Minor Things in Games That Are Super Cool

[Calandrino]

Crystal Castles puts the initials of the high score holder in the background of the first level.

Newspapers for death/failure screens. Destroy All Humans and We Happy Few both do this.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

For some reason i appreciate a game when it does neat audio things more than anything else

Recent thing i can think up is when F-Zero 99 combined Mute City and Fire Field into one song for a secret stage.

otherwise it's little subtle things like when Banjo Kazooie changes instruments fludily for a song depending on which area you are in. Or in Sonic Generations when clasic Sonic's City Escape song goes into the 2P Mine zone from Sonic3K and it somehow works.

 

[Fag Albert]

Maybe this isn't minor, I'm not sure. But I love it when fantasy games let me play a ranged guy but let me use some other weapon like a sling or an atlatl instead of a bow or crossbow.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

I picked up Trepang2 on sale and one thing I appreciate is the combat chatter. In most games the chatter is just generic stuff and at best, informs you that an enemy threw a gernade. But in Trepang it goes from the normal tactical stuff in most FPS games to soldiers actually freaking the fuck out as you rip though whole squads like nothing. It really sells the super solder power fantasy and adds to the general chaos of that game.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Maybe this isn't minor, I'm not sure. But I love it when fantasy games let me play a ranged guy but let me use some other weapon like a sling or an atlatl instead of a bow or crossbow.

I have never ever seen an atlatl in a video game. I love using slings, the only non-strategy games I remember depicting slings are Far Cry Primal and Apotheon.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I picked up Trepang2 on sale and one thing I appreciate is the combat chatter. In most games the chatter is just generic stuff and at best, informs you that an enemy threw a gernade. But in Trepang it goes from the normal tactical stuff in most FPS games to soldiers actually freaking the fuck out as you rip though whole squads like nothing. It really sells the super solder power fantasy and adds to the general chaos of that game.

One thing I started to really appreciate at higher difficulties was the addition of combat barks for when the enemy is close behind you. Each of the different enemy types has different lines and VAs, so you'll have grunts taunt for getting the drop on you, or cultists calling you out to their brothers. It can be very helpful in gameplay by giving you that split second to react to them, instead of the AI just unceremoniously dumping a mag into your spine and killing you without a chance to respond, and given how crazy things can get, that little advantage is surprisingly useful at keeping track of where each enemy is.

 

[bliblblblbbllb]

In Insanaqaruim's personal fish tank mode, you can on rare occasion buy a musical fish, which will sing a ringtone of various classical music when fed. There are dozens of them. A fish named Santa also sings Christmas music. This was the coolest shit when I was growing up with this game.

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[Waifu Denier]

I did alway like it when a game had some sort of playable last stand, to have the player experience the desperate and hopeless struggle of a situation. I think Halo Reach's ending is probably the most famous, but I remember one campaign in the game Battle for Wesnoth where some of your army have to make a last stand delaying the enemy, and even though it can only end in the death of all your units your next mission is affected by how long you held out.

 

[Two Dollars]

The World Ends With You having a secondary leveling system was great too. There's no variance in stat gain, so at any time you can adjust your level to any level lower than your current highest real level and your stats drop to match it. The further you drop, the higher your droprates in encounters. It made farming to 100% pin completion a 3-4 hour affair instead of 20+ since dropping far enough would crank most droprates up to 100% and actually make the refights vs old enemy groups a fun challenge.

It’s not quite the same thing, but the intensity system/fiend’s cauldron in Kid Icarus: Uprising is genius. Every level has a default intensity of 2.0, but you can pay hearts (the game’s currency) to change the intensity to anywhere between 0.0 and 9.0 in increments of 0.1. A higher intensity means more difficult/frequent enemies, but also better rewards in the form of more hearts and better weapon drops. A level that might be a pushover at the default intensity may be brutal at 9.0. The game forcefully lowers your intensity if you get a game over, which is an effective way to auto-balance difficulty but also works as a double-edged sword since certain areas can only be accessed at certain intensities, so you may be required to not die, checkpoints be damned.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Hal brought that over to Smash afterwards too. Great system.

If Nintendo doesn't figure out how to do a HD remake of KI:U eventually I'm going to sit down and play through it fully on high intensity with an emulator with mouse aim. Great game but complete wrist murder with the stylus.

 

[PunkinMan]

this isnt really in the game per-say but I like to think about if half life 2 had far cry 1 types of effects where ground explosions change the enviroment.

