I’m having a blast with PopCap Games’s Plants vs. Zombies. It’s been universally eulogized, and for all the right reasons, and like PopCap’s other games, it doesn’t require a supercharged system. Those of you that own the $10 Steam version will be pleased to know that an update has been issued to add 12 achievements to the game- and they aren’t so easy to obtain.

Hit the jump for the achievements.

Source: Destructoid

Home Lawn Security: Complete adventure mode.
Morticulturalist: Collect all 49 plants.
Towering Wisdom: Grow the Tree of Wisdom to 100 feet.
Nobel Peas Prize: Get the golden sunflower trophy.
Better Off Dead: Get to a streak of 10 in I,Zombie Endless.
China Shop: Get to a streak of 15 in Vasebreaker Endless.
Immortal: Get to 20 flags in Survival Endless.
Cryptozombologist: Discover the top secret zombie.
Walk This Way: Hypnotize the lead dancer zombie.
Spudow!: Blow up a zombie using a potato mine.
Explodonator: Blow up 10 zombies with a single cherry bomb.
Ask Me About Mustache Mode: Enable Mustache Mode.

Sony have confirmed to Videogamer that trophy support will be mandatory from January 2009- meaning that every game will have to support trophies, Sony’s answer to the Xbox’s achievement system. While many games have already been patched, plenty remain without trophies in this year’s lineup; it seems this won’t ever be the case again on the PS3. Following up a rumour that the system would require trophies, a Sony spokesperson told Videogamer that “Yes, from Jan 09 all games must have trophies.”

It seems a little too draconian, if you ask me. A game developer shouldn’t be forced into doing anything; I expect what we’ll see now is a slew of games with poorly thought-out trophies, and of course the inevitable trophy whores, buying crap games just to get easy trophies. We saw it with the 360, we’ll see it with the PS3. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see that trophies will be included with the good games as well as the bad ones- it’s not all bad news. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Left 4 Dead surprises me everyday with the amount of sheer awesome that’s being generated by the game’s hype machine. If you kill every zombie in the infected town of Willamete, you get an achievement. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? I mean, when the zombie apocalypse comes around that’s kind of the plan. You know, to kill everyone. Want to know more? Of course you do.

The city of Willamete is not going to go down easy. Remember the Zombie Genocider achievement in Dead Rising? Yeah, it’s just like that. It seems like Valve is trying to one-up Capcom in the zombie apocalypse genre…literally. The Dead Rising Zombie Genocider achievement required you to kill 53,594 of the undead, while Left 4 Dead requires you to take down 53,595 zombies. This is called the “Zombie Genocidest” achievement. I see what you did there, Valve.

This shit just got real.

Source: Capcom Unity

A new Gears of War 2 game footage video has made its way onto the web, further confirming in my opinion that the sequel will be better than the original and revealing a few new features as well.

In addition to the meat shield ability which lets you use your enemy’s body to absorb bullets fired in your direction, the video highlights what appears to be a new feature allowing you to reposition in game items and create cover on the fly. Specifically, Marcus flips a table onto its side during a fire fight with the Locust. Pretty cool.

Another new addition in Gears 2 is what looks like in-game achievement status update system. You can see an example of this at the 42 second mark in the clip.

If you don’t mind seeing a few spoilers in the way of cut scenes, have at the video after the jump.

Gears of War 2 hits shelves in a little over two months now. With the release date quickly approaching, the full achievement list has now been revealed, as well as the rewards for the previously revealed linked achievements.

Check them out after the break.

The rewards for the three linked achievements will be multiplayer skins. If you completed Act 1 in Gears of War, found 10 COG tags, or defeated RAAM, you’ll unlock the multiplayer skins for Anthony Carmine, Minh Young Kim, and RAAM, respectively.

Here’s the list of achievements, each followed by the number of gamer points it’s worth.

