When Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 console in 2005 they included a new twist that would revolutionize the way people with lots of free time would enjoy games: achievements. Microsoft would then attempt to “revolutionize” gaming further by offering both HD-DVD and Kinect support for their console and we all know how that turned out (expensive paperweights that can occasionally play a dead media format or secretly record your embarrassing workouts and upload them to Microsoft’s YouTube channel). Achievements are so commonplace these days that most of us can hardly remember a time when you’d turn on a game and not have explicit directions on what you were supposed to do to “beat” it; between the title screen and the rest of the game you knew there was a credits screen of some sort and that’s basically where you set your goal marker when you started playing.
The first few games released for the Xbox 360 featured only a small number of achievements where confused developers would issue you a 200 point award for throwing a football or for managing to sit through a loading screen; they truly didn’t know what in the hell they were supposed to do with this system and were confounded by these "achievements". It's why NBA Live 2K6 has five achievements and four of them have requirements that are met the second you plug your console into a working power source.
Regardless, once developers figured out they didn’t have to give gamers a thousand points just for pressing the B button they began getting creative with their objectives and goals using achievements to give otherwise straightforward games new missions and side quests for players to explore. Games are now no longer measured by an RPG completion percentage or whether or not you collected all of the Chaos Emeralds and stuffed them up Robotnik’s ass; if you don’t have 1,000G in an Xbox game and all of the DLC achievements unlocked then guess what? You didn’t beat it.
With that said below are six achievements who’s sole purpose in life is to make your gameplay experience a living hell. These are the achievements that, for whatever reason, are almost impossible (or in some cases are absolutely impossible) to unlock. They are “Completionists’ Nightmares”.
Hail to the Chimp is a game that strived to cash in on the lucrative “party games” genre of titles; the only problem here is this genre was over-tapped about six years prior and by developers touting bigger and better franchises. Hail to the Chimp features no Xbox franchise characters or cameos of any sort, just a bunch of random animals with ridiculously hard to pronounce names such as "Ptolemy" and "Murgatroyd" which sounds less like an animal’s name and more like something you’d see a proctologist for. The whole game itself is based upon a fake “presidential run” where each animal apparently beats the yiff out of one another for votes. The game never mentions if this is a WWF presidency or a domestic presidency.
They even make the game look like a fake news broadcast. HOW CHARMING.
Between insipid and uninspired minigames we’re treated to carryovers that make the game appear as a “GRR News” broadcast. The game is so generic and unfunny with its humor that it literally took me about fifteen minutes to realize that “GRR” wasn’t some creative or witty acronym but is literally just the “Grrrrrr” sound. Hail to the Chimp doesn’t even make an attempt at being cute, it just gives you a bunch of tired and unfunny jokes and expects you to either never have heard them before or be completely retarded.
This begs the question of who the game is for. Is it for kids? Surely it can't be because this game is ridiculously hard after the first few rounds. Is it for adults, then? No, because the jokes are such painful groaners that hearing them after a certain age will guarantee permanent erectile dysfunction. If you perform a stand up show entirely out of humor from this game you will be shot in the face by the second act. This is a both a guarantee and warning printed in the game's manual.
The cutesy characters are so one-dimensional and generic that even feral representations of actual animals are more entertaining than this game. That didn’t stop MTV, though, who said this game was funnier than The Colbert Report. MTV doesn’t even know what the hell “music” is and it’s in their company name, anything they say about video games is a lost cause because when it comes to gaming they might as well stick their thumbs in their asses and renew Fantasy Factory for another 29 seasons and start an MTV3 channel. I’d rather listen to Atari Corp’s Jack Tramiel talk about proper video game industry etiquette and ethics than ever take advice on entertainment from MTV.
Animal’s Choice is an achievement that requires you to “win the single player campaign without losing a primary”. The description is already vague enough to allow for at least three George W. Bush jokes but what the game is literally asking you to do is beat the game by finishing in first place in every single round of which there are over 50. Each round takes about five minutes to complete so with the addition of loading screens you’re looking at close to 5 hours of gameplay just for this achievement. If the game was a cakewalk this would be inconvenient at best but after a certain threshold of “primaries” the game drops its cutesy feel and becomes insanely difficult to the point where it reaches controller-smashing proportions.
