Player upgrades are what make video games so engaging and worthwhile, allowing you to unlock new sets of abilities to test out on enemies in thrilling ways during objectives. But these systems don’t have to be just boring skill trees you’re able to access from a game menu or through interacting with uninspired upgrade benches.
They can get really creative and surprise you with their designs, leaving you in complete awe of how someone could’ve thought of having things that way. Whether it’s horror games, fantasy, FPS, or third-person action-adventure, here are some upgrade systems guaranteed to wow you.
10Getting Absorbed And Growing A Vessel
Grime
If you thoughtBlasphemousorHollow Knightpresented strange and intriguing indie Soulslike Metroidvania worlds, Grime has another thing coming. It offers a cosmic horror atmosphere and has you play an unusual protagonist with a black hole for a head that can absorb enemies while they themselves are able to be absorbed.
That’s what will need to happen if you wish to upgrade your character’s stats and traits. There are these giant amethyst quartz-like pillars called Surrogates where crowds of worshippers are gathered, serving as both checkpoints and upgrade stations. Upon interacting with one, you’ll fuse into it and fuse back out of it when you’re finished with upgrades for your vessel.
9Tarsyu Plant Neural Connection
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora
Massive Entertainment found yet another ingenious way to incorporate the neural connection Na’vi have from the queue neural spindles of their ponytails, a vital aspect of the lore and their means of connectingto Pandora’s Great Mother, Eywa. To access ‘Ancestor Skill’ upgrades, your Na’vi character must make this ‘tsaheylu’ connection with Tarsyu flowers scattered all over the map.
Tarsyu plants have giant bulbous pods whose leaves come apart as you approach them to reveal a network of pink petals and plant fibers that your Navi’s queue will attach itself to, taking you to a lotus flower-style UI menu of skills and upgrades. Withkeeping Frontiers of Pandora canon to the movies, this is only available for the video game’s Sarentu Clan.
8Recipe Crafting Resident Evil Merchant Style
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evilturned into a bit ofCooking Mamawith its eighth mainline installment,Village, where you can now actually upgrade Ethan and give him abilities like increased health and speed or decreased damage on top of health aides. Putting the word ‘survival’ in survival horror, this is achieved through recipe crafting with the meat you get from hunting animals.
Unlike the shady merchant in Resident Evil 4, The Duke is a foodie and a culinary expert who can cook you up dishes such as ‘herbed fish,’ ‘bird and breast pilaf,’ or something more fancy like ‘Sarmale de Peste,’ with mouth-watering descriptions to follow them. The game treats you to some splendid meals and abilities courtesy of The Duke’s Kitchen.
7NORA The Upgrade Fridge
Atomic Heart
Atomic Heartaimed to be the successor of the originalBioShocktrilogy, and it certainly accomplished that with its premise, FPS gameplay, and the way it incorporates powers like shock and lifting enemies off the ground, here called Polymer abilities. What’s different is the more blatantly explicit way of getting to them.
The machineresponsible for your weapon upgradesand polymeric powers is an extremely inappropriate Soviet AI-powered fridge called NORA, which attempts to be as seductive as possible when accessing her menus and interface. Developer Mundfish even doubled down on this raunchy side character of a fridge and launchedthe Annihilation Instinct DLC dedicated to NORA.
6Eliminating Visionaries Over And Over
Deathloop
Whenever there’s a time loop mechanic in a game that features some form of combat, it means it’s usually bordering onroguelike genre territory. You can certainly think that ofDeathloop, based on how the upgrades work for Cole Vahn, but the game still puts its own unique spin on things.
You have what are called slabs, which give different types of powers like teleportation, invisibility, and karnesis to lift enemies, but to advance the tiers for these and gain new abilities with them, you have to target specific Visionaries and keep killing them every loop to get the next slab upgrade. It’s an unconventional FPS way of upgrading that works well with the story.
Defeating Julianna will also drop a random slab upgrade as an alternative to killing Visionaries.
5DMV Slot Machine Jackpot Mechanic
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 And Reunion
The prequel to the originalFinal Fantasy 7, Crisis Core and its 2022 remaster game adapt a casino-style slot machine system when it comes to unlocking new levels of abilities or using special moves.
Your party members' faces appear in the top corner of the screen, and whenever the jackpot of a 777 sequence comes, your protagonist gets a chance at an upgrade. This is almost the same in the remaster, though Crisis Core: FF7 Reunion decided to expand it to any sequence of three numbers and also connected it to the lore by labeling it a DMV (Digital Mind Wave).
Spinning a ‘777’ automatically levels up the character in both Crisis Core versions.
4Tatau
Far Cry 3
Tattoos are fairly common in games for cosmetic reasons. There are probably even plenty of video game protagonists you can think ofthat have iconic tattoos. Well, Jason Brody fromFar Cry 3might be one of them, but not for the reasons you might think. His tattoos signal skill upgrades.
You have three distinct upgrade tiers based on the Heron, Shark, and Spider skill trees, which count as tattoo designs (referred to as “Tatau” in the Rakyat culture of the Rook Islands) that fill out on Jason’s arm with each acquired skill. Tatau aren’t inked on by an NPC, but instead magically burned into the flesh, and you can also see the pattern from the menu.
3The Upgrade Chair And Jars Of Green Gel
The Evil Within Series
WhileThe Evil Withinis already a disturbing survival horror game that learns from the genre’s greats like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, it definitely did not need to have its skill tree and weapon upgrades be quite as disturbing. But alas, it was, and it’s now one of the most memorable parts of the game.
Basically, you collect mysterious green ooze dropped by enemies throughout the game, which already comes magically packaged in a jar for you. And you’ll deposit the green gel when you take your seat in the creepy ‘Old Sparky’ electric chair, which offers the menu and straps Sebastian in with restraints and a helmet to administer a shock whenever a skill purchase transpires.
2Lunchboxes, Words Of Power Graffiti, Flashlight, And Mindscapes
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2is an excellent achievement in survival horror, but it’s alsoone of the weirdest games you may playbecause of its wildly out-there mechanics and upgrade systems from the Lynchian-inspired design by Sam Lake and Remedy. There’s a live-action musical, a coffee-themed amusement park, and character-switching utilizing a janitor’s bucket to portal between dimensions.
Since you play as two different protagonists, FBI agent Saga Anderson and titular troubled author Alan Wake, there are two different ways to upgrade, both incredibly unlike anything. Saga must collect manuscript pieces from fictional character Alex Casey-licensed lunchboxes (who’s also her partner), and Alan has to shine a light on agraffiti spiral pattern of words like ‘Words of War’ or ‘Words of Fix’hidden in areas around the Dark Place.
To get the upgrades, Saga has to enter the Mind Place in her head and interact with a counter where there are weapons and ammo magazines.
Alan, on the other hand, must enter his Writer’s Room and access Words of Power note cards from a desk drawer to select upgrades.
1Majima Everywhere
Yakuza Kiwami
TheYakuzagames never shy away from delivering some very over-the-top skills and heavily unique ways of earning them. Just look athow Infinite Wealth’s job system works. But the most hilariously outrageous and iconic of them all will always be the Majima Everywhere system in 2016’s Yakuza Kiwami.
Goro Majima and Kazuma Kiryu areone of gaming’s best duosand this is the fun game mechanic that proves it. Kiryu has to unlock his forgotten Dragon Style abilities only by engaging in a series of fights with Majima, who keeps showing up literally everywhere on the map, a mix of hiding in trashcans and putting on disguises.
