Toughest Tasks in Gaming History - Volume Two

Do you consider yourself to be a hardcore gamer? Just how hard of a hardcore gamer do you think you are? Do you think you could perform some of the most difficult feats in gaming? Even if you don't think you could, Toughest Tasks in Gaming History is here to show you some of the most challenging feats in gaming. No, we don't mean things like becoming a credible gaming journalist. No, no! We're talking feats that will amaze friends within your gaming circle. This second volume contains tasks from games like Gears of War 3, Dead Rising, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl!

If you missed the inaugural edition of Toughest Tasks in Gaming History, have no fear! We have the first volume's link right here!

Seriously 3.0 - Gears of War 3 (360)

Some tasks in gaming are tough because of the challenge involved, while others are tough due to the time investment required. Gears of War 3's Seriously 3.0 achievement focuses on the latter. In the original Gears of War, there was the original Seriously achievement, earned through obtaining 10,000 kills. The sequel required the player to up their killcount exponentially with 100,000 enemies killed. This time one could earn these kills in and out of multiplayer (through grinding the last level over and over again in a sensationally stupid, tedious, and so-not-worth-it way).

Seriously 3.0 requires you to reach level 100 as well as acquire all 65 Onyx medals. What does that actually mean for the player? Well, one has you being forced to play over 15,000 multiplayer matches at the very minimum and score over 70,000 kills. Unless you absolutely can't live without Gears of War 3, this tough task is only reserved for the biggest fans of the game.

7 Day Survivor - Dead Rising (360)

Through completing the main campaign of Capcom's Dead Rising for the Xbox 360, Infinite mode unlocks. This mode requires Frank "covered wars, y'know" West to survive for seven in-game days. Each day in Dead Rising lasts two hours, so simple math has a 7 Day Survivor achievement-acquirer spending 14 hours total on this task.

You must constantly babysit Frank, as his health bar is always declining. He must eat over 40 meals at the very least to stay alive (a full health bar will empty in 20 minutes), he must survive against a zombie horde that wants him as a nighttime snack, and there are no checkpoints or save points to help the player with. That means you must have your Xbox 360 on for at least 14 hours. Huh. No wonder our damn Xbox 360 overheated on us when we got this achievement!

Collecting all of the trophies - Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

With the Super Smash Bros. series' fourth and fifth installments releasing later this year, it seems like as good a time as any to look back at the latest game in the franchise, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. One cool feature of Brawl, which was also in Melee, is that of trophies. These trophies are modeled after various characters, objects, items, and more from numerous Nintendo properties. It's a veritable virtual museum for Nintendo fans.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl introduced a challenge wall, much like what was seen in Kirby Air Ride, another Masahiro Sakurai directed title. As in-game tasks are completed, individual panes on the challenge wall shatter, revealing a prize.

In order to get every trophy in the game, a player needs to not only acquire all the trophies found in the challenge wall (this means beating the game's modes on the hardest difficulty), but he or she must turn every enemy and boss in the Subspace Emissary mode into a trophy with a trophy stand item, and beat the Classic and All-Star modes as every character. Not just immensely challenging as a task, but time-consuming, those who have collected every trophy Super Smash Bros. Brawl has to offer are without a doubt the best and brightest the franchise has to offer.

Super Monkey Master - Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz (Vita)

The PlayStation Vita's edition of the Super Monkey Ball series is a title that will grab you by the monkey balls and not let go. It's a very difficult game, featuring a steep leap in difficulty going from the intermediate to the advanced stages of the game. It's a feat all on its own to simply beat the fifty stages of the advanced mode, and that's because you don't have the luxury of unlimited continues until after you beat the mode.

What does Super Monkey Master entail, then? Well, it's the simple task of beating every stage in the game without ever using a continue. Be sure to grab as many bananas as you can to rack up those lives, master those challenging stages as many times as you can in Practice mode, and keep those palms steady! If you can somehow obtain this incredibly rare trophy, then pat yourself on the back, as you are indeed a Super Monkey Master!

Beating the game - Contra (NES)

...How about without the famous Konami code? Heck, even with the code activated, the original Contra on the Nintendo Entertainment System was no walk in the park... Well, maybe a walk in the park if your park has a hail of gunfire, explosions, and one-hit kills every step of the way.

Without the Konami code activated, which would give players thirty lives to work with, Contra only gave players three lives to work with. Yes. Three. Lives. Throw in the little caveat that every hit you took was a one-hit kill, and those lives just fly away like scraps of paper in the wind.

