All Achievements Achieved: Harm’s Way

Harm’s Way is one of two finalists for the Doritos Unlock Xbox competition where developers created Doritos-themed games. The other game is Doritos Crash Course. Ironically, both games are not, um, Doritos-themed, but full-fledged arcade titles with their own strengths and weaknesses. The ultimate winner of the competition was rightfully Doritos Crash Course, but the mega-chip company also tossed $50,000 at the Harm’s Way‘s creator for a job well done. Not too shabby. It’s definitely better than a lifetime supply of their All-nighter Cheeseburger chips. ::barfs::

Right. So, Harm’s Way is a racing game, but with a twist. One can try to beat their opponents by manning a turret and blowing other cars to bits before they cross the finish line. Conversely, if you’re controlling a car, other opponents can do this to you too. And that’s it. You race, you shoot, you explode, you swing around corners, you admire the above-par graphics, you sit in a turret and wait for cars to come around the corner, and you unlock Achievements with ease.

The hardest Achievement, surprisingly, was this one:

Affiliation (10G): Join a multiplayer game for the first time

Yup. Both Harm’s Way and Doritos Crash Course accounted for more than two million combined downloads since being released for free on Xbox Live Arcade, but it took me weeks to actually find enough people to start up a multiplayer game. Funny, that. Now that all 12 Achievements have been unlocked, I don’t really foresee myself playing this one ever again. Racing games, even ones with twists, aren’t my thing, and I’d rather work on my timeliness over at Doritos Crash Course. I mean, that game won for a reason–it’s a ton of fun!

I’m going to try to make All Achievements Achieved (AAA) a thingy. I’m really close on 100%-ing a few other games as you can see from the sidebar list. This will also help immensely with the backlog slack and my overall mental stability.

Don’t judge Doritos Crash Course by the Doritos part

The holidays are almost here, and even the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is celebrating with gifts by giving gamers TWO free games to download: Doritos Crash Course and Harm’s Way. I’ll talk about the latter in another post as I’d like to focus most of my time today on Doritos Crash Course, a game that is sure to surprise just about everyone.

Doritos Crash Course is a bouncy mix of Wipeout, American Gladiators, and ‘Splosion Man. Yes, all of those. Lumped together. With bonus Michael Jackson dance moves added in. Basically, you have to get your Xbox LIVE avatar from one side of the screen to the other by jumping over ledges, swinging from ropes, dodging hammers, and bouncing on trampolines, as well as avoiding a bunch of other typical platformer perils, the most nefarious being water balloons. Oh, how I loathe ’em.

Unlike Harm’s Way, which more or less hands you Achievements on a silver Achievement platter, the 12 in Doritos Crash Course do require commitment. As of this post, I’ve gotten three:

That’s Gotta Hurt (10G): Got smashed by 3 hammers in a row

Roadrunner (10G): Run at top speed when you’re about to wipe out

American Hero (20G): Finished the USA Levels

Hero of the Americas is right! Hope to get some more Achievements tonight. A few require your avatar to do some silly in-game tasks; these are easy things like swinging back and forth on a rope X number of times, but they definitely slow you down and then your chances at the gold medal disappear. So I will save ’em for later.

Played a round online against some Xboxers, as well as raced against Tara’s avatar via local multiplayer. It’s a surprisingly well done game, with the constant threat of failure on every jump, swing, float, and bounce always overhead, and the controls are really tight. One doesn’t need supreme platforming skills, but if you really struggled with ‘Splosion Man then this might not be for you. But you should still get it anyways. Why? The game is FREE, packed with Achievements, too. So, yeah. Download it and have fun watching yourself getting smacked into the TV’s screen or doing a little dance–the avatar animations are the best use of avatars so far.

On a more personal note, I don’t really like Doritos chips. Not since that day way back in 2008 that I got violently ill after having some ranch-flavored ones with my lunch. I’ve vowed to never eat ’em again ever since…so when I say this is the most fun I’ve had with Doritos in a long time, I really do mean it!