Master Chef" trophy, awarded for collecting all recipes and schematics in one play-through, is one of these other trophies, and although it isn't as hard to track as the playing cards, there are still a few missable schematics and recipes to be aware of that can be only be found during certain levels you cannot return to later.

These also contribute to the overall completion of the game, and the "Obsessive Compulsive" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% completion in the campaign, is the one trophy you'll always be working towards throughout the entire Single Player offering.

This not only includes collecting all playing cards and schematics, but an array of other requirements, (132 to be ticked off in total), that are also catered to with individual trophies within the list, including winning every race in the campaign, beating every main story mission and side mission and performing all wasteland jumps. There isn't an in-game checklist to look up what you have and what you still need, so it's best to keep track yourself and be aware to what you still need to tick off, especially given the fact that missing playing cards and schematics will also void this trophy unlocking aswell, and require you to replay the whole game to 100% again if you miss just 1 thing.

A couple of the mini-game trophies also deserve a mention, including the "Jackpot" trophy, awarded for rolling 4 targets in the first round of tombstones, which is purely luck based, and could very easily have you sitting there rolling the counter for hours as the jackpot eludes you time and time again, and the "Just a Flesh Wound" trophy, awarded for completing the final round of 5 finger fillet, is a genuine test of skill and reactions, and even though there is a little cheaty pause trick you can utilise, it still takes a considerable element of skill to nail all 5 rounds in a game.

The Co-op portion of the game also has a small handful of trophies allocated to it, centered around beating the 9 Legends of the Wasteland missions.

The "Anthology" trophy, awarded for completing all Legends of the Wasteland, is the main focus, and although it isn't as in depth as anything within the Single Player portion of the game, there's still an extra 3-4 hours to be had from all 9 missions on offer, and there are some more challenging trophies as an added extra that require you to beat a mission on Nightmare difficulty, and beat a mission without either player becoming incapacitated, both of which will be struggle unless you can find a good co-op partner to blast through the missions with.

The Multiplayer portion also contributes, albeit very subtlety, to the list, with 2 trophies awarded for competing in and winning an online race. They're very easy, but you wouldn't want the online to phase out before you got them.

In many respects, the things that make this game difficult just relate to managing the trophy list properly, and making sure you're prepared enough to collect everything within a single play-through and not having to play again for the sake of any missed trophies. The game itself doesn't present too much of a challenge, although if you fly straight into Nightmare difficulty, you'll need to prepare to be patient and tolerable of the low health mechanics which make you duck into cover and recoup often before launching attacks, which can make the game seem slow and devoid of any sort of flow and pace. 

Time-wise, a single play-through should take anywhere between 10-12 and hours, and if you need a second just for the sake of blasting through for anything you missed, you can easily do that in a lesser timeframe of around 8-10 hours, and with the co-op mode on top, it's still a sub 25 hour Platinum.

Notable Trophies -

RAGE Nightmare - Finish the Campaign on Nightmare difficulty
Gotta Have 'Em All - Collect all Playing Cards on one play-through
Master Chef - Collect all Recipes and Schematics in one play-through
Obsessive Compulsive - Reach 100% completion in the Campaign

Hardest Trophy -

Obsessive Compulsive
Reach 100% completion in the Campaign

DLC #73 - DiRT 3 Monte Carlo Track Pack

Even more ToUR'ing, in Monte Carlo

The DiRT 3 DLC packs conclude with a trip to Monte Carlo, and another offering of tour events to slog through, along with 4 additional trophies too.

The "La Grande Victoire" trophy, awarded for achieving first place in all DiRT tour Monte Carlo events, requires you to beat every available event, of which there are 8, a slightly higher amount than that of the X-Games Asia track pack.

All of these new events feature Rally races, and some of the latter events include 4/5 stages, which can make them long and challenging.

However, the "Tourist" trophy, awarded for driving in excess of 100 miles in Monte Carlo, will ensure full exploration of the new DLC tracks, and the extended portion of the DiRT Tour is a convenient way to put extra mileage on the clock, and still feel as though you're striving for a goal, rather than aimlessly charging around the longer tracks in the package.

