I think a lot about achievements. Sometimes I’m okay with them, sometimes I wish they didn’t exist. But, they’re here.
There’s a lot of deserved criticism of cheevos and how they can ruin a game’s tone, how they can trivialize the joy of discovery itself, how sometimes they gain more attention than the game itself, etc etc. That said, sometimes you just want to indulge in a completionist tendency, challenge yourself without devising your own “hard mode,” or just collect merit badges. Merit badges are really nice little things.
There are a lot of games that have half-assed or outright terrible achievements. Arguably, most of them are this way. The first that comes to mind (obviously, according to the thread title) are the “X Y amount of Zs” achievements. To a certain degree, they’re okay! They mark a dedication of effort and time, and you’re probably gonna pick them up without trying. But, they’re usually very abundant, making up half of the achievements in some games. That’s not interesting, and sometimes feels condescending.
Differently boring are achievements that reward you for passing each individual chapter, or boss. The Souls games do this and it actually works, since each boss itself feels like a major obstacle to overcome. But in most titles it comes across to me as a “thanks for still playing.”
I’m still thinking about how I feel about games with really difficult achievements. The more I think “I deserve to be able to get this achievement, don’t make it this hard,” the more the triviality of achievements rears its head. There probably shouldn’t be one uniform way of making achievements, of course. Mandatory co-op achievements are easily the worst offenders, though.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is interesting in that it has a list of achievements that are simple things you can do that have no affect on the completion of the game. They allude to and reward the discovery of little easter eggs. There’s no platinum trophy to crown the list. It’s as modest as possible.
Undertale completely forgoes achievements. This may be partially due to the fact that it’s a game that you shouldn’t have spoiled, but I think it’s also because the author knows that achievements can take you out of a game. I think the author also understands the value of discovery, since an entire route is hidden away to all but those who enjoy the game enough to prod and bend all the limits for their own curiosity. Obviously this didn’t work out due to the fact that The Internet exists, and I’ve seen the author show disappointment over datamining, but that is the world we live in nowadays.
There’s a website somewhere that lets you play older games in their custom emulators and it’ll reward your playing with community-contributed achievements, which is really interesting to me. I haven’t tried it, but I like the idea of giving other people a list of challenges to complete.
So yeah, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Does anyone have any of their own experiences or thoughts on this stuff they want to share? Bad cheevos, good cheevos. Games that work better with/without them. Whatever you can think of!
