Confessions of an Achievement Point Junkie

One of the best features on the XBOX 360 is the achievement points. By accomplishing various feats in games, you gain points which serve for not much more than bragging rights. To most casual gamers, the points are of little consequence, but for some hardcore gamers, achievement points represent a marker of their gaming ability.

Microsoft is well aware of this and its dashboard seemingly mocks you with the number of achievement points you should have based on the games you've played and the addiction only becomes worse when you see this.

The quest for achievements have launched countless sites dedicated to the sole purpose of adding up the points whether through skill and dedication or cheat, glitches and shortcuts.

I am not ashamed anymore of some of the great lengths I have gone to in order to collect as many points as possible. These are just some of my stories.

Sports titles, especially early sports titles are renown for their relative ease in racking up the points. This was not the case in Madden NFL 2006. By and large, the achievements were easy, i.e. scoring a touchdown or successfully complete (not win) an offline game. However, the final achievement entailed playing 30 years in the franchise mode.

I spent a whole Friday evening, simulating through three decades of an NFL franchise. This took several hours, and couldn't have been more boring. I had a DVD in my PS3 and kept switching inputs. I began a season, watched 10 min or so of the DVD, switched back to simulate the off season and then back to the DVD again (several times.)

For those of the faint of heart, or those who actually have something meaningful to do with their lives, this may be a stretch. It entails not only simulating preseason, regular season and post season games, but also free agency, scouting and the draft.

Only a true achievement junkie will admit to doing this, but for 400 points, it was well worth it to me. This achievement would rear its ugly, time-consuming head again in Madden NFL 2007.