As a fun little tangent to last year’s Best of lists, I wrote up a ranking of the Platinum trophies I achieved. It was a fun enough list that I decided to do it again for 2020 so let’s take a look at the 13 Platinum trophies I got across the PlayStation 4 and new PlayStation 5 in 2020.
13. Creature in the Well
I had a great time with Creature in the Well when it originally released in 2019. I picked it up on the Switch and spent a couple nights 100%-ing the game. I even played through it again on Xbox Game Pass while waiting for some game or other to install. So when it came to PlayStation back in March I figured I’d hop back into it to Platinum the game. I even tried to get a review code to Platinum it before release. Our friends over at popagenda graciously provided one but it didn’t come in until the day the game released so I wound up hopping in to burn through the game on that Friday. As a result, 5 hours and 25 minutes later, I became the fifth person to Platinum the game. Still a great game that is only here at the bottom of the list because it and the next couple games were basically just replays of games I’d already enjoyed.
12. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
For the record, I loved my time with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales so much that I almost immediately hopped into this Remaster and Platinumed the PlayStation 5 version BEFORE Insomniac released the patch that allowed people to carry over their PlayStation 4 saves and just automatically pop all of the Trophies they had already unlocked. I did use that trick to pop all of the DLC trophies though… Still as great as the game was in 2018 (if not made better thanks to the 60 fps mode on the PlayStation 5 that just feels so good).
11. Persona 5 Royal
I put well over 200 hours across two playthroughs into Platinuming Persona 5 the first time so I didn’t know if I was going to pick up this version at all, let alone try to Platinum the game again. But Atlus cleverly drew me in by making this version’s Platinum entirely achievable on a single playthrough (namely by doing away with the New Game Plus requirements and 100% the Persona compendium). The restructuring of the game’s trophies with a focus on the new features for this version just bumps this up to the top of the “games I pretty much already Platinumed” portion of the list.
10. The Last of Us Part II
Now we get into the portion of the list that was all new this year. The Last of Us Part II bottoms out this section of the list because it’s entirely likely that the decision to 100% the game for the Platinum accentuated some of the things I didn’t like about the game: namely the pacing. Thinking the game was already a bit bloated and more of a slog than I would have liked, jumping back into a New Game Plus run of the game in order to track down and find all of the collectibles and finish upgrading all the weapons at skills (which simply can’t be done in a single run) really highlighted the game’s length. Kudos to Naughty Dog for dropping the difficulty requirements that the first game included but also un-kudos to them for adding Grounded Mode trophies that are currently keeping my trophies on the game from being at 100%.
9. Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer was a beautiful game and another one of my favorites of the year. The only reason the Platinum ranks this low is because some missable trophies meant I had to play this one through a second time as well. My preference of it over The Last of Us Part II made it feel like less of a chore but I still would have appreciated the Platinum quest a bit better if I hadn’t needed to replay it in order to get the either/or trophies of “Sealed Lips” and “Loose Lips.” On the plus side, the second run did introduce me to a character I had completely missed the first time around.
8. Maneater
Maneater was just a fun game. Nothing overly great about it. But also nothing overly bad. It just made for a couple days of mindless fun as I spent a weekend 100%-ing the game and terrorizing the Gulf as an overly aggressive shark. The trophy list itself was pretty straightforward for an open-world game (level up to the max level, collect everything, and beat the game) but it was fun nonetheless.
7. Immortals Fenyx Rising
For my last Platinum of 2020, Immortals Fenyx Rising was a fun and engaging new offering from the Ubisoft factory of open-world action RPG franchises. It was another one that, like Maneater, was more or less easy to complete if you were aiming to 100% the game. Thankfully, though, there wasn’t a trophy for collecting every treasure chest or something so it wasn’t really a 100% completion kind of deal. I’m really just glad I looked up the trophies before I had completed all of the Arena-based Vaults of Tartaros because the “Look, No Hands!” trophy requires you to kill enemies in those vaults using the traps, which I had definitely not been doing for a good chunk of the game and if I had completed too many of them, I wouldn’t have been able to snag that one without restarting. Also, thank guides for helping me identify all of the different mounts, Phoenix skins, and Wings needed to nab the “Fenyx the Horseman,” “Ornithology,” and “Wing Nut” trophies because those would have been a big old pain without help. Also also, more open world games like this that can be completed in less than 50 hours, please.
