| Jumpin said: Achievements are a gimmick used to pad games with monotonous goals for the most gullible of gamers. |
They can be, but they can also encourage players to play a game in different and new ways they would otherwise not. Halo games are usually have some great ones like this in the form of vidmaster achievements (ODST had some good ones) or, most recently, with achievements like "Never tell me the odds" (which was a ton of fun to do and it is quite hillarious with friends ... turns a rather boring level into a fun nail-biter of a race.
There are plenty of examples of this (Valve has a lot of great achievements like this too that really add new and fun challenges to the main game ... Gnome Chompski achievement for example).
I agree that a lot of developers don't care about them though and they just put in "beat game on X difficulty" and "Kill X with X weapon X times."
When you think about it, they are a lot like collectibles ... they can be fun and add value to the game (Bioshock audiologs) or they can just waste your time and add nothing of value to the game (Call of Duty intel). It is up to the developer to make them interesting.
