Titanfall: Achievement Locked

Few things are quite as frustrating to an achievement hunter than meeting the requirements for an achievement, and having it not unlock. All too often, when it happens, there is very little you can do about it. You have to hope that the developers care enough to be bothered to fix it, or that someone, somewhere, happens to find something that you can do to trick the game code into re-analyzing the achievement's criteria and make another attempt at popping it.

I've had this issue with two games very recently. One, a simple city-building game for the Windows Phone called Kingdoms and Lords, actually has several achievements that may or may not unlock. You must build armies and attack certain "bosses" in the game, and the defeat of each one unlocks an achievement. Usually. Any one of the boss achievements could completely fail to unlock. If you do not know this ahead of time and are not paying attention, you could very easily move on to the next task and save your game at a point after the boss is defeated. Because that's the only way you can get the achievement to unlock — by reverting to your previous save point and replaying the final battle. While you can replay the battle at any future time, it doesn't count it as defeating the boss again, and the game will not re-evaluate the achievement and attempt to award it. The only alternative is to completely restart the game — but, since it's a typical free-to-play game that only allows a certain number of "turns" per day, it can take quite a bit of time to rebuild back to the point of the boss in question.

The other game in question is a much higher-profile game, Titanfall. This pride and joy of the Xbox One has been widely viewed as the first big reason to get a next-generation Xbox console. You can earn experience points to level-up your character to level 50, at which point you can "regenerate" and start over at level 1, doing it over again until you regenerate 10 times. There are two achievements that are closely related: Maxed Out for reaching level 50, and My Generation for regenerating and starting the next cycle. I say "closely related" because reaching level 50 is the requirement for being able to regenerate, so once you earn Maxed Out, you have the ability to hit a button, regenerate, and pop My Generation.

To fuel the fire, they have added a challenge called Early Adopter, for which you must reach level 50 in the game's first month (by the end of March 2014). Ideally, reaching level 50 within that time frame would pop both the achievement and the challenge.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work out that way in practice. Some time in the last week of the month, I reached level 50, and neither the achievement nor the challenge popped. In researching this issue, I've found I'm not alone, but sometimes things can be done to have the game reevaluate the criteria and pop it. Some have said that it pops on its own after playing a few games. Some have suggested hard-rebooting the console. Still others have noticed it pop after regenerating.

I've hard-reset my console already (since the Xbox One can't seem to go a week without needing to do that for some reason or another). I also played many games since then. There is another achievement for completing all weapon challenges to unlock all accessories. Since I was very close when I hit level 50, and since regenerating resets those challenges, I decided to play until I unlocked those items first. Ultimately, I did earn that achievement — but the Maxed Out achievement and Early Adopter challenge remained locked.

I even went above and beyond the call of duty in trying to re-trigger an achievement analysis. I deleted my saved game data, deleted the game off of my hard drive, and re-installed. I was a little concerned that it would lose my level progress, but I found that I need not have worried — as soon as I started the game, it showed a message that it was syncing with the servers, and I had my level 50 and all challenge progress and item unlocks back. Unfortunately, my achievement and challenge were still locked.

It is almost insulting to pull up your achievement progress and have it say "100%" next to the word "Locked".

I played one more game at level 50, and then decided to go ahead and regenerate. The My Generation achievement unlocked like clockwork, and I was back at level 1. So now my achievement history shows that I did regenerate on March 29^th, somehow, apparently, without reaching level 50.

I have read from random internet commenters that the achievement does sometimes unlock when reaching level 50 the second time around. However, I doubt that I will be able to accomplish this in the last two days of the month, and so, despite having met the requirement, the challenge will likely remain forever locked.

It's not really a big deal, since challenges are not counted with achievements and earn no gamerscore; and as long as Maxed Out does unlock when I reach level 50 again, I will still get my points and may possibly "complete" the game. But it is just generally annoying that I've done what I'm supposed to do, and I get no credit for it.

End-game achievements

I finally finished my quest to achieve 100,000 Gamerscore, well ahead of my original goal of the end of the year and even ahead of my "stretch goal" of the next Xbox's launch. I had hoped to hit the score exactly, but I decided not to stress that and just get over the score. I have to admit, though, I didn't quite expect to leap-frog it by such a large margin — the achievement that put me over the line was "My Hero" from Lego Batman 2, a 50G achievement that took me from 99,975 to 100,025. I knew I was coming close, but I admit I wasn't paying that much attention; I was going for a 35G achievement that I only expected to help by rounding out the last digit in my score (although at that point, it, too, would have put me over the mark by 10G).

