Tag Archives: G

Trials HD “Marathon” Achievement

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I am one persistent, stubborn, ornery ass son-of-a-bitch.

Trials HD is an amazingly fun motorcycle game.  Sort of like the old-school “Excitebike” game with a modern twist.  I have really enjoyed playing this game backwards and forwards; enduring literally countless moto-bike spills, endless attempt at completing nearly impossible tracks, and having a blast doing it.  GG Trials HD.

Enter the “Marathon” Achievement.

This achievement is ridiculously hard.  You have to complete a 20-track long tournament, straight through, without falling or retrying even once.  It’s so hard, that the developers actually swapped out a couple tracks with a recent update to try to make it even remotely a possibility to attain.  Anyone that has ever played Trials HD knows that it’s a pretty significant challenge just to get through some of the tracks in that game.  Period.  The game is even nice enough to keep track of your retries and falls for you (counted as ‘faults’) – and this is a counter that I have driven up into the hundreds and hundreds.  The mere thought of attempting to conquer TWENTY tracks…. Straight… in one singular tournament without a single fault is just a staggering premise.

Yet, I found that this was the only achievement I was lacking in this game.  I had to get it.  Had to.

“It’s impossible – Just give up” – I heard from several different people including my Wife, my Brother (happy birthday apparently), and even my own self.  And really; I was starting to think that was the honest truth.  This is damn near impossible to accomplish.  But I had set my mind to it.  I had to accomplish it.  There was no way I was giving up.

I started thinking about all the easy achievement points I’ve been getting recently…  Blasting from a 9,000 gamer score to over 15,000 in just a couple of weeks.  All those painfully easy achievement points demanded a penance of blood.  A consequence of my choice to pursue them.  I had to validate my gamer status, even if only to myself.  I felt a need to justify my gamer score, and that this impossibly difficult achievement would do so.  I simply had to get the Marathon achievement.

I don’t know if I’ve ever worked so hard at something in all of my life.  I have spent an un-trackable amount of time meticulously analyzing and honing skills on all 20 tracks.  It’s so frustrating, because if you fall on the 17th track out of 20 – you still have to start from track 1 in order to get the achievement.  It really seemed like the world did not want me to succeed – on probably my best run ever; my xbox froze once on track 18 while I had 0 falls.  Just a soul crushing event.

I kept grinding it out.  I kept analyzing the harder parts of each track and forming an exact strategy and pattern for each obstacle, trying to do the same thing every time.  I kept trying.  I kept re-trying.  I don’t have any official stats but I wouldn’t be surprised if I have played these tracks up to a thousand times.  It’s just completely ridiculous.

But I started to notice it getting easier.  I found myself getting further and further, and more often.  I got to a point where I started to notice myself getting to tracks 15,16,17 pretty regularly without falling.

And, then, FINALLY… Today, after weeks of pursuing the 40 point “Marathon” achievement – I have succeeded.  I got through a couple close calls, frequently paused and nervously tried to compose myself before moving into the 19th and 20th tracks…  I made it.  I finally survived this rancid despicable ordeal.  I feel amazingly good right now, extremely proud of my hard works’ eventual success.  February 14th lives onto a tri-fecta of celebration.  My beloved brother’s birthday, Valentine’s day, and the day I got the Marathon achievement in Trials HD.

All I can say, once again, is I am one persistent, stubborn, ornery ass son-of-a-bitch.

XboxLIVE – Mission Victor Charlie: Success

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The mission that I am dubbing “Vacation Catch-up” has been completed as a success.

As Vanlandw was away this week enjoying a much needed and EXTREMELY overdue vacation – I took it upon myself to catch him in gamerscore.  At the beginning of the week, I was almost 4,000 points behind him – so it was a pretty vast undertaking.

Originally I didn’t even think it would be possible; but as previously posted Vanbergs and Myself found a solution to that.

Vanlandw and I are tied for the time being; and I’m sure he’ll fly past me in no time.

TODAY, JUST TODAY, IN THE BATTLE OF VAN VS. VAN….