Green as Grass: Train the rook (any difficulty) : 10
It’s a Trap!: Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 2 : 10
Escort Service: Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 4 : 10
Girl About Town: Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 6 : 10
That Sinking Feeling: Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 4 : 10
Freebaird!: Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 5 : 10
Heartbroken: Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 6 : 10
Longitude and Attitude: Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 3 : 10
Tanks for the Memories: Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 4 : 10
Water Sports: Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 6 : 10
There’s a Time for Us: Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 2 : 10
Better Wrapped in Beacon: Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 3 : 10
Have Fun Storming the Castle: Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 6 : 10
And the Horse You Rode in On: Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 1 : 10
You Are the Support, Son: Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 2 : 10
Brumak Rodeo: Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 4 : 10
Does This Look Infected to You?: Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 5 : 10
Tourist of Duty: Complete all campaign acts on Casual Difficulty : 25
Guerilla Tactician: Complete all campaign acts on Normal Difficulty : 50
Artist of War: Complete all campaign acts on Hardcore Difficulty : 75
Suicide Missionary: Complete all campaign acts on Insane Difficulty : 150
Collector: Recover 5 collectibles (any difficulty) : 5
Pack Rat: Recover 20 collectibles (any difficulty) : 15
Completionist: Recover all 41 collectibles (any difficulty) : 30
One-Night Stand: Complete 1 chapter in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus/Dom) : 10
Open Relationship: Complete 10 chapters in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus/Dom) : 30
Friends with Benefits: Complete all acts in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus/Dom) : 50
Once More, With Feeling: Perform 30 perfect active reloads (any mode) : 10
Takes a Licking: Melee 30 Tickers (any mode) : 30
Organ Grinder: Kill 30 enemies with a cover mounted Mulcher (any mode) : 10
Shock and Awe: Kill 30 enemies with the heavy Mortar (any mode) : 10
Said the Spider to the Fly: Kill 10 enemies with a planted grenade (any mode) : 10
Crowd Control: Melee 10 enemies down with Boomshield equipped (any mode) : 10
Smells Like Victory: Kill 30 enemies with the Scorcher Flamethrower (any mode) : 10
Variety Is the Spice of Death: Kill enemy with every weapon in game (any mode) : 30
Seriously 2.0: Kill 100,000 enemies (any mode) : 50
Standing Here, Beside Myself: Win 3 matches of Wingman (public) : 10
Beat the Meatflag: Capture 10 meatflags in Submission (public) : 10
It’s Good to be the King: Win 10 rounds of Guardian as the leader (public) : 10
You Go Ahead, I’ll Be Fine: Win three matches of King of the Hill (public) : 10
Back to Basic: Successfully complete 5 lessons of multiplayer Training Grounds : 10
Party Like It’s 1999: Play 1999 rounds of multiplayer (any mode) : 30
Around the World, Again: Win a multiplayer match on each map (any mode) : 30
Dirty, Dirty Horde: Survive the first 10 waves of Horde (any difficulty, any map) : 20
Hoard the Horde: Survive all 50 waves of Horde (any difficulty, any map) : 30
Crossed Swords: Win 10 Chainsaw duels (any mode) : 10
A Parting Gift: Kill 10 enemies with a grenade while down but not out (any mode) : 20
Pound of Flesh: Use a meatshield to save your life 10 times (any mode) : 10
Photojournalist: Submit a spectator photo : 10
Kick’Em When They’re Down: Perform all 11 unique executions on downed enemy : 10

Well there you have it. I’m really glad that so many achievements can be earned in both single and multiplayer modes. I always hate it when games restrict certain achievements to certain modes for no apparent reason.

I’m looking at you, Battlefield: Bad Company.

Source: IGN

For dedicated achievement whores who are strapped for cash but don’t want to sell their entire game collection, there’s a new option-– sell the time you spend playing them.

It’s widespread practice, it seems. Den of Geek has found an auction offering such services for Gears of War. The Ebay link is nowhere to be found, but plenty of others – like this one for Guitar Hero and another for Gears of War – are out there. A bit more digging and you can even pimp your gamerscore on a grand scale.

This works because you’re not actually selling your own achievements or gamerscore, which are technically property of Microsoft anyway. You’re selling your time to do it for someone else. All you need is their live ID and password.

Would I buy them off you? Probably not. Sure, having them all would look great, but it’s still someone else’s score. I’ll still be as good (or rather, as bad) as I was before I paid to have these false accolades bestowed on me. Still, plenty of people out there fed up of being a noob.

Here’s the ad as posted on Den of Geek:

GEARS OF WAR – ACHIEVEMENT GLITCH!

