In Infamous, when you fall, you don't just fall quickly. You sort of crawl down the side of the object more slowly, giving you time to look for a handhold as you fall.

Similar to the GoW example, I really liked the way Uncharted handled it - there's a very distinct change in the sounds going from high adrenaline music to silence and only background noises after an "encounter" ends.

Being able to flip a car back onto its tires with a single button-press is one of my favorite small-time features. I don't even know how my times I had to leave behind a fancy vehicle in Grand Theft Auto because it was upside-down. Seen in Red Faction: Guerilla, and Halo. Â Â

how my times

Oops, that should say "how many times".

@Michael B that was also seen in Mercs 2

The ability to quick mute someone before a match. I first noticed this in COD 4.

In Demon's Souls, weapons don't clip through the environment. In other words, a large sword swung in a small corridor will hit the wall and disrupt the swing before making contact with the enemy, which makes the game much more tactical regarding weapon choice and positioning.

I've always liked when people's shoes clicked on stone - it was a relazing sound for me.

I also want to say a rumble or shime when your close to something hidden. Legend of Zelda / crackdown respectively

I think my favorite is probably the sniper trail effect. Halo is the first place I remember this, although I am not sure that it is the first example. It was a great way to have a visual cue of where someone is firing from without having to guess and/or die and let the killcam reveal the shooters location. It allowed players a little more of an edge when facing opponents camped on the opposite side of the map, and gave snipers more of an incentive to take head shots rather than widdle away a players health.

For games like Halo 3, Gears of War, etc... I would love to have a button that allowed me to zoom out for a bit to take a look at the action.

The camera switch when driving through a gas station in Burnout annoys me every time. It destroys the flow of the driving, and I actually tend to avoid them when playing Burnout Paradise. I also miss the sound of wind passing by when flying through the air(this was one of my favorite features in Burnout Revenge).

Also, menus are terrible these days. They are clumsily organized, take too long to load, and respond far too slowly.

I love it in sandbox games when attempting to get out of a vehicle while it's upside down causes you to awkwardly fall out of the door/window, as opposed to magically coming out right side up. It's in Red Faction: Guerrilla...I'm not sure if it's in anything else (haven't played GTAIV). Or, if the vehicle is on the side such that it blocks the driver side door, the driver climbs out the passenger side window.

It's a neat touch you don't really think about until you see it.

Awesome stuff...please keep them coming. Let's see if anyone can top my fire-escape ladder example for the most insignificant, but still cool, game design thing. :)

I have another; I don't know if this counts officially as "game design," but it was important to me: keyboard and mouse support for Unreal Tournament III on PS3. Those of us who cut our FPS teeth on the PC welcome more games providing this kind of control support for consoles. And now that Epic Games has shown it's possible, other developers no longer have any excuse!

I got your Infamous beat with my Dead Space. When your menu comes up and you're navigating it with the d-pad, Isaac's head follows your selection.

I love the way that the music in Space Invaders Extreme kind of follows the timing of your shooting. I don't know if it was the first to do this but I liked it.

As a Sound Design in Interactive Media student, it irks me to no end when a game's Sound Design and Soundtrack are just a place-hoder "white noise" in the background. Though graphics improve exponentially from generation to generation, sound design stays just as bland, flat, and generic. It goes unnoticed because we're so visually driven, but some developers have definitely taken it and improved it. Some examples are:

Geometry Wars-I doubt there is any other game, in my opinion, that feels so organic both visually and audibly when playing it. From the fading in/out of the music when you die or deploy a bomb, to the different sounds each of the enemies make when they spawn, Geo Wars creates a visually and audibly arousing world.

Shadow of the Colossus- We just cannot stop kissing Fumito Ueda's and Team Ico' ass for their masterful creations, so now its my turn. SOTC is truly a milestone in game design, it takes all the advantages videogames have over other media and uses them to create a narrative impossible to recreate in any other form. SOTC's sound(and lack there of) is crucial to the overall experience of the game. SOTC's sound ques("q's", however its spelled) aid in breathing life into the environment and the colossus that roam it. With the addition of an excellent soundtrack to accompany it that conveys the beauty, and epic scale of this never-to-be-forgotten interactive experience, SOTC is truly a gem amidst the endless rehashing of the same stories we see every year in the industry.

