For those of you who might not know what Gamerscore is, it's just a numerical representation of certain feats that you've achieved in games on your Xbox360. These range from the norm of actually beating the game, or beating certain stages, to performing other, more difficult, tasks. Now these can range from beating the game in its entire entirety of entireness, to playing the game in a way that it probably isn't usually played. One example of the former can be found in Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3). It involves clearing every championship in the game at the platinum (highest difficulty) level. An example of the latter is found in Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. This one involves staying alive for the first 60 seconds of the game without attacking at all. That one was hard to do. And it's very an 'outside the box' way of playing the game. But the achievement is there, and if you want the score, then you try for them!
If I haven't mentioned previously that I've signed up to MyGamerCard, then I'll do it. I have signed up. You can even check out my profile. It lets you see what I play, and how much I've achieved. It's cool. I got it to start with because they generate a signature image for you that showcases your Gamerscore data, and I figured it was a nice way to let people on forums that I go to that I play on 360's Live service, so they can play with me, too! An example of that generated majiggy can be found... Here...
How awesome is that? Kthxbai.
No really, though. I think Live is a service that other Console (and online service) providers should be taking a look at. The only other thing I've used that is this good would have to be Valve's Steam client (although Steam does have its share of problems).
There's no point in reinventing the wheel. You just make it a lot harder for yourself to build something that's good. Take a look at consoles today, not much has changed over the past 10 or 15 years. I mean fundamental changes to the way that they work. There have been practically none. They all have controllers, you pop in the game media, and away you go. No one has challenged that idea, and gone and made a console that defied all the current norms. It'd be silly. It's the same reason that the steering wheel/pedal systems in cars has been the same for so long, cause it's great. Instead of doing odd things (Friend codes, I'm looking at you Nintendo) why not just improve upon good ideas?
Now a rant for some good measure. Friend codes are the most cumbersome, and really just plain silly thing that anyone could come up with. It goes against the whole simplicity of the Wii. People who want to play together have to exchange codes, there is one code for your Wii and one for every code using online-enabled game. So for each of those games, you must input the code of each of your friends - and this is done using the software keyboard styled interface. And you've got to do this for every subsequent game. Not to mention that the only way to get your own code is to boot up that game, and login to the WFC and get it (then take a note of it).
A long time ago, before the Wii was released, this idea sounded good. I already enter people's emails into my MSN and whatnot. However I do this with hardware built for the job (a keyboard). And whilst I do have to enter in more things for every chat program I used, chances are, I'm only ever going to use MSN. That and I only ever need to add a contact, or receive an invite. We don't both have to add eachother, and then wait for the service to recognise that we have, and then play together.
It really is kind of obscene after you think about it for a bit.
Sidenote: I've cleared all the achievements in Boom Boom Rocket. It's like DDR, but with fireworks.
Good night.
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