6. Ghost of Tsushima
Speaking of, thank you Ghost of Tsushima for being another great open world that didn’t take a billion years to explore and complete. I certainly could have done with about 20 fewer fox shrines but Tsushima Island was a beautiful enough setting that I didn’t mind 100%-ing this one. One of the best game features that helped make the Platinum quest for this one easier was the decision to turn nearly every location you find into a Fast Travel point. It meant if I passed a spot in the middle of a mission or on the way to one, I could very easily return once I went back into “complete every location” mode. I even went back and picked up the New Game Plus trophies to test out my new 4K television and enjoy the beauty again (probably will be stuck at the current 87% trophy completion though since I don’t imagine I’ll be going back to Legends mode anytime soon for the four DLC trophies I’m missing.
5. Bugsnax
When the PlayStation 5 came out, I made sure to take a few days off work so I could just enjoy the launch line-up without much in the way of distractions. A side effect of that was that I pretty messed up my sleep schedule during that week and spent pretty much 12-13 hours playing all of Bugsnax and getting the Platinum in more or less a single sitting. It was a great, quirky time though and I loved pretty much every minute of it. I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition version of the game on PlayStation 4 so I might load it up again when that eventually ships in March and play through it again for the double dip trophy.
4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Another game, like Bugsnax, that I sort of just barreled through at the PlayStation 5 launch, Miles Morales was yet another great “bite-sized” open world adventure this year. Since the game didn’t have nearly the amount of side things scattered around Manhattan that the original 2018 game did, and since Ganke gives Miles an app that can just spawn any of the crimes needed, it was a way more achievable Platinum than the original game. (Though as I have already covered above, I didn’t have a problem going back and replaying the much longer installment either). I could have done without the trophy requiring beating the game on New Game Plus but I had enjoyed the game well enough that I just sort of raced through for another 4-5 hours one night after I finished it the first time.
3. Marvel’s Avengers
While being the 5th achiever of the Creature in the Well Platinum is potentially a cooler achievement, I would argue my placement on PSNProfiles as the 43rd person to obtain the Marvel’s Avengers Platinum is in fact more impressive given the difference between the two player bases. Really, I just happened to luck into getting the last couple of trophies to unlock shortly after the patch that fixed them was released. I was also very lucky that one of my Hulk Weekly challenges in that first week or two was Complete 15 Hives because that got me a good chunk of the way toward the dreaded 50 needed for one of the trophies. The fact that I kept playing even after getting the Platinum in order to complete every character’s Challenge cards and get 3 of them up to the max power of 150 (with the latest Kate Bishop even up to 149 as of this writing) is probably worth something too. Or it was just a huuuuuuge waste of time. Or maybe both?
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake
When I first saw that there were trophies attached to completing every chapter of Final Fantasy VII Remake on Hard Mode (where you can’t use items or restore MP at benches) I thought there might be a chance I wouldn’t really bother with it. But I wound up loving the game’s combat so much that I wanted to give it a try. Each chapter, I would find myself thinking ahead to the boss and dreading how I was going to make it work and defeat them with those handicaps. But at some point, Final Fantasy VII Remake forcing me to play on Hard Mode made something click for me and gave me a deeper and newfound appreciation for the depth of the combat. It led me to try things I hadn’t bothered with in my original playthrough and just gave me an all-around better appreciation for the game. Unlike The Last of Us Part II, chasing the Final Fantasy VII Remake Platinum led me to enjoying the game even more and helped make it That 10/10 Phenomenal Game I reviewed it as and led it to being my favorite Game of 2020. But it falls just shy of my favorite Platinum…
1. Astro’s Playroom
Top to bottom, Astro’s Playroom is a love letter to PlayStation and that includes its trophies. An incredibly charming title that can be completed and Platinumed in just a few hours, Astro’s Playroom managed to put the same attention and care that they showered the game with into their trophy list, with its own nods to PlayStation’s 26-year lineage. With trophy names like “Jason!,” “Adequate, Boy…” and “No No No Noooooo!” even seeing a trophy pop had me laughing and/or crying happy nostalgia tears and/or both. Pure joy from start to finish: Astro’s Playroom was my favorite Platinum Trophy of 2020.