Even though it might still be too cold where you live to play your 360 without wearing gloves, a mini-stampede of promising pre-spring games has arrived at retailers. Thank the maker! What does that mean for you, heroes? It’s time to warm up those fingers cuz we gots the hot skinny on the newest Achievements around, right here, right now. Devil May Cry 4? Check. Turok? You know it. Culdcept Saga? Frak yes! We also have two more supa-dupa Xbox Live Arcade titles for your consideration: Discs of Tron and Rez HD. Plus, in case you missed the Achievements-fest that is The Simpsons game, we have another reader review, this time by Nick Norman aka shadowdude55. (Email us to send us your reader review).

Per usual, The Scoreboard puts every other pantywaist gaming site to shame by giving you the most crucial, investigative and probing gaming coverage you’ll find on the intertubez: we cover goddamned Achievements, biatches!

Devil May Cry 4

For all you Dante (and Nero) fans out there, you’re prolly smitten by now with the butter-smooth graphics and the beyond-frenetic gameplay in the DMC series, and the first to double-jump its way over to the 360. Thanks Capcom! For all you achievement fans, unless you’re really, really good at DMC games, this might as well be called Achievement Whores Will Cry. Meaning, the average gamer will unlock about 200 points (if you’re really trying) with a decent but par playthrough. Ouch! For everyone else, most notably those of you who pride yourselves on actually becoming truly skilled at a game in order to unlock these little gamerscore-boosting bastards, you will feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven. By far, DMC4 offers the most challenging and “most worthy of being called Achievements” Achievements…maybe in the entire 360 back catalog. That is, until Ninja Gaiden II comes out, of course.

Best achievement – Tonight, We Dine in Hell (10 pts.) Clear All Missions in Hell or Hell Mode. Faaaaaak. Remember the Dante Must Die Difficulty from DMC3? Hell or Hell is sooooo much harder. So much. This is one of the greatest tests of gamers mettle and hails back to a time when the simplest-looking games actually took months to master and beat. Remember beating the Toad Mother Ship on Bucky O’Hare, or that tortuously fast Wind Tunnel level on Battletoads? If you do, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re anything like me—I know I am—you’ll agree that few achievements in any 360 games can be classified as truly epic. This is one of the greats, one for the history books, one that will be immortalized in song by warriors in mead halls, spilling ale whilst they boom on and on in Gaelic verse about your kick-assery. You should get a medal from Capcom for unlocking this, emblazoned with 1000 karats of diamonds that spell out WIN!

Worst Achievement – Skill Collector (50 pts.) Acquire all of Nero or Dante’s skills. There are two of these, each worth 50 points (one for Dante and one for Nero), but they are a bit lame because they don’t really stand up to many of these gnarlier feats. That, and they’re not all that critical for gameplay. Sure, it’s great to have access to every important ability, but you’re going to be able to buy all of these skills if you keep playing through, and there are more than a few skills that don’t do anything to make combat any easier (like Air Hike, WTF?). For a game with such smart, challenging achievements, these and the Proud Soul achievements are a bit on the meh side. 

Easiest Achievement – Smokin'! (10 pts.) Complete a Stylish Rank S (Smokin'!) combo. Not that this is really easy on a Simpsons level or anything, but once you get the hang of the combat mechanics you’ll be pulling off Smokin’ combos and putting the smackdown on Scarecrows, Frosts. and Mephistos in no time.

Hardest Achievement – King of the Palace (20 pts.) Clear All Bloody Palace stages with an S Ranking. There was a time when one of the biggest brags in gaming was reaching the 9999th level of the Bloody Palace in DMC 3. In case you don’t know, Bloody Palace Mode (unlocked once you beat the game on Devil Hunter Difficulty) is simply an arena test where the game turns on the enemy faucet and never shuts off. This go-around, there’s 101 stages stretched over 10 circles, each with a boss at the end. Oh yeah, and it’s timed. Poop. You’ll actually unlock circle achievements along the way, which is a bonus, but beating this mode  is no short order; its nonstop barrage of enemies makes clearing every circle with an S ranking close to a godly achievement. More singing will ensue from stein-wielding warriors once you unlock this. I still haven’t made it past the 6th circle. For better or worse, this is my Mile High Club or Free Runner achievement for DMC4. God be with me!

