Alright, we want a straight answer: which one of you took away all the games? Seriously, we had a rockin’ summer of constantly kick-ass releases, and now there’s nothin’ for us to review on The Scoreboard. It’s not like we don’t have anything this week, though. We managed to scrape a few games from the depths of Xbox Live this week with Arcade to analyze; Braid is on the list along with Bionic Commando Rearmed, Fable II Pub Games, and the much overlooked Go! Go! Break Steady. Oh yeah, there may or may not be an appearance by Madden 09 as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that bad boy.

Braid 

If you’re going in to Braid for Achievements, you’ve got a problem. No, we’ve got a problem – as in you and us. It does have Achievements to be earned, but the 200 points are worthless in the face of Braid’s clever story and brilliant simplicity. That said, we aren’t going to complain about how they’re laid out – you’ve got to see the whole game to max out your earnings. And damned if it isn’t something you’d do anyway.

Best Achievement: Closure (60 pts.) Complete the game – Ironically, the finale gives you just a bit of closure, but trust us: Braid’s ending is up there with BioShock, Mass Effect and Portal. The game is something you’ve got to experience in full to have the ending resonate with you emotionally. Being that it’s mandatory to solve everything before wrapping it up, your Gamerscore will temporarily suffer, but your reputation will skyrocket when you’ve scored Braid’s penultimate Achievement. You’ve got the badge and the points to prove you’ve seen it, and you can tell everyone how smart you are for having done so.

Worst Achievement: Solved World 5 (15 pts.) Fit together all the world 5 puzzle pieces and align the puzzle in its frame. – This is purely based on personal experience, but World 5 gave us more grief than any other. Maybe we’re just too stupid to figure out transdimensional existence or something, but some of the puzzle pieces seemed impossible to reach at points. Knowing that the solution is always there just rubs in the fact that you still don’t have the Achievement for solving a particular world.

Easiest Achievement: Transversed World 2 (10 pts.) Travel all the way across World 2. – Can you hold the analog stick to the right? Do that for a minute or two until you’ve walked through enough doors to reach the first adorable dino is his gigantic castle for the first 10 points in the game. In fact, all of the “Transversed” Achievements involve doing just this, though some levels have a fugly boss in the middle that needs some serious crushing. This is what we like to call a “cake walk.”

Hardest Achievement: Speed Run (15 pts.) Complete a full speed run of the entire game, beating the challenge time. – Let’s hope you’ve got a good memory. You’re going to need to bring up the solutions to many a puzzle on insta-recall. Speeding through Braid is no easy task, and no amount of rewinding is going to save your slow ass here. You’ve got to haul through levels a-hippin’ and a-hoppin’ on platforms to nab keys and pieces as fast as Tim’s stubby little legs will carry him.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 8 (out of ten) – Braid is a short adventure, and though you’ll play through some of the puzzles multiple times, it shouldn’t take too many hours to completely solve it and earn all 200 Gamerscore.

Overall: 9 (out of ten) – Achievements come when they should: when you do something worthwhile. Clearing a stage isn’t all that impressive, but going back to completely create a jigsaw puzzle is rewarding and brings out the Gamerscore. In an excellent move by designer Jonathon Blow, you’re forced to see just about everything (What do those stars mean? Wink wink) and to make full use of your point extracting skills.

Bionic Commando Rearmed

There was once a time in human civilization where we followed a sort of religious ideal known as animism. The belief that everything had a soul, inanimate and otherwise, was something that never really died with ancient culture: It lives on strong, deep within gamers’ hearts. Their primal lust to lash out at inanimate objects rages on, and if you don’t agree with us, drop the cash and try out Bionic Commando Rearmed. Hot damn is this game hard enough to invoke violent, controller-throwing rage, never mind its Achievements. With any luck, you’ll throw it so hard that you’ll hurt the soul of both your controller and your television screen.

Best Achievement: Pacifist Pride (20 pts.) Clear any of Area 1 - 12 without firing your gun. – We’re going to praise the challenging nature of BCR’s finest Achievement, but turn around and wail about the ridiculous difficulty of the game in the next segment. Just so you know.
This is one Achievement we can get behind. It’s not very often we’re presented with an objective that’s puts your real-world gaming skills to task in a way that isn’t insanely hard or totally arduous, but Pacifist Pride is a goal worth shooting for. Swingin’ your way through levels without poppin’ caps in any available asses is a crazy feat considering the game’s inherent difficulty and fleet of armed enemies that stand between you and the finish line. Make sure you make serious use of barrels when on the offense.

Worst Achievement: Elite Commando (5 pts.) Clear the game on Super Hard. – Also a prime candidate for Hardest Achievement, Elite Commando might be some of the worst bunch of BS in the history of Gamerscore. Five points for completing Bionic Commando Rearmed on its hardest difficulty is comparable to getting a high-five after conquering Everest in the nude immediately after having just swum the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean. Honestly, we’d like an Achievement for completing the game on any difficulty – but not for anything less than 25 points; this game is ruthlessly demanding. At least it’s not a zero-pointer...

