The Unlockables Debate

[The Sorrow]

This is a touchy subject, apparently, given the vehement response to Our Lord and Savior Yahtzee's comments.

My opinion was formed when playing an old 360 racing game called Full Auto. Most of the cars and weapon sets were locked, even in multiplayer. Basically, I think that unlockables should be single-player only. Unlock everything for multiplayer. That way, the game retains its depth while also making it easy to host a party the second you get it.

 

[L4mbd4]

The entire point of unlockables is to chain you to the game.

I liked unlockables in Call of Duty 4 because it made you feel like you were accomplishing something, even though it was only turning me into its slave.

 

[Melty Blood]

Unlockables, if used sparringly, and not keeping stuff like secret characters and game modes behind the impossibly difficult um... difficulty, can be a neat flavor to the game. BUT blatantly adding in secret characters that require many hours to be invested in, in order to be aquired is just annoying.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

yeah i don't mind trivial unlockables, such as videos, new outfits and other such trivial stuff but stuff like weapons, chars and game modes usually only makes me play the game to get that thing or not even play it at all

usually when the latter happens it's because the game doesn't have much substance to it

i agree let multiplayer have it all and then single player you have to unlock the stuff to use it in single player

 

[Midnight Voyager]

Eh, I'm a PC user. I don't want stuff as unlockable for some reason, I can generally mod it. Thus, I avoid having to spew bile.

Really, it depends largely on the mechanics used in the unlocking and the place it occupies in the game.

 

[propertyofcobra]

I like unlockables in games. People who whine about "how dare the entire game not be open from scratch"...
Do these people also whine because they have to play through the single player campaign? Do they want a level selector that starts out with every level unlocked?
Do you whine about how you don't start out with every item and heart in Zelda?
Do you complain about the lack of every skill, spell and weapon, as well as mode of transporation and city (and max level) having to be gotten yourself in RPGs?
Or how about complaining about not starting out with every gun in FPS games?
No? Why whine about unlocks anywhere else, then?
Every unlock is a small accomplishment. If it feels like unlocking is not too tedious, it will be a further incentive to return to an already good game over and over and increase your skill (both in-game and your skills as a player).

That said, there are these people who apparently want to throw parties with the game the millisecond they get them. Like, not just a 'let's play and unlock' (which can be part of the party very easily) kinda party, but...I dunno, honestly.
If everything is unlocked from scratch, there's no real sense of accomplishment in getting anything.

Then again, I'm one of those obsessive-compulsives who loves to know that I have completed a game 100%, unlocking *EVERYTHING*. I also have enough time to actually, y'know, PLAY THE GAMES. So the bullshit reason "I don't have the time" (Strangely, he exact same one used by developers to excuse ever-shorter games, nowadays for some reason a short game is a badge of freaking honor for reviewers, who complain if a game is so long that you can actually enjoy it for over six hours!) holds no sway over me. Maybe you don't have the time. So you don't wanna put in the effort to unlock stuff in games. Why should the game unlock it for you? It's like people who buy gold or characters in World of Warcraft. You are basically asking NOT to play the freaking game!

 

[AnGeL.SLayer]

...I'd rather have a sweet story line than some silly nonsense of trying to unlock stuff. If I ever waste the time to unlock anything in a game it's more because I'm curious than anything. If games demand that I unlock stuff then it's just not my kind of game. Games like that are more for little kids than anything else in my point of view.


^_^

 

[JC123]

Unlockables can be good or bad in my opinion, dependant largely on how they're done. They give a sense of purpose and achievement when done well. But the only condition I would put on them is to be random extras with no vital link to the game quality. Preferably extra outfits, videos, hidden storylines, weird characters (Tofu in the Resident Evil series, anyone?), some game modes (New York Minute in Max Payne), maybe even a few extra maps.

Just leave the required parts for a good game alone. Don't lock basic multiplayer modes (like pro face-off in guitar hero), don't lock huge selling points of the game (solid snake and sonic). I should want to play more, not feel that I have to in order to achieve the experience that was actually intended. Reward the long player with random extras, don't rob the casual player of basic material.

And who the hell plays single player in SSBB?

