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.

Pure

Like a four-wheeled-fury of concentrated cool, Pure offers a surprisingly solid list of Achievements to players looking to bomb down mountains at a rip-roaringly intense speed. Stock-standard stuff applies as usual, but in proving that four wheels are better than two (take that, Burnout update!) this stunt-heavy ATV racer wants you to win in more ways than one for serious unlockage.

Best Achievement: “Show Off” (20 pts.) Win a Race or Sprint event and crossing the line doing a Wheelie on every lap. – Writers are inherent egotists, so if you offer us the chance to show up the opposition simply by heaving the left stick down every time we cross the finish line, you’ve got us hook line and sinker. Since egotism applies to more than us word-folk at OXM, it’s a good little objective to earn a quick bit of Gamerscore and give everyone a more polite version of the middle finger. Just make sure you win or you’ll look like a total ass.

Worst Achievement: “Killer Combo” (30 pts.) During an event; perform a combo of at least 250,000 points. – F...Ffffff.... Whaaa? Huh? Two hundred and fifty thousand points in one combo? We’d surely bust in to hysterical laughter and mock the sheer absurdity of stringing this many tricks together before the combo meter ran dry, but frankly... we’re floored. This number is insane, and reaching it would be quite the Achievement if, you know, it were remotely feasible for anyone who isn’t a god on four wheels. We thought we were pretty huge hot shots when we came out of a Freestyle event with 100,000 points – total.

Easiest Achievement: “1 of a kind” (5 pts.) Build an ATV from scratch in the garage. – In all likelihood, you’ll pimp out your own quad-wheeled speed-demon because you want a leopard-skin seat. But if you just randomize your first ride you’ll unlock the 5G and hit the course sooner than if you’d been picky about the shape and color of your rear fender, as well as which sponsor you’d like to promote on it. Building time is for later – Achieving is for the now. Press Y, win.

Hardest Achievement: “Pure perfectionist” (100 pts.) Come first in every event in the Pure World Tour – Initially, you won’t think the amount of tournaments is anything to stress over, but when you account for the increase of events within each sponsored get-together it starts to dawn on you that you’ve got a few (OK, a lot of few) races ahead of you. Advancing from the D class, up through C and beyond becomes progressively more challenging as well, and those higher-up dudes know how to put the pedal to the metal, carve perfect corners and trick like it’s goin’ out of style. Hopefully you’re learning how to control your quad-wheeled beast, too, because you’re hooped unless you’ve got everything under control at all times. A single dirt-nap often leads to a loss – drive safe, kids!

Unbelievable Achievement: Two time! (25 pts.) Perform two special tricks in one jump. – Special tricks require you to bust your ass pulling off fresh tricks by the boatload simply to unlock it, which is fine. But we’ve got to wonder: at what juncture is one able to propel themselves so high that they can pull off two of these things at once? Each one takes so long you could come back from vacation before your rider ever hits soil, but two in one? We’re dying to see what this looks like, because it is probably the most awesome exaggeration of tricking available... and that sounds rad. Too bad we can’t figure out where to go to get it.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of ten) – Pure is all about progress, and your payoff is directly proportional to the time you sink in to it. You’ll be rewarded accordingly for whoopin’ some AI ass and doing some genuinely awesome things. Keep mixing up the way you race, keep tricks fresh, and speed towards each finish line with an unabashed ambition for victory and you’ll be “Yahoo”-ing like any number of Pure’s lame riders. Just don’t expect to max everything out in a weekend – getting 1st place in that one last Freestyle event is as addictive as it is aggravating.

Overall: 8.5 (out of ten) – As mentioned, you’ll get Gamerscore for doing cool or appropriate stuff, so aside from the easy-but-typical “Win Race!” unlocks there are loads of fun things to do for points. Decking out rides, winning with various engines, and of course, showboating your way across the finish line after each lap is just the tip of the awesome Achievement iceberg. As an added bonus, Pure is also freaking incredible... but we’re not here to talk about that.

