A Matter Of The Challenge

Update:

As you may have heard in Episode 24 – Better With Kinect, Al has officially conceded The Challenge without a title – still… Which means that he will be walking around Eurogamer on the Saturday in an extremely large, hand-crafted, ClapTrap costume, which, if you’re going, on that particular day, will be hard to miss. If you see him, say hi, i’m sure he’ll appreciate it. Claptrap for those of you who aren’t aware , is the largely loveable robot from Borderlands.

So how did we get here. The beginning of the story is below in the original story, many games have been played by both of us, but the challenge seemed to motivate us in different ways. For me, it turned me into a cheevo hunting machine, trueachievements.com was my friend and I managed to get many of my backlog games that i’d only got a couple of cheevos on out of the way and truly rinsed of cheevos. I had a clear strategy and inbetween every show i was aiming to improve my score by at least 1% which i managed to do more often than not. As you may of heard on the podcast i’ve enjoyed more of those than ones i didn’t. None are going to be in my top 10 games of all time, or even this generation, but i don’t regret playing them, especially as the beginning of this year hasn’t particularly over delivered on top games. That said, it’s going to be nice to crack open some new games (to me) such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dark Souls and Alan Wake. So that’s my side of the story.
As for Al, the challenge started well, and playing Mass Effect 3 on the 360 certainly helped him, but his gaming mojo has definitely disappeared over the past couple of months as our scores drifted futher apart. He’s said that, at times, he would have much rather done anything else than game, and for someone who co-hosts a gaming podcast that isn’t a great place to be. He can now get back to Skyrim, can crack open all of those unplayed games from Steam Sales past and also unleash the big one – Star Wars The Old Republic.

If i’m honest i’m glad it’s over, it’s a big weight off my shoulders, it sounds stupid, but i’m ultra competitive to a fault which can be good and bad. At the end of the day it means that I can crack open some new games, games that i wouldn’t necessarily have even looked at. Games like QUBE and McPixel come straight to mind and there’ll many more along the way and I know that Al feels the same. And hopefully it will reinvigorate that mojo of his…

Original Blog:

The Challenge without a title – yet…

Ok, so those of you who have listened to Episode 11 – Red Dead Relapse will have heard in the intro section me bait Al into a gaming challenge. This challenge will run all of the way through to Tuesday 25th September of this year (the final podcast recording before this years Eurogamer Expo), and will see the loser wearing something no doubt embarrassing on the Saturday at Eurogamer and having to walk around in it for the whole day in-front of the thousands who will be in attendance.

It has all come about for our mutual love of achievements (or cheevos!), the Xbox and our New Years resolution to complete more games from our gaming backlog. Now, you might have visited www.trueachievements.com before, it’s an awesome website that ranks each achievement by a difficulty rating based on how many people who own that game, have completed that particular achievement, thusly giving it a true achievement (TA) ratio. The higher the ratio, the higher the TA score, the more difficult that achievement is deemed to be. This is where we’re controlling the stats from for the challenge. It also gives you some other stats such as your overall TA score (your gamerscore x your overall TA ratio), amount of games played, comparison tables of how you are faring against other friends and the most important stat for us: The Achievement Completion Percentage.

This is the score against which our challenge will be fought. Now, on the site you can set  that stat to include any DLC that you have played (deemed played if you have unlocked at least one achievement against that bit of DLC) and this is how me and Al will be fighting it out. The person who has the higher percentage by that podcast recording before Eurogamer will be declared the winner and the other (hopefully Al) shall be suitably embarrased at Eurogamer with their clothing selection.

We’ll keep you posted in the podcasts as to the scores and how we’re both progressing, and we’ll update this blog to help track our cheevo hunting progress in the table below. Now, if you’ll excuse me, i’ve got some gaming to do…

Achievement Completion Percentage (inc. DLC)
Podcast No. Al Ben Difference Notes
Podcast 11 – Red Dead Relapse 48.72% 47.77% -0.95% Ep 11 stats exc DLC
Podcast 12 – Left And Forward 49.99% 48.59% -1.40%
Podcast 13 – The Paragon Option 50.49% 50.35% -0.14%
Podcast 14 – Every Single Orifice 50.91% 51.34% 0.43% Lead change
Podcast 15 – Fluffer Simulator 51.40% 52.40% 1.00% ME3 came out 🙂
Podcast 16 – 24 Stone Lighter 52.15% 52.60% 0.45%
Podcast 17 – Count Won Long Dong 52.51% 53.09% 0.58% Roughly 20 cheevos difference
Podcast 18 – It’s Not Gold, It’s Brown 52.05% 53.82% 1.77% Approx 65 cheevos diff
Podcast 19 – Innuendo City 52.07% 54.60% 2.53% Approx 95 cheevos diff
Podcast 20 – Use A Broom Handle 52.57% 55.53% 2.96% Roughly 110 cheevos diff
Podcast 21 – E3 Jizzathon 53.34% 56.79% 3.45% Roughly 125 cheevos
Podcast 22 – Done A Kev 53.61% 58.00% 4.39% Roughly 165 cheevos
Podcast 23 – Rezzed Special No update
Podcast 24 – Better With Kinect 54.27% 60.01% 5.74% Roughly 220 cheevos or over 3 a day! & Al concedes…
Podcast 25
Podcast 26
Podcast 27
Podcast 28
Podcast 29 (Last one before Eurogamer)

 

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