The TT Community Interview: Harris59

By Kes Eylers-Stephenson,

The TrueTrophies community interviews are back! This week, we are talking to Harris59 about their trophy haul, favourite games, and more!

If you are interested in being interviewed, shoot me a direct message on the site for further details.

Introduction

PSN ID: Harris59

Hello there, I'm Harris! I'm never that great at introducing myself, but I'm a British lad. I've been a gamer for many years and I've been dabbling in and around this site's community for a fair amount of time. Much of my life does, in some fashion, revolve around gaming — whether it be actually finding time to play games themselves or hanging around various communities and livestreams. I've always enjoyed the more niche and casual social gaming environments where I can kick back and chat with like-minded folk.

I'm generally a fairly relaxed and tolerant person that tries to get along with most people, at the same time I'm also pretty opinionated. Though, I'm pretty accepting of other people's views and perspectives and absolutely love to debate and understand more about damn near anything. I game for fun, I don't take things too seriously, and you won't really see me getting competitive nowadays.

Gaming Profile

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Screenshot

How did you start gaming and trophy hunting?

Now, there's a tricky question. I definitely began gaming when I was but a young child. Most of those memories are incredibly fuzzy — at best — so it's hard to pinpoint. Some of my oldest gaming memories were that of the Commodore Amiga and Playstation (with a side of Pokémon on the Gameboy like nearly everyone, naturally). I had some vague encounters with arcades, but those were when I was too young to really absorb much of it.

I have some distinct memories of my early PS1-era-self growing. The phrase "you never know... memory card!" became a bit of a household 'meme,' as it was on an old audiotape recording of me opening presents for... Christmas? My birthday? One of them, anyway! I still, to this day, don't know what the "you never know" was in response to but the sudden shift to getting excited over opening those precious 15 blocks of memory has always amused me. I still own my old 'password' books from before we had a memory card (speaking of, if anyone's ever played Disney's Hercules on PS1 just imagine a kid drawing out the passwords for that game and you'll have a rough idea how my passwords book looked). I continued along the path of Playstation for most of my gaming life, though I also have a history (more like an unhealthy history of addiction) with MMOs and I've sunk more time into some than I can count.

As for trophy hunting, it may come as a shock being someone registered to a site such as this, but the answer is I haven't started, yet at least. Now I am aware I have accumulated a decent number of trophy completions over the many years on my account, but the vast majority have all come naturally from playing games how I've always played them all the way back to my PS1. I've always leaned towards being a game completionist and this was probably in part that games came by few and far between in my childhood. But, even as my collection eventually grew as I grew older, I always felt like I enjoyed squeezing everything I could out of the games I liked.

When trophies made their way onto PS3 I didn't notice them, I vaguely remember an area in Playstation Home offering an exclusive costume for people with a platinum trophy in a game (Resident Evil 5, I think?) and at the time I assumed a 'trophy' must have been about some online multiplayer tournament placements or something and thought nothing of it. My first game that had trophies unlocking did make me curious what would happen if I got them all, exclusive rewards? Avatars? But nope! Nothing at all. So, I just mentally disregarded them for the most part.

All these years later, having spent time in gaming communities and on livestreams, I've socialised among people who are trophy hunters and I've become pulled into the scene, which is why I'm here today. Whilst I admit, some people have had some influence on me and I do like observing from the outside and throwing in my opinions, my gaming habits themselves have stayed exactly as they've always been. I've probably gained more knowledge about the trophy scene over the years than those who actively trophy hunt. But, I haven't been bitten by the bug yet, though Ratalaika is beckoning me.

Which consoles do you predominantly play at the moment?

As of right now, it's pretty much exclusively PS4, unless you want to count a Discord chat RPG game. I've long since completed my PS1 and PS2 libraries and don't go back to revisit games frequently enough to consider it a system I truly 'play.' Though, not too long back I did go back and do a new 100% playthrough of Scarface on PS2, pretty good fun! Not too long before that, I played Tony Hawks American Wasteland.

