Am I an achievement whore?
There was contest recently on Xbox.ca Canada Community forums that had 3 volunteers live their day-to-day lives and achieve 1400 achievement points. Forum goers were asked to pick one of the 3 users, who they thought would get to the 1400 points first. When one of the three volunteers reached the 1400 points, an individual who selected said winner was randomly picked and awarded a 1400 points card. However, we didn’t live our day-to-day lives. Instead, we all raced to 1400 points. The contest was over before the deadline to submit your vote was due. I was one of the 3 volunteers; I lost the contest and came in last place. I did manage to achieve 1040 gamerscore points. This led me on to find games that were easy and yielded very easy gamerscore in return. I found 5 games that would require minimal effort and give me the points I needed. The games are NBA live 06, NHL 2K6, Madden 06, Avatar and College Hoops 2k6. That’s a total of 5000 gamerscore points. However, I should mention that 40 from NBA 06 were not achievable because EA has taken down the online servers.
Avatar has 5 achievements worth 1000 points. This game isn’t even worth the purchase price of $9.99. Regardless, I would go and rent this game because it will take you less than 10 minutes to acquire all the gamerscore points.
NBA Live 06 has 12 achievements worth 1000 points; however as mentioned above, the online win achievement for 40 points is no longer available because Electronic Arts has taken down the servers. I recommend using Lakers for most of the achievements. You do have to win a game on each difficulty level. Plug in a second controller and control the other team and with about 20 seconds left in the game, go into the select side options and put the second controller in the middle. I had a bit of a hard time getting the MVP achievement, so I ended up releasing all the good players but for anyone from the Lakers and I got the achievement. Getting all 960 points took about 1 hr and 45 minutes.
The third game on my list is College Hoops 2k6, this game features 5 achievements worth 1000 gamerscore. I played 1 game with 20 minute halves and was able to get 3 of the achievements worth 700 points. I recommend using Duke for these achievements. I am having a bit of difficulty getting the Get 20 steals in a game and get 6 blocks with any player achievement. Getting 700 points took roughly 1 hour.
Up next we have NHL 2k6 with 5 achievements worth 1000 points. I went in and adjusted the sliders and then choose to play as Team Canada vs. Tampa Bay Lightning. I achieved 4 of the 5 achievements in 1 game. If anyone has any tips for Scoring on a penalty shot please let me know. Total time to unlock 750 gamerscore points was less than 1 hour.
Finally, we have Madden 06 which has 11 achievements worth 1000 points. I achieved 10 of 11 achievements in 1 madden season including playing 1 game at 10 minute quarters. The last achievement is complete 30 seasons of franchise mode. You can simulate every season but it will take a couple of hours to complete. Total time to unlock all achievements is 3 to 4 hours.
With a total investment of under 30 dollars and 8 hours of your time, you can easily boost your gamerscore above your friends by playing older games. To most people, gamerscores don’t mean anything but to some it may. I had many people call me an “achievement whore” or tell me I was wasting my time and money by doing this. To them I simply say, “well my gamerscore is higher than yours.”