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.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is definitely worth a look for longtime KUF fans, especially now that you can unlock a boatload of achievements as you play through as each character, finish each character’s story quests, and beat the bosses.

Best achievement – Both Marguerite achievements (40 pts. total). First of all, these are rad because you have to play as Duane to get them, and Duane is a real boob at the outset of the game. Second, at the beginning of the game, Marguerite is…how shall we say…a real bi-atch to Duane, so following the storyline through to unlock both of these, one which you’ll earn by attaining 50% favor with Marguerite (Dueling Is My Life - Raise Marguerite's favor to 50%) and the other by reaching 100% favor with the saucy minx (Marguerite, My Love Raise Marguerite's favor to 100%), is quite the character arc.

Worst Achievement – The Timid Developer (20 pts.) Watch all of the starting staff roll AND the ending staff roll credits! Dudes, enough with the credits-related achievements already! Are you really that desperate to get us to watch all of your names roll by? If you’re going to make us suffer through all the credits, at least give us an easter egg or secret movie at the end of the thing in addition to the gamer points. Thank you.

Easiest Achievement – A Friendly Game (10 pts.) Complete the tutorial. It’s not as easy as jumping into a multiplayer lobby, but suffer through this annoying, game-disrupting tutorial, (which includes really tough-to-master techniques like “move around with the left stick”), and you’ll unlock this pronto.

Hardest Achievement – Curse of the Developer (200 pts.) Reach Level 80 with ALL characters. Seriously guys, have you been playing Final Fantasy XI? It’s enough to ask us to play through the game six times as each of the six characters to unlock each individual “Complete game with…” achievement. Now we’re tasked with leveling each character up to an 80? Ugh. On a normal playthrough, we got to level 68 with one character. I guess we need to synthesize a lot more items.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 3 (out of 10) Similarly to Mass Effect, there are a bunch of smaller achievements tied to completing the game completely with each character in order to unlock each character’s individual “Completion” achievement and their story quests. Playing the game through once on normal difficulty, you’ll unlock between 250 and 290 points, which isn’t really great. The game ain’t short either; it’ll take you anywhere from 35-50 hours to complete it once, especially if you’re doing all the story quests. Now, there’s something to be said for playing as each different character because they each have a unique storyline, so it just depends if you really need to know everything about every character. If you do, you’ll be rewarded for it in achievements.

Overall – 4 (out of 10) This is definitely not an gamerscore-boosting title. Now, it’s a fun game and fans of the series will probably want to go through multiple times to find out what’s new with Celine and why Valdemar is so pissy with Leinhart. For everyone else, though, one trip through Bersia will probably be plenty, especially considering the significant time investment each playthrough requires.

Tempest (Xbox Live Arcade)

Oh Atari, what have you done? I absolutely LOVED Tempest growing up. L-O-V-E-D it. I played the crap out of it at several locations (the soda bar down the street from my house, the gym where my dad played racquet ball, and the ha-uge arcade at Six Flag’s Magic Mountain, to name a few) and I always dominated. Not so with this badly controlling port available on marketplace for $5. Pppffft! Way to tarnish my youth, Atari! How could you allow such an classic game come to Marketplace with such cruddy controls? In case there are some of you haven’t played Tempest, the stand-up, coin-op game had a spinner — a FAST spinner — that allowed you to maneuver your triangular what’s-it avatar thingy around with at lightning speeds and laser precision. In this version, you use either of the analog sticks or the D-pad, none of which work really at all. They go in the wrong direction, they stutter… oh, it’s bad. You’d think that Atari, who perpetually seems on the verge of financial collapse, could strike a deal with Mad Catz or someone to develop an inexpensive Xbox 360 paddle spinner peripheral, you gotta know they’d sell a bazillion of ’em to all the aging gamers like myself who squandered our youth going without lunch, sacrificing every cent to the Tempest gods. Consequently, the achievements are understandably challenging to rack up with the current control scheme, which is 100 times more frustratingly imprecise than trying to zoom-snipe accurately with an untrained, level 1 soldier in Mass Effect. One more gripe — all of the achievements are tied to the Evolved Mode. Who cares about the Evolved Mode? It’s great that Atari gussied up the original, but howabout a few, or even ONE achievement for playing the Classic Mode? This port just reeks of weaksauce.

Best achievement – Deplete (15 pts.) Clear Wave 5 without leaving any Spikes Evolved game - Normal difficulty. This is actually a fun achievement and harkens back to my perfectionist mentality when playing the coin-op games. Some guys would play slop and just eke through Wave 5, burrowing through one Spike on their way to the next wave. Not I. Nay, I would take the time to drill down every spike for that sense of satisfaction (and the extra points). It’s nice to finally get a reward for something I did when I was 10.

