DLC #169 - Grid - Season 3

There aren't any valid reasons to make this final review of Grid any longer than it has to be - These DLC packs have been literal copy and paste jobs, with the same set of trophies attached to the same sort of requirements throughout.

Season 3 adds 33 new Career events - Split down as 15 Invitational Events and 15 Track Day events, culminating in 3 Final events for the Hypercar Series Grand Finale.

Again, none of these matter as far as trophy hunting is concerned, and instead, the 3 trophies within this package are related to a further 3 time-trial based objectives.

There isn't anything to specifically mention here, and the challenge contained within is very similar to that of Season 1 - A small handful of very easily achievable objectives, all of which I managed to complete within a sub-1 hour time limit.

The 3 objectives rewarding the corresponding 3 trophies are as follows;

• Beat a 1:47 lap time on Okatuma GP with the Koenigsegg Agera RS
• Beat a 1:25 lap time on Indianapolis Sport Circuit with the Ferrari FXX-K Evo
• Beat a 1:41 lap time on Suzuka Circuit East with the Koenigsegg Jesko

Despite this being an easy selection of tasks, one thing I think may be worth mentioning - And this is something I only noticed right at the point of tackling this DLC - Some of these vehicles are extremely expensive, and you'll need to be able to purchase them to run them around the track in free-play. They can't be loaned, and if you somehow don't have the money, you'll need to play through some of these Career events and earn it. 

The selection of 3 cars required here alone will demand you to have over £4 Million in reserve to purchase them all, so just be aware of that.

DLC #168 - Grid - Season 2

It seems as though the Grid Season 1 DLC lured me into a bit of a false sense of security - After all, what would one more bump in the road be for a game that's just made me oversee a car bouncing off the walls of an oval track for over 200 hours to earn a trophy?

Season 2 adds exactly more of the same to Grid. 33 new events to tackle in the Career Mode, which are split between 15 Classic Touring GT events and 15 Modern GT events, with an additional 3 for the GT Grand Finale.

An additional 3 trophies added also follows the exact same format as prior, meaning the effort gone into including a large handful of new Career events to potentially work through is yet again wasted on trophy hunters.

Fine by me, although contrary to the sub-1 hour completion time of the previous Season, this one stung me a little bit, with a list of objectives linked to trophies that weren't quite as plain sailing as they were before.

The 3 trophies on offer this time relate to the following Season 2 objectives;

• Beat a 1:53 lap time on Silverstone Circuit Grand Prix with the Brabham BT62
• Beat a 1:54 lap time on Sepang International Circuit with the Ferrari FXX

These first two objectives fit the standard already set from Season 1 - Easily achievable within a small handful of laps at best. However, the final objective stands out, related to the following trophy;

A Wheely Good Time - Complete the A Wheely Good Time Objective.

The "A Wheely Good Time" trophy, awarded for completing the A Wheely Good Time Objective is linked to the following objective requirement;

• Beat a 1:40 lap time on Crescent Valley GP with the Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro

I've loaded up each of these time trial objectives with 50 laps, which is a standard practice, but never did this in anticipation that I'd actually need to exhaust the full amount of laps without having achieved a par time - This did somewhat come unexpectedly given how easy the DLC content had been up to this point.

I did see the warning signs fairly early though. The first few laps are always used to get used to the car handling and the track, and even though I never expect to achieve the time requirement within the first few laps anyway, they do act as a good measure of expectations - And I was over 10 seconds short in the early going, which made me realise quickly I was potentially in for a fight here.

The 1:40 lap time is harsh. There's practically no margin for error, and the Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro is an extremely fast Supercar that is challenging to control around a track like Crescent Valley, which contains alot of tight cornering and hairpins. I burnt through 50 laps mastering the track and still needed to find an extra 4 seconds or so, so I had to start tuning the car to accommodate acceleration to power through tight corners where loss of speed occurred.

I booted up for another 50 laps, and whilst I was getting close, I was still around half a second, to a full second out from the target time, and after hitting another 20 laps, I decided I had to look into further tuning to squeeze that last second out from somewhere.

After experimenting with adjusting the traction levels, and somewhere between another 10-15 laps, I managed a 1:39.82 lap time, and just about popped the trophy, but I did not expect to put 80-90 laps into any of these trophies when I originally researched their requirements.

Time trials have this fascinating aura of hooking you in sometimes, and the trophy reward on the other side of accomplishment always brings out that addictive form of repetition that simply doesn't exist elsewhere. It may have taken me 3-4 hours for this single trophy, playing this on repeat and only breaking away to delve into some fine-tuning, but persistence will usually win the day.

Thankfully, from here, it's straight, smooth and all downhill the rest of the way.

DLC #167 - Grid - Season 1

If there was ever a game that would benefit most from a quiet exit, it would almost certainly be Grid.

I can't overstate how much that main trophy list grind wore me out - Even more so the impressive feat when you realise it literally required me to do almost nothing and still somehow made me feel that way towards it.

Thankfully, the DLC for Grid is much more forgiving, and we can end this particular relationship on fairly amicable terms at least.

Season 1 adds a hefty chunk of content to the game, including a host of new events, presented as an extension to the main Career Mode under a new tab labelled "Season 1".

