PSN Trophies That Forced You To Do Really Dark Things
How far would you go for a PlayStation trophy? It's a legitimate question. While you can earn a platinum trophy in many games by fairly innocuous means — complete the single-player campaign, find all of the collectibles, rack up a set number of multiplayer kills, and that sort of thing — sometimes things take a more sinister turn. If you want to earn the following trophies, you're going to have to get your hands dirty. Really dirty.
For experienced trophy hunters, animal cruelty is an everyday occurance. Sexual depravity and over-the-top violence is everywhere. If you want the biggest, baddest, most impressive PSN profile around, make sure that you don't mind maiming opponents, and don't hesitate when it comes time to betray your friends. Sure, these actions will earn you a handful trophies, but you'll also have to live with yourself afterwards. Proceed carefully. A platinum trophy is a glorious thing, but sometimes, the cost is too high. You've been warned.
Equine assassination in jolly olde England
Thanks to the advent of modern conveniences, it's easier to get around Assassin's Creed: Syndicate's Victorian London than almost any other setting in the prolific franchise. Sure, if you really want to you can scurry up the sides of buildings and hop across rooftops to reach your destination, but why make Jacob and Evie Frye work so hard? Hop into a horse-drawn carriage and cruise down London's streets in style.
Of course, if there are horse-drawn carriages then there are horses, and as you can imagine, these magnificent beasts don't always mix well with the Fryes' arsenal of deadly weapons. When the Assassin vs Templar action gets too heavy, horses occasionally get caught in the crossfire. When they do, they die. It's upsetting when an innocent animal catches a stray bullet and passes away. It's even worse when you fire the gun yourself.
And yet, that's exactly what you're going to have to do if you want to score Syndicate's darkest trophy. In fact, you're going to have to pull the trigger multiple times. In order to score the aptly named "What is wrong with you?" trophy, you need to flip five horse-drawn carriages by murdering the horses pulling them. Given that many carriages have two horses attached, that means you might need to slaughter up to 10 creatures to succeed. Hope that platinum trophy was worth it, and good luck living with yourself afterwards.
In Friday the 13th, it's no counselor left behind — unless you're Chad, of course
As a so-called "asymmetrical multiplayer game," Friday the 13th is really two games in one. When a match starts, players are split into two groups. One person becomes hockey mask-wearing Friday the 13th icon Jason Voorhees. Everyone else is a camp counselor. In order to win, the person playing Jason must hunt down and kill all of the counselors. The counselors, on the other hand, need to work together to slow Jason down, complete side objectives, and eventually escape before they're all wiped out.
In other words, when you're playing as a counselor, cooperation is the name of the game — which is what makes the "Chad is a dick" trophy so darn twisted. The trophy can only be earned by hopping in a boat or a car and fleeing the map while at least one of your teammates is still alive. Betraying your team's trust, and then leaving them to die at the hands of a deranged, supernatural serial killer while you savor the sweet, sweet taste of victory? Yeah, that seems pretty dark to us.
Now, you don't need to so while playing as Chad, Friday the 13th's preppy opportunist. Any character will do. Chad's speed-heavy stats seem explicitly designed for leaving your friends high and dry, however, making him the best choice for trophy-hunting turncoats. Hey, the guy's a Chad. Do you really expect anything less?
Chickadoo? More like chickadon't
When you think dark, you don't think Slime Rancher. Monomi Park's laid back simulation title is many things, but disturbing isn't one of them. In the game, it's your job to venture into the wild with a vacuum cleaner strapped to your back, collecting different kinds of slimes and bringing them back to your ranch. Then, you breed them to create new combinations, feed them their favorite foods, and collect their turds — adorably called "plorts" — and sell them for cash.
It's a little bit Pokémon, a little bit Stardew Valley, a little bit Ghostbusters, and not at all scary. That's what makes "You ... Monster!" so disturbing. Slime Rancher is a game about growing things. It is not a game about taking adorable baby chickens and hurling them into an incinerator. The "You ... Monster!" trophy, on the other hand, is exactly about that. Now, Slime Rancher's Chickadoos don't exactly have the easiest lives. They're only in the game so that they can grow up to be Hen Hens or Roostros, lay eggs, and get fed to your meat-eating slimes.
Still, that's just the circle of life. Animals eat other animals. That's how nature works. Flinging a Chickadoo into a man-made fire and watching it burn isn't. At least Slime Rancher knows that it's asking you to do something horrible. The description for "You... Monster!" reads, "Send an adorable chick to a fiery end, the same place you're now destined to go." Harsh, but fair. Very, very fair.
