DLC #126 - Grid Autosport - Sprint Pack

From Drag racing to Sprint racing. This new focus for the second DLC package within Grid Autosport adds point to point Sprint racing into the game, which requires the player to make it from point A to point B as quickly as possible and win by logging the quickest time. With a handful of new Sprint Championships to tackle, and an additional 4 new environments to race in, the mode is well complimented.

There are also 4 new trophies to unlock, and unlike the Drag Pack, this package does not actually put any focus at all onto completing/winning any of the new Championships that come contained within the newly added content.

Instead, each of the 4 new trophies are earned by beating set times of 4 specifically chosen Sprint routes contained as part of this package (1 trophy dedicated to each of the 4 new environments, which include Cote D'Azur, California, Okutama and Hong Kong). It is, in very simple terms, a package that awards 4 silver trophies for beating 4 individual time trials.

Each of these 4 new environments has 6 route variants, totaling 24 new routes within this DLC, and 1 has been chosen from each set, with a time to beat applied to it in order to unlock the trophy that applies to that particular region.

Sprint racing is designed to be fast paced and risk-inducing, so these Sprint route times within the trophy descriptions have short completions, varying from 2 minutes and 50 seconds, up to 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Ultimately though, they don't really pose much of a challenge if you're anywhere near an average or above skill level.

My method involved just simply moving from the top of the list down. I never spent more than half an hour on any of these trophies individually, and although I had to restart the event a handful of times in the very worst case scenario, this never deterred my progress to any significant level of note. You can even use the benefit of flashbacks up to 5 times during the race if you really need them, which will help achieve some continuity.

This is a straight-forward list, laid out with very obvious goals, which you can easily knock out in casual evening's worth of play. A few hours maximum.

Platinum #93 - DiRT 4

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

DiRT titles are starting to become a regular scalp within my trophy collection (DiRT 4 is the 5th DiRT title to make it in at this point), and there isn't really much that has changed between them all in terms of the challenges they have each individually offered.

DiRT 4 is another fine example of this, reflected by a score of 7, which is shared by 3 out of the other 4 DiRT titles previously reviewed.

It fits within the main chronology of the series, focusing on the roots of the game by offering a variety of racing disciplines which will all require differing strategic approaches. These include all of the familiar favourites such as Rally, Landrush, Rallycross and Historic Rally.

The trophy list is best split into 2 parts, with Single Player and Multiplayer both covered, as is always the case with any DiRT title, but the vast majority of this challenge comes purely from the Single Player portion of the game.

The Single Player game spans across a global series of the 4 aforementioned disciplines, each with a progressive set of events. Subsequent events are unlocked through completing the prior events. For each discipline, you'll start out with a few events to compete in, and you'll need to win a certain amount of medals within these events in order to unlock the next "license", which progresses you further along towards the final Championship. The goal is to repeat this until you reach the end and win the final Championship.

The "Completed it mate", trophy, awarded for Winning the Triple Crown, is the sole focus of the Single Player game, and this trophy effectively comes in 2 parts.

Firstly, you'll need to actually unlock the Triple Crown Championship, which will require you to earn a podium in the main Championship of the Rally, Landrush and Rallycross career branches. Historic Rally is excluded for this, but there are separate trophies awarded along the way for winning the main Championship for all 4 disciplines, so you can't just bypass Historic Rally entirely, and will still need to complete it in it's entirety to unlock the Platinum trophy. This also makes it somewhat pointless to mention the fact you only need to achieve a podium finish, as anything less than 1st place will leave you short of the Platinum.

After this, you'll need to actually win the Triple Crown Championship to then finally unlock the trophy. Up to this point, the Career mode is already a long venture, clocking in at around the 40-50 hour mark to win every main Championship (including Historic Rally) and unlock the Triple Crown itself. The Rally disciplines largely contribute to this, with some of the latter events requiring hours to complete individually, whereas the Landrush and Rallycross events don't tend to be anywhere near as gruelingly long. The Triple Crown alone then adds another 10-15 hours on top, and although there are only 3 events, each of them are the longest 3 events in the entire game, and it becomes a bit of a mental battle when you realise this trophy is actually hidden and the Triple Crown comes out of nowhere just when you think you've reached end-game.

It does actually become tough to stomach, and even as someone who is a massive fan of the DiRT series, the limited stage environments and variety within events doesn't really help the feeling that everything is just a bit too drawn out.

The trophies are not difficulty sensitive, so the actual challenge is determined by the player. I played on Champion difficulty, which is just one off the highest, and did find this to make the game tough in spots, but once you can afford to buy the best vehicles, and also fully upgrade them, then it does start to become less of a challenge, though you will still need a reasonable level of driving skill to win events regularly. This is actually the main driver for the score presented above, and if the difficulty wasn't taken into consideration, it would be hard to justify where the points for this game would actually come from.

You'll unlock a massive chunk of this list along the way towards winning the Triple Crown. This includes 8 trophies awarded for unlocking licenses at set points along the way at certain points within the Career mode, 4 trophies for winning the main Championship in each of the 4 racing disciplines and a handful of easier trophies you will no doubt unlock naturally on your way towards winning that Triple Crown. Once you've completed this, you will have around 70% of the entire list accounted for, leaving you with just the Multiplayer trophies, and a few stragglers left behind from the Single Player which you can easily go back and collect later.

The Multiplayer also doesn't stray too far from the norm, with both competitive online and community events both covered, as they have been in more recent DiRT titles.

