When completion is suffering.
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00:00There are a few things more satisfying to gamers than fully completing a game,
00:03but sometimes it can feel like the developers have made it their mission
00:07to make getting to that 100% completion rate as miserable as possible.
00:12With that in mind then, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are the 10 Worst Video Games to 100%.
00:1810. Assassin's Creed Valhalla
00:21Assassin's Creed as a franchise has never been all that fun to 100%,
00:25but it seems that for whatever reason, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse with
00:30every new entry. Probably because the games themselves just keep getting bigger and bigger
00:35and bigger. Which leads us to the newest installment, Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
00:40It has all of the same fixings as other Assassin's Creed games,
00:43bloated out to a ridiculous size, but there's even more collectibles this time around.
00:49In fact, in total there are 782 collectibles throughout the whole game,
00:54and with about 21 different regions to explore, it can be a lot to handle to say the least.
01:00However, it was even worse when the game first launched because there were two collectibles
01:05that were just completely missable. That's right, you could be at the very end of the game,
01:09collect 780 out of these 782 different things, and then find out that you would never ever
01:16be able to get the other two without restarting the whole thing. Now if this was me,
01:21I would quite literally erupt like a tiny little hairy volcano. This was such a bad problem in fact
01:28that the developers had to patch the game in order for people to be able to actually collect those
01:32two objects, and it makes you wonder why after all the different entries in this franchise,
01:37they still can't ever seem to get the completionist aspect of it right.
01:429. Batman Arkham Knight
01:44Oh, the Riddler Trophies. Those genius, fantastic, absolutely awful Riddler Trophies.
01:53Having Riddler's involvement in the Arkham series be connected to the collectibles of the games was
01:58initially a great idea, but after the first title, the devs went absolutely stone cold berserk
02:04when it came to adding in all manner of them. This is most apparent in Arkham Knight,
02:09the last title of the Arkham series for now at least. With a wide open Gotham to explore,
02:14and with a giant focus on the Batmobile, the people at Rocksteady decided to take the opportunity to
02:19fill the map up completely with these little riddles, with a good chunk of them being locked
02:24behind obtuse puzzles that you almost certainly needed a guide to get. With trophies entirely
02:30dependent on certain gadgets that aren't mandatory for the main story, the Batmobile needed to be
02:35used in a million different ways that may not even make sense, and the sheer volume of them
02:40will guarantee that they will be the absolute last thing you do in the game, and will guarantee to
02:46give you a migraine. The worst kicker though? Well, that's that the secret ending that you get
02:50after you 100% the game as a reward absolutely blows, and barely even makes sense. What a whimper
02:58for this franchise to go out on. 8. Red Dead Redemption 2
03:02Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the greatest games of its generation, telling the tale of
03:06a gang of outlaws slowly coming undone thanks to their crimes catching up to them, and the
03:11rising madness of their leader. However, it can be a very very hard title to 100%. Why? Because it's
03:18so freaking big. Like capital B big. Like that Tom Hanks movie where he plays the piano with his feet
03:24big. The map of the Wild West is dense and vast, and it's incredibly easy to miss a giant chunk of
03:30what Red Dead 2 has to offer because of that. You can pass by side missions without ever knowing
03:35they were there, or you can be introduced to collectibles you'll never even see again. I mean,
03:40seriously, how do you find those dinosaur bones without a guide? The game, of course,
03:45seems to know this, and is a little lenient with its requirements to get 100%, but even with that
03:51it can be impossible to find all the cigarette cards you need, hunt down all the legendary
03:56animals to catch the legendary fish, and find the collectibles tied to side missions. And that's
04:02not even mentioning all the combat challenges and stuff. So if you want to be a real legend
04:07of the West, just know you're going to have to earn it.
