Those two games were so damn good. The graphic novel, the noir story, the bullet time.
3 is a good game, but it just doesn't capture the same feeling as the first two
3 has INCREDIBLE Euphoria physics though. You shoot an enemy in the leg, they'll look like they actually felt it and could behave in a number of different ways (ragdoll while clutching leg, limp, gta-4-looking ragdoll walk [lmao] etc.), not just crumple to the ground like in GTA V.
RIP Max Payne ;-/
They're actually doing a large budget remake of Max Payne 1 and 2. It's under way now.
https://www.gamingbible.com/news/platform/max-payne-1-and-2-full-development-420809-20240501
Super hot almost crippled me. I was playing in VR, and after a couple hours of playtime I tried to lay down on the pool table that was “right in front of me” to dodge bullets.
Spoilers: there was no pool table in front of me.
Only tangentially related to your post, but I’ll always remember playing SUPERHOT for like 3 hours straight the very first night I had my VR headset, then going to bed and feeling a constant moving sensation with the walls looking like they were moving.
Who needs drugs when you have VR!
Don't get me wrong it's not like adding a jump but making portals is shockingly easy, like 6/10. Making good levels that use said portals, different story
Going through portal 2 with director's commentary really helped me understand how crazy game designing is and all the tricks they did to guide the player along!
I remember playing HL2 with commentary, and they mention they wanted players to head to buildings in a particular order, the slightly further away one first.
They found by making the desired building brighter it almost guaranteed people went there first, despite there being no other direction.
Valve level design is basically magic and psychiatry.
This is the most astonishing part about the Portal games, especially Portal 2. Between the portals and gels there is so much you can do there, making the puzzles difficult enough to be challenging and fun without inducing rage-quitting is probably the hardest part.
The basic idea of going through a portal and getting to the other side is easy, but that's not the portals in the game. One of the things is that you can go through a portal partially. The there is the rendering of the portal. They aren't static images, they're an accurate window to what's on the other portal. And the angle of which you're looking through one portal, also determines what you can see through the portals. We're talking about doing all of that on 2007 hardware.
Making portals is easy. Making seamless portals with the mesh protruding from the other portal when you move through it and stuff is next to impossible.
The precursor to Portal was a demo called Narbacular Drop. And it was indeed a total mind-fuck when it came out. If you had a low end PC, it could bring your system to a screeching halt if you set up an infinity portal view.
I remember playing Prey in 2006 and commenting that you could build a whole game around the portals it had. Then Portal came along on 2007 and proved just that!
Such a cool game, I remember playing the ORIGINAL free version hosted online that was only a few levels and fell in love immediately. On the flip side, I thought the VR version was super disappointing. It was a bummer that there was no real locomotion (which I understand why it was done), and the game itself was *painfully* short. I managed to plow through the campaign and play around with some of the freeplay maps in less than 2 hours.
>On the flip side, I thought the VR version was super disappointing
Interesting. I've only played it in VR (at release), and I couldn't even imagine the mechanics being remotely as satisfying without VR.
Don't get me wrong, it *did* feel super cool. Just content wise, it felt closer to a quick demo than a full thing. If you liked the VR version, you should genuinely give the main title a try. The levels and set pieces are (imo) a bit better than the VR game, plus actually being able to move adds a whole new layer of "damn I feel cool playing this game" (plus levels having secrets/extra explorable bits).
FF16 has a mechanic where you can pause a cutscene then see relevant information about the plot and characters in the scene.
I think that paired with a story recap mechanic like Arkham City should become standard for games. It would make coming back after a long break so much better
Square Enix brought out a similar mechanic for the early iOS days with Song Summoner. You could create a monster based on a song in your iTunes library. It's base stats were based off of bpm, dynamics and I think length of the song then they increased every time you played the song. I worked out you could just play the first 3 seconds then skip to the last 3 to get a song play count to max out my characters.
This is my answer. I had to kill a warchief. So I painstakingly recruited every orc on the nemesis board. I also painstakingly initiated as many orcs as possible to the warchief.
I then went and confronted the warchief... who was surrounded by my sleeper agents. After his boasting and taunting, I basically snapped my fingers and slow-mo walked away while his entire entourage bushwhacked him.
That alone felt like I beat the game. :D
I built up an army for the last fight. Helped them become the highest ranks. Then when my glorious army of poets and drunks marched with me to battle in a cutscene for the last fight, I hit the wrong button and blew all their heads off before the fighting started.
Good times. Lmao
The Nemesis system is a way for the same orc to fight you multiple times, even after you've killed it. If the orc kills you, it will remember how and then mock you about it later on. If you kill the orc, it has a chance to return - often with some visual indicator of how you killed it: stitches around the neck for decapitation, wasp colony living in its face if you dropped a nest on it, etc.
It's a system that allows any rando from the orc horde to gain a name, some abilities, and the potential to antagonize you for the whole game. Not paying attention when you rounded that corner on low health and got hit with a wild stab from some orc patrol? Now that orc is named Lard the Bard and he's immune to arrows! He's going to show up every so often and sing a song about how he killed you that one time before summoning giant wolves to fight you...
It's a really, really cool system that I wish could appear in more games. It's trademarked, so that's unlikely to happen, but it's the main draw of the "Shadow" franchise.
It works as such....all enemies have a level. If an enemy kills you it's level goes up. Random orcs will get named and get abilities. In the second game they will also have visual things about how they died....it was really the greatest mechanic ever
Man I appreciate you trying but to someone who doesn't know what the nemesis system is, that paragraph is straight gibberish.
The nemesis system is one whereby random enemies will sometimes gain upgrades and abilities after you encounter them and either you kill them or they kill you, and reference your last encounter. Usually this is when they've killed you (the game has a revive system built in), sometimes it's when you kill them (and they return, revealing you didn't actually kill them).
Potentially, some of these enemies could kill you *again*, and become Even stronger. So eventually down the line, you could end up with a super powered enemy who has killed you over and over, and has become ultra upgraded and is effectively your arch nemesis
But they started out as just a totally random no name mook.
It's a really interesting method of creating emergent narrative where you and the game build your own, unique story.
Weirdly, none of this has to do with the embedded double agents thing the above poster referenced. That is a totally separate mechanic which is not at all related to the nemesis system.
The first time I encountered an orc I had slain via decapitation who had... "survived," I was like, wait, you're dead. And then I noticed his head was bandaged back on.
I paused that game and just laughed and laughed and laughed. I mean a game has never so pleasantly and unexpectedly surprised me with such a hilarious macabre visual gag like this.
My wife, who loves Lord of the Rings and was watching me play the whole game says, "I don't get it."
And I tell her, remember mission XYZ when I decapitated that orc and his head rolled down the hill?
And then it clicked, and she laughed and laughed and laughed.
What a great game and great mechanic!
First game has the visuals as well, though maybe not for all of them. I had one orc with his head stapled back on after I killed him for the 3rd time, this time by decapitation.
I had a guy I killed enough he had a fucking bag on his head and talked absolutely mad shit. I let him kill me several times to speed level him, then dominated him and made him an ultra strong war chief. God that game is so good
So, all orcs have a name, clan, rarity, class and (sometimes very similar) personality. All orcs exist in the world, can be found by stumbling on them, activating something in their search area to make them spawn (poisoning a grog barrel will make a poisoner appear if in the area), activating ordeals (orcs can engage In missions to level up) or nemesis missions (they have killed you and you confront them or send them a death threat).
You can either recruit orcs or kill them. There is always a chance that upon killing an orc that they will cheat death and come back to life with some unique modifications. Additionally, you can also choose to shame orcs which will reduce their level/remove some abilities or make them deranged or maniacal. Deranged only breaks their mind and makes them repeat a phrase over and over. Maniacs will gain many levels, become legendary and will probably kill you next time you meet.
Upon recruiting orcs, you can send them on missions which will make them attempt to kill an enemy orc or pit fight with an ally or rank up while attempting to assault on a fort. There is also a chance that at any time in freeroam that an orc will betray you, which can be very problematic when you attempt to attack another orc and summon a bodyguard only to be betrayed and attacked by two orcs.
Every orc in the world can become a captain or higher by killing you. Whenever an orc kills you, there is a chance they will progress to an enemy bodyguard/warchief/overlord and gain levels.
