The Scoreboard #11

Grand Theft Auto IV

Warning: This review contains minor spoilers to Grand Theft Auto IV’s main story. If you’d like to avoid any kind of story details, you’d best come back once you’re comfortable with the storyline.

Well, it had to come to this, didn’t it? Of Grand Theft Auto IV’s 50 Achievements, we’re going to cull the very best, worst, and confusingly non-existent. Feel free to leave your feedback and personal thoughts about this titan’s Achievement list! We know you’ve been lappin’ it up like a thirsty dog, and so have we. Which Achievements made the cut? Who made the chopping block?

Best Achievement: Warm Coffee (5 pts.) You were invited into your girlfriend's house. Rockstar’s making no bones about the disastrous Hot Coffee scandal that plagued the gaming (and public!) world with this hilarious inside joke. It’s an achievement in itself, especially if you can score on the second date. You’d better know your lady’s interests in advance if you want to go upstairs and do the nasty, which is indeed warm, if San Andreas was “hot”.

Worst Achievement: No More Strangers (5 pts.) Meet all random characters. Unless you’re in the right area, these randoms aren’t going to show up on your radar. If you’ve got a guide handy you may be able to chat it up with the local crack dealers, sketchy addicts and wannabe thugs. There’s little benefit to locating them, save for the humorous conversation Niko will have with the crazy cats, so don’t waste your time unless you’re really bored. The amount of points given to you is about as pleasing as a cap in the ass, too.

Easiest Achievement: Off The Boat (5 pts.) You have completed the first mission. Think of Off The Boat as Rockstar handing you five GS for buying their game. It’s nothing short of “Press Start to Unlock” since the requirement is to, you know, hit Start. You also watch a two-minute cutscene, but you can skip that with a button press.

Hardest Achievement: Key To The City (100 pts.) Achieve 100% in "Game progress" statistic. Have a spare couple hours? You’ll only need a few dozen if you want to unlock every item, complete each mission, side-quest and sub-side-quest in the wide open world of GTA IV, on top of killing every flying rat and unlocking Endangered Species. It might not be the most perfect game on the planet, but damned if it didn’t try by offering players potentially limitless hours of things to do. It’s no wonder Rockstar is handing out physical prizes to the first group of gamers to unlock the Key to The City Achievement – it’s a task that requires almost as much time as the game’s development cycle! If you want to enjoy Grand Theft Auto, don’t stress over that last bit of the percentage bar you need to top up. Also, if previous GTA games have lead us to believe anything, cheating will only shaft you, sticking you with an unbreakable 99.9%, so steer clear of that just in case tradition has kept up.

“Why Didn’t I Get an Achievement?” Achievement: Three words: “Three Leaf Clover.” WTF, Rockstar? Our AK-47s were AK-shredding-the-crap-out-of-cops by the truckload as we walked out the front door of a robbed bank! Was it possible to have a better time grenading patrol cars or escaping out of the subway and in to the sunset in a more intense manner? Yeah it is – by giving gamers an “Achievement Unlocked” pop-up as their four star Wanted level popped out.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 3 (out of ten) Despite the outrageous requirements to nail 1000/1000, GTA’s Achievements are handed out fairly well over the course of the game. The problem is that, even if you’re running critical path to get the best time, you still won’t come out with too many Achievements. Gamers are bound to walk out of the game’s finale with 200+ points.

Overall: 9 (out of ten) Not only are the Achievements in Grand Theft Auto IV fun, but they’re original. There’s so many entertaining ways to get Gamerscore – a 500ft wheelie, ten counters in four minutes, crazy car-splosion carnage... the list goes on – GTA could hold Gamerscore Whores’ attention for a number of months as they check off each richly engrossing activity after another. Well, we can’t justifiably call playing QUB3D for 20 minutes “richly engrossing”, but it sure was a good time banking those 15 points. People aren’t buying Grand Theft Auto for the Achievements, but if you were given full access to everything but the story, it would still be worth the retail price just to be able to dive in to the mini-games, stunt jumps and police chases to show off the 50 badges.

***

We hope you enjoyed our Gamerscore-enlargement program, which if you recall, cost you absolutely nothing. Nothing but your time, that is, which you could have spent bowling or playing darts in Grand Theft Auto, murdering a hobo with a cat in Penny Arcade Adventures, or putting your controller on the couch and going to take a nap while “playing” Quake Wars’ Easy difficulty. Did you get anything out of our guidance today? Let us know, or write up your own advice to Gamerscore-boosting hopefuls with your very own Scoreboard review, and you could see your name in the next Scoreboard! If you’re anxious to hear what’s happening next time, you can look for us on the Grid, where we’ll be talking about a bevy of licensed-games’ Achievements. What can you expect from Lego Indiana Jones, The Bourne Conspiracy, Kung Fu Panda, and more? A gang of tips and an in depth insight into each titles locked Achievements, that’s for sure.

PREV1234