Monday, January 18, 2010

Achievements and Trophies: getting 100%

Let's face it, achievements and trophies are a love-hate relationship. They've ranged from the shameless hoarding of such trivial goals from games like King Kong, to the hair-pulling awards that are almost impossible to obtain. But they all define one fact: that at one point or another, that game was in your system at one point or another.

"So what," you may ask? Well, when was the last time you checked out your trophies/achievements? How many of those games do you only have 1 or 2 of them? If you're like most gamers out there, chances are you're not completing all your games you've been purchasing. And now suddenly your list of trophies are just a chronicle of your failed conquests.

It's one thing to tell people you have so many trophies or achievements, but it's quite an entirely different thing if all of them are no-brainer goals that are earned by picking up your first item or taking down your first enemy. While these types of milestones have been minimized over time, games still employ these easy-wins just to satiate the gamers' palette for gameplay motivation.

And I don't know how XBox 360 displays their achievements, but those percentages on the PS3 stick out like a sore thumb. Every time I check out my trophies, it's a constant reminder of which games I've started and never finished. Nevermind the fact I finished one or two chapters - the emptiness says it all.

It's not a question of how many achievements or trophies you have, but how they reflect you as a an accomplished gamer. And that, my friends, is a goal I hope to attain from every game I conquer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am not a completest, perhaps i am a minority in that. I do, however try to finish all the games i start, yanno, clear the final level, and all that. XBox has achievements on 'flip pages' on the console "Game Library" segment. If it displays the percentage, it's not very eye catching. It displays achievements in an image grid.