PixelLinkr #218: The Story Behind the Puzzle

Hollow Knight makes you defeat your own Shade to get your Geo back. Losing your money apparently isn't enough; now it has a bodyguard who knows you personally. That is an unusually hostile approach to account recovery.

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🟢 Easy: Basketball is the main sport

Games: NBA Street Vol. 2 · NBA 2K16 · Mario Hoops 3-on-3 · NBA Hangtime

NBA Street Vol. 2 uses three-on-three street basketball and layers trick moves over it. NBA 2K16 takes the simulation route. The shared sport survives a very large change in how seriously the players are expected to behave.

Then there's Mario Hoops 3-on-3, developed by Square Enix and populated by both Mario and Final Fantasy characters. The basket remains the important piece of common ground, even when the surrounding cast looks as if two character-select screens collided.

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🟡 Medium: Snap into cover and shoot from behind it

Games: Gears of War 3 · Uncharted 2: Among Thieves · Spec Ops: The Line · Army of Two

Taking a sensible position behind a wall isn't quite the connection. These games give the character a dedicated physical relationship with cover, letting you press against scenery and emerge to fire.

In Uncharted 2, Drake can use aimed shots or blind fire from cover. Army of Two also has a cover system, though engagement needn't use the same button-driven approach as another game. The common mechanic is that attachment to cover, not a universal control layout. These are very committed relationships with masonry.

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🔵 Hard: Steal vehicles to use in the open world

Games: Saints Row 2 · Driver: Parallel Lines · Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction · Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

The vehicles don't have to be yours before you drive them. This row joins open-world games that let players take transport, rather than games that merely contain driving missions.

Driver: Parallel Lines divides its New York story between 1978 and 2006. Its missions include stealing a car and using it in a plan against its owner. Saints Row 2 and Liberty City Stories offer their own criminal approaches to acquiring a ride.

Mercenaries is the useful shift in setting: its sandbox is a fictional conflict in North Korea, and hijacking vehicles is one of the actions available within it. The shared behavior reaches beyond urban crime stories into a war zone.

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🟣 Tricky: Recover lost resources after dying

Games: Hollow Knight · Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order · Salt and Sanctuary · Nioh

Death doesn't necessarily close the account. These games give you a route back to resources you've lost, though the thing you're retrieving and the action required both vary.

In Hollow Knight, defeating the Shade restores Geo and lost Soul capacity. Fallen Order marks the enemy that killed you with a glow; damaging that enemy's health restores the lost XP progress. You don't have to finish the fight to trigger that recovery.

Salt and Sanctuary places lost salt with an enemy you must defeat, while Nioh lets you return for dropped EXP. The click is recognizing the trip back as a shared system. It's a second chance with a journey attached, not a promise that every death costs the same currency.

The walk back is always longer when you can remember exactly which bad decision put you there. For a different sort of competitive punishment, today's CineLinkr sends Slap Shot and Goon onto the ice.