Aliens: Colonial Marines - The Breakdown

I have never been more stressed out or exhausted when playing a game as I am right now. Today, I woke up with 6 achievements remaining and, after spending more hours than any human ought to spend playing Aliens: Colonial Marines, I've come out victorious. It is not a glamorous or proud victory, but a victory it is nonetheless. Outside of asking someone to help me on a terrible Challenge, I got everything as legit as I could, given how few people are playing the game. I played a few multiplayer maps solo just to beat them, but that's about it.

After playing each stage multiple times, hearing the dialog so much that I could probably recite it from memory, and screaming in frustration more than I can count, it's finally over. Or as over as it can be, given I don't have the DLC. I'm 50/50 and 1000 gamerscore richer. But was it worth it?

No, it really wasn't.

A game like Colonial Marines illustrates how bad achievements can extend a game's life in the wrong way. I'm fine hunting down Dog Tags and Audio Logs. I'm okay with beating the game on higher difficulties. It's grinding out specific little things in multiplayer or trying to speed kill a boss that's been buffed to make that nigh impossible that I have trouble with. But as the days passed and the number of lines in my text file got fewer and fewer, my morale started to return. When I beat the final Challenge, it gave me the jolt I needed to push myself through the final achievements.

I've been frustrated striving to perfect games in the past. Catwoman's final Campaign in Arkham City. The drinking games in Watch Dogs. Finders Keepers in Thief. They're all terrible in their own way, but no game has ever done more to my mental state than Colonial Marines has. I've used obscenities that don't exist, I've rage quit the game in the middle of a stage/multiplayer match, I've sat and stared at the walls in my room for lengthy periods of time, and I've wanted to just take the disc out, snap it, and be done with it. The only reason I still understand the concept of fun is because I've been playing Symphony of the Night and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate off and on, as well.

So, here we are at another achievement breakdown. And I think I'm going to expand upon something I did in the first breakdown, for Amalur. There, I marked the worst achievements I had to deal with in red. I think I should just do a general color-coded rating system from now on. Something like...

Blue: Either based on plot progression or something I didn't actively hunt, I just got it as I played the game normally.
Green: Something that wasn't too hard to get, whether by accident or while actively hunting it.
Yellow:  Annoying to get, but only took a few tries.
Orange: Provided ample frustration, but wasn't enough to get me spitting mad.
Red: The worst of the worst. 

Something like that. I'll refine it as I do more of these, I'm sure. So... let's get down to it, shall we?

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...But No Cigar: Rescue a teammate from a close encounter - I had to start Level 1 with a second controller hooked up, playing split-screen solo because it was the easiest way. I went through the level until you reach the spot where you cut Keyes off the wall. I let Player 2 walk up to trigger the Xenomorph in the wall coming out and grabbing him. Killed the alien with my controller and got the achievement. Probably could've gotten it for saving an NPC teammate from a facehugger in a later stage, but this was quick and simple.

Adaptive Morphology: Upgrade every Appearance slot once for a Xenomorph class - This just took a bit of time in Multiplayer. As I was doing Challenges and working on raising my Rank anyway, this didn't take any effort to do.

Adios, Muchachos: Gib two enemies at once. - Actually got this completely by accident while working on a shotgun-related Challenge. Not difficult to do, so you'll probably get it at some point without actually trying for it.

Another Bug Hunt: Complete a Challenge - Aaaahahahaha... a single Challenge. Ahhh, that was a long time ago...

Another Day in the Corps!: Complete Distress - You get this for beating Level 1.

Anytime, Anywhere: Kill a Crusher without it damaging you. - Surprisingly, for all the crap you have to do with Crushers in this game, this is actually the easiest to get. I got it without trying in multiplayer by shooting at a Crusher that was halfway across the map. I happened to get the killing blow, and so I got the achievement. Even if you didn't get it here, you'd have to boost for the Uncrushable Challenge, so you'd get it there.

Arbitrarily Exterminated: Kill 2179 Xenomorphs - Referencing, I believe, the year that Aliens took place, this one you'll probably have to grind a bit for. There's a long Smart Gun section in Level 4, I believe it was. I sat and just Restart Checkpoint'd for about 45 minutes and got it that way. Annoying and dull, but not difficult to do.

Bad Feeling About This Drop: Complete Sulaco Falls - You get this one for beating Level 3.

Coming Outta the Walls!: Kill a Xenomorph climbing on the walls or ceiling. - Not difficult to get at all. You'll probably get this somewhere in Level 1, in fact. I want to say I did, but it feels like I got this one years ago at this point...

Distinguished Service Medal: Complete all Challenges - This is the one, right here. This one almost completely broke me in half. This was the cause of so much pain that I can't even begin to describe everything that's terrible about it. I've done a couple posts now about Colonial Marines, and there was plenty of talk about how terrible Challenges are, both in general and in this game. Thanks to a lovely Xbox Live user by the name of Nergal Pluton, I was able to get Uncrushable and that was the turning point in me feeling like I could actually perfect the game again. If you're reading this - thank you.

Don't Count Me Out: Revive a teammate. - I believe I got this in one of the two or three random Campaign Co-Op levels I played with random people. Everyone gets incapped sooner or later. You just have to be there to pick them up again.

Dragged Queen: Complete Home - The final level of the game, and one I got exceedingly good at in the lead-up to hitting Rank 60, as I played it over and over on Ultimate Badass. It's short, it's simple, and when you know the optimal route, you can beat it in 3 minutes or less. And that's with the opening cutscene of Winter talking to Cruz and stumbling out into the hangar. 

Easter Egg: Find the Easter Egg - Tap a keypad that's only slightly hidden, go back a couple rooms through a now-open door, and look at some Xeno eggs that have been painted up a bit. Not hard to find.

Eat This!: Kill a Xenomorph with a shotgun at very close range. - This'll come naturally as you play the game. Sooner or later, a bug's gonna leap at your face, and you're going to pop him right in front of you.

Entry Prohibited: Kill 10 Xenomorphs that are using vents. - The game has a very broad definition of 'vents,' as you can pop Xenos that are coming out of any old hole in the ground. Or wall. Or ceiling. Or not coming out of anything at all, really. More than likely, you'll get this as you play through the game. Pay attention when you get it and see if there are actually any vents where you are!

Field Modified, Kill Certified: Upgrade every slot for a weapon. - This'll happen over time as you Rank Up and do more Challenges with certain gear. I think either the Service or the Combat Pistol is the one you'll open everything up for first. Tedious, but inoffensive.

Field Promotion: Earn Rank 2 as a Marine - Painfully simple, and will likely happen during or after Level 1.

Fire Drill: Arm the emergency release and escape in under 2:30 on Sulaco Falls - Alright, so this one was a turd to do and took more than a few tries. Basically, the hangar you're trying to escape from is filled with Weyland-Yutani PMCs. Why PMCs were augured into an Aliens title is anyone's guess, but they're shooting at you and respawning constantly as you make your way around the upper level of the hangar, flipping switches and waiting on boxes to move into place. It's not a terribly tight timer, but it's tight enough that you'll make mistakes as you try and rush through it.

Game Over, Man!: Complete all Campaign levels on any difficulty. - As you'll have to play through the game multiple times for various things, you'll get this sooner or later. Sadly, it's not a very accurate description, as anyone trying to perfect Colonial Marines will be far, far from being done with the game when they get this.