There are 33 events in total, split between 15 new Street Racing events, 15 new Pro Racing events and 3 Super Hatch Series Finale events to conclude the season. The package also adds a handful of new cars, but there is an absence of new locations/tracks, which is still a little bit disappointing given the fact this was already a big weakness the game should have addressed. The Season 1 events will still require you to use alot of the existing vehicle roster too, so it'll probably feel like you're mostly just replaying the main Career Mode over again for the most part. Same cars in the same places.

I did toy with the idea of possibly using these additional race events to clock some extra milage towards the "Around the Globe" trophy from the main list, but opted against this because I wanted to just settle on what I ultimately felt was the path of least resistance approach, which eliminated this idea from the decision-making process.

Regardless, the 3 trophies on offer don't require you to go anywhere near the Season 1 Career, and are instead focused on completing 3 new Objectives added to the Player Profile screen.

It was never mentioned in the main list review, but Objectives are just a collection of tasks you can perform to earn some additional experience points away from the core actions of in-game racing, and each of the 3 trophies corresponds to completing a specific objective - All of which are earned for achieving a hot-lap as follows;

• Beat a 4:11 lap time on Okutama Sprint Mizu Mountain with the Audi S1 Quattro Concept
• Beat a 1:38 lap time on Shaghai Waibaidu Way with the Lancia Delta HF Integrale Super Hatch
• Beat a 1:52 lap time on the Havana Paseo de Marti with the MINI Hatch JCW

In all honestly, none of these time trials caused me any issues, and I managed to polish off all 3 trophies within around an hour of play. It's good fun to see and use some new vehicles, but it's all over very quickly. It's also unusual to see so much content left outside of the trophy list, but in this particular instance, that's not a complaint.

Platinum #122 - Grid

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

There are many games out there that will test your sanity levels as a trophy hunter, and they come in all shapes and sizes.

I have lived through many of these over the years, and there always seems to be a way that certain games will continue to push those boundaries to their breaking point.

I've purchased additional peripherals. I've endured monstrous online levelling grinds. I've completed games 5/6/7 times. I've beaten every possible difficulty level ever named - all in the name of trophy hunting.

However,  I can now add to this, the fact I've left my console running idle for over 200 hours in order to fulfil the requirements of one of the worst ideas for a trophy ever designed.

Grid is the first outing for the Grid series of Racing games on the Playstation 4, after 3 previous titles throughout the Playstation 3 era. Grid has always been a solid racing series for me - It might not be in my top 3 favourites, but I feel like it's always offered up a fairly decent experience.

It blends a good combination of simulation and arcade racing, stuck somewhere bang in the middle between the two. The controls are fluid and intuitive, yet require a reasonable level of mastery on some of the more complex tracks using the more powerful vehicles on the roster, and the assortment of cars you can race with is plentiful, with some of the fastest cars offering up the ultimate experience to test your skills as a racer. The locations/track options are way more limited than they were in Grid Autosport, which is a little bit disappointing, but there aren't many real issues with what is an all around solid performer.

 You can race vehicles straight off the forecourt, or you can fine tune them for precise balancing. Luxury sports cars, or steady Minis. Assists off, or assists on. It's a perfect blend of simulator vs arcade that hits the spectrum in the right area, and ultimately caters to an audience of wide appeal.

However, my only major complaint - and make no doubt about it, this is a MAJOR complaint - is the trophy list.

Grid comes with 39 trophies, all of which are mostly geared to progressing through the game's Career Mode. Unlike in Grid Autosport, there isn't any sort of requirement to play online to achieve the Platinum trophy, and for the most part, just simply progressing to the end of the Career will get you the majority of the way.

The "Worth its Weight" trophy, awarded for Earning a gold trophy in every Career Event in the Career tab, is the ultimate end goal, and requires you to win all 103 career events, split across a small variety of racing disciplines. It's a fairly typical model for a racing game - beat a few events within a certain discipline to unlock a couple more, and repeat this process until you reach the finale of that particular discipline. There's also a World Series at the very end to cap everything off. You'll get to experience race, sprint and time attack modes, with different types of vehicles around different environments and stages.

However, the Career mode doesn't really do much to stand out, and to see just three types of races in a Career mode that spans over 100 events feels a little bit shallow. Whatever happened to Eliminators? Demolition Derbies? Grid used to do variety well once upon a time, and the fact you see alot of the same locations over and over due to the short selection of tracks does begin to feel very samey.

Going through the Career Mode, you'll also unlock a plethora of other trophies, such as completing all events in any position, as well as beating specific events on your way to the very top as you look to win every event. It's very generous with it's progression-based trophies, and these do a good job of spurning you on, especially when you realise the size of the overall task awaiting you.

There isn't any pressure to win all of these events on a specific difficulty either. I chose to play through the Career mode on hard, and found the AI to be extremely hit and miss. Some events I found fairly easy, whereas others were frustratingly difficult and required multiple attempts before I managed to beat them. This wasn't so bad, as I knew this was helping me master the game whilst contributing to the overall milage goal required (more on this shortly), and whilst it's tough to put a concrete time estimate on this, as it's not tracked anywhere in-game, I felt like I'd exhausted the Career Mode by the time I was finished with it.

