This crept up the other day as I was rekindling my interest in Gradius V and the concept of loops, where the difficulty increases for every cleared session (without interrupting the game) and continues until you've exhausted all your extra lives.
The issue I find here is that the added difficulty from these loops are not readily available from the menu without investing a number of hours into the game first, which is later lost upon shutting off the system - thus making it a privilege rather than right. Instead I'm required to prevail through the first "easy" loops before it becomes remotely challenging.
This design is prevalent in most games where you're often required to unlock functionality before it becomes available. I like the idea of unlocks as long as it doesn't interfere with the game, but I shouldn't have to endure a single player component of a multiplayer-oriented game to have access to all the characters and levels. And without the saved data at hand in form of a memory card or something similar, I'm short of a portion of the game and risk having to do it all over again.
blah!
I didn't know that - I'm so useless at Gradius that I haven't got to the other loops yet. I thought the loops were selectable via the Stage Select menu or something, are you saying those loop 255 or whatever replays I've seen are actually the end of an epic session? That's just crazy! O_o
The only one I've accessed another loop on is Salamander 2, I swear it saves it though.
One game I was wishing had Hard Mode from the start was God Hand. I didn't know Level Die WAS Hard Mode and played the entire run of my first game keeping it in Die. Then after finishing it I had to go all the way back through the (now selectable) actual Hard Mode in order to get a full game-data; playing a mode no harder than what I had just played through.
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My guess is that they utilise something along the lines of action replay to unlock the later loops. Unfortunately, you cannot advance the loop count via stage select, you must start a new game and begin from 1. I'd estimate each loop around 50mins or so and you can imagine doing a straight run through all 255 is bordering on the impossible!
When did unlocking start. Who's the culprit I wonder? sligthly on a tangent, but having done the first 'loop' of Super Mario Galaxy recently and unlocking the Luigi portion of the game I'm not sure I can be arsed to play through it all over again to get the final galaxy.
You raise a valid point though and it sounds like Gradius V (which I suck at incidentally) is being unduly harsh in not saving previously unlocked loops. I suppose it's about chasing those high scores and keeping everything on the level?
Looping in some games though is just plain silly. I remember looping Area51 arcade over and over until the score counter maxed out. Stupid, because it's way to easy to do and the game just speeds up slightly each time until it maxes out on speed.
Wasn't it Ghouls and Ghosts or one of that series where it made you play through the entire game again to get the good ending. FFS sometimes I just want to feel that warm glow of accomplishment for having busted my gut to get through something once, without feeling that I'm only half done.
I like both GNG and Galaxy but I wish the incentive for the secondary loops were stronger than simply repeating your accomplishment.
This is what's so brilliant about Symphony of the Night's inverted castle. Instead of having to retread familiar ground it changes the dynamic and puzzles entirely, and it's so simple it's almost ridiculous, just flip the castle around!