Tips - Shadow Complex - "Serious Complex" (Level 50) (Video)

Tips - Paperboy - "Easy Week" (Video)

Finally finished Paperboy. I bought the game a good 4 years ago and have been sitting on it ever since getting hung up on the last - and hardest - achievement: Easy Week. Funny thing is, even though I've had the game for 4 years, it's only about 4 hours total that I've spent trying to unlock the achievement. Something about the simplicity of the old-school makes it twice as aggravating - all I have are two stupid buttons to worry about.

Well, my latest self-imposed lull between games eventually led me to plant myself on the couch a couple days ago and resolve to finally unlock the stupid achievement. Day 1 produced the normal sputtering burst of an attempt before rage-quitting at 1AM, but Day 2 ended in success (albeit just as sputtering). Here are the tips:

• Deliver Your Papers! - Not only that, but go for Perfect Delivery for at least 2 days out of the week (Monday/Tuesday are the easiest, obviously, but Wednesday/Thursday are also very possible). This will 1) give you great points and 2) nullify some threats!
• More Points! - Combined with perfect/near perfect deliveries, breaking non-subscriber (red) houses and taking the obstacle course slow enough to hit some hoops and make some jumps will lead to 2 - sometimes 3 - extra lives that you will absolutely need to win.
• Don't Die! - Seriously, if you die on Monday or Tuesday, just restart. In fact, I'd recommend saving all your men until Friday, which is where things really get hard. At that point, choose your battles. If there's a spot that's especially hard for you, and you can't formulate a reusable strategy to avoid the obstacle, just plan to die there - you'll respawn in the clear. Win in part by calculated attrition if you have to!
• Specifics - watch the video.
  

There you have it, Paperbeard out.

Marvel vs. Capcom vs. Beard: The Fate of Not Much, Really

So this was a surprise in every way possible. I hardly ever buy new games, and I buy fighting games even less often than that (renting DOA4 was the closest I've ever come on the 360, and we all know how that turned out). Combine that with the fact that I was actually aware of how difficult a 1K could be here, and you get one big WTFBeardmobile.

What can I say, I guess my passing impression with all those killer character trailers belied a deeper interest in pressing down-forward-B more than a hundred times a day.

But you probably didn't come to AchievementBeard.com to hear me wax smarmy about graphics or gameplay, in fact, I'm pretty sure you're here because you misspelled "AchievementBears" into your browser bar. Well, the joke's on you! Because while you're busy wondering and/or seeing if that site actually exists, I'm going to talk about my first 400G for Marvel vs. Capcom!

Like I said, I don't get many fighting games. Street Fighter II on my SNES was amazing, of course, but that was back when "combos" were just something the AI did to make you angry, back before "button mashing" even had a name. It's a narrowly defined genre to begin with that has only gotten more complicated over time, so it's entirely understandable that the achievements for such games have largely catered to enthusiasts, i.e are hard.

Which is why I was excited when the first three achievements I popped for Marvel vs. Capcom were some that I originally thought might give me the most trouble: "Land a Viewtiful/Incredible/Uncanny (31/65/91 hit) Combo." In fact, by the end of that first 1.5 hour session I was at 155G, and I've since unlocked "Herculean Task" (beat arcade mode on very hard) and "Saving My Quarters" (beat arcade mode without continues) - 2 others that sounded harder than they actually were (again, fighting game n00b here). Even the ach for reaching the rank of 1st Class online is semi-viral - all you have to do is play (not even beat) someone that has gained the rank and you'll unlock it. The rest (online and off) might seem grindy at times, but overall I'd say there are numerous important concessions that make the achievements (not to mention the game) very accessible to everyone, not just the genre geniuses.

The one exception is "A New Avenger" (40G), of course, for which you have to clear 320 out of 360 "missions", the exclusion of which would also keep you from unlocking "Master of Fate" (50G) - because somebody out there still thinks achievements for unlocking achievements is a good idea (they're already meta people!). However, if Capcom decides to get off their duff and release more characters instead of costumes this time around (are you really all that concerned with dressing up all your Street Fighter sprites?), every entry would give us 10 more missions each, making 1K very, very possible.

So what do you say Capcom? We know you've already done most of the work on Frank West, and at least thought about Doc Oc at some point - let's see what you got!

Autistic Interest

We achievement hunters don't just have OCD, we can do autism too!

