Topic: The Achievement Discussion Thread

I thought it'd be a good idea to have a thread where we discuss which recent game we've gotten 1000 G in, how much gamerscore we have, and just talk about achievements in Xbox games in general.

So I just got 1000 G in Hellblade on Xbox One. This game has mostly straightforward achievements except for one where you have to find a bunch of collectibles for 100 G. But getting 900 G just for going through the game is incredibly good. The one caveat for this game's achievements is that if you use the instant-on/quick resume feature of Xbox One, achievements will stop unlocking for this game, which happened to me and I've been forced to play through the game twice now because of that. I finally got 1000 G though so I'm happy and the game was overall excellent as well.

Now I have in total 75 770 G. As a side note, I'm impressed at how much my gamerscore has shot up ever since I started using Game Pass. The service is a great way to nab lots of achievements. I'm hoping to get to 80 000 G before the end of the year, which shouldn't be that hard in all honesty.

Good idea for a thread. Only Xbox One games I have 100% achievements are Final Fantasy VII, Fallout 4 and Fractured Minds (I have some Xbox 360 tho). Maybe we can in this thread also give recommendations of games that give easily (or sort of) that sweet gamerscore.

I have in total 58'615 G. Increasing steadily.

@Justifier Yes, good idea! I'll be sure to mention any games that I come across with decent achievement lists.

Some that I would recommend now that are on Game Pass are What Remains of Edith Finch and The Touryst. Edith Finch might not be the easiest to get 1000 G in on your first run, but chapter select makes it very easy to acquire all achievements that you have missed after finishing the game once. The Touryst is a lot of fun to play through so getting the 10 achievements in that game is not that hard, but it can take some time (5 hours or so, it's actually a much shorter game if you don't go for 100%).

So looking at True Achievements, I have completed 14 Xbox One games and 4 360 games to 100%. On the One there are a couple of the LEGO games, Hellblade, Carrion (Game Pass, cool little game and an easy ish completion), Nier Automata (Game Pass or was when I played it), Peggle 2 which took about 6 years of on/off playing to get, Defense Grid 2 and a couple of TellTale Batman games.
My 360 completions are LEGO Batman 2, Defense Grid, Harms Way and Halo 4 which took some serious luck and hard work to get.

I have completed 149 games and have a total of 226015 G.
The last game i completed was Carrion, which was a very straightforward completion; just finish the game and find all powerups. It also happens to be a very good game, and is also on Game Pass, so it gets a very strong recommendation from me.

So Sony announced earlier today that they would be making some significant changes to its trophy system on PlayStation and the major one is that they would make it easier to level up now when collecting trophies. Before it would take a very long time and several Platinum trophies just to go up one level. Now they've changed the scale from 1-100 to 1-999 and that is going to make leveling up much quicker.

In my opinion, this is such a welcome change because collecting trophies haven't been as appealing as collecting achievements up until now. However, now that you'll level up more often it's going to be more rewarding to collect trophies compared to before.

So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think Microsoft should do the same and introduce a level system to tie in with your gamerscore? I think it would be much more interesting if they made achievements more engaging instead of how it is now. For example, reach certain levels, unlock rewards like in-game items or a currency system where you can buy items for your avatar. I definitely believe there's potential for a more ambitious reward system instead of the one we have now.

Last night I got 1000/1000 GS from Cyberpunk 2077. Not too hard, but there were couple achievements that you could miss, so I needed to play game twice (and a little bit of save scumming to see all endings).

I don't want to derail this thread or make a new thread but I don't think my question will necessarily derail this thread as it's only relevant for ten more days...

I'm thinking of going for that 10 000 GS for 10 000 reward points and I've downloaded the games from this list:

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2021/01/guide_easy_achievements...

To be honest, some of the games are games I'd probably like to play naturally anyway so I'm not keen on playing along to a 2 hour video that shows me solutions for puzzles and stuff, particularly on games like full throttle and day of the tentacle.

