You know trophies helped me with Bayonetta
I was just gonna play it on easy, beat it get some trophies, and be done with it
Then I saw, lets see how normal/hard goes, got into a groove learned new tricks, refined my skills, then I was like fuck it, lets do this Infinite climax (hardest difficulty)
Got a little better, and then just burned through the challenges and got the platinum. I was hesitant, but the trophies were so balanced, and the tier skill of earning trophies with the difficulties, and you refining and getting better made you a better player/gamer.
Dead Space gave me an incentive of beating the whole game with just the Plasma Cutter (starting gun, nothing else), a different way to play the game, and it was fun