Kinda bored bored so I thought I’d try and pose an interesting question to y’all: What are some game mechanics you’ve really enjoyed but rarely seen, if even more than once? It could be from any type of game and even something you’d like to see in DB but not necessarily.
I’ll start with my little story, so as to try and give an example. Back in the good old days of 2005 I was primarily a pc gamer but also had an og xbox, mainly for playing online with console peasant friends. After playing Halo, Timesplitters 2 and Halo 2 to death we wanted a new fps and being a Battlefield fan, I suggested we buy Battlefield 2 for xbox. Despite the “Modern Combat” suffix, I assumed it was the same as the PC game. Now in case any of you charitably write this off as an easily-made mistake and doubt my status as an idiot, I did the exact same thing with Counterstrike. CS was crap but yielded a little fun just wrecking bots.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand: Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. The game was fun and reviewed favourably (typically 7-8/10) but didn’t provide nearly the scope or scale of pc BF2. One thing it did have, however, was a mechanic where you could warp to any friendly soldier in sight and assume control over that character. They had a nice camera animation where you kind of zoomed across the map to them. This feature opened up a lot of options and the devs really did a good job at implementing it into the campaign. For example in 1 map, you start as a sniper, taking out some guys guarding a bridge. Then you can zoom over to where the assault squad is and attack the bridge, planting charges or whatever. The whole time their have been helos flying overhead so you can warp into one of those at any time, instantly, to provide cover for the snipers and assault squad etc. Even just the utility it provided of being able to switch classes and position on the map instantly was great.
I remember thinking at the time that it was a great mechanic and expected to see it again but haven’t really. For me this feature alone really elevates the game from an early generic modern fps to a noteworthy example of an interesting mechanic, mostly forgotten.
Anyway, thanks if you read this far. I’m really interested to hear any examples you guys might have.
g24
edit: I really should have checked before posting but apparently this feature was called “Hotswapping” and can be seen here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NhrCcS6f4bU
