Achievement Unlocked 11.21.08: Braaaaaiiiiinnnnssss

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 11.21.2008

This week in Achievement Unlocked, a look at a hot new trend in games: zombies! Plus NXE gets rid of those unsightly Gamercard blemishes, while Sony may be looking at Trophies being mandatory.



Gaming is, like most forms of entertainment, dominated by trends. One of this year's trends, and one that I heartily endorse, is the inclusion of our undead adversary - the zombie. Adding zombie-killing modes to games, doing zombie-based events - even making games that are nothing but killing zombies.

After all, outside of the Nazis, is there a group that's more fun to mow down in massive numbers? Okay, maybe PETA members...

This week let's take a look at the various games that have recently included the undead, separated into the various levels of inclusion the undead get.



Includes

This group is the weakest - games that just included zombies in some way. Fable 2 sported zombie-like undead in the form of the Hollow Men. The game also included ghosts, but they're not zombies so let's move on to Fallout 3. The Ghouls here were zombie-ish, though they were created from radiation, not...well whatever the hell makes zombies.

[side note: In most cases zombies are brought into existence via voodoo, though it's also been blamed on comets passing too close to the Earth, biological agents, or a host of other factors. They've probably even used radiation as a catalyst, thus rendering this side note entirely pointless.]

The Smackdown vs Raw has been a staunch supporter of the rights of the undead for some time now, including a Zombie entrance that includes walking motions and lighting. If we're going to really stretch the premise, I suppose Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe includes at least one dead guy. He's awfully mobile for a Deadite though, even teleporting around at times...

Modes

Let's not fight when there are zombies out there to kill!

These are games that include modes dedicated to zombies and the pressing need for their eradication. Call of Duty: World at War is the most recent of these, with a zombie outbreak mode unlocked once you beat the single-player campaign. In this mode you (and up to three friends) defend a stronghold against waves of zombies, using cash earned to bolster your armory of weapons and board up the windows and doors.

Saints Row 2 also included a mode dedicated to slaughtering the undead - Zombie Uprising. In this mini-game (triggered at any crib you own by just checking out the TV) featured multiple waves of increasingly powerful, but very slow moving, undead. This mode is fun, though it's not all that difficult, and if you can get through all the waves you'll be rewarded with a zombie mask.

GTA IV didn't include much in the way of zombie content at launch, but just before Halloween there was a multiplayer tweak to include zombies in the player versus player aspect of the game. This 'spread the infection' tweak added a bit of life to the multiplayer, but wasn't much for zombie integration. Better luck with that February DLC, guys!

Entire Games

Two major games released recently that prominently feature the zombie menace - Left 4 Dead and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

In Left 4 Dead, you run through missions that exemplify the 'zombie apocalypse' archetype - a small group of survivors that attempt to hold out against hordes of zombies, ending with a dramatic escape against incredible odds. The easy nature of porting content from one Source-based title to another has led to this game populating others (Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike among others) with zombies. More about the game in This Week in Achievements.

The other major - and that should probably be in all caps for this one - title that centers around the undead menace is World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Sure, a Lich isn't exactly a run-of-the-mill zombie, but it's definitely undead and also a menace*. Except to these guys that is.

* some even say it's a menace to other PC games, sucking the life force out of the market.

As for upcoming games, who could forget Resident Evil 5 - home of the racist zombie stereotype! There's also Burn, Zombie, Burn! - a PSN game slated for some time in 2009, and though there's not exactly a glut of information on that one just yet it's clear that it's going to feature a shitload of zombies. 10 shitloads, even.

Begone, Zero-point Achievements

A slew of new features came with the new Xbox 360 user interface update, with Achievement junkies liking one a great deal - the ability to delete games from their Achievement history. This only applies to games that have no Achievements earned, or at least none that were worth Gamerscore.

Though it seems rather pointless, having zero-point games on their history was a real thorn in the side for 'completionists' and the OCD-addled. I have to admit that I went through and deleted all my zero-pointers to prune the list down. It helps make your 'completion' percentage (the number of games you've gotten all the Gamerscore from versus those you haven't) more accurate, which is, I suppose, a positive. I just wanted to get some of those old Xbox Live Arcade trials off my Gamercard. No, I didn't buy Joust!

To delete zero-point games, hit the Guide button and go left to your Achievements. Just hit X while on any zero-point game to delete it. I think you can make it easier on yourself by changing the sorting, putting all the zero-point games together.

Sites that track this kind of thing, like MyGamerCard are already coming up with their own policies on how they'll make changes on their end. Here's the MyGamerCard proposal to users:

One of the features you may have heard about regarding the New Xbox Experience is the ability to remove games with 0 Achievements. This completely removes it from your public gaming history on Xbox Live.

Of course, one of the issues this presents is for websites that also tabulate and evalutate your history. Websites like MGC.

After some thought, and a little idea-bouncing off of people, I've come up with what I believe to be the best solution for everyone: We think the vast majority of you will be taking Microsoft up on this offer, so after NXE Launch Day (which is Wednesday, November 19th - so sometime after that) we'll remove any games which have 0 Achievements. To put this in perspective, that's over 23 MILLION games being removed from 2.1 Million (out of 2.4 Million) MGC users.
If you would like to keep any of those eligible games, you can restore them in one of two ways: Playing it again, or with a new tool that will appear in My MGC after launch.

