What game mechanics do you enjoy or that surprised you when playing a game? I recently started playing Tunic and I love building out the “manual” for the game and getting hints on how to play.
I don’t know if it’s actually a mechanic but I love it when a game has instant restarts and generous checkpoints. Takes away a lot of the frustration and allows me to play on a higher difficulty and still enjoy my time with it.
This is definitely huge for me. Nothing quite as frustrating as watching an unskippable cutscene every time you die to a boss.
One of the few things i dislike about the dark souls games is the time between 0 hp and actually playing the game again
Tunic’s writing system was the reason the game was recommended to me and i was not disappointed. Figured it out on my own during the second or third section of the game, after spending more time on it than actually progressing.
Also a big fan of literally climbing on bosses in shadow of the colossus.
Double jumping. Something about double jumping just always feels really liberating. It’s such a strange concept as well, with no analogue in the real world.
- Parrying/deflecting attacks. It’s just so damn satisfying
- Mass Effect’s charge attack of the Vanguard class. It turns you into a projectile to punch the socks off an enemy while also recharging one’s shield, so it incentivizes you to repeatedly fly in their faces followed by a point-blank headshot. Headbutting heavy mechs with a Krogan in ME3 multiplayer was great too
Elder Scrolls’ take on Dungeons and Dragons gameplay. If you read Arena’s manual, it’ll explain that they wanted a game that steers you into one dirrection, but if you want to say “fuck it” and go the other way, the story should support that. Similar to a DnD session where players don’t do what the Dungeon Master planned so he has to make up sonething else on the spot.
To this day, that’s why the main storyline is relatively short. But a storyline for alternative ways of life than “the hero who saved the world” exist, no matter if you’re a warrior, mage, thief, or assassin.
Creative allowance. Even if it makes the game “unbalanced”.
Just Cause 2 with the grappling hook you could attach one end to a statue and one to a truck.
Grand Theft Auto 3 was the first game where I realized I could complete an assassination by stealing a police car, use the swarm of police cars following me as a “net” to trap my target’s car so he couldn’t drive away, and then blowing up the pile of cars with a grenade.
Rimworld where I can create a settlement of nudist vampires trading beautiful wooden sculptures for slaves to feed on.
The Sims 3 of course.
From the Depths, Minecraft, Space Engineers, Valheim also to a large degree.
Add Dwarf Fortress to that list.
Ah yes. The game with the world’s best bug reports. I had a lot of fun creating a dwarven city in the treetops.
The last two Zelda games (especially totk) lets the player get really creative as well
Mine is Warframe’s travesal. Unmatched and unbeatable that all you need to know. But a close second in Titanfall 2’s one.
Not sure if this is necessarily a mechanic, but I always like in rpgs especially jrpgs when you have times when you just hang out with your friends. I think it’s great for pacing, world building and character development.
I like having a hangout spot. Like the Normandy in Mass Effect is a really good one.
CrossCode has an amazing “hanging out with friends” vibe from start to finish. The gameplay and plot are great but the lighthearted atmosphere is what stuck with me most.
Two things:
Anything that fleshes out “bard classes” (bonus points if you have grest freedom in how you play music). I don’t want to be a mage who, instead of fireballs that deal damage, shoots music notes that deal damage. Shoutout to the Entertainer class in Star Wars Galaxies and the ukulele magic in Tchia for getting it right.
High degree of freedom spellcasting. Right now, only Magicka comes to my mind, who really excelled in this. Fictorum also has a pretty awesome spell shaping system.
The hunting horn in monster hunter does this pretty well.
wallrunning from titanfall 2, driving a mech like in titanfall 2, basically every mechanic from titanfall 2
Titanfall 2 was so good, I miss it. A lot of it’s slick movement mechanics show up in some of those modern “movement shooters” like Ultrakill for example.
That time mechanic has to be my favorite mechanic from any FPS.
Yeah it was fucking awesome
I love fighting groups and just bouncing between enemies where hits stun. It’s especially good when enemies require different attack/dodge movements so everything feels like a choreographed production once I get into the flow.
I really liked Ys Origin for this, though there are plenty that do it well.
I’ve always been a fan of destruction and general environment interactability in games. Imagine what Red Faction Guerilla could be on modern hardware.
Have you seen Teardown? The whole game is basically made around some really impressive destruction tech.
I love when games utilize impossible spaces. I feel like so many games try to stay grounded in reality, so I appreciate when a game really takes advantage of being a game and plays with reality a bit. (ie: Antichamber, The Stanley Parable)
Any good movement mechanics. Shoutout to grappling hooks!
I love the dashes in Hyper Light Drifter. With precise timing they can be chained, making them not just useful in combat but also to quickly move through areas. Really satisfying.
Titanfall|2 was so fucking amazing
YES I GET TO TALK ABOUT GOOP
In NakeyJakey’s The Last of Us 2 video he describes a condition he has called Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain. Having GGGB essentially means that your motivation and interest in games is powered almost purely by moment-to-moment gameplay. Anything that gets in the way of gameplay, like:
- Stealth/Trailing sequences
- Overly long, unskippable cutscenes / game sequences where you just stand around to look at how pretty a game is
- Long Tutorials
is a threat to Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain.
I have Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain. A very bad case, if I’m being honest. It’s the reason why I can’t stand games like The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption 2, and other “prestige-type” games. It’s the reason why I am a big fan of a lot of Japanese games, which tend to focus very heavily on mechanical systems.
So when I say a game is “goopy,” this is what I mean. Maybe the movement system is godlike (Gravity Rush, Infamous 2, Forspoken). Maybe it has really deep customization mechanics (Bravely Second, Final Fantasy Tactics, Etrian Odyssey). Maybe the pew pews feel good (Apex Legends). Maybe it’s a Ys game (Ys).
I must be playing different Japanese games, as if they aren’t from Formsoft they tend to feel like cutscene simulators to me. Sometimes it can be fun if they have enjoyable writing (looking at a lot of the side content in the Yakuza games).
Nah I wrote a whole thing about it. Japanese games are in general significantly more interested in game feel in the moment to moment, even when they have tons of cutscenes (ex. MGS)
A game like RDR2 is extremely concerned with realism and physicality even if it costs the players agency. Morgan controls like a lumbering tank, and everything feels cumbersome. The game will make you watch him skin an animal for 20 seconds where you aren’t even playing the game, really. Contrast that with something like strangers of paradise or devil may cry. Is it realistic for Jack “Skip Cutscene” Garland to cancel out of any animation to perform a finisher? Nope. Does it feel good as fuck? absolutely.
Maybe I just don’t jive with the common tropes of game feel for them, as most of the ones I’ve tried haven’t given me that visceral fun you got.
