What Makes A Good Achievement?

I just finished reading x360a's Achievement Awards of 2009 (as I always do every year) and I must say I did enjoy reading it. The problem however is that I seem to disagree a lot with the views of Dan Webb and potentially many more gamers.

To me an achievement needs to be what's in the name, an actual achievement. There are of course lots of different types of achievements that have variety but ultimately I believe that the gamer needs to be achieving a feat that they are proud of when they hear their achievement pop. With this in mind I can pick out various points throughout the article that I have a problem with, mainly the choice of Fable 2 as best DLC achievements. So apparently you need to shoot some gamers in the groin, yay? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't see a challenge there and instead an achievement that is easy to do and anyone can get. I got the original 1000 in Fable 2 and I remember that the getting villagers drunk achievement was not fun. It just didn't work and I found myself getting frustrating, asking myself "why am I actually doing this as there is pretty much no skill involved, just luck".

I also think the article is too critical on generic based achievements. I personally don't see the problem in Terminator Salvation giving you the full 1000 for just completing the game. I won't compliment the developers for the list as I do believe a few more types of achievements could have been added such as completing a mission without dying or only using one weapon throughout, this however doesn't mean the game needs to be ridiculed on. I haven't played the game yet but when I do I'm sure I'll enjoy earning the achievements by using my skill of FPS's to complete the game on Hard, much more of a worthy achievement in my books than punching a horse in the face which requires no skill but nets you 100G, get what I'm saying?

Ultimately I think people are getting too wound up in the easy gamerscore world, wanting all games to be nice and easy so that they can net their 1000 points and move on. A great example of this is in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. I personally love the Expert achievements as I am aware that people which can play the instrument on that difficulty will unlock the achievement whilst others don't, the people that did make the achievement pop will now get recognition they deserve instead of those that 1000 Guitar Hero 5 or Band Hero. There's a reason why I played Guitar Hero 2 and 3 the most on my 360, it's because their achievement lists pushed me the most to go and 5 star every song on every difficulty, a feat I one day dream of being able to do.

Don't get me wrong I'm not completely against having a few various random achievements, I just think they should be skill based and not based on awe factor all the time (that must be the reason why people enjoyed punching a horse in Darkest of Days, right?).



Let me know what you think by posting a comment. I hope I haven't sounded critical on Dan from x360a, he's just a good example for me to use right now in order to vent my feelings on this subject.

3 Hours of Boosting Failure

I somehow managed to sign up to two boosting sessions that both started tonight at 8:00PM, the same time. I haven't been foolish enough to do this yet because I used to check the times but now I've learnt that because so many people join session's and then leave when they realise they have other plans that I should too. However I didn't decide to leave, I decided to persuade the session leader of Guitar Hero World Tour to push it forward by 30 minutes.

This shouldn't have been a problem, the Platinum Rockstars achievement which we were going for involves needing to complete a song on Hard/Expert 100%. I was hoping to get it done in minutes but unfortunately at 8:20 (40 minutes after we started) we had still not prevailed and the achievement hadn't been unlocked. I was on Bass and didn't mess up where as my friend rover08 messed up quite a bit and huge adrenaline also messed up. I shouldn't moan because Drums and Guitar are a lot harder to do that the Bass that I was on. However, when I leave at 8:20 to join the PGR4 boosting session I had joined I wasn't expecting for them 2 to find a replacement and get the achievement just 3 tries after I'd left. rover08 is a good friend that I know will play the game again for me to get the achievement however I don't know huge adrenaline so asking him to do it again for me is a bit cheeky however it's worth a try.

With this failure behind me I moved on to PGR4, hoping to get the Team Domination achievement which had already defeated me once when I finished a boosting session months ago with no achievement unlocked. Very quickly half of us 8 managed to get the achievement as their opponents quit the game and they continued to gain all top 4 positions, the rest of us waited. The guys with their new found achievements were kind enough to stick around and help me and the rest of us out however with the diabolical matchmaking that Bizarre have created for the game it meant that this was impossible to do. The closest I came was once when me and another guy boosting got put in to a game with 6 other randomers, 2 of them being good and on our team. It started great as after the first race the 4 top spots were taken by my team but then however the great start we had unfortunately couldn't be kept up and we didn't finish in the top 4 spots.

Anyway it's 3 hours later and I've gotten no achievement from my efforts. This blog was a way for me to release all the stress that I'd gathered up from this evening. Today hasn't been a complete waste as I unlocked Battery (1 million points in 4 player band) and other achievements on Guitar Hero Metallica, it's just the fact that the day has ended on a bummer which leaves me feeling bummed out.

Might play a bit more Xbox before I go to bed and try get a few more achievements to make up for the ones I didn't get, for now I'm just going to watch Match of the Day that's on TV and try to calm down.

3 Achievements on GH 2

Ever since I came back from NASS (a skateboard festival I went to last weekend) I haven't been in the mood for playing my Xbox, instead I've been all in to my skateboarding. I like it when I'm like this as I sometimes feel my Xbox takes over me a bit too much. So instead of playing Overlord and Soul Calibur 4 in a rush so that I could swap them for a new game with Lovefilm I've been enjoying playing Guitar Hero 2, netting 3 achievements in the process which I'm very proud about.

