Gaming

SuperHot!

Not a game per se, but I'm of the opinion that the Wii U Pro controller is the most comfortable controller I've ever held and I'm disappointed that Madcatz or whatever other third-party controllers don't copy its layout for other console controllers.

What's unique about it?

Until the new Lords of the Fallen just came out I'd have said the physical/spirit realm mechanic from the Soul Reaver games.

I mean, for me, it'd have to be the Nemesis system

Though not because nobody wanted to do anything with it

But because WarnerBros fuckin copy-righted it :P

Nemesis system from shadow of mordor.

Weapon degradation - far cry 2

parrapa the rapper and umm jammer lammy

I really liked need for speed undergrounds system of challenging random cars to races.

repeated 3 days, like Majoras Mask or Dead Rising

Not that I’m aching for it to come back, but the ability to vocally say commands into a headset on SOCOM (ps2) felt so revolutionary at the time

The Dead Front mechanic from 2 moons (Deakron).

Stalker PDA, having a menu on a device that actually responds to your mouse movements is awesome and incredibly immersive, so many tabs and what not and it never feels like a burden to navigate it because of how clean it is.

The Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor/War games. Granted WB patented it so no one else could use it but it would’ve been really cool to see other games utilize it.

Shenmue had this cool thing called Quick Time Events where a cutscene would be interrupted but button prompts that impacted the story.

Never seen again

There used to be a couple of games that mixed RTS with Team Shooter Gameplay. One player on each team would be the Commander that managed the base in a 2D RTS style and gave commands to the other players. Those other players played the match FPS style.

Nemesis system from shadow of war/Mordor. I thought that would be in everything…. I wish

Messiah - you are possessing the bodies of the enemies including the weapons and access rights and alignments. If you get killed you just take over another person, or you jump from person to person. Amazing and very overseen game.

Red faction - Destructible environment. Rarely seen ever again outside of the series .

Gratuitous space battles - Create, position and configure a fleet, just to watch the battle unfold and see how well your planning turns out, without interfering.

The sight jacking mechanic in siren games. Tbf it's the core mechanic,so copying it would be obvious .

The ability to basically tune in a perspective from the enemy to see from their perspective. You can see if you are near or facing you and what their routine is as well as game objects or puzzle solutions.

A wonderful and terrifying mechanic.

Geomod

Back in 1998, activision dropped a game called Battle Zone that I thought was one of the coolest games i'd ever played.

It was a first person shooter, but you had these hover tank vehicles that you piloted and you could jump out of them and into other ones, etc. This was already really cool in and of itself, but what made Battlezone really stand out to me is that it was also a first person RTS game. You had a whole base, built an army of wingmen that would go into battle beside you, etc. You build harvesters, gathered resources, all that jazz.

I thought it was amazing. And while they did make a Battle Zone 2 at some point, I haven't seen ANY other games that combined FPS and RTS like that ever since. The closest game i've seen that does something like that hasn't even released yet I don't think and it is still in development, but even it doesn't do it exactly the same because in this new game one player acts as the commander and plays the game like an RTS and the other players act like soldiers and do the fighting on the ground in first person. So even that isn't exactly the same, but it's the closest i've ever seen.

I think it was a really cool genre that i'd love to see explored and refined.

Isaac’s health bar in the Dead Space remake.

The Nemesis system that the Shadows series had was so cool. I was fully expecting every open world game to be trying to copy it, but no I haven’t seen anything like it since.

Grandia 2 had an Active Time Battle system based off of FF6 that no jRPG can touch. You ATB meter would fill up and at 66% you would lock in an action, at 100% you would act. If an enemy received damage their bar would retreat slightly. If they got hit by a crit attack between 66-100% they would lose a significant amount of their ATB meter.

This was the pinnacle of strategy in jRPGs, every basic attack, every defend, every reposition action was so crucial in this game, and you were rewarded for carefully executed strategies.

Every characters first special attack was a crit attack, and if fully leveled had an instant act, as in you went from 66% to 100% ATB with zero interruption, this allowed for some impressive juggling of attacks that could have your boss monsters constantly interrupted and unable to fight or cast spells.

The psychoanalysis parts of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The monsters were different, the ending was different, parts of the environment, etc, based on questions you answered with a "therapist" in game and various in-world objects you may or may not have interacted with. I haven't seen this replicated in a game since.

Another game that is absolutely amazing with the HUD off.

I believe it was also a one to one recreation of the streets of London, or at least those you could access.

Really wish they'd do a full remake/continuation of the game, it was like GTA, but made to be closer to real life.

The driving was also fantastic, the weight, stability, durability, and nimbleness of the cars felt just right, and when you finally got a sweet car it was like a whole different game.

I don't know if it was done again and I would like to know others games if they did it but SSX 3 had this dynamic music where if your in the air or a cave the music would change its tone. I don't know how to describe it right...

Anthem, I loved the movement and combat so much but the devs let it go to hell. Haven't found another game like it

Someone already mentioned Splinter Cell's light and sound meters so I'll say Def Jam: Fight for NY. You can't just do a million light punches and win by whittling their health down. Death by a thousand cuts doesn't work in Def Jam, you have to actually knock your opponent out. Get their consciousness down (where their health bar turns red) then finish them off with a weapon, environmental move, co op move, or the knockout move unique to your fighting style. A strong punch can knock an opponent out but only if your character knows streetfighting, otherwise it's just another attack.

Spore :(

Adaptive difficulty from MGSV. The game doesn't have a difficulty setting. Instead, it adapts to your playstyle to change the way you play. So if you rely on headshots too much, enemies would proceed to wear helmets. You kidnap too many people? Then the enemies plant fake balloon sized humans to distract you. I'd say though that the execution could've been more refined and would've wished for other games to have been inspired by this system.

Planescape Torment. A CRPG where you don't roll a character class, pick an alignment or assign ability points.

Those things are shaped by the way in which you play the game.

A DnD game was a ahead of its time.

Nemesis system, this is honestly one of the biggest Ls in all of gaming if Im being honest. The system already launched in a impressive state, can you imagine what could be done with it if Warner didn’t trademark it.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

Insanity effects

Spell crafting system

Nemesis system

Wildstar crafting system - specifically the overcharging part of it.

Super Mario Brothers

Kinda wish Xbox had followed Sony with the light bar and speaker in the controller. I feel like it would have made room for more devs to develop features for it.

There's not even anything super game changing or anything, but there is just so much possibility for little touches.

GTAV pumped the cop radio and flashing cop lights thru the ds4 when you catch stars.

One game had a talking sword. The sword talks thru your ds4 speaker.

But even the smallest stuff was great. The Tomb Raider games will flash thru a mix of orange/yellow/red when you sit at a campfire. Glows off your knees, feels cozy. TLoU1/2 and I think Uncharted send the little click of the flashlight to the ds4.

So many possibilities.