DLC #163 - Borderlands 2 - Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt

Borderlands 2 is the game that's kept on punching back. Every time you feel like you've finally dealt that knockout blow, it arises off the canvas begging for more.

However, even the toughest fighters eventually run out of steam, and despite a final flurry here, we're finally done with the Borderlands 2 DLC content, and all that remains is to dip back into the Main list one final time to wrap up the lot.

Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt takes you to the swamps of Pandora, where you link up with Sir Hammerlock for a "weekend of Big Game Hunting".

It also turns out that Professor Nakayama, a self-obsessed protagonist of Handsome Jack, resides here and wants you dead after hearing that you were responsible for his death. He is alleged to be secretly farming a cloning formula to bring Handsome Jack back to life, and must be prevented from doing so.

This pack adds a brand new main story questline, a handful of optional side missions, as well as new environments and enemies - It's very standard for Borderlands by this point, though is probably the lightest out of all the DLC packs in terms of overall content. It also still closely follows the general Borderlands 2 formula for trophies, adding 3 further trophies into the total list.

There is again 1 trophy associated to concluding the main questline, awarded for stopping Professor Nakayama, though this story is extremely short and only spans across a total of 4 missions, taking no longer than a couple of hours to beat from start to finish. There is also a trophy awarded for discovering every location. Standard.

However, despite this pack being the lightest on content - with only 13 side quests to complete for the remaining trophy - there was, yet again, another obstacle standing in the way;

Done That - Completed all Hammerlock's Hunt side missions.

The "Done That" trophy, awarded for completing all Hammerlock's Hunt side missions, produces another one of those moments that has occurred consistently within this journey - A challenge that spikes the difficulty of the game beyond logical reasoning.

In this particular instance, it comes from the quest "Voracidious the Invincible", another raid boss that joins Terramorphous the Invincible and Hyperious the Invincible on the "How on earth do I beat this?" wall of fame.

I had previously attempted to defeat Voracidious during the same period of time I was understanding just how challenging some elements of this game actually were, and attempted to take the same approach of returning with better equipment and weaponry later down the line in order to beat him with greater ease.

Except, that's not exactly how it went. I'd managed to beat everything else the game had thrown at me - Somehow - and yet, I couldn't beat Voracidious with my now maxed out level 50 character, and the weapons that had served me so well up to this point. I was suddenly stuck for ideas and had no idea where to turn. What do you do when you've beaten almost everything, yet are still struggling on Raid bosses??

For greater context, Voracidious is a giant Stalker accompanied by Chief Ngwatu, a savage warrior who will transfer a protective shield between himself and Voracidious at regular intervals. Chief Ngwatu is very vulnerable when he doesn't have the shield, and will die quickly if he takes damage without it. This sends Voracidious into his second form - a form whereby he becomes enraged and his attacks are not just way more frequent, but also way more deadly.

The general tactic is to keep Chief Ngwatu alive for as long as possible, chipping away at the shield throughout this time. Voracidious will become enraged once he hits around 25% health regardless, so his enraged form is unavoidable to an extent, but you want to have the shield depleted as much as possible when this happens, to increase your chances of killing him quicker.

The reality for me was, I just didn't have powerful enough guns to outlast Voracidious. The approach was sound, but as soon as he hit his enraged form, we always seemed to be in 1-hit territory, compounded by the fact I was generally extremely low on ammunition by this stage too, as the protective shield harbours an insane amount of hit points.

I was getting into a vicious cycle of dying, respawning for a certain cost, having to spend even more money to restock ammunition and then repeating the process. There were a couple of times where I got close and knew with a bit of luck I would have done it, but there were also times I was just getting slapped around so badly, it seemed it was there purely to remind me of how this game can have it's way with me at the drop of a hat, just because it wants to.

I found myself jumping back into farming the Pyro Pete Bar Brawl side quest to accumulate money for the sole purpose of buying ammunition to have more attempts at beating Voracidous, but it was also here where I got the stroke of luck I needed.

One of the enemies I downed within a run of the Bar Brawl dropped a rocket launcher that dealt 227,000 damage per rocket. This was an upgrade on my best rocket launcher by over 200,000 points and ended up being the difference maker in this fight for me.

I headed back in, equipped the launcher, and decided to use it from the point right where Voracidious became enraged, taking down the final 25% of health quick enough to the point where his enraged form didn't have enough time to influence the outcome of this fight.

Was it lucky? I suppose it was - Nothing else was working for me, and whilst I was farming more money, I was also trying to work on what I was going to do to in order to defeat him. My reserve option was to run the Terramorphous raid boss again, which is absolutely something I wanted to avoid, and I'm so glad it never came down to having to resort to this.

This is the culmination of some pretty challenging DLC packs, and somewhat unforeseen. I knew all about the challenges that awaited me within the main list, but was never aware of how tough this additional content was going to be. I still feel like there's a possibility that I just wasn't prepared well enough for it, and hadn't focused enough on my gear throughout the game, but the random difficulty spikes are extremely frustrating. You can coast past large portions of the content across all 4 of these DLC packs, and suddenly run into a brick wall - and how exactly do you prepare for that sort of erratic nature?

Anyway, we're almost there, and I'm certain in saying at this point, that there are no longer any nasty surprises lying ahead.

DLC #162 - Borderlands 2 - Mr Torque's Campaign of Carnage

Fingers firmly crossed still, but I think we're almost there. The burnout is real and I'm at the stage now where, as much as I've enjoyed the Borderlands 2 experience, I'm glad it's almost over.

We've had to do certain things the long way round, and this DLC pack was a big testament to this, as this is where we've had to farm the previously aforementioned Torque tokens to originally upgrade our equipment, and help us beat some of the side quest bosses within other DLC packs that were causing us issues.

Mr Torque's Campaign of Carnage takes you to the Badass Crater of Badassitude, where an open invitation awaits. Mr Torque is running an open deathmatch tournament to "find Pandora's Number 1 Badass", where the winner will be granted access to a new vault full of loot.

The tournament is structured like a leaderboard, where you'll start in 5th place, and have to progressively climb to the top in order to emerge victorious. This will involve completing quests in order to earn the right to call out and fight your next opponent directly above you, repeating this process until you reach the top, where you'll eventually fight the current Number 1 Badass - revealed very early on to be a protagonist called Piston.

The typical formula remains. A brand new main story questline, loads of extra side content, new environments to explore and unique enemies to face off against - Some of the characters you fight on the tournament leaderboard are especially stand-out. There are also 3 additional trophies that follow the exact same trend as the Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty pack.

Completing all 15 main story quests, and reaching the top of the leaderboard, will award 1 of these trophies, and is still fairly easy to progress through, as per the standard level of enemies still being around the 30 mark. There are also an additional 25 side quests, which will grant another trophy, but by this point, nothing had given me any trouble thanks to some proper forecasting on the back of the experience with the previous DLC packs.

