RT Rev 2
Like Burnie and Geoff, I'm a big Achievement Whore. Some might say the biggest, despite my total Gamerscore being nearly one fifth of the current leader, who's even admitted and is proud of using games saves to artificially inflate his score. Let me give some backstory as to why that might be. I was one of the fortunate 32,100 Canadians to actually get an Xbox 360 on launch day. I played my share of Perfect Dark Zero and Hexic, and acquired a dozen Achievements that day. I was instantly hooked. I continued to play Call of Duty 2, Kameo or Project Gotham Racing 3, and unlock more Achievements. A few days into it I noticed that I'd gotten Achievements each day in PDZ. So, being someone who likes to challenge himself with goals, I posed the question "I wonder how long I can do this in PDZ for?" The answer was only four more days, as the following Monday I couldn't nab 100 Sniper kills, because I tried to in an offline match rather than one on Xbox Live, so the Achievement didn't unlock after I did it. Awesome. I did however, get some Achievements in PGR3 and CoD2, so I switched gears to open up the self-imposed challenge to any Xbox 360 game's Achievements, so long as they were worth Gamerscore, because (believe it or not) there are actually games with 0 point Achievements. I continued getting at least one Achievement each day for nearly two years, putting a stop to my streak on October 5th, 2007. My Gamerscore was 49,900 on that day, netting roughly 1765 Achievements along the way. For the record, I also did a bunch of traveling in 2007, had a steady girlfriend, and got pissed drunk enough to keep my sanity intact. The reason for my stopping, as stated in my original article on it, was because of Microsoft awarding me MVP status on October 1st, 2007, and felt that I had proved my point with the whole endeavor (that point being that good things come from playing video games).
That's still 681 days.
In a row.
For starters, I'll give you an explanation on how Achievements work. Every Xbox 360 game, be it Arcade or Retail, has Achievements, that are worth Gamerscore. When you get an Achievement, it’s tallied up on your Xbox Live Gamercard. It would actually be kind of sad if you had an Xbox 360 and didn't know that. Initially, retail games required a minimum of 5, and maximum of 50 Achievements, totaling up to 1000 Gamerscore (some early games like The Godfather, included less than 1000 points – no one in the world knows why), and Arcade titles had 12 Achievements for a total of 200 Gamerscore. These totals have recently been allowed to increase thanks to Downloadable Content, potentially bumping Retail / Arcade titles to 1250 and 250, respectively. The launch titles tried but didn't always get the idea right, with some games being notorious for having ridiculously easy Achievements, most of which were the first sports titles. Others were ridiculously hard, sometimes even excluding the majority of gamers with Achievements that require you to top a game's leaderboards in multiplayer. Early missteps aside, they do add an extra "something" to Xbox 360 titles, whether you're hooked or not. When properly implemented, they give you incentive to play games uniquely, reward you for playing normally, and sometimes even coerce you to play games you normally wouldn't touch. They can also add friendly competition among peers, be it besting a friend's score, or as you've seen first hand, racing to complete a game the quickest. Community sites have popped up to catalogue them, and even manage to get complete lists for games months before their release. Outside of the Achievement Streak, one thing I did that changed the way I played (that I wouldn't have done otherwise), was to try and hit Gamerscore Milestones. Basically, these are cool numbers that I hit, rather than simply pass over, because you only ever get a chance at it once on any given Gamertag. For example, the first one I got was 2,500, though that wasn't a big deal at the time. The next one, which almost happened by fluke, was 12345. I thought it was cool, and from that point I tried to hit as many as I could, like 22222, 25000, 44444, 54321 to match my first one, and most recently 55555. When I first told Geoff about this, he thought it was a cool concept. He was on the cusp of getting 33333 himself, and this requires taking care of what Achievements you get. We used some odd numbered Achievements in GRAW and Marathon: Durandal to pull it off, and he nailed it this past weekend, which is pretty cool. I was at a Microsoft event in New York City, when I got my 33333, so it was cool having him start with the same one. Fortunately, game developers have become more familiar with implementing Achievements into their games, and we've seen some great examples in the past year of how Achievements can work to enhance gameplay. Titles like Crackdown, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 all have balanced Achievement lists that are fun, challenging, and sometimes downright difficult. That being said, we've seen some missteps as well, with titles like Guitar Hero III's ridiculously difficult Achievements, or Avatar's laughably easy ones. I can only hope that in 2008 we see continued improvement in games as developers get a better grasp on what works and what doesn't. If you’re on this site, it’s probably safe to say you’re at least a Halo fan, which means you probably have a 360 and have hands-on experience with at least Halo 3’s Achievements. Halo 3 has a nearly perfect balance of Single Player to Multiplayer Gamerscore distribution, allowing you to get 90% of it done without even playing online. Sure, the spread of 100/1000G for the multiplayer Achievements looks a little scarce at first, but once you think about, it works out nicely. First off, you can get all of the Achievements online if you want, via co-op or otherwise. There are 13 online-only Achievements, and barring the rank-based ones, all of them are worth 5G and exclusive to Lone Wolves. This means that if someone doesn't play that playlist, they aren't missing out on a bunch of Gamerscore. Plus, given the quality of the campaign, and Bungie's focus on the story, it's good that the majority of the Achievements are devoted to it. So, what do you think? Do Achievements affect the way you've started to play games, make you try new ones, or just enrich the ones you do play? I can say that having all three current gen consoles, it’s definitely made sure the Xbox 360 is my preferred choice, even though it's not the strongest on a strictly hardware level. Let me hear your thoughts.