By this point, I only had 4 trophies outstanding, but I knew since the very beginning this was going to anything but a simple case of cleaning up a small handful of remaining trophies, so it's about time I introduce to you, one of the worst conceived ideas for a trophy in any game I've ever played.

The "Around the Globe" trophy, awarded for Driving a total distance equal to the circumference of the Earth, requires the player to reach a total mileage of 24,901 miles across every game mode. If your instant reaction is one of disbelief, then that would be a justifiable response. Let's add some perspective and quantify it properly.

By the time I'd beaten the Career mode, I had amassed just over 5,000 miles, and even this felt like I'd already put a decent amount of time into the game - and then you realise this is only around 20% of the total mileage required to earn the trophy.

So what's the method thereafter for the remaining 20,000 miles? You can set up a race on the Indianapolis Oval and unbind the controller settings, in order to only bind the accelerate input to R2, but also have this option inverted - This negates the necessity to rubber-band your controller. This will allow the car to continuously lap around the oval without stopping for as many laps as you want up to 99 before the race ends. Once it finishes, reload a new race and keep going until you've accumulated the required amount of milage. When I read it back to myself, it sounds utterly ridiculous that this is what I had to resort to for this Platinum trophy, but these are the kind of depths we've reached.

On an oval track, the car will just run around the edges of the circuit, with no intervention required to make turnings or corners. This allows you to leave the game running idly in the background whilst pursuing other things. I did run into the odd problem whereby the car would somehow veer off track and end up facing backwards, which would cause a disqualification and cut the race short, but this is mostly a fairly fool-proof method, and should get you what you need eventually.

A race of 99 laps using the Bugatti Veyron (the fastest car), clocking a best lap of around 1:24, but sometimes slightly higher to a variance of up to 5 seconds, would mean each race of 99 laps would finish at around 140 minutes, which is almost 2 and a half hours. The oval circuit is 2.54 miles per lap, which means 99 laps also gives you 251 miles per race. This means, at 4 races per 1,000 miles, each 1,000 miles takes roughly around 10 hours. In turn, 20,000 miles would therefore take an eye-watering 200 hours in total.

So my main issue with this trophy is just simply the fact it's unnecessarily long-winded, but that leads me into my other major criticism. This is very much a passive grind, with practically no engagement. Would I prefer to race this sort of distance with a full requirement of focus? Probably not, but I think that just goes to show that the game has missed so far wide of the mark with this trophy, because they just haven't struck a reasonable balance here at all.

The fundamental problem is the fact that the distance required far outlives the amount of content actually offered by the game. There are just over 100 career events, and even playing on the hardest difficulty level in order to purposely stretch this out, I still only reached 5,000 miles. There aren't really any other game modes. I didn't really want to go through the DLC and play events that had no impact on achieving any of the DLC trophies. The online multiplayer environment is completely dead and I don't actually want to sit there and physically guide a car around an oval track 99 laps per race for 200 hours of my life. I'm not shy of grindy trophies, but I genuinely don't know if I'd be able to do this if there wasn't an alternative, much more passive, method available.

So the passive method it was - A lesser of the evils situation had developed and it was just a matter of allowing the game to do it's thing, only intervening to restart the race and go again every 2 and a half hours. It was also frustrating for the fact that, I'm still predominantly playing Playstation 4 titles, so I didn't really have much else to work on in between on other consoles. I could have strung this out amongst a much longer period of time, and only raced during downtime from gaming, but in all honesty, I just wanted to get this done as quickly as I could.

Then that was it - A 250-300 hour Platinum just like that. I had the Career Mode for this game wrapped up within a fairly reasonable amount of time. I chose to play on the hardest difficulty level, which is purely optional, and not a condition of the trophy list, and it can be challenging in spots. The difficulty never really makes any sense, and spikes erratically throughout the course of the game. I didn't mind struggling through some of the Career events too much though because I knew I was still accumulating milage towards a greater goal.

However, the "Around the Globe" trophy was a genuine mental blocker for me, and I did put this game off for an extremely long time because I just didn't want to do it. It's an awful idea for a trophy that never should have passed quality assurance. There's a fine line between extending the longevity of a game and just making people waste their time, and this just blatantly transcends that boundary with a massive leap - especially when you realise the content isn't even there to compliment it.

I've said this as recently as the Borderlands 2 Platinum trophy - It's in the blood of a trophy hunter to just simply face the music, and just get things done, no matter how ridiculous the task at hand may be. These sort of victories always feel the best, and sort the real trophy hunters out from the rest. I've never backed down and won't start now.

I do feel like you could bump this up beyond a 6/10 and I wouldn't have any objections to anyone trying to justify that. I do feel like the fact this was a passive grind would do a disservice to those other grinds I've done with games that have required my full focus and attention though, so that has to count for something. A Career mode with a challenge to be had for those seeking one - and another challenge absolutely nobody has ever wanted. At least I can now say I've technically travelled the World though...

Notable Trophies -

Worth its Weight - Earn a gold trophy in every Career event in the Career Tab.
Around the Globe - Drive a total distance equal to the circumference of the Earth.

