Carrot on a Stick

Building a Better Achievement

When developers spend a bit of extra energy on achievements, however, it can have a profound effect on the final product. Perhaps the greatest achievement set in recent memory comes from Geometry Wars 2. A few of the achievements like "Unlocked All Modes" and "Game Over" are the sort of modest goals that you would reach after a few hours of play regardless of your skill level, while achievements like "Smile" are spectacularly imaginative and satisfying. "Smile" asks you to complete the game's Sequence mode by winning, losing and timing out of rounds in such a way that the level completion grid looks like a smiley face. It's difficult, totally superfluous and not deep enough to justify its own play mode in the game itself, but Smile requires such unusually strategic thinking that it's a blast to attempt after unlocking all the regular game modes.

Contrast this achievement with those of the first Geometry Wars, which almost universally reward the sheer amount of time you've spent with the game (save for "Pacifism," which subsequently spawned an entire game mode in Geometry Wars 2). Score 500,000 points in one life; collect nine lives; collect nine bombs; earn a times-10 multiplier. These achievements are irritatingly hard to get, yet they require the same skills and strategies it takes to be good at Geometry Wars in the first place - they ask the player to do nothing new, and are generally too difficult to be worth the small reward of 10 or 20 achievement points.

In an ideal world, developers would follow Geometry Wars 2's lead. The developers went from offering a slew of difficult, uninteresting and tedious achievements in the first Geometry Wars to giving players new and imaginative ways to play their game in its sequel. They understood that achievements are at their best not when they force players to engage in difficult, mindless, long-term goals that can only be completed by the obsessive-compulsive, but when they surprise us, inspire us or even just make us feel better about things we would have done anyway. Geometry Wars 2 and games like it understand that achievements are about improving players' enjoyment with - and understanding of - the game itself. And that's worth more than all the tediously gotten achievement points in the world.

Anthony Burch is the creator of web series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin', writes a regular column on videogame films at AMC and is the Features Editor of Destructoid.com.