I’veGears of War always been somewhat dubious, as a player, about the 360’s Gamer Score paradigm. The temptation is to assess it as completely meaningless given that having a higher Gamer Score gets you absolutely nothing tangible but a higher Gamer Score. In one sense of course, it is meaningless. One gets nothing that can be tangibly measured from increasing one’s Gamer Score. You don’t get more powerful in Gears of War. You don’t unlock more animals in Viva Pinata. You get nothing.

And yet it completely transforms the experience I get playing ranked Gears of War matches, for instance, on Xbox Live. I am not even sure I’d still be playing ranked matches at all if it weren’t for the fact that I want at least one goddam GoW achievement that one gets by killing 100 other players in ranked matches with a particular weapon. I find myself not wanting to use anything but the main machine gun, the chainsaw, and the shotgun, as those represent the vast majority of my kills, and using any other weapon represents a barrier to my “progress.”

Even more extreme, one frequently (as in virtually every game) encounters players who are pretty clearly looking to get those 100 kills with a particular weapon. You can spot them a mile off. It’s the guy who uses the sniper rifle no matter if the enemy is standing right next to him, or the guy who only uses the frag grenades to tag opponents. (And yes, it’s always a guy. I have yet to hear a female voice on Gears of War.) Tonight one fellow on the opposing team just rushed straight at us repeatedly with grenades armed, and died repeatedly. He explained he didn’t care if he died because he only needed to get a few more kills to get his Achievement.

If you ask me most days what I think of Xbox Live Achievements, I’ll tell you that I think they’re a brilliant idea but that I would never get sucked into such a pointless race. If you asked me today what I thought of Xbox Live Achievements, I’d probably tell you to please ask me again tomorrow because I’m pretty close to 100 kills with a shotgun.

As a foonote, I find my lack of skill at Gears of War comically apalling. I have played 477 rounds. I’ve won 151 of them, and lost 318 of them. Worse, those rounds were part of 44 matches in which my side only won 9!