This is just a little rant that I had in my head over the weekend... but whatever happened to the concept of there being secrets and codes in video games? Now days, any and every game that is released has pretty much its entire contents disclosed up front, both in terms of what it contains and how to achieve it. I really miss the days where gamers had to work for these extras and such...
Take Mortal Kombat for example; that game could be given much more replay value if every Fatailty / Brutailty wasn't given in a press release the week before the game is released. That is what made the arcade games so great; the joy of experimenting and finding these things one your own. Do you think that Mortal Kombat 2 would have been as big as it was it all of the finishing moves and secrets were listed right there on the side of the cabinet from the start? Neither do I...
I caught wind of this indie game through a Twitter post recently and it sparked my interest: TAG- The Power of Paint. Imagine Valve's Portal with the gun getting more than just the Portal ability... that is TAG. This is a FP-puzzle game where the goal is to reach a certain point on stage; getting there is an entirely different story though. You can't jump, you can't climb... all that you can do is walk and shoot with your Super Soaker style gun. The world that you are in is completely in black and white, however you can introduce various colors to the world by collecting cans of paint to load into your gun which will have varying effects on the environment. Find some green paint, paint the ground and step into it, and you character will jump. Find some blue paint, and it will cause you to speed up. Get it? Got it? Good. Now go check out the game and throw some support to an indie developer for some phenomenal work... http://www.thepowerofpaint.com