10 Infuriating Ways Video Games Stopped You From Getting 100%

There's nothing quite like knowing you've fully completed a game, seen all there is to see, and do all there is to do. You're an expert, a master, and you deserve a big pat on the back. Well done, you. If you can't quite make it to that 100%, it should be something that's on you. It sucks, but sometimes a game is above our skill level, and that's okay. What's not okay is developers putting in obstacles that are figuratively or sometimes literally insurmountable. I'm Si for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Infuriating Ways Video Games Stopped You From Getting 100% 10. My Kung Fu Is Stronger – Mortal Kombat In the modern age, the 1000 gamerscore mark next to a game or the shiny platinum trophy is the clearest way to show your dominance over a title. 2011's Mortal Kombat has a platinum trophy that is currently sitting at 0.5% completion rate all because of the game's ultimate test of endurance. iKungFu is Stronger asks you to select a character and play with them for a whopping 24 hours in total. Other requirements are win 100 games, form 100 fatalities, hit 150 x-ray attacks and spill 10,000 pints of in-game blood with them, but these should pop over that time. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to totally master a character. That would be enough, but it's not strictly true. Mortal Kombat asks you to do this for its entire roster. That means playing as each of the 28 characters for 24 hours, bringing the challenge up to to at least 672 hours. You could probably leave your console on overnight every night for several months, but should you have to? At the end of the day, achievements, even the most brutally challenging of them, should still be fun to obtain. Your options with this are either letting the game play itself, or doing it legitimately, which is sure to make you sick of the game, no matter how good it is. 9. The Missable Trinity Mark – Kingdom Hearts As Kingdom Hearts flies through so many bright and beautiful Disney worlds, there's so much to see and do that it's truly worth soaking in every last bit of love. Someone should really keep a diary of your adventures, huh? The Trinity Marks are coloured symbols that are spread across Kingdom Hearts' many worlds. When interacted with, they expose new pathways, and often chests. Most importantly, using each marks a note off in Jiminy Cricket's journal, which means that using all of them is important if you want to feel like you've done everything in the game. That's what makes the red Trinity Mark in Halloween Town so notorious. If you miss it into the world's final boss fight against Oogie Boogie, there's no going back to it. The chest that it exposes isn't all that important, and you can actually get to it without the mark, but it's that missing entry in the journal that is sure to haunt. Gladly, Square Enix listened to the complaints of fans for Kingdom Hearts HD Remix 1.5 and completely moved the mark elsewhere so that this kind of accident couldn't occur moving forwards. Still, if you're playing on original hardware, this is something you'll absolutely need to be aware of. Number 8. There is no 100%. Gran Turismo 2. As gaming shifts slowly ever closer to being a purely digital medium, for better or worse, we leave behind things like the humble video game manual. Many of us have fond memories pouring over a game's instructions that sometimes feature tips, story details and a better look at the game's artwork. Occasionally they also left behind traces of what once was, but never came to be. The manual for Gran Turismo 2 mentions drag racing, but it's nowhere to be found on the disc itself, heavily implying that it got pretty close to being finished before it was cut. This is indeed the case, and the missing mode is responsible for why anyone who played the North American version of the game couldn't get that sweet, sweet 100%. The highest possible completion for Gran Turismo was a teasing 98.2%, so close and yet so far away. Even knowing that it was all said and done, just seeing this awkward number instead of those big shining three digits feels ungratifying. Thankfully, Polyphony Digital became aware of this and managed to fix it for the PAL releases, but in a time before downloading patches and updates, Japanese and American players were forever locked out of that sort after 100%. The original Fable was a really great game. Its sequel had a lot to live up to, and did so by tweaking what didn't work and growing the universe and gameplay in new and exciting ways. Many thought that Man's Best Friend was one of the best additions to the game, and they weren't wrong. but it can also wind up being the albatross for those wanting to get absolutely everything. Fable 2 features several alternate endings. First of all, make sure you save your game before the final quest, as Fable 2 demands you make an important decision, each option having its own separate achievement attached to it. Furthermore, you may well want your final choice to hinge on selfishly saving those you love over the needs of the many. You may prefer the other endings, but only one lets you keep your dog, and this is key when gunning for that 100%. Several of the game's achievements are about tending to your canine, as well as teaching it every trick in the game. And you know what they say, dead dogs can't learn new tricks. Something like that, anyway. Additionally, if your pooch hasn't dug up the Enforcer, the game's most powerful blunderbuss, then it'll be stuck in the ground forevermore. Number 6, Machine Scans, Horizon Forbidden West. Aloy's return to the wilds in Horizon Forbidden West was a stunning experience that improved on the already stellar gameplay of Zero Dawn and crafted yet another beautiful and immersive world. However, for the first month, achieving that coveted 100% completion could be considered impossible. First of all, players had to decipher which collectibles did and didn't contribute to the number, as Horizon features more to pick up than even its most dedicated players are expected to. It was then that gamers realised that the scans of various different variants of machines were keen to completion, and several of them didn't have a natural spawn point. The Apex Sentry Scrounger was one such example of a machine that was entirely missable. They could be found in one of the game's cauldrons, but only at a certain time of day. considering the player only traverses through them once, it meant many never encountered them at all. Since Forbidden West launched with an extensive list of tweaks that needed to be made to its music, graphics and the general fare of boundary-breaking glitches, it took Guerrilla Games weeks to finally launch an update that quietly made the 100% a possibility. Number 5. Be the Best. