Achievements are like little dopamine candies that game developers add to their games to commemorate difficult challenges, fun little Easter eggs, or important moments in history. And sometimes they exist just to taunt us, especially with the difficulty of getting achievements in some games, or the large number of achievements available in others.
Either way, Achievements are great for those with completionist tendencies, and if you’re that type of person, chances are you can relate to the ups and downs of Achievement hunting. If you’re not, well, trying to collect achievements is still pretty fun if you have some spare time and can help you get a little more enjoyment out of your favorite games.
seven Loving easy achievements
Do we know that these achievements are alms? Yeah. Does that make them less fun to grab? No, especially when those accomplishments are little easter eggs or not obvious despite how easily they are done.
Of course, it’s always fun when those accomplishments are also fourth-wall breaks, because that just adds to the humor. Also, the easy achievements help us get much closer to that 100% success rate, so it’s good when paired with more difficult ones to keep things balanced.
6 Have a “white whale”
We all have this realization that haunts us, our “white whale” that we never seem to be able to catch. This could be because the achievement seems incredibly difficult to achieve or because you just can’t bring yourself to do what is necessary to earn the achievement.
Horror games can be a source of these realizations for many, as the last thing we want to do is explore the grotesque landscape while being stalked by an unknown monstrosity.
5 Success Path Planning
Some achievements are somewhat mutually exclusive, especially in games where you have multiple options to complete a scenario. So if you’re into achievement hunting, you’ve probably taken the time to read a game’s list of achievements before you started your run.
After all, it makes sense to know how to best structure your runs for the most success, especially if you’re specifically into speedrunning for achievements (or in case speedrun is realization).
4 Decide whether to cheat or not
Cheating for success can take many forms and depends on how rigorous you are with your definition of cheating. Everything from using console commands to finding solutions online for tricky puzzles can be considered cheating, and chances are you’ve thought about it at some point.
Whether you decide to cheat to get achievements is up to you, after all, in the end, these are just small video game trophies, so there’s not much point in controlling how which people collect them.
3 Being frustrated with difficult accomplishments
Some achievements feel cruel due to their difficulty or the time they take to unlock. Either way, hard achievements can be a pain for any achievement hunters looking to get that 100% completion stat. Beyond that, there are also the achievements that aren’t that hard or take that long to get, but they’re just plain frustrating to complete.
For example, the True Neverclick achievement for Cookie Clicker, which involves creating a million cookies without ever clicking the big cookie once. If you’re not particularly lucky, aren’t ready to cheat, or it’s not Christmas while you’re trying to get this achievement, it may take over an hour to get it, and you’ll spend most of that time doing nothing, waiting for a golden cookie to appear.
2 You wonder about the secret achievements
Secret achievements are usually secret for a reason: to protect us, the players, from having part of the game spoiled before we even have a chance to play it. But that still doesn’t mean we won’t wonder what the achievements might be.
Of course, if you’re not particularly averse to spoilers, there are always ways to find out what the achievements will be, but it can also be a lot of fun to find out by unlocking the achievement organically. Red Dead Redemption 2 in particular has a lot of interesting secret achievements, some of which are story-related but some of which are not. So if you haven’t found them all yet, now is the perfect time to start the game, get on your horse, and start hunting (for achievements).
1 That satisfaction of getting 100% on a game
In some games, it can take years to unlock each achievement, but whether it takes you a few years or a few days, it’s still quite satisfying to see that 100% completion stat.
Achievement hunting can add a lot to the fun of playing games, and it’s especially nice to have a 100% beloved game, to have something you can point to and say “Look!” That’s how much I love this game.” So bask in it.
