So I'm officially in the thrall of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I stay up too late playing it at night and I think about it way, way too much. When I'm not playing it, a part of me always wants to be playing it. Killzone 2 was the last online multiplayer game to grab me this completely, and I dare say BFBC2 might have a stronger grip. So much awesome!

But on to my anecdote and the question posed in the title of this entry. Last night I was playing on the 360 (I also dabble on the PS3) and decided to grab a few achievements. Signed on at about 11pm and got "Mission... Accomplished" in my first game. Two hours later in my this-is-the-last-one-for-real-this-time game, I got "The Dentist."

The Dentist achievement is rewarded for scoring a headshot with the engineer's repair tool. Normally reserved for fixing up friendly tanks or sabotaging enemy vehicles that you manage to sneak up close to. It's not exactly an anti-personnel device:

I mean, even the medic's defib pads are more sinister. But with the prevalence of recon players it isn't exactly rare to stumble upon a player so absorbed in his scope that he doesn't hear your approach. Then it's just a matter of pulling out the repair tool instead of the knife and BOOM! Headshot. Well, more like zzzZZZZ! ZZZZ! Z! ZZZZZ!!!! Headshot. It might have just been my positioning, but it really seemed like I had to take a few seconds to grind through the guy's skull in order to gib the grey matter inside.

I imagine that many of you, like me, feel an extra sting when you get killed by a knife. Maybe you carelessly let someone sneak up on you, maybe you just lost a knife fight. Either way, it stings. So I've got to imagine that realizing you were killed by a repair tool stings in the same way, but worse because your killer clearly went out of his way to pull out an unintuitive weapon and go to town on you. There's a mocking edge to it that the knife just doesn't have. So here's the question:

Does it make it better or worse to know that not only is your killer mocking you, he is earning an achievement for his troubles? Do you forgive him his affront because you sympathize with achievement seeking? Or does it rankle even more knowing that your humiliating death is now permanently enshrined in his profile and gamerscore?

I'm leaning towards the rankle. What do you think?