One For The Achievement Whores
I love Achievements, but I’m not what one would call an Achievement whore. It’s more so about completion percentage for me; getting 1000/1000 for each game, or as close as my patience/skill will let me (I’m also not the type to play King Kong or Avatar The Last Airbender to get there). However, I still like to chase those G’s in a bid to up my completion percentage, and in doing so I came across a cool site. It’s called True Achievements, with the tagline ‘Just How Good Are You?’.
Upon signing up to TA it aggregated all my GamerTag’s feeds; my gamerscore, my completion percentage, what Achievements I do and do not have, my friends list (well, the friends which are also signed up to TA, which is currently only one person), and other small nuggets of information.
My profile page looks as follows (click to see full page):
My favourite aspect of True Achievements, and how I actually came across it, is the ‘Achievement Details’ where you can find out specific information on a particular Achievement you’re chasing. Often other TA members have chimed in with various different ways of unlocking the Achievement, sometimes even with YouTube videos attached to give you further guidance. Undoubtedly handy for those ambiguous Achievements you’re not sure how to unlock, or the ones that have you seriously stumped. There are also figures for the stat whores out there (Sam, I’m looking at you), such as how many tracked gamers have unlocked the Achievement you’re looking at, as well as how many own the game etc.
The Achievement section looks as follows (again, click for full page):
While I don’t see myself using it for much beyond the feature I listed above, there’s actually a whole host of other attributes. You’ve probably already found a similar site you’re content with using; perhaps Xbox 360 Achievements, or Achieve 360 Points (the latter of which was my previous choice), but True Achievements has pretty much become my one stop shop site for video games now, seeing as it also has forums for each game, as well as reviews. But the best thing, in my opinion, is that it’s all user generated. Too often I find myself turning to other gamers for their opinion on video games - I seem to pay less and less attention to what video game journalists think, and am turning more so towards my friends or small gaming blogs, like Matt Brett’s. So, a video game site with user generated content is exactly what I’m looking for.
Something else that interested me, for no other reason than it’s fun to know, is the hardest Achievements I’ve unlocked (generated by statistics, not opinions). I swear, whenever someone asks me what Achievement I’m most proud of (not that it happens often, it’s not great conversation material with my non-gaming friends), I always say Mile High Club on Call of Duty 4. Surprisingly, that’s not anywhere on the list. But what is are 2 secret Achievements for Eternal Sonata, Brass Balls for Bioshock (which entailed playing through on Hard with the vita chambers turned off), Rainbow Six Legend (which entailed completing Rainbow Six:Vegas on Realistic difficulty), and Master Flicker for Skate (which entailed earning all Milestones for Skate, though I can’t remember that being particularly hard).
Why am I writing about a web site with irrelevant statistics and information on Achievements? I have no idea. But sign up anyway. CandyStoreRock needs more friends!
After playing Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware’s latest Role Playing Game, for just under a month, I’m only 30% odd complete. There’s sex, there’s violence, there’s a question of morals, there’s a meaty story. With real-time gory combat and big swords, it’s what every action RPG fan wants, right?
Neil Sweeney