Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

To achieve this one you might want to turn off autosave (not actually necessary just the method I used). That way if incidentally one of the HVTs dies by your hand, his hand or one of his comrades hands, you can simply quit and restart. Some say to save BEFORE and AFTER each HVT, I just saved after capturing each HVT.

Be patient and make your way around the map capturing and calling in each HVT.

Before finishing the final mission, whether you chose AN or Chinese, you should have 54/55 HVT captured

Some things to remember:

-Factions won't come and extract their HVT if they are hostile towards you
-Make sure all SAM and AA's are taken out (the red diamonds) before calling in the extraction
-Try to pop smoke on flat ground without trees and other things obstructing the landing, I've had choppers land on the edge of cliffs and be unreachable
-The HVT can not die while you are carrying him, you on the other hand still can
-When playing in co-op it does not matter which person captures the HVT, but unfortunately only the host will receive the achievement

Thanks to Seraphim Needed and Fafhrdd for their additions.

I played the entire game solely relying on autosave so turning it off doesn't matter. If you ever see the message that the HVT has been killed just quit, reload and try again.

My suggestion is to work for one faction at a time. Each faction has HVT from the other factions, working for several factions and trying to keep them happy is harder than having multiple girlfriends. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE - PLAV must be happy in order to extract Blanco and UP has to be happy in order to extract Carmona. (if your stuck on one of those just let me know I have devised a strategy to fix this but it has to be done in MP)

Notes to make things easier:

-If your helicopter lands where you cant reach it wait awhile and he'll fly away so you can try again.
-Make sure all retards with rocket launchers are dead before going near the HVT's or calling in a chopper they are awesome at team killing.
-Throw the smoke grenades somewhere where you would want them to drop a car. No trees, cliffs, water or on top of buildings.
-Be very careful and quick on the oil rig extractions everything near the HVT can be destroyed and kill him. (he doesn't like dust), rockets and grenades greatly speed up this process.
-If you leave the HVT subdued for to long or move to far away he will die of discomfort or emotional problems (serious).

For a game that recommends wanton destruction to solve every problem, it has a lot of ways to punish you for doing so. This achievement is one of those instances.

There are a total of 55 people of interest to each faction, called High Value Targets -- usually 10 HVTs for each of the 5 factions, but 3 are story related and mandatory -- that must be verified over the course of the game. Verifying an HVT can be done one of two ways: kill the target and photograph their corpse, or melee them with , hit to restrain them while they are down, then call for a chopper to whisk them away. The former option is a lot easier and a lot more fun because you can call in your biggest goddamn bomb and sift through the bodies later. The latter option is what you are required to do for this achievement. Any time you are tasked with "Capture or subdue the HVT" on the right side of your screen, you must take the target alive.

You can be as surgical as a SEAL, but there is often way too much going on to handle that will ultimately screw up your captures. Most often, the HVT will kill themself if they start high up (and simply fall to their death) or possess an explosive weapon . Sometimes their buddies will get really eager to kill you and toss grenades, fire RPGs, tank shells, helicopter rockets, or anything else at you that will collateral your HVT. In other instances, the HVT is too close to a faction boundary and will be killed by a rival faction before you can sort out the situation. To make a long story short: everything is working against you.

The most glaring problem with this achievement is that there is no stat informing you of how many HVTs you have killed and how many you have captured, so this makes relying on the autosave a very bad idea. While it does not save over your manual savefiles, the process by which you select the unbotched game is convoluted a great deal by navigating the Options and Save Games menus, which can be avoided entirely by just hitting Continue on the main menu with autosave disabled. Consider in addition that in the midst of the clusterfuck this game often becomes when completing objectives that it becomes nigh impossible to keep track of when the game is autosaving, and because of the missing stat to track HVT captures you are literally tossing caution to the wind for no good reason. While playing with the autosave disabled, make a manual save after every successful capture. Do not get overconfident and think you can get 4-5 HVTs in a row, since your hubris will be the cause of two hours' worth of repeated play.

When capturing HVTs, all that matters is that the "HVT Captured" message appears on the screen (or in the log on the PDA if you happened to miss it). It does not matter if the helicopter that "carries" the HVT gets shot down, because the HVT disappears as soon as you load them anyway. Nearly all of my Chinese and AN HVTs were loaded into helicopters that were blown up shortly thereafter (some didn't even leave the ground), so keep this in mind for some of those particularly problematic HVTs.

