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.