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!