Over the years there have been lots of revolutionary mechanics in gaming.
From the originators like the combo system being accidentally created in Street Fighter, the aggressiveness of cops in the first GTA, and the difficulty curve being invented in Space Invaders.
All of these are good and revolutionary but in today's list, we will look at the most satisfying and the most enjoyable game mechanics that made them stand out from the rest.
These are the top 10 gameplay mechanics of all time.
10. Beard Growth - Red Dead Redemption 2
Arthur can turn from handsome cowboy to burley mountain man
Red Dead Redemption 2 is known for its assortment of impressive and groundbreaking attention to detail and a multitude of game mechanics.
From the dead eye that lets you kill 20 men without even blinking an eye, the satisfying fight club-esque melees you can get into, and of course, how can we forget the shrinking horse balls during cold weather.
Arguably though, the most immersive and realistic game mechanic in the game is the hair growth of Arthur and John. RDR 2 is lauded for the immersion that it can give the players.
The ambient sounds of the different places you can visit are unique to each other. But the hair growth mechanic is the most impressive of them all.
I mean horseback riding and adventuring take up lots of your time playing RDR 2 and of course, in all that time you spend gallivanting in the wild west, your hair eventually grows longer.
When growing your hair out in RDR 2 you can choose to make it as long as you want and your beard can grow even longer than your hair those and make it as thick as it can be.
From dashing cowboy adventurer to terrifying as hell mountain men, Arthur or John can pull it off to a T.
9. Zandatsu - Metal Gear Rising Revengeance
Swiss cheese in human form
When Raiden debuted in the Metal Gear series, let's just say that the reception to his character wasn’t all too nice.
Gaming mastermind Hideo Kojima did the old bait and switch to players when Raiden debuted in the 2001 Metal Gear game, Sons of Liberty.
All the advertisements pointed to Solid Snake returning as the main character but then after the first few hours we’re introduced to an anime-looking naked dude and then we figured out that this was the guy we’re supposed to play as the rest of the game.
Despite his rough introduction, he then slowly turned into a fan favorite and eventually transformed into a badass cyborg ninja that can use skyscraper-sized swords AND THEN finish other skyscraper-sized enemies at blinding speed.
In Revengeance, we’re put again in the shoes of our favorite cyborg ninja that now comes with new powers. The most famous of his new powers is blade mode or the zandatsu.
Raiden slows down time to a crawl and then cuts up his enemy as precisely as he can turning them basically into an unfinished Lego set but with blood and guts.
This satisfying-as-hell game mechanic is the reason why I was pulled into this game in the first palace and I'd argue also, it’s the thing that attracted other players to the game in the first place.
From humans to androids to giant robots, no one is safe from Raiden when he turns into a full-on Jack the Ripper.
8. Grappling Hooks - Just Cause 3/ Just Cause 4
In any game genre, any enemy has crap aim even helicopter-mounted turrets
Just Cause is built upon creating mayhem and unbridled description for the sole reason of, well, just because. There are a lot of traversal mechanics in this game.
From the traditional four wheels of a car or even flying a helicopter or jet. You can even drive a pirate ship on wheels and fire cannons on its sides and of course the wingsuit.
But the grappling hook is where it's at in this game.
You can create as much mayhem as is with all the guns and vehicles you have at your disposal but with the grappling hook you can create so much more convoluted and messed up amalgamations of things that go boom.
Tie together a gas tank and a car together and see how big the explosion becomes, tie a dude and a jet together and see how far the guy goes with the jet.
Travel faster by grappling jets, cars, or walls of mountainsides.
Endless fun is at your disposal with just a hook and an unbreakable piece of wire.
7. Resource Management - Red Alert 2
Creating all of this doesnt’t come cheap you know
We go back to a simpler but crucial game mechanic that we’re all too familiar with, and what better to show it than with the game we grew up in Command and Conquer’s Red Alert 2.
In the RTS classic, you take control of the Soviets or the Allied forces.
You have weapons of mass destruction at your disposal from weather control machines to iron curtains to a freaking missile silo, but all of these don't come cheap.
To achieve victory, you must gather resources by harvesting goldmines, oil, or electricity.
Create enough and you'll be able to spend millions of dollars on training troops, creating vehicles of war, and doomsday weapons.
There’s nothing quite like creating dozens of Kirov Airships and sending them to the enemy’s base and decimating them in a matter of seconds.
6. Limb Targeting - Dead Space
Instruction clear. Will commit crimes against necromorph-kind now
It says it all in this entry's photo.
In Dead Space, you take control of engineer Isaac Clarke onboard the space station Ishimura when suddenly it's overtaken by a deadly alien infection that turned his former crewmates into grotesque and deadly undead creatures called Necromorphs.
In order to combat this threat, he has to use his former tools as an engineer into deadly weapons.
Isaac also has the ability to use stasis which he uses to freeze any Necromorphs and throwable items in place to gain an advantage.
But in this game, headshots don’t count. To permanently stop the necromorphs, all the limbs of it must but cut off.
But since necromorphs have more than one limb and sometimes sprout more limbs and tentacles out of nowhere, that's no easy task.
This game mechanic adds tension to the gameplay as the jittery and aggressive necromorphs attack you in twitching and erratic manners so getting a good lock on their arms and legs is sometimes a hard thing to do.
But with a little help of stasis and an unshakeable aim, throngs of the Necromorph horde will fall on Isaac Clarke’s feet.
