by Luke Wheeler

Created on: June 22, 2009

The Xbox 360 has been a hugely popular console since its release. It has a big library of games, the excellent online gaming and content delivery service Xbox Live, and what I'm going to be writing about in this article, achievements.

Achievements are goals that you reach within games, to earn gamer points. Gamer points add up across all games, and are displayed on your gamer card, which can be viewed by people on Xbox Live. It's a way to show other people your gaming experience. Achievements could be things like, kill three people with one grenade, collect all pieces of the map, or, kill an enemy with a grenade whilst he's in the air.

Achievements are great at adding replay value to games, as once you complete a game, you will still probably have a number of achievements you don't have, which you can go back to try and get. Every retail game for the Xbox 360 offers one thousand gamer points for you to achieve, and often requires a lot of intense gameplay to earn every possible point. In this respect, achievements are a huge part of the Xbox 360 gaming experience; they make games more fun to play, add replay value, and enable you to show off your gaming skills.

There are however, a few downsides to the system. Firstly, and most importantly, many achievements can only be earned during online play. This has attracted a whole crowd of 'boosters', who attempt to cheat the system. For example, say an achievement in a game was to kill twenty people without dieing, during an online match. This would be a tough achievement that would reward you with a high number of gamer points. 'Boosters', will often try to take over normal online games, convincing other players to participate in getting an achievement. They will work together, and using my example, one person would simply do nothing, whilst the other person continuously killed them until the achievement was earned. Then they would switch roles, so the other person got it too. This way, gamers can earn difficult achievements easily, and show them off to other gamers, making them think they're better than they really are.

Secondly, many of the less serious titles for the Xbox 360 only make very light use of the achievement system. A certain game I know of offers one hundred gamer points just for completing one level of the game. By the time the player has finished the game, the one thousand gamer points have been earned easily. Achievements should be used to offer replay value, and to reward the player for completing difficult tasks. Because of this, many games like this are seen as a way of getting an easy boost to your gamer score without needing to do much in the game at all.

Despite its flaws, the achievement system of the Xbox 360 has been successful, and still proves to be a valuable addition to a great console. Most games take full advantage of the system, and it's really great being able to work towards goals in games, that without achievements, would never be worth it.

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