Game mechanics(and design choices) that haven't been done justice

[sullynathan]

I've been playing a lot of Japanese games lately with Resident Evil remake, Devil May Cry & Yakuza 5. I notice that these games have some central design choices that some would complain about or dislike.

Yakuza 5 from the 10 hours I've played of it is a game heavily focused on mini games. A good amount of the main missions are mini games and so are nearly all the side missions yet the game makes it very fun and exciting, maybe it's the Japanese setting that seems so foreign and at times ridiculous but it works. They're definitely much funner to do than the collectathon that a lot of open world games have.

Off the top of my head I can say that I've yet to play a game with great constant random encounters, Yakuza 5 has a lot of these and it can get tiring and so do the early Final Fantasies.

 

[Durandal]

Projectiles in first-person shooters. It's either all hitscan or straight fireballs. There exists some minor variation here and there, but it's rarely ever explored and put in the center of the game. Like nuDoom has some cool projectile attacks you never see in another shooter, but because dodging them is easy and enemies with different projectile attacks are rarely ever mixed, it falls flat on its face. In Marathon you had grenades, homing projectiles, explosive bowling balls, explosive homing bowling balls, long-range projectile spam, faster projectiles and so on. Not terribly imaginative, but when you faced a platoon of enemies it's like playing a shoot 'em up in first person, shmup logic like mobius dodging and tapdodging would be applicable on top of using stunlocking and the level to your advantage.

Randomness keeping you on your toes. Japanese platformers and run 'n guns like Ghouls 'N Ghosts and Contra would constantly spawn popcorn mooks at each side of the screen so you'd have to learn to deal with shit on the fly. This also occurs in the Descent games where enemies may decide to roam around the level instead of staying in one place if you take too long, so if you're practicing a level hard and notice one enemy who's normally THERE suddenly isn't anymore, you have to figure out where the fuck that little shit could have buggered off to, which is especially dangerous when there aren't any fucking doors around. I very much like this because a little bit of RNG prevents the game from being total hardcore memorization, you should also be able to deal with unexpected shit on the fly, but too much RNG and whatever skills you learned become pointless as success is largely determined by whatever shit the game feels like throwing at you. Generally speaking you should be able to know what's coming and prepare adequately, but how you will react to and deal with it should be left to player skill.

Your hearing ability in video games is rarely ever challenged, however pointless it may be with the existence of volume sliders. There are some games reliant on audio feedback which sometimes intentionally distort or mask audio to put you at a disadvantage, but aside from Crysis 1 there aren't any games I know of which make it harder to hear what's going on around you depending on the difficulty. Imagine a guard going HUH, WHAT WAS THAT? I GUESS IT WAS JUST A RAT on Normal when he's suspicious but letting out an inquisitive grunt on higher difficulties.

 

[v1rus]

Crossroad keep in NWN2. Fuck me, but that shit is awesome, and could have been amazing if the game wasnt, well ,NWN2.

 

[Icewater]

Dynamic music for things other than combat. Portal 2's music would change based on speed, proximity to a hazard, etc. I thought that was pretty cool and would like to see more stuff like that in games but I wouldn't be surprised if it took a lot of investment of time, money, etc.

Edit: Hub-based level design. Lots of games do this but few make good use of the opportunity to have significant changes occur to the hub(s) to refresh them, too many just recycle the hub(s) almost exactly over and over again.

Use of height and a varied combination of area types of different sizes, orientations, openness, etc. is generally pretty poor in the level design of most games.

Cover mechanics that don't involve surgically attaching yourself to conveniently-placed groups of chest-high walls.

 

[hellbent]

Crossroad keep in NWN2. Fuck me, but that shit is awesome, and could have been amazing if the game wasnt, well, NWN2.

Or, the homage to Crossroad Keep that was the stronghold in PoE.

I like the idea of city / village management coupled with SMALL SCALE, yet deep combat mechanics. Battle Brothers recently did some aspects of this well. In the past, Lords of the Realm did a good job of meshing these mechanics, and then later in Hinterland we saw something like this with real-time action RPG combat as well.

If we could have a game that allowed for some stronghold management plus a small customizable party (or 2-3 groups) with turn based combat and some questing, that would be great.

 

[hellbent]

Stealth mechanics haven't really been significantly improved upon as a whole. Some games have incorporated new gimmicks here and there, but no one has really put together a total package. Having somewhat realistic AI guard behaviors would be a fantastic start.