Gamerscore: rewards points for "nerd cred"

Yes. I didn't get the superior NCAA Football 07 for the Xbox (more feature-rich), nor Splinter Cell: DA version (more feature-rich, again).

Yes, not really a "gamerscore whore" but I am having a one on one competition with a friend.

But I wish they would get rid of all online achievements because it creates cheating.

It was starting to... then I started Final Fantasy XII and realized that it's not all about the gamerscore.

I wouldn't say achievements 'dictate my playing habits,' but they are certainly a nice little addition and incentive to games. For example, I probably wouldn't have even bothered to actively search out COG tags in GOW, but it was kind of cool saying 'hmm, where's that next one, I MUST be close to 2/3' etc. And in Geometry Wars, I wouldn't have even thought about just sitting there not firing a shot, but it was pretty cool to FINALLY get that pacifist achievement.

It adds a nice dimension to what's otherwise a pretty unrewarding experience. Yeah, I'd play the games otherwise, but it's a cool 'bonus' if you will. I rarely go out of my way to do side tasks or go after unlockable outfits and such, but I will devote a little extra time to getting an achievement. Why? I have no idea, and I really don't care how high my gamerscore is - I just feel a sense of, well, achievement when I unlock one.

No idea why this concept hasn't been implemented in consoles before or since, but it's a cool system.

It's funny I wrote a term paper about gamerscore as an authority function in gamer's lives. It was very well received paper by my professor who never played video games.

It's annoying for those of us who can't afford to buy a lot of games. I'd rather it be more like the TrueSkill rating for all games.

Lewis, this is precisely the reason I use GameFly - to play and get achievements from games I would never consider buying.

Oh, and yes, I did buy the BK games but not entirely because of the achievements. They're actually kind of fun :)

Yes, it certainly keeps me from playing Xbox 1 games. I bought SC:Chaos Theory and never touched it for that reason.

No one knows your playing, no acheivements, no downloadable content. May as well watch porn.

I agree with Lewis that it seems like you 'pay for the points' though...

It's also annoying how multiplayer-centric a lot of points are. I'm playing FEAR now and I'll be lucky if I break 200 points on it.

As a new (less than one month) 360 owner, my friend and I were discussing gamerscore and achievments. The interesting idea my friend came up with was: these achievments are things we would have come up with on our own, in time.

Think about playing games on the NES. Once you beat Mario, or Mega Man - nobody cared. But then it became "how fast" can you beat it, or "can you beat a level without having to kill an enemy?" things like that.

Geometry Wars has one achievment that asks if you can stay alive for one minute without firing a single shot - it's a lot of FUN to try and achieve that - and sooner or later, one of my friends would have been bound to say "dude, try and stay alive for one minute... without firing." The beauty is, these guys put it in the game for you!

I really think achievments and gamerscore (even as a 360 newbie who will never likely reach anything more than a couple of thousand points) at a lot of fun to the games!

Games have little challenges for you to try to get. (Beat the first level. Get all the heart containers) Xbox 360 achievements are just another little challenge in the game to try to get. So, every 360 game is a tiny bit bigger because of it.

Adds more replay value imo, ie. i couldn't be arsed finishing gears of war on insane if there was no incentive at the end of it.

Achievements have made me purchase rather than rent more 360 games so I can play each game to death for achievements or come back to it later for more achievements. On games that I really enjoy playing, the achievements get me to play and see more of the game environment and the extra features that I normally would skip or not know about. In Dead Rising, the clothes horse achievement forced me to go into new stores and see all the extra funny and down right disturbing reactions Frank made with all the new clothes. The ultra-realistic-die-if-someone-looks-at-you-funny achievements like in Rainbow Six Vegas makes me try, re-try, and re-re-try different paths to get through the different areas while trying all the different weapons and tactics.

I was disappointed with the achievements set up for Fight Night 3. I got all achievements early in the game and could have continued playing, but chose to not play the game any longer as it had not no more achievements to acquire. Wrong? Blame those damn achievements. Just like intRvenous, I too no longer play original XBox titles. Again, blame those damn achievements.

I wouldn't exactly call it 'nerd cred', considering the wide area that gaming appeals to now; people who I've known to ridicule gaming are usually the people who these days spend hours playing Pro Evo or the GTA games.

I agree with intRvenous, in that a lot of the online games are very online Ranked orientated. These are often the Gamerpoints I ignore, as I'm not a fan of Ranked games (nor the people who play them). I understand that having achievements for non-ranked games would make them far too easy with the help of your friends, but surely they can think of achievements which could avoid this.

I have all the single-player achievments for Gears of War, but only a few of the easier online achievements. Having to play Ranked games without friends certainly takes away the social aspect of Xbox live which many us paid for.

Gamerscore is better than no gamerscore, plain and simple

I do like gamerscore, but I still wish you could cash it in for something. Give us extra content or something. How cool would it be to open access to new elite map packs or weapons in GOW and Halo 3 by successfully unlocking a certain achievement. That would raise the validity of gamerscore to a new level.

I just got a 360 for christmas and didn't know there were achievements. I played GRAW and skipped some of the training and had to go back to it just so I could get achievement points.

I don't like the Gamerscore aspect so much... but the Achievement aspect is fantastic, especially since they all have an icon.

At Least With Gamerpoints You Have Something To Brag About With Your Friends But Sometimes People Take It Too Seriously Like Some Online Players. Anyways High Gamerscore Or Not I Still Kill Your Ass In Gears Of War

i forsee widespread cheating just like in halo 2 just for the sake of a higher gamerscore the day that the unsexed dorks from lickenszedickins( nerds is to kind a word for these assholes) trainers running on the 360 gamerscore is not going to mean a thing

I think achievements are a fun addition -- but I wish they were something different from things we'd try to do anyway. For example, the Oblivion achievements are all awarded for finishing major questlines, and I don't think that's all that creative. It'd be more fun, in my opinion, to have proof that you'd slain 50 daedroth or found every Ayleid statue, etc.

#20

Exactly, these kind of achievements would be really great for oblivion.

I find it hard to go back and play original xbox titles for a bunch of reasons ... points ... have a pile of 360 next gen games that come first ... xbox 360 over the original xbox.

AND @6, intRvenoud

You are so f'ing on the ball about Fear. I finished the SP campaign last night on normal difficulty and didn't even break 100 points total. Only if you manage to never die, don't pick up boosters, find and kill everyone (or play on hardcore difficulty) are there any decent points. Sigh... lol, looks like I'll be playing thru this again.

I think microsoft just invented the achievements to sell more games. I actually bought more games with the achievements as i would withouth them.
But it's kinda stupid, everytime i have all the achievements for a game, i don't play it anymore.
bu i'm hoping, with halo 3, i can just play the game for years, even if i have all the achievements.