Van won

XboxLive Gamerscore

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This weekend has turned into a massive achievement fest for Vanbergs and myself.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened; but at some point within the last 6-8 months I have become completely OCD about my gamerscore and rep on Xbox Live. I don’t spend countless hours getting every achievement in every game that I own; but I spend plenty of extra time hunting down worthwhile achievements trying to boost up my score as much as possible.  I’ve desperately plunged into the multiplayer arenas of Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 in search of 5 star rep.  I’ve begged and pleaded my friends and foes to “prefer me”.  The list of XboxLive addiction shame just goes on.

I’m not enough of an achievement whore to use cheats/godmodes/glitching to blast an easy 1000 points out of my games.  I do maintain a certain level of purism – but, at the same time, I am definitely enough of an achievement whore to seek out and destroy games that give an easy 1000 g. Oddly enough I blame Vanlandw at least partially for starting this: Back on my birthday he purchased me “Avatar – The last Airbender” for my birthday (not to be confused in any way with James Cameron’s Avatar film); this is easily the simplest/easiest achievement booster game known to man. You literally get 1000 gamerscore in less than 2 minutes. (youtube vid)

Fast forward to this weekend. I notice on my XboxLive account that Vanbergs has magically come within just a few points of my 9,000 point gamerscore.   Somehow he magically discovered through a coworker that the entire slew of the “2k6” sports game franchise offer ridiculously easy achievements.   These NBA/NHL/NCAA/MLB 2k6 games I think must have been developed so early in the pre-launch days of the Xbox360 that they just didn’t quite understand how the achievement system was supposed to work.  Instead of having 40-50 achievements that add up to the 1,000 points, they offer FIVE… this results in each achievement being worth hundreds of points compared to 5, 10, 20 points in “normal” Xbox games.

The achievements are for things like:

    • Score 50 points with a player
    • Make 15 three pointers with any team
    • Get 6 blocks with any player
    • Score a goal with a defenseman

    Vanbergs and I teamed up each scouring various Game Stop locations for these used games and were able to come up with a pretty darn complete collection of easy 1,000 point games.  In addition to the 2k6 series, we got Fight Night round 3, Madden 2006, NBA Live 2006, Prey, and King Kong.

    So far I’ve done done the 2k6 sports games only, and am working my way up to the others.  The games are just ridiculously easy.  Playing allstar teams against the worst teams in the league results in an easy 1,000 points in a single exhibition game.  Sliders can be adjusted to basically make the opponent team play like 4th grade girls; even if the difficulty is set to super star level.  Playing Duke vs. Princeton in NCAA 2k6, I seriously won 238 – 0.  The Princeton team did not score one basket.

    Now – there are a couple achievements in here that I did have to work fairly hard at.  It’s no small feat to get 20 rebounds with a single player, especially when the team doesnt hardly shoot the ball.  Or, to get 6 blocks with a single player.  Or, to score a goal while you have 2 players in a penalty box.  But I was able to find tactics that covered each achievement and do it in one single game.  I would just shoot half-courters to get my own rebounds, intentionally hack/slash the other team to get penalty box time, and jump around like a mad man at hopes of blocking shots.  etc etc etc.

    I must admit that I do feel a little bit cheap after this weekend’s activities thus far – but I take solace in the fact that I am not cheating whatsoever.  I haven’t entered cheat codes.  I haven’t entered any god mode codes.  I haven’t glitched any games, even though there are published glitches on a few games I own that COULD result in easy 1,000 points.

    I’m simply reasearching and finding games that have easy, high yield achievements – and I’m playing them legitimately.  In fact, it was a pretty frickin’ impressive amount of work to find and procure all of these games!  It was pretty satisfying though.  I paid $2-$5 per game getting them used.

    Could I make more of a sport out of this by playing the games at my actual skill level and not making it painfully easy?  Sure.  Does it take some of the pride and prestige away from blasting past 10,000 points for my gamerscore?  Yes it does, to be quite honest.  Would I do it exactly this same way if I had it to do over again?

    Absolutely.