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[KenOD]

Just remembered two.

Lost Patrol for Amgia/DOS/Atari ST. A survival game whose design was based around the idea of resources such as food and ammunition is limited from the start, and the survival group had a morale and stamina systems which could cause the action sequences to be lost if not maintained or properly planned for.
Nothing mechanically that hasn't been done since this game came out of course, but the whole design to replicate the experience of an army team having to survive while being chased or make it through obstacles where mistakes made early on can doom/give another story half-way through or near the end hasn't been done again in quite this way.

Which is something I really want as one of my dream games is a survival horror game that is fully realistic experience, purely about a military team having to survive or make it through with limited resources and preparation while being chased or surrounded in enemy location, and that could easily give just as much fright as any Resident Evil or Alone In the Dark could.

World Of Goo for Wii. Physics-based lattice building co-op. Two players working together to build a tower up/sideways was great fun and while we have plenty of games of this sub-genre of puzzle on consoles, mobiles, and PC, we lack the two-player co-op experience as far as I'm aware of.

Superman Returns and it's City Health system. The design and mechanic of not the main character being important, but the game world one plays in holds a lot of potential I believe for an action game (or better yet, a strategy or action-puzzle game along the lines of Frozen Synapse) that leaves itself open to plenty of interesting and fun ideas if it just had the right gameplay to compliment it and make defending a city worthwhile and interesting.
Yes the game was poor, and yes I know many of you don't believe Superman can ever have a good game, please let's not get into that debate in this thread because you can easily search my username and keyword "Superman" to find how much I will debate a good game could be made in threads dedicated to that subject This is purely about the idea, the mechanic and design idea.

Ikaruga's polarity mechanic needs to be used in none shmup genres, atm just Outland on XBLA / PSN uses it. Although the mechanic was born from another sidescroller by Treasure but instead of pressing a button to alternate between the two colours you faced / walked left to dodge one colour and right for the other.

Slip on Steam also features this two-colour mechanic as a platformer.

Twinkle Star Sprites

Ah yes, competitive shoot-em-up, where one could do well on their side of the screen and send big attacks at their opponent again in the vein of Puyo Puyo. Great game and quite one that needs to see a sequel or a HD remake or someone else just needs to copy.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

Superman Returns and it's City Health system. The design and mechanic of not the main character being important, but the game world one plays in holds a lot of potential I believe for an action game (or better yet, a strategy or action-puzzle game along the lines of Frozen Synapse) that leaves itself open to plenty of interesting and fun ideas if it just had the right gameplay to compliment it and make defending a city worthwhile and interesting.
Yes the game was poor, and yes I know many of you don't believe Superman can ever have a good game, please let's not get into that debate in this thread because you can easily search my username and keyword "Superman" to find how much I will debate a good game could be made in threads dedicated to that subject This is purely about the idea, the mechanic and design idea.

Maybe a limitation on my part: I don't see a difference between this and escort missions, which are notoriously annoying.

 

[Karsticles]

I don't think any game has accomplished a competent replication of Chrono Trigger's tech system. Many games have it in small doses, but only Chrono Trigger makes it a comprehensive part of the gameplay. Black Sigil came close, though. Why it never became a standard is a mystery to me.

Chrono Trigger's Position-based Turn-Based Combination Combat system.

It isn't turn-based, but I'm glad someone else mentioned it. Black Sigil has the exact same combat system, by the way. Unfortunately, the combat is miserably balanced, and the game is tragically low budget.

 

[KenOD]

Maybe a limitation on my part: I don't see a difference between this and escort missions, which are notoriously annoying.

Well obviously it would have to be done in a way with a bit of leeway and not fallen to the same faults of an escort mission where you can oh so easily lose due to no fault of your own. I'm taking about it purely as a mechanic, not in how it was used in Superman Returns mind you. Same way that an escort mission might be "A.I. is really dumb and can't survive on it's own", doesn't mean the mechanic of A.I. partners is dumb and can never work nor be fun.

Had Superman Returns done it right, or a future game for Godzilla or Robot Alchemic Drive or Pacific Rim or whatever might fight at that level where a city can be destroyed and that's not what you want, the city can take damage but you either work to mitigate it or prevent it depending on the skill. In the same way and sense I could take a lot of damage and be hurt in Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, but there is enough leniency given that I can still survive, I just won't get a good score/ranking. Defending the city could still mean damage is done to the buildings, but not to the point it's so very annoying if I don't keep track of everything or I wish I could let them just take Ashley away from me.
My saying of "better yet... Frozen Synapse" is another way to go with the idea of Superman or some other superhero, Green Lantern maybe, being given tactical situation of how best to deal with a threat and having that be carried out and your level of success/score is determined by the damage done to the city. A "destroy the building to prevent fire from spreading" or " break water towers/water pipes" that cause less damage and saves the building. Something along those lines, I'm tired and can't think of a better example than that as right now I'm really just thinking of the city health only really.

