Achievements are gaming squared: they’ve been mocked as wastes of time (by people who apparently think destroying the Covenant armada was a real matter of national security), but they take you into an incredible fictional world to do even more incredible and funner things.  It’s true that some are stupid, but the challenge involved in the more abstract examples couples to a incredible sense of insane satisfaction you simply don’t get when detonating Evil Overlord Number 3,223 (6,446 if you count ‘twist’ he-wasn’t-quite-dead returns).

The best example is Little Rocket Man from Half-Life 2 Episode Two - you have to carry an ornamental gnome all the way through the game.  A game that’s challenging enough when you’re using your hands for incredible weaponry, never mind when they’re full of porcelain garden figure.

Pictured:  Garden gnome.  Not pictured: Effective weaponry for combating Combine ground and air forces.

It’s one of the most painful experiences outside of stapling your head into a Virtual Boy, but James of PCGamer turned it into incredible fun (and produced the above image).  And one in twenty Episode 2 players have actually done it.

It’s all well and good when it’s your own time you’re double-wasting but L4D2 servers are an entirely different situation.  You’re hooked up with three other players and while a team taking on the challenges is fantastic meta-fun, wasting the time of a trio of strangers is a gaming crime up there with “Stealing healthpacks” and “Choosing Gon in Tekken 3” (the fighting game equivalent of blowing your nose on your opponent’s controller.)  Annoying others instead of playing the game properly is a simultaneous proof of

1. the fact you don’t have any friends to play with
2. the reason for that.

Here are the most awful antichievements to inflict on others:

He’s back and he’s bad!  How bad?

Bashing in undead-skulls bad, which is orders of magnitude more badditude than achieved by any other lawn decoration in all of history.  A terrific adventure for a willing team (and another one tackled by James, from whom the above image originates), but in any other situation you’re telling a desperate team of survivors “Good luck with the undead hordes guys, I’m going to cuddle a triple-fake virtual-statue-mythical figure instead of my gun.”

Melee weapons are for when things get too desperate for firearms, and these melee-only challenges make sure that’s happening all the time.  You might think unknowing strangers are a great way to get this - after all, they’re using their guns to keep most of the enemies away - but there’s a reason over 95% of all Left4Dead games have friendly-fire incidents.  And kick options.  At least the original Left4Dead offers Akimbo Assassin, where the spirit of Chow Yun Fat can help you.

John Woo + Gun + Gun = Invincibility

ANYTHING telling you not to shoot in this situation is not your friend.  It is trying to kill you, and at this moment you have 1000% enough things trying to do that.

Only available at the end of the Passing.  Also available at the end of the Passing: the chance to ask Louis “What the hell do you mean you’re doing okay on your own, Captain crippled-legs, you just lost 37.5% of your team on the same bridge we just cleared!”

Here’s where you earn Stache Whacker:

And here’s your complimentary Stache Whacker checklist:

1. Hold still in a game where holding still means more Special Infected and special Horde deliveries straight from the evil Director.
2. Do so while shooting at carnival game instead of said Special Infected and Hordes.
3. Your reward for doing so is a loud noise which trigger another horde.

You couldn’t hurt your team harder if you hacked the server and set it to ignore their fire buttons.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Half Life 2: Deathmatch Classic News, Left4Dead News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.