In all honesty, there isn't much at all that is challenging and/or note-worthy from the Multiplayer aspect of this game, which is a bit of a difference from a series that has previously featured some lengthy online leveling journeys in the past.

The "DiRTy Dozen" trophy, awarded for Completing all 12 Stages of a Monthly Event in Community Events, requires you to post a completion time for a monthly recurring event, without actually mentioning the fact that if you abandon the event, or retire your vehicle due to an accident or excessive damage, you will have wait until next month in order to compete again. This happened to me, whereby I damaged my vehicle to the point of retirement, and had to wait for next month's event in order to compete again, so the best thing to do is just be cautious and ensure you finish all 12 stages without any mishaps. It will take a couple of hours to beat all 12 stages, but there's no pressure to post specific times or outperform anyone, so take your time and you'll be OK.

The rest of the Multiplayer trophies are extremely casual. You'll need to complete 25 races within the Pro Tour game mode, which is just a competitive head to head scenario, and there are also a few trophies for top tier performance within daily events, but the fact these are daily means they're frequently available, and even if you do struggle to reach the top tier for each day, you can keep trying at regular enough intervals that it shouldn't be a problem.

The stuff you don't pick up along the way within the Single Player mode, and through the Multiplayer, can be easily collected later, and there is also a little bit of dabbling in the Joyride/Academy game modes for good measure (which effectively act as practice for the main game).

I will uphold the opinion that, the difficulty of this list is determined by exactly what the player makes of it. If you don't want this to be an overly challenging Platinum, then it doesn't need to be. Play through the game on the lowest difficulty and, providing you don't mind a Career mode within the region of 60-70 hours, then you'll completely coast through. Much of the overall score for this game is purely down to the fact I chose to play through on one of the higher difficulty levels, and the game does provide an adequate challenge for those who want it. Even in previous DiRT games, the Multiplayer has provided a reasonable challenge through online leveling, but this aspect has been completely stripped down on the list this time around, further emphasising the point that the challenge is pretty limited to whatever difficulty mode you choose to tackle the Career mode on.

Once you manage to win the Triple Crown, the game is effectively over, and the rest just makes up the numbers for a full list. The Multiplayer and any other trophies which were previously missed will only add another 5-10 hours on top, and are just a matter of going through the motions, rather than any sort of focus of challenge. Even the "DiRTy Dozen" trophy only gets a mention because you can fail this challenge and need to be made aware of this due to it's limited availability.

Despite playing on one of the game's harder difficulty levels, I actually found it harder to stick with it throughout what is a pretty lengthy Platinum, coming in at around 60-70 hours all in all. The game attempts to add variety via a unique random track/terrain generator, that will always make sure that no route is ever the same, but with the same 5 rally environments, it does become a little bit of a struggle seeing the same scenery, especially once you start to reach the latter stages of the career when individual events can take hours to finish alone.

The game doesn't contain any challenging Multiplayer trophies, which is rare for the series, but this is offset by a much longer Career mode than ever before, and a sometimes tough and unforgiving simulation, which is, of course, optional, but ultimately drives the justification for a steady 7/10.

Notable Trophies -

Completed it mate - Win the Triple Crown
DiRTy Dozen - Complete all 12 Stages of a Monthly Event in Community Events

Hardest Trophy -

Completed it mate
Win the Triple Crown

DLC #125 - Grid Autosport - Drag Pack

This package introduces Drag racing to the Grid Autosport experience, adding 3 new drag cars, 3 new drag strips and a series of 9 new drag events to complete, along with 3 additional trophies to unlock.

Out of the 9 new drag events included as part of this DLC, 7 of them are individual events, and 2 of them are new Championships, including the Hotrod World Championship and the Funny Car World Championship, both of which will award 2 of the 3 trophies upon completion.

Unlike within the main game, where you had to progress towards the upper tier Championships, all 9 of these new events are instantly available from the off, and the 7 individual events do not act as prerequisites to the 2 Championships, so you can completely bypass these preliminaries and jump straight into the main event.

Each of the 2 Championships consist of 3 events, composed of 4 rounds each, following the exact same format of drift events. There is a qualifying round, in order to narrow down the field from 16 to 8, followed by 3 subsequent knockout rounds, where you compete on a head to head basis against another driver through a Quarter, Semi and Final. Points are awarded for higher placement, and you'll win the Championship, unlocking the relevant trophy in the process, for earning the most amount of points across the 3 events.

Even if you're not familiar with the concept of Drag racing, it doesn't take too long to understand how it works, and more importantly, how to get the hang of it and start posting some good finishing times. You literally just have to drive in a straight line from point to point as fast as possible, and whilst there are more dynamic game mechanics to it than that, such as gear shifting and timing the jump start, it is really as simple of a principle as it sounds.

The Funny Car Championship is slightly more challenging than that Hotrod Championship, which is noted by the fact the former will award a Gold trophy compared to the latter's Silver, but I still managed to obtain full completion of this package within the space of 2 hours. I even left the difficulty setting as Hard, carrying on from where I left off from with the main game. The final trophy just merely requires you to beat an opponent who had a better "pass" time, with a better "reaction" time, which you'll get along the way towards winning both of the new Championships.

DLC #124 - Angry Birds Trilogy - Fowl Tempered

I mentioned previously, during my review of the Anger Management DLC, that I never wanted to see any Angry Birds content ever again, and with the full completion of this package, I am very much official on that stance.