Similarly, this tool will allow you to manage any eligible game; so if in 6 months you've played something that you've deleted from your Xbox History, you can come delete it here. Of course, there will be guidelines and limitations to what you can do and when, etc. These will all be enumerated when this feature goes live.

Please give us your feedback! We want to know your reactions to these ideas, and how you think it will affect MGC. I was reluctant to do this because of the effect it would have on our Completion and Genre Leaderboards, but there's no ignoring that a good portion of 23 million games will likely be removed when the NXE hits next week.

As I said last week, the new dashboard and Guide are pretty nice upgrades over the old user interface, though it may take people some time to get used to. The dashboard isn't really laid out as your 'do everything' place anymore, that's what the Guide is for - speedy access to all the stuff you're used to. The dashboard is for finding new things, discovering new content, etc...

What's your take on it?

Street Fighter Achievements

The Achievement list for Street Fighter has hit the Internet but no, it's not the Street Fighter you might have been thinking it was. It's the HD remix of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, a 12-Achievement list worth 200 points. You can find the list here, with the best of the bunch being either 'Sheng Long is in Another Castle' for beating Akuma in Arcade mode or 'Sagats Scar' for beating Sagat with Ryu's fierce shoryuken. One is just a funny nod to video game history, while the other is a nod to the history of the series itself.



No longer will PS3 gamers have to wait weeks or even months for a Trophy support patch, at least if a report on VideoGamer.com can be believed. According to the news posting, they were tipped off by an anonymous source and then verified it with a nameless SCEE spokesperson. Given the 'SCEE spokesperson' track record of being wrong about things, it's easy to be skeptical about this newest revelation, doubly so when it's an anonymous confirmation of an anonymous rumour.

I'd love to see Sony make Trophies mandatory, it's something that's long overdue. Just hold out on believing this one until you hear it from a more official source.

With Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on shelves, I took a look at the Trophy list for the game. At 43 Trophies, it's different from the 360 version's Achievement list in a few ways. It would have been nice to see a better list in either case, but at least the game itself is quite a bit of fun.



It's been a real bizarre mix of games this last week, starting with a ton of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I've sunk 11 hours into the game, and I don't think I'm really all that close to finishing it yet. I've been spending a lot of time working on perfecting challenge vehicles, including trying to do them in different ways.



One mission, for example, has you trying to protect a statue from hordes of kamikaze aircraft that keep divebombing it. The first time through I built a nimble plane loaded down with a few Egg Guns and tore them up in the air. The statue took some damage however, keeping me from getting the Jiggy or the TT Trophy, so obviously that wasn't the way to go, given my pilot skills.

The second time through the game I tried with a helicopter gunship made for the occasion. I figured that if I hovered above the statue, I could gun down anything before it got too close. Yeah, that wasn't the case as enemies also targeted me on occasion and some slipped through while I was otherwise engaged.

For the third time through I decided to think outside the box. Well, to be more accurate I decided to think 'inside' the box - creating a large hollow box topped with propellors and balloons that I could simply fly over top of the statue, land, and completely protect. Brilliant! Aside from one small snafu where I grazed the statue while landing the building - affectionately named Death Hotel in the blueprints - it functioned flawlessly. A turret gun on top of Death Hotel allowed me to gun down all the aircraft while leaving it completely free from harm.

It seems like most challenges work that way - there's an obvious way to do it, but also some less clear methods that will yield better results. In one race, for example, I had real trouble getting my vehicle to hug the track while I raced - until I added two propellors to the top, set to reverse thrust and keep it firmly planted on the ground. Suddenly my lap time was dramatically better! With a little more thought I realized there was nothing preventing me from using propellors as propulsion for my ground-based craft, adding a pair of props to the rear of the vehicle and cutting my lap times yet again.

At $60 maybe I wouldn't recommend Banjo Kazooie to just anyone, but at $40 it's certainly hard to pass up. There aren't many games you can play in front of your kids these days, but this breaks that trend.



The only other game I've been playing this week is Left 4 Dead, satisfying myself with the demo until getting the game Thursday. I still haven't played the full version, though that's on tap for later tonight and over the weekend. Having half my friends list playing the game at all times hasn't made the wait easier, but such is life. I'll have some videos up on Left 4 Dead soon, probably over the weekend. Look for them in the forums.

The game is, even just in demo form, a blast to play. I'm a huge fan of the 28 Days Later style zombie that's preternaturally quick and agile, pouncing on anything that isn't already dead, so this game is square in my sweet spot. The four-player co-op play is extremely well implemented, and the 'Take a Break' function is something that other co-op games need to implement RIGHT NOW.

The only concern I have about the game is that, at four missions, it seems like it might get old fairly quickly. I guess we'll see how good the Director AI is at keeping things fresh through multiple playthroughs, though I know the versus mode will have legs. Valve has apparently committed to supporting the game post-launch, so hopefully that means we'll see a lot of content coming down the pipe.

Test of YouTube HD embed:



Until next week, I'm out.