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke doesn’t feature a giant list of brilliant or cleverly implemented awards – goodness no – but 3D Realms’ classic comedic shooter wins for not having an entire collection of stupid, generic Achievements that were obviously put in the game simply because there had to be get-able Gamerscore. To be fair, it definitely has some bleh-chievements. But we’re a fan of badges that make you go slightly out of your way specifically to do something fun... no matter how perverted it might be.

Best Achievement: “Come Get Some” (25 pts.) Complete "Shrapnel City" on any difficulty or in co-op. – Ok, so we praise the game for having better-than-usual Achievements, and then reward its most generic award with the “Best” badge? We know, but every fan of Duke knows that the final boss – an oversized klingon-frog-steak – was the highlight of the alien invasion. Come on, you fought the fugly mofo on a football field and then booted his eyeball through the posts for a field goal once you made him crumple like you’d liquefied his bones. What doesn’t make that the greatest thing ever?

Worst Achievement: “Oomph, uugh, Where is it?” (10 pts.) Find 70 secret areas. – Duke Nukem’s notoriety stems from the fact that it’s absolutely seething with salacious pop-culture references (and BEWBZ LOL!), which is what you’ll find in almost every secret area. We’d be liars if we said we weren’t in to it (uh, the references... not the naked ladies) but the tedium of going out of your way to find 70 areas that are hidden to the point of not even having any clues to their existence is painful. Good thing this game is like 40 years old and there are walkthroughs by the score available to ease your wall-pushing, toilet-busting monotony. This is a lot of work just to see some nudity.

Easiest Achievement: “Alien Maggots Are Gonna Pay” (10 pts.) Finish the "Hollywood Holocaust" level in under 3 minutes. – Are you a wuss? Us too, so we dropped the difficulty to “Piece of Cake” in order to bomb through the first mission in 180 seconds. Play it once just to get a grip on where the card-key is, and where you need to go one you get it. You’ll barely need to shoot any of the baddies, so pass them without worrying about your health (remember, you’re on baby mode!) and head to the self destruct level-ending button and smash away. The next level also yields an easy Achievement in the tip-a-stripper “Shake it Baby,” which is also, as they say, a piece of cake.

Hardest Achievement: “Oomph, uugh, Where is it?” (10 pts.) Find 70 secret areas. – Not only is it frustratingly dull to look in every nook and cranny for oodles of goodies, it’s also kinda tough. You never know where a hidden passage might be hidden (hint: check every regular ol’ wall for maximum success) or a vent might be out of sight. You’ll have to pay a lot of attention to your surroundings and poke around a lot before you get remotely close to this bizarrely named unlock. Bring a friend or seven along for the ride.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of ten) – If you’re a Duke veteran, you’ll tear through this PC port in all of four seconds, but since the general consensus is “Xbox Live is a bunch of 12-year-olds” we’ll oblige these newcomers to Nukem. In short, the game is, um, pretty short. If you’ve got multiplayer goin’ on, well, you’re golden. You could probably walk away from a full Dukematch and still unlock a respectable amount of Gamerpoints by the time you returned. And despite how much we rag on the menial stuff like secrets, they really are quite fun to earn.

Overall: 8 (out of ten) – There are some boring blunders in here, but stepping in poop (LOL AGAIN!!), the strip-tip, and squishing shrunken pig-mutants is some mighty fine Achievin’ if we do say so ourselves. We’ll even take “Beat Misson X” so long as we get to punt an eyeball from the 50 yard line every now and again. “Game over!”

*****

Wow, what a solid week. Our Gamerscore was jacked over 1000 points with these four games alone this week, thus finally cracking the 30,000G barrier. If you read the other reviews around here (linked above) you’ll see that all of this week’s covered 360 games broke the 8.0/10 barrier critically, but they’re also all 8.0 and above here, too! We’ll see if the slew of ridiculous releases in the coming weeks can live up to the Achievement-y hype – Fable orgies? Why not?! – when we finally get our mitts on ‘em. We’ll try to remember to write this thing for you lovely, lovely readers while we’re nose-deep in Fable, Fallout, Fracture, Dead Space, Midnight Club 3, Saints Row 2 and presumably more... We can’t cover all of this alone! Help our lazy arses out by emailing your own Scoreboard review to us ASAP!