Repetition

It occurred to me, at some point recently, that I do a great many things over and over, and not in a good way. As I’m typing this, I’m in the middle of a video game boosting session with a bunch of gentlemen I’ve never met, playing Gears of War 2. The point of this session? To attain Rank 100 in the online multiplayer.

Here’s a quick summary of the boosting method: a bunch of people stand around in a circle, and a bunch of other people walk back and forth. Then the two groups switch places. This goes on for hours at a time, with the end result being a massive increase in the amount of experience awarded at the end of the match. We’re 40 minutes into a 4 hour session, and so far, I’m already bored out of my freaking mind.

Why am I doing this, you ask? Because I hate multiplayer. I know, that sounds illogical. Why would I be playing a mode that I dislike? The answer is actually quite simple, or at least it seems that way to me. You see, I’m also not very good at multiplayer, which means that there is no way in HELL that I would play this game enough to rank up on my own, but seeing as I’d like to get all the Achievements…

Well, my Achievement-whoring is a whole different post, for another day.

But back to the original premise. I repeat a lot of things. To a certain extent, repetition is a fact of life; each and every day we wake up, get dressed, eat food, etc. So I guess what I’m talking about really does relate mostly to my gaming habits.

With the Pokemon franchise, I routinely try to max out my Pokedex (as a Trainer is supposed to do) but I also spend far too much time training and breeding so as to have one of every single type of Pokemon in the game. Not just one from each evolutionary chain, but one of each and every Pokemon. I managed it in Diamond Version: all 493 were in my game. And now I’m doing it with Black Version. Now, I will be able to transfer over most of the original 493, which will save me a butt-load of time, but I still have to breed and train roughly 120 Pokemon to make sure that I have “‘em all”.

Let’s look at my Xbox 360 gaming experience. In order to get as many Achievements as I can, I do things like boost modes in games that I’m not particularly fond of: multiplayer being the one already mentioned. But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve played through entire games before just to make sure that I get those last few pesky Achievements that I didn’t take the time to get the first time I played through the game. and then there are games that REQUIRE multiple playthroughs in order to finish them off. MagnaCarta 2 springs to mind. In fact, I ended up playing that game through 3 times, twice to get all the Achievements, and another in order to write a guide that is now up on GameFAQs. And to be honest, I can’t really believe that I wasted all that time writing something. I mean, sure, it’s going to be useful for a bunch of people, and I’m sure I’ll get the occasional e-mail or LIVE message saying thanks, but I spent way too much time going through a game multiple times for no actual reward. Other than a job completed, which one might argue is reward enough.

I don’t really know what else I wanted to say through this. In some way, it’s really just a way for me to get my thoughts out of my head. It’s hard to discuss this sort of thing with others, as there are motivations and whatnot that even I find hard to understand. But as we all know, the internet is the most understanding thing in the world; it just likes knowing that you’re there.

Advertisement