The Scoreboard #7

Greetings, true achievers! Spring is finally here (with tons of games, no less!), and unless you’re Canadian, the snow has completely disappeared. Unfortunately, so has Scoreboard founder Casey Lynch. Yup, OXM Online’s chief score-whore has gone over to “the other side” – he’s now VP of Communications for the Radar Group, an IP shop working on games like Prey 2. Not too shabby, eh? We’ll miss him always, though we’re a little afraid of the way he keeps insisting that we refer to him as Madame Vice President…

Fortunately, I’ve busted in to the OXM Online HQ and taken over, just so readers can get their Achievement-review fix. It’s a shooter-heavy week this time around with Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, The Club, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Frontlines: Fuel of War, and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on the chopping block. For good ‘chievement-whoring measure, we will also be taking a look at the embarrassingly easy-to-1000 (erm... even if I only got 900) Jumper: Griffin’s Story. Who needs to analyze “visual fidelity,”“character development,” and “robust gameplay features” when there’s friggin’ points to be unlocked?

So yeah, The Scoreboard is back, and it’s here to bring you the most complete, detailed breakdown of the latest Achievements. You’ll scream, you’ll cry, and hopefully you’ll ROFL, but you’re guaranteed to come out the other side with thousands of Gamerscore points...but not without a little effort.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 isn’t much better than the first game, both in general quality and achievable Achievements. It’s a good thing this game is so much fun because the amount of time required to unlock a respectable amount of points is unbelievable – the kind of unbelievable that would lead folks to quit their job. Whatever, this game is rad, and the Achievements cry to be busted out of their oppressive Achievement prison, and only you have the key: tons o’ bullets. The lock is made of terrorists.

Best Achievement – True Identity (20 pts.) Use the Xbox Live Vision to create a character with your appearance.  Is there anything more sweet than slapping your photographed face on an elite Rainbow operative, then getting Gamerscore for it? The answer is “no”. The only problem with this Achievement is that it requires a $30 peripheral, but if you’re like me, you bought a camera for the last True Identity unlock.

Worst Achievement – Elite (50 pts.) Achieve the rank of Elite Getting to the highest rank requires the maddest of mad skillz and a ton of free time. The reward is only 50 points as well, so you need to weigh your options: do you want the 50 Gamerscore, or do you want to sleep, eat, and leave your mom’s basement? It's a lengthy journey that's ultimately not worth it unless you’re playing it for fun anyway.  You could just play King Kong or Avatar TLA: The Burning Earth to multiply your score-to-time ratio exponentially.

Most Broken Out of the Box Achievement – Private First Class (10 pts.) Achieve the rank of Private First Class. Ubisoft tried giving vets of Vegas a break, allowing them to carry over their save file from 2006’s Vegas title. In the process, anyone who’s using said save file loses out on an Achievement, potentially forever. For reasons unknown, the Private First Class Achievement doesn’t unlock when using this perk and since you’ve automatically surpassed the required rank, don’t plan on unlocking it without clearing all things Rainbow from your hard drive. Unless there’s a patch, this one could be out of grasp for a lot of gamers. Laaaaaaame.

Easiest Achievement – Novice Hunter (5 pts.) Complete your first Terrorist Hunt mission at any difficulty. Realistically, you could join a T-Hunt game and go for dinner. Your buds are bound to finish it eventually. Even more realistically, you could just play it on the default difficulty for five minutes and clear a map of 15 terrorists without trouble. Your “laziness level” will determine how much effort you feel like exerting for the pathetic five points.

Hardest Achievement – Freedom Shall Prevail (75 pts.) Complete the Story Mode on Realistic difficulty. Rainbow is a tactical game, through and through, and if you’re playing like an idiot, you’re dead. And that’s just on the default difficulty. Choosing Realistic difficulty will reveal things to you about yourself you otherwise never would have known. Your lack of patience, violent controller-throwing tendencies, and television-kicking superpowers will become immediately apparent, and your hatred for trial-and-error will exponentially inflate. Save yourself from the evils of agony – they want nothing more than to make your life miserable. Playing Realistic in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (even on co-op!) is only detrimental to your health.

Time investment vs. Payoff – 5 (out of 10) Most of the Achievements will be earned online, with a lot of them focusing on milestone kills. It helps that Rainbow is one of the best multiplayer games around, and since you’ll likely be devoting 20, 30+ hours to it, feel free to rap the short-and-sweet single player campaign for a ton of points. Play it on co-op to save yourself some time and get some more Gamerscore as well.

Overall – 7 (out of 10) Vegas 2 gets more points for having fun and worthwhile Achievements than it does for having easy-to-earn ones. There are a bunch that most folks simply will not get because it takes too much time to build up to 500 kills, but there are some great Achievements across the board. Still, if you’re not working for it, you not getting paid.

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