Isn’t it always great when a video game has hours and hours of fun? When you read about how a game has dozens of hours of playtime in one play through? Then you get the game and discover what? That there are some ridiculous fetch quests that add about 5-6 hours to the game that make it tedious and boring.
The sandbox games are notorious for this. The Grand Theft Auto series has always been throwing the odl “Hidden Package” thing in our faces since GTA III. Although the hidden packages were tedious and boring, at least they had some sort of benefit for going after them other than the 100% completion badge. Every 10 or so you found hooked you up with a new weapon, or armor, or health at your safe house.
Then Comes GTA IV several year later and we get FLYING RATS (they are pigeons)! Not 100 of them this time but 200! You think…big deal…probably get 20 different weapons out of finding them. Wrong. All 200 pigeons found and you get a flippin’ TROPHY, or ACHIEVEMENT. How fucking lame is that? Bad enough they give you nothing,b ut they make it a trophy on top so if you want platinum you HAVE to find them. Of course this falls into the video game scams this gen I have detailed before.
What does this accomplish? Well basically it adds a few hours to overall gameplay. Big deal. Was that couple hours fun? No. NO it wasn’t. IF you are a completionist though they know you will do it. They love to fuck with us video game perfectionists don’t they?
Another gmae that has them is inFamous. While much easier to find than the GTA ones, there are about 150 more of them to find. They are called Blast Shards. At lest by pinging them you can see them on your mini-map here. They actually have a purpose as well by giving you more “energy” to blast away with your powers. Of course it is another lame attempt at 100% to get the platinum trophy once again and prolong a game with meaningless tasks. Miss one of those damn shards and you are gonna be pissed. Finding 1 of 100, or even 200 isn’t a big deal, but what about 1 of 350? Of course if you arent’ an idiot you use a map and find all shards island to island before you move to the next.
I suppose that is my least favorite, but another game I rather liked, but has a moronic system in it is Final Fantasy XII. This is more of a gameplay “feature” that you can’t really see. You certainly experience frustration, anger, and ultimately boredom with it, however. What does it do though? Adds 50+ hours to gameplay at least if you are the completionist.
IF you played this game you know exactly what I speak of. It is none other than the random chest/item/drop rate mechanics in the game. This game has set it self up where enemies don’t really drop items like they did in past Final Fantasy games. They still do mind you, but typically they drop “Loot” that you combine to get weapons, items, armor, etc. in the “Bazaar”. These item drops, while always have been somewhat random, with drops being rare in come cases were never taken to this level. You have like 1% down to .0001% of a chance to find some things in this game. The Tournesol hunt is by far the most famous, but hardly even a problem if you miss the first Zodiac Spear and haven’t found the scam people have come up with to circumvent the 1/1000 chance you can find the other one.
I could probably go on with this for quite sometime, but this is going a bit long. I was going to get into the Oblivion equestrian apparel, or the infamous “horse armor” DLC thin,b ut that can be for another day. Oblivion is loaded with stupid leveling ideas that you can talk about all day, but I digress.
What are the most annoying game chores you can think of?