I keep telling myself not to worry about Trophies: ‘It’s arbitrary!If it stops being fun, put it down.’ Without fail, I still fall into the trap of chasing the high of unlocking a rare Achievement and getting that satisfyingly crisp ‘ding’, even if getting it makes me miserable. On the flip side, so many games have easy Trophies you’re able to get in one playthrough, likeRatchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which feels completely unrewarding and falls flat by the end. I didn’tearna Platinum here, I just sorta got one for showing up. In between the stupidly hard and the mind-numbingly simple, there’sResident Evil.
Resident Evil isn’t just a one-and-done game. It has roots in arcade machines, as when you beat it, you get a time and a score. It’s inviting you to do better and try again until you get that perfect S+ rank, and it’s not just for the bragging rights. Challenges mixed in with good scores net you points you can spend on things like cat ears that offer endless ammo, or an RPG that fires an endless amount of rockets. There’s a lot of replay value in simply perfecting each run, but there’s even more in going for these goodies. After all, there’s nothing more satisfying than makingNemesiseat shit in one shot.
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Trophies add a whole new layer to that progression since they ask you not only to strive for better scores but to push yourself with runs you likely wouldn’t do unless you were a streamer trying to find a way to spice up your tenth on-camera playthrough.Resident Evil 2 Remakeasks you to beat it in only 14,000 or fewer steps,3 Remakedares you to go without the item box or any healing items, and4 Remakechallenges you to only use a knife and handgun. It’s the same exact game as before, but it feels brand-new because of how you approach it.Going up against Salazarwith the Matilda is a whole different experience from blasting him in the face with a shotgun.
That’s what Achievements should do. They shouldn’t be meaningless checklists to make the percentage go up so you look like a real Gamer™, they should add something of value. There’s nothing fun about killing a standard grunt enemy 2,000 times—it doesn’t teach you anything about the game. You don’t learn valuable ways to approach each level or scenario as you would if you weren’t allowed to interact with the Merchant, or if you couldn’t heal. Instead, you’re more likely to turn on a podcast, tune out, and go numb for a couple of hours while you grind.
Playing Resident Evil 3 Remake without healing items made me significantly better at the game. I memorised enemy locations, figured out the best ways to conserve ammo while avoiding attacks, and pretty much perfected the dodge mechanic. Going for that Trophy wasn’t like racking up a dull, meaningless number, nor was it so easy that it got tedious. It was challenging, pushing me to learn mechanics I’d otherwise barely used—dodging was something I left to Nemesis fights, usually getting past zombies by killing them all. Sure, it was bad for my ammo reserves, but it made backtracking easier.
Likewise, going for the sub-eight-hour Resident Evil 4 Remake trophy has seen me learn the ins and outs of the village, perfecting new strategies to speed up my playtime while adapting to having less loot and gear. Iskipped the ambush entirelyby shooting the church bell and managed to get to the castle in under two hours, a huge improvement from my first-ever playthrough where it took me six. Then I had to fight the Village Chief with a few explosive bolts and a shotgun with next-to-no rounds, and I managed. Now, going for that S+ Professional rank, I’m not struggling much at all knowing all these new ways to play.
It’s easy for Achievements to be seen as an afterthought, combing back over a game and finding easily grindable challenges like crafting 100 schematics or dodging 300 attacks. They’re challenging only because they’re tedious and needlessly stretched out, whereas Resident Evil has long balanced challenge with fun, offering new perspectives with each playthrough. If an Achievement doesn’t add value in that way, there’s no real purpose to it other than to net you Gamerscore or to make your stats look better. That’s a dull way to play games—who cares if I got 100 percent in something if that amounted to me grinding for 30 rare items all week?
Games are ultimately for you, not for bragging, and Achievements can so easily entice you to strive for the latter, but Resident Evil stands tall for offering so many different ways to play by baking challenges into its Trophies. There’s no better way to learn a game than to conquer it in every way possible.
