Achievements.

**Kekvit Irae** · 03-01-2008, 15:22

I love achievements. They give you a good estimate on how good you are at the game. The achievements I do NOT like are the "Collect 3000+ Hidden Bottle Caps" type of achievements (The Simpsons Game), purely multiplayer achievements (Call of Duty 4), or gaining achievements for just doing nothing but completing the game (King Kong).

**Mikeus Caesar** · 03-01-2008, 15:30

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

I love achievements. They give you a good estimate on how good you are at the game. The achievements I do NOT like are the "Collect 3000+ Hidden Bottle Caps" type of achievements (The Simpsons Game), purely multiplayer achievements (Call of Duty 4), or gaining achievements for just doing nothing but completing the game (King Kong).

Completely agreed. I prefer achievements that are actually achievements, such as getting the gnome in HL:Ep2 all the way through the game and putting it in the rocket.

Now that, that is truly an achievement.

**Kekvit Irae** · 03-01-2008, 15:35

Originally Posted by Mikeus Caesar

Completely agreed. I prefer achievements that are actually achievements, such as getting the gnome in HL:Ep2 all the way through the game and putting it in the rocket.

Now that, that is truly an achievement.

I could never manage to do that. He always seems to get lost during a stage transition.

**Mikeus Caesar** · 03-01-2008, 15:41

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

I could never manage to do that. He always seems to get lost during a stage transition.

For me he either got lost in the chaos of the antlion hive or fell out of the car during some major action, and i didn't notice.

**Ramses II CP** · 03-01-2008, 16:19

I did all the HL2 Ep2 ones because they seemed like a fun addition, and I did all the Portal ones except the fewest steps and some of the timed ones, but... I don't own any consoles, and I think for most games it would just be sort of irritating and encourage cheating and exploits. I remember all those knife and pistol servers in BF2, and the people who would do the knife spawn (you know whats) to try to get their badge.

Overall, frankly, I hope developers aren't wasting time that could be better spent on debugging and testing creating that kind of minimally additive content.

**TinCow** · 03-01-2008, 16:28

IMO, 'achievements' are a method the console developers created to increase replayability. They are an inferior console substitute for PC modding.

**Lehesu** · 03-01-2008, 18:01

I originally thought that achievements got you Microsoft Points. Naive, I know. Having learned otherwise, I find them more or less useless...I don't really go out of my way to acquire them.

**Xiahou** · 03-02-2008, 22:10

Originally Posted by TinCow

IMO, 'achievements' are a method the console developers created to increase replayability. They are an inferior console substitute for PC modding.

I get your sentiment, even if the comparison isn't perfect. The main thing achievements seem to indicate to me is how much time you're willing to spend getting achievements. If the only reason a replay part of a game, find certain items, or to explore certain content is to get an achievement, then aren't they really just a crutch for bad game design? If it's new content, it should be good enough to see on it's own- if you're only going somewhere or doing something because of an achievement, what's the point?

My only real experience with them is in games like TF2. From that, I would say that I think they're interesting, in terms of stat tracking, but I did not feel compelled to play the game any differently in order to collect achievements. In fact, if it just tracked stats and dumped the achievements, I really wouldn't mind.