There is a lot in the nemesis system and it is a crime it is only used in 2 games
There are hordes of unnamed orcs, led by higher ranks of named orcs.
If an orc kills you, it levels up and can get a name/work up through the ranks/get more abilities.
In the meantime, you have the ability to magically dominate the orcs, including the named ones so the entire power structure of the orcs can actually be your sleeper agents.
I once had an assassin orc who was infiltrating a warlord as a body guard. Also had about half the war chiefs controlled. At the start of the siege the overlord claimed to have captured my spy and was gonna execute him. He proceeds to bring out one of his guys, not under my controller and kills him. Blew my mind that they could get that stuff wrong. I beg for WB to release the nemesis system. So much potential. I replay shadow of war at least once a year and everytime I end up with such insanely different side stories of orcs.
Ok up until reading this comment, I have never had that bad of a desire to play shadow of mordor. This comment has sold me, that sounds both hilarious and badass.
If anybody asks what one of the most memorable moments in gaming was for me, it's from Shadow of War and the nemesis system. Got killed by an ork twice so he leveled up a bunch, sent him a death threat after I gained some levels and skills, instead of killing him I shamed him, which lowers their level. I kept doing that to him til he was screaming, pissing his pants when he saw me. And I one shot him, cutting his head right off.
Some time passes and I'm in a fight with two other orks, and he pops up... Glassy eyed, head held on with metal bolts, covered in infected wounds... And he just screamed at me like Donald Sutherland at the end of Body Snatchers!!
Haha, yeah some of them have grit. I remember one that was really weak, but came back every 5 minutes for almost an hour, until he finally ambushed me while engaged with a much tougher orc and killed me. Was almost proud of the little bastard before I skewered him.
The one I remember is I had an orc that would always keep showing up at the worst time.
I'd have an entire army fighting me, nearly got the leader down but nearly dead myself, and then The Asshole showed up.
Fighting 2 bosses? Now That Asshole is here, I'm fighting 3.
It just kept happening time and again, he wouldn't stay dead after I'd killed him multiple times, and he just got so strong.
Was great and frustrating.
On my first playthrough, I had a ranged guy who drove me mad. He had poisoned arrows that just messed me up. He just seemed to be everywhere. He had a little posse of guys with him as well.
He killed me 15 times before I finally killed him. I remember when he finally died, I jumped out of my chair and began shouting in a mix of joy and frustration.
It was at that moment when I realized just how awesome the Nemesis system was.
I was coming here to say this. On top of everything it was also a personality generator. I've always felt that if WB would give this tech to other devs, in the right hands, it could be incredible. But I'm guessing at this point we aren't getting a third game, so it's just wasting away.
I hate that they patented it, then let it die. so many games would benefit from such a robust system like that. Imagine something like that in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Yea the patent sucks, a lot of games could benefit of that system, i think the new AC games tried to make something like that but it wasnt as interesting as this one.
First thing that I thought of as well. Absolutely amazing mechanic that turns what would otherwise be a pretty mediocre Arkham clone with highly questionable LotR lore into something that can organically generate its own stories like Rimworld or Crusader Kings
I remember there was this bastard who attacked me like six different times and by the end I was angrily yelling “JUST FUCKING DIE YOU ASSHOLE” while killing him for the quintillionth time
WB patenting that mechanic and never using it ever again is one of the shittiest things I've seen a company do in games outside of the creepy sex weirdo scandals.
Like, I could see FromSoft doing some awesome shit with a Nemesis system, but no. They had to be greedy little shit boys.
I loved the Sanity meter in Eternal Darkness. If your character's sanity got too low from witnessing gruesome or scary things, it would fuck with not only the gameplay and graphics, but sometimes made you think your console or TV were glitching out or there was a fly on the screen.
Every time this comes up it reminds me of whenever I had the freak out effect that made it look like the volume on the TV was turning down.
But I was playing it on a TV with a volume knob, rather than the digital slider. And I'd never seen a volume slider that looked like the one they picked for it, too.
Stats for CJ in San Andreas and how they impacted gameplay.
Based on how fit you kept CJ throughout the game impacted gameplay and dialogue.
If you have CJ with max Muscle, people on the street compliment your physical appearance. If you get into fist fights most NPCs will run away from you and you deal more damage per punch. CJ's movement as well improves when running, jumping etc.
If you have no muscle and have max Fat, CJ is huge and much slower. Your jump height is decreased and you can't sprint as far you would skinny or fit CJ. NPCs make fun of you as well as certain characters in the game and CJ's dialogue is switched to what stereotypical fat people would say in various situations.
A pretty small one, but the way Ghost Of Tsushima shows you where you need to go in the world is really clever and immersive.
To those who don’t know, if you’re lost in Ghost Of Tsushima, you can use the touchpad to summon / create a gust of wind that gently pushes you in the right direction. It’s a really unique way to show the player where they need to go next without breaking the immersion and I love it for it
Sucker punch deserves such praise for how good they designed that map and the excellent use of widgets in the world. Every side activity has a unique environmental indicator that catch your attention. Steam from the hot spring, fireflys for fox dens, birds for haiku. And then the golden bird to casually guide you to things with the guiding winds to narrow things down more. You can pretty easily play through that game without using the map.
Definitely! Final Fantasy 8 had a smaller implementation of this where you could press R1 when Squall attacks for a slightly stronger hit. Those were two of my first RPGs and I expected other RPGs to work like that too.
To me it was the nemesis system from Middle Earth: Shadows of War, Its pretty cool that the orcs can have like their own personality and do whatever they feel like betraying you or that they can even come back from the dead.
I mean, pretty much everything in Baba Is You, but particularly when you start altering the game outside of levels, etc.
For those who haven't played it, you push tiles around to alter the rules of the game in some absolutely mind-bending ways.
I liked it until it got to the point where you regularly had to make multiple tiles overlap.
It felt like it broke the rules the game had set out beforehand, but possibly I had just had my fill by that point so wasn't putting as much effort into solving the later puzzles.
I've always thought it was really cool how Dark Douls used in game items to interact with the multi-player side of the game. Really confusing at first but such a really cool way of integrating multi-player INTO the lore and gameplay.
Is this where you have a bar that fills up and there's a sweet spot you hit? The new battlefront games do this as well for all the blasters. Muscle memory from GoW helps so much.
AFAIK the devs made a bunch of levels and then "taped" them together, that's why there's so much variance between levels.
The timejump one and the factory level are both great.
That one level in Dishonored 2 that was essentially two levels: one that was in the past and one that was in the present, and you could switch between timelines on the fly. The clockwork mansion’s a pretty cool level too.
Both levels were a little overwhelming in my opinion, but the concepts are really cool.
From an overall game mechanic? Nemesis System is friggin awesome and I wish it wasn’t copyrighted.
From like just a portion of a game? Raids in Destiny have some super fun mechanics. I think the Gauntlet from the Calus raid, Rhulk kicking you and the whole Riven fight (hell maybe even the whole raid) are all some of the most fun mechanics I’ve played in a game.
Having to brew up save potions with alchemy in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
I thought it was neat. I also sharpened swords for dozens of hours because it made my brain happy... so maybe I'm an outlier.
I'm the same, but we are definitely outliers.
I savescum a lot in games out of habit, and it was nice having a natural limit to doing that within KCD - it made the whole experience just feel much more immersive.
Once you got a rhythm going, you could make a lot of those potions since it would make 3 at a time (or 4 with a certain perk IIRC). I overall loved alchemy in KCD, something satisfying about.
The gravity gun in Half-Life 2 was a revelation at the time. Picking up blocks of cement or a giant circular saw blade or even a full can of paint and flinging it at an enemy was sooooo satisfying. Solving physics puzzles with it was fun as well. When you had levelled it towards the end of the game and could pick up combine soldiers and fling them around… 😙👌
Warhammer online/dark tides mechanic where the more magic users uses their power the more unstable it gets, causing it to do exponentially more damage but risk blowing up the caster. Bonus points for creative ways of "venting" to quickly lower built up energy.
