Machine used to unlock Xbox 360 Achievement Points

by James Ransom-Wiley { Feb 27th 2007 at 8:26PM }

Just 60 of 'em. Yep, $60 for parts and a long day's worth of labor birthed the "xBot," a monstrous lil' bugger that latches onto the Xbox 360 controller and presses 'Start' and 'B' like, well, like a machine. Car mechanic David Harr assembled the xBot to unlock a pair of Perfect Dark Zero Achievements, which require playing 1,000 (offline) multiplayer matches in both Deathmatch and DarkOps modes -- each worth 30 points. Since matches don't need to be completed to register as "played," Harr calculated that it would take him roughly 40 hours to start, exit, and restart enough matches to unlock the Achievements; he would use just ten to assemble his xBot. Muahahahah!

While some whine that Harr's 'workaround' is unethical, the Seattle mechanic argues, "This is not playing online on Xbox Live -- it is not playing against other people ... This is a one trick pony, getting you just 60 points. It's not stepping on anyone's toes." We say, let him have his 60 points.

Tags: 360, AchievementPoints, Achievements, Gamerscore, PDZ, PerfectDarkZero, Seattle, xBot, Xbox360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

SYN @ Feb 27th 2007 8:31PM

60 bucks for two acheivements? why the hell not just buy 3 06 EA sports games for a total of 60 bucks and get those points?

Lord Chako @ Feb 27th 2007 8:35PM

Seems like a lot of work, for no reward. I never realized what lengths some go through to inflate their gamerscore.
Why not just play the game, and have fun? I find achievements to be more rewarding when I am not working just to unlock them.
(Hence my gamerscore of 2500)

dukemeiser @ Feb 27th 2007 8:36PM

Brilliant! At least he can use this for other mundane points achievements in the future, so it's not like he wasted it all just for this.

steve17 @ Feb 27th 2007 8:38PM

"While some whine that Harr's 'workaround' is unethical"

i will tell u whats unethical: forcing someone to play 1,000 rounds of perfect dark zero. LOL

Lord Chako @ Feb 27th 2007 8:56PM

Who is forcing him?
Actually, PDZ's online isn't that bad.
It reminds me of Timesplitters.
It's also nice, because it's not a game that everyone and their mother plays (GOW, Halo 2) so it has a more established community, much like burnout and SC:DA. And there are a lot of multiplayer options.
It reminds me of how I used to play Soldier of Fortune II online a lot back in the day.
It may not have been the best game in the world, but sometimes it's the people you play it with that make it great.

NeverSage @ Feb 27th 2007 9:19PM

Doing shit like this for virtually no reason is awesome. It's human ingenuity at it's best, just for the sake of doing it. I give props where props are due.

Evan @ Feb 27th 2007 9:30PM

I'm with steve17, asking a player to play 1,000 matches is shitty. That achievement doesn't reflect player skill at all, and its completely unreasonable to expect people to grind for 40 hours. We have jobs, lives, and better things to do. It would take me two months to put in that gaming time. Fuck you, Rare!

J RoD @ Feb 27th 2007 9:33PM

Wow...just....wow.

LongshotX @ Feb 27th 2007 9:34PM

Wasn't this on Engadget like two weeks ago?

Anonymous @ Feb 27th 2007 9:37PM

I say he deserves the points just for doing that.

steve17 @ Feb 27th 2007 9:37PM

@5

keyword: OFFLINE matches. who wants to play with themselves 1000 times to get achievments? and yes. PDZ does suck. its not the worst. but it just doesnt feel right. especially when its like trying to shoot a stick figure running at 100mph 50 times in order to make them die. the game is horribly unbalanced.

Poisoned Al @ Feb 27th 2007 9:42PM

Robots are awesome ergo, this is awesome!

DO NOT QUESTION MY LOGIC!

F1ghter @ Feb 27th 2007 9:44PM

Wow, that's pretty involved. I remember when I played through Starfox Adventures (still can't believe I made it through that game...), I had some trouble on the games where all you had to do was tap A inhumanly fast. So I did what any self-respecting engineer would do: I built an automatic button-tapper out of LEGO Mindstorm pieces. I never calculated how fast it could tap a button, but I'm sure it was faster than humanly possible; plus it didn't require any effort, and never got tired!

Kudos to Mr. Harr, though it does seem like a more complex (and expensive) project than it needed to be.

Rubang B @ Feb 27th 2007 9:50PM

Comment #4 beat me to it. That's not an achievement. It's a chore. Achievements should be difficult and not tedious. They should require skill and not 40 hours.

SYN @ Feb 27th 2007 10:16PM

acheivements shouldn't be handed out all willy nilly. this one would likely go to somebody who has real life friends, and plays the game with them from time to time over a period of ~1 year.

i put in well over 1,000 goldeneye matches, and well over 1,000 red faction matches. and well over 8 PDZ matches.......

maybe they thought they made a more memorable game?

steve17 @ Feb 27th 2007 11:19PM

"i put in well over 1,000 goldeneye matches, and well over 1,000 red faction matches. and well over 8 PDZ matches......."

that was my whole point to begin with. while not the worst game ever. especially for a launch game. by standards of now the game just plain sucks.

Lord Chako @ Feb 27th 2007 11:42PM

"by standards of now the game just plain sucks."

You forgot "IMO".

I am sure if you like the game, 1000 matches wouldn't be all that tedious. I think this only comes across as a chore to those who want to inflate their gamerscore.

NeverSage @ Feb 28th 2007 1:13AM

This kind of reminds me of playing the Adventurers of Ys or something like that for the NES. I found that if you knelt in one spot and held the B button to constantly attack you could repeatedly kill one ememy and level up fast. *sigh* good times when all you needed was a brick on your controller, instead of a working robot.