DLC #90 - Assassin's Creed 3 - The Tyranny of King Washington Episode 3 : The Redemption

Part 3 : The End

The Betrayal is the final installation of Single Player additional content for Assassin's Creed 3, and adds 3 new trophies to the game.

As before in the previous two Episodes, the criteria are exactly the same for achieving all 3 trophies again.

The "First in the Hearts" trophy, awarded for Defeating George Washington, pops upon completion of the last of 9 new missions for this final part of the mini-story. Again, there is nothing terribly challenging here, and even the requirements for 100% synchronisation are still incredibly straight forward.

The "If I Can Make It There" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% synchronisation in New York follows the exact same trend too, with another series of the same additional side missions and collectible lucid artefacts required to fulfil the 100% criteria, as well as completing all of the secondary objectives that accompany the new batch of main story missions.

The only other trophy, "Aftershock", awarded for killing 125 enemies using Bear Might, focuses on the new special power, and you should be able to get it quite quickly if you activate it during sequences where you're surrounded by enemies. Continue to use Eagle Flight too, which will make your overall quest much easier, and saves you alot of wasted time and unnecessary effort fighting ground troops and travelling long distances.

The structure of this package is an exact carbon copy of the previous 2 Episodes. The main clutch of missions should take no longer than 2/3 hours to complete in full, including secondary objectives, and the additional side activities are just a matter of going through the motions to complete them all for however many times you need to in order to fulfil their criteria.

DLC #89 - Assassin's Creed 3 - The Tyranny of King Washington Episode 2 : The Betrayal

Part 2 : The Middle

Part 2 of the Assassin's Creed 3 mini story DLC contains just 3 trophies, structured in an almost identical way to the previous episode.

Despite the lower trophy count, it's a slightly longer piece of DLC, with 9 main missions to tackle, 3 more than Episode 1. It won't make a huge difference to the expected completion time, but it definitely fleshes out the package, especially with the extra secondary objectives for each mission.

The "Blindsided" trophy, awarded for defeating Putnam, concludes the second episode, which should take no longer than 2-3 hours, and provides a typically relaxed experience as far as difficulty goes.

"The New Tea Party" trophy, awarded for Reaching 100% synchronisation in Boston, requires you to, yet again, complete every secondary objective that accompanies each of the main story missions. There isn't anything terribly challenging in store, and you should be able to complete every objective first time as you go along. 

There are also exactly the same side mission requirements to fulfil that contribute towards a 100% synchronisation too. These include 4 convoy rescues, 5 starving civilian rescues, 2 wolf rescues and 4 civilian rescues, as well as finding 3 lucid artefacts.

The "Frequent Flyer" trophy, awarded for using Eagle Flight to travel 1km, will be achieved very early on in the game, but the Eagle Flight animal power is an excellent new addition. Not only will it allow you to escape from pointless battles from constantly hostile enemies, it is also an extremely efficient method of getting from A to B during missions and when exploring the map for random side mission events, making everything quicker and more hassle free.

Overall, this episode should take no longer than 4-5 hours to complete in full. The storyline is slightly longer, courtesy of more missions, and you will still need to fulfil a handful of additional side missions in order to achieve 100% synchronisation, which is just a simple check-list exercise.

Eagle Flight will speed certain aspects of the game up, and should be used whenever possible, and the difficulty curve is non-existent, barring a few secondary objectives you might need to replay a few main missions for. Onto the final episode.

DLC #88 - Assassin's Creed 3 - The Tyranny of King Washington Episode 1 : The Infamy

Part 1 : The beginning

The Infamy DLC pack (the first of three episodic add-ons for the Tyranny of King Washington mini-story), adds 4 new trophies to the Assassin's Creed 3 list.

The 6 mission storyline is the main attraction, and will grant you with half of the trophies through simple progression, capped off by the "West Point Payback" trophy, awarded for defeating Benedict Arnold, and thus completing the episode.