Time Investment vs. payoff – 2 (out of 10) You can sink hours and hours into DMC4, often getting nowhere if a certain challenge proves too great. Once you’ve beaten the game on Devil Hunter Difficulty and start making your way through Son of Sparda Difficulty, Bloody Palace and the remaining three difficulties (there are a total of six difficulties, requiring six playthroughs. Ugh!), you’ll have lost more of your life to Dante and all the backtracking in this game than you handed over to Oblivion and Mass Effect combined. 

Overall – 8 (out of 10) Even though the game is hella difficult and will likely not yield much of a gamerscore boost for the average gamer, Devil May Cry 4 represents a return to truly difficult hardcore video games, and stands out with few peers among it in the 360 library. Personally, I think this whole casual-game thing is softening up gamers like too much Pizza Hut and Hohos. Too many games make things easy on players these days, whether it be removing the consequence of death (Prey, anyone?) or even doing away with “lives” and health packs in favor of regenerating health (why couldn’t they have thought of that for Super Ghouls and Goblins?). DMC4 is tough and makes no bones about it. If you can earn any of the toughies here, I predict there will be few other Achievements that you’ll be more proud of.

TUROK

Call me a purist, but when I heard that Tal'Set, my favorite dino hunter, was being replaced by some grunt named Joseph and we’d be crashing on a random planet rather than delving deeper into the Lost Lands backstory (didn’t the sucky Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion already try this?), I was less than enchanted. The single-player game doesn’t deliver any big moments like destroying the Campaigner in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (there are some tough boss fights, though), and the multiplayer doesn’t really best the imaginative modes (Frag Tag, anyone?) in the almost ten-year-old, multiplayer-centric Turok: Rage Wars. All my hatin’ aside, I knew there was still many a pwnasaur that needed taking down, so I slapped my 70 bucks (sigh) onto the counter at my local Gamestop and signed up for duty. The Achievements help take the ho-hum edge off, with only a few scoops of vanilla among gallons of chocolate-chip cookie-dough.

Best achievement – Dino Hunter (15 pts.) You assert your position in the jungle, killing 20 Dinos in one public game. This has to be the funnest, funniest, and most shenanigan-worthy achievement I’ve come across in a long time. There’s one map in particular (I can’t remember, I think it’s Spire) where dinosaurs jump over one particular wall in pairs. Once everyone in the game picked up on the dino-spawn point, the comedy that ensued is barely explainable. In short, during a CTF game, almost everyone on every team abandoned the objective and went to stand by the wall to takedown as many dinos as they could in an effort to nab this Achievement. And people think gamers don’t care about Achievements. Hah! Seriously, it was a sight to be seen, people fighting over dinos to get their 20 kills in before the rounds ticked away. Priceless. RUNNER-UP: Grab Bag (10 pts.) Kill at least 1 creature, 1 enemy, 1 teammate, and yourself in the same round of a public match. This would’ve easily won, but the folks at Propaganda changed it, removing the “kill teammate” requirement with a mandatory update (the Achievement description now reads “You killed at least 1 creature, enemy, and yourself in a public match, just for fun”. This is still one of the better, more humorous Achievements to come along, especially if it still demanded a mandatory betrayal. At least you still have a good reason to kill yourself…in the game of course.

Worst Achievement – Resurrection (10 pts.) Finish a player match free-for-all game with at least 10 deaths and 10 kills. The genius that dreamed this Achievement up must not play many free-for-all games. There’s something about nabbing freebie kills that leaves you feeling all dirty inside; when a glut of players who, with 10 kills completed, come running into a firefight jumping up and down yelling, “Hey fellas, shoot me, shoot me now,” you know you have a bad Achievement on your hands. Pffft.

Easiest Achievement – Massive Battle (10 pts.) You find strength in numbers by participating in a public 6 on 6 team game. Jump into a public Large Team match. Make sure 6 people are on each team when the game starts (it doesn’t matter if anyone quits during the game). Play. Achievement unlocked.

