My brief spell as an achievement whore

 

This generation bought about a new term for a certain type of completist gamer. Achievement Whore. It's fairly safe to say that I'm not one. There is a grand total of two games that I have all the achievements for. Bastion and The Walking Dead. Both of which are titles that you sort of 100% by default.

I try and finish every game that comes into my possession, but I don't have to finish them. By which I mean, if I get a game, I'll play it through to the end of the story scenario, perhaps I'll do it twice, but I won't go out of my way to find absolutely every collectible or obtain every achievement. Although I do make an exception for any secret or collectable that further enhances the story or setting of the game I'm playing. A good example being Vincent and Yuffie in Final Fantasy VII, Bioshock audio logs or the evidence in Max Payne 3.

Things might be changing.

If you read my last post, you'll know I'm practically out of games, and I'm delving into my library to find titles to squeeze some extra replay value out of. At the moment, said title is Sonic Generations. Certified 'Bestest Sonic game since Adventure 2'. My girlfriend bought it for me on release, and I played it to death, or at least I though I had. I blitzed through the single player and enjoyed a thrilling rivalry on the leaderboards with my best friend. At one point, we were both ranked in the top 20 on Sky Sanctuary act 1, such was the intensity of our competition. And as the times tumbled, the rivalry intensified until eventually, new games came along and Sonic fell to the wayside. As it happens, when I checked last night, I'm still ranked 46 on Sky Sanctuary. Not bad considering nearly a year has passed since I last ran a time attack there.

But that was before I ran out of current gen games. I fired Generations back up last week and was shocked at how much I had missed. Trivial things like S ranks on the action stages or setting a time on every level over xbox live. I vowed to rectify this, so I did. The S ranks stacked up and an achievement popped up. It sparked an unexpected flash of satisfaction. Eager for more, I rooted around the hub world to see what else I'd missed. There were challenges, and they unlocked cool concept art. Art is a reward in itself, so I spent a couple of nights dispatching the challenge mode. It wasn't as fun as blitzing through the action stages in the flow state that a really hot run of a Sonic stage induces, but still, the challenges were fun in their own way, and there was art coming as a result. ART! Another achievement popped up on completion of the last challenge, and another hit of satisfaction followed. I wanted more. Then came the momentary horror of realising that I'd descended into achievement whoredom. I cast it aside. I didn't care. Doing superfluous stuff was getting me in game rewards. I was hooked.

Gaps remained in my collectible collection, there were songs and art missing. The last things that needed finding in game were the red rings. So I spent last night finding them, reaping the rewards as I did. I get the feeling that the red rings are included as an incentive to slow down for a moment, explore the handiwork of Sonic team and drink in the still impressive graphics and art design. It's been well documented that the sheer speed of a Sonic game demands a lot of work from its developers. Some of the later stages with modern Sonic are something like twenty kilometres long. That's a lot of hard work that just gets ignored if you blast through at top speed, and the need for their effort to be appreciated is the reason that the much derided Warehog sections were included in Sonic Unleashed. The Warehog was a mistake, but the rewards offered by the red rings are a great reason to rein in the speed for a bit. When you do, you can really see just how gorgeous the worlds crafted by Sonic Team really are. It's a win for everyone.

With the red rings collected, I suddenly found myself with three achievements popping up. Three! Cue a wave of satisfaction. Grinning, I checked the achievement list to see how many remained. Imagine my surprise when I found out there was only one left. The thing I like about the way achievements work in Sonic Generations is the way they can be obtained by just playing everything the game has to offer. You don't need to do any of the weird, cryptic tasks that you need to gain achievements like you have to in some the other titles I own. Stuff like that is part of why I am turned off from achievements to start with.

That last achievement, you ask? Beat the final boss without taking a hit. Difficult, but probably not impossible. And you know what? I'm actually going to attempt it. If this was any other game, I wouldn't bother, but I'm not this close to a full achievement list for any other game in my library and I'm genuinely excited about getting 100% completion on a title through my own effort, rather than by default, like I have in Bastion and The Walking Dead. What's happening to me? Will it stay happened if once I do get that last achievement?

When I think about it, going out of my way to get 100% completion on one game doesn't really make me a proper completist. But it has given me an insight into the sense of satisfaction a completist gamer must get when they work their way through a game's achievement list. It's intoxicating, and I suppose it can be addictive. Still, I don't think I'll be going out of my way to finish the achievement lists of any of my other games.

So, I'm more than likely not an achievement whore. Not yet at least. I can be something of a graphics whore though, but that's another blogpost.

Ending the neglect.

The blog has taken a serious ignoring from me of late. It's my own fault really, and I thought that I had better explain myself.

It all started, as these things usually do, with a borrowed game. I'd just come off the back of my second run of Bioshock Infinite, and I was looking for something to play. At the same time, I was getting ranted at by my best mate because I'd had his copy of Catherine for something like six months and hadn't touched it. So I bowed to his will and finally slipped Catherine into my disc tray.

