So I've been playing Trials Evolution. For those who don't know, it is a game that gets painfully difficult after a while, to the point where you'll ask yourself multiple times why the hell you're even still playing. I finally finished a ten minute long track called "Gigatrack," got myself a tidy gold medal. And I look at my time spent and I just felt... empty. There was no joy, no shame, hardly any emotion at all. I had achieved momentary victory... but at what cost? Hours of my time, my very life's essence, and in the end, it was no victory. I had fought tooth and nail, but there was no satisfaction... only inevitable emptiness.
So, Escapists, what of you? What wins of yours have been short-lived, petty? Mutually assured? Astound us with your tales of unsatisfying, or outright undeserved, gaming victories. The multiplayer games where you steamroll a bunch of newbs and feel that, in the end, no-one won. Those games of Left 4 Dead where the last member of your team crawls over the finish line and stares back at the corpses of their fallen comrades and, instead of elation or joy, just sighs in defeat. Those games of XCOM where... those games of XCOM.
Regale us with your least satisfying gaming victories!