Little things you find far more satisfying than you should?

[Aeshi]

For me it's when you collect a quest objective without aggro-ing the nearby enemies who are supposed to be guarding it.

Hell, weaving through an enemy "camp" without entering the aggro radius of any of the occupants and the like is practically an art form unto itself.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Reload animations (if done well). In Resident Evil 4 I always keep the standard rifle throughout the entire game partly because the reload animation is so fucking sick.

Also long guns strapped across someone's back. In Uncharted 4 I could spend a good amount of time just staring at Nate's back if he had like a nice sniper rifle hanging there.

 

[CaitSeith]

Ditto. Also The Witness' puzzles and mining in Minecraft.

 

[Zhukov]

Vaulting over cover.

Especially if you can transition smoothly from a run to a vault without having to take cover first.

No wonder I love Mirror's Edge so much.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Head shots in Gears of War. Not a huge fan of the games, but hands down the most satisfying squishy blood fountain head shots in gaming, especially when I land one with an active-reloaded Longshot.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

A masked twofer headshot in Sniper Elite 3. Am a horrific person.

Finally taking down any synth in Alien Isolation with a wrench. Fuck those guys.

Any tactile and rhythmic feeling reloads. (Fave from memory must be the devastator grenade launcher from the first Perfect Dark. About the only weapon that can legitimately make the noise "schlock-kock" and live up to it too!)

When a well tuned piece of music matches an atmosphere.

When credits are skippable.

Blood on lit snow. Crunch of feet on snow. Trail physics in snow and sand.

 

[happyninja42]

When a well tuned piece of music matches an atmosphere.

Very much this. Pretty much all of the awesome moments for me in games are tied to a musical score that went with them. Like Saints Row 3, that final drive through town to

Spoiler

Rescue Shandi

, while "I Need a Hero!" was playing was fucking amazing to me.

OT:

Rescuing npc's in games. I like playing the hero, and having sequences where I can rush/swoop in and save somebody from a terrible fate, always satisfies me more than it probably should.

Successfully healing the shit out of a group in an MMO. I love doing this. Juggling damage mitigation and heals for a group while they take on some crazy thing, or pull too much agro and think we're going to die, but we end up pulling it off because my healing skills were able to handle the unforeseen.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Going back to early level areas where 1 or 2 type of enemies really killed me over and over, but now I'm x4 times their level and its time to torment the bastards with slow poison and fire damage and ooh, looks like that super attack barely does any damage to me anymore. Guess I'll just wait for the poison to slowly take you.

 

[American Tanker]

I don't think I ever quite realized just how much of a pyromaniac I really am until I played Far Cry 3. Granted, I had played games with lots of destruction and fire prior to it(Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Red Faction: Guerilla, Destroy All Humans!); but FC3's fire mechanics really taught me what it meant to be a true pyromaniac.

 

[CritialGaming]

Grinding levels in RPG's.

Currently playing DQ 8 on 3DS, and I will spend two or three hours at a time just grinding because I get a rush when my character's ding. That and the end result of overleveling tend to let me just fucking smash the game's bosses....oh man I love it. I basically play every RPG this way. I get a great satisfaction of trivializing the game's difficulty by just overpowering the fuck out of it.

 

[Sonmi]

Achievements, I am ashamed to say.

I've got an instant Pavlovian response to seeing the achievement pop-up on Steam, and the triggered sound of an achievement unlocking on the 360 used to give me quick and short-lived satisfaction.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Critical hits.

Mot of the time, there's no skill to it, it's purely random. But goddamn does it feel satisfying to see big numbers float up in the air with a flashy animation. XD Doubly so for the Golden Sun series that has special critical hit "unleash" attacks for some weapons. TRIPLY so if the crit outright slaughters the enemy in question.

It's probably the reason I enjoy games that allow you do control critical hits (Say, flanking an enemy in XCOM, or using an ability that boosts crit rate), and why I like making abilities in my own RPGs that modify critical hits (I make a character in one game that could guarantee that he'd get a crit on the next turn with one ability. Managing to pull off a buffed up critical hit on a boss with careful planning always felt amazing)

Reload animations (if done well).

