Pet Peeves With Game Stat Tracking

Generally speaking, I love the Xbox 360 Live component and the 360's achievement system.  I know we've all heard it hundreds of times before, but although it's a great system, it could be better.  One of my biggest gripes with the system is something that could very easily be remedied - the ability to view all of the statistics that a game gathers for it's achievement system.  I suppose this isn't a complaint about Live or the achievement system itself (they're not really to blame for this), but how game developers hide the statistics from you.

I can give you numerous "for instances", but I'll use Rainbow Six: Vegas just as an example to illustrate my point.  If you look over the achievement list, you'll see that you receive achievements based on a certain level of performance - "Demolitions Expert: Kill 50 Players using just Explosives" and "Marksman: 100 Total Player Kills in any Adversarial Mode".  The game is (supposedly) collecting all of these statistics, but I have no idea if it is or how close I am to reaching my goal because the game hides them from me.  I have to also keep track of which co-op missions and t-hunts I've played manually, because the game doesn't tell me which ones I've completed this way.  I just have to take it on faith that when I think I've completed all the missions that I'll get the achievement.  Maybe it's my mistrustful nature, but when games ship with bugs here and there, I want visual indication that it's tracking my statistics correctly.  Is that really too much to ask?

You see this type of thing pop up in all sorts of games.  Most people would probably cite Gears of War as being particularly guilty of this.  I mean, look at how many of the achievements are based on 100 kills in a ranked match from a particular weapon.  Wouldn't it be nice to see how many kills you've made with each weapon to track how close you are to each achievement?  Why can't they just show me the stat database that they're keeping?  Why does it have to be this big surprise?

I know I've ranted long enough on this, but another game this has bothered me in is Viva Pinanta.  To the games credit, it probably has one of the best stat tracking tools of any 360 game in the form of the Journal.  But there are a few things that it hides from you.  I swear that I've completed more than 20 Factory Challenges, but I still don't have the achievement, and I have no way to find out how many the game "thinks" I've done.  I mean, I've currently got 45 of the achievements and put probably 15-20 hours into the game, but I don't have an achievement for something that I should have received hours ago.  Is it a glitch?  I might never know - then again, I might get a "Achievement Unlocked" after I complete the next one...

Maybe there's a reason for hiding these statistics - maybe people just like surprises.  If anyone knows, please fill me in.  Maybe I'm just weird for wanting visual indication and hard numbers showing me my progress in a game. [/end rant]