The final tier of Bar Brawl side quests, where you have to clean out Pyro Pete's bar within a set time limit, does set the enemy level to 50, for whatever reason, and whilst this meant I did have to come back to this and tackle it later, I knew this would just be simply a case of reaching a much higher level and returning once I had matched this. I don't categorise this into the same grouping as boss fights which felt insurmountable and may need to have been revisited much further down the line from the point at which you first encounter them.

This DLC mostly served great purpose for the following things;

• Grinding out to Level 50, via the ability to replay the Death Race side quest, which in turn allowed me to obtain the "Capped Out... For Now" trophy from the main list - As well as finally equip some of the more powerful weapons I'd stored in my inventory.
• Earning Torque Tokens through various means, which are introduced via this DLC pack, in order to purchase stronger weapons that allowed me to tackle certain side quest bosses I was previously struggling to defeat.
• Accumulating much more money by selling Torque weapons, which have excellent re-sale value. I had previously struggled to fund boss fights by replenishing ammunition, and this alleviated this nicely.

As a consequence, I didn't struggle with any challenge contained within this pack. Every boss fight on the Badass leaderboard was easy enough to take down, including Piston, the final boss, and the big side quest boss, Pyro Pete the Invincible, was also plain sailing, despite being a bit of a bullet-sponge.

This could have been just as difficult as what I've experienced had I gone down a different route, but the Torque weapons and those I'd also farmed from Terramorphous the Invincible, helped make light work of these. Even the Level 50 enemies in the Tier 3 Bar Brawl were simple enough to deal with when I eventually came back round after hitting level 50 to give myself a reasonable chance. Incredible what learning and a bit of forward planning can do.

The final trophy is awarded for collecting 10 pictures of Moxxi, which are purely random drops from downed enemies, and will naturally come as you go. Shock, horror to see some classic RNG find it's way into this list somehow.

A larger total quest volume than both previously completed DLC packs, but much harder to nail an estimated completion time to, purely because I spent alot of extra time replaying certain quests to grind out for level 50, as well as Torque Tokens, which is where I probably spent the majority of my time here. Would it be fair to consider this as a factor? It was a purely strategic move, but also a necessary evil to progression for me, albeit mostly for the benefit of elsewhere with other DLC packs.

One last pack remaining before digging into the remainder of the main list for the final time.

DLC #161 - Borderlands 2 - Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep

Unravelling Borderlands 2 has been hard work, but there is definitely light beginning to emerge at the end of the tunnel.

There have been unexpected hold ups along the way, which is the main reason we've had to fast-forward across a couple of DLC packs to the final offering, jumping into the fantasy world of Tiny Tina's table-top RPG.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep puts you into the thick of a fantasy world, playing as a pawn in Tiny Tina's imaginative Role-Playing Game, Bunkers and Badasses.

This contains all the elements expected of a typical Borderlands DLC journey. A main questline, which sees you rescue the Queen from the clutches of the Handsome Sorcerer, a ton of additional side quests and plenty of opportunity to earn some loot. The fantasy element also allows for some fun new dynamics. Enemies and obstacles are conjured up right in front of you on Tina's demand, the plot is constantly altered when the other players start to complain about certain rules and you're given options to bypass parts of quests with alternate solutions based upon the attributes of the other characters involved in the game.

It's great fun, extremely charming and also my favourite pick out of all 4 Borderlands 2 DLC packages.

The trophy list takes a completely different direction to the other 3 available though, with 10 trophies on offer, and no requirement to complete every quest like the other packages.

You'll still need to beat the main questline, as normally expected, which contains 4 quests in total, awarding 3 trophies along the way for progressing towards the end of the story, defeating the Handsome Sorcerer and rescuing the Queen. This should take somewhere in the region of 4-6 hours. The quest volume is low, but they are fairly lengthy, and some of the environments you move through are actually quite vast and easy to get lost in.

Outside of the main quest, this is the only DLC package out of the 4 that does not require you to complete every side quest on offer, so you can actually leave a generous amount of content on the table if you're purely looking to fulfil the requirements of the trophies alone.

One thing I'd carried forward and learnt from my experience with Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty was that I may have needed stronger weaponry in order to tackle whatever challenges may be waiting for me within these other array of DLC packages.

I had to move into the Mr. Torque's Campaign of Carnage DLC in order to find some better weapons that would allow me to revisit and beat a particular boss within a side quest that I couldn't defeat with my existing gear, and I forecasted potentially similar issues going forward, so I needed a solution that would pre-empt this - Not just for this package, but the others I still had to beat.

As I scoured through the trophy list for inspiration, I realised that I still had to beat Terramorphous the Invicible within the main game, and felt this may be an appropriate time to briefly part ways with this content, to defeat him in the hope that he dropped some seriously good loot that would significantly support me within these remaining DLC packages. Terramorphous himself comes with his own challenges, but because that technically comes within the main trophy list, we'll save the detail on that for another time, but I managed to beat him and pick up a handful of interesting items. A shield with 53,000 capacity, a sniper rifle that dealt 25,000 damage per shot and a pistol that dealt 8,000 damage per shot.

The only drawback at this point was the fact I had to be level 50 in order to equip them, so I had to grind out around 3 more levels by just replaying the racing side mission from Mr. Torque's Campaign of Carnage DLC over and over. A bit tedious, but I did manage to unlock the "Capped Out... For Now" trophy from the main list, awarded for Reaching level 50, along with the motivation of knowing how far this would get me in terms of overcoming the handful of boss fights that remained outstanding within these DLC packages.

I eventually carried these items into some of these remaining 7 trophies within this DLC, and made complete light work of the remainder.

Most of these trophies are associated to specific side quests - The "Dang Girl You Ace At This Game" trophy, will require you to beat another version of the Circle of Slaughter within Murderlin's Temple, which I breezed through with my new weapons, and the "Make It Raaaaaid" trophy requires you to Vanquish the Ancient Dragons of Destruction, which again, was made light work by the new weapons I'd acquired from beating Terramorphous. This particular side quest concludes in a battle against 4 different types of dragon which will attack you all at once, and there's no way I would have beaten this without farming for some new and improved loot, so I'm happy my strategy to delve back into the main game paid off.

In theory, this should also allow me to go back over the other DLC packages with the same logic and finish them in the same way, but this is a game full of surprises, so we'll see how that pans out.

By the way, the "Hmmmmm" trophy, awarded for Wielding the Mysterious Amulet, can potentially create 2 problems. Firstly, it's a missable trophy, because when you accept the associated quest, it simply gives you a choice to either punch the merchant or buy the amulet. If you punch the merchant, you'll conclude the quest with no option to purchase the amulet anymore, which means you'll have to start the entire DLC over again. Secondly, it'll cost you around £126,000 to buy, which you probably won't have unless you have some valuable loot to sell off.

