Tiny insignificant details in games that really impressed you

[laggyteabag]

In Supergiant's Pyre, there is a song that plays during the credits, which changes, depending on your choices/success

Starts at around 1:00

This is the Original Soundtrack version, which replaces everyone's fates with "They stayed true to the end"

This version reflects this person's choices

I've never seen anything else like it, and is a very Supergiant way of doing things

 

[BrawlMan]

In RE4Remake, there is wall bounce tech. Leon, and other characters in Mercenaries Mode, can melee an enemy into a wall causing extra damage or death. If you stun an enemy into a wall, than you can perform an execution with a knife if close enough! That's freaking awesome and something you can't do in the original! Another neat feature carried from the other remakes are characters commenting on your combat performance or figuring out a puzzle fast enough.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

In Papa's Freezeria Deluxe, as well as most of the other Papa Louie games but that one's readily available since a couple weeks ago, it's possible to send coupons to your customers to ensure that a specific person will show up on your next shift. Normally, the coupons are delivered by Vincent, a mailman. However, it's possible to open the customer menu from the mid-shift pause menu and even deliver coupons at that time. If you send a coupon to a customer who is currently in the restaurant, then your PC will walk up and give them the coupon directly. Conversely, if Vincent is in the restaurant, or you're giving a coupon to him while he's not there, then your delivery driver will deliver the coupon instead.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So in hundreds of hours in the game I never thought to do this -

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The door loading screens in the original Resident Evil trilogy put a lot of effort into making sure that they look exactly like the doors in the main game do, and that they open in a consistent direction. Meaning that if you go through a door and it opens away from you, if you immediately go back through the same door it'll open towards you.

Having better loading times in the games since 4 made that obsolete, and fast loading is usually better than a visually engaging loading screen, but if you can't get the former, the latter is always appreciated.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The door loading screens in the original Resident Evil trilogy put a lot of effort into making sure that they look exactly like the doors in the main game do, and that they open in a consistent direction. Meaning that if you go through a door and it opens away from you, if you immediately go back through the same door it'll open towards you.

I think I only noticed that when I played the N64 port of RE2, because of course the doors opened almost instantly and therefore I wasn't distracted by annoyance or reluctant to go through them in the first place.

 

[bluegate]

Horizon Forbidden West having done away with Horizon Zero Dawn's inventory limits.

My god did it feel good to not have to discard Blaze stacks and low tier drops every X number of machine skills because of inventory limits.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Horizon Forbidden West having done away with Horizon Zero Dawn's inventory limits.

My god did it feel good to not have to discard Blaze stacks and low tier drops every X number of machine skills because of inventory limits.

OTOH it enabled them to make crafting more bloated and convoluted than it ever should have been. There was enough busy work in ZD but they practically tripled down on it for FW.

 

[BrawlMan]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ResidentEvil4Remake