Worst Achievement – Maniac (20 pts.) Score 100,000 Evolved game - Throttle Monkey mode. This could be categorized as the hardest achievement, but it’s more totally, mind-bendingly sucky than “hard”. First of all, the controls suck. Secondly, the Evolved version of game sucks. Thirdly, Throttle Monkey (the highest difficulty) is so hard, so fast, especially with these lame controls, that asking me to do this under these circumstances is almost as unrewarding as playing through Black on Black Ops mode with its socially unconscionable save system (or lack thereof). I don’t mind a challenge, but give me a paddle spinner and I’ll tear this baby apart.

Easiest Achievement – Streak (10 points) Clear the first 5 waves in 90 seconds Evolved game - Normal difficulty. What should’ve taken me 90 seconds took almost an hour, Cursed controls. Still, this is definitely pretty easy to do once you get the rhythm of the game and learn to overcompensate for the retarded control scheme.

Hardest Achievement – Struggle (20 pts.) Clear the first 12 waves without using a Super Zapper Evolved game - Normal difficulty. This achievement will expand your vocabulary of curse words. It took us sooooooooooooo long. Please, someone make a paddle spinner. Please?

Time Investment vs. payoff – 1 (out of 10) Oh, it’s bad. Now, I may just have sour grapes after playing what I feel is a highly sub-par version of a game I love, but it doesn’t change the fact that it will take you a while to unlock these, all of which will entail hours spent cursing your controller.

Overall – 2 (out of 10) I would’ve given it a 1 except for two things: It’s Tempest and I love Tempest. Also, I’m holding out that someone, anyone will make a paddle spinner. Did I mention someone should make a paddle spinner?

College Hoops 2K8

College Hoops 2K, we barely knew thee, and now you’ve been canned. Well, that’s not true, we’ve played lots of 2K’s NCAA baller, but just when the devs getting a handle on how to implement decent achievements, the series has been benched. No fair. Still, this unwitting swan song for the franchise include some thoughtful, albeit easy to goose. We didn’t go with the whole “cripple the opposing team with sliders” trick to get these, though we assume you can do that again if you’re so inclined. That notwithstanding, these are still very easy and doable to rack up.

Best achievement – Custom Chants (30 pts.) Create and save a custom Chant using Chant Creator. Who knew that making a chant for your school could be so cool? If you haven’t checked out this feature, it’s a must-do if you own College Hoops 2K8. This just caught us off guard, and being used to all the “score a triple-double” achievements, this was really a cool idea. Nice job.

Worst Achievement – Buzzer Beater (30 pts.) Win a game with a buzzer-beater shot. This is a cool idea but it actually changes the way you play the game for the worse. Trying to stay neck and neck and then going into the last few seconds of the game tied or down and then managing to pull off the buzzer beater is no small task. This is more likely to happen by luck than by planning. We tried to do this almost 10 times and got so frustrated it wasn’t making the game fun anymore, so we’ll just bide our time until it happens naturally.

Easiest Achievement – Upload And Share (30 pts.) Upload a 2K Share file to the 2K Sports server. This is pretty lame-easy, and it will earn you 30 points for not even playing basketball. We prefer the On Fire achievement, which rewards an equal 30 for making five consecutive three-point shots in a game. Sure it’s not as easy, but it’s pretty simple if you scout a player (or team) with a three-point draining gamestyle like Grinell and let them fly. You can sink five rocks like nobody’s business, and that’s without goosing the sliders.

Hardest Achievement – National Champion (50 pts.) Win a National Championship in Legacy mode (Open or Career). This is only hard because it takes time and you definitely don’t want to try to sim your way through it, so you’re talking an entire season of plodding, playing, coaching, scouting, trading, and winning. It’s quite the investment, and you have to love this game to do it. Those of you who do will definitely unlock this after a while.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 7 (out of 10) Much like the last few years of 2K’s collegiate franchise, you’ll open up a lot of these in a few games. There are a bunch that will require you play a specific way, like holding the defense to 35% shooting rate with heavy D and blocking, doing the drills or playing online, all of which will distract from (or at the very least take a certain amount of time from) your regular Career playthrough.

Overall – 8 (out of 10) You’ll nab a decent amount of these achievements through regular play, though it’s nowhere near the gamerscore feast that was College Hoops 2K6. Still, if you want to play this year’s best NCAA basketball game and enjoy some good gamerscore boosting along the way, College 2K8 delivers the goods.

NCAA March Madness 08

EA’s college baller doesn’t measure up in either the gameplay or achievement department compared to College Hoops 2K8. In fact, persuing the list of 25 achievements in this year’s March Madness you’ll quickly notice EA recycled the graphics and even a number of actual achievements name for name, point for point. If we could give an award for the worst implementation of achievements for a publisher, EA would probably win hands-down. What are you thinking, guys?

Best achievement – None. They all suck.

Worst Achievement – Old Spice Own the Glass (70 pts.) Participate in an entire game where a player on your team gets 51+ rebounds. Huh? This is a game-breaking achievement as it forces you to play your D primarily as one player while keeping said player out of foul trouble, not to mention suffering from fatigue. You can of course turn down the sliders and goose this, but it’s still a tremendous amount of irregular work for a lame achievement. Seriously, the NCAA all-time rebound record in a game is 42, which was set in 1972 by St. Augustine's Larry Gooding. EA, WTF?