You will still most likely complete the 8 new tour events before you hit the 100 mile mark, and there is still the standard online win trophy, which will also add extra miles to the counter if needed, and given the fact there's no totaliser available to track progression, you'll most likely have to resort to just setting up random rally events and racing the longest track until the trophy is triggered.

This is a longer package than the previous pieces of DLC, but you can still expect to unlock all 4 trophies within 3-4 hours in total.

DLC #72 - DiRT 3 X-Games Asia Track Pack

Visit Japan and do some more ToUR'ing

A slight change of direction for the DiRT 3 DLC, but an equally simple trophy list to go along with it too, adding another 4 new trophies.

The "Tokyo Story" trophy, awarded for achieving first place in all DiRT tour Shibuya events, requires you to beat every additional race available for the track pack (of which there are 4), and they're all just standard Rally Cross events, which aren't at all difficult to win.

The "Metropolis Racer" trophy, awarded for winning an online race in Shibuya, might take a handful of attempts, depending upon skill level, but generally shouldn't cause too many problems.

You can very easily unlock all 4 trophies on offer within an hour or two, which will vary based on how long it takes you to win an online race. Beating all 4 events and unlocking the other 2 trophies in the list can be done in less than hour, and the timescale just depends upon the online win.

Platinum #57 - FIFA 13

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

An unusually laid back FIFA Platinum, which definitely bucks the trend of the previous titles in the series, with what is without question the easiest list to date, though still not without a few difficulties.

The "In Form!" trophy, awarded for finding a Team of the Week player in a pack in Ultimate Team, returns to the list for the second consecutive year, and is still 100% purely luck based.

It took me much longer to find an In Form player this year in comparison to last time out, which made the journey slightly harder, given the fact it required me to accumulate more coins to afford the amount of packs necessary to unlock the trophy, but as with all luck based trophies, there's no guarantee you'll be able to achieve this Platinum, which is a difficult concept to accept.

As far as luck based trophies go, this is definitely the most difficult I know of. The probabilities of getting an In Form player are seriously low, and with absolutely no direct influence over the chances of obtaining an In Form card, your completion of this list is at the mercy of the game, regardless of how easy the general difficulty rating of the list as a whole might be. As before, this trophy will make or break your chances of achieving this Platinum.

Sticking with Ultimate Team, the "I Love this Club" trophy, awarded for achieving a club value of £85,000,000, also makes a return, and is just as time consuming as the previous iteration of this trophy.

Club value is developed by amassing players, and depending on the grade of player you collect the most of (Bronze, Silver, Gold), it can take anywhere between 800-1000 players to reach £85,000,000, and in terms of in-game currency, you can expect to be saving up at least 200,000 coins for packs and players in order to get you to within the required total of players necessary for the trophy, so it's by no means a small target that will come round quickly.

Pulling good players that sell for big money will make this trophy easier, since you can gather coins quicker by selling them off for big profits, as can buying packs with real money, since you can then convert the packs into more coins without the extra expenditure of buying the pack with coins in the first place. However, without such short-cuts, you can expect to plug a fair amount of time into the Ultimate Team game mode in order to achieve this trophy.

Away from Ultimate Team, and the only other trophy of any note that presents any sort of challenge in this game, is one of the Gold trophies in the list. The "Skill Legend" trophy, awarded for becoming Legendary in one of the skill challenges, requires you to reach the final stage of any of the games 8 skill games, and although the Bronze, Silver and Gold stages of each challenge are easy enough, the final task, which is also the one that unlocks the trophy, is seriously difficult in comparison.

This is mainly down to the fact the final challenge turns off all in-game assistance, and forces the player to complete the challenge using purely manual controls. After trying practically all 8 disciplines, I eventually settled on crossing, and even then, it took hours of practise in order to perfect the skill and beat the challenge, which was thoroughly rewarding after the amount of time and effort plugged into a single trophy.

The "Filling Cabinets" trophy, awarded for winning a Cup in seasons, is also a tricky trophy, and requires you to win 4 straight online matches in a 16 team round robin tournament format, which is always tough given the competitive nature of Multiplayer FIFA and there are also a small selection of trickier circumstantial trophies, including scoring a goal with a diving header, clearing the ball off the line and preventing a goal and scoring a free kick after running over the ball.

