Overachiever
ZOMG! Update! And within 15 months!I spoil you.
I have been having...Writer's Block! Yes! That' s it!
Quite a severe case of it in fact, so much so that I had to go see a doctor, and he ordered me to take lots and lots of rest, preferably playing LOADS of videogames, and who am I to argue with medical science? So rest assured, plenty of gaming has been done, and who knows, some day, I might even write about it, but not today! Today I am here for you to bring you my latest rant, and because I know noone is reading this anymore, it is a most excellent opportunity for getting things off my chest.
Actually, this is just a separate special post in preparation for an upcoming even larger one. I was initially going to include this topic as a tangent, but then I decided it is worthy of its own special space to separate my brilliant insights from my...uh...other brilliant insights.
Right.
So without further ado, let me introduce today's topic: Achievements.
And I don't mean the kind where you score a Drunk Bulgarian girl at a Student Party, that's hardly an achievement and the only thing it will earn you is your friends' ridicule, massive trauma, and some worrisome greenish pustules on your penis that you should probably get someone to take a look at.
No! I speak of the Achievements you can earn by playing XBox 360 games.
You know, the ones that are indicated on your profile with a bright shiny G behind them, implying that they are some kind of Final Fantasy currency, but good looking trying to get hold of a Potion with these, cos they don't do squat!
Initially, the point of these points (ahaha) escaped me completely. All they do is amount to a particular score, and that score won't do you ANY good. Apparently you can take your score online and see how many people have a smaller penis than you, but that's about it really.
Wouldn't it be SO much cooler if these points could actually be used as some kind of currency? I don't mean that you should pay your rent with them or anything, but wouldn't it be nice if XBox live offered some kind of, I dunno, skins, backgrounds, demo's, trailers etc. in exchange for points? The way it is, it seems totally useless to me.
It seemed all the more pointless to me, because the way games hand out points is completely random. Every game has to have 1000 points apparently, but it is obvious that some developers don't feel like bothering with them at all. Some games will give you all 1000 points gradually whilst making your way through the game so that you can't actually miss any (Enchanted Arms), but most others give you some nice side objectives to complete.
Thing is though, some games have really HARD challenges that only earn you like 20, 30 points or something, whereas some games like Lost Odyssey have the nerve to give you 125 points (that's pretty hefty) just for clearing a CD! Considering this game is 4 CD's long (Mister Sakaguchi obviously still has his head stuck in the PSX era), that's 500 points earned without any real effort!
And then there's Avatar, where you can get all 1000 points in two minutes apparently.
So what's the point in going online and showing off your enormous WAD, when points can be gained this easily in some games and are so hard to come by in others?
The answer is, there is none. In fact, I daresay that XBox live is one very good reason to never go online anymore EVER (Halo is a fine example of Darwin's Missing Link).
But then along came The Orange Box.
And the Orange Box opened my eyes!
The Orange Box has 99 (!!! Count 'em!) Achievements, which is such an insane number that most of them are only like 5 or 10 points (well there ARE 5 games in here), and Valve were apparently so proud of their ideas that they even included these achievements in the PC version, where you don't get any points at all apparently.
And that's what opened my eyes, Achievements are exactly that, Achievements!
It's not about points at all, it's about getting something done, it's about challenging yourself (or being obsessed if you look at it from another angle) and The Orange Box provides plenty of fun challenges indeed. In fact, I even replayed Half-Life 2 Episode 2 several times just to get some of the more elusive ones, and it was a goddamn blast.
So if anything, Achievements are about bragging rights, about being able to say you put that goddamn motherfucking asshole Gnome on board the Rocket, that you played through Episode 1 with only 1 bullet, that you defeated Generaal RAAM on Hardcore difficulty and what have you. Points don't mean Jack, so going online and showing them off to the world is completely pointless.
The Orange Box has rekindled my interest in Achievements though, and I even went back to some games I already finished long ago, just to get some of the Achievements, not for the points, but for the feeling of accomplishment, for the satisfying *plop* sound when your XBox tells you you unlocked something!
The point system can be dismissed for all I care, unless they actually DO something with it at some point, but as it is, it serves no purpose and worse, has no meaning, because the points don't tell you WHAT someone actually achieved.
Getting 40 points for killing every Antlion Grub in Episode 2 is considerably more impressive than getting 1000 points on Avatar.
And that's why I think there should be something to reward you for getting particular achievements. Not points, but something useful.
I think this was one of the early rumors on Sony's Home format: that accomplishing certain tasks in a game would earn you objects to adorn your humble virtual abode with. Posters, action figures, furniture, the possibilities are endless.
I don't know if this idea is actually going to be executed, but Sony have a potentially very exciting format in their hands if they do.
Knowing them, they'll probably mess it up though.
So if anyone from Sony or Microsoft is reading this, AND I THINK THEY ARE, then, please, get some kind of system that earns gamers achievement-specific virtual objects to brag with, not meaningless points. It'd be SO much cooler.
posted by Ingen! @ 2:53 AM
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