It's been a while, but my PlayStation Plus monthly reviews are back. We are doing these in blog form now as it's much easier for me to guarantee that I can do them every month.
If you're new here, welcome. These PlayStation Plus reviews were once a monthly video on my YouTube channel. In the videos I would take a look at each game being offered as part of PlayStation Plus for the month from a trophy hunter's perspective, letting you know exactly what going for the platinum will be like for each game, and that's exactly how we're going to continue doing it.
So, let's take a look.
FIFA 22 (PS4/PS5)
Difficulty - 3/10
Time - 60+ Hours
Online Trophies - Absolutely
Ah, it's one of those months. We're getting a sports game that fans of the series will already own and for everyone else will be a pass. Who are these inclusions actually for?
I unfortunately fall in to the latter category. If you have seen any of previous streams you will be well aware of my football knowledge. Apparently, Tottenham are going to do the quadruple this year. I will admit that giving away both versions of the game is a nice touch, we will be getting both the PS4 and the PS5 version. There is the possibility of auto-popping some of the trophies between the versions, but I would do some research into it before trying as some won't and some require extra wins etc. to get them to pop.
Looking at the trophy list for this one, I must admit that it does look like quite interesting and rounded. There are four game modes and the trophies are pretty evenly spread across them. Having said that, FIFA Ultimate Team does have the most trophies as it is their money maker. The list as a whole does look pretty straight forward and doesn't look too difficult, even with the online trophies. The only problem I can see and as you might expect, there is quite a lot of grinding involved.
If you are a casual trophy hunter and just want to grab a few easy trophies and move on, then that's possible as well, because there are quite a few easy ones. For example, play a women's international football match. The sad thing is only 16% of players have this trophy, while 24% have the trophy for winning the Champion's League.
You can check out the full trophy guide at PSNProfiles here.
Tribes of Midgard (PS4/PS5)
Difficulty - 3/10
Time - 50+ Hours
Online Trophies - All of them
Like FIFA 22, yet again, we are getting both the PS4 and PS5 version of Tribes of Midgard. Now this is actually very good news as it has been confirmed that the platinum auto-pops both ways, so you can finish either version and auto-pop the other. That's quite the rarity.
So what is Tribes of Midgard? Well it's a top down action RPG with survival elements, which allows for up to 10 players. If you have played Don't Starve, it's that sort of premise. You build by day and survive by night. The idea is to stop enemies getting to the Tree of Yggdrasil and destroying it. To make matters worse, every now and again a boss in the form of a giant (Jotunn) will show up and you'll have to take them down too. Like I said, this game is co-op for up to 10 players, so could be fun for a little while. In fact, I'll be sticking it on the slate for next week's stream.
Now when it comes to the trophies, that's where the problems arise. There are some extremely grindy ones. You will need to spend 1,000,000 souls. Reach the last season level (yes, sadly the game has seasons, similar to Fall Guys), this one can take tens of hours alone, if not reaching the hundred hour mark. You'll also have to reach the 100th day in survival mode, yet another unnecessarily grindy one. The rest of the trophies are actually fairly straight forward and you will get them from standard play, they are crafting and boss-kill related.
I think this one will just be stream and done. It seems like there is just too much to do here and apparently it does get pretty boring, pretty quickly. Shame. It does look nice though.
You can check out the full trophy guide at PSNProfiles here.
Curse of the Dead Gods (PS4)
Difficulty - ?/10 (Looks very difficult)
Time - Potentially 100+ Hours
Online Trophies - Doesn't seem to be
As you can see, the final game of this month does not have much information available for it with regards to trophies.
The game itself is a 'rogue-lite', so that's not usually a good sign when it comes to trophies. The genre isn't exactly famed for having easy platinums.
The gameplay and visual style does look reminiscent of Hades. The combat does looks very weighty, satisfying, and complex, with many build variations. Rogue-lite/likes really aren't my thing, but I must say I'm actually looking forward to trying this one next week.
Trophy-wise this one looks like quite the challenge. The first half of the list is dedicated to defeating the various bosses and completing the game. While the second half looks to be dedicated to the more difficult, grindy trophies. Things like, write all bestiary entries with their complete sketches, which I'm guessing translates to kill all the enemies many times each. Also, after doing a bit of research, it does seem that there are trophies tied to defeating all the bosses without taking any damage. That sounds fun.
Again, this game does look like it will be fun for a little while, but if you are actually serious about getting the platinum prepare to 'git gud'.
That's it for this month. Let me know what you think of the offerings by leaving a comment. I think Curse of the Dead Gods looks like a decent pick, but from a trophy hunter's perspective there really isn't much on offer here. Back to the backlog I guess.