What is a really fun gameplay mechanic or experience you had/have while playing an underated, unknown game? Or a game that might be known but not known for having fun in the way you do with it.
I’ll go first. Driv3r by unlocking the built in cheat code called infinite mass. It allows you to smash into vehicles and send them flying. Using the motorcycle makes it the funniest and most fun to play.
Vice city has a cheat code that makes cars fly. Although it’s more like leapfrog because you need to accelerate in order for the game to push you up to fly.
So when I was a kid I used to get the tank and turn the gun around and shoot it and use it as a propeller for infinite flying.
I remember that cheat code. It’s pretty fun. Me and my friends used to have a good time with it.
“Dodo cheat”, at least according to the little cheat book I had back in the day. It gave cars the same mechanics as the dodo (which I think was the little sea plane). Using the tank like a rocket and aiming for a ramp was the best.
I’ve always really loved mechanics that encourage players to manage risk, especially where it relates to HP systems.
One that I enjoyed, in Cosmic Star Heroine; when your characters’ HP reaches 0, they remain on their feet for their next turn. If their HP is healed to a positive number that turn, they can continue, but their healing is halved to make that difficult. On the other hand, while in negative HP, they can also perform an attack that deals double damage - after which they’ll be KO’d.
Fatal Frame has an item that will automatically revive and full-heal you one time when you would otherwise die. However, you can only hold one of these at a time. So, if you’re playing with heavy use of healing items, burning through all your film (ammo), you might find a second one, which will make you wish you’d leaned on the first one a bit more by not bothering to heal quite so often.
Another random example: You’re in a JRPG, and going against a boss enemy that has a brutal spell that reduces people’s HP by 3/4ths. However, they have pretty limited options for actually finishing you off. At some point, players will realize their advantage, and stop spending so much time healing people to full. A similar example is a boss in Final Fantasy X. It habitually casts Zombie on your party members, meaning healing spells will damage them, and revival spells will kill them. She then frequently casts “Revive-All” on your party. If everyone’s a zombie, that means you die in one turn. However, if you stop healing, and let party members die to basic attacks, she may accidentally bring them back to life for you - and no longer zombified.
It’s not unknown, but I think it’s an underrated mechanic: in God Hand, the better you do, the more the difficulty increases. If it gets too much and you want to lower it back down, you can grovel and beg enemies to go easier on you.
I wish more developers tied difficulty change to in-game actions like that.
Ratchet and Clank on the ps2 did this insanely good. Some guy on youtube completely described how they did it, let me find that real quick.
Edit, this is the one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6CnfnhTBWX0
Hmm, I remember from one of the developer commentaries that only future levels should get tuned, not the one player is currently on. Maybe the intro level was an exception.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_game_difficulty_balancing
Apparently it’s more common than I realized. Most games doing it apparently don’t tell you it’s happening. For example I played RE4 when it was new and had no idea it had dynamic difficulty.
Yeah. Back during the pandemic Abby Russell played RE4 on Giant Bomb and chat was pretty much constantly losing it over how much ammo she was using. But the game’s drop tables accounted for that and she basically was just playing Gears of War for all intents and purposes.
Was fascinating since basically everyone who has ever played that game focused on headshots and conservation rather than just unloading.
But it also speaks to how this is usually implemented. It is more about making every playstyle viable rather than actively getting the hammer and nails if it sees you are getting a bit too excited during a combat sequence.
Yet another Mikami game. Incredible legacy.
Building your moveset in God Hand was also really interesting.
Driftland: The Magic Revival is pretty unique with the tiny shattered islands you have to connect to be part of your empire.
Niche mechanics are my jam. My favorites usually revolve around unique economies or structures that create their own depth of play.
I love genre benders and sandboxy stuff. I’d like to see something like Chaos Seed (SNES) built on or re-imagined, dwarf fortress is great for tinker-ability, and I always liked how Nethack has some deeply designed interactions even if they can seem superficial or esoteric. FFXII with the gambit and realtime-ish combat systems was always a standout too.
I think every game in saints row series had the same “masshole” cheat. It’s fun.
I do remember SR1 or 2 having a similar ability. But Driv3r was funnier and had more ridiculously good results when playing it. They should make a new Driver game
I only have Driver SF, but yeah, they should, it was fun.
I wish for another football game with the gameplay of 2K5 and I wish other games tried a system like Magicka 2.