Heavy Lifting: Defeat the Raven in under 1:10 on Soldier difficulty or higher.  - This was the final achievement I got. The Raven is a larger than average Xenomorph and the boss of stage 5, which is named after him. You fight the Raven in a Power Loader as smaller Xenos scurry about getting in potshots and generally being a nuisance. This was the final achievement I got, because I thought I would have to clear my 360's cache to be able to get it. See, the game was patched at some point to make enemies tougher. This includes the Raven. Clearing your cache and playing offline can let you fight him as he original was, but also runs the risk of A) erasing your save game and B) resetting your Ranks. Obviously, I was not going to endanger either, so I did it last. I did it last and I did it legit. I figured I'd run the stage normally before resorting to a cache clear. And on the 13th try, when I was ready to give up for the night, the achievement popped. It wasn't even a particularly good run, either. I had a much better one a few attempts prior, but since the achievement pops only when it's too late to Restart Checkpoint, I never got to see if it would've granted me the achievement or not. Terrible achievement, in any case. If you buff bosses, change the achievement. Alternately, don't have stupid speed kill achievements for bosses!

I Can Handle Myself: Purchase all Upgrades for a weapon - Again, this is just something you'll get as you Rank Up, do Challenges, and unlock more stuff. Not sure what the earliest you can get it is, but it's far enough back that it couldn't have been tough.

I Feel Safer Already: Have another player join your party. - Start game, fire up Controller 2, have Controller 2 join a Private Campaign Co-Op level. Ta-da!

I Heard THAT: Collect all 12 Audio Logs - Actually one of the last 6 achievements I had. Generally, they aren't out of your way, you just have to look around for them. Still, there are various guides in text and video format to help you out if you need it. Not difficult or time consuming, this one got put off simply because I'm lazy and bad at spotting things.

I Like to Keep These Handy: Collect all 6 Legendary weapons. - Weapons that belonged to characters from Aliens, these are littered across the game's stages. For the most part, they're all in areas you'd be in while playing, so you should be able to get them all in your first playthrough.

I Love the Corps!: Earn Rank 60 as a Marine. - Apone, you may love the Corps, but I sure as hell don't. By the time I had finished almost everything but completing the game on Ultimate Badass, I had just crested Rank 50. This was the second to last achievement I got, and I got it by running Level 11, Home, over and over on Ultimate Badass. You get a lot of XP for completing it and, again, even on the hardest setting you can knock it out in 3 minutes if you know how to move. There's no need to get to this level, and it's pretty unlikely you'll get there without resorting to the same type of tactic I used.

It's a Dry Heat: Kill 3 enemies with a single U4 Firebomb - This one actually took me longer than I'd like to admit. There's a spot in Level 3, Sulaco Falls, where teammates Bella and O'Neal stop to talk while looking out a window. Then you'll go to a door and on the other side are a mess of Weyland-Yutani guys. Wait behind a box on the other side of the door for a second, then huck the Firebomb when they're all grouped up. It may take a few tries, and you'll definitely want to be on Recruit. There's really no reason why I didn't get this much, much sooner.

Just a Grunt: Complete Hope in Hadley's. - This one's for beating Level 9.

Lean and Mean: Earn Rank 20 as a Marine - It might not take too long, but the worst is still ahead of you. Enjoy the grind, rookie.

Let's Rock!: Kill 10 Xenomorphs in a game with the M56A2 Smart Gun - You'll get this, no problem, in Level 4. There's a whole sequence where you'll be toting around the Smart Gun, and there's far more than 10 Xenos in that hallway.

Love at First Sight: Survive a close encounter with a Facehugger  - Earliest you can get this is in Level 2 as you're en route to Bella's location. You'll run through an area filled with eggs. The first closed one will split as you approach and, if you let it, a Facehugger will jump on you. 

Majority Shareholder: Spend 30 Commendations - These are the points you get when you gain a Rank or do some Challenges. Takes awhile, but if you're working on other stuff, it'll come quickly enough.

Micro Changes in Air Density: Track 100 hostile targets with the Motion Tracker - Could probably get this in Level 2, if not Level 1. Neither difficult nor time consuming.

Mostly Come at Night...: Find Newt's doll - This one's in the Boiler section of Level 5. Early on, when I first started the game, I got dumped into this stage in co-op. It was actually the first level I played, and I got shown its location by the host. It's not difficult to spot, though. It's between sections of Boilers, you just have to keep an eye out.

Need a Deck of Cards?: Set up a UA 571-C Remote Sentry - You'll get this and Let's Rock close together. The first time you set a Sentry up is in Level 4, just before you do the Smart Gun sequence.

No Need For Alarm: Complete One Bullet without setting off the alarm - I got this one my first time through Level 7. Basically, you want to put a sound suppressor on one of your guns - I recommend the Battle Rifle - and then just go slowly once O'Neal points out the fact that dudes are near alarms. It's not exceedingly hard, but it can be annoying and tricky.

No Offense: Melee a Lurker that is pouncing towards you - This might take awhile, but it can be done in multiplayer or Campaign. You'll have a much easier time of it in multiplayer, though, as Lurkers in Campaign stay hidden and move much faster.

Not Bad For a Human: Complete all Campaign levels on Hardened difficulty - The difficulty order in this game is as follows: Recruit, Soldier, Hardened, Ultimate Badass. Here's the thing - outside of doing a level on Hardened for a Challenge, you don't need to do more. You get the achievement if you beat the game on Ultimate Badass. And since there's also an achievement for beating that difficulty, just play through on UB and get both at once! It's what I did.

Oorah to Ashes: Collect a Dog Tag - The first of many.  I collected my first Dog Tag in Level 1, I think. I was keeping an eye out since there's something to get in every stage. Getting one is not difficult.

Perfect Killing Machine: Upgrade every Loadout slot for a Xenomorph class - Purely a multiplayer thing, you'll have to put a lot of time into the game to get all your slots opened up. This one's a time sink, like a lot of them are. Unlike Marines, however, multiplayer is the only way to Rank Up, so they'll come fewer and farther between.

Quoth the Raven: Complete The Raven - This is Level 5. You'll be seeing it far more than you'd like to by the time you get that final achievement.

Ready to Fry Half a City: Edit a Marine Loadout - You can get this one really quickly. I can't recall if you can mess with your Loadout at Rank 1 or if you need a level or two. Either way, you can do it within your first hour playing the game.

Remember the Fallen: Collect all 35 Dog Tags - Shoutouts to Youtube channel PowerPyx for helping me collect the Dog Tags and Audio Logs. In the last few months, the PowerPyx channel has helped me out on crappy achievements more than I could probably remember. If it wasn't for their Finders Keepers video, I never would have perfected Thief. Some of these Dog Tags are really mean and hidden in places you'd never think to look. Don't feel bad if you have to check a guide - they're there for a reason. Don't make the hunt longer than it needs to be. This was one of my final 6.

Secreted From What?: Kill 5 Spitters without being damaged by acid - You'll probably get this as you level. You could get it in multiplayer too, though, and I believe that's where I got it. It's a small number, so whichever path you take, it won't be a long journey.

Short, Controlled Bursts: Defeat all Xenomorphs in the Sulaco hangar bay without them crossing your barricade - This one was a nightmare to get. This is in Level 1, around the midway point or so. I actually am not entirely sure how I got this, as I was dead at the time! That's not a clever Eddie Izzard reference, I had actually died and was staring at the black and white screen while I waited for the game to randomly decide it was okay for me to load the last checkpoint when the achievement popped. Took me about 20-30 minutes of trying on Recruit difficulty. If I had any advice, it's to wait until you're a higher Rank and have better guns. Trying this right out the gate is possible, but not recommended.

