In regards to PixelJunk Shooter and the DLC model.
I’ve been an avid fan of the PixelJunk games since I discovered Monsters and, even though Eden was perhaps more frustrating than fun, I thought Shooter was shaping up nicely after screens and videos of it started to materialize. It’s out now and I’ve finished it and it’s quite good. I think Shooter is a misleading name though because it’s less about shooting and more about how the various fluids in the game interact with one another but I digress. The controls are tight, the soundtrack is catchy and the graphics pleasant to look at. Nonetheless, this isn’t a review of the game because, after defeating the last boss, something annoying happened that I wanted to address specifically.
End game spoilers below.
Right after the credits…
And then…
Basically, your ship is swallowed whole, the game ends and you will be expected to pay more money for the inevitable DLC that’ll allow you to play the rest of the game with new levels/fluids/enemies/whatever presumably inside the innards of this creature. Now, I don’t have a problem with DLC but it’s unclear to me whether content from this game was withheld from the final product to be later sold as DLC for a nominal fee or not.
One could argue that PixelJunk Shooter is an episodic series and I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended in a huge cliffhanger and I wouldn’t dare say that they’re holding content from us to make that extra buck. The difference is that Episode 2 was a meaty game whereas PixelJunk Shooter just felt short. Three worlds with five levels each and the game is over before you know it. I feel like the lines are blurring between DLC, episodic and a game that’s just chopped up into pieces to make more money and, unfortunately, I think PixelJunk Shooter falls into that last category.
And why should we be charged for this content anyway? Valve releases its post-launch content for their PC games not as priced DLC but as regular updates for the handsome price of free. Team Fortress 2 has at least tripled the amount of content it had when it was first released thanks to new maps, weapons and game modes that the game has received over the last two years, not to mention the myriad of balance tweaks and housecleaning updates. Needless to say, Team Fortress 2 on the PC is a very different game than its console counterparts. It’s Valve’s way of saying “thank you” to the people that buy their games and, as a gamer, I think that’s a model more publishers should follow.
If done right though, paid DLC can be a fantastic way to give extra shelf life to a title. Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and its various pieces of DLC come to mind as a prime example of this. The retail game would make a happy customer out of anybody but the DLC provides extra content for those that can’t get enough of the game and are willing the shell out that extra dough. That’s another healthy model to follow. Bethesda’s own horse armor download from Oblivion sits comfortably at the other end of this spectrum in the bad DLC category for obvious reasons. As the video game industry exhausts every option in between, I hope we see less games that make the player feel shortchanged.
To cap this off, let me use a video game analogy to describe what it was like to finish PixelJunk Shooter. Imagine it’s 1986 and that you’re playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time. You reach the first castle and you’re dodging flames and holy shit, you reach Bowser and you somehow manage to kill him. You go to rescue your princess and find Toad instead. He says “Thank you, Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!”
And then the game ends.
That’s what PixelJunk Shooter felt like.
PS: The Playstation 3 screenshot tool is awesome.
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