Achievement Unlocked 08.01.08: Collection Achievements

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 08.01.2008

411mania's Rod Oracheski looks at Collection Achievements of all kinds. Well, OK - three kinds: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Plus a look at Epic's linked Achievements for Gears of War 2 and a quick comparison between NCAA 09 and Madden 09!



This week we talk about Epic's use of a past game's Achievements to unlock items in their upcoming title. Gears of War 2, maybe you've heard of it? We'll also take a look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of collection Achievements. Plus I'll have some more NCAA talk, and even a little on Madden 09!


I have to start with this news story, though it has nothing to do with gaming at all. The poor guy was sunbathing with a group of friends and walked away from the group for a bit, I'm assuming he had to take a piss. Bad idea, as it turns out, and he slipped on a slope, sliding down it until...

Well, until he hit an eight-inch piece of metal rod that was sticking out. The good news - the rod brought his fall to a stop! Instead of celebrating that good fortune, however, the guy was left in a bit of a panic. Turns out the rod had stopped him by impaling him.

Through the groin,

OK, let that sink in for a bit. If you're like me, you let out a soft 'owwwww' when you read that. Now for the kicker - he was sunbathing, as you'll recall.

In the nude.

OK, he had on shoes and socks, but that's close enough for me. At that point I have to admit that I laughed a little bit.

The real kicker is that he was now suspended by this eight-inch metal rod in his groin...upside down...for about 30 minutes or so, until the group went looking and found him there. He was rescued shortly after, by a team of firefighters who lifted him down and transported him to hospital, where he was treated and released, I believe later the same day.

I keep snickering when I think what it would have been like to be a person walking their dog in the area, rounding a corner and coming face to...face?...with a nude guy hanging upside down - suspended by his junk. And people say video games are weird? They've got nothing on real life, nothing at all.

Enough of that 'dangling by your groin' talk - here's the games!

On to the gaming side of things, where Epic's Cliff Bleszinski revealed recently that having unlocked Achievements in Gears of War will pay off for you in Gears of War 2. Specifically, he dropped word that doing these three things will get you bonuses:

• Complete Act 1 (no word on if difficulty matters) and unlock a playable Anthony Carmine


• Find 10 COG tags (Time to Remember Achievement) and unlock Minh Young Kim


• Kill Raam (not sure if this refers to A Dish Best Served Cold Achievement or not) to unlock a playable Raam

As you can see, though Bleszinski revealed that Achievements would have some affect, he didn't really get too in depth about it. The specifics about which Achievements are required isn't clear, and it's not known if those character models are for single player or if they're multiplayer-only, or if they can be unlocked via normal play without having the Achievements from the original game.

The idea of Achievements unlocking something in a game isn't exactly a new one - it's something that Mass Effect did, as it covered once already, and Universe At War also included Achievement-unlockables.

Epic is obviously considering them carefully though, more so than most developers it would seem. They already announced that they'd be cutting down on blatant boosting, and now this notion of 'linked' Achievements might have people who picked up a 360 recently, those who would otherwise have waited for the sequel and skipped the first game, to pick it up.

I think it's a good idea, and remarkably similar to the "Micro to Macro" idea from this column where I predicted they'd be able to do this in the next iteration of Xbox Live. I didn't know that the system already allowed this sort of tracking, which makes me wonder what else they could do - if they really wanted to.

Collecting... Collecting... Collecting... Collecting... Collecting... Collecting... Collecting... *ding* Achievement Unlocked

There are a couple Achievement list staples - things like 'Beat [X] Level' or "Beat [X] Boss' that are largely just lazy list fillers. Then there's Collection Achievements. You know the ones - they have you scouring levels for objects placed in out-of-the-way places just to get 10 Gamerscore.

But they're not all like that, of course - let's look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Collection Achievements.

The Good:

The best example of a good Collection Achievement is Crackdown's Free Runner (Collect 500 Agility Orbs). This Achievement has you scouring the city looking for Agility Orbs - something you do in the course of normal gameplay in order to boost your Agility stat.