State of the Badass Art: Complete all Campaign levels on Ultimate Badass difficulty - The Raven will make you want to tear your hair out when you go for this. Not only does he do way more damage to you, the Soldier Xenos that are flooding the area will constantly be slapping your ass while you try and focus down the boss. There's a medkit in the area, but you'll have to risk getting out of the Power Loader to grab it. It's possible to solo this, but if you have a friend or two to take care of the minions while you focus on the Raven, you'll be fine. The rest of the levels aren't really awful. The best advice I can give on this one is to make the Battle Rifle your best friend and to always hang back as far as possible. Let the NPC Marines do your fighting for you for as long as they can hold out.

Stay Frosty: Complete an entire Challenge category - That'll be the middle category, as it only has like 13 Challenges in it. I can't recall what they are offhand, as I've tried to purge all memory of A:CM's Challenges from my brain.

Still Got a Job to Do: Complete Rampart - This one's given to you once you beat Level 8.

Structural Perfection: Edit a Xenomorph Loadout - This'll require a bit of multiplayer, but is nothing to write home about. Simple and straightforward.

You Look Just Like I Feel: Upgrade every Appearance slot once for your Marine - This'll take awhile, and you'll need to have gained quite a few Ranks and completed quite a few Challenges to open everything up. Consider this a milestone for your journey to perfection.

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And there we go, that's all of Aliens: Colonial Marines color coded for your convenience. And because I like colored text. Looking over the list, there are more blues than I thought there'd be. To be perfectly fair, most of the real problems I had with this game came in the form of various Challenges. I've gone over those enough, however. And, with this post finally coming to a close, my bug hunt is also at its end. I never thought I'd get it done, and I wanted it to end so many times. Now that it's done, do I feel relief? No. No, I don't. I just feel sort of hollow. 

I love the Alien franchise. Or... I loved it. There have been a lot of stinkers over the years, both in movie and game form. But the core experience is something so interesting that I can't help be sucked back in. I've purposely been avoiding Alien: Isolation footage. I'm scared of what it could be, and I'm scared of what it won't be. I don't know if I'll play it myself - there are a lot of games coming out around its release date - but I'll certainly watch videos of others doing so. If the achievements don't seem too bad, then I may give it a whirl.

I think what's most disappointing to me here is that there are glimmers of promise in this mess of a game. There are a few sequences I genuinely enjoyed and didn't mind replaying. I think if you bought the DLC and had more maps, multiplayer could be a reasonably entertaining way to kill some time, despite the buggy nature of the hit detection. And I think, were it just one team actually putting forth any effort, it could have been something great.

Instead, Gearbox did what they do best - they made things worse. Randy Pitchford is a terrible human being, although lying through his teeth about what this game is and was isn't even the tip of that particular iceberg. For a man who compared game criticism to child abuse and wallowed in angering feminists with Duke Nukem Forever, lying to peoples' faces is the same as breathing air is to the rest of us. 

But going after Pitchford is a fight for another day. A day that will come far sooner than I really would like it to. A day that I put Duke Nukem Forever into my 360, install it, and permanently add it to my list of games.

Aliens: Colonial Marines - The Breakthrough

As of this writing, I have 9 achievements and 30 Challenges left in Colonial Marines. I've completed all of one category of the latter and I'm 7 away from finishing up a second. The strange thing about this game is the walls you encounter. I beat my head against Sentry Duty for so long, and then this morning I got the remaining 4 turret kills I needed to complete it in the span of about 20 minutes.

I've beaten the game once and now I sort of have a proper idea of what to expect on harder difficulties. I've beaten Stage 2 on Hardened and Ultimate Badass difficulties. Honestly? I'll probably beat the final stage, 11, next. Because you can replay missions whenever, you can cherry pick the order you want to tackle them in. It's nice, because if I run into a lot of trouble on one, I can bail and go back to it later. The final stage is simply a non-fight against a Queen Xenomorph. You move back and forth in the 'safe' area of a cargo bay, luring the queen into one area of the ship so you can run out in the open and flip four levers. Then you hit a button and the game is over. It's pretty lame for a final encounter, but I guess a limp finish is all I can expect out of this game.

I've almost hit another wall, however, and it's with two specific Challenges, one from each category. Stand Your Ground I believe I've brought up before - that's for getting the killing blow with a Service Pistol on a Crusher. The other is Hawked It All Up, for killing 2 Marines at once with a fully charged Acid Spit. Those will probably take awhile.

There are five remaining, including the two above, out of the 30 I need to mop up that I know are going to give me trouble. The rest are simple 'kill X using Y' type things, and those are simple, if a little time consuming.

I'm making a lot of posts about this game, both because I made this blog to chronicle the ups and downs of achievement hunting, but also just to have a place to talk about the games I play on the whole. Colonial Marines is kind of a tragic game, because every so often you see this glimmer of excellence in the rest of the garbage. I love the Alien franchise, and seeing it get manhandled like this is a pretty big bummer. But there are so many tiny little things I keep seeing that make me go 'Man, if only...'

The first encounter with the aforementioned Queen is an incredible sequence. Completely scripted and you're in no danger, but it sets her up to be this absolute monster. And she should be. While I don't care for how they handled the actual encounter with her, I think it might be better than actually killing her with your arsenal of weapons.  She's a Queen, she shouldn't be brought down with common guns. Personally, I think it would've been cool to blow her head off with one of those AA Guns you destroy in the second to last mission, but that's just my opinion.

I wish Smart Guns were a normal weapon. They're so much fun to use and such an iconic part of the series that limiting them to one-offs seems like a waste. You can argue that they're overpowered, but there are ways to balance them. Make your movement or turning speeds slower, for example. If an alien sneaks up on you, they should be able to do a lot of damage. As it is, you can just whip around and open fire. You'd have to choose between mobility and auto-targeting.

Some of the flattest voice acting I've ever heard has come out of this game. I've mentioned Michael Biehn sounding bored out of his mind. Lance Henrickson's in it and, outside of a brief moment during the ending, he sounds like he just wanted some pizza money, too. I recognized a couple other voice actors in the mix, and it's not much better for them. I think Ashly Burch is probably the best of the lot, to be perfectly honest. That might be more that her character, Reid, is a strong female that both survives to the end and isn't saddled with a love interest of some kind. It helped that she also had some of the best lines in the game. The sick dance moves bit comes to mind.

And trust me, after suffering through so much Tiny Tina when perfecting the whole of Borderlands 2, I never thought I'd say Ashly Burch is my favorite anything, but here we are. To be fair, she's also one of the few VAs in Colonial Marines that bothered emoting in any way, and it definitely helped. As much as I didn't like O'Neal as a character, his VA - Travis Willingham - was actually putting forth a good performance. Also, I had to look his name up because I didn't know it offhand. Dude is Guile. Now, when I'm going through the remainder of the Challenges and achievements, every time O'Neal finishes a line, I'm going to mentally add 'Sonic Boom.'

I don't have any DLC for this game, but they brought back Al Matthews to reprise his role of Apone. He's a multiplayer character you can select, apparently. I went off to Youtube to look up the voice clips for that pack of DLC characters. Apone is probably my favorite character across the entire franchise. Yo, Apone got old. No surprise, I believe Mr. Matthews is now in his early 70s! Despite this, he still brought forth more gusto than most of the main cast in the Campaign. I think the only person from Aliens who didn't reprise a role was Bill Paxton. The sound-alike got the whiny edge to Hudson's voice, though. Also better than most of the main cast.