Hardest Trophy -

Around the Globe

Drive a total distance equal to the circumference of the Earth

DLC #166 - Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 - Apocalypse Map Pack

The Black Ops 2 zombies experience is almost over, and I'm going to end this eternally thankful that I don't have to continuously run through these games solo, ending up failing post-round 15 anymore.

This was a very close runner for the roughest solo zombies experience I've had with a Call of Duty title - immediately behind Moon from Blacks Op 1. It's a bit of a shame, purely because I really like this map, but there are too many inconveniences that breach that gap between challenging and frustrating.

Just like Buried, there are layers to Origins that aren't initially apparent to the naked eye. You start amongst the thick of a World War trench network, full of bunkers connected by tunnels, with a couple of extra key areas thrown in for variety. These include a church that hosts a World War tank you can ride around the map and an Excavation Site right in the middle, which is the epicentre of the hidden world.

Below the Excavation site, you'll see a shrine which gives you access to one of the big additions to this package - the elemental staffs - which come in 4 flavours. These are Wind, Fire, Ice and Lightening, and once crafted, can be powerfully wielded with the relevant theme assigned to the staff. This area also contains a Portal to another world where you can enchant the staffs from within, making them even more powerful, and the trophies lean heavily on this whole game mechanic. The map contains alot of depth once you scratch the surface.

The blend of World War with Sci-Fi is an interesting crossover, but it's a great testament to what is ultimately the biggest strength that Zombies has - creativity. There are tons of other interesting differences too. Power around the map is now sourced from 6 generators rather than an an individual switch, which are also responsible for accessing the mystery box and perk machine within close enough proximity to it. Zombie blood is a new droppable power-up, which throws zombies off your scent and effectively makes you invisible for a certain amount of time. The Maxis Drone is a craftable item which floats around, half the time a murderous killing device, cutting down zombies with firepower, and half the time a revival tool which can hover and revive downed teammates.

However, some of the unique challenges the player will face from this map also come from some of the newly added mechanics. The giant robot that towers above the map and patrols it looks very cool, but will also suddenly stop you in your tracks by crushing you with it's massive feet unexpectedly at times. The muddy trenches will also slow player movement down, making it hard to escape hordes or transverse the map smoothly. There is also a new addition of the Panzer Soldat enemy, which looks a little bit like the Big Daddy from Bioshock, and will chase you round the map, using abilities such as a claw that can grab you from range and pull you backwards, and a flamethrower that will burn you to death.

When you're trying to survive and keep runs alive in the name of earning trophies, these mechanics become an annoying inconvenience, and I succumbed to all of them at least a couple of times each when striving for progress towards some of the trophies that required venturing into deeper rounds.

There are 10 new trophies added, and again, the formula is still the same. A handful of miscellaneous tasks that aren't that challenging, with a couple that are. There is a focus on the new elemental staffs, with trophies awarded for building and wielding all 4 of them in one game. You'll need to do these steps as a standard part of the Easter Egg, but absolutely have to make sure that everyone in the party exchanges staffs at some point so everyone can wield them. This is crucial to remember, and should be a added step to completing the Easter Egg properly before you end the game.

However, the harder trophies in this set really do ramp up the difficulty, and it also contains the toughest Easter Egg within the Blacks Op 2 DLC;

Little Lost Girl - In Origins, release Samantha.
Overachiever - In Origins, Complete all 4 Challenges in one game.

The "Little Lost Girl" trophy, awarded for releasing Samantha, is the Easter Egg for this DLC pack, and is by far the toughest out of all of them.

The main reason it's the toughest is simply because it required our party of 4 people to reach round 24 before we managed to complete the final step for the trophy to unlock, which took us around 4 hours in total. I began this at 2AM and finished just shy of 6AM, which was extremely tiring, so I'm glad I had a competent team to compensate for myself running on fumes by the end of this process.

Just by way of a quick side note, it is actually possible to achieve this Easter Egg solo, but after doing some careful research, I opted against this - It's even more time consuming and will require you to reach a much higher round than 24, and I just don't have the confidence to gamble on my solo ability to that extent.

The Easter Egg also requires alot of preliminary work before you actually begin the proper steps to completing it. You'll need to build all 4 elemental staffs, which requires finding 16 different parts, and some of these parts are randomly dropped by zombies, so you may have to slug through a handful of waves in order to find them all. Once this is complete, you'll then need to upgrade them to their ultimate forms. The Easter Egg is heavily reliant on the staffs, and they're used for multiple steps within this process, but finding all 16 parts and upgrading them to their ultimate forms feels like an Easter Egg in it's own right.

In comparison to the other Easter Eggs within these DLC packs, this is absolutely the most demanding. It's a long way off completing the Die Rise Easter Egg, which, by comparison, was casually wrapped up within 5 rounds.

The "Overachiever" trophy, awarded for Completing all 4 challenges in one game, is also a fairly big demand, especially for anyone who tackles this in solo zombies, such as myself.

It's best to break down the challenges and go through them one by one;

• Activate all 6 generators in 1 game

This one isn't too bad. The generators have a cost, but they're cheap at 200 points and you also don't need to worry if the templar zombies take one of them of back - Once you've activated one, it'll count for the remainder of the game. It can get a bit hairy in later rounds, as templar zombies will come at you along with regular zombies, and some of the generators will require you to spend money clearing debris to reach them, which will naturally come with later progression.