The "Getting Real" trophy, awarded for playing 25 EAS FC Matchday games, is just simply a matter of playing kick off games against the computer until you hit 25 completed matches. However, it's important to note because the trophy is glitched and could unlock later than anticipated, and given the fact there's no statistic around how many games you have completed, it just turns into a bit of hit and miss speculation until it unlocks.

As always, there are a selection of trophies dedicated to the game's Career mode, but for the first time, these are incredibly simple to achieve, and should take no longer than a full season to grab all of them. As always though, you can simulate through the calendar and still unlock the trophies at any point, for those who don't want to plug hours into the Career mode, but it's definitely important to note that not every trophy can be unlocked through simming out the season.

The "Impressive" trophy, awarded for achieving one of your season objectives as a player at any point in your career does actually require you to hit your season objective, which can't be achieved through the simulation of games. You don't have to wait until the end of the season for the player development report, since the trophy will unlock the moment you hit your target, but it is the first time you will actually have to delve into the Career mode without the benefit of being able to simulate through the season.

There's not much doubt that this is the easiest FIFA Platinum to date. There are a host of trophies that you will just stumble across playing the game naturally, and there's little on offer that will make you seriously go out of your way to unlock.

However, despite the general ease of the list, the "In Form" trophy will be a serious deal-breaker for alot of people, and could actually prevent you from earning the Platinum, which is a strange circumstance given how easy the rest of the list really is.

The time estimation will vary anywhere from 50 hours to never, and if you are one of the lucky ones who achieves the "In Form" trophy, then the rest of the list really shouldn't be a problem. Without taking any of the short-cuts listed above, including simulating matches in Career mode and purchasing Ultimate Team packs with real money, then you can definitely expect at least 100 hours out of this list.

In terms of true difficulty, it's only really the trophies related to the Skill games and Online seasons that provide a genuine challenge of gaming skill, but you can't emphasise the significance of the "In Form" trophy enough when considering overall difficulty, which brings the rating of the list up significantly.

Along with the naturally time consuming nature of any FIFA game, it's still a list to be wary of, despite the difficulty being the lowest of any FIFA game to date.

Notable Trophies - 

In Form! - Find a Team of the Week player in a pack
I Love This Club - Achieve a club value of 85,000,000
Skill Legend - Become Legendary on one of the Skill Challenges

Hardest Trophy -



In Form! 
Find a Team of the Week player in a pack

DLC #71 - DiRT 3 Mud and Guts Car Pack

Even more new toys to play with...

The second DiRT 3 DLC pack is practically a carbon copy of the first.

The quantity of trophies on offer is exactly the same (4), as are the requirements for each trophy too. Two of them are tweaked slightly, but just as easy to achieve, and the main two trophies of focus remain exactly the same as they did in the Power and Glory Car Pack.

The "Lively Set" trophy, awarded for driving all of the cars from the Mud and Guts Car Pack, again requires you to use the 5 new cars in the package at least once, and yet again, this can be also be achieved in tandem with the "Furious Five" trophy, awarded for winning 5 online races using cars from the Mud and Guts Car Pack.

Time estimations for completion also hinge upon the same criteria, depending on how long it takes to accumulate 5 wins, but as before, you can choose any vehicle in the pack to muster up the required wins, so it's best to stick to preferred disciplines for best results.

DLC #70 - DiRT 3 Power and Glory Car Pack

Play with some new toys in the Power
and Glory Car Pack

The first of the DiRT 3 DLC adds a handful of new cars to the game's various disciplines, and also contains 4 new trophies.

The "New Wheels" trophy, awarded for driving all the new cars from the Power and Glory Car Pack, will require you to sample each of the 5 new vehicles in the pack, by completing a race/event in each one.

This can be achieved in tandem with the "Fast Five" trophy, awarded for winning 5 online races with cars from the Power and Glory Car Pack, and although it's probably quicker to go through the car list ticking off both trophies at the same time, you can still choose to blast all 5 wins out with a favoured car, and since each of the new vehicles are tied to certain disciplines, you might find it easier just to stick to a strong discipline and avoid the frustrations of losing too often.

