Trophies and achievements are a huge part of gaming nowadays. They’re incredibly popular among Xbox and PlayStation fans, as your account tracks your progress across all of your titles – giving you a solid way to look at your gaming history. However, I never feel compelled to chase achievements or trophies in the games I play.
Here’s a closer look at why I’m content playing through the main story and moving on to the next title in my library without worrying about achievements.
They’re boring
I’m a big fan of short and sweet video games, as they get straight to the point and put you right into the action. Achievement pursuits are often the exact opposite of this philosophy and focus too much on bloated stuff.
A lot of games offer boring achievements that involve nothing more than roaming around the map looking for collectibles. This type of gameplay isn’t the most engaging, making it a dull addition to the main story.
I’d rather spend five hours exploring a new game than spend five hours searching for feathers — and I don’t think skipping that achievement could be detrimental to my play sessions.
Others are incredibly obscure, like the Overdesign II achievement in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. It requires you to kill three hard-difficulty soldiers without breaking their shields… while your character burns up. It’s an absurd goal and doesn’t sound particularly fun. Trying to unlock that achievement might be entertaining for some players, but for me, it sounds like hours of frustrating, monotonous gameplay.
I have a backlog of adventures to play
Another reason I’m not a fan of achievement hunting is because I have a huge backlog. I try to keep track of all the big releases throughout the year, but it’s a nearly impossible task. That means once I finish a game’s main quest, I know there’s a new adventure waiting for me in my library. So even if a game has achievements that seem mildly interesting, they pale in comparison to what a new video game can offer.
With big releases like Dragon’s Dogma 2, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Astro Bot, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Space Marine 2, and Persona 3: Reload coming out in 2024, I have too many games to choose from and not enough time to play them all.
This means that even if I want to chase achievements, I’ll be stuck with the newest releases.
The thrill ends once the credits roll
Once the credits roll in a video game, I often feel like my journey is over. Many people like to get every achievement in a game to squeeze every inch of content out of an adventure and really feel like they’ve explored everything it has to offer – but for me the main experience is usually enough. Once I find out what happens to all the characters and complete their story, I feel a sense of accomplishment and put it off for the day.
This is especially true for elaborate RPGs that take over 50 hours to complete the main story, as I often feel I’ve gotten enough value out of the game without touching on achievements. Sure – if there’s a game I particularly like, I’m happy to keep roaming its digital world. But in most cases, game developers make sure you only feel the sense of accomplishment by experiencing the main campaign.
Not all achievements are rewarding
There’s no universal guideline for what makes achievements, and that means they vary a lot from one game to another. This makes achievement searching an uneven experience, as what might feel rewarding in one game is unfulfilling and tedious in the next.
In turn, this diminishes the experience for me somewhat, as unlocking a Platinum trophy doesn’t mean every game in your library requires the same effort.
This diminishes the thrill of achievement searching, as until you dive into a game, you never know what’s going to happen. Will they be carefully crafted to help you explore meaningful side quests and meet memorable characters? Or will they simply be a waste of time that forces you to explore boring corners of the map?
This variability also makes me less inclined to check the list of achievements and try to find them, as there’s no telling how involved (or not involved) they’ll be.
The thrill of unlocking a rare achievement earned by only a small percentage of players is undoubtedly exciting, but the feeling comes so infrequently that I don’t find dedicated achievement searching to be a regular affair. And if getting achievements is just a matter of spending more time in a game without any new innovative content, there are a million other things I’d rather be doing.