The following auction is for the following achievements to be unlocked on your xbox 360 account :

SERIOUSLY… – 50G

All weapon achievements, including sniper, hammer of dawn etc.

Once payment is recieved., please send me the following details :

Your Gamertag, Email & Email Password.

And we will discuss a convenient time for both of us on when i should do it

Once recovered, i will have finished in around 15 minutes

After the achievements are unlocked on your profile, i will delete your account from my hard-drive and email you so that you know i have finished.

After perusing the recently revealed Fable II achievement list, one of the many that really jumped out at me was The Swinger — 5 points if you “take part in a orgy, responsibly”. I’m assuming this means group sex while wearing a condom and remembering to feed your dog.

So is this better or worse than the casual sex you can partake in while playing GTA4, or does the fantasy setting make this more acceptable to watchgroups and legislative douchebags? Will we see any of the action or will it go all black-screeny like the original Fable?  It’s situations like this that make me wonder what exactly it is that people find offensive and where the arbitrary line they draw on the moral spectrum is located.  I’m sure we will find out shortly after a few parents catch their kids stealing condoms in Fable II when it releases this October.

You can check out the full list of Fable II Achievements at Xbox360Achievements.org.

Mega Man is hard. No doubt about that. Mega Man 9, supposedly, is going to be the hardest one since the classic NES titles of yore, which is pretty fitting considering the game’s neo-retro graphical style. Back in the day when you downed Quick Man without taking a hit, all you could do was tell your friends, and hope they believed you.

Now, with these recently released Mega Man 9 Achievements, you can have concrete proof of your bona fide Mega mastery. Good luck getting them though, because well, they’re almost all completely insane, from “Gamer’s Day”, which tasks you with beating the game 5 times in a single day, to “Peacekeeper”, which requires you to beat the game while defeating “as few enemies as possible” – nice of Capcom not to give us a specific number. Hit the jump for the full list.

Jitterbug
Clear the game in 60 minutes or less. 20 G

Invincible
Clear the game without dying. 30 G

Almost Invincible
Clear the game without continuing. 20 G

No Coffee Break
Clear the game without using any Energy or Mystery Tanks. 10 G

Peacekeeper
Clear the game by defeating the fewest number of enemies possible. 20 G

Conservationist
Clear the game by using the least amount of Weapon Energy possible. 20 G

Gamer’s Day
Clear the game 5 times in 1 day. 20 G

Whomp Wily!
Clear the game once. 5 G

Destroyer
Defeat your 1000th enemy. 20 G

World Warrior
Defeat every type of enemy. 5 G

Trusty Sidearm
Defeat the 8 Bosses with the Mega Buster. 20 G

Blue Bomber 10 G
Defeat a Boss without getting damaged.

Oh boy… If World of WarCraft wasn’t already a massive drain on your free time, then Wrath of the Lich King will make things significantly worse.  Not only will the expansion add Death Knights and an entire new continent, but it’s also bringing with it Achievements, which you earn by doing a myriad of quest-related and pointless things alike.  With examples like Town Crier, which I assume involves /yelling a lot, and another one for giving out 10 hugs, I expect my fellow denizens of the World of WarCraft are about to get a whole lot more annoying.

Blizzard’s official site for Wrath of the Lich King has a list of some of the achievement categories.  Lucky for you, I won’t make you waste the energy involved with going to the site, as I’ve listed them here:

• Player-vs.-Player: This includes arena, battlegrounds, and world player-vs.-player objectives. A few examples:
  • Hot Streak: Win 10 ranked arena matches in a row.
  • Alterac Valley All-Star: Capture graveyards, towers, and kill the enemy leader all in one game.
  • City Defender: Kill 50 enemy players in your faction’s capital cities.
• Dungeons and Raids: Every end boss of every raid and dungeon in the game grants its own achievement. Future achievements in this category may include ones for completing a run without any player deaths, with fewer than the maximum number of players, or within a certain time limit.
• Professions: Advancing to each tier of mastery in a profession earns you an achievement, and there are specific achievements for secondary skills (with major professions to follow).
• Quests: Quest-based achievements include completing a certain number of quests and completing specific quest lines. This category contains zone-specific subcategories.
• Events: Seasonal events such as the Midsummer Festival, the Lunar Festival, and Hallows’ End have specific achievements of their own.
• World Exploration: You’ll earn achievements by exploring each zone in the game — and get meta-achievements when you fully explore a continent.
• Reputations: This set of achievements includes attaining exalted reputation with each faction in the game.
• General: These achievements tend toward the whimsical, including getting a shave and haircut (a new feature of Wrath of the Lich King), obtaining a certain number of tabards and vanity pets, falling from a great height, and more.

