DLC #87 - Uncharted 3 : Drake's Deception - Drake's Deception Map Pack

Double Trouble, dose two of Uncharted 3 DLC

Measured against the benchmark of the rest of the Uncharted 3 DLC packages, this actually proves to be one of the easier sets of trophies to complete, but still maintains a solid challenge throughout the whole list.

As standard, there are 10 new trophies along with this add-on, and, again, they're a bit of a pick and mix, with a variety spread across all modes.

There is a fairly large emphasis on accumulating medals across both the competitive and co-operative modes, with 7 of the trophies available for collecting certain medals, with a mixture of easy and tough tasks along the way.

There is also a typical insistence to set the unlock requirement to 50 medals, which can make some of the trophies time consuming, and in some places, also make them feel extremely grindy too. The skill element required in this particular grouping of trophies is lowered, but it definitely isn't without it's challenges in other ways;

Triumvirate - Kill the three end bosses in Chapter 5 (Harry Flynn, Eddy Raja and Zoran Lazarevic) within 20 seconds of each other on Crushing
Gladiator - Win 50 matches of TDM
Stealth Master - Get 50 Assassin Medals

The "Trimuvirate" trophy, is possibly the most skill dependant trophy in this list, and requires you to kill all 3 bosses in the final stage of the airstrip level in quick succession. You will need a strongly co-ordinated team, especially given the fact that all 3 bosses have an abundance of health on Crushing difficulty, and 20 seconds between each of them is a tough time constraint to try to comply with.

The Army of Three kickback is a must for this situation, which increases the damage of each players attacks, and it's best for each player to save their kickback and activate it during the boss battle, in order to maximise damage dealt by each player and allow you to take the bosses down quick enough to fulfil the requirements of the trophy. It can be done under normal circumstances, but you could easily struggle, and it's a much sounder tactic to just have your entire party equip Army of Three and activate the kickback one after the other, for a continuous streak of extra damage. If you can't do it successfully, you'll have to restart the whole level and get to the final battle in order to try again, which will become a nuisance if you find yourself doing it at least a handful of times.

The "Gladiator" trophy, is pretty self explanatory, and notching up 50 wins of Team Deathmatch will take some some time to get through. You're bound to lose a fair share of matches, but there are an assortment of other trophies spread across the various DLC packages, mostly related to accumulating medals in competitive Multiplayer, that you can work in tandem with whilst going for the 50 wins you'll need to unlock this trophy.

The "Stealth Master" trophy, takes first prize for the most tedious trophy in this set, with Assassin medals being awarded for every 3 stealth kills per game, and it's one big game of trial and error. A stealth kill is achieved via killing an opponent from behind when the blue ninja symbol appears above their character's head, and roaming around a map in a quest to get 3 of these per medal is tiresome and long. It's extremely tough to be stealthy in such a fast paced Multiplayer environment, and the fact you only get awarded 1 medal per 3 kills means you need to be prepared to play through entire matches without earning a single medal as a consequence.

Although you should need 150 kills to fulfil the requirements of this trophy, you do need to account for the fact that 5 stealth kills in 1 game, for example, will still only earn you 1 medal, and the 2 surplus kills that would go towards 6, and thus, 2 medals, will not carry through to your next game, so you could potentially earn alot of kills in vein that won't end up counting for anything. It turns into a very slow burner, and the progress tracker will tick over remotely for most people. You can try and play it out naturally as you go through other trophies in the game, but you will need to end up resorting to pure focus on attaining this trophy, because the opportunities to earn Assassin medals don't crop up frequently enough unless you actively go out looking for them.

It doesn't do much justice to say this is probably the easiest DLC package in the game, because the comparison is an extremely strong one, and it still presents a solid challenge in it's own right. There are alot of trophies related to earning medals, which work well with the amount of Team Deathmatch games you'll need to win because you can tackle both at the same time and make some good completion progress.

Assassin medals will require some special attention because they're so hard to come by naturally, and it's a trophy list that will still add it's fair share of hours onto the overall time estimate for all of the DLC trophies. Two down, but still a long way to go.

Platinum #68 - FIFA 14

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

When it comes to FIFA trophy lists, we've come to expect a standard that requires nothing less than hard dedication and copious amounts of skill and desire to succeed. 

