Game Cameos

Game developers and publishers occasionally do funny things, in an attempt to sell more copies of their game and make money. Sometimes they are ridiculous marketing campaigns, promising things that never arrive in the completed product (the original Assassin's Creed, anything Peter Molyneux is involved with). Sometimes they make extra little games to draw attention (Bulletstorm with Duty Calls), or just draw attention to odd things ("Duke Nukem has been in production for around 12 years, but its coming out! Quick, buy it!").

And sometimes, they insert random character cameos. Oh noes...

A cameo can either work really well as an added little bonus to the game. It can also fall flat on its face, making it seem like a stupid little cash in - or even worse, completely breaking a game and rendering it unplayable.

The "Tales of" RPG series does good cameos. They tend to have characters from other games in the series feature as a special optional boss in the coliseum. This works well because it completely does not intrude upon the game - they have nothing to do with the main plot. Indeed, you could miss the cameo entirely if you do not fight much in the coliseum (there's only one coliseum battle required in Tales of Symphonia. I do not know about the other titles). Once the battle is over, those characters disappear and never appear again. A true cameo role.

Viewtiful Joe also does a decent cameo. You play the entire game through, and unlock Dante, from Devil May Cry, as an alternate character to play as. He has nothing to do with the storyline as it stands regularly (as far as I can recall, anyway), and is completely optional, fun extra.

I have no problems with these cameos. The problem arises when the cameos become stupid, and adversely affect the game.

The single biggest example of this is Soul Calibur 4. It is quite an entertaining game, until you bring Star Wars characters into the mix! Soul Calibur is a sword fighting game with a medieval age type setting. Swords, armour, staves, etc clash in an all out slashfest. Quite entertaining.

So why the HELL did Namco decide to do a deal with George Lucas' people, and add in Darth Vader, Yoda, and the apprentice from The Force Unleashed? These characters affect the game badly in a few ways:
# They have an extra game mechanic which applies only to them - the Force. They have an extra meter as a result.
# They get in the way of random character selection - I like to do the random character selection, but I sure as hell don't want to be playing as Yoda when I do!
# Yoda is both useless, and gamebreaking. If you learn how to use Yoda half-decently, you're essentially immortal because HE IS TOO SHORT TO BE HIT WITH A REGULAR HORIZONTAL ATTACK. They seemingly tried to mitigate this by making every movement of his involve jumping around like a monkey, but seriously this is as bad as Dr B in Tekken 3!
# The Apprentice throws lightning. Nowhere else in the game do I recall seeing a projectile attack.
# Star Wars + medieval fantasy = fail.

Another example of where a cameo didn't make me very happy is the recently released (and banned) Mortal Kombat on the PS3. Kratos from God of War appears in it. At least this time the universe crossover works - Kratos is exactly the kind of guy who belongs in Mortal Kombat, due to the brutality of both their universes. However, I played a few levels as him, and it wasn't executed well at all. In a (mostly) unarmed fighting game, he permanently has weapons. Also, he only seems to have one voice acted line, simply lifted from one of the GoW games.

Seriously devs, if you're going to include a cameo in your game, think it through. Make it an Easter Egg, or a hidden secret that isn't a fundamental part of the game.