Other games I admire for their use of sound, but I didn't want to bore you with: Dead Space, Condemned series, Bioshock.

How in God of War 1 and 2, when walking into another scene the camera switches angles, up is now down, down is now up, but you continue the same direction if you continue to press the analog stick as you did from the previous scene.

Perfect Dark 64- menu of unlockable cheats, with descriptions of how to unlock them. This was a single player game that really had replay value, and to get every single cheat in the game you had to seriously committed. I can't think of a better reward system in a game than giving you fun cheats to screw around with.

Project Gotham Racing - "radio stations." While they dropped the DJs after PGR1 and 2, PGR3 and 4 still had music organized into stations. While racing, up and down on the d-pad switches station (ie genre), and left and right cycle through songs. Brilliant.

Valve games on PC - support for user-made dedicated servers. I've never seen a game website talk about this, which is shocking. You know why strong communities develop around multiplayer PC games, and usually not console games? Because when a clan forms around a PC game, they rent a server and can do whatever they want with it. And, you know, I don't want to play Halo 3 and use (shudder) matchmaking and play with random bimbos. I'd rather play on my clan's TF2 server where I can be an admin.

I have to say, I loved the reload animations in Resident Evil 4; they were awesome. I especially loved the way Leon reloads the Broken Butterfly, it was an awesome animation. In fact, I never got the Killer 7 solely for that reason. Others:

Every 3rd person shooter/FPS- the way guns recoil from the impact of the bullets

TLOZ:TWW- If you leave Link idle, while in a dungeon, his eyes point to what you have to do next. Also, the little music sound bytes that came out whenever you hit an enemy with the sword.

GTA IV: The way Niko's weight shifts with the car; for example, when he turns the steering wheel all the way to the left or right. The man actually drives with 2 hands, instead of thug style like in Saints Row 1/2.

Shadow of the Colossus- The way the main character's voice changes when he calls for the horse depending on how far or how close the horse is. So he could be saying Agro calmly one moment, the next he could be fighting a Colossi, desperately screaming out AGRO!! or whistle for him.

Crackdown- The sound of the of the Agility Orbs and the Hidden Orbs.

Dead Space- Definitely the holographic menu and the way Issac moves his head to look at the item.

That's all I got.

I love the tiny rumble your Wii Remote makes when it's your turn in a multiplayer Boom Blox game. Especially since we usually play while drinking, when people can get a bit distracted.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/29/i-would-pay/ 8)

Damn Alex beat me to the Dead Space comment... lots of cool interface design there, but the most subtle is Isaac watching the menus.

I also enjoyed the automatic summoning of orbs in God of War... collecting things may be annoying, but at least it's less annoying when you don't have to physically contact each and every item.

I like the animations of your troops in King's Bounty: The Legend. I especially enjoy how the Cannoneers load their artillery pieces or smoke their pipes in that game.

The first shooter I noticed it in was Counter-Strike, but I always loved it when someone would manage a headshot on you, but it didn't kill you, you were suddenly looking somewhere else. You were in a heated battle trying for a headshot of your own when all of a sudden you hear "goosh" sound effect and you're staring at the sky wondering what just happened. I've seen it again recently in Fallout 3.

Red Faction Guerrilla is what I've been playing so the thing I noticed most was that you could control your car in mid-air to a degree, depending on its weight. It's like they knew you'd be driving off ledges, getting some air, or giving yourself a boost with a remote charge. Being able to right your vehicle in mid-air makes flipping your car a much rarer occurrence.

I'd also like to echo the sniper trails from Halo.

My friends and I have been playing a ton of RE5, and we are all in agreeance: one of the most best features they have is the "quick open" doors.

For those that haven't played RE5, you calmly push open doors when you press the X button, but if you're jamming the X button praying that Chris or Sheva makes it through the door before being sliced in twain by the nearest zombie, the character will reflect this by kicking the door open in half the time.

It's subtle, it improves the game, and it reflects the player's feelings and actions; what more could you want?

I have to mention the moment in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare single player when your squad is cutting the chain link fence to enter the missile base, Gaz is pulling on the snipped fence to gain entrance and it comes off with minimal effort and he falls down clumsily. So small but it gave a very human touch to a character that could have been nothing more than a blank slate NPC.

Similar to the ladder example, I like how a lot of FPS games have doors that open in both directions, so the player isn't awkwardly pushed aside if a door is opening towards him/her.

