10 Video Game Rewards Not Worth Unlocking

3. The Blaine Skin - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2 Among Thieves multiplayer Blaine skin
Sony Interactive Entertainment

Uncharted 2's multiplayer was a breath of fresh air, a pacy and fluid combination of third-person shooting and smart environmental traversal.

Outwitting a pursuing enemy by jumping over a crate, popping into cover and shredding them with blindfire made you feel like a hero in an action movie, and the game was so much fun that it spawned a dedicated playerbase that managed to keep the servers online for almost a decade.

And while the game was enjoyable enough to just play without worrying about rewards or unlocks, you had to grind for an insane amount of time in order to reach the level cap, and if you did, you weren't given anything that justified the timesink.

In a post-launch patch, Naughty Dog increased the level cap to 80, requiring a ridiculous 362 million XP to hit. Even for skilled players, getting half a million XP per hour would be an impressive feat, and even then, it would still take them 724 hours - or 30 days - to hit the cap. Average players had no chance.

And what did you get for putting in all that time? A skin. A skin that isn't even that good, and could only be used if you happened to be playing as the villains. While there are worse grinds in single-player games, you don't have to deal with lag, cheaters, and bad teammates in those, and furthermore, you're probably playing for something a bit better than a dull cosmetic.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!