8 Tiny Gameplay Tweaks That Changed EVERYTHING

i'll do that one more time hello all of you little demons jules here for whatculture.com back again with another episode of the awesomely named and awfully hosted choose your own adventure the weekly medieval theme format where i the crown jewels of whatculture.com take a list chosen by you yes you the person who has made it to 2022 we all made it toot all aboard the hype train poop poop yes you get to decide what list i dole out to you each and every week and this week we are talking about video game tweaks that were so tiny that no one expected them to do much but they ended up changing everything but before we begin with today's list let's talk about new year's resolution scenes we are basking the uh the gray and dark uh january of 2022 but we can still be very hopeful indeed so james what's your new year's resolution this year jules i'm gonna spice things up a little bit i'm gonna be nastier to you oh that's a bit awkward because mine is actually to be nicer to you so i feel like ours are gonna come into conflict uh somewhat no no no no it'll be fine yeah yeah we'll just get on with it did he have a knife then so let's get on with it then as i'm jules this is whatculture.com and these are eight tiny gameplay tweaks that changed everything and you know the draw by now say hi to me here in the live chat and put your suggestions for next week's episode down in the comment section below but let's get on with that let's shall we i think we shall number eight dodging the last of us part two now while it might be utter sacrilege to talk negatively about the original last of us video games seeing as it sits atop a golden plinth in the hearts and minds of many gamers around the world i think that we can all agree that there was one area that needed a little bit of polish and that was the melee combat system because if we're being frank it was uh a dog dick i take that back it wasn't actually terrible by any stretch of the imagination but the fact that joel had to be equipped with a melee weapon himself in order to block or counter attacks coming in really did make for a confusing scramble which would more often than not lead to a player just having to accept their fate and restart a battle if things weren't going well for them and that doesn't make for great gameplay where a player would rather retry than be afforded the ability to properly dodge and counter and it's another reason why the last of us part 2 actually deserves a lot of commendation because seriously they took this broken bit of the original game and they tweaked it to utter perfection the addition of a proper dodge mechanic which can even see you make tricks your way around enemy gunfire opened up the combat immeasurably and it always felt like you had some degree of control even when encounters were going downhill fast with this small tweak melee combat was now certifiably a thing a depressingly harrowing and really brutal thing but i think nonetheless cheers number seven the cap jump mario odyssey okay so let's get something clear straight off the bat here i think that mario odyssey is a chef kiss title but what really matters is james dowser's opinion really so i'll tell you what we're gonna bring back an old segment here let's ask james let's ask james james do you like mario odyssey i love it i knew you would that's why he's a ledge and also i'm adhering to my be nicer to james thing right now see because when it comes to reinvention mario truly is the master as sonic looks up from the dumpster that he calls his home surrounded by pictures of human women that he's kissed warehog fur clumps and that time that he became a knight of artherian legend all he can do is try and shield his eyes from the bright wonder that is mario's ever shifting form with the meticulous level designs the phenomenal first three outing the constant shifts in gameplay mario has rarely settled into a groove but still manages to smash out enough bangers for a greatest hits collection but you see mario isn't about gimmicks for the sake of just having a gimmick it's about the freedom of movement that comes from his new toys in fact all of the mario games can be boiled down to how they actually address the issue of video game movement galaxy messed with our minds as we try to figure out how to use gravity and the rotation of objects to our benefit the flood from sunrise gave us what was in effect a jet pack to play around with and in odyssey it was like pandora's bloody box being opened yet for all of the tweaks and gameplay changes on offer here the one that absolutely broke the mould the most was the most simple the cap jump allowing mario to just bounce off of cappy allowed just so much creativity and how to approach the level problems that were presented to you it's like right i could go up this way or i could use a series of really interconnected bouncing and jumps in and using the level geometry and just grabbing this and moving on to that and bouncing again it just kind of like okay that was much harder but it was so much more goddamn impressive when placed in the hands of pros this one move opened up the world in ways never seen before as now mario could jump higher and leap further and the best part of it all is that nintendo rewarded you for doing so this was freedom akin to spider-man's web slinging and it was so utterly simple it's a wonder that the mechanic wasn't introduced much sooner yes i know that he had power ups and stuff that allowed him to do that like the cloud mechanic from galaxy too but still this was the real game changer number six the undershadow crash bandicoot 4 it's about time crash 4 is a video game that makes me happy for so so many reasons the first and foremost is the fact that it actually exists which will always give me a warm feeling in my yummy of tummies the thing is is that this series had a lot of stop start entries into it by loads of different developers and it never felt like crash was ever going to return to form but crash four oh boy that booted that can that preconceived notion