 

[Frosk]

I like unlockables in games. People who whine about "how dare the entire game not be open from scratch"...
Do these people also whine because they have to play through the single player campaign? Do they want a level selector that starts out with every level unlocked?
Do you whine about how you don't start out with every item and heart in Zelda?
Do you complain about the lack of every skill, spell and weapon, as well as mode of transporation and city (and max level) having to be gotten yourself in RPGs?
Or how about complaining about not starting out with every gun in FPS games?
No? Why whine about unlocks anywhere else, then?
Every unlock is a small accomplishment. If it feels like unlocking is not too tedious, it will be a further incentive to return to an already good game over and over and increase your skill (both in-game and your skills as a player).

That said, there are these people who apparently want to throw parties with the game the millisecond they get them. Like, not just a 'let's play and unlock' (which can be part of the party very easily) kinda party, but...I dunno, honestly.
If everything is unlocked from scratch, there's no real sense of accomplishment in getting anything.

Then again, I'm one of those obsessive-compulsives who loves to know that I have completed a game 100%, unlocking *EVERYTHING*. I also have enough time to actually, y'know, PLAY THE GAMES. So the bullshit reason "I don't have the time" (Strangely, he exact same one used by developers to excuse ever-shorter games, nowadays for some reason a short game is a badge of freaking honor for reviewers, who complain if a game is so long that you can actually enjoy it for over six hours!) holds no sway over me. Maybe you don't have the time. So you don't wanna put in the effort to unlock stuff in games. Why should the game unlock it for you? It's like people who buy gold or characters in World of Warcraft. You are basically asking NOT to play the freaking game!

In the single player campaign, unlockables are fine.

The problem comes when games don't allow you to use everything from the word go in multi-player. This was the problem that Yahtzee had with Brawl. Solid Snake and Sonic featured heavily in the hype around the game, but you couldn't use them in multi-player until you had unlocked them. All we're saying is that the multi-player should come with all the bells and whistles ready to go. The single player campaign is where unlockables belong and where they should stay.

 

[Credge]

Multiplayer unlockables are fine if, and really only if, you can only unlock them during multiplayer a-la TF2/COD4. This way, you have something to look forward to when you play.

 

[Anarchemitis]

I like unlockables, as long as they don't require inordinate amounts of dedication to earn their rewards, such as escort missions (which can go to hell), timed things and searching for stuff.

I wound'nt know how to criticize unlockables in fighting games, because I have yet to play one since that 15 minute stint of original Smash Brothers on the N64 in 2002.

 

[x434343]

I like the idea of unlockables in Single Player. Hone your skill against NPC's, get rewards, and try them out against real peoples.

 

[LainiWeiz]

Warioware Smooth Moves comes to mind, before you could play any multiplayer at all you had to finish the single player mode.
Okay it's easy enough to do that in turns but to have to unlock multiplayer, never mind extra characters or levels etc is amazing.

 

[Fire Daemon]

I'm suprised no one has mentioned any MMO. In any MMo you need to unlock a high level and then find a sword to use said sword. This is one of the main factors that draws people to an MMO.

I like unlockables. They give me a goal to aspire for and pulling it off feels great. However I hate those unlockable cheats. if I want to cheat in a game then I don't want to beat it first. What is the point of using cheats if you have beaten a game anyway?

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Everything should be unlockable, even the title screen, because that way it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something! Screw wanting to play the game for fun, I gotta turn this into a job.

 

[jim_doki]

Unlockables, when handled correctly are awesome incentives to keep playing a game. One of the best examples would have to be Resident Evil 1, where you if you made it through you allowed to start with a bazooka instead of a baretta. that was cool.
SSBB sucks that way around, because one, the unlockables featured so heavily in the hype. its kinda of a big deal because before Yahtzee;s reviewed i wasn't aware of that. its just in cases like this where the first thing i was going to do was kick the crap out of that fat plumber with my favorite blue hedgehog, i would find myself feeling very ripped off

 

[Iori Branford]

Do these people also whine because they have to play through the single player campaign? Do they want a level selector that starts out with every level unlocked?
Do you whine about how you don't start out with every item and heart in Zelda?
Do you complain about the lack of every skill, spell and weapon, as well as mode of transporation and city (and max level) having to be gotten yourself in RPGs?
Or how about complaining about not starting out with every gun in FPS games?

