Achievement Unlocked! – Cars

Platform: Xbox 360
Time to Complete: 8 – 10 Hours
Gamerscore Available: 1000G
Gamerscore Achievable: 1000G

Oh god what in the fresh hell is this. You all probably thought we were done with movie tie in games that have easy gamerscore. King Kong was enough and that was almost a month ago. But let me tell you, we’re only scratching the surface of terrible games with easy gamerscore. So let’s dive in to the movie tie in game, Cars.

Surprisingly this game was given all the audio licenses so all the music/voice actors are in the game as far as I can tell. Which wasn’t very far seeing as though I was listening to a podcast while playing this.

A majority of the achievements you’ll get in this game are from just completing it, i.e, all of the Piston Cup races, a few grand prix’s and that’ll be it. You can’t miss them, they’re story related. I use the word story extremely loosely in this situation though.

Something you need to get right straight off the bat. You can only win achievements in a specific game mode, be sure to choose the right one. The one you’ll want to choose is Caravan mode I think that’s what it’s called. Should be.

Play through the game, completely, finish off the story and you should have three achievements left. 12 of the Achievements can’t be missed whatsoever so finish the story and you can end it there. Or, you can do what I did.

Now, there’s three achievements that are left over, it’ll take probably two hours, and these are the achievements I’m going to walk you through. Firstly, let’s go over arguabley the easiest achievement which is to do all of the Sherrif Hot Pursuit Races.

Now for this achievement, you’ll need to do all of the Sheriff Hot Pursuit missions. In total there’s 15 Cars you need to pull over, with three per level, so the total levels is 5, well done you, look at your maths skills go (unlike mine). In case you’re having trouble with getting this achievement, there’s a couple of cheat codes to make it a lot easier for you. I did it without cheat codes and it only took me about ten to twenty minutes, but if you need them then here they are:

VROOOOM

IMSPEED

Quite literally all you need to do is follow the car until the meter empties, then that car is considered “pulled over” and will then crash into the nearest piece of scenery it can find.

These two cheat codes should hopefully help you out if you’re having any trouble with the Sheriff Hot Pursuit missions or any mission for that matter (excluding Tractor Tipping). This is honestly the easiest of the three achievements I’m going to walk you through.

Moving swiftly on to the achievement that took me longer than it should have because it was like playing Metal Gear Solid only you had the camera operated by a man with no arms. And my Tractor Tipping progress didn’t save. Twice. That was just dandy, but there’s a whole ten levels of Tractor Tipping to complete, all more annoying than the previous one. If you really need a walkthrough on how to do it as fast as possible then here yah go.

The key here is patience and not throwing your controller into the Kinect sensor that’s been watching you sit for the past 16 Hours in your pyjamas playing Cars the game when you could’ve been outside with friends, the things I’ll do for 75G.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a movie tie in game if it didn’t have collectables. However it’s only twenty postcards and it’ll take you half an hour with this handy dandy guide that I’m going to hyperlink for you, ‘ain’t technology dandy? You’ll need to talk to Lizzie in her shop before you start this though, it isn’t miss able, it’s literally in the town you start in and the walkthrough shows you where it is anyway.

After you’ve slugged through this game, go get a drink of water, or something stronger than that, we’re only just scratching the metaphorical surface of bad games with an easy 1000G.

Best of luck.

Ewan Gleadow is a writer that’s being enforced to write these little paragraphs at the end of his articles, if he doesn’t, his legs will have a new owner apparently. If you liked this article, please check out my other articles @ewangleadow (which is also my twitter). If you didn’t like this article, piss off.

Gamepad: A critical look at our favorite hobby

Have you ever wondered what is it about games that made you fall in love with them? Was it a game someone showed you, and decided ‘hey this looks fun’ or was it a gift you received that started it all? In my case, I went to a friend’s house and we played some of the classic Star Wars games, like Battlefront 2, Jedi Academy and a few others. I was very young and I completely sucked at them.But once I got home, I convinced my dad to get me Battlefront 2, which he reluctantly obliged. Next thing I know, I’m playing Instant Action all day, then a couple of months later, a classmate tells me about the first Force Unleashed and how awesome it is. And from there it was Lego Star Wars 2, Crysis, and here we are today. Of course Battlefront wasn’t the first game I came into contact with. Beyond Good & Evil was the first game I ever played, but I was too young to remember a major part of it. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it’s simple. If it wasn’t for Battlefront 2, then I would be a totally different person today, probably far away from games as possible…

But here’s the thing: As a gamer, my views and opinions on gaming in general are biased. I’d like to take this moment and try and distance myself from gaming to look at it in perspective. That doesn’t mean I’ll be over-critical towards it, it’s scientifically proven that games have a positive impact on our lives. But as is the case with alcohol, over-consumption leads to addiction and all hell let loose (so to speak)…

