The Top 10 Most Frustrating Xbox LIVE Achievements

The world of the Achievement Hunter can be a challenging one, but even the most accomplished AH suspects that some Achievements were never actually meant to be unlocked, at least not by most players.

We are not talking about the bugged Achievements or the ones that cannot be unlocked due to issues like game age and server shutdown mind you, we are talking about Achievements of a sort that can easily lead to rage-quits and serious anger. The sort that sees players professing a serious desire to meet a certain programmer in a dark ally.

There are a variety of such Achievements; at the top of the list are the odd Achievements that require you to place Number 1 on a Leaderboard, or pull off in-game moves that almost require three hands. But the ones that can only be unlocked through absolute luck are the ones that tend to enrage gamers the most - largely because they leave you feeling like it is you and not the game that are the problem.

The question of why Achievements have the power to cause that sort of reaction really is not difficult to answer. Whether they were originally created to be a measure of gamer success and prowess when the Achievement was first added to console gaming, the facts are that they have become just that.

Within the larger gamer community there is a general sense that any credible showing in terms of the number and percentage of Achievements that one does manage to unlock is fine. Generally any result of around 800G or above is considered to be a good showing.

That said, among the larger gaming community has arisen a significant subculture that views anything less than a perfect Achievement run on a game to be less than acceptable. Identifying that sort is easy, as they tend to take considerable pride in the number of perfect 1,000G games they unlock, and many include a list in their signature - or at least a tally.

While that is fine for the average game with mostly campaign or story-related Achievements, when one of that lot finds themselves in a game that has problematic Achievements you get some pretty awesome examples of temporary rage-quits and vitriolic posts to the game-related chat boards!

The thing about that though, is that where gamers who don't so much care for that sort of gaming experience will also rage-quit when confronted with this type of situation, the serious set will continue to bash away at the Achievements until they get them unlocked, using video guides and any edge they can manage.

While the list of the most rage-worthy Achievements out there varies from player-to-player, we thought we would share the top ten gathered from the gamer staff in the bullpen here at SuperCheats.

10. LA Noire

The neo-noir detective game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rock Star Games took players to a very convincing and well-designed late-1940s Los Angeles, where they played a police officer moving through the ranks, investigating crime scenes, and solving some of the most historic crimes in the history of LA.

While its Achievements were either story-related or followed several specific themes, there was one stand-out that required pure luck to unlock - not simply in the doing of it but in setting the stage to make unlocking it possible.

Bulletproof Windshield (20G)

Kill the drivers of two of the MP vehicles in the Hughes Aircraft gun battle before they pull up.

To unlock it the player not only needed to find a way to position themselves so that they had a clear line-of-sight at the front or side of both vehicles, they needed to kill both drivers before their rides came to a full stop and they opened the doors to exit their respective vehicles.

What caused this one to make the list is the fickle manner in which it is unlocked. Some gamers were able to get it without seeming to try, while others try over and over again and fail every time. The amount of anger seen on chat boards for this one certainly qualifies it for the list, though if you happen to be one of the gamers who found it 'easy' to unlock, well you may have a different take.