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Posted on: Feb 01, 2008
The Scoreboard #5
WORDS BY: Casey Lynch
Judging by the games that will be hitting stores in the upcoming weeks and months (Devil May Cry 4, you), I think you’ll agree that 2008 is already starting off with a bang. In the meantime, this installment of the Scoreboard is tearing through Paradise City with a report on the achievements from Burnout Paradise. I’ve also got a bunch of doozies from yesteryear —The Orange Box, The Darkness, Crackdown, and Dead Rising — that you may have put down or missed, and they’ll give you something to tide yourself over until the days of spring bring more new achievement blood.
We also have a supa-kewl link to a site where you can make your own achievements, as well as another reader review — this time Scoreboard enthusiast ScreechSkater22 reviews Skate for us. So buckle up and get ready to smash your way through a pileup of reviews covering the only thing that really matters in video games at all: achievements, sucka!
Burnout Paradise
I was almost moved to forgive Criterion for its insufferable non-save system in its sequelworthy (hint, hint) shooter Black after playing its awesomesauce racer Burnout Paradise. Almost. And while the new Burnout isn’t perfect — the absence of a restart-race function and route-marker mechanic, especially on some of the cross-map races or Marked Man events, is maddening — the experience overall whole is amazing, especially considering the way Criterion laid out many of the achievements.
Best achievement – Daredevil (25 pts.) Landed a 2 barrel roll jump. Pulling off a double barrel-roll jump ranks amongst the high points of Burnout’s rich achievement list, especially if you do it using the trick jump over the Lone Peaks Quarry off S. Mountain Drive. You can actually do this as a part of completing the online challenge Rock & Rolled, which will show you exactly where the quarry is if you queue up the challenge. (It’s located in the White Mountain territory, which is in the southwest portion of the world map).
Worst Achievement – Party Animal (25 pts.) Complete 250 online challenges. While some of the online challenges are really fun (like pulling off a barrel roll through the broken fuselage in the airhanger area), this requires an intense amount of potentially problematic work. The first problem with this is it took me about four hours just to complete the Party Crasher achievement for 15 points by completing a mere 25 online challenges. The second and more glaring problem is that, as you work your way through the list of challenges, you’ll begin coming across a bunch that require you to play with three, four, and five other players online. Similar to (but not as bad as) my beef with the Rock Band achievements, I think it’s a sticky proposition to make completing any achievements contingent upon lining up four or five other players to do so, especially one that requires so much work for such a small amount of gamerscore. This isn’t WoW, people! Pffft!
Easiest Achievement – Lookin' Good (5 pts.) Repair your first wrecked car. This is tooooo easy, though it’s only worth five points. After leaving the junkyard for the first time, head southeast over to the northmost Palm Bay Heights auto repair shop, drive though it and nab a quick and dirty five without even thinking.
Hardest Achievement – Criterion Elite (20 pts.) Get your Elite License, win every event, find all discoverables and beat every Road Rule. This requires a serious investment of time but comes with a few hidden perks. As you accomplish each of the feats listed here, you’ll actually unlock task-specific achievements along the way (acquiring your Elite license yields 70 points and you’ll nab a total of 40 points while beating each of the Showtime and Time Road rules segments). This would’ve been way harder if they’d tied all the smashes and billboards to it, but thankfully, Criterion had mercy. (I originally had chosen Boosting Around the World as the toughest achievement, which seemed all but impossible…that is, until I realized you can unlock this fairly easily in the Wildcat Stadium by boosting to a 20x multiplier with a perfect drift. Try it, you’ll see!)
Time Investment vs. payoff – 4 (out of 10) Put it this way. I’ve racked up over 1000 miles driven and over 20 hours of gameplay, and I’m still at only 470 points unlocked. So while it’s a fun ride along the way, Burnout Paradise isn’t a fast way to buff up your gamerscore.
Overall – 6 (out of 10) As you play through Burnout Paradise, I predict you’ll realize one thing pretty early on — it’s hella fun to accomplish everything the game lays out for you, and you’ll start unlocking achievements pretty quickly. And while some of the tougher challenges require a significant investment (unlocking the Burnout driver’s license for instance, which is worth 60 points, requires you win 40 events, and that’s after meeting all the criteria for unlocking your D, C, B and A licenses), it’s really fun doing so. Plus, once you unlock the Elite license, you get a paint finish you can apply to any car: solid gold! Muahahaha! If you love this game as much as I do, you’ll eventually unlock all the points. I know I plan to.
Mon, 04/14/2008 - 21:51
Posted by Axe Argonian
Itchy,you had to CLOSE the door on the rochet for the achievement to unlock. If you don't close the door,you won't get the achievement.
Thu, 03/06/2008 - 07:46
Posted by ItchyTasty
I tried to get the gnome achievement in The Orange Box but it didn't unlock. I assumed that you had to carry the gnome until the end of the game when you first come across the rocket. I threw him in the hatch and continued playing the game. When the rocket was launched later on I didn't get the achievement. Was that not what I was supposed to do? I don't have a save from before I left the gnome behind, does that mean I have to do it over again?
