Boom!! Headshot!
- Full Retail Game Downloads – I can appreciate having a physical library of games. Having all the games arranged neatly on your self, or home entertainment system, makes you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. However, not having to get up and swap out discs is something I value a lot more. When games give me the option of downloading their game off PSN, like Burnout: Paradise, I always choose to download them. I can switch from playing a game of shatter, to completing a challenge in Burnout, to playing a round in Warhawk, with only a few seconds of lag between each game. Sure, never getting off the couch will eventually lead to my obesity, but the comfort is worth it.
- Unique Weapons – It is always nice to see developers use their imagination and come up with something truly unique that makes gameplay interesting and fun. Too many times we are stuck with the same old weapons that we have seen a hundred times and it gets boring. No game has done it better than Ratchet & Clank whose weapon selection is humorous and a blast to use with one of my personal favorites being the tornado gun. Some other games to really change it up would be Half Life 2 and Dead Space which both brought a unique element with some of their guns.
- Gameplay Experimentation – It’s easy to see the experiment in Mirror’s Edge. It was the first game where first person “free-running” was a major emphasis of the game. Sure sometimes it was hard to see where you were suppose to go, hence why everything was painted bright colors, but it was an intriguing deviation from the normal. Hopefully this game will inspire a mechanic that works well in some other game.
- Community Interaction – Its always great to get the community of your product involved in minor decisions but ones that will appease the people buying the product. Some instances of this were when NISA asked its community to vote on the songs to be included on the soundtrack that was to be shipped with Disgaea 3. Another was when Insomniac asked fans to create weapons that might be used in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. You just have to love moves like this that get those people involved that have helped fund your games with their great support.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read our thoughts, please let us know what you think in the comments below. Check back with us next week when Josh teaches everyone how to fend off a newb without becoming one yourself!
