Wednesday 11 November 2009

Curse you Microsoft - you've won, OK!

As I've said before, I'm playing inFamous at the moment. It's, well, 'OK', I suppose - nothing out of this world but it rolls along at its own pace and gives you plenty of toys to play with. In short, somewhat giving away the review that I intend to write when I'm done with it, it's fun - an engaging way to spend your gaming time.

It's just that.......it's a bit longer than I thought it would be. I'm not sure how long I've been playing it (if only Raptr worked with PS3) but it's been a while and it's certainly the most I've played my PS3 since January, when I played through Uncharted. Since then, I've dipped in and out of Little Big Planet and Burn Zombie Burn, I've played a fair few Wii games and spent time on the handhelds (anything to escape the X Factor) but this year I reckon I've spent at least 75% of my gaming time on the 360. I didn't think it would ever bother me but I am concerned that my current gaming isn't increasing my Gamerscore!

When I first got my 360 I can honestly say I didn't care about Achievements. I took quite a low gp yield from my early games - Bioshock, Crackdown, Battle for Middle Earth II and others - as I never gave the Achievements and gamerpoints available a second thought. My disquiet over the time spent with inFamous has made it apparent that now I do, in fact, care about them. And that's made me angry with myself and with Microsoft (though the latter is tinged with a crudging respect at how they've played me).

Hopefully, this self-realisation will be enough to 'scare me straight' and I'll just concentrate on the games from now on. I'm getting Uncharted 2 for Christmas and God of War III and Heavy Rain look the most interesting games on the horizon, so I need to stop thinking about my Gamerscore and go back to thinking like a gamer.

3 comments:

  1. Hey, there's always trophies, right?
    I'm actually missing my PS3 right now, I got a big bundle of 360 games with my Elite, plus I was pestered into buying Borderlands on the 360 to play online, which I hardly did, and (due to the Mass Effect save functionality) I'll be getting ME2 on the 360, so I wanted Dragon Age on the 360 for the ME2 DLC. So I'm pining for a decent game on my PS3, the two you mentioned being the top candidates.

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  2. The problem I have with trophies (other than the fact that they are clearly a 'me too' afterthought, like Live's avatars on 360) is that they are on a simple 4-point scale and each additional trophy just adds one point to that scale (mainly on bronze, at that). With Achievements it isn't mainly about how many you get but about how many points you get, given the range of points you get for each Achievement.

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  3. The trophies are really not that great are they?
    The thing is with Achievements is that everywhere you look your Gamerscore is being forced upon you, you can't avoid it, and it makes you self conscious. I have a friend who's pushing 200k on his.

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