What I found very interesting is how the ending achievements in Lego Batman 2 are laid out. There are the fairly standard achievements for collecting all red bricks, all gold bricks, and all characters. There are also achievements for collecting groups of characters (all heroes, all villains, etc.), which usually means you end up popping two achievements at the very end (one character that completes their subgroup as well as completing the entire list). The interesting thing about this game, though, was that there is one character that requires collecting all of the gold bricks. I suppose it's possible that you could collect all the gold bricks before collecting characters, but most of the characters are picked up quite easily (even those that are locked up behind gold brick gates, since most have a much lower gold brick threshold to buy them). It just seemed like I was encouraged to pick up that character last, so the fact that the "Girl Power" achievement (for picking up the last female character) popped along with "Team Building" (for picking up the last overall character) seemed more of an inevitability than a coincidence.

Even odder, though, was the achievement that put me over 100,000G. There is an achievement for collecting all gold bricks, but part of that requires saving all of the citizens in peril, as each one itself unlocks a gold brick — not too far off from the groups of characters. But what I find curious is that this achievement that is a stepping stone to collecting all gold bricks is worth so much. Achievements for the different groups of characters are worth 20G, and the whole collection achievement is 50G. However, the achievement for collecting the gold bricks tied to citizens in peril is worth 50G, whereas the achievement for the full collection of gold bricks is only 35G.

I admit to having mixed feelings to these group achievements that, collectively, earn another achievement. It seems a little silly sometimes to have multiple achievements pop for basically doing one thing, but it is nice to have recognition of milestones along the way that collectively combine to something larger, instead of achievements that don't relate to each other in any way. I was almost disappointed when I found no achievements for collecting all vehicles, which I had to do in order to complete the last achievement for reaching 100% completion. Fortunately, in that case, collecting vehicles was also the last thing that I did, so having that action pop the 100% achievement was, in a way, its own reward.

Achievement Unlocked: Halo 2

I've had all of the Halo achievements from the Xbox 360 for over a year now, when the Halo Wars DLC finally went on sale and I decided to buy them up and start boosting for all of the outstanding achievements. But for being such a Halo fanboy, I felt like there was something missing. I never bothered to pick up Halo 2 for the PC. Well, for a while, I didn't have a PC capable of running it. It required Windows Vista (hacks to get it running on Windows XP aside), and then it just didn't seem like a priority. Who would be around to play it with, anyway, since three other Halo games had been out since then?

I finally decided to pick them up. Finding copies of Halo 2 on the cheap wasn't terribly hard (in fact, I also picked up the original Halo while I was at it, just to officially complete my collection).

The single player achievements weren't too terribly hard (all I'll say is: when you play on a PC, you have much more control over the system as a whole than you ever have on a console), and I was even able to pick up a few of the multiplayer achievements — Hired Gun, you could get by killing yourself (as long as you had the Legend achievement first); and Bonecracker, Assassin, and Flaming Ninja I managed to pick up by happening to find someone else online who just happened to have the Ninja achievement and who I happened to kill with a melee and an assassination before he gave up. The rest, however, were going to be more difficult.

So, with Halo 4 only 20 days away, I decided I would set up a couple boosting sessions on TrueAchievements.com to boost the rest. I made sure I had a handle on hosting games in Halo 2, and I created two sessions for the next two days.

I got one taker for the first session (not too surprising given the short notice). We were actually able to get a lion's share of the multiplayer achievements done in short order — any that didn't require having more than two people on the field at a time. The second night was a full session, having the minimum 5 gamers to get the remaining achievements. (You only really need 5 for the "Killtacular" achievement; the "play all game types" one only needs 4 total.)

To make a long story very short, we were able to get these done pretty easily. It was almost nostalgic playing on the PC, which I hadn't really done in years. We used TeamSpeak to coordinate (because the built-in chat system is somewhat lacking in the quality department, and because TeamSpeak has a brilliant option to overlay who's talking in a very clear manner), but we also had text chat available for those whose computers just weren't cooperating. (I only knew it was there when I was sending a standard Xbox Live text message to one player, and I saw his response typed up in the game window.)

The longest part of the achievement hunting was playing on every single map and game type. There are 39 different game types (and a little more than half that number of maps). It counted if the host (me) ended the game immediately, so we spent the majority of our time watching the game loading screens. But, it definitely wasn't difficult, and now I have every possible Halo achievement scored.

For the next 18 days, anyway.…

Achievement Unlocked: Borderlands

I picked up Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition earlier this summer. For a mere $30, I got the full game plus all four DLC packs. (The DLC is on Marketplace for $10 apiece, and the game is also available for digital download for $19.99. Once again, physical discs at retail prices win out over digital downloads.)

