Gaming is about challenges, or if you're into MMORPGs, gaming is about challenges and calling people gaylords. Regardless, game designers go to extreme lengths in order for you to test your skills, with rewards to follow. Sometimes, though, the rewards are simply not worth the agony of the accomplishment.
The Tube Race portion of Earthworm Jim's third level is famously hard, a white-knuckle ride through an underwater obstacle course where you're caught between running out of air and careening into cavern walls. Now, this is the only achievement on the list that you actually have to do, so the payoff is getting to the next level. What's frustrating is that the mastermind behind this devilish deathtrap is a goldfish, and once you come face to face with him, you simply knock over his bowl and walk away. Sorry, but after coming through the level shaking with adrenaline fatigue, the game really should've let you take your time with the bastard.
Modern gamers are spoiled by the fact that pretty much any game of epic size comes with its own map. Final Fantasy XII is no different...except in the Great Crystal level of Giruvegan. The level disables your map, and forces you through a series of near identical looking puzzles. You go through it once, but have to return if you'd like the sword Excalibur.
The thing is, you can pick up weapons that are inarguably better through much less maddening wandering around. The Zodiac Spear outclasses Excalibur in every way, and the Masamune and Tournesol were both less aggravating to get and better to use. It's not like weapons are character specific or anything, or that you even need more than three sets of gear at any one time. As far as we're concerned, they can keep the stupid thing.
By doing 100 Super Jumps in a row, you can get the best armor in the game, the Super Suit. The thing is, we've played this game for hundreds of hours, and the only way we ever accomplished this feat was through saving our state in an emulation every third jump or so. Even then, it took us almost two hours to accomplish this task. Video evidence above notwithstanding, doing 100 Super Jumps in a row is almost impossible.
But it's worth it, right? Best armor in the game? Not really. The Lazy Shell is ten times easier to get, almost as good, and since you only really need one ultimate armor to keep Toadstool alive and able to heal everybody, there's no real point in putting yourself through the nightmare.
Your quest is noble. A rich family pissed off a tribe of spider demons that turned them into spider-monsters who only say, "Yarrgh! I'm cursed." You hunt throughout Hyrule for 100 of the little bastards hidden in the most hard to get locations. As you kill more of them, members of the family are uncursed and they reward you with some pretty nice loot.
After 50, though, there's not a single reward until you kill them all. You won't accomplish this until the game is almost over. The reward? Infinite money, which would be great if you hadn't reached a point in the game where you don't need to buy anything, and even if you did you already have plenty of cash. We would've preferred the photo negatives of Zelda naked that they used to blackmail the Royal Family into financial security.
The real reward for working through the Riddler's challenges in Batman: Arkham Asylum is experience points that can be used to enhance your abilities, though you'll likely get plenty to do the job just in the regular course of playing.
And yes, if you persevere and solve every single one of the riddles, then you'll get 30 seconds of audio where the Riddler is arrested. Frankly, since we know he just escapes to become even more annoying in Arkham City, it doesn't seem worth tracking down that last set of Joker's teeth to destroy. After five hours of searching the same location where apparently we missed one, we gave up and just beat the snot out of the Joker until we felt better about ourselves...exactly like Batman!
