The little things you love in games

[Andy Shandy]

The past couple of days I've been playing Lego Batman 2, and it's really good, and I recommend it, but that's not what I've came to talk about. No, it's about a little detail in the game that made me love it all the more.

Today, I realised that, in the Gotham City hub at least, when you fly around as Superman, it plays the Superman theme tune, and I just loved it.

So, anyone else have moments like that, just a little thing in a game, that makes you love it all the more?

Also, just remembered this little reference to Arkham City as well

 

[Popadoo]

Coming across random little things, usually references, that don't actually have any purpose other than to make the world funnier. Most commonly found in open-world games.
One example would be the crashed alien space-ships in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and lots of little things around Skyrim that reference things from 300 all the way to Billy Goat's Gruff.

 

[Squilookle]

For some reason the beach ball in Vice city comes to mind. Mess around with it enough and you discover an entire new minigame within the game.

Oh, and the ability to shoot people's hats off in Goldeneye. That little feature still has no equal fifteen years later!

 

[Kud]

The ability to pick your hat back up after it's been shot off in L.A. Noire.

The running gag in Zelda wherein something weird happens if you wail on a chicken too much.

 

[SonicWaffle]

So, anyone else have moments like that, just a little thing in a game, that makes you love it all the more?

Being able to bust out of the chair during Black Ops' menu, and play Zork on a computer behind you.

I never liked CoD:BO all that much, but that feature really made me smile.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I like some of the little "buffs" in League of Legends. For example Akali has the effect "Ninja" on her with the description "this unit is a flippin' ninja!" it does nothing gameplay wise but it's pretty funny.

Also Gangplank and Miss Fortune with the Pirate and Pirate Hunter buffs respectively.

Oh and Nidalee has a secret buff that gives a teeny little bit of extra EXP to lower level Champions around her. Because she's a cougar... Aha I see what you did there Riot.


Annnnnd the fact that the super move quotes in Skullgirls had several versions of the same line. Valentine says "major surgery!" during her one super and at least three different versions can play instead of the one same voice clip... It's pretty neato.

 

[pilouuuu]

- How in The Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush Threepwood mentions that he can hold his breath for 10 minutes and later in the game after he drowns, he really can hold his breath for 10 minutes!

- All the chattering between your followers while you're walking around in Dragon Age Origins

- How in The Sims 2 when sims played chess you could see that they were playing a complete game. Sadly that level of detail was not included in The Sims 3, where they only act like they're playing it. But I still like how they pick up the right ingredients to cook their food. Really, those games are full of small, funny details.

- The facial expressions of the characters in Street Fighter IV. It was one of the first fighting games to include such funny and expressive characters.

- How the people in the city behave in GTA IV, doing their daily routines like drinking coffee and talking in different languages. Also how you can make someone hit you in front of the cops, just to see how they arrest him or when you punch someone until he falls on the floor and an ambulance comes to take him. This is another game full of nitfy, funny details.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The surprisingly detailed amount of humour in Galactic Civilisations 2.

Seriously, every time you research something, the description of the tech is its own joke. Great stuff.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Picked up Canis Canem Edit/Bully the other day, and was pleasantly surprised that the other students notice and just spend all day laughing at you if y'rock up to school in your underpants.

 

[wabbbit]

I like quite a few small things in games - some of which have been mentioned:

- Zork in CoD:BO
- Pedestrians & cars going about their daily routine until rudely interrupted. I actually followed a guy the whole way around San Andreas once! Much better when you shoot the car once though, their path finding becomes fantastically erratic.

- Most of the really small details in Mafia 2

 

[Scrustle]

The auroras from Skyrim come to mind. They move perfectly realistically, but they don't need to at all. They move so slow that you don't even notice it. They could have just left them static, but instead they do this:


All the atmospheric effects in that game are stunning, especially the way the clouds appear on the edges of mountains. I've never seen anything else like it.

 

[Terminate421]

In Halo: Reach, enemies actually react to getting shot rather than ragdolize like in most other shooters.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The auroras from Skyrim come to mind. They move perfectly realistically, but they don't need to at all. They move so slow that you don't even notice it. They could have just left them static, but instead they do this:


All the atmospheric effects in that game are stunning, especially the way the clouds appear on the edges of mountains. I've never seen anything else like it.

I remember in my first playthrough of Skyrim the first time I looked up at night. Took my breath away. More recently I was staring at the sky and realised that the moons were actually moving across in real time at a barely noticable rate. Fantastic.

The rather lacklustre Predator Concrete jungle for the xbox had the awesome idea of giving the on/off wrist blade spring mechanism a hotkey, so with a single button you could *shhhing* *shhing* *shhhing* your blades in and out with the actual predator sound, without having to access it in a menu or an overcomplicated button combination. Hours of fun.

I also loved the webslinging in Spiderman 2, that was awesome.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

Mostly the "hidden" quests and caches of items in RPG's. Baldur's Gate comes to mind with the Ring of Wizardry hidden in one of the bushes at the tavern where you meet Khalid and Jaheira, or Dragon Age Origins' Key to the City "quest line" and many more from that game ;d.

 

[Cowabungaa]

'The little things' is one of the main reasons why I loved WoW and still think fondly of it as one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played. It really shows Blizzard's skill at environmental design and it's the little things that really put a shine on it.

Things like seeing grizzly bears fish in Grizzly Hills, NPC's doing their thing in the big cities, creepy veins that even crawled over the little flowers in Duskwood. Tiny touches like that that really bring that world alive. All accompanied with that amazing music.

 

[Aeshi]

- The Human vehicles in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars have their own built in mini-maps on their dashboards if you go into 1st person.

- When my Singularity went past a tree in City of Heroes I found it had dozens of leaves orbiting around it (it does this with other physics object, but it's not as obvious because they're heavier)

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

In Ace Combat: Assault Horizon when you damage other planes they start leaking oil, it's in their tagline, "Make metal bleed." A little gimmicky but it's still kind of cool. Also, when you shoot down another place, and you don't always see it, you can actually see the pilot flying out of his metal wreckage.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

In Cryostasis you can see these old cigarette packs lying about, my granddad used to smoke those.

 

[Stormz]

Just simple things like a weather system can make me love a game more. When I'm traveling a country side in a fantasy RPG at night and it begins to rain. It's so atmospheric.