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.
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.
Mine is Warframe’s travesal. Unmatched and unbeatable that all you need to know. But a close second in Titanfall 2’s one.
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.
- 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
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, but it limits you to a specific spell loadout that is hard to switch in the heat of combat.
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.
I’ve always been a fan of destruction and general environment interactability in games. Imagine what Red Faction Guerilla could be on modern hardware.
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.
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
And then there’s those rare moments when you get a crit so devastating for the enemy team, you almost feel bad for them. 🤣
A really well done survival-craft gameplay loop is sooo addicting. When they get the balance just right it’s so satisfying, but when it’s off a little bit it can be so frustrating. For example I thought Subnautica had a really great balance of resource gathering and building and exploring. On the other hand, something like Raft has the balance way off and it’s really not fun for me at all.
Subnautica was the first survival-crafting game I played and I became obsessed in large party because of how finally tuned crafting and progression was. Now I keep trying a bunch of other similar games hoping they grip me like Subnautica, but they never come close. No Man’s Sky was closest but it’s too big and unfocused. I went from repairing my little broken ship to owning an entire freighter in like 2 hours.
Much like how I keep buying racing games hoping something will click like the old burnout games, I’m coming to realize I don’t think I like the genre that much, I just liked that one special entry within it.
- Turn based gameplay, especially as it’s done in classic roguelikes. Also like it in turn-based strategy (XCOM etc), going back to Rebel Star on the Spectrum.
- Deckbuilding. I love it in boardgames so it’s fun to see it being explored in videogames too.
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.
All time favorite was the feral druid transformations back in the WoW days (Burning Crusade ish I think).
I loved turning into a cat, putting bleeds on some boss, turning into a elf form and popping off a revive/heal, going back to cat to DPS, maybe going bear to pick up and add or two as back up tank. Super fun.
Also flying around in bird form, picking herbs to make potions and just chatting with the guild mates on the headset was very relaxing.
Past that the flying mechanics from City of Heros/Villains were great and I compare any flight mechanics now to those then.
Have you tried Dragonflight? They seem to have added physics/inertia to the flight mechanic. I haven’t played for like 15 years but am tempted to pull the trigger for that alone.
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.
