DLC #121 - Battlefield 1 - In the Name of the Tsar

The final installment of Battlefield 1 DLC keeps up with the consistent theme set throughout this series.

In the Name of the Tsar adds a variety of new maps, weapons, gadgets and vehicles, forever topping up the Battlefield 1 armory, which is very extensive after 4 DLC packs that have done exactly the same thing.

The Supply Drop game mode is a new addition, which gets no love whatsoever from the Battlefield community, though 1 of the 5 trophies on offer requires you to win 5 games of it, which can prove challenging, and may require you to find custom lobbies where you can win a match by yourself with pre-round enabled.

Each DLC pack has also had a tendency to add a couple of new Operations, which is thankfully one of the more popular Battlefield 1 game modes, and another trophy separately requires you to complete a game on both of these new Operations added as part of this package, as well as another trophy awarded for completion of a round across each of the 5 newly added maps. There is a final map to make 6, but this was a pre-release and does not count towards the trophy.

However, for the final time, at least within Battlefield 1, there is another assignment based trophy to discuss;

Filled the Stockpile - Perform a kill with all "In the Name of the Tsar" weapon variants

There are 19 new weapons to unlock within this package, which is significantly more than any other DLC pack in Battlefield 1. The individual objectives within the assignments will require a total of 824 kills, which is by some distance the most amount of kills any of these assignment based trophies demands of the player in order to unlock these particular trophies throughout the set. This spans across a number of readily available guns, gadgets, equipment and vehicles, making it a very diverse task, along with some more standard actions such as healing, resupplies and spot assists. This total also includes the 19 kills needed in order to fulfill the focal task as required by the trophy description, and as before, you can also potentially explore the method of picking these weapons up off the battlefield from downed enemies, though I would personally not recommend this for this particular DLC pack, purely for the high volume of weapons you need to unlock.

This will take some time to get through, and makes this package the most time consuming of them all. Is it necessarily the most difficult? I wouldn't say so, due to the fact the Turning Tides DLC pack had some tough assignment objectives among it, but that doesn't mean to say there weren't a few of these particular challenges here too.

Part 2 of the SMG 08/18 Optical Assault Rifle assignment requires you to destroy 5 tanks with the Anti-Tank Mine, which, for me, was the first sticking point of this trophy. It isn't exactly difficult, nor is 5 too big of a target for this particular objective, but there is alot of circumstantial luck required when judging where to place Anti-Tank mines in order to predict the most likely course for a tank to travel through. Planting them near vehicle entry spawn locations is a sound tactic, but enemies usually get wise to this after the first death, and will look out for them for the rest of the round, and they can also be very easy to spot for drivers who are paying enough attention to the road in front of them, meaning they can also be avoided easily or blown up. I had to play through numerous rounds specifically lying in wait to plant Anti-Tank Mines down on popular routes and waiting for unsuspecting tanks to pass by, frequently playing out entire rounds without a kill. The trial and error aspect significantly slows down your progress here, and is something to certainly watch out for.

Futher to this, Part 2 of the Vetterli-Vitali M1870/87 Carbine Scout Rifle assignment requires you to destroy 1 vehicle with K bullets, which was the single assignment objective I ended up spending the most time on, which is strange, because 1 doesn't seem like a lot, until you actually realise there's a very good reason for the requirement only being 1.

K bullets, which are armour piercing ammunition, can be equipped through the Scout class, and are used to cause damage to the outer shell of heavy armour-based vehicles. They are also still effective on non-armoured vehicles, but still do the same amount of damage points per hit, which is usually 7 or 8. 

Due to this low amount of damage, it's highly unlikely you will have enough opportunity to progressively wear down a vehicle to the point where it will blow up, and the more likely scenario is that the enemy will eventually abandon the vehicle, or an infantry soldier with repair it from either within or outside the vehicle. K bullets are also single shot, and take ages to reload, which simply doesn't give you enough time to be able to fulfill the objective without any assistance.

The only strategy is to take advantage of the assistance of your team-mates, and focus on vehicles that are subject to being targeted and damaged by others, whether this is through Anti-Tank devices such as grenades, mines and dynamite, or through the use of other heavy vehicles. All of the above will do significant damage, and your best chance will be to time a shot in order to get the killing blow. You can use visual clues in order to assess how close a vehicle may be to being destroyed, which can determine the moment you choose to release a shot, but you're still ultimately playing a game of trial and error and that 7/8 damage needs to be placed into a tight window of success.

This is the only strategy I could pinpoint, and I lost count of how many rounds I had to play before I managed to complete this objective. There is some reasonable logic in this method. It makes sense to let the heavy duty weapons wear larger vehicles down and use the visual state of the enemy vehicle to determine when you should start taking shots, but there isn't a way to tell how much health an enemy has at any point, so you're always taking the shot blind and will need luck on your side. I didn't explore any strategies with weaker, non-armoured vehicles, because they're mostly used for transportation rather than combat, and are never the focal points of attack, and since this objective requires the reliance of others to do the work for you, this is why I believed in this strategy being the best option.

Just away from this trophy, it is important to mention that the completion of this package was further held up by the "Secured the Resources" trophy, awarded for Winning 5 games of Supply Drop. It was touched upon above, and this game mode is literally shown no love whatsoever, so to sit in lobbies and win 5 games was just a matter of waiting for the right opportunities to present themselves. You can play games on custom servers with pre-round enabled, meaning you can sit in there alone and win games without anybody else being present, which is a Godsend, because I don't think you'd ever get the minimum number of players available to even fulfill 1 win, let alone 5. It just means to have wait for map rotations to fall your way, which involve a lot of idle lobby-watching.

