neat mechanics in otherwise bad/mid games

[Daddy's Angry Juice]

What are some cool mechanics in games that you thought were bad/mid
a couple of examples I can think of is in watchdogs 2, you could 'shazam' any song on the radio and it would be added to your library to play at anytime.

or in this indie game Pollen, a horror/maze game you can only see basic geometry [walls and floors] unless you take a moment to let the enviroment come into focus [ill post a pic below to give you an idea], it can be very unnerving especially with moving enemies that you cant immediatly see, makes the player have to make a choice between moving to find the exit or standing still to see if they can detect hazards/monsters in the enviroment at the risk of being caught. sounds awesome right, but the game can easily be finished/100 percented within the refund time so it doesnt do a lot with it.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

I'll get shit for calling it mid/bad, but Shadow of Mordor and it's Nemesis system. I mean, do we have any other game with it? I don't think so. The problem is for it to work you have to be either consistently beaten by others or have no idea where orc chiefs are and both of these things aren't the case. The game is rather easy and even if you get yourself into too much trouble usually you can run away and if not, there are plenty of options to turn the tide on the last breath, but even if you lose you can always track down that chief that killed you and make him pay. And this is exactly why this system didn't work for me - I either killed orc chief on the first try or tracked him down after losing a battle and killed him in revenge, so there was literally no one to build a story with except the plot mandated orc chief. Maybe there was one chief who tried to get revenge on me in the end, but since he was absent for the most of it I just killed him with "I don't even know who you are". Then I watched TIHYDP where Phil had an epic rivalry with Ukbuk and it made me genuinely sad that I missed all this.
Also, the mechanic where you were awarded melee runes if you killed chief in melee or stealth runes if you killed them in stealth was neat too, but be the end of the game all the chiefs were immune to arrows and stealth attacks, so it stopped working.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

I liked the gambit system in FFXII, being able to automate your party's actions to a high degree.



Would probably serve well as baby's first programming lesson.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Phoenix Point.

Just... the entire game.

 

[Civillian 18]

I'll get shit for calling it mid/bad, but Shadow of Mordor and it's Nemesis system. I mean, do we have any other game with it? I don't think so.

The entire system is patented and unable to be used in any other game. misc top-shelf Google links etc
Destiny/Destiny 2 first person raiding/dungeon content. I just wish there was a first person shooter MMO or whatever shit you would call it, but typing it out kind of makes me think I might just miss the old gang, because FUCK did we hate D2, it was really just the only thing like it.

 

[TheGuntinator]

I miss old God games. Not a very popular genre anymore. Especially when Black and White had an avatar for you to train that would act on its own. I have played a few indie God games and have never seen anything like it.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

MGSV, the bullet time effect that automatically occurs when you're spotted. Now just put it in an actually good game.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The armour system in Gore: Ultimate Soldier. You have armour that covers body parts with different properties. In practice, it doesn't amount to much.

The betting system in BOS: Bet On Soldier. The idea of having to pay for your gear and wager on boss fights. There's just one problem you might have noticed. There's no reason to not wager on yourself every time.

An entire genre, but basically every looter shooter. Borderlands, Destiny, all of them. I know this can work because I love New Vegas mods like Mighty Dungeons and World of Pain that are basically just this and I love them. I like this element of Fallout 4 but it quickly runs out of dungeons.

Speaking of which. Fallout 4s crafting, upgrading, and city building features. Sim Settlements 2 basically fixes the city management part by having options to place down prefabs or even automate the process so it becomes almost like an idle game. As for weapon mods, there's basically no reason to not go for the best mod each time.

Shadow of Mordor and it's Nemesis system.

There was also zero reason to keep them alive. Maybe that changes endgame as phil kept some alive.

 

[ihaveelbows]

I'll get shit for calling it mid/bad, but Shadow of Mordor and it's Nemesis system. I mean, do we have any other game with it? I don't think so. The problem is for it to work you have to be either consistently beaten by others or have no idea where orc chiefs are and both of these things aren't the case. The game is rather easy and even if you get yourself into too much trouble usually you can run away and if not, there are plenty of options to turn the tide on the last breath, but even if you lose you can always track down that chief that killed you and make him pay. And this is exactly why this system didn't work for me - I either killed orc chief on the first try or tracked him down after losing a battle and killed him in revenge, so there was literally no one to build a story with except the plot mandated orc chief.

