Mechanics That Made Other Games Feel Worse/Dated

[Cfrock]

Let me explain.

In Resident Evil 3, you can do a quick turn, which makes movement more fluid. After playing it, Resident Evil 2 feels dated because it doesn't have the quick turn, making movement feel slower and more cumbersome.

Likewise, Resident Evil 1 and 2 made you press a button to walk up stairs, but Resident Evil 3 lets you walk up stairs by just walking, which is smoother and more natural. In the follow-up, Code: Veronica, you have to press a button to walk up stairs again, and it makes Code: Veronica feel older than the game that came before it.

Are there any game mechanics you like that have made other games feel dated, or even outright bad due to their absence? Any mechanics you'd like to see in every game? Mechanics that you can't live without now that you've experienced them?

 

[Spirit]

The first one that springs to mind, which isn't exactly fair but I'm gonna mention it anyway, is Super Mario Sunshine.

In Mario 64, Mario had a good amount of moves like the long jump and back flip and standing high dive but the FLUDDless levels in Sunshine doesn't have any of those so it makes the naked platforming feel restrictive and lesser.

Resi 6 with being able to dive and melee at will etc made 4 and 5 uncomfortable for me in retrospect too.


I also put hundreds of hours into BotW, then tried to play Horizon Zero Dawn and felt so restricted because I couldn't climb what I wanted when I wanted.

 

[Sheikah_Witch]

@Spirit Climbing in BotW ruined so many other games for so many people haha.

I also wanna bring up Sunshine, in it, Mario's shadow appears whenever he is behind an object and out of camera view, and it always makes it iffy to play Mario 64 when the camera gets stuck behind objects.

 

[Cfrock]

God, climbing in BotW has ruined every other open world game, ahaha. It has to become mandatory in future. Everything else feels so limited without it.

One for me is the way Assassin's Creed Odyssey handles armour.

In Odyssey, you gather a lot of different armour and helmets, some of which look great, some of which look terrible. It always sucks in games when you find armour that is statistically better but looks a lot worse, but Odyssey solves this problem. You can make any armour look like any other you've already found, so you get to have the better stats while also having the style you like most, all at the push of a button.

This mechanic instantly made every other game with an armour system feel dated to me. Now, any time I find armour that is better but looks worse in a game I'm going to wish I had Odyssey's system, and not having it will make whatever game I'm playing feel a little worse to play. Odyssey has ruined any other game that doesn't shamelessly steal the mechanic

 

[DJ Twitch]

Pokemon Red just felt nearly impossible at times without the serious QoL features we've had since Gen 2. Not to mention the terrible balancing and move pools.

The original Snowboard Kids felt extremely slow after I had gotten so used to the second.

 

[Cfrock]

That's a point, the running shoes they added to later Pokémon games were a Godsend. Going back to older games where you had to walk everywhere before you got a bike feels awful now, lol

 

[Spirit]

That's a point, the running shoes they added to later Pokémon games were a Godsend. Going back to older games where you had to walk everywhere before you got a bike feels awful now, lol

In Let's Go there's no bike despite it being a Gen 1 remake, you can ride Pokemon though but some feel even slower than walking :/

 

[Cfrock]

In Let's Go there's no bike despite it being a Gen 1 remake, you can ride Pokemon though but some feel even slower than walking :/

Can't wait to ride my Shuckle around at 0.04mph in Let's Go Johto

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

this instantly made me think of the castlevania games in how 4 gave you so much freedom w/ the whip and simon's momentum that it can make it tough to go back to the restrictive gameplay of the originals, heck even rondo of blood went back to the standard whip attack, and bloodlines was a weird in-between

also gotta mention the GTA games in that San Andreas introduced revolutionary, state of the art game play mechanics never before seen such as CAMERA MOVEMENT, and CROUCH WALKING, and FREE AIMING,....and CLIMBING

speaking of which, MGS4 also had a better free aim and crouch walking, and if you try to play MGS3 afterwards, yeah you can kinda feel it

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

Tank controls. Nobody gonna remember how awful tank controls felt?

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Tank controls. Nobody gonna remember how awful tank controls felt?

People tend to forget. Browse forums for the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes and you'll see plenty of people bemoaning the fact that the remakes don't use the fixed camera angles and horrible tank controls.

 

[Sheikah_Witch]

Oh dear, forgot to mention the obvious one. After playing the ports of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX with speed-up, turning off random encounters and giving battle boost, it's gonna be beyond hard to return to the originals.

 

[the8thark]

Full 3D rotating camera.

Games without it, SM64 and Ocarina of Time being good examples feel very dated. It's tough going back to a smallnumber of fixed camera view points.