The game you were looking for and calling space, cosmic, empire, I believe is Alien Frontiers. It is a good worker placement game kind of like a variant of kingsburg with a little more choice on where to put your dice. This is also set on top of an area control game where you are landing outpost on a planet for further game benefits and victory points.

Tom M

Brutal Legend’s collectibles were so good. Glad you brought that one up.

As for difficulty of finding the collectibles, I like a game where it varies. One of the best things a game can do with collectibles is use them to encourage you to examine the game world more closely. I never appreciated Liberty City quite so much as I did when I was doing those car hunts where you have to find cars based on photographs on your cell phone.

But I mostly like a game that gives me some option to make difficult collectibles easier to find, like that radar they added to Brutal Legend or how they show all the diary pages in Assassin’s Creed Liberation when you finish the story.

That’s a good example with GTA!
While I do appreciate those assassin creed collectible maps, which I think they added from number two onward, I do tend to end up watching the mini map more then just being in the game world. Infamous did a radar thing were you could manually ping the environment, which sort worked better, giving you a temporary map of nearby collectibles.

One collectible which instills a pavlovian drool in me to this day are the coins in Mario, the sound especially! Stumbling onto a gold mine of coins… just … well it makes me feel good. Probably through nostalgia/conditioning but maybe it also ties into real world desires to hoard wealth haha!

That works for me! I’ve spent way too much time in Need for Speed: Most Wanted driving around getting billboard, security gates, and speed traps. Forza Horizon works similarly. There are signs that you smash to reduce the cost of upgrades.

By the way, you earn new cars in NFS: Most Wanted by finding them parked around the city. And if you stop and listen, you can hear the radios playing from these cars from quite a distance. I love that sort of audio component to collectibles.

This is pretty much my prime example. Personally I loved the song collectibles. Now I’m pretty sure I have an unusually strong attachment to this one because I love many of the genres represented. That said it is the ideal way to do collectibles.

Another that I find very good is the Batman games. Now they might go slightly crazy with quantity, but there are several things that make them exemplary. First is there is the incremental rewards (unlocking the Joker missions) along with not needed them all to fully unlock. Second there is an in game way to find their locations (maps/ joker thugs). Finally the trophies are often accompanied by a mini puzzle. They force you to use the mechanics of the game in a new/ novel way. The unique puzzle was often it’s own reward.

The dog tag system in MGS2 was rather brilliant, though as I’m replaying the game on the Vita I gave up trying to get them all. Dunno if they continued it in the sequels…

Thanks, that’s the one!

I just wanted to pop in and says thanks for keeping up a regular schedule with these podcasts during the “break” (as I was working the whole time), as most other feeds went dead.

I was going to mention Arkham Asylum, but I see someone did. Those were so varied and interestingly crafted and well integrated into the fiction by way of the Riddler. Now that I think about it, though, where was Riddler’s voice coming from that whole time?

There were also those gargoyles in Fable 2/3, which were basically the GTA4 pidgeons ,but with funny dialog, which helped. I also enjoyed the Photo Ops in Dead Rising. There were the static “landmark” photos to take, but also the “Drama” photos were fun to discover.

Also, collectibles that unlock concept art should be banned.

I agree about the Concept Art collectibles. One of my biggest issues with Mortal Kombat was having to futz around in the unlockables, praying for something useful.

I got the podcast late, but I think if I remember correctly the game on N64 donkey kong country had a pretty great collection thing… Been a long time so it’s fuzzy but I seem to remember passing the sticks back in forth trying to get all hundred bananas or something.. Was no real reward other that a percentage completion I think..

Pfft. Fucking Rat King.

Great podcast as always. Dave deserves every kudo he gets. (Is that right, every kudo? I don’t think it is)