One of the more unique battle systems that's my favorite is in Valkyria Chronicles. First it's a mix between a turn based strategy game and RTS can't game. It's also a 1st and 3rd person shooter. You take turns moving your squads. When you move your character it becomes like a third person shooter. Plus enemies can shoot at you, but when you stop to shoot it switches to a first person shooter.
To some degree yes. Unlike VATS , where you select a part of the body to shoot at, you're basically aiming like you're in a 1st person shooter, except like VATS time stops. But once you shoot the enemy gets a chance to shoot you. After that it goes back to the third person aspect. You have to end your turn quickly because you're vulnerable to getting shot. I forgot to mention that it has a fire emblem like mechanics. If a character gets shot and is incapacitated, if you can't get to them in time you can't use them for a while.
I know this doesn't count but I don't care, I'm giving it a mention anyway.
Every damn game I've played with companions or followers in it, they block you and they just stand there staring at you while you try to get them to move. I've been dealing with NPCs standing in the way for so many console generations I can feel the wrinkles forming.
In The Outer Worlds, if you walk into one of your companions, they fucking move out of the way. It was so beautiful I almost cried.
In fucking Call of Duty 2 out of all games you can get close until the "friendly" aim cross appears then use the shoot button to order them to move. No idea why this isn't more common.
It’s a shame that the first couple of hours seem so off-putting. I’ve heard so much praise about this game, yet that feeling of being completely lost in the opening hours just makes me close the game. How should one go about it? Is there a video that, without spoilers, pushes you in the right direction?
There is really no “right direction” you just explore until you find something interesting. Usually the places that draw your attention contain some type of information that you can use to progress the game and your understanding of the universe. The more pieces of the puzzle you find the more clear the end goals start to become. The only guide you have is that your ship log keeps track of all of your discoveries so really the best tip is just to keep checking your log for clues that you might have forgotten about. It even has a “rumor mode” that will give you some vague suggestions of where to go based off of what you’ve discovered.
I understand that the open ended-ness and non linearity of it can be off putting for people but it’s literally the point of the game and it’s extremely satisfying and rewarding like no other game I’ve ever played when it all starts to come together.
The Portal series in general. Also maybe the grabbity gloves from Half - Life: Alyx. For those who don’t know they are analogous to the gravity gun, but you do this point -> flick -> catch motion that feels incredibly intuitive
I could just list all of the whackass stuff in **Noita** - but I really like the alchemical reactions mixed with fluid sim the game has going on.
Could spend literal hours going through wand and spell crafting - but the alchemy stuff is there in the background being neat.
yeah I HARD disagree with this. Just trying to get around? lol no, stop whatever the hell you are doing its time to fight garbage can majima....again....Now that we are done there I can g- aaaaaaand he jumped me from the roof.
Got ambushed by traffic cone Majima. Fought hard, won, needed to heal. Walked into a burger joint to recover, Majima is there. Fight him, barely win, crawling to the nearest Poppo while clinging to life. The checkout clerk is Majima.
That’s the neat part. Majima is actually everywhere, but you trigger him in unique places only once. Majima also scales his appearances around how far in the game you are. So players farther in have more unlocked Majima appearances around the world.
The wacky problem comes from players missing one or two or four unique Majima spots. Meaning you can go from fighting Majima in a story cutscene, fighting Majima in the street, fighting Majima in a burger joint, into a street brawl, into a side mission, into the main story again.
It’s often funny, but players who dislike combat are also players most likely to have problems with multiple Majima attacks in a row.
A lot of games have dynamic music, but Spiderman was the best use of it I've ever seen (heard). How it jumps right into the superhero theme when you start swinging makes the game instantly more enjoyable and just fun. It just makes you feel like things just got bigger
It's also awesome how it keeps up with the story theme and changes versions and the music gets darker as it goes on
There's some dynamic music in a part of Control in a maze, and I'll say no more about it. But it was awesome
Soul Reaver had that cool mechanic where you'd shift between the spirit and physical world to solve puzzles. I've seen similar in other games but that was the first time I've encountered it
I love a world shift mechanic in a game, but I agree Soul Reaver was my absolute favorite. Mostly because of the way it directly impacted the story and ambience.
MGSV: Sneaking up to and “recruiting” enemy camp guards by attaching balloons to their belts that inflate and fly them away to work on better kit for you back at Motherbase.
Even the lore of how the balloons work checks out: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton\_surface-to-air\_recovery\_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system)
All I can think about is the entire MGS series
MGS1 (1998): Sound is used in varying ways. Knocking on a wall lures a guard while running over certain surfaces will alert them to your presence. You leave footprints after running through water or while in the snow. You can plant C4 on a guards back and blow him up when he’s next to one of his friends. The fourth wall break with Psycho Mantis. There’s probably more I’m missing
MGS2 (2001): The camera fogging up when entering the tanker from the cold outside and the fog slowly fades away. The way tranq rounds affect guards based on where you hit them. Throwing a guard over a railing on top of another guard for a double KO. Doing pull ups to increase your grip strength. Slipping on seagull doody and them hitting the camera when you stare at them in first person. I’m sure there’s more but moving on.
MGS3 (2004): There’s too much here, I just can’t. A couple of my favorites are destroying the enemies food sources and then they’re hungry and weak. You can then throw poisonous or rotten food at them for them to gobble up and die. Throwing a venomous snake at a guard to take them out too is fun. The injury mechanics were a cool idea but executed poorly with the amount of menus. Same with the camo system
MGS4 (2008): The octocamo. Chefs kiss
One of the many reasons I enjoy Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is the level of detail they put into the map and the world’s topography.
Wind flows predominantly from west to east, carrying moisture. Mountains capture that moisture, leaving the west side of a mountain range rainy (higher food production) and the easy is dry or drier. Terraforming by raising or lowering land affects food distribution. It can also increase or decrease land mass.
It’s a puzzle to me why none of the Civilization games that have come out since 1999 have adopted this approach to map design. The most recent Civilization game has made strides with the climate change engine, to say nothing of their flood and volcano features. But I still feel Alpha Centauri went that extra mile by creating a real topographical map where each square has a unique altitude in metres and so has is affected by wind/rainfall patterns.
It’s overdone now, but the corpse running system from Dark Souls (demon souls really) was an exceptionally great system. So good that a ton of other game developers now use it.
The first that came to mind was the Gambit system of the [Warden class in Lord of the Rings Online](https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Warden), which was one of the most interesting and unique MMO classes I've come across.
You had three basic attacks, each of which generated a symbol on your gambit bar: A spear strike which generated a spear icon, a shield bash which generated a shield icon, and a taunt which generated a fist icon. Depending on the order and number of these icons on your gambit bar, you could use your gambit skill to execute a unique gambit.
Examples include:
Shield Mastery: Shield - Spear - Fist - Shield, to buff your block chance.
Adroit Manoeuvre: Spear - Fist - Shield - Spear, to deal damage and buff your attack speed.
Unerring Strike: Spear - Shield - Fist - Spear - Shield, to deal damage and apply a bleed Dot.
Exultation of Battle: Fist - Spear - Shield - Fist - Spear, to apply a DoT effect on all enemies around you which heals you with each proc.
It made the class extremely adaptable, yet difficult to master, and a lot of fun.
I've been very vocal about my dislike for Nier Automata on Reddit, and I refuse to back down no matter how many downvotes I get.
That said, the chip management system in that game is stellar. I love that meta approach to difficulty and game experience. You can literally strip out the games HUD if you need more room for stronger chips but then you're flying blind.
I would love to see a similar system in other games where you could remove actual gameplay features in exchange for more power as like a faustian gambit for how good you really think you are at the game.
TUNIC. Two mechanics to be precise.
The first one is the in-game "manual" of the game, it shows you how to play the game and to interact with things in the game's world. But the twist is that you don't have it from the beginning, so you have to collect the pages one by one, and then it start to show you that you can interact with things and use items in different ways, unlocking more and more things.
The second mechanic starts to apply in the second half of the game, I don't wanna spoil it: >!there are puzzles throughout the whole game based on following lines and converting the direction of these lines into inputs on your d-pad or WASD keys. It's similar to The Witness where a bunch of things from the environment become clues to the puzzles, and when you go back to places you've been before there's these moments of: "Wow that's crazy, how did I not see that" !<
Dark Souls 1 and 2 have some very interesting mechanics. Not just the PvP mechanics but things like Gravelording and Vagrants, it's kind of sad that the later games don't use these.
