On Single-Player Competition

Via Ars Technica, a post on the Major League Gaming site about the return of single-player competition (ala arcade games) with the likes of Xbox Live Arcade. From the article: "Once it stops being really enjoyable and just becomes work, you move on to another game and rarely come back. But imagining myself playing Resident Evil 4 with online leaderboards showing high scores in the missionary mode or a timed 'kill as many bad guys as you can' mini-game brings a smile to my face. I know for a fact I would be playing Super Mario Sunshine every now and then to try to get the fastest time for beating a certain level if there were leaderboards that everyone could plainly see after they beat a level."

Comments

Project Gotham Racing

[djohnsto]

Probably one of the first (and best) examples of comprehensive leaderboard support was Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox. When connected to Xbox Live, every event you completed was uploaded to the leaderboard. I was extremely happy to crack the top 1000 on most boards. The top 10 entries on each board had their "ghost" uploaded so that you could view their record setting run and/or race against it. While there were some issues (they should have created leaderboards for each medal class), on the whole it was extremely well done and contributed greatly to the replayability of the game.