Modern gaming is pretty decent; we have some of the most beautiful looking games of all time and plenty of experimental experiences thanks to the explosion of indie games. However, while the grass is a vibrant shade of green, it’s hard not to notice one or two weeds starting to push their way through this heavy-handed metaphor. You see, games are great and all, but are we really making the most out of them? No.

This is where we get to Trophies. With Sony's virtual silverware now displaying how many people have earned each specific accolade, we can tell not just which individuals have played what, but exactly how the gaming populace as a whole conducts itself. And when we really start sifting through those challenge completion percentages, frankly, it all starts to get a bit bleak. Here are all the grimmest truths bits I’ve gathered while scrabbling through the Trophy gold mines.*

*Due to the ever shifting nature of said mines, some of these stats may have changed since the time of writing. Hopefully for the better.

When is a game “finished”? Is it when you’ve got a 100% sign flashing away on the save file? Or just once you hit the dreaded hour long credits sequence that accompanies most games? Well, it’s none of the above. It’s apparently finished when you put the game down and forget it ever existed, or hurl it into the dreaded pre-owned black hole of your nearest game shop for maybe a few quid, if Alien: Isolation is be anything to go by.

Isolation might have been our 3rd best game of the year, but only 15.7% of PS4 Isolation owners can proudly display the virtual icon telling them they’ve finished the game. Sure, that means 82.3% won’t be having Xenomorph related nightmares anytime in the near future, but they’ve also missed out on the pant-ruining terror that is a Working Joe who wants to explore the inside of your noggin. Also, the last few hours are insanely good. Fire it back up again, you fools!

But why let finishing a game be a problem when you don’t even have to properly start it? Telltale’s The Walking Dead is a fantastic game… although it’s also one that doesn’t require a great deal of actual playing. You hit buttons, but far less often than in other games, and the demands on your arcade skills are almost non-existent. In fact, to get the first Trophy you only need to spend 15 minutes playing. Should be a solid 100% collection rate for that one, right?

Nope; 93.2% of narrative zombie fans completed the arduous task of actually starting a game they spent real money on, according to the Trophy stats. That leaves an astounding 6.8% of players who maybe just saw a dog outside the window and forgot what they were doing. Who has an attention span like that? Wait, before I answer that, is that a French Bulldog..?

We all know the score by now, Tomb Raider is a pretty cool survival-action game where Lara Croft is both the victim and the monster. It’s not all about the queasy thrill of realigning the facial muscles of some poor goons on a deserted island though. There are also some tombs to have a poke around in as well. Hey, considering that the game has ‘Tomb’ in its name, you would think that would be a pretty big deal, to be fair. Let’s get raiding then?

Nope, turns out us gamers really just crave the violence. For instance, only 20.4% bothered to get all the optional tombs explored, whereas 68% of gamers mistook this for archery practice and ensured 50 enemies croaked it at the end of Lara’s bow. Add on the 62.8% of sneaky assassins who ended the lives of 25 unaware guards, and it seems we’ll forsake shelter in any old weather as long as there’s something to kill out there.

Who plays Call of Duty for the single player, ’eh? Isn’t the series now just an online playground for people without filters to vent their frustrations while blasting seven shades of pixels out of each other? Well, sort of. On PS4 CoD: Ghosts, 57% of people own the Trophy for completing the first mission. That’s 56.9% more than I was expecting, admittedly. But still, the first mission.

CoD 4: Modern Warfare still stands as one of the best FPS campaigns of the last generation, but since then, the series multiplayer offerings - both competitive and co-operative - have become increasingly dominant. This Trophy stat really hammers home the possibility that a good proportion of people have now stopped buying the series for it’s story. To look at what CoD campaigns have become - Kevin Spacey parachuted in to paper over the linearly scripted cracks and all - is a sad reminder that its single player has basically become a six hour tutorial for all the new toys in the online death grounds.

Life is full of contrasts. Some trophies, for instance, demand a commitment usually reserved for monks in a brothel. Others only require that you understand how to move your thumbs. In Burnout Paradise, your first task after turning on the game is to bundle your wheeled wreck through an Auto Repair shop, or else find yourself stuck in a death defying junkmobile for the rest of all eternity. You would expect in a game based purely around the concept of driving really fast, getting your car into an acceptable state would be a priority.

It takes some cars longer to get to 0-60 than it does to earn this Trophy and yet only 87.7% of gamers managed it. The only plausible theory is some Dark Souls level of self-imposed challenge. I refuse to believe 12.3% of players loaded up one of the best racers ever assembled and thought it “sod it” before they had even begun.