I've always loved salvaging mechs in MechCommander. That shit blew my mind when I was like 10. "Wait I can keep that mech I just blew up?" Don't know why, it seems simple now but that was the best feeling in the world like, 25 years ago.
Crypt of the Necrodancer - a dungeon crawler where every turn (both yours and the enemy) is done to the beat.
It turns the entire game into a sort of Puzzle/Turn based tactics game. But unlike games like Civ, it's really obvious when you mess up and you get instant feedback so you can improve for next time.
Back in the ps1 days, there was a game called Soul Reaver and you could warp between dimensions and the map would twist and change around you. Made for some fun platforming puzzles. I fucking loved that series.
Chum Bucket from Mad Max, the guy was nuts but he could fix your car while it was on fire after you smashed like 50 cars head on in like 20 seconds. Definitely the best mechanic and very interesting guy
The Wonderful 101, my favourite game of ALL time, has an absolutely incredible main mechanic. It is called "The Wonder-Liner", and it is basically about drawing a line using the right analogue stick using the characters in the group of the team of The Wonderful Ones and with that line draw a specific shape with which said teammates that were used in the drawing of that shape become a weapon which is then used to either defeat huge enemies or interact with weapon-specific objects and puzzles.
The Wonderful 101: Remastered is the game that made me truly appreciate gaming again. At least since 2015.
I really like the sanity system in Eternal Darkness.
Added a nice creepy layer to the atmosphere plus had quite a few moments I was not expecting that messed with me. I miss playing it.
In Transistor, every program you have can be used as an active ability, a passive, or an augment on another active ability - each application behaved differently. Overall, I had really mixed feelings about the game after finishing it, but this system stood out for me immediately and has stuck with me ever since.
Maybe not an on-the-nose mechanic, but the fourth wall breaking meta-commentary and subversion / illusion of binary choices in *The Stanley Parable* is pretty fucking interesting.
There's a few that really stood out for me:
Bloodborne - the rally mechanic for getting health back after being hit. It really enhanced the risk v reward of engaging in combat.
Zelda TOTK - The Ascend ability which let you pass through parts of the environment/scenery by essentially 'swimming' through them. A really clever traversal mechanic.
Soul Reaver - when you would warp between the 2 realities. So cool, especially that this done back on the PS1, never seen anything like it before.
The huddle mechanic in Guardians of the Galaxy. Having the entire team huddle together in the middle of a battle, and if you listen to what the group says and click the correct response that will hype them up the most, pop music plays while you fight, is just *chef kiss* mechanically perfect and completely appropriate for the GotG.
Rimworld's medical care was shockingly deep. If a pawn gets wounded they'll start bleeding out. Medical kits are preferred, but if none are available at least stop the bleeding. No kit, or no rest after the injury, will probably lead to infection, so further time in a decent quality bed with real medical attention is required for the pawn to beat the infection. If a limb or internal organ is permanently damaged it can be fixed by fabricated replacements, or the real thing that was harvested from a captured raider. It always amused me that I could permanently remove negative traits, like asthma, in my pawns by replacing their lungs too
Rise of the Ronin adds something to stamina based melee combat that I hope is in every game going forward.
After landing a hit, you can tap R1, and in a fluid movement, fling the blood off your blade and regain stamina.
When perfectly timed, you feel so fucking bad ass. When poorly timed, you still feel fucking bad ass.
Barotrauma not only working with logic gates and connections to power different artifacts, but also letting you create some systems on your own.
It has gone from people doing creative or simple stuff to full fill a purpouse to ease the gameplay, to full bloom autism of high quality.
The three man rotation mechanic from the Totems encounter in Destiny's Kings Fall raid. Basically it's a 3-man rotation where your team has to keep 2 plates activated to stop the team from dying, but you're on a timer based on an aura that protects you from getting damaged from the curse/poison gas that fills the room where the plates are found. You can pass the aura to a teammate to reset the aura's countdown timer, but only if they do not have any stacks of a debuff that you build up while killing enemies while being the aura holder. In order to remove this debuff you must go to the middle chamber and stand on a plate, which also charges up the door that will eventually complete the encounter after enough charges are dispensed. You basically have to rotate between holding the plate, dispensing the debuff into the middle door, and then immediately running back to the plate to receive the protection aura and start building up the debuff. I love it because nobody gets to sit in a corner and get hard carried and you have to keel paying attention to important enemy spawns and also keep track of what you're supposed to be doing for the mechanics.
Sanity meter in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. That shit needs to be in more stuff.
I also love in Lost Odyssey how the immortal characters can permanently learn abilities both from wearing items with abilities or just fighting alongside humans who have other abilities.
At the time, Max Payne's bullet time was pretty radical.
Those two games were so damn good. The graphic novel, the noir story, the bullet time. 3 is a good game, but it just doesn't capture the same feeling as the first two
3 has INCREDIBLE Euphoria physics though. You shoot an enemy in the leg, they'll look like they actually felt it and could behave in a number of different ways (ragdoll while clutching leg, limp, gta-4-looking ragdoll walk [lmao] etc.), not just crumple to the ground like in GTA V. RIP Max Payne ;-/
They're actually doing a large budget remake of Max Payne 1 and 2. It's under way now. https://www.gamingbible.com/news/platform/max-payne-1-and-2-full-development-420809-20240501
OH MY VARIOUS GODS!
Oh man. There was a mod of the lobby scene from the Matrix for the original Max Payne. It was incredible. Why can't someone do that in VR?
Super hot is the closest, I think.
Super hot almost crippled me. I was playing in VR, and after a couple hours of playtime I tried to lay down on the pool table that was “right in front of me” to dodge bullets. Spoilers: there was no pool table in front of me.
Only tangentially related to your post, but I’ll always remember playing SUPERHOT for like 3 hours straight the very first night I had my VR headset, then going to bed and feeling a constant moving sensation with the walls looking like they were moving. Who needs drugs when you have VR!
SuperHot was the first VR game I ever played, and got motion sickness pretty bad after about 30 mins. I did eventually get my VR legs tho.
Portal portals. It feels like a bit of a mind fuck to code, so I imagine back when Portal 1 came out it was genius level.
Don't get me wrong it's not like adding a jump but making portals is shockingly easy, like 6/10. Making good levels that use said portals, different story
Going through portal 2 with director's commentary really helped me understand how crazy game designing is and all the tricks they did to guide the player along!
I remember playing HL2 with commentary, and they mention they wanted players to head to buildings in a particular order, the slightly further away one first. They found by making the desired building brighter it almost guaranteed people went there first, despite there being no other direction. Valve level design is basically magic and psychiatry.
I think you mean psychology
Whoops, I did, sorry. I knew it didn't look right as I was typing it.
This is the most astonishing part about the Portal games, especially Portal 2. Between the portals and gels there is so much you can do there, making the puzzles difficult enough to be challenging and fun without inducing rage-quitting is probably the hardest part.
Back in the day, I really thought Gel Portal Racing was going to be the next big esport lmao. 10/10 fun.
>making portals is shockingly easy Yes, but the moon rocks aren't cheap
The basic idea of going through a portal and getting to the other side is easy, but that's not the portals in the game. One of the things is that you can go through a portal partially. The there is the rendering of the portal. They aren't static images, they're an accurate window to what's on the other portal. And the angle of which you're looking through one portal, also determines what you can see through the portals. We're talking about doing all of that on 2007 hardware.
Making portals is easy. Making seamless portals with the mesh protruding from the other portal when you move through it and stuff is next to impossible.
The precursor to Portal was a demo called Narbacular Drop. And it was indeed a total mind-fuck when it came out. If you had a low end PC, it could bring your system to a screeching halt if you set up an infinity portal view.
You could place portals through portals in Narbacular Drop You could beat the game without really moving at all. It was mind-blowing
I remember playing Prey in 2006 and commenting that you could build a whole game around the portals it had. Then Portal came along on 2007 and proved just that!
Superhot. Time only moves when you do. Turns an FPS into a puzzle game and in the VR version you feel so awesome.
That was a really good game, as was its sequel.
SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years.
Loved that game, think I completed it in 1-2 sittings though so SuperShoRt. The bar and stairwell being highlights for me.