5. The Gravity Gun - Half-Life 2
This and the portal gun are the two guns I wish were real
Half-Life 2 was released in 2004 and developed by Valve. 19 years later and we are all still waiting on the 3rd installment while also confirming the legend that Valve is scared of the number 3.
Portal 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 where?
Regardless, Half-Life 2 brought us one of the most iconic guns in video game history, the Gravity Gun. While wielding this powerful weapon, you’re able to manipulate gravity itself.
You can grab heavy objects such as explosive barrels and bladed saws and shoot them out at great velocity to any Headcrab zombies coming at you.
Although not able to exist in real life since Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So shooting those giant barrels and saws means that in real life there’s an equal recoil equivalent to the weight you shoot out. But this is video games. We don’t care about laws.
We care about breaking the rules of physics for fun.
4. The Batmobile - Batman: Arkham Knight
Oh yeah. Here we go. Vroom Vroom time
When Arkham Asylum was released in 2009, we were first introduced to Rocksteady’s version of the caped crusader while he was driving his iconic Batmobile to the Asylum.
And since then gamers have been lobbying for the reappearance of the iconic vehicle in the next installments of the franchise. And in 2015, gamers had their wishes granted.
One of Arkham Knight’s most prominent gameplay mechanics is not just the new skills that Batman had like the fear takedowns or the numerous other gadgets he had but the batmobile itself.
Being able to mow down crowds of criminals and seeing them ricochet off of the batmobile like an electrified pinball will never get old.
Apart from this shocking skill the Batmobile has, it also has a 60mm cannon used to destroy tanks that run amok in the city and a Gatling gun to disrupt any helicopters or drones that dare obstruct the Batman’s quest for justice.
Although not everyone was a fan of the Batmobile when it was released. There were complaints that the game focused too heavily on Batmobile sections such as racing and tank combat.
But in my opinion, the Batmobile sections perfectly showcased the power of the Batmobile and the destruction it gives to villains, and the salvation it can give to Gotham.
3. Guiding Wind - Ghost of Tsushima
In Tsushima, you don't go to people to ask for directions cause the wind will do that for you
In Sucker Punch’s 2020 epic, Ghost of Tsushima, we gamers were treated with arguably the most good-looking open-world game ever created.
With environments that look like they were ripped straight out of a painting and an immersion and feel that feels next to real life, Tsushima nails down all the checkboxes on what makes a good video game great.
And adding to this immersion is the game's waypoint system, the guiding wind.
In-game, it is told that the guiding wind is the embodiment of Jin Sakai’s father guiding him as he goes on his many adventures and his quest to free Tsushima from the Mongol invaders.
By swiping up on the trackpad of the PS4 controller, the guiding wind will guide the player to whatever active mission or point of interest the player would want to go.
With this mechanic, it makes the game feel more immersive by showing no HUD or arrow that most games have to point to where the objective is.
When you reach whatever mission or point of interest, the guiding wind simply stops guiding until the next location or mission is picked.
In this masterful stroke of genius by the game developers, they inadvertently made an already phenomenal game into legendary status and that is without any kind of exaggeration.
2. Day and Night Cycle - Dying Light
In real life, sunsets are supposed to be pretty. In Dying Light though it means to run as fast as you can to the nearest safehouse and hole up till the morning.
Dying Light gave us the most immersive experience of a zombie apocalypse we could ever have till Dead Island 2 finally came out in 2023.
Dying Light gives players nonstop anxiety and pulse-pounding action as a Viral could come out gunning for you around every corner or a Bomber infected could come out and explode and pretty much kill you in one blow.
Dealing with the infected eventually gets easier to handle as your skills level up by doing parkour and mowing down the zombies with any makeshift weapons you can create.
But when the sun sets and night comes, Harran turns into a different kind of nightmare
Biters suddenly mutate rapidly and turn from slow-moving to Usain Bolt-type of runners that run as fast as the virals. And most famous of all, it means the arrival of the Volatiles.
Fast-moving and nigh unstoppable killing machines that can spit a corrosive acid and beat you down hood style with their powerful claws and inhuman strength.
So when you come and visit Harran make sure to always keep track of time and watch the shadows because when you see the sun setting, find a safe house and sleep off for the night.
Those Volatiles and mutated Biters are no joke when it's pitch black.
1. Nemesis System - Shadow of Mordor
You shall not PASS with your head still on your shoulders
Arguably the gaming mechanic that has the most wasted potential is the nemesis system from the Middle-Earth: Shadow series of games.
First introduced to gamers the world over in 2014 with the release of Shadow of Mordor and again in the 2017 sequel Shadow of War, it has given players countless different scenarios, moments, and nemesis that made each playthrough unique to each player.
How the nemesis system works is that every enemy you encounter from the lowliest slave orcs to the highest ranking orcs have the chance to advance rank once they killed you or killed other orcs to take their places as generals or captains.
For example, you cut off the arm of an orc in one encounter, and then the next one that same orc comes back as a captain and has now replaced his severed arm with a mace.
Or you burn an orc with a flaming arrow and then come back for revenge with burnt skin and immunity to any and all arrow attacks.
Possibilities are endless with the nemesis system. It's such a shame that it was patented by WB studios and has gatekept it from being copied by other games.
But still, the two Middle-Earth games still give gamers tons of different playthroughs and nemesis that still hunt down Talion to the ends of Middle-Earth 9 years after its release.
