You Know What I Hate? Secret Achievements

I don't hate them by definition, I just hate how they are presented. We all have had that moment where we open our guide or press the PS button to check our list of achievable awards only to find out that a large portion are completely secret and unless you look them up on an external website you will have no idea what to do to unlock them.

I realize this can be a very good thing in most cases. Secret achievements help to not spoil important story events in a good number of games. There are certain games that I would never want to look at the achievements before finishing them. I am pretty ashamed that I knew nearly all the important plot points of the original Bioshock before I even started playing it.

My problem is more or less with games that use secret achievements in dumb ways. I like to use music games as an example. I was playing Guitar Hero: Van Halen the other day and a whole bunch of those achievements are secret. The weirdest ones involve simply selecting and playing a song as the different band members. I don't think the fact that Eddie Van Halen is in the game as a unlockable character is any sort of spoiler. This is just one example of a whole 5 years worth of mistakes that have been made. There are just a lot of achievements out there that don't deserve to be secret.

I would never suggest getting rid of secret achievements or hidden trophies. As I said before, when used right, they can be a life saver. I would like to just see them modified on a console operating system level. I think it should be the users choice to view them at their own risk. You should be able to press a button while highlighting them on the list to reveal the spoilers just like how you can highlight spoiler text on a web page. It should be the users right to see them without having to use an external website. I relize we are in an age where even one spoiler can ruin someone's gameplay experience but still, it should be their own choice to ruin it. 

Comments

[Outlulz]

I wonder if the developers just got sick of blogs posting all their achievements early and letting people know exactly how much content the game has. Other than achievements related to plot points there is no point to secret achievements.