Every Game Pass game with awkward achievement values

Whether you actively avoid games with unusual achievement values or you're looking for something to help round off your Gamerscore, here's everything in Xbox and PC Game Pass that refuses to play by the standard 0/5 rules.

Love 'em or hate 'em, weird Gamerscore values are here to stay, and they've even managed to find their way into a surprising amount of Game Pass titles. Some of the best games on Game Pass even like to dabble with these non-standard rewards, sometimes with just one or two cheeky ones for a giggle, while others have entire lists seemingly designed to freak out anyone with a dislike for achievements with scores that aren't divisible by five. Here's a look at every game in the Game Pass library that currently pulls this stunt — we're sure more of the games coming to Game Pass will join them, but for now, these are the titles you should be looking to avoid, target, or dive into, depending on your take on lists where 0s and 5s lose out to pure numerical anarchy.

Crusader Kings III (Windows)

Awkward achievements: 20
Values included: 2, 3, 8, 12
The first of four Paradox games on the list, this is actually one of the strangest cases of the lot. You see, while the Crusader Kings III (Windows) achievements are riddled with 20 unusual values across base game and DLC — bringing its grand total to a nice round 1,561G — 2022's console release saw the team go through and normalise all the values for the very same achievements; a rare example of identical achievements having different values in two versions of the same game. The base list for the PC version is still a round 1K, but thanks to The Royal Court update and add-on each bringing unusual numbers to the table (and their total not even being a standard amount), the overall Gamerscore value for Paradox's grand strategy game ends up being awkward, too. Wonder how the handful of players with the completion on the site feel about that?

Despot's Game

Awkward achievements: 10
Values included: 36, 51
A relatively recent Game Pass addition and one that's not in the best of states even beyond its ten strange scores — two of the Despot's Game achievements are currently partially discontinued due to being bugged, and since that includes one of each of the two unusual values the game likes to use, you couldn't get the full completion to round out your Gamerscore total properly even if you wanted to. It's an interesting if rather niche game, and since even just having weird achievement values is enough to put some players off, let alone busted ones, starting Despot's Game right now gets less and less attractive the further down the rabbit hole you go.

Doom Eternal

Awkward achievements: 2
Values included: 33, 67
id just had to be awkward with the Doom Eternal achievements, and its 50-strong list plays host to just two achievements that don't stick to the divisible-by-five norm (as well as the same pair in the PC stack, naturally). The good news is that both are for fairly easy cumulative tasks, with the 33G one coming as a reward for 33 pulling off 33 unique Glory Kills (likely to be one of the first achievements you pop in the game as this can be done before the end of the first level), and the 67G one awarded for killing 666 demons in total, which you should manage to hit somewhere round the halfway point of the game.

Double Dragon Neon

Awkward achievements: 2
Values included: 1, 19
Double Dragon Neon pulls a pretty cheeky trick, slapping you with a 1G achievement called Skullmageddon's Curse when you first start the game, replete with an evil laugh in its description (they knew what they were doing here), then locking the 19 Gamerscore required to round out the total behind beating the final boss to break that 'curse.' Realistically, it's a pretty straightforward retro-style scrolling fighter with a few extra bells and whistles, so it's not like you have to go out of your way to grab both, but it's still a bit naughty... not as naughty as 360 stinker Bullet Witch, which left you at 999/1,000G unless you beat the game on the hardest difficulty, sure, and it feels like a much more playful use of the Achievement score system than most, so kudos to WayForward.

Europa Universalis IV (Windows)

Awkward achievements: 306
Values included: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11
We've hit the motherlode with this one, and if you're someone who can't stand strange Gamerscore values, the Europa Universalis IV achievements will be your worst nightmare. This has more awkward achievements than the rest of this list combined, spread across the base list (and even that couldn't be normal, marching in with 1,025G) and dozens of updates and DLC packs. Paradox's degree of pisstakery with this one is off the charts — ever seen a 1G title update before? — and 89% of the strategy game's whopping 345 achievements are awkward numbers. Luckily it's a nice quick completion, and that full 1,532G can be yours in just... 5,000 hours? That's like 0.3G per hour! Madness. Sadly, Europa doesn't quite manage to complete its bingo card, though, but it's only an 8G achievement away from ticking off the full 1-10. A decent effort, but one that is about to be seriously outdone.

