Possibly the most difficult Platinum I've ever achieved
This was one of the most difficult Platinum Trophies I’ve ever acquired, and it’s definitely only for die-hard Metal Gear Solid enthusiasts. The game requires a minimum of five playthroughs—one on each difficulty level—as well as completing 500 challenge missions and the short but tricky Snake Tales levels.
Metal Gear Solid 2 was original released for the PlayStation 2 but found its way onto the PlayStation 3 as part of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Each game on the collection has their own set of trophy lists.
VR Missions
By the time I decided to seriously go for the Platinum, I had already collected most of the easy trophies and set my sights on the VR Missions. When tackling a trophy list, I like to identify the hardest trophy first and attempt that right away. If I can’t manage it, there’s no point wasting time on the rest.
Virtually Impossible
Complete all VR and Alternative missions
I assumed the hardest part was probably completing the 500 VR Missions. The first couple of hundred were relatively easy and quite fun. You might hit a few stumbling blocks along the way, but strategy videos online provide solid tips and techniques-the grenade launcher missions can be particularly frustrating. That said, nothing compares to the nightmare of Snake Variety Mission 4, which stalled my progress for quite some time.
No video guide on the Internet could help—it’s purely a test of patience and luck. The mission tasks you with preventing 26 guards from reaching Meryl by killing or tranquillising them. If even one gets through, the challenge ends in failure. Armed only with a sniper rifle, you’ll contend with guards using the map’s numerous hiding spots for cover as they dash around and pop in and out of view. To make matters worse, the analogue sticks make aiming over long distances an incredibly painful experience. I even searched to see if I could use a USB mouse for aiming instead... you can't. But after enough perseverance, late one night, after countless failed attempts, I finally beat it.
None of the other missions caused me as much trouble and eventually this trophy was earned.
Story Mode
Great Dane
Collect all dog tags in the Plant chapter to obtain the Blue Wig
Next came the task of completing the game on every difficulty while collecting all the dog tags. Dog tags are collected by sneaking up on an enemy and getting them to "Freeze" by pointing your gun at them. They do a little dance and drop their dog tags. Thankfully, you can check which dog tags you’ve already collected, and their names appear when you pick them up. However, since the game is mostly linear, the tags are missable, so you’ll need to follow a guide closely throughout. Collecting the dog tags on each difficulty isn’t too hard by itself, beating the game on higher difficulties is the real challenge.
To collect all the dog tags you have to play the game on every difficult mode: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard and Extreme. Each difficulty level has a different set of dog tags and all the save files stack on top of each other. Even playing the game on Hard difficulty... is quite hard. But Extreme takes it to a new level.
Getting past guards is not the difficult part, by this point you will be a master of stealth and know the position of every guard but there is no escaping the Boss battles. Each one is very difficult. Another very important point to note is that when you enter a Boss battle you cannot leave it. So you had better make sure you have enough health and other items because you can really make things impossible for yourself. At one point I found I could not beat the Harrier fight no matter how hard I tried. Eventually I reloaded to a much earlier save and went through more carefully to ensure I had enough health. The Harrier fight was bad, the Metal Gear Ray fight was even worse. You have to fight 20 Metal Gear Rays. On very easy you only have to fight 3! But even if you make it through that, only one person stands in your way... Solidus Snake, and he is really tough.
Miscellaneous
Complete Stealth
Clear the game without entering alert mode (not including events where alert mode is mandatory)
For this trophy you will need to complete a run of the game without entering alert mode. Definitely one to try and do on the very easy mode whilst collecting the dog tags. This one wasn't too much of a challenge.
Johnny on the Spot
Hear Johnny's bowel noises in two locations
This is a fun trophy, if you are a Metal Gear enthusiast you will know that the guard known as Johnny appears in nearly all the games and is found somewhere stuck on a toilet. This trophy requires you to use the directional microphone to find him. There are 2 locations you need to find. The first is when you have to use the directional microphone to listen to Ocelot and Solidus’s conversation and the other is when you have to provide Sniper cover for EE later in the game.
Steamed
Kill 5 enemies with pipe steam
Almost every game has that one trophy that is total and utter garbage. It adds nothing, it's glitchy, it's painful. In MGS2 it's Steamed. This trophy requires you to kill 5 enemies with hot steam. This is achieved by getting them to stand near a pipe and then shooting the pipe releasing the hot steam. There is basically only one section in the game where you can do this and there are a limited number of enemies to try it on in that area. So you need to replay the game or the section to keep coming back here and try again. It's not always obvious if it worked and there is no way to track progress. I feel like I must have killed about 30 before it popped.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of my all time favorite games so the addition of trophies In this HD collection was extremely welcome. My favorite part of trophy hunting is giving me reasons to replay my favorite games and do things in it I wouldn't have ordinarily done. I can well and truly say I have done everything in MGS2 by this point. It was very difficult, and from start to finish it took 10 years but I look back on this as a great achievement in gaming.
Absolutely would not recommend.