• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Praise an obscure thing about a game you love.

Attacking butterflies in Mario 64 can either give you a 1-Up Mushroom or a black orb that will constantly chase you and explode on contact.

Probably the scariest thing I discovered by myself as a kid
 

Metalmarc

Member
Multiple ways to kill/maim people and destroy/take out objects in the latest Hitman.

Everythingincluding making your own things up, like chaining explosives together, shooting gas leaks, shooting at parts of the enviroment causing them to drop on targets, to simple things like screwdiver/axe through the head, to poisioning food or drinks and dunking peoples heads down the toilet to drown them.

exploding golf balls to woodchippers, to pushing your targets off heights or pulling them through windows to their death and thats just a small amount of things you can do, most charachters you can kill in different locations of the map too, so they don't always stay in the same part of the map you have to seek them out, and if you get caught on security cameras you can take the footage and get rid of the evidence

Or even beating them to death with a soda can haha, they thought of almost everything,And all the little eastereggs.


I like all these things that are just a small part of the game, rather than shoot shoot, bang bang and fibre wire (but wait you can do that too, but it's more fun doing the obscure kills)

Or is that not obscure enough?
 

The Thnikkaman

Neo Member
Multiple ways to kill/maim people and destroy/take out objects in the latest Hitman.

Everythingincluding making your own things up, like chaining explosives together, shooting gas leaks, shooting at parts of the enviroment causing them to drop on targets, to simple things like screwdiver/axe through the head, to poisioning food or drinks and dunking peoples heads down the toilet to drown them.

exploding golf balls to woodchippers, to pushing your targets off heights or pulling them through windows to their death and thats just a small amount of things you can do, most charachters you can kill in different locations of the map too, so they don't always stay in the same part of the map you have to seek them out, and if you get caught on security cameras you can take the footage and get rid of the evidence

Or even beating them to death with a soda can haha, they thought of almost everything,And all the little eastereggs.


I like all these things that are just a small part of the game, rather than shoot shoot, bang bang and fibre wire (but wait you can do that too, but it's more fun doing the obscure kills)

Or is that not obscure enough?


The moment I killed a target by tricking him into ejecting himselft from a fighter plane while still in the hangar is the moment I fell in love with HITMAN.
 

Dash_

Member
The lore in Wipeout. The glass shards where you choose direction in Killer7. The magnification lens in DreamWeb. The parallax scrolling in Shadow of the Beast. The water in Panzer Dragoon Saga. The bus timetable in Shenmue. Getting the pixar-alike camera to chase your hands in Statik. The flat you have in Normality Inc.
 

Retro

Member
Possibly too obscure...

NaBk4in.png


In Symphony of the Night's Outer Wall section, there's a little enclosed area with a roof over it, and inside that roof is a mouse. It doesn't do anything, it just runs back and forth, and sometimes sits up. It is not a looping animation, it actually behaves somewhat randomly, scurrying around in its little space. To this day nothing I've ever tried (including obvious stuff like dropping cheese against the wall) has any effect, but that's the point. There isn't one.

Somebody loved their job enough to say "You know what? This little roof area needs something" and went to the trouble of animating and scripting in a little tiny mouse sprite that appears no where else in the game and serves no purpose except to breathe a little life into an area you might not even glance at for more than a heartbeat, but there he is, just doing his little thing, a quiet mark of a game well made.

And since it's a Castlevania game, I am legally obligated to include the following;

"... and then things got worse."
"Fuckonami"
 

Sotha_Sil

Member
Outside of guards, every character in Morrowind has a name. No generic "Servant", "Peasant", or "Bandit" here, which really helped make it seem like a real world.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Possibly too obscure...

NaBk4in.png


In Symphony of the Night's Outer Wall section, there's a little enclosed area with a roof over it, and inside that roof is a mouse. It doesn't do anything, it just runs back and forth, and sometimes sits up. It is not a looping animation, it actually behaves somewhat randomly, scurrying around in its little space. To this day nothing I've ever tried (including obvious stuff like dropping cheese against the wall) has any effect, but that's the point. There isn't one.

Somebody loved their job enough to say "You know what? This little roof area needs something" and went to the trouble of animating and scripting in a little tiny mouse sprite that appears no where else in the game and serves no purpose except to breathe a little life into an area you might not even glance at for more than a heartbeat, but there he is, just doing his little thing, a quiet mark of a game well made.

And since it's a Castlevania game, I am legally obligated to include the following;

"... and then things got worse."
"Fuckonami"
This is what I made this thread for

I don't get it. The characters have different colored hair, just like in every anime/Japanese game?
They represent the colors of the rainbow.
 

JayCB

Member
This thread was practically made for Breath of the Wild, huh? Here are a couple off the top of my head;

- Steam rises off of fire weapons when it’s raining
- Link has custom climbing animations based off how steep the surface is and how much stamina he has remaining
- Speaking of animations, you have a custom one for being idle while naked
- And another for opening chest while naked where he hurts his foot
- Killing an animal with a fire/ice weapon gives you prechilled/cooked food
- Pulling out an arrow near the volcano causes it to ignite - and bomb arrows to instantly explode

There are literally hundreds of things like this stuffed in there somehow.
 

