If you ever tried to beat Metal Gear Solid 2 in it's entirety back in it's hay-day on the Playstation 2, you may well have foreseen a difficult trophy list on the horizon when the HD collection was released.
Admittedly, I never beat the original game beyond a once-over on the story mode at moderate difficulty, but the HD makeover includes a trophy list that requires you to beat every aspect of the game thoroughly, and, as a result, presents a huge challenge that is tough to overcome.
Most of the games trophies are relatively straight forward. There's alot on offer for natural progression through the story mode, and completing specific actions, both accounting for well over half of the games trophy list, but the remainder throws up a challenge that propels the difficulty of the list right to the top of the scale.
Despite the length of the game being relatively short compared to most Single Player only experiences, you'll need to beat the game at least 5 times in order to unlock every item required on the trophy list.
The "Great Dane" trophy, awarded for collecting all the dog tags in the Plant chapter to obtain the Blue Wig, is the brunt of this list, but doesn't actually require you to unlock every single dog tag in the game, like the trophy suggests. Not that really matters for much, because you'll need 218 tags to earn enough, but with a maximum of 50 dog tags on offer per play-through, it will require 5 runs of the game to obtain enough to fulfil the requirements of the trophy.
This also creates the sub-challenge of the difficulty modes associated with the game too. Dog tags are achieved through holding up the various soldiers dotted around the vast amount of areas throughout the game, and can only be obtained once per soldier, per difficulty level, meaning you will have to scale upwards with each play-through of the game, most likely having to beat the game on "Extreme" difficulty as bare minimum (The second hardest in the entire game).
For the most part, the harder difficulty levels are only really obvious when it comes to boss fights, of which there are plenty throughout the game, and you'll end up spending the larger portions of the run just trying to get past certain boss battles (The Harrier Jet, Metal Gear Rays and Solidus are the stand-outs). The bits between are actually fairly easy, and as you unlock items from previous play-throughs, you can use these later on, such as the infinity (Brown) wig and the Stealth suit, and they become critical to easier progression towards the endgame during the harder difficulties. These don't impact the award of trophies like some games might do, which is a big help, so you can use whatever you have at your disposal without repercussions.
Even then, 5 runs is still a time consuming, and ultimately tedious grind, and you'll also have to play the Tanker chapter in order to unlock more items obtained through collecting dog tags, which will add to the length of the game.
You can unlock the vast majority of the trophies in the list naturally across these multiple play-throughs, including a bunch of progression based trophies awarded for beating the multitude of bosses in the game, defeating enemies in certain ways and collecting dog tags to achieve other unlockable items.
Away from the story mode, the "Virtually Impossible" trophy, awarded for completing all VR and Alternative missions, requires you to beat 500 individual missions in the games VR mode, a collection of training exercises that require you to reach an end goal by completing specific tasks along the way. These will include eliminating all enemies on course to an exit point, defusing a certain number of bombs within an allocated time limit and reaching an exit goal without being spotted.
Most of these are a simple case of procedure, but there are frequent difficulty spikes that will cause all sorts of trial and error upon completion. The MGS1 Snake hold up missions, all of the Variety missions and the Eliminate All missions are the pick of the bunch, but there is a general selection of these that will cause problems, and perfecting them can be an arduous process.
The sheer depth of the Virtual Reality mode is enough to make this difficult, because it becomes so incredibly time consuming, and when you hit a brick wall suddenly with a genuinely tough challenge, it escalates the difficulty of the mode even further, which can easily attribute 50+ hours to the completion of this trophy alone. You do only need to beat the mission, (though the "In It to Win It" trophy, awarded for Placing first in 50 different VR/Alternative missions ensures you still need to remain competitive to a lesser extent), which means there isn't much pressure, and the sole focus should just be about getting to the end goal, rather than trying to break records, but even that isn't so straight-forward with certain challenges.
The "Tell Me a Tale" trophy, awarded for Completing all Snake Tales, requires you to complete 5 short stories based on the spin-off from the main game. It's not a terribly long-winded mode, coming in at 5-10 hours, but it can be quite difficult, and and it actually ends up becoming a chore after you've seen the same environment 5 times already having beaten the game on every possible difficulty level previously.
There's also no actual difficulty level to choose, and you also face every single boss battle again at some point during each of the 5 tales. As if it the hardest element of the game wasn't enough 5 separate times throughout the main story arc, you have to go through them all again here and then also one more time in pursuit of the "No Boss of Mine" trophy, awarded for Completing Boss Survival. To suggest this becomes a bit monotonous is an understatement.
The "Vamp Eyer" trophy, awarded for Catching a glimpse of Vamp standing in the streets of New York during the end cinematic, requires you to pan the game camera towards an image of Vamp in the streets during the final cutscene of the game. Although not a difficult trophy, you cannot go back and have a second chance at it if you miss him without replaying the entire game.
Given the fact you'll get a handful of chances to obtain this trophy (with the sheer amount of times you'll have to beat the game), it's still worth noting because you can only obtain this trophy at the very end of the game, and if you somehow missed it, you would have to go through the game in it's entirety to get the chance to unlock it again. The trophy didn't actually register for me the first couple of times I tried to it, so it's best to look out for it and grab it from the first available opportunity.
It's also definitely worth noting the controls, which haven't been tweaked in any regard since the games original release way back in 2001, and can often feel clunky and unfinished, which proves a grand obstacle when trying to tackle VR missions that require intricate or subtle movements, and boss battles during the story mode that may require quick reactions and instinctive motions.
Despite actually being a fantastic story driven experience, the repetition factor will prove tough for anyone to overcome, especially with the amount of times you'll have to play through the game in order to achieve the Platinum trophy. The fact you'll also have to scale the difficulty level each time in order to unlock all the required dog tags not only makes it a time consuming venture, but a challenging one too.
The Virtual Reality mode is equally as challenging, both in the time consuming and difficulty sense, and combined with the requirements of the main story, this game will easily surpass the 200 hour mark in terms of a general completion time, and anybody who manages to earn every single trophy in this list should be proud. It's a long and gruelling road, but one that ends in the reward of one of the toughest Platinum trophies available in the entire Playstation catalogue. There are 6 other Metal Gear Solid games with trophy lists, and if this somehow isn't the hardest out of all them, then I dread to think what's to follow.
Notable Trophies -
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| Great Dane - Collect all dog tags in the Plant chapter to obtain the Blue Wig Virtually Impossible - Complete all VR and Alternative missions Tell Me a Tale - Complete all Snake Tales Vamp Eyer - Catch a glimpse of Vamp standing in the streets of New York during the end cinematic |
Virtually Impossible
Complete all VR and Alternative missions