• Get 115 Headshots

I think this is the toughest challenge, and definitely conditional of the fact that you make sure you're very thorough within the early rounds when the zombie hordes aren't as hectic. You can buy the M16, which is a single shot rifle, from the starting room, which will give you precise headshots very early. Once the hordes start to build, and you don't get the chance to be as accurate, it can become harder to accumulate headshots, and you'll probably need a high powered LMG to get the job done effectively. You'll reach a point where crowd control becomes essential, so weapons like the Raygun are preferred, but also won't give you headshot kills, so you've got to ensure you strike the right balance

• Spend 30,000 Points

This one can also be tough. Accumulating 30,000 points isn't too hard, but spending them can be an issue. Spinning the mystery box infinitely to the cost of 950 points per spin was my chosen tactic, and clearing debris will be helpful too. The only issue with this is the fact that it'll be limited, as will buying perks, and the mystery box is the only points-deducting activity you can perform indefinitely in order to reach the 30,000 points total.

• Fill 4 chests

This one isn't too bad, but will require a total of 80 kills. The 4 chests, placed in specific locations across the map, will fill when a zombie is killed near it. 20 kills are required to fill a chest to it's maximum capacity. This creates alot of close quarter encounters, and you'll need to ensure you don't get cornered or pinned in, so it's vital to be aware of your surroundings. The chest locations are also all located within muddy trenches, which slows your movement down. I tried to tandem this step with the 115 headshots, as it made sense to accumulate these at the same time.

The strategy I settled on eventually was as follows;

1.Turn on all 6 generators first whilst actively accumulating headshots in the lower rounds, opening up all avenues to each generator in order to clear the way whilst beginning to spend points - It was also critical to pull some decent weapons from the mystery box by the time the final few generators were turned on.

2. Fill the 4 chests in their relevant areas whilst trying to accumulate headshots, but just making sure the hordes were controlled as a priority as not to become overwhelmed and fail the run. Ideally grab the Juggernaught perk by this point too.

3. Survive rounds in order to build up enough points to spend them all, accumulate headshots at any opportunity and use these points to infinitely spin the mystery box.

This did eventually work for me, but it took me 6 attempts. Most of my deaths occurred somewhere between steps 2 and 3, usually trying to squeeze for headshots in higher rounds and being chased by chaotic hordes, making accumulation progressively difficult. I did also die whilst spinning the mystery box in step 3 within a location that didn't have an exit from a horde of zombies that pinned me in. Annoying.

I would reach somewhere between round 10-15 per attempt, and my successful run was actually at round 16. Not bad for someone who generally hates embracing the challenge of solo zombies, but I knew it would only be a matter of time once I'd developed a sound plan and just shown a bit of patience by sticking with it.

The zombies challenge in Black Ops 2 does reach it's peak here, and I've spent way more time on this map than any other - I would actually possibly go as far to suggest I've spent more time with Origins than the other 3 zombies maps combined. The Easter Egg hits differently here, thanks to it's complexity and length and the challenge from the "Overachiever" trophy is the toughest out of any trophy within any pack outside of the Easter Eggs.

DLC #165 - Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 - Vengeance Map Pack

One of the few things I do actually like about Zombies is the level of creativity that goes into some of these maps.

Buried is a Wild West themed map that is located deep underground a processing unit. You begin the game by sliding in via a hole in the floor, exposing a huge underground utopia complete with tons of Wild Western authenticity. A saloon, bank and Sherriff's jail are all present set-pieces.

I was a little bit critical of Die Rise, for it's lack of key features that made the map a little bit too vanilla, but there's much more going on with Buried.

A new free-roaming NPC called Leroy, similar to Romero in the Blacks Op 1 pack, Call of the Dead, can be plied with alcohol and candy, and will assist you with killing zombies, as well as breaking down barriers without having to spend the points to unlock them. Witches can be found within the Haunted Mansion and Maze areas - They'll free you up of your points if they get too close to you. Weapons can be drawn onto walls with chalk, which allows you to freely distribute their availability around the map, and speaking of weapons, I personally love the addition of the Ray gun MK2.

The injection of variety in game mechanics makes it an interesting and fun map, and the trophies do have a heavy focus on these things, such as acquiring a perk for free, which is awarded for killing all the witches and accessing all areas with the help of your new friend, which is awarded for plying Leroy with enough alcohol to break through every possible barrier and make the entire map accessible.

The pack includes another 10 trophies, with the usual expectations applied. There's an Easter Egg to go after again, as well as a variety of different miscellaneous tasks of varying challenge, and the easier ones are generally not too bad with the ability to earn them as a solo player.

As was the case with Die Rise, the Easter Egg will require 4 players to complete which is also down to the final step of this process. This involves shooting a collective total of 84 targets within a strict time limit, and these pop up in specific areas of the map, designed in such a way that each person is responsible for overseeing an individual area, making it practically impossible for anyone to run this as a solo or smaller group player. I didn't find it to be hard at all, as long as everyone does their bit, but you just need to keep trying and you'll get it eventually. However there was something that did standout here;

Mazed and Confused - In Buried, survive an entire round within the maze on round 20 or higher.

