Whoring It Up- A Road To Game Score Whoring

Jul 25, 2010

Back when the Xbox 360 was released, it was announced that in every game you play, you would be able to earn a new thing called Achievements.  These achievements would be awarded for accomplishing things during gameplay and would give you a point score suited to its difficulty. For each disk-based game played, you can earn an initial 1000 Gamerscore points through achievements and with DLC, it can rise to 1750 points. Arcade games will range from 200 up to 250 points.   These scores would keep a running tally of all your achievements and give you a Gamerscore you could brag about to your friends.  In theory this works to show how good you are at games and gaming in general. A higher score should equal higher skill right?

Well my friends, welcome to reality.  Just like Beanie Babies, achievements can now be collected.  And like any collectible, a Gamerscore whore wants to collect them all.  Why you ask?  I can’t say exactly, everyone is different.  At one point there were rumors that you would be able to trade in your score for free stuff.  Some do it for bragging rights.  Me, I do it purely because I enjoy the feeling of unlocking as many achievements per game as possible, and to say HA HA mine is bigger than yours(cause it is).

Being a Gamerscore whore is a difficult road, not many make it.  It requires hard work and dedication to push through with games you don’t like or enjoy.  It leaves you open to ridicule and mocking from your peers for the games you are willing to play just for points.  Many tap out or are unwilling to go the distance.  Some just aren’t sure where to start.  That is where I come in.

Over a series of articles, I will be helping you succeed on your “secret journey” to achieving Gamerscore greatness.  To keep this introductory article short I will present a few helpful hints for getting started.  We will get into specific games to try later.

First and foremost, to save on costs I highly recommend Gamefly.  Getting game after game can get expensive over time.  Gamefly is the perfect vehicle for this.  Most of you know how it works, you go online put a game in your queue and at some point said game will come.  All for a low price starting around $16 a month.  You can go the used games route, but even $5 here or there gets expensive, and some of these games you will not want to be seen buying (Hannah Montana).

My next suggestion is to go to xbox360achievements.org. This is a site that will have every achievement for every game long before its release date.  It also has a guide for getting the achievements in a game.  Before I play a game I usually look over the achievements list to see what I can do in one playthrough to get the max amount of gamer points with minimal actual play (if the game sucks).  The community over there is pretty good about posting detailed walkthroughs for almost all achievements.  Also a great forum to check out if you are ever stuck.

So this is what you will need to start, pick some easy stuff first, kids games, old sports games, and arcade.  I’ll get into some good games to start with in the next one.