I kinda fell into a bad habit with my gaming over the past few years. I love games and play them almost everyday but I also really like going after achievements and trophies. I'm not obsessed with getting them and only playing for them but if I see a game I think I can platinum I at least try for it. At the time of me writing this I currently have 149984 achievement points and 23 platinum trophies which has 5178 trophies. So if you play games and somewhat care about those numbers then you know I do go out of my way to get achievements/trophies sometimes. Now, on to the point of this post. I fell into the habit of wanting to play a game again but I didn't have any achievements or trophies to go for anymore, so I would just usually play something else in order to try and get my gamerscore up. This may sound stupid and you're right, it's very stupid!
To me the point of playing a game is to have fun, I've always felt that way, but for some reason this gen I fell off that a bit and would play things I wasn't in the mood to play just to get my numbers higher. I don't know if I watch too many YouTube videos of people who go for platinum trophies but I got the itch this gen. So this would result in me playing whatever new game came out on GamePass that month even if I didn't want to play it. Now some of that is because of financial reasons but not all. Like I would be in the mood to play Rise of the Tomb Raider again or something and would find myself playing Super Lucky's Tale just for achievements instead. Not that it's a bad game but I was so ready for it to be done when I finished it and wasn't sure why I was playing it to begin with. I guess in my subconscious I thought having a high achievement number looked impressive and would just keep going. Like someone would look that I'd played the game and been like "Well, he didn't even finish it" What the hell was wrong with me!
So I recently wanted to go back through some of my favorite games this gen to get ready for next gen, if I can get a next gen console, and I've been playing Metal Gear Solid V again. I love that game I'm having a ton of fun doing it. Now I am going for some of the trophies I didn't get when I played it the first time but not planning to go for the platinum, just playing for fun. I know it's weird to say that I'm playing a game to ya know...have fun but it's not something I've done with replaying games lately. I remember when I was little I would play games again all the time and had a blast. Maybe Nintendo is on to something by not having an achievement system in their games cause following YouTube videos for hours and hours just to get trophies can be tedious.
Now I'm not saying that achievements/trophies are a bad thing but they can def become a whole thing and some can ruin an experience with a game. Cause some games ask so much of you to get 100% and they become not fun to play, for me at least. I get that for some people they love the challenge and feel so accomplished but I've gotten to the point that I'm not sure that's me anymore. I will still go for them but not all the time anymore. For so long I've had this need to get 1000/1000 achievement points or the platinum trophy for games I love and wanted to show that digitally. I've learned to chill with that now though and know that you can love a game and not complete all the achievements!
This has been more a cathartic post than anything. Telling myself it's fine to not have the platinum in Death Stranding even though I loved the game! I just thought by me writing it and putting it out there that someone else might be like me and know it's fine too. There is a YouTube personality/reviewer I like called SkillUp and he said that trophies ruin games and I don't fully agree with that but I also get there is a point to be made there.
One last thing: Shoutout to the people that put together achievement/trophy guides before game come out cause they have to play games in a way that I would never want to! Finding over 100 collectables in a game by myself is not something I'm ever interested in doing!
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