Why I Hate… Achievements

The game was Halo: Reach and the Achievement was "If They Came To Hear Me Beg". Sounds simple enough - "Perform an assassination against an Elite to survive a fall that would've been fatal." You're unlikely to pull this one off in normal play, but going back and setting up the optimum conditions shouldn't be too tricky. Right?

Wrong. Earning this Achievement is an absolute nightmare. The words "stay low, let me draw the heat, just deliver that package" are forever etched into my mind like a disfiguring scar - because that's the line you hear after every agonising reload.

It's not like flattening a Goomba; that would be too easy. Instead you have to angle the trajectory of your jump precisely while pandering to Bungie's hidden variables. 99 leaps out of 100, the result is a fatal faceplant.

It took me half an hour of repeated attempts to get it right. One dedicated gamer I know threw in the towel after an hour, full of rage and loathing.

The biggest problem I have with Achievements like this is that the journey isn't its own reward. While completing the solo campaign on Legendary is a genuine test of skill, playing a game of pogo piggyback is a tedious chore. I did it, eventually, but what did I achieve beyond wasting my own time?

This is a question I've often asked myself when looking back at my Achievement hunting career. There are certain highlights I'm proud of - completing Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty on Legendary, Insane and Veteran difficulty settings, for instance. But I've also squandered hours and hours on brain-numbingly banal activities.

As I trawl through my list of unlockables from top to bottom, one Achievement stands out from all the rest as the most heinous example of time wasted.

When Dead Rising was released in 2006, I fell in love with its sandbox brutality and quirky humour. I played the game well beyond the level-cap, snapping up almost every Achievement along the way. Almost.

Cut to two years later. With the deadline for my university dissertation fast approaching, I decided there had never been a better time to go for the final Achievement: "7 Day Survivor".

This behemoth of an award requires you to play the Infinite Mode for 14 hours straight without dying. You might expect an epic ordeal of zombie survival, but in reality this boils down to an endurance test - 14 hours of holing up in safe locations punctuated by periodic supply runs.

At the time it seemed like a hardcore gaming challenge, but what the Hell did I expect to gain from this? A standing ovation the next time I walked into a Gamestation?

In the end, my grievance with Achievements (and their Trophy brethren) is that the end doesn't always justify the means. I have no problem with those which reward the player for steady progress or challenge them to feats of gaming finesse. But so many Achievements are frivolous, wasteful indulgences.

There's no doubt the Achievement system is a clever idea. I can understand why it's a compulsory feature in Xbox 360 games. It provides gamers with the incentive to keep on playing and it makes business sense.

All the same, I've never seen Gamerscores as anything other than arbitrary numbers. And I'm starting to care less and less about my record of so-called Achievements.

I play a broad range of games because I enjoy the immersion, challenge and entertainment they offer. With the industry continuing to release so many great games which amaze and captivate, finding the time to play them all is an achievement in itself.

So my New Year's resolution is to layoff the Guide button. I'm going to focus on enjoying games in a more natural way. Because no matter which way I look at it, life's too short to be spent jumping off cliffs.