I came upon an article this morning about an 11-year-old autistic kid that received the whole "gamerscore-reset-cheater-label" treatment by Micorsoft. The story sparked my interest if only for the questions it provoked: did he understand what "cheating" was? That others consider it "wrong"? That there were risks involved? For many kids with autism the answer would be "no" to all of the above, plain and simple - so is that still cheating? As philosophical as that might sound, Microsoft's Terms of Service that we all "sign" upon joining Xbox Live unequivocally says: yes, still cheating. Furthermore, the possibility that savant-like skill supplanted cheating in this instance has since been disproved - but at least it made for an interesting headline while it lasted!

Which was one of the reasons I typed up a little article myself, as I love doing for TrueAchievements from time to time. Unfortunately, for reasons completely within my control (my own stupidity), the article will not be printed there. So where can orphaned articles go to die? Why, AchievementBeard.com of course!

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

According to bad writers that work for Seattle's Q13 Fox News, autistic 11-year-old Julias Jackson was "socked in the stomach by Xbox Online" when he booted up his Xbox last week and found the label "Cheater" in place of 1500 deleted achievements that he had racked up over the course of about 200 days. Understandably upset, Julias's mother phoned Xbox Live and was immediately connected with people who had no idea what she was talking about, but was finally able to elicit this response later on via email:

The only actions that we take are to correct the player's current Gamerscore, and to label the player as a "cheater." This label can be observed on Xbox.com and through the player's view of their Gamercard on a console or computer that is connected to Xbox LIVE. The player can still legitimately gain future achievements. The player's experience does not change in any other way.

Julias's mother maintains, however, that her son's achievements were legitimate, due only to "his hard work and hours logged online", and that he can "master games in three to four days." In any event, she added that Xbox Live is "pretty much his only outlet and his only friend, because of autism", and that he was correspondingly devastated by the event.

Microsoft hasn't backed down though, and subsequently issued this response to Kotaku's inquiries:

Gamerscore resets are done when cheating is detected to keep LIVE fun, fair and safe for everyone. We only do them when we are 100% confident that cheating has occurred, and they are not something that can be appealed. Details can be found here - http://www.xbox.com/Live/Cheating.

Likewise, Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, confirmed via Twitter that "this wasn't a 'he played too good' situation at all," and that the details regarding young Julias's "cheated achievements" have since been given to his mother.

Achievement [Psyche] Unblocked!

It was July 2006, Daniel Powter was all the rage, fraternities everywhere wouldn't stop talking like Borat, and I had just rented my ninth Xbox game (ever) in the hopes of unlocking some more of these "achievements" I was beginning to enjoy so much. The game was Human Head/3D Realms' Prey, and I was quickly becoming annoyed with all the gameplay they had placed between me and my precious points. Even the scant day-and-a-half it took me to sail through all 1000 gamerscore was apparently too much, seeing as I returned the game with so much force that Blockbusters everywhere have been going out of business ever since.

A couple days later I received the latest issue of [Popular Gaming Publication!] in the mail, and opened up to find Prey plastered with their "Game of the Month" award. Sure, it was a slow month for games (it was either Prey or Chromehounds, for Pete's sake), but the more I thought about it the more I realized that my rabid achievement hunting had seriously screwed my appreciation of a decent game - and the achievements weren't even that bad! For me, it was an experience that defined the dark side of playing for points, and it's a definition that has stuck with me ever since. Not surprisingly, it's also the type of thing that many gamemakers have become overtly concerned with this generation.

Way back in March you may remember hearing about one such gamemaker, indie developer Chris Hecker, whose talk from GDC drew from budding research that suggests being extrinsically rewarded for completing tasks may actually diminish the task itself. In other words: exactly what I had experienced while earning achievements ("extrinsic reward") for playing Prey ("diminished task"). Hecker et al. argue that "intrinsic motivation" is the real goal for designers, and that taking away from such can lead to crappy games and "repetitive, dull tasks." They're absolutely right, but I don't think the player is positively powerless in this equation. It might take a conscious decision after some genuine reflection, but the mistake I made back in 2006 is very avoidable.

Which is why I find it at least a little funny when achievements as a whole are met with disdain, shame, or even hostility at times. Yes, they should never overshadow anything as possibly profound as gameplay or narrative, but they have their place. Haven't things like scoring and "leaderboards" been a part of gaming since the beginning? Even when the most sublime game succeeds in surpassing the sum of its parts it's not despite being a game (i.e. interactive), it's wholly because of it. Every game is different, of course, and there are far more gray areas than even I have alluded to, but ultimately I say playing for points and appreciation are not mutually exclusive endeavors.

So to all you closet achievement lovers out there, wherever you may be, I say stand tall and shout loudly, "I'm coming out of the closet, right now!" Don't worry, everyone will assume you're referring to achievements, and you'll make a bunch of new friends afterwards!