One of the main reasons society is generally inclined to feel negative towards gamers is the fact that just like any other activity out there, in order to get good at gaming you have to play a lot, and sometimes that means staying between four walls all day long, doing nothing more than bashing buttons. And of course the people of the world being the geniuses they are, think “staying home”=”anti-social” and a lot of the times they’re right. Many gamers are indeed the weeaboo neckbeards that “jocks” claim they are. The problem is, that a big percentage of gamers is not like that at all, and I strongly believe the problem with “girl gamers” stems from the fact that many people strongly believe that you have to be a certain type of person to play games, and that gaming is a pretty exclusive hobby when it’s not. Or maybe it’s reclusive… Nevertheless, any statement claiming gaming is for “some” and not “all” is untrue. Games are for all of us, and we all have the right to play them and enjoy them equally…

Another argument non-gamers have against gamers is that you should enjoy the real world no matter what, and any deviation from your boring daily grind, like say jumping into a virtual world is considered childish. I know a person who strongly believes that playing first-person shooter games means you had an “unfullfilling” childhood, and you’re trying to relive those moments. This is more a case of “either, or” than anything else, but said person does have a point. Perhaps we’re really trying to relive exciting moments from our past and are just too “hooked” that we can’t stop for moment and realize how detrimental that could be for our lives. And the issue becomes evident when a person decides to spend the majority of their day playing games, instead of socializing, going out, doing “people” stuff etc.

So I guess that’s it. I tried my best to take a somewhat critical look on gaming, but being a gamer myself I think I’m a bit biased “by default”. Whether gamers or non-gamers are right when it comes to arguing about this particular hobby, I think it’s necessary to mention that we all have fun in different ways, and playing games may not be as exciting as paintball or vice versa. If you’re a gamer, do not let your hobby consume you, after all it’s something that you enjoy doing in your free time, hence the name ”hobby” so don’t create free time in order to enjoy games. And if you’re not a gamer, I suggest you try and play a single game. Just one. After that, if you don’t like it, that’s fine, you tried I guess, but next time when arguing about games, your perspective may shift a little, and that’s what’s important…

 

Achievement Unlocked! – Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Platform: Xbox One
Time to Complete: 6 – 8 Hours
Gamerscore Available: 1000G
Gamerscore Achievable: 1000G

Of course I had to do this game at some point. Well, I didn’t, that’s a lie. I just 100% completed this quite recently actually and I thought I’d go over this one seeing as though it is an easy 1000G and it isn’t a movie tie in game, or a terrible game for that matter. So let’s have a break from the usual crap we play and play a genuinely good game, he lied.

Valiant Hearts is a game, it’s a puzzle game, which is not my type of game. It also has a hell of a lot of collectables in it, which I’ll get to later as it links in with an achievement or three. This game is extremely easy to get 1000G in so long as you use the right walkthrough. The one I used was this one. It is the Playstation version of the game, however all the achievements/trophies are exactly the same and this guide is quite literally perfect as it shows you how to do everything flawlessly.

The guide I’ve linked you to will basically allow you to achieve all the achievements, however I do want to go through some of the missable achievements that you might need to replay a chapter for. All story related achievements are secret achievements as far as I can tell and the ones that aren’t secrets are miss able, that’s what I’ve picked up on so far.

Now, the first missable achievement (sort of) is this one:

As soon as you meet the dog which’ll be in the German camp, click the A Button next to it, you’ll pet the dog and get an easy 15G for it. Quite honestly one of the easiest achievements in the game but you’d be surprised as to how many people missed this achievement.

Secondly, we have the Taxi Driver achievement.

The taxi missions were some of my all time favourite missions, they’ve got a good bit of classical music attached and the action in each mission plays along in time with the music. The very first time you use the taxi (Chapter 1 – Danger from Above) is the best time to get this achievement as it’s quite simply avoid the bombs, mines and gunfire, later on they get a bit more complicated and you may have trouble getting the achievement in later stages of the game.

I just need to make a special mention of one achievement very briefly, it’s the achievement for reading 30 Historical Facts, hopefully you’re following the guide with that but I forgot to read them all, for it to be considered as “read” the “!” should disappear from it, you don’t have to read it out to the Kinect where it’ll grade you on your reading skills or anything like that.

I’ve noticed one or two secret achievements that may give you some trouble, even though the guide will cover those, here’s the ones you may miss:

This achievement is earned in Chapter 3 Mission 1, you need to take a Health Kit into the laundry building and throw it up to the guy in there, he’ll walk along to the end of the screen and start dropping laundry bags, you need one of the laundry bags, collect all three and wheel the cart to the end of the track, there’s an easy 25G waiting for yah.

The next secret achievement you may miss is this one, which requires you to shoot the flag in Chapter 4 – Vimy Ridge. Play through the level and eventually you’ll find a cannon and in the distance you can see a bit of scenery. Click A on the cannon and you can actually fire it and use a few levers nearby or something to change the co-ordinates of where and what it’ll fire on. Make sure the numbers match up to these:

Bunker One is at 60
The flag is at 35
Bunker Two is at 10

As soon as you’ve taken out the flag then the achievement should pop, if it doesn’t then restart the level and try again, I had the same problem.