As for my PS3, I'd enjoy playing some of my unplayed backlog, but I've discontinued it thanks to my PS3 breaking. I'm not bothered enough by it to shell out for a replacement. Honestly, I probably could even fix it if I really wanted to but, eh. I'm a little bummed there's no PS3 backwards compatibility to be seen, though. As for PS5, I'm convinced it's a giant hoax and people are being paid to pretend they have one because I still haven't seen one with my own eyes yet.

My PC used to be a mild thing on the side for some time because I just have no interest in PC gaming, outside of the genre I've forbidden myself to play (MMOs). I've neglected that side of things so much so that my PC is pretty much obsolete even for the most basic of tasks. I just haven't needed it — so why upgrade, right?

Give us a taste of your favourite games!

One of the biggest things to note about me is at heart, I'm a variety gamer, I really do like a bit of everything (sports games excluded) but to give a taste of some of the highly-rated games in my library:

Crash Bandicoot Trilogy (originals and remake), and let's throw Crash Bandicoot 4 into the mix — it's pretty good too.
Spyro the Dragon Trilogy, too, as well as The Legend of Spyro games. Yeah, I'm in a minority with that.
The Last of Us needs no explanation, I'm sure.
Metal Gear Rising or pretty much any PlatinumGames title.
Wipeout. Used to like these growing up, nice and fast-paced.
Binding of Isaac because I find this one particularly relaxing.
God of War series, including the Norse saga, though I'm more of a fan of Greek mythos.
Last but not least, a game I always like to give a special shout out to because it's not one you see talked much about… Digimon World (OG & Next Order). The PS1 original was pretty unique to me and I loved it as a kid, and the sequel/reboot on PS4 is more of the same, but improved in so many areas. There's not a lot of games quite like it. Whether you love it or hate it I think there's a good chance you'll have never played another game similar, so I'd recommend it to all (and you don't need to be a Digimon fan, I'm only really familiar with the first series of the anime!).

What is your favourite genre?

As noted before, I'm very much a variety gamer, but if I had to really pinpoint one genre it would likely be Hack & Slash games — or 'Character Action' if you'd rather. I'm not a fan of that term myself, though. They've always been the games that get me going the most.

Runner up (and possibly cheating) is Roguelikes because not only can they be many genres, but they also offer a lot of variety on a run-by-run basis. Plus, I enjoy the fact they can be less predictable and that they offer more of a skill-check as you can't brute force them the same way you can a regular, static game checkpoint-by-checkpoint.

Where in the world are you and what is the gaming climate like there?

As noted earlier I'm a Brit, specifically Essex/England. It's safe to say gaming is fairly mainstream. For me personally, I don't know a lot of gamers (well, outside of the stereotypical 'FIFA bros') in my offline life, but online I've encountered plenty here and some turn out to be fairly local, actually. I also live reasonably close to quite a few developers and have kept in touch with some, though it's been a while since I've kept up with Ninja Theory, and I don't know if they're even still based where I knew them. I don't think they'll be happy with my opinions on Hellblade — which I played quite recently — though, so maybe for the best.

Do you have any controversial hot takes related to gaming?

I have plenty, some that might get me into hot water, so I'll put out a couple of tame ones and try not to rant and ramble.

Open world games suck, mostly:
I've really never been a fan of open worlds and whenever a game advertises itself as such I lose a lot of interest at that exact moment. In particular, I dislike the Ubisoft and modern Rockstar type open worlds the most.

They rarely, if ever, serve any purpose or help to build a world for me. It does nothing other than massively elongate your playtime and limits the capacity for good well-designed levels/mission structure. Often the best missions in open-world games are those that take you to a new area disconnected from the map (maybe set inside a cave, building, etc) and play out as regular linear segments.

This was one of the reasons I sadly didn't really connect with Horizon Zero Dawn, though the concept looked like it could be good fun). The machine combat isn't too bad at all, but there are very few instances that really felt like properly handcrafted encounters. The pacing — with all the padding — made the game drag to the point that I didn't care about the story or world anymore. I spent more time in the game just holding the left stick forward than truly actively playing anything.

