What are some of your favorite game mechanics?
What are some of your favorite game mechanics?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Transitionless turn-based combat, like in Yakuza : Like a Dragon.
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).
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.
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.
This one is a bit hard to describe, but I like a variety of mechanics that acknowledge HP loss as a possible thing that can happen (rather than, say, rewarding you for no-hit runs).
One example is when a game balances between giving you decent ammo, and decent healing items. Sometimes shooting every zombie is the better play because health is scarce. But when ammo is scarce and health is plentiful, it may make sense to run through 3 zombies taking only a few bites.
There's also HP feedback loop systems, where it's still bad to get hurt, and you're better off avoiding it, but when you DO get hurt, you build up some kind of meter that allows you to use that as a comeback. This might include things like a super-attack meter that builds when you're damaged, or faster attacks that only come from low health or broken armor.
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.
Skill trees, it's sad but I am such a sucker for a good skill tree.. or a bad one. A lot of rogue-lites especially and 7 days to die <3
- 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
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.
This is really niche, but I love drawing maps manually on first person dungeon crawlers. The Etrian Odyssey series is fhe quintessential example of this, and it in itself is a modern reinvention of the old days when you would use pen and paper to draw the map of a dungeon when games were so unforgiving that they did not give you any map at all.
Etrian Odyssey gives you an on screen map, but you get to mark where certain things are between your runs.
The whole thing gives me the same type of feel as manually keeping score of a baseball game. Kind of a lost art.
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.
Mine is Warframe's travesal. Unmatched and unbeatable that all you need to know. But a close second in Titanfall 2's one.
I know it sounds silly but if I can pilot a vehicle then walk around in it WHILE IT'S IN MOTION. Man. The game gets a 10/10 from me after that. Outer Wilds, Star Citizen and Subnautica come to mind.
Achievement based cosmetics in multiplayer games. While I appreciate the "cosmetics only" approach of some multiplayer games microtransactions and battlepasses I also really miss the days of showing off the hayabusa armor in Halo 3. Or even in single player games, it was sometimes more engaging to have something to aim towards to unlock a new costume or get the "ultimate" version of an armor set.
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 know there a lot of games that have tried to emulate botw's look and style. And that's whatever, but honestly I love the glider so much, I'm cool if as many games as possible want to use that 🙂
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.
Its a little silly but I do enjoy those little things they add to a game that don't really add much in terms of gameplay, heck you're even able to play the game without making use of them, but are a nice way of sort of just "grounding" yourself in the world for a time, giving you some time to pause and reflect a little on whats been happening.
Stuff like pulling out a guitar with Into the Radius and trying to strum out a lil beat or stopping in at a diner in Shadows of Doubt and having a little coffee and watching the world go by while mulling over a case that you're on. I think that kind of stuff is pretty rad.
- Whatever respects my reaction time is almost automatically a game that I will like. If I die in a game, I want to die knowing that I screwed up and it was not the fault of some clunking movement mechanic or due to some uninterruptible animations. Highlight: DOOM Eternal
- Whatever makes great gun-play. I don't even know how to describe it, it's one of those "you known when you feel it" types of situations. There are extremely few games that get this right. Highlight: Destiny 2, Halo Infinite
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)
I've played mainly fighting games for years and my fav mechanic is the comeback mechanic ala XFactor in UMVC3, Instinct in the recent Killer Instinct, and the Critical Art in the new Street Fighter 6.
It ain't over till you see the K.O. screen.
I'm bad at explaining but I love Kirby's boss battles, they're simple, challenging, and somehow extremely cinematic. Just can't get enough of them. If there's more games that are just the boss battles as a full game let me know.
Actraiser. That game was my favorite when it came out. Part Sim part platformer. Blew me away as a kid. I still give it a play through every few years.
In Everhood, an RPG with rhythm-based battles, you start out only being able to dodge enemy attacks. Much later into the game, your character regains their memories and a new sense of purpose as well as finally gaining the ability to attack.
Then you have to return to the battles you scraped by by dodging and look for opportunities to sneak attacks in. It adds a new level of challenge to an already challenging game.
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!
I was surprised how much I enjoyed the monster catching systems and subsequently the battle system in Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. So much so, that I got the platinum trophy in both the PS3 and PS4 versions. I loved that the battles were technically in real time but with cooldowns for each character and their familiars, and I appreciated that the characters (3 of them) are on the battlefield WITH the familiars rather than either/or. This meant I could deal some damage to exploit enemy weakness using the main characters while some of the familiars tanked damage and all that. It wasn't perfect but it really resonated with me.