Back in the days of the PS2, Pro Evolution Soccer was the critical darling to FIFA’s mainstream, sales machine, and its genius was built on the Master League. You created your own team, inherited a squad of players and dragged them all the way to victory. It’s basically football’s version of XCOM, just without the crushing moments of defeat when all your best squad members are brutalized into a coma.

This year’s Master League brings back exactly what you want; bizarrely named players to get far too emotionally attached to. Unfortunately, the PES buying public have seemed to move on, with only 32.1% registering one singular win in Master League. The last-last-gen version of the mode has become nostalgia fuel for plenty of gamers from that golden era, but its latest incarnation will be lucky if people even remember it by the time the next edition rolls around.

Poor Ivory Tower. Years had been spent fine tuning its next-gen debut, an ambitious MMO for petrol heads where the entirety of the US is the play area. It’s online-only, to convince people to team up and form some sort of gang when they race. A crew, if you will. See, it’s such a big part of the game, it’s actually the name of it.

So it must be soul crushing to find that only 52.8% of it’s racers have bothered to have raced in a Crew. I even got my Trophy when I accidentally accepted to join someone’s game. Not everyone wants to have other people spoil their fun, anyone who has ever played online will attest to that. Still, it’s a bit rough for only half your audience buying into the game’s concept.

I can’t really think of any reasons why anybody would not want to play every inch of Rayman: Legends. Personally, I love the game so much that I find it disconcerting that not every Trophy is 100% done. But I get it. It’s pretty much impossible to Platinum the game unless you play its challenges every day for about fifty days. It’s almost understandable that the big P Trophy is hovering around the 2% mark, even if a day with Rayman is ALWAYS better than a day without him.

But it’s the other trophies that make me want to weep for the gaming community. Only 50% have got the Trophy for completing the sublime Castle Rock musical level, where your actions sync up to a cover of Black Betty. If you don’t automatically think that sounds like a good use of your time, then it might be worth reconsidering your outlook on life. Like, really, really hard.

Early on in Wolfenstein’s Nazi-robo-dog slaughtering adventure, the game makes you to decide which one of your allies is going to be dissected by a mad Nazi General. And thanks to Trophy statistics, you can see that everybody made the correct choice in who to save in this scenario. Wait, hang on a minute. Something’s wrong here. You mean isn’t it 100% for Wyatt? You beasts!

Wyatt might have been a naive urchin who was lucky not be sucking down lead every minute of Wolfenstein’s prologue, but who could resist his plucky optimism? 62% of Wolfenstein’s cold hearted, dead-eyed players, that’s who. Fergus had a few things going in his favour - he was first on screen, you shared a life-or-death incident on a plane right at the start of the game, he probably likes the same things you like and smells really good - but it’s still not enough to condemn poor Wyatt to a brain removal. Those are a boy’s hopes and dreams you’re scooping out there.

Singstar might not be a game you particularly want to save for a marathon session, but round up a few people, add in some drinks, and it’s karaoke without the usual full quotient of humiliation. Or at least with a vague semblance of gamification to distract you from the humiliation. But, according to the darkest recesses of the Trophy list, you can also rap on Singstar. Why would Singstar do that?

I’ll gladly partake when nobody’s looking, but unless you are certified, actually-good-at-it rapper, that should be the only time any of us should attempt to spit some bars. We all make mistakes, and in the drunken haze of 2:45am, I could see how showing off your flow to something as innocuous as Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) could seem like a good idea. But to unlock “That’s A Rap”, just like 4.6% of real people did, you need to complete an actual rap song five times. A horror that great should not be allowed to exist.

Kittens! Mario! A nice brew on a Sunday morning! Feel better? Good. That particular tour of the depressing state of modern gaming could have turned most of us into Morrissey. Are there any gaming behaviours that send you into a spiral of despair? Or better yet, which ones have brought a wry smile to your face?

Looking for more features to consume, you rabid over-achiever? Check out , for there are prizes to be had!*

*There are totally no prizes.

Names are tough, because there's such a fine line between sounding cool and sounding completely bonkers. A good name sticks with people, a bad one sticks with people because it sounds like something a porn star would reject for being too obvious.

We have a lot of porn star-sounding game character names in the following slides, as well as ones that are too-cool-for-school and others still that are just complete nonsense. If you've ever been picked on for having a goofy sounding name, take comfort in the fact that it could have been worse - much worse.

Seen having a stupid name in: Punch-Out!! (arcade game)

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a first grader's attempt at identifying 'Italian things'. Seriously, was this THE FIRST THING that popped into the developers' heads when designing their Italian boxer? What about Gucci Gnocchi?

Seen having a stupid name in: Super Punch-Out!!