Another note that probably contributes to open worlds being so lacking is the obsession with 'realism'. Older open-world titles, at least, weren't too obsessively concerned about being 100% believable and authentic. So, gameplay elements could be found within the environment and there were more options for a more creative open plan style of level design. Nowadays it's just flat, barren — 'pretty,' yet gameplay devoid, locales that serve as nothing more than eye candy. They even fail at that because rarely does anything stand out or 'pop' as much because of the emphasis on realism.

Dark Souls' (or any FromSoft game) difficulty is overrated:
This one bugs me more than it should (and I'm not trying to say no one is allowed to find the game hard because we all have different abilities at games). But, one thing that drives me crazy is how much the Souls franchise is heralded as the poster boy for 'hardcore big boy games' and there's a lot of elitism and gatekeeping from the communities surrounding that series.

Souls games supposed 'difficulty' generally revolves around game knowledge, and the lack thereof, that's handed outright to the player. As far as combat mechanics, the games are actually well below the average (particularly in that genre) in terms of the skill-oriented challenge they pose. They're comparable to almost any other AAA game out there in my eyes, just without the constant in-your-face tutorials.

Every time a more difficult game hits the mainstream it's always labelled the 'Dark Souls' of whatever genre it is, when often the game in question is usually far more difficult than Dark Souls. Also, regarding the elitism and gatekeeping with this game, people seem to make beating Dark Souls the basis for their entire identity. But, guess what? Dark Souls is not a personality — just like 'the gym' isn't — and it doesn't make you 'better' than anyone else.

I think it's all a psychological trick and partly marketing. I didn't follow much of early Souls but I remember the whole 'prepare to die' campaign and obviously the 'you died' screen has always been emphasised and has spread through pop culture. I think maybe people believe they're doing worse than they really are whenever they die in a Souls title, and part of that is thanks to its reputation. It's like a never-ending cycle. I see people die/fail more in other games and never mention it but the moment it's Dark Souls... It just makes no logical sense to me, it's got to be something in the atmosphere!

A couple short and sweet extra ones that I'll throw out there so I don't keep saying too much. I might save some of these for potential future blogs that could touch on the subjects.

The birth of Steam was one of the worst things to happen in PC gaming.
Crossplay (in its current form) is a long term threat to online gaming and needs to either go away or be massively reformed before becoming a standard.
Nintendo gets away with far too much that other companies are blasted for.
Quality > Quantity. I don't even think this is a hot take at this point. I hear it everywhere. I'd rather pay for a great five-hour game than be given a 100-hour slog that maybe has a really cool section halfway through, if you're lucky. Heck, even if there are 10 hours of a good game in the 100-hour slog, I'd still take the five hours of a good game with no fluff. It's not just about value for your money, it's about value for your time to me. We don't have endless free time and I'd rather get the most out of it.

Do you have a love for a game that isn’t well-regarded by others?

Briefly noted earlier on, I do enjoy the Legend of Spyro trilogy, and that's often criticised. I see and understand the criticisms but I think it still offers a lot of value and was heading in the right stylistic direction for the franchise, in my opinion. I would love to see the game remade, perhaps with a studio like PlatinumGames heading the project. Honestly, that's one of my dream games right there! Along with a modern, high-quality Robot Wars type game (the TV show that used to come on the BBC back in the day). There used to be loads of cheaply made free ones on PC back in the day and I really enjoyed those as simple as they were. But, that's an entirely different topic altogether.

Another game, and I'm going to lose all credibility for this one, is Haze. Now, wait and hear me out! Put the pitchforks down! Admittedly I have some personal bias with that choice because I played the multiplayer competitively, but this is another Legends of Spyro situation where I can admit the flaws, but I can see all the positives that personally I feel outweigh them. There is the potential a remake could get the positives out of it, and then this could be fixed to be up there with the best of 'em. The multiplayer, particularly, as I thought it was pretty cool. In some regards, it was ahead of its time as certain modes and features have become fairly commonplace and beloved. Though I am not for a second going to claim they came up with these first; they did do stuff before it was popular, at least.

I also want to shout out Dead Star, another multiplayer game I had a lot of fun with that came to Playstation Plus. A lot of people very quickly dismissed the title (especially with the growing criticism of PS+ line-ups) and I feel people missed out on a really fun game, there. Due to its lack of success, it closed down its servers not even a year later, and I, among others in the community, was disappointed to see it go.