So I thought I'd ask people who might have played some of these games to just categorise them into the following categories:

Natural Unlock - this is how I'd describe most Telltale games, you play the game and unlock all the achievements naturally by the time you finish it
and
Text Guide - this might be for something like what remains of Edith Finch which I've played before. Missed a couple of trophies but I wouldn't have spoiled the game if I had a written achievement guide open
and
Watch the Video - the video won't spoil any puzzles but will help mop up any missable achievements
finally
No Guide - I'd go for these games last because looking at an achievement list or watching a video would spoil the story or puzzle solutions

These are the games on the list: (I'll say if I'm just going to watch the video on certain games)

The Gardens Between -
Rec Room - Watch The Video
Korgan -
Fractured Minds -
The Walking Dead Michonne - Natural Unlock
#iDarb - (I haven't got this game anyway)
What Remains of Edith Finch - Text Guide (I'll just do it to the video though because I've played it before on ps4)
One Leaves -
NHL '94 Rewind - Watch the Video
The Little Acre -
Little Nightmares -
Day or the Tentacle -
Full Throttle -
Roblox - Watch the Video
Sea of Solitude -
Gone Home - ( I haven't got this game)
Batman Telltale season 1 - Natural Unlock
Batman Telltale Season 2 - Natural Unlock (I assume)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - Text Guide (two missable achievements)
The Walking Dead Season 2 - Natural Unlock

I put the games I haven't got on the list in case somebody else is wondering the same thing as me and any replies might help them and/or eachother anyway. I also added Batman 1&2 because they have been GwG in the last year or so

Anyway, I hope what little information I provided helps anyone else who is considering going for this and I would be grateful if other people could share their experiences and what they thing each game could be categorised as. Cheers!

Edit: maybe someone knows a site that has achievement guides that are kind of in the style of a vague guide that will make sure you get every achievement on one playthrough without being a full guide to the game with spoilers?

Edit 2: I thought I'd update this in case anyone else finds it useful

I'm giving up on The Day of the Tentacle. I've been enjoying it but in all honesty I'm at a point where i have to look for guides to show me what to do next. This game just isn't intuitive for me so I'm deleting it cuz watching YouTube to play a game isn't my type of fun. Too bad as i really was enjoying it but when i realized I'm 3 hours into a sub 3 hour game and less than 20% completed i realized I had a problem lol. Off to the next game, Little Nightmares or Edith Finch.

@Krzzystuff This was what I was afraid of as well. The reason being that I remember when Grim Fandango (made by the same developer) got a remaster on PS4 years ago and people were talking about how amazing the game is, so I bought it when it was on sale. It was sitting in my backlog and eventually I wanted to look up impressions of the game in order to motivate me to play it. Turns out the game is incredibly difficult and so I never started it up. The fact that I'm hearing the same thing about Day of the Tentacle is not surprising to me at all, but it's unfortunate all the same. Double Fine really should've gone the extra length to add some easier difficulty modes for better accessibility in the remasters, because like you I too don't want to constantly look up guides when playing a game.

@Krzzystuff @LtSarge honestly I wouldn't feel bad about what is now a "sub 2 hour game" taking longer than expected. These games were designed to be hard to figure out and people would play them for days, weeks, months when they came out originally. The only reason it's sub 2 hours now is because people can use readily available guides nowadays or because they know the game inside out from playing it in its original form.

Before the proliferation of the modern internet, you might spend weeks stuck on one bit until a friend informs you of how to progress or you pick up a magazine or tips book that gives you a clue on how to carry on. I think finishing games entirely was much rarer in those days too. I think it was a phenomenon that really took full swing from the PS1 era onward. People might have finished the odd SNES game in the early 90s but it wasn't all in one go. They might play a bit every few days or week or so and finish it after a year or something!