Spman2099

Member
This one is a little controversial, but I love that the Orator class in Final Fantasy Tactic uses the "enlighten" skill to lower the faith stat of enemy characters. Funny stuff.
 

kinn

Member
Cant recall seeing this in other games except Burnout 2. When you start your boost /burnout , the music volume kicks up a notch.
 
04.gif


Shining Force 2: Geshp is a very uniquely written character. Evil, but not completely so. He has personality and humanity to him despite being a "devil." In fact all of the portrait-having devils show bits of altruism towards the force in defeat. Creed, is a "retired" devil who just outright helps you.

In Shining Force 2, one tiny thing that impressed me was how they would change the character joining jingle to something more sad whenever it played after a tragic event. It's like they acknowledge something sad had just happened and don't want to ruin the mood by playing the usual cheery jingle.

This happens in the other games too. It's a nice touch. The games are also not afraid to show death and war in quasi-realistic detail. Cities get sacked and when you walk through them the dead and dying lay on the ground.

Phantasy Star IV: The Dungeon music of this game includes "re-orchestrations" of tracks from the original. These tracks are used whenever you go places that are direct references to the earlier games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBAdzxLvOmc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIx7Z-LMeV4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebmbdIGcWW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlGHPDBba7A
 

big youth

Member
it's blatant but i've never heard anyone mention skyward swords stamina system. designed like a game within the game, the stamina balls are placed in such a way that you can sprint endlessly, at the cost of passing closer to enemies and other threats. a constant risk/reward system, really neat
 
In Shining Force 2, one tiny thing that impressed me was how they would change the character joining jingle to something more sad whenever it played after a tragic event. It's like they acknowledge something sad had just happened and don't want to ruin the mood by playing the usual cheery jingle.
 
I like the General Madelene statue in Final Fantasy IX. It gives the world of Gaia a history and helps it make it feel more alive. I think it might be an allusion to Jone of Arc.
 

Keinning

Member
Most people know about the high luck/low intelligence "ICE CREAM" dialogue that actually matches the password in the Repconn tourist building in New Vegas

But if you name your character "Ice Cream" you can also disable the security when the first guard robot ask for your identification and you just reply with your name
 

RRockman

Banned
The ending of the first Kingdom Hearts. When Mickey appears his ears are actually linked separately from his head. They are set to always face the camera, so even when Mickey turns his head, just like in Mickey Mouse cartoons, he always maintains his famous silhouette.

One thing I sincerely loved about the new 3d castle of illusion game is that they managed to pull this off during live gameplay without it looking weird at all. Even when the camera shifts to a 3d section Mickey's ears still work.

In metroid zero mission, you can skip the long beam and get the charge beam first. Instead of simply giving you the long beam power up too, the devs actually animated an charging animation/color specifically for your starter short beam AND gave it a distinctive noise that isn't used anywhere else. It was really cool to discover that when I was younger.
 
In GTA: San Andreas, if you wear lots of expensive suits, CJ will randomly shout "I'm a well-dressed maniac!" when you shoot somebody.

It's my favorite ad-lib in video games.
On a similar note in Sleeping Dogs whenever you buy new clothes at a store and leave, a voiceover of a dude will play. Most of the time he'll insult you by yelling, "IT TAKES GUTS TO WEAR THAT!" But if you wear a suit he'll actually compliment you.
 
Back in the day I used to love playing co-op Perfect Dark, using a CPU as my aide, and shooting her foot/leg to see the animations. I also loved how every bullet represented a blood patch on the enemies.
I'm not crazy I swear.
 

KHlover

Banned
Being able to heal while standing still in the balcony sections of Ys Origin is a pretty nifty attention to detail. You can heal in most Ys games in the overworld by standing still and well...technically you're not inside the tower while standing on the balcony, so it makes sense. Someone who didn't play any other Ys game besides Origin ´likely won't discover this because you don't really have any reason to stand still long enough for the healing to proc in these sections.
 

Giga Man

Member
The affection system in Tales of Symphonia. The dialogue choices you make with Lloyd and the actions you take affect certain members of your party, which alters a few cutscenes and enables special 1-on-1 cutscenes during certain events with the character who has the most affection towards Lloyd. I never knew the game had this feature when I first played it, and I assumed it was relatively unknown to most players when I found out about it myself. It wasn't until my second player, which was many many years after the first, that I found out about this and started making all the choices that would lead to Lloyd and Sheena getting together. I never knew that Lloyd could have other romantic partners besides Colette or "best bros" if you went for the guys. After that, I played it two more times to pair match Lloyd with Presea and Raine. I just couldn't stop!

Having just played Fire Emblem: Awakening 3 times for 3 months straight, a type of game I had never experienced before in my life that I absolutely fell in love with, before replaying Symphonia, I discovered that I kind of have a thing for romantic relationships that the player has influence over, or "dating sim elements" as it's most commonly known. I even played my first Harvest Moon game, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, for the same reasons.
 

