I was skimming through this article on Eurogamer about the best Xbox Live achievements — because, you know, other people are going to come up with a cure for malaria — and I couldn’t help but be struck by the plangent awesomeness of people’s accounts of how they beat the really serious ones.
Check out for example this dude, who got the Little Rocket Man achievement in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, which means he found the garden gnome at the beginning of the episode, hung on to him for the whole game, then launched him into space on the rocket at the very end of the episode.
Who among us would not be moved by his account of trying to get the gnome through the part where you’re driving and a chopper is chasing you:
1) If you steer at all, the gnome falls out of your car. If you don’t steer at all, you run straight into the Chopper’s mines and die.
2) If you go fast, he falls out. If you go slow, the Chopper switches to direct-fire mode, hovers in front of you and fires directly in your face, killing you.
3) If you stop to pick up the gnome when he falls out, the Chopper swings down low over your vehicle, and the downdraft sends the gnome flying. It’s impossible to put him back in the car under these conditions, or predict where he’ll go if you fire him into that downdraft with the gravity gun, or survive for more than a few seconds because of all the gunfire.
The screenshots alone are worth the price of admission — “the gnome adds poignancy to any scene.” Pentadact, Nerd World salutes your Achievement.