The Future Is Not Orange.

It seems, that something unfortunate is happening to the enemies of the gaming world. Over the last few years, I have seen it spread like a rash… and even though it only happens to the most vicious and bloodthirsty, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for them sometimes. The disadvantage I am talking about is the notorious Orange Weak Spot (sometimes known as the Yellow Weak Spot), seen on many a monstrous being for a fair few years now. Not red, not blue, not pink, green or grey…. This weakness means that the Mutant is almost certainly not going to win against a heroic dude with a gun and a good eye.

I suppose it’s a good job that these monsters have such an attention grabbing beacon of their weak spots. Who would have known their genetically superior DNA would have thought ‘I could be all powerful and hide this within me, but hey, gotta give whoever’s trying to kill me an actual shot’. When we come to this kind of enemy in-game, you can usually shoot another part of it’s body for hours if you had infinite ammo, and see no consequence other than maybe an NPC screaming ‘It has no effect!’ and ‘You have to shoot the orange bit!’.

So why do so many games use the same means to tell you of a weak spot? I understand that you need to know how to defeat a boss but does it have to be so glaringly obvious? Just in case it is not glaringly obvious, it will be once the dutiful NPC points it out to you. As soon as I see yet another giant with those orange beacons attached to it, I know the fight is probably going to be over in less than five minutes. I’m not saying that any of the games that use this strategy are bad, just that it would be nice for it to be toned down. It would be nice to find out the weak spot in a more creative manner, so I do not feel like my hand is being held when I am figuring out how to bring down an enemy which is most likely a lot bigger, stronger and faster than my character. It would also be nice to discover that the weak spot is not orange.

The fact that these marks only show up in a game if there is some kind of mutated monster in it (I guess they’re the only species that can carry off huge orange growths) only emphasises the fact that we don’t need them so much. We don’t need them at all. Yes, a shooter boss is always going to be a ‘shoot X to kill Y’ affair but it’s not too often that you are sure what to do as soon as you start. I believe that we should say goodbye to Orange Weak Spots and get creative!