DLC #160 - Borderlands 2 - Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty

Maximum disclosure; The Borderlands 2 trophy journey been a hot mess.

I started this game with a couple of mates in co-operative mode back at the start of 2013. They got bored, I shelved it, and eventually went back on my own at the end of 2016 and tried to beat the story solo. I then got bored playing alone, shelved it again, and eventually went back for a third time at the start of 2020 to finally beat the story.

I quickly realised that this wasn't just going to be a simple clean-up journey though, and there are a number of reasons as to why this game has been shelved multiple times. Initially, after beating the story, it was realising the grind behind a certain trophy within the main list that requires the player to complete the first level of every non-specific, in-game challenge. Within this, you have find and kill Jimmy J3NKN5, a Jet Loader who spawns randomly in certain boxes. After hours of reloading checkpoints and opening these boxes to find nothing, I quit again. However, having realised this game is now officially 10 years old in my collection, and as a hardened trophy hunter who knows exactly all about the perils that come with territory, you just sometimes have to face the music. We're back in Borderlands 2 for what I'm vowing is going to be the final time.

To support these complications, we're starting with the array of DLC content attached to Borderlands 2. This does come with it's own logical thought process though, as the main list contains a trophy for reaching level 50, and I currently sit at level 38 at the time of writing, so rather than play New Game+, it makes sense to go through the fresh content and attempt to unlock these trophies simultaneously. It's about the only thing that has made sense thus far.

This DLC pack takes you into Oasis, a town over-run by Pirates attempting to track and find Captain Blade's Lost Treasure of the Sands. Captain Scarlett, leader of the pirates, enlists your help to assist her in finding 4 compass pieces which will combine to reveal the exact location of the treasure at the promise of splitting the reward. It's a fairly basic plot, and there aren't really any major gameplay changes here - It's mostly more of the same with a bunch of new quests, some new environments and a handful of new enemies to fight against. It also comes with an equally basic trophy list to accompany it, with just 3 trophies added within.

Completion of the new main questline, containing a total of 9 quests, awards 1 of the 3 trophies on offer here. The level of the enemies is scaled to around level 30, which meant large portions of these quests left me completely untroubled coming into this at level 38. Enemies would die in a couple of hits, it was easy to absorb large amounts of damage from bigger groups and none of the loot was any better than what I was already carrying. This made the content feel like a simple matter of just mere progression.

There are just 2 other trophies to go after here, and 1 of these, awarded for discovering all named locations in Oasis and the surrounding areas, actually unlocked very prematurely, way before I'd discovered all areas anyway. However, the final outstanding trophy wasn't as straight forward;

Completionist - Completed all Pirate's Booty side missions.

The "Completionist" trophy, awarded for Completing all Pirate's Booty side missions, requires the player to beat 23 additional missions aside from the Pirate's Booty main questline.

These, for the most part, fit in line with the same characteristics of the main quests, with the simple requirement to just play through them and tick them off at a very leisurely pace with little resistance. However, every now and again, Borderlands loves throwing in a massive curveball, with a challenge so demanding, it suddenly requires you to rethink your approach and work out the best way to deal with it.

Of these 23 side quests required to unlock this trophy, there is a quest called "Hyperius the Invincible", which is offered to you by Shade towards the end of the content package. Hyperius the Invincible was ultimately too tough for me to defeat at the time I wanted to defeat him.

The DLC had lured me into a false sense of security. All these easy quests treated as standard procedure ultimately led to a boss I simply wasn't powerful enough to beat in that exact moment. My stubbornness shone through as I attempted to beat him multiple times, knowing in reality I probably couldn't with my current weapons. I also needed to level up and acquire more health points, as I was dying too quickly regardless. I eventually ran out of money refilling on ammo for the next attempt, and was ultimately forced to move on as a consequence.

My only option from here was to begin the next bit of DLC content, which was Torque's Campaign of Carnage, in order to further level up and take advantage of earning Torque Tokens - A currency exclusive to this DLC - which would allow me to buy stronger weapons that can only be purchased with this unique currency, to then go back and finally defeat Hyperius.

Once I'd acquired a couple of stronger Torque Guns through grinding activities allowing me to earn enough tokens to buy them, I returned to beat Hyperius fairly comfortably. It was just frustrating to suddenly hit a brick wall seemingly out of nowhere, where the challenge forced me to have to come back to complete it at a later date. If it wasn't for this sole quest, this would be a very straight forward package to complete, and it still is for 95% of the way.

You may be in a better position to fight Hyperius than I was, depending on individual circumstances, but I just happened to not be in that place at that time. I probably spent too much time attempting to beat him, and should have been smarter by moving on much sooner, but that's my own fault.

32 total quests, most of which are very straight-forward to complete, should take no longer than 6-8 hours, providing you don't run into the same struggles I did. Many wasted attempts notched up a couple of hours for me unnecessarily, so I spent a little longer than the estimate on this, but if you've already progressed well within the main game, you should be well over the level 30 threshold this DLC is set to, and this mostly becomes a checklist exercise. Just make sure you come back to Hyperius if you need to.

DLC #159 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Jack The Ripper

The scope for content during the London Victorian Era is full of intriguing ideas, so it's a little bit disappointing that Assassin's Creed Syndicate only bought out a single piece of DLC content. 

The good news is, they probably picked the strongest and most befitting idea of them all, focusing on the iconic serial killer, Jack the Ripper.

The succession of murders, that took place in Whitechapel, England in 1888 ultimately ended up unresolved, and this level of mystery made these crimes notorious in English folklore. The ambiguity also lends perfectly for the developers to run with their own narratives, characters and conclusion to the tale.

The story begins with Jack the Ripper having already committed the murders of 5 prostitutes, true to the real life crimes the Ripper was allegedly guilty of. However, in an added twist to lay the foundations of the plot, it also seems that Jack the Ripper is responsible for the death of Jacob Frye. This leaves you to play through the DLC as Evie Frye, with the main motivation being to stop the Ripper and understand what exactly happened to Jacob - His case is treated as a mysterious disappearance, but it's made quite clear to the player that Jacob is possibly killed during a very early confrontation with the Ripper. As part of the story, you will also control the Ripper during certain segments, which is a nice touch, as the game retains the angle of playing from the perspective of 2 different characters in the absence of Jacob Frye.

The DLC retains much of the main games approach, though it does implement a few fresh ideas. There is now a Fear mechanic in place, whereby you can disperse groups of enemies by pulling off specific attacks which will cause them to flee in terror, rather than relying on killing everyone in sight. This comes with the addition of some toys, including fear spikes and fear bombs. It's a neat little tweak, and makes combat much easier than killing seemingly endless waves of enemies.

There are also new associates you'll meet throughout the 10 memory sequence, who will provide a range of new side activities to complete. These are all required to achieve every trophy in the list, so to see some fresh injection of ideas into this, rather than just rinse and repeats from the main game, is also a good touch.

