Part Six: Crack addict whoring. The easiest 1000s.
Rich
In my first Achievement Whore article I made a distinction between the various types of gamerscore whore from the high class types who only play good games and will actively chase down worthwhile achievements to the filthy sluts who’ll play anything and will do anything to pick up points (short of gamesaving which is a cunt’s trick, frankly – thankfully M$ are banning these sick fucks). This article focuses on the latter type and the games you need to get a quick boost to your gamerscore. Remember, there is no shame. We’re all in it together.
Of course, if you’re going to pick up these kind of titles then you need to max them out. Leaving King Kong sat on your profile with only 800 points is just bad form. If you’re going to sell yourself you might as well get paid so we’ll be looking at the effort (or lack of) involved in getting a sweet 1000 out of these games. Invariably this will mean a collect-a-thon achievement or a small difficulty spike in some cases but this guide should let you know what you’re letting yourself in for when you first commit these titles to your gamercard.
Of course, the problem with an article like this is the inevitable whining of cunts who will proudly proclaim that they ‘don’t see the point of playing rubbish games for achievements’. Well, I don’t see the point of reading things I’m not interested in and then commenting on it. So with that out of the way let’s get ourselves some gaming AIDS.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
I don’t know what an Airbender is. I’m not sure I want to know. It probably involves bumming. Famously, Avatar is a five minute max-out. Bash the ‘B’ button enough times to get a fifty hit combo and you’ll be a thousand points better off. For those of you who want to feel clean afterwards, you could always try actually beating the game. But fuck that. It’s a lemon.
In whoring terms, this game will give you chlamydia. It’ll sit there on your card and you’ve got to live with that. But remember that shameless whoring is just that, shameless. It’s these cunts who say ‘I got 30,000GS without playing Avatar’ that you have to watch out for. Check their cards, there’ll be some of these other games on there. And then check their PCs and get ready to phone the police.
Hardest achievement: ‘One With Combat’. Achieve a hit counter of fifty. The other achievements are for ten, twenty, thirty and forty. So this is only a fraction harder and you’ll get the others on the way to this achievement. It’ll take you longer to load up the game than it will to get this achievement.
Time: 5 minutes
Effort: minimal.
NBA 2K6
This is one of those basketball games that they insist on re-releasing every year with a minor update to the stats and gameplay. The game has five achievements which are easily gotten within one match (if you set the time to maximum). All these old sports games have sliders in there for all the stats. The trick is, maximum stats for your team, minimum for theirs.
You’ll need to score 140 points and then concentrate on blocking your opponents to get some defense stats happening. The achievements unlock at the end of the game which means you’ll get a nice ‘5 achievements for 1000GS’ message pop up.
Hardest achievement: ‘Get A Triple-Double’. A double is a stat (three pointers, blocks, steals whatever) that has be performed ten times (ie – double figures) in a match. The triple refers to the fact that you have to get three of those. So ten blocks, ten steals, ten three points (with one player) would unlock it. Or you could switch one of those for rebounds or steals. Three pointers, assists and steals is the easiest combination. Look, I know nothing about basketball and I got this first attempt. Nice and easy.
Time: 48 minutes (4 x 12 minute quarters)
Effort: small.
TMNT
This ridiculously easy beat ’em up/platforming cross-over isn’t a bad game at all. You can’t really die whilst playing it so the achievements should come to you over just a few hours play. A much better game than most efforts aimed at kids. The final boss battle is easy but it doesn’t exactly signpost what you’re meant to do. So watch out for that. The achievements threaten a collect-a-thon with a ‘collect your first coin’ achievement but thankfully the devs decided that ‘hey if you can find one, you can probably find them all’ and left it at that. Sweet.
Hardest achievement: ‘Clean Sweep’. To get this achievement you need to complete a level without taking any damage (including falling off platforms, an ever-present danger thanks to the shonky camera). It’s not tricky at all though and you might as well repeat level one until you get it.
Time: 5-10 hours.