I have to agree with this. Some reload animations are just plain too cool not to love.

I enjoy seeing lucio twirl his ammo before slapping it into his megaphone gun. I adored the Needler from Halo the moment I saw that sick animation (Seeing a bunch of translucent purple needles pop out the top of the gun with a satisfying SHIIINK noise is the best). Etc etc. ^_^

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Achievements, I am ashamed to say.

I've got an instant Pavlovian response to seeing the achievement pop-up on Steam, and the triggered sound of an achievement unlocking on the 360 used to give me quick and short-lived satisfaction.

The only achievements I ever bother to get are ones I can get in a single play-through of a game. Like I got all the collectibles, audio logs, weapon upgrades, runes and whatnot in Doom. But I ain't about to go for the 'complete everything all over again with just a toothpick, a rubber ducky named Sylvester on Nightmare fuck you mode'

 

[happyninja42]

Invulnerability/Stone Melee tanker in City of Heroes. Holy fuckballs did I enjoy playing that smashing son of a ***** more than was likely healthy. Pre-nerf, the invul tankers were insane, and I truly felt unstoppable leaping into a massive pack of 30+ mobs and being able to tank all of them while my party kept pounding the hell out of them.

 

[sageoftruth]

The standard boss music in Freedom Planet. I think I look forward to the music more than the boss fights themselves.
Also, beating said bosses on hard mode.

Also, ripostes in any Dark Souls game, especially against hard-hitting high-risk enemies.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

When a well tuned piece of music matches an atmosphere.

Very much this. Pretty much all of the awesome moments for me in games are tied to a musical score that went with them. Like Saints Row 3, that final drive through town to

Spoiler

Rescue Shandi

, while "I Need a Hero!" was playing was fucking amazing to me.

OT:

Rescuing npc's in games. I like playing the hero, and having sequences where I can rush/swoop in and save somebody from a terrible fate, always satisfies me more than it probably should.

Successfully healing the shit out of a group in an MMO. I love doing this. Juggling damage mitigation and heals for a group while they take on some crazy thing, or pull too much agro and think we're going to die, but we end up pulling it off because my healing skills were able to handle the unforeseen.

Good track, never got to that point in the game unfortunately. Though the singing alien lord over the radio in 4 during some mission was pretty amusing. I agree with the team healing thing also, love bringing people back to life in Battlefield just when they think it's all over. And various other methods of helping.

Rainbow Six: Siege has some satisfying teamwork moments. Other than the usual healing and buffs; a gadget on the Fuze character eventually lets you plant it on any wooden surface, that when you remote activate, it drills through to the other side and proceeds to fire a few grenades into the room with multiple "pop" noises. Then come the explosions, dying screams and point accumulation. Never gets old when you do it to a room of 4 - 5 people who boarded themselves in.
Also never gets old when a member of the other team uses the same tactic for a hostage rescue situation.

 

[iwinatlife]

Fire emblem Crits
Keeping my Gf/ADC alive in a frantic teamfight (LoL)
Landing a Flash Taric Stun that leads to a kill (LoL)
catching a Shiny
Making a perfect prediction in a pokemon battle
Setting up Obscene unbalanced custom battles in Total War games
Beating second level in original Arcade Donkey Kong

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Organizing my inventory in Resident Evil 4. There's something so cathartic about moving them all around to get just one more item in and/or organizing it so everything is in its proper place.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Walking through snow and hearing the crunching sound.

Just makes my ears happy to hear it.

Also, finding that sweet sweet loot and finding either a weapon and/or armor that raises the stats and makes everything soooooo much better.

Did that a lot in Borderlands and finding a gun that was just the tits.

 

[Ryallen]

Landing a single really big hit, whether it be a critical hit or simply using a giant weapon. It's always satisfying to watch health disappear like that.

Getting a kill as the enemy is running away. It's fun to watch them sprint in the other direction, only to get blown to bits with a single well place shot.