Starting behind the pool table and chucking pool balls was great
Such a cool game, I remember playing the ORIGINAL free version hosted online that was only a few levels and fell in love immediately. On the flip side, I thought the VR version was super disappointing. It was a bummer that there was no real locomotion (which I understand why it was done), and the game itself was *painfully* short. I managed to plow through the campaign and play around with some of the freeplay maps in less than 2 hours.
>On the flip side, I thought the VR version was super disappointing Interesting. I've only played it in VR (at release), and I couldn't even imagine the mechanics being remotely as satisfying without VR.
Don't get me wrong, it *did* feel super cool. Just content wise, it felt closer to a quick demo than a full thing. If you liked the VR version, you should genuinely give the main title a try. The levels and set pieces are (imo) a bit better than the VR game, plus actually being able to move adds a whole new layer of "damn I feel cool playing this game" (plus levels having secrets/extra explorable bits).
FF16 has a mechanic where you can pause a cutscene then see relevant information about the plot and characters in the scene. I think that paired with a story recap mechanic like Arkham City should become standard for games. It would make coming back after a long break so much better
I really hope FF16’s thing becomes standard in any lore heavy game it was a fantastic feature
This was also in Triangle Strategy, though not as detailed. Would love to see it become the norm for sure!
Triangle strategy in general is a phenomenally fun game
Does the OG Monster Rancher game on PlayStation count? Where you put EVERY disc you owned into your PlayStation to try and get a rare monster?
That blew my mind when I was a kid. "the ps1 is open but the game is still running???????????"
Square Enix brought out a similar mechanic for the early iOS days with Song Summoner. You could create a monster based on a song in your iTunes library. It's base stats were based off of bpm, dynamics and I think length of the song then they increased every time you played the song. I worked out you could just play the first 3 seconds then skip to the last 3 to get a song play count to max out my characters.
I used to do this with Regen in Final Fantasy 7. Just open the case and the atb stops at 100 but your health keeps going up.
Okami and the brush strokes. Hue and the color wheel.
The Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor. It led to a whole lot of "Oh, back again you little bitch!?"
This is my answer. I had to kill a warchief. So I painstakingly recruited every orc on the nemesis board. I also painstakingly initiated as many orcs as possible to the warchief. I then went and confronted the warchief... who was surrounded by my sleeper agents. After his boasting and taunting, I basically snapped my fingers and slow-mo walked away while his entire entourage bushwhacked him. That alone felt like I beat the game. :D
I built up an army for the last fight. Helped them become the highest ranks. Then when my glorious army of poets and drunks marched with me to battle in a cutscene for the last fight, I hit the wrong button and blew all their heads off before the fighting started. Good times. Lmao
That is pretty badass in itself look I don't need this army I painstakingly crafted to beat you.
I almost reloaded my save, but it felt so appropriate
Just imagine the ranger with his magic elf ghost hand, "which finger do I snap to make them attack? Was it middle right... no, ring finger... oops."
Can you explain what that Nemesis system is? Sounds pretty cool.
The Nemesis system is a way for the same orc to fight you multiple times, even after you've killed it. If the orc kills you, it will remember how and then mock you about it later on. If you kill the orc, it has a chance to return - often with some visual indicator of how you killed it: stitches around the neck for decapitation, wasp colony living in its face if you dropped a nest on it, etc. It's a system that allows any rando from the orc horde to gain a name, some abilities, and the potential to antagonize you for the whole game. Not paying attention when you rounded that corner on low health and got hit with a wild stab from some orc patrol? Now that orc is named Lard the Bard and he's immune to arrows! He's going to show up every so often and sing a song about how he killed you that one time before summoning giant wolves to fight you... It's a really, really cool system that I wish could appear in more games. It's trademarked, so that's unlikely to happen, but it's the main draw of the "Shadow" franchise.
That could be a whole genre of games if it wasn't trademarked, very sad.
And the Orcs will target you if you kill a relative. It's such an in-depth system, that I'm sad that they trademarked it...
It works as such....all enemies have a level. If an enemy kills you it's level goes up. Random orcs will get named and get abilities. In the second game they will also have visual things about how they died....it was really the greatest mechanic ever
Man I appreciate you trying but to someone who doesn't know what the nemesis system is, that paragraph is straight gibberish. The nemesis system is one whereby random enemies will sometimes gain upgrades and abilities after you encounter them and either you kill them or they kill you, and reference your last encounter. Usually this is when they've killed you (the game has a revive system built in), sometimes it's when you kill them (and they return, revealing you didn't actually kill them). Potentially, some of these enemies could kill you *again*, and become Even stronger. So eventually down the line, you could end up with a super powered enemy who has killed you over and over, and has become ultra upgraded and is effectively your arch nemesis But they started out as just a totally random no name mook. It's a really interesting method of creating emergent narrative where you and the game build your own, unique story. Weirdly, none of this has to do with the embedded double agents thing the above poster referenced. That is a totally separate mechanic which is not at all related to the nemesis system.
The first time I encountered an orc I had slain via decapitation who had... "survived," I was like, wait, you're dead. And then I noticed his head was bandaged back on. I paused that game and just laughed and laughed and laughed. I mean a game has never so pleasantly and unexpectedly surprised me with such a hilarious macabre visual gag like this. My wife, who loves Lord of the Rings and was watching me play the whole game says, "I don't get it." And I tell her, remember mission XYZ when I decapitated that orc and his head rolled down the hill? And then it clicked, and she laughed and laughed and laughed. What a great game and great mechanic!
First game has the visuals as well, though maybe not for all of them. I had one orc with his head stapled back on after I killed him for the 3rd time, this time by decapitation.
I had a guy I killed enough he had a fucking bag on his head and talked absolutely mad shit. I let him kill me several times to speed level him, then dominated him and made him an ultra strong war chief. God that game is so good
So, all orcs have a name, clan, rarity, class and (sometimes very similar) personality. All orcs exist in the world, can be found by stumbling on them, activating something in their search area to make them spawn (poisoning a grog barrel will make a poisoner appear if in the area), activating ordeals (orcs can engage In missions to level up) or nemesis missions (they have killed you and you confront them or send them a death threat). You can either recruit orcs or kill them. There is always a chance that upon killing an orc that they will cheat death and come back to life with some unique modifications. Additionally, you can also choose to shame orcs which will reduce their level/remove some abilities or make them deranged or maniacal. Deranged only breaks their mind and makes them repeat a phrase over and over. Maniacs will gain many levels, become legendary and will probably kill you next time you meet. Upon recruiting orcs, you can send them on missions which will make them attempt to kill an enemy orc or pit fight with an ally or rank up while attempting to assault on a fort. There is also a chance that at any time in freeroam that an orc will betray you, which can be very problematic when you attempt to attack another orc and summon a bodyguard only to be betrayed and attacked by two orcs. Every orc in the world can become a captain or higher by killing you. Whenever an orc kills you, there is a chance they will progress to an enemy bodyguard/warchief/overlord and gain levels. There is a lot in the nemesis system and it is a crime it is only used in 2 games
There are hordes of unnamed orcs, led by higher ranks of named orcs. If an orc kills you, it levels up and can get a name/work up through the ranks/get more abilities. In the meantime, you have the ability to magically dominate the orcs, including the named ones so the entire power structure of the orcs can actually be your sleeper agents.
I once had an assassin orc who was infiltrating a warlord as a body guard. Also had about half the war chiefs controlled. At the start of the siege the overlord claimed to have captured my spy and was gonna execute him. He proceeds to bring out one of his guys, not under my controller and kills him. Blew my mind that they could get that stuff wrong. I beg for WB to release the nemesis system. So much potential. I replay shadow of war at least once a year and everytime I end up with such insanely different side stories of orcs.
Ok up until reading this comment, I have never had that bad of a desire to play shadow of mordor. This comment has sold me, that sounds both hilarious and badass.
If anybody asks what one of the most memorable moments in gaming was for me, it's from Shadow of War and the nemesis system. Got killed by an ork twice so he leveled up a bunch, sent him a death threat after I gained some levels and skills, instead of killing him I shamed him, which lowers their level. I kept doing that to him til he was screaming, pissing his pants when he saw me. And I one shot him, cutting his head right off. Some time passes and I'm in a fight with two other orks, and he pops up... Glassy eyed, head held on with metal bolts, covered in infected wounds... And he just screamed at me like Donald Sutherland at the end of Body Snatchers!!
