This post (while technically about a videogame), is actually about wasted potential and replay value. "Whoa," I hear you say, "this just got a bit heavier than I had hoped." Roll with me. Over the past week, my sister and I played co-op on the new wii version of the classic Donkey Kong country game. To be completely honest, I LOVED the game, and I'll tell you why; The game itself was a true-to-the-originals homage, but it was it's own game. Much like the New Super Mario game that came out last year, this game takes a classic franchise, blends in the wii, and makes something downright awesome. The worlds were from the original, but given new life as live 3d locations, which got down right cinematic. The game was very fulfilling, and spent the entire time hinting at great depth.
We spent the first half of the week playing through the game chronologically, from level to level, boss to boss, and had a great time. Even though the game was tough (we went through a lot of lives) we never got so frustrated that we quit, which is hard to pull off in games like this. As we played through the levels, there were extra things to collect, which were pretty gratifying when we could manage it, and suggested more replay when we didn't. For anyone familiar with the original donkey kong country game, the letters K-O-N-G returned, which were to be collected throughout each level, and there were also puzzle pieces to be collected in the same way. These puzzle pieces are the bone I would like to pick.
After the story is completed, it is revealed that collecting the Kong letters will lead you to a secret level, (I'm not really giving anything up, I hope.) "How exciting!" we exclaimed, straightening our monocles, "I say, let's get about it, then!", and we did. The whole while, we gathered Kong letters, and generally ignored the puzzle pieces, since we were fairly sure that after the Kong letters were gathered, they'd tell us to get those next. Oh wait, no they didn't.
Gathering KONG opened up nine bonus levels, which is fantastic, and each of those nine levels had their own group of puzzle pieces, as did every other level. It would seem that, if you are going to set the precedent of collecting items for bonus levels, that both sets would follow the pattern, but alas, Nintendo had other plans, apparently. We made jokes the entire time we played "watch, as soon as we get all the kong letters, they'll just say 'no, you can't enter the temple without the puzzle pieces'". Honestly, I think that would have been better than nothing, which is what we got. They used extra levels to motivate the collection of the kong letters, which worked great, and as a prize for finishing all of those levels we were given... mirror mode? Apparently we are expected to motivate ourselves to play the game by flipping it horizontally. I didn't bite.
I guess what I am saying is that, when you set up a motivator for replay value, like the puzzle pieces, you have to first entice the player (as they did with the Kong letters by "revealing the Golden Temple") And then reward them via extra content. To be fair, gathering the puzzle pieces unlocks concept art in a gallery, but really? I for one, wanted more to play, not a flip-flop, not pictures, gameplay. That's what the KONG letters did. They offered you more gameplay, in exchange for repeating previous gameplay. The ratio was about one new level for every nine old ones. You know what? That was more than enough. But trying to get me to replay just to get concept art isn't going to cut it. I like concept art, but at that point, playing through old content a third time, without the introduction of anything new turns it from a game to a grind, and I, for one, am not down for that.
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