I also said my feelings towards it were a bit tongue in cheek, which is also still the case, but after having to come back yet again, and experience some of my bigger nuances of this game which have made me feel a touch of resent towards it, I am secretly glad it's over.

This package adds a total of 5 new episodes to play through, which is 1 short of what was offered within Anger Management, but similarly spans across multiple different themes, including Halloween, Back to School and Christmas. The total number of levels contained within is 135, which is 5 more than Anger Management, but in reality, this is just more of what you already know about Angry Birds.

There are 10 new trophies in total, spanning across the 5 new episodes, of which half of these are awarded for completing each one, but you know the drill by now, and if you want to obtain full completion, you'll need to go the extra mile for it;

Star-Amplifier - Get 3 stars in every single level of Fowl Tempered.

The "Star-Amplifier" trophy, awarded for Getting 3 stars in every single level of Fowl Tempered, is par for the course at this point, having already achieved this feat for every single level in the main list, and every single level within the Anger Management list.

In all fairness, there isn't much that can be said for this trophy that hasn't already been mentioned within the Anger Management DLC.

The list of nuances is exactly the same as previously witnessed. You'll feel like you're hitting a consistent rhythm of managing to 3 star levels with regular consistency, and you'll suddenly hit that showstopper in the form of a particular level which you'll spend hours on trying to achieve that 3 star rating. It's this sort of painstaking brick wall feeling that has gotten to a point of inevitability that has made me glad to finally complete this entire game. It's even more frustrating that the pick up and play nature gives it all an undertone of addictive feeling at the same time. It did bring sessions to a grinding halt on a few occasions, where I just simply had to come back to the game another day before I lost my head over it, but it is still as sweet of a feeling as ever to finally overcome the levels you just simply cannot seem to beat.

Again, as with the Anger Management pack, once you've beaten all 135 levels to a 3 star rating, and achieved the above trophy, you'll have to go back through them with the Mighty Eagle, which, on the whole is an easier journey, but still sees you fall victim to the odd level that just makes you sit there replaying it over and over again in cyclical vein.

Again, a time estimation is difficult to nail down, purely because it'll depend on the levels of fluency you manage to achieve, and the extent to how often you hit those particular levels that take hours to get through on their own. As an average, a fair estimate would be 20-30 hours, but that's purely based upon guidance of the Anger Management pack, which roughly had the same amount of levels and trophy requirements, as both lists are virtually identical.

When you combine everything through from the main list and 2 DLC packs, there are over 1000 levels to get through in order to 100% this title, along with a Mighty Eagle run for every single one of them on top. Over 2000 individual levels, a large handful of which I would of played over and over attempting to clear them. It has been some journey, and there's no doubt that Angry Birds is frustrating, but is so in it's own charming way. 

However, after a main game (which I had to finish twice because of a Platinum-busting glitch), and 2 DLC packs, I'm ready to say farewell to it for good. With the greatest respect intended, to what is a uniquely annoying, yet addictive, game, I will never launch an Angry Bird from a catapult ever again. This is certainly a 100% to be proud of though.

Platinum #92 - Battlefield 1

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

Battlefield titles haven't exactly always been the most challenging to beat, but Battlefield 1 lowers the bar to the shortest standard yet, with the easiest Platinum trophy of the Battlefield series to date.

This list, coming in relatively small at just 32 trophies, is split between both Single Player and Multiplayer, combining to make what is one of the easiest Platinum trophies to ever make it into my collection.

The Single Player portion of this list focuses on the Campaign mode, which is a fairly original concept called "War Stories". Rather than include a normal story, with a defined beginning, middle and end, like pretty much every war game in existence does, the Battlefield 1 Campaign is broken down into 5 individual short stories, told from the perspective of 5 different characters.

Each of these stories focuses on specific aspects of the game, from "Through Mud and Blood", which focuses on Daniel Edwards, a Mark V Landship crew member, whose missions will demonstrate tank warfare, and "Friends in High Places", which focuses on Clyde Blackburn, an American pilot, whose mission will showcase air-based combat.

There are other gameplay mechanics demonstrated elsewhere, but the War Stories are an interesting and original approach for the Single Player aspect of a genre that doesn't tend to stray too far from a more standardised blueprint for Campaign offerings.

Around two third's of this whole list is dedicated towards the War Stories.

The "War to End All Wars" trophy, awarded for Completing the campaign on Hard difficulty, will require you to complete all 5 War Stories on the toughest challenge possible. Each War Story contains anywhere between 2-4 missions within, and they all individually vary on length, combining to around 6-8 hours for full completion.

You'll also be awarded an individual trophy upon completing each of the 5 War Stories, which adds a nice flow along the way. However, Hard difficulty really isn't that hard at all, and it's a very casual experience which makes this Platinum very accessible, and one of the reasons why it's such a low scorer. 

The "Master of adaptation" trophy, awarded for Completing all challenges in the campaign, is where this list starts to earn some difficulty points, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.

Throughout the War Stories, each individual mission will contain a series of different challenges contained within, indicated via a blank codex entry on the pause menu from within the mission. They are effectively assignments which have been a staple part of Battlefield games for a long time, and often form the basis for trophies within both core game and DLC lists. There are a total of 53 codex entries to unlock, which equates to 53 challenges, which, upon full completion will award the above trophy.