Gunfire Reborn

Awkward achievements: 63
Values included: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 33
Bingo! Roguelite FPS Gunfire Reborn doesn't just finish its bingo card but most of someone else's too, only shy an 18G achievement or it could have had a full run of rewards all the way from 1G to 21G, so it missed a trick there, really. Unlike some of these games, though, Gunfire isn't really the best of games to use to try and correct an awkward Gamerscore total. You might go into it with eyes on an easy 2G achievement to sort out that 8 on the end of your score, but like it or not, you'll probably end up popping a 7G here and a 19G there along the way — it's a big ol' list and with so many different numbers for so many different unrelated tasks, you wind up basically just rolling the dice and hoping the maths play nice. It's not really a quick or easy 1K either, with a 60-80-hour estimate and a 0.5% completion rate here on TA, but if you like seeing lots of different numbers pop up, there's no better game here.

Hearts of Iron IV (Windows)

Awkward achievements: 26
Values included: 1, 2, 6
Hi Paradox, fancy bumping into you here! Granted, Hearts of Iron IV is far more reserved than some of the studio's other games mentioned here, with 'just' 26 of its 143 achievements being weird numbers (not including the 0G one), but there are still some very low Gamerscore rewards for some very particular tasks that you'd expect should be better earners, and even the base list weighs in light at 885G. It's another epic completion as well, and getting that full 2,179G will take you at least... well, as long as it takes the team to fix the game's 12 bugged unobtainable achievements, we suppose, although players who have all or most of the others generally seem to have put in hundreds of hours. Probably not one you'll want to start any time soon if you're a completionist or a hater of those unusual Gamerscore rewards...

Let's Build a Zoo

Awkward achievements: 3
Values included: 42, 66, 77
Let's Build a Zoo is another strange case in that it's a perfectly standard list for the most part... but then three achievements just have to be different. One is easy enough, with 42G available just for hiring a certain mascot for your zoo, but the other two are cheeky in that they require you to run things in completely the opposite manner to one another — 77G for creating the most ethical and friendly park possible, and the remaining 66G for doing the opposite and turning it into a hellscape of pollution and animal cruelty. Once again, it's a pretty hefty completion with an estimate sitting at around 60-80 hours (no thanks to having to take things to both extremes mentioned above), but as a pretty enjoyable sim game, those hours will fly by in a blink of an eye if Let's Build a Zoo gets its claws into you.

Moonlighter

Awkward achievements: 47
Values included: 12, 26, 44
Somehow, Moonlighter has been in Game Pass for coming up on four years, which is kinda nuts when so many games only stick around for one. The majority of the 57 Moonlighter achievements can be filed under 'awkward' in terms of payout, with 47 in total across just three oddly specific values. Unlike many of the other games here, though, Moonlighter isn't actually that challenging or daunting a completion (and it's a great little game, too), so you can actually add up all of the weird numbers to make something nice and round in maybe 30 hours or so, give or take a little for the skill check achievements for things like perfect boss kills... and the grindy-as-heck Savage! for killing 10,000 enemies, which is completely unnecessary. It's way more than you'll end up killing even across multiple playthroughs, so thank heavens for the specific slime room that can spawn in the Tech Dungeon that allows you to farm this one, or it could end up taking forever.

No Man's Sky

Awkward achievements: 27
Values included: 16, 32, 64, 72
Hello Games' procedural space exploration game holds the honour of being the only game on Game Pass to exclusively have awkward achievement values, with all 27 of the No Man's Sky achievements being offenders... just don't call them odd, because they're actually all even. It's a pretty involved completion and one where your experience could differ massively to someone else's depending on where you begin your journey to the centre of the galaxy — no easy task in itself, especially in Permadeath Mode, although checkpoint sharing via co-op does allow you to cheese that one, making the 1K much more manageable if you can find someone to help you out. No Man's Sky wasn't an easy recommendation when it first launched on PS4, but it has evolved greatly over the years and is in a really good place, so assuming that array of ~~odd~~ even numbers doesn't put you off, you should definitely go do a spot of space travel.

