Achievements: Good or Bad?

Remember A Link To The Past? When Zelda finally came out on the snes in the early 90's, there was only one goal, beat the damn game. In an age without internet, and expensive Nintendo Power subscriptions, that wasn't the easiest of tasks. You would have to play until you got stuck, and then run to school the next day to get advice. "You don't have the ice rod yet? It's in the cave next to the second fairy east of the 2nd dungeon in the light world." "Thanks G, I appreciate the help." That's how video games were bested before the interwebs.

Today however, not only do we have detailed walkthroughs for every game (even Hannah Montana The Movie the Game has an IGN guide, no shit),  but we also have easier video games. As a group, us gamers have all lost our patience. When we were kids, a frustrating game just meant that we tried that much harder to beat it, it was a willpower test, now, when a game is frustrating, we bitch about the development company, and usually don't even finish the fucking thing. So, game companies found a solution, make the games easier, and thus quell all of the bitching and moaning.

The hardest achievement that I have ever attempted, CoD's Mile High Club

Now that the games we all love require less skill to conquer, simply beating the game isn't enough. Achievements and trophies give the more OCD of us extra tasks to complete, and earning all 50 for any given game is usually just as difficult as beating the old 8-bit games of our youth. So now, we have an equivalent, achievements are exactly what their name is, something difficult to achieve.

Originally, I thought achievements were a bad thing. I thought that people would play to only to get 50/50 instead of enjoying the story or actual gameplay. However, much like Romney, I changed my mind on this one. On any game's first playthrough, I go in blind, using no walkthroughs or guides, and earning achievements without knowing what they are beforehand. All of the achievements that I missed the first time around give me incentive to return to the game a 2nd time, where I use every resource I can find to get them all.

So, my opinion is that achievements are a good thing, given you keep things in perspective, and now that my gamerscore is over 37,000, I think it's obvious that I no longer have a moral issue with the implementation of these scorekeepers. However, as a footnote, I got every single achievement in Bioshock, until they released a 51st achievement as mandatory DLC called brass balls that requires me to replay the game on insane difficulty with vitachambers TURNED THE FUCK OFF. I have to do this if I want to keep saying that I got every single achievement in Bioshock. Fuck you 2K, thats way too far. Assholes.