The "Mazed and Confused" trophy, awarded for surviving an entire round within the maze on round 20 or higher, caused me some trouble. I originally attempted this solo a couple of times and I generally don't like tackling zombies on a solo basis, especially when the requirements are as demanding as reaching rounds as high as the 20's.

It's mainly a confidence issue - I get paranoid about suddenly being overwhelmed around every corner or just getting blindsided by a zombie and watching my attempt suddenly go up in smoke, with the realisation I have to start over and work my way back up. I'm way more comfortable in groups where I have the reassurance of other players to assist and/or bail me out within those previously aforementioned situations.

The group I did the Easter Egg with were kind enough to stick around and help me surpass round 20 within the maze area within the same game. The maze adds an extra level of complication due to the fact zombies can spawn out of nowhere from within the hedges, and there are alot of blind corners that can catch you out with an unexpected horde. When I ran this trophy solo a few times, I was caught out by both eventualities, causing me to have to start over - On the one attempt, I got to round 18, turned a corner in the maze to see a horde coming at me, and panicked straight into a dead end, which meant I'd unintentionally cornered myself with nowhere to escape, and lost me the game.

I'm sure I would have gotten it eventually, but those runs take alot of time to reach round 20, and as a solo player, it's disheartening to have to start from the beginning every time, so I was thankful for supportive teammates.

Some of the sub-challenges within these trophies are creative and provide alot of fun to go after, but the solitary trophy above did make for a reasonable challenge, albeit made significantly easier once run with a competent group. The peak of these packs is yet to come though.

DLC #164 - Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 - Revolution Map Pack

The Call of Duty games were a massive hit during their era, and for me, this was mainly because of the Multiplayer.

Truth be told, it's the reason I also stopped buying them after Black Ops 2, and whilst Zombies was a freshener the series needed, the DLC trophies quickly became the onion topping on a vanilla ice cream.

At this point, they're hard work for multiple reasons. Black Ops 2 is now almost 11 years old and sits 2 generations behind the current era. Half the battle is just finding people who either need the trophies too, or are just at least willing to help out others.

The Easter Egg concept carried over from Black Ops 1 is an interesting one, but doesn't stand the test of time very well. It doesn't help that the developers, in some instances, made these Easter Eggs almost impossible for smaller parties and solo players. This first DLC is a good example of that.

Revolution sees the release of the Die Rise Zombies map, a Skyscraper building spread over multiple floors, which leads to alot of tight, close quarters gameplay. In comparison to previous Zombies mode maps, as well as some of the ideas presented with other DLC packs in Black Ops 2, it's actually a fairly basic map with little in the way of unqiue level mechanics and standout features. I think that's the nice way of suggesting it's just a little bit dull.

The DLC also adds the "Turned" game mode, which gets a little bit of focus from the trophy list too. This game mode for 4 players see 1 person assume the role of the human, and the 3 others spawn in as zombies. The human has to fight the zombies off, whilst the zombies have to kill the human, and in doing so, will take their turn as the human player. Whoever racks up the most points within a specified time limit is the winner. It's a fun little party-esque mode, with fast and frenetic gameplay, but certainly lacks depth and feels like a little bit of a tack-on.

The pack also adds 10 new trophies, which follow the standard format carried over from Black Ops 1. The new Die Rise map gets 7 dedicated trophies, and the Turned game mode gets the remaining 3.

The "High Maintenance" trophy, awarded for being the architect of their instruction, is the Easter Egg reward for this particular map. It's not a challenging Easter Egg at all. In fact, I think it's one of the simplest out of any I've attempted across both Black Ops 1 and 2, containing as little as 7 steps and, in my case at least, completed within just 5 rounds of zombies.

The only thing worth noting about it is the fact that it does require 4 players to complete, and there isn't a compromise on that. One of the steps within the Easter Egg process requires all 4 players to simultaneously step onto a panel, so the requirement for a full party is mandatory to progression on this.

Otherwise, this can be done within less than an hour, and even the other trophies for additional tasks aren't really that challenging. Unlike the Easter Egg, these can all be done solo too.

The 3 Turned trophies do have the potential to cause some issues, especially the "Polyarmory" trophy, awarded for getting a kill with each primary weapon in a Public Match. You scale through a list of weapons each time you obtain a kill, very much like Gun Game, and the final weapon is a pistol, which requires about 13 bullets to kill a zombie. This is far too many to do easily in such a fast paced mode where possession of the human character changes very frequently, but I somehow had this trophy already prior to finishing off the pack, so I can't really testify to it's true difficulty.

Just like Die Rise, you also need to have 4 players to start a game of Turned, which is also going to provide challenges at this stage in the game's life cycle. There aren't many people playing this anymore, and of that select group, they certainly aren't playing Turned.

Maximum party requirements aside, it's not a bad opener to Black Ops 2. These packs definitely get more challenging, that's for sure, but it's least a starting point to build on.

Platinum #121 - Borderlands 2

 Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

It's hard to believe that it's been over 10 years since I earned my first trophy in this game. Since then, Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, Tales of the Borderlands and Borderlands 3 have landed, and we've seen 2 subsequent generations of console hit within the same time period.