The 7 trophies are easy to achieve, and do lean into the fear mechanic quite heavily. You should unlock all of these progressing towards 100% completion, including a final trophy for concluding the story and unveiling the mystery behind Jack the Ripper, but there is a bit of additional legwork required here;

Ripperologist - Achieve 100% synchronisation in Jack the Ripper.

 

The "Ripperologist" trophy, requires the player to complete all content within the Jack the Ripper DLC. This wasn't a requirement for the Platinum trophy, so this is a sudden change in expectations, and full completion will require the following;

Beating 10 main story memories, including all optional mission constraints, completing 21 Associate Activities, including all optional mission constraints and collecting a total of 98 collectible items, spread across Chests, Posters and Helix Glitches.

Everything you do within this DLC works towards this trophy. The Story is great and full of intrigue, and as long as you follow the logic of completing the optional missions constraints as you play through, this will minimise the necessity to replay any memories. With that considered, it's around a 6-7 hour experience.

You'll meet 3 new Associates throughout the plot too, which will unlock a host of new side activities to complete. Most of these are fresh experiences, and a couple of them are carried over from within the main game. These also come with optional mission constraints which need to be completed in order to reach 100% synchronisation, so it's important to make sure these are fulfilled in the same method as per the main story missions. These 21 additional activities, assuming no replay required, should be another 2-3 hours on top.

Finally, and it wouldn't be Assassin's Creed without some arbitrary collectibles, you'll need to jump around the city and find 98 collectibles. This is a fairly standard map-hopping exercise, but it is important to note that you will venture into 3 unique locations as part of the main plotline, where some of these collectibles are housed, so if you're missing any, they're probably there. You'll need to replay the relevant memory where you visit these areas if you missed any collectibles the first time round. As before, you'll be able to purchase treasure maps at £5,000 each, which will reveal the locations of all collectibles. Add another 1-2 hours for this.

All in all, it amounts to the thick end of around 10-12 hours, with all focus on this trophy to cap the DLC off. It's a very casual experience, but a decent amount of time to put into a single trophy, where you effectively unlock the rest along the way. Exactly what was needed after being punished by The Division Survival DLC.

Platinum #120 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10

Continuing a tradition of games in a series that seems to be great at consistently producing fairly easy trophy lists, Assassin's Creed Syndicate makes a strong case for being one of the easiest Assassin's Creed Platinum trophies to date.

Set in good 'ole England, in the midst of the second industrial revolution at some time in the 1800's, and for the first time in any Assassin's Creed game I've played, you take control of two protagonists - Twins Jacob and Evie Frye - with the goal to prevent London being overtaken by Templar rule.

You flick between each of the two main characters, both with their own play-styles and motives. Jacob is an action-based brawler who wants to build a gang empire and takeover London, and Evie is a stealth-based spy who wants to unravel the mystery of Eden. It's a good change of pace to effectively play out the story from two different perspectives, and the way these stories feel different, but still closely linked to an overall main story arc is executed well.

As always in Assassin's Creed games, the supporting cast is full of well known characters befitting of the era in time. I especially enjoyed this particular one, as an Englishman watching the introductions of some very influential British figures come and go throughout the plot, with an excellent homage to the First World War added in for good measure.

Despite the split motives between both characters, the ultimate conclusion is to stop Crawford Starrick, a powerful figure who controls London via a massive criminal network. The plot takes a typical shape as you go through memories and sequences murdering your way through a host of other different people with criminal ties to Starrick. It's another great entry into the Asssassin's Creed series, with a proven formula that doesn't stray too far from it's predecessors.

The aforementioned change in perspective, where you now control two main protagonists is the biggest gameplay change, but there are some new mechanics that are also solid additions. Missions where you ultimately end up assassinating a key figure play out as big set pieces with multiple ways to kill your target, down to the discretion of the player, with the variety providing a very Hitman-esque feeling.

The large scale gang fights are a cool addition too, and London is excellently recreated in all of it's Victorian glory, with a host of key landmarks across London bought to life, and instantly recognisable to their real counterparts.

On the trophy list front, it's much more of the same, with the now extremely familiar formula for Assassin's Creeds games being closely replicated here yet again.

The 50 trophies apply a focus on progression throughout the main story, delving into a wide array of the open world side activities, conquering the map and gathering collectibles. It also happens to be the easiest Assassin's Creed game yet.

The "Shall We Dance?" trophy, awarded for completing Memory Sequence 9, concludes the main story of the game, with normal rules in full application. You'll be awarded a trophy upon completion of every memory leading up to the end of the game, as well as another trophy for achieving 100% synchronisation, which involves beating every mission and their relevant additional mission constraints.

By this point, I'm always consciously aware of this because it seems to be a standard requirement of every Assassin's Creed list to contain a trophy for 100% synchronisation of the Main Story. Completing the additional requirements as I go along is a great method of reducing needless replayability, and when I went back over the small handful of mission constraints I'd missed, they were incredibly easy to tick off and gave me absolutely no issues. In previous titles, there have always been a couple of additional tasks that have been somewhat challenging, but no such issue existed here, and I cruised through the story unfazed.

There's no inclination to play through the game on any specific difficulty level - In fact, I don't even think the option is ever presented - and the combat system is still incredibly easy to grasp. There are a few tweaks to the combat - Enemies will now adopt a defensive stance to attacks, and will require you to break their block by pressing X before you can unleash a flurry of attacks yourself, but the game's combat still ultimately comes down to button-mashing using whatever weapon of your choice, and chaining these attacks together to deal with multiple enemies at once.

Outside of the main story, the game offers up a ton of side content, but the trophy list is very selective in it's requirements on how much of this you actually need to fulfil towards completing the entire list.

The "Street Sweeping" trophy, awarded for Conquering all the boroughs in London, is as extensive as the requirement goes, and conquering a borough does require a fair amount of work. There are 7 London boroughs to conquer in total, and in order to conquer a borough, you'll need to complete a variety of different tasks which gradually remove Blighter control of that particular area. These include clearing all gang strongholds, completing all gang member bounties, hunting all templars and completing every child liberation mission. Once you've beaten all these activities, you'll unlock the gang war activity for that particular borough, and winning the gang war will finally move it into conquered status.

The gang wars are the best part of this trophy - Most of the other preliminary activities become tedious and boring once you realise they're copied and pasted across all 7 London boroughs, and this sort of content padding is something Assassin's Creed games are notorious for. Even though the boroughs scale in difficulty of enemy presented to the player, there never seemed to be any serious challenge in clearing any of them as you progress through the game. It just becomes a fairly standard tick-box exercise.

