It's the little things... Your favorite small details in games.

[Casual Shinji]

I liked how Joel and Elle would actually respond to miscellaneous messages they found in general. I can't think of many games that do that.

There's also little differences in dialoge depending on whether or not there's still enemies around. At the start of Lincoln (Bill's town) after you get through the forrest area, there's a section with two dormant clickers where you have to boost Ellie to the otherside of a locked gate. They have a little dialoge moment during this, but if the clickers are still alive they'll whisper it, and if you got rid of them they'll just talk in normal volume.

Same thing if you sneak past certain enemies instead of engaging them, you'll get 'Wew, that was close', or 'Good thing they didn't see us' type dialoge.

 

[aozgolo]

King's Quest takes the cake for me, especially the Redux versions by AGD Interactive (Seriously, check them out, they're all free). You can investigate anything and the narrator will describe it to you, even random rocks, trees, and ponds will have some description... the real kicker is it's ALL FULLY VOICED. I find most modern adventure games lazy in that if it's not vital to the game progression, it's simply not able to be interacted with in any way, it's just a static background object. I much loved the older adventure games that didn't shy away from letting you explore the world at your leisure and enjoy the subtle details they put into every rock, tree, and bush.

 

[Mikejames]

There's also little differences in dialoge depending on whether or not there's still enemies around. At the start of Lincoln (Bill's town) after you get through the forrest area, there's a section with two dormant clickers where you have to boost Ellie to the otherside of a locked gate. They have a little dialoge moment during this, but if the clickers are still alive they'll whisper it, and if you got rid of them they'll just talk in normal volume.

Same thing if you sneak past certain enemies instead of engaging them, you'll get 'Wew, that was close', or 'Good thing they didn't see us' type dialoge.

There were some pretty great reactive moments from Ellie in response to enemies. Like hearing her whisper "Behind You..." when I was exploring a tunnel of clickers; about made me flip out. Felt organic.

 

[mrvenom]

The moment in Batman Origins where Alfred will suddenly contact you (out of nowhere) to wish you a good christmas. I liked that. "Merry Christmas sir. Merry Christmas Alfred."

 

[FrozenLaughs]

The little things that make a game for me... I guess it depends on the game. Most of the time it comes down to the accuracy of firearms and firearm handling in modern shooters (and movies). BF4 has you loose the rounds left in a mag when you reload instead of magically consolidating all that ammo. Any game that gives me the ability to have 31 rounds with a 30 round mag gets a huge nod. By having one round in the chamber and a fresh mag, for those of you who don't know. Yeah, I'm "that guy". The guy who notices when a fire selector switch is in the wrong position or when a gun is behaving differently than it should. I'm looking at you CoD full auto accuracy. >.>

I've always loved the firearms details in BF. I like that now, if you swap weapons in mid reload, upon switching back your reload animation is shortened because it remembers you already ejected your mag. Sacrificing ammo in a mag instead of recycling it. Select fire on guns that really have select fire. Only thing that irked me was in BF3 their pursuit of "balance" made some odd changes to attachments, like foregrips lowering recoil, but decreasing long range accuracy, essentially making you both more *and* less accurate.

 

[marioandsonic]

I like how in Mega Man X when X's health is low he has a deep-breath, "I'm tired," animation (yes I know this was mentioned above, stick with me on this) and in Chill Penguin's icy level, when he does this animation, you can see his breath.

Adding on to this, I liked how defeating certain bosses affected another boss's stage.

For example, if you defeat Storm Eagle and then go to Spark Mandrill's stage, you see the remnants of Storm Eagle's plane crash, and the crash caused the stage's power grid to be messed up.

 

[Fractral]

On the route with the day care in Pokemon X and Y, there's a section where the camera pulls in so you can see across the river and a section of the sky. As far as I know, there aren't any other places in the game where the camera points to the sky, but the developers added clouds that can pass across it. Not only that, but when it gets dark, stars appear and slowly move across the sky- the same star patterns each night. It's a nice feature, considering that only breeders are likely to notice it.