GFWL: Tinker

If you're an achievement hunter like me, you're always on the look out for your quarry. This is how I found out about Tinker which has Live achievements, specifically of the Windows flavor. While I am not a fan of the Games for Windows Live client, the game is free. To give an idea about its lineage, the game apparently came out initially in 23 Sept 2008 as part of the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras pack and wasn't made available to GFWL until 15 Dec 2009 . You may recall that Vista was once the unfortunate barrier to another source of achievements, but I digress.

Tinker is a fun little puzzle game that is essentially a Sokoban game, and features 8 sets of 20 levels each for 160 levels total. So far, I've only run through the tutorial set and some of the first set, but if the difficulty increases quite a bit, I could see the game easily providing 10-ish hours of playtime.

Achievements

In general, achievements are broken down into three categories based on how they are awarded, and I will attempt to describe them below.

1. Normal types of completion

These are usually earned incidentally like performing an action a number of times below the bare minimum to beat the game and/or completing levels on easy-to-normal-ish difficulties. A player can expect to get most if not all of these from a single play through.

2. Elite types of completion

These are usually earned by completing levels on the harder or hardest difficulties and/or completing these objectives in much more difficult ways including no-death-runs or the restriction of easier methods or abilities. These tend to be both difficult and frustrating, the latter due to restarting because of the former.

3. Bizarre kinds of behavior

These are usually earned by performing actions you would not ordinarily perform during the game and are generally the more wacky achievements. A game's more memorable achievements tends to fall under this category.

4. Grindy/Collection

Ah, the bane of many a 100% completionist are the grindy and collection type achievements. Grindy achievements generally require an large investment of time in the form of simply clocking in a large amount of play time or earning a large amount of kills or wins. Collection type achievements require a player to collect every single map, flag, post, gold piece, body part, whatever. These are generally more frustrating than difficult, especially if the game in question doesn't have a built-in checklist.

In case you're wondering, Tinker only has achievements of only the first three categories.

One little peculiarity about Tinker is that it has 200 points spread out over 15 achievements. XBLA games typically have their 200 point allotment spread out over 12 achievements, but then again Tinker isn't technically an Arcade game.

Here are some closing statements about the game:

[10/9/2011 23:12:00] Me: It's not that bad.
[10/9/2011 23:12:08] Me: It's like a more complicated Sokoban type game.
[10/9/2011 23:16:43] Ozan D: which tinker game?
[10/9/2011 23:16:55] Me: That's the name of the game.
[10/9/2011 23:17:09] Peter C: It's sortof like Sokoban, but more complicated
[10/9/2011 23:17:25] Me: Heh.

Watch out!

They'll make a heathen out of you otherwise!

Updates (as in my previous post, edited below):

Call of Duty: World at War: Just need to finish the Map Pack 2 achievements. I suppose I could do this myself (find link later), but that will probably be much harder.

Gears of War: Still need to complete on Insane, though I've made it to about the beginning of Act 5 as Dom (with Alex Mobasher). I also found the last fucking COG tag I was looking for.

Gears of War 2: I suspect after I do all the single player stuff in Gears of War with Mobasher, we'll finish off the equivalent achievements in Gears of War 2. Oh, I suppose I should tack on the Horde modes.

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD Remix: I believe Hau has two other friends who have the game. That means I can finally get that stupid 7 GS achievement and RETURN MY TOTAL SCORE TO A MULTIPLE OF 5.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand: Yes, I admit it. I bought the game. I'll probably get the bulk of these with Vivek.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway: A fairly easy game, but I will need to log in on 100 days (doesn't have to be consecutive, I think/I hope) to get the "Obsessive" achievement. I'll also need to log in on 17 September.

Prince of Persia: Also a fairly easy game. It does, unfortunately, have a set of collection-type achievements, which may take awhile.

Dead Rising: This is going to be a bitch to clear all of the achievements. Unlike the previous two games, this game is actually hard. I would say, however, that it is not quite of the Nintendo Hard variety... just some really bad Survivor pathfinding.

ALSO. Thanks a lot Hau for getting me to download Ikaruga. That's gonna be a bitch to do a 100% completion... but some fuckers make it look easy.

Updates on the Second Crusade

So, I've finished off Castle Crashers (finally!); Glork and Arena Master were not easy in terms of time invested. I picked up Vigilante 8 which had an online Achievement that was much easier to finish. In terms of games that I cannot easily finish by myself (because they require at least a second person), I present the following list:

Aegis Wing: Have to finish on Insane mode (not that bad) and complete a 4 ship formation (I could, actually, do this myself).

