Be Excellent To Each Other

This kind of comes from playing Zelda TP where I found a well hidden heart piece and though "Blimey that was well hidden. I wonder what else I have missed" So I went to gamefaqs and had a look. It turns out that the rough amount of stuff I missed was a motherfucking shitload. Cue hours of tedious backtracking to satisfy my gaming OCD.

So is anyone really going to look for all the hidden things in GTA IV or is it straight off to find a FAQ? I used one for the hidden stuff in GTA SA because I didn't have the rest of my life to swim around the circumference of the map in the hope of spotting a small rotating oyster.

I just think this sort of hunt turn into a bit of a chore, especially in really free-roaming environments.

What do we reckon?

I try to avoid any aspects of games that require carrying out a long winded tedious task for a crap reward at the end of it, usually to get 100% completed.

I especially avoid MMO games for this very reason.

I like finding things accidentally. Never bother with guidebooks at all, and certainly can't be arsed 100%ing a game once I've finished the main story.

Me too. I loved just roaming around in Oblivion finding random people, villages, forts, caves and what not.

A lot of the optional stuff in GTA games seems to be mindless repetetive tasks. I am getting particularly annoyed about having to drive my mates the full length of an island because when they ring me they have apparently gone for a massively long walk to Bolivia or somewhere, only for them to want to do an activity that takes place on the moon then they want dropping off at their place which is, exactly, the hardest place to get to ever. I'm gonna start ignoring those tossers.

I never played oblivion but I will at some point. The odd thing about 100%ing a game is that I don't care unless they give me a percentage stat. They know haw to play me don't they.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the game developers; They make us carry out tedious tasks for their sport.

It just smacks of dragging game length out doesn't it. In the old days, before the internet, I would have battled on with this sort of grind and (sort of) enjoyed it. Now you can buy games with the guide book attached a week after release.

I don't have the time to devote to this sort of thing anymore. And making me search every last square mm of Liberty City for stuff is getting me down. Apart from this and spending 20 minutes driving around so I can play John Lowes Darts or Tenth Frame, I am thoroughly enjoying the whole experience.

After completing Condemned recently, I realised that I'd get a different ending if I'd found more of the bits of metal along the way (plus I missed loads of the dead birds too) so I thought I'd play the first level again but taking extra time to hunt everywhere for the hidden stuff. I still didn't find it all so I think the only way I'm going to be able to do it is with an FAQ which, for me, spoils the game.

Condemned, Crackdown, Two Worlds and Assassin's Creed all extended their lives with collection-based achievements. To an achievements whore like me they are like kryptonite but I still end up bothering with them.

What he said. I'm 85% complete on Bully and I don't know when I'll go back to it to do anymore, as much as I loved finishing the story. The same with GTA IV (although I haven't quite finished it yet).

I've only just managed to get all the achievements for SWOS, thanks to a cunning plan devised by Dimrill and myself.

I love little Easter Eggs, but can rarely be bothered to go to the trouble of hunting for them myself. But it's always nice when developers throw little things into their games - the GTA titles are especially good for this (with my favourite, for some reason, being the Tourist Information sign at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge ripoff in San Fierra in GTA:SA which, amongst other facts and figures about the bridge, lists how much space it's files take up on the disc).

I normally don't like collectathons though GTA seems to do them better than most. I did collect all the packages in GTA III with the aid of an FAQ. RE4 did a thing with the shooting gallery which gave you little figures.

OTOH, the two I remember not even bothering with were the hippo race in FF9 and the lightning avoid thing in FFX. I can't stand that sort of "you've got to do this X times, and this is the only point in the game where you can try it."

First game I can remember that had that sort of self-awareness around it was the Mercenary series. When you got to Damocles, there was the programmers house and you could even switch off his computer - which ended the game.

I quite liked it in Condemned, where the eyes on the wall would make it slightly easier to find the chunks of metal. I don't often bother, though.

you get goodness for doing these missions tho

Yeah, I thought I'd find it easier second time around knowing that the eyes were a good clue to a bit of metal's location and yet a I still missed stuff!



I actually did that lightning avoiding thing (something like avoiding 200 lightning bolts in a row) and god, it was tedious. The main problem was trying not to let your mind wander as it needed solid concentration after which, my brain was mashed.

I can't see the point in going back and trying to collect everything in a game to achieve 100%. I play games for the enjoyment I get whilst I'm playing them, not for a sense of personal satisfaction that I've done everything.

Same here but if I've got somewhere near to completion of something during the course of normal gameplay then I might grind away for a while to finish it.

i really hate this kind of stuff. Like someone said, finding stuff that's hidden by accident its fun, or if you saw it on top of a hill or something and try to go there. Going to search for hidden stuff that you have no clue whatsoever where it is, that i don't bother

Fourthed, or thirded, or whatever. It's nice, but when you're no longer finding them by chance, or enjoying yourself exploring and keeping an eye out for them, it's tedious and I don't bother. I do go on obsessive runs of games, trying to get something done perfectly or using only one weapon, or whatever, but in those cases it's never because the game demands it, but because I'm just enjoying challenging myself (Hitman games are ace for this).

