The Top 10 Most Challenging Achievements: Xbox 360

04. XCOM Enemy Unknown: Ain't No Cavalry Comin' (50G) Have a soldier survive every mission in a full game.

The return of the XCOM series is a celebrated event among old school gamers largely because it also happens to mark the return to mainstream gaming of series and a sub-genre of the sort of Turn-Based Squad Combat game play mechanics that bring back fond memories of the early era of PC gaming.

This was actually a rather difficult game for us in terms of expectations and our eagerness to play the game due to the open approach that the wizards at Firaxis took in terms of not just promoting the game but presenting its progress to the games journo community.

The result of that was a constant presence at events like E3 and semi-private industry briefings - so if you can imagine the game appearing at every major industry event we covered for the three years leading up to its release in 2012.

To put that in perspective of you? At the very first briefing of the game we saw, at E3, they pretty much had us at “Welcome to the briefing” and the actual presentation (which was hand's off) just made us want to play the more.

In 1994 when development studio Mythos Games teamed up with game publisher MicroProse to release the original UFO: Enemy Unknown (there were actually two versions of the original - this new reboot is actually based on the European version) on an unsuspecting world, they had no idea what they were about to do to gamers everywhere.

I cannot emphasize enough the esteem and the popularity with which the original games in the XCOM series secured for themselves. It will help to know that among the elements that made the games special was the massive depth of the story each contained.

They were not like modern games where character development and creating an emotional connection between the player and protagonist are priorities. Instead the emphasis was placed on enabling the player and helping them to learn to use squad tactics to support their units while at the same time progressing the story.

For a game style in which character development and your attachment to the characters are not primary focuses, it is amazing how quickly the players not only begin to care about their troops, but actually start to develop attachments and “favorites” among them!

Epic Survival Challenge

This is a genuine challenge and all the more because it not only requires you to be very good at gaming the game, but also very lucky considering the criteria for unlocking it.

So just what is the criteria? The Achievement is unlocked for having at least ONE of your soldiers survive EVERY battle.

To help you understand just what you are facing in terms of challenge and your need to bring the fight to the enemy while using all of the most effective strategies to preserve your squaddies, we found the video embedded above to show you the combat system.

The video depicts the turn-based structure in a very practical example, which in addition to outllining the mission structure and combat mechanics, also helps you to understand the value of the active cut scenes (he mentions that you can turn them off, but you probably do not want to do that because often you will get intel in terms of enemy position as a result of these CS's).

Sorry about the larger than usual number of commercials in this one - that is not us doing it it is the video creator, who clearly is trying to max out the profit they make from their video on YouTube.

It's Progress Mates

Working on unlocking this one requires you to have your soldiers be part of the squad that is dispatched for every mission, and not simply survive the missions but survive them largely intact. They can be injured as long as that injury is superficial enough to require fewer than three days recovery time.

Getting a significant wound that required three or more days in the sick bay pretty much guarantees that when the next mission comes around they will not be able to go on it, because they need to heal and that process sabotages your ability to unlock the Achievement!

Of course the idea for this Achievement is that you try very hard to bring your troops through each mission unscathed... You do that by using your superior knowledge in Squad Tacitus, basic military strategy and Rambo-like skills.

So you think to yourself - Self (you think) why don't you stack the deck in your favor? Play on the easy setting and bring LOTS of First Aid Kits with you so that you can heal your team up before ending the mission! That is a great idea - except it won't work...

Even when your entire squad is at full health bars at the end of the mission the game “remembers” who was seriously wounded. So when they arrive back at the base, and even with a full health bar, they STILL get checked into the base hospital for X-number of days in order to be fully healed!

So again, you end up having them unavailable for the next mission, and thus the unlocking of this one is sabotaged!

Really the only way to unlock this is to (a) play on the easiest difficulty, and (b) designate one specific soldier, take them with you on every single mission, and then when you arrive at the mission site have them move back away from the conflict and hide in a safe place so that they never receive even a hang-nail let alone a nosebleed!

Of course that style of “:play” is the exact opposite of normal game play, but if unlocking this Achievement is important to you, that may be your only option...

Don't you hate Achievements that force you to play a game in a manner that is completely inconsistent with the normal game play action?? Us too! Which is why instead what we opted to do - and what we recommend you do - is not tuck your team member in the rear area but play with them like normal - just use the save system strategically.

What we mean by that is simple really - save going in, save after every major accomplishment in battle, and then if a squaddie gets a serious wound, reload the save and don't put them in that position this time!