04:107. Returnal
04:11Returnal is one of the best shooters of the past few years. It was a personal favourite of mine
04:16as well, the very first roguelike to properly get me into roguelikes. But the procedurally
04:23generated nature of its level layouts, weapon drops and yes, collectible drops made it a nightmare
04:28to 100%, and not in the kind of way the game intended. The two collectibles that were
04:34particularly difficult to find the final entries of were the audio recordings and the lore glyphs.
04:39While the bulk of these naturally do show up in your playthrough, others existed in unique rooms,
04:46and it was total RNG luck as to whether they would show up on your run. Consequently,
04:50you can spend 30 hours completing the main game, and then another 20 rerunning rooms and not making
04:56any progress at all, simply keeping an eye out for a single room that you had a minuscule chance
05:03of spawning. At release, the actual percentage chance of these dropping was ridiculously small,
05:09like seriously, I must have played that first area literally hundreds of times before the one
05:14I needed actually spawned, though the devs did drop patches that apparently alleviated this task.
05:20Still, for such a good game, the memories of 100%ing it can absolutely taint an otherwise
05:26flawless experience.
05:276. Ghosts & Goblins
05:30When you think about the hardest games in history, Ghosts & Goblins will no doubt be on that list.
05:35And not only will it be on there, but it'll be high up the ranking as well. Starring Sir Arthur
05:40as he fights his way through the supernatural terrors haunting his kingdom, this title is
05:46tough as nails, unforgiving, and just downright punishing, more than living up to its reputation.
05:52With crazy enemy placement, death in two hits, and very little room for error,
05:58beating Ghosts & Goblins at all is a crazy accomplishment, and it will take a lot of dead
06:03monsters, a lot of broken sets of armour, and a lot of luck in order to do it. But in order to
06:09fully complete the game, you actually have to beat it twice. That's because after getting to the end
06:14the first time around, you're then transported all the way back to the beginning, and now you
06:18have to go through everything again on an even harder difficulty to see the true ending.
06:23And yep, if you're thinking, well I'll probably just look it up on YouTube,
06:26you are absolutely right. That is definitely what you should do.
06:305. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
06:33There are few games that absolutely nailed the joy of the open world genre like The Legend of
06:38Zelda Breath of the Wild did. Anything you saw, you could interact with, any direction you went to,
06:43there was something there, the world was your oyster. And because of that,
06:47it was a completionist's nightmare. The problem with having a game stuffed to the
06:51gills with content is that you need to explore all of it to see everything. Hidden side missions,
06:57shrines, pieces of content you would never naturally see if you weren't digging through
07:00every inch of the map, this game had it all. And then there were those Korok Seeds. For the
07:06love of everything holy, there were those damn Korok Seeds. These things were everywhere,
07:13with a grand total of 900 of them hidden in the game. NINE HUNDRED OF THEM. And to make
07:20matters worse, the developers knew how incredibly dumb getting all of them would be, and that's why
07:25if you did collect them all, you would receive a gift of friendship from the person who tasked you
07:30with it in the first place. And that gift of friendship is literally just a piece of poop.
07:36It's a piece of poop. That's all you get. 900 of them. Sorted. Done. Boosh. What's me reward?
07:41It's literally poop. Cool. Love this. I'm gonna shut this game off and throw my Switch into the
07:46sea.
07:48Dying is a certainty in Dead Space 2. With Hero Isaac's fight for survival against the Necromorphs,
07:53you are bound to get torn apart in incredibly gruesome fashion by the horrific monsters more
07:58times than you can count. This certainty of dying in the game then is why it's so hard to get a 100%
08:04completion, because it also has the challenge of all challengers waiting for those that want to
08:08get every single achievement. The hard-to-the-core achievement sounds simple enough on paper,
08:14just beat the story on hardcore mode. Simple. Piece of piss, right? Well, no. Not when you
08:19find out what it entails, because it gets much, much more complicated. See, hardcore mode is of
08:25course the hardest difficulty available, with fewer supplies and more deadly and aggressive
08:30enemies. What makes it an absolute pain in the ass, though, is that you only get a grand total
08:35of 3 saves for the entirety of the game, with 0 checkpoints otherwise. This means that if you die,
08:41you can lose literal hours of progress depending on when you last saved. In a title that is already
08:47not for the faint of heart, this challenge weeded players out even more. If you completed it,
08:52you earned all the admiration possible in my eyes.
