high_jinx

anyone else swear by these little doo dads? maybe it's just because i remember a time before you couldn't even save your game and i'd keep my nes on for 5 days straight at a time trying to beat stuff like ghosts n' goblins, but i have a hard time getting excited about the little ding i get when i kill 50 birds in borderlands or don't give the little twerp a dollar in metro 2033.

on the other hand though, i have a buddy who's reticent to play anything other than xbox even though he has a ps3 because he doesn't want to lose his progress. also, there's a site i look at for cheap game deals and people there will pay an extra 5 or 10$ sometimes just to make sure they can activate a game on steam as opposed to not.... because of achievements.

am i missing something?

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tenchi069

Some people love em, some don't. I used to care when I first started playing Xbox, now I don't.*

The one exception - Sometimes I will 'achievement hunt' if I feel it will add another aspect to the game play. e.g. collect all *item*. This makes me explore vast maps that I may have not taken the time to before.

If the achievement feels like I have to work at it for more than just a few minutes and/or detracts from the gameplay, then that is an achievement I just won't have.

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ironpham

I think there's always some achievements that are worth looking into. They can allow you to look at/play your game in a way that may not have been obvious to you the first time around. For instance, in Red Dead Redemption, the achievement where you tie a woman up and put her on the train tracks. Or Portal 2's Smash TV achievement making you think about how you to use your portals for something other than getting to the exit.

The achievements that you get for completing chapters/parts of the game/etc. seem to be there just to allow other people to know how far along you are in the game. Luckily you don't have to grind for those. The ones you have to grind for are generally pretty worthless unless, like tenchi said, it unlocks something in the game.

And...those are what achievements are for.

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Baraka_Guru

I look at these as a kind of mini-game within the main game. They're for those hardcore gamers who really love the games that have these achievements.

I think WoW is a perfect example. Once you max out your character, there's not much left to do but raids and old quests. The achievements give you little things to try and accomplish. If you like the game, the world, the environment, the mechanics, etc., then it can be fun.

I never really got that far in WoW, but in the back of my head, I always thought that it would be fun to take a maxed character around Azeroth and do all the gathering, fishing, exploring achievements like some kind of checklist. You know, just for fun, rather than using the game simply as a looting, killing good time. You know, many of these I'd view as something to do on a lazy afternoon—some pretty low-key and relaxing gameplay.

And let's face it, getting an achievement makes you feel pretty heroic in WoW, even if it's a pretty lame one. Fanfare'd!

I don't get it as much in other games, such as L4D or Team Fortress 2. A lot of those achievements seem exercises in acrobatics or uncanny patience and would just frustrate me.

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high_jinx

ok that reminds me of one exception.... i went through and hit every ramp on the checklist in the first tony hawk game. and then it opened up the skate park from the movie "Search for Animal Chin".

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Cynthetiq

At first light of them I thought them to be lame. I then realized they were helpful in making the game play shelf life that much longer.

For WoW there's just something about doing some of the raid achievements, most of them are still very hard even at level 85. Try doing the dance achievement or even Immortal in Naxxaramas and you'll understand. Most people tend to do a boss in a particular way and an achievement shows that you understand the mechanics better than just a cookie cutter recipe.

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streak_56

I have spent hours upon hours trying to get achievements.... and I have classified myself as an acheivement whore.... I like it because its a game within a game, something to brag about with friends that play the same game and I find it has elevated my game playing to a whole new level.... but I still haven't found out if there's a real reason behind acheivements on the PS3 where as the xBox I think you can get certain extras but I don't own a xBox.... never will...

aberkok

Don't forget that different games have very different quality levels when it comes to achievements. TF2 has a range of them bordering on insanity - from pretty fun to OCD level player. Other games pat you on the back for just not dying through the intro tutorial.

Also, we call them achievements now, but back in the day were things really different? When you are grinding away to get those grindy acheivements is it really any different than when you worked towards level 99 in Final Fantasy VII?

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WhoaitsZ

pretty much came to say this. I fought with Blizzard for 2 weeks to get my hacked account back just because of my achievements.

on the 360 it depends. if i am having fun or its a special game I try to get all

my tag is Whoaitsz (shocker, huh?) and I have full achievements in only a few games. oblivion, ff13, mafia II (I still don't know why I cared)... seems like I am forgetting one.

I just like that I can show off that I did some particular feats. Funny enough I never cared about trophies on the ps3. -shrug-

---------- Post added at 10:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 PM ----------

oh and it pisses me off I can't get full achievements for Castlevania: SOTN because I cannot do Richter's moves. my hand just can't seem to pull that shit off.

Reese

I don't care about achievements that you get from playing through a game normally. I like achievements that have me perfecting an aspect of the game. Something like completing a stealth level without alerting anyone, or killing a dangerous creature without getting hit.

I also like achievements that have me doing something in a less than obvious way. World of Warcraft executes those better than most. A lot of the dungeon and raid achievements require you to kill a boss in a different way than you'd normally choose to do it.

I also like achievements that are basically just "Try this" signs. Red Dead Redemption has an achievement to tie a someone up and put them on the train tracks and have a train run over them. Dead Space 2 has an achievement to impale an enemy and have them fly 17 meters, and another to impale an enemy through a decompression window and have them sucked into space. If you accidentally do them, it's great and if you know about them beforehand it's still fun to go out and see it happen.

I can see how grindy achievements are popular too. When I'm done with the story of a game but craving more, an achievement such as "Kill X number of enemies with Y weapon" can give me something to focus on.

I don't really collect achievements anymore though. I switched my main character in World of Warcraft and completely lost interest in all achievements except for the ones with rewards and eventually quit that game and I've had 3-4 xbox profiles and lost all the points I had accumulated on those which really made me lose interest in them.

One thing about achievements is that I think some games are starting to sacrifice some of their own true replayability in favor is adding lots of achievements to get people to play the limited content over and over. Based on a recent interview I have a really bad feeling that Diablo 3 is going to do this in a very noticeable way.

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Vaultboy

It depends. As said above, some achievements motivate you to refine an element of gameplay, some are there for fun, some are there as genuine achievments of something difficult, but some are just insane -= the worst of which is Gears of War's 'main' achievement: 100 gamerpoints for 100 000 kills. There are TONS of easier ways to get 100 points, that dont involve 500+ hours of multiplayer, just to prove you are a 'fanboy'.

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xepherys

high_jinx - you mentioned the old school concepts that I grew up on. No save games (unless the game happened to give you a code that spit you back out at a certain location), leaving the NES on for days. Back then, we had high scores. All games had either a scoring mechanism, or a progress mechanism (which boss did you get to, what level is your hero, etc.).

Games are not always so specific, and not all friends like playing the same games. I look at achievements, well GamerScore specifically, as the new version of the arcade high score. Even if you and your friends play different games, you can brag about certain achievements, or your overall gamerscore. Sure, some games are easy to get 1000, some are nearly impossible... but unless you've both only played 2-3 games, it starts to average out.

It's a testament to geekdom!

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