After 5 pages of folks complaining about various aspects of games I began wondering what you people do like. Not necessarily the obvious like "lots of content," "good story" and so on (though you can talk about 'em if you want). Perhaps the little things that often go overlooked, or examples of developers going the extra mile when they really didn't have to. Things certain games have done that you'd like to see more of.

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Superbosses. Probably most common in JRPGs, these are the real nasty bosses. By no means necessary for a good game and typically much stronger than your standard optional bosses, occasionally appearing in low level areas and wiping even the most well prepared party setups (though, not in a cheap way). I love 'em, probably one of the few times I don't mind being beaten repeatedly or losing progress over.

I like enemies that take a vicious, direct assault, and return it to you. My favorite fights in Twilight Princess were with the Dark Nuts, who I knew could be defeated quickly by carefully timing attacks, but I had far more fun with by charging in and swinging my sword all over the place even though they blocked most of the attacks.

I like creating things too. When a video game has a crafting mechanic where you combine different things and thereby create new things, I'm all over it. Cooking is like this too. That's the kind of "little" mechanic that can just totally steal me away from the rest of the game as I make pies and cakes. Runescape did this, and Rune Factory 3 and Summon Night Swordcraft Story.

I really like it when there's extras on the menu too. Like when they have little character synopses, and extra tidbits about the world and lore, and maybe even little making of videos. I think Prince of Persia included some making of type videos on the disc, didn't they? I really enjoyed that a lot. Age of Empires II had an entire section in the menu for straight up History, which I believe I read over fully twice and spot read another three dozen times. That's one of the main reasons I didn't like Age of Empires III very much, because it lacked that kind of dedication to history and accuracy.

Any content or little details that are easy to miss on a first playthrough, but that the devs added anyway. Like 20% of each Deus Ex level.

Continuing the Deus Ex example: When the devs let the player think outside the box, instead of following a scripted routine where you have to do something in a specific way, and then actually making the game react to this. Like running away from 'boss fights' where you could've killed off that character permanently, and then the devs make the character pop up again a little later on in the game, with new dialogue. That dialogue would not even be seen if the player had killed the boss right away, even though that's the most sensible thing to do.

Or how pretty much every minor character in Psychonauts is unique, and has unique responses to pretty much every object you can find in the game. Even the turtle you rescue what is almost the end of the game, which you're only supposed to carry for 15 seconds to its owner. You can just leave the tower there, go all the way back to the camp, and show it to everyone for no reason.

Small, wacky and unexplained appliances to which I can attach a purpose in my head. Using my imagination in that way to flesh out the entire world using only the props that the game sneaks in helps immersion like nothing else.

I love Star Wars games for this. Beyond Good and Evil is doing it too. And BioShock and Rayman, Games like Mass Effect devote too much effort to explaining themselves. I want to come up with my own explanations.

Fully customizable controls. The kind where you can assign each action to each button.

I loved the crafting in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW72-dIiXgs. It's an MMO, so the idea of crafting is fairly standard, but there were tons of variables and item stats/quality all depended on the craftsman. I couldn't get into other games' crafting after it though, since most of it was creating specific items with set stats and such.

The linked video is very basic, but once you got into high level blasters and Jedi equipment it was really neat. I think I went a month straight of just crafting, no fighting or quests.

When things have some explanation to them rather than just being there for the sake of being there.

Health bars.

In RPG's when there are things at low level areas that cannot be opened/killed/obtained until later levels.

And for Fallout specifically: agriculture, production and economy.

When enemies can climb up things so that I'm not really safe standing on top of something. (Left 4 Dead)

When the choices I do come up to reward of haunt me later in the game.

It's hard to describe, but feeling like you're actually doing something rather than pressing a button and it happening. Like when you're driving in GTA IV and you pull off a cool handbrake turn, it feels like you did it, rather than you pressing the handbrake button and the game doing it for you. R* are especially good at this.

I guess it sounds weird and inefficient, but the more button presses it takes to do a single action, the more involving I find it. Like the very opposite of QTEs.

Little sub plots in games.

Like when you find a body or a note and you follow it's story leading you to a horrible truth or something like that.

Vault 11.

Remember in the 16-bit platforming days when characters would start doing amusing stuff if we let them stand idle long enough? Wish that could come back.

Polishing. Oh wait, that's probably not a small thing.

References that you really only get and really only know that they are actually references when you know where they come from, without a writer wriggling them in your face like a carrot on a stick on a jack-in-the-box in a piece of throwing pie.
Short: Really good in-jokes.

Or how in Blizzard games the units would start saying funny things if you clicked them long enough.

Almost everything about the GTA games. There's lots of little and not-so-little things that add up to real world you can blow up to your heart's content.

Button prompts that change the situation depending on how fast you react/what button you push.

I also enjoy a game we're one small decision can change the entire story.

Basically any feature that makes me go back and see what I can do differently, try handling a situation another way, etc. :happy:

A good Alchemy system, like in the Might and Magic games, Return to Krondor, or the TES series. Being able to create potions is nice.

Edit:


This should be standard procedure for video games and not a feature

Humor. But not slapstick-y stuff...like in FNV, I didn't like the WildWasteland overmuch, a lot of it was too over the top/in-your-face.

Inside joke/reference dialogue lines, or text written on tombstones that many might miss noticing, or a companion's voice lines that personally make you giggle the first time you hear them ("Our quest is vain!"). I often have a strange sense of the absurd tho, so perhaps a lot of things I find funny in games many wouldn't. I think I find humor/laugh a lot when it wasn't specifically intended as humor, too.

a useful item creation system.

Emotion

Gore

Violence

Russians!

I like easy to use menus.

I also think that a font can make or break a game. If the menu uses terrible fonts, I hardly ever beat them game.

responsive controls (especially in shooters)

seriously, it's the only reason I like Counter-Strike

Responsive controls are a pretty big thing, though (especially in shooters). They're very important in making the game enjoyable.

I like simple easy to use menus. Function over form when menus are concerned for me.

Dynamic foliage
Clean and appropriate UI
Ambient Occulsion
Gamepad support

They still do. I've spent way too long clicking on Marauders to get to the funny stuff.

What I really like is in RPGs and adventure game where they take the time to hide away hand placed treasure in really clever places that make you feel really good when you find them.

the inclusion of bots in some games like timesplitters and advance wars. i just love playing against the computer on the hardest difficulty