One of my favorite parts of the Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network are the leaderboards. I’ve spent many hours just trying to reach a higher score than one of my friends on many arcade games, Geometry Wars 2 in particular. Fighting to topple that next person can be extremely frustrating. There are times when I’d look at their score and think, “How is that score even possible?” Coming up just short of their score is incredibly trying, but when you finally beat it, it can be one of the most thrilling moments. Being able to send your friend a message and tell them that you just trounced their score…and getting the expletive filled message back is just pure bliss. Having leaderboards in games such as Geometry Wars 2 and Zen Pinball really adds another dimension to them. It gives you a secondary goal, and it creates competition against people, rather than just the board itself.
One simple, little feature that sets Geometry Wars 2 apart from other games is, it show the next high score from your friend list on screen while you are playing. While this could pose a potential distraction, it does give a constant reminder of what your goal is. Being able to know a friend’s score, without having to go through menus, is a great addition.
Now, not all leaderboards are perfect. Many of them just tell you how long it took you to beat a game, what level your character is, or how many enemies have been thwarted. While this can be interesting information, it does tend to be arbitrary and doesn’t really add anything to the experience. Most of the games that do this(I’m thinking of Castle Crashers and TMNT) don’t really need the leaderboards. Personally, the only games that I really look at the leaderboards for, are the arcade shooters, skill-based point games, and puzzle games.
Do any of you chase scores on the leaderboards? What games? Any score you are particularly proud of?
-Scott “Binary667″ Robbins
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The other night I finally bought Geometry Wars 2 and was playing through all the single player game modes to unlock them all and saw all kinds of crazy scores. Then I found a mode, Pacifism, which I really like and decided I wanted to get the highest score on my friends list. The highest score which is like 113 million or so was held by Binary667 and since then I’ve been trying to beat that score and have come up to 49 million. Soon I will beat your score Binary and experience that thrilling moment, soon.
I dunno… Zen Pinball ?
Leaderboards and scores do nothing for me. Trying to beat other people in overall scores makes it too much like a job to me, so I don’t do it.
I’m very bad at video games. Ask anyone, especially Rozonus who will regail you of stories during our days on Call of Duty Clanbase matches. My team killing skills were second to none.
It is for this reason that whilst I appreciate the idea of competitive leaderboards, I really don’t play much part in them. Nice post BTW!