Grappling Hooks

Video games have been around for nearly fifty years now. Over the past few decades, trends have come and trends have gone within video game culture. When games started utilizing open worlds, many other games followed suit. When games decided that climbing mechanics were the next big hit, many games began to replicate this feature in their own way. But there is one game mechanic that no matter how much time passes or what stage in the video game zeitgeist we are in that remains, bar none, the best feature a video game can have. That’s right, we’re talking about grappling hooks.

There is just something so wholesome, so endlessly fun, and so rewarding about being able to traverse a wild terrain by slinging a grappling hook and getting the job done; perhaps there’s only one way to cross a wide ravine surrounded by waterfalls, maybe you need to gain the high ground on an enemy and lunge your katana into their torso from above, maybe you’re being chased by a horde of undead and a quick grappling hook to the rooftops if your best escape, or maybe you just want to see what happens when you grappling hook an enemy soldier and tether them onto a moving helicopter.

Explore the top games of the last fifteen to twenty years that featured grappling hooks and discuss the value of such a useful mechanic while also discussing other games, their mechanics, and how and why those mechanics are inferior (I.e. yellow markers to indicate climbable structures, active building mechanics, stealth mechanics, dual-wielding, etc.).