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a fun way to speed the weekend. Do you think when Bear's parents named him, they knew their son would grow up to be a grizzled old mountain man who's also a boxer? It was destiny.

Seen having a stupid name in: Street Fighter EX

Name is stupid because it sounds like: WrestleMania, only deadlier.

Seen having a stupid name in: Mega Man X5

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Duffman from The Simpsons, oh yeah! Fun fact: the Duff is apparently short for Duffin, which doesn't make it any better.

Seen having a stupid name in: Mega Man X6

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a device that plays metal sharks. What would even be on a metal shark? Music, videos, lots of teeth?

Seen having a stupid name in: The King of Fighters XIII

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a grab bag of words people think sound cool. If he started a band, it would totally be called Nightmare Final Infinity.

Seen having a stupid name in: King of the Monsters 2

Name is stupid because it sounds like: some sort of weird, online sex slang (unlike all that totally normal online sex slang).

Seen having a stupid name in: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a stupid pun on the phrase "miles per hour." Tails is a decent enough name, but when you learn his name is actually Miles Prower - which sounds like "prowler" - it makes him sound like a creepy stalker.

Seen having a stupid name in: Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

Name is stupid because it sounds like: laziness.

Seen having a stupid name in: several Tekken games

Name is stupid because it sounds like: martial law. Even though the character has nothing to do with the military or the legal system. Super funny, right? Get it?

Seen having a stupid name in: No More Heroes

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a cheap way to have "down" in his last name. The main character's name is Travis TouchDOWN so, naturally, his rival should have the word 'down' in there somewhere.

Seen having a stupid name in: Toshinden 4

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a bunch of knightly words strung together. If your character is already a knight - and you feel the need to put the word knight in his name - then take a step back and really think over the decisions you've made in your life.

Seen having a stupid name: Final Fantasy X

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the noise a teeny, tiny baby would make while playing with a toy. Actually, Wakka was the goofball of the group, and he did fight using a toy, so I guess this name fits.

Seen having a stupid name in: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Name is stupid because as a matter of fact: Starkiller didn't kill any stars.

Seen having a stupid name in: Ready 2 Rumble Boxing

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a porn star. Seriously, you're going to find a lot of these in this list.

Seen having a stupid name in: Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner

Name is stupid because it sounds like: an Australian game show host. And yes, I'm saying the name's Australian because it has the word 'dingo' in it. I'm sorry.

Seen having a stupid name in: Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger VS. Darkdeath Evilman

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the first draft of a new Power Rangers villain. To be fair, ZHP is a parody game, so Mr. Evilman is technically a parody of generic villain names. But even so, it's still too ridiculous not to feature here.

Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Name is stupid because it sounds like: his parents had a really, really cruel sense of humor. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the 'Hot Coldman vs. Cold Hotman' naming meeting at Kojima Productions. Thankfully, good taste prevailed.

Seen having a stupid name in: Mario Kart 8

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Nintendo really has run out of new ideas for Mario Kart Racers.

Seen having a stupid name in: Devil May Cry 3

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a basic description for a character. There's actually a wonderfully convoluted reason for why Lady calls herself Lady, but the end result is that it's still a dumb name.

Seen having a stupid name in: Kingdom Hearts 2

Name is stupid because it sounds like: someone wanted a group of 13 people to all have the letter 'X' in their name, but ran out of good ideas after the first one.

Seen having a stupid name in: Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship

Name is stupid because it sounds like: an evil CEO in one of those family-friendly movies starring a talking animal.

Seen having a stupid name in: EarthBound

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Mr. Carpenter, which would have been a fine name, but if you really squint your eyes and read it again it actually says car painter. Car painter? As in, one who paints cars?

Seen having a stupid name in: Dirge of Cerberus

Name is stupid because it sounds like: blue the blue, which is basically what he's called. His name sounds like azure, a shade of blue, and his... um... title is cerulean, another shade of blue. There you have it: Blue the Blue.

Seen having a stupid name in: too many Mario games

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Luigi but with a 'W' at the front, yeah, we get it Nintendo, it's like what you did with Wario, only his named sounded cool and this just sounds like some kind of word jumble. Poor Luigi, even his villains are lame.

Seen having a stupid name in: Fracture.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a '50s high school football hero transported into the year 3090, where he stars as the protagonist of a pulpy sci-fi adventure serial, itself made in the '50s. Also, he sounds a bit like a porn star.

Seen having a stupid name in: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: computer science slang.

"Yeah, I was having trouble getting that part of the UI to display properly, but I've run a quick dash rendar to kluge it together for now. I'll fix it properly tomorrow"

Even for a character living in the Star Wars universe, it's ridiculous.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Gears of War series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a porn star. Seriously. Take him out of context and it does.

