So lately,
I been busy playing WarioWare Gold for the Nintendo 3DS. The WarioWare series
is one of my favourite Nintendo series for its simplicity yet innovate and
humorous gameplay. I completed the other WarioWare games (except for DIY and
Snapped. The less said about Snapped the better) so naturally, I would set
myself to complete Gold.
The
WarioWare series are usually short but Gold took longer than expected to
complete. This is primarily due to the Missions you can do which are basically
the equivalent to the Playstation and Xbox Achievements. You see, Nintendo
consoles do not have their own achievement systems unlike the other consoles
(with Playstation calling them Trophies) but some of their games have in-game achievements
which grants you in-game rewards. In this case, coins which can be used to buy
souvenirs such as cards. And boy, there are loads of them.
They
started off pretty simple from completing a character's stage to getting
certain scores in microgames (2-8 second games where you have to do a certain
action quickly to beat it. They can range from pressing a button, twisting the
3DS, touching the screen or even blowing into the microphone). Then I got to
the minigame based missions (longer stand alone games compared to microgames)
where progression slowed to a crawl.
There's a
minigame called Pyoro, featuring a small red bird with a really long tongue.
The aim is to eat as many falling seeds as possible. If a seed hits the floor,
it'll destroy a piece of the ground which results in your area getting smaller.
They can be restored but if a single seed hits you on the head, it's game over.
There's also Super Pyoro which adds special seeds to enlarge the bird and make
it invincible. The minigame is ok but there's a mission where you have to score
10000 or more points in the original Pyoro. For Super Pyoro, that is increased
to 66000. If you think that's a big number…you're right. They took multiple
attempts over the course of 3 days each in order to hit that target which
became tiring and stressful.
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Who would had thought that this bird would bring so much grief?
There isn't
really any special tricks to play Pyoro (though in Super Pyoro, there is a
secret bonus area you can access by climbing up a beanstalk) so it all came
down to repetitive persistence. Repetitiveness is a common trait for Autistic
people where they are often content with doing the same actions over and over
and over…and over again. For me, I don't mind doing repetitive tasks…but it
helps if there's a meaningful goal at the end and if the task isn't too dull.
Here, despite the prospect of completing a mission, the game was getting
tedious, especially if you do one mistake, you have to restart at the very
beginning. Not to mention there was another tough mission for the original
Pyoro where you have to restore all of the ground after having four pieces of
it remaining.
I admit at
times, I felt like giving up and abandoning the game but I eventually completed
them in the end. Thankfully, the other minigame missions weren't as bad bar a
few for example, scoring over 15000 in
Pumpkin Panic and defeating 200 enemies in Wario Kard (yes it's spelt with a "K") which took
about a week. I felt relieved having completed all the missions yet I did wish
that I could have gotten some of the lost time back.
Generally
speaking, I only aim to obtain all the achievements if I really enjoy playing
the game and if I believe I can achieve them all without too many problems. I
don't want to end up getting stressed over wasting so much time and enjoyment
getting the hard ones.
That said,
I would prefer it if there were more creative achievements that encourages you
to play the game differently (for example, in WarioWare Gold, the Antisneeze
Mission forbids you to use the A button to defeat the giant nose in the
microgame Nose Dive) as opposed to
grinding based ones so it feels like an actual achievement when you unlock it.
Some achievements could even teach you certain techniques. Team Fortress 2 is
an excellent example of this with class based achievements which not only
teaches you on how to play that character but also encourages you to do so.
Creative achievements are limited only by the
developer's imagination. As I hope you
will agree, I have a good imagination with the pictures I made for this blog. I
hope that when I get to develop my own games, I can come up with creative
achievements.