Did you read that last one? That’s right, there will now be a beauty salon/barbershop (presumably with no Ice Cube or Queen Latifah, at least I hope not) where you can alter the appearance of your character.

Your character panel will have a tab that lists all of these achievements, and they will show up on your page in the Armory as well.  Rewards for certain achievements include non-combat pets, tabards, and other non-game-altering, purely cosmetic prizes.  Perhaps you can unlock more hairstyles?

Unlocking the Achievements triggers an Achievement animation and “unmistakable” sound.  A message will pop up letting all those around you and everyone in your guild know what you just achieved.  As if trade chat spamming wasn’t bad enough, now we’ll have fifty other messages from people jumping off of Thunder Bluff to get the “Jump from really high” Achievement.  Glorious…

Oh, and these achievements will also have a points value and add to your running total, called your Gamerscore.  Wait… it’s not called Gamerscore?  Oh, my bad.  Seems they haven’t revealed what it’s named yet.  I have a suggestion, though: Gamerscore — let’s just call it what it is.

With things like this and Microsoft’s Avatars, it’s a wonder anything new and innovative is ever created.  What’s next?  Marcus Fenix isn’t original either?

Anyone who’s been following the news (or rumors, as Microsoft would have you believe) knows that I have not been having much luck with my 360. From the general Xbox Live problems that many people are experiencing to the disappearing achievements that I supposedly made up, things are not working the way they should. Microsoft apparently didn’t appreciate my whistle-blowing, however, because they’ve decided to shut me up by having my 360 clipped.

Before I go any further, let me clarify a few things. I love my 360. I love Xbox Live. It’s for these reasons that I get so upset when they don’t work. I don’t write these articles to bring unwarranted negative attention to Microsoft or the Xbox brand. I don’t do this to give the Sony fanboys more ammunition and perpetuate the flame wars. I don’t just make stuff up in the hopes of generating attention for our site, or me in particular. I don’t do this just for the money.

I write these articles because I’m unhappy with the state of the 360’s world. If a horde of people were made aware of the problems the 360 is having, especially if it lets them know they are not alone in their Xbox woes, then perhaps Microsoft would find the proper motivation to actually fix them (the problems, not the people). I write these articles to let everyone know that I will not just sit around and let Microsoft (or anyone else) pretend there is nothing wrong when there very clearly is. Public outcry is a powerful force.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me continue.

About two weeks prior to writing this article, I wrote up a a nice little piece about Xbox Live’s service troubles.

I quickly followed that up with an article about why I love Xbox Live, where I sarcastically pointed out the things that are actually great about it but were not working properly like Microsoft claimed they were.

Then last week, I wrote an article about disappearing Achievements. This, like the stories before it, was written from personal experience with the 360 and Xbox Live. I didn’t write it based on a rumor or hearsay, but from living through it myself. This prompted numerous responses on our website and other sites such as News4Gamers and Kotaku. The comment sections were full of people corroborating my story with their own experiences with disappearing Achievements.

While I can understand people not wanting to believe the story based on the fact that I have no hard evidence to prove it, as well as the notion that I’m just some amateur no-name looking to promote myself, the fact that so many other people have reported having the same experience should make it somewhat more credible. Microsoft doesn’t think so. Their official position is:

Xbox LIVE is not erasing Achievements earned while playing on the service. If any member is having trouble with their Xbox LIVE service, we urge them to contact 1-800-4-my-xbox.

Well thanks, Microsoft. I was having a problem and I did contact 1-800-4my-xbox. It was your people that confirmed to me that disappearing Achievements was, in fact, a known issue and offered me a solution (that I have yet to attempt because it seems impossible). Had your techies known they were talking to the great Dan Landis, Ripten writer extraordinaire, maybe they would have sung a different tune to prevent me shouting it from the rooftops.

