Today, I found myself Playing Test Drive: Unlimited, but instead of racing or even cruising on the freeway, I was just driving on random roads for the simple reason that once you drive on any given road, it turns blue signifying that "You've been here before." The game has built-in achievements (I was playing the PC version), and one of them is "Drive on every road in the game." I suppose that, should I have lost possession of my mental prowess and my subconscious saw no reason to get up from my nice lounge chair (which through some strange turn of events ended up at my desk) and my vegitative self had a large amount of time available to devote to said endless machinations, I may have continued on for quite some time until I was jolted back to reality by any loud, bright, or otherwise attention grabbing object wasn't the red Enzo I had been staring at for the past hour or so. My point is, I was driving on as many roads I could find simply because it was an achievement, even though said achievement was certainly beyond my reach, even in a mindless vegitative state where boredom was no obstacle.

The title is a Caboose line from a recent Red Vs. Blue Public Service Announcement about Xbox 360 achievements, in which Caboose racks up repeated achievements simply for saying "bleep bloop." That might seem like a far-fetched example, but many achievements are just as mindless and repetitive. Another achievement in TDU is received by driving 5,000 miles in-game, which takes either an extreme love of the game, or as I said before, mindless repetitive pseudo-gaming. A handy piece of information for anyone who wishes to easily increase his or her gamerscore by 1,000 easy points, which is quickly travelling amongst my 360-toting friends, is some Naruto game or another (it may actually be based on Avatar, all those inane anime shows tend to run together) where the only prerequisite to obtaining achievements is pulling off combos, which can be easily accomplished by running into the nearest availible corner, letting the enemies come to you, and robotically pressing the X button until your hand hurts. Another easy achievement booster is some sort of aquarium "game" similar to those DVDs you buy at an off-brand dollar store, that I heard about on the Hotspot (Which I was listening to whilst playing TDU, and I actually comprehended it, so I suppose my actions earlier today weren't entirely vegitative) in which there is only one achievement, and that is to have the aquarium on for 100 hours. And that isn't even necessary, as one can easily unset the system clock, start the game, save, set the clock, and reload and as simple as that, 1,000 points.

I'm not here to rant about the mindlessness of the design of the achievements, we all know that whether we allow ourselves to believe it or not. I have to admit though, some games do the achievements right, such as Portal. Some do them horribly wrong, like Prey. Most of the points are awarded upon level completion. What the remainder of this post is going to concern is the purpose behind the achievements themselves. The reason to create achievements is to inrease replay value, which usually they do. A motivation to accomplish the achievements, however, is almost completely lacking. The only discernible reason is simply to have done it. With the Xbox 360, achievements are embodied in a score, but in countless other games they are nothing more than a notation in an obscure menu. Other times the achievements are completely formless, rather to exist as something you can do, but have no motivation to, other than the aforementioned feeling when such an act is completed, that weak sense of accomplishment you receive shortly before you realize that you just wasted several days of your life pushing buttons on a controller to move a car you will never drive, much less own, around an imaginary island. What makes the least sense is that the "Drive on every road on the island" achievement isn't that many points compared to how many can be achieved simply by buying cars. Speaking of buying cars, I've purchased around 30, using money I won by doing the same race repeatedly, by simply accelerating to 170 miles per hour and pressing A, which takes about 30 seconds including load time. All but 5 of those cars I've driven less than 5 minutes, leaving me little point to own them in the first place.

Furthermore, no one else could ever possibly know that you took the time to explore every road on virtual Oahu unless you showed them personally, as there is no way to view anyone else's achievements on the PC version. There is, however a special symbol above your car and beside your name if you win every challenge and race, including multiplayer races. Unfortunately for those people who complete said requirements, most people probably don't know what that "weird black triangle thing" is anyway, and even if they did, they would probably just consider the aforementioned achievement-holding party as a total loser, which would essentially be true. Which brings me to the other extreme of achievements: Those who collect them for a reason: To have the highest gamerscore on Xbox Live. But the people who do that don't even play the games, I imagine pretty close to 100% of the time they use cheats, hacks, or game saves to artificially inject their gamerscore with a boost of "lawlz i bete ur scour." On top of that, all 23 people worldwide who care about that know that the only people who get their points legitimately dropped off the charts because they simply can't keep up with the others. A friend of mine who does nothing all day except play his 360 only has 7,000 and change, and he's incredibly good, too. My own experience with Test Drive: Unlimited left me with around 650, just enough to achive champion status and unlock the racetrack, which is the only reason I did so. So if I applied that to all my games (I don't have a 360, so I have to estimate) I would probably also have around 7,000 points. So when I see that someone out there has 120,000 achievement points, There is only one thought that goes through my mind:

What a loser.

So to wrap all that up, achievements increase replay value in proportion to the amount they decrease player's social lives. In English, that's "Achievements suck unless you're a developer." Also, the achievements in Prey and TDU are stupid, unlike Portal, and on top of all that, I have an Enzo.

The only bad thing is I have to play that awful game to drive it.