just straight in the face and was just like are you enjoying the taste of my grits mate you're not but here's crash four crash four is a total that wasn't afraid to take risks adding in new characters a host of new mechanics and of course was not afraid to break the very spirit of gamers looking to 100 the title thanks to its ridiculous hidden boxes numerous level tweaks that needed to be replayed over and over and utterly brutal time trial modes but one of its best tweaks was actually its most simple i'm speaking of course about the under shadow ring that appears to showcase to the player where their character will land no longer will you have to guess your platform placement as was the case in the insane trilogy i want to die and no matter your height or indeed whether you're even on screen you will have a precise landing zone to work with i cannot express how brilliantly executed this tiny gameplay change is and how much ramifications it have for the series overall because let's face it some of the level designs that toys for bob came up with in this game they needed to have this aspect here so i am very glad very glad big bless to the people who decided to put this in because without it no thanks number five the melee counter metroid samus returns now sometimes a gameplay tweak doesn't actually have huge ramifications because of the fact that it changes the damage that you dish out to an opponent but rather it helps you mitigate any damage coming in and such was the case with the melee counter from metroid samus returns what a game by the way what a game this move totally deserves some love because not only was it immensely satisfying to pull off but it further cemented just how much of a badass samus truly is now it's never fun to find yourself in a situation where you can do little to defend yourself against enemy projectiles and attacks especially when you're on a sliver of health and may well end up dying before your attacks can even shift the bars to do as you pin down but for a long time this was exactly what plagued the metroid series up until the metroid counter quite literally knocked that dated concept out of the park now samus could stare down a charging foe then in the blink of an eye counter their attack and leave them open to a one-hit kill response often shortening the encounter immensely as a result it not only became a very cool way to dispatch enemies but in fact became the way that certain pros and speed runners played the game they wouldn't wait to do anything else they just go like go and counter bam counter bam counter bam counter bam chill out man stop also it came back in metroid dread and looked even better because they implemented it against the bosses and then i was just like oh come at me bird man you want a bit of this i've just you i've zoomed around you i'm zooming i'm zooming like a cat door from final fantasy vii take that bang that literally was kind of the emotional ride that i had playing uh metroid drive by the way i i had to play it when i was on my own because kerry would just think there's something very wrong with me there is but um i didn't need her to know just the extent of how bad it was anyway moving on number four unclear dialogue choices fallout 4. why are you grinning oh you mean this screen right here oh it's just one that i usually get when i trick the audience by telling them that it's going to be about things that a positive gameplay tweak changes and then deliver something that is terrible because you see while a lot of entries on this list focus on tiny changes that improve things for the better along comes fallout 4 to showcase that sometimes only a slight alteration in key gameplay elements can have a drastically negative effect on the title overall and this meltdown all stemmed from how the game handled what your character would say in conversations or more specifically what they might say even a person with the iq of a regular super mutant why do i feel like james is just putting an image of me up when when you're putting that you're being nasty man knows that dialogue choices are pretty integral to the overall fallout experience and indeed it did seem at one point in time that bethesda was going to deliver big in this area as they boasted that all of the dialogue in their future upcoming fallout 4 would be fully voice acted and when you consider the sheer amount of dialogue present that is huge but so was their misstep when it came to presenting these choices to the player in an effort to streamline the game's dialogue system the list of your actual responses was ditched in favor of a mechanic which gave a general gist of how your character would respond the problem was however is that providing a mere hint at your response often led to your avatar coming across as too harsh aggressive or downright foolish ruining the immersion and the role-playing aspects entirely and don't even get me started on the sarcastic option here because it turned you into a bloody psychopath half the time is it any wonder that one of the most downloaded mods for this game is a d-tweaked dialogue system that shows you exactly what you're gonna say funny how people might wanna choose their exact responses in a game built around choosing your exact bloody responses number three dashing do maternal now i won't lie to you james uh when i first saw footage for do maternal i was actually slightly worried i had supped i had feasted on the big boy bad boy bazinga bean buffet that was the doom 2016 reboot and i was a very hungry boy and in my stupor that come from my gluttonous antics i thought to myself boom turtle's not gonna be as good as 26 dead time i went to somewhere there's no way it's gonna be good i mean look at it it's all arcadey i prefer that the goriness and the glory kills you know what i'm saying passed a slice of truffle but then i played it and boy was i hungry all over again well doom 2016 was a power fantasy eternal was an unapologetic sugar rush that sought to turn every encounter into a roller coaster ride of chained together attacks and viscera filled