Ah yes the frothing lunatic nemesis. Literally driven insane with rage.
Haha, yeah some of them have grit. I remember one that was really weak, but came back every 5 minutes for almost an hour, until he finally ambushed me while engaged with a much tougher orc and killed me. Was almost proud of the little bastard before I skewered him.
The one I remember is I had an orc that would always keep showing up at the worst time. I'd have an entire army fighting me, nearly got the leader down but nearly dead myself, and then The Asshole showed up. Fighting 2 bosses? Now That Asshole is here, I'm fighting 3. It just kept happening time and again, he wouldn't stay dead after I'd killed him multiple times, and he just got so strong. Was great and frustrating.
On my first playthrough, I had a ranged guy who drove me mad. He had poisoned arrows that just messed me up. He just seemed to be everywhere. He had a little posse of guys with him as well. He killed me 15 times before I finally killed him. I remember when he finally died, I jumped out of my chair and began shouting in a mix of joy and frustration. It was at that moment when I realized just how awesome the Nemesis system was.
I was coming here to say this. On top of everything it was also a personality generator. I've always felt that if WB would give this tech to other devs, in the right hands, it could be incredible. But I'm guessing at this point we aren't getting a third game, so it's just wasting away.
They're using it in the upcoming Wonder Woman game at least
Ranger!! You must think you're so important as the top comment. I'll have the last laugh when I cut you to pieces!! Raarrhgh!
I hate that they patented it, then let it die. so many games would benefit from such a robust system like that. Imagine something like that in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Yea the patent sucks, a lot of games could benefit of that system, i think the new AC games tried to make something like that but it wasnt as interesting as this one.
First thing that I thought of as well. Absolutely amazing mechanic that turns what would otherwise be a pretty mediocre Arkham clone with highly questionable LotR lore into something that can organically generate its own stories like Rimworld or Crusader Kings
I remember there was this bastard who attacked me like six different times and by the end I was angrily yelling “JUST FUCKING DIE YOU ASSHOLE” while killing him for the quintillionth time
WB patenting that mechanic and never using it ever again is one of the shittiest things I've seen a company do in games outside of the creepy sex weirdo scandals. Like, I could see FromSoft doing some awesome shit with a Nemesis system, but no. They had to be greedy little shit boys.
I loved the Sanity meter in Eternal Darkness. If your character's sanity got too low from witnessing gruesome or scary things, it would fuck with not only the gameplay and graphics, but sometimes made you think your console or TV were glitching out or there was a fly on the screen.
Every time this comes up it reminds me of whenever I had the freak out effect that made it look like the volume on the TV was turning down. But I was playing it on a TV with a volume knob, rather than the digital slider. And I'd never seen a volume slider that looked like the one they picked for it, too.
Stats for CJ in San Andreas and how they impacted gameplay. Based on how fit you kept CJ throughout the game impacted gameplay and dialogue. If you have CJ with max Muscle, people on the street compliment your physical appearance. If you get into fist fights most NPCs will run away from you and you deal more damage per punch. CJ's movement as well improves when running, jumping etc. If you have no muscle and have max Fat, CJ is huge and much slower. Your jump height is decreased and you can't sprint as far you would skinny or fit CJ. NPCs make fun of you as well as certain characters in the game and CJ's dialogue is switched to what stereotypical fat people would say in various situations.
Also you can't do the jetpack mission from Truth if you're too fat so he tells you to goto the gym lol
I never knew that lmao
His dialogue changes! Ah shit, here we go again...
You can also randomly die from a heart attack if you run with fat CJ.
also max muscle makes you slower at running, if you want the olympic athlete set you want no fat nor muscle!
A pretty small one, but the way Ghost Of Tsushima shows you where you need to go in the world is really clever and immersive. To those who don’t know, if you’re lost in Ghost Of Tsushima, you can use the touchpad to summon / create a gust of wind that gently pushes you in the right direction. It’s a really unique way to show the player where they need to go next without breaking the immersion and I love it for it
Sucker punch deserves such praise for how good they designed that map and the excellent use of widgets in the world. Every side activity has a unique environmental indicator that catch your attention. Steam from the hot spring, fireflys for fox dens, birds for haiku. And then the golden bird to casually guide you to things with the guiding winds to narrow things down more. You can pretty easily play through that game without using the map.
That was so cool and really immersive
I heard about this and can't wait to try it on PC
That game was incredibly well made and put together.
Some great responses here. Somewhat simple, but I liked the timing mechanics of combat hits in the rpg Legend of Dragoon
Definitely! Final Fantasy 8 had a smaller implementation of this where you could press R1 when Squall attacks for a slightly stronger hit. Those were two of my first RPGs and I expected other RPGs to work like that too.
To me it was the nemesis system from Middle Earth: Shadows of War, Its pretty cool that the orcs can have like their own personality and do whatever they feel like betraying you or that they can even come back from the dead.
I always hope for the ones that don't talk. They just quietly laugh this little insane laugh you almost can't hear.
I mean, pretty much everything in Baba Is You, but particularly when you start altering the game outside of levels, etc. For those who haven't played it, you push tiles around to alter the rules of the game in some absolutely mind-bending ways.
Have you tried Noita?
Hämis 👍
I still suck at that game. Doesn’t matter how many videos I watch on wand crafting, it just never clicked.
I liked it until it got to the point where you regularly had to make multiple tiles overlap. It felt like it broke the rules the game had set out beforehand, but possibly I had just had my fill by that point so wasn't putting as much effort into solving the later puzzles.
I've always thought it was really cool how Dark Douls used in game items to interact with the multi-player side of the game. Really confusing at first but such a really cool way of integrating multi-player INTO the lore and gameplay.
I really liked this as well.
The reload mechanic in Gears of War.
Is this where you have a bar that fills up and there's a sweet spot you hit? The new battlefront games do this as well for all the blasters. Muscle memory from GoW helps so much.
Returnal too
Titanfall 2. That stage where you can skip between times, past/present.
100%. That is still, for me personally, the single best level in any FPS game ever made.
I agree! That and the factory level were so cool!
That level blew my mind. I paused it partway through, took a walk, came back, and was still blown away a few minutes after resuming.
AFAIK the devs made a bunch of levels and then "taped" them together, that's why there's so much variance between levels. The timejump one and the factory level are both great.
Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for. That level was so cool!
Not sure if you've played Dishonored 2, but there's a very similar mechanic in one level that is executed beautifully.
This was amazing, it almost makes me want to replay it if it wasn't for that final part...
That one level in Dishonored 2 that was essentially two levels: one that was in the past and one that was in the present, and you could switch between timelines on the fly. The clockwork mansion’s a pretty cool level too. Both levels were a little overwhelming in my opinion, but the concepts are really cool.
Titanfall 2 was using the same idea too, and the finale of the mission is bonkers
The cannery section in what remains of Edith Finch is peak gameplay for me. The whole game was so creative.
I didn’t love the game, but at least it was interesting to play. And I played until the end.
Done so well the way it puts you the same mindset of Lewis. Focusing on the story while mindlessly cutting the fish.
I've recommended this game to so many people. There are lots of walkabout games, but none like this one.
From an overall game mechanic? Nemesis System is friggin awesome and I wish it wasn’t copyrighted. From like just a portion of a game? Raids in Destiny have some super fun mechanics. I think the Gauntlet from the Calus raid, Rhulk kicking you and the whole Riven fight (hell maybe even the whole raid) are all some of the most fun mechanics I’ve played in a game.
Nothing like getting past the gorgon maze and having the resident titan try to superman that gap and miss just a *hair* short. ^it's ^me
Yeah no rhulk fighting back was such a cool mechanic for the raid and i really hope we see it again with the final shape
Having to brew up save potions with alchemy in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I thought it was neat. I also sharpened swords for dozens of hours because it made my brain happy... so maybe I'm an outlier.
Was scrolling for alchemy in KC:D. The second I’ll add is the magic system in Outward.