Having 30 Challenges and 9 achievements did a lot for my morale. 30 is a nice, round number and breaking into single digits for achievements is always nice. For the first time, it feels like I'll be able to pull this off.

And then I'll get to play Ultra Street Fighter 4, where every time Guile speaks, I'm just gonna hear "BELLA!"

Aliens: Colonial Marines - The Struggle

I tried to pull the plug on this game yesterday. I wanted to walk away and work on some other game. After realizing you can't do offline splitscreen versus yesterday, meaning self-boosting was impossible, I was in a very bad position. It means that all of the Challenges had to be done legit. There were no shortcuts anymore. I've met a couple people while playing Team Deathmatch, and I could just ask them to help me boost in a private match, or go to True Achievements or similar sites and try to find someone. But here's the thing - I don't like doing that.

See, to me, achievement hunting is OCD, and it's a very strange and specific type. It's hard to explain, but it boils down to this: Once I start a game with the intent to perfect it, I cannot abort and play something else. I was going to move priorities over to Symphony of the Night, which I still plan to perfect by Ultra SF4 next month as well. But I woke up, and the first thing I did was start Colonial Marines back up. My brain wouldn't let me move away from it.

Then came an hour of beating my head against a wall made of Challenges. My current Actives are the following:

Short, Controlled Bursts: There's an achievement that shares its name with this, but it wasn't nearly as hard to get. Took about 20 minutes of checkpoint restarting, and I got it after I was killed somehow, but I did get it. The Challenge is as follows: "Do not miss an enemy with any bullets from a full rifle mag." No reloading, and that's a trick of its own, and you cannot miss a single shot. This is made difficult by the fact that you're almost always with an NPC Marine or three, and they're also capable of killing enemies. They will kill-steal and the shot you just fired will hit a dead target. Those shots do not count. Worse, it's impossible to try getting it on Xenomorphs. They're twitchy and move around too much. I was on Easy/Stage 1 and after over 90 attempts, I had to walk away for awhile. I couldn't do it. I'll try later on Stage 2, on the human enemies. Maybe those will be easier.

Iron Fist: "Kill 10 enemies with melee in a single campaign mission without dying." -- You can't get this easily on Xenomorphs because they'll sit there clawing at you the whole time. Also there are typically multiple aliens on you at once. On top of that, 90% of the time you whip out your pistol and execute them for the final hit, which does not count towards your progress. It may also be one that's easier on the Weyland-Yutani soldiers in stage 2. Given they have guns, however, I kind of doubt it. Even on Easy, you die really fast. You can't checkpoint-scum it, either. It will remove any melee kills you've gotten. It even removed a melee kill I'd gotten at the very start of the level after not doing so for about 20 reloads. Why it suddenly erased it and put me back at 0/10, I do not know.

Sentry Duty: "Destroy 5 sentry turrets." -- This is an issue mostly because no one plays anything but Team Deathmatch. Marines can set up turrets in other multiplayer modes, but not TDM. I want to say there are Weyland-Yutani turrets later in the game, but I can't be sure of that. If there are, then I'll have to slog through more campaign levels to get to them. The turrets in Stage 2, however, are ones you have to disable from behind. You cannot destroy them with weapons. This is a major problem, because until I get it, I can't work on any other Challenges in this category.

I don't know what happens after you clear a Challenge category. The campaign one is a short list - including Iron Fist, there are only five left there. The next challenge is easy, as it just requires killing 2 enemies with a Smart Gun, Flamethrower, or RPG. There's a campaign level with a Smart Gun section. Easy in and out. The Challenge after that is killing 5 enemies with explosives in a mission. Grenades in level 2 would be easiest there. The final two are for beating any level on Hardened and Ultimate Badass difficulties. Level 1, obviously, the best choice for getting those quickly. Once I get those, I want to see what happens. If you get a second Active from one of the two remaining categories, it would be nice. But I have a feeling you'll just be down to 2 Actives instead.

As far as achievements go, I'm under 20 now. I could probably get a couple today if I really hunkered down and focused on them. Like killing 3 enemies with a single Firebomb - it'd be Xenos because Soldiers don't group up. Or Heavy Lifting, for beating The Raven in under 1:10. But that's going to be one of the last ones I get. For one thing, it's at the end of a very long mission. For another, there's no on-screen timer. On top of that, it's very tight.The guides I see all tend to clock in at 1:04 or higher. You have very little room for screwing up. The Power Loader is slow, clunky, and for some reason any time you land or receive a hit, it spins the thing 90 degrees. Plus you have to get it on Soldier difficulty or higher. Which it to say Normal or higher. Now I assume this would be easier in multiplayer, but I don't know if the players not in the Loader are able to actually damage the boss. And since it happens at the very end of the stage, if you fuck up and don't get the Restart Checkpoint, then you'll have to replay the entire stage again, something that will take about an hour if all goes in your favor.

There are three achievements for beating later Stages, and one for beating the game on any difficulty. I could knock those out today, I'm sure. But that still leaves Challenges. And Challenges are the worst part of any game's achievement hunt. Borderlands 2 was a nightmare in that regard. Saints Row 3 and 4 artificially extended their lives with Challenges. They're never fun to do. They're tedious and frustrating at best, and pointless game padding at worst.

Gearbox, as a whole, is perhaps the most incompetent studio currently producing games. Randy Pitchford is to gaming what Curt Schilling is to gaming. In franchise terms, Gearbox is the Alien 3 of video games. The worst part, of course, is that I'm far from being done with that company, since I still plan to go through Duke Nukem Forever at some point. But I've looked at that game's achievements and there isn't a single Challenge anywhere. I can only assume many in the company cried themselves to sleep at night because of this.

A:CM is incredibly deceiving a game from the outside. Everyone knows it's bad. But only those trying to get the achievements will know the extent of this badness. You will restart checkpoints hundreds of times. You will see AI routines bug out and break. You will spawn upside-down and inside of walls. At one point in a Team Deathmatch battle, I was killed by a Xeno and was unable to respawn at all. For over 90 seconds I sat there, staring at a grey screen, before the option to respawn finally came up. This is something that should take 10 seconds at most.

To those who have come before me in perfecting this game: I salute you. And I am sorry for what you have gone through. To those who think about coming after me, might I suggest having someone rip off your fingernails instead, if only because the pain you experience will be briefer. Even if you want to challenge yourself with a bad game - find an alternative. Aliens: Colonial Marines is not a game you perfect because you want to. It is a game you perfect because you have to, either because you want to justify spending money on it, or simply because your poorly-wired brain won't let you walk away from it. Simpler, it could just be that you want to beat the game, you don't want the game to beat you.

I mentioned at the start that I could get someone to help me boost Challenges, and I said I didn't like doing that. The reason is because I understand how dumb this achievement hunting thing is. I don't want to drag someone else into it with me, even if they are in the same position I am. Even if I wasn't, I'd feel like I was wasting their time. And it's something that would persist even if we were alternating Challenges. It's one of the reasons I hate games with multiplayer achievements. They take too long to get, it involves other people being on the same page as you, and there are typically no ways to get them on your own.