Hardest Achievement – Arch Nemesis (10 pts.)  Kill the same player 5 times in a row without killing anyone else in between during a public match. Ex-squeeze me? Uh, yeah, I tried this like 20 times, and no matter what I did, I could only get up to three consecutive kills, but only because I would run into another enemy player along the way that was begging for a bullet in the face. I would try to run away or suggest settling our differences with a friendly game of backgammon with the non-Nemesis player, but nothing would work except ramming a knife into his chest. My suggestion: do this with a buddy, have him cover you while you look for the punk who’s feeling lucky and git your five consecutive kills. Teamwork, boys!

Time Investment vs. payoff – 4 (out of 10) I played about three hours of the multiplayer and unlocked six or seven Achievements for about 80 points without even trying, which felt great. The campaign, though, provides a much slower progression with the requisite “Kill 50 bad guys”, “get 50 stealth kills” or “watch 25 load screens” sort of stuff. That was joke, but that actually would be a funny Achievement.

Overall – 7 (out of 10) I really didn’t like Turok. That said, the Achievements are interesting enough to keep me playing a bit longer, at least enough to overlook the painfully short co-op missions, the retardedly arbitrary knife-triggering mechanic in multiplayer (which feels more random than a chainsaw kill in Gears of War), and the unacceptably laggy online gameplay.  

CULDCEPT SAGA

Playing through Culdcept Saga, I realized two things about myself: I love card-based games, and I saved a lot of money during the initial Magic: The Gathering craze in the ’90s because I didn’t know then that I love card-based games. If you’re new to the world of Culdcept, it’s very much like Magic: The Gathering, but played on a Monolpoly board. It’s actually pretty simple but takes a little bit to wrap your brain around. Suffice it to say, I really dug it and I especially dug the Achievements.

Best achievement – Path to Blessing (20 pts.) Upon the Stairway to the Gods, become the creator of a new world. The story in Culdcept isn’t anything to write the Palace of the Sun about, but there are a few key moments that are great, like the decision you must make to become the Ultimate Dark or Light Cepter, both of which will yield a cool 20 points regardless of which path you choose. Making your way to the Stairway to the Gods is equally rewarding. In Culdcept Saga terms, its like when Luke gazed upon Darth Vader maskless for the first time at the end of Return of the Jedi. Okay, it’s nothing like that, but it’s still pretty cool.

Worst Achievement – Chief of Goblins (30 pts.) Raise Red Cap's ST and HP to 300 or higher during battle and achieve victory. This took some tinkering to accomplish, namely because you can only ever have six cards in your hand and you need 15 goblins on the board (and you’ll need to keep them alive and occupying territory). The key? Get the Goblin’s Lair card, which is a spell card that you can play at the beginning of your next turn to summon a Goblin onto empty square’s you land on; keep doing this until you have the board hopping with goblin’s (the enemies count as well). Once you count 15, attack the next creature you land on with Red Cap and blam-o. Sounds easy, right? Yeah, no, it wasn’t. It took me friggin’ forever to figure out (which I was actually only able to do with a tip from a buddy). Another problem: Other than figuring this out, is you have to win the Goblin’s Lair card and have it in your book. Since it’s rare, this whole thing takes some serious work and trial and error to achieve.

Easiest Achievement – Any of the Ally Achievements (5 pts.) Your path through the story mode will change depending on who you align yourself with, but all you have to do is pick one, and you’ll be unlocking this gamerscore goodness.

Hardest Achievement – Berserker’s Honor (30 pts.) Win 10 consecutive online matches. This is tough. The most games I’ve won in a row is three. Maybe that’s because I suck; I’m still relatively new to Culdcept, so I’m okay with entertaining that possibility. But there is a fair amount of randomness that goes into every match of Culdcept Saga, and with each roll of the die, your fate is out of your hands, so to basing an Achievement on this seems pretty gnarly. Still, I know there are seasoned players who will unlock this in a jiffy, namely because I keep playing and losing to them.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 4 (out of 10) You’ll unlock a decent amount of points just for playing through the single-player campaign and doing it fairly well, but matches can take along time, especially your first few. If you’re looking to boost, go buy Avatar.

