Last week, I decided that I wasn’t going to buy anymore games until I achieved Platinum or 100% Trophies on all of my current games. A bit more than a week later, how’s it going? Well, I am a bit sad that I won’t be playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for a while, but my resolve has held intact despite Black Friday’s temptations. As far as progress goes, here’s some snippets of the thoughts I’ve had so far:

Call of Duty: World at War: 50%
I need to complete all of the levels of Veteran (the highest difficulty), which, at this point, should get me another 11 Trophies closer to the finish. I know that a lot of reviewers dinged Resistance 2 for enemies in the single player that seem to ignore everyone except you., but the problem is much worse in COD. So much so that often, it is very hard to tell whicc guys are on your side. At least in Resistance, the enemies are clearly not human. In COD, it’s not too rare to see two guys, on opposing sides, shooting in different directions while standing right next to each other. Of course, the moment I’m within range, the bad one immediately turns on me and kills me before I can exclaim, “that guy’s not on my te–?”

Still, I trudge on. Three nights ago, it took me two hours to get to the first checkpoint in the level, “Relentless.” So. Many. Bad guys.

It’s a weird feeling when suddenly games that don’t have Trophies suddenly feel like they aren’t worth playing, as if being able to carry over your achievements from one game to the next has some sort of physically value that can be perserved in the vast spaces of he interweb. Whatever the reason, I am once again hooked on Trophies (and other such systems). With the economy, and my personal economics, the way they are, the time for Trophies is now.

Even without the value arguments, Trophies extent the life of a game by offering that little bit of incentive to scrape up every last speck of frosting at the bottom of the cereal box, so to speak. Always fun? No. Getting every bit your money’s worth? Yes.

So from now until it’s done, before InFamous (hopefully), I will be going for Platinum on every game I own, forgoing the purchase of any new games until this feat is accomplished. The road will be rough, and I can’t imagine how I’m going to complete Warhawk, but in the end, I’ll be a better gamer and a little richer too.

See you on PSN.

Originally published on Playstation Underground Gamer Advisory Panel (GAP) 2008-11-18 12:05.