Game achievements

Because I'm basically a masochist, I often read threads at the end of gaming news articles. On Kotaku, there are often some nice insights by the more intelligent posters. On the CVG site, however, there are trolls trolls trolls galore.

Anyhoo, one thing that always (ALWAYS) gets brought up is this:

Achievements.

For example, the new Left 4 Dead DLC came out today.. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, am at work, but of the criticisms so far levelled at it by 360 owners (PC owners don't have it yet) are:

1) The rounds are too short
Which is kind of missing the point but never mind

and

2) There aren't any new achievements.

I'm sorry, what?


I should just say that I do quite like achievements - they're quite nice little additions to games and it can make you play things through in new ways - like the achievement packs in TF2 or the Akimbo Assassin one in Left 4 dead.

I really don't like what Microsoft have done with them, though. On the 360 (and on the ultimate satan of PC gaming that is Games For Windows, LIVE!!!) your achievements contribute to something called a Gamerscore.

There's no benefit to this score as far as I can tell - all it seems to do is rank players according to how "good" they are. This does play into the needle twitch 14 year old Halo playing: "I AM THE UBERMASTER LULZ FAG" mentality that the stereotypical Halo audience falls into... It's just a little bit sad that people out there care about this number... as if an arbitrary number can even attempt to represent how good a gamer you are.

Anyway, so this is why, overall, I don't like achievements. If people chased them for the sake of chasing them, fine, good for them, I do that myself. What I find utterly pathetic is when people do it to increase their gamerscore, which is the only reason I can think of to moan when games don't introduce new achievements with DLC.

It's also a criticism aimed at the Wii, occasionally, which is a bit odd. It's a bit like complaining that a Mac doesn't come with MS paint.


I did originally have a point to make. I've lost it.