Even still, you can easily cruise through this package with minimal concern. The amount of time 5 wins takes will obviously be dependant on skill level, but the average player should take no longer than a couple of hours to blast through this list and collect all 4 trophies on offer.

Platinum #56 - L.A. Noire

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

Despite having a practically non-existent learning curve, and the simple nature of the game, it still springs up a relatively solid challenge in it's trophy list, with a handful of trophies that will make you work hard for the Platinum.

The list packs a generous amount of progression based trophies, with the "Moth to a Flame" trophy, awarded for completing all cases on the Arson desk, being the final port of call for finishing the game's story, which includes just over 20 cases across 5 different police desks, and you're probably looking at a good 15-20 hours to beat the main game first time through.

There are also a small selection of trophies awarded for completing certain chapter specific actions, all based around choosing the correct decisions during interrogations or hunting for clues, but most of these are hidden, due to their spoiler-ish nature. You can go back through each case using chapter select at any point, so they're easy to unlock if you miss them at all, and you'll need to replay cases at the end in order to achieve a 5 star valour rating anyway, so missing them first time around is irrelevant. 

On the subject of case ratings, they're actually the centre of the toughest trophy in the whole list. The "Shamus to the Stars" trophy, awarded for completing all story cases with a 5 star rating, requires you achieve almost near perfection in each case, by discovering all clues, answering every interrogation question correctly and causing minimal damage to cars and property during the case.

Achieving a 5 star rating without any aid or assistance is a difficult task, not to mention time consuming, since you'll most likely need to replay the majority of cases again. You can use intuition points to find harder to see clues or remove answer options during interrogations, and if you've already beaten the game and you're replaying cases to 5 star them, you'll start with 5 intuition points per case, which is extremely helpful in cases that contain alot of clues and questions to answer. In most cases, it's the interrogation questions that will prevent you from earning a 5 star rating, and the leeway for error is extremely small, with the game allowing you no more than 2 incorrect questions or missed clues for a 5 star rating. 

It's also important to drive carefully and minimise damage to your surroundings, especially for cases that contain car chases and shoot-outs, which are fairly frequent. Assuming you're relatively intelligent, and as long as you're careful and use intuition points sensibly, you shouldn't have too many problems, though it's still the hardest trophy in the game by a mile.

The "Auto Fanatic" trophy, awarded for driving every vehicle in the city, requires you to discover all of the game's 95 vehicles scattered around the city, and is an extremely time consuming, and in some respects, frustrating task. The main issue with this trophy is the fact that the majority of the vehicles in the game have no concrete locations, and aside from the obvious (service vehicles being located next to hospitals, police stations, etc.) and "special" vehicles that pop up in garages at marked locations, you'll have to drive around, most of the time aimlessly, in order to find exactly what you need.

It isn't a problem at first, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of needing only a handful of vehicles, then you can literally spend hours searching for them, and the game gives you no assistance at all regarding their whereabouts. Many of the vehicles can look extremely similar too, which throws you off horribly sometimes, and even though the game does record which vehicles you've collected, and the ones you still need, you have to quit your game and go to the car showroom in the man menu in order to view them, and even then all you see is a silhouette of the car that's missing. Not exactly a great help when most of them look similar.

It turns out to be a pretty frustrating trophy, and it adds unnecessary hours onto the Platinum timescale. Of course, it does all depend on how lucky you are with stumbling across the remaining vehicles you need to unlock the trophy, but chances are, you'll be slogging away at this one for a good few hours by the time it boils down to those last few cars you still need for the trophy.

On the collectibles angle, the "Hollywoodland" trophy, awarded for finding and inspecting all gold film reels, requires you to locate all 50 gold reels scattered around the city, and just like the "Auto Fanatic" trophy, it can be just as annoying too. The film reels aren't marked on your map, and there's nothing that will allow you to display them, so you'll have to have a physical guide at the ready, and since the map is incredibly expansive, and the reels are scattered around heavily, you'll be trekking the surroundings for a good few hours if you want to find them all, resulting in a bit of a grind.

