The Scoreboard #20

With everyone off to Japan this week for the Tokyo Game Show, we thought it would be a good idea to kick back, relax and chat about Achievements with the readers while waiting for all the good news – come on, Kingdom Hearts 3(60). Good thing you decided to join us, because there’s a stellar stack of Achievement reviews on The Scoreboard and if you’re looking to pump big numbers in to your Gamertag then read on! We’ve got outstanding advice and criticisms of NHL 09, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Pure and the XBLAwesomeness of Duke Nukem 3D. Uh, Achievement advice and criticism, that is!

NHL 09

Caution: This review only applies to Canadians. Nobody but hockey’s Motherland, OXM Editoriginal Gangster Paul Curthoys and Intern-o-Tron Ryan Loren enjoy the sport. So if you’re here to hate, take a walk – or a skate, since it’s cooler than hoofing it – while we enjoy the surprising accessibility of EA Sports’ latest NHL Achievements. Oh, get-able Achievements, hmm? Now we’ve got your attention. You’re welcome to stick (and puck) around if you like.

Best Achievement: “Shut the Door” (50 pts.) As the lead NHL® 09 Profile get a shutout in a ranked versus match locked as the goalie – This is the epitome of an “I Am So Beyond Awesome” Achievement. Nabbing this one takes legit skill – or terrible opponents – and busting out Kipper-style saves is a rewarding experience. It ain’t easy bein’ goaltender, but you’ll be hailed as the true Great One if you can shut out the online opposition just from playing between the pipes.

Worst Achievement: “Bully” (0 pts.) As the lead NHL® 09 Profile win a fight against another user – Pulverizing another player? AWESOME! Getting no Gamerscore from it? ZERO AWESOME. You’d think you’d get something for knocking the block off of another actual human being, but alas your Brashear-ian tactics will net you nothing. Hearing that glorious bloop after watching a padded punk crumble to the icy floor with his face buried his hands is a feeling that could have been so much more ego-boosting than the crushing disappointment that it truly is. EA gets a match penalty for Delay of Gamerscore.

Easiest Achievement: “Say Cheese” (50 pts.) As the lead NHL® 09 Profile take and upload a screenshot – You’re probably aware of these things on the Xbox 360 gamepad called “analog sticks.” Well, we’ve got a top-secret, exclusive revelation: clicking those things inward does stuff! Yeah – no joke! If you click away while in the Instant Replay section, though, you’ll snap a screen and unlock yourself a cool 50G. This is almost too good to be true, considering its worth.

Hardest Achievement: “Big Club” (25 pts.) As the lead NHL® 09 Profile be part of an online team with 15 players – Rounding up 15 guys and gals who want to shoot some stick-puck is a hassle. Convincing them to all be on the same online team could eat up a lot of your real-life time as you try to convince 14 folks to plunk down the money for a copy of the game – and a console/Live membership if they don’t already have it – before joining forces on your elite team, “Brilliant Dynamite Neon.” If you manage to corral 15 total gamers on to one team, um, can we come too? Or do 14 of you want to play with us?

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 6.5 (out of ten) – Though the Be A Pro career stuff will take you ages (you’ve got to get an A rating on each position to get all of those unlocks) the initial 200-300 points come at a Millennium Falcon-esque hyperspeed. Uploading videos and screenshots after playing and winning a few online matches – and fisticuffing your way to victory along the way – will see you scoring hundreds. Just be careful not to get sucked too deep in to the addictive awesomeness of this Achievement list, ‘cause you’ll be shooting, checking and penalty box-ing your way through the Be A Pro mode for more hours than any person rightfully should.

Overall: 8.5 (out of ten) – There’s fulfilling diversity to be had here, and that’s something we couldn’t have truthfully said in years past. Online, offline, against humans, versus the AI, playing forward/ defense/ goalie... There’s a ton of cool stuff to do outside of the throwaway easiness of uploading pics and vids, so enjoy NHL 09’s Achievements. You don’t often get titles that are fun to play and have finely balanced badges.

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway

Dang! Hell’s Highway is far from hellish in the Achievements department, so if you hate Nazis as much as any rootin’ tootin’ blue blooded American patriot should, well, you’re in for a treat. Granted, you don’t unlock the six-foot-high stack of Gamerscore for popping 17 caps in 17 German asses in 17 seconds on Seventeentember 17th at 17:00 hours, but you’ll get your fair share of points as you cruise down the oh-so-scenic Hell’s Highway. Oh, and we forgot: prepare to be disturbed and depressed if you plan on Achieving. Sorry.