Borderlands is one of those games that's much better played in multiplayer. Although I got it nearly three years late, the announcement of Borderlands 2's pending fall release got people excited enough to revisit this old game over the summer. In the very few sessions I managed to play co-op, I managed to get all of the multiplayer achievements just by playing the game, really only "boosting" the duel-related ones. (I discovered later, though, it wouldn't have mattered so much, since these achievements are obtainable in split-screen co-op with an offline account.) For a game that is so much better in multiplayer, it does seem strange there aren't more co-op achievements; but, so be it.

There are a lot of annoying achievements in the game, mostly due to the repetitive task quests. The "Braaaaaaaaaaaaains!" achievement is a good example. To get it, you have to complete all of the quests from TK Baha in the "Zombie Island of Dr. Ned" DLC area, which amounts to collecting zombie brains by killing zombies with headshots. You first have to collect 10, then 25, then 50, then 100, then 250 brains (by headshotting zombies). If you activate this quest first, it can be easier (since you can just collect brains along your way to complete other quests), except you have to keep coming back to TK Baha to turn in the brains every so often (since you can only collect brains when you've started the quest — any extra brains you may collect will not count towards the next quest). I did the achievement last, so I had absolutely nothing to do but find and shoot zombies.

The most annoying achievements, though, are the collectible achievements in the "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution" DLC pack. These achievements require you to collect a certain number of items, which appear from Claptraps when you kill them. There is no shortage of Claptraps, so that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that these items do not always drop. They are relatively rare, and what item you may get is entirely random. Collecting 20 oil cans isn't very hard, except when you take into account that you have maybe a 1 in 5 chance (an optimistic estimate) of getting a special item dropped from a Claptrap, and a 1 in 6 chance of that item actually being an oil can, as opposed to a pair of pink panties, a fish in a bag, a slice of pizza, a Claptrap bobble-head, or a pair of 3D glasses. (In my experience, the 3D glasses were the most common — annoying because they're also what you need the least amount of — but I can't tell for sure if that was fact or just dumb luck with the virtual dice.)

The common boosting method is to get to the end game (spoiler alert), where the Mega Interplanetary Ninja Assault Claptrap rolls around the screen, shooting you the whole time, dropping "Divine Wind" Claptraps when it stops. The deal with the Divine Wind Claptraps is they will eventually self-destruct (right next to you, if they get their way), so you don't have to shoot them to kill them. You can hide in certain spots where none of the Claptraps can get you, but since there is really no penalty for dying on this mission, that's really optional. Just leave the game for several hours, come back, finish off the MINAC, and pick up all the items dropped by the suicidal Claptraps that are filling up the screen. Even then, there are reports that you may have to do this more than once just to get all the special items.

There is a trick that helps it go a little faster. If you shoot the Claptraps as the Mega Claptrap drops them, it will keep dropping them to maintain two Claptraps on the screen at a time for the several seconds it is stopped. I happened upon a machine gun that had corrosive and electric damage that I could fire a few bursts and kill several Claptraps at a time. When I ran out of ammo, I opened chests to find more, and failing that, I switched over to my shotgun to kill the Claptraps as they emerged (keeping a careful eye on my ammo count so I had enough shots to finish off the MINAC). I could get up to around 16 Claptraps for every time the MINAC paused.

It also seemed to me that, if I left the items on the ground, there was a greater chance of getting special items compared to if I picked up the common items before moving on. Also, by leaving the special items I didn't need (like the 3D glasses, which I collected before I even got to the endgame), the special items I didn't have would be more likely to drop. As if the game, when it decided to drop a special item, took note of what items were on the field at the time and favored items that weren't already there. Again, I don't know if this is actually the case; it may have just been my need to find some kind of order to the chaos. The fact that I was getting rather tired of picking up every item (which you have to do by making sure your crosshairs are centered on an item before you even think about pressing the button) probably contributed to me wanting to find an excuse to leave the items on the ground.

Even with the insane number of Claptraps destroyed (I managed to level up from level 61 to 67 in the process), it still took me two separate 2-hour sessions of mindless Claptrap-killing and item-collecting before I finally picked up the last item I needed.

After that, the last few achievements were easy. Game complete.

Achievement Unlocked: Transformers Fall of Cybertron

Time for a new feature that will give me some reason to write, outside of game reviews that I never seem to get around to and reposts of the podcasts I've hosted or been involved in. Achievement Unlocked tells the more interesting stories of achievements I've earned.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron includes three achievements of the kind I absolutely hate: multiplayer achievements that require you to dominate the entire scoreboard, and the worst of those achievements mean your domination includes those players on your own team. Not only are these achievements insanely difficult for anyone to get legitimately (unless they're the kind of player that can truly dominate — which I am quite definitely not), but they can take a team game and make it into a free-for-all, where every player is your enemy, coercing you to engage in unsportsmanlike conduct like team-killing or interfering with them accomplishing the objective.