I still maintain that Turning Tides is the hardest of the 4 DLC packs, but this does come in at a close second. The levels of patience involved sometimes feel insurmountable, but I wouldn't necessarily  equate that to difficulty, because it isn't hard to sit there in a lobby waiting for Supply Drop to turn up in the map rotation again, nor is it difficult to plant mines down, sit at a safe distance and await the fate of an enemy tank. The amount of kills required in this package is way higher than anything else though, and the K bullet assignment objective was the most challenging individual objective across all 4 DLC packs.

Timescales fall somewhere within the region of 20-30 hours, though this is hugely flexible depending on the above.

DLC #120 - Resident Evil 6 - Siege

It's taken me almost a year to realise I hadn't actually finished up the Resident Evil 6 DLC sets, with Siege being the final outstanding installment of the series.

It's also the most challenging set of DLC trophies by some distance, eclipsing the previously reviewed Survivors pack with ease.

Siege mode adds 5 new trophies to the list, and is a team-based game, where one team is tasked with protecting a single BSAA agent from the other team, who are player-controlled creatures attempting to kill the agent as quickly as possible. The maximum number on each team is 3.

The defenders will win the round if the agent survives the onslaught by the end of 3 minutes, where the attackers will win the round if the BSAA agent is killed. You will get the chance to both defend and attack once per game, and in the event that both attacking rounds end with death of the BSAA agent, the team which kills the BSAA agent quickest will be the team that wins the game.

The premise of the game mode is very straight-forward, but this is something that does not translate across the trophies. You can knock out a couple of easy ones early though, for winning 10 games of Siege and defeating the BSAA as a creature without dying once (you can sit back and let your team do the work and still obtain credit for this trophy).

However, the challenges contained within this pack are big ones, and there is some serious graft required if you're looking to earn the trophies which contribute to this challenge;

Everybody Dies - Defeat 100 player-controlled agents and 100 player-controlled creatures
Civilian Casualties - Defeat the BSAA 100 times

The "Everybody Dies" trophy, is split into 2 parts, but only half of this trophy requirement is where the real challenge derives from. Defeating 100 player-controller creatures is the easy bit. This can be any attacking zombie whilst you're on the defending side as a human agent protecting the BSAA agent, and isn't actually just limited to player-controlled creatures. Human players will be accompanied by hordes of computer-controlled creatures, which will also contribute to the kill count, so you can rack this number up at rampant speed.

Defeating 100 player-controlled agents is where the challenge lies, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, player-controlled agents are equipped to make light work of player-controlled creatures, stacked with weapons and explosives which make them undeniably tougher to kill. Even melee attacks from player-controlled agents are strong enough to take out creatures in a couple of hits, so you will find yourself on a the back foot often and respawning a lot when attempting this half of the trophy.

Secondly, player-controlled creatures don't really deal a terrible amount of damage on their own due to some very basic attacks, meaning it can take a while to down a player-controlled agent. This isn't really ideal when you're fighting against 3 minute rounds either, and trying to accumulate what is ultimately a pretty steep number in 100 kills. Well drilled teams of player-controlled agents will seldom struggle here, but against less coordinated groups, you could rack up a couple of kills per game, just don't expect this to often be a quick accumulation exercise for the reasons mentioned above.

The game mode is deliberately designed to be "few against the many", so it makes sense to offset the overwhelming numbers of creatures by making player-controlled agents stronger and more powerful. It just makes it a touch frustrating that there doesn't seem to be any common sense applied when making the kill requirements the exact same number of kills for both parts of this trophy. This half should be a lower total, but alas, it is not.

There are a few tactics which can work in the favour of player-controller creatures. The hordes of creatures that will also accompany players will create a notable distraction, creating openings of vulnerability towards player-controlled agents. This will allow for greater opportunity to achieve kills whilst player-controlled agents are busy focusing on other computer-controlled creatures. Maps also have BOW's dotted across them, larger or more aggressive zombies, which can be released into the fight, and will also cause problems for player-controlled agents, and allow for further openings for player-controlled creatures to accumulate kills.

The "Civilian Causalities" trophy, is actually the more difficult of the two trophies mentioned here, purely for the reason that, in order to "defeat the BSAA", you have to deal the killing blow to the BSAA agent yourself, and teammates contributions will not count towards this trophy. This can be a real challenge when you consider the fact that you're suddenly put into a situation where you're competing with your team-mates to deal the killing blow, and the realisation you have to do this on 100 separate occasions to fulfill the requirements of the trophy is daunting.

With the "Everybody Dies" trophy, there are multiple opportunities per game to accumulate kills, because of the respawn factor. However, no such thing exists here because the death of the BSAA agent triggers the end of the round, so you'll only be able to achieve a maximum of 1 kill per game of Siege, which puts into perspective how grindy this trophy will become. This is especially true when you also further consider the fact that, if you're playing Siege with a team, there is also the added possibility that your team-mates may kill the BSAA agent, rather than you, which is a wasted opportunity.

This is the single most grindy trophy in the entire DLC collection. The amount of times I went through games drawing a blank because my team-mates killed the BSAA agent instead was practically countless, and this trophy alone makes it the most challenging DLC package in the set. The only saving grace is that games of Siege can be played at a relatively fast pace, because they naturally last for only a few minutes, but some regularly prolonged dry spells effectively negated this, so you need to be prepared to be in it for the long haul.

It's tough to put a timescale on the package. According to the statistics screen, I spent 24 hours playing Siege, which is 8 hours longer than I invested in the Survivors DLC, and the "Take 'Em All Down" trophy, which, by my own admission felt like a long slog. It turns out I plugged an extra 8 hours into this package, so there's the added context for you. Both time and skill-wise, it's the most challenging DLC package out of the bunch.

DLC #119 - Battlefield 1 - Turning Tides

With what turns out to be the most challenging out of the Battlefield 1 DLC packs, Turning Tides comes with a recurring theme of sea-based combat, adding a series of naval based weapons, gadgets and vehicles, as well as a handful of new water-themed maps which allow for extensive off-land combat.

