Suffering from Game Score envy? All your mates racking up points by the thousandfold, while your paltry efforts are barely worth a mention? Scared to even connect to Xbox Live in case you're mocked in the street? Well never fear, as our good friends over at OXM have the answer with some quick 'n dirty - not to mention occasionally naughty - ways to radically improve your Gamer Score and convince people you are indeed an Xbox 360 Ninja! So without further ado, take it away fellas...
1. GET SOMEONE GOOD TO PLAY GEOMETRY WARS FOR YOU It only takes one good go. One crazy piece of high-focus square avoidance and you've bagged something like 120 points in ten minutes. Survive to 500,000 points without dying, pass the several scoring milestones along the way and collect nine extra lives. Sounds easy written like that, but it actually takes months of practice. So, like when the plumbing breaks, get a professional in. Someone to do it properly and in a fraction of the time. POINTS EARNED: 120 TIME TAKEN: Ten minutes (if you're good)
2. CHEAT A LITTLE BIT IN FIGHT NIGHT: ROUND 3 The game's dead simple, with only eight achievements, all unlocked by winning the special challenge bouts as you pound through the Career game. If you go to the options screen and stop the game punishing you for doing illegal blows, you can put it on Easy, headbutt and elbow your opponent into a swift submission, and fly through the entire Career game in a couple of moderately heavy evenings. Yes it's cheating and we know it's a brilliant game that you should play properly - but if you're stuck for time it's a good way to get 1,000 points in a hurry. POINTS EARNED: 1,000 TIME TAKEN: Six hours
3. RIP TONY HAWK TO PIECES If you have any 'legacy' Tony Hawk skills, put them to good use in American Wasteland. Playing on Classic mode, you can tear through the recreated levels from previous games amazingly quickly, completing goals and nabbing points. You get 30 points for completing 30 goals, another 30 when you hit 40, and 30 more when you do 50 Classic goals. Complete them all for another 50 points. That's maybe going a bit far, so just get up to 50. It's easy if you know how to do manuals and reverts and all that stuff. Another 300 are on offer for Xbox Live play - 10 each time you play a level online for the first time, plus 10 for setting a high score in each zone offline. Easy. POINTS EARNED: 390 TIME TAKEN: Four hours
4. DO SOME ONLINE TIGER WOODS You get 15 points for just taking part in five online tournaments. Even if you lose and mess around and spoil it for everyone else while not taking it seriously. If you try hard and win those five online matches, you rack up another 25. Which shouldn't take that long. Everyone knows how to play Tiger Woods, right? POINTS EARNED: 40 TIME TAKEN: Two hours
5. BREATHE GENTLY AND DEEPLY WHILE PLAYING BATTLEFIELD Kill four enemies with one sniper rifle clip and 20 points are yours. How easy is that? Then kill 20 enemies with grenades for another 20, do in four with a knife for 20 more, kill ten with a vehicle for another 20, and, well, just keep killing lots of things with specific weapons in each mission, and the points will come flying in. POINTS EARNED: 140 TIME TAKEN: Two hours
6. PLAY THE FIRST FIVE LEVELS OF GUN It's a bit boring and rubbish, but easy to plough through. You get points for beating levels on the Regular difficulty setting, so there's about 80 points to be had before you get bored of the Bland West, and the pain of continuing outweighs the reward in points. POINTS EARNED: 80 TIME TAKEN: Two hours
7. CHEAT YOUR WAY TO SS RANK IN DEAD OR ALIVE 4 You get 50 points for making SS rank when playing on Xbox Live. Getting SS graded is usually the climax of several months of hard work and practice - but you can cheat your way there in minutes if you have two friends that want to help. To cheat, do this: host an online room with three people in. When the additional two people join and start the fight, get them to both exit to the dashboard. Both players disappear, you get ranked up to SS and rewarded with 50 points for correctly inputting the shameless cheat. Do it quickly before this cheat loophole is closed. POINTS EARNED: 50 TIME TAKEN: Five minutes
8. TAKE BURNOUT ONLINE It's ridiculously easy to earn points when games call playing something online an achievement, and Burnout: Revenge gives you 40 points for simply playing races, sharing a clip, recommending a clip and getting a few takedowns and payback hits online. That'll take all of 20 minutes, and five of those minutes are turning the console on and clicking through the Xbox Live menu screens to start a game. POINTS EARNED: 40 TIME TAKEN: 20 minutes
9. DO CALL OF DUTY ON EASY That's 150 points in a couple of evenings of play. If you're some sort of hardcore gaming warrior you can try whacking it up to Veteran, which gives you 60 points for completing each mission and a further 200 for completing the whole game. But that'll take weeks. Seeing as we're all about hoovering up the easy points in a hurry, we'll settle for the quick and easy 150 before moving on. POINTS EARNED: 150 TIME TAKEN: Eight hours
10. WIN AT MARBLE BLAST ULTRA ONLINE Only 10 points, but all you have to do is win one online game. That takes ten minutes, tops, including starting a match and a small amount of pre-match small talk with your opponents. POINTS EARNED: 10 TIME TAKEN: Ten minutes
