Weird Things That Get You Excited

I think this is new at least. I was playing God of War and I hit the L3 button and he suddenly started hurtling forward as if he still wore Hermes boots. I love it when a character can run fast, I'm always trying to find the quickest way to get my character from point A to point B and it upsets me terribly when there is no way to run or if the run animation is barely faster than walking.

What average things can make or break a game for you? What are your best examples of this feature? What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more

I felt just like that with the sprint feature in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.

Being able to say, "hello!" at people in that mountain village in Uncharted 2. Spent ages doing that, genuinely the best bit of that game by far.

Lots of little things like this make all the difference for me.

Similar to Muss' "hello" from Uncharted, if a game features dogs/ cats, I need to be able to pet them or interact with them in some way.

A really good dodge/ parry does wonders. The Platinum dodge, as seen in Bayonetta and Transformers, or the Dark Souls Parry . . . and seeing those ideas copied in Monster Hunter Generations and Breath of the Wild! A good dodge mechanic makes or breaks an action game as far as I'm concerned. It was the subject of my article for Super FX magazine . . . but then the magazine closed before that issue came out. I'm waiting a respectful amount of time, then I'll stick it on Ginny I expect.

Lastly, this one's a bit different, but watching Die Hard 4 gets me excited for new Pokemon games. I've discussed it before, but basically I saw it the same day I picked up Pokemon Pearl and that was me getting right back into Pokemon. I watch that film before release day for new generations ever since.

Nice thread. We need stuff like this during the Switch droughts.

Agreed with the dodge/parry - BotW's dodge was immensely satisfying. Also agreed with the dash. In general, if a game has an opportunity to upgrade pace dramatically, and that feels like a dramatic upgrade in pace (either through viewpoint, or screen judders, or rumble or what have you), I'll be all over that. A recent example might be SMO's Jaxi.

You can't go further than Celeste's Prologue for a recent example for me. The last bit is what I've been quoting over and over again as a magic moment. It really got me excited to play the rest of the game.

I suppose in RPGs I always get dead excited when you can see the enemies on the overworld. Random sudden battles should stay in ancient gaming history where they belong.

I'm also a sucker for destructible environments. Throwing a grenade at some cover in an FPS and seeing debris fly everywhere gets me giddy.

Every time you inexplicably bring up the co-called "switch drought" in an unrelated thread I roll my eyes so hard I see backwards in time, peer into the face of God and know the eternal truths. Please stop before I cast myself finally and fatally into the burning void.

JayMoyles wrote:

I'm also a sucker for destructible environments. Throwing a grenade at some cover in an FPS and seeing debris fly everywhere gets me giddy.

You ever play the Red faction games? The destructible environments in that were quite good and there's a remaster coming soon as well. Also by law I have to mention R6 Siege here as that's a big reason why it has stayed fresh for me for the last 2 and a half years.

I still remember being blown away by the initial E3 showing of Siege. And they gave me a can of monster, so all around a top game.

That initial E3 showing was really just a proof concept trailer as you can't just destroy any part of a building you want, it'd work for a single player game but for MP you need to scale it back for the sake of balance but overall they did nail it as you can't just worry about what's in front of you.

JayMoyles wrote:

I suppose in RPGs I always get dead excited when you can see the enemies on the overworld. Random sudden battles should stay in ancient gaming history where they belong.

Absolutely this, but at this stage I think of it more as a 'should have' than an 'excited when it comes up'. That said, the option to change the frequency of random encounters in games that have them? Exciting.

Also: big things. (No.) Coming across a massive open plain, or a really big monster, gets me excited. That's why I'm a sucker for the Xenoblade series.

The smell of the pages in a freshly printed book.

Oh, right, game stuff. This is going to sound a bit bonkers, but it's in the vein of Drunka's thing about satisfying dodge mechanics. For me the thing that makes or breaks actions games, and something I love, is the satisfaction of impacts, of hitting things, in a game.

Remember in Smash Bros how more powerful attacks would take a split second before they're send your opponent hurtling through the air? Or Batman Arkham Asylum where every blow had the slightest of pauses. That sort of tiny thing really sends feedback to me and makes the simple act of punching, kicking, or slashing something so satisfying. You can almost feel the attack.