Also, in the first Deus Ex game, when exploring the UNATCO headquarters the player has the ability to enter the woman's bathroom. Later, while receiving a mission from the chief, if the player had gone into the women's bathroom the chief will offhandedly remark that that is unprofessional behavior. It isn't important to the story at all, but it was such a cool touch that I couldn't help but laugh at the coolness of it (okay, it's not so cool, creepy rather).

This is an awesome thread...

My contribution is in Halo: Combat Evolved. When you shot a wall or rock the bullet hole would stay there and even if you return to the same spot later in the level, the hole was still there.
This may have been done earlier, but Halo was where I remember it from.

I thought getting rid of life bars in Fight Night Round 3 was a tiny thing that had a huge impact on the way the game played. It felt more realistic and you paid more attention to visual clues like the cuts and bruises on your fighter's face to determine your status.

When browsing the Wii menu, you can rotate the little hand by rotating the controller.

Dead Space again: this is similar to the menu comment. At the start of the game, when Isaac talks to the other 2 characters from the train control room, what you see on the holo-projector is the same thing as on the other side of the room, but from a different perspective. I thought it was a neat touch.

Ninja Gaiden II: I like how Ryu shakes the blood off the weapons.

Prince of Persia 360/PS3: the little details to how the princess hangs on. Sometimes the guy would complain about how she's choking him, another thing that's pretty cute is how they hold hands as they turn around if they're on a beam and you're trying to get behind the princess. I also thought it was neat when the princess fell hard on the guy's shoulder's during wall climbing.

Boom Blox: I like how the animals stop dancing and follow the ball when its thrown until it stops moving and they're safe.

My previous post was mostly about little details that made me appreciate the games I played a bit more. The PoP details I felt were nice because it was a subtle way of building up the relationship between the 2 characters and I found it pretty tasteful. The Boom Blox thing I thought was really cute because they looked terrified of the ball. Cuteness, especially in a game like Boom Blox, goes a long way. Like naming the mama gorilla Gorilda. NG2's blood thing was bad ass. I remember the first time I noticed it I called out my GF and said "DID YOU JUST SEE WHAT HE DID?!". The DS observation was a nice touch in keeping the world consistent. It shows that they guys who made the game put effort into it.

Something else I wanted to bring up was Wild Arms XF. The Tactical RPG genre is pretty stale. It needs fresh ideas and I really felt WAXF tried to new things to a certain measure of success. The game was criticized as being very hard and it had its challenging moments. However, I feel like the game also was hard because it was unusual. We couldn't fall back on old lazy tactics. To address the fact that to accomdate the tactics of each map required specific classes, all class skills were available from the start. I felt doing so cut out a lot of the grinding and opened up the game to a lot more possible tactics. Each class also had a very limited number of skills, cutting out a lot of the fat (I'm looking at you FFT, with your 20 skills per class). You could focus a lot better on the way you played the game thanks to these features. I hope that future tactical RPGs look at the way WAXF was made and learn a few lessons, because there was a lot in there.

Not sure who started this movement, but whoever added Chapter Select to linear action games deserves a medal. Allowing me to replay individual levels (and in some cases, starting at specific checkpoints) is great when I'm looking for hidden items, trying to rack up kills with certain weapons or simply looking to return to the areas I enjoyed the most without having to restart the entire campaign. Resistance 2, Mirror's Edge, Resident Evil 5 all made good use of this option.

Also, it's been said before but having the characters in Left4Dead automatically announce important info ("Reloading!" "Ammo here!") is brilliant. Subsquent co-op action games (as seen above) have not picked this up yet and they should. Resident Evil 5 did have that "talk" feature which wasn't necessarily useful from a gameplay perspective but it was nice to be able to thank my partner with a single button press. I still press it even when I'm using voice chat and can thank my friend verbally. Having my character do it in-game is just more amusing.

Please note that I'm not necessarily sure if these games are the actual innovators of these features, but they are games I've been playing that have them.

Half-Life 2/EP1/EP2/Portal: Wherever you save in the game is the exact location you load from and there's an autosave so that you can load from last checkpoint if necessary. I think that every game should have this feature.

Also from Half-Life 2/EP1/EP2: The weapons grid, divided by class, no more than 3 weapons per direction. Makes things quick and easy when selecting weapons.