The package also adds the new Conquest Assault game mode (which is effectively the standard Conquest game with a few tweaks on the methods of victory), and also the new "Gallipoli" Operation, which has 1 of the trophies in this set attached to it, and earned via completion of the operation.

You'll also be required to perform a roadkill with a sea vehicle, which effectively means you'll have to kill a swimming enemy whilst in a boat, and the package also requires you to amass 15 kills with the new L-Class destroyer, a heavy duty warship loaded with health and big enough to make very light work of enemies, meaning 15 kills is a breeze.

The new slew of weapons also comes with the standard assignment based trophy, and the hardest group of weapon challenges in these DLC sets;

Naval Weapons Collection
Perform a kill with all the "Turning Tides" weapon variants

Same rules apply as before. There are 9 new weapons to unlock via a series of assignments, with a total accumulation of 264 kills required in order to trigger this trophy. This is a much smaller  total than the previous DLC packs, but quickly evened out by some frustrating assignment objectives.

Again, there's potentially alot of crossover from some of the objectives within these assignments that may have already been fulfilled within the main game or other DLC packs, and you can attempt the secondary method of scavenging the weapons individually off the battlefield from downed enemies. If you could pick up melee weapons, I would most certainly recommend this for what's to come.

What makes this DLC package the hardest out of all 4 are the requirements to unlock the Naval Cutlass melee weapon. Most of the challenges within the various assignments across all packs were relatively trouble-free right up until this point, with both assignments required to unlock the Naval Cutlass presenting their own challenges.

Part 1 of the assignment requires you to Capture 20 flags whilst in a boat, which might not seem terribly difficult, but alot of the sea vehicles you'll use across the water-based maps leave you horribly exposed to enemies whilst you're capturing control points, particularly to snipers/other land-based infantry (since you're never actually contained inside the boat when you're using it), and air bombers, which make light work of sea-based vehicles in general with their powerful air attacks. This can make capturing flags very challenging, and you'll die often trying to achieve 20 captures. It's always best to park up within the capture zone, and then man a mounted weapon in order to defend yourself and the boat, but this also can present it's own issues with squad members spawning in the drivers seat and potentially maneuvering the boat outside of the capture zone, so there are multiple challenges to contest with here.

Part 2 of this assignment requires you to kill 15 enemies whilst they're swimming, which is the more challenging aspect of this assignment, but only by virtue of the fact you'll need alot of patience in order to accumulate this many kills for the required task. You don't need to be swimming yourself, which limits you to only being able to use a handgun, meaning you can stand over bodies of water on land and wait patiently for enemies to appear, picking them off with longer range weapons, which is definitely the best approach. This can be a very long waiting game at times though, and enemies have a general tendency to use boats to transport themselves across bodies of water, rather than swim, which naturally makes sense. Enemies can also submerge themselves underwater for large periods of time, in order to avoid detection, which makes it even harder to spot out swimming enemies who you may not even realise are there at times. Add in the fact there's also alot of circumstantial luck, and it really slows down progression towards full completion, and combined with Part 1 above, it eclipses any other assignment within these sets of DLC, especially for time and tedium.

Despite having the least amount of required kills than any package before it, it's something that is quickly made up for by the Naval Cutlass assignment, which could arguably add at least 4/5 hours onto the package. It can also be very frustrating having to wait for the map rotation to cycle through into a water-themed map too, which is something else to bear in mind. You can't  make any progress towards unlocking the Naval Cutlass unless you're playing on a water-based map, after all.

Total completion time lies somewhere in the region of 10-15 houts, though this has the scope to be way more open ended thanks to both parts of the Naval Cutlass assignment. Most challenging Battlefield 1 pack thus far.

DLC #118 - Battlefield 1 - They Shall Not Pass

Containing the least amount of trophies out of the 4 Battlefield 1 DLC packs, They Shall Not Pass is also subsequently the easiest of the 4 too.

The package adds the standard for Battlefield add-ons. New maps, weapons, gadgets and vehicles are all accounted for, as well as the new attack vs defence Frontlines game mode, which requires to progressively capture points and advance up a battlefield towards the final portion in sector, with all sectors to be claimed in order to achieve victory.

The 4 additional trophies don't actually shift much focus onto the core aspects added into the game along with this package.

The new St Chamond Heavy Tank gets some love, in which you'll need to accumulate 25 kills with, but the other 2 trophies within the package are awarded for merely spending 30 minutes playing on the side of the French Republic as a Medic and obtaining 4 kills with the Trench Raider Elite Class, which is a special kit pick up randomly located on any of the 5 new maps contained with this package.

However, the constant within the Battlefield 1 packages are the Gold trophies, which focus on the completion of weapon assignments to unlock the weapons contained within the DLC;

Maitre d'Armes - Perform one kill with each of the 5 primary Weapon Assignments weapons

In exactly the same way in which the Apocalypse DLC required kills with each of the new weapon variants bought into the game via the DLC package, this trophy requires exactly the same thing.

There are 8 weapon variants, awarded through the fulfillment of assignments required to unlock them (the reason the trophy lists them as 5, rather than 8, is because 3 of these weapons come with 2 modification variants, making it 5 unique weapons).

Similar to the Apocalypse DLC, you can either unlock the weapon variants by conventional means of completing the specific assignments tied to them, or you can find them on the battlefield acquired from downed enemies. I will maintain throughout the entire assessment of this DLC set that the former is always the favorable option, purely because you cannot specify how long it would take you to find each weapon variant through trial and error.

One thing that's important to note is the fact that, having already completed the Apocalypse DLC, this naturally created a certain degree of crossover where partial amounts of the assignments for this trophy had already been fulfilled. With that said, you'll still need a collective total of 318 kills, which, despite being over 100 kills shorter than the Apocalypse DLC, will still take a degree of time dedication.