That is a trend that is bucked hard here, with what is the easiest FIFA trophy list you're ever likely to come across, and possibly one of the easiest trophy lists in any genre of game.

In reality, it's a struggle to pick out individual trophies that actually add any sort of challenge to the list, and it is one mostly filled with trophies that you will earn just through naturally playing the game and exploring a wide array of game modes.

The "Silver Lining" trophy, awarded for completing the Silver stage of all Skill Games, is where the biggest challenge of this list lies, with 13 different skills in total to complete up to Silver level to unlock the trophy. Most of them are actually relatively easy, but there are a couple of stray difficulty spikes in certain skills that will require some solid mastery before you can reach anything beyond their Silver level.

Lobbed passing, Goalkeeping and Free Kicks are the skills to watch out for with some tricky Silver level skill games, and you could find yourself slogging through some steady amount of trial and error in an attempt to beat them, but if you stick enough practice into them, you'll get past them eventually when you figure out the best ways to complete them with a high score to progress.

The "Legendary" trophy, awarded for becoming Legendary on one of the Skill Challenges in Skill Games, continues the theme of Skill Games, and requires you to go through every challenge level of one skill. Even though you'll only need to do this once, practically all of the Skill Challenges (preceded by Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of the same skill), are tough to crack and it's really just about finding out what you're strongest at and sticking with it.

The score requirements to beat them can be extremely difficult, and it can be hard breaking them down into which ones are easiest for you. I ended up going for the Goalkeeping skill challenge, and despite early difficulty, it is easier just to slog away at one particular skill and retry it until you can nail it down and beat the target score through your own methods of practice.

There are also some trophies that will inevitably become unachievable when support for EA Sports Matchday Highlights of the Week shifts onto the next title in the series, which will effect a small cluster of trophies, including "Challenging", awarded for completing a Match Day challenge in Highlights of the Week on at least World Class difficulty, "Big Game", awarded for winning a Game of the Week in Highlights of the Week and "On My Own", awarded for Competing a Be a Pro Challenge on any difficulty in Highlights of the Week.

None of these trophies are at all difficult, but should definitely be bookmarked for top priority due to their high probability of a limited timeframe for attainment. Some trophies for games with an annual release window don't tend to give the player much time to achieve them, and the FIFA series is one of the biggest culprits for it, so it's always better to be aware of anything that might trip you up, especially in a list as simple as this one.

In reality, that is practically it, and the trophy list is packed from top to bottom with trophies that you can earn just through naturally playing the game. There is a good diversity in regards to experimentation of games modes, and you'll need to jump around the menus often in order to unlock all of the trophies tied into certain areas of the game, but none of them are a challenging as the previous aforementioned trophies, nor are they as time consuming as previous FIFA titles have been.

Manager mode, Ultimate Team, Weekly Challenges, Skill Games and Pro Clubs are all catered to accordingly, but the tasks included in each one are menial, and will only ask that you dabble in them, or at least play through a handful of matches at the very most. There are also a selection of trophies awarded for performing actions during matches, including scoring goals in specific ways, pulling off certain defensive manoeuvres and other general play, all of which will come through natural means.

The biggest give-away for the difficulty rating of this list is the fact I actually unlocked 78% of the entire list before I even gave it a second glance, which even in the most progression based trophy lists is a high percentage to reach before even realising how close to the Platinum trophy you actually are, which is a big emphasis on the ease of this game's trophies.

The Skill Games, as you may expect to a certain degree, will challenge your skills to an adequate enough level to at least frustrate you a touch, but on the whole, this list goes against everything any FIFA trophy list in the past has put together. You can even blast through everything in a reasonable timescale of 20-25 hours, which also bucks a common previous trend of lengthy FIFA trophy lists.

Just be careful of any aforementioned potentially fast moving unachievable trophies and you easily have an early front runner for one of the least challenging trophy lists in the Playstation 4 catalogue.

Notable Trophies -

Silver Lining - Complete the Silver stage of all Skill Games
Legendary - Become Legendary on one of the Skill Challenges in Skill Games

Hardest Trophy -

Silver Lining

Complete the Silver stage of all Skill Games

Platinum #67 - Hitman : Absolution

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

After 3 trophy-fuelled re-releases of the previous Hitman games in the series, in the form of a HD collection, which produced a moderate to low-end hard string of lists, Hitman Absolution most definitely comes in as the easiest Platinum trophy of them all, and never quite manages to throw up any sort of real challenge within the whole list.

