100%

Last night marked the end of my GTA IV experience until the downloadable content drops as I killed my last pigeon, thereby earning the coveted Key to the City achievement for completing 100% of the game. So, what exactly did that entail? Well, you had to do the following:

All story missions (there were over 60 of them if I remember correctly)
All 10 courier missions
Win all nine street races
All ten car export missions
All thirty stolen car missions
All 30 most wanted missions
Twenty vigilante missions
All five helicopter tours
All nine assassination missions
Beat the computer at every game (bowling, darts, pool, QUB3D)
Take every friend out to every event
Fly under all 14 bridges with a helicopter
Meet all 21 random characters and do all of their missions
All 50 stunt jumps
All 200 pigeons killed

In addition to this, for achievement purposes I also won an additional 11 street races, rolled a car five times in one crash, did a 500 foot wheelie, scored with a woman, escaped a four star wanted level, survived a six star wanted level for five minutes, scored 180 points in darts, bowled a turkey in bowling, performed 10 melee counters in four minutes and blew up ten cars in ten seconds.

It took me about two months to do all of this, and this was with using a strategy guide. The guide certainly helped in some places, such as finding pigeons and finding the stunt jumps, but not so much in other places like actually completing the stunt jumps or for things like rolling your car or blowing up ten cars in ten seconds. For those, it was nothing but try, try and try some more.

I was pretty happy last night when my final achievement (the roll over one) popped, but sad at the same time as I've spent so much time playing this game that I'm bummed to see it go. Not since Mass Effect had I played a game that I looked forward to every night. Oh sure, I love me some Rock Band, but when it's not the same thing. When I wasn't playing GTA, I was thinking about it. I looked forward to sitting down with Niko every night. Not as much once it was just stunt jumps and pigeon hunting, but I still enjoyed it even then.

Now that GTA is done, and I have my achievement for completing the vocal tour on hard in Rock Band, I've started playing Condemned 2. So far I'm enjoying it, but I'm only about 45 minutes into it. I have three weeks until Too Human drops and I have to review it, so I'm not sure what I'll do once Condemned 2 is finished. I'm sure I'll think of something, but being in between games is so unsettling to me. It's like I'm lost, rudderless in a sea of inactivity. God forbid I do something constructive with my time.