Collectibles are still fairly rife, but nowhere near as tedious as they have been in some previous Assassin's Creed titles. You can still purchase maps that will reveal the location of all collectibles necessary to achieve a corresponding trophy in the list, which naturally makes them easier to gather. Further to this, each of the London boroughs will give a breakdown of all collectibles that lie within that area, all sorted by type, so the game does everything it can to support you with maximum clarity on the collectibles you might need, and exactly where you can get them. 

I count a total of 6 collectible-related trophies here, with the overall collective amount of items to obtain sitting at 164. It's not exactly light work, but to add some context, Assassin's Creed Unity had you collecting 422 treasure chests and Cockades towards the Platinum trophy, so it's a very welcome change in direction to see a fairly drastic drop in these requirements. Collectibles in Assassin's Creed games have never really been an interesting exercise, and they're really no different here in Syndicate. Some of them offer up some cool backstory, such as consuming the 20 different brands of beer, all of which provide interesting commentary to them, but their primary reason to exist is to act as a time filler with little intrinsic reward apart from the trophies related to them.

The rest of the list is made up of lots of miscellaneous tasks, some of which will come naturally as you play through the game, and others less so. The list also harbours a handful of really annoying trophies. Who deemed it was necessary to include a trophy that involved destroying 5000 destructible objects with your carriage, where the strategy is to just literally blast around the city for hours carelessly running into anything and everything until you reached a total of 5000?? 

Kicking 50 enemies off trains, shooting 50 enemies before they shoot you and performing 50 multi-finishers will more than likely all require post-game work, as these situations just don't simply pop up that frequently in an organic nature as you go through the game. They are all but a minor inconvenience, but still add tedious legwork onto the end of the journey.

However, this is the easiest Assassin's Creed game I've ever played by virtue of the following;

The additional mission constraints to achieve 100% synchronisation are easy, it's nowhere near as heavy on collectibles as some previous Assassin's Creed games have been - plus you still get the visual guidance from the game through the option of purchasing maps that reveal their whereabouts - and even with the some of the more grindy miscellaneous trophies, you can still come in on under 35 hours for this Platinum if you're efficient and complete additional mission requirements for 100% sync as you go along to minimise replay time.

Once I was finished, I only had a 74% completion rate for everything the game had to offer, which is a good indication of the fact that there's alot of side content you don't need to go through if you're playing the game purely for the purpose of achieving the Platinum trophy. The average benchmark seems to be around 4/10 for an Assassin's Creed, but I do believe this comes in slightly lower for those reasons.

Notable Trophies -

Shall We Dance? - Complete Memory sequence 9
Street Sweeping - Conquer all the boroughs in London

Hardest Trophy -

Street Sweeping

Conquer all the boroughs in London

DLC#158 - Tom Clancy's The Division - Expansion II - Survival

The Division DLC experience has been some journey. It's been time-consuming, grindy, challenging and, in this case especially, brutal in it's conclusion.

The concept of Survival is good, something different, but ultimately very frustrating because it's intent on showing absolutely no mercy and kicking you all over the place.

You're sent into Manhattan in order to extract some Anti-Viral agents, when your helicopter crashes into the middle of map. It's extremely cold, you only have a hazmat suit on, and you've contracted Sepsis, which will kill you within a matter of 1 hour. No bargaining on that.

The goal is to survive, and ultimately escape, but the disease flowing through you takes hold and will eventually kill you if you don't manage to escape within the 1 hour time limit, so something's got to give - And that's if the various other perils within the game mode don't get to you first. These include large groups of NPC's that patrol Manhattan's streets, booby traps and even the plummeting weather conditions.

You start out in a Safehouse with just a pistol and the aim centres around crafting warmer clothes, better weapons and the other necessary tools required in order to extract and escape. The game has a steep learning curve as you go through the process of understanding the map, and the best methods for success. This leads to some brutal difficulty, especially early on when you're running around with flimsy clothing and weak weapons - All it takes is to run into a group of enemies or find yourself caught short in the cold and it could be all over. If you have medkits, you'll be able to revive yourself, unless you die to the cold, which is always an instant death. If you don't possess any medkits, and die through either NPC's or a booby trap, you'll bleed out within 5 minutes unless there's another player willing to revive you. It's a fairly unforgiving experience for the solo player, which is how I mostly played through this DLC, and I failed time and time again.

You can play with other players, and the map is shared, so you'll see them running around alongside you, but, at least from my own experience, you'll be going alone if you're just looking to jump in and play. If you're feeling extra sadistic, you can play against other players too, something I was almost certainly looking to avoid.

The list contains 5 trophies, with a couple of these awarded to whet the appetite, including one for your first successful extraction, as well as crafting the Virus Filter and Flare Gun, both critical extraction components. Achieving a Master Rank will potentially cause a few issues for some, as this requires 10,000 points from a successful extraction, but I got this without even trying for it, so cannot really testify to any challenges.

The completion of this set runs through one trophy;

For The Hoarder... - Successfully extract 100 items from the Survival Dark Zone.

The " For The Hoarder..." trophy, requires the player to successfully extract with 100 caches from the Dark Zone. Once you reach the Dark Zone area, you'll be able to find sealed caches containing weapons and equipment, which you can then open to reveal your prizes. They're effectively the loot element of this game mode, and are either dropped by enemy NPC's, or found in gear containers. You can only hold up to 6 of these caches per extraction, which means, in order to extract 100 of these, you'll need a minimum of 17 successful extractions. You'll spend alot of time working towards this trophy and I ended up extracting 18 times to reach 100, dying many times throughout the process along the way.

I found the best way to tackle this trophy was to identify a solid approach, and stick to it, which I broke down into 2 parts;

Stage 1 - Crafting the Virus Filter to enter the Dark Zone - This is the first mandatory step, but I also made sure I did the following before entering the Dark Zone;

• Gathered Fabric materials in order to craft more sustainable clothing to cope with the cold weather
• Gathered 2 Green Weapons Parts in order to build the Green M44 Marksman Rifle, which takes down enemies at this stage in a couple of shots.
• Gathered Fabric and Tools in order to craft the Virus Filter and reach the Dark Zone

Once I'd fulfilled these steps, I'd move into the next stage...

Stage 2 - Extracting from the Dark Zone, along with the following;

• Gathered Gold Weapons Parts and Division Tech in order to build the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle, which is much better suited to take down the now stronger enemies within the Dark Zone.
• Gathered Tools and Division Tech in order to craft the Flare Gun and Extract - if there are other players around, you may not need to do this, as you can always have the option of backing onto another players Extraction, but this isn't always guaranteed to happen before you die of infection.
• Collected at least 5 Loot Caches in order to fulfil the total towards the trophy requirement - The Hunter you fight at the Extraction Zone will always drop a Loot Cache, which is your 6th drop.