You want to endeavor to completely finish one faction before moving onto another, including items not pertinent to this achievement like outposts. The only exception is the endgame with the AN and China factions; you must not participate in the Caracas battle until you complete both factions. Choose one of the factions to do first, complete everything they offer, then advance the story missions until it offers you a mission to battle in Caracas and receive the nuclear bomb. At this point, bribe the faction you did not choose and complete all of their missions. It would be easiest at this point to simply finish the game with the faction you just bribed to avoid having to pay a second bribe to the other, but if you really have some moral objection to allying with one over the other then there's nothing preventing you from joining the other guys again. Keep in mind at any rate that they are identical factions with equivalent equipment and both reward you with what you need at the end of the Caracas battle, so it's all on you if an imaginary alliance in a video game is somehow bothersome because of the flag they have.

You will not unlock this achievement until after you verify Solano at the end of the game. The helpful part is that he cannot die and you automatically capture him after a lame quick-time battle if you captured all of the HVTs before that point. If your mercenary pops Solano with their pistol, then something has gone horribly wrong and you will not receive this achievement.

This achievement will be the biggest pain in the ass for this game. To get this you must get every faction HVT alive plus Carmona, Blanco, Selano and either Joyce or Peng depending on whether you side with the AN or the Chinese. Of all the HVT's Selano will be the easiest because there is NO WAY TO KILL HIM!!! Carmona is pretty easy as long as you realize you don't have to catch him quickly cause he will drive away but you can chase him all the way to the helicopter. Blanco is a little dangerous because you can't stop other guys from spawning as well as being on an oil dike. The best strategy is to turn off the autosave lest you accidently kill one and are stuck with it.

The easiest way to do this is to cheat. Use invincibility cheat code. But it's not you who should use it. You should have a friend who comes on and puts in the code. When he puts in the code, him and you will be invincible but you CAN STILL GET ACHIEVEMENTS. If you are invincible, you can carry HVTs anywhere and not die. Remember that you must get all HVTs alive. This includes Blanco, Carmona AND Mendez. And you must get 54/55 HVTs BEFORE going for Solano because if you don't, you will blast a cap in his forehead but if you get 54/55 HVTs then go for Solano, instead of killing him, you will grab him.

This isn't so much a full guide as it is a tip or so:

DISABLE AUTO SAVE!!! Save before and after each HVT! Save in multiple places, on your hard drive, on a key drive, and to the Cloud. Use pen and paper to keep notes on all your save files and where you are on each one.

For capturing the VZ Mendez, have a few Tank Buster airstrikes and enough fuel equipped so as to have an easy time dealing with the tanks outside the church. For capturing Mendez himself, it won't actually say "captured" but as long as he's alive and you get to load him in the copter you'll be fine.

For capturing Blanco, just run after him and subdue him as soon as he jumps down. Just storm right up to him and knock him out before any grenades start flying.

For capturing Carmona, YOU MUST BE FRIENDLY WITH UP!!! They're the ones that do the pickup. Bribe them before the starting the mission if necessary. Later, you will need to hijack the enemy copter outside the bunker. It's really your only hope of getting back in time. Use its rockets to take out the SAMs at the PMC, then use (if shot down) the Tank Buster airstrikes against the tanks.

Once you get inside and Carmona drives away, try to die. You won't catch Carmona the first time, but if you die and retry the checkpoint you will respawn right outside the PMC much closer to Carmon. You will be close enough that you can hijack his Jeep or even prevent him from getting into it at all. Stop him from getting anywhere outside the estate grounds, and you won't have to worry about tanks that inevitably kill him on the highway. All you have to do is stop him from getting into the Jeep or highjack it as soon as he gets in, then subdue him, quickly kill his 6 guards, then call in the pickup. CARRY HIM AS SOON AS YOU CAN so that he doesn't kill himself. Remember, you must be Friendly with UP!

For capturing the Chinese HVT on the oil rig, use the Ambassador Gunship AA missiles to take out the Guardian helicopter, then just land on a crate near the HVT so that the heli cannot be commandeered by any of his protectors. You should have a fairly easy time subduing him, killing the guards, and then you just have to be careful of where you throw the smoke for the extraction. The Chinese pickup copter can fit in some surprisingly tight spots.

For the 54th HVT, side with the AN, after having bribed your way back into Friendly status with them. General Peng is outside and much easier to capture than Agent Joyce was. Just be sure to have room on the castle arm where Peng is for the pickup copter to land on.

Lastly, SAVE BEFORE AND AFTER EACH HVT!!! Some will be randomly killed by rockets and grenades and you will also die repeatedly going after some of the harder targets.