It’s easy to write about 256-player play, wireless skateboard controllers, 15 million weapons, bubble shields, and so on. But what about the little things that usually get buried in previews or go completely unnoticed?
A few weeks ago, the Bitmob community discussed seemingly insignificant features in games that we all should appreciate. To further recognize great game-design elements like these, we’re starting a new series called “It’s the Little Things.” When we get an early demo or preview and notice something kind of cool -- not necessarily press release or back-of-box material -- we’ll call it out.
To kick things off, let’s look at the upcoming Shadow Complex and its Achievement tracking. This Castlevania/Metroid-like 2D shooter/adventure game offers Achievements for a certain number of melee attacks, headshots, kicking away spider-like robots called Bombas, and enemies...uh...screaming (from killing them in violent ways).
Shadow Complex tells you how far you’ve gotten in each of those particular goals, similar to Gears of War 2 -- nothing new there. But the game takes this concept a step further for those “what’s the point now?” gamers.
After you’ve hit your 5/5 melee kills, 50/50 headshots, etc. and have received the corresponding Achievement, the game will tell you who on your buddy list has the next higher score in that category. It’s like individual leaderboards for the different ways you can kill bad guys.
It’s quite a clever feature, motivating players to continue racking up these separate “scores” long after they’ve gotten the Achievement and stopped caring about how they’re taking out enemies. You might’ve unlocked “My Head A-splode” already, but do you really want JayFresh006 to have a higher headshot count than you?
This might sound rather silly -- hey, we’re framing this as a “little thing” after all -- but once you get to playing Shadow Complex (due out August 19 for Xbox Live Arcade) and you see your friends’ names pop up with their progress compared to yours, tell us if you start going out of your way to introduce your foot to more Bombas.