Eblo

Member
Some of the stage music from Super Mario 64 shares the same basic melody. The fact that I went nearly two decades without noticing is just a testament to how well adapted the music is.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Most people know about the high luck/low intelligence "ICE CREAM" dialogue that actually matches the password in the Repconn tourist building in New Vegas

But if you name your character "Ice Cream" you can also disable the security when the first guard robot ask for your identification and you just reply with your name

Thats a great touch lol
 

Wood Man

Member
In Vandal Hearts when you make a kill. Everything from the sound-effect to the giant blood spray makes it so satisfying. But maybe not obscure enough.

vandalhearts.gif
 
The moment I killed a target by tricking him into ejecting himselft from a fighter plane while still in the hangar is the moment I fell in love with HITMAN.
The best part with that is that whole mission is a training exercise recreation of a previous ICA mission set up by the ICA to prove 47's worth. So when you do that kill in front of the guards they actually break character and are all like "What the hell's wrong with you, dude?!"

New Hitman is fantastic when it comes to little things like that.
 

Mijdax

Banned
Dont ask.me why but I f*cking love how the menus control in Final fantasy Tactics A2... I dont even know why but everything feels perfect when moving the cursor to the next menu item.

422750-final-fantasy-tactics-a2-grimoire-of-the-rift-nintendo-ds.png

wow.


I also love the consistent ui of ffxiv.
 

Zodzilla

Member
The Pappapishu plant in Curse of Monkey Island.

Early in the game, when you're stuck in quicksand, you have the ability to read a bunch of plaques left up by the island's tourism board (it's a joke, and handy to solve the puzzle of how to escape the quicksand)

One plant is thorny and is known as the Pappapishu plant, named after the native islander's slang word for "ouch".

If you happen to read the plaque, Guybrush will exclaim "Pappapishu!" in every subsequent situation wherein he would exclaim "ouch".

If you don't, he just says ouch instead and you would miss the gag, never knowing it ever existed.


Man, what a great adventure game.


Also of note: the rusty anchor song by glottis in grim fandango. If you happen to show Glottis the rusty anchor tattoo card while he's in the piano bar, he'll play a minute long diddy that's super cute and catchy. Totally throw away, but completely endearing,
 

Brizzo24

Member
I really enjoy the mad dog looks and eye stares that all the characters in Mario Kart 8 give one another when they're passing one another. It's small, sure, but promotes so much personality into the game.
 

Lijik

Member
Love is a strong word but in Epic Mickey when Oswald comes out of hiding and is in the hub world but doesnt trust Mickey still, any time you turn your back to him after talking to him he'll blow a raspberry and taunt you. If you quickly turn back around he'll start leaning back and whistling as if he wasnt doing anything.

Its such a perfect character moment and piece of cartoon humor.
 
In Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon there are cats in various areas.

You can try to befriend them by trying to slowly play with them or giving them food. A cutscene plays when you're successful.

maxresdefault.jpg


This serves no purpose except for them to remain not scared of you and Seto to mark his handdrawn maps. In fact looking at boards for the game many people ask what's the point of it and few even know about Seton marking the map. It's just a cute, but thematically consistent, thing that's there.

fragile%2Bdreams%2B-%2Bmap%2B01.png


The map above actually doesn't show any cats marked off but I couldn't find an example online.
 
Tactics Ogre: LUCT's menu. It's just so aesthetically pleasing with the background texture, portraits, icons, typography and pixel perfect stuff where applicable.

NIRE2yO.png
 

syncyes

Member
In Yakuza 3, if you walk slow enough while traveling with Kiryu's adoptive daughter Haruka, she'll hold his hand.

but the BEST PART is in Yakuza 5 postgame, after building Haruka's affection up to C or whatever and walk slow, she will STILL HOLD YOUR HAND ;-;

and the animations in Y5 are way better than Y3 so it's even better! ;w;
 
In Overwatch if you're playing as Junkrat and press to play the 'hello' animation after you've put a mine down and he has the detonator in his hand, he'll wave using his two spare fingers.

Most modern J-Squeenix game's menus tend to make me love the games more. Nier Automata being the most recent example.
 

El Odio

Banned
From the moment you start the final level in SMG2 you're constantly encouraged by Lumas both in the hub and the level, Bowser's Galaxy Generator, that you can do it and defeat Bowser. Partway through the level you get Yoshi and after completing his segment which brings you to the final pole leading to Bowser once you dismount him he'll actually turn to face you and wave goodbye as if to say "good luck." It's one of the reasons why it's probably one of my top final levels ever.
tumblr_okk5muru4F1rrftcdo1_500.gif
 

Ranmo

Member
The multiple voices for "Kid Mode" selection on spider-man ps1

edit

Nearly forgot about that. The nostalgia is real.

I guess mine would be that I really appreciate unique save screens in modern games. I feel like it's not as rare as it was during last gen but I appreciate when misc. menus retain the games HUD design and isn't generic or system based.
 

Qwyjibo

Member
Stomping stuff in the Dead Space games is one of the most satisfying things in gaming. The game designers did a great job making you really feel the weight of the suit/boots.

I'll stomp everything. Those crates, barely alive enemies, dead enemies, dead humans... everything.
 
Top Bottom