Can you really earn 10,000 Gamerscore in 24 hours? One man steps up to the challenge.

They say you can’t be too rich or too thin. We say you can’t have too many Achievements. The very idea of hitting 10,000 Gamerscore is tantalizing to new 360 gamers — not to mention anyone who doesn’t have infinite time to win 50 consecutive online matches or rack up 4 billion kills. With that in mind, OXM set forth a challenge: earn 10,000 Achievement points after just 24 hours of gaming. Surely there’s enough lowhanging fruit in the Xbox library that a truly determined player with a lot of games and few morals could increase their rating by five figures in a day’s time…right? Can it be done? With a can-do attitude, a pile of “easy” games, permission not to do it in 24 hours straight, and a fresh Gamertag — “OXM Achiever” — created just for this experiment, I’m going to find out.

Hours 1-3
Fight Night Round 3
Points Earned: 1,000

Deciding to kick things off with an explosion of pure awesome, I drop in Fight Night Round 3 for some quick points. In trying to keep the fights less than 30 seconds long, I abuse the “Flash KO” technique (two half-rotations on the analog stick that immediately daze my opponent, prepping him for knockout!), which lets me squash 40 fights in just three hours. It takes an hour to get in the swing of things, but the next two hours offer a blissful, undefeated rise to the top. If you manage to lose an Achievement fight (indicated by a bigname sponsor), you’ll have to restart without saving.

Hours 4-6
Wall•E, Viva Pinata: Party Animals
Points Earned: 770

In two hours, I’ve completed Wall•E, and as I peruse the un-earned Achievements, I realize that I didn’t see any collectible sketchbooks anywhere. Content with the ease of earning 500-plus points in two hours of incredibly simple platforming and puzzle-solving, I decide to move on. But after just one hour of partying with the Party Animals and 260 points, I quit. Not because of the subtle sexism in the “don’t lose to boys/girls” Achievement, but because my dignity has taken such a severe beating after 60 minutes of pitting cardboard animals against each other that I need to switch it up. With no one to play online, I’m also tired of rocking the repetitious mini-games solo. The same five or six mini-games seem to be on “repeat,” since nothing else seems to come up between the too-easy races, the most recent of which I won using butterfly wings to zip into first. Hey, I had to! My lady-horse wasn’t losin’ to any dudes.

Hours 7-9
Avatar: The Last Airbender - the Burning Earth, TMNT
Points Earned: 2,000

My dignity is already in shambles; this seems like a good time to tackle Avatar. I whip through the 90 seconds needed to fully unlock the B-button–mashing assortment of combo-building Achievements without worrying about my ego. Then it’s quickly on to the speedy Ninja Turtles game. Thanks to fast, fluid platforming, it’s a breeze to finish each of the 16 extremely short, challenge-free, and actually kind of fun missions; the Achievements pile on as long as you keep playing. And there’s a reason to yell “Cowabunga!” — OXM Achiever is closing in on the 4K mark for Gamerscore and the hours haven’t even hit double digits.

Hours 10-11
Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action
Points Earned: 720

After a false start with NBA 2K6 — disc-read errors! — I decide to go social and whip out the movie trivia with a bud. Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on how much of a film buff you are, but today I’m a veritable IMDB. Scoring huge with consecutive correct questions and finishing with mega-points, I wrap up the game with over 700 Gamerscore, an emotionally crushed opponent, and a vastly expanded knowledge of Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Hour 12
Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
Points Earned: 150

By the time we’ve finished the first four levels for the second time, scrounging for collectibles and upgrade points, my trivia comrade can’t take it anymore. We drop out as soon as we apply our hard-earned upgrades, grumbling about not finding that one last collectible goodie for its respective unlock. There’s definitely loot for those willing to grind to the end, but bringing a friend to ease the tedium of punch-punch-punching alone is highly recommended. An easily entertained 5-year-old would serve you best.

Hours 13-14
NBA Street: Homecourt
Points Earned: 590

Blasting through the career — leveling your baller and pulling off sick stunts — is the swiftest way to street stardom, and after just two hours of ridiculous dunks and b-ball breakdancing, your career character will have hit level 15 and snagged most, if not all, of the single-player Achievements. Multiplayer is also a great place for points, but with not a soul online, you’ll need a pal to get the game, too.

