Achievement Hunter by Krystal

I have ambivalent feelings towards achievement-hunting in games. While purists will chime in with statements like “I never go out of my way to get achievements, it ruins the flow of the game,” (you must be such fun at parties) I tend to have a more balanced view. One which flip flops between “who needs ‘em anyway?” and “OMG that arsehole got the uber-zealot mode achievement in Carnage Shootan 5, the BASTARD.”

I don’t start every game, or indeed any game with a quick peek at the achievements list. That’s just crazy. But after you’ve gone past those first easy wins like “Turned on console” and “Picked up gun”, you start to get a little curious. Oh goodie, there’s a fuckton in multiplayer. I guess that’s several weeks of getting stabbed in the throat by 14 year olds before I get passably good then, huh? Joy. My favourites are the ones you get for just having a friend. Achievement Unlocked: Oooh FWEND.

But there is something undeniably satisfying about unlocking achievements. It’s like a report card for your performance. Go beyond just playing through the main story, get good at the special moves, use a wider range of weapons and attacks, try multiplayer and you’ll see your trophies and achievements go up and up.

Of course we’ve always played games to achieve *something*, even if that’s just survival, and there have been ways to monitor your progress. I remember playing Crash Bandicoot Warped until 5am for a fortnight, replaying time trials until I reached a zen-like state of calm in the pursuit of 100% completion. I even managed not to throw my controller at the TV whenever that fucking tiger stubbed its toe on something. Reaching that 100% was oddly soothing and it wasn’t something you instantly shared. It was a more private, more personal. Now we have leaderboards which tell us how shite we actually are compared to the rest of the world, and scores that go some way to indicate how much time we spend attached to our sofas.

But are gamer scores and trophies any use to us beyond vanity and gamer pride? Well, while I will say that there’s something in this whole achievement-hunting business is when it arguably makes you a better gamer.

One of my favourite games of last year was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I was new to the series but its aesthetic and strange hybrid of gaming styles were a real shot in the arm during the post-summer lull and I played the bejesus out of it. But it didn’t start out that way. I got through the first mission, completely missing the captured hostages, so damning them to a bloodless off-screen death that pricked my OCD for missing out plot threads.

I made such an arse of that first attempt that I almost thought about jacking it in. Then I heard there was an achievement for getting through the game without killing anyone. The ‘Pacifist’ achievement. One thing was amiss though; despite having got through my first hamfisted attempt at being an augmented badass without killing anyone, some git forgot to tell me that the kills in the pre-becoming-aforementioned-augmented-badass tutorial intro counted and as my game stood, I would never attain pacifist nirvana. Oh, the shame.

Sure, the 100G sounded good, but I was in it for the glory. I had to start again, this time with a few hours of getting to know the controls under my belt and it all seemed simple. I even found those hostages I inadvertently killed before – huzzah!

Learning about that achievement actually made me a better player. I paced myself more, bided my time, waited for opportune moments to silently take down enemies and the game became a playground rather than a battleground. I started to question my old “Err I dunno if I’m a stealth game person” line and veered away from angry-nerd-brandishing-a-big-stick-and-shouting approach. I found it massively rewarding, even more than the jewel at the end telling me I’d got those coveted Gs.

I played the game in an entirely different way than I would’ve done based on my first, more scattergun attempt. I know it made me better at the game, so there is something to be said for a smattering of achievement-hunting. The Gs or trophies, the knowing you’re ahead of your friends is fleeting; what sticks – what has always stuck – is your connection to a game, how it challenged you and how it made you think about things in a different way. Now we have a system to be silly and competitive about yes, but which in really great instances, makes us better players. No bad thing.

But don’t get me wrong, if you find it hard to maintain arousal without the comforting sound of that bar popping up on screen, then you need to take a long hard look at yourself.