Due to the fact the weapons come as part of the package, these were untouched and the accumulation of kills began from zero. The aforementioned crossover comes from other requirements which can be fulfilled from the main game, such as obtaining 75 resupplies and 50 revives. This naturally cuts down the completion time, but with a hefty amount of kills still required, this will take somewhere in the region of 8/10 hours alone.

There aren't really many assignments that are that challenging. They're mostly accumulation activities using a variety of weapons and gadgets, and as mentioned, this makes it the least challenging out of the 4 DLC packs to date. If you've previously dabbled within the Multiplayer portion of the game, you will have made progress towards some of these assignments already, which will of course help, and even though there is a little bit of specific focus on the other trophies within the package, they are also accumulation based and shouldn't take much more longer than everything else.

Platinum #90 - Dishonored

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

In the current easy run of Platinum trophies, Dishonored seems to fit in quite well. Despite having some challenges along the way, (mostly stemming from an incredibly convoluted trophy list), this is a game which can be completed at a pace dictated by the player, though you will have to be prepared to run-through the game at least a few times, possibly even more, in order to achieve the Platinum trophy.

You take control of Corvo, a protectorate for the Empress, who is framed for her murder and abduction of her daughter Emily. Whilst imprisoned and soon to be executed, you're broken out by a group of Loyalists who know you're innocent, and assist you on a mission to find Emily but also to seek revenge against those who framed you in the first instance.

You'll progress through levels, using varying game mechanics in order to complete the objectives within via different methods, which is heavily interwoven into the entire trophy list, and will require you to explore most options if you want to unlock this Platinum trophy.

This list contains everything. Trophies awarded for completing the game under certain conditions, killing assassination targets in specific ways, completing other actions within levels in certain ways, collectibles, missables. Alot is accounted for, and whilst it's true that the story is only about 8-10 hours in length, you'll most definitely have to complete it more than once, and depending how well you track the rest of the list, this could also extend into more than twice.

The "Resolution" trophy, awarded for completing the game, is where you'll start. The list contains a healthy portion of progression-based trophies, and these are awarded at regular intervals during the story, except in the instance where the trophy is awarded for performing a certain action when you reach a specific point in the story. This also technically makes them missable if you choose to take a different approach which goes against the fulfillment requirements of the trophy. For example, there is a trophy for simply assassinating the Lord Regent, Hiriam Burrows, but then also a trophy awarded for neutralising him by broadcasting his crimes instead. Both trophies require you to take different measures in order to advance the story, which cannot be achieved at the same time, and this crops up multiple times within this list. I counted 15 progression-based trophies, with a small collection of these which have to be achieved across multiple runs.

This also extends to the "Dunwall in Chaos" and "Just Dark Enough" trophies, which require you to complete the game in high chaos, and complete the game in low chaos respectively. Nothing of note, other than to evidence the point that you cannot fulfil the requirements of these trophies simultaneously, leading to another run of the game in order to grab the other one you missed first time round.

The "Clean Hands" trophy, awarded for completing the game without killing anyone, adds yet another endgame trophy which has conditional completion requirements attached to it, and whilst you can tandem alot of these trophies into 1 run of the game and unlock them all together at the conclusion of the story, you end up having to constantly assess where you are with this list and what you need to do to achieve what you have left. It's really distracting, and is probably the biggest element of challenge within the entire game. 

Incidentally, I think this is also the hardest trophy in the whole list. You'll have to neutralise every assassination target, which requires more creativity than direct assassination, and you'll also have to move through every level either undetected or exclusively using the chokehold maneuver to neutralise enemies. You can also fail this trophy under very minor technicalities, including accidentally dumping unconscious bodies into water, causing them to drown, or leaving them on the floor to be eaten by a plague of rats. Pay attention to the statistics screen at the end of each level, and you'll see a counter for deaths. If this has a tally, you'll have to restart the mission, and these mysterious deaths occurred for me more than once, which is frustrating. The ability to be able to just restart a mission or reload a save is a good safety net to have for this trophy, but the cautious method is the slowest way to beat this game regardless.

The "Ghost" trophy, awarded for completing all missions after the prologue, without alerting or killing no one but key targets, is also another playthrough to consider. This is effectively the "Clean Hands" trophy, adding the point that you cannot alert any enemies, which means you'll have to be extra cautious when getting through each level. Naturally, you would combine these 2 trophies in one run, but you could very easily complete the game without killing anybody, but alerting an enemy accidently along the way. This would still allow you to achieve the Clean Hands trophy, but would in turn, negate this one. It's just another example that emphasises the explanation as to how things can easily get messy when it comes to picking apart a methodology for how to attack this list in the best way.

In reality, you don't have to beat the game 3/4 times, and a tandem approach is the best way to go about this list, but if you're not prepared with a solid plan of attack, you will be playing through this game a small handful of times. One redeeming feature of this list is that fact that, despite having 4 difficulty settings ranging from casual to hard, you're never required to beat the game on any specific difficulty levels, and when you play this game on casual, it is very easy to bypass large sections of certain missions and complete levels extremely quickly, which is a Godsend given how many times you may have to revisit certain parts of this game.

Finally, the "Art Dealer" trophy, awarded for collecting all the Sokolov Paintings, is a standard, but highly missable, collectible trophy, and is the sole reason why I had to play through this game one final time, taking my total number of playthroughs to 4.

There are only 11 Sokolov paintings, and they're dotted around in certain missions where you simply have to grab them from their designated locations. The complication here comes from the final painting, available in mission 7 of the game. It is directly tied into 2 other trophies on this list, which, just like the High/Low chaos trophies mentioned at the top of the review, are branched into a choice where you can only unlock one or the other depending on which character you side with. These 2 characters are called Granny Rags and Slackjaw, and you have to complete 2 side missions for them prior to mission 7, where you encounter them both in a situation where you have to side with one over the other, which ultimately leads to the death of the character you choose to oppose.

