When you spend most of your gameplay hours wrangling new release games for review, you do not typically get the opportunity to sit down and soak up the atmosphere to the same extent as a regular player does. Once those end credits roll, you’re onto the next one; sometimes a cause of frustration, particularly when the summer movie season is in full swing and rushed licensed titles are piling up on your desk, leaving you totally jaded. Sometimes you just need to step back from it all and remember what you enjoy about the hobby.

This week, we’ll look at a few of those little things that we really like in video games.

Those Tender Moments

It’s nice to just stop and soak in the scenery

Modern video games are always pretty busy; players are constantly under enemy fire, being chased by scores of police cars, or rapidly tapping away on a plastic guitar to a steady stream of five coloured notes. Sometimes though, we really like it when a game lets you take a moment to draw on the scenery, to let you soak in the game world that the development studio has spent years creating. There’s nothing like being able to soak up a good view – from the top of the castle in ICO, from the mountains of Oblivion or the sky of Just Cause. We also love when a game gives you the opportunity to stop the main quest for a second and take in some media like Max Payne 2’s various soap operas, the TV stations of Grand Theft Auto IV, or just being able to chill with your girlfriend and watch Popeye or Flash Gordon in The Darkness. Sitting in front of a TV watching a game character sitting in front of a TV is a little perverse but it’s entertaining, and isn’t that the point?

A lot of work goes into writing a game, but some take it further than others, giving players the opportunity to seek out and learn more about the game world and the characters if they wish. The Elder Scrolls games always have a ridiculous amount of lore that players can seek out, Mass Effect has technical information on just about everything in the game, while many games like System Shock, Deus Ex and Doom 3 use text and audio logs to provide background information on the player’s mission and the other characters in the game, along with filling in gaps in the story. It’s not something that works in every game, but well written literature really helps with that immersion factor.

Mass Effect had loads of information on the history of its world

I love it when a level designer makes allowances for certain crazy things when constructing a level. Have you ever wondered why the tunnel ceilings in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas seem that little bit higher than they should be? That’s so you can fly a helicopter through them. With a little bit of determination, players in Halo can take their Warthog almost anywhere – one lazy summer’s afternoon, a friend and I got the jeep all the way down to the bottom of the Silent Cartographer and back again with a few precision melee attacks and grenade explosions.

Adventure games and RPGs are filled with side quests; Fallout 3 and the Disgaea games have significantly more side content than they do main storyline. I love in when these side quests start exploring themes you wouldn’t expect to see in the game, like men being hunted for sport in Oblivion or the tenancy dispute in Fallout 3. Post-story quests are always a big plus in my book, even if they’re ridiculously complicated like Pokémon Platinum’s National Pokedex, which requires players to own the previous six major Pokémon releases. I really like when games that encourage or reward players to replay them in a different manner; the Metal Gear Solid series’ no kill, no detection runs (with cool rewards), or the extra objectives in harder difficulties in GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark and the Thief series.

You can do it all over again as Luigi

Another post-story feature I like in games is the New Game Plus, where players can play through the main story again with all of the abilities and equipment they had at the end of the game. It’s usually an RPG thing, but it’s started to eke out a place in some action games like Prototype, where it makes the slightly boring first section of the game really fun. I’m also a big fan of the arrange mode or “second quest” where players get to play through the original game with all of the items moved around like Legend of Zelda or Resident Evil or with another character who plays differently, like Luigi in Super Mario Galaxy or the Richter and Julius modes in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow respectively.

Games that give players true freedom of choice in how to deal with situations, rather than simple binary choices, give me real joy. Take Deus Ex for instance; there are a number of ways you can dispose of a certain agent in the game, even pre-emptively if you know what’s going to happen. If you’re thorough on your visits to UNATCO, you can even dispose of this agent without firing a weapon. Resilient players can even change Paul’s fate with the right equipment. It’s great when a game rewards players for snooping around and trying to get to areas where they are not supposed to go; there’s a community out there dedicated to sequence breaking (i.e. getting items earlier/out of order) in the Metroid series.

Raiden is a giant perv

The last thing I’ll mention this time refers to those moments when games just don’t feel like taking themselves seriously. The Metal Gear Solid series excels at this – try calling Otacon when you’re hauled up in a locker, or Rosemary when you’re in the women’s bathroom in Metal Gear Solid 2. Try seeing how Rose acts if you snap a picture of one of the hostage’s panties in the Big Shell. The directional microphone is a constant source of amusement later in the game, particularly in the scene near the oil fence at the bottom of the Big Shell. Perhaps my favourite example of ridiculousness in gaming is Neo Contra, which features a mission where players run on top of a helicopter blade, another where you fight guys who chase you while Cossack dancing on top of giant boulders, and an admiral who just happens to be a small dog (complete with uniform) and his soldiers all act totally serious! Don’t even get me started on 50 Cent’s hatred of helicopters.

Why not share a few of the little things you love about games in the forums?