They have no value in the real world (yet), but good luck telling that to the millions of gamers hopeless addicted to Microsoft's Xbox Achievements. Earning some of these digital tips of the cap can takes hours, if not days or weeks. Yet, for many, many gamers, they're an integral part of what makes the Xbox 360 such a great console.

Admittedly, the thrill of seeing "Achievement Unlocked" and hearing that pleasing little chime after long hours of hunting down in-game items is often its own reward. Some Achievements, though, can test the mettle of even the most dedicated gamers, remaining just a pipe dream no matter how hard they try. Stretch your thumbs and grab some extra batteries before trying to take down the 10 hardest Xbox Achievements.

"Seriously 3.0" (Gears of War 3)

Kotaku calls this the toughest achievement on the Xbox 360, and they might be right.

First, you have to reach rank 100 and earn all of the game's Onyx medals (6,000 kills with each of the game's 5 weapons). Then you'll need to take 1,500 enemy leaders captive and be an MVP in competitive combat five times. And that's just the warm-up requirements! The achievement ultimately has over a dozen checklist items -- each more brutal than the last.

"7 Day Survivor" (Dead Rising)

Even dedicated fans of this zombie game falter when trying to unlock these 20 Achievement points.

To even access it, you'll first need to open up the game's Infinity Mode by completing the difficult Overtime mode. Then, you'll need to survive a zombie-infested mall for seven in-game days -- 22 hours in real time. And no saves are allowed, so you have to play straight through. Also, just to make things more interesting, you'll need to keep eating food scattered through the mall or else Frank will die of starvation. Probably a good idea for YOU to eat something, too.

"Bladder of Steel" (Rock Band 2)

Like 7Day Survivor, this is an endurance test, but one of a completely different nature. You'll have to complete a setlist containing every song in the game (which chews up roughly 7 hours on the clock) without hitting the pause button once.

That includes having the game stop for any reason -- including your controllers running out of battery juice. Charge 'em up before starting, and whatever you do, don't chug a 2-liter bottle of anything beforehand.

"Hard to the Core" (Dead Space 2)

Not only will you have to complete this action/horror game at its hardest level to unlock this achievement, you'll also have to dedicate some serious time toward doing so.

Only three saves -- and no checkpoints -- are allowed in the game's Hardcore mode, making it a serious beast for even the most capable gamer. But there's another reason to give it a shot beyond the Achievement points: the hand cannon.

Yep. Even goes "Bang Bang!" and "Pew Pew!" when you shoot it.

"Strings of Steel" (The Gunstringer)

The Gunstringer is a cute, engaging game for Kinect in which you help guide a puppet through crazy adventures by pulling its invisible strings. Surely it wouldn't contain any rage-inducing, impossible challenges, right?

Well, maybe just one. To unlock Strings of Steel, you'll need to complete every single act in the game… in one sitting… on the hardest mode. That takes one macho marionette.

"Dedication" (Crysis 2)

Some view this achievement as a blatant attempt by EA to halt trade-ins of the game. Others see it as a way to reward the most loyal fans. Either way, it's pretty unique.

To unlock it, you'll need to play an online game at some point, then wait six months and play again. You can, of course, play as often as you'd like between those two points. The achievement is a pat on the back for people still playing the game six months after they bought it.

"Insanity" (Mass Effect 3)

Say what you want about its controversial ending, but Mass Effect 3 isn't an easy game -- especially when you ramp up the difficulty level.

You'll have to complete the game once just to unlock Hardcore mode, then you'll have to beat that markedly more difficult level to unlock Insanity mode. Then you'll have to complete the game playing this nearly unbeatable mode to grab the Achievement. At the request of friends in the development community, Bioware specifically made it harder than the previous two games.

"Mile High Club" (Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)

Many players don't notice this bonus campaign mission, which only pops up after you complete the mission "Game Over" and watch the credits to the end.

From there, you can go to the mission select menu to play it -- but earning its achievement is another matter entirely. To do that, you'll have to clear out an airplane full of 30 extremely skilled enemy terrorists in only 1 minute. How hard is it? It's an achievement that has taken even the most skilled CoD players weeks to complete.

"Ultimate Battler" (Star Ocean: The Last Hope)

This sprawling RPG packs one seriously random Achievement. You'll need to collect all of the game's 100 battle trophies to nab it, which doesn't sound too difficult at first.

But while many of those are easy, some -- like the one requiring you to deal exactly 55,555 points of damage -- are just insane. It takes tremendous patience and a LOT of searching. And your reward for this persistence? 10 lousy Achievement points.

"I Am Arthur Clark" (War of the Worlds)

Admittedly, War of the Worlds wasn't a real blockbuster of a game, but to unlock its highest achievement, you'll have to complete it in one sitting with no deaths. Seems easy enough, right?

Turns out that's a lot harder than it sounds. Exactly how hard is this achievement? To date, not one person has unlocked it.

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged...211201492.html

-The Dead Rising and Rock Band 2 cheevos sound insane! Maybe the reason no one has unlocked the War of the worlds one is cause no one bought the game?

In before all the "achievements are stupid," "other people play games differently than me and that's WRONG," etc. comments.

