GameSpot Staff Members Working Like Dogs

From me, Burnout Paradise's online challenges (all 500 of them) provided a long and fustrating challenge, especially the 8 player ones, which required 8 people to work together. There also seemed to be one idiot who wanted to do their own thing.

Getting the collectibles, such as the hidden packages, in the GTA games comes to mind for me. It's just a pain to find a good amount of them. I don't think it's worth it, really.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - I never like the shooting gallery mini-games in the Zelda series, but I still try them because I like to see if I can get lucky and get a piece of heart. I kept retrying one of the ones in Majora's Mask, the Clock Town one, and after an insane amount of tries, it was able to beat it and it felt great.

Donkey Kong Country Returns. Getting all the KONG letters in each level to unlock the last world took a long time. A few of these levels I must've died 50-75 times before I finally beat them. I just finished the game yesterday so this was first on my mind. Great game and loved the challenge.also Castlevania Circle of the Moon: getting all DSS cards, beating Battle Arena, 100% map, level 100. Thee best handheld Castlevania game.

Wouldn't necessarily say there's audio 'problems', but the way the camera works, it wasn't picking up the audio from the 'interviewee' as it were, very well. And the camerawoman was either too close or too loud! 

Either way, interesting segment. Is it too much if I were to ask for a GSUK version? :) 

LOL, I think I'm gonna chime in w/ what a couple others said w/ AC1.....but I ain't gonna front I didn't have the patience to finish all those flags.....ugh, that sooo bored the hell out of me! Plus, it wasn't like you got any benefit from doing it so eventually I was all like 'fuck this.....I give up'.

Oh and the missions where you had to help another assassin pick up his 'dropped' flag....damn I hated those! XD

The first Asassins Creed,I ended up killing all the templars and getting all the flags,and it was worth it tbh,I liked the game a lot. 

Never cared about doing the same in the other AC games though.

Guitar Hero for me. It took me a long time just to be able to play on Hard/Expert, and there's still a lot of songs that I can't beat.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Getting every item and weapon drop to complete the list, along with maxing out everything like certain weapons, personal stats, and castle completion. The game was much longer if you felt the need to do all of this, which I did, lol.

The entire Ratchet and Clank series: getting the RYNO parts, going to all the Moons (A Crack in Time), getting all the gold bolts (all games), leveling all the weapons than leveling them again in Omega range. Most Ratchet games require more than one play through to get everything. It's a lot of work but I enjoy it because I love the franchise.

Assassin's Creed, running around getting all the flags. That was no fun, that was a chore.

Crackdown and those stupid orbs.  Was it worth it?  No.  It's why I stopped halfway through it all.

Then there's jak and daxter the precursor legacy (PS2) to those who played it knows getting 100% completion required all ALL 101 power cells ,  getting them all  was hell of a lot of work , Ratche & Clank has you fighting your way through hordes and hordes of robots , espically when it comes to getting 1 million bolts in order to buy "RYHNO" the best weapon in the game , then there's Tourok ( N64 ) haha know what that's probably the most...n,nevermind

Man oh man there is a whole lot to list , Anyone who remembered Dark Cloud (PS2) knows how hard it was to lv up weapons (especially Chronicle , 7th Heaven ) , the game has you grinding through dungeon after dungeons for ab points , special attachments which were tedious at times looking for special keys to go into the hidden backdoor  ones , and some has you fulfilling certain requirements in order to progress further ,other hand  FF10 (PS2) has you putting serious "SERIOUS" work  through dungeons also , mainly getting legendary weapons and synthesis for HP / MP break armor most of the characters which were annoying as hell , honestly did ANY of you got them all , God of War II (PS2)  temple of the fates , was timeously long  and whoever said they breezed throught it on the first try are LIARS ...

Almost every JRPG. Almost all are easy the entire way through then the final boss forces you to run around power leveling to avoid being killed in one attack.

I can remember F-zero for the SNES was the most frustrating game I can remember playing.  Just trying to win consistently was a chore since computer often used the dreaded "rubberband difficulty".  So annoying.  Even now it gets my blood boiling lol.

I remember when I played Prince of Persia-Warrior Within back in the days and made me feel that I worked like a dog in some boss battles.