Alien Hominid HD: Need to play through at least once. Maybe it's easier to do with more people; haven't looked into it that much.

Battlestar Galactica: The online achievements are near impossible because NO ONE PLAYS THIS GAME ANYMORE.

Call of Duty: World at War: Need someone for the Map Pack 2 achievements; as well as the original online achievements (Edit: got all the non-DLC ones. Now to kill Nazi/Tojo Zombies). Shouldn't be so bad.

Gears of War: Need to complete on Insane, finish the game as Dom (can do both split-screen and at the same time), and collect the rest of the tags (can do myself).

Gears of War 2: Need to complete on Insane, play with a friend (see above).

Streets of Rage 2: Similar to BSG, I simply need someone to do matches against.

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD Remix: I simply need to invite everyone to a 4 player game. I can do the 7 chain achievement myself.

Worms: Simply need to be in a four player Xbox Live game. (Edit: got 'em all).

I'm a little disgusted with myself because I bought the Avatar game at Best Buy yesterday. It was only 6.50 USD in the check-out line; how could I say no? I'm also thinking about getting 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, simply (and somewhat ironically) because of this comic.

Oh, did you not get a postcard?

About the Second Achievement Crusade? Well, it started. I've mostly been finishing up some XBLA games that I have (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, 1942: Joint Strike, Catan, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage 2) as well as picking up some more (Altered Beast, Aegis Wing, Dash of Destruction). I had considered getting Uno today:

[1:59:17 PM] Andrew Chen: If I resort to things like downloading and playing Uno/Uno Rush for achievements, I think I may have a problem.

Let's just say that I was a little delighted when I learned that Alex Combs is trying out Uno:


As a side note, between my mention of Uno in Skype to seeing Alex play the game; I had successfully pestered Alex into getting his Xbox Live Account -- crusades are so much more fun with more people.

If you're a Penny Arcade fan, this whole tale seems strangely reminiscent of The Throes of Data Addiction.

It's okay, they're just zombies.

So, when I started on my First Crusade for Achievement points, I picked up the game Dead Rising. It's a pretty neat game which is sort of like George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead movie, except a bit more comical. Anyway, besides the game being fun to play, I thought it had some interesting Achievements, especially since it was once of the earlier X360 games (NA release: 8 Aug 2006). As usual, there is a set of the typical grind-type achievements:


In terms of progression, the first two make sense. But the last one? Well, if you pay attention to the intro movie, the sign introducing visitors to the town of Willamette, Colorado gives the population as 53,594 people. So, assuming that the population of Willamette has remained the same (perhaps steady-state?) since the numbers were taken, clearly there should be no more than 53,594 zombies.

A little more than two years later, another notable zombie game comes out: Left 4 Dead (NA release: 18 Nov 2008). If you look through the achievements, there's this one:


When presented here, it's clear that it's a cute little reference to the Dead Rising Achievements. When I saw this achievement for the first time, I was a little pleased with myself for catching the reference.

And now, to the near-present, we have Prototype (NA release: 9 Jun 2009). A quick glance through the achievements reveals:


I haven't played Prototype yet (Yes, I have the game. Yes, it's still in it's wrapper), so I don't know if the game actually involves zombies. EDIT: Apparently, I really need to play this game.

And no, I have not earned any of these achievements... though, I am planning on starting my Second Achievement Crusade shortly.

Steam!

So, I'm starting to use Steam more now. If you want to add me on Steam, here's my Steam ID Page.

Games I'm Actually Playing (that you can play with me!)
Team Fortress 2
Left 4 Dead
Empire: Total War

Games I'm Gonna Play for the Achivements (either single player or games you don't want to play with me)
Portal
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Day of Defeat: Source
Counter-Strike: Source (when they supposedly get released)

Miscellaneous Category (everything else)
Half-Life 2 -- Why aren't there achievements for this? They certainly exist for the Xbox 360.
Dawn of War II -- I think these are integrated into Steam
Sins of a Solar Empire -- I think there are achievements in this game and if so, they should be integrated into Steam

Steam also has a neat feature where you can use it to launch non-Steam games. The actual level of integration of these games is quite minor; basically, it shows up in your launcher list (basically organizing your games) and if you play the game, it lets all your Steam friends know that you're playing. Steam also tracks how many hours you've played that game, so if you like collecting data on your life, this is an enabler.