"I Achieve therefore I exist" says the modern Xbox-gamer. So say we all.

Worthwhile it may be, but the achievements are still considered "extra" or "surficial". Do they belong in a game? Well since Microsoft implemented them, everybody else is having them also. They approve your effort and display your enthusiasm. They feel good and show you're really THAT good.

Some of them are impossible because a) they require hoards of sheer dumb luck and b) they're glitched or BOTH. I have some of the a-type in Halo 3 multiplayer still dangling and laughing at me. They would have been super-easy to get when that game was new but now my level is higher and I don't get a bunch of noobs to triple kill with a laser in a row. I could boost it with friends but I would feel dirty afterwards. That really wasn't how it was meant to be achieved. Gamerscore-hoarders abusing glitches sometimes make multiplayer miserable for the real people. Kinda reminds me of that neighbour kid who always wanted to break grand lego constructions "cause your daddy can fix". He grew out to be the Joker in the Dark Knight movie.

At best the Achievements are exactly like that nice fuzzy feeling in the morning when you have rested a full night after a hard days work. Achievement is the invigorator. Good pacing makes the soft rain of achievements all that good. And talk about rain of achievements, how about the playstyle-oriented achieving? While it is rewarding that YOU have been selected out of all players because you play Oblivion with hoarding-style and REWARDED for it (No, Oblivion hasn't heard of such 'cheevos). It gets old really fast because there's a prompt realization that to get a shot at the S-RANK ("Sure, Racking Achievements is my Night Kibble") you have to play all those styles you don't enjoy playing. Playing for the Lord Achievement is hard work and work isn't always fun.

Lately a few online shooters have taken the achieving a bit further and introduced another achieving cue to consider. I was hooked on the Halo: Reach "credits" for a while. I'm a General now and there weren't an achievement for me to gain for a while. What was the purpose then? My own set goal in the ever trancending hierarchy. It goes on without saying that this is not really so new a feature in games. Think of the Sims' career building or Tetris high score or all those C64 games that had no clear goals (or graphics for that matter). Gamer is given a direct punctual reward for this "work" of playing. We all want to see how far the rabbit hole goes until there's nothing left of the hole. We just sit in dark and contemplate on the inner emptiness that was never really gone -now where was I- This paradigm is all too well implied in the old saying about fire, "[Achievement] is a good servant but a bad master".

Is there such thing as non-achievement gaming anymore? Bottom line is that Oblivion is still a game I can cope with even though the achievements are not so well played as with more recent games (yes, I play with Skyrim soundtrack in the background while I'm waiting for the whole game drop to my mailbox). I still play c64 games on emulators occasionally (and listen to SID-music on kohina.net -Internet radio). I just want to see it all and there's yet so much to see. Achieving was the very thing "playing games through" is based on! I have played Legend of Zelda through (first run AND game+, even though that wasn't a meme back then) on the NES and I was good at it. If that game came out today, I would've had achievements to show it. But I won't play Xbox 360 -version of King Kong because of the 'cheevos because it isn't worth my time and there's nothing there i'd want to experience. So the Non-achieving is the high standard of a true game, playing like a child, to experience something, because experience is the true achievement.