Those of us who own a console probably have one or two friends who just need to get every achievement/trophies in a game. Now, we question them, call them crazy, but why do they do it? Some do it for bragging rights, others because they have nothing better to do or simply because they like the game enough to achieve perfection. In the end, all those points count for nothing, but what would happen if they could get something in return for their achievement/trophy hunting? During my recent purchase of Assassins Creed 2 for the Xbox 360, I noticed a little button prompt on the main menu that was labeled as 'UPLAY'.

Now, since curiosity killed the cat, and I'm not a cat, I decided to play the game instead. After 18+ hours of messing with the good people of Italy, I decided to give into the curiosity. However, since I been living under a rock the past few weeks, I had no idea what I was getting into. To my surprise, I had stumbled into the beta stage of a system of in-game rewards. I had no idea how it worked, but there had to be a catch. There's always a catch right? Well after finding out a little more of information, this looked like a reward system in exchange for completing various achievement/trophies. Each reward is tied to an achievement/trophy. All I had to do was complete the achievement/trophy in order to get 'units' which can then be used to unlock the reward. Up to this point, I still was convinced that there had to be a catch somewhere. So I decided to register. During the easy registration process, I was never asked billing information. I was only asked to make an account by providing an e-mail address and making a password. All of this was done through the console. Once my registration was completed, I was taken into a UI (User Interface) were I could see my account information, as well as see which rewards I could unlock using the 'units' earned. (Note that just for registering, you get 10 units) This is a shot of the "Win" tab were you see how many 'units' you have, which rewards you have unlocked and which achievements/trophies (labeled as 'Actions') you need to complete in order to receive 'units'.

After the registration process, and a little bit of exploration of this new system, I decided to put this system to the test and try out on Assassins Creed 2. So far, each achievement gave me enough 'units' to unlock all the rewards. Rewards for Assassins Creed 2 included extra throwing knifes, an Exclusive map (aka a new Dungeon to explore), a dashboard theme, and Altair's outfit to use while in game. Everything unlocked and worked perfectly in game (except the dashboard theme which does not work in game)

Finally a system which gives achievement/trophy obsessed players a purpose for their...unique capabilities. However, even I like this new system which in simple terms can be described as a "thank you for playing, here are some rewards" type of system. This is a good move by Ubisoft to try an encourage gamers to buy their games and gives us more reasons to get those achievements/trophies. So far, Assassins Creed 2 is the only game with this system, however, Ubisoft has confirmed that R.U.S.E and Splinter Cell Conviction will have it. Also do take note that this system is on a beta stage, and problems are bound to happen, like your save corrupting. Thankfully, I wanted to do a second run of Assassins Creed 2 anyway.

However, a question rises as to why content already in the game disc is not accessible from the start? I ask this because the in-game rewards were already in the game disc, you just couldn't see them until unlocking. My point, whats stopping producers from making us pay to access content already in the disc? I'm not a fan of non accessible content, but lets hope this new system brings a twist to our video gaming and remains free of charge. It still remains to see whether other big companies like Activision or EA adopt their own version of UPLAY. If you want to find out more, please see UPLAY's website

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