visuals and the move that created this kind of tony hawks with a gun experience was none other than the simple dash this tiny change dropped like a bomb and exploded preconceptions about how combat could even be approached as now with greater movement options at your disposal you could dive in and dip out of combat on a whim meaning that you were always in a state of attack always moving from target to target and dipping out when the forces of hell began to toast your buns eternal taught you to never stop moving and never stop kicking ass and that is a mentality that i can get behind number two the revamped atb system final fantasy 7 remake now final fantasy 7 purists found themselves in a bit of a weird situation when the remake dropped because here was a game that they've been asking for for literally ages and it was finally here with brand new graphics and all this beautiful retelling of a story that they knew inside and out but upon playing the game they were somewhat divided because of the fact that the remake just was like yeah you see that bit of the church the story there i'm just gonna rip it right out she's gonna rip it right out oh you missed it well here's something that wasn't in there and we'll put that in there crisis core stuff do you like that it's different to be fair i love this remake by the way i just loved how confident it was with its approach to this new narrative but for some the changes were too much but for others it was a wonder to see a modern twist on a beloved tale but the one thing that both sides agreed on was that the game played so well that it almost didn't matter the battle system in particular received massive praise for how it took the established active time battle system and revamped it to make sure downtime was at a minimum and enjoyment at a maximum while the atb gauge would fill by itself over time and once full allow access to spells and special abilities the remake added in the twist that the bar could also be filled by attacking or parrying enemies meaning that instead of waiting for your chance to strike the player could switch between members chain together attacks and then switch back to those ready to unleash their more powerful moves it turns what was once a static battle system into a dynamic and deeply rewarding one with you pushing further and further with riskier attacks to shave off precious seconds of the gauge fill time i absolutely adore this change and i honestly can't see how the series is ever gonna go back from this point here's hoping that they maintained this for all future releases it is that good and number one turf war monster hunter world now it might seem a little strange calling a mechanic where two gigantic monsters meet each other and just tear chunks out of each other and the earth being a small gameplay tweak but on paper the question it posed that led to this gigantic clash of kaiju's actually was relatively simple and that was what if two of alpha predators actually met each other in the wild what would happen this now in prior games this problem wasn't really addressed with the largest beast usually ignoring all other lifeforms as it focused on trying not to become a new pair of boots for the player while also trying to kick their face in at the same time yet world introduced the breathtaking concept of turf wars wherein should an alpha predator meet another they might engage in a tussle of epic proportions it was simply breathtaking to see fanged favourites split the earth apart as they body slammed each other to the point where you might be tempted to watch this kaiju wrestling federation play out from the comfort of a pop-up deck chair however you might want to hold off on that for the moment because sometimes the team can actually pair up to form this thing called a bond attack where they inadvertently create a super move of absolutely devastating proportions that can sometimes one-shot your entire party so yeah enjoy but from a big distance still with this one tweak the term big game didn't apply to just the creatures you were hunting as the depth of this title also shot up to huge heights and there we go my friends those were eight tiny gameplay tweaks that changed everything i hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comment section below we did it james our first episode of 2022 in the bag in the can it feels so good to be back once more big love to you and yours big love to you and yours and if you want to chat to me further you can do so over on twitter at retroj with a zero or if you want to get nerdy with me then why not come and hang out with me on a wednesday afternoon where i do lots of streaming at the moment i'm going through a fallout randomizer uh run we're going it's got tons of warhammer mods in as well because i'm a big fan of the warhammer you might have guessed by now and i also do loads of warm about reports on live let's dice as well so come check me out over there that would be lovely but before i go i want to make sure that we're doing everything we can each doing tiny tweaks of our own personal lives to make sure that we are living our best lives and sometimes that can be as simple as just taking a step back and getting some perspective being kind to ourselves both physically and spiritually now what i want you to do for me right now today is take a look at things that are bothering in your life take a step back from them and ask yourself this one question am i okay do i need help with this because if the answer is yes i do need help with this and that is completely fine friends family professionals in the support industry there are services available to you to make sure that you are going out there and giving it your best all right and there is no shame in asking for help now go out there and absolutely smash at your big ledge as always i've been jules you have been awesome never forget that i'll speak to you soon bye

Channel: WhatCulture Gaming

Views: 233,491

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Id: US7IWICxaD8

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 11 2022