It is important to note, out of these 53 challenges, there are 5 codex entries awarded for completing the final mission within any given War Story, making these automatic, and a further 13 codex entries awarded for collecting all of the field manuals in specifically chosen missions. The field manuals are just a standard collectible activity, and there are usually, but not in every instance, 5 to collect per mission, and you can take the exact approach I did and just bypass combat to the location of the field manuals and pick them up in one fell swoop, which makes them nothing more than a slight sidetrack activity. You are also awarded a trophy for both collecting all fields manuals for any of the 5 given War Stories, and for a full collection.

They vary drastically in difficulty. Some are so easy to the point where you could unlock them naturally, but there are a small handful that can be trickier, and will certainly require multiple attempts to unlock. These are usually the codex entries unlocked by completing certain sections of missions without being detected by enemies (of which there are about 3/4), and therefore focus on the stealth elements of the game, which can be naturally lengthy anyway because you need to be extra cautious, and when you're detected, you'll have to reset and go back to the start, which can be frustrating. These difficulties do also extend into other challenges, such as those that involve air-based combat and some of the tank-based missions too. The "Total War" and "Forte Et Fidele" missions from within the "Friends in High Places" story, as well as "Over the Top" from within "Through Mud and Blood" are the standout missions which contain some of the more challenging codex entry challenges.

They're not make or break by any means of the imagination, but they will stretch the overall completion time of the list, and you'll need a bit of practice to get by and unlock some of these codex entries, so it isn't always completely plain sailing.

This is pretty much where the list peaks, even before we even get onto the Multiplayer portion of the game, which contains 10 trophies, and makes up the final third of this entire list. None of these trophies will encourage you to explore anything other than the surface of the whole Multiplayer experience, despite 4 of these 10 trophies attributed to this area of the game being Gold trophies.

This may initially lead you to believe you're in for a tough journey, but they're all complete throwaways, and not just the 4 Gold trophies. Every single trophy within the Multiplayer part of this list is a giveaway. If you're the sort of player who's purely into grabbing those high value trophies, for lowest amount of effort possible, then this one's for you. The 4 Gold trophies require you to simply level up each of the 4 different solider classes (Medic, Scout, Assault, Support) once. Just once. This will take a few hours maximum per class, so combined, it's still an additional 6-8 hours on top, but in comparison to other games that may feature trophies for Multiplayer leveling ventures, it's a little bit too easy, and proves to be a bit devoid of ideas.

In previous Battlefield titles, the Multiplayer portion of the list has usually been where the games difficulty tends to shine through. That was certainly the case in Battlefield : Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 at least, but here, with every online trophy accounted for collectively, you'll barely hit 10 hours to earn all of them, which also emphasises the ease of the rest of the list outside the 6-8 hours you'll need to dedicate to reaching level 2 with each of the Multiplayer classes. There's no point going into any detail for the rest individually, because there honestly isn't anything else to say. If you focus on reaching rank 2 for each class, the rest will follow along the way.

The whole list is a bit of a damp squib, to be perfectly honest. It'll suit some people but I personally feel the bigger titles should always carry a greater challenge with them when it comes to trophies, but it isn't always to be.

The Single Player portion does at least slightly elevate this challenge, which is just as well, because without the in-level challenges, we'd be looking at something lower than a 3/10, which would be a first for the collection. You'll need to beat each of the 5 War Stories on Hard difficulty, and this is unlocked from the outset, so there isn't a prerequisite to beat them once on a lower difficulty beforehand, so you're free to tackle these on Hard from the get go, which I would encourage. There is a decent amount of replay value, as you'll have to trawl back through individual missions gathering any missed collectibles and also tick off the vast amount of challenges, so I would recommend any strategy that minimises repetition, and Hard difficulty won't give even the most casual player many problems.

With around 6-8 hours to beat the War Stories once over, I would allow for around double this amount of time to go back over everything else which you may have missed. This will include collectibles and challenges, but a time that will also vary depending on the extent of tidy up required. It just happened to be around a 15 hour experience for me when it was all wrapped up.

The Multiplayer portion is somewhere in the region of an additional 10 hours for everything attached to this mode, which makes the collective package a 25-30 hour experience, which sounds about right to me. It's a shame the Multiplayer trophies didn't have more conviction put into them, as I personally believe Battlefield is still one of the best Multiplayer games on the market, though there has been a slew of DLC which has generously plied the game with some trophies, so the poor showing in the main list has been somewhat offset.

There's no doubt that this is the easiest Battlefield title to date, with a Single Player component that seldom offers a genuine challenge, and a Multiplayer portion that does even less than that, literally giving away trophies for minimal effort. Combined, it fully justifies the low score, and makes Battlefield 1 just the 7th title to receive a 3/10 in my collection.

Notable Trophies -

The War to End All Wars - Complete the campaign on Hard difficulty
Master of adaptation - Complete all challenges in the campaign

Hardest Trophy -

Master of adaptation
Complete all challenges in the campaign

Platinum #91 - GRID Autosport

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 9/10

On the recent subject of completions that have been a long time coming, the Uncharted 3 DLC seamlessly brings us into GRID Autosport.

When you consider the fact that I unlocked my first trophy in this list in June 2014, it'll be just over 5 years since I started this journey, and whilst the main reason for this has been due to breaks from the game, this is still a seriously challenging set of trophies.

The list of 51 trophies is mostly split into 2 areas of the game. These include the Single Player, which focuses on the Career mode, and the competitive Multiplayer, which contains one of the longest online leveling grinds I've ever encountered.

There are also a small collection of miscellaneous trophies attached to other game modes, such as custom cups and split-screen, but these are nowhere near considered to be a main focus.

