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.

The Orange Box

One the greatest values in gaming history — tons to do spanning five great games, including Portal (hells yes!) — and on top of that, Valve really put a ton of thought and consideration into the achievements in The Orange Box. Including 99 separate achievements, most of which are very unique, it’s a veritable tapas buffet of miniature gamerscore (many of the achievements are worth only five points).

Best achievement – In our Best Achievements of 2007 rundown, we gave Most Gratifying Achievement to Little Rocket Man (30 pts.) Send the garden gnome into space, and you know what? We’re sticking by it. It’s a doozy, but man does it feel good to get rid of that damned lawn monkey. Just drive slow (and check on him often) when you have him with you in the car, and good luck with that helicopter!

Worst Achievement – With Friends Like These… (10 pts.) Play in a game with seven or more players from your friends list. I hate to sound like a broken record, but making achievements based on playing with seven players on your friends list is retarded, and it will only lead to one thing: adding a bunch of people to your friends list you meet while playing Team Fortress 2 that aren’t actually your friends. Even that tactic is prone to failure because you have to have seven people that are already on your friends list to party up, and for someone like me who just wants to carve up people with a Gatling gun before bedtime, it’s almost too much work to add the friends and get them to get on Team Fortress 2.

Easiest Achievement – Defiant (5 pts.) Hit the trashcan cop with the can. This is a secret achievement, the second of two you can unlock at the beginning of the game. Sure, it’s cool to unlock the Submission fiver for throwing the can into the trash when the cop tells you to, but it’s way more happening to throw the can at the cop to nab this easy and risqué achievement.

Hardest Achievement – TIE between Aperture Science (40 pts.) Earn gold medals on all Portal challenges, and Neighborhood Watch (35 pts.) Save all buildings outside the missile silo from destruction. Both of these are tough, but for different reasons. The Portal achievement is test of the mind, the Half Life 2: Episode 2 a test for your speed and tenacity. Nabbing a gold medal in all the Portal challenges will require a firm strategy, lots of caffeine, and few trips to YouTube. The Neighborhood Watch is an exercise in hours of futile protection, resource management, and luck as you’re tasked to preserve all the buildings at the end of the game near the missile silo in an effort that will outdo anything Vassili from Call of Duty 2 was tasked with while completing Veteran Mode. Good luck. You’ll need it.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 4 (out of 10) While you unlock a decent amount of these while playing through each game in a normal fashion, many are so obscure and so specific that they require that you play through with a guide, which is more a game-ruiner than a game-maker. And why does playing through with a guide suck, you ask? Because you know everything that’s about to happen before it happens in order to find the last lambda or to know you need to discover the dancing Vortigaunt in that cuss-inducing pipe he’s located in. This phenomenon is obviously worse when applied to a game you’ve never played before, but since most of us played Half-Life 2 when it came out on PC, have at it with that guide and grab them points!

Overall – 8 (out of 10) Even though these will take you a while, lots of guide help, and some sneak peaks at YouTube, Valve obviously put some real thought into these, which in turn deserves recognition. After playing through games with vanilla or snoozy achievements, the bulk of these are really fun to go after and gratifying to complete.

The Darkness

Decent reviews and a huge marketing campaign couldn’t make gamers go out and buy The Darkness. If you’re one of the many who passed on it when it came out last year, you might be happy to know it’s actually quite fun (and relatively easy) to play through and yields a respectable amount of gamerscore for those willing to devour a few hearts along the way.

 Best achievement – Darkness Master (100 pts.) Only for those who are completely in tune with the Darkness. This one seems to stump people as it has lit up many a message board, though it’s actually easy to unlock with the right approach. It requires you kill a number of foes using Creeping Dark, Demon Arm, Darkness Guns and Black Hole, as well as spawning a certain amount of Darklings. We found a big fight close to a checkpoint and used whichever skill we were trying to level up to 100% to kill every enemy but one. You let the jerk kill you and then reload the last checkpoint and do it again and again until you reach 100% on each attribute (your kills will stay intact after each death, thereby leveling up each attribute). Check your progress in the pause menu under the achievements option.

