http://majornelson.com/archive/2007/10/30/Xbox-LIVE-account-sharing-and-Gamesave-tampering-dont-do-it.aspx
Now I'm all for these new measures as there is nothing worse than a cheater. However that's not the point of this blog. I've though for sometime now that the Gamerscore idea is rather flawed. Since it's introduction the Gamerscore system has been a massive success. However here you effectively have a number that details your skill (or at least your persistence) with each game that you own and also adds toward your total "skill" level. The problem is that each developer decides upon their own achievements and as a result different games are at different levels of the spectrum in terms of difficulty. For example, being an avid CSI fan I purchased the 360 game (I would only recommend it if you really love the series and the earlier games). Now there are five cases and you get 200 Gamerpoints for each case you beat (regardless of how much help you enlist in the game and irrespective of the difficulty the game is on) and yet games such as Blue Dragon demand that you fully max out every characters stats to get for less Gamerpoints than that.
Whats worse is that you know have "achievement whores" too. These "gamers" go out of their way for extra points. Now I don't mind someone saying "Hey I want to get all the achievements on Halo 3" – but there are people (I happen to know one) who will purchase games they have no hope of liking to get the points. And guess what? Yeah the person I know decided to buy the CSI game when I told them about getting 200 Gamerpoints a case despite the fact that he has told me numerous times that he hates CSI and funnily enough he hated the game too. It seems now, that for some people, games are more about completing basic task after task to get those little Gamerpoints than about actually enjoying the game – whether it's seeing the moment the twist is revealed or the moment you scored from 35 yards out.
But then again, what's £30, and your entertainment when you can get 1000 Gamerpoints like that.
Thanks to BTs incompetence I live in one of the few areas in the Glasgow belt that cannot receive a steady broadband connection. Now don't worry, it's been fixed and I'll soon have broadband and as a result - Xbox Live. However ever since the 360s launch I have had to make do with the single-player and offline multi-player elements of any game that I have wished to purchase and it seems to me that the ability to play someone half way across the globe has meant that the old art of playing with your mates (on the one console) or just through a single-player has been somewhat compromised.
Games such as Crackdown for example demand that in order for two people to play co-op you have to:
a) Do it through Live - not a viable option for me
Or
b) Bring over another 360 console and connect them together via a system link cable.
It's ridiculous! The 360 boosts some nice stats and games such as Halo 3 show that it can easily cope with 4 players on one console which means that the only cause of these problems are the developers.
I've played on Live before and it's great but if you ask me there is nothing better than beating your mates at a game of PES or something whilst sitting right there, able to see their every look of disbelief as you score again.
What is even worse is for every single 360 game I've played so far and actually though "hey that's good" I've also thought "was a bit short though".
Gears of War - done in a weekend easy
Lost Planet - Same scenario
Even the juggernaut that is Halo 3 falls victim to this. Fortunately with games like Mass Effect, Too Human, and Fable 2 all coming out in the near future this trend will not continue. The fact that I'll have Live in 4 weeks also helps but it just seems to me that games these days seem more about playing other people than about the game itself (i.e. the story).
What ever happened to the 35 year old fat man sitting in his parent's basement playing alone? I ask you that?
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