The lists contained within the 3 previous HD collection games were very similar to one another, and Absolution takes a very different approach to it's trophy list than what was seen before.

The most obvious difference is the size of the list, and Absolution packs a significantly larger amount of trophies than the other Hitman games. The most notable thing about the list is that fact is packs a ton of progression based trophies that revolve around completing the games 20 levels and, in a few instances, making the right choices, or finishing levels using different methods. There are 21 trophies that can be earned through simply playing the game from start to finish, which is just shy of half the entire list.

The "Absolution" trophy, awarded for completing Hitman : Absolution on any professional difficulty, will mean you do have to play through the game in it's entirety in any mode that falls under professional, and anything on a lesser difficulty is not rewarding in the trophy list, which doesn't exactly give you much of a choice if you're trophy hunting.

Difficulty modes have also been drastically changed from the previous Hitman games, which is actually a big part of the reasoning behind why this game is the easiest in the series. Where beating the game on Professional difficulty meant actually beating the game on it's toughest mode previously, Absolution splits 5 difficulty levels under 2 headings. "Enhanced" mode will cover easy and normal difficulty, and "Professional" mode will cover hard, expert and purist difficulties.

This means you can play through the game on the average difficulty (which is hard mode), and since it still falls under the "Professional" category, you'll still earn the "Absolution" trophy. Hard mode isn't terribly difficult at all, and the majority of the difficulty contained within the game itself is all mental and figuring out the best ways to complete a level without blowing your cover and getting killed. You might need to be prepared to be patient, and use a fair amount of trial and error as you constantly make poor errors of judgement during levels, but it will never get to the point where it becomes frustrating, nor too difficult to understand what you actually need to do.

If you're playing the game as intended, and want to take on a stealthy, low risk approach, it can be a long game, clocking in at around 20-25 hours from start to finish, plus anything else you might need after in terms of clean up on the trophy list, so it's a pretty modest time estimation.

The "Grand Master" trophy, awarded for completing 100 challenges, is the only other Gold trophy in the list, and the only other trophy of real significant note too. Challenges are just level specific objectives, and each of the game's 20 levels contains a handful of these challenges to complete along the way, with the whole story containing 278 challenges, so the margin for error is actually quite high.

With that being said, you most likely won't unlock 100 challenges just through just natural progression, and it does pay to read up on the list of challenges prior to beginning each level. Not only will they give you significant clues to eliminating targets and finishing levels, it will also minimise further replays later on when you're polishing up the list, and could drastically cut down on the estimated Platinum completion time.

Most of the challenges are quite straight forward, and some of them overlap into other trophies included in this list,  and although some will offer a harder challenge, it's not really necessary to push for the harder challenges when you don't even need to complete the vast majority of them for the trophies you need, so it's always better just to stick to the simple ones and spare the extra effort.

The "Jack of All Trades" trophy, awarded for Collecting all Play Styles, requires you to fulfil a number of criteria to unlock all 20 different styles of play in the game. Most of these tasks are easy enough, but you'll need to look up the requirements, which are locked until you fulfil them, and you'll also need to find out the best levels to achieve them within, given the fact that certain play style challenges will only be achievable in conditions that exist in a couple of levels throughout the game. It's a little bit fiddly, but nothing more than that.

The "Information is Power" trophy, awarded for Collecting all evidence, requires you to pick up every piece of evidence strewn throughout the game's story levels. Most evidence is easy enough to find if you're thorough in your search, though a small handful of them are actually well hidden and will require some out of the box thinking to find and pick up.

It's also important to note that collecting all evidence for each level will fulfil a challenge towards the "Grand Master" trophy, and you can always go back to level select and collect any missing evidence later. The game will also tell you which sections of a specific level you're missing the evidence from too, which makes it slightly easier to track down afterwards if you've missed a fair chunk of them and there are always various visual guides you can call upon if you're still somehow struggling.

Despite the list being very heavily emphasised on the Single Player main story, the Multiplayer contracts mode also gets some very slight attention too, though you won't be required to play through the mode in any great excess to collect all the trophies attached to it. 

