Game Design Appreciation

[windlessusher]

So I was playing White Knight Chronicles and it got me thinking about the things some video games do that are real icing on the cake.
Sure, you're not gonna go out and buy every game that does it, nor do you get peeved if it's not there, but the game design that if it's in a game you like you give it a nod of approval.
Or, if you want, talk about game design you wish games did that may not have been done before.

I immediately thought of two things.

Outfits. So you're playing your RPG, and you find this one armour set that you think looks pretty badass(orhot), but it is objectively worse than an armour piece you find later, even tho it doesn't look nearly as cool. So I appreciate games like Bravely Default that do give you the option of having static outfits that you have regardless of what equipment you're wearing.

And Dynamic Battle Music. Even if you got the most superspecialawesome spectacular piece of audible ecstacy, it does lose it's luster after you hear it for the 69th time, so I appreciate games like Kingdom Hearts where, at the very least, each area has it's own battle theme.

 

[Shounen]

Actually, I just played Luftrausers for the first time and it seems to have an amazing use of dynamic music which you mentioned. So in this game you can change the parts of your ship before going off into battle, and the parts you change will alter the music. Weapons will change the drums, the body will change the lead, and the engine will change the bass.

 

[windlessusher]

That's pretty Alpharad.

Another Game design I appreciate, that I wish more RPGs did, was in Earthbound. How if you're much stronger than the enemies around you, not only will they try to run from you, but engaging them you automatically win the fight, and still get EXP and their random drops.

 

[optimuskirby]

Lego games suck but the Handheld version of Lego Marvel is AWESOME! It's all action, 0 puzzels, & you can only play as ONE character for the story levels, instead of something like 5. So they had to build levels around that ONE character your using. & during Free play, you can switch between a character of your choosing, & the story level character. THAT has better design than the boringness of the console versions. It also maximizes replay value. In the console version, you can do 100% of the things in 1 go if you have the necessary characters.
ALso, I h8 turn-based combat. From Mario RPG, to Pokemon. God knows I've tried.

 

[Kasran]

The alphabet cipher and numeral system in Fez, swoon. There is enough text strewn about the game world that you can learn the alphabet through some guiding assumptions (e.g. that the text it conceals is in English) and some basic cryptanalysis (e.g. this glyph is very common, maybe it's E, work from there), and it made me feel incredible as I gradually worked it out without needing to look it up. Replaying and being able to read all the hidden text, the Hexahedron's ramblings, the signs... mm! And the numeral system is just ingenious. Fez in general is full of brilliant game design (spoken as someone who completed it to 200%), but the alphabet and numerals stood out to me as top-notch pieces of immersive worldbuilding for those who seek them. I wish more exploratory games did stuff like that.

 

[Lily♫]

I have to really appreciate Undertale's game design. The idea of a game remembering what you did beyond resetting your save is amazing, and leads to some really creepy scenarios. This is an example that can happen early on. The game remembers everything.

There's also a whole bunch of things that happen in the game by manipulating the files of the game itself. I won't go into details because it's the most spoiler-related thing in the game though. There just simply isn't a fourth wall in this game.

 

[windlessusher]

I really appreciate how in Super Mario World, how when you're running forward, the camera pans towards the direction you're running so you can see what's ahead, as opposed to Sonic games that keep the camera centred at all times.
I always wished at least one Sonic game would try that camera design, and lo and behold, Sonic Boom Shattered Crystal does, and it worked nicely.