It's one of the very few reasons Kingdoms of Amalur appealed to me initially. Nothing but a single player experience, so the only thing stopping me was the hours I'd need to put in. It took somewhere between 50-65 hours (I really should've looked at my two saves) but I perfected that game eventually. It almost took me as long as it did to perfect Dark Souls 2, which was in the mid-70-hour mark. And like Dark Souls 2, it was because I had to play through the game multiple times.

Colonial Marines is a nightmare for anyone with achievement OCD. Even if you're a huge fan of the franchise itself, this isn't something you should willingly subject yourself to. Some achievements can be fun. Some games can be perfected without much trouble. This is not one of them.

Aliens: Colonial Marines - The Challenge

With Kingdoms of Amalur put to bed for the time being, I've focused my attention back on A:CM. I have until Ultra Street Fighter 4 comes out (retail) to perfect its base game. Normally, I'd say it wouldn't be that bad, even with the Ultimate Badass run I'll need to do to pull it off. But there's a problem, and it was one I had with Borderlands 2, as well. Here, however, it's made much, much worse and might be one of the things that stops me from getting the full 1000gs out of it.

The achievement is called Distinguished Service Medal and it's for completing every Challenge in the game. Borderlands 2 had one like it, and that was one of the most miserable things to grind out in the entire miserable game. In Colonial Marines, however, you can't just sort the Challenges and start barreling through them.

See, you have three categories of Challenges, and I believe only one from each is active at any given time. The problem there is that you can only complete active challenges. Fire in the Hole is a Challenge that requires you to get 25 Xeno kills with either an RPG, a Flamethrower, or the Smart Gun. You can kill as many bugs as you want, but unless that Challenge is one of your three actives, you will not gain any progress towards completing it.

Thankfully, the internet is full of stubborn assholes like myself who refuse to let the game beat them. There are guides with discussions on the best way to knock out each Challenge as it comes up. And while a lot of them can be self-boosted through a second controller and private multiplayer matches, some will still require you to get your hands dirty out in the field. There are some Challenges that would be almost impossible to get legit unless you got incredibly lucky. One that stands out the most in that regard is called Stand Your Ground - a Challenge you get for landing the killing shot on a Crusher using the Service Pistol.

Pistols are a secondary weapon and are incredibly weak. If you haven't played A:CM, the Crusher is a special Xenomorph that only appears at the 3 and 1 minute mark in a multiplayer match - I want to say TDM, but perhaps you can spawn it in other modes - and you have to seek out a special place to turn into it. I didn't actually know how it spawned until just a few minutes before I started writing this. You apparently need a few kills under your belt, and you have to stay alive for them to count, and then you need to find a special spot on the map that has a 'turn into Crusher' prompt. The Crusher is basically the Tank from Left 4 Dead, to give an indication of how absurd this Challenge is. They expect you to luck out and get the killing shot to a Xeno that's almost invulnerable from the front using the weakest class of weapon in the game.

A lot of the challenges are simple 'kill X using Y' type ordeals, but multiplayer Challenges have an extra layer of difficulty. See, as you play, you rank up. As you rank up, you unlock new gear and add-ons for your gear. This includes weapons. What this means is that someone who is Rank 40 will be much, much stronger than someone just starting out. You can get one-shot as a Xeno by a high-level player, and when it's your turn to shoot guns at him, you can empty an entire clip into him without slowing him down.

The best way I've found to level up the Xenomorph side of things is to play as a Spitter. Find a reasonably safe spot high up - on top of a building with a large enough roof that you can escape if needed - and snipe people with your RT spit attack. As a Marine, well, it's down to sticking with your mates and hoping for the best.

I may not perfect the game before Ultra Street Fighter 4 is released next month, but I'm sure as hell going to put as large a dent as humanly possible into it. It is not a good game, by any stretch of the imagination, and trying to perfect it is absolute madness. Unfortunately for me, it's just the first of three impossibly bad games I've tasked myself with completing this year.

I have a feeling the write-up for this game will be much longer than my Amalur post was.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - The Breakdown

I just wrapped up achievement hunting in KoA. As in, I took my last-achievement photo, saved, exited, uninstalled, and came here to write. It was a hell of a process, and one I made longer by not paying attention to the achievements before I got started. It was completely avoidable, since I go to great lengths to organize achievements before I start on a game. I'm going back to Aliens: Colonial Marines now that I've finished Amalur's base game - I'll go back to it if the DLC ever goes on sale for a reasonable price - and here is what that text file looks like. I've already gotten some achievements, so I've removed them from the list, but it gives you an idea of how I organize.

There was no excuse for having to do a second playthrough outside of a moment of stupidity when I started the game up. In total, my first save was around 35 hours, and the second save was around 25 or so. The second playthrough was entirely to mop up three achievements, two of which I could've done on my first save. As much as I set up my list to sort achievements by 'type' - difficulty completions, challenges, enemy kills, multiplayer, etc - I somehow didn't think about a couple, and I'll get to those below.

Posts like this are going to be simple enough. I'm going to break down every achievement in the game. Some obviously will have more commentary than others. Amalur wasn't too terrible as far as achievements go. The last one I got, I had to reach Level 36 and put all my points into one talent tree. It requires 109 points total. Getting from L35 to L36 took almost an hour. And that's just me wandering Alabastra and Klurikon killing mobs and popping Reckoning Mode on big groups. I did one or two minor quests, but killing things gives much better XP at that stage. If you get a couple trolls and ogres, you can get something ridiculous like 13,000+ experience.

Sadly, this post will be a little more disjointed than future posts will be. See, when I get an achievement, I'll delete it from my file. It's a morale thing. When I start the game, I pop the text file. Seeing the list getting smaller is good motivation, especially when I hit 15 remaining. Those last three sets of five are always pretty big boosts, since around that point, you're either mopping stuff up or working on the really difficult or annoying ones. Achievements marked in red are the ones that gave me the most trouble or simply caused the most swearing at my television.

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A Life of Crime: Get caught committing a crime 25 times. - For this, I went to the first inn in the game and basically just pickpocketed/stole items in plain sight of everyone else. The guards would run in, I'd pay my fine, and then I'd go back to being the Worst Thief Ever. I did this after beating the game on Playthrough 1, so it took maybe 10 minutes. Pretty dumb achievement, to be honest. You aren't going to steal things when the chance of getting caught is high, so you actively have to hunt this one down. It's not a naturally-attained sort of thing.

A Wink and a Smile: Succeed at 50 Persuasion attempts. - This is one of the three I did on Playthrough 2. And it's purely because I didn't think there were so few Persuasion attempts in the game. Thankfully, the Amalur wiki had a wonderful page showing what quests had them and how many there were in total. Still, it took me pumping Persuasion before any other Skill, along with savescumming a couple of times in order to get my successes. The highest you can get it is 95%, and you'd be surprised how often it fails. Of the 3 achievements I had left on Playthrough 2, this was the first I got.

And Then There Were None: Kill 500 enemies with abilities. - Incredibly tedious, this one came down to me running around the starting zones, one-shotting mobs en masse to beef up my numbers. One of the problems in Kingdoms of Amalur is that the game tracks almost nothing you do. Certainly nothing specific. You'd think, with achievements for things like this and the one above, it would show you how many you've succeeded at. But that wasn't the case. I had to keep track of the Persuasion successes manually. This one, I just had to use the melee earthquake skill over and over until it popped.

Big Spenders: Spend 200,000 gold. - Incredibly simple. There are vendor items before you even leave the western continent that will run you well over 100K. This one didn't take long and happened naturally.