What. A. Game.

If you haven't played it, I urge you to go find a copy and fire it up as soon as you're done with The Last of Us, or any other major new release you're playing. Don't expect high octane thrills though. Catherine is a slow burning and thoroughly grown up game, dealing with adult themes like commitment, infidelity, jealousy, fatherhood, and yes, even a bit of sex. And that's before you get to some of the deep seated psychological traumas experienced by the supporting cast. It's tautly written, beautifully voice acted and looks and animates like a top quality Anime. Best of all, the game has a proper morality system that, if you answer truthfully, can surprisingly accurately gauge the kind of person you are. It's spooky.

If you've heard anything about Catherine at all, you'll know the meat of the game itself is a set of melon twisting block puzzles. They're worked into the narrative more effectively than I first imagined they would be, and even though they're hard (even on easy mode) they're more than worth persevering with because of that fantastic story. If you're the sort that doesn't always need huge explosions and enormous bodycounts to have fun, play the game, then evangelise about it to all of your gamer buddies. It's that good.

Anyway, I decided I liked Catherine so much, it was worth blogging about, but while I was dreaming up a post, I stumbled upon the Twisted Pixel Bundle on XBLA. I paid my 800 points, because I thought it would be a good way of cleansing the gaming palette before I moved onto something a bit more substantial. Before I knew it, I was chomping critters down in The Maw. It was short, but interesting though it's not particularly special, even if there is more than a little something Nintendo 64-ish about it. Then I tried 'Splosion Man. And it chewed me to a pulp. 'Splosion man is old-school hard. The week I spent playing it was basically four days worth of sheer fury, with a half a day's worth of end of level elation weaved through them, and the last half day's worth of time spent humming the Donut Song. It's an earworm. I haven't played many games that demand as much precision or practice as 'Splosion Man, but I enjoyed it immensely, even as it tested my abilities, and my temper, to destruction. I finished it, one rainy Saturday evening at my girlfriend's house and I decided I had a blog post about difficult games that I could put up on Monday.

Monday rolled around and Twisted Pixel struck again with the Comic Jumper. I was only going to give it half an hour to see if it was any good. Two and a half hours of laughter, and one Time Cop reference later, I was hooked into another bastard hard game. Comic Jumper is worth the play, if only for it's hilarious script. Alongside Portal and it's sequel, it counts as one of the few truly laugh out loud games in my library. But good lord was it hard, perhaps more so than 'Splosion Man. It's hybrid platformer/twin stick shooter playstyle really taxes the abilities, but it keeps drawing you back with every line of dialogue. If the Twisted Pixel bundle is still available, get it. These two games alone are well worth the 800 point cost of entry, and I haven't even started Ms 'Splosion Man yet. Tell a lie, I've played three levels of it. It's 'Splosion man but more so. More madcap, more difficulty, more irrational meat love, more Big Science. But I needed a break from relentless difficulty for a while.

So, with Comic Jumper finished, Ms 'Splosion man on ice, and my gaming palette suitably cleansed, I'm ashamed to say that I'd forgotten all about the blog. I decided to fire up the last of the proper current gen games in my backlog. Max Payne 3. I don't know why I waited so long to play it. The first Max Payne was the first game I really played that made an effort to tell a mature story, rather than trying to be mature by interjecting every sentence with an F bomb. It blew sixteen year old me away, and I've held Max in a special place in my gaming heart ever since. The sympathetic update of the decade old gameplay, along with the return of Max's voice actor and a great noir script that was faithful to the spirit of the first two Remedy developed titles meant that Max Payne 3 blew me away all over again. But what really grabbed me, and kept me marvelling, was the level of detail throughout the game. The lines in Max's face, the downright incredible animation, the gloss of the Sao Paulo rich boy's night club, the squalor down in the favelas and the stellar voice acting come together to make Max Payne 3 sparkle like the crown jewels. A special mention is owed to the cutscenes too. If you're a fan of the process of film making in any way, give Max's cutscenes a watch. They're beautifully shot, looking like Man on Fire by way of a South American gangster flick. Whoever the director of those cutscenes was, I need to see more of his work. Hell, I'd even like to see him direct a film. They're that good.

So, now I'm almost out of current gen games. I'm still not feeling the urge to play Ms 'Splosion Man just yet, I've hit a wall in my normal fall back of Trials Evolution and Deadly Premonition is going to take some working up to, so I've gone back to Sonic Generations. It's still just as awesome as I remember it, and it turns out that I've missed loads of collectables. I generally ignore collectables, but blasting through Sonic Generations' celebration of one of my first gaming loves is too much fun to let my aversion to collecting things get in the way. It does mean however, that my gaming is much less compulsive than it used to be, which has opened up time for a post. At last.

And there you have it. The reason I've neglected the games blog is because I've been playing games. Not a bad reason all in all, but no excuse really.

Gaming.

It takes over your life if you let it.