• Shown Their Work: Leon's weapon handling is top notch, showing realistic tactics that are used by professional police and military. The gun reloads are also handled properly.
  • Leon uses the CAR stance (Center Axis Relock) when he's at close range with enemies. The CAR stance provides numerous benefits, and is a good idea for close encounters. The 45 degree angle allows for quicker sight acquisition on targets, and allows for faster switching between targets. The 45 degree angle plus the cupping of both hands over the length of the handgun provides better recoil control. The extra tension put in the elbows plus the gun being pulled back towards the chest makes it harder for the enemy to wrestle the gun out of the shooter's hands. No stance is perfect, but it's a realistic technique for someone of Leon's training to actually be using.
  • During a partial reload, Leon will put the old magazine away, and then place the new one into the mag well of the handgun. Leon wouldn't dispose of a perfectly good magazine that still has ammo in it. This partial reload also reflects that there is still one bullet left in the chamber, so Leon has however many bullets are in the magazine plus one bullet extra in the chamber to fire. Sadly this +1 feature does not apply to other magazine fed weapons like the rifle or the submachine guns, which would allow for the same result.
  • The pump action shotgun does not have the pump pulled back during a partial reload, because that would simply extract the current shell loaded in the shotgun's chamber. Only when the shotgun is fully empty does Leon rack back the pump action, in order to load a shell contained inside the magazine tube.
  • The knife fighting between Krauser and Leon is handled much more realistically compared to the original fight. Attempts to stab are not unknown in a knife fight, but professionals prefer to use quick omni-directional slashes in order to hit as many vital points as possible to bleed the opponent out. The original fight relied too much on stabbing attempts and had their knives clash, which is remarkably rare for such a small target. Krauser did have ambush attacks from behind in the original, but most of his attacks were from the front. In the remake, Krauser is much more persistent about trying to maneuver around Leon to flank him on his more vulnerable side or back regions.
  • The Regeneradors' healing factor is treated with a little bit more realism (insofar as such a creature can be), since heat is factored into the equation. The exposed regeneration cores glow in the dark, suggesting that the Plagas cores are producing vast quantities of energy to enable the high speed regeneration. When the Regenerador regenerates a body part, huge amounts of steam pour out of the freshly grown limb, something that would only happen if the flesh was producing an enormous amount of heat. If hyper fast regeneration was ever a real thing, the heat produced by regenerated body would look very similar to what's presented in the game. On a physics level, the amount of energy needed to regrow a body part at those speeds would likely boil to such an extreme degree that the blood inside the person would expand and explode. This is to say nothing of the hyper fast blood pressure the Regenerador would be undergoing, because the new limbs would receive their nutrients from the blood carried through the body. The Regenerador exploding upon death is one of the most realistic depictions of what would happen to a fantasy healing factor. Where the Las Plagas gets the nutrients necessary to sustain this regeneration is another matter altogether, and that issue borders on magic.
  • When Saddler mind controls Ashley to use Leon's handgun on Leon, the gun jams. This is not plot armor, but a reasonable occurrence. note Guns are recoil operated, and use an internal spring mechanism to pull back the slide of the chamber, which then ejects the old round and then pushes forward a new round into the chamber. This kind of jam is to be expected when the ejection mechanism has worn out due to repeat firing, let alone if the gun has taken blunt force trauma. This jam can also happen if the shooter is "limp wristing it", meaning that they're not letting the recoil hit their hand properly. The entire point of the recoil spring is that the recoil felt by the explosion of gas from the bullet is supposed to hit the gun, so that the recoil can put pressure on the spring and cycle the action. If you don't hold the gun properly then the recoil doesn't hit the gun properly, and the already fired bullet gets jammed in the ejection port. In short, Ashley is an inexperienced shooter and her hand quite visibly wobbles around in fear; perfect conditions for a "limp-wristing" malfunction. Leon also checks the gun in textbook fashion when he gets it back.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I donated but never thought to look later on.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

One of the cosmetics in Resident Evil 4 Remake you can unlock is a pair of sunglasses; Leon and Ashley each have an accessory slot as well as a full costume. Though it doesn't have a stated effect the way the gas mask (aim assist), chicken hat (higher defense) or cat ears (infinite ammo) do, equipping them on either Leon or Ashley will make them immune to the flinch effect of nearby flash grenades.

 

[Chimpzy]

I've been playing HL Alyx, and there are just so many fun interactions you can do in this game. Like, you can grab a gasmask or hardhat, put it on, and it'll be functional. Or you can grab a metal plate or barrel, hold it in front of you and use it as a bullet shield. You can grab a bucket, fill it with grenades and carry it with you through basically the entire game. When a headcrab jumps at you, you can grab to intercept it mid-air, and it'll be helpless while you pull out your gun to execute it. Or throw it down a pit, or trap it inside a barrel, or feed it to a barnacle. There's no melee damage, but you can smack enemies with stuff or throw at them them make them flinch and buy a little time. Also grab and throw back grenades. You come across a functional piano at one point, and you could play songs on it with some practice. Bottles have pretty realistic liquid physics in them, but when you put it to your ear and shake, you can also hear it sloshing around. I tried throwing a light switch, and it worked. There's functional markers at the start of the game that you can draw with on any glass surface, not just at the beginning of the game.

