18 Comments
May 21, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

I'm still scarred from the "In memory of Petruccio" achievement from Assassins Creed 2 to the point I haven't bothered with collectibles since . I spent a whole day from morning to night with YouTube open on my laptop going to all 100 feather locations because I wasn't sure which ones I had already collected.

After I was done, I felt no sense of achievement either, I was just overcome with relief which made me realise I'd just wasted my time.

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May 21, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

This post reminded me that my favourite use of achievements of all time is in Europa Universalis IV, as they essentially serve as the "missions" in what is otherwise a complete sandbox game. There are plenty of achievements that you organically unlock like any other game, but also plenty that unless you set out from the get go trying to achieve this, and let it influence your expansion plans, then you're very unlikely to meet the specific requirements in a game with such a wide variety of possibilities. A few of my personal favourites include re-forming the old Roman empire with Byzantium, completely annexing the Ottomans as the Mamluks, and owning 99 provinces as Switzerland without owning a single coastal province (titled Switzerlake). They all set out a goal that gives you a fun reason to play a particular nation that you may have not considered otherwise, and for me they're the most satisfying achievements!

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May 20, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

Boy does this entry resonate with me.

Conceptually I love the idea of achievements/trophies, I think they speak to some weird corner of my lizard brain that loves stats, tracking things and ticking things off lists. That's undoubtedly evidenced by my gamerscore and trophy count respectively (a quick look at TrueAchievements and TrueTrophies tell me I have 43 and 31 completed games across the respective platforms), but these days they rarely do anything for me.

I still find myself trying to tick off as many achievements/tophies as I can, but where once I would push myself and grind through games to hit completion I only ever do it where I'm really enjoying myself these days. Though those "Kill 10,000 things" type achievements could always do one.

I will say, as soon as I started reading today's piece my mind went to exactly the same achievement as you mentioned: Pacifist from Geometry Wars. It makes me so sad that few games use achievements to challenge player thoughts on what's possible. That one achievement made me so excited for the possibility of them, but thinking back it feels telling that this is the one achievement that really sticks in my mind and it's so old now.

Who knows, maybe some inventive indie will inject a bit of creativity to them again, but for now they'll continue to scratch that lizard brain itch and serve as reminders of some fond gaming memories.

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May 22, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

I came back to gaming when achievements (or trophies, being a PS player first) were the norm and was pretty bemused by them, and apart from a few of FromSoft’s games have never been compelled to attain them. Yet I do owe them a debt. It was Street Fighter V’s trophy stats that made me realise how you could track the overall player base’s progress based on what trophies had been attained, which also made me realise how little of a chance I stood of matching up with similarly low-skilled players. I wrote about that for Edge, which got me the coveted letter of the month prize that issue. That topic also became the basis of my first commissioned pitch for Kotaku UK when I wrote about ‘what a game’s trophies can tell you about its players’. So yeah, I may not care for the achievement system per se, but it was responsible for kickstarting my freelancing career, perhaps its own rare achievement?

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May 22, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

I've always thought Tie Fighter was a fantastic example of how to include "achievements" as an organic part of the overall design. In that and other similar games, medals are awarded for completing bonus objectives and contribute to your sense of progression as an ace pilot with actual in game medals as opposed to a checklist, which are of course stored in a lovely display case. This is then extended if you achieve enough of them, opening up the Secret Order missions where your achievements are literally branded onto your character. It's incredibly involving and draws you into the universe more than pop-ups would.

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May 20, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

In some cases, whether for better or worse, I think achievements help some people get the most value out of their game at a time when they're more expensive than ever - even if this does involve collecting 8 million feathers/orbs/balls of light.

On a related note, this issue reminded me that I got 'Seriously 2.0' (Kill 100,000 enemies) on Gears of War 2, a (vaguely terrifying) reminder that time marches on because nowadays I can barely fit an hour of anything in around Paw Patrol.

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Ok, you just stirred a cauldron of memories with this one... one I didn't even realize I had--to the point I feel like putting my own post together to make some sense of it.

For now let's say I love them when they work--which is almost a confession they mostly don't, I guess?

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Took a look myself, for first time in a while. 110k score, but only 2 1000/1000: Firewatch and King Kong.

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May 20, 2022Liked by Nathan Brown

For me the problems with them are the points and mandated by platform holders parts. Take away those and you are left with challenges which can teach you new things about a game at the developers choice. I learnt to play Goldeneye in a completely different way when working out how to do the finish X level on Y difficulty in under Z time. The points and drive to make numbers go up can feed unhealthy behaviours. The mandation leads to lame tick box exercises.

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