The "Set for Life" trophy, awarded for earning 1 million contract dollars, might require you to play through a handful of competitive contracts and there are a ton of easy contracts that have big pay-offs available, which makes that total more readily achievable, but everything else barely scratches the surface of the mode, and simply liking other players contracts and completing a few tutorials are the sorts of criteria you need to fulfil to unlock everything the Multiplayer mode has to offer.

Overall, this isn't just the easiest Hitman game with a Platinum trophy, it's one of the easiest games with a Platinum trophy too. The Single Player portion of the game will test your thinking capabilities, and you will need to be clever to complete levels in the correct manner to unlock challenges and fulfil objectives in the correct ways, but it never really pushes you to any limits. The fact that you technically don't need to complete the game on the hardest difficulty available, unlike previous Hitman games, is also a crucial and decisive factor, and the sheer amount of progression based trophies is hugely overloaded in this list.

The Multiplayer side of the list is even easier still, which tops off what is a very straight forward Platinum trophy that seldom presents a genuine gaming challenge. It might take a generous chunk of your time to beat the game and go through the process of trophy clean up, but you can easily bag this Platinum within 30 hours.

Notable Trophies -

Absolution - Complete Hitman Absolution on any professional difficulty
Grand Master - Complete 100 challenges
Jack of All Trades - Collect all play styles
Information is Power - collect all evidence 

Hardest Trophy -

Grand Master

Complete 100 challenges

DLC #86 - Skyrim - Hearthfire

Skysims...

The Hearthfire DLC adds 5 new trophies to the world of Skyrim, and focuses around the concept of building and furnishing your own houses, using raw materials gained from resourcing the landscape and/or purchasing them from traders.

The trophies are, predictably, as dull as the actual package itself, with a sole focus of building houses upon all 3 plots of land you're given the option to purchase after downloading the add-on.

The concept of building houses is just pure button bashing, but it is worth noting that you will need to plug a fair amount of financial backing into the cost of land, raw materials and home extensions if you're looking to grab every trophy available.

The "Land Baron" trophy, awarded for buying three plots of land, will require 15,000 coins (5,000 for each plot) straight off the bat, and will also require you to complete/already have completed a couple of side quests for each area before you can buy the relevant plot of land too.

The "Master Architect" trophy, awarded for building three houses, will require you to fully max out a house at each plot of land, which includes constructing a small house layout, a main hall and three different extensions. If you've already beaten the main game and have stockpiled your coins, this won't be a problem, but there are high costs involved in maximising your properties, so if you don't have the coinage for it, you could be in for a very long and arduous slog. 

If not, you can collect all 5 trophies in no more than a couple of hours, albeit a very long feeling couple of hours.

DLC #85 - Skyrim - Dragonborn

Free Solstheim from it's dark shackles

The Dragonborn DLC adds 10 new trophies to Skyrim, all focused around the new region of Solstheim, including a host of new weapons and a fresh questline.

The new main story dominates the trophy list, with exactly half of the trophies awarded for natural progression throughout the relatively short quest-line. The DLC packs 7 new main quests, with the 5 trophies being awarded for hitting specific points in the main story, usually upon completion of certain quests.

The other trophies in the package will reward exploration, and also cater towards new game mechanics, including the "Dragonrider" trophy, awarded for taming and riding 5 dragons and the "Hidden Knowledge" trophy, awarded for learning the secrets of 5 Black Books, both of which take advantage of new gameplay additions relating to riding dragons and more in depth skill books. It's relatively straight forward stuff for the most part, and the quests are incredibly easy, however, there is a slightly more tasking trophy in this package;

Stalhrim Crafter - Craft an Item out of Stalhrim

This trophy is a bit more long winded than it will seem at face value. Stalhrim is a new element which you can only craft specifically in Solstheim, and you'll need to a fulfil a couple of things before you can actually meet the requirements of the trophy itself.

Firstly, there is an early main story quest called "The Fate of the Skaal", where you'll first interact with a group of NPC's who will be attacked by a Lurker. If any of these NPC's die, you won't be able to initiate a later quest which eventually leads onto the discovery of Stalhrim in Solstheim. Therefore, if you play on after this quest and at least 1 of the 3 relevant NPC's is killed during the fight, you won't be able to trigger the dialogue between them later on, and won't discover Stalhrim as a result. It isn't a difficult problem to overcome, you just need to save the game manually before the fight and reload if it turns out one of the NPC's is killed in action.