Easiest Achievement: Faster Than A Speeding Bullet (20 pts.) Block 100 projectiles using the claw. – Find yourself a generic-o-jerk who’s trying to put a bullet in your eye and merely extend your claw towards his globular orange discharge. You could stand in his face and continually do this repeatedly all the way to 100 but we can’t promise it won’t cause the AI to go in to some blind, frustrated rage. Also, keep in mind during the Meet With Enemy sequences (those top down battles) that you can still swing your arm around you to stop incoming fire... But as far as we could tell, our 15 minutes of deflecting didn’t count towards the Achievement! Are we wrong?

Hardest Achievement: Intel Collector (5 pts.) One Dozen Yashichis (20 pts.) Collect all twelve hidden Yashichis - one from each of Area 01 - 12. – We have but one question: WTF is a Yashichi, and where can I find one? Or twelve for that matter. Developer GRIN did a mighty fine job of sneaking these collectables  in to wherever they are, because we ain’t seen jack. 

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 4 (out of ten) Let’s pretend Elite Commando doesn’t exist. It’s not even on your radar at this point, we don’t care who you are. Everything on the short list of get-able goodies will require your undivided attention and repeated play-throughs for the sake of muscle memory if you plan to pull points from Capcom’s latest... We’ll just say that you’re going to be drowning in Bionic Commando if you’re in it for the Gamerscore. Can’t you just bask in the nostalgia instead?

Overall: 7 (out of ten) There’s little to dislike in a game where the bad guys scoff at the idea of someone chucking barrels around with a response of “ROFL.” But BCR’s wild difficulty and perfection-required platforming makes unlocking most of the longevity-based Achievements impossible for those who aren’t willing to stick their entire arm in it. Still, there’s a challenge offered in this classic remake that will feed your ego like few other available games, and with fun Achievements to boot it’s a good run for your money. The problem is that if you suck, you’re finishing with squat.

Fable II Pub Games

The appeal of earning a fat wad of cash to bring in to the Fable II universe is pretty enticing, but unless Pub Games has the Gamerscore we crave, it can cram its interconnectivity-interaction-crossover-whatever up a blunderbuss. Hopefully Lady Luck is a little easier on you than she was on us; that hag restricted our earnings something fierce, no matter how hard we tried to pretend like this trio of casino-esque games required skill.

Best Achievement: Champion of Chance (30 pts.) Win a tournament – There isn’t a more appropriate name for this Achievement – since Fable II Pub Games requires less than or equal to no skill, you really are the Chance Champ when you pull in a huge pot at a tournament. Still, it feels really good to win your first tournament of tappin’ A, and odds are it’ll pull in enough quid in the process to net the Serious Stakeholder award.

Worst Achievement: Fabled Financier (0 pts.) Play a pub game with your Fable II Hero – This is total BS: We’ve got to wait until Fable II comes out – in October – to unlock an Achievement in its trite spin-off Arcade game that was released months earlier? Worse yet, the Achievement is worth exactly squat. This could go in the “Easy” column if it wasn’t so friggin’ brain dead, and if Fable was on shelves. Honestly, who called this one? I hope they get run over by a lorry and stuffed in the boot!

Easiest Achievement: Fortune Finder (10 pts.) Unlock a new game of any type – Head on over to Keystone and play naturally – there’s no chance you’ll walk out of it without unlocking something new, provided you don’t play like a total dunce. Make a decent profit, jump out when you’re done and poof, you’ve got a shiny new badge and a brand new...uh, sorry: identical game to play. Tip: Bet on red! Oh, or black!

Hardest Achievement: Lucky Locksmith (30 pts.) Unlock all games – Sorry, we don’t have all the time in the world to wait for Lady Luck to smile down upon us and grant a sick stack of gold winnings to our character. Considering how painfully dull it is to sit in front of your TV pressing A to watch spinners do their thing (that is to say, spin) we can’t fathom the idea of doing it for so long that everything actually unlocks. No thanks. We’d not only be rotted carcasses, but Fable XXVI would be just around the corner – obviously Peter Molyneux will not only still be alive that far in to the future, but he’ll have come up with an idea so bananas and magnificent that he will have willed the Fountain of Youth in to existence.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 0 (out of ten) – Personal opinion aside, you really will spend too much time trying to fluke your way in to an Achievement. Seriously, there’s no skill required, which means that luck is all you can rely on to get you anywhere. We didn’t have any, which means we didn’t get much bank for the sickening amount of time we put in to this. Bon chance to you, though.

Overall: 2 (out of ten) – Do we really have to explain this? Just read what was said above again, it pretty much clarifies it. We don’t want to think about this friggin’ interactive time-and-money-sucker anymore.

Go! Go! Breaksteady

Who ever thought that combining Guitar Hero-like rhythm inputs would mesh so fluidly with the ball-blasting simplicity of Zuma? Probably the same person who decided that this game fusion should revolve around breakdancing and terrible Achievement unlocks. Fortunately for you, the lack of players online means that there’s loot to be earned; unfortunately for everyone else,  they aren’t havin’ a hoot bustin’ moves in Breaksteady.

