Achievement Unlocked 11.28.08: Everyone's Innocent

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 11.28.2008

Microsoft wipes the score of an innocent man who loudly proclaims how innocent he is while selling off all his 360 gear and buying a PS3. But what did he sell that makes his claims seem shaky?



My ears perked up a bit this week after catching wind of an article about another Gamerscore cheater, a topic I've talked about before, being caught and busted by Microsoft.

While the news of continued enforcement probably wouldn't be enough to warrant inclusion in the column, this particular story has a unique twist.

The guy says he's innocent. Oh what a shocking rebuttal!

But is he really innocent or is there some funny business here?

In prison, everyone's innocent.

Took 'Hiding Evidence 101' from OJ Simpson.

In an article originally found on Slapstic and subsequently linked at a variety of sites, "JackTheWhack" professed his innocence.

Jack, real name Jack Barbosa, said his Gamerscore, a whopping 121,250 before being wiped, was the result of using Gamefly. He alleges he rented games through the service, playing any game that came out that he had at least a mild interest in.

Jack said that simply using Gamefly was the reason he hit 121,250 Gamerscore - the highest Gamerscore in all of New Jersey and enough to attract Microsoft's attention. No, not to wipe his Gamerscore - he claims he was interviewed to be featured as a 'Spotlight Gamer' on the 360 dashboard...just before his Gamerscore was reset to zero and he was branded a Cheater.

In the Slapstic piece Jack claims he called Microsoft, confused about what happened, and they said it was "abnormal for a person to achieve an undisclosed amount of Achievements in such a short period of time" but would say no more on the subject.

The author of the piece, site editor and owner Ryan Rigney, concludes the piece with this:

There are things working for Jack to make it seem obvious that he did not cheat. For one, he didn't get the full 1,000 points on many of his games. Like many gamers, he simply gets as many achievements as he can before moving on to the next game if things start taking too long. So with a lot of games he DOES have the full 1,000 points, but more often he has closer to 500, or even as low as 5 for games that he really didn't take a liking to.

I came upon all this information about the situation through an interview that I did with Jack. In it, he mentioned that he was selling all of his 360 products on his Amazon.com storefront. I asked him if he would consider going back to his 360 if he somehow managed to get all of his gamerpoints back, to which he responded, "I will never return to the 360, even if a new system were to be released. I would be gone." He also went on to inform me that he will be purchasing a Playstation 3 as soon as possible and that all he wants from Microsoft is a change in their policies that will keep such a thing from ever happening to anyone else.

I find the entire thing utterly infuriating.

Here's what I find "infuriating" - doubly so from a guy who says in his E-zines bio that he's using Slapstic to "launch a career in journalism."

Rigney believed what he was told by a person playing the victim, and didn't bother to check the facts by contacting Microsoft or even checking out the items Jack was selling on his storefront.

The guy that just had his account reset for cheating the Achievement system was selling a kit for transferring game saves - the very practice that made Microsoft start resetting Gamerscores and branding people cheaters?

What a shock.

Here's one day for JacktheWhack, from his 360voice blog:

7/19/2007
Gamer score is 46025. That is a gain of 1725 points over last time!
He opened up Call Of Duty 3 winning an amazing 14 achievements, Perfect Dark Zero picking up an amazing 31 achievements, Guitar Hero II gaining an amazing 9 achievements, Bomberman LIVE, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, All Pro Football 2K8, Gears of War, NCAA Football 08 finishing an amazing 16 achievements, UNO, and then nothing... nothing at all...

Getting 1,725 points in one day, that's definitely doable if you play some easy games. NBA 2K6 and Avatar will get you that in two hours.

Getting 31 Achievements in Perfect Dark Zero, in addition to getting all those other Achievements? Look at that list. Not going to happen. Before anyone says he could have been offline for a week prior, he had Achievement updates the day prior, so that's not the case.

Microsoft hasn't had to overturn one of their score wipes yet, and it sure doesn't look like this will be the first.

