Ah, the holiday season, it’s a time for togetherness, celebration, great food, and time off from school or work responsibilities. That stuff is great and all, but the holidays are really about attempting feats in games that you would never do if you didn’t have so much free time. This year, I recommend trying to obtain some frighteningly difficult trophies. You’ll be at your parents’ house and relatives will be around, but who cares about all that when there are arbitrary points to earn?
No game mechanic has been able to cultivate such juvenile rage quite like achievements and trophies. And so, in the spirit of the season, I present to you this list of four of the most anger-generating trophies on the PlayStation 3. You should probably just print this list out so that when your relatives find your shriveled corpse in the living room, they know that you went out with a purpose.
Late Boomer (Super Stardust HD)
Bomber – Get 15 bombs
Seeing as Super Stardust HD was the first game to get trophies, that would make Late Boomer like the grandfather of trophies designed to ruin your blood pressure. In Bomber Mode, you cannot shoot at all. You simply have to avoid tons of enemies and walls while using only a small stock of bombs to fight back when things get too dangerous. Every now and then, the game rewards you with an extra bomb. The kicker here isn’t that you have to have obtained 15 bombs overall, but rather that you have to carry 15 bombs at once.
Essentially, to get Late Boomer, you can’t use bombs. You may have to drop one from time to time, but if you get into the habit of doing that, you’re going to lose more than you gain. This trophy goes against the very design of the mode and turns it into some sort of twisted rat-in-a-maze experiment on how many retries it will take for a human being to actually devolve into a rat. Even those most skilled at maneuvering in Super Stardust will likely have to retry this hundreds of times. Even though I managed to get it, this trophy still haunts my dreams.
Zone Zeus (Wipeout HD)
In Zone Mode, reach Zone 75 on any track.
Wipeout HD was never an easy game to begin with. The A.I. is better than you, the tracks are challenging, and the tense electronic music keeps each race nice and stressful. Zone Mode, though, is in a league of its own. In Zone Mode, you race around a single track and every ten seconds or so, you advance to the next Zone. Advancing to the next Zone increases your speed slightly. It’s actually a really fun little challenge mode if you don’t go for the trophy.
While trying it out, I was never able to get past Zone 30 or so. You only have one life and as you speed up more and more, it becomes very difficult to not hit walls on the tighter turns. I can’t even imagine what it’s like up in Zones 50 and beyond. I’d look it up on YouTube, but I’m afraid even that would be too stressful.
Outstanding! (Mortal Kombat)
Win 10 Ranked Online Matches in a row
Trying to play a fighting game online, especially several months after release, is like trying to perform brain surgery in the dark with no previous training; it’s impossible to know what’s going on. The people who are playing games like Mortal Kombat and Super Street Fighter IV still are the people who are absolutely insane at it. As a test, I hopped into ten ranked matches to brush up on my Reptile and Sub-Zero skills. I was rewarded with ten prompt defeats, each typically consisting of nothing more than one long combo by the other player.
This trophy is so infuriating and soul-crushing because even if you think you’re pretty good, the guys online will show you that you’re a joke. Imagine Grandma’s surprise from the couch as she watches your mental state deteriorate each time your spine gets ripped out.
Master Slasher’s Trophy (Demon’s Souls)
Obtained Best Weapon by Bladestone
If you’ve somehow missed out on Demon’s Souls, weapons are upgraded by forging them with special ores that drop off of enemies. The rarest of these ores, by far, is called Bladestone. Based on my research (and highly scientific testing), Pure Bladestone is best obtained off of a unique skeleton during Pure Black World Tendency. While I’ve beaten the game and still couldn’t explain what World Tendency means, I know that in order to get there, you need to die. A lot. So after you kill yourself several times, you now have access to this special skeleton. The next problem is that this skeleton is no pushover; he carries two katana and is completely savage with them. Adding to the fun is the fact that you must fight him on the edge of a narrow cliff.
Oh, but that’s not the end of it. When you do finally manage to kill him, you’ll be disheartened to find out that Pure Bladestone actually has a drop rate of roughly 1 in 200. Compound this on the fact that you must re-fight your way through the entire level every single time you want to kill him. That’s right, beating ten guys in Mortal Kombat suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
That about does it. If you can obtain just one of these trophies before your family attempts to rip you away from the controller to quell your screams, then you’ll earn my undying respect. Just writing about these trophies has had a negative enough effect on my own metal state; I think I’ll just go pound some egg nog and play something simple like Lego Star Wars. Happy holidays, everyone!