I like trophy lists like Horizon: Zero Dawn and God Of War too. Most PS first party trophy lists are similar to this. Tied to the game in a fairly organic way, avoiding, as you said, grinding/farming, and Olympic gaming feats. Gran Turismo is an example of the opposite, although as a driving game, it's quite different. Notoriously brutal, both as tests of skill and patience.

the witcher 3

The Metro Trilogy. Didn’t play until 2019. As a trilogy it’s one of the most atmospheric games I’ve played

Sweet Amaterasu, is it ever...especially regarding patience. B-Spec in GT5 was useful to keep things moving along when I was finishing up a degree, but I can't imagine going after the trophies for B-Spec (or the Endurance races, for that matter). It's kind of funny, to me at least, that when I was much younger I'd throw on a CD (like Garbage Version 2.0!) and that was enough to keep me entertained while I just endlessly navigated the tracks in GT2's and GT3's endurance races. Now there's, arguably, greater incentive, greater variety in music at my disposal, and I can't be bothered... Makes me glad that games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics came along before my time for gaming became so short.

On topic, I'd also add Resident Evil: Revelations 2. I really liked the story (for the most part) and atmosphere (which I think presaged the tonal shift from RE6 to RE7). I also loved the chimeric gameplay which was a complete surprise to me. It has one of my favorite lines in the entire series as well. I had avoided it because I was real burnt out on the Resident Evil series, dislike episodic publication of games, and was skeptical about any sort of 'gaiden' entries. The story of how I finally came to play the game is a bit longer and has to do with my analysis of the franchise in general, but Capcom's PS4 release being a complete edition definitely helped abate some of my reticence to play it.

Are you still working at the powerstation ? I can see you sitting next to homer.

I am! It's actually like the best job I've ever had. Hopefully I stay there until I retire. That place changed my life! 

You know, I ran into something similar. When I was playing this on my PS3, it took 20 minutes or more the first time it loaded. And then the second time I played it, it took about 20 minutes or more to load my save along with early cut-scenes having some real bad pop-in/clipping, etc. As I progressed, the cut-scenes evened out (so only one of the most compelling cut-scenes in the beginning was ruined...hurray!), but the initial load time got slightly longer and longer (timed it to verify). So, despite this extremely frustrating circumstance, I persisted in playing through the game.

Fast forward, I finally beat it and was talking to a friend who said that they experienced none of these issues. I then talked to another friend who said the same thing. So, I tried one of these friend's disc, and this ridiculous initial load time persisted. Of course, I started to wonder if it was just my system. However, all diagnostics on the HDD showed all sectors were good and absolutely no other game was giving me any issues.

Turns out, it was self inflicted: as I understand it, the initial interminable loading was due to the game putting its required files into the HDD's cache. Every time I played a different game (and I did cycle games a lot, especially because I had 3 or so at the time which were part of weekly online gaming sessions with friends), I was causing that cache to be replaced. Given that I was only able to play TLoU once a week for a couple of hours, I was basically forcing myself to sit through the initial set up each and every time.

Live and learn ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Specs Ops: The Line.

Flew under my radar at the time of release, I was more focused on other, bigger games. Finally got around to it years later. Damn good game, one of the best examples I can think of of video game violence serving a narrative purpose, plus refreshing in its unpredictability in that it didn't stick to formula and often outright subverted it.

I remember you showing a pic of yourself in body armor working security, is what you do now at the plant the same type of work or something different. btw the reason I know your work details is ages ago I checked a network down site and it had your profile on it. it's a small world.

Mass effect franchise

God of war, I first played this because they switched to Norse Gods, but that was the reason why, I loved god of war ps4 but I won't bother playing the previous games.