I hate it when you buy a game and you have to unlock all this shit. No, I’m not talking about using bobby pins to unlock doors in Fallout 3 (although sometimes I don’t get why I can’t just nuke down a door). I’m talking about unlocking playing modes, and to a lesser extent, characters, items, etc.
If you’re booting up Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the first time, you’ll notice that you only have two playable characters: Fetus Link and Captain Lou Albano. So you have to do a bunch of stuff to unlock characters and maps. Some may say this is part of the challenge and fun, and to an extent, it is. But if the only way you can unlock something is by playing 5,000 versus matches, or by searching for an alternate solution online, then what’s the fun in that? I don’t care about all the other unlockable stuff like stickers and other “trophies,” but I do want to easily get all the characters I can play with.
But Smash Bros. really isn’t that bad compared to other games. At least they let you play multiplayer mode right out of the box. Imagine if you had to play that “Subspace Emissary” mode before being able to play multiplayer. Well, be prepared when you buy WarioWare: Smooth Moves.
You have to play through a long and tiring single-player mode to even get to play multiplayer here. And even once you unlock multiplayer, you have to play each multiplayer game to unlock the next one in succession. Arrrgh! In Smooth Moves, you play a bunch of microgames that last at most five seconds, and you have to do goofy things with the controller. It’s fun, but only in a group. It doesn’t make sense that you can’t play multiplayer from the start, because the multiplayer modes are basically the same thing as single player anyway, just with more people. Beyond this, only the microgames you unlocked in single player are available in multiplayer, so you’ll still need to go back and “master” single player to get all 200+ microgames available. The same thing is true for Rayman Raving Rabbids; multiplayer is not available at first.
You know what’s under that newspaper?
Imagine buying a car, but the only way you’re allowed to have any passengers is if you first drive 10,000 miles by yourself. You bought the car; why can’t you do what you want with it? At least give me a damn code I can use to bypass. When you boot up Super Street Fighter II Turbo, M. Bison and the other boss characters are already unlocked. I don’t have to do a bunch of Zangief 360 piledrivers to unlock Vega, right?
None of this even makes sense financially. Some may argue that it increases replay value, but do game developers really want their games to have a high replay value? Unless they’re offering downloadable content, wouldn’t they want you to just be satisfied enough to purchase the next POS game when it comes out? Why has this changed so much? I can’t think of any NES or SNES games where you have to unlock things. Does the presence of battery backup yield the necessity of having to unlock 95% of the content? It used to be that “unlocking” just meant collecting all the E-tanks and missile canisters in a Metroid game.
Oh, and don’t get me started on downloadable content. Some games offer stuff that should have been in the original game as DLC, aka “unlockables you have to pay for.” Most DLC isn’t above and beyond the original game, so why not just buy a new game, instead? Sometimes they get you with the Trophies/Achievements, too, like in Disgaea 3, where some of the Trophies are basically impossible to get unless you get certain DLC.
And some DLC is just stupid. I have to pay for dumb costumes in LittleBigPlanet, or buy crappy anime themes for my PS3 menu? Where’s the justice here? Then there are the bigger things, like the Burnout ”Cops and Robbers” pack. You feel compelled to buy this unlockable, because if everyone else has it, you won’t be able to play with them. Well…screw you, buddy!
If we get our DLC purchases up to $88/hour, we’re going to see some serious shit!
So when you don’t have a choice, you strive to get that next unlockable character or map. But then it’s a huge let down. Why did Brawl get rid of Dr. Mario, but include Fox, Falco, and Wolf, who are all basically the same? What the crap is going on here?
Somewhere the developers have to draw the line. I think most of us are fine with unlocking minor things like costumes, a Sound Test mode, etc. But if things like core game modes and characters are going to be locked away by some tedious task or price tag, I’ll pass.
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My thoughts exactly. I felt dirty shelling out for the Beautiful Katamari DLC, because it’s on the DAMN DISC already. Same goes for Dancing Stage Universe, Motorstorm et al.
Well said, Sir Freedman! I actually have Burnout Paradise, and all of the DLC’s. I actually got it as a combo…..way later in the game’s life cycle, after all the DLC’s had been put out, they offered the game and all of its DLCs in a combo package called the “Ultimate Pack” or something on the PSN…..for $30, versus $20 for buying the game alone. So lets see….It was $5-$10 per DLC as they came out, on top of the game which was around $30-$40 when it was “prime”. And now everything across the board is only $30?! If I were an early adopter to that game, I’d have felt screwed.
