From now on, I will be following a loose framework for my posts, days that start with “T” are free post days were I can post whatever I like.
This post will have nothing to do with the game-play, story, or general awesomeness of Dead Space 2, instead it will be entirely about it’s achievements.
I for one enjoy the achievement system on the Xbox 360, and as you can see I have a pretty respectable amount of gamer-score. But as you can also see in “completed” game section, Dead Space 2 is very lonely… It is a good thing I finally got that last achievement I needed for Dead Space 2, because prior to this weekend I didn’t have every achievement unlocked for any game. Now when I say more games should be like Dead Space 2, I’m referring to the kinds of achievements in that game. All of them were fairly doable, no achievements were impossible to obtain and on the flip side, you didn’t get achievements for turning the game on, and yes I have played games were you got an achievement for exactly that.
Most of the achievements pertained to gameplay aspects, which you could easily get just by reading what the achievement was, and then altering your playing strategies to get said achievement. There were achievements in which you had to find secret items, normally I would have to look up how to do all of these achievements online, but the maps on Dead Space 2 are not too intricate and I found almost all the secret items I needed after a couple run-throughs. Another thing I appreciate about Dead Space 2 is that they didn’t have any achievements that you got from the multiplayer. When games make achievements that you must unlock in multiplayer matches, they just become chores that dampen your multiplayer experience, this would have been especially true in Dead Space 2’s case because I didn’t care for the multiplayer very much. Now, all games have that one achievement “Beat the game on the hardest difficulty” and Dead Space 2 is no exception.
Dead Space 2 has one of the hardest campaign of any game I have ever played, the only games that come to mind as being harder are the Halo games on legendary, and Twisted Metal (2012). But one thing that is different, is that Dead Space 2 doesn’t make you want to throw your controller across the room and rage like legendary Halo games do. The main thing that make Dead Space 2 hard is that on the hardest difficulty there are no checkpoints and you can only save three times. This seems like a daunting task, but once you get your strategies down it is very doable. Anyway, the main point I’m trying to make is games need to lighten up a bit with the difficulty of their achievements, and become a bit more like Dead Space 2. Achievements should be challenging, but not impossible, and easily obtained with some time and effort put towards it.
Now, what do you think of achievements and their difficulty?
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