Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank Seem Made To Be Platinumed

Not long ago, I did something I rarely do: I got all the trophies in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Often, I get too busy or bored and don’t complete everything in a game. This is doubly true for big open world games. But Rift Apart kept me hooked and seemed made with the idea that Insomniac Games wanted me (and yes, you too!) to finish the game. In a world of 400-hour collect-a-thons and overstuffed games, it’s a nice change of pace and a trend I hope the studio continues.

What can often feel like a slog or a chore in other games, was a blast in Rift Apart. A lot of this is because of how compelling and fun to play the game is, not to mention how damn nice it looks, too. Still, fancy graphics and nice controls aren’t enough to make trophy hunting fun or satisfying, and Rift Apart seems to get this. Every type of collectible but one can be easily tracked on your in-game map or on the main planet select screen. Likewise, collectibles in the world will get marked on your mini-map when you get close enough. Rift Apart doesn’t include any missable collectibles either. So even if you are minutes away from the final boss fight, you can jump back into your ship and explore all the planets and collect everything you missed.

Collectibles aren’t the only part of the formula the made me want to 100 percent Rift Apart. Insomniac built the game to support any and all playstyles and skill levels. For example, as you collect Gold Bolts, you unlock extras including cheat codes that allow you to play with infinite ammo or invincibility. Even with these cheats on, the game lets you earn every trophy available. This ended up being very useful for me because, at 3 in the morning, I was missing one combat-related trophy that involved a shield-projecting weapon. Even in my tired state, I was able to quickly grind it out in the replayable combat arena using the endless ammo and invincibility cheats.

The end result of all these design choices is that Rift Apart feels like a game that is begging you to go platinum. And it seems to be working. If you peek at the completion rates for Rift Apart’s platinum trophy, you’ll find many folks doing it all.

As of this writing, close to 18 percent of Rift Apart owners have unlocked the platinum trophy. That might seem low, but it’s incredibly high compared to most other games. I checked a few other popular games on PlayStation and the numbers were much lower. Four percent of Last of Us Part II players unlocked its platinum trophy, only 2.3 percent of players earned Resident Evil Village’s platinum, and just 4.3 percent of players grabbed all the trophies in Days Gone. And in the gigantic titan that is Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, merely a teeny-tiny 1.3% of players collected every trophy. (I blame this low number on the annoying fishing-related trophies. Those suck and are the main reason I’ll never 100 percent it.)

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Another Insomniac gem, Spider-Man on PlayStation 4, employed similar design choices as Rift Apart, and it’s similarly one of the very few games on PS4 I ever earned a platinum trophy for. I’m not alone. As of today, nearly 9 percent of players have done a completionist run of Marvel’s Spider-Man. This is less than Rift Apart but still more than most games by quite a bit.

Still, this hasn’t always been the case for Insomniac titles with achievements. The Ratchet and Clank reboot sits at a low 2.4 percent, for example.

Insomniac’s latest games paint a picture of a developer happy to make games that everyone and their grandparents can enjoy, play, and eventually master. In a world where toxic gamer culture continues to push people away and recycles arguments about game difficulty, it’s refreshing to encounter a developer making games for everyone.