by dkpatriarch

© 2009 David Hilton

When I was a youngster eager for amusement of any kind, Easter egg hunts were a lot of fun. The promise of reward in the form of chocolaty goodness and the competition of beating my brother and sister to more treasure strained my eyes on the search so much that I now have to wear glasses (okay genetics may also have had something to do with it…).

But now I have grown up (somewhat) and what do I find myself doing? The same bloody thing, only now I hunt goodies in video games…and it’s a lot less fun.

There’s still the so-called reward in the form of achievement points or trophies (usually if you find every single stupid hidden item) but they are really useless in both the real and game world and not nearly as good as chocolate eggs.

I could always ignore these hidden items, but once I find one or two it gets to be some sort of psychological imperative: must find pixilated treasure!

Game developers have been doing this to us as far back as I can remember. Almost two decades ago I spent hours holding space bar down on my 486’s keyboard as I looked at the endless blocky walls of Wolfenstein 3D, trying to find the secret rooms with treasure.

They hide the stuff and we seek it. I can understand it somewhat as a game mechanic to get you to explore when you really don’t need to because the gameplay mostly involves wading through enemies to the finish line.

However it can be taken to ridiculously useless lengths as it was in Assassin’s Creed where you had to find a billion flags. Even when out of frustration I purchased a guide book I still can’t find one or two of them!

And yet I wasted hours for no reward at all leaping over and over the same areas wondering how I could be so blind. At least you could kill the hidden Templars who stood robotically waiting for you to stab them.

But games get you to look for and find posters (50 Cent: Blood On The Sand), gold bars (Battlefield: Bad Company), cogs (Gears of War), taped voices (Bioshock), death cards (Call Of Duty: World At War), treasures (Uncharted) and all sorts of other useless crap you don’t need for the game.

Is that really replay value? Running around searching for sparkly bits you missed, resorting to using a guide so you at least get the achievement points or trophies you deserve for wasting your time? There should be an achievement called ‘Sucked In- We Wasted Precious Moments Of Your Life’.

That’s not to say that all hide and seek egg hunts should be banned from gaming. Prince of Persia would be missing a big chunk of its gameplay where you have to collect hordes of glowing orbs to open up new sections of the game. On second thought….maybe it’s still a good idea.

No, there are some games like Resident Evil 5, Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood, and Wolfenstein that let you actually exchange your treasure for in-game items that are useful like new or upgraded weapons and ammo. Then it makes sense to go looking for treasure because it helps you in the game.

Otherwise, stop tempting me to go waste my time looking for stupid things I don’t need! If I don’t want to look for chocolate eggs anymore then why would I want an on-screen art shot of a Nazi dagger?

Sorry, I have to bugger off and go and search the house for the TV remote I idiotically ‘hid’ somewhere so the kids wouldn’t use my HD TV…

© 2009 David Hilton

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Filed under: Blogbanter, Console gaming, Editorial, Game Impressions, GameBanter, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, achievement points, Assassin's creed, Battlefield Bad Company, Bioshock, Call Of Juarez Bound In Blood, COD World at War, Gaming, GEars Of War, Hide and Seek, Microsoft, Prince of persia, PS3, Resident Evil 5, Sony PS3, trophies, Uncharted, Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 3D, Xbox