APS: TrueAchievements App

Back in August at this year's Gamescom, we revealed that your favourite achievement website (HINT: it's this one) would be making its way to consoles with an exclusive app for Xbox One. As we hoped, the news was met with much salivation and great joy, with some lovely people even claiming that it was worth buying a One just for it. Now, two months later, the app is almost upon us and, in preparation of its imminent launch, we can exclusively reveal the TrueAchievements achievement list for earning achievements when using TrueAchievements while you earn achievements. Has your brain melted yet?

The TrueAchievements app contains 20 achievements for a total of 0G (well, it is an app). Out of those 20, one is a Secret that I can't go into too much detail on. For the list we really wanted to replicate as many of the core features of the site on the app as possible and to reward you for exploring all of them, so we've got achievements that cover the full gamut of features, from game pages and solutions to sessions and news, the app's achievements task you with diving into it all.

The first thing to point out is that, to use a lot of features of the app and earn a selection of its achievements, you don't necessarily need to have a TA account, but if you want to be unleashed upon the full majesty of what the app has to offer, you'll want to have one. You do have a TA account, don't you? No?! Then what are you waiting for?!? Once you're registered or if you open the app and you already have an account, it'll automatically sign you in and you'll get what is likely to be your first achievement:



Once we've got our hooks into you, we hope that you'll stick around, so we've got two achievements for using the app across extended time periods. Judging by how active a lot of our community members are here on the site and how useful we hope this app is for expanding your achievement earning experience on the console, it won't be difficult to think you'll be using it regularly. For starting up the app on 10 different days and, if you're really getting the most from it, using it on 20 consecutive days, you'll get the following:




One of the first things you'll be getting to grips with on the app is game pages where you can check out your collection's achievement lists and delve into stats and solutions. Like on the site, the app includes options to customise the order that achievements are listed and then apply filters to show you just the achievements you've earned or the ones you haven't earned. For double-dipping on both sorting and filtering a game's achievement list at once, you'll be rewarded with:



To help inform the community about whether a game is good or not, we want to encourage people to rate their games. We've recently added these ratings as a friend feed item so you can see what your friends think about their collections and we want to encourage people to rate games through the app too. We've added two achievements related to doing just that:




Bear in mind that these achievements relate to rating games within the app itself, so previous ratings on-site won't count towards it.

Along with game and achievement pages, a big part of what has made TrueAchievements the site it is today and what will make this app so useful is the solutions for achievements written up by you lovely lot. In the app, we'll reward you for delving into this key area when you look at and rate your first solutions:




The TrueAchievement ratio and score aims to give an indication of an achievement's rarity by applying the powers of maths to the base Gamerscore. The higher the ratio, the more rare the achievement is in that game. If you're looking at a game page on the app and discover an achievement with a really high ratio, we'll reward you with:



I should point out that we originally wanted the app to then force you to try for that ultra-rare achievement using a series of elaborate traps, but we haven't figured out the coding yet.

We didn't want to make the achievement list purely about playing around with the app features. You are achievement hunters after all, so we also wanted to reward you for striving to be the best darned achievement hunter out there.

One such achievement focuses on milestones. If you or one of your friends manages to attain one of the site's milestones for things like TrueAchievement score earned, achievements won or games completed, you'll get the following for viewing the milestone on your friend feed:



If you really want to show off your abilities, then this next one will probably be the achievement that will require the most skill. If you manage to get the highest score amongst your friends on any one game, putting you at the top of that game's leaderboard, you'll get:



This will encourage a bit of friendly (or not so friendly) competition between you and your friends as you race to become the highest scorer. And no cheating by starting a game hardly any of your friends have got. You'll need to have at least 10 friends on the leaderboard for the achievement to pop.

Since the launch of Xbox One, achievements have expanded past the standard static score-carrying lists in games. Now there are also achievements for apps (what's that all about?) and timed achievements in games known as challenges. We've got a selection of achievements in our app that relate to challenges, including A New Challenger Appears! for viewing a live challenge and Challenge Accepted! for looking at the challenge's solution while the app is snapped.

Yes, snapped. Naturally, a big draw for using the app on the One is snap functionality, which will allow you to keep an eye on solutions and other site features simultaneous to playing the game itself. As well as the above mentioned challenge-related achievement, we've got one for snapping for the first time and one for earning an achievement while its solution is snapped:




Another major feature of TrueAchievements is gaming sessions. TA'ers can set up sessions for games where they're going for specific achievements that any other site member can join to help out. These are particularly useful for older or less popular games with multiplayer achievements where the servers are otherwise barren. For actively using the session system through the app, we'll reward you with the following:



Finally, us Newshounds work tirelessly night and day to bring you the latest news from achievement-carrying games across multiple platforms, as well as a delicious selection of editorial features like this one. Many of you actively read and comment on our our news and editorials, but for those of you who don't follow the front page, well tough, because now you have to for achievements:




That's all for this very unique Achievement Preview Spotlight. Let us know what you think about our very own app's achievement list in the comments below.

If there's an upcoming game or DLC pack that you'd like to see featured in the Achievement Preview Spotlight, be sure to let us know in the comments!