Minor things in games that you greatly appreciate

[-Samurai-]

In Max Payne 3, if you walked into a cutscene carrying a rifle/shotgun, and the scene called for him to be holding a handgun, you could see him put the rifle under his arm and hold it there for the rest of the scene, and use his handgun.

None of that disappearing weapon crap.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I really, really love volumetric shadows/light shafts. I can spend quite a lot of time positioning objects between the camera and the sun in games that have this.

I'm not 100% sure why I love it so much, it's just so pretty D:

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Little atmospheric things. In Saints Row 2, for instance, you occasionally run across these guys:



That's right. A full-on barbershop quartet. The first time I saw them, it was such a cool little moment that I paused my murder spree long enough to hear them sing for a minute or two, then went on my way and left them alive.

 

[Boggelz]

I really like reloading animations on guns for some reason. I just like it when it shows a gun being more complicated than switch magazine. Like in halo 1 where you load the pistol. Or Bioshock when you reload the chemical thrower (actually all the guns in that game are pretty awesome for animations)

 

[CleverCover]

In ME1, actually having the ship land and my characters walk out of it and onto the landing pad made a world of a difference. Or seeing the Mako fall out of the Normandy and onto the planet below was wonderful. Hell, being able to pretend I was walking on the moon and looking at the Earth was beautiful.

Those parts made ME1 so much more enjoyable than ME2. So much more.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Interface. There's nothing more tragic than a great game let down by a shitty, clunky UI. I should not have to navigate 5 menus to swap something out, I shouldn't have to use f*@%$£g cursor keys when I have a bloody mouse and I shouldn't have to guess at what an item is or does (unless it needs an Identification spell cast on it first, in which case it's forgiven!).

 

[King of Asgaard]

It's the little details that get my love.
Case in point, Red Dead Redemption.
If you look up at the night sky when there are no clouds, you can see multicoloured stars, just like IRL, instead of a bunch of white dots.
In a thunderstorm, you can hear the storm coming from a distance, and up close, the lightning strikes light up the area, creating shadows depending on the origin of the lightning.
Shooting a guy in the arm will get him to drop his gun, in the head can knock his hat off and in the leg will make him limp.
Small things like this impress me just as much as big set piece moments.

 

[Woodsey]

In Fallout: New Vegas, the background noises, in casinos, you can hear slots rolling, people talking, groaning about losing, and outside in the desert, you can hear gunshots and other such things, really adds to the immersion.

I find that quite distracting and unnerving when there are 3 people in the whole casino.

OT: Good options menus. FOV sliders, UI customisation, all that good stuff. There's no excuse: I'm not going to play your game if I'm going to want to hurl after 20 minutes. And since I'm the one playing, let me decide what aides I find necessary.

And for Christ's sake, give me proper audio sliders. I turned the music off in Far Cry 3 because it's all of the sound options are tied to one bloody slider.

 

[MajorTomServo]

Being able to change the bindings on console games. Many a game has been ruined by always wanting to press X when you're supposed to press O.

Megaman Anniversary Collection is a good example. In all the games, B is jump, A is shoot. It makes it borderline unplayable.

 

[teebeeohh]

good subtitles.
i wouldn't have mentioned it but the new tomb raider has terrible subs, they are in those big greyish boxes and use different colors for different people but who gets what color is not fixed and there are names next to the text so everything might as well be white. and they subtitle fucking EVERYTHING, i know it's for people who have trouble hearing but ffs why can't i just sub dialogue and not every gasp and moan Lara does.
oh and rpgs? why is the subtitle option off/dialogue/everything? where is my option to have everything outside of dialogue subbed? you know the parts where i do not focus 100% on the talking and might miss something to background noise

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I like some of the extra animations that I feel give some of the protagonists more character. Like in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the way Sam tenses the closer he gets to an enemy, the way 47 tries to conceal his gun in Hitman: Blood Money, or even the animations of characters getting impatient when you don't do anything, like Sonic tapping his toes, pointing towards the screen then pointing forward.