Blades of Glory: Acquire 10 Unique weapons. - This excludes any DLC weapons. I didn't have the DLC, so that wasn't an issue. This is just for getting 10 different named weapons. Happened fairly early on into Playthrough 1. 

Bookworm: Read 50 books. - Normally, it's hard to get me interested in the lore of a game to begin with. Unless I'm already deeply invested in it, it's just not going to happen. I don't play games to read messages and books and notes. Even in games I really love - Resident Evil 4, Skyrim - I can't be bothered to read books in them. Amalur has plenty of books, they're just spread out to the point where it's a pain in the ass to get them. There's a vendor in Rathir (or was it Adessa?) that sells about 17 or them, which was a good boost. I actually got this towards the end of Playthrough 1. It was one of the last miscellaneous achievements I got before I started the Hard Mode run.

Breaking and Entering: Pick 50 locks. - I like playing Thief-type characters in games, so this was simple and quick to get. Shame all chest loot is random and, after getting the achievement, you'll likely never bother picking one open again.

Bull in a China Shop: Smash 1,000 objects. - Actually had to focus on this, because attack animations tend to take awhile to come out, even with fast weapons. It boiled down to me just opening fire with my bow occasionally and seeing how many crates or pots it would shatter. Got this one about halfway into my first run.

Cartographer: Discover 100 locations - Occurs naturally, especially in conjunction with finding all the Lorestones.

Cleaning Up the Streets: Kill 50 Bandits - Another simple one. There are enough bandits around the starting town that you could get this within the first half hour if you really wanted.

Crime Doesn't Pay: Spend over 10,000 gold in crime bribes. - I actually got this the first time I started working on A Life of Crime above. I'm not entirely sure what the hell I'd stolen that got me such a massive fine, but it was somewhere in the realm of 60,000 gold. Oh well, easy achievement whatever the case!

Destiny Defiant: You have defeated Tirnoch, and defied destiny. - You get this for beating the final boss, who is just a series of minion fights. Kill a couple minions, get your Reckoning Meter up, and enter Reckoning Mode to attack the boss directly. Actually killed her faster on Hard Mode, somehow.

Destiny Dominated: You have won the game on Hard difficulty. - Beating the game on Hard Mode, of course. This was the second of the three achievements I got on Playthrough 2. The final boss and the much harder one before her both went down far faster than on my Easy Mode run.

Diamond in the Rough: Craft a Pristine Shard. - Since this game is basically a junkier, shorter single player version of World of Warcraft, it had to ape some standard fantasy-RPG ideas. Like Jewelcrafting. This one's just for combining lower-level gems into a higher-level one. All you need for this is to put a certain number of points into the Sagecraft Skill. 

Elixir of Fate: Make a potion with the Essence of Fate. - This requires you to get the Essence of Fate item, which is frequently found on enemies you've killed while in Reckoning Mode. Once you have a couple, all you have to do is make a potion that uses it.

Five Finger Discount: Steal and fence an item. - You can sell stolen goods at the Sun, Moon, or Star Camp areas. Or you can max the Mercantile Skill and you can fence items at any vendor. I was doing a lot of respeccing at the end of Playthrough 1 to get these Skill-related achievements.

Foiled Again: Parry 100 times. - I actually didn't get this until well after I'd beaten the game the first time. I rolled more than I blocked, and it took awhile to get the timing down on when to block to trigger a parry. Still, 100 times isn't too much. It happened fairly quick once I'd actively started doing it. Towards the end, I'd just sit and parry guys without attacking. They'd still die, since parrying does a certain amount of damage on its own, but it went along faster than the alternative.

Good as New: Repair a piece of equipment. - All you need for this is a Repair Kit, something easily and cheaply bought in the first town. Can be attained within the first half hour of the game.

Green Thumb: Harvest 10 of each type of reagent. - Remember when I mentioned that the game doesn't track anything you do, really? This is one of the things it doesn't deem necessary to inform you of. So if you haven't actually paid attention to how many of each you've already gathered, you're going to be running around like an idiot for ages. You can't even look into your reagents bag to see how many you have, since they're fairly common a drop on basically all mobs in the game, and unless you harvest it from a gathering point, it doesn't count. I tried keeping a list, but in the end, I got it while collecting something I thought I'd already harvested well over 10 of. One of the worst achievements in the game unless you keep notes.

Hero of Mel Senshir: You have defeated the great Balor.  - Plot achievement. Happens when you head to the eastern continent. Retaking Mel Senshir is the first thing you have to do. The Balor is a giant with a Beholder-style head. Very easy boss, very dull achievement.

House of Ballads: Complete the House of Ballads storyline quests. - An annoying final boss fight aside, this one was pretty simple. The Maid of Windemere fight is the first time you'll encounter a really add-heavy battle. If you don't go into the fight with your Reckoning Meter full (and with a full compliment of potions) you probably won't beat it the first few tries.

House of Sorrows: Complete the House of Sorrows storyline quests. - This one starts on the eastern continent and is fairly easy, if rather dull. It involves lots of backtracking, moreso than a lot of other quests in the game, and going through multiple loading screens to get to and from the main quest giver. 

It Didn't Explode!: Make a stable potion by Experimenting - Why you would ever Experiment, I'll never know. Reagents give a highlighted word giving you a hint as to what they might work with, but recipes are abundant. You can make a basic Minor Healing Potion right from the first town if you want. There are more than enough reagents en route to it from the tutorial dungeon.

It Is Your Destiny: Unlock a top-tier destiny. -  This is the last achievement I unlocked, just before starting work on this article. The easiest way to explain this one is that you need 109 points in a single talent tree to get this. That requires you to reach Level 36. Once you hit about Level 32, leveling up slows down considerably. I beat Hard Mode at around L30, and it took a good 5-6+ hours of grinding via western continent quests and just running around killing mobs to get to it. I think the level cap is 50, and I dunno who would be insane enough to go for it. There's thankfully no achievement for hitting that cap. That would just be cruel. As is, this was one of the most annoying achievements in the entire game. The last hour I played was running around Klurikon and Alabastra, grinding enemies and popping Reckoning Mode for the boosted chain-kill XP whenever a 'big' mob was in the group.

Jack of All Trades: Unlock a Jack of All Trades destiny - Great description there, huh? Thanks, fellas. What this means is you have to put an equal number of skill points into all three talent trees. Why anyone would do that, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. Got this one after I beat the game the first time while I was getting the Skill-related achievements.

Jailbreak: Break out of jail. - Oh, word? Painfully simple, if you get locked up in the starting town. And probably elsewhere, the jails never have many guards inside of them for some reason. Got this while working on the other being-a-criminal achievements.

Juggler: Land 5 consecutive hits on a launched enemy. - Actually didn't get this one for awhile, despite rolling with a Bow as my Secondary Weapon across both runs. Into your melee weapon's combo, or with some skills, you'll pop an enemy into the air. Then it's a simple matter of mashing whatever button you have your Bow mapped to. Each shot keeps them in the air a second longer. Probably could get this very early, possibly in the tutorial dungeon.

Loremaster: Discover all Lorestones. - There are something like 175 of these fucking things, scattered all over the world and inside dungeons. You'll likely never find them all, even if you max out Detect Hidden so that they're shown on your map. Even with that, I had to check multiple guides and maps to find the ones I was missing. One of the last achievements I got on my first playthrough and one of the worst in the entire game. Many hours of aimlessly running back and forth across every zone, all for 'lore' of the world. And by 'lore,' I mean 'poetry that would make an angsty 13 year old cringe.' Seriously, I'm not kidding here. Go to Youtube and see for yourself.

