Video games are built around their mechanics. These could be anything from the way you move through the world to how combat plays out to the way you interact with a trash can. Mechanics are the basic rules by which the game operates, and through which you interact with the world. They determine what you can do and what it means when you do something.
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While most games lay out their mechanics gradually (usually in a tutorial) so that you know what you’re working with, sometimes games will hide their mechanics. There are many reasons for doing this, from amplified immersion at the cost of realism to encouraging a certain style of play without “forcing” it outright. The following games are all very popular, but for these reasons and many more, they have hidden mechanics operating in the background that will blow your mind.
Time Signatures Correspond To The Level You’re Playing (Thumper)
A Musically-Inclined Method Of Increasing Difficulty
Thumper is a very interesting rhythm game that’s less about hitting specific notes and more about making moves in time with the beat of a song. It’s a lot like Metal: Hellsinger or even Hi-Fi Rush in that way. You control a beetle-like spaceship on rails, grinding along the side of a track and dodging obstacles in time with the beat, and even fighting bosses to close out each level.
Any music theorist knows that time signatures are foundational to a music composition; the higher the time signature, the more complex the song. In the case of Thumper, that directly applies to each of the game’s levels. For example, Levels 1 and 2 are in 2/4 time (or 1/2 for Level 1), Level 3 is in 3/4 time, Level 4 is in 4/4 time, and so on. It’s a pretty savvy way of gradually increasing the game’s difficulty by tying that difficulty to the songs in each level.
Fewer Enemies Spawn When Traveling In A Straight Line (Suikoden)
Makes Moving Between Destinations Easier
One of the most frustrating aspects of older JRPGs is random enemy encounters. They typically show up when you’re exploring. Without warning, you’ll be thrust into combat with a random assortment of enemies from the local region. These encounters can make exploring a drag, especially if you aren’t grinding and are just trying to get to your next objective. The genre tried a few different ways to mitigate this: Chrono Trigger made enemies visible, while Pokemon gave players the option to flee from encounters. Suikoden took a more nuanced approach.
When you’re traveling across the world map in a straight line, like from one city to the next or when heading for a specific location, you’ll encounter fewer enemies, which speeds up your travel time by removing the stop-start of random encounters. Meanwhile, if you’re traveling more aimlessly, like when exploring or while you’re trying to grind for XP, more enemies will spawn, which means that grinding gets easier when you’re actually trying to grind. It’s a really great way of balancing both gameplay aspects to keep things moving forward.
The Xenomorph Has Two Separate Brains (Alien: Isolation)
The Method Behind The Monster
Speaking of famous enemy AI, Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph enemy is widely regarded as having some of the most detailed AI in gaming history. You play as Amanda Ripley (Ellen Ripley’s daughter) as she explores Sevastopol station while searching for her mother. While there are human and android enemies to contend with, by far the biggest threat is the alien itself. It will hunt you down, learn your tendencies, and adjust its strategy accordingly. If you hide in lockers or under beds too many times, the Xenomorph will find you easily.
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Alien: Isolation enhances that by giving the Xenomorph two separate “brains” that operate its AI: one moves the creature around the level, finding paths through vents and away from areas it has already searched, and the other learns and gives hints to the first brain on where to go. This second brain picks up on your behavior and tells the alien where to look for you, where you like to hide, and any patterns you adhere to when exploring (or escaping). What’s most impressive is how these two minds work together, making a cohesive whole that not only feels like a thinking enemy but often feels like it’s smarter than you are.
Enemies Target Isolated Players (Left 4 Dead)
Stay With The Group
Left 4 Dead is a team-based game. Sure, you can play it solo with three other AI allies, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to work together with the other survivors. Those massive waves of zombies are way too relentless to handle on your own, and even the most talented players will eventually be overwhelmed by the hordes of undead that descend upon them.
The thing is, since Left 4 Dead can also be played in co-op, there is no guarantee that all four players will adhere to that expectation, so the game does a bit of background trickery to force you into teamwork. While the zombies may seem mindless, they still have AI, and that AI will single out players who are off on their own. In other words, wandering away from your teammates will get you targeted instead of them. The same thing goes for players who aren’t aggroing as many enemies as the others. Basically, if you aren’t actively helping out your team, the zombies are going to come after you first.