 

[Redingold]

The Metal Gear Solid series generally has loads of these. Case in point, in the cave system before you fight the Pain in MGS3, it starts off being pitch black, but your eyes adjust to the darkness and you can see more clearly as time goes by. That's a very neat touch.

Or, if you kill a guard in the mountains, and then he gets eaten by a vulture, and then you kill and eat the vulture, then during the Sorrow sequence, that guard will appear and accuse you of cannibalism as you walk past. Just the fact that they even considered that sequence of events amuses me greatly.

Or the fact that you can capture live snakes and then throw them at guards. It's an utterly useless tactic, but it sure is funny.

 

[MrPhyntch]

Going to second completely rebindable keys. I absolutely detest games like, say, Halo, where you have 4 layouts to choose from and that's it. It means that the games with rebindable controls end up getting rebound whenever I pick up a new game with a new control scheme. Also borderlands 2, while rebindable, aren't fully rebindable. All the vehicle control keys are bound to the fps control keys. Meaning with my layout when I originally started playing, my driving controls were screwed up to the point that I could not drive playing multiplayer.

 

[rasputin0009]

Lighting is a big one for me. Like in BF3, where the camera reacts to the sun's brightness when you go outside from a dark building.

Or in open-world games that allow you to access every building you see. It's really jarring seeing a cool looking building, running up to it, and not being able to explore it. I feel it defeats the purpose of the exploring part in an "open-world" game. Ya, a large city with every building accessible would be a lot of work, but it has a lot more impact than looking at the outside of the building and surrounding area.

 

[Pulse]

1. In FPSs, being able to see your legs. Looking down and seeing nothing but thin air really ruins it for me.

2. Idle animations. When you do nothing for a while and either your character or an npc acts. In dragons dogma my pawn would walk up and cautiously wave their hand in front of my face, I liked that touch.

3. Wind. As in proper gusty wind with good sound effects and everything reacting accordingly. It's just far more impactful than most other weather effects and somehow make landscapes feel more tangible.

4. When quest givers aren't rooted to the same spot throughout the entire game. Especially if they aren't even constrained to a shop or something.

 

[norashepard]

My answer is jokes that are good but don't take themselves too seriously and aren't the focus. Literally any game that makes me laugh while I'm busy doing other stuff (like saving galaxies/stabbing dudes), is a good game in my book.

Notable examples: Fallout 3 and it's random and funny things that you can find, Mass Effect 3 (or any Bioware) party banter (and the jokes Traynor makes if you romance her; comedy gold), The Sims when it bugs out and sims do idiotic things like stand outside your window for 8 hours in the rain right before sitting down to "contemplate the hollowness of life."

 

[David Huff]

I don't know if this has been said but when you can pause a cutscene.

 

[Bostur]

- I do appreciate loading screens that prompt for a button press to continue. Then I have time to read the loading tips, and prepare myself mentally.

- I also appreciate really slick UIs. Blizzard is good at it, so is Dota 2.

- I like logs, and they can be useful in most games. If I miss a visual hint, or just didn't pay attention having a log at hand is very handy.

- Tight responsive controls are yummy.

- Graphs, graphs, graphs. Many games have lots of numbers, but too few bother to graph them. I'm looking at you Vicky 2.
Now this is graphs:

Spoiler

 

[Vault101]

aside from small details when a charachter expresses what your thinking at the time

for example in Tomb Raider as I was trawling through some flooded cave Lara said "what the hell am I doing?" to which was exactly what I was thinking

or Maya from boderlands 2 specifically saying "QUIET!!" when doing her phase thing

 

[flying_whimsy]

They've both been said at this point, but pause-able cutscenes and idle animations, so I guess I'll say something else.

I really like it when player characters and npcs alike will move around on their own; my biggest gripe with Fallout 3 was stealthing around places only to find the enemies all standing around waiting for me.

Oh, and reflections. I love when I can see the game world and characters reflected on shiny things.