Best Achievement: LP (15 pts.) Last in endurance mode for ten minutes. – Who knew breakdancing could be this exhausting? It’ll tax your brain, but lasting an entire 600 seconds without totally falling on your face is a satisfying feat you’ll want to Achieve. The 15-point payout is a definite plus, and as soon as the Achievement pops up, you’ll know that you’re the best of the best...videogame breakdancers.

Worst Achievement: Double Dog (15 pts.) Survive 10 minutes in online coop endurance. – Nobody wants to rely on their buddy to pull off a 10-minute endurance round. Doing it solo is hard enough, but having an inept buddy crap all over your excellence is infuriating!

Easiest Achievement: Dance Master (15 pts.) Fill the move progress bar with all perfects. – We haven’t got a clue how we did this, but it happened in the first five seconds of the ball-shooting Zuma action! Talk about simple!

Hardest Achievement: Survive 10 minutes in online coop endurance. – We already moaned about how lame it was to have to rely on a buddy, but hopping online where anyone could join and mess you up is all the more frustrating. Throw in a dose of lag here and there and you’ve got yourself one bunk breakdancing session. Sadface.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of ten) – You shouldn’t need to spend more than a day or two stacking the online Achievements after getting a grip on the game in single-player. You’ll naturally unlock a fair percentage of the solo stuff, like big combos and perfects, but online is where the game really shines. Quick matches for repeated wins, all before brunch.

Overall: 8 (out of ten) – Let’s be real: everyone’s enthralled by Braid’s brilliance, or is trying to earn loot for their Fable character if they aren’t exploding the heads of dictatorial jerks in Bionic Commando Rearmed. That means you can hop online and bank a handful of Break Steady’s Achievements with a buddy – no one else is playing ranked, so meeting up should be smooth. Enjoy your winning streak online and off, you Zuma-shootin’ breakdancer, you.

Madden NFL 09

Best Achievement: Midway Monster (50 pts.) Create a legendary player from the past. – While we’re disappointed with the lack of real Mutant League Football, a reference and a character avatar are enough to appease our bizarre lust to see football players tear each other’s limbs off. By creating a player named “Bones Jackson” – a classic mutoid-athlete from the greatest sports franchise of all time – you’ll unlock a gigantic 50 point Achievement, and what must be the greatest Achievement-badge ever rendered in the history of 64x64 pixel jpegs. We know, we’ve said that about 7654 things this week, but it’s fact, dudes and dudettes. There’s also 50 more points in the deal if you create a character named, you guessed it, John Madden.

Worst Achievement: 300 Rush Yds with the Jets (10 pts.) 300 Rush Yds in a game with the Jets (non co-op) – How dost I hate thee, let me count the ways. For real: team-based Achievements are lame. Not everyone wants to play as the Falcons, Titans, or Jets – especially the Jets; no slight against my boy B-Favre’s new gang or anything, it’s just that rushing completely blows. Honestly, why run when you can toss the ball forty yards ahead in a single play? Ok, so maybe you dig blasting through the blitz, but runnin’ for 300 yards is a monstrous feat. Good luck.

Easiest Achievement: Slam Dunk All-Star (30 pts.) Dunk the ball over the goalpost (or at least attempt to) after a touchdown – Slam dunking your way to NBA stardom requires that you promptly press but one button to boost yourself in to the air as you drop the ball in to the chains and... Hey wait, this isn’t basketball! Well, however you humiliate your opponents, simply slamming down on the Y button while standing in the blue box below the goalpost will do the trick, and immediately net you these 30 Gs.

Hardest Achievement: Kick a FG for over 50 Yds (15 pts.) Kick a FG for over 50 yards in a Franchise game (non co-op) – Not only is this the toughest of the lot of predominantly easy-to-earn Achievements, it’s also the most difficult to read without thinking that an English-illiterate Russian wrote the name. You are can have been wanting field goal for over 50 yards, yes? After you’re done tripping over the word jumble, nailing a perfect kick from the 50 (or further!) yard line is like trying to drop a medicine ball in to a golf cup from space.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 8.5 (out of ten) – Simulating games still works, as does boosting yourself/crippling the AI with sliders. Most importantly, crank your Rewinds so you’ll never run out! If that kind of stuff doesn’t tickle you right, try playing on easy mode or sabotaging your Madden Test for best Achieving results. Within a couple Franchise games, and a few Exhibition matches you’ll be fumbling to get out from underneath your 500+ points... kind of like a kid who’s stuck in a ball pit at Chuck-E-Cheeze.

Overall: 9 (out of ten) Big Achievements and very few of them means this is the best Madden for score-whoring since ’06. Plus, even with the stupidly implemented team-specific Achievements, they’re all fun to individually check off the half-sized list of 25 objectives. Give it a hardcore play over a weekend and you’ll likely pull in close to the full thou’.

*****
Alright readers, it was a mixed bag this week, but we can, ahem, whore-heartedly recommend at least playing all of the games we talked about this week  -- Madden’s an easy 500+, Break Steady is fun and stackable, Braid is a true gem with Achievements you have to earn, while Bionic Commando’s difficulty offers a great challenge for those lookin’ to impress with their Achievement collection. As for Pub Games...let’s hope you got it for free with your pre-order.

PS: You never call anymore.