GTA IV pigeons encouraging unnatural play
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Tuesday 28 July 2009 14:08

What's unnatural play? If you somehow pretend to be
involved in reviewing or writing about games
professionally I doubt you're playing natural. Even
if you combine work and play you can't possibly
keep playing all the games you have to review to
the point where the average player is getting
naturally, or even be able to discuss all the
achievements of all the games. But Dick has a point
with the pigeons. The achievement is for killing
the last pigeon. The last pigeon is almost
impossible to find. Even if the first 190 or so can
be found during natural game play, there is a huge
chance you'll never get the achievement because
you'll never find one of those last ten if you
don't know where to look for them. And what makes
that annoying is that if you just naturally started
killing every pigeon you encountered, you don't
know where to look for the last one. Peering down
the scope of your sniper rifle you don't know if
you just can't see the pigeon from that angle, or
it's just not there anymore because you've already
killed that pigeon. So to get the achievement
usually means starting a new game with all 200
pigeons in them and checking them all off from an
online guide list, even if you managed to kill 199
of them during natural game play. That makes this
achievement tedious. While I think the idea of
getting people to explore Liberty City in more
depth by looking for pigeons in remote places and
have them appreciate all the work that has been put
in all the details of the city, multiplayer can do
that also, and it would help if the pigeons were
also in multiplayer. And don't forget you don't
need all the achievements. I mean, there are
actually people who drive around every race track
with a friend twice, alternating "wins" so after
about ten hours they both have "won" a "race" on
every track and get an achievement for that?
Doesn't that just show the whole game score and
achievement system is based on who can waste the
most time on a game?

Unnatural game play btw is when you commit suicide
as a way to teleport to a spawn point to get
somewhere faster. I refuse to do that. I don't even
respawn a damaged car during a race. Realism is
more important than winning.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/play/2009/07/28/gta-iv-pigeons-encouraging-unnatural-play/