Achievements: Your Gaming Legacy
Our gaming histories are littered with all manner of milestones reached as we complete games, earn new high scores, set records, and compete in online competitions. We complete our goals and bask in their glory; we smile at the recollection of these triumphs, but with Xbox 360™, these victories become tangible and viewable awards in the form of achievements.
Achievements nudge you in new and interesting
gaming directions with each intriguing requirement.
In short, achievements are goals offered up by the game's developer. They can be as simple, as complex, or as off the wall as any of the following examples:
- Finish the game.
- Earn a 100% rating for finding all secrets and items.
- Beat a level or the entire game within a set time limit.
- Beat a player online ranked several levels higher than you.
- Compete with or against someone from a different country.
- Beat all the preset high scores.
- Finish a level in a stealth game without ever being spotted.
You get the idea. Essentially, achievements can be as simple or extraordinary as the developer wants them to be. They might be normal attainable goals through your first play-through, or a set requirement that changes the very way you approach the game.
Half the fun comes in comparing your own achievements
to those of your friends and competitors.
Digging Deeper
Beyond offering some very new and interesting goals, there are a few features to the system that make it rewarding and easy to use. For one, achievements are offered in every single Xbox 360 game, with each game being required to offer at least five significant achievement goals.
View and Compare
Your achievements page in your gamer profile may offer you a rewarding history of your own gaming exploits, but half the fun comes in comparing your own achievements to those of your friends and competitors. This is great ammunition for bragging rights, but there are more strategic uses as well.
For example, say you see someone on your Friends List has beaten Kameo™: Elements of Power™, but you're stuck on the second boss. Next time you see them online, just send a chat invite and ask them for a few pointers.
Gamerscore
Your overall gamerscore will be affected directly by your achievements as you obtain them. Gamerscore is not solely an online component, so you can rest easy knowing that your offline adventures will contribute fully to your overall score.
Web Integration
There's no need to boot up Xbox 360 to view your own goals, or even those of your friends and fellow competitors. You can hop onto the site here and keep track of your own progress and that of everyone else you care to examine.
Offline to Online
Your achievements are kept ready for Xbox Live®, even if you're not yet sporting broadband. As soon as you take the plunge, the achievements saved locally on the storage device (hard drive or memory unit) of your Xbox 360 console will be broadcast for the world to see, so you won't have to concern yourself with reaching those goals all over again.
Achievements offer one more chance to look back fondly at your best gaming moments. They also connect you directly to the Xbox 360 gaming community, give you something to definitively point to for bragging rights over your buddies, and even nudge you in new and interesting gaming directions with each intriguing requirement. The achievements feature gives you a living breathing gaming legacy, a legacy to build on and a legacy to look back on.
Article by Alex McLain