Hours 15-17
Aegis Wing, College Hoops 2K6, Fuzion Frenzy 2
Points Earned: 1,590

With Aegis Wing a free download, I hit it up online with a couple of buddies, both of whom crash and burn as horribly as I do. None of us can kill anything without running into mines or getting bombarded by bosses’ lasers, so we throw away our hopes of finishing the Insane difficulty (and don’t bother restarting on normal) with fewer worthwhile Achievements in tow than intended. I reluctantly move on to the gloriously easy College Hoops 2K6, crippling the CPU and boosting myself with the stat sliders to clean up 1K in one game. Cheap, but hey, we’re not here to be fair, kids. As such, I go hard at the frequently recommended Fuzion Frenzy 2, which boasts one too-serious 10-year-old in its online players list, so I stick to single-player mode. Finishing matches with each character proves for a seriously mundane hour, but it gets the job done.

Hour 18
Open Season, Eragon, Jumper: Griffin's Story
Points Earned: 855

Oh crap — where did the time go? I’m barely over halfway to 10,000 Gamerscore by the 18-hour mark, so I figure it’s time to bust out the big guns: godawful movie licenses. Open Season has such in-depth gameplay as walking that I bomb through the first few levels without doing anything but going straight. But soon there are hidden collectibles that, even with a guide, are too time-consuming to hunt. Having to get 100% completion in a level to get its Achievement is lame to the point that I put the game back in the “to play” queue. I may be desperate to hit my goal, but I’m not that desperate.

Eragon lasts about as long as Season, but only because the nonretroactive Achievements are going to cost me more than a few hours I don’t have; so after tying a bow on the first two levels (twice: once on medium, once on hard), I go for the real money-maker: Jumper. I tolerate the unnerving voice-overs in exchange for the good stuff, which is paying off in spades... right up ’til the point that the disc refuses to load without freezing. No! This was my ace in the hole. Now what?

Hours 19-24
Peter Jackson's King Kong
Points Earned: 1,000

Crushed by failed dreams of earning 900-plus points in Jumper, I mope my way to Skull Island. Ripping off dino-jaws and shooting your way through the jungle is all in a quarter-day’s work, and since all that’s required to unlock the full thousand is “finish the game,” Kong is mandatory playing. Fortunately, it’s also fun, and the only thing that can improve primate-vs.-T-Rex fist fighting is mad Gamerscore.

The Finish Line

Twenty-four hours and 8,675 Gamerscore later, OXM Achiever has failed — I’m one boxed game and two XBLA games shy of the goal. Maybe if my copy of NBA 2K6 worked, or if I’d been able to grab a copy of Madden 06 in time, or if Jumper worked properly, or if I’d gone with Cars or CSI: Hard Evidence…maybe, maybe, maybe. Ultimately, OXM Achiever was defeated by faulty discs and poor patience for kiddie games. I couldn’t do it — but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done…

The XBLA Way

An Xbox Live Arcade game might have only 200 points to its name, but a few are worth a download for score grubbers. Check out these three Gamerscore goldmines for a quick hit of the good stuff.

Carcassonne

German board-gaming about French city-building sounds lame, but it totally rocks. After you kill off the offline Achievements, grab some buddies and play a few leisurely matches online. You’ll be at 200 points by lunch, and you’ll enjoy yourself in the process.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One

Powering through this downloadable adventure takes up four hours of your time. It’s not really that hard to get all 200 points, although dying just once immediately stops you from getting an Achievement. Everything else should unlock by default by the finale.

Small Arms

The downloadable content for this 2D platform/fighting game will give you easy access to even more points, but exchanging punches and sword swipes with a couple of friends will provide plentiful points all on its own. As a bonus, laying the smackdown on secret-agent swine (and other, more deformed animal combatants) in the arcade and multiplayer modes is some entertaining unlockin’.

Off The Clock

After you’ve given the 10K experiment a chance, try to get the easy points out of these games. They’ll take a bit longer than you’re used to after your 24 hours of power, but there’s some quality content that you can actually enjoy while you Achieve!

Gun

Gaining all 1,000 points requires multiple playthroughs at different skill levels, but this five-hour rootin’-tootin’ cowboy adventure game is as awesome as a fresh bottle o’ sarsaparilla. Various difficulty and tedious exploration Achievements are the only things that might stop you from clicking your heels and shouting “Yee-haw!”

Mass Effect

BioWare’s epic space opera was a frontrunner for our 2007 Game of the Year for a reason: it’s got a lot of Achievements to unlock! Well, that and the high quality, which you’ll appreciate as you play through the game four or five times to get the full 1,000 points. There are tons of objectives to tackle.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Viking’s huge Fable-like world is ripe for the Gamerscore picking, and aside from some yawneriffic skull-collecting, you’ll pillage your way to 800-odd points over the course of 25 demon-murdering hours. Keep an eye out for friends who need rescuing, and for places to upgrade your surly character.