Dangers of Achievement Hunting

I would say that since joining True Achievements, I have become a novice achievement hunter. I've started to care about completion percentages, full game completions, and hard to ear achievements. I love it. I love hunting for achievements. I also love the people I've met on here that I have hunted with. However, achievement hunting has proved very dangerous for me.

Primarily, I forget to have fun while I'm gaming. I find myself spending more time looking at solutions and walkthroughs than I do playing the games themselves or writing reviews of them (which I really used to enjoy). It's become more important to me to get every achievement on one playthrough so that I don't have to play it again, than to really enjoy the game itself. Maybe it's just my demeanor. I have a really hard time motivating myself to play a game again, whether it's because I missed an achievement, or because I need to complete it on a higher difficulty. Collectible achievements are the worst to me, I hate having to find 101 Flags in AC:B for no apparent reason other than the fact that the people who made the achievements/game thought it would be fun.

In one sense, I guess I still have fun while I'm gaming, because the achievement hunting itself has become fun to me. I like watching my completion % rise, and I love being able to add that "Game Completed" trophy to my trophy case. But at the end of the day, I need to remember to have fun when I'm playing the games, not just looking for achievements. I've found myself on some days wanting to game, but choosing not to because there's no achievements I can easily attain in the time frame that I have to play. I just need to go back to having fun. Enjoying the world, enjoying the story, enjoying the characters. I need to go back to playing more online because I miss it. Hopefully, all this will change with the slew of games that are getting ready to drop this Fall. Starting with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, I'm going to go back to having fun just because of the game itself.