I felt quite accomplished after beating Super Mario Galaxy 2's Grandmaster Galaxy, after 70-some tries. :P

borderland forced me work like dog earn all achivement and spent over 120 hours on this game!

As you stated, Every installment of the Pokemon series forced me to spend hours leveling up my pocket mosters to earn all eight badges.

Persona 3 FES: I need stronger persona's... so I gotta level up really bad to beat the final boss.

I remember working like a dog in Final Fantasy VII trying to level up characters and materia to the point where I could even stand a chance against Emerald and Ruby. I also remember working like a dog just to stay alive in those battles too!

Actually you can go ahead and forget what I said because the game that made me truly work like dog, without really enjoying the outcome was Burnout Paradise. I got the Burnout license or whatever it was called (the last license) but broke a controller while doing it.... I restarted almost every race so many times before succeeding.

Most mmos that I play end up being like that, more work than fun. But strangely enough the game that has made me work the hardest, ever, is also my favorite game of all time Dark Souls. You can call me a masochist or whatever but I think the amount of work pays off, because it is incredibly satisfying.

For me, the only game that eventually felt like a job I had to work hard at was World of Warcraft. Half way into The Burning Crusade, my ex-coworkers (guildies) became douchebags, so I quit. Lich King was hiring, I applied and found a new guild to work for. About a year or two later I quit again and filed for unemployment (console gaming) :P

Long story short. WoW is the Walmart of gaming.

DQIX...i spent like 113 hours playing it...parts of it were worth it..the sides quests not so much, but i got some cool gear :lol:

Got a few games that I can think of but it would have to be the Guitar Hero series up to the 3rd game.  I would become so obsessed with trying to 100% each song on expert but also doing it while playing with on both, the right and left handed settings.  It does help being ambidextrous but spent so many hours trying to get everything 100%.  Think I managed to get all the songs 100% on expert except for five which includes, Through the Fire and Flames, Raining Blood, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, The Number of the Beast, and One.  Best I could get for both hands was around 93-95%.  Haven't played it in a long while so kinda rusty now but definitely a lot of fun to play though.

Definitely Dragon Age Origins which I was just playing a few minutes ago. The Deep Roads suck.

I remember when I tried to get 3 stars on all courses in all cups in Mario Kart (I think it was the DS one).

Damn it, that was hard. I hated doing it, it became a grind and a chore, and yet I kept returning to the game for some reason. Maybe I have masochistic tendencies.

FFX, the European version, where after finishing the game you can then fight against the dark Aeons and Penance. Just completing the sphere grid wasn't enough you had to start deleting spheres and replacing them with higher stats and getting those deleting spheres were many hours spent in the arena. Then having to repeat the process for each boss to cater for its strengths. Many hours of experience grinding goes into it just to complete the grid, but it was worth it after beating Penance, possible the hardest boss I've had to ever face in any video game.

Final Fantasy XI. It's both an MMORPG and a JRPG. It has grinding covered. Plus you have to wait on public transportation to get to your grinding/farming spots. It's not work unless you get herded like cattle first. Oh, and you have to go outside the game to learn a bunch of macro commands and ability combination lists to be any good. There are (or used to be, at least) third party sites that track to value of items like some sort of stock market too.

I liked the game though. The depth of combat in later levels makes you appreciate a good group of players that have the timing of an orchestra. The waiting during travel makes you appreciate the size of the world and it makes remote areas feel distant in a way that just isnt possible if you can fast travel anywhere for free.

Well EVE Online comes to mind. Especially if you don't want to pay for your subscription.

Why is the phrase work like a dog? Most dogs you see now days which are domesticated don't really do that much work. Recently Guild Wars, but that was mostly because I was trying to get some of the things that you would naturally get over the course of playing normally over a few months/years in the span of about two weeks. 

Hum.. thinking of it, BIG NOSE for NES was also pretty complicated, since you'd have to start the game from the very beginning if you failed, but it was not as glorious to finish as Meat Boy was.

Meat Boy for getting all the bandages. Terrible, most terrible. "Trice" as terrible when you lose all your progress by a hard-drive wipe you did not really intended to make.

Hmm, recently it's been Star Trek Online that tends to feel like a job at times with very minimal to no rewards for the effort, especially when trying to earn fleet marks and only getting a few measly marks after being in a vicious battle and being blown up a few times or more.