Trophies - Rank Them (Difficulty, Design, etc)

[Digital-Nitrate]

Now that the Trophy system has really begun to hit it's stride, what with 36 games currently available with trophies making it a total of 1,327 possible trophies so far, I thought maybe it would be fun to start a thread where we can share our opinions about a lot of the individual trophies.

For instance, which ones do you think are the hardest to get, and which ones are the easiest?

How about the design and look of the trophies themselves?

I know some of the early trophies not only looked extremely generic, but in some of the games they often use the exact same trophy image for lots of different achievements. 👎

However, recently, many of the games are coming out with really interesting and unique trophies for each achievement in a game. 👍


So what do you think?


BTW: for those curious, here is the breakdown of the total number of trophies as of December 23, 2008:

1,842 Trophies

• 33 Platinum
• 141 Gold
• 372 Silver
• 1296 Bronze

Here are the platinum trophies (listed by when they were made available):

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune --- Warhawk --- Ferrari Challenge

Buzz! Quiz TV --- AQUANAUT'S HOLIDAY --- Burnout Paradise

Wipeout HD --- NBA 09: The Inside --- Blitz: The League II

Dead Space --- Eye of Judgement --- Rock Band 2

Bioshock --- Midnight Club: Los Angeles --- Far Cry 2

Mercinaries 2 --- GTA IV --- LittleBigPlanet

MotorStorm Pacific Rift --- Battlefield: Bad Company --- Quantum of Solace

Resistance 2 --- Tom Clancy's EndWar --- Call of Duty: World at War

Mirror's Edge --- Mortal Kombat vs. DC --- Shaun White's Snowboard

Alone in the Dark: Inferno --- Sonic Unleashed --- Prince of Persia

Age of Booty --- Fallout 3 --- White Knight Chronicles

SOCOM: Confrontation --- The Lord of the Rings: Conquest --- Skate 2

Tomb Raider: Underworld --- Street Fighter IV --- F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection --- X-Blades --- Killzone 2

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard --- Resident Evil 5 --- WWE Legends Of WrestleMania

Wanted: Weapons of Fate --- Demon's Souls --- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Monsters vs. Aliens --- The Godfather II --- Trivial Pursuit

Yakuza 3

--- ---

​

 

[Jeremy Ricci]

Great thread!

The hardest, IMO, are Bioshock and WipeoutHD. Ridiculous.

 

[ceiling_fan]

Most difficult

'Beat Zico' (Wipeout HD) is the hardest trophy in any game off the top of my head. (maybe Warhawk platinum...) For those who don't know, 'Zico' is the first name of one of the developers of Wipeout HD. Basically, you have to beat his best time around a certain track in a certain vehicle. There is literally ZERO margin for error. My friend got it, he's way good and it took him six 99 lap runs (99 is the limit) and got it on lap 81 of his seventh run. Absolutely ridiculous.

Zone Master (not sure on the name) (Wipeout HD) Reach Zone 75 in zones.

Airbraker (Wipeout HD) Reach zone 50 (subsonic) using only the airbrakes for steering. Somehow jamez (G.T) got this.



'That Was Some Bug' (Warhawk) I can't imagine someone getting this in a random match. You have to kill an enemy flying a jetpack by hitting him with your plane. Pretty hilarious, but I bet 1% of those who have this got it legit. (Funny name and idea IMO)

Platinum (Warhawk) Self-Explanatory, and probably the rarest trophy on Playstation Network

General (Warhawk) Achieve General rank in Warhawk. Pretty easy except that you need 275000 experience...

More to come...

 

[Digital-Nitrate]

The only games I have with trophies that I have actually taken the time to earn many if not all of the trophies are the following:

• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• Buzz! Quiz TV
• Burnout Paradise
• LittleBigPlanet
• Mainichi Issho
• Linger In Shadows

As far as completing them, by far the easiest was Mainichi Issho, as all it takes is to view a bunch of news items... although some of the mini-games are fun, but unnecessary as far as earning the trophies. The trophies themselves are the same basic design:

Cute, but seeing as they all look the same, the novelty wears off quickly.