Yngwie Malmsteen Award: - Got a 1000 note streak
Champagne Room V.I.P.: - Got 500,000 points in a song

The two above achievements unlocked during the playthrough of one song, X-Stream on Expert. The song is one of the easiest songs on Expert as it has no hard bit, just constant fast pace which would usually cause me to mess up a few times and therefore eliminate the chance of me getting the 500,000 points I needed in order to get the 500k achievement. I checked a star power path for the song and the maximum amount of points I could have gotten was around 510,000 which meant there was very little margin for error. Eventually after 25+ times of trying I got a perfect run, 100% and FC getting me 506,000 (as I dropped a few thousand points by activating star power too early at one point). As the song has 1337 notes it meant I also picked up the 1000 note streak achievement whilst I was halfway through the song. Both of these achievements I am pretty proud about as neither of them can be gotten by using the terrible glitch, therefore this helped my TA achievement ration quite a bit.

Expert Tour Champ: - Beat the Expert tour

Unfortunately the glitch is possible for this achievement which is why the TA gamerscore for this achievement is below what I was expecting. I'm proud to say I didn't cheat and that I spent 10 minutes playing Free Bird yesterday and conquering it. All you need to do is make sure you have full star power for part C of the solo and then get full star power again for part I and J, the rest is not too challenging and I was able to get through without the need for star power.


So there it is, 3 achievements for 90 Gamerscore gotten on Guitar Hero 2 in just 2 days. Not much else I can get on the game until I have a friend come round and do some of the co-op ones (there's no online on GH2 :(). I still need to complete Expert on GH3 as One and Raining Blood are currently standing in my way. I think I'll be able to do them, just have to give it a go and hope for the best.

End of Week 5 of GSL

Okay well I sat out Week 3 and didn't bother doing this for Week 4 so its now time for my end of Week 5 review. It's been a low scoring week, getting 1200+ or so which is bad but I'm not disappointed as I got more than I was expecting. So what have I been playing.....

So my Dad went and bought a new Xbox 360 alongside the games the guy he bought it off had, one of them being Call of Duty 4. Now I loved Call of Duty 2 and bought Call of Duty 3 when it was released to feed my passion for the genre. But Call of Duty 4 came out and went huge, making me not want to play any more. Weird I know but I don't like following the big crowds, add to the fact this version was modern day I thought I would pass it. Now however I was told by my brother (kizwiz) that it has easy gamerscore so I thought I'd play it to boost me some points. Sure enough I've managed to get 200G so far just by completing a few levels on veteran and getting random achievements like 4 headshots in a row. I really enjoyed playing it and the challenge of Veteran difficulty reminds me of the countless hours I spent getting 1000 on Call of Duty 2. It's all good though, I do like a good challenge.

I didn't know what to play this week so I decided to pick one of the games I own but have never truely played and try to get gamerscore from it. I was aware that Stuntman Ignition gave 30G out for the completion of every Movie, that was 150G I knew I could get right there so I decided this would be my game of choice for this week. A great choice it has been as I've found myself playing this the most out of all of my games. I've always liked the game as it's concept is unique and a pleasure so I'm glad I have finally given it the attention it deserves collecting the random "do this 20 times" achievements as well as completing career. I now need to go and 5 star everything which will be tricky but possible (remember I like a challenge) and then find a boosting partner to play online with. I want to stick to giving this game my attention so that I can get the achievements whilst I remember the levels and am good at it, will most likely play a bit next week.

I actually went and played Sega Rally before I even began working on Stuntman which I admit has taken my attention away from this great game. I bought it for £10 waaay back when I went Milton Keynes a few months ago and yet never found time to give it a play. I needed gamerscore so I thought I'd put Sega Rally in and get some easy points, I was wrong. It doesn't give out easy points, it's time consuming and potentially quite hard. I had a shock when in my first race in a Championship rally the flock sprinted ahead of me, spraying dirt in my face. But thankfully I picked up the slick controls quite quickly and have fallen in love with how the game handles driving. It's a lot different to any other racing game I have played and you do truely feel like a master when you drift around a corner with style. I did a few championships and boosted for the online Ranked achievements this morning but that's all I've done so far. I decided that I would be able to pre-play the game outside of the GSL week so I have left it for now.

Easiest game to 1000? No as the developers of Avatar made getting 1000 gamerscore on a game possible for a baby to accomplish, however Codemasters have structured the achievements on LMA Manager 2007 to make them extremely easy to get. As they are all "win this" it means constant simulating and saving before a game so you can load back up and play again if you lose is needed. Make a few tactical decisions such as buying players (Sylvain Wiltord for Rangers got goalscorer of the season for me, oh yeah) and you'll be able to win no problem. I would have gotten 1000 by now if it wasn't such a loooong drag. You need to do 8 seasons which take a couple hours at least each to do which means this is the game I have been pre-playing before the week starts. I have currently done 3 out of the 8 leagues and have started my fourth, with just 3 weeks left of GSL I need to step it up to make sure I make the gamerscore count for the competition.


I played a few more games this week such as boosting online with my brother to get Prizefighter ranked achievements and playing on drums on GH World Tour for a few achievements but only minimal playtime on these games. Of course I got some gamerscore from Skate 2 (putting me at 750 currently) but I can't be bothered to discuss that in-depth right now. Might aim to get the 1000 before the end of GSL so I'll discuss it then.

That's enough from me for now, biggest blog post I've ever wrote? Hmmm, might be....

Going to 5 Star GH2 on Hard At Last

It's been a while coming and at least a year of progress but I realised yesterday that I am not good enough to 5 star the set list on Guitar Hero 2 on Hard difficulty. I had 5 songs needed to do (Trooper, Psychobilly Freakout, Institutionalized, Hanger 18 and Carry Me Home) and I did them all in one or two tries apart from The Trooper. I had one go at Trooper and was just a few thousand short therefore I am sure that come GSL week I will past it to get an extra 30GS for my week total.

Been trying Guitar Hero 3 today but no progress made, can't beat Raining Blood on Expert and Knights of Cydonia, One and Raining Blood refuse to get 5 stars on Hard. I will do it, one day.....