It'll only take an hour or so to get through all 6 missions, including secondary objectives, and there isn't much of a difficultly curve presented in any of them.

Granted, Assassin's Creed games have never been terribly difficult as far as their core gameplay goes, but it's always been the additional in-game requirements that have made them hard in the past. There aren't any of those elements present in this add-on though, and it's plain sailing from start to finish.

The "Frontiersman" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% Synchronisation in the Frontier, is an old Assassin's Creed favourite, but the secondary mission objectives are nowhere near as challenging as they have been in previous titles and DLC add-ons in the past, and you most likely won't even need to replay any of the memories to fulfil each one. The additional side missions are equally easy too. You need to complete 5 convoy rescues, 5 wolf attack rescues and feed 5 civilians using hunted meat, along with just 3 collectibles in the form of lucid memory artefacts.

It shouldn't take any more than 3-4 hours to unlock every trophy. The opening story portion is fairly brief but the side missions are mostly random events, so it can eat up some time scouring the landscape and waiting for them all to occur, but that's about as tough as anything in this DLC package gets.

Platinum #69 - 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 10/10

FIFA games have recently coaxed people in with easy trophies in recent years, but this list most definitely goes back to the original roots of the series, with a gruelling set that only the most committed of football fans will managed to squeeze a Platinum trophy from.

The list covers a vast array of game modes, including the Road to the World Cup mode, which has a handful of trophies for successfully getting through the World Cup qualifying stages using a country from each FIFA confederation. Some regions have longer qualification campaigns than others, but completing all 6 regions will take some time, which is a recurring trend in this list.

Speaking of which, the "Boyhood Dream" trophy, awarded for Winning the FIFA World Cup as the Captain in Captain Your Country, is definitely one of the most time consuming trophies in the entire game. It requires you to play through a 3 year International calendar, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup, with a round of games preceding each squad cut. You need to make each cut above the line to be able to make it to the World Cup, and missing the cut at any stage means you'll need to start from the beginning or reload from a previous save point. It's also important to mention that, if you don't make it to Captain before the World Cup starts, you won't be promoted any further during the tournament itself, which means you won't be able to earn this trophy.

You can unlock a bunch of trophies related to various cuts throughout the mode, and there are also trophies for winning the World Cup tournament awards (Golden Ball for being the best player, Golden Boot for being the tournament top scorer). These are potentially missable, because you'll only get one chance at them, but as long as you score the most goals and win the Golden Boot, along with lifting the World Cup, you should win the Golden Ball too, though that isn't a guarantee. 

You'll play in excess of 50 matches throughout the mode, which can easily take 15-20 hours, and if you fall under the line and get cut from the squad, it's game over and you'll have to reload your last save, or restart the whole thing if you don't have one, which adds unnecessary replay time on top of everything else.

Sticking with the Single Player modes, the "Conqueror" trophy, awarded for completing all scenarios (major objectives) in all 6 FIFA regions in Story of Qualifying, requires you to complete all 54 scenarios that relate to the real qualifying campaign in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The trophy doesn't tie you down to a specific difficulty level, and in truth, they are really easy if you play on Semi-Pro, but if you want to tackle these with a challenge, the higher difficulties will provide a more than adequate one, and it'll take some time to master every challenge to unlock this trophy.

Similarly, the "Reliving Every Moment" trophy, awarded for Completing all scenarios (major objectives) in Story of Finals, follows the exact same requirements as above. These scenarios just relate to all 64 FIFA World Cup finals matches that took place during the summer tournament, as opposed to the qualification matches. Again, they don't have to be done on a specific difficulty level, but the challenge is available if you want to take it, and 64 matches is a fair slog on top of the 54 qualification matches too. Both modes will take anywhere in the region of 30 hours to complete in full.

Moving onto the Multi-Player modes, this is where the game excels in difficulty, with a handful of trophies that will challenge the most hardened FIFA players to the highest limit.

