UNUSUAL Things Games If you’ve been listening to us talk about games for a while now, you know that developers love adding little details to their games, things that just really heighten the experience.
Today, we’re talking about little tiny details that were added to add gameplay. Random moments in games where you do something completely different or something just feels totally different, just clever things that we thought were worth mentioning.
We got 10 cool examples, so let’s get started off with number 10.
Now, the campaign mode that has five separate segments and is in total only about five or six hours long, it shouldn’t be surprising that battlefield five is going to introduce some ideas and concepts that don’t get much screen time. It’s following the Call of Duty model of giving you quick little alternate gameplay styles that last only a few minutes or at worst, only a few seconds. A lot of this stuff just adds to the pacing and a lot of it isn’t totally noteworthy, but we think the skiing is here. In one of the game’s chapters, you play as a Norwegian freedom fighter on a mission to rescue her mother from a German-held facility.
And after a quick setup, you switch to the main character of the episode with your objective way out in the distance. How do you get there? Well, by skiing. It’s a surprisingly impressive simulation that only really lasts a few minutes or less, but it’s there. Honestly, I would have liked to do a little more skiing in a game, but you know how these military first-person shooter campaigns work. You can finish this stuff in an evening, so there’s no time to just take in the sights. There’s killing and first-person shooting to be done. But still, it was a clever little addition and a campaign that really didn’t get too much traction. Now, next over at number nine, the Call of Duty franchise.
It’s jam-packed with these alternate gameplay styles. Sometimes they’re well integrated into the games, sometimes they’re really not. Now, you can’t deny the Black Ops subseries for its ambition, but those games are the absolute worst about integrating their alternative ideas into gameplay. They’re constantly introducing new concepts or switching up the gameplay for only a few minutes at a time and then never really revisiting them again. Now, in our mind, the perfect example of this thing is in the mission WMD in the awesome first Black Ops game.
There’s this whole elaborate setup where your player character climbs into a blackbird and flies into low-earth orbit, then switches over to a thermal screen where you can give order to a CIA infiltration team. It seems like this is going to be the gimmick of the level, like the Death Room Above mission in the first Modern Warfare, but it’s bizarrely short. After giving an order, then you just switch back to controlling the CIA team now. It just leaves me wondering, why did they go through all the trouble of showing this airplane take off and introduce this new gameplay mechanic where you barely even get a chance to use it? I got them. Kilo one, this is Big I-6. I have you on the TRP. Roger that, Big I-6. We have zero visibility on the ground. We need you to guide us to the cop’s relay. Maybe there was originally going to be more of it and the developers at tray just thought it was boring or it didn’t help the pacing or they had to cut it for budgetary reasons. I don’t know. But it’s a strangely in-depth setup for what ends up just being another run, gun, call-of-duty mission.
Next over at number eight, let’s talk to Final fantasy Seven Remake and the dance-off. Some people are going to ask, Where did this come from? It’s not just out of nowhere. It’s also really elaborate. For some reason, in the middle of the Final fantasy Seven Remake, we get this elaborate dance number slash rhythm game where Cloud has to prove something. I don’t know, his intentions to get the dressmaker to make Cloud a dress… Listen, Reason has very little to do with this whole thing. This is just the game developers having some fun here with a self-indulgent sequence that just goes way harder than it has to. The thing is, it only lasts a few minutes, and in terms of gameplay, that part is even shorter. And once it’s done, that’s it. There will be no more dancing in Final fantasy 7.
They got it out of their system and it’s done. We actually wish there was a little more. There are a few other mini games to try out in the Wall Market area, of course, but this one just comes so out of left field, lasts for no time at all, and then is never mentioned again.
You got to respect the ambition and the fun, if nothing else, man. Next over at number seven, let’s talk Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, you’d think dog fighting would be one of the central pillars of a game like this. And before release, a lot of people asked about it. So maybe this section is just the developers more short term jamming in some space combat right before the deadline. I don’t know how that stuff works. I don’t want to speculate.