Tue, 02/12/2008 - 20:33
Posted by momk
One of my greatest achievements: giving birth to screechskater22! Great article.
Tue, 02/05/2008 - 23:43
Posted by ScreechSkater
Yeah I think that guy down there totally summed up achievements, in his own weird little dialect.
Amen, brotha.
XBL GT - ScreechSkater22
Tue, 02/05/2008 - 00:28
Posted by Silent_Samurai
The Achievements in Dead Rising would have been MUCH better had 1) Capcom divied up the points better. Genocider should have been a 50 pointer at least. Although I did have fun doing it. I didn't get bored like forums at achieve360points said I would. 2) Capcom tightened up a lot of the quirks with the AI, aiming and other aspects of the game that while fun, made it extremely maddening. Cat herding couldn't have been a more apt description of rescuing survivors. 5 and 7 Day Survivor however are completely absurd. I had already said it on here before, but having to play 10 and 14 hours straight to get these achievements is stupid, plain stupid. Very few people have that kind of time.
To further add insult to injury, the game has enough bugs, as has already been said that will send all your hard work down the toilet. I was going after Saint and Transmissionary ... and Kindell decided he didn't want to show up. Fantastic. I'd had enough and decided 40 points wasn't worth it anymore.
Had this game been tightened up just a little bit more, it would have been a fantastic game.
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 01:11
Posted by Aeshir
Ah-frickin'-men.
Sun, 02/03/2008 - 02:46
Posted by cart00nstrip
Considering thewanger wrote that statement to GET that type of remark, he'll be back. He's probably lurking right about now... Attacking his grammar was pretty low, tho'- a LOT of us do a LOT of typing these days in our increasingly keyboard controlled world, the LEAST we can do is take a few short cuts when we're just being casual...
But seriously, achievements HAVE changed the way I game - I rarely play any game that won't net me G. I have almost NO interest what-so-EVER to buy a Wii or PS3, cause those games will just keep me from time I can use to earn G. Not that I don't mind taking a little break now and again to play some Zelda or Psychonauts. I'm not saying that other games aren't FUN - but I'm having a LOT of fun collecting achievements.
To suggest that achievements have changed the core focus of gaming is simply LUDICROUS, considering that games have ALWAYS about competition and skill, and the best way to display said skill is thru high scores. Just because many of today's games have shifted their focus to narrative and interactive storytelling, don't even THINK they haven't forgotten the underlying reason the game exists in the first place. Especially considering these games seldom offer much in the replay department - how many games have YOU gone back to play thru again? Just for the STORY... Like books and movies, SURE there are many gems out there that DEMAND another sit thru (or three, or a hundred), but those are few and far between. But even if there were TONS of great games that demanded to replayed again and again, there are so many OTHER great games that keep coming out, finding the time to go back and play those gems gets to be pretty difficult...
And along come achievements. The recipe was simple - just add "high score". Gamers LOVE "high score"! Back in the arcades, we kids thought "high score" was the reason initials even EXISTED! Then came stories, and cut-scenes, and narratives and what-not - the talk changed from "did you get on the board? How many down from 'high score'?" to "have you beaten the fifth boss yet? Wasn't that FMV amazing to look at?" "High score" somehow got lost in the dialog.
No longer! We have "high score" once again! Only now it's all inclusive - it's like we're the guys on the baseball cards, y'know, the ones with all those stats on the back? Now we have stats that are all over the internet, people are keeping track of our scores from all over the world. That's pretty fucking cool, people...
Long live the mighty G! May we be able to continue to increase our G, and may developers continue to give us more creative achievements to give us MORE reason to raise our G!
gt: cart00nstrip
Sat, 02/02/2008 - 17:14
Posted by ScreechSkater
:-)
I meant it in a friendly way no hard feelings broskee.
I don't think he's coming back though...
Oh well.
XBL GT - ScreechSkater22
Sat, 02/02/2008 - 08:37
Posted by MitchyD
Unless of course he is an impersonator. DUN DUN DUN.
-- http://www.nukoda.com --
Gamertag: MitchyD88
Sat, 02/02/2008 - 08:36
Posted by MitchyD
Wow. A classy response from someone who just got his stuff published. ;)
-- http://www.nukoda.com --
Gamertag: MitchyD88
Sat, 02/02/2008 - 07:28
Posted by ScreechSkater
XBL GT - ScreechSkater22
Dude are you retarded? First of all, it's you're, not your, learn grammar.
Secondly, games have a shit ton to do with replay value, because in a lot of cases it takes quite a bit to unlock some of them.
If you want to bitch about achievements, why would you make a post on a feature that is here solely to show you the ups and downs of them?
Sat, 02/02/2008 - 05:17
Posted by thewanger
I think,all things considered, that achievements are just a distraction from a game. They never should be taken into account,like they are too many times, in the re-playability of a game. I also think they keep gamers from realizing the true qualities of the game they are playing. Next time your evaluating any game just leave out the achievements and see what happens. Try that with multi-player too. Ouch!!!