The "Public Menace" trophy, awarded for racking up $47,000 dollars of penalties during a single story case, requires you to wreck as many cars as you can before finishing any case. Even though this is simply matter of causing as much destruction possible, the majority of the vehicles in the game aren't worth that much, and if you don't approach the trophy in the correct way, it just turns into another unnecessarily long grind.

The quickest and most effective way to obtain this trophy is to grab one of the special cars, since most of them are worth well over $5,000, which is way more than what most of the cars in the game are worth, wreck it and then wait for it to respawn. It might take a few minutes to reappear, but it's alot faster than any other available method for this trophy.

To top it all off, and something that seems to be typical of Rockstar games, the "City of Angels" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% game completion, requires you to fulfil everything in the entire game, including beating all story cases, collecting all vehicles and gold film reels, completing all street crimes and finding all newspapers and landmarks.

There's alot to get through, but most of the items required to achieve 100% are included with their own trophies within the list, and the game does actually track what you have left to collect on it's own game completion list, so you shouldn't have any difficulties finding out what you still need to fulfil the criteria for the trophy to unlock.

When you account for 15-20 hour story, and then the repetition of cases that need to be 5 starred, it is a pretty time consuming list too. Add on top of that the collectibles and other tasks required for the 100% completion rating, and 40-50 hours is a realistic estimate for most people.

All in all, it's a solid Platinum trophy to achieve. The difficulty of the game itself mostly hinges on being able to obtain a 5 star rating in every single case, which is a tough little venture. However, some frustrating collectible based trophies and a hefty amount of work needed to attain a 100% game completion rating also contribute to the overall rating of the list.

Notable Trophies - 

Shamus to the Stars - Complete all story cases with a 5 Star rating
Auto Fanatic - Drive every vehicle in the city
Hollywoodland - Find and inspect all gold film reels
The City Of The Angels - Reach 100% Game Complete

Hardest Trophy -

Shamus to the Stars
Complete all story cases with a 5 Star rating

Platinum #55 - Dead Space 2

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 9/10

Following up on a solid offering from Dead Space, this list ups the difficulty and provides an even steeper challenge than before.

Despite the overall difficulty, the list does actually provide a large array of relatively easy trophies, including 15 progression based trophies awarded for hitting various key points throughout the story. There are also a mixture of cumulative kill-based trophies, weapon-specific trophies and other trophies awarded for performing very specific actions, most of which you can just unlock naturally as you play through the story mode.

The real toughness of the list shines through in a just a small selection of the whole lists trophies, but despite this, they prove to be a solid test of skill and patience.

The "Mission Impossible" trophy, awarded for completing the game on Zealot setting, requires you to beat the game on it's hardest true difficulty level, and as far as hard modes go, this is one of the tougher ones out there. Although you don't actually need to unlock Zealot difficulty setting, and can effectively jump straight into it, it's best advised to beat the game once on a lower difficulty in order to unlock New Game +, which will make Zealot difficulty alot easier to tackle.

New Game + allows you to carry forward all of your weapons, upgrades and items into a second playthrough, which is extremely useful for battling the game on it's toughest setting, and despite the fact the game will still present a steady challenge, it is much easier to manage when you have the benefit of upgraded weapons and armour from a previous playthrough. I'd almost go as far to say it is essential you beat the game once and unlock New Game + because the game would simply be too difficulty to beat under other circumstances.

Even with the benefit of being able to carry over weapons and upgrades, you can still expect a solid challenge. Enemies are alot tougher to take down and generally do more damage with attacks, which is only really problematic during ambushes or big set pieces, but the limited amount of health throughout the game still means you'll need to be aware, since it doesn't take much for any enemy to kill you and set you back.

The "Hard to the Core" trophy, awarded for completing the game on Hardcore setting, requires you to beat the game with just 3 saves at your disposal, and death at any point results to being pushed back to your last available save point. 

This is without doubt the stand out trophy in this entire list, and Hardcore mode not only limits your ammunition and health, but seriously tests your nerves and persistence. The key to beating the game on Hardcore mode essentially lies within great preparation and planning, and mistakes can be seriously punished at any moment.