Effort: some skill required at points but little effort and its an enjoyable game.
Cars: Mater-national
Shitly-titled racing game aimed at kids and gamerscore whores alike. Arguably a bit too tricky for kids to max out (the ‘Tractor Tipping’ stealth sections are a marginal prick and the rhythm action sequences can get a bit manic) but at least the races are piss-easy (especially if you put in the cheats for infinite boost and maximum acceleration). The mandatory collect-a-thon achievements aren’t that bad either. The game itself isn’t up to much and so the time spent playing it might feel like a chore. This is the follow-up to the equally easy/dismal ‘Cars’ which is made slightly more choreish because of a larger collect-a-thon achievement.
Hardest achievement: the ‘Frank Slash’ and ‘Ghost Light’ achievements are based on a stealth minigame and one that reverses your left/right controls (turn pad upside-down if this gives you too much trouble). These aren’t particularly hard but might stall you for a few extra minutes. The last tractor tipping level (for the ‘Frank Slash’ achievement) has a tricky part at the end where there are a bunch of lights that you have to go through, just try to get to it with your stealth maxed out and prepare to take some stealth damage on that part but be quick and you’ll get through.
Time: 10 hours.
Effort: practically none for the main game, a little skill required for the mini-games. Fairly effortless collect-a-thon achievements.
Surf’s Up
Surf’s Up is apparently another one of these animated film things that so enthralls children and the educationally sub-normal. The game focuses mainly on the surfing which can be though of as a stripped down, on-rails version of well… any extreme sports game you can think of. The usual jumps, tricks and grinds all apply here. It’s a very easy game to complete but the levels will require multiple playthroughs so that you can collect all the idol trophies. An additional ‘leaf sliding’ minigame sees you sliding down a hill in a race against time. These bits can be frustrating but overall it’s still a very easy max-out.
Hardest achievement: ‘Slide Survivor 3’. The leaf-slide sections are a race against time and play like a regular racing game, except you can’t really stop (unless you crash). There is some room for error on the third one but not much. You’re going to have to learn the route through repetition but don’t be afraid to use the brakes. Rather that than fall off of one of the narrow sections.
Time: 10 hours.
Effort: Some tricky sections and you’ll need to replay each level a few times to find all the collectibles.
CSI: Hard Evidence
The game of the series that never seems to stop being on telly. The game gives you five murder cases to solve, with each one giving you 200GS. Solving the cases involves looking for clues, analysing items in the lab, questioning suspects and all that other science shite that the show bangs on about all the time. It’s a six hour max-out but you’ll have minimal fun doing. Of course, you’ll want to follow a guide (otherwise it’ll take five times as long to beat) which will utterly kill the gameplay for you. If you’re going to play this one, prepare to be demoralised.
Hardest achievement: ‘The Peacemaker’. All the cases are easy enough if you follow a walkthrough. This is the last case though and it does involve trying to find bullet holes in the crime scene. That isn’t particularly hard but it’ll be a fucker if you’re in standard def as the holes are tiny and the graphics are quite horrendous.
Time: 6 hours.
Effort: Minimal skill required but the game will test your sanity and will to live.
Open Season
Another animated film tie-in. Open Season is a roaming platformer/adventure game that has you playing as a bear or some kind of deer. The gameplay is standard stuff. You run about a bit, jump on things, avoid hazards, scare hunters by roaring at them and throw skunks into buildings to flush enemies out. It’s as charmless a game as I can remember unfortunately and is dragged out to a ridiculous 28 levels. The achievements are based on completing the levels perfectly. That means picking up all the collectables (usually 5-10 per level), scaring all the hunters and completing all the objectives. There are only really two tricky levels (one where you are a trapped in a giant rolling snowball and a mine cart section) but the game is still very easy and at least the collect-a-thon stuff is broken down into each level.