That seems like a long time for a game that ultimately falls within the middle of the difficulty spectrum, but it'll make sense why in due course. It hasn't been a journey without it's bumps in the road, and this is ultimately a titled I re-visited multiple times.

Borderlands 2, a direct sequel from Borderlands 1, follows 4 new vault hunters, as they attempt to prevent main protagonist, Handsome Jack, from taking over Pandora and it's inhabitants. It turns out that Handsome Jack has a plan to farm Eridium in order to forcefully open another vault, which will only open without intervention every 200 years, meaning the Eridium is being used to immorally accelerate this process. Your goal is to stop him, and naturally, as a vault hunter, claim the vault as your own instead.

The game looks and feels fairly similar to the original Borderlands title. It still has a unique cell-shading art design, heavy RPG mechanics such as looting for weapons/equipment, levelling up and spending skill points on character development and tons of quests/side content.

There are some small tweaks here and there, but for the most part, it's more of the same, and I think it's a formula that works. The graphics are great and the variety keeps the game fresh - From enemies, environments and weaponry - everything feels like it changes regularly enough to keep things feeling dynamic and more like you're part of a big, vast open world game. The trump card for Borderlands has always been it's characters, and they're still vibrant and full of personality here, right from the cast of playable characters through to the enemies you'll encounter at ground level as you progress through the game. The dialogue is funny and the main characters throughout the story are fleshed out with great care and attention from how they look to what they say. It's the game's biggest strength by far and contributes to a enjoyable ride, even if the trophy list doesn't.

Speaking of which, the main game contains 51 trophies across the main list, all of which are related to the main Borderlands 2 story experience. The only variation you get within this entire package is to what extent you play through the story with others, allowing for up to 4 players to complete the game together in co-op mode. Outside of this, it is purely a Single Player experience and does not contain any other added game modes - Just how it was in Borderlands 1.

There isn't any sort of mandatory requirement to play any part of this game in Co-op mode, and you can achieve the Platinum trophy purely as a solo player, despite some of these trophies being designed for Co-operative play. The condition to this is that you will need a second controller to be able to play in split-screen to achieve some of these said trophies, as well as using it as an aide in other ways, which will be explained in further detail soon.

The "Cool Story, Bro" trophy, awarded for Defeating Jack, is the main trophy within this list, and will be awarded upon completion of the main questline. There are no options for selecting a difficulty level and I didn't run into any real challenges on my way towards the end of the game. Enemy levels will scale in accordance to your own for most of the way and you always seem to find generously distributed loot that continuously makes you stronger, meaning you're always ahead of the curve. The challenges from this list definitely come from outside the main story.

Just as a side note to the story, I did originally start this game in a Co-operative party with a group of mates, and shelved the game half-way through when they got bored. I came back to it at a later date in an attempt to finish it, got side-tracked by some additional trophies which proved too frustrating to persevere with at the time, and shelved the game for a second time without still having beaten the story. I finished it eventually on my third re-visit. The list contains a further 15 trophies related to natural progression within the main story via beating certain quests, which is ultimately a large chunk of this list.

The "Challenge Accepted" trophy, awarded for Completing level 1 of all non-level specific challenges with a single character, is one of the aforementioned trophies which were the source of frustration whilst attempting to complete this list.

The challenges feature provides the player with a huge list of in-game challenges, related to a variety of different things within the game. Each individual challenge is stacked into and up to 5 different levels, increasing the cumulative total for every level. For the most part, they're fairly simple, and naturally achievable as you progress through the game, and the trophy only requires you to fulfil the first level of each challenge. On paper, it doesn't sound too bad.

However, this is also where most people have come unstuck with this Platinum, specifically over 1 challenge. The JEEEEEENKINSSSSS!!! challenge requires you to kill Jimmy Jenkins, a Jet Loader who randomly appears when opening certain types of crates. There are various methods plastered around testifying to their success rate, but this just ultimately comes down to aimless grinding and luck.

When I said above that I stopped playing the game on my second visit to Borderlands 2 because of frustrations with certain trophies - This is exactly what I meant. I settled on a method which involved taking a route around Opportunity and opening around 14 of the crate types he can usually be found in, quitting and reloading in order to start the route again after every unsuccessful run. I did this for 3/4 hours, on 3 separate sessions before getting completely bored of it and quitting. The worst thing was, I knew this was purely a case of sweeping the mess under the carpet, and it would still be there to clean up later, and even when I came back to the game for the final time, it still took me a handful of hours until I eventually managed to find him.

It's also important to note, you have to reach the highest level of some challenges, in order to unlock level 1 of different challenges that aren't accessible from the beginning. Amongst this, you'll be required to kill 750 enemies from point blank range with a shotgun and 200 enemies with rocket launcher splash damage. They're really tedious requirements and I'm not sure why every challenge isn't instantly accessible from the beginning, for no other reason than to annoy the player.

The "Capped Out...For Now" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 50, requires you to achieve the highest possible character level in the game. This is exactly the same as Borderlands 1, which also contained a trophy for reaching the maximum possible level.