The "I've got what Rick Scott's got" trophy, awarded for Winning each discipline's most prestigious driver's championship for Ravenwest, is exactly what you'll work towards throughout the main Career, which contains a series of events spread across 5 racing disciplines. These include Touring Cars, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner and Street racing, and this trophy is effectively split into 2 parts.

Firstly, you'll need to win the final event within each of these 5 disciplines, through completing a series of smaller events, and gradually working your way up towards the top event. It's a pretty standard progression model for racing games, and even though you won't need to beat all of the events in each discipline to unlock the highest one, some of these Championships can contain a lot of events, and the final event in each discipline branch always has 10 events, which will easily take a couple of hours each to complete alone.

Secondly, the only way to unlock a contract for the Ravenwest team, is to beat the top event for the first time with any other team. This means you'll have to win the top event for all 5 disciplines twice in order to fully beat the Career mode and unlock this trophy. It's a little bit of a cheap way to add longevity onto the game, but the trophy specifically requires you to beat the top event, so you'll have to repeat the longest Championship in every discipline twice if you want the Platinum, so be prepared for a long journey.

The "A True Legend" trophy, awarded for Winning the "GRID Legends Series", is also another aspect of the Career mode which adds longevity to the game. As you complete more Championships within each discipline, you will obtain experience points for that discipline. Once you hit level 3 in each of these disciplines, you'll unlock the first GRID series to compete in (Grand Slam). You will also subsequently unlock the Masters series at level 6 for each discipline, and eventually, the Legends Series at level 10 for each discipline. You'll also need to win the previous GRID Series Championship in order to unlock the next one, meaning you'll need to win each of these Championships along the way.

Level 10 might not seem like much, but this amasses to 1 Million experience, and you'll unlock an individual trophy for reaching this milestone for each of the 5 disciplines. You'll manage to reach this as you progress towards the end of the Career on your way to fulfilling the requirements of the "I've got what Rick Scott's got" trophy, but these Championships, just like the final Championship at the end of each discipline within the main part of the Career mode, have 10 events, which will take a couple of hours each to beat. It all adds up, and this trophy is effectively the epilogue to the main Career mode, so just bear in mind that you're not quite finished once you beat every top Championship again with Ravenwest.

All of the other Single Player trophies are tied in to natural progression, and you'll get these along the way, providing you stick to the task of the above 2 trophies being your main focus. Nothing else requires you to go off the beaten track, so at least that's one thing about this list that's straight forward enough. There is also nothing that ties you into completing anything on specific difficulty levels, so you're allowed to go through the Career Mode at whatever pace you please, though the challenge is certainly there on the harder difficulties if you want it. I ended up playing through on hard difficulty, which caused me some challenges along the way, and even though you may need to replay races often, it's a good challenge, rather than a frustrating one.

However, the Multiplayer portion of this games makes the Single Player look like a warm up, despite the Single Player trophies coming with challenges carrying solid merits.

The "I've stopped counting" trophy, awarded for Reaching a total Online level of 250, all disciplines combined, is the longest online leveling grind I've finished to date, and by some distance too. The leveling system online works as follows;

You can compete against other drivers in lobbies specifically focused on all 5 disciplines, and your performance within any given race will award experience points towards that discipline. Each time you level up within that discipline, this will contribute towards an overall combined level, which relates to the 250 levels required for the achievement of this trophy. You can also complete weekly "Racenet" challenges, which are a series of challenges that award bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals depending on how well you complete them. There is 1 challenge set each week for each discipline, and this changes every week to a new challenge on a rotational basis, so there are 2 methods upon which you can earn experience points.

Level 250 will require a whopping 5 Million experience points, and in theory, the quickest way towards that is to reach level 50 in each of the 5 disciplines. The Racenet challenges are an absolute Godsend here, because if you earn the Platinum medal for a challenge, you'll bag 10,000 experience points, which may not sound like much in the bigger picture of 5 Million experience points, and in reality, it's not, and you'll have to chip away every single week re-visiting and keeping on top of these challenges to gradually level up over time, but I also dread to think how long this would take you without them. You can also jump into competitive lobbies and attempt to place well in races, but this has the shortfall of not awarding as much experience for the time input compared to Racenet challenges. This is, of course, offset by the limited opportunity of only being able to take advantage of earning the Platinum medal once per week, as opposed to the unlimited cap of competitive races against others.

In theory, you could just come back and play through the Racenet challenges week on week, and you would get there eventually, but this would be a very long term project, and I ended up having to deploy this method after I had finished all the other online trophies and only needed to reach level 250. It's not as tedious as some previous online grinds I've done, purely because it's naturally broken up by the fact you can only come back once a week and earn a Platinum medal from challenges, but this also means it takes way longer than it should, and technically earns the title of the longest online leveling grind I've ever completed.

The "FTW" trophy, awarded for Winning 100 Online races, is just as matter of fact as it sounds, and should be the foundation of your quest to reach level 250. Some racing games will count a podium finish as a win, but here you'll need to place in first position. It's not really as daunting as it sounds, purely by virtue of the fact the "I've stopped counting" trophy exists, and completely eclipses this trophy, but you'll need to be a reasonably good driver to notch up this amount of wins throughout the game.

You can use your own cars, purchased through the car shop, and also spend winnings on upgrading them and using them in races against other drivers, which will give you an edge as you get deeper into the online journey. This will help you out towards winning races, and of course, any experience, win or lose, will all go towards hitting that 250 milestone required on your way towards the Platinum trophy, so no losing effort ever feels like it's being done in vein.

