[Amusing] My Achievements. Let me show you them.

I rarely go out of my way to unlock achievements. Anyone with access to my Live game list can see that the vast majority of the ones I have are those you pickup through normal play. Grid does well on this front as there's only a few you have to actively seek out (90 seconds round that long-ass Jap circuit for example, I had a go, managed just over 2 minutes and realised that life's too short to bother. I did however bother to get the last man standing as that was fun to get) and those are ones which you actually get a sense of achievement for unlocking.

As Skills said, some games get it more right than others. Crackdown had great achievements with a mix of during the normal course of play ones (Boosting your stats kinda things), encouragement to replay (The multiplayer and timetrial ones) and a few silly ones (Spearing people to a car with the harpoon gun). Frontlines is another game with a good balance giving you most for just playing through, then a load for finishing levels without getting killed or under a certain time limit and some online efforts that are fairly un-boostable, given that you need at least four people to start a game, other people can join at will and the amount of bullets flying around mean that sneaking off to a corner to take it in turns killing each other 10 times in a row is likely to attract someone in a tank looking for easy kills. When I got the achievement for being on the winning team without dying once it was through picking decent sniper points and moving around a lot, not by just hiding at the back somewhere as some kids do. I unlocked the highest score in a ranked match at the same time and yes, I had quite a sense of achievement afterwards. It makes me laugh when people boost the secret "Noob" achievement you get for getting killed 10 times without killing anyone as you don't get any points for it.

For me achievement points are an interesting way of tracking how much of a game you've busted open, when they're done well. If people want to go nuts unlocking them all for every game that's their perogative and whilst it is a bit annoying when people are detracting from a multiplayer game by AP boosting, those same people often give you lots of opportunity for easy kills and the comedy of hearing some whiny teenager complaining that you interupted their kill streak with your airstrike.

I think once you get past the childish need to unlock all of them, they're harmless and often a good way to get your interest back in a game you might otherwise have abandoned.

Jam it back in, in the dark.