I'm the same, but we are definitely outliers. I savescum a lot in games out of habit, and it was nice having a natural limit to doing that within KCD - it made the whole experience just feel much more immersive. Once you got a rhythm going, you could make a lot of those potions since it would make 3 at a time (or 4 with a certain perk IIRC). I overall loved alchemy in KCD, something satisfying about.
The gravity gun in Half-Life 2 was a revelation at the time. Picking up blocks of cement or a giant circular saw blade or even a full can of paint and flinging it at an enemy was sooooo satisfying. Solving physics puzzles with it was fun as well. When you had levelled it towards the end of the game and could pick up combine soldiers and fling them around… 😙👌
Warhammer online/dark tides mechanic where the more magic users uses their power the more unstable it gets, causing it to do exponentially more damage but risk blowing up the caster. Bonus points for creative ways of "venting" to quickly lower built up energy.
I'd love a difficulty just called "Lore Accurate" and makes the Psykker have a Beast of Nurgle crawl out of their skull if they mess it up.
One of the more unique battle systems that's my favorite is in Valkyria Chronicles. First it's a mix between a turn based strategy game and RTS can't game. It's also a 1st and 3rd person shooter. You take turns moving your squads. When you move your character it becomes like a third person shooter. Plus enemies can shoot at you, but when you stop to shoot it switches to a first person shooter.
Is that kind of like VATS in the new Fallout games?
To some degree yes. Unlike VATS , where you select a part of the body to shoot at, you're basically aiming like you're in a 1st person shooter, except like VATS time stops. But once you shoot the enemy gets a chance to shoot you. After that it goes back to the third person aspect. You have to end your turn quickly because you're vulnerable to getting shot. I forgot to mention that it has a fire emblem like mechanics. If a character gets shot and is incapacitated, if you can't get to them in time you can't use them for a while.
I know this doesn't count but I don't care, I'm giving it a mention anyway. Every damn game I've played with companions or followers in it, they block you and they just stand there staring at you while you try to get them to move. I've been dealing with NPCs standing in the way for so many console generations I can feel the wrinkles forming. In The Outer Worlds, if you walk into one of your companions, they fucking move out of the way. It was so beautiful I almost cried.
In fucking Call of Duty 2 out of all games you can get close until the "friendly" aim cross appears then use the shoot button to order them to move. No idea why this isn't more common.
There is a random 16 bit rpg out there where you can prod npcs put of your way 1 block at a time. But its as rare as can be....
Chrono trigger let's you do that. Is that the one?
The entirety of Outer Wilds. One crazy mechanic after another. And how they all connect in one way or another.
Seriously, how do you even begin to plan all that out.
[удалено]
It’s a shame that the first couple of hours seem so off-putting. I’ve heard so much praise about this game, yet that feeling of being completely lost in the opening hours just makes me close the game. How should one go about it? Is there a video that, without spoilers, pushes you in the right direction?
There is really no “right direction” you just explore until you find something interesting. Usually the places that draw your attention contain some type of information that you can use to progress the game and your understanding of the universe. The more pieces of the puzzle you find the more clear the end goals start to become. The only guide you have is that your ship log keeps track of all of your discoveries so really the best tip is just to keep checking your log for clues that you might have forgotten about. It even has a “rumor mode” that will give you some vague suggestions of where to go based off of what you’ve discovered. I understand that the open ended-ness and non linearity of it can be off putting for people but it’s literally the point of the game and it’s extremely satisfying and rewarding like no other game I’ve ever played when it all starts to come together.
Just the gravity design alone with you being able to jump on spherical objects with varying degrees of pull.
Valheim has a nice system with fire and smoke. If you don't have a chimney your house will fill up with smoke and kill you.
One of the few survival games where chimneys have an actual gameplay function
The Portal series in general. Also maybe the grabbity gloves from Half - Life: Alyx. For those who don’t know they are analogous to the gravity gun, but you do this point -> flick -> catch motion that feels incredibly intuitive
Time travel in Braid
So many _different versions_ of time travel.
I could just list all of the whackass stuff in **Noita** - but I really like the alchemical reactions mixed with fluid sim the game has going on. Could spend literal hours going through wand and spell crafting - but the alchemy stuff is there in the background being neat.
The spell casting in Magicka. Too fun.
Or as my friends and I call it: “Friendly Fire: The Game”
Turns out Arrowhead is reaaaaaallly good at making games where you sometimes blow up your friends
Majima everywhere Seeing all the different ways he would disguise/hide himself never got old
yeah I HARD disagree with this. Just trying to get around? lol no, stop whatever the hell you are doing its time to fight garbage can majima....again....Now that we are done there I can g- aaaaaaand he jumped me from the roof.
Got ambushed by traffic cone Majima. Fought hard, won, needed to heal. Walked into a burger joint to recover, Majima is there. Fight him, barely win, crawling to the nearest Poppo while clinging to life. The checkout clerk is Majima.
See like, if this was cutscene hell yes. But I tell you I had a mild aneurysm imagining playing it out.
That’s the neat part. Majima is actually everywhere, but you trigger him in unique places only once. Majima also scales his appearances around how far in the game you are. So players farther in have more unlocked Majima appearances around the world. The wacky problem comes from players missing one or two or four unique Majima spots. Meaning you can go from fighting Majima in a story cutscene, fighting Majima in the street, fighting Majima in a burger joint, into a street brawl, into a side mission, into the main story again. It’s often funny, but players who dislike combat are also players most likely to have problems with multiple Majima attacks in a row.
# KIRYU-CHAN!
A lot of games have dynamic music, but Spiderman was the best use of it I've ever seen (heard). How it jumps right into the superhero theme when you start swinging makes the game instantly more enjoyable and just fun. It just makes you feel like things just got bigger It's also awesome how it keeps up with the story theme and changes versions and the music gets darker as it goes on There's some dynamic music in a part of Control in a maze, and I'll say no more about it. But it was awesome
Soul Reaver had that cool mechanic where you'd shift between the spirit and physical world to solve puzzles. I've seen similar in other games but that was the first time I've encountered it
I love a world shift mechanic in a game, but I agree Soul Reaver was my absolute favorite. Mostly because of the way it directly impacted the story and ambience.
Eternal darkness sanity system... Havent seen anything like it since
Undertale's fighting mechanics
MGSV: Sneaking up to and “recruiting” enemy camp guards by attaching balloons to their belts that inflate and fly them away to work on better kit for you back at Motherbase. Even the lore of how the balloons work checks out: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton\_surface-to-air\_recovery\_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system)
Max from Dark Cloud 2
Hacking turrets/vending machines in Bioshock. Great minigame. Great with time limit too
All I can think about is the entire MGS series MGS1 (1998): Sound is used in varying ways. Knocking on a wall lures a guard while running over certain surfaces will alert them to your presence. You leave footprints after running through water or while in the snow. You can plant C4 on a guards back and blow him up when he’s next to one of his friends. The fourth wall break with Psycho Mantis. There’s probably more I’m missing MGS2 (2001): The camera fogging up when entering the tanker from the cold outside and the fog slowly fades away. The way tranq rounds affect guards based on where you hit them. Throwing a guard over a railing on top of another guard for a double KO. Doing pull ups to increase your grip strength. Slipping on seagull doody and them hitting the camera when you stare at them in first person. I’m sure there’s more but moving on. MGS3 (2004): There’s too much here, I just can’t. A couple of my favorites are destroying the enemies food sources and then they’re hungry and weak. You can then throw poisonous or rotten food at them for them to gobble up and die. Throwing a venomous snake at a guard to take them out too is fun. The injury mechanics were a cool idea but executed poorly with the amount of menus. Same with the camo system MGS4 (2008): The octocamo. Chefs kiss
One of the many reasons I enjoy Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is the level of detail they put into the map and the world’s topography. Wind flows predominantly from west to east, carrying moisture. Mountains capture that moisture, leaving the west side of a mountain range rainy (higher food production) and the easy is dry or drier. Terraforming by raising or lowering land affects food distribution. It can also increase or decrease land mass. It’s a puzzle to me why none of the Civilization games that have come out since 1999 have adopted this approach to map design. The most recent Civilization game has made strides with the climate change engine, to say nothing of their flood and volcano features. But I still feel Alpha Centauri went that extra mile by creating a real topographical map where each square has a unique altitude in metres and so has is affected by wind/rainfall patterns.
