GamerNode: Columns - Gotta Catch 'Em All

Gotta Catch 'Em All

As Gordon Freeman traverses the ruins of City 17, he'll occasionally see a lambda symbol etched onto the devastated remains of buildings, walls, or random air vents. Our silent protagonist will then think "aha! Health! Guns! Ammunition!" personally, I think "right, that's one, now where does the guide say the next one is?"

Collectibles are running videogames. Even logical collectibles, like the supply caches I mentioned in the above example, are simply tools to wrench more life out of a game that, quite honestly, doesn't need it. Do you really need every golden and coloured banana in Donkey Kong 64? Of course you don't, but you'll usually do it anyway, and it's only gotten worse with the introduction of achievements and trophies.

Think about it. Where do most collectibles fit in, when playing titles that tout immersion as their main selling point? Half Life 2 was one of the best - and still is, in my oh-so humble opinion - FPS titles in videogame history. It has class, a fantastic storyline, believable technology (however advanced it may seem) and real, down-to-earth characters, not to mention a silent protagonist that, like Link and the Doom Marine before him, allow you to slip into his skin so easily the title becomes less of a game, and more of an adventure.

And yet, in this epic tale of one man (and occasionally a horrendously stupid sidekick whose dialogue sets feminism back around a hundred years), where's the need for collectibles? What's his motivation for killing every Antlion grub in the hive? Surely, he could eradicate the buggers to prevent more from spawning, but when the Queen takes a good ten minutes to kill with decent weaponry (when she's not smashing you off a tunnel wall), is it worth it? Why would a scientist care about only using the Gravity Gun throughout Ravenholm when he's got a machine gun strapped to his back? Forgive me for nitpicking, but there are some things even mentalist HEV-equipped scientists won't do in the name of their craft.

Personally, the only collect-‘em-up that really presented me with a viable reason for collecting masses of anything at all was Pokémon. You had a Pokédex, and your mission from Professor Oak (the other professors mean nothing to me, he was the original and the only) was to help him research all of them. I had a motive, and my reward was simply his gratitude. It helped that every single collectible in the game was a living, breathing thing that looked original and came in useful every time you felt like stomping Gary's arrogantly assembled squad into the floor.

But there's nothing that validates my need to collect every virtual snowflake on the mountain in SSX 3. Granted, it's one of my favourite games of all time, but I have no motivation or logical reason to persuade myself to throw Psymon down the same mountain trail fifty times so I can claim a little bit of cash and a ton of snowflakes. There are snowflakes everywhere. This is a snowboarding game. I don't need any more. It's patently ridiculous.

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