Hardest achievement: ‘Perfect Snow Blitz!’. Whilst this level is piss easy to complete, getting the achievement for perfecting it is harder than you’d expect and is the main sticking point for most people who maxed this game out. It’s not that hard but the game makes some curious design choices that make it harder than it should be. You need to obtain nearly all the available style points in the level and you get most of those by taking the harder route through the level. However, as you are rolling quite quickly this will test your skill a bit and, oddly, the point locations aren’t marked out.
To get the achievement you’ll need to crash three times in each section so that you’ll go back to the checkpoints. This will let you mop up any points you missed in that section. You can miss a few points and still get the achievement but I recommend milking all the points you can incase you accidentally pass a checkpoint too soon.
Time: 10-12 hours.
Effort: A couple of trickier sections but overall it’s an easy, if tedious, max out.
Fuzion Frenzy 2
This follow-up to Bill Gates’ favourite Xbox game (apparently) is a bit of a lemon. The mini-games vary from poor to quite good but the inclusion of cards that either steal or multiply points means that most tournaments are settled by luck rather than skills. It’s a pretty quick game to max out but you’ll need a boosting buddy to get the multiplayer achievements as you’ll not find anyone online playing this game anymore.
Hardest achievement: ‘Fuzion Frenzy Master’. To get this you just need to play all of the mini-games. You don’t need to win them and you can do it versus the AI. There aren’t that many either but some are unlocked as you go through all the other achievements so this is the last achievement you’ll get. Not hard at all.
Time: Can be done in a day.
Effort: Easy but you can be undone by the AI getting lucky with their cards. Requires a boosting partner for online achievements.
King Kong
King Kong was one of the first wave of Xbox 360 games and was also the easiest of them to max out. Achievements are given for completing each level of the game and there are no collectables to worry yourself about or multiplayer matches to win. Unfortunately, the game is a horrible chore to play and all the graphics seem to be the same shade of mud brown so expect to squint your way through large portions of the game. The bits where you play as Kong are a bit better than the bits where you play as Jack Black but it’s still a bleak experience.
Hardest achievement: ‘Completed game’. The achievements in this game are unavoidably unlocked as you progress through the story and this one unlocks at the end. As long as you can handle playing a fucking lemon, you’ll get this quite easily.
Time: 8-10 hours.
Effort: a little harder than people would have you believe, especially as the game is a joyless experience, but still pretty easy.
Lost: Via Domus
I never bothered with the TV show so I can’t tell you if this is a good game for fans of it but it’s a very simple max out. The majority of the achievements unlock as you beat each level but it does include some other ones that you have to go out of your way for. These usually involve taking a photograph of something and are easily missed but the game will allow you to replay any chapter so it’s not really a problem.
If you use a walkthrough (like this one), you should be able to pick up the full 1000 within 6-7 hours. The game is a bit of a lemon though and the jungle sections can be a chore but the game doesn’t really offer any challenge and the achievements are nicely compartmentalised in each chapter for orderly whoring.
Hardest achievement: ‘Dharma Ride’. To get this achievement all you need to do is take a photo of a van. Unfortunately the van is hidden in a jungle and that jungle is quite tricky to navigate (it’s not always that clear where you can and can’t go) and is patrolled by a cloud of deadly black smoke. It should only take you a few attempts to get the achievement but this was the only one that gave me any kind of problem.
Time: 6 hours.
Effort: very easy apart from one section (the return leg past the black smoke when you aren’t allowed to run) but even that is still only going to take a couple of attempts.
So, there we have it. A very easy ten thousand gamerscore from a bunch of games that you should have no problem getting on rental whilst everyone else is silly enough to request CoD5 or Gears 2. Remember though, this kind of dark arts whoring is indelible. You make your bed and then you’ve got to lie in it.
So make sure that you max these out once they hit your gamercard or else you’ll be the king of fail (and you do not want to be left with 850 out of 1000 on Cars – bleoww) and remember to, I don’t know, max out something credible now and again. You don’t want to be one of these guys on xbox360achievements who has like three games maxed and that includes Avatar because they truly are the Rik Wallers of gaming.