Tagged: achievements
Remember September '44
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway was released on the 26th of September 2008 a week after the anniversary of Operation Market Garden – the largest airborne operation of all time that ultimately ended in failure – this was also the storyline of the game as you again played as Matt Baker of the 101st Airborne Division.
BiA: HH was a solid tactical FPS that I thoroughly enjoyed, the cover system was well thought out, being able to direct fire of bazooka and machine gun teams helped your strategy and the action camera made for some intensely exciting and gory moments during a fire fight. Looking back I’d probably give this game a rating of 3.5 out of 5. It wasn’t perfect, the multiplayer was a serious let down unfortunately.
Today is the 17th of September 2009, the anniversary of Operation Market Garden and one of the achievements from Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway was to play the game today for a cool and rather easy 50G. While I appreciate that a lot, it has to be said the massive losses in this operation to the British 1st Airborne Division is something I couldn’t overlook, some 8,000 men died here alone.
I truly do love a good FPS, and am a big fan of the WW2 genre of FPS as it’s a part of history I am genuinely interested in, but the people who lost their lives shouldn’t be forgotten.
The problem with Multiplayer Achievements
Multiplayer achievements have a limited life expectancy, if you’re as much of an achievement whore as I am – and I mean that in the sense of completing games more than boosting my gamerscore – you quickly come to realise that after the initial buzz from a new game wears off, people head back to their regular haunts leaving servers desperately empty.
Take a look at some of the titles from the Xbox 360 Top Live Activity List: Gears of War 2 – almost 1 year old, Grand Theft Auto IV – 16 months old, Call of Duty 4 – 19 months old and even Halo 3 which is 2 years old next month. These games are what people know, what they love, and each has a solid community behind it that people aren’t going to abandon on a whim.
Developers filling their games achievement list with a multitude of online achievements seems like a gimmick to get you to use it and fill up server slots. Instead they should focus on making an awesome multiplayer that people will enjoy playing, there is nothing worse than having half of your team focused on ranking up and whoring objectives to gain their achievements before buggering off.