Astro Bot

Astro Bot is a comfort game with a comfort platinum. The game is a throwback 3D platformer collect-a-thon and the platinum trophy is basically “collect everything.” It never gets too difficult, but isn’t entirely obvious either. If you like running around well designed 3D worlds with amazing mechanics finding fun bots, Astro Bot is a can’t miss platinum.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a Jet Set Radio spiritual successor. You spend your time grinding rails and pushing your scores to new heights. I liked, but didn’t love the game when I initially saw the credits. The “can’t fall” mechanics went against my Tony Hawk instincts. I fired up the game after initially beating it, just to see how wild the trophy requirements were. The scores you need to hit on each level are absolutely wild and significantly higher than the scores I was hitting during my playthrough. After finding the perfect line to hit this score on the first level, I was hooked. Each level was its own puzzle of finding the best lines and executing ridiculously long combos to reach the target score. It’s a very specific type of challenge that will either instantly turn you off or hook you for hours.

Celeste

There are a few different types of platinums that I tend to enjoy. Celeste covers the “the base game was really great, let’s add a lot more of that, often with ramped up difficulty” type just about perfectly. There is so much side content here, all more difficult than simply pushing through each level (which is pretty tough on its own), that you really do feel like you have played an extra game’s worth of content after you go back through to grab it. You can even do this in different levels as you can choose between the B- and C-sides or getting all of the strawberries.

CupHead

A famously difficult game with a surprisingly reasonable platinum. The basic gist is to beat the game on Expert mode. This is far from easy, but also not terribly difficult if you have gone through the process of beating the game on normal. There are also some other fun trophies thrown in such as completing run-and-gun levels without killing anything and defeating an airplane boss while only firing the small bullets. Perhaps the most difficult trophy by description is defeating the penultimate boss (which is a grind of many, many different bosses) without taking any damage. You can, in fact, take a lot of damage, but your final HP total must be at 3 or higher. Various charms allow you to recover HP so this seemingly impossible “don’t get hit across eight mini bosses” becomes fairly simple.

Deathloop

This might be my ideal platinum trophy. The game is a time loop mystery to unravel which is wrapped in really great first person shooter/stealth mechanics. There is only one ultimate solution to escape the loop, but you do have quite a bit of player agency in how you achieve that solution. I certainly settled in a play style to suit my preferences, mostly as much stealth as I could but that would often devolve into shootouts. The platinum was great because it forced you into different playstyles. There are trophies for only killing the main bad guys, none of the henchmen which litter every level, killing each main bad guy in unique ways I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and more. Once you solve the loop, these extra are pretty easy to attempt, but they also each offer a bit of a different puzzle to solve.

God of War Ragnarok

An open-area game, this platinum is about a lot of collecting and side quests. The great part is how good many of the side quests are. They also happen to hide some of the most difficult fights in the game, with some extremely rewarding try-and-die learning along the way. This is one of the longest platinums on this list, but I never got tired of exploring everything this game had to offer.

Spider-Man 2

I would love to have Miles Morales here, but it went to the “New Game+” well, unfortunately. Spider-Man 2, however, is ultimately respectful of player’s time with its platinum. There are no replays or anything drastic to accomplish. You, quite simply, just need to see everything the game offers. This means fully completing the minimal amount of side quests the game offers, collecting everything, and hitting various combat goals. The most arduous trophies here are around purchasing all upgrades and suits, which does take a minor amount of grinding, but is not overly annoying. This is the shining example of how to create reasonable, fun platinums for open-world games.

Sifu

Sifu was the most difficult platinum I had achieved at the time. The game is a very tough 3D brawler with some bosses that will certainly crush you the first few times you try. The hand-to-hand combat mechanics are deeply satisfying and the reason I fell for this game enough to try for the platinum. The game has you aging each time you die, but you get checkpoints between each level along the way which saves your progress (age). Beat the first level at age 30, then you can start the second level at any time aged 30. You begin the game at age 20 and upon your third death will start at 26 years. There is a trophy to beat the game aged 25 or younger, so only die twice. This is made somewhat easier with the per-level savepoints, but the real kicker is the final boss which is multi-phased and incredibly difficult. If I didn’t love this game, I never would have gone for the platinum, but I’m glad I did.