Secondly, you need a minimum Smithing level of 80 in order to craft Stalhrim. Smithing isn't one of those skills you will use often enough to level it significantly, and chances are, you'll have a fairly low Smithing skill coming into this DLC package. If this isn't the case, you won't need to worry about anything, but if your Smithing is low in level, you'll need to be prepared to lump a few extra hours into grinding methods in order to heighten your Smithing skill to 80, as I had to, given the fact my Smithing level was only at 25. There are good methods out there for this, but it's long and boring if your Smithing skill is anything under level 40, which for most people it will be, but it's the only effective way to get your skill level to where it needs to be.

Aside from that, this is a fairly easy piece of DLC. The main questline shouldn't take any longer than 3-4 hours, and almost every other trophy can be obtained through blasting through a few side activities which should only add on a few extra hours or so. If you need to heavily level up your Smithing skill, that will easily add another 3-4 hours on top, which turns things into a bit of a grind, but there's nothing terribly challenging about this package.

DLC #84 - Battlefield 3 - Back to Karkand

Get your hardhat, you'll need it

Back to Karkand is the final piece of Battlefield 3 DLC, and also the toughest out of the five packages by a considerable distance, and, as with the other packs before, it also adds a further 5 trophies to the overall list.

The main focus comes from the addition of 4 old school maps, remastered specifically for Battlefield 3. There are also 3 new vehicles, and 10 new guns added to the package, all of which are catered towards the new trophies attached to the DLC.

As slightly touched upon already, this is by far the toughest of all the Battlefield 3 DLC packages, with skill, longevity and frustration all catered to in equal abundance.

There are a few easier trophies contained within this list too, including getting a kill with the Skid Loader, and taking a swim in the Oman hotel swimming pool, but the other trophies pack a much greater challenge, and end up being some of the most difficult trophies in the entire game;

Complete Warrior - Got a kill with the following weapons in a single life: Assault Rifle, Jet, Tank
Third Tour - Got a kill with each of the following vehicles: the BTR-90,  DPV, F-35
Gunslinger - Got 10 kills with each of the ten Back to Karkand weapons

The "Complete Warrior" trophy is a definite contender for the toughest trophy in the whole Battlefield 3 list, despite the fact that not all the requirements are actually that tough individually. Kills with an Assault Rifle, and a Tank are easy enough to come by, but the dealbreaker in this trophy comes through trying to obtain a kill in a Fighter Jet.

Jets have always been notorious for being difficult to obtain kills with in Battlefield, and there is no exception to the rule here. The biggest problem stems from the fact that all the Jets in this DLC can only be occupied by 1 person, and thus, getting the kill you need is entirely down to your own skill. You can't just jump into a passenger seat and obtain kills in the same way you could when you were striving for Jet ribbons in the main game list, which made it incredibly easy if you were in the same Jet as someone who was exceptionally good at controlling them.

Piloting a Jet is a tough enough task alone, but having to co-ordinate a gun at the same time makes it even more difficult. The Jets are also very weak, and easy to take down, especially in dogfights against other air vehicles such as Helicopters, and 1 shell from a tank will down a Jet instantly.

Even then, there is still a small matter of obtaining both an Assault Rifle kill and a Tank kill in the same life, and death at any point before that resets the counter, and you'll need to start over again. It is an incredibly frustrating experience, not to mention a potentially time consuming one, and will require alot of trial and error for alot of people.

The "Third Tour" trophy only really gets a mention for reasons already noted, due to the fact that it requires a kill from the F-35, which is the new Fighter Jet added to the game through this package. The BTR-90 is a Tank, and the DPV is a Buggy, which are easy enough to obtain a kill with in comparison, but this trophy will come down to that dreaded Jet kill and how long it takes you to actually earn one.

The "Gunslinger" trophy also contributes it's own challenges to the game, and, as exactly in the same way the "Show of Force" trophy in the Close Quarters DLC did, it requires you to get 10 kills with each of the ten new weapons in the package, achieved through completing a host of assignments tied to each of the new guns.