But here’s the thing. There’s only one moment where you actually get in a space battle in the entire game, and it’s really short. It’s not a few seconds, at least. It’s longer than that, but it doesn’t feel much longer. In chapter nine, the crew gets ambushed by this guy called Captain Glory, and the only way to escape is to take him out and his little fleet. In this section, you finally get full 360 degree control of your spaceshipship and enjoy a while last, though, because it’s going to be the last time. Please try to flee. I would love to hunt you down. And feed your egos? No, thank you. There are a few moments before and after this part that let you control the ship, but they’re more like playful QTEs where you’re stuck going in one direction.
This little segment actually lets you cut loose with guns and missiles. And while it’s pretty basic as far as combat depth is concerned, it’s still a fun little sequence. It’s not up to the level of the halo reach space combat segment, but it’s pretty good for how short it is. Next over at number six, let’s talk a way out. This co-op action adventure game is filled with little distractions, but the one that really stands out the most to us in terms of the effort put into it is the Connect Four game. So it’s found in the hospital lobby at the start of the chapter, A New Life. This game is exactly what you’d expect. It’s Connect Four, and you take Tarrins dropping in chips or the tokens or whatever those little round things are called, and whoever makes a row of four vertically, horizontally, or diagonally wins. The thing that stands out to us is just how good this looks. Most games would just switch to some boring interface or make it so the pieces fall on their own. But this game goes all in, showing the characters fully modeled, carefully animated to pick up each piece and manually drop them into spaces with dialog lines.
It’s one of the best visual representations of a board game out there in video games. I’m not that sure I’d be all that impressed if I sat down and watched two guys play Connect 4 in a movie for a minute. It’s completely pointless in the game. It’s not something you’re forced to do. And in fact, both players need to sit down to do it, so it has to be mutual. The way out is just filled to the brim with these kinds of nice but unimportant details, just stuff that has a little depth, a little bit of character-building, maybe even a little building between the two people playing it cooperatively. I don’t know. And this is just a really cool example of that. Now, next over at number five, Resident Evil 6.
That was a weird game. It was definitely ambitious, but in ways that people didn’t exactly want for a Resident Evil game. I mean, this game cranked up the action movie, the insanity, the insanity all the way up. And that’s why we got a segment where you pilot a jet fighter in a Resident Evil game. I can’t even begin to explain why any of this is happening, but there’s literally a part where Chris Redfield and his buddy, pierce, they jump into a jet and attack an aircraft carrier.
Do I need to explain why this doesn’t feel like Resident Evil? Either way, Yeah, I mean, this game is actually full of these little gameplay changes. There are multiple car chases, for example, but the jet fighter just stands out in our mind as the most bizarre and unnecessary. It’s not bad for what it is, but why is it in a Resident Evil game? Why is it so elaborate? Capcom, I guess, maybe wanted some of that Call of Duty money at the time, and that means throwing in a few weirdly elaborate gameplay changes that never come up again because that’s what people really like about other games, right? I think over time, people have softened on Resident Evil 6, but there’s still some weird stuff. We had to mention this. We have an emergency. The missile is preparing to launch. What the hell? We’re out of time, I don’t have permission to destroy the missile. Granted. Damn it, get things in our way. Next over at number four, to say that No More Heroes 3 takes some pretty strange turns would be an understatement. I mean, it’s a game with wild shifts in tone, presentation, and even gameplay.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it really doesn’t. But it’s definitely unique. You got to admit that there’s a reason why people like these. There’s a few oddball bosses that show up before the rank three battle with sonic juice. But this one really is something else because instead of being your standard hack and slash combat, this time you’re forced into an old-schoolRPG battle for whatever reason. Preemptive strike. Legendary water.
Shit. We got to attack with command input? We take turns attacking. It’s an extremely fair way to do battle. This is hardly the first game to pull out theRPG fight gimmick, but it’s one of the most recent that we can think of and somehow manages to be one of the strangest. I mean, just look at this guy. He’s got hands for nipples. You got to love the developers.
