Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

Most of the Xbox 360 sites tell you it's easy to get 1000 points from Madden 06. I blew this off for a long time because I'm not a huge football fan and I didn't plan to drop $50 on the game. Passing through the Xbox 360 section of Hollywood Video, I noticed Madden was in stock, so I figured the $8 5-day rental was worth a shot. What none of the sites tell you is a 5-day rental is overkill. You can add 1000 points to your gamer score in about 6 hours by playing only 4 games.

Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Pick a team

Step 2: Select Franchise and pick New Franchise

Step 3: Confirm your team and Start Franchise

Step 4: Hit B and scroll down to the History Book and view at least 1 NFL record.

Enter History Book Achievement. You just added 10 Achievement points to your gamer score without doing anything. 990 points to go.

Step 5: Simulate the Pre-Season

Step 6: Simulate the Regular Season

Step 7: Playoffs

Up to this point you did't need to do anything other than push a couple of buttons. The console is doing all the work. Now you actually need to play a game. Select your franchise team in the list of Wild Card Playoffs and Play This Game.

Choose your franchise team as the team you control.

After the coin toss and game loads select your kickoff formation and then hit the Start button. Scroll down to select Settings and select Gameplay. Choose Game AI. Modify User Offense, Defense and Special Teams so the User settings are all 100. Change the CPU Offense, Defense and Special Teams so the CPU settings are all 1. This makes your team play better and the computers team play worse for a net effect of easier Achievement points.

Go back to the game and play football. The key to getting through games as quickly as possible is to let the play clock run down as much as possible (without delay of game) to use up the game clock. You want to score enough touchdowns to win without spending a ton of your time in special teams modes where the game clock is stopped. You should be able to complete a game in about 30-35 minutes of real time.

By the end of this game, you should advance to the next round of the playoffs and have the following Achievements:

Complete an Offline Game
30 points

Get a First Down
20 points

Score a Touchdown
30 points

Win a Franchise Game
100 points

And one or more of the following:

Pass for 350 Yards
100 points

You need to pass for 350 yards in a game for the passing achievement, which is a piece of cake if you run several deep passing plays on each scoring drive.

Four Sacks in One Game
100 points

As the name indicates, you need to sack the quarterback 4 times during the game. The easiest way I found to do this is to opt for a blitz defense on every play and rush the passer, counting on your AI enhanced players to do most of the dirty work.

At the end of this game, you should have a total of 390 points.

Playoffs Round 2

Play the game to win but focus on rushing yardage to complete another big achievement.

Rush for 200 Yards

Rush for 200 yards in the game with any combination of running backs. I used the Seahawks when I played and switched between the Shaun Alexander and the fullback on every other play with the occasional passing play thrown in to keep the defense mixed up.

Now you've hit 490 points

Playoff Round 3

You'll play a total of three playoff games before reaching the Super Bowl. As I said before, the fastest way to get through the game is to let the play clock run down to less than 10 seconds for each play any time the game clock is running. This minimizes the amount of game time spent with a stopped game clock.

Super Bowl

Win the Super Bowl
100 points

Stick with whatever gets you through the game quickly to unlock the Super Bowl points. By the end you'll be at 590 points.

Post Season

Simulate the Pro Bowl to get to the post season. Manually go through the first part of the post season and open one of you players to unlock the RS Card Achievement.

Activate RS Card
10 points

600 points are yours with about 2 1/2 hours invested.

30 Years of Franchise

Next comes the boring part. You need to simulate every season from this point forward until completing the 2033 season. If you're paying attention, it takes somewhere between 6-7 minutes per season, factoring in all the times you are asked to switch modes. At this pace, it takes about 3 1/2 hours to get through all the seasons. You'll have all 11 achievements at the end and an easy 1000 Achievement points.

Complete 30 Years of Franchise
400 points

Total Points: 1000

Note: If your team didn't make it to the Wild Card Playoffs in the first season, simulate the rest of the season and keep simulating until your team hits the Wild Card round. You need to simulate most of years 2005-2033 before you're all done anyway. At some point your team will get a Wild Card birth without any human intervention.