Im a huge achievement whore so I'll often check out a guide before I start playing a game to figure out my plan of attack for the achievements (and ensure I dont miss any missable ones!).

I have mixed feelings with secret achievements, if they are story related and you get them for progressing through a game Im fine with that, as the developer is making the progression achievements spolier free.

But if they are for some random, sometimes cockamamie tasks its pretty stupid to make those secret, when often you HAVE to go to a guide to even figure out how to unlock them!

JRPGs are huge culprits, often an achievement might not be secret but It'll have a silly description like: "Rich Guy - keep collecting money! You'll have heaps in no time!", and the achivement is unlocked by getting 1000000 gold or something. It'd be nice if they told you exactly how much youre going for.

Ive yet to play a crap game solely for achievements though! I am considering renting King Kong for an easy 1000 ;p

Grrr... hate those secretive type achievements... They will not in any way keep me playing longer, it just makes me want to look up the solution online instead of at least attempting to work it out myself.

As for what I've been doing, trying to finish FF 12 before the FF 13 release, because I know I'll never get to it once I have 13 in hand. Sadly FF12 had to go on hold for a while, as my wife enjoys watching me play and she was kinda busy completing her degree with no time to watch, with that all over we are now attempting to get it done asap.

I always check out http://www.xbox360achievements.org/ before playing any game. It stops you missing out anything on your first play through. Nothing is more frustrating than finsihing a game then realising you'll have to replay the whole thing from the begining coz you missed one silly step/item.

If I see a secret achievement on the list then I play the "Find the acheivement details on the internet" game and wallah....no problems. I don't really see the point of them but most of them are fairly easy and prefer them to some of the totally insane and impossible achievements found in some games.

While we are on the topic is it just me or is achievement impossibly to spell correctly the first time?? Ever time I haved typed it (even when thinking about it properly) I get it wrong!

As for playing, Im working my way through Mass Effect 2 (about 26 hours in) and loving it. This is going to take some beating for game of the year! Loving most of the changes but not into the resource gathering and would like the loot system back from the first game but otherwise stunning game so far.

Unfortunately I think that Secret Acheivements are here to stay. I have to say though, they can be put to good use.

The annoying secret achievements are like the one you mentioned where you have to perform a certain action that you have no idea about. This just seems pointless and just pushes me to go online and find out what the achievement is.

The good secret achievements I find are the story related ones. Where they want to give you an achievement for doing some action in the story, but dont want to give away a major spoiler or similar

I rarely go the "gotta get all trophies" route, but if I did, I think I'd get hacked off by secret ones in no time. FWIW, I'm pretty sure I know the one in Bioshock 2 you're talking about, and it took a couple of repeats of the required maneuver before I got it.

The only game I've made a concerted effort to get all trophies in was Uncharted 2. It was such an awesome game, I really wanted it to be my first Platinum. But getting some of the trophies were so time consuming and repetitive, it kinda put me off the whole deal, so it may remain my only platinum. In fact I was just as proud at beating the game on Crushing than I was at getting Platinum.

What we need is a grass roots movement which values beating a game on its hardest setting over getting all trophies/achievements. We should stress that the former is really cool, but the latter hints at not achieving that gaming/non-gaming balance in life, and as such is not valued as much (perhaps is even frowned upon) :-)

<toddles off to reserve www.IamCoolBecauseIbeatCrushingAndDoNotHavePlatinum.com&gt;

Statistics can be manipulated to "say" whatever the survey commissioner wants it to say.

As for secret achievements, it does seem a little odd. I often start a new game trying to get all the unlocks and extra bits and pieces, but by mid way through, I'm just aiming to get to the end. Not that I've played much recently.

Currently playing my way through GT PSP on my train commute to work and that's about it. Doesn't seem to be any unlocks for that at all.

Playing World At War again - at a higher level of difficulty and have been getting frustrated by the Russian sniper mission. Particularly that pesky comrade in the other building who at this level has fantastic aim and reaction times. So looking online for any suggestions I found lots of achievements listed - most of which I didn't achieve last time and really aren't hankering for this time.

I don't mind secret achievements when they're genuinely story-based achievements that are secret purely to avoid spoilers. But yeah it frustrates me when there are secret achievements that are just silly random things. The upshot of that is that I tend do what others above have mentioned and check out a guide before playing a game, to try and avoid any missable ones.

And like Geoff #7 said... there are lies, damn lies, and statistics!!

Achievements seem a bit pointless to me in general. Maybe because I don't spend a lot of time online with the XBox. It's nice to get them I suppose, but I don't go out of my way.

On the other hand, if achieving 1 gamer point earned 1 MS point...