C'mon guys, if you want to cheat to get to the top of the Gamerscore leaderboards at least have the balls to admit it when you get caught. You screwed up, don't try pointing fingers at everyone else - especially when you're stupid enough to sell the transfer kit that got you in trouble to begin with, while also directing people there to buy all your 360 gear so you can get a PS3.

Good luck cheating on your Trophy collection.



With the news that Trophy support will become mandatory starting in January, 2009, PS3 gamers aren't going to have to wait weeks/months for a patch to add Trophies to games. It's unfortunate that it took Sony this long to mandate the practice, but at least they finally did it. The mandate comes in on January 1st, so any game that goes to certification after that point will require Trophy support to pass - so some early January games may sneak in without it.

The next step for Sony is to make Trophies as much of a community builder as Achievements have proved to be. That means making it easier to check your friend's Trophy collection, something Home might help with - if people want to bother with it. A 3D UI that takes longer to do what you could do with the old method seems counterproductive to me, so I'm not sure how much people will take to Home. There needs to be a quick way to compare what your friends have done compared to what you've done, and ways to communicate directly from that menu.



November 27th, 1998 - the Dreamcast launches in Japan. It's been 10 years since the Dreamcast, a console that was - in many ways - ahead of its time. Ah well, the more things change...

I really got into only two games in the last week: Left 4 Dead and The Last Remnant.

Left 4 Dead continues to delight in multiplayer, which was completely expected. There are only four 'films' to play through, and only two of those are open for versus mode play, but the game retains a remarkable amount of replay regardless. It's no secret why, of course. The game isn't really about the experience of making it through each level, but the experiences had while making it through the level. It's 'cool moment' followed by 'cool moment' - each unique to the game you're playing. It's exceedingly rare that you'll have the same thing happen on successive playthroughs, which keeps the entire experience from growing stale.

I was a little surprised to find the experience is still able to hold my interest in single-player, however. The Director AI does a decent job of mixing things up, changing the spawns of the special Infected and moving the weapon and health spawns to keep things from feeling 'been there, done that' despite just playing with and against AI - not humans.

I still don't know that I'd recommend this for anyone who doesn't play online, or at least do same-screen gameplay with friends, but Left 4 Dead is easy to recommend to those who do. For any gamer who's big into online gameplay, this one is a contender for Game of the Year.


Triggers the Witch, the horde, closes the door on me...then closes the door to abandon us to die?

The Last Remnant probably isn't going to be up for any Game of the Year honours, though it's hardly the terrible game that sites like IGN (5.3) would have you believe. I tend to agree more with Gametrailers, where it got an 8.0. As I pointed out in the forums, the IGN review has a few basic errors about the gameplay that make me wonder how much they really played. It's one thing to mark down a game if you can back up that reasoning, quite another if you back it up with inaccurate info - especially where unions, the title's biggest gameplay change, are concerned.

The game has a handful of technical glitches (slowdown during major battles and texture pop-in are the worst of it, with additional complaints about load times) but the core game is something that JRPG fans will love - particularly those who enjoy a good grindfest.

It's not that you have to grind in order to advance, but I've found that I want to. Almost every battle ends with your party receiving some form of performance boost: more health, increased strength, a new skill - it's so easy to fall into the classic grinder's trap and just keep jumping back into battles to keep raising those stats.

It also helps that each area (outside of the two starter areas, but possibly those as well) seems to house at least one - usually more - rare spawn. These are generally easy to spot, being larger than the normal creatures and sporting a green name. They'll beat the hell out of you if you're not prepared, but provide a challenging fight that's worth taking on.

I've found myself popping the game in even when I have only 10-20 minutes to play, something I wouldn't do with other JPRG's, just so I can grind out a few battles. Then I discovered the joys of adding in other soldiers and experimenting with unit formations, plus the strategies of motion on the battlefield became more apparent...

The Last Remnant, like most JRPG's, isn't for everyone. If you're into the genre and willing to overlook some minor flaws (load times are negligible if you choose to install the game, though texture pop-in and slowdown will persist), then there's a lot to like about the game. I'll try to get a video or two of The Last Remnant up over the weekend, so watch for those in the forums.

Until next week, I'm out.