50 Most Memorable Achievements in Gaming History

By Alex Turner / December 10, 2012

36. Rock Band - Endless Setlist

Complete the Endless Setlist. This is one of my personal bucket list achievements. Ive not figured out exactly how many hours it would take to accomplish this but its something that my friends and I have occasionally gotten ourselves pumped up to attempt, before getting past the first song and realising there are at least ten more hours to go. Feeling suddenly deflated, we quit the game to make sandwiches instead.

37. GTA IV - Key To The City

Achieve 100% in Game progress statistic. For many people, this is one hundred gamer points that just isnt worth getting. One of the great things about the kind of sandbox world you see in the latter GTA games is that the player is given the freedom to do anything they want. 100% completion achievements such as this one, however, are the bane of open world games to anything but the most hardcore of point collectors, and this one is one of the toughest to collect. In addition to completing all available story missions, the player must finish every procedural side and car theft mission, unlock all abilities from friends and complete each and every activity with them, finish every side game, complete all random character missions, stunt jumps, most wanted missions and crime missions. Not to mention finding all two hundred of those pesky pigeons. Be prepared to throw a solid two or three days into this one.

38. Modern Warfare 2 - Star 69

Earn 69 stars in Special Ops. Some of the greatest achievements are ones which involve cooperative play (as with finishing Halo 3 on Legendary) and Star 69 is one of the greatest of those. It takes a lot of patience, much shouting and screaming and an endless amount of retries, but theres nothing quite like seeing this one pop up when youve sunk scores of hours into it with a friend.

39. Trials HD - Marathon

The player has completed the Ultimate Endurance tournament without any faults. Another Live Arcade title making it into the list, Trials HD is one of the most excruciating examples of trial and error committed to the Xbox in recent years. This particular achievement requires the player to finish the Ultimate Endurance Tournament a set consisting of twenty different tracks in a row without registering a single fault. This not only takes countless hours of patience and practice, but requires a remarkable sense of restrain to not put your fist through the television when you fail halfway through. Which you will, a lot.

40. The Last Airbender - Full 1000

A good rule for a developer when developing a game which is anticipated to sink without trace is to include a handful of easy achievements, tempting sales from point lovers who otherwise wouldnt consider the title. Perhaps the easiest full thousand points ever committed to an Xbox game, The Last Airbender requires you to achieve a hit counter of 50 a feat that can be accomplished in under two minutes at the very beginning of the game.