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.

[Full Gamerscore] UNO

So…full Gamerscore earned for UNO; all 12 Achievements pinged and proudly captured; blah blah blah yadda ya I’m the man blah blah. It happened last night, and I slept quite soundly thanks to it. I polished off a few more rounds of online multiplayer, thus securing the final Achievement and telling the world that, yes, I am a UNO shark. Feels good to finally have another game fully completed that isn’t LEGO-based.

Anyways, reviewing the list of Achievements, it’s clear this isn’t exactly a tough 200 to get. Most just come naturally with time, and the ones that took the longest for me involved playing online games…because I was a Silver member of Xbox Live for a great while.

Favorite Achievement

Skip to My Lou (15G): Play 40 Skip cards.

Skipping an opponent is a lot of fun. I enjoy it more than Reversing or even making them Draw 4 and lose a turn. Skipping just has this quick satisfaction to it, and I love the Achievement’s artwork. Makes me want to throw some rocks across a lake now.

Easiest Achievement

UNO! (10G): Successfully call UNO! and win the game.

This is basically how you win a game…though I guess you could win without calling UNO! but that might get you in trouble with other opponents, forcing you to draw two more cards. Best to just call it and then seal the deal.

Hardest Achievement

UNO Shark (30G): Win ten 4-player games of UNO®, in any mode, on Xbox Live.

It’s the last one I got. Some nights, I’d play two to three games and not win a single one. This is because some people like to play up to 250 points, which is not easy to win in one fell swoop. Other times, I’d be in a game where the first person to go out wins, and that made things easier. Either way, this one required patience and a lot of diligence.

Yay…full Gamerscore! UNO! It excites me to now see a new entry on my Xbox Live dashboard under the fully completed titles section. Maybe I should try to finish up Shadow Complex next, since that’s the closest. Or Winterbottom. One of those. We’ll see. So much more games to play, so little time and sanity left.