This occurs in a room where the final Sokolov painting is seen, and is only available if you complete the missions for both characters and trigger the final decision. Due to the fact you can you only earn 1 of the 2 available trophies for siding with 1 character, I ended up trying to unlock the Slackjaw trophy on it's own, in the same playthrough as trying to obtain the Sokolov paintings, which meant I ignored the Granny Rags questline, and did not reach the final decision, which in turn, meant I could not obtain the painting in the final room. I had to go back over the game one last time, complete ALL side missions for BOTH characters, and then reach the final room in mission 7 to grab the painting.

Admittedly, this could have been prevented by better planning on my own part, though it is also important to note that I followed a guide which pointed out you didn't need to satisfy the requirements of both characters in order to reach the final Sokolov painting, so I won't take full responsibility here. It does also serve as the cherry on top to evidence a trophy list that pulls the player in every direction, and is ultimately difficult to dissect without resorting to the fact you might as well play the game 3/4 times just to be extra sure you can earn every trophy without having to worry about missing something accidentally.

For certain parts of this list which, on the flipside, are made a bit more user-friendly, you can use chapter select to go back through the game again and obtain trophies which are specific to certain chapters, rather than play through the game again and having to watch out for those specific segments of the story. With everything else out to catch you out, this is a welcome repreive when polishing off the list.

I will maintain the notion that the game itself isn't really that challenging. The absence of difficulty sensitive trophies means you can play through the game at whichever leisurely pace you choose to, and this is definitely something to take advantage of if you start to hit the third or fourth playthrough and just want it to be over quickly like I did. Even in scenarios where you have to be more creative, the game does a lenient job of guiding the player through the game, using a lot of visual clues and a hinting system to make sure you're never really stuck. 

Even when you think you've planned well, there is always something that seems to trip you up, and the need for multiple playthroughs caused me a few issues. You also have to constantly be aware that you don't breach conditions of trophies when trying to complete the game in numerously different ways which could cost you. This isn't a hard game, but the trophy requirements add a new dimension to the whole package, which splits it straight down the middle.

Notable Trophies - 

Resolution - You completed the game
Clean Hands - You completed the game without killing anyone
Ghost - You completed all missions after the prologue, alerting or killing no one but key targets
Art Dealer - You collected all the Sokolov paintings

Hardest Trophy -

Clean Hands
You completed the game without killing anyone

DLC #117 - Battlefield 1 - Apocalypse

Battlefield games are always strong contenders for DLC with trophies, and Battlefield 1 continues that trend with 4 sets of DLC attached to the main game.

Apocalypse adds what seems to be the norm in terms of an overall Battlefield DLC package, with a series of new maps, weapons, gadgets, vehicles and 5 additional trophies bought to the games core.

The Air Assault game mode is also added, which is covered off by the "Flyswatter" trophy, awarded for destroying 5 airplanes while in the Behemoth Airship L30.

It's a familiar looking list, with the format very akin to that of the set of Battlefield 4 DLC. Within most of those packages, were trophies awarded for smaller tasks, but also a trophy for completing the newly added batch of assignments to each package (This wasn't the case for all 5 DLC packs, but was present in most of them).

Obtaining a kill with the Livens Projector and the Broken Bottle will cover off a further 2 trophies (though the latter will require a prerequisite to be unlocked for use), and you'll also need to perform a melee kill on a Flametrooper Elite, which is incidentally the easiest way to take them down. Regarding the new weapons added to the package, they actually have to be unlocked for use, which is where the final trophy comes in;

Weapons of the Apocalypse - Perform a kill with all "Apocalypse" weapon variants.

Where Battlefield 4 would award a trophy for completing all assignments in the package, this is effectively the same thing, just dressed up a little differently. There are 10 new weapons included within Apocalypse, and each one has to be unlocked for use via completing certain assignments, so the weapon is effectively the reward. Across these 10 new weapons, there are 14 assignments in total, and this trophy is replicated for all 4 Battlefield 1 DLC packs.

There aren't many assignments that actually stand out as challenging. Most of them just simply require you to obtain a specific number of kills with an existing weapon, though the total number of kills you'll need to rack up is 440, which includes all kills as per the assignment objective and subsequent kills required with the actual weapon variant. Don't forget that last part. It is the key trigger for the trophy after all.

This naturally makes it a fairly time consuming venture, with this trophy responsible for around 15-20 hours of gameplay alone. In order to unlock the Broken Bottle melee weapon, you'll need 5 kills with the wine bottle, which is dotted around in certain parts of the new maps within this package. The catch with the wine bottle melee weapon is that, once it's been collected from it's spawn point on the map, it won't respawn until you begin a new game, so your chances for kills will be limited, and due to the fact it's a melee weapon, it can be frustrating to get close enough to opponents in order to acquire kills, but this is really the only assignment I would specifically pick out from this group which presents any sort of skill-based challenge. Most of the other assignments are based around accumulation of kills and/or support functions such as healing and resupply points, which are easy to focus on.

One final detail that's important to point out, and this goes for every assignment-based trophy contained within this batch of DLC, is the fact that you can actually unlock this trophy by just picking up the weapon variant from killed enemies on the battlefield and this will count towards the trophy. I never once had the inclination to do it this way myself, and whether it's a more time efficient method than unlocking them progressively will purely depend on how lucky you are in finding the required weapons. It will cut down a series of challenges per weapon you find and obtain a kill with, but whether you find them all is another story. Some of these weapons aren't that commonly used, so it's probably better to just work on unlocking them yourself. It's also a better challenge.

