Summary
- Some collectibles in video games require players to go through tedious and time-consuming tasks, such as collecting scattered notes or shooting hidden frogs.
- The reward for collecting these collectibles can often be underwhelming or even worthless, making the effort put into collecting them feel frustrating and not worth it.
- Developers should consider the balance between making collectibles challenging and rewarding, as well as ensuring that they add to the overall gameplay experience rather than detracting from it.
Love them or hate them, collectibles are, and have always been, a major part of many video game experiences. Whether for costume unlocks, special items, or simple achievements, developers have found ways to turn just about anything into an object of interest for their players, no matter how bizarre or nonsensical.
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Whether filler padding or a nice little reward for those dedicated players who like to explore every inch of a game world, they're here to stay. However, it seems that some collectibles were added to games either with a contempt for player time, a mischievous little "that'll teach them" grin, or with a significant lack of play testing feedback, and have subsequently gone down in gaming history as legendarily galling.
1 Musical Notes
Banjo-Kazooie - All Or Note-Nothing
Banjo-Kazooie
- Exhibit A: 100 notes scattered across sizable levels
- Exhibit B: The game resets the count when the player leaves the level or switches off the console!
Any loyal Banjo Kazooie fan will straighten the record and proclaim the classic Nintendo platformer as one of the easiest examples of a classic collectathon, and may admonish those who wish to criticize it for its overabundance of stuff. That being said, one of the more progress-crucial items has to be picked up all in one go. That means no leaving the level, no dying, no powercuts, or else the whole level has to be scoured from top to bottom once again.
To be fair to the developers, Rare, the game was unable to save the player's musical note progress because of technical limitations (which the sequel thankfully resolved, especially given its enormous levels). Then again, if there was a hard limit on how many notes the game could commit to memory, why add so many in the first place?
2 Kerotan Frog
Metal Gear Solid 3 - Frog Sniper
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)
- Released
- November 17, 2004
- Developer(s)
- Konami
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 2
- Exhibit A: There are 64 of these well-camouflaged frogs scattered across the mission
- Exhibit B: Once shot, they create an annoying sound that draws the attention of guards
In a game about methodically crawling through the jungle, carefully avoiding the notice of guards and masterfully becoming one with nature to slip by unseen, just about the worst thing any snake-slurping super spy could do on a mission is set off an endlessly-croaking, guard-attracting children's toys.
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However, to unlock Snake Eater's prestigious stealth camouflage item, players are asked to shoot (and set off) all 64 of these green guys hidden throughout the (mostly verdant) jungles. The kicker is that some of them have to be hit while on a moving vehicle, and if they miss, players simply have to reload their saves over and over until they can hit them.
3 Stones Of Barenziah
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - Better Left Unturned
Skyrim
- Exhibit A: Scattered across one of the largest provinces of Tamriel
- Exhibit B: Cannot be removed from the player's inventory until the end of the quest
The Stones of Barenziah appear next to loot as shiny objects, potentially worth selling off for a tidy sum. However, they cannot simply be sold off at the player's convenience. Until all twenty-four (scattered all across Skyrim) are found, completing the "No Stone Unturned" quest, they will stubbornly refuse to leave the Dragonborn's inventory until the changing of the kalpas.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that the stones will sit in players' inventory (thankfully, weightlessly) until the associated quest is completed. And the reward for painfully gathering each of the stones? A slight buff for finding precious gems in chests.
4 Pigeons
Grand Theft Auto 4 - Rats With Wings
Grand Theft Auto 4
- Exhibit A: Shooting one of the two hundred adds a wanted level
- Exhibit B: Pigeons are birds, not rodents
The worlds that Rockstar put out in their staggeringly detailed environments have only gotten bigger with time, but Grand Theft Auto 4's Liberty City was already huge. Hidden among the gray and brown streets and buildings are 200 gray and brown pigeons perched on various posts, walls, nooks, crannies, and cranes. Once Niko makes one explode into a cloud of blood paste and feathers with his bullets, a notification will taint him, letting him know that there are 199 left.
What makes hunting these helpless animals down particularly infuriating is that unloading lead into most of the "rats with wings" found throughout the city will grant Niko a wanted star, or worse, some packing pedestrians will assume that the player is firing at them and will engage in a pointless firefight. The player's reward for completing the incredibly tedious extermination is the spawning of a helicopter on the MeTV building (one of the tallest in the game) that requires another helicopter to scale. What gives?
5 Nirnroot / Crimson Nirnroot
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion / Skyrim - *Nirnroot Noise*
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Exhibit A: Their obnoxious monotone humming
- Exhibit B: One of the most worthless rewards for one of the hardest quests in the game
Nirnroots. Anyone whose fingers have been marred by these ugly-looking and ugly-sounding leaves will already have their annoying monotone humming in their heads. This plant pest was first introduced in Oblivion. Plucking one would activate a quest that involved a high elf tasking the Champion of Cyrodiil with going out and finding 10 more. And then 20 more. Actually, another 30. Then 40. And the reward for collecting all 100 requested Nirnroots? A leveled potion that gives the player a 300-second skill boost, at best.
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But because the Nirnroot quest must have been such an in-house favorite at Bethesda, they saw fit to add an even more infuriating variant of the plant in Skyrim, the Crimson Nirnroot, which can only be found at the bottom of a dark, hugely expansive hole called Blackreach. Thankfully, only 30 of the 44 possible crimson weeds are needed to complete their associated quest, and the reward is a permanent 25% boost to the player's alchemy output.
6 Multi-Colored Bananas
Donkey Kong 64 - Going Bananas Over A Pallet Swap
Donkey Kong 64
- Released
- November 24, 1999
- Developer(s)
- Rare
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo 64, Nintendo Wii U
- Genre(s)
- Platformer
- Exhibit A: The collectibles are arbitrarily colored and divided between different characters
- Exhibit A: Only the correct Kong can pick them up
Of the 1,810 bananas required to complete DK64, an astonishing 1,680 of them have to be picked up with the right character in every single level. Since there are five Kongs in the family, each with their color preference, and which can only be swapped in specific locations, players are forced to backtrack a migraine-inducing four times before being able to call the level quits.
If the banana count were lower and slightly hidden, it would still be just as irritating as having to pass by hundreds of bananas just because the wrong family member happened to be selected at the time. While DK64 remains one of Rare's best games in the eyes of the fans, its philosophy on collectibles remains bananas.
7 Flags
Assassin's Creed - A Big Red Flag
Assassin's Creed
- Released
- November 14, 2007
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Montreal
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Stealth, Action
- Exhibit A: 420 flags divided across four vast areas
- Exhibit B: Basically no reward for snagging them all
This history-spanning murder spree simulator Assassin's Creed is known for its tendency to conjure arbitrary tasks and busy work to keep its players running around for hours in its splendidly rendered parkour sandbox extravaganzas. From feathers to almanac pages floating in the wind, the checklist never seems to end.
This trend began in the original game where Altaïr is tasked with stashing various flags planted across the Holy Land. All 420 of them. These flags are not merely flags atop poles from which Altaïr can perform a leap of faith. They are tiny bits of fabric attached to a small stick with little else to distinguish them from the rest of the open world. And the reward for collecting them all? Four achievements (for Xbox 360 players only).