However, this trophy is definitely the biggest skill related trophy in the game, and 100 wins is still 100 wins at the end of the day, so you'll need to brush up on every ounce of driving skill you have if you still want to achieve this trophy. After all, you could still, in theory, hit level 250 before you win 100 races, and you certainly won't want to be playing this game beyond reaching that milestone, so make sure the wins are ticking over nicely. I'd consider driving games one of my stronger genres, and I still had over 500 races finished by the time I got 100 wins, so be warned about the fierce competitiveness of this game online.

The "An icon in the pit lane" trophy, awarded for Advancing a car to level 99 in Online, requires you to max out the level for any purchased vehicle. Throughout the Online journey, and during competitive races, you'll be loaned a vehicle if you do not own the specific vehicle required for that particular race, but you can also acquire these vehicles for yourself. Racing owned vehicles will level them up and unlock performance upgrades for the car.

The benefit of this is the fact you can make them more powerful than a loaned vehicle, which will always remain at the minimum spec. Reaching level 99 will also take some time, and it was actually one of the final trophies I unlocked, even coming after I had reached level 250 collectively. This may have been down to the fact I never really focused on purchasing vehicles initially, until I realised I'd need to max one of them out for the purpose of this trophy, so it's important to get a headstart on this as soon as possible.

Racenet challenges will go some way to upgrading your vehicle significantly, but the events each week are always predetermined, so there's always a chance your cars don't become available for selection. However, if you buy as many as you can, and work on them on a simultaneous basis, you'll have enough in your rotation to level them up consistently enough to reach level 99 with at least one car sooner or later. The one thing you absolutely don't want to do is only own a couple of vehicles, so as long as you avoid this, you'll be OK.

The "Sofa, so good" trophy, awarded for Completing a Splitscreen race, is in here purely to reference the fact you'll need a second controller for this Platinum. Anything that requires you to own additional peripherals deserves to be called out, and there are actually a couple of other trophies within this list that can only be unlocked in local Co-op.

This is the most difficult racing game I've finished since Motorstorm : Pacific Rift, a whole 8 years ago. That was a 10/10 for a similarly grueling Multiplayer component, which had a unique regressive leveling system, and whilst GRID Autosport does not, the grind to level 250 is for the seriously dedicated. However, the Racenet challenges deny this being a 10/10 Platinum, purely because they take the intensity away from the grind. Don't underestimate this leveling journey, but the Racenet challenges, and the fact you don't have to play hours straight on end to achieve level 250, takes the edge off considerably.

If you'd prefer to hammer out races in public lobbies and accumulate the experience points at a faster rate, something you'll need to do to a lesser or greater extent anyway, due to the fact you'll need 100 wins, then you can take this approach, but completing the Racenet challenges each week will give you a much longer, but leisurely journey that just requires ample patience. It's good to have options, and you may find you want to combine both methods to maximise your progress.

When you add on top of this a Single Player Career mode, which is not only lengthy, but can also contain a strong challenge if you're that way inclined, then you have a big task on your hands. 

The collective timescale is easily 200+ hours, and that's even when taken as a very low end estimate. The fact you can play on a weekly cyclical basis through Racenet challenges will aid progression, but the 100 race wins redresses the balance to ensure this isn't just all about time, and that you'll need to display some strong driving skills to get this list over the finish line. It's the ultimate mix of long and hard, and very close to another 10/10 Platinum, stopping just short by virtue of the fact the Racenet challenges will throw most people a lifeline during the grind to the top.

It's a very high end 9/10 though, and it feels good to get a credible Platinum trophy back into the collection.

Notable Trophies -

I've got what Rick Scott's got - Win each disciplines most prestigious driver's championship for Ravenwest.
A True Legend - Win the GRID Legends Series.
I've stopped counting - Reach a total Online level of 250, all disciplines combined.
FTW - Win 100 Online races.
An icon in the pit lane - Advance a car to level 99 in Online.
Sofa so good - Complete a Splitscreen race.

Hardest Trophy - 

I've stopped counting
Reach a total Online level of 250, all disciplines combined.

DLC #123 - Uncharted 3 : Drake's Deception - Flashback Map Pack 2

Completing this final piece of DLC for Uncharted 3 prompted me to look back over this entire set, and actually made me realise how difficult this journey has been.

There are challenges around every single corner, varying from the outrageously lucky, to the highly skilled. Given the ease of difficulty expected from the main list (which is to still be completed), the DLC alone makse it a very impressive 100% completion to have in any collection.

The Flashback Map Pack 2 adds 4 new maps, which are all re-incarnated from Uncharted 2, spanning both Competitive and Co-operative game modes. As standard, there are 10 new trophies added, with a slew of new tasks, and whilst this contains the second half of our treasure related collectible journey previously discussed within the Fort Co-op Adventure pack, there is actually a little bit more to talk about here, still presenting a slightly heightened challenge, which has certainly been a recurring theme within this whole game.

All 3 silver trophies will give you some degree of challenge to tackle here, whilst the other 7 bronze trophies are all focused on in-game medal accumulation again, another recurring theme throughout. None of these medals will cause too much trouble, as they'll mostly be covered off through the large time investment you'll be expected to put into the Competitive and Co-operative modes throughout this journey.