If you go for the more conventional method of unlocking the weaponry yourself, the package comes in at around 20-25 hours of gameplay. The specific objectives for the weapons in this set aren't as challenging in comparison to some of them in the other sets of DLC available, but they will take a solid level of time commitment at the very least.

Platinum #89 - DiRT Rally

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

Out of 3 previously reviewed DiRT titles (DiRT 2, DiRT 3 and Showdown), there has never been a game that has breached past a 7/10 for difficulty rating, and DiRT Rally doesn't quite get there either.

Where these previous titles have had an emphasis on a variety of Motorsport activities, this is the first title since the original Colin McRae Rally games, last seen on the Playstation 2, which has contained a heavy focus on the concept of Rally.

The list is split very evenly across a range of different aspects to this game, including the Career mode, Online events, Online PvP and other various adhoc tasks.

The meat of the game, as always, is based around the Career mode, but has a slightly different take on progression in comparison to previous DiRT titles.

Before, you would progress through the career via a series of events, and winning these events would subsequently unlock further events to compete in until you reached the final tier. It was a very linear model which was carried through the series across all of the previous titles prior to this one. DiRT Rally follows a league format, where you compete in events which are made up of a specific number of stages, and the quicker you are across these stages, the higher you'll finish within an event. The closer you are to the top spot after each event, the more points you'll earn towards the overall league table. The top 3 drivers are promoted to the next league, and the bottom 3 drivers are relegated back down to the previous league, and this format is followed across the game's 3 disciplines of racing (Rally, RallyCross and Hillclimb).

The difficulty of the Career mode is determined based on which league you're in. You'll start at Open level and end at Masters level, with a total of 5 different leagues to climb through, with each level becoming progressively more challenging.

The "Born to Run" trophy, awarded for Becoming Champion at Masters level in Championships, is the most difficult trophy on the list, but strangely enough, is also where the game loses a few possible extra marks for difficulty at the same time. Just to make this clear from the off, the game can be unforgivably challenging, but this also depends on which discipline you're playing. The requirements of the trophy only task you with becoming a Champion at Masters level in just 1 of the 3 previously mentioned disciplines, so you have some very lenient flexibility to work with here. Rally is tough to the point where I genuinely don't think I'd ever win at Masters level, whereas Hillclimb, which was the discipline I ended up unlocking this trophy for, is still tough, but makes the trophy much more realistically achievable.

For a game that has previously prided it's trophy lists on maximum completion, to effectively allow the player to be able to bypass the majority of it's Career mode options is definitely a change of direction.

However, there are also a small collection of trophies on offer which will which require you to win a Championship using a variety of cars from different Rally classes, so even if you choose to avoid the Rally discipline for the purposes of the trophy above, you won't be able to escape it entirely if you want to unlock the Platinum trophy. The most efficient way to achieve this is to win a Championship at Open level, promoting you to Clubman level, and then retire events until you're relegated back down to Open, repeating this process for the 5 trophies you'll need to unlock which require you to explore 5 different vehicle classes. This also keeps the game as simple as possible, and means you won't have to reach the upper tiers of Rally Championships to attempt to unlock these trophies, which should keep things manageable. Be warned though, Rally is still challenging, even at Open level, so this will give you a few problems if your skills aren't up to scratch.

Away from the Career mode, there is also a fairly big emphasis on Online Events, which are a series of challenges pitting you against others to finish as high as possible on a leaderboard based on event completion time. There are 5 further trophies which require you to finish within the top tier of these events, which occur daily on a random rotational basis, and span across different disciplines and tracks. The top 33% times logged by the end of the day will qualify for the top tier, and there are 2 things that are important to note about these trophies.

The first important note is that fact that, naturally, almost 4 years on, there aren't that many people playing this game anymore, so the window for opportunity to actually place within the top tier is much smaller. If you were going for these trophies at the beginning of the game's life cycle, where you were seeing thousands of people log event times each day, it would have been much easier to reach that top tier. This sort of leads onto the second important note, which is the fact only the hardcore DiRT fans are still really playing this game, and are inevitably finding their way into the top of the leaderboards consistently, such is the age of the game, subsequently reducing the availability of qualifying spots to fulfill the requirements of the trophy for others.

Ultimately, if you're good enough, you'll get in, but you're competing against real players, and only the best will achieve that top tier. The major positive is the fact the events are run daily, so you'll have ample opportunities to keep coming back to try again, even if it does mean going back to the Single Player portions of the game to perfect your skills.

The "Dependable" trophy, awarded for Completing a Monthly Event, requires you to just finish a single monthly event, though this does also come with it's own challenges. A monthly event is composed of 24 stages, so damage management is critical to completing the event. Your car will depreciate over time, and this is alot of stages to get through, so you'll need to ensure maximum care, and disregard the element of time, given the fact you merely need to finish the event for the trophy. Too much damage to your car means you won't be able to keep up with the adequate levels of repairs to make it through to the end, and if your car is retired due to excessive damage, you'll be unable to complete the event until next month.

Another issue to watch out for, and another reason why you should disregard time and take care navigating through stages, is the fact that, crashing your car off course in certain stages will retire you automatically. It seems strange, because driving too far off track will reset you with a time penalty, which is fine, but driving off a mountainous ledge, or over a wall, will end your event, and you'll have to wait to compete in next month's instead. I experienced both separate instances of irreparable damage and driving off stage, so I had to wait out 3 months to achieve this trophy, so it's definitely worth mentioning. The event will also take somewhere around 2-3 hours to complete too.

The "Maximum Attack" trophy, awarded for winning every stage on a 12 stage event with all assists off, is easily the most challenging of the adhoc trophies remaining in the list. This replicates the real life simulation of driving a vehicle, where there are no handling assists, disabled HUD and the event is completed within the cockpit from first person perspective. It's very difficult to get the hang of if you're used to the default settings of driver assists and being able to see the HUD and vehicle from an outer perspective. You also need to win every single stage, so if you don't finish top of a particular stage, you'll need to restart it until you do, which means it can also become a very time consuming venture. If you can't master handling the car without any assists, you'll lose control and won't top the stage, so a certain degree of mastery is required here which could take some practice. It was easily the one adhoc trophy I spent the most time on.

