Unimportant Things In Games That Make You Grin And Think 'Neat'

[Tumedus]

Here are a few off the top of my head:

1) Psychonauts - overall just great dialog, but I love the bulletin board. Lots of games have done something like this, but these messages were great

2) Day of the Tentacle - the prior LucasArts game Maniac Mansion, in its entirety, was playable from a computer within the game.

3) Diablo II: The secret cow level - Not the level itself, but the melodic cries of the hell cows. How they made variations of "moo" so aurally compelling is a mystery for the ages.

 

[Vault101]

The biggest one though is when an explosion goes off really close to you and you see her reflection the visor! Seeing that never gets old. It disappoints me that they removed these effects in the Metroid Prime Trilogy re-release for the Wii.

WAAAA???? why would they do that?

I loved how int he old sega genesis bubsy game if you stood still for a bit, bubsy would try and catch your attention, eventually culminating in him knocking on the inside of the screen and it shaking as a result, i thought that was really neat

it was on SNES too

I loved all the cartoony things he did...like then you got close to running out of time (and were idle) he'd pull out a pocket watch and freak...then it would break

 

[Gurgleflob]

Boiling water in Skyrim.

Totally useless, but a fun inclusion regardless.

Wait, what? how do you do that?

OT: I loved Being able to climb up the side of the temple at the end of SoTC. It didn't do anything, but it was still fun.

 

[lunavixen]

it was on SNES too

I loved all the cartoony things he did...like then you got close to running out of time (and were idle) he'd pull out a pocket watch and freak...then it would break

we never had a SNES, we had a mega drive (genesis) a game gear and a master system before going onto gameboy and playstation (I still have the gamegear, and yes, it does work). But yeah, that was good too, and also the animations if bubsy died

("Claws encounter of the furred kind" is the particular bubsy game i played)

 

[Jorec]

The biggest one though is when an explosion goes off really close to you and you see her reflection the visor! Seeing that never gets old. It disappoints me that they removed these effects in the Metroid Prime Trilogy re-release for the Wii.

WAAAA???? why would they do that?

I don't know!! I'm just glad I don't have the Wii version.

 

[piinyouri]

Boiling water in Skyrim.

Totally useless, but a fun inclusion regardless.

Wait, what? how do you do that?

OT: I loved Being able to climb up the side of the temple at the end of SoTC. It didn't do anything, but it was still fun.

It won't work on every bit of water.
One plae I know that I will for sure is the little decorative ring of water in the square of Whiterun.

Aim your "Flames" spell towards it and the water will bubble.

 

[Voulan]

It won't work on every bit of water.
One plae I know that I will for sure is the little decorative ring of water in the square of Whiterun.

Aim your "Flames" spell towards it and the water will bubble.

I had no idea! I must definitely try this!

One thing I liked in Skyrim was watching the salmon leaping out of rivers going upstream over small waterfalls. It has such amazing details like that. I also really like how, if you're standing at an unreachable point firing arrows down on your enemy, they run and hide out of range to wait for you to come down so they can attack you.

 

[Salomega]

Awhile back in Never winter Nights 2, the original story not Mask of the betrayer, there was a point where you could join the Cloaks or the Shadow Thieves. One mission for the Thieves had you using a torch to burn down a certain building, there was a line of dialogue that a guard would say if he caught you with torch in hand and you stated "But I don't even have a torch!" He would then point out that you did, indeed, have a torch in hand. I'd never seen anyone react to what I had in hand, the awesome part was that if you didn't have a torch in hand he would go, "Oh, ok well...becareful, its dangerous at night." and wander off.

 

[Pink Gregory]

If you go around wearing no clothes in Skyrim, people actually comment on it.

"You're naked!"

Bully/Canis Canem Edit also does that pretty well.

ie if you decide to rock up to school in just your underpants and a dunce cap, even the nerds will laugh at you all day.

 

[RustlessPotato]

I like how in Red Dead Redemption, you can say hello to people by pressing B. "Howdy Partner" *lifts hat* is always fun ^^.

Half-Life 2 and the G-man that you can spot in various places. Such as looking through a combine binocular in the part with the car, and you'll see him talking to a person that you will meet later on.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

In Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 sometimes, when you shoot someone in the legs while they are sprinting, they stumble hard and slide and fling their rifle in the air so hard it lands about 20 meters away. That always makes me chuckle, because most of the ragdoll deaths are just "go limp and slide to the floor."

 

[Mr Dizazta]

Visible damage on character is always nice. Especially in the Arkham series where Batman is going through hell.

 

[Terminate421]

When you come out of water in Halo: Reach, water runs down your visor. Even though you don't really fight in the water.

 

[6_Qubed]

It won't work on every bit of water.
One plae I know that I will for sure is the little decorative ring of water in the square of Whiterun.

Aim your "Flames" spell towards it and the water will bubble.

Had to see if this is legit, so I went to Whiterun and tried it. Dude, that's so cool! Nice catch!

OT: I really like crafting and/or customizing my own items. My favorite example would have to be Fallout: New Vegas, because I would make special trips away from my home in Novac (which doesn't have a convenient campfire,) for the sole purpose of crafting food items. About the only thing I used Stimpacks for was healing limb damage.

 

[Saika Renegade]

I'm rather fond of idle animations--the little inclusions for when your character is clearly a slight bit bored because you've been sitting in one spot too long. For instance, in Team Fortress 2, the Engineer subtly taps the slide of his shotgun (or shotgun equivalent) with his index finger as a nervous tic, and in Goldeneye 64, if you watch the guards long enough, they'll sneeze or threaten an invisible bug with their guns. It was fun if the devs put a little humor into the idle animations too, like the Snark bug from the original HL. Wait long enough and Freeman tries to poke it, it gets a bit bitey, and he has to shake the lil bugger to make it calm down.

 

[Reaper195]

Moving bodies and body parts in Fallout 3. It has no point whatsoever, but it's fun to kill the pretentious pricks in Tenpenny Tower, remove all the limbs and heads, and then arrange everything into neat piles.

Boiling water in Skyrim.

Totally useless, but a fun inclusion regardless.

Is that a mod? Or from the new DLC? Never encountered the ability to boil water.

 

[glyphseeker]

let's see what's off the top of my head

Idle animation of Banjo Kazooie and Tooie
Ripples when you jump in water in Aion or WoW
Killing chickens in Hunted: The Demon's Forge earns a dialogue from your other character
In Terreria the NPCs will have different sayings depending on time of day and other NPCs presence
The way in Prince of Persia when you die the main character says "oh wait, let me try again"

aaaaaand like that, i'm out

 

[Zeema]

STATS i love a game with stats i wanna know how many innocent people i've decked

 

[Casual Shinji]

The bachelor party/table dancer scene in Mass Effect 2 with the turian, the salarian, and the human.

 

[AntiChri5]

The way people comment on dropped items in Skyrim. Guards will go off at you for dropping a sword on the ground, bandits will argue over who owns a valuable gem you stealthily drop in their camp, eventually killing each other over it.