Quake

Awkward achievements: 5
Values included: 86
id is at it again, people, this time dropping in five 86G Quake achievements for finishing each of the campaigns on the brutal Nightmare difficulty... seriously, would it have been so hard to at least make them 96G in reference to the year of the original game's release? Still, players on console will probably struggle with these a fair bit as Nightmare is no joke, but seeing as console commands don't disable achievements in the PC version, players on that side of things have a way to make this quintet of difficult achievements (and the full completion) basically free, with access to God Mode, level select, and collision removal to just literally fly through the game. You could always not bother with Nightmare if it seems too rough and end on 570G from the possible 1K, but managing even one of these basically ties you into doing the rest if you want the full thousand and/or to keep your score nice and clean.

Skul: The Hero Slayer

Awkward achievements: 17
Values included: 12, 89
Time is short on this one. Skul: The Hero Slayer is set to leave Game Pass next week, at which point it'll have to be stricken from this list, so you may need to look alive if you've started the game and want to tidy up more of its awkward achievements. Don't let that 1-2-hour estimate fool you — that's a relic from when Skul, like Quake, allowed console commands (even on Xbox) to trivialise the completion, and without them, it's a challenging game that a lot of players probably wouldn't be able to complete legitimately. It's a skill-intensive action roguelite with a fair bit of luck involved too in terms of getting good abilities and favourable boss RNG for the no-damage kills, so honestly, if you haven't started Skul yet, it's probably not a good idea to go for the completion with less than a week left before it bows out of Game Pass. And if you have started it... well, good luck.

Stellaris (Windows)

Awkward achievements: 1
Values included: 39
Alright, Paradox, but one last go... you need to let the other games have a turn. Stellaris is the studio's least awkward Game Pass title with just a single wonky achievement in the PC list — as with Crusader Kings, the equivalent achievement in the console version was standardised to give the Xbox list a nice round total. Once again, we see a weird base list total (1,805G), with this rogue 39G achievement added 18 months after launch with the Nemesis expansion, and again we see a full all-DLC completion likely to run the 'hours played' stat into four-figure territory, which is pretty spooky. If you want that grand prize of 4,804G, you've really gotta put the work in.

Sunset Overdrive

Awkward achievements: 2
Values included: 1, 199
Insomniac's chaotic shooter Sunset Overdrive only makes this list on a technicality. Both the console and PC version of Sunset Overdrive got April Fools title updates in 2015 that added 200G across a pair of achievements. The first achievement asks you to replay a (literal) garbage mission for a pathetic 1G, but the second pops immediately after to hand you the other 199G as a punchline with a secret achievement. Since these are the only two non-standard achievements in the game and you can't get one without the other, there's no need to fear Sunset Overdrive, but there's also no use for it in fixing a funky Gamerscore total, if that's what you're here for.

Total War: Three Kingdoms (Window)

Awkward achievements: 49
Values included: 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24
Alright, this is just an absolute bloody mess. We're not exactly off to a great start with Total War: Three Kingdoms' perfectly normal 1,073G base list, then we have five DLC packs which add exclusively 10G achievements... until two achievements randomly decide to be just 9G instead, taking us up to a grand total of 1,441G. There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to this list, although the one saving grace is that it at least doesn't stoop below 7G as its lowest, unlike some of the games above. You could tell us these achievement values were the result of a cat walking across a developer's keyboard and we would 100% believe you. It's just chaos, and therefore perhaps the perfect way to end an article like this.

Any of these on your tag or your backlog, or are those awkward numbers your achievement-hunting Kryptonite? Let us know!

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Written by Luke Albigés

Luke runs the TA news team, contributing where he can primarily with reviews and other long-form features — crafts he has honed across two decades of print and online gaming media experience, having worked with the likes of gamesTM, Eurogamer, Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, and many more. He loves all things Monster Hunter, enjoys a good D&D session, and has played way too much Destiny.