11. COMPLETE KING KONG It's not the biggest game in the world, plus there's nothing funny or weird to do to bag all the points - you just have to complete it to net yourself a grand. Proportionally, that's a lot of points for not a lot of effort - if you're vaguely competent with a controller, it shouldn't take you more than eight hours or so. Maybe do it over the course of two evenings, so you don't get too tired - or over the weekend in between the football. The achievements are straightforward, like using fire, killing dinosaurs and so on - all things you do in the game anyway. An easy banker. POINTS EARNED: 1,000 TIME TAKEN: Eight hours
12. BEAT GHOST RECON ON NORMAL Unusually, big points are dished in GRAW for beating the game on Normal - 300 of 'em, 25 per mission. You can double that by completing it again on Hard, but that's not really efficient use of your point-gathering time. Take the 300 and EVAC. POINTS EARNED: 300 TIME TAKEN: Ten hours
13. PLAY TOP SPIN 2 FOR HALF AN HOUR It's a bit stupid of games to dish out points for just playing their various modes, but that's what Top Spin 2 does. You get 25 for playing your first Career match, 25 for your first Exhibition, plus another 25 for winning a Career tournament (too hard, ignore this). Oh, and 25 for winning any Xbox Live ranked match. We can't see that taking more than half an hour, even if you're a bit old and lacking in co-ordination. Then you can give the game back to whoever you borrowed it from. POINTS EARNED: 75 TIME TAKEN: About half an hour
14. SPECIALISE IN QUAKE 4 Easy points can be had by completing levels using only one weapon. Quake 4 rewards you with 15 points each time you beat a mission using just the one weapon type, so pick an easy level, then hammer through it only using just the one gun for an easy 15 points a time. Beating a level using only the grenade launcher is bloody good fun, too. It's not all work. POINTS EARNED: 150 TIME TAKEN: One hour
15. WHIP THROUGH NBA LIVE 06 Another poorly planned selection of achievements here. This dishes out 20 for simply using the Character Create feature, 10 for winning any game on the easiest Rookie setting and a stupidly high 40 for winning any online match. The rest get harder, so we'll just guzzle down the easy 70 and move on. POINTS EARNED: 70 TIME TAKEN: 30 minutes
16. DO SOME XBOX LIVE FAR CRY This game hands you five points when you win a game in each of its online modes, plus a bonus 30 when you've done them all. That's 55 points for playing five online games against rubbish people. If you want to play against rubbish people, our tip is to stay up really, really late - the Brits are tired by then, and the Americans aren't that good despite all their shouting to the contrary. POINTS EARNED: 55 TIME TAKEN: One hour
17. BLITZ NHL 2K6 It's only got five poorly planned achievements. Score on a breakaway, score with a defender, score while two men are down, score a penalty on All-Star difficulty and score in under a minute on All- Star. Do all that and you're 1,000 points up. Even if you don't get the rules of ice hockey, you'll have that lot sewn up in half a lazy evening. Easy. POINTS EARNED: 1,000 TIME TAKEN: Two hours
18. QUALIFY FOR THE WORLD CUP... You only need to play six games, and 300 points are yours. It's easily worth lowering yourself to FIFA's level to boost your score. If you can take more than six FIFA games, more points can be had by winning the Master, Open and League tourneys, but they all take too long. Get in, qualify, then get the hell out again. You should probably set your Xbox 360 to hide your online status, so your mates can't tell you're playing FIFA. We value Gamerpoints, but value dignity and respect a little bit more. POINTS EARNED: 300 TIME TAKEN: One hour
19. THEN WIN THE WORLD CUP... ...In FIFA World Cup 2006, the already-out newest edition. Winning the World Cup is easy (in FIFA), thanks to the game being massively easy. Scoring's so easy you can cruise to victory in an hour, and you don't even have to be any good. You get 250 points for doing this, plus a bonus 50 for beating host nation Germany along the way. Then, there's another 150 up for grabs if you complete the World Cup qualifying tournament again. That's about another hour. This is why we suddenly like FIFA quite a bit more than we did before. POINTS EARNED: 450 TIME TAKEN: Two hours
20. PLAY ONE GAME OF MADDEN NFL 06 Thirty points for scoring a touchdown? Twenty points for getting a first down? Really basic achievements, those are, embarrassingly so. Decent Madden players ought to be able to do those and get four sacks on the quarterback (100), rush for 200 yards (100) and pass for 350 yards (100) all in one game. Lucrative and easy. POINTS EARNED: 350 TIME TAKEN: 15 minutes
ha, not bad, you missed Armored Core 4 though. Cheat your way through by playing the first 2 chapters with the standard mech, then go build a custom tank/mech. Full armor, shields, boosters, and your shoulder weapon as the King sized launcher. Now you can't pay for this monstrousity, not yet. As you have your desing up, go play the simulations, each set of sims is worth 30 gamer points and takes 5 mins at the longest. beat as many as are avaible by floating high above your target while launching round after explosive round at them. Then use the money earned to buy your new mech and go beat hte story and the rest of the sims. Approx Time: 5 hours, if your good Gamer points: 720
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