Seen having a stupid name in: Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy on the Atari Jaguar. That's why you've never heard of him.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the developers did not realise that simply putting "Mc" in front of an obvious character trait does not a plausible name or believable characterisation make. Also, given the current state of internet culture, it's inadvisable to put the word "fur" in any character's name. Also also, Trevor is my dad's name and so all of this just freaks me out. Click on to the next slide now and forget that this one ever happened.

Seen having a stupid name in: Rosco McQueen, Firefighter Extreme.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a southern '70s sheriff who works by his own rules but gets the job done.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Halo series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: of all the real-world naval ranks available to them, Bungie chose the one most likely to sound like "Captain Boss" to those uninitiated in military designations.

Seen having a stupid name in: Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name a 10 year-old would give themselves if handed a deed poll form shortly after being handed a bottle of whiskey and a giant bag of Skittles.

Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VII and its multitudinous spin-offs.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a teenage goth's online alter-ego. Or alternately, that of a French porn star.

Look, I'm going to stop doing the porn star joke now, because a) it's not a joke, and b) it applies to nearly all of them. Can we just agree that it goes without saying from this point on? It'll save me a lot of time. Like, literally seconds.

Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VII and its multitudinous spin-offs.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Square-Enix realised that "Cloud" sounded too much like the product of hippie parenting. Given that Cloud was to be their most emo hero to date, they thus stuck "Strife" on the end in order to add additional angst. He might as well be called Rainbow Misery.

Seen having a stupid name in: Far too many Sonic the Hedgehog games.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: an instruction to do something unpleasant to a rabbit.

Seen having a stupid name in: Mace Griffin, Bounty Hunter.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the developers decided that sticking together the respective names of a medieval weapon and a mythical beast was a dead-cert route to badassery. And it should be. But in practice, it isn't.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Wolfenstein series

Name is stupid because it sounds like: iD effectively tried to shoehorn the word "blast" into the name of an action hero.

Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the subtitle of any modern military FPS.

Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear Solid

Name is stupid because it sounds like: a gadget used by James Bond during the ultra-camp Roger Moore period.

Seen having a stupid name in: Parasite Eve

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a mad scientist. Which is exactly what he is. A really, really obvious mad scientist. Who was somehow allowed to carry on with his mad science until he nearly brought about the destruction of the world. Hans Klamp, people. He was called Hans Klamp. And just look at his freaking beard! Look at it!

Seen having a stupid name in: the Virtua Fighter series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Sega obviously didn't pay attention to my "Jimmy McCharactertrait" rule from earlier on.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Virtua Fighter series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Sega have tried to subvert the "Jimmy McCharactertrait" rule, but only slightly succeeded.

We know that Wolf is a nature-loving woodsman, but the point need not be laboured by stapling together three elements of the natural world in order to create his name. Who's his arch-rival, Concrete Buildingstreet?

Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VIII.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: half a sentence. Rinoa Heartilly what? Ate a juicy roast chicken? Laughed at the poor? What? What was Rinoa doing with such gusto, Squenix?

Seen having a stupid name in: the real world, as a pro-gaming association.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the supporters' association of a well-known assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland. Apparently the whole thing was a complete, really unfortunate accident, and they were quite embarrassed when they discovered connotation.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Guilty Gear series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: OH COME ON!

Seen having a stupid name in: the Star Fox series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: his parents spent very little time naming him.

"So we, Mr. and Mrs. McCloud, being foxes, as we are, have birthed a baby fox. What shall we call him?"

"Fox?"

"Done"

Seen having a stupid name in: Dark Souls.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: I'm not even getting into this one.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Capcom tried to go for a name that playfully danced with genre conventions, but then went a bit too far, effectively naming their character "Detective Detective".

Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: Okay, looking back over these pages I think we we might actually have stumbled upon the method for coming up with your own personal Video Game Name. By my estimation the method is simply a case of working out your porn name (first pet + mothers maiden name) and then substituting one of the words with the name of a mythological beast or dangerous real-world animal of your choosing. Mine is Goldie Minotaur*. Tell me Metal Gear Solid has never used anything sillier.

*I imagine Goldie Minotaur to be a street-smart female detective in a lightly steampunk-tinged '20s-noir universe. Because why wouldn't she be? She's not a minotaur though. I'm not going all Star Fox with this one.

Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series. Again.

Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a low-to-medium-profile mid-'80s wrestler, with a garish gold outfit and a large beard.

Any other stupendously named characters you think I've missed? Any in this list you think have been hard done by? Let me know. And don't forget to drop your official Video Game Name in the comments.

And while you're here, check out some of our other tasty feature content. I'd recommend .