Overall – 6 (out of 10) Well, like I said, this game is paced differently than most of the ADD-inducing games that are more popular these days. Culdcept Saga takes time on every front — time that’s well spent. The Achievements are thoughtful, and the gameplay is addicting if you give yourself over to the fact that it can be fun to play a videogame even if there’s no air-strikes to call in, no space marines with which to finish the fight. and no Little Sisters to save.

DISCS OF TRON

God, I love Xbox Live Arcade. It brings back memories of all the time I wasted playing videogames when I should’ve been studying or getting together with the ladies… yeah right! FTW! I loved hanging out at my local arcade, and I remember that fateful day, sometime in 1983 (wait, is that 25 years ago? Geeesh!) when Discs of Tron came onto the quarter-swallowing scene and hypnotized me with the prospect of continually derezzing Sark, over and over (and over and over) in all of Tron’s blacklit neon glory. This new Xbox Live Arcade game (it hit Marketplace this past Wednesday) is a blast, but it gets old pretty fast. Thankfully, the bounty of a quick and dirty 200 points is enough to keep me jacked in, at least until they bring Zombies Ate My Neighbors or TMNT IV: Turtles in Time to Arcade (please Konami, PLEASE!).

Best achievement – Teamwork (25 pts. total) Achieve a score of 50,000 or more playing an Xbox Live Co-op game. Much like the recent Bomberman Live release, these ports feature great online multiplayer and co-op, which means a little variety when me and my friends get bored of playing Call of Duty 4 or Halo 2 (SWAT, chumps, you know it!). This Achievement is really fun and requires quite a bit of communication and, well, teamwork to pull off.

Worst Achievement – Sharp Shooter (10 points each) Destroy 5 enemy discs in the air in a row. This is kind of a poor act to reward, simply because there’s not a tremendous amount of premeditated accuracy with old Tron’s discs here. Sometimes when you think you’re flinging your disc at a certain angle, it just zings out of your intended path, wildly ricocheting with no rhyme or reason. This Achievement should be called Lucky Shot, because that’s about what it takes to get this. For the record, I got 4 in a row, so perhaps I’m just bitter.

Easiest Achievement – Fearless (10 pts.) Derezz Sark 4 times without using your deflector. I did this accidentally in my first match because I didn’t know which button/trigger engaged the deflector. The key to unlocking this: don’t read the instructions.

Hardest Achievement – Immortal (45 pts.) Rack up 60,000 points without dying. This should really be called Incorrigible, what with how long this takes. I played for what felt like forever and I only got to 20,000ish points. It’ll take a lot of space Frisbee to reach 60,000 points. 

Time Investment vs. payoff – 8 (out of ten) If you can outlast the inevitable bore factor that will set in after about five minutes of playing the same game over and over, you’ll bag most of these 200 points in one sit-down.

Overall – 8 (out of 10) Discs of Tron is stupid simple, from gameplay to Achievements, and offers some easy points and fun gameplay, but after you unlock most of these and/or beat the game, you’ll probably forget about this game for another 25 years.

REZ HD

If you missed Rez when it hit PlayStation 2 in 2002, you owe it to yourself to try out this synesthesia, on-rails trance shooter. Confused? It’s actually so simple (download the demo to test-drive the first level up to the first boss battle); lock onto mid-air targets, taking them down while floating in the air, and progress through five worlds to face a boos fight at the end of each. Rez is a great comedown game after a serious night of Team Fortress 2 or Burnout Paradise, and the added incentive of unlocking some tasty achievers along the way makes it all the more playworthy.

Best achievement – eden (20 pts.) Clear play mode area5. We won’t give away the fun of beating the final regular level, that would just be mean. But you have to do it.

Worst Achievement – The Rezident (15 pts.) Achieve 100% shot down and support item in areas1-5, or play for over 10 hours. Yeah, like I have time to play Rez for 10 hours straight? I know creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi is all about this new version, with all its graphical wizbangery and such, but 10 hours, dude? I wonder if ole’ Mizy has played it for 10 hours straight without wanting to hang himself at least once.