Master of the Forge: Crafted an item that uses all 5 forge component slots. - People say Blacksmithing is insanely overpowered. I ask them what they're smoking. Even maxed out, you're not going to be making great stuff, because you're rarely going to have the mats needed to make something worth a damn. Still, this is an easy thing to do. You just have to put a certain number of points into the Blacksmithing Skill to be able to work with all 5 component slots.

Niskaru Slayer: Kill 25 Niskaru - Niskaru are super aggressive assholes with blade hands. I think, anyway, it's kinda hard to tell sometimes. This is another easy one. The Warsworn questline has you primarily fighting the little bastards, but they're plentiful on the eastern continent even if you don't do that.

No Destiny, All Determination: You have met High King Titarion, and have been confronted with the true scope of your powers. - "Get this far into the game." It's a plot achievement, and one you get about a third of the way through, give or take.

Open Sesame: Dispel 50 Wards - Wards are an additional/alternate lock on some chests. Unless you invest points into the Dispelling Skill, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to open anything above Easy. Thankfully, instead of running around, you can just get a quest in Adessa (or was it Rathir?) where you're sent upstairs in a building to dispel 3 chests. You can do the quest over and over and each one counts towards your progress. The difficulty of the wards does go up, but it does so every few attempts, and if you have points in the Skill itself, that isn't going to matter. Dumb, but easy to get when you know you don't have to run around hoping to find them.

Out of Your League: Kill an enemy 4 levels higher than you. - As soon as you exit the tutorial dungeon and get to the first town, lockpick the jail open, release the prisoner, and beat the hell out of him. It's the quickest and easiest way to get the achievement. The game makes a save of when you leave the tutorial, so you can load that up at any time and get this without any effort.

Reborn: You were reborn from the Well of Souls, and have escaped Allestar Tower. - Hooray For You! You've gotten out of the tutorial dungeon. You are capable of both moving a stick and pressing a button! Please enjoy your free achievement!

Reckoning Rampage: Kill 5 enemies with a single Fateshift - Fateshift being the thing that ends Reckoning Mode before the timer runs out. Very easy to get. Fill meter, pop slo-mo vision, kill five enemies, then hit A to finish them off with the QTE.

Riposte!: Land 25 special attacks out of a Parry - Requires you to actually have those from the talent trees, I believe. Takes a surprisingly long time to do. Or maybe that was just for me, since I only ever blocked in this game to eat magic (which is a pain in the ass to dodge roll to avoid) or to get the two achievements related to Parrying.

Romancing the Gem: Craft an Epic Gem - Again, you just need to have a certain number of points in the Sagecraft Skill to get this one. If you wait long enough, you'll be able to pop this and the other one back to back. Epics Gems are far less useful than you'd think because although the gems themselves are often very good, you'll rarely get socketed gear to put them into.

Scholia Arcana: Complete the Scholia Arcana storyline quests. - Another major side quest chain. I don't actually remember much from this one, but I'm pretty sure it was annoying towards the end. Anything involving magic usually is in Amalur...

Shock and Awe: Kill 100 enemies with abilities: The baby brother to the earlier achievement. Again, pretty easy to pop this fairly early on, if you remember to spam your early abilities as finishing moves.

Shop Class: Craft a piece of equipment with Blacksmithing -  Another one you can get as soon as you hit the starting town. The smithy even sells stuff to make weapons and armor with, so you don't have to Salvage anything you've picked up by that point.

Some of This, Some of That: Unlock a two-class hybrid destiny. - Another 'why would you do this?' achievement that requires equal talent tree point distribution. The best skills in a tree can only be unlocked when you've spent 70 points in it. You're crippling yourself by dabbling in multiple skill trees, even if they can boots your Secondary Weapons a bit. It's just not worth doing. I got this after beating the game the first time when I was just doing respecs to knock out a whole bunch of achievements in a very short time.

Streaker: You spoke to someone while not wearing clothes - Remove all of your armor and talk to a dude in the starting town. Could probably do it directly outside the tutorial dungeon, even.

The Great Detective: Detect 25 hidden things. - This involves putting points into the Detect Hidden Skill. You'll occasionally run across loot piles hidden in logs or rock piles. You'll get this after investigating enough of those. I believe it also works for finding hidden doors, but those are rare and far between.

They Never Saw it Coming: Backstab 20 enemies - Even if you're going pure Thief and taking just the Finesse talent tree, you might not get this for awhile. You'll want to invest points into the Stealth Skill to make enemies take longer to spot you while you're creeping around. It's mostly difficult due to the fact that enemies are rarely by themselves, and you kind of need them to be. You can get a backstab off on one person in a group, but you're gonna alert everyone else you're there.

Trapper: Kill 25 enemies with traps - This is a weird one. There's only one Trap in the game that I know of, and it's the frost trap in the Finesse tree. Granted, I never really played a mage, so I didn't look at their skill tree too much. If they have one, surely it's better than the frost trap, which is really just a giant turd since it barely does any damage. Even to start-of-the-game mobs, it took 2 with a fully maxed out set of related skills. Tedious, but easy.

Travelers: Complete the Travelers storyline - Take the Thieves Guild from an Elder Scrolls game - right down to finding the Skeleton Key and all - and then make it shit. Congrats, you've made the Travelers quest series! And you don't even get to use the master key when it's all over, so it's twice as dumb!

Turning the Tide: A ruse has baited Octienne into betraying the necromantic nature of his experiments. - Another plot achievement. Octienne is a mage who mostly sends minions after you, taking potshots from behind a magic shield that makes him invincible. Kill the minions and continue along until you get to throw his gnomish ass through a window, which is incredibly satisfying.

Warsworn: Complete the Warsworn storyline quests - If Travelers is the Thieves Guild, this is the Fighters Guild. Only total crap. It's a lot of Niskaru fighting, so you'll at least get two achievements for your troubles!

Where's My Wallet?: Pickpocketed 20 times - Pickpocketing is a pain in the ass since, again, no one is ever by themselves in this damn game. Got it at the end of my first playthrough during my respec blitz.

Would You Like Fries With That?: Complete 100 attack chains - Mash X with a melee weapon equipped. You'll get it in the first hour or two of playing.

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It's not hard to see why Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning failed. It initially shows a lot of promise. But it doesn't take long to realize that the combat is incredibly shallow, the voice acting is subpar, the quests are all boring and repetitive, and it does a poor job of telling its story. You have a main villain in Gadflow, but he's barely brought up throughout the course of the game. Just as well, as Jim Cummings delivers the most lifeless performance I think I've ever heard out of him. Sometimes you just need to make your car payment, I guess.

And the final boss herself, Tirnoch, is a dragon - and a hell of a strange-looking one at that - that basically doesn't even come up until the very end. The fights with Gadflow and Tirnoch are both simple and dumb. For Gadflow, I was able to enter Reckoning Mode and took him out with three or four fully charged Bow attacks. Tirnoch is a simple fight - she summons minions, you kill them to fill your Reckoning Meter, then you trigger it. Her head will fall, you attack it, then you move to a new platform and repeat.

It took 4 cycles on Normal and 3 on Hard, likely because by then, I was primarily using my Bow for everything. If you want an overpowered weapon, try a Bow and max out all the skills related to it in Finesse. Finesse in general is probably the best talent tree to use. The top-level skills you open at 70-points in are all pretty nice, the best being the mines you can throw out. When enemies run over them, it pops them into the air and interrupts whatever they were doing. You can charge it while casting to send like 25+ of the things out in a wide arc.