So now that I’ve given you enough context for this story and done enough self-promoting, let me continue with what’s new.

RRoD. To those of you that have never seen that before (which I find hard to believe), that stands for Red Ring of Death. It’s the current term used to describe the three flashing red lights on the 360’s face when it goes kaput. I just got it last night. This really isn’t that strange — it happens to a lot of us. So why am I writing an article about it? Well, it’s what followed that got me typing.

All red and no green makes Dan a sad boy.

Not 10 minutes after I saw those beautiful red lights did I get a call from none other than Mike. If you don’t know who Mike is, you’ve got plenty of company because I don’t know who he is either. He claimed to be from Microsoft Consumer Relations.

“I was just calling to confirm your issue with missing Achievements. Specifically, I want to know whether or not our customer service agent has resolved your complaint so that we can help other people with the same issue. Is this still an issue for you?”

I tell him that the previous agent said I need to get another achievement in the same game to update my profile, which should then unlock my previously earned achievement that had disappeared. I don’t really see myself ever getting any of the remaining achievements because they are just too hard, so I haven’t even tried the supposed solution. Now that I already have him on the phone, however, I wanted to report that my 360 has died and needs repaired.

“Really? Well, that’s very unfortunate. I can’t assist you with that problem at this time because that is not my department. You’ll have to call 1-800-4my-xbox during normal business hours.”

Oh, right. It isn’t normal business hours right now. In fact it’s 2:30am. I ask him why he’s calling me now if it isn’t normal business hours, and he tells me that I had called them before during this time frame, so they base their callbacks on that. Then he thanks me for my time and hangs up.

Very strange. So it appears to me that Microsoft hired a Black Ops guy named Mike (obviously a cover) to stealth-kill my 360, and then call me to make sure the job was successful. Even if you aren’t a conspiracy nut, you have to find the timing to be more than just a coincidence.

Mike calls at 2:30 in the morning (strange) and asks about an issue that supposedly isn’t acknowledged by Microsoft to even exist (also strange). And this happens less than 10 minutes after my 360 dies on me (super strange). Either Microsoft is trying to send a message, some Xbox fanboy is upset with my stories and hacked my shit, or it really is just a strange coincidence. I’ll let you be the judge.

Moving on. I go out to “24-hour store whose name I won’t mention because I loathe giving them my money” and pick up another 360. I’m working on a review of Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom and, obviously, I need to play the game to do that. I’ve been wanting to get another 360 anyways, so this just gave me an easy excuse to justify it to my wife. Long story short, the power supply of my new 360 doesn’t work.

So I called 1-800-4my-xbox today during normal business hours and reported all of my issues. Apparently I can’t send my new power supply in the same box with my old 360 because it’s “harder to track”. The power supply needs a separate box that I have to pay to ship to them, even though it’s brand new and not my fault that it doesn’t work. I tell the woman on the phone (Rita) to forget it, that I’ll just take it back to the store and get a new one. She then gets confused and cancels the repair order on my 360. After about 20 more minutes, we get everything straight: repair my old 360, and I’ll replace my new 360 on my own.

Do I really think Microsoft or some hacker broke my 360? No, not really. It is a strange coincidence, but that’s probably all it is. I sometimes wonder if Microsoft cleverly designed the 360 to break after a year and make people like me buy a “backup” 360 to alleviate my worries. What a great way to increase sales! Surprisingly, none of the stores I called to get a replacement 360 (Target, Wal-Mart, Gamestop, EBGames) had any in stock, and the one I had purchased last night was the last one from that particular store. Have they really not received any shipments since the holiday rush? Are too many people buying new systems because their friends got one, or are that many systems defective that all those people are already needing replacements? Discuss.

Basically, the point of this article is to address the baggage the 360 currently comes with. It’s incredibly frustrating, and someone with less patience than me would quickly give up on it altogether. Someone on the fence about whether or not they should “Jump In” might decide against it because you’ve filled the pool with shit. Please, Microsoft, for the love of Mike — stop pissing off your customers and get it together.

This was going to be a pool full of shit, but that would just be gross.