The Best and Worst Kind of Playstation Trophies

First introduced on the PlayStation 3. Similarly to Xbox’s achievements, PlayStation trophies are a bunch of collectables you can gather to improve your gamer profile. They can also add replay value to most games with difficult challenges that only the die-hard gamers will unlock. While I personally love unlocking trophies, not everything about them is great. Here are 8 things that make the best/worst trophy.

You buy a new game, you start playing, you’re learning the controls, and before you master them, you end up dying. For most games, it ends there. Not for the Dark Souls series. The first time you die in Dark Souls, you earn a bronze trophy called ‘This Is Dark Souls.’ While this may feel like the developers mocking you, they are, in fact, warning you. Warning you that their game will be hard to complete and to get used to dying over and over. What’s great about this is that it shows you the challenge and difficulty of the game, and prepares you for a great and rewarding journey that requires pre-planned strategies, patience, and perfectly timed attacks.

While the ‘You Died’ trophy can warn you about the difficulty ahead in a game, trophies like ‘Nature’ in ‘Flower’ can suggest that you’re in for a long, potentially tedious experience. The ‘Nature’ trophy, for example, involves blooming 10,000 flowers—something that isn’t necessarily easy or hard, but rather time-consuming. It also takes longer to unlock this seemingly mundane trophy than it does to complete the game. There is nothing challenging and rewarding about these types of trophies. Doing the same thing repeatedly lacks creativity from the developers and can drive players mad.

The Metal Gear Solid series excels in this aspect, offering trophies that tell you what to do but not how to do it. For instance, ‘Snake Bit’ from Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater requires you to poison a guard. While it may sound easy enough, there are no guns that poison your enemies in Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater. To achieve this trophy, you have to catch a live snake and then throw it at an enemy. It makes you think and encourages creativity, for which you get rewarded.

The thinking trophies are great, but the hidden trophies are not. While developers may believe that concealing the trophy guide encourages exploration and improves replay value for players, the result is far from it. I often just Google a trophy guide list when I encounter hidden trophies because they cause frustration and can lead to countless boring hours trying to unlock them. Thank goodness these hidden trophies weren’t around during the PlayStation 1 era.

The best thing about PlayStation trophies is the platinum trophy. Earning all the trophies in a game rewards you with the ultimate platinum trophy—a great, big achievement that looks impressive on your profile. It recognizes your dedication to a game and provides the satisfaction of completing everything it has to offer. It also allows you to move on to other games, with the hope of unlocking more glorious platinum trophies.

While most platinum trophies are satisfying and rewarding, some fall short because they require little or no skill to achieve. Games like The Last Airbender and King Kong are notorious for their extremely easy trophies. Players often play them solely to unlock the platinum trophy, increasing their profile level, which can be seen as a form of cheating. Platinum trophies for Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead and Tales From The Borderlands are also relatively easy, as all you have to do is finish the game. Developers lack creativity with these trophies, which is a shame because a well-designed list of trophies can enhance replay value after completing the story.

A good trophy requires the perfect balance of skill, difficulty, and reward. Trophies in fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat, can be very challenging, but they contribute to improving your skills. For example, the ‘Knockout’ trophy in Mortal Kombat X demands the execution of a perfect 10-hit combo with every character in the game. While it is very hard and time-consuming, mastering a 10-hit combo with every character enhances your fighting abilities, making you a better player and increasing your chances of winning more matches online, which is a significant plus.

Some trophies are very easy to achieve, while others are quite challenging. However, the most annoying trophies are the ones that require no skill whatsoever—only luck. These luck-based trophies are common in games like FIFA and Call of Duty. For example, the ‘Keeper’s Best Friend’ trophy in FIFA requires you to prevent a goal with a sliding goal line clearance, something that depends on being at the right place at the right time. The same can be said for Call of Duty: Black Ops III’s ‘In Their Sleep’ trophy. These trophies are impossible to achieve without some luck, and you may never unlock them (and that all-important platinum trophy) because of it.

And there we go—8 things that make the best/worst PlayStation Trophies/Xbox Achievements. Thanks for reading. Please like, share, and comment. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter X @rhysbritton.