I fired up a review copy of Madden NFL 10 for the first time today. As usual, one of my first stops was checking out the Achievement list. This year, there are 24 Achievements, most of which have a fairly high degree of difficulty. Each requires you play on the All Pro difficulty setting, which may be too much for the normal Madden player. You have to remember that Madden sells millions of copies every year to people who many would consider casual players. Most of these Achievements will go unrewarded to the majority who aren’t comfortable playing on All Pro.
A couple that jumped out at me include tackling Adrian Peterson for a loss 3 times in a game, tackling Antonio Gates inside the 5 yard line, forcing Kurt Warner to fumble on a sack, intercepting a pass intended for Randy Moss, and intercepting Peyton Manning 3 times in a game. A lot of these will remain unlocked on large number of consoles.
Sports game Achievements have run the gamut from too easy (the early titles of this generation) to way too hard (Madden NFL 10 could fall into that category). At this point in the life cycle of Achievements and Trophies, I would have thought developers could narrow in on the sweet spot, but it seems that hasn’t happened in the sports gaming world just yet.
Want to see all the Achievements? Hit the jump.
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Microsoft recently sent out a survey asking gamers how they feel about Achievements. Towards the end, one of the questions asked how you would feel about certain Achievement types. One of the options is fairly interesting.
Providing Achievements for non-gaming uses of your Xbox 360 (e.g., “The Film Buff: You’ve watched 50 DVD’s”)
It looks like Microsoft may be gauging interest to see if people would like Achievements to spread into other areas of their digital life. I’m not that big into Achievements or Trophies anyway, so I could care less. If they do implement something like this, though, there should definitely be something for having gone through 10 RRoD’s like I have. How about 20k Gamerscore points for that one?
So the Xbox 360 avatars came and went. People were more or less blaise about it. When the word of charging for clothes came out, people blew off the concept altogether. The old adage does hold true however; give people free shit and they will pay attention. Rare will be handing out clothes as an achievement prize.
“In time… games will be able to give away clothes and accessories just like Achievements,” said art head Lee Musgrave. “We are currently working with multiple partners who have expressed interest in using Avatars,” added producer Stacey Law.
A good idea involving avatars? The end is nigh. In the above picture, I’m the Morpheus looking guy. I have to make him taller.
With the upcoming Xbox 360 expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar is dishing out an extra 250 Achievement points for you to whore yourself to get.
- Get Good Wood – 50 – In the Bike Races, whack off 69 bikers with a bat.
- Easy Rider – 100 – Finish The Story
- Full Chat – 70 – Your backup are riding at their best!
- The Lost Boy – 25 – All hail the leader of The Lost!
- One Percenter – 5 – Billy is back on his bike.
Aside from the first one being hilarious, these seem like a good way to entice people to play through the entire DLC storyline. Still no word on how long that story will take, but I’d imagine a solid amount of play time for your $20.
In preparation for the announced title update for Gears of War 2, seven brand new achievements have been detailed on xbox.com. Don’t fire up Gears of War 2 yet, you achievement whores, the new achievements won’t be attainable until the title update is released.
As for the achievements themselves, three require the Flashback Map Pack, another three require the Combustible Map Pack and the last one requires both. If you don’t already own the Flashback Map Pack because you are cheap and purchased the game used, you can always download it for 400 Microsoft Points.
Gears of War 2 will now have 1175 possible gamerscore points, leaving room for more DLC in the future.
- Skeletons in your Closet (20G) – Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Flashback Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty)
- More Mystery, Less History (15G) – Win a multiplayer match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman)
- Bound by a Shared Past (15G) – Win a Wingman match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps
- Trial by, and on, Fire (20G) – Survive first 10 Horde waves on Combustible Map Pack maps as a team
- The Roof! The Roof! The Roof… (15G) – Win a multiplayer match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman)
- Forged in the Fire (15G) – Win a Wingman match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps
- Annex: Now With Execution Rules (75G) – Win an Annex match on each Flashback and Combustible Map Pack map (public matches only)
All PC games that have had achievements up to this point have also had a 360 counterpart with achievements. Well not any more. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II will be the first game to accomplish this feat.
It has always been up to the developers on the PC side of things to choose whether or not to have achievements associated with their games. In the past most developers didn’t choose to use this service because it made gamers have to pay for a live account when most PC based online games didn’t force you to pay anything at all. Now the service is free.
No matter which way you look at it, this is a positive for PC gaming. Achievements rock.
[Via Xbox360achievements.org]
Fable 2 will be giving gamers a reason to play again soon enough, especially if you are solely interested in gamerscore points. Achievements for the Knothole Island DLC have recently been placed on Xbox.com. There will be 3 achievements totalling 100 gamerscore points leaving room of course for more DLC in the future. So are you ready to visit Knothole Island on December 22nd, or watch another player do so?
- The Collector - 25 GS
Acquire all the mystery items in The Box of Secrets shop, or see another Hero do so.
- The Meteorologist – 50 GS
Bring all of Knothole Island’s weather problems under control, or help another Hero to do so.
- The Bibliophile - 25 GS
Find all the books detailing the history of Knothole Island, or help another Hero to do so.
Are you tired of seeing old demos and games you played for 7 seconds show up in your Achievement list? With the NXE, you can go through and delete them. Finally!
All you have to do is hit the Xbox 360 Guide button, move left to the Games tab and select Achievements. Once there, scroll down to anything with a zero Gamerscore and hit X to the delete the game from the list. It’s that simple.
I went through and got rid of a bunch of older Arcade demos and a few retail games that I tried out for about 2 minutes. Now I don’t have to see them as part of my Achievement lists anymore. Go do the same and thank me later.
Are you picking up the AC/DC Live expansion for Rock Band in a few weeks at Walmart? If you’re an achievement whore, you might want to try and make that happen. The expansion will net you an additional 250 gamerscore points over 12 Achievements on the Xbox 360. No official word on PS3 Trophies, but I have a feeling things will be the same.
Most of the achievements are song based, meaning you need to get 5 stars on certain tracks of AC/DC Live to earn your keep. Check out the whole list and count down the days until you can scream like Brian Johnson or shred the axe like Angus Young.
We all know about the massive Halo 3 title update and the new achievements. Now, there seems to be 750 pts, not 500. If you go to Xbox.com, and look up your Halo 3 gamerscore or a friend’s if you don’t have it, you will see many of the new achievements have to do with Mythic Maps. We don’t know what that is yet. Furthermore, on these maps which it appears are 6 of them, there is a skull on each. Skulls have only appeared during campaign gameplay, not multiplayer. Hmm. Is there an expansion to the campaign or maybe some levels added in between. There are some multiplayer specific achievements such as infecting people and getting double kill. It appears they will be hidden on multi maps? Who knows. The wait is on. i wonder what the new skulls will do when enabled.
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