@ralphdibny Yeah, it's the same reason why other games in the 80s-90s were intentionally made very difficult so that people would constantly play them over and over since they were otherwise very short games. But a lot of the games from that time period have been re-released today with options for accessibility. For example, Rare Replay has the rewind feature for its older games, Castlevania Anniversary Collection has save states and all Virtual Console games on Wii U/Switch also have save states. Something similar could've been done for Double Fine's games as well, such as giving you hints whenever you were stuck. Otherwise most people will find these games to be too intimidating to play.

@LtSarge maybe so, they are a bit obtuse for modern audiences. I could barely make it through the first few areas of grim Fandango on PC as a kid. I made some more progress on the PS4 port but never got around to finishing it! I am really looking forward to getting round to day if the tentacle and full throttle. Going to go in blind though! No guides....unless I get really stuck....

So Donut County was added to Game Pass today and after hearing from some users here that the game has easy achievements, as well as is rather fun and not too long, I decided to give it a try. I finished it in just 2 hours, got about 500 G on my playthrough and it took about half an hour to clean up the rest with a guide. In other words, fairly easy game to get 1000 G and it doesn't take more than 3 hours. The game itself is pretty fun, although I did find it got rather repetitive at first since it didn't offer many varied levels. But since it's only 2 hours long, and the levels got more varied towards the end, the overall package was good. Definitely worth playing even if you're not interested in the achievements since the concept is very fun and heavily reminiscent of the Katamari series.

@ralphdibny Thought I'd tag you here since you were looking for easy games to get 1000 G in.

@LtSarge nice one, cheers for the heads up! I need to do some shorter ones to top up to the 10 000

I've nearly finished the last walking dead game that's on game pass. I have enjoyed them a lot more than I was expecting to considering I don't watch the show. I think they are pretty good so even though they took about a day each to play, I am glad I did so.

Probably going to go at the other shorter games without a guide first and then mop up the achievements after. I think I'll save DotT and Full throttle for another time

@LtSarge thanks for mentioning it. I'll give it a go for sure to try and get my 10K before next week.

I did that fractured Minds game and it took less than half an hour to play. I did like it even if it is a bit on the nose. I particularly liked the text at the bottom the screen that kind of insults you. Assuming this is your internal dialogue, it is quite realistic. I think the overall message is a good one but i don't think it makes clear that overcoming or living with your own problems is only good for you. What I mean is, it's more of a compassionate game that might liken itself to your own depression and anxiety and it praises the player for dealing with it but it doesn't really address the hurdle of the next step which is making it within society, where your own problems mean diddly squat unless they are directly related to your contribution to society. It's a weird one, it's kind of a good message and a good starting point but is almost a bit naive and shallow in its handling of the subject matter. Not everyone is an actor/filmmaker/counsellor/mentor/activist etc where their mental health can be channeled into their work. Maybe it is just meant as a kind of validation or "you're not alone" style piece of art. It doesn't claim to approach anything more than acknowledging your own issues so maybe I am expecting too much of it. Either way it is quite a freaky game and probably not the best choice for the middle of the night! Worth a play though

@Krzzystuff I just played Little Acre from the easy achievements list and I thought it was really good. It's like a really easy point and click game and could be a good starting point for the genre and warm you up for the less forgiving ones like day of the tentacle.

Took me just over an hour to finish it without a guide and then I went back and played through it again with a guide to unlock the rest of the achievements. Only one didn't unlock though and I can't figure out why. I'll probably leave it anyway.

Good game though, the animation reminds me a lot of Dragons Lair. Some of the designs are somewhere between Dragonball Z (or maybe a studio gibhli/general anime style) and Monkey Island too.

@ralphdibny thanks for the recommendation. I had little acre on my play later list already so I'm downloading it now. I'm just over 5K for the quest so I'll see how far i get overall. End of day i played a decent amount of games that i likely would have out off and played more Forza and such. Good to switch it up a bit. Really enjoyed playing A Way Out with kefka in co-op, that was a surprisingly good story.

@ralphdibny I'm pretty sure that game was made by highschool kids, so pretty good if you consider that. The game was interesting and a very short experience.