Players had eight levels to complete in order to beat Contra, and if you could beat the game with just those three lives, you were the coolest kid in elementary school. Nowadays, many gamers are soft-- using save states, tool-assisted runs, and other girly-men handicaps. We should know...

My Trouble With Trophies and Achievements

When the Xbox 360 debuted, it introduced a novel concept to gaming - system-wide points for achieving certain in-game goals. Now, Sony would implement a similar system along the long in the form of trophies, which I actually prefer. Instead of some arbitrary point amount, you have gold, silver, bronze, and platinum trophies. These made seeing which feats in a given game are the most difficult by what color trophy is assigned to it. Generally, challenging goals are tied to gold trophies, trophies that take a little work and a little less time are tied to silver, and small goals are tied to bronze. With the platinum trophy, it is very simple to see what retail games on your friends' trophy lists were completed 100%. A loud, proud, and elegant platinum trophy icon is right there.

Are trophies/achievements (still) important to you?

Now, trophies and achievements are wonderful things because they enable players to delve deeper into games they might just shelve as soon as they see the ending or just grow tired of the game. At first I was addicted to collecting these achievements to boost my Gamerscore and show to my friends that I dominated a game. I let my Xbox 360 stay on overnight to complete one of the more dedicated and time-consuming achievements in Dead Rising in order to get the full 1000 Gamerscore (now knowing about the RRoD, that wasn't that smart in retrospect). But then I started to realize that I was not having as much fun. Why was I bending myself over backwards just to complete some arduous tasks that weren't enjoyable to do just to get some worthless point number?

So now I simply play through the games that I like, and if I really admire the game I am playing, I will go for the trophies (my 360 died on me, so goodbye to achievements) that seem reasonable.
For instance, I will happily try to get all the trophies in Ratchet & Clank, but will avoid trying to get 100% in Final Fantasy XIII.

But that's not the inherent problem with trophies and achievements that I have. No, I am of the Nintendo/Sega era. I grew up on the NES, SNES, Genesis, and consoles on, and I have a fond memory of doing in-game tasks and being rewarded for them with in-game unlockables. Back in the day (that's what the kids still say, right?), when someone beat a game on the hardest difficulty, they earned a cool unlockable. For instance, I remember beating Viewtiful Joe on the Nintendo GameCube on Ultra V-Rated mode (the most challenging of difficulties, not to brag) and unlocking Captain Blue as a playable character. That was on top of unlocking two other characters through easier modes. Nowadays it seems that all one would get for doing such a task is a meaningless trophy or achievement for all their hard work.

Viewtiful Joe had old-school sensibilities right
down to how the game awarded unlockables.

Going back to Dead Rising, that game did achievements right. Not only did you unlock Gamerscore points for doing specific tasks, but you were also awarded with in-game stuff like new weapons and costumes. If you wanted the most spectacularly overpowered weapon in the game, the Real Mega Buster (of Mega Man fame), you had to defeat 53,594 zombies in one run through the story. Why can't more games bestow the player with cool rewards in addition to points and trophies? I realize that some Xbox 360 games give out avatar pieces for some achievements, but I am meaning more in-game things and not system-related.

Looking good, Frank!

There were rumors that Nintendo would implement their own type of achievements into their upcoming Wii U system. That would have been just fine, but even then I would have hoped that developers would have still pushed for unlockable content.

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby, Super Smash Bros., and the mind behind Kid Icarus: Uprising, does it right. His games have a checklist or prize wall that contains a smorgasbord of different challenges to do. Each time a challenge is completed, the box that the challenge sits in gets checked off and a reward is handed out. The neighboring boxes then reveal what the player has to do to satisfy the conditions of those challenges. This is how it has worked for Sakurai’s past games like Kirby Air Ride (GCN), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii), and Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS). From trophies to new battle arenas, to new songs, to other rewards, there is no shortage of things to unlock.

The checklist feature of Kirby Air Ride.

These are the types of games where the rewards aren’t just points or virtual accolades. No, they’re things a player can use within the game to not only achieve goals but get something useful and fun out of it. That’s the type of era I was raised in, and I look with great nostalgia back at it (while looking like an old fogey). I hope some developers keep the old school mindset of unlockables as the short syllabic jingle that popped up when I got an achievement on my 360 just isn’t enough anymore.

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What about you, dear SPC reader? Do you still go after achievements and trophies and find the task enjoyable? Do you try to get 100% of the achievements in every game you play? Let the community know your thoughts on achievements and trophies in the comments section below.