Easiest Achievement – Pump Up Team (20 pts.) Pump up a teammate. So easy. Build up your intensity meter, press of the left bumper and a flick of the right stick, unlock the points. While you’re at it, Pump Up The Crowd for another 20 pts. Phew!

Hardest Achievement – 100 Points (100 pts.) Participate in an entire game where a player on your team scores 100+ points. At 100 points, this is definitely worth doing, but again, it should be filed in the “what are thinking, EA?” folder. Who plays an entire game of basketball, a LONG game of basketball where you’ll rack up the triple-digits, with one player shooting everything? Someone who will exchange the real game of basketball for gamerscore-goosing shenanigans, that’s who. EA, how about finding a way to reward gamers for playing basketball right?

Time Investment vs. payoff – 7 (out of 10) Unfortunately, like most other EA Sports games, you can unlock almost all of this, though you’ll need to flush your integrity down the toilet to do so. If you’re dead set on getting all of these, go the way of the old-school gamerscore goosers and cripple the opposition with the sliders and walk all over them. EA won’t care, and neither will any of the unimpressed people who see how you got your gamerscore so high.

Overall – 3 (out of 10) Haven’t you caught on that people like these things called achievements? Why are you reusing old assets and not thinking up original achievements? EA’s nonchalant attitude is only made more aloof-looking by 2K’s tasty achievement graphics and original achievements (Custom Chants, you fox). There’s also the fact that a huge number of the achievements are basically sponsored by Old Spice. Totally lame. Uncreative, unupdated achievements are made utterly insulting by advertising. Not that EA cares, they still have lame achievements for finishing an online game…finishing, as opposed to winning. Now that’s an achievement.

As promised, here’s our next reader-submitted Scoreboard entry reviewing BioShock by another faithful reader, Philip Vasto. Hey Phil, look, you’re published! Give that man a T-shirt!

BioShock

By Philip Vasto

Best Achievement: Irony (10 points). This is one of my favorite achievements that I have ever earned in 2007. Killing Sander Cohen and taking a picture of his corpse is simply an ironic blast. He sends you to kill four guys and then you turn on him at the end of Fort Frolic or in the middle of Olymus Heights to put an end to his madness and in the process, take a picture of him! Sure, you may not want to kill him because he produces nutty comedy, but kill him while thinking about everyone that he has plastered for his crazy “masterpiece.” Not to mention that you get 10 gamerscore points in the process. (Note: Don't kill him as soon as you finish Fort Frolic. When you go to Olympus Heights, he’ll invite you into his home. If you disobey his orders here, he will come out to kill you. Kill him, take a picture of him to get 10 points, and then enter his secret room to get another 10 points.)

Worst Achievement: Lucky Winner (10 points). This is a VERY annoying achievement. This is all based on luck and chance. When you go to Fort Frolic, you have to use one of the slot machines to win the best prize. You don't even have a good odds of winning the prize and the achievement! Not to mention, you need this cash for more important things like health packs. Still, the best way to handle this grim situation is to use only one machine and to save your game before you start gambling. However, this achievement can make you waste cash and anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours.

Hardest Achievement: Brass Balls (100 points). Brass Balls is one hell of a tough ride! You have to complete BioShock on Hard Mode without using a Vita Chamber. Crap. First of all, downloading the new content for BioShock should be a priority. Sure, you can get this achievement without downloading the content that lets you turn off the Vita Chambers, but eventually you may forget that you're trying to get this achievement and actually use one. My advice? Save every time you do something important and before you face one of those super-tough Big Daddies. The hardest part? If you want to survive, you'll have to fight a Big Daddy to save or harvest a Little Sister. Fighting a Big Daddy usually means death if you are playing the game on Hard Mode. Thank you 2K Boston for giving us an achievement that really means achieving something.

Easiest Achievement: Toaster in the Tub (10 points). There are more achievements in BioShock that are easy, but this one takes the cake. And it’s fun too. As soon as you gain the Electro Bolt plasmid (at the beginning of the game), just shock an enemy when they stand in the water (which is very easy to do in the Welcome to Rapture level) and voila! You just earned a very easy achievement. It has a nice picture too.

Overall Score (out of 10): 8. Actually, if you play this game on Hard Mode, turn off the Vita Chambers, and collect every collectible hidden in Rapture, you can get all 1100 points in the game. Yeah, you may get frustrated trying to find all of the audio diaries, but if you use a good guide (like I did), you can get all 1100 points easily. That is unlike a game like Assassin's Creed, because even if you use a guide, collecting 420 flags is still difficult and annoying. So stop stressing yourself in Mass Effect by trying to get all the Ally achievements and just enter this wonderful underwater city that can net you easy points for easy things.

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 As always, thanks for reading and don’t forget to email us your reader-submitted Scoreboard entry. Tune in next time when we start to pick apart some of 2008’s new releases. Spring is almost upon us, which means new games, which means new achievements. Until next time, ACHIEVE!