Geek Syndicate Issue 8 | Page 62

Geek Syndicate

I would also argue that
achievements should be rare
rather than handed out like
candy. I can remember the
annoyance of people with
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter on the Xbox 360. One of the
achievements was to reach
the top of the worldwide rankings in multi-player. Certainly
a tough task, and one that
not many people will ever
achieve. I am not saying that
all achievements should be
this tough, but you can now
see the two ends of the scale.
Compare that seemingly insurmountable
achievement
with Soul Calibur 4’s “You have
inserted the disc and loaded the game” achievement.
Which do you think was more
noteworthy?
There should be something
of a middle ground of course.
Don’t give us achievements
for mundane activities (such
as rotating the camera to see
up a skirt (I’m looking at you
Lollipop Chainsaw!) and don’t
make them so hard as to be
unattainable. Make them relevant and tough. If everyone
can get every achievement
without too much effort, then
where is the value in that?
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Achievements were implemented into games to help
people generate more playtime and fun in the game, giving players ideas for alternative ways to play or for new
things to do. You can probably thank achievements for
making so many games come
stuffed to the gills with hidden collectibles in the guise
of statues, diaries or whatever
else the developer can think
of. Litter the world with a hundred such items and set up an
achievement to find them all.
I know that they don’t force
you to do this and if you really
truly love the game, you might
fancy doing this just to prolong your time in the particular game world you enjoy. To
me, collecting achievements
feel like pointless busy work
the majority of the time and
do not really add to my game
experience. In fact, it can detract from it in many cases.
I remember a time (nostalgia
flashback incoming) when
people used to play games

on their Sega Megadrive or Super Nintendo. If they enjoyed
them, friends would find new
ways and challenges to amuse
themselves. It didn’t have to
be planned out and orchestrated by the game developer.
We even came up with nongaming o bstacles, like playing
Street Fighter whilst someone
kept yelling down your ear. We
didn’t have a little thing pop
up and say:

But we had a good deal of fun,
even if we did end up annoying our parents and possibly
the neighbours. Sure, there
was the social pressure to get
things done and the inevitable mocking when you failed,
but we were defining our own
fun, and if someone gave you
a very nasty goal, you would
get your own back when it was
your turn to concoct something for them to do.

Image © Games Radar, 2012

for playing the game are next
to worthless in terms of kudos.
Okay, completing a game is
probably something worth rewarding. There are usually various statistics floating around
saying that only x percent of
people completed y game; so
in a way, you are ahead of the
curve if you do actually finish
it.

10 Points for trying to look up a schoolgirl’s skirt ... Achievement?