I was just chatting with a friend about how I’d never once consciously tried to get an “achievement”.  I’ve always been an exploration player, never a score player– I could care less if I have 600/1000 or 800/1000 for Mass Effect, or if I have all my Azeroth achievements unlocked on my Death Knight (unless it gives me a faster mount).

Days later, I stumbled across Achievement Unlocked, which turned me into a bona fide achievement whore.  I absolutely had to get every last achievement.  What’s the difference?  For starters, the achievements are all listed along the right-hand side of the screen, with obvious indicators of which ones you have and haven’t completed.  There’s no hunting for your next goal: there’s a list of ‘em right there.

Also, many of the achievements require a bit of cleverness, especially if you try to figure them out without reading the hints.  (Note: there’s one achievement you can’t get without reading the hints– namely, the achievement for reading the hints.)  So, there is gameplay in many of the achievements, even if the game is ostensibly trying to show how achievements detract from gameplay.

But what about the obviously gameplay-free ones, such as the achievement for jumping for 10 seconds?  I still completed those.  Why?  Logically, I could clearly see that jumping for 10 seconds would complete the achievement, and that that would complete my 100% achievement.  Maybe I’m not as immune to completionism as I thought.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Game Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.