There's a good mix of time consuming and genuinely difficult tasks amongst these assignments. The more time consuming side of the trophy will see you spend an aggregate total of 6 hours playing across the new maps in the package (2 hours on each map), and accumulating over 300 kills using a range of specific weapon types, vehicles and explosives. The more challenging tasks include obtaining 2 kills with Mortar fire and destroying an enemy vehicle with a repair tool, and this trophy alone will bring the package up into the region of 10-15 hours in terms of a time estimate.

Even after completing all of the assignments to unlock all 10 weapons, you'll need to notch up a further 100 kills to actually fulfil the requirements of the trophy. 

This is without question the hardest DLC pack in the entire game, and possibly one of the hardest DLC packs available for any game in the Playstation library. There is a good mix of difficult and time consuming tasks, with alot of frustration contained along the way, and although the "Complete Warrior" trophy makes it hard to nail down a concrete time estimation, you can easily expect it to be within the 20 hour region, and possibly beyond.

DLC #83 - Battlefield 3 - Close Quarters

Very close quarters

The Close Quarters DLC adds a further 5 trophies to the Battlefield 3 list, and focuses around small maps emphasised by close quarters combat and hectic, fast paced action.

Despite some of the trophies being extremely straight forward, including completing a game in the new Gun Master mode (A carbon copy of the Call of Duty Gun Game mode) and winning in a round of Conquest Domination, the 2 newly added game modes for this package, this is the first time a genuine challenge is presented within the Battlefield 3 DLC.

Even after you're done with launching yourself off the edge of the new Ziba Tower map, and earning that particular trophy, the 2 silver trophies in the set are where the challenges lie;

Show of Force - Got 10 kills with all ten CQ weapons
Deadly Tools - Without dying, got a kill with a Carbine, Pistol and a Rocket Launcher

The "Show of Force" trophy might not seem too difficult upon face value, but this package also adds a new feature called "Assignments", which are a series of objectives the player must complete in order to unlock each of the 10 new weapons in the Close Quarters DLC bundle. This means you'll only be able to rack up the 10 kills with each weapon once you've completed the relevant assignment attached to it, and some of the tasks are both time consuming and difficult.

For the more time consuming side of the trophy, you'll need a cumulative total of over 300 kills with a wide variety of the games weapons, including explosives, guns and weapons attachments, and for the harder side, you'll need to complete tasks such as, finishing within the top 5 in Gun Master, and obtaining a kill with the EOD bot.

Even then, you still need 100 additional kills on top in order to actually fulfil the requirements of the trophy and unlock it, and this trophy can easily take you anywhere into the region of 10-12 hours. It is alot easier to amass a high kill count on the new maps, due to their very compact nature, but it's still alot of time to spend on a solitary trophy.

The "Deadly Tools" trophy isn't a time consuming, and not exactly as difficult either, but definitely has the potential to cause a few slips ups. Chaining together 3 kills in a row with 3 different, and slightly more awkward weapons, is a tricky task, and there is a bit of trial and error with this trophy.

It is much better suited to fulfil on any of the new Close Quarters maps, because there is always a greater tendency to run into more enemies, but that can work both ways and cause you to die quicker than you can get the 3 kills you need. The Pistol and Rocket Launcher are also much easier to get kills with at a closer range, so playing games in more confined environments just naturally makes more sense.

I always find it easier to start with the tougher weapons and work in reverse (Rocket Launcher, Pistol, Carbine), but that's just personal preference. It isn't as tough as a similar trophy in another, yet to be mentioned, DLC package, but it does have the potential to test your skills and patience.

The "Show of Force" trophy is the meat of this package, and even though 3 of the trophies in this set are complete throwaways, there is enough from the other 2 trophies to give you both a time consuming and challenging venture. Some of the weapon assignments will provide stumbling blocks along the way, and the "Deadly Tools" trophy can potentially notch up some extra time on it's own due it's own difficulties. 

An estimate of anywhere between 10-12 hours is a realistic one, but definitely flexible beyond the higher limit depending on skill and luck.

Platinum #66 - Assassin's Creed 3

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

In seemingly traditional fashion, the Assassin's Creed 3 list contains a host of progression based trophies, mainly awarded for completing each sequence throughout the main story arc.

The "The Sum of Truth" trophy, the solitary Gold in this whole list, awarded for completing sequence 12, signifies the culmination of the main story, by which point you will have unlocked 16 trophies through natural progression, which is roughly a third of the entire trophy list.

