NCAA Football 08 Xbox 360 Achievements are Out

[JoeyJojoShabadoo]

http://www.ncaastrategies.com/images/news/achievments360.png (http://www.achieve360points.com/game/ncaafootball08/)Achive360points.com has released the list of game score achievements for the Xbox 360 version of NCAA Football 08.

View the list (http://www.achieve360points.com/print/ncaafootball08)

[TrickyD]

good grief... basically anyone with a pulse can get about 265 in a single play now game.

I like this one though

42. 1-Star into 6-Star
Turn a 1-star prestige school into a 6-star prestige school in single team Dynasty Mode. - 50 points

[Southpaw]

What is this bowling and tug of war mini game stuff? I must not have read about that yet. Rest assured I won't be playing those, though.

[husker_blitz]

Instead of Make a Promise to a Prospect, why wouldn't they give points on 'Keeping A Promise to a Prospect'?

[joshuahuskers]

OK, so I've never really gotten into this whole acheivement thing. What do they do, and what do the points do for you?

[Catch28]

OK, so I've never really gotten into this whole acheivement thing. What do they do, and what do the points do for you?

bragging rights i guess, not much else

[JeffHCross]

OK, so I've never really gotten into this whole acheivement thing. What do they do, and what do the points do for you?They're like Enzyte tablets for your e-penis.

[Canada_NCAA]

18. Player Interception Record
Break the game record for interceptions with one player (5) in a Play Now or Dynasty Mode game.

Damn. 5 Int's with one player.

[gschwendt]

What is this bowling and tug of war mini game stuff? I must not have read about that yet. Rest assured I won't be playing those, though.

I don't remember exactly the tug of war but the bowling was that you were put at the 10 yard line, if you score the first time, it's a strike, if you score the second time it's a spare. If you don't score, for however many yards you get, you get that many "pins".

[Fluff E Bunny]

I don't remember exactly the tug of war but the bowling was that you were put at the 10 yard line, if you score the first time, it's a strike, if you score the second time it's a spare. If you don't score, for however many yards you get, you get that many "pins".

Correct. And Tug-Of-War was starting at the 50 yard line and alternating offensive plays with your opponent (ie, they'd be offense and you defense, then next play switch). You had a limited number of plays to select from. The idea was to move the line of scrimmage in your favor until you finally scored. You had the option of doing run only, pass only, or mixed.

I actually played bowling more than the rest of the game last year. But that was because it was a better practice mode than the real practice mode (which, sadly, remains crappy again this year).

[gnperdue]

So... but in last year's title, if you touched the sliders, you couldn't earn most of the achievements anyways... so who cares? Really, if it is between decent gameplay and the eloquently phrased "enzyte for the e-penis," is it a contest?

[Fluff E Bunny]

good grief... basically anyone with a pulse can get about 265 in a single play now game.

I like this one though

42. 1-Star into 6-Star
Turn a 1-star prestige school into a 6-star prestige school in single team Dynasty Mode. - 50 points

The list for this year is fairly similar to last year (http://www.achieve360points.com/print/ncaafootball07).

[JeffHCross]

Really, if it is between decent gameplay and the eloquently phrased "enzyte for the e-penis," is it a contest?Nope, but in my experience, those that care the most about achievements don't care about decent gameplay. Not everyone, but the ones that obsess about them.

[Fluff E Bunny]

Nope, but in my experience, those that care the most about achievements don't care about decent gameplay. Not everyone, but the ones that obsess about them.

I care about achievements, but more in the sense that they need to be well chosen to get me to play the game to 'completeness'.

This is something they are getting better at, but still some games really make you scratch your head.

NCAA actually had one of the better early achievement lists, with a ton of different achievements, but the game play was so flawed (although I preferred it to the last-gen game play) and incomplete that I just never bothered to go after them.


If they have executed game play better this year, I'll be hitting the achievements.

[kenniefresh]

i hate the achievements more than anything for every game i have for 360

[JeffHCross]

Right Fluff. I'm more talking about the people that need to get every acheivement, as if it's some part of their self-worth. That's the type that'll edit the roster and give themselves 99 OVR players and play on Varsity all day, in my experience.

[TubbyChooChoo]

This will be nice. Most of the other games I play are really online games for me so I don't earn a bunch of points people get for playing them offline.

NCAA I play a ton offline with dynasty obviously so I'll get some freakin points.

[Cdenz]

TRY tug of war and set it to run only, now that's tuff:)

[Fluff E Bunny]

Right Fluff. I'm more talking about the people that need to get every acheivement, as if it's some part of their self-worth. That's the type that'll edit the roster and give themselves 99 OVR players and play on Varsity all day, in my experience.

I think those are more of the exception than the rule.

TRY tug of war and set it to run only, now that's tuff:)

I used TOW and Bowling for practice. Bowling was better, but the problem is that you had a short field, which changes how a defese reacts. TOW lets you play on a longer field, but your play selection is limited.

EA just needs to give us a revamped practice mode.

