PlayStation Network Trophies have been around since 2008, engendering legions of “Trophy Hunters” (I’ve heard a other names as well). The most elusive prey for these digital treasure seekers is the Platinum Trophy. For the uninitiated, most “full size” retail games reward players who completely unlock a long list of in-game accomplishments with a Platinum Trophy attached to your PSN ID. At a glance, it’s the quickest way to suss out a fellow gamer’s skill – while anyone can rack up the bronze Trophies, most Platinums require a mix of skill and dedication. Out of the 2000+ trophies I’ve earned, only 3 are Platinum. It’s still more than Sid.

A few weeks ago, PlayStation Blogcast listener John M. asked us: Are you able to tell us the top 5 or 10 games that have been “platinum’d” or competed 100%?

We dug around the servers, and here’s the list, ranked by total Platinum Trophies earned:

Assassin’s Creed II Modern Warfare 2 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves God of War 3 Resident Evil 5 inFamous Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune God of War (GoW HD Collection) Borderlands Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (The Sly Collection)

Analyzing the list, I noticed some interesting trends:

These are good games – The average Metacritic score for the above games is 89 – so it’s a good bet that these games are of high enough quality that gamers are all too happy to fully explore them to find every last collectible (Assassin’s Creed II, Sly 1), or are willing to play through multiple times on the hardest levels to earn those Trophies (Uncharted, Modern Warfare, God of War)

Big sellers – We’re looking at total Platinum trophies here, so it stands to reason that games that have sold a lot of copies would have been Platinum’d a lot. That’s probably why you don’t see CSI: Fatal Conspiracy or Hannah Montana: The Movie on this list, even though they are known to be easy to Platinum.

Few multiplayer Trophies – None of the games listed have the dreaded “Hit Level 50 Rank in Multiplayer.” Even the multiplayer-heavy Modern Warfare 2 saves most of its Trophies for the campaign and Spec Ops missions. I think this is why you see Assassin’s Creed II on this list, and not AC: Brotherhood, which introduced Multiplayer to the series (and associates 10 Trophies with this mode, many of which are tough to get). Take note, developers!

These games are a couple of years old – The newest game on this list is Sly Cooper & the Theivius Raccoonus from The Sly Collection, which came out last year. The rest of the games are from 2009 or before. My theories: it takes a lot of time to grind through everything there is to see and do, and with most of these games now value-priced, many people are still picking these up and embarking on their road to the Platinum even today.

With these criteria in mind, here are a few titles I expect to see on this list a year from now: Skyrim, Jak & Daxter, another Call of Duty title, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Yup, with Trophies now on PS Vita, there’s be a whole new frontier for Trophy Hunters to explore. We’ll check back again in about a year’s time.

Happy hunting!