Ratchet & Clank series / Resistance 1: Whenever you select a weapon from the weapon wheel, the game auto-pauses. This lets you think out carefully what weapon you'd like to use next and if you use a less-than-effective weapon, the only thing you have to do is bring up the wheel and carefully select another one instead of hitting buttons frantically to find the right one.

Fable 2: If you mess up on a quest, you can select another quest or a general area from the start menu and if you select the option, it will load your save from the last auto-save or checkpoint. This saved me a few times when I took a quest and wasn't leveled up enough to finish it.

inFAMOUS: Mid-mission checkpoints.

Grand Theft Auto IV: Certain cheats are saved right in the cell phone once you input them, so if you need them, you can just select them.

Ode to Joy in Peggle. It's amazing how a little tune can help make finishing a level feel like an ultra dramatic fourth of July.

In Gta Chinatown wars, the cars adjust themselves when you steer so you stay in the direction of the road. It's subtle enough to never get annoying and makes the driving much better than I ever expected it to be.

About the weapon select pausing feature: I think the first game I saw that in was MGS.

The whole Metal Gear series is practically full of little details that fit in this category. I remember when MGS2 came out I realized that even though it wasn't the most graphically impressive in terms of straight looks, it was all of the little details that added up to make it so amazing. From the way the rain drops built up on the camera in first person view, to the ice cubes that melted slower the closer they were together. And then of course, there's all the poop. Apart from the ability to be pooped on if you stared up at the seagulls for too long, if you ran too fast through the accumulated bird shit on the ground, you'd slip and fall.

I could go on and on about the whole series, but I'll stop there. I won't go on about catching a cold from spending too much time out in the snow on Shadow Moses. Or all the things you could do to harass The End in MGS3, or strapping C4 to guard's backs, or the iconic symbols that display the physical/emotional status of enemies.

When I started reading this article, the first thing that jumped into my mine was the Call of Duty series. I remember falling in love with the CoD1 demo for numerous reason, but I absolutely fell in love with the ability to aim down the iron sites as well as being able to go into the prone position. To this day I have a small bias against any FPS that doesn't include these features.

Another touch that was added by other games like Brothers in Arms was the complete loss of the cross-hairs. It just felt more immersive to be forced to use the guns own sites rather than rely on an old gaming convention for accurate fire.

In Gun, you could ride horses to death if you hit the ''sprint'' button too much. A bit sadistic but a nice realistic touch.

I've always dug the 'flat line' sound effect in Half Life 2 when you kill a combine unit. It serves double duty as indicating that the soldier is in fact dead, as well as giving one more piece of evidence that the Combine are totally different than Gordon and the rest of the Resistance fighters.

In fact, I have an article up about this very thing, if I may use this post to promote my own work. :P

I'm not sure if any other sports game has done this before or since, but NFL 2K5 for the Xbox gave you the ability to replace the generic music being played in the stadium PA with clips from your own custom soundtracks. I remember spending quite some time editing clips to fit into specific situations, like "Bombs Over Baghdad" after a long pass play or "Billie Jean" during a touchdown celebration.

In Halo 3, when you are headshot by a sniper, you don't hear the shot. You just crumple over and see the trail of the bullet. It's like Bungie's way of saying Pwned in multiplayer, and allowing you a chance for revenge by seeing where the shot came from before you died.

If I could make one feature happen, if I had a genie or could sacrifice you all on the Altar Of Gaming to make one thing come true, it would be instant continue. Imagine it! Imagine holding down a certain button while your game starts up, or even ticking a check-box before on options, and your game actually starts up from the last save point! You would gain hours of life! Getting right into playing instead of

LOADING
Developer animated logos that cost a lot of money but every gamer in the entire world hates (HAMMER BUTTON)
Game intro videos (HAMMER BUTTON)

LOADING

Intro menu
> Load game
(SHORT LOADING)

Select most recent save, sometimes the only save, the god-damn only reason I'm playing again

LOOOOAAAAADING!

Imagine a bold new world where you can just hold down a button and the very first loading is your save! Where it starts where you left off, or where you don't even have to hold a button - where it automatically starts to load the save and says "Hold B to go to Main Menu instead"!