[Fluff E Bunny]

I care about achievements, but more in the sense that they need to be well chosen to get me to play the game to 'completeness'.

This is something they are getting better at, but still some games really make you scratch your head.

NCAA actually had one of the better early achievement lists, with a ton of different achievements, but the game play was so flawed (although I preferred it to the last-gen game play) and incomplete that I just never bothered to go after them.


If they have executed game play better this year, I'll be hitting the achievements.


To add more to this, let me use Project Gotham Racing 3 (http://www.achieve360points.com/print/projectgothamracing3) as an example of a really piss-poor list of achievements.

First of all, you have just 25 different achievements possible (1000 GP total). That is an average of 40 GP's per achievement, which is, frankly, too high. Crackdown (http://www.achieve360points.com/print/crackdown) has 50 different achievements and more GP's possible with 1250. It averages 25 GP per achievement. Much better, but just over what I consider to be the sweet spot of 20 GP average. However, it does have the right magic number of achievements, which is 50 (per 1000 GPs). Gears of War (http://www.achieve360points.com/print/gearsofwar) does a pretty bang-up job of distribution with 57/1250, or just under 22 GP's per achievement. But more on Gears in a bit.

Now, going back to PGR3, when you look at the list the big thing that the achievements fail to do is further the game along. Here's what I mean. In the Career Mode of the game, you have to work your way through sets of races. You get a trophy for each set of races you complete. You have to get a certain number of trophies in order to unlock other race sets. There are NO achievements for completing race sets. In fact, after you unlock all of the race sets and get all of the trophies, you get nothing except maybe the Steel Champion (which means you have won all the races at the minimum skill level), a whopping 30 GP's. And it takes a LOT of races to get there. There is basically nothing to keep you racing, which is why I have barely played the game, even though the MS race wheel is pretty snazzy.

I think the issue with the game is that they made a poor decision to keep the Kudos system from the previous versions of the game. The Kudos were essentially last-gen's achievements for the game. They are redundant now. What they should have done is doled out, say, 5 GP's each time you earned a trophy and unlocked the next set of races (assuming at the lowest level of difficulty). If you go through the race set at the next higher difficulty level you'd get another 5, and so on. They could have made the career mode very compelling. They also have a lot of other crap like badges that you earn with certain feats, but only two of those earn you an achievement. Scrap that shit, make all the badges achievements and give some GPs. Make me want to go and try some of the stuff you have to do go get a badge. Right now I just get them at random by pure luck, not by design on my part.

Now, about Gears. While it has a great distribution of achievements by the numbers...roughly half of them are online-ranked match only. More to the point, a lot of them are either simply ridiculous (see: 'Seriously') or require far too much time spent doing redundant crap to complete (see: all of the kill 100 enemies with xxx weapon achievements). They are, by their nature, un-compelling achievements. You're better off masturbating.

Online achievements are really hard to make compelling. The one's I like and go after are the one's that require co-operation. So, for Gears it was the two 'Dom' achievements, and for Crackdown the 'DoubleTrouble' and 'Tag Teamer' achievements. The 'Psych Out' achievement, while not a co-op or online achievement per se, was considerably less frustrating and faster to complete with a friend online.

Making on-line achievements tied to ranked matches is an all or nothing proposition for most people. For FPS games, people know there are going to be cheaters galore in ranked matches and avoid them. So they get locked out of those achievements unless they put up with a lot of shit...and that isn't fun. On the other hand, not tying an achievement to ranked matches makes it kind of pointless to have ranked matches. So, I don't know if there is a cure for that quandry. One Idea I had is to make all rank-tied online achievements part of downloadable content in the extra 250 group. That way, if you don't want to put up with cheater, you just don't download the extra DC and you can still complete the retail game achievements and feel satisfied.

[JBHuskers]

Instead of Make a Promise to a Prospect, why wouldn't they give points on 'Keeping A Promise to a Prospect'?

Because that isn't realistic, just ask Nick Saban.

[Fluff E Bunny]

Gah! The 'Held Under xxx Yards' achievements are stupid. I just held a play now opponent to 89 yards of total offense. But the fucking achievement is for TOTAL yards....including kickoff and punt yards. WTF. It means you have to basically kick every kick out of bounds....especially if you score a lot.

Dumb!

[djwill13]

Gah! The 'Held Under xxx Yards' achievements are stupid. I just held a play now opponent to 89 yards of total offense. But the fucking achievement is for TOTAL yards....including kickoff and punt yards. WTF. It means you have to basically kick every kick out of bounds....especially if you score a lot.

Dumb!

No necessarily. Kick kickoffs straight up in the air and kick punts out of bounds. Just a suggestion.

[Fluff E Bunny]

No necessarily. Kick kickoffs straight up in the air and kick punts out of bounds. Just a suggestion.

Kickoff straight up still have a chance for a return. It is just a stupid achievement. If you shut down an opponent's offense and score a lot, you've pretty much got to complete abandon smart/normal football in order to get the achievement.