How I went from an indecisive gamer to a trophy hunter
How did I develop a trophy obsession? Let me take you back a fair way. I’ve been playing games since I was around 4 or 5 years old. When I was growing up I had an original ATARI, and used to sit 40cm from our 12inch analog TV and play frogger, space invaders, and many other games for hours on end. These were some of the best memories of my childhood, working out how to get through a 2D level on a jungle maze game, that I will never for the life of me remeber the name of. As the years advanced, I went from an ATARI to a SNES, then to a N64 and a PS1. I spent hours on end playing Goldeneye and Banko Kazooie on the N64, but my real love was my Playstation 1. Crash Bandicoot, THPS, Driver, Metal Gear Solid, to name a few. I still have my PS1 tucked away in a box with all my other retro consoles, but I think my days of 32 bit gaming are well and truly gone. The PlayStation 5 has spoiled me – it’s the mainconsole I touch these days, though I do plan to go back and play some PS3 and Vita titles very soon.
For a long time I played a lot of differnt games, but I always struggled to finish them. It wasn’t as though I wasn’t enjoying them, more the fact that I found another game before finishing the previous titile, and moved on leaving the best parts of the story behind. Hours of content wasted, and because of this I missed countless experiences in classic games all through the PS2, PS3 and PS4 era. Sitting on my shelves are dozens of unplayed, or partially played games, not to mention my online library. How did it get like this? Well, over the past couple of years I have been playing Rainbow Six Siege almost exclusively. I actually became quite good and hit diamond rank on multiple occasions. One thing was wrong though, I didn’t really enjoy the game; I enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching a certain rank, but I’ve never known something that I’ve spent so many hours on that I thought, really? Is this what I want to be doing?
As a child I sat down and did my best to complete every game that I played. I even got to the stage where I attempted to speed run games that I had completed, simply because I felt there was more to do. So, surely there is more to a game that slugging through a story and then never really touching it again? I always felt the game was somewhat incomplete, but I didn’t really know why. I had definitely tried my hand at trophy hunting before, I had a few platinums from some of my favourite games, but that was it really. I would say, “I’ll ge the platinum on this game” but never really follow through with it.
Fast forward to the end of 2021. I have a brand new PS5 sitting there, and the only game I’ve played on it is R6 Siege. Well, after 3 months of playing every night for 4+ hours after work, I took a break from the game. This time, instead of taking a break from gaming all together I decided to play some of the other games that are sitting on my shelf/library. I knew I wouldn’t last doing this if I didn’t set myself a goal for each game. It had been around 3-4 years since my last platinum trophy, Bloodborne – my 7th overall platinum – and after some research I decided what better goal to set than obtaining the platinum trophy for the next game that I played.
The next game I played was Astros Playroom. Despite this game being a fantastic experience, the old me would’ve played through all of the levels once, beaten the final boss, and called it a day. If I done this, I would’ve missed what I believe to be the most captivating part of the game – gathering the collectibles and building the picture/story of the PlayStation legacy.
Herein lied the secret to reigniting my passion for gaming. A path to “completing” a game, a goal that has only one outcome. A platinum trophy. Once I obtained this platinum, I felt a sense of excitiment, fullfilment – something I hadn’t had from gaming in a long time, somethign I had been greatly missing. I spent hours upon hours researching games, looking up guides and trying to decide which games to play next. I felt a new lease on my gaming life, something that I hadn’t had since 10 year old me was attempting to speedrun Banjo Kazooie for the 4th time. Besided this, I felt as though I had broken the monotony of my gaming habits that had been haunting me for the past decade, at least. I was finally enjoying gaming again.
Now, I could play agame and know I will continue playing untill that shiny platinum trophy pops up in the corner of my screen. No longer do I have the anxiety of worrying about which game I will play next, or how long I will play a game for. I will still only play games that I enjoy. I will still play them how I want, but now I actually know how I want to play these games. I’m very early on in my trophy hunting journey, but I have managed to secure a handful of platinum trophies this year, which I will detail in future posts, but I can’t wait to venture further on this Trophy Obesssion journey and share it with you.
Check out PlayStation Trophy Hunting – Astro’s Playroom to read how I obtained my first platinum on my new journey. I’d love to know your thoughts