I bought Amalur used off of Amazon, costing me just shy of 12 dollars. For the amount of time spent in it, I'd say it was worth the cost. The two DLC missions both cost 10 bucks apiece, and fuck that noise. I've got OCD when it comes to achievement hunting these days, but it thankfully ends with buying a bunch of DLC at full price. Even when I went back and perfected Borderlands 2, I only did so because the DLC was on sale. If Amalur's DLC ever does, I'll definitely go back to it and fully perfect it. For now, base game perfecting will do.

I went through a strange arc with this game. At first I thought it was great, then I thought it was complete garbage. And now that I'm done? Eh, it was okay. It wasn't the worst thing I've played this year, it isn't gonna be the best. And maybe that's why it failed. Aside from needing absurd numbers to recoup costs, Kingdoms of Amalur isn't great or terrible. It just... is. 

Next up on the list is returning to Aliens: Colonial Marines. I'd started work on it before Amalur arrived, but decided to switch over. It's been an interesting time so far, and I'm eager to resume work on it. As I'll have to play through its 11 or so missions multiple times due to having Difficulty-based achievements, I'm sure I'll have plenty to say when it's time to do its Breakdown.

How I Got Started: An Achievement Hunter's Beginnings

I started actively perfecting games with Saints Row 4. It wasn't because I enjoyed the game. It wasn't because I thought it would be fun. It wasn't because I wanted the thousand Gamerscore it would give. I perfected Saints Row 4 because I hated Saints Row 4.

Saints Row 4's achievements were made by people who A) clearly hated life, B) clearly hated gamers, and C) had no imagination whatsoever. Hunting down all Data Clusters, grinding weapon and super power kills, traveling 2,500,000ft in alien vehicles... You spend many, many hours doing incredibly boring busy work. The last one isn't an achievement on its own, but it is part of 'The Challenge King' achievement, which requires you to do every Challenge in the game. The problem with that one is that you will not spend much time actually driving in Saints Row 4. In the end, I had to resort to flying back and forth over Fake Steelport in an alien VTOL for about 6 hours. And even after that, I still hadn't popped Fourth and Forty, the achievement for spending 40 hours in the simulation. Not playing the game - specifically for being in Fake Steelport.

From there, I went on to other games I had. I perfected Skyrim, which was fairly easy. It did involve me standing outside Whiterun for 90 minutes, casting Paralyze on a goat for about 2 hours to level grind high enough for Legendary Dragons to begin spawning, though. Thief, Borderlands 2, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, Dark Souls 2, Watch Dogs, New Vegas... I've powered through a lot of games since 2014 began. When I have access to the GotY, I'll perfect all of the DLC. If I don't, or if I perfect a game and then walk away before DLC is released, chances are I won't go back.

I have Borderlands 1 GotY, but fuck that, I'm not doing Mad Moxxi. I still have some sanity left.

Watch Dogs was the last game I perfected, and it was a miserable experience from beginning to end. A lot of the achievements were bland, but some were infuriating. Drinking game, I'm looking at you. A misogynistic, boring, and insultingly bad experience from beginning to end. I was looking for something else to play once I'd finished it. Ultra Street Fighter 4's retail edition isn't out until August, and I get fidgety if I don't have a game to work on. It's like a smoker trying to quit cold turkey. You get the urge, and you start looking around for a fix.

My fix was a double shot of horrible. To my surprise, the awfulness came from the wrong game. I bought Aliens: Colonial Marines and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Amalur looked interesting and, more importantly, was single player only, which meant not having to deal with multiplayer achievements. When I finish the XBL version of Doom 1, I'll have two achievements missing, and that's because no one plays Doom multiplayer! I'll have to find someone to boost those with, and that's annoying in and of itself.

Aliens is not a good game. Let's start there. It's clunky, it doesn't feel like it belongs in the Aliens universe, and it has goofy explode-mode Xenomorphs down in the required sewer level. But the multiplayer achievements were few and easily gained. But it bears the curse of a lot of Gearbox titles - it has Challenges. "Complete All Challenges" might be the phrase I fear the most in an achievement list, even moreso than multiplayer achievements. I haven't looked at Colonial Marines' Challenge list yet. I'm scared. I know something in there will make me want to tear my hair out. Borderlands 2 was particularly offensive in regards to Challenges.

So I moved off of it and into Amalur. I was on board with it for the first... two hours or so. Then the weight of the task I'd set myself sunk in. I'd given myself a poorly cobbled together single player MMO to perfect. And I had to get it - and Colonial Marines - done before Ultra Street Fighter 4 dropped! I work best on a severe deadline, and this is pretty tight, even for me. My New Year's resolution was that I had to perfect any game I bought - at least the base game, because I'm not laying down cash for bad game DLC unless they're on deep discount - before I moved on.

The way I think this blog will work is like so: There will be smaller articles specifically centered around a particular achievement if I'm having trouble with it, and then there will be wrap-up posts that'll happen when I finally perfect a game, breaking down every achievement, one by one, and discussing what I remember about them and what I liked and hated about the game on the whole.

Amalur's post is going to be far longer than Aliens' will, I feel.

There have been a lot of stressful achievements. One of the worst was doing the entirety of Riddler's Revenge in Arkham City. That's 800+ medals. I was stuck on Catwoman's final Campaign mission for about 13 hours. They make you do all the side quests for the 'beat the game on Hard' achievement, which is just unnecessarily cruel. Getting all the Challenges and doing all the side missions in Borderlands 2 was incredibly bad. I soloed most of the raid bosses myself, including a 90+ minute non-fight with the second one in the Scarlett DLC. You can't hurt the boss himself, but sandworms spawn. You kill them, they spawn a slowly-increasing pool of acid. If you don't walk the boss through that and make him absorb it, it will eventually cover the whole area and kill you. I killed one, ran him through the slime, then hid behind a rock near the gate, ducking down so the worms wouldn't spawn and he couldn't attack. I let the acid slowly eat through his shield and, even slower, eat away his HP.

The pain isn't ending with Aliens and Amalur, though. I've devoted myself to completing the unholy trinity of bad 360 games. Duke Nukem Forever and Ride to Hell Retribution are both on my list. I'd like to get them done before year's end. I'm planning on cutting the pain by also getting good games with them. I thought I was doing that with Aliens and Amalur. I'm going to use Lego Marvel - because I've never perfected a Lego game despite really liking them - and Dishonored GotY. I've rented Dishonored's base game and got the low chaos ending, but I'd really like to go back and perfect it and the DLC that I haven't looked at yet.


I don't have an ETA for Amalur, but I've got somewhere in the realm of 26 achievements left. That includes beating the game on Hard. Which, if I'd not had a brain fart before I started playing, I would've just done from the get-go. Sadly, you can't bump your difficulty up mid-game and have it count. It even warns you when you go to change the difficulty after you've started that moving it around could cancel out your ability to get certain achievements. At least it has the decency to alert you to it. Thankfully, Amalur's main storyline is short, with only a few difficult parts. With enough potions, however, you can facetank everything the game spits at you.

I'm excited to finally get a proper blog on this going. Having somewhere to collect my frazzled thoughts will be helpful. And, looking back when I'm finished, I can talk about difficult achievements with a clear head. Lord knows I don't have one of those while hunting them.

Here's to a fun, stressful, and hopefully prosperous year of achievement hunting!