The system is utilized better in the second game. base concept is the same but it's built into a "command your own kingdom" thing. You get a self sustaining content engine that feels like a sped up game of thrones as various allies/enemies emerge via the system.

Thread contribution: Spore species origin system.

 

[Super Guido]

Quest 64's stat gain mechanic. I think other games have done it, but it was still a neat one. You can sort of cheese gaining speed by just running around.

 

[McMitch]

MGSV, the bullet time effect that automatically occurs when you're spotted. Now just put it in an actually good game.

I would go so far as to say all of MGSV's game mechanics are great mechanics dropped into a game that has no idea what to do with them (and a story that needed another decade to develop).

 

[Disapproving Bread]

Quest 64's stat gain mechanic. I think other games have done it, but it was still a neat one. You can sort of cheese gaining speed by just running around.

The Rune Factory series is kind of a logical extension of this mechanic. Literally everything you do from walking around to using magic to making friends gives you stat boosts, all couched in a farming sim/ARPG package. Everything you do advances your character in a small but tangible way.

It's a shame that it's both horribly optimized AND has pacing issues that leave you either grinding for several in-game days or gliding past any semblance of challenge. RF 5 in particular allowed me to see the first credit scroll in less than half of the first season. (Though to be fair the games tend to do a brief credit scroll between story arcs/acts rather than at the end of the full main game story).

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Everybody fondly remembers Spider-Man 2 because the web-swinging traversal is so incredibly good that it still hasn't been matched 20 years later, but outside of that it's a generic, repetitive action game that has nothing else going for it.

 

[R00T]

Speaking of which. Fallout 4s crafting, upgrading, and city building features. Sim Settlements 2 basically fixes the city management part by having options to place down prefabs or even automate the process so it becomes almost like an idle game. As for weapon mods, there's basically no reason to not go for the best mod each time.

All of it feels better and more meaningful in Survivor mode. There are times where you simply cannot upgrade in the early game and are forced to take a weaker upgrade. Currently I’ve been scavenging weapons and once I run out of ammo scrapping it to upgrade a more permanent weapon that I have. Leads to these very tough decisions where I’m sitting in a dungeon planning my next moves with maybe 30 bullets to spare.

 

[A Very Big Fish]

I like the games, but Dishonored 2's Crack in the Slab and Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause missions where you're hopping between two different timelines. I feel like that's something that I wish the games had either kept longer, or built the entire game around.

 

[.lua]

Despite spending over 1200 hours playing it I think FF14 is a midtier game at best. However I love the fact that you can change role/job with the click of a button rather than having to make a whole new character, which is something I sorely miss when playing other similar games.

 

[Double Taps]

Blacklight Retribution's HRV mechanic was fucking cool. I think it tried to solve the waller problems in FPS games by just giving everyone an ability to temporarily see through walls, you couldn't shoot weapons while it was active but it was so innovative to see at the time.

It also had a pretty insane gun customization system at the time that I've only seen matched by some modern iterations of CoD and somewhat from PD2. You could give an SMG poison rounds to prevent people from healing, AP rounds on heavy characters or people in hardsuits but did reduced damage to other types. It had so many solid features, shame it was never as popular as other shooter franchises, it couldn't keep up.

 

[Asian tech support]

The harden to avoid damage gimmick in Mortal Shell is really neat but it's not enough to base a game around, let alone justify a sequel.

Destiny/Destiny 2 first person raiding/dungeon content.

There's an indie fps called Witchfire that I thought was going to go the route of having (single player) Destiny style strike and raid encounters but I don't think it's actually going to end up going in that direction. There's this one encounter that released relatively early into its early access that I figured was going to be a harbinger of content to come but I was mistaken, sadly.
Here's a video of what I'm talking about. The Wailing Tower part starts at 15 mins in.

 

[donksmanSupreme42]

Spore species origin system

this, so much this


threadtax: basically mordhau's entire combat system

 

[BrunoMattei]

The ghoul dismemberment system in Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2. Totally mid games (fite me IRL) but damn is it satisfying to kill dudes. Putting that shit in something like a fully 3D version of Blood or Duke 3D would have been epic.