If I could have a second request, assuming my genie was generous, it would be a "Mute All" button on FPS servers. Sometimes you just want to play despite the fact that everyone else on the server is an asshole, and escing out to mute each one as they start playing MP3s down the voicechat at you takes time away from killing them.

Finally, every game with autosave should have two autosaves. One most recent, one second-to-most-recent. Can't recall which game impressed me with that (suspect it was Valve) but it so saves you from stumbling, bleeding and unarmed, into impossible situations because the cover you dashed into was a checkpoint.

I always got a kick out of how you could spin the loading icon any direction you wanted in castlevania: symphony of the night.

this is sort of the opposite phenomenon--a very small thing that was overlooked and detracted from an otherwise perfect game-- but still relevant, I think...

In Splinter Cell, when you hide in the shadows, you still have those three glowing lights from your goggles and yet enemies walk by you like you're totally invisible. Really? You don't think a glowing trio of lights is a bit odd?

Just seemed a strange choice for a game that went to great lengths to look hyper-realistic.

Can't think of any small things done well that haven't been covered already, though. Good list so far.

In Devil May Cry 3 you could attack the ''Now Loading'' thing in the loading screen. I always did it for no good reason. Made me wonder if I was OCD.

The ability to deflect a rocket with a grenade explosion and some luck in Halo 3.

Don't know where it started, but, having the option to invert the controls in a game.

I liked that in many dreamcast games if you hold ABXY and press start anywhere in a game you could go all the way back to the title screen, and if you do it again you go back to the dreamcast system menu (though this feature is sort of moot with the guide button on the PS3/360).

Another one that involves rockets was adding physics to the GTA4 RPG. At first it seems like just a fun effect to have a rocket ricochet off the ground, but when you are skipping them under cars in order hit incoming armored vehicles it goes from a fun effect to a game changer.

In Fable 2, I really hate that when you are knocked, you might get up right away and blast enemies away from you (which would have been my answer, but...) for some unknown reason, but sometimes you would stay on the ground for like 5-10 seconds. I would almost throw the controller in a fit of rage. "Why the fuck am I not Getting up GAAAAAAH!!!!!!" That was me every time I was knocked out in Fable 2.

I'm late to this post, so some of my faves have already been said...

Diablo 2, the first use (that I can recall) of being able to push a button and have your character say something in game ("thank you" post item trade, "come on!" during a quest, etc).

Dead Space's pop up menu is fantastic, seeing Isaac watch your selections is a small, brilliant touch. But the Burnout Paradise pop up menu is equally great. Sure, you can go to a pause screen, but with Burnout's use of the d-pad, you can invite friends or start in game challenges, ALL while it keeps you in the action, allowing you to crash into something. Brilliant.

Speaking of Burnout, I actually like the small cut-scene during drive-thru's. In a race or marked man, the added time and distance can be a strategic advantage in a tight situation. Similarly, the small cut-scene during takedowns within races lends the racer a small breather to regain composure.

Regarding music cues, Sacred 2's light 2-3 note chime tells me there is something hidden nearby. Not vital-to-the-game's-quests hidden, just gold or the potential set item. I found the last piece of a set just by paying attention to the barely audible cues. Other games have done this before, though. Sly Cooper was the first game that I remember giving good audio cues on nearby secrets.

Old school: Super Hydlide 2 for me offered a few nice small touches - if you were overloaded, your character moved SLOW. If you did not sleep during the night (first day/night clock I can remember in a game), your character's reaction time slows and defense lowers).

Last but not least...
In this current generation of gaming, my favorite thing that really has NO consequence is display of the alt-weapons on visual representation of the character. First noticed this when I got Gears of War 1, and now a lot of 3rd person shooters such as Resident Evil and Uncharted use this small visual touch. I don't know why, but it was the one thing that impressed me most, and, coincidently, the thing that made my wife shake her head the most: "You spend $400 on an Xbox and the thing you like the most is the display of the guns you are NOT using...?"

Right.

The zoom in effect in Peggle during extreme fever.

The fact that you can hit the watching animals in Boom Blox.

The jealous girls fighting in Bully if one sees you kiss another girl.

Luminoth corpses with info on their specific deaths when you scan them. Often you wouldn't see them until they were highlighted in the scan visor, which made it double eerie.

Luke, basically, what you're talking about is what the GTA games have been doing for a long while. Also: I am your father.