Surprise! “Achievement Unlocked”
I’ve been going through a pretty dry spell in regards to increasing my Gamerscore. This is mostly due to the fact that new game releases have been trickling out every other week at best for the past couple months. There just isn’t a whole lot to play right now on the 360. But here’s where the whole achievement points system really shines. When I realized I hadn’t gone up a single point in about 2 weeks, I went back and checked out which achievements were still up for grabs in my current games. Most of them are ridiculous “win 50 races online” or the like, but I did find quite a few that were still within reach. I spent this past week playing through Tomb Raider Legend again, this time on hard which scored me an extra 175 points. Not bad for 4 or 5 hours work.
Having worked most of this afternoon (yes, it’s Sunday, I’m well aware!), I wanted to just chill out and shoot dudes or blow shit up. So I blew the dust off Burnout Revenge and popped it in. I’m pretty close to getting a few achievements and figured I’d try and wrap up those loose ends and score me some points. I’m not overly stoked on the achievements that are up for grabs in Burnout Revenge as most of them require you to perfect every race in each rank. It gets pretty damn tedious when you’re down to those last 1 or 2 stars and you’ve played the same race over and over trying to get those 10 or 15 points. I jumped into a race and not 30 seconds in, my favourite message appeared on screen – “Achievement Unlocked”. With a big stupid grin on my face, I quickly hit the guide button on my controller to see what I got. I was awarded 25 points for taking down 1000 opponents. An achievement I had totally forgotten about. Not only was this 25 points I didn’t see coming, it was enough to bring my Gamerscore up over 4000. Whoo!
The whole achievement system really is nothing short of genius. I’ve put way more hours into my 360 games than I normally would have simply to score some extra points. Some games have better achievements than others, especially those that require you to play every aspect of the game in order to obtain them all. Talk about a good way to get people to fully explore the game. Burnout Revenge was actually one of the first games I played that had such achievements. You got 10 points for uploading a “Burnout Clip” (instant replay from a race) and another 5 for sending a friend a message about your clips. I probably never would have bothered with the replays at all, if it wasn’t for the points.
When I first got my 360, I was quite a points whore. Just had to get my score up to a respectable level. Since passing 3000, I don’t really care as much. But I will admit, one of the first things I do when a new game is released is check out the achievements. Microsoft takes a lot of heat from every angle, and a ton from me personally. But I have to hand it to them for the 360. Since the Spring update has been released, the console has really felt like it’s all there now. Like all the bugs are ironed out, everything’s organized now and all those you first expected to be there that were MIA have been added.
So, do we have any points whores out there? Anyone willing to admit that they’re wicked competitive over a score that doesn’t really do anything for you or serve any purpose in the least? Come on…