I’ve been watching Playstation Access plat vids–both list videos on when to go for the plat and what to expect in a plat run, and actual plat runs. I’m including the video about what a game must have in order to make a plat run appealing. The first is loving the game, which you would think would be a given, but some people are plat hunters and don’t care for which game they hunt the plat. I call it not-platting because I think it’s funny, but also because the first two times I went for plats (Dark Souls, Dark Souls III), I told myself I wasn’t platting.
I am not a trophy hunter. At all. The reason is because I know that I will become obsessive about it once I start a plat. It happened with all the Dark Souls plats and the Hades plat as well. Fortunately, the latter plat is one of the most organic ones to get. Very little grinding, which made me happy. Here’s the thing. There’s always the grueling trophy or two that a game throws into the plat list that makes it such a pain to get. In the case of the Souls games, it’s the covenant items. It wasn’t terrible in the first game because you only needed ten (if I remember correctly). In the third game, however, you needed thirty of the item and the drop rate from farming was two or so an hour. Three or four if I was lucky. It was so painful, I begged Ian to let me kill him for the last dozen-and-a-half or so items I needed for one covenant. The second game, which I platted last of the three, also had a requirement of 30 covenant items twice, I believe (maybe three), but it didn’t seem quite as grindy as the third game. Why? Because the drop rate was a tad better. 3 an hour versus 2. It was still grindy as fuck, but didn’t wear me down as much as the third game did.
By the end of the not-plat for the third game, I was hating the game with all my might. It’s a good thing I gave in and asked Ian to let me kill him several times in a row for the last bunch of covenant items I needed because I have a feeling I might not have played the game again if I had to finish the plat the old-fashioned way–grinding it out.
I don’t see the need for excessive grinding at all in a plat. To me, a plat should celebrate a game and remind you of why you love it. It should bring a smile to your face as the trophy pops not make you feel like a hollow husk inside. Which is how I felt with each of the Dark Souls plats. Also, a sense of relief, but it was mixed with anger that I had to go through all that. I didn’t play Dark Souls III for months after the plat because I hated it so much by the end. Thankfully, I got over the hatred in time and now love it as much as ever, but it took many months and fear in my heart.
I was thinking about Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) because it’s one of my favorite games ever. I played through it three times and contemplated a fourth, in part to plat it. In reviewing the trophies to plat it, I quickly remembered why I didn’t do it. One, there’s a rhythm guitar game in it that I could not do. At all. Even on easy, I couldn’t make it through without making mistakes. For the trophy, you have to do all the songs on the hardest difficulty or something like that. There is no way I can do that.
Which, before we get to the second reason I’ll never plat the game, let’s talk about accessibility. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it because I am a firm believer in creative freedom and for developers to make the games they want to make. I don’t think every game has to be for every person and I use myself as an example. I can’t play first-person games because they make me nauseous to varying degrees. What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow is supposedly one of the best indie games ever. I bought it, even though I knew it was first-person just because it was supposed to be so good. I gritted my teeth as I played through it, not feeling the love because it was making me nauseous as I walked throughout the game. Then, we hit the flying bit and I instantly quit the game because I was thisclose to throwing up. I have never felt that awful playing a game before. I tweeted about it and the dev had a tip that might help. But the negativity I felt in that moment meant I instantly returned the game and never touched it again.
There’s another game, Paradise Killer (Kaizen Game Works), that was a really cool and quirky murder mystery game that I really wanted to play. It’s funky and cool, and I liked it so much. But, I was constantly nauseous as I played it, which meant I could only play in fifteen/twenty minute increments. Then, after the third or fourth play session, I just couldn’t any longer. So I regretfully stopped playing it and moved on. The thing is, I don’t expect to be able to play every game and most of the games I like play are from small indie devs. I want to support them as much as possible, which includes not expecting them to be as tricked out as Triple A games. It’s my long-winded way of saying that I’m tired of all the focus on how hard FromSoft games are. But that’s another post for anothen day. Let’s get back to plats!
The second big reason I won’t be getting the Night in the Woods plat is because there’s an in-game video game you can play. It’s fun, but the kind of thing that I’ll play for twenty minutes before getting bored and moving on. You have to beat the game in order to get the plat. The game isn’t easy. That’s not going to happen. There are other smaller reasons such as having to find all the sketches around town, but I would be willing to do those if it weren’t for the computer game and the guitar DDR mini-game.
I almost quit the Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) plat because of the platforming and I’m not getting the Cozy Grove (Spry Fox) plat for another year if at all. That one has two trophies that are a pain in the ass. One is to play in three seasons. Oh, I should say that the seasons are two months long, followed by a month of ‘in-between’. That one is hard because you have to keep track of the seasons, but technically, you only have to play three times to unlock that trophy. The worst one, the one I’m stuck on, is given for breaking 150 tools. That sounds like it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Well. Let me tell you. I’ve been playing the game for ten months and have reached 47.3% to getting this trophy. So I’m not exaggerating when I say it might take me another year to get it.
Why is it so hard? because there are only four or five tools that qualify for breaking. The pickaxe, the dowsing rod, the machete, and the shovel. All the tools you have to craft. Each one is used for something specific. Hopefully, it’s obvious what they do. There are spots around the world that use those tools. Spots to dig, chop, mine, dowse. Back when I was playing this game seriously, I would do all that every day. Then, it was like, I’ll do it once every week or so. Now, I’m back to doing it all the time because…maybe I have the plat in the back of my mind? Anyway, a tool breaks every…shit. I just thought of something. You could upgrade your tools and I have the highest upgrade of each one. I wonder if they would have broken more often if I had the shittier versions! Fuuuuuuck.
Anyway, I do want the plat, but there’s not much more I can do about it. The world runs in real time so there’s no way I can push things to respawn quicker than they do already. I could probably play more often because surely the places to dig at least would respawn more than once a day. If I keep playing the game once a day as I have for the past ten months (except when I was in the hospital), I’ll get it eventually. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing else I can do.
If I could eliminate one thing from the plat requirements, it’s this: please stop putting in meaningless trophies that are so painful to acquire for no good reason. I think the plat should be about exploring every nook and cranny of the game, yes, but not about grinding to the point of boredom. I’m not in charge of plats, though , so I presume it’s not going to change any time soon. We’ll see what I need to do for the not-plat of Elden Ring in a month or so.