The Scoreboard #4

It’s hard to believe we’re halfway through January already, but the fact that we’ve begun playing through and working on reviews for titles like Devil May Cry 4, The Club, Army of Two and Condemned 2: Bloodshot is proof enough. And while we’d love to give a reveal of some of the best and worst achievements in these upcoming releases, we’re going to wait until those games come out and cover five new-is-er releases from over the holiday break for this installment of the Scoreboard.

As always, The Scoreboard brings you the most exclusive, in-depth, hard-hitting videogame coverage in the industry. Yeah…that’s not true, but we cover Xbox 360 games like no other magazine or website dares to: we only review the achievements, FTW!

So buckle up, heroes — we’re looking at the achievements in some of the fiercest games to come out recently: MX vs. ATV Untamed, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom and Tempest, plus a grudge match between NCAA March Madness 08 and College Hoops 2K8 (for everyone out there that’s ready for the NFL season to end already, oh my poor Cardinals and Bears). Lastly, we have yet another Reader Scoreboard, this time a review of BioShock! Don’t forget to write us with your reader-submitted Scoreboard entries, you’ll score a free OXM shirt! And now, buckle up and get ready to ACHIEVE!

MX vs. ATV Untamed

I love motocross and off-road racing. Give me a burly 500cc beastie to manhandle and the virtual nads to pull off sweet disco can-can’s and rigor mortis’, and I don’t need much else in life. Not only does Untamed give me my first chance to tear across the moto-circuit Rainbow Studios-style on 360, but it’s also the first time I’ve been able to unlock achievements along the way. Big-ups!!!!!!!!!

Best achievement – Speedworld (200 pts.) Achieve one of the top 5 Best Lap Record for each race course. Here’s a perfect example of a great achievement that rewards a significant investment in playing the meat of the game itself. To accomplish this, you have to nab a lap record on every track, which means you have to unlock every track. So essentially, this rewards you for playing well and playing a lot. Honestly, it’s not even a lot of gameplay, it’s just playing everything that’s there. This is also difficulty-agnostic, so if you want to fudge your way through on the Beginner level, have at it. Our recommendation is to try at least on Normal, which ensures you’ll actually have a little competition. The fact that the payoff is a whopping 200 points is pretty sweet as well.

Worst Achievement – THREE-WAY TIE between Clean Freak (Clean your vehicle of mud and dirt by riding through water), Kudos (Watch the credits till the end), and all of the 10 Sprocket Collection achievements. The first two are a useless waste of time and yield zero points. The latter is yet another example of boring achievements tied to trite game design. You’re an effin’ MX racer, for crying out loud! What business do you have roaming around janky-looking, free-roaming levels looking for floating sprockets to collect? Sorry guys, but this isn’t a Mario game. Ricky Carmichael wouldn’t collect sprockets, so neither will we. Okay fine, I collected about five tracks worth, but I came to our senses and I’m reclaiming my dignity. No more sprocket-collecting!

Easiest Achievement – Explorer (5 pts.) Enter an online Free Ride location with at least one other player. Yeah, it’s like that. Grab a buddy, enter an online Free Ride event, achievement unlocked.

Hardest Achievement – Wreck-less (25 pts.) Complete one Freestyle event without wrecking. Just because I love MX vs. ATV Untamed doesn’t mean I’m the best at it, especially when attempting to control ourselves biff-lessly while Freestylin’. In fact, I was surprised how often I bailed when I noticed this achievement and started to try for it. It takes a steady, cool-headed rider who knows how to pre-load and land big stunts while remaining upright for the whole event. Winning the X-Cross Pentathlon trophy was definitely challenging, but only from a time-investment perspective. This, for whatever reason, took way more concentration, which is why we gave it the Hardest Achievement award. Now we realize that there are those of you out there that totally pwn at Freestyle and never bail, but nobody cares, nobody likes you, and you’re a big jerk.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 8 (out of 10) The majority of these achievements will be unlocked with about 10-15 hours of gameplay and without much extra thought or effort, making it a great gameplay to gamerscore ratio. If you like this game and you play, you’ll unlock a lot of this stuff.

Overall – 8 (out of 10) Most of these are totally within reason (except maybe the Collection achievements, but those aren’t as bad as some other collection tasks we’ve seen) and will be unlocked simply by playing the game well and thoroughly. If you’re having a hard time, tone down the difficulty — it won’t affect your unlocking ability and you’ll get the hang of things until you feel comfortable ramping back up.

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