Worst Achievement – The Don (25 pts.) Be on the winning side of 250 multiplayer matches. Not only is the multiplayer laggy and overall just plain bad, there’s a glitch that doesn’t calculate wins properly. I’ve even heard of instances where the game will reset wins from time to time, especially if you play off and on over a long period of time. The only way to really be certain you’ll get this is by getting all the wins in one or two sessions, and who has the time and patience to sit through 250 matches of Darkness multiplayer?

Easiest Achievement – Knuckle, Meet Face (5 pts.) Perform a melee kill for the first time. This one’s easy — you can either drain a gun of ammo and pistol-whip a cop, or you can use the left trigger to punch with only one gun equipped.

Hardest Achievement – Completionist (20 pts.) Unlock 100 collectables. This one requires a tremendous amount of work as you’re tasked with finding 27 letters and finishing all the side missions to rack up 73 collectible phone numbers. Ugh. I hate this kind of stuff.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 8 (out of 10) The Darkness isn’t a long game, and you can definitely bag all of these with a guide and a friend to help you goose the multiplayer. You’ll need the guide to help you leap over several glitches, so I definitely recommend it, but it’s generally a fun, relatively painless process as well if you want to grab the bulk of these and skip out on the harder challenges, like beating the game on Hard (which only yields 35 points).

Overall – 5 (out of 10) Even though these are doable, there are too many problems and glitches to trip up an average play-through, making this a mixed bag for achievements. It’s fun, yes, but the multiplayer sucks and some specific bugs will rob you of points if you’re not careful, which definitely dings the score.

 Crackdown

For all of you who thought Crackdown was a nifty way for Microsoft to get you to pay to participate in the Halo 3 multiplayer beta last year, think again. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop in Pacific City was one of my more memorable experiences of 2007. I can’t tell you how many nights I played in co-op, doing my own thing, sometimes in a completely different gang territory than my buddy, chatting about the day’s events and meeting up every so often to take a roadster for a triple barrel roll off of a semi-jump from atop a high bridge. It’s a fantastic game in its own right; if you played it, I think you’ll agree. If not, it’s time to get cracking, agent! Achievements-wise, there’s a ton to do, and while it may be notorious for its especially punishing orb-collecting achievements, there are plenty of gang-stomping, four-star rating-earning, and car flipping achievements to keep you busy until Fallout 3 comes out. Okay, maybe not that long.

Best achievement – High Flyer and Base Jumper (20 pts. total) Make your way to the top of the Agency Tower, and Jump from the top of the Agency Tower and land in the water below, respectively. These are actually tied together because you do one right after the other. I remember vividly completing this task after falling to my death a few times. It was only after I reached to the top and leapt off that I realized the sheer verticality of Crackdown. That trembling sense of vertigo was only really rivaled again once I tried to get the orb atop the Shai Gen tower after I killed the final boss.

Worst Achievement – Orb Hunter and Free Runner (50 points each) Collect all the agility and hidden orbs. I think we’ve covered this one plenty, but this is just a long, long long process. The agility orbs are a great boon as you progress through the game, seeing that they boost your ability to four-star your agility rating. After that, meh.

Easiest Achievement – Driving High (10 pts.) Achieve a height of 115 feet or more in a vehicle. This one is easy and its funny. After driving around every conceivable high point in Pacific City, my buddy told me about this trick — go to the Central Point building on Shai-Gen island (right next to the Stripey’s Café supply point), and kick down the front doors, deal with the jerks inside, and drive the car into the elevator. Trigger the elevator and jump in the car. You will literally ride the car up past the 115 feet requirement and unlock this achievement while sitting in your car. In an elevator. Sweet. We were going to give this distinction to Take Me To Your Supply Point, which nets you 10 points for finding your first supply point, but this was just as easy and way more fun.

Hardest Achievement – Agency Wheelman (20 pts.) Accelerate and slide your way to a 4-star Driving rating. I know, I know, the Orb hunter and Free Runner achievements are harder, but haven’t we run those into the ground? This little twenty-spot was rough in its own way, as it required you to become proficient at getting around the city fast, killing with your car (the AI is notorious for jumping out of the way at the last second, making run-downs a challenge sometimes) and learning to master the routes of the road races. Yeah, it’s still not as hard as the collection stuff. So what? It’s my column.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 7 (out of 10) Technically speaking, if you play this game the way it was intended to be played, which means you take down all three gangs and their 21 crime lords, ranking up to four-star ratings along the way, and throw in a car or body juggling achievement here or there, you’ll unlock about 500-600 points, which isn’t too shabby. After that, the game really hits its stride as you take your totally maxed-out agent to wreak havoc throughout the sandbox that is Pacific City, one by one nabbing every achievement, which becomes a game in and of itself. Especially with the downloadable content and its extra 200 points.

