Confessions of an Achievement Whore

"This time baby I'll be...bulletproof." - La Roux

If you play the Xbox 360 chances are you know what achievements are, and chances are you are an achievement whore like I am.  For the uninitiated, achievements are points you get for completing certain actions in an Xbox game.  These can come from just playing the game normally and passing the levels.  They can also come by doing challenging or strange actions like the "Dastardly" achievement in Red Dead Redemption.  This achievement involved playing the role of a dastardly villain from the old timey shows.  You have to hogtie a woman, place her on the train tracks, and watch her get run over by the train.  If that's not awesome I don't know what is.  You gain nothing from these achievements, purely bragging rights.  Unlocking achievements adds a ton of replay value to certain games, it can also subtract some replay value as well (I'll delve into this later).  I have played a 10 hour game over 4 different times to try to get all of the achievements.

I think achievements are such an ingenious way to get gamers invested in the games, and I think, at least for me, that it is a way for me to keep purchasing Xbox 360 games over Playstation 3 games.  Sony does have their own "Trophy" system but they started it, I believe, due to the popularity of achievements.  It works in a completely different way, and I heard that it is pretty rewarding, but I think its too little too late.  Honestly, unless I read reviews and they are completely skewed toward the Playstation 3 (hasn't happened yet) for a multi-platform game I will ALWAYS purchase this game for the Xbox 360.  Why?  Achievements.  I've already invested so much of my time building a high Gamerscore (the score that tallies all of the achievement points you've unlocked) and I just want to keep improving on it.

Another thing achievements do is add a sense of old school competitive nature.  Nowadays people are bragging about how many kills they have, what they're K/D spread is, and so on and so forth.  But gamerscore showcases a few things: 1) how dedicated you are at playing your games 2) how skilled you are at playing games and 3) how much of a nerd you are.  It's a way of quantifying exactly how much better you are at games than they are.  So when I get shot in the head playing Modern Warfare 2, and I end the match in last place with a record of 2 - 20, I just say, "shut up, I have a higher gamerscore than you."  Then they continue to own me.  These points are reminiscent of old school arcade machines that people toiled over trying to beat the high score.  It's just another way to earn bragging rights...of which I just recently lost.  My jobless friend has surpassed my gamerscore and I vow to regain my dominance.

I mentioned earlier that achievements can subtract for a game's overall replay value.  How this happens is when all of a game's achievements are easily unlocked.  For example, one of my favorite games last year was Batman Arkham Asylum.  The best Batman game ever made.  I had so much fun playing it.  However after I completed the story there were only a few other achievements I had to unlock, they were challenging, but when they were done I didn't feel the need to pick the game up again.  There was still another difficulty level I could have tried and a few more challenge maps I never attempted.  The same thing goes for Mass Effect 2.  One of my absolute favorite games.  I got most of the achievements on my first playthrough, and then the rest starting my second.  I did finish the game even though there were no achievements to be had, but the story is just so awesome, plus I want a bunch of different save states for when I play Mass Effect 3.  Then after that I put the game down for a good while, having gotten 1000 gamerpoints from this game I didn't need to pick it up again until some new DLC came out that added more achievements.

I think achievements and gamerpoints definitely change the way you play games, and for some like me, the way you buy them.  Thanks for reading.  You earned this.

- Joel