Whilst there are no questions about the treasures being the main focus for this package again, there is a nice little collection of trophies that will give you some challenges here;

Invincible - Complete a Co-op Arena Map on Crushing Difficulty without losing a single life
Two by Two - Win 50 matches of Three Team Deathmatch
Collector - Complete the Antiquity Treasure Set

The "Invincible" trophy, is a directly influenced from the Flashback Map Pack 1 DLC, which offered the exact same requirements, only applicable to the Co-op Adventure mode.

The same challenges that were present there are also present here. Arena is a very different game mode to Adventure though, and I would personally argue it's more difficult to survive within Arena mode than it is with Adventure mode, making this trophy the tougher of the 2. Where you could deploy some solid tactics to help you through Adventure mode, such as hanging back in certain sections, and allowing your team-mates to clear the way, there is nowhere to hide in Arena mode, and you'll have to defend on the front foot and be aggressive against the hordes of enemies if you want to succeed here.

In order to complete an Arena Map, you'll need to clear all 10 rounds, and to do this without dying, especially at the latter rounds when Brutes, armored enemies and RPG units turn up, can prove to be tough, and potentially get ugly very quickly. It's also important to pick your 2 other team-mates wisely. You don't want to play with uncooperative partners who could potentially let you die when you need to be revived, which will blow your chances of the trophy, and given the fact you have to clear all 10 rounds on Crushing difficulty also means you'll need team-mates with a lot of skill to see you through to the end.

It's also important to pick good partners because you're limited to 15 lives per game, and if lives are disposed quickly by your team-mates, the game will prematurely end when nobody can respawn anymore, so there's a small handful of important considerations needed to unlock this trophy.

The "Two by Two" trophy is the standard game mode win accumulation offering for this package. I certainly believe Three Team Deathmatch is one of the more difficult game modes to accumulate wins in, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's 3 teams competing against each other, unlike most other modes in Uncharted 3, where 2 teams go head to head. That may seem like a statement of the obvious, but competing against 2 other teams, rather than just 1, naturally decreases your chances of winning.

It also seems to be a mode where you run into a lot of pairs who don't like playing bigger team based game modes where they're forced to mix with random players, meaning a greater concentration of better teams that naturally gravitate to Three Team Deathmatch. This could just have been a coincidence, but I ran into a lot of good pairs who seemed to be experienced in playing with each other, and therefore, naturally very good.

Out of all 5 trophies that required 50 wins for the various game modes amongst all of these DLC packs, this was the last one I unlocked, purely because I lost a lot of Three Team Deathmatch games, due to a mixture of the above combinations. I did eventually find a decent partner and managed to win games more frequently, but it was definitely the longest game mode that I reached 50 wins in.

The "Collector" trophy, awarded for Completing the Antiquity Treasure Set, is the second half of the previously reviewed "Hoarder" trophy, in the Fort Co-op Adventure pack, and for the sake of not wanting to tread over old ground, there isn't really much to be said that hasn't already been covered prior to this.

There are a few key differences. The Antiquity set has 16 total treasure sets, with a combined total of 42 treasures, which is 6 sets and 16 treasures shorter than the Artifact set. Whether this actually makes a difference for something that is completely random, I do not know, but in theory, the much smaller collection should be the one you complete first. I have read a lot of strong backing for a theory that suggests you are always left with 1 treasure from each set for full completion, which was also the case for myself, so this, at least from my own experience, seems to be true. I also unlocked the larger Artifact set in full first too, which further disproves the theory that the fact the set is smaller actually matters, but this could be different for the general consensus.

A more relevant difference is the fact that this set also contains a collection of adventure treasures, awarded throughout the Co-op adventure chapters, just like the Artifact set did. However, where the Artifact set only awarded these treasures under the condition that you played the levels on Hard/Crushing, the treasures within the Antiquity set will drop treasures if you play the levels on Easy/Normal, so this is naturally a smoother journey as a consequence.

Apart from those minor differences, all the trials and tribulations you can expect from this trophy are exactly as they were described in the Fort Co-op Adventure pack for the "Hoarder" trophy, they're just not merged and discussed as one because they come from different DLC packs.

And with this, completes another tough set of DLC trophies from a game which isn't usually known for it's difficulty. I am still yet to obtain the Platinum trophy from the main list, but don't anticipate this to be anywhere close to as challenging as this DLC adventure was. When I sit here and look back on all of it as a collective, I can see where both the challenge and hours would have been amassed from. There are an assortment of trophies here, ranging from high skill requirements, time-consumption and the outright absurd. It is a real grueling collection that only those who really want it enough will obtain full completion within. It's hard to look back over everything and determine an overall timescale. I started unlocking some of these DLC trophies as early as 2012, so you can hopefully appreciate how difficult it is to truly say how long this took me altogether, when my only real reference points are my previous reviews of other DLC packs, and a few loose time totals from the online leaderboards. It's easily a 200+ hour experience as a very minimum.

It's massively time-consuming and requires a certain level of mastery to finish everything within these DLC packs and if you manage to beat the clock before that early September deadline for server closure, then make sure you cherish this victory.

DLC #122 - Uncharted 3 : Drake's Deception - The Fort Co-op Adventure

It's been almost 2 and half years since my last completed DLC pack for Uncharted 3, so to suggest that this one is overdue is a bit of an understatement.

In reality, if it weren't for an announcement from Sony that the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer servers are due to close in early September 2019, then this would have more than likely continued. However, the suddenly limited opportunity to grab these trophies has prompted some immediate action to be taken regarding the completion of this DLC set. So, here we are.

Just like all Uncharted 3 DLC packs, this is more of a top-up than anything else. There are 3 new character skins added to be used in-game, and a Prelude co-operative level to complete called Fort.