This achievement is possibly the most difficult in the game, other than the “Healing Hero” achievement which we’ll talk about later. It took me a few tries to actually do this achievement, just take your time and make sure you’ve got your cannons in a position where they can hit the planes or else you’ll have one guy die and have to re-do it all. This achievement is actually key to unlocking the “They’ll All Be Remembered” achievement as two of the soldiers you need to have survive will drop two collectables.

By now you should be near enough to the end of the game and at the last mission. Collect all the collectables in that mission, grab the 200G and finish the game. Unless you’re a wizard of quick time events then you’re probably missing one, last achievement.

Best of luck getting this achievement, just completely memorising the pattern will hopefully work. Either that or just leave it. You need to save him three times, so at the farm, in the hospital and then in the hospital again. If you fail the one on the farm, you need to start again. If you fail the first hospital resuscitation, you need to start again. Once you’ve done those two flawlessly you’re pretty much in the clear, as if you mess up you can deliberately kill Karl and it’ll just take you back to the start of the third resuscitation.

Here’s the button sequence for the third sequence, you need to hit every single button.

1) AXXY—-AXXY—-AXXY—-AXX–Y+B

2) AAAAAAA—-XXXXXX—-AAAAAA

3) AXX—YBB—AXX—YBB—AXX—YBB—AXX—YBB—AAAAAA—XXX–X+A

At this point you may want to mute the game as Karl’s bloody kid wont shut the hell up about his father dying or some shit like that, I dunno, maybe the game devs wanted to annoy the hell out of us or something.

And that’s it. Another 1000G in a game that was alright if you like puzzle games, next time it’ll be back to the mines of utterly awful games, sport games and maybe a microphone related game or two.

Ewan Gleadow is a writer at Updownright and often when he says “down right” he’ll make a shitty pun about how he works for updownright and not downright because that’s the type of humour I apply here. If you liked this article then feel free to read more @ewangleadow which is also my Twitter!

Creed just might be my new favorite sports movie

That’s right, I’m actually writing about something other than games for once! I’m no professional movie critic, but I feel that Creed is a movie worth writing about. I just recently went to see Creed and came in with high expectations due to the surprisingly high Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% (I didn’t read reviews to avoid spoilers). Even with my high expectations, though, Creed surprised me and may now be my new favorite sports movie for a multitude of reasons. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

How open worlds can detract from narrative in games

I recently reached into the black hole that is my gaming backlog and pulled out Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Anyone who reads my work regularly is aware of this as I have mentioned quite often my many problems with the game and how vehemently I yearn for those hours of my life back, especially considering I was playing it on the recommendation that I would “absolutely love it”. At one point in my enthralling adventure as a pirate that was getting a divorce or whatever the hell that story was about, I found myself in a situation in which I was told of this terrible thing happening on some island and how I should immediately sail there before it’s too late. So I did the reasonable thing and spent the next several days (in game time) sailing the open sea and killing fellow sailors because they had some kind of material I needed to put an extra cannon on the back of my ship. Eventually I made my way to whatever the actual story objective was and of course things played out exactly the same it would have if I had gone there immediately. How nice of them to wait for me to begin the festivities, eh?

Needless to say, events like this destroy the already small suspension of disbelief I afford the Assassin’s Creed franchise. If Ubisoft was hoping I would simply submit to their will and automatically invest myself in the world they had haphazardly constructed, they were sorely led astray. However, experiences like this do raise interesting questions. Is it my responsibility as a player to do what the developers hope I will? Or is it on the developer to make me care about their narrative before trying to create a sense of urgency?

Updownright first impressions: Onion Force

Yes, I know, the world really needs another cartoon-styled tower defense game, but don’t give up on me yet. Onion Force (formerly known as Dirty Rascals) is the first game from independent studio Queen Bee Games and has to be one of the most charming games I’ve played recently. Onion Force does it’s part to stand out from the overabundance of simple tower defense games, and the promise of hand drawn animation and apparently no microtransaction BS instantly made me interested in this game, but did it hold my interest once I got my hands on it?

Developer Q&A with Kathleen and Steve Cassidy of Queen Bee Games

Queen Bee Games consists of the Prince Edward Island based husband and wife team of Kathleen and Steven Cassidy. They had a baby in 2013 and chose to do the obvious thing and immediately start an indie game studio… Somehow, though, they seem to be making it work, and their first game, Onion Force, is a highly stylized and charming game set to come out in January 2016. I found Queen Bee to a very interesting developer, especially for a first time developer. I was able to speak to both Steve and Kathleen about the challenges of being a first time indie developer and about their first game Onion Force. So, sit back, close your ey…OK maybe keep your eyes open unless you have some magical internet powers and can read this with you eyes closed…just enjoy it, alright?