For many, achievements and trophies are an afterthought to the actual enjoyment of a game, but for others checking off every single last one of them becomes a point of pride and a game isn’t truly complete until this happens even though the main story line or side quests have long since been completed. With this in mind, certain devious developers have taken it upon themselves to surreptitiously implement mischievously difficult achievements that border on the impossible. Here are five of the most outrageous culprits.
Garry’s Mod – Yes, I am The Real Garry!
This is one straight up evil. Physics sandbox nightmare and cesspit of strange creativity Garry’s Mod is among the weirdest games out there. It’s no surprise it comes with an achievement called ‘Yes, I am The Real Garry!’ which requires players to join a server, get this, with the game’s developer Garry Newman. Garry’s Mod has literally hundreds of servers running at any given moment. The fact the game is nearly 12-years old, the chances of Mr Newman actually being in game and someone finding him are pretty remote. Incredibly, 2.8% of players on Steam have managed to unlock the achievement.
World of Guns – Quizz
World of Guns fits all the criteria of a game only found on Steam. It’s about building guns, not shooting them, simply assembling and deconstructing them for, we imagine, enjoyment of some description. In any case, World of Guns has an achievement called ‘Quizz’. The name seems pretty straightforward and innocuous at first; complete a 10 question quiz to unlock the achievement. In reality, the quiz is based off a succession of gun silhouettes where the player must identify ten of them correctly. Catch is the game has a couple hundred guns, the quiz can only be played once per hour, and the questions are selected based on RNG meaning they are never the same. So unless you’ve got a Rain Man ability for retaining object outlines, the achievement becomes a chore, then a slog, then a Sisyphean-esque nightmare of firepowered silhouettes merging into one calamitous mess.
Rock Band 2 – The Bladder of Steel
As the achievement name suggests, you’re in for the long haul with this one as you teeter on the edge of self-inflicted incontinence and a possible big wet mess. Load up Rock Band 2
Hate Plus – Level Four Revive Materia
Hate Plus is what you’d call a niche game. Nestled in the depths of Steam’s exhaustive library of titles, Hate Plus is a visual novel style game that explores the final days of a doomed ship with assistance from an ‘AI girl who grew up in a tremendously patriarchal Neo-Confucian society’. Now the achievement requires players to ‘finish the game with the security AI in traditional dress, *Mute!’ The problem is that however you go about it, the character Mute will invariably take her own life. The event of her death is intricately woven into the narrative of the game and cannot be avoided, changed, or circumnavigated by any ingenious play by play walkthrough or glitch. Despite the dogged efforts of a devoted fan base intent on modding the achievement into existence, all attempts have come up fruitless. The achievement is well and truly impossible.
The Stanley Parable – Go Outside
To describe The Stanley Parable is a rather futile exercise as the experience can have a radically different meaning depending on the player. Psychosis inducing office nightmare? A cerebral exploration of narration in video games? A straight up existential conundrum under the guise of a game? Your guess is as good as ours. However, sticking to the same confounding path, the developers inserted the ‘Go Outside’ achievement into the game with the description ‘Don’t play The Stanley Parable for five years’. Given the game released 5-years ago this Wednesday, players are only just able to legitimately pick up the achievement, that is if they haven’t forgotten to load up the game. Oh and The Stanley Parable also has an ‘Unachievable’ achievement, which no one really knows how to unlock.