I still maintain that the biggest problem with Hardcore mode is psychologically knowing that you really can't afford to die, in fear of losing hours of progress, or having repeat large portions of the game all over again. It can lead to silly mistakes that cause unnecessary deaths, or panicking at vital moments that can also cause similar demise. However, it is still true that Hardcore mode does bump up the toughness of enemies, and that ammunition and health is much scarcer. You also do not get the benefit of being able to play in New Game +, meaning you're forced to start the game from scratch without any weapons or upgrades.

I died on numerous occasions on Hardcore mode, and the amount of time lost made it tougher each time. It's difficult to understate the importance of forward planning too, which is the key to succeeding in Hardcore mode. Knowing where to spend your credits and what weapons/upgrades to spend them on makes pivotal areas of the games easier to manage, and increases your chances of getting past them without dying. It's also essential to plot your save points carefully too, as saving too early could leave you with more work to do later on, just in the same way trying to save too late could cause an untimely death and undo hours of hard work instantly.

It is also important to note that, due to the fact you're permitted just 3 saves, you'll need to find the time to commit yourself to 3 individual sessions of play, playing in blocks of anywhere up to 5 hours, depending on planned save points, so the endurance factor is also a key component to Hardcore mode.

In reality, there are numerous ways to approach the mode, and it's a certainty that there are many tactics that will help people to succeed in various ways, but the demands and sheer magnitude of the challenge never changes, and it remains one of the toughest Gold trophies available in any game to date.

Aside from those trophies, the game doesn't really present much else in the way of a direct challenge, though the "Librarian" trophy, awarded for collecting 100 audio logs fulfils the collectibles criteria nicely. As with the original game, you have some nice leeway on the amount of audio logs that are actually available throughout the game, and due to it's very linear nature, you should naturally run into most of them without having to go out of your way too much.

The "Fully Loaded" trophy, awarded for simultaneously having four fully upgraded weapons, takes a ton of power nodes to achieve, and can actually only be achieved across 2 playthroughs through New Game+, since you won't be able to gather enough power nodes across a solitary playthrough in order to fully max out 4 weapons. Yet another good reason why it's advisable to take a relaxed playthrough of the game before tackling the Zealot difficulty setting.

In total, you're looking at a recommended 3 playthroughs of the game to unlock everything, but given how massively variant the times for beating Hardcore mode could be, it's difficult to nail a solid time estimation on the Platinum trophy. The story itself takes around 10-12 hours to get through, but the amount of hours you could very easily lose on Hardcore mode is harder to judge.

There's no denying the true challenge of this list lies in beating the game on it's 2 toughest modes. Zealot difficulty presents a solid offering, but pales in comparison to Hardcore mode, which definitely lives up to it's billing, and provides one of the sternest tests available in any game.

The ease amongst the list is just to lure you into what turns out to be a pretty prestigious Platinum trophy for any collection.

Notable Trophies - 

Mission Impossible - Complete the game on Zealot setting
Hard to the Core - Complete the game on Hard Core setting
Fully Loaded - Simultaneously have four completely upgraded weapons

Hardest Trophy -

Hard to the Core
Complete the game on Hardcore setting

Platinum #54 - FIFA Street

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 8/10

This list is split into 2 distinct areas of focus, including the FIFA Street World Tour and the Multi-Player online mode.

The World Tour trophies cover most of this games list, with a host of progression based trophies for marching through and winning games at all 4 stages in the tour.

You get awarded trophies for "beating" each of the 4 stages (Regional, National, European and Global) culminating in the "World Grand Champion" trophy, awarded for winning stage 4 of the World Tour. 

Winning a stage just means you have to unlock the final tournament of the stage, by earning enough ranking points (through placing high in tournaments), to reach the top 8 of the team standings, and even though the World Tour mode is large and expansive, you don't need to compete in every single event in order to take on the final tournament. This lessens the overall completion time of the World Tour significantly, since beating every single event isn't a necessity to unlock all of the trophies on offer, however for trophies such as "Mighty Heroes", awarded for having a team of 8 created players that are level 50 or higher, you'll need to slog through a fair amount of events/tournaments anyway in order to hit level 50 with 8 players, so even though it isn't compulsory to compete in every event, it's encouraged to compete in as many as possible, in order to unlock the trophies that require a certain amount of accumulation. 