A tough nut to crack
If you want a detailed football simulation with real teams and players, a robust physics simulations, and more respect for America's actual national pastime than any sport actually deserves, play Madden NFL. But if you want to use the ol' pigskin as an excuse to brutalize your opponents, then go with Blitz: The League 2. When it comes to Blitz, forget about referees or penalty calls. You won't find any. Fill up your clash meter to execute "dirty" hits. Treat injuries with steroids, or delve into Blitz: The League 2's single-player campaign for a story full of sex, drugs, and references to contemporary football scandals. Family friendly Blitz ain't.
Naturally, the game's various trophies follow suit. The "Skidmark" trophy comes with a classy icon that looks like a pair of underwear. "Stiffarmed" requires you to injure at least two defensive players in a single match. You'll get "Playah" if you sleep with three different women during The League 2's campaign, and you'll net "Anatomy Lesson" by causing every type of in-game injury possible.
"Testikill," however, is far and away Blitz 2's most squirm-inducing trophy. In order to earn "Testikill," you must, as Blitz puts it, "rupture ten scrotums in any mode of play." As PlayStation Trophies observes, the easiest way to bust your opponent's balls (literally) is to dirty tackle them head-on, targeting their crotch. Occasionally, that'll bruise a kidney. Other times, it'll burst the player's scrotum wide open. Testicular ruptures are remarkably painful injuries, and they're not something that any game should encourage. Blitz: The League 2 makes you do it anyway. A lot.
A sad end for man's best friend
Any Hollywood writer worth his or her salt knows screenwriting's number one rule: your characters can kill as many people as you see fit, but whatever you do, don't kill the dog. While there are exceptions — John Wick, we're looking in your direction — audiences tend to tune out as soon as a friendly fluffball bites the big one. Unfortunately, the people at Ubisoft Montreal didn't learn the same lesson. Not only does Far Cry Primal, the Far Cry franchise's foray back to prehistoric times, let you kill animals, it forces you to, at least if you want to score Primal's platinum trophy.
It's not enough to just slaughter an anonymous beast, however. If you really want to get the "Tears of Shame" trophy, you're going to need to put down one of your beloved pets. That means that you're going to have to track down a jaguar, bear, or sabretooth tiger, make it love you, then kill it, watch it die, and skin it. Then, and only then, will you receive the "Tears of Shame."
That's like asking Fred Flinstone to serve Dino for dinner or forcing Calvin to decorate his bedroom with a Hobbes-skin rug. It's disgusting, cruel, and inexcusable. If you've got "Tears of Shame" on your PSN profile, you're either a monster who'll do anything if there's a trophy attached or you're incapable of real love. Either way, it's not a great look.
Get up in 2B's business, or butt out
Not every PlayStation trophy is about murder or animal abuse. Sometimes, they're about good, old-fashioned sexual assault. For example, NieR: Automata is a meditation on free will, war, and the nature of humanity that's twisty, bizarre, and really, really smart, but the very first thing that most players notice is that hero 2B's skirt is awfully short. It's so short, in fact, that a fake screenshot allegedly showing 2B's butt — like, all of it — seemed entirely plausible to a number of NieR fans. That includes NieR creator Yoko Taro, who requested a zip file of "rude" 2B fan art as the controversy grew. The internet provided one.
Yeah, that's a little creepy. It gets even worse once you play the game, and learn that consent and agency, and whether the android 2B is capable of either, are two of NieR: Automata's major themes. Then you look over the game's trophy list and see what the "What Are You Doing?" award requires. The description of the trophy reads innocuously enough — "2B's secret discovered ten times" doesn't sound that dark — until you realize that the secret is her underwear, and the way that you "discover" it is by angling the game's camera to peek up her skirt.
It's an unwelcome intrusion. After you stare for a few seconds, 2B covers up and steps back, blocking your view. She's clearly embarrassed. And yet, to get the trophy, you need to violate 2B's privacy nine more times. It's an unsettling part of an otherwise great game, although NieR: Automata also asks you to delete your save file to save the world. Maybe Taro's just trolling. It's hard to tell.
