10 Awesome Video Game Mechanics Introduced Way Too Late
Horizon Forbidden West's flying mounts should've shown up MUCH earlier.
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00:00Making a video game that enthralls players from start to finish is no easy feat, but one thing that can really help in that regard is introducing fun new mechanics.
00:09These might be unique twists on the core gameplay, some nifty new weapons, or an ability that makes your enemies tremble before you in pant-wetting fear.
00:17Reshaping the player's experience mid-game is a dead-set way to keep them glued to the screen throughout, but sometimes developers perhaps don't appreciate just how awesome these mechanics are,
00:28and so they end up introducing them far too late than most players would like.
00:32Thankfully, at least in some of these cases modders have worked their magic to make sure that you can get your hands on these mechanics and items earlier.
00:39I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 10 awesome video game mechanics introduced way too late.
00:4510. Supercharged Gravity Gun – Half-Life 2
00:49There's absolutely no denying that Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun is probably one of the best weapons in gaming.
00:56Gordon Freeman receives the weapon relatively early on in the game, and its physics-manipulating potential ultimately became one of Half-Life 2's most praised elements.
01:05But in the game's penultimate level, the Gravity Gun receives a nifty dark energy upgrade, allowing you to manipulate considerably larger objects and, best of all, use it against organic matter, letting you throw Combine soldiers around like toys.
01:20It's insanely fun, even if it is also a massive shame that such a ludicrously inspired weapon would only be introduced for a brief stint towards the end of the game.
01:30Unsurprisingly, it wasn't long before enterprising fans released their own mods which allowed players to use the Supercharged Gravity Gun for the entirety of Half-Life 2, because its official canonical use is just too damn short.
01:439. Gil-Up Materia – Final Fantasy VII Remake
01:48Gil-Up is a materia in Final Fantasy VII Remake that immediately doubles the amount of currency – that is, Gil – dropped by any defeated enemy.
01:56Sounds great, right? Except that it's introduced in the game's 16th chapter, The Belly of the Beast, and the game only has 18 chapters.
02:04The materia is obtained by beating one of the challenges in the combat simulator within the Shinra building, and while in theory it has the potential to be massively useful, by this point in the game there's basically nothing left you absolutely need to buy in order to beat it.
02:19Gil-Up certainly would have been fantastically helpful were it given to players, say, midway through Final Fantasy VII Remake, but arriving in its mostly linear final few hours?
02:30It feels a little bit like Square Enix trolling their own fans, honestly.
02:348. Summon Eleanor Plasmid – Bioshock 2
02:38Bioshock 2 is a perfectly fine sequel to an excellent game, but it only reaches fist-pumping levels of awesomeness in its penultimate level, Outer Persephone. That's when you get your hands on the game's last Plasmid.
02:51This Plasmid power, Summon Eleanor, grants players the ability to summon Big Sister Eleanor, one of Rapture's most powerful entities, and whose abilities include telekinesis, fireballs, and teleportation.
03:03Eleanor is also invincible and can be summoned ad infinitum to do your bidding, effectively trivializing the rest of the game's combat encounters, but in a way that's still extremely fun.
03:14Given that Bioshock 2 is a relatively unchallenging game even on higher difficulties, there's not really any risk of damaging the experience by making Summon Eleanor available a couple of hours earlier.
03:25It's a mechanic that immediately makes combat so much more dynamic and entertaining, it's just such a shame we only got access to it for a sliver of our playtime.
03:347. Freaker Hordes – Days Gone
03:37One of Days Gone's prominent selling points pre-release was the presence of Freaker Hordes, gigantic swarms of infected ranging from 50 to 500 bodies which can easily overwhelm unprepared players.
03:49And yet for anyone sticking to the game's critical path, and with its minimum 30-hour playtime who can blame them, they won't encounter any Freaker Hordes until the last few hours.
03:59While you can uncover optional Hordes if you go off the beaten track, if you're just playing through the main campaign, you're only going to encounter three mandatory Hordes that you need to beat.
04:09For anyone wanting to cut through the critical path because 30 hours is plenty of game for a lot of people, it's pretty damn underwhelming that one of Days Gone's most advertised mechanics basically feels like a footnote.
04:216. The Shango Satellite Laser – Resident Evil 5
04:25Resident Evil 5's penultimate chapter, 6-2, sees Chris and Shiva taking on the monstrous Ouroboros Aheri.
04:32And during the fight you'll get the opportunity to use the Shango Satellite Laser, an immensely powerful laser which can be guided to fire upon Aheri with the use of a gun-like targeting device.
04:43The laser can be used to annihilate Aheri's weak points, and it takes about a minute to recharge.
04:48But sadly, this boss fight is the only time players are able to use the hilariously OP piece of tech, and coming about an hour before the end of the game, it seems like a case of too little, too late.