What upcoming game are you most excited about?

I am becoming cynical with age and I don't get too overly excited about upcoming releases. This is because you can often get burned and end up with an Avengers, Anthem, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, or — to me — a Red Dead Redemption 2. Those are just some recent high profile examples! Though, all those games did have glaring warning signs long before they were released and I predicted the state of each one pretty early on. Even so, I'm still not one to stir myself up into a bundle of hype.

That being said, I do have titles I'm hopeful for:

God of War Ragnarok, being maybe the predictable obvious choice.
Marvel's Spiderman 2 & Wolverine, even though I'm feeling the Marvel media burnout lately.

Aside from that, I'll wait and see what games attract the attention of my wallet as and when they come. I'm quite a spontaneous gamer and I'll pick up and play all kinds of games whenever I fancy them.

The Trophy Case

What is the hardest trophy you have earned?

I used to have a guilty pleasure for this type of question because I can talk about how I like to view my 'hardest trophy' based on context. When and how did I do it? Was I less adept back then? Did I make it harder for myself? But recently, I earned a new top contender that has none of the exciting context or story and is just an awful game. I did it for losing an awful bet. Without further ado, I present to thee...

The Vision for Division trophy in FIFA 21 (PS4) worth 156 pointsPlay a game in Division 4 or higher in FUT Division Rivals

Now, I'm sure I already said I hate sports games, right? Well then, how do you think I coped with rising to a decent division of ranked multiplayer in a football game and, to top it off, in the purposefully unbalanced mode with the collectable players in packs of varying quality that you have to gather.

So, until you accumulate good players you're at a borderline unplayable huge statistical disadvantage, and this is an EA game, so it's not a quick task to accumulate the players to compete unless you want to spend the big bucks on their lootbox system. I do have a blog post on my profile documenting my time trying to go through FIFA 21, and to be fair, there were a good amount of opportunities in the endgame to earn players (I sure ain't spending money on FIFA). So it wasn't too bad all things considered! But, it does dwarf any other trophy specific accomplishments I have.

If you're curious what my old answer was to this question: it was the platinum trophy for Grid 2. Just for context, I absolutely sucked at driving games at the time (and still do). I also played everything on the hardest difficulty setting, which is apparently not even required for the trophies. As I mentioned before, though, I do not pay attention to trophies. I'm generally a completionist and thus I always do the hardest difficulty setting regardless, because that's just the basic requirement of completing a game.

What is the longest it took for you to earn a trophy?

Is it FIFA as well? It could very well be actually! I don't know just how much time I spent getting it since I kept the game running in the background and also distracted myself with the player career mode. So, my tracked game hours aren't a perfect reflection of how long it took me to specifically do that trophy. It's still fairly long regardless because earning player packs or specific players from challenges requires playing a bunch of matches against the AI and I probably had around 200 matches played earning packs and building a viable team before I even started going up against real players, since there's a trophy for 200 matches with one player and I am pretty sure I had that before making the final push.

The other possible contender could be the PUBG platinum as it's a slow-paced battle royale title. Plus, it didn't unlock until more than double the requirement, if I remember correctly. So that probably has some decent hours behind it. There may be another contender that's totally slipped my mind but for the life of me, I can't think of anything specific.

The Master Assassin trophy in PUBG: Battlegrounds (EU) worth 453 pointsKill 1000 players by any means.

What is the naughtiest way you have circumvented the hard work to grab a trophy?

Believe it or not I have an answer! Those who know me probably already know this, but I play by the idea of 'do it legit or not at all' and I don't like to misrepresent my accomplishments. As noted previously, I also don't particularly go for trophies either. Despite all that, I have done something cheeky and I even have a solution for it on this very site! I rubber banded my controller overnight to get 100,000 kills in Helldivers.