The theme of progression is actually heavily emphasised throughout, and beyond just the main story arc, with a host of extra trophies tied into completing activities that contribute to 100% game completion.

The "Completionist" trophy, awarded for completing ALL progress tracker grid entries, requires you to achieve a total of 17070 points in the DNA tracker, a total which is accumulated through fulfilling a large range of criteria, spanning across a host of activities the game has to offer, and at times, it can actually feel like a bit of a grind. Collectibles, Naval missions, Club challenges, Homestead missions and Main story sequences are all accounted for, amongst a variety of other things, and with a personal 100% Single Player completion time tracked at just under 56 hours, the wealth of content that contributes to the Platinum trophy is evidently deep.

Most of these activities are actually awarded with individual trophies along the way, so for the majority of the game, you don't even need to worry about the rest of the list for as long as you're striving towards achieving 100% in the DNA tracker, which should be your only real focus. 

There aren't any great difficulty spikes contained within any of the missions or activities, though some of the additional objectives for certain Privateer and Naval contracts are the more difficult highlights, and certain aspects of Club challenges, Assassin training and Hunting do get a bit repetitive and feel way too drawn out, and it does turn out to be one of the longer Single Player offerings available in the Assassin's Creed series by some distance.

The "Perfectionist" trophy, awarded for completing 100% of all main missions constraints, requires you to fulfil every secondary objective attached to a main story mission, and even though most of them are just a standard box ticking exercise, there are some slightly more challenging objectives on offer that may require numerous retries of certain missions to complete in full. 

It is easier just to make sure you go through each mission fulfilling the criteria as you go along, rather than waiting to clean up everything at the end, to prevent needless replay value, and even though you might need to come back to certain tougher missions at the end of the game, those are few and far between, and you should look to complete the secondary objectives as soon as possible because of how long the Single Player game is without any added extras such as mission replays.

Those two trophies are pretty much the solitary focus of the Single Player portion of the list. As previously mentioned, the amount of progression based trophies towards the "Completionist" trophy, account for a huge portion of the game, with only a small handful of trophies that you will need to go out of your way for.

The "An Extraordinary Man" trophy, awarded for Completing the Encyclopaedia of the Common Man, is the only other real trophy of note, and requires you to record a host of activities from various occupations around the Homestead. There are 9 workers in total, and once their first mission is completed, they can be scanned working various chores on the plains of the Homestead, and the Encyclopaedia needs to be filled with 3 activities from each worker, totalling 27 in all.

The activity patterns seem to be completely random, and when you get down to the last few log entries needed, it turns into a bit of a waiting game, especially given how unpredictable each worker can be. The best thing to do is to start scanning workers as soon as you find them on the Homestead and hope you catch them performing activities you need sooner rather than later. If you leave it too late, the whole thing can turn into a drag and it will add unnecessary time onto the completion estimate.

The Multiplayer portion of the game also gets a bit of attention, as always, but the demand of these trophies isn't even a fraction of those of the Single Player ones.

The "Abstergo Entertainment" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 20 in the multiplayer mode, is a standard levelling fare, and should take no longer than 5-6 hours. Partial levelling, as opposed to reaching the highest rank possible, has been a common theme in recent Assassin's Creed games, and this is no exception, with the maximum level being 50, and thus, making this levelling task incredibly easy.

Despite this, the 5-6 hours reaching rank 20 will take should still be enough time for you to be able to unlock the remaining 4 Multiplayer trophies along the way with minimal effort, emphasising how easy this part of the game actually is.

In terms of overall difficulty, the only real challenge to overcome in this list is the hefty time-sink that comes tied to the game's Single Player component, which can easily clock in at anywhere from 50-60 hours. Some of the main sequence missions, and particularly a small selection of the Naval/Privateer missions, pack some genuinely difficult parts when trying to achieve 100% memory synchronisation, but practically everything else in this list is all about time, and despite odd sections providing some tedious repetition, the only barrier to completion is the long time-frame attached to achieving 100% in the DNA tracker.

The non-progression based trophies are just as easy as the progression based ones, with the possible exception of the "An Extraordinary Man" trophy, and the small spread of Multiplayer trophies merely require a brief visit. It's a longer game that most previous titles in the series, but for the most part, follows the same trend, and generally, the same level of Platinum difficulty at the same time.