The package also adds 10 new trophies, following a similar template to the rest of the Uncharted 3 content. All geared towards the game's Multiplayer, there is a nice mix of competitive wins required, acquisition of certain volumes of in-game medals and the crown jewel of the set, the collectible treasures from the Artifact treasure set.

The majority of the trophies within this DLC are simply in-game medal accumulation tasks, and will come naturally over time. In reality, the treasures are what this package ultimately comes down to. Not just for this specific set of DLC trophies, but also for those who aspire to full completion. That's not to say there aren't other challenges along the way, but get ready for a strong task at hand if you're looking to complete this package;

Team Player - Win 50 matches of Team Objective
Hoarder - Complete the Artifact Treasure Set

It would be easy to skim straight over everything else, and just charge head-first into why the treasure system in this game is such a big deal, but it is also worth mentioning another aspect of this set.

The "Team Player" trophy, awarded for winning 50 matches of Team Objective, is the obligatory win based objective for this list (every DLC pack requires you to win 50 games of something). Team Objective is one of the more exciting game modes within Uncharted 3, where a series of objectives will pop up on a rotational basis, and you have to win that objective to score a point for your team. This continues on a first to 3 basis, and the rotation includes modes such as King of the Hill, Turf War and Chain Reaction.

50 wins is a heavy demand, but games generally are nowhere near as long as Plunder can be, and these trophies lend themselves well to the slew of in-game medal trophies that accompany these DLC packs, so even when you lose matches along the way, which you inevitably will, it never feels like a waste of time. This will take you somewhere in the region 25-30 hours alone, accounting for possibility of defeats en route to 50 victories.

The "Hoarder" trophy, awarded for completing the Artifact Treasure Set, is where the challenge of this package spikes heavily.

The treasure sets were not a new addition to the game via this DLC offering. They already existed as part of the base game. So, it may well have been the case you had already made progress towards this trophy without even realising it. The Artifact Treasure Set is the larger of the 2 sets (with the Antiquity Treasure Set being the other), at 22 sets containing a cumulative total of 58 treasures. The achievement of these are all spread over the various components of Uncharted's Multiplayer, including Co-op adventure, Co-op Arena and Competitive Team Deathmatch/Objective and Plunder.

This trophy is the solitary reason for the 2 and a half year gap since the completion of the Co-op Shade Survival Mode pack back in February 2017. The acquisition of treasures is completely random, and there is absolutely no way this can be influenced by the player whatsoever. The sets are checklisted, and the game will tell you which component of the wider game you can obtain each treasure from within, but that's about as much help as you'll get.

Otherwise, it's merely a case of loading up said game modes and hoping you'll get the treasures you need from killing opponents/enemies in-game. The biggest barrier to completion here is the fact that treasure drops will constantly duplicate, which eventually turns this trophy into a needle in a haystack task once you get down to the final handful of treasures you still require. You'll need to absolutely plow the hours into this, and the level of dedication required to persevere with farming these treasures is extremely high. You'll also need to be mentally prepared to go through prolonged periods of time picking up duplicate treasures as your list gets smaller and you find yourself only needing the last few. It has a very, "so close yet so far" feel to it, and can be easily demotivating when you're not seeing any signs of progress.

The key is to just stick at it. That's really the only piece of advice you can give, for a trophy which is without question the most challenging luck based trophy I've ever unlocked. There are a few recommended methods which can prove to be formulas for success, but for me, exclusively playing Hunter Arena will net the majority of the treasures with higher success rates, especially the last listed treasure in each set, which is considered "rare". It is also important to note that, you'll also need to be prepared to play through the 5 adventure chapters on the grueling Hard/Crushing difficulty too, which is another challenge within itself, as 13 of the 58 treasures are exclusively granted from level bosses within these chapters when only playing on these 2 difficulty levels. Just in case you needed another degree of challenge here.

A timescale is hard to nail down, both from a personal perspective, and an overall perspective. When I eventually came back to tackle this trophy when the date for the server closure was announced, and assessed my situation properly, I actually only needed 23 treasures across both the Artifact and Antiquity Treasure sets, but even then, it took me a solid 2 and a half weeks of exclusively playing Uncharted 3 to obtain every treasure, and some days I was easily playing for as long as almost 10 hours a day, which is well over my normal average, not to mention extremely tedious at times. 

To add some level of perspective, my chosen method was to farm Hunter Arena, which on average will see you earn around 3/4 treasures per game, with each game lasting 24 minutes in total (4 rounds of 6 minutes each), with no guarantee you'll get any new treasures. It's also important to note that, you'll only be active for 2 rounds, as you'll share with your opponent who will also have their turn at farming treasures for the other 2 rounds, whilst you sit back and await your next turn. Along with whatever progress I managed to make prior to my lengthy break from this game, it wouldn't surprise me if the treasures alone took me around 60-70 hours, but even that would be a very loose bottom end estimate.

It's ultimately the fear of the unknown that gets to you. There's always that niggling doubt in the back of your mind that you'll be one of these people that spends 30+ hours on that final treasure, which is only ever a concern that's alleviated once you actually have it and if you can see this one through to the end, that final treasure is hugely satisfying. I certainly consider this DLC pack to be an excellent scalp to add to the collection. You can read up on the challenges the treasure sets have posed for other people, and some have even given up entirely. Whilst I never felt like I was ever at the point of quitting, I was absolutely glad it was over, and this package takes pride and place towards the top end of my collection.

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.