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. There are plenty of achievements and trophies out there that are wars of attrition, as previously mentioned, but very few require skill quite like World Champion from Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. The name isn't just for fun, it's a pretty legitimate description. This next to impossible achievement requires you to be the number one ranked player in the game. You might think that now that the title is over 15 years old that this might be easier to obtain than ever, but you'd be very, very wrong. When the game first released, there were certainly thousands of players competing for that top spot, but everyone was on fairly even footing and the title could pass around fast. Now, over the years, the most dedicated players have stats that are impossible to punch up against. What was once considered several months of grinding could now be years of work if you truly want this gold dust of an achievement, mostly because everyone else who is still playing this old game are only doing so for the same reason. Imagine how it must feel now if you were one of the first players online with Grawr and were able to grab this award without even trying, knowing that players have wasted months of their lives in pursuit of it ever since. Number 4. Chin Pokemon South Park – The Stick of Truth Obsidian Entertainment's 2014 RPG was a long time coming in a way. The South Park series had been running for 17 years at the time of release, and in that time had a pretty poor back catalogue of video game adaptations. The Stick of Truth was the tie-in masterpiece that the show had been waiting for. The Stick of Truth is more than just edgy humour and clever subversion of the RPG genre though. Out of the many elements, the game's collectible Chin Pokemon can be a source of frustration that can break the otherwise good-natured silliness of the title. Whilst they're dotted all over the world, a few of them can be totally missed as they're in places you only visit briefly. There's only 30 in the game, so it's entirely possible to be just a couple shy by the end of the story and unable to complete the side quest, denying yourself of a big achievement. More popular than John Lennon asks you to add all 120 characters as friends and this includes Chin Pokemon Corporation, who will only do so when you've picked up all the hidden critters. meaning not only do these missable collectibles stop you from completing that specific quest line but can also lock you out of an achievement that you've already put lots of work into number three genuine singing skills sing star by this stage you've all likely heard about the bladder of steel award that asks rock band two players to play the entire six hour set list of the game without pausing or failing however rock band is all about getting and more confident on your plastic instrument of choice it's a party game but it also has room to be something that's truly fun to master. Games like SingStar lean further into the former camp, a karaoke game to bring out every now and then when your friends are over. Still, it has some deceivingly challenging trophies attached to it, so if you want that 100%, you'll be in for a rough ride. Singing with friends 300 times is a lot more than you'd think, requiring upwards of 15 hours of constant play. It's technically doable, as long as you've got willing duet partners and aren't chasing your friends off with the expectation of making them sing every time you see them. Good Vibrations asks players for 300 seconds of vibrato and Rule the Stage demands 10,000 seconds of perfect pitch. Chances are if you're a good enough singer to unlock these achievements, your friends don't want to do karaoke with you anyway. 2. Summons and Cards – Final Fantasy VIII Whilst Final Fantasy VIII has its fair share of criticisms about its gameplay and story, it still remains a bit of a beloved underdog in some circles. It gave us incredible character designs, the best minigame in the series, and a battle system that is hilariously good fun to abuse. Final Fantasy 8 is entirely dependent on its summons, known in the game as Guardian Forces, and the abilities that they give players by being junctioned to them. Magic is collected through drawing from enemies, and certain additional Guardian Forces can be drawn from boss fights. If you forget to check every boss fight to see if they have a drawable summon, or if you accidentally kill them off before it happens, then you're out of luck until the final dungeon of the game, and even then the game never signposts this. Additionally other guardian forces can be obtained from certain locations until they get locked off completely and can't be returned to in the final act of the game. Oh and that incredible minigame? Triple Triad, as amazing as it is, requires a guide if you want to collect the full set as it hinges on challenging certain NPCs at certain times. Even more confusingly it also includes losing certain cards to win them back later to get even rarer cards. How are you ever supposed to figure that out? Number one, multiplayer achievements. Many gamers enjoy a healthy diet of single player campaigns and multiplayer hijinks but the mere idea to throw all the achievements for both into one list has been a debate since, well, achievements were even a thing. You might have conquered the story of Gears of War completely and utterly but if you haven't made 10,000 kills in the multiplayer mode, then you'll never see that beautiful 1000G. Plus there are plenty of games, such as 2K Games is the Darkness, where the multiplayer is such an afterthought that it doesn't deserve to have achievements attached to it. Obviously the one true undeniable issue with such things, regardless of quality, is the fact that they're a finite thing. Eventually, no matter how good a game is, its server will one day be switched off forever. Whilst that's not something that can be avoided, it does mean that the true 100% of many titles produced in the last two decades is gone forever. At least if you're going to do this, keep the two modes entirely separate. Never want to play the multiplayer? That's fine. Can't play the multiplayer because too much time has passed? You can still feel like you've finished the game. Thankfully, there's been a rise in the trend of separating offline and online trophies on PlayStation into non-interfering lists, which means that the all-important platinum will always be obtainable. Xbox owners, however, no such luck so far.