I cannot claim to have actually killed 100,000 by my hand, just driving in circles running over little bugs while I slept! But, with the peer pressure to finish a trophy list that's sitting at 99% and knowing that I've reached not even a quarter of the requirement from doing pretty much everything in the game twice over, it's fair to say I was either not going to do the excessive arbitrary grind or cheese the heck out of it. It turns out I went with the latter. I have also left my game idle in a handful of games when I discover the only trophy unobtained is for dying 'x' times. Why are these even trophies? Trophies for a lot of failures? But I almost feel like these don't count.

The Making mountains out of molehills trophy in HELLDIVERS worth 479 pointsKill 100,000 enemies.

What is the easiest full list for the best game?

I'm not entirely sure if I'm interpreting the question correctly but a good game with an easy list I've played would probably be the Spyro/Crash remakes, MediEvil, and Ratchet & Clank on PS4. They are simple, beginner-friendly games with pretty straightforward completions that just feel natural to head for. The game gently guides you towards completion as you go along, whilst also not making it mandatory to do so. There's certainly a special kind of flow to completing games like those — they really were designed to be completed.

What is the trophy you are most embarrassed to have?

I am not embarrassed to have anything really, it's all an accurate representation of my gaming history across the last two console generations and I guess tells a story. At different times I had some different interests perhaps but nothing I'm ashamed of.

I supposed if I had to pick something, by reputation I'd go with the Terminator Salvation platinum, as it's known as a game people play for easy trophies. I didn't know that at the time, just a random Christmas present from my parents but knowing now there's some stigma surrounding the game, maybe I could consider it 'embarrassing'? Even so, I'm not embarrassed by it one bit, not a particularly bad way to spend a few hours before Christmas and Boxing day dinners. What else am I going to do, watch Die Hard for the 400th time? Though I do like Die Hard... number one Christmas movie right there! No arguments.

The Determinated trophy in Terminator Salvation worth 356 pointsCollect all other Trophies

What trophy are you embarrassed not to have?

Kind of cheating with this one. It's less about the trophy and more the fact that The Last of Us: Part II is still sitting in my backlog. I've been constantly putting it off because I want that right environment, the kind where I know I'd have the free time and I'm in that kind of mood for it. For some reason, I haven't had both of those at the same time. I've been up for it and not had the time and had the time but not felt up for it. One day I'll get around to it.

The What I Had to Do trophy in The Last of Us Part II worth 99 pointsComplete the story

Which lists have you given up on?

Anything on PS3 because it's broken. Aside from that I probably can't be bothered to go back and clear any of the online challenges in Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-. When I first played, there were zero people online at that time of day. To go back now not only would I be too rusty to enjoy fighting the calibre of people still playing this game, but it does that thing that fighting games love to put in their trophy lists: excessive grinds.

It's one of the biggest misconceptions I see within trophy communities. Fighting games are generally considered a 'hardcore' genre and with a thriving competitive scene. Most people assume fighting games are, therefore, hard to obtain all the achievements in from a skill perspective. The low completion percentages help to reinforce that belief, but it couldn't be further from the truth (outside of a handful of titles). Most fighting games are time sinks because they want you to spend a lot of time in every mode and playing every character. The games rarely if ever ask you to actually be any good, outside of maybe fighting a hard level of AI — which can probably be cheesed if you really wanted to. Usually, it's just like 'play 100 games with every character' and the like. Playing all the characters is something I like, I enjoy the variety of it, but I know most people stick with a 'main' so to them that's even more of a big nope.

Best non-trophy related gaming achievement?

Probably the biggest, if we want to talk competitively, is obviously going to be being ranked number 1. Hell yeah, you read that right. Though, it is probably not as exciting as you're expecting. Back in my MMO days I used to plug plenty of hours in some of them and placed myself at the very peak in PvP with one character in one game. I also had a second character in the same game that was a tank which topped the total hit points leaderboard — by quite some margin too, at the time. That'll do nicely for a 'flex.'

The game in question? FlyFF! I don't expect many to know it but I lose my mind anytime someone says they've heard of, or better yet actually played it! So please, come tell me if you have! I even saw a stranger in a random Rocket League match with FlyFF in their username and stopped playing to ask them about it. So many memories tied to that, especially at the age I was and all the life events around it.