The search for Orbs leads you around the city pretty handily, with each Agility Orb bringing you closer to making the jumps you'll need to reach the higher Orbs. It also lends a certain sense of satisfaction when you finally collect enough to reach a new ledge and get that Orb that's been driving you nuts for the last two hours. Then you see another one...just out of reach.

Not only was it entertaining and rewarding to track down those Orbs, but it was also fairly easy - they emitted a noticeable sound whenever you were near them. The developers even responded when people still found it difficult to find the last few they were missing, making them easier to find with an update that had Orbs get louder as there were fewer left.

The Bad OK

I couldn't, for the life of me, think of any that were 'bad' per se, though I came up with a few that were just so-so. These were collect-a-thons that were neither particularly fun, nor egregiously annoying. Games like Call of Duty 4, where you collected 15 enemy intel items for Look Sharp, or all 30 to unlock Eyes and Ears. I almost put this collect-a-thon into the good-job category as you unlock cheat options like Super Contrast, Slow-Mo Ability, or Ragtime Warfare by collecting them, but it was hampered by not being much fun to do.

The intel pieces didn't stand out from the background at all, though they were generally put in places that weren't too hidden, and didn't have any indicator noise to show you were near one. They did give you mission by mission indicators, however, so you'd know if there were any left on a level.

The weapon- and gold-based Collection Achievements in Battlefield: Bad Company were also stuck at so-so status. The weapons aren't particularly hard to track down, though the gold is a bit of a pain in the ass, and there are level-by-level indicators as to what remains undiscovered...it just didn't wind up being fun.

Being a chore is the path to The Ugly...as you'll find out next.

The Ugly

There's one Achievement list that has plenty of terrible Collection Achievements - a whole collection of them in fact. That game is Assassin's Creed - and I'm willing to bet some of you knew that was going to be the game even before I mentioned it.

Collecting those flags - over 400 in total - was an exercise in frustration and boredom. They did everything wrong here. Hide them in out-of-the-way places. Made them blend in. No indicator sound. No reward for getting them other than a measly few Gamerscore. Anyone that willingly got those Achievements should be tested for OCD.

Not only did they have one bad Achievement like this - they had SEVEN. Bad! Bad, Ubisoft!

The Grand Theft Auto IV pigeon hunt should also get a mention here. In this case the target - rats with wings in random locations around Liberty City - had indicator sounds, but not much of one. I have to admit that it was fun to hear that cooing sound and drop everything to hunt down the winged vermin, but that excitement wore off long before the 50th pigeon, so 200? Forget about it. Sorry, GTA - that was ugly.

Speaking of ugly, I'm about done with NCAA 2009. I'm not sure who's slated for the review, but I can tell you right now that it's got a ton of bugs - some that negatively impact your gameplay directly. I had a major one yesterday, one that left me hanging at the conclusion of a game in Campus Legend.

My running back was doing pretty well on the season, contending for Heisman, Maxwell, and Doak Walker trophies. There was one other halfback who had a 450 yard, 2 touchdown lead on me though, thanks to a bruised hand keeping me out of a game, so I needed some serious yardage.

I go through a couple games and I'm eating into his lead. I get a marshmallow game against TCU and light it up. An 86 yard TD run, a 74 yard TD run - huge yardage game where my o-line is just dominating them and opening up huge gaps. I get sat for the last 3 minutes of a game that's well in hand and... The game didn't end.

I was stuck at the sim screen - with my only options being to hit X to watch the play, Y to sim until I was back in, or A to sim the play. Only none of those would do anything.

Looking at the play-by-play, I noticed TCU took a penalty on the last play of the game. The game can't end on a penalty...but apparently either EA didn't think about that or the game has a bug where it can't deal with it. I had to quit to dashboard and start the game up again. That's when I remembered that I hadn't saved the game for a few weeks of the season...

I really wanted to finish up my Campus Legend career and import that guy into Madden 09 - 'finishing' NCAA 09 before moving on, but I don't know if I can resist the allure of Madden 09 as it sits on my desk. I tried two games of Madden 09 and it's just far more polished and offers up far more options.

The only downside...NCAA 09 has better Achievements - far better. How the hell does that happen?

For an example of how bad NCAA 09 can be, check this out:

EA SPORTS World: NCAA Football 09 Video

Until next week, I'm out.