The game where I was able to get all the trophies the fastest was easily Linger In Shadows, but it isn't really a game, just an interesting semi-interactive video demonstration and many of the trophies are awarded by simply playing through the short demonstration.

However, there are several secret trophies some of which you must earn by discovering hidden images throughout the demo that are often very hard to find without referring to any help guides. In addition, at least here the trophies are unique looking and capture the style of the game/demo:

As far as Platinum's go, Buzz! Quiz TV so far was the easiest to get. Most of the trophies in that game can be won simply by playing a few games within each of the different gameplay modes (offline single player, offline multi-player, and online). There are several secret trophies, but almost all of them are easily discovered as you play the game. I can think of only one secret trophy that was particularly difficult, and had I not looked it up to find out what it was I likely would have never discovered it:

Spoiler

"Lightning Reactions"
Correctly answer three questions in a row in under 0.5 seconds (290+ points each)

This was also the most challenging trophy in this game... bloody difficult!

The only other trophy from Buzz that I found challenging was the gold "Barnard Award" trophy:

To earn this you must score over 5,000 points in a singleplayer game. The problem is there are only 18 questions in a singleplayer game, and it would take a minor miracle to get 17 of them answered correctly and in just .5 of a second... which is what you would need to get 5,000 points and still get one question wrong. So basically you need to not only answer each of the 18 questions correctly, but you also have to answer each one on average in less than two seconds!

The only real trick to this is to set the game so that it only ask questions form a specific sub genre that you are the most familiar with... this way not only will the questions be easier for you to answer, but even if you fail to reach 5,000 the first few times, eventually the game will run out of unique questions, and you'll start to see the same questions which of course by now you'll already know the answer.

*Although they will be in random order each time

Of course, even when you know the answer to a question, you still have to spot the right button to press, as the game randomly assigns the answer to a different button each time you play... so you can't simply memorize what button to press. In the end it is a matter of practice and patience.

I also find it helps for both this and any "Fast Finger" questions, to place a different finger on each button, two from my right hand and two from my left, this way I cut some of the reaction time down one must use to shift your thump or finger if you are only using one or two digits to cover multiple buttons.

Other than those two trophies though, the majority are easily earned simply by playing the game a lot, and not necessarily having to be great at it.

In fact, some can be won fairly easily or even automatically in just one game like the following:

The Silver "Barnard Award"

• Score over 3000 points in a singleplayer game

The Silver "He's on Fire!"

• Correctly answer ten questions in a row

The Bronze "Barnard Award"

• Score over 1500 points in a singleplayer game

The Bronze "Sofa Surfer"

• Play one Sofa vs. Sofa game

The Bronze "MyBuzz! Enthusiast"

• Play one MyBuzz! game

As you can also see from the pics, Buzz was the *second game that I'm aware of that the developer's created different looking trophies for each achievement.

*The first to do that was Warhawk.

Here are some of the other different looking trophies from Buzz:

I'll follow up later with my thoughts on the trophies from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Burnout Paradise, and LittleBigPlanet.

 

[Giancarlo]

Well there are several Rock Band 2 trophies called "???", so i'd vote for those to be the hardest to get.

 

[Apollo87]

Well there are several Rock Band 2 trophies called "???", so i'd vote for those to be the hardest to get.

As far as I know those are hidden trophies which appear once you do it and atleast every game I've seen that has trophies has some of those.

 

[klondike]

I have a few games with trohpies. I havent been pursuing them so much though, as I recently got into a nostalgia trip and is playing FF7 atm.

GTA4. I havent started my trophie hunting yet, but i will defenetly do it at some point, as I never got to complete the game my first time playing it. So the trophie addition is very nice. But I think the trophie where you have to kill and employe from rockstar online is ridicolus. They really shouldent make trophies of this kind. It is kinda imposibel to get the platinium with these kinda trophies.

