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Annoying Collectibles
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Written by Slam Da Brakes   
Sunday, 24 January 2010 00:00

 

Nearly every release so far this year has seen collectible achievements and it doesn't seem developers are stopping them anytime soon. Collecting shiny objects or fruit (which ALWAYS to appear in kids games) is not really my gig. So here are TEN reasons why I hate collectibles and why they can be annoying..

 

 

Any number of collectibles beyond 50 is ludicrous. Crackdown had 500 orbs and it was mental torture, as I was stuck on 499 for weeks. I literally broke down in tears when I saw my last one humming after I had traversed the same area for weeks before. I don't think I could ever again face another 500+ collectible achievement. Well not until Crackdown 2.

 

 

Been here many a time. Buy a new game, find there are collectibles and you Google a guide. Ugh...no guide! So you post in a forum along with numerous others asking "anyone done collectible guide yet?" Then you always get some smart ass poster saying "Why don't YOU write a guide" Where do these people come from?  Why am I looking for one if I can write one? I am here to save time , not buy it.

 

 

Do you remember the flags in Assassins Creed? Do you remember why they were there? Of course not because they did rock all to the story or game. They were there because the developers couldn't think of a better way to make you cover the whole map so they decided to throw in hundreds of pointless flags. At least in GTA you unlocked a flamethrower or Call Of Duty 4 Intels unlocked cheats. 

 

 

It is not science. It is even not common sense. It is just rude and insulting to put collectibles in a game and not give you counter at level select. How are supposed to know how many you have missed or where you have missed them if they are not going to give you at least a clue? I am finger pointing at Ben 10 Viglax Attacks here.  If you miss one badge, you will have to replay all the levels again and look for it. Grrrr.

 

 

Like the ones without real-time saving and you have to pick up again after you die. I died because your game sucks and then you expect me to go back and collect it again? Jumper was a nasty and cheap game and it had the insolence to make you do just that, go back.

 

 

The ones where some sadistic developer placed high and for the love of God you cannot reach. Ever bashed the A button continually trying to reach a collectable? Of course logically you know with game physics that bashing the A button continually means you are standing in the wrong place. Yet we still do it.  I don't mind a challenge, but not in kids games. Shouldn't be allowed. There is one in Lego Indiana Jones where you have to jump in across three rotating pillars to reach a treasure chest. Talk about swearing in front of the kids.

 

 

It is bad enough you have to try and figure a strategy to defeat a boss and then the game expects you to stop and collect something while you are there. The Bourne Conspiracy had a passport to collect after the boss gun fight coming out of the museum. Tricky, as you had to play this section and collect it on Assassin (hard) difficulty if you wanted to play the game in a single playthrough. The major annoyance is that if you missed it, you couldn't go back to a checkpoint as a cut scene would trigger. You would have to play the whole level again. All for one shabby passport.

 

 

It is almost inevitably one. It is never two or three. It is the law of missing collectibles that when you reach the end of the game,  and if the achievement for the collectibles did not pop, then you are missing ONE.  You check your stats and sure enough 99 / 100. The game is glitched obviously as there is no way you could have missed one as you followed the collectible guide. Unless of course the guide is flawed and then everyone else is stuck on 99.

 

 

Like the ones that disappear if you do not reach it in time. I hate these. It is always a swear-a-thon when I encounter a collectible that requires me to go through hoops to reach it for it to disappear or for the door to close just when I get there. Tomb Raider was notorious for crap like this and most recently Gears 2 had one. The worst one ever for me was Lego Indiana Jones (again) with the treasure chest on the back of the truck driving sequence. If you missed it jumping for one truck to the next, it disappeared and you would have to replay the WHOLE level again. This is probably why I am avoiding Lego Indiana Jones 2.

 

 

This here I think is the ultimate annoyance when it comes to collectibles. The one you cannot pick up or just simply isn't there or the stats are glitched. You have given time and effort and picked 100 fruit but your stats says 99. Not funny. The Force Unleashed had a Holocron collectible glitch in that if you changed costumes, it would wipe ALL your stats. Ben 10 has a collectible that is stuck in a wall. This is major annoyance as there almost nothing you can do about it. You have to either wait until there is a patch or find a workaround (if there is one) Otherwise the game stays in a corner of your room as unfinished business.

 

So there are my ten reasons why I hate collectibles in games. I am still going to do them in games, it is just I don't trust them and I approach any collectable achievement with suspicion. Please comment below if you have found an annoying collectible. As for me I can't wait to do the 500 orbs in Crackdown 2. 

 

Comments (23)
  • |2010-01-24 03:06:01 Anonymous
    Bravo! I just finished Where the Wild Things Are, and thank god for the "treasure hunter" cheat, cus i would've never found the rest of them. The newst Glitched one(well not that new" is Cars race-o-rama 100% complete glitch
  • |2010-01-24 03:06:51 Phuture 909 (above)
    .
  • |2010-01-24 03:36:14 Metal X  - I concur!!!!!
    Collecting stuff sucks. It's tedious, very time consuming on some games. If the developers helpped you by at least giving you a idea of where you might have missed a collectable. I have seen one game help you find all of the collectables. Batman, Bully, all you had to do was finish history class or whatever it was and it showed you on the map near end game. All games should do this at end game or let you replay levels or something. Throwing 500 items into a game and saying explore and have fun, it's not! Some games I have managed to collect everything in but only because I planned it out,found maps and worked on just finding stuff in one go. 1 game that still really pisses me off is Transformers, The game was crap but I tried to have fun anyway. I am only missing 2 cubes, think I could find them? NOPE and I walked back and fourth in the 2 levels where I missed them, spent many hours serching to get that last achievement. Only to give up in pure frustration. I don't like giving up an...
  • |2010-01-24 03:45:14 Metal X  - cont....
    Typeo ^sorry 2 games help you to find stuff^ Cont... and I do feel a sense of acomplishment when I 100% a game. I'm not saying stop throwing in collectables, just help us at end game in some form.

