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 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)
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.
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.
I think one that really stands out for me was the unexpected time travel mechanics of Titan Fall 2 that you leveraged for puzzle solving.
It was so outta left field but so we’ll executed it really left a lasting impression. Such a fantastic game overall really.
Any good movement mechanics. Shoutout to grappling hooks!
Titanfall|2 was so fucking amazing
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.
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.
The last two Zelda games (especially totk) lets the player get really creative as well
Oooh yes. I have a switch, but didn’t pick up TotK yet. It looks amazing.
While it’s very similar to botw, it fixes a few things and introduces a lot of new fun mechanics. If you enjoyed botw, there is no way you don’t have fun with totk.
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 “Choose your reply (or none)” mechanic of ‘Oxenfree’.
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 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
There are a few that I find really cool.
The “bullet time” in the max payne series was very enjoyable to me. Dodge-flying around enemies while bullets hit your last position and all looking like you are in the matrix movie? Yes please!
Then there was the flying in GTA5. The controls and “feel” of all the vehicles are very good, but flying is really implemented in a great way. Its by no means to difficult to learn (like a real simulator), but has a pretty high skill ceiling. To really “fly beautifully” you have to know your shit. And thats not even counting fighting air-to-air or air-to-land. It’s beautiful.
Also I’m a sucker for all atmospheric games. Bonus for being dystopic. The System-/Bioshock series, Stalker, Fallout, Cyberpunk2077 and many many more. Disco Elysium. Some games really are art in its purest form. Still entertainment, but art at the same time. I remember the first time I entered Novigrad in Witcher 3, not even on a good graphics card. Such a vivid, “living” town, with logical alleyways, bridges, beautiful architecture, soundstage just amazing, … I think to this day no other game has surpassed W3 when it comes to creating a believable city. It’s just art!
Random crits. Fair and balanced.
Killing someone with a crit rocket in Team Fortress 2: hahaha fuck yeah
Getting killed by a crit rocket in TF2: what the FUCK dude
Mine is Warframe’s travesal. Unmatched and unbeatable that all you need to know. But a close second in Titanfall 2’s one.
If you let me interact with environment in a way that’s grindy, it brings me personal joy.
Things like mining ore, picking up herbs, so forth. It brings me back to my Runescape days.
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.