Double-Joint

This could potentially be a full "feature" article where I go into mad detail about loot across different games, but it's not.

I imagine loot to be one of the elementary components of a good game. When buying a game, I am essentially trading money for nothing, its nice to have a false sense of gain as I play. That's not to say that playing has no rewards generally; there is a great sense of accomplishment that can come in a wide variety of flavors from games. Unleashing omnislash on Sephiroth's punk-ass; finally chaining a stage (almost) perfectly in Ikaruga; at last stumbling upon a hidden path in Super Mario; earning your handful of cash from a hard day's work moving boxes with a forklift...

All those things are great rewards for playing a game, but I've recently been enjoying a much more base type of reward: loot. In-game items. Actual virtual objects that you can accumulate. As stupid as it sounds to anyone who hasn't felt satisfaction from this, satisfying it is.

For me, the key aspect that makes one game's loot stand above others is the quality of the icons. This is one of the few times that I really care about the graphics in a game; well drawn icons or well modeled objects takes loot to a whole new level. It's somewhat hard to characterize because the quality of the graphics doesn't have to be objectively good (high-res or high polygon count), but there is just a certain something that particular games really nail.

A good example of this would be DQ VIII. While the different weapons you get are for the most part only minor improvements upon previous weapons (+18 damage vs. +15), they all have distinct icons specific to that weapon. On top of this, weapons are visible on your character as you walk around, and that simple change in appearance gives a strong sense of change and progress, even if the numerical difference is small. This esthetic payoff changes what could be a frustratingly slow progression through weapons into something that is rewarding enough such that the rate doesn't seem like a drag.

 My recent loot fixes have been Treasure World on DS (pure loot), and PsyPets (Tamagotchi + Progress Quest + loot). I hope to write more about those games at some point. Though, I suppose they only marginally fall under the category of 'games'; the term "software toy" would probably be more appropriate, and should totally be brought back.

-Steinkamp