I Miss The Days of Playing Games Without a Checklist

I never thought it would go this way, but those little achievement pops you get as you earn them are like digital crack. I hate them. And when I say that, what I really mean is I fucking love them. It’s so awful.

The Gamification of… games?

I know I’m not the only one who gets obsessed with trophies and achievements in modern gaming. There’s a good chance you clicked this article because you feel the same way and you’re trying to understand why you’re also a massive tool like me.

It’s become a modern standard now to get achievements in nearly every single game so we can show off how much time we are willing to waste grinding through every single nook and cranny of our favourite games.

PlayStation has trophies, XBOX has a gamer score, and Steam has its own achievement system. We’re encouraged to build these up for absolutely no incentive other than a virtual “Well done!” at the most. Let’s be real here too, nobody but us cares. Our friends are not looking at our profiles to see.

Is it bad I’ve actually considered not rushing into a game if there are no ‘chieves? Surely the point of playing games is to play them and enjoy them… not to turn it into some kind of completionist-obsessed dick swinging competition.

Apparently it’s now both of these though. I envy those who are unaffected by the predatory, addictive nature of trophy hunting.

Friends? Pfft, no thanks.

Apart from my relentless addiction to hunting for ‘chieves itself, the one thing I truly do hate about some of them is how ridiculous the criteria can be. 

Let’s start with my least favourite – multiplayer ones.

Take DOOM 2016 for example. I was having a blast collecting all the Steam achievements. I feel like they tied in pretty well, actually. They followed the linear progression closely and encouraged me to actually explore the levels to find everything. It felt a lot less stressful to begin with.

Then I saw that there were multiplayer trophies. What the hell?! I bought DOOM because it’s primarily a single-player experience! I don’t want to play with other people just so I can say “DOOM? Yeah, completed it mate.” and add it to my collection of “perfect” games. I’ve now been denied this privilege because I’m not really up for doing some dumb PvP activities.

Reality is, I fucking suck at PvP. I’ll never get those last trophies. I’m not keen on co-op ones either, but at least I can make someone else do those for me while I hide (play smart, not hard). Anything that pits me against other players though and I’m screwed. I find it irritating that these are even a thing. If you made a game and did this to yours, congrats, I hate you.

While we’re on the topic of absolutely sucking…

No, it’s the game that is bad, not me

When achievements are tied to difficulty, I also die a little inside. DOOM again had this for the first mission. It wanted me to finish that level on the hardest difficulty. For fuck sake. 

It wasn’t too bad at first with a few enemies. Took quite the beating, and I thought to myself, “hey maybe I haven’t deteriorated that much after all” but then came an open area and it was over. Couldn’t do it. Forget it. Haven’t been back to it since.

Another offender of the difficulty-tied achievements would be the COD4 and MW2 campaign remasters. I got hold of both of these on my PS5 thinking it would be a beautiful nostalgic experience. It almost was until I looked at the trophy list.

All the levels on veteran? Sure, fine. I played these campaigns a few times years ago. I know them well – It’ll be fine… Oh my god. it was not fine at all. I’m not sure I even liked a single second of playing these games again.

 I still can’t believe I managed Mile High Club for the platinum. I even saved the recording (which is painful to watch by the way) I was that blown away. However, with MW2 I just gave up. Literally seconds away from getting to Shepherd so he can just betray me once again, but I just couldn’t get there. Every step towards the end of that level in the open space meant death. I’m convinced it’s impossible. I’d had enough. I finished the rest on Recruit.

It’s not just me being bad that fuels my love-hate with trophies and ‘chieves, though.

POP! Wow, that was totally worth 300 hours!

Plenty of achievements and trophies in games nowadays are just there to wind us up at this point. Some devs just want us to suffer and struggle, that much is clear.

Who the hell has time to collect 300-odd achievements in Civ or Age of Empires? Seriously, I love those games, but I’m not gonna even try to get all of those. I imagine they’re tailored more for the RTS nerds who take it a lot more seriously than me and sink 1000s of hours into them, but that’s not me. Believe it or not, I do touch grass every so often.

Also, don’t get me started on games that add in new achievements post-launch. I do get it a little bit if there’s a significant addition to the game, but when it keeps happening it’s a proper piss take. I’m looking at you Vampire Survivors.

I’ve 100% that game multiple times for them to just plonk even more on the end. I think they’ve stopped doing it now, but I can’t be bothered to get the last few anymore. They’ve ruined it for me. I felt like a king and they just dethroned me and smashed my crown right in front of me. I bet they’ll do the exact same to Vampire Crawlers. I don’t even want to think about it.

It would be easier if I just didn’t care…

…so maybe I should just do exactly that. The achievement and trophy addiction is real, and a lot of us are wasting valuable hours of our lives not enjoying games and pointlessly grinding.

I hate to admit it when Nintendo do something right, but their lack of an overall achievement system is much healthier. I find that when I play games on Switch, I actually enjoy them for what they are. Some Nintendo games have internal achievements but I can handle that. For some reason, I’m able to ignore them and just have fun.

Anyway, there you have it. This was a great cathartic release, and despite my clear disgust towards these stupid little in-game brownie points that mean nothing, I fear I will never stop hunting them. 

Oh well.