To put the difficulty of this achievement into perspective here’s a link to this achievement on an Xbox gamerscore website that “weights” achievements based upon how many people actually have it. This achievement, literally worth only 50 Gamerscore, is worth 1,614 points when calculated for its "Bullshit Factor". There are over 1,000 logged gamers who have this game and out of all of them only one guy has this achievement. Animal's Choice is so damn ridiculous that out of every achievement ever created for an Xbox 360 title this one is 6th for weighted value.
Legend has it that earning this badge is the only way to ascend to true furry nirvana.
Borderlands is one of those games that people either hate or love. In my experience the title is just an exercise in how far a developer can go before they piss their players the hell off and drive them to never play the game again. Between what seems like endless collection missions and DLC about as broken as the aftermath of a drunken Alabama monster truck rally this game is just an utter mess; it’s tolerable at its best and completely infuriating at its worst. Yes, I just went there.
Upon its release Borderlands had an insanely high number of glitched achievements that simply would not unlock even if you met the requirements for them. Because of this I never unlocked the award for reaching level 30; I had to start a whole new game to get that achievement and for the longest time a handful of other menial achievements were all glitched and locked as well, but this one right here, Fully Loaded, was the very last achievement I unlocked for this game.
The requirement is painfully, and deceptively, simple: “rescue enough Claptrap robots to earn 42 inventory slots”. A “Claptrap” is a robot that drives around on one wheel and spouts out phrases that Gearbox desperately tried to make the new “Cake is a lie”. Claptraps are among the worst video game characters ever conceived and are right up there with Oblivion’s Adoring Fan on the “what the christ were you idiots thinking” list. They never shut up. Ever. All of them universally spit out the same unfunny shit and each Claptrap literally only comes with around four action phrases before they all start repeating. Broken Claptraps are hard to pass up, because you just want them to die, but the catch is that the only way to shut them up is to find a toolbox and fix them. Your reward for your troubles is a “Backpack SDU”, an item that grants you three additional inventory slots.
The issue here is that you don’t always get a Backpack SDU, it’s just random chance. If they don’t give you an SDU they’ll give you a worthless grenade mod that’s about 15 levels under your current one and drive away. There also isn’t an unlimited supply of Claptraps to fix either, once you fix one they’re gone from the rest of the game. Borderlands has two playthroughs available (“easy” and “hard” if you wish), each one has the same story and missions and each one has their own set of Claptraps. I played through both playthroughs and rescued every single Claptrap and was stuck at 39 inventory slots, and mind you if you rescue every Claptrap in just one playthrough you can get to 42 slots "easily"; I went through both and was stuck at 39 because the little bastards wouldn’t give me my required final SDU. After beating the game I was forced to turn to the DLC where only three more Claptraps existed… and the first two dispensed a worthless grenade mod as well.
This game shouldn't be deserving of standard Rule 34 treatment. I hate it.
I was down to my last Claptrap who appropriately enough was broken down right beside a sawmill. If this sack of dicks didn’t give me my SDU I was going to summon the powers of the dark lord and throw this son of a bitch straight into the decorative spinning saw blades that I could see in the background.
He didn’t give me the SDU.
The second this happened I shut the 360 off to prevent the game from autosaving (since it does that once every 14 seconds it seems). I loaded my file three more times before he finally gave me the SDU. If I had missed this achievement the only way to get it would be to start a new file from scratch and play through this monumental waste of time yet again, and frankly there was no way this was going to happen. I'll take up self-mutilation with broken Christmas ornaments and playing soccer using newborn babies before I will ever sit down and play Borderlands from start to finish again.
And remember, this wasn’t the only bugged achievement in the game. There were at least six others that would not unlock for me that I had to either start a new save file for or do over until it gave it to me. Screw this game. Seriously.
Mega Man was a legendary game from the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Sure, the box art was terrifying but the game went on to be the only NES game to have five sequels released for it in the console’s lifetime. In the late 80′s and early 90′s this was completely unheard of for a game. Super Mario Bros had only one sequel (I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Super Mario Bros 2) and that was enough, as did The Legend of Zelda, but five for Mega Man? What can I say, the formula worked. The action platformer is an incredibly fun and engaging game with a difficulty that isn’t too steep but also isn’t completely easy either. It’s a winning combination and that’s why there’s more Mega Man games than there are honest bankers in the United States.
