Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I’m a stats junkie, so the slightly upgraded Trophy-viewing system over at playstation.com is yet another screen of numbers and percentages that I can stare at for hours. And being able to compare the Trophies of your friends is like having five times as many personal stats to paw through, even if they aren’t yours. I just like knowing what games people have; every time I fire up the PS3, my comfort ritual is to immediately scan down the friends list to see whatever everyone is playing.

The new website interface lets you stack you against your friends for a direct comparison, so let’s see what we can learn about the PS3 habits of your friendly Aeropause.com staff.

You can right away that Paul and I are locked in combat to the death. Paul was consistently about 50 Trophies ahead of me… until his machine went south and I had a couple weeks of him not playing to close the gap. I pulled ahead, but this week Paul has been running through inFamous and has now passed me again.

Oh, and if you’ve seen Haygood’s 360 avatar, you’re probably wondering how he always manages to find that freaking hat.

First let’s peek at the games that a majority of us own…

The two top titles are Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and LittleBigPlanet. Paul is far and away the Uncharted master (see you in multiplayer when U2 drops, Paul!) Paul and I are both well experienced in LittleBigPlanet. To give you an idea of how the Trophies mathematically break down, silver and gold Trophies are worth more of the percentage than the common bronze Trophies. LBP has a fair number of gold and silver to collect, which is why I’m showing 68% even though I only need another four out of the 47 or so.

Burnout Paradise is another favorite. We all know Haygood has this one on six different platforms (including a radical LCD wristwatch), so he can be excused for not having much to show here. Paul and I both hit the Platinum mark here (my ONLY Platinum; Paul also has one in Mercenaries 2). My percentage is higher because I have some DLC Trophies, which are not counted towards the 100% you need for a Platinum.

Super Stardust HD pisses me off. Even if you just tried out the demo, you get a Trophy record line. Naturally, you can’t earn any Trophies with the demo, so this one sits there and annoys me, pestering me to buy the full version just so I can fill up that bar. I wish there was a way to expunge a game from your Trophy record.

Rag Doll Kung Fu was free for a week. Which explains why four of us own it. (Stephen, where were you during that week??) Most of these Trophies are a pain, because the game is kind of a pain. I have exactly one more Trophy than Mike and Paul, which accounts for my TOTAL DOMINATION of 23% over their sad little 9%s.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Mike just hasn’t gotten around to reading the FAQs on how to 100% Noby Noby Boy. Because most of them you would NEVER figure out on your own. Seriously, “Report a length of exactly 765m”? I’m a big Namco geek and I don’t even get the in-joke behind that one.

Mike leads in PixelJunk Monsters (another difficult Trophy list, but at least this one is attached to an awesome game), and I’m leading in Pain.

Between the five of us, we have 39 games represented. Here’s how some of gaming’s big hype games have fared with the Aeroteam:

• I’m the only guy to have bought Fat Princess, Resident Evil 5 and Marvel vs Capcom 2.
• Only Paul has inFamous, Resistance 2, Mercenaries 2 and Fallout 3.
• Stephen is the only guy with Prince of Persia.
• Mike is the sole owner of Street Fighter 4.
• PixelJunk Eden is only on Mike and Paul’s lists.
• Haygood and Stephen are the only SingStars. While Mike and I are the Rock Band 2 stars.
• Paul and I were the only guys around back when Warhawk was the one good PS3 on the racks. We’re also the only two to have picked up Flower and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Maybe your eyes are glazing over, but I think it’s interesting that here’s five guys, obviously into gaming, and some of the biggest titles out there can’t muster up interest in more than one or two of us. Of course, Joe Haygood has a couple of these on 360 and PC, but I think the point still stands.

Some final quick notes:

• Our Trophy counts make this apparent, but only Paul and I were sick enough to pay $3 for Linger in Shadows and score 100% on all the non-game Trophies.
• The only sports game on the list is The Bigs 2, from Haygood.
• I have 100%ed Buzz Junior: Robo-Jam. EAT IT.
• There is no way I am ever going to squeeze a single Trophy out of Marvel vs Capcom 2.