When designed well, achievements are a fun away to show off your gaming skills to your friends and look at a game in a new way. Achievements like Master Chief Collection's Feet Firmly Planted (complete a Halo 1 level without jumping) or Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel's 360 No Scope (spin 360 degrees and get a no-scope sniper kill... while in the air) provide a perfect balance of challenge and replay value. They're a good way to wring more life out of your favorite games, or at least provide a little extra reward for going above and beyond.

But sometimes, achievements aren't fun little extras. Sometimes, a game's achievement list hates you, and everything you stand for. Sometimes, certain achievements seem to exist solely to mess with any OCD completionist unlucky enough to start in on a game before taking a close look at just what they'll have to go through to get 1000/1000 Gamerscore.

These are 11 of the hardest, meanest, and most downright brutal achievements ever created.

My Kung Fu Is Stronger - Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat's My Kung Fu Is Stronger achievement might be the worst of the alarmingly large pile of “do everything in the entire game” achievements floating out there. To earn it you must win 100 fights, complete 100 fatalities, perform 150 x-rays, and spill 10,000 liters of blood… for all 28 fighters. Oh, and did I mention that you also have to play as each fighter for a full 24 hours? For those unwilling to do the math, that’s a cool 672 hours spent playing Mortal Kombat, at minimum. Enjoy!

Lost Planet 2 - Committed ‘Til the End

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Lost Planet 2’s Committed ‘Til the End Achievement is already pretty damn hard, in the way that all “do everything and max everything in the game” achievements are hard. Those tasks alone probably represent around 250 hours of gameplay. But the real kicker is that you also have to set a world record on one of the game’s training modes. The more time that passes, the harder and harder it is to reach #1 on any of Lost Planet 2’s leaderboards. So good luck!

Mr. Perfect - Mega Man 10

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Mr. Perfect starts off reasonably enough: just beat Mega Man 10.

...without getting hit. Once. Youtube has proof that this achievement is possible, but it’s still a goal for essentially only masochists to attempt. It can be earned for completing the game on Easy difficulty, but even then, complete perfection feels so daunting. Misread a boss pattern just one time, or mis-time one jump, and you have no choice but to start over. That’s just plain mean.

The Bladder of Steel Award - Rock Band 2

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To earn The Bladder of Steel you have to complete Rock Band 2’s ‘Endless Setlist 2’, which contains nearly every song in the game, without ever failing or pausing. This is around 6-7 hours of constant playing. There are no cheats or workarounds. And if your controller battery runs out, you lose. This achievement’s only saving grace is that it can be completed on medium difficulty, and with any instrument. You can pee while singing lead vocals, right?

I Am Arthur Clarke - War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds earned a 4/10 on IGN in large part thanks to its brutal difficulty. It isn’t “so hard it’s fun.” It’s just hard. It’s random. You’ll think you’re safe, only for something off-screen to kill you. The controls are clumsy, and will often betray you to your death. The 'I Am Arthur Clarke' achievement requires you to beat the game in one sitting… without dying. War of the Worlds is so unfairly hard that for many years achievement hunters thought this achievement might actually be impossible. Several years after its release, at least two gamers have managed to pull it off, making this one of the rarest achievements ever unlocked.

The Shadows Rushed Me - Max Payne 3

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The Shadows Rushed Me achievement in Max Payne 3

LASO Master - Halo: The Master Chief Collection

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LASO Master requires you to complete Halo 1, 2, 3, and 4 on Legendary, with all the difficulty-upping skulls on. Legendary Halo is no joke to begin with - it’s far more than just a hard mode. Add in skulls that do things like make enemies throw more grenades, double enemy health, disable your radar, and plenty more, and you’re going to have a bad time. The one shining light (besides the ability to cheese these achievement unlocks in a way I won’t spoil here) is that they don’t have to be completed solo. So you and a buddy can at least suffer together.

7 Day Survivor - Dead Rising

Dead Rising’s Infinity Mode is a fun little post-game bonus. In it, your health continually depletes, and you must run around the zombie-infested mall eating and drinking all the non-respawning food you can in order to survive as long as possible. You lose one block of health every 1 minute and 40 seconds, meaning you’ll lose all your health in exactly 20 minutes. The achievement? Stay alive in this mode for 14 hours. With saves disabled. Not so fun anymore.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter - World Champion

It’s almost a little unfair to include multiplayer-only achievements on this list, but Advanced Warfighter’s is so especially harsh that it deserves special mention. The achievement requires you to climb to #1 on GRAW’s global leaderboard. A few years ago this required around 2-3 months of constant, day-in day-out play. And now? The time investment is only growing - you’re looking at probably at least 1000 hours of play.

Gears of War 3 - Seriously 3.0

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Every Gears of War game has included a “Seriously…” achievement that involved some hardcore grinding, and the stakes have been steadily escalating. In Gears 1 you “only” had to kill 10,000 players in ranked multiplayer. By Gears 3, Seriously 3.0 requires you to earn every Onyx medal. There are 65 Onyx medals for doing… pretty much everything in the game. So you’ll need to earn 500 MVP ribbons, win 3,000 matches, complete 6,000 kills with six different weapons, get First Blood 3,000 times, complete 240 campaign chapters without dying, and 55 more incredibly time-consuming and challenging feats.

Cloudberry Kingdom - Shenanigans!

To earn this achievement, all you have to do is complete Chapter 7. No biggie. The only problem? Chapter 7 includes Level 319:

:(

Any brutally hard or unfairly grindy achievements can remember? Discuss with your fellow gamers in the comments below.Justin Davis is the second or third best-looking Editor at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @ErrorJustin and on IGN