Wozza's Blogs

Achievements are somewhat mandatory on XBOX games now. Every game has to have them, and some people will use these as an excuse to play a game and bump up their rankings. What this blog is about though is the implementation of these achievements.

Achievements were designed as a reward for playing through a game. Many games reward you just for playing the game. Here’s an award for playing the turorial. Wow you got past the title screen!!! This is pretty standard stuff. What I prefer though are games that have put some extra thought into the achievements.

Stepping in every dog poo in the level. Kicking a chicken over a house. Destroying all the street signs in the neighbourhood. Being rewarded for playing with the game world, finding secrets or just doing something plain weird are the best achievements for me. Just messing around and suddenly unlocking an achievement because you used a rocket launcher on a pigeon will draw a smile from any but the most uptight of gamers. ‘I got an achievement for that?

Death Tank is a game I have been playing recently where achievements really feel earnt. You’ll just get them out of the blue for doing things like dominating a game, boosting clear across the map or hitting someone dead on. Nailing a particularly demanding shot and then seeing the little achievement graphic pop-up is definitely satisfying. Much more so than just picking up your first ‘Jiggy’ in Banjo-Kazooie for example.

I have to say personally, I have never hunted out achievements – they are just little bonuses that pop up[ every now and again. Personally I find them a bit meaningless is I beat a level I was going to play anyway, but I would find it interesting to see that my mate beat a level in Doom without firing a shot for some reason.

I dunno, maybe I just feel that achievements you would get within the first 5 minutes of games anyway are lowering society’s expectations as a whole. Congratulations, you did an hour of work today. Go home and take a nap and give yourself a pat on the back while you are at it. Jeeze kids of today, in my day you had to walk 15 miles and warm your feet in cowpat to unlock an achievement.

N.B. Last paragraph I may have forgotten the point of the blog and got carried away. Oh well.

Any thoughts on this or favourite achievements?