Even with the minimum amount of events/tournaments played, you can still probably expect to sink 15-20 hours into the World Tour mode. The hardest difficulty setting, which isn't influenced by the trophies, is actually quite a solid test, and getting all the way through to stage 4 of the World Tour will still require you beat a handful of tournaments and events along the way. Couple that with some of the longer winded trophies on the side, and it's a pretty extensive game mode that requires a solid chunk of time to complete.

Slightly tied into the World Tour is the "Globetrotter" trophy, awarded for winning a match/event in every venue, and although you'll be able to fulfil most of the criteria through the various venues you visit in World Tour mode, there are a small selection of venues that are only available in Hit the Streets mode or Online, which is definitely something to look out for, especially if you're still missing the trophy when you think you may have won a game in every venue.

There's also no in-game checklist or tracker relating to which venues you've won a game at already, and with just over 40 venues in total, it is alot to keep track of, so a physical checklist of some sort is the only way to keep score on which venues you've managed to win at and which ones you have remaining. It's also important to note you do need to win a game at every venue, and not just merely play a match there, a small but very significant detail that definitely shouldn't be overlooked.

The Multi-Player portion of this list is where the true challenge of the game comes out, with the "Online Dominance" trophy, awarded for winning all 9 Online cups, being, by far, the hardest trophy in this entire list.

The cups consist of 4 knock-out rounds, and are rotated in selection on a weekly basis, spanning a 9 week period for just the weekend, meaning you have roughly a 3 day period where you can win a tournament and unlock the cup for progress towards the trophy. This means missing out on a cup for just 1 week makes this Platinum completion time a minimum of 9 weeks, since you'll have to wait for the cycle to come round full circle and allow you to enter the tournament again. 

Thankfully, it never happened to me, but with this sort of set-up, it makes it much more difficult and adds alot of pressure on players to win the cups so they don't miss the small window of opportunity each week. Some of the cups are incredibly difficult to win aswell, with score-fests of 5 and 6 a-side meaning games can go either way, and the naturally low scoring Futsal tournaments could see you concede just 1 goal and lose a game. Every tournament is straight knock-out format too, meaning you'll also need to be prepared to repeat tournaments multiple times before you win them, and even accept that you might not even win them within the allotted time window. 

Not only do you need to be very good at the game, as you're bound to come across some decent players, but you'll also need to make up the time consistently each week to devote yourself to this trophy, which, in many respects, is probably harder than actually winning the cups themselves. It is easily one of the toughest Gold trophies I've ever earned.

The Multi-Player mode does offer a handful of other trophies too, but these are mostly just around community/sharing based trophies, which are very easy to achieve in contrast.

Quick mention to the "Who bought the snacks?" trophy, awarded for winning a tournament with a local Co-op player. Another one of those awkward trophies that requires you to own 2 controllers to unlock.

All in all, despite being a medium sized list, this is a tough Platinum to obtain. The World Tour is lengthy, and if played on the hardest difficulty setting, a pretty challenging venture, despite the fact you don't even need to compete in every single event to unlock all the trophies on offer.

However, the Multi-Player is where this game's difficulty truly excels, with the "Online Dominance" trophy providing one of the toughest challenges of any game to date. In total, you're looking at around 30-35 hours to unlock everything, though because of the "Online Dominance" trophy, the game still requires a minimum commitment of 9 weeks, providing you don't miss out on any cup windows at any point.

The Gold trophies are the ones that do the real damage here, and it definitely keeps up the standard of FIFA games and difficult trophy lists.

Notable Trophies - 

World Grand Champion - Win Stage 4 of World Tour
Globetrotter - In any game mode win a match/event in every venue
Online Dominance - Win all 9 online cups
Who bought the snacks? - Win a tournament with a local Co-Op player

Hardest Trophy -

Online Dominance
Win all 9 Online Cups