    P.S. I still haven't opened Crackdown.
  • |2010-01-24 05:50:17 pureskillz  - I agree
    they are horrible and I don't ever bother with them. I will take the hit in points to save my self the punishment.
  • |2010-01-24 15:46:03 AJStevens  - Yes, like Ghostbusters
    Ghostbusters is STILL glitched, can't get the last two Ghosts for "No Job Too Big" and "Payday" doesn't unlock. Worst still is the possibility that when/if Xbox gets a patch, it might be like the PS3 and only unlock Payday for those who didn't 100% meet the requirements before the patch, it's all here: http://bit.ly/GBTVGPatch
  • |2010-01-27 12:00:14 Raistlin 156  - Pigeons
    Anyone who did the pigeons in GTA can relate to everything you wrote. What an incredibly hard set of collectibles.

    In AC they ruined the game for me and I didn't even finish it. I did 1000 AC2, but it wasn't as bad. Plus they did an AMAZING job on the DNA strand which showed which areas of the game were missing items.
  • |2010-02-11 16:17:54 WYLIECOYOTE1973  - Crackdown Orbs
    Pmsl....felt your pain & relief on finding your last orb.Been there & know exactly what you meant.
  • |2010-02-13 09:22:40 J05B  - destroy al humans
    i need three more, cant find them AAARHHHGGG
  • |2010-02-15 12:39:32 Venom R6  - The Simpsons
    I think The Simpsons Game should've been mentioned in here somewhere, but wasn't. This game has the worst amount of collectibles I've ever seen (next to Crackdown)! There's 100 collectibles for each member of the Simpsons household (except Maggie, she's with Marge in the game) in the free-roam town of Springfield. That's 400 collectibles! Aside from that, every episode has even more collectibles to hunt down! And to make it even more frustrating, the collectibles are specific to each character, and out of the two characters that you can control at one time, if that certain collectible you come across doesn't belong to the two simpsons characters you're currently controlling, then you'd have to go find a bus stop somewhere in town to change your character! DOOOOOHH!!
  • |2010-02-16 09:58:23 Metal X76
    I totally forgot about the simpsons. Gave up on it a long time ago. The last cliche is glitched for me and be damned if I'm going to collect everything again. I will probably delete it off of my list as soon as I get the option to delete achievements and forget I ever tried it.
  • |2010-02-23 01:31:29 Anonymous  - Davito444
    I hate doing the saboteur collectibles that was very time consuming for sure.
  • |2010-03-08 10:01:35 Anonymous
    i gave up collectable cheevs after assassins creeds flags
  • |2010-03-19 00:00:06 sider  - sider
    Assins Creed with their 420 flags and 60 templars... damn got them finaly but thank god they fixed that in AC2 :)

    thank god for the website assasinscreed-maps.com cause other wise it would be a long fokking time
  • |2010-03-27 14:07:01 s  - asdasdfasf
    i got 1000 on simpsons, ac and ac2. enjoy
  • |2010-04-01 01:23:47 silent_riot  - DARKSIDERS
    There is an item you can get for every map that shows were all of the items on the map are. I already loved the game but this made me love it even more.
  • |2010-04-11 11:15:19 Mr. ?
    I hate collectibles in games, just because a game is too small they have to add in collectibles to make it bigger. I've done most things on the simpsons. all cliches done, just need to collect everything in springfield (F**K THAT) Lego games I complete 100% only because of cheat. I've only played 1 game in which I've enjoyed collecting everything and that's Batman: Arkham Asylum just because it's a really good game
    Overall I hate collectibles as much as the next guy. Unless there not like Assassins Creed or Crackdown I'll do it. Other than that (like I said before F**K THAT)
  • |2010-04-19 13:29:51 cheifjordan
    Like everyone else, I also hate collectibles, where it be dog tags, cigarettes, or riddles. I really hate collectibles when you search and search and collect 75 of them and you only get 20 Gamerscore, F**K that man. But my fav collectible hunt was in both of the Bioshocks. Not only where they a challenge but they also let you in on some of the background story to alot of the characters.
  • |2010-04-19 13:31:46 cheifjordan
    Right now im searching for "collectible" cell phones in James Bond Quantum of Solace. Very annoying....
  • |2010-04-22 23:12:43 d3ath_1oMinG  - Dragon Age: Origins
    Played this one threw the first time, there are a lot of nice ways to trick the game into giving you achievments that would take you playing the WHOLE game to get. But I decided to play it threw a second time, just to see the difference. As you may be aware, each choice you make, there is a complete opposite choice you can make, that will award you with another achievement. Well lets just say after completeing about 3 of these choices a different way, and I wasn't rewarded with new achievements, this game ended up back at Gamestop. >=O
  • |2010-04-23 07:03:15 Anonymous  - ac2
    i got this game when it first came out, but didnt know you could see how many feathers you had per level in your dna, it took me months to find my last one.
  • |2010-06-20 16:37:51 Jesse
    i got about half way thru the collectables in assassins creed and gave up. at least in AC2 there was a reason in the story to collect feathers. i did get 1000 but its fun...not tedious.
  • |2010-07-12 11:51:13 Sambles
    I dont bother with them anymore, its pointless, especially when you run around and get them all and then end up with a measly 20 gamer points.
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