With the new release of Project Gotham Racing 4 comes a slew of brand new achievements, 50 to be exact worth 1,000 points, for every red blooded achievement whore to drool over. But the one that really caught my attention was the one where you need to buy a gamer picture?!

29. Buy an Achievement – Buy the K1,000,000 gamer picture to earn this Achievement. – 20 points

Ok, Achievement points have come in all shapes and sizes, some with great honor, others with shameless promotion, but now an achievement for buying something?! This is ridiculous! You get an achievement for spending money on something worthless. It is a pretty shameless way for Microsoft to make more money off of their gamerpics by forcing someone who actually wants to get all of the gamerpoints for this game to buy something they never wanted in the first place.

::Edit:: the money isn’t real money, but in game kudos, I take the finger pointing away from MS and smile. But it still is an interesting achievement and would have been pretty interesting if MS charged real money for it.

Many arguments have been waged discussing whether achievement points add to Xbox 360 games or if they just force people to play different parts of the games they wouldn’t have normally. What can we expect next? Achievement for sending angry voice messages to your friends list, points for sending a picture of your genitals or better yet send Microsoft a bag of money get 100 points! What do you think and what crazy non-sensical achievements can you think of?

Check out all of the achievements here.

Achievements have been all the rage since the launch of the Xbox 360. But just how much have they done for gaming? Many people will argue that they add a level of depth to the games that give you the urge to keep playing when you normally would stop. I can’t argue with that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. What I’ll add, though, is that achievements can take the fun out of a game.

There are a lot of times when gamers will spend hours just trying to get some achievement points that really don’t mean anything. It’s driven people to play games they don’t want to play (ie. King Kong, College Hoops 2K6) just to boost their gamer score. A lot of times, you’re just not having as much fun. In the Tiger Woods series, there has always been achievements for competing in Daily Online Tournaments. Now, most people would normally skip this feature, which doesn’t provide a lot of depth. Many players are grinding their way through just to get those extra points.

I’m not saying achievements are bad. I think they’re a great addition to gaming. But the way some developers have positioned the achievements in their games brings out sides of gamers that we’d rather not see. Cheating and boosting just to get some points online, and playing through games and modes that otherwise you had no desire to touch just to increase your score. If developers can put more effort into setting up their achievements, I think the system would be much better than where it is today.

Puzzle Fighter HD Remix was a much anticipated release that has been talked about for months. The release of it on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 poses a dilemna for those that have multiple systems and can’t decide.

Both games look great in HD, you can really tell that the gems have been updated and look crystal clear. Also the effects on the different colors have been enhanced, the red gems when they burst have a fire sound, the blue ones sound like water and the yellow ones sound like lightning. Also both versions have different modes where you can play with the classic drop rates or the new adjusted drop rates, this is pretty coool so people can’t complain that it was changed and they don’t like the new drop rates.
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The Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights demo for the Xbox 360 lets you play around with the career mode and buy one of 3 cars, a Mazda RX7, a 1969 Chevy Camaro SS or a Saleen S7, I chose the Saleen and tricked it out. This game tries hard to not let you forget that it is affiliated with HIN, there are mentions of it everywhere! The demo lets you play around with the different performance upgrades, vinyls and visual parts (hoods, scoop, spoilers, etc.) which is pretty interesting but their system is not even close to Forza, sorry guys.

The demo let’s you play on 1 race track against 6 opponents and once I tricked out my car it was no contest. The cars handle horribly, almost as if your car were on an ice rink. There is little to no control in corners and their is some damage physics so when you hit a wall it is noticeable, but I still was doing 165 mph with NOS afterwards. I pretty much bounced off of every wall and still won the race by a lot. The car models are not bad, but the graphics overall leave much to be desired.

There is an interesting aspect of the demo where you get DNA achievements based on different feats you perfomredduring the race, they are like skill points pretty much and will play out more in the full game. you can supposedly use your friends DNA to be part of your pit crew, I don’t know about you but I don’t want another man’s DNA anywhere near me.

The only thing worse than the bad gameplay is the horrible voice acting. The model they hired to act in this game as your guide should be shot on site. She tries to be hip and cool and it sounds very forced. From playing the demo I can’t recommend this game with a good conscience to anyone unless there are nude HIN videos hidden in the final game. Shame on THQ for putting this game out into the world.

One of our editors brought you a full review of the new Madden 08 game for the Xbox 360 and for the most part it was very positive and he went as far as to call it “the best football game to ever hit next gen” but this editor has a bit of a different opinion. I see it as a solid game, but not worth the purchase as it has not evolved enough from it’s other iterations.

