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.

  • businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    8·
    2 years ago

    any game that feels good to move around in is instantly better than games with less developed movement systems. games like sm64, source bhop/surf, tf2 rocket jumping, etc. why not make it a joy to get from one place to another instead of just moving in a straight line or fast traveling?

    • stom@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      I had a real weakspot for Tf2 surf maps and I don’t fully understand why. I think it’s partly the fact that this isn’t how you’re “supposed” to play the game, but is an added bonus that came about by accident.

      I’m also not very good at them, I spent far too long on surf_utopia (v3, I think) and only ever got to the end of it once.

    • mustyOrange@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      This

      Traversal in a game is the #1 factor for me enjoying it. Riding Torrent in ER is fun. Building mechs that can have a suspension system and turret system in TOTK is fun. Thwipping as spiderman and doing tricks is fun. Pogoing in HK is fun.

      Traversal is what players spend 99% of their time doing, so make it fun

    • apprehensively_human@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 years ago

      The Ori series is really good for this. Bash is one of the greatest movement mechanics I have ever used in a video game, and coupled with Ori’s other moves you can fly across the map and it feels extremely natural.

  • aokon@beehaw.org
    8·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • delcake@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      Honestly that’s a big reason that Personas 3, 4, and 5 stand as some of my favorite games. Letting a player focus on the main character’s relationships with the supporting cast around them just makes the main story hit that much harder when it involves all of these people you’ve ended up forming strong feelings about.

      • aokon@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        Ya Persona 5 and FF7 remake are the two games that I have played and IMO do this the best!

    • Herbstzeitlose@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      CrossCode has an amazing “hanging out with friends” vibe from start to finish. The gameplay and plot are great but the lighthearted atmosphere is what stuck with me most.

  • missingno@kbin.social
    8·
    2 years ago

    Boss fights that are synchronized to the music. Not too many I can think of off the top of my head right now though. There’s Violette in One Step From Eden, and I guess you can count the final stage of Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion sorta loosely did this with the final minute transition.

    • Julian@lemm.ee
      1·
      2 years ago

      Not really a boss fight but probably my favorite moment from any video game is the shockwave level from Inside. The way the music gradually comes in is pure magic.

  • SanityFM@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • mint@beehaw.org
    8·
    2 years ago

    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).

    • psudo@beehaw.org
      1·
      2 years ago

      I must be playing different Japanese games, as if they aren’t from Formsoft they tend to feel like cutscene simulators to me. Sometimes it can be fun if they have enjoyable writing (looking at a lot of the side content in the Yakuza games).

      • mint@beehaw.org
        2·
        2 years ago

        Nah I wrote a whole thing about it. Japanese games are in general significantly more interested in game feel in the moment to moment, even when they have tons of cutscenes (ex. MGS)

        A game like RDR2 is extremely concerned with realism and physicality even if it costs the players agency. Morgan controls like a lumbering tank, and everything feels cumbersome. The game will make you watch him skin an animal for 20 seconds where you aren’t even playing the game, really. Contrast that with something like strangers of paradise or devil may cry. Is it realistic for Jack “Skip Cutscene” Garland to cancel out of any animation to perform a finisher? Nope. Does it feel good as fuck? absolutely.

        • psudo@beehaw.org
          1·
          2 years ago

          Maybe I just don’t jive with the common tropes of game feel for them, as most of the ones I’ve tried haven’t given me that visceral fun you got.

  • knokelmaat@beehaw.org
    7·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • Spicy@beehaw.org
      5·
      2 years ago

      This is definitely huge for me. Nothing quite as frustrating as watching an unskippable cutscene every time you die to a boss.

    • Lux@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      3·
      2 years ago

      One of the few things i dislike about the dark souls games is the time between 0 hp and actually playing the game again

  • donio@beehaw.org
    7·
    2 years ago
    1. 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.
    2. Deckbuilding. I love it in boardgames so it’s fun to see it being explored in videogames too.
    • setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      This is going to sound insane, but Gears Tactics, the Gears Of War spin-off game might actually be a good fit for you. The game straight up copied the combat from the new XCOM games, but it did it really competently. The main difference are all the special abilities your squad members get, which when you are at a high level makes the game turn into figuring out how to min-max for the best chain damage combos.

      Not a game you’ll play forever, but worth at least a play through of the campaign, so if it’s on sale I recommend it.

  • SevenSwell@beehaw.org
    7·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • dawnerd@lemm.ee
      3·
      2 years ago

      Same. I really liked the early alphas of 7 days to die but then they went and tried to make it much harder and it just stopped being fun. I haven’t played it recently so maybe they’ve backed off but early on I put in so many hours. Building was great and the zombies did just the right amount of damage to buildings.

    • ConstableJelly@beehaw.org
      3·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • SevenSwell@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        Have you tried Forza Horizon? I haven’t been invested in a racing game as much as that one since NFS Underground 2. YMMV but I think it’s pretty much the pinnacle of Arcade style racing games.

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • patchymoose@beehaw.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • wispikat@beehaw.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    optional, well hidden, especially cryptic content. this kind of thing is the BEST. it plays into my simple collectathon loving brain where just finding things for the sake of finding them is where all the fun is.

    see: Environmental Station Alpha, Tunic, FEZ…