04:59But modders of course hacked the laser to be usable on conventional enemies from the start of the game, and even included a rapid-fire mode, which is exactly as hilarious and awesome as it sounds.
05:115. Concrete Powers – Infamous Second Son
05:15Infamous Second Son sees a player gradually able to control different elements with superhuman abilities, including video, neon, smoke, and eventually concrete.
05:25Mileage may vary on which ability is your favourite, but concrete is certainly an extremely potent one, with players able to fire out concrete shrapnel at enemies and encase themselves in concrete armour.
05:37It's a great ability, and yet introduced far too late into the game to make much of an impact as the others, only being unlocked in the middle of Second Son's climax.
05:46Fans have long speculated that Second Son's development was rushed, and it absolutely makes sense that Concrete Power's presence in the game was scaled back due to it having a shortened finale.
05:56The little time we got to use the Concrete Power is certainly a lot of fun, we just wish that it had shown up much, much earlier.
06:034. The High-Frequency Blade – Metal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty
06:08Hideo Kojima sure knows a thing or two about incredible weapons and gadgets, and in Metal Gear Solid 2, players are eventually gifted the High-Frequency Blade, a sword reinforced by a strong alternating current, allowing the user to cut through any material like butter and even deflect bullets.
06:25Raiden is given the sword by Solid Snake in the final hour or so of the game, and though you get a few ripe opportunities to use it, both cutting through soldiers and using it to battle the game's final boss, Solidus Snake, it's nowhere near enough time for such an incredible and fun-to-use piece of weaponry.
06:41Though console players were able to use a GameShark to unlock the blade from the start of the game, and PC mods did eventually arrive too. Reserving such a kick-ass weapon for the final passages of the game was a sure mistake, especially as it hasn't reappeared in any of the mainline sequels since.
06:573. Controlling Rats – A Plague Tale Innocence A Plague Tale Innocence is admittedly primarily a stealth game, in which siblings Amicia and Hugo attempt to flee from both French Inquisition soldiers and hordes of rats carrying the Black Plague in 14th century France.
07:14However, in the 14th chapter, about an hour from the end of the game, Hugo gets the ability to control rats, wherein he can form a path or even stick them on soldiers. While players are given only a few brief opportunities to use the ability in the final segment of the game, it's a ludicrously entertaining ability, and one that feels well-earned after hours and hours of stealth-driven gameplay.
07:36Though in that respect, it's easy to appreciate the design decision of holding this ability back until the game's end, it still feels like a little bit of a shame that we only got a few fitful sequences to use it. If you feel that way, then at least the upcoming sequel, A Plague Tale Requiem, will hopefully give us a few more opportunities to use the ability.
07:542. Flying Mounts – Horizon Forbidden West Horizon Forbidden West is a largely entertaining sequel that offered up some modest incremental improvements to the original game, yet its most jaw-dropping new mechanic was sadly relegated to the very end of the campaign.
08:10In the final hour of the game, Aloy unlocks the ability to use sunwings, allowing her to traverse massive distances quite quickly. This leads to a brief five-minute sequence where players can ride a sunwing to far zenith space, after which control is wrestled away for what little remains of the story.
08:27While players can continue to ride sunwings in the post-game, unlocking the ability to ride flying mounts in literally the last 5% of the campaign, and for such a short time no less, feels like a massively missed opportunity.
08:41A huge scale set piece could have been designed around the ability to ride sunwings, but instead their implementation feels, and let me quote this from the author of this one Jack Pooley, it feels a bit of a damp squib. Now I'm Australian and I don't know what that means, so I'm going to go with it feels a bit meh.
08:58Hopefully the inevitable threequel might give players access to sunwings from the very beginning, even if giving us such a huge advantage from the jump will obviously create some balancing challenges for Guerrilla Games.
09:091. Force Crush – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 The Sith Lords
09:14It'll take most players around 30 hours to blast through Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2's critical path, and it's only in the final hours of the game, once you return to Dantooine to meet with Kreia and trigger the endgame, that you'll unlock the greatest ability of all.
09:29The ability you unlock will depend on whether you're light side or dark side, and look I'm a light side devotee but I think we can all agree, the dark side powers are way more fun, and this one really synthesises that concept. It's Force Crush.
09:42Force Crush allows you to levitate any enemy into the air and crush their body from the inside, dealing massive amounts of damage in the process.
09:50It is admittedly shamelessly OP in every sense of the word, allowing players to make short work of just about anybody who stands in their way for the rest of the game, even the final boss.
10:01But for a game that's really in a lot of ways about unapologetic wish fulfilment, it's such a shame that we didn't get Force Crush any earlier.
10:09That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that comment section if you can think of any other awesome video game abilities that you reckon were introduced way too late.
10:17As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me, if you like you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald, but please do stay tuned to us here for plenty more great gaming lists.