Mattering

It's always been a tricky business to really gauge the appeal of achievements. I'd wager that the majority of gamers view them casually, but positively - that little blip equates to accomplishment, no matter how trivial, and that's something more ingrained into the gamer gestalt than fear of women (or hatred of stereotypes). Most recently, however, there have been a few firsts from achievement land that suggest their following is flourishing...

Demo the Game, Demo the Achievements

Not long after writing the achievement breakdown for Crackdown 2, Ruffian Games broke with tradition and released the Crackdown 2 demo with unlockable achievements - well, sort of. It turns out there was 100 points available that would carry over to the retail release version, giving you a nice 10% head start on the world - the world that didn't also download the demo, anyways... but still!

Wronged, but Not Forgotten

The latest Ghostbusters game had a rough development life, and for a while there it was unsure which part of developer Terminal Reality's name was going to be more appropriate for the troubled title. "Reality" was the answer, thankfully, and while the game reviewed generally well and moved more than a million units, it didn't quite shatter any records, and any completionists that played it soon found themselves curled up in the corner crying uncontrollably - 2 multiplayer ach (20g total) appeared to broken, never to be unlocked. Amazingly, Terminal Reality has since announced a patch for the problem - over a year later! Sure, plenty of pouty pansies out there will whine "about time!" through their stuffy little noses, but I can count on one finger the amount of developers that have gone back to fix flawed achievements after so much time has passed, and that's saying something.

Marvel Ultimate Re-Alliance. Again. For Now.

While some games rely on glitches and closed servers to negate completion, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 broke the mold of... being broken by completely removing 250 points worth of DLC from the Xbox Live Marketplace - and this time there was no "Gold" or "Game of the Year" edition to fall back on for your 1250/1250. As inexplicably as the content was yanked, however, "HeroHQ" big wig "Kalina" announced that some even bigger wigs had agreed to re-list the DLC until the end of the year, although at the full original fee of 800 Microsoft Points. Hey, a completion is a completion, especially when it's one you had written off long ago.

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As with anything, there's always a tinge of marketing in the mix - demos that unlock achievements, patches that fix games, and re-available, limited-time DLC are all bound to draw in customers, and not just obsessive online dorks with blogs. But the fact that achievements are figuring into the marketing equation, that they are being considered by both developers and a growing amount of fans... is good. Not so much in that we're constantly barraged by said marketers and fanboys, but good in that, you know... it matters.