Enemies Can’t Turn 180 Degrees (Batman: Arkham Asylum)
They’ll Never See You Coming
Batman: Arkham Asylum gets most aspects of Batman right: the combat, the investigative instincts, and, of course, the stealth. This is the game that pioneered the meme “It makes you feel like Batman,” and there’s a reason for that. This Batman is a crime-fighting menace. He deliberately walks into Arkham Asylum during a wholesale prison break and subdues every supervillain threat one by one. It’s the kind of thing that Batman is known for, but to achieve that level of authenticity, the game takes some shortcuts.
While hidden loading screens are a big part of that, another is the way enemies handle Batman while he’s in stealth. The main thing is that they never look behind them unless they’re terrified. They’ll turn 90 degrees one way or the other, but never all the way around, giving you all the opportunity you need to sneak up behind them while also ensuring that they never look like they’re just standing still. However, once they enter the “terrified” state, they can turn all the way around, becoming more alert as their comrades are picked off. This means that encounters get more difficult as you progress, which is exactly how they should feel.
The End Of Your Health Bar Lasts Longer (DOOM)
It Always Feels Like You Just Barely Made It Out Alive
Firefights in DOOM are intentionally hectic, and it plays into the boomer shooter style that id Software is going for. Hideous demons are everywhere, spawning in front of and behind you, and your best chance of survival is to keep moving. There’s no hiding behind cover here; constant momentum and gunfire are the recipe for success.
With that said, have you ever noticed that you frequently complete an encounter with only a tiny bit of your health left? It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s a surprisingly frequent occurrence. The reason for that is that the last bit of your health bar is actually worth far more health than it looks like it is. This helps give the impression that you barely escaped a fight by the skin of your teeth. Assassin’s Creed uses a similar mechanic, where the last notch in your health bar is much more robust without displaying it as such. It’s a crafty little way for these games to make you feel like a total badass.
Machines Evolve If You Kill A Lot Of Them (Horizon Zero Dawn)
Just Like An AI Would
The machine enemies in Horizon Zero Dawn come in all shapes and sizes. There are little Stalkers and Grazers, stealthy Stalkers and Snapmaws, and massive Thunderjaws, all of whom are looking to turn Aloy into a red smear on the post-post-apocalyptic wilderness. Her only option is to fight back, and fight back she does, but with every machine she takes down, the AI behind them gets stronger.
That’s not just a lore thing either; these machines really do evolve the more times you kill them. For lesser machines like Chargers, you’ll have to kill a dozen or more before their behavior changes, but for bigger enemies like Stormbirds, killing one is all it takes. This evolution primarily takes the form of increased armor, particularly on the machines’ weak spots. It also only applies to machines that are still being produced in Cauldrons, so older machines like the Corruptors don’t evolve. It’s a pretty cool detail that both enhances the gameplay of Horizon Zero Dawn while tying into the lore of the machines themselves.
You Can Use Enemies As A Human Shield (Hotline Miami)
It’s Very Specific And Not Very Useful, But It Can Be Done
Hotline Miami is a violent game. The actual context around that violence isn’t laid out all that clearly. The whole thing feels like a mid-80s fever dream, where mysterious packages are delivered to you and tell you to go and kill a bunch of people, and you do it, usually with a baseball bat or a series of firearms. Enemies go down in one hit, but so do you, so the game’s isometric levels often feel more like a puzzle than an arena of bloodshed, as you plot your course through the army of gun-toting thugs standing in your way.
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Most of the time, when you come across a gun, it’ll be a two-handed assault rifle or a shotgun. These are both extremely effective, so don’t pass them up. However, if you end up with a handgun, Hotline Miami has a hidden mechanic you can make use of in very specific circumstances. If you’re wielding a handgun and you knock an enemy down (say by hitting them with a door), instead of doing a standard execution on them, you will pick them up and use them as a human shield. It’s not all that useful — it basically just absorbs one bullet, with more likely following right behind it — but it’s a very cool hidden detail that you could easily play through the entire game and never see.
