Editor's note: Chris points out the right and wrong ways to implement collectibles in games. I have a bunch of examples as well (I have the same obsessive urge to collect everything), but I'll save my thoughts for the comments. -Shoe
I know I'm not the only gamer that has compulsive urge to just collect the shit out of everything, but over time I've slowly come to terms with how to deal with this quirk. My trick is to avoid doing it when it requires me to tediously look over a guide and check every single collectible location 8 million times because I missed flying rat #34 out of 200.
Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed are prime offenders of this despite being good games. So in this feature, I'm going to go over a few great titles that really do things right and the techniques they used to make it all possible.
Okami and collectible identification
Now it's hard to argue what makes this game great, but I certainly know why I love it. Okami has an amazing tracking system that marks your progress in just about everything you do. This includes the stray beads you collect, animals you feed, fish you catch, enemies you fight, and techniques you obtain.
It's hard to not recommend this game to compulsive collectors. Another interesting feature in the stray bead section is that the game tells what sections of the map they're located in. Narrowing the search to a smaller area is always a solid way to help collectors get everything they want without easily handing it to them.
It also helps that all the collectibles are numbered, making it easy to check which ones you've missed. Compare this to games that drop 100 of the same collectible, making it difficult to check your progress toward completion. Assassin's Creed makes this concept even more difficult by the sheer fact that its cities are fairly uniform. Unlike GTA, which is loaded with street signs and easily recognizable locales, Assassin's Creed lookalike towns make collecting those flags nigh impossible — even with a guide.
Honorable Mentions: Beyond Good and Evil, Fallout 3 (bobbleheads), The World Ends With You
Prime Offenders: Assassin's Creed
Bully and collectible locations
I'm still shocked this next feature came out of Rockstar, especially because they chose not to use it in GTA4, which came later. In Bully, taking fun geography mini-game classes gives you a real reward — it unlocks collectible locations on the map.
Now Rockstar is not the first developer to do this, but it really showed how Bully favorably compared to the GTA series. The GTA games have always been the prime offenders with this sort of thing. Trying to shoot 200 poorly placed flying rats is just torture to anyone who likes to collect everything.
Honorable Mentions:Beyond Good and Evil, Metroid Prime 3, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Prime Offenders: GTA Series
Beyond Good and Evil and the bread crumb trail home
Anyone else go for 100% completion in Metroid Prime, only to realize you missed a one-time scan about an hour into the game upon reaching 99%? To their credit, developer Retro Studios fixed this mistake for Metroid Prime 3, but the first and second are still "prime" offenders (yeah, I know it's a lame pun).
The concept of taking away the opportunity to collect or do something in a game, particularly if it counts toward the completion score, is completely mind-blowing to me as a gamer. At no point in the development process should that seem like a halfway decent idea. Obviously developers have their reasons for changing something in their game worlds, but there are always ways around that when it comes to completing a collection.
Beyond Good and Evil came up with an easy solution for its photography-collection problems, and after seeing it done, I had trouble figuring out why Retro Studios never thought of it. If Ubisoft had taken the Retro path, the only opportunity to photograph a boss would be during the boss fight itself. Not only would this be frustrating and annoying to pull off, once the fight is over the chance to get that picture is lost forever.
The solution? Leave the body once the fight is over for later photo ops. If you fight the flying worm boss, you'll find the corpse washed up on the rocks for the rest of the game. After the reaper fight, his corpse will also be found floating in the water at the bottom of the factory. Although most developers in their right minds allow you to backtrack, some just don't get the importance.
Honorable Mentions: Kingdom Hearts series
Prime Offenders: Final Fantasy series, Metroid Prime 1 and 2
It always seems like so many games out there are only one tiny feature or improvement away from being truly great. Although you can find plenty more examples out there, I can only speak for the games I've played.
It's also interesting how certain development houses will show such a large divide between studios in how they address these issues. Taking in-house Square-Enix developers as an example, games like Kingdom Hearts and The World Ends With You seem to do just about everything right, whereas the Final Fantasy series almost seems decades behind in allowing fans to get everything they want. As mentioned above, Rockstar is the same way, so I'm not sure if these developers are even thinking about or discussing this.
I also get the feeling reviewers don't particularly care about this stuff, as most of them never mention any of these things in their reviews. By no means am I disappointed in them or even criticizing them, because they just don't have the time to commit to collecting everything in games like I do. But even if it's not there, it's the thing I'm concerned about the most.
I used to collect every package in GTA, or attempt to collect every flag in Assassin's Creed, but I just can't bring myself to do it anymore at the cost of my enjoyment of the game. I find myself deciding early on whether I'm going to 100% it and get all the achievements, or leave them be and just beat the game. On the other hand, I am and will always be pleasantly surprised when a game adds those features — just for me.
If anyone else has some good examples or thoughts on this, by all means, please share them. I'm always curious what other games exist out there that are pushing this concept forward.
GTA 4 flying rat screenshot courtesy of GTA4onlineguide.com.