The "WHO won the FIFA World Cup?" trophy, awarded for winning the FIFA World Cup with a 0.5-1.5 star team, is undoubtedly the toughest trophy in this list, and you will need to be prepared to put alot of trial and error into achieving this trophy. Practically every player you run into will be using a 5 star team, so even if they might not be a great player, they'll have such a greater difference in team quality, it can often be the difference between winning and losing.

In regards to which team to use, it's best to just experiment. I eventually managed to win using the Central African Republic after around 20 attempts using 10 different teams, and it was just about finding out which team was best suited to my general gameplan of deep defence and playing on the counter attack. If you go head to head with the vastly superior teams you will encounter, you'll get beaten too often, and with 4 knockout matches to negotiate in the latter stages of the tournament, it's vital to have a set gameplan based on defence and stick to it.

As mentioned, it took me around 20 attempts to unlock this trophy, losing at the final on 2 separate occasions before winning it. Persistence is hugely important, and if you can accept the fact it will most likely take a multitude of attempts (both in order to experiment with different teams/tactics and losing alot), then it definitely becomes an easier challenge to tackle. In reality though, this trophy will make or break this list for many people, and it's a big scalp to achieve alone, never mind the rest of the set.

"The English Invented It..." trophy, awarded for Winning the FIFA World Cup 5 times to match the all time record set by Brazil, is self explanatory, and although you're free to use whichever side you want, as many times as you like, it still means you'll need to win 4 knockout matches in a row on 5 separate occasions, which is tough in online FIFA modes. If you're a good player, being able to use the best teams available should just mean the 5 wins is a matter of time, but it could take a while, and also require some patience if you end up getting knocked out in the latter stages a few times.

It makes more sense to link this trophy into the other 3 trophies that require you to win the FIFA World Cup with various rated teams, but if you want to focus on those separately instead, just exclusively stick to Germany or Spain.

Finally, the "We Actually Did It!" trophy, awarded for winning the FIFA World Cup in Road to Rio de Janeiro mode, requires you to reach the 12th City and win the division in order to clinch the World Cup. Road to Rio de Janeiro is just a re-skinned version of Head to Head seasons featured in the regular FIFA games, but you'll need to climb through 12 divisions, as opposed to the usual 10, and the relegation points threshold is also much higher, making you more susceptible to relegation if you have a bad season.

The earlier divisions for the starting cities are actually quite easy to get through, but the game spikes in difficulty fairly quickly and you'll suddenly find yourself needing to win 7/8 out of 10 matches in order to gain promotion to the next city. It will take a while, and the matchmaking will always put you against players in and around the same divisions, so the quality standard of your opponents will scale accordingly, which makes this trophy a solid challenge in it's own right.

All in all, this is a list that packs in an abundance of time consuming and highly skill based trophies in big measures. The list holds many similarities to FIFA games of years gone by in the sense that you'll be required to divulge and complete practically every game mode in it's entirety, and every Gold trophy on offer will test your skill and determination to the very maximum. Such vast amounts of exploration also mean a time consuming venture that will take anywhere in the region of 100-150 hours depending on how long it takes you to reach the final stage in Road to Rio de Janeiro and win the World Cup 5 different times.

If you were disappointed in the recent slump in difficulty of current FIFA titles, then this challenge is the perfect remedy.

Notable Trophies -

Boyhood Dream - Win the FIFA World Cup as the Captain in Captain your Country
Conqueror - Complete all scenarios (major objectives) in all 6 FIFA regions in Story of Qualifying
Reliving Every Moment - Complete all scenarios (major objectives) in Story of Finals
WHO won the FIFA World Cup?! - Win the FIFA World Cup with a 0.5 - 1.5 star team
The English Invented It... - Win the FIFA World Cup 5 times to match the all time record set by Brazil
We Actually Did It! - Win the FIFA World Cup in Road to Rio de Janeiro mode

Hardest Trophy - 

WHO won the FIFA World Cup?! 
Win the FIFA World Cup with a 0.5 - 1.5 star team

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.