For better or for worse, love them or hate them Achievements/Trophies/etc are here to stay, and they have a large and dedicated following, and are always a hot topic of debate on the GiantBomb forums and elsewhere.

Personally, i'm a huge fan of them and I feel they've helped me to try games I would have otherwise avoided, and have helped me get hundreds of hours extra playtime out of games I would have normaly played until the credits rolled and simply shelved forever. So I owe them a lot of thanks, some of them at least, not all of them are well thought out...

Cabela's Alaskan Adventures

This is going to seem like a rather odd choice, given how poorly recieved the game itself was (Trust me on this one, it's truly awful) I bought it because I was curious about the series and wondered if it was at least playable. How wrong I was. However, that is testemant to it's achievement structure (full list here)

While the achievements may seem fairly standard, each section of the game (on each difficulty) as well as awards for hunting each animal and hunting 10 animals with each weapon. As well as one odd achievement for bagging 3 different Trophy Legend bears. They are actually more cleverly designed than it might seem at first, each achievement you get brings you one step closer to another one on the list. For example, by the time you've hunted a couple of animals, you've already gained something like 15 points, and ordinarily by this point i'd be thinking "Wow, this game sucks balls, i'll play something else now" instead, what I was thinking was "Hmmm, 7 more animals and i've got the rifle achievement"

My train of thought continued along this path and before I knew it, I was struggling to get the very last achievement, and oddly enough despite the game being truly awful, I had a lot of fun because the achievements were laid out in a fashion that while I had to work hard to get them, were flowing at an even enough pace as to hold my interest with an iron grip. Sadly I could not get the last achievement, the duck hunt style sections of the game are just too unplayable for me to get the gold medal on the last one. So I ended up calling it a game after something like 10 hours of gameplay and 970 points. Something I would never have given the game ordinarily.

8/10

Clive Barker's Jericho

Despite a huge array of flaws, I rather enjoyed the game itself. It's achievements on the other hand, were almost nonexistant. Full list here, as you can see it's almost impossible to miss any of those achievements, especially if you are aiming to get them. Even if you played through the game oblivious to them you would still come out the other end with something like 900 points at least. None of them are worthy of being called an 'achievement' really.

The game itself is not particularly difficult, and the achievement list shows very little imagination, it appears as if the developers almost begrudged putting them in and so went to as little effort as possible. You have standard achievements for finishing each chapter, and the game, and achievements for using each characters special abilities and for killing a certain amount of enemies in different ways. As well as this, there are achievements for finishing each chapter on hard without becoming incapacitated (which is much much easier than it sounds) so, by playing the game on hard, and making proper use of saves, you can get something like 70 points per chapter, ontop of this the game is quite short, even with the extra effort required for a couple of the achievements it takes no more than a half hour or so ontop of the regular amount of time it takes to play through the game. A thoroughly dissapointing list in my opinion.

2/10

Bionic Commando: Rearmed

For an XBLA game, Bionic Commando: Rearmed manages to include a large amount of variety with it's achievements, while you have the standard achievements for clearing the game on the hardest difficulty, finding hidden objects, and performing a certain action a large number of times (in this case quite a difficult one, blocking projectiles with your claw)  you also have a number of level specific achievements varying greatly in difficulty and objective, such as clearing a stage quickly, or clearing a stage without touching some of the goo found on that stage. 

Overall, the only problem with this list, is that they flow quite slowly and sporadically, and you must put a lot of effort in to see some of them, but then isn't that the point?

9/10

Duke Nukem 3D

While Duke Nukem 3D's achievements aren't particularly a departure from the norm for the most part (100, 250 and 500 multiplayer kills, finish each chapter) they do offer a degree of flexibility that you don't always see. For example, the chapter specific achievements can be played on any difficulty or even co-op, and it uses the remainder of it's achievement allocation for a bit of a laugh. While these achievements don't even try to be difficult (Tip and exotic dancer, step in a pile of excrement) they are certainly very Duke-like and deserve a chuckle.

Overall though, the game itself can be quite difficult, so even some of the generic achievements become a tough challenge even on normal difficulty settings, so overall i'd say it's a pretty good list, a nice balance of funny and challenging.

7/10

Well that's all for this time folks, i'll leave you with a story. As some of you know, I recently played through Afro Samurai, and while the game itself isn't particularly great, and it's achievements are pretty brutal in their difficulty (I left the game with about 300 as I had no more time with it, and lacked the patience to attempt hard mode) I am truly grateful for having played it simply for this one segment, what I consider to be one of the most epic boss fights ever envisioned.