Easiest Achievement – The Earth (10 pts.) Clear play mode area1. You’ll be able to do this in one or two tries, and since the game is so mesmerizing, you’ll have a great time doing it. Just remember once you get to the final boss at the end of the level to aim at the nodes along the equator of the globe (and hold the fire button down until it maxes out).

Hardest Achievement – Laser Assassin (15 pts.) Shot down over 95% in areas1-5. Similar to the 100% hit ratio in the Rezident Achievement, you get 15 points for at least reaching 95%, which is actually pretty doable after a couple of tries on each level. The highest I’ve gotten on one level is 98%, so to clear all five at 95% would take some serious focus. I guess Mizuguchi-san was of the mind that if you kept trying for the 100% and didn’t quite get it, you at least get a little some-some for almost nabbing it.

Time Investment vs. payoff – 7 (out of 10) You can play this casually over a few sessions and unlock most of these, considering there are only five regular levels to the game. You’ll need a few playthroughs to grab things like the Power Breaker, but you’ll clear almost everything in the 10-hour time.

Overall – 8 (out of 10)  As I said above, not only is Rez really fun and captivating to play, but you’ll reap some serious gamerscore in the process, which always makes a game better, no matter what anyone tells you.

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 with the Simpsons review below. Also, emailing us thoughtful soundbites like “Aci3v3m3nt wh0r3z t3h sux0rz” does not constitute a review, so try and follow our format.

That said, here’s what Nick Norman had to say about The Simpsons.

THE SIMPSONS

By Nick Norman a.k.a. shadowdude55

Best Achievement: Power Up! (15 points) Finish Enter the Cheatrix. This is my pick for best achievement purely because it's the most enjoyable level in the game. With parodies like "Need for Speedo" and watching EA lampoon themselves and the game industry as a whole, you'll keep chuckling throughout the entire mission.
 
Hardest Achievement: Complete Package (150 points) Finish every episode, find every collectible, and discover every Video Game Cliché Moment. This is the probably the toughest because it makes you do the most, and it’s just time consuming. At least the collectibles aren't hidden like Crackdown's — Springfield is pretty small, and there are only 300 there, with around 15 or 20 in each of the 20-some levels. The hardest Achievement after Complete Package are the two that make you finish every level's target time and do every level's time challenge. If you do everything you need for these three, you should have almost every other achievement in the game.

Easiest Achievement: Press START to Play (5 points): Easiest achievement...ever.
You get this when you press start at the title screen. This truly is the easiest achievement ever — just don't expect the rest of the game to be like this.
 
Worst Achievement: Heavenly Score (20 points) Get a perfect score on the final Boss battle. This isn't really a bad achievement, because the rest are good, but out of all of them, this is the most frustrating. The last boss challenges you to a DDR-meets-Guitar Hero mini-game where you have to press the Right on the D-pad when an enemy gets close. Passing the level isn't too hard, but not missing an enemy or pressing the D-pad even one too many times makes it crazy. The needed perfection coupled with the lame, mushy D-pad that Microsoft might think about revising means you'll be retrying this a lot.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 7 (out of 10) After one 10-15 hour playthrough, you'll have around 400 points. The rest come from collectibles and replaying past levels. To get most of the achievements, you're looking at no more than 15-20 hours.
 
Overall Score: 8 (out of 10) The great humor and gaming references that only true gamers will understand make the trek through the story that much more enjoyable. Even on your second or third time through for most episodes, you'll see or hear things you missed before as you're collecting stuff or doing time challenges. This is the Simpsons game we've been waiting for and, with these great achievements, it’s a pleasure to play.

*****

That’s it for now, kiddies. Sound off below with your comments, your gripes, and the gamertags of anyone who wants to play SWAT on Halo 2 with the greatest shenanigan-pulling Halo 2 players around (yeah, me and my buddy).  Next time we’ll bring you the scoop on The Club and a ton more achievement talk. Now go get unlocking!