Favourable Game Mechanics (Gone, But Not Forgotten)

[Hagan]

We all had that one (or more) game mechanic(s) that we thought (felt) was the absolute gift from devs; that thing that makes certain gameplay moment fun or engaging.

About a week ago, my sister and I were discussing this very thing.

I was playing AC: Liberation at the time and it got me to thinking just how much I miss Prince of Persia's wallrunning, jumping and backflipping over enemies to get the advantage; these elements proved greatly advantageous to the player, while looking awesome and badass.

Thus, this got me to thinking that:

"Wouldn't re-introducing such elements be fantastic; reminiscent of the good ol' days?"

Have anything from older games you miss, maybe a previous title's mechanic that would have been a great (or even helpful) in its successors' gameplay?

Feel free to share

[The_Imp_ZA]

In-Game HUD. How should it be done? The HUD should be incorporated into the design of the game. Don't just plaster it on top. If that isn't possible than adopt the following: HUD when you need it, hide when you don't.

Dead Space 1,2,3 are good examples, all relevant info is displayed on Isaac. Distance in the only other recent game that I've seen adopt the philosophy. It's actually a racing game, and they cleverly put all relevant info on the back of the car, like engine heat and speed.

A lot of games put a crazy amount of effort into their environments, then the UI designers go and clutter the screen with a bunch of HUD elements. It pisses me off. The Witcher 3 was a good example of this. Their artists put in so much detail, that all the landscapes even have the correct soil and rock erosion types. Why put in all that effort if you're just going to go and clutter the screen with useless HUD elements? Ironically TW2 had a very minimalistic HUD. I'm not sure why they changed that for TW3.

On PC there's an amazing mod called Friendly HUD which makes use of the concept I mentioned above. It makes the game so much better, in my opinion.

[Mclyle_]

I miss the aggro system from the first Army of Two game. Really enjoyed that

[AstroTurf]

I loved the parachute in mdk. Never seen the like again.