Wipeout HD. I havent really been trying to get them. Kinda regret I bought the game as I havent really been playing it. Gues I was drawn by all the hype. Maybe I will take it up some day.

Ferrari Challenge. Good implemention of trophies, although compared with some other games it takes a lot of time to get them all. But by the nature of the game its hard to see how they could do it other wise.

Uncharted drakes fortune. These where very easy to get. I havent bothered to get them all, because I mistakenly completed the game on normal on my first run, so I will have to complete it twice more. Hard to unlock chrushing, and then crushing to complete all trophies.. Anyway the game is superb and I plan to play it again at some point.

 

[Dragonistic]

The Midnight Club LA platinum seems rather lengthy rather then difficult (for me anyway as a Midnight Club veteran, alot of people think it is a fiendishly difficult game though). The trophie? Get EVERY other trophy in the game, simple but each trophy must take some effort such as completing every time attack race objective (under X amount of damage and under X time).

I've not updated my GTAIV yet for the trophies, I don't see what the trophies award us with.

 

[Hereward]

For me the hardest ones are the trophy mode on pixle junk monsters..........not got one yet but I've tried....oh how I've tried LOL

 

[FoolKiller]

Some of the trophies in PAIN are downright near impossible. Even for me, who has been playing the game nearly since it launched.

 

[ceiling_fan]

Platinum club is practically unreachable in any of the game types. Therefor I will likely never acquire Ninja Pwn

 

[sesselpupser]

I have to say, Super Stardust HD's Late Boomer is pretty damn hard, a lot of the GTAIV ones are hard but only because of the time involved (and I accidentally chose the ending where Roman dies so I'll have to play through the story AGAIN to get the 100% one, unlocking friend's special abilities counts towards the completion and I was in a rush to do the story in 30 hours... Turns out I needn't have bothered as I did it in 12!), Most games with an online mode have pretty tough trophies because you have to get to like the top rank and stuff...

Battlefield Bad Company's trophies are alright, not too hard and quite easy to earn quickly except for the online trophies like the 10002 kills one, all the online badges and stuff and getting to the top rank will be a pain in the arse when all I want to do is play something else (and for that reason I probably wont bother!)

Dead Space's trophies are pretty easy too, got them all by my third playthrough... Impossible mode is pretty much anything but! Its tough to start with but I did the whole game just alternating between the plasma cutter and line gun!

And Littlebigplanet's trophies are probably the most balanced trophies there are; some games give away golds for nothing (Burnout Paradise!) and some require a stupid amount of effort just for a bronze (SSHD!), but LBP gives you bronze for easy achievements, some silver ones are easy to get but some are like, not ones you can just do (like playing a game with 3 friends), and the gold ones will take a while; having a level played by 50 people, being hearted by like 20 people and not dying once in the story mode, I think? I'm not sure. But not everyone will get those, I bet.

P.S. is anyone here on trophy level 8 yet? I'm level 7 with 34%, mainly because of too much student loan funded videogame purchasing and being very bad at getting my priorities sorted...


P.P.S. For those unsure as to what Trophies are for, I'm fairly certain they'll become relevant when Home finally comes out, I would imagine the trophy level unlocks stuff or something and having trophies for certain games will show in your space, I think. So for now they're a good way to compare how much better/worse your friends are at a certain game, as if thats even a worthwhile thing to do, and thats about it.

 

[FoolKiller]

Platinum club is practically unreachable in any of the game types. Therefor I will likely never acquire Ninja Pwn

Or King of Pain. I am not nearly as good at some of the mini-game modes.

P.P.S. For those unsure as to what Trophies are for, I'm fairly certain they'll become relevant when Home finally comes out, I would imagine the trophy level unlocks stuff or something and having trophies for certain games will show in your space, I think. So for now they're a good way to compare how much better/worse your friends are at a certain game, as if thats even a worthwhile thing to do, and thats about it.