Overall – 8 (out of 10) God knows how many hours I wasted on Crackdown, but it was all worth it. In fact, writing this up, I think I just might go back and start picking away at some of the handful of achievements I’m still missing. It’s official, I’m inspired!

Dead Rising

Lord have mercy, Dead Rising may be the mother of all creative achievements. Even though Capcom got a lot of things wrong with this open-world zombie-thrashing game (like the molasses-slow, over-the-shoulder aiming mechanic), many of these outrageous achievements make up for it. So if you’re biding your time until Gears of War 2 comes out, might as well do it holed up in the Willamette Mall.

Best achievement – Frank the Pimp (20 pts.) TYPE: 1 Play REQ: Simultaneously escort 8 female survivors. This one is hella cool and gives props to the playa that Frank West truly is. Now, this is pretty hard, that is unless you have a little help. Check out the advice of our friends at xbox360achievements.org and you should be able to bag this pronto.

Worst Achievement – Transmissionary (20 pts.) TYPE: 1 Play REQ: Answer all calls from Otis. This is really a bitch. You need to answer 38 separate calls, and you may not get one or more if you haven’t rescued/killed the right survivors. You can also miss out on a call if you have a number of survivors with you that, when combined with the number of survivors that will be on the phone when you would get the call, is greater than 8. If you don’t meet the criteria to get the call, it won’t happen again and you could have racked up 27 answered calls only to have all your work go down the tubes. We have only have two words for that pestering Otis: text messaging.

Easiest Achievement – Photojournalist (20 pts.) TYPE: 1 Play REQ: Score at least 1,500 PP from a single photo. Piece o’ cake. When you go to the roof through the vent for the first time, snap a shot of the couple when they hug and you’ll nab 10,000 PP, which will unlock the Artiste achievement for another 20 points as well.

Hardest Achievement – TIE between Saint (20 pts.) 1 Play REQ: Get at least 50 survivors out of the mall, and 7 Day Survivor (20 pts.) TYPE: 1 Play REQ: Survive for at least 7 days. Unlocking the Saint achievement is truly a virtual game of cat herding. Never have I been so perplexed, cussed so wildly, and felt so undermined by stupid AI than when trying to locate, corral, and protect 50 survivors. Honestly, this is an epic achievement, as is 7 Day Survivor, which requires that you complete all your cases and get back to the heliport at noon with an A ranking and get the true ending in 72 Hour Mode to unlock Overtime Mode, which I’ve done. Here’s the trick — after doing so, you unlock Infinity Mode and must stay alive more seven days (or so I’m told). I haven’t gone back to the mall to finish this task yet, but I imagine I will need a serious guide to accomplish either of these. Got tips? Post ’em up, people!

Time Investment vs. payoff – 4 (out of 10) There are a number of achievements you can bang out just by running around and doing them, which is fun considering the zombie-killing shenanigans you’ll get yourself into. Really, though, this is a thinking, plotting, long-distance runner’s game when it comes to achievements because many are tied to scenarios that take some sophisticated planning to pull off.

Overall – 6 (out of 10) Kudos to Capcom for getting on the achievement bandwagon so early in 360’s lifecycle. These could’ve been lame, but they took the time to come up with some humdingers, some of which many people probably think are too humdingery. They’ll take you a while, and you’ll probably die more than once as you trudge through, but it’s all worth it end when you can double-lariat, zombie-walk, and Megaman Buster your way to victory with a totally pimped out Level 50 Frank West.

As always, we invite you to send in reviews of your favorite achievements in a game. A quick note: The games don’t have to be new — case in point, the Skate review below. Also, emailing us pithy thoughts like “the achievements in Earth Defense Force 2017 blow monkey balls” does not constitute a review, so make sure you follow the format you see here.

