What Have You Achieved?

Let me tell you why I never finished Mirror’s Edge. The game received a lot of, as they say, mixed reviews but I actually held it as one of the best games of last year. The concept and gameplay was inventive and addictive, it had a unique graphical presentation and the soundtrack was incredible. The story was the usual take-it-or-leave-it schlock I’ve come to expect from high-concept titles, but still felt interesting enough to make me feel sufficiently involved to care about Faith and her, em, fate. Basically, I’m saying I liked it, yeah? But as the first sentence of this paragraph suggests, I never reached the end credits. To be completely honest, I was never even close. Just typing these words feels like I’m admitting to a crime worse than genocide. You didn’t finish it? And you still have the nerve to praise it so? Who are you – Hitler?!

The jury’s still out on that, but I digress. The reason I never finished Mirror’s Edge is as simple as it is stupid; my own stupid pride. You see, Mirror’s Edge has an achievement called Test Of Faith, which you earn if you manage to finish the entire game without shooting an enemy. Since the game is basically a parkour simulator and I suspected the gunplay would detract from the pureness of that, I decided to see how far I could go without using a firearm to blast my way through. The answer was, to my surprise; further than I had thought. Quite a lot, actually. I think I had managed to reach the fifth level when I started feeling like a god amongst gamers. As I punched and kicked my way through the game I felt a pride I rarely feel in real life and those 80 achievement points felt inevitable. That is, until reality snapped back into gear like an evil illusion-shattering rubber band, and I entered the subway station.

The subway requires you to take out a whole group of enemies in a very open space. As taking one enemy out leaves you entirely vulnerable to another, you have to isolate them one by one and be as quick as possible. I kicked, jumped, grabbed guns and screamed at the sky in frustration. Controllers flew through the air, blood was shed and the screen was darkened with the ink of my defeat more times than I care to mention. I had gone right back to my default position: sucking. At this point I briefly considered simply picking up a gun, swallowing what little pride I might have left and blast through the stage but I never did. After trying for days to get past the section using only my bare hands, I gave up and never returned to Faith and her bloody knuckles. I simply couldn’t bring myself to willingly undo the achievement I was on my way of winning, so I put the game aside in the vain hope that I might one day be able to take it on again and finally master it.

You see, my gamerscore is quite pathetic. I have owned a 360 for well over a year now and I still clock in on just less than 2000. I blame this on the fact that I have been cursed with two hugely incompatible human traits; perfectionism and being really shit at games. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played games longer than I’ve been able to balance on two legs, but my skills have only improved marginally since then. I used to be able to play on most games on Easy or make use of as many shortcuts as were given to me and still be able to live with myself, but this changed when achievements entered the fray. Now, I can’t simply block out that I need to use the training wheels on almost any game I play, because it will show in my gamerscore regardless. Anybody can log on and see which achievements I haven’t yet managed to get. Thus, there is one corner of my brain which is constantly preoccupied with the thought that hundreds – nay, thousands – of people are constantly laughing at the fact that I still haven’t got the Wax Off achievement in Geometry Wars, or that I never played Bioshock for longer than a few hours, or that I couldn’t even beat Mirror’s Edge.

I recently played some Left 4 Dead when I received a message from somebody I was unfamiliar with. With a devastating wit to rival Wilde, it simply read “u suck”. The person who sent it was not in the game I was currently in, nor could I recall having played with him at any other time. I am therefore forced to assume that was simply summing up my person based on my lowly four-digit gamerscore. It’s not like I can argue with him. I do suck, and he was just observant enough to notice and rude enough to point it out in my face. So what am I to make of achievement hunting, an activity I’m genetically inclined to pursue but not skilled enough to be successful in? In the case of Mirror’s Edge it has clearly led me to lose sight of the actual game in favour of, let’s be honest here, useless additions to a useless number tied to my gamer profile. I’m not sure if I am some kind of freak or if other people have fallen into the same trap, but if so; come forth. How many games have been bought and abandoned because of this senseless hunt for perfectionism?

This week marks the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a game I’m quite excited about but likely won’t have a chance to play until the prize withers somewhat. It also marks the first use of Nintendo’s Super Guide system which allows the player to hand control over to the game itself to finish difficult stages for them, or at least show them how they are meant to be completed. On the one hand this feels like a slightly odd addition, since one of the most rewarding aspects of gaming is to feel the difficult curve slowly rising and feel your own skills rising accordingly. But there are sad cases like myself who will love a game only to find themselves at its mercy in a section where the difficulty curve shoots into the clouds. The Super Guide is there, the game will probably even suggest it in a patronising “Do you want us to help you, show you how it’s supposed to be done, yeah?”-way, but our own internal gamer will stop us. Maybe it’s more healthy for the soul to just leave a game entirely than to suffer the shame of having the game play itself because you’re too crap. Maybe that’s just a stupid thought which makes us miss out on a lot of exciting experiences later on in the games. Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to use the available tools, sacrifice a few pointless achievement points and avoid limiting our enjoyment of the games themselves. From now on I think I will subscribe to the latter. But then again, what do I know – my gamerscore is just 1970.