The 5 Most Pointless Grind-tastic Achievements Ever

It’s safe to say that the vast majority of achievements are designed to extend the length of the video game you are playing. This may be through tricky hidden challenges, or post-game content, or it could be an easily missed objective that may require multiple playthroughs. If the game developers are feeling uninspired and lazy, however, you can end up with tedious achievements based on extensive grinding. These are those achievements, the worst nightmare for any completionist.

5 - Dead Rising

Dead Rising, Capcom’s zombie survival simulator, already had some pretty difficult achievements. These were made bearable by the game being roughly as fun as visiting Disneyland on a sugar high. But Seven Day Survivor was different. You had to survive for one in-game week; this translates into over 20 hours of gameplay.

This makes the Bladder of Steel achievement seem
positively reasonable in comparison.

This doesn’t seem too lengthy when compared to other achievements on this list, and it isn’t quite as monotonous. The reason it deserves this spot is because you can’t save or exit the game at all. You have to play for 20 hours straight.

4 - Beautiful Katamari

Well, I suppose Beautiful Katamari wins the award for the most honest achievement on this list.

Also, this.

Beautiful Katamari - and indeed, the entire Katamari series - is a very fun and unique game that has enough replay value to keep you going for a very long time. Unfortunately, 100 hours is extremely generous, particularly when considering the rather short story campaign takes all of three hours to complete. You are more than likely going to leave your console on while you’re asleep, but even this method is going to take several days.

3 - Bejeweled 2

Bejeweled 2 is one of those games that seems so innocuous upon first glance. “Look at me,” it says. “Look at my bright colours and shiny gems. I’d never hurt you.” But you would hurt me, wouldn’t you? You’d hurt me and hurt me and demand I come back to be hurt again.

I... I’m sorry. I have this thing with Bejeweled 2. I was bitten badly by this game.

I’ll cut to the chase. The achievement is for "completing" the Endless Mode in this game. Being that it is called "endless" for a reason, you are looking at around 250-300 hours of playing to get this achievement. That in itself sucks so hard that you’re in danger of getting a hickey if you complete it. Add on the fact that a game mode and two more achievements are inaccessible without clearing this and you start to understand why this game is so vindictive.

When the game talks to you it doesn't
even try to hide the fact it's diabolical

The absolute worst part is The Bug. See, Bejeweled 2 has an interesting way of handling game saves. When you continue a game it automatically deletes the previous save. When you quit the game, it creates a new one. This means that if, for example, you are in the middle of the 157th level and you experience a power outage, you irreversibly lose all of your progress. Swift vengeance enacted upon the controller, console, and PopCap offices will follow.

2 - Bomberman: Act Zero

Bomberman: Act Zero was released to universally bad reviews. It took the unique cartoony aesthetics from the Bomberman series and scrapped it, replacing this...

...with this.

Suddenly, Iron Man

On top of the drastic design overhaul the single player was abhorrently long and repetitive, and even at launch it was incredibly hard to even find multiplayer matches, let alone join. These issues pale in comparison to the sadistic achievements, however.

Most of them were standard fare and monotonous by design, rather than maliciousness. Clearing the single player would take hours, especially since you can’t save your progress, and the addition of hidden and completely unmentioned challenges to unlock several achievements complicated things further. There were several other grind-tastic achievements to obtain, but the real piss-take came in the form of the "break 1,000,000 blocks" achievement. You got a few dozen blocks per stage to clear, meaning you would have to play at least twenty thousand games whilst clearing the entire arena by yourself. I estimate roughly 500 hours spent going for this one achievement.

1 - Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2

Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball was, I like to imagine, an experiment to see exactly how much merchandise you can sell by slapping a big pair of boobs on the box.

Pictured: feminism

Alright, three pairs of boobs.

As sleazy and uninspired as it was, the game sold remarkably well; well enough to spawn a sequel. DOA:X2 is every bit as chauvinistic and objectifying as the first (Team Ninja have even gone on record as saying that if fans masturbate to the Xtreme series they’d consider it “a success”) but the move from the Xbox to the Xbox 360 means you can now earn achievements. They consist of the tedious task of unlocking every single swimsuit for every single character.

Pictured: progression

The number of people that have cleared all of the achievements is so small that it’s extremely hard to guess exactly how long it takes, but estimations are generally over 1,000 hours. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game wasn’t already extremely boring and unappealing to anybody outside of the “can’t maintain an erection unless it’s for polygons” demographic.

Alternatively, you can spend thousands upon thousands of MS Points to cut down the time drastically in the biggest dick move that will ever exist until Ron Jeremy perfects his “Trust the Thrust” dance routine.

Know of an achievement that you think should be here? Post it in the comments below!