Settling on this method took some trial and error to reach, and there were many failed attempts along the way, some of which would come as agonisingly close as almost extracting, but either running out of time and succumbing to infection, or getting killed by NPC's near the end of the session. The Dark Zone is full of Purple and Yellow-graded enemies, and they will cause you problems in groups, which is probably the most noticeably unforgiving thing as a solo-player, and also why it's essential to craft the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle. It's a necessary equaliser to not always having the support of another player in gun fights. I know some people like crafting the turret, but I never did this personally, as my general tactic was to choose the path of least resistance, and this generally involved ignoring fighting.

Also, as soon as you call in an Extraction via shooting the Flare Gun, a Hunter will spawn in, which you'll have to beat before the chopper lands. They're powerful and if they down you, they'll execute you before you can revive, so this is a horrible knife-edge at the final step of any Survival Session. I came unstuck here multiple times, even during my latter parts of this trophy when I'd gained more experience. They're just tough foes that can get the better of you if you're not careful, which adds to the difficulty levels.

I did generally try to avoid conflict when I reached the Dark Zone. It's better to try and go about your business quietly, and only fight in situations of absolute necessity, if all you're attempting to do is achieve this trophy. It is discouraging to see so much time and effort go to waste when you die, and there were some times I'd play multiple Survival games in a row and come away empty handed every time, which is a big test of perseverance.

One thing I do need to shout out is how helpful other players are. If you get downed by enemy NPC's, and you don't have any medkits left, you'll get a 5 minute timer before you bleed out and your session ends. Your only hope at this point is if another player comes and revives you. This will cost them one of their own medkits, and if you die, they could scavenge all your loot off your corpse, so it was extremely refreshing to see alot of people choose the former option and help you up. This saved numerous sessions for me where I ended up getting extractions off after being on the brink of death, so this supportive environment is absolutely worth mentioning. It was my favourite part of a pretty rocky experience.

Once I'd gotten used to the game mode, and put in place a clearly defined plan of attack, I did start to find a much better flow. There were still some horrible endings to sessions where I'd get blown up by a bomb I didn't see around a corner, or not managing my time well enough to extract before death, or being sandwiched by groups of enemies coming at me from 2 different directions, but that's all part of the game. It's an aptly named piece of DLC that will always keep you on your toes, and the sense of relief upon achieving this final trophy was huge. I'm probably going to need to play something more casual next, that's for sure.

In terms of a time estimation, it's hard to gauge. 18 extractions totalling the full time limit of 1 hour in most instances would be around the 18 hour mark, but the number of failed extractions isn't accounted for anywhere. I would say I comfortably failed more than 18 times, but these wouldn't always amount to an hour lost each time, depending on at which stage of the run I died at.

However, one statistic that is tracked - I've ended up spending 9 days, 22 hours and 56 minutes beating the Division. That's 238 hours in total, the vast majority of this being on these 3 punishing DLC packs, which makes it one of the most time-consuming 100% games in my entire collection. It's definitely been a journey to remember.

Platinum #119 - Metro : Last Light Redux

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

Generally speaking, I don't mind vast crossover between games born from the same series when it comes to their respective trophy lists.

There has to be a certain level of expectation that ideas will carry over, and the scope for creativity is somewhat limited as a consequence of this - and this is something I am OK with.

However, I really dislike it when certain ideas return where I feel like they don't really compliment the experience for the average trophy hunter, and sadly, I think you see this here with Metro : Last Light. I'll explain more soon.

Despite Metro 2033 offering 2 different story endings to the player, based on the games moral system, the story for Metro : Last Light picks up under the premise that the missiles were ultimately called down upon the Dark Ones in order to wipe them out as a threat to humanity.

It's reported back that a sole surviving Dark One escaped the blast, and there is an order for Artyom from Captain Miller to hunt down and kill the remaining creature in order to be sure the entire threat has been eliminated, as was the original mission in Metro 2033. Khan, who returns as an ally to Artyom from Metro 2033, convinces Artyom that the Dark One can help them as a key to preserving the future of humanity. The Dark One is found almost immediately, but both Artyom and the Dark One are captured by the Nazi Reich and suddenly have to find a way to escape from their clutches.

This suddenly turns the plot on it's head, as the mission quickly becomes about stopping the Nazi Reich, whose plan is to take control of D6, and use it to control the fate of humanity by getting hold of the nuclear explosives being held within.

I wasn't huge on Metro 2033, levelling a few criticisms towards bland gameplay, an uninspiring range of weapons and poor enemy AI, and in all honestly, I don't think Last Light does anything to really address any of that. The game also still takes place in Moscow, so even the environmental settings are exactly the same underground metros and overground warn-torn cities of rubble that still existed in the previous game, so even that feels too similar to the point where you just feel like you're playing the same game again for the most part.

Even the unique gameplay elements from Metro 2033, which I liked, have now just returned here, such as using air filters when navigating through areas above ground. Seeing these just return with no expansion to them merely adds to the lack freshness as a result, and there isn't really anything new to talk about that's been introduced as part of this package to make it feel like an upgrade on the original game.

This theme of repetition continues deep into the trophy list, which isn't exactly a million miles away from being practically identical to Metro 2033, with alot of the same gameplay options and features returning for Metro : Last Light. The Moral points system is back, as are the Survivor and Spartan game modes, all of which are heavily integrated into the trophy list once again.

The "Redemption" trophy, awarded for Saving D6, is the exact equivalent trophy to the "Enlightened" trophy from Metro 2033, and requires you to achieve enough positive moral points throughout the game in order to trigger the good ending.

The moral system works exactly the same way as it did in Metro 2033. You go through the game performing certain actions in order to fulfil the requirements of this trophy by executing enough positive actions, as well as avoiding negative actions that could potentially impact the outcome of the game, and thus, the awarding of the trophy.

The system itself is still extremely mysterious, which was definitely something the game could have improved upon, and whilst I appreciate there is a sense of deliberate design to it being this way, where they're potentially looking to see more organic gameplay develop without players being guided by a very obvious moral system that gives you choices, it's a real pain for trophy hunters. There's still no tangible indication of how many moral points you need to acquire in order to trigger the good ending and there's still no introduction/explanation to the system and the influence it has on the outcome of the game. It just sort of sits there for the player to work out, though every time you perform a positive moral action, the game will give an audio/visual prompt, so there is at least something that indicates to the player they're on the right tracks this time.

I feel like the fact you have to bring up a guide in order to make sure you fulfil as many positive actions as possible, and avoid the negative ones, really breaks up the immersion of the game itself - having to stop and sense check every 5 seconds throughout the entire game, primarily focusing on not missing anything important for practically every step of the way isn't the right way to engage the player.

You should have no problems triggering the good ending, and earning the trophy as a consequence, but you will need to make sure you're following a guide and there is a theory that some critical plot points that award trophies also do potentially offer so many negative moral points, they automatically award the bad ending, regardless of how many positive moral actions you may have earned beforehand. I don't know how true this is, as I played it fairly safe and grabbed these either on the bad ending play or just through chapter select afterwards, so it's always better to go for the safer option, especially when you can still grab any outstanding trophies from the chapter select menus anyway.