What I find obsurd is how High Velocity Bowling (Sony’s answer to Wii Sports bowling) requires people to pay for a patch that supports the MOVE controller (which came out less than 2 weeks ago). So let me get this straight….when High Velocity Bowling first came out, it was to compete against Wii Bowling using a dual shock controller (believe me, it was awful), but when a SOLUTION to that problem comes along, the dev’s want more money for it, even though that was the way it was supposed to be. I’ve seen worse….but that is redonk….remember paying full price for MK3 on SNES, and later having to pay the same price again for Ultimate MK3? Or how about ALL the iterations of Street Fighter II….
I disagree, to an extent. If unlockables and DLC are implemented well and for the right reasons, they can be really gratifying.
Withholding multiplayer until you’ve beaten single player reeks of, “The single player isn’t very good, but this is the only way you’ll play it.” But, having a few hidden characters, costumes, weapons, etc. can be nice for games like, say, Karaoke Revolution where the unlockables act as more as a nice little surprise than something you NEED to get to make the game feel complete.
The problem is that, in this culture of FAQs and walkthroughs, unlockables aren’t fun surprises or random rewards anymore–they’re nuisances that mean we have to waste our time fulfilling whatever requirements are necessary to have everything. If unlockables are things that a normal player would eventually come across after playing long enough, that’s one thing, but going way the heck out of the way to unlock anything of value usually seems like a waste.
As far as DLC goes, I feel that should be reserved for ideas the developers didn’t think about until after the release. I’ve bought a few expansion packs for PC games, but I never complained about the price because the content of the expansion packs was usually as good as another game altogether, and not one that COULD have easily been part of the original release.
If Capcom read all my whiny posts about Mega Man 9 and 10 and released DLC that allowed you to slide and charge up your blaster, even though the game was deliberately designed to NOT include those features, I’d pay up without a second thought. If they rushed the games out the door and charged me for the same features because they didn’t have time to implement it before the release, I’d raise an eyebrow, for starters.
There’s a right and wrong way to do DLC and unlockables; I don’t think they’re inherently bad.
Yeah, game of the year editions, Gold editions, what-have-you, are an interesting item. If you wait a year or so (like with Fallout 3), you can buy the game at the original full price but have all the DLC. Is DLC as gratifying if you have it from the get-go?
I was considering buying Red Dead Redemption, but then I got an email from Rockstar advertising their DLC. Well, if I just get in to it now, most people online will have the DLC and I will be left out. But, maybe the original price will come down. It does depend heavily on if it’s a multiplayer game or not.
See, those fancy editions bother me even more, like you’re being punished for buying the game when it comes out instead of waiting a few months. One of the many reasons why I rarely buy a new game until it’s definitely no longer considered “new.”
I guess as long as you can own the 100% complete final version of the game, regardless of when you bought it, and without re-purchasing anything you already own, I’m happy enough.
Argh, that wario ware multiplayer thing pissed me right off. I had some friends over and we decided, hey, let’s play some Wario Ware, that’ll be fun. I pop in the game and realize I hadn’t unlocked multiplayer yet. The party then disbanded and that’s the story of why I have no friends anymore.
I feel DLC should only be used to expand on a title that’s been around a bit. Unlocking things on the disk is downright criminal and releasing DLC at the same time as the game just strikes me as being stuff they could have easily just put on the disk I just paid 60 goddamn dollars for.
“Argh, that wario ware multiplayer thing pissed me right off. I had some friends over and we decided, hey, let’s play some Wario Ware, that’ll be fun. I pop in the game and realize I hadn’t unlocked multiplayer yet.”
Same thing happened to me at new year, Wario Ware and no other.
“Unlocking things on the disk is downright criminal and releasing DLC at the same time as the game just strikes me as being stuff they could have easily just put on the disk I just paid 60 goddamn dollars for.”
I agree, this is just wrong. I’d go as far as saying “evil” too. I paid for content that has been on the disc all too many times. Beautiful Katamari, Dancing Stage Universe and every other game with download “tickets” are a curse.
I’ll agree in that DLC’s can be great for adding more content to an already outstanding game (or…reviving a game from crappy to fantastic), but if it’s just to unlock crap that’s already preloaded in the game to begin with, I call that a scheme.
For Burnout Paradise however, I did appretiate the “keys to the city” DLC, which unlocks every car in the game for $10. It gives lazy players another way out, so they don’t have to achieve those cars, so that they can play more competitively online (because clearly they suck but still wanna have fun). I can see the value in that, but I can also understand how players who ACHIEVED those unlockables without buying em will feel a bit cheated…
I definitely don’t mind unlocks that are more like achievements. For example, the alternate title screen to Mario Kart 64 when you get Golds in everything (I don’t remember if you need Golds in the mirror cups). Back in the day, people knew you were badass (at Mario Kart at least) when you booted up your machine and they saw that new scene.