Achievements changed the way I play games. And I’m going to blame my achievement hunter mentality for my ridiculously large backlog. Challenges aren’t going to change the way I play games, but they will definitely increase the amount of time I spend playing games. And herein lies the problem, I do not have time!
Challenges are simple, do a specific task, get a specific reward. It’s like chores for children, “go clean your room and get a piece of candy”. The piece of candy isn’t enough to do anything with, but as a kid, you get so excited about the candy that spending hours cleaning your room is totally worth that piece of candy. Flipping back to gaming, challenges aren’t entirely new, they’ve been in games forever – Halo: Reach comes to mind. Reach had daily and weekly challenges. Completing these challenges netted you a butt-ton of XP. Also, they were fun to complete:
- Get 5 headshots in a match
- Get 3 killing sprees
- Melee 20 enemies
I made all of those up, but they give you an idea of what Reach’s challenges were like. I was addicted to obtaining these. So addicted that I put more time into Reach than any other Halo game (besides Halo 2, but that’s a different story). Now with the advent of Xbox One, Microsoft has decided to allow all games to offer timed challenges. When completing a challenge on Xbox One, you’ll be rewarded with an item that relates to the game you’re playing. For example, Dead Rising 3 will award costumes or clothing accessories, and Killer Instinct will award Killer Points (KP – in-game currency). Getting to the point, some people whine that they are missing content because either:
- They don’t have an Xbox One (yet)
- They don’t have game X (yet)
I’m whining because I see challenges like:
- Dead Rising 3 – Spill 10,000 gallons of zombie blood before Christmas (Unlocks a Reindeer Mask)
- Dead Rising 3 – Kill 1,000 zombies with explosives (Unlocks New Year’s Hat)
- Ryse: Son Of Rome – Complete 15 rounds in multiplayer – This Weekend Only (NO BONUS)
- Killer Instinct – Instinct Cancel 5 times (Unlocks KP bonus)
- Killer Instinct – Win 5 ranked matches in a row (Unlocks KP bonus)
Well, ASDF you Killer Instinct, I won EIGHT matches in a row last week, but you weren’t counting then, were you? Some of those wins were skill, others were dumb luck. Regardless, I still gotta go back and grind on that for no reason other than some KP’s.
UPDATE: I finished a ranked match in Killer Instinct last night (1/2/2014) and it unlocked the challenge for winning 5 consecutive ranked matches, even though I lost the last ranked match I played. Therefore, at least one Killer Instinct challenge is retroactive, but I’m not sure if other Killer Instinct challenges follow the same principle, or how other games handle it. Just wanted to let everyone know I’m not as mad as I was. I now hate Xbox One Challenges a bit less than before ;p