Proof that this Madden is still the same game is the fact that one of my buddies and I sat down for the first time without looking at one instruction manual and played a full game without losing a step. The only thing I had to ask about was what the speed burst was now, aside from that all of those extras in there (which there are a ton) are not that necessary. By these I mean the mismatch crap, the possesin catches, the icons for players and all of those other “upgrades” really don’t add value. It was funny because we played the 360 version and my buddy doesn’t even have a 360 and actually still plays Madden on the original Xbox, but he played just fine.
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In case you want to get real life achievements, here’s a nice cute little pair of Achievement Locked ladies underwear.

Finishing Expert in Guitar Hero II. Defeating General RAAM on Insane difficulty. Achieving the Rank of Elite in R6 Vegas. All these and any other achievements you’ve accomplished on your beloved 360 pale in comparison to unlocking this one. It will take a steady hand and unflinching concentration, but we have faith, it is in fact unlockable.

So if you’re into that role playing thing, grab one of these and try to unlock some achievements with your significant other. I’m sure Scuba will be wearing a pair to work in the next couple days…

I have been playing Super Contra on my Xbox 360 since it launched a few weeks ago on LIVE arcade and I am still missing two of the achievements. The two I am missing is getting to the fourth level and beating hte game using only 1 credit. The game is super tough and I continue to try and play through with little success, to make myself feel better I put on the older Contra game and beat that fairly easily. It also looks like my first place rank in Co-op has been knocked down a few notches to 20th overall, if anyone wants ot get a co-op game in and try to reclaim the top spot, just shoot me a message. This game is pretty close to beating my spirit!!!

With the new Madden 08 it looks like EA decided to make all of the Xbox 360 achievements in the game related to on field stats like yardage of runs, passes, returns, etc. They have done away with the achievements associated with playing online and also with any achievements attributed to a season mode. Typically there is an achievement for completing X number of games or winning the super bowl, but it seems this year they are also missing.

Has EA tossed down the gauntlet to the players and challenged us to earn our Gamerscore the old fashioned way? Did EA think the achievments of the previous years were too easy and decided to increase the difficulty on us gamers? You be the judge.

Ther are a total of 48 achievements each ranging in difficulty and points value, but all associated with very specific feats that need to be accomplished during gameplay. Unfortuantely it does not mention what difficulty it needs to be accomplished on, I can only hope that it needs to be done on default or higher, if not people will just gimp the AI and get easy points.

You can find the list of achievements here courtesy of Achieve360points.com:

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NinjaBee (kudos to your name), announced a new expansion pack, Red Kingdom, for Band of Bugs on Xbox LIVE Arcade. The new expansion pack comes with two new troop types – artillery and cavalry and more content for the level editor, leading to Ninja Bee’s own “Design a Level Contest.” the expansion also brings with it new areas to explore, characters, special powers, level caps and best of all achievements.

From the press release :

Red Kingdom pushes the editor further by adding in desert tile sets and items such as stone huts, rock formations and more cactus types than any Bug needs. To make sure these new levels get seen, NinjaBee is hosting a contest for level editors. Once gamers have designed their entry level, they only need to post a description and screen shots to the user forums at NinjaBee. Members of the forum will vote for their favorite levels and NinjaBee staffers will take the top 3 levels with the most votes, play through them and select the number one level. Winners will get 4,000 Microsoft Points and a special edition NinjaBee tee-shirt. All levels are due by August 16, 2007. Contest rules will be posted on NinjaBee.

It looks like recently I have picked up a few older titles in the hopes of finding a diamond in the rough. Too bad all I have found is coal.

Tetris Evolution for the Xbox 360 is a sad attempt to bring Tetris into the next gen age. It is Tetris plain and simple, the developers try to give it different backgrounds and skins, but you can’t stray far from Tetris.

The game throws in a few different modes that all end up feeling the same and a few achievements for getting certain scores in the different modes, but it just isn’t enough to really set this apart from Tetris on your original Gameboy. The online play over Xbox LIVE is basic as well and I got owned in less than 30 seconds playing the #1 ranked guy who was the only one that seemed to be playing.

The only interesting feature I found in the game is the ability to store a piece using the triggers, this piece can then be swapped later and works well when you are trying to get a Tetris (4 lines cleared) and break out your straight piece. Unless you are a hardcore Tetris fan there is really no reason to own this title, 1 day rental at best.