There also tons of easter eggs, to the rest of the Half-Life franchise obviously, but there's also a TF2 Scout figurine, a Portal turret grafitti, a Bridges branded package from Death Stranding, and an 0451 reference.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I've been playing HL Alyx, and there are just so many fun interactions you can do in this game. Like, you can grab a gasmask or hardhat, put it on, and it'll be functional. Or you can grab a metal plate or barrel, hold it in front of you and use it as a bullet shield. You can grab a bucket, fill it with grenades and carry it with you through basically the entire game. When a headcrab jumps at you, you can grab to intercept it mid-air, and it'll be helpless while you pull out your gun to execute it. Or throw it down a pit, or trap it inside a barrel, or feed it to a barnacle. There's no melee damage, but you can smack enemies with stuff or throw at them them make them flinch and buy a little time. Also grab and throw back grenades. You come across a functional piano at one point, and you could play songs on it with some practice. Bottles have pretty realistic liquid physics in them, but when you put it to your ear and shake, you can also hear it sloshing around. I tried throwing a light switch, and it worked. There's functional markers at the start of the game that you can draw with on any glass surface, not just at the beginning of the game.

There also tons of easter eggs, to the rest of the Half-Life franchise obviously, but there's also a TF2 Scout figurine, a Portal turret grafitti, a Bridges branded package from Death Stranding, and an 0451 reference.

What’s crazy is I never recalled hearing much of anything about this game whether praise, hype or both. Guessing because it was VR/Steam only and therefore not mainstream enough to garner any significant amount of media attention.

 

[Dalisclock]

What’s crazy is I never recalled hearing much of anything about this game whether praise, hype or both. Guessing because it was VR/Steam only and therefore not mainstream enough to garner any significant amount of media attention.

It got a lot of good press but as you said, it's so inaccessible that most people can't play it. It's not just "Own PC" and "own game" but "Own a powerful enough PC to play it", "Own Game", "Own a VR Rig" and "Have the ability to play game in VR as far as space".

I very much like the HL series(and held onto the hope for HL3 for a very long time) but I can't justify buying a VR Rig just for Alex. That's how much of a hassle it is for me(and arguably I'm the target audience for it) and I suspect it's a much bigger hurdle for people who don't particularly care about the HL series.

 

[Chimpzy]

It got a lot of good press but as you said, it's so inaccessible that most people can't play it. It's not just "Own PC" and "own game" but "Own a powerful enough PC to play it", "Own Game", "Own a VR Rig" and "Have the ability to play game in VR as far as space".

I very much like the HL series(and held onto the hope for HL3 for a very long time) but I can't justify buying a VR Rig just for Alex. That's how much of a hassle it is for me(and arguably I'm the target audience for it) and I suspect it's a much bigger hurdle for people who don't particularly care about the HL series.

Pretty much this, yeah. When played with the proper setup, HL Alyx is in a league all of its own, as much of a leap in environmental interactivity between it and HL2, as HL2 was to HL1. But like you said, that proper setup requires a pretty penny, like at least €300-400 up to basically the price of a PS5 and Steam Deck combined. That's a large ask for one game.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It got a lot of good press but as you said, it's so inaccessible that most people can't play it. It's not just "Own PC" and "own game" but "Own a powerful enough PC to play it", "Own Game", "Own a VR Rig" and "Have the ability to play game in VR as far as space".

And also "not be subject to simulation sickness so you can enjoy the game without throwing up".

 

[Dalisclock]

And also "not be subject to simulation sickness so you can enjoy the game without throwing up".

Also a very good point.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

And also "not be subject to simulation sickness so you can enjoy the game without throwing up".

Also, “not be subject to taking off your head gear and looking like this” -

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Replaying the Battle Network series, I'm really impressed with how well BN2 simulates the feeling of going to another country and getting absolutely screwed over. You lose MegaMan, you lose your money, you lose your battleships and you even lose your passport. It REALLY sucks but is fantastic for giving kids a harsh lesson in a safe environment.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

In Earthbound, there's several points in the game where you have to cross deserts, and while you're on the bare sand, your characters have a chance of receiving the Sunstroke status condition every step. The chance is the same for each party member, except for Ness, who has a lower chance of getting sunstroke because he wears a hat.