Dishonoring Lady Boyle with a fate worse than death
At first, Dishonored's "Clean Hands" sounds downright pleasant. Finish the game without killing anyone? What's so dark about that? But as you creep through Dunwall, you quickly learn a hard truth: even in a no-kill run, Dishonored's corrupt nobility need to be dealt with somehow. Branding High Overseer Campbell with a heretic's mark, for example, won't kill him, but it'll force him to live out the rest of his life in shame. Instead of assassinating the Pendletons, you can do a favor for a local crime boss. In return, he'll take the brothers to the local silver mines, where they'll spend the rest of their days performing hard labor.
So far, so good. When it comes time to deal with Lady Boyle, however, things get a little trickier. Instead of killing the treasonous Lord Regent's main financer, you can kidnap her and pass her off to Timothy Brisby, her would-be lover. Unfortunately, Lady Boyle doesn't return Brisby's affections. In fact, as you sneak your way through the not-so-good Lady's masquerade, you'll learn that Brisby is less like a boyfriend and more like a full-on stalker. It's not pretty
Dishonored doesn't spell out exactly what'll happen to Boyle under Brisby's watch, but it drops some pretty unsavory implications. All in all, death is probably the more humane option. However, if you want to get "Clean Hands," you're going to have to suck it up and let Brisby have his way with the noblewoman.
A different kind of family dinner
You're going to need a strong stomach to make your way through The Forest, Endnight Games' open-ended survival game. Its developers don't drop the names like Cannibal Holocaust, one of the most sordid and controversial films ever made, lightly. In addition to woodland creatures, The Forest's deadly peninsula is filled with mutant cannibals who'd love nothing more than to eat the player's character for dinner. If you want to win, you'll need to fight off the flesh-eating hordes while also scrounging for supplies, building shelter, and battling wildlife. It's rough.
Of course, like they say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Humans may not be as nutritious as other animals, but The Forest is a game of eat-or-be-eaten. If you've got a stack of human bodies lying around anyway, you might as well put them to good use. The Forest's developers really want you to dine on human meat, too. If you're playing The Forest on PS4, you have access to the "Major Cannibalism" trophy, which you'll get after eating an entire family. Hope you're hungry. That's a lot of people.
That's not the only ultra-depraved act that The Forest forces on trophy hunters, either. Have your eye on the "Gross!" trophy? All you need to do is "drink water from cooler that has the lawyer head in it." Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like. Gross indeed.
Red Dead Redemption, where racism and animal cruelty meet
Why did the American buffalo disappear? Well, if you have Red Dead Redemption's "Manifest Destiny" trophy, it's because you killed them. All of them.
In real life, the United States government waged war on the beasts (which are technically bison, not buffalo) in order to devastate the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains, making it easier for white settlers to take the land for themselves. Independent hunters helped, too. Lured by the promise of $3.50 for each buffalo hide, hunters flocked to the region and decimated the buffalo population. As buffalo remains flooded the market, prices dropped. Hunters had to kill even more to break even. They did. By the end of the 1800s, there were only a few hundred American buffalo left.
That's where John Marston comes in. "Manifest Destiny" tasks Marston with killing "the last buffalo in the Great Plains." That actually means wiping out the entire herd and driving the species to near-extinction. No matter how you look at it, that's pretty nasty. Even the name "Manifest Destiny" has dark connotations. The phrase refers to a 19th-century idea that God has given white settlers the right to settle North America, which has been used to justify all kinds of horrifically racist acts. All in all? "Manifest Destiny" is vile all around.
It's South Park. What did you expect?
Spoiler alert: your parents had sex. If they didn't, you wouldn't be here. Still, it's one thing to understand that intellectually. It's another to see your parents going at it in all of their sweaty, grunting, flesh-slapping glory. Sometimes, a kid innocently opens the door to their parents' bedroom and catches a glimpse of Mom and Dad going at it. Usually, they're permanently scarred afterwards.
So, naturally, South Park: The Stick of Truth forces you to watch your parents have sex for a full minute, at least if you're hunting for the game's "Perverted" trophy. It all happens during the game's Underpants Gnomes quest. As you scurry through the walls, you'll end up in your parents' bedroom, where the dirty deed is going down. Stand there and watch for 60 seconds, and the trophy — and the resulting trauma — are yours.
It's dark and weird and gross, but then again, this is South Park we're talking about. Once you've got elementary school children dressing like Hitler and trying to reenact the Holocaust, nothing is off the table. Just one word of advice: if you're going after the "Perverted" trophy, don't do it around other people. At the very least, wear headphones. In addition to horny, your parents are incredibly loud.