That said, here’s what ScreechSkater22 had to say about Skate:

Skate

By ScreechSkater22, a.k.a. Kyle King

Skate is a game that took me by surprise late last year. With its revolutionary yet sensible controls, it took no time at all to come to the conclusion that this is how a skateboarding game should be made. And although I have an excellent collection of Tony Hawk memories from the past decade, each rehash and “reinvention” of the series has become almost as stale as Dynasty Warriors. I could go on forever about how Skate dethroned the competition and has become the new standard in cruising on a console, but I’d rather review what’s really satisfying about the game: unlocking its achievements!

Best Achievement – Master Flicker (100 pts.) Earn All Milestones.Earning all milestones includes recording all of the video challenges, beating every pro at SKATE, completing every pro skater challenge, completing every medical milestone, performing every trick in the Trick Book, etc. It is basically beating the entirety of the game’s offline content, which unlocks a rewarding 100 points. However, for completing all of the milestones that I previously mentioned, you unlock many achievements along the way. In total, these “along the way” achievements will grant you a hefty sum of 465 points before even unlocking the 100 for Master Flicker. This is the exact type of achievement I love to see because not only is Skate extremely fun and satisfying in its own right, you are rewarded for playing through the main content of the game.

Worst Achievement – Skate Celebrity (10 pts.) Reach 20 reviews on a single uploaded photo or piece of footage. This was a tough pick for Skate because almost all of the achievements are practical and can be achieved by most players with a little bit of dedication. This achievement, however, gives no real control to the player. In order to achieve these 10 points, you have to first upload footy or photos, and pray to Buddha that at least 20 people give it a review on the Skate reel website. While this is a neat idea, the fact that you have absolutely no control over who views your uploaded media, if anyone, can be upsetting to people who may have not unlocked this achievement yet. Basically, people are generally lazy, and if you have unlocked this bad boy, consider yourself awesome. Oh, and by the way, telling 20 of your friends to rate your footy is cheating!

Easiest Achievement – THREE-WAY TIE between Footy = Footage (Save a Replay in Career Mode), Exhibitionist (Upload Footage to Skate reel) and Try Online (Join an online session) All worth 5 points, these achievements are some of the most effortless achievements I’ve seen in a game. Footy = Footage can be unlocked immediately after the introductory tutorial in the community center. All you have to do is skate around, press start, and enter the replay editor, and save a piece of film to your hard drive. Simple as pie. Exhibitionist is only a bit tougher, as uploading that piece of footy to the Skate reel website is just a few more button presses away. And for Try Online, you only have to hop into another player’s session and hop out for another five points. You just kickflipped your way to 15 points in under five minutes.

Hardest Achievement – Enduring Icon (20 pts.) Earn 2000 total EXP points.This achievement doesn’t make much sense at only 20 points, but you get at least 100-150 points more along the way, which takes the edge off of this a bit. To become an Icon Trickster or Icon Racer (both 100 points each), you have to gain 600 EXP points in either one. You usually gain about 10-16 EXP with each win, so Online Addict (Complete 50 online game sessions) will more than likely be unlocked as well along the way for another 50 gamerscore. After you unlock Icon Racer or Icon Trickster, you have to keep winning online matches until your EXP goes from 600 to 2000, which will take some serious time and dedication. Props to anyone who unlocks!

Time Investment vs. Payoff – 8 (out of 10) Honestly, this game is the best skateboarding game ever made, which means hours and hours of your time will ollie away without you even realizing. The career mode is beefy at a solid 10 hours if you try and rush your way through, which will yield about 500 points. Otherwise, completing the game’s achievement list could lead you to upwards of 50 or 60 hours of gameplay, not to mention all of the time spent freeskating around the city.

Overall – 9 (out of 10) The only real difficulty with any of these achievements comes from the amount of commitment it takes to unlock some of them. The real beauty with achievement lists similar to Skate is that it isn’t the type of game where you go into your guide every five minutes to check and see how close you are to the next achievement or how many stupid little items you have to collect to get a measly five points. You simply just play the game and watch the score increase.

*****

 As we mentioned earlier, we came across this little site that lets you make your own achievements, as you can see below. Check it out and see what you can come up with!

Sound off below with your comments, your gripes, and the gamertags for anyone who loves to stay up until 3am playing Burnout Paradise. Next time we’ll bring you Devil May Cry 4 and a ton more achievement talk. Now go get to unlocking!