You mean, like having a trophy case? So far, the only thing I have heard officially was possibly allowing you to get special wallpapers or themes. And even then that was just one executive saying, "It would be neat if we did this."

As it is a competing thing for Xbox Achievements I would guess that they get you about as much as those do.....nothing but bragging rights.

I think giving them any real value will turn the whole situation into a mess of people trying to cheat. I can get all of the non-rank Warhawk trophies by just getting together with some friends. Trophy whores are bad enough as it is, and giving them real value would only make it worse. If I see one more LBP level comment that says, "Heart me and I will heart you" I will scream. Anytime I see that I play the level, and unless it truly is heart worthy I rate it one star. I don't want to encourage that.

 

[Hereward]

I'm with you on the LBP thing, levels entitled "Win 7 trophys" get 1 star rating from me! I like the trophy system when it expands a game like monsters, where getting trophys is basicly sub games to the original and as such adds to the overall game. I don't get them for "points" although it is rewarding to get them.

Home is suposed to have a trophy room? where friends can go look at your trophys, not the logos you get now but 3D trophys. See pic.

 

[FoolKiller]

Home is suposed to have a trophy room? where friends can go look at your trophys, not the logos you get now but 3D trophys. See pic.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

The only actual substantial reward I have heard was just an executive thinking he would like to see something small given out as a reward.

 

[rpgcyco]

The most difficult (and IMO, stupid) trophy is Late Boomer in Super Stardust HD. I've already smashed numerous things trying to achieve it, so I think I will stop.

I wish there was a way to delete trophies. That way I could remove SSHD and pretend I never bought it.

Perhaps Housemarque haven't realised that frustrating and stupid difficulty in games, for the most part, died out over a decade ago...

 

[FoolKiller]

The most difficult (and IMO, stupid) trophy is Late Boomer in Super Stardust HD. I've already smashed numerous things trying to achieve it, so I think I will stop.

I wish there was a way to delete trophies. That way I could remove SSHD and pretend I never bought it.

Perhaps Housemarque haven't realised that frustrating and stupid difficulty in games, for the most part, died out over a decade ago...

Such frustration over a hard trophy. The game hasn't changed in anyway if you fail to achieve 100%. Heck, I only have 100% on Linger in Shadows.

Did SSHD's normal gameplay suddenly become not awesome because you couldn't get Late Boomer?

 

[rpgcyco]

Such frustration over a hard trophy. The game hasn't changed in anyway if you fail to achieve 100%. Heck, I only have 100% on Linger in Shadows.

Did SSHD's normal gameplay suddenly become not awesome because you couldn't get Late Boomer?

You're right, of course. I like the normal SSHD gameplay, but as you know, Late Boomer forces the player to play in a way that's not normal. Anyway, I will try again tonight, when hopefully I am not so tired.

 

[FoolKiller]

You're right, of course. I like the normal SSHD gameplay, but as you know, Late Boomer forces the player to play in a way that's not normal. Anyway, I will try again tonight, when hopefully I am not so tired.

I just look at trophies as an added challenge. Is it required to beat the game itself? Usually not, but when it is it is not because the game was changed to match the trophies.

I attempt to earn trophies right up to the point that I feel I can't do it anymore and then I ignore them. If I get better at the game then I may approach them later.

 

[ceiling_fan]

A funny name for a trophy in COD:WAW is 'Rough Economy' where you have to kill 3 enemies with a single round. Must be a really rough economy.

 

[TsukubaTrueno]

It's actually 2 kills with one bullet. I popped in the disc yesterday and this was the second trophy I got. Haha, I chuckled.

 

[Jeremy Ricci]

The most difficult (and IMO, stupid) trophy is Late Boomer in Super Stardust HD. I've already smashed numerous things trying to achieve it, so I think I will stop.