So far I have:
7 Day Survivor in Dead Rising
Dedication in Crysis 2
Insanity in Mass Effect 3

Put a decent amount of effort into Hard to the Core (Dead Space 2) and Mile High Club (COD 4) before moving them onto my "life's too short for this" list, but will probably go back and try again at some point. No plans to attempt Seriously 3.0 in Gears 3 because life really is too short.

I own The Gunstringer and Star Ocean but haven't played them yet, and after trying the demo I will never, ever play War of the Worlds.

Unless it unlocks something in the game, there's no point in doing them.

OK, they put an achievement on there that only requires you to play a game twice in 6 months to achieve? Lost Planet 2 has virtually the same trophy/achievement, in addition to a crapload of very difficult and/or time consuming trophies/achievements.

One of them requires you to set a world record in one of their time trials. Now while that might not sound too bad, the world records have been set over and over by people playing this game. It's gotten to a point where we're talking about fractions of a second between success and failure. And a time that would have shattered the record in 2010 when the game came out wouldn't even make the top 50 now.

And that's just one of the requirements of this particular trophy/achievement. There's over 500 requirements for it!

Yeah, the Crysis 2 achievement isn't hard. Just requires keeping the game for 6 months.

That can easily be replaced with:
Zuma 20G
Score Champion
Awarded for earning 2,000,000 scores.

The only way to get this is to earn extra lives as they net you enough points to cross the 2m mark after you finish the game. This also means you can't lose more than 3 lives over the course of the entire game.

I'd also toss in all the "Perfect" achievements in Burnout Revenge and Beat the Team II challenge in Split/Second.

I have none of those, and no games fully completed (whether it's 1000/1000 or more due to DLC) outside of the CSI games

I don't have enough time to be an acheivement whore.

I have 200/200 in Zuma

I'll go with Gears 3.0 simply because of the insane amount of time involved. They're not really hard but some can be painstakenly more than others. Just some time wise are equal to the lengths to some games. I got the 30 Onyx Medal Achievment and frankly was burned out. The moment I got it, I haven't played it since and that was two months ago.

I tried the Mile High Club achievement for about an hour and gave up. Even studied a youtube walkthrough of how to do it and still couldn't accomplish it.

The only games I have on that list are Gears and Mass Effect 3. I don't really care about achievements and don't set out to get them 95% of the time, so I love seeing these hard ones come up and people complain about them.

The Dead Rising one is the most frustrating because 22 hours of straight gameplay increases the chance of your console freezing from heat, immensely. I had a friend who had that happen 12 hours in back when the game was new.

yep. same here. it was fucking ridiculous.

I have Bladder of Steel from RB2.

Yeah, some there are just grinders. A few really require high skill, or luck.

There are some that pretty much aren't possible anymore I'm sure after patches and whatnot. In Left4Dead 1, there is 1 achievement that requires beating an entire campaign without taking any damage from special infected. It wasn't too bad when it first came out to get it, as there was a glitch that let you join a game in progress to get it. They fixed that. Then it was still possible, but tough, as the Smoker didn't damage you until he pulled you all the way in. Then they patched it so you take damage as soon as the smoker grabs you. I couldn't even do it before they did the smoker patch, after that, it's just impossible in my opinion. That's the only achievement from that game I don't have. I quit playing it long ago, so know knows, maybe they did something since then that made it more possible.

Also, I forget which game it was now, but one of the achievements was to hit #1 on the global leaderboard or something I think. Or maybe top 5. Yeah, like a normal person is ever going to get that.

Edit: looked it up, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.
World Champion (Multiplayer): Climb to the top of the universal leaderboard

Eh. What about stuff like Chromehounds where the servers are off, but a lot of the achievements are tied to online?

Also, Final Fantasy XI has some insane achievements... as an MMORPG, maxing all the classes and getting all the items should take years.

The only one of those I have unlocked is the Mile High Club achievement. I'll admit, it was pretty hard and took a couple hours to get, but I was damned determined at the time.

I got that one solo, on Easy. I would just hang back a bit and let the AI do all the work. They're pretty efficient on the lower difficulty. It's not terribly difficult to get through a campaign without getting pulled by a Smoker, although it may take a couple of attempts.

Those are impossible now, obviously, rather than difficult. EA Sports games are notorious for this as well.

GRAW resets their leaderboards at least somewhat regularly. i have a buddy that went the day the reset happened and got his way to the top with a few other friends so they would all get the achievement. huge amount of work but possible due to the reset.

I know plenty of people still waiting for the cybertron 2041 achievement, but the top 5 people just flat out won't play anymore, and with no reset or no way of taking them over, that is never going to happen again

I wish all games with an online mode had a tcp/ip option.

With the improvements MS has made to the system since then, this is not as big of a deal today as it was back in 2006.

And I believe it actually takes around 14 hours, not 22.

Wow, I thought Mile High Club was doable. It took me about 70 tries to do it, however.

I have the Dead Rising one. It requires prior planning and strategy to survive, but I enjoy that sort of thing.

There's a glitch in the mode where the game will freeze at a certain point if you go into a specific place at a certain time. I didn't know about it on my first attempt.

I have the Mile High club one, but I don't think it should be on the list. It is hard, obviously, but the level is only one minute long, so there are a lot fewer chances to screw up than when going for other hard achievements. Finishing the level mostly just requires you to just learn where it is best to take cover, what spots trigger enemy spawns, when to throw flashes, etc. You don't need superhuman reflexes or hand-eye coordination.