I was recently discussing Farcry 2 with some friends and how cool the fire spread system was - And how it essentially was never used again after that title.
Is there a cool feature or mechanic you’ve seen in a game and hope to see more of?
Trade Runs from silkroad online.
NFL 2K5 gameplay in a newer football game
Magicka 2 combat in some 3rd/1st person action RPG
Vehicle combat games. Which I guess is more like a genre than a mechanic.
Right now it’s basically Mariokart or nothing.
Grip came out in 2018, but the physics were really unforgiving (clipping a corner could cost you like 10 seconds as you tumble) and there weren’t enough players online.
Which is a real shame because it’s gorgeous, fast paced, with effective power ups, and amazing tracks. And a hell of a sound track.My friend made this top down racing game with guns. It’s free to play in the epic store: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/auto-drive-c2db17
I really want to see a god game with gestures, like black&white, make the jump to VR
randomization of stats, on weapons and gear. i feel like that adds interesting elements, diablo 2 for example.
But that is also the worst part of boarderlands
The scrolling health bar in Eartbound/Mother
- an absence of quick-time events (I hate those things in cut-scenes, parry systems, etc.)
- a mode that allows the player to destroy the environment, NPCs, etc. including, when on, making the game unable to be completed potentially. I think having that be a toggle will still allow people to relive older RPGs where you could easily ruin your life without knowing for hours.
- Off-the-wall weapons. I think Blood 2 had a few and even halflife 2
- Counting beyond 2, speaking of the above.
Take a look at Half-Life 2’s old Face Poser software. I feel like you don’t see that sort of action-level control much anymore.
Indie studios are evading the need for lipsync entirely, by making simple models, giving people masks, putting them on radio overlays, etc. AAA studios are overengineering it, putting a $4,000,000 actor in a motion capture suit for each of their cutscenes to capture every fine detail as they stare in wonder at the white ping-pong ball in the studio with the sign written; “LOOK HERE”.
Face Poser was a good median; it’s where the director gets control, but you don’t need a vast technical setup beyond animations, some vowel extraction, and some basic know-how. It means that if the director wants to add a criticism “No, character B should give a dubious, unsure look when character A says that”, it’s something they can apply directly rather than ask the animators to do by hand.
For some reference, old machinima like Clear Skies, or my own “AS” made use of Face Poser.
Destructible environments like in silent storm. You could remove walls and floors with grenades or mines. Unfortunately it was a bit buggy and slow. Teardown is fun, but it feels like a tech demo.
Like in the finals, kinda?
No, it was more a turn based game with npcs, and you had to extract people, kill targets, or return objects from the map. By strategically placing mines on windows or doors you could take out enemies, and remove cover for other enemies, or accidentally start a chain reaction that would blow up other barrels nearby.
The downside was that the game was terrible slow, with what feels like 5seconds per npc to make a turn (even when they where not revealed yet), which is annoying with sometimes 20 npcs per map, who can take sometimes multiple rounds to finish if you are unlucky and miss. And any explosion that would destroy the environment would also bring even modern PCs to a grinding halt. The game was from 2003, but only runs on a single core.
The instant i read farcry 2 i thought of the fire too.
The fire was amazing and gave me interesting ways to burn out enemies in outposts etc.
I miss casual flight sims that were designed to be played with a joystick. Not so much Janes F-15 1997 or whatever, i’m more talking about Crimson Skies. I want more Crimson Skies.
VTOL kiiiinda fits, maybe?
Cross game integration. I was recently playing Last Command B-Side, and in a certain part, the game picked stages themed around the games I have installed and it blew me away.
Whoa, that does sound cool. Psycho Mantis-y.
Horizontal progression. Relatively flat power curve, but you gain more options.
Guild Wars 1 is a really good example of this.
Mods and self hosted servers
This seems fairly common among the survival games genre.
mind sharing a few titles?
I stopped looking into much new stuff beyond word of mouth, last I played was Neither, I think, and it was very disappointing that that didn’t go anywhere. neat that you can still run a server, though
V-Rising, Valheim, No Man’s Sky, Palworld, Enshrouded, Conan Exiles.
Minecraft is probably the quintessential survival game and has a significant modding community.
The vehicle damage modelling from GTA 4. The fact that it hasn’t been surpassed is tremendously disappointing to me.
Not the same genre, but have you tried BeamNG? That tech should be in every game with cars.
For me this is more about open world games losing cool features than wanting to play a game with that feature. In GTA 4 it affected the choices I’d make whilst driving as it was entirely possible to make a vehicle nearly impossible to drive without coming close to blowing it up.
In an open world game that isn’t about racing*
Games like wreckfest have pretty great damage modeling. BeamNG too.
I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a neat way to say “GTA-like games” and decided to hope that the reader could intuit that context.