Obviously now these records are long gone. If the game is even still running, then I imagine there are people with ten times, heck, 100 times the HP I had. The level cap is probably over 1,000, or something crazy, now. Back then level HERO (level 121) was the cap, which was hassle enough as you could only obtain that by first reaching 120, then doing a special quest that sets you back to level 60 (referred to as level 60M for Master levels), and then getting back up to 120M with 99.99% exp. Trust me, that takes longer than it sounds.

The thing I loved most about being so powerful was just using my tank in the open PvP arena. I could use my pain reflection skill and then just sit there AFK, or just chat and not fight back against anyone, and because of the combination of my raw HP and crazy defence stats, I would basically never die. There were also a lot of players who'd actually take more damage from the small pain reflection skill than I would receive, so they'd eventually either die by themselves or burn through a load of healing items whilst barely scratching me and give up. Good times!

Another small 'flex' would be ranking 3rd worldwide (1st UK) in Haze in a competitive scene. This was like early, pre-modern eSports so it's less exciting than being, say, 3rd in the world for the latest Call of Duty or Fortnite or what-have-you today. Nonetheless, it's still the closest I have to a second flex. I haven't seen anything near that kind of height nowadays. I'm too far past my prime to consider getting a serious competitive placement in a shooter, especially with such a huge rise in player standards (seriously these kids today are crazy!), and I'm not going to sink enough time into any new MMOs to replicate that success either. I'm a has-been now, folks!

What was your favourite trophy list?

I can't say anything, in particular, has stood out. However, I will give a guideline for what I consider a decently made list. The bare minimum is one that actually asks you to complete the game in question. For example, include stuff like:

A few bronzes along the road for the story, climaxing with a silver for beating it.
All collectables and spread the trophies out how you like. A trophy for 50% and for 100%, as well as one for your first.
All difficulties, this should be stackable
All side content/modes, but again, spread them out however you like

Then, on top of that, sprinkle something creative in. Don't get silly and put some excessive arbitrary grind or something contextually out of place, like having five wins in a row in a goofy casual party game (looking at you Fall Guys). However, if you're releasing a hardcore competitive multiplayer game, then by all means go for it. That's a great idea to put in your list to add some challenge into the mix. Speedruns are always a safe bet for an additional challenge, even if they are a bit generic. Think of something that'll inspire the player to, perhaps, get more out of the game than just the basic completion checklist.

When you first skim a trophy list, what do you look for?

I don't. I've seen trophy lists for plenty of games I play before I've played them, but I normally purposefully avoid them on the off chance there's some spoiler, whether it be a story or gameplay-related. I'm the kind of guy that doesn't even watch trailers when I'm already committed to buying or playing the game. Blind as can be is how I roll.

The Community

Any TT community shoutouts?

Indeed, I do!

Firstly, I'm going to give a big loving shoutout to my "Well, That was embarrassing..." GTTSC teammates. Slayer1189 and BeardedScot86]. I hope their backs have recovered from carrying me before because they need to carry me again.
NekoRave is the most Dumbledore. Nobody quite does Dumbledore like this guy!
Daddy Ulven is a legend and rightfully deserves the recognition.
WelshSkipper88, WookieWebster316, gRAYmer99,the_lightling, and anyone else from that corner of Twitch who either hasn't signed up here, hasn't added me as a friend so I didn't realise you've signed up, or that I've completely skimmed past when checking my friends list.
JohnCenaSong- for the memes.
Hakoom for just existing on the leaderboards since forever and being the only trophy hunter I could really name if asked.
YourMom for raising you, reader, into the person you are today.

Okay, jokes aside though, my final shoutout goes to all those who keep this site going and anyone who took the time to get to know about this little fella right here!

We would like to thank Harris59 for taking the time to write all this! It was an awesome read. If you have any other suggestions or would like to have a swing at answering some questions yourself, feel free to let us know in the comments!

Community News

Written by Kes Eylers-Stephenson

Editor Kes is our resident expert in PlayStation and other gaming news. He writes about exclusives like The Last of Us and Horizon, PS Plus news, and his favourite games — The Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, and God of War — before an evening swim.