I think they were an ingenious innovation. I think they're great for gamers and retailers alike. A gamer wants achievements because they play to what gamers inherently love, numbers going higher for completing more things in a game. It's almost like adding an RPG to element to your overall gameplay. Not only this, but it adds a lot of replayability to a game. It's great for retailers because achievements push more copies of games. I read a poll, I believe on Joystiq, where owners of both the 360 and PS3 overwhelmingly chose to get GTAIV on the 360 simply because of achievements.

I also think, as long as people don't get too competitive with achievements, they can be a great bonding point for gamers. They can instill friendly competition, and also encourage gamers to work together to get the same achievement. I've even sometimes worked with someone to help them get an achievement, say in Guitar Hero 3, and then had that person help me get the same achievement (or a different one) in exchange.

My question, then, is why do I constantly see people in forums dissing achievments and saying if you have a lot of achievement points you have no life? If you want to integrate achievements into your gameplay, great, you get all the advantages mentioned above. If you don't, great. It doesn't really matter. Why do you have to berate people who like working toward difficult achievement points in games?

Mario Kart Wii came out yesterday and I played it a whole lot. It's extremely fun, and I know I will be playing it forever. I definitely have a few gripes, including the four player split-screen graphics, but most of them hardly detract from the fun. The online is awesome, and I love being able to choose between control schemes. So far, my favorite is the Wiimote and Nunchuck, but the Wii Wheel is extremely fun. I think it may be my control scheme of choice once I get used to it.

In other news, I've been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl as well, and while I've never been into a Smash game before (gasp), I've been loving this one. The sheer amount of things to do besides just Brawl with your friends is amazing, and I've finally gotten good enough that I can pull off quite a few wins as Toon Link against three of my friends who have been playing Smash forever.

Aside from Smash and Mario Kart, I will always be playing the 360. Guitar Hero and Rock Band alone will always keep me coming back, not to mention Halo, Burnout Paradise, and Call of Duty. Plus, I still have Orange Box and Mass Effect to beat... oh goodness.

About a week and a half ago, my friends and I were going to play the endless setlist in Rock Band, but that very day our Les Paul guitar broke, and the drums broke. I really enjoy music games, but seriously, when will they make peripherals that actually work? If the standard 360 remote broke as much as any music game conroller does, consumers would not stand for it, so why do we sit back and deal with it when music game controllers bite the dust? Just for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, every music game contoller I've had has encountered some sort of problem. The Xplorer's whammy bar will not stay in place, the Les Paul completely stopped registering notes (which we fixed with this: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/low-fi-fix-for-malfunctioning-guitar-hero-iii-les-paul/), the Rock Band Strat we first had broke when the strum bar stopped working, and every single drum set we've had out of four has had some sort of problem (with this last one's blue button completely breaking). Despite all this, I still want to play the endless setlist. Let's just hope nothing breaks halfway through or worse, on the last song.

Halo is taking over my life. Well, not my life, but my gaming life. I sit down to play video games, and what do I do? I play Halo. I'm in the middle of Gears of War, Metroid Prime 3, and God of War, but it doesn't matter, all I want to do is play Halo. All three of those other games are awesome, I just can't seem to pull myself away from playing matchmaking or the meta-game in Halo. It's like a drug...