The 9 Best Steam Achievements
Monday, December 27th, 2010The Steam store’s been chasing after Xbox Live, which is like the Mona Lisa getting made up like Lindsay Lohan. They’ve added in-game text chat, shift+tab out to the community screen, even a Steam score for those who need a fictional numerical reason to play games. As opposed to the very real numerical reason of Steam sales, as in “all the financial numbers are way lower and often missing altogether.” An accomplishment Xbox Live strangely seems to miss out on. Even for the packs which are free on the PC!
The upside is achievements, that most beautiful beep when you do something particularly cool and the computer agrees with you that yes, that was totally sweet. (And on TF2 servers it can even earn you new guns, which are even sweeter.) That’s why we’ve looked over our game catalog to find the best achievements.
An achievement which creates better players is a rare and precious thing, like someone turning their baseball cap backwards that they might read classic literature more easily. Many achievements are exercises in game-ruining, where one team is effectively outnumbered because their most expert player is standing in a corner jumping up and down (we’re looking at you, Batter Up). Protip: make sure your server has a kickvote function.
Philanthropist, however, encourages team-building behavior to create a well-armed squad. And the more well-armed squadmates you have between yourself and this…
AAGH NO PATRIARCH TOO CLOSE GUN TOO SMALL ME TOO DEAD!
..the better everyone will like it. Well, except for the squadmates between you and that, but their opinion will stop mattering in about three seconds anyway.

At the other end of the expert-play spectrum, Merry Men walks right up to a squad of pro players and says “You think you’re so tough? Then why not come and fight death incarnate with nothing but pointed sticks?” Then it insults them a lot because they’ll be dead in a minute anyway.
The Ball
Our fine (and extraordinarily improbably appelled) friend Harchier Spebbington demonstrates the standard “Do what the game is all about” achievement. Which makes it onto this list despite its unoriginality because it’s just so much fun. The Ball is a sweet Source combination of Half-Life physics with a Portal-style single weapon, and while “huge boulder” is significantly lower-tech than Aperture Science’s handheld Portal Device, that’s only because you can’t flatten foes into smears of ex-eneemy with a tear in spacetime.
How do you even get a name like Spebbington? Did his ancestors piss off the first census worker?
And since Harchier can appear on Killing Floor servers thanks to a cool crossover, you can achieve the world’s first officially Merry Archaeologist!
Poker Night At The Inventory
Possibly the most unimaginative achievement name in history, but it could be called “You’ve just been diagnosed with horribly pustulent things” because it gives you this:
Unfortunately the Iron Curtain it doesn’t do anything beyond “Look Awesome.” Fortunately it looks SO awesome it doesn’t have to. And be honest: any Heavy Weapons player should be stylishly rewarded for resisting Natascha’s siren, slowing, enemy-annoying song.
Counter-Strike: Source
Counter-Strike servers running on the Half-Life engine – this couldn’t be a more perfect combination of videogaming beauty if it were presented by Joanna Dark. Normally these “you used a weapon to kill enemies” achievements are more superfluous than a third appendix, but on a CS:S server it isn’t just a message. It’s proof that you’re playing the game properly.
Though it’s odd that the makers, while talking about the most important weapon in the game, should be typing this “Magnum Sniper” nonsense instead of AWP. The most lethal acronym in existence outside of OMGIAATAB (Oh My God I Accidentally Armed The Atom Bomb.)

Achievements are both fun and terrible, not least because they’ve given puns a whole new lease of life. A life more more painful than being on the wrong end of a shrapnel grenade, and by wrong end here we mean “while you’re on the toilet you spend your last second discovering one in the bowl. ” But this one is simply so enjoyable - both to read and to achieve - we included it anyway.
Taking out the emplaced guy because he’s distracted killing the idiots charging him. Such sweet joy, here the achievement isn’t a goal or even a reward, merely an electronic high-five for doing something cool.
You can view this as heroically saving the day, or mercenarily using your own teammates to detect emplaced enemies, or simple annoyance at being stuck on a team with so many idiots. “Don’t charge the heavy machine gun” shouldn’t have to be explained. Though for anyone who does need that demonstrated, multiple high-velocity ballistic death is probably the least powerful tool their cro-magnon skull will notice. Whatever the reason, a sweet snipe into someone distracted by thinking of how brilliantly they’re doing is incredibly enjoyable and the key to capturing the next point on any Day of Defeat server.
Team Fortress 2

With 368 achievements and counting, players used to be obsessed with achievements to get the new weapons. The Mann Co. store has released this pressure valve for those who simply have to have the latest items immediately, and allow the rest of us to enjoy the sheer joy of achievements like Search Engine. The Engineer’s was the last update, the delay building up so much spy hate in every mechanically minded player, and finally we can pay it back the way an Engineer should. With hundreds upon hundreds of rounds of sentry gun ammunition.
Revenge is a dish best served repeatedly at high velocity by robotic death machines
D.I.P.R.I.P., the incredibly fast fun and free Mad-Max-madness game you can install from Steam right now, closes out our list with the achievement version of screaming “YEEAAAAAH!” Ramming enemy cars might seem obvious, but DIPRIP servers aren’t a game of bumper cars. You have four weapons ranging from machine guns to mortars, emphasizing various non-zero distances of combat, and you’re far more likely to use your turbo to rush for a repair crate than ramming an enemy.
Which just makes those times you dare their fire to hit you and detonate a damaged enemy with a faceful of engine block that much more glorious.
KICKASSSSS!



