Best Achievement: “Action Camera Sniper” (10 pts.) Unlocked when you get the headshot Action Camera – Hopefully, none of us will ever know what it’s like to kill another human being, but if you’ve ever wondered what it might feel like to actually pull the trigger after lining up the sights then this is your opportunity. The Action Cam is clearly meant to make you want to high five someone, which is completely out of place within the gritty realistic setting and authentic ambiance of BiA: HH. But what it really achieves is a surprising sense of remorse. The only sound you’ll hear is a bass-y static as the Action Cam tunnels in on the red-painted brain case of your victim; as their head lurches back and the disturbing explosion of blood sprays from the exit wound, you’ll be temporarily paralyzed as you realize that you did that to a man – the Achievement unlocks, and you wonder if you deserve it. Same goes for the “explosives” variant of this unlock. Seeing a guy’s shoulder bone sticking out of his shredded corpse as his arm flies in to the air is a little more shocking than we expected... that the feeling of disgust hits you every time is astounding; that we get points for experiencing something as emotionally-gut-punching as this is even more phenomenal. Grossest. Gamerscore. Ever.

Worst Achievement: “Remember September ’44” (50 pts.) While connected to Xbox LIVE, play the game on September 17th. – Far from the absolute worst on the list, “Remember September ‘44” earns our “Worst award” for its inherent idiocy. Considering that BiA:HH was released after the required September 17th date by almost an entire week, we’ve got to wait a whole year before we can get this Achievement. You won’t even be able to switch up the time zones to accommodate for lost time! You need to be connected to Live to unlock this too, so there’s no BSing the date since the online service automatically corrects it for your time zone. This is the only Achievement you’ll ever unlock for playing The Waiting Game.

Easiest Achievement: “Suppressive Fire” (10 pts.) Suppressed an enemy – You’re an Xbox 360 gamer, right? If you said “yes” then we’ll bet dollars to donuts that you’re familiar with your right trigger – the all encompassing “KILL FOOLS” button in any and all shooters on the console. If you’re able to hold that crescent-clicker down for a second or two as you blast machine gun fire in the general direction of German jerks then that’s a solid ten points in your bank. Suppressing an enemy consists of scaring the bajeezus out of them enough that their red “It’s all good” icon becomes an “Achtung!” grey – fire away.

Hardest Achievement: “Kilroy Gold” (25 pts.) Find 25 or more Kilroys –We’re as lazy as the next nerd so naturally we’re huge proponents of making other dudes do the killin’ for us. When your team is unleashing the lead on the opposition, feel free to explore the area to look for funny drawings of big-nosed chaps in order to unlock... uh, nothing. We guess it’s alright that it gets you Gamerscore, but ditching action in favor of lame exploration isn’t just bland – it’s also really tough, because, to Gearbox’s credit, the Kilroy symbols are really well stashed. Need help finding ‘em? Us too, so the next paragraph is hint-a-riffic.

Cheat-chievments: “All Recon Unlocks” (70 pts.) Be A Filthy Cheater – Okee doke, so this isn’t actually an Achievement, but we thought we’d clue you in on how you can bank 70 Gamerscore without so much as thinking about a warzone. If you want the free Gees then enter this code to immediately unlock all Recon points in the game, and their respective Achievements consequence-free: 0ZNDRBICRA. Now if only we could do the same with the Kilroy collectibles... Instead, we’re stuck dealing with a cheat that points out when you’re near one. We’ll take what we can get: 4V35JZHQD6.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of ten) – The ten to 12 hour campaign will award you 500-ish points upon completion, or upwards of 700 if you search for the hidden Kilroy symbols and go out of your way to take out tanks or blow up sandbag cover. The list of badges is a really solid one, but we’ve got major gripes about the no-payoff-online component (more on that in a second) and having to play the game for 100 days, as well as specifically on September 17th (in case you missed it, that’s before this game came out)!

Overall: 8.5 (out of ten) – Achievements and Aryans go hand in hand so if you’re looking to pad your score legitimately, it’s worth breaking the space time continuum and going back to 1944 to use marksmanship and explosions in order to unlock sweet (but unsettling) slow-mo action sequences for Gamerscore. Other objectives of note: hijacking a German’s machine gun and mowing him down with it; crushing fools with tanks; ordering teammates to wallop bad guys for you, and hand delivering a C4-FedEx to the hull of a Panzer. What’s stopping us from juicing the score higher is that there are seven (yes, 7 – sEH-vIN) zero-point Achievements – we hate these worthless SOBs as it is, but when they’re tied to legit badges it kills us to even bother trying to finish 20 multiplayer matches... just out of spite.

12NEXT