I wish there was a way to delete trophies. That way I could remove SSHD and pretend I never bought it.

Perhaps Housemarque haven't realised that frustrating and stupid difficulty in games, for the most part, died out over a decade ago...

Posts like these make me proud to have 100% of the SSHD trophies

 

[rpgcyco]

Posts like these make me proud to have 100% of the SSHD trophies

Nice work.

I'll get it eventually!

 

[Jeremy Ricci]

Nice work.

I'll get it eventually!

A tip for Late Bomber: If you can manage to wait for 2 ships to spawn (which will happen) you can occasionally get them to get very close and blow up 2 ships with 1 bomb, effectively giving you 3 bombs for the price of one (which will GREATLY increase your chances of getting the trophy).

Hope that helps! Just keep at it, it took me about 50 games of Bomber to get it.

 

[rpgcyco]

A tip for Late Bomber: If you can manage to wait for 2 ships to spawn (which will happen) you can occasionally get them to get very close and blow up 2 ships with 1 bomb, effectively giving you 3 bombs for the price of one (which will GREATLY increase your chances of getting the trophy).

Hope that helps! Just keep at it, it took me about 50 games of Bomber to get it.

Thanks. I got it tonight after about another 15-20 attempts. I came incredibly close on an earlier attempt, but the last bomb ship descended over the other side of a big wall of rocks and was heading in the opposite direction.

However, the time I did get the trophy, the last bomb ship dropped right next to me.

Now I need to get Shock and Awe.

 

[FoolKiller]

Now I need to get Shock and Awe.

Shock and Awe is easy in comparison. That is the ten nukes one, right?

I think I got that one by accident by just trying to get a godo score in Survival mode. I tend to hang out near nukes when I see them so that if it gets to hectic I can just set it off to free me up for a few seconds. Using that strategy I ended up getting the trophy without realizing it.

 

[ceiling_fan]

KingOfAllGames is halfway through level 12. Dayumn. The highest on my friends list is 10. I'm a couple bronzes from 7.

 

[rpgcyco]

Shock and Awe is easy in comparison. That is the ten nukes one, right?

I think I got that one by accident by just trying to get a godo score in Survival mode. I tend to hang out near nukes when I see them so that if it gets to hectic I can just set it off to free me up for a few seconds. Using that strategy I ended up getting the trophy without realizing it.

Unfortunately Shock and Awe is causing me a lot of problems too. The most I can survive for is 5 nukes, before I am all out of lives... Oh well, I'll get a lucky run some time.

I fear I am dragging this thread off topic, so here is my attempt to bring it back.

For instance, which ones do you think are the hardest to get, and which ones are the easiest?

SSHD have been the hardest for me. That said, the only other games I've got a signifcant number of trophies in are BioShock and Uncharted (100%). Uncharted would be the easiest of them two. Sure Crushing mode was a challenge, but it felt harder going from Normal to Hard, than Hard to Crushing. I died a lot less on Crushing.

How about the design and look of the trophies themselves?

I know some of the early trophies not only looked extremely generic, but in some of the games they often use the exact same trophy image for lots of different achievements. 👎

However, recently, many of the games are coming out with really interesting and unique trophies for each achievement in a game. 👍

As you say, the earlier games had one image for each type of trophy. However BioShock has unique images for each trophy and they look really good. Mirror's Edge and Far Cry 2 also have unique art, but I'm not really a fan of the Mirror's Edge images.

 

[TsukubaTrueno]

The trophy "Gunslinger" in Call of Duty: World at War is quite difficult. You have a sniper rifle and you're supposed to snipe a German General; to get this trophy you have to kill him with a pistol.

 

[ceiling_fan]

I did it, nyah nyah. You can shoot the car 4 times before it picks him up, when he gets in, shoot the car with your pistol and it'll blow up and you get it. Supposedly. I was using this strategy but I shot him accidentaly as he was getting in. Go figure