So my second warranty-less 360 died a week ago, and since my economy is currently shot for a couple of months, i've returned to my other systems for gaming sustenance. The Wii has gotten a lot more play (though mostly through VC stuff), but also my PC, my Dreamcast and bizarrely my Xbox classic (got to play Oddworld Stranger again, woo!).
 
I'm struck with some really odd emotions that have taken me a couple days to process fully. The first while i actually felt sort of desperate to pick up another 360, in spite of not having money for things like, you know, food. Getting to a point where i realized i had other gaming media was immensely liberating, and i got back to playing games i haven't had time for in the longest while. I've finally finished Metroid Prime 3, i've been playing more Super Mario Galaxy, i finished Zelda 3 again, i've been getting into tournaments of Blood Bowl on the PC (which despite its bullshit frontend is really enjoyable if you're a board game kind of person), and i started replaying Freedom Force and its sequel. I even got time to plan a weekend co-op session of System Shock 2 with a friend who never played it but loved Bioshock. 
Got around to addicting my girlfriend to Rez on the PS2 as well, which is still a killer game.
 
I'm absolutely loving it. It feels.. free?

The feeling i've got is that games used to be more about plain fun for me, and the fun of playing the games themselves. I look back on the past year(s) of 360-centric gaming, and i realize how much time i've spent playing for achievements, and the sense of gentle failure at loading up a game to play and seeing how few of the 1000 points i've got. I realize for some, that adds a kind of meta-game to their hobby, but for me i have to say it mounted to kind of a painful addiction, where i'd play games almost out of spite to clear achievements and "clean up my life". I'm not even any kind of weird neat-freak (hardly), but there's a bizarre element of guilt or shame to those missing points that make me think i paid for a product that i'm not fully making use of. Games like Shadow Complex for instance wear this achievement meta-game proudly on their sleeve, and seeing there are achievements i haven't got in a game that's essentially all about completion in its purest sense makes me feel, well, shit at the game.
 
Sometimes this sensation will even make less of games i truly love. Bioshock for instance, and Bionic Commando Rearmed, both games i have played and replayed to the point where i really can't go back to them, but still there are those mother fucking achievements i didn't get. So how can i say i really finished them?
 
Frankly, the more i think about it, the more i'm certain that (for me at least) this meta-game high-score list is bullshit that brings the experience down to a really basic level. I don't feel any need to be matched up against my "peers". The gamer term is bullshit anyway; why do i want more "gamer points"? How is collecting gamer points supposed to make something i *already love* better? Can't point-centric games have their own leaderboards and lets be done with it? Should i be RATED on how i play my immersive RPGs? Having played Mass Effect twice over, have i not played it enough? Am i somehow LESS of a player for not grinding out the remaining achievements?
 
Worse yet, in some games i'm pretty sure achievements are effectively breaking some of the immersion for me. Not necessarily because they exist, but because they intrude in the gameplay experience. Again, if the game i'm playing is an emotional revenge story like The Darkness, why the fuck should i care about that achievement dialog popping up?  

The paradox of course is that i really do enjoy getting achievements. It's a reassuring little pop of success, and it always feels good. But on the whole i'm not sure they amount to anything worth caring about. Much like a cola addiction really. I love coke, but man, on the whole i'm not sure it's good to keep it a cornerstone of my life.
 
I remember reading or hearing some Nintendo quote that playing games shouldn't be incentivised, simply because playing the games should be reward enough. Considering the sense of reward i'm getting from playing achievement-free games, and replaying games from before achievements became cool beans, i'm pretty sure i agree. To be perfectly honest, at this point i wish the achievement system was opt-in. I'd love to not have that number there at all.
 
So, fair folk, take a few steps back; how do you really feel about achievements? Do you feel they have shaped or altered the way you play games?