All people have a little of that completionist streak in us, which is why games have things like trophies, collectibles, and checklists you can tick off. For some people, however, that urge borders on an obsession. They need to find every secret, see all the content in a video game, and get those platinum trophies or maximum gamerscore rewards.
If you’re that type of player, you’ll probably want to avoid these games, because they take all that hard work and dedication—and throw it back in your face!
10The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wildis an absolutely enormous game with an endless number of things to do and discover, so it’s probably a good thing that Nintendo doesn’t have an achievement system.
Individual games, however, still have collectibles and can reward you for getting them all. In BOTW, for example, there are these little critters called “koroks” that are hiding all over the map. If you find one, they’ll give you a golden “seed”.
If you return these to a character named Hestu, you’ll be rewarded with more inventory slots. You need 441 seeds to max out your slots, but there are in fact900seeds scattered (ha!) all over the game. If you return all 900 Hestu will give you the “gift of friendship”, which is very obviously a golden turd. The flavor text reads “A gift of friendship given to you by Hestu. It smells pretty bad.”
9Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasygames are pretty infamous for making you jump through (sometimes literal) hoops to find all the items in the game, such as the best weapons and gear for your party members.
Final Fantasy Xis no different, and finding the best best weapon for the character Lulu (the queen of belts) requires dodging lighting strikes on the Thunder Plains200times. This gets you a special sigil, which you need to fully upgrade Lulu’s ultimate weapon. To be clear, you do not need the ultimate weapons for any of the characters to beat the game normally, so this is very much a self-inflicted punishment. One redditor even built alightning dodging machineto automate this tedious requirement.
8Nier Automata
You have to show some respect towards game designer Yoko Taro and how he refuses to take anything seriously.Nier Automatais one of the best games ever made, and it’s a pretty serious action game as well, so players attracted to precise, difficult battles are likely to be drawn to it.
However, there is a shop that unlocks in the game during normal gameplay that lets you buy any trophies you haven’t earned yet using the game’s normal currency. Best of all, you don’t actually have to lose any money in the game. You can just unlock a trophy, let the achievement pop up, reload your save and repeat until you’ve got them all. I don’t care about achievements, so I never even realized you could do this, but can you imagine a trophy hunter putting in all that work only to realize that their trophies mean nothing? Somehow, I feel Taro has left us a message here.
7Shadow of the Colossus
I playedShadow of the Colossuson my PlayStation 2 originally, which means no trophy system and no list telling me what I might have missed in the game. In fact, the first time I played the game I had no idea that you could collect stuff to boost your health and stamina, so I beat the game the first time without doing any of that.
While doing the research for this piece, I came across the “secret garden” in this game where you apparently need maximum stamina and all the lizards collected to reach. When you get there, you’re greeted by a grove with fruit that would usually increase your health, but here they decrease it. Thats’s it. There doesn’t seem to be any actual reward or point to this.
6Pokémon Red/Blue
In the original Pokémon games, and basically all the subsequent main entries, one of your main goals is to complete the Pokédex. After all, that’s what the various professors needed your help with in the first place. In Pokémon Red and Blue, the Pokédex only needs the original 150 Pokémon, though that’s easier said than done.
You don’t need to complete the Pokédex to finish the game, and to do it legitimately you need to trade Pokémon with other players—or at least another Game Boy.you may also use exploits and glitches, but suffice it to say most people never bothered to complete the Pokédex. So, if youdidgo to all that trouble, what was your reward? Well, you get an in-game diploma and some characters will acknowledge your achievements. That’s it. I couldn’t find any other known benefit of pulling off this challenge.
5Super Mario Sunshine
I never owned a GameCube, so I never playedSuper Mario Sunshine, but it turns out that if you collect 120 shine sprites in this game, you can unlock a secret ending! Now that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the sort of thing you should be getting for having to run down all the sprites, which it seems requires going through every stage in the game twice. So what about that ending? How does it change the game? See for yourself:
Yup, the alternate ending gives you a dumb postcard in the end credits.
4Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
I bought this game on PS3 when it came out, and I also bought it again on Nintendo Switch—and I still haven’t finished it. For people whodidfinish it and made a point of doing all the optional stuff too, there’s a side quest that has you fighting through all the bosses in the game again, and then facing a tough grindy enemy.
If you defeat them all, you’re rewarded with the “Philmobile”, which allows you to drive around the map without any monster encounters. That would’ve beensuper-useful if you hadn’t already unlocked the entire map at this point in the game and done everything. Even worse, the Philmobile is the same car that started off the whole tragic series of events at the start of the game. So it feels disrespectful on multiple levels.
3Blast Corps
In the N64 gameBlast Corpsyou get medals for completing missions and challenges, and if you do them faster or better than expected, you’ll get a platinum medal. Quite prophetic for modern gaming!
The hilarious part, however, is what happens when you get every single platinum medal possible in the game. This is a seriously hard thing to achieve by all accounts, but the only result of getting this perfect medal collection is that your rank changes to “you can stop now”. Earning this game a spot on TV Tropes’completion mockerypage.
2Rock Band 2
Remember when we all bought plastic instruments and pretended to play music in a video game? Well,Rock Band 2came out at the height of that craze, and given that this was an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title, it means it had achievements too.
The most infamous of which is the “Bladder of Steel” award, given for playing the game for just oversix hoursstraight without pausing. If you press the PS or Xbox button, that counts as pausing too. Also, you may’t fail a single song either. So yeah, a completionist would have to literally punish themselves with hunger, thirst, and no bathroom breaks just to get this trophy.
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I love both the original PlayStation and theJurassic Parkmovie, so it’s a little odd that I never played this 1997 title. There’s an exceptionally tough challenge where you can strive to get every DNA bonus in the game. If you do, you’re rewarded with apersonal video messagefrom Jeff Goldblum, which sounds awesome, until you hear what he has to say.
Also, here’s an honorable mention forRed Dead Redemption 2, which is filled with endless things your character Arthur can collect or try to achieve. If you know how the story of the game proceeds, well, all that time spent hunting legendary animals or customizing your guns feels pretty empty.
