Overachiever For a Day
From the archive: John Teti attempts to earn 10,000 gamerpoints in 24 hours.
27th May, 6.18am - College Hoops 2K6
You know the drill with these 2K6 games by now, so here's a fun fact: Were you aware that people cheat to get Achievements? That is, beyond the garden-variety cheating that I engaged in.
"The highest Gamerscore, the legitimacy of which is questioned by some people, is over 400,000," Knuckles told me in our prep session.
I had to ask: "Why is the legitimacy questioned?"
"As soon as you put an arbitrary number next to someone, they will find ways to inflate it artificially," he said. "The old way was to modify the saves of the game. Let's say Gamer X beats a game legitimately. He posts his save file online. Then other people download it and modify that game save to be associated with their Gamertag. When they load the game, they unlock the Achievements."
If you ever feel bad about your video game habit, just reread that last paragraph and remind yourself, "At least I'm not so pathetic that I would pirate someone else's Gamerpoints." Unless you are that pathetic. In that case, you should probably sob quietly into your sofa cushions.
- Gamerpoints acquired: 850
- Total: 7795
27th May, 7.10am - Backyard Football '10
With less than three hours to go, I didn't see a way to reach 10,000 in time. Was I doomed to a humiliating four-digit total? I rooted around in my game pile again. On my hands and knees, I spotted Backyard Football '10 under the coffee table.
"That's not on the spreadsheet," I said to my cats.
"You're right!" they replied. Good lord, I needed sleep.
But wait, it was coming back to me. Backyard Football was never part of the plan. I'd grabbed it on a lark the day before the marathon - read about it on a forum or some such.
To the laptop! "All 10 Achievements can be done in a single game, well before the first quarter of play is even over," said the online guide. The Achievement whores had lied to me about Lost: Via Domus. I had no choice, though. I had to trust them.
They were right. 10K was within reach.
- Gamerpoints acquired: 1000
- Total: 8795
27th May, 7.54am - NBA Live 07
27th May, 8.29am - Ms. Pac-Man
By 2007, the sports-game developers had figured out how to design Achievements that required at least a bit of skill. On this day in 2010, that presented a problem.
I only needed a couple hundred points from NBA Live 07, but my hands were shaky, my vision was bleary, and my motor control was spotty. Online tips like "hold L1 while rotating the right analog stick" seemed impossibly arcane to me. "Such a manoeuvre is impossible!" my fingers declared.
After a half hour of stumbling and bumbling around the court, though, those 200 points were mine. Throughout this whole escapade, this was the only "Achievement Unlocked" that made me feel like I had accomplished something.
I went to the Xbox 360 dashboard and launched Ms. Pac-Man, where I knew I could get five Gamerpoints for eating cherries in the first level. That brought me to an even 9000.
- Gamerpoints acquired: 200 (NBA Live 07) + 5 (Ms. Pac-Man)
- Total: 9000
27th May, 8.35am - Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth
It was time.
Some developers spend their whole careers trying to produce a memorable work, and some stumble into it. The makers of Avatar: The Burning Earth probably thought they were making a humble, unremarkable action game based on a TV cartoon. In short order, however, their creation became the stuff of legend - the easiest 1,000 Gamerpoints on the planet.
Here's how to unlock the Achievements in Avatar. Step 1: Launch game. Step 2: Wait for loading screens. Step 3: Press B repeatedly until you earn 1000 GP. How long will this take, you ask? Not as long as Steps 1 and 2.
- Gamerpoints acquired: 1000
- Total: 10,000
27th May, 8.50am - Hannah Montana: The Movie
27th May, 9.21am - Lost: Via Domus
It didn't seem proper to simply stop at 10,000 - the idea was to go 24 hours whether I hit my goal or not - but I also didn't have the wherewithal to learn a new game. So I did something I swore I'd never do: I went back to Hannah Montana to ride Blue Jeans again and again. Once the old nag gave up the 50 points, I thanked him and sent him off the to glue factory.
Finally, resigned to the fact that The Island wasn't done with me yet, I danced with the smoke monster for a while until my phone alarm went off. Time up.
- Gamerpoints acquired: 150 (Hannah Montana) + 140 (Lost)
- Total: 10,290
Epilogue
The most surprising thing about this experiment is that it kind of worked. I can't imagine ever chasing Achievement points again. I racked up more than 10,000 points without performing any in-game feats that were even marginally noteworthy. It's hard not to feel silly about the whole Gamerscore obsession after that experience.
To be sure, I purposely sampled the most poorly designed examples from the Achievement crop. My favorite Achievements have always been the ones that encourage you to play a game in a new way, or to discover some part of the world you wouldn't have explored otherwise. Finish BioShock without using any Vita-Chambers. Go to the highest point on the Just Cause 2 island. Leap your car over a Hextadon in Brütal Legend.
The revelation of my 24-hour descent into madness, though, was that I don't need an arbitrary bonus to make those things enjoyable. That's not to say I've soured on Achievements altogether. Far from it. I'll still use them as guideposts to a game's undiscovered experiences.
I just don't care much about the little grey "Achievement Unlocked" box anymore. It's such an underwhelming destination; why let it distract from the journey? I'm at peace with my approach to gaming again, and I think that's a pretty great achiev-- uh, a pretty great thing that I did.