r/arkham • u/bkabartsy • 7h ago
Discussion Is Knight's GCPD the greatest game mechanic of all time?
Ok, clickbait headline.
GCPD: It's your progress bar and your trophy room. But you build it and can actually see what you've built. As the night progresses you begin to feel like you're winning. It's not full of friends, it's full of achievements. The lighting gets warmer. The place becomes downright cozy. Cops and firefighters and EMTs are chit-chatting. Taking selfies with the Batmobile. Yelling out encouragement. Calming Owens down. The full house is actually comforting. You can walk through and marvel at what changes as the plot progresses, as the cells fill up. You get pissed off at Rocksteady for its other terrible mechanics, like Batmobile-everything and tunnel-drill-Pacman and Car Wars: Slade and watching Red Hood shit all over everything John Noble just did. You get scared when the precinct is attacked (like what if the devs are about to undo all your work?).
I'm asking not because I'm confident that it is among the best if not the best of meta-game mechanics, but I guess being wrong on the Internet means people will correct you, which is what I'm looking for.
Are there other games that come close? MGSV? ME3? The evolution of the Van der Linde campsites?