Archive

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Renon in Castlevania 64. He is a merchant and a demon that towards the end turns into a boss if too much money has been spent in his shop. Spending more than 30k means that you have sold your soul(it's clearly written in the contracts that the player picks up, it's just written in a language the player can't read) and now he's going to collect it. That's a cool and unexpected addition.

 

[Fag Albert]

I have never ever seen an atlatl in a video game. I love using slings, the only non-strategy games I remember depicting slings are Far Cry Primal and Apotheon.

I've seen atlatls exactly once in an RPG (Technically twice because 3 days after I posted that I guess runescape added them). An MMO called asheron's call from ''99 would let you specialize as an atlatl guy which was kinda cool.
Also yeah slings are really fun. The first time I beat the original baldur's gate was with a halfling sling guy

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

I did alway like it when a game had some sort of playable last stand, to have the player experience the desperate and hopeless struggle of a situation.

Advance Wars games (aside from the reboot) always nail this with the final missions. For those unfamiliar with AW it's very deterministic in damage calculations, which are very simple and involve unit type, terrain and health on both sides. The game's AI is good but not great and the final missions always start a ton of predeployed units where your side is at a clear type disadvantage to the opponent, so the first 10 turns or so are all about getting as much expansion/production going as possible while trying to stall the enemy as your units are gradually wiped out. Eventually the enemy breaks through but if you've played correctly and stalled long enough you'll have a force of type-advantageous units built up to push them back which leads into the proper final push into their base to finish the game.

I always thought those missions were really great design due to the simple math meaning they almost always play out in that rout-into-turnaround progression. They're tense as hell and playing one through to a win takes between 1 and 2 hours due to the sheer size of the map and number of units involved.

 

[Chin of Campbell]

I did alway like it when a game had some sort of playable last stand, to have the player experience the desperate and hopeless struggle of a situation. I think Halo Reach's ending is probably the most famous, but I remember one campaign in the game Battle for Wesnoth where some of your army have to make a last stand delaying the enemy, and even though it can only end in the death of all your units your next mission is affected by how long you held out.

Indie Fire Emblem rip-off and all-around fun game Symphony of War has a really great last stand mission.

It occurs smack dab in the middle of the story when you'reat the point in most Fire Emblem games where your ragtag group of children is decimating the imperial army. Turns out a tiny insurrection isn't actually a match for a well-supplied, well-armed military and you have units two tiers higher than your own and cannon artillery units show up in droves to slaughter you. The game secretly turns off permadeath so you're under the impression the entire fight that you're losing all the units you've trained. My favorite part, though, is there's an achievement for winning that mission that the dev said they weren't even sure it was possible to get, lol.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Games letting me rob graves (like with a shovel)
Games letting me drink and smoke and what not

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

View attachment 5833600

Fuck i’d love a new Paperboy game. I spent hours and hours playing the one on SNES.

 

[marvlouslie]

Alpha Protocol is a game made up of these. There's so many minor choices that the game acknowledges, like if you kill random guys or just knock them out. Let an arms dealer get away so you can tail him means you get extra intel, but enemies have better guns. You can buy dossiers on various NPCs. The game tracks this, so you can use certain minor information in dialogue trees to your advantage.

I recently bought Alpha Protocol on GOG, and honestly, I'm kinda hoping it's as good as people are hyping it. I'm still trying to figure out why it didn't do so well. Was it because journos didn't like it?

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

I recently bought Alpha Protocol on GOG, and honestly, I'm kinda hoping it's as good as people are hyping it. I'm still trying to figure out why it didn't do so well. Was it because journos didn't like it?

It's a fantastic, reactive spy story wrapped around the limp bones of a mediocre game. The shooting, stealth, etc, is kinda clumsy and doesn't really have any depth to it.

Abusing the pistol headshot and shadow cloak abilities let you focus on what's good.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It's a fantastic, reactive spy story wrapped around the limp bones of a mediocre game.

That's being generous.

The gameplay is trash, especially early on. The choices are great, but there are certain things like weapons being pea shooters that can't hit the broad side of a barn until late game. Melee attacks are appealing because they're consistent and non-lethal.

The framing device also makes no sense. I never finished the game, so maybe it explains it. But the set up is you're introgating the bad guy and the rest of the game is a flash back. Fair enough. But then 90% of the scenes are Thornton being interrogated by the bad guy.