Notable Trophies - 

Completionist - Complete ALL progress tracker grid entries
Perfectionist - Complete 100% of all main mission constraints
An Extraordinary Man - Complete the Encyclopaedia of the Common Man

Hardest Trophy - 

Completionist

Complete ALL progress tracker grid entries

DLC #82 - Call of Duty : Black Ops - First Strike Map Pack

Classic survival horror!

The First Strike Map Pack adds 4 new trophies tied to the single Zombies map (Ascension) added to the game, and definitely produces the easiest list out of all the Black Ops DLC packages.

The tasks are fairly straight forward and low in skill requirement, including escaping on all 3 lunar landers within the level during one game, killing a space monkey with a fire trap and Pack-A-Punching a weapon before Round 8.

The "They are going THROUGH!" trophy, awarded for killing at least 5 zombies with 1 Gersh Device, will require you to obtain the Gersh Device via the Mystery box, which, as always, is completely dependant upon luck, but if you follow through with basic strategies of zombies mode in solo play, you can easily get through enough rounds to be able to get the Gersh Device and fulfil the requirements of the trophy with relative ease.

In theory, you can actually unlock every single trophy in one game, and it isn't too demanding to juggle them around and create an order, though you will need to make sure you have a Pack-A-Punched weapon before Round 8 if you want to attempt all the trophies in a single run. That's just an emphasis of how easy this package is though.

Most important to note, you can unlock all 4 trophies in solo play and therefore don't have to rely on anybody else to complete the package. 

DLC #81 - Battlefield 3 - Armoured Kill

Armour, Big Armour

Another 5 trophies accompany the Armoured Kill DLC, with the focus of this package on the vehicles of Battlefield 3, with a couple of new additions including the Quad Bike and Gunship, and a new angle on tanks with an extra game mode in the form of Tank Superiority.

This package is a bit of a mixed bag, with some challenging trophies thrown into a small bunch of easier ones. The more simplified tasks in this content follow suit from other DLC packages, including obtaining a kill with two of the new vehicles added into the game (Quad Bike and Gunship), along with winning a game of the new Tank Superiority game mode.

It's fairly easy to knock off these trophies, though the Quad Bike is a tricky vehicle to get a kill with at times, and it is very small and weak, making it susceptible to being destroyed easily, so it does have potential to cause you problems. However, the real challenge of this package lies in other areas;

Destroyer - Got 10 kills each with Tank Destroyers and Mobile Artilleries
Dropship - Destroyed the Gunship

For the "Destroyer" trophy, it's obtaining the 10 Mobile Artillery kills that makes this trophy difficult. Tank Destroyers are just variations of regular tanks and they're still the easiest vehicles in the game to obtain kills in, racking up 10 of them shouldn't be an issue.

The Mobile Artillery trucks are new additions to the game also, and are essentially over-sized Mortars on wheels. Measuring the trajectory and angle of the missiles is a difficult concept to get the hang of, especially when you need to be accurate enough to take out ground troops at certain points on the map, and even though there is a fairly big blast radius, nothing short of a direct hit will earn you a kill. Mobile Artillery trucks aren't very mobile either, and they're alot weaker than any Tank Destroyer in the game too, so they're prone to being destroyed easily, and racking up 10 kills is a bit of a slow burner as a consequence.

The "Dropship" trophy is slightly less frustrating, but does come with it's constraints at the same time. The Gunship is only available in conquest mode, and is assigned to a specific flag for the whole game in which the enemy needs to be in control of in order to spawn the gunship. Even then, the gunship only spawns at sporadic intervals so there are limited windows of opportunity to achieve this trophy, and the fact it will always circle the outer perimeter means you need to be in prime position to take your chances to destroy it.

It's best to sit on the edge of the map at a certain point where the gunship will patrol towards, and because of the fact the gunship always hugs the outer parts of the map and is situated so high up, Stinger lock-on range is ineffective from anywhere else on the map. It takes about 3 hits from a Stinger to destroy it, and you will always have other Jets and Choppers trying to take it down and steal the kill, so you may need some patience fighting for this trophy too.

Armoured Kill isn't the toughest DLC package in Battlefield 3, but it contains a few challenges that will test your skills, and even though a time estimate is difficult to nail down, you can expect anywhere between 5-8 hours as an average timeframe.