Which brings me to the three qualifying achievements in Fall of Cybertron.

First up is Heavy Metal War. This one does not require you to interfere with your teammates' progress. In fact, it's easily possible for multiple players on the same (and even opposing) teams to get the achievement simultaneously. The achievement requires you to kill six different players on the opposing team in one deathmatch. The things that make this a little more difficult is: (1) you have to get in a match with six people on the other team (which can be a challenge unto itself some nights), (2) you have to be able to find and kill each of those six people (there is almost always one or two players on the opposite team that, no matter what I do, I just can't seem to kill), and (3) you have to score these six kills before either team gets to the winning score of 40 (which is often just a little too fast).

I ended up getting this achievement when I happened into a game that was 5-on-5. The players on my team were pretty good at engaging the enemy, which meant I could fly around as a jet mostly ignored and pick off enemies retreating or hiding. I wasn't really keeping track, but I thought I managed to get each one of the enemy five once. As the game was coming to a close, I saw a notification that someone joined the game on the enemy team. As the voice of Optimus Prime announced there were five kills remaining, I boosted over to the enemy spawn area as the sixth opposing player spawned in. Unfortunately, my first attempt at taking him out didn't go so well, but I was able to respawn, jet over to him, and finish him off just before the game ended.

Second, Ultimate Menasor, requires you to personally capture three flags in a public multiplayer capture the flag game. Since the game goes to a score of three, that means you have to capture all three flags, without any of your teammates scoring even one. This is easily the most annoying and unsportsmanlike achievement in the bunch, since, in order to get the achievement, no one else on your team can score.

Some fellow Geezers got this achievement on a night I happened to not be online. By letting Hyperdive, "the Geezer from Australia," host the match (setting matchmaking preferences to "regional", and it being the middle of the Australian day instead of gaming prime time), they managed to create rooms with very low instances of other people joining. We were trying that method again, but with a party of only three, we weren't able to secure a room all to ourselves.

Duck grabbed the first flag and brought it back to me, and I waited at our base with Duck covering me until the rest of our team secured our flag and I could score. Then the enemy flag was again snagged by our team, but this time by one of our random teammates. I figured this would kill my achievement attempt. The enemy likewise grabbed our flag, and we were in another standoff. Again, I waited by our base, hoping against hope that maybe the enemy would come in for a flag rescue, kill my teammate, and be weak enough that I could kill him and grab the flag for myself.

Then the strangest thing happened. Our flag-carrying teammate came up to me, transformed into his vehicle form (automatically dropping the flag), and drove away. Was this a mistake? Did he not realize that you had to stay in robot mode to carry the flag? I wasn't too sure at that point, but after I scored the flag and the battle for the third score started, he came back and did it again. Completely unbidden, this random player going by the gamertag EMFULZ gave me the achievement.

As soon as the game was over, I left him some positive feedback. I only looked up his profile later and noticed he also needed the achievement, so my intent this week is to hopefully get the Geezers together again, find him online, and return the favor.

Later the same night, I decided to lone wolf it into some headhunter games and see if I could pick up the third achievement: Ballistic Energon Goodie. To get this achievement, you have to play a game of headhunter and score five "sparks" (heads) in one shot. It's another one I didn't think I would get without a lot of orchestrated help, as it requires staying alive long enough to nab five sparks and then score them — although more than one Geezer said they managed to get lucky by playing as a jet, flying into the aftermath of large battles, and scooping up enough sparks to score. After dying over and over again without ever touching a spark, I figured it was a lost cause. Then, I happened to get a glimpse of an enemy jet carrying four sparks. I figured it was worth a shot. I held my boosters down and chased him down a long corridor. At one point, he flew into a room where the rest of his team was congregated, and I started taking fire. I think my missile lock must have had the other jet spooked, as he just kept flying, and I just kept following him. Once he started down another hallway, I started firing, and I killed him out of site of the rest of his team. I scooped up the four sparks he was carrying plus his.

Now, I had five sparks. I was also low on health, not that far from his team, on a map I wasn't too familiar with, and a healthy distance from the score points. I flew in the general direction of one of the score points and what I hoped was friendly territory (bumping into unexpected walls and turns all along the way). Amazingly, I found my way to a score point and swooped through it, scoring the sparks and the achievement. Before I could turn around and get back into the fray, a teammate scored the final points and ended the game.

With the most outrageous achievements out of the way, the rest are just a matter of time, patience, and walkthroughs (for the "collectibles").