Some video games will add achievements like “Kill 200 enemies” or objectives like “Collect 10 plants” which doesn’t show much originality. It’s a dumb grind. What are some of the best achievements or objectives you’ve seen?
They could be the best because they’re clever, funny, provide a genuine challenge, are thematically/narratively-relevant or simply because they’re classics that make sense. Or another reason you can think of.
For an example of what I mean by the latter, Door Kickers is a game where you control a small SWAT team that does the SWAT stuff you would expect. It’s like playing SWAT 3 from a bird’s eyeview. You unlock equipment with stars. You get a star for completing a level but you can get an extra star if you do it under a time limit and another star if you do it without friendly casualties.
Now, completing the level under a time limit or with no friendly casualties isn’t particularly original, clever or funny. But it is a good challenge that requires you to be skillful at the game, it fits well with the idea of a SWAT operation and, while time limit or no damage restrictions are often stressful and annoying in games, it’s fun here.
Note that they could also be restrictions like “No civilian casualties” or “Don’t get spotted” although I suspect that objectives which are defined in terms of what you don’t do will probably not be that interesting. But I could be wrong; Playing tennis with a net can be more interesting than without one.
“How D’ya Like Them Apples” from Assassin’s Creed 3.
The achievement itself is automatically acquired when finishing sequence 3. So there’s nothing special about the achievement, but the name lampshades that the ending of sequence 3 is a twist, particularly if you’ve played all the previous games.
Getting all the Gwent cards and beating the various players was awesome in Witcher 3 - don’t know how common it is to have such an exceptional game-within-a-game but I’d not seen that before.
Not quite what you’re looking for but I’d heard of Ornstein and Smough before I ever played Dark Souls. To have a Boss fight that is so legendary it transcends the game is pretty cool - sure I’m not alone in doing a crazed victory wardance round the room when I finally finished them off.
the Stanley Parable had some pretty funny achievements. If I started it up again I would probably finally get the “Go outside - Don’t play The Stanley Parable for five years” achievement. They’re mostly jokes which worked well with the game. Steam Community :: The Stanley Parable :: Achievements
Paradox makes games with really good achievements that can be fun to get. For example in Hearts of Iron 4 there’s one for playing as The Netherlands where you go to war with Germany and don’t lose the majority of your territory. Or play as Canada and take Washington DC. There’s dozens of ones like that which can be fun to try to get.
I hate Gwent because I love Gwent and sometimes decapitating water hags becomes less important to me than destroying some stupid innkeeper and his “deck of a thousand spies”. I forget what game I’m playing. I’m not sure if I’ve ever played another game where I’m so conflicted about what my priorities are.
(The only add-ons I’ve ever downloaded for that game revolve around Gwent and getting all the cards.)
I like achievements that you ear by dying in interesting ways. (Even when it’s games like Long Live the Queen, which I describe as the world’s cutest regicide simulator…the reason 90% of the achievements are for dying is you’re going to be doing that, constantly.)
My favourite of these is Portal 2’s Good Listener, which, in the list of achievements is described as ‘Take GLaDOS’s escape advice’ as this is before the point in the game when she is Chell’s sarcastic-ass ally this is one only those who know about it, are morbidly curious, or terminally stupid would get. (I, FTR, was the second. ‘Ah, fuck it, let’s see what she’s going to do to me.’ It predictably ended with Chell dead…can’t remember just what she did…gas, maybe?)
A couple non-death ones I like from Saints Row the Third, both for the sort of stupid violence the game loves:
‘Ow, my balls!’ Which you get for…destroying the balls of two people, one with a gun, one melee.
‘Stay classy, Steelport’ Which you get for killing enemies with the Penetrator (a giant floppy purple dildo attached to the handle of one of those padded bats), and the Fart in a Jar…which is just what the name says.
(Look, I’m the kind of person who owns SR3 on two different platforms…of course I find that hilarious.)
But that reminds me to check Borderlands 2’s achievements*, some of which I remember to be fun…
Some good ones…
‘What does it mean?’ Description ‘I can’t even capture it on my camera’…for seeing a double rainbow.
‘Just like that one video’ Description: ‘Showed thine worst enemy, the abomination known as “The Darkness,” who is the nerdiest of them all’…by using a Magic Missile at it, during Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. (I’m sure that 99.999% percent of players did that automatically.)
And, while it’s a simple ‘do lots of violence’ achievement, gotta love the name: ‘Dang Girl You Ace At This Game’.
Because it has one mission where you have to deliver pizza to, and subsequently kill, the ninja turtles.
I laughed out loud at Yakuza 0’s “I only did it for the achievement”, which you get for watching one of the game’s softcore porn videos (feat. actual Japanese pornstars, it turns out). Which are pretty uncomfortable to watch and, yeah, you pretty much only do it the once
For the challenging ones, X-Com 2’s “Who needs Taigan ?” was fun to get - it requires beating the final mission of the game using only ballistic weapons. It’s not as hard as it sounds, since by then you can have psy soldiers ; alien grenades (which don’t count as non-ballistic since you can’t de-upgrade those) and so on… but it still made that mission a lot more rock 'n roll than the victory lap it usually is. And I’m kinda proud of having gotten Arkham City’s “Perfect Freeflow 2.0” - it requires you to do finish a combat with a perfect score, having used each and every move Batman has at least once and never getting hit. Got the adrenaline flowing pretty nicely when I realized I’d actually done it and only needed to finish the combat without fucking up !
You played the DLC though right? Hearts of stone and the other one - just superb quality for DLC material, could have been a standalone game.
Gwent did get a bit easy IIRC, once you had your decks together. Playing some of the NPCs earlier on with a bit of a weak deck could be very hard, but once you got the cards together it was rare to be beaten. There was also one super strong player in the Gwent tournament who could wreck you, but I think I got lucky and beat her first go.
One that isn’t necessarily “in-game” is the One City Challenge in the Civilization games, where the goal is to win Civ/Civ2/etc on the hardest level with only 1 city.
I have both expansions (Blood and Wine is the other I believe) and I do pretty good with Gwent. My deck is fairly solid now and the AI isn’t that great. But I keep putting the “real” game on hold because Gwent is so fun and addictive. It’s a good problem to have but I am definitely conflicted often.
I see why Witcher 3 is considered one of the best games of all time.
The only “exploit” which is used is city placement - you want a city that has the ability to farm, mine, and have access to the sea (and for later versions of Civ, access to resources). It’s also easier to do on smaller maps.
This was so popular in Civ 1/Civ 2 that Firaxis actually made it an option for future versions.
The Simpsons Hit & Run has an accomplishment where, if you find 49 cards hidden throughout the game, you can trade them with Comic Book Guy for an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon exclusive to the game (“500-Yard Gash”).
The mobile port of X-Com: Enemy Unknown has an achievement for winning a mission with an all-female team. Since the gender of recruits is random and has no material effect on the game, this one is a curiosity.
I recently read about a WoW achievement where the consensus was that the only way to get it was to game the wording. I don’t remember details, but there was this quest that you would trigger by ringing a bell, and then a bunch of enemies would invade who you’d have to fight off. The wording of the achievement was something along the lines of “defeat the invasion within 30 seconds of ringing the bell”, and the only way to do it was to trigger the quest, kill all but one of the invaders, then ring the bell and second time and finish off the last one within 30 seconds.