Despite the watered down requirements for completion of the Career mode compared to previous DiRT games, DiRT Rally still presents a solid enough challenge to keep things interesting. It also still maintains a pretty decent longevity factor too, clocking in at somewhere between the 50-70 hour mark for full completion. Winning numerous Rally events with different vehicle classes, reaching and winning at Masters level for 1 discipline in Career mode and a generous portion of trophies spread across competitive Multiplayer game modes keep the hours ticking over nicely.

The game also does not have any preset difficulty levels, and is dictated simply by the league level at which you're competing in Career mode and how strong your times are against other players online, both of which will offer a reasonable challenges as a result. It doesn't quite set a new standard based on previous difficulty ratings for other DiRT games, but it's still competing in the upper echelons. Somewhere around Professional to Elite league level, you could say.

Notable Trophies -

Born to Run - Become Champion at Masters level in Championships
Dependable - Complete a Monthly Event
Maximum Attack - Win every stage on a 12 stage event with all assists off

Hardest Trophy -




Born to Run
Become Champion at Masters level in Championships

Platinum #88 - Canis Canem Edit (Bully)

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

By simple virtue of the fact this game isn't called "Grand Theft Auto" or "Red Dead Redemption", this is one of Rockstars lesser known titles.

Originally released on the Playstation 2 in 2006, Canis Canem Edit (renamed for it's release in Europe to be "softer" than it's North American counterpart "Bully"), was later released in this form on the Playstation 4 as a downloadable title. It is a straight port, retaining the same gameplay mechanics, content and graphics as the original game.

As with all Rockstar titles, this is a story-driven sandbox game, where you take control of Jimmy Hopkins, a deliquent child exiled to Bullworth Academy to pursue his education (as well as dominance of the school). The list is about medium-sized, with 38 trophies in total, and in truth, this is an incredibly easy Platinum trophy, sometimes plagued with a grind or two along the way, but mostly a leisurely stroll to full completion.

The "Graduate" trophy, awarded for Completing Chapter 5, concludes the main story's 77 missions, and this is an easy journey from start to finish. There is no difficulty setting applied to the game and the missions are quick, easy and very basic in concept, which equates to a very straight-forward experience. There are a series of trophies also awarded upon completion of each chapter leading up to the final one too, so there are rewards for incremental progression present too.

The story takes up a large chunk of overall completion time, clocking in at around 10-15 hours, during which you'll naturally earn a lot of the other trophies within the list along the way. Without any reason to specifically mention any of these trophies in particular, there is a large element of grind attached to this game, which will catch you out if you don't do your research beforehand. This involves accumulating a varying degree of distance covered on multiple forms of transport, including the bicycle, skateboard and on foot, and it may be that you heavily favour one of these to the extent that you reach the end-game and find yourself spending a lot of additional time just travelling around specifically to cover ground using the modes of transport you previously may have neglected. 100 kilometers on the bike, 100,000 metres on foot. These are big totals that need to be worked on as soon as you begin the game.

This list heavily favours this approach throughout, and extends to other activities within the game too, including running 30 errands, delivering 50 wedgies, kicking 100 footballs and knocking 200 people out. It all seems a bit unnecessary and devoid of inspiration, but these kind of gradual accumulation trophies make up around 60% of the entire list, so, as a collective, they're worth mentioning.

The "Sharp Dressed Man" trophy, awarded for Purchasing 250 clothing items, could also fit into the above description, but there are extra elements to this trophy which mean it requires a mention. First and foremost, this will require an accumulation of money to the tune of around $3,000. Completion of certain main story missions will reward a cash prize, but most of these funds will come from extra-curricular activities such as paper rounds and lawn mowing, so this involves a bit of grinding for money on top.

It's also important to be smart with money too, and not senselessly burn it on aspects of the game that won't influence this trophy, such as haircuts and playing arcade games. It also helps to spend it wisely. You don't need to buy every clothing item in the game to fulfill the requirements of this trophy, so it is unnecessary to spend money on the most expensive items as soon as you see them, otherwise you'll be in a situation where you need to spend more time accumulating further funds to purchase the full 250 items you'll need to trigger the trophy.

The "Problem Child" trophy, awarded for Amassing 160,000 trouble points, will require some post-game grinding. Out of many of the things the game's statistic screen tracks for you, this is unfortunately not one of them, but 160,000 is a big total, and you'll more than likely reach the end of the game still needing this trophy. 

The issue with amassing trouble points lies in the fact that causing trouble will get you collared by authority figures, such as school prefects and police, who will bust you causing you to "respawn". This makes it a very stop/start process with little continuity. The fact that trouble points can't be tracked anywhere either means you don't actually know which are the best actions to perform in order to quickly maximise the amount of trouble points you're amassing at any one time. There are more serious offences you can commit in comparison to others, which are easy to work out with a little bit of trial and error judgement, but you're in the dark until you see the trophy pop, which for me was about 3 hours after the original end-game.

As a general rule of thumb when rating the difficulty of trophy lists, I tend to rate on a scale of 4-10, saving the exceptions for games that barely contain enough of a challenge to be considered any higher up the scale. This is exactly where Canis Canem Edit fits.

In comparison to the normal expectation of a Rockstar sandbox game, it isn't very vast at all, and you won't even need to complete the game to 100% in order to unlock the Platinum trophy (It actually sits at around the 93% mark, but there are thankfully a couple of annoying collectible strands that are neglected from this, which cuts down a handful of extra hours which would otherwise be required if 100% was necessary for the Platinum).