Imagine a game that combines with the Dishonored chaos system where two different endings could be had, either you protected the city well enough and things go on, or it was too badly damaged and it's just a wasted refuse and barely liveable except for the rats location. In the example of Superman, a good ending would be everyone is happy in the first motion picture, while the bad ending would be most everyone's complaint in Man Of Steel where bad fighting and just reacting destroyed most of Metropolis. An original IP like Hancock would be a better fit of course though.

That or go the other route. Have a super villain like Bizzaro or a giant monster like Mothra or other like the Blast Corp or hero like guy in Red Faction: Guerilla destroy a city. The enemy/opponent would stand in your way and you figure out how to get around them or make a fight with them help you out to take down the "boss" that is the overall city. Sure we have titles like Tornado Outbreak, Katamari Damacy, and Space Invaders Get Even, but not quite the "destroy an entire city" experience where city health is the key focus.

My thoughts in that tired rambling is basically just the mechanic of a whole city having health/destruction limit/survivability level could be used and offers enough potential that I find it compelling even if the game that did it was utterly rubbish.

 

[ScOULaris]

So in Blade 2 for the PS2 and OG Xbox, when you fired your submachine pistol the spent brass would hit the ground as physics objects.

This in itself isn't a big deal and has been done before and since but they didn't immediately turn static like MGS2 or Max Payne, they remained as a collidable physics object and made an awesome ringing sound when you walked through them and they scattered away.

I've never seen that in a game since. aside from a very special New Vegas mod. In fact most modern games damn near ignore ejected cartridges these days which sucks because it's such a cool visual flourish.

We need to refocus our technological efforts people.

Woah, that's really cool! It's just a visual effect, but I agree that it should be used more. Surely on today's hardware it shouldn't be too taxing to render shell casings as physics-governed objects once ejected.

 

[CLaddyOnFire]

Back with another RPG battle system I enjoyed that I can't recall anyone else ever trying out. Legend of Legaia for the PS1 had an awesome, complex input system with a neat way of unlocking skills and what not.

For those who haven't played or heard about it, basically you have an action bar of a set size (that increases over the course of the game), and each direction on the D-Pad was a different attack (such as hi-kick, low-punch, etc.). Each command was a set size, and you would input a combination of those to fill your action bar, and then accept it to perform the attack. Arts in the game were defined by segments of actions (for example, a Shoryuken style uppercut could be down, left, up) and would be read from left to right. Arts varied from being 2-3 segments long, to being an entire action bar length, so you could either use an extremely strong Arte, or use 3 or 4 weaker Arts, depending on the enemies you're fighting. There was actually a lot of depth to figuring out what you wanted to do, and battles were actually a ton of fun, which is good because the random encounter rate was admittedly really high in that game.

Also, you have to learn the Arts on your own, and you aren't given the inputs until you've stumbled upon them by accident. It makes playing without a guide or walkthrough tons of fun, since you'll pretty much just be mashing in commands, and every so often you'll be like "OHHHHH SHIIIIIIT" when your dude goes into slo-mo and flaming uppercuts a dude's face off.

 

[djtiesto]

Yeah, this! Also, it surprises me that it took until this year's 'Child Of Light' for someone to rip off the battle system from the Grandia games. More JRPGS should use it

The Penny Arcade RPGs from Zeboyd Games use a takeoff of the Grandia system as well. Actually one thing I really like in the Zeboyd games (that I haven't really seen in many other turn-based RPGs) is you can have recurring spells/attacks.

The RPG genre is the king of the 'unique design choice that was never/infrequently replicated in other games'. Some others:

-World Ends With You - loot drop prevalence tied to difficulty level
-Dark Cloud 1/2 - Georama system
-Dark Cloud 2 - taking pictures of objects in the environment for recipes for alchemy
-Wild Arms XF - environmental puzzles in a strategy RPG
-Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - can restart at any time with a new game plus bonus and see extra scenes
-Nier/Ys: Oath in Felghana - danmaku bullet patterns in an Action RPG
-Live A Live - multiple short character scenarios each with their own unique gimmick, many of these gimmicks being unique to that particular game (one character uses sense of smell to find enemy positions, another character can read the minds of NPCs, another can camouflage with the environment turning the game almost to a steal game)

 

[akachan ningen]

I wonder how many of these mechanics were never replicated because of patent laws.