I don't want to keep doing the same shit in the same level for days just to qualify for the next one.

I don't want to do yard work for half an in-game day just to pay for the only weapon that does more than go "tink, tink" against the next boss.

I don't want to be forced to repeat the same braindead battles with clones of clones of the same palette-swapped enemies in between running two-yard laps until I could convert what remains of my controller into some nice thick plastic spectacles.

And I especially don't want to see the game's penultimate gun, the one I saw the main character fucking shit up with on the box and in the trailers, stuffed away behind some secret door rigged with a wall of C4 bricks you have to defuse one at a time, and that's if you saw the 32x16-pixel tooltip reminding you to get your defuse kit from the bottom drawer of your office desk at the beginning of the game, but oh wait, it was locked and your mute best friend mistook your key for his meatball sandwich, so once he took a shit you'd have had to zap yourself with shrink rays and go diving in all the toilets, but the only way to get the shrinker gun is to start with it by typing IDSPISPOIIVYGAEKHWEJGA^_^glLoadCompressedBMPNGSurfaceFromDeuncompressedTGAFile(8======D); within the first 0.000000234654 nanoseconds of the opening cinematic, because that's the goddamn weapon hidden behind that goddamn secret door with all the goddamn C4 in the first place.

In short, I want to play for my stuff, not work for it.

 

[Knightcrawler]

...I'd rather have a sweet story line than some silly nonsense of trying to unlock stuff. If I ever waste the time to unlock anything in a game it's more because I'm curious than anything. If games demand that I unlock stuff then it's just not my kind of game. Games like that are more for little kids than anything else in my point of view.


^_^

Here's the kind of thinking that really bugs me - and no, this post isn't all geared straight at you, AngelSlayer. How is unlocking features for kids? How? No, think about it. It's really annoying when people don't like something, so they just write it off as "for kids." Don't like to cook a meal before you eat it? Cooking must be for kids. Don't like to wake up in the morning? Dang, waking up is for kids! Don't like to go do work? Whose idea was it to institute child labor laws, anyway? Musta been a kid.

Now I don't think unlockables are or aren't for kids one way or the other, but if you want to reason one way or the other, it's easier in the opposite direction. So you want everything ready to go right off the bat? No waiting? Now, now, now! You don't want to work for anything? That's a pretty immature attitude, don't you think?

What bugged me about Yangtzee's review the most out of everything is that he complained that Marth was too small of an unlockable, but also that Sonic was too big of one. That... doesn't make sense. He doesn't want them to be small, and not large either. While I'm on the subject, there was not a single complaint that he levied specifically against SSBB, instead of fighting games or video game at large. He complained that you can improve in video games as if somehow that's SSBB's fault. Seriously. (This is not to mention the fact that there are 3 different ways to unlock everyone and he could very well have played the "single player" mode with his friends at the party... And that if he really got so much better at the game than his friends, he could just do a team match and fight both of them or *gasp* not hog the controller, even using the game's rotation feature if need be. Besides that, in Smash the quickest way to get as good as your friends, once you understand the game concept and controls, is to play against them)

Now, I grew up on games with no unlockables. Either they had no battery pack, or they were PC games in which unlockables weren't really a thing. Some of my favorite games don't have unlockables. But as it was said earlier, if you start complaining that all characters aren't unveiled immediately, you might as well complain that you don't start with all characters at level 99 and god equipment in Final Fantasy, or that pressing A+B at the beginning of Mario Galaxy doesn't just take you straight to a level select with all levels, or that you don't start out a first person shooter's level with full health, armor, shields if applicable, every weapon in the level, and full ammo for each of them. It is all EXACTLY the same. If a game has unlockables, maybe just maybe you should just try to enjoy the content that you already have. By the time you're done with that, you should have unlocked something else, or maybe you'll even understand the game by then.

Look, if you want a video game to hold you hand and make you feel better at it than you really are, just buy God of War or Kingdom Hearts something.