Gears' new Achievements in full

By Tom Bramwell Published 14 June, 2007

Patch to go live after 10am BST.

The latest free patch for Gears of War is set to go live after 9am GMT (10am BST) today, Microsoft has said, and we've also had some more Kryll-dodging light shed on the nature of the eight additional Achievements provided for multiplayer fans to unlock.

As you know, these focus on the "Annex" gametype and the "Hidden Fronts" multiplayer map pack (the latter currently costs 800 MS points, and will be re-released for free on 3rd September). The total value of the eight Achievements is 250 points, and anybody hoping to harvest some easy gamerpoints is out of luck.

That's because the "cheapest" of the lot is probably "You Down With E.P.I.C.?", which demands that you "Win a multiplayer match of 3+ rounds in any game-type on 6 different downloadable maps". That's for 30 points. The others talk about winning 20 multiplayer matches on specific Hidden Fronts maps, while the 40-point-unlocking "THIS! IS! ANNEX!" Achievement requires you to "Complete 100 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in Annex and capture 3 objectives in each match". Crikey. For a full rundown of the Achievements, scroll a bit lower.

Microsoft and Epic have also said what else the patch does in more detail. It tweaks the amount of damage done by the Lancer weapon in multiplayer; it fixes split-screen players interrupting the other player's actions when they die; it stops Annex scoring whenever a "Connection Error" dialogue box pops up; it reduces the amount of time corpses lie around when hosting an Annex match; it reduces the range of bleed-out times on offer for Annex hosts; and it addresses an unspecified number of multiplayer exploits and promises "other general housekeeping".

Let us know how you get on. Here's the Achievement list:

  • "THIS! IS! ANNEX!" (40 points) - Complete 100 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in Annex and capture 3 objectives in each match.
  • "Inconceivable!" (30 points) - Win 20 rounds of multiplayer matches in Annex by fewer than 5 points.
  • "Nub Pwn3r" (30 points) - Win 20 rounds of multiplayer matches in Annex by shutting out the opposing team.
  • "You Down With E.P.I.C?" (30 points) - Win a multiplayer match of 3+ rounds in any game type on 6 different downloadable maps.
  • "Green Thumb" (30 points) - Win 20 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in any game type on the Garden multiplayer map.
  • "Mind the Gap" (30 points) - Win 20 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in any game type on the Subway multiplayer map.
  • "All That Juice" (30 points) - Win 20 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in any game type on the Process multiplayer map.
  • "Purdy Mouth" (30 points) - Win 20 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in any game type on the Bullet Marsh multiplayer map.
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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Birchy #1 5 years ago

    Do these take into account games you have already played?

  • penhalion #2 5 years ago

    Is it just me or are the gears acievements just stupidly hard to get by anyone other than a pro gamer?

    I always thought Microsoft had said they would actively discourage acievements like this as they were blatantly unfair. For instance the "Are you Serious" acievement from gears will litterally take you years to unlock. Isn't it something like win 10000 matches in multiplayer.

    Er let's see if I play 15 matches a day for 1.8 years I should get that...oh wait that's assuming I win every match.....

  • polar #3 5 years ago

    zzzzzzzzzz. Sounds like way too much hassle. I assume these new achievements only apply to ranked matches?

  • peteb #4 5 years ago

    yea ranked only. most people, like me, won't even bother. especially since ranked games are full of twats
    Edited by 1 at 14/06/07 @ 09:25

  • afghan_jones #5 5 years ago

    @ penhalion

    the seriously acheivement is 10000 kills not 10000 matches won. Still hard but not as hard as you thought.

    These acheivements are pretty rock hard but to be honest you could get 20 wins on garden, subway etc in a weekend or evening of solid play. But in the end they are acheivements and should be hard to acheive.

    Its more impressive to see the 'seriously' acheivement on someones gamercard than it is to see the full 1000pts for king kong for example.

    Not sure why people have a problem with difficult acheivements or online only ones. If you dont like multiplayer then you dont get those acheivements. I personally dont like sport games, does that mean sport game shouldnt be allowed acheivements because i dont want to play hockey or madden or whatever? Of course not. The fact is, a lot of people like playing multiplayer so why shouldnt they be rewarded?

  • ralphwolfenstein #6 5 years ago

    Nice to see their achievements are about as inspired and original as their character design and art direction...

  • IAmBatman #7 5 years ago

    > Its more impressive to see the 'seriously' acheivement

    It just tells me they have too much spare time. Even someone who's shit at the game could get that eventually, if they could be bothered.

  • WinstonChurchill #8 5 years ago

    @ ralphwolfenstein

    I know you really wanted to show your cynicism towards GoW and how much you dislike it, but the majority of the achievements have been pop culture references and I'm glad that they've taken the time to add some personality to it, rather than have "Kill 100 People".

  • Kiigan #9 5 years ago

    Time to get back into GoW!

  • afghan_jones #10 5 years ago

    @ IamBatman

    Whats your point? You could say the same about every acheivement there is. I didnt say having that acheivement would get you respect and adoring fans just that it took more effort than a lot of easy acheivements in other games and was therefore more impressive by comparison.

  • DutchDemons #11 5 years ago

    thing is...these achievements are friggin lame and most importantly unoriginal.

    i love the achievement system and all, but i do prefer interesting ones (ala Crackdown!)...mixed up with a few 'hard as nails'..as opposed to 'just takes forever'.

    Sure, eventually you might get every achievement in every game, but that's besides the point.

    the whole 'impressive'discussion is a strange one. There is a vague/fine/hazy line between impressive and ridiculous.

    I mean..i have a 22K something score out of 25 games, which i consider to be pretty ok. I have some spare time, i spent like 2 hours a day gaming, but i have 2 studies and a life, so...yea:-)

    I know people who have a 90K+ score out of 150+ games.....which tells me one thing, they do nothing else but play games...bragging about THAT fact is ridiculous, imho.

    anyway, these GoW achievements are, as said before...boring:)

  • stepneg #12 5 years ago

    You can get all the new achievements in player or ranked match. Personally I wasn't over keen on annex but as you can go for these in player matches with friends it might actually be a laugh getting them, unlike the ranked only ones.

  • miiiguel #13 5 years ago

    Gears of War kick-started next-gen.
    It is indeed the greatest shooter ever.

  • miiiguel #14 5 years ago

    Do these take into account games you have already played?: It makes sense if it does.

  • IAmBatman #15 5 years ago

    > You could say the same about every acheivement there is.

    No you couldn't. Some require skill, some just require lots of time.

  • afghan_jones #16 5 years ago

    @IamBatman

    You just said the following:

    "Even someone who's shit at the game could get that eventually, if they could be bothered."

    Surely that applys to every other acheivement there is. Which acheievements do you feel can only be won through geniune skill and couldnt be got simply through investing a lot of time into them?

  • IAmBatman #17 5 years ago

    The various perfection ones in Burnout, the high scores without dying in Geometry Wars. There are bound to be more, I'm not going to hunt through and point them all out.

    While it's true that skill often comes with time, sometimes it doesn't. You could play Joust until your 360 melts and still never be able to get to wave 100.

    edit: wait, it's wave 100, not 50.
    Edited by 1 at 14/06/07 @ 13:27

  • SharkVLion #18 5 years ago

    Release more SP/Coop for gods sake! I'll pay for it, just release it!

  • numptyboymatt #19 5 years ago

    I agree with SharkVLion - Im not a fan of multiplayer but would happily pay a bit (not too much, mind) for more single player or co-op stuff.