Insane over the top attacks are all well and good, but to me the best kind of action is when you can feel your attacks blowing your opponent back. Probably why I find myself maining characters like Nightmare in Soul Calibur.

Yes. Utterly agree. Whatever the manoeuvre or attack is, I want it to feel like it has some punch behind it. (Although I played Talim in SC2. )

The_Jaster wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

I'm also a sucker for destructible environments. Throwing a grenade at some cover in an FPS and seeing debris fly everywhere gets me giddy.

You ever play the Red faction games? The destructible environments in that were quite good and there's a remaster coming soon as well. Also by law I have to mention R6 Siege here as that's a big reason why it has stayed fresh for me for the last 2 and a half years.

I played a demo of it back on 360, and I adored crumbling everything around me with explosive and big ol' sledgehammers. I didn't know about the remaster - colour me interested.

Athrun888 wrote:

Remember in Smash Bros how more powerful attacks would take a split second before they're send your opponent hurtling through the air?  Or Batman Arkham Asylum where every blow had the slightest of pauses.  That sort of tiny thing really sends feedback to me and makes the simple act of punching, kicking, or slashing something so satisfying.  You can almost feel the attack.   

That has a name - hitlag! It's a big thing in fighting games. There's nothing more satisfying than hitting Andy with a big move in Injustice 2 then comboing Andy into another move before juggling him into another move before finishing Andy off with a super attack to win the match before he's barely made a dent into my first health bar all whilst his character freezes for a tiny moment with each blow. That's not a specific example or anything...

Beat me to it Jay! Yeah, Hitlag is one of those things that you never notice is there, but it's absolutely MASSIVE when it isn't there.

When you get a randomly-generated track on F-Zero X's X Cup that has all the other racers fall off of the circuit and die on the first corner, that gets me excited every time.

JayMoyles wrote:

That has a name - hitlag! It's a big thing in fighting games. There's nothing more satisfying than hitting Andy with a big move in Injustice 2 then comboing Andy into another move before juggling him into another move before finishing Andy off with a super attack to win the match before he's barely made a dent into my first health bar all whilst his character freezes for a tiny moment with each blow. That's not a specific example or anything...

Sure that's not just beating Andy that get's you excited.

I explicitly said that's not a specific example at all Mas. I would never find great enjoyment in beating up my good friend Crumpy "Andrery" Ricey Boy Man 949 in Injustice 2.

Non-Specific Andyman Figure.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

When you get a randomly-generated track on F-Zero X's X Cup that has all the other racers fall off of the circuit and die on the first corner, that gets me excited every time.

I concur with the

A bit predictable this - a movement mechanic that's difficult to pull-off but great when you can chain a bunch together. Thinking of Mario 64's wall jumps, which were less forgiving than their modern counterparts.

This is a big one, and I don't think it's terribly weird, but - music and gameplay matching up. Two obvious examples of this: the Celeste prologue (is silenced before he can get going) and the musical strikes when you slash a foe in Wind Waker. Far from the only examples, natch, but when the two combine well, they can be so much more than the sum of their parts.

As a tenuously linked point, I really enjoy when games use a vocal track when you least expect to really heighten a particular moment. MGS is the king of this with the now legendary ladder climb in MGS3 or the helicopter battle in Peace Walker, but my personal favourite is the arrival to Mexico in Red Dead Redemption with that Jose Gonzalez track playing. Magic. I wish I could think of more examples, but that's definitely a somewhat weird thing to get excited about.

Bayonetta is great at that, particularly the first one where the song was more emotionally linked to the story and felt less shoehorned in. And of course Super Mario Odyssey's festival.

I get excited when a title screen says 'Press Any Button To Start' and I can. *pushes L3*

I've found myself getting excited about the lumpy bits on girls' bodies in recent years. How's that for weird?

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I get excited when a title screen says 'Press Any Button To Start' and I can. *pushes L3*

Good man, couldn't agree more.

Drunkalilly wrote:

I've found myself getting excited about the lumpy bits on girls' bodies in recent years. How's that for weird?

Bad man, get back on those tentacles like the rest of us good God fearing men.