To celebrate the success of the games that started it all Capcom released retro-inspired sequels to the NES games in the form of Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, two games made to look and play exactly like an NES game but without the hassle of fellating your cartridges to get them to work. Each game is a reasonable and affordable 800MSP ($10) and to be honest I don’t have a single bad thing I can say about either one, well, except for the achievement “MR. PERFECT” (caps necessary for emphasis most likely). What’s the requirement?
Beat the game. Without taking any damage.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mega Man as much as the next guy, but seriously when was the last time you made it through any level in any Mega Man title without getting hit from a stray bullet or cheap shot from an enemy that randomly appeared at the bottom of the screen? I grew up playing Mega Man 1 – 6 and even though I know each game better than I know most of the members of my immediate family I still can’t make it through even the Robot Master stages without getting hit.
I was going to make a stereotypical joke here but "Baxter" doesn't sound Japanese.
Was Capcom high when they created this achievement? Were they not aware that one of their Dr. Wily bosses is basically the equivalent of that hellspawn yellow blob goliath from the original Mega Man who has attacks that are almost impossible to dodge? Part of the reason why Mega Man is so difficult is because every enemy, not just bosses, have attack patterns that you have to memorize and keep track of because the game will quickly throw multiple baddies and multiple kinds of them onto the screen all at once.
And you’re expected to not get hit a single time while all this is going on.
No thank you, Capcom.
You cannot have a list of “worst achievements ever” and not include this one, the grand-daddy of all frustrating awards. See the guy in the tile? That’s Otis. He’s a genuinely nice old man who works as a security guard at Willamette Mall. He’s like a black and not fat version of Paul Blart. Otis keeps tabs on everybody in the zombie-infested mall via the building’s security cameras and is kind enough to let you know when he sees survivors so you can go rescue them. He sounds like a decent enough old man, so how does he reach you? He calls you on a yellow industrial cell phone that he gives you in one of the game’s opening cutscenes. It can’t be that bad, right? So what do you have to do to get this achievement?
Oh, just answer every single call this guy makes to you.
Otis calls you when he sees any survivor and he generally doesn’t like to tell you whether they’re a psychopathic boss or a stranded shopper. You have to answer every call, not just the ones where he says “so I saw a lady getting double teamed in the women’s restroom in the East Wing you should go check it out”.
Otis will call you about story-related events pertaining to the game’s main plot. If you fail the storyline you fail this achievement because you won’t get all of Otis’ calls. You also have to save certain survivors because they will request things later. If you answer the calls and just show up and murder everybody with the rake you found in the hardware store you will fail this achievement because Otis will not be able to call you with their follow-ups. There is more to this unlockable than sitting in a storage room for three days answering a phone. This is Dead Rising, not a Dell Tech Support simulator.
Obvious reference is obvious.
For a guy who mentions that he can see everything on the mall’s security system he really doesn’t understand the concept of being appropriate with the timing of his calls. On numerous occasions during boss battles Otis will call you and ask you to bring him some Taco Bell or whatever. Not really, but you get the idea. While you're dealing with an insane photographer who's trying to shove a zombie wasp larva inside of a survivor’s spread eagle ass for a good photo op (this actually happens in the game but I may be exaggerating certain details) Otis will calmly ask you what you’re doing and tell you there’s a perfectly safe woman hiding in a record store, because since she’s already safe there’s apparently a pressing need to call you right this very moment.
Oh, and by the way if you’re thinking on waiting in a location where he’s going to call about a survivor so that you can get there quickly? He won’t call. You will fail the achievement.
Capcom, you assholes.
At least they have a sense of humor, though, as in Survival Mode (where every survivor is an enemy you must fight to stock up on food and items) Otis is the very first survivor you spar with and there's nothing more rewarding than bashing him in the face with a frying pan and using the disembowel move on him 50 times in a row.
<string test> is not an achievement. Well, it is but you can’t unlock it. There is no way to legitimately obtain the achievement because its unlock parameters are never defined anywhere in the Osmos game code. Really, with a name like <string test> it already looks like a piece of messed up placeholder code, and that’s exactly the issue. This secret achievement is a last-minute insertion by Microsoft when they realized how badly the developers of Osmos screwed up the way their game would work with the existing Gamerscore and achievement system.