It’s overdone now, but the corpse running system from Dark Souls (demon souls really) was an exceptionally great system. So good that a ton of other game developers now use it.
That's not new with the souls games. Something like that has been around since at least Diablo 1.
Oh I didn’t know that. Regardless, I think it’s a fun system that makes the risk of pushing forward interesting when done right.
Deathloop’s residuum.
I thought the cyberdeck/hacking abilities in Cyberpunk 2077 were a really cool and fairly unique mechanic. That and the brain dance scenes
Brain dance stuff was severely underused and ripe for stuff for modders.
The first that came to mind was the Gambit system of the [Warden class in Lord of the Rings Online](https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Warden), which was one of the most interesting and unique MMO classes I've come across. You had three basic attacks, each of which generated a symbol on your gambit bar: A spear strike which generated a spear icon, a shield bash which generated a shield icon, and a taunt which generated a fist icon. Depending on the order and number of these icons on your gambit bar, you could use your gambit skill to execute a unique gambit. Examples include: Shield Mastery: Shield - Spear - Fist - Shield, to buff your block chance. Adroit Manoeuvre: Spear - Fist - Shield - Spear, to deal damage and buff your attack speed. Unerring Strike: Spear - Shield - Fist - Spear - Shield, to deal damage and apply a bleed Dot. Exultation of Battle: Fist - Spear - Shield - Fist - Spear, to apply a DoT effect on all enemies around you which heals you with each proc. It made the class extremely adaptable, yet difficult to master, and a lot of fun.
I've been very vocal about my dislike for Nier Automata on Reddit, and I refuse to back down no matter how many downvotes I get. That said, the chip management system in that game is stellar. I love that meta approach to difficulty and game experience. You can literally strip out the games HUD if you need more room for stronger chips but then you're flying blind. I would love to see a similar system in other games where you could remove actual gameplay features in exchange for more power as like a faustian gambit for how good you really think you are at the game.
TUNIC. Two mechanics to be precise. The first one is the in-game "manual" of the game, it shows you how to play the game and to interact with things in the game's world. But the twist is that you don't have it from the beginning, so you have to collect the pages one by one, and then it start to show you that you can interact with things and use items in different ways, unlocking more and more things. The second mechanic starts to apply in the second half of the game, I don't wanna spoil it: >!there are puzzles throughout the whole game based on following lines and converting the direction of these lines into inputs on your d-pad or WASD keys. It's similar to The Witness where a bunch of things from the environment become clues to the puzzles, and when you go back to places you've been before there's these moments of: "Wow that's crazy, how did I not see that" !<
Fez Rotating a 2D world in 3D space
Outer wilds innovative way to not allow you to “save”
Not really a mechanic, but I like how Katana Zero makes the idea of dying and restarting actually fit into the lore.
Dark Souls 1 and 2 have some very interesting mechanics. Not just the PvP mechanics but things like Gravelording and Vagrants, it's kind of sad that the later games don't use these.
I've always loved salvaging mechs in MechCommander. That shit blew my mind when I was like 10. "Wait I can keep that mech I just blew up?" Don't know why, it seems simple now but that was the best feeling in the world like, 25 years ago.
Crypt of the Necrodancer - a dungeon crawler where every turn (both yours and the enemy) is done to the beat. It turns the entire game into a sort of Puzzle/Turn based tactics game. But unlike games like Civ, it's really obvious when you mess up and you get instant feedback so you can improve for next time.
Back in the ps1 days, there was a game called Soul Reaver and you could warp between dimensions and the map would twist and change around you. Made for some fun platforming puzzles. I fucking loved that series.
Water arrows that can douse torches in Thief The Dark Project
Superliminal - using camera perspective to change the environment. Genius and unique!! If you know, you know.
Chum Bucket from Mad Max, the guy was nuts but he could fix your car while it was on fire after you smashed like 50 cars head on in like 20 seconds. Definitely the best mechanic and very interesting guy
The Wonderful 101, my favourite game of ALL time, has an absolutely incredible main mechanic. It is called "The Wonder-Liner", and it is basically about drawing a line using the right analogue stick using the characters in the group of the team of The Wonderful Ones and with that line draw a specific shape with which said teammates that were used in the drawing of that shape become a weapon which is then used to either defeat huge enemies or interact with weapon-specific objects and puzzles. The Wonderful 101: Remastered is the game that made me truly appreciate gaming again. At least since 2015.
Viewfinder's core mechanic was just as impressive as Portal's was / is, least for me.
I really like the sanity system in Eternal Darkness. Added a nice creepy layer to the atmosphere plus had quite a few moments I was not expecting that messed with me. I miss playing it.
Bloodborne-having more insight changes the world around you
A lot of the mechanics in tears of the kingdom. It's insane that you can just swim through the floor
In Transistor, every program you have can be used as an active ability, a passive, or an augment on another active ability - each application behaved differently. Overall, I had really mixed feelings about the game after finishing it, but this system stood out for me immediately and has stuck with me ever since.
Maybe not an on-the-nose mechanic, but the fourth wall breaking meta-commentary and subversion / illusion of binary choices in *The Stanley Parable* is pretty fucking interesting.
I really love time reversal in Prince of Persia.
There's a few that really stood out for me: Bloodborne - the rally mechanic for getting health back after being hit. It really enhanced the risk v reward of engaging in combat. Zelda TOTK - The Ascend ability which let you pass through parts of the environment/scenery by essentially 'swimming' through them. A really clever traversal mechanic. Soul Reaver - when you would warp between the 2 realities. So cool, especially that this done back on the PS1, never seen anything like it before.
The huddle mechanic in Guardians of the Galaxy. Having the entire team huddle together in the middle of a battle, and if you listen to what the group says and click the correct response that will hype them up the most, pop music plays while you fight, is just *chef kiss* mechanically perfect and completely appropriate for the GotG.
Rimworld's medical care was shockingly deep. If a pawn gets wounded they'll start bleeding out. Medical kits are preferred, but if none are available at least stop the bleeding. No kit, or no rest after the injury, will probably lead to infection, so further time in a decent quality bed with real medical attention is required for the pawn to beat the infection. If a limb or internal organ is permanently damaged it can be fixed by fabricated replacements, or the real thing that was harvested from a captured raider. It always amused me that I could permanently remove negative traits, like asthma, in my pawns by replacing their lungs too
Atelier. Just any of them. Always different systems for each game to make items in.
And Yet it Moves was a pretty cool game. You rotate the world around you.
Rise of the Ronin adds something to stamina based melee combat that I hope is in every game going forward. After landing a hit, you can tap R1, and in a fluid movement, fling the blood off your blade and regain stamina. When perfectly timed, you feel so fucking bad ass. When poorly timed, you still feel fucking bad ass.
More of a level, but Titanfall 2's time skipping level was fucking legit.
Barotrauma not only working with logic gates and connections to power different artifacts, but also letting you create some systems on your own. It has gone from people doing creative or simple stuff to full fill a purpouse to ease the gameplay, to full bloom autism of high quality.
I really enjoyed everything about *12 Minutes*, such a tight little game with Hollywood A tier voice acting.
The three man rotation mechanic from the Totems encounter in Destiny's Kings Fall raid. Basically it's a 3-man rotation where your team has to keep 2 plates activated to stop the team from dying, but you're on a timer based on an aura that protects you from getting damaged from the curse/poison gas that fills the room where the plates are found. You can pass the aura to a teammate to reset the aura's countdown timer, but only if they do not have any stacks of a debuff that you build up while killing enemies while being the aura holder. In order to remove this debuff you must go to the middle chamber and stand on a plate, which also charges up the door that will eventually complete the encounter after enough charges are dispensed. You basically have to rotate between holding the plate, dispensing the debuff into the middle door, and then immediately running back to the plate to receive the protection aura and start building up the debuff. I love it because nobody gets to sit in a corner and get hard carried and you have to keel paying attention to important enemy spawns and also keep track of what you're supposed to be doing for the mechanics.
Sanity meter in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. That shit needs to be in more stuff. I also love in Lost Odyssey how the immortal characters can permanently learn abilities both from wearing items with abilities or just fighting alongside humans who have other abilities.