When an achievement becomes a pain in you know where

When does this unlock?

This is no doubt experienced by anyone and everyone who has ever played a X-Box 360 video game during the achievement generation (and if you haven't they you are so on the wrong blog). The introduction of achievements has changed (if not revolutionized) the gaming scene today. It has added a new aspect to re-playability, a new measure of skill and dedication, it has become the new definition of completing a game. In fact, it is because of achievements that gamers now have veterans, rookies and amateurs. Each one identifiable just by a quick look at their game-score.Today, complete web-sites are dedicated to that popping sound in your X-Box (check out www.xbox360achievements.org); There are more tutorials on the net for how to gain a particular achievements, then there are actual walk-through for the game itself. Gamers today want interesting achievements (there are even competitions for the best achievement tile) as much as they want an interesting game.



An ideal achievement can ask you to explore a facet of the game, which you would have normally ignored (for eg. being a rogue instead of a barbarian in an R.P.G., or kill enemies with a pistol instead of an assault rifle in an F.P.S.). An ideal achievement may also award you for staying true to the game (for eg. finding all the alternate endings in Silent Hill: Downpour (the game has 8, and there is a bracket inside a bracket), or reaching the rank of Captain in Halo-4). An ideal achievement may even be the reward that you get when you do something really gigantic and improbable or in gaming lingo... 'A bit tough' (for eg. complete the HALO Reach campaign on Legendary difficulty without dying....Alone). All in all, an ideal achievement is something that you should feel proud on getting, something you can show-off to people (to those who understand what it means), and a trophy to your hard-wasted time.

Hope I don't get into trouble for this

However, not every achievement is like that. Many are your run of the mill, story driven achievements, others are awarded when you as much as press the START button (The Simpsons I believe). Worse yet are the achievements which makes you wanna find the guy who came up with this idea, and then punch him in the face, then in the gut, and then stomp all over him as writhes in pain on the ground and then drag him outside and run him over with your car (vivid enough?).

The achievement from hell

Case in point Army Of Two: The Fortieth Day - Full Arsenal achievement. The game has weapons and weapon parts, the parts can be added to an existing weapon to make it better. The cheevo is all about owning every single weapon and weapon part in the game, straight-forward enough. Then you come to know that to unlock all weapons, you will have to replay the game at-least twice (once as the good guy and then as the bad guy), fair enough. Then you find out that just finding that part and unlocking is not enough, you actually have to buy each and every weapon and weapon part, getting hot. Then you realize that you can't mass buy all the parts from a particular category (for eg. you can buy 1 suppressor, and 1 barrel out of 5 and 6 available respectively in a given buying spree), which means some very repetitive scrolling and button pressing, just to buy stuff that you are not even gonna use in your endgame, hotter. But it gets hotter still, see not all weapon parts can be put on any 1 gun, some can be put on a AK-47, while others can only be put on SCAR-L, so if you think you are done buying all the stuff for your 3 equipped weapons, that cheevo ain't popping buddy, burning?  Now consider that some part will only show if you are customizing the right gun, means you have to basically go to every single gun, customize it, run through its part list and equip and re-equip all the available weapon parts applicable to it, now that what I call a burn.

It took me 2 hours (after I had finished the game twice), first to check that I have unlocked all the weapon parts, then to realize that I have to buy each and every one of them, and then scrolling and button-mashing through them in the most teeth-grinding of manners. The process made the most fun part of the game (you can practically add any gun's part to any other gun and come up with your very own cocktails) , the most irritating. In fact it was so irritating, that my co-op partner decided to give up on the achievement after watching me go through it. So what did I get after all that useless (this coming from a gamer for a game, really has some weight, I mean I while away hours on a whim) scrolling (by now you must have understood, I just hated the scrolling). What I got was 50G in terms of game-score and that elusive popping sound while I bought a suppressor for an S.M.G. I was never gonna use (not quite satisfactory, 'relieved' is the adjective here).

Too much X-Box

So now that I have ranted about what an awful time I had last night, I would just like to lighten the tone a bit. Check out this awesome take on achievement hunting by CollegeHumour.com, and tell me what achievement you hated the most.




Signing Off,
Ayush 'Kabel' Chauhan