Men’s Sense - Men’s fashion & style magazine

So my question is who is addicted to achievements raise your hand, I for one am. If you’re wondering what kind of achievements I am talking about it’s the reward system given to gamers on their Xbox 360 when certain criteria are met during the course of a game.

The joy of the little Xbox icon pop up at the bottom of the screen telling me I have just earned 20G – Marathon Runner for Dead Rising now just 980G more left to go, oh joy. There was a time where I had no idea of achievements and didn’t pay much attention but the sense of accomplishment every time that little icon popped up put a small grin on my face.

In the past few months I have noticed that I can’t stop trying to get them. Waking up at the crack of dawn and staying up late into the night just to get 5G for one criteria e.g. playing for 6 hours straight for DOA 4 (oh my poor Xbox 360 I hope you don’t RROD (red ring of death) on me)
For those of you that don’t know what really know much about the achievement point system, it is basically one of the many things Microsoft requires developers to put in every single Xbox 360 game, when I mean every single I mean even those little arcade games that you download off the marketplace. Each game usually offers 1000G points to be achieved, with new downloadable content like Mass Effect 50G on top of that for each extra mission or in games like Gears of War 1250G after all the DLC has been paid and downloaded. Points are split dependent on the developers. You might see 10 achievements for 100G points each and others with a whole spectrum of points from 5G – 400G.

Although the achievement reward system is a nice feature to have while playing offline, it’s not until you get onto Xbox Live where the real action begins. Bragging rights to the extreme are seen once your profile goes online. Your friends can see your score, what games you have conquered and compare what achievements have been earned. Nostalgic of the good old high score systems of yesteryear where you could only use three letters. Achievements have taken it to the next level with everyone around the whole world been able to see your score.

The downside of achievements is along with the fun they bring to the gamer they can also cause great sadness. As sometimes the achievements of the game contain spoilers e.g. murder your partner (I have to kill my partner!) and other times they won’t tell you what is required to get the achievements.

But I for one love the achievement systems, and I can’t be the only one, seeing gamers with scores of over 100,000G plus in total. As more and more games are released and gamers getting a hand on the machine it won’t be long until everyone will start working on their own little achievement list.