The fact you need to witness both the good and bad endings again also still means there is a minimum of 2 Playthroughs required for the Platinum trophy, with the "C'est La Vie" trophy, awarded for Destroying D6. In the bad ending, Artyom will reach D6 and fight off the Nazi Reich in order to complete a suicide mission in blowing up D6 and, in turn, stopping the Reich gaining control of the facility themselves. In the good ending, Artyom will attempt to carry out the exact same steps, but will be stopped by the sole surviving Dark One, who will disrupt the detonation and wipe out the Nazi Reich with the help of a group of Dark Ones who were hibernating within D6 all along. As was the case in Metro 2033, the default ending is more likely to be the bad one, which makes this trophy slightly easier to obtain, as it will probably be the one most people earn more naturally.

A full Playthrough of the game is roughly timed at the same length as the previous game, at around 8-10 hours per Playthrough. The difficulty levels are also exactly the same, with options to play on Normal, Hardcore, Ranger and Ranger Hardcore difficulties. Due to the fact the trophy list does, yet again, not impose any difficulty related trophies on the player, I opted to play this game entirely on Normal difficulty and providing you tandem the Survivor and Spartan modes to correspond to earning both the good and bad ending, you can limit this entire list down to 2 Playthroughs.

As before, Survivor and Spartan modes both give their own unique ways to play through the game, but on the lowest difficulty mode, they don't really prove to be a challenge in any way, and path of least resistance was also chosen for this title as it was in Metro 2033.

The big difference within this trophy list in comparison to it's predecessor, is the fact that there are 9 trophies dedicated to a variety of DLC levels. These were included as DLC add-on trophies in the Playstation 3 version of this title, and as part of the PS4 Redux, are bundled into the main trophy list, therefore counting towards the Platinum trophy.

Most of these are fairly standard packages you can just naturally check off, but the "Test Complete" trophy, awarded for Completing the Tower level is a fairly sudden difficulty spike. In this level, you need to progress through a number of arenas in a horde-like setting, beating waves of enemies until you reach the end of the level. There are 5 in total, and you'll unlock a better range of weapons as you go through each stage. The issue is, the enemies also get stronger, and the clunky combat of Metro : Last Light doesn't really lend itself well to these horde-type game modes. It's hard to escape combat when you're close to death, so you need to keep enemies at arms length, and this is a challenge once you begin fighting waves of Nosalis that can reach you quickly and overwhelm as a consequence.

It took me about 4-5 hours to beat this mode, which is a long time given the fact the total amount for everything else, including 2 full Playthroughs of the story, was around 15-20 hours. Managing your arsenal is the best way to beat it, and once I figured out the best combination of weapons to take into each arena, I did manage to find a way that worked and allowed me to progress, but did this require alot of trial and error.

I would go as far to suggest that this is also the hardest trophy in the list - The "Redemption" trophy isn't exactly hard, it's just an inconvenient way of playing the game that makes it less immersive and requires you to focus on minute details instead. It's just annoying, in all honesty, and it was disappointing to see it return from Metro 2033 as part of the trophy list integration. Beating the Tower level for this trophy was the only real time in this game you felt like you were being genuinely tested by something that wasn't just your own patience.

Other similarities that still exist in the rest of the list include collecting 43 entries of Arytom's diary, beating specific chapters under requirements involving no kills and achieving a certain number of kills in specific ways, though this is nowhere near as heavy as it was in Metro 2033, and has been substituted by the inclusion of the all the DLC content which now forms part of the main list.

Unsurprisingly, the Platinum difficulty rating sits in roughly the same ballpark as it did for Metro 2033. There is around 80% crossover in both lists, with the only real significant difference being down to the fact around a fifth of this list accommodates the DLC that was bought forward from the PS3 version of the game. The moral system is back, Survivor and Spartan modes are back, the same choices on difficulty levels are back and most of the miscellenous trophies that fit around all the aforementioned are back too. Metro : Last Light gets an extra mark purely for the Tower DLC content causing me some unexpected issues during the end-game where I was expecting to just go through some casual mopping up, but on the whole, this is another easy one from the Metro collection to bag, and should clock in at around the 25 hour mark in total.

Notable Trophies -

Redemption - Save D6
Test Complete - Complete the TOWER level

Hardest Trophy -

Test Complete

Complete the TOWER level

DLC #157 - Rocket League - Chaos Run

It's been almost 3 years since a Rocket League update, which is perhaps surprising, given how easy some of these DLC packs are to finish.

No good excuse for not getting round to them, but we now have 3 out of the 9 DLC packs fully complete with the latest completion of the Chaos Run DLC pack.

In a fairly minimalist content update, this package merely adds a large handful of car customisation items, including 2 new car models called Ripper and Grog. The package also makes the addition of the new Wasteland arena, which is a fairly standard Soccar pitch playable in most rotations.

The 5 new trophies do focus on the content within this specific update, requiring you to jump in and take a total of 50 shots on goal in any mode with Merc, Grog or Ripper, as well as score a total of 20 goals across 2 trophies with any one of 6 car models.

You can also grab another trophy for destroying 3 bots in the new Wasteland arena and there's also an easy Gold trophy up for grabs for winning an online 4 v 4 game with the new Flamethrower Booster equipped.

The 20 goals spanning over 2 of these trophies have to be scored against bots, which is easy to farm out within any 1 v 1 setting through Exhibition mode, and the 50 shots on goal will nicely compliment progress towards the "Rocket Repleter" trophy from the AquaDome DLC set. This is probably also best done via Exhibition mode too, and the total package should take no longer than a few hours.

Platinum #118 - Dead Island : Riptide

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

When I reviewed Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record not too long ago, I questioned which part of me felt like it was a good idea to go straight back in and play a game that felt exactly like the previous one I'd just played, and upon completing Dead Island : Riptide, successor to the Playstation 3 title, Dead Island, I'm here asking myself the same question again.

In defence of Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record, it didn't ever claim to be a true sequel, hence the remaining use of the number "2" with an extended tagline in the title, rather than actually calling itself Dead Rising 3. It was the same game with an alternative plot that ran in parallel to Dead Rising 2, so it at least made sense.

Despite being taglined, rather than numbered, Dead Island : Riptide is a direct plot continuation of the ending of Dead Island, which is good enough reason to consider it a sequel in my eyes. However, Dead Island 2 would subsequently be announced for the pipeline at a later date anyway, so who knows what the rules are?

My main point is, Dead Island : Riptide, doesn't feel like a sequel. It doesn't feel like a new game with fresh ideas or differences. If I began to list the changes that I felt were worth mentioning, I wouldn't even fill out this paragraph. Is that a criticism? Probably. I just felt like I was playing through Dead Island all over again though.