08:553. Crash Bandicoot 4 It's About Time
08:58After years of silence from the orange marsupial, Crash finally returned in a brand new adventure
09:03a few years ago, ready to continue where he left off by platforming, spinning and smashing his way
09:08through level after level as he jumped through the time stream. However, the developers at Toys
09:13For Bob went a little too crazy when it came to one aspect of this Crash game, and that of course
09:19is the collecting. See, the previous Crash entries were well known for their enticing
09:22challenge to get 100% completion, smashing every box and collecting every time trial in order to
09:28see the true ending and unlock the secret levels. Crash 4, however, took that and bumped it way past
09:3411 and all the way to like a million. And that's not hyperbole. This time around you had 6 gems
09:40per level to collect, VHS tapes that required you to not die at all before you got to them per level,
09:46some of the hardest time trials in the history of the series per level, perfect relics that
09:51required you to master every level, and you had to do all of this, except the tapes,
09:56twice thanks to the inverted levels. This was a whole lot of capital C content and as a result,
10:04it can take you more than 50 hours to do it all, and that in my opinion was a terrible decision
10:09in an otherwise perfect platformer. And that's mostly because I couldn't hack it myself,
10:14Dark Souls has nothing on this.
10:162. The Stanley Parable
10:18The Stanley Parable is one of the best indie games ever and one of the best experiences you
10:22can possibly have with any video game ever really. It's an absolutely hilarious yet insightful look
10:28at the nature of choice in games, with the title giving you control of Stanley as the narrator
10:32reacts to everything you do. It can be incredibly hard to know if you've even gotten every ending,
10:38but even putting that aside, it's not an easy game to 100% despite its length. And that's
10:43because by design, the game is terrible for achievement hunting. The original game had an
10:48achievement called Unachievable that was literally impossible to unlock. There was nothing you could
10:54do to actually earn it in the game, and the only way for you to get it was to go into the Stanley
10:58Parable's files and hack it so it would appear. On top of that, there was an achievement called
11:03Go Outside which required you to not boot the game up for 5 whole years. And this achievement
11:08was actually modified for the new Ultra Deluxe version of the game, which cranked this bad boy
11:13up to 10. So yeah, this is a fantastic game everyone should experience, just please don't
11:18try to 100% it.
11:201. Rock Band 2
11:22Ah, the days where Rock Band and Guitar Hero were at the top were some of the most simple fun a
11:26gamer could have. Getting a few buddies around, a few plastic accessories and just jamming out
11:31together was always a great time, and Green Day Rock Band in particular will live in my heart
11:36forever, even though it wasn't that good. But despite this joy, there was a part of Rock Band 2
11:41that caused utter suffering. A part that erased any memories of your fun times and made you wonder
11:47why you even bought the damn game in the first place. This part, of course, is the appropriately
11:52named Bladder of Steel achievement. You earned this achievement by going through the entirety
11:57of the endless setlist. You had to go through every song without failing, and you had to do
12:02the entire thing without pausing, which meant you had to do it all in one sitting. And how long
12:07would that take, I hear you ask? Well, over six hours of rocking out. So yeah, getting this
12:13achievement is not easy in the slightest, and if you messed up one song or accidentally paused,
12:18you'd have to restart the entire process again. So please spare a moment to think of the poor
12:23bladders of the people who fully completed this game.
12:26So that's our list. I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below. Which of these
12:30games did you 100% and were there any nightmare titles you think I missed off here? While you're
12:35down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to
12:37whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day. Even if you don't thought I've
12:42been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.