It was pointed out to me this week that I missed some areas in Uncertainty Principle in my video playthrough, which is always a possibility when doing live playthroughs as you don’t want to bore the viewers too much.

Anyway, I am sure there have been plenty of mods released with hidden areas and secrets etc. The question is whether a mod author should eventually tell people about them. I feel they should but not necessarily in a readme.txt file or in the credits. I do feel that a player should be told exactly how many secrets there are though, as that encourages players to replay mods.

If my memory serves me correctly, The Citizen Returns had a system of 15 EEs to collect or maybe it was the first release. Anybody remember? I like that idea a lot, although it needs to be implemented really well to ensure it’s not frustrating. For example, letting a player know when the are about to leave an area that can not be returned to that has an EE they missed.

I’d love to hear mod authors’ point of view on this, as well as players of course.

Those readers/viewers who have been following or watching my recent playthrough of Coastline to Atmosphere: Phillip Sings Badly (Yes, the series is called Phillip Plays Badly, but if you watch the video for long enough, you will understand why) may have noticed I cheated on a particular section. In fact, I “cheated” twice.

The first time was because of what I believe is a design error – I left the buggy and progressed forward, only to come back and find the buggy behind a gate that had risen.

Now you could argue that I left the buggy in the wrong place but I argue “How is the player supposed to know?!”. In this case I used impulse 82 to spawn a new buggy. There was no way I was going to replay that whole section again.

The second time, linked to above, seems an absolutely unbeatable section. Every single time, I was instantly killed by a strider, even though I had 100 health points. That seems totally unfair.

Now because I was live on Twitch, I kept playing for a while and eventually used BUDDHA mode and continued. If I had been playing alone, I might have kept trying.

However, yesterday, I reloaded the section from the beginning and replayed it. I finished it in a few moments and felt cheated.

I felt cheated because it was very easy to do but not from where I tried last time. Yes, I know that might not make sense, so just watch the video if you can bear it.

This weeks question was formed from that exact experience. Often you just need to approach a situation with a different tactic and stopping playing and coming back another day is all it needs.

If somebody asked me “Did you cheat when play CtA? I’m not sure what I should say. Technically, I did cheat, but I also beat the section without cheating too.

Thoughts?

Oh, if anybody wants my save file to see if they can pass that section from my exact situation, just le me know. In fact, I might make a mini-challenge from it.