The combat is exactly the same melee-heavy, dull, clunky attack system present in Dead Island. Swinging and missing with no rhyme or reason is frustrating and the stamina system sucks the fun out of combat because once you get into the rare occasion of hacking zombies down with consistency and not being stifled by the inaccuracies of the combat system, you'll be forced to take a break for a few moments whilst your stamina bar regenerates itself anyway.

Quests are just a seemingly never-ending loop of fetch tasks, exploiting a painfully obvious lack of creativity, character dialogue is still delivered with a severe lack of quality and the "story" is garbage. The game is better in co-op, which you'll need to do as per the requirements of the trophy list, but the biggest gripes with this game will still exist - you'll just have a few people to discuss how bad they are with, as opposed to just telling yourself in your head.

Regardless, Dead Island : Riptide begins at the end of Dead Island, where your safe evacuation off the island of Banoi is promptly interrupted by an attempted arrest by Australian police forces on the getaway ship. After being sedated, you're awoken to the ship being run amock and all hell breaking loose, an outbreak presumably started by one of the survivors visibly biting a soldier during the arrest cutscene. The ship ends up washed ashore on the island of Palanai after crashing into a rock amidst the chaos, where the infection from Banoi island has already apparently spread into. All of a sudden, we're back at square one where you're taken on a journey to find your way off the island of Palanai.

The trophy list is medium in size, coming in at a reduced volume of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, down 13 trophies from Dead Island's 49. I think it's a slightly less creative list on the whole, with a touch of crossover to the original, but with a bigger emphasis on story progression, and lower emphasis on the Co-op elements of the game.

Across the game's roughly 6-8 hour Story, there are 11 trophies awarded for simply progressing through to the end of the main story arc and completing the main game. This equates to almost a third of the entire list - A big change in direction from Dead Island, whose progression trophies only went as far as beating specific acts within the game.

There isn't any requirement to play through the game on a specific difficulty level, and you're also given the option to import your character across, which will allow you to start from whichever level you reached at the end of your time with Dead Island  - A Level 50 Sam B in my case. This turns out to be an extremely useful headstart for a returning trophy.

The "Obtain Level 70" trophy, awarded for Obtaining level 70, requires the player to amass a gargantuan 23,396,500 experience points. The import character option does make an instant dent in this, which is where the feature comes in most useful. However, this will only get you so far, and you'll need to rely on other methods to achieve this trophy.

You'll earn experience points for fairly standard actions, including completing quests, defeating enemies and completing in-game challenges, but the total amount of experience required for this trophy means you're just not going to get through all this in a single playthrough of the game, even if you choose to import a fairly high level character like I did. Amongst the variation of quests you can complete, there are a series of ongoing side quests where you have to retrieve specific items for certain characters, of which you can infinitely turn these items in, in exchange for experience points.

These quests allow you to take advantage of a duplication glitch, whereby you can drop a series of items on the floor, kill yourself and before you load back into your last checkpoint, you can interrupt the process and reload in manually. This action will restore your inventory to it's previous state, but more importantly, allows you to still pick up the items you previously dropped. Rinse and repeat this process for the relevant item to turn as many in for quest experience as you need to. It's a great tactic that will spare you a full second playthrough of the game, which is something I really didn't want to have to do - This game was barely worth 30 hours of my time, let alone 60. Once I'd beaten everything the trophy list had required of me, I was still only level 62, and even though duplicating these items on repeat was a chore in itself, it was a much better alternative than facing the prospect of a second playthrough.

The "Dream Team" trophy, awarded for Completing all the main quests co-operatively with any number of partners, ensures the co-op element of this game becomes a mandatory part of the trophy list, and you'll need to beat all 28 main story quests with at least one other person.

There is some generous flexibility here. You don't need to use the same partner(s) throughout, it doesn't matter who the game host is, which allows you to freely jump into other players sessions if you find it difficult to get people to join yours, and the quests don't need to be completed in sequential order, which is handy for instances where the only players available are those at different chapters to you.

I had already completed 22/28 quests with a previous mate I originally played this game with, but it was tough to find other players at this point in the games cycle, and I had to accept in a few instances that I would have to jump backwards and beat some quests I'd already beaten to assist somebody else in reaching the same point in the story as me and continuing on through there, which meant a little bit of re-treading old ground on a couple of occasions, but something I had to resort to due to the baron nature of co-operative availability.

I also can't confirm this for sure, but it seems as though joining someone else's session whilst they're part way through a quest doesn't count for trophy progress either. I think you need multiple players present at the beginning of the quest for progress to count, which is a bit frustrating because the only way to make sure this doesn't occur is to have full control of the game as session host - However, it is easier to join onto other players and there's a strong chance they'll already be part way through a mission when you join them. In most of these challenging scenarios, it's just easier to set yourself back and play-through to the point you were at yourself and help somebody else progress.

Finally, the "Hoarder" trophy, awarded for Finding all collectibles, requires you to collect all 61 different items scattered throughout the game.

As far as collectibles go, this isn't actually one of the worst collectible journeys out there, however, it is prone to being glitched, whereby you'll finish on 60/61 collectibles and the game won't recognise that you have picked one of them up. This happened to me and cost me an extra 2-3 hours of gametime to figure out which collectible I was missing - An apt way to finish off an experience that was generally fairly underwhelming.

The most effective way to solve it is to start a New Game+ with a new character and choose to load in at Chapter 12, which will open up the entire map, but respawn everything, including the collectibles. The rest is just a trial and error task of re-collecting them until the solitary collectible you were missing pops the trophy. I already had the individual trophies for collecting all voice recordings and secret files, so I figured those weren't the issue, which narrowed the field slightly, but it was still a postcard that I was missing, and typically, was one of the last few remaining items I had to collect to trigger the trophy.

I managed to earn the Platinum trophy in just under 32 hours. This included a fully complete 29 hour save file, and an extra 2 and a half hours for a new game purely to go through the collectibles for the sole remaining glitched trophy.

The story is very short, clocking in at roughly 6-8 hours, and everything else fits around this as you go through the game. The majority of the rest of your time will be spent completing every single quest in the game for the "Achiever" trophy, which totals to 80, including the 28 main story quests. If you manage to make sure your intent is to play-through this game in Co-op from the very beginning, you'll avoid having to go through the story twice, providing that you also take advantage of the duplication glitch explained above in order to make sure you can reach level 70 in the same playthrough, and further negate the necessity to have to start a new game purely for the purpose of levelling up.

The game itself seldom poses a challenge, and the only consequences of death are losing a bit of money and restarting at a checkpoint that's never really any further than a few steps back from where you died. There are no difficulty sensitive trophies either, leaving you to play the game to whatever leisurely extent you wish. 

Notable Trophies -

Obtain Level 70 - Obtain Level 70
Dream Team - Complete all the main questions cooperatively with any number of partners
The Hoarder - Find all collectibles

Obtain Level 70                                                                                    Obtain Level 70