Chasing achievements or percentages, though? No thanks. If it were any fun, I'd be doing it already.

Ahh Easter eggs and things. The other side of the hidden stuff coin. Nothing makes you feel more special in a game than doing something or finding somewhere just because of experimenting or exploring. It is a great moment when you smile because of doing something weird and it paying off.

A nice feature in Lord of the Rings: Online, wot I play, is that you will get names for hidden achievements you unlock. For example, "Oakgrove the Wary" if you get to level 10 without dying. There are some quite obscure and funny ones. It also has a traits and deeds system. For example you can be happily exploring and come across a remote cliff top, you find your way to the top and a message will come up telling you that you've found the lost tower of blah-de-blah. If you find the companion ruins then you get a trait which you can use to customise your character. You also get traits and titles for killing certain ammounts of things, completing certain quest strings, finding equipment, performing emotes, jumping from great heights, eating pies etc. The neat thing is that it all takes place in the background and through normal play you unlock a good half of them at least. So you don't go off tediously grinding and just let them come to you naturally as part of questing and exploring. You don't know about them until you've started on them.

Though there are idiots who grind for traits, naturally.

At least Bully gives you a map with a guide to the general location of each collectable item once you finish the Geography classes. Likewise Zelda on Wii will give you clues to heart piece locations. Searching a general area for hidden things is always much more fun if you know there's something there, I find.

One thing that always bugged me.

In FF9, you can unlock a chocobo related game by, um, something to do with an island at the top of the map, a red pepper(?) and a crack in the wall.

How in the name of Willow are you supposed to find out about that without reading a guide book?

That Lord of the Rings thing does indeed sound like a neat touch. CoD4 did a similar thing on the funsquare, with some of its achievements being things you'd only get by chance and skill, but you wouldn't know how to get them until you'd got them.

I like putting on a coat I have not worn in ages and finding £20 in the pocket. That's really good finding things accidentally - even better than finding 100 computer generated pigeons. Also, I have a short enough memory to have this happen almost every time I put on a coat, so life is one lovely little surprise after another.

Also, I should really buy a purse...

Body Harvest is ace for this.

You should stop putting that £20 back in the coat every time you take it off again...

Note to self: rifle through mimi's pockets.

Life is too shot to go looking for a hundred of anything purely fo a percentage dodah.

Which is why I wait until I've unlocked all of the area a macguffin is likely to be in, then consult a map. I played San Andreas without 100%ing anything collectible the first time round, second time I did all the graffiti, using a map, as soon as I had spray, which tooled me up at my save point and allowed me to speed through the shooty missions, enjoying them differently along the way and gaining me replay value, plus I'd a fair idea of the jogriffy of Los Santos by then.

So in GTA4 I'm waiting until the islands are all open and if I can get something in-game for doing 100 pigeons, I'll do it, or if there is a big gamerpoints haul for doing so. Thisa is where Crackdown excells though - I was horrified at having to collect agility orbs and that but it is as addictive as PacMan in that regard now I am underway. Every orb really counts.

I think as long as the rewards are good enough for some of the OTT things that games ask you to do, then it's not so bad. In FFX, I went around capturing one of every monster (which was frustrating as you have to user certain, weaker, weapons to do so) which gave you something good at the end (forget what.. it's been a while) and then I read that there was another reward for capturing five of everything so I went and did that too... dunno if I'd have the patience to do anything similar again mind you as it took my play time to over 120 hours. I certainly wouldn't do it for a few gamerpoints.

They gave you hauls of various items which you could use to put upgrades on weapons. (And expose a 'get more xp than you'd know what to do with' method) And so, by the time I met the final boss, I could defeat it with one hit.

I'd intended to go around and kill the tougher, hidden enemies (can't remember what they're bloody called either.. dark somethings..?) but in the end my party still wasn't good enough so I packed it in.

Dark Aeons. I beat them all by being incredibly cheap and using the samurai's one hit kill if you give him all your money.

Even with my insanely powered characters, I couldn't hit them by trying to fight normally.

I've found and killed all 200 pigeons in GTAIV and there doesn't appear to be any bonus for doing so. Booooooooooooooooooo.

Or should that be Coooooooooooooooooooo?

I believe it is one of the criteria for getting the 100% completion achievement.

Apparently, you get a helicopter.

No idea where it appears though.

Don't you order it with your phone?

No, you can use a cheat code on the phone to spawn a helicopter, but you can't order one. I don't believe that the "helicopter for 200 pigeons" thing is true, as when I killed number 200 I didn't get a message to that effect, it just said something like "You've cleaned Liberty City of the flying rats disease" or something.

It took me ages to find the frigging annihilator helicopter after getting the pigeons. It spawns on one of the three helipads at the airport.

That's not a reward for getting all the pigeons, though. I know this because I used that same Annihilator at the airport to get the pigeon on top of the Screamer rollercoaster.

Bah.