A brief rundown of the standards and practices for achievements in an Xbox 360 game for those who don’t know: Console and PC titles are allotted 1,000G to divide up among up to 50 achievements (99 in special cases such as The Orange Box). If DLC is planned for the game the developers are permitted to increase the game’s total gamerscore by 250G each quarter of the year not to exceed 1,750G total. With Arcade and Windows Phone 7 titles developers have 200G they can divide up between a required 12 achievements.
Osmos has only 11 achievements.
Somehow in a fluke miracle of mathematics Hemisphere Games can make a list of numbers that add up to 200 but they can’t count to 12. Rather than make a 0-point achievement called “Thanks For Buying!” that unlocks at the game’s title screen Hemisphere Games’ developers looked amongst themselves with shifty and nervous eyes asking “do you think they’ll notice”. They submitted a game with 11 achievements and the moment Microsoft’s quality assurance department (like that really exists but just bear with me here) looked at the game they said “okay, which one of you didn’t pass second grade?” It’s not Microsoft’s job to come up with achievements for games, that job is given to the developers to carry out assuming they know how to perform basic math, so when Hemisphere Games shifted their gaze down to the ground and started kicking rocks I’d like to imagine Microsoft let out a long exasperated sigh and stamped their game with this unobtainable award.
One of these hangs in every room of Hemisphere Games' offices now.
<string test> is included in this list because it’s a great example of the first real demonstration of developers not knowing what the hell they’re doing. Perhaps a mistake of this caliber could be tolerated at the launch of the console — when the achievement system was brand new — but we’re about six years into this system’s life. The only excuse here is “ourbad we am no counting gud”.
It's possible to get the full 200G on this game with the 11 “real” achievements, but depending on how you want to gauge "true completion" you can go by gamerscore or total achievements. If 200/200 and 11/12 is fine for you then that’s great, but for the gamers out there who focus more on keeping their achievement completion percentage as close to 100% as possible Osmos is a game that will forever screw up your ratios.
If there was ever a definition of a truly worthless game genre it’s the sports category, and yes I’m just going to be right out with it. Sports titles are a shameful disgrace to video games and their presence is just a long filthy blood-tinted skid mark on the face of the gaming market. There’s a new sports game every year and honestly when all you’re doing is playing football is there really anything more you can do to your games before you’re playing XFL? The same goes with basketball; basketball is basketball and we don’t need a new game every year. We also don’t need a bunch of FIFA games or NHL titles, how about making one good game instead and just sticking with it? Environmentally the system we have is wasteful and economically it’s its own mini disaster. NBA Live 1995 is worth so little money that if you try and look up its trade-in value at a GameStop you’ll crash the system and cause a rift in space/time because that number doesn't exist.
This game isn't even worth the material it's made from.
Because sports games are a dime a dozen infinity and because 99% of them are crapped out by Electronic Arts (a company that “has been” can’t even begin to describe) it goes without saying that their online play is tentative and fleeting at best. EA knows so little about maintaining quality with their products that their website shamelessly boasts over 550 released titles, about 500 of which are sports games. This entry in the list isn’t devoted to just EA alone however; I’m not ragging on them specifically, they just happen to be the “most guilty” since the last time they ever had an original idea for a video game that didn’t involve some kind of inflated ball was sometime in the 1990′s.
The catch-22 with sports games is their achievements are notoriously simple; the first few rounds of “2K6″ and “Live 2006″ games literally showered you with achievement points for performing completely inane tasks. Their online achievements are no different; most of them have requirements as mindless as "don't fall asleep". The problem here is that the window of time for obtaining these online achievements is insurmountably small to the point that some of them today only have a window of about a year to be completed so that server resources can be put toward the next worthless sports title. There are some games whose online servers will likely never be shut down (Halo 3, Reach) so their achievements are obtainable no matter how late you arrive to the show, but when it comes to sports games it’s not a matter of “if” the servers will shut down, it’s literally “when”. The only thing more worthless than sports games themselves are the achievements contained therein. They are the crowning example of “not giving a shit” when it comes to developers being in touch with their customers and a beacon of what can be called a "Completionist's Nightmare".
André Bardin is a freelance writer in the video game industry. Presently, he maintains a regular humor column at GatorAIDS and is employed by indie studio TrackMill. He recently published a book on games called "Nintendon't: 25 of the Worst Video Games Ever" (available at Amazon). André can be reached via email (andre [at] trackmill [dot] com) for any and all inquiries.