I was chatting with a friend about something that seems to have largely disappeared from today's games: Cool/fun Unlockables and/or cheat codes. Replaced with icons/badges that sit next to my username and Achievement points. Does anyone really give a damn about concept art galleries? Yippee. I'm talking unlockable characters, skins & costumes; crazy weapons, god modes, big head and game modes. I'm just finding that a majority of games these days are taking themselves too damn seriously and are forgetting that they are in fact games. Certainly a multiplayer-centric game like MNC is not a good fit for a god mode, but it strikes me as a game that screams for hidden skins and character models, or character customization. Take Capcom and Lost Planet 2 and the mountain of unlockables there. Frank West gunning down Akrid with a stuffed bear strapped to his back? Why not?! Brilliant. Volition and Saints Row 2...genius. Pure genius. True Crime: SoLA was on this path with the first game, but then tried for a serious tone in New York and...well...that's why we haven't seen it for over half a decade. Now it looks like they will try and go head on with GTA4. Ya...sure that will be an easy road... Konami/Kojima with Metal Gear games. Kojima has never taken Snake too seriously, putting him in skate boarding mini games, wild armor or skin swaps. The first Spiderman game (one of the few Activision got right) allowed you to swing around New York as Mary Jane if you wanted to. They have never matched the unlockables of the first game, or been even close. Why is it that unlockables and 'cheat' codes have dropped off the map for the most part? Is it due to time? Cost of development? Lack of inspiration? All/Some of the above? Or am I missing something? The reason I ask is that Uber strikes me as a company that is about fun games with capital F-U-N. Games that are tongue in cheek and keep you coming back for more.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that you can't have these kinds of things in place in a primarily multiplayer game without opening up cheating attacks. I could speculate a lot on other reasons. People wanting to monetize add-ons, changing demographics (more casual players), stricter testing requirements, games that are overall more complex, cert requirements etc etc.
I think achievements have kinda done away with the other unlockables. I'm not real sure why in-game cheat codes aren't more prevalent. It seems like it would be a relatively easy way to extend the life of the game, although I have no experience developing a game and no real idea of how much work is actually required. If you have a Wii you might be interested to know that NBA Jam is coming back with over 100 unlockable characters, teams, and cheats.
Ha! Nothing like dunking on George Clinton...with Bill Clinton! NBA Jam unlockable characters were awesome. Yup. Totally understandable with a multiplayer game. I agreed with you ahead of time in my initial post. And I've heard the game hacker explanation before and it saddens me that many developers have decided to address a tiny minority of gamers that are trouble makers to the detriment of the vast majority. While I praised Capcom for LP2, they are also shameful for their fleecing of gamers of already-on-disk content in Street Fighter 4 and Resident Evil 5. That was pure crap.
On the topic of "hackers", developers make decisions about this tiny demographic explicitly because they are a detriment to the vast majority. From a gamer's point of view the limiting of extra content and "cheats" reduce the perceived possible fun factor of a game. From a developer's point of view, if a few people abuse those systems only they have fun and the actual possible fun for the rest is reduced. Worse, the fun of "tah intranets" is those exploits become common knowledge quickly and spread much faster. Old school gaming, if one of the people you were playing with started exploiting like this, you could lean over and punch them in the arm. In today's world you're probably playing against someone thousands of miles away so it, unfortunately, becomes our job to police or prevent these situations. The other unfortunate reality is it takes time to react, even huge companies like Activision with gigantic mountains of money and man power behind a game can take several weeks to fix game breaking issues. For a big game with a well known brand, people will stick around till it gets fixed. For a new title like ours, it could be a death blow.
I know it's not gonna happen for many reasons (except maybe as mod) but I could totally see a skin for the Jackbot as Core Commander or Arm Commander... =P
the problem with skins is detecting people that should be invisible (have had a few instances of those with the spy in TF2)
Safe to say that none of us here are fans of hacking or hackers. I thought it was epic when MS dropped the ban hammer on thousands of consoles for mods and hacks. Some people on forums were fuming. Pure awesomeness. This topic is meant to be more about characters, skins, costumes and mini-games than anything else. A personalized gaming experience is all the rage these days. I get a chuckle out of the customization of some of the characters I come across in Lost Planet 2, for example.
Games that lack customization usually make up for it in solid game play, and epicly balanced maps and weapons.. i don't know where I'm going with this, maybe, they just cater for a different type of gamer ?
I dunno, but I personally MISSED the time even before that. I'm 18, and didn't start playing games hardcore until the Gamecube era, because of parental stuff. I missed the time when games were hard, and you didn't complain. You threw yourself at that boss over and over and over until you could go through his level without even being looked at funny, then hand his *** to him in a matter of seconds. When you didn't need unlocks and multiplayer to have fun, where multiplayer was getting a bunch of people in one room and taking turns all night long. I've made up for it a little with playing beatmaina (which is a devilishly hard rhythm game, for those who don't know), and I've been looking for an NES, but I still feel like I missed out. /endwhining
Good old Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, those where the good days. With big heads and fast running. And ofcourse the spiderman game, i remember that very well. Now where did i put my youth :?
tl;dr past first paragraph regarding cheats being filtered out of game design over the past years.( Proof that evolution exists!) The only company that seems to include any type of cheat inside their own games this generation of gaming is Rockstar. Enjoy the same engine over sandbox style games. Nothing of value was lost with the death of "CHEAT CODES YEAH!" Goldeneye however did have it right. Aesthetic cheats were majority in that game as I recall. Very few redundant cheats like unlimited explosives, 1 shot kill on all weaps (golden gun was cool too - I know not a cheat. Just let me nostalgia.) and other generally retarded ****.
Yeah, I remember beating a game, then extending it's life with several more playthroughs with cheats and unlockables. San Andreas as a prime example. Just the hidden stuff here and there made the game so much more enjoyable, and the cheats were just hilarious to play with, such as flying cars. Nowadays it's just 4 hour single-player campaign and useless levels for online multiplayer to make you feel like you are achieving something but aren't really doing anything worthwhile towards being entertained. Everything feels like a grind. MNCs protag system is a nice little unlockable system, but I still feel something more could've been done. But, could've would've should've, it's still a great game that keeps me playing. Though, this might be why I love playing RPGs so much (and why Final Fantasy 13 was so disappointing), because they usually have TONS of hidden stuff to unlock (or not-so-hidden, such as upgrades). I remember spending at least 20-30 hours just playing that card game in Final Fantasy 9, and around the same playing Blitzball in 10. Other games such as SaGa Frontier had me constantly going because you had several stories to play through with intertwining plots and lots of hidden things. Then you had older D&D like games such as the Dark Sun series with the massive amounts of lore to go through. You know, back when games came with super large boxes because the manuals were bigger than strategy guides (especially todays strategy guides). Ugh, I miss the 90s.
