Drizzlehell
Banned
This thread is totally motivated by my recent fascination with Killzone Mercenary, which I have been chipping away at almost every day on my Vita in short bursts for the past few months.
It amazes me how a game like this, which is essentially just a linear gun porn shooter with a 5 hour long campaign, managed to keep my interest for that long. And it's all thanks to a number of design elements that inject a lot of replay value into the package. Just off the top of my head, here are the things that you can do beyond just plaything through the campaign on one of the three available difficulty levels:
The only real blunder here is that it's a handheld game, and I would really love to play a shooter with this much variety and replay value on my TV/monitor, but I kinda struggle to think of any games that put this much attention into optional game modes. Maybe Doom 2016/Eternal, but other than that...?
It amazes me how a game like this, which is essentially just a linear gun porn shooter with a 5 hour long campaign, managed to keep my interest for that long. And it's all thanks to a number of design elements that inject a lot of replay value into the package. Just off the top of my head, here are the things that you can do beyond just plaything through the campaign on one of the three available difficulty levels:
- complete "contracts" which are basically these challenge runs that you can do for every level that require you to complete the objectives under special conditions, eg. use a specific gun, don't raise the alarm, complete a special objective like throwing a grenade through a vent to flush out enemies from hiding, complete the mission within allotted time, etc.; there are three of those contracts available for every mission, each with its own theme (stealth, demolition, precision)
- collect intel, i.e. optional text/audio logs that contain some cool bits of lore that often refers to other games in the series; what makes these stand out from your garden variety collectable hunt, is that it actually requires a bit of skill as well, either through a hacking mini game that utilises Vita's touchscreen, or by stealthily grabbing enemy commanders and smacking them around during a small interrogation sequence
- earning money that you can use to unlock new weapons and gadgets - the more skilfully you play, the more cash you'll earn, which totally taps into that part of my brain that likes being rewarded for good performance; and the gear that you unlock is all pretty fun to use too
The only real blunder here is that it's a handheld game, and I would really love to play a shooter with this much variety and replay value on my TV/monitor, but I kinda struggle to think of any games that put this much attention into optional game modes. Maybe Doom 2016/Eternal, but other than that...?