I’ve been an avid PC gamer most of my life (Although I have had the odd console here and there) so it was with great contemplation I finally put down on a 360 a few months ago. First thing I did when I got my console out of its box was hook the thing up to my network and create a LIVE account. Upon starting a game up I almost immediately felt that little flutter of elation at unlocking an achievement, then lamented completing all those games on someone else's console and gamertag.

But that’s not really what I wanted to discuss. Today I started playing Gears of War on my 360 (which I had already played through on my PC). After wrestling with using a controller in place of the infinitely more accurate keyboard and mouse setup (my gawd, how do you aim with these things?!), I pretty quickly stumbled across a COG tag and this set me thinking about those collection achievements that seem to be a required part of every game.



Most if not all of Gears’ tags can be picked up by the eagle eyed player on their travels through each area, during the course of 'natural play' if you like. This is in stark contrast to GTA IV’s pigeons or Assassins Creed’s flags. While they all exist purely as part of an achievement the latter two require you to step outside of the natural flow of play and actually spend considerable time actively searching for them. To me this isn’t fun, and rather than discovering them as you go, the majority players will go straight to Google and the first guide they come to, or just not give a shit of course.



Where some achievements may show some level of proficiency with the game, these types only really show how much tedium a person can endure and whether they have a borderline OCD need to collect every point possible. It’s slightly more bearable when there is some payoff other than the achievement itself, Condemned 2’s tuning achievement is the only thing that springs to mind at the moment with the extra little narratives that are provided.

What do you think, do collection achievements add value and longevity to a title, or are they a cynical attempt to expand the life of a game. Maybe my fellow Englishman Mr. Sterling should do a ’10 things’ feature on achievements’ - Must have an otherwise pointless item hunt, must make the player complete the game on each difficulty rather than unlocking achievements for easy when playing on hard etc etc.

I did originally start writing about achievements in a broader sense but I got bored and revised it to cover just one type so consider yourselves lucky. Now I’ve popped my Cblogging cherry I feel somewhat satisfied. Have fun reading my fail blog you poor fuckers, and no you can’t have your time back.