The difficulty curve of the game is non-existent, and despite a small selection of grindy trophies which you'll have to make sure you begin accumulation on quickly, this is a nice easy Platinum to add to the collection. My overall completion time according to the statistics screen was 22 hours and 48 minutes.

Graduate - Complete Chapter 5
Sharp Dressed Man - Purchase 250 clothing items
Problem Child - Amass 160,000 trouble points

Hardest Trophy -




Sharp Dressed Man
Purchase 250 clothing items

DLC #116 - Angry Birds Trilogy - Anger Management

Upon full completion of the previously reviewed main Angry Birds list, there weren't many more things beyond that I ever wanted to see less of than more Angry Birds content.

I say that with a bit of tongue in cheek. There is a strangely addictive charm to this game, which I should, in theory, dislike, but can't quite bring myself to.

This first of two DLC packs offers up more of the same. A collection of new episodes containing a series of levels to conquer in the same old Angry Birds style we've come to know and (not always) love.

There are 6 episodes in total, themed across popular calendar events, such as Halloween, Christmas and Chinese New Year, spanning a collective total of 130 new individual levels contained within. There aren't really any additional game features or new birds to unleash into the atmosphere, so this is literally just more of what you already know. The Piglantis episode does add a cool water mechanic, which makes you approach those particular levels slightly differently to the rest, but that's as about as fresh as this package gets in terms of providing any new content.

There are 10 new trophies in total, 6 of which are offered for completing each of the new 6 episodes. This merely requires you to rid the stage of all pigs present, and does not extend to obtaining a 3 star rating, however, that isn't the case for full completion of this package;

Star-Expander - Get 3 stars in every single level of Anger Management.

The "Star Expander" trophy, awarded for getting 3 stars in every single level of Anger Management, will require you to do exactly that. These are the kind of trophies that bore my love/hate relationship with Angry Birds, purely because they have a bad habit of challenging unpredictability, and this is no different here.

Just like the main game, you'll run into a series of levels at varying points that just leave you stuck for hours, resorting to some desperate trial and error in an attempt to create as much destruction as possible and hit that 3 star score requirement. There isn't any logic to why the points don't quite tally up and it's just a matter of retrying the level until something sticks. It will eventually work, but you just have to persist with it, and that's the hardest thing about these trophies, and the fact you never quite know how much longer any given level will take to complete. There is a very minimal influence that skill can have here, so it's purely a waiting game.

If achieving 3 stars for each of the 130 new individual levels wasn't enough, you'll also have to go back through and cleanse them with the Mighty Eagle too, another popular extra-curricular activity introduced into the main games list, so this doubles the original figure to a plump 260 levels to complete in total. The Mighty Eagle will get you through levels much faster than conventional means of achieving 3 stars, but you're still effectively putting into motion a second play-through of the package. No small feat.

It's difficult to nail down a time estimation, purely for the previously aforementioned degree of trial and error present, but covering a broad spectrum and suggesting 20-30 hours would be fair enough. This may seem high for a package which is much shorter on content than the main game, but I think it nicely emphasises the amount of patience you'll need to see it through to the end.

NOTE : At the time of writing, this content pack has been removed seemingly on a permanent basis from the Playstation store. If you had not downloaded the pack prior to purchase, the trophies within this package are rendered unachievable by conventional means.

DLC #115 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag - Blackbeard's Wrath

The Multiplayer half of Black Flag's DLC comes in the form of a very small DLC package.

The content of the package contains just 3 new character skins, so is a very scarce offering, but does also load up a small collection of trophies to go after too.

Each of the new trophies requires the player to pull off some sort of in-game feat, whilst skinned up as 1 of the additional character skins. There is a surplus trophy which can be achieved with any character skin, but the other trophies will require you to use each of the 3 new characters.

Despite being a Multiplayer package, you can take the easy way out for at least 3 of these trophies, by loading up a game of solo Wolfpack, which is still contained within the Multiplayer portion of the game, but can be played alone as a training exercise. The fact you can still also earn these trophies within that game mode is an added bonus which makes this easy enough, for the most part anyway;

Sacred Land - Playing as The Jaguar, be the highest scoring player of a Domination game session.

Unlike the other trophies in this set, this one has to be completed in a game of Domination, which cannot be done solo. There are two obstacles with this trophy.

Firstly, during any team-based game mode on Assassin's Creed, the responsibility to choose which character the team uses will fall to one person on the team chosen at random. The issue is, the others on your team won't be choosing the Jaguar skin, meaning you'll more than likely have to wait until it's your turn to make the choice, so there's a either large element of reliance on others or a lot of patience to achieve stage one of this trophy.

Once you've managed to create the above scenario, you then you need to make sure you're the best performer in the lobby, which, when full, will consist of another 7 players. There is a really important detail that the trophy description actually neglects to mention, which is the fact you not only have to be the highest scoring player in the lobby, but you also need to be on the winning team. This is something I discovered the hard way, when I thought I had fulfilled the requirements of the trophy, but ended up on the losing team, so the trophy did not trigger.

This meant I was back at square one, and had to go through the whole stage one process of getting into a game where the Jaguar skin was selected either by myself or somebody else, and this will be the case every time you fail at stage two, so this has the potential to be a somewhat drawn out process. It does help to obtain this pack early and tandem it with the main trophy list, which requires you to reach level 55, just so it seems like you're not wasting time if you need a handful of attempts at this trophy. At least you're still leveling up if you're experiencing set-backs.

The fact you can earn most of the trophies in a non-competitive environment makes this package a lot easier than it initially seems. In a competitive Multiplayer environment, some of these trophies are tough, and could take a while depending on situational luck. This is somewhat upheld by the only trophy in the set which can only be earned within a competitive playlist, but the rest is much easier thanks to solo Wolfpack mode.