As was also the same in Borderlands 1, it doesn't look like you can achieve this in a full entire playthrough of the game. Even after beating the main questline and every single side quest, I only managed to reach level 34. The amount of experience required to reach the top is just shy of 3.5M, which is obviously alot. In Borderlands 1, this would have extended into around halfway through a second run of the game, but I used the DLC content to help me grind the remainder of the way. There's a recurring side quest in the Mr. Torque's Campaign of Carnage DLC which awards almost 10,000 experience per run for a 1:45 race, which is the most effective grinding method.

This seemed like a much more viable option than running through the game on New Game+ to continue levelling up, even though the car handling mechanics are truly awful in this game. I get they're not a core focus, but as someone who ending up taking advantage of the racing side quests to level my characters, it needs to be mentioned how bad they are.

The "Thresher Thrashed" trophy, awarded for Defeating Terramorphous the Invincible, mirrors vibes of Crawmerax the Invincible from Borderlands 1. Crawmerax was added later in as part of the Secret Armoury of General Knoxx DLC, but was a raid boss designed to be tackled by a full Co-operative party at the highest level with the best equipment available.

Terramorphous is the exact Borderlands 2 equivalent to this, except contained within the main game. Once you beat the main story, you'll gain access to this raid boss as part of separate side quest called "You. Will. Die. Seriously". How would you expect someone 10 years down the line to beat a raid boss specifically designed to be beaten by a party of 4 players maxed out to the highest level?

Thankfully, there's a method that still allows a solo player to do this. If you invite a second player into the game via split screen, you can occupy a certain space on the battlefield where Terramorphous cannot reach and subsequently harm the player. This is crucial because, for as long as at least 1 player is within the boundary of the arena at any one time, Terramorphous health will not regenerate, which is the key to defeating him. It allows you to idly sit the second player here for the entirety of the fight, whilst my main character kept going back in and chipping away at his health bar.

The downside to this approach was it still took me around 5 uninterrupted hours to do this solo, using the weaponry I had to keep gradually taking away his enormous levels of health, succumbing very frequently to his overly powerful attacks. Dying alot doesn't matter as long as the idle player is sitting safely in the right spot and the fight becomes a matter of perseverance. He did drop some exceptionally good loot that allowed me to take down some of the DLC raid bosses which were giving me trouble, and there's no way I would have been able to get a full party of players this far down the game's life cycle, so it's a big stroke of luck that this method works.

Just one final thing to note, in Borderlands 1, the trophy list encouraged you to dabble with each of the 4 playable characters by making you earn a certain amount of kills with each of their relevant action skills. This was a fairly easy task, which returns in Borderlands 2, but on a much greater scale.

The "So Much Blood!" trophy, awarded for Gunzerking continuously for 90 seconds, will require you to reach level 25 with the Gunzerker in order to spend enough skill points on the skill tree in order to Gunzerk for 90 seconds.

You'll also need to do the same thing for the Assassin, reaching level 25 in order to acquire enough skill points, which will allow you to stay in Zero's deception mode for 10 seconds straight. Zero was my main character, so I didn't need to worry about doing this, but if your main character is the Siren or Commando, who only require you to reach level 5 to unlock their action skill and earn their character-specific trophy, then you'll need to playthrough the game twice to level 25 with the other 2 characters, which will be painful to do.

After the amount of time I'd already spent on both this main list, and the DLC amongst it all, it just about summed up my experience with this game to realise I still had one final obstacle ahead of me - To get another character to level 25 to earn his action skill trophy, though I was thankful I had already picked the Assassin as my main, and therefore did not have to do this twice. I used the same method of race grinding outlined above to level up, which meant the journey wasn't too bad, but probably still tacked on an extra 10-12 hours.

Upon overall reflection, I think there are alot of parallels to draw between Borderlands 1 and 2. Incidentally, I gave Borderlands 1 a 6/10 difficulty rating and anyone who wanted to make a case for this being slightly tougher than Borderlands 1 wouldn't get much pushback from me. The horrendous RNG around finding Jimmy Jenkins, as well as the Terramorphous raid boss, would easily be enough justification to suggest this as a slightly tougher Platinum, despite much of the remainder of the list being very similar. I'd also love to be able to put a time estimation on this, but the multiple re-visits over an extended length of time and the consistent blending of DLC makes it impractical for me to commit any sort of timescale with conviction. It wasn't a short journey though, that's for sure.

For those reasons, I think a 7/10 is justifiable. It's a soft 7, but the amount of time I wasted on finding Jimmy Jenkins can't be understated, and whilst it's important to note that this won't apply to everyone, I felt like I got the rougher end of the stick with the amount of dead time I had to put into this trophy in the end, and that's just what luck can do to you sometimes. It was also extremely annoying having to put in an extra 10-12 hours on another playthrough just to get one of the character-specific trophies by reaching level 25 with the Gunzerker, and if it wasn't for the fact you can cheese Terramorphous using a split-screen, second controller method, then there's a distinct possibility we might not even be discussing this Platinum at all.

Notable Trophies -

Cool Story, Bro -Defeated Jack.
Challenge Accepted - Completed level 1 of all non-specific challenges with a single character.
Capped Out...For Now - Reached Level 50.
Thresher Thrashed - Defeated Terramorphous the Invincible.
So Much Blood! - Gunzerked continuously for 90 seconds.

Hardest Trophy -

Challenge Accepted

Completed level 1 of all non-specific challenges with a single character

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.