Trophy hunting is a sickness. It consumes every facet of your life and sucks the fun out of every nook and cranny in gaming. Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but that won’t stop me from delving into my favorites and going for that sweet 100 percent. Ratchet & Clank as a series fits the bill there, but Rift Apart felt far too short in its chase for the Platinum, and that’s because it sorely lacked some of the staples that came with the PS3 era and the 2016 reboot. I miss the older trophies.
It’s not necessarily that Rift Apart was too ‘easy’ to Plat. I’m not gatekeeping difficulty, especially for a game that bends over backwards to make itself accessible. I don’t get my kicks by telling people how hard I am because I beat Dark Souls with my eyes shut while having a mod installed that made every enemy into a Gravelord Phantom. It’s more that Rift Apart was just too fast. You can do almost everything in a single playthrough if you play your cards right, and aside from buying the new guns right at the start, there are no serotonin dings that pop up in the corner when you plow through challenge mode.
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I’ll start with one of the primary Trophies that I believe to be missing: level up every weapon. What this ultimately does is incentivize you to plow through the game with all the tools at your disposal, trying everything in Insomniac’s roster. There’s a whole arsenal to have a blast with, but you can just ditch it and go ham with the RYNO or the Negotiator as soon as you unlock them. They are beefy powerhouses. But, having a Trophy to push you to try every single weapon to the point of maxing out its XP really added something of interest to playing through Ratchet & Clank, like those times when all that was left was a mix-up of a sniper and the Zurkons, leaving you in an awkward hamfisted sandwich of muddled range, stubbornly refusing to use any other weapon. Some weapons have specific Trophies attached to them, but it honestly wasn’t enough for me.
Granted, playing Rift Apart, I still aimed to level up every weapon. At first, this was because I assumed it’d be a Trophy, but I continued even into challenge mode when getting the Platinum, but it’s a touch upsetting that there’s no reward for doing so, because that 100 percent didn’t particularly feel earned. It felt more hollow than the others, because it came about too quickly, and pushing you to level every weapon would’ve alleviated that. It’s not exactly a grind. I managed to do it in two playthroughs which brings me to the second trophy that I'd argue Insomniac shouldn’t have abandoned. That’s the ‘complete a challenge mode playthrough’ one. It’s simple, but worth having.
Two playthroughs to level every weapon is anything but a grind. It’s certainly easier than the prior games, especially factoring in that you can change difficulty on the fly and still do it with infinite ammo enabled. However, there’s no Trophy for beating Rift Apart on Insomniac’s version of New Game+. It means you start out stronger than when you go for it fresh, but everything else is a bit harder as well. When playing through narrative’s like Insomniacs, there’s often so much to catch with all the context intact, knowing where it’s leading, spotting those tidbits of foreshadowing, so it’s certainly worth trying challenge mode out. Older games locked collectible rewards to this second mode and had a trophy for beating it, so it always felt like a new experience. That’s lacking in Rift Apart with collectibles unlocking as you go and no trophy being had for beating it a second time. It’s not a huge issue, again. The game is borderline perfect. But, I get my rocks off Platinuming this series, so I’m having a little vent, because Insomniac added trophies to Spider-Man, so I can hold out hope for the same happening here.
The next ‘missing’ bout of trophies are the bolt ones that increase incrementally, starting at the likes of ‘collect 250,000’ in A Crack in Time, and ending in ‘collect 1,000,000.’ This pushes you to play the game again just as a challenge mode trophy does, but it also asks you to be more careful. See in NG+, you get a bolt multiplier for each kill. Getting hit drops this back to zero, so you have to be extremely cautious to avoid taking hits. Doing so can speed up the dough you rake in until you’re doing it faster than Bezos, ultimately adding another layer to playing through challenge mode. Then, there’s ones such as ‘Groovitron every enemy.’ Granted, this was broken in the 2016 reboot, but if it were to be tweaked to work, it could be a fantastic Trophy. There’s no Groovitron in Rift Apart, but there is a sprinkler that plantifies enemies, and that could’ve been a fantastic trophy to include to push people to try this slept-on gem of a weapon.
All in all, Trophies incentivize playing more, playing in a way you normally wouldn’t, and exploring each orifice of a game, perusing all it has to offer. Some of us still do that regardless, but it’s far more rewarding when you get the little ding that says congrats for doing so. It’s why trophy hunting can get unhealthily addictive, but in these small bursts, it’s a treat. Sadly, Rift Apart was a whoopie cushion in terms of its Trophy hunting scene. It was just too quick. However, that being my only major gripe means hats off to Insomniac, because there’s practically nothing to complain about.
The Trophies I mention that are absent weren’t exactly hard or annoying to get, they just required more time put into the game, more exploration of their mechanics and world. You get to know the game’s more that way, so when you finally do 100 percent it, you feel like you really have earned that Platinum, because you’re deeply familiar with the game in question. If Rift Apart gets anything in its updates, I hope it's more Trophies. If Spider-Man can do it, Rift Apart can too.
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