The Joys of Trophy Hunting (PlayStation)

Introduction

So for the past year, I've become quite addicted to collecting PlayStation trophies, or as I like to call it, hunting for trophies. Gaming has always been one of my favourite past times, my most cherished passions in life, the ability to export yourself into an entire different life play as different characters, do anything, achieve anything, go anywhere. And I wanted to share my learnings from the past year of trophy hunting to not only reach out to other fellow hunters but to recommend people who enjoy playing PlayStation getting into it too. So, I'll be going through a few reasons as to why trophy hunting is good for gamers, but even more so for completionists like myself. If you haven't heard of PlayStation trophies and have always been confused about why there was a random box notification on the top right-hand side of your screen, well, I was too. Noob! But, about a year and a half ago I was watching a YouTube video about someones PS Vita game collection and heard them talk about trophies and was like "huh?" and it made me want to find out what it was. After realising what trophies were, not only did I feel rather stupid, but I was determined to collect as many as virtually possible. Pun very much intended.

Benefits of Trophy Hunting

Trophies add extra layers to the game by giving you extra tasks to fulfil throughout the game, things you never even thought of doing. And what's more, being the completionist that I am trophies enticed me to complete all game tasks, and since finding out about PlayStation trophies I just couldn't help but go straight to finding out where the extra tasks were and to completing them also. Seeing the trophy numbers pile up motivates me to play more and more games, or even different categories that I never even thought about playing just to get more trophies. Categories I thought I didn't like. For example, I didn't even know that I liked 2-D platformers until I purchased a bunch of Ratalaika games to earn more trophies, and now, I love platformers and dabble in them from time to time quite frequently. I also didn't know I was into story-based games until I played Heavy Rain for the trophies and guess what, I now know I love story-based games too. In other words, it not only gives you extra tasks in games but also, if you get addicted to attaining trophies you may step out of categories you're usually interested in and learn that you like a wide range of game categories that you didn't realise you liked before.

How to Keep Track of your Trophies

Trophy hunting is easy. Whenever playing a game or starting a new one all you need is the trophy list by your side as you play through the game. I say this because some games have over 20 trophies and I doubt you'd remember them all as you playthrough. I like to keep the PlayStation app on my phone open so I can grab it and scroll through to check them all and see which one I can attempt to collect next. You can always press the PlayStation button on your controller and head over to the trophies section on the home screen, but I do believe that if you attempt to do this on the PS Vita it will make you shut down your game before you can check the trophies. But I do believe this feature is accessible on the PS3. Couldn't tell you about the PS4 or PS5 though as I haven't either of consoles, but it's always worth a shot. Or, you could have a webpage open to the list either on your laptop or tablet if you'd prefer.

Using the PlayStation App

If you haven't downloaded the PlayStation app yet, then I highly suggest you do so as it'll make tracking your trophies a lot easier. Once downloaded, log into your Sony account. After signing in you'll be taken to the app dashboard. From there press your name or your profile picture, either one works. Then it should take you to your profile page where you'll see a button called trophies with the varying types of trophies sitting lined up beneath it with their total numbers beneath them stating how many you have collected of each. Pressing the trophies or the "Trophy" button itself, you be taken to an extensive list of games and their prospective trophies. From here, look for the game you're currently playing or the one you'd like to collect from and press it to be taken to it's list of trophies, and voila, happy trophy hunting! As of right now, I personally have collected 489 different trophies from several different games, and am currently at Level 177, my personal goal at the moment is to reach 1,000 total trophies. If you enjoy setting yourself goals, why not set a goal for how many trophies you'd like to achieve in the short term and then aim for that. Later on, you can change your goal once you've reached it. There is nothing more thrilling than receiving a platinum trophy, and I'm sure my fellow trophy hunters would agree with me on that one.

Conclusion

To sum up, trophy hunting is fun and is great for extra in-game tasks for an extra challenge, as well as an opportunity for you to try new games and enhancing your gaming categories through testing out games of different genres. Keeping track of your trophies can be easily done through any of your personal consoles, or using the PlayStation app itself on any mobile devices either through the Apple App Store, or Google Play App. And finally setting yourself a goal for how many trophies you'd like to achieve in the short term can add to the excitement of trophy hunting and even motivate you to collect even more trophies.